Leaving Beyond – Grounded In Scripture

Written by: April J. Buchanan

You see the flyers, the social media posts, the invitations to conferences, revivals, studies, and more. You need not respond favorably to every invitation. Every invitation must be tested against Scripture.

What are they appealing to?
How are they defining biblical terms?
What promise are you being drawn to?
What is the message?

Is it clearly and distinctly biblical, or are biblical words being used while their meaning is quietly redefined? Is the draw Christ Himself, or is it something wounded in you that is being targeted with the promise of an experience, an encounter, that will finally give you the spiritual boost you need?

Those two words alone, experience and encounter, are revealing.

I could ask whether you see how you are being drawn by manipulative means. But the truth is, many do not see. They feel the draw.

These teachers are fluent in biblical language, but not biblical meaning. They can quote Scripture, but they are not grounded in sound doctrine. They promise what appeals to the most basic desires common to all mankind, the desire to feel strong, capable, affirmed, empowered. And so they present a Jesus who is attractive to sinful man, a Jesus who helps, boosts, and enhances what is already believed to exist within.

This is not the Christ who calls sinners to die.
It is a Christ who helps them succeed.

I grieve and despise what many women are being drawn to today. It is not Christ. It is not His grace. It appeals to shared struggles, familiar wounds, and real pain, but it offers the wrong remedy. It promises empowerment. It promises addition. It promises to give something to what is assumed to already exist within the woman herself, needing only activation.

She is told she will slay demons, conquer threats to her peace, protect what she cherishes, if only she receives the boost she lacks.

Do you not see what this implies?

She does not need Jesus.
She does not need faith that truly trusts God in suffering.
She does not need grace that is sufficient.
She does not need the Word of God rightly exposited.

That was never the attraction.

She comes for an experience. An encounter. Something that will unlock her potential and empower her to become all she is said to already be. Jesus is not the treasure. He is the means. The Gospel is not the message. It is the tool.

They say they love Jesus, but they do not know Him.

The Christ of Scripture does not come to add to what is already within us. He comes to expose that there is nothing within us that can save, strengthen, or empower us apart from Him. Biblical grace does not awaken hidden potential. It puts self to death.

Grace does not make us strong so that we can conquer. It reveals our weakness so that Christ alone is our strength.

The Gospel does not offer empowerment through experience. It offers reconciliation through the cross. We are not called to activation, but to repentance. Not to self-discovery, but to self-denial. Not to encounters that elevate us, but to union with Christ that crucifies us and raises us to new life in Him.

Recently, I had a conversation with a young man who is much in God’s Word. I listened as he spoke with excitement, joy, and love, grounded in Scripture. Here was a young man with much still to learn, and yet it was evident that the Holy Spirit was at work in him. He spoke of Jesus with deep love for his Savior, and as he spoke of himself and God’s people, it was clear that he understood the true work of God in man. He boasted much in Christ, in what He has done and in the continuing work of the Spirit in the believer.

As I listened, I found myself pondering how many who profess Christ do not know such love, such satisfaction in Christ, such joy and such peace. These are not found merely in knowing what Christ has done at the cross, but in knowing what He continues to do in the believer by means of His Word, rightly understood and rightly applied through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.

I think of those who burden new believers with talk of their potential, their greatness, how they are made for more and will do amazing things for God. Faith is turned into a formula for success. Suffering is framed as an attack of the enemy against their potential. They are given more works to do, more steps to take, more things to unlock so that they might finally do great things.

They do not know grace.
They do not know peace.
They do not know joy.

These are wrought in man by the Holy Spirit as we hear God’s Word rightly exposited. But they do not hear it. Scripture becomes metaphors, allegories, and pretexts for their own greatness. They sit under teaching that promises peace while robbing them of peace, that promises power while robbing them of the true power of the Holy Spirit, who works in the believer to conform him to the image of Christ.

They do not know. Even their experiential knowledge is counterfeit. It is exhausting. It is boastful. It destroys true peace, true joy, true faith, true hope, and true love.

They have a love, a peace, a joy, and a hope, but it is much like that of false religion. It is not real.

This is why the message is rejected. It leaves no room for boasting, no room for self-trust, and no room for a Jesus who merely helps.

As Voddie Baucham once said, “The modern church is producing passionate people filled with empty heads who love the Jesus they don’t know very well.”

Grace and peace, y’all.
Soli Deo Gloria