Over the years, even before I became a theonomist, I have occasionally asked my pastors at the various churches that I have attended to pray about certain issues... (So, I guess I wasn't always a consistent (R)2K advocate but I was still positive that theonomy was "clearly" wrong... How did that one turn out?).
In the past 10 years, due to job moves and not whimsical moves such as I didn't like the new carpet at church, I have attended 6 different churches. In three of them, I have asked the pastors to pray issues that I felt were very pressing. I didn't even ask them to preach on them, just to do some sort of supplicational congregrational prayer. And I didnt even ask that often: I asked one time each at two separate churches, and two times at another. Given the number of months that I attended each church, that amounts to less than 1% of the time.
-Right as my business trip to Kuwait ended, I asked one of the local chaplains to befriend a local Bengladeshi dry cleaner guy that I had befriended in hopes that the chaplain could share Christ with him. Over email, he told me that he would not share Christ with my dry cleaner friend because of the regional policy on no proseltyzing in the region.
Would my dry cleaner friend really have reported him to the law enforcement if the chaplain shared Christ with him?
-I once asked a pastor to pray against a particular legislation that was being generated that would ***make it illegal*** to bring up any future legislation against abortion in any way, restrict it, make it more difficult to get one etc...
Legislation that would make murdering babies legal all the time without opposition??? Surely this was something that would garner an important and specific prayer topic for congregation prayer. The response I got was that he wouldn't pray against this specific legislation, but he would pray for abortion generally. When I asked him about it afterwards, he told me that he didn't want to lose his tax exempt status, and that it was a "political" matter and it wasn't appropriate to bring up politics from the pulpit, even if that meant talking about forever allowing "doctors" and mothers to be able to murder babies without any fear of further legislation to prevent them from exercising their "right".
-I once asked another pastor to pray for the German family that is currently potentially going to be deported back to Germany. They left Germany because they were going to be arrested for taking their kids out of public school and attempting to homeschool them. He never prayed about them specifically, but to be fair, he at least prayed a very general prayer about govt persecution and control. Another time, I asked the same pastor to pray for the DOD move that would attempt to court-martial military members for "prosiletyzing" to others. Same response. A general prayer, and no specifics.
As I reflect back on these requests being either ignored, shot down, or answered in a very vague way, this seems to be a large swath of the church that is either afraid, or unwilling to preach God's law to every area of life, even in the face of seemingly strict government restrictions.
Esp. now with homosexual marriage having the great potential to be "upheld", our churches will have to deal with this and there will be a lot of legal maneuvering and suing going on. The church is being actively persecuted and yet no one is able to speak out against these things, and in fact is unwilling to face the facts that the church is being persecuted by outside forces.
Where are our ministers boldly preaching the law and driving people to the gospel? Why is it that Glenn Beck, a conservative talk show host and a Mormon, is rebuking pastors for something that Christians should understand better than a Mormon does?
This has been going on for years, and not just pastors, but Christians in general refuse to become involved. Greg Bahnsen said in a lecture about 25 years ago that the church is being punished for its cowardice and apathy. I mentioned my feelings to my friend that I felt that with all of these things going on in our society today (abortion, marriage, marginalization of the church in the public square etc...) that the church was being punished and judged by God. He then told me about the Bahnsen lecture which I was unaware of until he told me.
I don't know how long it is going to take before we wake from our slumber, and I don't know if our country will be able to last the next 50 years, given the moral decay in our society in general.
Please continue to pray for boldness and loving action in your own life and for the church and her officers. If our country isnt around in the next 50 years because of our unwillingness to speak out and become involved, there won't be any more church to pray for and that will be further (temporal) judgement from God that we rightfully deserve.
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