For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works

By Mike Ratliff - Posted at Possessing the Treasure:

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10 NASB)

As many of you know, I grew up as a Southern Baptist. After God saved me in 1986 I was a Southern Baptist until 2006 when our former church was overtaken by the Purpose Driven paradigm. I was bitter about that for a while. I and many of you found common ground having had our churches ripped away from us and in many cases finding it nearly impossible to find a good Biblical local church remaining in our area after the Seeker-Sensitive tsunamis had moved through devastating what were once good churches, leaving behind man-centered, store fronts for Rick Warren’s brand of man-focused religiosity. However, God is good and through this devastation and some personal fiery trials, which actually began in 2004, He has worked in me to grow me into a more mature Christian, stronger in the Word of God than ever, more knowledgeable in Biblical Greek, and deeper in the more cerebral areas of our faith that are sorely needed in our day such as presuppositional apologetics. When I was a Deacon teaching Sunday school at our local SBC church, I was extremely mediocre in most of that and hardly knowledgeable at all in the area of apologetics. Why? I was serving and operating from within a mindset that was extremely spiritually immature compared to today. My understanding of the Gospel and theology was probably deeper than most of my peers at that time, but compared to now, it was probably surface level at best.

As I said above, the wake up call began in 2004 and as I drew closer and closer to being the obedient, prayerful Christian we are all called to be, the more suspect I became in the eyes of my pastor and most of the leadership at that church. I remember 2005 being extremely difficult because of two things. Because of my study of Church history and theology I became Reformed and my Pastor began trying to move the leadership into changing our church from a traditional SBC church into a more seeker-sensitive church. At the end of the year, he began actively pushing Rick Warren’s books in our classes and small groups. At the first of the year in 2006, he gave each of the Deacons Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Church to read. By then I was in active discussion with Ken Silva and many of you online about this stuff and was becoming more and more educated about what was really going on and how if I could not stop the takeover then my wife and I had to leave that church. When it became apparent that no matter what I said or did the die was cast, we left.


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