Old E-Mail #4

Feeling guilty is taking the side of the devil. Think about the worn out verses of Romans 7 where Paul is saying that he does not do what he wants to do, and he does what he doesn’t want to do, and so on. Do you sense he feels guilty? I do not think so. He acknowledges in that in his physical person there is a struggle that occurs between his evil flesh, and the holy spirit of God. Notice how he removes himself entirely from the conflict. He takes no credit for righteousness, and no blame for unrighteousness. God himself is at war with Paul’s flesh. The same is true of anyone who has been born of God. Now if we feel guilty, our mind is saying ‘I am taking my stand on the side of the flesh’ and there is guilt because God assaults the flesh. The mind is attached to the flesh and feels as though God is assaulting it as well. Yet if we operate under a clear conscience we welcome God’s assault on the flesh and we take the side of God. So should we go on sinning with a clear conscience and just say, “I side with God?” God forbid. If we side with the Spirit why would we desire to go on sinning? It is conceivable for us to say it is no longer we that sin, but sin that dwells in us, yet in the very same breath we must say we have no righteous acts, but that which Christ acts through us. We too often want to take all the credit for our evil, and none of the credit for the good, and thus we are left feeling perpetually guilty. We should take credit for neither, that is if we are born of God, through Christ. Paul talks about walking in the spirit, and not after the flesh. So with our minds we must constantly consider what the spirit is doing, the moment we consider the flesh our guilt condemns us. When we find that we are following the flesh and with our minds, and feeding the flesh and its desires we must repent. Repentance is taking sides again with the spirit. This principle of ‘taking sides’ is evident in confession of sin. What is confession, it means ‘to speak the same of’. In other words confession is simply saying ‘God what you say about my flesh is true, and I am in agreement with you.’ Confession is taking God’s side against your flesh. Repentance then is turning to serve the spirit as opposed to the flesh with our mind. Because of Christ’s sacrifice God welcomes us in taking His side because we are His. We were bought with a price, in fact he rejoices when we side against our flesh with Him. Our problem is that we sometimes think He wants us to reform our flesh, or bring it into submission, but that is not the case. The flesh does not need reformed, or corrected, it is evil to its very core, and it needs crucified. Now we (our old man) were crucified with Christ, so we are dead, yet we live. There is no room for guilt, guilt was the property of the old man, and he has been crucified. When we wallow in guilt we are trying to resurrect the old man. The one thing that makes this all hard to comprehend for me is the time element. The cross was one moment in time that is effectual for all eternity. It is hard to accept the death of the old man on the cross with Christ when we can see the fruit of the old man’s labor every day. I know this all seems like high thought, but it is very practical. Guilt hinders everything. When we feel guilty, we attempt to pacify our guilty conscience with our own acts of righteousness. Our righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). It is the righteousness of Christ we need. Should we feel remorse for sin? I do not think so. Instead we accept that sin is the deed of the old man who has been crucified, and we leave him behind, and move on toward righteousness. This morning you and I talked about seeking out our sin, this is the best thing I think we can do. We are telling God when we ask to see our sin that we are on His side, and we desire the flesh to be destroyed. We are then actively participating in God’s act of sanctifying us. We are truly moving towards holiness because we are becoming more and more in accord with God concerning ourselves. Quite possibly none of that made sense, but it helped me, so it was worth writing. The last thing I want to do is get all philosophical and intellectual so I hope this doesn’t seem that way. I think God is moving us somewhere on this topic, and I am kind of hoping He doesn’t divert us off of it anytime soon. But I choose to be on His side, so if it the topic changes so be it. --------- Continued in another message -------- The conversation on guilt is interesting, but it tends toward moving in a bad direction. When we acknowledge the fact that we should bear no guilt for our sin because of the atonement we will too often go one step further and have no remorse over sin. I think there is a distinct difference between remorse and guilt. It should bother us that sin dwells so easily in such close proximity to us, yea even in us, and that is cause for remorse. We know that if we were holy sin could have no part of us, the flesh would be utterly cut off and have no power. We are not guilty, our guilt was nailed to the cross, yet we are not holy so we end up cohabitating with sin in our mortal bodies. Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? Christ. He can make me so holy that sin and the flesh will have no dominion in my mortal body. I need him to do that. My only goal in life should be to obtain that holiness from Him, to diligently seek Him and obey Him until sin is utterly destroyed. We need to be so careful not pervert the blessed truth guiltlessness into authorized unholiness. Well, those are my thoughts for today. Jay Miklovic

Old E-mail #3

Here is a thought for you, I heard this preached on a little bit today and thought it was interesting. Jesus said “you are the salt of the earth.” This is a declaration, and not a command. It is a statement of fact. You are the salt of the earth. As a Christian God declares you salt. Salt is not what we aspire to be, it is not what we are commanded to be, it is not a suggestion, it is not even a teaching as to how we are to be, it is what we are. We are the flavoring, we are everything that salt is. We are not becoming salt, we are salt.

Now as salt, if we lose our savor we are good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under the foot of men. What then is our savor, or saltiness? The lovey-dovey liberal says our savor is the peace, love, and justice we bring to the world, and maybe so. Still the fire breathing fundamentalist focuses on the salt’s preserving aspects, and its stinging and cleansing aspects. Maybe they are both right… or maybe they are wrong. I think they are both wrong.

Think of where this passage falls, what precedes it? Blessed are the poor in spirit… blessed are they that mourn… blessed are the meek… blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness… blessed are the merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted. These are the savor of the Christian life.

We are always so focused on doing so many things, which is not all bad, but we are also called just to be. I just realized something as I am typing here, do you know why we struggle so much with the beatitudes? I just figured it out. It is because they are not commands. We cannot go out and do ‘poor in spirit’. They reach so much past what we do, and they reach into who we are. The Christian life is not the life of a busybody constantly looking for something to do. We must wait. God wants us to fellowship with Him, more than He desires our service. He can accomplish His means with a donkey, or a stick, or a rock, and probably get the job done better with them than us. It is an amazing act of love that He would allow us to carry out His perfect will despite all of our imperfections. It is almost like when the coach of a team gives the ball to the handicapped kid to shoot so that he can be part of the victory.

Gods love and His fellowship are amazing things, but I fear some people (myself included) are too busy trying to conquer injustice, or warn people of hellfire to even see the blessed life. We are too busy trying to work our way out of spiritual poverty, and ignoring the first beatitude that calls the spiritually poor blessed. We are so busy seeking our Christian joy that we do not mourn, and so on.

I guess I ran myself in circles again, but that is what I have been thinking today.

With Love, In Him,

Jay Miklovic

Old E-Mail #2

This old mail was a rant to a good friend of mine concerning church growth strategies. This man is so patient for listening to all of these. We serve a mighty God. Our conversation this morning was not all bad, but we have been so beaten down by the failure which we see that we forget the victory He has won. I think the problem we encounter is that we judge God on the basis of the professing church. When everyone says ‘God is present here,’ or ‘we are spirit led here,’ or ‘revival is happening here’ and whatever else gets said, we assume what they are saying is true. If it is true then this god is pathetic. If all of our claims of how powerfully God is moving in our midst are true, then I want nothing to do with that god, because he is a god we have created. We invented him, and he is so weak. We have taken our works and called them his movements. The god of today’s evangelicalism is lame. At least Baal seemed to be able to help crops grow, this god cannot even make a man turn off his television for a minute or two. I assure you God is not pathetic, the problem is us. We are not what we claim to be, both as a church and as individuals. We claim to witness powerful workings of God, when really they are usually psychological manipulations of the flesh. I say this with extreme caution because the last thing I want to do is call what actually is a work of the spirit something else. If I say a genuine work of the Spirit is really a work of sinful flesh then I am coming very close to blaspheming the Holy Spirit, I certainly do not want to tread there. I say God is not pathetic because He does move powerfully in His children, he really does. Praying last night in the middle of that field, He met me there, yes the world crept in and I ran, but He met me there, I have no doubt. Seeing him change Kristin’s life direction against her will and desire, He is there. Changing all of my desires, putting this new heart in me, He is there. Taking the burden of this world off of my shoulders and giving me His burden, oh He is a mighty God, and He is mighty to save. Men and women of old, and even today give everything for Him in expectation of nothing in return, but give it all simply because He is worthy. We don’t care about a state of ‘nirvana’ or 72 virgins, or coming back as some cow or something. No! a thousand times no! God has put in His children a love and adoration for Him. We desire heaven because we have perfect fellowship with Him there, nothing else. We do not desire some heaven of our own creation where God is not present. This God of ours is mighty, and we need Him to break us, and to bring us as a congregation into His fold. As long as we can continue in our own power we will not seek Him, period end of story. Gary this is why that whole thing had me so mad, I am sick of it, seriously sick of it. I cannot do purpose driven, I cannot even do spirit led spirit fed, I just cannot, it is so cheap. IF GODS POWER WAS REALLY MANIFEST IN OUR CHURCH WE WOULD NOT HAVE TO LABEL IT!!! WE WOULD NOT NEED A CLICHÉ TO DESCRIBE IT!!! I was glancing through a magazine Kristin had from the Church about all these new tools and ministry ideas and so on and it makes me start to feel sick, literally. I get frustrated beyond words. It is everywhere, if I thought I could go elsewhere to other churches to avoid it I would leave in a heartbeat. Well this was a rant, I think you can see that it is love for God and His people that brings me to this point, at least I hope you see that. There are a lot of good things of God I want to discuss, but for now this is place where I am, and I am without power to change it, and praise God it is not my responsibility, but I am to be His willing instrument. I fear what would happen if God used me in a pulpit at xxxx or anywhere else that suffers our plague. I can see how Wesley got kicked out of so many churches. Well I hope I was not a total downer Thanks for listening Jay Miklovic

Old Email #1

Sent 02-20-2007

Just a quick thought on purity. While we are seeking to impart Christ’s will for sexual purity to the children and youth of our church, we must also seek our own purity. Seems obvious right? While we may not struggle so much as youth with sexual purity, our life is nonetheless to be a life of complete purity. Purity in the way we work, the way we talk, the way we interact with our friends, our spouse, our church, and so on.

Think about what all the things in the temple were overlaid with, was it not gold? No, it was pure gold. What about that old law about not having garments made of two different types of material? What is with that? These garments were supposed to be pure. You can go through tons of examples of purity in the Levitical laws and they show us the desires of God. The requirement of purity has not changed since Leviticus, do not fool yourself into thinking it has. The change from old to New Testament is how we become pure. This holy purity is a separation from all the things of this world that spot us. This purity is required and the Lord certainly deserves a holy and pure people.

“Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart…” Psalm 24.

The question we must ask ourselves is: Are we really serious about purity? If so, if we desire to teach the children and youth about sexual purity we to must place ourselves in the refiners fire that our dross may be removed, and we would be as pure gold. We must separate from television that glorifies violence, sex, love of money, and idol worship (we might as well just turn the TV off). We must separate ourselves from the conversations that tend toward lewd joking, lying, bragging, bitterness, and so on. We must drop our grudges, confess our sin, and repent toward holiness. God demands it, “without holiness no one will see the Lord”. Is our life spotted with impurities that we are well aware of? If we know we are impure in an area of our life, then we are being disobedient and must repent. If can live with our impurities and refuse to deal with them, then we cannot expect a move of God through this purity event or anywhere else in our life. God demands a holy people. A people that are repentant and broken when they sin, and a people that are not perfect, but are progressing in sanctification towards that ever distant perfection.

I just bring this up because we desire to bring pure water to cleanse a younger generation, but it will do little good if we try to bring that pure water yet contaminate it with our own filthy vessels.

Warmest Regards In Him,

Jay Miklovic

Abortion at the Altar

I survived partial birth abortion, and I remember it. Yes, it is true, I was in the womb and nearly developed, about to enter the world as a new child. At any point the pains of labor could have begun. My body had begun to turn, my head was facing down, I was entering the canal and the pain of being born was starting, when all of a sudden I felt nothing and I was yanked from the womb. I had shed no tears, I felt nothing, and yet I was faintly breathing. Fortunately for me, another doctor, a good physician entered into my room, and as I was being tossed into the trash with the rest of the aborted children he noticed that I still had breath in my lungs. He plucked me from the heap of death and placed me gently in an incubator, he helped me to breath, and nursed me to health. I have grown some since then, I still have birth defects from the whole procedure, and I am finally getting to the point where I can eat a little bit of solid food, though it takes a deal of searching to find anything palatable. The saddest thing of the whole process is that I can still remember seeing in that mass of partially born children many whose eyes were not completely dim, and whose breath had not entirely departed, and yet it appears that the clinic has no intention of reviving them. Will anyone stand with me against the heinous practice? Are there any doctors out there who still deliver children? After conception occurs, does a child have even slim chance of surviving delivery? “Except a man be born again…” Spiritual abortions like the one I described are occurring daily in churches across the globe. Spiritual children are being yanked from the womb before there lungs are developed, they are being pierced through before they ever come into the light, and what should break us the most is that they end up in everlasting darkness. Even you may have been aborted at an altar, and what you think is your new life may merely be the faint breathing of survival. Is this a sick illustration? It is not sick enough. It should be more offensive even than this, we must wake up. You may be an abortionist! To my shame I have performed a number of them myself. Let me explain the process: The Pains of Labor: At some point after a child of God is conceived they face a painful realization. I remember when this happened to me, I was 18 years old and had committed certain immoral acts, which had laden me with guilt. I had passed the threshold of my own perceived piety, the rushing realization that I was immoral, and moreover deserving of death was a reality. I knew full well that I needed the rebirth, at least I needed reconciled in someway to God, so that I would not be condemned. (Note: it had nothing to do with pleasing God, I just wanted to go to heaven.) The water breaking: We all have heard in some way shape or form that Jesus came to save us. After this initial guilt and desire for an undeserved heaven settles in the unborn child determines to turn to Jesus.This too happened in my life. I knew I need forgiveness, and I was told that Jesus was the only place to find it. The water broke, I was on my way to being a new child, I had seen my guilt, my need of a savior, I knew who the savior was, and I was going come to Him and receive my new life. I was about to be born again. The first gasp of air: The sinner will kneel at the altar in humility, knowing that they have done wrong, and knowing that they are in the proper place to put it right. I remember that gasp, the hope of new life. I was at an altar in Findlay OH, on my knees, praying a prayer, oh the blessed hope of life everlasting! The abortion: At the point when the nearly born again sinner needs nothing more than the clear concise gospel given to them, the preacher or layman reaches out with a generic almost gospel and slays the nearly converted with it. This I remember all to well, and have been reminded of it in my own church, on radio programs, here on Sermonaudio, and nearly everywhere professing Christianity goes. I heard a message that simply said ask Jesus into you heart and you will be born again. So I prayed the prayer, I asked him in, I rejoiced, shed a little alligator tear or two, and went on my carnal way. I was never faced with the first word of Jesus, I was never reached with the first word of John the Baptist, I was never greeted with that first word of the apostle Peter, or with the repeated message of the apostle Paul. I was aborted by a false gospel that mentioned nothing of repentance, nothing of new life, nothing of the death of the old man, nothing at all. I was not transformed, instead I was deformed. I had my conscience eased, without my heart being made new. I had my conscience crucified instead of the old man, what I had was not new life, just the same old death restructured a bit. The trash can: Most of these partial births end up in the can, surrounded by stained glass, and plush pews, imagining that they are reborn, yet never breathing the breath of new life. This is the part of the blog that may get me in trouble, but I have been there. I was in that can for over two years, and I have talked to people that have spent much of there life in that place, rotting and corrupting away in the same sin, and depravity they were in prior to praying their little prayer to let Jesus in.The trash can is not new life! The new life is victorious, there is repentance, there is a new understanding of God, and of self, there is a new desire to please Him, and deny self. There is power to overcome sin, there is freedom from habitual carnality, there is new life!! Yes we fall, but our life, if it is new is characterized by victory not defeat!!! The question we must ask ourselves is are we performing abortions so that we can line our pews with the carcasses of “almost Christians.” –A term used in one of Wesley’s Sermons. Or are we going to be the good physicians? Will we preach repentance and the unborn nearly converted soul feel the pains of birth so that they can be a viable child in the kingdom? Are we patient enough to let a child develop in the womb of there own conviction being nurtured by the placenta of their conscience, until they be delivered from that place by the whole gospel of redemption? Or will we continue to yank them out prematurely and hope that somehow they will learn to live in the trash can amongst the rest of the almost born? I know this was a real hard rant, and maybe the theology was poor, but at some point a few brave souls need to truly stand in the gap, cut through the emotional manipulations of big events, and purpose driven painless gospel presentations that mention nothing of repentance unto God. We need preachers that will cut to the heart as the apostle Peter did, those that will stand in the face of the religious establishment and endure the stones as Stephen did, those that will receive the assatination attempts as the apostle Paul did. Maybe then we will hear the healthy cry of the new born child crying out for repentance unto God.

Analysis of American Christianity Today - Psychology

How many times have you sat in a meeting of some sort where the preacher repeats the same words over and over again and you end up repeating them, and by the end everyone is in a frenzy and all fired up? You walk out and think, oh what a move of God that was, and 2 hours later you are in the same sinful state as you were before the meeting. Was it a move of God? Can you encounter God personally and remain unchanged? I have been to baseball, and football games and seen frenzies induced from words on a scoreboard, "Clap clap clap... Louder Louder Louder... Charge..." and so on. Was that a move of God? Of course not, it was manipulation, and most of our preaching is much the same.

Churches are built upon this principle, create an event, stir some emotions, and then convince the people that because it happened in a church setting it is somehow a move of God. Many movement have sprung from this. Look at the promise keepers, I am not calling that group heretical, but they are deeply steeped in this psychological manipulation method. I have heard so many men come back and talk about what a move of God it was, and how they encountered God in that stadium and yet that deep passion and zeal dies a week or so later. Did God move? Was their a real encounter with God? When these men come down from that mountain top experience do they enter the congregation blazing with the holiness of God? When Moses came down from Sinai the congregation could not even look at him, he had to veil his face.

I will continue later...

Analysis of American Christianity - Television

“Be ye holy therefore as I am holy.” “Be ye perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect.” “Woe unto them that call good evil and evil good.” “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” I was dropping my cousin off at his house and I walked inside and sat down, they were watching TV. What I saw terrified me. There was a divorced couple lying on a hospital bed together stuck in the act of intercourse and unable to separate themselves. The doctors were instructing them to gyrate in a certain manner in order to separate themselves, and the man appeared to be at the point of orgasm. At this point I had seen enough and had to get up and leave. The only reason I mention this is because this occurred on what could be the most popular show on television right now, ‘Gray’s Anatomy’. This was my first encounter with this show, but I imagine that this is fairly normal, and it will hopefully be my last encounter with it. This does not make me all that angry, but it breaks my heart into a million pieces. So many of us in the Church do not live in the fullness of Christ because we are not strangers in this land, we are not pilgrims heading to a heavenly country. We have full citizenship here on earth, and we only hope to transfer that citizenship at death. Let this no longer be, let our citizenship be in heaven, and let us find no pleasure in the things of this world. The ‘church’ in America today is so blind to holiness and the righteousness of God that even shows like ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ are consumed by her without thought. Even worse than the fact the church can watch this, is the fact that I am sure that some publisher is most likely developing some sort of Sunday school curriculum that is based off of this show. Come on, the only attraction to these shows is the immorality which they contain. I have heard so many professing Christians discussing Gray’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and every other vile show, when I think the show that most suits them might very well be ‘Lost’ (note sarcasm). Have we no concept of the righteousness of God? Do we even know Him? If the Holy Spirit actually dwelt in us would we not be grieved by these shows, would we not be convicted by the Spirit and have our consciences smitten when we watched them? We the church take a different approach, instead of saying ‘touch not the unclean thing’, we consume iniquity like it is water and then turn around and say ‘We are engaging the culture’. I think if we actually obeyed Christ we would be ‘enraging the culture’. Note the fate of all but one of the first apostles. We are so hypocritical, all of us, I certainly am not exempt. We say things like ‘We need the Ten Commandments back in government and the schools.” We do not even have them in our own house. We say keep the commandments, and then we watch ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ and take pleasure in adultery. We watch sports and participate in idol worship. We watch CSI and take pleasure in Murder. We watch MTV and take pleasure in the dishonoring of parents, we take pleasure in the NFL’s Sabbath breaking, come on! We break every commandment just with our television, let alone the rest of our lives. I hear a lot of arguments saying that TV is just recreation and diversion. Why would we want to have a diversion from Holiness, from Christ? I do not understand, diversion is what we are striving to eliminate in our lives… right? We have a God that is love; we should turn our TVs off and revel in His amazing love. We are polluting our souls with filth, and we do not even know it! Sports, TV, Radio, all these things are killing us, and putting spots on the bride. I will stop for now. We must be broken over this, let us pray for revival, our God is so ready to grant righteousness unto us, let us long for that and not bask in the iniquity the world is feeding us through our television set.

Analysis of American Christianity Intro

The next twelve posts will be a criticism of modern American Christendom. This is born out of prayer and out of genuine concern which was born out of that prayer and will be presented, Lord willing, in a very matter of fact way. This should come as a warning, an encouragement, a wake up call, and a humbling acknowledgement of the truth about the professing church today. What these posts will not be is some angry tirade or rant born out of the flesh; instead it will be an honest and open evaluation of where we are at as the church in America. I will warn this; I do not think there will be that many good things to say about professing Christendom as a whole, if you are browsing for something fuzzy to make you feel good you may not want to continue on. On the other hand there are certainly many individuals, and congregations that are healthy and are abiding in Christ, these posts are not intending to say that everything is amiss. The individual can discern whether or not these posts are talk about them and their church. My only request is that everyone, including myself, be honest and introspective about this, before they jump on the ‘your right modern Christendom is so wrong’ bandwagon. I say this; each one of us in someway or another represents some part of the problem, and we must not exclude ourselves from the criticism that will be made here.

Hopefully the Lord will be pleased and we will be blessed by these posts over the next few months.

I hope to finish this before the year is out, but it is tough to tell whether or not that will happen.