More Enlightening News for Men

More Enlightening News For Men
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My conclusion as to why men do not often stay in the Church is many faceted and too large to say in one email.However I would presently at least state three or four things which if these were addressed affirmatively and firmly would help stem the rot.One is the pietistic ideas which are still around which are unbiblical, and also the sacred/ secular divide where faith and the practice of it is considered a private matter which is also unbiblical.It never was a private matter.Where Christian service is so called directly serving God whereas any other job is not, that too is unbiblical. Where one area of life is sacred and the other secular that too as I have said is unbiblical.There is only two areas of life,redeemed or rebellious.We should be stressing instead and asserting the Lordship of Christ over all of life (after all Jesus himself will be coming again to drive home the point in a most unforgettable way.!!!) which means whether you are a bus conductor or a conductor of an orchestra you can still operate with integrity and honour in both positions and be loved by God despite your current status.A good wife does not question whether a man is doing the right thing or not by being a bus conductor or not as long as he helps to support his commitments ie a wife and family.She may try to convince him that his talents may be useful in other areas than that and with better pay but that does not necessarily reflect upon his integrity as such.A job well done is a job well done whether xyz or zyx.The second in many ways which should actively be first to be addressed is the sadly common failure to nourish and extend community outside of church buildings and church events.Many people do not have the comforts of family to come home to or live with.There is a great deal of brokenness in our society.Churches are locked through the week.What a waste of resources both in terms of building community and in finance..Or in other words to openly exhibit a true, open and compassionate use of personal life,personal resources for the Lord, for community,meals together in each other's houses and homes, meals out in different homes, a church fishing expedition,etc etc,games,including board games,how about a biblical Monopoly,these need not and should not be all male events.We need some balance. An opportunity for church people to give small talks on chosen subjects other than Biblical texts exposition of the Bible to be chosen by consensus.We need applications of biblical principles to living in the real world not in some Ghetto of the Christian mind.Females and males doing things together,as well as times apart.Sometimes it is helpful not to have the other gender there for many reasons,sometimes it is.We need sensitivity and wisdom in these areas.God is not lacking in either.We can ask, we can recieve,we can act..Meetings for lectures,for prayer, for discussion over cultural issues,abortion,homosexuality,infanticide rock music,poetry, drama, art, etc etc those with expertise to give talks,those without expertise to learn how to converse fruitfully in these areas.As we broaden our horizons God will give us the six pack that we need, faith, hope, trust, love,long suffering, and delight in Him .God is exciting, revolutionary, so loving that we have yet to comphrehend the depth, length,height, breadth of His great love for us, and how He has fought for us over the years, through giving us the Bible ,through His open and observable love, through His Creation,and provision, destruction of enemies who were warned about what would happen if they continued, who outfaced false Gods, saved some from the mouths of lions,gave signs through night and day, bread from Heaven called Manna ,prophecies to prophets, words in the night, dreams when asleep, great wisdom as Solomon will later testify to us personally.all that is without even mentioning Jesus or the blessed Holy Spirit.Let's abandon political correctness,Christ was a man not a mouse,lets forget about hairs on the chest and consider hearts on the chest.Jesus was/is a real man.He wept openly.He was loving openly to his friends and his enemies..He was angry righteously,threw over tables, faced Satan himself down ,raised the dead,fed the multitudes,stopped crowds stoning a woman caught in adultery,healed the blind, made the lame walk, forgave sins,cut history in half ie BC/AD .He was compassionate openly. He screamed openly at the silence of His Father when He was on the cross in the unimaginable loss of His Father's presence because of our sin that He bore for us.He rejoiced openly before Death and when resurrected knowing He had completed His chosen Mission.Sinners loved Him. He was made welcome in their homes,it was the so called righteous that put Him to death,church loving people that condemned Him when He claimed divinity.I guess lastly at least for now we need to become warriors for the gospel of Christ, willing to lay down our lives for " a chance, just one chance" as Mel Gibson puts into Wallace's lips and that was only for freedom from rule by the English and for Hollywood.What then could we feel to fight for the kingdom of Christ for so much and so much.I prayed recently when moved by an amazing piece of martial music on the great pipes,the Highland Bagpipes, that at Armageddon if I am to fight in that last great battle that God would grant me the grace to hear the bagpipes in my ears as I faced the foe and I would fight as a man moved gladly by the SpIrit of God himself.Last but certainly not least we must stop fighting single issue battles here ,start to realise we have a cultural mandate from Christ to fight for the truth in all areas,get our spiritual armour on,and learn how to wear it, use it, maintain it, and sleep in it and fight in it and fall in it with our faces to the foe.Men then who are won for Christ will flock to our banner and our churches and maybe we will also need to rethink what the idea of church really means instead of or as well as the meanings we have commonly ascribed to it.The rest of men and women who are yet God willing to be touched by the grace of God wonder and stand amazed at seeing the glory of God in the land of the living .May God grant that it may be so by His Grace Amen.