How to Turn Down the Volume of Your Anxiety
Perhaps you’ve met Ms. Frantic. She arrives at the gym at 8:00 a.m. Hours later, she’s still pounding the treadmill, pumping iron, and powering away on the rowing machine, barely stopping to catch snatched sips from her water bottle. She looks exhausted, miserable, and ready to faint, but still she goes on. You ask her why she is doing this, and she replies, “Because I must.” When you press her, asking, “But, why must you?” she looks at you strangely, and impatiently exclaims, “I don’t know, I just must! There’s always more to do.”
Ms. Reflective also starts bright and early at 8:00 a.m., but she’s different. She uses the same machines and works equally hard at points, but not all the time. Every now and then, she enjoys a drink of refreshing cold water. Sometimes she pauses to look out the windows and simply watch the world go by. She laughs at the children splashing in the nearby swimming pool. She even spots a friend exercising and has time to wave, give a big encouraging smile, and sometimes chat.
Now ask yourself, “Which of these two images reflects how I live my life before God?” Am I Ms. Frantic or Ms. Reflective? Am I overworking and over-stressed, or am I taking time to think and to enjoy God’s world?
A MARTHA WORLD
“Women Are Working Themselves to Death,” warned a recent headline.[1] It was based on a joint study by Ohio State University and The Mayo Clinic that compared almost eight thousand men and women over a thirty-two-year period and found that working over forty hours a week did serious damage to women’s health, causing increased risk of heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and diabetes.[2] Working sixty or more hours a week tripled the risk of these conditions. Not surprisingly, the report’s lead author, professor Allard Dembe, warned: “People don’t think that much about how their early work experiences affect them down the road. . . . Women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are setting themselves up for problems later in life.” Unexpectedly, the risks are elevated only for women, not for men. Further analysis led the researchers to conclude that the greater risk to women is not necessarily because women are weaker but because they are doing so much more than men:
"In addition to working at a job, women often come home to a 'second shift' of work where they are responsible for childcare, chores, housework, and more, according to sociologists. All of this labor at home and at work, plus all the stress that comes along with it, is severely affecting women. Research indicates women generally assume greater family responsibilities and thus may be more likely to experience overload compared to men."[3]
Professor Dembe also pointed to less job satisfaction among women because they have to juggle so many obligations at home as well. But this is not a problem just in the greater culture; it’s a problem in the Christian population too. A survey of over a thousand Christian women, sponsored by Christian Woman magazine, found that 60 percent of Christian women work full-time outside the home. Reflecting on this, Joanna Weaver, author of Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, commented, “Add housework and errands to a forty-hour-a-week career, and you have a recipe for weariness.” But she also warned homemakers: “Women who choose to stay at home find their lives just as full. Chasing toddlers, carpooling to soccer, volunteering at school, babysitting the neighbor’s kids— life seems hectic at every level.”[4] Maybe you’re now seeing Ms. Frantic in the mirror or hearing her in your heart and mind.
OUR INNER ORCHESTRA
Every Christian wants to know God more; few Christians fight for the silence required to know him. Instead, we spend our days smashing stillness-shattering, knowledge-destroying cymbals on our ears and in our souls. And with so many gongs and clashes in our lives, it can sometimes be difficult to isolate and identify them. So let me help you do this and then provide some mufflers.[5]
First, there’s the din of guilt, the shame and embarrassment of our dark moral secrets: “I should have . . . I shouldn’t have . . . I should have . . . I shouldn’t have . . . ” clangs noisily in our deep recesses, shattering our peace and disturbing our tranquility.
Then greed starts banging away in our hearts with its relentless drumstick: “I want it. I need it. I must have it. I will have it. I got it. I want it. I need it.” And so on.
And what’s that angry metal beat? It’s hate stirring up malice, ill will, resentment, and revenge: “How could she . . . I’ll get him! She’ll pay for this!” Of course, anger often clatters into the cymbal of controversy, sparking disagreements, debates, disputes, and divisions.
Vanity also adds its proud and haughty thud, drowning out all who compete with our beauty, our talents, and our status. “Me up . . . him down, me up . . . her down, me up . . . all down.”
Anxiety tinkles distractingly in the background too, rapidly surveying the past, the present, and the future for things to worry about: “What if . . . What if . . . What if . . . ” And is that the little, silver triangle of self-pity I hear? “Why me? Why me? Why me?”
The repetitive and unstoppable jangle of expectation comes from all directions—family, friends, employer, church, and especially from ourselves. Oh, for even a few seconds of respite from the tyranny of other people’s demands and especially from our demanding, oversensitive conscience.
And smashing into our lives wherever we turn, we collide with the giant cymbals of the media and technology: local and international, paper and pixels, sound and image, audio and video, beep and tweet, notifications and reminders, and on and on it goes.
Is it any wonder that we sometimes feel as if we’re going mad? Clanking and clanging, jingling and jangling, smashing and crashing, grating and grinding. A large, jarring orchestra of peace-disturbing, soul-dismantling cymbals. Then.
“Be still and know that I am God.”
But how?
SILENCING THE CYMBALS
We can silence the cymbal of guilt by taking faith to the blood of Christ and saying, “Believe!” Believe that all your sins are paid for and pardoned. There’s absolutely no reason to have even one whisper of guilt. Look at that blood until you grasp how precious and effective it is. It can make you whiter than snow and make your conscience quieter than the morning dew.
Greed is not easily silenced. Maybe muffled is about the best we can expect. Practice doing with less than usual, practice not buying even when you can afford it, practice buying nothing but necessities for a time, and practice spending time in the shadow of Calvary. How much less you’ll find you need when you see how much he gave! Draw up your budget at the cross (2 Corinthians 8:9).
Our unholy anger can be dialed down by God’s holy anger. When we feel God’s hot rage against all sin and all injustice, we begin to chill and calm. Vengeance is God’s; he will repay.
The doctrine of total depravity is the ultimate dampener of personal vanity. When I see myself as God sees me, my heart, my mind, and even my posture change. I stop competing for the top spot and start accepting the lowest place. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Hey! I’m beginning to hear some quiet now. But there’s still that rankling anxiety tinkling away. Oh, to be free of that!
Fatherhood.
What?
Yes, the fatherhood of God can turn the volume of anxiety to zero. He knows, he cares, and he will provide for your needs. Mute your “what-ifs” at the bird feeder (Matthew 6:25– 34). As mother-of-two Sarah told me, “Sometimes the things that can start to burn you out or cause you weariness are often things you can’t leave. Just because you’re feeling burned out by the responsibilities surrounding your husband and kids doesn’t mean you can just up and leave—sometimes not even just for an afternoon! Sometimes you just have to put your head down and persist—but at the same time it is important to take to our Father in heaven our emotions and weakness and weariness.”
Oh, and call in total depravity again when self-pity starts up. “Why me?” cannot stand long before “Why not me?”
“She has done what she could” (Mark 14:8). Don’t you just love Christ’s words to Mary when she anointed his head? What an expectation killer! Every time the despotic Devil, other people, or your tyrannical conscience demands more than you can give, remind them of Jesus’s calming words, “She has done what she could.”
Content taken from Refresh: Embracing a Grace-Paced Life in a World of Endless Demands by Shona and David Murray, ©2017. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.
Shona Murray is a mother of five children and has homeschooled for fifteen years. She is a medical doctor and worked as a family practitioner in Scotland until she moved to the United States with her husband, David.
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.
[1] Jessica Mattern, “Women Are Working Themselves to Death, Study Shows,” Woman’s Day, July 5, 2016, http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/news/a55529 /working-women-health-risks/.
[2] MistiCrane,“Women’s Long Work Hours Linked to Alarming Increases in Cancer, Heart Disease,” Ohio State University, June 16, 2016, https://news.osu.edu/news/2016 /06/16/overtime-women/.
[3] Mattern, “Women Are Working Themselves to Death, Study Shows.”
[4] Joanna Weaver, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World (Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook, 2000), 7.
[5] Part of this section was previously published in Tabletalk, the monthly magazine of Ligonier Ministries. Used by permission.
New Book Release | That Word Above All Earthly Powers
Today we release our newest book, That Word Above All Earthly Powers. Pick up the paperback or Kindle edition at Amazon.com.
The Protestant Reformation means many things to many people. More than just a movement of people away from an ecclesiological structure filled with abuses, the Reformation was a movement back to the truth of God contained in the Scriptures.
THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE
Underneath this movement was the question where does the authority for life and salvation rest? In answer to that question, the Reformers declared Sola Scriptura, or Scripture alone possesses the authority to command our lives and declare where salvation is found.
Scripture has the final word to determine how we should live—not the Roman Catholic Church.
Scripture alone possesses the truth of how we are rescued from our sin and rebellion against God. For the Christian, the Scripture is the highest authority over and against any church tradition or structure.
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE
As we look back 500 years, we give thanks to God for his grace to inspire and embolden men and women to work for the reform and purity of the gospel for the good of the world.
And, yet, we must also give thanks for the Scriptures themselves. As God's revealed, pure, and complete Word for us containing all we need for salvation and life, we must humble ourselves to its authority. The Reformation reminds us of the emboldened passion to lift high Christ above all and to bring to the center God's Word for the shaping of our lives.
This collection of reflections written by the GCD Staff Team and noted writers and theologians like Dr. Gerry Breshears, Micah Fries, and Jonathan Dodson is our effort to spur you on to listen to the voice of God through his Word and humbly receive his grace for all of life.
Our prayer is that this book will bolster your confidence in the authority of God's Word, and encourage you to see his grace for all of life.
Purchase That Word Above All Earthly Powers in paperback or Kindle edition.
The Spiritual Angst of Martin Luther
Martin Luther experienced angst in the extreme. Born five hundred years ago into a humble copper miner’s family, it was neither career uncertainty nor economic worry that most troubled young Martin, though I’ll bet that German winter got him down. Martin experienced anxiety of cosmic dimensions. He was petrified by death, hell, and the avenging wrath of God. At twenty years old, weeping and wailing, trembling and doubting, Martin despaired over the salvation of his own soul. He was convinced that God’s grace was utterly blocked by his mortal guilt and that there was just no way out. “To cry unto the Lord, that is beyond us,” he lamented, “for our bad conscience and our sin press down on us, and lie so about our necks so badly that we feel the Wrath of God: and the whole world could not be so heavy as that burden.”
The Jesus of Martin’s imagination promised no refuge; he never 
showed up as a brotherly Savior offering comfort. When Martin kneeled on the stone floor of the unheated church, the young man looked up to the crucifix with the suffering Christ hanging there—and he saw a harsh judge from whom he wanted to flee. Martin turned pale, terrified by the very name of Jesus; Christ’s accusing gaze was, he said, a lightning stroke to him.
But one day, Martin was caught out in an open field during a violent thunderstorm, convinced that a fiery death was at hand. In desperation he cried out for rescue and vowed to become a monk if only God would spare his life. Martin survived the storm. I’ve also made some impulsive, emergency promises, bargaining with God and then always managing to forget, but Martin actually made good on his prayer. He gave away his possessions and signed on at the Augustinian monastery before even checking with his parents. They’d been pushing him to become a respectable lawyer. Eager to go all the way, Martin, at twenty four, became a priest.
Unfortunately, Martin’s new religious vocation provided zero relief from his anxiety. Martin found no peace within the monastery walls despite his scrupulous regimen of vigils, fasts, confessions, and grueling self-punishments. Plagued by distress, he was tormented by the vision of an irate God who set impossibly high standards then damned him for failing to achieve them. Martin came to hate the God he was commanded to serve.
Disillusioned, melancholy Martin lost all hope in the church’s claims to salvation. The corruption of the medieval church, with its pay-your-way-to-heaven scams, pushed him over the edge. On October 31, 1517, Martin nailed his famous protest declaration, his Ninety-Five Theses, onto the massive door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, declaring war against the Christian establishment. With that, the Protestant Reformation began.
Martin antagonized the church elites and then stubbornly refused to recant. The authorities excommunicated him as a heretic, vowing fatal penalties. Martin, a convicted clerical outlaw on the lam, hid out behind the walls of Wartburg Castle for almost a year.
Driven by rebellion and despair, Martin turned to the Bible. Paul’s words in Romans captured his attention: “‘He who through faith is righteous shall live” (Romans 1:17). With that truth, everything changed. Martin found relief from his doomed efforts to win God’s pleasure, the impasse of church dogma and religious piety. Faith, he realized, is simple trust in God’s promises, no matter how we feel or what we accomplish. What an unexpected, astounding revelation: salvation is a gift! In a profound emotional rush, Martin declared, “When I realized this, I felt myself born again.” It was as if “the gates of paradise had been flung open” and he’d walked in.
Did Martin’s newfound spiritual freedom heal his heart and calm him down? Hardly.
Intense, complex Martin launched ferocious doctrinal debates and waged personal battles. Unwilling to back down, Luther vilified his opponents as dragons, specters and witches, monsters of perdition, and enemies in a pantheon of wickedness. (You did not want to get on this guy’s bad side.) Martin’s countercultural ideas took off and ignited violent peasant uprisings. Historians say that his theological revolution ushered in the modern era of Western history. So, uh, no. Martin never calmed down.
Martin did find some relief in human love. No longer a monk in good standing, Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, a runaway nun. She’d escaped the fortifications of her convent hidden in an empty fish barrel, a display of her innovative spirit. Katharina was one no-nonsense wife. She ran a buzzing household, supervised their six children, hosted mobs of relations and theology students, and all while she managed her brewery, vegetable garden and fish hatchery. It’s no wonder Martin utterly adored the woman. He warmly declared, “There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage.”
Even with intimate family affection, close community, prayer, biblical conviction, and outsized courage, Martin was still plagued by chronic anxiety to the end of his life, a condition he named Anfechtung, with its connotation of assault. At fifty, Luther lamented that his dark emotional afflictions, those “weapons of death,” were still troubling him—more worrisome than any of his intellectual labors or personal enemies. One strategy usually helped. When things got bad, he said, he got into bed and embraced his Katy until her nearness sent the demonic depressions away.
In Martin’s time, fellow sufferers came to him and begged for counsel. Pastor Martin first responded with theological insights. Jesus knows that we worry, he truly does, Martin assures them (and us). So listen deeply to Jesus’ words, he’d say, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Trust in God.” In your hopelessness, your angst, your helplessness, there is a clear divine command: Rejoice! Yes, Martin, insists, “The Christian should and must be a cheerful person.” I for one read this and ask: isn’t cheerfulness a lot to expect? I know I can hardly complain, compared to some impoverished Germanic peasant in the year 1500. But still. I can’t just put on a happy face.
It is said that Martin prayed the Lord’s Prayer eight times a day. I don’t think he did it as an act of rote religiosity. Instead, I think Martin was daily tested by his apprehension, continually forced back to ask for
God’s help. Only in prayer was Martin assured, as he said, that Christ loved him, that the Father loved him, that the Holy Spirit loved him.
I imagine going back to sixteenth-century Wittenberg for an afternoon. I walk along Collegienstrasse and through the Katharinenportal to enter the Luther-Von Bora house. I pull a chair up to the heavy wooden table in the Lutherstube and join the men for several hours of heated intellectual debate. In the courtyard, the Luther kids scramble after squawking chickens beyond the smoky kitchen. The chatter, the commotion, the conflict. It’s just too much. I have to get outside and walk.
Katharina and Martin guide me into the medieval streets. We push through the crowded market square, past crofters’ clay and straw huts, through the ramparts and city gate and into the open summer fields of Saxony. Here, with the sun on our faces, Martin drops his cantankerous tone for a more pastoral, reflective manner.
Martin quotes Jesus, who said, “Do not be anxious, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ Your heavenly Father knows that you need these things.” As we amble through the grass, I picture Martin as the young man who bolted across this very meadow, caught in the stormy terror of God’s wrath. Here he is, speaking of grace. I know that it’s not easy for him.
Adapted from Vintage Saints and Sinners by Karen Wright Marsh. Copyright (c) 2017 by Karen Wright Marsh. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Karen Wright Marsh is executive director and cofounder of Theological Horizons, a university ministry that has advanced theological scholarship at the intersection of faith, thought, and life since 1991. Karen directs daily programs, writes resources and curriculum, teaches weekly classes, mentors students, leads the staff, and speaks at retreats, churches, and campus ministries. She holds degrees in philosophy and linguistics from Wheaton College and the University of Virginia. Karen lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband, Charles Marsh.
Uncomfortable Holiness, and Why It's Essential for Christian Community
The bar was full of people, full of smoke, full of that loud, sustained decibel hum of alcohol-fueled chatter that makes shout-talking into someone’s ear necessary for a conversation. The music was bumping, full of profanity. At one point a few people were dancing on a table. Bursts of laughter and the occasional shattering of glass punctuated the noise. All manner of tobacco was being smoked: cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, pipes. And almost everyone in the bar had just finished a day of sessions at a major Christian conference.
I was a part of that scene, one of the evangelical revelers whose behavior was such that no observer could have distinguished us as believers in any holy God, in
any “set apart” sense. Of course in the moment it was fun, joyful even, and we relished blending in with the bar crowd. But in retrospect I wish I’d contributed a better witness, living at least part of the call to “not be conformed to this world” (Rom. 12:2). I wish I’d been more mindful of how, even in a bar, I was called to be different, to let my light shine before others (Matt. 5:16). I came home from that conference and penned thoughts about the problematic desire for faith to “fit in” with the cool kids of the world.1
Like many of my Christian peers who grew up in a rather moralistic, protective, separatist evangelicalism, I fell prey to the all-too-common pendulum problem in my twenties. I attended parties (and hosted some) with Christian college students and graduates where kegs, beer pong, sake bombs, and vomiting were among the evening’s amusements. I watched movies and TV shows with little filter for unsavory or explicit content. In my efforts to avoid legalism, I abused Christian liberty.2 Because who wants to be prudish or lumped in with the hypocritical, holier-than-thou evangelicals so despised by society? No one.
But as uncomfortable as it is to embrace holiness and be noticeably different in the way we live in the world, it is essential for our vocation as the people of God.
WHY WE HATE HOLINESS
In today’s world, holy is the most offensive of all four-letter words. It’s far more acceptable to say, “My life is so messed up,” than it is to say, “I am striving to be holy.” For many, Christianity’s seeming obsession with holiness is one of its most distasteful qualities.
Why is holiness so reviled? One reason is simply that the pursuit of holiness also involves the acknowledgment of sin and the necessity of repentance. These are two words that are incredibly unfashionable: sin and repentance. In addition to implying that we are not good people, the words sin, repentance, and holiness conjure images of nuns with paddles, deceptively sweet (but kind of creepy) church ladies, and hypocritical pastors who decry the deviant sexual ethics of liberal America while they ravenously consume pornography behind closed doors.
Hypocrisy is a huge reason why we hate holiness. We’ve witnessed the inconsistencies of a “moral majority” that often failed morally, and fundamentalists who railed against the evils of pop culture while they perpetuated the evils of racism and sexism. We’ve seen too many people use the word holy while simultaneously ignoring the poor, condemning the homosexual, turning away the refugee, and covering up various forms of abuse.
For some nonbelievers, the idea that Christians are called to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48) is naive but innocuous, so long as believers keep their holiness and sin talk to themselves. What is abhorrent is when Christian morality is felt to be imposed on others or suggested as the preferred program for human flourishing. One man’s morality may be OK for him, but it’s not OK to suggest it is right for another. This implies a holier-than-thou superiority, and nothing is worse than being holier than thou.
OUR WARINESS OF "WORKS"
Even devout Christians can be uncomfortable with the word holiness. Many Protestants are skeptical of too much emphasis on sanctification, for example, lest it morph into works-merited righteousness. But the history of God’s covenant relationship with his people has always been one of both God’s sufficient grace and his desire for our response of obedient living. In his biblical theology of covenantal discipleship, Jonathan Lunde argues for a continuity between the old and new covenants in terms of the holy living that, though not understood to merit the covenantal blessings, is nevertheless expected of God’s people:
Though always established in grace, each biblical covenant also includes demands of righteousness from those who trust in [God’s] faithfulness to fulfill his covenantal promises. This means that covenantal grace never diminishes the covenantal demand of righteousness—righteousness that flows out of covenantal faith. As a result, faith and works of obedience will always be found in God’s true covenant partners.3
Jesus and Paul do not dispense with the importance of holiness for God’s people in the new covenant. In some cases Jesus actually calls his disciples to even higher standards than the Mosaic covenant, for example in the area of divorce (Mark 10:2–12), the expansion of the murder prohibition to also include anger (Matt. 5:21–26), or the elevation of the prohibition on adultery to also include lust (Matt. 5:27–30). But why? Jesus is not upping the expectation of righteousness to make it harder for people to enter his kingdom. No, salvation is by grace through faith, not of our own works (Eph. 2:8–9). Jesus is raising the bar because he wants his people to be noticeably different, a light in the dark world. It’s difference for the sake of mission.
THE DIFFERENCE OUR DIFFERENCE MAKES
Ever since Abraham was called by God to leave his homeland to found a new nation in an unknown land (Genesis 12), uncomfortable obedience and uncomfortable difference have been a part of what it means to be the people of God. Why? Because God is perfectly holy. “Be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:45; 19:2; 20:7; 21:8). God’s holiness is no joke. It’s why the Israelites crossing the Jordan were instructed to stay a thousand yards or more away from the ark (Josh. 3:4); it’s why Uzzah died for touching the ark (2 Sam. 6:6–7). It’s why the entire book of Leviticus is devoted to holy worship (chapters 1–10) and holy living (chapters 11–27). The minutiae of holiness in the Old Testament may seem a bit bizarre to us today, but that was sort of the point. Holiness is difference.
It is strange. But not for the sake of strangeness. For the sake of Yahweh.
The theme of holiness and separation is reiterated in the New Testament: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). Jesus also uses the light imagery when he says his followers are to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13–14). As Lunde notes, “Whatever Jesus intends by the images of ‘salt’ and ‘light,’ it is clear that his followers are to be different from those surrounding them in the world.” Salt was used in the ancient world for flavoring, for fertilizer, and as a preservative, in each case bringing something different and beneficial to the substance around it. Light also brings something different and beneficial to its surroundings (darkness).4 Like a lamp in a dark house, our light shines for a purpose: “So that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).
For Christians, there is a discomfort in being different, but it is for a missional purpose. It is for the sake of the world. As Rod Dreher notes in The Benedict Option, embracing a countercultural identity as Christians is not about our survival as much as our task to be a light to the world: “We cannot give the world what we do not have.”5
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING COUNTER-CULTURAL (IN GOOD WAYS)
As historians of the early church have pointed out recently, the earliest Christians recognized the vital importance of habits and behavior that were starkly different from those of the surrounding culture. For them, more important than believing in Christian virtues was living them, “embodying the Christian good news, bearing it in their bodies and actions, living the message visibly and forcefully so that outsiders would see what the Christians were about and, ideally, would be attracted to join them.”6
But our pursuit of holiness is also an act of worship, a response to God’s grace. The opening of Romans 12 calls Christians to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (v. 1). And the next verse underscores the connection between holiness and difference: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (v. 2).
“Do not be conformed to this world” is one of the most grating verses of the Bible to many modern ears, yet it is not just a Pauline one-off. The nonconforming set-apartness of God’s people is a major theme of the whole Bible. But it’s an unpopular idea these days, both for Christians who wish they could blend in and for nonbelievers pressuring religious institutions to compromise on their different-ness (for example in the recent push for Christian colleges to abandon their policies on sexual conduct, or for Christian business owners to provide services or insurance policies that compromise their beliefs).
But the logic of groups necessitates difference. In order for any group—whether a Jewish seminary, an African-American college fraternity, or an LGBT advocacy organization—to have a meaningful identity and flourish in its function, it must have boundaries. If a Jewish seminary started enrolling radical, Jew-hating Muslims, or if an African-American fraternity allowed white women to join, or if GLAAD hired James Dobson as its new president, these groups would cease to have any meaningful differentiation. In the same way, a Christian college or church ceases to be relevant when it abandons its conviction-driven distinctions to fit the prevailing winds of politics and culture. Pluralism only makes sense if individual groups are allowed to be themselves. When boundaries are blurred and set-apartness is lost, everyone loses.
FROM MORAL MAJORITY TO PROPHETIC MINORITY
This is why Christian difference matters. When we blend in, when our boundaries are blurred or disappear altogether, our light in the darkness fades. Our salt loses its saltiness. This is why the shift Russell Moore describes in Onward, from an evangelical “moral majority” to a “prophetic minority,” is a good thing. It doesn’t mean we disengage from culture or build impenetrable, dialogue-averse walls around our institutions. What it means is engaged alienation: “a Christianity that preserves the distinctiveness of our gospel while not retreating from our callings as neighbors, and friends, and citizens.”7
The more Christians look, talk, act, and believe like the culture around us, the less interested others will be in what we have to offer. Why would anyone go to church and bother with Christianity if it is only a replica of the sorts of things they can find at the mall, movie theater, community center, or nightclub? It is the different-ness of the gospel, not its hipness, that changes lives and transforms the world.
- Those written thoughts eventually became my book Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010). ↩︎
- I explored the healthy balance between the two extremes in Brett McCracken, Gray Matters: Navigating the Space between Legalism and Liberty (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2013). ↩︎
- Jonathan Lunde, Following Jesus, the Servant King: A Biblical Theology of Covenantal Discipleship (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 50. ↩︎
- Ibid., 172–73. ↩︎
- Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Sentinel, 2017), 19. ↩︎
- Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 13. Kreider illustrates this focus on behavior and habitus by quoting early church leaders like Cyprian: “We know virtues by their practice rather than through boasting of them; we do not speak great things but we live them” (p. 13). Or Lactantius on a non-coercive missional strategy that is focused on embodying truth: “We use no guile ourselves, though they complain we do; instead, we teach, we show, we demonstrate” (p. 34). ↩︎
- Russell Moore, Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel (Nashville: B&H, 2015), 8. ↩︎
Content taken from Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community by Brett McCracken, ©2017. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.
Brett McCracken is the managing editor of Biola Magazine at Biola University and the author of Hipster Christianity and Gray Matters. He writes regularly for the Gospel Coalition website, Christianity Today, Relevant, and his website, BrettMcCracken.com.
The Baffling Call of God
August 5, 2014 was the darkest Tuesday of my life. My mother, critically ill with the Ebola virus, was returning from Liberia to the United States for treatment that we hoped would save her life.
The previous ten days had been a whirlwind of emotion. On July 26 my father had called late in the evening from Monrovia to say that mom had contracted the disease. She was serving as a nurse’s assistant in the isolation unit of a mission organization hospital when she became ill. Since Ebola was becoming an epidemic in West Africa, international news media quickly inundated us with requests for information regarding my mother’s condition and the family’s response.
I had placed it in my mind that mom would—like so many overseas missionaries before her—lose her life to a foreign disease. We’d been told there was no possibility of transport from the small house where she was being isolated to a first-world medical facility capable of better fighting the virus.
So it was a great surprise when we learned that she would be medically evacuated to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. She was due to arrive on August 5.
THE RIGHT WORDS FOR THE MOMENT
As my father and I spoke during the time between mom’s diagnosis and her transport and arrival in Atlanta, he shared how timely and encouraging Oswald Chambers’s devotional had been to him. He would read My Utmost For His Highest outside the bedroom window of the house where my mother was growing more and more ill, and it would sustain his heart through the gravity of the situation.
When my brother and I arrived in Atlanta we too began to read Chambers’s meditations along with some close friends. On the morning of August 5, as we awaited mom’s nationally televised arrival and transport to Emory, we read the entry titled “The Baffling Call of God.”
Confident of God’s call on my parents to serve Him in Africa, I was baffled by what they were enduring for the sake of the needy there. Furthermore, as I dealt with my own weary and broken heart, I was baffled at what God was doing in my own life. None of it made sense.
It all seemed like failure—and the conclusion of the matter would be death. I could relate to the disciples when they heard about Jesus’s mission to go to the cross: “They understood none of these things” (Luke 18:34 ESV).
THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS
We live in a cause-and-effect world, so trials and suffering bear down on us in ways we would never imagine. We desire—we insist on—lives that are clear-cut and explainable. We hate it when circumstances we can't control threaten our comfort and security.
When hardships, suffering, and trials hit our lives, our faith can be jolted deeply. It’s not uncommon for sufferers to bellow out to God, “Why?” And yet Jesus “led every one of [His disciples] to the place where their hearts were broken.”
Suffering feels like failure, like complete and utter defeat. The world calls it foolish.
From a certain perspective Jesus’s life looks a lot like this. As he left his family and carpentry trade at the age of thirty to begin an itinerant preaching ministry, he confused his family. They heard the reports of His ministry and miracles and concluded, “He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21).
He labored for the kingdom of God without a place to lay his head or call home (Luke 9:58). His teaching became difficult to understand, and the number of those who followed him dwindled (John 6:66). As he confronted the religious establishment, he created powerful enemies who sought to have him killed (Matthew 26:59). One of His own friends and followers betrayed him for a small sum of money. He was slandered, beaten, abused, mocked, rejected, unjustly tried, and ultimately executed as a criminal, in shame and disgrace.
The cross is foolishness if the “Savior of the world” hangs dead upon it.
FOOLISHNESS TURNED TRIUMPHANT WISDOM
Yet, from another perspective—the biblical one—we can see our sufferings in another light. The apostle Paul called the cross the wisdom and power of God. He saw from God’s standpoint a “tremendous triumph.”
Through the suffering and death of Jesus we have one who can stand in our place for our sins—and take them away. We have one who can mediate on our behalf and reconcile us to God. We have one who, by laying down His own life, won righteousness, peace, and life for us. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Following the utter defeat of the cross, the powerful resurrection of Jesus on the third day verified, vindicated, and validated all the suffering he endured for our sake. “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:12–14 ESV).
BAFFLED BY OUR SUFFERING
This leads us back to our own trials. The Scriptures show us we should not be surprised by “the fiery ordeal” (1 Peter 4:12). The Christian life is one that includes persecution (2 Timothy 3:12). We can expect difficulty and trials as marks of discipline from the hand of a heavenly Father who loves us and longs for us to be mature and complete (James 1:2–4, Hebrews 12:5–11). Suffering is a mark of the Christian life.
Still, like so many in the world today, we want to know the reason behind it.
But the gospel allows us to move ahead without having all the answers, without knowing perfectly the purposes of God. This doesn’t mean we can’t ask the "why" question or ponder the bigger picture; we simply become, as Chambers states, “less inclined to say—‘Now why did God allow this and that?’”
If we see the goodness of God in the seemingly foolish decision to send his Son to die on our behalf, then we can embrace his call to what may feel like an “unmitigated disaster” in our own lives.
CAN I TRUST GOD?
This is what the whole of faith truly boils down to: Can I trust God?
If we affirm that God is trustworthy and does all things for His glory and our good, then we can live with an unparalleled freedom to receive both the triumphs and the trials of life from his gracious hand. If all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28), then we are liberated from having to hold all the answers in our own hands.
The baffling call of God, although it can bewilder us, is ultimately a safe and rewarding call. It’s a release from the ever-present desire to control and maintain all things by our own power. It means I can be a child, safe in the hands of an omnipotent and gracious God, and he will lead me through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4).
Whatever God may have planned for my future—whatever he may have planned for your future—he is working out his purposes.
THE LEISURELINESS OF FAITH
As the air ambulance carrying my mother landed at Dobbins Air Reserve Base outside Atlanta on August 5, I could only wonder at the baffling call of God. The aims of God’s work and call in the life of my family were not clear. The anguish and turmoil of our hearts swelled as we became a public spectacle of suffering. My parents’ mission to Liberia looked like an utter failure.
And yet, in God’s hands and by his power, we could trust his great purposes. As a child of God I could cling to his mercy and ask for his grace in my pain. I could trust “the wits and the wisdom” of God, to use Chambers’s phrase, that ultimately everything would be okay—even if that meant my mother’s death.
I could even trust God’s baffling call when mom’s health made an incredible turn for the better. I could rest with joy when God healed her of the terrible Ebola virus. I could trust his providence when he called my parents back to Liberia—back to the mission—even when others might argue the cost was too great.
I can walk with a leisureliness of faith because what looks like failure to the world is, from God’s perspective, the fragrance of life.
Taken from Utmost Ongoing: Reflections on the Legacy of Oswald Chambers, © 2017 by Discovery House. Used by permission of Discovery House, Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.
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.
Book Re-Release | Sent Together by Brad Watson
Today we are re-releasing one of our most popular and helpful books, Sent Together
by Brad Watson. Sent Together is helpful for both leaders and churches looking for wise and practitioner tested strategies to make disciples through community. The Second Edition includes updated content and has been thoroughly edited.
If you have not picked up Sent Together today is an excellent time to get this into the hands of the leaders you are equipping to see gospel-centered discipleship move forward in your city.
Pick up a Kindle or paperback copy here.
Jesus does not simply call us to be a lovely community together, but he sends us out to our neighborhoods, towns, and cities to declare and demonstrate the gospel. In fact, the gospel beckons men and women to take up the call of leading and starting communities that are sent like Jesus.
In Sent Together, Brad Watson helps leaders discover what it means to start communities centered on the gospel and mission. By exploring the gospel motivations that send leaders to start missional communities, Watson gives readers a framework for the purpose and ways of building a community that is deepening its understanding of the gospel, while also sharing it. Sent Together will serve as a field guide for leaders and training guide for those called to start missional communities.
Brad A. Watson enjoys encouraging, challenging, and helping followers of Jesus to live on mission in community by helping them connect the gospel with its implications to their daily lives.Brad serves as an equipping elder of Soma Culver City in Los Angeles, California, where he lives with his wife and their three children. Globally, he has the privilege of coaching and resourcing church leaders on how to form gospel-centered communities that love God and serve their cities.
Brad is the author of the Together series of missional books (GCD Books) and co-author of Raised? Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection (Zondervan). He also serves as a board member of Gospel Centered Discipleship. Connect with Brad at BradAWatson.com where he writes about community, mission, coaching, and leadership.
A Long Obedience In an Instagram Age
How do we get people's attention long enough to disciple them? Here are four ways to encourage people toward a long obedience in an Instagram age.
If the results of Microsoft’s infamous study are correct, you have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. That means I have eight seconds to grab your attention before you click away from reading this. The study led Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, to conclude we live in a world where “the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention.”
We’re more distracted than ever, constantly feeling overwhelmed by the torrent of information that floods our eyes and ears each day. Arcade Fire’s newest album, Everything Now, captures the spirit of our distracted age. In a surging song that sounds like several playing at once, frontman Win Butler holds up a mirror to the modern world with these words:
Infinite content Infinite content We're infinitely content All your money is already spent on it All your money is already spent Infinite content
Butler is warring against the Instagram age, mocking our contentment with endless streaming, infinite music, and never-ending social media feeds.
One of Eugene Peterson’s books on following Jesus is titled A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. His message is that discipleship to Jesus takes discipline and attention, and he’s right.
But how do we get people's attention long enough to disciple them? Here are four ways to encourage people toward a long obedience in an Instagram age.
1. EDUCATE YOURSELF (AND YOUR DISCIPLES)
You probably feel like Tony Reinke about your phone:
My phone is a window into the worthless and the worthy, the artificial and the authentic. Some days I feel as if my phone is a digital vampire, sucking away my time and my life. Other days, I feel like a cybernetic centaur—part human, part digital—as my phone and I blend seamlessly into a complex tandem of rhythms and routines.[1]
We can’t go on living as if constant connection to our devices isn’t changing anything. Paul tells us we are to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). If our attention jumps every eight seconds, we don’t stand a chance against an enemy who would love to distract us to death.
Christians must become more educated about the good and bad of smartphones and other devices. We are a people of the word, a people who lift up the Son of God as being the very Word of God. If anyone is to take their attention seriously, it should be disciples of Jesus.
There are some great resources about technology and faithful discipleship to Jesus. Andy Crouch’s The Tech-Wise Family and Tony Reinke’s 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You are both excellent at giving an overview of the pros and cons of technology and how to live wisely with our devices.
Tristan Harris, the former design ethicist at Google, has some great articles and videos from a secular perspective that explain what’s really going on at big tech companies, and how they design their apps and products.
Educate yourself on what’s going on, then educate those you disciple as well. It would be a major disservice to those you’re discipling to never address the device that’s likely sucking up two or more hours of their day.
2. TEACH THAT SPIRITUAL GROWTH DOESN’T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT
There’s a reason almost every metaphor for spiritual growth in the Bible relates to gardening. Spiritual growth takes time, and much of it is out of our control. Just like with gardening, disciples of Jesus will experience seasons of growth, seasons of drought, and times of harvest. There will be times to celebrate, and times to grieve.
We have to remember that the men and women we’re discipling are living in an “everything now” age. The titular song of Arcade Fire’s album exposes the desire pulsing through those you disciple:
I need it (Everything now!) I want it (Everything now!) I can't live without (Everything now!) I can't live without (Everything now!) I can't live (Everything now!)
If this is the internal dialogue of many in the church (and I think it is), then our constant reminders to have a quiet time or serve their neighbors can become really frustrating when they don’t see progress, especially when they’re used to Amazon bringing whatever they want to their door in two days.
We’re programmed to want immediate satisfaction, but that’s simply not how spiritual growth works. We want a microwaveable faith, but the one we’ve been given is a crockpot faith. Low and slow is the key to following Jesus—it’s how you get that unmistakable flavor of someone who has simmered in the flavors of Christ.
We have to constantly remind those we disciple that following Jesus is a lifelong pursuit. What they’re after is a life that’s more and more obedient to Jesus every day, even if they have trouble seeing the daily change. The good news is we’re not alone in our pursuit of holiness. This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6 ESV).
Even though we’re guaranteed to screw up along the way, God will see through the work he started when he saved us. Teach your disciples that spiritual growth doesn’t happen overnight, and remind them they’re not in it alone.
3. ASK MORE, NOT LESS
The temptation is to cater your approach in order to get people’s attention. In the church, that means we start shortening services, asking less of volunteers, or lowering the bar for membership. But to ask less is to miss the point.
Jesus was constantly surrounded by people claiming they wanted to follow him. Every time people asked how they could become one of his disciples he responded not by lowering, but raising, the bar.
“I will follow you wherever you go!” someone proclaimed to the Messiah. “Think again; I don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight,” Jesus answered (Luke 9:57-58).
“I’ll follow you. Just let me bury my father first,” another said. Jesus replied, “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke 9:59-60).
“I’ll follow you too!” said another. But Jesus turned and said, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:61-62).
Jesus responded to sincere requests by raising the bar so high it forced his would-be disciples to count the cost of making him their Lord. And he calls us to do the same today.
We cannot respond to an eight-second attention span with ten-second devotionals. Not if we’re going to build the kingdom of God. The Master himself spent three years of concentrated time with those he discipled. He walked, talked, taught, and slept right alongside them. That’s far more discipleship than most of us fit in over cups of coffees in the same amount of time.
Asking more of our disciples means we set the bar high from the outset. In my own discipleship groups, I’ve been clear about the expectations on the front end. I tell them it won’t be easy, that it will be more work than they’re used to, but it will also be a time of accelerated spiritual growth they won’t regret if they see it through. I let them know I’m asking the following of them over the next 12 to 18 months:
Daily Scripture reading (in the beginning, the willingness to form this habit)
Weekly Bible study homework (Discipleship Essentials or Multiply)
Weekly memory verses
Weekly meetings
Participation in serving opportunities throughout the year
They’re given time to think through and pray over that list before the first meeting, so they have plenty of time to count the cost. That way, if they know they’re not going to commit to those things, it saves both of us time and allows me to focus my attention on someone who is ready.
If we’re going to get our disciples’ attention, we have to raise the bar to the same place Jesus did. In a superficial time of excess, the call to true discipleship will surely be off-putting to some. But for those who are willing to make Jesus their Lord, the call to more is a call they’ve been waiting for.
4. SHOW THEM JESUS
While the answer to discipling men and women with tiny attention spans lies in asking more of them, we still have to be realistic about what we can expect, especially early on. They’re trying to become disciples of Jesus, but they’ve been discipled by the culture for far longer.
When a guy commits to being a part of a discipleship group with me, I know he’ll struggle with reading the Bible daily and memorizing Scripture. His attention span is short, he’s easily distracted, and might have trouble completing tasks on a routine basis. He’s used to looking at Facebook, Instagram, or email first thing in the morning, not Matthew, Mark, or Luke.
The same is probably true of those you’re trying to teach to follow Jesus. Know that growth may come slow. Expect to have the same conversation about turning off Netflix and opening the Bible over and over again. But beware of the temptation of frustration.
As disciple-makers in an Instagram age, we can end up being distracted by frustration over our disciples’ pace of growth, which causes us to miss explaining the most foundational thing in discipleship—Jesus.
When the weekly meeting comes up and the guys I’m discipling explain they didn’t get their reading done or didn’t memorize the verse, I can either get frustrated, or I can see the moment for what it is—a chance to give them grace and show them Jesus.
If you pay attention to the Spirit’s work, you can seize these kinds of opportunities and watch God make the most of it. These are the times when a man or woman looks up with guilt in their eyes and, instead of sighing and telling them to try harder, you get to say:
“I’ll be glad to help you come up with some strategies for getting up on time and getting your reading done. But first we’re going to talk about guilt, which is not from God. God convicts; only the devil condemns. When we put our faith in Jesus, it is no longer our performance that counts, but his. His perfect righteousness covers up our imperfect sinfulness. You don’t need to wallow in that guilt. Look to Jesus, believe your sin has been paid for, and keep moving forward.”
When they hear the gospel spoken into their life in a specific way, they’re driven to awe that Jesus laid down his life for theirs. The fledgling disciple’s heart is softened to the work of Christ, and the work of gospel change begins.
KEEP GOING
Following Jesus means entering into a lifetime of continual transformation. It means settling into a long obedience in the same direction.
And to teach others how to do it means we have to learn how to get—and keep—their attention.
[1] Tony Reinke, 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, p. 15
Grayson Pope (M.A., Christian Studies) is a husband and father of four and the Managing Web Editor at Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship. For more of Grayson’s writing check out his website or follow him on Twitter.
New Book Release | Kelly Havrilla’s Gospel Glories from A to Z
We are releasing Kelly Havrilla’s Gospel Glories from A to Z in three formats—a digital edition, a black and white paperback, and a full color edition (click “look inside” to view full color images for the first several chapters). The Christian life is knowing God. It is not an impersonal knowledge of bare facts but one rooted in wonder at "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6). It is knowing that basks in the glories of the gospel.
In Gospel Glories from A to Z, Kelly Havrilla works to reflect some of that glory onto each page as she connects deep biblical truths through the structure of the alphabet. Useful for both those new to the beauty of Christianity and those looking for a fresh way to grow deeper this book aims to make God's grace abundantly clear and accessible. Our hope is is that this reflection will spark a desire to venture into deeper waves of gospel glories.
If you love rich theology and great design, don’t hesitate to pick up our first ever full color book! Enjoy this excerpt from the “Preface.”
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Corinthians 5:21
“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” That is the good news about Jesus Christ in a sentence, and that is the best news of all time for the entire world. The gospel, which means good news, is the centerpiece of the Christian message. It explains that although every person is separated from God because of sin, God in his justice, mercy, and love has made a way for us to be made right with him. And that way is remarkably simple—trusting in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
The Bible teaches that Jesus brought peace between God and man through his perfect life, sacrificial death on a cross, and resurrection from the grave. Jesus himself proclaimed in the Gospel of John, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6) This is an extraordinary claim. C.S. Lewis, Oxford theologian and author of the famous Chronicles of Narnia series, posed a compelling statement about Jesus. He said in view of all that Jesus did and said about himself, one cannot view him as merely an incredible teacher, a remarkable Prophet, or an exceptionally moral man. He must be either a liar, a lunatic, or he is who he said he is—Lord of all.
It’s a wonderfully amazing thing that we have the most credible and well-attested books of all time testifying about the life and works of Jesus—the Bible. Comprised of both Old and New Testaments with 66 books written by about 35 authors over a period of some 2000 years, the Bible has God’s ultimate plan of redemption as its singular theme. It repeatedly points to Jesus as the only person qualified to accomplish the task. The Bible authoritatively and accurately records who Jesus was, what he did, what he said, what others thought of him, and how they reacted to his claims. His greatest claim is that he is the very Son of God, sent by his Father—who so loved the world—on a rescue mission to save people on planet earth. And that is indeed good news!
In a New Testament letter to the church in Corinth, the Apostle Paul wrote, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). This is the good news from the pen of the great Apostle in concise form. God sent Jesus to earth to die for sins, and to rise again, so that those who trust in him can be forgiven of their sins and be declared righteous.
In the following pages, we will navigate our way through the alphabet of twenty-six gospel rich words; words which will enlighten, encourage and challenge us all. The gospel is the only true life-giving message in all the universe. I pray you learn it, believe it, and embrace it for yourself.
Kelly Havrilla lives in Plymouth, MI, with her husband David. They are both outdoor enthusiasts, love hiking in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and enjoy spending time with family and friends. After a career in marketing at General Motors she has pursued a variety of creative endeavors. However, her greatest passion is the gospel. Over the years God has graciously opened numerous avenues into several local and international communities into which she and David have opportunities to minister and share the gospel. From this passion and desire was born the Gospel Glories project.
An Unredeemed Sense of Guilt
The human conscience is a like a fine musical instrument. When in tune, it plays lovely music. When out of tune, it sounds wrong notes. A conscience rightly oriented has three characteristics: What is the standard? You evaluate yourself (and others) by God’s standards of right and wrong.
Who is the judge whose opinion matters? How God views you matters more than how you view yourself (self-esteem) or how others view you (reputation).
Where do you turn when you fail? You rely on God’s mercies in Christ.
Experiences of sexual darkness bring disorientation to the conscience. We will look at two problems: the self-righteousness of a seared conscience and the self-condemnation of an anguished conscience.
First, a dull or seared conscience is a deadly affliction. Many sexual behaviors are misbehaviors, but the conscience feels no guilt or shame. Instead, wrongdoing is defended and even extolled as normal and desirable—the wrong standard. Appeal is made to the authority of personal desires and popular opinion—the wrong judges. There is no need for mercy because people are okay as they are—self-salvation by self- righteousness is assumed. The conscience reassures itself, “Peace, peace,” but there is no peace. The operations of the conscience fail the test of reality on all three counts. But God can take such a heart of stone and make such a person come to life.
Second, an anguished conscience is an exceedingly painful affliction. Feelings of guilt and shame become stuck in a vortex of self-condemnation. Rightly aroused guilt and shame are good gifts of God. They signal that something is wrong. Guilt senses failure against a standard that matters; shame senses failure before the eyes that matter. These feelings are natural, God-given repercussions when our conscience is alive to genuine personal failure before God. But guilt and shame are meant to go somewhere good.
What do you do when you find yourself drowning in self-condemnation? The normal aftermath of doing wrong (or thinking you have done wrong) is to feel guilt, shame, regret, and remorse. But what comes next? We are meant to seek and find mercy and refuge in the loving welcome of our Father. But when we are not alive to the mercies of Christ, what follows is a predictable cycle of repetitive self-reproach, resolutions to change, self-punishing penance, attempts to forgive ourselves, hollow rationalizations, trying to make up for the wrong by compensating actions, self-concealment, escapism to numb pain and shame, and, finally, despair.
Consider two self-condemnation scenarios. What happens when the conscience is accurate—for example, “My girlfriend and I were wrong to do that”—but blind to the mercies of God? Right standard, right judge. But this true sense of guilt spirals in many fruitless directions. And what happens when the conscience is inaccurate? For example, “I should have done something to avoid being sexually abused. It must have been my fault. I feel horrible about myself and ashamed to let anyone know.” Wrong standard, wrong judge. And self-blame for wrong reasons is inevitably blind to God’s mercies, so it spirals in further fruitless directions. The second scenario calls for a more comprehensive reorientation of the conscience, but both forms of self-condemnation need to find the mercies of God.
Consider a situation where actual sin has occurred. An unmarried man and woman have not treated one another respectfully, as brother and sister, but have indulged in heavy petting. They know they’ve done wrong. But, like many strugglers, they oscillate between moments of obsession with erotic pleasure and days of obsession with moral failure. Guilt turns them inward.
But grace invites them out of themselves. So simple to say, so hard to do. We routinely underestimate how radically faith relies on fresh mercies freely given. Grace means that what makes things right comes to this brother and sister from outside themselves. It’s a sheer gift from their Father and their Savior given courtesy of the Holy Spirit. They don’t get it by self-laceration, by trying to work up a different set of feelings, by trying to say it’s not that big a deal, by resolutions to do better, by distracting themselves. They are forgiven, accepted, and saved from death by God’s mercy. Listen to how Scripture shows a person dealing candidly with his former and current sins. The italics highlight how much his hope amid guilt lies outside himself:
Remember, O Lord, Your compassion and Your lovingkindnesses, for they have been from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; According to Your lovingkindness remember me, For Your goodness’ sake, O Lord.
..........................
For Your name’s sake, O Lord, Pardon my iniquity, for it is great. (Ps. 25:6–7, 11 NASB)
David’s sexual sin was high-handed. It tore his conscience (Psalms 32, 38, 51). It brought immediate and long-lasting consequences (2 Sam. 12:10–12, 14–15). Yet David was truly forgiven (2 Sam. 12:13). He experienced the joy of repentance and the wisdom, clarity, and purposeful energy that real repentance brings—captured in those same psalms and the rest of 2 Samuel 12. Notice how David radically appeals to the quality of “Your compassion . . . lovingkindnesses . . . goodness . . . O Lord.” David’s own conscience remembers only too well what he did. But he appeals to what God will choose to remember. In effect, “When God looks at me, will he remember my sin or his own mercies? O Lord, when you think about me, remember yourself.” Understanding these last few sentences will forever change your experience of failure.
So let’s make it personal. Are you haunted by your sins in the eyes of God, in the eyes of your conscience, and in the eyes of others who might find out? Your sin may have just occurred a few minutes ago; or it may be a distant but potent memory. Perhaps you don’t commit that sin anymore. You’ve come far and no longer feel any allure to a lifestyle you once avidly pursued. Or perhaps you just did it again. But the memory—whether fresh-minted or ancient history—fills you with dismay. Perhaps immediate and long-term consequences of your sin run far beyond the repercussions within your conscience: abortion, STD, inability to bear children, ongoing vulnerability to certain kinds of temptations, a bad reputation, ruined relationships, wasted time, failed responsibilities. Nobody did this to you; you did it to yourself. The sense of shame and dirty distaste haunts your sexuality just as it haunts those who were victimized. Only you victimized yourself (and others you betrayed). You, too, feel like damaged goods. Sex is not bright, iridescent, cheerful, restrained, generous, matter-of-fact. It is not a flat-out good to be enjoyed with your spouse, or saved should you ever marry.
You might live with such guilty feelings in your singleness. You might have brought them into your marriage. Perhaps you are afraid of relationships, because you know from bitter experience that you can’t be trusted. Perhaps it’s hard to shake off the train of bleak associations that attach to sexual feelings and acts.
Just as sin and suffering turn us in on ourselves, so guilt and shame spiral inward. But living repentance and faith turn outward to the one whose opinion most matters. What God chooses to “remember” about you will prove decisive. Your conscience, if well tuned, is secondary. (This retuning is the core dynamic in renewing an inaccurate conscience.) Your self-evaluation depends on the evaluation he makes and the stance he takes. If the Lord is merciful, then mercy gets final say. It is beyond our comprehension that God acts mercifully for his sake, because of what he is like. Wrap your heart around this, and the typical aftermath of sin will never be the same. You will stand in joy and gratitude, not grovel in shame. You’ll be able to get back about the business of life with fresh resolve, not just with good intentions and some flimsy New Year’s resolutions to do better next time. This is our hope. This is our deepest need. This is our Lord’s essential and foundational gift.
You need to know how faith in Christ’s mercy decenters you off of yourself and re-centers you onto the living God’s promise and character. You know other people who need to know this. We typically mishandle the aftermath of sin with further forms of the God-lessness that manufactures sin. The One “to whom we must give an account” freely offers mercy and grace to help us by the loving-kindness of the Lord Jesus Christ (Heb. 4:13–16).
David Powlison (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a teacher, a counselor, and the executive director of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation. He is also the senior editor of the Journal of Biblical Counseling and the author of Seeing with New Eyes, Good & Angry, and Speaking Truth in Love.
Content taken from Making All Things New: Restoring Joy to the Sexually Broken by David Powlison, ©2017. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.
Recapturing the Wonder
In Susanna Clarke’s wonderful fairytale Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, she tells a story about the rediscovery of magic in England in the nineteenth century. In the beginning of the tale, magic has vanished from England. It remains part of English folklore, like the story of King Arthur, but no one has actually practiced it in many years. Nonetheless, there were men who called themselves magicians. They did so in spite of the fact that “not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course or changed a single hair upon any one’s head. But with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentlemen in Yorkshire.” These magicians spent their days in lengthy arguments about theoretical magic, debating the use of this spell over that, nitpicking the details of magic’s history in England, meeting once a month and reading “long, dull papers” to one another. The idea of actually practicing magic was vulgar.
Then Mr. Norrell showed up. He cast a spell that made all of the statues in Yorkshire’s cathedral come to life: shouting, singing, and telling stories about the deaths of the men and women those images they bore. The magicians of Yorkshire were speechless. The world was far different than they’d believed.
I couldn’t help but feel a certain sadness reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I found myself identifying with the magicians of Yorkshire. My life as a Christian had left me with a certain amount of fluency with faith: I could keep up in conversations about theology, the history of the Bible, the world of the first century, and the history of the church. I could talk a bit about apologetics and worldview. And I could talk a good bit about worship and liturgy in the church. But as I read Clarke’s book, I couldn’t help but feel the gap between knowing and know-how, between what I knew I could say about my faith and what I could do with it. At times, my faith felt like a boxed-in corner of my life, separate and distinct from the rest of it.
Strangely, this isn’t because of a lack of events in my life that could be called miraculous. In fact, I’ve seen more than a few things that I can’t explain rationally, and I’ve had spiritual experiences that felt no less than spectacular. But these, too, felt somehow boxed-in, an island I occasionally took a ferry to, rather than the mainland of my everyday experience. Even the little things that make up a “Christian” life—going to church, reading the Bible, and so on—felt tacked on and disconnected from the rest of my life. My ordinary life felt strangely irreligious.
Much of this book is an attempt to understand why such a gap exists and what we might do about it. It’s an attempt to sketch out the spiritual landscape of an age that has been called a “secular age,” an “age of anxiety,” and a “culture of narcissism,” and an effort at finding a path into a different way of life.
Transformation is a before-and-after story, and to know what the after looks like (and how to get there), it’s necessary to have a sense of the before. For most Christians, our before picture is shaped by decades of immersion in this strange world and strange culture that surrounds us. It’s had a deep and powerful formative effect on us.
This is an age where our sense of spiritual possibility, transcendence, and the presence of God has been drained out. What’s left is a spiritual desert, and Christians face the temptation to accept the dryness of that desert as the only possible world. We have enough conviction and faith to be able to call ourselves believers, but we’re compelled to look for ways to live out a Christian life without transcendence and without the active presence of God, practicing what Dallas Willard once called “biblical deism”—a strange bastardization of Christianity that acts as though, once the Bible was written, God left us to sort things out for ourselves.
In such a world, the Bible feels like a dead text and our prayers seem to bounce answerless off the drywall. Practicing our faith feels more fruitless than talking about it, and we end up very much like the magicians of Yorkshire, able to talk fluently about magic and almost certain that it doesn’t exist. The practical magic that’s missing isn’t just the dramatic—healing the sick or raising the dead. Rather, it’s the more quiet and invisible magic of how anxious souls find wholeness and how broken people find healing. We might be fluent in the language of faith but unable to pray, overwhelmed by fear and anxiety, and victim to the compulsive, distracting habits that fill our age. We might be able to articulate the doctrine and dogma of the gospel but feel as though we’re doing so from the outside looking in.
I want to better understand how we got here, the reasons we feel this resistance, and the ways we’ve intentionally and unintentionally cultivated it. Most of all, I want to try to describe how we might live differently.
Mike Cosper is a writer, speaker, and podcaster. In 2016, he founded Harbor Media, a non-profit media company serving Christians in a post-Christian world. He's the host of Cultivated: A Podcast about Faith and Work, and is developing The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a podcast about faith and culture.
Taken from Recapturing the Wonder by Mike Cosper. Copyright (c) 2017 by Mike Cosper. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Ask Him for Joy
Like a seismograph, my wife is intimately tuned to recognize any time the ground is moving in the lives and needs 0f our five children. She can sense a fever from a mile away and knows if her offspring need a Kleenex five minutes before a nose begins to run. This has come not only because of the amazingly intuitive and attentive mother she is, but also because of the immense amount of time that she has invested in our children. She has been the primary resource to meet every one of their needs from their conception onward. As each of our five children developed in her womb, there was not a physical need her body didn’t anticipate or provide for them. As they have entered the world and have grown, she has been a constant presence and provider for them. When they have a need, she meets it. As a result, they go to her for almost everything.
It’s a bit humorous when I’m at home, because even when I’m close by and available to meet their needs, my kids don’t default to me as a major resource for their most basic needs. There are times when I will be in the room near my wife when one of my smaller children walks in and asks her a question like, “Does Daddy have to go to work today?” At that moment, Keri and I will exchange a bemused and knowing glance. Her eyes will momentarily return to the child’s, and with the power of a gravitational force (I’m convinced that mothers actually have tractor beams in their eyes) will guide a pair of five year-old eyes—simply with a nod—to my waiting and attentive face. She’ll gently say, “Your dad is right here. Ask him.”
The resulting transformation of a child’s face from query to comprehension (and on a good day, to delight) is miraculous. It’s as if a veil has been lifted and the child has noticed my presence in their world for the very first time. Their eyes widen, a smile broadens across their face, and oftentimes a hug ensues (these are the sweet times). The child’s attention is then diverted to me, and the questioner has been re-introduced to the appropriate party with a simple directive: “Your dad is right here for you. Ask him.”
Christ, the Perfect Mediator
Christian theology has long acknowledged and celebrated Christ’s unique office as Mediator: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). Through his sacrificial and atoning death, burial, resurrection and ascension, Christ has accomplished the enduring reconciliation of relationship between God and his people. There is no greater truth, no greater reality.
And yet the robustness of Jesus’ mediation is often weakened when we tell ourselves that maybe God isn’t really happy with us. Maybe he just tolerates us. So we are hesitant to get too close to him. This is one reason why we need Jesus to continuously run interference for us with an unhappy God.
The fact of the matter is that Christ is such a perfect mediator between us and God that he has provided a way for us to come to the Father directly. His righteousness is now our own (2 Cor. 5:21), and we are counted as fully-vested, adopted children. It is utterly profound, and often rather difficult, for us to believe what Jesus says in John 16:
“In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full…In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you.” – John 16:23–24, 26–27
Jesus references a radical change in relationship between his followers and his Father that will happen through his mediating work; specifically, through his redemptive death, burial, resurrection and ascension. Jesus is assuring his gathered disciples that “that day” will come when direct access to the Father will take place. In that day, Jesus says that we will be able to ask directly, that is, we will be able to pray. We will be able to approach the Father directly in Jesus’ name and through his mediating work—and we will be the ones asking (“I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf”). In turn, the Father himself will be the one hearing, listening, and responding, “for the Father himself loves you.”
A pastor friend of mine often reminds me that at the core of the gospel is the often-missed truth that Jesus died so that we could pray. The author of the letter to the Hebrews assures us that we may “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16). We have truly been given “boldness and access” to the Father “with confidence through our faith in him” (Eph. 2:18, 3:12).
And God expects us to come, to pray, and to ask. In fact, he commands us to ask. He wants us to ask. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “Your Dad is right here for you. Ask him.”
Ask Out of Joy, Not Shame
But, if you’re like me, prayer is often a labor and a grind for you, accompanied by overtones of duty, burden, and guilt. We know we ought to pray, so we simultaneously carry an awareness of our deficiency in prayer. Ask any of your Christian friends how their prayer life is going, and you will likely get a sheepish aversion of the eyes, a quick change of the subject, or a dejected expression.
Yet the fact that we now have access to the very throne of God is incredible, and should be for us a source of much joy. What else could bring us greater joy than a new, intimate relationship with God himself? God doesn’t want us to associate prayer with guilt and shame. Instead, he grants us the ability to find joy in our relationship with him through prayer: “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (Jn. 16:24).
We often take this to mean that our joy will be full because of our receiving, but its true meaning is deeper than this. Joy comes because of the relationship in which we can ask God something because he loves us:
“In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you.” – John 16:26-27 (emphasis added)
Perhaps Jesus is saying that joy comes because of our new relationship with the One whom we are asking—the One who is present; the One who loves us; the One who listens to and answers our requests. Because of this new relationship, we are learning to ask for that which is actually able to make us joyful. As a result, we receive what we truly want, the very thing that we will find ourselves asking for, more of God.
ASKING FOR JOY
What if instead of loading our prayer life with false expectations, guilt, fear, aversion, humiliation, anger, frustration, or even boredom, we were to ask for what God is so willing to give? What if we were to ask God for joy?
For God prayer is all about relationship; it’s all about being with his children. And for us, it should be about being with our Father, in whose presence is fullness of joy (Ps. 16:11). God would have you be joyful, even in your sadness, sorrow, broken-heartedness and pain. So come to him—especially if you don’t feel joyful—and ask for joy from the Healer, the Care-giver, and the only One who can turn your sorrow into joy.
Ask for joy! Fight for joy! Find joy! For in Christ, you are in the smiling, happy presence of the God who made you and loves you more than you could ever ask or imagine. He wants to be with you. He wants you to devote your time and attention and energy to him. He loves you and offers you joy.
Your Dad is right here for you. Ask him.
Mike Phay serve as Lead Pastor at FBC Prineville (Oregon) and as an Affiliate Professor at Kilns College in Bend, OR. He has been married to Keri for 20 years and they have five amazing kids (Emma, Caleb, Halle, Maggie, and Daisy). He loves books and coffee, preferably at the same time.
Odd, but Good, News
On a cold February night in Lake Placid, New York, a few thousand American men and women cheered hysterically in disbelief. So did Al Michaels, a man paid to be stoic and professional as he announced the broadcasted hockey game. “Do you believe in miracles?! Yes!” The United States National Hockey Team shocked the world and defeated the Soviet Union, the Goliath of hockey at the time, before going on to win the gold medal. Who would have guessed? John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two American revolutionaries, stood divided over how much of the federal government’s nose should be in the people’s business. Disparagement and muckraking ensued. But time healed these wounds, and Adams and Jefferson went on to become friends again, writing letters back and forth for over a decade. Their lives ended five hours apart from each other on the same day. That day was July 4—the very same day their country would celebrate its independence.
I sat down with my family to play a trivia game. The question read, “Which of these state laws is true?” There are four choices. I picked the answer that sounded the most ridiculous, one we all laughed at when we read it aloud, and I got it right. “It was too strange not to be true,” I quipped.
Sometimes, what makes the truth so believable is how unbelievable it is. This is why G.K. Chesterton said, “There is generally something odd in the truth.” It was a sense of oddness that saved my faith some years ago.
MY QUEST FOR TRUTH
At some point, every Christian deals with the reality of doubt in their lives. Maybe it’s a momentary thought or a season of spiritual depression, but we all have a time when we ask ourselves, “Is all of this really true? Is the Bible really God’s words? Is Jesus who he said he was?”
My moment was brief, but very real. It was more than an annoyance or a bother—it shook me. I felt like I was in a spiritual crisis. Would a few questions topple decades of Christian teaching I experienced? I began to read notable Christian apologists and secular New Atheists in tandem. My thought was to weigh the two sides, see which one holds more clout and makes more sense, then go with whichever one made more sense. That was not a foolproof decision, though. After all, my quest revolved around faith—a word contingent on mystery and trust. I soon realized that in order to profess or deny faith in Christ, one must come face-to-face with God’s Word itself and say, “Yes,” or, “No.”
So, I put down Richard Bauckham and Richard Dawkins and picked up the Bible. These words are different, claiming to be the self-professed words of God. They are their own apologist. If that was the case, then I could simply read these words and see what happened.
THE ODDNESS OF SCRIPTURE
As I began to read the Scriptures, I pleaded with God: “Help my unbelief!” And he did. One way he did was by pointing me to the oddity of it all. It was that same strangeness in the truth I had identified over a board game, the unnaturalness that made me say, “That must be the answer…” And I believed.
I read about Adam and Eve. As I read the opening chapters of Genesis, my eyes almost glazed over. Thankfully, the Lord stopped me in my tracks with a sentence I had never noticed before. “And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them” (Gen. 3:21).
I’m not sure why, but it stunned me. I began to wonder why. Why would God do this, especially to people who just spit in his face with their sinfulness? Why would the author include this detail? This is…odd.
I kept reading. I found more odd things.
I read about Noah, but from God’s perspective for the first time. Mankind had been nothing but a disgrace to his name. God has every right, as holy Ruler of all, to condemn them and go back to the drawing board. But he doesn’t. He gives a sin-stained race a second chance through the line of Noah.
I read about Abraham, who God blesses with a son in remarkably old age, only to ask Abraham to climb a mountain and sacrifice him before eventually preserving his life in the end.
I read that God appoints a man named Moses with a lisp to make one of the most important speeches in all of human history. God called him to go before King Pharaoh and demand the release of God’s people, and pronounce judgment if he fails to do so. This same man receives tablets with laws inscribed by God’s own finger.
I read prophecy after prophecy. I had hoped to catch a contradiction or an unfulfilled anecdote that all of church history skipped over. Nothing. The mercy of God litters chapter after chapter. What in the world? Even the genealogies are bewildering. God uses two prostitutes, an adulterous murderer, and a former pagan from Moab to pave the way for the promised King of all Kings.
Then I read about the birth of this King, whom the Bible calls “the Word made flesh” —Jesus Christ. It’s easy to miss just how odd this is when we’ve read it so much. God became man—that’s odd! He took on human flesh. He drank wine with the worst social class. He was a carpenter that travelled as a rabbi. He made blind men see. He slept. He became sin even then he knew no sin. He died on a cross for a stubborn, stiff-necked people. He was dead for three days, then came back to life. After he resurrected, he wanted some fish to eat. After all that, Jesus told his followers it was better for him to leave, but he promised he would send the Helper to remain with them in their hearts.
God has built His Church and preserved His Word over the course of human history. It’s the clear-cut, number one most widely-read, data-confirmed story in antiquity the world has ever heard, and the race for second is not even close.
I COULD NOT HAVE GUESSED
Little of this makes sense to my brain. If I was writing these stories,
- Adam and Eve would have been dismissed from the Garden naked and perpetually ashamed.
- Noah would have been drowned, too.
- Isaac would never have went to the mountain.
- Human error would have allowed for a prophecy here or there to be incorrect.
- God would have stayed where he was, and it would have been mankind’s responsibility to get their act together to get the benefits of heaven.
- Jesus wouldn’t have eaten a fish dinner.
The complexity, the oddness, of these events, rattled me. There was so much specificity, so much ugly, so much unlike what I could have imagined had I created this story myself. I began to realize that Scripture is not just this ancient set of tall tales, religious platitudes, and allegories. Instead of being old and dead, God’s Word is alive and active (Heb. 4:12). It is historical, and, therefore, visceral. It gets brutally honest and takes turns no one could have foreseen. We could have never written it. It is unpredictable, and therefore, worthy of our attention—but more than attention. If God is who he says he is in his Word, he becomes worthy of our worship.
C.S. Lewis sums this up in Mere Christianity:
“Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion that you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have.”
ODD, BUT GOOD, NEWS
The Miracle on Ice. The friendship of Adams and Jefferson.A state law in Alabama. God made man. Grace for sinners.
The story that God tells in and through His Word is truly unpredictable, not because God governs the world with haphazard hands, but because our minds can hardly fathom the truth of it all.
This year, Protestants everywhere celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, a time in which the commitment to Scripture alone was professed loud and clear. As one reads Scripture, he will find that God makes one invitation throughout the text to the reader: “Take me at my Word.”
Perhaps you hang in the tension of doubt and wonder what this means, if anything. Consider the uniqueness, the honesty, the earthiness of the biblical stories. Both Christian and secular apologists will give you everything they’ve got in terms of evidence, but at the end of the day your belief or unbelief will come down to your willingness to take God at His Word.
When you sift through the thin pages of a Bible, you will find a lot that is unlike anything you’ve ever read or heard. And that might be just enough to convince you.
Zach Barnhart currently serves as Student Pastor of Northlake Church in Lago Vista, TX. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University, and is currently studying at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, seeking a Master of Theological Studies degree. He is married to his wife, Hannah. You can follow Zach on Twitter @zachbarnhart or check out his personal blog, Cultivated.
Something Greater Than Disney
“You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me.” — John 5:39, CSB
I remember the day I missed meeting my hero.
As a 10-year old, I had posters and baseball cards of the greatest player of my childhood. The name Mark McGwire was spoken in reverential terms, hallowed among the Little League dugouts I live d in during hot, humid southern Missouri summers. Alongside his equally powerful "Bash Brother," Jose Canseco, we would imagine hitting home runs with the same power and distance. I was sure whenever the opportunity came for me to meet Mark McGwire and get his autograph, I would be ready.
Surprisingly, the meeting did occur. I literally ran into Mark McGwire. To my dismay, even some 30 years later, I did not recognize him. I was not ready with his rookie card in my back pocket and a Sharpie for him to sign it. I did not get to tell him how great his swing was or how I really wanted to be in the Oakland A’s dugout. Instead, I was distracted, focused on other things, not paying attention to where I was going as I walked through Disneyland with my family that fateful July 1989 evening.
The Major League Baseball All-Star game was in Anaheim that year, and the players were guests of honor at the evening Main Street Electrical Parade. Too overcome by all the magic and fun of a day at Disneyland, I was barely tuned into a scene where my favorite ballplayers were in the same location that I was.
As the spectacle concluded we wandered through the park wrapping up a day full of fun at the “happiest place on Earth." I don’t have a vivid memory of where in the park we were, except that it was dark, I was tired, and we were walking looking for one final, magical Mickey fix.
Distracted by all the activity around me, I plowed right into a rock-wall of a human being. I remember a chuckle, my embarrassment as I said "Excuse me," and walking along as if I had just run into an actual wall. As we moved on my dad pointed out that I had just walked into Mark McGwire. And yet, I had missed him.
Missing Great Glory for Just Good Enough
It may seem unfortunate that this happened to a wide-eyed 10-year-old , but the same thing happens to us often as we engage the Bible. We miss the greatest glory of the Scripture for side issues and lesser beauties. We miss the center of Scripture for the outlying artifacts that all point to the center itself. We miss the hero and focus on the attractions and events. We miss Jesus.
The religious leaders and thinkers of Jesus’ day were the chief violators of this reality. Day after day they would pore over the Scriptures. Bible study was their constant habit. They were masters of the Hebrew Bible, well versed in the story, law, poetry, and prophets. They won all the "sword drills," accumulated every Citation Award, and could recited every “Fighter Verse” written to date verbatim.
This pursuit of Bible excellence was commended. D.A. Carson points out, “Hillel affirms that the more study of the law, the more life, and that if a man gains for himself words of the law he has gained for himself life in the world to come.”1
Their Biblical mastery was superior, and from that superior position, it was assumed they possessed true life. In a way, they lived thinking he who memorizes the most verses wins.
Jesus, however, gave no satisfaction to this pursuit but rather condemned them for missing the point. Instead of seeing that the Scriptures were pointing clearly and explicitly to him as the Messiah, the religious leaders were unwilling to follow the signposts to Christ. Like a starving person focused more on place settings and silverware than the actual food that will save his life, these people cared little for the life offered to them in Jesus but rather wanted to parse, debate, and hyper-analyze the practices of keeping the religious law.
The problem wasn’t just one of Jesus’ day. Modern expressions of this kind of missing the point are commonplace within the church. Often I hear the Bible is talked about as an “instruction manual for life.” As if, by following the rules of the Bible we would be able to assemble the good life, much like following the instructions for IKEA furniture would lead to a completed Swedish apartment. This makes the Bible a moral sourcebook that misses the point of the greatness and glory of Jesus.
Another perspective is that the Bible is a "love letter from God." While it is true that the Bible shows us the love of God in Christ, the Bible's purpose is not to exist as a therapeutic resource to help lift our self-esteem. The purpose of God’s Word isn’t to wrap us in a warm, cuddly expression of how great and wonderful and loved we are because God finds us so valuable and worthwhile.
Yes, the Bible does include moral code and expressions of God’s affection for us. But life is not found in keeping the Law or in feeling affirmed and valued. When we use the Bible as a means to those ends, we miss the entire point, and we miss life itself!
If we look to the Bible to gain theological knowledge, validate our behavioral patterns, or affirm our bruised psyche, we exchange great glory for just good enough. And “good enough” won’t get us anywhere.
Don’t Miss Jesus!
For the reformers of the 16th-century church, the doctrine of sola scriptura wasn’t just about putting the Bible above the hierarchical structures of a corrupt, gospel-less church. Sola scriptura was about highlighting the source of life in the Scriptures, Jesus Christ.
For Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and other reformers, declaring that Scripture was the chief source of authority for the church was to declare that Christ is the center of the Scriptures and the source of life.
To that end, we must labor to see Jesus in all of Scripture and see his life, death, and resurrection as the source of life for us today. Let me suggest three questions we can ask when reading the Scriptures to keep Jesus central and avoid missing his great glory.
#1 – How does this passage point out my need for Jesus?
Often passages will expose our sin and brokenness. Especially, in reading the Law portions of the Old Testament, we find how deep our shortcomings really are. Yet even in the New Testament, we find over and over again we have “all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
Bryan Chapell calls this the “Fallen Condition Focus” of every passage. Scripture shows us where we come up short, and in doing so, it shows us our need for life.
#2 – How does this passage show me the way of God’s grace in Jesus?
As each passage reveals our brokenness and sin, so also the Scriptures show us the remedy through Christ. The Old Testament points forward to Christ coming by giving us God’s promises to receive by faith. Scripture teaches how Christ actively won righteousness for us in his perfect life of obedience.
The Bible magnifies salvation through the suffering of the Messiah which we receive by faith. Grace abounds through the Scriptures and, when we look at how the Bible points us to God’s ways of grace, we see all Jesus has accomplished for us.
#3 – How does this passage lead me to love Jesus more and more?
Not only is the Bible a means for us to see Jesus, but it is a means for us to grow in love for Jesus. It shows us our need; it shows us Christ's redemption; it shows us his great grace!
A final question we can ask of the passage we are reading is: How can this text influence my life so that my love for Jesus grows? This is where our steps of faith-filled obedience are taken. We move forward in obedience to the call of Christ as we follow him out of the love he has poured out for us.
The Bible Bring us To Life, It Is Not Life
Much like missing my chance to get an autograph from Mark McGwire, we run through the Scriptures and fail to encounter Jesus as the source of life. We can stack up books about the Bible, memorize verses, develop or adhere to a theological system, and all the while miss the source of life that the Bible points to, Christ.
Instead of believing that Bible knowledge will save us, we should remember the gospel. We are justified by faith alone, in Christ alone, which we see in Scripture alone. The Bible, rightly engaged, brings us to Jesus. Don’t mistake the map for the source.
1. D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 263.
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.
Beating the Prayer Bluff
Can you and I take a moment to get real honest? I know this may come across as hypocritical since I am a Christian and a pastor and I am always sharing churchy exhortations online, but I want to be candid. Many times I have told someone that I would pray for them and I failed to do so. I bet you have done the same.
You have no doubt become the victim, or played the perpetrator, of the “prayer bluff.” Someone expresses their struggle with a circumstance or new issue peeks its head over the horizon, and our mind sends a message to our mouth: blurt out something about praying for them!
It all sounds genuine. But I fear, in my own life and in yours, that “I’ll be praying for you” has become nothing more than a religious platitude.
The Problem With Failing to Pray for Someone
I have felt a bit pessimistic about “I’ll be praying for you" for some time now, but it wasn’t until recently that I discovered its heartlessness. It happened when I was reading Numbers (yes, really).
Throughout the book of Numbers, the Israelites are on their way to Edom under the guidance of God and Moses. They complain. A lot. They take up their complaints with both of these faithful leaders, demanding an answer for why they were escorted to this dreadful wilderness. The food (when they manage to find some) is bland, and there’s no water.
God reacted to their ungratefulness and slander with judgment, sending fiery serpents among them. They came to their senses in repentance, or perhaps they feared the prospect of death. Regardless, here’s what happens next:
And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. — Numbers 21:7
Here’s the question that came to my mind as I read that: What if he hadn’t? What if Moses heard these pleas from the people and said, “Okay, I’ll pray for you,” then didn’t, and just went about his business? Wouldn’t we call Moses unloving? Lazy? Cruel?
Last I checked, none of us are asking others to pray for our deliverance from fiery serpents. But what does it say of us when we promise our neighbor to come before the Lord in prayer, forsaking our own selves for their sake, only to not follow through? Is this what it means to love one's neighbor?
We can beat the prayer bluff. There are three shifts we can make when it comes to being constant in prayer for those around us.
#1 – Believe your prayers matter to God
We would pray more if we believed our prayers mattered. At times, our confession of God’s sovereignty can mess with our thoughts on human responsibility. The truth is, a sovereign God doesn’t undermine the need for prayer; it intensifies it.
Only a sovereign God could do something with the prayers we offer Him. This should compel us all the more to pray, especially for those in need.
What’s amazing about Moses’s decision to truly pray for the Israelites is that it made a difference on their behalf:
And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. — Numbers 21:8-9
This does not mean that every time we make our requests known to God that it is bound to happen the way we expect it to. For example, God may not end up bringing healing to a physical sickness. Yet in our very act of earnest prayer, our faith is strengthened. Our hope in Christ’s return is renewed. Our love for another is expressed.
For at least those reasons, our prayers always matter, regardless of the outcome. When we begin to truly believe that our prayers mean something, we will begin to take the weight of “I’ll be praying for you” more seriously.
#2 – Pray in the moment
I know how convenient and tidy it is to notify someone you will be in prayer for them and be able to walk away. Instead of getting our hands dirty in prayer, we often go for the hand sanitizer (“I’ll pray for you”) and call it a day. But the road to Christlikeness is not spotless or expedient. Neither are relationships with one another, whether spouse, friend, or stranger. Rather than offering what is often a trite, meaningless response to one in need, what if we began to make a shift to, “Can I pray for you right now?”
I’ve heard many stories of people approached with this simple question who were brought to tears that someone would actually do this for them, in the moment. I have been a part of it myself, on both the giving and receiving ends. When I see with my own eyes that someone is no longer bluffing, but is actually laying their cards down to pray for me, I feel loved. I feel safe. I feel God’s comfort. You don’t have to offer a professional prayer with fancy words and Scripture meditations; only offer an authentic, heart-felt cry to God. It does wonders for them, and for you.
#3 – Make a list, then follow up
There are some who are tried and true people of prayer. They know their prayers matter, and they take initiative in praying in the moment with others. The rest of us need a strategy. Perhaps a final area we can continue to grow in is following up with those whom we have prayed for. It’s as simple as making a list. Maybe it’s that I’m a one-thing-at-a-time kind of guy, but I cannot bring myself to remember to pray for the seventeen people I know need it. I do better with reminders in front of me that are tangible.
There are many ways you can do this. Next time you go around the circle in small group with prayer requests, take time to write names and requests. Refer to this list throughout the week. Simple. For the more tech-inclined, put names or requests into an app or reminders list on your phone, even prompting yourself by using notifications. Discipline yourself to not take prayer for others with a grain of salt. And, most importantly, pray for them.
Take it a step further and reach out to those people after some time has passed to follow up. One of the most joyful feelings as a human is to be reminded that we have not been forgotten.
I’m glad Moses prayed for the Israelites that hot day in the wilderness. I’m also thankful when people pull me aside to offer words of life to me when I feel like I’m traversing my own wilderness. Let’s not think of Paul’s recommendation to “be constant in prayer” (Rom 12:12) as a dated, unrealistic expectation.
It’s simple: prayer matters, and so do people.
Zach Barnhart currently serves as Student Pastor of Northlake Church in Lago Vista, TX. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University, and is currently studying at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, seeking a Master of Theological Studies degree. He is married to his wife, Hannah. You can follow Zach on Twitter @zachbarnhart or check out his personal blog, Cultivated.
The Gospel in the Daily Grind
The sound of the rainforest drew me out of my sleep. It was actually a synthetic sound coming from an app on my smartphone. It’s supposed to slowly wake you up so that you don’t crash out of your sleep cycle into the daily grind. More gradual, less tired supposedly. At 5:20 a.m., I was always tired. I don’t how I survived that year without drinking coffee. I’d scrounge a quick bite to eat then zombie walk into the shower and get ready in the dark as my family continued their sleep.
Off to work. Eight hours of monotony. I answered phone calls and fixed broken technology. I repeated stock phrases thirty plus times a day. I’d try to make connections with people I never saw. I had worked in that kind of call center environment for eleven years.
For the first few years, I struggled finding value in my seemingly mundane tasks. If I’m honest, I loathed going to work a lot of days. I know I’m not alone because life in a call center creates camaraderie, and I’ve talked to countless people who share these feelings in and out of my industry. But then something clicked for me — something that gave me meaning in the mundane daily grind.
Jesus Works
The gospel starts from the very first pages of the Scripture. That truth changes the way you and I work in the marketplace and worship in the mundane of everyday life.
Most churches talk very little about work. They start their gospel presentation with the fall: “We are rotten to the core and in need of redemption” (Gen 3). If they do touch Genesis 1 and 2, it’s usually to discuss creation and evolution. We treat “in the beginning” as if Jesus wasn’t around yet. We function as modalists.
Paul tells a different story,
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through him and for him. – Colossians 1:16
John tells the same story,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. – John 1:1-5
This thread of Christological creation isn’t some gnostic truth. Paul elsewhere says we were “chose . . . in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4) and John calls Jesus, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8 KJV). Matthew reports Jesus’s words, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt 25:34). Peter says, Jesus “was foreknown before the foundation of the world” (1 Pt 1:20). Paul admonishes the Corinthians, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’” (2 Cor 4:6).
From the first words of Scripture “In the beginning, God” to the final curse of Revelation, the Holy Spirit shines a spotlight on the work of Jesus Christ. He isn’t hidden. And finding Jesus in the beginning completely transforms our understanding of the original creative mandate and propels our purpose in working.
Working with Purpose
First, Scripture teaches Jesus actively works from before the foundation of the world and in the world now. He is choosing, creating, and founding. He is holding all things together. He is advocating for us on his throne. When he creates man, it’s no surprise he says, “‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion . . . . ’ And God said to ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion’” (Gen 1:26, 28). Part of our createdness, built in the very fabric of who we are as humans made in God’s image, is the necessity of dominion and work.
God works. We work. Jesus creates. We create. We are sub-creators to his divine creative masterpiece, but we still image God when we work. We have intrinsic value in our work because it’s connected with who God made us to be. Part of Adam’s task was tending the garden and naming animals. Talk about mundane and routine, but, before the fall, Adam obeyed God and worked as his ambassador and found meaning in doing so. When we work in the workplace, we are also obeying this creative instinct to image God. Jesus Christ is the perfect image of God and the prototype of glorified humanity. We see that image clearly when we follow his lead in working.
Second, Scripture teaches this image of God is found in every human equally. In The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis says,
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. . . . There are no ordinary people.
This fundamentally changes the way we work and the way we treat others who we work with and who may do jobs we might be tempted to turn our nose down at.
Each of those people when working and doing their job with excellence are, even if dimly, reflecting the original image of God. They are not ordinary. They are humans who were made very good. For those who lay hold of the promises found in Jesus Christ and believe, this image is even more visible (“transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another,” as Paul says). We should appreciate and encourage those who work skillfully. We should remind each other we are a picture of Jesus Christ who works. He has been working from the beginning and will not stop working until he’s brought us all the way home.
Fourth, Scripture teaches our work now images of the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. As noted earlier, the Holy Spirit inspired many allusions and direct references to creation and many of these directly point us to our spiritual redemption. The image of light and darkness is found throughout the Gospel of John. John also talks about the new birth (John 3). Paul in 2 Corinthians 4 compares God’s original divine fiat with his raising us from death to life. He says, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’” (2 Cor 4:6). As we work, we must not forget Christ’s work for us. It’s a daily gospel reminder in the daily grind of our work.
Fifth, Scripture teaches we please God. Jesus’s ministry starts with his baptism and God the Father proclaiming, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17). When regenerated by the Spirit, chosen by the Father, and redeemed by Jesus, we are united to Jesus Christ. All the promises and blessings found in him are ours. Jesus pleases the Father and so we please the Father. A robust understanding of common grace, also, suggests when we work well and create excellently it pleases him in as far we reflect his image well. This work isn’t salvific in any way, but it’s valuable nonetheless.
One of my favorite quotes comes from the movie Chariots of Fire. Eric Liddell, an Olympic runner, says, “God made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.” Meditate on that truth when your alarm wakes you up in the morning or when you repeat the same task for the hundredth time at your job remind yourself: “God delights in me when I work.” Feel his pleasure. Repeat, “When I ______, I feel his pleasure.” That’s not an insignificant truth.
Finally, Scripture teaches work will not always be laborious. Before the fall, the creation didn’t war against us as we created, tended, and worked. After the fall, God curses the ground and work becomes difficult. Paul says, “the whole creation has been groaning” as it waits for its full redemption (Rom 8:22). We are waiting for the new heavens and new earth—when God will makes all things right. We will be glorified and the earth will be redeemed from its sorrows. The reality of our ultimate rest in Jesus Christ doesn’t remove work. Jesus redeems work. The end of the story is an earthy ending. We live on the new earth in his eternal kingdom and worship God in all we do (Matt 5:5, 25:34).
We struggle now in the daily grind of the dirty now and now, but we look forward to the redeemed not yet of the new creation. So work well now. Struggle. Labor. Toil. Create. Do it all with excellence, purpose, and hope. But find rest in Jesus Christ in the not yet, while eagerly longing for the redemption of our bodies and this world. He will return and he will make all things new.
Mathew B. Sims is the Editor-in-Chief at Exercise.com and has authored, edited, and contributed to several books including A Household Gospel, We Believe: Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms for Worship, A Guide for Advent, Make, Mature, Multiply, and A Guide for Holy Week. Mathew, LeAnn (his wife), and his daughters Claire, Maddy, and Adele live in Taylors, SC at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains with their Airdale Terrier. They attend Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA). Visit MathewBryanSims.com!
On Fire, But Not Consumed
The air is sticky right now in my home state, but I am already dreaming of fall, still months away. I am more than happy to skip over the heat, humidity and general mugginess of summer, and head straight for the crisp air, sweaters, and bonfires of autumn. If I could find a place on Earth where it was perpetually fall and all that goes with it, including Saturdays spent watching college football and the smell of hot apple cider, I would move there in an instant. It is perhaps, though, the changing of the leaves, like a changing of the guard, which summons the return of fall and reminds me why I love the season. Trees formerly a monochromatic green suddenly seem to burst into flames. Deep reds. Vivid yellows. Vibrant oranges.
As those hues shift, I have spent many an autumn whispering to myself, shaking my head somewhat in disbelief, "I swear, it is like they are on fire."
I fall into a trance, just staring, captured by this involuntary thought, followed by a moment of wonder, trying to memorize the colors on the leaves, marveling at the rich hues, wanting to linger in the moment.
While these leaves are the tell-tale sign of yet another season passing, I have often found myself in seasons of life wanting to pull a Heisman-like move and keep God at arm's length. It seems easier, safer that way.
Jennie Allen wrote in her book Anything about how she began praying the prayer, "Anything you have for me, God. I'll say yes to anything."
The book sat on the floor by my recliner for the longest time and I quietly kept avoiding it. I did not want to be confronted by such challenging words and such prayers. Because, quite frankly, I know I am not always willing to pray anything. Far too risky.
What if I am not ready for anything? What if God hands me anything and I fail miserably? What if everything spins out of control? And what if I no longer get to call the shots?
So at arm’s length he stays, as if I have control over God somehow. Isn’t it crazy the things we delude ourselves into believing, these warped and out-of-whack concepts of who God is?
Every time I see the leaves of fall, and see the colors bursting forth, I am reminded of Moses at the burning bush, found in Exodus 3:1-3:
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” (emphasis mine)
Far too often in our pursuit of God, we want to be just like that burning bush—on fire, but not consumed. We want the flames and we want to feel his heat, but not so strong that we find ourselves disappearing altogether in the blaze. We like to keep self intact, don’t we? We want to hold self close, making sure everything is manageable, tidy, orderly, just the way we like it.
That is what I find myself foolishly and selfishly wanting—to be on fire, but not consumed.
I want just enough of Jesus, to get just close enough to Him that I might look a little bit different — a little less impatient, a little more loving. I want to be a little less arrogant and a little more humble. I want to be a little less lazy, and a little more disciplined. I want to get just close enough to sound good and godly and holy.
But maybe—just maybe—when I am honest with myself and others, deep down I realize I do not truly want all of him. Because all of Him might require anything of me. And that feels terrifying.
As I stood staring at the trees one fall, I began thinking to myself, "You may want to be like the burning bush, on fire, but not consumed. But the reality is that God is an all-consuming fire. You don't get to be near him and not be consumed by him."
It simply does not work that way. You want to know him? You want more of him? You want his Word and his Spirit to change you? You want to look more like him? That requires you to be close to him. And being close to him means he consumes you. You—the foolish and selfish version of you—has to be consumed in the fire if you are ever to truly meet the God of the Burning Bush.
"For our God is a consuming fire," Hebrews 12:29 says.
Consuming. Not the kind of fire you warm your hands over; not the kind of fire you melt s'mores with; and not the kind of fire we all crave to keep us cozy in the depths of winter.
Those kinds of fires are safe within the confines of fireplaces and fire pits. Thoses kind of fires have boundaries and are easily manageable. But I am not talking about those kinds of fires.
I am talking the kind of fire that purges the dross, melts the mountains like wax, annihilates sin, and is meant to make you more like his Son. God is that kind of fire.
You do not want to be consumed? Then stay far, far away from him.
But maybe being consumed by the flames is exactly what we—what I—need more than anything. Maybe setting self ablaze is what we need most. Maybe letting God strike a match to our hearts and throwing gas on the flames is what we should long for. And maybe we will find on the other side of those flames a God who whispers through the blaze, "I was with you all along.”
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead. Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give people in exchange for you, nations in exchange for your life. Do not be afraid, for I am with you — Isaiah 43:1-5 (emphasis mine)
Courtney Yantes spends her days as an event planner, coordinating events and conferences designed to inspire change and promote access for people with disabilities. She graduated from William Woods University with a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in business administration. She enjoys blogging, traveling, and generally organizing anything she can get her hands on. She is a lover of all things Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and relishes a life free of social media accounts.
From One Young Gun to Another
About five years ago I landed a dream job. Fresh out of seminary and with barely any experience, I became the Assimilation Pastor at a church with more than 1,300 weekly attendees. I was way out of my league. Seminary did a great job teaching me theology and exegesis, but I was vastly unprepared for a host of other responsibilities. I had to manage difficult personalities, tell people “no” when their ideas conflicted with the vision and mission of the church, develop elaborate processes for ministry involvement, and delegate key ministry roles. Now I’m starting over. As the senior pastor of a 200 year-old Presbyterian church facing issues of relocation and revitalization, I am facing a whole new set of issues for which I feel vastly unprepared.
Maybe you find yourself in a similar situation. Maybe you are realizing seminary only did half the job you thought it did. Or maybe your new ministry position is more complex than you ever imagined. God taught me some incredible lessons five years ago, and I’m re-visiting them again. Here are six things I’ve learned that helped me keep my head above water, and even begin to thrive.
#1 – Be a student of your surroundings
There’s a scene in Maverick where Mel Gibson promises to lose at poker for one hour. Why? An hour is a long time. What is he doing? He’s observing the other players. Who has an obvious tell? Who likes to bluff? Where can he gain an advantage? Mel Gibson is learning everything he can in that hour: He’s being a student of his surroundings.
In the same way you study a map before a road trip or let your eyes adjust to a dimly-lit room before walking in, you’ve got to take the time to study your surroundings. Unfamiliar territory requires some degree of familiarity before action. Do your best Maverick impression and spend time studying your surroundings.
I’ve been at my present church for just over four weeks, and already I’ve been asked a dozen times, “How are we going to grow the church? What is our vision? Our mission?” It has taken great discipline, but each time I’ve answered, “Give me six months.” Why? I once heard John Bryson say, “Guys never wish they had planted a church sooner, and they always wish they had waited longer.” In the same way, you’ll never regret learning too much context about your church and your community before you begin to implement a plan of action.
Learn the people. Learn the community. Learn the church. Study your context. Don’t jump into action, but take time to learn the rhythms of where you are. Don’t delay action forever, but, if you’ve done your homework, when it is time to act you’ll be more prepared to interact with your people in a healthy way.
#2 – Rely on relationships
Before you can sell somebody on a solution, you have to sell them on the problem. And before you can sell somebody on the problem, you have to give them a reason to listen to you.
In my previous church I was hired to help small groups play a more central role in the life of our church—to engage believers in spiritual formation beyond Sunday morning. Before I could do that, however, I needed help our people understand why that engagement was necessary. During my first three months in that new role, my wife and I had over 60 people to our home for dinner. Why? We were building relationships; getting to know the folks I’d be leading, and letting them get to know us. As time wore on, I continued to spend time with leaders and new faces over breakfast, lunch, and coffee. That time was invaluable, and relational capital is an investment you will never regret.
When we left our previous church we experienced the fruit of our relational investment. Our final Sunday was similar to Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:36-37—tear-filled embraces let us know we hadn’t merely implemented ministry programs, but had cultivated relationships and impacted lives.
#3 – Be particular with the process
Anybody can cast vision but saying something louder and more often isn’t going to affect change. What are the processes that will move your people from seeing the vision to living the vision? Put those processes in place, and then patiently shepherd your people through them.
Don’t plan a new evangelism initiative or offer a children’s ministry program as standalone events. How can you integrate them into other activities to achieve greater strategic impact? Consider a sermon series through the book of Acts and write small group curriculum to help your people realize their place in the Great Commission. Train your small group leaders to help their groups identify their own personal “Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.” Then, consider a “reverse offering” in which you give each small group a small budget to host a neighborhood barbecue or community VBS. Don’t just cast vision, but walk with your people and help them take the necessary steps in actualizing that vision.
Vision inspires change. Processes facilitate change. Habits sustain change.
Your vision will inspire your people, but it is incumbent upon you to establish the processes necessary to making that vision actionable, thereby helping form the habits to sustain that action.
#4 – Leverage the LOOGYs
In baseball, a LOOGY is a Left-Handed, One-Out Guy—a relief pitcher who only has one job: to come into the ballgame and get one out.
In your church there are a lot of LOOGYs who don’t know they are LOOGYs, and as a result they are going to give you a lot of advice on a lot of things. Don’t write them off. Instead, leverage them. Find their sweet spot and plug them in. Chances are they can be a boon to your ministry. Help them find their place and partner with them.
Maybe you’ve got somebody who is exceedingly organized and really wants to help lead a small group, but they can’t teach. They’d probably do a great job at follow-up. Perhaps someone always gives you new ideas for new ministries, but doesn’t have the ability to see them through. Ask them to pray for ministries the church is currently doing. You’ve got someone who is eager to help with your Sunday morning hospitality ministry, but you haven’t see them smile in five years. They’d do a great job emailing your first-time guests and keeping track of your new members. Find a way to leverage the gifts your people do have in a way that channels their passion for the health of your church.
#5 – Favor feedback
Feedback is crucial. You have to know if the processes you’ve put in place are achieving the goals you’ve established. So ask questions. Be objective. Invite criticism. Be humble and listen. Not every piece of feedback will be accurate or helpful, but it will start you thinking outside of the box.
A friend once told me, “We allow everybody to see us with our clothes on, we allow those we know well to see us in our bathing suits, and we allow our spouses to see us naked. As pastors we must have trusted companions who see us and know us to varying degrees of intimacy and vulnerability.” With degrees of appropriateness, seek out those with whom you can be vulnerable and transparent.
Proverbs 27:5-6 reads, “Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” Ask the Lord to give you a heart willing to receive wounds from a friend, then seek out friends who will wound you in love. Cultivate this type of atmosphere among your staff. Model how to receive criticism well. Publically thank brothers and sisters who are honest with you.
Inviting criticism is frightening—there’s no doubt about it. Approach brothers and sisters you love, establish a framework for feedback, and trust the Lord to bear fruit in your soul.
#6 – Have joy in Jesus
Ministry should be fun, so love what you do! In certain seasons this won’t always be easy. In those tough times, hold fast to the Word of life and shine like a light in the world. Strive to proclaim with Paul, “Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all,” (Philippians 2:17). When this is your heart’s disposition and your internal compass, those with whom and to whom you minister will rejoice along with you.
Rejoice in your relationship with the Lord and let that joy spill into every facet of your life. Your spouse, your kids, your friends, your co-workers, and those you minister to should all sense your passion for Jesus and your love for them. Devour the Word of God, cultivate sensitivity to the Spirit’s leading, commune with Lord in prayer, and never lose sight of the cross.
Chris is husband to Liz and daddy to Aletheia, Judah, and Evangeline. Chris is senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Reading, Pa and has a PhD in Organizational Leadership. Chris is happy to be back living in the north after five hot years in South Carolina.
What Does Hollywood Have to Do with Calvary?
What’s your all-time favorite movie? Think of just one. Why do you love that movie? I’ve asked that question of thousands of teenagers and college students over the years. Young people love movies, after all (so do I). I get all kinds of examples, from action movies (think The Avengers or Star Wars), to great epic tales (Lord of the Rings), or romantic comedies. We love movies and the stories they tell. What if I told you the very reason novels grip us and movies move us is directly related to the grand gospel story of the Bible? We live in a world that has lost the story of the Bible (and many in the church have as well). I have found explaining the gospel story helps unbelievers to see the big picture of God’s salvation, but it does more: it encourages believers to share this great story with others. Missionaries overseas have done this a long time with people who don’t know the Word. We tend to put the gospel in such overtly religious and ecclesiastical categories many lost people don’t see its beauty and wonder.
Stories follow plotlines. I want to review three popular storylines for you. We see these in books and film again and again, each told with its own nuances.
1. Man falls in a hole.
This storyline (often called Overcoming the Monster) starts off with the main character doing well, but he falls in a hole of some sort, that is, he gets into a predicament, he has some evil thing or person cause him distress, or he finds himself in some other version of calamity. He cannot save himself, so ultimately a rescuer comes to get him out of the hole and back to well-being. Think of the Die Hard movies, any of the Marvel films, or any other action adventure film. We love stories that depict the evil and brokenness we see all around us, but we love even more the rescue and restoration that follows. Good storytellers take that simple storyline and rivet our attention and affections with how they tell it.
A version of this story is Kill the Dragon, Get the Girl, where some evil creature or person wreaks terror among people but at the end a hero kills the creature and rescues the damsel in distress. My daughter, Hannah, and I loved the movie Taken with Liam Neeson, which followed this storyline.
2. Boy meets girl.
This is the classic romantic story, made extremely popular in recent days with romantic comedies like Hitch, The Proposal, Along Came Polly, and a host of other often-cheesy movies featuring actors like Ben Stiller, Will Smith, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Jennifer Aniston, Sandra Bullock, and others. (I’m not endorsing them; just saying.) It includes romantic dramas such as The Vow.
There’s a guy and a girl who somehow meet. A chemical reaction begins between them. Then you see two things depicted in these films. First, guys are dumb. Really dumb. The guy doesn’t get the girl’s hints, or does something dumb to hurt her feelings. They named a movie titled Dumb and Dumber about two guys, after all. Then you realize a second feature: girls are crazy. The girl overreacts, goes drama queen, and the movie continues with the two almost figuring things out, until the end when they actually do, and, to quote another movie in the genre, Love Happens.
3. Rags to riches. This is the story of Cinderella, or The Princess
Diaries, or the favorite of Hannah’s and mine from years ago, What a Girl Wants. Sadness ultimately leads to a rescue and restoration beyond the wildest dreams of the star of the story.
Why do I use these examples when talking about sharing the gospel? Matt Chandler, Josh Patterson, and Eric Geiger help us to see why through the eyes of two literary greats, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien:
A conversation once held between colleagues C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien speaks to this innate human desire for being part of larger-than-life stories, quests, and victories—the draw of our hearts toward “myths,” which Lewis said were “lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver.”
“No,” Tolkien replied, “they are not lies.” Far from being untrue, myths are the best way—sometimes the only way—of conveying truths that would otherwise remain inexpressible. We have come from God, Tolkien argued, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they do contain error, still reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily toward the true harbor.
These stories touch us because they speak to us, albeit imperfectly, where the gospel has the power to change us, to move our hearts toward the one who truly rescues and restores. We want a life of joy. We know something has gone wrong. We love and admire a rescuer, and we want a happily ever after, a rescue and a restoration. These stories touch us because they relate our lives to “the greatest epic the universe will ever know—God reconciling all things to himself in Christ.”
You can see that sharing Christ is helpful when we relate the gospel to truth we can see every day, whether in the stories we love or the design we see. This is so vital for a culture that no longer knows the story of the Bible. We don’t need to choose between the specific, propositional statements of gospel truth and the glorious story of the Bible. But we do need to help people see both the truth of the gospel and the great story of God’s redemptive plan.
My friends at Spread Truth Ministries (spreadtruth.com) have developed a wonderful tool to help believers see the whole gospel story of the Bible and share the good news of Jesus with others. The booklet they created called The Story has been a helpful tool for me.
Read more about The Story at viewthestory.com or download the app.
A few years ago I began realizing in my own witness how people I talked to didn’t seem to get the point of the gospel. It seemed more “churchy” to them than a message that would impact all of their life. I wanted to help people—especially young adults I interact with a lot—to see the great big picture of God’s plan and how their life related to God’s glory. In recent years I’ve seen more unchurched young adults come to Christ through sharing the whole gospel story than with any other approach. The gospel story offers a guide to help explain the gospel based on where the person you are talking with is at the moment. I will be unpacking this throughout the book, but let me walk you through this here.
There are many wonderful tools and apps you can use to help you share Jesus more confidently. Unfortunately, sometimes evangelism training unintentionally focuses too much on doing the evangelism program just right, rather than really knowing the gospel so you can share it in a conversation.
If you are at a church that uses a certain tool, such as “The Gospel Journey” by Dare2Share Ministries, “Two Ways to Live,” any of the free tools from The Way of the Master Television, or the courses offered by Christianity Explored, for instance, the principles in this book can help you share Christ using any of these and more. I also use the Life on Mission: 3 Circles conversation guide from the North American Mission Board (SBC). It’s another way of using the gospel story through circles. I’ve often drawn the three circles on a napkin at a coffee shop, and earlier this month I led a young man to Christ doing just that. My friend Jimmy Scroggins first developed this excellent approach while reaching unchurched people in South Florida. I want you to learn the gospel is more than a tool, although tools that center on the gospel can help grow our gospel fluency. We all need a baseline of gospel understanding to have conversations about Jesus, and tools like these can help.
Knowing and Sharing the Gospel Story
When you put a puzzle together, you start with the border, since a framework makes the rest of the image make sense. The grand narrative of the Bible follows the plotline of creation, fall, rescue, and restoration, the framework of Scripture that “frames up” our world and our greatest need as well as God’s
Alvin L. “Doc” Reid serves as Professor of Evangelism and Student Ministry at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where he has been since 1995. He is also the founding Bailey Smith Chair of Evangelism. He is the author of several books including Gospel Advanced: Leading a Movement That Changes the World.
Dreams of Another World
I don’t usually wake up laughing, but that morning I did. Head pressed deeply into the dense pillow, I awoke to my own laughter. The room was cold, which had caused me to sleep more deeply than usual. My legs were numb, but I was warm all over, except for my nose. A single beam of dusty light revealed an unfamiliar room of placard signs, mass-produced art and sterile chairs. Hotel room curtains never fully close, do they? A strip between the two panels allowed that beam of light to poke me in my sleepy head. I had slept so deeply that my first thought in that refrigerated state was, Who am I, and how did I get here? I wanted to disappear under the thick comforter, to roll my head between the three pillows and just dream. But I had laughed myself awake. I have no idea what I dreamt of that caused such morning hilarity, but as I flopped over, sitting next to me—also laughing—was my new bride. We had been married just three days.
“What were you dreaming of?” she asked, snickering. “I watched you toss and giggle for ten minutes before you woke up.”
“I wish I could remember,” I said with a laugh. Though the details of the dream were lost, I knew I had tasted another world. The dream had trailed off as light hit my head, and it was gone. Nothing left now but bad breath, a lined face and a deep sense of rest and peace. Though the dream had vanished, I lay there in the bed on my honeymoon with contentment and joy.
I wish I could have held that moment forever. It was a moment between two dreams—one an unconscious dream of peace and joy, and the other a waking dream of marriage with my new wife, Jodi, where everything was new and exciting.
What is it about a dream that beckons us, ever entangling us in its web of hope and longing? The elusive dream of our hearts fades out of reach each morning. With each sunrise, with each knock on the door, we awake with a realization that real life awaits us. But we long to go back, to pull the covers over our faces, to tuck our heads between the pillows and just dream.
Though the elusive dream of our hearts fades, we search for it because we’ve tasted it in small doses over and over again. In the breathtaking beauty of a sunset, the oblivious, innocent laughter of a child, through forgiveness and kindness, in expressions of love and selflessness, we’ve tasted a world we were meant for and want more of. Our soul remembers the aftertaste of a world we were destined for, because we have tasted it in small measure our whole lives. The taste is unmistakable. We know this taste of the world more viscerally than anything else, because it is at the core of what it means to be human. The dream is a foretaste of another world, a better world, a world where things are the way they’re supposed to be.
We are dreamers, every one of us. John Lennon’s song “Imagine” described a dream where the world would one day live as one. The dream Lennon sang of—though many would disagree with him—is a reflection of this other world, a world where greed, possessions, hunger, violence, nationalistic and religious beliefs no longer drown out love, companionship and peace. Lennon’s dream was very close to the dream of God, though Lennon himself would likely dismiss this. The amazing thing about the dreams of some of the people furthest from God is that their desire for a better world mirrors the ultimate dream of God to make all things new. We are dreamers because God is a dreamer.
Though we are often not able to articulate it fully, what we dream of is the same dream that God has dreamt since time began. The dream of God is at the heart of our dreams. We can know a great deal about our dreaming God by looking at our own dreams and the dreams of humanity throughout the world.
Dreams are powerful, but because the world is not the way it’s supposed to be, our dreams are often twisted—mere shadows of what they once were. Dreams can become misguided—expressions of exploitative power, excessive material acquisition, sensual indulgence. There’s no limit to how badly dreams can run amuck. Dreams can become nightmares, ruling and eventually ruining our lives. The longing to escape the struggles and disappointments of this world often tempt us to escape “reality” artificially. Drugs, alcohol, shopping, sex, pornography—anything to escape and “just be.” To be alone with ourselves, at peace with our mind, free from worry and pain—we just want to dream.
The longing to be transported from where we are to where we were meant to be is also powerful. Most people will risk everything they have and all that they are to reach for a dream. Some people do this in ways that are healthy and life giving, but most people settle for the easy substitute. We settle for a cheap version of the dream in a one-night stand, in dancing erotic pixels in dark rooms. We want a quick fix, and we find it at the baked-goods section at the grocery store, the bottom of a bottle or the pulsating floor of a dance club. We often pursue a dream in selfish and destructive ways, ways that are incompatible with God’s dream.
We long to go to that other world that lingers in our hearts. We are called to it in small ways each day. For me, it is the small “magical moments” of life that call me back, the little things that pull at my heart: a wispy meadow in late August, the sound of cicadas buzzing in the trees, the smell of dense, warm air before a storm. All of a sudden, my mind wanders away from my son’s orthodontics bill, the fight I’m having with my wife, Jodi, or the diaper that needs to be changed. Another world pokes in as I smell bacon in the morning or catch a glimpse of a hummingbird hovering over the lilies outside my office window. We live in a world where “real” is limited to what we can see, hear, smell, touch and taste. But these are hints of a world more real than what all our senses can tell us. Our dreams point us to another world.
The world we live in is caught between two worlds—a dream and a nightmare. But the good news is that the dream of God will come to pass and is coming to pass all around us. It will one day replace the nightmare of this world. In many ways, God’s dream is already breaking in. Every time a well is dug for a community, food is provided for the hungry, nets protect those at risk of mosquito-borne malaria or those who traffic in the flesh of prostitutes are brought to justice, the nightmare ends and the dream begins.
When we join God in bringing his dream to the world around us, we are fulfilling his plan and purpose for our lives. Joining in God’s dream is the most significant thing we could ever do. It is what we were created for. God’s plan for us begins and flourishes as we allow our dreams to merge into the great dream of God.
R. York Moore is a passionate and visionary leader. York deeply values spiritual formation, relational intelligence, innovation, and collaboration. An effective communicator and orator, York casts vision and leads change through his communication skills on-line, in publications, and with live audiences. York has traveled the world, working with organizational leaders and academic institutions in their context to mobilize constituents to more effectively engage their mission. He has led change organizationally in large not-for-profit organizations and in the local church. York is a published author and blogger in magazines like Outreach, Preaching Today, and EMQ . He also is a Cabinet member for Luis Palau’s ‘Next Generation Alliance‘ and is a Compassion International speaker. York holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Michigan and an MA in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary. R. York Moore lives in Canton, MI with his wife and three kids.
Taken from Making All Things New by R. York Moore. Copyright (c) 2012 by R. York Moore. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com
Understanding the Father Heart of God
I woke up suddenly at 2:30am in my parents room to the sound of my dad struggling to get out of bed while asking me, “Where’s mom? I need to go to the living room. I just need to get to the living room.” My dad had been battling cancer for four years now and was coming to the end of his life. My mom, the nurse, had called me the week before to tell me to fly home because dad only had about a week left to live. I helped him up, wondering how he even had enough strength to push himself into a seated position. He was so weak this final week of his life. We walked with my arm supporting most of my dad’s weight from his bedroom to the living room. He sat on the armchair, and I sat on the couch. My dad fell into a deep sleep which he wouldn’t wake up from. He passed into the arms of Jesus the next day around 2 or 3pm. I sat up most of the night wondering what I would do without him. The questions you ask yourself and God in the moments of pain are hard but precious. As I was watching my dad pass away, I asked God a series of questions that would lead me on a path of discovery into the depths of God’s heart as a Father. Theology helps you answer the question, “Who is God?” but in my painful situation I asked the question, “Where are you God?” More than ever, I needed the comfort of a father. I needed to know that God was near and that he cared about my pain. We all ask this question at some point in our lives. It’s the heart of God the Father to help us answer this burning question.
God’s Heart
When the Israelites were in slavery in Egypt they cried out in pain asking God, “Where are you?” Moses uses four important verbs to describe God’s response to their pain. “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel- and God knew” (Ex. 2:24-25).
God was not ignorant of the cries from his people, and he is not ignorant of our cries. God’s response to pain is all throughout the Bible, and the greatest expression we have of God’s heart for us is in the sending of his Son, Jesus.
In Jesus, Divine Love became human. He decided to experience our pain, sickness, our sin, and ultimately our death. He left perfection, heaven, to come into our broken world. It’s sort of crazy when you think about it. Why would you leave perfection to experience imperfection? The answer is love, but it’s still almost incomprehensible especially to us living in brokenness. But God the Father still sent Jesus and God’s expressive love for His Son directly relates to His love for us.
“This is my beloved Son”
There are two places in Scripture where we find God’s love for Jesus explicitly stated. One is at his baptism (Matt. 3:17), and the second is at his transfiguration (Matt. 17:5). God the Father says the same thing about Jesus with one addendum at the transfiguration. He says, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased,” and at the transfiguration He adds, “Listen to him.” God the Father speaks acceptance (This is my…), love (This is my belevoded…), identity (This is my beloved son...), and approval (listen to him) over Jesus. These four characteristics of God’s love for Jesus show us God’s heart for us.
Through Jesus, God’s love for us is revealed and God’s immanent presence is manifested. Behind my question of “Where are you God?” was a deep longing to be heard and an even deeper longing to be loved. As disciples of Jesus, we must remember that the main purpose of Jesus’s coming was to bring us into a reconciled relationship with God the Father.
We call him, “Abba” through the Holy Spirit because we are all in need of acceptance, love, identity, and approval from him. Abba is a deeply relational word, and it represents what we need most: a Father who will never leave us, who we can always trust, and who we can always come to in our pain for help. We need our dads to say these things to us, but they often fail and they won’t always be around (in some cases they never are).
In my life, I lost my dad and had to explore the world without him. My exploration was often not pretty. What I found was a God willing to speak into my life that which I had lost and that which I had never had in my relationship with my dad. I found a Father. Every disciple of Jesus will wrestle with the question, “Where are you God?” and our response reveals what we believe about him and the depths of relationship to which we are willing to go with him.
Our Response
We can have two responses to the question, “Where is God?” The first response reveals that we do not know God as Father. It is a response that says, “God has abandoned me so I must seek love elsewhere.” Some of us are living this response right now. I know I have lived it. This response believes God can’t be a good Father and won’t ever really be around. I minister to teenagers who never had a dad present in their lives and are ignorant of the love which God has for them as a Father. The first response isn’t meant to be our only response. When God’s love as Father is revealed to us, our response is much different.
The answer to the question, “Where is God?” was “Right beside you.” Just like with the Israelites, God heard my groaning, remembered his covenant through Jesus, saw my pain, and knew me. As a disciple of Jesus, I wanted to follow him to explore a relationship with my Abba. As I began sharing my story, I began hearing story after story of people who had found the love of God the Father. Our deepest wounds are addressed by a Father who's presence as “Abba” changes our very identity.
His presence as a Father through the Holy Spirit reminds us that even when we feel alone, cast off, in pain, and rejected we are actually not alone because God stands with us. Our response now says, “God is present in my pain through the work of Jesus Christ, and he is right beside me caring for me as a good Father should.” And He wants us to share these stories of pain and our wounded hearts so that others can experience the love of God.
“All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” — 2 Corinthians 5:18-21
Each time we share our story about the love of God the Father, we declare our ambassadorship about belonging to the family of God. We are showing the world that God loves us in our deepest pain and has not abandoned us. He is present in Christ Jesus and shows us that having a Father means we are never alone, we have an familial identity, we are loved, and we have a purpose. So share your story, even if it hurts. God is with you.
Bryan Green is an aspiring church planter, barista, seminary student, and servant at Soma Tacoma. He's graduating at the end of the summer with a M.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies at Western Seminary.