Claire Westbrook 10/27/15 Claire Westbrook 10/27/15

Overcoming Anxiety

Three years ago, I had my first panic attack. The panic attack continued off and on for 5 days, I had a moment of revelation from the Lord and felt immediate physical relief. I continued my battle with anxiety, sought counseling, prayer, and anything else I could get my hands on and am now in a completely different spot than I ever imagined I could be. Although going through that was truly awful, I'm better for it and I'm grateful to be able to empathize with others who are struggling. Before all of this, my perception of mental illness was completely inaccurate. It seemed weak and, honestly, just kind of silly. Why can't people just get a grip? I know that kind of perspective is shared among many people who have never experienced a mental illness or walked alongside someone who has. Sometimes it's because of a lack of compassion, but sometimes it's just because they don't know any better.

Sure, we all deal with anxiety on some level. But when it stops your life, takes over your brain, causes you physical symptoms and pain, and clouds your mind with fear—that's when you know you have a problem that needs serious attention. That's a mental illness, not just a little case of worrying too much.

By the grace of God, I am currently in a place where I don't deal with anxiety on a daily basis. It's very situational and even then, I feel capable of managing it and coping. Since I'm on the other side of it, I wanted to share the areas to examine and consider when overcoming anxiety. I'm not a doctor and I'm not a therapist, but I am a person who has been in the dark and come into the light.

SPIRITUAL LAYERS

In most cases, a spiritual aspect is involved with anxiety. A lot of the time, anxiety is our body's response to holding on too tightly to too much. That can mean a lot of things. We can hold on too tightly to our children, our husband, our future, our status, our job, our financial situation, or a specific problem going on.

From what I've experienced, anxiety comes from a loss of control that we thought we had. But the reality is that the only control we really have in life is over our own decisions—our own responses to what life deals us. We cannot control the safety of our children or the security of our job or the outcome of the future. This is why it's so important to know where we place our trust.

Now, one of the most frustrating things is when Christians think that a good sermon on worry or a list of bible verses will cure anxiety. It's just not true. So, while I am saying that there is a spiritual element that needs to be dealt with, it is not the quick fix for a mental illness.

MEDICATION

In some cases, medicine is needed. All I will say about that is that even with a medication, I would strongly encourage you to still seek out counsel and help for the anxiety or depression or whatever mental illness you're struggling with. This is not something you want to let linger. Treating a mental illness solely with medication is only part of the process. You should dig deeper into it, whether that is with medication or not.

GUARD YOUR HEART

You might find at the onset of anxiety and depression you are not in a place to guard your heart. It's like your brain is locked in one spot and can't get out. Sometimes you're just stuck dealing with the shock of it all. That's where people come in. After a few months of trying to move through this on my own, I decided I needed to find a counselor. I needed someone who I could trust to guide me when I didn’t feel I could trust myself. I also found rest and understanding within my community group at church. Many of our meetings ended with me in the center of the room receiving prayer. They were faithful to pray for me when I didn’t have the strength or the words to pray. They knew my story and were aware of my triggers. They could guard my heart for me even when I was unable to. It wasn’t until after I felt some real healing had begun that I could move into a place where I was capable of guarding my own heart.

Guarding our hearts is something we have to actively practice. It helps keep us from going back to that dark place. It's also a great preventative habit to start now even if you've never had serious issues with anxiety. An awful thought may come to mind, but we are in charge of whether or not we let it spin out of control into a completely false fear-based reality. We choose what we let into our minds and hearts.

"Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life." Proverbs 4:23

I like this quote from a book study I did a few years ago:

"When you have a thought, it lingers in your brain for anywhere from thirty seconds to several minutes, and then it seeps into your heart. During those seconds or minutes you can take the negative thoughts captive and deny their entry into your heart ... Thoughts will reach your heart either way, but you have a choice to hide them in your heart or throw them in the trash." Gary Smalle, Guarding Your Child's Heart

You get to choose what you think about each day.

In my opinion, our society is bad at this. It seems like we mope around as these weak mental beings.

I can't help it.

I just fell out of love with her and that's why I cheated.

It's what comes naturally, so I did it.

I need to do what's right for me and what feels good.

That's just who I am and I can't change that.

I'm not talking about being true to yourself versus being like someone else. I'm talking about fighting for what's right and best versus giving in to every little desire or fleeting thought we have.

"And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you." —Philippians 4:8-9

Take charge and push out the dark thoughts. So what does this look like? For me, it looked like stopping trails of fearful thoughts in my head and choosing to think about something else. It looked like focusing on exactly what I was doing at every single moment of the day instead of allowing anxiety of the future or "what ifs" to take over. It looked like choosing not to watch the news or other shows and movies that I knew would take my heart to a place it didn't need to be. It looked like getting up to do something different with my body if I felt the physical symptoms of anxiety start to rise up in my chest. Baby step by baby step, I replaced negative or fear-based thoughts with truth. Over time, all of those baby steps added up.

GET HELP

If you suffer from anxiety (or any mental illness) and haven't sought any help, consider this your sign to get help. Get help! You can have the strongest support system around you and still need a professional counselor. Everyone can benefit from counseling, but people who are weighed down by anxiety most definitely need it. You may not think it will help you, but it will. You may be nervous about talking to a stranger, but I think you'll find it's easier than you imagined. You may worry that asking for help is a sign of your weakness, but it is in the weakest times that you are able to become who the Lord is making you to be.

Do not put off getting help. You are valued, you are important, you are worth the money, you are worth finding childcare. It's critical that you talk to someone.

When it comes to anxiety, I know I'm not alone. When it was all happening I thought I might be, I quickly realized I wasn't as soon as I started sharing my story on my blog back in 2012. So many people deal with some sort of mental illness. Sometimes it's a lifelong struggle and sometimes it's situational. It looks different for all of us. But a lot of people are suffering mentally and you need to know you're not the only one.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by any sort of mental illness, seek help immediately. You need people to walk through this with you. Never in my life have I been so carried by the community of believers around me. There may be a long, exhausting road ahead of you, but there is hope. There is light on the other side.

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Claire Westbrook is a stay-at-home mom to two kids, Duke and Nova, and has been married to her husband, Colt, for 7 years. When she's not changing diapers and assigning timeouts, she enjoys teaching piano lessons, songwriting, and blogging at My Devising. You can follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

GCD Editors 10/25/15 GCD Editors 10/25/15

9 Ways to Pursue Spirit-Led Leadership

Leadership is a tough concept to grasp, especially for those that are in or aspire to leadership positions. There are endless perspectives, books, commentaries, and motivational content on how to become a “better” leader. Much of the information is helpful yet it’s insufficient if your aim is to get beyond worldly wisdom. For Christians, Jesus promises much more—to be personally and practically lead by the Spirit as you lead in your homes and workplaces. Acts 1:5 says, “For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Acts presents this beautiful pattern of conversions where the eventual result is being sealed with the Spirit. Look at Acts 2 where the Spirit is poured out at Pentecost. The power of the Spirit in that setting was astonishing, amazing, and bewildering (Acts 2: 6-7). To the onlooker, the role of the Spirit is incredible because the disciples are able to do things that they could never do relying on their own power. As a young Christian, I had to work this out and learn what it meant to have been baptized by the Spirit. Personally and practically, Spirit-led leadership is important. I’m a husband, my wife and I have 4 young children, and I’m the CEO of a fast-growing company with 50+ employees. The truth is, by my own strength, I’m insufficient and under qualified. Yet God has called me to these things, and it’s in these things that I submit to him on a daily basis. Spirit-led leadership is not a one-time concept you just grasp. It’s a daily fight that requires diligence, prayer, and seeking the Lord’s will for all of your life.

As a leader, there’s no shortage of issues to work through. I’d argue that leaders are making hundreds of influential decisions on an annual basis. Often times, if you’re leading, your decisions are affecting many. Whether you call it your conscience or not, you will often know what “feels” right in certain situations. In every tough decision that I have to make, there’s usually a very clear answer as to what’s right and good. It’s not often an easy decision, yet there is a right decision to be made. This requires the leader to be mindful and receptive to what the Spirit is doing in their hearts and minds. In Ed Welch's book, Addictions, A Banquet in the Grave, he speaks of this attentiveness. He gives the analogy that a soldier can hear a twig snap because they’re so alert and aware of what’s happening around them. That’s what Spirit-led leadership is like. It demands we stay alert.

In my study of the Old Testament, I’ve noticed an interesting pattern. Leaders succeed because the Lord allows their success. Typically, failure results from disregarding godly wisdom and counsel because of pride and/or idol worship. Build in time to study 2 Chronicles and you’ll get a front row seat into leadership successes and failures. Brothers and sisters, this is not an obscure pattern that we should overlook. Whether in your homes or workplaces, allow others to speak into your life. Let your guard down and allow the Spirit to work through other godly influences in your life. What’s the worst thing that can happen? They’ll find out that you’re a sinner? For the sinner, there’s grace. There’s a Father that loves us so much, that he sent his Son to be the propitiation of our sins. We are washed by the blood of the Lamb and that’s good news to the aspiring leader!

In an effort to share how leadership failures have shaped my wife and I, I wanted to share nine stories and situations that we had to work through. I really struggled to get through these situations, so I’m calling you to learn from my mistakes and the pattern of repentance.

1. Pray through decisions and be attentive to what the Spirit is imprinting on your heart and mind during prayer.

Remember, prayer does not always move the hands of God. It often shapes us and changes our hearts so that our will aligns with his. I’ve also learned to commit huge decisions to prayer for a period of time then to make a decision at the end of that period. I’ve worked with so many ineffective leaders because they’re indecisive. Pray and fast for a period of time then make your decision. I found myself paralyzed by indecisiveness until our CFO started encouraging us to set deadlines for decision making. This came after periods of time where I was not making tough decisions that I had to make.

2. Invite godly leaders and mentors into your life.

The unexamined life is not worth living said Socrates. Godly leaders invite counsel and feedback. They’re also rooted enough in their identity in Christ that the feedback shapes them into more effective leaders rather than defeating and discouraging them. One of my most trusted advisors is our CFO. He’s an elder in the church and provides invaluable counsel and leadership to us. I also have a Gospel Coach. These are men that constantly carry the burden of leadership with my wife and I. I am incredibly thankful for them even when I hate what they have to say! My natural inclination as a sinner is to remove these influences so that I can have my way. I did that for a while yet it doesn’t works if you want to have an impact for the Kingdom.

3. Leaders shape and influence other leaders.

Model repentance to those that you’re entrusted to lead. We need godly influences and role models. While you’re doing this, remember that God does not need you. That’s right, you’re invited to participate by the King, but you’re a dime a dozen. Stay humble my friends.

4. Serve well.

Never settle for allowing others to serve you, especially if they're entrusted to you and you're responsible for leading them well. Practically, get off the sofa and love your wife by doing the dishes, starting the laundry, or making dinner. Make time for that employee that really needs you to affirm them in their work. Never believe the lie that you’re so busy that you’re unable to create space for depth in relationships, especially for those that you’ve been entrusted to serve. Three years ago my employees were constantly telling everyone how busy I was because I was not making time for them. I was lazy and undisciplined in my schedule, which made it appear like I was busier than I was. Be disciplined in your schedule and serve those that God has entrusted to your care. That’s what a good shepherd does. If you need help with your schedule, find tools that other godly leaders have used. There’s a gamut of good resources available.

5. As Jesus did, retreat and take time to meditate in silence.

Often God speaks mightily when you’re quiet and receptive to what he’s communicating. I used to believe the lie that I needed to “do” more and sitting around was not acceptable. What I failed to remember was God’s established rhythm for rest and solitude. Find sacred time and space to pray and meditate but keep yourself from becoming legalistic. Good leaders are flexible and can adapt well when unexpected things come your way because they will.

6. When there seems to be two choices or decisions and you’re not sure which one to make, consider this: God is a good Father that loves to give good gifts.

Maybe he’s giving you the choice. Maybe it’s like taking your kiddos to the toy store and saying “Which one do you want, you could have either?” My Gospel Coach and I worked through this exact scenario just this month. That’s what he said to us verbatim. There’s two really good choices and both honor the Lord. The question really is, what do we want? This goes back to making decisions and not allowing yourself to become indecisive.

7. Be ready to make tough decisions when the Spirit leads.

I remember three years ago when we had an attorney advise us against paying drive time to our staff (they drive to their clients). Legal counsel was “That’s not necessary, you’re protected under the law against having to pay them.” Godly counsel was different. Wisdom says, “Pay your employees for their time, even if you’re not legally obligated. The result will be fruitful because you’ll rightly communicate to your employees that you value them and their time.” That decision affected my wife and I personally because we knew those resources would come directly off what we were paid. Be ready to make tough decisions and know that the Lord honors those that walk upright in heart.

8. Allow yourself to fail.

Failure is feedback and serves as a learning experience. We’re shaped in part by the consequences in our lives. Certain actions and decisions are strengthened by the success that follows, while others are informative due to failure. Learn from failure and document what God is teaching you through those experiences.

9. Think sustainability and listen to the Spirit’s prompting to slow down and reevaluate your pace.

I felt the Spirit calling us to steward our time better, yet ignored it until it became really unhealthy in our lives. If you’re going to be effective, you need to maintain a sustainable pace. I’ve failed miserably at this and have learned so much as a result. Once more, it took godly counsel and wisdom to redeem our chaotic lives and schedules. I can accomplish more today than I did before, yet I maintain a healthier pace, one that allows for rest, leisure, and ample time for the most important, not just the urgent things. Lastly, sustainability involves having established boundaries. Dr. Henry Cloud has a book called The One Life Solution. This was the most influential read in my life as a husband, father, and CEO. I’d highly recommend it if you’re struggling with sustaining as a leader because of boundary issues.

Spirit-led leadership is attainable. It’s not perfect nor is it easy. It’s what we’re called to as leaders, whether you’re leading in your home or workplace or in any other context for that matter. We know the Lord works mightily in those who hunger and thirst for him, so let’s be leaders who wholeheartedly seek the Lord.

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Rob Fattal serves as CEO and BCBA in high-touch boutique firms providing educational services to children. He started his career as a credentialed teacher and served in both the public school system and at the university level. He and his wife have 4 kiddos of their own and have led and coached MCs and MC leaders. Ultimately, they love the church and hope to serve it well.

Brad Watson 10/19/15 Brad Watson 10/19/15

4 Lessons for Making Disciples from Jan Hus

Editor: In our Family History Series we are seeking to understand how Christians of the past have pursued making disciples. We want to connect the church’s current efforts to make, mature, and multiply disciples to its historical roots as well as encourage the church to learn from her rich past. So far in our series:

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Yesterday I meandered through Prague with my friend Nuno. Nuno used to be a student of my father’s in Lisbon, Portugal, and we now oddly find ourselves sharing a few days together in Prague, his adopted city. Prague is everything I thought it would be: craftsmanship in every detail of the city—the rails, the sewer caps, the windows, the roofs, the palaces, and the cathedrals. We walked through cramped cathedrals with thousands of others who could barely get enough space to take photos. We walked over the Charles Bridge, passed snake handlers, beggars, artists, and tourists rubbing statues for good luck and blessings. We escaped the crowds when we went to the cemetery of the Jews and the oldest standing synagogue in Europe. It was preserved, unlike the jewish people in Prague, during world War II because Hitler wanted it to be a museum or monument to the extinct race. On our walk, I learned the mixed history of this city. It was central in trading, the arts, and religion. Now it’s central in human sex trading, the arts, and atheism—the brand of atheism that refuses to even think about God.

Then we stepped into a nondescript building donated and built by a shopkeeper where the Bible was to be preached in Czech. I found this fact both inspiring and disappointing, what were all the other cathedrals for?

An old Czech woman walked us into the vast silent chapel where, 700 years ago commoners, business owners, nobleman, and university students pilled in by the thousands to hear the gospel in their language, many for the first time. They say it seats 3,000 people. Historians note it was normal for upwards of 5,000 to gather there. To the side of the pulpit where Jan Hus preached the gospel is a deep, ancient well. Literally. On the walls you can see slight remnants of hymns etched in stone where people sang the gospel in their language. The room itself was powerful. More powerful than the massive gothic cathedrals crammed with tourists, because of the significance of what happened in that space and in the souls of thousands hundreds of years ago.

My friend Nuno and I, who hope to give our lives to seeing everyone in our cities experience the deep well and life found in Christ, sat quietly meditating on the reality that we wouldn't be where we are in life without the ministry and discipleship of Jan Hus.

Jan Hus was a Czech priest and a professor at the Prague University which was established by Charles IV, the Holy Roman Emperor. Hus was given the privilege of being the preacher of the Chapel of Bethlehem where he was charged with delivering sermons in the language of the people. This is what Jan Hus did and the impact was astounding. It’s amazing how such a simple act can have massive global, historical implications and how at the time it was seen as a small charitable work of an entrepreneur.

As Hus preached the gospel, people responded. As he declared the gift and mercy of Christ, his convictions hardened against the system which kept people from receiving that. Jan Hus stood as a sign post in one of the Church’s major forks in the road. Would the church be given to the lives of everyday people? Would she include them or would she be kept exclusively for the ruling class? Hus, emboldened by the fruit of the gospel, knew instinctively that it should be given to the people. He worked to have the Bible and his works published into Czech and allowed every believer to take part in communion—to drink the cup and eat the bread for themselves.

Jan Hus came into the reformation movement after Wycliff and before Luther and Calvin. On my tour through his small apartment attached to the chapel, I saw a piece of art that depicted Wycliff lighting a spark with stones, Hus lighting a candle, and Luther carrying a torch. Hus stands firmly as a major player in our family history. Luther would say later that he was Hus’ “disciple” despite the time and place that separated them.

In the fall of 1414, Hus was called to attend the counsel of Constance and speak before the rulers of Europe and the Catholic Church about his beliefs and teachings. He was granted safe passage, but once he arrived and shared his beliefs they demanded he recant his teachings and his reformation ways. Hus was soon put into prison to await a trial. At the trial, he refused to recant unless they could prove his error through the Scriptures. In the summer of 1415, he was condemned a heretic and sentenced to death. He was burned publicly at the stake in the center of town and in the shadow of the cathedral. Dying, he sang hymns to God as worship before breathing his last as flames blew in his face.

Here are just four lessons on gospel-centered discipleship I learned from Jan Hus in the old city of Prague:

1. Unleash the Artists to worship God through their work in the Cities

“I entreat all artisans faithfully to follow their craft and take delight in it.”

This is so evident through out the city. The wealth that flowed through Prague and the vision of Charles IV attracted hundreds of artists to build temples, bridges, theaters, clocks, statues, and palaces. Jan Hus continued to press the creative tradition and took it further. Ultimately God commissions the artisans to create beauty in the world, notnobility or bishops .

2. We want to be pastors for respect and admiration, but instead we lose our lives and it is sweet

“I was anxious to take the holy orders to have a life of comfort and the admiration of the people.”

Hus’ desire to become a priest was rooted in his desire for comfort and respect. He saw the life of a priest accurately in that time. Instead of the life he envisioned, he found the gospel to be everything his heart desired. As a pastor, his life models mine. Honestly, my heart often seeks admiration from people through my vocation. I don’t simply just want to be liked but revered. Hus’ life and writing teach me to be honest about that while pursuing the greater calling which is to give your life away and find the deepest life possible in the gospel.

Hus stood in front of kings, emperors, and a pope knowing he could have their affection by recanting his beliefs. Yet, he sang hymns to God amidst flames in death. He found God to be more worthy of worship than himself. Then, he found God more worthy of worship than his peers.

3. The Gospel is For Everyone

During Hus’ lifetime, many church leaders were separating people into categories—who is important and who is not. For them, the church existed for the wealthy and powerful more than the people. The church played the role of power broker and power keeper more than a place for everyone to know the love of God and to love one-another.

This is our family history, too. We cozy up to the influential and use the uneducated, the burdened, the insignificant as collateral damage in kingdom building. Many times we are more like the Catholic church of 700 years ago than we would like to admit. We prefer to imagine ourselves and our family history beginning with Jan Hus; however, all of it is our history. And some of it ought to be a caution to us as we build kingdoms, seek the influential, and disregard the un-cool. This problem isn’t new—Jesus critiqued the Pharisees, Paul fought Jewish leaders to include Gentiles, and James rebuked the church for keeping special seats for the “important.”

Jan Hus teaches us that the gospel is for everyone and for every aspect of life. The gospel is grace, mercy, and faith—not power, money, and control.

4. Proclaim and Die for the the Gospel alone

“I hope, by God's grace, that I am truly a Christian, not deviating from the faith, and that I would rather suffer the penalty of a terrible death than wish to affirm anything outside of the faith or transgress the commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I love how Hus describes his reasons for persevering to death. He would not let go of what he knew and believed to be central to his faith. He died for refusing to give up anything central. He didn’t die for the fringe, he didn’t stir up conflict, and he didn't try to start a revolution.

He was fixated on making the gospel clear, understood, and experiential. He wouldn’t recant that. He couldn’t stop preaching the gospel. Because to stop proclaiming the gospel andto stop inviting people to the communion table would make his life in Christ void.

The gospel of free salvation and mercy in Jesus was controversial and it still is. As we make disciples this has to be our focus, too. We have to put all our efforts into making the gospel central and clear. As we make disciples in community and in our cities, we need to create a space for the gospel itself to be controversial. Step into conflicts about those things that without you would not be a Christian.

Conclusion

We are in the midst of many conflicts, disagreements, and issues in our culture. I pray that we are fighting with the gospel in mind and for the gospel. I pray our hope in talking about sexuality is rooted in the gift of God’s love in Jesus. I pray that our discussions about racial reconciliation are directly sourced in the reconciliation of God to man in Christ. I pray that our motivations in government are founded on God’s love for all men and women. Above all, I pray that we are motivated and empowered by the Spirit of God to make the gospel plain and clear to everyone around us.

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Brad Watson (@bradawatson) serves as a pastor of Bread&Wine Communities where he develops and teaches leaders how to form communities that love God and serve the city. Brad is the author of Raised?, Called Together: A Guide to Forming Missional Communities, and Sent Together: How the Gospel Sends Leaders to Start Missional Communities. He lives in southeast Portland with his wife and their two daughters. You can read more from Brad at www.bradawatson.com.

Dave Jenkins 10/15/15 Dave Jenkins 10/15/15

4 Dimensions of Exposing Faulty Worldviews

Few issues today are as important as understanding the connection between the gospel, discipleship, missions, and apologetics. I’ve learned these truths through ministering on the streets of Seattle, being in college campus ministry, and at local coffee shops around my area. Engaging in discipleship, missions, and apologetics in a manner worthy of the gospel means understanding how they relate first to the gospel and then to the Church’s mission. I hope to trace out some of these vital connections and in so doing help readers understand that the story of Jesus exposes faulty worldviews. For example, in John 4, Jesus unveils the woman at the well’s faulty worldview. He asks her questions designed to draw her closer to understanding who he is. As the woman’s understanding grows, she sees her need for Jesus. She understands that Jesus is the Son of God. Then she becomes a disciple of Jesus and goes on mission for Jesus in reaching her neighbors and town for him. This is how the gospel works. Jesus exposes faulty worldview stories by showing us our need for his better and truer story,then he saves us by showing us the majesty of his death and resurrection. From there he grows our understanding of himself and sends us out on mission. Part and parcel of this mission is to show the truthfulness of his story in history in comparison to the faultiness of every other story.

Gospel

As the Church, we come together on the Lord’s Day because of the gospel. We gather to be reminded of what Jesus accomplished in his death, burial, and resurrection. We assemble together because God has taken those who were formerly not his and redeemed us through the blood of the Lamb of God. The Apostle Peter calls us to “give an answer for the reason for the hope that we have but to do so with gentleness and respect” (1 Pt. 3:15) because we are honoring Christ the Lord as holy in our hearts (1 Pt. 3:15).

Apologetics exist not because we know all the right answers but as a result of a life centered on Christ. This is what Peter emphasized in 1 Peter 1:13-17, namely that God who is holy has called us to be his own and as a result, we’re called to manifest godly character in keeping with our status as his beloved.

Redeemed people long to see Christ formed not only in their own lives but in the lives of others and to share their stories with others. The real work of apologetics is sharing the stories of God’s grace, goodness, and work in our lives with others. Part of apologetics does deal with objections and responds to error, heresy, and false teaching, but, before we do that, Christ must be honored preeminently in our hearts as noted in 1 Peter 3:15. We’ve been called as a people because of the gospel to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pt. 3:16) and to have a Christ-like character being formed in our lives (2 Pt. 1:3-15).

Discipleship

Because we are disciples of Jesus, we must grow in Christ-like character. Jesus had much to say to the disciples about discipleship. Luke’s Gospel is arranged around the question of “Who is Jesus?”, a question explored in great detail from Luke 1:1 to Luke 9:51. Luke also spends considerable time noting the training of the disciples in his Gospel. This training focuses on helping the disciples learn about Jesus. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a learner of Jesus. To be a disciple of Jesus means to grow in understanding of who Jesus is, what he has done, and what he demands.

This is why exposing faulty worldviews as I mentioned at the outset is so important. Faulty views of the gospel, discipleship, and missions abound today. One prime example of a faulty perspective on these issues can be found in the book Heaven is for Real. In Heaven is for Real, the author promotes a worldview where God’s words are not enough, instead suggesting that in some way we need more assurance than Christ has given us that we will rise from the dead. The truth is one day when we die we will be with Jesus. This truth compelled the Apostle Paul to long for this Day, the Day Jesus said we would receive the crown of righteousness (2 Tim. 4:8). Mature disciples of Jesus are those who are growing in their understanding of the gospel and can apply that knowledge in real-world situations. As disciples of Jesus therefore, we must grow in our understanding of Jesus for the purpose of exercising godly discernment so we might speak the truth in love to people.

Mission

The message of the King demands faithfulness to the means the King has given. King Jesus died on the cross, was buried, and rose again. Jesus, through the work of the Holy Spirit, indwells believers for the task of growth in him and also to be about doing the work of the Kingdom. When either growth in him or missions for him are emphasized above the other, the redeeming message of the gospel is compromised. The gospel’s call is personal in that it alone justifies the sinner, as well as transforming every area of one’s life. Furthermore, the gospel is corporate in that it calls people everywhere to repent and believe in who Christ is and what Christ has done in his death, burial and resurrection.

The reason we engage worldviews comes from the mission of Jesus who came into the world to redeem man from sin. By coming in human form, the God-Man Jesus lived a sinless life, performed miracles, taught his disciples, and demonstrated how to engage people with the truth in love. When dealing with the religious leaders of Israel, Jesus often asked questions and went against the grain of theological thought of his day. Jesus was not novel with the Old Testament, but he did interpret it through the perspective that he came to fulfill its meaning. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, and the Prophets all looked ahead to the hope they would have in a coming Savior. New Testament believers today look back to what Jesus has done in his finished work. Jesus engaged people where they were and helped them to understand who He is and what he has done. This should provide believers today with the urge to engage people through a biblical worldview.

The mission of Jesus is to rescue sinners (Lk. 19:10) from sin through his death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus called his disciples to mission. During his earthly ministry, Christ called his disciples to a small missions trip to prepare them for future service (Lk. 9), he called the seventy-two to ministry (Lk. 10:1-16), and now he calls believers in our day to a mission to make disciples. While the mission of Jesus is to redeem lost sinners, his mission is also to grow in intimacy with those who follow him. Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 that the gospel is both inward and outward. The gospel is a message that one first must believe personally and then confess outwardly. The gospel is a message we first must apply to our own life and context before we can ever hope to confess it outwardly with any degree of effectiveness. Preaching the gospel to ourselves is the greatest way to fight against sin and grow in sanctification. We first must be a disciple before we can do the work of a disciple. Jesus taught that a disciple is not greater than his master, so a disciple must first learn from his master before they do the work of the Master.

The mission of Jesus is to go out and make disciples (Math. 28:18-20, Lk. 24; Acts 1:8). As a result of going out on mission, we will engage all manner of worldviews and the interaction with these various worldviews is ultimately a Great Commission concern. The gospel is the timeless message we are to preach but the way one ministers that message may change depending on the context we find ourselves or the background of the person we interact with. Regardless of context or background, the Christian must preach the gospel in such a way as to make it clear to the person listening that Christ died, was buried, and rose again.

We live in a rapidly changing world where many voices are calling for Christians to compromise on matters related to the gospel, the Bible, and ethics. Christians have been called to be in the world but not of the world. This is why as Christians we must know what we believe so we can accurately, boldly, and precisely represent Christ as his ambassador in a pluralistic therapeutic culture. This is why understanding the gospel will help us to have a biblical view of discipleship and missions with the result that we’ll be able to be an effective witness for Christ in the world in the context of the local church that makes, matures, and multiples disciples to the glory of God.

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Dave Jenkins is the Executive Director of Servants of Grace Ministries, and the Executive Editor of Theology for Life Magazine. He and his wife, Sarah, are members of Ustick Baptist Church in Boise, Idaho, where they serve in a variety of ministries. Dave received his MAR and M.Div. through Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. You can follow him on twitter @DaveJJenkins. Find him on Facebook or read more of his work at servantsofgrace.org.

Brad Andrews 10/12/15 Brad Andrews 10/12/15

Idolatry: A Fatal Attraction | Part 2

It’s one thing to understand the category of idolatry, but quite another to isolate what deities you worship. It’s the difference between knowing what a steak is and actually tasting a perfectly grilled morsel of meat melting on your tongue. Today we take the first step in diagnosing idolatry. ****

I’m a sucker for the occasional B-movie escapism. Replete with a low budget, painful dialogue, and a severely undefined story arc, it can be the perfect silliness for a Friday evening. Enter Anaconda. As only 1997 could deliver, the film chronicles a documentary crew headed into the jungle to shoot footage on a mysterious Indian tribe. On their way, they pick up a stranded man who then takes the team hostage on his quest to capture the world's largest and deadliest snake: a record-breaking green Anaconda.

The thrust of the storyline in one sentence (spoiler alert!) is: people scanning the crest of the river to determine where this deadly snake might be. That’s it. You can imagine the dialogue: “Is that it?” “Did you see that?” “I think I heard something” “Watch out, I see it coming!”

I’ve been thinking lately about the ways we pursue happiness and my drifted to Anaconda. Though most of us wouldn’t articulate it this way, we stroll through our human existence, scanning the surface of our hearts until we find what we think we are looking for. Our time, our energy, our attention, and even our money is devoted to a quest of self-assurance and self-significance.

The Great Hunt

We want to be loved. We want to belong. We want to make a difference. We want to feel important. And we’ll look endlessly until we have found something we think might satisfy us—much like the documentary crew looking for what lies at the crest of the river. But the fruit of our self-salvation projects lie at the surface of a greater hunt in our lives.

Want happiness? It’s important to identify what is at the surface of our hopes and desires. In order for us to find real satisfaction, we must start here. We must ask, “Is that it?” “Did you see that?” “I think I heard something” “Watch out, I see it coming!” The Bible calls this self-diagnosis idol detection (1 Cor. 10:14). Today, we are discussing step one of this self-diagnosis: unearthing those idols that lie on the surface.

Many times these idols are easily discernible, because they are on the surface but there’s always deeper root idols. You can identify them by listening to your prayers. What do you ask God forgiveness for? Maybe it’s an anger problem. Maybe it’s an issue with lust. Maybe you have bitterness in your heart towards another.

While it is good to ask God to cleanse you of unrighteousness, prayer is the first leg in the race to kill your idols. Anger, lust, and bitterness are exterior sins indicating deeper root sins. These are branch idols. You can see them easily but the root sins are what’s actually feeding them.

Hunting for Your Idols

Here are some questions as you look for your surface idols.

Do I need to be esteemed by people?
Do I demand order in my world?
Do I compare myself favorably to others?
Am I angry or defeated if things are not accomplished immediately?
Do I have to be the center of my family life, my job, or my church?
Do I dictate that people must submit to me?
Do I think my opinions are all-wise and correct?
Do I do whatever pleases me?
Is my appearance—whether religiously or physically—ultimate?
Do I desire to be accountable to no one?
Do I have to win at everything?

If you notice, these questions require a sense of self-awareness. Tim Keller says that one way you can identify your surface idols is by looking at your most uncontrollable emotions

Just like a fisherman looking for fish knows to go where the water is rolling, look for your idols at the bottom of your most painful emotions, especially those that never seem to lift and that drive you to do things you know are wrong . . . when you ‘pull your emotions up by the root,’ as it were, you will often find your idols clinging to them.

So what are your surface idols? Look at where the water is rolling on the crest of your heart and you will locate them. It’s an essential first step to reversing the fatal attraction of idolatry in our lives.

Next time, we will look at why we can’t stop at just identifying our surface idols if we want to find true significance and happiness. To find real peace and contentment in life, there is something that lurks beneath the surface that we must address because our surface sins are only symptoms of much deeper sins.

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Brad Andrews is a husband of one, a father of seven, and an advocate for grace. He serves as pastor for preaching, vision, and missional leadership at Mercyview in Tulsa, OK. He blogs at graceuntamed.com and his articles can also be found on Gospel-Centered Discipleship and Grace For Sinners. He served as a religion columnist for the former Urban Tulsa Weekly and was also one of the ten framers of The Missional Manifesto, alongside Tim Keller, Ed Stetzer, Alan Hirsch, Eric Mason, J.D. Greear, Dan Kimball, Linda Berquist, Craig Ott, and Philip Nation.

Matthew D. Adams 10/11/15 Matthew D. Adams 10/11/15

3 Lessons from John L. Girardeau for Crossing Divides

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I remember as a young kid waking up in the middle of the night and walking into my parent's room and just staring at them. It sounds creepy, but I'm sure that many parents know exactly what I am talking about. I did not want to wake my parents, so I decided just to get right in their face and stare. They would wake up, startled, and fuss over the mild heart attack I just gave them.

In a way, this is the story of the old Presbyterian churches throughout the South. Looking back into the early nineteenth century, the Southern Presbyterians were solid in their doctrine, but inconsistencies in their practices and teaching were staring them right in the face. Slavery.

Didn’t slavery in the antebellum South not go against the grace and compassion that the Southern Presbyterians preached? Was this not breaking the commandment to love your neighbor? One minister —a Southern Presbyterian—struggled with these questions.

John L. Girardeau is not a household name, but his boldness for the Scriptures and his heart for discipleship should not be forgotten. Early on Girardeau desired to minister to the slave community in the low country of South Carolina. He graduated seminary in 1848 and went on to be a famous pastor to the slaves of Charleston, SC.

Through his pastor's heart, his Biblical convictions, and his boldness to break the great divide of race, he has a lot to teach us today about discipleship.

1. A Pastor to the Least of These

Girardeau spent much of early life around slaves because his father ran a small plantation. His mother’s compassion for the slaves made a strong impression on the young John. He watched as she would care for them while they were sick and share Bible stories with them. Girardeau's love for the slaves as people and his desire to see them know Christ would grow.

Conviction, compassion, and a pastor’s heart starts in the home—even when inconsistencies and sin are present. His home was full of regular family devotions, his parents taught him what it meant to pray without ceasing, they worshipped faithfully together at their local church, and observed the Lord's Day with great reverence and admiration. Later in his life Girardeau shared these practices and his knowledge of Christ with slaves.

As he grew, he attended college and enrolled in seminary at Columbia, SC. He would regularly listen to the preaching and teaching of James Thornwell and Benjamin Morgan Palmer. These men's theological convictions and walks with Christ were instrumental to Girardeau. All the while, he still longed to minister to the "least of these."

Even in his time in the midlands of South Carolina, Girardeau would spend time in the streets ministering to the homeless. He would travel to the local plantations and preach the gospel to the slaves. He would continue to do this while fervently studying with the goal in mind—go back to his home region and preach and teach to the slave community.

As he returned to the low country of South Carolina, his longing became a reality as he began his ministry to the slaves. At his first church, he would preach in the mornings to his white congregation then for the slaves on Sunday afternoons. He would travel around to the different plantations in the surrounding area and preach from the porches of the slave houses. Girardeau would sometimes preach six or seven times on a given Sunday. He would eventually be called to serve as the minister of a mission church built for the slaves in the Charleston area. In 1854, he had a regular attendance of thirty-six people and six short years later would preach to a congregation of over 1500.

Through his preaching there was never a doubt where his theological convictions were founded. Girardeau held fast to the Scriptures and found the Westminster Confession and Catechisms a faithful exposition of biblical truth. He would use both throughout his preaching and ministry.

Ultimately, the small mission church Girardeau was called to pastor was too small for the crowds that were gathering to hear him preach. The plantation owners in the Charleston area built another church for the slaves. The slaves would call it Zion Presbyterian Church. Zion Church would continue to grow and its influence in the lives of the slaves and in the community would not be surpassed.

2. A Barrier Breaker

Girardeau has been considered by some to be the "Spurgeon of America." He preached with a clear and gentle voice. His sermons were always Christ-centered and applicable. The congregation was regularly brought to deep conviction of their sins sometimes to the point of tears.

His proclamation of the gospel was clear and precise. He handled the Word rightly. He always presented the gospel then underlined the believer's response to the gospel as he called the people to love God with all of their heart, body, and soul and for them to love their neighbor as themselves.

Girardeau, in the new Zion Presbyterian Church, established a thorough education program where the catechisms, hymns, Psalms, and Scripture memorization were practiced. This entire education program came at a time when it was illegal to teach a slave to read and write. Girardeau and the elders of the church would be criticized and sometimes were physical intimidated by those who disagreed with their ministry.

However, the church stayed true to its vision and taught the slaves fervently through what Girardeau called Sabbath Schools. The slaves would be discipled in classes and spiritually strong men would be trained to be future leaders of the church.

As the Civil War began, Girardeau was called to be a chaplain for the Confederate Army. However, his intentional discipleship of the "least of these" never stopped. These classes were continued even in his absence. As the war ended, Girardeau was begged to come back to the Zion Church. Dr. C.N. Willborn writes in the Presbyterian Church in America history logs,

"[The Zion Church] desired to have their white pastor whom they knew, loved, and respected, rather than a black missionary from the North." [1]

Even with this pleading from the congregation, because of Reconstruction and the Freedman's Bureau happening throughout the South, he could not return.

Davey Salley, in his article for Banner of Truth, writes,

"It was a sad situation: many of the Southern whites were defensive and bitter; and the policy of the Freedman’s Bureau, set up by the Northern government, was to divide the now free black citizens from the Southern white populace."[2]

Nevertheless, Girardeau still trained the newly freed slaves through Sabbath Schools and taught them the same as if he was their pastor.

This discipleship process culminated in 1869, after the Civil War, as Girardeau nominated seven newly freed slaves to become elders of the Zion Presbyterian Church. Later that year he preached the ordination service and along with his white elders, they laid hands on their black brothers ordaining them to the office of ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church.

3. A Reformer Who Stood Alone

Stepping across the great divide of race within the South before and after the Civil War did not come without a price.Girardeau and some of his elders were criticized and even threatened for teaching and training the slaves. Even after the Civil War when the slaves were freed, Girardeau still faced great opposition for his desire to disciple the "least of these." One particular instance would pin him against one of the very men who he was mentored by during his time in seminary. Willborn again writes,

"The pressures of Reconstruction and the Freedmen's Bureau, and the hardened positions of notables like B. M. Palmer [who Girardeau would sit under the preaching of during his time in Columbia] and R. L. Dabney brought the church to a pivotal moment. The weight of political and social issues eventuated in "organic separation" of white membership and black membership and the formation of churches along the color line. Girardeau alone dissented against the resolution at the 1874 General Assembly in Columbus, Mississippi, for which he served as Moderator." [3]

Girardeau was the only dissenting vote. He boldly stood. He believed the Scriptures demanded loving and teaching the "least of these" and his convictions held fast. He would stand alone if that is what it took, and sometimes he had to do just that.

Girardeau would continue to preach and teach until his death. He would be nominated to take the endowed chair at Columbia Theological Seminary and is still recognized as a prominent professor. However, we should rejoice and take note of his work discipling the slave community where he lovingly pastored the "least of these," faithfully taught them while breaking barriers, and many times stood alone.

[1] Dr. C.N. Willborn. http://www.pcahistory.org/HCLibrary/periodicals/spr/bios/girardeau.html

[2] Davey Salley. https://banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2015/john-l-girardeau-minister-to-the-slaves-of-south-carolina/

[3] Willborn.

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Matthew D. Adams is the Director of Youth and Family Ministries at First Presbyterian Church, PCA in Dillon, SC. He is currently a Master’s of Divinity student at Erskine Theological Seminary in Columbia, SC. He lives in a small town by the name of Hamer, SC and is married to Beth. Follow him on twitter @Matt_Adams90.

Kevin Garcia 10/7/15 Kevin Garcia 10/7/15

A Case for Public Discipleship

What we talk about and the words we use when we approach discipleship are important. If the direction of our discipleship is unclear or incomplete, that shortcoming will affect our pursuit of the image of Christ. For example, if you were asked what do spirituality and discipleship look like what are your initial thoughts? Does it include people’s work place? Does it include business, art, or music? Just completing a quick search for “what is discipleship” pulls up this definition:

A Disciple is one who grows in Christ and in so doing models and teaches Christians the precepts of the Bible, prayer, doctrine, relationship, Christian living, service, and worship, to name the main ones.

This plays out in a discipleship relationship where we often, subtly, are just transferring information. For some this can be an emphasis in theology, for others it’s Scripture memorization, and in other groups it’s a deeper “level of the Spirit.” In the best case scenarios, we see how this knowledge applies to our hearts practically and what steps can be done to continue this walk.

While we should celebrate any areas where a believer is discipled I would contend that large portions of our lives remain untouched with this kind of knowledge transfer approach to discipleship. I am not saying the traditional approaches are bad or inherently wrong. Having a sharpened focus on spiritual disciplines and obtaining knowledge are a vital part of discipleship and should be integrated into any approach. Rather this approach alone is incomplete. It doesn’t integrated with our daily lives, work, or human flourishing through loving our neighbors in politics, art, education, culture, and other public spheres.

Why Is This?

As we approach discipleship, we assume that the focus should be primarily, if not entirely, on spiritual disciplines. Songs are written, blogs shared, books authored, and sermons preached that teach exclusively that this world is not our home and that one day we will escape from it to float in heaven and sing songs. This kind of teaching implicitly prioritizes “spiritual” practices like Scripture reading and prayer; meanwhile because this world is not our home, it implicitly teaches Christians to neglect “worldly” practices like taking care of the world, creating excellent art, or focusing on social justice.

Dr. Anthony Bradley writes that this deficient view is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of where our gospel begins. He argues that when we begin with man’s depravity in Genesis 3 rather than man’s creation and cultural mandate in Genesis 1 our starting point is faulty:

A Gen 1 and 2 starting point views the gospel as a means for human beings to have a realized experience of what their humanity was meant to be and to do, whereas a Gen. 3 orientation sees the gospel as a means of saving us from our humanity in preparation for the eschaton (heaven).

In order to see the need for our public lives to be discipled along with our private ones we must understand that our good news begins in creation, not the fall. This creation based approach prevents us from seeing creation as an evil to be avoided rather than a good to be stewarded.

When God created us he created us good. Sin marred this inherent goodness that Christ’s victory through the cross and resurrection has started to restore in us and the world. In a sense when we are being disciple, it is not to become more otherworldly in our discipleship process but rather more human, how God intended us to originally be from creation.

Public Discipleship

Misunderstanding the fundamental goodness of creation fosters a lack of engagement in our world.When Scripture speaks negatively of the world, it is not speaking to the material form we see around us but rather the sinful systems, desires, and worldviews that oppose God.

God created the world as inherently good in the same way that man was originally created as good. In the same way that God works a particular type of grace to save people there is also a type, called common grace, in which he works throughout his creation. This common grace restricts the affects of the fall on mankind as well as empowering us to better cultivate creation and serve the world.

In Exodus 31 tells us that Bezalel was “filled with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability, and knowledge in all kinds of crafts to make artistic designs.” Also, Isaiah 28:23-29 teaches us how God gives the farmer his abilities to cultivate the ground correctly in order to produce crops. God reveals his truth in a way that advances human culture beyond just personal piety. In every advancing stage of society, God is the one working through people and society to further display his glory in the world.

This is not just limited to farming but extends to all advances in human culture such as the utilization of electricity, the invention of personal computers, or even the mapping out of DNA by the Human Genome Project. These all imprint God’s restoring work in creation that we should fully embrace rather than ignore in our discipleship efforts. Abraham Kuyper, Dutch Reformed Theologian, in his Lectures on Calvinism says:

Henceforth the curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life.

This “every position of life” emphasis in discipleship could be termed—“Public Discipleship.” Practically this would encourage believers to steward creation in whatever area of influence they find themselves in and to do it well. This could be milking cows to produce the best milk possible or creating jobs by being a successful entrepreneur. This public discipleship is not less than spiritual discipline and knowledge but more as we work them out in our everyday lives.

However, if we see discipleship intersect with our jobs or the public square, we are prone to give lip service to Jesus when given a platform. Musicians are given quotas on how often they must say the name of Jesus, artists with how many crosses are painted in a picture, and businessman charged with how cleverly they can fit a Scripture into a business plan. Let’s honestly answer: Does this advance the kingdom?

Most jobs don’t provide daily opportunities to evangelize and pray with co-workers, clients, or customers. For those in these other jobs they might start to wonder how the grand scope of Scripture informs how they work if their discipleship is only knowledge transfer. Scripture tells us that that our faithfulness to work helps bring God’s plan for all of mankind to fruition.

In his recent work, The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life, Vincent Bacote promotes an idea called “Public Holiness.” This approach teaches how our sanctification overflows from our lives into the public arena and our interaction with those around us. This means that not only do we individually become more like Christ but we also extend that into making society more reflective of God’s intentions as well. He writes,

Though we may often think of holiness in in terms of our personal piety (and indeed we should), the pursuit and expression of holiness is hardly antithetical to Christian engagement in public concerns such as politics.[1]

This approach prevents the promotion of biblical values in issues of personal morality to the neglect of what God says on public morality. This approach engages our areas of influence holistically no matter where we have been placed by God. This approach means applying the ethics of the entirety of Scripture to the entirety of life.

How Does This Happen in Discipleship?

You may be saying to yourself, “Well that sounds good and we should affirm God’s plan in our vocation but what now?” There are numerous ways to highlight how our discipleship is related to all of life. In whatever discipleship approach your denomination or church may practice whether community-centered, one-on-one relationship, or another form the public discipleship emphasis can be adapted into the approach.

Affirm Vocation – Communicate this clearly and consistently. Just that emphasis alone would be a great place to start. Timothy Keller’s Every Good Endeavor might be a good tool to jump start the conversation in small groups or traditional information transfer discipleship programs.
Find Their Role – Encourage people to find how their work specifically relates to God’s work in this world. For example, if someone is building fences we could show how this demonstrates God’s common grace in restraining sin and protecting people and their property.
Connect – Connect with others who value excellence in their craft. Often people in non-explicitly Christian vocations feel alone in their pursuit of doing things well. Help them connect with others in their field which can create persistence in serving in their role well.
Challenge – Challenge people to be creative to help them serve better. That can be a more efficient way to work, starting a business to help create jobs, or providing quality care for their peers or employees. This challenge is to start viewing work as a way to extend God’s kingdom rather than just getting a paycheck.

What we talk about and the words we use in discipleship matter. It affects our emphases in how we seek to glorify God and become increasingly Christ-like. When all of Scripture informs all of life we have a public discipleship that extends inwardly to our personal piety as well as outwardly to loving/serving those around us. As we pursue various ways to disciple people in our given contexts, let’s affirm this area and make much of God and his reign wherever we can.

This worldview has reshaped my way of working at my current job. Daily I would have such a struggle to see how my work was accomplishing anything meaningful. I would have days of working on multiple accounts and clocking in that I felt would be better served preaching, teaching, serving at the church, or other more direct forms of what I understood ministry to be. Once I began to understand the way my work connected to God’s work in the world, it reinvigorated my appreciation for the purpose of work.

The majority of people we focus on in our discipleship relationships will be in the same boat. They may be working at a job they find purposeless or mundane. We should aim to affirm their vocational calling and encourage everyone to make much of God in their 9-5.

[1] This chapter and idea is where the aforementioned public discipleship term is based off of.

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Kevin Garcia is married to a beautiful woman, Miriam Garcia, and is a senior at SAGU. He will be continuing his studies in seminary afterwards particularly to study in the areas of philosophy, theology, social issues, and apologetics. He is passionate about seeing God work in urban contexts and examining the worldviews that influence people. He serves in a variety of areas at his church including teaching and preaching at LifePoint Church in the OakCliff neighborhood of Dallas, TX. Follow him on Twitter at: @kevingarcia__

Matthew Forrest Lowe 10/6/15 Matthew Forrest Lowe 10/6/15

4 Gifts to the Church from Mechthild of Magdeburg

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A week after I started reading Mechthild of Magdeburg[1], my wife asked jokingly (I think) whether she should be worried about my new 13^th-century girlfriend. It was an understandable question: I’d never read anything quite like Mechthild’s The Flowing Light of the Godhead and I was eager to tell anyone who would (pretend to) listen about this fascinating writer. Mechthild (her name looks complicated, but it’s closely related to “Matilda”; the ch is hard, like in character, and the th is more like a t) lived most of her life as a beguine[2]—a member of a lay sisterhood, living in chastity, poverty, and community—before entering a convent in later life. She and her book became inspirational models for contemplative prayer; but soon after her death, Mechthild’s work was known only in bits and pieces, often anonymously. So if you haven’t heard of her, that’s not surprising. As I’ve continued to study Mechthild’s life and work, I’ve found four significant gifts that she gave to the church—gifts that I’ve experienced personally, and that I think can be profoundly helpful for discipleship today.

1. The gift of creativity in prayer and writing.

Mechthild’s book is a mixture of visionary journeys, images of courtly love drawn from her medieval world, conversations between her soul and the Lord, sympathetic observations on characters from Scripture, and other meditations. But later, she asks God to let her stop writing: she feels “just as weak and unworthy, and more so, than . . . when I was required to begin.” God responds by showing her “a spiritual convent” of personified virtues. For example, the “abbess is sincere love”; the choir mistress, hope; the schoolmistress, wisdom; and the “mistress of the sick is toiling mercy.”[3] In these personifications, perhaps Mechthild’s prayerful imagination is rising to the challenge of relying on (and identifying with) her new sisters, even in the frustrations of writing. It’s as if she’s looking at the flawed, flesh-and-blood sisters around her, and seeing, in their actions, reflections of love, hope, mercy, etc. What would happen if we asked the Holy Spirit to use this text to shape our perceptions of others in our churches and communities? Individually and together, how are we embodying such virtues? Where might God be calling us to nurture, complement, and pray for one another in our practices of love, generosity, or peacemaking?

I’ve also found that Mechthild’s book fuels my own reading and writing. In my journaling, her tendency to align her character with those that inspire her in Scripture—not just for their heroics, but for their approach to suffering—has transformed the way I identify with the oh-so-human thoughts and reactions recorded there. Mechthild’s honesty about her failings and weaknesses has changed the way I see the Examen, the prayer in which we take stock of our day and ask for God’s help in remedying the moments that require forgiveness. I’ve even found Mechthild’s work helpful for my own creative writing, as I’m working on a novel that draws significantly from her life experience. Not that I always agree with her theology or her interpretations of Scripture; but when I part company with her, I have to discern what it is that I disagree with and why. Prayerfully cultivating such discernment makes us more sensitive to the voice of God, more faithful in our imagination and discipleship, and that’s never a bad thing.

2. The gift of seeing estrangement and exile as welcome gifts.

One of the most consistent notes in Mechthild’s writing is her yearning for God’s presence. To express this yearning, she often used images of estrangement and exile, as though she were living in another country, separated from her true home and her Lord. These metaphors helped her face challenges in her life, coming to see them as bittersweet blessings from God. It probably shouldn’t surprise us that she found help in identifying her feelings of estrangement and exile with similar experiences of the Bible’s cast members, including Jesus, Mary, John the Evangelist, Peter, Paul, and Stephen. In the following short excerpts, Mechthild speaks respectively to Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, and Mary, Jesus’ mother:

“I live with you in the desert wilderness, because all things are foreign to me except God alone”;

“To the extent that we live a holy life in exile,” we resemble John the Baptist;

“Ah, Lady, remember all my longings and all my prayers . . . when I leave this deplorable exile.”[4]

Desert wilderness. Foreign. Deplorable exile. With these images, and in solidarity with biblical figures who had undergone similar experiences, Mechthild transforms her feelings of estrangement and exile into heartfelt prayers of hunger for God. Amid the rapid religious, political, and cultural shifts that are re-shaping our world today, the image of exile is receiving a lot of attention: in some instances it’s being used to describe a sense of loss and nostalgia for the Christendom of the past, while in other cases it’s employed as a picture of Christian mission in an uncertain future, and it’s not easy to tell where one ends and the other begins.[5] And in the current Syrian refugee crisis, we should be careful not to use images of exile too easily, as exile is a very real thing for so many. But in all of this, exile and estrangement should never be left as merely abstract concepts. They certainly weren’t just images for Mechthild; they were at the heart of her prayer language, shaping her prayers for herself and for others in their suffering.

3. The gift of following Christ as a pilgrim.

400 years before John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress, Mechthild envisioned her life as a pilgrimage, following a path that Jesus had walked as a pilgrim before her. In her younger days, she had observed,

“God guides his chosen children along strange paths . . . that God himself trod: that a human being, though free of sin and guilt, suffer pain. Upon this path the soul that aches for God is joyful.”[6]

Years later, ravaged by age, illness, and blindness, she returns to the exile theme as she laments:

“This is how the tormented body speaks to the lonely soul: ‘When shall you soar with the feathers of your yearning to the blissful heights to Jesus, your eternal Love? Thank him there for me, lady, that, feeble and unworthy though I am, he nevertheless wanted to be mine when he came into this land of exile and took our humanity upon himself.’”[7]

The younger Mechthild understands this path is “strange” not merely because it carries both pain and joy, but because God himself has preceded her on it and is now her guide. Looking back upon the same path, her older self is thankful for the same grace, in a different key: Christ “wanted to be mine when he came into this land of exile and took our humanity upon himself.” Here—and in other places in her book, where she envisions Christ himself as a pilgrim[8]—Mechthild reminds herself, and us, that if the hard moments of our lives feel like estrangement, alienation, and exile, then there is consolation in knowing that God himself knows what it is like to have been estranged, alienated, and exiled. As if that were not enough, God wants to identify so closely with us in our hardships that he belongs to us, and we belong to him.

4. The gift of submitting our gifts to our community and the church.

Having spent her earlier life serving in what today we might call “intentional community,” when Mechthild transitioned to the convent in later life and poor health, she struggled with letting others serve her, as well as with the question of whether to keep working on her book, as we’ve already seen. But her writing shows how she brought these challenges back to God. Even when she struggled most with her longing for God’s presence—confessing, once, that when God “chooses to withdraw,” to temporarily estrange or absent himself from her, “My longing is higher than the stars”[9]—even then, her life points to a submission to Christ and to the church. In continuing to live in community with her new sisters, in submitting to their Cistercian order, and in completing her book as an example of contemplative prayer that would inspire them even after her death, Mechthild’s path of discipleship wasn’t just a “vertical” relationship of disciple and Master, but a “horizontal” relationship with other disciples in her community, too. She might not have put it quite this way, but Mechthild was contributing her gifts to what has been called the maintenance of longing:[10] a mutual support of one another’s hopes for God’s kingdom, when facing a deeply fragmented world.

In all of these gifts—and perhaps in others that I haven’t yet discerned—Mechthild’s discipleship isn’t a new thing. It is a well-worn path, which she followed with faltering but prayerful steps, inviting others to follow along. She was well aware of the company of saints who had preceded her on this path, and of her own frailty and faults that kept her from walking it as confidently as she might have liked. But she allowed Christ to use these challenges to conform her more closely to his image, so that others might meet Christ while following the written “footsteps” she left behind in her book.

[1] Much of this post is adapted and expanded from a longer paper that I hope will be published in an upcoming issue of the Canadian Theological Review.

[2] Yes, as a matter of fact, the word is distantly related to the Cole Porter song, “Begin the Beguine.”

[3] Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, Book 7.36. Quotations in English are from Frank Tobin’s translation (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1998).

[4] Ibid., 2.24, 6.32, and 7.20, respectively.

[5] For a helpful study of this image of exile in biblical tradition and the church today, see my friend Lee Beach’s book, The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015).

[6] Ibid., 1.25.

[7] Ibid., 7.65.

[8] Ibid., 6.33, 7.13.

[9] Ibid., 7.8.

[10] Sherrie Steiner and Michelle Harper Brix, “Mark 7: Nurturing Common Life among Members of Intentional Community,” in School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism, edited by The Rutba House (New Monastic Library 1; Eugene: Cascade, 2005), 97–111, citing 102 here.

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Matthew Forrest Lowe is a freelance editor, professor, and writer, specializing in spiritual formation, biblical theology, and imperial contexts. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where he co-directs Lectio House, a retreat house startup, with his wife Karen.

Chris Crane 10/5/15 Chris Crane 10/5/15

Jesus Loves the (Unborn) Children

Within the past couple of months, the conversation over abortion in America has changed forever with the scandal surrounding Planned Parenthood and their use of fetal tissue and handling of aborted babies. Through several scathing videos, both sides of the political aisle and much of the culture was left stunned by what they saw and hear. Several state and federal agencies investigated Planned Parenthood resulting in several states removing funding. Most recently, the House of Representatives has attempted to defund Planned Parenthood which the Senate chose to block. Many companies—such as Coke, Xerox, and Ford—instructed Planned Parenthood to remove their names from the list of company donors, while other major companies—such as Avon, March of Dimes, Macy’s, and the American Cancer Society—have made it clear that they have no direct involvement in giving financial support to Planned Parenthood. Even StemExpress, the company featured on these videos, has chosen to cut ties with the company. Regardless of the national outcome, we can now say along with William Wilberforce, “You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.” Margaret Sanger in Woman and the New Race writes,

[We should] apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.[1]

Furthermore, in the Birth Control Review in 1932, she wrote “Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”[2] In Woman, Morality, and Birth Control, Sanger absurdly writes,

We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.[3]

This is sad, evil, and heartbreaking. It is certainly evidence of a Western cultural narrative that has no place for God, only radical individualism, a incurvatus in se, a life oriented towards the self rather than towards God or in service to others. It’s a revelation of how American consumerism funnels into our view of life, where lives are expendable and meaningless if they don’t somehow benefit us. This is the world we live in. So how can churches respond to this culture of death? How can we faithful live out the gospel in our communities?

1. Know the Science

For example, Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth, associate professor of medicine at Harvard University Medical School says, “[It] is scientifically correct to say that an individual life begins at conception.”[4] Furthmore, Dr. Alfred M. Bongiovanni, professor of obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania says, “I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception. . . . [H]uman life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood. . . . [Any] interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life.”[5] Lastly, Randy Alcorn writes,

At eighteen days after conception the heart is forming and eyes start to develop. By twenty-one days the heart pumps blood throughout the body. By twenty-eight days the unborn has budding arms and legs. By thirty days [the baby] has a brain and has multiplied in size ten thousand times.

By thirty-five days her mouth, ears, and nose are taking shape. At forty days the preborn child’s brain waves can be recorded, and her heartbeat, which began three weeks earlier, can be detected by an ultrasonic stethoscope. By forty-two days [the baby’s] skeleton is formed and [their] brain is controlling the movement of muscles and organs.[6]

Science is clear—abortion ends a human life, created in the image of God. Alcorn again is helpful, arguing that as you look through Scripture, what you see is that personhood was never predicated upon “age, stage of development, or mental, physical, or social skills. Personhood is endowed by God…at the moment of conception.”[7] In Scripture, such as Lev. 18:21, Deut. 19:10, 2 Kgs. 24:3-4, Ps. 72:12-14, and Prov. 6: 16-17, we learn that God hates the shedding of innocent blood. Also, the grand narrative of Scripture shows us how God loves children and that his people should care for the orphans (Lk. 18:16, Ex 22:22; Ps 146:9; Isa 1:17; Jam 1:27). We cannot ignore or be silent about abortion.

2. Encourage Adoption

As John Piper writes, “The deepest and strongest foundation of adoption is located not in the act of humans adopting humans, but in God adopting humans. . . . It is at the heart of the gospel.” He goes on to say,

There are huge costs in adopting children. Some are financial; some are emotional. There are costs in time and stress for the rest of your life. You never stop being a parent till you die. And the stresses of caring about adult children can be as great, or greater, than the stresses of caring for young children. There is something very deep and right about the embrace of this cost for the life of a child!

Few things bring me more satisfaction than seeing a culture of adoption flourish [as a church]. It means that our people are looking to their heavenly Father for their joy rather than rejecting the stress and cost of children in order to maximize their freedom and comforts. When people embrace the pain and joy of children rather than using abortion or birth control simply to keep children away, the worth of Christ shines more visibly. Adoption is as far as possible from the mindset that rejects children as an intrusion. Praise God for people ready to embrace the suffering—known and unknown. God’s cost to adopt us was infinitely greater than any cost we will endure in adopting and raising children.

Aside from marriage, what better way to live out the gospel story? Foster a culture where adopting children is encouraged, whether orphans, from broken homes, or unexpected pregnancies. Welcome these children into a new family, with a new name, and give them unconditional love and full acceptance. Adoption is a way to display the better story of life, one under the reign of Jesus, one in which there’s no “unwanted” children. Ask God to raise up men and women who would adopt children and raise them in families who love the Lord.

3. Drive Home Hope

As children of God, we have the undeserved privilege of calling God “Father” and this God who adopted us, to paraphrase John Piper, hasn’t just brought us into his family, but has brought us into his arms. Abortion can cause shame that has lasting effects on the women. It can also cause guilt for men who stood idly by instead of taking responsibility for the life they helped create. Listen to their stories. Be slow to speak and slow to spout off stock answers. As rapper Trip Lee says, “Keep all your anecdotes and cute quotes / I’ll pass on clichés for true hopes.” When men and women who are reeling from the effects of abortion feel like they have no place to go, the church should be a place where they are welcomed with open arms.

The gospel should be a reality that changes the culture of our churches. People won’t see the gospel as good news if we don’t actually live like it really is. If Christ welcomed all sorts of sinners into his midst and welcomed prodigals and Pharisees into his family, what does that say about how our church should welcome those who are considering an abortion, have had abortions, or have performed abortions? No one is beyond the grace of God and the gospel can set people free from even the strongest bondage to sin. Lavish grace and mercy upon them and show them how, in Christ, they are not their sin. We point them to the Savior who gives rest and takes their burdens on himself (Matt. 11:28-30). To be pro-life means being pro-resurrection life as well, an eschatological life that proclaims the reign of King Jesus, a good king who will “will wipe away every tear from their eyes” and where, in his kingdom, “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.” Abortion does not have the last word. Shout hope from the rooftops.

Through God’s work of creation, the church champions being made in the image of God and the value of human life. Through the gospel, we not only maintain the value of human life, but seek to proclaim the restoration of it, even if you ended someone else’s. Let the gospel bring the healing it can, showing and proclaiming to families affected by abortions and to abortion clinic doctors and staff members that “if the Son sets free you will be free indeed” (Jn. 8:36). And no amount of shame or guilt is too powerful for that kind of love and grace.

[1] Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, MT, 2010).

[2] Margaret Sanger, “A Plan for Peace” in Birth Control Review, April 1932, 108.

[3] Margaret Sanger, Woman, Morality, and Birth Control (New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922), 12.

[4] Quoted in Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life?: Revised and Updated (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 2012), 14.

[5] Ibid., 13.

[6] Ibid., 17.

[7] Ibid., 132.

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Chris Crane is a Th.M. student in Historical and Systematic Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary. He previously served in various church ministries around Dallas, TX and in campus ministries with Dallas Baptist University. He is a freelance writer and occasional blogger at chriscrane.net. You can follow him on Twitter @cmcrane87.

Matthew D. Adams 9/29/15 Matthew D. Adams 9/29/15

Diligently Teaching Our Children to Spot Counterfeit Gods

I have a friend who works in the banking industry, and as he was training I was fascinated by a particular story that he shared with me. He was sitting in the training room and his manager began to lay twenty-dollar bills on the table. As he laid them down he looked up and asked, "Which one is a counterfeit?" My friend carefully examined the bills and chose one. He chose the wrong one. The manager picked the bills up and began to teach him how to spot the counterfeit bill. This happened everyday until he could spot the counterfeit within seconds. Likewise, we must train our children so well that they can spot the counterfeit gods that our society invites them to serve within seconds. These brazen invitations to serve counterfeit gods are the reason our children need to be trained just like my friend who works in the bank.

Teach Them Diligently

These are the words of God in Deuteronomy 6:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. –Deuteronomy 6:4-9

When we think about raising children, these words from God come quickly to mind. God commands believing parents to raise their children diligently.

"You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise."

This training is a lifestyle and you must teach it to your children.

We must answer the question, "Why?" Why do we need to be teaching this to our children? It is quite simple—because as believing parents, we are the primary means of discipleship in our family. God tells us to teach our children diligently and that is exactly what we must do. Besides, as you may have figured out, this command has many practical implications for your life and your children.

God is very clear in why he commands his people to train their children up in the way they should go; because when they go into the land that he has promised them, there will be counterfeit gods and they will be tempted to go and worship them! Well, we know that the only God that must be worshipped is the Lord and he is a jealous God for his people (Deut. 6:15). He demands we worship him and him alone (Exod. 20:1-6).

My mind immediately goes to Galatians as Paul warns those believers not to turn to a "different gospel" (Gal. 1:6). Well as frankly as I can put it, believers are finding their children turning to a different gospel and falling into the temptations from its counterfeit gods because we have not followed the command from Deuteronomy 6 to diligently teach our children.

More times than not I hear parents say, "I'm just going to let my child be a child. They don't need to worry about things like homosexuality or abortion until they're out of college."

This response is oblivious at best because everything that surrounds them in life pushes them to counterfeit gods and their “gospels.” Our children are pushed by the media to care more about Brady's deflated footballs than the devaluation of human life. Their schools teach them that it's foolish to believe in God and that only science should be trusted . I could go on and on about how our world is telling our kids to run far away from God and into a different gospel of false love and acceptance—where anything goes and God does not exist.

Three Common Counterfeit Gods

As a youth director, I regularly encounter these three counterfeit gods: the counterfeit god of choice, the counterfeit god of sex, and the counterfeit god of acceptance.

First, our children are being proselytized by the god of choice. This is the idea that they are entitled to live life the way they see fit. This counterfeit god’s gospel proclaims that how they and others choose to live their lives is no one's business. There is no absolute truth; there are no rules for life only whatever they see as right. Jesus rebukes this counterfeit god by saying, "Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth" (Jn. 17:17). The Word of God is the only absolute truth. The Word of God tells us what is right and points us to Jesus. Many today see the Word of God as binding them, but the Psalmist David exclaims that the Word of God makes the believer's paths wide (Ps. 119). The Word of God is where our children will find their perfect joy and peace in this life, and ultimately, Christ prays that his people will be sanctified by it.

Second, our children are being proselytized by the god of sex. We live in a culture that glorifies sex without consequence. The television shows, the movies, and the music that surrounds our children shove a sexual lifestyle that carries no future weight in their lives. Our children see this bogus glorified lifestyle and they begin to desire to live their lives this way. This counterfeit gods gospels proclaims that they know what true love is and a rampant pornography industry says they know what sex is designed to be. Our children fall into this trap time and time again. The gospel counters this counterfeit god by reminding believers that their bodies are temples of God and that sexual immorality should not be named among believers (Eph. 5:3). Jesus is clear in his definition of marriage and beyond that definition is against the will of God (Mark 10:6-9).

Last, our children are being proselytized by the god of acceptance. As our children fall into the lies of counterfeit gods, so do their friends. As their friends begin to believe a different gospel, they proclaim the gospel of acceptance and urge our children to follow suit in esteeming the opinion and acceptance of man above the one true God. What does the true gospel proclaim? Our reward for faithfulness is in heaven (Matt. 5:12). Our children must live a life that is always ready for eternal life and able to say, "Come Lord Jesus, Come quickly, Amen" (Rev. 22).

So, as parent's, how do we disciple our children, and stop this constant sliding into a lifestyle that is led astray by these counterfeit gods? We must teach our children that the only way to discern what is important in our world is to look at what is important to Jesus. We must teach our children how to spot counterfeit gods and different gospels.

And this must start at the home! Parents must diligently disciple their children in the faith once delivered. Parents, you spend the most time with your children and you must be intentional about raising them up in the faith so that they will not be like the house built upon the sand that falls when faced with the great storms of life (Matt. 7:24-27).

Two Means to Recognize the Counterfeits

I think we have two primary means to disciple our children:

1. Go to Church Regularly as a Family

I do not know of a better place to have your children other than in the church—where we are called to worship in the very presence of God. They will be accustomed to hearing the Word preached, the sacraments being practiced, and prayers being made. These aspects of worship are the primary ways by which our God pours out grace upon his people. Parents, why would we not want our children in church? For children to see their parents worshipping God, to see them fellowship with other believers, and to see them serve the church faithfully—there is no greater training that you can give!

If you worship God together in the church fifty times every year over the course of your child’s life, they will have heard and seen the gospel over 600 times. Don’t miss these opportunities. Families who worship in the church together help to counter the current trend in our culture because when you know what true worship looks like on Sunday, you can truly worship rightly on Monday through Saturday.

2. Worship with Your Family at Home.

Because family worship is often neglected in the church, it is a practice I’m intentional about promoting to the children and families I help shepherd. How can we obey Deuteronomy 6 without setting aside time for family worship? If your children see God being glorified in the home, if they see their parents living out their worship that takes place on Sunday morning through the rest of the week, and if they feel encouraged to live their life for Christ, they will be more prepared to boldly stand for their faith outside of the home when the time comes.

Parents, it is not good enough to live for Christ on Sunday morning and not the rest of the week because your child will grow up and do exactly the same thing. These two practices go hand-in-hand. Our worship on Sunday flows into our family worship throughout the week. We worship in our churches, the benediction is proclaimed and the service ends, and now we are sent out into the world. However, discipleship cannot end there. We must worship in our homes so that as the counterfeit gods of our culture assault our children they instinctually recall what we have diligently taught them in our churches and in our homes.

Through worshipping together on Sunday mornings and worshipping throughout the week in the home, our children will have been in the presence of God so much that they know exactly how these counterfeit gods look and their response will be to flee from them. Parents, disciple your children. Make going to church a habit and worship regularly together, in your church and in your home. Teach your children diligently. It's vital for your family and our culture. Now the time to take Deuteronomy 6 seriously.

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Matthew D. Adams is the Director of Youth and Family Ministries at First Presbyterian Church, PCA in Dillon, SC. He is currently a Master's of Divinity student at Erskine Theological Seminary in Columbia, SC. He lives in a small town by the name of Hamer, SC and is married to Beth. Follow him on twitter @Matt_Adams90.

Guest User 9/27/15 Guest User 9/27/15

4 Convictions for Boldness from John Knox

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John Knox was born in Haddington, c. 1514, though admittedly there is some debate on the exact date. We do know that Knox was born into a poorer family with not a lot of resources. Upon completion (another point of historical contention) of University in 1536, Knox was ordained as a priest. By 1543 he was converted to Christ after a couple of years working as a tutor and notary. While not much is known regarding the context of his conversion, so began the journey of the man who would thunder the gospel in a dark Scotland.

As a pastor, I am intrigued by the life of John Knox and taken back by the trials he persevered through. For example, in 1546, the French took the castle at St. Andrews and the aftermath led to Knox’s enslavement for 19 months. Yet Knox persevered. Eventually he went back to England to preach the gospel during one of the more difficult times of English history.

While history is undoubtedly under the control of the sovereignty of God, Knox would contend with both the religious establishment (fighting against Anglican formalism in worship and Roman Catholicism) as well as the civil establishment. The latter contention would escalate when in 1553, Mary Tudor (“Blood Mary”) would rise to power after King Edward VI died. Knox lived in a time of political uncertainty—something we can learn from indeed.

As God would have it, Knox fled to Geneva in 1554 where he developed a friendship with John Calvin. Knox would visit Geneva several times, but in 1559 returned to Scotland to pastor at St. Giles, Edinburgh. From there Knox wrote, taught, preached, and fought for the gospel, eventually dying in 1572. You can find his grave underneath a parking lot at St. Giles Church today.

1. Power of Prayer

It is said that Mary, Queen of the Scots, feared the prayers of John Knox more than the assembled armies of Europe. Though weak in stature, the Reformer was a man broken before the Lord. He was a humble man who trusted not in himself but in the greatness of God. Prayer is a sure and steady sign that reads, “God is really great and powerful, I am not.” Knox was this type of man.

From his rough childhood, run-ins with various Cardinals and Bishops, to his time in captivity and on the run—Knox knew that in the midst of all these circumstances that he had to commit himself to the Lord. And what better way is there to do so than through communion with him in prayer? A humbled soul is a prayerful soul.

Perhaps one of the most telling aspects of Knox’s prayer life was his ability to pray in defense of the gospel and pray for his enemies. A prayer for Queen Mary is worth noting,

Behold our troubles and apparent destruction, and stay the sword of the thy vengeance before it devour us. Place above us, O Lord, for thy great mercies’ sake, such a head, with such rulers and magistrates, as fear thy name, and will the glory of Christ Jesus to spread. Take not from us the light of thy Evangel, and suffer no papistry to prevail in this realm. Illuminate the heart of our sovereign lady, Queen Mary, with pregnant gifts of thy Holy Ghost, and inflame the hearts of her counsel with thy true fear and love.[1]

The prayers of John Knox were answered no different than our prayers today. In some circumstances, the Lord grants our requests according to his sovereign will. In other cases, the prayer is not answered. Either way, our God is the Lord and he knows what is best.

The power of prayer lies not within the sinner but the Savior. Getting this order right for discipleship is crucial. The disciple of Jesus is to be a man committed solely to the glory of God through a prayer life marked by a humble posture and persevering spirit. Such was the great Scottish Reformer.

2. Necessity of Conviction

John Knox was man with conviction running through his veins. Much like the Apostle Paul who “[proclaimed] the kingdom of God and [taught] about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance,”[2] Knox believed in both the grace and severity of God. His prayers, preaching, writing, and actions all aligned in a such a way as to demonstrate the reality that conviction is necessary if reformation is desired.

Perhaps one of my favorite pictures in history is a painting of John Knox preaching before Queen Mary and her council that was drafted in such a way as to demonstrate the conviction that poured through the life of Knox. Towering in the pulpit above the crowd, Knox thundered the gospel to the magistrates present. As D. Martin Lloyd-Jones has pointed out, Knox was a man with “astounding energy,” “shrewdness,” and “courage.”[3] His ability to discern, press on, and courageously preach the gospel was rooted in his conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that his crown rights must be acknowledged by all nations, especially his beloved Scotland.

Knox saw compromise and darkness in his homeland. It was in poor condition and immersed in moral decadence. What is someone to do in a situation like this? Have conviction. The world could use more conviction. For disciples of Jesus, conviction is a prerequisite, which is why Paul told Titus that an elder “must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). Disciples who make disciples must be men and women who are committed to standing on the truth of God’s Word convicted to the deepest parts of our souls that Christ is King and that his gospel is sufficient. Nothing short of all-out commitment to raising the banner of Christ crucified will suffice.

3. Priority of Preaching

At one point in Knox’s young life, he didn’t want to preach. In fact, when he was confronted about this issue, it is said that he left the room in tears, buckling under the weight of the task. For Knox, preaching was an incredibly large task, not because the preacher was anything special, but because the message was so precious.

During Knox’s young life, preaching wasn’t the focus in the Roman Catholic Church. After his conversion, his chaplaincy at St. Andrews proved an opportunity for him to teach. Knox feared the pulpit, but not because the message wasn’t powerful to transform, or because he could never do it—no, the fear was the weight of its importance. It was of utmost importance which meant it must be done soberly.

His zeal for the gospel led to his power in the pulpit. Like a man wielding a sword in battle, so was Knox in the pulpit with the Bible. He didn’t shy away from cutting through the stone hearts of people with the truth of the sinfulness of man and the holiness of God and offering those same sinners hope in the gospel. Christ was the focus of his preaching because Christ was the focus of his life.

“When Knox stepped into the pulpit to preach the Word of God, he opened with a half hour of calm exposition of the text before him. Thereafter, he became more vigorous.”[4] The Bible was a priority for Knox because the gospel was the priority of the church. It was this prioritizing of the gospel that fueled the fire that came from Knox. That fire led to the Spirit of God working in the lives of many people.

As disciples, we must commit ourselves to preaching. Like Knox, we must see it as the priority because God uses the foolishness of ourselves and the cross as the means by which He saves sinners. Knox’s example here is worth our consideration. Do we truly value preaching? Are we humble in our approach to this daunting task? Do we really believe that the preaching of God’s word is enough?

4. Need for Perseverance

We are in desperate need of perseverance. Some say desperate times call for desperate measures—we might say desperate times call for faithful measures. Without perseverance, which is a repeated theme throughout Scripture, discipleship falls flat.

The life of John Knox briefly outlined above demonstrates quite clearly that 1) Most of us haven’t walked through the things he did, and 2) We have no excuse for choosing to abandon the mission of God. Knox trusted in the sovereignty of God believing that God writes the story of history and he does so with us as his characters. He had a big God and big theology to boot. No doubt there were times of deep sorrow for the great Reformer—indeed there are plenty of times of sorrow for each of us!—but let us learn this last thing from Knox: Perseverance is water we drink during the times of seemingly unending fiery trials.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” –Hebrews 12:1-2

Jesus endured for us so we in turn endure because of and for him. He gives strength. He gives wisdom. He gives conviction. He gives courage. He gives righteousness. Christ gives hope. Oh how prone we are to wander! God, grant your servants an unending supply of perseverance!

Follow Knox As He Follows Christ

Knox is a man worth emulating. While no stranger to controversy, Knox was committed to the kingdom of God first and foremost. Like today’s culture, Scotland was a religious wasteland. Everyone did whatever was right in his own eyes. Knox reformed Scotland because the gospel light was dim. Though several hundreds years from our context, we can learn a lot from Knox. Knox had a sense of urgency—to make the gospel known everywhere. That, after all, is the heart of a disciple.

We don’t look to John Knox because he was great in and of himself. We don’t look to John Knox, we look to Jesus Christ, the King who John Knox served. We learn from this humble servant of history how to follow someone who is following Christ (1 Cor. 11:1). May the Church in America never lose hope, but instead cling so dearly to the gospel of King Jesus that John Knox so fervently clung to.

[1] John Knox, The Select Practical Writings of John Knox (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2011), 25.

[2] Acts 28:31, emphasis mine.

[3] See: D. M. Lloyd-Jones and Iain H. Murray, John Knox and the Reformation (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2011).

[4] Douglas Bond, The Mighty Weakness of John Knox (Sanford: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2011), 55.

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Rev. Jason M. Garwood (M.Div., Th.D.) serves as Lead Pastor of Colwood Church in Caro, MI and author of Be Holy and The Fight for Joy. Jason and his wife Mary have three children, Elijah, Avery and Nathan. He blogs at www.jasongarwood.com. Connect with him on Twitter: @jasongarwood.

Chelsea Vaughn 9/20/15 Chelsea Vaughn 9/20/15

3 Counter-Cultural Lessons from Elisabeth Elliot

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I remember embarking on my first attempt to read a book written by Elisabeth Elliot. I figured the best place to start would be her first Through The Gates of Splendor. I sat comfortably on a lawn chair by the pool and a bubbly girl came to sit beside me. I could see her eyeing my book, so I turned towards her with a smile and asked if she’d read it before. To which her smile contorted and she said, “Her husband had a cool story, but it’s just too sad. Their lives were all about being missionaries. After reading some of her book I stopped because I didn’t like the lack of love they shared. Their marriage wasn’t about love, it was all about mission.” I was taken back by the abrasive truth she presented me and spent the next hour reconsidering my interest in her book. If marriage isn’t about love, then why be married?

I came across Elisabeth Elliot’s works several times through the years and passed by them with caution. Even if they were profound, I consistently had the mindset that she lacked the kind of passion I desired for my future marriage. I couldn’t embrace her wisdom because her will was too strong for my liking.

“Sometimes it is absolutely necessary for God to yank out of sight whatever we most prize, to drag us into spiritual traumas of the severest sort, to strip us naked in the winds of His purifying Spirit in order that we should learn to trust.” –Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity

I have three constant mentors that I turn to for advice, wisdom, and exhortation. One of which I do life with, one of which knows me deeper than anyone else, and the last knew me at my lowest. In the past four years, each of these highly admired women has quoted Elisabeth Elliot to me in times of need. Ironically, I started noticing something about this strong willed woman. Her words prodded at my spirit in a way that stuck. Her objective devotion to the Lord made me uncomfortable, and though I didn’t like it, it frustrated me in a convicting way.

1. Uniting Marriage and Mission

“From a respectful distance, with no knowledge on his part, I had the opportunity to observe the character of Jim Elliot. He was a man careful with his time. Friendly, and enthusiastic. I knew what kind of student he was. I watched him wrestle. I heard him pray and watched him lead. There was nothing pompous or stuffy about him. Long before I had any reason to think he might be interested in me, I had put him down as the sort of man I hoped to marry.” –Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity

“In regards to dating, many times the best thing to do is pray steadily and wait patiently till God makes the way plain.” –Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity

I was discontented when I was told to sit, wait, and pray. I am not a girl content with uncertainty. I covet understanding, value clarity, and seek insight. I cling to the truth in 1 Cor. 14:33 that declares confusion is not of God. In the past, I chose to ignore the patience required to labor in prayer. God has used countless trying relationships to refine me, but deeper than that, he has used those times to speak identity to me. The waiting, the watching, and the praying have been more sanctifying than the actual person and relationship. That is certainly because it’s in those times that God has been the center. God uses his people to sanctify his people, and that happens (most often) when the Church is on mission.

Elisabeth and Jim were not seekers of self but of God’s Great Commission. Their top priority was not to have a pleasing marriage by the world’s standards, but to glorify God through a sacrificial love in marriage. They met in college, then left for Ecuador both following God’s individual plan for their lives, then later got married in the mission field. When the two were not in physical company, they pursued the relationship as one with God’s mission. It was not separate from their call to share God’s gift of life, but a tool to use in the pursuit of his mission. Even afterwards, when Jim was killed and Elisabeth lived alone, she shared God’s glorious story and how her husband served to fulfill it with his life. The mission was never driven by their marriage, but the mission always drove their marriage.

How can we ever expect to go seek a relationship then find God’s will after we find the person? I don’t believe that was God’s initial intent for covenant marriage. The pastor of the church I attend often says, when speaking to singles, “Know who God has called you to be, pursue what he has called you to do, then watch for someone doing the same. Who can you imagine being on mission with you? They will, most likely, be God’s holy match.” Praise God for their example of pure, unbridled affection for the Kingdom of Heaven.

2. Loving Unto Death

In Let Me Be a Woman, one of her most popular books, Elliot paraphrases the biblical design of steadfast love.

This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive. Love is not possessive. Love is not anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own ideas. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. Love is not touchy. Love does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails. Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that stands when all else has fallen. –Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be A Woman

If this is the biblical design for steadfast love, then we can examine it in light of God’s love and the love shared in marriage. I can return to my initial question with a revised question. Can you truly love a person and not be on mission with them? I’m not sure if it’s even possible to devote one’s life to God and neglect a shared mission with a spouse. Consider the depth of love Elisabeth Elliot had when she returned to serve the same tribe that killed her husband. Her love did not lack passion, but had unconditional passion and compassion—because her love for God was ultimate.

This love carries the story of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot. These two lived to tell God’s story and their story challenges because of the drastic measures they took to love the world. They lived counter-cultural lives. The world sees the loss of life and tragedy, whereas Elisabeth and Jim saw gain for the kingdom.

3. Counter-Cultural Manhood and Womanhood

Our culture shouts out their corrupted view of marriage. I contend that because our understanding of womanhood and manhood is fractured the culture has made headway with their own vision for each. I found that my own assumption was similar to that of Betty Elliot’s:

“In a civilization where, in order to be sure of manhood (or, alas even “personhood”), men must box, life weights, play football, jog, rappel or hang-glide, it was startling to realize that there was such a thing as spiritual commitment as robust, as total, and perhaps more demanding than the most fanatical commitment to physical fitness. It was a shock to learn that anybody cared that much about anything, especially if it was invisible.” –Elisabeth Elliot, Through The Gates of Splendor

The power of her words expose the culturally-twisted understanding of manhood/ womanhood. The standards of the world lack commitment, growth, and deep affection. Often, it seems like men do not care to persist or endure with something they can’t see. Yet, Elisabeth watched her husband and his team faithfully and fearlessly seek God’s will. She also risked her life in hopes of bringing life to this same violent tribe. She breaks free of the caricature of the passive, beaten down Christian woman and the aggressive, independent woman of our postmodern culture. She modeled biblical strength, dignity, submission, grace, and love.

Upon first hearing of Betty’s strong willed character, I was rattled and frustrated by her. I couldn’t support the seeming lack of passion found in her mission-fueled marriage. However, the past four years have led me to the truth of God’s intention for covenant marriages, and thus, deconstructed my rose-colored cultural expectation. This woman unknowingly discipled me by her deep devotion to the steadfast pursuit of God’s affectionate call. Her wisdom, life story, and fervent words have refined me to be a better woman, servant, and future wife. Sometimes the things that frustrate you the most, are the very things that your spirit needs to embrace.

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Chelsea Vaughn has served a ministry she helped start in the DFW Metroplex since she graduated from college. She received her undergraduate degree at Dallas Baptist University in Communication Theory. She does freelance writing, editing, and speaking for various organizations and non-profits. She hopes to spend her life using her gift for communication to reach culture and communities with the love of Jesus.

Jonathan Romig 9/15/15 Jonathan Romig 9/15/15

5 Ingredients for Spiritual Meal-Making

My mom is a great cook who would make three delicious meals a day for my brothers and me. I wish I could say I inherited my mom's love for cooking, but I never did. She tried and tried to teach me how to cook, but I never wanted to learn. Now my wife is away for a few weeks and I'm counting down the days until the lasagna she made and so lovingly stored in the freezer is gone. As this terrible deadline approaches, I have several options: 1) I can starve; 2) I can eat out; 3) I can ask for handouts; or 4) I can cook for myself. I don't want to give up food for the next three weeks even though I could potentially fast for some of that time. I don't have the money to eat out daily and although I do have several friends who are going to invite me over for meals, begging for food just doesn't seem like the grown-up option. The last option is the hardest one, but that one has the most benefits. If I learn to cook while my wife is away, imagine how I could surprise and bless her when she returns. I could make her a date-night meal and maybe cook one-night a week. I could even invite friends over and be the one to prepare the meal. The benefits of learning to cook for myself are pretty much endless.

Why Do It Yourself?

I don't know many pastors who are good at cooking, at least, in the literal sense. However, I do know many pastors and teachers who are great at cooking spiritually-filling meals. They can prepare a great Bible lesson or sermon that provides you something to meditate on for the week. They're so good in fact, and you get such great nutritional value from what they're teaching, that you're a bit wary of your own cooking. Why study the Bible for yourself when your pastor can do it so much better?As a pastor, I'm here to encourage you that nothing brings me more joy than seeing people learn to “cook spiritually” for themselves then nourish others. In other words, I love it when you learn to love and know God for yourself through the Bible and when you share that love with those around you.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:12-14 ESV)

The book of Hebrews is written to early Christians who aren't maturing in their faith as they should. All they want is to be fed and not even with food that meets their spiritual need. The author of Hebrews has a double challenge for them: hunger for spiritual food and become cooks ("teachers" v. 12). Notice that those who are mature and feeding on solid Christian teaching are themselves responsible to duplicate the task. They should be "trained" so that they can understand what is "good."

Spiritually filling food is for those who have "powers of discernment" and are "trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil" (v. 14). Christians need to get involved in the cooking process. We are to take ownership for what we're learning. Other passages also encourage believers to prepare themselves to receive real food (1 Cor. 3:2) and to desire good food to grow strong (1 Pt. 2:1-3). So not only should we desire good teaching, we need it to mature, and we should desire to share what we are learning with others.

Ingredients for Spiritual Meal-Making

What are some practical ways we can learn to cook?

1. Study the Bible individually and in a small group; 2. Use outside resources to double check your recipe (i.e., use reference tools and commentaries like your pastor does); 3. Pray and meditate on what you're learning; 4. Take what you're learning to your pastor and teachers so they can help you; and 5. Finally, share what God has taught you with friends, family members, and fellow pilgrims.

This doesn't mean we should stop learning from pastors, teachers, and others, but we should become less dependent on them even though we value and honor their teachings. We come under their authority but not passively. A strong faith produces active discipleship. We don't desert the church for our own personal devotion, but we realize both personal and corporate learning together make the most nutritionally healthy Christians. Good shepherds should always feed their flock, but the goal is not to just eat another good meal, but to feed the starving and teach the full how to cook.

While my wife was away I went to the store, purchased chicken thighs, and spent around 45 minutes baking them when they probably should have only taken around 20-25 minutes. I couldn't get the chicken to cook like I wanted and when I did eat them, I was very much suspicious that I was poisoning myself. I don't enjoy cooking but I'm willing to try again. I want to help my wife and grow as a person. You're first time cooking “a spiritual meal” will probably go something like mine. Nobody ever learned to cook the first time they tried. Try again and see how you grow in Christ and mature as a follower of Jesus. The best cooks all started by making one meal.

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Jonathan Romig (M.Div., Gordon-Conwell, 2013) is the Associate Pastor of Immanuel Church in Chelmsford MA (CCCC) and the Church Planting Pastor of Cornerstone Congregational Church in the neighboring town of Westford MA. He has taught New City Catechism as a year-long adult Sunday school class and recently self-published his first e-book, How To Give A Christian Wedding Toast.

Winfield Bevins 9/14/15 Winfield Bevins 9/14/15

4 Lessons from St. Patrick for Making Disciples the Irish Way

Editor: In our Family History Series we are seeking to understand how Christians of the past have pursued making disciples. We want to connect the church’s current efforts to make, mature and multiply disciples to its historical roots as well as encourage the church to learn from her rich past. So far in our series: 4 Simple Ways Fred Elliot Discipled His Children. —

“In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life.” –Thomas Cahill

When most of us think of Ireland, we think about green rolling hills and country sides covered in grass. What is not as widely known is that over one thousand years ago on this little island, was the birth of one of the most influential movements in the history of the Christian church. In fact, some scholars argue that the Celtic Christians contributed to preservation of western civilization.[1] Celtic Christianity stands out as one of most vibrant and colorful Christian traditions that the world has ever known.

The Life of Saint Patrick

Before you can fully understand Celtic Christianity, it is important to look at the life and ministry of Saint Patrick. His life is surrounded by mystery, superstition, and myth. We have all heard of him, but few of us know very much about him. There is a holiday that bears his name and he is known as the man who drove the snakes out of Ireland and used the shamrock to explain the Trinity.

So who was Saint Patrick? Patrick was the founding leader of the Celtic Christian church and was personally responsible for baptizing over 100,000 people, ordaining hundreds of priests, driving paganism from the shores of Ireland, and starting a movement in Ireland that helped preserve Christianity during the Middle Ages. As we shall see, the life and ministry of Saint Patrick reveal the great influence that he made upon Christianity and the world.

Patricius, better known as Patrick, was born in 389 a. d. in a Christian home in Britain during a time when England was undefended by the Roman Empire. Irish raiders captured people in Britain and brought them back to Ireland as slaves. At the age of sixteen, Irish barbarians demolished Patrick’s village and captured him. They brought him to the east coast of Ireland and sold him into slavery. During this time, Patrick would spend many hours in prayer talking with God.

Six years later, he received a message from the Lord saying, “Soon you will return to your homeland. . . . Come, and see your ship is waiting for you.”[2] He escaped from his master, fled 200 miles, and boarded a ship of traders who set sail for France and eventually made his way back into Britain. It was at this time that he received his call to evangelize Ireland. He explained his call in the following way:

“I had a vision in my dreams of a man who seemed to come from Ireland. His name was Victoricius, and he carried countless letters, one of which he handed over to me. I read aloud where it began: ‘The voice of the Irish…We appeal to you holy servant boy, to come home and walk among us.’ I was deeply moved in heart and I could read no further, so I awoke.”[3]

This vision had a profound effect on Patrick and he immediately made plans to return to Ireland, the land of his previous captivity.

Tradition has it that Patrick was appointed bishop and apostle to the Irish in 432. Patrick traveled the Irish country preaching the gospel. Paganism was the dominant religion when Patrick arrived. He faced most of his opposition from the druids who were highly educated and also practiced magic. They constantly tried to kill Patrick. He writes, “Daily I expect murder, fraud, or captivity, but I fear none of these things because of the promise of heaven.”[4]

Patrick’s own writings tell a great deal about the man, his ministry, and his love for Ireland. He mentions several times that his education was disrupted when he was taken captive at the age of sixteen. His writings tell that he was very self-conscious about his lack of education. He said, “I am unable to explain my mind to learned people.” Although he did not receive the same education as other bishops, he did receive his call directly from the Lord. Perhaps it was his lack of education that made him so successful in pagan Ireland. His great success demonstrates that he was able to relate to common people in a real and relative way. He had a great love for people and the Lord, which was manifested in every area of his life and ministry.

Part of Patrick’s ministry strategy was focused on Ireland’s tribal kings. Patrick knew that if a king converted, his people would follow. When kings would become converted they would often give their sons to Patrick to educate and train in the ways of the Lord. Thus, he persuaded many of them to enter into the ministry. Patrick’s mission was responsible for planting nearly 700 churches throughout Ireland.

As bishop of Ireland, he was instrumental in the conversion of thousands, ordaining hundreds of clergy, and establishing many churches and monasteries. Because of his ministry, Christianity spread through Ireland and into other parts of the British Isles. Patrick’s mission was responsible for planting nearly 700 churches throughout Ireland.

The churches and monasteries that he was responsible for establishing became some of the most influential missionary centers in all of Europe. Missionaries went out from Ireland to spread the gospel throughout the world. It was the Irish monasteries that helped preserve the Christian faith during the dark ages.

Celtic Way of Discipleship

The missionary legacy of Saint Patrick continued long after his death through the Celtic Christian monastic movement. In the sixth and seventh centuries, Celtic Christianity spread throughout the British Isles like wild fire under the gifted leadership of men such as Columba who established monastic communities in Iona and Aidan in Lindsfarne. These monasteries were not places for monastic recluses, rather they became spiritual centers and discipleship training hubs that sent out missionaries throughout Western Europe. On Columba’s influence, early church historian Bede wrote that he, “converted the nation to the faith of Christ by his preaching and example.”

What made the Celtic way of discipleship especially successful was their commitment to making disciples not just converts by infusing evangelism and discipleship. This is an important lesson. Many churches today focus on evangelism at the expense of discipleship by seeking to win converts instead of making disciples. The goal of evangelism is disciple making. The Great Commission in Matthew chapter 28 is to make disciples who will follow Christ rather than simply win converts. When Jesus said, “make disciples” the disciples understood it to mean more than simply getting someone to believe in Jesus and they interpreted it to mean that they should make out of others what Jesus made out of them. There are four lessons that we can learn from the Celtic way of discipleship which we will look at in the following pages.

1. Doing Ministry as a Team

The Celtic Christians did ministry as a team instead of individually. This means they didn’t go out and try to win the world by themselves, rather they went out as a team because the understood the power of numbers. Each member of the Celtic missionary team played an important role in the whole of reaching the community. Author John Finney observes that the Celts believed in, “the importance of the team. A group of people can pray and think together. They inspire and encourage each other. The single entrepreneur is too easily prey to self doubt and loss of vision.”[5] The Celtic team approach to ministry and discipleship is an important alternative to the modern “lone ranger” mentality approach that is typical in so many Western churches and desperately needs to be recovered. George Hunter says:

“In contrast to contemporary Christianity’s well know evangelism approaches of “Lone Ranger” one to one evangelism, or confrontational evangelism, or the public preaching crusade, (and in stark contrast to contemporary Christianity’s more dominant approach of not reaching out at all!), Celtic Christians usually evangelized as a team by relating to the people of a settlement; identifying with the people; engaging in friendship, conversation, ministry, and witness with the goal of raising up a church in measurable time.”[6]

2. A Holistic Faith

The Celtic Christians developed a holistic approach to discipleship that prepared people to live out their faith through a sense of depth, compassion, and power in mission. The Celtic believers were immersed in a holistic spirituality that had depth and meaning and enabled them to withstand difficult and hardship in their everyday lives. In other words, their faith wasn’t just theoretical, but practical and relevant to everyday life. Celtic Christians were not just hanging out in classroom, but living their faith in real world.

A major problem with much of North American discipleship is that it is one dimensional. Many Christians see themselves as either evangelical, sacramental, charismatic, etc. However, like a diamond the Christian faith has multiple dimensions. The Celtic Christians understood the complex nature of the faith and sought to bring together a faith encounter that encouraged spiritual growth on many levels. George Hunter says that they had a four-fold structure of experiences that deepened their faith.

You experienced voluntary periods of solitary isolation in a remote natural setting, i.e. a grove of trees near a stream where you can be alone with God.
You spent time with your “soul friend,” a peer with whom you were vulnerable and accountable; to whom you made confession; from whom you received absolution and penance; who both supported and challenged you.
You spent time with a small group.
You participated in the common life, meals, work, learning, biblical recitation, prayers and worship of the whole Christian community [7]

3. Missional Community

The Celtic Christians understood that mission takes place within the context of the Christian community. The Celtic Christians entered into the community they were trying to reach with the gospel. They would live, work, and eat among the people they were trying to reach. This is contrary to the way most modern Christians try to reach people. They went to where the people were, we usually expect people to come to us.

They knew that God created man to live in community with others. In the context of Christian community, spiritual seekers were able to explore the faith in real life settings. They were able to see the gospel message lived out before them. In this sense, Christian community is a living sacrament that demonstrates the eternal truths of Word of God.

Upon arrival, a guest would be given a soul friend, a small group, and a place for solitude. A guest would also learn some Scripture; worship with the community; one or more members of the community would share the ministry of conversation and pray with and for the guest daily. After some days, weeks, or months the guest would find themselves believing what the Christians in the community believe. They would then invite the seeker to commit their life to Christ and his will for their life, leading the new disciple in continued outreach ministry to other seekers.

4. Biblical Hospitality

The Celtic Christians understood and practiced biblical hospitality. The role of hospitality was central in the Celtic Christian ministry to seekers, visitors, refugees, and other guests who came into their sphere of influence.^_ Hospitality was an important part of the monastic community life and ministry. They would invite seekers, pilgrims, refugees and others to be guests of the monastic community. They followed the Benedictine Rule that said, “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’”

Many Contemporary Christians and churches have lost touch with the Biblical hospitality. It is imperative that we relearn the gift of hospitality, especially in light of its important place in the Scriptures. The word hospitality literally means “love of strangers” and is found several times in the New Testament (Romans 12:13; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:8; 1 Peter 4:9). We are all called to offer the love of Christ to our guests and welcome them in such a way that they would be transform from strangers into friends.

Lessons for Today

The Celtic Christian movement offers several extraordinary insights into discipleship for the church of 21st century. We can learn a lot from the man, Saint Patrick. He is an example of how an individual can overcome tremendous obstacles with the Lord’s help. Patrick went back to the very land where he had been a slave to evangelize. It is like the story of Joseph who ended up saving his brothers who had sold him into slavery. What a powerful example of how God can use our past to minister to others. Many times the Lord will give you a burden to help bring salvation and healing to people from your past.

Even though he didn’t have a good education he didn’t let that stop him from letting God use him. We see that he was able to do great things for God despite his lack of worldly education. His calling came from God and that’s all that really mattered. When the Lord is in your life He will make a way for you. Patrick was used mightily by God to deliver the people of Ireland from paganism, slavery, and sin. He helped bring revival to a nation and to a continent. He stands as one of the great men of the Christian faith.

[1] Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization. New York: Doubleday Press, 1995. See introduction.

[2] Liam de Paor, Saint Patrick's World: The Christian Culture of Ireland's Apostolic Age, Dublin: Four Courts. 1993. 99-100.

[3] Ibid, 100.

[4] Ibid, 97.

[5] Ibid, 53.

[6] George Hunter III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism. 47. This section draws heavily from Hunter’s classic work.

[7] Ibid, 48.

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Dr. Winfield Bevins is the Director of Asbury Seminary’s Church Planting Initiative. He frequently speaks at conferences and retreats on a variety of topics. He has a doctorate from Southeastern Seminary. He has written several books, including Our Common Prayer: A Field Guide to the Book of Common Prayer. As an author, one of his passions is to help contemporary Christians connect to the historic roots of the Christian faith for spiritual formation. He and his wife Kay, have three girls Elizabeth, Anna Belle, and Caroline. Find out more at www.winfieldbevins.com. Twitter: @winfieldbevins

Joshua Waulk 9/13/15 Joshua Waulk 9/13/15

An Exchange Worth Making

Children often struggle with being fickle and indecisive when receiving or shopping for a gift. Those who’ve witnessed that awkward, anti-climactic moment when a child is clearly unimpressed by some gift they’ve just been given know the gut-wrenching desire that the unfortunate moment would pass quickly. One of the hallmarks of adolescence is an inability to discern the true, objective value of one thing in comparison to another. What glitters in the eyes of a child today becomes rubbish tomorrow. For children, the investment that originally secured the object for them is of little concern.

Christmas and birthdays are a prime time to observe this phenomenon. A child unwraps a gift like a tornado ripping through the aluminum siding of a mobile home, plays with it momentarily, and then drops it in hot pursuit of the next big thing.

Unaware that material goods offer only a fleeting, momentary satisfaction, children convince themselves that happiness will be found in the next best gift. They have not yet learned that discontentment produces only sadness and disappointment. The things of this world are surely passing away (1 Jn. 2:17).

A parent’s dismay at their child’s struggle with idolatry is short-lived, however, when they hear Paul say, “Such were some of you” (1 Cor. 6:11). We are not entirely unlike our little ones, as we’ll soon learn.

A History of Gift Exchange

As adults, we carry on a legacy of gift exchange that works in our hearts like an almost unstoppable force. The next big thing tempts us in much the same way that we see our children enticed by things that glitter. An example of this might be the ensuing fervor that occurs whenever the latest smartphone or luxury car hits the marketplace.

Many people today sit at the counseling table or in discipleship meetings brokenhearted over what amounts to the inability of their functional gods to make good on false promises (Deut. 4:28).

In biblical counseling, we refer to this as spiritual or circumstantial sadness and depression. It’s different from a sadness that’s rooted in biology, but it’s no less real. It doesn’t originate in the brain, as much as in the heart. In a materialistic culture, it’s all too common—even for those in the church.

Ruling desires of the heart not aligned with Scripture lead us into the restlessness of which Augustine warned: You made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its place of rest in you.[1] Humans were created for worship. Indeed, something or someone will always occupy the throne of man’s heart. For this and other reasons, we are instructed to guard our hearts—the wellspring of life (Prov. 4:23).

We fail to guard our hearts, however, when we seek wholeness in career, fulfillment in marriage, happiness in education, comfort in the praises of men, or ultimate rest in recreation. Instead, we risk further estrangement from the God who created us and who now offers us fullness of joy in relationship with him when we continue seeking to exchange what we cannot lose for what we cannot keep (Ps. 16:11).

God the Father is indeed the Giver of all good gifts, such as those listed above, but when we exchange the pleasure of knowing the Giver for the gratification of merely possessing the gift, we reveal the true condition of our heart.

We say, in effect, God may be good, but there must be something better.

A Gift Exchanged for a Curse

Our propensity toward dissatisfaction begins in the garden with Adam exchanging the unspeakable joy of covenant communion with God for the false hope of becoming like God (Gen. 3:5). The horror of Adam’s deception was that he was already like God. Adam was the unique recipient of God’s immortal image and was the pinnacle of God’s creation (Gen. 1:26).

The greatest gift given to Adam at the beginning of human history was not “free will,” but the privilege of being God’s image-bearing vice regent over all the earth. God had already loved Adam, but Adam would ask God, in effect, “How have you loved me?” (Mal. 1:2).

By exchanging the divine gift, that is, his covenantal relationship with God in the garden, what Adam received was not blessing but curse. Not higher freedom but slavery. Not life but death. Not the truth but a lie. Not a deeper faith but unbelief.

Adam believed, in a way similar to an immature child, that he would find in the creation something better than the good gift he already possessed in God. The fruit of this is that we inherit this tragedy from Adam—the curse of sin and death along with a fundamental nature that is altogether different from Adam’s original state (Gen. 2:17; Ps. 51:5).

We continue making Adam’s fatal exchange each time we reject God’s good gift of communion with him in favor of lustful desires for something better in the world. Like Adam, we attempt to seek in the creation what can only be found in God. Like fickle children, only sadness and disappointment await us when we seek to exchange this toy for that toy.

It was C.S. Lewis who wrote in “The Weight of Glory”:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.[2]

A Biblical Exchange Policy

It used to be that stores would not exchange a gift without a receipt and certainly not after it had been opened or beyond thirty days. Store policies have changed over the years, so much so that shoppers are encouraged to read the fine print on any gift receipt. Shoppers are warned to not lose their receipt or attempt the return of items not purchased at the same store.

Thankfully, the story of the gospel, in both its diagnosis of man’s condition and prescription for redemption and restoration, has never been altered or amended.

This biblical exchange policy, though strict, is incredibly gracious to the returning customer (man) who offers an item (sin) that did not originate with the storeowner (God). Even more outlandish is that the customer seeks an item in exchange for their sin and sadness to which they can lay no claim—the righteousness of Christ and eternal life in him (Jn. 3:16).

The scandal of this policy is the storeowner’s perfect and just willingness to allow and even make provision for this outrageous exchange. Concerning this transaction, Paul writes:

“He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in [Christ]” —2 Corinthians 5:21 HCSB

Unlike children who are bound for eventual sadness and disappointment when the newness of something better wears off, those who receive the miracle of this Great Exchange will never tire of restored peace and fellowship with the author and finisher of their faith (Heb. 12:2).

To be sure, shadows of happiness and pleasure are evident in the world, but shadows do not fill the soul.Produced by that which moth and rust destroy, they leave the heart restless and empty (Matt. 6:19). By contrast, the “holiday at the sea” Lewis alluded to was secured by Jesus for Christians when he traded places with them on the cross.

Writing of this glorious truth, authors Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington write:

In this Great Exchange, we find ourselves arriving at God himself. . . . Far from being slaves, we are now God-esteemed sons of God and Christ-esteemed brothers of Christ. . . . What can this inheritance mean? What blessing can be excluded? What a reward, what grace, what a God, what a Christ, what a Gospel![3]

An Exchange Worth Making

Much of what passes as clinical depression today is discovered to be situational rather than biological. Some significant percentage of those cases, once the layers are pulled back, are driven by unruly desires of the heart. Satisfaction and contentment in Christ alone have been exchanged for whatever fills the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life (1 Jn. 2:16).

The good news is that despite our great folly when this is the case, God offers hope for prodigals who exchange their birthright for a bowl of soup or who spent their future inheritance on immediate pleasures only to find themselves wallowing in a pig’s pen.

As the Prodigal Son of Luke 15 learned, let us be convinced of our need for repentance and faith in the face of our own misguided exchanges and let us run with confidence back to our heavenly Father who waits for us and stands ready to exchange our soiled garments for a robe of righteousness and our earthly trinkets for eternal treasure.

[1] Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2005), 15.

[2] C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory Quotes,” goodreads, accessed August 24, 2015, https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1629232.

[3] Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington, The Great Exchange: My Sin for His Righteousness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 168-69.

— Joshua Waulk is the Founder and Executive Director of Baylight Counseling, a nonprofit biblical counseling ministry in Clearwater, Florida. He is married with four children, three of whom are adopted. Josh earned the MABC and is now pursuing the D.Min. in biblical counseling at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is ACBC certified.

Sean Nolan 8/25/15 Sean Nolan 8/25/15

4 Simple Ways Fred Elliot Discipled His Children

Editor: In our Family History Series we are seeking to understand how Christians of the past have pursued making disciples. We want to connect the church’s current efforts to make, mature and multiply disciples to its historical roots as well as encourage the church to learn from her rich past. This is the first in our series.

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“Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth.” –Psalm 127:4

Fred Elliot isn’t a name I’ve heard thrown around . . . well ever. Despite being mentored by Harry Ironside, his legacy is largely unknown in our present day. However, his son, Jim Elliot, is perhaps the most well known missionary of the 20^th century. Because the saying is true that disciples aren’t born they’re made, it is difficult to understate the influence Fred had on Jim’s spiritual formation. Here are just four examples:

1. Authentically Living Coram Deo

Interestingly enough, Fred Elliot may or may not even have been able to define the term “Coram Deo,” a Latin term, meaning to live in the presence (literally “face”) of God, but all the same he lived it out. And this had a profound impact on the young Jim Elliot. Prior to marrying Elisabeth he wrote to her of his father:

“Betty, I blush to think of things I have said, as if I knew something about what Scripture teaches. I know nothing. My father’s religion is of a sort which I have seen nowhere else. His theology is wholly undeveloped, but so real and practical a thing that it shatters every ‘system’ of doctrine I have seen. He cannot define theism, but he knows God.”1

Jim was often viewed with suspicion by other students at Wheaton College for taking God’s Word at face value and living in obedience to a simple and literal interpretation of Scripture. A skeptic of human attempts to systematize and categorize biblical truth, Jim took the second part of 2 Timothy 2:9 which states, “the word of God is not bound,” to mean that God and his revelation in Scripture could never be contained by human classifications.

Too often we give the impression that assent to accurate theological teaching is indispensable to salvation. Don’t misunderstand me, while salvation is more than just “right belief” it is certainly not less. But believing “rightly” is not the same as “walking closely” (cf. 1 Jn. 2:3). Fred’s relationship with Christ left a profound impact on the young Jim not because he possessed a tidy, buttoned-up orthodoxy, but because he humbly submitted to the living God and aimed to walk closely with him. The Savior’s words sufficiently warn us of the danger of placing one’s study of God’s Word above one’s submission to the Word Made Flesh: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (Jn. 5:39-40). We must take care not to stuff our heads so full of content of Christ that our hearts lack contact with Christ.

It doesn’t take long for a young mind to come up with a theological question that stumps even the most well read of Christian fathers. Don’t lose heart, dad, let God’s grace melt your pride. Seek his face, live authentically in front of it, and teach your children out of the overflow of that relationship. A simple faith lived out sincerely in front of your children will likely leave a stronger impression than a complex theology devoid of an intimate relationship with the Savior.

2. Intentional Time Spent with His Children

Additionally, Fred carved time out of his schedule to spend with the young Jim Elliot and this too left a lasting impression on him. He wrote on his nineteenth birthday:

“My arrival at this point is not of my own efforts […] but by the quiet, unfelt guidance of a faithful mother and a father-preacher who has not spent so much time rearing other people’s children that he hasn’t had time for his own.”2

Anyone who’s ever tried to serve in any meaningful capacity in ministry knows just how demanding it can be. The to-do-list is never done. The temptation to sacrifice your own family for the sake of another family who is in need of pastoral help and discipleship is always present. Even the time with our families that we guard could potentially be interrupted by phone calls and emails if we are not careful. Even before the cell phone and email, pastors were neglecting their own families enough to warrant Jim mentioning it in his journal.

What measures do you take to guard time with your children? Whether you’re in vocational ministry, banking, accounting, medicine, law, or any other profession, what time do you make “sacred” for your family?

There will always be another email; there will always be something on the to-do-list that still needs to be done. Our children, on the other hand, will remember if dad took time to read to them, pray with them, and listen to them. Conversely, if our “quality time” consists of being physically present, but mentally engaged in answering emails on our phones, our sons and daughters will remember that as well.

3. Praying For His Children

Third, Fred Elliot was a man who prayed both with and for his children. “The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much,”3 he writes in one journal entry, going on to attribute his own affection of Christ to the prayers of his own father. Elsewhere he writes to Fred: “Nothing has had a more powerful influence on this life of mine than your prayers […] thank God you took the time—the value of such is inestimable.”4

He didn’t mince words. The single most effective action Fred took in training his son to follow Christ was praying for him. This shouldn’t be surprising when Christ himself, the only perfect person to ever walk this earth, models a life of unceasing prayer for us. Can we really expect to be effective in any of our attempts to make disciples out of our children if we aren’t constantly stopping to pray with and for them?

I know it’s not super flashy to say, “praying for your kids is important.” And then offer that as the most effective way of discipling them. We all prefer 15 new and improved methods of raising children that love Christ, but the simple fact is that God is a person to be related to and not a set of principles to be assented to. While it sounds so simple and dated to say, it does not mean it isn’t true or that it’s easy. Spending time with God and with our kids, praying to him, for them, and with them (as the Bible so intuitively outlines) is likely to pay off better dividends than jumping at the latest trending parenting method that will be forgotten in six months.

So, dad, live in the face of your God and invite your children to accompany you. It’s easiest to introduce them to the living God when you spend a lot of time living in his presence and praying to him.

4. Making The Gospel the Main Thing

Finally, Fred Elliot sought “to show [his children] the glory of Christ above all else, striving always to avoid legalisms or a list of ‘don’ts.’”5 What else could be more important than this?

I only had to wait nine months before my son, Knox, started walking. Then I quickly found myself saying the word “no” more than any other word. Not surprisingly, he wanted to do everything I told him not to. Why is it the fallen human race is so quick to point out everything that shouldn’t be instead of all the great things that are? The Christian life is nothing less than chasing after the glorious risen Christ. Yet, we all too easily can reduce it to a list of things to avoid or define ourselves by the things we are against.

We do well to follow Fred’s lead. Rather than put a spotlight on all the things that are lesser than Christ and discuss their inferiority, we simply exalt him and give him his due praise and our children will hopefully decide on their own that nothing else on this earth is worth their time.

Christ’s defeat of sin and death is proclaimed as Good News. If we continue to proclaim it as such to our children and show them why it is Good News, perhaps they will follow in our footsteps and live their own lives Coram Deo, investing in their children, and praying for the next generation. None of us will be perfect fathers, but, by God’s grace, we can be purposeful fathersand maybe some of our own sons will shake the gates of hell much like Jim Elliot did.

1 Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty, p. 90

2 Ibid. p. 39

3 Ibid. p. 32

4 Ibid. p. 42

5 Ibid. p. 25

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Sean Nolan (B.S. and M.A., Summit University) is the Family Life Pastor at Christ Fellowship Church in Fallston, MD. Prior to that he served at Terra Nova Church in Troy, NY for seven years and taught Hermeneutics to ninth and tenth graders. He is married to Hannah and is about to be a father for the second time. He occasionally blogs at Hardcore Grace.

Justin & Lindsey Holcomb 8/13/15 Justin & Lindsey Holcomb 8/13/15

An Interview with Justin and Lindsey Holcomb, Authors of God Made All of Me

It’s perhaps a parent’s greatest fear – that at some point his or her child will become a victim of sexual abuse. The statistics are alarming: Approximately one in five children will become victims by his or her 18th birthday. Authors Justin and Lindsey Holcomb have responded to parents’ concerns by writing God Made All of Me, a resource for moms, dads, and caregivers who want to protect and educate their children.

GCD: What prompted you to write God Made All of Me? What age range was it written for?

JUSTIN & LINDSEY: The book is for 2-8 year olds. We wrote it because we have two young children and know that parents need tools to help talk with their kids about their bodies and to help them understand the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touch. It allows families to build a first line of defense against sexual abuse in the safety of their own homes. Our goal is to help parents and caregivers in protecting their children from sexual abuse. Because private parts are private, there can be lots of questions, curiosity, or shame regarding them. For their protection, children need to know about private parts and understand that God made their body and made it special.

GCD: You were intentional about using the terms “appropriate” and “inappropriate,” when referring to kinds of touch, instead of the words “good” or “bad.” Why?

JUSTIN & LINDSEY: It is important to be clear with adults and children about the difference between touch that is appropriate and touch that is inappropriate. Experts discourage any use of the phrases “good touch” and “bad touch” for two main reasons. First, some sexual touch feels good and then children get confused wondering if it was good or bad. Second, children who have been taught “good touch” or “bad touch” would be less likely to tell a trusted adult as they perceive they have done something bad.

To your child say something like: “Most of the time you like to be hugged, snuggled, tickled, and kissed, but sometimes you don’t and that’s OK. Let me know if anyone—family member, friend, or anyone else—touches you or talks to you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable.”

GCD: How did you approach talking about this issue with your own children?

JUSTIN & LINDSEY: We started by teaching them the proper names of their private parts at an early age and telling them that their bodies are strong, beautiful, and made by God. We read books to them from an early age on this topic and would talk about who can help them in the bathroom or bath and that it was OK for the doctor to check their private parts at appointments when mom or dad is present.

We would also roll play different scenarios to get them thinking what they would do if someone approached them and wanted to touch their private parts, show theirs, take pictures, etc. Play the “what if” game with them at the dinner table with different scenarios to see their thinking and problem solving skills. “If someone asked you to show them your private parts and promised to give you candy if you didn’t tell anyone what would you do?” Remind them that they can tell you anything and anytime without fear of getting into trouble.

We’ve also tried to instill a sense of control our kids have over their own bodies. We would tell them to say “no” or “stop” when they were all done being hugged, tickled, or wrestled. We encourage them to practice this with us so they feel confident saying it to others if the need arises. We also tell them they don’t have to hug or kiss a family member if they don’t want to and teach them how to express this without being rude. It is important to empower children to be in charge of their bodies instead of at the mercy of adults.

GCD: What are some practical things parents can do to protect their children from sexual abuse?

JUSTIN & LINDSEY: In our book, the last page is to parents and called, “9 Ways to Protect Your Children from Sexual Abuse.” Some of the key practical things parents can do are: teach proper names of private body parts, talk about touches, throw out the word “secret,” and identify whom to trust. You can read about all 9 here.

GCD: It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, but what should a mom or dad do if they suspect their child might have been the victim of sexual abuse?

JUSTIN & LINDSEY: You can call your local sexual assault crisis center and talk with a child advocate or hotline volunteer about your concerns. They will be able to point you to the proper authorities. Some areas would have you speak with a detective where other areas would have you talk to a victim witness advocate. Don’t ask probing questions that could instill fear in your child. Just assure them that you are so proud of them for telling you what happened and that you believe them and that your job is to keep them safe.

GCD: Tell us about GRACE. What does it offer to the church and families?

JUSTIN & LINDSEY: GRACE stands for “Godly Response to Abuse in Christian Environments” and the mission is to empower the Christian community through education and training to recognize, prevent, and respond to child abuse. We help educate churches and other faith based organizations how to protect vulnerable individuals from abuse and we help churches love and serve survivors of abuse who are in their midst. Check out GRACE at www.netgrace.org.

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To keep up with Justin and Lindsey Holcomb, visit www.godmadeallofme.com. You can also follow Justin’s page on Facebook or follow them on Twitter (@justinholcomb and @lindseyholcomb).

Chelsea Vaughn 8/11/15 Chelsea Vaughn 8/11/15

A Beautifully Fractured Heart

I will never forget one time when I was sitting in my mentor’s living room explaining how mad I was that a boy hurt me. I didn’t care to reconcile with him because he treated me carelessly. She looked at me in loving boldness and said, “Chelsea, are you saying you don’t want to talk to this boy about how he disappointed you, or that you don’t want to talk to God about how he disappointed you?” Her words convicted my heart. I searched my heart and learned that my intention was not to run away from the boy, but to run away from my Father. My heart has experienced pain because of boys, friendships, and even family. Because our world is broken, we must constantly pursue restoration, but it’s hard to trust our Father with our pain and suffering. Plus from a very young age, we are trained to be strong, courageous, and protect ourselves from hurt. It’s a charming philosophy to preemptively guard our hearts from experiencing pain. This breaks down because protecting ourselves from hurt directly prevents God’s plan for restoration. We often believe the lie that being strong means we must condemn weakness, forsake pain, and ignore brokenness. This philosophy runs counter to the gospel and ignores the character of God.

Our culture preaches this distorted theory of brokenness and our hearts are hardened to what could be—that is, God’s holy intention for his children to be collectively known, saved, and redeemed with his all-encompassing affection for us. David writes,

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent forth his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave. Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men. – Psalm 107:19-21

David clearly portrays an image of Christ as one who saves, heals, rescues, and loves. He reminds us of who we are and who God is. This passage is beautiful because it is a story of gospel power in community. Our humble acknowledgment of despair beckons surrender. It is only in this broken surrender that we experience Jesus.

Jesus hung vulnerable and exposed for the entire world to ridicule, yet silently he bore into deeper strength, devotion, and courage than any human being could grasp. This glorious mystery has been eternally inscribed on our hearts. The Holy Spirit retells this story in our lives. Will we risk humiliation, pain, and brokenness to search the mystery of God’s redemption in community?

Our hearts can’t be reconciled if we aren’t known.

We shield the place in our heart that holds our hurt, fear, and anger fiercely. When we expose these places, we may feel overwhelmed because the emotions there may be uncontrollable, unknown, and painful.

Our response is most often negligence, which (unknowingly) leaves us alone in despair. The gospel response would be inviting God into those places and praying, “Search me, God, and know my heart” (Ps. 139:23). This cry unifies our heart with the Holy Spirit then ushers us into community with fellow believers, which is God’s tangible gift of comfort and grace.

Our hearts can’t be reconciled if we aren’t cleansed by His blood.

To refuse pain is more than rejecting healing; it is ultimately rejecting the need for the cross. In the presence of Christ, our hearts are vulnerable to hope for reconciliation. Our hope is beautiful because it calls out for the cross. Dependence on God is so much deeper than admission of weakness; rather it’s an acknowledgement of worship. Our response to Jesus is a humble acknowledgement of how worthy his sacrifice was.

The Lord is rich in mercy, he is steadfast, and he delights to redeem. These are characteristics of his nature, which lead our eyes to Jesus, who was the incarnated hope of God’s children. The absence of need for help suggests an absence of worth for Christ (Gal. 2:21). When we choose to ignore this need, we choose to ignore his worth. This could likely be the most disparaging lie that Western culture believes.

However, we have reason to hope in the body of Christ. Community will flesh out honesty, brokenness, and even healing. Community is more than company to minimize loneliness; community is the coming together of Christ’s body. This means we must be unafraid to be known and dependent. Our mission is to walk, together as a body, towards the cross so that the world may see and declare that he is God.

Intimacy requires risk. It demands exposure to the weak and vulnerable places of our heart. I dread the continuous act of exposing my brokenness beckoning my need for counsel and prayer. I must choose trust, even when my flesh wants to hide in shame. Healing is the most humbling reminder of God’s gracious gift in dependence, both on him and among his body. I am forced to face my need for support, encouragement, and accountability. I am forced to trust God that he has provided me with a community that may disappoint me but will not abandon me. I have never felt closer to God then when I finally allowed him to touch my heart with his healing hand of grace. And the friend and mentor who challenged my source of disappointment has continued to trudge through the trenches and rejoice on the mountains. True community fights to resemble God’s image in dependence, faithfulness, and hope.

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Trillia Newbell 8/6/15 Trillia Newbell 8/6/15

Fear and Faith

I find Paul to be a wonderful example of a God-fearing man who had to learn to trust. He had to learn to be content (Philippians 4:11). Paul hadn’t arrived. He was tried by fire. He was tested, and his faith and trust in the Lord grew as a result. I share this because you and I so often hold the men and women in Scripture as our example for life. The example from Paul is one of learning—not of perfection. The valiant woman of Proverbs is another example of a biblical character we may elevate. She laughed at the unknowns in the days to come and found her security and strength in the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 31:25, 30). She is the quintessential biblical example of a strong and courageous woman. When I envision her, I imagine she is unruffled by uncertainty and ready to face any danger. Boy, do I wish I were like her! Thankfully, that is why she is considered an ideal. I, however, would characterize my everyday walk with the Lord quite differently. I am fearful, but I want to be bold and trusting. I am anxious, but I want to find confidence and rest in God. I imagine that the valiant woman, if walking the earth, wouldn’t be comfortable with the pedestal we’ve put her on. No one is perfect, and even the “ideal” woman needed to grow and learn.

Walk by Faith

Similarly, you and I are tried. We don’t become Christians and suddenly understand what it means to walk by faith. Like a baby, we may begin our journey by pushing off from our hands, then crawling, pulling up on the Word of truth, and failing and falling many times. And then one day we reach the point where we take that sure step of faith, and before we know it, we are wobbling toward a straight path. We aren’t born walking from our mother’s womb, and we aren’t born again trusting perfectly.

I’m not alone in this. Just the other day I received an email from a friend, requesting prayer because she was afraid to leave her daughter as she traveled across the state. Before that, and over the past several months, I’ve had the privilege of caring for women who have had miscarriages, and they fear having more or never getting pregnant again. I have a dear college-aged friend who shared that she was afraid she might not do well enough on a midterm to pass her college class; and my single girlfriend is praying that the Lord will bring her a husband—but the prospect seems dim, so she fears it just won’t happen. I could go on. And I imagine you resonate with similar temptations and circumstances.

We too often fear the past, the present, and the future. There is the fear of being who we are, so we try to please people. We, unlike the psalmist in Psalm 23, are afraid that the future is not as good as God says; will goodness and mercy really follow me all my days? (Psalm 23:6). There is the fear of other women, and—as a result—we compare ourselves to them and judge their actions and motives. We fear the future with anxious thoughts about our children not knowing the Lord when they get older or about our husband not returning from a trip. We don’t want our kids to die, so we fixate on death and forget who is really in control. And we wonder if we are good enough for anyone or anything.

I know this to be true firsthand. From trusting God for a husband to praying that I wouldn’t have another miscarriage, I’ve experienced the intense and debilitating temptation to fear. The fear I am referring to is by definition an expectation of harm; it is to be alarmed and apprehensive. When I am tempted to fear in this way, it is because my false sense of control has been altered by a circumstance. Or there are unknowns—what lies in the future—and I realize I have absolutely no control over what will happen. In many ways, our fears rest in seeking trust and security in ourselves. Within a matter of seconds I can bury my husband in my private thoughts; I’ve arranged the funeral and am now terrified as I try to figure out how to raise our two beautiful children by myself. These thoughts are imaginary; it hasn’t happened. It’s just my fear. During those times my mind isn’t meditating on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8). I’ve noticed that my decision to play God never works out well for me. Can you relate? Regardless, I think you and I do this because we believe it’s easier to be in control. But when we realize we don’t reign supreme, that we don’t have sovereign authority over our lives, it can be terrifying.

A Remedy for Our Fears

There is, however, and thankfully, a remedy for all our fears. That remedy comes as a person, and the means through which He provides the comfort, along with the Holy Spirit, is through His Word. To fight our fears, we will look at God’s sovereignty and love and watch our fears dissipate as we apply God’s Word to our lives. The very thing we are holding on to (control) is, ironically, the thing we most need to let go of. As you and I come to understand that our God isn’t ruling as a tyrant but is lovingly guiding and instructing as a Father, we can loosen the tight grip on our lives that produces the bad fruit of fear. This isn’t “Let go and let God.” It’s “Let go, run hard toward your Savior, and learn to trust God.”

There is, however, a fear that we want to possess. It is a fear defined as an awestruck wonder of the holy God who condescended to become a man, died on a cross, and bore the entire wrath that you and I deserve so that we might now enter into His presence. We can enter His presence and receive grace. He can turn our weak and sinful fear into a fear of Him. That’s what He does; He turns coal into diamonds. We don’t have to be crippled by fear, because we have a God who holds the oceans in the hollow of His hand. He doesn’t promise that our lives will be easy (far from it), but He does promise to take care of us, His daughters, till the very end and for all of eternity. Ultimately we fight fear by trusting in the Lord and fearing Him.

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Trillia Newbell (@trillianewbell) is a wife, mom, and writer who loves Jesus. She is the author of United: Captured by God’s Vision for Diversity (Moody).

Guest User 8/4/15 Guest User 8/4/15

The Gospel of Matthew Reading Plan

We’ve launched a series on The Gospel of Matthew for the month of August. Brad Watson, our executive director, encouraged our readers to read a chapter a day in the Gospel of Matthew. To help jumpstart your reading, we want to share our reading plan (below) and this helpful resource from the folks at The Bible Project (@JoinBibleProj):

Mon, August 3rd—Mathew 1
Tues, August 4th—Mathew 2
Wed, August 5th—Matthew 3
Thurs, August 6th—Matthew 4
Fri, August 7th—Matthew 5
Sat, August 8th—Matthew 6
Sun, August 9th—Matthew 7
Mon, August 10th—Matthew 8
Tues, August 11th—Matthew 9
Wed, August 12th—Matthew 10
Thurs, August 13th—Matthew 11
Fri, August 14th—Matthew 12
Sat, August 15th—Matthew 13
Sun, August 16th—Matthew 14
Mon, August 17th—Matthew 15
Tues, August 18th—Matthew 16
Wed, August 19th—Matthew 17
Thurs, August 20th—Matthew 18
Fri, August 21st—Matthew 19
Sat, August 22nd—Matthew 20
Sun, August 23rd—Matthew 21
Mon, August 24th—Matthew 22
Tues, August 25th—Matthew 23
Wed, August 26th—Matthew 24
Thurs, August 27th—Matthew 25
Fri, August 28th—Matthew 26
Sat, August 29th—Matthew 27
Sun, August 30th—Matthew 28

As Brad encouraged:

Read the Gospel of Matthew. One of the reasons Jesus’ life ends up feeling like a random collection of anecdotes and one liners is we rarely read through it all together. We may have done so in our early days of faith but have since neglected it. We invite you to spend August reading the Gospel of Matthew. Read a chapter a day. As you read, contemplate the passage. Here are some helpful questions:

What is Jesus saying or doing?
What does that say about his character?
How are people reacting to him? How does that expose your reaction to Jesus? How would your friend who doesn’t believe in Jesus respond to this?
How is Jesus proving to be the true humanity? The true Prophet? The true Priest? The true King?
What is most challenging about Jesus?

Pray the Gospel of Mathew. Practice Lectio Divina, Read, Reflect, Respond, and Rest.

Mathew B. Sims is the Editor-in-Chief at Exercise.com and has authored, edited, and contributed to several books including A Household Gospel, We Believe: Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms for Worship, A Guide for Advent, Make, Mature, Multiply, and A Guide for Holy Week. Mathew, LeAnn (his wife), and his daughters Claire, Maddy, and Adele live in Taylors, SC at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains with their Airdale Terrier. They attend Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA). Visit MathewBryanSims.com