It’s a disease that’s rampant in the culture and in the church. People are inundated with messages from powerbrokers, media, entertainment, TV evangelists and bestselling authors that say joy is inextricably bound up in material prosperity, physical health, relational success and all the comforts and conveniences Western society provides. For most people, joy and suffering …
“During the last two or three generations the pulpit has given less and less prominence to doctrinal preaching, until today, with very rare exceptions, it has no place at all. In some quarters the cry from the pew was, ‘we want living experience and not dry doctrine’; in others, ‘we need practical sermons and not …
“It seems to me that if any one problem outstrips all of the others in the church today, it is the utter lack of spiritual discernment (which is the ability to discern truth from error regarding God and the things of God.) The church today has boundless credulity (..they’ll believe virtually anything). And the result …
Weak, self-centered, trivial, superficial, shallow gospel presentations do not bring people to a true knowledge of the gospel, do not bring them to true salvation, but they make some kind of response to that superficiality and when there is no real transformation in their lives, they depart thinking that they’re inadequate understanding was an adequate …