Written by
Ryan Burns
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4 comments
  • I saw this episode…

    And as much as I agree with the patient who was in need of a more experienced chaplain at that time, because that woman WAS inexperienced, flowery, and new age…she was also right to a point. The man’s life had become his guilt. Now, if this had been a real situation (which it’s not…it’s TV, but I’m sure similar situations happen everyday), if it had been real I’m not one to say what God may or may not have done, because I’m not Him. However, even if she had given him the right answer…that Jesus had paid his price, the patient may have come to the same conclusion about his guilt. In the show, the man believed that he had already started living his life of hell, and the only good he could do is make what ever right he can for the families he had hurt before he faced his eternal punishment. His guilt and penance had become his reality and his mission.

    However even with the right theology, in the end, the Holy Spirit would have needed to strip him that.

    I guess I don’t want people to watch this and place themselves in that spot with pride enough to say that, “If I was that REAL chaplain, I WOULD HAVE DONE IT BETTER…and that man would have been saved.” In the end, with people so broken…all our right theology is not enough to save a man. In the end…it can only be God. Does this mean inaction on our part? No, but it does mean we should the lack of humility to say, “I can do it better!”

    IHS,
    Chris

  • Good points chris… and I hope you didn’t take my comments to mean that “I can do it better.” Rather, in watching the clip I was reminded that the world is full of lost and dying souls… people confronted with the reality of their sin and are seeking a savior (whether one that is true or one that is false). The man was crying out for someone to tell him about reality and truth. Unfortunately, the chaplain only had relativistic, look inside yourself for the answer, advice for a man tormented by sin.

    My motivation for seminary is that I want to stand with confidence before men and women and declare, “This is the way… this is the truth.” Now, scripture is clear that it is the work of the Spirit to draw men to Christ… but “how shall they call on him whom they have not heard…”

    We preach, God saves. But the content of our preaching is critical… least we be like the chaplain in the clip and offer no real hope of salvation.

  • This drama simply presented the desperate need of all men to know Christ before going into eternity and their inner knowing of this fact, especially revealed at the time of pending death. AND it presented the responsibility of those who are called to this ministry to never lose site of the difference in regurgitating religious rhetoric and being a true witness testimony of a genuine experience in salvation.

    With our much learning we often become ignorant. Each of us must guard our relationship with the Lord from pride. Seminary does not give us the answers to life and death, atonment or salvation…that revelation comes from the Holy Spirit. If we lose site of our need for His presence and His wisdom and His love, first to work transformation within, and then to minister truth to others, we begin once again to lean to our own understanding. So just as seminary does not provide us with salvation, it, in reality, does not prepare us for ‘ministry’ either. That too is the work of the Holy Spirit.

    The NT is filled with examples of those who followed the Spirit into ministry, even danger, and were supernaturally empowerd to be a true witness…and many came to be saved through their WITNESS. All believers are called to ‘minister’ in whatever field of life HE leads them.

    The response dramatized by this woman was not one of ‘youth’ or ‘new age’…it was the response of someone who has either never had, or has lost touch with the reality of, a genuine experience of new birth and is leaning to her own understanding, and should serve as a warning to all believers of the seriousness of this fallacy.

    We all ,as believers must guard our heart and mind to the Biblically sound and experientially verified truth of Jesus’ redemptive work of death and resurrection.

    Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving our own selves.
    (a hearer only repeats, but a doer becomes)

  • I sow, another water…God gives the increase….

    We do have to be careful what we sow and how we water….God chose to call us to witness and be salt and light. He chose for us to participate in this process of soul winning and discipleship. He could have done it alone, but in His wisdom He always has multiple lessons going at once.

    Accountability for the lost to listen is no greater or less that our accountability to be instant in season and out of season to give an answer of our hope…anything less is garbage to the starving which is the message of this drama…and a very real issue in our relative culture. He wanted the absolute he knew in his heart existed….she gave him relativism….a lie from hell….

Written by Ryan Burns
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