I don’t post often. Most of the time, I have several posts rolling around the “quality control department” of my mind, which prevents me from posting regularly. Recently, though, I’ve had several phone conversations and blog exchanges on other sites that have brought me to the realization that I need to step away from it all and spend more time praying, studying and listening. Yes, I’ll still be reading the posts on all of your blogs but I won’t be commenting much.

Brother Lawrence D. needs to focus on Christ being Lord over his life in every area and seeking to interact with his brothers and sisters in Christ in a manner that would both edify them and honor Christ. It’s time out for arguing to be arguing or arguing without a real biblical, Christ-honoring goal or intent. This is on me. I’m taking full responsibility for my words, actions and attitudes.

So, later for now. I’ll be back to continue agonizing with you. Hopefully more mature, loving, knowledgeable and wise. Please pray for me as I embark on this journey. And in the meantime, read this blog post on my brother Lionel’s site…..It’s so timely!

My Brother CJ has a great article over on his blog (Christ My Righteousness) entitled Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Race. Check it out!

As with all time, just make it count… for Christ!

Today my daughter Patience (5) said that she wants to live her own life so that she can do what she wants. (Actually this is all in relation to wanting to sit in a seat at the dinner table without the booster. She’s a “big” girl now. Women?!) I asked her what she thought about living the life that Jesus wants for her. Suddenly my son Keyshawn (8) says,

“If you live under God’s roof, you should live by His rules!”

Nuff said!

If you are a Christian, then you realize that you do not need a special day in which to be thankful. You know that you have many things to be thankful for daily, especially in regards to the forgiveness of your sins. You also realize that you could spend the rest of your life listing the blessings God has favored you with and yet you would not have enough time. 

But as you set your mind to reflect upon things God has done for you also think about the things that He didn’t do for you. Think about how He kept you from that job, position, relationship, or possession. Think about how if He would not have done so, the amount of trouble and anguish you may be experiencing right now.

So often our thanks to God is for what He HAS done. Perhaps we should be just as joyous for the things that He HAS NOT done. For that was just as much of a blessing!

HAPPY THANKGIVING! I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!

A few years ago I was caught sight of a program on Book TV which I think is a CNN station. I saw the name Frank Shaeffer and wondered if it was the guy I had heard many evangelicals refer to. It was not. It was his son and he was promoting his new book. I listened and I was very intrigued to hear him speak of his father’s ministry being hijacked by the political right. Anyway, I e-mailed him about some things and low and behold he actually e-mailed me back. We exchanged e-mails a few times after that and now any time he is doing an appearance, writing another book or, like today, writing another article, he will e-mail me for feedback. Well today’s article was shocking to say the least.

I have been constantly confronted with questions as to my thoughts on Barack Obama. My answer is always the same: He’s not the Savior. I would say the same thing, I suppose, if I were to be confronted with the same inquiries about John McCain or any other candidate. But it really seems that Obama is being looked to as a savior. Well read the following article and you will see what I am talking about. As a side note, I’m quite sure that there are some people who feel the same way about the so-called “maverick” John McCain, but I’ve never read anything like this about him. Check it out:

Hi, I hope you find my latest article (first published the Huffington Post) about Senator Obama of interest. Here’s the article below.

Okay, you may laugh at my hopes and idealism, but once in a while we have to hope. Also, feel free to pass this on, or reprint it. You have my permission.

Best,

Frank

PS Note!

My book CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back…

Is now in paperback at your local bookstore, or you may order on Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-God-Helped-Religious-Almost/dp/0306817500/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223562653&sr=8-1

Obama Will Be One of The Greatest (and Most Loved) American Presidents

By Frank Schaeffer

Great presidents are made great by horrible circumstances combined with character, temperament and intelligence. Like firemen, cops, doctors or soldiers, presidents need a crisis to shine.

Obama is one of the most intelligent presidential aspirants to ever step forward in American history. The likes of his intellectual capabilities have not been surpassed in public life since the Founding Fathers put pen to paper. His personal character is also solid gold. Take heart, America: we have the leader for our times.

I say this as a white, former life-long Republican. I say this as the proud father of a Marine. I say this as just another American watching his pension evaporate along with the stock market! I speak as someone who knows it’s time to forget party loyalty, ideology and pride and put the country first. I say this as someone happy to be called a fool for going out on a limb and declaring that, 1) Obama will win, and 2) he is going to be amongst the greatest of American presidents.

Obama is our last best chance. He’s worth laying it all on the line for.

This is a man who in the age of greed took the high road of community service. This is the good father and husband. This is the humble servant. This is the patient teacher. This is the scholar statesman. This is the man of deep Christian faith.

Good stories about Obama abound; from his personal relationship with his Secret Service agents (he invites them into his home to watch sports, and shoots hoops with them) to the story about how, more than twenty years ago, while standing in the check-in line at an airport, Obama paid a $100 baggage surcharge for a stranger who was broke and stuck. (Obama was virtually penniless himself in those days.) Years later after he became a senator, that stranger recognized Obama’s picture and wrote to him to thank him. She received a kindly note back from the senator. (The story only surfaced because the person, who lives in Norway, told a local newspaper after Obama ran for the presidency. The paper published a photograph of this lady proudly displaying Senator Obama’s letter.)

Where many leaders are two-faced; publicly kindly but privately feared and/or hated by people closest to them, Obama is consistent in the way he treats people, consistently kind and personally humble. He lives by the code that those who lead must serve. He believes that. He lives it. He lived it long before he was in the public eye.

Obama puts service ahead of ideology. He also knows that to win politically you need to be tough. He can be. He has been. This is a man who does what works, rather than scoring ideological points. In other words he is the quintessential non-ideological pragmatic American. He will (thank God!) disappoint ideologues and purists of the left and the right.

Obama has a reservoir of personal physical courage that is unmatched in presidential history. Why unmatched? Because as the first black contender for the presidency who will win, Obama, and all the rest of us, know that he is in great physical danger from the seemingly unlimited reserve of unhinged racial hatred, and just plain unhinged ignorant hatred, that swirls in the bowels of our wounded and sinful country. By stepping forward to lead, Obama has literally put his life on the line for all of us in a way no white candidate ever has had to do. (And we all know how dangerous the presidency has been even for white presidents.)

Nice stories or even unparalleled courage isn’t the only point. The greater point about Obama is that the midst of our worldwide financial meltdown, an expanding (and losing) war in Afghanistan, trying to extricate our country from a wrong and stupidly mistaken ruinously expensive war in Iraq, our mounting and crushing national debt, awaiting the next (and inevitable) al Qaeda attack on our homeland, watching our schools decline to Third World levels of incompetence, facing a general loss of confidence in the government that has been exacerbated by the Republicans doing all they can to undermine our government’s capabilities and programs… President Obama will take on the leadership of our country at a make or break time of historic proportions. He faces not one but dozens of crisis, each big enough to define any presidency in better times.

As luck, fate or divine grace would have it (depending on one’s personal theology) Obama is blessedly, dare I say uniquely, well-suited to our dire circumstances. Obama is a person with hands-on community service experience, deep connections to top economic advisers from the renowned University of Chicago where he taught law, and a middle-class background that gives him an abiding knowledgeable empathy with the rest of us. As the son of a single mother, who has worked his way up with merit and brains, recipient of top-notch academic scholarships, the peer-selected editor of the Harvard Law Review and, in three giant political steps to state office, national office and now the presidency, Obama clearly has the wit and drive to lead.

Obama is the sober voice of reason at a time of unreason. He is the fellow keeping his head while all around him are panicking. He is the healing presence at a time of national division and strife. He is also new enough to the political process so that he doesn’t suffer from the terminally jaded cynicism, the seen-it-all-before syndrome afflicting most politicians in Washington. In that regard we Americans lucked out. It’s as if having despaired of our political process we picked a name from the phone book to lead us and that person turned out to be a very man we needed.

Obama brings a healing and uplifting spiritual quality to our politics at the very time when our worst enemy is fear. For eight years we’ve been ruled by a stunted fear-filled mediocrity of a little liar who has expanded his power on the basis of creating fear in others. Fearless Obama is the cure. He speaks a litany of hope rather than a litany of terror.

As we have watched Obama respond in a quiet reasoned manner to crisis after crisis, in both the way he has responded after being attacked and lied about in the 2008 campaign season, to his reasoned response to our multiplying national crises, what we see is the spirit of a trusted family doctor with a great bedside manner. Obama is perfectly suited to hold our hand and lead us through some very tough times. The word panic is not in the Obama dictionary.

America is fighting its “Armageddon” in one fearful heart at a time. A brilliant leader with the mild manner of an old-time matter-of-fact country doctor soothing a frightened child is just what we need. The fact that our “doctor” is a black man leading a hitherto white-ruled nation out of the mess of its own making is all the sweeter and raises the Obama story to that of moral allegory.

Obama brings a moral clarity to his leadership reserved for those who have had to work for everything they’ve gotten and had to do twice as well as the person standing next to them because of the color of their skin. His experience of succeeding in spite of his color, social background and prejudice could have been embittering or one that fostered a spiritual rebirth of forgiveness and enlightenment. Obama radiates the calm inner peace of the spirit of forgiveness.

Speaking as a believing Christian I see the hand of a merciful God in Obama’s candidacy. The biblical metaphors abound. The stone the builder rejected is become the cornerstone… the last shall be first… he that would gain his life must first lose it… the meek shall inherit the earth…

For my secular friends I’ll allow that we may have just been extraordinarily lucky! Either way America wins.

Only a brilliant man, with the spirit of a preacher and the humble heart of a kindly family doctor can lead us now. We are afraid, out of ideas, and worst of all out of hope. Obama is the cure. And we Americans have it in us to rise to the occasion. We will. We’re about to enter one of the most frightening periods of American history. Our country has rarely faced more uncertainty. This is the time for greatness. We have a great leader. We must be a great people backing him, fighting for him, sacrificing for a cause greater than ourselves.

A hundred years from now Obama’s portrait will be placed next to that of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Long before that we’ll be telling our children and grandchildren that we stepped out in faith and voted for a young black man who stood up and led our country back from the brink of an abyss. We’ll tell them about the power of love, faith and hope. We’ll tell them about the power of creativity combined with humility and intellectual brilliance. We’ll tell them that President Obama gave us the gift of regaining our faith in our country. We’ll tell them that we all stood up and pitched in and won the day. We’ll tell them that President Obama restored our standing in the world. We’ll tell them that by the time he left office our schools were on the mend, our economy booming, that we’d become a nation filled with green energy alternatives and were leading the world away from dependence on carbon-based destruction. We’ll tell them that because of President Obama’s example and leadership the integrity of the family was restored, divorce rates went down, more fathers took responsibility for their children, and abortion rates fell dramatically as women, families and children were cared for through compassionate social programs that worked. We’ll tell them about how the gap closed between the middle class and the super rich, how we won health care for all, how crime rates fell, how bad wars were brought to an honorable conclusion. We’ll tell them that when we were attacked again by al Qaeda, how reason prevailed and the response was smart, tough, measured and effective, and our civil rights were protected even in times of crisis…

We’ll tell them that we were part of the inexplicably blessed miracle that happened to our country those many years ago in 2008 when a young black man was sent by God, fate or luck to save our country. We’ll tell them that it’s good to live in America where anything is possible. Yes we will.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back.

Now in paperback at your local bookstore, or order today on Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-God-Helped-Religious-Almost/dp/0306817500/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223562653&sr=8-1

(BLD) I will comment no further. You let me know what you think.

Forgive me if this is all over the place. And forgive me for taking so long to post new articles.

Okay, here’s the text:

Matthew 23:13 (NASB) “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.”

In all sincerity I believe that whenever we present an inaccurate or unclear gospel message, we come very close to being guilty of the very thing Christ is condemning the Pharisees for in this verse. This also holds true whenever we include things in our gospel presentation as necessary for salvation and then fail to present the means by which these necessities are fulfilled. I call it “Closing the narrow door” or “Salvation: The Constantly Moving Target”. What am I referencing specifically? Well…

I consider myself a proponent of “Lordship Salvation”. This teaching was made most popular by Pastor John F. MacArthur. By his own admission, Pastor MacArthur developed this as a reaction against what is infamously called “easy believeism”. But what I find most disturbing is the utter mechanical nature of his exposition of the teaching itself. I listened to his radio program from last week on my Ipod at work. There was some serious meat in it and it was very convicting. Truly I was searching my own heart before the Lord as to the state of my soul. The questions of whether or not a person has experienced “true faith” and “true repentance” were expressed most powerfully. There’s no escaping how important it is for an individual to experience both. For Pastor MacArthur’s proclamation of that fact I am most grateful. However,

The final sermon was entitled “The Sovereignty of God in Salvation”. Here is where things took a troubling turn for me. You better believe that I believe 100% in the sovereignty of God in salvation. I am completely monergistic. I believe that every requirement for salvation is enacted by God in an individual that He has sovereignly selected for that salvation. The faith, the repentance, the sanctification. Everything! Read Romans 8:29-30 and tell me that’s not true. There are so many scriptures that speak to this fact that it doesn’t even seem arguable to me, although I know many still do. So what’s the problem?

MacArthur spent a great deal of time stating the requirements for salvation, only to  end up telling us that there was nothing we could do about it. Earlier in the series he had already invalidated the so-called “Sinner’s Prayer” and the “altar call”. These acts in themselves were no guarantee of an entrance into the Body of Christ. They weren’t even made to seem as possible evidence of an individuals true committment to Christ. So what if an individual, convicted by what they heard MacArthur saying, desired to be saved? He gave no answer. Even worse…

 What if an individual had been born again the night before at a church that practiced these methods?  What if this person had had it suggested to them that they listen to MacArthur’s program? What would they be thinking? He had already said that these acts (prayers/altar calls) meant basically nothing if they were not met with what we might call “discernable change in behavior”. But this person is new to the faith!

And what about the 6 month old Christian? 1 year old? 10 year old? With MacArthur’s emphasis on behavioral evidence, what is the struggling Christian supposed to think? When he/she considers their constant battle with sin, how are they supposed to have any confidence that they are secure? And MacArthur offered no answers. Sure he gave lip service to the fact that we can’t be perfect and that we are going to make mistakes. But he definitely put a dividing line between these “mistakes” and what he called “gross sins”. ”No Christian” as he put it would be in an ongoing battle with these gross sins. (I hope I’m not putting words in his mouth here, therefore, I encourage you to listen to the programs themselves for clarification. Try oneplace.com for the audios) But look at Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Galatians,  Ephesians, etc. He was responding to problems that existed in churches that he founded! Also look at the letters to the churches in Revelations and tell me they had no problems with sinful behavior.

One of the conclusion that I came away from his message was that it was possible for an individual to desire to be saved and not be able to. How? Well, I know that no one has this desire on his/her own. But again, after laying down the requirements and then saying that it was all of God, MacArthur left no access open to get to the very God that an individual so desperately needs. He told us the what, when, where, why, and who but not the HOW!

And even in regards to the why, he said that “fear of hell” was the wrong motivation. What?! Jesus said in Matt 10:28 “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” If you back up to verse 5, you will see that he is instructing the 12! If Jesus taught the disciples to fear hell (I’ll listen to the argument that He said it specifically for Judas’ sake), how much more should an unbeliever fear hell and run to Christ?! Don’t we always remind people that Jesus talked more about hell than heaven when we want to encourage them to proclaim the truth about it?

Let’s be clear, I’m not accusing Pastor MacArthur of being a Pharisee. I only desire that we be very careful that we don’t shut off the kingdom of God from those who are entering by not being clear on what one must do to be saved. Don’t close an already narrow gate and please don’t make salvation a moving target.