Fuzzy Christianity?

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Fuzzy Christianity? Are we speaking of the traditional definition, which is “frizzy, fluffy, or frayed in appearance”, such as in a person’s hair or on a sweater? Or rather are we referring to the secondary meaning the dictionary gives to the word ‘fuzzy”– “difficult to perceive clearly, understand, and explain precisely; indistinct or vague.” Dr. Al Mohler uses the word “fuzzy” about those who hold to a fuzzy Christianity.

It causes me to think of how much fuzzy Christianity there is out there— fuzzy-thinking religious people, who profess to be Christians, but who cannot even define clearly what a Christian is, who attend fuzzy churches, hearing fuzzy sermons from fuzzy Bibles by fuzzy preachers, and people sitting in fuzzy Sunday school classes with other fuzzy people, or sitting in fuzzy home-groups, pooling their ignorance about passages that are not unclear, but they make them unclear by their fuzzy approach, saying that the passage “can have different meanings to different people.” Perfect fuzziness!

So we are in an age of fuzzy “Christians” attending fuzzy churches, hearing fuzzy sermons from fuzzy preachers who make the clearest things fuzzy, and they leave their fuzzy church more fuzzy than when they went in. This is why the devil loves fuzzy.

In our increasingly fuzzy age, how fuzzy is your Christianty? How fuzzy is your gospel, your church, or your professed faith? Fuzziness may work on some sweaters or hair styles, but not in the things of God. Jesus’ death wasn’t fuzzy; the gospel isn’t fuzzy; full precision, accuracy, dogmatism, distinctness, and clarity are always true when describing biblical truth and the gospel. Let us not be fuzzy on the greatest issues of life when it pertains to eternal life, the Bible, the Christian life, the gospel, and the eternal destiny of men’s souls. On these issues, no one can afford to be fuzzy because theological and moral fuzziness sends people to hell. Isn’t it a great tragedy that people will find themselves in hell, primarily because they were fuzzy about the gospel, and never cared enough to believe the real truth. Fuzziness–does that describe you and me?
g mo

– Mack Tomlinson

A Lie of Thanks and Praise

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As I read in Hebrews, I came upon a cause for very great thankfulness that I had not noticed before. Suppose the Old Testament promises were only for those to whom they were first given; suppose we had no right to take them for ourselves (some teach that this is so); what a tremendous loss it would be. Hebrews 13:5 was the word that brought this home to me just now. There we have the essence of three glorious verses from the Old Testament, from the Scriptures that belonged to other people (from ancient history), now given to us for our own use. I take it that the Spirit of God guided the writer of Hebrews, both in the choice of His quotations and in the translation of them, so that we have the very words which can help us most. “I will in no way fail thee, neither will I in any way forsake thee;” (Gen. 28:15; Deut. 31:6,8; Josh. 1:5) and then “The Lord is my helper, I will not fear: what shall man do to me?” (Psalm 118:6; Psalm 56:9-13). So what can man, the devil, or even myself do to me, if I truly know that the Lord of heaven and earth is my Helper, and that He truly says to me, “I will in no way fail thee, neither will I in any way forsake thee.”

So let us cherish thankfulness–“In God’s word will I rejoice; in the Lord’s word will I comfort myself.” For though my soul is among lions every day of my life, with me is the most high God, that shall perform the cause which I have in hand. 
From the midst of frustrations in central Africa, Fred Arnot, who was considered the David Livingstone of those regions, wrote, “I am learning never to be disappointed, but only to praise.” I read that journal letter of his when it came home from Africa forty years ago. But that vital word, in an ordinary letter, remained with me, ready for a moment of need. I am learning never to be disappointed, but only to praise. God keeps us so near to Himself that there will be little shining seeds in our letters, seeds that will bear harvests of joy somewhere, sometime, and be melody to others in their heaviness. Let us learn to not be disappointed in anything, but instead to praise.

– Amy Carmichael

The Arm of the Lord is not Shortened

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We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us what work Thou didst in their days, in the times of old. – Psalm 44:1

When people hear about what God used to do, one of the things they say is, “Oh, that was a very long time ago.” They imagine that times have changed since then . . . “Things were in a different state then from what they are now.” Granted, but I want to know what it means by “the things” and what that has to do with. I thought it was God that did the things. Has God changed? Is He not an immutable God, the same yesterday, today, and forever? Does that not furnish an argument to prove that, what God has done at one time, He can do at another time?
Others say, “Oh, well, I look upon these things as great one-time miracles. We are not to expect them now.” But that is the very reason we do not get them and see them occur. If we had learned to expect them, we should no doubt obtain them, but we put them up on the shelf, as being out of the common order of our regular faith, and as being only the special rare curiosities of biblical history. We imagine such supernatural and divine things, however true they might be, to be prodigies of providence; we cannot imagine them to be according to the ordinary working of God’s mighty power.
I beseech you, my friends, to reject that idea, and put it out of your mind. Whatever God has done in the past in the way of converting sinners is to be looked upon as a precedent, for “His arm is not shortened, that He cannot save, nor His ear heavy, that He cannot hear.”

– C. H. Spurgeon

 

Distress Enlarges Us

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“Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress.” – Psalm 4:1
 
The more one thinks of these words, the more they open their wonderful meaning to us. Darby renders it, “In pressure, Thou hast enlarged me”; and the translator Kay renders it, “In straits Thou madest wide room for me.”
Whatever the pressure be, in that pressure—think of it—enlargement is ours, the very opposite of what the word pressure suggests. We may sometimes feel distressed; here, then, is a word of pure hope and strong consolation. No distress need cramp us or crowd us into ourselves, making us smaller and poorer in anything that matters. Largeness, like the largeness of the sea, is His gift to us. We shall not be flattened in spirit by pressures, but instead enlarged; in the narrow ways of pain or temptation, He will make wide room for us.

– Amy Carmichael

Waiting for His Loving-Kindness

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“We wait for Thy loving-kindness, O God.” – Psalm 48:8

Wars and rumors of wars are everywhere now, and we know that dark days are coming on the earth. But through all the thousand clamors that even now we cannot help hearing, these calm words come like the sound of bells through the storm: “We wait for Thy loving-kindness, O God, in the midst of Thy temple.” So within, all is to be peace. “All hail,” said our risen Saviour to the troubled women, “be of good cheer” and “peace be unto you.”

What is around the next corner? We do not know, but we do know that we shall find that for which we wait– the lovingkindness of our God. Things were dark in the political world when Elijah said, “It is enough”, but we know that what was happening in the spiritual world at that moment was that an angel was on his way to support the prophet. Things were dark when Elisha said, “Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?” But in the spiritual world, things were happening, for the Lord made the host of the Syrians hear a noise of of chariots and of horses, even the noise of a great host”, and they were defeated.

Some of Winston Churchill’s words are great for these days for our kingdom work and spiritual welfare: “Let us move of forward steadfastly together into the storm and through the storm, “into and through”, yes, that is it! Be of good courage, be of good cheer.

– Amy Carmichael

“Blessed is he who is not offended in Me”

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I have been reading Luke 1. “With God, nothing shall be impossible.” Then I read Acts 12 where James was killed in prison, and then Peter was set free. God, with whom nothing is impossible, did not answer the prayers of those who loved James in the same way He answered the prayers of those who loved Peter. He could have done so, but He did not. “And blessed is he, who is not offended in Me.” These words seem to be written across Acts 12. John the Apostle must have wondered why the angel was not sent to James, or was at least tempted to wonder.

Again and again in Acts, the Lord Jesus seems to say those words under His breath, as it were– “blessed is he who is not offended in Me.” Let us turn all our puzzles and our temptations to wonder why, into opportunities to receive the blessing of the “unoffended.”
Think of this– Now all the grief of those days has been utterly forgotten by those who loved and prayed for James; they have all been together with James in the presence of the Lord now for 1900 years, and the one thing that matters now is how they lived through those days when their faith was tried to the uttermost.
So it will be with any who are longing to see the answer to their prayer for those who are in affliction [and for those who are themselves in affliction] or in any other adversity. In a few years– how few we do not know, but it will be few at most– we shall all be together in joy for eternity. So with us, too, all that matters is how we live through these days while we ourselves are trusted to trust. “Blessed is he who is not offended in Me.”
– Amy Carmichael

“Blessed is he who is not offended in me.” Who among us gets upset about how God is running His kingdom? This verse spiritually separates the men from the boys and the sheep from the goats. As Vance Havner paraphrases it, “Blessed is the one who is not dumb enough to get upset about how God is conducting His business and running HIs kingdom.” He knows what He is doing and why, even when we do not, and all we can do is trust God in the dark.
– Mack Tomlinson

Passing Pleasure or Lasting Gain

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All that grieves is but for a moment;
All that pleases is but for a moment;
Only the Eternal is important.

Most is  of us know these facts, but I want to remind us of them. The Eternal in anything is the unseen, the spiritual. A trial comes and it will then pass. In a few days, months, or years, we will have forgotten it. But the way we meet that trial– our inner attitude toward it– belongs to the things that are eternal. It will matter ten thousands years from now if we conquered or were conquered by that temptation to impatience, faithlessness or worry which came when the trial rushed upon us.
It does not seem so now. We feel “If only I could have that— that joy on which my heart is set– then I would be happy.” But these words remind us of something we know is true, and yet often forget– the pleasure will pass; it is temporal. There is nothing abiding in pleasure, but there is something abiding in our attitude toward that pleasure. If we say, “I must have it; I will not be happy if I cannot have it”, then even if we did have it, there would be no lasting, eternal gain, but only a dreadful and eternal loss.
There is a verse about this in the Bible: “He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul.” (Psalm 106:15) Let us ask that this word may never be true of us.

– Amy Carmichael