Want to get convicted? Check out this great sermon:

Go here:

http://www.wotmradio.com/2006/07/03/july-03-2006-hour-2/

Sermon starts about 4:00 minutes into it.

 

My favorite line from that sermon, "Stop applauding! You're the people I'm talking about!"

 

Forgive me if this rambles a bit, but it's a little tough to put this into words.

What stuck out at me really was the part about how much of our doctrine is based on Christian pop-culture and not on God's word. About how we get out theology from CCM and from the backs of Christian t-shirts and end up with weak, often foundation-less doctrine.

I know because that's exactly what I did and, twenty years later, I'm still finding little bits of spiritual debris from that big train wreck in my life.

I've said many times that I wish I hadn't gotten saved when I did. People always think that's a very odd thing for a Christian to say, but I really do wish that, somehow, I could have become a Christian about ten years later than I did.

I "accepted Christ" for all of the wrong reasons. I was twenty years old, my dad had just died, I'd just been thrown out of the service before my career had even begun (medical, not disciplinary) because of injuries sustained in a car wreck. I had kind of dabbled in crime. My brother talked me into taking part in a robbery that (thank God!) fell through. I was selling a little pot here and there to make some extra money because I wasn't making any from music. I was a good kid, but I was a very confused kid and some of the grief and the heaviness of the things I'd been through in such a short time and at such a young age clouded my judgement.

I would have grasped at any straw if I thought that it would have helped.

Through a series of events, I ended up with some CCM records (this was back in '88) and I found that I really liked them. Greg Volz, Mylon Lefevre, Mike Warnke, etc.

The messages I was getting weren't convicting at all, but that were all about, "Hey, isn't Christianity cool? It's all just one big party. Learn the cliches, buy the shirt, etc."

These things got me into a Christian sub-culture that was very cliche, very much a social thing. The Bible was only taken in refrigerator verses.

I fell in with some folks who shared the same brand of pop-Christianity as I did and because I was never challenged, never held accountable, I became an easy target for every false teacher under the sun.

I had a lot of zeal, but it was misplaced. Instead of being zealous for God, I know in retrospect that I was really just zealous for signs and wonders and to have my ears tickled. I truly believe that I was a part of that "wicked and perverse generation" Jesus talked about who followed after signs and wonders.

Because this little clique of ours was one big...well I can't use the phrase here because there are ladies who may read this...but let's just say that we were a great mutual admiration society, I really thought I was the best thing to come down the pike.

I'm not saying this to be funny and I'm certainly not saying it to brag in any way, but there were four girls in my church who had crushes on me and they would just hang on every great spiritual pronouncement I made.

I would say something idiotic (and always taking scripture out of context) like "Oh, we've got to claim the blood of Jesus because we're supposed to be the head and not the tail" or rebuking Satan (listening to Carman's records really screwed my theology and doctrine up) and you would think that I just discovered fire. They ate it up and I took the attention as a sign that I was on to something.

Well, I just got completely out of hand and left that church because they obviously didn't have Jesus there the way that I had Jesus. Later I'd realize that that was one of the Godliest and most on fire for God churches I would ever see, but I was too stupid to see it at that time.

I would also burn some really close relationships with some good friends who cared enough about me to try to stop me from going down the path I was going down. That I destroyed those relationships still hurts a lot to this day and is, twenty years later, still one of the biggest regrets of my life.

I eventually ended up in the WoF movement and it was a complete disaster. When hard times hit again (actually, many of them were just the same troubles and besetting sins I'd swept under the rug the first time), I found that I had nothing to hold onto because all of the lip service I had paid to Jesus was just that: lip service. It's like drowning and someone throwing you a rope, only to discover that the rope isn't attached to anything.

The people in this new group quickly turned on me because I wasn't living up to the WoF ideal of appearing healthy, wealthy and wise at all times, so I left Jesus (if I ever had him in the first place), I left church, and I just split. I started to backslide and lived even worse than before I was saved.

I started drinking a lot and sleeping with a lot of girls and smoking a lot of pot and all of that fun stuff.

Eventually, I did repent and I did get saved and really did get right with God, but I'm going to leave that for next time.