A (24:12)
Yeah, vote with your feet. Leave. Leave. I would appeal. I would be patient and long suffering. I would contend for the truth. I would pray for him, I would seek to inspire him. I would educate him. I would do all those things. You brought up Calvinism. And I like this because it's a good illustration. Calvary chapels are not Calvinist, but they love Calvinists, love our worship and they love our evangelistic approach. We've had 10,000% growth since 1968. We're all about evangelism. Greg Laurie started with the Calvary chapels. I think he's now affiliated with the Baptists, but he would do the Harvest Crusades. So we're all about evangelism. Calvinists, there's really, you can't go up and say to somebody, as a real true five point Calvinist, you can't say God loves you because that's not true. You may not be one of the chosen. And by the way, when the scripture says in Romans, Jacob, I loved Esau, I hated. That was written in Romans. That was after Jacob and Esau died. And the Bible says it's appointed once for man to die, then judgment. Paul could write that, but it wasn't declared in the Old Testament. So the idea to be able to say to someone, God loves you, you can't say that as a Calvinist. So it makes it difficult for evangelism and Calvinism. It's kind of heady. It's a hard sell. It's difficult. It's like being a Republican. It requires logic. So they'll come to our church and I'll say, look, if you're Calvinist, I'm thrilled you're here. But we're not, and we're not interested in being Calvinists. But worship, enjoy it. Know that we're going to teach the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book. Stay with us. But I'm not interested in dividing the church. You know what we're about. And they, oh, praise the Lord, brother. We're not gonna do that every single time. I've had an issue. Not every single time. There's some Calvinists out there. They keep to their word. But inevitably, over the 20 plus years of ministry, that's been a struggle and I say that because folks who, they bring in this Trojan horse, and then they want to go with their agenda, and that's troublesome because that's what we're facing right now in the church. I don't want the people that are confronting their pastor to drive an agenda with a pastor who already has a direction. Either agree to disagree and remain with him and endeavor to keep the union of the Spirit in the bond of peace, or quietly leave and go start something else. Yes, because that pastor may not be a fighter, may not be called to that capacity, but the bride of Christ, the church is a multifaceted diamond, and we all have a different facet on that. Yeah, I'm a fighter. That's my facet. But don't divide the bride. Don't attack the church. Now, granted if it's heretical, granted if, like in the Book of Acts, where you have Ananias and Sapphira, you need to point out those who are deceptive. You have to mark those who cause division and have nothing to do with them. The scripture says so. That's important in a church. And then if Satan can't attack the church from the outside, he tries to infiltrate it with deception on the inside. And if he can't do that, he tries to divide the church. And. And he does that, as you see in Acts chapter 6, with the Hellenists and the Hebrews contending over the lack of care for the Hellenistic widows. And in that case, you know, God creates race. He also creates ethnicity. And when they decided and they prayed to resolve this issue, the first thing they looked for were godly men who rightly divided the word of truth, who were filled with the spirit of the Lord. And you would think that's all that's necessary because we don't want to look at the color of the skin, but the content of the character. Well, they also looked at the color of the skin because they appointed the men who oversaw the distribution to the widows. They were all Hellenists. They all had Greek names. These Hebrews yielded to the Hellenists. It's to a man's benefit to overlook an offense. If it's within your ability to serve someone, do it. And they did that. So there's mending that's required. But the enemy is going to try to divide us by the color of our skin and our socioeconomic status. It's the Hegelian dialectic where you divide and conquer. The church must endeavor to keep the union of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Long answer, but I'll close it with this. If you're in a church and you have appealed to your pastor and you've found resistance and no yielding, and he has made it abundantly clear that he is not yielding, you quietly leave and vote with your feet. Don't. Don't attack him on your way out. Don't dump them. Dump on him on the way out. Leave. And when you leave, go to serve, but endeavor to keep the union of the spirit in the bond of peace. Does that help?