Lately, I am very saddened by things I see taking place in the world, both near and far. I see people moving farther from God so fast that I ask Him how I can make a difference? He quietly reminds me that I am an ambassador for Christ. My house is like an embassy in a foreign country these days. The way I live is supposed to represent the Kingdom of God. I take that seriously. So here I am, on my little wordpress blog where I have a platform to share with the few people who take time to click in and look. How many, I wonder, read to the end? How often am I preaching to the choir? Is anyone’s life impacted? Is there something else I can be doing?

“God,” I ask, “where can I make the greatest difference for Your Kingdom?” Because if I am going to be investing time and energy and resources, I want them to count big. Where can I make the biggest waves?

I have a friend who always tells me I am a prophet to the nations. He makes me chuckle. Aren’t we all, if we are sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ? I tell him, I’m just a stay at home mom, but now and then someone clicks in from Indonesia or Canada or South Africa. Today there was someone from the United Kingdom. My oldest daughter visited an African city earlier this year… she had the opportunity to love on a refugee family. That brought my heart so much joy.

I am still reading in the New Testament with my children at the breakfast table (ages 4-18, currently home). This year we have read Acts, Galations through 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Peter, and 1st-3rd John. These books cover the birth and spread of the church as well as letters that the apostles wrote to those fledgling churches, teaching them how God wants us to live. I see the same struggles in my world today that they wrote about then. How can we have the Bible, which teaches us God’s will for our lives, and the world is forgetting what truth they have had and sliding back into darkness? So many of the Greek philosophies that threatened the early church are revived and infiltrating the church today. How is this happening? I think the greatest danger lay in what we don’t recognize. We get used to things being a certain way, and then we just accept it without questioning whether it is right or wrong. In the apostle Paul’s letters, he warned the churches to be aware of the people they associated with and how their relationships could impact their spiritual health. Who influences what you believe? Here is my experience:

I Just Wanna Be a Sheep, Baaa. It’s a song the younger children sing at camp and VBS. Jesus said that his sheep know his voice and follow him. He is, after all, the good shepherd. Devoted Christ-followers don’t just know about Jesus, they know Him. They study the Bible to understand God’s heart and will, and they follow him, when the road is easy and when the road is hard.

Seat Warmers. They show up to church on Sunday morning, but they’re like the lambswool that is sitting on my chair to make it more comfortable… when I get up, my seat warmer stays on the seat. These people tend to leave what they learn at church in church. When they go home, they may call themselves Christians, but their choices are based more on what makes them comfortable and less on what God’s instructions are.

Goats in the Pen. Maybe they are seekers. Maybe they are there out of obligation and don’t believe what they hear. Our family used to have milk goats, and they are stubborn. The Bible separates the obedient from the disobedient, calling them sheep and goats. One of girls who shared a dorm room with my daughter Angel her first year at the Christian University changed schools the next year. She changed her pronouns, had her breasts removed, and more. She had sat through the Christian doctrinal classes, but she did not believe or follow the teaching.

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing. These are people who are intentionally in the churches and proclaim a gospel, but it is not the true gospel. Paul called it heresy, and he said not to accept a gospel that is different than the one Jesus left us. There are so many ways the truth is being muddied in churches across the US, but this post is not going to be big enough to cover them.

Peter said the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he can destroy. Lions are not in the church, but they are against the church. There are two ways I see this happening today: 1) The first is that the anti-Christ approach. Ungodly men who have never claimed Jesus live counter to God’s ways, teach counter to God’s ways, and have a way of working against those who try to follow God. Check out new Minnesota laws and you will see this in action. 2) The second way is the Judas syndrome. Friendly fire. People who used to claim Christ have gone through the process of “deconstructing” their faith, which can be simply understood as individuals who have de-converted. They are self-proclaimed apostates, and there are a lot of them. They are not satisfied in themselves to not believe; they make it their goal to sabotage the faith of as many others as possible.

I met a woman on a friend’s Facebook comment thread. I had never encountered anyone like her before. She was an ex-pastor’s wife who said she used to be just like me, only now she is angry and bitter toward God. She was deliberately irreverent of God, calling Him names and accusing Him of being the bad guy. Naturally, it was shocking, and her goal was to trap Christians into conversations where they would respond to her in an un-Christ-like manner so that she could condemn them and God for their unloving responses. I was so thankful that the Holy Spirit guarded my mouth and I remained kind, but I did tell her that I was concerned for her future since the Bible tells us that anyone who causes one of God’s children, who believe in Him, to stumble is facing a terrible eternity… that it would be better for them to have a mill stone tied about their neck and be thrown into the sea (Matt 18:6). Her response was that she would rather spend an eternity in hell than to spend it with God in paradise. Honestly, there was nothing I could do to change her mind. She knew scripture, but she turned it around to mean something it did not mean. I do pray for her heart to be softened and for her to recognize the truth.

The Deconstruction Movement is about dismantling one’s faith. Some people go about it intentionally, and for others it is a slow and unintentional process of allowing the world’s ideas to erode their belief system. Deconstruction in literature is about examining writing to find the inconsistencies and areas that it can be misunderstood. In college writing, students learn how to deconstruct so that they can make their writing better. How should we view such things? Questions are not wrong, but we should never question the truth of God’s word or the goodness of God. To work to dismantle God’s word is like tearing down our house with our own hands… the Bible calls this foolish. We should seek to clarify our understanding by asking God for wisdom when we read His word. This He will always do.

We pray for revival, but true and lasting revival starts with repentance. It starts with you and me, seeking God’s truth and then choosing it over and over, no matter what comes against us: whether disappointment, complacency, false teaching, or attack. Where can I make the biggest difference? If you’ve ever sat in on a multi-level marketing talk, you know the power of multiplication. God invented it, if only we’d get as excited over the truth as we do over selling a product. Put the brakes on this backward slide the church is in. Create some sparks. Start a revolution. A turning—back to God and his blessing.

Image by Adrian Malec @ pixabay