The Battle

In 1992, I left my job and home to pursue a calling to full-time vocational ministry. At the time, my mentor warned me that the Church would soon find ourselves facing first century level persecution. He was preparing me for increasing polarization between believers and unbelievers, and the inevitable attempts to silence the Gospel.

We’re not there. Even with the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, the attacks on believers by unbelievers are far from the levels of the first century.

Yet, as I scrolled through social media this weekend, I realized that much of the seething anger toward believers is coming from within the Church. The Church is divided between those who have accepted the beautiful, endless grace of Jesus AND His Lordship verses those who have accepted his amazing grace but rejected his Lordship.

When I began to grasp the depth of Jesus’ love for us and grappled with just how far He went to pay for our sins, I accepted that He would never do anything to harm us. Accepting His Lordship means following Him and trusting that everything He says and does is for our good. We were called to accept Jesus as Savior AND Lord. My gratitude for salvation leads me to accept His Lordship.

Jesus claimed to be “the Truth”, and the Bible is our record of who He is and what He teaches. But somewhere along the way, one believer at a time, pastor by pastor, church by church, and even denomination by denomination, we have accepted that the Bible “contains the Word of God” rather than the Bible “is the Word of God.” This perspective implies that parts of the Bible are not true or are no longer relevant. But once we accept that the Bible is not the Word of God, but merely contains some truth, who gets to decide what parts are true & relevant and what is not?

To accept Jesus as Lord is to accept His definitions of marriage, gender, sexuality, sin, forgiveness, wealth, love, and even life. To reject His lordship is to leave any or all of these to be defined by shifting popular opinion and chosen by each individual. “Truth” is replaced with individual opinions. We could literally have as many definitions as we have people with no way to validate or invalidate any opinion regardless of how foolish, costly, or dangerous it is.

Embracing salvation while rejecting Jesus as Lord is not simply foolish or costly. It is dangerous. It puts the overwhelming weight of choices, never meant to be carried, on the most vulnerable people in our society. Without the Lordship of Christ, these choices are presented as gifts. We say, “You get to choose.” But what our young people hear is the overwhelming message, “You have to choose.”

Have you watched the stress levels of people faced with difficult, seemingly permanent choices they must make?

The weight of these choices that God never meant for us to carry is crushing them… and we wonder why suicide is the most common cause of death for American children ages 12-18 for the third year in a row.

For those of us who have been part of the Priesthood of Believers for over twenty years, much of this shift toward accepting Jesus as Savior but rejecting Him as Lord has taken place on our watch. In the absence of any real persecution, we’ve appealed to people’s needs with a message of grace while protecting their egos by going light on explanations of Lordship. Our attempts to sell the benefits of grace without wading into the more challenging discussions of Lordship have crippled not only those whom we have reached, but those they reach.

Now, the church has multiple generations of believers who have accepted Jesus as Savior but rejected Him as Lord. The attacks of unbelievers on believers are revealing just how wide the division is as vast numbers of Church members embrace the world’s definitions of life, love, marriage, gender, sexuality, sin… rather than God’s definitions and therefore sympathize with those supporting attacks on believers.

This is not simply an American battle. We’re being strategically distracted by politics which primarily serve as camouflage. This is not and should not be framed as a political battle. While government leadership affects the battle, our battle is not first and foremost for the White House. It is a kingdom battle, and kingdom battles are always about who sits on the throne. Our barometer is peace verses chaos. When Christ is on the throne in our lives, when He is Lord, His peace reigns supreme. When chaos ensues in our hearts and relationships, the throne is empty, or worse we’ve taken His seat and/or given it away.

There is only one way to win this battle. 2 Chronicles 7:14 is as clear as it gets:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14

God is telling us that it starts with us. We must repent. We must humble ourselves, pray, seek His face, and embrace the Lordship of Jesus. We must be bold and teach the Lordship of Jesus right alongside our teachings on the cross and His grace. Otherwise, the blood of our children is on us.

We’ll take discipleship seriously, learning, embracing, and teaching what Jesus says about each of the issues weighing down the weak, young, and vulnerable in our society or we’ll wait until only a remnant of the Church is left to honor His Lordship.

But make no mistake. The longer we wait to be bold, the harder it will be.

If not now, when?