Written by J. V. Fesko |
Monday, August 1, 2022
Accountability is only as good as the truth. If you want to grow in your sanctification, you have to be honest with Christ, yourself, your family, and your church. When you’re honest and admit your sins, your need for Christ, and your need for assistance, then you can begin to deal with your need for repentance and greater sanctification.

Part of my pastoral ministry involved making regular visits with the members of my congregation. My elders and I did our best to visit every household in the congregation once a year. There were and are a number of benefits to doing this. First, it allowed me as the pastor to get to know my sheep. It is very difficult to get to know people if the only interaction you have with them is on Sunday when you spy their faces from the pulpit or when you see them across the buffet line at church lunch. I would spend a portion of my visit with the household getting to know them. Second, it was an opportunity for me as the pastor and my elders to be present in a home before there was trouble. It is a bit difficult to enter into a home for the very first time when you have to deal with a problem. People might not trust you, know you, or be willing to listen to your counsel because you have not established much of a relationship with them. True, regardless of these things, members of a church have the biblical responsibility to submit to their elders (Heb. 13:17), but knowing your sheep certainly helps.
However, one of the things that I quickly noted was that when holding members accountable to their profession of faith, accountability was only as good as the truth. What do I mean? On a number of occasions I would observe a family and instinctively know that something was wrong. I saw certain behavior that led me to believe that there were spiritual problems. When an unmarried couple, for example, is very “hands-on,” in public, showing a great degree of public affection, then chances are such behavior is merely the tip of the iceberg—what they do in public is a fraction of how they’ll conduct themselves in private. I visited with such people and flat out asked them about their sexual purity, and I typically received answers, that on the face, were correct—they denied wrong-doing.
I also typically asked the members of my congregation, “Are there any significant struggles, or sins, that we can assist you with, pray for you, and hold you accountable?” I typically received negative replies to this question with the assurances that all was well. Apart from any specific hard-evidence, and only unfounded suspicions, I had no other choice than to take people at their word.
Read More
Related Posts:

There’s no question that the West is becoming increasingly antagonistic towards Christianity. One reason for this is that the ever-expanding LGBT agenda is deeply incompatible with biblical Christianity. In our age of ‘self,’ choice and rights are paramount, and no one has the right to tell someone else what to do (unless, of course, you are correcting a Christian).
Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age speaks into our context, unpacking how we arrived at our current state. Butterfield gives a biblical diagnosis and prognosis of our predicament, outlining the key issues at stake. For this reason, it is a critical book for our day and age.
The author, Rosaria Butterfield, was formerly engaged in a homosexual relationship and worked as a radical feminist academic at Syracuse University in New York. After a radical encounter with Jesus Christ, her life was irrevocably changed. She now serves the Lord as a writer, speaker, and homemaker, sharing the good news of Jesus and its transformative power.
As the title suggests, the book provides biblical truths in response to five lies prevalent today:

Lie #1: Homosexuality is Normal.
Lie #2: Being a Spiritual Person is Kinder than being a Biblical Christian.
Lie #3: Feminism is Good for the World and Church.
Lie #4: Transgenderism is Normal.
Lie #5: Modesty is an Outdated Burden that Serves Male Dominance and Holds Women Back.

You ought to buy the book to receive all it has to offer, but here are some key points I took away:
1. The Lie of Gay Christianity
In Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age, Butterfield cautions Christians against jumping on the ‘Gay Christianity’ bandwagon. This movement describes homosexuality as an identity rather than a behaviour, refuses to identify homosexual lust as sinful (cf. Matthew 5:27), and embraces LGBT language in Christian activities (i.e., diversity, inclusion, hate speech, etc.).
Butterfield argues that ‘Homosexual orientation is a man-made theory about anthropology [which] comes from atheistic worldviews that coalesced in the nineteenth century in Europe.’ (p. 65) The Freudian idea of ‘sexual orientation’ is an anti-biblical concept which must therefore be rejected by the church.
She reflects on her own deception before becoming a Christian:
“Instead of lesbianism being who I was, I now understood it as both a lack of righteousness and a wilful transgressive action. I was no victim. I was no “sexual minority” needing a voice in the church. I needed to grow in sanctification—just like everyone else in the church.” (p. 49)
She continues:
“I learned that we repent of sin by hating it, killing it, turning from it. But we also “add” the virtue of God’s word. It is light that changes darkness. The Bible calls us to mortify (kill) and vivify (enliven). I realized that Christians are given a new nature, yet we have sin patterns that we need to kill, to be sure.” (p. 49)
‘Gay Christianity’ is not only anti-Christian, but it denies salvation to those in the snares of sexual sin. It negates the possibility of freedom from disordered sexual desires and does not appreciate the power of the cross to free captives from their sin. On the contrary, the gospel offers a better narrative.
First, those who have engaged in homosexuality — in thought or deed — need not view themselves as permanently enslaved to their desires. Instead, God calls them, as he does all people, to repent and believe in the gospel, that they may have everlasting life (cf. John 3:16).
Second, it provides freedom and hope to those feeling shackled by their sins. By accepting Christ, we can overcome the deeds of the flesh through the Holy Spirit, including sexual sins. God no longer defines us by our transgressions, as we have been united with Christ. For believers, how beautiful it is to be recognized as a ‘new creation’ rather than being labelled by our sins?
2. Spiritual or Biblical?
In recent times, liberal Christianity has reared its ugly head again. In the name of ‘tolerance,’ liberal Christianity despises exclusive truth claims as bigoted and inhospitable. As J. Gresham Machen, author of Christianity and Liberalism wrote in 1923:
“The movement designated as “liberalism” is regarded as “liberal” only by its friends; to its opponents it seems to involve a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts.”[1]
Similar to the climate of the early 1900s, there is now a push in the West to distinguish ‘Biblical Christianity’ from ‘Spiritual Christianity.’ In other words, your relationship with Jesus is more important than your doctrine.
Butterfield challenges the false dichotomy between spiritual and biblical, suggesting that true spiritual only flows from biblical Christianity. Unless spirituality is tethered to the truths of Scripture, it is nothing more than subjectivism.
Butterfield echoes the words of Peter Jones, who suggests, ‘Spirituality has become a do-it-yourself life hobby that blends ancient Eastern practices with modern consumer sensibilities.’[2]
She explains why only biblical Christianity provides the strength and power we need to resist worldly lies:
“What makes one child’s faith stand against the world and another fall in conformity to it? The word of God is our answer. And the word of God is an answer of hope. Jesus is our hope, and he is not done with any of us.” (p. 124)
Biblical faith is grounded in the promises of God as revealed in His Word. Unlike the chaff of ‘spiritual Christianity,’ biblical Christianity is anchored in real promises of hope, joy, and peace for those who repent and believe.
Read More
Related Posts:

The chief principle and origin of prayer is the Spirit of adoption received into the heart. Many of you cannot be induced to pray in your family (or, even more seriously, on your own personally), because you say you aren’t accustomed to it, or haven’t been taught, or something like that. But, beloved! Prayer doesn’t come through education or learning — it comes from the Spirit of adoption. If you say you can’t pray, then it means you do not have the Spirit — and if you do not have the Spirit, you are not the sons of God. Please be aware of the logical conclusions of what you say.
But I hasten on to the characteristics of this divine work: fervency, reverence, and confidence, in crying, ‘Abba, Father.’
Spirit-Given Prayer is Fervent
Unfortunately, fervency is usually spent on other things of less importance than prayer. Truly, what people are spirited and passionate about is all in the way of contention and strife, or high temper and misnamed zeal. Yet because the things that we are so earnestly contending about have some connection with religion, we not only excuse our vehemence but approve it!
Other people’s spirits are burned up on the pursuit of the things of the world. The sharp edge of their desires turns that way, with the inevitable consequence that it is blunted and dulled in spiritual things, so that it cannot pierce into heaven and prevail effectually.
Fervent like burning incense.
As there were no sacrifices in the temple without fire, kept going perpetually, so there is no prayer now without some inward fire in the desires, kept blazing up and growing into a flame as those desires are presented to God.
As the incense that was to be offered on the altar of perfume (Exodus 30) had to be beaten and prepared, so, truly, prayer would do well to be made out of a beaten and bruised heart and contrite spirit (Psalm 51:17) — a spirit truly conscious of its own unworthiness and needs. That pounding of the heart will yield a good, fragrant smell, as some spices only do when beaten.
The incense was made of various spices, suggesting to us that true prayer is not one grace alone, but a compound of graces. It is the joint exercise of all a Christian’s graces, seasoned with all. Every one of them, whether humility, or faith, or repentance, or love, etc., contributes some distinctive fragrance. The acting of the heart in supplication is a kind of compendium and result of all these, just as perfume is made up of many ingredients.
But above all, as the incense was, our prayers must be kindled by fire on the altar. There must be some heat and fervour, some warmth, conceived by the Holy Spirit in our hearts, which will make our spices send forth a pleasant smell, as spices do when they are heated.
Fervent and unspoken and discerned by God.
Let us commit ourselves to be more serious in our approaches to God, the Father of spirits. Certainly, frequency in prayer will greatly help us towards fervency, and help us to keep it when we have it.
Crying in the heart may be silent to others, but it strikes the ears of God. His ear is sharp, and the voice of the soul’s desire is shrill, and even if it cries in the depths, they will meet together. It is true that vehemence of affection will sometimes cause the voice to be lifted up, but yet that fervency will cry just as loud to heaven when it is kept internal. I am not insisting on such extraordinary degrees of vehemence that they affect the body — I would rather wish that we would accustom ourselves to a solid, calm seriousness and earnestness of spirit, which would be more constant than such raptures can be.
Spirit-Given Prayer is Reverent
Another thing that prayer is composed of is reverence. And what is more suitable than reverence, whether you think of Him or of yourselves? “If I be a father, where is my honour? If I be your master, where is my fear?” (Mal. 1:6).