When one thinks of life and of prayer it is clear that human beings are unbroken and yet do not see why that it is a problem. It is a mystifying question when we see that the Bible is so full of the need for humility and brokenness in all parts of life. We are told that God dwells with humble and the contrite, so why will people not seek humility and contrition? We are told that God looks upon the humble, so why will people not seek humility? We are told that the only acceptable sacrifice to God is a broken spirit, so why will people not seek a broken spirit? Why are people so satisfied with religion and their unbroken hearts?
While questions like these could go on and on, the basic question that takes them all into account is this: why will men not seek to truly be broken before God? On the one hand there is the secret atheism that is in the heart of men and so they don’t believe in the true God but instead of the god that they have formed in their imaginations. On the other hand it could be that men are ignorant or perhaps deceived about the nature of God, the Gospel, and true holiness. Another aspect of both of the two reasons is that men love themselves and they refuse to believe or submit to a God that makes them uncomfortable and wrests control from them.
Psalm 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.
Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite.
Isaiah 66:2 “For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being,” declares the LORD. “But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.
The Scriptures could be repeated many, many times over that point to this, but the ones just above are sufficient to show just how important this humbled and broken heart are. While the old Puritans (both in England and America) taught that the soul must be humbled and broken before it could be saved, that is denied today. However, without this humility and brokenness of the heart man will rest in and trust in himself rather than God. Without the humility man will rest in his own decision and believe in a false god of himself as sovereign. There is no real option in the matter, either one lives as if God is sovereign or one lives as if self is sovereign in some way.
Now if people think that a person can be converted without a humble heart, then it is easy to see why they want to be able to be holy on their own terms and by their own will as well. If people think that a person can be converted and live holy by their own will, then surely they can pray apart from being humbled as well. It remains one of the most shocking things in the world that men can think that they can keep their proud and self-centered hearts and be saved. What does it mean to be converted if a person’s heart is not changed in reality? What can it mean to be saved from sin while one remains in the heart of sins which is self?
It is no wonder that the proud hearts of men will resist this humbling, but one would think that it would be obvious that if a proud heart is opposed by God and yet the humble receive grace that men would see the utter necessity of humility. When Jesus taught that a person must be turned/converted and become like a small child in order to enter the kingdom (Matthew 18), one would think that this (become like a small child, helpless, humbled) would at least be seen as necessary for salvation and the Christian life. But it is not so. One would think that if the dwelling place of the Lord Jesus Christ is indeed the human heart that people would recognize that He would not have His throne in and dwell in such a filthy and stinking corrupt place as an unhumbled heart, but it is not so.
Men will not seek a broken heart before God because they do not want to be humbled and delivered from self-rule, self-control, and self-love. They love the brat of hell (pride) and do not want to give it up even if it means that they will go to everlasting torment where that brat of hell will be tormented, but instead they will try to suppress the truth of humility in the unrighteousness of pride. Instead of crying out to God to be changed from a proud heart they will try to change God into a god of their own devices. The issue is whether God or self will reign in the heart. Men love themselves in their pride and want a salvation that leaves them with their pride and self-love. Oh, they think, God will not send someone like me to hell. When they lift their eyes in hell all of their self-deception will be swept away and they will see what it means to be given over to a heart that is hardened in pride and self-love.
God Loves... Himself 
December 25, 2013 at 8:08 am |
On Sunday our pastor commented in both the morning and evening services about what a great soul winner he is. Such comments do not seem to me to come from a broken or humbled heart, but from a proud spirit and a desire for self-exaltation. Besides that, his method of winning souls is to have a person admit they are a sinner and then have them ask Jesus into their heart. What do you think about people who use methods like this and then boast about what great soul winners they are?
December 30, 2013 at 4:01 pm |
Greetings:
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. Scritpure tells us that we are to boast in one thing and one thing alone, and that is the cross of Christ. Without knowing your pastor or his heart, I do know that it is hard to hear of men boasting in themselves and their own evanglistic prowess rather than the cross of Christ. But then again, the heart is so deceitful that I am afraid that we can even have pride in boasting in the cross and want others to see us spiritual folks boasting in the cross. The method of “sinning souls” appears to be the method of the flesh with the guarantee of fleshly success. It is so sad that this method is used by many to see souls “saved” when in fact it is the method that the evil one has worked in the churches to further a great deception. Any method that has people just admitting that they are sinners as opposed to being convicted of sin and broken for sin is a deceptive method. Any method apart from a deep humbling of the soul is a method that ensures the soul is not converted. God only gives grace to the humble and that humility itself must come from His work in the soul. To be blunt and even mean, one can view “soul winning” from two different sides. A “soul winner” can be one preaching the Gospel of grace alone and God uses that as means of grace that He is the real “soul Winner.” However, when people are using methods that are nothing but undiluted Pelagianism which rest in the will and choice of man, it may be that the person is “winning souls” for the devil.
February 25, 2014 at 6:35 am |
The crux of understanding a persons perspective of the Gospel (this pastor or any professor of Christianity in America) seems to really reveal that persons heart condition. This pastors perspective of the “how to” become converted is absurd. His understanding of soul winning is decisions rather than transformed lives that immstakeably resulted from the decision and will of God. Worse yet, his church is filled w numerous people who not only approve of his deception but are themselves deceived. Their (this pastor and the hearers who are not troubled at his thoughts he shared) deception is great and it is crafty and cunning. This is a lie to say the least. He has no one to show him that scripture does not affirm this message and he is not only not able to see that he is lost, His proud heart would likely reject the true gospel if someone did come and show him the truth and the reality of his falseness. The thought that his decision for himself is the basis of all his falseness.
When this decisionism results in unregenerate souls not being transformed then the true nature of this lie should come forth. The proud heart will declare decisionism because it is itself using this false decisionism to quite its own lost heart and depraved mind. There isn’t one example of souls won thru decisionism….not one! There is not one single example of a soul praying to accept Jesus. Yet there are thousand of churches that have this instruction or some form of it as their foundational basis. This man is lost, he is just like the proud Pharisee when he prayed/praised himself to God. He is a ruling member of the Sanhedrin in America!
March 2, 2014 at 5:16 pm |
This is a very interesting discussion thread. The pastor described above does not understand the gospel at all. He is deluding all who trust in his false preaching.
I read an excellent book entitled Pilgrim’s Progress Through the Wastelands of Heresy and Revivalism. In it evil spirits are discussing how to destroy the church and the following conversation takes place.
Spirit of Delusion. “I would propose to have great efforts made to fill up the churches with spurious converts, and to have as many such as possible encouraged to seek the office of ambassadors for the King. Those who trust in a false hope themselves will make excellent instruments to lead others to trust in a false hope. It will be easy for us to induce them to make their own experience the standard by which to judge of others, and to which they will try to bring all others. Such persons in the office of ambassadors, and in other leading places in the Church, will be great helps to us. To accomplish this object, we must endeavor to reduce the examinations through which they have to pass to a mere form…If any are disposed to discriminate, and appear unwilling to let every excitement of the passions pass for true religion, we must raise an outcry against them, and put them down, as opposed to religious feeling. In this way we can prepare for ourselves a multitude of instruments for the execution of our plans, that we can direct and control at our pleasure.”
Is this not exactly what has happened to our mainline fundamentalist and evangelical denominations? A pastor (ambassador of the King) assumes the pulpit of a church, himself never having been converted, but claiming a great love for saving souls, he leads others to trust in the same false hope which he has. His own experience becomes the standard for judging all others. He appoints like-minded “yes” men, who are as unconverted as he is, to offices in the church. The criteria for evaluating who is converted and who is not converted becomes whether he at one time in his life he ever accepted Jesus as his personal Savior. Nothing else is needed to make him an upstanding Christian in most churches today. If anyone steps forward and talks about the biblical signs of true and false conversion, or questions the salvation of someone who is obviously not living a Christian life, the questioner is considered the one who is evil, and probably unconverted, for being so judgmental.
Do you think this is an accurate assessment of the church today?
April 11, 2014 at 3:33 am |
To your final statement and question Chuck, absolutely. The summation describes the visible church in America. It took two years to find a church who preached the gospel. They are so few and far between. Essentially, your description nailed it.