The July Newsletter
More than ever before our country is in danger of collapse. From the politcians whose ethics come into question to the people who seem to have an interest only in their causes and comfort, we stand a good chance of self-destructing. The history of God's people as related in the Bible parallels our own and has been the topic of many sermons warning us of the dangers. What seems even more alarming is that we whom God has assigned the task of being salt and light are having problems being a preservative or a beacon. Our power seems to be waning. We could say that is the way it will be in the latter days as men refuse to hear the truth. There may be another reason though, and the following excerpt from the book "The Trivialization of God" may help us recover our power and enjoy a resounding triumph as people turn back to the Lord.
You will benefit by reading this article as well as the book itself. If you think by reading the title you already know the content, you may be in for some helpful surprises.
Lee J. Martinez
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The Trivialization of
God
by Donald W. McCullough
"I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before Me."
Exodus 20:2,3Visit a church on Sunday morning - almost any will do - and you will likely find a congregation comfortably relating to a deity who fits nicely within precise doctrinal positions, or who lends almighty support to social crusades, or who conforms to individual spiritual experiences. But in many churches, you will not likely find much awe or sense of mystery. The only sweaty palms might be those of the preacher unsure whether the sermon will go over; the only shaking knees could be those of the soloist about to sing the offertory.
The New Testament warns us, "offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:28,29) But reverence and awe have often been replaced by a yawn of familiarity. The consuming fire has been domesticated into a candle flame, adding a bit of religious atmosphere, perhaps, but no heat, no blinding light, no power for purification.
When the true story gets told, whether in the partial light of historical perspective or in the perfect light of eternity, it may well be revealed that the worst sin of the Church at the end of the twentieth century has been the trivialization of God.
"Why do people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless, tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?" asks Annie Dillard in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk. She goes on, "On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return."
We prefer the illusion of a safer deity, and so we have pared God down to more manageable proportions. Our era has no exclusive claim to the trivialization of God. This has always been the temptation and the failure for the people of God. Pagan gods have caused less trouble than the tendency to re-fashion God into a more congenial, serviceable god. Those who turn from God have nothing but gods of their own making, and these false gods inevitably take concrete form in human life. Idolatry externalizes a false image of the divine.
Even as Moses was on the mountain receiving the First Commandment forbidding idolatry, the people turned from God. They lost patience. Where was the One who had led them into such a god-forsaken wilderness? They wanted a god who would stay put, a god who would be useful as they journeyed toward whatever the future held. So they imagined a different deity, and making their imagination concrete, they fashioned a golden calf. They did not even think they had abandoned the God who had saved them. But they re-fashioned God to fit their expectations and to service their desires. They reduced God to a more manageable deity; they exchanged the saving God for a trivial god.
It is worth noting that God gave the commandment against other gods not to pagans but to Israel, the very people of God. Being saved never guarantees worship of the true God. God can seem too distant, too slow in appearing, too unaccommodating to individual desires. The consequent longings easily seduce into adulterous liasons with more immediately satisfying gods. But when the afternoon's diversion has passed, unfulfillment comes raging back with even greater intensity. By then, though, the marriage has been defiled, the God of salvation has been betrayed.
The history of Saved Ones - from ancient Israel to the modern church shows a continual capitulation to the temptation to forsake God for other gods. But we may be even more vulnerable than our forbears because of certain characteristics of our age.
We have lost a sense of awe before transcendence; God has seemed especially silent at a time when other information has exploded in unimaginable ways; and as Americans, we have had bred in our bones a thorough-going individualism. We will be tempted, therefore, to create for ourselves gods who will not threaten us with transcendence, gods who will be manifestly useful in a world of confusing voices, and gods who will conform to the contours of our individualistic desires.
But what if we need more than we desire? According to the Bible, this precisely describes our situation. Our real problem, we are told, is sin - not sins, in the sense of this or that specific disobedience, but sin, a fundamental mis-orientation of our lives. Sin, in its most rudimentary form, is the attempt to be like God, the attempt to seize God's place at the center and to take control. (Genesis 3:5) So, however sin might manifest itself in thoughts and words and actions, it is essentially self-centeredness.
Because self-centeredness leads inevitably away from the God of life and therefore toward death, because it leads toward the destruction not only of individuals but of creation, we need much more than our self enclosed desires can imagine, let alone achieve. Salvation can only come from outside ourselves, from a God who transcends us, from a God who speaks a Word more authoritative than all human words, from a God who delivers us from the individualism that will be the death of us.
This God is holy: that is, wholly other than us - a God, therefore, before whom we may and must be in awe. This God, moreover, is fully revealed through Jesus Christ - a God, therefore, who has spoken the one necessary Word we must hear and obey. And through Jesus Christ, the holiness of God is revealed to be an agressive, pursuing love.
A God such as this will never be manageable - and may at first be frightening. But the Bible tells us, "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." (Proverbs 9:10) Not craven fear, but awe-filled fear in the presence of the only Friend and Helper who can save us.
"I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before Me" - will this commandment be first in our lives?
Excerpted with permission, The Trivialization of God, Dr. Donald W. McCullough, ©1995, Used by permission of NavPress. Dr. Donald W. McCullough is President and Professor of Theology and Preaching at San Francisco Theological Seminary. For copies call 1-800-366-7788.
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FOCUS ON THE FAMILY
(Weekdays 1:30 & 9:00 p.m.)
INSIGHT FOR LIVING
(Weekdays 8:30 a.m. & 7:30 p.m.)
Intimacy With the Almighty Series continues through July 11. The Book of Daniel series starts July 12.
Weekend edition -Saturday, 8:00 p.m.:
GRACE TO YOU
(Weekdays at 11:00 a.m.)
KEY LIFE
(Weekdays at 6:15 a.m.)
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Each month we list our broadcasters that have birthdays that month. We encourage you to remember these friends and their ministry with special prayer on that day.
July 15 - Dr. Harold Sala - "Guidelines"
Weekdays, 5:00 p.m.
Box G, Laguna Hills, CA 92653
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PALM BAY - I enjoy the speakers you bring forth as well as the DJ's. However I would like to hear more black gospel music - traditional as well as contemporary. Thanks for spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
MELBOURNE - Here is my May pledge. I want to thank you again for having such a wonderful Christian station to listen to. I listen before work and after work and my days off. I am proud to have the bumper sticker on my car, hoping others will see it and they too will listen. Thanks for the many blessings I get by listening all the time that I can!
PALM BAY - This is the pledge amount I made in March. I apologize for the length of time. I was dealing with a medical condition. I greatly appreciate your service to our community.
INDIALANTIC - Here's the money I promised during Sharathon (finally)! Thanks for the inspiring programs and music.
PALM BAY - Please find enclosed one pledge for l996. I have been blessed by your ministry for the last l0 years in many ways. I thank God and keep you all in my prayers. The reason we are sending our whole pledge instead of the monthly amount is that God has given me a new job opportunity and we are moving to Clearwater, Fl. I start on June 3rd. Although this is an answer to prayer and will be a great move for us, we are sad to leave so many friends and WCIF. I will always be thankful for the example of Lee and Martha and everyone I have been touched by at WCIF. We will tune in any time we come back this way! It will be hard to find such a wonderful station!
SATELLITE BEACH - Thank you very much for the Newsletter. Also was happy to hear the good news from your letter about the increasing of power to reach more people with the gospel. I do pray you will find the right spot for the tower and antenna. Like you say they need to hear the gospel of the protector and Provider. I will indeed continue to pray and certainly do appreciate you dear people of all you are doing there at WCIF. I have learned to enjoy everything on there and thank God for everyone that makes this possible. God Bless All.
VERO BEACH - I'm so happy to hear you may be able to increase the power from your station. I tell all my friends what great programs you have. A lot of them say they have a problem getting the station. In fact I have a problem when the weather is bad. I have only one radio that I can depend on all the time and the only place it works is in the bathroom on the counter next to the sink.. I have a bumper sticker on my car. I always have my car radio tuned to WCIF. When its bad weather I get a couple of stations on the same station. So I hope you have success. Thanks for the Great Programs. I try never to miss Charles Stanley and Chuck Swindoll.
MELBOURNE - I am inspired by so many letters to you telling what your station means to them. It is the same with me - ever since I started listening on my way to work about ten years ago. The many messages have helped me grow in my walk with Jesus and I thank you for your selection of programs that keeps Jesus as the central ministry - for Jesus is Lord - there is no greater power.
COCOA - Sorry it has taken so long for me to start sending in my $ per month pledge. Here is April, May, June. Please send a receipt. Thank you.
INDIALANTIC - Music is good - need more of it in the evenings.
MELBOURNE - Thanks for the Number 1 station.
PALM BAY - God Bless all at WCIF. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He has redeemed from the hands of the enemies. Because the Lord God is a sun and shield He will give grace and glory and nothing good will He withhold from us. So we can go on trusting. I am really glad for Christian Stations and Christian television. By His Grace I will continue to walk uprightly so I will receive His promise. May God Bless all the Staff keeping them in His Will, He is coming soon.
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A gift has been given to the ministry of WCIF:
In Memory of
John Riddell
from
John Pottinger
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God of our fathers, give unto us, thy servants, a true appreciations of our heritage, of great men and great deeds in the past, but let us not be intimidated by feelings of our own inadequacy for this troubled hour.
Remind us that the God they worshiped, and by whose help they laid the foundations of our Nation, is still able to help us uphold what they bequeathed and to give it new meanings.
Remind us that we are not called to fill the places of those who have gone, but to fill our own places, to do the work thou hast laid before us, to do the right as thou hast given us to see the right, always to do the very best we can, and to leave the rest to Thee.
Peter Marshall
PRAYER FOR MARTHA AND MILTON - For the past nine years Milton
and Martha Root have traveled to Brazil as part of a mission team presenting
the Gospel and serving the people. Pray for their safe- ty and effectiveness
as they go to Brazil this month. Martha's duties as Operations Adminisrator
will be spread around, prepared in advance or waiting when she returns.
She is a crucial part of our staff. Pray for the station as well as the
entire team serving in Brazil this month.
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July 2 - Frederick and Wynn Herscher in memory of their son Garry Lee Herscher on his birthday
July 4 - Anonymous
July 6 - Paul and Nancy Hunt, in honor of the marriage of their son Jeremy to Deandra Javon Little on March 30
July 7 - Harold and Pat Guiles in memory of their grandson Kevin Guiles on his birthday
July 10 - Homer and Anne Mason in honor of their fifty-first wedding anniversary
July 13 - Irvin and Betty Derrick in honor of their granddaughter Megan Susanne on her first birthday, the daughter of Mike and Natalie Derrick
July 21 - Sally Benson in memory of her mother Ruth Farrington
July 24 - Dudley and Sue Garner in memory of Barbara Heinbaugh
July 25 - Mayo and Mae Adams, in celebration of the start of their fifty-fourth year of marriage
Thank you to our Day Sponsors who have underwritten the cost of a
broadcast day on WClF. If you or your church would like information about
being a Day Sponsor call 725-9243 or send E-mail to
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A program featuring pastors of local churches heard weekdays at 5:30 p.m.
July 1-5 - Pastor Mack M. Brown
Community Church of the Nazarene, Merritt Island
July 8-12 - Pastor Dan Wilkerson
First Baptist Church Malabar
July 15-19 - Pastor Michael Thompson
Tabernacle Church, Melbourne
July 22-26 - Pastor Rod Johnson
Emmanuel United Methodist Church, Melbourne
July 29-August 2
Pastor C. Ross Rowland
Oceanside Evangelical Free Church, Satellite Beach
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Thanks to some expert help from a friend of the station, Rick Kiper
of KiperteK, WCIF now has an attractive
internet home page. Those who call up our address will find the most recent
issue of the newsletter, addresses
for contacting our programmers, a history of WCIF
as well as a survey which will ask for your listening
habits and any suggestions you might have. Of course, all of these are
available to anyone by contacting the station, but pulling them from the
internet could speed things up. If you have something you'd like to see
us include let us know -our WWW address is www.wcif.com.
(E-mail:
INVITE A FRIEND TO TUNE IN
WClF NEWSLETTER is a monthly publication of
WClF FM
702 E. New Haven Avenue
Melbourne, FL 32901.
(407) 725-9243.
VOLUME XIV, No. 7 Free subscription sent upon request
"I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity."
1 Timothy 1:1&2
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Copyright ©1996 WCIF Christian Radio
Created by KiperteK |
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Contact WCIF:
WCIF Christian Radio P.O. Box 366 Melbourne, FL 32902-0366 (407) 725-9243 E-mail: info@wcif.com |
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