Category: Christian Living

Articles I have written specifically dealing with areas of Christian living.

It’s Time to Sing!

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living, Church, Theology

–December of 1999

It’s Time to Sing!

The year 2000 marks the beginning of a new millennium.  Crossing this threshold of time will prove to be an extraordinary moment for the church.  Two thousand years have passed since the birth of the Son of God in Bethlehem’s lowly manger, yet that birth still remains the defining moment of all history.  The church has steadily marched forward and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it.  The unfolding centuries have brought peril and persecution but the blood of the martyrs has proven to be the seed of the church.  After 2000 years we can joyfully proclaim that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever!  This alone ought to have the church singing as it makes its way into the new millennium.

Yet my sense is that most of the church is far from jubilant.  At the moment, the steady drum beat of the Y2K fear mongers have many looking for a reasonably comfortable cave, stocked with an ample supply of dried food and pure water.  Others are depressed by a culture that mocks Christian values.  They rightfully fear the violence, vulgarity, meanness and instability that is endangering our communities and sliding civilization into barbarism.  To make matters worse, much of the church has reacted by retreating to the safety of their religious subculture which has served only to privatize and marginalize their Christian witness.

It may be that the church strolls along with a heavy heart and a downcast look because it has forgotten something that the early church knew all too well.  It has forgotten the warning of Jesus in John 16:33.  Before Jesus left his disciples, he made it clear to them that tribulation is unavoidable, “In the world you shall have tribulation.”  This fundamental truth seems to rub the fur of the modern church the wrong way.  The early church understood it and counted it all joy when they suffered for Jesus’ sake.  When Ridley and Latimer were burned at the stake during the English reformation, Latimer cried to Ridley, “Have faith, Master Ridley.  Today we shall light a fire that will illuminate the world!”  Early Methodists faced hostile mobs, stonings and brutal beatings.  They accepted it as a part of confronting a fallen culture with the claims of Christ.  Today’s church around the world still offers more martyrs than any time in history.  The saints of all ages have faced trying times.  Jesus said that tribulation was unavoidable and we would do well to remember His words.

The trials that the church has endured have also proven true the words of Jesus that peace is available, “In me ye might have peace.”  I know of no amount of grace that makes a child of God look forward to difficulty, but there is His promised peace.  There is grace to help us keep our heads up and our hearts singing during the darkest of times.  After weeks in a concentration camp, Corrie Ten Boom asked her sister Betsy why God had allowed this to happen to them.  Betsy responded, “So that when we get out of here we can tell the world that there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

Jesus also reminded us in this same verse that victory is inevitable.  “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”  The century we are about to close has done its dead level best to secularize, demoralize and destroy everything Christians hold dear.  Yet secularism, modernism and radical individualism have given the world nothing but emptiness and despair.  These philosophies have created a moral and spiritual vacuum which may well serve as the catalyst to launch the greatest move of God in the history of civilization.  The church must be ready to seize the moment!  This isn’t the time to hide in caves or adorn ourselves in the garb of a Puddleglum.  We haven’t the emotional coinage to spend fretting about what might happen.  This may be our finest hour!  So, children of God, look up!  Victory is ours!  Strike up the music!  It is time for the church to sing again!

A Heritage of Spiritual Reality

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living

–November of 1999

A Heritage of Spiritual Reality

I recently enjoyed a wonderful afternoon visit with my good friends Murl and Dorothy Patterson. At 88, Brother Patterson is still strong, active and very proud of his family’s heritage. His grandparents came to this country from Germany and finally put their roots down in Nebraska, settling a short distance south of the Platte River. Brother Patterson’s eyes sparkle as he recounts their stories of meeting Indians, working with the railroad, buying a farm and building it up through hard work. His parents staked their own claim about one mile further west and bought a farm bordering the Platte, right on top of the Oregon Trail. The Pattersons still live on that farm and in the same house where he was born 88 years ago. When you look at the beautiful farm and the hundreds of acres of corn and alfalfa, the huge barns and massive equipment, you realize it took three generations to conquer, tame and mold this farm into what it is today. Though Brother Patterson has put an unbelievable amount of genius and hard work into developing this farm, he would be the first to tell you the farm is what it is today because he could stand on the shoulders of those who came before him.

As proud as Brother Patterson is of the family farm, there is one thing he feels even more deeply about; that is his spiritual heritage. When he speaks of the farm, his eyes sparkle. When he speaks of his grandparents’ and his parents’ love for God and zeal for the church, his voice breaks, his eyes moisten, his attitude reflects deep reverence. In his memory, he is walking on holy ground. He tells of hearing his grandmother pray in the grove, “Lord, save my family and bless them down to the third and fourth generation.” He recounts how his parents helped to start the Sunday school at the Methodist Episcopal Church, and how his dad was later the president of the Western Holiness Association. He recounts wonderful stories of camp meetings with the great holiness preachers of the past. He loves to relive the altar services, the singing and the fellowship.

His grandmother’s prayer has been answered. The lines have fallen to the Pattersons in pleasant places. The faith that was found in his grandparents and his parents can still be found both in him and his children. The light still shines.

Handing down to each generation a heritage of spiritual reality is so important. The greatest gift and inheritance we can give a generation that will follow is the influence and memory of a life well-lived for God, the testimony of a clear conscience and of faith that is real and sincere. Nothing else will really last; nothing else will really matter.

The Old Testament emphasized the importance of each generation serving as a link to spiritual reality. Isaac spoke of the God of his father Abraham.  Jacob spoke of the God of Abraham and Isaac. The children of Israel spoke of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Paul wrote to Timothy and charged him not to break faith with his heritage. He admonished him to keep alive the heritage of spiritual reality that was first found in his grandmother Lois and then in his mother Eunice. Timothy could build on that heritage and pass it on to another generation, or he could lose it for coming generations.

Each generation must discover God for themselves. Yet, we can point the way and allow them to build on a heritage of faithfulness.

Job’s Real Pain

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living, Theology

–September of 1999

Job’s Real Pain

I’ve been pondering over the pages of Job lately.  The portrait that is painted of Job in the first five verses of chapter one is of rare beauty.  Job’s faith is expressed as perfect and complete.  His family was the envy of every parent.  His fortune was the largest in the East, and his fame was world renowned.  Job’s life is portrayed on a canvas of perfect tranquility.

In the course of time, Satan was allowed to paint his own gruesome scene into Job’s life.  In successive strokes of calamity, Job’s peaceful world was turned into utter chaos.  The first blow to fall was the loss of his financial empire.  It was the second blow, however, that took away his greatest treasure—ten wonderful children.  Job was staggered by these vicious blows, but he was still able to hold his head up and declare his faith in God.  All Job had to say was “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Satan was given permission to test Job further, but this time he could touch him physically.  Job was smitten with a type of leprosy known as elephantiasis.  Massive ulcerous sores covered his body.  His limbs were so swollen he became disfigured and unrecognizable.  He was forced to sit as an outcast on the rubbish heap.  His wife counseled him to curse God and die, while his friends could only sit and watch in stunned silence.

In the beginning of his affliction, Job defended God by acknowledging that we must accept the bad as well as the good from His hand.  In contemporary expression, Job understood that trouble eventually knocks at everyone’s door.  As days turned to weeks and months, Job began to feel that trouble had not only knocked, but literally had banged the door down and rushed in with violent disregard.  The loss of all in one swift stroke left him reeling under the intolerable burden of sorrow and suffering.  The constant itching and pain of his sores, and the nausea and other side effects of his illness finally began to take its emotional and spiritual toll on Job.  He sank beneath the billows of despair and depression.  He cursed the day of his birth.  He felt that God was unfair and had “shot him through with arrows.”  Job became so weary and bewildered by his suffering that he finally began to feel that God had only blessed him with so much in order that He could “take it away and harm him.”

As the story progresses, you see that Job’s real pain was far more than physical or emotional.  It was the pain of failing to understand why God was letting this happen to a man who was indeed “blameless.”  Job had been living right, and he knew it.  So why was God letting all this suffering fall on him?

As I thought of Job, I thought about the many people who will read the words that I have written and will identify with the story.  Moms and dads, church leaders and pastors, young couples and senior saints, lonely singles and lively teenagers from all walks of life have an affinity with Job’s “real pain.”  I thought of a precious young couple with whom I went to school whose fifteen-year-old son recently died mysteriously in his sleep.  I thought of a missionary friend whose wife walked out on him and left him with five children to raise.  I thought of a pastor who was carelessly voted out of his church and left to pick up the pieces of his shattered future and heal the wounds of his embittered children.  I thought of a senior saint forced into a lonely nursing home.  I thought of a faithful administrator suffering the terrible pains of burnout and deep depression from having given all to advance God’s kingdom.  I thought of a young wife left alone with two small children after the tragic death of her husband.  I thought of a young teenage girl trying hard to live for God in a godless environment, who brutally lost her virginity to a wicked stepfather’s incestuous behavior.

Like Job, each of these people have journeyed down the treacherous path of pain and to the dark places of sorrow and suffering and can’t understand why.  Perhaps each of us can identify with Job.  None of us are strangers to discouragement and despair.  We, too, battle with the painful question: Why?  The real question is not why, but how do we respond?  Do we just give up and quit?  Do we become bitter and turn our backs on both God and man?  The answer, of course, is a resounding NO!  The great lesson learned from the book of Job is that we have a heavenly Father who can and does bring triumph out of trial and blessing out of brokenness.  Job teaches us that God has a way of using suffering in our lives to make us better.  Someone has said that it is doubtful that God can use any man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.  Suffering has a way of seasoning and sanctifying the soul like nothing else we will ever experience in life.  The tragic marriage and personal suffering of Hannah Whitehall Smith became the seedbed out of which grew unbelievably rich and blessed devotional writings.  J.B. Phillips, who is well known for his beautiful translation of the New Testament, lived in a constant struggle against depression.  His biographers wrote of him, “He knew anxiety and depression from which there was only temporary release.  For a period of fifty years he had to cope with psychological disturbance and dark depression.  And while he never lost his faith in God, he never ceased to struggle against mental pain.”  William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, came to a point more than once in his ministry that he was so drained and dried out that he wanted to quit and get some respectable job that would keep him and his wife Catherine going.  William Booth, however, is remembered by the Salvationists as a tower of strength, a man of abounding energy and unrelenting in his warfare against sin.  Behind the scenes, though, we see a glimpse of his humanity and his being subject, as we all are, to depression in the face of exhaustion and hardship.

The secret to all of these people’s successful lives and the secret to your success is simply in “going on” when life is difficult.  They kept their faith in Him who knows what’s best.

Are you under great stress and facing deep suffering?  Are you under great pressure beyond your ability to endure?  Are you discouraged?  Are you asking questions that seem to have no good answer?  You are in good company.  The great saints who have gone before you did too.

Life will afflict all of us with trouble and pain.  We will all be tempted to turn and run or to give up and quit.  Life will tumble in someday for all of us; but when it does, just keep holding on and keep going on.  Victory and unspeakable blessing will be yours in the end.

The Great Omission

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living, Education, Theology

–April of 1999

The Great Omission

For the last half of this century, the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian.  Contemporary American churches, in particular, do not require following Christ in His example, spirit, and teachings as conditions for membership in the local body.  Discipleship has clearly become optional.

This is not the New Testament way.  The word “disciple” occurs 269 times in the New Testament.  The New Testament itself is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ.  The kind of life we see lived out in the earliest glimpses of the church is that special life that has all of the markings of a dedicated follower of Jesus.  All of the assurances and promises afforded to mankind through the gospel message presupposes such a life and makes no sense apart from it.

The first command that Jesus left for the early church was to use the power of the Holy Spirit within and the authority of His Name to make disciples.  Having made these disciples, they were to “baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”  This was Christ’s plan for the growth of the church.  Today, however, we have jettisoned the disciplines of discipleship and rushed wobbly-legged believers into membership.  Many of these “converts” aren’t even converted.  Thus we have filled the church with people who haven’t a clue as to what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and live out the life that He requires.

What it meant to be a disciple back then on the dusty roads of rural Palestine is essentially the same in today’s world of advanced theology.  It still means to follow Jesus in an attitude of study, obedience and imitation.  Disciples always seek above all else to be like Him.  They are so intent on becoming Christlike that they prioritize their life around His Word and the affairs of His kingdom.  They love their enemies, bless those who curse them, and in general seek to live out Christ to the world around them.

Dietrich Bonheoffer wrote the book, The Cost of Discipleship.  It was a powerful essay against cheap grace.  In it he writes, “One cannot be a disciple of Christ without forfeiting things normally sought in human life, and that the one who pays little in this world’s coinage to bear His name has reason to wonder where he or she stands with God.”

Fortunately, not every church has abandoned our Lord’s commission.  The narrow road to Heaven is still trod by a faithful band of men and women wearing a cross-shaped yoke, who know the joy of being His disciples and following in His steps.

We Are Holiness People

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living, Church

–March of 1999

We Are Holiness People

On the cover of this issue of the Revivalist you will see a distinguished vanguard of holiness theologians of this century who have nobly declared and defended the doctrine of entire sanctification for the various descendants of Methodism.  These men were more than academicians.  They were men who saw the holiness training as a doctrine to be believed, an experience to be enjoyed and a life to be lived.  They were indeed holiness men.

As the holiness movement, internationally and nationally, has lost momentum and drifted toward mainstream evangelicalism, the identifying title “holiness people” is used less frequently.  Some see it as an antiquated term associated with derision and scorn.  (To them it conjures up images of snake handlers and holy rollers.)  Others feel that it no longer identifies in any meaningful way what the holiness church really is.

I believe it is still a good term and we shouldn’t shy away from using it.  I don’t think we should use it in the sense to advertise or emphasize our personal righteousness, but I do believe it is a term that identifies what we believe doctrinally and what we practice freely.  We are holiness people…are we not?

 Dr. Taylor points out in his article that holiness people are those who have found an answer to the problem of the “Christian’s wobbling” and the “church’s feebleness.”  They understand that at the core of the unsanctified believe is the sinful self that seeks always to turn “to its own way.”  They recognize the sophisticated antagonism of the carnal heart as a “hangover tendency” of self rule and self centeredness that needs to be cleansed by the refining fire of the Holy Spirit’s baptism.  They still preach and teach that the sin nature can be and must be cleansed.

It is the holiness people who offer hope for the Christian who lacks love for the brethren, personal victory in the inner man, stability in the Christian walk and freedom from the love of this present world.

Holiness people offer a message of entire sanctification that promises: (1) the power of Spirit fullness that enables a person to be what God wants them to be; (2) a dispositional alignment with the plan and purpose of God for their lives; (3) a new thrust of single-minded devotion that will help one stay focused; and, (4) a passionate love for mankind that is grounded in a perfect love towards God.

Are you a holiness person in more than just name?  Are we, indeed, worthy sons and daughters of such noble fathers?  If not, why not seek to be so today?  Confess your need, ask God to sanctify you wholly, and believe Him to do it.  The assurance of inner cleansing can and will be yours.