5 Reasons to Give Your Church Jesus

We have the tools and know the motives, but how do we give our churches Jesus? By preaching the gospel to ourselves and to one another. “What you really need is good news,” I told him. He didn’t understand. We had met time and time again and unknowingly, he was trying to perform his way into the kingdom. “You can’t do that,” I exhorted. “Otherwise you miss the entire point of Jesus and His performance on your behalf!”

Whether we acknowledge it or not, we all need good news. Not just good news, but better-than-anything news. News that announces something spectacular—like nothing you could ever imagine or fabricate. And until you recognize this need, you’ll be helpless. Like an engine with no gas, your life, without a constant barrage of Jesus-is-King news, will stall.

I often tell my congregation that I have thirty-four years left in my ministry here, and for those thirty-four years, you will hear the gospel over and over again, not because you don’t know it in your brain, but because knowing it in your brain isn’t enough. We must know it—I must know it—in our hearts, and in our hands. Remember, the gospel isn’t the starting point—it is the point. It’s the point of everything! And until we understand this truth, we will continue to be lured away, enticed by other false gospels that over-promise and under-deliver. These things distract us from making war.

Martin Luther is reported to have said that he continues to preach the gospel each and every week because each and every week his people forget it. I’m sure he would include himself in this assertion because let’s face it, we’re all guilty as charged.

Because of this, there are five simple reasons why we need to hear about Jesus and His glorious gospel each and every day. “Give us Jesus” ought to be the rally cry of the church. If we are to make war, we must do so here. Over and over again, our hearts should be yearning to hear the gospel again and again—like my two-year-old daughter begging for a “horsey-ride” on my back, let us go back to the truth that sets us free. We make war using the preaching of the gospel to ourselves and each other:

1. So Our Affections Are Stirred

Our emotions are impressed with many things. Whether a good movie, television show, football game, or shiny new Apple product, we love an emotionally stirring experience. We thrive on it. But what happens when those emotions become sour? What happens when we just don’t feel like worshiping Jesus and finding joy in him? What do you do when your affections are clouded with bitterness, jealousy, envy, and anger? What happens in war if you are tired and just don’t “feel it”?

Jonathan Edwards is helpful: “Upon the whole, I think it is clearly manifest, that all truly gracious affections arise from special and peculiar influences of the Spirit, working that sensible effect or sensation in the souls of the saints.”

It is the Holy Spirit that drives our affections towards gospel holiness and one of the means by which He does so is through gospel proclamation. We need it. Fighting for joy is absolutely that—a fight; but joy in Him is absolutely worth it (Ps. 16:11). Only when old affections have been expunged by greater, far superior affections can we be free from idolatry.

You see, in war time, your affections can take a beating. You can be side-tracked by other things. You don’t have time to sit around and worry about those distractions. Making war is an all-out declaration that the only thing that matters in this moment, at this time, is that the gospel takes precedence against the enemy. You will feel overwhelmed. God gives you more than you can handle because the idol of self-sufficiency is destructive. You can’t make your heart feel good towards God. You need something from the outside, namely, good news. The gospel stirs up affections, like bubbles in a glass jar, so that what comes out of you is holy.

2. So Our Identities Are Clarified

Whether it is a counseling appointment with a young man trying to understand what he should do with his life, or a newly engaged couple looking for some premarital help, I am convinced that the root issue with all of our problems is an issue of identity. For example, no matter the marital issue, I can always trace the issue between the husband and wife back to the problem of a husband not being a biblical husband, and a wife not being a biblical wife. Identity matters tremendously.

If you think about it—sin is a loss of identity. When Adam and Eve sinned against God in the garden, they lost their identity as a covenant people with their covenant God. Subsequently, because of their transgression, their lives were marred by sin and ever since then, man, made in God’s image, has simply forgotten who he is in relationship to God. Everyone knows He exists (Rom. 1:20); however, the issue is identity amnesia.

Take the example of the pursuit of holiness. For the Christian, the battle of sanctification is a battle to be who you are. If you’re a redeemed saint, then act like one! When we give ourselves to sin, we lose our identity—hence the need for the gospel. We need a constant reminder that we are freely justified in Christ to rest in Him. Wartime has a tendency to distract us, so it is important to know who you are.

3. So Our Idols Are Uprooted

John Calvin wrote, “The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols.”32 Calvin was on to something. Every time we lose sight of the gospel it is because we have taken our eyes away from Jesus and placed them on an idol. Idols can be subversively deceptive, or they can be patently obvious. Either way, this side of glorification will undoubtedly be marked by a constant fight with idols. That’s what happens in war.

An idol cannot be uprooted by mere moral effort. It has to be uprooted and replaced by something far superior, namely, the gospel. And what better way to see an idol uprooted, than the goodness of the good news? The intensity of pain we feel when an idol is removed from us is directly proportionate to how far away we walked from belief in the gospel. If sin and idolatry is trusting, confiding, believing, and gaining identity from something other than God, then it follows that we ought to, through repentance and faith, trust, confide, believe, and gain our identity in Jesus. Idols are destroyed when good news is heeded.

4. So Our Covenant Is Kept

As talked about in the previous chapter, the New Covenant instituted by our Lord is meant to be kept. Sometimes we do not often talk like this, mostly because in portions of our culture we’ve lost the key concepts behind covenant. Regardless of unconscious ignorance, it is our duty—indeed it is commanded of us!—to “be holy” (1 Pt. 1:15-16; cf. Lev. 11:44). To be sure, Christ is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30). However, we are still called to the covenant obligations of obedience. And because of the indwelling power of God the Holy Spirit, we can follow Jesus in obedience (Jn. 14:21) because the law has been written on our hearts (Jer. 31:33; cf. 2 Cor. 3:6). This happens through the work of the Spirit leading us to truth (Jn. 17:17) and glorifying Christ (the power of the gospel in us). You need to hear it, because the Spirit uses it to drive your obedience.

5. So Our Mission Is Spurred On

So having had our affections stirred, our identities clarified, our idols uprooted, and our covenant in check, what do we do? The answer? Make disciples. This is our mission. The gospel is news; therefore, it should be proclaimed. Boldly, I might add. After all, Jesus has been given all authority—we need not fear (Matt. 28:18; more on this in the next chapter).

If we do not continue to go back to the good news again and again, we will lose sight of our identity and purpose. The gospel is the engine that drives this whole thing. Without it, we are lost. Again and again, we need to hear, see, believe, experience afresh, enjoy, and understand the good news of Jesus’ work on our behalf: His virgin birth, His perfect life under the law of God, His perfect fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures (Israel’s story), His substitutionary death, His resurrection, His ascension to the throne, and His current mediation—this is our gospel! Let it spur us on to do His work.

“I have stored up your word in my heart,” the writer says, “that I might not sin against you” (Ps. 119:11). The issue is not just hearing the gospel, but marinating in it as well. Whether proclaimed from the pulpit or shared over a cup of coffee, the gospel must take center stage, because we do not want to sin against God. When it is stored in our hearts and minds, we get all of the benefits mentioned above. But the ultimate benefit is that we get God. We need the good news because we need God. The war against sin is not a war against sin in and of itself. The war against indwelling sin is a war to get God. He is the prize worth pursuing.

Will you rest in the righteousness of Christ credited to your account? Will you walk in peace, knowing that peace is at the heart of gospel? Will you put on the helmet of salvation, knowing that your salvation has been secured because of Christ’s perfect work? Will you tighten the belt of truth so that your life is held together by the truth of God’s word? Will you hold fast and “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3)? Will you boldly take up your sword, trust in the authority of Scripture, and wield it with humility? If so, then you must wage war knowing the battle has already been won. Christ is victorious. Christ is King.

—

Rev. Jason M. Garwood (@jasongarwood) serves as Lead Pastor of Colwood Church in Caro, MI. Jason and his wife Mary have three children, Elijah, Avery and Nathan. He blogs at www.jasongarwood.com. Connect with him on Twitter.

Excerpt from Be Holy: Learning the Path of Sanctification available from G4S Books (2014).

4 Ways to Redeem Millenial Ideology

Every culture possesses true treasure. Gems of wisdom and truth that are worthy of affirmation. This is the “indigenizing” principle of Christian missionary work which affirms that the gospel is at home in every culture and every culture is at home with the gospel. Just as with every culture, the gospel is at home with Millenials. What are the specific redemptive windows of Millenial culture? Let’s explore a handful of those windows.

1. We must embrace the Millenial faith crisis as an opportunity, instead of fearing it as a danger.

David Bosch quotes Kraemer: “Strictly speaking, one ought to say that the church is always in a state of crisis and that its greatest shortcoming is that it is only occasionally aware of it… [the church] has always needed apparent failure and suffering in order to become fully alive to its real nature and mission.”¹

As we, the Western church, acknowledge our failure to proclaim and embody an emotionally, culturally, and rationally coherent gospel, it allows us the opportunity to invite the Holy Spirit’s power into this unique moment of history. Up until now, the activity of many local churches has revolved around modern ministry methodologies and “best practices”. We have tended to plug and play rather than innovate and pray. But where we are travelling now, there are no roads.

Hand wringing about “losing this generation” accomplishes nothing to engage them. Lamenting the “hard-hearted, rebellious youth” will do nothing to instigate meaningful change. Rather than these fear-based attitudes, the Spirit invites us into a prayerful conversation of creativity about our present opportunities to participate in the Kingdom of God.

2. We can celebrate Millenials intolerance for superficial and overly simplistic reality frameworks.

We have already discussed Millenials disgust for know-it-alls, their frustration with canned answers, and their refusal to avoid life’s big questions. Young adults have recognized that life is more complex than it’s been made out to be. The arrogance of modernity’s assumed omniscience has been swept away and what seems to remain is a general attitude of teachability, humility, and curiosity. Of course, the extreme dark side of post-modern thought can bring unrelenting doubt, apathy towards truth, and agnosticism. But on the whole, these words do not seem to describe Millenials.

3. We can graciously engage a generation that is eager for honest dialogue.

Millenials aren’t looking for another sales pitch. They want an open conversation and thanks to social media and blogging, many are more used to self-sharing than many past generations. This kind of transparency can be redeemed to for the sake of conversations that really matter.

4. We can feed Millenial’s longing for exploration, experience, adventure, and discovery.

Don’t those words sound an awful lot like Jesus’ invitation to follow him? For too long, the concept of discipleship has been reduced to stuff an older guy talks about with a younger guy at Starbucks.

• Information – The “information” young adults must become acquainted with is the richness of the biblical narrative and their invitation to participate in what God is doing in the world. This is what it means to come to know Jesus intellectually. This can happen at Starbucks.
• Imitation – In a community of practice, a disciple will begin to mimic the behavior, rhythms, and practices of those who are pointing them to Jesus. There is a re-shaping of life and character that takes place in this facet of the discipleship process. This happens in living rooms, kitchens, cars, workplaces, gyms, over text, call, email, or wherever else life happens.
• Innovation – In this component of discipleship, the Holy Spirit empowers a person and/or community to creatively embody the way of the Kingdom in their context. Here mentors and teachers must partner with Millenials to unleash their biblically-informed imagination to discover what God wants to do in and around them. This kickstart can happen in Starbucks, but that’s only the beginning of the adventure.

The invitation to follow Jesus is an adventure that involves our entire personhood. It will literally take us new places in our neighborhood, our city, and our world. By feeding Millenials experiences that expose them to the way of Jesus, we can facilitate Kingdom exploration that will transform their lives. ^{1. Bosch, 2 ↩}

—

Sean (@Sean_Post) lives in Maple Valley, WA with his wife and two sons and leads a one-year discipleship experience for young adults called “Adelphia”. He is completing his doctorate in Missional Leadership.

Adapted with permission from One Year Millenials, Short-Term Communities, and a Coherent Christianity. One Year explains how to cultivate community and relationship with Millenials in ways that truly benefit their faith formation. Anyone seeking to engage young adults with a coherent Christianity will appreciate the big picture research and heart-level insights that flow throughout the book.

Counsel One Another with Good News

Church: Love Poised between Faith and Hope

As Paul provides spiritual counsel for the troubled and confused Colossian Christians, he doesn’t envision them alone. Instead, he envisions them together “as God’s chosen people” (Col. 3:12) and “as members of one body” (Col. 3:15) — the church. Paul includes these words of one-another minis- try in the context of growth in grace (Col. 3:1 – 11) because sanctification is a Christ-centered community journey. “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ” (Col. 1:28).

In Paul’s letter of spiritual counsel, he does not move directly from Redemption to Consummation. Instead, he teaches that we find ourselves as the church living between two comings — the first and the second coming of Christ. We are poised between looking back with faith in our Redeemer and looking forward with hope as we await his return as Conquering Groom. What is our role in this dramatic waiting epoch?7 God calls us to speak and live truth in love.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Col. 3:12 – 14, emphasis added)

And how is the church to love one another? “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom” (Col. 3:16). Where does the church find wisdom for life in a broken world? In God’s Word, where the grand gospel narrative is told. We are to build wisdom’s house together as the redemptive narrative dwells deeply within each of us and overflows lovingly between us.

What has the church to say and do that no other human institution can say and do? We are the Jesus-centered community that speaks gospel truth in love to one another in such a way that it opens a door for sharing the gospel message (Col. 4:3). In God’s grand narrative drama, the church is, as Kevin Vanhoozer pictures it, the theater of the gospel. We are to perform the gospel in our one-another relationships with the world as our audience so that they will ask us for a reason for the faith, hope, and love they witness (Col. 4:4 – 7; 1 Peter 3:15). As the church we are to embody communion with God and one another in a manner that entices and invites others to join in.

Consummation: The Way Is Won; The Bride is Wed

The Bible’s narrative presents life as a war and a wedding, that we can capture the Bible’s drama as “slay the dragon, marry the damsel.” To people beaten down by sin and beaten up by suffering, Paul says, “Let me tell you the rest of the story — the end of the story. We were under Satan’s domain of utter darkness. Helpless and hopeless, Christ has rescued us. Just as earthly rulers transplant a conquered people from one country to another, so Christ has transplanted us from our earthly citizenship to our heavenly citizenship. But he transplants us not from liberty into slavery, but from slavery into liberty. He transplants us not out of darkness into semi-darkness, but out of dismal blindness into marvelous light. He’s disarmed his enemies and ours, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col. 1:13; 2:14 – 15).

Paul not only pulls back the curtain to show us the end of the war, he also shows us the beginning of the wedding. “But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, with- out blemish and free from accusation” (Col. 1:22). This is almost identical to Paul’s wording in Ephesians 5:25–27 where his focus is on Christ’s love for the church, providing the example for a husband’s love for his wife. This is wedding language!

Paul is letting us eavesdrop on eternity. Just like John does. “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear” (Rev. 19:6 – 8). The victory is announced. God reigns! The wedding march starts. All the scars and blemishes of sin are cleansed. The bride wears white!

Paul and John share the same message: “The war is won! The bride is wed!” Both messages communicate the same point: the gospel is about God radically changing people. The war Christ wins for us provides victory over sin and Satan where once we were their slaves. The wedding Christ prepares us for produces purity where there once was sin and shame. And it is all for God’s glory.

This victory narrative forms the foundation of our counsel and changes the agenda of our counseling. Typically we ask God and seek help from each other to change our feelings and our circumstances. God is in the change business, but a very different type of change — heart change, Christlikeness — presenting everyone “perfect,” or mature, in Christ (Col. 1:28).

Listen to the song of eternity — it’s about celebrating Christ’s victory and the Bride’s purity for God’s glory! We look at our lives and want instructions or explanations. What we need is imagination and vision to see life today in light of eternity.

Gospel-centered counseling highlights both Good Friday and Easter — the cross and the resurrection. The gospel message is not like the White Witch’s evil rule over Narnia, where it is always winter and never Christmas. The gospel narrative is Christ’s holy and loving shepherding of the universe where it is always spring and always Easter!

Confidence as a counselor begins with how we view the Bible. The central message of the Bible is God’s announcement of our past, present, and future victory in Christ. Because God so loved us, he sent his Son to slay the dragon and marry the damsel — the Bride of Christ — us!

The Good News as the End of the Story

Though the outcome of the war is sure, skirmishes continue. When our current dreams are dashed, when we surrender yet again to another temptation, we must remind ourselves that we’ve read the end of the story.

The grand narrative of the Bible shows that life makes sense. History is moving toward a God-ordained purpose. More than that, the stories of our lives have purpose. God is directing all of history toward the final defeat of evil, toward happily ever after, toward his people ruling with him and in relationship with him.

Christ’s triumph in the drama of redemption guides our interactions in our one-another ministry. We engage one another in gospel conversations, encouraging each other to ponder: “Why give up when we lose one battle, since we know we have won the war?” “Why choose mere survival, when we are more than conquerors?” “Why choose the cheap thrills of the pleasure of sin for a season when in the end we rule the universe forever dressed in pure white robes?”

— Bob Kellemen, Th.M., Ph.D., Bob is the Executive Director of the Biblical Counseling Coalition, the Vice President for Institutional Development and Chair of the Biblical Counseling Department at Crossroads Bible College, and the Founder and CEO of RPM Ministries. For seventeen years he served as the founding Chairman of and Professor in the MA in Christian Counseling and Discipleship department at Capital Bible Seminary in Lanham, MD. Bob has pastored three churches and equipped biblical counselors in each church. Bob and his wife, Shirley, have been married for thirty-four years; they have two adult children, Josh and Marie, one daughter-in-law, Andi, and two granddaughters, Naomi and Penelope. Dr. Kellemen is the author of thirteen books including Gospel-Centered Counseling, Gospel-Conversations, and Equipping Counselors for Your Church.

From Gospel-Centered Counseling by Dr. Bob Kellemen. Used by permission of author.

A Question of Comfort

MY THREE-YEAR-OLD CHARLOTTE WOKE UP AT 4 AM LAST NIGHT.

When the babysitters had put her to bed, they hadn’t flipped on her “night-night light.” A train horn in the blackness startled her to tears. When I plugged in the tiny bulb, soft yellow light engulfed the room. The darkness was gone and she cuddled back to sleep. One of the most impacting facts I’ve ever learned is that physical light always goes into darkness; scientifically, darkness never comes to light. Darkness cannot overcome a candle; it must wait for the flame to flicker out. But when you flip a light switch, beams instantly fill the blackness. If we may spiritualize the image a bit, light goes into—and pushes back—darkness.

Consider Jesus’ familiar words: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Living out our faith in an unbelieving world is one way that God draws people to glorify Him. Conversely then, if we do not live out our faith in the darkness, we remove one way people can glorify God.

A LONG LINE OF LEAVING OUR COMFORT ZONE

Many followers of Jesus have what we’ll call a “low indecency tolerance”: if anything looks like it might, potentially, one day, maybe be sinful, we avoid it. Of course there’s some wisdom in that: it’s right to approach anything that incites our sin with wisdom, accountability and close community. And we’re by no means saying that true mission always includes going to a bar. But alcohol is an easy example of a broader idea: anything God doesn’t label sin, He can use for His mission.

We’re 130 percent certain that hairs are bristling on the back of some reader’s neck right now. But consider a couple other ways God sent people out of their comfort zones for His mission. These may seem normal after 2000 years of hindsight, but each was far more controversial in its day, than crisp cigars and aged bourbon are today.

The apostle Peter grew up believing anyone outside his own race was evil, as was eating certain foods. But in a trio of rooftop visions, God redeems Peter’s legalism: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” God didn’t just expand Peter’s palate; He destroyed racial tension, and for the first time, God’s mission extended to non-Jews: “truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Later, Peter and Barnabas got scared kosher when legalistic Jews arrived at a Gentile feast. And Jesus’ disciples were scolded for not fasting correctly, while Jesus Himself hung out with the “wrong people” in the eyes of religious leaders, and was rebuked for healing, driving out spirits, and feeding on the Sabbath.

WILLING TO BECOME ALL THINGS?

From Sabbath, circumcision, and bacon, to drinking, gambling, and music, history proves legalism as one of religion’s darker sides. Some Christians in Paul’s day tried to force meal restrictions and even circumcision on those to whom they were on mission. But the Apostle took a different path, becoming “all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” First Corinthians 9 shows that Paul didn’t always reject legalism. At times, he gave up freedoms and submitted for the sake of those with tighter rules. We can’t swing the pendulum of selfless discomfort to one extreme and ignore the other.

But as we follow Paul as he follows the example of Christ, we might say, “To those who hang out in bars, I became one who hangs out in bars, in order to win them from their drunkenness. For those who are religious, I became religious, that I might save them from their self-righteousness. For those who get drunk every Saturday, I go to the frat parties—not to get drunk, but that I might bless and care for those who are. For those who add rules to God’s grace, I follow the rules in order to free them from trying to earn their salvation.” And so on. There are hundreds of places God sends us on everyday mission. Many are out of our comfort zone, in the proverbial darkness, and on someone else’s turf. But whoever they are and whatever their turf is, that’s where we go and make disciples.

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Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben.

(Editor’s Note: This is adapted from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers starting June 2014. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher. For free resources and to order, visit everydaymission.net.)

Sacrificing for Our Idols

IDOLATRY: AGAIN

In his early years, Theodore Roosevelt traveled to Europe with his family. On one trip, they went hunting for a few days, but Roosevelt couldn’t hit a thing. He later wrote:

One day they read aloud an advertisement in huge letters on a distant billboard, and I then realized that something was the matter, for not only was I unable to read the sign but I could not even see the letters. I spoke of this to my father, and soon afterwards got my first pair of spectacles, which literally opened an entirely new world to me. I had no idea how beautiful the world was until I got those spectacles. I had been a clumsy and awkward little boy, and while much of my clumsiness and awkwardness was doubtless due to general characteristics, a good deal of it was due to the fact that I could not see and yet was wholly ignorant that I was not seeing¹

Idols make us blind. They not only make us blind, but also make us blind to our blindness. As many have noted, idolatry often turns good things into god things, where we seek ultimate satisfaction or security. I am not saying that every pastor who reads this is, right now, committing idolatry. I am saying, alongside men like Calvin, who said that our hearts are idol-making factories, that ministry idols can be and are a regular temptation for those in vocational ministry.

Colossians 3:1–10 is a great passage of Scripture to give us new “spectacles” to understand what is going on inside our hearts. To the extent that Christ is not supreme and preeminent in our hearts and lives, and to the extent that we are not seeking the things that are above, something else will be preeminent and our hearts will seek things here below. This is why it is so crucial for ministry leaders not only to feed others with the glory of Christ and the wonder of grace, but also to nourish their own souls at the feet of him who is the fountain of life. This is one of the reasons why Paul says that covetousness is idolatry (3:5). We are seeking life and fullness in someone or something other than God.

Keep this in mind: covetousness always says “more!” and never says “enough!” However, when the gospel of Christ and the glory of God capture our hearts, and when we see the supremacy of Christ and rest in his sufficiency, hearts that are content in the gospel will always say “enough!” and never say “more!”

Because I struggle with this idolatry in my heart, and I venture you do too, I am often tempted and often succumb to thinking like this: “I know I have Jesus, but I’d be happier if more people were sitting in the pews, if more people were grateful for what I do, if more people gave so we could have a larger budget or build a larger building, so that I could have more of a reputation and be known and admired by more people.” More. More. More. During the times when I am not sinking my heart deep into the “It is finished” of the gospel, I long for more, am never satisfied, and never say “enough.” What is the “I’d be happier if . . .” of your heart? Seriously. Take a moment and reflect on that question.

Reflection is important because ministry leaders make such enormous sacrifices for their idols, whatever they may be. All idols demand that we sacrifice in order that they will bless us, so in order to experience the blessing of recognition, power, comfort, control, acceptance, or any other idol, we sacrifice our health, our families, our relationships, and even our own walk with Christ. This is why, I believe, when we are pursuing the idols that promise more and always deliver less, we will be filled with the anger and lying and bad-mouthing of others that Paul describes in verses 8–9.

The consequences of this idol worship are that, deep down, leaders may be filled with anger or constant disappointment with others because they are not able to deliver what the leader is looking for. The consequences for the leader are a dry and hard heart toward the Lord and often wrecked health and strained relationships with other leaders, with other people in the congregation or ministry, and even with his own wife and children. Idols subtly bring death into practically every sphere of life.

If the idols we are pursuing are blessing us, we will feel alive and successful—and prideful. If the idols we are pursuing are cursing us, we will feel despair and death. In the moments (and there have been way too many) when I have thought about leaving the ministry, the Lord has usually been quick to point out that I have been building my own kingdom and pursuing false gods. The disappointment and discouragement that I have felt has been more about my reputation being hurt and my selfish kingdom being crushed than about genuinely feeling I wasn’t called to ministry. I have realized that I have needed to repent for acting like some kind of Pharaoh and forcing the lambs under my watch and care to work hard to build Clay Werner’s kingdom, rather than prayerfully advance God’s. It’s as if God has been saying, “Clay, let my people go!”

Here’s what I want to say: when you realize that your internal idolatry is driving your heart and ministry, you don’t change by mere willpower. Moving forward isn’t about sin management, but about worship realignment. Deep down, at your core, Christ must become more satisfying than anything and everything else. Thankfully, the Spirit is eager and willing to help reveal Christ to your heart in such a way that you’ll treasure Christ above all things and endure even when the kingdom of God around you seems so weak and slow.²

THE KINGDOM OF GOD REMAINS FOREVER

Kingdoms come and kingdoms go, but the kingdom of God will remain forever. The danger of ministry is that pursuing our own kingdom can be easily disguised by using language from the kingdom of God.³ Too often, leaders themselves are blind to the reality that they are making ministry “their world” rather than a place of nourishment for God’s people and equipping for God’s mission. However, once the little kingdom is forsaken and repented of, the kingdom of God that is invisible yet inevitable, seemingly insignificant but yet incomprehensible in its power and breadth, will provide the deepest joy and the greatest security, especially as the eyes of our hearts remain fixed on its King.

^{1. Quoted by Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 2001), 34 (emphasis added).↩ 2. Some helpful material for diagnosing idolatry are David Powlison’s “X-Ray Questions” in Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition through the Lens of Scripture (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003), 129–44; Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman, The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions about God (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1994). I have also found John Owen’s books Communion with God, Meditations on the Glory of Christ, and On Being Spiritually Minded very helpful in cultivating a heart of worship and adoration.↩ 3. See Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More: Living for Something Bigger Than You (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2007), 72–82.↩} —

Clay Werner (MDiv, Westminster Seminary in California) is senior pastor at Lexington Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Lexington, South Carolina, where he lives with his wife, Liz, and their five children.

From On the Brink: Grace for the Burned-Out Pastor by Clay Werner. Used by permission of P&R Publishing, http://www.prpbooks.com/.

Show Them Jesus

If kids are leaving the church, it’s because we’ve failed to give them a view of Jesus and his cross that’s compelling enough to satisfy their spiritual hunger and give them the zeal they crave. They haven’t seen that Jesus himself is better than any “Jesus program.” He’s better than the music used to worship him. He’s better than a missions trip. He’s better than their favorite youth leader. He’s also better than money. Better than video games. Better than romantic teen movies. Better than sex. Better than popularity or power. We’ve failed too many kids. We’ve fed them things to do. We’ve fed them “worshipful” experiences. But we’ve failed to feed them more than a spoonful of the good news. Now they’re starving and they’ll eat anything. They’re trying to feed their souls with something—maybe even a churchy thing—that feels like it fits them, when what they need is some one utterly better than themselves.

Who Has the Best Answers?

Church kids don’t just need the good news as much as other kids— they need it more. I saw an example of this while teaching at another Bible camp. Most of the campers were church kids, but not Ryan. His mom had signed him up because a neighbor had invited him and because camp was cheaper than other activities. Ryan had seldom been to church and didn’t even have a Bible at home.

At the start of the week I wondered if Ryan would be able to keep up. I needn’t have worried. He was my most attentive student, asking good questions and listening with excitement as I taught.

Most Bible teachers have experienced this phenomenon. Kids who are new to church are transfixed, while church kids hear the same lessons and remain ho-hum. Accepted wisdom says this is because the church kids have heard it before. But this time there was more to it. I was teaching the good news with every Bible story and the church kids were interested enough—they just weren’t excited by it. I soon realized that they weren’t even noticing the good news part of my teaching.

One evening near the end of the week I taught about King David and Mephibosheth. David had become king after his nemesis, Saul, died in battle. Not many descendants of Saul were left, which was good for David; they were a potential threat to his throne.

Mephibosheth was Saul’s grandson. As a boy he’d been crippled, but survived and lived in an obscure home on the fringe of Israel’s territory, away from his family’s land. From David’s perspective, this would have been a safe end for a potential enemy. But David was an extraordinary man who wanted to show kindness to a member of Saul’s family, so he summoned Mephibosheth to the palace. The lame man must have been terrified, but David told him, “Do not fear, for . . . I will restore to you all the land of Saul your father, and you shall eat at my table always” (2 Samuel 9:7). David treated Mephibosheth like one of his own sons, and the Bible mentions three more times how Mephibosheth always ate at the king’s table.

I asked the kids an open-ended question: “What can we learn about life with God from this lesson?”

Several hands shot up. “We should be kind too,” said one. “God wants us to love our enemies,” said another. More heads nodded in agreement. These were good answers. But were any of them the best answer?

“Anything else?” I asked. Nope. Everyone seemed to have the same thought.

Then I saw Ryan’s hand. “It sounds like us and God,” he said. “We’re like Mephibosheth. We’re the hurt guy who’s not on God’s side. But God is kind to us anyway. He’s so good!”

Yup. That was the best answer, all right—and Ryan saw it before any of the church kids did. The church kids had years of experience with Bible lessons and had learned to respond to questions about God by thinking first, “What do I have to do for him now?” They’d need to unlearn this before they could admire Jesus as the King who invites them, his crippled enemies, to sit at his table. Both they and Ryan had heard the good news for a full week, but only Ryan was ready to respond to a question about God by thinking, “He’s so good!”

How Christian Growth Stalls

There’s one more reason kids who are raised in Christian homes and familiar with church need more of the good news. This time it isn’t because of anything wrong; it’s because that’s just how Christian growth works.

As kids learn about God’s goodness and holiness, they ought to increase in awe of him. That’s growth. And as they examine themselves and see the ugliness inside, they ought to increase in conviction of sin. That’s growth too. But the combination of these will drive them to despair—unless their understanding of the forgiveness and righteousness they have in Jesus also grows.

Think of a kid who’s a new Christian as one starting to see God’s light. As he learns, the beam of light in his life shows him two things: (1) God’s holy demands and (2) the kid’s sin in falling short of those demands. We at Serge use a helpful illustration of this. The diagram shows these two things as the top edge and bottom edge of God’s light. The kid also sees the cross, which covers the gap between the kid’s sin and God’s demands. The kid has joy and confidence. He’s eager to live for God.

As his Christian life goes on, the kid learns more. His understanding of God’s holy demands grows. He also sees more fully how neither his life nor his heart can ever measure up, so his understanding of his own sinfulness grows as well. The beam of light widens. And if he hasn’t also been growing in appreciation for the good news—if the cross remains roughly the same size in his life—there will be gaps.

The kid becomes an Anxious Alice. He’s aware that his good deeds aren’t good enough and that his feelings for God aren’t strong enough. He knows he’s a hypocrite and is secretly haunted by guilt. He becomes a pretender, constantly scheming to make himself, his friends, and his parents believe the situation isn’t so bad.

He tries working harder to do better, but with no success. So he also acts like a Complacent Kyle. He fills the gap between the cross and God’s holiness by pretending that God’s demands aren’t really so extreme. Whatever little obedience he can muster up, he tells himself, must be okay.

The same kid acts like a Smug Sarah too. He fills the gap between the cross and his sin by pretending his sin actually isn’t so horrible. He stops repenting. Instead, to keep up a Christian image, he will lie, get defensive when corrected, tear others down, and do churchy things or obey his parents only to look good.

In short, the kid’s Christian growth stalls. Learning more about God’s greatness can’t help him because he can’t handle it. Telling him to sin less and obey more can’t help either, because he fights back, tunes out, or does both. For a church kid, this stall can happen very soon after becoming a Christian because he already knows so much about God and sin.

The solution is for the cross to grow along with everything else. The more a kid learns about himself and God, the more he must learn to trust and delight in the good news too. He must become ever more certain that he’s totally accepted in Christ, forgiven and adopted by God. It’s the only way he can keep growing.

The Bible tells us to expect this dynamic. Consider the prophet Isaiah, who had a thundering vision of God in the temple. His understanding of God’s holiness grew huge in an instant, and he couldn’t handle it: “Woe is me! For I am lost” (Isaiah 6:5). But an angel touched his lips with a hot coal and declared, “Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (Isaiah 6:7). Only then, once Isaiah’s bigger understanding of God’s holiness and his own sin was matched by a bigger confidence in his forgiveness, was he ready for ministry.

A kid who’s fed by the good news has a growing appreciation for Jesus and all he has done for him. That kid will be an amazing, non-pretending Christian. He won’t try to look better than he is but instead will dare to confess sin openly and repent earnestly. He also won’t have to pretend God is easily satisfied with a little churchy behavior, but he will dare to draw ever nearer to a holy God. This is because his sin and God’s holiness just show him how much more he’s been forgiven. They enlarge his love for Jesus.

—

Jack Klumpenhower is a Bible teacher and a children’s ministry curriculum writer with more than thirty years of experience. He has created Bible lessons and taught children about Jesus at churches, camps, clubs, conferences, and Christian schools all over the world, including Serge conferences. Currently he is working on a middle-school gospel curriculum in conjunction with Serge staff. He lives with his wife and two children in Durango, Colorado.

From Show Them Jesus: Teaching the Gospel to Kids, Copyright © 2014 by Jack Klumpenhower. Used by permission of New Growth Press, www.newgrowthpress.com.

Temptations During Difficulties

“And they woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’” (Mark 4:38b).

It is easy to ridicule the disciples at this point, to see them in some sense as being quite dramatic. But the text does not tell us the ride is bumpy. It tells us that the boat is filling with water from the waves. If it were you or I in that boat, even if Jesus were in the flesh with us, nine times out of ten fear would trump theology. In a situation like the one described, terror is practically instinctual. In the middle of a raucous storm, boat taking on water, “We’re all gonna die!” is not a punch line. It’s a valid prediction.

And yet, Jesus is sleeping. Like the disciples, I can’t get over this. How tired do you have to be to sleep through getting knocked about in the stern of a jostling boat, getting water sloshed on you from the rising level in the bilge, let alone thunder and the frantic shouting of your friends? There is, in a way, something quite comic about this passage. And it makes the disciples’ question sort of humorous. I assume there is a level of anger in it, a smidgen of sarcasm added to the terror: “Don’t you care that we’re dying?”

Does that sound at all like any of your prayers? Does it at all resemble your theology these days? “This stuff must be happening because God doesn’t care about me.”

Two Temptations in the Midst of Difficulty

The cry of the disciples is as common as the human heart. Their question evinces two great temptations we face in the midst of any difficulty.

First, we are often tempted in trouble to equate worry with concern. Just as the disciples leap to conclusions about Jesus’s sleeping, you and I tend to get very frustrated when others refuse to get infected with our anxiety. I’ve counseled quite a few married couples, for instance, who have wandered into a communication standoff in part because the wife has mistaken her husband’s failure to mirror her nervousness as failure to care about the issues involved. Sometimes explaining the different ways men and women tend to process information and deal with stress helps to clear the air, as does encouraging husbands to be more vocal about their thoughts and feelings with their wives. But very often the essential breakdown comes from logic like this: “This is a very big deal. That’s why I’m freaking out about it. You must not think it’s a very big deal because you’re not freaking out.”

The reality is that sometimes people share our concern without sharing our worry. That’s a good thing. And it’s quite Christlike. Remember that worry is forbidden for the Christian (Matt. 6:25; Phil. 4:6) and that it won’t get you anywhere anyway.

And as in Mark 4, Jesus may come to your pity party, but he won’t participate. He will sit by you, loving you, caring about you, and overseeing all of your troubles, but he won’t for a second share in your anxiety unless you’re trying to get rid of it.

There is a reason the most repeated command in the Bible is “Be not afraid.”

The second temptation we face when going through enormous difficulty is more directly theological: we tend to assume that a loving God would not let us suffer.

There is perhaps no line of thinking more dangerous, more insidious, and more utterly unchristian than this one. The cry “Do you not care that I’m perishing?” becomes the accusation “I’m perishing and you don’t care,” which gives way to disavowal: “If there is a God, I don’t want anything to do with him. He is cruel.”

Where we get the idea that Christianity excludes suffering, I don’t rightly know. It likely comes mostly from our flesh, from our prideful idolization of comfort and pleasure. It comes somewhat from just plain ol’ crappy doctrine. It certainly does not come from the Bible.

The Cross Is Laid on Every Christian

In the story of the man whose house is built on the rock (Matt. 7:24–27), the firm foundation does not keep the storm away. In fact, according to the Scriptures, being a Christian means being willing to take on more suffering than the average person. Not only must we endure the same pains, stresses, and diseases of every other mortal, but we agree to take on the added burden of insults, hardships, and persecutions on account of our faith. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we em- bark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

The call to discipleship, in other words, is not an invitation for one of those popular Christian cruises. I can see the advertisement in the Christian magazine now:

Jesus! Shuffleboard! Seafood Buffet! Join Jesus Christ and twelve other influential teachers for seven luxurious days and six restful nights on the maiden voyage of our five-star, five- story ship of dreams, the S.S. Smooth Sailing. Enjoy karaoke with your favorite psalmists on the lido deck or splash your cares away in our indoor water park with a safe crowd of people who look just like you!

Instead, Jesus calls us into nasty crosswinds in a boat specifically designed to make us trust totally in him. And if the boat even appears to offer safety from the waves, Jesus may actually call us out of it and into the sea (Matt. 14:29). But in either place, he will be there with us, not to help us worry but to help us believe. Thus, it is imperative that we have our theology straight before we even get in the boat.

—

Jared C. Wilson (@jaredcwilson) is Becky’s husband and Macy and Grace’s daddy, and also the pastor of Middletown Springs Community Church in Middletown Springs, Vermont and the author of the books Gospel Wakefulness, Your Jesus is Too Safe, Abide, Seven Daily Sins, Gospel Deeps, The Pastor’s Justification, and The Story-Telling God. He blogs almost daily at The Gospel-Driven Church.

Excerpt taken from Jared Wilson, The Wonder-Working God, Crossway, ©2014. Used by permission. http://www.crossway.org

The Bait and Switch

Texas Only Has Three Seasons

Unlike most of the nation’s spring, summer, fall, and winter, we have springtime, ridiculously hot, and football season. From preseason to Super Bowl Sunday, football talk is everywhere. From fantasy teams, to social media feeds; from pro and college jerseys worn proudly in the grocery, to conversations and watch parties, our world revolves around our teams. You may not love football, but something is just as important to you as football is to the stereotypical fan. The next installment in your favorite movie trilogy, your family, your job, your church, a new restaurant you visited, a big project you’re working on: whatever it is, we all talk about what’s important to us.

If you’re a Christian, it’s likely you’d consider Jesus more important to you than football. Although sometimes we wonder about some men in our churches . . . And yet, this Cornerstone of our very lives, motives, actions, and decisions often becomes the least-discussed aspect of our entire lives. Many Christians pull a “bait and switch” on those around us. You know that image: a newspaper ad lures you to a store, where you find out there were “only ten at the special price, but look what else we have . . .” If we’ve gotten to know a neighbor for nine months, and only then we reveal that we follow Jesus, we’ve done the same thing: they question our motives, wonder about our relationship, and feel like we’ve lied to them. And we have: as the courtroom oath goes, we’ve showed and told “the truth,” but not “the whole truth so help me God.” How do we share the gospel without killing the relationship? The first way is to be open about our faith from day one.

Why do we do this? Maybe we hesitate to talk about faith because it’s divisive. Maybe we’re nervous: what if they then ask us a question we can’t answer? Or maybe, since they don’t follow Jesus and we lack that shared experience—which a football game easily provides—we might wonder if we have common ground. Each of these breaks down. First, if we incarnate ourselves into a mission field, eventually people find out we follow Jesus. Our neighbors see us pull out of our driveways every Sunday, frantic and late, or see Bible-toting friends enter our home every Wednesday. Second, when (not if) they ask a question we can’t answer, we have two viable options. We can answer from our own experience, since experience is sometimes more meaningful than cold, hard facts. Or we can show humility: “I haven’t studied that specific element of faith yet, so I don’t know.” Then we can go find the answer and honor them by remembering to follow up. Third, we may lack the shared experience of faith, but we’re normal humans, so have plenty to talk about.

A Perception of Shame

One thing comes across in our lack of sharing the gospel: shame. If we can’t look someone in the eye and talk about our personal experience with Jesus with confidence, we appear to be ashamed of the very thing we claim as most important to us. We go directly against the apostle Paul’s exhortation to Roman Christians, not to be ashamed of the gospel1. It takes great faith to share the gospel: it is divisive—God promises it to be, and others will consider our belief foolish. It can make us nervous—they might not respond well; they might laugh at us. And it is intrusive—the cross draws a line between beliefs. Such is Christian experience, throughout history and across the world. But the faith by which Paul and the righteous live isn’t faith in others’ perspective of us, or the relationship we have with them. It’s faith in a far greater God than those idols. And that faith caused Paul—and causes us—not to be ashamed of the gospel.

Eboo Patel started the Interfaith Youth Core, which works primarily on college campuses. Eboo—a Muslim who I (Bob) admire deeply and love—once asked what I believed. “Eboo I’d never offend you in the world, but I really believe based on the Bible that Jesus is God and the only way to Him.” I told him of working in Vietnam and later in Afghanistan with Muslims. He told me one of the reasons partnered with us is because I held to my faith and still wanted a relationship with him. People do not just want honesty, but clarity to understand what we believe. It’s a matter of how we say it. I’ve become convinced that truth is always kind and humble. Harshness, mean-spiritedness and arrogance often displays insecurity about our beliefs. If we believe the truth, we should be the most secure, humble, compassionate people on earth. We have nothing to be ashamed of.

Christianity in Everyday Conversations

And we’re not encouraging forcing God into every conversation, at the exclusion of everything else: that will ensure a ‘no’ the next time you invite them over. We are encouraging allowing our faith to be a part of our normative, unforced conversation. Just like other parts of our lives are. Sharing the gospel begins by not omitting parts of our lives that speak to our beliefs. If your boss asks what you’re doing this weekend, instead of “yard work and a birthday party Saturday, then some other stuff on Sunday before I watch the game,” simply acknowledge that “some other stuff” means “going to a church gathering, and even serving on the parking team.” If a neighbor wants your opinion on a hot-button issue, instead of simply talking about politics and human rights, bring your Higher Authority into the conversation.

Tim Keller said it like this: “You have to be willing to talk about how your faith integrates with your life. Because if you’re in non-superficial relationships with people, your faith simply has to come up! Why you do this and why you do that, and why you don’t do this and why you don’t do that, and how you were helped with a problem—you just have to mention it. It should be very natural . . . You have to have a lot of non-superficial relationships with not-yet-believers, and you also have to have a willingness to talk about your faith, and how it affects how you think and live.” Here are a few, among many, common ways to bring faith into common conversation3:

• Talk about your faith and community: speak of church gatherings, events, meaningful relationships, and God’s work with excitement and joy: it raises intrigue.
• Talk about our redemption stories: talking about our lives both before Jesus and after takes courage, but is deeply moving in its vulnerability. And talk about moments of brokenness and reconciliation in your life since He redeemed you. It shows that you’re still not perfect, but that Jesus continues to redeem areas of pain, struggle, and disbelief.
• Share the result of your faith: show people our true rest, joy, peace, and comfort in God alone, because of His ongoing work in us. How does faith impact your daily life?
• Give God due credit: as you talk about good things in your life, rightly attribute those blessings to God, the giver of every gift.
• Point to the bigger story: as we discuss conflict, sin, pain, and brokenness in the world, or as we discuss success, joy, and echoes of redemption, acknowledge that every specific act is part of a larger story of brokenness and redemption.
• Be generous with praise: whether watching a mountain sunrise or hearing a co-worker complain about her assistant, point to beautiful things God has uniquely put in them
• Show great grace: instead of engaging in gossip, and instead interacting with someone who’s failed or hurt us, display the grace God first showed us.
• Share our true thoughts when asked: instead of avoiding advice, or downplaying the fact that the gospel drives us, boldly give answers from a faith-filled worldview.
• Don’t talk about God differently with not-yet-believers than we do with believers: we normally talk openly about God, faith, and even struggles and doubt with our community; do the same in our mission field. Honesty and openness shows others we don’t have every answer.

The gospel is important to us. While we must listen well, the other side is equally true: to really get to know people, they need to know what’s important to us. You talk about everything else in your life that’s important. Don’t stop talking about the big game, the hit movie, or your big project. Just make sure they’re in their place and don’t ignore the bigger driving force in your life. Don’t be ashamed of the gospel. In normal conversation, and early in the relationship, let people know you’re a follower of Jesus.

—

Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben.

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers starting June 2014. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher. For free resources and preorders, visit everydaymission.net.)

Changing the Dating Culture

Let's get right to it on this topic. The way young people date today pretty much reflects how married people relate to each other. Young people spend lots of time together alone; they awaken desire prematurely; they mess around, often times ending in intercourse; and they are just as affectionate as a husband and wife should be within the sacred confines of marriage. Most of the time, the only thing that separates a dating relationship from a marriage relationship is the ring that is parked on the left hand. Vodie Baucham says, as stated above, that dating as it is currently done is “glorified divorce practice.” So, it’s not hidden—I am a huge enemy toward the way we currently practice dating. The difference between a Christian and a non-Christian when it comes to relationships should be monumental. For the Christian, the lens through which we view relationships must be Scripture. For the non-Christian, the lens through which they view relationships is often the current cultural approach. This approach is found in the saying, “You don’t know if the shoe fits until you try it on.” Men and women live with each other, fulfill their sexual desires, hop around from dating partner to dating partner, and treat each other as husband and wife—all without any form of commitment. Again, it is not uncommon to find confessing Christians living together before marriage either. If they are not living together it seems that they spend all of their time together in intimate environments where there is no accountability, and they have no one walking beside them as they pursue the biggest journey of their life.

What’s the Difference?

The dating relationships of Christians must be different than those of non-Christians. Men, what does it say about you when you do not protect your girlfriend physically, emotionally, or mentally? Do you use the words, “I love you,” without thinking twice about it as if love is really an emotion, and then when you aren’t “feeling it” anymore you can just use the “it’s not you, it’s me” line? Oh man, there is nothing worse than a guy who uses a girl and then moves on to the next after he’s gotten his fix! Do you often put yourselves in situations where temptation can be sparked? Have you awakened desire and intimacy before it is ready? If you can answer yes to any of these questions then you need to repent of your stupidity, and really begin to think about how you are forever hurting your sisters in Christ. Believe me guys; I’ve been there. I have done the things mentioned above, and thankfully God has shown grace upon me through his Son Jesus where I have had to repent of sin and become intentional about how I treat my sisters in Christ.

The way young people currently practice dating is killing not only their spiritual lives but it is killing the vitality of the church. This must change in our generation! Scripture does not necessarily say, “This is how you are supposed to date,” but it does give us insights and wisdom into how men and women outside of marriage should relate to one another. Let’s begin in Genesis 2. Genesis 2:24-25 says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

The Bible does not say that a man shall leave his fa- ther and mother and hold fast to his girlfriend. Let me be clear men, we don’t join with our fiancées either. We join together with our wives. This is what is known as leaving and cleaving. Men, we leave our mother and father and we cleave to our wives. And obviously, we don’t get naked with our girlfriends either. Do you ever wonder why you feel ashamed when you do?

So, if marriage is the end goal then what are the steps to getting there? Here’s what I think, and honestly, it’s this simple:

1. If you find yourself being sexually tempted then it’s time to begin to prepare yourself for marriage (1 Corinthians 7:1-3).

I realize that many people will disagree with me on this point, but that’s okay, often times the ones who disagree with this are the ones who are justifying their actions of finding sexual pleasures outside of marriage—whether it’s through sexual relationships or pornography. It has been said somewhere that 98% of men lust after women; the other 2% who say they don’t lust after women are liars.

2. Young guys, you must have someone walk with you through the dating/courtship process (Titus 2:1-10).

I often tell young guys who ask me about courtship that it is simply the season of life when you are preparing yourself for marriage. If we are modeling discipleship/mentorship biblically then we should have an old- er man who is teaching and walking beside younger men as they make decisions. This includes their dating/courtship decisions.

3. Keep your dating/courtship/engagement time short (Song of Solomon 2:8; 8:4).

Please don’t date for five years before you get married. Seriously, is there any biblical wisdom in this? Let me tell you what will hap- pen if you don’t know already. You will be putting yourselves in five years of sexual temptation, desire, and struggle. Desire and love will awaken before its time. Also, when it comes to the engagement process then keep it as SHORT as possible. Believe me, this is the absolute WORST time for guys.

4. Begin to read books on marriage and not books on dating.

Why would you want to read a how-to-guide on dating if you’re only going to date for 6-8 months when you’re going to be married for the rest of your life? Prepare yourselves to be husbands and wives, not boyfriends and girlfriends. Believe me, six to eight months is enough time for you to know if you want to spend the rest of your life with someone. You don’t need a year to figure out if you want to see them naked or not, if you are like-minded, and if he or she loves Jesus. In all honesty, these are the only three requirements you must have to be compatible as husband and wife: 1) Do they love Jesus? 2) Are you attracted to them physically? 3) Are you like-minded in life, family, children, church affiliation, goals, etc.?

With that said, I implore you to begin to rethink your current dating situation if you are indeed in one that I have spoken of above. Let us be men who take the Bible seriously. Let us see the culture through the lens of Scripture—not vice-versa. I challenge you to be courageous in your dating, engagement process, and marriage.

Men, we must step up! —

Greg Gibson is married to Grace and is the father of Cora and Iver. He serves as an elder and family ministries pastor at Foothills Church in Knoxville, TN overseeing birth through college and marriages. He is the author of Reformational Manhood: Creating a Culture of Gospel-Centered Warriors and serves as the lead editor for CBMW’s Manual. Greg also writes often at ggib.me. Follow him on Twitter: @gregrgibson

Excerpt taken from Greg Gibson, Reformational Manhood, BorderStone Press, ©2014. Used by permission. http://borderstonepress.com

Looking for Hope in a Better Person

You’re a night security guard and the only Christian on duty. Another guard suddenly sticks his head into your office. Pointing his finger he almost accuses, “You’re one of those ‘Christians,’ right?” Nothing good ever follows that question. No one gives you a high five, says “good job,” and goes about their business. They want to debate, challenge, or stump you. You hesitantly respond, “Yeah . . .” He crosses his arms, looks you square in the eye and then comes the challenge: “I do drugs. What would Jesus say about that?” How would you respond—in a way that might actually resonate?

Three Insufficient Responses

I’ve posed this scenario, which actually happened to a guy I know named Nick, in trainings around the country. No matter where I am, I hear these responses,

“Um, I Don’t Know Exactly”

For some, our gut response would be to look down, stammer, and ashamedly admit we don’t know what Jesus would say. Maybe it’s the outlandish honesty or the shock of a challenge at 2 a.m. Perhaps we have a hard time putting Jesus’ response into words. Or our people-pleaser kicks in and we simply can’t tell him the core of what we believe. A common response to this question is a blank stare. Put yourself in the shoes of the asker: “I don’t know” looks like ignorance.

“He’d tell you to stop”

For others, the answer would stem from the moralistic, humanist culture we grew up in. Our answer is some form of Bob Newhart’s MADtv sketch: a counselee admits a number of struggles, while Newhart “counsels” each with a blunt, “Stop it!” Even if we intellectually know Jesus is our savior, we function as if He is a good guy with ethical advice. Maybe we advise a few “good works.” Perhaps we appeal to legality (“you’ll get arrested”), personal welfare (“it might kill you”), heartstrings (“if you get arrested, can you imagine how your family will feel?”), or moralism (“you know it’s wrong”). It could be that we even quote a verse: “He’d say ‘you shall have no other gods before me’; that’s the first commandment.” Put yourself in the asker’s shoes again: “‘Stop it’” fits a view of God many already assume: a rule-giving, demanding, and impersonal deity.

“He died for your sin so you can be with Him in heaven”

A final common response acknowledges their need for the gospel. Maybe you’ve been praying for this guard. You’re elated that God finally opened the door. So you gush the gospel many of us know well. “He’d tell you that God is perfect and heaven is perfect, but because of sin, you’re not perfect. God sent Jesus to die for your sin so you can be reconciled to God and live eternal life with Him. If you accept Jesus He’ll forgive your sin of drugs.” This is true—and praise God it is! But if he’s ignoring God, he doesn’t care about heaven. If he’s like much of the world, he doesn’t believe he’s too bad a person. If he’s a common American, it’s likely he doesn’t fully understand sin or his need for Jesus. Even the objective, big-picture gospel is not a sufficient answer.

“Like Children, Tossed To And Fro . . .”

These responses fail to get to the heart of our faith. The first is empty. the second is moralistic. The third sees the gospel as merely a past event that greatly benefits my future, but that has nothing to do with today. Many who question the gospel need to know how it applies to them in their current situation. Behind the challenging question is a heart in need of applicable truth.

Futile attempts like these are not unique to our culture. Writing to first-century Ephesus, Paul explains the goal of Christian life is maturity, then gives three ways we cannot attain that goal: “every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” First, exclusively pursuing doctrinal trends, teachers, or head-knowledge of the Bible isn’t enough. Second, we will always be let down by relying on our own power, to make new rules and fix each other. Third, false teachers deceive, spouting false hope and false ways to solve real issues.

But these are ways we often answer many questions, not just the 2 a.m. drug challenge. “How can God redeem my broken marriage?” “I’m so angry at my boss, what do I do?” “We just want a baby.” “How do these verses or commands apply to me?” “Where is God in this (recent tragedy)?” We answer, “I don’t know” (and if you’re really good, “. . . but I’ll pray for you.”) “Let me give you a great book on that.” “Let’s meet every week for accountability.” “Do these three things or steps.” “You just need to trust Jesus.” “One day, all this will be better.”

Applying An Objective Gospel To Subjective Situations

None of these, Paul would say, are sufficient for faith or maturity. He even calls answers like this childlike. Answers like these miss one of the great blessings of the gospel. It is a past event, both historically and personally for every Christian. It does give future hope, for personal reconciliation and the renewal of all things. But it also impacts every moment of our present lives. The gospel means something, to everyone, everyday, for every situation, whether they know it or not. Paul says that while those other ways fail, the one way to grow in Christ is to “speak the truth in love.”

This is why we listen well; why we learn stories. Within every complaint, struggle, and idol hides an opportunity to speak the objective truth of the gospel into someone’s subjective circumstance. Jeff Vanderstelt offers four areas to listen for, in every story, frustration, and situation, where we can intervene and point people toward Jesus:

• Identity: Who or what shapes their understanding of themselves? Where do they find personal value and worth?
• Brokenness: Where are things “different” than they’re supposed to be? What are areas of pain, hurt, and frustration? Who or what’s to blame?
• Redemption: What or who do they look to, to fix the brokenness? What or who makes everything right? What or who’s their functional redeemer?
• Hope: What does “right” look like? What would everything look like once everything is fixed? What or who is the center of that hope?

When we identify false identity or hope in someone’s life, see a misplaced view of brokenness, or hear the letdown of a false redeemer, we can point them toward a better story. We lead them to an identity and hope in God, not anything or anyone else. We define sin as the true brokenness, not any other problem. We point to Jesus as the only true Redeemer in the midst of the siren calls of false saviors. That loves them well, and speaks gospel truth in a way that addresses a direct need.

How Would You Respond?

“I do drugs. What would Jesus say about that?” Based on today’s content, how do we answer that question? What deeper need do the drugs really cover? What true struggle is he admitting? Put yourself in Nick’s shoes: how does the objective gospel apply to the guard’s subjective situation?

After thinking for a moment, Nick responded, “I think Jesus would tell you you’re looking for hope in a place that lets you down. And you know it lets you down because you have to take a hit three times a day. So I think Jesus would tell you He’s a better place to put your hope, because He promises He’ll never let you down.” Nick spoke the gospel truth into the basis of the guard’s personal hope. In thousands of years of history, sixty-six written books, and millions of lives across history, God has proven that Jesus is our greatest hope. The guard didn’t fall on his knees weeping that night. God didn’t redeem his soul in that office. But he uncrossed his arms, shook his head, and told Nick, “No one has ever told me that before. That actually makes a lot of sense.” That night, the guard walked having heard the gospel in a way that resonated with his present life and need.

—

Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben.

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers starting June 2014. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher. For free resources and preorders, visit everydaymission.net.)

Picturing Discipleship at The Moulin Rouge

Embodied Desires

A common “churchy” response to this cultural situation runs along basically Platonic lines: to quell the raging passion of sexuality that courses its way through culture, our bodies and passions need to be disciplined by our “higher” parts—we need to get the brain to trump other organs and thus bring the passions into submission to the intellect. And the way to do this is to get ideas to trump passions. In other words, the church responds to the overwhelming cultural activation and formation of desire by trying to fill our head with ideas and beliefs.

I suggest that, on one level, Victoria’s Secret is right just where the church has been wrong. More specifically, I think we should first recognize and admit that the marketing industry—which promises an erotically charged transcendence through media that connects to our heart and imagination—is operating with a better, more creational, more incarnational, more holistic anthropology than much of the (evangelical) church. In other words, I think we must admit that the marketing industry is able to capture, form, and direct our desires precisely because it has rightly discerned that we are embodied, desiring creatures whose being-in-the-world is governed by the imagination. Marketers have figured out the way to our heart because they “get it”: they rightly understand that, at root, we are erotic creatures—creatures who are oriented primarily by love and passion and desire. In sum, I think Victoria is in on Augustine’s secret. But meanwhile, the church has been duped by modernity and has bought into a kind of Cartesian model of the human person, wrongly assuming that the heady realm of ideas and beliefs is the core of our being. These are certainly part of being human, but I think they come second to embodied desire. And because of this, the church has been trying to counter the consumer formation of the heart by focusing on the head and missing the target: it's as if the church is pouring water to put out a fire in our heart.

What if we approached this differently? What if we didn’t see passion and desire as such as the problem, but rather sought to redirect it? What if we honored what the marketing industry has got right—that we are creatures primarily of love and desire— and then responded in kind with counter-measures that focus on our passions, not primarily on our thoughts or beliefs? What if the church began with an affirmation of our passional nature and then sought to redirect it?

A Romantic Theology

The result would be what Inklings member Charles Williams called a “romantic theology.” Developed in a number of (unfortunately) forgotten little books, Williams’s argument is that the human experience of romantic love and sexual desire is itself a testimony to the desire for God. Williams would put it even more strongly: the person who experiences romantic love has experienced something of the God who is love. Treading a path opened by Dante’s meditations on Beatrice, Williams suggests that romantic love “renews nature, if only for a moment; it flashes for a moment into the lover the life he was meant to possess.” Love, says Williams, is a testament to the in-breaking or emergence of the divine in human experience, and thus to be affirmed as an expression of our deepest erotic passion, the desire for God:

Any occupation exercising itself with passion, with self-oblivion, with devotion, towards an end other than itself, is a gateway to divine things. If a lover contemplating in rapture the face of his lady, or a girl listening in joy to the call of the beloved, are worshippers in the hidden temples of our Lord, is not also the spectator who contemplates in rapture a batsman’s stroke or the collector gazing with veneration at a unique example of [a stamp]?

As we’ll see later hinted in Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins, the erotic—even misdirected eros—is a sign of the kinds of animals we are: creatures who desire God. As Augustine famously put it, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” This is not a matter of intellect; Augustine doesn’t focus on the fact that we don’t “know” God. The problem here isn’t ignorance or skepticism. At issue is a kind of in-the-bones angst and restlessness that finds its resolution in “rest”—when our precognitive desire settles, finally, on its proper end (the end for which it was made), rather than being constantly frustrated by objects of desire that don’t return our love (idols). But this means that even desire wrongly “aimed” is still a testament to our nature as desiring animals. Operative behind Williams’s “romantic theology” is a picture of the human person that appreciates affectivity and desire as the “heart” of the person.

An Augustinian Anthropology of Desire

An Augustinian anthropology of desire primes us to adopt just such a romantic theology. And this entails, I think, an interesting implication for how we’ll think about learning and discipleship. I have in mind The Moulin Rouge—a film set in that den of iniquity, Montmartre, at the turn of the twentieth century, during the fervor of the Bohemian revolution. A starving artist named “Christian” has rejected the “respectable” and bourgeois lifestyle of his father (as a clerk or salesman) and instead sought to pursue a life devoted to literature and drama, all in the pursuit of beauty. He rejects the nine-to- five machinations of “normal” people, refuses to be reduced to a middle-class producer and consumer, and instead takes up residence with the colony of artists clustered in Montmartre—infamous home to burlesque shows and the red-light district, but also home to painters and artists like Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and van Gogh—all taking place under the watchful eye of the Basilica Sacré-Coeur perched atop the hill. Thus Montmartre represents a certain mix of the sacred and the profane—both of which seem to be at odds with the bourgeois life of production and consumption that the young artist, Christian, has rejected. The proximity to Sacré-Coeur almost invites us to look for parallels and comparisons between the bohemian artists and the mendicant friars, the decadent painters and the celibate priests, both of whom reject a life of moneymaking for the sake of very different visions of the kingdom, of the good life. But if both the bohemian and the friar desire a kingdom that rejects the pursuit of comfort and wealth, could it be that there are some covert similarities between their visions of the kingdom? Does the Moulin Rouge already point up the hill toward the Basilica? What, at the end of the day, is Christian after?

Above all, Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge is a “spectacular” love story revolving around the play within the play—a production of another love story, “Spectacular, Spectacular.” It is desire that brings the young man to art, to commit himself to the voluntary poverty of a bohemian literary existence. And it is in pursuit of this desire that another desire flames: his passion for Satine, a courtesan who reigns at the Moulin Rouge. Oddly, Satine herself represents the moneymaker, concerned primarily with acquisition, as attested in her hymn, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” (Indeed, her profession represents the very commodification of love.) Thus she resists his advances; above all she rejects his bohemian ideal, his naive commitment to love (played out in the “Elephant Love Medley”). But love wins. Christian’s evangelistic commitment to love captures the heart of Satine, and the effect is transformative: rejecting a lucrative offer from the duke, she too becomes a bohemian, and the desire for acquisition gives way to a passion for love and beauty. Love even has a kind of epistemological or perceptual effect, as indicated in their anthem, “Come What May”: “Never knew I could feel like this, like I’ve never seen the sky before.” The world is “seen” differently because of love. By the end of the film we learn that all of this has constituted a kind of education: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return.”

On the one hand, this seems to be the very antithesis of the kingdom of God: a realm of prostitutes and addicted artists given over to wanton pleasure-seeking. This criticism is embodied in the figure of Christian’s bourgeois father, who berates the bohemian culture for its sinfulness, which seems to be most linked to its failure to be “productive.” But to “the children of the revolution” (try to hear Bono crooning the song from the sound track), our highest calling is not to simply be producers. Instead, they are committed to the bohemian ideals of “beauty, freedom, truth, and above all, love.” And the spectacle of the film is ripe for analysis in terms of Williams’s theology of romantic love—a love that is revelatory, that breaks open the world (“Never knew I could feel like this, like I never saw the sky before . . .”). Christians will tend to say, “Ah, but that’s not love—that’s eros, not agapē!” But a romantic theology refuses the distinction because it recognizes that we are erotic creatures—that agapē is rightly ordered eros. And so one could suggest that the kingdom looks more like Montmartre than Colorado Springs! The kingdom might look more like the passionate world of the Moulin Rouge than the staid, buttoned-down, talking-head world of the 700 Club. The end of learning is love; the path of discipleship is romantic.

—

James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he also holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. He is the editor of Comment magazine. Smith has authored or edited many books, including Imagining the Kingdom and the Christianity Today Book Award winners Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? and Desiring the Kingdom. He is also editor of the well-received The Church and Postmodern Culture series (www.churchandpomo.org).

James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, ©2009. Used by permission. http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

The Pastor’s Kid: An Interview with Barnabas Piper

Being a pastor's kid (PK) is not something most of us can relate to, and yet the PK is someone we cannot avoid. PKs live in a world different from ours, a world where their family's every move is under intense scrutiny. But even if we're not a PK, it's important to understand the unique difficulties they face.

Barnabas Piper has written a book, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity, hoping to use his experience to encourage PKs to trust in Christ and to seek community in the midst of public and private struggle. It is also an instructive book for those of us who want to love our pastor's kid better.

Barnabas was kind enough to answer a few questions for GCD, and I hope it will encourage you to buy the book.

BRANDON: What made you feel like this message was the one to turn into a book?

BARNABAS: I was reluctant, at first, to write a book from the perspective of PKs. I doubted whether it would connect with enough people and wondered if it might seem whiny or navel-gazing. But as I corresponded with PK after PK I heard the same stories and perspectives over and over again, and they meshed with mine almost perfectly. I saw a persistent need and consistent desire. After I wrote a couple articles on being a PK the responses flooded in—each one hit a nerve. I saw a clear void in resources speaking to and for PKs both to encourage them and help their parents too.

BRANDON: Pastors have the unique expectation of discipling everyone in the church at the same time, in some form or fashion. How did this affect your dad (John Piper) in discipleship at home with you and your siblings?

BARNABAS: My dad was always a preaching pastor. His calling was to preach and his gift was to preach, and he was uniquely gifted at it. For him, discipleship of the church was primarily in consistent faithful exposition of the Bible. It was similar at home, just without the booming voice and gesticulations. He exposited and applied scripture. It was a strength and a weakness. The consistent pointing to God’s word laid a foundation for understanding, but it sometimes fell short of feeling personal and relational. There are dads, especially pastors, who use scripture verses like a magic cure for every ailment. My dad was not one of those.  He was never trite in his use of verses and he didn’t proof text to make a point. Sometimes, though, I just wanted normal conversation and connection and his default was digging into the Bible.

BRANDON: Pastor's kids often carry the unfair weight of being expected to be perfect because of who their dad is. How can people in the church help pastor's kids feel more "normal"?

BARNABAS: The short answer is “treat them like you do all the other kids.” PKs get singled out for misbehaving and even small indiscretions get noticed and reprimanded or reported. Where one kid might be called out Sunday School for being a distraction the PK  will have his mother or father called about the same sort of incident. PKs often get singled out to answer questions in Sunday school even if they don’t want to or don’t really know the answer. In fact, not knowing isn’t really allowed either. It creates an expectation of perfection, or at least a faking of it. Last, let them ask questions, doubt, wonder, explore, and find faith. Too often faith is expected of PKs and what is actually there isn’t a relationship with Jesus but a recitation of what is expected.

BRANDON: What advice would you give pastors seeking to better disciple their own kids?

BARNABAS: Converse, don’t ever preach. Relate, don’t always council. Connect with your kids over what they enjoy and over what you enjoy. This means have a hobby that can be shared (not just reading or studying). Listen, don’t always teach. Sometimes they need to be heard and to know you care. Show them you enjoy being with them. And admit to your sins, not just to being a sinner, but to actual sins. Then ask their forgiveness. These kinds of actions create an atmosphere of trust, respect, and openness. Such an atmosphere is where faith is worked out, questions are more safely posed, and a real relationship with Jesus can be exemplified and developed.

BRANDON: What advice would you give pastor's kids struggling with the pressures they face?

BARNABAS: Trust somebody. Find one or two friends. (You don’t really need more than that.) No they might not totally understand, but they care. It will help you process your struggles to talk through them. You’ll begin to see the holes that exist in your life that only Jesus can fill.

Then look for Jesus. Sure, you’ve heard all about him for your whole life, but go look for him. What you see may differ greatly than the impression you have of him. He’s not your daddy’s boss. He’s not a killjoy or a judge. He’s not an angelic, halo-wearing, choir boy. He is profoundly powerful, gracious, loving, and present. What find see when you look for Jesus is that you find him. He will introduce himself to you in a way that is so real that all those pressures and challenges and issues become something that may still hurt but are manageable and secondary.

—

Brandon D. Smith is Executive Director of Gospel-Centered Discipleship and serves in editorial roles for The Criswell Theological Review and The Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood. He is also Editor of Make, Mature, Multiply: Becoming Fully-Formed Disciples of Jesus. He is proud to be Christa’s husband and Harper Grace’s daddy. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonSmith85.

New Book: Make, Mature, Multiply by Brandon D. Smith

Today, we release the newest book from GCD Books—Brandon Smith’s Make Mature Multiply: Becoming Fully-Formed Disciples of Jesus. You can buy a digital copy from the GCD Bookstore for $3.99 or get paperback for $9.99. Here’s an excerpt from the editor’s preface: As a new Christian, I was told that being a disciple of Jesus could be summed up in his own words—“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mk. 8:34). While this statement is certainly a foundational truth of being a disciple, is this it?

In one sense, yes. Jesus could have stopped there and we could aim to model our lives after the self-sacrifice and humility he displayed on the cross. There would be nothing wrong with that. But he didn’t stop there. Scripture gives us more. Much more.

The good news of the gospel is not only for self-application; it is for proclamation. It’s meant to be shared. A disciple follows Jesus, invites others to follow him, and then trains them how to repeat the process. Simply put, disciples are called to make, mature, and multiply disciples.

First, we are called to make disciples. This means that we evangelize, we share the good news. Making disciples is about telling strangers, friends, family, and anyone else who doesn’t know it yet that Jesus Christ is their King, their Savior, their God.

Next, we are called to mature disciples. So we don’t tell people about Jesus and move along. We don’t say, “I’m glad you believe! Enjoy yourself.” Maturing disciples is teaching them to obey all that Jesus has commanded (Matt. 28:20). It’s the process of sanctification—being made holy, becoming more and more like Jesus. We rely on God. We devour and dwell on the things of God found in the Scriptures. We pray. We kill sin in our lives. We serve others. We take “WWJD?” seriously by remembering what he actually did. These are but a few characteristics of a mature disciple. We model these things and we teach others to model them.

Finally, we multiply disciples. Mature disciples don’t keep the good news of the gospel to themselves. Mature disciples, by the Holy Spirit’s power, take Jesus to others. We are evangelized to evangelize. We are loved to love. We are forgiven to forgive. We are served to serve. We are redeemed to point to the Redeemer. We complete the cycle of discipleship by making disciples who make disciples who make disciples who make…

This is not a perfect process, but it doesn’t have to be. Jesus was and is perfect so that you don’t have to be. You can’t save anyone, but you can show others the One who can. The Holy Spirit is with you (Jn. 14:25-26; 1 Cor. 10:13). My prayer is that this book will help you become a fully-formed disciple of Jesus who makes, matures, and multiplies fully-formed disciples of Jesus.

These chapters have been adapted from articles that originally appeared at GCDiscipleship.com. We like to think of this book as a “best of GCD” compilation. I speak for every contributor in this book when I say: we hope you see the glory of Christ on every page, and that you are so captivated by the beauty of the gospel that you can’t help but take it to the ends of the earth.

_

GCD Store: All Digital Formats (Mobi/Kindle, ePub/iBook, and PDF)

Amazon: Paperback

—

Brandon D. Smith is Executive Director of Gospel-Centered Discipleship and serves in editorial roles for The Criswell Theological Review and The Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood. He is proud to be Christa’s husband and Harper Grace’s daddy. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonSmith85

Birthing New Disciples

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” was Christ’s clarion call to his closest companions—those who had walked with him for over three years, and those who would sow the seeds of joy in Christ throughout the early days of his Church. Likewise, this banner is rightly taken up by any modern church that seeks to follow Christ’s call. But in our modern culture, an emphasis on process often leads to false pretext. In other words, the “how to” of discipleship often precedes the “why” of discipleship. C.S. Lewis explains the futility in this, asking, “What is the good of telling the ships how to steer so as to avoid collisions if, in fact, they are such crazy old tubs that they cannot be steered at all?” But this phenomenon cannot only be attributed to a cultural emphasis on process. Rather, it stems from a lack of understanding around the nature of new life in Christ, or the doctrine of regeneration. Often, Christian churches struggle to connect doctrine with practice, but such a connection is imperative in the area of discipleship. And if this is true, regeneration—the birth of a disciple—bears tremendous weight on the outworking of discipleship. There are four major considerations around the doctrine of regeneration which should be woven into the fabric of any philosophy of discipleship.

Regeneration is the creation of a new affection.

One of the most fascinating things about regeneration is that God creates within the newborn disciple a new taste, or perhaps a more refined taste, for glory. Here’s what I mean. Everyone gets some satisfaction from the glory that comes from temporal things: family, food, drink, success, popularity, etc. Surely you understand this when your child brings home a report card with all A’s, or when your sports franchise wins a championship, or when you’ve just earned the promotion you’ve been working toward for years.

But here’s the interesting thing about glory: it always leaves you wanting more. So, when you seek the glory that comes from these temporal things, you will never be satisfied. Your kid will end up resenting you for all the academic pressure, your sports team will begin a new season, and the novelty of your new job will wear off, leaving you thirsty for more.

Graciously, when God regenerates you, what he is actually doing is introducing you to the only true fountain for the satisfaction of your glory-thirsty soul. He is killing your old taste for temporal glory and creating within you a taste for the glory to be found in the fountain of Jesus Christ alone.

So, a disciple is most fundamentally someone who has been re-created, as the Apostle Paul iterates in 2 Corinthians 5:17. Prior to such a work (which is wholly of God), no one has the capacity, nor frankly the desire, to accept Christ’s call to “take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk. 9:23). But, the Bible says that at the moment of regeneration, God grants a beating, fleshly heart, a heart that can feel (Ez. 36:25-27). This heart, created by God and guided by his Spirit, has a real sense of desire for attributing glory to God. It not only recognizes God’s worth at an intellectual level; it delights in ascribing to him ultimate worth at the level of the affections.

Now, we have come to the true and underlying motivation for discipleship: genuine affection for Christ, freely granted by God at regeneration through the work of the Spirit.

Regeneration means a change in identity.

The doctrines of justification and adoption are rightly heralded as chief tenets of the Christian faith. As we probe these doctrines, we understand that they are gracious gifts from a loving Father, wrapped up in regeneration. In other words, they are freely given to a newborn disciple.

A disciple of Christ must recognize, with Paul, that God is both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). This means that, because of Jesus, God does not compromise one ounce of his justice when he forgives our sins. His justice was executed on the cross, as Christ bore the penalty for all our sins at once. But very often, we feel that we need to be both just and the justifier on our own. When we sin, we run from God, owing our flight to the need to clean ourselves up before coming back to God. We carry around a medieval notion of penance for individual sins, thinking that we are more devout in doing so. But the kind of repentance that Jesus secured for those he regenerates is much bigger than penance for individual sins. It is a lifelong posture toward God which glories in his grace for sending Christ to the cross to make payment for all of our sins at once.

And while our need for justification is the most pressing legal matter prior to regeneration, our need for adoption is certainly the most relational.

Why is the doctrine of Christian adoption so life-giving? Because it gives us a new identity. At the moment of regeneration, God fundamentally changes who we are. In fact, Paul tells us that the transformation is as stark as “slave to son” (see Galatians 4:7).

The transformation from “slave” to “son” means a complete change in identity. It doesn’t affect one or two aspects of how we live or think; it literally changes everything. It offers a change in perspective. It gives us new lenses through which to see the world.

These two gifts are wrapped up with regeneration because there is absolutely nothing a newborn disciple has done to earn them. Like a baby that is birthed into a loving family, they are simply part of the new reality into which a disciple is born. Now, the task is to continually teach this newborn disciple about his new identity and how it affects all of life.

Remembering regeneration is a means of grace by which disciples are matured.

One of the most practical avenues God employs in the hearts of regenerate believers for stirring our affections for him is simply the remembrance of the gospel. In remembering this, our hearts’ affections are stirred to ascribe worship to God for the life-giving work he has done in us.

This is why observance of the sacraments is an important practice in the Christian life. When a church body observes baptism, are they not rejoicing in new birth? Regeneration is brought to the forefront of the hearts of the regenerate as we celebrate that act in the lives of our new brothers and sisters.

The observance of communion is also themed around celebration and remembrance. We commemorate the life and death of Jesus as we partake of the bread and the cup. All of this serves to bring us back to the humble realization that Christ’s sacrifice procured our regeneration.

Regeneration levels the playing field for mission.

Since all this is true, we understand that regeneration is 100% God’s work. The Father grants that the work of the Son be imputed to men and women, and the faith to rest in this work is wrought by the Holy Spirit. When God turns on the light, when he shines in the hearts of men to reveal the glory of Christ, a new disciple is born. An explosion of grace has birthed excitement, affection, and deep joy in the heart of a previously dead man or woman.

What are the missional implications here? Since regeneration is 100% God’s work, based on no merit of the individual, this brings to light the glorious truth that no one is too far gone. Christ’s call to make disciples of all nations was a call toward radical inclusion. It was a call to go into the dark places and proclaim the light, trusting God to shine in the hearts of men. It was a call to celebrate God’s good purpose of redemption for people from all walks of life.

You see, everyone is born spiritually dead. And, one way or another, we all try to make ourselves alive. But think back to your regeneration–the moment God illuminated the gospel in your heart and caused you to behold the glory of Christ. Were you not acutely aware that you had nothing to do with this change? After all, dead is dead. Christ is life. God is the one who regenerates, matures, and multiplies his disciples. And when He calls us to “go and make disciples,” He’s giving us front-row tickets to the greatest show on earth.

The experience of living the Christian life is tied up in a proper understanding of the nature of regeneration. How can one know how to live unless he understands how he has been made alive? Thus, the maturation of a disciple is driven by a daily reorientation around gospel regeneration. In light of all this, don’t stifle the experience of your new life by attempting to run back to the same streams you used to drink from. Drink from the stream of living water in Christ, for in this you shall find both deeper desires and deeper fulfillment. You will bank all you have, all you know, and all you ever hope to be on one thing: once dead, I have now been made alive in Christ. And He is enough. If this is you, never cease to praise God for the gospel regeneration He has caused in your life.

— 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.

(Editor’s Note: This is adapted from Gospel Regeneration by Alex Dean available on Lucid Books. It appears here with the permission of the author.)

Pursuing Not-Yet-Believers

It Sent Shock Waves Throughout the Campus

As you might imagine, seminaries are full of Jesus-y people, from suit-clad conservatives to library-dwelling linguists to edgy liberals who buck the system by (hold your breath) wearing flip flops to class. Our grad school was filled with religion majors, pastors and interns, and private school teachers. Everyone was religious; most were active in some form of church; many spent spring breaks and summers in overseas missions or student ministry camps. So imagine the bombshell when a student realized he’d never actually known Jesus. Students and professors alike were stunned, then celebratory. In this instance, the student was a son of a prominent pastor, a rising star in the student ministry world, and someone who knew—and could teach—the Bible better than most of his peers. Apparently it happens more than you might expect: God redeems people who are already in seminary. And praise Him that He does!

The shock is understandable: we can easily assume that because someone is part of a Christian school, group, and church, they must be redeemed. But as today’s verses point out, their religion may be misleading. Whether you attend a seminary or Christian school, are involved with a Christian organization, or are simply part of a local church family, you regularly find yourself in some of the most forgotten places everyday mission happens: within “Christian” circles. Today we consider two elements of mission inside the Church: seeing it as an everyday mission field and getting other Christians to join you in everyday mission.

Fruit and Foundation: Marks of Faith

Today is not a license to look under every rock for false prophets and fake Christians. Only God can know the condition of souls for sure, so we approach today with great humility and much prayer. But it should spark an awareness: how many in our own circles look and act redeemed, but are deceived, even intentionally? As we pursue everyday mission in Christian circles, today’s verses offer two concurrent marks of redemption: fruit in our lives, then the foundation of our hearts.

When rightly rooted, our lives flourish with good fruit. In Luke 3, John the Baptist rebukes many who come to be baptized for a poor view of salvation. To put it in a common term today, John calls those who view Jesus as mere “fire insurance”—whose so-called salvation makes no impact on daily life—“a brood of vipers.” His charge is that those who are truly redeemed will bear fruit. The following verses are examples of this fruit: those who were selfish become generous; those who stole become honest (and in Zacchaeus’ case in Luke 19, display the gospel by reconciling brokenness they caused); those who trusted their own ability turn to God for provision. Galatians 5 explains the difference between fruit of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit. Romans 5—7 give marks of the “old man” versus the “new man.” Seen throughout the Bible, redemption leads to fruit.

On the other end of the spectrum, good works—which look like spiritual fruit—can stem from misguided motives. An early song from musical duo Shane and Shane encapsulate well the mystery of not-yet-believers existing in Christian groups: “Your child is busy with the work of God and taking him for granted / Got a lot to do today; kingdom work’s the game I play / Lord my serving You replaced me knowing You.” Religious acts, having the right answers, doing the proper things, and even looking repentant or wise can give the impression that we must be children of God. Those Jesus speaks of in Matthew 7 preached, did great works, and even performed miracles “in your name.” Yet He still never knew them. Anything but Jesus is a failing foundation of faith. Winds of truth expose our misplaced footholds, and “great [is] the fall” of even our greatest attempts. Good fruit is only good if its roots are in the right foundation.

Pursuing Not-Yet-Believers in Our Churches

Due to theological misinformation or indignant misunderstanding of salvation, mission in our churches can be tricky. Claiming that someone might not be a Christian is a bold claim, and can cause ripples. But if people in our churches and Christian circles lack fruit, we have to lovingly pursue them: it’s our responsibility as brothers and sisters who love them more than their opinion of us. Even if they are believers, they need discipleship in areas where disbelief or idols pull them from obeying God. If they are not redeemed, they need loving relationships and intentional discipleship even more. Either way, the gospel needs to redeem at least some area of their life.

Do they exhibit patterns of sinful or unwise behavior? Do they put other authorities over the authority of God? Do they seem unrepentant or uncaring toward their sin? Do they lack the desire to grow in spiritual concepts and practices? Matthew outlines a process to address such questions35. While this passage is often misunderstood, “discipline” has the same root as “disciple”: the goal of loving confrontation, humble rebuke, and gentle questions is stated throughout this passage: that the brokenness in “your brother” would be restored, to God and community. And while the final step of this process is often interpreted, “cut them out of your life,” we see in Jesus’ a far different view of “Gentile[s] and tax collector[s]” (v. 17). He didn’t throw them away; He pursued them, loved them, demonstrated the gospel to them, and sought their redemption. In other words, He encourages us to act the same toward sinners in our churches, as sinners outside our churches. . . .

As much as we acknowledge her beautiful brokenness, we believe in local churches, and their biblical leadership, place in God’s mission, and unity amongst their members. Churches are full of sinners who need to be redeemed, and sinning saints who already have been. Just like you and us. We cannot plead this point enough: let us be wise, humble, and prayerful, both as we pursue God’s mission toward those in our churches, and as we pursue mission together alongside others in them.

—

Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben.

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers starting June 2014. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher. For free resources and preorders, visit everydaymission.net.)

The Wellspring of Love

One of the greatest sources of joy in my life is parenting my three young children. It is also one the greatest sources of chaos in my life as well. Yet, I find I can handle the messes, the sleepless nights, and even the 50,000 meals I’ll prepare for them, but what I can’t handle is the bickering. The constant picking. The small arguments over who had what first and who took apart whose Legos and why must brothers be so annoying. (I am seriously thinking about forgoing traditional baby gifts from now on. Instead I’m going to start giving something more eminently suited to parenting—a black and white striped jersey and a whistle.) In the midst of the chaos, I often find myself yelling at the top of my lungs, “Will you all just stop it?!?! Why can you just be KIND to each other?”

Legalistic Love

During one such meltdown, I had an epiphany. Here I was demanding that my children love like God loves without directing them to Him as the source of that love. And yet, the only way my children—those little image bearers themselves—will ever be able to love one another properly is as they encounter and bask in God’s love for them first. In a twisted irony, my call for them to love had morphed into legalism because I had presented it apart from the source of love.

Most of the time we associate legalism with strict adherence to a specific set of rules, but legalism is not simply choosing the letter of the law over the spirit. Legalism is any attempt to model God’s attributes apart from a relationship with Him. Legalism is trying is to be an image bearer without relying on the Image.

When we attempt to “love” apart from God, our love will only be as lasting as the current situation or our own ability to sustain it. This is why forced tolerance, political correctness, and the “just be kind” approach often feel so weak and at times, so artificial. These approaches are artificial because they are not rooted in imago dei relationship. It’s like we’re playing dress-up in our mother’s heels and pearls—clumping down the hallway, mimicking her behavior but never truly embodying it.

Christ Changes How We Love

In order to make us the fully faceted people we were meant to be, Christ must change what and how we love.  He must reshape and reorder our loves to their proper places. And to do that, He must first hold the central place in our affection.

Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to love God supremely and that the second greatest is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Because God is supreme, we must desire Him and His approval above anything else; we must position Him as the source of our affections and acceptance; and when we do, as His image bearers, we will naturally reflect His perfect love. This is why the Scripture speaks of our new identity in terms of having a “new heart.” When Christ has first place, when we are consumed with His love, we will naturally love like He does.

And yet, unlike some believe, loving God supremely does not mean that we don’t love other things; instead it means that we love other things the way that God intends for them to be loved. This is why the second commandment follows on the heels of the first. You can only love our neighbor properly—you can only love him or her as God does—if you find your source and definition of love from God Himself. In this sense, loving your neighbor actually flows out of loving God and cannot happen in the fullness that God intends apart from Him.

But when we are transformed by intimate daily dependence on the Creator’s love, when He becomes the source, not simply the model, of the love we extend to each other, we will have vast reservoirs of love welling up inside us, overflowing for all. So the way that we come into full personhood, the way that we love as we were intended to love, is not simply to mimic God’s love, but to allow it to transform us from the inside out. And then, only then, will people know we are His disciples. They will know we belong to Him because our identity will be consumed by His; they will know we belong to Him because we will love like He loves.

—

Hannah Anderson lives in the hauntingly beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She spends her days working beside her husband in rural ministry, caring for their three young children, and scratching out odd moments to write. In those in-between moments, she contributes to a variety of Christian publications and is the author of Made for More: An Invitation to Live in God's Image (Moody, 2014). You can connect with her at her blog Sometimes a Light and on Twitter @sometimesalight.

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt adapted from Made for More: An Invitation to Live in God's Image by Hannah Anderson available from Moody, 2014. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher.)

Same-Sex Attraction in the Church

There are a number of things churches can do to help Christians with SSA:

1. Make it easy to talk about

Pastors as well as church members need to know that homosexuality is not just a political issue but a personal one, and that there will likely be some within their own church family for whom it is a painful struggle. When the issue comes up in the life of the church, it needs to be recognised that this is an issue Christians wrestle with too, and that the church needs to be ready and equipped to walk alongside such brothers and sisters.

Many Christians still speak about homosexuality in hurtful and pejorative ways. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard Christians (even some in positions of church leadership) use phrases like: “That’s so gay” to describe something they don’t like. Such comments are only going to make their Christian brothers and sisters struggling with SSA feel completely unable to open up. When I first began to share my own experiences with friends at church, I was struck by how many mature Christians felt they needed to apologise for comments they’d made in the past about homosexuality, which they now realised may have been hurtful.

Key to helping people feel safe about sharing issues of SSA is having a culture of openness about the struggles and weaknesses we experience in general in the Christian life. Christian pastor and writer Timothy Keller has said that churches should feel more like the waiting room for a doctor and less like a waiting room for a job interview. In the latter we all try to look as competent and impressive as we can. Weaknesses are buried and hidden. But in a doctor’s waiting room we assume that everyone there is sick and needs help. And this is much closer to the reality of what is going on in church.

By definition, Christians are weak. We depend on the grace and generosity of God. We are the “poor in spirit” (Matthew 5 v 3). It is a mark of a healthy church that we can talk about these things, and so we need to do all we can to encourage a culture of being real about the hard things of the Christian life.

But there is a caution: having made it easy for someone to talk about their sexual struggles, we must not then make the mistake of always talking to them about it. They may need to be asked about how things are going from time to time, but to make this the main or only thing you talk about with them can be problematic. It may reinforce the false idea that this is who they really are, and it may actually overlook other issues that they may need to talk about more. Sexuality may not be their greatest battle.

2. Honour singleness

Those for whom marriage is not a realistic prospect need to be affirmed in their calling to singleness. Our fellowships need to uphold and honour singleness as a gift and take care not unwittingly to denigrate it. Singles should not be thought or spoken of as loose ends that need tying up. Nor should we think that every single person is single because they’ve been too lazy to look for a marriage partner.

I remember meeting another pastor who, on finding out I was single, was insistent that I should be married by now and proceeded to outline immediate steps I needed to take to rectify this. He was very forthright and only backed down when I burst into tears and told him I was struggling with homosexuality. It is not an admission I should have needed to make. We need to respect that singleness is not necessarily a sign that someone is postponing growing up.

3. Remember that church is family

Paul repeatedly refers to the local church as the “God’s household” (for example, 1 Timothy 3 v 15). It is the family of God, and Christians are to be family to one another.

So Paul encourages Timothy to treat older men as fathers, “younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters” (1 Timothy 5 v 1-2). The church is to think of itself as immediate family. Nuclear families within the church need the input and involvement of the wider church family; they are not designed to be self-contained. Those that open up their family life to others find that it is a great two-way blessing.

Singles get to experience some of the joys of family life; children get to benefit from the influence of other older Christians; parents get to have the encouragement of others supporting them; and families as a whole get to learn something of what it means to serve Christ by being outward-looking as a family.

4. Deal with biblical models of masculinity and femininity, rather than cultural stereotypes

Battles with SSA can sometimes be related to a sense of not quite measuring up to expected norms of what a man or woman is meant to be like. So when the church reinforces superficial cultural stereotypes, the effect can be to worsen this sense of isolation and of not quite measuring up.

For example, to imply that men are supposed to be into sports or fixing their own car, or that women are supposed to enjoy craft or to suggest that they will want to “talk about everything”, is to deal in cultural rather than biblical ideas of how God has made us. It can actually end up overlooking many ways in which people are reflecting some of the biblical aspects of manhood and womanhood that culture overlooks.

5. Provide good pastoral support

Pastoral care for those with SSA does not need to be structured, but it does need to be visible. Many churches now run support groups for members battling with SSA; others provide mentoring or prayer-partner schemes.

Those with SSA need to know that the church is ready to support and help them, and that it has people with a particular heart and insight to be involved in this ministry. There may be issues that need to be worked through, and passages from the Bible that need to be studied and applied with care and gentle determination. There may be good friendships that need to be cultivated and accountability put in place, and there will be the need for long-term community. These are all things the local church is best placed to provide.

It has been a few years now since I first started telling close Christian friends that I battle with homosexual feelings. It was a lengthy process and in some ways quite emotionally exhausting. But it was one of the best things I have ever done. The very act of sharing something so personal with someone else is a great trust, and in virtually every case it strengthened and deepened the friendship. Close friends have became even closer. I also found that people felt more able to open up to me about personal things in their own lives, on the basis that I had been so open with them. There have been some wonderful times of fellowship as a result.

It has now been several months since I shared about the issue of sexuality publicly with my church family. Again, it has been a great blessing to have done so. There has been a huge amount of support—people asking how they can help and encourage me in this issue, many saying that they are praying for me daily. Others have said how much it means to them that I would share something like this. It has also been a great encouragement to me that it does not seem to have defined how others see me. Aside from the expressions of love and support, business was back to normal very quickly.

—

Sam Allberry has been a pastor at St Mary's Church, Maidenhead, UK since 2008. Prior to that he worked as the pastor for students at St Ebbe's Church, Oxford, UK. His passion is helping people understand the significance and wonder of biblical truth. He is the author of Is God Anti-Gay? You can follow him on Twitter: @SamAllberry

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Is God Anti-Gay? by Sam Allberry available from The Good Book Company, 2014. It appears here with the permission of publisher. For more information visit The Good Book Company.)

Liberating Our Teens from Sexual Lies

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Preparing Your Teens for College by Alex Chediak available from Tyndale House Publishers, 2014. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher. For more information and a lengthier excerpt, visit Alex’s site.)

A Biblical Understanding of Sex

Our teens need to have a biblical understanding of sex in order to navigate the challenges that await them in college. For starters, let’s define the term, not on an anatomical level but at a foundational level. Here’s how pastor and author Tim Keller puts it:

Sex is perhaps the most powerful God-created way to help you give your entire self to another human being. Sex is God’s appointed way for two people to reciprocally say to one another, “I belong completely, permanently, and exclusively to you.”¹

And that’s true. But Keller (and the Bible) would go a step further. Sex is a physical picture of a spiritual reality: God wants to dwell among and deeply know his people. God invented sex not just to propagate the human race and to give us enjoyment but to be a picture of the salvation story—Jesus Christ laying down his life for us (his bride) to bring us back to God (see Ephesians 5:25-27; 1 Peter 3:18). Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas say it well:

God created sex to serve as a living portrait of the life-changing spiritual union that believers have with God through Christ. . . . God created the physical oneness of sex to serve as a visible image, or type, of the spiritual union that exists between Christ and the church.²

At stake in our sexuality is nothing less than our representation of Jesus Christ’s relationship with those who follow him.

Maybe you’re saying, “This all sounds great for an adult Sunday school class, but is it really practical to explain this to our teens?” While I wouldn’t expect the same level of interest from a 12- or 13-year-old as from a 17- or 18-year-old, I do believe teens need a big-picture perspective on what sexual intimacy represents if they’re going to win the battle for purity in college and throughout their adult lives. And a biblical understanding of sex is the best antidote to the culture’s sexual lies. Our culture believes that sex is all about me. My desires. My satisfaction. It’s about using others, not serving them. But the Bible tells us that sex is all about God and his glorious work in bringing us into relationship with him. In the context of marriage, sex is about giving ourselves to serve our spouse (see 1 Corinthians 7:3-5).

A BIBLICAL MOTIVATION FOR PURITY

A biblical understanding of sex leads to a biblical motivation for abstaining until marriage. I fear that sometimes we motivate teens to sexual purity in small, even worldly ways, rather than in big, biblical ways. I have friends who grew up in Bible-believing churches that faithfully preached chastity, but the rationale was “Hey, you wouldn’t want to get pregnant, or get someone pregnant, or contract a sexually transmitted disease (STD). And watch out for those condoms! They’re not as effective as your health teacher says they are.”

The problem is it’s assumed that teens know that sex before marriage is a sin and little to no explanation is given as to why it’s a sin. Of course, we should want our teens to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancies and STDs, but neither of these is an explicitly Christian goal. You don’t have to believe the Bible to want to avoid those things. Moreover, this argument doesn’t confront the cultural lie that sex is all about self.

If our teens know something about how human sexuality is meant to represent the permanent, spiritual union between Jesus Christ and his bride, it gives meaning and motivation to the prohibition on sex outside of marriage. Sexual intimacy in any context besides marriage dishonors God by telling a lie about how Jesus Christ relates to his people. And it massively disrupts our relationship with God (see 1 Corinthians 6:12-20). In contrast, the fear of the Lord teaches us to hate all evil (see Proverbs 8:13), to abstain from sexual immorality (see 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7), and to be holy because God is holy (see 1 Peter 1:13-16).

Once our teens understand what sex is, what it represents, and why it must be reserved for marriage, they’ll be better able to understand that there is a whole range of behaviors that are sexual in nature and that therefore must all be reserved for marriage. I fear it’s too easy for those with small, worldly motives for “staying pure” to cut corners, focusing on how close they can get to the edge without falling off. For example, ministry leaders in Christian college settings will confirm that a significant number of professing Christian students (like their non-Christian counterparts) do not consider oral sex to be sex. Why not? Because it doesn’t fit their overly narrow definition of “sex.”

But if they had a more comprehensive understanding—one rooted in the perspective summarized above—they would see that of course oral sex is sex. It’s the giving of oneself to another person in an incredibly intimate way. Like-wise, a lot of other physical acts would fall into this category.

Which leads us to the age-old question Christian teens and singles ask: How far is too far before marriage?

AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD FOR PURITY

But your teen might ask, “Isn’t that legalism?" We should anticipate this response. Many Christian teens will recognize that “getting physical” with someone they don’t really know is pure lust and clearly wrong. If they struggle at this point, remind them of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, the forgiveness available in Christ, and that their past behavior need not determine their future. For others, the clear line of purity gets fuzzy when they develop a mutual attraction. Maybe they agree to be “exclusive,” to be boyfriend and girlfriend. They begin to see this other person as “special”—more than a friend but less than a spouse. So things get a bit physical (i.e., sexual), but they tell themselves, It’s not like we’re having sex, Things aren’t getting out of hand, and We know when we need to stop. And they tell others, “Don’t judge us—you don’t understand.” (As if we never lived through those years.)

Teach your teens what’s wrong with this logic before they’re in the throes of temptation and every ounce of their being wants to believe they have the right to decide “how far is too far.” The idea that Christians are allowed to set their own sexual standards, as long as they accomplish the goal of avoiding intercourse, is dangerous and misleading. . . .

This is not legalism. It liberates our teens from being captive to their own subjective standards, which can be profoundly flawed, especially in the heat of the moment. And we can really help them as parents, because if you’re married, I’d imagine that the boundaries of propriety toward other women or men are pretty clear for you. If our teens are to relate to young men and women “in all purity” (1 Timothy 5:2), they need to have this same clarity.

—

Alex Chediak is an author, speaker, and professor of engineering and physics at California Baptist University. Alex has been involved in mentoring students for many years. He has published numerous articles in Boundless (Focus on the Family), Trak (God’s World News), and Christian College Guide (Christianity Today). He is the bestselling author of Thriving at College (Tyndale House, 2011). Alex and his wife, Marni, live with their three children in Riverside, California. Visit Alex’s site or follow him on Twitter: @Chediak.

^{1. Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage (New York: Dutton, 2011), 223-224.↩ 2. Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas, Sex, Dating, and Relationships (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 18..↩}

The Resurrection Life

New Mission: Make Disciples

Matthew 28:18-20 is what Christians call the Great Commission, the dominant marching orders for all who have faith in resurrection. It can sound a bit militant: “Take God’s authority and make disciples.” But remember, these orders are from the one who has laid down his life to save his enemies. Ironically, our orders are to invite through imitation. Our mission is to make disciples through our words and actions. Or, as Jesus said, “teach and obey.” In fact, it is when we experience the riches of renewal through Christ that we become, as Eugene Peterson says, “God’s advertisement to the world.”¹ We make disciples by living resurrected lives and telling people about the resurrected Christ.

There’s not a hint of coercion here. It’s a life of love. Jesus wants us to spread the gospel throughout the world by spending our lives for the sake of others. The power of the resurrection doesn’t end with us; it travels through us. Our commission is invitation. We invite others to join God’s redemptive agenda to restore human flourishing and remake the world. We are sent into the world to share the good news that Jesus has defeated sin, death, and evil through his own death and resurrection. Jesus is making all things new, and he calls his followers to participate in his work of renewal.

Distinctive Discipleship

Part of what makes this command such a “great” mission is its scope—all nations. When Jesus spoke these words, he was reorienting a primarily Jewish audience to a distinctly multiethnic mission. The Greek word used here is the same word that gives us the English word “ethnic.” It refers to the nations, not modernist geopolitical states, but non-Jewish people groups (Gentiles) with distinct cultures and languages. Our commission is not to Christianize nation-states, but to share the good news of what Jesus has done with all ethnic groups. Christ does not advocate what is commonly called Christendom, a top-down political Christianity. Instead, he calls his followers to transmit a bottom-up, indigenous Christianity, to all peoples in all cultures.

We should also note that this command is to make disciples of all nations, not from all nations. The goal of Christian missions is not to replace the rich diversity of human culture for a cheap consumer, Christian knock-off culture. Dr. Andrew Walls puts it well:

Conversion to Christ does not produce a bland universal citizenship: it produces distinctive discipleship, as diverse and variegated as human life itself. Christ in redeeming humanity brings, by the process of discipleship, all the richness of humanity’s infinitude of cultures and subcultures into the variegated splendor of the Full Grown Humanity to which the apostolic literature points (Eph 4.8 – 13).²

What we should strive for is distinctive discipleship, discipleship that uniquely expresses personal faith in our cultural context. Disciples in urban Manhattan will look different than disciples in rural Maehongson. These differences allow for a flourishing of the gospel that contributes to the many-splendored new humanity of Christ. Simply put, the message of Jesus is for the flourishing of all humanity in all cultures.

Jesus informs our resurrected life. He gives us a new and gracious authority, a new identity, and a new mission. With that in view, what does it look like to participate in this task of renewing the world? Where do we begin? Jesus has painted for us a great picture of the new life. Let’s turn now to the daily implications of resurrection life.

IMPLICATIONS: RISKING FOR HUMANITY

If Jesus did, indeed, rise from the dead, we have nothing to fear and everything we need. All that we strive for is fulfilled in Jesus. All that we seek to avoid has been resolved by him. For example, if Jesus rose from the dead, we no longer need to strive for acceptance because we are now accepted by him. If Jesus rose from the dead, we don’t need to fear death, because it has been defeated. This means that we are free to smuggle medical supplies into Burma, even at the risk of death, knowing that our eternal fate is already sealed. We can move to distant countries to invest in development and renewal because Christ did the same for the world. Like the early Christians, we can care for the poor and marginalized in our cities. If we have resurrection life, we will have courage to take risks in the name of love. . . .

This is the power of the resurrected life. Serving others is a sacrifice, yes. But that sacrifice is filled with joy. You won’t be able to imagine living any other way.

Why?

Jesus tells those who follow him to leave all they have behind, to give their lives to the poor, to love their enemies, and to be a blessing to the world. Let’s not pretend this is easy to do. Following Jesus will require your whole life. Not just part of it. Not just your leisure time. Not just some of your budget. No, it requires your whole life. It will feel like death and suffering at times. It will feel that way because you are laying your life down. That’s what the resurrection looks like in daily life. We do not hold anything back—our talents, possessions, or time—because we live with the certainty that death and sin have been defeated.

There is no sugarcoating it. You will lose your life. In its place you will find a vibrant, full, and eternal life. By dying to ourselves we become alive to the power of Christ through the Holy Spirit. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead empowers us to live a life for Jesus. His death and resurrection have become our death and resurrection. Our old life is gone, and we now experience a new authority, identity, and mission. This is why we give, celebrate, and serve: we have died and have been raised again to experience new and abundant life.

Come back tomorrow. We’ll being giveaway 10 FREE paperbacks of Raised? courtesy of Zondervan.

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Jonathan K. Dodson (MDiv; ThM) serves as a pastor of City Life Church in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Gospel-Centered Discipleship, Unbelievable Gospel, and Raised? He has discipled men and women abroad and at home for almost two decades, taking great delight in communicating the gospel and seeing Christ formed in others. Twitter: @Jonathan_Dodson

Brad Watson serves as a pastor of Bread & Wine Communities in Portland, Oregon. He is a board member of GCDiscipleship.com and co-author of Raised? His greatest passion is to encourage and equip leaders for the mission of making disciples. Twitter: @BradAWatson

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Raised? by Jonathan Dodson and Brad Watson available from Zondervan. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher. For free resources and preorders, visit raisedbook.com.)

^{1. Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerd- mans, 2010), 13 – 14.↩ 2. Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), 51.↩}

A Season to Fast and Pray

Lent is a time for prayer and fasting. It is a season of spiritual preparation in which we remember Christ’s temptation, suffering, and death. Historically, the church has celebrated Lent as a 40-day period beginning on Ash Wednesday and concluding the day before Easter. It is observed in many Christian churches as a time to commemorate the last week of Jesus’ life, his suffering (Passion), and his death, through various observances and services of worship. Many Christians use the 40 days of Lent as time to draw closer to the Lord through prayer, fasting, repentance, and self-denial. We live in a culture of fast food, instant gratification, and self-centeredness. One of the best ways to get our eyes off of ourselves and back onto the Lord is through fasting. However, fasting has practically been disregarded and forgotten in the comforts of the modern church. Fasting didn’t end in Biblical times, there have actually been proclaimed fasts in America. Fasting is nothing new in American history. The pilgrims held three formal periods of fasting before leaving for the New World. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress proclaimed July 20, 1775, as a national day of fasting and prayer in preparation for the war on independence.

What is Fasting?

What does it really mean to fast? According to the Oxford Dictionary, fasting means to abstain from food; especially to eat sparingly or not at all or abstain from certain foods in observance of a religious duty or a token of grief.” Fasting and religious purposes cannot be separated because they are intricately intertwined. The Bible gives us numerous references to individual and corporate fasts. There were even certain days that were designated each year for fasting and prayer. Fasting is a gift that God has given to the church in order to help us persevere in prayer. Fasting draws us closer to God and gives power to our prayers. Our central motivation with this lesson is to teach about the reasons to fast, different types of fasting, and then discuss how to fast.

Reasons for Fasting

People have been fasting since the ancient days of the Bible. The Bible records numerous accounts where people, cities, and nations have turned to God by fasting and praying: Hannah grieved over infertility “wept and did not eat” (1 Samuel 1:7); Anna, who was an elderly widow, saw Jesus in the temple and “served God with fasting and prayer” (Luke 2:37). Saul encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, “was three days without sight, neither ate or drank.” (Acts 9:9). Cornelius told Peter, “Four days ago I was fasting until this hour…” (Acts 10:30). Most people fast for religious and spiritual reasons, while others choose to fast for health reasons. There are several specific reasons that the Bible tells us to fast.

1. To be Christ like. (Matthew 4:1-17; Luke 4:1-13).
2. To obtain spiritual purity. (Isaiah 58:5-7).
3. To repent from sins. (See Jonah 3:8; Nehemiah 1:4, 9:1-3; 1 Samuel 14:24).
4. To influence God. (2 Samuel 12:16-23).
5. To morn for the dead. (1 Samuel 31:13; 2 Samuel 1:12).
6. To request God’s help in times of crisis and calamity. (Ezra 8:21-23; Nehemiah 1:4-11).
7. To strengthen prayer. (Matthew 17:21; Mark 9:17-29; Acts 10:30; 1 Corinthians 7:5).

Types of Fasting

In the same way that God appointed times and seasons to fast, He also designated several types of fasts. Because of certain medical problems, and physical needs, there are different types of fasting. Not everyone can go on an extended 5-7 day fast; in a similar way, not everyone can totally abstain from food and water. A person should exercise wisdom and consult their physician if they have any medical concerns before they fast, otherwise it could actually be harmful to your health. However, there are at least three types of individual fasts: absolute fast, solid food fast, and partial fast.

1. Absolute Fast

An absolute fast is conducted by abstaining from all food and water for a certain period of time. This is also known as the “total fast” because an individual chooses to abstain from all foods and beverages. There are several Biblical examples for the total fast. Moses and Elijah both abstained from food and water for forty days and forty nights. (Deuteronomy 9:9, 10:10, 18:25-29; 1 Kings 19:8). Although the Bible says they fasted for forty days, many people usually only totally abstain from food and water for three days.

2. Solid Food Fast

A solid food fast is where an individual may drink juice and water, but chooses not to eat solid food. Certain scholars and theologians think that Jesus may have drank water while in the wilderness since the Bible doesn’t say that he was thirsty after his forty day fast (see Matthew 4:2). Drinking water while fasting for several days can actually be therapeutic for your body. In any case, you should not fast for more than a week unless you consult a doctor.

3. Partial Fast

To fast simply means to “abstain” from something. A partial fast is where you choose to abstain from certain foods and drinks instead of complete abstinence of food or drink. The Bible tells us that Daniel abstained from bread, water, and wine for twenty-one days (Daniel 10:3). Others may choose to fast from television, computer, newspaper, and hobbies. This will help you free up some time to spend in prayer and reflection.

Jesus and Fasting

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught a lesson about how to fast and how not to fast:

“Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your father who is in the secret place; and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” (Matthew 6:16-28)

We see that it is important to not brag or boast to others about fasting. The Jews of Jesus’ day used fasting and giving to make everyone think that they were more spiritual than others. But Jesus tells us that fasting should be done in secret so that it can’t be used as a way of bringing glory to ourselves. Fasting should make us humble instead of proud. In the end it is not our works, but our hearts that matter to God.

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Dr. Winfield Bevins serves as lead pastor of Church of the Outer Banks, which he founded in 2005.  His life’s passion in ministry is discipleship and helping start new churches. He lives in the beautiful beach community of the Outer Banks with his wife Kay and two daughters where he loves to surf and spend time at the beach with his family and friends. Twitter: @winfieldbevins

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Prayer Life by Winfield Bevins available through GCD Books.)