Pastor John Hewett, a friend from some years back, once attended the Carolina Panthers-Minnesota Vikings football game in Charlotte. Just outside the gates, two stern-faced men stood holding up huge signs.<\/p>\n
\u201cJESUS CANNOT BE YOUR SAVIOR UNLESS HE IS YOUR LORD.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noticing the expression on John\u2019s face, one of the men said, \u201cJesus can save you.\u201d<\/p>\n
John said, \u201cHe already has.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fellow said, \u201cYou sure don\u2019t act like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fascinating the way some Christians find one single aspect of the Christian faith and turn it into the end-all of salvation and righteousness and go to seed on it.<\/p>\n
Thereafter, it becomes the theme of their sermons and the thrust of their conversations. If they\u2019re Facebook friends with you, that\u2019s all you ever read from them.<\/p>\n
For some, it\u2019s the KJV Bible. If you\u2019re using anything else, you are a compromised liberal and naive to boot. Either you have been taken in by the con men in the faith or you are a scam artist yourself.<\/p>\n
For some it\u2019s Calvinism. Unless you cross every \u2018t\u2019 and dot every \u2018i\u2019 as they do\u2013or Brother John himself did\u2013you\u2019re shallow, don\u2019t know your Bible, and a blind leader of the blind.<\/p>\n
<\/span>I once had a deacon who had come to Christ at the age of 43 after a life of ungodly living. His conversion was dramatic and total. He went from blind to perfect vision overnight and became a zealot for the Lord.<\/p>\n As a new believer, he looked around the church and saw complacent, dozing members and came to the conclusion they had probably never been saved. The aspect of salvation they had missed out on, he decided, was repentance. They had never truly repented of their sin, otherwise they would be changed, transformed, made new, and on fire for the Lord.<\/p>\n Thereafter, repentance became his theme.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I first met him, the deacon was serving as chairman of the pastor search committee for his church and I was their prime candidate. As the committee and I pulled up chairs and began to get to know each other, his first question to me was, \u201cWhat do you think of repentance?\u201d<\/p>\n As it turned out, I\u2019d been doing some serious Bible study on that subject myself and had convictions of its importance. I said, \u201cExcept you repent, you shall all likewise perish.\u2019 Luke 13:3,5.\u201d<\/p>\n He liked me from the start.<\/p>\n In time, as the Lord worked with him, through his wife and his young pastor (me), he began to mellow. He never lost his conviction about repentance\u2013no one should; it\u2019s important\u2013but he achieved more balance in his faith and doctrine.<\/p>\n At one time we had a neighbor across the street who had decided that \u201ctongues-speaking\u201d was as important to believers as salvation. In time, we found ourselves running from her, just to avoid another of those frustrating confrontations. She made you feel you were a nothing-Christian and probably harboring some secret sin in your life if you did not want what she had found.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t help matters that she was a member of my church.<\/p>\n Name any doctrine of the Christian faith\u2013I mean, any!\u2013and someone somewhere is obsessing over it, convinced that this one aspect of God\u2019s revelation holds the key to everything else.<\/p>\n The sovereignty of God. (\u201cHe\u2019s Lord over all and we are nothing.\u201d)<\/p>\n The grace of Jesus. (\u201cHe will always forgive, no matter what we do.\u201d)<\/p>\n Studying the Word. (\u201cYou can never get too much Scripture inside you.\u201d)<\/p>\n Memorizing the Word. (\u201cAfter all, thy word have I hid in my heart that I may not sin against thee.\u201d)<\/p>\n Evangelism. (\u201cYou\u2019re either a missionary or a mission field.\u201d \u201cIf you\u2019re not telling it, you don\u2019t have it.\u201d)<\/p>\n Ministry. (\u201cAfter all, when you do it unto the least of these, you do it unto Jesus.\u201d)<\/p>\n The Church. (\u201cHe did not give His commission to any parachurch organization, but to the church.\u201d)<\/p>\n The missing ingredient is balance.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s not that these things are not true. It\u2019s just that this is not everything the Lord said on the subject.<\/p>\n It\u2019s about balance in your Christian life and equilibrium in your doctrine. Warren Wiersbe used to say, \u201cI sometimes think we need one more Beatitude: \u2018Blessed are the balanced.’\u201d<\/p>\n Take those fellows outside the Charlotte stadium Sunday night who insist no one is saved unless he has \u201cmade Jesus Lord of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n That little argument has gone on for quite some time, whether when a person comes to Jesus for salvation, he must accept Him as both Savior and Lord. Not just books, but entire libraries, have been written taking one side or the other.<\/p>\n What irks me about the controversy is how both sides want to box God in, to tell Him what He can and cannot do. \u201cGod won\u2019t save you unless you do this.\u201d \u201cGod will always save you if you do this.\u201d<\/p>\n My own position on this and half the theological controversies I know about is to quote Psalm 115:3. \u201cBut our God is in the Heavens; He does whatever He pleases.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of our readers can remember when a well-known evangelist ignited a firestorm by announcing at a huge political rally in Texas\u2013attended by a cross-section of Christian ministers\u2013\u201cGod Almighty does not hear the prayer of Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n His point was that prayer must always be offered in Jesus\u2019 name or it\u2019s not prayer.<\/p>\n Sometime later I asked a leading denominational statesman, an outstanding mega-church pastor who was an intimate friend of that evangelist, \u201cWhy would he say such a thing?\u201d He shook his head and said, \u201cI don\u2019t know what we\u2019re going to do about him.\u201d<\/p>\n The answer, of course, to that evangelist\u2019s statement is the Lord\u2019s Prayer. Anyone see Jesus\u2019 name in that? I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n I\u2019m strong on praying in Jesus\u2019 name, let me emphasize. But anyone who spends a little time in the New Testament\u2013I\u2019m talking about after the gospels\u2013will see that this was never intended to be an acid test of anyone\u2019s prayers. Plenty of prayers in the Bible were not offered \u201cin the name of Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n The Lord knows the heart. He knows which prayers are offered in Jesus\u2019 name in the way He intended. He knows which prayers are valid and which are just so much talk.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not the judge.<\/p>\n But neither are you.<\/p>\n By the way, next time any of our readers decide to stand outside a football stadium holding up huge signs declaring your pet theological position on anything, could I offer one suggestion?<\/p>\n Smile. Act like you yourself are a Christian. Speak kindly to people.<\/p>\n You might win more converts with your soft spirit than with your shouting sign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pastor John Hewett, a friend from some years back, once attended the Carolina Panthers-Minnesota Vikings football game in Charlotte. Just outside the gates, two stern-faced men stood holding up huge signs. \u201cJESUS CANNOT BE YOUR SAVIOR UNLESS HE IS YOUR … Continue reading