Pray, Read, Do

When I first became a believer, having given myself to Christ, I wanted to be involved with everything that He was doing.  I had a few brothers that were working on me with the Bible.  The Spirit grabbed me and by God’s grace I gave myself to Jesus one morning while watching Charles Stanley from in touch ministries.  I still love listening to that guy.  He is a hero of mind.  But I wanted to be part of the Bible studies, I wanted to hang out with the men, I wanted to get into the Church.  Man I was excited.  I was pouring myself into the Word, prayer and into serving God.  I was praying, reading and doing.  I was growing.

As time progressed I was more and more impressed up on with the culture of the Church.  In NH in the late 90’s, in most Baptist circles that is.  As I read and drank in the words of Jesus, I didn’t see them reflected in the politically charged, anti-homosexuality and abortion sermons that I was hearing on Sundays.  Now before you string me up or give me the “tolerance” award, don’t.  Sin is sin no matter how we label it.  If you are committing adultery, you are not having an affair.  You are an adulterer.  So I heard the pastors grab a verse and run it like a Knight on a horse at the sins of the nation.  However, those in the Church felt pretty good about themselves.  There was not a call to repentance, no change in hearts, just conservative evangelical talking points.  I was lost.  Not in the eternal sense, but in the sense that I had no idea what I was doing wrong.  So I dropped out of Church.  When the going gets tough, the immature in Christ quit.  That is what I was; a babe in Christ fed up with the Church.  I hate wearing ties anyway.

 

What was I missing?  Could all of these people be wrong?  Did I just get special insight into scripture that had been totally missed by thousands of years of study and human history?  So I started to look back.  I read Calvin, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, AW Tozer and others.  I read the greats of the Puritans.  I read Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress.  I jumped into Calvin.  John Owen and I learned how to mortify the sin in our bodies and find Communion with God.  I realized that these men were men of God.  They were men of the Word.  Praise God, they were out there.

But this is not what I saw in the Church.  We are starting to see resurgence in Biblical Doctrine, thank God.  We are starting to see a focus on Christ and His finished work, thank God.  But back then I didn’t see it.  I saw politics, quasi-new age self-help nonsense and pastors who purchased sermons online.  If your pastor buys sermons online, run.  If he shares sermons with his pastor buddies, run.  Seek men of God that teach the Bible as a dying man to dying men.  Pastors fall into a few categories; the called and the terrible.  Those who are called will invest themselves in a body of believers as long as they can and preach the Word with all that they have.  The terrible desire a career.  Don’t make pastoral ministry a career, go to do something else.  Pastoral ministry is not a career, it is a calling.

So I was disgusted.  I saw so much in scripture about the priority of prayer.  I saw the effects of consistent Bible reading.  I also had zeal to be obedient to God wherever He called me.  But I didn’t see this in the Church or in the pastors.  I saw a lot of ties, really ugly ties.  I saw men and women that would faint or vomit if you smoked a cigarette or talked about wine in front of them.  I saw the Pharisees.  The outside of the cups were sparkling, but it seemed like the insides were dirty.  The veneer of legalism.  The veneer of religion.  The veneer of the bumper sticker Christian.  I was disgusted.  Sometimes I still am.

What is the secret to walking with God?  Surely there is a magical formula that we, as believers, should unlock from our dusty Bible.  Perhaps a day will come that a sermon, or a song will just hit me and I will know what it all means to walk with God.   I know that someday a little Bible leprechaun will show up and give me that theological pot of gold and I will get it.  Nope, that’s not it.  Walking with God is this; consistency in prayer, consistency in the Word, and consistency in service to God.  Pray, Read, Do.

I Quit

With those two words I found the second most meaningful moments in my life.

The first is that day I came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.  But this day, my “quitting” day was like getting my second wind in my walk with the Savior.   We should all be quitters, but quitters in a good way.  Seems almost counter intuitive.  If you study scripture, you will find that those who had the most impact were quitters.  They were quitters in this sense; the quit relying on themselves, others, clergy or family to fulfill a need within them that only God could satisfy.  They quit listening to the negative people, and invested in those who were on fire for Christ.  The quit worrying.  They quit worrying about solving, fixing, mending all relationships outside of their immediate and rear sphere of influence.  I too, am a quitter.  I quit carrying the burden for people who have no desire to carry it themselves.  I quit filling my mind with scenarios about how my words, actions or inactions were going to offend someone’s precious sensibilities.  I quit.  I quit worrying about negative people.  You see how that works?  Let’s take this further, shall we?

In 1997 I began to attend a Bible study.  You see, a few friends had encouraged me to read the Bible.  So I started to read a red letter KJV.  I still have it here on my shelf.  Because I don’t speak the old English, I have since moved to ESV.  I considered myself an intellectual, as Bill Cosby stated “we read to learn about things…”  So being an intellectual, student of history and all around Renaissance man, I decided reading this book that I have never witnessed the interior of before would add to my cadre of smartypantsness.  Reading the Bible would help me understand people.  It would give me special insight into the religion of the world, a special view into the mind of history.  Little did I know what happens when the human mind comes in contact with the Word of God.  It changes you.  It transforms you.  It burdens you.  Having never set foot in religious services, outside of a few weddings, my friends figured I was hopeless.  I was tremendously gifted in my reading, memory and understanding of the Bible.  Or so I thought.  My intellectual assent to the subject matter was one day transformed into a life changing moment.

Nearly a year after I first began to read the Book, I was watching Dr. Charles Stanley from In Touch ministries.  Now I had a fond appreciate of his style, his straightforwardness and his ability to communicate.  Little did I know that the Holy Spirit had prepared his message that day to pull my heart to salvation?  Right at the end of the message, Dr. Stanley gave his ever so eloquent invitation.  I accepted.  I got up from the couch, went into the bathroom and knelt on the cold tile.  There were no angels singing in my head, although I know they celebrated in Glory.  There were no lightning flashes or liver shivers.  That day I simply gave my life to Christ.  A life that was riddled with over sexualization, over indulgence with booze, and a generally bad direction.  Through God’s providence my young wife gave herself to Christ a month later.  We were baptized together in January of 1998.  She was 7 months pregnant with our first son, Noah.  After Noah was born we brought him to Church.  Pastor Eli Mercer was the pastor of First Baptist Church in Concord NH at the time.  As we sat near the back, the tall figured pastor came to greet us.  As we exchanged our typically Sunday morning pleasantries, he began talking about the baby.  His words still wring in my ear – “You know what Noah means?  Peace.”  He had no idea how much peace we had recently discovered through Jesus Christ.

So, right now I quit.  I quit attempting to be a pleaser of men.  I desire to please God.  If men are pleased with how I please God, then icing on the cake.  If not, I would rather offend man than God.

Galatians 1:10 “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.”