A Peruvian woman called Virgen Maria, who is married to a carpenter, has named her son Jesus Emanuel after giving birth on Christmas Day.
via BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Peru Christmas baby named Jesus.
It had to happen eventually :)
Should Christian discipleship & mentoring be completely confidential? What if someone confesses sin that they then refuse to turn from. How do you ‘tell the church’ as Jesus say in Matthew 18?
I came across a link of a story about a member of a church in the US who confessed to her mentor that she was in a sexual relationship outside of marriage. After some time the mentor got other people involved to mentor her - without her permission or any prior warning. She left the church rather than leave her new bloke. But her church, instead of handing her over to the sin to run its course, decided to take Matthew 18 literally and announce her sin to the rest of the church (the man involved is not an attender) despite the fact that she has left.
A little vindictive, no? Grace Church (tagline: Changing Lives One Truth At A Time) doesn’t think so…:
Rebecca Hancock told FOXNews.com that Grace Community Church, a non-denominational church in Jacksonville, Fla., was against her relationship with boyfriend Frank Young because the two were sexually active but not married.
When she wasn’t willing to obey the church’s orders to leave him, she decided to leave the church instead, allowing her two children to remain active members.
Now, she says, church elders have given her the worst ultimatum yet: In a Dec. 8 letter, they told her she either has to meet with them and end her “immoral” relationship or she will face public humiliation.
“Bottom line, on January they 4th they are going to the church publicly with my sins, and my children will be sitting in church at the time,” Hancock told FOXNews.com.
Jesus’ heart and words in Matthew 18 are not about bullying & humiliating people into repentance.
Its a real shame to see what we’ve seen in the life of Todd Bentley over the past week - it has finally emerged that TB was in an illicit relationship whilst running these recent meetings and that that is the reason behind the separation. You have to feel for his wife & family.
I imagine there will be further revelations about what he’s been up to behind the scenes. I do feel both angry and sad. I visited Toronto twice but I’ve never been to Lakeland or anywhere to see Todd speak - I’ve always felt strangely ambivalent toward his ministry and so have not invested an awful lot and hence don’t have a feeling of being duped. I do feel disappointed that this is going to be used to undermine some of the work God did despite Todd in the first place (Calvanists would say God planned this to happen for higher purposes, Arminians have to admit that God foreknew what Todd would do and still chose to use him - praise the Lord there are more sensible ideas than these about God’s perspective of time). It is an amazing testament to God’s grace & favour that He would meet with people despite what was going on.
So is this just a clear cut case of someone diving into ministry before their character was ready?
Or, as a friend of mine suggests of many fallen leaders, did Todd just pull the ejector seat cord because the pressure of leading this ministry was too great for him?
Calvinism teaches the doctrine of Unconditional Election. Briefly stated, it is the idea that before the world began God chose (elected) who he would save, and who he would destine for reprobation and punishment. It is called ‘Unconditional’ because there is no condition placed on humans or any action that we could do that could change that predestined election. Regardless of what we do eternal bliss awaits those whom he chose, and eternal punishment awaits those he chose to be punished. (Frankly I think that is enough to write off Calvinism but I’m trying to focus on the Election issue).
Arminianism teaches the doctrine of Conditional Election. Again briefly stated, it is the idea that before the world began God had foreseen who would have faith in Christ and then predestined them. Arminians are forced to say it like this because they (like the Calvinists) insist that God sees the future as a single certainty - that God has exhaustive foreknowledge of the future (Calvinists go a step further to say that God determines the future also).
“The meek man…knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring.”
A.W.Tozer
I love this quote. It reminds me too of the phrase “in God’s eyes” that we often hear prefixing a sentence: “In God’s eyes you’re great!”, “In God’s eyes you’re worthwhile!”, “In God’s eyes you’re beautiful!”. We forget that the prefix is entirely redundant, as if the world’s sight, or our sight is absolute reality. Sometimes I think we get a little too caught up in relativism and overvalue our own worldview at the expense of cold, hard reality and do ourselves no favours at all. Relativism is a recent human construct born of our individualism and the next logical step of a society disconnecting itself from God - we do well to remember that.
