Have you noticed that Pastors and the Church in general has gone out of its way to avoid the Woke Agenda?
We sat back as they stripped God, prayer and the 10 Commandments out of our education system.
We fail to communicate any message of significance to the world about Christ, salvation or quite frankly anything that matters.
So what do we need to do and say as followers of Christ, when it comes to indoctrinating our children on sex, immoral ideas, pedophilia and gender surgeries?
Most Christians & Pastors are clueless on what to do and say to counter these horrible ideas & practices.
What do you think believers should do in these bizarre times? Or should we merely sit back, be comfortable watching our nation become immoral and wicked?
True children of God - who are a shrinking minority in the Church today in North America - are often very confused about what it is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. And if the genuinely born-again are confused about this most crucial spiritual subject, how much greater the confusion of the nominal Christian majority in the Church? This confusion reveals itself in all manner of ways in the Church but ultimately and particularly in it having no power to spiritually/morally influence secular society. Until the Church is revived spiritually, cleaned out, and enjoying real, daily fellowship with God, it will simply be carried along on the tide of Woke madness inundating North America that is drowning saved and lost alike in cultural chaos and destruction.
How can this state-of-affairs be rectified?
1.)
Repentance. (
Acts 3:19; Revelation 2-3)
At bottom, repentance is a change of mind. Not tears shed over sin; not weepy declarations of my wickedness; not chest-beating self-recrimination, but
recognizing the lies I've told myself about my sin, in the light of God's Truth seeing the line of self-deceptions that have brought me into spiritual/moral compromise and have halted my daily, life-changing communion with God
and rejecting them for the lies that they are,
embracing God's Truth, His will and way, no matter the cost.
Repentance is not first and foremost an
emotional business, marked necessarily by tearful confession of sin, but is a
mind-oriented thing that conforms my beliefs, my values, my thinking and my conduct to God's will and way. Doing so might lead to a tearful confession of rebellion toward God, but real repentance isn't revealed by tears and honesty, but by a turning from false (and sinful) thinking to a life that is entirely occupied with pursuing God's will and way, His glory, in everything. (
Romans 8:29; 1 Corinthians 10:31; 2 Corinthians 4:7-11; Colossians 3:1-4, Philippians 1:21, etc.)
Perhaps the most basic point upon which most "Christians" today need to change their minds (repent), is in their view of God. He is very small in the minds of most modern believers, crowded to the margins of life by all manner of distractions, diversions, desires, urgent matters, practical considerations, looming catastrophes, cultural decline, political strife, and so on. There is so much stuff between the average North American "Christian" and the God to whom they claim allegiance that He is often entirely obscured - even on a Sunday morning when they are singing praises to Him. They may belt out "Come Let Us Worship" energetically but their minds are on their afternoon golf game, or the pretty woman a few pews over, or the outfit and hairdo of the Worship leader, or the next session of World of Warcraft they'll play, or on getting the bass line of the song right. Many "Christians" worship God with their lips but their hearts are far from Him; they profess that they know God but in works they deny Him being abominable, disobedient and reprobate in their living (
Matthew 15:8; Titus 1:16).
The terrible thing about this condition is that many have been so long in it that they don't see it as a problem. It's normal; a shrunken, distant God who doesn't actually do anything in one's life is common Christianity, they believe, and so it must be proper Christianity (which, of course, is a great example of the Is-Ought Fallacy). From this badly diminished view of God inevitably arises a very ungodly life. What sense would there be, after all, in centering one's life around such a small, far off, disinterested Being? And so, Christians with this sort of insignificant God in their minds live in constant reflection of His insignificance by replacing Him at every turn with themselves and what they want, and think, and imagine.
Obviously, a church filled with "Christians" of this sort is utterly devoid of any real, divine power, or experience. To make up for this fact, such churches migrate into worldliness, entertainment, psychological therapy, and social justice garbed in religious activity and language, sanctified by the occasional vague reference to God. These churches eventually reflect only the World, the Flesh and even the devil (in the worst cases) and so cease to be of value to the lost who already have plenty of these things without the added layers of religious rituals, ideas and language.
Until genuine repentance from such stuff is enacted by the Church in North America, it will continue to remain rotted and ineffective in the culture.
2.)
Confession. (
1 John 1:9; James 4:6-10)
When genuine repentance happens, confession is always the result - so much so that confession is often confused with repentance. Many is the "Christian," however, who has confessed their sin - perhaps with many tears - and then gone right back to it. Fellow believers are often astonished and dismayed by this, having mistaken confession for repentance. Nonetheless, confession is a necessary feature of the Church returning to spiritual health and power and to its God-intended morally and spiritually salutary effect upon society.
By the way, confession isn't "God please
forgive me!" but "God
you're right: What I've done, what I've thought, imagined and believed, is sin." Confession is an acknowledgment of the Truth of things, a conscious, explicit agreement with God that our sin is actually the sin He says it is.
After Christ's atonement for sin, in Scripture there isn't a single command to
believers to ask for forgiveness from God. Why would there be? In Christ, the born-again believer is already fully, permanently forgiven by God, which is
the necessary condition for His acceptance of them into His kingdom and family.
3.)
Submission. (
Romans 6:13-22; Romans 12:1; James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:6)
If believers do not repent, confess and then come under the constant control of the Holy Spirit, their spiritual transformation and empowerment cannot happen. God will not fill rebels with Himself, which is what every wayward believer is until they consciously, explicitly and persistently submit to His authority and control (and
stay under His control!). So long as the Christian is a rebel toward God, perhaps pleading with Him for power, peace, joy and blessing but never yielding to Him as their Lord and Master, they will find only spiritual counterfeits of genuine Spirit-filled living that leave them, in the end, exhausted, frustrated and ignorant of a genuine, concrete daily experience of their Maker and Savior. Oh, they may have moments of high emotion about religious ideas and rituals, but in the mundane grind of daily living never experience the transformative touch of God upon them. And they never will until they are under His constant control. In such a state, "Christians" are of no use to those in the World desperate for something real, something heart-changing, with God.
So, no, the Church ought never to sit back and watch society collapse into evil. For that collapse I think God will hold complacent, compromised believers (the Church) at least partially accountable.
1 Peter 4:17-19
17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them who obey not the gospel of God?
18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?
19 Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.
2 Corinthians 4:7-11
7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
8 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
11 For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
Matthew 5:16
16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.