Din and Roar
As a teenager I worked around sawmills with large diesel engines. Deafening! No ear plugs. My hearing was damaged. Fortunately, a small piece of technology serves me well to assist with hearing and understanding sounds in my world.
From childhood I have been exposed to other sounds that have not damaged my ears, but my heart. Harsh sounds of sin have pounded against my mind and emotions. My hope is to keep a tender heart, to keep laughter in my eyes, and to think the best of everyone. There is a thief that keeps trying to steal these dreams from me.
Daily the din and roar pounds against the heart. The eardrums of my soul are bruised with ugly and ungodly trash too often in candy wrappers to try and take away the smell of sin and the cries of the damned.
The governor of California signs a bill requiring public school children to be taught the history of homosexuals. A special class of people is singled out as heroes, with it plainly understood their sexual preference is contrary to God's law. Why? Why this class of people? Why not others?
Two of my grandchildren are in California public schools. I am angry at sin---stupid sin!
Why did the governor not require that the history of Pentecostals be taught in public schools? In 1906 a revival in Los Angeles joined with other latter day out-pourings of the Holy Spirit. The world was shaken. Today it is estimated that there are close to 700,000,000 Pentecostal/Charismatics (tongue-speakers Acts 2) in our world. Why not pass a law requiring the history of Pentecostals be taught?
There is a reason. The reason is that hell is at its best thundering away, pounding our spiritual eardrums with ugly sounds to deny God, to desensitize our souls, and to sell us narcissistic trash to separate us from heaven, hope, and Jesus. The devil wants to destroy, not save. Those who serve the devil do not understand they are tools of hell. They think they are acting as intelligent and worldly-wise people to make a better world.
The world they see is a world without a holy God. They see man as his own God, carving out his own future, making up his own values, and creating his own heaven. God of the Bible is being modified into a passive, let-everyone-do-what-they-want-to-do god, who will in the end give everyone a free pass to paradise. No one will go to hell.
The din and roar is shaking the church. Too many churches are spending time trying to get through economic hard times, instead of finding ways to evangelize. Church becomes an esoteric and existentialist happening that has little impact on the outside world. Church over folks go home and back to the din and roar.
This must not be. We must re-frame our perspective of church to what God intended it to be. Coming together in worship is about edification of each other. We build each other up in the Lord. We pray. We study God's Word. We bring tithes and offerings. We learn how to leave church and be more powerful in witness, in testimony, in relationships. We learn how to make changes in our personal lives, our homes, our families, and among our relationships in a manner that keeps our cross on our own back and points others to Jesus.
My Friend, you will have to be careful. If you do not want your heart to become callous, hard, carnal, and "deaf" to the call of God, you will have to do a lot of resisting. Be sure that you do not resort to selfish life of following Jesus for what He is going to do for you. Follow the Master asking how you may serve. Be bigger than yourself.
You will have to work hard to shut out the din and roar. We use fabric softener when we wash clothes. I suggest you ask God daily for a generous refreshing of the Holy Spirit to enable you to discern between good and evil...and to keep your heart soft enough to hear the sounds of heaven.
Pastor Bare
Take heed therefore how ye hear [Luke 8:18].