Letters

Thank you, through the power of the Holy Spirit of God, that you are continuing [to be] “truth doers,” standing for righteousness in rightly dividing the Word of God, and for being an edification and encouragement for this pilgrim that I might be sharpened and enabled by the Spirit to prayerfully do my own “foraging” instead of being lazily “force” fed by just grazing on today’s media supplements or indeed, even comfortably fed by sound teaching shepherds and ministries, versus going to the Word and searching on my own in prayer and by the Holy Spirit’s leading!...I discern a change manifesting among [many ministries] in that they are beginning to reveal a lack of discernment that causes me to grieve and to continue in prayer as they seem to be choosing to accept less than God’s Word and Ways. The gate, the pilgrim path upon which we tread, becomes ever narrower…. I pray…that we might be filled with the love of Christ…and share this with the increasingly dark and deceived world, and sadly, the deceived saints. PS (ID)

I read with interest your recent article on the problem with accepting the so-called science of psychology in church practice. I would suggest an additional reason to exclude its use.

When one makes a sweeping statement such as, “all psychology is wrong,” people almost cannot believe what they have heard. Years of taking true/false tests make us wary of accepting any statement with an absolute in it.

However, I contend that there is no psychological theory of human behavior that includes the concept of sin. All theories that exclude this aspect of human nature will fail to accurately describe why people do things. Any therapeutic methods derived from such flawed theories could only at best hope to approach randomness in their efficacy.

For a pastor to apply a technique that can at best be as effective as doing nothing and at worst compound existing problems would seem foolish.

One can be sympathetic for pastors who have been prepared by their seminaries to defend their denominational doctrine, but have been left unprepared to deal Biblically with real human problems. For these men I would suggest cultivating relationships with older, wiser Christian men from whom they can learn the application of Christianity to real life. TF (email)

I am writing to tell you how much your ministry has blessed me over the years. I first read your newsletter in November 1995, while deployed to Kuwait. An airman gave me several of his copies and they were a great blessing to me then. I subscribed shortly after returning home and have received the monthly newsletter ever since.

[My family and I] have removed ourselves from our local Baptist congregation. The pastor there revealed that he does not believe God is omniscient. There are other stands he has taken that disagree with the Scriptures so we felt compelled to remove ourselves. The majority of the congregation is not bothered by this and sits quietly, agreeing to disagree.

We are blessed to have you preaching and teaching God’s Word….Thank you again for blessing me. EM (TX)