An Honest Confession of a Contrite Heart

I have a confession to make: I love me. Out of this fixation of self flows a daily desire to build, fight, protect, and expand my own kingdom. I love me and my kingdom. It’s simply the natural inclination of my heart. I see it in my politics. I observe it in my desire to manipulate people to do stuff I want them to do in the name of serving Jesus. I feel it when, in false humility, I reject compliments for a well-written blog, a nugget of wisdom I may have dropped during a conversation, or preached a sermon that may have resonated gospel rhythms in the heart of the very individual paying me said compliment. Every day and in every possible way, my heart is hard at work trying to convince me that I am, well, awesome. It is in this space of self-deception that sin does its finest work in me. And without fail, whenever I choose my own kingdom, I am always left empty and wanting. In perhaps one of the greatest sermons ever preached, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection, Thomas Chalmers surmised that there must be a greater love, a greater affection placed in the regenerate heart that usurps the rule and reign of all lesser loves. Chalmers attested:

It is then, that a love paramount to the love of the world, and at length expulsive of it, first arises in the regenerated bosom. It is when released from the spirit of bondage with which love cannot dwell, and when admitted into the number of God’s children through the faith that is in Christ Jesus, the spirit of adoption is poured upon us—it is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny of its former desires, in the only way in which deliverance is possible. And that faith which is revealed to us from heaven, as indispensable to a sinner’s justification in the sight of God, is also the instrument of the greatest of all moral and spiritual achievements on a nature dead to the influence, and beyond the reach of every other application.

You see, if I am uncomfortably transparent with you, I must confess that my heart is a tyrant in need of a new affection placed in it daily. Frankly, so is yours. Our desires must come under the rule and reign of a greater love, a love that dethrones all others, with self above all being dealt the final death blow.

As I have journeyed towards the daily discipline of dying to self, I have found that the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6.9-13 plays a crucial role in properly orienting my affections godward. As it has served me well, I extend the invitation to you to pray with me in the same way.

OUR FATHER, WHO IS IN HEAVEN (Matthew 6.9a)

I confess to you, Father, today I do not believe you are my Father. I am fully aware that you are Father to the hurting, to the broken, and to those who you have freed through the work of Jesus to love you.

It is available to everyone you have freed, and it is available in abundance. You have freed me, but I do not feel free. I feel trapped by my own sin. I feel unlovable. And I feel as though I do not love you. I know these things aren’t true, but they feel true. I feel the weight of it today.

Would you help my unbelief? Would you help me to understand that you are my Father and you love me right now? Father, overwhelm me with the love I first felt when the gospel was the best news I had ever heard.

HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME (Matthew 6.9b)

Father, only you make your name holy. You do not need me to do that. I need you to do that on my behalf. If holiness isn’t your nature and you are not about the business of making your name revered, then Jesus died in my place for nothing. I’ll never be holy without the work and the person of Jesus.

I cannot work enough to please you. It’s a fool’s errand I run every day. And it has left me wanting. I confess that my most sacred moments are riddled with my own sins of lust, power, need for approval, and pride. And my pride tries to convince me daily that I can achieve holiness apart from the finished work of Jesus. I am not holy. I am the furthest thing from it.

Today, I need the good news that Jesus took my sin and clothed me in all of his righteousness. Without Jesus’s intervention, I will never see you, Father. And if I never see you, I’ll always be self-deceived. Oh, make my heart believe!

YOUR KINGDOM COME, YOUR WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN (Matthew 6.10)

Father, I confess that I say I want your kingdom. Truth is, I want my kingdom. I want it every day. It burns inside me. I want, I want, I want, I want, I want…. I want all the advantages and benefits of the rule and reign of your heavenly kingdom here on earth, but I want to be king.

Yet, my heart is often foolish, always steeped in its own selfish ambition, greed, and lust for control. My heart craves it. And it isn’t good news—not for me, not for those who love me, and it is utterly damning news for those I say I love. I’m a crummy king. I repent.

Jesus, give me the faith to believe that your kindly rule has dealt the death blow to the curse of sin's tyrannical kingdom that is prone to rule my wondering heart.

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD, AND FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS AS WE ALSO HAVE FORGIVEN OUR DEBTORS (Matthew 6.11-12)

It is my sin that causes me to perish. I glut myself on so many different sources of bread that aren’t life giving. I eat my fill of death. Only you give life Father through Jesus. Forgive me for seeking satisfaction in everything else but you.

The sin debt I owed with my life is the sin debt Jesus paid with his life. Through the person and work with Jesus, by the regenerating power of Holy Spirit, I have been united with you in death and in life. You have clothed me with the very same dignity and honor that I have so longed to thieve, doing so without restraint.

Father, change my heart towards other glory thieves. Grant me the compassion to invite those who have sinned against me to the same table of mercy that you have extended to me in your gospel. It is our only hope for you are the gospel and in it, you give us what we truly need: All of yourself.

Let us, smiling sinners who have been forgiven of so much, glut ourselves on the Living Bread—the very finished work of Jesus on our behalf.

AND LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL (THE EVIL ONE) (Matthew 6.13)

Father, one of the greatest sins of my heart is my quick protest when convicted of sin that the enemy forced my hand. If I am being honest, I was undone before I engaged. I confess that there is darkness in my heart, a darkness that longs for my kingdom. I beg you not to lead me into the temptation of believing my kingdom is better.

Rather, protect me from the craftiness of the evil one who is desperately trying to convince me that I am okay. Deliver me from myself, oh God. Free me through believing and resting in the finished work of Jesus on my behalf.

A so very amen in the precious, beautiful, wonderful and gracious name of the one true King, Jesus.

—

Scott Fitzgerald Scott Fitzgerald is the Executive Pastor of Metro Church of Northwest Arkansas. He is currently pursuing his MDiv at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and blogs at thethrillofhope.com.

Killing The Devil's Radio with the Gospel!

George Harrison of The Beatles was right when he referred to gossip as the “Devil’s Radio.” In an age of overabundance of information, it is easy to tune into the frequency of social media where news are often blown out of proportions. Perhaps, in no other generation like ours is discernment required to such a great degree. While the gospel calls us to confess our sins, gossip confesses other people’s sins. Gossip broadcasts people’s weaknesses and sins in a whisper while others tune into the frequency. But it is always wiser to put a hold on any given subject until we’ve gained a fuller picture. We are all transparent before the Holy Spirit who sees and knows all our thoughts. I am transparent to my wife and other elders who speak into my life biblically and truthfully.

Everything is naked and laid bare before God, to whom everyone must give an account (Heb. 4: 12, 13). I believe we are to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another as priests (Jas. 5:16).  I believe in the kind of transparency that Paul said, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ” (I Cor. 11:1).  But what is often passed off as Christian transparency is sometimes-

Faux-honesty so often used as an excuse for voicing various kinds of complaints, doubts, accusations, fleshly desires, and other kinds of evil thoughts.  This exhibitionistic “virtue” is often paired with a smug self-congratulatory sneer or a condescending dismissal of anyone who dares to suggest that propriety and spiritual maturity may sometimes require us not to give voice to every carnal thought or emotion—i.e., that sometimes discretion is better than transparency.

Sometimes discretion may be better than transparency precisely because it takes spiritual maturity to be entrusted with confidential information.  In some cases, you’re in the middle of a conversation with someone and the gossip had already started. What should you do in such a case?

1. Listen objectively without taking sides and hold back judgments.

“The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Prov. 18: 17).  Listen with sympathy about the person being talked about, knowing that the person being talked about is not present to be able to defend himself/herself.  Don’t chime in or endorse!

In some cases, the person may come crying. When that happens, out of love for the person it is easy to believe everything the person says.  Sometimes, people cry not because they are innocent, but their burdens have become too heavy.  In such cases, tears can also be manipulative.

Think about when Esau returned from his hunt, he wept bitterly.  Esau was the victim of his own foolishness. He sold his birthright eagerly for a morsel of food to his brother, and when the blessing was given to Jacob (the swindler), he blamed it all on Jacob with tears—without admitting his own foolishness.  We are all skilled self-swindlers.  Besides it’s easy to feel sorry for the one who’s crying rather than the dry-eyed one–because when people cry, they can look like they’re the victim.  We must listen well with compassion, without being prejudiced in our discernment.

2. Gossip can destroy respect for the person being talked about.

It is wise to refrain from arriving at conclusions based on what you heard about the person. Gossip is second, third, or fourth hand information and when a morsel of truth is passed on, truth gets distorted and is diluted.

Even an element of truth becomes disproportionate and mixed up with personal opinions and judgments on the person’s character and reputation (sometimes this is done by well-meaning people).

For example: Person A may really respect person B, and because person A eagerly believed what he heard about person C say of person B, now person A has lost his trust and respect for person B (which may actually be partial truth but poisonous nonetheless).

Nothing may be as poisonous and destructive as gossip is in a community.

The Apostle James says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers” (4:10-11).  The word “speak against” is not necessarily a false report.  It can mean just an “against-report.”  The intent may be to belittle a person or be contemptuous.  It can mean to disdain, mock, or rejoice in purported evil.  These are subtler yet sinful forms of speaking against a person created in God’s image. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov. 18: 21ff).  So we can either speak life or destroy a person with gossip.

3. Realize that chronic gossip is in itself a deep character problem.

For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The tongue, James says “is a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (3: 8).  Proverbs says that those who gossip are untrustworthy: “A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid anyone who talks too much” (Prov. 20:19).  In Asian cultures, group conformity tends to encourage people to avoid confrontations to the extreme, whereas in Western culture, individualism tends to  lead people to err on the opposite side of over confrontations (Mat. 18:10-15).  “Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a thing covered” (Prov. 11: 13).  Those who gossip to you will gossip about you because they are not “trustworthy in spirit.”  In any case, prayerfully discern when to avoid the gossiper next time, or gently confront the sin (recognizing the ugliness of your own sin and the grace you have received) (Gal. 6: 1-2).

4. Pour water (not more fuel) to the fire.  

In other words, refuse to become a channel of gossip and walk in love (Eph. 5: 2).  Leviticus 19:16 says, “Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life.  I am the LORD.”  Gossip is smearing a person’s character.  Gossip may involve details that are not confirmed as true.  It endangers a person’s credibility and can bring your neighbor’s reputation to ruins.  It is the opposite of the commandment to love your neighbor—who bear God’s image.  Even if the report being said about the person ends up being true, be hesitant to become a carrier of bad news.  Remember how instead of piling up all your bad records, Jesus has cancelled them on the cross (Col. 2:14).

Seek prayerfully for clarification; ask God, before you ask others, what to do with the bad report.  Proverbs 16:28 tells us how destructive gossip can become in relationships: “A perverse person stirs up conflict, and a gossip separates close friends.”  Fight the urge to add more fuel to stir up “conflict” that separates close friends.  Satan is the master of division!

Someone once said that gossip is giving others some strife instead of peace.  It always brings more strife than peace! Gossip pours fuel on the conflict setting the entire community on fire.  It poisons relationships and multiplies misunderstandings.  Gossip never has positive outcomes!  Besides, there is a lot of truth that need not be passed around by people who are recipients of God’s lavish grace.

Gossip is always on the erring side because gossip is confessing other people’s sin without giving them the chance to repent.

Gossip is a like a terrible drug and very addictive.  For many, it is impossible to live without passing on bad news about someone, some churches or ministries because gossip has become a chronic illness.  Hence, gossip becomes an idol—something you can’t live with—something that gives you a false sense of superiority and self-righteousness over others.

The solution is not to simply try and control the tongue, because to be free from gossip an axe must be laid at the root of gossip.  “The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness” (Jas. 3: 6).  Therefore, the root problem of gossip is in the heart: “for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Lk. 6: 45).  Pray and give room and time for grace, repentance, healing and restoration to take place in a relationship that has been torn by gossip.

“For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases.” –Proverbs. 26: 20

With the passage of time, as the gospel takes root in the heart whisperers repent, and if no “whisperer” passes on gossip, quarrels and strife will cease.  John Owen said, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”  Instead of kindling the fire of gossip, it must be killed.

While moralism flails at the branches, the gospel cuts to the roots of gossip.

Ultimately, Jesus was slandered on our behalf.  The Pharisees accused him of casting out demons by Beelzebul (the prince of demons) yet he was the purest of all (Matt. 12: 24).  All the accusations hurled at him were wrong.  Yet he endured them all on the cross for our sake.  He was accused of demon possession when he did not even know sin in purity.  Each one of us deserves to be put in His place, but we received what we did not deserve because of Him.

Even his most noble motives were challenged, yet in weakness he conquered the power of Satan, sin, and death. Jesus came not to condemn but to save sinners—which is the opposite of speaking against a brother or sister and hurting or destroying their reputation. In Christ, God offers us a clean heart, a new heart, with which we can honor our neighbors truthfully, and give praises to our God.

Do you struggle with gossip?  

1. There is nothing in our sinful nature that has not already been covered by the blood of Jesus, so confess your sins instead of other people’s sins.
2. Preach to your heart and say, “I am worse than what people think I am, but Jesus loves me more than I can ever imagine.  He already covered me with His own righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). Therefore, I am free to discern the evidence of God’s grace in others instead of lending wood to the fire of gossip.”

—

Joey Zorina is a church planter in an artistic neighborhood in Tokyo, Japan.  He writes articles, essays and devotionals for Living Life, and blogs occasionally @regeneration).  He asks that you please pray for them and the Japanese.  You can connect with him at https://twitter.com/JoeyZorina

Prayer is the Most You Can Do

One of the things that have always captivated me about the life of Jesus is his constant communion with the Father. In one instance, Luke writes: “When Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples came and said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples’” (11: 1). Jesus chose a certain place to pray, but it was not the marketplace. He had a habitual communion with the Father. If Jesus (who knew no sin) needed to pray “in a certain place,” away from the distractions around him, how much more do fragile and weak people in modern societies, with all of its distractions, need to pray?

Prayer wasn’t a religious to-do checklist for Jesus.  For him prayer was like breathing. This was not an isolated event.  Elsewhere Matthew 14: 13 tells us: “[Jesus] withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.” And Mark 1:35 says, “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.”

Or Matthew 14: 23, “And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.  When evening came, he was there alone.”

Again Luke 6:12 says that, “He went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God.”  Prayer is communion with the Father.  Jesus lived a prayer-saturated life during his ministry on earth.  So when the disciples saw him having communion with the Father in this way, they approached him.

Lord, teach us to pray

Looking up to the Lord as a much better (or more qualified) teacher than John the Baptist, they said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”  The disciples had seen John teaching his own disciples to pray, and they had seen Jesus praying to his Father earnestly.

Therefore, when they saw the communion that Jesus had with the Father through prayer they wanted that more than anything else.  Ironically, they did not ask, “Lord, teach us to preach, teach us to lead, teach us to disciple and do ministry” although they did all of these things later.

Their ministry would flow out of their relationship with the Father in prayer.  And so the first thing Jesus taught was this: “Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name” (Lk. 11: 2).  We call God “Our Father” by His Spirit because of Jesus who went to the cross.  And so Jesus taught his disciples big God-sized global prayers. He taught them to pray for the hallowing of God’s name. And he taught them Kingdom-centered prayer (“Your Kingdom come”).

But why aren’t many of us confident in prayer? In Matthew 7: 9-11, Jesus awakens the disciples and us with a simple logic, when he said,

“Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

Idols prevent us from praying

Sadly, many of us do not feel the need to pray until disaster strikes in our countries or homes; or unless  cancer, physical debilitation, or great destruction shatters our pride to our great need of God.  More often than not, it’s our idols that prevent us from praying earnestly, because idols distract us from the more important things— like prayer.

The greatest barriers to living prayerful lives are not always bad things, but good things.

Bad things tend to make us pray, but not good things because bad things are not our most darling idols– good things are.  And these good things are blessings from God that we look to in order to give us comfort, security, safety, convenience and ease.  We can pull off all our organizations with managerial skills because we are a pragmatic people.  But prayer is spiritual so we find it to be the hardest thing to do.

Prayer, as simple as it sounds, is not simple for the vast majority of Christians when it comes to actually doing it, because everyone struggles to pray.  Sometimes, we don’t know how unspiritual we are until we start to pray.  I sometimes struggle to have prolonged periods of tarrying in prayer unless there’s a desperate need.

By God’s grace, I try to make it a habit to pray silently while in the train, workplace and leisure.  And though early morning prayers are often a struggle, the time I enjoy it most is at dawn.  Nothing is as revolutionary in the Christian life than to become a person of prayer.  But unless we put in prayer times as part of our daily schedule in our calendar, it will become harder for us to pray.

A common widespread misconception

In times of trouble, I’ve often heard people say: “The least we can do is pray.” I have probably said it too. But as a pastor once said: prayer is not the least we can do, but the most we can do.  What does prayer do?  Prayer tears down our self-reliance, and increases our reliance and confidence on God.  As Martin Luther (the reformer) said:

“None can believe how powerful prayer is, and what it is able to effect, but those who have learned it by experience.  It is a great matter when in extreme need to take hold on prayer.”

And he went on to say,

“I know, whenever I have prayed earnestly, that I have been amply heard, and have obtained more than I prayed for.  God indeed sometimes delayed, but at last He came.”

Grace frees us from legalistic praying

Again, we pray not to become a righteous person, but because we are already declared righteous by God in Christ (2 Cor. 5: 21). We pray not because we have to, but because we want to. Resisting legalistic praying comes from an overflow of our confidence in Christ.  God’s grace frees us from legalistic praying. Grace frees us to come boldly before the Father and confess our sins to one another (Jas. 5: 16).  God’s grace frees us to pray for the hallowing of God’s name, as opposed to Pharisaical public praying that seeks to be seen by men (Matt. 6: 5).  We pray fervently not to become accepted by God, but because we are already accepted by him in Christ.  We pray not to feel better about ourselves and look down on others who don’t pray, but we pray so that we can lift up others who are in need, with love and humility.

Furthermore, we pray because we’re desperately in need of God’s intervention.  In Luke 9: 40  a father who had a boy with an unclean spirit approached Jesus with a great sense of helplessness.  He said, “I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” The disciples were not able to do anything with this particular case and neither could us.  Later on in Mark 9: 28-29 the disciples asked Jesus in private why they couldn’t cast it out, and he replied: “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” 

The point is this: we are helpless and powerless over the kind of work that God is calling us to do.  We’re constantly in the middle of warfare (Eph.6).   So even in our disciple making, no matter how many hours we spend with people, we cannot aid the work of the Spirit in a person’s life without prayer.  This is why: in all that we do, praying is the most we can do.

The purpose of earnest prayer

I Peter 4: 11 says, “Whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything (i.e., in all our speaking, disciple-making and serving) God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.  To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

The purpose of prayer is that we may repent from self-reliance and be prevented from saying, “We did it with our strength; we were clever and bright.” Or, “We had the credentials and the educational qualifications.”  Or that, “We were smart and gifted” or that, “We had the money and power backing us up.” Or that, “We had cleverly devised ideas borrowed from the corporate world.”  Or that, "We had the latest strategies on how to grow church.”

We might never confess it out loud, but our attitudes and actions can betray us and reveal where our ultimate confidence really lies.  The ultimate purpose of prayer is that we may serve, speak, sing, teach and lead with the strength that God supplies, so that in everything God alone may be glorified.

As Jonathan Edwards said, “There is no way that Christians, in a private capacity, can do so much to promote the work of God and advance the kingdom of Christ as by prayer.” God’s purpose for us is that we get the joy of seeing him at work in the world through all of our work and prayers, and that He alone gets the glory.

God’s means of recruiting and moving workers for active service

Jesus said in Matt. 9: 37, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”  Japanese, for instance, are the 2nd largest unreached people group.  And Jesus' solution for recruiting workers is verse 38, which says, “Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”  Jesus is sovereign! He is the Lord of the harvest.  There is a massive need for workers and our responsibility is to pray earnestly to God to send out laborers.

There is still a need for more workers, and so great is the harvest of souls around us that no single church, no single denomination, no single organization or a small network of Christian workers can accomplish the task.  There is a need for unity for a citywide, nation-wide Gospel-centered movement in Tokyo, Japan and the world.

Prayer is a God-ordained means for birthing that kind of unity and movement.

Moreover, we must also feel desperate in our prayers because there are desperate needs all around us. Desperate situation requires desperate measures and prayer is God’s means for us to feel desperate before him.  But when we pray we also rejoice with confidence knowing that Jesus is Lord of the harvest.  He’s the Great Farmer!  It is his harvest field.  The unreached peoples belong to him, and he is patient.  As we look around us, and the state of our times, prayer is essential more than ever.  With a great burden, Jonathan Edwards wrote in his day:

“The state of the times extremely requires a fullness of the divine Spirit in ministers, and we ought to give ourselves no rest till we have obtained it. And in order to [do] this, I should think ministers, above all persons, ought to be much in secret prayer and fasting, and also much in praying and fasting one with another. It seems to me it would be becoming the circumstances of the present day, if ministers in a neighborhood would often meet together and spend days in fasting and fervent prayer among themselves, earnestly seeking for those extraordinary supplies of divine grace from heaven, that we need at this day.” – Jonathan Edwards

All of us may not go to cross-cultural missions, though I hope many or most of us would. All of us may not be preachers, but all of us can pray “for extraordinary supplies of divine grace.”  We have been given the privilege to pray.  We’re told in James 5: 16, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”  As a people who have been declared righteous in Christ our prayers have “great power as it is working.”  How comforting it is to know that some of the most effective prayers were prayers prayed by men with nature like ours, and God answered with incomparable power.

“Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not train, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.  Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit” (vv 17, 18).

The goal of my prayer is that God be glorified in sending many into his harvest field among the unreached people groups.  Would you join us in praying for the mission fields to bear much Gospel fruit?

—

Joey Zorina is a church planter in an artistic neighborhood in Tokyo, Japan.  He writes articles, essays and devotionals for Living Life, and blogs occasionally @outsidecampers and @regeneration).  He asks that you please pray for them and the Japanese.  You can connect with him at https://twitter.com/JoeyZorina

The Emmaus Model of Ministry

What can we learn from that “walk to Emmaus” about ministering to the people God has placed in our path? In Luke 24, Jesus gives us a ministry model worth imitating. Four ministries served two hopeless travelers on one road in a single day, yet they show us the history-shaping life and ministry of Jesus on a small scale. He walked with us, talked with us, taught us, and brought us to himself through the taking, breaking, and giving of his body for us. These are the ministries of incarnation, inquiry, interpretation, and ignition.

The Ministry of INCARNATION | Draw Near

The ministry of incarnation happens when we become love in the flesh with up close compassion and personal pursuit of the heart. When he found the downtrodden disciples on the road to Emmaus "Jesus himself drew near and went with them" (Lk. 24:15). He showed up in the flesh, entered their world, and physically walked alongside these two disciples.

I love Eugene Peterson's description of Christ’s incarnation in this paraphrase of John 1:14, "The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood." He moved into their life, into that particular page of their story at that messy moment. In the ministry of incarnation, we draw near to the people in our path by taking the time to enter into their world and story right now, right where they are. But like Jesus, we go there with a prayerful purpose.

The Ministry of INQUIRY | Draw Out

What did Jesus do after he showed up? He drew out their hearts’ hopes, fears, and desires by paying attention to and poking around in their story with curious questions. This is the ministry of inquiry.

First, he paid attention to their story. He made an effort to listen to them. He walked with them for a while before he said anything. He was aware of and interested in their conversation and their concerns. He was listening for their hopes, fears, and desires as “they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened” (verse 14).

Next, he began to poke around in their story a little bit. He started asking questions. He not only listened but also wanted to learn more (as if he needed to!). Jesus’ compassion made him curious, and so he asked, "What is this conversation that you are having?" “And they stood still, looking sad,” Luke noted. We must stop there with Jesus and see the sadness in their eyes and hear the hurt in their voices.

We, too, can offer the people in our path the ministry of inquiry, drawing out their hearts by using curious questions to explore their smaller story as we prepare to tell them the Larger Story of Jesus.

The Ministry of INTERPRETATION | Draw Connections and Draw Them Up

After Jesus drew near these disciples and began to draw them out, he then began to draw connections between their small story and His Large Story, and thus he drew them up into that Larger Story. This is the ministry of interpretation.

They had grown up hearing all the stories of the coming Messiah all of their lives, but still, they were like those to whom Jesus said, "You search the Scriptures looking for eternal life, but you missed Me. You're supposed to come to Me!" (Jn. 5:39-40). These guys had the Scriptures, but they didn't have Jesus. They knew the Bible, but they hadn't connected all the dots so that Jesus appeared on every page, making sense of the whole Story.

So, he took the time to draw the connections for them by beginning with Moses in Genesis, then walking them through the Scriptures, interpreting them, translating them, explaining them, so that they could see him and see that the Scriptures were all about him (Lk. 24:27).

We must take the time to take our friends to the Story of Jesus, drawing connections between one Bible passage and the others, showing them how Jesus is the center of it all, and drawing them up into the Larger Story God is telling, so that they might interpret their stories in light of his. It’s only when we talk with them on their journeys and “open to them the Scriptures” that the Spirit draws them to Jesus and sets their hearts ablaze with faith, hope, and love in him (Lk. 24:32).

The Ministry of IGNITION | Draw Them to Jesus

Jesus’ fourth ministry to these disciples was the ministry of ignition. By drawing those connections, Jesus drew them up into the Larger Story. He was ultimately drawing them to Himself. That's where he wanted this journey to take them. Pay attention to what happens to these disciples. When Jesus enables them to rightly place their faith and hope in him as he is offered in the pages of Scripture, the Spirit of God ignites them and sets their hearts ablaze with love for him and others.

It may have happened like this:

When he opened the Scriptures to them on the road, he lit the fuse, and their hearts began to burn. 10, 9, 8, 7, . . .

Then at the right time, when he was ready, 6, 5, 4, . . .

Dinner with the disciples in Emmaus, 3, 2, 1, . . .

“When He was at table with them, He took the bread, and blessed and broke it, and gave it to them” . . . IGNITION! He opened the eyes of their hearts so that they recognized Him as the Jesus who had served them bread in those same actions just days before.

He drew them to himself and BLAST OFF! He's gone, and so are they. Immediately they run back to Jerusalem. It's already nightfall, and they’re back on the road, but now a whole day’s journey must have felt like a 100-yard dash. They go straight back to that Christ-and-people-loving community and that Christ-and-people-loving mission to which Jesus had called them on Thursday night. In the ministry of ignition, Jesus drew these disciples to himself and set them ablaze with passion for God and compassion for people by enlightening their eyes and inflaming their hearts to see and to serve him for who he really is. He was not the redeemer they wanted, but now they know he is the Redeemer they needed.

It is worth noting that the ministry of ignition is the one ministry that we can’t quite do the way Jesus did. “No one can come to me,” Jesus said, “unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). Only God can draw people to Jesus so that they see his glory and catch fire (2 Cor. 4:4-6). None of us have the power to ignite faith, hope, and love in the life of any person; only the Spirit can do that (John 6:63; Romans 8:2). Our participation in Jesus’ ministry of ignition is to pray that God would light the fire, that he would draw them to Jesus (Ephesians 1:16-18).

We pray that he would open the eyes of the hearts of the people in our paths to pay attention to his Word, just as he did for Lydia in Acts 16:14. Jesus invites us into the ministry of ignition by asking us to pray for the Spirit to come in blazing power to set hearts on fire with faith, hope, and love in Jesus as He is offered in the gospel story we’re telling the people in our paths (Luke 24:49-53; Acts 1:14 – 2:47).

The Emmaus Model of Ministry: incarnation, inquiry, interpretation and ignition. He did them for us, and he gave them for us to do. The book of the Acts of the Apostles, which is actually Luke: Volume Two, documents the continuation of these ministries in the lives of the disciples. Luke began Acts saying, “Remember in my first book I told you all that Jesus began to do and teach. Now I'm going to tell you what he continues to do and teach by the power of his Spirit through His people." May God grant us grace to continue the Emmaus ministry of Jesus with Jesus in the power of his Spirit.

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Jimmy Davis is an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America currently serving the good folks at Metrocrest Presbyterian Church in Carrollton, TX. He occasionally shares some thoughts and resources at The Cruciform Life Blog, Twitter @cruciformlife, and Facebook. He is the author of Cruciform: Living the Cross-Shaped Life.

God Is Holding Out On Me

Right now I’m tempted to believe that God is holding out on me. There. I said it.

I planned to postpone writing this until I could speak about my unbelief in the past tense. Like most of you I’m more comfortable sharing my struggles when I can see them in the rearview mirror (with a lesson in my back pocket of course!). It feels godlier to say, “Six months ago I was tempted to look at porn or binge shop or cheat on that exam. But now I’m trusting in Christ’s work.”

I can’t help but think that this subtly undermines the gospel. Christ isn’t only sufficient for us when we’re past our temptations. He’s more than sufficient in the midst of them. Thus, Christians are free to share present tense struggles that elevate a high view of Christ even as we walk through real doubt and unbelief.

Present Tense Kind of Doubts

Lately, it seems like nothing falls into place. Nothing comes easily to me. I wrestle. I strive. I fight. And . . . nothing. There’s a little voice within that enjoys pointing out that if God were really in control of the whole universe, then it would be easy for him to change my circumstances. It would take him no effort whatsoever to make a tweak here and there and poof! my life would be fixed. That voice takes my good theology—a high view of God’s meticulous rule—and comes to poor conclusions that God is withholding something good from me.

You understand this feeling, don’t you? Even as you read about my doubts, you’re internalizing your own. Perhaps it looks like one of the following equations:

• God is the Creator of life + You are barren = He is withholding good from you
• God is the Author of marriage + You are single = He is withholding good from you
• God is Owner of universe + You are broke = He is withholding good from you

Scenarios such as these tempt us to disbelieve and distort God’s character. We feel that God’s holding out on us—that he's stingy. We conclude that we’ll just have to make things happen for ourselves. Like Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11), we’re presented with an opportunity to believe the lies and to try and secure our desires apart from God’s provision and perfect timing.

For the most part, we know that these thoughts aren’t rational. God is sovereign, and God is good. There’s nothing in our experience that can change that. Then again, doubt and unbelief are rarely rational. But they sure are powerful! The more we focus on the lies and feed the doubts the more powerful that unbelief becomes. And the more powerful the unbelief becomes, the more convinced we get that we need to go out and make something happen for ourselves.

Choosing to Form Habits of Belief

It’s at this very moment, the present moment when unbelief rears its ugly head, that you and I have a choice to make. We can preach God’s truth to ourselves and allow it to strengthen our belief or listen to the lies and allow it to strengthen our unbelief. Either way, something will grow stronger. There’s no neutral ground. It’s not like we can just wait it out and see what happens. The path of passivity (“maybe tomorrow I will feel like God is good and gracious”) will only deepen unbelief. If we wait until tomorrow to believe God is good, upon waking up, we’ll discover that the unbelief has spread throughout our soul like terminal cancer.

But, if you are in Christ, the temptation to unbelief is not the final word. We can choose a different path! We have One who walked before us and was tempted as we are yet remained sinless (Heb. 4:15), so that he might offer himself as a sinless substitute in the place of unrighteous sinners (2 Cor. 5:21). Through our union with Jesus we can “receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need” (Heb. 4:16). Moreover, Christ serves as an example of what it looks like to perfectly trust the Father in the face of temptation by speaking out truth and resisting the Devil in the power of the Spirit (Matt. 4:4,7,10).

As we’re progressively conformed to Jesus’ image, we can choose the path he chose. We’ve been set free from sin so we can pursue righteousness. We are not enslaved to unbelief anymore. You don’t have to keep doing what you’ve always done.

You can form new habits of belief that builds your confidence in God on a daily basis:

You can verbally refute lies (whether personal, demonic, or worldly) the minute they pop into your head.

You can cry out to the Spirit to help you when you feel weak and overwhelmed with unbelief.

You can read, meditate on, and memorize Scripture to renew your mind.

You can confess your doubts to a friend and ask them to pray for you.

You can meet with God’s people on a Sunday or mid-week gathering to hear the truth and worship God.

The point is we have a choice. Jesus’ work on our behalf breaks the fatalistic patterns of sin in our lives and gives us supernatural power to battle unbelief. We don’t have to be resigned to our unbelief. We can be different. We can be like Jesus!

An Exercise In Trust

Today, in my present struggle, I’m going to choose to follow Jesus by refuting the enemy’s lies and speaking God’s truth out loud. Sure, nothing’s coming easily to me. Life feels hard. But I refuse to believe God’s being stingy. I know he’s not stingy because of the gospel:

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things. – Romans 8:32

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. – Ephesians 1:3

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. – James 1:16-17

When I meditate on these truths, my doubts are obliterated. Our God is a good God who gives us good gifts. There’s no way he could be stingy towards me—he’s given me his very own Son! Any feelings regarding my current circumstances simply cannot hold up in the face of the cross. I’m choosing to exercise trust in God because he is 100 percent trustworthy.

What about you? As you stand at the intersection of belief or doubt, what choice are you going to make to feed your faith in God? What Scriptures are you going to use to refute the lies of the enemy? Who are you doing life with that can help you fight the fight of faith? How will you exercise trust in God during moments of unbelief?

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Whitney Woollard is passionate about equipping others to read and study God’s Word well resulting maturing affection for Christ and his glorious gospel message. She holds a Bachelors of Science in Biblical Studies from Moody Bible Institute and a Masters of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary. Whitney and her husband Neal currently live in Portland, OR where they call Hinson Baptist Church home. Visit her writing homepage whitneywoollard.com.

Joyful Perseverance in a Hard Cultural Soil

One story is told of a medical missionary who went to reach a tribal people in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1912. After seventeen years of laboring in the mission field, he went home utterly discouraged thinking he had failed. Several decades after he died, much to their amazement, a team of missionaries discovered a network of reproducing churches where he was stationed. At the moment, some of our brothers and sisters among the least reached people groups are hit by the harsh realities of following Christ, being stripped of their dignities, and flogged for the sake of the gospel. But they are embracing suffering in the cause of making disciples (Col. 1: 24). Remembering those who are persecuted for the sake of the gospel ignites my faith to persevere in our context (Heb. 13: 3, Phils. 1: 14). How about you? What are the daily challenges you face in making disciples in your context?

Every Cultural Soil Is Hard Without the Spirit

Our context in Japan presents itself with a unique set of challenges. The Japanese are the second largest unreached people group. And discipleship is costly! Jesus left the comfort of his vast heavenly home and entered our small world to live a perfect life we could not live and died the death we should have died. Because of him, we can enter into cultures—and bring lost people into his vast Kingdom with the gospel.

If you’re called to go and make disciples in a poverty stricken area in Africa, you give up the comforts of a developed country to live according to the standards of the people. Likewise, to live as a missionary in Japan and make disciples is costly, spiritually and culturally. The cost of living also goes higher up. Some missiologists have even called it the missionary graveyard because many missionaries go home discouraged after years of sacrifice (sometimes with little to no fruit).

But when Jesus calls us to leave everything behind and follow him, he's calling us to better things than the things he has called us to leave behind. He has called us to himself first, and then to a people group—wherever that may be.

Many Unreached Places in Our Hearts

Many places are still unreached by the gospel in our hearts. Personally, my greatest struggle as a disciple maker is that I want people to believe in the gospel and grow quickly so that they can make other disciples and multiply (2 Tim. 2: 2). In this process, I often forget how slow my sanctification is. When I first came to Christ, my life changed dramatically. In a matter of few months, everything in my life turned around. Because of the unique nature of my conversion experience, I tend to expect (by default) that same kind of progress in others. But I often forget, momentarily, that I am what I am today only by God’s grace (1 Cor. 15: 10). I forget that trying to make disciples without the power of the Spirit is like trying to drive a speedboat without the engine. I cannot disciple a person, much less disciple myself, apart from prayerful reliance on the power of the Spirit (Jn 15: 5). I’ve come to realize that making disciples is more like getting into a sail boat and letting the sails up, so that when the wind (the Spirit) blows we are blown further into the sea—by the power of the wind (Jn 3: 8, Rom. 8: 14).

In our disciple-making journey, the most crucial thing to remember is that we are being discipled ourselves. We are disciple-learners before we are disciple-makers. We are constantly in need of someone to teach us. And the Spirit of Christ who lives in us teaches us about all things (Jn 14: 26). In this disciple-making journey, we must stay teachable, as the Holy Spirit has come to conform us to the image of Christ (I Cor. 3, Rom. 8: 29). Who we are becoming is as important (if not more important) as what we do. And we can rest in our hearts knowing that only Jesus can truly be Jesus to people.  He must live his life in and through us (Gal. 2: 20).

As Bonhoeffer puts it:

“[Jesus] stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through him and unto him (John 1:3; 1st Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2), he is the sole Mediator in the world.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In this sense, only Jesus can be Jesus to others—working in and through us.

Planting And Watering Gospel Seeds

All we can do is to plant gospel seeds in the soil of a culture and prayerfully rest in God’s Spirit to raise up disciples who look like Jesus. Take, for example, the parable of the sower of the seed (Mk 4: 1-20). The parable has no focus on the strength or skill of the sower. Surely, the sower needs some basic knowledge to cultivate the soil, plant seeds, and water it. In some cultures, it takes time to cultivate the soil. Language must be learned; relationships must be built, and communities must be formed.

Moreover, Christians must have a good reputation with outsiders (I Tim. 3:7). We must stay in the community for the long haul, becoming all things to all men to save some (I Cor. 9: 22). People’s stories must be learned well before we bring the gospel to bear on them. Spiritual strongholds must be broken down (Eph. 6, 2 Cor. 10: 4). And people need to see the gospel changing us for them to believe in the credibility of our message (I Tim. 4: 16). So disciple-making has a lot to do with faithfulness, joy, and patience—all of which are also the work of the Spirit in us (Gal. 5: 22).

But if we look carefully, it doesn’t say that the soil wasn’t producing because the sower was performing poorly. What the sower was dealing with was the type of soil in which the seeds fell into. Although some fell on the rocky ground, along the path and thorns, the parable shows us the hope of the gospel:

“Those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold” — Mark 4: 20 (emphasis mine)

It doesn’t tell us how long it took, and he does not know how the seeds grew.

All the sower does is what every farmer does: “He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how” (Mk 4: 27 emphasis mine). All of them heard the gospel, but these are hearts that have been prepared by the Spirit.  The sower can improve in what he or she does, but the Spirit prepares the “good soil” and multiplies disciples. Didn’t the greatest church planter say the same thing?

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.  So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth”  – I Corinthians 3: 6, 7 (emphasis mine)

Therefore, we are joyful even when people take an interest in us and start to trust us. Like parents, we enjoy seeing small steps taken by our people. It's like observing a baby taking his or her first steps. We take great delight in the little progress our people make even in their attitudes, as one missionary puts it:

"Ministry joys come whenever a person moves a step closer to Jesus, whether it is learning to trust us, becoming curious about why we are here or who Jesus is, showing an openness to change, seeking after God, or actually entering the kingdom. But it takes time. And this is the challenge" – Send Missionary

Jesus said that if “a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies. . . . It bears much fruit” (Jn 12: 24). Be encouraged. Keep tilling. Sometimes, the soil must be cultivated before gospel seeds can be sown, take root, and grow. It often takes time!

Remember, the growth of the disciple is not dependent on the skill of the disciple-maker, in the same way as the growth of the seed does not depend on the ability of the farmer, but on the seed and the condition of the soil. The power is in the seed (Matt. 13: 31) and the “good soil” prepared by the Spirit. Jesus is discipling all of us by the power of the Spirit. He has commanded us to do that which only he alone can do (Matt. 28: 18, 19), so that in our disciple-making we might rely on him and he might receive the glory.

In the end, we have great hopes that just as Jesus fell to the ground, died and produced many disciples, his Spirit will work through us, and in the lives of those he has called us to disciple (Jn 15: 16).

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Joey Zorina is a church planter with The Bridge Fellowship in an artistic neighborhood in Tokyo, Japan.  He writes articles, essays and devotionals for Living Life, and blogs occasionally @outsidecampers and @regeneration). He asks that you please pray for them and the Japanese.  You can connect with him at https://twitter.com/JoeyZorina

Forgive Us Our Trespasses

Field day was the best day of the year. We got out of class to play outdoors. One of my favorite activities was tug of war since it made me feel a lot stronger than I was. Honestly, my arms are zero percent muscle. One year, we got into place and started out with power. The knot of the rope was steadily budging to our side when I fell, and my leg got caught under it. My ankle experienced the wrath of the great war between the two teams shifting the rope each way. Just as the opposing team broke into victorious cries, they let go, and the rope furiously ran across my skin towards their outburst of triumph.

Jesus teaches us to start our prayers by remembering we belong to God’s family—the family that God has rescued and is gathering together from all nations.

I yelled out and looked up at my team in defeat. As I lifted myself from the grass, my friend asked if I was okay to which I answered with a negative. Immediately, he called the nurse over, and she came running. I was confused, so I told them I was fine and explained that my concern was for our loss . . . not my ankle.

The pain was the least of my worries until I saw the look of disbelief on their faces. To assure them, I grabbed my ankle and looked at it. I winced in pain and saw deep white tissue exposed. The rope hadn’t caused blood, but a blistering white battle wound. I frantically started crying and screaming for help.

Sometimes we don’t feel hurt until we get the courage to look at our wounds. Occasionally, this delayed sense of hurt can reference physical pain, but most often it’s the truth speaking into emotional or spiritual pain. When we courageously acknowledge our hurt, we’re forced to ask for help, which is why forgiveness carries weight.

The Courage to Look at Our Wounds

The power of forgiveness triumphs over pride, jealousy, and death itself, but if we never acknowledge the need for it, then we’ll never engage it. Often, our minds are too distracted with who won the tug of war to look down at our wounds. Our hearts grieve the loss of our victories and ignore the grave repercussions of the battle. Will we continue to ignore hurt for the sake of ourselves? Or can we get to a place where we humbly cry out for help before the mess of scabs and scarring?

“But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes, we are healed.” – Isaiah 53:5

Forgiveness circumvents the untreated mess of unspoken hurt, which is known to spread rapidly across our lives and infect our peace, joy, and love. Forgiveness cleanses us, renews us, and sends us out stronger than before. More than that, it ushers in the reason for Jesus—the gospel.

Jesus gave his life so that he may enter into ours. The beating, mocking, and even death that he endured was for our freedom. If he had chosen to bypass the brutality of the cross, we wouldn’t have freedom in Christ. The empty grave glorifies his supernatural victory over death, but this victory is not victorious without the pain, hurt, and suffering. Although we did nothing to deserve freedom, his generosity is an indication that the Spirit works on our behalf to reconcile, redeem, and restore.

“Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” – Colossians 3:13

His courage to forgive made way for reconciliation. Jesus had wounds that remind us of our own, which instills in us a reason to look at him as we hurt, suffer, and heal. If God has forgiven mankind, then how much more can we forgive one another?

Spirit-empowered Forgiveness

Forgiving others requires courage because we must look down to inspect the wounds inflicted upon us, and even harder, the wounds we inflict upon others. But this kind of inspection is also good news. Christ provided more than just the command to forgive; he provided his own Spirit that empowers us to forgive.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” – Romans 8:1-2.

Wounds are tender, and they have to be treated with care. When I was a young girl playing tug of war, I felt more pain when I grabbed my leg in arrogance. I had to dig my fingers into the fleshy burn and see it with my own eyes, instead of just accepting that I was hurt and in need of help. We must examine our hurt as well.

We try so hard to prove that we’re invincible, that our hurt isn’t worth our time, and that the wounds will heal themselves. If we never care for our wounds, then they won’t heal. Acknowledging our need for forgiveness empowers our hearts to generously give and receive forgiveness. God has been showing me my need to do this and the freedom that’s found in doing so.

Hoping for Forgiveness

My hope for you is:

• I hope you will have renewed gratitude for Christ’s forgiveness.
• I hope you will approach your own hurt and forgive the people who have caused it.
• I hope you will humbly seek forgiveness from (at least) one person that you have hurt.

Life has its battles, and we can’t escape that harsh reality. However, we can be more conscious of what they do to us. Jesus fought for forgiveness, let’s humbly follow him.

“Christ performs the office of a priest by once offering himself as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, and to reconcile us to God, and by making continual intercession for us before God.” – John Piper

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Chelsea Vaughn (@chelsea725) 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.

Our Daily Bread

I’ve never not had daily bread. Sure, when my siblings and I were growing up we complained, “There’s nothing to eat in the house!” We meant that there was nothing we wanted to eat (my mom had a strange affinity for cabbage and beans. In Jimmy Fallon’s words “EW!”). But there was always something to eat. Maybe that’s why I don’t routinely pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11). It doesn’t fit within my experience. In modern Western culture, daily bread is often assumed.

Jesus’ teaching turned people’s religious ideas inside out and upside down.

Meals are planned out days or even weeks in advance. I don’t think to pray for bread. It’s just there. However, Jesus instructs his disciples to pray for daily bread, so if we call ourselves disciples, we need to grapple with what that means for us today.

Daily Bread Is Not the Norm For Everyone

Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount before crowds of poor peasants oppressed under Roman rule. Most workers in first-century Palestine were paid on a day-to-day basis with no assurance of tomorrow’s work. Illness, unjust governments, or changes in climate could all bring instant deprivation. These were people for whom daily bread was an uncertain part of life.

When Jesus tells his followers to ask their Heavenly Father for daily bread, he means food for sustenance. The Jewish mind inundated with the Exodus story would be reminded of Yahweh’s miraculous provision of manna in the wilderness. In the same way, the Israelites were called to trust God for their very sustenance, so now Jesus’ followers were called to trust the Father for their basic survival needs. This petition was a call to radical dependency on God.

This kind of dependence may be lost on many of us in developed countries, but it’s not lost on everyone. Hunger is still the norm for many people around the world. A variety of outside influences can spell out tragedy for families today just as it did in Jesus’ day.

I witnessed this in Southern Sudan during a visit in 2010. War had ravaged the land. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) controlled many of the resources. Children were orphaned. Crooked government drained outside aid. Families were destitute. When they prayed, “Give us this day our daily bread” it wasn’t symbolic sentiment offered as a religious rite. They were legitimately asking God to provide their next meal.

This experience made the petition for daily bread real to me. At the heart of the request utter dependence and childlike trust. Jesus wants his followers to ask and depend on God for their most basic needs.

How Should We Pray If Daily Bread Is Our Norm? 

So what do we do with Jesus’ word if our basic material needs are supplied? This question caused me to pause this week—especially from those of us who have abundant resources. I came away with two points of personal application that may be helpful in your prayer life.

– Repent of prideful independence and acknowledge total dependence on God. 

Americans have made a god out of independence. Few things are valued like the independent, self-sufficient man. We work hard, we get good jobs, and we provide for ourselves. Most importantly, we depend on no one. If we have daily food, it’s because we earned it. We’re proud of that.

What we fail to understand is God’s providential hand in everything. If you’re not worried about where you’ll get dinner tonight (and I don’t mean what farm the chickens were raised on!), it’s not ultimately because you’re a stellar businessman or know how to rock Groupon. It’s because a gracious, loving God has supplied you with abundance. 

God created, sustains, and governs the world in such a way that we are dependent on him for everything. He “gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). The next breath we take is dependent upon God’s provision, which means—brace yourself—we aren’t the independent, self-sufficient people we pride ourselves upon. We’re dependent beings. There’s a built-in Creator/creature distinction that no one escapes.

You have much less control over your life than you would like to believe. God determined the boundaries of your life—the family you were born into, your country of origin, where you live, the government you reside under, and the circumstances that got you the job. God placed you in an environment with the resources and opportunities you needed to flourish. He gave it, and he can take it away.

The Lord’s Prayer reminds you of this radical dependency. It gives you an opportunity for repentance, confession, and worship. Confess ways you’ve trusted in your work to provide for you and your family. Acknowledge your dependence on God for all your material needs, even your daily bread.

Praise God for the many blessings he’s given you. Thank him for the skills and resources he has provided. We’re so quick to complain about what we don’t have (money for all organic foods or to eat at trendy restaurants), not realizing how privileged we are. We have food! God has been good to us. Allow this to generate childlike worship in your life.

– Pray for your hungry brothers and sisters around the world. 

When you pray “Give us this day our daily bread” don’t miss the “us.” You won’t find a single singular pronoun in the Lord‘s Prayer. Personal requests are important but this prayer shows particular concern for the corporate body rather than the individual believer.

As I observed this, the need to pray for my brothers and sisters around the world hit me like a ton of bricks. My basic needs may be met, but many of theirs aren’t. We’re one family in Christ, so their burdens are my burdens. I’m fed, but they go hungry. This realization caused me to stop my studies and devote time to prayer!

Will you join me? As you pray “Give us this day our daily bread” would you petition the Father for hungry believers around the world? If so, here are specific things I’m praying for:

• The faith of believers to be strengthened so that they can ask and trust God for provision.
• Christian organizations to be well funded so that they can be on the front lines in the worldwide hunger crisis.
• Support for Christian orphanages, so that they can feed and house hungry orphans.
• Just governments to be put in place so that they can champion the cause of the hungry.
• Churches and Christians to grow in their generosity and sacrificial giving so that more resources can go to the hungry.

This list isn’t exhaustive. Pray as the Spirit leads. But pray!

Daily bread was a legitimate concern for Jesus’ original hearers, and it still is for many today. Allow this to break your heart and fuel your prayers for your local and global faith family. If you’ve been blessed with basic provision, acknowledge the Giver of all good gifts then pray for those who need daily bread.

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Whitney Woollard is passionate about equipping others to read and study God’s Word well resulting maturing affection for Christ and his glorious gospel message. She holds a Bachelors of Science in Biblical Studies from Moody Bible Institute and a Masters of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary. Whitney and her husband Neal currently live in Portland, OR where they call Hinson Baptist Church home. Visit her writing homepage whitneywoollard.com.

No Straight Line

A Snowy Day and A Cup of Coffee

I pulled into Dunkin’ Donuts one morning to grab a much-needed coffee on the way to an early morning meeting. It had snowed pretty heavily the night before, so things were pretty messy driving around. Pulling into the DD parking lot was tough enough because of the mounds of snow in the entrance and the people trying to navigate their way in and out of the small parking lot, but something else had happened.

Once we are in Christ, we are no longer orphans. Everyone has a place in the people of God.

Snow had now covered and replaced the once clear vibrant yellow parking lines. The lines were virtually non-existent, as far as all the drivers were concerned, and the parking lot turned into an absolute mess. People were parked sideways; some were taking up two spots; people were double-parking behind other cars making getting in and out of the parking lot nearly impossible. It was a mess, and it was chaos . . . And I hadn’t had my coffee yet.

Straight Lines

First, I learned that day that we love our straight lines. What I mean is that as humans we, at some level, desire structure, and organization to order the seeming chaos. A quick look at the parking lot that snowy day would have had anyone wishing they could just see the parking lines to put some things in order. Organizations, businesses, our lives, and parking lots benefit from a structure that systematizes and organizes our world. I would go as far to say that some of our lives, mine included, may benefit from more structure in some areas.

Second and most important, I learned that day that life is not made of straight lines. As much as I may want it to be, life is not a series of straight lines where everyone stays in their lines, and I stay in mine, and we all go on living happily into our beautifully structured and clean IKEA-like lives. Quite the opposite, life is more like the parking lot and roads covered in snow and full of people who have not had their coffee, so you better get out of their way.

Messy Discipleship

If we agree that life is messier and more fluid than a perfectly lined parking lot, then why do we make disciples who need parking lot lines to learn and make more disciples? Why do we believe that the way to make disciples is to make better parking lots? How will the next generation of disciples teach others what it means to be someone who follows Jesus in the messy snowy days of life if we spend our time stuck in the parking lot drawing lines? Let me explain.

A disciple, as it is defined, is a learner of a way of thought and life. So then discipleship is the process by which a person becomes and grows in the way of that particular thought and way of life. I have gone to, been involved with, and worked for churches across the map. I have seen countless models and methods to make disciples. I want to go on record and say that all of them are good to some degree and serve a purpose much like lines on a parking lot. Now, put those parking lot lines in the middle of the interstate you are going to create a mess; not because they aren’t useful but because they don’t belong there.

When we look at the modern day church, the question is, are we discipling people in a way that is helping them and others navigate the messy roads of life or are we teaching them to stay in the parking lots?

Not Your Average Teacher

I had a driver’s ed teacher who was no joke. A tall and lanky guy, Mr. F was all business with his reflective aviator glasses, light blue corduroy pants, and drove what we believed was an original Humvee that very well could have still had the attached machine gun mounted on the roof from a tour of the battlefield. He was not your average driver's ed teacher.

One particularly snowy day, Mr. F decided to take us for a little spin . . . literally. As the first driver of the day, he told me to head to the back of a large parking lot that was near us in town. We backed up against the curb, and he said, “Take your foot off the pedal and keep the car going straight.”Confused I did so and at that moment, Mr. F reached his long, lanky leg over the center console and slammed the pedal to the floor. We immediately went into a sideways spin, which I corrected (thank you very much), and we started careening across the parking lot at a very alarming rate. I can still remember his calm but stern voice, “Don’t touch the break. Don’t touch it.”

Finally, after a few moments barreling down the parking lot like an Olympic bobsled team, he took his foot off the pedal, brought his lanky leg back to his side, slammed on the passenger break and yelled, “Cut the wheel to the right!”. I’m sure you know what happened next; we started into a spin which would have made any adrenaline rush seeker jealous. I remember looking at Mr. F in the middle of this, almost in slow-motion, he was relaxed. He was so peaceful in fact he might as well have been drinking a cup of coffee with one hand and looking at the sports section of the newspaper with the other. Meanwhile, the entire drivers ed class was silently praying that that car just wouldn’t flip over as we crashed into the rapidly approaching wall.

More Like a Feeling

I am proud to tell you I stopped the spinning car that day, saved our lives, and maybe even impressed Mr. F. I learned a lot of things that day, but one of the most poignant lessons that I learned was something that could not be taught but had to be felt. Life is best learned while living and living is best done while learning.

You know what was unhelpful that day? Parking lot lines. I promise I wasn’t thinking about how I could, in an organized manner, find a safe resting spot for the car—I was just thinking about living until dinner. You know what else would not have been helpful? If one of the three people in the back of that car in the middle of the spin said, “Hey Greg. This is pretty stressful, and I don’t know much about how to stop the car, but I do have a really nice parking lot that I know of that you could come to, and we could talk about it.”

On the flip-side, do you know what was helpful? A confident, calm, and strong mentor in the front seat. Up until this point I had heard about sliding in the snow, learned about it in the classroom setting, but I had not experienced it yet. Mr. F knew the feeling well and knew something else even more important; I needed to feel it too.

Experiencial Download

If we think of our discipleship methods in the church, many stop at the information stage. We gather Sunday to learn more about God, and then we gather for a small group to hear more about God, what He has done, and how we are doing in light of it, which is all magnificent. Something is missing in the process—a Mr.F.

Jesus spent time discussing the Kingdom of God, the nature of God, the plans of God and people were amazed or disturbed. The difference between Jesus and the church today is Jesus took it to a level we often don’t take it. Ever wonder why Jesus called the disciples to, “Come follow me”? Why not just teach them at the temple, answer any questions they may have had, and send them on their way with a few worksheets to fill out and a chapter to read until next week? He and Mr. F knew the secret of any good teacher/mentor; they knew people learn best through experience.

Where to Now?

Today, even over fifteen years later, when I am driving in the snow and start slipping, I remember the way I learned to handle the car that day. The days in the classrooms are talking about it, the videos seeing it, and the discussions about what I might do were helpful but nowhere near as helpful as the galvanizing and staying power of experiencing it.

Our structures were helpful but not what I needed at that moment. In the same way, discipleship in the church must be reformed to help people not only know how to talk about making disciples but making them. This reform must be purposefulness and trust that God is the Great Discipler who will use every moment and every spin to teach us a great lesson; God is best experienced not only when we are experiencing him and but when we are helping others experience him too.

The Clarion Call

God put in front of us the essentials to discipleship all along, but we forgot it in all our planning. We lost the simplicity, power, and beauty that we saw Jesus and others like Paul personify. “Follow me as I follow Christ” (1 Cor 11:1). But when these words come to you, you will never quite see discipleship the same way.

Discipleship was never supposed to be a model but a way of life. It was to be done, “as you go” (Deut 6:5-7). Maybe you realized this truth is watching a father teach his child or someone lending a hand to someone in need. Or maybe watching someone sitting next to a friend comforting them after a loss. Why did we ever think we could systematize that? Maybe we thought discipleship would be easier that way. But discipleship was meant to be caught as much as it was meant to be taught. We have put our faith in systems and models that promise results but only produce a need for more improved and efficient systems.

Read through the Gospels. Do you get the feeling from Jesus that anything held him back from making disciples? He discipled on mountain sides, a tax collector’s home, the marketplace, and the temple (much to the chagrin of some of the religious people). He didn’t need a system or a model; he just lived it, people took notice and asked questions. He had some disciples that were close to him who he taught in a more intimate way and some that were not as close, but that he discipled in a different way. Both were done on the highways and byways of life. Discipleship must be done while living because that’s where the head, heart, and feet meet.

So, are we walking in the ways of Jesus or are we just studying his footprints?

—

Greg has served in various pastoral roles in churches in NY and FL over the course of 10 years. Greg now lives in FL with his wife and two children where he is helping churches and church planters equip the church to make disciples in everyday ways in everyday places. You can read more from Greg at www.gregsmiths.com

Originally appeared at www.gregsmiths.com. Used with permission.

5 Ways to Cultivate a Multiplying Culture

You can’t force multiplication to happen, but you can cultivate an environment where multiplication can happen. As a leader, you can create a culture where sending people out is expected, celebrated, and shared be the entire community.

Jesus does not simply call us to be a lovely community together, but he sends us out to our neighborhoods, towns, and cities to declare and demonstrate the gospel.

There are five important principles from the story of the Church in Antioch and the sending of Paul and Barnabas in Acts. Their story is not merely a pattern to follow but the essence of a multiplying culture.

1. Start With Thriving Communities That Make Disciples

The sending out of Paul and Barnabas from the church of Antioch doesn’t begin with the prayer meeting in Acts 13, but from the church’s inception. The story of the Church of Antioch’s birth is found in Acts 11:19-26.

Antioch was formed out of the ashes of persecution and the proclamation of the gospel from a few faithful people. They proclaimed that Jesus was Lord, and many came to believe. They relied on the Holy Spirit; they were generous, and they welcomed help for the formation of this church.

Ironically, Paul and Barnabas were first sent to Antioch because it was the frontier and outskirts of the church. They were sent to lay a foundation on the gospel, to encourage this church, and to bless them to remain faithful or to walk in obedience to the teachings of Jesus. Many people believed the gospel and became disciples of Jesus. As the church became rooted and thriving in the Holy Spirit, they morphed from being the outskirts to being the launchpad.

This story is not written as a bizarre one-off tale; it’s describing the ordinary movement of the gospel. The gospel that forms you is the same gospel will propel you to send. People in your community will leave your community to start a new work in another part of the city, another city altogether, or even another country and culture entirely. Sending is a function of gospel growth and maturity. Multiplication happens when disciples are being made, the gospel is being proclaimed, and people are growing in faith and obedience.

The foundational assumption of my upcoming book, Multiply Together is: when you make disciples, the effects reverberate through our cities as the gospel is believed, shared, and demonstrated through thoughtful engagement in making and redeeming culture. People following Jesus lead others to follow Jesus, which leads to the sending of others to start communities.

Multiplication begins with planting thriving missional communities centered on the gospel and faithful to pursue obedience. In other words, as we form disciples to love God, we will find leaders who can form environments saturated with the gospel. As we form disciples who reconcile, forgive, endure, and encourage others in the community, we will see leaders who can shape communities in that same culture. As we engage our neighbors and city with love, we will see leaders lead others in speaking and demonstrating the gospel.

– Gospel Enjoyment: Growing in Our Love For God Together

Missional Communities answer the discipleship command to grow in their enjoyment of the gospel. As redeemed, adopted sons and daughters of God, we are invited and ushered into a life complete and united to God. God has lavished every spiritual blessing on us; our calling is to receive that love and love God in return.

Missional communities have the goal of growing in our enjoyment of the gospel together. We grow together through reading the scriptures, practicing confession, repentance, and faith. Communities seek to know God and give him their hearts, minds, and strength. In this way, a disciple of Jesus is within a context where the gospel is not only spoken but devoured and ingested into their life. We imagine disciples flourishing in a spiritual life that impacts every aspect of their lives and results in worship.

– Community: Growing in Our Love For One Another

Missional communities are also created with the goal that everyone would grow in the aspiration to love one another. That the community would be one centered on God’s sacrificial love and marked by extending that love to one-another. Missional communities are a discipleship environment where we are challenged to give gifts, time, compassion, and peace to one-another freely. In other words, we grow in all the one-anothers of the New Testament.

These one-anothers are expressed through listening to each other and know one another's stories. We care for the burdens, pains, and struggles each person walks through. We celebrate, and we mourn. Also, we serve each other in our areas of need; whether it is yard-work or babysitting. Ultimately, community is a discipline of sacrifice and giving.

– Mission: Growing in Our Love for Our Neighbor Together

Lastly, missional communities are created to pursue mission together. We are called to not only love God and one-another but love our neighbor as we would love ourselves. We are to seek their flourishing. This applies to our wealthy CEO neighbor, refugees down the street in apartment complexes, and the children who are separated from their parents. Missional communities are structured around one common mission where everyone’s gifts and capacities get to work together to share the gospel in word and deed.

Missional communities grow in this area by conspiring to care, learn, show-up, and build relationships with those around them. Participating in this common mission reinforces the way we live on mission in the scattered everyday reality of life.

2. Expect to Participate and Send Globally

The thriving church of Antioch expected the Holy Spirit to advance the good news of Jesus beyond them and to use them. In fact, they had already given of themselves for people beyond themselves in chapter 11.

So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul. – Acts 11:29-30

Before they considered sending a team of people to share the gospel, they had already given their wages, property, storehouses, and food for the well-being of people they did not know. They saw themselves as participants in a global kingdom and church, not an isolated one within their neighborhood. They had seen the need, and they had determined, as a whole, to send relief for that need. They were a sending church before they sent Barnabas and Saul.

Your community becomes a sending community long before it multiplies. A community that is aware of the hardships of other communities and takes the initiative to serve them is preparing itself to send. A community that is connected to others and not consumed by itself is fertile soil for multiplication.

3. Praying, Worshiping, and Fasting is the Fuel for Sending

We often think we must talk sending up and discuss it often to make it happen. We believe we can speak multiplication into reality. Only God speaks anything into reality. God sends while we pray, worship, and fast. God sends while we respond to what he has spoken. Worship is the “vision cast" of mission. You aren’t called to spread “vision”; you are called to worship, pray, and fast in light of God’s vision for the world. An inescapable reality in the book of Acts is that mission occurs in the midst of worship, because of worship, and results in worship. The elders of Antioch demonstrate this reality well in Acts 13 when Paul and Barnabas are sent in the midst of worship and fasting:

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. – Acts 13:2-4

The Holy Spirit sent them while they worship Jesus as Lord. A community that sends will be one that is regularly praying, worshiping, and fasting to adore God, who is in charge of his mission and the Holy Spirit who will accomplish it. Furthermore, that community will be listening to the voice of God with a dependence on him, knowing the Spirit will send.

Worship dependent mission reproduces enjoyment of the gospel. Worship fueled mission reproduces humility and dependence on the Holy Spirit. Worship inspired sending beckons everyone to listen to the Holy Spirit for what he is calling them to. It is through gospel enjoyment that we plant the seeds of multiplication and create a culture that sends. We are turning our hearts and minds to Jesus, the king of his kingdom, the author, and actor of the gospel. In this posture, we come to multiplication with humility, awe, trust, and joy. The scope of the gospel is on display, and the scope of mission becomes clear. We cannot cast a vision better than a God, who sent himself to love others and make the world whole. This creates the expectation that God will send.

4. PREPARE AND PLAN TO SEND YOUR BEST

In chapter 13, we can see the church and its leaders expecting to send not only their possessions but also their people. They even, you might suppose expected to send some of the most influential people within the church. Paul and Barnabas, who had spent a year being investing in this church, were truly gifted in discipleship, pastoring, and preaching the gospel. We get the understanding from the context of this passage that any of the strong and diverse leaders from Antioch were on the table for the expansion of the mission. They prayed, fasted, and worshiped and it became evident that Paul and Barnabas were to be sent. The church was willing to send any or all of their leaders.

Paul and Barnabas had been prepared for a long time. Barnabas was an initial disciple in the church of Jerusalem. He helped establish the church in Antioch and was a spokesman on what God was doing outside of Jerusalem. His name is a nickname, “Son of Encouragement”. Every mentioning of Barnabas to this point has been in connection with serving the church, loving the church, and going outward. It isn’t surprising God sends Barnabas; it seems obvious. Paul, on the other hand, seemed destined to go to the western borders of the Empire. Upon conversion, he knew he was saved to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. He new he would stand before rulers. Everyone knew he would. Despite a few nervous moments in the beginning, the church as a whole had committed to discipling, training, and nurturing Paul in his calling.

The two of them had been prepared for this moment through their whole lives. They had been taught the gospel, and they had taught the gospel. They had been cared for by the church, and they had cared for the church. The church of Antioch had welcomed them, learned from them, and loved them. Paul and Barnabas grew in Antioch, and they also helped others grow. Barnabas arrived at a young church without leaders. He left that church with leaders and maturity.

Leaders are called, developed, and trained within community and by the Spirit. As you establish a missional community, you will prepare and plan to send your best. Instead of keeping the more mature, bought in, equipped, and enjoyable people off limits and hoarding them in your group, prepare them to start new communities. Spend intentional time preparing for leading on their own. We see this evident throughout the New Testament, as communities freely give great leaders to the mission instead of keeping them.

Missional communities are simultaneously environments for discipleship and training leaders how to make disciples, which is the chaos and brilliance of communities making disciples. As you go, you prepare others to send. We ought to be constantly looking for the next leaders to develop. Multiplication might happen by sending out first-time leaders, or it may be veteran leaders leaving to start a new community. Regardless, we alway develop leaders.

5. The Community Gives Itself. It is Never the Same

Lastly, we see the principle of sacrifice in multiplication. Through prayer, grief, and anticipation that God will advance the gospel; the community sends people. To send, God works in the heart of a community to trust God. To trust that he will give you community everything you need. The people God gives you are the people God wants you to have. You must trust God’s goodness, grace, and ability to orchestrate his mission better than you can.

This is a sacrifice because the community will never be the same. You cannot replicate what was because the personalities, gifts, and perspectives of the community make it. As people are sent, what remains is not an old community and new one, but two new communities. One is sent out discovering how to be a community of disciples on a new mission or with a new group of people. The other remains and is rediscovering how to be on mission and community in the same place and with the some of the same people.

This is multiplication. In the last loving act of being a community, it chooses to give itself and never be the same again. For the sake of obedience. For the sake of gospel growth. For the love, they have for others who will enjoy a new endeavor of faithfulness.

But also for themselves to step into the new thing God has called them to in their current place and within their current mission. Multiplication is final communal discipline. In Acts 13, this is expressed by touching these men and praying for them. It’s a touching moment of a new reality.

—

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.

Adapted from the final installment in our Together book series Multiply Together: A Guide to Sending and Coaching Missional Communities 

Thy Kingdom Come

For much of my Christian life, I failed to connect the dots. I couldn’t bridge the gap between what I knew God had done in my heart and how that truth applies to the world around me. Is following Jesus just a small, subjective feeling? Did the Spirit’s work in changing my heart mean that his work was only for my heart? These questions perplexed me for quite some time. I never received peace until I dug into the scriptures to explore the kingdom of God.

Jesus teaches us to start our prayers by remembering we belong to God’s family—the family that God has rescued and is gathering together from all nations.

Central to the gospel announcement are the words of Jesus himself: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel” (Mk 1:15). Our Lord saw his vocation as Israel’s Messiah as genuinely good news—and it had everything to do with God’s Kingdom coming to bear on this earth.

The Kingdom of God

The Kingdom announcement was about God’s rule being established in time and on earth. The prophets of old had warned of this great day (e.g., Dan 7:13–14), and Jesus declared without hesitation that the day was “now.” “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt 12:28).

The ministry of Jesus consisted of both demonstration and proclamation. He showed and taught the ways of the Kingdom. He healed both external wounds and internal injuries. The Kingdom of God was an all-encompassing reality—a new world order underneath the lordship of Christ Jesus.

Jesus taught his disciples to pray for this fact to “come.” Incidentally, it was coming. Had Christ died for sinners? Not yet. Was the tomb empty? Not quite. But the Kingdom was breaking in, and the disciples were to ask God to increase the temperature.

Notwithstanding the disciples’ current struggle with unbelief, Jesus assured them that their prayers would not go unheard. If they prayed like this, then the Father would hear their cry.

“Prayer doesn’t change things; God changes things in answer to prayer.” – John Calvin

Praying for the Kingdom

What does it mean for us to pray for God’s Kingdom to come? To start, we must keep in mind that prayer is God’s means. It is no accident that Jesus here taught his disciples to pray and not how to organize a three-point sermon. The preaching would come later when the Spirit would descend and give them authority and power.

What they needed now was to learn in Christ’s school of prayer. They needed communion with God. As Jesus would later pray in Gethsemane, that they also may be in us

Praying to “our Father” that the Kingdom would “come” is simply another way of communing with God underneath his sovereign authority and plan. Even though the disciples would have to walk through countless trials—including the death of their teacher—they were to stick closely to God in prayer, believing that, in doing so, the world would be changed.

This second petition covers everything from eschatology to missiology and ecclesiology to piety. I want to focus in on just three aspects of this second petition.

Three Key Elements of the Lord’s Prayer 

1. We pray that sin would be eradicated.

Because “all mankind” is “under the dominion of sin and Satan,” we pray for the Kingdom of God to come and deal with the big problem of sin. Because the Kingdom was inaugurated, we must not forget how it was done.

Christ’s substitutionary death was an end to sin. The Lamb of God came to take away the sins of the world, and he intends to do just that. Praying for the Kingdom to come is to pray that Christ’s sovereign rule would wipe out our lustful thoughts and irritable attitudes.

We don’t want God’s moral law to be trampled; we want it to be honored! We want sin to be eradicated, and we look forward to the day when it will be.

2. We pray that Satan would be snuffed out.

“Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). The Bible makes several things clear about Satan and his demise.

• He has been disarmed, defeated, and triumphed over (Col 2:15; Rev 12:7ff; Mk 3:27).
• He is “fallen” (Lk 10:18) and was “thrown” down out of heaven (Rev 12:9).
• For the early Christians, he was crushed under their feet (Rom 16:20).
• He has no authority over Christians (Col 1:13).
• Jesus tied him up, binding him so that the nations could no longer be deceived (Matt 12:29; Mk 3:27; Lk 11:20; Rev 20).
• Satan has been “judged” (Jn 16:11) and cast out (Jn 12:31).
• He can’t touch a Christian (1 Jn 5:18).
• All his works have been destroyed (1 Jn 3:8).
• Satan has nothing (Jn 14:30), and he flees when resisted (Jas 4:7).
• He is alive in the world, but he is a defeated enemy moping around in his bitterness.

Praying for the Kingdom to come means that evil and Satan her leader must go.

3. We pray that Christ’s glory would cover the earth.

Because the Kingdom has come and it intends to grow in history (Dan 2; Matt 13; Isa 9:7), we pray for its expansion in every neighborhood and every home. “For the earth will be filled with knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Hab 2:14).

The glory of God is the supremacy of his personhood; we want desperately for his holiness, love, grace, wrath, and mercy to be acknowledged by all men, women, and children everywhere. The impetus for the missional church is this glory.

Multiplying Disciples

When we consider the task of making, maturing, and multiplying disciples, sometimes we fail to see (like I did!) how the Kingdom connects to real life. At a basic level, we know that disciples are made and brought into the Kingdom because the Spirit changes a person’s heart through our preaching of the gospel message (Rom. 10:14–17).

We usually understand this regarding evangelism and discipleship—both are necessary correlated. When we consider maturing disciples, we understand that the power to make and grow disciples rests in the power of the gospel.

We make a disciple by the power of the gospel, and we grow a disciple by the same thing. The trouble comes in on this last part: How do we multiply disciples, and how does it connect to this second petition?

When we consider the reality of the Kingdom that has come and pray for its effects to grow, we need to keep in mind that a significant part of that growing comes from the Church. In other words, the Church of Jesus is a colony of heaven; our citizenship is held in the heavenly file room while our practical passports are held at the local assemblies.

Baptized disciples who partake of the Lord’s Supper under the leadership of qualified elders and listen to the preaching of the Word of God each Lord’s day are ambassadors of this Kingdom. The signposts of heaven are people.

Pieces of the Kingdom

If we intend to plant churches, grow missional communities, and send out missionaries around the globe, we’re going to need to keep in mind that God has ordained these means to achieve his Kingdom ends. All those late-night counseling meetings, all those coffee conversations, those men’s groups, ladies’ book studies, missional community gatherings, fight clubs, and church planting efforts are all pieces of the great Kingdom puzzle.

To connect the dots between what God has given you and what God intends to do through you, we must realize that the dots are already connected.

Everything we do is motivated and fueled by God’s Kingdom work. Usually, we divorce our multiplication efforts from the Kingdom—and sometimes for good reason. It often just doesn’t look like the Kingdom. But perhaps we aren’t looking at it with the right glasses? Perhaps the invitation of the Kingdom is an invitation into the small stuff that doesn’t look like much.

When we catechize our children, go to work and do a good job, interact on social media in an honorable way, or even change a diaper, all of it falls under the lordship of Christ.Since the entire world belongs to him

Since the entire world belongs to him in principle and is commissioned to multiply disciples who think, speak, act, and toil like Jesus, we are now free to find all our work, all our missional community efforts—all of life—as honorable work for the Kingdom.Since we are sent into the world that belongs to King Jesus, even the small stuff matters.

Since we are sent into the world that belongs to King Jesus, even the small stuff matters.

Reflections

• How does praying for God's kingdom to come bridge the gap between his work in your heart and the world around you?
• What does it mean for us to pray for God’s Kingdom to come?
• In what ways can you pray for sin to be eradicated in your community and city?
• What is the impetus behind the mission of the church?
• How does the kingdom of God bring significance to even the small tasks in this life?

—

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.

Hallowed Be Thy Name

Arguably the linchpin of the entire Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer fills a critical role in as Jesus taught his disciples. Up until this point, Jesus has issued his blessings as the Supreme King in the Beatitudes and has given marching orders to his vassals. He now arrives at the matter of prayer. “Pray like this,” Jesus commands.

Jesus teaches us to start our prayers by remembering we belong to God’s family—the family that God has rescued and is gathering together from all nations.

OUR

The Church belongs to Christ. His blood purchased her through the ransom of the Cross. Because of the Father’s election, the Spirit’s regeneration, and the Son’s propitiation, we belong to him.

When we pray our prayers, the entire army we call “Church” comes together to petition the heavenly throne room. Our God. Our Father. Our Lord. He is ours.

The Lord’s Prayer begins with corporate solidarity. We are one, and one are we. Together we make up the Body of Christ, and together we petition him. The Church is a unit that functions together in such a way as to be more than just a bunch of individuals who have shared interests in common. No, we are his, and he is ours. We are one in Christ, and together we approach him.

Together we make up the Body of Christ, and together we petition him

FATHER

But who is this God? Sure, we come together and approach his throne, but who is he? God is our Father, and we are his children. He is compassionate, patient, loving, and majestic. He is sovereign, yet approachable, and transcendent, yet immanent.

We can knock on his door at 3:00 am, and he will still let us in. We can approach him with whatever is on our minds because he is Father, which means he is love.

To approach our Father is to approach the infinite God of the universe with tempered fear and courageous boldness. He is both other and majestic. He is utterly distinct from his creation, yet his heart is so full of joy.

He takes part with his creation with much delight. His ear is never too full and his attention never too short; he is our Father, and our Father is eager to hear from his children.

HALLOWED BE

We are not careless when we approach our Abba. Yes, Father cares for you and me, but we aren’t flippant. If we wish to pray like this, we must be sober in our approach to the throne of glory. The throne is still holy. The fact that we can even approach his throne is only by the mercy and grace of Christ. We needed someone to let us in, and Jesus did just that!

God is holy, which means he’s entirely unstained by sin and evil. His clothes are white, and there’s no stain remover in heaven. Because of his morally uncorrupted nature, we pray that God’s name would be revered and honored as holy everywhere. We desperately want not to just see God’s glory, but to taste it as well. And not just taste it; we want to share it with the world!

To hallow something is to revere something as entirely distinct and separate. We wish to see the holiness of God on display in the world so people will respect and pay tribute to him. We say, “Hallowed be” because God is.

YOUR NAME

We long to see the name of God venerated in all nations. We want God’s name—his character, personhood, and glory—to be treasured, valued, and esteemed by everyone everywhere. The Lord’s Prayer is a global prayer.

We hope that God’s holiness, majesty, knowledge, love, wrath, purity, patience, loving kindness, justice, righteousness, and light will become the priority of all peoples in all nations.

The name of God is sacred. His character is wrapped up in these two words, “I AM.” God simply is. Because he is, we pray that his name be hallowed. To pray likes Jesus is to approach God with joy, happiness, fear, and trembling. We come to God together because he is our Father. And we want the name and fame of our Father to be revered everywhere! He’s just that important.

MATURING DISCIPLES

What about you and your prayer life? Does your prayer life reflect these things? Do you pray to our heavenly Father? Is there a hint of trepidation and elation in your prayers or are you glib about it? Do you come to God knowing that he is both “Father” and “holy”? What about the content of your prayers? Are they simply a reflection of whatever randomness you have going on, or is there a hint of cosmic significance?

When it comes to the issue of maturing disciples, we need to keep in mind that our aim is twofold:

• We want the glory of God to be revered in our lives and the lives of others;
• We desire to see the gospel restore the imago Dei in us.

Maturation takes time—it takes much practice to restore virtue in a heart once ruled by vice. To accomplish this task of learning from Jesus, we must be people of prayer. We must be people who live within the confines of the Lord’s Prayer; we must be people who practice the Lord’s Prayer.

Whoever you are, wherever you are located, know this: he is our Father, and he longs to hear from you. Turn to him this very moment, like a child to his father, jumping into his ginormous lap and know that his ear is turned towards you.

And let that joy ruminate deep within your soul with the prayer that everyone everywhere would hallow God’s perfect name. As we seek to make, mature, and multiply disciples, the Lord’s Prayer is the gold standard for accomplishing such an audacious vision.

Reflections

• Do you pray to our heavenly Father?
• How does prayer play an integral role in making, maturing, and multiply disciples?
• Why must we approach the Father through Jesus?

—

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.

How Does Your Community Share Meals?

“Jesus didn’t run projects, establish ministries, create programs, or put on events. He ate meals.” – Tim Chester, A Meal With Jesus

Food is significant. Through food, Adam and Eve rebelled. Through food, God grows dependence in the Israelites in the dessert. And through food, Jesus holds up bread and wine during his last meal with his disciples—proclaiming the bread his body and the wine his blood. Food and drink transform into metaphors and tastes of the gospel.

In our efforts to go and make, we often forget that the very places we already inhabit are places that we have been sent with the good news of Jesus

Bread has an association with life that surpasses biblical imagery, but in Christ, it is the sufficient sacrifice. Wine too has gained traction, outside Christianity, as a sign of blessing, goodness, and often associated with blood. However, in Christ, wine becomes the image of blessing, goodness, justification, and cleansing that comes through Jesus’ suffering on our behalf. Jesus chooses a meal for us to remember the gospel. If the gospel forms a community, sharing this gospel feast ought to be as often as we get together. Jesus called us to remember him and his sacrifice for us through a meal. When we eat together, we commune around this truth.

Our Relationship with Eating

Humans have a unique connection with food. We depend on it to survive. We also turn to it for comfort and safety in overindulgence. Food, for some of us, becomes a medium for expressing our creativity, becoming art. Fundamentally, food reminds us of our need for something outside of ourselves. We have to take, receive, and eat to continue moving through this world. Meals are a daily reminder of our common need for God and his faithfulness to provide both physically and spiritually.

Communal Eating

In community, we regularly eat meals together instead of in isolation. At the table, we share our stories, we listen to one another, and we experience grace. The New Testament describes this act as "breaking bread" and invokes a giving and receiving of relationship in the most simple and unspoken of ways. The weekly communal meal is a spiritual discipline.

Through the meal, we engage one another as a family in Christ, and we engage Christ.

The communal meal begins through arrival or gathering. At this moment, everyone’s individual responsibilities, schedules, and to-do lists collide into an expression of community. The worries, struggles, fears, and happy news of each member comes rushing through the door. Your lives are hurried until this point. Your lives are physically separate until this moment. A weekly meal is more than logistics to work out but a spiritual discipline of being united. You are physically bound together by the table you gather around, the complete meal everyone shares in, and under the prayer recognizing God’s grace as you eat.

Through the meal, we engage one another as a family in Christ, and we engage Christ. The weekly meal is a fantastic space to grow in your love for one another. Let the conversations around the dinner table be focused and meaningful. Embrace this moment with honesty. As a leader, spark the conversation to be about more than the movies people watch and the latest sports scores.

Welcome Others to the Gospel Feast

Come, sinners, to the gospel feast; Let every soul be Jesus' guest. Ye need not one be left behind, For God hath bid all humankind. – Charles Wesley

We regularly sing this hymn at Bread&Wine. It is an anthem for us, and the church we aspire to be. A church that welcomes every soul as Jesus' guest into the most meaningful of tables. Our invitation to those in our city is not merely to dinner parties but into the family of God, into union with Christ. As we welcome the poor and powerless into our community meals and as we share the crucial nature of the elements of communion, we realize we are the sinners coming. We are the ones in need of his body and his blood. A community that secludes itself and its dinner table from the outside world will not only struggle to reach their neighbors but will fail to see their need for the Table.

Make Meals Meaningful

• Ask each other how the week is going and expect long, honest answers.
• Ask everyone a common question that will lead to deeper understanding of each other: What is your favorite summer memory from childhood? Or how do you prepare for the Christmas holidays?
• Ask about how each person is processing the sermon from Sunday, or about the service that was done as a group the week before, circle back to past hardships people have shared.
• Simple things to like what are you thankful for today. What was the hardest part of your day today?
• You could also have a person or couple in the “spotlight” where they can share in more depth their story, current spot in life, and what they are going through with the community having the chance to pray for them.

Reflections

• How does your community share meals?
• How can you eat with glad and generous hearts?
• How can you remember Christ as you eat?
• How can the gospel become clearer as you share a meal with folks?
• How often should you get together to share a meal during the week?
• How does your community remember Jesus in these meals?
• Most people eat twenty-one meals a week, how could anyone in your community share at least one of them with others?

—

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.

How Do You Get Prayer to "Work?"

I say unto you, “Ask, and it shall be given. Seek and you shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you. For whoever asks, receives; and whoever seeks, finds; and to whoever knocks, the door is opened.” – Matthew 7:7–8

What a promise! Do you need anything? Just ask, and you’ll get it. Do you have problems that seem to have no solution? Just seek, and you’ll find! Do you only see closed doors in front of you? Just knock, and they’ll swing open! Getting from God’s hand everything I lack, everything I desire, and everything I want is what prayer is all about, right?

I’m not sure why, but sometimes I have problems swallowing that.

Jesus teaches us to start our prayers by remembering we belong to God’s family—the family that God has rescued and is gathering together from all nations.

I knew a precious lady—a friend I used to go to church with—whose name was Phyllis. Phyllis was an attractive, active, pleasant woman, full of zest for life and still quite young. She had a great husband named Fred who loved her, two married children, and her first grandchild on the way. Phyllis and Fred loved the Lord and were faithful in church. They were always in their place every Sunday.

One day, Phyllis was taking her customary jog when she noticed a nagging pain in her side. At first, she thought she’d pulled a muscle, but the pain persisted for several days, getting even worse. Finally, she went to the doctor. After a battery of tests, she learned that she had liver cancer. Immediately, she began the most aggressive treatment available. She went through all the misery and suffering that goes with chemotherapy and radiation, but her condition continued to worsen.

Finally, the doctors told her that the only hope of a cure was to have a liver transplant; however, to qualify, she must be clear of cancer in every other part of her body. Another even more intense battery of tests followed.

One by one, her vital organs were cleared until the very last—her lungs. I was in the room with Phyllis and her family when the doctor came in to tell her that there was a spot on one of her lungs, and that, because of this, there was nothing more they could do for her. She would be sent home and made as comfortable as possible until she died.

Immediately, we prayed, placing her in God’s hands, asking him to do what the doctors couldn’t do. During the weeks and months that followed, Phyllis and her family prayed fervently. A group of friends from church went to her house and had a special prayer meeting, asking God for healing.

About the same time, another faithful member of the same church, a friend named Nate, who was about Phyllis’ same age, was diagnosed with a serious and life-threatening skin cancer. We also prayed for Nate. The same group of friends went to his house and had a special prayer meeting. The same people. The same request. The result? Nate got well and is still in good health today. Phyllis, after months of excruciating suffering, died.

What are we to do with this? Here were two people who loved God, who were committed to him and ready to serve him. Both of them trusted in the Lord for healing. One was healed. The other was not. How do you explain it?

How do you get prayer to work?

Some might say it’s a question of morality: God listens to the prayers of good people and ignores the prayers of bad ones. But I’ve seen so much suffering by so many dedicated, moral people (and also the apparent blessing of a few people I didn’t think deserved it) that I’m just not buying that explanation.

Others might say it’s a matter of faith: you have to believe … hard. Maybe Phyllis just had that hint of doubt, and consequently, she wasn’t healed. But I remember a particular father who cried out to Jesus and said, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” Faith has to be something more than just believing hard.

Prayer, after all, is not getting what we want from God. It’s receiving from God all that he wants to give

Still others might say that it’s a matter of asking according to the will of God. My problem here is that I have so much difficulty sometimes understanding just what God’s will is in a given situation. Do I have to wait until I’m certain of God’s will before I can pray? I just can’t see God expecting us to live in this constant guessing game about what’s going on in his mind.

All of this leads me to the question that Jesus’ disciples asked him at the beginning of this passage: “Lord, how should we pray? John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray. Why don’t you teach us?”

Jesus responds with a sample prayer that is only 45 words long, a promise, and two parables to give them an idea of just what prayer is. Maybe these stories can help.

Story #1: The Friend Nobody Wants

The first is a story about the kind of friend nobody wants. He shows up, knocking at his friend’s door at midnight, knowing that all the lights are out, and the family is most certainly asleep in bed. It’s an awful time—convenient for no one but himself. And the worst of it is, he has a ridiculous request: “I have a visitor in my house—another friend who came to see me—and I have nothing to feed him. Couldn’t you get out of bed, wake up your kids, bother your family, lose some sleep and wreck your work day tomorrow—just for the sake of going to your kitchen and getting me some bread to feed my houseguest?”

I like to think I don’t have any friends who would abuse me that way. But, in fact, I have had friends just like that. They only appear when they want something. One friend of mine customarily says (joking, of course!) “What are friends for if you can’t use them?” The truth is, I don’t consider people like that to be my best friends. They appear in front of me at the most inconvenient moments with some silly demand—and they won’t let me go until they get what they want. They’re not friends; they are people who see me as a means to their ends. They’re users. But at the end of the day, according to what Jesus says in verse 8, it’s not because the caller was his friend that the guy got up to take care of him—it was because of his boldness, his persistence, his stubbornness, and his unmitigated gall! Giving away the food was his only way to be free of the man, so he got up and gave him what he wanted. This story provides some interesting implications for prayer, don’t you think?

When I was a kid, my parents were missionaries in Mexico, and they worked with another missionary by the name of JT. He was legendary for his persistence. The story of how JT got his permanent residence papers is well known. Usually, it took months or even years to get papers, but he wanted to do it during the summer break of the school where he taught. The first day, he went to the immigration office with his paperwork and placed it on the counter in front of the appropriate official. The person said the words that all immigrations officials say, the world over, “Come back in 2 weeks.” (This doesn’t mean that the papers will be ready in 2 weeks, it just means you can come back in two weeks.) JT said, “That’s OK, I’ll wait.” And he sat down with a very thick book next to the person’s desk and waited. Ever so often, he would go up to the counter and say, “So where are my documents now? Are they ready?” Before the end of the day, this official expedited his documents, stamping, and signing them and sending them on to the next bureaucrat, just to get rid of JT. JT followed his documents to the next office and did the same thing. At the end of the day, he went home to rest, but the next morning he was right there when the office opened up again, book in hand, ready to irritate, annoy, and put people on edge until he had his visa in hand. Result: JT accomplished in two weeks what it sometimes took two years and thousands of dollars to do—he got his visa, and it didn’t cost a dime!

Is this what prayer is? Is it cutting through the red tape of heaven by our pure stubbornness and obstinacy? Is it making a pest of yourself, bugging God until He gives you what you want? After all, prayer is a matter of getting what we want from God, right?

Story #2: The Boldness of Claiming

Maybe the second parable will shed some more light. It’s an entirely different story. The person in the first parable gets what he wants not because of his relationship, but because of his boldness. The person in the second parable gets what he wants because of the relationship. It’s the story, or at least the image, of a father and son. If the child asks for a piece of bread, Jesus says, the Father isn’t going to give him a stone. And if it’s an egg he wants, the father isn’t going to give him a scorpion. Of course not! The boy is his son! He has rights! Fathers give the best to their children, not the worst. Let’s take advantage of the fact that we’re children of God. Demand from God what you want. He’s obligated to give it to you. It’s your birthright.

There are quite a few people who proclaim a message just like that these days. “God is a father who loves us. Like any father, he wants us all to be healthy and wealthy. If we don’t have everything we want, it’s  because we are not claiming our rights as his children.”

I used to work in a small church that was down the road from a massive “prosperity” church. The pastor of that church was famous because he was on TV every day, inviting people to a life of riches and well-being. All you had to do, according to him, was to send your money to his ministry and, in so doing, claim your birthright as a child of God. It was a huge church—a cathedral. Thousands of people went there, and thousands more sent the man millions and millions of dollars. Occasionally, some of these people would show up in our church. I called them the “refugees of prosperity.” They had given everything to this man and had ended up disappointed, disillusioned, and defeated.

Is this what prayer is? Claiming our birthright? Storming the gates of heaven and demanding what we want from our heavenly father because he’s obligated to give it to us? After all, prayer is all about getting what we want from God, right?

I don’t know. I still struggle with this.

It seems that, if this is true, the result will be spoiled children. And if it’s not, the result will be disillusioned children. There must be something more that we’re missing. And I think it might be in the very last verse of the passage.

The Answer to Prayer

Jesus says, “If you, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

Who said anything about the Holy Spirit? I thought we were talking about loaves of bread, fishes, and eggs. Sure it’s figurative language, but it makes sense that when we translate it into our contemporary lives, we’d be talking about houses, healings, and automobiles, right? No one asks for the Holy Spirit—and why would you? The Holy Spirit doesn’t make your life any easier. He convicts you of sin. He calls you to confess and to repent—change things around in your life. He reveals truth—truth that you’d often prefer to stay hidden! He demands commitment. He comforts us when things go badly, but I’d personally prefer that things just didn’t go badly so that I wouldn’t need any comfort. The Holy Spirit gives gifts to God’s children, obligating them to use them in serving him. The Holy Spirit produces fruit, binding us to live with the character of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is not necessarily at the top of most of our lists of things to ask God for; however, Jesus gives this one particular application in his teaching about prayer.

Maybe we should take a closer look at what Jesus is teaching in this passage. He responds to his disciples’ question, first with a model prayer that is made up of six brief requests—only one of which has anything to do with material things. And this request is just for the necessities of life. All the others ask for priorities that are not of this world—“Hallowed be your name . . . Your kingdom come . . . Forgive us . . . Lead us not into temptation . . . Deliver us from evil.”

Next, he tells two parables and makes a promise. One parable calls us to be bold in prayer—persistent—entering with confidence in the presence of the Lord to make our requests. The other parable speaks of God’s desire, as our Father, to always give us the best. But it doesn’t say that the Father will always give the piece of bread, or the fish, or the egg that the child asks for. It may be that what the Father gives is a nice warm vegetable soup. The promise says that whoever asks, receives. But it doesn’t say that he always receive exactly what he asked for. It says that whoever seeks, finds, but it doesn’t say that what she finds will be what she expected. It says that whoever knocks will find that the open door, but the scene on the other side of the door may or may not be what you imagined.

I’m starting to get the feeling that prayer, after all, is not getting everything we want from God. But if it’s not that, what is it? 

Prayer is About What He Wants to Accomplish

Maybe Jesus is telling his disciples—and, by extension, telling us—that prayer is more about what he has come to accomplish than it is about giving us what we want. He didn’t come to make us happy, or comfortable, or prosperous. Jesus didn’t come to fill our lives with houses, healings, or automobiles. He came to make us holy, to make us new, and to make us fruitful. We expect prayer to change things, and we are right to do so. But the first thing that prayer changes is not our circumstances or our health or our financial status. The first thing prayer changes is us!

Prayer is not about getting what we want from God. Prayer is about receiving from God’s hand what he wants to give. It is about opening our lives and our hearts to be changed, transformed, and prepared for his kingdom.

Conclusion

Remember my friend Phyllis? Let me tell you the rest of her story. From that day in the hospital and on, she and her family and friends began to pray fervently that God would cure her. As the weeks and months passed, she continued to grow weaker and weaker in her body. But an amazing thing happened. Even as her body weakened, her spirit grew stronger and stronger. At a certain point, she called her children to her and said, “I am confident that God is going to heal me. He may heal me by working a miracle in my body so that I can continue to live a while longer on this earth. Or he may heal me by taking me on to be with him in heaven now. I want you to know that either way, I’ll consider it God’s cure, and I’ll be happy.”

During those last months, her suffering was unimaginable. She lost so much weight that sometimes, from one week to the next, I couldn’t even recognize her. But at the same time, her face grew more radiant with each passing day. And her life during those days was an unforgettable blessing to everyone who knew her. Her family experienced a spiritual growth and depth of relationship with God they had never encountered in the best of times. Her Christian friends were encouraged and challenged every time they were around her; it was as if we could see eternity in her eyes. And her friends who were not believers saw in her such a compelling picture of God’s grace that some of them came to Christ as a result. No one who knew Phyllis during those days escaped the hand of God reaching out to us through her. And when the day of her death came, it was like a gift—a liberation. And her funeral was a celebration of God’s grace and provision.

Prayer, after all, is not getting what we want from God. It’s receiving from God all that he wants to give.

Ask, seek, and knock. Be bold in your prayers. Be persistent. And be trusting. Be prepared for God's presence to change you. Come to your Father with a passion for receiving from him what is best!

—

Dr. Glenn Watson teaches preaching at the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary. He is passionate about preaching that is Bible-based, gospel-driven, and story-shaped. He blogs at Preaching Prof.

4 Experiences Young People Need to Flourish

The transition from high school into adulthood is bumpier and more confusing than at any other time in history. I remember a quiet moment the night after my high school graduation thinking, “What in the world am I going to do next?” What happened included attending an expensive private college, dropping out after one semester, working at a Lumberyard, traveling to Buffalo to look at a ministry internship, turning it down, and getting hired at the church I was serving at.

Whether you are 18 or 68, you can’t predict your future. The dream is never the reality. Life unfolds so much different than anything you could have ever imagined—especially when you are following Jesus.

How will I position myself to flourish in this next season of life?

To most of us, this isn’t comforting. The tension of the unknown hovers over us like a dark cloud. It would be so much easier if God would just “direct our paths” as Proverbs 3:6 says he’s supposed to. Following Jesus would be easier if there was giant red footprints painted on the ground and neon signs flashing, “God’s Will For You, Straight Ahead.”

But think about this for a second, does your heart burst with love while you’re following an IKEA instruction manual? Probably not. If so, you might just want to keep that excitement to yourself.

God forms us as disciples not by teleporting us to a destination but by inviting us to evaluate priorities, weigh options, seek counsel, and then make decisions. Who ends up as a more emotionally intelligent, faith-filled, wise individual—the person following detailed instructions or the person making decisions?

Many children grow up in highly controlled Christian families and lose themselves when they go off college. The kids know how to be controlled by their parents, but they never matured to the point where they could walk in love. Their decisions were made for them through a rigid structure and plentiful rules, so although they “did all the right things” at home, they were robbed of the opportunity to mature that comes through decision-making. It cost them dearly.

We orchestrate our lives around a big story that we trust in. The habits and decisions of our daily life are expressions of living that story.

Thankfully, that’s not how God fathers us. He doesn’t dictate our path, but invites us to wrestle with the grand questions of our purpose. He doesn’t have us on a leash and then yank us back on track when we wander too far off course.

He doesn’t lead us by controlling our details; instead, he tells us a great story, wins our affections with his goodness, and invites us to bumble around as we find our place in his Kingdom.

So if you feel confused and run down by the question of, “What is my calling in life?” Take it down a notch. Ask a simpler question. If you are facing a tough decision or a transition right now ask yourself, “How will I position myself to flourish in this next season of life?”

The prophet Jeremiah gives us a compelling picture of flourishing in any season of life:

Thus says the LORD: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

– Jeremiah 17:5-8 ESV

You will either become a shrub in the desert or a tree planted by water. The difference is where you plant yourself.

For the tree, difficult seasons still come. Times of drought come. Extreme heat comes. But because the roots are taking in life and health from the water the tree continues to be healthy in any season. In fact, it says the leaves “remain green.”

How can you plant yourself somewhere like that? How can you put yourself in a position to flourish in any season of life?

I want to suggest that there are four experiences you need to flourish after high school. Four experiences that will help you thrive in this next season of life and beyond. If you are a young adult thinking through what’s next, whatever it is—make sure these experiences are a part of it.

1. Confirm Your Faith

Before you can work out at my gym, you have to take a fundamentals class. In the course, you learn basic body movements. Most of the time, people can’t perform these simple movements correctly because of mobility issues associated with their lifestyle.

The class is to protect me from jumping into an exercise I think I understand well enough (like a clean and jerk) and then hurting others or myself through my lack of knowledge and coordination.

What if we offered more fundamental experiences like this to young Christians? When we use the word “gospel,” we can’t assume we’re all on the same page. Every year at Adelphia, the one-year discipleship college I lead, we have students come in the fall who have grown up in church their entire life and can’t articulate the gospel.

Without explicit training in the fundamentals of faith—not just hearing it but studying, writing, and then teaching it to others—our “Christianity” deteriorates into sentimentality, moralism, or pointlessly vague deism.

2. Rip Up the Script

I’m a college dropout. At the time, my parents and grandparents thought I was destroying my life. My wife always makes me qualify that story by explaining that I now have a doctorate—but that’s not the point.

The point is God brings great fruit in our lives when we rip up the script that has been handed to us. We all have some sense of the path we are supposed to take. That path may be informed by the American Dream, our parents, or even our ambitions. Notice: none of those people are vested with the authority of God.

When God speaks to us, he doesn’t shrug nonchalantly and say, “Just keep doing what seems rational. Whatever culture is telling you to do, just aim for that.”

If you’re looking to flourish in this next season of life, try detaching from the ordinary. The old business axiom is true, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

3. Integrate Your Identity

Are you living one whole life or a bunch of fragmented lives? If you’ve ever felt that you are one person at work, another person at home, and another person with your friends—you might have fragmented identity syndrome.

One of the cures is to plant ourselves somewhere where our work, play, worship, and downtime are all with the same people. In many cases, you may even live together. In my book One Year, I refer to places like these as “short-term communities.” Others have called them, “immersion experiences.”

The benefit of an experience like this is that it serves to integrate our identity. During a short period of time, we can begin to see how God’s presence nourishes our ordinary moments. In this sort of community, our vision is expanded to grasp how every area of our life connects to God’s purposes.

4. Transition to Adulthood

Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost write, “The loss of meaningful rituals of initiation into adulthood is considered by some to be the primary cause of delinquency and malformed adult identity, especially among men, in the West.”[1]

What are they getting at? Cultural anthropologists would tell you that virtually all people groups throughout history have a rite of passage. A rite of passage is a checkpoint that someone moves through to become something different. You enter the experience as an adolescent and, upon completion, emerge as an adult.

• In the Amish rite of Rumspringa, teens age 14-16 are invited to either leave the community or to choose baptism in the church.
• Jewish youth experience bar/bat mitzvahs.
• The Massai tribe (Keyna and Tanzania) requires their aspiring warriors to hunt and kill a lion with a single spear.[2]
• The Australian word “walkabout” originates from an Aboriginal rite of passage in which young men live unassisted in isolation for six months.
• Many Native American tribes sent their young men into the wilderness for several days of fasting and soul-searching.
• In Europe, the gap year—a year off before pursuing higher education—is an “accepted and expected rite of passage.”[3] This seems to be increasingly true of Canadian young adults as well.

So here’s an important question: What is the rite of passage for a young adult in the United States? What is the clear transition point between being an adolescent and being an adult? Are you drawing a blank? There’s a reason for that.

Hirsch and Frost argue that the lack of a defined experience to transition adolescents to adulthood is a primary cause of dysfunction in our country. This trend is on display on a national level.

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have written at length on “delayed adulthood” and “prolonged adolescence.” Young men and young women are delaying the key sociological tasks that define adulthood longer than ever before.

What are they doing instead? Well the cultural path to mature adulthood is to go to college, experiment, and stay just sober enough that you can get your degree. The less acceptable (but frighteningly popular) option is to live in your parent’s basement as a full-time video game indulger, part-time Taco Bell employee.

Also, you have a band and you’re currently lining up a big-time tour (traveling in your car). Also, you are 29 years old. We aren’t producing emotionally mature, spiritually vibrant adults if the critical transition moment is a landmark birthday or sending someone off to college. It's not enough.

Poised to Flourish

Leaders, how will you help the young people in your ministry prepare to flourish? To flourish, they need to confirm their faith, rip up the script, integrate their identity, and transition to adulthood. Whether you create these experiences or farm them out to established ministries, help your young people in this process.

Aspiring adults, you are only young once, but you can be immature forever. Don’t let that be you! How will you position yourself to flourish in this next season of life and beyond? Plant yourself well. Plant yourself by the stream. Plant yourself in space that will offer these critical experiences. That’s the beginning of flourishing for the rest of your life.

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[1] The Faith of Leap, p57

[2] http://list25.com/25-crazy-rites-of-passage/

[3] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/gap-year-why-your-kid-shouldnt-go-to-school-in-the-fall/article570898/

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Dr. Sean Post leads a one-year discipleship experience for young adults called Adelphia. He has authored three books. His great joys in life are spending time with his wife and three kids, eating great food, and CrossFit.

The Reluctant Missionary

When my wife Emily and I moved to Mexico, I self-identified as a reluctant missionary; God called us to the mission field, but I didn’t go singing like one of the astronauts in the movie Armageddon. Since then I’ve sweat more than I thought possible. And much of what I was reluctant about, I’ve navigated with forward momentum. Sure, I’ve bumped my head a few times, even caught it on fire, stalled a van full of mission trip guests roughly eight times in one outing and now have the language capacity of a 3-year-old with a speech impediment, but things are good.

The Lord has helped us make sense of a lot in eight months. We’ve learned a lot about each other, our marriage, his mission, and Mexican traffic patterns. Over and against all these, though, he’s taught me the most about my reluctance as a missionary.

I only want Grace to write a dramatic, perfect sentence in my story. I don’t want to relinquish the whole narrative.

At its core, my reluctance wasn’t about language barriers, selling my truck, or an inordinate amount of sweating. It wasn’t about disputed dreams. Sure, those things were there. But at its core, my reluctance fundamentally was about Grace.

Grace is scary.

In The Reason for God, Tim Keller writes about a woman who gets her heart around grace. She realized if she could earn Grace, she can demand of it. If she can crowbar Gods love, then God is in the hot-seat. She’s paid her tax and got skin in the game, so God needs to ante up. But, if God loves us, saves us, by grace—due to nothing on our end—then there’s nothing he can not ask from us.

If you’re like me, that’s comforting at first, but immediately terrifying.

I want Grace, but, if I’m honest, I only want a kind of Grace that steps in to rescue, but then leaves me alone. I only want Grace to write a dramatic, perfect sentence in my story. I don’t want to relinquish the whole narrative.

But Grace doesn’t co-author.

That was my predicament: I wanted a sentence about grace, but God pens entire stories with it. And when your story is penned by Grace, it means your story is not about you. Grace is so scandalous that it enters your story without permission. And, Grace is so scandalous it will send you into others’ stories without permission.

I’ve learned grace not only saves; grace sends. And grace sends wherever grace saves, which, again, makes us uncomfortable.

Grace goes “far as the curse is found.” Grace goes and sends us into every nook-and-cranny of the world that’s been warped, desecrated, and bothered by sin, selfishness, and stupidity.

The Ordinariness of Grace

Grace isn’t shaped or stopped by geography, class, race, intellectual status, plausibility structures, income level, or click-bait. Grace isn’t skeptical, which means it walks up to whoever it walks up to and says, “Follow me.”

And grace doesn’t only send cross-culturally. For most, grace won’t send you farther away than family, friends, neighbors, school, though, it very well might. But it will send you deeper into those people and places. Grace is extravagant, but grace dwells in the everyday.

Grace sends us into the extravagance of the everyday, which is the hardest place. Because it’s in the everyday that we’ve grown accustomed to “this is just the way things are.” But grace isn’t content with “the way things are.” Grace won’t be content until things are “the way they ought to be.” Grace hears through the white-noise of life. Grace hears and sees the vulnerable, the overlooked, the unjust, the crooked, the condemned, and the mistreated who’ve faded into the everydayness of our lives. And grace sends us there.

Things might be a tad more dramatic, at times, for the cross-cultural missionary, but no matter where it’s the same rhythms of relationship, trust, conversations, patience, prayer, and more patience that are part of the “sent” life anywhere.

Because we’re saved by grace, there’s nothing it cannot ask of us.

Grace scares us from the comfortable, predictable stories we want.

Even death looked at Grace and said, “You’re too much for me.”

The Stubbornness of Grace

Grace is stubborn, like a hurricane. You can board up the windows of your heart and stack sandbags around your story, but it’s a losing battle. Grace will out stubborn you, every time.

When Grace comes and we hear the shutters of our stories crack against the walls of our hearts, our knee-jerk reaction is to hide. We scramble to grab whatever vestiges of our personal narratives we can salvage and batten down the hatches. But what sounds devastating and scary and brutal isn’t the sound of destruction. It’s the sound of a new story.

Grace isn’t a bully. It’s as stubborn as a hurricane, but it’s as careful, intimate, and personal as a good storyteller.

At first, it seems like an arrogant actor, shoving your carefully crafted script back in your face. But Grace isn’t an actor in your little narrative; it’s the director. And your script isn’t being shoved back at you.

Rather, you’re being offered a part and invitation into a story not less than yours, but so much bigger.

It’s a story you may know nothing about, but you’ve always wanted. It’s a story more ancient than the cosmo and more new than morning dew.

It’s a story that knows the depths of human suffering and the astronomical heights of joy. It’s a story as everyday as grocery shopping and as outrageous as climbing Everest.

It’s a story that knows the pangs of division, racism, and human brutality, but glories in reconciliation and resurrection. It knows the powerful may appear to have all the cards, but the meek shall inherit the earth. It’s a scary, foolish, subversive story, and is full of surprises.

I’ve seen Grace take a young boy isolated in hardened, confused fear and change him into a team player on the soccer field. I’ve seen grace use bunk-beds to remind a mom her kids have a Father who cares for and sees them.

I’ve seen Grace take a sewing class and make it ground zero of empowerment and dreaming in an impoverished community. I’ve seen Grace take a five-year old’s ashamed, rotten smile and give him the biggest set of chompers you’ll ever see.

I’ve seen Grace give a young girl new life in Christ the same week she welcomed a new baby brother. I’ve seen a young boy with special needs have the best day of his life carting around a stalk of plantains.

I’ve seen Grace transform a young girl from someone who thought she’d never get through high school to someone who was signing up for her first university class.

The Surprise of Grace

But Grace was here long before we were and Grace will be here long after we’re gone. Truth is that Grace surprises people everywhere everyday. And these surprising narrative twists happen in-between the hard and dark plot points.

But that is the point. Grace isn’t writing a clean, tidy, white-washed, quarantined story that’ll drop out of the sky one day. It’s an inside job.

The story of Grace is mysterious and transcendent, but it knows the dust of the earth. Grace knows of a world where life, justice, and beauty flourish all the live long day and Grace put on flesh to bring it here.

Grace came from the extravagance of Heaven into the everydayness of Earth. And Grace knows the depth of a tomb so we can know the heights of the Kingdom. I’ve learned that Grace scares us from the stories we want, and surprises us with stories we could never ask for, nor imagine.

So, wherever Grace sends you today—a college classroom, an office, a newborn’s crib, a bus stop, a funeral, a doctor’s office, a community center, a hard conversation, an urban elementary school, a church building, a grocery store, a nursing home know this: Grace will not send you where it will not surprise you.

And that’s good news.

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Ben and Emily Riggs serve in Cancun, Mexico, on staff with Back2Back Ministries, where they seek to protect and restore vulnerable children and strengthen at-risk families. Prior to that he served as Director of Storytelling for Apex Community Church. Ben blogs at Logline and writes for Back2Back. 

4 Essentials For Cultivating Disciples

The Church is constantly conversing about what discipleship should look like. These conversations only buttress the truth that proper discipleship strikes at the heart of the Christian faith. Without right discipleship, our faith deforms. It turns into a circus, social club, dead “orthodoxy,” or worse. In my estimation, the church has overcomplicated matters. We must return to fundamentals of cultivating disciples and enjoy liberty in each of our cultural expressions of those fundamentals.

1. Retell The Story

Storytelling has always been foundational to the Christian faith. In the Old Testament, God rescues Israel from Egypt in dramatic fashion. He could’ve entered Egypt day one and rescued his people in a variety of ways, but he didn’t. He chose to do it with plagues. He chose an angel of death. He chose to part the Red Sea. He chose the desert. Then after these chapters in his grand story of redemption, God gives his people a gracious law and as he gives it he keeps using phrases like “Do this because I redeemed you from slavery” or “When you teach your children, remind them of how I brought you out of Egypt.” Story was essential for the faith of his people. When they rejected God as their God, it was because they forgot where they came from.

In the New Testament, Jesus enters the promised land where his people are again under captivity. He comes preaching the kingdom—which includes freedom from slavery. But this freedom was not the kind people thought he would bring. He brought freedom from the body of sin—a freedom that can never be taken away. So Jesus lives, dies, rises, and ascends to heaven. Many years thereafter the primitive New Testament church was versed in the oral re-telling of the stories of Jesus’ life. Can you blame them? The majority of the church to begin with were Jews who were used to re-telling stories as a way of life, but the church grew to include Gentiles as well. We of course know that within a century we have what is now known as the New Testament. But stories of Jesus were essential for maturing disciples within the covenant community. It should be no different in the church today—except now we have a sure foundation in the written Word. Do not neglect re-telling the story of our redemption in every square inch of life.

2. Church Gathered (Gospel Received)

Disciples must be made within the covenant community. The Church gathered is where God calls his people to hear his Word—sung, read, preached, eaten, and sent. This time is where we rehearse the story so that its re-telling sticks to our bones. It is where the one story intersects with people from every nation. This is the place where wounds are healed, friendships formed, and charity is born. It is where God speaks. If this time as a gathered community is neglected then disciples cannot be cultivated. Discipleship happens in the church before the face of God. We hear him speak the gospel to us through the liturgy and we receive the gospel full in our hearts ready to go out.

3. Church Scattered (Missio Dei)

God does not keep his Church gathered, but scatters her among the nations. He sends her out as light into darkness—on mission to make disciples. She goes out to “teach all nations,” to work as his image bearers, and to be fruitful and multiply. Without going out on mission, the Church maims herself—a light under a bush sets the bush on fire. Many of the cultural deformations the American church faces, for instance, are a result of her failure to go out and be fruitful and multiply. We have lost our doctrine of marriage, sex, and family and when the light fades, is it any surprise that darkness advances? But we are not scattered alone on solo missions. We are scattered together as a living body. This is not inconsequential. Community is necessary for our mission in the world. We need each other to survive and when we forget that we place ourselves in peril.

4. Family Worship (Liturgy For Life)

Families must imitate the liturgy of the Church in the way it worships from morning to night and specifically in its set aside times of worship. If the Church gathered misfires in her liturgy, is it any wonder that the Christian family misfires? We have a skewed liturgy in many churches and little to no worship in many Christian families. Families must retell the story from Genesis to Revelation. We must read, pray, sing, and eat together. And when we do so, this liturgy for life leaks into all areas of life.

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Disciples are born out of the Word—told as story, rehearsed as we are gathered, shared when scattered together, and rehearsed in our homes and all areas of our life. When one of these pistons misfires, the engine malfunctions. However, I have confidence that in the Church we will not shrink back. Even when we are faithless, God is faithful. Thomas Oden says, “The providential reason God allows heresy among the faithful, according to the ancient Christian writers, is to challenge the worshiping community to correct its exaggerations so as to bring it back into the balanced consensus” (A Change of Heart 165). Maybe in God’s providence he has allowed misguided methods of discipleship to bring us back to the tried and true methods. God the Father and King Jesus have sent the Spirit to build his Church—and he will build. Work faithfully in ordinary ways with ordinary means. No exaggerations needed.

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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!

Salvation: Past, Present, & Future

It is well said by many in the church that the Christian is not who he’s supposed to be, but by God’s grace he is not who he used to be. This well worn saying strikes at a truth we all know intellectually and experientially but get discouraged by in the aftermath of sin: sanctification doesn’t happen overnight. It is painful and progressive. By way of example, I think of my friend, we’ll call him George. George used to be dominated by alcoholism, but now by the empowering of the Spirit he has been sober for several years. In the earlier years of his struggle, however, this was not the case. He might go two weeks without a drink only to go on a weekend binder. He’d repent, muster up his strength, and get back on the wagon. Two months, maybe four, and he’d fall off again. While stuck inside this cycle it was easy for George to get discouraged. Didn’t Jesus die to save him from this mess? He hated alcohol, but like a dog returning to its vomit he kept returning to it (Prov. 26:11). That’s where fellow sojourners on this journey toward glorification had to meet with him and remind him of the truths that would get clouded by his sin. If he were to fall off again tomorrow, Jesus’ grace would still be there to help reorient him towards the fixed goal.

One step forward, two steps back. Such is the awkward dance of sanctification. But we do not dance alone. Jesus is our masterful dance instructor, never missing a beat, but always extending a hand to pull us back to our feet when we trip ourselves up.

God has Saved Us

Many people write the date they accepted Christ in the front cover of their Bible. It is a helpful reminder, an ebenezer to the day God first introduced himself to you. Yet, we risk misplacing our faith in a particular date in time instead of a particular person who entered time and took on flesh (Jn. 1:14). While from our human perspective it is helpful to remember the day we acquired a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, it is all too simplistic to think of that as the day we were saved.

Instead, salvation was purchased for us on a cross in Calvary some 2000 years ago. Long before our mothers had planned to birth us God had planned our second birth. Paul says, “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). Jesus knew the names of those he was dying for even before they were born.

In eternity past, God decided it was good for him to make man in his own image (Gen. 1:26, 27). At the cross, he chose to ransom some of every tribe, tongue, and nation and in the future he will bring many sons and daughters to glory. Our salvation, in one sense, was entirely determined in the past by the triune God.

God the Father had a plan and a purpose to accomplish our salvation the moment our first parents sinned in the Garden. As Adrian Rogers was fond of saying, “The Trinity never meets in emergency session.” This plan was then executed by the son who was obedient even to the point of death (Phil. 2:8). He, as the second Adam, succeeded in the desert in contrast to the first Adam who failed in the garden. It was the Holy Spirit who led the Son to the desert (Lk. 4:1) and now indwells all who trust in Christ. All of these events were sovereignly ordained prior to the birth of those of us alive today. When understood and contemplated they should overwhelm our hearts and bring us joy. We have been saved indeed. All that was done to accomplish this was determined in eternity past. And all of it accomplished by grace; we can do nothing to add to it. We can nod in agreement with the truth that “we are great sinners, but Jesus is a great savior.”

Yet, in another sense, our salvation has not been completed.

God Will Save Us

The death of Christ is not our only and ultimate hope, although it was necessary to purchase salvation for us. Paul says that we are hopeless without the resurrection of Christ and should be pitied (1 Cor. 15:19). If the death of Christ was the payment for sin, his resurrection is the proof of purchase to take home the prize.We don’t worship a dead Savior, but a Savior that defeated death and promises that we will too if we place our faith in him.

So long as we toil in these earthly bodies we fix our gaze toward the renewed heaven and earth (2 Pet. 3:13) where even the presence of sin and death will be removed. Jesus’ earthly ministry (Rom. 5:10) and substitutionary death (2 Cor. 5:21) purchased for us nothing less than paradise. It purchased life for our dead souls at the cross and in the future will cast death itself into the grave.

At times Christians have been accused of being “so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.” This criticism is a sort of evidence that most of us understand (at least in part) the future hope of our salvation. Yet, something gets missed. Our hope is misplaced if it is in the paradise. Paradise isn’t important without the one who we are with in that paradise. Jesus promises the thief on the cross paradise in his presence (Lk. 23:43). Note this.

Perhaps you’ve heard the hymn “I Will Trade the Old Cross for the Crown.” While it may comfort us in our suffering, the song misses the gospel. One line talks of carrying a cross for the Savior, but no line about the cross he carried for us—a glaring omission. Furthermore, the hymn writer sets our hope on obtaining a crown in exchange for a cross. But in Revelation 4 the elders cast down their crowns at the feet of Jesus because of his worth and glory. We will receive crowns, no doubt, but we’ll return them to King Jesus.

When we think of our future salvation, we must cautiously direct our thoughts not to the crowns we will receive but to the King who is worthy of our worship. It is there, with him, that every tear will be wiped away and death will die (Rev. 21:4). We will cast our gaze on him and see him face to face (1 Cor. 13:12). His righteousness will dwell there and that will be enough (2 Pet. 3:13). He will be more captivating than the paradise that merely provides the background for his glory. So God has saved you, he will save you, and he is saving you. Past. Future. And now we move to present.

God is Saving Us

We are a fickle people. As another hymn states, we’re “prone to wonder…[and] leave the God we love.” But God has redirected our hearts and minds via signposts to what we need most—himself. We draw encouragement from the actions of God in the past that secured for us salvation. We set our hope on a future day when we will see him face to face. But God is not distant and confined only to the past and the present. His grace is here for our taking now.

Paul writes,

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. – Romans 5:1-2

Through Jesus we stand in grace. Yes, we stood in grace when he saved us in the past. Yes, we will stand in his grace in the future when he himself serves as the light of the new heavens and earth (Rev. 21:23). But we are short changing ourselves if we relegate God only to the past and the future. Paul David Tripp, pastor and writer, says:

Many believers have a gap in the middle of their gospel. They understand salvation past—the forgiveness that they have in Christ; and salvation future—the eternity that they’ll spend with Christ. But they don’t understand the present benefits of the work of Christ in the here and now.

We have a mediator interceding for us at the throne of God at this very moment (Rom. 8:34). This should be cause for rejoicing. We have peace with God, not because we have put down the gauntlet, but because Jesus has absorbed our sin in his body on the tree. Because we have placed our faith in him, we can boldly approach the Father (Heb. 4:16). He is not mad at us; we don’t have to avoid him. Do not neglect to plumb the depths of this great grace.

The prosperity gospel teaches us to demand earthly rewards in the here and now—rewards that Christ himself rejected in the desert (Lk. 4). We should reject this over-realized eschatology found in the prosperity gospel. We will enjoy physical blessings in the end, but as I stated that’s never the point. The point is a person. So as we daily struggle with sin and discouragement over our slow progress in sanctification, we should boldly claim the blessings we are promised now. In Jesus Christ, all of God’s promises are yes (2 Cor. 1:20). We can commune with God now in preparation for seeing him face to face. We have the Spirit of Christ within us. We have Jesus enthroned in the heavens interceding for us. We have everything we need to make it home. Rejoice in hope of the glory of our God!

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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 a church plant in Troy, NY for seven years and taught Hermeneutics to ninth and tenth graders. He is married to Hannah and is father to Knox and Hazel. He blogs at Hardcore Grace and the recently started Family Life Pastor.

9 Reasons to Prioritize One-on-One Discipleship

Few people in our local church shout “Amen!” when I preach which may be a testimony to the quality of the sermons. Yet every once in a while, I preach something decent. I know this because some of our members will grunt and nod their heads aggressively. This has become the telltale sign that I’ve said something helpful or convicting. The easiest sermons to preach are sermons on discipleship, particularly the necessity of fulfilling the Great Commission. The grunt per person ratio is off the charts on those Sundays. One Sunday, the general tone of agreement led me to believe those to who heard me preach were particularly ready and willing to take personal ownership for the mission of disciple-making. My assumptions led me to seek out disciple-makers for young believers in our church actively—either those who came to faith through our church’s ministry or those who had only been walking with Jesus for a short time. It made sense to target those who had known Jesus for years and pair them with a younger believer so they could fulfill Jesus’ call to teach one another to do all things that Christ commands (Matt 28:18–20).

But the more I attempted to engage the church in discipleship, the more I found that far too many of the seasoned saints had no idea where to begin or what to do. They acknowledged their responsibility to make disciples and had a relationship with someone who needed investment of time and training, but the mature believers were unsure what disciple-making should look like. Though they had attended church for years, many had passively learned that disciple-making was something that the staff or structure of the church was supposed to accomplish. If someone needed to be taught the basics of the Christian life, they assumed that Sunday school, small groups, or sermons would do the trick—what those structures could not accomplish would be the work of the professional pastors or ministry leaders.

Over the years, the gap between the mission of disciple-making and the actual practice of most Christians grew wider and wider. Many knew they should be making disciples and wanted to do so, but they simply didn’t know how.

I’m convinced that a return to the practice of one-on-one, life-on-life discipleship is one of the most critical needs for today’s church.

Here’s why:

One-on-One Discipleship Allow Every Member of the Church to Carry Weight

We laughingly jest at the “80/20 rule” (20% of the people in the church do 80% of the work) and wonder why our churches lack the every-member ministry we know God desires. Many attendees, much less members, sit as bystanders to the life of the church. They show up, sing the songs, listen to the sermons, give an offering, and leave through the back door. Often those without meaningful investment in the work of the church are the first to complain when their needs are not met or the leaders do something they don’t like. So, how do we call these people out of passivity and into action? Giving out bulletins before a service is unlikely to do the trick. We need more. A culture of one-on-one discipleship among the members of the church would communicate that everyone has a vital role to play in the spiritual health of the body. Passive consummation and petty squabbles would likely be minimized if it was assumed that every member of a local church was going to meet with at least one other Christian on a regular basis for the sake of their spiritual growth and transformation.

One-on-One Discipleship Allows for Honest Conversation

We’d love to assume that believers are ruthlessly honest with each other at all times—be it the 5-minute conversation in the hallway of the church or sitting around in a living room during a weekly small group gathering. But we know this is not true. Nor is it reasonable. Most settings simply do not allow for the level of honesty we need to fight sin and pursue holiness. It would be unwise and unhelpful for a man to confess an ongoing battle with pornography in a mixed-gendered small group. Even if this man were bold enough to share with the men in the group, he will likely struggle to mine the depths of his sin in this setting. The men in the group may be able to listen, pray, and encourage him with the Scriptures, but he’ll need one or two men who are willing to meet with him and walk with him through what is likely to be a long process of repentance and change.

One-on-One Discipleship Allows for Personalized Application 

Consider the difficulty when a college student raises her hand during the typical Sunday morning sermon or even in a Sunday school class and saying, “Yeah, I understand that, but this just doesn’t make sense to me yet,” or “That may be true, but I’m not sure how it applies to my life.” These settings aren’t designed for personalized care. Most sermons and classes operate at the 30,000-foot level—trusting that God, by his Spirit and through his church, can apply the truth of his word to the needs of each person in attendance. This move from broad teaching to personalized application happens best in one-on-one discipleship settings.

One-on-One Discipleship Allows for Evangelism and Discipleship to Unite

Churches with a culture of one-on-one discipleship have no question with what to do with someone who comes to faith in their church. First, the person who was most instrumental in sharing the gospel with the new believer should be the go-to source for ongoing discipleship. Following baptism, these two can continue to fan into flame the good work that God has started. If the person came to faith apart from a relationship with a church member, such as through a Sunday sermon or big event, then the church has a farm system of ready, willing, and capable disciple-makers. Imagine the long-term fruit that could result if every church could say to new believers, “We have someone who would love to walk with you for the next year as you grow in your faith.”

One-on-One Discipleship Allows for Ongoing Accountability

Genuine change happens when someone brings sin out of the dark and into the light—both to God and to fellow brothers and sisters. Then the fight begins. Hard work must be done to put protective measures in place to aid in one’s pursuit of holiness. A man who finds his identity in his job and neglects his family needs to confess this sin to another brother and have this man hold him accountable to being home for dinner, putting his phone down at night, and playing with his children. These actions cannot change the human heart, but they are a means by which we can spur one another on to love and good deeds (Heb 10:24).

One-On-One Discipleship Allows for Burden Bearing Relationships

In an age of incessant social media chatter, we assume that every believer is surrounded by people who will pray when they hurt, and love and support them when they suffer. A simple glance at your Facebook feed will almost certainly find another person asking for prayer. Yet, in an age of constant connectivity, people are as lonely as ever. While Facebook “friends” may like your post or offer prayers of support, it is impossible to bear another’s burdens in a meaningful way via technology. We need someone to sit with us, listen to our muddled conversation, make us something to eat, and pray while we cry. We need burden-bearing relationships. Those that know us know where we hurt, know where we are weak, and are willing to drop everything to be by our side (Gal 6:1–10).

One-on-One Discipleship Allows Other Ministries to Thrive

Discipleship relationships are not an alternative to small groups or Sunday school. In fact, they enhance the work that happens in these groups. One-on-one discipleship frees small groups from the pressure of assuming that they must accomplish all the heavy lifting of disciple-making. Most groups know that they can’t teach the Bible, apply the word to each group member, care for the wounded, make new guests feel welcome, live on mission to their neighborhood, promote passionate prayer, and practice biblical hospitality. The thought that all of these laudable goals must happen between 6–8 p.m. on a Tuesday night or 9–9:50 a.m. on a Sunday morning is a crushing burden. A church filled with a culture of disciple-making can trust that their groups don’t have to do it all, freeing these groups to do the very things they do best.

One-on-One Discipleship Allows for Mutual Growth

One-on-one discipleship is often explained as if it is only for the benefit of the younger Christian who is being discipled. Yet, ask one of the older women in our church who has engaged in this work and she will insist that the process of discipleship was as transformative for her as for the new believer she served. Do you want to grow in your hunger for God’s word? Meet with a younger Christian and have them ask you questions about the Bible. Do you want to see change in your prayer life? Meet with someone who doesn’t have it all together and is looking to you for help. Do you want to see change in your personal sin struggles? Invite someone into your life and say, like Paul, “follow me as I follow Christ” (1 Cor 11:1).

One-on-One Discipleship Allows for Healthy Relationships

Biblical community is a buzzword in the church; however, like a mythical unicorn, biblical community can be easy to define, yet hard to find. Sunday services alone are unlikely to create the deep love we long to see among the people of God. But one-on-one discipleship can. Imagine what happens if, over the course of five years, a member of your church has met with five to seven people (one or two a year) for the purpose of intentional discipleship. In these relationships, they have cried and laughed, talked and prayed. They’ve seen God transform them both and they are better for it. Though they may no longer meet, the deep love they have for one another will be unmistakable. Now, assume that those with whom they’ve met are also meeting with others and doing the same thing. Multiply this process by the number of members of your church and imagine the love that would permeate your local church (Jn 13:35).

Discipleship relationships are not one of a host of options on the buffet line of spiritual formation alongside Sunday sermons, small groups, Sunday School, men’s or women’s ministry or a host of other good activities of the church. Certainly, people can’t do everything, and expecting a person to take part in every ministry the church has to offer is unreasonable and unhealthy. Yet, one-on-one discipleship relationships are not optional extras once the other ministry obligations have been fulfilled. Like the Sunday gathering of the entire church and some form of community group (either Sunday school or small group), those seeking to participate in the life of the church in a meaningful way should regularly be engaged in one-on-one discipleship—for the good of others, the good of the church, and their own good as well.

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Matt Rogers is the pastor of The Church at Cherrydale in Greenville, South Carolina. He and his wife, Sarah, have three daughters, Corrie, Avery, and Willa and a son, Hudson. Matt holds a Master of Arts in counseling from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary as well as a Master of Divinity and a PhD  from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Matt writes and speaks for throughout the United States on discipleship, church planting, and missions. Find Matt online at www.mattrogers.bio or follow him on Twitter @mattrogers_

Longing for My Real Home

After two years of focused theological study I realized my soul needed a good story. It’s not that I don’t love reading theology, but during this season I wanted something different to stir my heart. I knew any old story wouldn’t work; no, it was time for a fairy tale.What better fairy tale than C.S. Lewis’ classic masterpiece The Chronicles of Narnia to awaken my heart? As a child, I never read The Chronicles of Narnia. As a matter of fact, I never read fairy tales. Much like Lucy Barfield, Lewis’ granddaughter, I had outgrown fairy tales all too quickly. Thus, his words to Lucy in his dedication were all too timely, “But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” That day had finally come for me. Little did I know how deeply I would be impressed by this fairy tale and the truths it directed me towards.

In The Chronicles of Narnia, I quickly discovered a world so magical and captivating that adequately explaining the impression it had upon me is difficult. It’s like a delicious secret only to be savored by those who have taken the journey through Lewis’ fairy tale, by those who have stared Aslan in the eyes. I could give excerpt after excerpt that resonated with my soul, but seven articles couldn’t contain them all. Perhaps the words found within those excerpts should be reserved for persons brave enough to take their own journey into Narnia.

Instead I will present two overarching reasons why this series of books left a profound impression upon me and why I am convinced that every person—young and old—should read The Chronicles of Narnia to drive them towards maturity as a disciple.

The Depiction of Aslan Directs Your Heart Towards Christ

The way in which Lewis portrays Aslan is glorious! He first appears on the scene as the One who sings Narnia into existence. The reader discovers he is a Lion, but no ordinary lion. His mane is like gold, his eyes radiant energy, his voice causes the ground to shake and tremble. He is resplendent and terrifying and wonderful all at once! Children can know him intimately and yet he is mysterious beyond the magician’s knowledge. He is always at work, but he never does the same thing twice. He can defeat his enemies with a single paw, but walks willingly to his own death. The reader understands that when you come face to face with Aslan you forget about everything else.

Magical Lions don’t exist. Yet, there is a true story about a real Lion that this one points us to. Lewis draws so heavily from the biblical depiction of Jesus when forming Aslan’s character, I could not help but think of Jesus as I read about the Great Lion. The parallels are striking. Every time Aslan appears on the page and does what only Aslan can do, your heart is directed toward the true Lion, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who has done what only he can do (Rev. 5:1-14).

My affections were stirred afresh for Jesus in wonderful, childlike ways during my time in Narnia. I was reminded that I serve a King who isn’t safe, who isn’t tame, but is good beyond comprehension. It brought to remembrance my own story of encountering the Lion for the first time and all of the adventures that have ensued since. It softened my heart towards Jesus and his perfect work on my behalf. Essentially, I found that reading about Aslan presented me with wonderful opportunities to meditate upon Christ.

The Depiction of Narnia Directs Your Heart Towards the Eternal

From the creation of Narnia in book one until the revealing of the “real Narnia” in book seven I was enamored with this land. Narnia—the land Aslan sang into existence, the land where children rule as kings and queens, and the land that houses talking beasts. Oh Narnia! How I loved your hospitable beavers and friendly fauns. How I longed to partake of a hot meal by Mrs. Beaver or witness a sunset laced with colors seen only in Narnia.

Something about Narnia in all seven books points you towards the eternal. It causes you to long for something transcendent, something more. Yet, in book seven, when the old Narnia gives way to the real Narnia, the words of the Unicorn are piercing, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.”

As I read those words, I felt hot tears fill my eyes which splashed onto the page. The unicorns words resonated with my own longing for my true home. I, like so many of you, know what it’s like to feel out of place while searching for satisfaction in a fallen world. I know what it’s like to long for my real country, my real home.

These words reminded me that one day I’ll close my eyes for a final time and open them to discover that I have finally come home, finally arrived at the land I have looked for all my life. So often we are afraid of death, terrified of eternity, and anxious about the unknown, but we must remember that our future land is not unknown. It’s home! It’s the land we’ve longed for all along! Thus, this fairy tale directs us forward towards the true reality we will one day experience in Jesus’ consummated kingdom.

Lasting Impressions

Narnia made a lasting impression on me at a mature level, but that doesn’t mean it’s reserved for adults. If you are a parent, I encourage you to read this series to your children at the appropriate age and use it as a springboard to talk about Jesus and eternity. It gives children a framework in which they can think about Christ and the new heaven and earth in a way that is real and concrete to them. Even if they don’t understand all of the implications Lewis is making, the idea of this glorious Lion living in a perfect land will stay with them until one day (just like Lucy and me) they will return to savor the parallels more fully. May you and your family grow in your love for Jesus and his eternal kingdom as you read The Chronicles of Narnia together!

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Whitney Woollard is passionate about equipping others to read and study God’s Word well resulting maturing affection for Christ and his glorious gospel message. She holds a Bachelors of Science in Biblical Studies from Moody Bible Institute and a Masters of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary. Whitney and her husband Neal currently live in Portland, OR where they call Hinson Baptist Church home. Visit her writing homepage whitneywoollard.com.