Is the Bible Good for Women?
Is the Bible good for women? Growing up in the conservative South, I never considered that question. I didn’t understand anything of women’s rights except the caricatures I saw on the news during attempts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. But I was one of three daughters, no sons, born to a Christian dad who valued his girls well. Though I experienced my fair share of struggles growing up, female oppression in a patriarchal society did not seem to be one of them. As I got older and watched the news with a more critical eye, a different view of women came into my line of sight. There were countries where women couldn’t vote? There were cultures that would put victims of rape to death in honor killings? Then I moved to Seattle, where women’s rights and feminist issues are often center stage in local news and conversation. I couldn’t hide from these issues anymore. Female mutilation, legal oppression, and culturally accepted rape were much bigger issues affecting many more women worldwide than I had ever under- stood. And domestic abuse, the blaming of sexual abuse survivors, and discrimination in the workforce occurred closer to home. My experience of being valued as a female by the men in my life was not the norm worldwide, but I also came to realize it wasn’t the norm in the conservative South either. I was bombarded by women’s issues. As a believer in Jesus since childhood and one who loved and valued the Bible, I was barraged with criticism of the Scripture around women’s issues as well. Does the Bible address oppression of women in helpful ways? Or does it only perpetuate such oppression among its followers? In a world that is quite often very bad for women, does the Bible help or does it make it worse?
HARMFUL WORLDWIDE PRACTICES
National Public Radio recently highlighted a disturbing practice in western Nepal in which young women are banished to outdoor sheds when they are on their periods.1 The families interviewed believe that the girls could cause illnesses among the family’s elderly if they touch them while menstruating. The humiliation and stigma those girls endure is worth public outcry.
Hinduism is the primary religion (81 percent) in Nepal.2 Al- though Judaism and Christianity have made small inroads into the country, this practice of barring young menstruating women from their homes does not seem to have a direct relationship to Old Testament Law. Yet I can’t help but think of similar instructions in the Law (see Leviticus 15:19–33) when I hear of the Nepali practice. I know from Scripture that despite the similarities, the Nepali practice is a perversion of God’s intent in the Law. The Nepali tradition attributes to girls on their periods something Old Testament Law never does, it does so without the Law’s corresponding instruction to men, and it perpetuates a practice that Jesus said two thousand years ago was brought to completion through Him. (We will work this out in greater detail in chapters 6 and 7.)
But the comparison puts a question to us, one that many women ask themselves: Is the Bible good for women? How can a book that includes instructions on where a woman can sleep or sit when menstruating be trusted by women today when similar modern practices like that of the Nepalese are clearly harmful for women?
We have not always been suspicious about the Bible’s take on women’s issues. For long periods in history, people viewed the Bible and Christianity as powers that lifted the downtrodden and demoralized to new places of respect. During the twentieth century, the first wave of feminism gave voice to women whom society had long marginalized. In 1920, women finally won the right to vote in the United States, due in large part to the efforts of Christians. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union led this movement, seeking to apply biblical principles of social justice to larger society.3 Based in part on their understanding of Jesus and the Bible, men and women of faith fought together for women to have the right to vote. This first wave of feminism resulted in women’s right to vote and inherit land, along with subsequent benefits to both women and children as women gained a voice in legislation.
But as the century wore on, there came a fork in the road in which orthodox Christianity seemed to go in one direction concerning the rights of women, and second-wave feminism (which focused on birth control, abortion rights, and equal pay) in another. In the last few years, many pro-women authors (for lack of a better name), even Christian ones, have painted a picture of women in the Bible that is troubling, even referring to certain pas- sages concerning women in the Bible as “texts of terror.”4 According to many books and popular blogs, the view in our current culture is that an orthodox understanding of the Bible is threatening and even downright harmful to women. The similarities be- tween Old Testament Law having to do with women on their periods and the Nepali practice that results in shaming menstruating girls seem to only reinforce such a distrust of Scripture.
Other books have dissected the history of evangelical Christianity and the secular women’s movement.5 Rather than looking at how we arrived at the twenty-first-century general mistrust of the Bible regarding women, I would like instead to simply challenge it by encouraging us to discover and use a Jesus-centered under- standing of Scripture when reading the Bible. In turn, this gives us a Jesus-centered understanding of how the Bible speaks about women and to women in its pages. I believe this process will give us all a life-giving perspective of our gendered selves in God’s kingdom. It will help us see the profound difference in the shame that fathers project onto menstruating Nepali daughters and the dignity God places on His.
Editor’s Note: To find the answer to these questions and more pick up a copy Is the Bible Good for Women by Wendy Alsup where she dedicates a chapter to answer a single difficult question in-depth.
Wendy Alsup is the author of Practical Theology for Women, The Gospel-Centered Woman, and By His Wounds You Are Healed. She began her public ministry as deacon of women’s theology and teaching at her church in Seattle, but she now lives on an old family farm in South Carolina, where she teaches math at a local community college and is a mother to her two boys. She also writes at gospelcenteredwoman.com. She is a member of a local church in the Lowcountry Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America.
Excerpted from Is the Bible Good for Women by Wendy Alsup Copyright © 2016 by Wendy Alsup. Excerpted by permission of Multnomah, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Why You're Not Being Transformed
“In many cases our need to wonder about or be told what God wants in a certain situation is a clear indication of how little we are engaged in His work.” – Dallas Willard, Hearing God
As a pastor, I talk to people all the time who are frustrated with where they are spiritually. They want to be “better.” They desire to grow more like Christ. But they just aren’t getting anywhere.
They’re trying to address it, and many times even good things. They’re reading their Bible. They’re going to church every weekend. They’re even in a small group. But still, they’re not seeing any transformation. So what’s going on?
What they’re really saying is they’re not being transformed. That the power of God isn’t evident in their everyday life.
How transformation happens
Many of us have misconceptions about how we’re transformed into the likeness of Christ. We think we can just read different books or listen to different radio stations or go to church every week and somehow we’ll change into godly people.
The Bible teaches something very different, though. In terms of transforming the human heart, it teaches that we’re actually powerless to do anything. That left to ourselves we are incapable of being righteous before God. And that’s the glory of the gospel—that we are offered salvation and eternal life solely through the magnificent grace of God.
But when it comes to transforming how we live, the Bible’s teaching is that God transforms us through his Spirit by the power of his Word, and that we are to make every effort to strive to live godly lives. Most believers and their churches have at least a basic understanding of how God’s Word transforms and renews us. When it comes to making every effort to live godly lives, though, it seems that many of us are less clear.
Make every effort
The language of “make every effort” comes from the Apostle Peter’s epistle:
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” – 2 Peter 1:5-7
We’re told that we should be exerting effort to supplement our faith with actions. That’s what the list that follows the command is referring to, these qualities of living that display on the outside how we’ve been changed on the inside. Now, notice that Peter says these efforts only supplement, not replace, our faith.
Perhaps nowhere is this same teaching seen as clearly as in the Apostle James’s writing, where we’re told simply to,
“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” – James 1:22
What James is saying here should shock us, because he’s saying that listening to the Word of God is not enough. Through James, the Holy Spirit is saying that listening to sermons and podcasts, reading Christian books, and even reading the Bible itself, none of these things are enough on their own. They must be accompanied by doing something, otherwise we’re just deceiving ourselves.
In John 8:44, the Apostle John tells us that Satan is a deceiver, using all kinds of schemes to distract us from obeying God. If we listen to the Word but never do anything with it, then we are doing his job for him. We are deceiving ourselves if all we’re doing is sitting through a church service on Sunday or even attending a group during the week, while not ministering to others in obedience to what we’ve heard.
Lack of Exercise
When someone breaks their leg and they can’t put weight on it, they have to do physical therapy when it’s time to walk again. That’s because their leg muscles have atrophied. They’ve shrunken from not being used.
When you exercise, you’re actually tearing muscle tissue. Muscle is being built up by continual tearing that is then healed by scar tissue. As that happens more and more, muscles begin to grow.
Many of us in the church experience spiritual atrophy. We’ve spent so much time taking information in that we’ve forgotten how to exercise what we’ve learned, and now our spiritual muscles have atrophied from lack of use.
What’s needed now is action—putting those muscles to use. And yes, it will be difficult. It may even be painful. But it’s only through the hard work of exercising our faith by the power of Spirit that we begin to see transformation. Because of his work of love in us, we work in love towards others. Exercise may tear your spiritual muscles, but the grace of God acts as the scar tissue that heals the wounds and builds you up into something more perfect along the way.
Doing and Sanctification
After James makes his case that believers should be doers of God’s Word, he says something very interesting:
“But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” – James 1:25
That last phrase, “he will be blessed in his doing,” points out something that’s so often overlooked: that our sanctification happens as we minister to others. Our sanctification, our being transformed into the image of Christ, happens as we put our faith into action.
Most of us think we need to be transformed before we minister to other people. But what the Bible teaches is that we’re transformed as we minister to other people. It is in dying to ourselves, taking up our cross, and being obedient to Jesus that we’re transformed into the image of Jesus.
And that’s really what being “doers” of the Word means—being obedient to Jesus. So if we want to experience transformation, we need to ask ourselves if we’re being obedient to Jesus’s commands. Are we making disciples? Are we living on mission? Are we sharing our faith?
We can’t expect to become like Jesus if we’re not doing what he did. We can’t expect to be transformed if we’re not obeying his commands.
But this obedience isn’t oppressive, or something that should cause us to groan. God created us for good works.
How obedience to Christ brings freedom
In Ephesians 2:10, Paul tells us,
“We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
We are God’s workmanship. Another translation says that we are his masterpiece. And he created us as masterpieces for a reason, which is what? For good works.
We were saved by Christ that we might do good works in Christ. Which means we won’t fulfill God’s purpose for our life outside of obedience to Jesus. But in that obedience there is outlandish freedom.
That’s why James uses that paradoxical phrase, “the law of liberty.” He knows that if we’re obedient to Christ then we are free from the law and, ultimately, our sin. If we’re obedient to Christ, we are free to experience the transformation God has in store for us.
If we are obedient to Christ, we are free in Christ. Which is why Jesus said,
“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. . . . So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” – John 8:31-32, 36
Grayson Pope is a husband to Maggie, father to three kids ages five, three, and one. He serves as the Pastor of Community at Mecklenburg Community Church. He’s also a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he’s pursuing a MACS.
New Book Release | A Pastor's Guide for Everyday Mission
We are releasing Ben Connelly’s A Pastor's Guide for Everyday Mission—which is about how not to forget the great commission and how to make, mature, and multiply disciples. Here’s a description of the book:
After fifteen plus years of vocational ministry, Ben Connelly had an epiphany. He had missed the great commission. He was really good at keeping Christians happy and really bad at making disciples. A Pastor’s Guide to Everyday Mission helps those in paid ministry positions rediscover—and live—their life as God’s missionaries, even as they minister to God’s people. Without burdening you with the guilt and shame he once felt, Connelly charges his peers in ministry to look over the walls of our Christian castles and realize that there are always more people “out there” than there are “in here.” A Pastor’s Guide to Everyday Mission will free you to let down your drawbridge, go out to the people to whom God sent you, and lead others across the bridge and into the world with you.
You can buy a digital copy for $4.99 or a paperback copy for $8.99. Below is an excerpt from the introduction. We will share another selection from this book on Friday!
Mathew B. Sims, Managing Editor
“I’m really good at appeasing Christians, and really bad at making disciples.”
In 2009, this crippling epiphany overwhelmed me. I was in “vocational ministry” since I was a freshman in college. While reading the New Testament for a seminary class, I started to get the nagging feeling that something was off. I didn’t know what exactly, but clouds gathered at the horizon of my mind. As I read over and over about the New Testament Church and compared its life and ministry to the ministry of the churches I’d worked for, everything seemed to get eerily still. As page after page showed disciples made and sent, the church loving its neighbors and those in need, church leaders called to love not-yet-believers in their midst, and even Jesus’ prayer that his Father not take Christians out of the world, I became disoriented; everything seemed to go into slow-motion.
Then I read the Great Commission.
I’d read it maybe two-hundred times before. But not like this. A tidal wave rose from nowhere. Looming. Rushing toward me. It crashed down: I’m really good at keeping Christians happy and really bad at making disciples. We had a decent-sized college ministry and praise God, he used even our lack of missional intentionality to bring some students to himself. But by and large, I felt like I was paid to keep Christian students liking our church’s ministry more than other churches’ ministries.
But the Great Commission isn’t to appease Christians. It’s to “go make disciples” (Matthew 28:19)! Whether in our hometowns, across the world, or somewhere between, my calling—long before I was a pastor—was to be a missionary! The wave crushed me. Drenched in shame and remorse, I began to question my purpose in life and ministry. I wondered if, in God’s eyes, I was a total fraud.
Following that season, I walked through the feelings of shame, remorse, and hypocrisy. I realized that some of the feelings stemmed from emotion; others, however, I rightly repented of, and have come to rest in God’s grace. (At least most of the time.) But the principle stands: whatever role we play, every follower of Jesus on earth is a missionary, sent to make disciples. And that’s especially true for those of us in paid ministry positions.
Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben.
Become Idolaters by Forgetting the Gospel
We all know people who are not Christians who live good, quiet, and moral lives (according to outward standards of living). Many non-Christians give to charities, help the poor, feed the hungry and clothe the naked. These people really do tangible good. These people are concerned about living a good and moral life for a variety of reasons—good reputations, species preservation, etc. We live in a humanistic age meaning we “live in the midst of people who argue that you can live a good life without being a Christian. They say it is about time people grew up and began to think and to cease to cling to this non-sense about God and an unseen world, and that all this talk of a so-called incarnation and redemption and all the rest of it.”[1]
These people say, “We don’t need it anymore. We are no longer primitive. Christianity was our first attempt at understanding and morality, but not our best attempt. We are now enlightened and educated. It’s time to move on.”
There exist in our families and friends these types of people that live good, decent, generous lives according to outward standards and say—“See, I’m a decent person, yet I’m not a superstitious, brainwashed disciple. I don’t need the crutch of Christianity to live a good and decent life.”
As Christians we can and should acknowledge the reality that non-believers can be compassionate, loving, and generous. These acts are a part of God’s common grace to the world despite the whole world not acknowledging his universal Lordship.
However, there is no basis whatsoever for why moral and good non-believers behave the way they behave. They may appeal to common good or human solidarity, but our trendy culture dictates its definition. I contend that apart from the Infinite we appeal to the finite for truth and that’s a dangerous place to reside.
The very unusual thing to me is while Christians may boisterously shout “AMEN!” to what I just mentioned, we often (most of the time unintentionally) live this way ourselves. We commend ourselves toward good works apart from the gospel of God. We treat the Christian life as if one day we will stand before God hoping our good deeds will outweigh our bad deeds and that we will deserve a spot in eternity. We guilt ourselves toward good works and because of that our good works are no longer produced out of a gratefulness for the gospel but out of religious obligation.
Everything we do as believers should be inside the framework of the gospel. Good works apart from the gospel have no real foundation and are themselves idols leading us away from savoring Christ.
The Apostle Paul in Romans 8:12-17 gives us a great reminder as believers. He states,
So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs- heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
The Apostle Paul reminds us of several truths in this passage:
- You are no longer orphans, but adopted sons and daughters of the Most-High King therefore, act like it. Because of the perfect righteousness of the God-man, Jesus Christ you are no longer a hopeless orphan. You have a Father, so cease to behave as if you are an orphan.
- Good works in the life of a believer are empowered by the Holy Spirit. One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to produce Christ’s character in believers (Gal. 5:22-23).
- Those who persevere to the end are the true adopted sons and daughters of God. Let me be clear—our good works do not save us; we are justified by grace alone through faith alone. The Apostle Paul is saying that one of the evidences this side of eternity that we have been changed by the gospel is our repentance. Those who continually repent and believe the gospel are those God has adopted and those God has adopted will never be snatched away (Jn. 10:28-30). Those who do not continually repent and believe the gospel were never saved to begin with (Jas. 2:18-20).
How can we be sure we are commending ourselves to good works within the context of the gospel? Here are a few practical applications that I believe are grounded in God’s Word:
- Read and study God’s Word – A great place to start is Romans 7 and 8. Paul reminds us of the deceitful heart (Rom. 7), which progresses into a clear reminder (Rom. 8) that we labor in good works as uncondemned men because we are in Christ.
- Remind yourself of the gospel message daily – A great passage to memorize is 1 Corinthians 15:3-6.[2] A gratefulness for the gospel will always fuel good works with Christ in view as supremely valuable.
- Become a member of a local church (Heb. 10:25) – You want to be invested in a gospel-centered community of folks who are committed to reminding each other of the truthfulness of the gospel and the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:12-14).
- Remember the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) – Your Christian testimony and character is important in fulfilling the Great Commission. Take your role and calling seriously.
- To Pastors—preach the gospel from your pulpit every week (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 15:1-4) – When you fail to preach the gospel in your sermons you succeed in promoting behavior modification and this enslaves people (Rom 7:10). Every cult in the world teaches behavior modification. Preach the gospel always (2 Tim. 4:2).
As believers, we have a responsibility to pursue holiness and to flee sin by the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God and the sake of the gospel.
[1] Lloyd-Jones, Martyn, D. Spiritual Depression: Its causes and its cures. 1965.
[2] “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.”
Joey Tomlinson lives in Yorktown, VA with his wife, Brayden and their son, Henry Jacob. He has served as a pastor at Coastal Community Church for over 10 years and is pursuing his doctorate in biblical counseling at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also blogs over at Servants of Grace.
Someone More Important Than Your BFF
Relate
My ministry has taken me to many places in the world, but no matter how exotic or beautiful the location, it always felt empty and hollow without my wife and children to enjoy it with me. In contrast, my family and I recently traveled to the United Kingdom to surprise my parents on their golden wedding anniversary. It was one of the most memorable trips of my life, not only for the joy we gave to my parents, but also for the joy of doing such a trip together, sharing in one another’s lives. The joy of a journey depends so much on who’s riding with us.
As God said, “It is not good that man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18). If a perfect man in a perfect world in a perfect relationship with God needed to hear that, how much more do sinful men in a sinful world in far-from-sinless relationships with God? It is not good for man to be alone. Man. That’s me. That’s you. Yet so many of us still try to live largely independent, solitary, disconnected, and self-sufficient lives. The result, as predicted, is “not good.”
Central to God’s answer to this “not goodness” was his provision of a wife to move the state of men from “not good” to “very good.” But there are other key relationships in our lives we must consciously cultivate, especially in a fallen world, if we are to avoid “not good” and move toward “very good”: our relationships with God, with our wives, with our children, with our pastors/elders, and with our friends. Even if we just get that order of priorities right, it will make a massive difference.
Relationship with God
Like all healthy and satisfying relationships, our relationship with God needs time and energy. But giving time and energy to our relationship with God actually increases free time and energy because it helps us get a better perspective on life and order our priorities better, it reduces the time we spend on image management, and it removes fear and anxiety.
Here are some things that have helped me to keep my personal relationship with God personal and avoid falling into the trap of relating to him only through my ministry to others:
Guarded time. I try to guard personal Bible reading and prayer time as jealously as I guard my own children. I keep my six twenty appointment with God each morning as zealously as if it were an appointment for kidney dialysis.
Undistracted mind. In a survey of eight thousand of its readers, desiringGod.org found that 54 percent checked their smartphones within minutes of waking up. More than 70 percent admitted that they checked email and social media before their spiritual disciplines.1 I agree with Tony Reinke, who commented, “Whatever we focus our hearts on first in the morning will shape our entire day.” So I have resolved not to check email, social media, or the news before my devotional time, as I want to bring a mind that is as clear and focused as possible to God’s Word.
Vocal prayers. As I always pray better when I pray out loud, I like to find a place where I can do so without embarrassment. Hearing my own prayers helps me improve the clarity and intensity of my prayer. Also, I cannot cover up a wandering heart or mind so easily when I pray out loud.
Varied devotions. Sometimes I read a psalm, a chapter from the Old Testament, and a chapter from the New. Other times I read just one chapter or part of a chapter and spend longer meditating on it. Or I may read through a Bible book with a good commentary. Though the speed varies, I do try to make sure that I’m reading systematically through both testaments and not just jumping around here and there.
Good sleep. If I get a good seven to eight hours of sleep each night, I come to God’s Word with more energy and concentration.
Christ-centered sermons. Using sites such as sermonaudio.com, I listen to many preachers outside my own tradition because I often find their approach to texts refreshing and stimulating.
Christ-centered books. Books that draw me into communion with Christ include John Owen’s The Glory of Christ and Spiritual Mindedness; John Flavel’s Christ the Fountain of Life; and, more recently, Mark Jones’s Knowing Christ.
Selfish reading. Sometimes I read a book exclusively for my own soul. I resolve that I won’t use it for any sermon, article, or lecture, and that I won’t share any of it on social media. This makes a significant difference to the way I read and the profit I get from it.
Daily reminders. In order to maintain or recover communion with God through the day, I link regular daily habits with prayer or meditation. For example, I may use a coffee break to remind myself to pray, or I may use a time of standing in line to memorize a verse written on a card.
This personal relationship with God is so important because character is so important. Dave Kraft, author of Leaders Who Last, quotes statistics that show only 30 percent of leaders finish well, and in his experience, failures to do so usually happened because popularity and professionalism took the place of character in Christian leaders’ lives. He writes that “in many quarters there seems to be a tendency to overlook a lack of character in one’s personal and private life in exchange for a high degree of success in one’s professional life. . . . Most leaders focus too much on competence and too little on character.”2 General Norman Schwarzkopf agrees: “Ninety-nine percent of leadership failures are failures of character.”3 Character is formed primarily in communion with God. We put this relationship first because it is the most influential in all other relationships, not least in our marriages.
[1] Tony Reinke, “Six Wrong Reasons to Check Your Phone in the Morning: And a Better Way Forward,” Desiring God, June 6, 2015, http://www.desiringgod.org/articles /six-wrong-reasons-to-check-your-phone-in-the-morning.
[2] Dave Kraft, Leaders Who Last (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 95–96.
[3] Cited in James C. Hunter, The World’s Most Powerful Leadership Principle (New York: Crown Business, 2004), 141.
David Murray (DMin, Reformation International Theological Seminary) is professor of Old Testament and practical theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and pastor of Grand Rapids Free Reformed Church. He is also a counselor, a regular speaker at conferences, and the author of Jesus on Every Page.
Content taken from Reset by David Murray, ©2017. Used by permission of Crossway Publisher, https://www.crossway.org
The Liberating Grace of Generosity
What if I told you that you live daily wearing a straitjacket? How crazy would that be?! Thinking yourself free and unbounded you, like a person in need of restraint to keep from hurting yourself, you bind yourself up so that you don't become too excessive or lavish. The straitjacket is one you put on yourself, but it's also likely that the straps of this jacket have been pulled tighter by religious types. If you accomplish and achieve their standards, you feel better because you can check the box and validate your goodness. If you don't measure up to the straitjacket standard you feel shame, guilt, dishonor, and anxiety. The straitjacket is pulled tighter, and the pressure to perform is all the greater. Insanity! Is this what Christianity is? A straitjacket of rules and regulations? Is Christianity a set of metrics for the fruit of the Spirit? If Christ came to set us free then why do we wear a straitjacket of laws around our lives instead of being free to enjoy grace and flourish in holiness? If the gospel is "Good News" then where is the good news for us in the realm of giving and generosity? Are we bound to give ten percent?
I'm convinced that many Christians live with straitjackets around their hearts and wallets. The fear they live under demonstrates itself either by making them afraid to loosen the straitjacket and hold with open hands the resources they have, or it makes them tighten their fists around what they have all the more, lest they lose it. If they hit the magic "ten percent" mark though, all is well with God and man.
This kind of approach doesn't sound like generosity to me. It doesn't sound like “giving” either. I suppose if I had to compare the practice of giving ten percent to something, it would feel more like taxation. The danger could be we are expecting and believing that if we do our part, meet our quota, and hit the mark then we are living right.
Jesus and the Straitjacket
Lately, as I’ve read the four Gospels, I can’t help be struck by Jesus’s generosity. He is constantly giving in some fashion or another. The demands upon him were great—heal this friend, cast out that demon, teach at this town, feed that crowd, serve this poor woman, or pay that disciples’s taxes. I don’t ever recall Jesus saying, “No, I’ve hit my quota today. Ten percent is all I have to give. I’m done.”
If anything it was the other way around. The greater the demands and requests upon Jesus the more open his hands were to give, serve, and love. It doesn't seem that Jesus had many world possessions. He even told someone who wanted to follow him, "The Son of Man has no place to lay his head" (Lk. 9:58, CSB). We often think of Jesus’s lack of material wealth as a result of his vocational choices. But what if his material poverty was intentional? What if he actually gave away everything he possessed.
I'd like to think, through Paul's reflection, that Jesus was intentionally poor because he was intentionally generous. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8:9, CSB). Note the verb in this verse—“became.” Jesus’s poverty was an act of intentionality. He saw the need of the human race that could do nothing to rescue and help itself. He gave. He saw the way we suffocate ourselves with legalism and works and gave himself to free us from death-by-tithe.
Jesus didn't wear the straitjacket of ten-percent. He became poor so that he could liberate, model, and earn real generosity for all his people. He saw the straitjackets of the Pharisees and scribes. They wore them well and helped others suit-up into straitjackets of their own. Because they were so fearful of breaking the Law, they would go to the extreme of emptying the kitchen cupboards of their spices and measure out ten percent of the mint, cumin, and dill to be sure they could say they gave ten percent of everything away (Matt. 23:23, Lk. 11:42). As good as they were at honoring the tithe principle though, they lacked generosity, justice, and mercy. Real generosity eluded them.
Gospel-Informed Generosity
If generosity is not measured by a percentage (however high or low you want to make it) but by Jesus’s own example, it begs the question, how generous are we really? Could it be that we have not perceived the depth of the gospel to such a degree that we are changed by the gospel? Or are we afraid there won’t be enough of God’s generosity for us as well?
Fear not! By the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we too can become generous like Jesus. We can hold with open hands all that we have in order to love God and serve others. We can become poor so that through our poverty we might make others rich in Christ. The straitjacket can be loosed, and we can be freed to be gospel-generous people.
An Invitation to Gospel-Centered Generosity
I’d like to invite you as well to imitate Jesus’s generosity. My hope is that you are supporting the work of the ministry through your local church and giving priority to generously supporting the ministry and pastors that feed you the Word of God each week (see 1 Corinthians 9:14 and 1 Timothy 5:17-18).
As you give to your local church, I'd also like to ask you to consider giving to support the ministry of Gospel-Centered Discipleship. Our purpose is to publish resources to help make, mature, and multiply disciples of Jesus. While we operate each month on a limited budget and scope, our desire is—if God wills—to increase our reach and serve Christ by equipping the church with excellent resources for the advance of the gospel.
Practically speaking, we’d like to increase our reach through hiring more editorial staff, updating aspects of our website, and funding and developing creative writers who have the gifts of excellence with words. You can support us coming alongside the church and discipling writers in three ways:
- If you have found an article particularly useful for your own growth would you toss a "tip in the jar" to support the development of more articles and resources? You can make a one-time donation here.
- Would you consider being a monthly donor to our ministry and making a contribution to the work of our ministry on a regular basis? If one-hundred of our readers were able to give $5 a month to our work, we'd be able to move forward in some accelerated ways. You can contribute on an ongoing basis by following this link.
- If you would like to fund one of our major projects like website development, staff positions, or other opportunities would you please contact me to allow me to share more of our vision with you.
May the grace of God through Christ be in your gaze. May you know and believe in him as the one who generously gave all he had, even his very life, so that, “He might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7, CSB).
Jeremy Writebol is the Executive Director of GCD. He is the husband of Stephanie and father of Allison and Ethan. He serves as the lead campus pastor of Woodside Bible Church in Plymouth, MI. He is also an author and contributor to several GCD Books including everPresent and Make, Mature, Multiply. He writes personally at jwritebol.net.
You can read all of Jeremy’s articles here.
3 Ways Jesus’s Priestly Work Destroys Soul-Fatigue
A pastor once told me that in his twenties he couldn’t fathom how his friends fell into moral failure or quit vocational ministry. But now, in his fifties, he understands the plausibility of both. I didn’t understand him then. I do now. Pressing forward in faith when you’re getting slammed with trial or temptation is exhausting. The truth is, life is exhausting. We’re bombarded with needs from the minute we awake to a screaming baby to the last text we send to someone we’re discipling. Over time those day-to-day pressures fatigue us. We push and press until one day we’re too tired to go on.
It’s possible to continue the outward mechanics of life, but inwardly check out. Or worse still, give yourself over to soul-numbing sin. Both are common responses to what I call “soul-fatigue.” Soul-fatigue isn’t “I need another cup of coffee” fatigue. It’s “I don’t see a way forward” fatigue. And, eventually, we all experience it.
So how do we persevere when everything inside of us wants to check out of life or find relief in sin?
Ask Your High Priest for Help
It might seem basic, but what you need most when you’re soul-fatigued is Jesus’s help. Whether your need stems from life’s external blows or your own internal temptation, Jesus’s priestly work draws you near to the throne of grace to help you persevere in your time of need.
Hebrews 4:14-16 says,
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
These verses are tucked within the larger context of Hebrews where the author is repeatedly calling his readers to persevere in the Christian faith despite persecution, temptation, and trial. They were growing weary in the faith and were tempted to give up and go back to their old way of life. They were ready to check out.
But the author urges his readers to press on in the midst of trials and temptations because Christ is superior to the angels, to Moses, to the former priests, and to the old covenant sacrificial system. Believers must not turn away. Rather, he admonishes them to look to Jesus, their great high priest. In him, they would find true rest for their souls and courage to persevere until he returns.
This truth is as true for you today as it was for them—Jesus’s priestly work draws you near to the throne of grace to help you persevere in your time of need. So, you need to ask him for help and allow him to minister to you.
3 Ways Jesus’s Priestly Work Destroys Soul-Fatigue
The ways in which Jesus’s priestly work helps you persevere through soul-fatigue are many. Here are three that stand out to me from Hebrews 4:14-16.
– Jesus prays for you.
Have you ever wondered what Jesus is doing in heaven until he returns at his second coming? He’s praying for you! Hebrews 4:14 says that he ascended into heaven and he now sits at the Father’s right hand (Col. 2:20) and intercedes for us (Rom. 8:34). He is exalted in this intercessory role.
Imagine the scene in the heavenly throne room. Jesus sits beside God and asks him to work on your behalf. “Father, [fill in your name] needs your help today. Increase her faith. Enable her to keep going. Send her encouragement for the moment.” Jesus prays for you, even on days you feel too weak to pray for yourself.
Meditating on this truth is one way to persevere in the faith: When you’re tempted to check out, remember that Jesus is praying for you. When you want to give up on that draining discipleship relationship, Jesus is praying for you. When you don’t know how you’re going to make your marriage work, Jesus is praying for you. When you can’t get out of bed, Jesus is praying for you.
– Jesus “gets” you.
Not only is Jesus praying for you, Hebrews 4:15 says he’s doing so as one who “gets it.” You have a high priest who empathizes with you in all of your weaknesses. He understands the limitations of a fallen body, the sting of injustice, the loss of loved ones, the frustrations of discipleship, the abandonment and betrayal by friends, the fatigue of ministry, and the full weight of temptation (though he never succumbed and sinned). He partook of everything you endure so that he could be your sympathetic priest.
It’s easy to think that “nobody understands” your struggles. How often have you dismissively said to someone, “You wouldn’t understand”? When we grow fatigued with the life or work God assigned us, it’s tempting to feel like we’re the only ones who has ever felt this frustration. But the truth is, Jesus understands exactly what you’re going through.
Reminding yourself that Jesus took on the full weight of humanity so he could be an empathetic high priest is another way you persevere in the faith. You’re not alone! The Son of God intimately understands your struggles and lives to help you in them. That’s the third point.
– Jesus helps you.
Hebrews 4:16 tells you that you can draw near to the throne of grace to get mercy to help in your hour of need. This is only because of Jesus’ priestly work. His sacrificial work on your behalf cleanses you of sin and enables you to approach God with boldness.
If you’ve put your faith in Jesus, you can go to God and pour out your honest thoughts, requests, and needs. You don’t have to be afraid that you will be punished. And you don’t have to be ashamed to ask God for help. It doesn’t matter how embarrassing your temptation is, Jesus stands ready to pour out grace to empower you to overcome sin. He wants to help you say “no” to temptation.
He also offers grace to you when you don’t say “no” to sin. Unlike Jesus, there will be times when you give into sin. You’ll bark at your spouse because you’re frustrated with yourself. You’ll binge eat after an emotional fight with your teenager. You’ll look at a website because you want immediate relief. You will fail. And when you do Jesus is right there ready to forgive you and lift you up out of that sin. He will do so again and again until the final day when you will perfectly submit to the Father just as Jesus did.
Run to Jesus
That pastor was right. There’s a kind of soberness that accompanies aging. As time goes by, you see and experience things that weary you. You get tired. You go through seasons where you sit behind the steering wheel of your car and dream of driving far, far away in a one-way direction. Checking out or giving in seem like the only plausible options. (Yes, even Christians experience this.)
But they’re not. There’s an alternative—You can run to Jesus. Or, maybe limp to Jesus. The point is, go to Jesus!
You have a high priest who is dripping with compassion. He’s not waiting to shame you for being weak or weary. He wants to sit with you; to listen to you and pray for you. He’s eager to give you the ministry of his presence and to bind your wounds with his healing grace. He’s there to strengthen you and help you persevere in your time of need. It’s only when you run to him that you’ll experience the rest and relief you need in your soul-fatigue.
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.
Technology and Lost Art of Livedness
Another border to transgress is the border erected by emerging technologies between life and our online, disembodied lives. That Christianity could have anything to say about our approach to technology may seem legalistic at first, but an essential dimension of following Christ is participating in His body, and this is a flesh-and-blood existence. One of the most beautiful aspects of Christianity is that the incredible truth that Christ saves us in His body of flesh by the Spirit is not something we apprehend only spiritually. We meditate on it, we receive it, we build our lives on it, yes, but we can also have dinner with it. I’m talking here about the church.
The church is the body of Christ. Local assemblies are designed to bear witness to Him—to be His hands and feet. As Christ is love and lives His life in the Spirit, so the church is love and lives its life in the Spirit. “Such a community is the primary hermeneutic of the gospel,” declares Newbigin, for “all the statistical evidence goes to show that those within our secularized societies who are being drawn out of unbelief to faith in Christ say that they were drawn through the friend- ship of a local congregation.” Just as the temple was the magnet people were drawn to, the life of the Spirit lived in the temple “of a collective body” becomes magnetic itself. Faithfully proclaiming Christ and patterning our lives after Him—imitating His love, embodying His teachings, inviting outsiders to the table—this is how the world sees Christ.
The very lived nature of Christian communal life increasingly becomes rare in the twenty-first-century world, for livedness is downplayed in our culture. The organs of power increasingly communicate to us through the digital world. We rarely meet politicians; rather, we see their digitalized forms daily. We do not experience the influence of celebrities, sports stars, and the titans of business in an enfleshed form. Rather, to experience their impact we must consume images and information about them via the Internet or television. Less and less do we get to know our local bank teller, find out how their kids are, or chat with the cashier in our favorite store. Such interactions now hover in digital form on our screens, ensconced in a part of our consciousness.
One day, after entering this online consciousness to consume the news, I was confronted with a social landscape stretched to the breaking point. Divisions between left and right, angry tweets, indignant punditry, terrorism, tensions over the place of Islam in the West. Putting down my iPad and heading out the door to pick up my daughter from school, I reenter the lived world.
There I feel awareness of my body moving, my legs stretching as I walk down the hill. The sun warms the back of my neck. Entering the school, before me runs the gamut of Western multiculturalism. A myriad of different ethnicities and religions, all acting in a wonderfully mundane ballet of wiping kids’ noses, dragging along toddlers, holding basketballs and footballs under their arms, lugging scooters and schoolbags. Instead of a fractious, fragmented, fiery online reality, there is calm, peace, a pleasant parallel universe. Friendly nods, waves of recognition, the hum of small talk.
I watch a young mum arrive, holding in her arms a newborn baby. Smiles break out. Quickly she is surrounded by a handful of other mothers, all beaming at the new arrival, kisses and hugs of congratulations are exchanged. Women in tank tops and yoga pants, some in jeans and tattoos, others in multicolored Islamic scarves. There is no tension, no arguments, no flaming tweets, just a group of humans, interacting face-to-face as we have always interacted. United in the small bandwidth of mundane activities humans have always engaged in. This is the real world. This is the enfleshed world.
Despite all of the adulation given to the digital landscape, despite its increasing incursion into our lives, we still live in the enfleshed, ordinary world. Just look how we crane our necks, uncomfortably walk with our gaze set on our screens, commune with sofa and at screen. It is not our home, but a temporary place of residence for our attentions, a distraction, an echo chamber of opinions and vain words.
At risk of seeming to tell a sentimental story in which a newborn baby unites humanity and undoes all of the problems I have outlined in this book, I wish to clarify my point. We live most of our lives in the real world. We live part of our lives in the feverish, hovering space of the digital world. Such a world can overwhelm us with its immersive power, leaving us ill-equipped for the reality of livedness. The influence of the online world, with all of its divisions and distractions, can lead us even as believers to take it as normative. Fretting and fearing at our cultural turn. However, there is a hope that many have missed. Christians, formed by the church, shaped by its relational rhythms, abiding with Christ, fighting flesh and living in the Spirit, are built for the real world. It is the realm in which the church flourishes and creates community with a heavenly destination.
The church provides good news. Re-centering life around the worship of God, it is the perfect environment for human flourishing. It gives needed, but also tough, medicine for those formed and shaped by the contours of our digitized, consumer-driven world. For the change we are living through wrought by social media and the digital world is a technological one, yet it is shaped by an ideology, a dogma of techno utopianism.
The initial designer of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, states that the web is not so much a technological invention but a social one. It was a platform to create social change, one whose supporting pillars were radical individualism, mystical faith in the power of technology and innovation, and the Californian counterculture’s resistance to authority, which is soaked deep in the soil beneath the industrial parks of Silicon Valley.
The original visionaries of our online worlds, observes tech commentator Andrew Keen, “imported the sixties’ disruptive libertarianism, its rejection of hierarchy and authority, its infatuation with openness, transparency and personal authenticity, and its global communitarianism into the culture of what has become known as ‘cyberspace.’ Their vision was to unite all human beings in a global network linked by computers.” This vision is a digital non-place. It believes that digital networks and online worlds can offer us community and connection while preserving our individual autonomy and freedom. It is this ideology, not the technology itself, which does the damage to our psychological, social, and spiritual selves.
The anxiety that hums like a computer in the background of our contemporary lives alerts us—not to the inherent danger in technology—but rather the inability of digital networks to deliver human flourishing and the deep connection for which the human soul desires. Yes, the new digital landscape has delivered handy ways to connect, as well as unparalleled access to information. Yet its technological utopianism, now monetized and designed to elicit consumer desires at a neurological level, has profoundly formed us. To move from the pure “livedness” of this digital, consumeristic, constantly connected state of being, into the pure “livedness” of the church, can be a jarring one. The gospel invitation into the community of discipleship, which is the church, can seem far from good news. It can feel like a cold shower.
Mark Sayers is the Senior Leader of Red Church, and the co-founder of Über Ministries. He is particularly interested in the intersection between Christianity and the culture of the West. Mark lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife Trudi, daughter Grace, and twin boys Hudson and Billy.
Content taken from Strange Days by Mark Sayers, ©2017. Used by permission of Moody Publishers, https://www.moodypublishers.com
3 Ways Sin Attacks
It was hard for me growing up to get at the root of my sin. Where was it coming from? It was hard to figure out how to fight sin, and I felt like I was constantly failing. The tradition I grew up in taught that sin primarily was “in the world.” So if I could keep myself unstained from the world, I would sin less. I tried to do this, but I didn’t sin any less. I grew frustrated and tired of trying to live the Christian life. Part of it had to do with me fighting in my own power, but another part of it had to do with my focus on where sin was attack me.
Depending on what tradition you grew up in, you most likely have a certain view of how sin attacks us. There seems to be three categories of how sin attacks us: Satan, the World, or the Flesh. As I have reflected more on these categories it got my wheels turning with two questions emerged:
- What are the flaws in each category as it relates to how or why we sin?
- Is one of these three categories more helpful than another in fighting sin?
Three Ways Sin Attacks
If you grew up in a more charismatic tradition, it probably was all about Satan and his demons. If your car broke down, it was the car demon. If you sinned, the devil tempted you to do it almost bordering on “the devil made me do it.” Therefore, the focus on fighting sin became to have enough faith and will power to withstand the devil and his attacks.
Maybe you grew up in a more conservative evangelical tradition, it probably was all about “the world.” We had to learn to be in the world, but not of the world. Sounds good, even biblical. But it became about hiding out from the world so we would not be tainted by “the sin out there.” We chucked the idea of being in the world because there was just too much sin out there. Then we huddled up together thinking we would not sin, while not engaging the world at all.
Perhaps you grew up in a more reformed tradition, it probably was all about “the flesh.” In this tradition, sin attacks us from within, while not paying much attention to the enemy or the world. This tradition sees us as totally depraved and corrupted the whole man. It is all about my sinful heart, and how I can’t do the things God is calling me to do.
All three of these are true. Satan schemes against us, the world is broken and filled with sin, and we are broken and corrupted by sin. Can it be dangerous to give one category of how sin attacks us more focus than another?
Flaws in All Three Categories
First, let’s look at the more charismatic tradition and the over focus on Satan. There is a real enemy seeking to destroy us like a roaring lion seeking to devour us (1 Pt. 5:8). He is a very real enemy who is looking to tempt us and entangle us once again in sin. We need to take our enemy seriously.
But the first part of 1 Peter 5:8, tells us to be sober minded and watchful. The devil can’t make us sin. Our sin isn’t ultimately the enemy’s fault. The Bible says,
“No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” – 1 Corinthians 10:13.
God will give us a way out, or a way to endure the temptation of the enemy. We don’t need to focus so much on the enemy and who is against us that we forget who is in us and fights for us. We are called to submit ourselves to God so we can resist the devil, and he will flee us (Jas. 4:7). It is not about mustering up enough faith, or conjuring up enough will power to resist the devil. It is about the object of our faith that is Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit in us.
Second, from the conservative evangelical focus on the sin “in the world,” we must not be of the world (Rom. 12:1-2, Jas. 4:4). There are things in the world that are not good for us to engage. But when we huddled up, we realize the fact that sin exists in us as well. It was not just about the “sin out there,” but the sin we could not escape.
Not only that, but God has kept us in the world that we might display his love and grace. We can’t do that if we don’t engage the world we are in because we are huddled up waiting for the rapture. God calls us to engage people who will be worldly that we might show them otherworldly love.
Maybe some of the problem is more our reputation, our self-righteousness, and the appearance of good. We abstain from the world because we don’t want to look like we are friends with it.
“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.” – Matthew 11:18-19
Maybe we should worry less about our reputation, because people are going to say what they want no matter what we do. Being in Christ, frees us from what others think about us (we don’t need others approval). Being in Christ, frees us to not care what others think of us (meaning they don’t define or justify us). If we believed this, maybe it would free us to go places, without being “of those places,” because we are going to reach the people Jesus wants us to reach. Maybe it would free us to have “those kinds” of people over to our home, or go to their party for the purpose of loving them like Jesus.
Third, from the more reformed tradition of the sin of “the flesh, in some views of total depravity, we are “so bad” and “so sinful” why should we even try to fight sin? Then it can swing from “I so bad” to “I am so free” that I can do and indulge in anything. While it is true we are free in Christ, this freedom isn’t a license to sin which Paul warns us against (Gal. 5:13). Paul goes on to tell us that we are freed from sin so we could love our neighbor not ourselves. We have the Holy Spirit in us that gives us new affections and desires that we might not sin.
Is One Category More Helpful Than Another?
The reformed tradition helps us identify the root of sin better. Sin resides in us.
“But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” – James 1:14-15
While the world and the lies of the enemy can influence us, entice us, and deceive us, we chose to sin. We sin because we want to sin. We sin because sin is still in us. We can’t escape sin, but we can learn how to identify and fight our sin.
We must identify our sin. We need to see sins effects on those around us as well as ourselves. We need to know how we are being tempted, but when we stare too much at our sin we will find ourselves sinking deeper in it. The only way to find freedom from sin is in Christ Jesus. It is about remembering who it is that saves us, and what he has done for us. The key is to focus less on our sin, and more on our Savior and what he has done to free us from sin. We do this by looking to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.
We need to look at Jesus and see it is finished. When we remember our salvation accomplished by Jesus, God looks at us and doesn’t see our sin but Jesus’s righteousness, then we can look at our sin to address it. The way you deal with sin’s attack, whether it is the enemy’s deceitful voice or the influence of the world that lures and entices our desires, is to remember who’s we are, and what he has done to make us his own.
We need to remember who we are in Christ, and what he did to make us his (Eph. 1:3-14, 2:1-10). We need to listen to the Holy Spirit guiding us. The Spirit is applying all Christ has done for us, and testifies to our spirit that we are children of the living God (Rom. 8:15-16, Gal. 4:1-7).
When we see who we are in Christ, remembering what he has done for us by his perfect life, sacrificial atoning death, glorious resurrection, and that he is currently ruling and reigning over the universe, we can say no to sin and yes to his grace. His kindness leads us to repentance (Rom. 2:4). We can turn from our sin, and turn to our Savior. He stands to receive us, give us his grace, and empower us by the Spirit to seek new obedience in light of his gospel.
As pastors or small group leaders, let’s give people the gospel that transforms us from the inside out. As we point people back to Christ and all he has done, his grace transforms us and enables us to fight sin. With people being aware of their own sin and the one who has done something about it, our people are better equipped to withstand and fight the attacks of Satan and the attacks of the world.
Now, we can be better equipped to fight sin as it comes at from the other two categories of Satan and the world. We can tell the enemy he is a liar and needs to shut up. We can engage the world with love, grace, and truth without being of it. We can see the sin that remains in us, but not be lured and enticed by it because it doesn’t define us or have a hold on us any longer. We are God’s and he is ours. As the old hymn says,
Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in his wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of his glory and grace.
Clay Adkisson is the Pastor of Discipleship at Double Oak Community Church in Birmingham, AL. He has a B.B.S. in Speech Communication from Hardin Simmons University, and a M.A. in Religion from Redeemer Seminary in Dallas, TX. He has worked in ministry for 13 years with youth, college, young adults, men’s ministry, small groups, as well as being on preaching and teaching teams. He has had the privilege of working in many different kinds of churches from church plants to mega churches. Clay’s passion is to see people find freedom in the gospel by seeing it transform their everyday lives.
An Invitation to Swim in a Different Current
Caught in a current. It happens so suddenly. You are swimming along just fine. Body wrapped in the coolness of the sea. Rolling with some waves and diving under others.
Floating, swimming, surfing. Enjoying the light flavor of saltwater on the lips. Just you and the vast ocean. Adventure. Peace. Place. It hits you.
The towels, umbrellas, kids running around on the shore all look small, too small. The shore is a ways off. Much further than what you feel comfortable with.
Your eyes scan the shore to find your lifeguard tower, chair or something familiar and realize you have not just drifted far out but far away from where you started.
You drop under the water to touch your toes to the ground and gauge the depth.
Your feet reach and flail desperately as you sink but they are nowhere near touching the ground.
It’s deep.
Too deep.
You start to swim in.
Try to ride the next wave and get some momentum towards the shore.
In the back of your mind you know it is too late.
All the warning signs start flashing through your mind.
The flags on shore cautioning of a strong current that you brushed off.
The way the waves were crashing against each other at angles instead of rolling in on smooth lines.
You feel stupid for ignoring all the warnings but hold on to denial for a bit longer as you dive under and swim a bit harder and faster to shore.
The waves are rougher now.
Your body senses your weakness; you feel your fatigue. How long have I been out here?
The salt on the lips reminds you of your thirst. When did I last drink fresh water?
The harder you swim to shore the more violently the current sucks you out to sea.
Rip tide. You are caught in a current.
You feel helpless, scared, small and can’t help but fear the worst.
Why did I go out this far? Why didn’t I pay more attention to the warnings?
I was just going for a short swim. I was having so much fun.
What was I thinking? What am I going to do now?
Caught in the Current
American Christianity is caught in a current. And pastors are leading the charge. This current seems harmless and the drift happens in small doses, but it is deadly nonetheless.
It is a current that commodifies Christianity. A current that packages, markets, and sells discipleship. A current that finds its way through the lure of performance, approval and comparison. A rip tide of celebrity pastors, conferences, twitter, blogs, promotion, numbers, always numbers.
It starts with a warped view of success. A plundering of other whys. Why do we do what we do? This view of success gets hijacked to be the same why of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street. The same strategies used to make it in a dog-eat-dog world are the same strategies used to make it in the church world.
Performance. Approval. Comparison. Numbers.
Churches don’t have meaningful partnerships or friendships and certainly would never sacrifice for the other church in their neighborhood. It is never stated, but we are both swimming along in the same current and looking out for number one. Striving for the same view of success to be bigger, better, and more known and the truth is there isn’t room for both of us.
Western Christianity is caught in the current. We are drowning. Some are swimming to shore, some are loving it, but more should cry out for help.
Help us God. We are drowning!
Pastor, are you caught in the current? Is your church?
We didn’t start out this way. We fell in love with Jesus. We fell in love with his Word. We felt his presence. We hungered for others to taste and see the goodness of this true, life-giving, world shattering reality of the gospel. We wanted more time with Jesus and for others to meet and know and follow Jesus!
We never thought it would go this far. We just wanted to dip a toe in the water. We saw the warnings, but thought it couldn’t happen to us. We couldn’t get caught in this current. We saw the danger from afar but up close it didn’t look so dangerous.
Surely, this small compromise is worth the growth. Certainly, the lead pastor needs to be shielded a bit from the people to focus on “vision.” It’s ok to build my platform, it’s for Jesus, right?
I need to be known, so I can make him known. If we got bigger, we could have more influence. If we could just get to that church size, or get that band, or that building then we could really do God’s work.
You’re swimming along and everything seems fine until you realize how far you are from shore. Your relationship with Jesus is strained. Your prayer life is dry. You are only available to your celebrity Christian posse on social media. You feel lonely in the church, lonely in your home. Old addictions that you thought were long gone are starting to creep back in. You try to swim to shore, you try to manage it for awhile, hide it, change it. But it is too late.
Rip tide.
Heed the Warning Signs
This pull away from shore in churches happens all around us and inside of us all of the time. Pastors, the warning signs are everywhere. Pastor wakes up and can’t get out of bed. Pastor has moral failure. Pastor can’t sleep with or without sleeping pills. Pastor blows up on his staff. Performance. Approval. Comparison. Numbers, always numbers. Burnout, moral failure, blow up. Rinse and repeat.
And it is not just pastors. Church members, deacons, volunteers, leaders. All following us pastors onto the same treadmill of performance until we have to get off and the only way it seems to get off is to leave the church, the ministry, and often the faith all together.
Pastors, what should we do?
An emergency sabbatical. Pay a bunch of money to celebrity Christian counselors. Schedule in some hobbies, change our diets, get better work rhythms, get a masseuse, hire an extra assistant, etc. We figure out how to solve it, manage it, and get back to it so our performance, approval, comparison, and numbers are not too damaged. Hobbies, vacations, sabbaticals, counselors are all great ideas and helpful. I am not hating on any of those things. My problem is what we do next!
We get right back in the exact same current.
Maybe this time we have a nice boogie board or a quality wetsuit to help us float a little longer, but it is the same current. Pastors, church, Christians, have we ever thought that maybe, just maybe we should avoid this current and swim somewhere else?
An Invitation to Swim in Another Current
That is why I am writing. I have been caught in the current and seen other pastors, Christians, and churches caught in the same current and I want to invite us all to swim somewhere else.
To recognize and heed the warning signs and choppy waters that are all around us proclaiming the danger of performance, approval, comparison, and numbers.
- What if ministry is not about us?
- What if we have everything backwards?
- What if the least are the greatest in his Kingdom?
- What if the greatest commandment was to love God and love others more than our platforms?
- What if NO one could come after Jesus without denying himself?
- What if we had to become a no name unrecognized servant to become great in his Kingdom?
- What if we are supposed to avoid the crowds and seek his presence?
- What if we are swimming in the wrong current all together?
I know that after calling out to God for help he is rescuing me and showing me a new path. It is a narrower path and it doesn’t make much of me, yet each step is so life-giving even if it often feels like I am learning the same step over and over.
It is not about me.
Step.
Nearly everything I do naturally is the opposite of what Jesus proposes and models in his Kingdom.
Step.
I can do things with Jesus and for Jesus in secret and with no need to broadcast it.
Step.
His ways are often secret, hidden, and small (Matthew 13).
Step.
If I am going to swim in this current it is going to have to be prayerfully and patiently.
Step.
There is no room for ego here.
Step.
He must increase, I must decrease.
Step.
Follow me. Follow me. Follow me.
Step.
He cares more about me being a follower who makes followers than being a leader who makes leaders.
Step.
Pray. No really, pray.
Step.
He has me right where he wants me.
Step.
The time, place, and size of my ministry is beautiful.
Step.
Contentment. Formation. Presence.
Step.
Jake Chambers is the husband to his beautiful bride Lindsey, and a daddy to Ezra, Roseanna, and Jaya. Jake is passionate about seeing the gospel both transform lives and create communities that love Jesus, the city, and the lost. He currently serves Red Door Church in San Diego through leading, preaching, equipping, and pastoring.
Four Anchors in the Crucible of Pain
Last August I resigned my post as pastor for discipleship at a church I deeply loved. Uncertain if I would again land in a fulltime vocational expression of ministry, I accepted a job in the marketplace in an unfamiliar city with very unfamiliar people. A day before the orientation process began at my new job, I answered an emergency phone call that my 66-year-old father had fainted and was in need of an emergency quadruple bypass. Due to the severity of the situation, he was bumped up in the surgery queue and underwent the procedure on a Wednesday.
While in surgery, he suffered a septal-wall heart attack that caused his heart to endure ventricular fibrillations three times. His liver went into shock, his kidneys went into failure, his heart scarcely worked, and the doctors inserted a mechanical heart pump to sustain his life.
Now on full life support—with a ventilator to support his breathing, 24-hour dialysis to remove the waste from his body that was accumulating due to his failed kidneys, and the pump that was running his heart—the doctors induced medical paralysis and downgraded his condition from critical to grave.
I felt lost.
Prayer to Plea
What began for me as a simple prayer for Jesus to sustain my father on a Wednesday became, by Sunday, an all-out plea for the sovereign power of Christ over life and death.
Dad remained in a medically induced coma for 21 days. It was no small thing to see the strongest man I have ever known rendered utterly incapacitated by the failure of his own body. And in that hospital room, I hardly had time to process the disappointment and disillusionment of leaving ministry as a vocation.
My life was in need of an anchor, and like never before I felt as though all the anchors of familiarity I had held on to were now wrenched from their footings. Life for me felt very adrift.
In that place, my often repeated plea—“Come, Lord, Jesus!”—became my tutor, bringing me back to Romans 5:1–5, and tightening my grip on four anchors holding me in place in the crucible of pain.
Anchor #1 – Peace in the Person and Finished Work of Jesus
“Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). We all suffer this side of heaven, but in these moments we see that our pain does not shape the finished work of Jesus; rather, the finished work of Jesus shapes our suffering.
The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, who was faithful to finish the work his Father set before him, is the plan of restoration for God’s elect. This reconciling work transfers us from condemned enemies deserving of the full weight of God’s wrath to adopted sons and daughters who are inheriting an unblemished kingdom.
For the Christian, it is of utmost importance that we grasp this understanding of faith and how it not only secures our past, present, and future peace; it is our peace. The second coming of Christ will consummate a glorious new beginning in which evil, suffering, and death will be eradicated as far as the curse of sin is found. Our hope in that glorious day is intimately linked to the belief that Jesus has fully and perfectly justified us in his finished work in the here, in the now.
Anchor #2 – Peace in the Accessibility of God
“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” (Rom. 5:2). Not only do we stand in all of the benefits that justification brings; we stand in Christ. We were justified in our embrace, by faith, of the justifier himself. This is unmerited, unwarranted, and unadulterated grace. This is what it means to be united with Christ.
Not only does our union with Christ affirm future promises of the restoration of all things, it also enables us to firmly stand in deep grace despite a world currently subjected to the curse of the fall, and in all of the daily insecurities and questions we will face along the way.
Anchor #3 – Peace Leading to Unfailing Hope
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom. 5:3–4). There is a peculiar way in which suffering shapes us. As we are united with Christ in his life, we are united with him in his sufferings as well, and as Hebrews 2:10 tells us, Christ was perfected through such hardships.
Suffering is a worker: it works for the good of God’s children (Rom. 8:28). We should expect no less; rather, we should pursue joy in the midst of pain, for God is using it to shape us into the image of Jesus.
Glorification awaits for when Christ returns to consummate all things under his rule and reign. And we long for this day! But we also take great hope in the present that he is transforming us from one degree of glory to another in the here-and-now (2 Cor. 3:18). Once again, as we are united with Christ even in our sufferings, it is Christ who is transforming us. And if it is Christ who is transforming us, then we have all we need, for we have all of Jesus.
Anchor #4 – Peace in the Presence of God Himself
“Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). Of all the anchors that held my soul in place in those critical moments of life, perhaps the strongest one was God’s commitment to give me all of himself.
God is the gospel—even in the pain. He is the one we get. He is the prize. He is the treasure. He is the everlasting anchor.
The Father sent his beloved Son to reconcile us to himself. Because of the Son’s work, we now have the Father. And because of the Father we have all of the Son. As if this was not enough, then the person of the Holy Spirit joins in to make the love and security of the triune godhead a reality inside of our hearts.
God gives all of himself to us so that, when it feels like all of life gives way and everything is desperate and unfamiliar, he is then my hope and stay.
As the old hymn says, “His oath, his covenant, his blood support me in the whelming flood; when all around my soul gives way”—when everything in life seems desperate and unfamiliar—“he then is all my hope and stay.”
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.
A Better Way to Find Leaders in the Church
With the fall of celebrity pastors becoming a normal part of life, many of us are wondering what's happening. Why is it that these men can build something so significant for the kingdom of God, yet fall into adultery, alcoholism, or narcissism? Their falls come at no small cost. As Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel have written,
"We live in the era of celebrity pastors whose platforms of influence stretch far beyond the walls of their local congregation, and who shake the earth when they fall off their pedestals."
In the wake of these collapses, we sound the alarm for more accountability and stronger community, and rightly so. None of these efforts appear to be working, though, as we see pastors and church leaders making the same mistakes time and time again. These events should drive us to reflect deeply on what is happening, and about how we find leaders in the church.
What if we're missing what's really going on? What if we're asking the wrong questions? And what if the fall of our pastors has at least as much to do with us as it does with them?
Goggin and Strobel suggest that's exactly what's happening. They go further to say that we as the Church need to take the log out of our own eye and start to see what's really going on. So what is going on?
AN INVERTED POWER STRUCTURE
Here again, Goggin and Strobel are provocative and insightful when they suggest,
"[T]he church has embraced a form of power that is antithetical to the way of Jesus, and her pastors stand on the front line of this destructive reality."
They go on to explain that the Church and her people have believed the same lie as Adam and Eve in the garden, that "dependence upon God is a place of scarcity and hindrance, while autonomy is a place of flourishing and fulfillment." Our culture and our church-culture in America lift up self-reliance and autonomy as cardinal virtues. These are prime examples of what it means to be successful, driven, and American.
Therefore, when pastors and leaders display these characteristics their vision and mission go forward unquestioned. The bolder, more powerful they seem, the more impervious to spiritual failure they seem, and the more they're praised. When their leadership results in “success,” they’re exalted for these character traits. But when they fall we scorn them for those very same traits.
As Goggin and Strobel write, it's time for the Church to see that,
“[T]he very narcissism, lust, and greed that has caused church leaders to fall is the same narcissism, lust, and greed that drove their ministries to 'succeed.”
They're talking about the fruit of the flesh here (Gal. 5:19-21). What they don't say is that these pastors simultaneously display many of the gifts of the Spirit. How can they display the gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the flesh at the same time?
CONFUSING SPIRITUAL GIFTS WITH SPIRITUAL FRUIT
I took a seminary class with Nik and Ruth Ripken where we talked mostly about the persecuted church, and their research findings (read this if you're unfamiliar with their story). As Nik started unpacking their findings related to leader selection in the church, he noted that some of those being persecuted experience the same problems with pastors that fall, either away from the faith or into moral failure.
But not all those in persecution experience this, and those that don't select their leaders much differently than we do in America. In the United States, we appoint leaders based on giftedness—speaking ability, charisma, knowledge, etc. But those believers thriving in persecution appoint leaders based on godliness. These believers choose leaders based on the fruit of the Spirit, not the gifts of the Spirit.
The problem with selecting leaders based on giftedness is that the presence and power of gifts don't guarantee godliness—but we assume they do. The danger in apparent giftedness is that it can fool us as to what's really going on in someone's heart.
Of course, if we were paying attention to the fruit of the Spirit in our leaders lives then we wouldn't be fooled. If we were looking closely, we would see that while some of our small group leaders or pastors appear to have the gift of leadership or teaching, they're also marked by lust, greed, narcissism, or arrogance. But in many cases we just don't see it. Why?
We confuse the gifts of the Spirit with the fruit of the Spirit. We assume that giftedness follows godliness. We assume their eloquence is preceded by gentleness, so we miss that they're abrasive in meetings. We assume their passion is preceded by joy, so we miss their inability to care what others have to say.
This blindness is misguided, though. Spiritual gifts don't qualify you for ministry, they simply tell you what to do. Spiritual fruit qualifies you for ministry. And the lack of that fruit disqualifies you.
A BETTER WAY TO FIND LEADERS IN THE CHURCH
There is a better, more biblical way to find leaders. A way that doesn't leave us stunned when our pastors fall because we were unable or unwilling to see what was really going on. Leaders found this way won't be without sin, and surely some of them will fall (even Jesus had Judas), but there will be less of them that pull the rug out from under the church and damage her witness. So how do we do it?
When looking for leaders, we must realize that it is a person's relationship with God that determines their Kingdom-effectiveness. We must prioritize the fruit of the Spirit over the gifts of the Spirit. We should look for those who are marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And if we don't see real evidence of the Spirit in their lives, we shouldn't let them near a leadership role—particularly a pastoral one.
Jesus kept his twelve disciples close for three years as he observed the fruit of their lives and ministry. Only at the end did he finally cut them loose, saying, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn. 15:15). Paul did the same with Timothy. Barnabas did the same with Paul.
Leaders in the Bible were commissioned after they had been tested and proven to display the fruit of the Spirit as they applied the gifts of the Spirit. They were surely gifted, but those gifts were preceded by their fruit. Once their lives gave sufficient evidence of the work of the Spirit, then they were ready to enter into leadership.
This is why 1 Timothy and Titus list qualities like being "sober-minded" and "self-controlled." The only thing listed in 1 Timothy 3:2-7 considered a gift or skill is being "able to teach." The rest are character traits that flow out of a life marked by the fruit of the Spirit.
A better way to find leaders in the Church is to look for leaders whose gifts are nested in their fruit. Leaders who display the fruit of the Spirit as they exercise the gifts of the Spirit. But to do it, we'll have to crucify our desire to build our kingdom, and instead focus on building his.
Grayson Pope is a husband and father of three, as well the Managing Web Editor at GCD. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship and has earned a MACS at The Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. For more of his writing check out his website, or follow him on Twitter.
Point, Shoot, Forget
The high-resolution cameras built into our phones are simply one of the most incredible blessings of the digital age—convenient, portable, and potent. But they also raise three questions. First, we need to think about the social capacity of our phones and how that capacity shapes our impulses. What is true of our cameras is true of every smartphone behavior—the power to immediately share anything we see or do conditions what we capture in the first place. In Donna Freitas’s extensive study of the social-media habits of college students, one sharp female student told her: “People used to do things and then post them, and the approval you gained from whatever you were putting out there was a byproduct of the actual activity. Now the anticipated approval is what’s driving the behavior or the activity, so there’s just sort of been this reversal.”1 Phones with social connections transform us—and our friends and children—into actors. That’s huge.
Second, we need to rethink our memories. What if the point-and-shoot cameras in our phones make us less capable of retaining discrete memories? One psychologist calls this camera-induced amnesia the “photo-taking impairment effect,”2 and it works like this: by outsourcing the memory of a moment to our camera, we flatten out the event into a 2-D snapshot and proceed to ignore its many other contours—such as context, meaning, smells, touch, and taste.
If the cameras in our pockets mute our moments into 2-D memories, perhaps the richest memories in life are better “captured” by our full sensory awareness in the moment—then later written down in a journal. This simple practice has proven to be a rich means of preserving memories for people throughout the centuries. Photography is a blessing, but if we impulsively turn to our camera apps too quickly, our minds can fail to capture the true moments and the rich details of an experience in exchange for visually flattened memories. Point-and-shoot cameras may in fact be costing us our most vivid recollections. But until we are convinced of this, we will continue to impulsively reach for our phones in the event of the extraordinary (or less).
Third, and most insidious of all, I wonder if this unchecked impulse exposes something deeper and darker in us, a certain unbelief that drives us, something more similar to the lie that maybe a given moment is our last opportunity to get close to greatness. In essence, this was the scam that targeted Adam and Eve, and it has been the heart of every human dupe ever since.3
Sin lies about the future. If I don’t grab this chance at glory now, sin tells me, it will be lost forever. So we point our phones at celebrities, which only points out our forgetfulness. We forget eternity. We so easily lose the faith to imagine that one day we will inherit the world and be more renowned and wealthier than Johnny Depp could ever imagine in this life.4 We want our share of glory now, instead of waiting for our “glory that is to be revealed.”5 What if our rhythms of Snapchat selfies and our star-studded Instagram feeds are exposing the dimness of our future hope?6
Breaking Free
How, then, can we walk (and click and share) with wisdom? First, we must humbly admit that we are targets of digital mega-corporations that can make us into restless consumers with strategic intermediated content. We cannot be naive here. Our attention spans have been monetized, and getting us hooked on our phones is a commercial commodity measured in billions of dollars, not in kiosk change. The hook often comes in visual allurements. Again, this medium is not inherently wrong. Digital art and messaging can be done for God’s glory, and done well. But we must see that we are being conditioned to turn to our phones when we want to be amazed and wowed, and in turn, we are being milked for corporate profit. Likewise, social-media platforms are huge businesses with public stock prices, and they can grow in value only if they condition us to become actors in front of our phones.7
Second, we must learn to enjoy our present lives in faith—that is, to enjoy each moment of life without feeling compelled to “capture” it. A growing trend among touring musicians is to ask fans not to record concerts on their phones. Keep the phone in your pocket and enjoy the moment, they say. This direction parallels something of the Christian enjoyment of God’s good gifts. Get off your phone, go camping, gaze at the stars, hike in nature—whatever brings creation closer and richer than pixels.
Third, we must celebrate. We cannot suppress our souls’ appetite for what is awe-inspiring. The goal is not to mute all smartphone media but to feed ourselves on the right media. We were created to behold, see, taste, and delight in the richness of God’s glory—and that glory often comes refracted to us through skilled artists. Our insatiable appetite for viral videos, memes, and tweets is the product of an appetite for glory that God gave us. And he created a delicious world of media marvels so that we may delight in, embrace, and cherish anything that is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, or worthy of praise.8 This will keep us very busy marveling at Scripture, at nature, and at God’s grace in the people he created.
Feeding Authenticity
Filled with mediated reality from God, we become eager in our celebration and shrewd in our discernment of intermediated art. For our online networks, we become filters—salt and light—as an act of love in what we publish, share, and like. We refuse to be brainless carriers of the most recent viral meme. Instead, we live as Christians offering “dialogical resistance”—which means that we filter the messages of the world through our individual discernment and then share online through a robust theology of reality, possibility, and meaning in God.9
To do this, we must escape the trap of the intermediated world of the produced and step away to live our own lives. On the nine-month anniversary of her social-media sobriety—completely off Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter—my wife turned to me and said, “Compulsive social-media habits are a bad trade: your present moment in exchange for an endless series of someone else’s past moments.” She’s right about the cost. Our social-media lives can stop our own living.
Or, as Andy Crouch says, our smartphone addiction leads to creational blindness. It is only in the absence of constant digital flattery that we can feel small and less significant, more human, liberated to encounter the world we are called to love.10 We inevitably grow blind to creation’s wonders when our attention is fixed on our attempt to craft the next scene in our “incessant autobiography.”11 Instead, says Crouch, “All true, lasting creativity comes from deep, risky engagement with the fullness of creation.” So “get out in the glorious, terrifying creation and let it move you and break your heart. Then you’ll have something to offer in the dim mirror that is ‘social media’—and in the full, real world that demands the engagement of all of our heart, mind, soul and strength.”12 Yes, step away from screens, and let the glories of creation break your heart and let the handiwork of God’s creative genius wash you as you ski mountains, hike trails, and scuba dive into oceans. But don’t stop there. Climb the summits of Scripture, too. Let God’s Word pierce your intentions and cut down into your truest motives, and let yourself be convicted, broken, and remade—which is the feeling of standing in the breathtaking presence of God.13
Then take all of God’s created and revealed gifts to you and make all of them into a life that shows the world how glorious and satisfying God really is. This is the secret to “creating” great digital art of all forms and types.
[1] Donna Freitas, The Happiness Effect: How Social Media Is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 4.
[2] Je Jacoby, “Free Your Eyes from the Shackles of the Shutter,” The Boston Globe (Oct.4,2015).
[3] Gen. 3:4-5
[4] Ps. 37:11; Matt. 5:5; 25:21; 1 Cor. 3:21–23; 2 Tim. 2:12; James 2:5; Rev. 2:26; 5:10.
[5] Rom. 8:18; 1 Pet. 5:1.
[6] Phil. 3:19.
[7] Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, “How Seth Godin Manages His Life—Rules, Principles, and Obsessions,” The 4-Hour Workweek, fourhour- workweek.com (Feb. 10, 2016).
[8] Phil. 4:8.
[9] Oliver O’Donovan, Ethics as Theology, vol. 2, Finding and Seeking (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 83, 87.
[10] Andy Crouch, “Small Screens, Big World,” Andy Crouch, andy-crouch.com (April 8, 2015).
[11] C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 101–3.
[12] Joshua Rogers, “Five Questions with Author Andy Crouch,” Boundless, boundless.org (June 15, 2015).
[13] Heb. 4:12–13.
Tony Reinke is a journalist and desiringGod.org staff writer who hosts the popular Ask Pastor John podcast. He is the author of Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books and Newton on the Christian Life.
Content taken from 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke, ©2017. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.
The Problem of Unity in the Church
It was time to eat, or so I thought. I came home at 5:30pm, ready for dinner with my new bride. She had agreed to make dinner, yet when I came home she was not scurrying around the kitchen putting together a meal that would impress Paula Dean. Instead, she was sitting on the couch, watching a show, and recovering after a long day of work. “When’s dinner?” I asked with obvious frustration that the meal was not ready.
“Dinner?” she replied, “It’s only 5:30. No one eats dinner at 5:30.”
Oh, I beg to differ, I thought, but thankfully I did not say it. In my home growing up, dinner was always ready at 5:30. It did not matter who was preparing the meal, unless something unexpected happened, the meal would always be ready like clockwork at 5:30.
Not only did I assume this was when dinner should take place, but I also preferred it that way. I enjoyed skipping breakfast, eating an early lunch, having dinner at 5:30, and grabbing a snack before bed. Surely, I thought, others had figured out the clear benefits of structuring their eating habits in this way. I mean, who wouldn’t?
My new wife—that’s who wouldn’t. Growing up, her family ate dinner at 6:30. Her dad’s work schedule hindered him from getting home earlier so they ate later. I came home that day ready for dinner, and she was just beginning to think about what to cook.
Marriage exposes these types of preferences. Some prefer a live Christmas tree, and some a fake one. Some prefer the sound of a TV or music playing all the time, while others love silence. Some want their toilet paper to greet them over the top of the roll and others from the bottom. Some want the house to remain in pristine condition throughout the day, and others could not care less. Some want a big family, and some only want one little princess. The list could go on and on.
Certainly, we are all united with God through the glorious gospel. Yet, preferences are inescapable—a God-given facet of what makes you, you and me, me. In most cases preferences are not right or wrong either. It is not “right” to eat dinner at 5:30 and “wrong” to eat at 6:30 (as I quickly learned). These preferences are based on our life history, our experiences, our gifts, and the uniqueness of our personality and they drive hundreds of decisions we make each day.
No two people’s preferences are exactly alike. Marriage provides a unique case study for the way two people with preferences are forced to work together to achieve unity. Either you find a style of life that will work for you both, or you are in for a miserable marriage. It doesn’t much matter if you eat at 5:30, 6:30, or somewhere in between, but you’d better pick one and make it work.
Christians are no different. We are all different—shaped by a vast array of circumstances that God has used to draw us to himself. We come to our roles with different sin propensities, influences, backgrounds, training, senses of calling, and experiences in the church.
These preferences make it challenging for diverse people to unite in the church. At times these preferences may move along stereotypical lines, with certain generations preferring a defined form, structure, or ethos within the church. But this is not always the case.
Certainly, not all seasoned pastors prefer a liturgical worship style and not all younger pastors preach in jeans. All people do, however, prefer certain things, and the intersection of these preferences is a potential battlefield for unity.
A Divided Church
Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth was written to such a church. Paul responds to the issues that he has heard that are hindering the mission of the church. The first, and perhaps the most important, was that the church was deeply divided.
To this church, Paul writes, “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment” (1 Cor. 1:10).
Paul warned that preferential matters can undermine and hinder the work of the church. The unity that should be seen by virtue of Christ’s work can be veiled through needless divineness, likely the result of the following four factors.
#1 – The Voices that Influence Us
The preferences of Christians are often shaped by the voices that speak into their lives.
We are all prone to parrot voices of those around us. At first, this can be a good thing. When we begin our discipleship journey, few of us have any clue what we are doing, so we find other Christians we admire and mimic them. Over time, however, we can become a rote, thoughtless, caricature of someone else.
This reality is not as dangerous if you are modeling the preferences of a personal mentor or trusted friend with whom you have spent countless hours. But, in our day, this is often not the case. Rather than modeling the voices of mentors, we often imitate famous leaders that we only know via their podcasts, blogs, books, or sound bytes on Twitter. We respect them, so we try to become like them.
I’ve noticed this tendency in my own preaching. If I’ve spent too many hours listening to Matt Chandler preach, then I often find the tone of my preaching changes. If I listen to David Platt, I begin my sermons with “If you have a Bible and I hope you do. . . ” If I read Piper, then the frequency of the words “supremacy,” “exaltation,” and “glory” goes through the roof.
We admire certain people, pattern ourselves after them, and judge others who don’t fit this style as well. The fact that you respect these leaders is not wrong, but when you expect others to be like them to win your approval, then you needlessly isolate yourself from others. Not only that, but you squander the privilege of being yourself, choosing to become merely a replica of someone else.
#2 – The Theology that Compels Us
Theology can have a similar divisive effect. Here it is critical to make a distinction. Truth matters, and false teaching should be aggressively exposed and rebuked in the church. It is important that the church work to think rightly about God.
We should scour our Bibles in an effort to discern the faith that was once and for all handed down to the saints. We should work to align our preaching, teaching, and leadership to the revealed Word of God. Sloppy, trustless unity is not biblical unity.
Theological concepts compel Christians to take risks, love the marginalized, and pursue pastoral ministry, church planting, or international missions. For example, the idea that men and women around the world who have never heard the gospel are destined for an eternity apart from God has incited in many a passion for international missions.
In stunning irony, the very words that we use to speak about God and the way in which we use those words can be a tool Satan uses to cause division in his church. Christians often size-up others based on the particular words they use to speak about God and the theological camps in which they stake their claim. Many align themselves to certain theological systems or concepts, join forces with others who hold similar ideas, and avoid all those who don’t see things the same way. Such theological snobbery serves to divide God’s church.
Recently, I attended a meeting with a group of pastors and church leaders that included leaders from diverse generations. As the meeting concluded, one of my younger peers raised his hand and said, “This is great and all, but you guys have forgotten the gospel. Without the gospel, none of the rest of this matters.” This guy’s heart was in the right place (I think), and he wanted to remind us of the need for gospel centrality in our ministry.
What he missed was that these leaders had been talking about the gospel–they simply had not said it the way he would or used the same buzzwords that were important to him. Because they did not say it his way, he thought they had not said it at all. The result was that these established pastors felt undermined by a younger leader who had publicly shamed them for missing the gospel.
#3 – The Neglect that Angers Us
Preferences can also be formed negatively. We see something wrong and want to do something about it. A broken world certainly has enough pain and suffering to provoke anger in us all. From sex trafficking to malnutrition and unsafe drinking water to racial discord, we have plenty of pain to address. Christians often embark on their respective ministries in direct response to some unmet need in the church. From stale religious traditions to a lack of evangelistic intentionality to sloppy theology, we are all responding to something.
They are then stunned to learn that not everyone shares their passions. The person with a particular passion for orphan care may not understand why others are not heartbroken for these children as well. The individual with a passion to propel the church to think outside of the church’s walls may not understand those who have a passion to help the church formulate accurate theology. We are prone to forget that God has sovereignly orchestrated our lives, our circumstances, and our passions to prompt us to care about certain needs while doing the same in other people in order to prompt them to address other needs.
I had a wonderful experience in seminary. My time at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary was rich, and I was taught a deep love for disciplined theological insight. This, combined with my introverted and contemplative personality, means that trite, illogical, or unreflective teaching and preaching uniquely frustrates me. This is not true for others.
Many pastors were trained during a time when seminaries were far from a bastion of conservative theology, and they saw their peers fall prey to social gospel liberalism. For them, academic theology does not conjure up positive notions. Those who spend hours debating seemingly minuscule theological notions only to neglect the practical aspects of loving others and sharing the gospel anger them. If I am not careful, I can quickly fall prey to a sterile intellectualism that divorces theological reflection from a life on mission. For this reason, it is vital that I consistently acknowledge this propensity and repent when it hinders my leadership of God’s people.
#4 – The Mission that Drives Us
Finally, Christians should be those who are compelled to action. We see something broken and want to be a part of God’s work to fix it. God plants a mission in our hearts and we act. This passion often consumes younger believers who are just awakening to the beauty of the gospel and the mission of the church. Many are overly confident while still naïve, immature, and often foolish. They have a passion to experiment—to try things even though they may fail.
For example, a teenager in the youth group may notice the apathy in his church and determine to give his life to church-planting to counter this complacency. His passion for this mission may isolate him from the leaders who are laboring to bring change in local churches where apathy reigns supreme.
The seasoned believer may understand his mission differently. He has invested countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears into seeing a group of people conformed to the image of Christ through the local church. It may appear to those on the outside that all he cares about is the institution of the church, but in his heart he understands his mission to love these people faithfully. He may, unintentionally, feel threatened by younger men and women who come along—fearing that they may not love people the way that he does or harm the church he’s invested in for decades.
These factors shape every leader and make him or her unique and produce Christians with a unique set of preferences. The danger is when these preferences become ultimate—making us abrasive to others, dismissive of their counsel, and increasingly prideful—thinking that we have somehow mastered the art of doing church.
Unity does not mean that we relinquish our preferences, but that we have the wisdom and maturity to love and serve others in spite of our preferences. Through genuine effort and honest conversation, they can work to see beyond preferences and find a person who may love Jesus and his church just as much as they do.
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_
Adapted from a chapter Matt wrote with eight other leaders from Unite: Connecting Leaders from Diverse Generations, representing diverse generations and exhorting the church to find practical ways to forge unity.
Making Disciples at Home
Make disciples. That is what Jesus has called the church to do. Making disciples means reaching the lost and equipping believers to declare and display the gospel in all of life—even parenting. God has entrusted parents with children to raise and nurture in the gospel.
The church partners with parents to make disciples of the next generation by encouraging and equipping parents in this task and investing into the lives of their children through gospel-centered children and student ministries. The church’s mission to make disciples informs and encourages the parent’s pursuit of being a disciple and making disciples at home.
In turn, the parent’s pursuit of making disciples at home furthers and strengthens the church’s mission of making disciples. Making disciples is the mission of the church and it must help parents pursue it faithfully at home.
Churches and Parents Partnering Together
Making disciples of the next generation must be a partnership between churches and parents. Churches cannot replace parents and parents cannot be independent of the church.
Within our own church, we have tried to think through avenues of partnership that promotes discipleship through the church and in the home. Here are some categories that help us navigate this partnership:
– Encourage Parents
Parenting is not easy. There are countless decisions and situations parents face that bring them to an end of themselves. They are regularly reminded of their insufficiency and inability to change the hearts of their children. As much as they need equipping to be more faithful parents, they also need encouragement both as parents and disciples.
Every believing parent is at the same time a disciple and needs to be reminded of who God is, what he has done, and who they are in him. They also need to be encouraged to stay faithful in serving, disciplining, and loving their children. As leaders in the church, we must not undervalue the importance of making a phone call just to check in with a parent or having a lunch meeting to encourage them in their pursuit of Christ and discipling their children.
In the past, our church’s student ministry has invited parents to a quarterly event called Parent Connect. This time is designed to both encourage and equip parents in their task of making disciples at home. Being with other parents while sharing both the challenges and joys of parenting can be a great blessing. It also provides a time for our leadership to hear directly from parents regarding the challenges and questions they have as parents, which in turn helps us better equip them as parents and disciple-makers.
– Equip Parents to Make Disciples at Home
While it is vital to enter into the challenges of parenting and speak life-giving, gospel-rooted encouragement, it is also essential that the church calls parents to make disciples at home and equip them to do so. There is not one particular way the church accomplishes this; however, through a multitude of ways the church can both emphasize this calling and equip parents to carry it out. Consider the following ways:
- Remind parents of their calling as parents through faithful biblical preaching
- Speak directly to the challenges and opportunities of parenting in your sermons
- Devote a sermon series, discipleship class, or retreat to the issues of parenting and disciple making in the home
- Host parent events that focus on specific parenting topics (e.g., Parent Connect)
- Provide parents with resources in your newsletter or ministry update
Ask yourself: What avenues of ministry does my church have that we can use to better equip parents in making disciples at home?
Sometimes it can be the small things that help parents most. For example, each month our student ministry sends out a monthly update. Within those emails, we have a “Parent Connect” section that provides links to various topics that aim to provide parents with resources to help them better raise and disciple their children.
As a student minister, there is nothing more encouraging than hearing how a particular resource encouraged a parent or helped them work through a situation or have a difficult conversation.
– Reach, Equip, and Send Students
Another significant way churches partner with parents is through having a faithful student ministry. While most churches have student ministries, it is important how a student ministry understands its mission and how it carries it out.
A faithful student ministry does not aim to replace parents or entertain students. It aims to reach students with the gospel, equip them to be disciple-makers, and send them on mission. A faithful student ministry does not isolate itself from the rest of the church, but reflects the mission of the church and helps foster that mission within the lives of students and families.
When a church’s student ministry carries out its ministry with parents in mind it can strengthen the ministry of parents by echoing the same gospel and promoting the same mission in the lives of their students.
From Church to Home: Parents Making Disciples
If you are parent, how do you make disciples at home?
How do you help your children come to faith in Christ? How can you help your student take the next step in their walk with Christ? How do you make disciples when you are so busy already? How do you make disciples when there are so many other influences in your student's life?
Making disciples at home isn't a cookie-cutter process. It won't just happen if you love Jesus and pray before your meals. It won't work to hope that someone else will do it. Making disciples at home will only happen as parents pursue making disciples with intentionality and great dependence on God. Let me give you three categories to help you think about how you can more faithfully make disciples at home:
– Be A Disciple
Making disciples at home begins with being a disciple of Christ. Many parents put their children in church because they want them to have a positive influence in life. Ironically, what they hope for their children, they fail to pursue themselves.
Other parents want their children to follow Jesus and make wise decisions, but they simply don't hold themselves to the same standard. The goal we should desire for our children is that they know Christ and submit their lives to Him. This is the hallmark of a disciple. If we desire this for our children, we cannot help them get to where we have not gone ourselves.
Ask yourself:
- How is your relationship with God?
- How are you doing at prioritizing time in God's Word?
- How are you working out your faith in the office? In your marriage?
I challenge you to so live for Christ as his disciple in every area of your life that your children cannot help but take notice.
– As You Go
Deuteronomy 6:4-8 is a key text in thinking about what making disciples at home looks like. How do you help your children love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength? Deuteronomy 6:7 says, "Talk about it when you sit down in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."
In other words, as you go throughout each day and week, talk about the Lord with your children. Talk about it on the ride home from school, on the way to practice, around the kitchen table, as you get ready in the morning, or before you go to bed each night. These conversations don't have to be formal or equate to a Bible study. Ask them questions and listen to the struggles and problems they face. Think through gospel truths your student needs to hear. Find ways to connect those truths to their life.
While your child might now want to hear it from you or may appear not to listen, these words and moments can have lasting impact long after the awkwardness or silence of these conversations. The beauty of a church committed to making disciples is that parents and pastors have the opportunity to echo the same truths into the lives of children and teenagers through a mosaic of relationships. Think of your parenting as having a cumulative impact on the direction of your child's life. It most likely won't be one particular conversation that changes everything, but it will be the everyday, as you go, ordinary moments that shape and mold who your child is in Christ.
– Family Worship
There are multiple ways families make time for family worship, but the most important point is that you make time for it. I'll be the first to acknowledge this can be difficult to do consistently. However, its value is worth the difficulty of figuring out how to do it. The mistake many people is making it more than it has to be.
In Donald Whitney's Family Worship, he encourages a simple plan: read the Bible, pray together, and sing. Take time to reflect on a passage of the Bible (maybe from Sunday's message or your student's small group), pray together (ask your student about the things on their heart/mind), and sing (see if your church has a Spotify playlist). In this interview, Whitney provides detailed information about family worship.
We cannot relegate making disciples to Sunday. It must be woven into our daily life. Let me encourage you: this will not go as you would like. You will fail. You will have funny attempts to connect God's truth to your teenager's life. In the midst of this pursuit, don't grow weary in doing what is right. Don't lose sight of the goal. Don't forget this is ultimately a work of God's grace through his Spirit.
God has given us his Word to might pass it on to our children "so that a future generation-children yet to be born-might know. They were to rise and tell their children, so that they might put their confidence in God and not forget God's works, but keep His commands" (Ps. 78:5-7).
Michael Guyer is the Minister to Students at Open Door Church where he has served for the last five years. He gets most excited about good coffee, enjoying friends and family, making disciples, engaging culture, and planting churches. He writes to help others delight in, declare, and display the gospel in all of life. Connect with Michael on Twitter or his website.
Creative Father, Creative Children
I’ve heard more than once that creativity is a genetic trait, and I think that’s probably true. I’ve seen it in my own childhood when my mother, a police officer, would spend her scant free time painting and sketching. Both of her kids eventually followed in her footsteps, with my brother becoming a natural artist like her. He would come home from school with piles of drawings, pottery dishes, and guitar chords for songs he was writing.
I, on the other hand, usually expressed myself by sewing my own mall-goth attire and writing bad poetry that I think may have put me on the school counselor’s watch list.
My creative mother gave birth to creative kids. I’m beginning to see this emerge in my own children too; my oldest has already shown an aptitude for piano, a gift of musical creation that could have come from his father or my brother.
However, my youngest has disabilities that will probably prevent her from ever reading sheet music. She may never sit in a college lecture and hear about the work of Renoir or Kahlo, or even write angsty, cringeworthy poetry like I did.
And yet, she seems to have this innate understanding that the creative process is gratifying, and that being a creator is something to take joy in. Every day when she returns home from preschool, our daughter drags her backpack to us and gestures for us to open it and pull out her artwork.
Day after day, Katherine brings home pieces of art that have no real explanation, purpose, or professional qualities to them. And day after day, she is extraordinarily proud of herself. She takes great joy in her art.
Maybe it’s in her genes too, but the desire to create runs deeper than my immediate family tree. The imaginative works that my brother, my kids, and I produce may be genetically influenced by my mother, but ultimately they are gifts from the Father.
A Creative Father
The first few words of the Bible establishes God as a creator and ex nihilo (“out of nothing”) is the term most commonly used to describe his artistic process. God created the universe and the planet we live on—out of nothing. The earth, water, and the skies are all his craftsmanship.
But only one piece from his collection was a self-portrait: humanity. In Genesis 1:26-27, God is described as creating man in his image and likeness, and from that day forward, men and women continued to bear the imago dei. He gave his image bearers dominion over the rest of his created work and commanded us to care for it.
The first and ultimate Artist created more artists—from builders and designers to painters and poets. Christians worship and serve a creative God.
What art tells us about ourselves and our Father
Part of my ministry internship responsibilities include spending time at an art gallery that my church sponsors. It’s not unusual to have patrons walk in for a few minutes to marvel at the art, only to make a confused face when they see cards for our church on the counter.
Staff members often get asked, “Why would a church sponsor an art gallery?” For us, supporting the creative arts in our city is a matter of aligning our interests with God’s. He clearly values creativity; he is the author of it. Shouldn’t Christians value it too? Why wouldn’t we support image-bearing artists as they express and create in a manner representative of their Creator?
The reason creativity resonates with us so strongly is because we bear the imago dei. Artistry is what we are made of, so it calls to us and pulls us in. We fuss over each drop of paint and each written word until we get our own creations just right. We are moved by works of others and deeply satisfied when we finally finish our own.
This intense care we have for our created work mirrors the care God has for his own creation and the joy he took in making it all. He was pleased with what he made.
Any time we see thoughtful workmanship—a painting, a song, a hand-knit sweater or a beautifully-prepared meal—it should serve as a reminder of the creative God we serve.
Rachelle Cox converted from Mormonism six years ago and is now passionate about helping women understand God's good word and good theology. She is a women's ministry intern at Karis Church, and is beginning her theological education at Boyce College. She loves serving her husband and two children, and writes at http://eachpassingphase.com
Adapted with permission. Originally posted at “Creative Father, Creative Children.”
Here I Raise My Ebenezer
I was raised in the cessationist tradition, which means I was taught to never believe God was speaking to me other than through His words in the Bible. No seeing signs in the shapes in the clouds, no hearing calls from Jesus. I might feel like God was saying something specific about His love for me whenever I got the fitted sheet the right way on the mattress on the first try, but I knew better. But last year, a remarkable providence (that’s cessationist code for “miracle”) reminded me of how God often tells us in His Word that He wants us to tells others how we’ve experienced that what He says about Himself is all gloriously true. He even leaves us tangible objects to stir our memories, and prompt our words. On the morning of our wedding, my husband gave me a diamond solitaire necklace, made from his grandmother’s engagement ring. For my birthday six months later, he gave me a small pair of platinum hoop earrings. I waited what I hoped was the right amount of time before our first anniversary to confess my lingering discomfort with owning or caring for expensive, sparkly things after growing up in a family who could barely afford the basics. But I thanked him for his generosity, and promised I’d do my best to take care of what he’d already so kindly given me.
I kept that promise for fifteen years. Then on one particularly hectic morning when I was late for work, I slipped the necklace and earrings into the inside pocket of a small, black purse, thinking I’d have time during my morning commute to put them on. But then I promptly forgot about them, and at the end of the day the purse went on its shelf with several others. When I next went to my jewelry box to get my necklace and earrings, and saw they weren’t there, I scoured the house with what felt like Luke 15:8 zeal. But several days of searching didn’t lead to finding. I quietly berated myself for my carelessness after so many years, and sat under what felt like the chastisement of the Lord for my bad stewardship.
One Saturday afternoon, my youngest daughter Kate burst through the back door after a morning running errands with her Dad. “Look what I found in the trunk of car, Mommy!” she said with delight. In her hand was one, small, platinum hoop earring. Gasping, I asked her how she had found it. “We took those bags of giveaway things to Goodwill, and when Daddy was closing the trunk I saw it sparkling!” My heart sunk to the bottom of my stomach. A vague memory surfaced of a recent closet purging, endin with my tossing my purse into the top of a garbage bag filled with clothes, then the bag into the trunk of my car. I thought I’d remembered to search all the pockets. I obviously hadn’t.
My middle daughter offered to ride with me to the Goodwill to make a last, surely impossible, attempt to find my jewelry. Before I pulled out of the driveway, I prayed out loud, asking God to show me undeserved mercy in helping me find my jewelry, and to give me His peace if I didn’t. As I drove, I talked with my daughter about what God might be teaching us, almost certain that it had to do with things like trusting Him when hard things happen, the futility of valuing material things that can be so easily lost, the importance of being a good steward of the material blessings He gives us, and on. And in my heart, I spoke to God about what He was teaching my daughter as she watched events unfold, and prayed for His help to be faithful.
We pulled into the drop off area behind the Goodwill, and the sight of rows and rows of barrels overflowing with the discards of an entire city made my heart sink. A worker named Bob heard my plea as I showed him the earring my littlest girl had found. He chatted away as my daughter and I walked amongst the barrels, desperate to catch a glimpse of a garbage bag that looked like ours. “We get someone like you here every week,” he said. They’re looking for prescription glasses, jewelry, money, a passport one time. They never find ‘em.”
With Bob’s encouraging words ringing in my ears, I decided our search was futile. I gave him my business card, with a note on the back promising a cash reward if the contents of the purse were ever found, and my daughter and I headed back to the car. On the trip home, we talked some more. What had God meant by letting my little girl find one earring, but not the purse with the rest of it? With our question unresolved, I dropped her back home to finish homework, and then drove on the Container Store, suddenly inspired to pick up some decorative boxes I’d been thinking about buying to better organize my closet.
I was standing in line when my phone rang.
“Mrs. Starke, this is Bob. We found your purse, and your jewelry is in it. When do you want to come pick it up? I gotta tell ya, I’ve worked here five years and this is the first time this has ever happened.”
I burst into unashamed tears of gratefulness, and told him I’d come right away. I didn’t even wait for the people around me to ask what had happened. Filled with Luke 15:9 joy, I just told them. “I accidentally left the jewelry I wore on my wedding day in a purse I donated to GoodWill, and someone just found it! The man at the store said it was impossible, but I prayed, and God did it! Because that’s. what. God. does! “
The strangers made affirming noises of varying kinds at the crazy lady having a personal “praise Jesus” moment in the checkout line, and the checker hurried me through paying for my things, so I could be on my way and out of her store. Twenty minutes later, after stopping at an ATM for the promised reward, the diamond necklace and other earring were back in my hands. A few minutes after that, I opened the back door of my house, and stood in the entry way silently, waiting for my girls to see me and what hung, sparkling, around my neck and in ears once more. They squealed, and stared in amazement, questions and exclamations tumbling over each other.
That afternoon, my daughters and I lived out David’s exhortations in Psalm 105 and Psalm 145 - we commended God’s works to one another, and reminded each other of God’s goodness and mercy to us. We’ve done it every time I’ve worn my jewelry since then. My necklace has become my personal “Ebenezer”, a reminder of a day when God taught me to trust Him with circumstances totally beyond my control. My necklace holds no power in and of itself. But it points me to the One who has it all, Who upholds the universe with it, and who can and does work mightily on my behalf.
I learned that day how God works through ordinary circumstances and ordinary things, and that the ordinary objects in our lives can be used to bear witness to our extraordinary God, and the good things He has done.
Rachael Starke has lived and worked in Silicon Valley for over 18 years. She writes about the intersection of the gospel with technology, gender, food, and other cultural artifacts. You can connect with her on Twitter, LinkedIn or her blog.
The Gospel Doesn’t Accommodate
The gospel is unaccommodating. That is not to say that the gospel isn't powerful, but it isn't putty to be formed in our subjective hands. God didn't send Messiah to come and barter a deal with partisan politics—you know, the "reach across the aisle" sort of thing. Jesus wasn't crucified so that his potential and actual followers could make up their own version of why that particular substitutionary atonement was important (or not). As a pastor I find this to be one of the most difficult things about my ministry. Not only does my own heart battle, I'm called to shepherd others whose hearts are battling. Living in Christian community is challenging because so many things are vying for our attention. In the middle of it all is this temptation to want to bend on the demands of the gospel.
Jesus's yoke is easy, his burden light. But that's not the same as saying that there is no burden—the call is hard. The gospel will have all of you, or none of you. Christ's Kingdom doesn't settle for partial dominion. There are no spots in your life—in my life, too—where Christ will say, “That's for someone else.” Yes, the battle in the heart is hard, for we are quick to fashion idols. But the demands of the gospel are comprehensive because the world is in comprehensive sin. Wherever sin goes, the gospel goes deeper.
The Gospel Doesn’t Accommodate
It doesn't work the same way as booking a vacation. You don't get to choose your amenities and ask about the fridge in the room. You either come, or you don't. The terms and conditions are set, and negotiations are completely off the table.
And yet what do we see happen in evangelicalism? We see compromise on the demands of the gospel. We see alterations on the fabric of the gospel. We see disputes over the content of the gospel. We see attempts at making the gospel more palatable, more accommodating. Is this our gospel? More to the point, is this Christ's gospel?
Jesus said in Matthew 10:24, "A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master." Which means that, for example, you don't get to rule yourself. The gospel doesn't let you govern your heart, for clearly sinners are incapable of doing so. And yet how many want their Christ and their idols?
"Ah, but we have room in our hearts for both!" No, you don't. You can't serve two masters, and serving no one isn't an option. As Bob Dylan has taught us, "You've gotta serve somebody." Either we will be slaves to sin, or we will be slaves of Christ (Rom. 6:6ff).
The Weight of the Gospel’s Demands
Part of the problem stems from a failure to see the weight of the demands of the gospel. Whether it's intentional or not, we gladly look the other direction. Jesus says, "Take up your cross," and we say, "That was only a metaphor." Jesus says, "Follow me," and we say, "Well he’s in heaven. That doesn’t mean anything for me now." Jesus says, "You must hate mother and father!" And what do we say? "Jesus couldn't have meant that."
Why are we so willing to set aside the hard sayings of Jesus and opt instead for a Jesus of our own creation? Perhaps C.S. Lewis was right after all, we're half-hearted creatures.
A part of me wonders if we're just plain insecure. We're insecure about admitting our failures, doubts, questions, and concerns. We're insecure about looking foolish for having failed Jesus (somehow). We're insecure about the light shining in the darkness, after all, the cockroaches scurry about when the light finds them.
At a root level, we all want to be liked, treasured, and adored. (All the things the gospel provides, mind you.) We want some tangible sense of being appreciated, loved, and accepted. We long for someone to come alongside us and affirm that we're not that stupid. Like a man stuck in the desert, we thirst for acceptance.
The Religious Idolatry
We want to be liked in all the wrong ways and all the wrong places. Idolatry is a fight for reconciliation. We want something other than the triune God to help us get closer to God. I mean, come on, even Aaron dedicated the idol to Yahweh (Exod. 32:4-5)!
At the risk of coming across rather incredulous, the most dangerous idols aren't the ones that stand in stark contrast to God, they are the ones that stand most closely to God. The religious people who read their devotional several times a day. The religious people who proudly flaunt how much they tithe. The religious people who are proud about their humility. You know what I'm talking about.
I said above that idolatry is a fight for reconciliation. Here's what I mean: If we will be people reconciled to Christ, we must be unreconciled to idols. You can't serve two masters. You cannot hang on to all the gods, no matter how beautiful the pantheon paint looks.
The person who wants the gospel to be more accommodating to their terms and conditions is the person whose world is unreconciled (or at least unrecognizably reconciled). After all,
"For in [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross." – Colossians 1:19-20 (emphasis mine).
The heart becomes divided. Idols appeal to our flesh. We question the gospel's demands. All of this is an issue of reconciliation. Will we give ourselves to Christ on his terms? Or will we sabotage our reconciliation in him by trying to reconcile ourselves to our idols? A duplicitous heart is a heart without rest.
There’s No Manipulating the Gospel
The gospel doesn't allow for manipulation. The good news of Christ crucified doesn't have a footnote. The empty tomb doesn't have an alternative ending. The gospel demands all of you, and leaves no room for silly trinkets in the heart.
Dear reader, the call is simple: Resist the urge to craft an idol to suit your comfort. Resist the urge to make God into your image. Resist the urge to want to placate your pleasure seeking with false piety. Resist.
Know that the gospel won't accommodate your cute decorative idols. It won't accommodate your crafty sensualities. The gospel is unaccommodating to your imaginative attempts at making its message more palatable. And for that, I'm grateful.
—
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.
You can read all of Jason’s articles here.
A Fate Worse Than Eating Dog Food
There’s a haunting scene in the newest season of The Walking Dead that has stuck with me. After being captured by enemies, Daryl, a beloved character, is placed in a small cell. He is fed—and viewers are intentionally shown—dog food that is haphazardly spread on white bread. The dehumanizing effects of captivity are well portrayed. His captors want him to understand: he is not human, he’s something less, and he’s not worthy of human meals. His rights are no more than a dog in a cage. But it is not the diet alone that distinguishes humanity from beasts. More brutal than his daily lunch is his unrelenting isolation. The dirty, concrete cell is shown to be devoid of all light. Alone with nothing but his thoughts, his tormentors deprive him of any sense of dignity or community.
The detrimental effects of solitary confinement are well-documented. Yet, it is not uncommon for God’s people to live their lives as if they are ignorant of his Words: “It is not good that man be alone” (Gen. 2:18).
Marriage and Family Are Good
After God created all forms of animals to roam the land, sky, and seas, he makes man in his own image. However, none of the animals were a fit companion for this solitary man. So he makes another human utilizing parts from Adam himself, like him but different—complimentary.
God gives us the gift of lifelong companionship to combat the not-goodness of being alone. But companionship in marriage is not the only gift God gives to prevent aloneness. Shortly after joining the two in marriage he commands them: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28).
While marriage is not insufficient in itself, love often multiplies and expands beyond the initial parties. Similar to how God himself, lacking nothing, created others to share in his love (1 Jn. 4:8), he calls man who bears his image to multiply as well.
God gives us the gift of children who will outlive us and further our impact. Or as the psalmist puts it: “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth” (Ps. 127:4).
Marriage and Family Aren’t Guaranteed
So far my examples have been idealistic. While marriage is good, it is not promised to everyone. While children are good, the effects of living in a fallen world sometimes includes couples who are barren. Tragically, sometimes parents end up burying the children that were intended to outlive and out influence them.
As good as spouses and children are, they are common graces. A good marriage or a good family is not necessarily a distinguishing mark of God’s blessing. It is possible that a righteous man may lose his wife or family, and a wicked man’s family may prosper.
While marriage and family are important, they are not ultimate. While they are excellent, they are not eternal (Mt. 22:30). The kingdom of God, on the other hand, is.
The Church Is Better
The now and not yet of God’s kingdom is a difficult concept to grasp. Graeme Goldsworthy offers a helpful way of thinking about God’s kingdom: “God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule.”
Using this definition, God’s kingdom was fully realized in Eden, but then shattered after humans rebelled against him. This way of thinking also helps us to make sense of all the times Jesus refers to the kingdom during his earthly ministry. It is in our midst (Lk. 17:21) where people are willfully submissive to God. This is why the Church’s importance cannot be overstated.
In the Church, we get the clearest picture of the kingdom of God before it is fully realized. In it, people joyfully submit to God in worship and reverence. Sure, the Church is made up of various marriages and families, but it is of greater importance and longevity. In its walls, today’s families are united with those of some 2000 years ago as they place themselves under God’s rule as the benevolent father who has adopted a family for eternal life (Eph. 1:3-5). The saints perfected in heaven look down upon those being prepared for a future day where they will join them (Eph. 1:10).
The Church is also a home and a refuge for those that do not have spouses, children, or families. We are tasked to take care of the orphaned, the widowed, the barren, and the unmarried (Js. 1:27). And it is a primary sign of true religion.
The Beauty of the Bride
If marriage and offspring were essential, then Jesus would be less than perfect because he had neither. The profundity of this is full of warnings as well as encouragement. Warnings for those who deny the necessity of life in community. The “one anothers” of Scripture, as well as our commission to make disciples are impossible for the hermit. Jesus does not call hermits, but disciples who will make, mature, and multiply other disciples. This warning is just as needed for the introverted layperson as for the pastor that is tempted to neglect relationships in favor of study.
The encouragement is for those who desire a spouse or a family but don’t yet have one. For the single among us, they have an example in Jesus who lived a full life while never participating in the covenant of marriage. Similarly, the infertile inherit a family that transcends the bounds of their own blood as they are absorbed into the Church family that was bought by the blood of Christ (1 Pt. 1:18;19). Additionally, they imitate Christ when they adopt children and raise them as their own (Gal. 4:5).
The Kingdom Feast
Jesus further models for us how life in community is to be lived out. He chooses twelve disciples. Our influence in discipling relationships cannot be spread too thin or it will decrease in potency. He then shares life with them. The humanity of Scripture is worth noting here. My wife laments that so much of modern television and movies neglect to show the characters eating. (Even more lamentable is the pain they go through to show them fornicating—it is clear what appetites drive ratings.) But Scripture, as truth, accurately portrays humans as social creatures in need of sustenance. There is no shortage of bread broken among Jesus and his disciples.
Food, perhaps more than anything else, brings people together. “The Last Meeting” would be far less memorable in our minds than “The Last Supper.” It was over a Passover meal that Jesus chose to reveal the things of ultimate importance (1 Cor. 15:3) to his inner community of twelve disciples. A master teacher, he utilizes the meal as a prop to appeal to the kinesthetic, and visual learners, as well as the auditory ones. He would leave them, but not alone, they would have each other. No, instead he would be alone. Unaccompanied by his community, he would go to the cross.
Worse yet, he’d be forsaken by his Father (Mt. 27:46). We get a glimpse into one of the greatest mysteries of the faith when the Son suffers the Father’s wrath on behalf of sinful mankind. There, on the cross, he’d be stripped of his dignity (Heb. 12:2) as well as his clothes. His blood would be drained on behalf of humanity, and he’d be exposed to the elements, thirst (Jn. 19:28), and hunger. All to join us together as a redeemed community (Jn. 19:26; 27) under his lordship.
His last supper foreshadowed all these events. Even his betrayer, was welcomed at his table. He’d die alone, so that those who were once his enemies (Rom. 5:10) would not have to dine alone. He’d give us a glimpse into the future fully realized kingdom where unlikely guests are welcomed into the great feast (Mt. 22:10).
There at the feast, in the fully realized kingdom of God, we will dine on the finest food and drink the best wine (Jn. 2:10). But better than the food will be the fellowship of the redeemed with the Redeemer. For the distinguishing mark of the kingdom is not food (Rom. 14:17), but love. Solomon’s wisdom tells us that an unsatisfying meal with love is better than a great feast where there is no love (Prov. 15:17).
In other words, there is a fate worse than eating dog food—eating alone.
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Sean Nolan (B.S. and M.A., Clarks Summit University) is the Family Life Pastor at Christ Fellowship Church in Forest Hill, Maryland. Prior to that, he served at a church plant in Troy, New York for seven years and taught Hermeneutics to ninth and tenth graders. He is married to Hannah and is raising an army of toddlers. He blogs at Family Life Pastor.
You can read all of Sean’s articles here.
Christ: The Only Agent of Change
Recently, my small group decided that we needed to renew our efforts to dig deeper into community with one another. Two of the primary ways we planned on doing this are by praying toward that end and by learning to ask one another questions rather than offer advice. We want to take a stab at being men and women who are quick to hear and slow to speak (Jas. 1:19), that we might create space to make much of Christ, the only agent of change. If you’ve been around the church, much of that probably sounds cliché and, in one sense, I suppose it is.1 That’s because collaborative attempts “to dig deeper into community” and the practices that accompany it are some of the more stereotypical small group efforts; however, they are also simple acts of obedience to Jesus. For us, the decision to dig deeper into community wasn’t cliché—It was simply born out of obedience to Jesus as well as a response to the state of our small group.
Falling Short
Apart from our recent efforts, most of our time together has been characterized by disproportionately shallow, even unhelpful, conversations and weekly attempts at corporate encouragement, rebuke, repentance, and prayer have been short on practical, Christ-centered wisdom. In fact, most of our conversations have been dominated by an irreverent post-share rush to offer one another advice, instead of the forbearing work of asking and answering what David Powlison describes as “X-ray Questions.”2
In short, our small group has been caught trafficking in pop psychology and truisms. For example, instead of responding to statements like “My boss has been such a jerk lately . . . I think I want to quit my job” with questions, we just change the subject. Typically, people reply with some tired version of “I know how you feel, Rob” or “Just keep at it” or “Geez, well here’s how I deal with my boss, Sydney.” Sadly, this pitiful practice has closed doors to gospel application and furthered feelings of frustration, estrangement, and disillusionment within the group.
Perhaps worst of all, though, is the reality that our previous efforts have caused us to make much of ourselves, instead of the very One in whom we are found, healed, and made whole (Matt. 9:12; 1 Pt. 2:25). When communities find themselves in this situation, Bob Thune and Will Walker remind us, “The good news of the gospel is not that God makes much of us, but that God frees us to make much of Jesus.”3
That means we need to spend less time peddling worldly wisdom and more time making much of Jesus if we really want to change.
What’s Wrong?
My best guess as to why our communities lack deep community is that we have exchanged the deep things of God and heart for the world’s favorite form of wisdom: advice. As many have observed, it takes just five minutes in the local bookstore to conclude that we are an advice-obsessed culture. We crave quick tips and seek out superficial sayings. And the internet has made this kind of advice even more accessible. In fact, today it seems like we’re just as likely to use Google to seek out pithy proverbs as we are to find ideas for our next DIY project. But it’s not just us.
Together, the world, the flesh, and the devil have been operating a murderous joint venture since the first Adam’s fall from grace, peddling a false view of humanity and its condition. Over the last couple of centuries, this clandestine cartel has given rise to a dangerous preoccupation with the psychologized self and moralistic advice that has permeated every nook and cranny of our culture. If you don’t believe me, just tune in to the nearest TV between the hours of noon and 4:00pm!
Like the proverbial fish that doesn’t know it lives in water, our communities have been operating as a microcosm of the larger culture in which we live. We have been far too satisfied with counterfeit hopes and unbiblical theories of change, giving in to what Tim Lane and Paul Tripp describe as “hollow and deceptive theories of change that masquerade as biblical wisdom.”4
Admittedly, those hollow and deceptive theories of change are hard to see, “because they borrow some aspect of biblical truth”5 and then operate just below the biblical horizon. Ultimately, though, “they are hollow because they miss the center of biblical wisdom, which is Christ.”6
So what needs to change? And how can our group learn to see Christ better, and what would seeing him better enable us to be and do?
Christ: The Only Agent of Change
At the most basic level, our community groups have forgotten who and what we are in Christ. We have failed to point one another to him and the resources that are available in and through him by the Spirit (Rom. 8:9-11; Gal. 4:6-7). Of course, there is more to the change process than simply reminding one another of Jesus.
That’s because the rubber meets the road only when we learn to live into the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and to apply it to every area of life. One of the primary ways that happens is through small groups, especially ones that spend time praying and asking questions instead of giving advice.
Moving forward, our group plans to do just that. Rather than continuing to anesthetize one another with the worthless words of worldly wisdom, we will make a habit of praying and asking questions. Those habits will teach us how to celebrate and apply Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to every area of life, which will in turn empower us to grow into thoughtful brothers and sisters who are free to encourage, rebuke, repent, and pray authentically.
For our group, that will mean responding to statements like “My boss has been such a jerk lately . . . I think I want to quit my job” with questions. For example, “Can you tell us more about that?” or “Has his behavior caused you to respond sinfully?” or “Would you be willing to share anything about specific points of tension?” Answers to questions like that create space for honest self-reflection, and self-reflection is the hinge by which the doors to gospel application are always opened.
In other words, groups that fail to ask questions fail to open hearts. And closed hearts aren’t interested in Jesus. When we gather, we will look to Christ. We will claim all that is already ours in and through him (1 Pt. 1:3-5), even as we long for the day he will complete in us what is yet unfinished (1 Jn. 3:2).
1. David Powlison, “X-ray Questions: Drawing Out the Whys and Wherefores of Human Behavior,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 18:1 (Fall 1999), 2-8.
2. Robert H. Thune and Will Walker, The Gospel-Centered Life: Leader’s Guide (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2011), 35.
3. Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp, How People Change (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2008), 20. For more, see Timothy J. Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters (New York: Penguin, 2011) and Edward T. Welch, “Who Are We? Needs, Longings, and the Image of God in Man,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 13:1 (Fall 1994), 25-38.
4. Lane and Tripp, How People Change, 20.
5. Ibid., 20.
6. For more, see Lane and Tripp, How People Change and Tim Chester, You Can Change: God’s Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010) and James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2016).
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Grayson Walker teaches American history at Casady School in Oklahoma City. Prior to teaching, Grayson worked for Cru and Providence Church in Austin, Texas. You can follow him on Twitter @graysonpwalker.