To keep others from His love (part one).

I had a watershed moment in my life as a Christian today and what it means to be denied worship. For years I have supported organizations that provide for the persecuted church around the world. My favorite and probably most well known is Voice of the Martyrs. I actually got to visit their U.S. headquarters in Bartlesville, OK and meet their director, Tom White. He's the author of God's Missiles Over Cuba. My aunt who worked there introduced me to the man. It was quite an experience meeting someone who had been tortured in a Cuban prison camp for years simply for dropping Christian literature on the island. It is horrible that he was persecuted by non-Christians for his beliefs. How much worse is it when Christians try to deny the worship of other Christians?


I visited a church today and was told that I should not take the Lord's Supper because I am not a member of any church. I didn't obey the request and simply said that, according to my conscience, it would be wrong not to partake in the Lord's Supper and that regardless of what they believed I would take it anyway. To wit, I was told that I should, "respect the desires of the church" and refrain. What about their respect towards my conscience? Had I bowed to their pressure I would be sinning by doing something I thought to be wrong! I could only reply that I could not obey unbiblical desires of any church. The wine never tasted so sweet!

I'm reminded of the movie "Chariots of Fire" when Eric Liddell (a Christian running in the 1924 Olympics) is told by many of England's most powerful and influential men to run the qualifying heat for the 100 meter dash on a Sunday. He believed that doing so would be against God's law of resting on the Sabbath. When Liddell refuses these men, Lord Cadogen spits, "Don't be impertinent, Liddell," to which Liddell retorts, "The impertinence lies, sir, with those who seek to influence a man to deny his beliefs!"

As the situation is resolved and upon this vein, the Duke of Sutherland says to Lord Birkenhead, "The "lad", as you call him, is a true man of principles and a true athlete. His speed is a mere extension of his life, its force. We sought to sever his running from himself."

"For his country's sake, yes," responds Lord Birkenhead.

The Duke's final response is, "No sake is worth that, least of all a guilty national pride."

I find that, among many churches, the "pride" is not guilty so much as it is arrogant. It is similar to national pride yet infinitely more grotesque. Does it not serve to divide God's universal children? It reveals a gross split from the life of grace that Christ teaches and the life of works that is preached. To tell a man how to worship is to deny the condition of his heart and make him a liar. Christ changes us by writing His law upon the flesh of our own hearts and makes a broken and contrite heart an inward reality for those who love Him. Thus, obeying the law written on stone at Mount Sinai does not save; trusting in Christ who obeyed that law and gives us His obedience by coding it into us does.

It is so important that the gift the founding fathers gave us was the ability to live according to our own conscience in liberty, free from oppression. It is so easy for us to oppress! As for myself, my conscience is directed by the Holy Scriptures and I will spit in the face of any man-made institution that desires to add to or subtract from the principles upon which Christ builds His children.

I was shocked and incredibly angry from all of this but the Lord redeemed the experience and made it very good. I am blessed to be able to worship according to my own conscience as taught in the scriptures. The Lord's Supper is something amazing, for I am able to physically enjoy my relationship with the God of the universe. I have never truly appreciated the gift until today when others tried to strip it from me. Ultimately (learning from those who have been persecuted to the point of death), had they been successful, it would not have mattered. We feed on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and the Spirit of the Lord is with us wherever we go. As Romans 8:31-38 says:

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.