Author: Tim Ehrhardt

I'm just a common ordinary pastor, chaplain, father, grandfather, and dog owner who loves the smell of a genuine leather Bible and the aroma of its message. I'm on a quest to track down the best Bibles, how to best read and use them, and to discover the encouragement inside.

Are You Ready?

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment


Satan once called to him some demons of hell and said he wanted to send one of them to earth to aid women and men in the ruination of their souls. He asked which one would want to go. One creature came forward and said, “I will go.” Satan said, “If I send you, what will you tell the children of men?” He said, “I will tell the children of men that there is no heaven.” Satan said, “They will not believe you, for there is a bit of heaven in every human heart. In the end everyone knows that right and good must have the victory. You may not go.”  Then another came forward, darker and fouler than the first. Satan said, “If I send you, what will you tell the children of men?” He said, “I will tell them there is no hell.” Satan looked at him and said, “Oh, no; they will not believe you, for in every human heart there’s a thing called conscience, an inner voice which testifies to the truth that not only will good be triumphant, but that evil will be defeated. You may not go.”  Then one last creature came forward, this one from the darkest place of all. Satan said to him, “And if I send you, what will you say to women and men to aid them in the destruction of their souls?” He said, “I will tell them there is no hurry.” Satan said, “Go!”
Most people’s crime in not gross sin, but just indifference without much thought to a coming judgment.  After all, why do today what we can put off till tomorrow?  We need to be deeply concerned for the Day of the Lord which may come sooner than we think.  The question for us is not “when will Christ return?” because no one knows the answer to that question (Matthew 24:36).  Rather, the question for us is:  “are you ready for Christ’s return?”  We are to remain constantly vigilant.  We are to live every moment of our lives in light of the promise of Christ’s coming.  We are to be faithful because we don’t know the day or hour it will occur.
            We are to be faithful and busy, like Noah, building the ark of the church instead of being just like the world and indulging in our lives as if Jesus weren’t coming, nor wasting our time trying to connect current events to signs in scripture as if making prophecy charts is God’s will for us.  We are to be faithful by being servants in God’s household (Matthew 24:45-51).  We are not to be like the unfaithful teenager who, when given the responsibility of watching over the house while the parents are gone for the weekend, has a big party and trashes the house.  But the parents will come home at a time when the teenager does not expect, and then there will certainly be weeping and gnashing of teeth!  
            The faithful and wise steward should be busy doing the master’s business – the often mundane work of taking care of the master’s house.  Are we being faithful to our household responsibilities?  How are we caring for the people in our lives?  Preparing for Christ’s return leads to down-to-earth acts of love and care, and not just sitting around and waiting passively.  
            As we wait for the Lord’s return we are not to become impatient and simply get caught up in our petty day to day problems to the point of losing sight of what is really important.  One day a man named Denis Waitley was trying to catch a flight but was running late so he literally ran through the airport terminal.  He got to the gate the split second the gate agent closed the door.  Denis explained his situation that he had a speaking engagement to get to, but the agent didn’t budge.  That’s when his frustration turned into fuming.  Denis stormed out of the boarding area and back to the ticket counter to register a complaint and reschedule his flight.  The anger intensified as he waited for more than twenty minutes in a line that barely moved.  Just before he got to the counter an announcement over the intercom changed his life.  The flight he missed, flight 191 from Chicago to Los Angeles, crashed on takeoff and killed every person on board the plane.  Denis Waitley never registered his complaint.  In fact, he never returned his invalidated ticket.  He took it home and pinned it on a bulletin board in his office to remind him whenever he got frustrated or upset that life is more than day to day impatience and worry and complaints.  It is about serving a lost world destined to slide away from God apart from the grace that can turn judgment into blessing.
            We are to keep watch because the Lord’s return could be today.  In the meantime, we are to be faithful servants of God by serving a world that is in tremendous need of getting on the ark and being saved from the judgment that will come.  What does God want you to do?  How does he want you to be a faithful servant in his world?  The best way to overcome our own chronic unhappiness and struggles is to serve the world and be the servant God’s wants us to be.
            So, live with the end in mind.  Live without regret and without procrastinating.  Jesus himself has said, “Yes, I am coming soon” (Revelation 22:20).  Amen.  Come, Lord Jesus.

Self-Deception

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Back in the day we kids used to say to someone who was full of himself: “well, aren’t you just hot snot!”  The problem was that we usually thought more of ourselves than we should have and took the moral high ground even as we detected pride in another.  The fact is we are all targets for the temptation of self-deception.  King Saul in the Old Testament was the epitome of one who paid lip service to God and thought himself faithful, but never could bring himself to see that he was a disobedient clod and in need of coming clean about his true character (1 Samuel 15:1-26).
Many followers of Jesus are surprised when they end up in trouble.  They never saw the major inconsistencies of their lives, and did not take the preacher’s sermons and a well-meaning friend’s rebuke to heart because the message was really needed for “that other person.”  Too many of us Christians actually traffic in lies rather than truth through offering rationalizations, assessing blame on others for our problems, and evading responsibility.
When confronted squarely with our own wrongdoing, instead of trying to wriggle out of it by believing we aren’t as bad as other people, there is a much better and biblical response:  own up to it, and receive God’s grace.  The basis of grace is the cross of Christ, and that grace is most often dispensed through others.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Christian who resisted the evil of Hitler and chose a life of radical discipleship, had this to say:    
“A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.  As long as I am by myself in the confession of my sins, everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother, the sin has to be brought into the light.”

 

            If we easily confess to God something that we would never think of sharing with a trusted friend or pastor, we are back to thinking too highly of ourselves and of the opinions of other people and not highly enough of God’s grace designed to shoo away the snakes of pride that slither about our feet.
            We must face our own addiction to self and a false self-image, and create a love for the truth of grace.  Deception can come in many forms, but the self-deceiver is in a special need for healthy spiritual introspection.  Are you willing to speak honestly about your own struggles, weaknesses, and shortcomings?  Or will you rely on reading a wimpy blog post to substitute for genuine and honest confession?
            God is glorified not when we are perfect or give the illusion of perfection; He is glorified in the struggle to live a holy life with a group of like-minded believers who have each others backs.  Wise church and ministry leaders will take care to cultivate a culture of confession throughout its organization.  So, may you have the courage to pursue hard after grace and find in Christ and his people newness of life.

Spiritual Blindness

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Jesus had a lot to say about spiritual blindness.  He didn’t like it.  Some of his harshest words were reserved for those who should know better, those persons for whom the light of God’s truth ought to be clear and present.  Yet they are in darkness.  Having spiritual blindness is terrible to Jesus because it not only keeps the blind person in the dark, but slams the door of God’s kingdom in other people’s faces.
Many of the Pharisees of the New Testament, most of the heretics in the early church, and some of the spiritual phonies of today are actually not charlatans, that is, they are not deliberately trying to deceive or lead others astray; they are not trying to keep people out of God’s kingdom – they think they are doing the right thing when they are actually doing the wrong thing.  One of the eye-opening realities I learned when I first started studying church history is that the early heresies that were condemned at the church councils were doctrines promoted and put forth by men who were not evil bad people – they were just sincerely misguided.  They thought they were helping the church better understand the nature of God and Christ when in fact they were teaching really bad doctrine.  They were unintentionally slamming the door of God’s kingdom in the faces of ordinary people.  And later when I worked on my master’s thesis in 19th century American Religious History, I read hundreds of sermons from southern preachers before the American Civil War.  I learned that they had a biblical defense of the institution of black chattel slavery.  Many of them were pastors of large churches and led many people to Christ, that is, white people.  They were super-slamming the door of God’s kingdom right in faces of African-Americans, and teaching others to do the same.
            We can unwittingly super-slam the door of God’s kingdom in the faces of people when we say God’s grace is for all, and turn around and avoid certain people; when we have explicit written statements or rules that exclude people from service; and, when we bind people to human traditions and practices instead of Holy Scripture.  The seven deadly words of the Church that slam the door of God’s kingdom in people’s faces is:  “we’ve never done it that way before.”  Never mind that there are people trying to enter the kingdom of God – that is against our tradition!  However well-meaning and sincere that might be, it is sincerely wrong because it leaves people who need to be saved by God’s grace on the outside and unsaved.  And that kind of practice will bring the condemnation of Jesus every time.
Jesus gave us some telltale signs of spiritual blindness, which he calls “hypocrisy” (Matthew 23):  hypocrites don’t practice what they preach; they keep other people out of God’s kingdom with their burdensome legalism; they focus on externals and ignore the inner sanctum of the heart; and, they major on the minors.
            But condemnation and warning is never the last word.  The last word to everything is God’s grace.  At the end of his tirade of pronouncing woes on the Pharisees and those like them, Jesus did something that we would do well to follow:  he broke into a tear-filled, heart-rending love song for his wayward people.  Christ was not just concerned to blast the bad guys; he has a deep pastoral sensitivity to people, all people, so that they will come back to the true worship of God.  May it be so, Lord Jesus.

Real, or Fake?

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry Blog2 Comments


Some things are pretty unrealistic.  But for most things in life, you often cannot tell a fake by the external appearance.  When it comes to Christianity and the true worship of God a person might give a good outward performance, but actually not be the real deal because he or she is full of bitterness and death on the inside with a heart far from God.
What is sobering for devoted believers in God is the reality that the Church may have people who are religious on the outside but not really be a Christ follower on the inside.  Having all the outward signs of faith without an inward reality is like putting perfume in a vase – it might smell like flowers but the flowers aren’t really there.  
            At the heart of Jesus Christ’s teaching is to be humble and avoid pride by not comparing ourselves to others and wondering if we are getting our due attention; rather we are to compare ourselves only to Christ and the Word of God and, so, become truly meek and humbly serve others out of a genuine heart that loves God.  What we proclaim and profess cannot be separated from who we are.
Jesus condemned the religiously committed Pharisees because they put heavy burdens on people and were unwilling to help them carry those burdens.  Throughout Jesus’ ministry he approached the crowds with the understanding that they were following him for a variety of reasons, some noble and some not so noble.  Some of those people heard of Jesus and genuinely wanted to be healed.  Some followed him because their hearts burned within them when he spoke and they wanted to know God better.  Some desired a true way of living and saw in Jesus fresh hope for their lives.  Yet others followed Jesus around wanting to see the next cool miracle, to maybe get a free handout, or just to hear him so that they could tell all their friends that they heard him speak and saw him heal.  Jesus was always trying to press and challenge the vast crowds of people into a genuine, real righteousness from the heart that would submit to God’s kingdom.  But the Pharisees and teachers of the law kept undermining Jesus, talking behind his back, and tried to stir up resentment against him.  
            The Pharisees’ motives were not to help people know God better through service, but to just talk a good line.  Interestingly, Jesus did not chastise them for what they taught (Matthew 23:1-12), but leveled condemnation on them for not helping people live-out their obligations.  The Pharisees knew their bibles and had a high view of Scripture.  The problem was not so much their doctrine but that they did not practice what they preached.  It isn’t so much what the Pharisees taught as howthey taught it – it was neither gentle, nor had any grace.  People need one another in order to truly live for God, but if there is a double-standard that exists among folks in the church then there is only heavy loads that aren’t getting carried because some individuals think they are above helping others or think too little of themselves and believe God could not use them.  In both cases the person declares “someone should do something!”  Someone should give, someone should pray, someone should visit, someone should tell that person about Christ, someone should help.  To which Jesus would say that someone is you!
            Jesus also condemned the Pharisees because they loved to do things for a show, for the attention.  Everything the Pharisees and the teachers of the law did was for others to see.  They thought they deserved the accolades of others.  We can be hard on the Pharisees, yet whenever we plaster on fake smiles, only obey and serve when others are looking, and/or pretend like everything is just peachy keen when we are dying inside then we have fallen under the same condemnation and are in need of putting aside caring so much about how we look to others and grieve, mourn and wail asking the God of grace to have mercy on us.  We can be so obsessed about the right thing to say that we never say what is really on the inside because we think it isn’t spiritual enough and we fear looking bad.
The Pharisees also were men who sought status and prestige.  Respect and honor was everything to many Pharisees which is why they wanted the positions of prominence and insisted on being recognized for whatever they did in the synagogue.  In public they insisted that the people respect them in their greeting and acknowledgements.  They did not want to look bad, ever.
            But facades will not do for Jesus.  Pharisees are very predictable because they always act with the spectator in mind, and seek to elicit praise and respect everywhere they go.  To Pharisees, it does not matter what is on the inside as long as the outside looks good.  In his autobiography, Be Myself, Warren Wiersbe writes about his first church building project as a young pastor in Indiana. He and the church’s building committee were working with a church architect. At one of the committee meetings, Wiersbe asked the architect, “Why do we need such an expensive, high ceiling in the auditorium? We’re not building a cathedral. Why not just build an auditorium with a flat room and then put a church façade in the front of the building?” Wiersbe writes that in a very quiet voice, the architect replied, “Pastor, the building you construct reflects what a church is and what a church does. You don’t use façades on churches to fool people. That’s for carnival sideshows. The outside and the inside must agree.”
So, what do we do when we realize that the outside of our lives and the inside don’t match?  We become humble and meek just like Jesus.  We are to revere and honor God, not people.  Putting people on a pedestal is not good because they are just people.  Instead of the mentality “look how great I am!” we are to treat everyone as an equal because at the heart of thinking people owe me something is the idea that I am better than the other person.  The answer to that attitude is to adopt Christ’s meekness and humility.  The zeal to feel important and respected is to be transformed into the desire to serve others.
            The way up is down.  We are to descend, not ascend, into greatness.  So, what does humble meekness look like?  Taylor University is a Christian college in Indiana. Years ago, an African student, Sam, was going to be enrolling in their school. This was before it was commonplace for international students to come to the U.S. to study. He was a bright young man with great promise, and the school felt honored to have him. When he arrived on campus, the President of the University took him on a tour, showing him all the dorms. When the tour was over, the President asked Sam where he would like to live. The young man replied, “If there is a room that no one wants, give that room to me.” Over the years the president had welcomed thousands of Christian men and women to the campus, and none had ever made such a request.  “If there is a room that no one wants, give that room to me.” That’s the kind of meekness Jesus talks about in the Beatitudes.
If there is a job that no one wants to do, I’ll do that job.
If there’s a kid that no one wants to eat lunch with, I’ll eat with that kid.
If there’s a piece of toast that’s burnt, I’ll take that piece.
If there’s a parking space that’s far away from the church, I’ll park in that space.
If there’s a need is someone’s life, I’ll meet that need.
If there’s a hardship someone has to endure, I’ll take that hardship.
If there’s a sacrifice someone needs to make, I’ll make that sacrifice.
            The greatest among you will be your servant.  Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.  This applies not only to individuals but to groups of people and churches as well.  If we never get out of our comfortable little band of people, then we need to ask ourselves why not?  If we never look beyond the four walls of the church building in order to serve someone, we need to ask ourselves why not?  If we have a chronic critical spirit toward someone then we need to ask ourselves if the genuine article is within us?
            The kingdom of God is not a matter of outward eating and drinking and displays of spirituality but is a matter of inner righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.  May we all serve one another deeply from a heart of love and grace.