Tag: Christian

Abortion, Share Your Testimony

Testimony Tuesday: Sharron’s Story

Michelle Lesley

If you’d like to share your story, please see the info at the end of the article. Though all types of testimonies are welcome, right now, I’m especially looking for brief (1-3 paragraphs) testimonies of those who had to leave an unbiblical church, but diligently searched for and found a doctrinally sound church.

Sharron’s Story

I grew up in a very liberal church that, as far as I can remember, never spoke of the need for salvation, being born-again or Christ’s coming return. I was baptized, confirmed and at the age of 18 I hightailed it out because it was so boring. Thinking only of my newfound independence in moving out of my parent’s home I got into drugs and alcohol and partying. I maintained a good job and found out I could hold a job AND party!

I became sexually promiscuous and at the age of 25 I became pregnant. Giving no thought to it being a child (the idea actually never crossed my mind!) I promptly had an abortion thinking it would quickly solve my dilemma. It instead led to a lot of new self-destructive behavior.

I got married two years later and became pregnant with a child I truly wanted. I still didn’t understand the scope of abortion. It was 1975. All I knew is that it was newly legal so it must be fine.

My husband and I continued to party, we made a lot of money and could afford to live the high life.

One day, 18 years later in 1993, a neighbor came to my house and began telling me about her life before “Jesus saved her”. I thought, “uh-oh, a holy roller”. She told me she had been into drugs and alcohol and had had an abortion and had even tried to end her life. I thought “why is she telling me this!”

But it struck a nerve. That was MY life she was describing! She asked me if I knew Jesus. In a huff, I got up and locked myself in the bathroom. I stayed in there for what seemed like hours. Then it dawned on me….I was in MY house locked in MY bathroom waiting for HER to leave!

I came out and she gently led me over to my couch and I begrudgingly sat down. She told me Jesus forgave her for everything horrible she ever did. I said, ” even your abortion?” She said yes in a way that made me believe her. She shared the gospel with me and asked me if I wanted to pray and ask Him to forgive me of all my sins. She said Jesus is a gentleman and He was standing at the door of my heart, knocking – waiting for me to invite Him into my life. Suddenly a giant picture of Jesus knocking on a door that hung over the choir loft of my childhood church – filled my mind. I never knew whose door that was He was knocking at!

I began to cry so hard. 18 years of bottled up junk came pouring out. She helped me pray because I didn’t know how and that moment I was forgiven and my life was radically changed almost instantly. My neighbor helped me to join a good Bible church and my 10 year old daughter was saved two weeks later!

I devoured the Bible twice in a short time and read everything my neighbor had in her full library.

The first thing God did was heal me from the guilt and shame of my abortion. It haunted me but as my understanding of His mercy and love and forgiveness began to go deep into my heart, He healed me. It wasn’t overnight. It took a long time. But because He did heal me, 10 years later God placed me in a biblical post-abortion Healing ministry, Healing Hearts Ministries International. I trained to become a counselor and have taken many, many women through the post-abortion Bible study written by the founder of Healing Hearts. I’ve had the privilege of watching God forgive, heal and set women free from the aftermath of abortion.

I’ve been in this ministry for over 11 years and I’m always amazed at the way God brings post-abortive women into my path. God never lets anything go to waste if we allow Him to use the mess of our past.

Ladies, God is still at work in the hearts and lives of His people, including yours! Would you like to share a testimony of how God saved you, how He has blessed you, convicted you, taught you something from His word, brought you out from under false doctrine, placed you in a good church or done something otherwise awesome in your life? Private/direct message me on social media, e-mail me (MichelleLesley1@yahoo.com), or comment below. Try to be brief (3-4 paragraphs or less) if possible. I’ll select a few to share on the blog another time. Let’s encourage one another with God’s work in our lives!

Church

Throwback Thursday ~ Six Ways Not to Forsake the Assembly

Michelle Lesley

Originally published August 14, 2015

not forsake assembly

“We’ve been looking for a biblically sound church for seven years.”

“There isn’t a church that preaches sound doctrine within a 90 minute drive of our house.”

“My husband and I have given up on church.”

It was heartbreaking to read these and scores of similar comments responding to my recent article “Nine Reasons Discerning Women Are Leaving Your Church.” On the other hand, it was encouraging to hear from so many women (and even a few brave men!) whose love for Christ and fidelity to His word have moved them out of apostate churches and set them on the hunt for a body of believers which worships Him in spirit and in truth.

Even though most commenters already seemed to know this, I wanted to go back and clarify for everyone that leaving an apostate church is not the end of the story. God is quite clear in His word that we are not to abandon meeting together with other Christians for fellowship, worship, and the preaching and teaching of God’s word:

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, NOT neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. Hebrews 10:24-25

Look around. Read the paper. Watch the news. Do “you see the Day [of Christ’s return] drawing near”? I do. God says that makes it even more important for Christians to stick together, meeting regularly to encourage each other and stir one another up to love and good works. We need each other. But how can we meet together, when it’s so hard to find a church that teaches and preaches sound doctrine?

1. Make sure you’re only leaving a church for essential reasons.
There are biblical issues and then there are issues of preference. You may not like the genre of music at your church, but is it theologically sound? Perhaps you’d prefer that your pastor wear a suit instead of jeans, but does he rightly handle God’s word?

If you’re a member of a church that is, generally speaking, doctrinally sound, you should probably stay, even if – or maybe especially if – you see some areas that seem slightly “off,” biblically. It may be that God has placed you in that church to shed some light on the situation and to be a catalyst for bringing things back in line with Scripture. Sometimes when a church member or leader bobbles a little it’s simply because they don’t know that what they’re doing conflicts with Scripture. See if you can come along side the person and help out. Remember, there was a time when you didn’t know any better, either.

2. Leave no stone unturned.
If your church is apostate and you do have to leave, you should immediately begin looking for a doctrinally sound church to join. Staying home from church for a while just makes it that much easier not to go back. Ask trusted Christian friends about their churches, look on line, drive around town, but look. Don’t give up your search until you’ve checked out every single church you can possibly get to.

Keep in mind that you may have to make some sacrifices to find a church that adheres to God’s word. It might not be very close to your house. They might meet earlier or later or be bigger or smaller than you prefer. You may have to choose a church of a different denomination than you grew up in. That’s OK. Keep looking.

3. Think outside the steeple.
It seems impossible, but some people, even in populous areas, leave no stone unturned and still can’t find a church that rightly handles God’s word. (Unfortunately, we are going to see more and more of that “as the Day draws near.”) If you absolutely cannot find a doctrinally sound established church you may need to begin meeting with other Christians outside of the established church: in homes, community centers, after work, etc.

I want to be clear that I advise this only as a last resort after exhausting every possibility of joining a biblical established church. I have known of people who withdrew from established churches because of doctrinal problems, and instead of searching for a sound, established church, decided to form a house church, which then fell into other doctrinal problems of its own. House churches can be very vulnerable to doctrinal error.

If you must meet with other believers outside of an established church, make sure whoever is pastoring the group is biblically qualified to do so, and that your home church carries out all of the components of a biblical church: Bible teaching, worship, prayer, care for members, the Lord’s Supper, baptism, and church discipline. There are many wonderful, trustworthy resources such as sermons, Bible teaching, and Bible study lessons available on line for free. Take advantage of them. You may also wish to contact your denomination’s headquarters, a reputable missions organization (such as NAMB or IMB), or a doctrinally sound church planting organization and ask about the possibility of a missionary or church planter coming to plant a new church in your area.

4. Can’t find other Christians to meet with? Make them.
I say that somewhat jokingly. Of course you should not evangelize for the sole purpose of having other Christians to meet with. You should already be sharing the gospel with others simply because you are a Christian. Every Christian, regardless of her own church situation, is called to take the good news of Christ to those around her. However, whereas you might previously have shared the gospel with someone and then invited her to church with you, now you might invite her to your home church.

5. Move.
Yep, it’s a pretty radical idea, but we still have the freedom in the U.S. to move to any area of the country we want. If you absolutely cannot find a way to meet together with other Christians, you might want to prayerfully consider moving somewhere else. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and obeying Scripture is worth any sacrifice. Yes, it’s that important.

6. Pray.
God’s word says we’re not to forsake meeting together with our brothers and sisters in Christ. God wants you to obey His word. If you want to obey His word and you ask Him to make a way for you to do that, He will answer that prayer. It might not be in the way you’re hoping or expecting, but He will provide a way for you to obey Him.

 

God wants you to be in fellowship with other believers. I know it can be hard to find a biblical church, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. God’s will. God’s way. It’s my prayer that each of you reading this will find that biblical place of worship, fellowship, and teaching so that each time you get ready for assembly you can say with David:

I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Psalm 122:1

Mailbag

The Mailbag: Should Christians Participate in Boycotts?

Michelle Lesley

Originally published September 19, 2014

Should Christians boycott businesses or charities that financially support abortion, homosexual marriage, or other unbiblical things?

This question has gotten a lot of attention lately because of the ice bucket challenge and the ALS charity that funds embryonic stem cell research. I think whether or not to boycott a business or charity is something every Christian needs to decide for herself based on Scripture and her own conscience. Some good Scriptures to study to help with your decision are 1 Corinthians 8 and 10:23ff, and Romans 14:5-12.

Since there’s no one right answer to this question, I’d like to just share with you how I have come to handle it in my life, in case it might be helpful.

I used to do boycotts (I was on an e-mail list that was basically a constant call to boycott this or that business), but it got to the point where there were so many companies and subsidiaries of those companies that donate here and there to unacceptable causes that it was impossible to track all of them down and keep up with them all. Since I would have felt like a hypocrite for boycotting one company but not another, I amended my “policy” on boycotting:

1. I don’t boycott places where I get necessities for my family–phone company, grocery stores, gas stations, etc. If there were a very big public splash about one of these places supporting something unacceptable and I had another option, I might reconsider a boycott.

2. If there’s an alternative to a “boycottable” business, I take it. For example, I would not donate to Komen because they support Planned Parenthood, but I might donate to another cancer/breast cancer charity that doesn’t.

3. If it’s not a necessity and there’s no alternative, I probably wouldn’t donate/buy/shop there. For example, within the last 5 years, Starbucks has, among other very publicized pro-homosexuality actions, filed a brief against DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) and worked to support legislation in Washington state to legalize same sex “marriage.” Starbucks isn’t a necessity, and if there weren’t an alternative coffee place in my area, I would just do without. (Full disclosure- Starbucks is expensive and several miles from my house. My coffee maker is cheap and only several yards from my bed. So, I don’t go to Starbucks, but it’s because I’m broke and lazy, not because I’m boycotting.)

My way isn’t the perfect way, and there’s probably still some hypocrisy in it that I can’t see or reconcile, but it works for me.

For further reading:
Should Christians boycott companies that support anti-Christian policies? from Got Questions
Should Christians Boycott Boycotting? from The Gospel Coalition

Do you boycott any businesses for certain reasons?
How did you arrive at your decision to boycott?

Sanctification, Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday ~ Abiding in the Vine

Michelle Lesley

Originally published July 30, 2015

abiding-in-the-vine

Ah, the good old summertime! Which, sadly, is rapidly drawing to a close. Summertime brings with it a lot of simple pleasures- a more relaxed schedule, vacations, family reunions, pool parties, and barbecues. But one of the simplest pleasures my husband and I enjoy during the summer is stopping at produce stands to stock up on locally grown fruits and veggies.

In our area, farmers often just fill up the beds of their pick up trucks with watermelons, okra, tomatoes, peaches, or whatever they grow, park on the side of a well-traveled road and sell their wares. As small business owners ourselves, my husband and I like to support other small business owners, plus there’s just something about eating produce that was freshly picked down the road this morning rather than shipped in from across the country a week ago.

Recently, my husband was on his way home from work and ran across a farmer selling cantaloupes. The farmer made him a good deal, so he brought home three of them. Now, my husband loves cantaloupe, but, unfortunately, he forgot that he’s the only one in the family who does. And these were big cantaloupes.

I cut up the first one for him and he finished it in a few days. By the next week he had finished the second one. But by the time I went to cut up the third one for him, there was a soft, mushy spot about the size of a dollar bill along one side.

Nothing untoward had happened to this cantaloupe. It hadn’t been dropped, knocked around, or exposed to extremes of temperature or moisture. The only thing wrong with this cantaloupe was that it had been cut from the vine it was growing on quite some time ago. And the moment it was severed, it started dying.

As I carefully cut away the spoiled area to salvage the rest of the fruit, I was reminded of what Jesus said in John 15:4-6:

purple-grapes-553462_1280

In the first half of John 15, Jesus talks a lot about vines and branches and fruit. The main application of this passage is that Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. The living, fruit-bearing branches are those who have truly been born again. The dried up branches who don’t bear fruit are people who appear to be or claim to be Christians, but aren’t actually saved. But there’s a second layer to this story for those who are genuinely regenerate Christians: obedience. Walking with the Lord day by day and producing healthy fruit.

I looked over at the little stump of cantaloupe branch I had cut off and thrown away. Because it hadn’t been abiding in the main vine, it had dried up. It was no longer bearing new fruit nor was it carrying nutrients from the vine to its already existing fruit, namely, the cantaloupe sitting on my counter, turning to mush.

The same thing happens to Christians when we disobey God by neglecting our relationship with Him. When we go days without picking up our Bibles or praying or gathering for worship with other Believers, we begin to dry out and shrivel up, spiritually. There’s no biblical nutrition flowing from Christ through us, so we’re not bearing any new fruit, and any already existing fruit we’ve produced starts showing signs of rot.

Galatians 5:22-23 tells us:

pineapples-1606852_1280_kindlephoto-18964258

I don’t know about you, but when I’ve skipped my Bible study and prayer time for even a few days, I can tell that I’m not bearing any new spiritual fruit and that I’m less patient, less loving, less self-controlled- more rotten in all of these areas than I normally am. I can tell if my husband is neglecting his time with the Lord, and when my children aren’t having their daily quiet times. I’m surrounded by slowly rotting fruit.

As daughters of Christ, it is imperative that we receive the nourishment He has provided for us in His word, in prayer, through the church, and through obedience to Him so that we can bear good, strong, growing fruit. Because the longer we walk through life at a distance from Christ, the rottener we’ll become. Just ask a cantaloupe.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT SATISFACTION THROUGH CHRIST.

Church

Is It Really All Our Fault?

Michelle Lesley

all our fault

“If the church would just _________,
the world would flock to us.”

“The world is in the state it’s in because
the church has fallen down on the job.”

Over the past few years, I’ve been hearing and reading statements like these more and more frequently. But are they true? Is the world really in such sad shape as a result of the failings of the church?

Yes!…and…no.

It is absolutely true that the visible church – everything that wears the label “church” or “Christian,” whether or not it’s biblical Christianity – has a lot to be ashamed of. Westboro. TBN. Homosexual church leaders and members. Pastors caught in adultery. Child molestation scandals. Female “pastors.” All manner of demonic behavior masquerading as “worship,” blasphemously attributed to the “Holy Spirit.”

Even churches with an orthodox statement of faith – which, to onlookers, seem to be doing fine, biblically – water down the gospel in the name of being seeker sensitive, use materials produced by false teachers, invite false teachers to speak at their conferences, fail to evangelize, place women in unbiblical positions of leadership, have pastors and teachers whose main form of teaching is eisegesis and pandering to felt needs, fail to provide for the needs of their members and their surrounding community, focus on fun and silliness in their youth and children’s ministries instead of Scripture and holiness, allow members to gossip, backbite, and exercise selfishness, fail to practice church discipline, make their worship services into irreverent entertainment-fests, have “pastors” who are little more than stand up comedians, and have largely biblically ignorant congregations.

Some churches are spiritually healthier than others, but nobody’s getting out of this one with clean hands. Even the healthiest church is doing something wrong in some little nook or cranny. And as Christ’s bride, it is incumbent upon us, whenever we discover those nooks and crannies, to repent, set things right, and do things biblically as we move forward.

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:25b-27

That’s Christ’s vision of the church. A vision all churches fall woefully short of. And when the church fails in any area, it does contribute to the downhill slide of the world, because it is not being the city on the hill Christ wants it to be, and it is producing individual Christians (or false converts) who aren’t being the salt and light Christ wants them to be.

But is it fair to lay all the world’s woes and sinfulness at the doorstep of the church? Is it really true that if we would just clean up our act in this area or on that issue that we’d magically see an influx of pagans begging, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

No, it isn’t.

The world isn’t steeped in sin because of the failings of the church. The world is steeped in sin because of the Fall.

Look back over history. The world was vicious and depraved long before the church ever came on the scene. And, for that matter, long before God set apart and established Israel as His chosen people. (Hello? The ante-diluvian world? Sodom and Gomorrah? Ancient Egypt? Baal and Molech worship?)

Examine any era in the last two millenia when you think the church was doing a better job than it is now and take a look at the society that church was situated in. The New Testament church? It was surrounded by a world of war, oppression, torture, debauchery, sexual deviance, slavery, misogyny, poverty, famine, and child abuse.

The head of the church, Jesus Christ, spent over thirty years physically present on this earth. We know He conducted His ministry perfectly. Not once did He fail to preach the gospel or provide for people’s needs or fall short in any other way. He even went so far as to lay His life down for the sin of the world. And what impact did that have on His immediate society? Did all the Pharisees repent and temple worship was restored to godliness? No. Did Rome stop ruling the world with an iron fist? No. Did acts of sedition and perversion and persecution suddenly disappear? No. In fact, some of those things actually got worse during and after Jesus’ time.

Just like He prophesied.

You see, Jesus didn’t say, “Be more like Me and the world will come running,” or “The church can solve the ills of the world.” He said:

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. John 15:19

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 2 Timothy 3:12-13

The more the church and individual Christians look and act like Christ, the more world will hate, persecute, and ostracize us.

The church is not going to fix all the evils of society. And it’s not fair to lay that burden of responsibility – one that even Jesus’ earthly ministry didn’t accomplish – on believers who genuinely love their Savior and want to serve Him. Holding out the stick and carrot of a utopian world to the church – if only we’ll get our act together – does nothing but breed hopelessness, despair, and futility in the pews.

Does the church have a lot of repenting to do? Yes. Are there right hands we need to chop off and right eyes we need to gouge out in order to facilitate obedience to Christ? You bet. Should we be exponentially more proactive and passionate about preaching the gospel and meeting the needs of a lost and dying world? Absolutely.

But we do not do those things because we’re failing the world. We do those things out of love for and faithfulness to Christ. Christ is our goal, not a changed world. Christ is the prize we’re to fix our eyes on, not a society that behaves itself. Christ is the finish line we press toward, not domestic tranquility and morality.

Christ.

Because if it’s the church’s job to set the world right, we’re doomed. The world sins because the world is made up of sinners. And the world will continue to sin – even if every church on the planet suddenly becomes perfect – because the world is made up of sinners. But if the church’s highest attainment is love for Christ, faithfulness to Christ, and obedience to Christ, then we are successful in God’s eyes regardless of what the world around us looks like.

Let’s be faithful and trust God to handle changing the world.