The guys discuss parachurch ministries and how they have often contributed to the confusion about what characterizes a strong Christian. Then, we talk more about the necessity of ordinary faithfulness in loving the weak in the church.

Giveaway: “Spurgeon’s Sorrows” by Zack Eswine

FREE EBOOK: theocast.org/primer

Scripture references:
Romans 15:1-4
Galatians 6:1-2
1 Thessalonians 5:14
Ephesians 4:1-3
Hebrews 3:15
John 13:34

SUPPORT Theocast: https://theocast.org/give/

https://youtu.be/_5iVIY3T8Lg

Semper Reformanda Transcripts

Jon Moffitt: Welcome to Semper Reformanda.

Justin Perdue: I’m going to launch us into this by giving a little anecdote from my past with respect to a buddy of mine. It would have been almost 15 years ago that I had this conversation with a friend and he was going here, there, and everywhere doing itinerant ministry with a youth organization. He was speaking regularly. His motivations, I trust, were good and all those things. I remember having a conversation with him where I encouraged him that he would be profited by doing a little bit less of that traveling and speaking stuff, and joining a local church where he can be anchored and rooted, where he can have depth of relationship, where he can encourage others and they can encourage him, and he can just be present. I thought it was going to be better for his  Christian life long-term. His response to me —and again, very sincere, and I assume his motivations are good—was basically, “I’m out doing all this really good ministry and I’m out doing all this good stuff. If I tether myself to a local church, all that’s really going to do is slow me down.” And I looked at him and said, “But brother, even if that’s true, even if you joining a local church slowed you down, as you put it, have you ever considered that in God’s plan and in God’s economy, maybe he has set it up in such a way that he would use you to help other people?” We’ve been so conditioned to think that being strong or being mature is all about our own personal strength, our own personal growth, our own personal fruitfulness—however in the world, we define that—rather than looking to the New Testament to see that really what defines success and maturity and strength are these things that are corporate. They have everything to do with how we’re loving our brothers and sisters, how we’re bearing burdens, and how we’re being gentle and compassionate and seeking to restore those who have fallen. You just can’t do that when you’re living life in isolation and you’re in the itinerant speaking circuit and you’re not in a church. How do you do these things?

Jon Moffitt: Even Paul was an itinerant speaker, in a way, and he himself was cared for and was underneath the leadership of elders, was sent out by them, and had multiple men around him that were caring for him and that he was caring for.

Ravi Zacharias is another great example of a man who, I think, for many, many years openly has not been a part of a church underneath the church leadership and cared for. There’s so much that has been said out there and I don’t want to get into that. The one thing I want to say is I think if he was a part of a good local church that was caring for him, that maybe some of these sins and struggles would have been exposed as Galatians 6:1 says, much earlier than this longevity. I know a lot of people questioned his salvation and all that kind of stuff, and that’s not what this is about, but a man who was doing the work of Christ in isolation is just not the design.

Justin Perdue: Yeah, it’s not the design. For people that give their lives to parachurch ministries that are not also in a local church, that’s not good for them. I agree with that completely. Also, what I think is  sadly, parachurch ministries have really served to do so often is just distract Christians from what really matters. Because peop

How would you describe a strong Christian? If you were to make a list of what characterizes a mature Christian, what would you put on that list? At Theocast, we are convinced that many would not answer these questions the way the apostles would have. As we look to the New Testament, what does it say about those who are strong in the church?

Semper Reformanda: The guys discuss parachurch ministries and how they have often contributed to the confusion about what characterizes a strong Christian. Then, we talk more about the necessity of ordinary faithfulness in loving the weak in the church.

Giveaway: “Spurgeon’s Sorrows” by Zack Eswine

FREE EBOOK: theocast.org/primer

Scripture references:
Romans 15:1-4
Galatians 6:1-2
1 Thessalonians 5:14
Ephesians 4:1-3
Hebrews 3:15
John 13:34

SUPPORT Theocast: https://theocast.org/give/

https://youtu.be/zLoJL9uT9Ks

Podcast Transcript

Jon Moffitt: Hi, this is Jon. Let me ask you this one question: what is a strong Christian? Is it one who is disciplined? Is it one who has read a thousand books on Christianity? How would you describe a strong Christian according to the Bible? That’s what Justin and I are going to talk about today on Theocast. We might have a little bit of a twist to the question. We’re going to look at it from Romans 15. We hope you enjoy. Stay tuned.

What are the marks of a strong Christian? Often, things that can cripple us and drag us down are things like depression and the dark night of the soul. This conversation is birthed out of a conversation we had at a men’s Bible study and a sermon that I preached recently. We’ll put the sermon in the notes as well.

The conversation we want to have today are the marks of a strong Christian and those marks, if we were to do a survey, it would probably have been fun to do and see what people would have come up with. I’ll throw a couple out, Justin. I’ll let you throw a couple out. Ones that we’ve heard that normally, when we think of someone who is strong, this is someone who for 20 years has been faithfully on their knees for 30 minutes in the morning, an hour in the word, and really just hasn’t missed unless they’ve been sick. The mark of a dedicated, faithful, disciplined Christian—that right there is a strong Christian.

Justin Perdue: For me, whenever I’ve heard people talk about being a strong Christian, the first word that pops into my mind is discipline. It’s a person who is disciplined in their life—and that may be with respect to prayer, Bible reading, but it could be any number of things. It’s a regimented, ordered kind of life. I think a lot of times we think of Christians as being strong when they don’t struggle with particular kinds of sins—the more taboo, public, obvious kinds of sins—they don’t deal with those in the same way that others do, and so therefore they’re strong.

Jon Moffitt: One of the guys described it as there are no extremes—you don’t see an extreme high, you don’t see an extreme low, they’re just steady. Steady Eddie, the guy with the gray hair who just always is: he’s always there and he’s always faithful. That’s the strong Christian. Some of these things are true.

Justin Perdue: Some of these things are good. To be really clear, we’re not saying that discipline, steadiness, and not struggling with certain kinds of obvious sins are bad—all of those things are good.

I’ll just go ahead and say this, Jon, that if you were to take a survey of the top five things that should characterize a Christian, I am relatively confident that most of us would not answer that and would not fill that out the way the apostles would have. As we’re getting to the number one thing that should mark us, it’s pretty obvious in the New Testament and it’s not what we would put first.

Jon Moffitt: No, it is not.

We’re going to look at several passages, but we’