Pulpit....Not The Podium

        Radio host Mark Levin will be honored in two days at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He is to receive the inaugural Andrew Breitbart Defender of the First Amendment Award. Mark Levin deserves to be honored. His books and his radio program have been invaluable to an America under siege and I have written of them often but our problems are deeper than even the tyranny in our midst.
         During those first years after a burden of sin appeared on my back and I came to the cross of Calvary and found redemption in what Jesus Christ accomplished on that day over two thousand years ago I found myself frequenting Christian conferences. They were a time of great joy and I'm so thankful for them but if one is not careful one can live only for the conferences and seminars and begin to live vicariously through the speakers and come to depend upon their efforts to sustain one's enthusiasm.
         Only a reformation in American Christianity holds any hope for us to survive as a nation. God's Holy Spirit is the only one who can transform us by the renewing of our minds. It is only upon the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ that we can depend. Should God have mercy upon America it will be through our pulpits that he reforms us and there is scant evidence at the present time of such mercy. The vast majority of my brothers and sisters in Christ would disagree with that assessment but that same vast majority has been given little to compare with present day evangelicalism. The following post is from August of 2011:

Pulpit....Not The Podium    

         One of the running themes in this blog is the need for America to humble itself before God, before God humbles us before our numerous enemies. Yesterday, Texas Governor Rick Perry hosted a major prayer event in Houston of upwards of 25,000 people with that very message. One might therefore expect the writer of this blog to wholeheartedly rejoice in this but that's not the case. I agree with the diagnosis, but not prescription of a media event.
         We are falling apart in every way imaginable. Our Congress is clueless which is a description far too generous to use on our White House. Our culture is in chaos. Our media is in denial while our enemies are certain of our collapse. Pep rallies are not the answer especially when politics is part of it. I'm not questioning the intent of the organizers or Governor Perry for I know what it is like to finally figure out that America is collapsing because its reliance upon God has vanished, because we have gone our own way and God is permitting us to reap what we have sown.
          I have probably written a dozen times in this blog on the need for America to humble itself before God and I hope in those blogs that I made it known that I was talking about myself as much as anyone who might read it. Ultimately, we do not have to see America's sins clearer...we have to see more clearly the one sinned against (God.) A deficient view of the holiness of God can result in feelings of a satisfactory repentance and the consequent projection upon others of the need to do so also. A heightened view of the holiness of God will hardly get one off the hook so easily.
         The Puritan mind could see clearer... God and His character, hence repentance was an everyday occurrence as they humbly approached God for all their needs. The secular mind of today sees the Puritan mind as a lifelong quest to quench joy in anyone and everyone and the evangelical mind is a product of these times, on display in Christian bookstores, Christian music concerts and events, and fundraising telethons, and is much more susceptible to a good gimmick than what is really needed.  
         The podium, the bookstore and the blogosphere can indeed address our inflated view of our minds and ourselves and the turmoil that lies ahead but only the pulpit can effectively deflate that view, soften the heart and ease the burdened soul through the proclamation of redemption through the blood of Christ as written in God's Word. The speaker on the dais and the soapbox tends to point out every culprit except the one standing on the dais and the soapbox and those gathered together to listen.
         We attended a Lutheran church (Missouri Synod) this past week while traveling. I scoured the local church websites looking for a Lord's Day sermon topic on Christ and, as I had done in the past, wound up choosing the Lutheran church, for the atonement is at least always present in the liturgy if not the sermon. As it happened, a "retired" minister was filling the pulpit for the regular pastor. In essence, his sermon was "Christ is the only answer." A worshipper came up to my wife and recommended that we should come back next week when the regular pastor is in the pulpit but I think that we were blessed with the right day, the right minister and the right message. In our storied past, calls for national days of prayer and fasting have been corporate, where the composer of the call was in need of repentance as any of the represented, but ultimately the pulpit is what God utilizes in calling individuals and nations to repentance. Unfortunately for today, our pulpits are in need of awakening. Such is our extreme dilemma.

Once again I would like to recommend refnet.fm as a resource for a comparison of our church age today and that of times past.