Climate Change: Who Changes Whom?
By Jim and Dianne Schroeder
Over the past forty-plus years we’ve been slammed by a storm of epic proportions.
Snail-paced at the outset, but quickly gathering momentum with the onset of the tech boom, the storm of moral and cultural upheaval is now approaching a Category 5.
This upheaval has sent billowing tsunami waves of ungodly cultural influence into our individual homes. So terrible is the onslaught of this heightened influence that it seemingly paralyzes our response, causing in us a lack of desire to address it – even an inability to appropriately react or respond to these changes.
You, the individual Christian, are caught in the middle as the storm of cultural influence launches attacks against the Son of God and the Body of Christ, the Church.
The eyewall of cultural space between the Son, His people and the storms of cultural change threatens to send us retreating back into the eye of the storm, where there is peace and no wind at all.
Outside of the eye, the eyewall storms are raging furiously, pulling in a direction away from God. There they threaten to annihilate us and our family – if we don’t respond appropriately.
But God is faithful to raise up a standard against the storms of cultural change, as Isaiah 59:19 declares: “So they shall fear the name of the Lord from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.”
As cultural storms spin across the world, that eyewall wipes out everything in its path. All the while, the eye of the storm is still a peaceful place.
But Jesus told us not to remain in the eye. Instead, He commands us to go out into the storm and preach the Gospel to the nations, and He promises to be with us as we do (Matthew 28:18-20).
We need to make a decision not to allow these tumultuous winds of cultural change to bring a catastrophic blow to the church. Rather, God’s intent is to use these forces to catapult us out into the world and culminate in the most dynamic revival ever known to man.
The family must be the cultural atmospheric center, supported by and rooted in the Church.
How are cultural changes affecting you and your family? Those effects can be harnessed to bring a positive spiritual influence in the home, or they can go unchallenged and result in literal spiritual destruction for some or for every member of our unique families.
The Christian family must influence the culture more than the culture influences us: individually, as a family unit, and as the family of families which is the Church.
In Ephesians 3:16-19 Paul says his desire for the church is “that [God] would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
It is more imperative than ever that we effectively communicate with one another. We must actually know our Lord and be determined to get to know one another, strengthening each other in the Lord.
How might cultural changes affect families in the Church positively or negatively?
Godless influences are more accessible than ever in today’s culture. Television, video games, telephones, social media, the Internet via the worldwide web have all changed what we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell, and how we relate or don’t relate to one another.
How, then, shall we now live in today’s world and still glorify the God we serve?
We may be tempted to retreat, to hide, to isolate ourselves in self-defense, as a way to protect ourselves and our families from these unwelcome godless cultural influences.
Or we can stand firm against the storm, putting on the whole armor of God and entering the battle to disciple those new converts who may not yet be aware of the storm’s effects on their families.
Ephesians 6:14-18 lists the components of our spiritual armor: “Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.”
As we read this passage it becomes clear that we arm ourselves for the battle individually and then stand together with each other, and so become a bright light in this present darkness – a loving light toward which people are drawn because they see “Christ in us, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). We must find ways to share this glorious secret with the world around us.
Here we come, marching boldly into spiritual warfare as His soldiers, carrying the cross of Jesus and fully equipped with the weapons of our warfare. They aren’t carnal weapons, but spiritual, and mighty in pulling down the strongholds of cultural influence (II Corinthians 10:4).
How can godless cultural change turn our eyes heavenward?
By driving us to seek daily doses of God’s Word, and prayer, and the perpetual presence of His Spirit. This is what keeps us focused on the Son, preparing us for the storms so that we are ready and able to ride each one out and rebuild the church into a powerful new source of explosive revival in this country and around the world.
Through prayer we put on love, because without love, we will implode into judging one another, compromising with the culture or succumbing to it, rather than overcoming it and shining out into it.
The next great revival is inevitable and it has been prophesied. Growing numbers will be and are even now being added to the Church daily.
How can you – individually, corporately and as a family – most effectively impact the culture?
God has prepared the fields. They are ripe already for harvest. Prepare yourself to stand firm, and gain momentum from the storm. “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel” (Mark 16:15).