Category: Christian Living

27September2016

How to Know if you are Partial to the Beast and Party in Babylon

Written By robfaircloth

The apostle John was taken into a desolate place where his vision guide showed him the real picture of the Harlot, Babylon.

In Revelation, Babylon is the Harlot (Rev. 17-18), who is depicted using her charms and allurements in an attempt to draw people in to her, and away from true delight in and commitment to the Lord.

The Beast represents man’s lust for power, when those who have it use it benefit themselves, and when those who don’t fight to get in in order to benefit themselves. Babylon joins forces with the Beast to undermine God’s plan to draw people to himself by appealing to their desire for power and their lust for pleasure.

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15August2016

When do you need counseling? Whenever you need the Gospel

Written By robfaircloth

A pastor was preparing a younger minister to lead a church plant. The church planter didn’t think that training people in biblical counseling was a priority for the new church. The pastor asked him, “Well, then, how early should you start training your people to care for one another with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?” The church planter smiled slightly, and admitted “Immediately.”[1]

This anecdote illustrates the bias we naturally have against the term “biblical counseling.’ We suppose that any sort of counseling requires degrees, certificates and offices, and we suppose that other regular believers can’t provide us any help in the area.

But biblical counseling is applied discipling, in which one believer applies the Word of God to the particular issues and struggles that another believer faces. This is why many prefer to use the term “Gospel Care” to describe what happens in biblical counseling. In these terms, every believer should be both counseling others and being counseled.

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13August2016

Being Zealous without Legalism or License

Written By robfaircloth

Be not slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Romans 12:1

[Jesus Christ] gave himself for us to redeem us from lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Titus 2:14

…be zealous, and repent. Revelation 3.19

When I was a younger believer, we called them Holy Rollers. Bible Thumpers. Jesus Freaks. Holier-than-Thou. They were the Christians who were just a little too serious about the whole faith thing, and expected way too much from other believers. They were radical. Pharisaical. Legalistic. Zealous.

 The problem with this way of thinking is that though there are errors to be made regarding zeal (when used as political philosophy as in Luke 6:15, or when fervor is uninformed as in Romans 10:2), the basic teaching of Scripture is that those who follow Jesus will be fervent and zealous, not lukewarm.

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7July2016

How Should Dating Effect Church Participation?

Written By robfaircloth

It’s a familiar situation: a single person who attends one church becomes romantically interested in a person who doesn’t attend that church.

Once this happens, the woman starts attending the man’s church more frequently, or the man stops participating as much in his church, or the teen’s parents consider changing churches so junior can be closer to his girlfriend.

There are many variations on the theme, of course, and many factors contributing to the phenomena, but the fundamental question that all of them raise is this: To what degree should a believer’s participation in church life change due to dating?

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28March2016

Disciple’s Handbook: How to Labor with Purpose

Written By robfaircloth

As John reports Jesus’ last hours with the disciples before his crucifixion, Jesus give the disciples a sort of user’s manual or disciple’s handbook with instructions about how to walk with him while they are physically without him.

In John 14, Jesus explains that we must look to our place and labor in our purpose as we live in his peace.

Knowing that we have a place, a home, a position is indispensable to our mental and spiritual health. So, Jesus, knowing our weak frame, encourages his disciples with the promise that he, himself, is preparing us a place in heaven, itself, where we will be with God, himself (14:1-3). Not only that, Jesus promises that though the world will not provide us peace, he will, and is, providing a peace much better.

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21March2016

Canonballing into the Mission of Christ

Written By robfaircloth

An advertising campaign for Walt Disney World from a few years ago capitalized on the popularity of professional football, asking the winning quarterback of the year’s biggest game “You’ve just won the Super Bowl: what are you going to do now?” to which he would gleefully respond “I’m going to Disney World!”

Should the same commercial interests be applied to the scene in John 20 and 21, it might go something like this, with considerably different effect:

“Peter, you’ve just seen and heard the risen Lord: what are you going to do now?”

“I’m going fishing!”

At this point, Jesus has died, risen from the dead, and appeared to his disciples with a commission.

Due to the proximity of this episode to the appearance of Jesus to the disciples, some say that this return to normal life represented an apostasy, or falling away, on the part of the disciples. But at this time, the Spirit had not fallen on them with power, as would happen at Pentecost. And Jesus had something else to teach them.

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17March2016

Six Aspects of Rehabilitation in Jesus

Written By robfaircloth

People generally welcome restoration and rehabilitation: we want to be put back into a former, better position.

Yet sometimes we resist those things that are necessary to achieve the result of restoration. Who enjoys physical therapy after knee replacement? An encounter between Jesus and the apostle Peter demonstrates those things necessary for spiritual rehab.

After boldly predicting that he would lay down his life for Jesus, Peter denied being one of his followers, not once, but three times, when public identification with Jesus seemed most needed. If anyone could use restoration, it was Peter.

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