Decision Making: How Do I Stop Being A Sleazy Charismatic? Reject The Bullseye Approach

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Christ Alone for Salvation and the Reality of Divine Judgment

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish. God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bashed

Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. Listen and enjoy this installment of Iron Sharpening Iron as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

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Rejecting the Bullseye Approach to Finding God's Will

On this episode of Bible Bashed, we will begin a series of follow-ups to our recent discussion on decision making designed to help the recovering charismatic take that next step of faithfulness by answering the question, how do I stop being a sleazy charismatic when it comes to making decisions?

These episodes will be for individuals who want to stop being false prophets but just can't seem to quit. So step one in this process is going to be to reject the bullseye approach to finding God's will.

Now the bullseye approach to finding God's will can be worded in a variety of ways. Often we describe the bullseye approach, or individuals who teach this kind of thing describe it as basically trying to find the center of God's will or to put it more crassly, to be in that sweet spot of God's will.

And the problem with this approach is that it is the kind of approach that essentially views God's will as some sort of secret, unrevealed plan that God has specifically for an individual that they have to discover through favorable circumstances.

And so as you think about this kind of way of determining God's secret plan for your life that's unrevealed or the secret expectations you have, the primary way you're going to determine that is by looking at your circumstances and looking at the situations that you're in.

And then the logic of the bullseye approach is that as you get closer to the center, this mysterious center of God's will, there will be more blessings to be found there. And then the further away from the center you are, the more trials and difficulties that you're going to experience.

And the issues with this are manifold. But one of the primary issues with this is that this is based on a prosperity assumption about the way that the gospel actually works. So essentially one of the things that you have is you have charismaticism or mysticism.

So you're looking to find God's will not in God's revealed word but through favorable circumstances. You have that added to a prosperity expectation which essentially thinks that any time favorable circumstances are happening, that's a sure sign of God's pleasure.

And then any time unfavorable circumstances are happening, that's a sure sign of God's displeasure. So you're combining this charismatic impulse with a prosperity impulse, and you're coming up with the bullseye approach to finding God's will.

Trials, Persecution, and Faithfulness

Now as you read through the Bible, one of the things that you're going to realize is that Jesus says over and over again that the faithful Christian should expect difficulties that come from his faithfulness.

So the Christians are told to count it all joy when we fall into various trials. Trials are the testing of our faith which are designed to produce steadfastness. If this bullseye approach to finding God's will is accurate, any kind of trial that we experience is not going to be a trial that comes from faithfulness, but it's going to be a trial that comes from not being in the center of God's plan.

But then the Bible will tell us over and over again that woe are you if all men speak well of you. All those who desire to live righteously in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. We are destined for affliction.

Jesus says, do not think I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword to set father against mother, sister against brother. A man's enemies will be those of his own household.

If you think about the expectations that Jesus has of faithfulness, one of the things you'll realize is that all of the apostles, except for John, were murdered in a grisly way. And not only were they murdered in a grisly way, they were told to rejoice when they were murdered or when they were being persecuted.

They were told to rejoice and be exceedingly glad because great was their reward going to be in heaven. And so as you think about the Christian life, one of the things that you can't do is you can't adopt this silly bullseye approach to finding God's will.

There are many times in life where you are going to be doing exactly the thing that God wants you to do, and people are going to be mad and people are going to be upset about it. That's the way the Bible works.

If they hated Jesus, they are going to hate his followers. If they hated the master, a servant is not above his master. If they hated him, they're going to hate you. Often, the more faithful an individual actually is, the more that he's going to suffer.

Rejecting Circumstances as a Simple Guide to God's Will

Now, one of the things that you can't do is you can't assume that an absence of suffering means that you are in some sort of bullseye of God's will. But then you can't also assume the opposite. There are times in life where an individual will suffer, but he won't suffer for righteousness sake.

He will be suffering because he's being foolish or disobeying God's command. So one of the things that you have to do if you want to know God's will is you're not going to look to favorable circumstances to determine God's pleasure, and neither are you going to, in a simplistic way, look to unfavorable circumstances to determine God's pleasure.

One of the things you're going to do is you're going to ask yourself what has God revealed about this situation, and you're going to devote yourself to the things that are actually revealed. And then when individuals come along and persecute you for doing the right thing, you can rejoice then not because your people are mad at you.

You can rejoice because you know that you're doing the thing God wanted you to do as revealed by the scripture, and then this is the anticipated response. So what do you do? How do I stop being a sleazy charismatic when it comes to making decisions?

Reject this bullseye approach to finding God's will.

This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion. We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media.

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Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.