New Year’s Champions
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Most of us never tire of flipping to a new calendar and the new opportunity to begin fresh. There is something about it that feels good. It signals an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, to start anew, and maybe, just maybe, this next year will end better than the one we just put behind us.
Having said that, we still live in a world where sin crouches behind us like a shadow. Wherever there is light there will be a shadow. As a shadow follows us and so sinfulness follows us into the new year. All that is wrong with a fallen world and a fallen people will creep into this new year, hiding behind the corners of our new year’s resolutions. But knowing this, being cognizant of this, allows us to compensate for this shadowy reality. For Christ has come, as we celebrated at Christmas. Christ is the Light of the world, Whose light shines and no darkness can overpower or overshadow the revelation of His Word and the joy that a Savior is born to us.
Back in November, Jared Bridges, a writer for Family Research Council’s The Washington Stand published an article and a pithy review of Rosaria Butterfield’s new book Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age. As a result of this article, it is now on my new year’s reading list. I can’t vouch for how good or helpful this book is, but it seems worthy of a read. As Bridges shares a few excerpts from the book, he notes that this is a book about truth, the truth that uncovers the lies that culture cloaks in shadows and deceptions. Lies can never stand the light of truth. Butterfield reveals her own story of uncovering the lies and deceptions that bound her for many years in homosexuality and gender ideology. Butterfield’s story, though, resolves into a life that was drawn to Christ through His Word and witness of others.
The book promises to work through five particular lies, though there are others, that seek to be solidified by many in culture and also seek to push back against Christ’s truth. Bridges lists them in his article:
Homosexuality is normal.
Being a spiritual person is kinder than being a biblical Christian.
Feminism is good for the world and the Church.
Transgenderism is normal.
Modesty is an outdated burden that serves male dominance and holds women back.
Couple these with the many others that show up as media headlines and religious freedom cases where entities are seeking to silence the Church’s voice of biblical truth, and we have quite a malaise of challenges heading our way even in this new year. What are we to do?
Certainly the Church will be the Church, and she will proclaim God’s Word with all its truth and purity. Christ, in His death and resurrection, assures us that He has already won the day. Standing firm in that Word is the Christian’s calling for the Church, but also for the sake of our culture. The Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty (LCRL) stands to bless Christians with an aptitude, a knowledge, and a calling for living out God’s truth even as public Christians as God’s places us into the midst of the culture that we find ourselves.
LCRL’s Champion For Religious Liberty is the special effort to help Christians discover that God is at work in our world to bless and preserve His ordering of relationships, people, and governing entities. We equip Christians to learn how to engage the issues and people who seek to silence God’s way of blessing and preserving work. We network together with people so that they can support one another in standing for His truth. This isn’t to protect the Church necessarily but to help others from even further hurting themselves.
With so many of our children and our grandchildren buying into the wiles of the worldly ways, think about them, if you need to, to consider just how important this work is today. Then, consider applying this to even others. Rosaria Butterfield speaks about how Christ won her over by His grace and mercy. As a former lesbian, she witnesses the fact that Christians opened her eyes to the fact that homosexuality wasn’t her greatest sin . . . but her unbelief. Now she stands to counter those that perpetuate lies and deceptions that cause hurt and damage in this life, with the hope and trust that Christ will win their day finally through His grace and mercy. What a champion.
Please consider bringing the “Champions For Religious Liberty” to your congregation for a Religious Liberty Weekend, https://www.lcrlfreedom.org/champions , where together we can explore the important ways that you and I can stand for truth, a truth that will help bless and preserve so many others who are currently hostile to us. Let this be one of your new year’s resolutions.
The Rev. Mark Frith is director of the Champions for Liberty Network.
Be Informed
Are you prepared to answer arguments against why marriage should include homosexuality or even that homosexuality is an equally committed form of love? Rev. Heath Curtis of LCMS Stewardship helps you make the case for biblical truth on the matter.
Be Equipped
Life issues are big issues because you were made in God’s image, and that’s no small thing! In fact, “The original Hebrew for image means ‘reflection.’ You were created by God to reflect His will among creation.” Learn more here.
Be Encouraged
“We are stewards of the Gospel of the One who was the perfect Steward where we are the failed stewards. He gave it all for the world and you.” –LCMS Stewardship
