This is a blog for SHEC to share thoughts, devotions and other content. You will find sermon notes, and articles written for your consumption and enjoyment.
It was a humid and hot day in the bustling city of Washington D.C., yet in the hallways of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum a quiet chill swept through the halls. The air conditioning hummed quietly in the background, but the goosebumps on the arms of visitors were not results of the cool air, but rather the gruesome sites portrayed in the museums dimly lit displays. Four foot tall concrete barriers surrounded TV monitors to keep children from seeing the horrifying video shot by Allied troops as bulldozers moved mounds of dead bodies into poorly constructed mass graves. Corridors were lined with shoes of slaughtered children; underneath one of the walkways were bags upon bags of human hair shaved off the heads of young men and women before they were sent into the infamous gas chambers; all this leading to the final memorial room with an eternity flame in the middle. As I lit my candle in remembrance of the over 6 million Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust, I could hear the silent sobs of others overcome with grief for those who lost their lives in one of the world’s most blatant manifestations of human wickedness.
As we are reminded of the horror of the Holocaust, we can’t help but be overtaken by grief and anguish for those who were lost forever. It is very easy for humans to grieve over physical lives. Suffering, genocide, murder, disease and natural disasters pull at the hearts of humanity as we watch others go through physical sufferings. But what about the greater suffering, what about those whose real death is not in the graves of Auschwitz, but at the final judgment seat of God?
Look at the grief of Paul when he viewed a spiritual Holocaust in the Roman culture: “I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit—that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from the Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh (Rom 9:1-3).”
Paul’s anguish was not for a physical destruction plaguing his brothers, but a spiritual, imminent death. Paul stressed a desire to give up his own self in order for others to be saved from this Holocaust. When you look at the physical destruction of the historical Holocaust, how many of you are driven to an anguish so severe and so guilt provoking that you would desire to take that spot in the chamber, or that bed in the furnace? How much more should our guilt and anguish push us to have an overwhelming grief for those who are destined for far worse than a concentration camp spiritually!
In a recent interview, Pastor Francis Chan said “I haven’t wept for the lost in years. I used to cry and weep for my friends, and I just don’t do that anymore.”
The question is; how do we obtain a true heart for the lost? How can we have a heart so on fire for Christ that we see anyone who lacks that joy as a casualty of immeasurable sorrow? How can we “plead” as the apostles did to the early church to understand of first importance that Christ died for our sins!
I believe Paul finished this thought, and answered the question one chapter later, “For CHRIST is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Rom 10:4).” Notice who the subject is of this sentence, “to everyone who believes.” Paul is saying that the only way to regain a passion unhindered by religious pride and a calloused heart is to drive that heart into the tenderizing power of Christ. You cannot possibly be expected to have a heart for the lost until you realize that Christ once found you as lost, dead, and buried.
A true heart for the lost doesn’t stem from a missions trip to Guatemala, it comes from falling to our knees at the base of the cross and pleading for Christ to grant us a portion of the passion he has had for us.
Each day as we go through our lives, we face a spiritual desolation that blows that of the Holocaust out of the water. The question is how driven will you be to quench the “unceasing anguish” that Paul had towards his non-believing friends? You might find that the answer is directly correlated to the unceasing passion in which you pursue your own Savior.
Tyler Velin
I wrote a blog a couple weeks ago entitled “What San Diego Taught Me About Ghettos.” In this blog I discussed the statements that Dr. Peter Jones made which were summarized as “optimism in the church can lead to regression.” This idea has been seared in my mind since the moment I heard it; the idea that the church as a whole can become progressive within the walls of the church, and yet maintain a meek regressive spirit outside the church.
Tyler Velin
So many guys struggle with lust and porn. I’m not sure if there is a gender equivalent sin for women, but to be honest, sin is sin. I am of the male species and never want to imply a separation from what men struggle with. I have just read a great view of this sin, which bears repeating and application.
A Gospel Primer by Milton Vincent talks of “Mortifying the Flesh with Fullness”. In these pages he talks about how fleshly lusts exploit the emptiness in us. He goes on to say that, “When my soul sits empty and is aching for something to fill it, such deceptive promises are extremely difficult to resist. Consequently, the key to mortifying fleshly lusts is to eliminate the emptiness within me and fill it with fullness; and I accomplish this with feasting on the gospel.” Proverbs 27:7 says that “One who is full loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet.”
Where do we start? I would say that we think too small on almost every level in our faith; therefore we pick a fight with porn when we should be declaring war on sin. A great deception that men believe is that, “Man, if I didn’t struggle with lust and porn life would be so much easier.” This isn’t a sustainable view, nor is it a proper entry point into the real war. Christian men and women need to attack with an effective strategy in order to deal with sin that has infected our DNA. In the coming days I will lay out an approach to the war on sin. Focusing on the bigger war against sin will settle all the secondary battles we are currently fighting.
To be continued...
First of all I would just like to say a big thanks to the SHEC family and elder board for the giving of finances to allow me to be writing this blog from beautiful San Diego, California. Whether you know it or not, I am currently attending the Exchange Conference, hosted by the Truth Exchange and the Resurgence. Day one is done and I have heard some fantastic speakers such as Dr. Peter Jones, Kevin DeYoung and Mark Driscoll.
The big theme here at the conference is the truth and the lie, discussing how our culture is shifting from a “Two-ism” (God-man, man-woman, creator-creation) to a “One-ism” (universal religions, gender confusion, higher consciousness). But of all the things I heard on the first day, it was an observation by Dr. Jones that had me thinking the most. In summary he said
“Optimism in the church can sometimes create a regressive church.” While I’m not condoning a doom and gloom approach where you refuse to buy bar coded things for fear of the mark of the beast, it was a neat idea to think about.
There is no doubt that the God is doing great things worthy of praise and excitement in the Church (in Missoula and the world). But sometimes we have a tendency to take those positive attributes that are being seen in the church, and also apply them to what’s happening outside the church. This is the fatal flaw of regression. In fact when a church becomes introverted on itself, and not also extroverted towards its community, Dr. Jones says we become in effect a Ghetto, or a group of “Holy Huddlers.”
I see this on a regular basis when I leave a staff meeting at SHEC, and head to campus to take classes. I went from a community that is bursting with the joy of the work of the Lord, and I enter another community that finds that same God a close minded outdated code that needs to be updated with other religions. Regressive cultures will never be able to change anything outside of their sphere of influence. The New Age-tolerance-global community movement is a progressive movement, and its progressive nature is working in the hearts and minds of today’s youth, young adults and adults.
The solution: be progressive. We are not close minded bigots; we are ambassadors of the only true gospel, the only one that saves the only one that lasts. Matthew 24:14 makes it very clear that our goal is not to be a regressive introverted culture, but a progressive extroverted one, going head to head with the heresies and heretics of our day.
When I was in high school, my family was over at our cabin in Idaho, and my brother had brought a friend with him. I was walking through the woods one day and saw my brother and his friend shooting things with a paintball gun, they expressed to me their desire to play paintball but a lack of a second gun prohibited them from doing so. In my supreme knowledge I suggested a game to meet all of our desires. The game was called “Tyler stands in the tree fort with the gun while Cody and Morgan run around in the forest trying not to get shot.” Upon their agreement, this became the crowning achievement of my life.
My brother and I both had two very separate desires when playing this game; his desire was to add excitement to his life, while my desire was being able to shoot my little brother without fear of repercussion. The book of James makes it very clear that like my brother and I, God and humans look at the same game of life, but have two very separate desires in that game.
James 1 says that each man is tempted and enticed by “his own desires” (vs 14), that idea is juxtaposed with the desires of God as listed in verse 18, “Of his (God’s) own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth.” You see our hearts are innately wicked, we fall to sin by our own desires, and we chose to live in that sin by our own desires.
Fortunately God doesn’t share the same delight as I do in paintballing, and his desire is to save us from our own desires. His will is to take us, and fuse our desires into his desires, to take our temptations, and fill them in him.
So the question is, whose will are you living by? Are you choosing to fall continually by living in your will, or will you take a vested interest instead in the will of God and his desire to save us from sin?
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