From City Bible's April 14-15 Bulletin:
Imagine being one of the few in Pastor Frank's recent dream: trapped in a deep canyon surrounded by steep clefts with no visible means of escape. Hearing rushing flood waters rapidly approaching–a breathtaking, fearful, heart racing experience. He had the peace of mind to quickly analyze the situation and PRAY! "Help, Yahweh-the bottom has fallen out of my life! Master; hear my cry for help! Listen hard! Open your ear! Listen to my cries for mercy." (TMB)
This reminded me of a prophetic word to our church in 1984. "In the time of trouble, in the time of adversity, in the day of storm and hardships, when you feel overwhelmed by the pressures of this life and you feel like you want to pull back and fall away. You want to lay down your armor and your sword, — don't stop now, and don't pull back… Don't rely upon that which you feel or see with your eyes. Draw near unto God."
Overwhelming flood waters may rise to drown us with physical, mental or emotional distress or frustration. What rising waters threaten you today: debt, strongholds, apathy, broken relationships, sickness, family issues, fear, worry, anxiety, depression, immorality, or unbelief? Instead of focusing on the flood, believe-pray-intercede and see the floods retreat! "Don't be afraid of the enemy! Remember the Lord, who is great and glorious, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes." Nehemiah 4:14 (NLT)
I'm really quite curious about why they keep bringing up Frank's dream. If its for real, then it sounds to me like some bad things are about to happen to CBC (or just Frank). Probably not something I'd want to parade around.
Also, is anyone else bored with obvious prophecies such as the one above? I mean, really, "When things get tough, don't give up"…that's not a prophecy…that's a Hallmark Card of Encouragement. Furthermore it leads me to this rant:
I am sick and tired of having people treat God like he is the Staples Easy Button. He's not. Lets get real people, God created the earth, He created all the people and all the animals and all the Schefters in this world. HE set the rules in motion…and you know what? He set up consequences or rewards for every one of your actions…that's right…there are consequences for YOUR actions. Stop waiting for God to clear up the problems you created, go out and work on fixing things yourself. Don't just sit around whining to God about your problems. Yes you should pray but don't stop there. Pray and do, people…pray and do.
CBC wants you to believe that the only way to solve your problems is by asking God to take them away. Why do they do this? I'm not entirely sure, but I would guess it's because they want to be in control of your life. When they tell you "Just pray about it" if God doesn't miraculously solve all the problems that YOU created for YOURSELF they have built a crutch for you to lean on and then they can pressure you into whatever they want (giving more money seems to be their go to).
All to often while at CBC, when I would go to my pastor for advice they would say "Just pray about it" to which I would think…"I am praying about it, I have been praying about it, I need real advice here"…but none ever came.
In my opinion, outside of death and sickness (and perhaps "bad childhoods"), life is what you make of it. For every action there is a reaction. For every decision you make there is either a consequence or a reward…but it's your decision:
What rising waters threaten you today: debt, strongholds, apathy, broken relationships, sickness, family issues, fear, worry, anxiety, depression, immorality, or unbelief?
I've written out their list of "Rising Waters" and next to them I've put what I like to call "The Boat". In addition to prayer, when you face these "rising waters" try:
For Debt – Try a Budget
For Strongholds -Try Self control
For Apathy – Try a Red Bull
For Broken relationships – Try taking responsibility.
For Sickness – Ok, you can push the button on this one.
For Fear, Worry, Anxiety, or Depression – Try Prozac
For Immorality – Try Self Control (again)
For Unbelief – Try…Ok, they stumped me with this last one…go ahead…push the button.
My point is this: Although life is not easy (and anyone who tells you differently is selling something) you don't have these problems because God has decided to curse you. You have these problems because of bad life decisions. Sorry. The cold hard fact (and feel free to disagree with me on this point) is that God is not likely to take away all your problems, that would be classified as a miracle and we don't see to many of those around here do we?
I believe in the power of prayer, I just hate seeing it used as a crutch. Don't just pray…pray and do.
Now that was easy.
For the record, I wrote this last weekend and don’t really like it, but decided to post it anyway. I think the issue I am trying to address is much more complicated than a little blog can deal with.
Anyway…there is nothing wrong with asking God for help and believing that he will help you. Faith and Trust in God is wonderful. I just hate seeing it used to shift the blame off of ones self and onto God.
I don’t think I made that clear in my post. Sorry.
Joel 2:28//Acts 2:17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams
Um, you don’t like this? It was VERY clear and it needed to be said.
Amen, amen — a thousand times amen.
For sickness-read Kevin Trudeau’s books and find out why you’re sick in the first place
For unbelief, read the Word
Not good? Heck, fellow…if there were more pastors like you I’d probably still be religious!
RP, your comment about asking for advice and not getting any brought back some memories. The same thing happened to me, except that whenI asked for some personal counsel, the elder involved said he “would tell an intercessor about it.” Wow, that was helpful!
Later on, I actually got aquainted with a real ‘shepard’ who was able to help. (Not at CBC by the way!) He pointed out Isa.9:6 to me, “And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor” and said that anyone in ministry should be able to counsel, and if they couldn’t they shouldn’t be in the ministry. If a ‘minister’ can not reflect the character of Christ, then what ARE they doing? The ‘just pray about it’ routine should be a RED FLAG telling you that they have no answers themselves.
That sums it up pretty nicely. The worst part of that is, that when people could get real help they get no help at all. The consequences can be disastrous.
Another problem with this thinking is that it creates a mystical pseudo-faith in God’s ability or desire to save us from terrible things that are not our fault. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard pastors talk about faith for healing those with terminal illnesses, only to have those people die and the pastors do the same thing the next time. Sometimes bad stuff happens. It’s part of being in a sinful, corrupt world. There are times when God chooses to intervene, but in most cases He doesn’t. Does that make God any less powerful or loving? Does that mean my faith is too small? This skewed perspective leads people to eventually reject the idea that God loves and cares enough about them, and it also leads to the conclusion that they personally could never be the kind of person who is good enough (or have enough faith) to earn God’s favor.
This kind of misplaced hope is placed upon our very temporary lives. We need the short-term fix to satisfy our selfish desires and like spoiled children we reject the Giver of Everything because we don’t get our way. Or we continue to pester the Father with every little thing hoping that if we can somehow bug him enough we’ll be able to get what we want. It’s all about controlling God instead of living a life submitted to Him.
Instead our attitudes should be ones of gratitude and thankfulness for what He has done for us already. He has paid for our sins and promised us eternal life. It is that HOPE that we live for – the hope that someday we will shed our mortal sinful bodies and take on the immortal perfection. The key to having real joy is understanding how temporary our suffering is compared to what is eternal.
There are many more…
That is not to say that we should not be empathetic to one another during times of suffering. Jesus said to “mourn with those that mourn” and he often took compassion upon those who were suffering. But I agree with RP, that we shouldn’t treat God & prayer as a fix-all, we should learn to help each other through our sufferings.
What if instead of telling people to tithe more, the church provided financial advisers who helped people work their way out of debt?
What if instead of telling people to pray over addictions, they host 12-step programs on church campus?
What if instead of telling people to pray against apathy, they provided job fairs and community work days?
What if instead of telling people to pray for relationships, they provided trained & certified marriage/relationship counselors at no charge?
What if instead of just praying for the sick, the church hosted fund raisers to pay for medical expenses?
etc. etc. etc.
There’s a lot that that church can DO in addition to prayer that will help bring Heaven to Earth in a very real and tangible way to people. I would think that the effectiveness of DOING far outweighs shouting at walls, screaming in tongues, and giving more money to the church.
FICM…oh no you didn’t!
How many times have we told you to stop giving practical applications and legitimate solutions, and to keep your ramblings to bitterness and slander?
Remember…we are all just little, jealous, bitter, angry, uneducated backsliders here, and you giving these great, clear, practical, doable solutions only hurts our cause!
Watch yourself, brother!
“The ‘just pray about it’ routine should be a RED FLAG telling you that they have no answers themselves.”
Mwahahha another reason why my youth group got wrecked. Kids were praying but needed serious help with problems and weren’t getting it. Praying and reading the bible is a must but these kids were dealing with things like eating disorders, abuse, drugs and so forth and some of them go NO help just a prayer and a brush off. It’s like they didn’t want to deal with it themselves or they didn’t even care.
Ok….have to weigh in on this one. Having been on the receiving end of a substancial amount of “counseling” from CBC in my former and much less educated days, I must say that our pastoral staffs are extremely inept at being able to provide quality, qualified counsel to most if not all situations that we find our selves in.
Typically it is expected, and rightly so, that if you have a problem with “________________” you should be able to get help from your church and pastor…however, so many of our pastors don’t have any education past high school or bible college…both of which provide no training for how to deal with real life. Just because you are called to the “ministry” does NOT make you uniquely qualifed to counsel…lets get real and stop bashing educated men and women who go to school, get trained in human behavior and are able to educate us on how to solve our issues.
Off the “cure all” track…sorry. But it becomes very frustrating when you need real help, look for it in your leadership, and come away feeling worse and more hopeless than when you went in. It is easy to transfer our emotions that we feel toward our church leadership onto God, because we expect them to be different (translated better) but come to realize that they are just like the rest of us~
Been there–I saw the pendelum swing from praising no education esp. w/ staff members and interns to then having a psychologist come in to train on counseling in 5 easy lessons.
Do you know what happened — everyone realized how screwed up we were but didn’t know what to do about it. We were already at prayer more than any church in America! People started going to the counselor themselves with their problems because the more they heard the more they realized they needed help.
Did we pray –definately –but its hard when people caught up in a dyfunctional web are told to try to counsel others. They need to get free themselves and then try to help someone else.
Religiousness is a form of addiction —just read the book ‘Toxic Faith–healing your faith’ The best read on everything we write on here.!
Free~ It seemed that there was a certain arrogance in the attitude that “hey I’ve not had any formal training in how to deal with problems that people have….but” then they proceed to use either some pastoral authority cliche or rely on the Holy Spirit to give them a spirit of disernment of what you need to do. NOW PLEASE EVERYONE…don’t get me wrong. I am a firm believer in the power of the Holy Spirit to work in my life, but I also believe that you have to have something to “annoint.” Some wise soul once said “God dont’ annoint nuttin”. Training/Education Required!
BTDT,
I understand … the real-life experience of most pastors is nil, if after graduating from highschool (or home school) they rush off to seminary school and their first assignment as youth minister / assoc. pastor. How can they advise people who work for a living, parents, relationship troubles, etc.
Sam
Sam…thats just the point. Alot of the pastors, CBC included, have always been in the “ministry” and never had to deal with real life. One such pastor, whom I worked with for 13 years, would schedule “manditory” meeting for his leadership team on Sunday evenings, and then have no regard for the fact that everyone but him had to get up early in the AM and go to work…such disregard. Whats interesting about this is that not one of his original leaders is still with him…hmmmmm (I take that back, there is one…)
Oh too familiar a scenario. Most of our staff had no idea that other people worked for a living.
Just ran into one of their long term members today in a store–they are still there but said “I felt like they wore me out and then discarded me.” Tears in the eyes—-wow great care of your sheep. Do you care? We hear these stories on a daily basis MFI –just in case you are listening.
The heart of the sheep is an interesting thing. I believe there is a certain perception that is facilitated by the leadership that we tend to strive for: Being One Of “Them.” During my many years in multiple churches, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to understand that the “ministry” is the desirable place to be. The philosophy is continually engrained that “they” are better, and if we want to be like “them” then we need to act/do such and such. AFter many years of giving and giving and giving…the blacksheep is worn out and doesn’t have any wool left. If you don’t have any wool, your worthless and get discarded. All my life I have been involved in helping in some way in the church…except for the past 3. The pain of having to go through the brain damage again and again, hoping and believing that “this time” it will be different…it never is. I am a firm believer that we need to be involved in Gods Kingdom, it’s just that my definition of what and who the kingdom is. Being discarded is a fact of life in the church world…were only too happy to kill our wounded.
“it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon…”
I certainly hope not, rocket surgeons are hard to come by.
RP –you kill me! The first good laugh of the day. And believe me this crowd needs any laughs we can find.
Of course, not to be confused with his not too distant cousin, brain scientist~
I used to work with a guy who would say
“It’s not rocket scientry”
“All my life I have been involved in helping in some way in the church…except for the past 3. The pain of having to go through the brain damage again and again, hoping and believing that “this time†it will be different…it never is. I am a firm believer that we need to be involved in Gods Kingdom, it’s just that my definition of what and who the kingdom is. Being discarded is a fact of life in the church world…were only too happy to kill our wounded.”
You sound like my mom. She’s 65 and was involved in church work her whole life until 5 years ago. She went through the same thing too sorta. I’m only 23 and when I was younger and heavily involved I went through this too. Never discarded but burnt out and no mentorship/encouragement. We are children of God,not work horses.
[Comment ID #25668 Will Be Quoted Here]
So, why go back? Why keep trying again if the result is always the same?
Could it be that a lot of those “church works” are akin to rebuilding the ‘Tower of Babel’, in as much as we try to reach God or attain godliness through works? Could it be that the lumps we all get from those sorts of programs and their chronic failure is the result of God, who is still sending wind, rain, waves to test what we have built? If we continually try to prop up “church works” that are continually falling apart in response to the wind / rain / waves of God, are we not working against God?
Why not just rest from all that and be content in Christ, love one another and break bread together?
Sam,
Couldn’t agree more. I guess most of the problem is inside my own head. When all you know is “works” and all that has been “acceptable” is again the same works, you get brain damaged and change is difficult. As creatures that believe that there is something better “out there” I am so prone to doing the same stupid things. At the bottom line is the fact that I am “insane” as the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. My eyes are being opened, albeit forceably pried, and I am starting to think differently. One redeeming fact is that when I don’t go to church, I feel “guilty” and I do understand that guilt comes from people, not God. Being able to relax in Christ and understand and accept the work that He did on the cross is a freeing concept, but difficult to embrace and accept.
I think I am embarrassed to finally admit that after many decades of the church, I really don’t know who Christ is and what the Bible really says. In the attempt to not become bitter toward all the things that I have been force fed, I am working to accept the basics of Christianity…God Loves Me (no matter who I am and what I do or don’t do), I am accepted in him and acceptable to him, Christ died for my salvation and that is enough (I don’t need to do ANYTHING) One of the incredible things is the realization that I can be a very sinful person, living in a church world…but accepted because of how I look and what I do.
OK…enough of the poor me. I am so thankful to share with others who are apparently going through the same struggle. If there are others in my area who want to just fellowship and enjoy who we are…I’m open!!!
HELL…WE MIGHT EVEN HAVE A BEER!!!!
beentheredonethat;
One of favorite scriptures I’ve found while ‘in the desert’ is found in 1 Thess. 4:11, “and make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, and attend to your own business, and work with your hands, just as we commanded you;”
Written by Paul so long ago, but still relevent for today. We don’t have to be rushing around, doing and doing and doing for the ‘church’. It is OK to live quietly and go to work and build our relationship with Christ. I find little opportunities all the time to help people in some small way, or share a word of encouragement with a neighbor. Sometimes I just get to listen to an older person talk…just to be there to listen and nod. As I have learned to listen to the Holy Spirit, He has told me these things are more important than buildings or fundraisers. He loves people, and love means you take time.
For me too, BeenThere … thanks.
……..
I’m up for a beer anytime.
Sam
Sam,
Thanks. Don’t know where you live, but if your ever in the area…give me a buzz!