Pastor Hurst

DON'T JUST SETTLE

“Don’t just settle.” This I have found myself often admonishing during counsel. The marriageable young lady is dating a young man of questionable relationship with Christ, sub-par work ethic, and evident narcissistic behavior; thinking she may never have another chance at being a bride, she begins to feel urgently inclined to accept his proposition of marriage. She asks my wife and me what we think. Among other things we say, “Don’t just settle.” A couple needs a vehicle. They’ve found one that seems like a good deal, but there are some indications of things not being just right with it; yet, tired of looking around and needing a vehicle, they’ve just about talked themselves into purchasing it. My opinion is asked. Pointing out some red flags about the vehicle, I urge, “Don’t get in a hurry. Check it out better. Don’t just settle.” Another is seeking a position of work or ministry—a position that is a fit for his gifts, skills, education, goals, desires, etc. The only position currently offered is one that is not a match for any of these. “Should I take it,” he asks. Again, I find myself saying, “Don’t just settle.” Most simply, just settling is accepting less. Settling is letting go of expectations, dreams, beliefs, values, goals, etc., and accepting something less. Often, this happens when one has a deflated view of himself, his abilities, potential, resources, and prospects, and an inflated view of the adversaries, obstructions, and interferences against his having, obtaining, achieving what would be the best, the more fitting and fulfilling. Often, just settling is fueled by believing one is out of options, opportunities, and time. Believing this, he gives up expectations, promises, dreams, aspirations, whose fulfillment may still lie in his future and just settles for whatever is in his present. He settles. He acquiesces, “This is just what I am; I cannot change. Things will never be any different; I will just have to live with this. Nothing better will ever come along; I better just resign myself to this is the way things will be.” Settling is a surrender that says, “I cannot be any more than I am, do any more than I do, have any more than I have.” To settle for less is to wave the white flag accepting the inferior, mediocre, second-rate, inadequate as inevitable. This is one reason I have an aversion to the ubiquitous, go-to, and hackneyed cliché, “It is what it is.” Often, that is the expression of one just settling. Arguably, COVID has drastically affected the visible Church. But the Church does not have to settle for an emaciated, decimated, de-moralized new existence. It must not. The Church must not settle for being anything less than the Spirit-filled, Gospel-preaching, life-changing Church, the kind Jesus founded and left when He ascended—the kind of Church He is coming back for. For many Christians, not worshiping in-person but only watching live stream has become inveterate and, thus, to them the new norm. Others are resigned that they will never be a witness for Christ or used by the Spirit. There are temptations, many have concluded, they will never overcome. They must accept their foibles, failures, and faults as permanent. No! The Christian must not settle for anything less than transformation, empowerment, and sanctification. He must not settle for anything less than being fully engaged in worship, fellowship, and sharing the Gospel with others. He must not settle for stagnation in place of progression. He must not settle for anything less than victory. One unsaved has become convinced his sins cannot be forgiven, that his heart is unconvertible. He has been told or has convinced himself that God can’t or either won’t save him. He will die unprepared for eternity. The unsaved must not settle for thinking he must be lost. He must not settle for believing he cannot believe. He must not settle for anything less than forgiveness, hope, joy, peace, and assurance of eternal life that Christ can and will give him. Sometimes this “settling” thing comes up when bartering over an item being sold. Recently, I sold a garden tiller on Facebook Marketplace. I had listed it with the price I expected. Minutes after posting it, potential buyers were messaging me; some asked, “Will you settle for less?” We must not settle for less than what God has for us, will do in and through us, and can make us. Not as individuals. Not as a church. Unwilling to settle for less, some sellers, to preclude even being asked, include with their list price “firm.” Firm means, “I will not take, I will not settle for less.” Less is not an option. Our time is a unique time for Church and Christian. It is a time to be firm. It is a time, not to settle for less. I find myself saying it again (to myself as well as.) “Don’t just settle.”

DANGER: NO SENSE OF SMELL

As of this writing, I have smelled basically nothing in well over three weeks. Nothing. Nada. You’ve already concluded why--COVID. Pre-virus, I had an extraordinarily acute sense of smell—which was generally a blessing but at times a curse. I have found my loss of smell upsetting--I cannot taste my food; disheartening—I cannot be awakened by the aroma of anticipated morning coffee; life-changing—I no longer see a need to bathe since I seem never to stink (just joking on this one); and even depressing—I begin to think, whatever the reassurances from virus veterans, that I will never regain my sense of smell. But until reading an article in the newspaper two days ago, I never thought of the loss of smell as being dangerous. I should have. Something was bugging me when I spilled gasoline on my clothes while filling my lawnmower’s tank. I kept thinking, “I can’t smell gasoline.” That pestered my subconscious, but I soon forgot about it as I concentrated on mowing. The spilled gasoline came back to me when I read the article. The point the reporter made was that the loss of smell from COVID was dangerous and could be life-threatening for those who lived alone. Those with COVID-affected anosmia cannot smell natural gas, or, I might add, smoke. Therefore, their home could have a major natural gas leak or have a hidden smoldering fire, and they would never know it. Inability to smell could be disastrous. Yes, losing one’s sense of smell can be a very dangerous thing. As I contemplated this reality, it occurred to me that too many Christians have or are losing their sense of smell. Before elucidating that thought, let me share something else that bothers me—pouring spoiled milk on my cereal. I’m one of those who fastidiously seeks to avoid ever tasting spoiled milk. So, I’ve developed a habit of de-capping the milk jug each morning and sniffing to see if it has gone bad before pouring it over my cereal. The expiration date can be three weeks in the future, and I’m still going to sniff before partaking. People also sniff for natural gas leaks, smoke, and many other things. Thus, a metaphor has emerged in our common vernacular. We speak of performing a smell test. A smell test is an effort to determine if something is genuine, ethical, believable, etc. Without a sense of smell, I cannot do a smell test on the milk. Many Christians today never do a smell test. They accept into their lives, partake in their worship, gulp down from their teachers, consume from new books, things that would have been repugnant to the Apostles, the first Christians, etc. It never crosses their mind to do a smell test to ascertain if these things are God-pleasing, doctrinally sound, or spiritually edifying. For most, it would be pointless for them to do a smell test. Why? They have lost their sense of smell. Something could doctrinally stink of humanism, occultism, new ageism, pseudo-psychology, and post-modernity, and they would never detect it. They have no sense of smell. They have lost what gives them a sense of smell. I have no sense of smell because the coronavirus has severed the supporting cells to my olfactory neurons which send messages to my brain. My sense of smell comes from these olfactory neurons and their supporting cells. Analogously, the Word of God, the Bible, is the olfactory neurons and supporting cells of the Christian, church, movement, and denomination. In so many cases being no longer inculcated with the Word, no longer consulting the Word, no longer immersing in the Word, and no longer venerating the Word as an authority for belief and living, much of American Christianity has a damaged olfactory system. Without the olfactory, there is no smell. Without smell, there is no smell test. As I can no longer determine if the milk is spoiled, too many Christians can no longer tell if what they are hearing, seeing, reading, is spoiled or not. What I mean is they have lost their discernment. They no longer can differentiate between truth and falsehood. Many Christians can no longer tell whether something is genuine, believe-worthy, correct, or even moral. The olfactory neurons, what cause smell, are simply not there. The Word of God is simply not there. In wide-swath of American Christianity, how-to, motivational, and story-time sermons have replaced preaching the Word. It’s worse than that. The Bible is no longer seen as the final authority for belief, worship, and living. With no ingrained Word in their worldview, thinking, or processing, Christians have lost their sense of discernment. They cannot tell when the milk is spoiled. They gulp down the spoiled milk of elements of other religions, faddish culture, false doctrine, and non-Christian thinking, all the time insisting it is fresh, wonderful, the greatest thing ever. But, there is hope. Just prior to reading the news article, I had told my family, “I am trying to remember how things I’m eating smell. Maybe this will trigger its return.” Encouragingly, the article confirmed that there are things one can do to regain his smell. One thing is to take sniff food items with strong odors. This could forge new olfactory neuron paths. This is also the way Christians can regain their sense of smell, their discernment. Return to the Word. Return to Truth. Return to daily consumption of the Word. Return to Biblical preaching and teaching. Partake of it. Take it in. Ingest it. Soon, the sense of discernment will return. A new book, a new form of worship, a new charismatic orator, a new teaching, a new movement will appear. Christians will do the smell test. They will smell the gasoline in the clothes with which the charlatan garbs his teaching. They will smell the smoke from the hidden smoldering false doctrine. They will smell the spoiled-ness of the milk behind the glamour, lights, faddishness. They will smell the danger. And, they will thank God, their sense of smell has returned—as, I pray, mine soon does. Pastor Clifford Hurst

WHEN GOD MAKES THE WAY OF ESCAPE

Below I have retold one of my favorite stories of the Revolutionary war. Previously, I shared this story on the day of one of our church’s Annual Freedom Services to thank God for His providential hand in the founding of our country; however, this time I share it because I kept thinking of this Scripture: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (1Co 10:13). “God…will…make a way of escape.” No doubt, some are currently enmeshed in awful trials and tests, in the worst of circumstances and under the fierce sustained attack of the enemy. It appears defeat is inevitably imminent. But, God has promised to make a way of escape. Take heart from this story from the war that won us the freedoms we celebrate today: It was the first great battle of the Revolutionary War; it was also a crushing defeat for our rag-tag Continental army. General Washington with his troops had retreated and were in a dire predicament: They were trapped with the town of Brooklyn and the British army in front of them and the East River to their backs. Both armies were waiting for the wind to change from the northeast—one with horror and the other with anticipation of finishing off these rebels of the Empire. When the wind changed, the British warships would be able to sail up the river and bombard the Continental soldiers into oblivion or total surrender. Had that happened, we would not be celebrating freedom today. There simply would be no United States of America. But, the wind did not stop blowing. The conditions worsened with the skies growing ever darker, the temperature plunging, and the rains falling. An assessment of the situation concluded that, if our army stayed put, annihilation was yet inevitable. The only possible but improbable option for the Continental army was to retreat over the East River to Manhattan Island. If the storm lifted during the retreat, the British army on its front would notice and immediately attack, destroying our colonial army as the British ships moved up behind closing off any attempt of escape. The colonies would revert to the rule of tyranny. Even as the next day dawned, the storm continued. All that day in inclement conditions, arrangements were made for escape. Boats were collected. The time came to begin the retreat across the river. At that very moment, the rain stopped and the winds died making escape possible. Under the cover of the darkness of night, the hodgepodge flotilla of small overloaded boats began ferrying the many soldiers over the river. The boatmen worked feverishly all night, but there were just so many soldiers. By daybreak, when the British would have been able to observe the retreat and attack, a huge part of the army was still stranded on the Brooklyn shore. But, just as the night that had concealed them was lifting, a heavy fog fell upon them. It was as difficult to see in the morning as it had been in the night. Even as the sun climbed higher and higher and should have burned off the fog, the fog held on, enshrouding the retreat. Amazingly, just a short distance on the other side of the East River where the Continental troops were disembarking on the bank of New York, less than a mile away, there was no fog. The sun was brightly shining. Just minutes after the last of America’s troops had escaped from Brooklyn and marched into New York, the fog lifted. The red-coated enemy could be clearly seen on the opposite shore surprised and disappointed that all the Continentals had escaped to fight another day. Nine thousand American troops escaped without the loss of even one life. It is very difficult not to see a Providential orchestration of their escape, and, consequently, of the freedom of the United States. It simply wouldn’t have happened without Divine intervention. Likewise, none by their own ability or efforts walks away from the bondage of sin, Satan, and this world. God, through Christ’s work, orchestrates the escape. For those who trust Christ, God also orchestrates the escape from trials and temptations. With God, the escape isn’t so much a short-cut chute. It’s not Mario or Luigi facing a long stretch of attacking enemies and obstacles but is directed by a player to a secret door through which he can go and escape what was ahead. The escape in the Mario game is a bypass of what is ahead. The escape God makes is a way out; but it’s not so much a take-you-out so you don’t have to face trouble but a take-you-through-and bring-you-out-the-other-side. It is not that, as believer, you find yourself walking a dark, arduous path through a deep valley when God taps you on the shoulder, points to the sheer cliff wall along the path and pushes His finger through it enabling you to step through the opening and find yourself suddenly on a mountain top in bright sunlight. With God, many times it’s more like this: Though you may have to walk the whole length of the valley, suffer the whole life of the disease, fight a continuing battle, God will bring you out the other end. You will escape the valley. You will, in the end, come out victorious. God is faithful! God made an escape for the Continental Army. He will make one for you too. Pastor Clifford Hurst

My Dad

Today is the first time in thirty years I will not follow preaching a Father’s Day sermon with a phone call to my dad—oh, wait, twenty-nine years; last year he was yet living but unable to talk on the phone. Knowing I will not be making that call makes the celebration of the day and my preaching a sermon for it quite a different thing. My father passed away last August. I shared a eulogy at his memorial service. For thirty years, each week, I have written an entry (which, sometime back at folk’s suggestion, I began to share on social media) for the Pastor’s Pen space of our church’s Sunday bulletin. For today, having nothing else relevant to surface above the ache of missing my dad, I’ve shared a mostly unabridged copy of my eulogy of him, Allen E. Hurst: Yesterday morning Sandra and I walked west from my parents’ home to uptown Shawnee; we walked up 10th St., then through Woodland Park, back down 10th street, and then over to the Santa Fe Depot. I had often taken that walk with Dad when I was home to visit. At every building, every edifice, every street corner, the bridge, the creek, the railroad tracks, Dad would have a story to tell, a memory to share, a historical note to make. Not counting two very short hiatuses, one at the beginning of marriage and the other at the end of life, Dad lived his whole eighty-eight years never moving more than a half a block as the crow flies. He was born at home on 9th St., raised three houses down on McKinley, and lived the rest of his life in the house on Harrison St., whose lot adjoined the backyard of the house where he was raised. But, on Sunday, close to 5 p.m., he made a move, the biggest move he ever made. He moved to his mansion in the House of the Lord on Heaven’s Boulevard in the Celestial City. Dad wasn’t famous. But he was just what this world needs--a moral, hard-working provider and producer--and a faithful Christian. Among our earliest memories of Dad are of him reading the Bible to us and praying with us before we went to bed at night. From a child, I believed Dad to be a man of faith. I was deathly ill once. He prayed for me, and I immediately fell asleep awakening the next morning completely well. Dad had to get up early for work—while it was still dark. What times I had to get up to go to the bathroom, I would see Dad in the living room either reading his Bible or knelt down to pray before work. He was always a person of prayer until it came time to eat. His advice then was, “It’s time to eat. Pray short. If you need to pray through, you can do that some other time.” Few, even preachers, knew the Bible as well as Dad. He had read it over and over, cover to cover. Pre-disease Dad was a quiet, mild, gentle man. Yet, he was a man of inalterable principles, unflagging devotion to duty, and unerring common sense and wisdom. As we were raised, he said and did a thousand things that built character into us. Let me just share a few examples of this: We were never late for anything. We would sit in the car in front of church way before it started, ready to go inside when other folks started getting there. “Always be early. It isn’t right ever to keep someone waiting.” I guess we didn’t keep God waiting. When I was a really young child, just starting to color, he would not allow me to turn the page until I had finished coloring that picture. “Always finish what you start.” Then there were those axioms he restated over and over: “If you turn it on, turn it off. If you got it out, put it up.” “It’s not how much money you make. It’s how you manage what you make.” Yes, he was a wise man with the wisest reflections on and advice for life. However, sometimes he showed a lapse of wisdom--like when he got Mom a paint scraper for her birthday. Dad’s chief concern in life was to provide for his family. After I was grown, he told me his greatest fear in life was that he would be able to get us children raised. He did. He took care of those not in the family too. He was always making something for someone. He was continually helping widows of the church repairing things gone wrong with their houses, etc. Once, Dad had a mentally disabled neighbor whose only means of transportation was a bicycle. It was always breaking down. Dad was always repairing it—even after the neighbor moved across town. Dad never believed he was very smart—he was always self-deprecating of his intelligence—Over and over he’d say, “I’m a dummy--I can’t spell.” Yet, he could repair or make anything mechanical. He could do any carpentry, electrical, or plumbing work. When Tinker Air Force base got CNC machines, Dad wanted to be, not only an operator but also a programmer. He borrowed my college trigonometry book and taught himself all about sines, cosines, tangents, and the rest. He soon was programing using up to five axes. He submitted many suggestions and designs concerning aircraft and repairing them that were accepted and adopted—and awarded with cash bonuses. Here are a few things even family members may not have known: Despite being shy, Dad used to lead songs and give youth talks in church. I’ve read his notes of these. Some of them were blistering. He was also a good artist. He could sketch things very realistically. Something he was especially proud of--he was the champion ice cream and watermelon eater in his unit at Tinker. I don’t know if I have any other fans of my ministry, but I know, if I do, that Dad was my biggest fan. We will be throwing out tons of cassettes and CDs of my preaching that he listened to over and over again, saving each one. Soon after I declared I was called to preach, he came back into my bedroom with a list of scriptures. He said, “Called to preach, huh? These will help you preach. If you are really called to preach, you will memorize them.” I did. To this day, I still quote them while preaching. He would bug me incessantly to do the necessary work to get my ordination until I did. He always had this sense of humor: When I was first called to preach, I asked him once, “What about this fasting, Dad.” He replied, “Tried that once. Got hungry. Didn’t like it.” Of all the memories, the one, I think, that reminds me most of his love for me was when he took off from work when I was sixteen to take me to get my driver’s license—in his 1946 Willys Jeep. He had taught us to drive with it. He’d said, “If you learn to drive this stick shift, you will be able to drive anything.” Afterward, we loaded up the dogs in that jeep and went rabbit hunting until the sun set. I still vividly remember that sunset, that day, that Dad. One image that is indelibly branded on my mind and heart is of Dad worshipping the Lord. During altar time, there by the piano, at the edge of the platform, one of us boys on either side, he would lift up his hands, tears running down his cheeks praising Jesus, and soon he was speaking in tongues and shouting, “glory”. Those times were the few times when I saw Dad truly experiencing freedom and joy. It is into that joy, unending joy, unmitigated joy, that he entered Sunday: “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” (Psa 16:11). This is where he is. This is what he is experiencing. Right now

DOWN DEEP, THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO CHANGE

The brother was obviously upset. “Pastor, I’m not trying to be a crybaby, but it’s getting almost unbearable. My coworkers, including my boss, are giving me a horrible time for my being a Christian. They mock me as being a ‘holier-than-thou’ for not laughing at their jokes, make fun of me for reading my Bible during breaks, bombard me with comments about all Christians being hypocrites, wreck my workplace when I leave….” I tried to encourage this brother with, “Well, at least they aren’t throwing you to the lions in the Coliseum, burning you at the stake, exiling you to Patmos.” No, I didn’t say that. With whatever else I said trying to encourage him, I did say this, “Brother, here’s the irony: If you were to change, give up your faith and become like them, they would be highly disappointed. Down deep, they really don’t want you to change.” I went on to explain that despite all their harassment, they could see the difference between his life and theirs. Theirs, despite all their hoopla and bravado, was a life of disappointment, failure, hopelessness, meaninglessness, etc. Seeing his life, they could see that, just perhaps, there was something that could give them hope of help, purpose, and meaning. No, those hecklers at his workplace really don’t want him to change and would be greatly disappointed if he did. They were glad for the difference, however convicting of their own lives it might be. I knew I was right when I recently listened to a debate between a Christian and an atheist. What a shock I got. The moderator, knowing the atheist had once been a Christian in the Church, asked the atheist something like, “I can see you greatly disagree with the Church. What about the Church would you like to see it change?” The atheist, Douglas Murray, replied (I paraphrase from memory), “I don’t want it to change. Even though I’m now outside the church, I’m an atheist, it deeply upsets and bothers me that the Church is changing and becoming something other than the Church. It particularly bothers me that the Church no longer preaches the Gospel about humanity’s problem being sin and there being salvation only through Jesus Christ.” He was bothered by the Church’s becoming, in so many places, engaged as an agent of political activism and/or social justice—although he is an advocate for social justice. Whatever reasons he holds or shares for this sentiment, the reality he saw is this: When the Church becomes chiefly about political activism and social justice (as contemporarily defined), it will pollute, dilute, and ultimately jettison the truth of the Gospel. It becomes just another social club, social justice proponent, or political activist group. Jesus left His disciples with two mandates: A Commission to fulfill and a Compassion to demonstrate. The Commission, “go into all the world and preach the Gospel.” The Compassion, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these (the naked, the hungry, the imprisoned), ye have done it unto me.” The Commission is a command. The Compassion is a commendation (or, if not done, a condemnation). The Church should be responsively compassionate to the needs of those in society--but, not to the neglect of sharing the Gospel. And the Church should actively preach the Gospel, but not to the ignoring of the real-life needs of suffering people. Too many churches today have stopped preaching the Gospel in order to be relevant to and engaged with contemporary society by espousing, endorsing, and engaging in social justice causes. Others have lost their distinct identity as Gospel proclaimers by merging with and becoming political activists. Their jingoism is anything but evangelism. Down deep, I think there are many in the unbelieving masses who are disappointed by this. They may not have realized it, codified it with thought, articulated it, or conceded it, but they sense that, if the Church changes and no longer shares the Gospel, there is no help, hope, or meaning for anyone, themselves included. If the Church is just like them, the Church and, by association, God, has nothing to offer. The Church may protest that it does preach the Gospel. But, when it is rabidly shouting loyalty of a political candidate, championing him with unbridled enthusiasm across the public forums and in the streets, society does not hear the measured, muted, unenthusiastic whisperings about Jesus from its pulpits within its sanctuary’s walls. When the Church is marching locked-stepped with stomping feet and exuberant shouts with proponents of social change, the lost world cannot hear the Church’s tiptoeing into its gathering place for benign, whispered worship. Basically, I had told the harried Christian that he should take the verbal attacks at his workplace as a compliment. Down deep his coworkers were glad he was different. His difference spoke of hope. Conversely, when society, political party, praises the Church for being so engaged, so relevant, so supportive of its causes, that’s not a compliment. That is a condemnation. If honest, down deep, the unbelieving don’t want a Church just like them. There’s no hope in that. Any harassment over your faith, if it is indeed that, is a great compliment. It says the Gospel is getting through. That’s something they really don’t want you to change. --Pastor Clifford Hurst

BYPASSING THE BURN BARREL

Today, Thursday, was the day after the termination of our statewide mask mandate. When I opened our local paper on my tablet, I was greeted with a large photo on the front page of women gathered around a burn barrel throwing their face masks into the fire. They look determined, joyful, and free all at the same time. The accompanying article noted a range of emotions from reluctance and caution to joy were stirred by the end of the mandate. Apparently, the mask burners in the photo experienced the joy. A local pub hosted this mask burning. It provided the barrel and the fire and encourage patrons to throw their masks into the flames to symbolize the end of a tough year. The photo of masks being tossed into the burn barrel from the hands of those whose faces were filled with joy and freedom reminded me of our doing something similar at my home church when I was a teenager. No, it wasn’t masks we burned, and, though it may have appeared so to passers-by, we weren’t a cult. We had been experiencing a real move of the Spirit among our youth that increased our passion for spiritual things and our devotion to Christ. There was even a spontaneous outbreak of the Spirit in our teen Sunday School class; there was no teaching that day nor sleeping during class. We wept, shouted, and worshiped Christ the hour long. During this time of revival, we gathered before church to pray, and when service time came, we spilled into the sanctuary from the prayer room worshiping God; the service got no further with its usual activities. With such a spiritual renewal there comes a desire to be rid of anything and everything that pulls one to the world and sin, that binds and fetters the soul, that drains, dampens, depletes one’s love for Christ. So, one night, I cannot remember who suggested it or prepared for it, but outside the church, a burn barrel was set up. We gathered around and threw in anything that had been a worldly or carnal influence on our souls—things like 8-tracks and records of worldly music. There was real joy and freedom felt as we sang and worshiped around the burn barrel. Such a thing was not original to us. Scripture provided a precedent. The book of Acts chronicles a great, supernatural spiritual stirring in Ephesus when the Gospel came to that town in the early days of Christianity. Many, practitioners of magic and other Occult worshipers among them, came to know Christ. These brought books and other paraphernalia associated with their occultic and divination practices and worship and threw them in the fire. The thing about dropping something in a burn barrel is that there is no going back. That thing will be burned up, gone. You cannot reclaim it. It is irrecoverably incinerated. You can’t get it back. This isn’t true of just throwing an item away. Early in my pastorate, a young man rededicated his life to Christ and threw in the trash stacks of CDs of worldly music that had been a part of his rebellion against God and rejection of faith. Later, his mother told me, “I dug them out of the trash and stored them in closet in case he backslides. He spent tons of money on those.” He did backslide, as his mother expected, and, perhaps, his doing so was precipitated by her lack of faith in and support of his commitment. He recovered his CDs. He could not have done so if he'd burned them. See, a burn barrel is about a no-turning-back surrender. Surrender is giving something up. Of course, the items we dropped into the burn barrel were only symbols of the thing we were really surrendering to Christ—ourselves, our hearts, our lives, our future, our passions and our lusts. The older I get, the longer I’m in ministry, the more I realize this is the real objection people have with God. They do not want to surrender. True salvation requires surrender. This explains so much. This is why some who were raised to know Christ strike out with such vitriol against their upbringing, against church, against God. They have to make the aforementioned bad to discount the message that salvation is through the surrender of self to God. I do not claim there has been no false teaching, no hypocrites in the church, or no cultic churches. But, those are exceptions. Not all the churches, people, teaching, and practices in them were errant and malicious. No. That’s not what this vitriol is about. This is about discrediting the dissimulators of the Gospel, in order to dismiss the Gospel. The Gospel calls for surrender through denouncing of self and acceptance of the truth. The same is true with 99% of the proliferating new atheists. Today it’s vogue to be atheist. Why? Being an atheist is just another tactic to avoid the need for surrender. If there is an all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere existing, Creator-God, then everyone is answerable and accountable to Him. If so, one needs to bow to this God in surrender to His will, word, and Being. This, these self-proclaimed atheists do not want to do. Surrender. Surrender opinions. Surrender passions. Surrender to the awareness one has done wrong. Surrender to accountability. Surrender to the need to make restitution, make things right with others. Surrender of habits, addictions. Surrender of bitterness, grudges. Surrender of pride. Surrender of oneself. Some walked past the pub’s provided burn barrel without depositing their masks. Despite the freedom in giving up one’s mask, as the article noted, “some local residents remained reluctant to eliminate mask-wearing from their daily routines.” Whatever those reasons, they meant more to the wearers than freedom. Same with surrendering one’s life to Christ. Folks’ reasons for not surrendering to Christ, whatever they are, mean more to them than the forgiveness, eternal life, peace, and freedom that they would have if they would but surrender. To their eternal detriment, they bypass the burn barrel. Perhaps, having a burn barrel celebration is a good idea. I mean, if a pub can sponsor one, why can’t a church? If so, would you toss something in or bypass the burn barrel? -Pastor Clifford Hurst