The Dead Snake Handler and the Dead Poet’s Society

On February 15, Jamie Coots, pastor of Full Gospel Tabernacle in Middlesboro, Kentucky, and co-star of National Geographic’s reality show Snake Salvation, died from a snakebite to the hand. Christianity Today has the story. It was his ninth bite in twenty years. The previous eight made him very ill. Once he even lost a finger.

Snake handling as a form of worship is practiced by a small number of churches mostly in the rural southeastern United States. It started 100 years ago with an illiterate Pentecostal preacher in Tennessee who interpreted Mark 16:18 as a commandment from God.

They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16:18, KJV)

Coots had stated that he viewed this commandment on the same level as the Ten Commandments.    Continue at Jon Bloom

Why We Shouldn’t Neglect to Meet Together

Have you ever thought of this simply stunning statement by God as a reason why we are to gather together in corporate worship?

It is not good that the man should be alone. (Genesis 2:18)

What’s so incredible about this is that God said it before the fall, when Adam’s heart was undimmed by the dark night of sin and he enjoyed unbroken fellowship with his Creator.

What was not good about Adam’s experience? He had unimpeded communion with God. He had no God-shaped hole in his heart. Wouldn’t this have been truer for Adam than Asaph: “there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25)? Wouldn’t this have been truer for Adam than Chris Tomlin: “All of you is more than enough for all of me”?

Was God not enough for Adam?

I think we often simply assume that Adam’s being alone was not good for Adam. By God’s design, that was certainly true. But that wasn’t the only or ultimate thing that was true. Adam’s being alone wasn’t good for God. The ultimate point was not that all of God wasn’t enough for all of Adam. It was that all of Adam wasn’t enough for all of God. One human would not enjoy God as much as many humans together.    Continue at Jon Bloom

Relentlessly Call Abortion What It Really Is

Abortion is rarely talked about.

I’m not talking about the word “abortion.” We hear this word a lot it in the public square. But we rarely hear about it. Abortion almost always refers to something else. We hear that abortion is fundamentally about a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. Or abortion is a litmus test for judicial nominees. Or abortion is symptomatic of what’s wrong with the social discourse in America.

But none of those things is what abortion really is. Abortion is the intentional killing of unborn children.

Death Is in the Power of the Tongue

Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Abortion is a clear example of this truth.   Continue at Desiring God

The Weakness of the World’s Strongest Man

When the writer of Hebrews listed the Old Testament heroes of faith, he included Samson (Hebrews 11:32). Really? Samson’s story, recorded in Judges 13–16, reads like a narcissistic super hero’s whose Kryptonite weakness does him in in the end.

But God wanted Samson included in the list because there are crucial things about faith that God wants us to understand from him. To explore these, let’s imagine two of Samson’s brothers on their way to collect Samson’s body in Gaza (Judges 16:31) reflecting on all that went wrong (I’ve given them the fictitious names, Abijah and Nadir).

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The two brothers said nothing for a long time after the ruins of Dagon’s temple came into view. It lay on the ground like a torn carcass. The living were crawling through the debris extracting the dead.  Continue at Jon Bloom

Hope for the Battle with Intractable Weakness

We all have sin-infected weaknesses that are intractable. They are deeply woven into the fabric of who we are and are frequently exacerbated by our sinful responses to them.

Inherent weaknesses are different from indwelling sin. Indwelling sin is evil that is waging war against God in our very members (Romans 7:21–23). Inherent weaknesses are our bodily experience of God’s curse of futility that is affecting all of creation (Romans 8:20). Sin is moral corruption resulting in real guilt. Weakness is a constitutional corruption — a disease or disorder or disability — resulting in sometimes anguishing struggle.

When we’re young, we tend to underestimate our weaknesses. We think they’ll change when our situation changes. Or we believe they will simply fade away as we get older. Or we assume our future mature selves will muster the discipline to conquer them. Or surely the Spirit will come with healing power and give us victory.

We battle our weaknesses every day for years. And years. And at some point, often in middle age, we find ourselves bewildered. Our old enemy is not vanquished. We thought sanctification was supposed to be progressive. Where’s the progress? Will this never end?     Continue at Jon Bloom

You Can Take Heart in Uncertainty

Uncertainty is a difficult thing to bear. We want to know where the provision is going to come from or if we’re going to die of this disease or how this child is going to turn out or if our job will still be there next month.

But as we see in Luke 9:57–58, Jesus makes it clear that his disciples must be able to bear uncertainty if they are to follow him.

“I will follow you wherever you go.”

I’m sure that whoever made this public declaration to Jesus was sincere. They likely had heard him preach and seen him perform amazing signs and wonders. 

As Jesus’s fame increased, so did the number of his would-be disciples.

What the person might not have known was that at that moment Jesus was homeless. Jesus and his cohort were traveling south from Galilee. He had set his face to go to Jerusalem, where his resolute purpose was to die. But to get there he had to travel through Samaria.

Getting the Context

Back then there was a lot of bad blood between Jews and Samaritans. More precisely, Samaritans had the bad blood. They were the result of centuries of intermarriage and religious syncretism between Jews and Israel’s former Gentile conquerors.   Continue at Jon Bloom

Lay Aside the Weight of Fragmented Focus

No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. (2 Timothy 2:4)

The Debilitating Weight of Too Much

 

If we’re going to successfully run the race of faith with endurance (Hebrews 12:1) and finish our course and the ministry we receive from the Lord Jesus (Acts 20:24), we must learn the martial art of doing less.

I call it a “martial art” because of Paul’s military metaphor in 2 Timothy 2:4. By “doing less” I don’t mean (necessarily) working less hours or doing less intense work. I mean doing fewer things more effectively. Mark Forster is right when he says,

We tend to think unsuccessful people are unsuccessful because they sit around doing nothing. But it’s often for quite the opposite reason: they take on far too much—all sorts of wonderful projects at the same time—and never bring any of them to fruition. (Do It Tomorrow, 18)

A fragmented focus results in our carrying the debilitating weight of doing too much.

Time Is Not the Problem

 

Doing too much is not a time problem. It’s a distraction problem. When Martha was frazzled with tasks, Jesus said that her “many things” were making her “anxious and troubled.” Only “one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:41–42).

Our days are as long as God designed them to be and we have as many days as God allots to us (Psalm 139:16). Each of us have God-given “gifts that differ according to the grace given to us” (Romans 12:6), as well as weaknesses that God has assigned to us so that Christ’s power may be uniquely shown through us (2 Corinthians 12:9).   Continue at Jon Bloom

Remember What’s Really Going On: Jesus Is Gathering His Sheep

I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. (John 10:16)

Jesus Christ is hard at work gathering the rest of his sheep that he “bought with his own blood” (Acts 20:28) and that are “scattered abroad” (John 11:52). This is the main thing that is happening in the world. All the great geopolitical shifts in the world are connected to this mission. The world doesn’t know it. 

But the church on earth, the sheep that are in the fold already, must remember this. It’s what history is all about and it’s why they are still here. It’s why God installs and removes rulers. It’s why economies surge and crash. It’s why church planting and missionary doors open and close. It’s why gospel awakening breaks out in one place and persecution breaks out in another. 

We can be at peace despite major cultural shifts, political upheaval, war, natural disasters, disease, and persecutions (Romans 8:35) because we know that “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37) to the point of death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). And we know that all these things “must take place” (Matthew 24:6) and that the “gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).   Continue at Jon Bloom

Feeding Your Soul

When your soul is in turmoil, it’s hard to see clearly. Fear, anger, sorrow, and despair can distort your perception of reality. It’s hard to keep things in perspective. They can actually magnify your troubles.

Often, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, what you need is somebody to take you by the shoulders, look you square in the eye, and speak some sense to you. Sometimes that somebody is you.

I get this from the Bible. Listen to the psalmist talk to himself: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Ps. 43:5).

This was a man in trouble. He felt threatened and overwhelmed. And in the first part of the psalm, he was doing exactly the right thing by pouring out his soul in prayer to God. But then he stopped praying and spoke directly to his soul.

God is very intentional about what He includes in the Bible. So, when God includes this kind of soultalk in the inspired hymnal for the ages, we’re supposed to notice. God clearly intends us to speak to our souls. So, we need to understand why this is important.

When the psalmists talk to themselves, what are they doing? In every instance, whether in desperation or celebration, they are reminding themselves that their hope is in God. Why? Because in a world of tribulation (John 16:33), hope drains away, and they know how crucial it is to feed one’s soul.

Hope is to our soul what energy is to our bodies. Hope is the spiritual energy generated in the soul when we believe that our future is good, even if our present is bad. Our souls must have hope to keep going, just as our bodies must have energy to keep going.   Continue at Jon Bloom

I Hope You’re Right, but I Doubt you Are

Jon Bloom did a service for everyone who experiences a crisis of faith in writing his most recent blog posting. I’ve worked with him either as a volunteer or as an employee for seven years and  I can’t remember how often he’s reminded me to trust God’s promises over my perceptions.  It is always good advice.

In his blog posting last Friday, When You’re in a Spiritual Storm, Trust Your Instruments, he tells his own story of a season of doubt.  But unlike my own experience of running away from God and the people of God, Jon persevered:

So I continued devotional Bible reading, prayer, church and small group attendance. I opened my heart to trusted friends and mentors and sought counsel. I remember John Piper saying to me: “Jon, the rock of truth under your feet will not long feel like sand.” When he said it, my thought was, “I hope you’re right, but I doubt you are.”

My doubts proved wrong. After a long season of darkness, God pierced the clouds with his light.

None of us can know when our particular season of darkness will end, nor can we guarantee that it won’t return for a time.  Our doubts about God’s goodness do not change the fact that God is good, nor do they change God’s ability to keep every promise he has made.  Continue at John Knight