Kicking babies..

I remember the first time I heard about Smith Wigglesworth.

I was standing in the entryway at LifeGate Church next to a flight of stairs talking to Pastor Jeff Payne about faith and obedience.

He told me about this guy who brought a baby back to life by "dropkicking" it.  

He told me that as Mr. Wigglesworth held the dead child in his arms that God told him to kick the baby.

He did and the baby was brought back to life.

Pastor Jeff told me this story with a look of admiration on his face.

Justin Peters nailed it in this interview when he said "how can any thinking Christian not be absolutely appalled at that?"

I definitely wasn't a "thinking Christian".  

Most who attend churches like that aren't.

I am ashamed to admit that I was amazed at the "faith and obedience" of Smith Wigglesworth too.. 

Because I was not a thinking Christian who understood the Bible and practiced real discernment but rather a naive, deceived person who trusted false teachers.

It wasn't just Pastor Jeff who admired this baby-kicker.  Pastor Tracy Rice was a fan of his as well.

Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (we call it Hogwarts) actually took students to the grave of Mr. Wigglesworth (and others) so that they could lay across their graves and "suck up the anointing" of this heretic.

If these are the sort of things you are learning about at your church, leave and find a church that teaches Scripture.

The "gift" of Discernment..

"A lot of times when people think they've got the gift of discernment, what they really have is a hypercritical personality." - Phil Johnson

This will be one of my more embarrassing confessions...

A few months into my time at LifeGate church I was sitting in their Starting Point class fuming because of two guys who were talking during the class.

I don't even remember what they were talking about, only that by the way they were talking and the expressions on their faces, I knew they were just blowing smoke and making themselves out to be more than they were.

It was pretty obvious.  

I could tell by the way others were looking at them that they felt the same way.

So I sat there getting more and more annoyed.

When the class was over I grabbed my stuff and marched out of the room.  

I didn't stop to talk to anyone and I even bumped a couple people on my way out without apologizing.

*I wasn't saved at this time and I was pretty accustomed to acting like a brat*

On my way home the pastor called me to ask me why I rushed out so quickly.  

I don't remember what I said exactly but it was something along the lines of "those guys are full of sh*t.  They went on and on, lying about themselves and how great they were and you just stood there and let them!"

He replied (and I remember this word for word): "Oh Ren, I've had a feeling about this for a while but now I'm sure of it.  You have the gift of discernment!" he told me to come to his office and he'd help me to understand what it meant.

Basically what it came down to was that I had a super power..

God had given me the ability to know truth from lies.  Who was for real and who was a fake.  Who was lying and who was telling the truth.

About anything and everything.

Yep. Another one of those invisible gifts that people in the hyper-charismatic church get, to make them feel special and somehow more powerful and loved by God than your average, boring, legalistic, Christian.

Now I know what you're thinking..

"But Ren, you study everything..  Didn't you study discernment too?"

Well of course I did!

I read everything in the hyper-charismatic pastor's library about it.

I talked to the pastors at the hyper-charismatic church.

I listened to "sermons" about this magical gift of discernment by hyper-charismatic people.

Sermons by super smart theologians like Joyce Meyer and Robert Morris and Beth Moore.

I grew so much in my gift that pastors would introduce me to other people and say things like "this is Ren, talk to her, she has an amazing gift of discernment".

I would use this gift to 'help' other people in the church.

I wish I was making this up.

You have no idea how embarrassing it is for me to admit this now.

If you haven't noticed yet; once I was told that I had this amazing and special gift, I completely forgot about every other person in the room who was also annoyed by the incessant bragging of those 2 guys.  

I had forgotten that it was obvious to EVERYONE IN THE ROOM.

Because this was MY gift.

This was MY special super power.

But what I didn't do was look at what the Bible had to say about discernment.  

Well except for the verses about the gifts of the Spirit that every hyper-charismatic takes out of context.

**by the way, when I say out of context, I mean not properly understanding the context in which the text was written- to whom, by whom, when, and why. 

You can recite an entire chapter of the Bible and still be taking it (understanding it) out of context.**

So.  What is discernment?

The word discern and its derivatives are translations of the Greek word anakrino in the New Testament. It means “to distinguish, to separate out by diligent search, to examine.”

The key words: diligent search, to examine.

John MacArthur describes it thus-

"In its simplest definition, discernment is nothing more than the ability to decide between truth and error, right and wrong. Discernment is the process of making careful distinctions in our thinking about truth. In other words, the ability to think with discernment is synonymous with an ability to think biblically."

So- "making careful distinctions about our thinking."

This means taking every thought captive and not making snap judgments based on a feeling or a hunch. 

R.C. Sproul said-

"To some it is given in unusual measure as a special grace gift (1 Cor. 12:10), but some measure of it is essential for us all and must be constantly nourished. The Christian must take care to develop his “sixth sense” of spiritual discernment. This is why the psalmist prays, “Teach me good judgment and knowledge” (Ps. 119:66)."

Now here- "some measure of it is essential for us all and must be constantly nourished."

This means that everyone who is truly saved; everyone who has received the Holy Spirit has been graced with biblical discernment.

Some more than others.

But why?

Well. That's pretty simple actually.

They pray, they search the Scriptures, they learn.

They work at it.

Yeah, work. 

And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment. - Philippians 1:9

To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight,- Proverbs 1:2

And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. - Ecclesiastes 1:13

and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. - Timothy 3:15

So is biblical discernment a gift or is it learned?

Both.

Like I said, every true believer has been graced with biblical discernment.

You have to be saved before you can truly understand the Word of God.

Anyone can read the Bible.

Atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans..

Everyone.

But only those who are saved can understand it.

The Bible says so.

But they have to feed their discernment.  Nourish it with the Word of God.  They have to learn it.  They have to read it. They have to meditate on it, and they have to pray for it. 

I'm not just giving you my opinion here. I promise.  

The Bible says all of this.

The problem is, there are so many people who have been taken in by false teachers who believe they are saved but aren't.

So they believe whatever they are told by the false teacher because what they are telling them sounds good.

That's how I know that I wasn't saved at that time.  Of course I didn't know that then.

It's only because I am saved now that am I able to look back on the things I learned from Joyce Meyer, Robert Morris, Beth Moore, Les Beauchamp, Tracy Rice etc, and realize that they were ALL lies.

I know that they are lies because now I understand Scripture.

Anyone, believer or unbeliever can listen to a couple of windbags brag about themselves and know that they are full of crap. 

But not everyone can discern a false teacher from a biblical one.

Not everyone can discern the true teachings of Scripture from lies taught by ungodly teachers.

Well then, how does one really grow in biblical discernment?

Believe the gospel.

Repent.

Pray for wisdom and learn the Bible.

"How is such discernment to be obtained? We receive it as did Christ Himself—by the anointing of the Spirit, through our understanding of God’s Word, by our experience of God’s grace, and by the progressive unfolding to us of the true condition of our own hearts."- R.C Sproul

In the beginning..

On January of 2015 LifeGate church put on their first “Greater Glory” conference.  

Clay and I were still members of the church at this time.  In fact Clay was providing security for David Perkins, the speaker at the conference. 

The last day of the conference was the last day we attended LifeGate Church.  

The next day I went in, sat down at the computer and removed as much of our information as I could from their database, emailed the pastors to tell them that we would not be back, I put my set of keys on the desk, and we left.  This wasn’t planned.  We hadn’t set a date to leave LifeGate, we hadn’t discussed it with anyone, we hadn’t found a new church.  

We just left.

I had wanted to leave for almost a year prior to that but Clay wasn't ready.  But something happened at the conference that sealed it for him and at that moment he was ready to go.

Maybe I'll explain what happened in another blog post..

For the first four years that we attended LifeGate we were happy.  

Really happy.  

It was our first experience belonging to a church and we were devoted members. 

We made friends with leadership quickly and volunteered constantly- helping our friends prepare meals for everyone on Wednesday nights, setting up luncheons for funerals and I made two thousand phone calls reminding people to give money to the church (not even kidding).  

Clay took care of repairs that their maintenance people didn’t know how to do themselves and he helped form the security team.  

For the last year I volunteered in the office four or five days a week making phone calls and doing data entry.  

Clay and I would stand in the senior pastor's office and pray over him before he would go out and give his “talks” on Saturday nights. For 5 years we practically lived at LifeGate church.  

We were popular, and we liked it.

But we were naive about the whole church thing.  Aside from the boring church services we were forced to attend as children (that we never paid attention to) this was what we thought church was supposed to be. 

Colored lights, fog machines, loud music, people dancing and singing to feel-good songs played in upbeat tones to get us all hyped-up and ready to listen to a feel-good sermon all about us.  

The pastors were funny, they threw candy from the stage, and handed out free copies of Jesus Calling, Heaven is for real, The Circle Maker, The Shack and any other self-centered heretical book they were promoting at the moment.  They even used props and drew pictures to keep us all engaged.  It was fun.  We were “doing life together”.

From the beginning there were things that didn’t sit right with me and at first I chalked it up to being a new Christian.  After all, I was still learning “church”.  Even as I read more of the Bible and began to see that what I was reading wasn’t lining up with what I was seeing or hearing at LifeGate, it didn’t sway me.  These were my friends!  They were like my family.  In fact, I liked a lot of them more than certain members of my real family.

So what if something they preached from the pulpit didn’t exactly line up with what I read in the Bible?  There are so many different ways to interpret the Bible right?  Was it really a big deal that they used verses completely out of context as long as they loved Jesus?  That’s what’s important isn't?  That we love Jesus? 

 Everything else is religion and legalism.  It’s the relationship that counts!  

Besides, just because I thought that particular verses meant something else didn't that just prove that the Bible means different things to different people?

The Bible was alive.  We were told that all the time.  

And things that have life change all the time.

Duh!

Yeah, for real..  I actually believed that..

At the time I had no idea what a Confession was or why they were so important.  Plus if anyone had told me about them at that time I would have ignored them or said something like "how do we know that the people who wrote the confession were right?" which is exactly what the people who still attend that church (and others like it) say when I mention a Confession now..

At the time I truly believed that how you feel was what was important.

Besides, they were pastors!  Obviously they knew much more about the Bible than I did.  So I disregarded what I read and how I understood it and went with whatever they said while pushing aside the “but that’s not what the Bible says” thoughts whenever they came into my head.

But then my husband’s cousin sent me a Bible class in the mail.  The Levitical Sacrificial System.  Wow!  This was the “meat” that I read about in the Bible! I completed the class and then took it again.  I learned and wanted to learn more.  

This was when I started asking questions about what I was reading in the Bible.  

Simple questions like:

Are the 10 Commandments given in the order they are given for a particular reason?  

Every single person I asked (six pastors including the senior pastor and one person who was actually employed at a bible college at the time) couldn't give me an answer except to say “I’m not really sure” or “I’ve never wondered about that, let me know what you find out”.  

How do we know that certain books of the Bible are actual historic events and not just parables to teach a moral lesson?  

I mentioned three books of the Bible specifically when asking this question- Job, Esther, and Ruth.  

I asked three of the pastors. 

The first one said “I know they are real historical events, but I will have to check some of the books I kept from college to explain why and I’ll get back to you.”  

He didn't.

The second one answered with a couple questions of his own- 

“why do you need to know? Why can’t you just have faith that they really happened?”

 He never actually answered any of my questions.

Now that I think about it, he never answered any of my questions that pertained to the Bible specifically.   

The third pastor said “I'm not sure, I'll look into it and let you know”.  

He did come back later with an answer and then admitted to me that while he was online looking for the answer he also learned that Luke was not one of the twelve apostles. 

He actually said “I didn’t know that”.  

He had been a pastor for 20 years and he didn’t know that. 

*sigh*

If you didn’t pick up on it, one of the books I asked about was the book of Ruth.  

Ruth!  The wife of Boaz and the mother of Obed.  Obed was the father of Jesse.  Jesse was the father of David.  How can it be that not just one pastor, but THREE pastors did not know that Ruth was the great-grandmother of King David?  

The Bible clearly says so.

I'm not talking about new Christians here, I'm talking about pastors.  It’s literally their job to know this stuff!

I realized that if I wanted to know more about the Bible that I wasn’t going to learn it from the leaders of the church (ironic eh?) so I enrolled in theology school.  By this time I knew that LifeGate was seriously selling people short as far as educating them in Scripture, but I still stayed. 

 I still wanted to stay.  

Sure I grumbled occasionally because I wasn’t learning anything that I didn’t already know, but all in all LifeGate Church was a great place to be.  

By this time my husband and I were even more popular, we were part of the in-crowd. Everyone knew us, and some of the pastors were telling visitors about me and my “amazing testimony”.

I really did have an amazing testimony. Something that can only be described as a “God thing” really did happen, and it lead me to the pastor’s office where I repeated the prayer that saved me got me started on a journey toward my salvation four years later.  The problem though, for those first four years I really did think I was saved.

I wasn’t and neither was Clay.

I’m not going to go into everything that happened leading up to the moment that I sat in that pastor’s office repeating a prayer that would save me give me a false sense of security for the next four years but suffice to say that all at once I was aware that everything I had believed about God and myself up until that moment was a total lie and that I needed to know the truth.

So, I sat in the pastor’s office and told him what had happened.  

Then for the next hour or so he told me about himself and how he used to be a selfish guy who wasn’t interested in who Jesus was, but one day while he was visiting this little red church he ran down to the front, fell on his knees and cried and then confessed that he was a sinner and needed Jesus and then he was saved.  There was quite a bit more detail than that but that’s the gist of it..  So I repeated the prayer, admitted that I was a sinner, asked Jesus to please come into my heart, and I was saved!

I wasn’t though.  

I thought I was.  

I really did.  

I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing.  Serving, attending every event, leading a table at Hearts, giving money so people could go on mission trips, joining prayer groups, volunteering at the homeless shelter, handing out money to anyone and everyone, and was part of a small group full of other popular people.  

I read my Jesus Calling book every day, read the bible for two hours every morning, and then studied it for another two hours at night. If there was something a Christian should be doing, believe me I was doing it.

But I wasn’t saved.  

I was simply a person who went to church a lot and did a lot of stuff there while handing out a lot of money. 

And then one day I watched a video on Youtube by David Platt talking about how it doesn’t matter what any particular scripture means to any particular person; what mattered was what the bible said it meant. 

I actually jumped off my couch and yelled "YES!"

Over the next few weeks I searched for more videos.  

That David Platt video led me to a video of Todd Friel and that led me to videos from the Strange Fire Conference put on by John MacArthur and that led me to a video seminar by Justin Peters, and that led me to a video called 10 indictments against the modern church by Paul Washer, and that is what led me to God.  

That is when I really heard the Gospel and understood what salvation was, who Jesus really was, who and what I really was, what it was that Jesus was saving me from and why I so desperately needed Him. 

People please, seriously..  

Saying a prayer inviting Jesus into your heart is not going to save you.  

Nothing you do is going to save you.  

Not a choice or a decision that you make.

No one is saved without hearing the gospel and no one hears and understands the Gospel without God giving them the grace to do so.

You don’t have to believe me.

Read the bible and find out for yourself.