Something To Think About Fitting in, or sticking out to God's Glory, 7/10

Eric Metaxas makes a great point about ministers/ministries and relevance in today's Breakpoint.  The gist of his commentary is no matter how hard we--conservative Christians--try to fit in, we won't.  The leaders of the world scene around us will just keep moving the goalposts, and demanding more.  I encourage you to listen to or read the piece. Metaxas is in a long and honorable line in making this observation.   The Apostle Paul wasn't a very accommodating fellow when it came to compromise with the world.  He counselled making "no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts."  (Romans 13:14) As we'll see in a moment the lusts within us are the receptors to the temptations in the world. In Ephesians 2:1-3 he indicates that the world lies in the realm of Satan's control.  Read and you'll see how those lusts fit in here. No argument from John. Or James. Jesus plainly stated that we ought not to expect to be treated than He.  The world hated and persecuted Him, and if we follow Him it will us (John 15:20). One will search in vain in Martin Luther's powerful hymn, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,"  for any hint of accommodation.  The great reformer is said to have declared, “If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ." The Church that Luther founded, floundered when it tried to compromise with the zeitgeist of the early 20th Century. And even of late, those who have tried to accommodate the clamor for the recognition of same sex marriage by their silence, have found they didn't get very far.  Just ask Lou Giglio.  (I'm not accusing him of compromise) how that worked out. A while back Os Guinness observed in, Prophetic Untimeliness, that all our efforts at relevance have done is to render us irrelevant. As a preacher I admire wryly recommended, "Why don't you preach the Bible.  No one does that anymore."  (I heard the line from Allistair Begg.) It's STTA:   To find out more about CBC at our website, or in a recent newsletter. God's Story in His Own Words. a message composed of nothing but Scripture that presents the flow of Divine Revelation from "In the beginning," to the final "Amen." You can find the most relevant message of all time here.