Lost Cause Ministries

Last Saturday, August 16, 2008, I helped Lost Cause Ministries run their booth at the North Texas State Fair in Denton, Texas with several other volunteers who have a much better grasp at witnessing than I do. Ironically, the last time I was at the fair grounds was in 1992 when one of my bands played there. The same old stage was there, but they had added quite a bit to the fairgrounds since then.


We had a great time handing out "One Million Dollar bill" tracts and 10 Commandment coins.

Please listen to the interview I did with Jon Speed about his ministry:

Jon Speed
Lost Cause Ministries

Blow out...

Interesting story, I bought a new car a couple of weeks ago and we had to take it out of town this weekend because our other new car developed a light on the dash directing us to go to the dealership as we were attempting to leave that morning.

We drove up to Tulsa to see some relatives. We took 75N and got stuck for an hour behind the tragic bus wreck in Sherman where 17 people died. We had no idea what was going on at the time until we arrived in Tulsa and someone told us about it.

Saturday, mid-morning, while driving from Tulsa to Oklahoma City on 44 we had a tire blow out. I thought we could change the flat and get right back on the road but the jack in our new car didn't go high enough. About two inches short of what we needed. We were stuck out there for nearly two hours in the hot August sun. And I was praying pretty hard for someone to stop to let us borrow their jack but no one did even with a 2 year old baby sitting with us on the hill by the side of the road. If you're ever in a situation like this do not stay in the car, people mistakenly ram parked cars on the side of the road.

The guy from the service call finally shows up. He had driven by about 30 min before but missed us because he thought we were at another location! The dude was quiet and not saying much I think he knew he had screwed up. So he jacks up my car and we get the tire on in 5 minutes. Without saying goodbye, he gets in his tow truck and waits for us to leave.

I reached into my bag and pulled out a Mark Cahill "One Heartbeat Away" book and walk over to his truck. His girlfriend opens the passenger window. I asked if he ever read. He said some. I gave him the book and said it was good and walked off. Not easy to do when I wanted to ream him for leaving my family on the side of the road so long in August heat.

While stuck on the side of the road, I tried to think about Paul while he was chained to Roman guards (Acts 27:1) & (Acts 28:16) or how he and Silas sang in the prison when an earthquake opened the prison doors (Acts 16:16-40). And, amazingly for me, at one small point I prayed for the people who kept driving by and not stopping to help us.

All came out well. When we stopped to eat in Oklahoma City, the temperature was well over 100 and I realized that God's wonderful mercy had saved us from that kind of heat on the side of the road with no cover!

Also, after we got back on the road we saw several cars on the side of the road and we didn't stop. If you do stop to help someone, be very careful of the situation.

Acts 16:25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.


After our roadside experience: lunch time at Del Ranchos in Moore

LAMININ

A friend forwarded this video link in an email to me and I have to admit it blew me away. I watched it several times. Pretty wild. Actually amazing really. It's a Louie Giglio sermon, I'm not sure what his other teaching is like but this is good.

Robb Bell Bullhorn response

Have you ever listened to Robb Bell's bullhorn response? Here's an interesting game if you're up for it - let's compare his response to Todd Friel's response. By watching these two videos you can get a good understanding between their views on evangelism, the emergent (postmodern-influenced) Christian vs a Christian who takes the Bible as the literal, absolute truth of God. Bell holds that God is love and you'll get there when it works out but don't sweat it (Jesus is a big love teddy bear) and Way of the Master teaches that your next breath is not guaranteed so don't delay in seeking out Jesus. Interesting.

Robb Bell's Bullhorn response:


Todd Friel of Way of the Master radio's response.


Bullwhip guy: (from PerishNot Ministries) Using film footage of Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple (Mark 11:15-17) as a fake Robb Bell gives his view that event.


Many churches are moving towards Bell's style of preaching. What is your church preaching? Are they ignoring difficult sections of the Bible and never mention sin or hell? If so, are you being fed?

When I came to Christ, I realized fairly quickly that many, many of my friends and family weren't saved and therefore going to hell. In 2002 I started attending a church that really wasn't into evangelism other than inviting friends to church or doing nice things for people. And what I am about to say may be a little controversial but from my experience as a believer (although not a long, long time believer but I've spent many hours watching for this), that the casual encounters with unbelievers unless really touched by God will not bring people to Christ through being nice. And if an emergent is honest, they build everything on being nice to people and doing things for people rather than sharing the gospel with people or telling them what the Bible says on different subjects. In my experience I have not seen anyone come to Christ just because I was nice to them at the grocery store (ie a random encounter with a person you meet once or twice). They don't ask what I have that was different from everyone else. Now I do believe that people you work with or see often can see the love of Christ in you in a way that can point them to Christ.

Now I want to point out that Way of Master does not endorse people who are meanspirited when preaching the gospel. That's not in love. (1 Corinthians 13:2) But to have the attitude that it's a bad thing and doing more harm than good to share the gospel to someone you meet on the street is so against what Jesus and his disciples did it's almost laughable to contend that in our modern times sharing the gospel with a stranger doesn't work anymore. What was one of the first things Jesus ever preached? In Matthew 4:17 "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."

I would love to challenge the emergent Christian who is reading this and not really liking what he's reading to ask him or herself are you more influenced by the Bible or by a humanistic belief that you can make the world better? And if you disagree this might be a problem, I challenge you again to dig into your Bible and ask God to reveal what he wants of your life instead of letting the Bell's and McLaren's of the world do your interpretation for you. Several years ago I know that I had to do this when I stopped reading many of the popular Christian books because I had to admit I was reading them more than the Bible!

Remember: 1 Timothy 3:16 "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,"

MEGACHURCHES!!!

I won't make the claim that all big, big churches are bad but what percentage would you say that are bad? Pretty high if we're comparing them to churches that are biblically rooted. In my opinion the postmodern mindset of many big, big church leaders is that church growth is more important that staying biblically sound. The message have been softened not to offend, quotes from the bible lessened to keep people awake and more giant screen TV previews of contemporary movies for the newbies to relate to. And really all they are saying with these actions is the Word of God is not good enough for people today so we have to jazz it up, add to it. The farther we move from the Word of God and dumb down the message the more we embrace weak teaching.

Below is a video I found that asks the modern church goer to ponder what we consider church to be today. How did Paul ever manage without giant TV screens and million dollar sound systems?



You may ask why this concerns me? In the last days before Jesus returns people will move away from sound teaching and embrace that which tickles the ear. And when I read the two sections of scripture below, they tend to cause me some concern over what I see happening in the evangelical church world today. I don't know when the end times will begin but I know we are called to watch and be prepared (Mark 13:33). Poor teaching in our churches, no matter what the size, will make the job of the antichrist and his minions that much easier when he herds uneducated Christians into a one world religious system.

1 Timothy 4:1 The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.

2 Timothy 4:2-5
2 Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.



Mark 13:33 "Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come."

Forwarded emails - call for discernment

I believe we could use a little discernment in the emails we forward. A good place to reference those with outrageous claims is www.snopes.com to verify if they are true. And if it's one of those emails that claims if you pass this along to ten people and you'll get a pot of gold or whatever- PLEASE DELETE THOSE!

Below is from an email I sent out in reference to RE: TEXAS COACH SPEAKS OUT.

I found a blog where this guy researched the RE: TEXAS COACH SPEAKS OUT email and it's partially true (see snopes) website. They say that abc claims it was an overzealous programmer that answered the coach's email so the email isn't abc's official position. But the reality is that even though abc came up with an email apologizing for this email response, many writers in Hollywood and most of the people who run the media are very pro-homosexual agenda.

The blog I got this info from the writer lives in the town of Childress and couldn't find a coach named Jim Neugent. He makes some good points about emails like this - it's worth reading this.
http://www.treymorgan.net/2007/03/jim-neugent-coach-from-childress-abc.html

Back in March I wrote an article about how today's writers in TV and movies tend to twist right and wrong in their story lines. There is so much in TV and movies we should really avoid these days. Esp if we have kiddos.
http://stpreach.blogspot.com/2008/03/moral-relativity-on-your-television-set.html

Rapture ready?

I'm not going to even touch the timing of the rapture (post or pre-trib). Instead I'm going to ask you a potentially tough question, are you ready for the rapture? If it happened tonight, would you be ready?

At the building I work in they recently forced the smokers away from the entrance of the building, farther off. Because of this, the smokers have discovered nature in the trees and small fountains away the building. Yesterday, I was told by one of the smokers that there was several cute baby ducks swimming in the small fountain near the new smoking area. Because of this I brought my camera to take pictures today. But when I asked a smoker if she had seen the baby ducks, she said they were not there. And she said the mother duck seemed to be waddling about searching for her little ones.

I realized that this situation is a powerful analogy on how unbelieving or backsliding parents will feel when their children are raptured and they are not. How people who's dear friends are raptured and they are not will find themselves.

Today I watched an interested video by Monica Dennington of Tic Toc Ministries who biblically defends the view that Christ wanted us to be focused on being ready for his return rather than focusing or arguing on the actual time of his return.



All of us are going to die at some point. We have no clue when our number's up. Here's a clip from a film called "Drifting" featuring Brett Bower as the bad guy. In this clip a pastor and his wife pick up a hitchhiker who pulls a gun on them and challenges the pastor as to whether he's ready to meet his maker or not. Very powerful.



This is an interesting video that you either rejoice at the end or get really mad. If this made you mad, please think about what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 13:5-6 "5 Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test? 6 And I trust that you will discover that we have not failed the test."



God bless,
Steve

LONG HOT SUMMER

One of my friends made the most profound statement when he described adult life by stating how we used to look forward to summer as kids but as adults it's basically just a beating that you endure till September. I'm not very good at planning vacations so I've never built those in to help with the long hot summer in north Texas. As a byproduct of the heat, I usually feel tired and not at all inspired when it comes to writing my blogs. During these times I've tried to dig in the Word of God.

My friend, Bill, likes to work with wood. He made little wooden crosses for all the guys in our men's group and told us we could pick a verse from the Bible that he would burn into the crosses. I picked the end of 2 Corinthians 12:10 - "For when I am weak then I am strong."

When in doubt, turn to the Word of God.

Prophecy

Prophecy (def) n 1: knowledge of the future (usually said to be obtained from a divine source) 2: a prediction uttered under divine inspiration

John Nieder discusses the signs of the times through the lens of Bible prophecy in the clips below:

PORN

Is porn bad for a Christian?

For the Christian that thinks the porn industry isn't so bad, I would refer them to Shelley Lubben's website. Shelley's an ex-porn star, ex-prostitude who came to Christ and now has a ministry to help educate people about what it is like to live/work in the world of pornography. She reveals that drugs/alcohol/sexual diseases run rampant and although they make good money they tend to blow whatever they make. The damage to these people's lives is devastating and some take their own lives after only a short career. After listening to her story, it's hard to claim no one's getting hurt by watching pornography. And whether we want to admit it or not, if we watch these movies we are watching someone's daughter/son in a legalized form of prostitution.

Having said all of that let me say that I’ve struggled with pornography most of my life. The Internet has made it a whole lot easier to get it as opposed to not just 10 years ago you had to drive some place or mail order.

As a believer in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17 – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”), we are called to not be of the world (see Galatians 5:16-26) and if we slip or fall into lust we must repent and turn from it. And not make the excuse that everyone does it...

Shelley recommends digging into the Bible for help. Her favorite Bible verse is 2 Corinthians 10:5 “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

Another ministry that helps with porn addiction is
Pure Life Ministries.

I am currently using a porn filter (X3Pro) from XXXChurch which emails the websites that you visit to up to three accountability partners every week.