And today's prayer is about courage.
Please let me know if FR is going to regulate what proper religious worship is. I'm happy to include a "FR does not endorse this thread."
As I said, I don’t think this guy warrants the “Devotional” tag.
Free republic isn’t a church. It is a conservative discussion forum. You are demanding no discussion on comments made by an unpopular religious figure to many conservatives.
But worship and doctrine go together, and as Jim has affirmed "Free Republic is a pro-God site. The one and only true Judeo-Christian God as taught to us by KJV with no additional editing or books of fiction," then it can also follow that a perfectly pleasing preacher who uses the Christian name but denies key Truths, would hardly be expected to be set forth as one with a protected devotional thread.
A Spurgeon or Oswald Chambers he's not, but represents part of what it wrong with many churches today.
Joel Osteen: Barack Obama Is a Christian
Mark Andrews, 11/4/2014
Considering Joel Osteen's well-documented acceptance of just about anyone who believes almost anything, it should come as no surprise that the senior pastor of the mammoth Lakewood Church in Houston believes President Obama's assertion that he is a Christian—despite his numerous unbiblical beliefs, such as "there are many paths to the same place."
Osteen's comments came in an interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN Friday on his news program, The Situation Room.
Osteen says he has been to prayer breakfasts and other events with Barack Obama and heard him express his faith, redemption and salvation.
"I just believe in my heart that he's a Christian," Osteen said. "He says he is."
"Again, I wouldn't try and push people away," Osteen continued. "That's just the opposite of what we're supposed to do."
Obama has gone on the record with numerous comments that seem to veer sharply away from the well-known tenets of Bible-based Christianity.
In a 2004 interview with Cathleen Falsani, Obama said that he "draw(s) from (his) Christian faith," but then went on to talk about growing up with Eastern influences in Hawaii, Muslim influences in Indonesia, his father being an agnostic while his grandfather was a Muslim and finishing off claiming that he was mostly influenced by Judaism. However, he claims to be "rooted in the Christian tradition."
Oh, really? Let's test that assertion against some of his recorded comments: -- http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/46007-joel-osteen-barak-obama-is-a-christian
In "Your Best Life," Mr. Osteen counsels patience, compassion, kindness, generosity and an overall positive attitude familiar to any reader of self-help books. But he skirts the darker themes of sin, suffering and self-denial, leading some critics to deride the Osteen message as "Christianity lite."
"He's not in the soul business, he's in the self business," said James B. Twitchell, professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida and author of a forthcoming Simon & Schuster book on megachurches: "Shopping for God: How Christianity Went From in Your Heart to in Your Face." - http://www.apologeticsindex.org/232-joel-osteen-christianity-lite
Rob Bowman, president of the Center For Biblical Apologetics and a former colleague of Dr. Martin, explains in his book Orthodoxy and Heresy why this kind of bad diet of all cotton candy spiritual sweets is so harmful:
The church today is plagued, not only by heresies and aberrations, but by doctrines which I would characterize as junk-food doctrine. Junk food won't kill you, unless that's all you eat – in which case poor nutrition will eventually catch up with you (p.54).
As one looks deeper into this feel-good message of Joel Osteen, however, it becomes clear that his doctrine is actually far worse than junk-food, for it is indeed the spiritual poison of the metaphysical Mind Science cults which is the actual root of W/F.
Now consider the following examples from Joel Osteen himself:
You’ve got to speak it out. Your words have creative power. One of the primary ways we release our faith is through our words. There is a divine connection between you declaring God’s favor and seeing God’s favor manifested in your life. And some of you are doing your best to please the Lord. You are living a holy consecrated life, but you’re not really experiencing God’s supernatural favor. And it’s simply because you’re not declaring it. You’ve got to give life to your faith by speaking it out.” (Audio clip from Bible Answer-Man Broadcast, April 26, 2004). - http://moriel.org/MorielArchive/index.php/discernment/church-issues/popular-teachers/apprising-joel-osteens-word-faith-teachings
This isn’t religious worship. It is self worship with God’s name being misrepresented.
I don’t think they belong in the Religion Forum at all. Just because someone uses Bible quotes to support their quackery doesn’t make it religion. It’s just dressed up quackery.