Monthly Archives: August 2025

Satan’s Playground

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2 Corinthians 2

Church discipline is tough. In fact, I think it’s so tough churches refuse to discipline. We turn a blind eye and hope the person caught in sin sees the light on his own. Let God do the convicting and convincing.

I’ve only experienced church discipline once in my whole life as a church-goer, and that church blew it big time. It was handled so badly I don’t think the young woman involved ever fully recovered or was ever fully restored by it.

Now just because I’m not aware of “church discipline” in churches I’ve attended doesn’t mean it wasn’t going on. I hope it was. What I am about to say is my opinion based on what I believe is taught consistently in God’s Word. Here’s what I think church discipline ought to look like:

I think first of all we are accountable to each other. Jesus said that once we have dealt with the plank in our eye, the sin in our heart, we then should go and address the splinter in our Christian brother or sister’s eye, the sin we see them living. I believe that is the first step in church discipline. If we can encourage one person to repent of sin, the need for further discipline ends there.

But if that doesn’t happen, then two or three friends from the church should go privately to the person caught in sin with the intention of restoring that person to a right relationship with God. Again, behind closed doors, not for public attention.

Third, if that person is still resistant, representatives from the church, pastor, deacon, elder, SS teacher, should quietly have a meeting with that person and lovingly confront them with their sin and resistance. The goal should always be restoration.

I also don’t believe that this is a three step process. You might go privately to your friend many times before you ask another person to go with you. The two of you might go many times before you go to the pastor. I don’t think it should ever be a checklist you complete in order to get to the final step. We are talking about a dear member of our fellowship, loved and cared for by his or her church family. Sometimes it takes time and consistent effort.

I believe that at any point the person does repent of sin, the “discipline” doesn’t end there. I would hope there would be follow up, encouragement, support, maybe Bible Study or counseling that occurs.

Finally, and this is the first time church discipline goes pubic, the church must ask an unrepentant sinner to not come back. Again, this step cannot come without a lot of effort on the church to help the person realize his or her need of repentance. It cannot come without a lot of prayer, maybe fasting, pleading with God and this person to make that change. But as hard as it would be, a separation must take place to protect the body.

Even then, the goal of the separation is the eventual restoration of that lost soul. It should be followed by the entire congregation praying for the needed repentance, with anticipation of the time when he or she surrenders to God. Then, I would hope the fellowship would welcome the repentant one home with open arms.

I honestly think that if we really did the first three steps, the need for separation would be almost zero. But in that rare case, we have to do the hard thing for the good of the fellowship, and in obedience to God.

I look at the state of the Church and wonder if we are more intent on making church fun, or exciting, or attractive that we don’t have time for discipline. I wonder if we are so worried someone won’t like us we are afraid to confront. And I wonder if we are more worried about the tables turning, we don’t want to address sin in someone else. Even as I write this I think about churches that make the news because they abuse church discipline. We certainly don’t want to be like them, so we choose not to discipline at all.

All I can say is as I look at the modern church, an undisciplined church is Satan’s playground. I think he’s having a ball inside the walls of our churches and in the hearts of churchgoers these days.

Again, just my opinion. But I wonder.

The Choice to Suffer

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2 Corinthians 1:1-11

First let me make myself clear. I am not going to encourage anyone to adopt a victim mentality. In fact, what Paul says in these verses will blow that attitude out of the water. Paul is talking about sharing in Christ’s suffering, and Jesus was anything but a victim!

So how am I sharing in Christ’s suffering? I believe He suffered and died. I wear a cross around my neck and participate in Communion once a month. I identify with Him by calling myself a CHRISTian.

But I’m a wimp. I avoid suffering. I live a safe, predictable life in a nice home on a beautiful island. How am I supposed to share in Christ’s suffering?

I know there are people who will die today because of their faith in Jesus. There are people all over the world who live in fear every day, yet they stand boldly for the NAME.

Me? I’m afraid someone won’t like me if I actually share the Gospel will them. They might not want to be my friend, or they might even cut me out of their life completely. That would hurt my feelings.

I’m sitting here thinking about this whole idea of sharing in Christ’s suffering, and it dawned on me (or God did). To share in Christ’s suffering means to let go of my “self,” and do the will of the Father no matter the cost. Wasn’t that what Jesus did? He didn’t shy away from doing the hard thing, because the hard thing is what God wanted Him to do. He didn’t think “Me first.” In fact, He didn’t think “ME” at all:

Not my will, but Thine be done.

Paul wasn’t intimidated by the gossip about him in Corinth. He considered that insignificant compared to knowing Jesus and obeying His command to go and make disciples. Paul chose to put his life in God’s hand and, come what may, Paul trusted God even if it caused suffering.

So the question is, am I willing to share in Christ’s suffering? No one is going to nail me to a cross or beat me with leather straps. But standing up for the Truth might make someone mad. It might cause an argument. They might walk away and make fun of me to their friends.

If that’s the extent of my suffering for the sake of the Gospel, shame on me if I cower in fear. Don’t I realize that anything I may “suffer” can bring glory to God? Jesus’ suffering certainly did. And I have the privilege of sharing in that.

Do I choose to suffer for Jesus’ sake? We’ll see. I pray that I do.

Connections

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1 Corinthians 16

I hate texting. I do it often every day. But between auto-correct and my stiff fingers on those tiny buttons, I don’t always end up sending the message I meant to say. Plus, you can’t read inflection. What I think is funny might read as anger or insult to the receiver. I hate that. But what I think I hate most about texting is the personal connection it lacks, the sound of a friends’ voice, actual laughter instead of reading LOL.

Ok, so yesterday I said I felt like I had gotten a hug from God. I GOT ONE TODAY, TOO! As I was writing the first paragraph, my phone rang. On the other end was the beautiful voice of a dear friend I’ve loved for decades. We live about 800 miles apart now, but for the last 20 minutes I was back in her kitchen, just gabbing over coffee about this and that and the other thing. We laughed the familiar belly-laugh over silly things, and shared some struggles we wouldn’t necessarily share with many others. No text could have done what that call did. Thank you God, for prompting my friend to call.

Paul knew how important face-to-face connection was. He wrote letters out of necessity. He couldn’t pick up the phone and he couldn’t be everywhere at once. But in his letters you can hear his longing to be in the physical presence of those to whom he wrote. That connection was important to him.

And whether we realize it or not, it’s important for us, too,

Our society has become more and more an isolationist society. We are all so self-focused we can’t even take a minute to stop and have a conversation with a parent or a child or a friend or an annoying scam artist. (Don’t do that last one. Don’t answer the call of a phone number you don’t recognize. Don’t do it!)

God created us to be relational. He said right from the start that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone. It’s not good for us to be, either. Some of you are alone living in a houseful of people. You are on your phones more than you are interacting with those people. Shame on you parents whose children see you with one eye on your phone when you are with them. You might as well live alone. I’m not sure you’d know the difference.

Our families are disconnected. Our churches are, too. Online worship? What’s that about? If the Church is the body of Christ, why does his elbow or his toes think it’s ok to disconnect? That’s not a healthy body! We need you. We need each other.

Friend, hold onto that connection in your family. You might have to grab on tightly and fight the pull. Do it anyway. You might have to put down your phone. Or turn it off. That wouldn’t kill you.

Hold onto that connection in your church. Reach out. Invite. Grab coffee or knock on a door of someone who is pulling away. Don’t wait for someone else to make the connection. You do it.

Satan loves to separate God’s sheep from the herd. That’s where we are the most vulnerable. Satan loves to separate children from their parents. That’s where they are the most vulnerable, too. If you don’t keep a connection with your kids, it’s easier for them to make poor choices. We need each other. We need to hold on.

So I guess my hope is that we will put down our phones, eliminate screen time, and look at each other. Talk to each other. Touch each other. Laugh with each other. Cry with each other. Listen. Share. It’s what it means to be human beings. Let’s get that back.

Make a real connection with someone today.

Religious Stuff

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1 Corinthians 15:35-58

Friend, if you don’t read your Bible every day asking God to speak to you, then expecting to hear His voice, you are missing out.

A few months ago I found a devotional book of short excerpts from AW Tozer sermons, compiled by Gerald B. Smith and published by Moody Publishers, 2008, called Mornings With Tozer. Today, August 20, there was a line that caught my attention and prepared my heart to hear from God as I turned to 1 Corinthians 15. In fact, I not only heard what God wanted me to know, I got a gentle hug from my Lord, too.

So Paul is talking about our resurrected bodies. It’s natural to wonder what we will look like in our new and improved bodies. I see me as a size 0 with long flowing blond hair and perfect skin. I digress.

Paul says the body I am wearing will die like a seed dies in the ground and comes forth as something totally different. This body won’t be the same when Jesus comes for the harvest. It will be changed into something incorruptible and immortal in the twinkling of an eye. (I get chills just thinking about that. Jesus is coming again!)

But, and this comes from the “therefore” in verse 58, until that eye-twinkle I am to be “steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

I hear God say, “Don’t spend so much time trying to figure out things the details of which I didn’t think were important for you to know. Get to work.” My spiritual body will be what God intends my spiritual body to be and until I receive that spiritual body, it’s pointless to dwell on the possibilities. There are too many things to do before I get there.

I was prompted to take an inventory of my “labor in the Lord.” I am a Sunday School teacher, a ladies’ Bible Study teacher, the head of a children’s ministry, I sit on a long range planning committee at church, and am on a team that serves our Wednesday dinners. I attend church every Sunday, followed by Sunday School, I go to our Wednesday night prayer and Bible study. I spend many hours each week preparing for the various lessons I teach, and I start each day with a quiet time in God’s Word. I will tell you, sometimes I get weary.

So I read Paul’s charge to be “steadfast, immovable, excellent,” and my whole body aches. All the things I do are good things, I love doing them, and it’s my privilege to serve God this way. But none of that is the most important thing.

Here’s what Tozer said that got my attention: “Of things religious we may become tired, even prayer may weary us, but God never!”

I’ve come to realize it’s when I’m doing religious stuff, when I’m intent on the task at hand, wanting to do well, giving it my all, that’s when I become the weariest. But when my gaze is on Jesus, when I am in-tune to His voice and relying on His direction and strength, He makes me steadfast, immovable, and excellent.

I said I felt a hug from God this morning. I hear Him tell me to quit trying so hard. It’s not that any of what I do is wrong, or that the time I put in is futile, or that I shouldn’t want what I do to be excellent. But none of that can come in place of my relationship with Jesus. My first priority is to my Savior.

When we, God and I, work together the labor is not in vain. When my focus is on Jesus, the work gets done with excellence. I’m glad God has given me some religious stuff to do, but the stuff isn’t my religion.

Jesus is.

Is the Resurrection of Jesus a Thing?

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1 Corinthians 15:29-34

Why is believing in the resurrection of Jesus a big deal? You hear about people dying on the operating table, then coming back to life all the time. You read books about little boys who die, go to heaven, then come back to tell about it.

But you’ve only heard about one person who was dead for three days, then came back to life without the paddles or shots of adrenaline. Jesus died, was buried for days, then was alive again. Hundreds of people were eye witness to the fact.

Christianity is nothing without the death and bodily resurrection of Jesus. It is because Jesus is actually alive today that we can face whatever this life hands us. It’s because He lives that we can be assured of our eternal life in His presence. It’s because Jesus died and rose again that our sins are forgiven. God revealed Himself in the ultimate display of power when Jesus defeated death.

What a privilege to know Him, to serve Him, to be loved by Him. What a comfort in knowing that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in my life, changing me, molding me, protecting me, and fighting with me against the power of darkness.

Is believing in the resurrection a big deal? It’s the difference between believing in the One True God, and believing about Him. You can’t separate God from the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

So Jesus rising from the dead is not only a thing, it is the most important thing of all. It’s the fulfillment of God’s plan to save you from the penalty of your sin. It’s that big of a deal.

Should I Wear a Hat to Church?

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1 Corinthians 11:1-16

Are we wrong in the 21st Century Church to not adhere to Paul’s mandate about hats in worship? I hate to think there are 16 verses in God’s Word that have no meaning to us in 2025.

As I sat here and tried to make sense of it, and before I went to Amazon to look up “women’s hats” to buy, God seemed to draw my eyes to the word “tradition” in verse 2. I looked back at what Paul had written in chapter 10 and saw he’d just had a conversation about our freedom in Christ. Are these verses in chapter 11 a continuation of that theme? It seems so to me.

Eating food sacrificed to idols isn’t an issue for us in the modern church, but the wisdom in the lesson still applies: choose to do nothing that would trip up a weaker Christian, or give a non-believer a wrong idea about what it means to follow Christ.

The ancient tradition of head-covering has a lesson for us, too. If idolatrous men covered their heads while bowing to their false gods, Paul is calling Christian men to take off their hats when they worshiped God. If idolatrous women went to their false god bare-headed, Christian women should cover their’s. It wasn’t as much about the hat, as it was being totally separate from anything idolatrous, so as not to trip up a weaker Christian or give a non-believer the wrong idea about what it means to worship the one true God.

Does God care what we wear to church? The popular philosophy is, no. But I wonder if we should care. Does what I wear separate me from the world on a Sunday morning? If I go to church wearing my short shorts and tank top, am I going to hell? Of course not. (don’t worry. I don’t even own short shorts and tank tops anymore. Relax!) We have the freedom to wear just about anything.

But if my unsaved neighbor sees me getting into my car on a Sunday morning, will he automatically know I am going to worship God, or will he think I’m going to the beach or a ball game? If my approach to worship looks that casual, would a weaker Christian think it’s ok to take a casual approach to worship?

What is permissible is not always profitable.

I know when we talk about wearing our “Sunday best” to church, we are touted as old fashioned, out-dated, legalistic. Yes, there is no dress code for church. But shouldn’t I care about how I am perceived as a Christian woman? What do my clothes say about me and my worship of Holy God?

I will go so far to say that this lesson isn’t just for the Sunday morning worshippers. I hope we present ourselves every day as people separate from the world through our choice of what we wear to work, to play, or simply to walk through the neighborhood.

You might say, “I have a right to wear what I want.” Ummm, I question that. As Christians we are called to set aside our “rights” for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of that weaker Christian, or for that unsaved person who is watching us.

I’m not advocating for the fashion police to guard the doors of our churches. But I think I’m advocating that we guard our hearts and our witness every day, and especially on Sunday when we have the privilege of gathering with our family of faith to worship our precious Savior, our Holy God.

What does your choice of clothing say about you? Do you blend in with the world? Could people mistake you for a non-believer? Or are you living a life that is separate from the world, and looking like it?

Deliberately Limited

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1 Corinthians 8-9

A.W. Tozer said Jesus is God, “limited deliberately.” He never ceased being God. But He chose to limit Himself when He put on human flesh. In a sense, Jesus went into the ring with one hand tied behind his back… deliberately.

Paul apparently believes that is the model for living this Christian life. In Christ we have freedom, rights. We are “children of the King,” “joint heirs with Jesus,” “chosen.” We are not bound by a list of do’s and don’ts because Jesus fulfilled the Law on our behalf.

Free at last!

But Paul tells us to limit deliberately our rights and freedoms for the sake of others. For instance, I have the freedom to attend the wedding of a homosexual couple. Yet because my going can be interpreted as approval, or a celebration of that sin, I choose to decline the invitation. Being at that wedding wouldn’t effect my going to heaven. It might, however, effect that of someone else who looks at my example and reads “homosexuality is not a big deal,” “sin is no big deal.”

I want to limit deliberately what I do, where I go, what I say in order to represent Jesus the way He deserves. The pleasures of this world aren’t worth it. What is permissible is not always profitable. May I choose holiness, absolute truth, and the inerrant Word of God to be my standard of living, no matter what freedoms I have in Christ.

Those freedoms cost Jesus a great deal. Deliberately limiting myself for His sake is a no-brainer.

Is Holiness Outdated?

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1 Corinthians 5&6

Paul reminds me that we Christians, God’s body, His temple, represent Him to the world. If we treat sin in our midst like the world treats sin (with tolerance or celebration or with compromise), what does that say about the Holiness of God? If we allow quarreling and gossip in our midst, what picture of God does a non-believer see?

Yes, we should be calling each other out for unrepentant sin. We ought to be protecting the Holiness of God in our fellowships.

I think it’s addressing the plank in our collective eye so that we can address sin in our neighborhoods.

I think the fact we don’t address sin in the church has resulted in the accurate accusation that Christians are hypocrites. Maybe it’s time the Church stops making excuses, that we quit compromising, and reset our standard of living to holiness.

Holiness.

That’s who God is. He deserves (and demands) that His Body reveal His holiness to the world.