The Dark Side of Wives Submitting to Husbands

Christian teaching on male headship is often used as a weapon against women. This abuse must be confronted.

During a past ministry trip to Hungary, I heard a painfully familiar story. Through a translator, a tearful young woman living near Budapest explained that her Christian husband was angrily demanding her absolute submission. This included, among other things, that she clean their house according to his strict standards and that she engage in sexual acts with him that made her feel uncomfortable and dirty.

This lady was not demanding her rights or trying to be disrespectful. She was a godly, humble woman who obviously wanted to please the Lord. But she had been beaten to a pulp emotionally, and she was receiving little help from her pastor—who was either unwilling or unprepared to confront wife abuse.

I've heard so many sickening versions of this scenario. In Kenya, several women told me their AIDS-infected husbands often raped them—and then their pastors told them they must submit to this treatment. In some parts of India, even some pastors believe it is acceptable to beat their wives if they argue with them or show any form of disrespect. And in some conservative churches in the United States, women are told that obedience to God is measured by their wifely submission—even if their husbands are addicted to alcohol or pornography or if they are involved in adulterous affairs.

Why I Don’t Use the F-Word

I honestly never thought I’d see the day when Christians would justify swearing.

I lived a sheltered life growing up. My Christian parents allowed me to watch a re-release of Gone With the Wind at the local theater when I was 12, and my virgin ears were scandalized when Rhett Butler told Scarlett, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” I had never heard such language—and I knew that if I ever talked like Rhett Butler in my house, I would be sent to the backyard to choose my own switch.

Fast-forward to today, when profanity has so saturated our culture that dirty words are unavoidable. Dropping the F-bomb is a daily habit for millions of Americans. Jesse Sheidlower, the editor-at-large of the Oxford English Dictionary, says the F-word has lost its shock value. He says, “For most people, it’s hardly noticeable anymore.”

Today students wear “WTF?” T-shirts to school. I’ve seen the F-word indelibly tattooed on people’s arms in dark blue ink. And I’ve heard guys and girls alike use the F-word more than 15 times in a sentence to simply describe their day. There’s even a mock children’s book titled Go the F*** to Sleep that was one of the fastest-selling titles on Amazon in 2011. What’s going on here?

Music has certainly played a role in forcing the F-word on us. (Listen if you dare to any popular hip-hop artist for proof of this nastiness.) One song by the rock band Limp Bizkit a few years ago featured the F-word 50 times. American rapper CeeLo Green released a song in 2010 called F*** You, and it was nominated for a Grammy Award. Meanwhile, the Motion Picture Association of America recently relaxed its ratings code to allow more uses of the F-word in PG-13 movies. (The old rule only allowed one F-bomb per film.)

6 Steps Out of Your Religious Box

Almost all ministry in the book of Acts occurred outside a church meeting. So why do we hide our message in a building?
Whenever I visit my friend Lewis Lee, a pastor in Baltimore, I end up on the streets. That’s because Lewis is never content to keep his congregation cooped up inside their church. Every month he takes them downtown to feed homeless people at a park near Johns Hopkins University. On hot summer days he takes teams to the worst neighborhoods of his city to pray for people, share the gospel and distribute bottles of water.

This should be standard procedure for any church, but it’s not the norm. A majority of American churches rarely engage in any form of outreach that takes place outside their buildings—and 95 percent of Christians in this country have never led a person to Christ. Because of fear, apathy or lack of training, we are content to live in an isolated religious universe. Then we trick ourselves into believing we can transform our communities by singing, praying and preaching to the choir.

Yet when I read the book of Acts, I’m struck by the fact that in the earliest days of the New Testament church, almost all ministry took place outside of Christian meetings. The gospel was always shared outside the box. Of course, the first disciples met together for encouragement, teaching and fellowship, but their primary focus was always outward. Shouldn’t the book of Acts be our pattern?

How God Is Breaking Walls of Racism—in Europe

Only the Holy Spirit can break a vile form of racism that has lasted for centuries.

I can’t communicate too well with my friend Dániel Kovács. He doesn’t speak much English, and I only know three phrases in Hungarian. But last week we sat beside each other in a worship conference and enjoyed fellowship with the help of a translator.

Dániel is my brother in Christ. But many people in Europe look down on him because he is a Gypsy. He faces huge obstacles because Gypsies—also known as the Roma people—have the highest rates of unemployment, illiteracy and poverty in Eastern Europe, along with the lowest life expectancy rates.

Dániel and the people in his village of Uszka, in northeast Hungary, suffer from what is known as antiziganism, the hatred of Gypsies. It is racial profiling at its worst. It has plagued Europe since the Roma people arrived from India in their caravans 600 years ago. The highest Gypsy populations are in Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Slovakia and Spain, but Gypsies are scattered all over Europe and the Middle East—and many have come to North America.

Wherever they go, they experience discrimination.

Antiziganism reached its peak during the 1940s, when German Nazis murdered between 250,000 and 500,000 Gypsies in concentration camps. Like the Jews, many Gypsies were starved or gassed; others were sterilized. Scientists also used Gypsies as human guinea pigs for diabolical experiments because they felt their slightly darker skin made them racially inferior.

The 5 Biggest Mistakes We Make in Prophetic Ministry

While ministering in Eastern Europe this week, I learned about a church leader who recently aired an audacious claim. He says he was taken to heaven in some sort of fantastic vision and that while in glory he met and talked to the apostle Paul himself.

The clincher is even more ridiculous: This self-appointed leader says Paul commissioned him as an apostle to his country, adding that anyone else who claims to be in that office is going straight to hell. This isn’t the most diplomatic way to win followers.

There have always been and always will be religious megalomaniacs who split churches with claims of special revelation. But the saddest part is that men like this give the biblical gift of prophecy a bad name and cause people to be suspicious of anything of a supernatural nature.

While I was overseas I helped teach at a prophetic school that is sponsored annually by a large charismatic church. I shared these points below with the students. I think they will help you in your local church, especially if you want to develop a prophetic ministry that is healthy, God-honoring and faithful to the New Testament.

In my experience with prophetic ministry over the years, I believe there are five big mistakes we make in this important area.

Top 10 Rudest Things People Do in Church

Lots of things annoy us today. But we should be most concerned about what God considers rude.

It doesn’t bother me anymore to hear a phone ringing during a church service. It’s part of life in the 21st century. But I’ll admit I was shocked last month when I heard a ringtone while I was preaching—and a woman seated in the third row pulled her phone out of her purse and began a lengthy conversation as if she were in the waiting room of a beauty parlor.

That incident prompted me to post a question on Facebook the next day. I asked my friends to share their own stories of rudeness in church. That triggered an avalanche of pent-up frustration about crinkly peppermint wrappers, loud music, smelly feet (yes, someone took off their shoes during the service), unruly children, coffee-sipping saints and parishioners who try to finish their pastors’ sentences during sermons.

When I tallied the responses, I came up with this list of the rudest things people do in church:

1. Talking during a service.

2. Texting or surfing the web during a service. (One person mentioned seeing people playing video games on their phones.)

A Response to Exodus: Don’t Apologize for the Truth

I agree with Alan Chambers that some Christians have been hateful toward the LGBT community. But we can’t change God’s Word to please people.

Two weeks ago at a church in Pennsylvania, a young man came to me seeking prayer. I’ll call him Enrique. He needed to make an honest confession. He admitted to me he had been experimenting with gay sex with two different guys.

The Holy Spirit had convicted Enrique that his behavior was wrong. His eyes were moist with tears as he bared his soul. He said he didn’t want to live in a homosexual lifestyle. He wanted help. I could have offered my new friend three very different responses:

1. Harsh judgment. I could have stepped back, scowled with disgust (“You did what? That’s sick!”) and told Enrique homosexuals go to hell—leaving him feeling condemned and without hope.

2. Lenient sympathy. I could have told Enrique not to feel guilty. I could have affirmed his behavior by saying, “Lots of people have same-sex attraction. Some are born that way. If you are attracted to men, just explore your sexuality. God loves you just the way you are.”

40 Years After Roe v. Wade: One Abortion Survivor’s Story

My friend Chris Foster could have been aborted. Today he is a trophy of God’s grace.

The Supreme Court legalized abortion in this country 40 years ago. That is an intensely personal issue for my friend Chris Foster, a pastor in Pennsylvania who happens to be 40 years old. He was born just three months before the Roe v. Wade case was decided.

Chris grew up in central New York in a troubled family. He sometimes struggled with his identity because his stepfather spoke about “adopting” him. Chris didn’t understand what that meant. Later, when he was 16, his sister told him during a fight he was a “bastard.” Chris got angry—and realized there were issues about his past that were being hidden from him.

Chris’ mom tried to change the subject when he asked about his sister’s cruel comment. But Chris was left with nagging doubts. Who was his biological father?

Chris began a personal relationship with Jesus when he was 17 and then headed to Bible college. But five years later, after he had married his wife, Amy, he learned the shocking truth about his conception: His mother had been raped by a drunken stranger while she was visiting some friends. The result was an unwanted pregnancy.

5 Lessons From the Stupidest Man in the Bible

If you want to be a good husband and father, avoid this guy’s bad example.

Who is the most brainless man in the Bible? We could make a long list of losers: Adam, Cain, Esau, Pharaoh, Saul, Ahab, Judas or Simon the Sorcerer. I love the fact that people’s mistakes aren’t whitewashed in the Scriptures. Even the holiest guys blew it (Peter comes to mind) but fortunately many of them found forgiveness and a second chance. That gives me hope every time I make a dumb mistake.

But there’s one guy who’s stupidity puts him in a class by himself—partly because he never even realized how spiritually clueless he was. When I was speaking to a group of leaders last week in Puerto Rico, I used Nabal as an example of how men shouldn’t act.

If we want to be good husbands and fathers, and if we want to disciple other men to do the same, we should take a cue from this Old Testament geezer whose name literally means “fool.” Here are five reasons I put Nabal in the “stupid” category:

Nabal didn’t honor God. Nabal was an entrepreneur and he built a prosperous business in sheep and goats. But the Bible says he was “harsh and evil in his dealings” (1 Sam. 25:3).  He was the kind of guy no one really wants to be around: pompous, corrupt and selfish. When David came seeking food for his warriors, Nabal refused to help. He didn’t care about God’s kingdom because he was focused totally on building his own.

How I Know David and Jonathan Weren’t Gay

Some “theologians” today are perverting Bible stories to promote their agenda. We can’t let them hijack the gospel.

A few weeks ago when I addressed the topic of homosexuality, a reader posted a comment on our forum suggesting that the biblical King David and his friend Jonathan were gay lovers. After a few other readers questioned this interpretation, another reader repeated the claim. “The Bible is clear that David and Jonathan were physical, sexual, gay male homosexual lovers,” this person wrote authoritatively—without citing a chapter and verse.

Most evangelical Christians would drop their jaws in bewilderment if confronted with such an odd theory. Even people with minimal knowledge of the Old Testament know that (1) David was married to Jonathan’s sister, Michal—and he had a few other wives, and (2) David’s biggest blunder was his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba—a woman he saw bathing on a rooftop. God was not happy about David’s lust or with his decision to have Bathsheba’s husband killed so he could hide his sin.

It is illogical to read homosexuality into the story of David and Jonathan because neither Jewish nor early Christian tradition ever endorses sex outside the bounds of heterosexual marriage. If you read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, you will never see a depiction of a gay relationship, ever. Nor will you see homosexuality affirmed. You cannot get around the fact that the Bible says gay sex is flat-out wrong.

No More Spineless Christianity

The apostle Paul not only confronted sin but named specific sins when he preached. Why can’t we?

People often complain about angry preachers. I don’t like them either, and I agree that if a person mixes a sermon with hateful language (or if he believes God has called him to picket other churches), he’s in the wrong profession. Yet today we’ve jumped to the opposite extreme. Now we are afraid to confront sin.

We can’t preach about materialism because we might offend rich people in the audience—as well as the poor people who buy Lotto tickets every week. We can’t preach about fornication because there are people in the church who are living together. We can’t preach about domestic violence because there are deacons who sometimes hit their wives. We can’t preach about homosexuality because our culture says it’s hateful to call that a sin.

And the list goes on. In fact, some preachers are avoiding the word sin altogether because it’s too negative. And we all know that the latest polls show people want a positive message.

This temptation to dilute the gospel has produced a new recipe for a trendy sermon. We start with some great motivational speaking (“Your past does not define your future!”), add a few quarts of cheap grace (“Don’t focus on your sin!”), pour in some prosperity gospel (“Run to this altar and grab your financial breakthrough!”), flavor it with some trendy pop psychology (“It’s all about you!”) and voila!—you end up with a goopy mess of pabulum that not even a baby Christian could survive on.

There Are No Indian Reservations in Heaven

God’s heart is broken over the spiritual condition of the Native American community. Do you care?

I spent part of this week preaching at my friend Quentin Beard’s church in Sioux Falls, S.D. On Sunday—which happened to be Pentecost—I reminded the congregation that if we really want the fullness of the Holy Spirit, we must have more than just emotionally charged worship, speaking in tongues or miracles of healing. Those things are wonderful, but if we want full-blown Pentecost we must also tear down racial and ethnic barriers.

Later that morning, a tall Native American brother named Joe Marrowbone came to the altar for prayer. He is from the Lakota Sioux tribe, and he wanted the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Within a few moments, he was praying in tongues with his hands raised in the air. He told me later that He feels God will send him to share the gospel on some of the Indian reservations near Sioux Falls.

Joe was especially blessed when I addressed the issue of racism among whites and Native people in his home state. I told the church that when we get to heaven, there will not be a white section, a Hispanic section, a black section or a Native section. “We are all one big family. There are no Indian reservations in heaven," I said.

The Bible Verse No Guy Enjoys Reading

Deuteronomy 23:1 is painful—but it shows us that God wants to heal the wounds of the masculine soul.

I’d never heard a sermon on Deuteronomy 23:1 until last month, when my Puerto Rican friend Luis Roig had the courage to read the text out loud to a group of men in Florida. When he did, one guy gasped and fell on the floor. Several others laughed nervously, and we all drew our knees together and groaned.

The Holman translation says it this way:

“No man whose testicles have been crushed or whose penis has been cut off may enter the Lord’s assembly.”
Ouch!

Please pardon the graphic language, but older translations just aren’t clear. The King James Version says, “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.” That’s putting it mildly!

Most of us dismiss or ignore this odd passage, either because the subject matter is embarrassing or because the law seems unfair. After all, if a man’s private parts are damaged in an accident, why should he be considered an outcast?

7 Ways to Stop the Adultery Epidemic

Why is there an epidemic of moral failure in the church? Because holiness has become a foreign concept.

It happened again. For the third time in six months, the pastor of a large church in my hometown of Orlando, Fla., has resigned from his pulpit because of adultery. I’m sad. I’m sick. I’m sorry for the pastors, and sorrier for the congregations that are having to deal with the fallout caused by bad choices.

I’m also cringing because an increasingly hostile public sees these train wrecks as evidence that Christians are hypocrites who preach one thing and live another. We stand for biblical marriage between one man and one woman, but in many cases those marriages are failing. No wonder the gay community hates our flimsy platitudes.

Why are we witnessing this epidemic of moral failure? Many factors could be cited (easy access to pornography, sex-saturated entertainment, the devil and his demons, etc.)—but I don’t think we need a list of excuses today. I’m tired of excuses. The devil does not make us do this. It is totally possible for Christian men and women to live in holiness today. The power of His grace is not affected by social trends or hell’s attacks.

Maybe we’ve made this too complicated. Let’s go back to some basic ways we can stay pure:

The Horror Movie That Will Never Be in Theaters

It could be called The Abominable Dr. Gosnell. Or perhaps Nightmare on Lancaster Avenue. Or maybe something as provocative as Scissors.

The plot might resemble a movie in the bloody Saw franchise. In the opening scene, a frightened teenage girl wanders into a dank, smelly clinic. Muted cries of women can be heard in a nearby room. Creepy violin music plays in the background.

A cat walks down a dark corridor, startling the girl. She sits down nervously on a sofa in the waiting room and sees a blood-stained blanket. The girl decides she doesn’t want an abortion—but when the doctor comes to take her to the procedure room, he gets angry when she protests. (Shouting is heard off-camera, followed by more of the Psycho-esque score.) The girl wakes up several hours later with severe cramps and realizes she has had an abortion.

This is not a clip from an Alfred Hitchcock film. The scene I described resembles what happened to a 15-year-old patient of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the infamous Philadelphia abortionist whose trial ended Monday. Yes, there was a cat wandering in his clinic. (Observers testified that it had fleas.) Yes, there were bloodstained blankets in the waiting room. And witnesses testified that the girl was forced to have an abortion even though she decided not to go through with the procedure after arriving at Gosnell’s filthy office.

If that’s not enough R-rated horror for you, consider these facts:

9 Bad Charismatic Habits We Need to Break

I love the Holy Spirit’s gifts. But some of our “Spirit-filled” practices are questionable.

Anybody who has read this column before knows I’m unapologetically charismatic in my theology. I love the Holy Spirit, and I believe the New Testament calls us to make room for manifestations of the Spirit. The apostle Paul gave guidelines for the gift of prophecy; he saw dramatic healings; he experienced supernatural visions; and he told church leaders not to forbid speaking in tongues (see 1 Cor. 14:39). Paul was the epitome of charismatic spirituality.

But not everything we do today in the name of the Holy Spirit is a valid expression of His power. Over the past four decades, we charismatics have invented some lame practices that not only make us look silly but actually turn people off to our message. I figure we started these behaviors because of immaturity—and I can laugh about them because I’ve done some of them myself. But it’s 2013, and I think God expects more of us.

I realize this can be sensitive if you have one or more of these bad habits. But please pray over this list before you blast me for being critical.

1. The body slam. There are times when people feel woozy or weak-kneed when the Holy Spirit touches them. I leave room for that. But can we please stop pushing people to the floor? Any minister who hits, shoves or slaps people at a church altar is being extremely rude. He is also relying on his own swagger to demonstrate he has the power to “slay” people in the Spirit. If you pushed someone to the floor, God had nothing to do with it.

How God Gave Me an African Grandson

My family has just witnessed the miracle of an international adoption.

My daughter Margaret was pregnant for almost three years.

I should explain. She didn’t actually carry a baby in her womb that long. But it was almost three years ago that she and her husband, Rick, took a team of students from Emmanuel College to Ethiopia for an evangelistic outreach. They learned about the plight of the children of that country during their visit and felt God was calling them to adopt an Ethiopian baby.

The dream grew in Margaret and Rick’s heart, and they officially launched the adoption process in January 2011. It was tedious and expensive. The wait seemed endless—sort of like standing in line at the post office for 26 months. Bureaucracy moved at a snail’s pace—and it seemed even slower after they learned they were assigned an infant boy and got a picture of him.

I’ve been more impatient than my daughter and son-in-law during this journey. They held on to their dream, even when the adoption agency faced some serious problems. To keep focused, Margaret ran a marathon to raise awareness of the need for international adoption. She decided that since she didn’t have to go through the pain of childbirth to have this baby, the least she could do was run 26 miles.

Her stamina paid off. Last week Margaret and Rick traveled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to do the last interviews and get the final paperwork approved. They arrived there just in time to celebrate their son’s first birthday. And a few days ago, they landed at the Atlanta airport with their African bundle of joy.

Quit Trying to Be Big … and Just Be Faithful

Our culture says bigger is better. But in the kingdom of God, less is often more.

There’s nothing more disheartening to a preacher than to see empty seats in a church service. I’ll be honest—I like meetings where you have to pull out extra chairs and put people in the aisles. Why? Because I assume if God’s blessing is on a meeting it will be packed. I like numbers because, in my carnal thinking, crowds are more significant.

Our culture puts value on things depending on how popular they are, and we are guilty of applying this rule in the church. We like big. We even rate churches based on size. We know that the three largest churches in America in 2013 are (1) Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, (2) Andy Stanley’s North Point Ministries and (3) Bill Hybels’ Willow Creek Community Church. The assumption is that these churches are leading the way in making spiritual impact.

But God doesn’t evaluate us based on numbers, nor does He rate our effectiveness by comparing us to someone else. Many pastors of small or mid-size churches get discouraged because they evaluate their ministries by counting the number of rear ends in seats or the amount of money in offering plates. But God’s ways are not our ways! Remember these kingdom principles:

The Problem With Rob Bell’s Gospel

The controversial author says evangelical Christians are too narrow. But didn’t Jesus tell us to follow the narrow path?

When former evangelical pastor Rob Bell published his bombshell book Love Wins in 2011, his Michigan megachurch reportedly lost 3,000 members. They scattered quickly because Bell questioned the existence of a literal hell. His point was that Christians need to develop a nicer message with a lot less judgment. But his solution was to throw out 2,000 years of Christian theological tradition.

Then last month, Bell made a more stunning announcement from a pulpit in California. He told people gathered at Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal church in San Francisco, that he supports same-sex marriage. His primary reason, he said, was that culture has changed and we need to adapt.

“I am for fidelity,” Bell said. “I am for love, whether it’s a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man … This is the world that we are living in, and we need to affirm people wherever they are.”

I can appreciate Bell’s desire to affirm people. And I agree that some Christians come off sounding unbelievably harsh when we talk about homosexuality. But Bell didn’t have anything affirming to say to the evangelical Christians who were his support base during the early years of his ministry. He trashed us. And he was judgmental about it.

How Jesus Endured the Pain of the Cross

Jesus refused anesthesia. Yet something supernatural sustained Him during His suffering.

Nobody performed an autopsy on Jesus’ mangled body after He was taken down from the cross. But doctors who have studied the Bible’s description of His death say the pain would have been beyond excruciating. In fact, the word excruciating means “out of the cross.” Jesus literally defined the worst pain anyone could feel.

His suffering began in Gethsemane, when God laid the sins of the world on His beloved Son. The intense stress caused what physicians call hematridrosis, a condition in which blood seeps out of sweat glands. After His arrest, Jesus was flogged so mercilessly that his skin was stripped off His back, exposing muscle and bone.

After being slapped, punched, crowned with thorns and beaten with reeds, He was covered with a red robe and led to Golgotha. There, Roman soldiers drove seven-inch nails into his wrists (most likely hitting the median nerve, causing more blinding pain) and then they rammed another nail into his feet.

At that point, doctors suggest, Jesus would have suffered dislocation of His shoulders, cramps and spasms, dehydration from severe blood loss, fluid in His lungs and eventual lung collapse and heart failure. Yet He refused to take a pain-killing solution (see Matt. 27:34). He chose to endure the pain for us.

So how did Jesus handle this agony? Many scholars believe He meditated on Psalm 22 throughout His ordeal. He would have already memorized the prophetic prayer—which is quoted more often in the New Testament than any other Old Testament passage. It describes in detail the death of the Messiah. Imagine Jesus muttering the words of this psalm as He gasped for breath: