by David Gibbs
‘‘Well, you have to believe in Jesus and what He did on the cross. When He died, He took the punishment my sins deserve.’’
The lawyer turns toward the defense table where your pastor is sitting and then asks you, ‘‘Did your preacher just cook all of this up? Was this some sort of a marketing campaign or perhaps a guilt trip the church leadership designed to get people to show up on Sundays?’’
‘‘No. What our pastor preaches—and what I believe—is all based on the Bible, God’s Word.’’
The lawyer is enamored with the fact that you actually believe God wrote a book. He says, ‘‘Now, let me get this straight. You really believe that God wrote a book?’’
You look at the judge for a moment. ‘‘Do you actually want me to go into all of that? I thought—’’ The judge cuts you off. ‘‘Please, answer the question.’’
‘‘Well, not to get too technical,’’ you say, ‘‘but I believe God breathed His Spirit on the holy men of old—you might say He inspired them with His thoughts. They took it all down, and others have carefully preserved what they wrote over thousands of years.’’ Suddenly, you’re glad you stayed awake during the foundations of the Christian faith sermon series.
The lawyer says, ‘‘Is God going to write another book anytime soon?’’
‘‘No, the Bible even addresses that. It says that no one should add or take away from what’s there. And it says that ‘not one jot or tittle’— not one of the smallest marks in the original Hebrew text—is going to pass away. This book is going to stand for eternity. It’s the Word of God.’’ At this point, you feel your testimony is going great.
The lawyer takes a step closer and, placing a hand on his hip, says, ‘‘Have you ever read the entire Bible through even one time in your life?’’
A hush falls over the courtroom. All eyes are fixed on you. ‘‘Well, I do read the Bible, if that’s what you mean.’’ You offer a weak smile.
‘‘That’s not what I asked,’’ the lawyer says. ‘‘I asked if you ever read the entire thing through, just one time?’’
You shift in your seat, wishing your pastor didn’t have to hear your answer. ‘‘Well, most Christians who go to church have never read the entire Bible through.’’
‘‘I’m not interested in what most people do,’’ he says, clearly intent on securing a direct response. ‘‘Have you read it one time cover to cover?’’
‘‘Um, I don’t know if I’ve read the whole thing, it’s a pretty big book.’’
‘‘I assume you own a copy. Is that correct?’’
‘‘I do.’’
‘‘Several copies?’’
‘‘Yes. Three or four.’’
‘‘How long have you owned these copies?’’
You blink. ‘‘About ten years.’’
‘‘So we could say you’ve owned at least one copy for the last three thousand, six hundred fifty days?’’
‘‘Sounds right.’’ Now your heart is racing. You have no idea where this line of questioning is going or what the relevance of it is to the sanctity of life testimony you thought you were going to provide.
‘‘How many pages are in your Bible?’’
‘‘Um, I don’t know . . . maybe twelve hundred?’’
‘‘Alright. You’ve said that you haven’t read God’s Word through one time. You’ve said it’s a large book. And you’ve owned a copy for ten years. Is that a fair summary so far?
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘Let’s say you were to read just one-third of one page per day,’’ he says, consulting his yellow legal tablet. ‘‘Mathematically speaking, at that rate you could finish reading the whole Bible in ten years, correct?’’ ‘‘Yes . . . that sounds right.’’
‘‘How long does it take you to read a page?’’
At this point you have an idea of where he’s going and decide to get creative. You say, ‘‘Look, I went to a very bad school. They were messing around with that whole phonics fad and I never did get to be a strong reader.’’
The attorney pauses for emphasis. ‘‘I think it’s safe to estimate that the average person might take one minute a day to read a third of a page. Agreed?’’
You nod and then whisper, ‘‘Yes.’’
The judge, looking down at you over the top of his glasses, says, ‘‘Please repeat that louder for the benefit of the jury.’’
‘‘Yes. I could read a third of a page per day. Sure.’’
‘‘According to these calculations,’’ the lawyer says, driving home his point by ticking them off with his fingers, ‘‘you could have read the only book that God ever wrote, the source of your faith, the source of what your church believes, had you spent just sixty seconds a day over a ten-year period. Is that true or false?’’
‘‘Well, according to your math, yes. It’s true.’’
‘‘And I believe you already testified that you didn’t.’’
‘‘No sir, I didn’t.’’
‘‘Why didn’t you?’’
‘‘Well, I . . . I was busy. I had a lot of things going on. I feel bad about it now. I should have had more time.’’
‘‘Do you own a television?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘You own more than one?’’
‘‘I do. Three to be exact.’’
‘‘Do you pay money to run a cable or a satellite dish or antenna to it?’’
‘‘Doesn’t everybody? We have cable.’’
‘‘Do you get a lot of channels?’’
‘‘Sure, but we’re not big TV viewers.’’
‘‘Do you ever watch television sixty seconds in a day? What about five minutes? An hour? Two hours?’’
Before you know it, you’d be grilled about how much time you spend listening to the radio, reading a newspaper, reading a magazine, or surfing the Internet. And in the end, the other side will demonstrate that you and I have all of the time we want to do what matters most to us. The judge and jury will come to see that believers ignore their God and His Word all the time. They’ll conclude that we believers are not guided by the strength of our convictions after all.
You know what?
Sloppy Christian living is killing our testimony.
The vast majority of Bible-believing people neglect to faithfully study God’s Word, seek His face through prayer, and make choices about life and living that reflect His priorities. This is how Paul describes the spiritual bankruptcy of his day: ‘‘They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him’’ (Titus 1:16a). Sounds like us, doesn’t it? Is it any wonder that we’re not experiencing the revival that our nation needs?
America is at a crossroads. There are forces working from within, pushing a culture without God, a culture of death over life, folly over wisdom, and secularism over faith. In the history of our nation, it was the church that was in the forefront of defending the helpless and the poor, tending the sick and feeding the hungry. Churches established the first hospitals and schools, both in America and in many other lands. When the church again defends the disabled, the struggling, the weak, the poor, the hopeless, and the orphan, America will experience a blessing and continued freedom from the hand of God.
How can we awaken the church?
Read on.
CHAPTER TWENTY - SIX
IF MY PEOPLE
There was nothing I could personally do to change what was happening to Terri. I just totally put myself in God’s hands. I put 100 percent of my confidence in God, and whatever He decided, that was the way it was going to be.
—BOB SCHINDLER
The interest in Terri’s fight for life reveals that we are a deeply divided nation. This is obvious everywhere I travel. There are some typical responses when I speak about her struggle. The first group of people think we should have left well enough alone. A man in Tallahassee, Florida, said, ‘‘Mr. Gibbs, I realize you and the Schindlers are making a big deal over Terri’s life. But, frankly, it’s creating a problem.’’ When I as
ked him what he meant by that, he said, ‘‘Well, you know, seven to eight thousand people a year are starved to death in the state of Florida. Many are senior citizens whose lives are ended at the request of their family.’’
He added, ‘‘Terri Schiavo would have been one of those eight thousand if you guys had just kept your mouths shut. If you had just said, ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ then none of us would have had to view this as an issue. And Terri would have slipped quietly away without all the fuss in the media too.’’ Here’s a guy more concerned about the nuisance that Terri’s story created than with the fact that so many thousands of the disabled and elderly are being starved to death in his own backyard.
Other folks are overwhelmed at the scope of the problem; with a shrug, they give up in frustration. To them, the entire court and political system is broken beyond repair. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, they wish they could just click their heels together three times and be transported to safety. Knowing that is not an option, they decide to tune out the whole debate.
Thankfully, there’s a better option. This response has to do with making changes from the inside out; it begins with the hearts and minds of each of us. Here’s the good news: God supplies the means to heal our land—if we are willing to do it His way. His blueprint is found in 2 Chronicles 7:14:
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Did you catch it? God doesn’t say, ‘‘If the judges . . . if the politicians . . . if the police . . .’’ No. I don’t think we’re going to change the courts until we change the hearts and minds of the American people. I don’t think we’re going to change the leadership in Washington, D.C., or in your state capital until we first change the convictions and values of Americans.
Put another way, the best way to influence the laws of the land is to pursue a change of heart among the people of the land. This powerful verse begins by sounding a clarion call to the church. The cure for our nation’s ills begins not with the courts or with the government but with the people of God. Indeed, God says, ‘‘If my people’’ do four things, He promises to heal our land. Let’s briefly unpack those four steps.
1. HUMBLE OURSELVES
This is easier said than done. True humility before God occurs when we say, ‘‘It’s not my way—it’s your way. It’s not what I think that matters most, it’s discovering what you’ve said and then doing it.’’ Humility, therefore, grows every time we defer to what God has said in His Word and then obey it. That’s tough. Watch how easy it is to get this backward. For example, the Bible says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Let’s say a husband reads that but his first thought is, ‘‘Yeah, I know what the Bible says. But you don’t know my wife—she’s distant and she constantly bad-mouths me to her friends. We just aren’t happy. We should stop pretending anything will get better.’’
Time-out. Did you see what just happened? He elevated his personal opinion above God’s Word.
Let’s say a parent has unruly children. She might say, ‘‘I know the Bible says I need to discipline my kids and raise them to know the Lord. But frankly, I just don’t have the energy to constantly be disciplining.’’ Watch out. Those feelings are about to take precedence over what God has made clear: ‘‘The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame’’ (Proverbs 29:15).
Consider the disabled. Terri Schiavo was starved to death before our eyes. Guess what? While she was in the last days of suffering a most uncivilized death, a Time magazine poll found that 53 percent of ‘‘Americans surveyed who call themselves born again Christians or Evangelicals agreed with the decision to remove Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.’’1 That should break our hearts.
How is it possible that so many believers in Jesus Christ appear undisturbed by the euthanasia of a disabled, nonterminal person? Are we more concerned about what we think than about what God says? I imagine the rationalization process might look like this: ‘‘Well, she was brain-injured. Who would want to live in that condition? So I think . . .’’
Here’s an interesting dynamic. When we humble ourselves, the ‘‘least of these’’ look a whole lot more important. Humility, then, begins when we put an end to our constant quibbling over what God has allowed into our lives. The well-known story of Job comes to mind. Here was a man who had everything. But in the blink of an eye, God permitted it all to be swept away. Houses. Possessions. Livestock. Wealth. Children. Even his health. You might say Job’s wife was the original right-to-die advocate. She said, ‘‘Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die’’ ( Job 2:9).
Notice Job’s reaction: ‘‘But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips’’ (v. 10). What Job didn’t know was that his life was being scrutinized by an audience in heaven. By humbling himself in obeying the words of God rather than by taking his life in his own hands, he brought honor to God and proved Satan wrong.
The best model of humility, of course, is seen in Jesus’ life, the One who ‘‘humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross’’ (Philippians 2:8).
2. PRAY, PRAY, PRAY
What do you think I’d do if the president of the United States were to call and say, ‘‘I’d like to see David Gibbs in the Oval Office this afternoon’’? I’d be on the next plane, car, or train. You’d probably have the same reaction. We’d do whatever we had to do to take advantage of that opportunity. Talk about a real honor.
Yet you and I have a far greater privilege to come into the presence of the King of Kings through prayer every single day. In fact, this is not a onetime invitation to speak with the One who holds our breath in His hands. The apostle Paul encourages believers to ‘‘pray without ceasing’’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
Do you know when most people pray? Aside from perhaps at mealtime, most people pray when they get really scared. You see, when life is rolling along smoothly, we tend to do everything in our own strength. We rely upon our own talents and giftedness to get ahead in the workplace. We take comfort in our relatively good health. We draw a sense of security from a fully funded retirement account. With everything going so well, why pray?
Then, without warning, we feel chest pains—can’t breathe, the room seems hot, we’re dizzy, tingly, numb—as the dismaying and terrifying realization dawns on us that we’re experiencing what only happens to ‘‘other people.’’ We’re having a heart attack. Or perhaps it’s a diagnosis of cancer, or our home is flooded, or we’re the victim of identity fraud. Whatever the crisis, our world has just lurched out of the control we thought we had of it. And when that world crashes down around us, we find time to cry out to God, don’t we?
I’m sure the Lord is pleased to hear those prayers. But His invitation to go deeper in a day-by-day conversation with you and me is what His heart longs for. God is looking for those who will say, ‘‘By faith I’m going to start totally depending on you for my daily bread rather than relying upon myself.’’ The humbling of ourselves and the commitment to prayer go hand in hand because they demonstrate that all of life is about God, not about us.
Here’s a practical tip: Use your ‘‘wait time’’ to pray. Stuck at a long red light? Use those moments to pray for your spouse or a friend in need. Trapped behind a long line of shoppers at the cash register? Thank God you have food you are waiting to buy, a home to eat it in, and friends and family to eat it with. In the morning, waiting for your coffee to brew, greet the Lord; ask for His wisdom as you make decisions in the hours that stretch ahead of you.
3. SEEK HIS FACE
The word ‘‘seek’’ in this context connotes a ‘‘passionate excitement’’ or a ‘‘burning desire.’’ Unfortunately, in som
e churches it looks like the people are all in pain.
Grown men who will yell and holler at a ball game or women who become elated over a shopping sales event can’t so much as give a holy grunt for God. Believers who can memorize a mountain of statistics about their favorite athlete seem to have difficulty remembering the general location of the various books of the Bible.
You know what?
The world is not going to get any more excited about Jesus than we are. The idea behind seeking His face is that we are to pursue Jesus with the same passion, the same energy, and the same single-mindedness as anything else that thrills our soul in this life. One indicator of our priorities and what captures our hearts is where we spend our time. The Barna Group found that ‘‘born again Christians spend seven times as much time on entertainment as they do on spiritual activities’’2 (emphasis added).
Let’s contrast that with the story of the pearl of great price. Jesus was speaking to His disciples about the passionate pursuit of God’s kingdom. He says, ‘‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it’’ (Matthew 13:45– 46). Do you see the difference?
King David set a wonderful example of seeking God with passion and a holy gusto. In Psalm 63:1–2, David compares the seeking heart to the yearnings of a thirsty man: ‘‘O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.’’ Why is David so captivated by God? He writes, ‘‘Because thy lovingkindness is better than life’’ (v. 3a).
4 . TURN FROM OUR WICKED WAYS
From the beginning of the Bible to the last page, one thing is perfectly clear, and it can be found in every book of the Bible. Simply stated: God will bless righteousness; God must judge sin. It’s His very nature as a holy God that if someone is living holy and right, He will bless that; and if there is sin, He must judge it.