Jen Oshman 9/16/18 Jen Oshman 9/16/18

10 Ways Phones Can be Used for Our Good and God's Glory

Am I the only who feels this way? I wondered for the umpteenth time. I was in the midst of a conversation with friends lamenting their iPhones. The complaints were familiar: our smartphones make us more self-focused, short-tempered, less able to interact with real people, eager for the approval of others, unable to read and communicate in-depth. The woes are limitless.

And I don’t disagree. I too have given over too much power to my phone. It has shaped me in a number of ways I’m not proud of.

But my secret thought in that conversation and others like it is this: I like my phone. I think it’s more helpful than hurtful—even (maybe especially) in my spiritual disciplines. Am I a fool to say I think it has actually aided gospel growth in my life?

In our effort to distance ourselves from the pitfalls of these devices, are we missing what a blessing they can be?

BRAND NEW TECHNOLOGY, SAME OLD PROBLEM

Throughout history, people have sounded the alarm every time some new technology hits the scene:

Socrates worried writing would cause our minds to grow lazy;
There were cries of information overload and chaos when the printing press was invented;
The distribution of newspapers caused concern that people would no longer get their news directly from the pulpit;
Worried parents thought that teaching reading in schools would certainly wreak havoc on the minds of their children;
Later generations worried the advent of radio and television would wreak havoc on their children’s ability to read.[1]

Today, you can’t go on the Internet without seeing headlines bemoaning the connectivity and technology of this age, too. Those concerns are valid. Certainly, we should not consume new technology without carefully examining the ramifications.

Paul’s warning to the Ephesians is useful for us: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:15-16).

THE CAPACITY FOR GOOD AND EVIL

Just as the printing press can print the Word of God or pornography, our phones can deliver good or evil. With the Holy Spirit’s help and the accountability of a Christian community (and perhaps the implementation of some digital boundaries), we can choose to use our phones for our edification and sanctification, rather than for our destruction.

Our phones can be put to work to help us to obey this command in our current age: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8).

They can help us find wisdom and gain understanding, which is a blessing (Prov. 3:13). They can help us “do good to one another and to everyone” (1 Thess. 5:15).

10 WAYS PHONES CAN BE USED FOR OUR GOOD AND GOD’S GLORY

The following are ten ways smartphones can be tools for our good and even God’s glory.

1. Hearing the Bible. Perhaps the most important way our phones can help sanctify us is by providing the Word of God through various Bible apps. While paper Bibles should not be replaced, Bible apps can provide customized daily reading plans, nourishment in a pinch, and add oomph to our quiet times. As I make my way through my Bible-in-a-Year plan, my app audibly reads along with me. In this way, not only am I reading the Word of God in my physical Bible, but I’m also hearing it as I go. This is especially helpful to me in the early morning when my mind is prone to wander.

2. Memorizing Scripture with voice memos. Storing God’s Word in our hearts (Ps. 119:11) is a sweet tool for sanctification. Using a voice memo app can greatly enhance Scripture memory. Reciting memorized portions into our phones allows us to immediately check our work against the written Word. The immediate feedback is excellent for catching mistakes and ensuring we rightly memorize Scripture.

3. Reading more books. Various apps allow us broad access to more books than in any other age. It’s normal today to travel frequently and commute long distances. That potentially wasted time can be redeemed as we listen to or read books we could not access prior to our smartphones. I am deeply indebted to Christian authors whose words have shaped me and library apps that have made wide reading affordable.

4. Growing through Christian blogs and websites. Smartphones allow us to access Christian blogs (like this one) and websites every day. Having the Internet in the palm of our hands allows us to wrestle with even deep theological issues at a moment’s notice. Whereas we would have needed to make a trip to a seminary library in the past, we can now immediately peruse a variety of sites and articles to help us gain commentary on a given Bible passage, theme, or difficulty.

5. Listening to a wide range of teachers and preachers. Many disciples find podcasts and sermons invaluable for growth and learning. Podcast topics vary widely from hearing news from a Biblical worldview to theological discussions, encouragement for moms to the history of racial issues in the church, and wisdom for Christian living. Access to a wide range of preachers and teachers from multiple theological backgrounds helps us keep growing both inside and outside our typical doctrinal bubbles.

6. Connecting with friends and family. Depending on one’s life stage or calling, texting can be a lifeline for Christian fellowship. Missionaries serving overseas, pastors or their wives reaching out to friends in their shoes in another city, or even new moms who need encouragement but don’t have time to meet or call a friend, can all benefit from receiving and sending encouraging texts. In our global, busy lifestyles, texting allows us to type out our prayers for one another. It can be a sweet and intimate way to keep in touch and build one another up.

7. Remembering names, prayer needs, and important dates. Phones can be a practical assistant, helping us practice hospitality on Sundays when we gather for corporate worship. We can immediately record the name of a newcomer to church right after we shake their hands. We can refresh our memories the following Sunday and greet them by name, making a warm and inviting impact. We can have our phones handy to record someone’s prayer request so we don’t forget it as soon as they walk away. Additionally, alarms can be set on our calendar apps to help us remember to pray for a surgery, an important test, or other need in our community.

8. Accessing special groups. While it’s no substitute for face-to-face friendship, Facebook can provide access to specific groups and ministries around the world. I’ve been able to connect with other adoptive parents, missionaries, ex-pats, and Christian women wherever I have lived around the world. These special niche relationships haven’t been available near me at certain times, and the online alternatives have been a source of strength and encouragement. Additionally, we can keep up with missionaries in various contexts through their secret online groups, which provide updates and prayer needs.

9. Understanding your community. Social media apps allow us to know what others in our communities are drawn to or hoping for. Based on others’ posts and what they’re chatting about, we can keep a finger on the pulse of what matters to those who attend our church, Bible study, or neighborhood fellowship. In this way, we can be better prepared for false teaching or false gospels when they arise, or fads that aren’t biblical. Social media allows us to be prepared in advance and contribute a gospel-centered voice to a conversation that might otherwise lack it.

10. Building one another up. Group texts are the way young adults communicate. Rarely do people call one another or use email. Texts are the best way to stay abreast of what is happening in the lives of our community members. Texts can be an excellent way to share joys and sorrows and prayer needs. They’re also a great way to coordinate group meetings, meals for people in need, and more. It’s nearly impossible to stay involved in relationships today without texting.

There is indeed a way to use our phones that will help us “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10).

Smartphones can be a powerful tool for our growth. Let’s consider how we might put them to work for our good and God’s glory.

[1] I am indebted to this article for this historical information. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/02/dont_touch_that_dial.html

Jen Oshman is a wife and mom to four daughters, and has served as a missionary for nearly two decades. She and her husband serve with Pioneers International and planted Redemption Parker, an Acts 29 church. Her passion is leading women into a deeper faith and fostering a biblical worldview. Her book, Enough About Me: Find Lasting Joy in the Age of Self, is forthcoming with Crossway in 2020. Read more of Jen’s writing on her website or follow her on Twitter.

Guest User 8/21/18 Guest User 8/21/18

Wrongly Handling the Word of Truth

I still remember my first hermeneutics class, where I learned how to interpret the Bible. We were required to take one through my university. I was not excited to spend a semester learning what I assumed I already knew. I recall being stunned as I learned that I was far from reading my Bible correctly! I quickly found that I knew nothing of the context from which any of the biblical stories came from, nor had I ever even taken the time to look for contextual clues through careful study. Questions like, “Where does this passage occur in the book?” or “Who is the author speaking to?” had never crossed my mind. But once I learned some basic Bible study tools, everything seemed new and no text felt off-limits or unapproachable.

Recently, Crossway released new research and infographics that revealed people’s bible study habits. As a Bible teacher, I was shocked to see how many books of the scriptures go completely unread because they're hard to understand.

With countless Bible studies are available for churchgoers, this shouldn’t be something we have to grapple with. Yet biblical illiteracy remains pervasive among us.

Perhaps that's because we teachers too often assume people understand the importance of Bible study. Why should people learn to study the Bible? After all, it's difficult to understand ancient cultures and multiple genres.

WHY WE SHOULD STUDY THE BIBLE

Why do we want our people to study the Bible? Because the Bible yields its treasure to those who dig for it. Too often we take a shallow approach to reading Scripture: we want the application without the work, the easy-to-grasp imperatives without the hearty parables, the cozy promises without the uncomfortable truths. Christians should study the Bible to know God deeply. It is a book filled with the glories that teach, reproof, correct, and train us (1 Tim. 3:16), but it is ultimately a book about God and what he is like (Luke 24:27).

As G. K. Beale’s popular work states, “We become what we behold, we become what we worship.” We are formed by the things we do, by the liturgies we participate in, and one of these things that can form us into disciples of his words is the careful study of Scripture. This is why love must be what drives us to the text. Then our study will formational instead of just educational. Disciples are, by definition, learners, and that learning should change transfer across creed and into conduct. Doctrine must motivate practice. Truth has to move from our head to our hearts and actions.

As we seek to live our lives in a manner worthy of the gospel (Phil. 1:27), our answer is to submit to be shaped by the author of life abundant. His words and his Spirit given to us are what guide us, as they point us consistently back to be like Christ.

A CALL TO BIBLICAL LITERACY

I shouldn’t have had to wait until a hermeneutics course to have at least some tools to study Scripture. Christian universities don’t bear the weight of training church members in biblical literacy—churches do. My local church should have equipped me with the basic tools for reading, understanding, and applying the foundational text of our faith.

Biblical literacy helps us more clearly recognize the gospel as it is reflected across all of Scripture. Even in portions of the Old Testament where it seems the difference between their culture and ours is too foreign and unfamiliar; Jesus, covenantal love and grace have abounded since the beginning. And that affects how we read scripture as a whole.

WRONGLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF TRUTH

Many of us could tell horror stories of passages being skewed, and the marks the false interpretations leave on the lives they touched. Books like Finding the Love of Jesus from Genesis to Revelation by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin unpack the many ways we have tried and failed to read God’s Word. You will no doubt find your reading habits implicated in some way, just like mine were.

But we can’t press on in learning to study if we don’t first know what we’re doing wrong. If being told that your way of studying and understanding has been wrong causes you a twinge of pain, this may be because it has become an idol in your own way of making Jesus out to be who you’d prefer him to be, rather than who he actually is presented to be in Scripture.

Hold fast, friends. Don’t let this warning deter you from stepping foot into what he has to offer you in his Word.

So many resources are readily available to understand the context and background from where the words of Scripture were written as well as resources on how to see meaning and application from them. Books like the aforementioned Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin, Asking the Right Questions by Matthew Harmon, and One-to-One by David Helm all outline helpful ways to approach the text. Online resources like stepbible.org, blueletterbible.com, and luminabible.org aid with things like cross-references and comparing translations of the Bible. Websites like bibleodyssey.org and thebibleproject.com can give you a feel for the history of the people and the literary structures within the book you may be reading.

TAKE UP YOUR SWORD

Teaching your people that these resources are easily accessible to them is a comfort, and helping them to test and discern these resources is so fruitful. A Sunday morning understanding of the Bible is simply not enough for the battle that wages from Monday to Saturday. We need to be able to readily approach scripture each day of the week.

There are a lot of voices out in our world, and we desperately need a whole body fighting together—and that means each of us must know how to fight. You wouldn’t send soldiers into combat without them knowing how to use their weapons; likewise, we shouldn’t send believers into the world ill-equipped to wield the double-edged sword of the word they have been handed (Heb. 4:12). Together, rightly handling the truth, we can be church bodies filled with the true and good news of the gospel, as seen page after page in God’s Word, and this should make a difference not only within our churches but in the world around us.

When we know how to read and reflect on Scripture, the Bible studies we lead and the discussions we have gain greater depth. We begin to see how a devotional that shies away from hard texts limits and stifles our spiritual growth. We see how shallow study gives a limited view of the magnificent depths of our great God!

Most importantly, though, Scripture provides us with hope. Scripture shows us the gospel. The Torah, the Prophets, the Gospels, the Epistles, Revelation all point to knowing and treasuring the triune God. To know that God has spoken to our hearts and minds through his inspired Word ought to be a comfort to us. Knowing how to approach passages in their context and apply them faithfully to our lives shows us how to really recognize the hope we have in Christ. The more clearly we can read and glean truth from God’s Word, the more hope can take root in our hearts.

Christian, learning to read the Bible is ultimately up to you since each one of us will one day give an account to God of how we spent our days. I implore you: learn to rightly handle the Word of truth. Learn to study the good book for yourself. Don’t give up when there are so many tools to help you learn. Don’t give up when there are pearls on every page.

Alexiana Fry (M. Div.) is a wife and associate Women’s Director at Crossroads Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her passion and call are to see the church make whole disciples, pursuing the Gospel in the everyday mundane of life. She also finds herself to be highly caffeinated and blogging regularly at mygivingofthanks.com.

Josh Shank 11/23/17 Josh Shank 11/23/17

Featured Book | A Guide for Advent: The Arrival of King Jesus

As the season of Advent comes into view, we wanted to invite our readers to pick up our resource, A Guide for Advent: The Arrival of King Jesus. With essays that will help you focus on the meaning and anticipation of the Advent season, this guide will help you walk closer to Christ as the day we celebrate his birth draws close. Enjoy this excerpt from our Executive Director, Jeremy Writebol, and pick up the ebook or paperback in time for the first Sunday of Advent, December 3.

The Greatest Fear 

What is the single greatest fear that most people have about the Advent season, especially Christmas Day? I doubt it has to do with finding the perfect gift. Nor does it seem like the inevitable holiday weight-gain would rank as the greatest fear. Debates over religion and politics at the dinner table might earn a higher rank but even those fights are nothing compared to a deeper fear of the soul.

I believe it to be the lack of presence. Not a lack of presents (or gifts) but a lack of presence. No one wants to be alone during this season. We sing songs about being home for Christmas. Many Christmas films riff on the theme of being separated from family and loved ones at Christmas. We cower at the thought of waking up to ourselves with no lit tree, no joyful laughter, and with nobody to share the day. Consider the very ghosts that haunted Scrooge in Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, they haunted him with lonely Christmases. Studies indicate that depression hits widows and widowers deepest at the holidays. I can almost guess that a full 98% of people reading this article would prefer to have someone, even if they didn’t really like them, to be with on Christmas over spending it with no one at all.

What is it about Advent that reveals this fear in almost all of us? If we look at the very nature of what it means we will find the very reason being physically alone during this season troubles so many. At its core it is more than just remembering the coming of God into our existence, Advent is about the actual presence of God in our existence. It’s the one season that reminds us that God is with us. So, when we consider a season that tells us God is with us and yet functionally experience it in loneliness a massive discord hits. The discord, for most, isn’t with God. It’s within ourselves. We should be experiencing presence. We should be with others and God should be with us.

Presence on the Way

Four hundred years is a long time to wait. The United States of America has barely existed for half of that time. It would be nearly impossible to understand the absence and silence from God for that amount of time. However, that is exactly where the people of Israel were. National culture and identity would go through an immense rewriting if it had been four hundred years since you had a prophetic word from the national center of worship activity. Certainly brief and dim glimpses of recovery and hope came and recharged everyone’s expectations but they were just that, brief and dim. Sure, they had the prophetic words of old to lean on. Isaiah did promise Emmanuel, even if that was seven hundred years ago.

Then, rumors started cropping up. Angelic visitations occurred. Barren old women conceived. Kings from the East traveled West. A nation immigrated within itself because of a census. A virgin was with child. Then, the rumors died down. Things went back to normal for another thirty years until a shabbily dressed man like Elijah began to speak for God in the wilderness. He was no respecter of persons and called kings, priests, and publicans to repent. A nation finally received a prophetic word: “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is present. God is with us. Emmanuel has come.”

Yes, Emmanuel, God with us. He was attested to be God by his words and works by doing things only God could do. God with us possessing authority to drive out sin, devils, and death. God with us doing justice, loving the outcast and the stranger. God with us dinning with the drunkards, the harlots, and the sinners. God with us clothed in the material flesh of our bodies. Emmanuel experienced the physical limitations, pains, and agonies of our condition. God with us bearing the wrath of God in our place for our offenses against God and taking our very own death-blow. God with us being laid in a tomb dead for three days, he, God with us, was miraculously raised to glorious new life again by the power of God–securing resurrection life for all who trust in him. God with us sent his eternal presence to indwell and empower us for lives of glory and mission. He hasn’t left us, in fact, God with us has come, became flesh, and lived in our very domain and gifted us his eternal presence so we would always be with him.

Jeremy Writebol is the Executive Director of GCD. He is the husband of Stephanie and father of Allison and Ethan. He serves as the lead campus pastor of Woodside Bible Church in Plymouth, MI. He is also an author and contributor to several GCD Books including everPresent and That Word Above All Earthly Powers. He writes personally at jwritebol.net.

Josh Shank 9/25/17 Josh Shank 9/25/17

Book Re-Release | Sent Together by Brad Watson

Today we are re-releasing one of our most popular and helpful books, Sent Together by Brad Watson. Sent Together is helpful for both leaders and churches looking for wise and practitioner tested strategies to make disciples through community. The Second Edition includes updated content and has been thoroughly edited. If you have not picked up Sent Together today is an excellent time to get this into the hands of the leaders you are equipping to see gospel-centered discipleship move forward in your city.

Pick up a Kindle or paperback copy here.

Jesus does not simply call us to be a lovely community together, but he sends us out to our neighborhoods, towns, and cities to declare and demonstrate the gospel. In fact, the gospel beckons men and women to take up the call of leading and starting communities that are sent like Jesus.

In Sent Together, Brad Watson helps leaders discover what it means to start communities centered on the gospel and mission. By exploring the gospel motivations that send leaders to start missional communities, Watson gives readers a framework for the purpose and ways of building a community that is deepening its understanding of the gospel, while also sharing it. Sent Together will serve as a field guide for leaders and training guide for those called to start missional communities.

Brad A. Watson enjoys encouraging, challenging, and helping followers of Jesus to live on mission in community by helping them connect the gospel with its implications to their daily lives.Brad serves as an equipping elder of Soma Culver City in Los Angeles, California, where he lives with his wife and their three children. Globally, he has the privilege of coaching and resourcing church leaders on how to form gospel-centered communities that love God and serve their cities.

Brad is the author of the Together series of missional books (GCD Books) and co-author of Raised? Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection (Zondervan). He also serves as a board member of Gospel Centered Discipleship. Connect with Brad at BradAWatson.com where he writes about community, mission, coaching, and leadership.

Zachary Lee 7/5/15 Zachary Lee 7/5/15

The Life of the Mind for Knowing God

I have some formal education but not as much as others. I don’t have a PhD. I’m not a professor. I’m entertained by mindless T.V. shows and video games on my iPhone. If asked to do a math problem I freeze, blackout, then vomit. However, I’ve recently become aware of how much the Bible actually pushes the importance of serious biblical study. “Yeah,” you may say, “I know we are all supposed to read the Bible as Christians.” However, I think I mean something stronger than that. I mean something closer to “almost all we should be doing is growing theologically because our devotion to the Bible shows how much we believe it really is God’s Word.” Yikes! That is a pretty strong statement. So let’s see if it is true. Let’s see what the Bible itself has to say about how much we should study.

High-level Bible Study

The Bible is not ambiguous about the fact that Christians are to be serious studiers.

We are told to love God with all of our “mind” (Mk. 12:29). We are commanded to “Destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). We are told to meditate on God’s law “day and night” (Ps. 1:2). We are told to discuss it with our children when we walk and when we rise and when we sit and at all times of the day (Deut. 11:9). We are told to question everything, especially teaching and “prophesies” (1 Thess. 5:21). We are called to supplement our faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge (2 Pt. 1:5).

And that’s not all . . .

The king of Israel was to copy God’s entire law by hand and read it every day of his life (Deut. 17:18). The sole academic requirement for elders is that they are “able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2). God’s people perish due to their lack of theological knowledge (Hos. 4:6). We are commanded almost forty times in Proverbs to seek, not just “wisdom,” but “knowledge.” Paul rebukes those who have a zeal (i.e. passion) for God but not according to knowledge” (Rom. 10:2).

And this is just a tiny fraction of all the times we are told to know God’s word, to seek knowledge, and to study, study, study!

Church Leaders Yesterday

We also see a pattern regarding the importance of education in church history. All the major players in church history seem to be very highly educated either formally or informally:

Jerome translated the entire Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin.
Augustine was a Rhetoric professor in Milan before his conversion and had a broad education in the humanities.
Gregory the Great said, regarding the education of ministers, “No one claims to be able to teach an art until first having learned it through careful study. With what incredible boldness then do the unlearned and unskillful stand ready to assume pastoral authority, forgetting that the care of souls is the art of arts! For it is clear that the ills of the mind are more hidden than the ills of the bowels. And yet quite often those who have no knowledge whatever of spiritual principles dare to declare themselves physicians of the heart, while those who do not know of the use of drugs would never dare to call themselves physicians of the flesh!”
Martin Luther had a doctorate in Theology and translated the entire Bible into German by himself while locked up in a castle struggling with spiritual attack. Luther thought that the biblical languages were so important that he said he would be willing to go to school with the devil to learn them. He also encouraged people to study until they “had taught the devil to death and had become more learned than God himself and all his saints.”
John Calvin studied at both the University of Paris and at Orleans and wrote one of the most popular Protestant Systematic Theology textbooks ever.
Ulrich Zwingli, in addition to having a strong formal education, had all of Paul’s letters memorized in Greek.
George Whitfield and John Wesley both studied theology at Oxford.
Jonathan Edwards graduated from Yale at 17 and then became the president of Princeton. His dissertation was delivered, of course, in Latin. He sometimes studied 14 hours a day and is considered to be the greatest mind to ever come out of America.
Even those like Charles Spurgeon, who didn’t have a lot of formal degrees, were highly educated . . . Spurgeon tutored Greek at Cambridge.

Evangelicalism Today

Great church leaders in the modern era are the same way. Some of the most influential, godly, Christian leaders are also the most knowledgeable:

John Piper has a PhD from the University of Munich.
Wayne Grudem has a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard, a Master’s degree from Westminster (which broke off of Princeton Seminary), and a PhD from Cambridge.
N. T. Wright has 5 degrees from Oxford, including two doctorates.
Alister McGrath has 5 degrees from Oxford, including two doctorates.
D. A. Carson, in addition to having a PhD from Cambridge, reads 500 books a year. Think about that… there are only 365 days in a year!

But what about the Apostles? Weren’t they uneducated?

Despite the overwhelming pattern above, some will object and say, “The Apostles were a bunch of uneducated fisherman and God seemed to use them despite their lack of training.” However, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, some were highly educated (like Paul who wrote a lot of the New Testament). Second, these other men spent three years personally walking with Jesus! What better education is there to knowing God then living with the God-Man for 3 years?! Also, the Apostles knew Aramaic (and some knew Greek and possibly Hebrew) which are more biblical languages than most pastors know. They didn’t need to study the background or culture of the Bible because they lived in it. They had also seen the risen Jesus, been commissioned by him to be Apostles, and had been empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. That is a far cry from anyone’s meager education today. In a sense we could say they had more theological training than anyone else, not less. Ministerial training is not about a lot of knowledge but about the right knowledge.

Discouraged Yet?

The above facts don’t make me want to be a Christian—they make me want to give up. If the above information is true then I feel like God will never use me. I’ll never attain the level of these guys. I don’t have a PhD. I don’t debate scholars in Latin. And I’ve never translated the entire Bible into a new language.

However, my purpose is not to tell you that you have to be a scholar but merely to correct a trend in our evangelical culture which seeks to make Christians a people of the heart without also being a people of the head. This shouldn’t make you feel as though you have to become an ivory tower monk. It should, however, encourage you just to take “baby steps” and to devote yourself to studying God’s word. Part of loving God more is to know more about him.

Jonathan Edwards described knowledge about God like firewood and passion for God like fire. A fire with no firewood just produces a big flash but no lasting heat. Firewood without fire doesn’t do much good either. But if there is a fire the more firewood you add to the pile the brighter and hotter it will burn. Theology is the ceiling to your worship – by knowing more about God your capacity to love him grows.

God uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. So the power is not in education in and of itself. But it is the education that allows one to better unlock the treasures of God’s Word. That is why these men are great and that is what the Bible itself tells us to seek.

Reconnecting Head and Heart

We have a tendency to vilify academics and act as though study is somehow unspiritual. We also have a tendency to feel as though serious Bible study is only for the “experts.” However, God wants all his people to be serious Bible students. So how can we take some “baby steps” and what are some practical things we can do to grow? Perhaps this means participating in some of these activities:

Asking seminary professors or pastors what books they recommend so you don’t waste your time on poor books.
Auditing a class at a local seminary.
Listening to seminary lectures on iTunes U.
Just devoting yourself to reading for fifteen minutes a day.
Asking more questions from people who know a lot about theology.

It’s not about reading a lot of books. It’s about reading the right books and to know what books those are you have to ask the guys who know. The easiest thing you can do to start is just to read the Bible a little every day. You won’t understand everything at first, but the more familiar you become with the Bible the more it will make sense over time.

It is easy to accidentally separate “head” from “heart.” We do it all the time. We either try to merely know facts about God (and not love him) or we just try to love him and conjure up emotion (and don’t correctly think about whom we are loving). However, it doesn’t have to be this way. The Christian is called to love God with our whole heart and our whole mind. It is not so much a “scale” or “spectrum” (which would mean that loving God moved one away from knowledge and having knowledge moved one away from love). Rather, these are two separate categories in which one should seek to grow. If one finds that they love God but don’t know much about him they shouldn’t try to love him less as if that will make them know more. Conversely, if one finds that they know about God more than they love him they should not study less as if being dumber will somehow make them love God more. Rather they should just seek to grow where they are weak whether that be head or heart.

The goal is not degrees but knowing God. Or, as church historian Justo Gonzalez says, “The goal of theological studies is not a degree or diploma. Their final goal is the contemplation of the face of God in the final reign of peace and justice.”

—

Zach Lee is Associate Home Groups Minister at The Village Church and is married to Katy. Follow him on Twitter: @zacharytlee.

Alex Dean 11/11/14 Alex Dean 11/11/14

4 Reasons to Study Church History

Read your Bible. Pray with your spouse. Disciple your kids. Serve in the church. Meet with your small group. Mentor someone younger . . . and . . . study Christian history? I know what you’re thinking. There is way too much going on for me to think about juggling all the above, as well as maintaining a robust knowledge of the history of the faith. I suppose I can’t argue with you. Upfront, none of the above are requirements for admittance or acceptance into the family of God. The gospel calls us to enter a rest unlike we have ever known (Heb. 4). And because we’ve entered that rest by the blood of Christ alone, we are compelled by the love of Christ to grow deeper in the faith and to love people radically. I’m here to argue that God can use the study of Christian history to make you a mature disciple. Here are four reasons why.

1. The creeds and confessions were not written in a vacuum.

What is the chief principle of hermeneutics? Context, context, context! It’s no different for the historic creeds, confessions, and other writings. Many Christians have read the Nicene Creed, Luther’s Shorter Catechism, The Westminster Confession, and more, and taken them at face value. No doubt these documents were written to stand the test of time, but each one was also written within a specific historical context and toward specific historical debates.

Partner—GCD—450x300 Look at these titles from the early fathers: Against Heresies by Iraneus. On the Incarnation by Athanasius. Anti-Pelagian Writings by Augustine. Or how about Luther’s On the Bondage of the Will, which is entirely a reply to Erasmus’ On Free Will.

I’m not saying that you can’t take these things at face value. What I am saying is that if you do, you are only getting half of the story. The beauty of many of these creeds, confessions, and writings is set against the backdrop of heresy. We see throughout the history of Christianity a vigilant defense of the orthodoxy we enjoy today. We stand on the shoulders of those who have fought for the gospel over the past two-thousand years. Let us not take that for granted because we are ignorant of that rich history.

2. Most contemporary theologians are admittedly reproducing what has been first produced elsewhere in church history.

Trace this line with me. Jesus met Paul on the road to Damascus. Paul espoused Christ’s gospel throughout his writings in the first century. In the fourth century, Augustine expounded and defended Paul’s gospel theology against the heresies of his day (see specifically the Pelagian controversy). Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk. Read Calvin’s Institutes, and you’ll find Augustine flooding its pages. The Great Awakening in eighteenth-century America was led by Calvinist theologian Jonathan Edwards. In the twentieth-century, C.S. Lewis picked up on the Edwardsian threads of beauty and wonder. And, as you likely know, the greatest theologians of our day constantly place the works of centuries past before our eyes to remind us that orthodox theology stands the test of time.

When you read men like Keller, Piper, Chandler, Carson—and many more—know that they too stand on the shoulders of other Christians through church history. We reap the benefits of their careful study of the history of the faith.

3. Church history, particularly during the Reformation, spurs us to be always reforming.

Theologically speaking, the Reformation is not complete. How can I say that? One of the chief tenets of the Reformation was Sola Scriptura. Can you say that your study of Scripture has totally transformed your life in such a way that you think and act Biblically at all times? Of course you can’t. Neither can I.

We are always reforming when we, like the Reformers, constantly go back to the Scripture as our standard for doctrine and life. The spirit of the Reformation lives on when we continue to challenge modern thought, practice, and life with the unchanging truths of Scripture.

4. The history of Christianity proves it has always been a disciple making endeavor.

Make no mistake, when Christ said, “Go and make disciples,” he meant it. Paul discipled Timothy. Augustine was deeply committed to his teaching and preaching ministry in Carthage as a way of transmitting the chief tenets of our faith to young believers. Wycliffe committed his life to Oxford, not only as a way of equipping, but also as a way of sending out some of history’s first itinerant preachers. Luther worked in a close relationship with Melanchthon. Calvin transformed Geneva through education and systematization of theology.

Step back and take a broad look at the spread of Christianity, and you’ll find a simple yet stunning reality. Since the book of Acts, God has built his Church by the power of his Spirit and the transmission of the gospel. He does this through discipleship. That means that he has invited you into this overarching story of Christian history. You are probably not the next Augustine, Luther, or Calvin. But, if you are in Christ, you are absolutely vital to his mission of making disciples. Who are you discipling today?

Here are a few great resources on historical theology:

Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought by Alister McGrath.
Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation by Mark A. Noll.
Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther.
Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God by Dane C. Ortlund (the entire series On the Christian Life from Crossway is church history gold)

—

Alex Dean is a pastor in Lakeland, Florida. Holding an undergraduate degree from Dallas Baptist University, Alex is currently completing his graduate work at Reformed Theological Seminary. His book, Gospel Regeneration: A story of death, life, and sleeping in a van, will be released in the summer of 2014. Follow his blog at gospelregeneration.com or follow him on Twitter @alexmartindean.

Stephen Witmer 3/13/14 Stephen Witmer 3/13/14

Eternity Changes Everything: An Interview with Stephen Witmer

In Eternity Changes Everything, you claim that, for Christians, a passion for our future in the new creation will affect our lives in the present. Why? Because we’re human, and humans inevitably live toward the future. The philosopher Peter Kreeft says we “live by hope. Our hearts are a beat ahead of our feet. Half of us is already in the future; we meet ourselves coming at us from up ahead.” I think he’s right. Just ask any school teacher whether an approaching summer vacation stays in the future. Of course not! Kids get restless and rowdy in the weeks before, because their future is impinging on their present. The future often gets to us (in our thoughts and feelings) before we get to it (in our actual experience).

Check out how all the practical exhortations of Romans 12-13 are framed by the call to not be conformed to “this age” and the call to “know the time,” that “the day is at hand.” When we’re living, and what we’re living toward, shapes how we’re living.

I was blown away when I read something George Marsden wrote in his biography of Jonathan Edwards: “If the central principal of Edwards’ thought was the sovereignty of God, the central practical motive in his life and work was his conviction that nothing was more momentous personally than one’s eternal relationship to God…He built his life around disciplines designed constantly to renew that eternal perspective.” Marsden then goes on to give some remarkable advice to those who want to better understand Edwards’ writings. He says if we think something Edwards has written seems harsh, difficult, or overstated, we should ask the question: “How would this issue look if it really were the case that bliss or punishment for a literal eternity was at stake?” My first response to reading Marsden’s advice was to wonder whether the life to come is so foundational to my thinking that it could serve as a key for people who want to understand who I am and what I say. I hope my life doesn’t make sense apart from the reality of the new creation. There’s a big problem if it does.

So, where do you see a need for improvement in how Christians think about the new creation?

Too many of us have bought into the wrong-headed notions of our culture. The other day in the children’s section of our local library, I saw a book on Heaven by Maria Shriver (yes, the Maria Shriver). The Heaven in this book is a place of fluffy clouds and disembodied existence. And that’s normal: Heaven is often thought of as solitary, static, and boring. In 2007, Starbucks printed on their paper cups some wickedly funny and surprisingly insightful lines from Joel Stein, a columnist at the Los Angeles Times: “Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can’t wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but heaven has to step it up a bit. They basically are getting by because they only have to be better than hell.”

Of course, the Heaven Stein describes isn’t the biblical portrait of Heaven at all–it’s our modern, misconceived notion of Heaven. Some recent books–such as Randy Alcorn’s Heaven and N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope–have been really helpful in explaining the biblical teaching on Heaven, as well as distinguishing the present Heaven (where we go when we die) from the future new creation, which is a renewed creation in which we’ll live an embodied existence forever. The new creation will be an incredibly exciting place to live, and it will be great above all because God is there. We get God…forever. Yet, sadly, I’ve spoken with people who have been Christians for many years who don’t understand this biblical teaching about our ultimate future.

If we understand the greatness of our ultimate future in the new creation, and begin to long for it, how will this affect our living in the present?

It’s going to create two impulses: we’ll become more patient in waiting for the new creation, and simultaneously, we’ll become more restless in longing for it. That sounds like a contradiction. It’s not.

Why not?

Well, we often have this experience in life. When we’re convinced that something really, really good is coming to us, that certainty simultaneously lengthens our patience and heightens our restlessness. If you know Thanksgiving dinner is going to be absolutely fabulous, you’ll start anticipating it well before it’s on the table and on your plate. The smells emanating from the kitchen will make your mouth water. But–at the same time–because you know dinner will be phenomenally good, you won’t snack on Doritos. Who wants to fill up on junk food when turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce are on the way?! You’ll be patient.

Christians lived in a permanent and productive tension. We are a restlessly patient people, and that’s biblical. In Romans 8.23-25, Paul says the certain, glorious hope of the new creation makes us groan restlessly and wait patiently.

Why, and in what ways, do Christians fail to wait patiently for the new creation?

Two words: prosperity gospel.

We’re children of our culture, and most of us realize that our culture has a massive problem with waiting. The Dunkin Donuts in my town actually times their employees to the second on their drive-thru service so that customers get their donuts and coffee as fast as humanly possible. None of us are immune from this impatience. Have you ever exclaimed in dismay that your internet search took longer than two seconds? I have.

The radical impatience of our culture affects Christian theology and practice. I look around the Christian scene today and grieve at the huge influence of the prosperity gospel. There was a report in The Atlantic a few years ago that said 50 of America’s 260 largest churches preach a prosperity gospel. Apparently, 66 percent of Pentecostals and 43 percent of ‘other Christians’ think that God will bless the faithful with material wealth. Have they read Hebrews 10.34?! What the health and wealth teachers are telling you is that the new creation is available now. Their teaching is deeply flawed eschatology. The Scriptures reveal to us a God who often makes his people wait. There’s a whole biblical theology of waiting that the prosperity teachers completely miss.

Of course, we can’t just point the finger at the health and wealth teachers. In the course of writing this book, I was convicted of the personal, mini-prosperity gospels I create for myself by daily expecting good health, plentiful finances, friendly neighbors, and obedient children. I recently replaced the catalytic converter in our car (expensive!). Now the “check engine” light is on in our other car, indicating the same problem. How will I respond to that? Will I expect the new creation now, and grumble that I still live in an age where things fall apart and cars need repaired? Or will I be thankful to own two cars, and cheerfully patient for the coming age, when they’ll run forever (or be unnecessary).

Why, and in what ways, do Christians fail to yearn restlessly for the new creation?

We’re not restless enough for the new creation because–as I’ve said–we think it’s going to be boring. One long worship service. Or a millennia-long harp solo. Moreover, we’re not restless for the future because we’re absorbed with the lesser pleasures of our present. God has given us a future the size of the new creation. We shrink it down to the size of a long weekend or a Facebook page or a promotion at work. We settle for far less than God plans to give. Because we invest all our emotional energy and passion in our immediate future, we have none left for our ultimate future.

Christians of our generation do not spend nearly as much time thinking about our eternal future as did Christians in previous times. The Puritan Richard Baxter said that as he grew older, he meditated more frequently upon the “heavenly blessedness,” and that he preferred to “read, hear or meditate on God and heaven” more than any other subject. Stephen Nichols says that Jonathan Edwards was “consumed by heaven.” Are we? How much time in the last month have we devoted to reading about, praying about, longing for, the new creation? I wonder if, for most of us, we’d have to say it was less than five minutes.

What fruit does a restless longing for the new creation bear?

For one thing, it allows us to die well. I’ve been at enough deathbeds to know that if you’re not confident and excited about what’s coming next for you as a Christian when you die, you’re going to die clinging to this life rather than embracing the life to come. It’s really sad to watch people go that way, with their backs to God’s future. Christians with a passion for the new creation will die facing forward.

Restlessly longing for Heaven also allows us to live well. Richard Baxter said that the mind will be like what it most frequently feeds on. That’s so insightful. If you become absorbed in some mindless reality TV show, you’ll tend to become as flat and shallow as it is. But if you feed your mind on heaven, your soul will begin to look heavenly. For Baxter, heaven was more than a comfort when things in this life were tough–it was also a reality that produced present obedience and strengthened him against sin and temptation. I can testify to the latter in my own life. I remember vividly a time several years ago when my longing to see God in the future (Matt. 5:8) saved me from serious temptation. God’s promised future trumped inferior, sinful promises.

Final question: will too much focus on the new creation make Christians less engaged with this present world? Is there some truth in the old saying about being so heavenly-minded we’re no earthly good?

No, it’s exactly the opposite. C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity, “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.” Amen! A paradoxical Christian life of restless patience produces yet another beautiful paradox: we need this world less and love it more. And that love moves us into the world with fearless, fruitful productivity. But you’ll have to read the book to get the full story on this!

Stephen Witmer is the author of Eternity Changes Everything: How to live now in the light of your future (Good Book Company). He is the pastor of Pepperell Christian Fellowship in Pepperell, MA and teaches New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Follow him on Twitter: @stephenwitmer1.

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Help Support GCD

Dear Friends, Gospel-Centered Discipleship exists to publish resources that help make, mature, and multiply disciples of Jesus. That is our heart. Our board members and staff pray daily that we will continue to resource the Church to this end.

And we have seen God answer these prayers in tangible ways. Over the past year, we:

Saw over 250,000 visits to GCDisicpleship.com, a nearly 30% increase from the previous year.
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We join with the Apostle Paul in saying, “What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:18). We are working hard to make all of GCD’s resources freely available as often as possible. Our hundreds of articles are, and will continue to be, free. While we charge for books, we price them below market value so that we can get them into as many hands as possible. Serving the Church in this way is our primary goal.

However, providing these resources free or at a reduced cost is not free to us. Like Paul’s ministry (2 Cor. 11:7-8), GCD is a donor-supported ministry. Publishing books, running websites, and creating resources costs us about $15,000 every year.

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Thank you for all that you do to help us serve the church with gospel-centered resources. Through purchasing our books, distributing our resources, and referring us to other friends, you’re helping us fulfill the work God has entrusted to us. Please pray that we will be faithful to steward this calling with excellence.

Yours in Christ,

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Christ-Centered Reading, Preaching, and Teaching

by Matt Capps.

Why Do We Need Jesus in Our Exegesis? Except for a period in my early twenties, I have been involved in the life of a local church for as long as I can remember. Because I was so involved in various ministries, I made it a priority to study the Bible in preparation so that I could be, in the words of Paul, a workman unashamed. Still, something wasn’t right. The spiritual growth and change I desired wasn’t happening on a notable or consistent basis. I remember doing my “quiet time” one afternoon in my teens and becoming exhaustingly discouraged. Sunday after Sunday I would walk out after the service on a spiritual high only to crash into the reality of my own brokenness within minutes of leaving the church building. I didn’t realize what was missing until later in life. While my salvation and early spiritual growth had come from the work of the Spirit in my heart and life, I began relying less on the Spirit and more on my flesh for my continued growth (Galatians 3:3). Like many believers have confessed to me over the years, I turned to Jesus for salvation, but trusted in myself for sanctification. Most of the teaching and material I was exposed to presented lists of Christian attitudes and actions, along with a call to do these things, and that’s it. I am not saying there is a problem with calling people to act in God honoring ways. Descriptive examples and prescriptive imperatives are all over the Bible.

However, problems arise when you approach examples and imperatives the wrong way. My exasperation found its roots in incomplete exegesis. I was approaching the Bible as if it was primarily about me; the stories just examples of morality that I should try to emulate. As I’ve sought a deeper relationship with my Savior, I’ve come to the conviction that the Bible is not primarily about you and I. It’s about Him. While this does not dissolve our responsibility concerning biblical imperatives, it does change how we approach and apply them to our lives. It fundamentally changes our hermeneutical framework and our method of Bible application. Until my mid-twenties, I approached the bible as a compilation of morally commendable stories. I completely missed THE Bible story. The story of Jesus. This is the aim of Christ-centered hermeneutics - to center everything on the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the Link Between Every Part of the Bible and Us

The Bible is very clear that Jesus is the one and only mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5). In light of that, shouldn’t we approach interpreting God’s word as mediated to us through Jesus Christ? I have come to believe that this is the hermeneutical grid that Jesus and the Apostles advocated (John 5:39; Luke 24:27; Luke 24:44-45; 1 Corinthians 2:2; Colossians 2:2-3). Essentially, all of Scripture needs to be interpreted by the definitive person and work of Jesus Christ. I believe Graeme Goldsworthy said it well:

The Old Testament does not stand on its own, because it is incomplete without its conclusion and fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ. No part can be rightly understood without him. In this sense it is about Christ. God’s revelation is progressive, moving in stages from the original promises given to Israel, until the fullest meaning of these promises is revealed in Christ…Thus Christ, interprets the New and Old Testaments.[1]

There are thoughtful Christians who are skeptical of Christ-centered hermeneutics because they think it advocates an unbalanced allegorical approach to interpreting the Bible. They would contend for a more strict expository method that doesn’t stray too far from the controls of the immediate context of the passage.

Advocates of the Christ-centered method push back and maintain that they are simply widening the contextual parameters to the entire canon and focusing in on Jesus as the key to understanding God’s word. Therefore, the trajectory of every passage and theme in the Bible points to Christ through type, antitype, promise, or symbol. Tony Merida contends, “the goal for Christ-centered expositors is not to ‘look for Jesus under every rock,’ but rather to find out how a particular text fits into the whole redemptive story that culminates in Christ.”[2] I do not think Christ-centered hermeneutics and grammatical historical driven hermeneutics are antithetical. Combined, these methods give us the proper exegetical approach to reading and applying God’s word focused on the person and work of Jesus Christ. So, if Jesus is the climax of God’s revelation (as we read in Hebrews 1:1-3), how does this change the way we read, preach, and teach the Bible? And why would it have mattered to me in my earlier spiritual development as I was being confronted with the law’s demands and my own inadequacies? Here is where Christ-centered hermeneutics unleashes an ocean of benefits for Christian sanctification.

The Gracious Benefits of Christ-Centered Hermeneutics

First, we need to have a proper understanding of our own struggles and find security in Christ. Too many honest Christians struggle with their own sin nature because they can’t make sense of its place in their Christian identity. If I am a Christian, why am I (still) so broken? I will always be thankful for Bryan Chapell’s book Christ-Centered Preaching on this point. Chapell introduces the concept of the “Fallen Condition Focus” in this work. Our fallen condition is the mutual human condition all believers share when confronted with the demands of God’s law, which in turn draws us towards the grace of God found only in Christ. When we look at the perfection of Jesus, the God-man, we are confronted with our own failures and the failures of people in the Bible. As Ed Clowney once wrote, “Jesus fulfilled the law not only by keeping it perfectly for us, but also by transforming our understanding of it. Christ not only obeyed the law, but also displayed its true meaning and depth.”[3] Therefore we don’t simply approach the Bible as a handbook of life for moral direction, but as God’s word revealing our hideous sin and the beauty Jesus’ perfection. Jesus is faithful when we are failures.

Second, the primary way to respond to our fallen condition as it is revealed in the Bible, and through the Spirit, is faith in the completed work of Christ. Moreover, the implication of Christ’s work on our behalf becomes the motivation and power for faithful Christian living. Graeme Goldsworthy argues that “The ethical example of Christ is secondary to and dependent upon the primary and unique work of Christ for us.”[4] It is from Jesus’ life and work, also his death and resurrection, that the motivation and power for Christian living flows. Relying on our own will power to live the Christian life will leave us devastated. This feeling of hopelessness can often be the result when we jump to an immediate application of a biblical text without first seeing the text through the lens of Jesus Christ. In other words, we don’t approach the Bible with the question: what does this mean for me? without asking prior questions like: How does this text relate to Christ? How do we relate to Christ? Only then can we ask, in light of Christ’s work on our behalf, how can we respond with our lives in worship as gratitude for his grace? Further, we then plead with the Holy Spirit to provide wisdom and motivation for living in a God honoring way.

Third, the good news of the gospel is Christ’s work for us and the fruit of the gospel is Christ’s work in us. Jesus produces fruit in us where our willpower fails us every time. The good news of Jesus is something we need to be reminded of throughout the Christian life. Tim Keller is well-known for saying, “The gospel is not just the A-B-C’s of Christianity but is the A to Z of Christianity. The gospel is not just the minimum required doctrine necessary to enter the kingdom, but the way we make all progress in the kingdom.”[5] The gospel needs to be applied to every area of one’s thinking, feeling, relating, working, and behaving consistently throughout life. This is why Christ-centered hermeneutics is so important for properly understanding the Bible. When we read and apply the Bible without Christ as the center, we naturally swing towards either religion or irreligion. We either apply the text in ways that send us on a trajectory towards self-exultation because we become the hero of our faith, or self- exhaustion because we cannot consistently live up to the standards of our faith.

Conclusion

A Christ-centered hermeneutic teaches us that in every passage the canonical trajectory points us to Christ as the hero of our salvation and our sanctification. Moreover, we learn that we are to approach the Bible with the posture (As Keller has said on many occasions) that we are more sinful and flawed than we ever dared believe, while being more accepted and loved by Jesus than we ever dared hope. Christ-centered hermeneutics not only informs the mind, but also employs the truth to appeal to our emotions and challenge our will to respond appropriately and entirely to the good news of Jesus Christ. Certainly, to understand the Bible correctly requires faith in Christ along with the Spirit’s enlightenment. Jesus is revealed as central to the Bible so that no part can be rightly understood without him. Sadly, many Christians read, many preachers preach, and many teachers teach the Bible in a way that would be agreeable to someone outside the faith. The key question in biblical hermeneutics is: How does this text testify to Christ?

If the reader, preacher, or teacher hasn’t addressed and answered this question in their pursuits, they are not approaching the Bible in an explicitly Christian way.

Further Resources for Understanding Christ-Centered Hermeneutics

Gospel-Centered Teaching (Forthcoming), Trevin Wax
Proclaim Jesus, Tony Merida
Preaching Christ in All of Scripture, Ed Clowney
How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens, Michael Williams
Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, Graeme Goldsworthy
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics, Graeme Goldsworthy
Him We Proclaim, Dennis Johnson

Matt Capps currently serves as the Brand Manager for The Gospel Project at LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, TN . Matt is a graduate of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div.) and is currently a student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (D.Min.). Matt blogs here.

[1] Graeme Goldsworthy, According to Plan, 52.

[2] Tony Merida, Preaching the Forest and the Trees, 2-3.

[3] Edmund Clowney, How Jesus Transforms the Ten Commandments, xiii.

[4] Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, 4.

[5] Tim Keller, The Centrality of the Gospel.

GCD Editors 3/12/13 GCD Editors 3/12/13

Your Baby's Ugly

by Hershael York.

Hershael York is Victor and Louise Lester Professor of Christian Preaching and Associate Dean of Ministry and Proclamation in the School of Theology of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Senior Pastor of Buck Run Baptist Church. He is married to Tanya and they have two sons. ___

I often have to answer the strangest question anyone could ask a preaching professor: “Do you think preaching can be taught?” I always want to respond, “No, I’m just going through the motions for the money.” Of course I never do, not only because it’s best not to say the smart aleck things I sometimes think, but because I know what they mean when they ask. It’s not really an unfair question.

No one denies that a preaching class and some coaching can help anyone become better. What we question is the possibility that someone with no natural giftedness and ability can be taught well enough that he can become really good.

For the last sixteen years I’ve sat in a seminary classroom, listening to student sermons on an almost daily basis, and I’ve heard every kind of sermon and every level of preacher. I’ve seen guys so nervous that they had to stop and vomit during the sermon, and I’ve been so moved by a student’s sermon that I felt I had been ushered into the presence of the risen Christ. I’ve seen guys who were no better the fifth time they preached for me than they were the first time, but I’ve seen guys whose initial sermon was depressingly awful turn it around so radically by the end of the semester that I almost couldn’t recognize him as the same preacher.

On the first day of the semester or the first time I hear a student preach, I have no way of knowing if he has what it takes or is willing to do what he must to be the preacher he needs to be, but I can usually tell by the second sermon if he does, because that is when he has to act on what I told him after his first sermon. What makes the difference?

1. Calling

The most frustrated preacher is the one who has a sense of duty but not a burning calling. Preaching is not just another helping profession, a Christian version of the politics or the Peace Corps. The call to preach is a definite demand issued by the Holy Spirit that ignites a fire in one’s bones that cannot be extinguished by the hard-hearted, stiff-necked, or dull of hearing. A preacher who has been called must preach what God has spoken simply because God has spoken it. The success of one’s ministry will depend on the strength of his calling. His willingness to work at his preaching will be proportional to his conviction that God has called him to preach and to be as fit a vessel for God’s use as he can be. The Holy Spirit must undergird everything else from preparation to delivery, and that will not happen apart from that calling.

2. Teachability

Being a preaching professor is like getting paid to tell a mother that her baby is ugly. It might be the truth, but it’s not a truth anyone wants to hear. Most guys I have taught dread my comments and cringe when I tell them they missed the point of the text or seemed unprepared. They tire of hearing me tell them they lack energy or failed to establish a connection with the audience. Every now and then, however, someone smiles gratefully as I offer corrections and suggestions. Someone may even say, “I want you to be really tough on me. Tell me everything I’m doing wrong because I really want to do this well.” That guy is going to be fine because his spirit is teachable and he’s willing to pay the cost of personal discomfort in order to be effective. He understands that he is a vessel in service of the text and his feelings are not the point.

3. Passion

Almost all my students are passionate about Christ, about reaching the lost, and about the Word of God. The problem is not that they don’t feel passionate but rather that they do not show passion. What I feel is never the point, whether good or bad, but rather how I act. If my delivery of the Word does not convey that passion, then my audience will not be moved to be passionate about it either. The prophets were all passionate. The apostles were passionate. Jesus was passionate. Why else would farmers, fisherman, and housewives come stand in the Galilean sun for hours just to hear Him?

I once heard a missionary preach at the Southern Baptist Pastors Conference. He was dynamite, preaching a great expository sermon with incredible energy and moving the entire audience by his treatment of the Word and his testimony of baptizing tens of thousands of Africans. Astonished by his great preaching, I approached him and held out my hand to introduce myself. “Hershael.” he said, shocking me that he knew my name, “we went to seminary together.” Embarrassed, I admitted that I did not remember him. “You had no reason to,” he explained, “I was very quiet, never spoke in class, and never went out of my way to meet anyone.” I asked him to explain what happened. “When I got on the mission field, no one would listen to my preaching of the gospel. I was putting them to sleep. When I came stateside and preached in churches, they were bored to tears. Finally I realized that the only way to be effective was to preach the Word in the way it deserved to be preached, so I became willing to go beyond my natural personality and comfort zone and allow God to make me effective. I prayed for the Word to so grip me in the pulpit that I would never be boring again.” His teachability led him to show a passion that was not natural to his introverted personality. It was supernatural.

4. Reckless Abandon

The generation of students I now teach have grown up with the written word—on screens, smart phones, blogs, Kindles, and now iPads. Through video games they have raced cars, built civilizations, won wars, destroyed zombies and killed hundreds. They communicate orally far less than any previous generation, and when they do so, they typically do it with less passion. Yet God still uses the preaching of His Word—an oral event—to edify the church, encourage the saints, and engage the lost.

So to preach the Word, a young man has to be willing to get completely out of the comfortable cocoon he’s built in his personality and habits, and recklessly abandon himself to risk being a fool for Christ. I tell my students, “That little voice inside your head saying ‘That’s just not who I am’ is not your friend. Sanctification is the process by which the Holy Spirit overcomes ‘who I am’ and shapes me into who He wants me to be. So if I need to preach with a reckless abandon that is foreign to my natural way, I will beg the Holy Spirit to help me do it for Christ.”

Pay the Price

Frankly, very few students I teach fail to get the meaning of the text. They often demonstrate an exegetical and hermeneutical sophistication that astounds me. They are serious about the Word. But they make the mistake of thinking that if they just feel that way, and if they just say the words, the preaching will take care of itself. And if they keep thinking that, if they insist on “data dump” sermons that just concentrate on the content and not also the delivery, there’s not much I can do for them. They will be the kind of preachers they want to be.

But if someone has a burning calling, a teachable spirit, a passionate heart, and a reckless abandon to pay the price to preach well, then not even the limitation of their own background, personality, or natural talents will keep them from preaching the Word of God with power.

___

*Editor's Note: For another helpful post on preaching, check out our interview with Jared Wilson and Tony Merida.

Micah Fries 3/11/13 Micah Fries 3/11/13

Interview: J.D. Greear on "Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart"

J.D. Greear stops by to talk about his new book, "Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart."

You will be hard pressed to find a book with a more compelling, if not controversial, title than J.D. Greear’s new book, “Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart." For those of you who may not know J.D., he is the Lead Pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina. J.D. has pastored The Summit since 2002, when he led the church to relaunch itself (formerly known as Homestead Heights). At the time of the relaunch they were running close to 300 people, and now are exceeding 6,000 regularly. For the past few years they have been recognized by Outreach Magazine as one of the 25 fastest growing churches in the country. J.D. is kind enough to stop by the blog today to speak with us about his new book. I am thankful for his willingness to give us a bit the inside story behind the book, and to help us understand the content of the book a bit more.

______________

1. J.D., thanks for stopping by the blog today. I appreciate the effort. Your new book has a provocative title. I am confident that it is stirring interest in those who are reading it. So, give us a quick synopsis. What is the book all about?

My main thesis in this book is that reducing salvation to a sinner’s prayer gives assurance to some who shouldn’t have it, and keeps assurance from some who should. I wrote this book because there are a lot of people who can’t seem to find assurance no matter how many times they pray “the prayer,” and others who have a false assurance based on the fact that they went through a ritual with their pastor.

You could say I wrote the book to bring comfort to the unnecessarily troubled, and to trouble the unjustifiably comforted.

2. Your story is similar to mine, though I haven’t been baptized as many times as you. However, you talk about your struggle with assurance and the fact that you have been baptized four times. You also point out that false assurance, which is the flip side of the coin, is a serious danger. Of the two, which do you think is a bigger plague in the church?

Based on statistics that those like the Barna Group have run, the larger numerical problem is probably the falsely assured: 51% of all American adults believe they are going to heaven, even though most of that group never attends church, reads the Bible, or lives in any recognizably Christian manner. But the flip side of the problem is a huge issue that I have encountered repeatedly in my time as a pastor.

In the end, it’s less important to figure out which side of the coin is the “bigger” plague, but to focus on the remedy. And I believe that part of the problem comes from the shorthand, clichéd ways we speak of the gospel. The usual evangelical shorthand for the gospel is to “ask Jesus into your heart” or to pray the “sinner’s prayer.” Shorthand is fine insofar as everyone knows what the shorthand refers to. But in our day “the sinner’s prayer” has often become a substitute for repentance and belief.

To be clear—I am not trying to say that the sinner’s prayer is wrong in itself—after all, repentance and belief are in themselves a cry to God for mercy. Jesus presents the repentant tax collector being converted through the prayer, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13). Some of the greatest evangelists in history—even Reformed ones—used a sinner’s prayer, including John Bunyan, George Whitefield, and Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon would plead with people to pray the words of a sinner’s prayer after him as part of the conclusion to his sermons. I would go so far as to say that if you do not press for a decision when you preach the gospel, you haven’t fully preached the gospel, because the gospel in its very essence calls for a response. I’m not even against the language of asking Jesus into your heart, because—if understood correctly—this is a biblical concept (cf. Rom 8:9–11; Gal 2:20; Eph 3:17)!

I am saying that the sinner’s prayer has become a Protestant ritual that people often go through without considering what the prayer is supposed to embody. God doesn’t give salvation in response to a prayer; repentance and faith are the instruments that lay hold of salvation. You can express repentance and faith in a prayer, but it is possible to repent and believe without a formal prayer, and it is possible to pray a sinner’s prayer without repenting and believing.

3. In chapter 2 you mention that every religion in the world, except for Christianity, uses doubt to compel one to obey. However, in my experience, doubt is one of the most often used reasons for many Christians to obey. Instead, you suggest that the gospel of God’s grace creates a desire to obey. What’s the difference? As long as we are obeying, that’s all that should matter, right?

God is not simply after obedience; He’s after a whole new kind of obedience, the obedience that grows from desire. He wants the intimacy of sons, not just the service of slaves. Unfortunately, far too many Christians use doubt as a catalyst for obedience. The Roman Catholic Church of Martin Luther’s day, for instance, believed that people would only obey when threatened with harsh consequences for rebellion. Luther did not mince words when he called this the “damnable doctrine of doubt.”

We are supposed to relate to God as a father, not as a strict task-master. A faithful father does not leave his kids wondering whether or not he knows and loves them. When I go away on a trip, I don’t say to my kids, “Daddy will be back soon . . . or maybe he won’t. Maybe I’m not really your daddy at all. Maybe my real family lives somewhere else. You’ll just have to wait and see if I come back. Sit around and think about that while I’m gone, and let that compel you to become better children.”

That would not produce love and loyalty in my children. It might produce a little fear-based obedience, but it’s only a matter of time until fear-based obedience turns into father-loathing bitterness and rebellion. I don’t want my children feeling like orphans, and neither does God.

4. At the beginning of chapter 3 you suggest that assurance, in one sense, is as easy as asking the question, do you believe in Christ? Your rationale is supported by John 3:36. However, many who worry over assurance will, with great fear, point back to Matthew 7:21-23 that says:

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, drive out demons in Your name, and do many miracles in Your name?’ 23 Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you! Depart from Me, you lawbreakers!’

How do you balance the simple truth of John 3:36 with the fearful tone of Matthew 7?

The verses from Matthew 7 were part of what threw me into the first of my many spirals of doubt. I remember during my 9th grade year, when my Sunday school teacher told us that according to Matt 7, many people who think they know Jesus would awaken on the last day to the reality that he never knew them. I was terrified. How could I know I wasn’t going to be in that group?

My advice to those who fear that they will be among those to whom Christ says, “Depart from Me, I never knew you,” is this: rest in His promise to receive all who hope in His finished work. Jesus’ warning often makes us look inward and find plenty of reasons for God to reject us. But for every one look we take at our sinful heart, we should take 10 looks at Christ. Once Charles Spurgeon, reflecting on those whom Christ turns away in Matthew 7:21–23, said (and I paraphrase), “Never knew me, Lord? How could you say that? When I had no hope of salvation, I rested all my hope on you. When I despaired in my struggle against sin, I looked to you for strength. Jesus could never say to me, ‘I never knew you.’”

None who lean the weight of their soul on the truth of the testimony God gave about Jesus as their hope of salvation will ever hear the words, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.” To rest in Christ’s finished work is, you see, to be known by Jesus.

5. I love the statement you make in chapter 4, in reference to our own assurance. You say, “Present posture is better proof than a past memory.” In other words, your present position before God is more important than whether or not you can remember the time, date, location of your conversion. I’ve said it this way, “The question is not so much, have you believed, but rather are you believing?” Having said that, are you suggesting that salvation does not have to be tied to a “moment?”

Certainly not. Salvation does indeed happen in a moment, and once you are saved you are always saved. My point is that conversion is not a ceremony you go through but a posture of repentance and faith that you assume. The posture does indeed begin in a moment, but it continues for a lifetime.

Salvation happens in a moment: I don’t want to confuse or downplay that. But in that moment, you merely enter a posture of submission to the lordship of Christ and trust in his finished work. That is a posture you maintain for the rest of your life. And the way you know you made the decision to get into that posture is that you are there now.

In the book I compare conversion to sitting down in a chair. If you are seated right now, then you know that at some point in the past you made a decision to sit down—your posture proves it. If you are right now trusting in Christ’s finished work and submitting to his Lordship, that proves you are saved. If you are not, then it doesn’t matter what “ceremony” you went through. Assurance doesn’t come through a memory of a past event, but through our present posture. “Believing,” as it relates to assurance, is almost always presented in the present tense (e.g. 1 John 5:13).

6. Further along in this chapter you speak about helping your children to know Christ. You mention the tension parents feel about not pushing their children to make a hasty decision. I know I have greatly struggled with this. However, you encourage parents to begin appealing to their children to respond to Christ at an early age. How do you do that, and not encourage what would become your testimony, and mine, that of multiple “conversion stories,” multiple baptisms, etc.?

As a father of 4 young children, I have often reflected on the best way to lead them to faith. I want their decision to follow Jesus to be significant, but I also don’t want them to go through what I went through, constantly questioning my previous religious experiences. I know that when you present kids with a “don't you want to be a good girl and make daddy happy and accept Jesus and not go to a fiery hell?” of course they say, “Yes.” “Praying the prayer” in such a situation may have little do with actual faith in Christ and have more to do with making daddy happy.

For that reason, many parents don’t want to push their child to make a decision for Christ. What if we coerce them into praying a prayer they don’t understand, and that keeps them from really dealing with the issues later when they really understand it? Might having them pray the prayer too early on inoculate them from really coming to Jesus later, giving them false assurance that keeps them from dealing with their need to be saved?

I understand that fear. At the same time, I know that children are capable of faith. (In fact, Jesus tells adults that for them to be saved they must become like children, not visa versa!) And Jesus says that those of us who make it difficult for little kids to put faith in Him ought to have a millstone tied around our necks and be thrown into the sea (Matt 18:1–6). So I don’t ever want to discourage my kids from faith.

The dilemma is resolved, however, by seeing salvation as a posture toward Christ and not as a ceremony. There is only one posture ever appropriate to Christ: surrendered to His Lordship, and believing that He did what He said He did. From the very beginning of their lives, I want my kids to assume that posture! So I explain to them often what Christ has done and encourage them to pin their hopes of righteousness on His work and not theirs. Whenever they think about their hopes for heaven, I want their minds to go to what Jesus did on Calvary. And when I encourage them to walk in holiness, I want the motivation—from day one—to be the finished work of Christ on their behalf.

Again, it’s like sitting down in a chair. If you’re sitting down now, that is proof that at some point you made the decision to sit down even if you don’t remember the moment. There was a moment you sat down, but the proof is in the present posture, not the past memory. The same is true with my kids and the Lordship of Jesus and his finished work. They can only be in one of two postures with him. So whenever I talk to them about Jesus, I encourage them to assume the posture of repentance and faith. Why would I ever want them to have a different posture in relationship to Jesus? Whether they can explain later the exact moment they sat down in repentance and faith is less important than the fact that they do it.

7. In chapter 6 you speak about the doctrine of eternal security. You say, “It’s not incorrect to say ‘once saved, always saved.’ It’s just incomplete.” What do you mean by that?

I do believe in eternal security, the idea usually summed up with the phrase you mention here: “once saved, always saved.” But the way that I heard eternal security described in Baptist churches growing up is not the way it is described in the Bible. It’s not even the way that some of the great Baptists of the past—I’m thinking of Charles Spurgeon and John Bunyan, among others—described eternal security.

Neither the great Baptists of the past nor the Bible describes eternal security as a one-time ritual that produces a guarantee of salvation no matter how you live your life. They described it as the knowledge that if God had started a true work in you, he would complete it. And the way that you show your salvation is genuine is by persevering for the rest of your life.

Persevering in the faith is proof that you have the salvation you could never lose; failing to persevere shows that you never had it to begin with.

8. In chapter 7 you address the biblical signs of genuine faith. You even go so far as to say, “the presence of the struggle [with sin] itself can be affirmation that God’s Spirit is at work within you.” I know many will find this difficult to believe. Can you elaborate on this point?

Struggling with sin or its consequences isn’t proof by itself that a person knows God. But I have known a lot of believers who live on the brink of despair because of the presence of sin in their lives. They know the attitude of their hearts, and they recognize strong undercurrents of selfishness, idolatry, apathy, and unbelief. And they begin to wonder, “Can I really be saved and still have these sinful desires?”

The simple answer is, “Yes.” The Apostles all testify to a never-ending and intense struggle they had with sin (cf. Paul’s words in Rom 7:21, and John’s in 1 John 1:8). James says that we sin (even as believers) because we are “drawn away by our own lusts and enticed” (James 1:14). I assume he says that from experience. And I find my own heart prone to unforgiveness, resentment, jealousy, and selfishness more often than I care to admit.

Believers can and do struggle with just about any kind of sinful lust. This is why the struggle is so affirming. Before God’s Spirit came into you, you didn’t struggle with sin—you ran toward it eagerly! But now God’s Spirit lives in you, and you feel the tension of that struggle every day. The strongest evidence of my growth in grace is not absence of struggle, but the growing recognition of my need of grace.

9. As we close this up, if you had 30 seconds to speak to a believer who was greatly struggling with assurance. What would you say to them?

It would, of course, depend on the situation of the person I was talking to, as a wayward believer needs to be treated differently than a humble seeker, but essentially I would ask them if their present posture is one of submission to Christ’s Lordship and trust in his finished work. If so, they are saved, even if they don’t remember the prayer or the moment they got into that posture. If not, then it doesn’t matter what prayer they prayed.

Second, I would ask them to consider whether the signs of eternal life are present in them. As John explains so thoroughly in 1 John, conversion does not bring sinless perfection, but it does begin to make fundamental changes in the human heart.

______________

If you would like to purchase “Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart" click here.

If you would like to see other books by J.D. Greear, click here.

Cross-posted from Micah's personal blog.

Guest User 2/28/13 Guest User 2/28/13

Be the Church: A New eBook on Mission and Discipleship

Check out this new eBook from contributor Seth McBee.

One of our contributors, Seth McBee, has teamed up with Caesar Kalinowski to write a new eBook. Here's a snippet:

As the conversation around being “missional” has come front and center within certain church circles in recent years, it seems that many of us struggle to grasp and/or explain the basics to others. This short book of simple pictures and conversations is meant to offer a starting point–a way to get, or keep, the dialogue going around some of the key issues surrounding who we are as the Church and what our mission really is.

Grab a copy HERE.

Guest User 2/25/13 Guest User 2/25/13

Crossway Books Giveaway

More books from Crossway!

Thanks to our friends at Crossway, we have another book giveaway!

The Goods:

Dangerous Calling by Paul Tripp
Gospel Deeps by Jared Wilson
Faithmapping by Daniel Montgomery and Mike Cosper
Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church by Michael Lawrence
God is Impassible and Impassioned by Rob Lister
Setting Our Affections upon Glory by Martyn Lloyd-Jones

There will be six winners, each winner will receive one of these books!

How to Enter

Retweet our post on Twitter and share our post on Facebook.

*EXTRA CREDIT: Follow our contributors on Twitter.

***Giveaway ends March 13 at 11:59 p.m.

Guest User 2/18/13 Guest User 2/18/13

Giveaway: The Gospel Project Experience

On May 17-18, LifeWay is hosting The Gospel Project Experience – a conference that will focus on the main events of the gospel through times of vibrant worship and engaging messages.

On May 17-18, LifeWay is hosting The Gospel Project Experience – a conference that will focus on the main events of the gospel through times of vibrant worship and engaging messages.

The purpose of The Gospel Project Experience is to walk participants through the entire gospel story - Christ's incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and second coming. Along with worship led by Matt Boswell, these speakers will cover the aforementioned themes:

The Experience will inspire you and your congregation to live out the implications of the gospel in your community. This event will be simulcasted live and the kind people at LifeWay are letting me give away two individual and two small group simulcast registrations. That’s FOUR winners!

Enter to win by commenting why you should win a ticket!

The deadline to enter is Friday, February 22 at 11:59 p.m. CST.

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The Gospel Project, led by General Editor Ed Stetzer and Managing Editor Trevin Wax, is designed to unify the entire church under a single Christ-centered curriculum. In every lesson that each age group studies, participants are immersed in the gospel story and ultimately challenged to live on mission for God.

If you’re not sure what it is, I’d invite you to check it out when you have a moment. You can even sample four of the lessons for free.

GCD Editors 2/11/13 GCD Editors 2/11/13

A Gospel-Driven Catechism for Kingdom Warfare

by Jeff Medders.

Jeff Medders is the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Church in Tomball, Texas. He is pursuing his M.Div. at Southern Seminary. He and Natalie have one precious little girl, Ivy. Jeff digs caffeinated drinks, books, and the Triune God. He blogs at www.jeffmedders.org and tweets from @jeffmedders. ___

Today, we are at war. Not with flesh and blood, but in soul. Our heart, soul, mind, and strength are in daily conflicts with the Cosmic Powers. How do you fight?

The Apostle Paul wants us to be catechized. We need a catechism—a gospel-driven catechism of victory.

Dust off Your Catechisms

Catechizing believers, teaching a set list of questions and answers, is a long-rooted practice of the Bride of Christ. It's one that seems to be waning, if not already gone. It's definitely dusty, but we can recover it. Catechism is a powerful, helpful, biblical method of teaching others—and yourself.

How ultra-helpful are the Westminster and Heidelberg versions?

Westminster Catechism

Question 1: What is the chief end of man?

Answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Question 4: What is God?

Answer: God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

The Heidelberg Catechism

Question 1: What is thy only comfort in life and death?

Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

Preaching the Gospel to Our Hearts

We need to become experts in the art of preaching the gospel to ourselves. One of the greatest thinkers and pastors of the past 100 years was Martyn Lloyd-Jones, referred to by many as “The Doctor.” He rightly diagnosed why so many Christians flounder in their daily lives and experiences with God. The Doctor said, "Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?" How right on was he? A defeated, depressed, downtrodden, exasperated, exhausted, joyless, burnt-out Christianity is not Christianity.

We need to lay hold of the cross and remember our new life in Christ. We need to preach the gospel to ourselves. We need to catechize ourselves. Catechisms are a turnkey help in the practice of preaching to yourself.

Catechism ought to be in our spiritual discipline gun cabinet.

The long tested spiritual disciplines need a freshening in our perspectives. What can often be seen as a quiet and cute time around a cup of coffee, Moleskine, ESV Study Bible, assorted pens and highlighters—maybe some instrumental music—is nothing short of Kingdom warfare. We don't read the Bible to get a pick-me-up; we read to grow in the knowledge of the holy—yes, and amen!—and we take up the spiritual disciplines as weaponry against the ancient Reptile and his hobgoblins. “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ”(2 Corinthians 10:4–5 ESV). The last thing Satan wants of the Church is to obey Jesus, glorify Jesus, honor Jesus, spread the fame of Jesus—and that should be our first thing, the chief aim of all spiritual disciplines.

Attack With Gospel Truth

When the hiss of accusation, doubt, and fiery arrows draw near, Paul walks us through a catechism of victory in Romans 8:31-39; and if we resist the devil, and draw near to God, the snake will bolt (James 4:7-8). As you read Romans 8:31-39, look for the question marks.

Romans 8:31-39:

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul sets up seven questions (in ten verses!) and gives the answers—what is he doing? He is catechizing us. Romans 8:31-39 may be one of the first Christian catechisms.

There seems to be four main questions:

Question: Why should I not doubt God's love and care for me? (vv. 31-32)

Answer: If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Question: How come charges will not stand against me? (v. 33)

Answer: It is God who justifies.

Question: Can I ever be condemned? (v. 34)

Answer: Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

Question: Can anything separate me from the love of Christ? Will I ever be unloved by God? (vv. 37-39)

Answer: No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Glory to God!

It All Comes Back to The Gospel

The questions are helpful, but the weapon is the answer. What weapon does Paul give when we are wondering if we'll be condemned? Read your Bible more? Pray harder? No way. He gives gospel truth. Stand-alone spiritual disciplines are not an encouragement; they are a vehicle, meant to help us draw near to God (James 4:8). Spiritual disciplines alone aren't the answer to a struggling heart; they take us to the answer. And each question is answered with gospel glories.

Question: Why should I not doubt God's love and care for me?

Answer: v. 32, He gave us his Son! (Gospel)

Question: How come charges will not stand against me?

Answer: v. 33, It is God who justifies us! How? The Cross & Resurrection (Romans 4:25). (More gospel)

Question: Can I be condemned?

Answer: v. 34, Never! Jesus died for you, is alive for you, is at the Father's right hand for you, and interceding for you. (Yep, more gospel!)

Question: Can anything separate me from the love of Christ?

vv. 37-39, No! You are a mega-conqueror through Christ. You have victory in him & nothing can separate from him. (And again, more gospel!)

Gospel. Gospel. Gospel. Gospel.

It always comes back to God's love; it's lauded four times in the passage (vv. 35, 37, 39). Always come back to his love. And God's love is made plain and clear in the gospel.

Romans 5:6–8 ESV

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

God wants you to know and feel his love. While else frame every answer with it? You can never feel too loved by God.

Are you sure of his love (v.38)? That's the point of the catechism, to be sure. Preach to yourself the immeasurable, matchless bounty of God's love for you.

RESPONSIVE READING

Here is responsive reading based off of Romans 8:31-39, that could assist you catechizing yourself with the gospel.

I struggle to believe God's love and care for me. Is there hope?

God is for me. No one can stand against God’s plan for me. He didn't spare his Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Is it true that God won't cast me aside? I've done some bad things; I'll never be good enough.

No one can condemn me, for Jesus died in my place—more than that, He is alive—and he reigns over my life, and is interceding for me.

My life is heavy; things aren't going as I planned. I thought God loved me?

Nothing can separate me from God's love. Trouble, distress, persecution, poverty, danger, and death cannot remove me from God's grace. In all these things, I am more than a conqueror through him who loved me.

Satan prowls around me. I've sinned too much. I've sinned too big. I'm nervous about my future.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus my Lord.

I confess these truths, clinging to Jesus — I believe and live again.

Christ be praised.

BRAND NEW TECHNOLOGY, SAME OLD PROBLEM

THE CAPACITY FOR GOOD AND EVIL

10 WAYS PHONES CAN BE USED FOR OUR GOOD AND GOD’S GLORY

WHY WE SHOULD STUDY THE BIBLE

A CALL TO BIBLICAL LITERACY

WRONGLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF TRUTH

TAKE UP YOUR SWORD

The Greatest Fear

Presence on the Way

High-level Bible Study

Church Leaders Yesterday

Evangelicalism Today

But what about the Apostles? Weren’t they uneducated?

Discouraged Yet?

Reconnecting Head and Heart

1. The creeds and confessions were not written in a vacuum.

2. Most contemporary theologians are admittedly reproducing what has been first produced elsewhere in church history.

3. Church history, particularly during the Reformation, spurs us to be always reforming.

4. The history of Christianity proves it has always been a disciple making endeavor.

Free and Reduced Resources

Partnering with Us

1. 5 Things Mistaken for Evangelism - Mark Dever

2. The Introverted Evangelist - Seth McBee

3. 9 Myths of Discipleship - Zachary Lee

4. Spiritual Warfare Prayer - Winfield Bevins

5. How Kids Learn to Follow Jesus - Seth McBee

6. 5 Lies That Kill Obedience - Brad Watson

7. 7 Ways to Keep Your Missional Community from Multiplying - Seth McBee

8. Why I'm Tired of Church Planting - Seth McBee

9. 6 Lessons I Learned as a Rookie Pastor - R.D. McClenagan

10. How Jesus Made Disciples - Winfield Bevins

1. 5 Things Mistaken for Evangelism - Mark Dever

2. 9 Myths of Discipleship - Zach Lee

3. 5 Ways to Grace Your Workplace - Nick Abraham

4. The Idol of Hospitality - Danielle Brooks

5. When a Comma Puts Us in a Coma - Robby Gallaty

1. I Hate My Church - Seth McBee

2. Parenting & Grocery Store Tantrums - Gino Curcuruto

3. Your Church Doesn't Need Followers - Jason Garwood

4. Revising the Popular Phrase "In, but Not of" - David Mathis

5. Entering the Harvest - Logan Gentry

1. Why I'm Tired of Church Planting - Seth McBee

2. 6 Lessons I Learned as a Rookie Pastor - R.D. McClenagan

3. Living Like a Narnian - Joe Rigney

4. 4 Anchors of Repentance - Jake Ledet

5. Why Teach the Bible's Storyline? - Trevin Wax

1. 7 Ways to Keep Your Missional Community from Multiplying - Seth McBee

2. How to Tell the Better Story - Logan Gentry

3. Why Women Should Go Beyond Titus 2 - Luma Simms

4. Singing as Spiritual Warfare - J.A. Medders

5. Food, Weight, and the Gospel - Josh Reich

Jesus Christ is the Link Between Every Part of the Bible and Us

The Gracious Benefits of Christ-Centered Hermeneutics

Conclusion

Further Resources for Understanding Christ-Centered Hermeneutics

1. Calling

2. Teachability

3. Passion

4. Reckless Abandon

Pay the Price

The Goods:

How to Enter

Dust off Your Catechisms

Preaching the Gospel to Our Hearts

Attack With Gospel Truth

It All Comes Back to The Gospel

RESPONSIVE READING

The Greatest Fear 