Category: Quotes

On Man’s Ego

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Devotionals, Quotes6 Comments

Never in the history of the race has man been so busily occupied with the study of himself as he is today.

The behavioral scientists and the religionists are turning out tons of material for us to read as we search for new knowledge about ourselves. Most of us are surprisingly eager to do our assigned reading because, quite frankly, we are enthralled and fascinated with our subject. We are unreservedly devoted to this baffling, unmanageable creature called man.

No one interests us more than ourselves.

One large reason for this is that we are all egoists at heart. And that’s a problem, the world’s biggest. God has shown us how this problem is solved. God is Himself the solution.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Are you enthralled with yourself?
  2. Do you realize you have an ego problem?
  3. Do you know that God is the solution?

Resources

Earl Jabay, The god-players, preface.

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On True Church Growth

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Pastoral, Quotes4 Comments

The growth of the gospel happens in the lives of people, not in the structures of my church.

Or to put it in terms of our opening metaphor, the growth of the trellis is not the growth of the vine.

We may multiply the number of programs, events, committees and other activities that our church is engaged in; we may enlarge and modernize our buildings; we may re-cast our regular meetings to be attractive and effective in communicating to our culture; we may congratulate ourselves that numbers are up. And all of these are good things!

But if people are not growing in their knowledge of God’s will so that they walk ever more worthily of the Lord, seeking to please him in all things and bearing fruit in every good work, then there is no growth to speak of happening at all.

Questions for Reflection

  1. How do you measure growth at your church?
  2. Do you seek to fill the pews, or to fill people’s hearts with the truth of the gospel?

Resources

Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, 82.

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On Felt Needs

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Pastoral, Practical, Quotes2 Comments

The newscaster gives us the awful truth, which is reality; the Bible gives us the revealed truth, which is revelation; psychology has given us the hidden truth, which is a rip-off.

America is the psychological society, and the language and philosophy of need have seduced the church.

Therefore the people in the pew ask all the wrongs questions, based on cultural programming:

  • What can the church do for me?
  • Can I get my needs met here?
  • Do I feel good when I leave here?
  • Does the pastor make me feel guilty?
  • Will I have to do what I don’t feel like doing?

These questions and more reflect the corruption of self-idolatry primarily fostered in our society by the secular psychological community.

This has led to the development of a “need theology” that finds its roots in gratifying the desires of the flesh. Therefore, the most popular theologies of today are directed toward immediate need gratification.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Can the church meet the needs of its congregants without being a felt needs church?
  2. How would you suggest a pastor meet the needs of his congregation without being a felt needs pastor?

Resources

Bill Hull, The Disciple Making Pastor, 42.

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On the Disappearance of Theology

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Pastoral, Practical, QuotesLeave a comment

The Stats

What does it mean, for example, when 91 percent of evangelicals say that their beliefs are “very important” to them, when 93 percent say that they believe in divine judgment, when 96 percent say that they believe in miracles? It does not mean all that much.

Theology is Peripheral and Irrelevant

Even in churches that are active and among believers who are religiously observant, it is possible that theology (i.e., a set of beliefs that refers beyond the experiencing subject to the world “out there, “natural and supernatural) has become peripheral and remote.

Even “those who count themselves as believers, who subscribe to the tenets of a Church, and who attend services regularly, ” Bryan Wilson has observed, “nevertheless operate in a social space in which their beliefs about the supernatural are rendered in large part irrelevant.”

Wherever modernity has intruded upon the Church, there the social space even of believers who give assent to the full range of credal elements will be emptied of theology.

Even the beliefs of such individuals will have been pushed to the margins of life, the central and integrating role they once had commandeered by other interests.

Theology on the Periphery Can’t Define Evangelical Life

It is in this sense that it is proper to speak of the disappearance of theology. It is not that the elements of the evangelical credo have vanished; they have not. The fact that they are professed, however, does not necessarily mean that the structure of the historic Protestant faith is still intact.

The reason, quite simply, is that while these items of belief are professed, they are increasingly being removed from the center of evangelical life where they defined what that life was, and they are now being relegated to the periphery where their power to define what evangelical life should be is lost.

Practice Reveals What Polling Can’t

This is not the sort of shift that typical polling will discover, for these items of belief are seldom denied or qualified, but that does not mean that the shift has not occurred. It is evangelical practice rather than evangelical profession that reveals the change.

Questions for Reflection

  1. What do you think of the state of the church? Has care for theology been moved to the periphery?
  2. If theology is moved to the periphery, what affects will that have on the church?

Resources

David Wells, No Place for Truth Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?, 107-108. (NOTE: Paragraphs are Wells; headings are mine)

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Don’t Write the Bible Off

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Devotionals, Quotes3 Comments

Francis Schaeffer

I am convinced we don’t read the Bible because we think its irrelevant. We believe it doesn’t answer the questions we are asking.

Francis Schaeffer, arguable one of the 20th centuries greatest Christian philosophers, doesn’t agree. He believes the Bible is just as relevant today as when it was first written. At a turning point in his life, he turned to God’s Word and found it answered the questions he was asking. Questions his liberally minded church weren’t answering. Here is how his biographer puts it:

As he read [Greek philosophy] he had a growing sense that he was gaining more questions but no answers. This awareness was reinforced when he realized that he experienced a similar situation in his church, which he later realized was influenced by theological liberalism…What he was getting in his church was a constant questioning, but no answers to the issues of life…

Having tasted the thinking of the ancient Greeks, he thought it was only fair to read through the Bible, something he had never done. He ought to give it a last chance. So it was that, night by night, alongside his reading of Ovid he began reading the Bible from the beginning (as a book, he thought this was the way to do it). He began with Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” and read to the very end: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen” (KJV).

In his reading of the Bible he was surprised to find unfolding answers to the deep philosophical questions he had begun to ask. The dawning excitement would never leave him.

Schaeffer’s experience is proof the Bible answers the questions we’re asking. It’s relevant. It’s useful. It’s life changing.

At this time in Schaeffer’s life, he was ready to write the Bible off. That is, until he read it. I believe that’s why we don’t believe the Bible is relevant. Why we don’t believe it answers the questions we’re asking – we haven’t read it. If we had, we would come to a completely different conclusion.

If you think the Bible is irrelevant, I challenge you to read it. Don’t write it off without giving it an honest chance. Schaeffer didn’t, and he became one of Christianity’s greatest minds.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Have you read God’s Word cover to cover?
  2. How has God’s Word proven relevant in your life?

Resources

Quote from Francis Schaeffer: an Authentic Life, by Colin Duriez, pg 20-21.

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On Salvation

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Devotionals, Quotes2 Comments

The mark of someone who is saved is that they maintain their confession of faith until the end of their lives.

Salvation is not a prayer you pray in a one-time ceremony and then move on from…

…salvation is a posture of repentance and faith that you begin in a moment and maintain for the rest of your life.

Question for Reflection

  1. Are you assured of your salvation because you prayed a prayer or because you are actively following Jesus?

Resources

J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, 5.

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