It is time for a moment of honesty with all of you. Lately, I have really been struggling to get into my devotions. My every day copying out of the Bible has come to a stop, and the only Bible that I was receiving for a while has been the one chapter that I read every day in my Christian school homeroom with my students (which we do at their requests, by the way). The struggle also has not just been of my own doing. Every time that I will sit down to read and copy the phone will ring or someone will walk into the room or something just goes wrong. I know that those are attacks, but that does not help me when I am not able to open my Bible.
I finally came to the point where I had to sit down with my dear husband and express my concerns over my struggle for devotions. I expressed my need to be fed not only in church but also in my daily walk, and he had the most wonderful suggestion for me. Thank God for godly husbands. His inquiry was why I do not just listen to a sermon every day to help me to get back on my feet and into the Word. I took him at his suggestion and it has been wonderful.
This week I have been listening a lot to Pastor Eric Ludy from Ellerslie. Dynamite preaching! There are a few things that you have to understand about me. I am conservative, more so than other people my age or even older than I am to some extent. This takes some people by surprise because I don’t look conservative. I am not really talking about my dress but more along the fact that I am a loud and bubbly person for the most part. Apparently conservatism and outgoing are not allowed to mix. 🙂 This happens quite a bit in school and youth group. The youth will express a viewpoint and expect for me to side with them; however, I turn around and give a response similar to what their parents or grandparents would give. The confused looks I receive are actually semi-comical. I have students ask me all the time why I am not a Bible teacher, and, to be honest, it is because the Bible teaching positions at my school are already filled with very godly Christians whom I look up to. But back to Eric Ludy…
His sermon that I listened to yesterday was entitled “Majesty Lost.” Here is the link to his sermon.
http://ellerslie.com/sermons/eric-ludy/8-8-10/majesty-lost
For some reason I cannot get that sermon out of my mind. It has been a while since I have been so convicted and wept and been brought to my knees before Almighty God in such a way. It was one of those sermons that gives you a slap in the face to wake up out of the complacency that you did not even know that you were in.
In his sermon, he goes back into the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 8:1-6 the children of Israel have committed abominations against the Lord God, and God has had enough. He takes Ezekiel by the lock of his hair to Jerusalem to look upon the abominations. In verse 6 the Lord says, “Son of man, seest thou what they do? even the great abominations that the house of Israel committeth here, that I should go far off from My sanctuary? but turn ye yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations.” This continues, and you follow Ezekiel as he watches idol worship and the weeping of the women for Tammuz. Later they worship toward the east (which has to do with some other convictions I have, but I will right about those later). God has had enough with his children worshiping other gods. He has brought them from Egypt; He has fed them with manna; He has guided them with His mighty hand, and the nation worships those that cannot see, hear, or act. In the words of my coworker “God is about to open a bag of freak on them.”
In chapter 9 God calls for all the men with “destroying weapon in his hand” and “one man among them was clothed in linen, with a writer’s ink horn by his side.” Why the man with an ink horn? What is an ink horn? The Merriam- Webster dictionary defines it this way.
1ink·horn
noun \ˈiŋk-ˌhȯrn\
: a small portable bottle (as of horn) for holding ink
This one man had an inkhorn with him, and his job was to “set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.” The people that mourned over the state of God’s people were marked by this man to show that they were faithful men of God. What of the others? Verse five records the command. ” And to the others he said in mine hearing, ‘Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity.’ “
Neither have ye pity.
God gave chance, after chance, after chance, after chance; and He has had enough. Those in Israel worshiping the idols were slain. Those who stood by and watched were slain. Those who felt nothing were slain. God saved His remnant. Then the thought hit me.
“Megan, if a man came through now with an inkhorn, would you be marked or slain?”
I told you it has been a long time since a conviction hit me that hard. I clasped my hand over my mouth, cried, and prayed to my King. I have become complacent. My preference took place over conviction. My logic over His commands. My striving to be normal with His non-conformity. I fear being slain not for my God but by my God because I had let my let be only a dying heat on a wick.
How much worse is it for us Christians? We have the blood of Christ. We have His grace, His salvation, His crucifixion, and His resurrection; and He is first in word only? God forbid! I used to write the names of those that God allowed me to lead to Him in the front of my Bible, and the last name and date was this time ago last year. It has been a whole year since I shared the gospel with someone and have led them to Christ. I felt sick. I have always wanted to be a foreign missionary. We are not there yet, but we are still praying. However, I have a mission field all over my city, and I have not been trying my hardest to bring others to Christ. Shame on me!
We are to stand in the midst of these abominations and sigh and cry over the state of the church. The American church, by the way, is in a state to be mourned. Christ wept over the city of Jerusalem at the triumphant entry because in AD 70 the Romans would leave no stone unturned. We, as the church, have turned our own stones. Mourn at that! I am Independent Fundamental Baptist, and guess what…I am proud to be. I do not view it as a cult. I do not write posts and articles slamming the churches that raised me in the Word of the Lord because THEY ARE WHO LED ME TO CHRIST! Johnny Pope said in one of his sermons “If you are going to move a fence you should know why it was put there in the first place.” Are there some that are wrong? Yes. Are there some that I have left because I feel they are wrong/cultish? Yes. When you put your Pastor and his words over the words of Almighty God something is wrong.
My husband and I decided to give up secular music for the month of April, and I tell you honestly that it has been huge. Music. Music can be a false god. I love music. As I sit here typing this post I am wearing a shirt with music notes and clefs all over it. I teach music. Music is one of the biggest things that leads me to praise my Lord God, and honestly it is the thing that leads me to praise myself. Think about the focus of most music. Self. Self, self, self, self, self. It is disgusting. Why praise myself when I serve a Holy God. Lecrae in one of his songs says, “Magnify the Father why bother with something lesser?” and he is absolutely right. Why bother focusing on myself when I am depraved. Any focus on myself should be to focus on being more like him, not more like whatever American Idol is center stage right now. I should want to follow and speak His Voice instead of being the voice to turn chairs. No, we should want to turn hearts, and we should want to turn hearts toward Christ.
“Sigh and cry over the fact that true Christianity is almost lost in our generation.” -Eric Ludy
He gives a beautiful list of Christians in the past that are what he called “Irish Elk” Christians. The Irish Elk is extinct by the way. But in the words of Johnny Pope “Satan is not impressed with your past victories. Today’s ashes are yesterday’s victories.”
I beg you, and I beg myself. Do not sacrifice yourself to the idol of self. Do not back down from right because it is unpopular. Call things the way they are. I had a great man in my church growing up that would always say “If your phone is ringing pick it up.” Pick up your phone. Answer your call. Do not just sit in church and recall the way it used to be. Get up with me and fix it to the way it should be. “Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross. Lift high it’s royal banner it must not suffer loss.”
The world can look online right now and find plenty of ammo against Christianity. Unfortunately, the ammo is posted by those that call themselves Christians. We should be the Roman shield dipped in water that quenches the fiery arrows that come at the church. Have the shield of faith. Pick up your armor with me and stand.
Do not be marked with the ink of the world and its label. Strive to be marked with the mark of the inkhorn.
ragsandrubies 