Half-heartedness

Che Guevara is known internationally as a Marxist revolutionary. As he recruited for his guerilla operations in Cuba, the Congo, and Bolivia he often encountered the half-heartedness of his volunteers.

Author John Lee Anderson quotes Che’s sarcastic evaluation of the freshly trained recruits who had just arrived to fight in the Congo:

In a ludicrous sideshow, the captain had also brought over forty new Congolese rebel ‘graduates,’ fresh from a training course in the Soviet Union. Like their Bulgarian and Chinese-trained predecessors, they immediately requested two weeks of vacation, while also complaining that they had nowhere to put their luggage. Che wrote, ‘It would be a little comic if it weren’t so sad, to see the disposition of these boys in whom the revolution had deposited its faith.’

Possible Preaching Angle:

The church also faces the same issue with those who are called to follow our Savior. We are not called to be part-time disciples looking for a life of leisure. Jesus calls for us to “take your cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). He also promises to give us immense rewards stored up in heaven for the sacrifices we make for his cause (Matt. 19:29).

While many Americans report that they attend church at least occasionally, that number could be slowly shrinking. Recently, people were asked in an online forum, “If you used to go to church and don’t anymore … Why not?” and the answers were interesting and insightful.

1. There Are Too Many Judgmental People - Yes, there are many, many kind, loving Christians. But there are plenty of not-so-kind ones too.

2. They Were Hurt at Church - Unfortunately, church hurt is a very real issue that way too many Christians have had to endure.

3. The Service Is Too Loud - Many former church members reported that they didn’t appreciate how loud and showy the services can be these days.

4. There Were Too Many False Teachings – Some churches have turned aside from their original purpose and turned the sermons into self-help seminars with the Word of God only occasionally sprinkled in.

5. The Church Split - Church splits are incredibly painful for those involved, and can easily lead to some walking out of church altogether.

6. Their Schedule Is Too Busy - People are busier than ever. This can mean church attendance takes a back seat to other matters.

7. They Stopped Attending During the Pandemic - Multiple people mentioned the recent pandemic as a reason, whether this was due to ongoing health concerns or simply a change in routine.

8. The Church Focused On Religion Over Relationship – The church should focus on building a good relationship with God and others, not simply following rules or measuring up to an impossible standard.

9. The Church Became Too Focused on Money - Too much emphasis on money and giving simply isn’t healthy. This is problematic if church members are treated differently due to their differences in giving.

10. They Have Social Anxiety - Anxiety is a common mental health condition, so this prevents some from regularly attending and enjoying time at church.

Editor’s Note: The original survey was conducted by Equipping Godly Women on Reddit. You can read the original survey and comments here.

Jeanne Pouchain knows she’s not dead. But she has to prove it in court. The 58-year-old French woman was declared dead by a court in 2017 during a decade long legal case. An employee Pouchain had fired years ago sued her for lost wages and told a court that Pouchain was dead after she stopped responding to the employee’s letters.

Without evidence, the French court accepted the allegation and levied a judgment against Pouchain’s estate. The court’s decision set off a chain reaction in France’s bureaucracy, which scrubbed her from official records and invalidated her identity cards and licenses.

Pouchain recently told The Guardian, “I have no identity papers, no health insurance, I cannot prove to the banks that I am alive … I’m nothing.” Pouchain’s attorney then presented an affidavit to the court from her doctor attesting to her continued existence. Her former employee says Pouchain had been pretending to be dead in order to avoid paying the court-mandated damages.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Christians can also appear to be dead if they let their spiritual life lapse. This is true in church membership (Rev. 3:1) and also in the lifestyle they choose if they fall into worldliness (Eph. 5:14-15; Rom. 13:11).

In a poll of 2,000 Britons the 'Perfect Sunday' involved: waking at 8:30 a.m. to the smell of breakfast cooking, a cuddle, and three hours of television. A quarter of Brits thought an ideal weekend morning starts with a full English breakfast in bed and a third wanted to start their Sunday morning with a cup of tea or coffee, before pottering around the house for an hour.

The perfect roast is said to be best served at 3:15 p.m. with, ideally, four people. Other activities Brits enjoy doing on Sunday include reading a book, listening to music, and doing some gardening. Nearly one in 10 said they spend their Sunday afternoon at the pub, while one in seven think Sundays are made for doing food shopping to keep the cupboards stocked for the rest of the week.

Attending church did not appear in the poll. Graham Nicholls from Affinity, a network of evangelical churches, said:

I suppose I was sad that attending a gathering of God's people, in a church, wasn't kind of anywhere on the majority of people's lists. … It means that they're not hearing the gospel, they're not coming to an encounter with God … It's also that churches are great places for taking our families, for making friendships and for learning who we are and why we're here.

The Declaration of Independence was signed by fifty-six men. In signing this document, they put their lives and their fortunes on the line. Treason was the word the British would use to describe what they did. Many of them lost everything.

Thomas Nelson Jr. was one of these men. Nelson was wealthy. He often paid for, or lent the money to buy the munitions that George Washington's men desperately needed. During the Battle of Yorktown, British General Cornwallis took over Nelson's home as his headquarters. It was not just a move for Cornwallis' comfort, or to make a symbolic point as to who was in charge. It was a strategic defensive move. The British general knew that that Washington's men would never open fire on the grand estate of their great friend and benefactor, Thomas Nelson.

However Nelson saw the predicament General Washington was in, and how the cannons were not even pointed in the direction of the enemy's headquarters. Nelson quietly went up to Washington and urged him to open the canon fire on his own home—now Cornwallis new headquarters. Washington did open fire and the home was destroyed.

Eugene J. Polley lived his entire life in the Chicago area, where he worked for Zenith Electronics for 47 years. Hired as a stock boy during the Depression, he eventually became an engineer with 18 patents to his credit. But his most famous invention would become known as the TV remote control.

In 1950, Zenith released a product called Lazy Bones, a cumbersome device tethered to the TV by a long cord. Zenith's founder demanded something better. So in 1955 Mr. Polley produced an innovation called the Flash-Matic, a ray-gun remote control sold just as TV sets were making their way into every American home. "Absolutely harmless to humans!" the Flash-Matic ads promised. Within decades, a television could be found in practically every American home, and nearly every TV set had a remote to go with it.

At one point in his life, Polley had high hopes for his invention. He said, "Maybe I did something for humanity—like the guy who invented the flush toilet." But although the TV remote has helped the disabled and elderly, it has also been blamed for contributing to obesity, sparking marital spats, and causing many TV viewers to "zone out" as they "channel surf." For many people, a TV remote control has become a symbol for convenience and even laziness. As John Ortberg once half-jokingly wrote, "Life without the remote control is an unbearable burden for the modern American family."

Towards the end of his life, Polley seemed to regret some of these negative consequences of the TV remote. He said, "Everything has to be done remotely now or forget it. Nobody wants to get off their fat and flabby to control [their own] electronic devices."

Jesus relentlessly undermines all that is not god to make room for the God who has redeemed our hearts.

Christ is not valued at all, unless he is valued above all.

Christ says, "Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there. I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think are innocent as well as the ones you think are wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you myself: my own will shall become yours."

—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Ron Hutchcraft describes a visit to Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina:

As the tour boat approached Fort Sumter, I wondered whether the guides would be dressed in blue or in gray. Sumter had been a Union fort in Confederate territory when the Civil War began. It had changed hands several times.

We were greeted at the gate by a "soldier" wearing a blue coat and gray pants! This uniform wouldn't have worked very well back in 1861. It would have gotten its wearer shot on both ends!

It's not a good idea for a follower of Christ to send double signals to his world either. Compromise increases stress over the long haul. The deception, the half-heartedness tears us apart. When people aren't sure of our stand, they keep pushing.

Gandhi once observed, ''One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.''

On a recent trip to Haiti, I heard a Haitian pastor illustrate to his congregation the need for total commitment to Christ. His parable:

A certain man wanted to sell his house for $2,000. Another man wanted very badly to buy it, but because he was poor, he couldn't afford the full price. After much bargaining, the owner agreed to sell the house for half the original price with just one stipulation: he would retain ownership of one small nail protruding from just over the door.

After several years, the original owner wanted the house back, but the new owner was unwilling to sell. So first the owner went out found the carcass of a dead dog, and hung it from the nail he still owned. Soon the house became unlivable and the family was forced to sell the house to the owner of the nail.

The Haitian pastor's conclusion: "If we leave the Devil with even one small peg in our life, he will return to hang his rotting garbage on it, making it unfit for Christ's habitation."

The core problem is not that we are too passionate about bad things, but that we are not passionate enough about good things.

"It's Monty Williams. He wants to know if he can audit your discipleship class on 'Total Commitment.' "

The greatest criticism of the Church today is that no one wants to persecute it: because there is nothing very much to persecute it about.

The church, if it expects to rouse from lethargy, must know why it exists and what God expects it to accomplish.

A feeble, nominal Christianity is the great obstacle to the conversion of the world.

Chad Walsh wrote an intriguing book entitled Early Christians of the Twenty-First Century. He provoked my thinking with words like these:

"Millions of Christians live in a sentimental haze of vague piety, with soft organ music trembling in the lovely light from stained-glass windows. Their religion is a pleasant thing of emotional quiver, divorced from the intellect, divorced from the will, and demanding little except lip service to a few harmless platitudes.

"I suspect that Satan has called off his attempt to convert people to agnosticism. After all, if a person travels far enough away from Christianity, he or she is always in danger of seeing it in perspective and deciding that it is true. It is much safer, from Satan's point of view, to vaccinate a person with a mild case of Christianity so as to protect him from the real disease."