Articles by Matthew Lutey

Fellowship with other believers is a gift from God and it should be a joyful activity.  However, if you are like me you have been in a situation where fellowship seems forced, tedious and legalistic. 

It should be a joy to know God is drawing your friends closer to Him.  However, I want to address possible reasons why fellowship can be tough at times, and ways to make it more joyful.

The first reason fellowship is struggle is during times when we are not active in prayer and in God’s Word.  It is tough to get excited by about anything you are not actively involved in.  For example, you walk into a conversation where two people are talking about an amazing game or play they saw from the night before.  However, you have been too busy to even think about sports for about the past week.  Therefore it will be tough to generate excitement about something you have not thought about in a long time.

The same thing is true with conversation about Christ.  If you have not been meditating on God and the grace he has poured on out you, despite being saved, it is easy to feel lukewarm, or even downright apathetic about the gospel. Read the rest of this entry »

What do you think your reaction would be if you experienced suffering on a grand scale?  I would love to say that I would experience a period of anger like anyone would and then come through it closer to God, but I do not know if that would be the case.

Why do I say this?  It is easy to figure out if you think about it.  Think about suddenly going blind, deaf, crippled and then about how much your life would change.  Yes I would know that God has a plan in it all, but while waiting to see what that plan is I can see myself growing increasingly frustrated with not knowing what it is.  I assume this comes from pride that I should have some kind of authority over my life and my body.  However, scripture is clear that we died to ourselves when we became Christians. 

Which leads me to my next thought: for Christians, does God ordain suffering to happen for those that can handle it better?  More importantly does suffering always work out something good in the long run?  I do not know the answer to the first question and for a while I struggled with the issue of freedom of choice and personal responsbility that we have in the second one. But I would still have to answer: yes. Read the rest of this entry »

I was convicted the other day about how sinful my prayers can be. My prayer is usually selfish because the purpose of prayer is to exalt Christ, bear fruit and glorify God.  Selfish prayer is sin, and it is scary to me because you can sin at a time when you talk to God.  Even if we do not realize we are being selfish, it is still sin.  In all cases even sin we do not know we are committing is sin.

 At the same time it is not always wrong to ask God for help and turn over to Him whatever burdens are on your heart.  After all, the second half of John 15:7 does say

 ”Ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you.”
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For VFC, we had Bruce Landis come in speak on a number of different issues of importance to the Christian life.  For part of the message, Bruce spoke on Ephesians 2:1-5, which is the same text Tony Carter used to deliver his message on sin at Anthem this past weekend.  I don’t think it was by chance that these two great speakers chose the same verses.  Despite hearing the same text, God used the two speakers to affect me in different ways.  That is the great thing to me about hearing the same message twice in a row.  Some people might think it is redundant, but I think it is a great chance for God to reveal different aspects of His character.

Tony’s message on sin convicted me of the root of my sin, and that it comes from a lack of trust in the Lord,  while Bruce’s message just helped me to reflect on my previously dead state before salvation.  As a person who was saved at a very young age, it is sometimes hard for me to grasp my once dead state.  However, I clearly see dead people  in my day-to-day interactions and I know that those people could very well be me without God’s grace.  The Bible makes it clear that there is no difference between us without the Word of God. Read the rest of this entry »

“The resurrection of Jesus Christ is either one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted on the minds of human beings–or it is the most remarkable fact of history.” -Josh McDowell in ”Evidence for the Resurrection.”

I love this quote. However, the question is how do we show to non-believers that the resurrection of Christ was not a hoax?  Truly that can only be done through the work of the Holy Spirit, but Caleb raised some great points last night about the validity and importance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The first thing I want to mention is that you cannot reject the resurrection as a Christian. As Caleb mentioned, the entire New Testament points to the importance of the resurrection.  In his book Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem stresses that through the resurrection Jesus earned for us a new life.  Also, we know that God had approved the sacrifice that Christ made for our sins through the resurrection and because of that we no longer have to worry about the bondage of sin!

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“There were thousands who died on a cross and many have had more painful deaths than that of Christ.  But only one person has ever received the full measure of the curse of God while on a cross.  I doubt Jesus was even aware of the nails and the spear- He was so overwhelmed by outer darkness.  On the cross Jesus was in the reality of hell.”–R.C. Sproul, Saved from What? 

It is always good to focus on the cross.  When I was younger I used to struggle with one of the questions Mike mentioned tonight: “Why did Christ have to die?”  I did not understand why a God that is so powerful, timeless, holy and loving would not be able to forgive sins without all of this.  I did not understand why God had to be just.  More importantly, I did not understand the many things God accomplished through the cross. 
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