How to suffer well...

This is a 50 minute video. It is very encouraging watching Matt Chandler walk through this thing and watching him glorify God with his life. Enjoy.

T4G 2010 -- Session 8 -- Matt Chandler from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

We don't need a REVIVAL!

I've come to the conclusion (call me crazy), but I don't think the church in the US needs a "revival" as so many church-goers are praying for. In case you aren't aware of this, thousands of churches in America pray for revival everyday. I preached a sermon one time saying that if you draw a box in the ground and revival starts in that box then it will spread to others. Most church-goers tend to think revival is the answer to their woes.

With church attendance dropping and public perception of the church at an all-time low, most people think that the answer is revival. I have to disagree. I've been doing a lot of listening lately. I haven't talked much. As a matter of fact, I have only preached one time in the past several years. God has had my ear. I have been investigating several different trends in the western church and have to this astonishing conclusion. Most church-goers do not know the bible. Forget revival, we need a REFORMATION.

You see, if you ask any John Doe christian out there what the message of the gospel is, you will likely get a myriad of responses. And, only a few of those responses will hit anywhere near what the gospel actually is. This is very bad. Forget praying for a revival. We don't even know the word enough to proclaim Christ's death on the cross and the repentance of sins.

Here is what we "know": God loves you, he wants a good life for you, he wants you to be happy, he wants you to have lots of money and good job, he wants you to have your heart's desires.

This is all hogwash (except that God really does love you, but you must repent). God never promises you a good life. He doesn't care if you own a Lexus or not. The only thing that matters is that you accept his death on the cross as punishment for your sins and that you repent of those sins. You can't do this on your own. He has to do this in you. He is the one that is the author of your salvation. You don't choose God, he chooses you.

Revival assumes that people were once alive, but now are dead and in need of being brought back to life. I tell you this. If you don't know the Word, you were never alive to begin with. Maybe you experienced some emotional induced, feel-goodness that made you think that God was with you. Maybe you recited a prayer that meant nothing to you. None of that saves you. God alone is responsible for salvation. You must have faith and faith must be given to you.

One of my favorite sections in Scripture is when Jesus asks his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" And some of them guess at it, but Peter gets it right. He says, "You are the Christ." Jesus then tells him that he is blessed because flesh and blood did not reveal this to him, but God in heaven. Did you notice that last part. I used to think Peter was smarter than the other disciples, but he wasn't. God revealed it to him. It had nothing do with Peter and his wits.

If you study the Reformation you will learn that biblical literacy was at an all-time low during this era. Very few people owned a bible and even less could read one. This is in stark contrast to the age we live in, in one way. We have bibles all over the place. We have camouflage bibles, girl bibles, boy bibles, marriage bibles and all the like. Yet, just like those people during the age of the Reformation, we do not know the bible.

This is very scary. The bible warns us that during the last days there will come a great falling away and that people will run to and fro looking for teachers to scratch their itching ears. People want to find pastors that will tell them what they want to hear. Does this sound familiar in our age of having to have good self-image and self-esteem and so on? We are ripe for the picking when it comes to the great apostasy that is spoken of in Scripture.

Pray for a Reformation. I am trying to figure out how to do my part. I preached the gospel to a co-worker the other day. He did not repent, but I think it may have been the first time he heard the true gospel given the questions he asked and the comments he made. Pray for him.

God is good...

Sometimes I have a hard time accepting the fact that God is good. Sometimes I easily label him as good, because I have "good" things going on in my life. It is much harder to label him that way when things go bad. I want to ask you to pray for a person that I don't know personally, but their faith has touched my life.

Matt Chandler is the pastor of the Village Church in the Dallas, Texas area. He suffered from a seizure on Thanksgiving day and was found to have a tumor on his brain. The doctors went in to remove the tumor and it was found to be not encapsulated and cancerous. This is a serious issue. Please pray for Matt, his family and Village Church.

I just watched his latest update on YouTube. His main message is that no matter what God is good. I broke down and cried. It's very touching to watch someone going through this and still proclaim that God is good and his mercies endure forever. In situation after situation God is revealing himself to Matt. I am praying for you Matt.

I pray that Jesus will reveal himself to you and I pray that despite your circumstance you can give God the glory. God is good and deserves our praise...no matter what.