What is the Gospel?
Video one: An Introduction to An Introduction
This blog post begins a series of videos that I shared in April and May of 2020 about the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Enjoy!
To be a great leader does not necessarily mean we are great servants of God.
Knowing when, where, and how to apply leadership skills is far more important than being ABLE to lead others. In Jesus Christ there are boundaries about where and what we can lead others. There are no blank checks to do with God’s people what we want. God’s people are not to be seen as our piggy banks or our experimental sheep.
Great leaders know how to deal with people, loyal followers can be easy to control and even abuse. But they also know hot do deal with their opponents, which usually usually a combination of ignoring them (when they are right) and shredding them in debate, (from a stage) when they are wrong.
The Jesus-follower who is led of the spirit is not a constant and forever leader of other Jesus followers, he or she applies his leadership always and only where the spirit leads him to. His leadership is subject and surrendered to the Holy Spirit. His leadership is not free for his personal use and ambition.
This attitude is very common today. Never raise your kids to have the attitude that THEY are the leader. Most pastors kids are examples of this. Dad trains them from a young age to expect to leader (which is really to dominate) other Christians. To sift your friends to find those who will be subject to your leadership, to drive away those who will not yield. They hit their mid-20’s and need income they think “Maybe dad was right … and I do have to be the leader”.
Sometimes… it’s the dominating ego (that their parents carefully trained them to have) kicks in and they “take a church.”
It is abusive (to the body of Christ as a whole) to teach young Christians that, and to teach older Christians to expect that of certain Christian families.
Instead teach them first and foremost how to be led of the Holy Spirit. Then teach them secondarily how to lead, but only subject to and yielded to the spirit.
Just because a crowd of Christians expects to be led, and wants a great human leader and is offering “tithes”, and you are able to lead, and need an income, does not mean you have permission from the Lord to become what we call a modern day pastor. We are not led by logic and fleecing. We are to be led by the Holy Spirit, not by mom and dad.
Been studying WW1 history. What a nightmare, a four-year horror show which changed the world.
The worst war that this world has ever seen, as far as large scale human suffering is concerned was this war. And if you think about it, it was mostly waged by Christians against other Christians. All competing for land, money and “glory”. There are remarkable lessons there for us all.
What particularly interests me about this war was that most of the major actors, and particularly the ones that played a major role we’re supposed Christian nations. So called Christendom was at war with itself.
Most of Europe were Christians. Protestants in Germany, Catholics in France and Italy, Orthodox Christians in Russia, and Church of England in England.
In WW2 unlike WW1 everyone was fighting blatant evil in Hitler and the cult in the Japanese government.
But in WW1 it was primarily Christian dominated governments fighting for money, land, and power.
At the start of WW1 most people were excited to get into it for “glory”. It was almost like a sport for many involved.
But how quickly their thinking changed after 1914.
I believe God allowed that war to break something in his people. An evil stronghold needed to be broken in them, it was a twisted love of the world. A lust for human government, for wealth, and for power. It was a Christian cooperation with the principalities and powers in the kingdom of darkness and it resulted in unspeakable suffering, 22 million deaths, and widespread famine. In a part of the world that was normally quite prosperous.
That is what Christians do when we go after government, to supply us power and money, we join Satan’s kingdom of darkness. We cooperate with and we submit to him. Even to the point killing our brethren for an deceptively evil idea of personal ‘glory’.
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