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Sermon & Worship Packages: Time to Remember
Rodney Buchanan
Annie Dillard, in her book The Writing Life, tells of an experiment that was done with butterflies. The experiment involved placing a male butterfly with a female butterfly of his own species. Then they placed a painted cardboard butterfly alongside them. The cardboard butterfly was bigger than the female — bigger than any female could ever be. The male ignored the living female butterfly next to him and went to the painted cardboard butterfly over and over again. Dillard adds, “Nearby, the real, living female opens and closes her wings in vain.” It is a picture of the world in which countless males are trapped today. Staring at painted cardboard butterflies they are squandering their own resources and defrauding the real, living, breathing females in their homes. But then you don’t have to establish a relationship with cardboard butterflies. You don’t have to put up with their failures — nor do they have to live with you and discover yours. There are no expectations from you. You don’t have to communicate with them. An inviting smile is painted on their faces and they don’t even know you. Perhaps it is better that way.
In an episode of the TV show Friends Chandler and Joey turn on their television to discover that for some reason, their cable company is allowing them to receive free porn. For the rest of the episode, these guys are glued to the set. They never leave the house. They never leave their chairs. The TV never gets turned off. They couldn’t get enough of the stuff.
Pornography is dangerous because it always leaves you wanting more. Lust never delivers what it promises.
So we are not only talking about the sex act itself, but also anything that feds these shameful evil desires....
And listen one thing that does that, and it something I need to talk about briefly is pornography... because It is an epidemic that is destroying our country... It has it’s death grip in people especially men from 11 year olds to men married with children..
. Pornography is a $13 billion dollar a year industry....
. In 1999 web-site revenues were 1.2 billion dollars
. There are 100,000 porn sites on the web - with an estimated 200 new sites
Everyday.
. Currently more than 50% of requests on search engines are for porn
. 10,160 porn movies were released in 1999 alone
. There are 450 porn magazines being published today
. There are more porn outlets today than there McDonalds
. More than 300 million x-rated videos are distributed each year. This is more than the entire population of the US.
. 25% of porn sites have brand names (barbie.disney.nintendo,nba...) in their metatags to attract hits from search engines.
Pornography now nets over $40 billion a year selling 400 porno magazines openly.
The 3rd largest grossing industry in the US is illegal drug sales.
15 million alcoholics cause over half of our traffic deaths, and that number increases by 1500 every day.
Shoplifting losses net over $30 billion a year which is 400 times the amount stolen in all bank robberies.
Since Roe vs. Wade, America has seen over 40 million abortion murders of our children. We have only recorded 1.2 million deaths in all wars since the Revolutionary War.
Barna surveys report that 66% of all born-again Christians believe there is no such thing as absolute right or wrong. Rather, their decisions are based on what’s best for them. That percentage grows to 75% of all college students today.
Georg...
If I Were the Devil
If I were the prince of darkness, I’d want to engulf the world in darkness, and I’d have a third of its real estate, and I’d have four-fifths of its population, but I wouldn’t be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree. THEE. So I’d set about however necessary to take over the United States. I’d subvert the churches first. I’d begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve. DO AS YOU PLEASE. To the young, I would whisper that the Bible is a myth, I would convince them that man created God, instead of the other way around. I would confide that what’s bad is good, and what’s good is square. And the old, I would teach to pray, after me, "our father, which is in Washington." And then I’d get organized. I’d educate authors in how to make lewd literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting. I’d threaten TV with dirtier movies and vice versa. I’d peddle narcotics to whom I could; I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. I’d tranquilize the rest with pills.
If I were the devil I’d soon have families that war with themselves, churches that war with themselves, and nations that war with themselves, until each in its turn was consumed, and with promises of higher ratings, I’d have mesmerizing media fanning the flames.
If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine young intellects, but neglect to discipline emotions, just let them run wild, until before you knew it, you’d have to have drug sniffing dogs and metal detectors at every school house door.
Within a decade I’d have prisons overflowing, I’d have judges promoting pornography. Soon I could evict God from the courthouse, then from the schoolhouse, and then from the houses of Congress. And in His own churches, I would substitute psychology for religion, and deify science. I would lure priest and pastors into misusing boys and girls, and church money.
If I were the devil, I’d make the symbol of Easter an egg and the symbol of Christmas, a bottle. And what’ll you bet I couldn’t get whole states to promote gambling as the way to get rich. I would caution against extremes, in hard work, in patriotism, and in moral conduct. I would convince the young that marriage is old fashioned, that swinging is more fun. That what you see on TV is the way to be, and thus I could undress you in public, and I could lure you into bed with diseases for which there is no cure.
In other words, If I were the devil, I’d just keep right on doing what he’s doing.
- From a Paul Harvey Broadcast
Why Mike Guglielmucci Lied to the World
The Australian musician who wrote "Healer" needed his own healing from a porn addiction. His tragic story should challenge us to embrace purity.
I play the song "Healer" all the time in my car. I can't get the tune out of my head. You probably know the words:
I believe You're my healer
I believe You are all I need
I believe You're my portion
I believe You're more than enough for me
Jesus You're all I need.
Thousands of churches have been singing the popular worship chorus since Australian youth pastor Michael Guglielmucci wrote it in 2007. The Aussie worship band Hillsong United has made it a global anthem, and it's especially popular among people battling illness. But the song took on a darker meaning in August when Guglielmucci admitted it was part of an elaborate hoax he created. When we sing "Healer' from now on, let's remember that Jesus wasn't lying when He promised to heal our broken soul.
Christians around the world felt shocked and betrayed when the 29-year-old minister admitted he had faked cancer for two years in a strange ploy to hide his secret pornography addiction. The fiasco has become one of the biggest scandals to rock Australia's Christian community in years.
In a tearful apology aired on Australian television several weeks ago, Guglielmucci said he faked symptoms and wrote bogus e-mails from doctors. He sat in waiting rooms alone while his family assumed he was getting treatment. He appeared in church concerts with an oxygen tube in his nose, deceiving thousands of mostly teenage fans into believing he needed a physical healing.
This talented but tormented young man eventually trapped himself in his own deceptive web. Church leaders asked him to confess his lies to the police, since he used the story to raise funds. He was stripped of his ministerial credentials and is now receiving psychiatric help. Aussie church leaders, including pastor Brian Houston of Hillsong Church in Sydney, had to make public statements to calm distraught churchgoers who feel betrayed and, in some cases, defrauded of their money.
I can't begin to imagine the pain that Guglielmucci's parents feel. (His father is an Assemblies of God pastor who read his son's apology to a stunned congregation outside Adelaide). I am sure trust has been severely damaged among members of Guglielmucci's family. But how do we respond when a leader fails us like this?
Thankfully, in Guglielmucci's case, he did not justify his behavior. His apology was read in churches all over Australia. He told a news reporter: "I'm so sorry not just for lying to my friends and family even about a sickness, but I'm sorry for a life of saying I was something when I'm not. From this day on I'm telling the truth."
Guglielmucci admitted that he began to weave his false story of illness in order to mask his addiction. Sometimes he felt so guilty after looking at porn that he couldn't go to work--so he called in sick. He dug himself deeper every day. His little lies grew to become a monstrous con job.
This man's pretend sickness was caused by a disease of the soul that plagues millions of people today, including many Christian men who wear masks to church to hide their shame. They haven't stuck tubes in their noses or broadcast their lies to teenage audiences like Guglielmucci did, but they are lying just the same to cover up their lust. They, too, need to come clean.
(Source: J. Lee Grady, Charisma.)
Chuck Colson has called Internet pornography “Spiritual Crack Cocaine,” because of how quickly people can become addicted to it and because of how destructive it is to the human soul.
Charles Colson told the following story in an address at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi:
I love the illustration about a man named Jack Eckerd. A few years ago I was on the Bill Buckley television program, talking about restitution (one of my favorite subjects) and criminal justice. Bill Buckley agreed with me. A few days later I got a call from Jack Eckerd, a businessman from Florida, the founder of the Eckerd Drug chain, the second largest drug chain in America. He saw me on television and asked me to come to Florida. He agreed Florida had a criminal justice crisis, would I come down and do something about it? And we did. We got the attorney general of the state, the president of the senate; we got on Jack Eckerd’s Lear jet; we went around the State of Florida advocating criminal justice reforms, and everywhere we would go Jack Eckerd would introduce me to the crowds and say, "This is Chuck Colson, my friend; I met him on Bill Buckley’s television program. He’s born again, I’m not. I wish I were." And then he’d sit down. We’d get on the airplane and I’d tell him about Jesus. We’d get off at the next stop, he’d repeat it, we’d do the same thing again, and I’d talk to him about Jesus. When we left I gave him some of R. C. Sproul’s books and I gave him C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, which had such an impact on me. I sent him my books. About a year went by and I kept pestering Jack Eckerd. And eventually one day he read some things including the story of Watergate and the Resurrection out of my book, Loving God, and decided that Jesus was, in fact, resurrected from the dead. He called me up to tell me he believed that, and I asked him some other things. When he got through telling me what he believed I said, "You’re born again!" He said, "No, I’m not, I haven’t felt anything." I said, "Yes, you are! Pray with me right now." After we prayed he said, "I am? Marvelous!" The first thing he did was to walk into one of his drugstores and walked down through the book shelves and he saw Playboy and Penthouse. And he’d seen it there many times before, but it never bothered him before. Now he saw them with new eyes. He’d become a Christian.
He went back to his office. He called in his president. He said, "Take Playboy and Penthouse out of my stores. The president said, "You can’t mean that, Mr. Eckerd. We make three million dollars a year on those books." He said, "Take ’em out of my stores." And in 1,700 stores across America, by one man’s decision, those magazines and smut were removed from the shelves because a man had given his life to Christ. I called Jack Eckerd up. I said, "I want to use that story. Did you do that because of your commitment to Christ?" He said, "Why else would I give away three million dollars? The Lord wouldn’t let me off the hook."
Isn’t that marvelous? God wouldn’t let me off the hook. I don’t know any theologian who’s better defined the Lordship of Christ than that. And what happened after that is a wonderful sequel and a wonderful demonstration of what happens in our culture today.
We are caught up with this idea that we’ve got to have big political institutions and big structures and big movements and big organizations in order to change things in our society. And that’s an illusion and a fraud. Jack Eckerd wrote a letter to all the other drugstore operators, all the other chains, and he said, "I’ve taken it out of my store. Why don’t you take it out of yours?" Not a one answered him. Of course not--he’d put them under conviction. So he wrote them some more letters. B...
An initial sin or mistake leads to regret … which is followed by some destructive coping mechanism … which brings more sin and mistakes … which prompts more regret. On and on the downward spiral goes
Some of the coping mechanisms we turn to include "drugs, alcohol, overeating, gambling, pornography, escapism, or inappropriate relationships. When we rely on these things to cope with guilt and hopelessness, we find that regret begets regret - and the cycle continues."
Susan Wilkinson, Getting Past Your Past, 40
ILL. Do you remember reading this article in the newspaper, "GIRL ACCUSED OF PRINCIPAL POISONING TRY"? It says, "An 11-year-old girl tried to poison her principal in an attempt to prevent her parents from learning that she had been in a fight at school, police said. The 5th grader had a classmate deliver a cupcake containing three pellets of rat poison to Zona Jefferson, principal of Alice Drive Elementary School."
The article goes on to report, "The poisoning attempt was the second this school year by an elementary student in this city. In September, a student tried to poison his teacher because she wouldn’t let him go out for recess. That incident also involved rat poison."
"Police said the 9-year-old boy put poison in his teacher’s iced tea after he got the idea from the movie `Heathers,’ in which a teen-ager poisoned her classmates."
Another newspaper told about a man arrested for molestation. It reported that when the authorities went to his house they found stacks of pornography portraying that same kind of behavior.
In response to such news items, one newspaper received this letter, "Yes, it is true. I admit to reading Penthouse & Hustler magazines & viewing the Playboy Channel. I am also proud to say that I am a devout Christian."
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