Imperishable Inheritance

My friend wrote a great arti­cle on on how many mod­ern Chris­tians proudly declare: “I feel like God is pulling me towards _______ [fill in the blank].” He looked crit­i­cally at this claim, and he is right. It has become a another un-Biblical slo­gan in today’s Christianity.

So what I’m ask­ing is, is it wrong to live out God’s will be being wise, liv­ing in right­eous­ness, and being devoted to prayer, fast­ing, and study? (Gal. 5:16) That’s what the Chris­t­ian life is all about right? This, â??spe­cial rev­e­la­tion’ that I’m sup­posed to have in every deci­sion has become not so spe­cial because it becomes some mys­ti­cal hippy-saying that is now another Chris­t­ian nov­elty phrase.¹

Tell me: what hap­pened to trust­ing in The Cre­ator for every­thing instead of trust­ing in our­selves and then try­ing to prove that God agrees with us? It should come as no suprise as Chris­tianty has become the Syn­er­gis­tic, alter-called, theo­cen­tris­tic, drive-thru Chris­tian­ity. A faith where the­ol­ogy and the study­ing of God’s word is down played for “unity.” Ecu­meni­cism. Here is a com­ment made by other friend, Lenny Tav­er­nelli, down at SBTS with Nick:

James Mont­gomery Boice has this to say in “What Makes a Church Evan­gel­i­cal?”

‘Not long ago one of my staff gave me a script to be used for an imag­ined â??evan­gel­i­cal hot­line,’ the kind of recorded mes­sage one might hear when he or she calls a par­tic­i­pat­ing church for psy­chi­atric help. It went like this:

If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeat­edly. If you are code­pen­dent, please ask some­one else to press 2. If you have mul­ti­ple per­son­al­i­ties, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6. If you are para­noid, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call. If you are an evan­gel­i­cal, lis­ten care­fully and a lit­tle voice will tell you which num­ber to press.

Is that how we are to find guid­ance for our lives from God? A lit­tle voice? Not at all. That is a kind of mys­ti­cism. â??I prayed about it, and God told me to do the fol­low­ing.’ In for­mer days a state­ment like that would have been fol­lowed by a more mature believer ask­ing for chap­ter and verse, mean­ing, where do you find that in Scrip­ture? We need to get rid of that way of talk­ing and those false claims entirely.

God has given us all the guid­ance we need in the Bible. So if there is some­thing we want or think we need that is not in the Bible’what job shall I take? where shall I live? Whom shall I marry?‘after hav­ing prayed for God’s prov­i­den­tial guid­ance, we are free to do what­ever seems best to us, know­ing that God, who cares for us always, will cer­tainly keep us on his path. It does not mat­ter what spe­cific action we take as long as we are obey­ing God and try­ing to live a godly life.

That does not mean God does not have a plan for our lives in all these areas. He does. He has a detailed plan for all things, hav­ing fore­or­dained â??what­so­ever comes to pass,’ as the West­min­ster Con­fes­sion of Faith has it. But it does mean that we do not have to know this plan in advance and, indeed, can­not. What we can know and need to know is what God has told us in the Bible’ (24–25).

I’m get­ting more and more fun­da­men­tal everyday…praise God!