The biblical principle is simple. If it’s sinful to perform and produce, it’s sinful to watch. But the American church is so morally degenerate that she will not accept this. I understand that this is a very unpopular position to take. Some of the greatest Christian minds will disagree with me on this. Why? Because, for some reason, we have conditioned ourselves to accept “artistic” representations of sin as acceptable. “A swear word here or there won’t cause me to stumble.” But that’s just the thing, you’ve already stumbled. Immersing yourself into something sinful is sinful.
It does us no good to turn from our sin if we have no desire to completely separate from sin. How can we say that we’ve repented–that we hate sin–if we still desire to watch it? Will God allow this kind of entertainment in Heaven? Have the desires of your heart really changed if you’re a believer? If not, perhaps you should seriously examine yourself. Living out your depravity through television shows, movies, and entertainment is no different than living it out in real life. It merely assuages your conscience, leading you to believe that you don’t desire to sin, while the truth is, you very well may still be a twisted, barbaric fornicating pornographer and blasphemer at heart.
What a tool Satan has in leading the world away from God.
— Jeff Maples, Pulpit & Pen, How Entertainment Has the Church in Bondage to Sin, November 28, 2016
A mother who is a doctor or nurse can help people get better but they will all die eventually.
A mother who is a lawyer can win some cases but only those who love Jesus win in the end.
A mother who is a teacher can have an influence in her students’ lives for one year but what they learn in this life is very temporary.
A mother who is an actress or singer entertains a lot of strangers for a while.
A mother who is a salesperson sells things that will all burn one day.
A mother who is in the military, police or fire department may save lives temporarily but only very temporarily since life is short compared to eternity.
A mother who spends her child-bearing years raising, training, and teaching children full time have the opportunity to build God’s kingdom here on earth and for eternity.
Which job do you think is the most important one for mothers?
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Not one of the other jobs does God call a heritage of the LORD and a reward. Even Mother Theresa spent her life helping children. “How can there be too many children? That is like saying their are too many flowers.” Our children and grandchildren are our greatest treasures. Nothing in this world even comes close. It grieves me to hear young married couples who are not interested in having children or postponing having them because of the wife’s career.
Some may argue the church is not a business — I would disagree. After all, at one point in serving as the Senior Pastor of NewSpring Church I was responsible for 425 employees and a $63,000,000 budget — which takes way more than a prayer meeting to manage! What Jesus taught me I believe can be used to help you as well.
— Former pastor of NewSpring Church and alcoholic Perry Noble
After a stint in rehab, Noble has started a church (business) consulting operation — I Want My Church to Grow. Here’s the WHY (besides needing money) Noble gives for starting his business:
You want your church to grow. Not only that, Jesus wants your church to grow.
You know that if your church grows then more people will be influenced with the gospel, and in your heart you know that is a good thing.
However, it seems every report we see in both secular and Christian media screams that the church is declining and is in danger of being marginalized.
Not only that, when you express a desire to want your church to grow you seem to get the greatest amount of resistance from people who actually are in the church and claim to be Christians.
Jesus said to go and reach the world, and to do it through the local church! In your heart you know the local church has greater potential to change the world than politics, entertainment or social justice movements. But when it comes to making this happen you feel like you are hitting a wall and feel confused, discouraged and may even be tempted at times to just throw in the towel.
I get it, I know how frustrating and heartbreaking the leadership journey in the local church can be.
However, I think the leadership struggle is worth it.
Jesus changed entire communities through what He did in this movement.
And here is what I know: if He can use someone like me, then He can absolutely use you to accomplish immeasurably more than you could ever ask or imagine.
During my 16 years at NewSpring Church we saw 15 people in a living room grow to over 35,000 in attendance at 17 different locations and over 50,000 decisions for Christ in 16 years. And I believe with all my heart that if Jesus did great things in the church I served, He can do them in the church you serve as well.
My heart it to take the lessons I learned at NewSpring and help your church really clarify your vision and unify your staff and congregation, which I believe will result in exponential growth for your church. (At the bottom is a list of the specific things we can work on, depending on your specific desires/needs.)
Schedule a call and let’s see what we can do to figure out how your church can accomplish more in your community than you ever imagined possible.
God is a big God, His followers should have big dreams and the church should not let the world outdo us or out-dream us.
I know you don’t want your church to be average or a mere statistic that says the church is dying.
Jesus said He would build His church, and your church is not the exception. Let’s chat about what we can do to set your church up for healthy, lasting growth.
Thank you, Perry Noble, for illustrating my contention that megachurches are massive businesses, corporate giants out to dominate the Evangelical market.
The sinner sees little cause for alarm and fails to apprehend his imperative need of promptly accepting Christ as his Saviour. He imagines himself secure. He goes on in his sin, and because judgment against an evil work is not executed speedily he increases in his boldness against God. But God’s ways are different to ours. There is no need for God to be in a hurry – all eternity is at His disposal. He is in no haste to execute judgment because He knows the sinner, cannot escape Him. It is impossible to flee out of His dominions! In due time every transgression and disobedience shall receive “a just recompense of reward.
3. Even if we were to ignore the obvious crimes against humanity that atheists involved in the global communist movement in the past century have committed, we can condemn all atheists and atheism simply by examining the one million dead at the hands of “rational,” “enlightened” atheist French Revolutionaries. Historians call the Vendean Martyrs in March 1793 the modern-era’s first genocide. The atheist French Revolutionary Army ordered the conscription of 300,000 citizens of Vendée. Having already had all of their churches suppressed and their bishops slaughtered, this infuriated the populace which rose up in “The Catholic Army.” In response, the Revolutionary Army massacred 6,000 Vendée prisoners, many of them women, children and the elderly, after the battle of Savenay. In addition, 3,000 Vendée women were drowned at Pont-au-Baux. In addition, 5,000 Vendée priests, elderly, women and children were tied in groups in barges and drowned in the Loire River at Nantes. By July, AD 1796, nearly 500,000 Vendean Catholics were killed. All of these theists were killed at the hands of atheists. Considering this was the first cry of “public” atheism—as opposed to individuals who simply didn’t believe in God throughout Christian history—atheists have yet to explain why “compassionate” and “rational” atheists’ hands are so murderously bloody.
4. If the above statement were true, it might make the atheist case unassailable. However, anyone who has read a newspaper at any time between the 17th and 21st centuries knows this to be untrue. This is one of the atheists’ fondest lies. I’m not sure that the person about to be executed by a Marxist or Maoist atheist is assuaged in the knowledge that his evil, merciless executioner isn’t killing him because he’s an atheist but rather because he believes in an atheist philosophy and only coincidently doesn’t believe in God. Multiply this by all 152 million dead at the hands of atheists in the 20th and 21st century—a carnage which has yet to abate—makes the above claim perfectly worthless. In addition, we have more than sufficient proof that atheists killed in the name of atheism as in the case of the Soviet Union’s Society of the Militant Godless, Mao Zedong’s Red Guard, the Enlightenment’s Reign of Terror, Abimael Guzmán’s Shining Path, atheist Napoleon’s wars and Plutarco Elias Calles democide of Mexican Catholics during the Cristero Wars.
5. Atheists who make nonsensical, ahistorical and misological claims such as this one, prove they’ve never truly examined their own community’s behavior under the microscope as they enjoy doing with us. Consider instead those who have died in the name of atheistic philosophies such as marxism, socialism, communism, maoism, Nazism, fascism, totalitarianism, libertarianism, monopolistic capitalism, robber barronism, industrialization, secularism, jingoism, anarchism, social darwinism, eugenics, malthusianism, messianic scientism, nihilism, anti-humanist terrorism, individualism, narcissism, physicalism, materialism, consumerism, modernism, postmodernism, nietzscheism, Marquis de Sade’s sadism, (i.e., sadistic murders) moral relativism, hedonism, radical feminism, (i.e., abortions, infanticide, suicide, false claims of rape) radical environmentalism, (i.e., ecological terrorism) Anton LaVey’s satanism, (i.e., ritual murders) and the “Law of Attraction.” (i.e., the deaths, including suicides, caused by Peter Popoff, Sylvia Browne and other gurus”) All of these atheistic philosophies have resulted in the deaths of countless hundreds of millions of human beings. In comparison, the deaths caused by religion seem almost quaint and insignificant.
For generations now, the American church has been declining in both relevance and number as it sought to placate sinners rather than model holiness, call for repentance, and watch Jesus save them. The hold-hands-and-sing-kumbaya-with-culture way of doing church looked like it was modeled after the accommodate-and-yield way of doing politics (especially in the Republican Party). “Whatever we can do to keep you from getting mad” has been the mantra of both for decades.
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Americans were drawn to Donald Trump because of his fearless tell it like it is attack on what’s plainly and clearly wrong with the nation. That same go-along-to-get-along mentality he railed against in government has clearly trickled into the churches and found a home. We have hope for a better tomorrow in this country because a few pastors and Christian leaders boldly stood up and said Trump’s vision for America was more in line with biblical values and our Founders intent than Clinton’s dream of open borders, taxpayer funded abortion, and gun control.
Something is going on in America and it’s not just about the president. Republicans are now in control of the White House, both houses of Congress, and a record number of state legislatures and governorships. Liberals in government have been telling the American people for too long to “sit down and shut up” while they tell us what we need to do and even think. At one point in her campaign Hillary Clinton even said, “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” Mrs. Clinton wanted the government in charge of changing religious beliefs. People are obviously fed up with it. And the same goes for liberals and progressives in the church. People are sick of it.
Smart churches that are experiencing growth have found that people are actually hungry for plain talk from the pulpit. America’s parishioners are rejecting the progressive religious message just as they are rejecting the progressive political message. They are sick and tired of being told by programmed clergy that the Bible doesn’t mean what it clearly states.
This country, as demonstrated by the 2016 presidential election, is ripe for a message of repentance, renewal, and restoration! Someone has said that the electorate voted to make America great again and the Church should decide to make America a Christian nation again.
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Now is the time to speak truth to power from the halls of Congress to the padded pews in the vaulted ceilings of our church sanctuaries. The Left will call it hate speech, bigotry, and a long list of words ending in ‘phobia.’ But it is crystal clear that people are ripe for straight talk on both politics and religion. We will always have a welcome and needed contingent of people calling the body of Christ to love, forgive, and accept God’s love. Thank goodness. But what we have lacked for a long time is the voice of the prophet thundering about God’s judgment on unrepented sin. Surprisingly, we find out that people actually want to know God doesn’t look the other way when we sin.
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This may be our last chance. The political climate has actually paved the way for it. People are responding to plain talk. If our preachers will stop apologizing for what is in the Bible and start reminding people that God is both loving and holy, teaching about forgiveness and Heaven as well as God’s judgment and hell, we just might have a revival in the country. We might make America a Christian nation once again. I wonder if that might have been the real purpose in the miracle of the Trump victory?
— Ray Rooney, Jr., American Family Association, On the Cusp of National Revival?, November 18, 2016
The prayers of the saints have been answered. Hallelujah! Political Correctness is done. Hallelujah! The evangelical vote is back! Hallelujah! Israel has a new friend. Hallelujah! The Swamp will be drained. Hallelujah! The justice that our government refused to deliver came from the people. Hallelujah! Abortion has a new enemy. Hallelujah! A leader will work for us and not our enemies. Hallelujah! The Supreme Court will be saved. Hallelujah!
The people have repudiated the Obama legacy. Hallelujah! Obamacare will be replaced. Hallelujah! America has been spared. Hallelujah! Instead of filth, there will be faith in the White House. Hallelujah! The House, the Senate, and the President will work together for hard working Americans. Hallelujah! Outreach ministries are safe from the IRS. Hallelujah! A corrupt mainstream media has been discredited and neutralized. Hallelujah!
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Today, you are indeed, witnessing a singular miracle in American history. Donald Trump faced insanely impossible resistance. He was pronounced dead again and again. Today, he stands with humility, on the cusp of making America Great Again. Hallelujah!
Mario Murillo, Mario Murillo Ministries, Hallelujah!, November 9, 2016
Question: “Pastor John, did God cause, or would God cause, my wife to miscarry our child because I have a struggle with lust and pornography? I have a lot of guilt right now, and I don’t know how to think about God’s discipline and punishment for my sin. I’m very confused, please help.”
May that discipline come in the form of harm, even death, to others that we love, as well as ourselves? And the answer is yes, it may. This was certainly the case with David’s sin of adultery and murder with Bathsheba and her husband. Nathan the prophet said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin” (2 Samuel 12:13). And then the next thing, “Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord” — and surely that is what pornography is — “the child who is born to you shall die” (2 Samuel 12:14).
So, I would certainly say in my own life — now hear this carefully — I would certainly say in my own life the most painful and humbling disciplining from the Lord has regularly been though the pain and suffering and sometimes death of those I love, rather than through any blows against my own body. Oh, that we only suffered in our own body. This has been the way the deepest Christians have always thought about the losses through the death of those they love. Jonathan Edwards preached numerous sermons about the way the Lord disciplines a church by taking away a godly pastor in death. Edwards’s godly wife Sarah spoke about kissing the rod of God in the death of her 54-year-old husband — a rod of discipline that she felt more than anyone. She called it a rod of God on her back. And she kissed it.
Every loss that we endure as sinful children of God have two designs: one from Satan, one from God. Satan designs our unbelief and rebellion and renunciation and guilt and paralysis and loss of faith. God designs our purification and that we would hope less in this world and more in God who raises the dead.
I don’t know whether our friend who wrote this question lost his child in miscarriage as a direct discipline from God because of his pornography. I do not know. He does not know. I do know that in the loss of the child, God wills a new humility and a new submission and a new faith and new purity through the pain of this loss.
When it comes to God’s sexual ethic, there’s a clear rationale for what’s commanded. His Word doesn’t so much show us a theology of sexuality or sexual ethics as it does a theology of marriage. Human marriage, we see repeatedly, is to point us to the ultimate marriage between Jesus and his bride, the church. It’s a signpost to the big thing God is doing in the universe—drawing together a people to belong to his Son. That vision explains the contours and boundaries we see in Scripture’s teaching about marriage. Once we unpack it we see why God insists that sex is for marriage (since only in a covenantal relationship with him do we have the ability to be vulnerable and intimate); that marriage is between one man and one woman (since God brings together two unlike yet complementary beings in a union); and why Christians are to marry only those in the faith (since our union with Christ means we cannot painlessly unite with someone who doesn’t also belong to him).
After I had my daughter Camila everything changed. I was overjoyed, overwhelmed and very scared. I was almost certain I would screw something up so I welcomed the Mommy Fear with open arms. My careless, free spirit soon became a very irritable, worrisome one. What changed?
Yes, I had a kid but there was something more. I started to remember all the negative things people would say. “Get ready for NO sleep”, “This will be the hardest thing you’ll do, but it’ll be worth it”, “You’re traveling with a baby?! Good Luck!”
I began to dwell on the terrible “hardships” I was about to endure and the thought of having to be responsible for a child 24/7 almost paralyzed me with fear. I put up with the fear and things began to materialize. One night, Camila had an allergic reaction to some bananas and was hardly breathing. Jonathan quickly whisked her up from the bed and began to pray. It wasn’t more than five minutes after he had prayed that Camila began to breathe normally. It was as though nothing had happened.
Did I stay by Jonathan [Evangelist Jonathan Shuttlesworth] believing in faith for our daughter? HECK NO. I was outside calling 911. It was then that I realized my faith in God needed a major tune up. Instead of resting in the peace of God knowing His promises belong to me and my children, I totally freaked out. I allowed that Mommy Fear to fester because I thought it was normal. I read articles about the so-called “healthy fears” in parenting. The truth is, the devil will creep in wherever he’s allowed. I opened the door to fear for my child and soon, it began to trickle into everything I did. My mind began to think about worst case scenarios. I could hardly sleep. I thought to be responsible meant being in fear. I was seriously wrong.
You can blame it on hormonal imbalances but deep down, the root is fear. The Bible has commanded us several times not to fear. We are not exempted as mothers. In fact, we should have stronger faith! Fear is a trait that can be easily picked up by your kids. The way you walk, talk, and act, are all affected by fear. Stop that cycle today!
Matthew 6 is one my favorite scriptures because God instructs us to not worry about a single thing. It also says in verse 33 “ Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” Seek God for guidance. Ask the Holy Spirit to lead you in the way you should go. Don’t allow for that fear to take control of you a minute longer. You can be a parent and not fear. Don’t open the door to the devil. If you open that door a tiny little bit the devil will kick that thing open on your face. You’ll have a broken nose and a ton of problems. Keep it shut by staying in God’s Word. Anoint your children daily, not out of fear but in faith knowing God’s Word will prevail.
— Adalis Shuttlesworth, Revival Today, The Mommy Fear, November 3, 2016
