A pitfall of the American church is that it relies on carnal means to try and entice lost and worldly people into saving grace. The issue is, when we know real grace ourselves, we understand that there is nothing a person can say or do that can convince someone to sacrifice their worldly comforts to live a God-honoring life. Instead, we have to rely on God’s revealing Himself to someone in order to draw the lost to Him. And because we minimize that fact into a minor detail of church culture, Christians tend to strive in certain things in order to try and get imperfect people to see Jesus using imperfect means and methods.

Last week, we discussed the prosperity gospel– what it entails and why it isn’t gospel. Primarily, we focused on the financial side of the movement and how teachers of prosperity gospel twist the Bible to claim that God is the way to health, wealth, and material success. In my personal life as someone who wants to make freelance writing into a career, I follow a lot of freelancers or writing coaches to study their business models and tips. The weird thing is, without fail when talking about the “spirituality” or “mindset” of the lifestyle, they tend to mention that they subscribe to people that are known teachers of prosperity gospel: Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, Kenneth Copeland, and the list goes on.

Live your best life now. God wants us to live a life of health and wealth. Speak it into existence. Pray your way to a better life. I’m sure you’ve heard some of these taglines before. Last week, we spoke about the importance of knowing your Bible, and knowing the full counsel of God’s word so you won’t be led astray by false gospels and teachers that peddle an inferior version of the Way, Truth, and Life. Now, the Lord has been weighing heavily on my heart for some time that we need to meet some of these false gospels head-on. Unfortunately, the American Church is full of “gospels” that lead people away from Christ in droves, and it’s not because they are outwardly evil or obviously false. They often preach things that people love to hear and subscribe to.

Submission. In 2021, that’s an uncomfortable word when it comes to relationships. In a “woke” culture that champions girl-bossing, equality, and feminism, submission feels like a dirty word. A social taboo that culture twists to say, “See? The Bible is an antiquated book. Why would you live by that? It devalues women as the lesser sex! Only a bigoted jerk would still follow it!” And the only reason people can get away with saying that is because the church has done a poor job at explaining the subject of, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.”

I prayed the sinner's prayer when I was about 10 years old, or at least, that’s the first time I remember praying it with a full realization of what I was doing and committing to. Before that, I was parroting along the words my teacher asked us to repeat during Sunday school “altar calls.” I went to the same church until I was 25. I sat under the same pastor, worshiped in the same building, and learned most of what I knew about the Bible in that church. I feel it’s very important to note: I love that church. I still have nothing but deep gratitude to the man that pastored that church while I was there and led a community where ultimately, I found a place of my own.

How is it that this is one of the simplest messages in the gospel, yet we still can’t seem to grasp it? Trust me, I’ve done it, and still do. Sometimes, we read certain passages so much that we gloss over them. But we can’t allow our head knowledge to rob us of heart knowledge. So if you read today’s key verse and immediately checked out, then I need you to reposition your heart, because I can promise you, none of us have figured out how to carry out these commandments the way Jesus did. No matter how many Sunday school lessons you sat through, no matter how many episodes of VeggieTales you’ve watched, these lessons are never done learning.