Getting ready for another week of The Sickness Within @gotocore. Talkin pride this week. about 6 hours ago from web
Craig Groeschel - The Sickness Within - LifeTV - PrideGo to CORE Twitter:
We are talkin pride tonight. Be at 215 e Washington St at 5:30
about 6 hours ago from web.
The last CORE Twitter was two weeks before the one above. I need a full-time assistant to Tweet for me. Seriously, dude.
Perhaps others think it hilarious that real, relational, and relevant Ski
commands people to attend his church. I suppose that is his Law preaching. His introduction on the CORE website also
commands people to attend.
I hear the sound of flopsweat dripping from the pores of all the people involved in this fiasco. Thank you, CORE, for providing the glass-bottomed boat, so we can see the swamp of Church and Chicanery without getting stunk up too badly.
Training for The CORE has consisted of:
- Drive 08 Babtist Worship Conference, led by Andy Stanley.
- Catalyst, with Stanley and Groeschel.
- Granger Community Church, with Beeson, also attended by Katie, Head Tweeter.
- Drive 09 Babtist Worship Conference, attended by seven WELS pastors and Katie.
- Seattle Pastor Conference (not WELS), attended by Glende, Ski, Katie.
Ski did
not attend the conference where WELS Professor Deutschlander spoke on the theology of the cross.
Bishop Katie:
Would you ever do this?
http://twitpic.com/6dljq (via @jackalopekid) // are u serious? Seriously we live in a sad world.
29 minutes ago from web
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GJ - The founder of Church Growth, Robert Schuller, arranged for car worship decades ago. I find this hand-lettered sign rather touching. Not everyone has $100,000+ grants to lease them huge buildings, popcorn machines, soda fountains, IMax screens with 20 Woofers! To paraphrase Pieper, I would rather worship in a car with Means of Grace Lutherans than be entertained by Babtist wannabees in a Popcorn Cathedral of Rock. I guess I "don't get it."
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I downloaded the Groeschel transcript for The Sickness Within - Pride. It's free, and includes a video, a video teaser, graphics, all kinds of way cool stuff for Schwaermer WELS Church and Chicaneries. I am sure the Circuit Pope, District Pope, and local pastors (Witte, Parlow) have jumped on Ski like hobos on a hotdog. WELS is famous for doctrinal discipline and fellowship principles.
Sickness Within #3 by Groeschel[ Music ] If you have your Bibles with you today, let’s open them up to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 14 is where we will start. We are in week number three of the series called, “
The Sickness Within.” Today, we are going to deal with the sickness that we call pride. All of our campuses, would you be very honest? How many of you deal with pride? You are prideful? Raise your hands up in the air. Those of you that are really prideful, you are too proud to raise your hands. You are hanging back.
All of us deal with pride at one level or another. For example, if you ever find a group photo, a group picture, and you are in the picture, who is the first person that you look for in that picture? Who do you look for? You look for yourself. Right? And if it’s a good picture of you and bad of everyone else, you don’t care. You’d still say it’s a good picture. If it’s good of everyone else and it’s bad of you, what kind of picture is it? It is a bad picture, right? We all deal with pride at one level or another.
Isaiah 14:13-14 offers us perhaps, chronologically, the first example of pride in scripture. In fact, this event took place even before Adam and Eve were born. It was when Lucifer decided that he wanted to be like God. His pride got him a one-way ticket out of Heaven. We can see his pride in Isaiah 14:13-14, “You said in your heart,” Lucifer said this. He said what? Say it out loud. He said, “I will ascend to Heaven.” What did he say? Say it again. He said, “I will raise my throne above the stars.” He said it a third time. He said what? Say it. He said, “I will sit enthroned on the mount of the assembly of the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.” The fourth time, he said, “I will ascend above the tops of the clouds.” And a fifth time, he said, “I will make myself like the Most High.” Contrast, his most common two words, “I will” with the words of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when He said, not I will, but He said, “Thy will be done.”
Is it going to be about us, or is it going to be about Him? What I want, or what He wants? Today, we are going to do battle with the sinful sickness within called pride. All of us deal with it. For me, when I first met Amy, that was an obvious example of pride. We were on our second date and she came out, actually, to watch me. I played college tennis and I was playing the district finals, and I thought to myself, “If I play really, really good, she will be impressed.” She came out to watch, and on the very first serve, I thought, “I’m going to just wow her with this awesome kick serve.” So, as she walked up, I flexed everything that I had, trying to impress her. And a kick serve in tennis is when you actually brush over the ball with just tremendous velocity and the ball comes down, and then it lands, it jumps way up. And I thought, “If I kick this really good, she’ll say, ‘Oh, I gotta marry that guy. I want him to have my six children.’ “ So, as I swung, I actually misjudged the ball, and rather than clipping it, I hit it dead on the end of the rack and sent it straight up in the air, and it landed three courts over. Thankfully, Amy doesn’t know anything about tennis. She thought that was amazing, and she clapped for me. When the match was over, she was just amazed. She said, “Why did you only do that one really cool serve one time? No one’s ever done that all day.”
Pride is when we think we are hot and we are not. Have you seen my new website? It’s the www.bomb.com. Pride is the dangerous sickness within. What does scripture say about it? Proverbs 16:18, all of our campuses, if you guys could, help me out. Scripture says that, “Pride goes before,” what? Say it out loud. “Pride goes before destruction. A haughty spirit before,” what? “Before a fall.” How dangerous is pride? Proverbs 16:26, the Lord does what? Say it. What does He do? “The Lord detests …” Who does He detest? “All the proud of heart. Be sure of this.” What will happen? “They will not go unpunished.” I Peter 5:5 says God actually opposes. He resists the proud, but what does He do? He gives grace to whom? To the humble. Now, some people might say, “Well, what if I’m proud of my kids?” This is a different type of pride. What we are talking about today is a sinfully selfish pride. It is not saying, “You know, I am proud of what God is doing in my church.” That’s being proud of God. Or, “I’m proud to be an American.” Or, “I take pride in my neighborhood.” We are talking about a selfish, self-focused sickness within, a sinful pride.
There’s three types of this pride that we are going to look at today. The first one, if you are taking notes, is this. This is probably what you think about when you think of pride, and that is number one, “I am better than you” pride. Okay? You are not as good as I am. “I am better than you” pride. It’s a lot like one very proud woman who came to her pastor and said, “Pastor, I guess I deal with vanity and pride, because every time I walk through the church, I look at all the other women, and I just say to myself, ‘I am so much more beautiful than all of them.’ Pastor, I just deal with pride.” And the pastor said, “Well, ma’am, to be honest, that’s not pride. That’s a mistake. You are just wrong with your assertion. That is a mistake.”
Pride. “I am better than you,” is the way so many people feel. Now, how does this type of pride show itself? Because, you may not honestly recognize it in yourself. Well, one of the ways it shows itself is in a critical attitude or a critical heart. If you find that you are often criticizing, “Well, you know, look at the way she does that. Look at the way he does this, and he’s not this and he’s not that.” What that is, is a reflection of a proud heart. “I know it’s right, and you don’t. You don’t do it right.”
Another type of “I am better than you” pride, is spiritual pride, and oh man, is it ever ugly. You know, “We worship God the right way, and everyone else, they are all wrong. We’ve got the corner on the truth.” Or, you know, “I would never do what that no-good sinner would do. I am so much holier than they are.” You will see a I’m-better-than-you pride often in marriages, too. “Well, I’m right and my spouse is always wrong. I’m right. This one is always wrong.” I’m-better-than-you pride. In the early days of the church, I’m embarrassed to say that I never took time off. I preached almost every weekend, and someone said to me, “Craig, that’s because you are proud.” I said, “I’m not proud.” He said, “Yes, you are proud. You think that you’re the only one that can do it. You think you’re that good, and you’re not.” And all of a sudden, I owned that. That was an I’m-better-than-you pride, and I had to repent of that, and now, I’m honored to take a lot of time off and let a lot of other people do what I do, do it better, and it refreshes me.
I am better than you pride, very, very dangerous. We can see a great illustration of this in a story that Jesus told about a tax collector and about a Pharisee. Now, during this day, the Pharisee’s were known throughout the whole community as very righteous in appearance. They would tithe off of everything. They would wear these fancy religious looking robes. They would fast two days a week, not eat anything so they could pray. And then, there’s a story about a tax collector who was despised and absolutely hated by everyone. The tax collectors, they were Jewish by birth, but they basically were betraying their own people because they were helping the Roman government. They had the full force of the Roman army behind them. And so, let’s say you owed for the year $4,000 in taxes. These tax collectors could come up and say, “Your bill is, huh, $5,000 and if you do not want to pay, deal with these Roman officers.” Then what they would do, is give $4,000 to the Roman government and they’d keep $1,000 for themselves. They were thieves, and everyone hated them.
Jesus told a story about a tax collector and a Pharisee. He said they went to the temple to pray, verse 11 of Luke 18, “The Pharisee stood up and he actually prayed about himself.” One key, reflection of those who are proud, those who always pray about their needs and pray about themselves, “God, do this for me.” The Pharisee prayed about himself and said, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, robbers and evil doers and adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I give a tenth of all that I get.” Jesus continued in the story in verse 13, and He said, “but the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to Heaven, but he beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The proud, and the humble, and Jesus said that it was the tax collector, the one everybody despised, that went away justified, not the proud Pharisee.
One fifth grade Sunday School teacher asked one of the fifth grade boys, “Do you get the moral of the story?” and he said, “Absolutely, I do, and oh, how I thank God I am not like that Pharisee.” Do you get the moral of the story, and that is, God opposes the proud, but oh, how He loves to give grace to the humble.
There’s a second type of pride, and boy, this one really hits me. If you’re taking notes, the second type of pride is this. I call it an “I can handle it myself,” pride. I can handle it myself. How do you know if you struggle with this? Well, if you have a difficult time asking others for help, you are dealing with an I-can-handle-it-myself pride. “Well, I just don’t want to bother anybody. I can do it myself.” If you find it difficult to receive, someone else wants to help you or wants to give to you, or wants to bless you, but you just find it so difficult to receive. “No, no, no. I’m not worth it. No, no, no. Give it to somebody else.” That is pride! “I can handle it myself.” If you find yourself with a very on-again, off-again prayer life. You pray for a little while and then you stop praying. What does that really say? Deep down, no matter what we say we believe, our actions indicate that we think we can do it without God. “I can handle it myself.” For example, I have this kind of pride. Anytime I am driving somewhere, I never ask for directions and maps or the devil. Won’t use them. Secondly, I can’t fix anything. Those of you that can fix things, I just can’t stand how great you are at that. Amy always is like, “You can’t fix anything.” You are right. I can’t. One time, I actually bought one of those do-it-yourself assembly things from the devil. This was a bookshelf and it came with these instructions, and Amy said, “You really ought to ask for some help from one of your staff members to put that together.” I’m like, “Uuummm, no, step back. I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength,” and I said, “You leave me alone for a month and when you come back, I will have this completely assembled.” And so, I started to work on it. I actually read the directions for a few minutes, and they weren’t doing any good. Believe it or not, within a few hours, I had assembled the whole bookshelf without even using probably a third of the parts. All these extra screws and little things that were just totally unnecessary. I put the bookshelf up, put all of my books, all of my little nick knack’s, all of the stuff in there, and I called Amy in for the great debut. I said, “Come on in, sweetheart.” You’re not going to believe this true story, God as my witness. She walked in. I said, “ta-da,” and she looked at it. She said, “I can’t believe you pulled it off.” And right when she said that, my bookshelf fell over and boards flew everywhere. Nails were flying out. We were ducking for cover, and she said what you know any loving wife would say, “You should have asked for help, stupid.”
Why is it that we are like this? “I can handle it myself.” Because we are prideful. You see a great example of this in the story that we know as the Prodigal Son. Luke 15:11-12, Jesus was continuing His teaching and He said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate,’ “ and what you can hear behind and between the lines is basically, “Dad, I want my stuff. I don’t like your rules. You are cramping my style. I want to do life my way. Now, if this was a modern day story, it would go something like this. So this son, went out, max’d out his credit card, bought an expensive skateboard, started drinking beer, smoking whatever, hanging out with loose women, tatoo’ing and piercing everything, and this guy just went absolutely wild. Before long, he couldn’t support his lifestyle, started living on a friend’s sofa, his friend kicked him out, and all of a sudden, he woke up one day hurting. He thought he knew what he wanted, and he thought he had the resources to pull it off, and the bottom line is, he thought he knew what was best and he could handle it without his father. But scripture says this, Jesus said, verse 17, “When he came to his senses,” and there will be those of you today that I pray will come to your senses. When he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death. I will set out and I will go back to my father and say to him, ‘Father, I’ve sinned against Heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired men.’ “ Can you see the contrast?
The proud and the humble. Pride comes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. God opposes the proud, but God gives grace and God lifts up those who are humble and broken before Him. So, what does this mean to you? If you battle with an I-can-do-it-myself pride, it’s time to humble yourself and get help. How does this play out? Some of you, your marriages, they are in trouble and you have said for a long time, “Well, we don’t need help. We can do it on our own. Well, well, you know. Ah, counseling is for whooshes, okay? We don’t need that.” No, no, no, no. No, no, no. You, please, for the sake of the covenant that you made with God, humble yourself. Ask for and receive help. Others of you, you are addicted to something and you think to yourself, “I can handle it. I can stop this any time.” Let me just say right now, if you haven’t stopped yet, you are not going to stop without help. You need help. Humble yourself. Humble yourself. Humble yourself. Open up. Open up your life this week. Open up to your spouse. Open up to your campus pastor. Open up and say, “I need help.” Ask for it and receive it. Why do we not? Because of pride.
First type of pride we are looking at is this. “I-am-better-than-you” pride. Second type, “I-can-handle-it-myself” pride. A third type is this, “It-doesn’t-apply-to-me” pride. Those may be the rules, but they don’t apply to me. It’s a lot like Muhammad Ali. I like some of the Muhammad Ali stories. What was he saying? “Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee. Something, something, something, Muhammad Ali.” I always forget that other little line. I like, there’s a story that Muhammad Ali was supposedly one time on an airplane, and the stewardess, a flight attendant, came up and said, “Sir, you need to wear your seatbelt.” And, Muhammad Ali said, “Superman don’t need no seatbelt.” And she looked at him and smiled and said, “Superman don’t need no airplane.” Okay? “Well, I can, I am above the rules,” you say to yourself. Some of you, you think you are above the rules. You are the people that take twelve items to the express checkout line that says ten and under, right? Why? You think the rules don’t apply to you. Scripture teaches different things. It is adultery to lust after a woman, and yet, I know so many guys who call themselves Christ followers that look regularly at pornography as if to say, “Well, that doesn’t apply to me. This just helps me deal with things. It just helps me cope. It doesn’t apply to me.” Or, “We are just living together before we marry because, you know, the rules don’t really apply to me.” Or, “I know that scripture says that we are supposed to forgive as Christ has forgiven us, but you don’t know what this person has done. You see, that just doesn’t apply to me.” Or, “I know that as Christ followers, the greatest of these would be those who serve, and we ask people at our church to serve, but you know what? That doesn’t apply to me. I can go to church and just watch and go home. I don’t have to do that. Do you know why? Because it doesn’t apply to me.”
One time I was making fun of bad drivers, because everybody knows that we drive good and everybody else is dangerous. It’s just kind of the way things are, and I was making fun of people who put their blinker light on in Washington and drive to L.A. with their light on the whole way, you know. And I was talking about people that drive off on the shoulder when there is a traffic jam, and go off of the shoulder and think that they have the right to be more important that the rest of us who are following the rules, and just how ungodly those people are, and how they are going to answer to God one day. Well, the very next day, from a Sunday to a Monday, the very next day, I was driving to church, and sure enough. I was really close to the church parking lot and there was a traffic jam. And I looked up and I realized that there was a little grass trail just off to the side that could take me, in thirty yards or less, into our church building, and I rationalized it out. We own that property. That’s my property. That belongs to me. So I just pulled off into the grass, and I drove up. Little did I know that a few cars in front of me was one of the staff members who was taking his son to school, who looked out the window and said, “There’s one of those guys that pastor Craig was talking about!” Then, his mouth dropped wide open. He said, “That IS pastor Craig doing what Craig was talking about!” What is that? It is the pride of thinking that the rules don’t apply to me.
King David was like this in the Old Testament at one time in his life. Scriptures said that at one time, when kings went off to war, King David didn’t go off to war. When he didn’t go where he was supposed to go, he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to do. He saw something he wasn’t supposed to see. He thought something he wasn’t supposed to think. He did something he wasn’t supposed to do. He sent one of his people and said, “Uh, see that naked lady over there? She looks good. Go get her.” And then, he committed adultery. He did, thinking he was beyond the rules. Then, what he did was one of the most horrendous crimes you could ever do. After taking this other guy’s wife, he made an order, which was basically led to the murder of his good friend, Uriah. He betrayed his friend and then had him killed. “The rules don’t apply to me.” Nathan, the prophet, called King David on this, and he told him a little story. You can read it. It’s in your notes. I’ll basically summarize it. It goes like this. There was a rich guy with lots of sheep and lots of cattle, and there was a poor guy with one little bitty lamb. The poor guy came to the rich guy’s house, and instead of the rich guy offering him one of his from his wealth, instead, the rich guy killed the poor guy’s one little lamb and fed it to him. And Nathan told David the story and David was like, “That’s the worse thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” The scripture said, “His heart burned with anger.” David was like, “We’ve got to punish this guy. This just isn’t right.” And then, Nathan looked at David and said, “Auttaeesh.” Everybody say, all of our campuses say, “Autta, autta-eesh.” Now say it together, “Auttaeesh.” Nathan looked at David and said, “Auttaeesh,” which is Hebrew for “You are the man.” “You are the one that we are talking about in this story. Auttaeesh. May I say, lovingly and humbly, that there are those of you that are living in this kind of pride. It doesn’t apply to me, and may I say to you, auttaeesh. You are the man. Some of you ladies are going, “Ha, well, I am glad that I am a lady.” May I say to you, auttaeesha, which means you are the woman. Is there an area in your life where you are saying, “You know what? This doesn’t apply to me. Yeah, I’m not happily married, you know, and I know that God hates divorce and all of that stuff, but, you know, forget this marriage. You know, forget it. It doesn’t apply to me. I know God says we are stewards and ten percent of what He trusts us with belongs to Him. Now, I just don’t believe lalalaladalalala, uh, that doesn’t apply to me. Auttaeesh.
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Another version of The Sickness Within - Pride.
Yet another version.
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I. J. Reilly has left a new comment on your post "Join the WELS Popcorn Cathedral of Rock To Hear Gro...":
For the record, I'm a member of Ski's conference. He has been at every Pastors' Conference since he's been in the area -- including one this past January where Prof. Deutschlander spoke about the doctrinal importance of the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. This talk included many of the concepts from his
Theology of the Cross book.
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GJ - They even defend Ski anonymously. Ski boasted about missing the
Atlanta WELS conference, where he ran into Deutschlander, because he was there to worship with
Babtist Andy Stanley. Buske and Parlow were also there. Ski's blog is still up and running. Many are reading it. Doubtless they were all worshiping outside the framework of fellowship.
Absent from this pusillanimous defense is any mention of plagiarizing false teachers, worshiping with false teachers, and being an all-around embarrassment to Lutherans everywhere.
Pastors are required to attend conferences. They are also required to be faithful. The apostasy of Ski's Conference is proven by his fellow pastors' apathy, indolence, and lassitude about sound doctrine.
