Browsing Tag

worldliness

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

This Present World

Posted on September 14, 2023

I’ve been studying about Demas. He just started so strong…listed as coworker with Paul and Luke. He was in there. (Philemon 1:24; Colossians 4:14) But by the time Paul was writing that final letter of 2 Timothy, Demas had totally forsaken Paul because he loved this present world (4:10). It’s so sad when people who started out with great zeal and commitment, love the world more than the Lord. The people who had the most influence for good can hurt the cause most severely, injure people profoundly and, in general, do the most harm.

It’s also comforting to know that we are not always responsible for investing in people who will end up hurting the church. Paul was invested in Demas. He boasted of his faith and sent greetings to struggling churches and individuals–letters that included the commendation of Demas. Paul was a Demas-supporter.(Truth is, we have to be invested in some people who will walk away, because we are not readers of the heart. The Lord looks on the heart. We are just commission responders.) Loving the present world, though, enough to walk away from truth, is so very tragic. It deeply hurts innocent people.  It’s why we still hurt for Paul when we read about Demas.

I don’t want to take my eyes off the other world–the one that’s not “this” and “present”. But it is “that” and “future”. I’m staying with Paul’s inspiration, Luke’s words from the Spirit, and the blessing of being a coworker–a partaker–in the sufferings of Christ, if granted that opportunity (2 Corinthians 1:7)

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Spark Again!

Posted on January 13, 2023

Today, we are headed to Valdosta, Georgia to be with sweet family in Him and be part of a PTP Spark conference with the good church at Forrest Park. I’m indebted to the family there on many counts, but especially for paving the way for so many Christians to get to go do mission work in Latin America. One of those people who have gone to countries in Latin America and found the evidence of much education and hard work produced from Forrest Park …is me! I’m thankful.

I’m also needing to put my mind and will into the book of Judges–to learn the awful pitfalls of people when “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” My eyes are short sighted. I sometimes act and react based on what’s happening today and how I feel about that, instead of basing my decisions in eternity. My eyes are often wet with disappointment and pain and I need to look at this book and see the power of the amazing God I serve. My eyes are often needing to close and rest and renew and restore the zeal that Christianity requires. The book of Judges is a great place to realize (when we see those passages that say “the land had rest for ___ years”)  that true rest comes to those who depend on the victorious power of God and submit to His will. Oh, I know that was speaking primarily of rest from war. But those battles have their spiritual application in the New Covenant, too. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” May my eyes clearly see who the enemy really is.

There are so many parallels in the book of Judges to the society in which you and I work to be Christians. Like those people in a land of idolatry, it is easy for us to get comfortable in our culture and begin to blur the lines between the distinctive lifestyle to which we are called, and the affluent, but undiscerning manner of living that characterizes our communities. Through Judges, God calls us to see the importance of adhering to the commands He’s given because He is God and has commanded them, but also, because we are human and we need them! When God commands, He is saying “Help yourself to fulfillment and contentment!”

May your weekend be blessed. May it be all for Him.

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Guest Writer: Reflecting on Homosexuality and the Slow and Painful Death of a Family Dynamic

Posted on August 12, 2019

Recent work in several areas has glaringly portrayed to me that even God’s people can, over time and with the right exposure to and stimuli from a wicked environment, come to accept sinful behaviors and even to be sharply critical of the people of God who do not come to celebrate the culture’s accepted sins. Things that could have been said twenty years ago with the unanimous approval of Bible-believing people are today the catalysts of division in families, both physical and spiritual. (Darwinian evolution, even given millions of years, can never be accomplished. But the evolution of sin’s acceptance happens with the passage of much briefer periods.) I have a friend who was an advocate of holy marriage twenty years ago, but is now a confessed impenitent adulterer; another who stood squarely for the submissive role of women in worship who now worships in a church where women are fully incorporated into leadership positions; yet another who believed in the sanctity of Biblical marriage just 15 years ago, who now is married to her same-sex partner. I ache in my soul for these friends, understanding that the changes in their perspectives came, not because God’s perfect Will evolved with the times, but because they looked away from His Will –they got distracted, coming out of the Word and into the world.

It doesn’t take a lot of time and effort, in an environment that’s spiraled so quickly, to make the change. You get to ride the strong waves of culture’s tide.  But coming back is a herculean battle against that tide. It’s easier for people to go with the current and lash out against those who believe the very things that they, themselves, knew to be true only a few short years ago. It’s self-gratifying to use words like backward, unloving, intolerant, bigoted, holier-than-thou, and judgmental in describing those who believe the very things that they once, a short time ago, knew, from the Bible, to be truth. On the other hand, it’s conscience-soothing to use words like enlightened, matured, liberated, discerning, loving, accepting and open-minded about one’s self, when one has traveled with the current.

Today’s guest writer chronicles the short trip so many have taken in a culture of subjectivity and spiritual death. She shares it with a heavy heart and a flickering light of hope that could still be fanned into flames if hearts will turn.

Growing up, I was always taught that marriage was between a man and a woman.   My parents are still married after raising all their children to adulthood, and for as long as I can remember, they stood against those who would defame marriage with homosexuality.  While I did not grow up in the church, my parents professed a belief in God, and homosexuality was never a gray area for us — we knew that it was wrong, even with our limited exposure to true Christianity.   The same was true for pornography.  Although I grew up with virtually no “modesty” standards, we knew that viewing pornography was bad.    I don’t remember ever even being tempted by either of these sins (homosexuality or pornography), because the teaching on these was so absolute that I knew I never wanted to get close to them.

However, the devil works in crafty ways.   He can penetrate even the most resolute hearts if we give him entrance and do not immerse ourselves in God’s word.  After I moved out of the house and started my own family, one of my younger siblings engaged in some behavior online that resulted in punitive action from the internet and email providers. My parents were stunned.  Surely a child raised in their home could not have engaged in such horrific behavior under their watchful eyes!  They had done all things “right” in that sense.   The computers were in prominent locations in the house. Screen time was limited.  We were told to be careful where we clicked and looked.   The internet company had surely made a mistake!  We were “good” kids. However, after investigating the browser history on the computer, it became obvious that there had, indeed, been inappropriate behavior occurring in their home. So began the tearing down of strongholds in our family.   Slowly but surely, things that had once been deemed terrible sins by my family began to have “another side to the story.”   One thing led to another, and gradually our family values were torn apart.   

I still remember the day years ago when my sister called me out of the blue.   I was shocked (and yet, not surprised) when the confession was made that her ever-present same-sex roommate was actually way more than a roommate and was, in fact, a “partner.”    Even though I suspected this for a long time and knew deep down that this was the case, hearing the actual words from my own flesh and blood destroyed something in my heart and in our family.  I found out that my parents had encouraged this hidden life and secret-keeping because they knew my stance on the matter and wanted to protect my sister from my “judgment.”     In that moment, I knew we were at a crossroads and that life would never be the same.    We talked for a long time, and I let her know in no uncertain terms that she was living in sin.  Yet, I reminded her that we were family and that I still cared for her soul.    We ended our conversation on heartbroken terms, and we rarely see each other now.   I still pray for her often, and I still try to find opportunities to teach her and to love her while hating her sin.    

It has been unbelievable to me to see how my parents have progressed through the years.   What was first appalling and disgusting to them has now become acceptable and even glorified.     When my sister and her partner decided to “marry” according to the law, there was great rejoicing and celebration among my family (although not from me or my husband).   The rest of my family considers this “marriage” to be the same as mine to my husband, and they can’t understand why I cannot accept it as such.   They have begun justifying her choices and accepting this sin that once was incomprehensible.   They view us as judgmental, unloving, and intolerant, and they constantly encourage us to “accept her just as God made her.”   What they once reviled, they have now determined is “the way she was created.”      

I have witnessed firsthand the destructive nature of sin.   I have seen the slow progression from covetousness, to lust, to sin, and to spiritual death.   My children have been exposed to things at an early age that I would have chosen to shield them from much longer.   I have not given up on my family accepting God’s word and obeying the gospel, but this sin has torn asunder any shadow of a foundation of truth in their hearts.   Sin is destructive.   Sin is selfish.  Sin is sin.  “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil.”  Isaiah 5:20   May we never be among those who blur the lines of truth.  May we ever be steadfast and resolute in our battle for what is right.   

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: No Tolerance for Conviction

Posted on May 6, 2019

Of course, the pretty words in the grey box are one of the biggest lies of our generation. We live in a post-modern world. I don’t know all of what that means, but I do know that, as one person put it to me recently, some of the things I stand for because of conviction—things that were taken for granted as truth for Christians five decades ago—are “laughable” to the average person—maybe even “Christian”—today. Things like the exclusivity of Christianity; my belief that not everyone who has some loose belief in parts of the Word of God lives under the security umbrella of God’s eternal protection (Matthew 7:13,14, 21) . Things like the eternality of both heaven and hell; my belief that they are real and will both be “forever” abodes for people, based on whether or not those people obeyed the gospel (Matthew 25:31-46). Things like even the very concept of sin; that there are things we can do that will, without repentance, alienate us, for all time, from God. Things like doctrine; that there are teachings in the New Testament that are binding on Christians today as they relate to our worship, the organization of the body of Christ, and the moral and ethical behavior of His people. Things like the very concept of absolute truth and the adherence to God’s system of primary and delegated authority. 

“Tolerance” is the watchword, of course. What’s right for you may not be what’s right for me. Unfettered tolerance excludes absolute truth and certainly precludes my ever speaking to anyone about a concern for his/her eternal soul, especially when I might be implying that there is sin which must be put away in order to be pleasing to God. There are all sorts of “wicked” terms that define me if I have the idea that Christianity is exclusive of those with a relaxed attitude about what God has clearly defined as sin. Judgmental, intolerant, bigoted, homophobic, narrow-minded, haughty, holier-than-thou, and self-righteous are among the characterizations assigned to those who maintain that our God, as He’s expressed in His Word, cannot co-exist with sin. 

Sometimes we let the world’s post-modern view get into our hearts, as HIs people. Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that God put us in the body so that we might help each other go to heaven . I need that accountability. I need the verbal accountability of those who are brave enough, in a world that would throw its “wicked” terms at them, to come to me and say, “Can I help you to take a step back and look at this sin?” I need those who, in spite of the vitriolic hatred of a post-modern world toward any adherence to truth, will bravely stand up and teach moral absolutes and who will plainly teach passages about worship and church organization. (The up-and-coming generation surely needs this, because relativism’s assault on their faith is unrelenting.) We (I) have to be careful in a world that looks at truth as some fluid entity that is unimportant, even if it exists, that we (I) don’t resent the body of Christ for the very thing that makes it so valuable to us/me. The church is the “called-out”. It’s the haven in this world where truth is real; the place I can go where my core values in Him are respected and where I am held to a standard of accountability to those values. It’s my spiritually safe place.

The thing is…a spiritually safe place will make me shrink back from embracing the concept of tolerance that’s the very ideological foundation of post-modern philosophy. I cannot say “I’m ok..you’re ok” if you are not adhering to God’s standard of truth about religion, about sin and about godliness. I can’t embrace our differences if those differences will keep one of us from heaven. I can’t ignore sin that damns in the lives of people I love. Because I have a safe place, the world becomes unsafe in some important respects. I am not in alignment with its philosophies. In fact, I must be in opposition to them at almost every turn. Confrontation, awkward conversations, declined invitations, exclusion from certain activities, and sometimes even loss of friendships or positions is a price I must pay for choosing love over tolerance. 

Love over tolerance. We will not always get the exact tone of our voices right in the conversations, borne of love, that we have with people about sin. But we still have to talk and do our very best to love them to heaven. We will sometimes be too soft in our approach and, at other times, we may seem harsh as we try to reach for souls that are in need, pulling them from the fire (Jude 23). But we still have to pray fervently and try. We, in turn, must be glad for the accountability that convicted people are willing to give us; always open to the guidance of faithful elders and glad for their reproof when we are going astray. That’s the temporary discomfort of discipline. It’s the right-now pain that yields an eternity with the Father. We should thank him for the accountability of the body of Christ. We should thank the family of God when we find our spiritually safe place there. 

The problem in our post-modern world is not really tolerance. It’s that there’s no tolerance for conviction. Conviction is founded on truth. And the idea of  any truth to which all people are accountable is a concept that’s simply unpalatable to and rejected by the masses in this post-modern world. 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: Spiritual Pornography?

Posted on October 18, 2018
     I can easily get discouraged when speaking with women who are dealing with the problems that pornography brings into a relationship. They are legion. Lack of trust, jealousy, feelings of worthlessness,  guilt, lust, and uncertainty about the future are all a part of the grim picture that accompanies porn. What is most surprising to me is that there are people, some even “experts” who would have us to believe that the use of pornography is not a bad thing…maybe it’s even a good thing, and healthy for marriages. This is preposterous and anyone who is God-centered at all in his thinking reckons the loss that  accompanies the use of pornography as being profound in its ramifications. Often, when adultery is traced back to its insidious roots, pornography was involved long before the actual adulterous encounter. Jesus, of course, called this looking and lusting adultery of the heart (Matthew 5:28).
     When studying James 4 recently, I pondered the obvious truth that, as members of the bride of Christ, we can commit spiritual adultery by our entanglement with the world. Notice the first six verses of this very serious discussion:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

 

     These verses made me think about how a member of the body of Christ might make God jealous in the same way that I might provoke my husband to jealousy—the kind of jealousy that is normal in a husband. What if I were to talk negatively about Him to people outside the family? What if I were to break my appointments with Him? What if I were to make fun of Him and laugh when others made fun of Him? What if I did not want to share generously with Him of my time and money? What if I enjoyed being with others more than I enjoyed His company? What if I did not take the time to read what he wrote to me or to respond when He gave me a gift?  You can understand readily, especially if you are married, how we can begin to court the world rather than being faithful in our marriages to Christ.
     But then I thought about the sin of pornography and how that, long before a spouse forsakes his wife, he may look at other women with passionate desire. He may lust for another woman. He may be busy facilitating his adultery before he knows the woman with whom he will one day commit the sin.
     Do we sometimes do that spiritually? I mean long before a person actually leaves the Lord for the world, does she sometimes look at the world with passion and desire? Does she place the lure of the world right in front of her eyes? Does she gaze longingly long before she becomes a full-fledged friend of the world? I believe we often do this through our entertainment choices. Are you looking with favor on that which is enmity with God? I think when we choose to be entertained by movies, television shows and music that are filled with profanities, obscenities, lasciviousness, fornication, homosexuality, adulteries and/or uncleanness, we are allowing ourselves to gaze on that which is off-limits to the bride of Christ. The more we gaze, the more comfortable we become with these desires for the world. The more we look, the more we want to look and the more anesthetized we become to the shock factor that sin should bring. Soon, just as a pornography addict is a short step from adultery, we are a very short step from committing the overt sins of the world–spiritual adultery. That which once entertained us becomes less something we watch and more something we do.
     Being entertained and aroused by looking at pornography often leads to the commission of the overt sin of adultery. This destroys marriages and families.
     Being entertained by the sinful things of the world often leads to all kinds of worldly alliances and actions. This destroys our relationship with God and our relationships within the family of Christ. Is this spiritual pornography? I think so.
Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: Be Brave and Fear Him

Posted on July 13, 2017

You could name lots of enemies of a Christian’s boldness in our world today. One enemy is the overemphasis of tolerance. We’d rather be villains in almost any other category than to be labeled as intolerant or judgmental. (The most quoted and misapplied passage in this culture is Matthew 7:1.) So we stop speaking out about sin. We fear being ostracized. We fear confrontation. 

Another enemy of boldness to speak God’s truth is our busy-ness. Our schedules shout at us. Our commitments bulge in their time limitations. We simply over-commit and there is little time left to write letters to editors, show up at venues like gospel seminars or meetings that serve to inform and embolden, or take time to speak to individuals about the gospel.  We fill up our calendars and then allow them to control us. Their demands often make even the free moments of our lives full of anxiety or dread for the upcoming stress of deadlines and back-to-back responsibilities. They make us physically tired and weaken our spiritual stamina. We lose some of the will to do spiritual battle against wickedness in high places (Eph.6:12). It’s “wrestling”, as Paul put it, and we are too exhausted for that.

One more enemy is worldliness. This is a big one. We slowly become anesthetized, through entertainment choices, the news media, the public education system and governmental influences. We stop thinking very much about the societal departure from truth that is quickly becoming so complete. We start thinking like the world, instead of like the Lord. We are influenced, sometimes unknowingly, by pop culture’s psycho-babble and we become complacent—even ignorant—about the polar differences between the way God wants us to think and act and the accepted norms of society around us. 

Part of fearing him who is able to destroy body and soul in hell (Matthew 10:28) is being wise to slow anesthetization by the culture. We simply cannot go to sleep in the devil’s gentle lull of  tolerance, busy-ness and the normalization of sin. See, ironically, those who fear are the brave. It’s those people who’ve developed a healthy fear of the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell who are emboldened to stand against His lies in a culture of relativism.