Strategy: Modern Proverbs

When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Strategy
Modern Proverbs

Facing largely unrecognized yet daunting spiritual challenges from modern life, the vast majority of Christians today have no set strategy for overcoming the perils of temptation and deception, worldliness and sin.

Mistaking presumption for faith, most simply assume salvation without deep and abiding brokenness and repentance leading to the kind of radical discipleship and sanctification required by Scripture. A costly mistake, daily lived out by hundreds of millions of modern Christians. One leaving countless churches powerless and society with little of no conscience or hope.

So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others.

- 2 Peter 1:5-7 MSG

Strategy
Modern Proverbs
by Robert R. Pennington

Glory draws. Oh that God’s glory would fill His church. Against Glory the world can't compete. Without it the church can't.

Sometimes the right question is better than a thousand good answers. Didn't Jesus ask the best questions at the perfect times?

Brood of Vipers and Blind Guides. Beams verse Specks and Camels verse Gnats. What descriptive and chilling imagery!

Even the few Christians who will admit at least some of the serious symptoms that explain the disease afflicting the Body of Christ in First World nations are hesitant or even hostile towards a complete diagnosis. Who then has the wisdom and courage to recommend and commence the invasive treatment our condition demands.

It isn’t love to ignore of pride to admit the serious pervasive nature of the church's illness. Apathy and false humility must reign to bring such a magnificent institution as the church to our current wretched and miserable state.

Great emphasis is placed on the sovereignty of God, confidence of His unconditional love, and accepting that Divinity’s role eclipses human action. So much so that little energy or effort is invested in praying and pressing through for personal and corporate revival.

If relating to and relationship with God is wholly based on Divine sovereignty any significant effort may seem worth-less. While some scriptures rightly extol the virtue of God’s sovereignty the overwhelming preponderance of biblical commands speak to the centrality of our obedience, faith and love in our working out our salvation with fear and trembling.

With so much at stake in both time and eternity, as to the question of sovereignty and election vs. choice and obedience why not err on the side of caution?

Even when building bridges engineers must use some dynamite.

Are you small enough to serve and invisible enough to lead? On Earth, even the Sun can be entirely eclipsed by your thumb.

Skill may be taught, vision may not. It must be nurtured.

“Aim small miss small” is as good advice for discipleship as for marksmanship.

Without a prophets mantle you cannot do a prophets business. When powerless, one best be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove, be a wise steward and make deals and calculate battles well, making peace on the way to court when necessary.

How might one meaningfully communication with those deaf, blind and without understanding? As Helen Keller's teacher did, by touch. Disciplining such is tedious work built on wise relationship, relationship, relationship.

Hold your enemies close, your friends closer and neither too close. Micah 7:5

The most effective route between to points is rarely a straight line.

Rightly, a few recognize the wisdom of training young church leaders to be Daniels, should judgment on Western Christianity lead to captivity. In a sense, Daniels are needed even now to administrate the Western Church, already taken into exile, conquered by an army of sinful pleasures.

One blessing of war is it how often it makes soldiers, and even heroes, of scoundrels.

As the wise lawyer asks no question of a witness without anticipating their response, so the effective teacher gives no instruction without overcoming his student’s unspoken objections.

Martin Luther stands at a fulcrum in history. The devout Catholic condemns him for going too far while the Evangelical might for not going far enough!

Sometimes, perhaps, “Less is More” particularly when it lasts.

Listening is key to Learning, Writing to Knowing, Doing to Being.

Both Satan and Christ veiled their presence. The god of this world and God the Son hid their glories for reasons diametrically opposed. The prince and power of the air, to rule and enslave mankind, the Prince of Peace to seek and save the lost. Ignorant of their cunning strategy, man's most basic enterprise is self promotion.

In light of the evidence of rampant sin everywhere including in the church, might many contemporary charismatic healings and deliverances be less the product of the Holy Spirit as the “finger of God” than strategic withdrawals luring millions into false assessments and spiritual assurance? “Let a man examine himself to see if he be in the faith..”

Is the charismatic trend today toward the truly prophetic or pathetic?

Wisdom demands we think about difficult subjects and decide rather deciding not to think about them.

Shouldn't we expect rather than be surprised to find vortices of Hi/Low pressure systems raging about men and ministries? Hardly does this excuse unleashing Tornados of our sin to devastate those we've been called to lay down our lives for... But doesn't it explain a lot and give us a prayer/discipleship target?

Synergy is good but doesn't this present darkness require Critical Mass? Time, Energy, etc... “unless a kernel of wheat fall to the ground it abides alone.”

The weight (wait) of the silence of God speaks volumes.

If pride comes before a fall what comes before pride? Height.

GPS: without knowing where we come from or where we're going, tracking where we are is difficult.

It seems nearly a universal rule that “those with vision lack real resource and those with real resource lack vision.” If you have great resource beware. If great vision, God's speed. How blessed the exception.

God appears to neither “play dice” nor walk backwards. When angel or man betrays His trust, He does not retrace His steps, wait for us to do the same, and continue forward again. Rather, within the context of His covenant, God uses failure to reveal additional dimensions of His will and nature. His plans unfold on new order of magnitudes, as One knowing the end from the beginning. This may hold true even to the personal level.

God's dealings with humanity metamorphosis from the fall of Adam and Eve onward. The redemption provided does not then restore the dimensions of their relationship with God or one another. Restoration does not include their innocence. It is replaced by indwelling sin and familial challenges. Never again is there mention of walks with God in the cool of the evening. Jealousy, depression. rage and murder take root and thrive in the soul of humanity. God's response is not a backward looking one. Paradise lost, forbidden by angelic flame, is not regained.

After Adam's fall God molds and breaths on men not dust. Enoch pleases God and is taken (perhaps for a time to come). Noah is perfect, in his generation(s), and rides above the flood. Abraham's faith begets nations and Israel. Moses delivers God's people by unparalleled miracles and revelation. Clearly the nature of such progress is forward.

It would have been difficult for a 1st century Israelite to imagine a scenario of greater power, glory and intimacy with God than Moses enjoyed. Yet, who can argue the Incarnation proved just such an experience for the Apostles and New Testament authors. Few 21st Christians imagine improvement on the power, glory and intimacy of those 1st century legends yet one wonders if our current situation might not necessitate just such a surprise.

Synergy is used in conjunction with nearly every modern pursuit except that which it most naturally lends itself, “sin.” As Jesus warned, sin's leaven is so opportunistic it soon permeates the entire lump, synergized by the sin above (principalities and powers) about (temptations) and within (fallen nature). This unfortunate triangulation produces a destructive wild fire not unlike dropping napalm on a hillside covered with dry timber, on a blazing summer day, while a stiff wind blows uphill.

To heat “lukewarm” water one may introduce much warm water or a little hot.

There is a fine line between the working definition for insanity, “doing the same thing repeatedly yet hoping for differing results” and that of perseverance.

A recent prayer meeting I hosted may underscore our current dilemma of powerlessness. Scheduling a 2 hour prayer meeting for late in morning the day after Thanksgiving, I invited a single wise and practical middle aged man with years of devoted service as a Christian activist. Though good friends who've talked and worked together on numerous occasions, it took the whole first hour to underscore the depth of the church's current dilemma. We agreed together in prayer for the remainder of our time, after which he arose and was on his way to a prior engagement.

He and his father in law, an Alzheimer suffer whom my friend and his wife care for, had haircut appointments. Hugging him, I thankfully sent him on his way. It wasn't until an hour latter it occurred to me how foolishly we had broken the flow of our intercession, the quality of which is far too rare these days, without a single answer from on High for our plight, all for the sake of a couple of haircuts... Little doubt the Book of Acts would have been the Book of Words had they a similar mindset.

Far from free and easy, seeking real Truth is costly and difficult. This explains why so few pursue it and why God prizes it. “But the time is coming and now is that the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit; and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

A principle difference between Whitfield and Wesley was the planning by the latter to see the fruit of his revival remain. Even so, given what we have made of his legacy, were he there he would undoubtedly have burst into flame from the combustion of spinning in his grave.

Any serious strategy for an American revival should reflect the gravity of worldliness. Over the last 40 years modern day conservatives have become what liberals were a generation ago. This phenomena is also true for Christians and our worldly counterparts. Yet, even in light of this continuing, and what should be an alarming trend, few see that our two party system is simply two slightly different puppets skillfully wielded on the left and right hands of a Devilish Puppeteer.

As for sparking a major modern revival even the choicest of kindling seems waterlogged from decades of immersion in, or battering by, rising tides of a tsunami of entitlement. Engulfed by hurricanes of sin, every aspect of Western Christianity is tossed on turbulent waves of lust. Shipwrecked, Christians like driftwood, are caught by relentless rip tides, making landfall unlikely. Further, a 40 year Noadic torrent of Abortion, promiscuity, divorce, soft and hard pornography, sorcery (drug addiction), evil media, homosexuality, materialism, humanism, demonism (horror and gore movies) etc... reduce to remote any chance of Laodicea catching fire at sea.

In less prosperous times and places simple acts like baking were often excellent demonstrations of Christian love. In 1st world nations with food so prevalent, perhaps such time would be better spent in prayer, research and seeking to bridge the silence and distance of God on behalf of others not to mention ourselves.

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