When to Break Fellowship

We live in a church age where the norm is to use ourselves as the standard. Whenever a brother or sister in Christ doesn’t line up with the preferences we have set in place for our own lives condescension and condemnation is what we express toward them. God, however, knew how biased we would tend to be so He set some very specific guidelines that we are to follow. Unity is one of God’s favorite New Testament concepts so we must be careful not to get too trigger happy when cutting off our brethren. What does the Bible say on the topic?

Well, first and foremost, all the way through the New Testament we find that if we love our neighbor as we love ourselves that the law would be fulfilled and the works of the flesh would cease (See Galatians). That means that all of this sitting around the late night dinner table discussing what you think the motive of some other brother’s heart is would stop. That means your infatuation with how wrong everybody else is would morph into an empathetic, compassionate heart that attempts to understand your brother. That means that you would humbly recognize how desperate for growth you are in your own life and not be so quick to judge. That means that we would all stop thinking ourselves to be something when we are nothing; “deceiving ourselves,” as the scripture calls it. It’s hard to move on, throw away and forget someone that you love as fervently as you love yourself. But, there comes a scriptural time that it must happen. First Corinthians 5:9-11 gives a list but there is a very important catch here. Paul states in verse twelve that we must judge those that are “within” so we are not breaking fellowship with backsliders here; we are breaking fellowship with active, Christians that are coming into our assemblies, leading our assemblies, participating in our assemblies and playing the part of the hypocrite. Galatians chapter six URGES us to handle backsliders with kid gloves and to bear in mind how easily we could wind up in the exact same fall. We are never to issue the cold shoulder to an injured, fallen brother. He may do things we cannot go along with but he should be able to find love in his assembly ANY time he wanted to come back. The backsliders ought to be weary of our brokenness for them! I repeat! Breaking fellowship is NOT scriptural practice for the fallen, injured and discouraged. We are judging those that are “within” when we are breaking fellowship and even then we are only doing it so God can judge them while they are “without.” The goal here is still restoration, driven by a broken and contrite spirit for people that we are burdened for. Here’s the list…

Fornicator- any person that is actively, currently participating in sexual activities outside of a God honoring marriage relationship.

Covetous- any person that has disorderly, sinful desires. A person who lives motivated in search of things that God has forbidden. Sex, power, control, and much more.

Idolater- a person who lives in devoted, adoration to anything other than God.

Railer- A person who is constantly scoffing at and degrading other people. He uses proud and haughty language in contempt of other people. This is a domineering, overbearing person that attempts to control others through fear and emotion.

Drunkard- a person that is given to consistent intoxication with strong drink

Extortioner- this is a tyrannical person who gets performance or goods out of people for his or her own gain. They use oppression and even violence to control people and benefit selfishly from them.

These are the types of people that are actively participating in our assemblies that we are commanded to put out from among us. There are no preferences listed here. There are a lot of Christian’s in my life that do things I may not particularly agree with but this is the list where God draws the line on fellowship and if unity is to be tampered with we better prefer His lines over ours. Even then, though, love is not thrown to the wind. When you try to live holy without a charitable spirit you negate the entire original cause. This is not a pistol God has given us that we can arrogantly spin on our trigger finger and spitefully fan the hammer on anyone who crosses us. This is the last ditch effort toward restoration. This is tough love. I don’t want to get to Heaven one day and realize I was a railing extortioner operating under the banner of separation. I pray my assembly would have the gumption to throw ME out so I would wake up and not waste my life like that. God help us to love and live with the right attitudes for the right reasons: His reasons.

Holiness: a god or a lifestyle?

When you ask God for wisdom, He will give it to you with the stipulation that you use it (James chapter one). We like to picture wisdom being a fluffy gift that descends from the Heavens, places a crown upon our brow, and prospers us further in the direction we are already traveling but most of the time real wisdom is better depicted in a man being ripped off of his comfy sofa by the fire and thrown into a place he has never ventured before. It’s growth, though. It’s real living. It’s taking the hand of the Father and walking into the light others have rejected.

I was born and raised in Independent Fundamental Baptist churches. Over the course of my less than thirty year life I’ve been a church member under six different pastors whose styles and flavors were as different as a bag of skittles. I’ve spent the last four years of my life assisting in camp meetings, revivals and evangelistic outreaches in countless more likeminded, fundamental churches and I’ve seen all the ups and downs God could trust me with. My burden is for revival and my mind has exhausted itself analyzing what God has let me see. The past few months have pulled me off of that proverbial sofa and drew me to many of the answers I have been seeking for the last four years but, as I said, wisdom, real wisdom, doesn’t promote comfort: it demands change! My idea of revival has always been everyone else changing and me continuing in the direction I have always gone but if I’ve learned one thing at all it is that revival is personal: if God can’t convince me to change how will He ever use me to bring change to others? No, He wants to break ME, mold ME, make ME and then allow me to encourage everyone else after I have already been ran through the mill. That’s where the pain of revival is at. The burden for others is heavy but the revelations I’ve been handed about my own self have been overwhelming.

Pride is the issue, I’ve outlined that in more than one of my previous post but pride is a weed just like any other sin: it needs fertilizer and water to grow and an unconcerned gardener to leave it alone. I’ve been confused because, in fundamentalism, everything about our pride can be traced back to our standards and convictions. Confusing, right? Yes, the very things that we feel promote holiness and liberty are fertilizing our pride weed. I’ve traced it back to motives being wrong but that answer isn’t good enough. There is a better one.

We are missing two more pieces to our spiritual make up: principles and preferences. Without principles and preferences we cannot balance standards and convictions. Watch this…

Principle: I Timothy 2:9a “in like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel…”

This is a principle of the word of God that no man can deny. Ok, lets move down the ladder.

Conviction: I personally believe the Bible wants women to dress modestly.

A conviction is a personal opinion based on a biblical principle.

Standard: My wife and daughter are going to dress modestly

A standard is wall of safety the Christian builds to ensure that he lives by the biblical principle.

Preference: I believe long dresses and skirts are the most modest choice for my wife and daughter so they do not wear thigh bearing shorts, pants or anything of that nature.

A preference is the nuts and bolt route of how we accomplish living out the biblical principles God has given us.

Ok, here is the problem. There is nothing wrong with preferences; they are the romantic side of our relationship with Jesus and are the valuable pearls we hold so dearly in our personal walk. However, when we move our preferences into the biblical principle slot we are actually re-writing scripture or pretending to have a new revelation from God as Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, did. Since others who study scripture struggle reaching those same conclusions we perceive ourselves to be advanced and elite creating a fertile plot for all the pride we could ever afford to grow. We then look at Christians outside our circles and critique their faith and sincerity because we actually believe them to be going against principle when actually they just don’t match our preference. Everything we believe needs to be ran through this equation so we can see clearly our standings and motives.

When preference is preached as principle lives are damaged because shadows are stirred into the Bible, absolute truth is lost and private interpretation is pushed. Young Christians live tirelessly to the point of frustration trying to keep up with it all but since they never discover these “truths” in their own studies and prayer times they wind up disappointing their mentors and living defeated, guilt laden lives. Rather than reaching a romantic place with Christ where they begin to go above and beyond for His glory they are attempting to carry chains another man has forged and defeat is always the result.

In the big picture, preaching preferences as principles robs us of our voice to all of society. Culture isn’t as dumb as we like to believe and when they see us re-writing scripture and enforcing our new texts they label us a cult. Fundamentalism didn’t have a reputation for being “legalistic” and “Pharisaical” a hundred years ago, as a matter of fact, fundamentalism was one of the primary voices God used in this country a hundred years ago. What has changed? We like to believe that we are so holy that persecution has robbed us of our influence but actually idolatry has. That’s right, when we preach preference as principle we are hand carving idols that we are willing to sacrifice to. We will throw family away, brethren away, fellowship away, unity away, love away and many other things that God loves for the sake of serving our new gods. These idols provide us with self gratification and even favor with men and our flesh loves those things….all the while we move further and further away from principle.

I’m not interested in compromising my preferences.  I’m conservative, more so than most. I’m going to practice AND promote those preferences but if I crack them up to BEING biblical principle instead of personal preferences that I use as a MEANS of living out biblical principle I am going to damage the cause of Christ. How do I know? Because I spent years doing it and am in the pit I dug right now with my waders on and a good shovel in my hand desperately trying to repair the damage I arrogantly caused. Being honest with yourself will likely be the most terrifying thing you’ve ever done but it’s time. Cut down the groves and tear down the idols! We need revival. Won’t you go with me?

GOOD Christians Lie About It

Confession is not only good for the soul, it’s also the foundation of revival. Honesty is a concept few would argue with, but it is rarely lived by outside the elementary level. If I’m late for work because I overslept it would be wrong of me to excuse myself by saying my car wouldn’t start, few would argue with that, but what if I struggled with pornography. Would I be better off acting like I had that all together? How about bitterness or selfishness? Would it be right to pretend those problem areas of my life didn’t exist and portray myself as perfect to those who know me? Liars. It makes us liars.

 

Dishonesty portrays false confidence which is the very essence of pride. Living like we don’t need God’s grace depreciates His grace in front of the audience our life is supposed to be expressing grace to. We lie to the world about how flawless our faith has made us and all we do is convey to them that even WE don’t need God. We lie to the church about how far we have progressed spiritually and all we do is trample the sincere and embarrass the struggling souls right back into solitude and failure. We lie to our families about our holiness and we lose them. The Bible said the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much! Scripture promises that children who are trained the way they should go won’t depart from it! God, in His word, designates grace to the humble! By hiding and denying our flaws, by shifting blame from our failures, by never taking responsibility for the inner sins, we proclaim loudly to the world that the word of God is a lie! God knows me, do you understand? He knows how wicked and deceitful my heart is, how wretched and inconsistent my walk is and how imperfect I am; He just struggles convincing ME of these facts most of the time.  I’m reminded of a recent discussion my wife and I had. When we met as teenagers she was in the middle of the most rebellious crisis her heart had ever had. Everybody around her saw how conservatively she dressed, how clean she lived, how dedicated to her school work that she was and few knew what was happening in her heart. She confessed just the other night that even though she wasn’t involved in any vile, outward sin that her heart was as wicked as it possibly could have been! Had she died before making peace with God about it do you think He would have excused her heart problem since its desires were never gratified? Or do you think He would have judged her heart?

 

I graduated with a guy named Thomas Zuniga. He was the shy, quiet type and few got to know him. I spent a lot of time around him and ate lunch with him almost every day but I still can’t say I ever really got to know him. I noticed on Facebook years after we graduated where he had begun documenting a personal struggle in his life through writing but I never paid it much attention until the words “gay Christian” got tossed into a discussion he was a part of. Of course, I’m not a fan of that title just like I’m not a fan of the title “bitter Christian” or “selfish Christian”, it identifies you with sin when God identifies us with deliverance. As I begun reading some of his blog posts and even interviewing him privately I discovered a man who believed homosexuality and all of its gratifications to be sinful and displeasing to Christ but a man that was also honest about his struggle with those desires. He wants to have a wife and kids one day and desires that God use his battle as a help to others who are in the same position. My first thought was “man, he is brave to admit that!” Why? Why would he have to be brave? Because there is a very real fear that Christians would discard a person that was honest about such a struggle. It’d be better if he just lied about it! Right?

 

Before you get too Pharisaical, dear proud Christian, I’d like to remind you that MY pride struggle is just as much of an abomination unto my Maker as Tom’s homosexuality struggle.  Tom’s battle is with desire. I, on the other hand, have followed through with my God robbing pride on more occasions that I even care to have a count on! Am I to cruise into church in my suit on Sunday and have the teens seated around me believe that I am the epitome of the Christian life or by some strange chance should I be honest? The first person I have to come clean with is ME. “Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof” is a quote from scripture that nails us to the wall about our pretending.  When concrete is liquid it will take the shape of any form it is poured into. How long, though, does it hang out in that form before it gets stuck looking like that forever? We fear change because we perceive change to be compromise but confession is not compromise; false religion is! We testify about the sins we committed before God saved us but we have to build staircases to get up on top of our rugs because of how HIGH they stand with all the CURRENT sin struggles we’ve stuffed under them! I’m a normal man and I struggle with lust to the point that I have to make daily decisions about it! I battle covetousness every time I see a foreign sports car! I envy the wicked as King David did when I see their lives of pleasure laid next to my life of warfare. I battle selfishness every time my baby wakes up in the middle of the night and my instinct says send your wife in there! I surfed past a wicked country song just last week and I finished listening to it and had to get my spirit back right with God about it. I battle ME every day of my life and you are in the same trench! We have two options and they are confession or denial. Denial produces pride and if you are a proud, self accepting, sin denier you may as well be a practicing sodomite in the eyes of almighty God because both are abominations in His eyes and only pride would argue with that!

 

Who are you? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Who are you? There is the mask you wear that scripture refers to as your “person” and then there is who God sees. Revival is when what God sees and what you see become one and the same; its where the healing starts, where the growth begins. Are you ready to be honest?