Hearing Through the Noise

I get up every morning at 5. My hope is to get my oldest ready for school and onto the school bus and then have some quiet time with my Bible and a cup of coffee.

It rarely works that way. When 6 rolls around my other children start waking up. My 6 year old insists on snuggle time in my lap and my 9 and 10 year old want to be close as well.  We start our homeschool at 9 am. The hours between that are used on getting everyone ready and some light housekeeping and taking my intellectually disabled brother to work.

We do school and have lunch. Then there are chores and I have to finish school with any stragglers. Then my daughter,  my brother, and my husband begin arriving home and it is time to start dinner.

It is hard to find quiet time. I felt I needed quiet time, without distraction not only to be in the Word but to have some time of reflection. I have considered getting up at 4:30. I also need sleep so I haven't done that.

After dinner I try to spend some time with husband or speak with friends on the phone or in person.  There is also another clean up time thrown in and by 8:30, it is bed time. I have tried to go to bed at 8 and snag some quiet time there but often time my dh will decide to go to bed early as well or a child will come to get some mom time.

The days are full and exhausting. How does one recharge and read their Bible,  how does one stay close to God? 

I decided to search Google and Pinterest to see how others handled this.

I found a lot of blogs with pictures of nice journals arranged with equally nice Bibles,  pens and cups of coffee.   But there were no real answers to my dilemma.  I am unwilling to get up earlier,  I am unwilling to send the children away when they come to me for attention,  and I have household duties that I am as obligated to meet as I am to read the Bible. 

Then the answer came to me. My issue is not one of quiet but it is an issue of hearing through the noise.  So here is my plan:

1. Keep an attitude of prayer and open communication with God. Just knowing that He is always available to listen helps me to pray, even when loading the dishwasher.

2. Make the time I do have in the Word count. So often we pick up our Bibles with no real plan and waste time trying to find a passage that "speaks to us". The entire thing was written for us so it all speaks to us.  I have decided to reread the book of Proverbs and John. 

3.  Don't wait for silence and look for opportunity. My house is busy. There are a lot of people who live in it. It is never really quiet. This means that I may never have pretty pictures of bibles and coffee but there are worse things than spending time in the word with a child on my lap.

4. Understand this time is short and know God knows my heart.  In no time at all, the children will be grown and I will have more quiet than I can stand.

We serve a God of grace.  He is the one who gave me these guys along with the intense desire and dedication to meet their needs. He gave them to me knowing my life would be full and busy and loud.  I trust the One who gave them to me to also take care of me and to reveal himself to me in ways and times that are good for me.

Is Altar Call Biblical?

As a child I attended a very traditional fundamental Baptist church. You know the kind; a long skirt wearin', KJV carryin', altar call havin'. While I have come to believe that none of these are essential to a good church, I am specifically going to focus on the altar call. You will have to forgive me if I ramble. I am not so good at getting things like this out, but never the less, writing them helps me sort out holes in my reasoning and I certainly enjoy hearing comments when I post something like this, but be kind please :).

Anyways, back to the point. We have flitted back and forth between churches quite a bit. I am not particularly proud of this, but when Karl and I first got married we felt an obligation to stay at my "home church". I mean, I had literally grown up there having attended school and several services a week. He was a new Christian so relied on my um, expertise, to guide the decision on where we went. When we tried different churches, even up until recently, we always went to ones that were nearly identical to the church I had grown up in. Not surprisingly, we weren't being led to stay at any of those either! After several discussions we tried a few churches that were far outside of my comfort zone. When we found the one we believed the Lord was leading us to, we took a hard look at what was different. There were many things, the style of preaching, the less legalistic approaches to dress and Bible versions, but none stood out more than the fact that they followed a more traditional order of service and there was one big thing missing: altar call. Altar call is a staple in a IFBC church. I have never been to a Baptist church in general that didn't have an altar call, but I would be shocked to my core to find an IFBC church that didn't have one. After much studying and prayer we have both come to the conclusion that while we do not believe that altar call is in and of itself wrong, we do both believe that it is a bigger hindrance than a help to evangelizing. Here is why:

It often creates an emotionally manipulative atmosphere. I know this isn't usually the intention but, think of the altar calls you have witnessed. There was likely an emotional introduction to the call begging you to accept Christ as savior while slow, soft music beckons you to come just as you are. I have found myself caught up in this sort of manipulation. Coming to the altar under emotional coercion will most likely not result in a true conversion. Which brings me to my next thought:

The Sinner's Prayer is deceiving. In an IFBC the "Sinner's Prayer" is a big tool. The prayer itself it completely fine. It is a prayer of repentance, the declaration of faith in Christ and the asking of forgiveness and salvation. Most of us who are born again, will have said some sort of prayer similar to the traditional Sinner's Prayer (I don't necessarily believe the prayer is required to be saved. The prayer is simply an out-loud manifestation what of the new believer is doing through the conviction of the Holy Spirit). However, this prayer is held so highly in regard to so many Protestants that it can be deceiving. Saying a prayer does not save us. Without the opening of our eyes to the need of a savior by the Holy Spirit, and true repentance, the Sinner's Prayer accomplishes nothing. Now, as a Christian whose eyes are opened, I know this, but combine this rote prayer with the emotional manipulation that altar call can produce and how many walk away thinking that because they said a prayer they are now saved? Again this leads into my next thought:

It produces false converts. I went to the IFBC for about 23 years with a few years sprinkled in here and there up until about a year ago. I saw many many "converts" stand in front of the church. Including close friends and even myself. I can attest that there are some converts as a result of the altar call, but if we are to judge by fruit produced, I can also attest that for every 1 true conversion there were dozens of false converts. And oh! How many times I heard the story of how someone walked down the aisle to get saved but later realized they themselves were a false convert. Even the pastor at the IFBC I attended told that story! Thinking back to those I watched converts at the altar, very few were baptized and even fewer continued to come to services. I don't claim to be able to judge the hearts of those who did not appear to follow through with their faith, but the Bible does tell us that we can judge a tree by it's fruits and for most altar converts, the fruit just doesn't seem to be there. If every person that walked up an aisle and said a prayer was truly converted our churches would be over flowing!

Of course, there is nothing in the Bible the specifically forbids the altar call, but looking through scripture will also not reveal a single specific instance in which an altar call was used and it appears to be something that was only relatively recently added to church services. Yes, some people will be saved as a result of the altar call, but can we afford to be pragmatic about something that is also potentially causing such large numbers of false converts?

There are many things I am reconciling as my faith matures and I have had to make changes in order to line up with what I believe to be Biblical. Altar call is not something that I focus on much but when I do think about it enough to study it, I can't seem to bring myself to being ok with it.