Implosion (21 page)

Thirty-five times in the Bible, the Lord warns against the sin of lust. Dozens more times, the Scriptures warn us against sexual immorality. Jesus said in Matthew 5:27-29, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” The apostle Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:2-3 (just before writing about the Rapture), “For you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality.” How much longer, then, can we expect the Lord to show America grace and mercy when we are so flagrantly violating his commands to be holy?

Consider, too, the surge in support of homosexuality in the United States. The number of people declaring themselves to be homosexual is growing. The open discussion of homosexuality is expanding on television, in the movies, and throughout popular culture. Open support and approval for homosexual marriage is dramatically expanding as well. In 1996, only 27 percent of Americans supported the legalization of homosexual marriages, while 68 percent were opposed. By 2011, a majority of Americans supported same-sex marriages; support had climbed to 53 percent, while opposition had fallen to 45 percent.
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And it’s not just attitudes; now it’s legislation. In 2011, New York became the seventh state to formally legalize homosexual marriages (after Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Iowa, Vermont, and New Hampshire; though not a state, the District of Columbia has also legalized same-sex marriages).
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In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Bible is clear that homosexuality is not just a sin in God’s eyes but an “abomination.” In Leviticus 18:22, the Lord instructed, “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.” In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, the apostle Paul writes, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.”

It is becoming politically incorrect to accept the Bible’s teachings on these and other moral issues or to talk about them publicly. Nevertheless, the Kingdom of Heaven is not a democracy. The Lord is not running for political office. He’s not trying to cobble together a majority. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. What he says goes. How blessed is the man or woman who follows the Word of God, not his or her own desires.
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And how blessed is the nation that follows the Word of God as well. As we read in Psalm 33:12, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the L
ORD
.” That said, the Bible also teaches that a nation that loses its vision of the Lord and willfully and systematically disobeys the Word of God will not be blessed but will eventually perish.

• “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he” (Proverbs 29:18, KJV).

• “When there is moral rot within a nation, its government topples easily. But wise and knowledgeable leaders bring stability” (Proverbs 28:2, NLT).

• “If the foundations [of a nation] are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3).

Once again, therefore, we need to ask the question: How much longer will the Lord keep America from imploding if our society keeps moving in direct opposition to the expressed will of God?

The State of the Church

As deeply grieved as I am by the spiritual blindness and the shocking moral brokenness of our nation, I am even more deeply grieved by the state of the church in America. Where are the Christians? Where is the church? What difference are we making? The answer is painful to hear, but we must say it anyway. Too many people who say they are Christians are asleep or distracted or intoxicated by the world. Like the old country song says, too many people who say they are Christians are “looking for love in all the wrong places.” They have been seeking love and meaning and purpose outside of Christ and his love. As a result, the church is as weak as—or even weaker than—the culture itself.

In 2011, George Barna, the Christian pollster and researcher, released a fascinating but sobering book titled
Futurecast
, which I commend to your attention. In it he devoted considerable time to analyzing the state of Christianity in America today. What he found was revealing.

• 85 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians.
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• 84 percent of Americans consider the Bible a holy or sacred book.
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• The typical American household owns four Bibles.
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Think about that for a moment. More than eight in ten Americans say they are Christians and consider the Bible a holy book. Yet over the last few decades, our country has experienced a moral and spiritual breakdown of unprecedented proportions. We have faced war and depression and even insurrection in our country’s history. But never have we seen such a wholesale abandonment of God and his commandments. How is this possible in a country where 85 percent of the people claim to be Christians?

Clearly, there is a serious disconnect between who Americans say they are, what they say they believe, and how they are living.

For example, there is no statistical difference between the percentage of married non-Christians who have been divorced (33 percent) and the percentage of married “born-again Christians” who have been divorced (32 percent).
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Lynn and I have seen this happen among our own friends and acquaintances. People we know who once said they loved Jesus and were committed to helping build his church then betrayed the Lord and their spouses and let their marriages and families implode. Knowing that Christ warned in Matthew 24 that in the last days betrayal and apostasy would accelerate and people’s love for one another would grow cold hasn’t lessened the resulting pain and heartbreak.

At the same time, sexual sin is metastasizing through the church like cancer. In the year 2000, Focus on the Family reported that 63 percent of men—two-thirds of whom were in church leadership—who attended “Men, Romance & Integrity” seminars had admitted to struggling with using pornography in the previous year.
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Focus on the Family also reported in 2000 that one in seven calls to the organization’s pastoral care line were regarding struggles with Internet pornography.
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All over the U.S., pastors continue to resign from their pulpits because they are having adulterous affairs. According to
Christianity Today
’s
Leadership Journal
, “Four in ten pastors online have visited a pornographic website. And more than one-third have done so in the past year.” After assessing the increasing prevalence of such problems among pastors, the editors of the magazine warned, “If you think you can’t fall into sexual sin, then you’re godlier than David, stronger than Samson, and wiser than Solomon.”
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The apostle Paul called the church to be different from the world and thus a witness to the world of Christ’s redeeming power. “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship,” Paul writes. “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. . . . Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:1-2, 21).

The statistics from recent research on America’s social and spiritual crises are sobering, and there is ample evidence of the disconnect between what Christians say they believe and the way they are living. Allow me to share two more troubling examples.

First, only half of all born-again American Christians say they try to share the gospel with even one unsaved person one time—
one time
—per year.
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Second, only 15 percent of American Christians are being mentored or discipled, and only 2 percent of all American Christians say that discipling others, teaching them about Jesus, and helping them grow spiritually is a goal of theirs and would make them spiritually successful.
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How is this possible? How can the church be salt and light to the lost world if it is no different from that lost world? How can we possibly hope for a spiritual revival or a Third Great Awakening in this land if Christians are barely sharing their faith in Jesus Christ with one person a year and not following Christ’s great commission to preach the gospel and make disciples of all nations?

Jesus said in Luke 6:46, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” This is an important question for all of us at this hour.

Four Reasons God Is Shaking Us

The Bible teaches us that in the last days, God “will shake all the nations” (Haggai 2:7). This shaking is not to punish people, though judgment will eventually come during the Tribulation and on the Day of the Lord. As we pray and hope for revival and healing in our country and around the world, we should thank the Lord for the time we have left, however much that is. We should also thank the Lord for shaking us in all kinds of ways. These shakings are sometimes physical and sometimes metaphorical, and I believe they have four key purposes.

Because He Loves Us and Wants Us to Wake Up and Turn to Christ

In John 3:16, the Lord Jesus was crystal clear about God’s attitude toward the world. He said, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” God sent his Son to offer forgiveness and eternal salvation to anyone who would repent. In other words, God doesn’t want us as individuals, families, or nations to implode or perish. Rather, he wants us to put our faith in Jesus Christ and follow him. Sometimes, therefore, he shakes people to get their attention and help them realize their need for him.

In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul pleads with the church to wake up. “This is all the more urgent, for you know how late it is; time is running out. Wake up, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is almost gone; the day of salvation will soon be here. So remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes, and put on the shining armor of right living” (Romans 13:11-12, NLT).

The proper response to this kind of divine shaking, the Bible indicates, is to repent. But what is repentance?

Lynn and I have tried to teach our four sons what repentance means in a very simple way. Our youngest is Noah. Sometimes I’ll bring Noah over to my side and say, “Noah, start running away from me, out of the family room, through the kitchen, and to the dining room. Ready? Go!” So Noah starts running. Then suddenly I say, “Stop, Noah!” And he stops. And I say, “Repent, Noah.” And he turns around. And I say, “Come back to Daddy!” And he comes running to me and jumps into my arms, and I hug him and kiss him. That’s repentance. God is telling us to stop because we’re running in the wrong direction, away from him. He tells us to repent—to turn around—and to come running back to him so he can forgive us and show us his love and restore us. And that’s why he shakes us. He is trying to get us to let go of anything and everything we are holding—every form of ideology, philosophy, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or material possessions—whatever we’re holding on to that we think will give us hope and peace and security other than Jesus Christ.

Because He Wants Us to Realize There Is No One Else Who Can Give Us True Peace and Security

God doesn’t simply want us to stop going in the wrong direction. He wants us to move in the right direction, toward him, because he is the only answer to all of our personal and national problems.

In the Old Testament—in Jeremiah 17:13-14—we read, “Those who turn away on earth will be written down, because they have forsaken the fountain of living water, even the L
ORD
.” So the prophet prays, “Heal me, O L
ORD
, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for You are my praise.”

In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” Jesus “spoke of the [Holy] Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive” upon salvation (John 7:37-39). Nothing else will quench our spiritual and emotional thirst except Christ’s “living water.” The Lord wants us to discover him and draw near to him and drink the water only Jesus Christ gives us.

Because He Has a Mission for His Church and for Each of His Followers

The apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2 that born-again believers were “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (v. 10). In that same chapter, Paul makes it clear that we are not saved by doing good works. Rather, we are saved by faith, in part so that we will do good works that the Lord long ago planned for us to accomplish for him. As such, God doesn’t want us to miss the blessing of serving him and seeing him bear fruit through our lives of obedience.

One of the most remarkable examples in the Bible of God shaking a man to get him to stop, repent, and get back to the important mission of serving the Lord is found in the Old Testament book of Jonah. Much of the narrative of that book is focused on a key biblical city in northern Iraq. I’ve had the opportunity to travel into northern Iraq four times in recent years to preach the gospel, teach the Word of God, assist with humanitarian relief efforts, and strengthen the local believers. In the spring of 2010, I was invited to bring a team of pastors and staff from the Joshua Fund, the nonprofit organization Lynn and I created to bless Israel and her neighbors, to conduct a pastors’ conference in northern Iraq, near the province of Nineveh. We have a son named Jonah, and he really wanted to go with me so he could see Nineveh. Lynn and I weren’t so sure about that, but we prayed about it and felt God’s peace, so Jonah came with me. But as we were flying in, a big storm came up and prevented our flight from landing in northern Iraq. We were diverted back to Amman, Jordan. There, I texted Lynn and told her what had happened and said Jonah and I were disappointed and weren’t sure what was going to happen next. She texted back to say, “Don’t worry. This would be the first time in history that a Jonah
wanted
to go to Nineveh and God prevented him from going. I think God is going to actually let you and Jonah get to Nineveh after all.”