Women in the Local Church: A Conversation

Today we are hosting a conversation with Lore Ferguson, writer and speaker. This conversation centers on how the local church can make, mature, and multiply stronger women disciples.

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Gospel-Centered Discipleship: There are many opinions about what Christian women need most in and from the church. In your opinion, what's the greatest need for women from the church?

Lore Ferguson: What women need most is the same as what men need most—to understand and see the power and effects of the gospel made clear in their lives. I think we often think of the men as the gospel proclaimers and the women as the gospel enactors. Men teach and preach, women serve and build. Even if we wouldn’t draw such clear distinctions with our words, it is the way the local church seems to function. In the same way the gospel is for all people, though, the effects of the gospel are for all people all the way through.

GCD: Pastors have not always honored or considered the needs of women in the church. How can pastors grow in their understanding of the needs and meeting the needs of women in the church?

Lore: Ask us! Whenever my pastor is asked by another man how to lead his wife, my pastor says, “I know how to lead my wife. You ask your wife how to lead her!” It’s the same with us. Keep an open dialogue with the women in your local church (not just the wives of your pastors/elders). Many pastors seem to have similar personalities and marry women with similar personalities/giftings, which enables them to minister well to women of the same personalities. But the local church is made up of every personality and gifting. Ask women—aside from your wives—how you can serve them and help them flourish.

GCD:

What are the biggest hurts for women in our churches that we are overlooking and missing?

Lore: Every woman is different, so my answer here might not be helpful in the sense that it might reflect more what’s going on in my heart than in the average woman’s heart. I think there seems to be a universal desire for us to be loved and cherished as an essential part of the body. This includes being heard and not having to fight for a voice, but recognized as someone who has an equal and distinct voice (the essence of complementarianism). We understand the distinct part, and feel that often, but we don’t feel the equal part quite as much.

GCD: As a follow up to that, I’ve heard from women that they desire a voice on the front end of the decision process as opposed to hearing about it after the fact and being asked for feedback. How would you recommend pastors change their approach in decision making to include a broader range of voices and specifically women?

Lore: If the approach is that they’re asking women’s input after the decision, or the only women they’re asking on the front end are their wives, I’d just say invite more women into the front end fact-finding mission. I regularly have men from my church seek me out for thoughts on how we minister to women in different contexts. In no way do I assume I’m part of the final decision making process, but I hope and pray my words are considered as a part of the water that ship sails on. As I say further down, a woman’s role is to help, but sometimes we’re better helpers on the front end of things.

GCD: One of the biggest conversations in the church has to do with women's roles and opportunity in the church. Many women feel there isn't a role for them in the church, yet when someone reads how Paul praises women's involvement in the church, we can't help but ask—How did we get here? Why is our experience of church seemingly different than Paul's?

Lore: There seems to be a lot of fear in some complementarian churches. Fear of the messiness of life on life, fear of sexual brokenness, or fear of being seen as a place where the women wear the pants (whatever that means). What that results in is the staff can become a Good Ole Boys Club instead of a place where we see, value, employ, and utilize the gifts of women in an equal measure. I don’t mean women are given equal authority—eldership in the local church is clearly for men, but the disparity in staffing and investment in women does not reflect the equality we say we believe.

GCD: From the outsider's eye, there seems to be a rise in women bloggers, women's books, ministries, and bible studies. How have these helped in empowering women? In discipling women? And what are the dangers of these in relation to discipleship in the church?

Lore: In regard to empowering women, the internet/publishing world has empowered every voice, so I don’t know that we’re moved the conversation that far forward as a whole. For every woman who speaks out, there’s another voice speaking against her. I’m not sure the quantity has helped the quality. I do think that all the voices might have harmed the discipleship of women because it’s taken discipleship out of the local context and made it global. Women are getting their theology, encouragement, teaching, etc. from blogs and books in an unprecedented way. Meanwhile face to face engagement within the local church has suffered.

GCD: In this conversation, there seem to be polar extremes of complementarianism and egalitarianism. Have those terms clouded the conversation or helped the conversation in empowering women?

Lore: They’ve done both. Whenever we have terminology for something, it helps make the conversation more clear. The problem is when our experience differs from the actual definition, and I think the complementarianism/egalitarianism debate is a cesspool for disparate experiences and definitions. We’re talking past one another most of the time instead of really sitting down and understanding culture, context, history, and how the Bible speaks to all people for all situations.

GCD: Women on staff at complementarian churches are the minority and, when they are, they are rarely in roles beyond children and women. How can complementarian churches seek to empower women better in staff roles?

Lore: Hire them! The benefit of elder led churches is you have men whose responsibilities include shepherding and discipling men. We would think it was foolish if that wasn’t a qualification for an elder, but we don’t have women in those official roles (or if we do, they’re in charge of “women’s ministry” which is a fuzzy, unhelpful term). We need women whose job it is to disciple and shepherd women. Not necessarily lead women’s events, organize meals, or teach VBS or kids church. We need women who will walk faithfully with women in discipline, holiness, Bible study, teaching, etc. One thing to note is that I’m speaking from the context of larger more urban churches with more resources, you’re going to be able to hire more women. In a smaller church where hiring more women isn’t possible for various reasons, it should just be on the minds of the leaders there that they’re going to need an extra measure of intentionality in making sure their women are shephered and are discipling.

GCD: I've heard many women express a lack of discipleship while they watch men experience it. How does this happen? How is it fixed?

Lore: I don’t think the lack of discipleship is a distinctly female issue. Discipleship is going to be hard no matter our context or gender, otherwise we wouldn’t have needed to be told to do it so emphatically by Christ. Men experience a lack of discipleship too, but I think what happens is, especially in complementarian contexts, men are more visible, so we see the resources being poured into them in a more visible way. If there is a lack though, this is how it happens: many women only know how to contextualize the gospel in one situation or life-season, i.e., their marriage or home. The result of that is you have single women and empty-nest women who don’t have specific people within the sphere of their influence with whom they’re walking in discipleship. But it secondly happens when the local church doesn’t prioritize the discipleship of women. It’s fixed by prioritizing it in your staffing and ministry paradigm.

GCD: How have you heard gifted, godly, and strong women express their desire to serve the church and their elders?

Lore: In every way and every day. Women were uniquely designed to be helpers, so we see possibility in every situation. We’re not just helpers in the sense that we come alongside what’s already happening, though, we’re also helpers in the sense that we see things men just don’t see. That’s actually a beautiful thing! We don’t want to do the same thing as the men do, or overtake their God-given roles. We do desire to play our equal and distinct part though.

GCD: There seems to be an unnecessary awkwardness in male and female relationships. Many fear inappropriate relationships. How does the gospel free us from this fear and empower our relationships?

Lore: All through the New Testament Paul uses shockingly inclusive language to refer to the church, familial language. It’s not shocking to us because we’ve used it for two thousand years, but to the early church, calling one another brother and sister and father and son without the blood bond would have been shocking. In the western church we’re very accustomed to holding the opposite gender at arms length—which actually provides more room for fear than if we drew our brothers and sisters close and engaged in the messiness of family. There is righteous wisdom when it comes to avoiding sin, or the appearance of evil, but there’s also so much we miss out on when we hold our brothers and sisters away from us and don’t engage their distinctiveness from us. The gospel is marked by hospitality, by being drawn close to God (who is the most holy of us all!). By drawing us near, He is saying, “Your soiled self doesn’t sully me. I will engage that and cover it and love you all the more through it.” I say embrace that awkwardness, press through it, hug generously, listen fearlessly, counsel wisely, and live as though you’ll give an account for every action. My lead pastor does this better than almost any man I know. He simply isn’t afraid of women and always draws near to us. As much as he’s able and it’s appropriate, he closes the gap.

GCD: What levels of leadership and responsibility can a woman have in the church without encroaching on a pastoral role?

Lore: This is a tough one partially because I think it does depend on the pastor(s). If you have strong and humble men leading, men who will listen and lead well, a woman has a lot of freedom within those bounds. But if you have timid and/or young immature men leading, there’s going to need to be more restraint by the women. As far as biblically and theologically, that’s an issue for the local church elders to navigate.

GCD: A misconception seems to exist that complementarian and strong, gifted, and godly women don't go together. In this misconception, egalitarianism seems to draw the strong women. How can complementarianism strengthen women?

Lore: By majoring on the majors. We believe that women are equal and distinct, but too often we only feel our distinctiveness, our otherness. If we believe women are equal, then we have to begin to treat them as such. And—forgive me for encouraging men to be like Sarah—but we have to do it without fearing what is frightening (I Pt. 3:6). It will be messy or difficult—but so is gardening, child-rearing, and building a house, and we know we don’t do those things in vain.

GCD: Men can be taught, encouraged, and impacted by the gifts and lives of women. This seems lost in opportunities given to them to teach class, lead mixed small groups, and even in everyday church relationships. How do we move away from this gap?

Lore: Again, I think it needs to be reflected in staffing/ministry paradigm. We don’t need wide here; we need deep. By that, I mean we don’t need a huge women’s ministry. We don’t need more conferences or retreats, etc. We need to staff women who will go deep with few, disciple them in a long-suffering, difficult way, so those they disciple are empowered to do the work of the ministry. The more we are building healthy, discipled women, the more confident those women will be in engaging men in right and biblical ways, and the more happy they’ll be to submit to God’s good design for them as equal, distinct image bearers.

GCD: Paul highlights many women as “partners” with him in the gospel. It is safe to say that women don't often feel that way. What would a great partnership look like to build the church without compromising a complementarian approach?

Lore: If complementarian churches would gather and staff an equal amount of women as men, I think they’d be surprised at how effective the ministry of their local church would be. We seem to assume a church with strong leadership means a church with more men on staff, but staff isn’t eldership. Our elders/pastors ought to be men, but we should have a clearly reflected equality throughout the rest of our ministerial staff. In the same way as a marriage in which there is a clear partnership is effective, the local church that reflects this equality would thrive. And I don’t mean it would thrive in the sense that it would grow leaps and bounds (though I think it would), but their people would thrive under the firm, godly, nurturing, gentle, wise unification of their male and female leaders.

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Lore Ferguson is a writer whose deepest desire is to adorn the gospel in everything she says and does. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and is a covenant member at The Village Church. Lore writes regularly at Sayable.net, and you can follow her on Twitter @loreferguson.

Making Peace Through Confronting And Repenting

Everyone assigns a different meaning to the word “peace.” To some, peace is a calm feeling, an ability to relax, and a care-free life. To others, peace is the end of hostility, a white flag raised to end a terrible war. To others, it is something that happens when we avoid conflict, ignore faults in others, affirm and flatter and “sweep it under the rug” rather than challenge hurtful actions or patterns. Biblical peace is none of these things. Rather, biblical peace is something that we make by engaging in healthy, redemptive, life-giving conflict when necessary—especially with those whose actions and patterns are hurting us, other people, and/or them. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peace-makers.” But what does this mean?

To make peace is to rescue a hurtful person from himself

Paul writes that if anyone is “caught” in a transgression, those who are “spiritual” should restore him (Gal. 6:1). If a person is caught in a transgression, it means he has actually been overtaken by a sin. It now controls him and, if he is to be freed of it, he will need outside intervention. Some of us have participated in an intervention with a drug addict or an alcoholic. When friends or family notice that a loved one is being overtaken by an addictive substance, they come together and lovingly seek to rescue the addict from his own, self-destructive patterns. To ignore the problem would be terribly unloving. To do everything in your power to block a person from continuing in destructive patterns—this is true love and true peace-making.

Peace-making is counterintuitive

None of us wants to confront. We fear uncomfortable conversations and potential rejection, so we may choose to ignore hurtful patterns in others, or, perhaps worse, to flatter them into thinking that there is nothing wrong with their behavior. When Paul says to “restore” a person caught in transgression (Gal. 6:1-2), the same word in other ancient writings refers to the re-setting of a broken or dislocated bone. The re-setting of a bone is excruciating at first, and is usually followed by a low-grade pain that could last for weeks or even months. But once the bone is fully healed, it is usually stronger than it ever was before it was broken. When friends confront friends, and loved ones confront loved ones for sinful and destructive patterns, it is comparable to the re-setting of a bone. But instead it is a re-setting of the heart and of the person’s character. It flows from a vision to see God restore the person’s original moral beauty to him, to heal and re-align his life to the way things are supposed to be. It is a small, tangible way to bring the peace or ‘shalom’ of heaven to the present earth.

True peace-making is done in a gentle, humble inviting spirit

Galatians 5:15 warns against our potential to “bite and devour” each other. We are warned because whenever we are offended—whenever someone fails (fails us!)—we tend to become aggressive toward the perpetrator in one of two ways. We may become active-aggressive (the fight impulse) by telling them off, asserting our rights, pointing fingers, making ourselves out to be the sole victim, beating them up with our words. Or, we may become passive-aggressive (the flight impulse) by withdrawing relationally, making the person pay with our silent snubs, gossiping about them to others, or even leaving the relationship altogether.

We must see that both forms of aggression—active and passive—are self-medicating strategies employed to soften our own pain by increasing the pain of the enemy. But the Bible calls for a different kind of confrontation—the kind that prizes the healing of the enemy and the restoration of the relationship. So we are to approach this effort in a spirit of gentleness and humility. Biblical peace-making is confrontation in a sinner-safe environment. The goal is two-fold. First, we must do everything in our power to ensure the person feels safe with us and not condemned (because we are just as capable of the sin). Second, we must do everything in our power to ensure that the person is rescued from patterns that are harmful to him and/or to others.

Peace-making requires a heart that is saturated with the Gospel

The only way to gain the emotional wealth needed to respond to an offense with gentleness and humility instead of active or passive aggression, is if our hearts and identity are secure in the gospel. To the degree that we are experiencing freedom from condemnation in God’s eyes through our union with Christ, we will not fear rejection from the person we confront. If we understand that we are fully loved and secure in our relationship with God as Father—that God loves us as much as he loves Jesus, all the time—we will envision even our enemies flourishing in the gospel. We will view ourselves as partners with God, on a mission not to put offensive people in their place but, as JI Packer says, to make people great by calling them to a more beautiful, Christ-like heart and character.

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Scott Sauls, a graduate of Furman University and Covenant Seminary, is foremost a son of God and the husband of one beautiful wife (Patti), the father of two fabulous daughters (Abby and Ellie), and the primary source of love and affection for a small dog (Lulu). Professionally, Scott serves as the Senior Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Prior to Nashville, Scott was a Lead and Preaching Pastor, as well as the writer of small group studies, for Redeemer Presbyterian of New York City. His first book Jesus Outside the Lines: A Way Forward for Those Who Are Tired of Taking Sides releases March 1. Twitter: @scottsauls.

Originally posted at www.scottsauls.com. Used with permission.

Bending the Heart for the Impossible

After unearthing the themes of prayer, discipleship, and humility in Luke 18, what remains of the chapters seem less applicable to encouraging Biblical discipleship. Perhaps this is true, but Luke’s story placement for the rich young ruler is fascinating. Jesus has just finished comparing a Pharisee and tax collector (Lk. 18:9-14) and exalted the person that the Jewish society disdained. Christ has exalted little children into the kingdom and rebuking the disciples (Lk. 18:15-17). It is not on a mere whim that Luke records this infamous question and answer. “What does entering the kingdom then look like?” is the natural question arising from these teachings of Jesus. Poor discipleship has been exemplified, but what does proper discipleship look like?

18 And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” 21 And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” —Luke 18:18-21

Perhaps parents relate more to this formulated question. “Dad, what must I do to go out tonight?” or “Mom, what must I do to be done with dinner?” There is not anything wrong with be willing to act and work. These types of questions are certainly better than the truisms my daughter has been spouting lately, “Dad, if I have to watch TV than I have to watch TV.” This young rule understands he did not naturally deserve to inherit eternal life. In religious fervor, he was bent on doing what needed to be done to earn God’s favor. But he was guilty of “a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge” (Rom. 10:2).

Christ’s Confusing Answer

Christ’s answer honestly addresses this fervor. And perhaps Christ’s answer has left many confused about the nature of justification. The reason Christ does not say, “Hey dummy, just believe in me and you will be justified by faith” is because the rulers desire for eternal life is not bad. Christ condescends to the rich ruler’s thinking in an effort to show him that earning his justification is an impossibility (Lk. 18:27). In fact, apart from Christ this is the greatest impossibility (2 Cor. 1:18-20). For this reason, Christ responds,“Why do you call me good?” and concludes with “One thing you still lack” (Lk. 18:22). The rich young ruler misses out on Christ’s point that God is the high standard and that no disciple, through adherence to the law, could achieve this. The teacher standing right in front of him was the only exception. He was the impossible possibility. Christ’s second response seeks to push the point, he strikes to the heart of the ruler and the ruler breaks. He breaks apart from Christ. He has missed out on Christ revealing that through him, the “good teacher,” is the inheritance to eternal life. What is “impossible with man” has become possible through the God-man that stood before the ruler.

Check List Discipleship

What does this story communicate about discipleship? It re-iterates that completing a check list, even a holy one, is not the equivalent to following the Good Teacher. The root issue of discipleship is the heart. So, when our discipleship programs become merely external rituals we should be willing to acknowledge what they are and what Paul would say about them,

For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. —1 Timothy 4:8

True discipleship has to be convinced that its programs must die to themselves in order to follow Christ. True discipleship must be bent on affirming the greatest impossibility and that all of the physical effort in discipleship is non-meritorious in making us a disciple. Instead the church needs to stress the grace of God.

It is true that one does not explicitly hear “what must I do” often in the church today. The truth is the religious answer lies before us. Sunday School, good church attendance, Bible study, fellowship, and un-healthy food at the potlucks. These are the marks of religious fervor and remain a blessing (especially the food part) from God for his disciples. We must return to instructing new Christians that taking on a loaded schedule of godly things does not a disciple make. Instead, the bending heart that merely asks “Who then can be saved?” will find the God-man ready to accomplish the impossible. This will affect how we counsel parents to disciple their children. This will alter how we view parents with children who cannot attend Bible study. This must transform our vision of who Christ’s disciples are and how we can edify each other.

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Joshua Torrey is a New Mexico boy in an Austin, TX world. He is husband to Alaina and father to Kenzie & Judah and spends his free time studying for the edification of his household. These studies include the intricacies of hockey, football, curling, beer, and theology. You can follow him @benNuwn and read his theological musings and running commentary of the Scriptures at The Torrey Gazette.

Re-Narration Takes Practice

“Through worship God trains his people to take the right things for granted.” —Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells

Let’s return to where we began: Christian worship and Christian education both have the same end. Both the church and the Christian university are institutions caught up in the missio Dei, recruiting the hearts and minds of the people of God into the very life of God so that we can once again take up our creational and re-creational calling—to bear God’s image for and to all of creation. The church and the Christian college (and Christian schools) are sites of formation that culminate in sending: to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord” by taking up our cross along with our commission to cultivate the earth. Christian worship and formation, as practices of divine action, culminate in Christian action—being sent as ambassadors of another “city,” as witnesses to kingdom come, to live and act communally as a people who embody a foretaste of God’s shalom. This is not to “instrumentalize” worship as merely a means to an end, nor is it to reduce worship to a strategy for moral formation; neither should it be confused with an activism that sees Christian action as some Pelagian expression of our abilities. Worship and the practices of Christian formation are first and foremost the way the Spirit invites us into union with the Triune God. Worship is the arena in which we encounter God and are formed by God in and through the practices in which the Spirit is present—centering rituals to which God makes a promise (the sacraments). As Boulton observes, while John Calvin persistently emphasized a “preferred suite of formative practices” as “disciplines of regeneration,” he also constantly emphasized that these were not routines of spiritual self-assertion or human accomplishment:

Disciples may and do perform these sanctifying practices, but their performances are themselves divine gifts, and they take place properly and fruitfully—that is, in ways that produce genuine humility and insight for them and others—only by way of divine accompaniment and power. . . . Thus following Calvin, we may reframe “spiritual practices” as in the first place works of the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, the sanctifying, regenerating, restorative labor of God with us and in us. . . . Each of the church’s key practices is still something human beings do, but they do it neither alone nor as the act’s primary agent. Rather, in and through the practice, they participate in divine work.

So in the practices of Christian worship, and in related spiritual disciplines, we encounter the Lover of our souls. We are drawn into the life of the One our hearts were made for, the Lord of heaven and earth.

And it is that creating and re-creating God who tells us to go even as he goes with us, “even to the end of the age.” Christian worship culminates with a sending (“Go!”) accompanied by a promise (“And as you go, you go with his blessing”)—the benediction that is both a blessing and a charge, a co-mission-ing accompanied by the promise of the Spirit’s presence. So while we are sent to act, to labor in love for God and neighbor, the Spirit of Christ goes with us so that even “our” Christian action, undertaken as we are recruited into the missio Dei, is never merely “ours”; we “act in communion with God.” Worship is not merely time with a deistic god who winds us up and then sends us out on our own; we don’t enter worship for “top up” refueling to then leave as self-sufficient, autonomous actors. “In the conception of Christian praxis,” Ward notes, “there is no room for such a modern notion of self-sufficiency.” Instead, the biblical vision is one of co-abiding presence and participation (“I in you and you in me”). In other words, our Christian action is bound up with the dynamics of incorporation. “By the act of receiving the Eucharist,” for example, “I place myself in Christ—rather than simply placing Christ within me. I consume but I do not absorb Christ without being absorbed into Christ. Only in this complex co-abiding are there life, nourishment, and nurture because of, through, or by means of this feeding; there is both participation of human life in God’s life and participation of God’s life in human life.” So our action is not merely motivated by worship of the Triune God; rather, it is in worship that we are caught up into the life of God, drawn into union with Christ, and thus recruited into this participation that generates Christian action as we “go.” “The Christian act,” Ward continues, “has to be understood in terms not just of the church but also of the church’s participation in Christ, the church as the body of Christ. That is, the Christian act is integral to the church’s participation in the operations of the Triune God within realms created in and through Christ as God’s Word. Discipleship is thus not simply following the example of Christ; it is formation within Christ, so that we become Christlike. And the context of this formation is the church in all its concrete locatedness and eschatological significance.”

To emphasize the s/ending of Christian worship is not to reduce worship to moral formation or to treat the presence of God as a tool for our self-improvement. Rather, the centrifugal end of Christian worship is integral to the Story we rehearse in Christian worship; sending is internal to the logic of the practice. To emphasize that Christian action is the end or telos of Christian worship is not to instrumentalize worship but is rather to “get” the Story that is enacted in the drama of worship—the “true story of the whole world” in which we are called to play our part as God’s image-bearers by cultivating creation. Integral to that Story, and to the practice of Christian worship, is the sense that we are now enabled and empowered to take up this mission precisely because of the gift of the Spirit (Rom. 8:1–17). At the same time, the Spirit meets us where we are as liturgical animals, as embodied agents, inviting us into that “suite” of disciplines and practices that are conduits of transformative, empowering grace. So even if there is a centrifugal telos to Christian worship and formation, there is also a regular centripetal invitation to recenter ourselves in the Story, to continually pursue and deepen our incorporation. It’s not a matter of choosing between worship or mission; nor are we faced with the false dichotomy of church or world, cathedral or city. To the contrary, we worship for mission; we gather for sending; we center ourselves in the practices of the body of Christ for the sake of the world; we are reformed in the cathedral to undertake our image-bearing commission to reform the city. So it is precisely an expansive sense of mission that requires formation. It is the missional telos of Christian action that requires us to be intentional about the formative power of Christian practices.

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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, Imagining the Kingdom, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, ©2009. Used by permission. http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

Growth in Grace Advances Knowledge of Sin

Not long ago, I read the true story of Nick Lannon, Editor-in-Chief of LIBERATE, who was serving as a chaplain at a VA Hospital in Pittsburgh. The story goes that Nick walked into the room of a sick man. And when he asked the sick man how he was doing, the man said, “Son, I’m dying.” Nick was actually shocked at this man’s brutal honesty, and Nick said, “Well, how do you feel about that?” And the sick man said, “Well, I think I’ve lived a good life. I’m just not sure it was good enough.” After telling that story, Nick writes this:

God never looks at a Christian and says, “Good enough.” There’s no such thing. Instead of waiting for us to become something we can never be, God gives that which he requires: perfection. In exchange, he takes our imperfection onto himself. He speaks a loving word over his righteous son, and that word is applied to us. He calls us perfect, he calls us holy, and he calls us beloved. And since God’s words call into being the thing which he speaks, we become what are naturally not: perfect, holy, and beloved.

It is this exchange that forms the center of Christianity and allows Christians to be honest, with themselves and with others. … We can say, “I am a liar.” We can say, “I am selfish.” We can say, “I am a sinner.” Finally, we can say, “I am dying.” Into the darkness of those admissions comes the fire of new truth: though I am not good enough, Christ was good enough for me.

At my church, we went through a sermon series on how we grow in grace in the Christian life—how we mature as believers. Sometimes we get the wrong idea about maturity. We think maturity is simply being able to obey God more and more. Of course, that’s what we want. We don’t want to sin. We don’t celebrate failure. We want to see the fruit of our faith in Jesus. At the same time, though, our obedience cannot be our only measure of faith.

Why? Because it will lead us down one of two roads—either we’ll look at our fruit and say, “Man, I’m pulling this off. I’m a pretty good guy now.” And it leads to pride, self-righteousness, and the sense that we can be less dependent on Jesus. Or it could lead the opposite way. We could say, “Whoa! There’s a lot of commandments in here. Even the two commandments that sum everything up—love God and love my neighbor—I’m not doing that perfectly. I could never be good enough. God, how can you still accept me? Broken as I am? A sinner. Every bit in need of your grace as I was the day I first trusted you?” And it leads to shame and guilt and despair. We forget that Christ is good enough for us.

I want to look at three different letters that Paul wrote to the church, and, through these letters, we’ll see what Donald Grey Barnhouse called Paul’s “strange advancing knowledge of sin.”

The Already But Not Yet

Let’s consider that we live in a time of great tension. We live in what’s called the “already but not yet.” As believers in Jesus Christ, we have already been saved from our sins. We have already been set free from our chains. Christ has already come to pay our debt in full on the cross, but we have not yet arrived into the future kingdom that God promises us in his Word. There is still a future hope that we look forward to. We are on what John Bunyan called The Pilgrim’s Progress.

The tension is that we have been set free from sin, but we have not fully arrived. Even though we are no longer under condemnation for our sin, as Romans 8:1 affirms, we still struggle. In this in-between state, this “already but not yet,” we give in to temptation each and every day. We are not there yet. We have not yet reached the glory that God promises.

We see this more clearly in Paul’s letters to the church. We have two natures at war against one another. We have the old nature—the one where we were born in sin. That’s our sin nature. Then we have the new nature in Christ, which belongs to the Holy Spirit. We are being re-created by the Spirit, re-fashioned back into the perfect image of God. Yet, that old, pesky nature of sin continues to pull us back down.

So Paul said in Romans 7:15, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” And in Galatians 5:17 he says, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”

This is what Martin Luther and others meant by the Latin phrase simul justus et peccatur, which simply means we are simultaneously righteous and a sinner. Because of Christ’s finished work on the cross and resurrection from the dead, we are declared righteous before God. The Bible calls us saints. But we sin daily, and we are still affected by our old, sinful nature. So we are still sinners in daily need of grace.

As Jono Linebaugh said, “The Christian, in him or herself, is totally a sinner while at the same time being, in Christ, totally righteous before God. In other words, Christians are fully human—real people with real problems and real pain. But Christians, at the same time they’re sinners, are fully and savingly loved.”

Living in this state of “already but not yet” is scary. We are often afraid of our real selves. On our church’s men’s retreat last year, Nate Larkin told us how, as a minister, he would regularly look at pornography. And then it escalated to soliciting women to satisfy his desires. So he lived this double life of good Christian minister by day and sinful adulterer by night. He said he was simply playing the role of Jekyll and Hyde. And he was afraid of what would happen if someone found out about the real Nate Larkin. But it was only when he presented the real Nate Larkin to Christ that he was able to begin to repent and heal.

Advancing Knowledge of Sin

Paul did advance in life, but Paul did not advance to a state of arrival in the Christian life. As he progressed through life, he gained a greater awareness of himself—his own sin and need for constant renewal.

On Paul’s third missionary journey, he wrote to Corinth.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:3-10a)

He’s saying, “This is the gospel that I’ve been preaching to you. Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared to many people. And then he appeared, last of all, to me.” Paul understood the grace of God. He understood that if it were not for an act of sovereign grace, he would still be spiritually dead in his transgressions and sins and dragging Christians off to be persecuted. So he proclaims in 15:9, “For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle.”

But then if we turn over to Ephesians 3, we see how Paul’s self-awareness evolves. Again, Paul talks about how he was called to be a minister of the gospel. He says, “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (3:7).

Look at that again. “The very least of all the saints.” Not just last of the apostles, unworthy to be an apostle. Now it’s “very least of all the believers in Christ.” The way Paul speaks here is not simply in the past tense. It’s not, “Well, I used to be least in the kingdom, but now I’ve matured.” No, it’s just the opposite. Paul’s maturing faith leads him to the conclusion that, like King David said in Psalm 51, his sin was ever before him. He wasn’t worthy to be counted as great in God’s kingdom, much less as an apostle, a witness to Christ’s resurrection.

That leads us to 1 Timothy, where Paul is nearing the end of his life. He says in verses 15-16,

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

Do you see the progression? “I am the least of the apostles.” “I am the very least of all the saints.” “I am the worst sinner.”

Not long ago, I was reading through the Gospel of Matthew and came to chapter nine. Jesus healed a paralytic, and then he called Matthew, the tax collector, to follow him—to be his disciple. Jesus ate with Matthew and his tax collector and sinner friends. The Pharisees saw that this happened and said, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Jesus responds in Matthew 9:12: “‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’”

And after I read that, I found myself asking, “Am I a Pharisee?” Now, we all do this, don’t we? We read about what the bad guys do in Scripture, and we say, “Yeah, I do that sometimes. I grumble. I complain. I sin in this way and that way.” But what I’m saying is that, for the first time, I was identifying as a Pharisee. Not simply like a Pharisee or one who has Pharisee tendencies. I am a Pharisee. I desire sacrifice over mercy.

There’s nothing wrong with sacrifice. But desiring it over steadfast mercy and love toward others is what the Pharisees were guilty of. It’s what I am guilty of. I love being right and following the rules, and it’s often at the expense of loving my wife, my children, my friends, the church, or my neighbor.

So then I get to this place of, “Man, I’m worse than I thought I was. I’m not just Pharisee-esque. I am a Pharisee. I don’t just sin. I am a sinner.” So as you progress in your Christian maturity, you may find yourself saying, “Wow, I didn’t realize how selfish I am when I drive. I used to think it was everyone else around me.” Or maybe you think, “I was never aware of how unloving I was to my wife. It always seemed like she was just critical of me.”

Christian maturity is not advancing from one stage of goodness to another, but, by God’s grace, recognizing more and more our need for faith and repentance—recognizing our need for the Holy Spirit to renew us from the inside out. Why is that? Well, I love how the Heidelberg Catechism Q&A #115 helps us out here:

Q: “If in this life no one can keep the ten commandments perfectly, why does God have them preached so strictly?”

A: “First, so that throughout our life we may more and more become aware of our sinful nature, and therefore seek more eagerly the forgiveness of sins and righteousness in Christ. Second, so that, while praying to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, we may never stop striving to be renewed more and more after God’s image, until after this life we reach the goal of perfection.”

Abundance of Grace

By now you have probably heard the story about Ray Rice, former running back for the Baltimore Ravens. Back in February 2014, he was arrested for striking his fiancée, Janay. He came forward with Janay, to whom he is now married, and spoke to the media. He said, “I failed miserably, but I wouldn’t call myself a failure because I’m working my way back up.”

Now, I love that he came forward. But here’s the thing, and this what I would say to him if I could, “Ray, you failed, and it’s not just because you make mistakes or because you slipped up here or there. You failed because you’re a sinner. You can’t work your way back up. You need someone outside yourself to restore you.”

And that’s why Paul’s words to Timothy are such good news: “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners like Ray Rice. He came into the world to save Pharisees like me. He came into the world to save Paul, the chief of sinners and persecutor of Christ’s church. And it only magnifies the patience and the grace of God. To receive this abundant flow of God’s grace, we must be in a position of need. A position of weakness, not strength. We receive grace at the bottom, with our hands open as poor beggars.

So where is hope when our disobedience to the Father is revealed more and more? When we increasingly find that we are not perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect? When we reach the end of our life and we see that, “I am dying, and my life was not good enough”? We have hope, because Jesus was more than good enough. And our faith in Jesus is what makes us righteous before God. When the Father sees us, he sees Jesus.

That’s why Paul says in Romans 4:20-25,

No unbelief made [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

The strong may survive in this life, but it’s the weak who are raised to new life with Christ. As Tullian Tchividjian writes in One Way Love, “God doesn’t select His team the way the NFL does in the April draft. He isn’t looking for the best athletes around, or even those with the most potential. . . .  God lavishes his grace on the foolish, the weak, the despised, and the nothings so He alone will get the glory.”

May God be glorified and praised for sending the Son to come into the world to save sinners, of whom I am foremost.

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Ethan A. Smith (@EthanASmith) is a thirty-something seminary student trying to juggle work, study, husband, and father duties, while also finding his identity as an adopted son of God. He blogs at Overwhelmed Again.

Adapted from Overwhelmed Again. Used with permission.

The Lord of the Sparrows

“All the way my Savior leads me; What have I to ask beside?Can I doubt His tender mercy, Who thro’ life has been my Guide? Heavenly peace, divinest comfort, Here by faith in Him to dwell! For I know, what’er befall me, Jesus doeth all things well; For I know, what’er befall me, Jesus doeth all things well.”

—Fanny J. Crosby

Two Hard Truths

There are two kinds of God's sovereignty that are difficult for our human minds to grasp. The first is his sovereignty over the big, terrible events of our lives. This is because we cannot understand how a good and loving God could possibly be orchestrating the devastating, debilitating, and often deadly circumstances that we find ourselves subject to as humans living in this sin-infested world.

Indeed, we are often met with a crisis of faith when a spouse leaves us, when a pregnancy ends in miscarriage, or when we get the awful news that we are dying from cancer. In these times we are forced to decide whether we truly believe in the God of the Bible—a God who is incomprehensibly sovereign over evil events and at the same time good in all he does—or whether we will invent a more palatable god of our own design. When catastrophic events happen in our lives we must trust—with God-given faith—his revealed Word when it says that he "works all things for the good of those who love him."

The second category of God's sovereignty we have difficulty accepting—that I see my own heart struggling to believe—is his control over the minute, the tiny details of our lives. This, perhaps, is an even greater struggle than the first because it confronts us every moment of our lives. It is the unbelief that continually fails to recognize God's continual, purposeful interaction with the moments that make up our days.

It is seen in the fiery anger that burns within in our chests when we are delayed at a stop light. For we fail to recognize that it is God himself who controls all things and who has chosen to delay us for his own purposes. We fail to believe that it is for our good.

It is seen in the frustration that festers in the heart of a teacher when her student struggles to understand the concept of blending consonant sounds as he struggles to read. She forgets that it is God who controls her student's faculties, that his struggle is part of our loving Lord's plan for both him and her. She forgets to trust that such a challenge is for their good.

It is seen in the exasperation of the homemaker whose war against the never ending piles of laundry tempts her to resent the precious souls who add to it every day. She does not believe that God himself has given her this task, that he is blessing others through it, that he could use such a mundane chore to sanctify her. She does not believe that its is for their good.

The Lord of the Little Things

Yes, it is seen every moment of every day when we fail to acknowledge him as Lord over the little things.

"Are not to sparrows sold for a penny?" Jesus said to his disciples, "And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father."

Oh soul, remember that it is he, the Creator of heaven and earth, who controls the birds of the air. Is he not also in control of your crying baby, your complaining child, your car that won't start? "Even the hairs on your head are all numbered by him," our Lord Jesus says. Does he not then also control the blemishes that plague your skin? How different our attitudes would be if we met every frustration, every annoyance, and every difficulty that comes our way with the knowledge of our loving God's sovereignty.

For we do not view the events of our lives through rose-colored glasses, but rather through blood-drenched ones.

If we could but remember the price he paid to save us, would we not view the inconveniences of life with greater appreciation? Would they not drive us to the throne of grace rather than our keyboards where we share quick, relieving complaints disguised as Facebook statuses? Would we not find ourselves beseeching the Lord for wisdom every moment of every day, as James tells us to? For it is he who "gives generously to all without reproach!" Soul, make use of his generosity, for your need is great!

And how differently our days would transpire if we could see his sovereignty in the small blessings he lavishes upon us. For indeed, so great is our sinfulness, that we don't even find it easy to recognize the constant good that flows from his wounds to his beloved bride.

Prayer and Praise

We take for granted every breath that enters our lungs, every smile we receive from our children, every kiss we enjoy from our husbands, every hug we get from a good friend. We enter into soft, comfortable beds each night relieved that the day is over, forgetting to thank him for the many blessings we've received—not the least of which being the soft, comfortable bed we lay on!

Would our countenance not be characterized by peaceful joy rather than frenzied exhaustion if we could but keep the cross ever before us, seeing all the good things that come our way as loving gifts from a bridegroom to his purchased bride? Would our lips not be filled with his praises? Would our love for him not spill out upon all who are in our presence?

Perhaps this awareness of God residing over the little events of our lives would yield an attitude of ceaseless prayer and praise. Maybe we would come closer to obeying Paul's command to the Thessalonians to "rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." (1 Thess. 5:16-18)

Can we live as those aware of the Savior's leading? Can we trust him with the little things, whether they be good or bad? Lord give us the grace to live in this blessed awareness, for we long to see you.

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Jessalyn Hutto (@JessalynHutto) is the wife of a church planter, a mother to four, and a very part-time writer. Most of all she is a ransomed sinner, living in the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ. You can learn more about her at JessalynHutto.com.

Originally published at JessalynHutto.com. Used with permission.

2 Big Reasons Evangelism Isn’t Working

One in five Americans don’t believe in a deity. Less than half of the population attends religious services on a regular basis. People simply find our evangelism unbelievable.

Why?

While a person’s response to Christ is ultimately a matter that rests in God’s sovereign hands—something we have no control over—a person’s hearing of the gospel is a matter we do have control over and responsibility for.

• “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season…” 2 Tim. 4:2
• Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. – Col. 4:4-5
• So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.  Romans 10:17

The first reason our evangelism isn’t believable is because it isn’t done in grace for each person.

Paul isn’t just saying evangelism is our responsibility; he’s telling us to do it “in person.” Unfortunately, a lot of evangelism is an out of body experience, as if there aren’t two persons in a conversation. It’s excarnate, out of the flesh, not incarnate—in the flesh.

I’m reminded of the more passive Christian who looks to get Jesus off his chest at work and into a conversation. “Check!” Or the time in college when I pretended to share the gospel with a friend in Barnes & Noble so others would overhear it! Alternatively, an active evangelist might troll blogs and start conversations to defeat arguments, while losing people in the process. “Aha!” The comment section on a blog is the new street corner.

These approaches are foolish because they treat people like projects to be completed, not persons to be loved. Have you ever been on the other end of evangelistic project? Perhaps from a Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon at your door. Or a pushy pluralist at work? You don’t  feel loved; you feel used, like a pressure sale.

Paul says we should “know how you ought to answer each person.” This means that most of your gospel explanations will be different, not canned. It also implies a listening evangelism. How can we know how to respond to each person, if we don’t know each person?

When Francis Schaeffer was asked how he would an hour with a non-Christian, he said: “I would listen for fifty-five minutes, and then, in the last five minutes I would have something to say.”

A second reason people find our evangelism is unbelievable is because it is foolish.

Paul isn’t just telling us evangelism is personal; he’s telling us to do it with wisdom. Wisdom possesses more than knowledge; it expresses knowledge through understanding. It considers life circumstances and applies knowledge with skill. Another word for this is love.

Love is inefficient. It slows down long enough to understand people and their objections to the gospel. Love recognizes people are complex, and meets them in their need: suffering, despair, confusion, indifference, cynicism, confusion. We should look to surface these objections in people’s lives. I was recently having lunch with an educated professional who had a lot of questions. After about thirty minutes he said, “Enough about me. You’re asking me questions. I should ask you questions.” I responded by saying, “I want to hear your questions, but I also want to know you so that I can respond to your questions with wisdom.” He told me some very personal things after that, and it shed a lot of light on his objections to Christianity. It made my comments much more informed, and he felt much more loved, declaring at the end, “I wish every lunch was like this. Let’s keep doing this. I have a lot more questions.”

Rehearsing a memorized fact, “Jesus died on the cross for your sins,” isn’t walking in wisdom. Many people don’t know what we mean when we say “Jesus,” “sin,” or “cross.” While much of America still has cultural memory of these things, they are often misunderstood and confused with “moral teacher,” “be good,” and “irrelevant suffering.” We have to slow down long enough to explore what they mean, and why they have trouble with these words and concepts. Often they are tied to some kind of pain.

We need to explain these important truths (and more), not simply assert them. When we discerningly separate cultural misunderstanding from a true understanding of the gospel, we move forward in wisdom. But getting to that point typically doesn’t happen overnight.

We need to see evangelism as a long-term endeavor. Stop checking the list and defeating others. Be incarnate not excarnate in your evangelism. Slow down and practice listening and love. Most conversions are not the result of a single, point-in-time conversation, but the culmination of a personal process that includes doubt, reflection, gospel witness, love, and the work of the Holy Spirit.

And remember, don’t put pressure on yourself; conversion is in God’s hands. We just get to share the incomparable news of Jesus.

In sum, how you communicate the gospel matters.

Does Anything Need to Change in Personal Evangelism? from Jonathan Dodson on Vimeo.

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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

Jonathan’s new book is The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing (resource website here). You can also get his free ebook “Four Reasons Not to Share Your Faith.”

Re-posted with permission from Desiring God.

Cherishing the Foreverness of Jesus’ Work

Who has done more for us than Jesus? Who’s ever come close? No one loves like Jesus. No one and nothing delivers on their promises like Jesus. The good news of forgiveness from all of our crimes, being made a child of God and a co-heir with Christ, does the heart good . Forever. Jesus has wounded the Dragon, and he is coming back to get his girl, his beautiful church.

the tale of tales

The Bible is the tale of tales. A Jesus-exalting view of the Bible means that you refuse to view the Bible (and the Christian experience) as mere regulations and sanctions for life on earth. The Bible is way more than that. Children’s book author Sally Lloyd-Jones says it best:

No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules , or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne —everything— to rescue the ones he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life! You see, the best thing about this Story is— it’s true.

There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.

It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby . Every story in the Bible whispers his name. He is like the missing piece in the puzzle—the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture.

What beautiful picture? A crucified, risen, sin-pardoning hero—your hero. Your Savior. Your Jesus, and he killed the big bad wolf. Your sin is finished. Do you believe it? As in all good tales, the enemy is vanquished. It’s time to believe it— that’s part of the “happily ever after.” As in all good tales, the enemy is vanquished. It’s time to believe it – that’s part of the “happily ever after.”

As in all good tales . . .

As in all good tales, the enemy is vanquished. It’s time to believe it—that’s part of the “happily ever after.” How would you describe your relationship with sin? For the Christian, only one word in the Bible fits: deceased. God’s Word doesn’t say that we are simply weakened, cold, hardened, or numb to sin; it declares that we are dead to sin and alive to God because of Jesus. “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6: 11). If you’re like me, you probably don’t always feel this way toward sin, but the gospel brings great news. You are no longer under the power, control, and kingdom of Satan and his toxic meal-deals

If you are in Christ, look at how the Bible describes your relationship with sin. I heard these from the great Scottish theologian Sinclair Ferguson, in a seminary class, and I pass them on to you:

• Sin is no longer your king: “Let not sin therefore reign” (Rom. 6: 12).
• Sin is not your commander: “Do not present your members to sin as instruments [weapons]” (v. 13).
• Sin is done being your dictator: “For sin will have no dominion over you” (v. 14).
• Sin is no longer your master: “You were slaves of sin” (v. 20).
• Sin is no longer your employer: “The wages of sin is death” (v. 23).

Sin controlled you, but no more. You are free. Jesus smashed sin’s scepter, and now he reigns forever. The Lion of Judah roars against all other predators.

back to the gospel—again

Go back to the gospel—again. Not for conversion, but for comfort.

But maybe you don’t feel like you are dead to sin. There is hope. If you are a Christian and your life still sleeps in the pigpen—it is time to confess, repent, and walk in the freedom that Jesus has already purchased for you. Go back to the gospel—again. Not for conversion, but for comfort. The gospel— Jesus’ death and resurrection—is a one-time event, but we believe it more than once—we believe it and re-believe it every day. God’s gospel declares that you are free. You are safe in Christ, and he is ready to help you. Go to God. Cherish the foreverness of Jesus’ work for you, walk in grace, and life change is on the way. In fact, it has already touched down.

Paul’s instruction from Romans 6: 11 is clear: “You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Believe it. Don’t close this book till you do. Your being dead to sin is as true and real as Jesus being alive. Christian, you must consider your ties with sin to be forever severed by the blood of Jesus. This is what it means to believe the gospel again—believing the glorious gifts of the gospel.

We will still sin, and Jesus will continue to own us. Sin is no match for Jesus. He’s already shown what he can do. Jesus is bigger, stronger, faster, and greater than all our sin: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3: 3). Do you believe that you are dead to sin? Do you believe that you are alive? What sin do you think you’ll never have victory over ? Today that lie ends; the crimson flood swallows it up—your joy is found in gospel truth. Jesus is the great curse -lifter promised in the garden of Eden (Gen. 3: 15), the great gloom-cleanser of the land, the heavenly and human harbinger of joy.

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J.A. Medders is the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Church in Tomball, TX. He and Natalie have two kids, Ivy and Oliver. Jeff digs caffeinated drinks, books, and the Triune God. He blogs at www.jamedders.com and tweets from @mrmedders. Jeff’s first book, Gospel-Formed: Living a Grace-Addicted, Truth-Filled, Jesus-Exalting Life, released this November from Kregel.

Excerpted by permission. Gospel Formed: Living a Grace-Addicted, Truth-Filled, Jesus-Exalting Life by J. A. Medders, Kregel Publications 2014

5 Obedience Killing Lies

When Mirela and I loaded up our belongings and headed to the northwest, we were filled with an incredible blend of expectation and zeal. We knew something major was happening, and God was going to let us be part of it. We didn’t have a grand plan. We just had a genuine desire to serve and start a church in Portland. It was a big adventure and we felt like pioneers on the Oregon Trail. As we crossed the Walla Walla mountains in eastern Oregon, we listened to Rich Mullen’s song, “You’re on the Verge of a Miracle.” We couldn’t wait to see mass revival in Portland. God placed us with a remarkable church planting team. We’ve seen lots of evidence of God’s grace in our lives and in the church. He has continually provided for our small church plant. We are thankful for many things. From the outside, it looks pretty good. Church planters come from all over the world to learn about what we are doing. Our missional communities multiply every year. We even have a cool website.

The reality is—life lived on the frontier is hard. We have seen only a handful of people come to Christ and be baptized. Church conflict is constant. It seems as though every time someone joins our church, another person leaves. About a third of the missional communities we start fail. All the while, our city continues to be desperately far from knowing the riches of the gospel. My neighbors constantly reject the good news of Jesus despite our best attempts to demonstrate and proclaim it to them. The city is not flourishing in the peace of salvation, but struggling in the chaos of brokenness. It doesn’t feel like the miracle is happening. We sometimes wonder, “When will the revival come? Will we be around to see it?”

Lessons from China

It reminds me of the church in China. No, not the Chinese church of today, where thousands are baptized daily and they can’t print enough Bibles or equip enough pastors to keep up with the rapid multiplication of the church. Not that movement. I am reminded of the Chinese churches of Hudson Taylor, Robert Morrison, and the Cambridge Seven. They spent the best years of their lives laboring with little or no fruit. Despite decades of evangelism and service, they only witnessed a few conversions and a few new churches in their life times. By the time Mao banned religion, many, even within the missions movement, assumed China was unreachable. These missionaries had seemingly wasted their lives.

However, the house church movement that began to erupt in the 1960s and continues today was built on the foundation of these missionaries. The converts they baptized became the backbone of today’s movement. The few disciples they made, made more disciples, who made disciples, and so on. The revival those missionaries prayed for came. It was just decades after they had died. The pioneering missionaries never saw the packed house churches or the all night baptism services. They didn’t see their prayers answered. Yet, they faithfully served at great personal cost for years. They obeyed the call to go and make disciples without knowing what the lasting affect would be.

The Rewards of Obedience

What do you get for all your anonymous and resultless faithfulness? Nothing short of God. “Discipleship,” Bonheofer writes, “means joy.” The reward is Christ himself. Often we get confused and think the rewards for obedience are big churches, lots of twitter followers, and the approval of our peers. And we miss the promise of Christ.

How sick are we when we lust for the results of Christ’s work, thinking it could belong to us? When we prefer convert stories to Christ? Sadly, many of us will hope more for success than we will hope for Christ.

If you follow Jesus, you may never see revival. Though you love your city, you may never see it transformed. But if you follow Jesus you are guaranteed this one thing—Jesus. Your fruit is the joy of obeying Jesus. Nothing else. The baptisms and church plants belong to God. Those are God’s work, not yours.

Our ability to quit and become sidetracked is great. Our hearts are constantly being attacked by lies that keep us from persevering in faith. These five lies are particularly successful. They are deceptive and effective in killing our conviction to follow Jesus and trust in his work.

1. “You are above this.”

This is the lie of strong pride. That the grunt work isn’t for you. I first heard this lie when I cleaned toilets for a church in Los Angeles. You may hear it while you are watching babies in the nursery Sunday after Sunday. Or when you get stood up once again by your not-yet believing friends for dinner. You hear it when your neighbors shun you for being crazy people who believe in Jesus. The lie is, “You are better then this.” When you believe this lie, you think you are entitled to fame. In reality, you are only entitled to be called a child of God, and that right was purchased by Christ. Don’t settle for position and fame. If you think you are above the job and task, you will not persevere in obedience.

2. “You are below this.”

Many times it also sounds like, “You don’t belong and you don’t deserve this.” This is a lie attacking Christ’s ability to work in and through you. If you believe this lie, you believe that God is not at work, but you are the one at work. This lie leads to fear and rejection of your identity as a son or daughter of God. It is also born out of comparison to others instead of Christ. What is so devastating about this lie is it paralyzes folks from obedience that would give God glory. No one is capable or skilled enough to do what God has called them to do. The Holy Spirit empowers us for the tasks and God is glorified in using us.

3. “If you were better, it would be easier.”

This one comes when things feel incredibly hard. It leads to self loathing and increased suffering. This lie shakes your sense of purpose. You begin to place yourself as the focal point of God’s work and conclude you are either in the way or driving it forward. When things improve, you believe it is because you have done better and have earned it. When things fail, you are certain it is your fault. Similar lies are, “You have to be good to be used for good.” Or “You have to be smarter, better, quicker, more talented, more educated, rich and moral in order to do good.” This leads to a personal quest for self-rightness, excellence, and God’s job. This lie essentially says, “You are this city’s savior.” Eventually you quit in desperation because you have labored without a savior.

4. “If it isn’t happening now, it never will.”

This lie says, “today is all there is and God can’t work tomorrow. If God hasn’t answer your prayers for revival by now, he never will.” When you believe it, you lose perspective on the scope of life and count everything you are doing as worthless. You are no longer content in obedience alone, but want to see what your obedience will create. This is nearsighted dreaming. This lie results in quick quitting or shrinking versions of worthwhile-God-given dreams. This is a lie people believe when the settle for less then the radical surrender and obedience God called them to. When we believe this lie we are saying, “God doesn’t care anymore or he can’t do it.”

5. “You are alone.”

This is the hardest one. Our sinful hearts leap to this lie when we are tired and discouraged. The goal of this lie is to isolate you and make you think no one else cares, and no one else is coming to help. No longer are you being obedient to God’s work, but now you feel like a hired hand. It is as if God is paying you to establish a franchise of his kingdom and is looking for a return on his investment.  Your belief in this lie says, “Jesus doesn’t love me or this city. He didn’t died for this city of for me . . . God abandons his people.”

Gospel Motivation

At the heart of each these lies is an attack on your motivation and an attack on the gospel. The truth is Christ died for you. You are loved and you are his son or daughter (1 John 3:1). He has empowered you with his Spirit to be his witness (Acts 1:8). He will work in you and through you as he works all things together for good and conforms you to the likeness of Christ (Romans 8:28-29). He is with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28).

When I was 11, my family moved to Lisbon, a city of five million people with fewer than 4 percent believing the gospel. Shortly after we arrived, my family went to a hill that overlooked the city we came to win for Christ. My dad wept over it as he prayed for the people and for the gospel to take root and free people. We all cried. We had put everything on the line to follow Jesus to this city. We loved the city and we loved Jesus.

Soon it will be two decades since that day we prayed for that city, and the statistics are the same. My parents saw only a couple people baptized in over a decade of ministry there. They will never see or experience his prayers for the city being answered. What did they experience? God’s lavished grace in new ways; the gospel.

Are you willing to weep over your city for decades and never see your prayers answered, and plant seeds you never see germinate? What if your church never becomes nationally known? What if you don’t write books or speak at conferences? Is the gift of the gospel enough for you?

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

The Deconstructed Gospel

What is the gospel? My first semester at seminary I showed up feeling called by God to become a pastor and I couldn't say what the gospel was. Sure I had an idea. Isn't the gospel that we're "saved by faith" or that "Jesus rose again"? The word gospel comes from the Greek word that means "good news." Mark 1:1 tells us the gospel is "the good news about Jesus the Messiah." So what about Jesus' life and ministry is good news for us? Just about every Christian I know has trouble answering this question. Usually someone will bring up Jesus' life, death, and resurrection (something I like to call the three days gospel) and how through them God gives us eternal life. That is absolutely true and so beautiful. But what about the other thirty-three years of Jesus' estimated lifespan? Do those years matter for us too? This is why I break down the gospel into three days and thirty-three years.

The Three Days Gospel

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

Day 1 - Friday: "Christ died for our sins"

This is a great starting point for defining what the gospel is. Jesus died for our sins. That's a huge statement and is summed up in the fancy theological term "atonement." The Day of Atonement described in Leviticus 16 was the day the High Priest of Israel slaughtered a goat and sprinkled its blood in the Most Holy Place of the temple before God. This sacrifice atoned for the sins of the people for another year. On Good Friday, Jesus atoned for our sins when he became the final sacrifice. He died an innocent victim in the place of guilty sinners.

Day 2 - Saturday: "He was buried"

True, Jesus was buried in the tomb on Friday, but he stayed dead on Saturday. Friday and Sunday of Easter weekend get all the credit, but Saturday played an important part too. Saturday proved Jesus was really dead. He wasn't just passed out or dying. He was locked away in a tomb with no breath in him. Hebrews 2:9 tells us Jesus "suffered" or "tasted" death. He went through all the pain of Friday so he could be dead on Saturday. This is the same death you and I face for all eternity if Sunday's miracle never comes.

Day 3 - Sunday: "He was raised"

Jesus rose from the grave conquering sin and death on Sunday morning. Resurrection! He returned to the living in his old yet newly glorified body. This is what we who trust in Jesus will experience at the final resurrection when Jesus returns. Christ will call us forth from our graves to spend eternity with him in a whole new creation. We who trust in Jesus die spiritually with him on Friday. One day our bodies will really be dead, like Saturday. But our hope is in what Jesus did on Sunday so we too will rise again. The resurrection is good news!

The last three days of Jesus' life matter for you and for me. Those three days are what most people think of when they think of the gospel. We turn to them first because they're what drive us to put our faith in Christ. Jesus offers forgiveness for our sins through his sacrifice on the cross on Friday, through our fear of death on Saturday, and through the hope we have for eternity on Sunday. We turn to them because they matter for us when we die. Even in our last days, we still have hope.

The Thirty-Three Years Gospel

So what about the rest of Jesus' life? How are they the gospel? How does how he lived matter for our lives right now? Usually when I ask this question, everyone goes quiet. It's because we don't usually think about the gospel from this angle. We love our hope in eternal life, but haven't considered what Jesus may have done for our present life.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Jesus lived a perfect life: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,"

Jesus was born, and then he lived. But he didn't live like you and I live. He lived a life of perfect obedience to God, his Father. He "knew no sin.” That means he never lied to his parents, stole from his employer, cheated on a test, lusted in his heart, drank too much alcohol, or got angry for the wrong reasons. He lived without sin through all life's stages. Jesus was a toddler, but he wasn't terrible. He was a teenager, but he wasn't angsty. He was a man, but he wasn't prideful. He was on his deathbed made of wood, and he died with grace.

Not only did Jesus never sin, he also lived a holy life. This means he always did the right thing. He prayed enough, fasted enough, read the Scriptures enough, and gave enough to the poor. He did all those right things and more. Luke 2:52 gives us a glimpse of Jesus' godly character. "And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man." Jesus was a person like us in his experience, yet unique from us in his perfection. Don't you wish your everyday was more like Jesus' everyday? Don't you wish that you weren't the sinner you are? Don't you wish you are as holy and good as Jesus? Here's the good news . . . you already are!

We get credit for Jesus' perfect life: "so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Jesus trades his righteousness for our sin. This is the great exchange. Through Jesus’ perfect life and substitutionary death, God has taken your sinful life and placed it on Jesus and taken his holy life and placed it on you. That's what grace does. When God looks at you, he sees the life of his Son! God has permanently credited the righteousness of Jesus to your account. This truth is as old as Abraham trusting Yahweh in Genesis 15:6 and as fresh as Paul writing to the early church in Romans 3:21-26. The gospel is for every believer every day.

This means that when you wake up and blow it sometime this morning, afternoon, or evening—you are holy. This means that when you cuss out the driver in front of you for driving too slow and the driver behind you for driving too fast—you are holy. This means you don't have to regret your teen years, or your college years—you are holy. This means when you forget to be polite and you don't help your neighbor because it's inconvenient—you are holy. This means that the hidden sin you don't want anyone to know about are forgiven in God's eyes,—you are holy. This means your worst offense is completely forgiven at Christ's expense.

Not only does the gospel forgive our outward acts of sin, it cleanses our inward rebellion. Ezekiel 36:26-27 tells us the gospel has changed our very hearts. God takes your old hard heart and gives you a new soft one filled with the Holy Spirit. Where your life was empty, now your life is full. You are awash in righteousness where you once were lost in unrighteousness. When you sin today, remember that God sees you as he sees his son, forgiven and holy. One day your sin will be completely gone, and God's righteousness will become intrinsic to who you are, but until then God has credited us with a spotless record that you may enjoy today. Thank you, Jesus.

Jesus has traded his thirty-three years of perfection for your whole life of disobedience and sin. This means you no longer have to wallow in despair, guilt, and doubt, because you are seen through the lens of Christ. One day soon our sin nature will go away, but until then we hope in Jesus and enjoy his righteousness. As one friend said when he finally understood the gospel, "That's so unfair!" My dirty record is gone. Jesus' fresh record is mine.

So What is the Gospel?

The gospel is the good news that Jesus lived a perfect life, died an innocent death, rose again so that we may spend eternity with him, and now credits us with his holy record so that we may enjoy a guilt-free life today. We make disciples by helping the lost believe the three days gospel and we mature those disciples by helping them live every day in appreciation for the thirty-three years gospel. We need the full gospel message to truly make, mature, and multiply disciples of Jesus.

—

Jonathan M. Romig (M.Div., Gordon-Conwell) is the associate pastor at Immanuel Church in Chelmsford Massachusetts (CCCC). He blogs at PastorRomig.blogspot.com and recently finished teaching New City Catechism to his adult Sunday school class and self-published his first ebook How To Give A Christian Wedding Toast.

Simple, But Not Easy

“We've had more decisions for Christ in Africa than there are people." The words of the missionary visiting our church service stuck in my head like the chorus to a pop song.

It reminded me of the quote by Francis Chan, "Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.”

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to become “successful” at running up the score on decisions for Christ while neglecting the great commission of Jesus to make disciples for Christ.

Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: “God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” —Matthew 28:20, The Message

Discipleship Takes Time

We've dedicated ourselves to the glorification of a one-time act and abandoned the transformation of the journey.

Not because it's complicated to make disciples, but because it's difficult to make disciples. It takes time, and we're in a hurry for some unknown reason, racing against an imaginary clock to see who can “die with the most things.” We humans are funny that way.

Discipleship is Messy

Have you ever built anything with your hands? Making things is intrinsically messy. Whether it's your favorite meal in the kitchen or something you build in the garage . . . you always end up with a mess on your hands that you have to clean up.

True discipleship is like making things—it’s making people for God—and it’s messy. When Jesus said, "Go and make disciples,” he definitely knew it was going to take time, and be messy. Jesus himself had spent years investing into a small crew of guys—teaching them all he knew, and showing them the way to true life.

Discipleship is Difficult

It's a simple command that Jesus gave us, yet extremely difficult. True gospel-centered discipleship not only produces difficult personal transformation in the people we are discipling; it also produces difficult personal transformation in our own hearts as well.

Don’t be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. – James 3:1-2, The Message

It takes an investment of our time, attention, and resources. But what is made through this process stands the test of time like a beautiful piece of antique furniture.

Our Purpose is Clear

The primary purpose in life for every disciple of Jesus couldn't be any clearer in the Bible—to disciple others.

We should all have people in our lives who are discipling us, and we should all embrace our chief purpose by eventually looking for other people we can disciple. This isn’t just a job for pastors.

Good friend, don’t forget all I’ve taught you; take to heart my commands. They’ll help you live a long, long time, a long life lived full and well. —Proverbs 3:1, The Message

Disciple Three People for Life

You may never fill large stadiums through the simple, yet difficult process of discipleship . . . well, at least not at first.

If you discipled just three people over your lifetime, with the purpose of them each finding three people to disciple over their lifetime and continue to pass on this process . . . you are traveling a very slow road, which does not lead to earthly fame.

In fact, after five years of this grueling, messy and time consuming life, you’ll find that because of your dedication to obey Jesus’ command, you will have become the catalyst for a whopping 363 disciples.

I don't think any statues will be built in your honor or roads named after you for this crowning achievement. But, you might begin to see something amazing as those 363 grow deeper and mature in their faith, being transformed into the image of Christ.

Don’t give this vision up. If you keep going, you'll find yourself five years down the road and those original three who you are still making into disciples for a lifetime have become the catalyst for 88,572 maturing disciples.

Now, you might start turning heads, but I doubt it, because if you're doing it right, you're still humbly devoted to the insignificant beauty of leading just three disciples you've been entrusted with for a lifetime.

Just as we entrust the earth with an insignificant seed, so are we who are entrusted to disciple. And the last time I checked, no one was throwing any celebrations for dirt. Unless you count earth day I guess.

This dedication to discipleship is simple, not rocket science. But don’t let that fool you into thinking it's easy.

By now it gets even more exciting, because as you are still discipling just three other people into disciples over your lifetime, you’ll find yourself twenty-one years down the road from when you started making your three disciples for a lifetime. And while you are still only directly connected to the one who is making you into a disciple, the others that person is making into disciples with you and the three you are making into disciples; your little seed has grown into a mighty giant redwood.

In fact, in those twenty-one years your little discipleship group has grown to cover the entire planet with maturing disciples of Jesus. "How many?" you ask. It's 15,681,672,913 disciples. There are not even that many people on the planet yet.

So you see, true discipleship isn't easy, but it is simple, and it's the command we've been given. Will you accept the challenge? We hope you will, and we look forward to meeting you and the three people you are making into disciples for a lifetime on the journey of discipleship.

—

Joe Jestus is the Vice President of Development at Targeted Content Marketing, husband of 13 years, and happy dad of four amazing kids.

Matt Brown is an evangelist, author of Awakening (2015) and founder of Think Eternity.

Telling the Same Story a Thousand Ways

“He’s got one trick to last a lifetime, but that’s all a pony needs.” — Paul Simon

In preaching the gospel, we are essentially telling the same story a thousand different ways. Movie-maker Wes Anderson seems to understand this concept.

Moonrise Kingdom, one of Anderson’s most recent movies, tells a beautiful story. It’s a story of very different people who, oddly enough, have something central in common—they are all broken people who feel cast off, confused, and unwanted. The privileged 12-year-old Suzie Bishop, who lives in an idyllic New England home with her attorney parents and three younger brothers, would seem to have nothing in common with Sam Shakusky, an orphan and recently resigned Khaki Scout, who has been traipsed from one boys home to another many times over the course of his young life.

Suzie’s attorney parents—Walt and Laura Bishop—far from feeling grounded and accomplished with their giant home, boat, four children, and successful law practice, are painfully aware that they don’t have what it takes to be the parents their kids need them to be, nor the spouses they need to be for one another.

Laura is having an affair with Captain Sharp. As upset as her husband is when he finds out, he can barely react because he knows their marriage is not working. Scout Master Ward, whose job it is to keep all of his Khaki Scouts safe and productive, is shocked to discover Sam has run away, and even more surprised to find out he’s an orphan. Why hadn’t Sam said anything?

The gnawing uncertainties of life are lifted in the unifying pursuit of bringing Suzy and Sam back to where they belong safely. It is not perfect—people get stabbed with left-handed scissors and dogs get impaled with arrows. But this is not to be judged, just accepted.

“Was he a good dog?” runaway Suzie asks her companion, Sam, as they stand over the corpse of Snoopy, the accidentally arrow-pierced pooch.

“Who’s to say,” Sam intones, with the detached timber of a yogi.

The Story of Hope

As characters begin to bear with one another and learn to rely on one another, things change. Families are created or reunited. Couples form meaningful relationships. Kids learn to help other kids and bullies are overthrown. Each finds a sense of purpose and community when they accept themselves and one another.

The baseline plot won’t come as a surprise if you are a Wes Anderson fan. He has the same message in almost every film. It’s in the Tenebaum household, among the brothers seeking to mend a family in Darjeeling Ltd., and among the animals Anderson takes on in Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

It is a message that resonates with me. In a broken world, where things aren’t right, love somehow makes it beautiful. People are still broken and, at times, outlandish—but beautiful.

The Gospel Story and the Church

The reason the gospel story can be told a thousand different ways is because of its depth. The gospel tells us the core of orthodoxy, the kerygma of Jesus, the fundamentals of the faith, the statements of the Apostle’s Creed—it is the eternality of the gospel. When Peter declares that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt:16), Jesus responds, “Blessed are you, Peter son of John, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father in Heaven.” The Divine mysteriously interacts with creation and that which is eternal and unseen is made known to mere humans.

The gospel also tells the story of pilgrimage. It speaks of how we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. But God doesn’t leave us alone in this. First, he is with us. God works within us both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil 2:12-13). We have God himself with us, but we also have his reflections—his people. The other pilgrims are with us.

A pilgrim differs from a hermit. The hermit isolates, while the pilgrim triangulates. The pilgrim heads to a fixed point—namely Jesus—and finds along the way more pilgrims. They come from different places, but join their journeys because they have a common destination. The Church is the gathering of broken people who have encountered Jesus and are journeying together with him towards home.

The gospel also tells the story of ambassadors from another kingdom. It tells of how we have become a people unique to God among all the peoples on the earth. It tells us we are a royal priesthood. We are to serve the world around us. The gospel, through the revelation of God, transforms us so that we demonstrate life in Christ—in word and deed—to the community around us. Mission and evangelism are part of the story of this same gospel.

An Eternal Story

We tell this story.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

We tell it in pulpits, at our family table, where we work. It is in how we work, why we work. We tell it in our leisure time. We tell it to our spouse. We tell it to ourselves.

Take time to hear the gospel again. Tell the story so well that you want to hear it again and again. A good message lives in many constructs and has many iterations. As we live and breath, the gospel continues. We tell the same gospel story in a thousand ways.

—

Ed Marcelle (@emarcelle) is Lead Pastor of Terra Nova Church in Troy, N.Y., and Northeast Regional Coordinator for the Acts 29 Network. Marcelle holds a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Dallas Theological Seminary. He and his wife Diane have four children: Alfonso, Isaiah, Bethany, and Abigail. 

Redeeming Theology

I knew it was coming. The conversation was inevitably leading to one of my least favorite assertions. I thought to myself, “Please don’t say it, please don’t say it.” Too late—the familiar words spilled out of her, “I’m not into theology. I just love God and people.” I cringed. Another well-intentioned believer had fallen prey to the false dichotomy between thinking well about God and living for God. 

Theology As A Bad Word   

Believers choose to live in a certain amount of ignorance when they claim they aren’t into theology. In their defense, I know what they mean. They’re communicating disdain for the abuse of theology. Many have been recipients of ridicule from theology-mongers who insist on setting everyone straight and causing division. It only takes a few encounters with that guy for the idea of theology to be warped in one’s mind. It’s associated with abrasive people who would rather argue theological views than show Christ’s love. In many circles “theology” now carries with it a stigma analogous to a four-letter word. This creates an unfortunate gap between those who are into theology and those who love God and people.

Theology Has Been Misunderstood

This distinction is flawed. Contrary to popular opinion, theology is not defined by intellectual scholars reading books or arrogant seminarians picking fights. The term theology means “the study of God.” It comes from the Greek words for God (theos) and word or body of knowledge (logos). At its root, theology is the process of thinking about our lives in light of the faith we proclaim. It’s faith that seeks understanding. When we do theology we are attempting to understand who God is, who we are, and how we should live in view of God.

To study theology is to study God—to know him better and delight in him more accurately with the hope of glorifying him through our love and obedience. The Apostle Peter understood this connection between knowing God and glorifying him. He says that believers have been granted “all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence” (2 Pt. 1:3 [emphasis mine]). He continues by exhorting Christians to “make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge” (2 Pt. 1:5).

Therefore, believers who want to love God but not do theology may be sincere but are terribly misguided for at least two reasons:

First, all Christians are already doing theology. As image-bearers of God, humans are interpreters of meaning. Every day we receive data from the surrounding world and systematize it. If you are a believer, at some point you received information about God, the world, and your life and systematized it into a Christian worldview. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you live from this functional set of theological presuppositions.

Everything you do, every choice you make, flows (perhaps unconsciously) from these beliefs—when you process pain in light of a sovereign God, you are doing theology. When you pray with your children before bed, you are doing theology. When you tell your unbelieving neighbor about Jesus, you are doing theology. When you overcome fear and step onto a plane, you are doing theology. When you assess if a Christian should take anti-depressants, you are doing theology. In fact, when you say, “I just love God and people” you are doing so from several theological assumptions about God, man, salvation, and reconciliation.

Second, Christians’ love for God requires knowing God. We grow in our knowledge of God so we can love him, and then grow in our love for him so we can serve him. Just as a husband grows in his affection and devotion to his wife as he studies her over time, so the believer grows in his affection and devotion to God as he studies him over time. It’s the growing knowledge of a person that enables one to love him or her more appropriately.

I’ll never forget how excited my husband was during our first year of marriage when he threw me a surprise birthday party. It was sweet, but topped the charts as my worst birthday to date. He didn’t know I was an introvert disguised as an extrovert. And there is nothing worse for a true introvert then unexpectedly walking into a room full of people and calling it a party. However, over time he learned to love me well by mastering the intimate dinner together or planning an evening in on my birthday. Nothing makes me feel more celebrated than this. In the same way, knowing God and loving him cannot be divorced. The more you study God, the more you learn to love and serve him well. As you grow in the knowledge of God you will be able to celebrate and glorify him in ways he desires and finds pleasing.

Theology Is For ALL Christians

One of my passions is to see theology redeemed in the lives of ordinary disciples. I refuse to believe it’s reserved for brilliant scholars or theology-mongers. It’s for all Jesus-followers. It’s for you! How desperately the church needs good theologians filling its pews today. Can you imagine the transformation of local churches if every Christian became a robust theologian who loved God and people in a biblically informed manner? This may seem like a pie in the sky idea, but it doesn’t have to be. The change begins with you and your local faith family. Take a moment to consider the atmosphere within your home and local church. Does your family and faith family value theological reflection? Have you cultivated an environment that encourages thinking well about God? In what ways are your family and church being intentional about doing theology in the context of community?

You don’t have to be a scholar to begin implementing theological dialogue in these key areas. Take your family for example: If your wife is battling despair, ask how the gospel affects her fight of faith. If you get a bonus at work, ask your family if there is anything in the Bible that informs how you spend it together. If you’re at a stoplight and see a homeless man, talk to your kids about what it means biblically to love and serve someone different from them. Or consider your community group at church. If your group is asked to bring canned goods for a food drive, discuss why Christians should do justice from a biblical standpoint. If someone in your community is struggling with sin discuss what it means to live in the tension of being justified, but not yet glorified. If someone comes to group but not the corporate gathering, discuss why Christians should gather together for worship.

You see, there are hundreds of ways to intentionally practice discipleship through theological reflection in a manner leading to gospel transformation. My hope is that the idea of theology would be redeemed and all would come to see the value that doing theology has for every sphere of life. I echo the prayer of the Apostle Paul asking, “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him” (Eph. 1:17) so that you would come to know him more deeply and be motivated by this knowledge to love, serve, and obey him all of your days.

—

Whitney Woollard has served in ministry alongside her husband Neal for over six years. She holds an undergraduate degree in Biblical Studies from Moody Bible Institute and just finished her Master of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary. She is passionate about equipping disciples to read and study God’s Word well resulting in maturing affections for Jesus and his gospel message. Neal and Whitney currently live in Portland, OR where they love serving the local church. Follow her on Twitter @whitneywoollard.

Carried unto Christ

My children are frequently disobedient—as children tend to be. They got it from their mother, my wife, and . . . from their grandparents. Okay, they got it from me too. But my involvement is more or less irrelevant at this point. So tuck my disobedient children away for a moment. We’ll be returning to this them.

Blessing the Little Children

In developing the theme of discipleship in Luke 18, it has been seen that unceasing prayer in to be honored (18:1-8) as well as the ministerial truth that mercy and humility must be at the root of prayer (18:9-14). In a natural continuation out of Christ’s parable, Luke shows how these elements come into play in practical life. It is at this point in his Gospel, Luke tells the infamous story of Jesus blessing the little children. Since most scholars of the synoptic Gospels presume Luke did not arrange his material chronologically, it is safe to assume that the prayer laden instruction from Jesus is actually tied into this event. As one might expect then, Luke uses some different wording than the other Gospels that helps present some insight to the why of the story,

15 And they were bringing even their babies to Him so that He would touch them, but when the disciples saw it, they began rebuking them. 16 But Jesus called for them, saying, “Permit the children to come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 17 Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” —Luke 18:15-17

The first difference in Luke’s rendition is “infants” (translated “babies” above), so these weren’t just children being brought before Jesus. These babies could not have reached Christ on their own. They were, in fact, carried. This is hardly meaningless. Scripture regularly shows the potential for blessing even for those incapable of understanding what was happening to them. This theme of people being brought to Jesus because of physical infirmity, being ill, or demon possessed is common throughout the Gospels. People of all ages and ailments were physically brought to Jesus because they could not bring themselves.

The second difference in Luke’s rendition is that the babies are brought to be “touched” by Jesus. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus lays hands on the children and prayers (Matt 19:13), but for Mark and Luke the word “touch” is used. This slight word change ties the activity of Jesus back to His numerous healings throughout the gospels. Both Luke and Mark focus intently on how healing occurs when Christ touches (Matthew includes these stories but also emphasizes how Christ can heal with his words). Taken at face value, Luke could be insinuating that these children needed healing but that makes the disciples’ decision even stranger. Instead, it should be read as a general insight that what the Messiah touched was often healed, made clean, and pronounced as purified. And to the disciples this status seemed wasted on babies.

Carried unto Christ

These are the truths of the gospel. People are carried unto Christ because they are spiritually infirmed. It is the real touch of Jesus Christ that purifies people. Christian discipleship should recognize all these things to be true and facilitate them. However, unchecked discipleship can result in the mannerism of the disciples. They “rebuked” the infirmed and those carrying them. Perhaps they were concerned about the Savior’s precious time. Perhaps he was extra tired from the healing or was unable to teach them as much during such days. In either case, the disciples had decided that they were not (yet?) worth of Jesus’ time.

Now reintroduce my disobedient children. As their father before them, they are a rebellious lot. Sinful and fallen decisions are made that should not be made. And yet it would be silly for me to propose that my youngest, Judah, apologize to me and explain why he desires my love and forgiveness. No. To a certain symbolic degree he is infirmed. He cries when punished and does not understand the torments of a fallen world. I cannot wait for him to come to me. I must go to him and reassure him that my forgiveness is there. Sometimes, when he has sinned against his mother I pick him up and take him to her so that she can show him the forgiveness that he does not yet know he needs.

As a parent I am called to make forgiveness, comfort, and love accessible to my children. I do these as a stand-in example of the Father and Son. True Christian discipleship should not make Christ less accessible. This can be done through our attitudes, preferences, and behavior. We can obscure the Lord with our theological language, Bible studies, and commentary quotes. The growing disciple of Christ should be increasingly sensitive and compassionate to the infirmed who cannot bring themselves to Christ and who may not remember their encounter with Christ. For it is in these encounters that Christ touches and heals people for His kingdom.

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Joshua Torrey is a New Mexico boy in an Austin, TX world. He is husband to Alaina and father to Kenzie & Judah and spends his free time studying for the edification of his household. These studies include the intricacies of hockey, football, curling, beer, and theology. You can follow him @benNuwn and read his theological musings and running commentary of the Scriptures at The Torrey Gazette.

Missional Lessons for the Holidays

GOD CREATED HOLIDAYS

Cultural celebrations are not man-made institutions. Like much of God’s creation, holidays can be—and have been—distorted for all sorts of less-than-holy purposes. But what if “Santa” really isn’t an anagram for “Satan”? What if we can we redeem this holiday season, and use it for God’s work?

Seen throughout the Old Testament, and most clearly in Leviticus 23, God commanded His people to pause several times each year, simply to feast and celebrate. Here are far-too-brief summaries of Old Testament Israel’s national holidays:

• The Festival of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) kicked off the Jewish New Year with the blast of a ram’s horn. God’s people gathered as one, as Israel kicked off each year with ten days of feasting, celebrating God, and ceasing work to rest in Him.
• The Day of Atonement was an annual reminder of Israel’s sin and God’s forgiveness. In a solemn service on the most important day of the Jewish year, one ram was killed as a symbol of appeasing God’s wrath, as another symbolized  God’s removal of sin, being sent into the wilderness never to return.
• The Feast of Booths saw Israel praying for her upcoming harvest. To visibly recall God’s past deliverance from Egypt, they lived in tents for a week. As they then returned to their homes—seventeen days in total after gathering for Rosh Hashanah—they celebrated God’s gift of their permanent dwellings, symbolic of His giving them the Promised Land.
• Passover remembers the biggest event in Israel’s history: God’s original rescue of His people, in His plaguing power over Egypt. Israel sacrificed and roasted a lamb, and still tangibly recall God’s work through readings, foods, and glasses of wine.
• Passover kicked off the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days, Israel recalled the speed with which their ancestors fled Egypt the night of the original Passover.
• The First Fruits Offering marked the beginning of the harvest. A day of thanksgiving, the celebration included offering Israel’s best produce to God, and recalling God’s power and grace in sustaining and providing for His people.
• The Feast of Weeks (called Pentecost) again pointed to God’s provision. Another offering made; more feasts occurred; more thanks shared—this time at the end of the wheat harvest.

LESSONS FROM THE STORY OF ISRAEL

This is more than a bit of Jewish history. Each feast foreshadows God’s work in Jesus’ death and resurrection. These celebrations were celebrated by Jews for centuries and by Jesus Himself. And they inform our own celebrations:

First, Leviticus shows that God instituted intentional celebration into the annual rhythm of His people. God’s people ceased from work and partied. They cooked meat—a luxury in those days—and enjoyed good drink. They made music, relaxed, and played together. They laughed and grieved together. Celebrations are right and good.

Celebrations also cut to the heart of mission: God’s people didn’t celebrate by themselves. They included those around them. Even people with different beliefs. Consider this instruction: “You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns.” This idea echoes through the Old Testament Law: “sojourners” were foreigners in Israel who joined the feasts; “servants” from various nations celebrated with God’s people; “strangers” and “aliens” weren’t Israelites but joined their events.

A final Levitical lesson is that people, events, and even milestones themselves were never the focus of Israel’s celebrations. Israel celebrated one thing, in many ways throughout each year: God. They didn’t celebrate grain; they celebrated the Giver of that grain. They didn’t celebrate their power over Pharaoh; they had no such power! They celebrated God’s power. These lessons combine to show us not only that not-yet-believers were invited to Israel’s feasts; they observed—and in ways, even participated—as God’s people celebrated God, on days God created for just that occasion.

REDEEMING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

If Israel—geographically set apart from the rest of the world—publicly celebrated God in the midst of strangers, foreigners, and sojourners, there’s hope for us as we consider holidays. Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25, and God didn’t invent Halloween or Thanksgiving. But these and other annual days have been carved into our culture, to cease work, celebrate, and engage others. Gifts abound in December, giving us an easy chance to surprise coworkers and classmates with cookies or a brief note. And the world still rings in the New Year with gatherings and far more pomp than Israel’s trumpet blast.

Instead of celebrating this Christmas season, New Years Eve, and other occasions alone or with just-Christian friends—and instead of creating “Christian” versions of special events already happening in our city and neighborhood— let’s celebrate these occasions on mission. Let’s display the gospel through generosity, grace, conversation, and joy. And let’s declare the gospel through stories, toasts, and prayers. Sure, many cultural celebrations have long forgotten God. But we haven’t, and we’ve been sent to those who have. God is sovereign, even the fact that someone declared certain days holidays. God uses even the most broken things—and days—for His mission. How can we do the same?

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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: Used with permission from the authors. This is adapted from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers. )

Culturally Literate Evangelism

Cultural shifts have resulted in the collapse of Christendom, an official or unofficial relationship people have with their country and its civil religion. In America, moral views typically associated with Christianity have been replaced by more progressive views associated with libertarianism on marriage, sexuality, and gender. In addition to loosening the American moral fabric, the collapse of Christendom has left behind a rubble of theological understanding. As the dust settles, we can no longer assume that people know what words like Christ, sin, faith, and God mean. For many, these words may no longer carry their original biblical meaning. We need to become culturally literate in order to be evangelistically fluent. If we don’t, the gospel gets lost in translation.

In secular culture people may actually hear us saying teacher for Christ, bad deeds for sin, wishful thinking for faith, or moldable deity for God. Today, it is a mistake to assume theological literacy. If we are to move forward, the Church must develop its ability to listen to new questions people are asking and learn how to translate the gospel into words and concepts that speak to the heart.

The Need for Cultural Literacy

Consider the need for cultural literacy in this story. A church planter in my city planted little wire signs in grassy medians around the city that read “RepentAustin.org.” I’ll admit it’s a pretty gutsy and confrontational tactic, but Jesus did call people to “repent and believe.” Yet, as I thought about this evangelistic approach, a major objection came to mind. These signs did not take into account contemporary understandings associated with the word “repent.” They conjure up images of judgmental people, filled with hatred toward “sinners,” who self-righteously speak words of condemnation. Instead of intriguing people, it probably elicited disinterest and, perhaps, unduly promoted a distorted view of the Gospel.

What makes this way of presenting the Gospel distorted? First, it does not call attention to Jesus — it focuses on a person’s need to change before they even get to hear about Jesus and what He has done. Second, there are strong cultural memories associated with the word, especially in the South, that are connected with a return to good, moral living — again, a response that has nothing to do with Jesus and what he has done. Many youths, when they hear the word “repent,” associate it with things like: stop listening to secular music, stop sleeping with your girlfriend, and start going to Church. This kind of repentance does not involve turning away from trusting in yourself to trust the Savior. It is simply a switch in lifestyles, secular to Christian. You can alter your behavior without altering your savior.

People adopt the trappings of faith—the religious habits, attempts at moral living, even a new Christianized culture that entails wearing a purity ring and listening to Christian music. But this cultural repentance is not a true turning to Christ; it is a turning to Christianity, to a religious subculture.

Slowing Down to Understand

To be effective in our new cultural landscape, we will have to slow down long enough to understand what people hear and how they speak in order to communicate the gospel in intelligible ways. This involves listening to what people think in order to communicate meaningfully what God thinks. This doesn’t require a PhD in Bible or theology. It requires love: sacrificing our time, tweaking our crammed schedules, putting away our canned responses, and actually conversing with people.

People don’t just need to hear a thirty-second gospel presentation. They need to understand why the Gospel is worth believing. To do this, we must learn their language and know their stories. We need to become “culturally literate in order to be gospel fluent, communicating the gospel in words and idioms that make sense to the people we talk to.

Why Do People Find the Gospel Unbelievable? from Jonathan Dodson on Vimeo.

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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, The 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

Jonathan’s new book is The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing (resource website here). You can also get his free ebook “Four Reasons Not to Share Your Faith.”

Finding Release From Our Spiritual Mistresses

God’s intention is to restore believers in Christ and turn them into new people. “If anyone is in Christ,” the Scripture says, “he is a new creation. The old has gone and the new has come.” As Christians, it is our job to cooperate with this new creation vision for our lives. Our motivation for embracing newness of life in Jesus is quite different than moralistic motivation. Religious moralists obey God’s rules to feel morally straight and morally superior, and also to earn applause from God, from others, and even from themselves. Christians, on the other hand, are able to obey God precisely because they don’t have to.

Let me explain that one.

If you are a Christian—that is, if you have anchored your trust in the perfect life and substitutionary death of Jesus on your behalf, then you need to know that God smiles over you before you lift a finger to do anything good. Christianity is different than moralism. In that unlike moralism, God’s embrace comes to us at the beginning of our journey versus at the end of our journey. He approves of us not because we are good people, but because Jesus was a truly good person in our stead. His moral straightness, his righteousness, and beauty have been laid upon us as a gift. That, and that alone, is the reason we obey . . . because it makes us want to obey. God does not decide to love us because we first loved him. No, we love God because he first loved us. That is biblical Christianity.

How idolatry works

Imagine you are a married woman and your husband tells you he wants to start dating around. “It’s not that I don’t love you,” he says. “I’m not saying that I want a divorce. You are extremely important to me. We have been through so much together. But I just think that my life would be more complete if I could also date some other women—play the field a little bit, you know?”

Absurd as this may sound, this is precisely what we do to God whenever we disobey him. Every act of disobedience flows from a desire for something or someone besides God to be our first love, our true north, our reason for being. Each of us has his/her own unique potential mistresses—whether money, power, cleanliness, control, relationships, material things, entertainment, or even a spouse or children. Whenever anything becomes more essential to us than God himself (by the way, anything is usually a good thing), it becomes an idol. According to God, our true and everlasting Husband, we become spiritual adulterers. An idol is any person or idea, any created thing that captures our deepest affections and loyalties and will—and in so doing steals our attention away from God. An idol is anything that becomes more precious to us than him. It’s not that we love the thing (whatever it is) too much. Rather, it’s that we love God too little in comparison to it.

Idolatry is the sin beneath every other sin

Idolatry is the root beneath all sin and beneath every choice we ever make to go our own way instead of following Jesus in faith and obedience. Sin, ultimately, is not a matter of behavior, but a matter of desire.

We always obey that which we desire the most.

When we desire something more than we desire God, we will obey that something if ever and whenever we are faced with a choice to obey God or to obey it. So this is what keeps us from being good in the purest sense. Our distorted over-desires escort us into the arms of adulterous lovers, pseudo-saviors, counterfeit Jesuses that put a spell on us and make them appear more life-giving than Jesus, our one true love.

How do we do this? Thanks to David Powlison and his insightful essay, Idols of the Heart and Vanity Fair, there are several diagnostic questions that can help us effectively identify and name our specific spiritual mistresses:

• What do I feel I cannot survive or function without? What do I feel I must have in order to enjoy life, be acceptable as a person, etc.? What are the things I am terrified of losing or obsessed about having?
• Where do I spend my time and money with the least amount of effort? The things we give time and money to most effortlessly are absolutely the things that we worship and serve. They are the things that we believe in our hearts will give our lives the most meaning.
• What do I think and talk about the most? Where do my thoughts go most quickly and most instinctively when I am alone in the car, when I awake, when I am alone in a quiet, undistracted place? As Archbishop William Temple once said, “Your religion is your solitude.”
• Which biblical commands am I most reluctant to obey? What do I treasure so much that, if it is threatened, I will disobey God to keep it? What is so essential to me that I will disobey God to get it?
• What things anger me the most? What kinds of people, things, or circumstances irritate me the most, and what about these people, things, or circumstances give them this kind of power over me? What, if it happened, would strongly tempt me to curse God or push Him out of my life? (Remember Job’s wife. See Job 2:9)
• How would I fill in the blank? I cannot and will not be happy unless.

Dismantling idols after they are identified

Idols are dismantled when they are first exposed and then replaced. Dismantling our idols requires that we labor in our study and meditation of Scripture to understand the many ways that Jesus fills our emptiness in a much more adequate, life-giving way than any Jesus-substitute we may be tempted to worship and serve. Replacing our spiritual mistresses means giving them a back seat to Jesus in our hearts and lives. Basically, every idol (and every sin) traces back to a self-salvation strategy. We use this strategy every time we attempt to replace something that only Jesus can provide, with a counterfeit. What does this mean for us?

It means that we must face head-on our own idols, and humbly admit exactly how the things we love more than Jesus will reduce us, empty us of ultimate meaning, and even destroy us. We must admit that our “over-desires” cannot bring us the lasting wholeness, happiness, or fulfillment (salvation!) we desire. Only Jesus can. Ironically, only when we love Jesus more than these things, we actually end up enjoying these things to a much fuller extent! As CS Lewis once said, “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.”

When our love for Jesus exceeds our love for other things, we end up loving, cherishing, and enjoying these other things even more than we would if we had loved these other things more than we love Jesus. However, if we put the gifts in the place of the Giver, our enjoyment of the gifts ends up being spoiled. Why is this so? It is so because we are made in the image of God. The human soul is so magnificent that only God is big enough to fill it. As Pascal is famous for saying, “Only God is able to fill the God-shaped vacuum in the human heart.”

Be possessive of anything but God—a romantic interest, a career, a net worth, a life goal—and you will never possess that thing. Instead, it will eventually possess you. It will have you and it will hold you . . . around the neck! This is why we are much better off when we learn to pray like the Puritan who had nothing to his name but one piece of bread and a glass of water: “What? All of this and Jesus Christ too!”

Redirecting our deepest loves

Christian growth is about learning to see clearly that Jesus will fill our hearts in much more adequate and enduring ways than any Jesus-counterfeit ever will. Using Scripture, we must immerse our minds and stir our affections with the many ways in which Jesus delivers fully and truly on the specific promises—especially the promises that our specific idols falsely make to us. For example, if we thirst for approval, only the unwavering smile of God over us through Jesus can free us from enslavement to human approval. Or, if we hunger for secure provision, only the God’s sure promise to take care of us like he does the birds and the lilies can free us from our enslavement to money and things.

So what about you? What are your spiritual mistresses? How are they working out for you?

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for his righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

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Scott Sauls, a graduate of Furman University and Covenant Seminary, is foremost a son of God and the husband of one beautiful wife (Patti), the father of two fabulous daughters (Abby and Ellie), and the primary source of love and affection for a small dog (Lulu). Professionally, Scott serves as the Senior Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Prior to Nashville, Scott was a Lead and Preaching Pastor, as well as the writer of small group studies, for Redeemer Presbyterian of New York City. Twitter: @scottsauls.

Originally posted at www.scottsauls.com. Used with permission.

The Presence of Advent

The Greatest Fear


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

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

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

Presence on the Way

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

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

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

Advent as a Missional Teacher

This is what Advent points us towards. A seasonal reminder of presence. An annual celebration of God’s personal intervention and presence with us. Advent teaches us that God is with us and that God is for us. Advent shows us God-in-action working for his glory and for our good.  Our reflection of this reality can not leave us to merely feel good about God with us, it must propel us forward to display the God whose image we bear.

Advent becomes a missional teacher to us as we consider that God shares life with broken, messed up, needy, people of disrepute. As we increasingly consider God with us, we must ask ourselves are we displaying this reality to the world? Are we showing lonely people God with us by our presence with them? Are we enacting this good news for the same broken, messed up, needy, people of disrepute that God with us hung out with?

As much as Advent is a season for gathering with family and friends, for the church it is a missional launching point for us to inhabit and take the gospel to the world. The world sits and waits year after year for a savior. They make functional saviors of sex, power, possessions, comfort, and a billion other idols they can find. Yet, all the while being let down year after year by their little, failing, and distant gods. The world is waiting, the Savior has come, the church must be present!

Practically this boils down to one thing—be with people. In the same way God became present in the world, he sends us to go and be with the world. Be at the parties, the Christmas programs, the neighborhood celebrations, the family dinners, and the company gift-exchange. As you are with people, love them. Be the presence that the lonely, lost, waiting world is so eager to receive. Show them their Savior through your love, by the way you honor them, give them dignity, listen to their stories, and hear their hurts.

A rocket-science degree isn’t mandatory, just ask the Holy Spirit to show you someone that he can display his presence to through your presence with them, and then follow his lead. Go be present with the world because God is present with you. The world waits for God with us and we are blessed to display that God is with us!

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Jeremy Writebol(@jwritebol) has been training leaders in the church for over thirteen years. He is the author of everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present (GCD Books, 2014) and writes at jwritebol.net. He lives and works in Plymouth, MI as the Campus Pastor of Woodside Bible Church.

3 Ways to Battle Spiritual Depression

Many people today struggle with depression in varying degrees and for a variety of reasons. Some people take medication. Some participate in counseling. Regardless of the cause of depression, the gospel can provide comfort and relief for those who are hurting. I want to look at Psalm 42-43 with a view to understand who God is and how he is a help to those who struggle with depression and discouragement. This post will conclude with a look at three ways to battle spiritual depression with the gospel. Solomon rightly notes in Ecclesiastes 1:18 that with much knowledge and wisdom comes sorrow. This means that as we grow in Christ, we may experience seasons in our walk with God where everything in our lives seems to be down in the dumps. That last sentence in my opinion is a neglected truth in Christianity today. While we are rightly taught that we are to be happy in Christ and enjoy him, it is also important to note that the Christian life is not about living on the mountaintops without also living in the valleys of daily life.

Hope in God

The writer in Psalm 42 points out that the one whose soul is indwelt by the Spirit “pants” for God. This means that those who love God are exhorted to “hope in God” (Psalm 42:5; Romans 5:5). The Psalmist here is describing an intimate relationship with God that Christ came to fulfill in John 14:21. He more fully and deeply can empathize with our feelings since he experienced the full range of human emotions but did not sin as the God-man (Psalm 42:14; Mark 15:35).

The sons of Korah refer to God with three names rich in redemptive significance: God, salvation, and rock. Because this God is living, the psalmist hopes that his thirst for satisfaction in worship will be quenched (Psalm 42:4-5). Christ personally came to bring this ever-living God—and the fullness of his joy—to spiritually dead people (Matt. 22:32; John 15:11; 17:13). The particular aspect of “salvation” that the psalmist pines for—the very presence of God (Psalm 42:2-3)—is precisely what the Savior provided. The psalmist needs around-the-clock protection (v.8); Jesus promises it (Matthew 28:20). The Psalmist mourns for a “rock” to give stability to his life (Psalm 42:9); Christ became the cornerstone (Matthew 21:42; Eph. 2:13-22). If we suffer from spiritual depression, we can find relief in the Savior anticipated in this psalm. We must call our souls to build their confidence on the living Rock who stabilizes, protects, and provides the only basis for joy.

Vocabulary for Our Deepest Emotions

The Psalter in Psalm 43 provides all the vocabulary necessary to articulate our deepest emotions. This Psalm encourages God’s people to express without fear even our disappointments with God. Though God has not rejected him, the psalmist feels as though he has. But God uses even our mistaken beliefs about him to draw us to himself. In Christ, God will ultimately show us the relief from despair for which the psalmist longs (“salvation”). By committing his spirit into God’s hands, the suffering servant experienced vindication (v.1; Isa. 50:7-9; Luke 23:46). Because the Lord upheld him in his righteousness, his “light” could not be overwhelmed, and the “truth” he personified could not be discredited (Psalm 43:3; John 1:5; John 18:37). After Christ’s life provided justification, he was raised in holiness and later ascended to Gods “altar” (Psalm 43:3-4). And there he has received with “joy” the inheritance of the nations (v.4; Acts 4:25-26).

Those who are united to Christ by faith may anticipate the same trajectory of “hope in God” (Psalm 43:5). While many languages do not have an equivalent expression to “my God,” this Hebrew poet assures God’s people that he offers himself to be possessed by faith (John 20:17). Complete consignment to Jesus as our Redeemer will result in vindicating righteousness, guiding light, liberating truth, and emboldening access to Gods throne in prayer (Romans 3:21-26; Ephesians 4:20-24; John 8:32; Hebrews 4:16)

THREE WAYS TO BATTLE DEPRESSION

First, fight spiritual depression with the gospel. The gospel is the power of God and provides the fuel by which we go out and face our day with all of its challenges by the grace of God. Whenever I’m feeling discouraged or depressed I don’t run to my books. Conversely, I spend significant time being quiet in prayer with God preaching the truth about who he is, what he is like, and who Jesus is focusing on what he has accomplished for me in his death, burial, and resurrection.  I have also found it helpful to note how he continues to move in my life to grow me to the image of Jesus. In a sense, battling discouragement and depression with the gospel is just another way of applying the reality of who I am in Christ given that fundamental truth alone helps me to get to the bottom of the issue. While I realize some people do seriously struggle with depression and discouragement (if that is you I encourage you to seek professional Christian counseling) what has helped me more than anything else is preaching the gospel to myself.

Second, realize you don’t fight spiritual depression alone. The Bible resoundingly teaches that in the abundance of counselors there is wisdom (Proverbs 11:4). Don’t fake your Christianity acting like everything is okay when it isn’t. Be real about where you are. For most of us that will mean being honest with our close Christian friends about what is going on in our hearts and allowing them to minister to us. On multiple occasions I’ve had to call on close friends to listen, pray, and encourage me. The more you realize that you are not in this Christian life alone and that we desperately need each other, the better. The Christian life is not meant to be lived in isolation but in community with God’s people. Living in community with God’s people and having godly friends to pray for and encourage me has been a huge blessing from God to help me do serious battle against discouragement and depression.

Finally, battling spiritual depression may be spiritual warfare. Some of you struggle with depression and discouragement because a battle is being waged requiring you to take up the full armor of God. Rather than succumbing to the lies of Satan, you need to stand firm in the grace of God and take hold of the “nowness” of the gospel that is your identity as adopted sons and daughters of God. Battling depression and discouragement is hard, but preaching the gospel, applying the truth of who you are in Christ, living in community, as well as knowing when and how you get discouraged are keys in the fight against discouragement and depression.

Whether you struggle with discouragement or depression a little bit or a lot, please don’t suffer in silence. There is hope and healing in Jesus, a Redeemer who is not far from you but near to you. Know that God loves you, sent his Son Jesus Christ to die, rise, ascend, and to serve as our High Priest and Intercessor. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit has called you to the community of saints to hear his Word, to call on his name, and to grow in his grace. Grow deep and wide in the gospel by standing firm in the gospel, not being afraid to be real and honest about your struggles. Moreover, always have a view to lean on your brother and sisters in Christ in time of need so that together we may show the world his unfailing and unchanging love that flows to God’s people from the throne of his grace.

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Dave Jenkins is a servant of Christ, husband to Sarah, writer, and Seattle sports fan. He serves as the Executive Director of Servant of Grace Ministries, the Executive Editor of Theology for Life magazine, the Book Promotions Specialist at Cross Focused Reviews and serves in a variety of capacities as a member of Ustick Baptist Church in Boise, Idaho.

Originally published at Servant of Grace. Used with Permission.

The Legacy of a Disciple-Maker

Ode to a Mentor

My mentor’s name is David. We met at a local pastor’s gathering where he took voluntary interest in me. I needed a mentor and he wanted to make disciples by caring for the next generation of pastors. For the next year and a half, David poured into me. He taught me the importance of sharing life stories, hunting one other’s sin, and giving each other grace.

1. We shared life stories together.

One of the first things David and I did at our monthly meetings was share our life stories. David wanted to model life-on-life discipleship, and the best way to start this was by retelling our histories. This meant we shared big events, little events, and even those embarrassing moments we didn’t want anyone to know about in a stream of consciousness. It lasted ninety minutes to two hours. The who listened asked three questions at the end:

• What did you hear as David told his story?
• Is there any place where your story intersects with David’s story?
• What would you like to tell David in light of his story?

I remember David encouraging the pattern of shepherding leadership in my life. That meant a lot to me as I was approaching pastoral ministry. I encouraged his fatherly discipling of many men throughout his pastorate. It did not take long to become true for my relationship with him as well. Over the coming months we continued to talk about pastoral ministry, family, and God together. For as much as we shared life together, I wish we had shared even more.

2. We hunted each other’s sin.

Sharing our life stories with each other provided an opportunity to confess many of the ways we’ve failed. We were open about our sins so that we could hold each other accountable in our sin patterns going forward. This included anything from asking each other the blunt questions to searching out each other’s motivations. The purpose was always to help bring healing.

As we were beginning this fight against sin together, David pulled Timothy Keller’s book The Meaning of Marriage off the shelf. He read a quote about granting each other a “hunting license” to hunt out sin in each other’s life. There were only a handful of people he’d given this license too, and now I was one of them. He, of course, claimed a hunting license for my life.

David didn’t use his license often, and I only used mine once jokingly on him, but I was glad he had it. Instead of causing me to hide my sins when I was around him, it helped me open up so that he could shine some light on my darkness. This light was a mixture of first admonishment followed by grace.

3. We gave each other grace.

What I admire most about David’s discipleship of me was his continual reminder of my need for God’s grace. He helped me not only understand the gospel, but relish the grace within the gospel. I am a sinner and that’s just how it is for now. But my great savior Christ Jesus has come to save me because he absolutely loves me. He has gone so far as to trade his spotless record for mine, so that now God sees me as he sees his Son. Holy. Righteous. Clean. What better news is there than this?

David was especially good at making grace practical to my everyday. Instead of wallowing in my sin, he taught me to release my guilt as I prayed Psalm 51:10 “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” When I shared with him how I wanted to be more satisfied and joyful in Christ, he pointed me to the book Pure Pleasure by Gary Thomas. There I began to learn all the ways God has provided for his people’s joy.

My mentor lived a life of grace. When he was diagnosed with stage four cancer, nothing about that grace-filled life changed. He went much quicker than expected, but I got to write him a letter before he passed. In that letter it was my turn to remind my mentor of his need for God’s grace. His wife shared through mass-email that she had been reading letters to David from all the men he had mentored throughout the years. He would just listen and say, “My boy, that's my boy.” I don’t cry often, but I cried when I read this. Even at the end, my mentor loved his sons.

My mentor’s legacy of discipleship lives on.

I’ve tried to take the model David gave me for mentoring, and use it as a framework for discipling others. Already I’ve experienced the blessings of sharing life stories, the responsibility of having a hunting license, and the joy of giving the gospel grace. I’ve seen others grow in ways David must have seen me grow. I want to be the type of mentor David was to me. He loved me and was an enormous example of Jesus to me. He is now present with the Lord, but the impact of his discipleship lives on. Praise God for mentors.

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Jonathan M. Romig (M.Div., Gordon-Conwell) is the associate pastor at Immanuel Church in Chelmsford Massachusetts (CCCC). He blogs at PastorRomig.blogspot.com and recently finished teaching New City Catechism to his adult Sunday school class and self-published his first ebook How To Give A Christian Wedding Toast.