What Brings the People Must Keep the People

“Do you not yet understand or remember the five loaves of the five thousand?”  Matthew 16:9

A man was telling me about a slow leak that he had in a truck tire. He wanted to get as far down the road as possible, because he did not have a spare tire. He explained that his grandfather had told him a secret, “When you have a slow leak, drive as fast as you can. This will cause more wheel rotations, and when the part of the tire with the hole hits the pavement, the pressure will not let the air escape. Just drive flat out, and you can go longer before the flat completely stops you.” I thought that was interesting, but wondered what it had to do with our seminar. Then, with a crestfallen countenance, the man looked at me and said, “I am flat as a pastor and a believer. I have seen that there was a leak in the church, and my approach was to speed up, introduce as many new programs as possible, keep the people busy and distracted, and thus ignore the leak. It did not work, and I am flat and exhausted. Today, I see that the leak’s essence was that I had forgotten to proclaim Jesus, forgotten to determine to make Him known.” That I did understand. We must be careful as we work in the church, for what attracts the people will be what is needed to keep the people. I have seen so many burnt-out believers. Jesus fed the multitude, and when He was not feeding them, they crucified Him. He was feeding their flesh, and their flesh grew. Imagine two pastors, both with the same message. One attracts the people with video, music, games, a magnificent facility, miracles, healings, comfort, cappuccino machines, the spectacular, strong personalities, and bribes of a variety of forms. The other attracts with the simple message that a believer is the temple of God; the Holy Spirit will bring about the life of Christ naturally in him; and Jesus can be the source of his heart, bringing life to his spirit, soul, body and the world around him, though in the world there will be trouble, but Jesus has overcome the world. The first pastor now needs a football field to accommodate the audience and enough room for motorcycles to jump over him while he speaks or a flagpole from the top of which he has promised to eat pie if everyone in the youth group brings a friend. The other pastor just keeps talking about Jesus and has fifty people attending; they take back to their daily lives and jobs a great secret: Jesus in them. One must ask what has really attracted the people, because what attracts the people must keep them. I find it interesting that overall attendance in church is decreasing but increasing in the mega-church. What does one have that the other does not? It is a slippery slope and a great temptation when we see the mega-club degrade Christianity to the folly of the flesh that attracts people. Once that has occurred, the only way to keep the people from shifting to another mega-club with more appeal to the flesh is to up the fleshly appeal in the existing club. It is throat cutting, because flesh begets flesh, and appealing to the flesh of man will ultimately create more flesh. Take a walk in the woods. Life is something that comes naturally, without effort. If people are attracted by Jesus, then lifting up Jesus will keep the people. The goal is not keeping them coming for any reason but for Him and His glory. It is easy and relaxing. I spoke to a large group in a remote area of Nepal. The pastors came at the break, saying, “We did not know that if God gets the glory, He does the work. Everything we have heard from the U.S. involved a program that we needed to do. Preaching Christ has taken a second place.” Yes, and there is one more thing. When did the men of God begin to look to the world for the secret of success? There was a time when the Church led the world. It is as though there is a worldly parade, and the Christian club stands on the curb analyzing what has attracted people to join in. Next, the Christians jump to the back of the parade, dressing, imitating, and offering what those with a darkened mind at the front have dreamed up for the masses. They put something of a Christian twist to it, believing that those at the front of the parade will look back and want to be led by the new followers. A club in the Midwest used its budget to buy shot glasses and hand them out to every bar in town for free. The bar owners were asked to serve the whiskey in the glasses, so that when the patron drank the last swig, he would see the message painted on the bottom, “Give our church a shot,” along with the address. This kind of thing is hailed as cutting edge. There is a group of prostitutes for Jesus going on the streets, sleeping with men, and giving them a Bible and inviting them to church. When questioned, they said what so many say, “How else are you going to reach these men? They will not come to church.” I want to encourage all of you reading that Jesus is enough, and if you want to shake the world, you do not have to become like it to be heard. The world knows a contrast when it sees it. We are not joining the world’s parade. People attracted to Jesus need only hear talk about Him. That type of fellowship will not ever go flat.

Divorce and Bitterness

When I talk to a brother or sister contemplating divorce, I immediately explain how he or she is presently feeling. The response most often will be, “How did you know exactly how I was feeling?” Quite simply, I say, I just described the characteristics of a bitter person. The mate’s behavior is not dictating how the person now feels, although he or she believes that it is. Bitterness is the true dictator, a most divisive and destructive force to which many believers have succumbed. “See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled” (Hebrews 12:15). “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:31, 32).

What are some of the common signs of bitterness in a relationship? The bitter person is responsible for them, remember, for it is not the actions of others that cause bitterness, but rather a hard heart and ears attuned to the enemy’s voice, providing the soil bitterness needs to grow. There is a difference between being offended and being bitter. We do not find Jesus, the one Man in all of humanity who was offended the most, ever bitter. Blame must rest squarely on the shoulders of the person who is bitter.

Bitterness is an attitude that grows until its roots are entangled throughout the person’s mind, will, and emotions. Any attempt to remove this poisonous plant will be met with resistance through desire, intellectual arguments, and the feeling of hopelessness. Bitterness can even be considered an addiction. There is a soothing inner calm for those who have become accustomed to it, for though everything outside of them seems out of control, they can at least control their bitterness and make others pay for the perceived wrongs they have done. The majority of believers under emotional stress will either have an outer or inner explosion (which normally converts into depression), and with the passing of time all is forgotten. However, the bitter do neither of these; their explosions do not pass. They accept a lifestyle, a path that allows them the luxury of avoiding personal responsibility for the remainder of life. A child grows embittered toward the parent, and the more the child fails in life, the more anger he exhibits toward the parent. This is living in a distorted reality, a neurosis. When events begin to pressure the bitter people into accepting blame, they immediately recall all of the wrongs that have been done to them, once again avoiding responsibility. An interesting thing about Christians is that they often maintain their bitterness under the guise of being extremely spiritual, “so spiritual” that God has called them to suffer and be cut off from others, and yet the proof of carnality is that everyone who has disappointed them is covertly punished for the perceived failure.

Bitterness becomes a compulsion, the opposite of which would be the passive blame-taker, whose first response whenever life circumstances get the best of him is to roll over, play dead, and accept all responsibility. Each morning there is the comfort of the known that will take him through the day with the assumption that whatever happens, he is to blame. There is no fear of change. Similarly, but conversely, the bitter can be assured that no matter what, a problem is someone else’s fault.

Yes, bitterness is an addiction that can be likened to smoking cigarettes. When someone starts that habit, he can smoke when he desires: after dinner, at a party, or during leisure times. However, soon enough something very interesting happens. Instead of exercising free will, the smoker heeds the domineering command of a cigarette and goes whenever it calls. At this point, there is addiction. A glorious creature created to listen to the Father above listens instead to a cigarette below. The creature is a slave to a new master. When the misery of this revelation sets in, the smoker begins to make a series of vows and smokes hundreds or even thousands of what become known as “the last cigarette.” Soon there develops frustration, anger, and even depression.

At first bitterness is used as an excuse, but with the passing of time, bitterness uses its holder. The fact most evident, yet rarely discerned by the bitter, is that whoever they are bitter toward has become their god. While in the wilderness, Jesus heard Satan make the request to “fall down and worship me.” The word “worship” means to give attention. Jesus said no! Only God, the Father, would have His attention. Most of us have been hurt by others, but is making those others our gods by continuing to give them our attention not a greater tragedy? Do we want to worship those who offend, abuse, use, and neglect us?

Jesus gives commands not in order to make us more acceptable to God but to make us happy. Forgiving makes any person happy! When we forgive, we rule! When we do not forgive and become bitter, others rule us! The command to love is not for the good of others, but for our own good. What a deception the enemy imparts, that to obey will hinder our happiness. A paramedic once made the observation that he had never had an emergency call from a Bible study, yet he had received many calls from bars and parties. Does the disregard of the commands make us happy?

Bitterness is oppression. The embittered person is oppressed by the enemy, who has invested many hours of whispering about the supposed misery caused by others. The most predominant trait of the bitter is that he considers himself a victim, having had to suffer and go it alone without help, support, or respect. He is isolated, forced to a place of self-sufficiency. No one even cares, and he is angry.

This attitude of bitterness can begin with a dislike, or even hatred, of one’s mate, but soon turns into hatred of the opposite sex. Women are complainers, impossible to please, picky, manipulators, non-submissive, rebellious, and dominant; they only care about seeing a paycheck, they lack respect, and a man never knows what he is coming home to. To a bitter wife, men are proud, insensitive, arrogant, passive know-it-alls who only care about themselves, sex, and having their egos continually stroked; they are slow to fulfill their responsibilities and cannot do things right. Soon, both decide that they can live without sex, communication, approval, or support from their mates. I have personally discipled couples that mutually decided through bitterness to withdraw sexually from one another for periods of more than twenty-seven years, and some were pastors, at that! These attitudes will often be communicated to the children of the couple through various overt or covert messages, resulting in many today being fearful of the opposite sex.

The addiction of bitterness takes surprisingly little time to become a person’s comfort zone. It is actually easy to withdraw and put the mate under the magnifying glass, waiting for the next word or action that will confirm the negative assessment of the relationship and the hopeless state of the mate. I have been amazed how frustrated a bitter believer becomes at the suggestion that his mate may not be as bad as he believes; he hates to hear such a thing! And as I draw attention to the bitter one’s inability to love in spite of offenses, the conversation is immediately turned away from his failure back to the inexcusable behavior of the other. I can only ascertain that this type of person has every intention of remaining bitter.

Finding the way out of bitterness requires the revelation that the person toward whom we are bitter has become, through inappropriate attention, our god. Where there was one problem–the other person’s despised behavior–now there are two, for self-hatred also arises when worshipping someone that caused offense. The third problem occurs when the actions of the one toward whom we are bitter begin to control our actions and even our personality, making us a distortion, no longer ourselves. The behavior of the one that “made us bitter” is blamed for all behavior. “If only you knew what had happened to me, you would be acting even worse than I am right now.” “Of course I am not sleeping with you; do you not understand my pain?” “Of course I am in a bad mood; under similar circumstances you would be in a bad mood, too.” The person that caused the bitterness is in control of every aspect of the “sufferer’s” family and relationships. However, Jesus tells us to love an enemy and pray for those that persecute; by so doing, the enemy will remain the same, but we will walk away free.

I was told of a man who, upon hearing of the hurricane in New Orleans, immediately got in his truck to bring a family to his state and help them get started in a new life. He had trouble finding a black family that wanted to live with a strange white man from the north, let alone in his basement (they do not have basements in New Orleans). At last a pastor persuaded an old woman, her daughter, and granddaughter to go with the man. They arrived to discover the white man lived in a mansion, and the basement had been completely redone for them; it was a walkout basement with a beautiful view. The family had never been in such surroundings. Six weeks later, the white man found the old woman in the kitchen weeping. He approached her, put his arm around her, and said, “I am sorry! Are you homesick? I know it had to be hard to leave everyone you knew! Is there something here that you want changed that is making you uncomfortable or unhappy?” The old woman looked up with tears flowing and said, “None of those things are bothering me. See, I was raised to hate white people, and all my life I have done a good job of it. Yet your kindness has proven me wrong, and I am so sad that I would have acted and talked that way.” His love had broken the stronghold that bitterness had on her. Now her family is settled on the east coast, and the two families take turns annually hosting one another for Thanksgiving dinner!

I must repeat myself over and over again: Anything that can be done without Christ cannot be Christian. We cannot love an enemy but must ask Him to love the enemy; we receive the victory that He gives by simply walking across the room and loving. Often I will be in a place where someone has developed hatred toward me. Inviting Jesus along, I go over and start talking to the person, asking his opinions, what work he does, what about his children, his take on the government, and more. At first his head appears to be spinning with a real look of confusion, for on the one hand, it was settled in his mind and emotions that I was some kind of deceiving monster. On the other hand, I cannot be completely hopeless, because we have found common ground. This is Christian life; the first person to lose is the first person to win. Take up your freedom and walk away from bitterness.

Too Easy on Sin?