You might think, "Hey! How can you say your denomination is the best!?" But hold up, I said non-denominational, as in not having a denomination. lol. I will explain why:
Personally I think every Christian should be non-Denominational. I never understood why we have denominations. How about we just go by what the Bible says on different things rather then what the extra teachings of PEOPLE say?
I don't believe in Calvinism, that people are predestined to be saved or go to hell. I think that takes away any free will, and God gave man free will since the beginning in the garden. If that were true God would not be just and fair in sending some to hell. So I don't like the "high church" denominations that teach that. I think it is very arrogant to think of oneself as picked and elect and chosen and that other people simply aren't and never will be. The verse where Jesus says "You did not choose me, I chose you" they take out of context all the time. He was speaking to his disciples and just about his disciples. I know the verse "No man can come to me unless the father draws him." I think everyone at some point in their life God does draw; God reaches out to every single person with a Bible tract or a friend etc., and they can say yes or no to God. Some get several chances where God tries to draw them to himself. But God will not force himself on anyone. He will not violate our free will, because he wants our yes to him to really be yes and not us forcing our love for Him. Would you want to marry someone who was forced to marry you or someone who wanted to? Exactly. If they were forced to marry you every day of life would be miserable. That is the same as how it is with us and God.
And then you have the other side of the charismatics. I believe what they do, in that the gift of tongues is for today, but just for some Christians, not all. So I disagree strongly on their arguments that the only evidence of the filling of the Holy Spirit is tongues. It happened that people spoke in tongues when filled with the Holy Spirit sometimes in Acts, but not every single time. The fact is, most Christian don't pray in tongues and never will because they have other different gifts. But each gift is equally important and equally useful to our own Christian walk and helping to save others. Amen. So your gift is the perfect gift for you! Whatever it is. Don't worry about what gift other people have. Your gift is perfect for you!
I heard once that humans tend to live in extremes on one side or another but God can be found in the middle. God is in the balance.
Satan loves to make us to go to one extreme or another. I love how Joyce Meyer said once, "Satan will either keep you from going to church altogether or he will make you think you need to go EVERY night of the week." Can I get an amen to that? lol. Yep. We all tend to be in one extreme or the other. And both are wrong. Balance is always key. Why is going every night wrong? Because then you neglect your family. Trust me I know. I grew up with my mom going every night and it made me mad a lot. And then you have not going to church at all, but then we don't get connected to the body and the vine and apart from Christ we can do nothing. There are online sermon videos and Hillsong YouTube worship is awesome, but being in a church body is much more powerful and you will bear more fruit. Trust me. Amen. :) So go to church but don't go every single day. Don't forget God and the body of Christ but don't forget your family either.
So it's not "high church" Calvinism that's right, that's how they like to refer to themselves, and it's not the out of control Charismatics that are right either, it's THE BIBLE that's right. What does the Bible say? Neither extreme group really reads the Bible verses they use in context. They both take verses out of context all the time, or they blatantly ignore verses! They both make the Bible say what they want the Bible to say, what other people have told them that it says. And they stay MORE LOYAL TO THEIR TEACHERS THEN TO GOD AND THE BIBLE. Shame on them for doing that. :( Neither have good "hermeneutics," a term I heard in college a lot. Neither get it totally right.
So I try to just seek the truth and just see what the Bible says for itself, not what anyone else tells me it says. And I pray you will do the same. Just pray for God to show you the truth and he will. Stop reading commentaries or books about the Bible, JUST READ THE BIBLE. Amen. The Bible says tongues need to be interpreted if used in church meetings, period! If not there is just chaos. And the Bible says "WHOEVER calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Amen! Anyone can be saved because we all have free will. God can still give people gifts of healing and I actually now do think Todd Bentley has a legitimate gift of healing. After watching his three hour revival meeting via Facebook online feed I am convinced. I went into it very skeptical, mainly because of all his tattoos probably lol. But then I felt he really is from God and the people really are getting healed. I still think he needs to not say "bam" and "fire!" so much and just say Jesus more but oh well. There is the most power in the name of Jesus amen? Amen! Pray that he will think about some of my many suggestions to him via my comments on his meeting. :) Thanks. But also, maybe if the "educated Christians" would accept him and his gift more he wouldn't feel the need to go to the extreme crazy Charismatic side and be influenced by people like Rodney Howard Brown etc. If all the "smart Christians" would stop thinking all the supernatural gifts ceased then that would be good. That's simply not the truth. The Bible doesn't say anywhere that they will cease. They use the verse of "when the perfect comes" but that is referring to heaven, NOT the canonization of the Bible. Honestly guys, you claim to be smart but you still read into the Bible what you want to!
John MacArthur would be a prime example of this. He had his Strange Fire conference and I agreed with most of what he said, except that he completely ignores that Paul DID say "I thank my God that I pray in tongues more than you all." For the record, I have never prayed in tongues and don't really want to cause it freaks me out honestly lol, but I'm tired of the "smart Christians" being so mean to the "tongues Christians." :( Just let the Bible say what it says and not tell the Bible what you think it should say, essentially that's what people do. And don't teach some verses but totally ignore others.
But then the tongues speakers make the Bible say all Christians should pray in tongues because maybe they feel insecure about not all Christians speaking in tongues. But you guys just need to be ok with Christians being different. We all have different gifts and that is OK. Amen. :)
The issue is people with the gift of tongues are essentially kicked out of normal churches so they go to these churches that don't teach the Bible correctly. But we need to have BOTH. Churches that teach the whole Bible and use their minds to DISCERN and believe ALL gifts are still for today. May God make that happen.
Oh God help us all to teach the Bible for what it says! And NOT what we want it to say! Amen.
If you are looking for balanced teaching like that, pastors on YouTube that do this are Bob Utley, and John Piper, and Francis Chan and I think Joyce Meyer is always pretty awesome, even though she bought her own private jet lol. I still think she's great and has a great balance to her teaching. So praise God for all of them! And may more pastors imitate them in their balance and not be on one extreme side or the other. In Jesus' name Amen!
And now I have to stop writing because my one year old likes to crawl all over the table and stop me lol. May God bless you all! And be balanced!
(that makes me think of how this blog reminds me of how I have to break up my 3 year old and 1 year old all the time from fighting. That's what is happening in the church between the high church people and the Charismatics, it's just a bunch of God's children fighting over stupid stuff all the time. Well leave it up to mama bear to stop the fighting right? lol. Maybe that's what Paul says women will be saved through child bearing, in that when we have kids we will see things we didn't see before. Not that all women need to have kids to be saved, :) but having kids helps us understand God's heart more because we are his kids. Ok peace out ya'll. lol Amen and God bless!
God I pray for your divine blessing and favor on this blog! I think this is the most needed piece of writing in the entire world today! I think it can stop a lot of the fighting and blindness and anger and in-forgiveness that your children in the church feel for each other. I think it can stop the confusion that the world feels when they look at the church. God I pray that THIS BLOG would become my MOST read blog. I pray that people would email forward it to everyone in their email contact list! I pray that you would supernaturally make the words that I wrote sink deep into people's hearts and transform their minds and change how they think. God please renew our minds! We need to love others purely and whole heartedly as you would love them. We need to be a united group of people as you want us to be! Please God I pray for a miracle, that every Christian in every country all over the world would read this blog! In Jesus' awesome and holy name Amen!
If you can and feel led to by God's awesome Holy Spirit please share this. Thank you! And may God bless you:)
! :)
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