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.

Guardians and Gardeners

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Church, Culture

–October of 1999

Guardians and Gardeners

To prepare my mind for a sermon I was to preach on Freshman Sunday, I decided to walk with the Apostle Paul on his last earthly journey.  I joined Paul as he gave his farewell to the Ephesian elders and started for Jerusalem.  I left him in chains at Rome.  As I traveled with him, I listened very closely to what would be his final words.  Emotion filled his exhortations to faithfulness as well as his warnings against false teachers and moral perversity.  Yet one theme kept surfacing.  Paul again and again reminded young Timothy of his responsibility to “guard” that which had been committed to him.  Paul left Timothy and me with a clear understanding that we have been entrusted with a guardianship—guardianship which demands that we must be willing to lay down our life for the truths of the gospel and spiritual reality.  However, as I read closer, I saw that Paul meant more than just standing like a sentry over scriptural revelation and doctrinal truth.  He meant more than just being a watchdog agency over orthodoxy.  To Paul our “guardianship” would also include a “gardenership.”

Dr. Theodore Kalsbeek, a prominent Cincinnati minister, helped me to see this in a story he recently told of a Russian czar who came upon a sentry standing at attention in a secluded portion of his palace garden.  Seeing no particular reason for having a sentry stationed at that particular place in the garden, he asked the sentry what he was guarding.  The young man replied, “I don’t know, sir.  I was ordered to my post by the Captain of the Guard.”  When the czar asked the Captain of the Guard, he could give no other reason than the simple fact that the regulations called for it.  The czar went to the archives and searched for the origin of the command.  He discovered that many years earlier Catherine the Great had planted a rose bush at that place in the garden and ordered a sentry to be posted beside it to protect it from being trampled.  The rose bush has been dead for over 100 years but the regulation to guard it remained.

This colorful story out of Russian history makes a forceful point for the church today.  Like Catherine’s rose bush, the church could die despite the presence of a sentry.  It is certainly true that the church needs guardians.  It is equally true that the church must have gardeners.  Watching is not enough.  There must be workers that nurture and build the church.  It is also equally true that the church needs guardians who know clearly what they are watching over.

Finding this balance has been difficult for the church.  Historically, every time the church has made the preservation of orthodoxy its focus, it has become scrutinizing, loveless, divisive, intolerant and legalistic.  In its effort to defend and purify itself it has usually only succeeded in destroying itself.

On the other hand, when the church has neglected its role as guardian for the sake of outreach, it has often become accommodating, compromising, worldly, and shallow—characteristics which have been the breeding ground for all forms of heresy.

John R.W. Stott, commenting on this problem, said, “It is easy to be faithful if you don’t care about being contemporary.  It is also easy to be contemporary if you don’t care about being faithful.”  The church must find the balance.  It must be both a guardian and a gardener.

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.

Where Do We Go From Here?

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Church

–Summer of 1999

Where Do We Go From Here?

I’ve been listening with keen interest to the discussion created by Dr. Richard Taylor’s article, “Why the Holiness Movement Died,” published in the Revivalist, March, 1999.  What I have heard has been healthy, encouraging, and hopeful.  The majority of the responses have been very supportive of Dr. Taylor’s insightful remarks.  Most of the disagreement stems from the failure actually to read or understand the thrust of his article.  The responders fall into four distinct categories.

The first category, by far the largest (over 90 percent), is made up of those who understood the intent of Keith Drury’s original article (“The Holiness Movement is Dead,” Revivalist, March, 1995) and Dr. Taylor’s response.  They welcomed the prophetic warning and pled for a response of prayer, fasting, and other corrective efforts to “turn the tide” so that the holiness movement may say that its best days are yet ahead.

The second category of responders agreed with the thesis given by Keith Drury and the article by Dr. Taylor, but were concerned about the language in the title.  They would have preferred words like “decline” or a question, “Will It Die?” rather than the rhetorical use of the word “dead.”  They were concerned that it sent the wrong message or obscured the real message given by each author.  This group, though small, was made up mostly of church leaders.  I believe there is some validity to their view, though I question whether or not Drury would have ever been heard had he not used strong language.

The third category responding was the smallest group of all.  They are what I call the “I told you so” group.  They twisted Dr. Taylor’s article to agree with their long held view that the entire holiness movement is indeed literally dead.  This view offers nothing but hopelessness.

The fourth category was another small group that could be ranked on the extreme opposite of category three.  This group responded with rhetoric to the rhetorical use of “death” and with sarcasm to the whole point of the article by claiming that “the holiness movement is alive and well.”  They have distorted Dr. Taylor’s remarks by making him say what he never said.  They seem to be motivated by a fear that to acknowledge any problem is to breed a hopelessness which will cause the younger generation to abandon the movement.  One can understand their concern and even sympathize with their desire to protect their children from any discussion about the problems within the movement.  However, their approach is fraught with danger.  Any approach that ignores the real problem is an approach that will prevent an appropriate solution and will actually perpetuate the problem.  Man’s natural tendency is not to face up to things as they are.  Human nature has an infinite capacity to jump from one extreme to the other.  To this group it is either “dead and hopeless” or “alive and well.”  They ignore the truth that lies between these two extremes.  I have dealt with young people for many years.  I have two young sons of my own.  What I have found is that young people can smell religious humbug from a considerable distance.  They are not wanting to be sheltered from the truth.  Rather, they want to be challenged to become change agents in a movement that they deeply love and are committed to just as much as their parents.

Furthermore, this approach flies in the face of church history and Biblical precedent.  Never before in the history of the church or in Biblical history did speaking the truth in love cause an abandonment of God’s cause or His work.  On the contrary, it proved to be a fundamental step in return, renewal, and ultimate survival.

We cannot be distracted from a pursuit of revival and renewal for the holiness movement.  The cries of those who are saying they are tired of hearing it must be ignored.  The truth is nobody is talking about the death of the holiness movement, but those in category three.  No one that I know has ever said that the holiness message is dead, that the holiness experience is dead and that holiness saints have passed from the earth.  The truth is, for the first time in my adult life, I hear serious discussion by leaders from California to North Carolina who have been moved to action in response to Dr. Taylor’s article.  I believe it is urgent that we strike while the fire is hot.  We must address the issues that need it and cry to God for a national and world-wide revival of full salvation that will save men to the uttermost.  I believe this can be our day!  We cannot afford to miss it!

 What is a fair evaluation?

It would be very difficult to improve on Dr. Taylor’s article (go back and re-read it word for word).  I have no real disagreement with him.  (Though, I do think he speaks too uncritically of the 19th century holiness movement.  I also think there are a few other theologians from the 19th century, as well as the 20th century who, along with Mildred Wynkoop, have added to other theological woes.)  Over all, Dr. Taylor’s article gave a fair evaluation of many of the problems that we do have.  However, I think it is important to point out that many of the problems we are facing as a holiness movement in America, such as a steady decline in full membership, a lack of real ethical and moral impact on society, and a difficulty in articulating our belief system, are problems which are not unique to the holiness church.  As a matter of fact, they are problems that are shared by the North American church in general.  Any study of the dilemma of the Christian church in North America would readily acknowledge that what is happening in the holiness movement is also happening in all other denominations across the evangelical mainstream.

It should also be pointed out that many of the problems we are facing today are not necessarily new to the holiness movement.  When a movement institutionalizes and becomes a formal church movement it will naturally experience times of decline.  Almost a half a century ago Uncle Bud Robinson said of the holiness movement, “There are only two things wrong with this movement – too little holiness and too little movement.”  The loss of sanctity and service are perennial problems within any religious institution.  It is also significant to note that when a movement institutionalizes and ages into a second generation, religious experience becomes more theological than experiential.  The holiness movement at the turn of the century was far more dynamic because holiness was more of an experience and a life style than a theological tenet of a particular institutionalized movement.  It should also be pointed out, though it may be a bit painful, that some of those who are trying to analyze our problems are the very embodiment of the problem.  They have retreated form real sanctity, real separation and real service, which have always been at the heart of the holiness movement.

 What can we do?

Let me begin by telling you what I think we should not do.  First, we had better not try to rationalize the demise of the vital signs of life within our movement, nor ignore the warnings of those who have their hand on the pulse of this movement.  Secondly, we dare not continue to accept and tolerate the growing credibility gap between the holiness message verbalized and the holiness message internalized.  Third, we cannot and dare not give up strong confrontational preaching that checks the erosion of ethical standards, Biblical lifestyles and the plaguing problem of materialism.  Fourth, we cannot allow our church leaders and other leaders to negotiate a compromise on long held Biblical values.  We must insist that our leaders, in educational institutions, in denominations and in local pulpits, stand strong on a Scriptural response to the issues confronting our day.  Fifth, we should not continually dwell on our problems.  If we continue to analyze ourselves, we may simply analyze ourselves to death.  We can dwell on the problem until we become problem-conscious rather than God-conscious.  Dwelling on it too much is as bad as ignoring it altogether.  Both can be paralyzing.  We must ask God to give us the sensibility to address the serious needs and concerns within our movement without becoming obsessed with those problems.  Obsession with any problem will produce negativism, censoriousness and despair.

What should we do as a movement?  I believe the answer isn’t as difficult as we want to think.  First of all, I think we need to stop looking around to each other for an answer and start looking up.  So often we are like people stranded on a desert island who rush to retrieve the bottle floating on the waves with a note in it, only to find it is the very bottle and note that they had thrown into the ocean only a few days before.  So often we just rehash our own thinking.  We need a message from outside of ourselves.  We need a word from God.  Every movement, both large or small, has had its beginning with a man or woman who rediscovered who God is and what God can do.  The Hebrew nation was born when Abraham saw the “God of glory” chose to follow Him.  Every great king, judge or spiritual leader in the Old Testament was a man who rose to the occasion because of a revelation of who God was and what He could do for His people.  The gospel literally was carried to the far corners of the earth because Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus and he could never be disobedient to that “heavenly vision.”  Every great revival and move in church history was preceded by a man or a woman rediscovering who God is and what God wants to do.

The generations that surround mine are generations that have not seen the God of revival.  What we do not experience we cease to believe.  My generation needs to understand that God is predisposed to give revival.  There are thousands of good God-fearing people around us who have never really seen who God is and what He can do.  They have lived off of the vision of others and have never caught a glimpse of Him for themselves.  They need to rediscover God.

I believe the natural result that will follow a rediscovery of God is a rediscovery of Scripture.  God’s Word is indeed relevant to the problems of our day.  The central themes of Scripture can and must become the major priorities in our lives.  Holiness and holy living must be more than a buzzword or a doctrine that we Wesleyans have captured.  It becomes a way of life.  Far too often we have taken the Bible and just extrapolated a second blessing rather than allowed the Word of God and the Holy Spirit to produce sanctity in our lives.  In rediscovering Scripture, we will rediscover that we can love God with all of our heart and our neighbor as ourselves.

In rediscovering God and His Word, we will rediscover our neighbor.  Wesley was right when he said there is no holiness but social holiness.  It is absolutely impossible to speak of loving God with all of our heart and not recognize our responsibility to our neighbor.  If Biblical holiness does anything for us, it enables us to become focused on redemptive activity.  The holiness giants of yesteryear (men who knew the holiness movement in its best of times) were men who were totally captivated by redemptive activity.  John Wesley said to his itinerant preachers, “We have nothing to do but save souls.”  Frances Asbury brought Methodism and holiness to America.  In one generation he changed the religious complexion of America from one in forty being a Methodist to one in four being a Methodist.  These men were driven with a passion to redeem lost mankind.  The holiness movement at the turn of the century was led by men who were gripped with the responsibility to take the message of full salvation to the far reaches of the earth, to put it in print so that every man might read it, and to start Bible schools that would promote and preserve the holiness message to another generation.  They established orphanages, homes for unwed mothers, and rescue missions in all of our major cities so that they might literally take the message of full salvation to those who needed it most.  To these men a holiness message that didn’t reach out, a holiness that didn’t help heal the hurts of fallen mankind, a holiness that didn’t offer to the world an answer to the sin problem was a holiness that was neither real nor inspirational to the masses.  To speak of holiness and not couple it with social concern for their neighbor would have been to these men pure hypocrisy.

I thank God for the insight of both Dr. Drury and Dr. Taylor.  I don’t want to end up on either extreme in response to what these men have said.  I intend to thank God for the warning, to move ahead as never before, to do my best to correct the wrongs, while continuing to preach, teach and live holiness to the best of my ability.  I intend to pray and fast for a mighty outpouring of God’s Spirit that will help my generation and the coming generation rediscover God, what His Word says and who our neighbor is.

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.