The Pornified Mind and the Glory of God

When I was 22 I heard Louie Giglio speak about the glory of God and I've never forgotten that sermon. He spoke about a road-trip he and a friend took in their late teens. Mount Rainier was the destination; they ate, drank, and breathed information about the mountain in preparation to summit it. But in the moment when they beheld the mount, it was not information that filled them, but awe. Louie told how he stood there looking at Rainier and wept. He was ashamed of his tears at the time—what self-respecting man weeps at a mountain? But as he shared the story in front of thousands of young people I guarantee there was no shortage of tears welling in our own eyes. Awe is contagious.

Rewiring Our Minds

A new film is set to release this year, the protagonist is a guy who values, "My body, my pad, my ride, my family, my church, my boys, my girls . . . and my porn." As best as I can tell from the trailer, when he finally encounters a girl who meets his porn-infused standards, he's surprised to find out she has some standards of her own. Her porn, though, is chick flicks—stories of tender, strong, fictional gentlemen who will meet her emotional and physical needs; needs which our principle guy finds he is hardly qualified to meet.

There's a good amount of gender stereotyping from what I can tell in just the trailer; however, as I don't see myself spending time, money, or soul watching the film, my observations here are based on the trailer alone. Now would be a good time to point out that porn is not just an issue for men: 66% of women today watch or have watched porn. But for the sake using the illustration of the film, we're going to stick to what it offers to us here. There are a few notable observations to be made from it, namely that even secular culture recognizes the similarity between men who watch porn and women who read books and films depicting romance. If watching porn rewires the minds of men, it's a safe bet to say there's some rewiring happening in the minds of women as well when they feast on emotional and sexual fantasies (of any kind).

One of the ways porn has affected men in greater numbers is their lack of arousal by a real live woman. The more they feast on multiple women at the mere click of a button, the more they train their minds to need new, new, new. Though I have no scientific proof for my theory, I would argue the same is true for women who have allowed their minds to sit in the stench of imagined and unfulfilled futures. No man can compete with the specimen of modern lore.

A number of single, young men have told me they can't get a date because women have this strong, silent, tall, dark, and handsome fictional ideal. The same is true for women. Men who have feasted on airbrushed women meeting their every sexual fantasy are not going to find much attractive in the girl next door unless she's wearing daisy dukes and midriff top. The more we feast on what is not real, the less we desire that which is.

In conversations with my single friends, the number one attribute of a woman the men want is someone they're physically attracted to, and the number one attribute the women want in a man is a partner and a friend. That's telling to me and it should be to all of us.

Splitting Intentions

Wendell Berry, in his essay Feminism, the Body, and the Machine, writes,

Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate "relationship" involving (ideally) two successful careerist in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided.

While Berry is speaking specifically about the modern idea that within marriage we "split" duties and work equally, his share and her share, and how this is only a divorce mindset within the confines of a lawful marriage, there's something to be said here for the way we go about seeking a spouse. For a man to place such high emphasis on the "hotness" of his wife is to overlook the sharedness of the image in Whom they were made. And for a woman to find her greatest satisfaction in a man who will be her gentle-friend and provider, she misses the opportunity to reflect back the Maker to her spouse.

We have been splitting duties since the garden of Eden (Eve: The serpent gave it to me! Adam: The woman you gave to me gave it to me!). In a culture that increasingly sees nothing wrong with porn, romance novels, or chick flicks, we only fracture that split further: the woman is meant to please men, the man is meant to please women. Meanwhile both have almost completely lost sight of original intention which is not to please one another at all.

God's Good Pleasure

"Come, let us make man in our image, after our likeness," are the first words we hear from God regarding man. In our image. In our likeness.

He formed man from dust and breathed life into his nostrils. He formed woman from bone and brought her to man.

Adam's response to woman has been caricatured by many to imply that woman was staggeringly beautiful and so should every woman henceforth be to her husband. But it falls flat because to what did Adam have to compare this creation? There were no standards of beauty but One. God alone. And in Adam's cry we hear the anguished cry of every man and woman to this day when they behold the nearest thing to God they can know, "At last!"

At last.

It was not the mere beauty of Eve's body that brought Adam such joy, but the image-bearer of his Creator standing in full glorious reality in front of him. It was not only a sexual reaction, but a spiritual one. Like Louie at the foot of Mount Rainier, nothing could have prepared Adam for the sight of something which so beautifully reflected his Maker.

Within the hearts of men and women, at the sight of what God has created to bring him worship and glory, to fulfill our greatest good and every mandate, we stand and worship, we weep. Why? Because we have seen the real thing, and no amount of airbrushed images or happily ever afters could prepare us for what God created to best reflect his likeness. A real, live person. The real thing.

—

Lore is pronounced Lor-ee, but you can call her Lo. She grew up on the east coast, but transplanted to Dallas a few years ago—she’s not from Texas, but Texas wants her anyway (as the song goes). Lore has been writing since 2001, blogging since blogs were invented, and still can’t get the hang of the whole business very well, but she loves it just the same. Visit her at Sayable or follow her on twitter @loreferguson.

20 Ways to Poison the Monsters: A Training Manual For Demons

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” —Ephesians 6:12

This is an excerpt from Monstra by Chemosh. This book is used to train mid-ranked demons in the Prince’s army.

In order to poison the monsters He loves, the ones He calls men and even “children,” here are 20 things you must lead our slaves–and His–to do. . .

1. Christianize popular ideas. In the United States, for example, tolerance equals love. Train them to quote 1 Corinthians 13 while ignoring other verses that are intolerant. Leaders must tell their hearers that love equals tolerance and equality, so that in the name of love leaders may encourage their hearers to love them by tolerating their heresy. No one wants to be labeled “intolerant” today because if one is labeled “intolerant” it’s the same as being labeled “unloving.” Use this reality to our advantage. Have the monsters care more about what other monsters think than what He thinks.

2. Put heresy in a Christian song with Christian lingo and a good beat. It will be sung in churches all over the world. Turn the music ministers to our side and rule the church. They are the new priests and popes in Evangelicalism.

3. Appeal to adolescence. Due to our influence and their depraved little hearts, every teenager and adult wants to break away from the ideas of their parents and grandparents. Train our slaves to cater to this adolescent mentality. Tell them to suggest that they’re teaching something relevant (new), as opposed to what their parents and grandparents previously taught. In other words, have them appeal to the pride of their hearers. Train their hearers to believe their spirituality is greater than the spirituality of those before them.

4. Put heresy in a song with some sentimentality. Monsters easily forget who gave them their families and friends—Him. Many monsters like to sing about how mommies, babies, daddies, etc. are the glory of Heaven. We don’t care who they think the glory of Heaven is, so long as it’s not Him. Train our servants to capitalize on this weakness.

5. Create an atmosphere that makes people feel good. Heresy should anger His children, but if you make them feel good with the music, singing, prayers, videos, entertainment, and sermons, then our servants can sneak heresy in. Monsters find it hard to recognize heresy when all of their senses are peaked. When the bottom-feeder likes what he sees, hears, and feels thinking and discernment are cast aside. Train our monsters to lull their hearers into a euphoric sleep, so they then can deliver their poison.

6. Appeal to the sinful nature. Monsters love to hear how good they are, for their hearts hate their guilty consciences. Hide the light with darkness by appealing to the darkness that is already within them. In other words, do not expose their evil deeds as defined by Him; rather redefine “evil.” Remember, you cannot call light darkness. They will rebel against you if you do. But you can call darkness light when speaking of their hearts. They want to believe us because their hearts are like ours. Give them what they want.

7. Tell amazing stories. His monsters and ours alike love to hear amazing stories where He recently moved in a “mighty” way. They’re constantly looking for a new sign that He is not dead. They’ve heard the stories in the Bible enough. They long for something fresh and new. Give it to them. But use some Scripture to hide the heresy, so that your stories are treated as authoritative. Remember, there is no need to prove their authority; one only needs to preach them as authoritative.

8. Appeal to the idolatry of your hearers. We do not care who they worship, so long as they do not worship Him. If your monsters live in an entertainment-centered society, make sure you train them to entertain while presenting their heresy. If they live in a postmodern society, make sure they say nothing absolute while appealing to the only truth they know: “I’m not sure.” Monsters love false-humility.

9. Speak in non-absolutes. Train our slaves to preface every sermon and lesson with, “I think, I believe,” while never saying, “I know.” Eventually their hearers will see their beliefs as their beliefs, and not necessarily the beliefs of the prophets, apostles, and Christ. The underlying assumption for such language is that there is no absolute truth. If there’s no absolute truth, then there’s no such thing as heresy. Their hearers will eventually redefine “orthodoxy” as “heterodoxy” while believing that neither exist. We’ve got them!

10. Dress it up in new clothes. Do not train our monsters to present heresy how previous heretics presented it. Instead, train them to dress it up in new clothes. They must present the heresy like the scheming politician we trained does. They should use catch-phrases that sound biblical. Most people will walk away thinking, saying, and believing their catch-phrases.

11. Major on specific Bible verses while intentionally ignoring those that contradict your interpretation. Biblical ignorance is our ally. Train our bottom-feeders to connect verses with other verses with other verses. Even if these verses have no contextual connection, if they use Scripture arbitrarily, they can teach heresy from the Bible. The goal is to give their hearers half-truths, but not the complete truth. Half-truths are the make-up of heresy, and some Scripture is your ally in this endeavor.

12. Change definitions. If you train our slaves to change the definitions of words, they can sign any confession or document, or agree with any orthodox doctrine. They know what they mean; just make sure no one else does. Have them please everyone a little bit. After all, when it comes to doctrine in evangelicalism, monsters don’t have to be orthodox, they just need to sound orthodox. Even our Prince sounds orthodox.

13. Accustom your hearers to statements you tout as facts that cannot be proven right or wrong. Train our slaves to make vague statements that hang midair such as, “God is going to do something amazing,” “I feel like revival is coming,” “God told me someone is going to give a large sum of money,” etc. These statements all lack sufficient proof. There’s no timetable for validation. As their hearers grow more accustomed to unfounded, indemonstrable prophecies, they’ll seek no validation from their prophets for unfounded, indemonstrable heretical statements either.

14. Appear cool, sweet, hip, or simply different from other pastors. Train our monsters to look like celebrities. They should say curse words from the pulpit occasionally and be edgy shock-jocks. Train each generation to rebel against or redefine the light of the previous generation.

15. Pray and preach like you’re the high priest in the pulpit. Train our monsters to act like they’re receiving a special anointing that exalts them above their hearers as they preach. This way, their hearers will come expecting to hear from Him through our monsters, thinking that they have the only word from Him, instead of believing that the Scriptures have a word from Him as well. See, our monsters can become His mouthpiece. Heresy is easy to indoctrinate when bottom-feeders think you alone speak for Him. The goal is for our hearers to view our monsters as a type of high priest, prophet, or apostle who have divine authority. Our monsters must attack the priesthood of His children by exalting themselves in the pulpit, if their heresy is to be accepted by Bible-readers.

16. Get everyone to like your personality. If everyone likes our slaves, then they can say almost anything. Train them to always be positive and encouraging. Monsters need to feel secure, regardless of reality. If our slaves can make them feel secure, they will be ours forever.

17. Train our slaves to exalt the words of His Son above the words of the apostles. Act as if Christ’s words are greater than the words of the Holy Spirit spoken through the Scripture writers. Then, they may reject the progressive revelation that further amplifies the words of Christ in the rest of the New Testament, and replace it with their own heretical interpretations. Teach them that their interpretation of Christ’s words in the Gospels is better than the interpretation of Christ’s words by Luke, Peter, Paul, John, Jude, and James (men who walked with Him) in the the New Testament. If you encourage monsters to trust themselves more than they trust those who wrote Scripture, heresy will be the natural outcome.

18. Grow the crowd numerically. If our slaves’ methods produce visible numbers, then they can say almost anything. Monsters love bare numbers, for numbers–not biblical obedience–equal success. We do not care what they trade their souls for, so long as they trade.

19. Speak of previous heretics as martyrs. Train our monsters to act like previous heretics were sweet little lambs who fell victim to evil oppressive idolaters. Their hearers probably won’t check the history of these monsters, but if they do, it’s necessary for our slaves to reinterpret church history prior to their research. You must give them an interpretive grid that helps them view church history through our eyes. If they view heresy in church history through the lens of tolerance, they’ll tolerate the heresy of our slaves as well. After all, all His children have a right to believe whatever they want, even if it goes against Scripture.

20. Increase giving and baptisms. If our slaves bring in money and decisions for baptisms, they can do or say almost anything. Make sure the world thinks they’re a big deal. If the world likes them, the monsters will like them as well.

—

Jared Moore serves as the senior pastor at New Salem Baptist Church in Hustonville, KY.  You can follow him on Twitter here.

Originally published at All Truth is God’s Truth. Used with permission.

5 Lessons from C. S. Lewis’ Grief Observed

“Cancer, and cancer, and cancer. My mother, my father, my wife. I wonder who is next in the queue.” —C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I never wanted to have this in common with C.S. Lewis. I never wanted to major in suffering.

Yet I am here, and she is there. She is resplendent in memorandum. . . and I cannot write fast enough. And I am left holding a copy of C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed. As Lewis observes his particular grief, I too observe my own. C.S. Lewis got it.

I would rather have other things in common with the man. I would have much rather been an “Inkling”—instead we are widowers observing grief.

I believe Lewis understood that one cannot simply skirt grief. Not without consequences anyway. Grief cannot be skipped over as one would skip over the fast kid in a game of “Duck, Duck, Goose.” No, rather, it seems as though grief is such-a-one whom demands to have a day of reckoning, be it now, be it later, it matters not so much. Be that as it may, it almost behooves the mourner to ride directly through the tempest of grief; keep on pedaling. Lewis himself writes, “Aren’t all these notes the senseless writhings of a man who won’t accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?” (33).

I started this short book several weary years ago. I had started a book club at church and chose C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed because I wanted my people to walk the valley of the shadow of death before death rapped at their doors. My Resplendent Bride was diagnosed with cancer before we finished chapter 2. Over the next twenty months, I would pick up this slender book of terror and read a paragraph or two, only to set it down again because I never wanted to understand what this man was writing about, and the possibility of understanding ebbed and flowed as that fox cancer raged and retreated, raged and retreated.

The Lord took her home on the third day of May. Perhaps God told her nothing would ever hurt her again. I do not know all the words he speaks to new arrivals, but I do take solace in the truth that nothing will ever hurt her again. Lewis writes, “I had my miseries, not hers; she had hers, not mine. The end of hers would be the coming-of-age-of mine. ” (13).

The gospel of Jesus Christ has sustained, maintained, and supported me all this time.  My solace is in his truth.

But it is farce to claim hope in Christ makes one immune to the sheer pain of life under the sun.  I have not found hope in Christ to be mutually exclusive to the feeling of bereavement.

As spring bloomed outside The Hermitage, winter set in inside.

The lingering challenge for the widower is to somehow fill the void left by the dissolution of all the loving, all the care-taking, and the family unit itself.

So it was that I once again picked up this slender volume, and it was there within the pages of A Grief Observed that I was surprised to find a friend in C.S. Lewis.

He gets it.

Few do, and for that I am thankful.

I have found C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed to be helpful to the widow or widower in five ways.

1. In  A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis does not make a false dichotomy between hope in Christ and mourning over searing loss.

Lewis accomplishes this feat by allowing heavy sorrow to hang on his pages longer than others dare. Lewis does not seem to be in any hurry to provide the “Sunday School” answer so many follow up their condolences with. Some folks are born with Congenital Insensitivity To Pain, a condition wherein one cannot feel pain. This is a troubling ailment because our bodies warn us that things have gone awry such as “You stepped on a hornet’s nest” or, “The Sun is burning away your epidermis” or, “This machine you paid to be baked in is burning away your epidermis” through the sensation of pain.

Now, how shall the slow rending of the one flesh once again in two not hurt (Gen. 2:24)? Widowerhood is not the “conscious uncoupling” actress Gwyneth Paltrow euphemistically described her recent divorce as.

To be widowed is to be torn asunder. Sometimes the hurting need to hurt.

2.  A Grief Observed, seeks to answer the question, “Can God still be good when He hurts us so?”

My family was dissolved by death.  God is sovereign over both life and death.  Open Theists as well as some other theological traditions will not be too keen on this truth, but the Bible is.

Psalm 139:16 states, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.”

Ecclesiastes 7:17 and 3:1-2 indicate that there are times appointed for all to live and die.  If so, then surely it is God who is the divine scheduler?

And shall we forget that it was God who drove and barred man from the tree of life growing in the Garden of Eden lest man steal immortality just as he had stolen knowledge?

Genesis 3:22-23

Then the LORD God said, ”Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever– “therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”

The New Testament informs us all flesh is destined to die someday:

Matthew 4:16, “The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.”

The author of Hebrews argues that death is “appointed for man” (9:27).

So it is, and so it shall always be: God is Lord over both thanatos and zoe. Herein lies the rub:

• God has dissolved my family by death.
• The ruin of that which remains are great.
• And, I love him.

Lewis writes, “Is it rational to believe in a bad God?  Anyway, in a God so bad as all that?  The Cosmic Sadist, the spiteful imbecile?  I think it is, if nothing else, too anthropomorphic” (30).

Lewis goes on to write,

Feelings, and feelings, and feelings.  Let me try thinking instead.  From the rational point of view, what new factor has H.’s death introduced into the problem of the universe?  What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe?  I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily.  I would have said that I had taken them into account.  I had been warned—I had warned myself—not to reckon on worldly happiness.  We were even promised sufferings.  They were part of the programme.  We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn, and I accepted it.  I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for.  Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination.  Yes; but shout it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this?  No.  and it wouldn’t for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people’s sorrows had been real concern.  The case is too plain.  If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards.  The faith which ‘took these things into account was not faith but imagination.  The taking them into account was not real sympathy.  If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came”  (36-37).

The question Lewis is wrestling with is whether God is a divine veterinarian or a divine vivisector (in other words one whose cutting is aimed to heal, or one whose cutting is motivated by sadism)?

“And I must surely admit — H. would have forced me to admit is a few passes — that, if my house was a house of cards, the sooner it was knocked down the better.  And only suffering could do it.  But then the Cosmic Sadist and Eternal vivisector becomes an unnecessary hypothesis” (38).

“Of course the cat will growl and spit at the operator and bit him if she can.  But the real question is whether he is a vet or a vivisector.  Her bad language throws no light on it one way or another.  and I can believe He is a vet when I think of my own suffering” (40).

Lewis believed that a good God only hurts for a greater good in the Christian’s life. This notion frees the Christian from having to use lame circular arguments to defend God from that which is plain. God is sovereign. God is good. I hurt. All three are true.

3. In  A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis rightly observes that grief can lead to laziness.

Lewis writes,

“And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief.  Except at my job — where the machine seems to run on much as usual — I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? They say an unhappy man wants distractions — something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog — tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he’d rather lie there shivering than get up and find one. It’s easy to see why the lonely become untidy, finally, dirty and disgusting” (5).

Lewis’ observation on this point is useful for the widow/widower in that knowing and naming the temptation helps us to not only fight the temptation but to recognize it as it slowly encroaches upon us.

Those of us in bereavement must continue to take care of ourselves. We must try to eat right, exercise, keep house, do laundry, and for the sake of our fellow man, shower. We must continue to stimulate our minds even though it hurts to not be able to share new things with our cherished one. We must endeavor by God’s grace to work at our vocation and hobbies, because whether we find the joy in it all at the moment: we still live.

Work is the antidote to the temptation to amuse ourselves with the specter of time travel as remedy to regret. There is no redemption in regret.

4. In  A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis warns the widow or widower that they may be treated as the harbinger of death.

“An odd byproduct of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not.  I hate it if they do, and if they don’t. Some funk it altogether. R. has been avoiding me for a week. I like best the well brought-up young men, almost boys, who walk up to me as if I were a dentist, turn very red, get it over, and then edge away to the bar as quickly as they decently can. Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers. To some I’m worse than an embarrassment. I am a death’s head. Whenever I meet a happily married pair I can feel them both thinking, ‘One or the other of us must some day be as he is now’” (10-11).

Lewis’ words ring true.

• The widow/widower, especially young ones, remind all the marrieds of the dread truth that there is a 50% chance that this, all this, is coming their way, someday, sooner or later.
• Nobody knows what to say. The friend does not know. The bereaved does not know.

Furthermore, in the absence of anything to say the things which are said tend to get under the widower’s skin.

People will ask variations of, “How you holding up?” or, “How are you doing?” and let us know forget, “How is your heart?”

Muscle, grit, and pumping are certainly not acceptable answers, but regardless of the answer there are those who are never satisfied that your answers are truthful unless you cry all over them.

Not likely.

The widower suddenly finds himself in a situation where every person with the capability to pass wind through their vocal cords in his general vicinity now places themselves in a position of authority over him for his own good. If a question is asked it must be answered to any and all’s satisfaction, or he shall risk a raised eye brow and the ever quizzical, “How are you really doing?”

Everyone is Barbara Walters.

Shall everyone presume to be both inquisitor and confessor?

And all this in the name of “community”?

Widower. . . They may love you, and it is a terrible fate to love someone who is hurt and to have nothing to say by way of making the dreadful affair better. Widower, I know it is tedium because you don’t know what to say either. But grief is no excuse to be a tool. Nor is grief an excuse to be an over analytical fool. This isn’t Dawson’s Creek. . . and your friends didn’t kill her. They’re just trying to help.

Those who are suffering from grief must be aware that they may be much more easily annoyed than they once were. As the movie Swing Kids says, “Put your glasses on.” Your friends simply wish to help, and they are suffering too: for they cannot help you, and they probably love whomever you lost as well.

5. In  A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis takes Heaven back from the family reunion and returns it to the Glory of God.

Heaven does not primarily exist for me to see my Resplendent Bride again. Everything, and I mean everything in me wants to see Danielle again. It is a visceral need. A couple of days ago I teared up as I brought her pills to the pharmacy for disposal. I miss her so much that I didn’t even want to be parted with her pills.

Yes, I am damaged in every which way.

But, heaven is about Jesus.

Heaven is about the glory of God.

Anything less is idolatry.

From the talk I hear at funerals I am fearful that people are giving God lip service in order to get what they want from him, namely, an eternal family reunion.

Almost as though we would approach God and use his throne like a friend’s lake house. “Hello there! God, we’d like to use your house for this thing. . . you’re. . . not going to be there, right?” Lewis writes,

“Am I, for instance, just sidling back to God because I know that if there’s any road to H., it runs through Him?  But then of course I know perfectly well that He can’t be used as a road.  If you’re approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you’re not really approaching Him at all.  That’s what was really wrong with all those popular pictures of happy reunions ‘on the further shore’; not the simple-minded and very earthly images, but the fact that they make an End of what we can get only as a by-product of the true End” (68).

Lewis goes on to write something that is helpful for the widows and widowers who have read Matthew 22:30, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”

“Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet.  We shall see that there never was any problem” (71).

So say we all.

I recommend A Grief Observed for the bereaved, as well as those who have a 50/50 shot of standing in my ever so scuffed dress shoes.

—

Evan Welcher is senior pastor of First Christian Church in Glenwood, Iowa. Husband of the lovely Danielle. Evan graduated with a B.S. in Bible from Emmaus Bible College in 2005. His goal in ministry is to stir up love for Jesus Christ by the giving of great care and fidelity to the teaching of the Scriptures. He blogs at EvanWelcher.com. Follow him on Twitter: @EvanWelcher

Originally published at EvanWelcher.com. Used with permission.

Loving One Another

“Let brotherly love continue.” —Hebrews 13:1

The New Testament resounds with the command to love the “brothers,” an idiom for fellow believers in the faith (Matt. 22:39 John 1334; Rom. 13:8; 1 Cor. 13: 1 Peter 1:22; 1 John 2:10; 3:10 4:7).  The word “love” used in Hebrews 13:1 is φιλαδελφία transliterated from the Greek as philadelphia which means “Love of brothers or sisters, brotherly love; in the NT the love which Christians cherish for each other as brethren.” We all have heard of Philadelphia before because of the city of brotherly love.

Christians are to love one another because Jesus loved them first. Paul declares, “Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another” (1 Thess. 4:9). Loving other believers should be as easy as falling off a log. Christians should not wait to get to church where they can drink in the fellowship of the godly. For the early church, the fellowship of their new brothers and sisters was delectably mysterious to them and they rejoiced in plumbing the depths of each other’s souls.

Brotherly love is to be a telltale sign of the salvation of the people of God and being a disciple of Jesus Christ. As the Apostle John would later write, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death” (1 Jn. 3:14 ). The impulse of the early church to brotherly love provided a sweet, inner self-authentication. It also announced to the world that their faith was the real thing as noted in John 13:35, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

What a glorious phenomenon brotherly love is, a sense of the same paternity (a brotherly and sisterliness taught by God, a desire to climb into each other’s souls), a sweet inner authentication, and the sign of real faith to the world.

Christians are to practice brotherly love. Inwardly, this requires that we consider the stupendous implications of our shared adoption—that we truly are brothers and sisters with those terms being more than sentimental notions. They are objective facts—that though we are millions, we share only one Father. We will still be brothers and sisters when the sun is no more, and that God is pleased when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity (Ps. 133, Jn. 17). Our status as brothers and sisters in Christ is truly an eternal bond to be treasured. Outwardly, we must will to say and do only those things that will enhance our philadelphia. Furthermore, we must will to love one another because of the gospel.

When Jesus readied his disciples on the night of his arrest, he gave them one clear command to guide them in the days ahead, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn. 15:12 ). As we look at the message of Hebrews 13:1, it must be noted the Book of Hebrews was sent to a body of Jewish believers who were tempted to revert from Christianity back to Judaism in order to escape persecution. The great refrain of Hebrews is both a warning against apostasy, against a falling away from the faith, and an exhortation to hold fast to Christ for salvation. Five times this warning is given in one form or another, including the one at the end of chapter 12 referring to the voice of God in the gospel: “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking” (v. 25).

Not unlike Jesus on the night of his departure from the twelve disciples, the writer of Hebrews prepares to leave his readers, and in this last chapter he gives his final words of exhortation. It is no surprise, therefore, he begins in the same manner Jesus did, exhorting them to “Let brotherly love continue” (v. 1). Hebrews 13 begins with a command for Christians to take seriously, “Let brotherly love continue.” We are to live continually by this principle as Christianity is all about being in the family of God and the church is to be a community characterized by family love.

One person who wrote much about Christian love was Francis Schaeffer. Much of his life was caught up in church disputes that were quite divisive. Schaeffer was known as a powerful defender of Christian doctrines, yet at the same time he strove to maintain love within the body of believers. One of his books begins with these words, “Through the centuries men have displayed many different symbols to show that they are Christians. They have worn marks in the lapels of their coats, hung chains about their necks, even had special haircuts. But there is a much better sign. It is a universal mark that is to last through all ages of the church until Jesus comes back.”¹  That mark is love among Christians, and Schaeffer proves it with Jesus’ teaching, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”(Jn. 13:35 ). This is a conditional statement predicated on the reality that if we love one another, the result will be that people will see this as the mark identifying the disciples of Jesus.

In another of his excellent books Schaeffer writes, “Evangelism is a calling but not the first calling. A Christians first call is to return to the first commandment to love God, to love the brotherhood, and then to love one’s neighbor as himself.”² This means we are to show love as an essential part of our witness, as an essential part of being a mature disciple, but more importantly because God is love and we are called to Godlikeness in the world. The Apostle John puts this in challenging terms, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 Jn. 4:7-8 ). Loving others is an overflow of our relationship with God and it is how we show gratitude for his love to us.

Love is a central mark of the Christian life because it demonstrates that the Christian has been transferred from the Kingdom of Satan to the Kingdom of God. This means love is the fruit and necessary by-product of the Christian being born again. To love one another is not a suggestion; it is a command grounded in the finished work of Jesus Christ. When Christians love one another they bear each other’s burdens (Gal. 6:1) and seek to faithfully live out the “one another” passages in the New Testament. All of this is because of the gospel which provides the basis for loving God and loving others.

Love one another, my brothers and sisters, because of the great work of God’s grace. The Christian who has been born again can’t help but love his brothers and sisters in Christ because they know it is the love of God in Christ that has wooed and won them over. This is why Christians are to love one another before a watching world greatly confused about love. Let us love one another as Jesus has loved us and demonstrate his love within the confines of our local churches and to a watching world to the glory of God.

^{1. Francis A Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian, in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1982), 4:183 - See more at: http://servantsofgrace.org/love-series-brotherly-love/#sthash.vTrY8psZ.jLP5ozRR.dpuf↩}

^{2. Francis A. Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time, in Complete works 1:85 - See more at: http://servantsofgrace.org/love-series-brotherly-love/#sthash.vTrY8psZ.jLP5ozRR.dpuf↩}

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

Originally published at Servant of Grace. Used with Permission.

4 Ways to Apply Grace to Fight for Holiness

Christians believe in the gospel. Simply put, God became human in Jesus Christ; Jesus lived a sinless life; in his perfection, Jesus died as an atoning sacrifice for sin; and he was resurrected. Christians believe this life to be the power of God’s grace—we are powerless to save ourselves, but God in Christ has reconciled us to himself. Grace is what justifies us before God. Millions—if not billions—of people alive believe the truth of the gospel. They confess it freely. But the question many of them have is what’s next after this confession. They might say, “I believe the gospel to be true. But what do I do now? How do I grow spiritually?” For centuries, churches have recommended corporate worship, Bible study, prayer, and a host of other spiritual practices. But I’ve recently found when people ask me how they are to grow spiritually, they are actually asking a different question. They are recognizing a universal experience in the Christian life—they are still tempted to sin.

If grace has justified me before God, how does grace change me over a lifetime? God gives his grace freely in Jesus Christ and in Scripture; the Christian journey is one of applying that grace to our brokenness over the course of a lifetime. The application of grace is the way we fight for holiness in life.

How to Fight For Holiness

1. Identify the lie you believe.

We all believe lies about ourselves. These lies are different for each of us, but belief in lies is universal. The prophet Jeremiah puts it this way: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9) You do not need to wonder whether you, too, believe lies about yourself. Instead, you must identify what the lie you believe is.

Our tendency is to focus on the concrete, to focus on our actions. We spot the actions or attitudes in our lives we do not like, and we want to change them. We make plans or resolutions and through sheer willpower, we change behaviors. This sort of behavior modification is good and works in many circumstances. We want to stop biting our nails, so we resolve to do so.

But the darkest places in our heart and actions are not able to be overcome by willpower, for those dark places are not about the actions. The dark places are about motives and loves. And these are the places where the lies live. The place where anger, jealousy, insecurity, lust, lies, and fakery thrive. And these sorts of motives and loves feed upon the lies. As Matthew 12:34-35 reminds us, “How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

If you want to apply the grace of Jesus to your life, you must be willing to spelunk into these dark places and examine your heart. You will need to ask some difficult questions to find the emotional and spiritual motives behind some of your actions. No easy answers are allowed in the dark places.

Addictive behavior often falls into the same trap. I choose to look at pornography, drink excessively, or abuse illegal drugs because I believe that the pleasure I will receive from succumbing to my addiction will supersede all other pleasures available to me. I have convinced myself peace comes through my addiction; the behavior killing me is the one I believe best-suited to satiate my thirst. I believe a lie: The greatest pleasure in my life comes from participating in addictive behavior, not God.

Surface behavior is rarely the root problem. Behaviors are often symptoms of something deeper within our hearts. We believe things about others, ourselves, the world, or God, and we then act upon those deeply held beliefs. Often those beliefs are so deeply rooted within our personality or our past that we cannot even immediately identify them. As a lifelong struggler of insecurity and people pleasing, it took multiple conversations with my wife and friends—along with extended time in prayer and reflection—to begin to notice the lies beneath my behaviors. Rooting out the lies we believe can often be the most difficult part of the process, for it often requires us to visit emotional and spiritual wounds we would prefer to forget or ignore.

2. Find the grace-centered truth of Scripture.

The preceding spiritual lies are false thoughts taking up residence within our current belief structures. These false thoughts are causing us to behave in ways we know are in opposition to Kingdom living. In order to fight the lies, we must replace the false thoughts with the truth. The written source of truth for the Kingdom life is found in Scripture. In order to change our life, we must find the truth of Scripture and allow it to combat the lies. Hebrews 4:12 describes the Scripture as a sword, able to divide between soul and spirit. The truth found within the pages of the Bible must become the weapon you use. These lies are not new; humanity has been recycling the same lies for millennia.

To battle lies with the truth, we need to know the themes of Scripture. Because the lies we tell ourselves are not always about the outward symptom (drugs, pornography, etc.) but instead about heart motivations, we must ensure we are allowing the Word of God to speak to the lie itself, not simply the symptom. Take anger for example. A root lie for anger says, “I believe I am entitled to a life I control.” In order to combat this belief, I must find what Scripture says regarding control.

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matt. 6:24).

“In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind” (Job 12:10).

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

“Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Ps.115:3).

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Gen. 50:20).

Repeatedly, Scripture testifies that the Lord is sovereign over all of creation. While I am allowed great freedom to act within the world, the Bible clearly states that everything is seen by his gracious eye and everything passes through his hand. If my anger stems from a desire to control, these (and many other) verses are essential. The lie? I am entitled to a life I control. The truth? God is in control and sovereign over my life.

Once you have identified the lie, finding the truth of Scripture becomes a quest. Do not only settle on the easily discovered Scriptures; instead, dive into Scripture every day. Read the New Testament repeatedly—like any great text, it takes multiple readings to grasp its depth. The more you read, the more the truth of God will replace the lies within your mind. If you keep a running list of Scriptures with the truth that combats your resident lie, you will soon find you have an extensive armory. Even further—and perhaps more important—Scripture is best understood when it is read and interpreted in communally. You need to read the Scripture with other believers so that you can understand it. Deuteronomy 6 exhorts parents to teach their children in this way—talking about the Scripture as they journey together. When you read Scripture in community, allowing it to address the lies present in your life, you will quickly find Proverbs 27:17 true, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

3. Apply the grace of Jesus.

Once you have stocked your built your armory, you are now prepared for the fight. And there will be a fight.

When temptation comes, you will be better-equipped to recognize it for what it is—the seduction to believe and act upon a lie. You will recognize your anger as the lie of control; you will know your desire for people-pleasing is actually your misguided understanding of self-worth.

And in that moment, you must act decisively—you must choose to act upon the truth instead of the lie. This is a tension, to be sure. You are not justified by your action; you are justified by grace. But in that justified state, you are now freed to act upon grace as empowered by the Spirit. The Spirit’s leadership is found within Scripture’s truth. Therefore, you must remember those stockpiled truths and act upon them. Acting upon Scripture instead of self-created lies is the practical application of the purchased grace of Jesus.

• God is ultimately in control (Scripture), not me (lie), so I can resist anger.
• God declares me to be a child of the King (Scripture), not others (lie), so I can resist the need to unnecessarily people-please.
• God alone is the judge (Scripture), not me (lie), so I am not required to immediately criticize the actions of others.
• God is the ultimate pleasure and joy in life (Scripture), not my addictive behavior (lie), so I am free to enjoy him.

Contemporary neurology affirms what you instinctively know to be true. Years of acquiescing to spiritual lies create neural superhighways which feel like second nature. To choose to act upon Scripture’s truth will be difficult, because it will be the hacking of a neural path through the thick underbrush of amassed past decisions. In fact, current neurology explains that to create new neural pathways can be painful, as it indicates new neural growth. In spite of the pain, the decision to act upon the truth is the step toward freedom. You are creating new thought patterns within your mind; you are participating in the inception of holiness.

4. Repeat. For life.

The temptations will always come, but the more you choose to act upon the grace of Jesus imparted within Scripture, the more your machete-hacked neural path becomes a well-worn road. Eventually, the decision for holiness becomes its own superhighway. Like any behavior, the new habit of holiness will eventually take hold, and the truth will more naturally supplant the lie.

You will fail and fall down some days. You will fall prey to old temptations and use the old pathways. But, on those days, do not believe the lie that you are a failure. Instead, embrace the truth of the gospel. Remember 2 Corinthians 12:9, “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” In your weakness, God continues to give grace, and he never ceases to do so. The well of Jesus’ love does not run dry.

Spiritual maturity is the journey of a lifetime, and it is a journey that we never complete until the day we “will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2). Paul encourages believers to “work out your salvation” (Phil. 2:12). Much like our contemporary use of “working out,” the application of grace is an exercise or a solving of spiritual issues. It is breaking old patterns of thoughts and behaviors through the process of grace. It is what Jesus referred to when he commanded his disciples to take up their cross each day (Lk. 9:23). Nevertheless, walking with Christ daily is a source of incredible peace and joy—it is the greatest delight of the heart. So find the lies you believe; replace them with the truth of Scripture; and act upon the grace purchased at the cross. This is the path of holiness—the path of a mature disciples.

This is the Kingdom life, the truth of Jesus, made alive in us. As Paul wrote in Galatians 2, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me!” May you apply the grace of God each day in your journey to know him alive in you. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).

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Steve Bezner is Senior Pastor of Houston Northwest Church. He holds degrees from Hardin-Simmons University (B.A., Bible; M.A., Religion) and Baylor University (Ph.D., Religion). He is married to Joy and has two sons: Ben and Andrew. Follow him on Twitter: @Bezner.

5 Thoughts on Confessing Sin to One Another

“Open Confession is good for the soul,” or so the maxim goes. Perhaps it might also be said, “Open Confession is  good for your relationship with God and men.” While Scripture supports both of these statements, there is something of a haze that lays across the surface of the meaning of such statements in Scripture as, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (Jas. 5:16). Is James speaking of going around and confessing any sin that you can point to in your life to just about anyone you are in fellowship with in the church so that they will pray for you? Or, does he have in mind the practice of “keeping short accounts” with the brethren? Does he mean going to an offended brother or sister and asking forgiveness for a particular sin that was committed against them? Or, as the context might indicate, is James instructing  individuals in the congregation to come to the elders and confess particular sins of a scandalous nature in order to be healed of a sickness with which they had been chastened by God? While we may not come to a completely settled agreement on the precise meaning of James 5:16, there are two dangers and three applications of our duty that we should be able to agree upon when reflecting on this subject.

Dangers

1. There is a danger of treating believers like personal priests.

When confession of sin becomes penance rather than repentance, there is a danger of turning to others to help us quiet our guilty conscience. Instead of turning to Christ and seeking for the cleaning of his blood–which alone quiets a guilty conscience before God, we can turn in penance to others to get that quieting. In his book Repentance: A Daring Call to Real Surrender, C. John Miller made the following astute observation about this danger:

“Penance seeks out a human priest other than Christ. . . . All too often religious leaders are flattered into accepting the role of by sympathetic parishioners who admire their gifts and graces. In accepting this role they harm themselves and the ones for whom they attempt to mediate. . . . Christians who witness with power and effectiveness will find that others will look to them to do the work of Christ for them. For instance, as the pastor must take care not to become priest to needy people in the congregation, so the youth worker must be careful not to become priest to the young people.”

This is nowhere seen as much as it is in the realm of biblical counselors. When I was an intern at Tenth Presbyterian Church, I asked Paul Tripp for advice in biblical counseling. I’ll never forget the line he threw out: “Don’t become the fourth member of the Trinity for people.” This is one of the real dangers we face when we broach this subject.

I would take Miller and Tripp’s warnings even further. I believe that we can do this with any wise and sympathetic Christian friend–not simply with pastors and biblical counselors. When we’ve found a godly and compassionate ear—even the ear of someone who will pray for us—we can all too easily start to go to that person for relief of a guilty conscience and then not go to Christ for forgiveness. When we do the former and not the latter, we have fallen into the trap of turning a friend into a personal priest.

2. There is a danger of inadvertently tempting others, or being tempted ourselves, to sin.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick, who can know it” (Jer. 17:9). Jeremiah is not simply speaking of unregenerate men and women–though it is supremely true of them. While the believer has been given a new heart and is a new creation in Christ, he or she still has a sin nature. We are, as Luther aptly put it, simul iustus et peccator (simultaneously just and sinful). Since this is so, the Scriptures give us warnings about how one believer may be tempted to sin by the sin of another believer. For instance, in Galatians 6:1, the Apostle Paul writes, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” Paul warns against the danger of adopting a self-righteous response when he warns, “Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” We are ever in danger of falling into sin even as we seek to help others who have sin in their lives. While Galatians 6:1 is speaking of confronting a sinning brother or sister about his or her sin, it has application to how we might respond to someone confessing sin to us as well. This is seen in the way in which the Corinthian congregation was initially responding to the repentant brother who had been previously excommunicated. When he returned and confessed his sin publicly, Paul charged the congregation:

“For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs” (2 Cor. 2:6-11).

There is also a very real danger of falling into the same sin that is being confessed to you by virtue of coming into contact with too many details about a particular sin in the life of another. Jude may have this in mind when he says, “Have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh” (Jude 22-23). On the phrase, “Hating even the garments stained by the flesh,” Calvin noted:

[Jude] would have the faithful not only to beware of contact with vices, but that no contagion might reach them, he reminds them that everything that borders on vices and is near to them ought to be avoided: as, when we speak of lasciviousness, we say that all excitements to lusts ought to be removed. The passage will also become clearer, when the whole sentence is filled up, that is, that we should hate not only the flesh, but also the garment, which, by a contact with it, is infected.¹

As Calvin explains, “When we speak of lasciviousness, we say that all excitements to lust ought to be removed,” so we must realize that we may be tempting a brother or sister to fall if, in the act of confessing sin, we inadvertently stir up in their own sinful desires by speaking in too much depth about a particular sin. There is a call for great caution here.

When I was a new believer, a friend of mine told me about interactions she had with a team that she was a part of on a  short term mission trip that she had recently taken. One of the things she shared, that I found to be extremely odd–if not troubling–was that the group (made up of men and women) had committed to coming together every morning to confess ways that they had sinned against each other in thought or word. That sounded like a complete recipe for disaster to me. I think that I would prefer not to know every time someone thought, “Nick’s a jerk. I really don’t like it when he does this or this or that.” There may be a need to go personally to a brother and sister privately and confess a bitter or envious spirit, but to sit in a circle and do so seems entirely unwise. Additionally, if one of the less mature men said something like, “I lusted after several of the women here this week” that would potentially lead to an adulterous outbreak. Years ago, I heard the story about a minister who had embraced the idea of complete transparency with his congregation in the name of “confess your sins to one another.” One Sunday he stood up and said, “I have to confess sin to you all this morning before the service. I lusted after five of the wives in the congregation.” Not only would this lead to potential adultery, it might also  tempt the single women in the congregation—who have chalked their singleness up to a lack of physical attraction—to sinful despair. Whatever James has in mind when he says, “Confess your sins to one another,” this much we can say—surely this is not it.

Duty

If James does not teach treating pastor and congregation as priest for penance, or confession of sin in undifferentiated settings, what does he have in mind? Clearly we can say that there is a duty involved in the words of the text. It is a command for us to confess our sins to certain individuals. Thomas Manton, in his commentary on James, gives three principles concerning when and to whom we we ought to confess our sin.

1. We are to confess sin publicly before the elders and/or the church if it is scandalous and harms the ministry of the Gospel.

This is an indisputable truth associated with the words of James 5:16. This is part of the discipline process appointed by the Lord Jesus (Matt. 18:15-19). It is clear that at some point the man who was excommunicated from the church in Corinth returned, confessed his sin publicly and asked to be restored to the fellowship (2 Cor. 2:5-11).

Thomas Manton wrote:

“Upon public scandals after admission, for of secret things the church judges not; but those scandalous acts, being faults against the church, cannot be remitted by the minister alone, the offense being public; so was the confession and acknowledgment to be public, as the apostle saith of the incestuous Corinthian, that “his punishment was inflicted by many” (2 Cor. 2:6). And he bids Timothy, “Rebuke open sinners in the face of all” (1 Tim. 5:28), which Aquinas refers to ecclesiastical discipline. Now, this was to be done, partly for the sinner’s sake, that he might be brought to the more shame and conviction; and partly because of them without, that the community of the faithful might not be represented as an ulcerous, filthy body; and the church not be thought a receptacle of sin, but a school of holiness: and therefore, as Paul shook off the viper, so these were to be cast out, and not received again, but upon solemn acknowledgment. So Paul urges: “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” (1 Cor. 5:6); and, “Lest many be defiled,” &c. (Heb. 12:15): in which places he doth not mean so much the contagion of their ill example, as the taint of reproach, and the guilt of the outward scandal, by which the house and body of Christ was made infamous.²

2. We are to confess sin privately to those we have sinned against and with.

Again, Manton explained:

Private confession to men; and so, 1. To a wronged neighbor, which is called a turning to him again after offense given (Luke 17:4), and prescribed by our: “Leave thy gift before the altar, and be first reconciled to thy brother” (Matt. 5:24). God will accept no service or worship at our hands, till we have confessed the wrong done to others. So here, “Confess your faults one to another.” It may be referred to injuries: in contentions there are offences on both sides, and every one will stiffly defend his own cause, &c, 2. To those to whom we have consented in sinning, as in adultery, theft, &c, we must confess and pray for each other: Dives in hell would not have his brethren come to that place of torment (Luke 16:28). It is but a necessary charity to invite them that have shared with us in sin to a fellowship in repentance.³

3. We are to confess sin to appointed, godly and/or trustworthy persons in the church.

Here, Manton left us some beneficial concluding thoughts when he wrote:

To a godly minister, or wise Christian, under deep wounds of conscience. It is but folly to hide our sores till they be incurable. When we have disburdened ourselves into the bosom of a godly friend, conscience finds a great deal of ease. Certainly they are then more capable to give us advice, and can the better apply the help of their counsel and prayers to our particular case, and are thereby moved to the more pity and commiseration; as beggars, to move the more, will not only represent their general want, but uncover their sores. Verily it is a fault in Christians not to disclose themselves, and be more open with their spiritual friends, when they are not able to extricate themselves out of their doubts and troubles. You may do it to any godly Christians, but especially to ministers, who are solemnly entrusted with the power of the keys, and may help you to apply the comforts of the word, when you cannot yourselves.⁴

^{1. John Calvin Commentary on Jude↩ 2. Thomas Manton A Practical Commentary, or An Exposition with Notes of the Epistle of James (London: Hamilton, Adams and Co., 1840) pp. 424-425↩ 3. Ibid.↩ 4. Ibid.↩}

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Rev. Nicholas T. Batzig is the organizing pastor of New Covenant Presbyterian Church in Richmond Hill, Ga. Nick grew up on St. Simons Island, Ga. In 2001 he moved to Greenville, SC where he met his wife Anna, and attended Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He writes regularly at Feeding on Christ and other online publications. Follow him on Twitter: @Nick_Batzig

Originally published at Feeding on Christ. Used with permission.

Temptations During Difficulties

“And they woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’” (Mark 4:38b).

It is easy to ridicule the disciples at this point, to see them in some sense as being quite dramatic. But the text does not tell us the ride is bumpy. It tells us that the boat is filling with water from the waves. If it were you or I in that boat, even if Jesus were in the flesh with us, nine times out of ten fear would trump theology. In a situation like the one described, terror is practically instinctual. In the middle of a raucous storm, boat taking on water, “We’re all gonna die!” is not a punch line. It’s a valid prediction.

And yet, Jesus is sleeping. Like the disciples, I can’t get over this. How tired do you have to be to sleep through getting knocked about in the stern of a jostling boat, getting water sloshed on you from the rising level in the bilge, let alone thunder and the frantic shouting of your friends? There is, in a way, something quite comic about this passage. And it makes the disciples’ question sort of humorous. I assume there is a level of anger in it, a smidgen of sarcasm added to the terror: “Don’t you care that we’re dying?”

Does that sound at all like any of your prayers? Does it at all resemble your theology these days? “This stuff must be happening because God doesn’t care about me.”

Two Temptations in the Midst of Difficulty

The cry of the disciples is as common as the human heart. Their question evinces two great temptations we face in the midst of any difficulty.

First, we are often tempted in trouble to equate worry with concern. Just as the disciples leap to conclusions about Jesus’s sleeping, you and I tend to get very frustrated when others refuse to get infected with our anxiety. I’ve counseled quite a few married couples, for instance, who have wandered into a communication standoff in part because the wife has mistaken her husband’s failure to mirror her nervousness as failure to care about the issues involved. Sometimes explaining the different ways men and women tend to process information and deal with stress helps to clear the air, as does encouraging husbands to be more vocal about their thoughts and feelings with their wives. But very often the essential breakdown comes from logic like this: “This is a very big deal. That’s why I’m freaking out about it. You must not think it’s a very big deal because you’re not freaking out.”

The reality is that sometimes people share our concern without sharing our worry. That’s a good thing. And it’s quite Christlike. Remember that worry is forbidden for the Christian (Matt. 6:25; Phil. 4:6) and that it won’t get you anywhere anyway.

And as in Mark 4, Jesus may come to your pity party, but he won’t participate. He will sit by you, loving you, caring about you, and overseeing all of your troubles, but he won’t for a second share in your anxiety unless you’re trying to get rid of it.

There is a reason the most repeated command in the Bible is “Be not afraid.”

The second temptation we face when going through enormous difficulty is more directly theological: we tend to assume that a loving God would not let us suffer.

There is perhaps no line of thinking more dangerous, more insidious, and more utterly unchristian than this one. The cry “Do you not care that I’m perishing?” becomes the accusation “I’m perishing and you don’t care,” which gives way to disavowal: “If there is a God, I don’t want anything to do with him. He is cruel.”

Where we get the idea that Christianity excludes suffering, I don’t rightly know. It likely comes mostly from our flesh, from our prideful idolization of comfort and pleasure. It comes somewhat from just plain ol’ crappy doctrine. It certainly does not come from the Bible.

The Cross Is Laid on Every Christian

In the story of the man whose house is built on the rock (Matt. 7:24–27), the firm foundation does not keep the storm away. In fact, according to the Scriptures, being a Christian means being willing to take on more suffering than the average person. Not only must we endure the same pains, stresses, and diseases of every other mortal, but we agree to take on the added burden of insults, hardships, and persecutions on account of our faith. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we em- bark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

The call to discipleship, in other words, is not an invitation for one of those popular Christian cruises. I can see the advertisement in the Christian magazine now:

Jesus! Shuffleboard! Seafood Buffet! Join Jesus Christ and twelve other influential teachers for seven luxurious days and six restful nights on the maiden voyage of our five-star, five- story ship of dreams, the S.S. Smooth Sailing. Enjoy karaoke with your favorite psalmists on the lido deck or splash your cares away in our indoor water park with a safe crowd of people who look just like you!

Instead, Jesus calls us into nasty crosswinds in a boat specifically designed to make us trust totally in him. And if the boat even appears to offer safety from the waves, Jesus may actually call us out of it and into the sea (Matt. 14:29). But in either place, he will be there with us, not to help us worry but to help us believe. Thus, it is imperative that we have our theology straight before we even get in the boat.

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Jared C. Wilson (@jaredcwilson) is Becky’s husband and Macy and Grace’s daddy, and also the pastor of Middletown Springs Community Church in Middletown Springs, Vermont and the author of the books Gospel Wakefulness, Your Jesus is Too Safe, Abide, Seven Daily Sins, Gospel Deeps, The Pastor’s Justification, and The Story-Telling God. He blogs almost daily at The Gospel-Driven Church.

Excerpt taken from Jared Wilson, The Wonder-Working God, Crossway, ©2014. Used by permission. http://www.crossway.org

A Buoyant Hope

Behind the veneer of much of our discipleship (and honestly, my own weathered and jaded heart), there is something in the depths of my heart that regularly flusters and flummoxes. It is something we all crave but even on our best days, we feel very little of. In our pursuit of it, we have replaced it with falsified versions that aren’t up to spiritual snuff. And thought it’s right under our noses, it’s possible that the reason we may not have much of it is because we are looking in the wrong nooks and crannies for it. Oh hope, where art thou?

More Like the Mona Lisa

One of the reasons that we overlook hope is because we are wrongheaded in our definition of it. Hope is typically expressed as doubt rather than a deep certitude that what seems impossible is assured. I’ve said it before. “I hope everybody shows up tonight for missional community” or “I hope they remember to show up for this counseling meeting” or “I sure do hope they like this sermon.” But that is not biblical hope. Hope is not just an aspiration for something good but an expectation that it will happen—an assurance that it will happen. An inevitability that the good we anticipate and long for will transpire. In other words, biblical hope is not finger­-crossing. It is a thumbs up kind of hope—a hope that it is embedded, not in skepticism, but in the stalwart faithfulness of God.

My children loves to color our carport sidewalk with chalk. It’s one of their favorite activities. Pinks and greens and blues and yellows all scribbled on gray concrete. I love to watch them as they make the grandest creations with no thought about their lack of permanence. Inevitably, a rain shower eventually rolls in and washes away their artwork. Gone. In a moment. Hope in a faithful God is never like this. It doesn’t wash away with a little rain. There is firmness in it that can’t ever be dissolved because God’s purposes are more like the Mona Lisa—enduring and unfading. Hoping in God and hoping in anything else is the difference between chalk and paint. One fades, the other abides.

Seeing the Unseen

The writer of Hebrews adds a vital component to the idea of hope: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). Wherever there is full guarantee of hope, there is faith. Or said another way, faith is the jam-­packed, self­-confidence of hope. I admit that I regularly lack that kind of confidence but that is what real hope brings. It brings spiritual assuredness. I need that kind of inspiration for my flimsy faith. But the writer of Hebrews also says that yes, faith includes hope but it is more than hope. Charles Spurgeon says it this way, “Though the ‘things’ are only ’hoped for’ and ‘not seen’ at present, the eye of faith can see them, and the hand of faith can grasp them.” See, faith­-shaped hope does the unthinkable and the counterintuitive. It sees what is unseen and clasps on what is intangible. It has vision for what is undetectable. It clutches onto what is indiscernible. That’s good news to me because frankly, my faith tends to be miniature sized. What was Jesus' proposal to his disciples for their little faith? He told them to grow it to the size of a tiny mustard seed (Mk 4:31). I love that. Jesus, as only he can, gives me hope that I can have a faith that believes and sees what can’t be seen if it’s as big as something that is very small because my faith is small most of the time.

The Bible describes the patriarch Abraham as a man of deep faith who had this kind of hope. He was filled with hope that God was able to do everything that he had promised ­ even though reality raged against God’s promise. "In hope he believed against hope” (Rom. 4:18). Interesting verbiage. Webster’s Dictionary has a separate entry for the phrase "hope against hope." It is defined as "to hope without any basis for expecting fulfillment.” Does this sound like Abraham’s faith? Not even close. Abraham’s hope had a different tone and focus.

Abraham's "against hope" meant that from a conventional human perspective, there was not an ounce of likelihood that a miracle could happen. Remember, Abraham was old and his wife was barren. Abraham knew that hope is never anchored to what is achievable by man's effort. Biblical hope gazes to the promise of a miraculous God. Abraham had a Hebrews-like hope. We must point our hearts and the hearts of others to this kind of hope in our discipleship.

Hope as Cork

In 2 Thessalonians 2:16 the apostle Paul rounds out the idea of biblical hope. He says that a hope that is good is a grace­-filled hope—one that points to the ultimate hope we have in the gospel of Jesus. This might be the most important things I preach to my heart. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. As a church planter, I remember many of those early days when only a handful of people showed up for our Sunday morning worship gathering. Because much of my identity was wrapped up in numbers, I would despair. Over time, I had to develop a rhythm of reminding myself of the hope I have, not in the varying quantity of people sitting in chairs, but in the boundless quantity of God’s love for me in Jesus.

Pastor J.C. Philpot says,

“A good hope through grace is . . . how the Lord begins and carries on his own secret operations upon the soul, when he calls it out of darkness into his marvelous light. It is not, then, all darkness and gloom with the child of grace; and even if his sky be for the most part clouded, yet rays and beams of heavenly light break in upon his heart; and as these come from the same Sun of righteousness which shines forth in all his unclouded beauty when he gives everlasting consolation, they kindle within a good hope through grace.”

Philpot is right. It is through God’s grace and mercy, our hope can now be unclouded. Redemption ignites “good hope.” Because of God's gracious act towards us, we now have an expectant confidence found in the gift of his Son, Jesus. Our deepest hopelessness—namely, our sin—has been eradicated his work on a cruel cross. And from this gracious gift emanates all of other hoping and confidence. Why? Because when you’re forgiven, you’re free to believe. You’re released to have confidence in an unswerving Father because your sin—your greatest hope­stealer—has been buried in the tomb of Jesus. We must remind those we disciple of this relentlessly or they will ground their hope in something less than Jesus’ righteousness.

In The Soul's Conflict with Itself, Richard Sibbes says, “As he is a God of hope, so by this grace. . . he stayeth that though as a ship at anchor it may and moved yet not removed from its station. This hope as cork will keep the soul though heaviness from sinking.” When the center of our hope is steeped in a faithful God, the chains of doubt and fear that we carry around can be plowed into a heavy anchor to moor us to something fast and true. And like a cork that bobs up and down in water, our hearts and the hearts of those we disciple can be buoyed from that undertow of life because grace can now become our lifejacket of hope.

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Brad Andrews serves as pastor for preaching, vision, and missional leadership at Mercyview in Tulsa, OK and as a religion columnist for the former Urban Tulsa Weekly. He also was one of the ten framers of The Missional Manifesto, alongside Tim Keller, Ed Stetzer, Alan Hirsch, Eric Mason, J.D. Greear, Dan Kimball, Linda Berquist, Craig Ott, and Philip Nation. He blogs often at mercyview.com/blog.

Curved Inward

Augustine may have introduced it. Luther certainly formed it. But the Apostle Paul wrestled openly with it as he penned lines he most certainly knew would be authoritative for the Church of Jesus Christ. When you read Romans 7, you most certainly identify with Paul’s struggle. If you are honest, no matter how long you’ve been following Jesus, you must admit that, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Rom. 7:18-19). Most people would agree that the battle with the flesh rages throughout the life of a believer. But the question is: Why would Paul so openly confess this here? Surely toward the end of his life, he came to understand that his writings were being circulated. He knew that the letters he wrote were authoritative (1 Thess. 2:13). Paul, this great church-planting pastor, the leader of a movement, the greatest missionary in Christian history. Paul, who endured countless beatings, imprisonments, and persecutions for the sake of Christ. Paul, who would give his own life under the persecution of Nero. Why in the world would he openly admit this struggle?

Incurvatus in se is a Latin phrase, coined by Luther and rooted in Augustine’s thought, which simply describes the primordial evil in the world—humanity curved inward on itself. And it is precisely this idea that Paul wrestles with in Romans 7. How do I know? Turn the page.

In Romans 7:24, after Paul has written himself to the point of frustration over his own struggle with sin, he is completely undone. He writes, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” In other words, “I look within myself and I find absolutely nothing that is not wretched, depraved, and totally self-absorbed. I need deliverance from someone other than me!”

Gazing on Jesus Christ

What happens next is stunning. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25). And he doesn’t stop there. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8:1).

Don’t you see what Paul is doing here? Are you catching the whole scope of what is going on? Paul struggles, he wrestles, as he acknowledges his inward curvature. As he looks within, he is given over to despair because of his total depravity. But . . . do you see where Paul’s gaze turns? Upward! To Christ! To the gospel! Romans 8 is one of the richest expositions of the gospel in all of Scripture, and we so often forget that it comes on the heels of Romans 7.

Why does Paul do this? Is he just given over to his own emotions, carried along by whim as he is writing? Certainly not. Paul is giving his readers a picture of exactly what the gospel does. It redirects our gaze. It restructures our natural curvature. We move from inward to upward. When we look within, we find nothing but condemnation and despair. But when we look to Jesus, we find a banner which reads, “It is finished. No condemnation.” And perhaps the most gloriously counterintuitive part of this message is this—it has absolutely nothing to do with us.

So how does a man go from being a self-absorbed Pharisee (Paul’s former life), to being a selfless missionary who leverages everything he has for the cause of Christ? The gospel redirects his gaze. He meets Jesus, and his eyes are fixated on the cross.

The Chief Enemy of Discipleship

Incurvatus in se (being curved inward on oneself) is the main enemy of making, maturing, and multiplying disciples. More than Satan’s plans to thwart our evangelistic efforts. More than the apologetic arguments of the leading atheists. More than the newest scientific discovery. Men and women curved inward will never desire to make, mature, and multiply disciples of Jesus.

This is why so many theologians have remarked about the power of the gospel especially for Christians. We need to have our gaze redirected every day. The gospel reminds us, over and over, that nothing good resides in our members, and yet, there is no condemnation because of the finished work of Christ. We are drawn to look on Jesus. We are moved to consider him. Something like worship begins to stir up in our hearts. And do you know what the automatic outflow of worship is? Making Disciples.

Christian, you are the chief enemy of the make, mature, and  multiply mentality. You are not exempt from the natural curvature of all humanity. This is why being gospel-centered is absolutely necessary. It is not a catch phrase. It is not a buzz-word. It is the power of God for salvation.

Looking Outside of Yourself

When your heart is set on yourself, you will never look outside of yourself. You’ll get home from work and retreat inside your home, where you’ll neglect your wife and children, owing it to the need to decompress after a long day. You’ll never engage in small-group discipleship because it’s all about giving of yourself, not getting for yourself. You’ll hardly care about the lost and dying around you because you are probably too busy checking who has commented on your most recent self-glorifying status update.

If the gospel captures your gaze, day after day, you’ll be reminded of the glorious reality of no condemnation. You’ll spend your time looking up and out. You’ll be free to serve everyone because you need nothing from anyone. You will live a gloriously counterintuitive kind of life in which you won’t care about your own power, position, prominence, or praise. You’re only concern will be the glory of Jesus and the praise of his glorious grace.

Christians, let us come before the glory of the gospel each day, that our gaze may be lifted upward and outward. Let us remind each other of the glorious reality of no condemnation with ferocious vigilance. Let us seek to make, mature, and multiply because our gaze is fixed on the One who told us “There is no condemnation.”

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Alex Dean is a pastor in Lakeland, Florida. Holding an undergraduate degree from Dallas Baptist University, Alex is currently completing his graduate work at Reformed Theological Seminary. His book, Gospel Regeneration: A story of death, life, and sleeping in a van, will be released in the summer of 2014. Follow his blog at gospelregeneration.com or follow him on Twitter @alexmartindean.

The Bait and Switch

Texas Only Has Three Seasons

Unlike most of the nation’s spring, summer, fall, and winter, we have springtime, ridiculously hot, and football season. From preseason to Super Bowl Sunday, football talk is everywhere. From fantasy teams, to social media feeds; from pro and college jerseys worn proudly in the grocery, to conversations and watch parties, our world revolves around our teams. You may not love football, but something is just as important to you as football is to the stereotypical fan. The next installment in your favorite movie trilogy, your family, your job, your church, a new restaurant you visited, a big project you’re working on: whatever it is, we all talk about what’s important to us.

If you’re a Christian, it’s likely you’d consider Jesus more important to you than football. Although sometimes we wonder about some men in our churches . . . And yet, this Cornerstone of our very lives, motives, actions, and decisions often becomes the least-discussed aspect of our entire lives. Many Christians pull a “bait and switch” on those around us. You know that image: a newspaper ad lures you to a store, where you find out there were “only ten at the special price, but look what else we have . . .” If we’ve gotten to know a neighbor for nine months, and only then we reveal that we follow Jesus, we’ve done the same thing: they question our motives, wonder about our relationship, and feel like we’ve lied to them. And we have: as the courtroom oath goes, we’ve showed and told “the truth,” but not “the whole truth so help me God.” How do we share the gospel without killing the relationship? The first way is to be open about our faith from day one.

Why do we do this? Maybe we hesitate to talk about faith because it’s divisive. Maybe we’re nervous: what if they then ask us a question we can’t answer? Or maybe, since they don’t follow Jesus and we lack that shared experience—which a football game easily provides—we might wonder if we have common ground. Each of these breaks down. First, if we incarnate ourselves into a mission field, eventually people find out we follow Jesus. Our neighbors see us pull out of our driveways every Sunday, frantic and late, or see Bible-toting friends enter our home every Wednesday. Second, when (not if) they ask a question we can’t answer, we have two viable options. We can answer from our own experience, since experience is sometimes more meaningful than cold, hard facts. Or we can show humility: “I haven’t studied that specific element of faith yet, so I don’t know.” Then we can go find the answer and honor them by remembering to follow up. Third, we may lack the shared experience of faith, but we’re normal humans, so have plenty to talk about.

A Perception of Shame

One thing comes across in our lack of sharing the gospel: shame. If we can’t look someone in the eye and talk about our personal experience with Jesus with confidence, we appear to be ashamed of the very thing we claim as most important to us. We go directly against the apostle Paul’s exhortation to Roman Christians, not to be ashamed of the gospel1. It takes great faith to share the gospel: it is divisive—God promises it to be, and others will consider our belief foolish. It can make us nervous—they might not respond well; they might laugh at us. And it is intrusive—the cross draws a line between beliefs. Such is Christian experience, throughout history and across the world. But the faith by which Paul and the righteous live isn’t faith in others’ perspective of us, or the relationship we have with them. It’s faith in a far greater God than those idols. And that faith caused Paul—and causes us—not to be ashamed of the gospel.

Eboo Patel started the Interfaith Youth Core, which works primarily on college campuses. Eboo—a Muslim who I (Bob) admire deeply and love—once asked what I believed. “Eboo I’d never offend you in the world, but I really believe based on the Bible that Jesus is God and the only way to Him.” I told him of working in Vietnam and later in Afghanistan with Muslims. He told me one of the reasons partnered with us is because I held to my faith and still wanted a relationship with him. People do not just want honesty, but clarity to understand what we believe. It’s a matter of how we say it. I’ve become convinced that truth is always kind and humble. Harshness, mean-spiritedness and arrogance often displays insecurity about our beliefs. If we believe the truth, we should be the most secure, humble, compassionate people on earth. We have nothing to be ashamed of.

Christianity in Everyday Conversations

And we’re not encouraging forcing God into every conversation, at the exclusion of everything else: that will ensure a ‘no’ the next time you invite them over. We are encouraging allowing our faith to be a part of our normative, unforced conversation. Just like other parts of our lives are. Sharing the gospel begins by not omitting parts of our lives that speak to our beliefs. If your boss asks what you’re doing this weekend, instead of “yard work and a birthday party Saturday, then some other stuff on Sunday before I watch the game,” simply acknowledge that “some other stuff” means “going to a church gathering, and even serving on the parking team.” If a neighbor wants your opinion on a hot-button issue, instead of simply talking about politics and human rights, bring your Higher Authority into the conversation.

Tim Keller said it like this: “You have to be willing to talk about how your faith integrates with your life. Because if you’re in non-superficial relationships with people, your faith simply has to come up! Why you do this and why you do that, and why you don’t do this and why you don’t do that, and how you were helped with a problem—you just have to mention it. It should be very natural . . . You have to have a lot of non-superficial relationships with not-yet-believers, and you also have to have a willingness to talk about your faith, and how it affects how you think and live.” Here are a few, among many, common ways to bring faith into common conversation3:

• Talk about your faith and community: speak of church gatherings, events, meaningful relationships, and God’s work with excitement and joy: it raises intrigue.
• Talk about our redemption stories: talking about our lives both before Jesus and after takes courage, but is deeply moving in its vulnerability. And talk about moments of brokenness and reconciliation in your life since He redeemed you. It shows that you’re still not perfect, but that Jesus continues to redeem areas of pain, struggle, and disbelief.
• Share the result of your faith: show people our true rest, joy, peace, and comfort in God alone, because of His ongoing work in us. How does faith impact your daily life?
• Give God due credit: as you talk about good things in your life, rightly attribute those blessings to God, the giver of every gift.
• Point to the bigger story: as we discuss conflict, sin, pain, and brokenness in the world, or as we discuss success, joy, and echoes of redemption, acknowledge that every specific act is part of a larger story of brokenness and redemption.
• Be generous with praise: whether watching a mountain sunrise or hearing a co-worker complain about her assistant, point to beautiful things God has uniquely put in them
• Show great grace: instead of engaging in gossip, and instead interacting with someone who’s failed or hurt us, display the grace God first showed us.
• Share our true thoughts when asked: instead of avoiding advice, or downplaying the fact that the gospel drives us, boldly give answers from a faith-filled worldview.
• Don’t talk about God differently with not-yet-believers than we do with believers: we normally talk openly about God, faith, and even struggles and doubt with our community; do the same in our mission field. Honesty and openness shows others we don’t have every answer.

The gospel is important to us. While we must listen well, the other side is equally true: to really get to know people, they need to know what’s important to us. You talk about everything else in your life that’s important. Don’t stop talking about the big game, the hit movie, or your big project. Just make sure they’re in their place and don’t ignore the bigger driving force in your life. Don’t be ashamed of the gospel. In normal conversation, and early in the relationship, let people know you’re a follower of Jesus.

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Ben Connelly, his wife Jess, and their daughters Charlotte and Maggie live in Fort Worth, TX. He started and now co-pastors The City Church, part of the Acts29 network and Soma family of churches. Ben is also co-author of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission (Moody Publishers, 2014). With degrees from Baylor University and Dallas Theological Seminary, Ben teaches public speaking at TCU, writes for various publications, trains folks across the country, and blogs in spurts at benconnelly.net. Twitter: @connellyben.

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers starting June 2014. It appears here with the permission of the author and publisher. For free resources and preorders, visit everydaymission.net.)

Cultivating Wonder in Children

Success by Religious Conformity

It was one of those moments when I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So I opted to just shrink lower into our second-row pew, stifle my giggles, and thank God for my seven-year-old son and all his glorious honesty.

My husband pastors a rural church in SW Virginia; and while we do our best to keep our kids out of the fishbowl, we do expect them to participate in the full-scope of congregational life. This includes our mid-week Bible study. This isn’t usually a problem, but like all of us, there are days when our children would rather stay home. Sometimes they’re tired, busy doing other things, or in the case of my seven-year-old son, simply finds his Legos more interesting than sitting still for an hour.

On this particular Wednesday night, my husband and I had dealt with the standard objections over dinner, and by 7:05, everyone was safely ensconced in our pew with our heads bowed. The head deacon was opening the service with prayer as only a head deacon from a rural Baptist church can when about half way through, he asked God to touch the hearts of “those who could have come tonight, but chose not to.” Not missing a beat, my son piped up, “Well, I didn’t want to come, but I HAD to.”

My son’s resistance to church is not the only discipleship hurdle we face as parents. It is easily matched by his older sister’s recent acknowledgment that she finds God’s eternality “weird” and by the fact that their five-year-old brother regularly asks to pray at meal time for the sole purpose of controlling the length of the prayer. (“Dear-God-Thank-you-for-this-food-help-us-to love-each-other-Amen.”) If parenting success is measured by religious conformity, we’re batting 0 for 3 here.

Discipleship Through Fear

These kinds of situations have the potential to worry Christian parents who desire to pass their faith on to their children. With reports of widespread Millennial angst and stories of apologists’ daughters rejecting Christianity, it easy to fear our children will not come to a personal relationship with Christ. It’s even easier to respond out of that fear by simply doubling our efforts to force faith into them through more catechism, more Bible memory, more “church.”

Part of the reason we do this is because we tend to believe discipleship happens through the accumulation of religious knowledge. A quick Google search for “children’s discipleship” brings back resource after resource—everything from catechisms to Bible memory systems to pint-sized devotional books–all promising to produce faith in the next generation of believers. What I rarely hear discussed is the necessity of discipling our children through “natural revelation.” When theologians use the term “natural revelation,” they are referring to what God has revealed about himself through the world around us. “Specific revelation,” on the other hand, is what God has revealed about himself through the Scripture.

And while I believe Scripture is essential to the process of belief, Scripture was never intended to be engaged in a vacuum. Instead, faith happens as the Holy Spirit impresses the truth of God’s Word (specific revelation) onto a heart that has been primed to accept it by experiencing the truth of God in the world around it (natural revelation). Like a pair of chopsticks, the two must work together.

The Apostle Paul understood this and it’s precisely why in Acts 17—that famous Mars Hill sermon—he begins by appealing to what the Athenians already knew through their experience of the world. They already believed in some “unknown God” because they could see his works both in them and around them. Most of us understand the importance of this approach in adult evangelism; we craft winsome arguments and appeal to the nature of the cosmos and the intrinsic code of right and wrong that seems to be written on every human heart. What fewer of us recognize is that we must evangelize and disciple our children in this exact same way. We must evangelize and disciple our children through wonder as much as through catechism.

Wonder as Much as Catechisms

In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton, that great British philosopher of the last century, writes that he gained his understanding of the world as a child:

“My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery . . . a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by mere facts.”

It is this “certain way of looking at life” that many Christian parents neglect—or perhaps have never even acquired for themselves. We are not merely stuffing our children’s heads with facts; we are shaping hearts to believe that certain realities are true so that when they do finally encounter the facts essential to faith, they will already have hearts that can recognize them. When they finally memorize “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” it will find lodging because they have already gazed up into this same heaven and marveled at its brilliant stars; and they have already let the sand from this same earth slip through their chubby fingers.

So that in the end, they don’t believe there is a Creator simply because Genesis 1 tells them so; they believe there is a Creator because they have seen his Creation. 


As you go about discipling your children, as you teach them their Bible verses and correct them when they disobey, do not neglect the sacred discipline of awe. Take them to the mountains to walk forest trails in search of the millipedes and butterflies that are the works of his hands. Take them to the seashore to be knocked over by the power of a wave so that one day they’ll know how to be knocked over by power of God. Take them to the art museum to thrill at colors and shapes and textures whose beauty can only be explained by the One who is Beauty himself. Take them to the cities to crane their necks to the see the tops of sky scrapers and shiver at God’s miracle of physics that keeps them from tumbling down.

And then take them to church.

Take them to church to bow their heads and receive the Word that gives them the ability to know the God behind all these wonders in a personal way. Take them to church to let the joy of their little hearts overflow in worship of the One through whom all these things consist. And take them to church, so that in the midst of other worshipers, in the midst of other image bearers, they too will be able to find their place in the great, wide world he has made.

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Hannah Anderson lives in the hauntingly beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She spends her days working beside her husband in rural ministry, caring for their three young children, and scratching out odd moments to write. In those in-between moments, she contributes to a variety of Christian publications and is the author of Made for More: An Invitation to Live in God’s Image (Moody, 2014). You can connect with her at her blog Sometimes a Light and on Twitter @sometimesalight.

Catching God’s Vision for Multiplication

There are many reasons—some good and some not so good—why churches consider planting other churches. Church planting, going multisite, and revitalizing churches have increasingly become options for churches today. At the same time, evangelism and discipleship are being talked about and mulled over more than ever. Amidst all the debates about how to do it and what to avoid, we might begin by simply looking into the grand story of Scripture and being propelled by God’s big vision. The Bible tells us to gather around and listen to his plan for multiplication and the spread of his glory.

Filling the Gaps with Glory: A Theological Rationale for Multiplication

At Creation, and later in Redemption, God implements a grandiose vision for filling the earth with his glory. The Bible tells the story of God spreading his beautiful, holy, and glorious image to every nook and cranny on the earth. The endgame or supreme goal of missions, evangelism, or discipleship is the glory of God. Thankfully, the glory of God and the good of humankind aren’t at odds with each other. We don’t pursue God’s glory at the expense of our joy and fulfillment, but rather we pursue, proclaim, and replicate God’s glory as the means by which our joy and fulfillment can reach their highest heights.

Consider God’s original great commission to humankind. After God creates man—male and female together—in his image and likeness, he places them in his kingdom and says: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over” every living thing (Gen. 1:28). Humankind is meant to exercise dominion and care over God’s creation as his ambassadors, but we’re also called to spread in the earth and bear fruit as we multiply. God intended that Adam and Eve would faithfully follow him and as they see what he’s like they’ll reflect him (similar to how kids mimic parents). As they multiply and spread, their children would also reflect the glory of God. As this happens from person to person through fruitful multiplication, and as it spreads throughout the earth, you can envision God’s image and glory filling the entire world.

God’s heart for multiplication is clear in this passage from Genesis. His desire is that we would be image-bearers who reflect the glory of God back to him. To take it a step further, the desire isn’t that we all stay in one place but that we fill up the earth with more glory-reflecting image-bearers who spread God’s glory to every square inch of his kingdom. Unfortunately, we know in Genesis 3 that sin comes into the picture, and with Adam’s fall we are plunged into darkness, and the image of God in us is marred (though not completely erased). We are now like dusty and cracked mirrors that reflect little of God and instead reflect increasingly of the earth’s corruption.

However, as heartbreaking and tragic as the fall is, God’s plan in redemption eclipses that with a soul-stirring hope that provides the “happily ever after” that our hearts long for. God is recreating a new humanity in Jesus, and all those united to him by faith are being restored back into the image of the glory of God. On earth that transformation is by degrees as we’re sanctified, but on the new earth it will be instantaneously completed as we’re glorified (Rom. 8:29; I Cor. 15:49; 2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 3:10).

The Great Commissions: How Genesis 1 Relates to Matthew 28

You might be asking at this point what this has to do with church planting in its various expressions. Church planting is really just about multiplication and the making of disciples who reflect God’s glory everywhere (“fill the earth”). When the New Testament speaks about evangelism or missions it isn’t a new idea and it’s not separate from God’s plan for us in Genesis 1. God’s vision is the fulfillment of his commission in Genesis 1—that man would fill the earth with his glory. This is the eschatological hope of the prophets and is stated beautifully in Habakkuk 2:14: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (cf. Mt. 28:18-20; Rev. 21:22-22:5).

In the Great Commission passages (Mt. 28:18-20; Acts 1:8), Jesus is tasking the new humanity in him with the Genesis 1 mandate. The goal is to go and make disciples, followers of Jesus Christ who know him, represent him, bring his kingdom, and reflect his glory. Throughout the book of Acts we see this taking place as the gospel spreads out from Jerusalem to Samaria to the surrounding countries to the ends of the earth. In all these locales new people are converted and new churches are set up. In the New Testament, there’s no idea of disciples being made apart from their incorporation into the church (Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5). Church planting wasn’t one way of “doing church” but was simply the necessary and authorized way of maturing disciples in the locations the gospel reached. Epaphras might hear the gospel and be converted in Ephesus (Acts 19:10), but he then goes back to his own community in Colossae where he shares the gospel and starts a local church (Col. 1:7). The commission to make disciples of people everywhere is accomplished by planting local churches, and people are discipled in community best when the local church is truly local.

Colossians: A New Testament Example of the Spread of God’s Glory

Let me provide one example in Paul’s letters where I believe he subtly builds on this theology. Paul writes this to the church at Colossae: “Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing” (Col. 1:5-6). Paul’s says what is happening in Colossae is fulfilling the commission in the garden and the commission Jesus gives to the Church. In the whole world, and in Colossae as one example, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing. God desires multiplication, not only numerically but also in a way that it spreads. The gospel is bearing fruit and growing as the whole world is filling up with the glory of God through the conversion of sinners and the planting of churches.

It’s not just that people are saved but that people are being remade into the image of God by becoming a new person in Christ. Later Paul tells them to act differently because they are “being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:10). They are reflections of the glory of God and should live in such a way that people get a glimpse of what God is really like and what it looks like to be an image-bearer flourishing. People in Colossae are being renewed into the image of God, and in this way the gospel is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world. Hopefully you see how multiplication through conversion and church planting in each pocket of the planet is accomplishing God’s plan for spreading out his glory over the entire world.

We’re told this will one day be fully realized when a new earth (God’s city) comes down out of heaven as the final home for the people of God. In that place, there will be no sin and no sinners (Rev. 21:1-4). Jesus will fill up the place with his radiant glory so that every piece of creation sparkles in his light (Rev. 21:18-27; 22:1-5). We ourselves will have a glory derived from Jesus that refracts back to him (Rev. 21:24-26). The hopes and visions of the prophets will be fulfilled as the glory of God does indeed cover the whole earth. This has always been God’s plan, and although dramatic twists and turns take place within the narrative, his plan will surely be accomplished. The work of the church now in making disciples, of planting churches in every community, and reaching the nations with the gospel is rooted in this theological vision of God’s glory spreading and increasing through multiplication.

Each of us are part of one local church, one drop in the bucket wanting to fulfill our God-given task of spreading the glory of God locally and globally. As your church thinks about multiplication—individually and corporately—pray to see the glory of God spread throughout your neighborhood, city, country, and globe through the transformation of image-bearers and the planting of local churches.

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Dustin Crowe has a bachelor’s degree in Historical Theology from the Moody Bible Institute and studied at the master’s level at Southern Seminary. He is Local Outreach Coordinator of College Park Church, a church of 4,000 in Indianapolis, where he also helps with theological development.

Be a Storyteller

What do you do when you get together with friends? You start with a story. What do you do when you return from vacation? Do you pull out the agenda from the cruise and walk them through a list of what you did? No, you share stories. How do you explain your childhood to your kids? Stories. It is difficult to separate storytelling from the fabric of relationship. We like to tell stories and hear stories. Sharing them is the foundation of relationship. Yet we often fail to share the story of Scripture in the same natural way. If story is the way we share  how our day went, why is it not the form in which we clarify the gospel? If story is the way we instruct our children in the way they should live, why don’t we become storytellers to instruct disciples in the way of obedience. We like stories as illustrations in sermons to clarify meaning, but fail to see the story of Scripture as the place to find meaning. I want to call us back to narrative. I invite us to become gospel storytellers. Scripture is nearly two-thirds narrative. It is the story of God. We ought to share it.

Stories are Where We Go for Meaning

“What is the meaning of life?” is the timeless question. It is the question asked in Micah 6:8: “What is required of man?” It is Aristotle’s question: “How should a man lead his life?” Historically, humanity has answered this question through philosophy, science, religion, and art. The first three have failed us or been disregarded. No one reads Plato outside of homework and cramming for exams. We are tired of science’s polished, empty answers. Religion is a place of hypocrisy, ritual, and superstition. The world of cynics has rejected all but the art and story is the dominant art form. In Story Robert McKee:

“The world now consumes films, novels, theatre, and television in such quantities and such ravenous hunger that the story arts have become humanity’s prime source for inspiration.”

Many of the stories we hear and tell fall short as the meaning of life. As a society, we are beyond the myth of human progress. We have far too many evils to remind us we aren’t getting better. The depravity of the world is our base assumption and our human hunch is that life was not supposed to be this way. Stories try to explain the way forward through this mess. However, void of the gospel story, our neighbors hears some variation of this plot: you can fix your problems, if we are creative, courageous, and smart enough. The meaning of life in contemporary stories is: you are the center of the problem and the solution. The story, or life, is about you. However, the gospel is the story of God for you, for your life. The story of a gracious and just God who goes to great lengths to save and redeem those who don’t deserve it. The story of God gives humanity a new identity, meaning, and purpose.

Stories are Where We Turn for Guidance

Kenneth Burke said, “Stories are equipment for living.” We model our own life choices on the stories we believe are best or the stories we wish to avoid. We hear how things worked and didn’t work in the years before and make adjustments. We learn from how our older siblings stories and model our own lives after them. Not only do my parents and teachers have a major affect forming the way I wanted to live, but so did Huck Finn, Bill Huxtable, the Box Car Children, and the group from Saved by the Bell. These stories and characters instructed and formed my proper view of living. They taught me how to live adventurously, with integrity, and even how to ask a girl out on a date. They did this, because I connected with the characters. We witness what they witness, we experience what they do. Stories are shaped in the reality of the world. They reflect what is true of us and our surroundings. As we listen to a story, it informs how we live. How does the story of the Bible inform how you live? What would it look like to have life shaped by the gospel story and bring others into that story?

Stories are the Glue of Community

Stories form and hold groups of people together. They are the folklore shared, the background, and the history of our greatest triumphs over our most challenging days. The inside jokes, the shared experiences turned lifelong memories, and anything that follows “remember that one time” binds communities together. The stories a community shares are the stories that define it. If the story is one of independence and self-reliance, the community will be shaped by this. If the common story is one of pleasure and riches, it will be defined by this, too. If the community’s story is one of hope, grace, and love, it will be characterized by hope, grace, and love.

The Good Story

Robert McKee, the self proclaimed story guru of the twenty-first century, writes, “A good story tells the world something it wants to hear and it’s the artists job to figure out what it wants to hear.” The gospel is that good story. It is the story of what the world needed but didn’t deserve being given by God through Christ. It is the story of true acceptance, adoption, belonging, gifts, overcoming the destruction and devastation of this world. Eugene Peterson explains this well:

Stories are the most prominent biblical way of helping us see ourselves in ‘the God story,’ which always gets around to the story of God making and saving us. Stories, in contrast to abstract statements of truth, tease us into becoming participants in what is being said. We find ourselves involved in the action. We may start as spectators or critics, but if the story is good (and the biblical stories are very good!), we find ourselves no longer just listening to but inhabiting the story.

The gospel is a story not a list of facts. It is the story about God redeeming, rescuing, and recreating his creation. The story of God taking it upon himself to save us from death and bring us to life. The gospel is the true story and only trustworthy account for what has been done to redeem the world. The story is good news. The gospel is the compelling story that doesn’t fall flat on meaning. The story that satisfies our longings for purpose and joy. It is the greatest story because it instructs us in how to live with faith and in close relationship with God. Furthermore, it creates a community. The story of God makes a new people characterized by grace, because the story is about grace. The community is centered on God because the story is about God. This is a story the world must hear.

Sheryl’s Story

Her family tree mostly produced problems. Its fruit wasn’t peppered with convicts or crazies, just disappointments: neglected homes, broken promises, and abandoned children. The residue of family pain was silent relationships. She knew at an early age that everything would be uphill for her and no one was going to carry her. Whatever she gained would be by her sweat. Whatever the costs, she would pay. She was raised religiously in what to do and how to do it. She knew the right things to do—but was never told the story.

One evening, she came to our home for our community’s weekly meal and story time. We shared and engaged the story of the early church (Acts 2). We shared the story of God’s adoption of us and the creation of the church. It was story-time. In the middle, Sheryl asked, “I’ve never heard this story, but is the church a family? All I’ve heard is God wants us to do stuff for him and live right, this story sounds like God loves us like children.” My wife explained, “Church is family. We are a family. Even when we are not together we are the family. But all good families get together, catch up, share stories, and live life together.”

Sheryl was raised to know the right things to do and the bullet points of theology. She was never told the story of the gospel. The story she had believed was one of self-reliance and moral behavior. She found meaning in it and had accepted this story for her life. But it wasn’t the true story. We had the blessing of sharing the story of God with her. Unfortunately, most of the people we live around and work with don’t know the gospel story, either. They may know some of the points, or some of the characters, but they haven’t heard the story. Like Sheryl, they need to hear it and engage. Be a storyteller to them!

Become a Storyteller

How do you become a gospel storyteller?

• Begin by knowing it as a story. Read it, listen to it, and engage it in conversation with us. Place yourself in the narrative, not as the hero but as the everyman.
• Ask of the story? If this were true, how would it change my life, community, city?
• Participate in the Story-Formed Way created by Soma Communities.
• Speak it. The best way to learn is to share it and try!
• Share your life story and how it is really part of God’s story.

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

Suffering Nails Truth to the Heart

It was the night before Easter Sunday (arguably the best day of the year) and I was planning to prepare my heart to celebrate the Lord’s resurrection the following day. Instead, I ended up lying in a hospital bed hooked to an IV receiving the usual cocktail the doctors give me for migraines. In the past, that would have been the opportune moment to hit play on my usual “woe is me” self-talk. But during those long hours in the emergency room, as I came in and out from the tranquilizing effects of the medications, something rather astounding happened—I began to preach the gospel to myself. The following three gospel truths particularly ministered to me that night and have become regular tracks that I play over and over as I learn to preach the gospel amidst my suffering.

Three Gospel Truths

1. I am not being punished

In the midst of pain there is a very real temptation to believe that God is punishing you. I’ve wrestled with debilitating migraines for seven years and my immediate response is to frantically search my life for some secret sin I’ve committed. I fall into the trap of believing that if I’m good I’ll be rewarded and if I’m bad I’ll be punished. In my legalism, I equate pain with God’s punishment. Yet, I’m missing an essential component in my religious equation—the gospel. The gospel tells me that I don’t simply do “bad things”; rather, apart from Christ I am bad. Scripture is clear on this point. I was “alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds” (Col. 1:21). I was “dead in the trespasses and sins” in which I once walked (Eph. 2:1-2). By my very nature I was a child “of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). I was under God’s just condemnation and there was nothing I could do to work my way out of this death sentence “for by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight” (Rom. 3:20). Theologically speaking, if I think migraines are a just punishment for my sin then I have fully underestimated the gravity of sin. In terms of punishment, I don’t simply deserve migraines—I deserve death and hell.

But it doesn’t stop there. The gospel is good news for a reason.

God put Jesus forward as the propitiation for sin so that we might be “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). This means that though I was alienated from God he has now reconciled me to himself “in his (Christ’s) body of flesh by his death” (Col. 1:21). Though I was dead in my sins deserving of God’s punishment, he made me “alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:5). Do you see what Scripture is proclaiming? Christ came as our substitute and suffered the penalty of our sin so that we no longer experience the punishment of God’s wrath. Though God disciplines those he loves (Heb. 12:6), he poured out his punishment conclusively upon his Son at the cross. If you have been united with Christ, you no longer bear the punishment for your sins for “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24).

You will never be punished because Jesus was punished in your place.

Therefore, pain is not punishment from God, nor is it a sign of his disapproval. In Christ you have unconditional acceptance and approval before the Father. This has significant ramifications for believers as we suffer in this lifetime. Whether it is migraines or cancer or panic attacks, we stand on the truth that God is not punishing us. Because of our union with Christ, God is for us (Rom. 8:31) and nothing (not even pain) can “separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39).

2. I am not alone

Pain can be terribly isolating leading to feelings of loneliness and despair. I do not fully understand it nor can I rationally explain it, but when I suffer physically I inevitably suffer spiritually and emotionally. Were it not for Jesus, I think pain could result in feelings of total defeat. But the gospel reminds us that Jesus shared in our physical and emotional pain. His suffering was certainly more than that (i.e. absorbing the wrath of God), but never less. Jesus left the glories of heaven to take “the form of a servant” and be “born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7). He shared in “flesh and blood” and “he himself partook of the same things” that we endure (Heb. 2:14). He was “made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest” (Heb. 2:17). Jesus is able to sympathize with our weaknesses (Heb. 4:15) because he knows what it is like to suffer in the flesh. Hebrews 5:7 says, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death . . . ” Jesus understands what it’s like to cry out in agony in unmitigated pain.

How many times have you prayed “with loud cries and tears” to the Father for relief and yet your pleas seemed to ring hollow? How many times have you thought to yourself, “God is able to take this from me and he chooses not to”? How many times have you felt abandoned by God in your suffering and wondered where he was? Those subjective feelings can seem so real in the moment, but the objective truth is that God through Christ has drawn near to us. We can be sure that God hears our cries because we have an intercessor in heaven that identifies with us (Heb. 7:25).

Because of this, we are never alone in our pain. Our sufferings can be a means by which we draw nearer to Jesus, our great High Priest, as he intercedes on our behalf (Heb. 4:14-16). There seems to be a sweet closeness with Jesus for those uniquely qualified by pain. I’ve been a Christian for twelve years and have joyfully celebrated Easter every one of those years, but this year I savored Christ’s sufferings in a new way. I was richly comforted by the fact that my Lord had walked the path of pain so that he might become my merciful High Priest before the throne of God. It gave me peace to know that Jesus didn’t only suffer for me, but he also suffered with me.

Think about that—we have a God who left heaven to come alongside us and suffer among us.

3. I have the hope of the resurrection.

Pain has a way of shrinking perspective. It can cause us to fold in on ourselves. We become so obsessed with feeling better (physically or emotionally) that we lose sight of the bigger picture. The gospel reminds us that pain is not the final word for those in Christ—resurrection is! Our ultimate hope is not in this world or in finding temporary healing for our mortal bodies; it is in the re-creation of all things, including our bodies and minds. God did not create us for sickness and pain and mortality. Death and pain came through Adam’s first sin (Gen. 3) and now “in Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22). But the gospel declares that Christ defeated Satan, sin, and death and in his resurrection we see the first-fruits of what is to come (1 Cor. 15:20, 23)—a bodily resurrection. The Bible testifies that those “in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22) on that final day when the “perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:54). Christian, this is our greatest hope.

Full redemption is coming!

This doesn’t mean that we don’t do everything within our means to relieve and alleviate severe emotional and physical pain. But to put all of our hope in temporary healing is to lose eternal perspective. There’s greater glory still to come. We must realize that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). Beware of preaching a gospel that is too narrow in its scope. The gospel message isn’t simply “get saved and go to heaven when you die.” Instead, the gospel declares that in Christ God rights all wrongs. He renews all things. A new heaven and a new earth are coming. And on that new earth we will live in our fully redeemed, resurrected, and glorified bodies.

Then, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4). That’s what we really desire, isn’t it? We “who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23). There’s a sense in which I have come to see my migraines as my body’s way of groaning for full redemption. Chronic pain and disease and anxiety are all a part of this groaning. This isn’t the way life was supposed to be and our bodies know it. Thus, pain points us forward towards that final day when death will be swallowed up in victory and all things will be made new. In many ways, pain has taught me what it means to cry out with so many saints throughout history, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20).

So What Do Migraines Have to Do With the Gospel?

I find that it’s quite easy to believe these gospel truths on a “good day.” But then migraines come and render me powerless. It’s illuminating to see how insecure and anxious I become when I cannot produce. It reveals that much of my confidence comes from my performance and not from Jesus’ finished work. When I cannot physically perform I’m confronted with the dissonance between the theology I affirm and the theology I practice. Consequently, migraines have become one of the means by which God takes my good theology and drives it into my heart. It’s an opportunity, if you will, to really believe the truths that I confess. This certainly isn’t limited to migraines. Maybe you, like me, struggle with chronic physical pain. Or perhaps you have wrestled with panic attacks your whole life. Maybe you have to live with food allergies or suffer from an autoimmune disease. Or possibly you’re battling stage four cancer and all my groaning about migraines seems minor league. Pain and suffering, physical and emotional, come in all sorts of packages. Each person will suffer differently in this lifetime, but in every instance pain presents us with a unique opportunity to believe the glorious truths of the good news of Jesus Christ in a deeper way.

I have found that we can play the woe is me audio all day long (please realize I’m not diminishing the reality of suffering!), which leads to despair and discouragement. Or we can choose to rehearse the gospel to ourselves, which leads to life and godliness. It’s in those raw moments, the ones that are truly beyond our limitations, that we are provided with some of the most fertile soil to plant seeds of gospel truths in our hearts. And it is those seeds that fuel our affections for Christ and supply us with the foundation for a long life of faithfulness. I’m not saying I like migraines, but I am saying if there is anything in this world (including suffering) that can help train my obstinate head and hard heart to better understand what God did for me in Christ during that great exchange on the cross I want to welcome it with my entire being. And so, in that sterile hospital room on Easter’s eve, I chose a different path amidst my pain and preached these truths to myself. As it turns out, come Sunday morning, my heart was more prepared than ever before to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.

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

Learning Outside the Camp

During the first week of August, a pastor that I respect and admire quoted 20th century German thinker and author Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. The quote, which reads “I had to experience despair before I could experience grace,” is a beautiful sound byte that sums up the ubiquitous human illness of wanting to cling to everything and anything before we submit in brokenness to the grace of God. Everything seems sure until it isn’t there anymore—when the only thing left is God’s mercy in Christ. The only problem is that Hesse was a syncretist and about as far from what even the most ecumenical Christian—evangelical, progressive, post-liberal, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anabaptist, you name it—would consider within the boundaries of historical Christianity. And to be sure, people on Twitter let this pastor know this.

In that tweet, pastor Tullian Tchividjian set out to teach his tweeps (that’s a real term, look it up!) something about the grace of God using the writing of somebody who did not accurately understand the grace of God as articulated in Scripture. Someone who would certainly qualify as unregenerate in almost every Christian tradition. In other words, in one of those pop-psychology word association test nobody has ever shouted out “Hermann Hesse” when prompted with “orthodoxy.”

Likewise, the news of the band Gungor’s recent departure from several historically Christian positions has the evangelical internet aflutter with mourning, condemnation, and nuance. If you haven’t heard, in a blog on their website back in February Michael Gungor articulated his position on Adam and Eve, the flood, and metaphysics:

I have no more ability to believe, for example, that the first people on earth were a couple named Adam and Eve that lived 6,000 years ago. I have no ability to believe that there was a flood that covered all the highest mountains of the world only 4,000 years ago and that all of the animal species that exist today are here because they were carried on an ark and then somehow walked or flew all around the world from a mountain in the middle east after the water dried up. I have no more ability to believe these things than I do to believe in Santa Clause or to not believe in gravity. But I have a choice on what to do with these unbeliefs. I could either throw out those stories as lies, or I could try to find some value in them as stories. But this is what happens . . .

If you try to find some value in them as stories, there will be some people that say that you aren’t a Christian anymore because you don’t believe the Bible is true or “authoritative.” Even if you try to argue that you think there is a truth to the stories, just not in an historical sense; that doesn’t matter. To some people, you denying the “truth” of a 6,000 year old earth with naked people in a garden eating an apple being responsible for the death of dinosaurs is the same thing as you nailing Jesus to the cross. You become part of ‘them.’ The deniers of God’s Word.

In the last few weeks, World magazine and a few other publications got ahold of this and lamented Gungor’s lapse from orthodoxy. While a lot has already been said about this, both of these little case studies expose something about our hearts:

We (humans!) are often terrified to listen to and learn from people who hold to different (and sometimes contradictory) beliefs than us. In fact, our default reflex is to shun, condemn, and caricaturize.

The Bible, Orthodoxy, and Imago Dei

Ironically, the Bible is not afraid to affirm the God-implanted wisdom from those who fall outside of the perceived orthodox tribe. Most are familiar with the stories of Rahab the Canaanite prostitute who helped the Israeli scouts, the Roman gentile God-fearers who ran to Jesus, and the Greek polytheistic poets Paul quoted from memory who unwittingly proclaimed aspects the gospel. But there is often a disconnect between these Biblical examples and our on-the-ground understanding of our fellow image bearers.

Just as the seraphim called out in Isaiah 6:3:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”

God has filled the earth and the people of the earth with his divine imprint. The pinnacle of God’s creation—human beings—have been given a special conscious and unconscious understanding of his ways. God  “has put eternity into man's heart” (Ecc. 3:11) and thus, has given each human being the capacity to teach every other human being something significant about the character of God.

Certainly, those of us whom God has saved, adopted, and, through the Holy Spirit, given special revelation into the character of God through Christ have a lot to offer a world groping at the shadow of God’s image. The damage of sin and rebellion has dimmed humanity’s understanding of God dramatically—and that should not be ignored.

Yet the image of God is still there in every person. Hiding in plain sight. Sitting somewhere between the doubt, confusion, and rebellion. Believers who have been illuminated to the glory of God’s grace through Christ have “everything [we] need for life and godliness” (i.e., God’s Spirit in us), including the ability to learn about the things of God from all of his creation—even those who seem to be fighting God’s revealed truth at every turn.

This process is far from complete in me—I am not the discerning, godly, thoughtful, gracious student of truth that I delude myself into thinking I am. Still, despite my weakness and foolishness God has used various people and media that fall outside of evangelicalism to teach me about the God who reveals the same orthodoxy that I love. And God has probably done the same in you.

My Story and Zossima

No fictional characters (and only a few real-life people) have ministered and instructed me in God’s love, grace, and mercy like Father Zossima in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brother’s Karamazov. Dostoevsky created the character of Zossima to be a Christ-like figure amidst a world and church institution fraught with sin and hard hearts. Zossima is not a Protestant pastor, but a Russian Orthodox monk. A system that is fraught with what I believe are major theological errors. However, the words of gospel-dependent love and tenderness that Zossima speaks in Brothers is a spiritual opus that I return to regularly.

Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For no one can judge a criminal until he recognises that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a judge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me. If you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without reproach . . .

. . . Know the measure, know the times, study that. When you are left alone, pray. Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love. Love all men, love everything. Seek that rapture and ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears. Don't be ashamed of that ecstasy, prize it, for it is a gift of God and a great one; it is not given to many but only to the elect.

This passage—and many like it—showcase a beautiful, tender, gospel-rich love that Zossima beautifully articulated and, in the book, lived out. When I read it I am usually moved to tears. Though I don’t agree with some of his conclusions above (e.g., “if I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me”) I can see  and learn from Zossima’s Christ-like tenderness and love for sinners. I am moved by the tender love that Zossima articulates, and I believe that this tender love of people, God, and creation is close to what Jesus talks about in Luke 10:27. Zossima has discipled me in God’s love and grace, even though his systematics would not fly at any church I would ever join.

Back to Hesse and Gungor

So when Tulllian quotes syncretist Hermann Hesse about grace and suffering, I am free to nod and agree as I discern glimmers of God’s truth in it. To learn from Hesse’s saying, though he may not understand grace as articulated in Scripture, is to affirm his humanity and the divine imprint (common grace) on his musings. With orthodox grace-colored glasses, we can explore the world in search of God’s love. We can discern the good, affirm the truth, and love the person without harshly condemning and shunning all that is secular or not theologically airtight (because, honestly, besides Jesus, who is theologically airtight?).

We can disagree with Gungor’s steps away from an evangelical hermeneutic while still celebrating their music and whatever truth is in their statements. In fact, to love them and doubters like them, we must insist that their doubts may arise out of their honesty. As George MacDonald observes “doubts are messengers of the Living One to the honest”—they keep us humble and remind us of our humble dependence on God’s revelation to lead and guide. Though Gungor may still be in process, their doubts may be evidence of God working in their life—and like Thomas before them, Jesus will show them his wounds.

From here, we can listen to Michael Gungor’s words and hear the image of God. For example, when Gungor says,

To some people, you denying the “truth” of a 6,000 year old earth with naked people in a garden eating an apple being responsible for the death of dinosaurs is the same thing as you nailing Jesus to the cross. You become part of ‘them.’

We may at first just hear a jab at Biblical literalism, but there is much more there. He points a finger on the painfully shaming nature of much public and private discourse on doubt, grace, and orthodoxy. We (being, those who identify as more-or-less “conservative” evangelicals) should see this as a prophetic encouragement to love our enemies, bless those who persecute us (though this is not anything close to persecution), and to love our neighbor as ourself. We can say, “Thank God for these comments! Thank God for Michael Gungor!” Thank God that he used Gungor to articulate the pain that doubters often feel amongst those with less paradigm-shifting doubts.

Grace

At the heart of all charity and discernment is grace. The more we realize that we have been given amazing, free grace, the more we will desire to extend that grace. As our condition becomes clear, we’ll have more sympathy on other ignorant blasphemers. Our rejection of God and our reflected imaging of God is as instinctive

I remember teaching Sunday School with my wife, trying to get an adorable three-year-old to sing songs with us.

“Don’t you want to sing songs to Jesus with us?” I asked, as he sat in the corner of the classroom.

“No” he declared, as astutely as a three-year-old can

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like Jesus”

Nobody taught him to say that. Nor does anyone need to teach us to deny God’s truth, doubt God’s promises, or disobey God’s statutes.

When this little boy told me that he didn’t like Jesus, I didn’t shun him. Neither does God when we daily, repeatedly declare that we don’t like Jesus! That is the beauty of grace. The patient, one-sided love of God that has blessed us with divine wisdom amidst our rebellion. This grace is patient with us, and so we can be patient with others. This grace sees the good in us, when we are a complete stinking mess. This grace teaches us when we don’t want to learn—as Newton reminds us, “t’was grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.”

And this is the same kid that will come up to you with innocent affection, give you a high five, and tell you all about Super Mario with a glimmer of passion in his eye. Just your typical God-imagining blasphemer.

This grace can be extended to others as it has been extended to us only as we see ourselves in need of it and the grace of God’s image in others. And hopefully, in doing so we can, like Paul in Acts 17, see God’s fingerprint on the un-orthodox and lead the un-orthodox to a more beautiful, robust understanding of God than they could’ve ever imagined—all the while as we are learning from them.

Learning from un-believers sounds dangerous. It sounds like capitulation of our ideals and our morals. But the cross of Christ assures us that we can dangerously extend grace because grace has been permanently, legally, imputed to us. In our exploration of God’s world, we are securely tethered, inseparably united to Jesus who promised to be with us always. So, in light of that Christian, search for truth and explore grace—even when it comes from those who also do not fully understand grace. And may God lead you in his Truth and his Grace.

What a beautiful grace it is!

—

Nick Rynerson lives in the west suburbs of Chicago with his groovy wife, Jenna. He is a staff writer for Christ and Pop Culture and a marketing coordinator at Crossway. Connect with him on Twitter @nick_rynerson or via email.

Changing the Dating Culture

Let's get right to it on this topic. The way young people date today pretty much reflects how married people relate to each other. Young people spend lots of time together alone; they awaken desire prematurely; they mess around, often times ending in intercourse; and they are just as affectionate as a husband and wife should be within the sacred confines of marriage. Most of the time, the only thing that separates a dating relationship from a marriage relationship is the ring that is parked on the left hand. Vodie Baucham says, as stated above, that dating as it is currently done is “glorified divorce practice.” So, it’s not hidden—I am a huge enemy toward the way we currently practice dating. The difference between a Christian and a non-Christian when it comes to relationships should be monumental. For the Christian, the lens through which we view relationships must be Scripture. For the non-Christian, the lens through which they view relationships is often the current cultural approach. This approach is found in the saying, “You don’t know if the shoe fits until you try it on.” Men and women live with each other, fulfill their sexual desires, hop around from dating partner to dating partner, and treat each other as husband and wife—all without any form of commitment. Again, it is not uncommon to find confessing Christians living together before marriage either. If they are not living together it seems that they spend all of their time together in intimate environments where there is no accountability, and they have no one walking beside them as they pursue the biggest journey of their life.

What’s the Difference?

The dating relationships of Christians must be different than those of non-Christians. Men, what does it say about you when you do not protect your girlfriend physically, emotionally, or mentally? Do you use the words, “I love you,” without thinking twice about it as if love is really an emotion, and then when you aren’t “feeling it” anymore you can just use the “it’s not you, it’s me” line? Oh man, there is nothing worse than a guy who uses a girl and then moves on to the next after he’s gotten his fix! Do you often put yourselves in situations where temptation can be sparked? Have you awakened desire and intimacy before it is ready? If you can answer yes to any of these questions then you need to repent of your stupidity, and really begin to think about how you are forever hurting your sisters in Christ. Believe me guys; I’ve been there. I have done the things mentioned above, and thankfully God has shown grace upon me through his Son Jesus where I have had to repent of sin and become intentional about how I treat my sisters in Christ.

The way young people currently practice dating is killing not only their spiritual lives but it is killing the vitality of the church. This must change in our generation! Scripture does not necessarily say, “This is how you are supposed to date,” but it does give us insights and wisdom into how men and women outside of marriage should relate to one another. Let’s begin in Genesis 2. Genesis 2:24-25 says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

The Bible does not say that a man shall leave his fa- ther and mother and hold fast to his girlfriend. Let me be clear men, we don’t join with our fiancées either. We join together with our wives. This is what is known as leaving and cleaving. Men, we leave our mother and father and we cleave to our wives. And obviously, we don’t get naked with our girlfriends either. Do you ever wonder why you feel ashamed when you do?

So, if marriage is the end goal then what are the steps to getting there? Here’s what I think, and honestly, it’s this simple:

1. If you find yourself being sexually tempted then it’s time to begin to prepare yourself for marriage (1 Corinthians 7:1-3).

I realize that many people will disagree with me on this point, but that’s okay, often times the ones who disagree with this are the ones who are justifying their actions of finding sexual pleasures outside of marriage—whether it’s through sexual relationships or pornography. It has been said somewhere that 98% of men lust after women; the other 2% who say they don’t lust after women are liars.

2. Young guys, you must have someone walk with you through the dating/courtship process (Titus 2:1-10).

I often tell young guys who ask me about courtship that it is simply the season of life when you are preparing yourself for marriage. If we are modeling discipleship/mentorship biblically then we should have an old- er man who is teaching and walking beside younger men as they make decisions. This includes their dating/courtship decisions.

3. Keep your dating/courtship/engagement time short (Song of Solomon 2:8; 8:4).

Please don’t date for five years before you get married. Seriously, is there any biblical wisdom in this? Let me tell you what will hap- pen if you don’t know already. You will be putting yourselves in five years of sexual temptation, desire, and struggle. Desire and love will awaken before its time. Also, when it comes to the engagement process then keep it as SHORT as possible. Believe me, this is the absolute WORST time for guys.

4. Begin to read books on marriage and not books on dating.

Why would you want to read a how-to-guide on dating if you’re only going to date for 6-8 months when you’re going to be married for the rest of your life? Prepare yourselves to be husbands and wives, not boyfriends and girlfriends. Believe me, six to eight months is enough time for you to know if you want to spend the rest of your life with someone. You don’t need a year to figure out if you want to see them naked or not, if you are like-minded, and if he or she loves Jesus. In all honesty, these are the only three requirements you must have to be compatible as husband and wife: 1) Do they love Jesus? 2) Are you attracted to them physically? 3) Are you like-minded in life, family, children, church affiliation, goals, etc.?

With that said, I implore you to begin to rethink your current dating situation if you are indeed in one that I have spoken of above. Let us be men who take the Bible seriously. Let us see the culture through the lens of Scripture—not vice-versa. I challenge you to be courageous in your dating, engagement process, and marriage.

Men, we must step up! —

Greg Gibson is married to Grace and is the father of Cora and Iver. He serves as an elder and family ministries pastor at Foothills Church in Knoxville, TN overseeing birth through college and marriages. He is the author of Reformational Manhood: Creating a Culture of Gospel-Centered Warriors and serves as the lead editor for CBMW’s Manual. Greg also writes often at ggib.me. Follow him on Twitter: @gregrgibson

Excerpt taken from Greg Gibson, Reformational Manhood, BorderStone Press, ©2014. Used by permission. http://borderstonepress.com

Pursuing Accountability in Community

We are commanded to grow in our faith and to look more Christlike as time goes on. However, this command was never meant to be something we just did by ourselves. The Bible constantly expects that we will be a part of a local community and that there will be people who know us and walk with us in our Christian life. In fact, churches where people merely attend and do not belong, where they sit in a big service, but nobody knows their struggles and issues is not really doing what the church was made to do. Discipleship is a community event. You are one part of the body—not the whole thing. With that in mind, here are some helpful tips on how to do accountability and confession within a Bible study, home group, or other Christian community.

1. Make Accountability a Priority

We are commanded in James 5:16 to "confess your sins, one to another." Without accountability people will not be able to work through their sins and their spiritual growth will be hindered. The church is not merely for Bible studies, but also times for community, worship, confession, and prayer. The easiest way to make accountability a priority is to set aside time for it as you meet together in groups. Meeting together should be done often (Heb. 10:25). You may not need to have a time for accountability every time you meet, but it needs to be done regularly.

2. Break up men and women

It is fine to hear Scripture taught, worship, and pray for each other together. When it comes to accountability, it is best to split up men and women. Not only is this extremely wise (you don't want woman who struggles with lust confessing to the man that struggles with lust, for example). It also allows for greater freedom with confession. The man who struggles with pornography will not confess that to a group of women. The woman who struggles with weight and body image issues will not confess that to a group of men. This allows people a level of comfort in dealing with their struggles that is good and appropriate.

3. Lead from the front

Your group will confess as much as the leader is willing to confess. If you want them to be honest and to lay their issues on the table, you have to start by doing the same in your life. When someone sees that a leader struggles with sin and is open and honest about it they feel freed up to do the same.

4. Request more mature disciples to participate

All through out Scripture the more mature are encouraged to lead younger Christians, so before you meet, call a few people who are mature disciples in the group. Ask them if they would be willing to confess sins and share how God has worked in their life when they repented of sin in this way. So, when you confess, you have a few other people who are willing to show how God works through accountability and repentance.

5. Give direction on how to do it

Let people in the group know that the accountability time is not just for personal prayer requests or for "how they are doing" but a time to be honest of where they are at spiritually and to be encouraged by other brothers and sisters in Christ. Also, let people know not to gossip about other people's issues. However, there are times to tell other people of something that is confessed. For example, a husband who has cheated on a wife and has never told her will eventually have to have his wife let in on this.

6. Overwhelm people with grace

Once someone has confessed their sin, there is a temptation to wallow in shame. Overwhelm them with grace! Encourage them in the gospel and in how much Christ loves them. In fact, I think this is the most important part of accountability. The focus is not on how bad we are, but it is on how much we have been forgiven. It's not about our failures, but about Christ's victories!

7. Follow up

After accountability you may have to meet with people to follow up. Some people may need to get into a recovery program or get plugged in with a counselor. Other people might have tried to make the time all about them and will need to be asked to try to be more considerate of the other people trying to confess as well.

Accountability is not easy, especially if you are new to it. Also, taking the first step to begin accountability can be tough. It is countercultural to express where you fail and struggle. However, the Spirit uses our weakness (Rom. 8:26, 1 Cor. 1:25, 2 Cor. 11:30, Rom. 5:6) to glorify Christ—so guide your community as they mature as disciples and rest in the mercy of the gospel. —

Zach Lee is Associate Home Groups Minister at The Village Church and is married to Katy.  Follow him on Twitter: @zacharytlee.

Multiplying Disciples in Bivocational Ministry

Bivocational ministry is a life many pastors find themselves in these days. Of course, it is not a new phenomenon among pastors. In the area that I live, there are many small rural churches that have been around for many years. Back when these churches were planted the pastors were bivocational, often farming besides preaching. For those pastors, being bivocational was not a choice instead of full-time vocational ministry, it was the norm and more or less required of those called to ministry. Today, there are still many pastors required to be bivocational because they live in a rural area, are church planters, or are pastoring a smaller church that couldn’t fully support them otherwise. Being bivocational is not the lesser calling. To be bivocational does not mean playing in the minors until God decides to send them up to the big leagues of full-time vocational ministry. I will confess that I held this view, though I would not have explicitly said it. Depending on what the “other” job is for bivocational pastors, it can be very easy to feel discontent and weighed down by the seemingly unimportant duties of what we incorrectly deem as our “secular” work. That’s good! Now we know how our entire congregation feels much of the time. When we view bivocational ministry as a lesser calling, we both belittle God’s explicit call on our lives and idolize full-time vocational ministry as something that will fix all our problems.

Work is hard, regardless of what it is that we do. We know this from our own experiences and because of the curse God spoke to Adam (Gen. 3:17-19). I have been bivocational for about seven years and I have friends that are also bivocational and friends that are in full-time vocational ministry. They all say that their work is hard. They all say there are days and seasons where they would like their situations to be different. Within the context of the hard work that all Christians do, pastor or not, we are still to be about the work of being a disciple of Jesus in, through, and by our vocations. A primary way that we do the work of being a disciple of Jesus is to make other disciples (Matt. 28:16-20). The New Testament gives many examples of disciples of Jesus that not only make new disciples, but make new disciples who make new disciples who make new disciples and on and on. The spread that took place stemming from the original twelve disciples is one example. There is a clear picture of multiplication that happens.

This process of multiplication can take place in the ministries of bivocational pastors both in their church work as well as in the supplemental work that they do. For bivocational pastors there are some distinct challenges and some real blessings that come from the work of multiplying disciples in both contexts in which they live and work.

Time

Full-time pastors have more margin in their schedules to be able to devote to meetings with people and, therefore, do the work of discipleship. Or do they? Do bivocational pastors really not have any time to disciple people? If you are bivocational, should you only look to preach and teach and leave the rest of the work to someone that has more time?

I think it comes back to redeeming the time that we have. We all have margin in our daily schedules; the challenge is whether we use it and how we use it. Everyone eats lunch, so there is anywhere from a half hour to an hour that could be used to meet with someone or make a phone call. Depending on what time work starts, other people in the congregation probably have to go to work too, so getting up a little earlier before work to meet is an option. Using the time in our commute to and from work for a phone call can be beneficial as well. These are all scenarios a bivocational pastor can use to connect with someone from his congregation in the midst of his work schedule. However, there is also a large pool of people at his workplace that need to and can be discipled.

The effort needed to disciple at work is less than one might think. A great example of how this is done is parenting. Parenting children is discipleship. The life of the parent is lived out with and in front of the children. The discipleship that occurs in parenting does not only consist of sitting down with the child to talk about their walk with Christ, although that happens.

Discipleship in parenting happens while the parent and the child are folding clothes, working in the yard, and so on. The same can be said for discipling coworkers. The little conversations on the way to a meeting, during a break or downtime, at the coffee pot are the primary avenues for discipling coworkers.

Reaching the multiplication stage at work requires a bit more organization and intentionality. This means setting some time aside to meet with fellow believers at work. I meet with a group of guys to do this very thing every other week at lunch. As one would do in the church, there should be an awareness of leaders and/or other strong Christians to develop. Once those folks are identified, then the process of making them into the second generation of disciples in that place begins. In Acts 14:23, Paul and Barnabas appoint elders in the churches on their way to Antioch in Syria and the same principle stands at work. We are not Paul and Barnabas and we are not appointing elders, but a similar work needs to take place for multiplication to happen. The development of leaders and the passing on of the responsibility for making disciples must take place so that disciples can be multiplied.

Purpose

A pitfall for many in bivocational ministry can be denying that they are bivocational. We can spend so much time pretending that our supplemental work is only temporary and that very soon God is going to give us that full-time gig. Our time in bivocational ministry may be our life’s calling or it may be only for a season. In any season of waiting on the Lord, there is work to be done while we wait. The sooner we realize we are indeed where we are for a purpose—and God sovereignly plans that purpose—the sooner we can be effective.

I look at God’s sovereign purpose in the time spent in bivocational ministry as a development of my gifts and laying down of my rights. In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul talks about all the rights that he has as an Apostle and a minister of the gospel. He immediately says that he does not take up those rights, but essentially lays them down for the sake of the gospel. “Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ,” (1 Corinthians 9:12b).

Like Paul, we who are bivocational (Paul was too by the way) are ministers of the gospel, who have the right to be taken care of through the ministering of the gospel. There is at least a partial surrender of those rights, whether it is by our volition or not, when we are bivocational. There was power that came from Paul’s laying down of his rights. There was an identification that Paul could have with others because he set aside these rights. “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings,” (1 Cor. 9:22b-23). One of the evident purposes of God in the calling to bivocational ministry is the ability to identify with those to whom we minister. There is both purpose and blessing in this identification, which serves as a foundation for the multiplication of disciples in our contexts.

Humility

The reality is that if we are bivocational we are probably not speaking at conferences, writing best-selling books, and garnering thousands of Twitter followers. Of course, our mistaken definitions of “making it” in ministry in relation to any of these measures are far different from God’s. The ministry work that is done bivocationally is probably mostly done in the shadows of public view. Ministering bivocationally can be humbling. You may be a church planter that celebrates when there are more than thirty people that show up for a Sunday service. Your greatest joy in ministry for a week may be a good conversation you have with a coworker. This is all very, very good for our souls.

The pitfall of parts of our Christian subculture is an issue, not only for our congregation, but for all those in ministry. There is the fanboy culture of authors, speakers, and podcasts. There are those that many have deemed celebrity pastor. When we are working in the trenches of bivocational ministry, we need not covet fame and fortune in ministry. Our placement in bivocational ministry may be a protection from our own prideful selves. It may be a season that God uses to refine us and humble us. It may be a time where we learn how to celebrate all the small ways that God works. Some of us simply may not have been able or may not ever be able to handle the platform of full-time ministry. God may be protecting us and those to whom we minister from what we would become on that platform. He may at the same time be preparing us.

Humility is one of the most attractive things about Jesus. Think about it, “He is God and he did what?!” You probably know Philippians 2:5-11, but I will remind you. “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,” (Phil. 2:5). The mind that Paul is talking about is that of humility, which he goes on to describe in the verses following. When we exhibit Christlike humility, people see the grandeur and beauty of Jesus. We could say that Jesus makes and multiplies disciples through us by showing himself in us. As God teaches us humility in bivocational ministry, people start to see glimpses of Christlikeness in us. The humility that God is teaching us is for our good and his glory. His glory is then magnified by the disciples that are made and multiplied through our lives and ministries.

Thankfully, God does not put us anywhere that he does not intend to put us. If we find ourselves in bivocational ministry, we can be encouraged that it is God who has put us there. It is not the B team and this is not our lot because of some shortcoming that we have. It is the particular vocation that the God of the universe has prepared us for and placed us in for such a time as this. We have the responsibility of multiplying ourselves as disciples of Jesus Christ wherever we are. We have been given time to be redeemed and used for the kingdom. God has a Spirit-powered, Christ-exalting purpose for our vocations. In light of all this, we cannot help but seek humility in our hearts and in our actions as we embrace the challenges and receive the blessings of serving Christ.

—

Nick Abraham (DMin student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) lives in Navarre, OH with his wife and daughter. He serves as an Associate Pastor at Alpine Bible Church in Sugarcreek, OH. He is a contributor to Make, Mature, Multiply: Becoming Fully-Formed Disciples of Jesus and blogs at Like Living Stones.

Telling Stories in Our Neighborhood

In a suburban town outside of Seattle, we celebrated God’s grace and the Spirit’s work through baptizing a new disciple of Jesus. This is the story of how a neighborhood can look like the book of Acts, where disciples are made and we teach and preach from house-to-house, an example of how to make disciples in our sphere of influence—in today’s context. We moved into our housing development seven and a half years ago, and for the first six years, we didn’t know anyone who didn’t live next to us. I’m serious. I didn’t know the guy across the street. (By the way, his name is Trevor, and he’s getting baptized in my backyard.) But, for the first six years, the extent of our reaching-out to our neighbors was leading a youth group and handing out bibles door-to-door and singing Christmas carols in the dark because people shut off their lights on us. Sometime while standing in the cold singing “O Come All Ye Faithful,” I started to think, “Maybe we need a different modus operandi for bringing the gospel to my neighbors.”

I decided to leave my one church to seek out help from people who have done this before, and I landed with Soma Communities. Truth be known, I am very prideful in the way I do things. Whether it is my orthodoxy or my orthopraxy, I feel like I have it down to some degree, which is a spillover from my success in business. It is wrong thinking, and I know this about myself. When coming to Soma Communities, I purposed to be a learner. What I asked myself was, “If you know so much, how come no one around you is repenting and being baptized?” Even though I was soon asked to take a lead role in a Missional Community out in my suburban city, I decided to just sit back and learn. As I learned, as I listened, I began to be intrigued, and I finally had to act on it.

How Should We Start? A BBQ in the Front Yard

I asked a new friend of mine, Caesar, “How should I start? Where should I begin in my community?”

He suggested, “Ask the Spirit, ‘What’s next?’”

At that time, I rarely asked the Spirit to guide and empower me for mission because I was doing nothing that would require the Spirit. I was insular, hanging around only Christian people, and rarely ever engaged anyone with the gospel or showing them the effects of the gospel and how that might look in our community. There was no reason to pray. It would have been like asking God to help me flip the channels on my television.

Well. My wife and I prayed, “Spirit, what’s next?”

If you want to open the power of the Spirit like freeing a hungry lion from its cage, then ask the Spirit what’s next with a desire to show others what he’s like for the sake of making disciples.

The Spirit answered by simply telling my wife and me this: On July 4th, instead of having your BBQ in the backyard, move it to the front yard.

This isn’t earth shattering, but as Luke 16:10 puts it, he who can be trusted with a little, can be trusted with a lot. We agreed with the Spirit and decided that would be a good idea. Then he pressed. We ended up putting together a 4th of July wiffle ball tournament and cook off and going door-to-door handing out flyers. The response was overwhelming. This was the first time I met Trevor, my neighbor from across the street. He entered a wiffle ball team, and they won. Whatever. In the end, we had about forty people play in the tourney and around one-hundred and fifty people at the 4th of July festivities. People continued to come up to me and tell me it was the best 4th of July party they had ever been to. It reminded us all of the Wonder Years. We didn’t want this to only happen once a year. So, we started throwing BBQs all the time and inviting people over to have dinner from the connections we made on the 4th.

The Story of God

As summer was drawing to a close, my wife and I knew one thing: we needed help to build this community to reflect the community of God. We started praying that God would send helpers and had other leaders within Soma praying for us as well. God answered. He ended up moving another couple to our city from a different Soma Expression and then sent us another couple from our old bible study. It was beautiful. We came together with a plan that we felt was from the Spirit. We sought to continue the dialogue with these new couples by hosting Saturday morning breakfasts at our house. We wanted these other couples to be there with us to engage our neighbors and become part of our community. To do this, they are willing to lay aside some of the things they might have been more comfortable with to pursue our neighbors. But, our goal was to have these breakfasts with an eye on going through the Story of God at some point with those people with whom we were building relationships. We figured this might take a year or so to build these relationships strong enough to engage them on a deeper spiritual level.

This whole time, my wife and I kept asking the Spirit, “What’s next?” Now, we were able to put names to these prayers. We started the breakfasts in October and by the end of the month the Spirit was opening doors for the gospel like I’ve never seen. People were asking us, “Why do you do all these things for the community?” We had also arranged a Halloween party, game nights, etc. “Do you sell Avon? Are you Christians? What church do you go to?”

We answered those questions, and then asked, “Would you be interested in walking through the story of what the Bible says about God and why we feel compelled to bring about this type of community? We can do it in our house and have fun and eat like we always do anyways and then have this story time with dialogue among friends.”

We ended up asking about six couples from our neighborhood and four said yes, including Trevor and his wife. After ten weeks of engaging in story and having a lot of fun, summer was back. We told those who went through the story that if they wanted to continue with us to dig into the Scriptures to see what the gospel says about making disciples, we’d be happy to have them. Trevor and his wife agreed and really started to delve in. We again threw a huge 4th of July party with wiffle ball, cook off, and fireworks, and kept following up with BBQs and studied the word together as a Missional Community.

Now, this entire time, we had, as a group, been praying that God would put on our hearts those people in our lives who seemed to be pushing into the kingdom. We’d been praying (and are still praying), because we were going to once again be doing the Story of God coming up in January. We then had a study on baptism, and two things came out of Trevor’s mouth: 1) I want to be baptized 2) I’ve been praying and talking to my brother and his fiancé and they desire to not only come to the BBQs, but also to the Story of God when we start it.

Praise God!

A Backyard Baptism

Shortly after this conversation, we had Trevor’s whole family, some friends, and our Missional Community in our backyard for a BBQ and a baptism. He’s being commissioned to make disciples, but because he’s been watching me and I’ve been walking this out with him day-to-day in normal everyday life for a year and a half, he’s already doing it. To him, a disciple of Jesus naturally makes more disciples.

Our Missional Community started the day I put aside my own comforts and moved my BBQ from my backyard to my front yard. We went six years without knowing anyone. Now, if we throw a BBQ, we have seventy people show up. We have six couples in our Missional Community. We are doing pre-engagement for one couple and trying to save another couple from going through a divorce. We think we might have to multiply coming up in January because we could have close to forty people that desire to go through the Story of God with us.

I’m no saint. I’m nothing special. I’m not paid by the church. I’m not paid by the community. God pays me money through my business—not to hoard it, but so I can be making disciples who make disciples in the neighborhood where I live.

This story isn’t crazy. This story isn’t outlandish. It’s pretty normal. My family is pretty normal. That’s the beauty of it. This is a small taste of what has been happening in our neighborhood and also in our own spiritual development. You’ll notice as you live this out, life, as usual, isn’t perfect. There are times of much difficulty. As a dude in our Missional Community put it, “You only get really irritated with people if you actually get to know them. It’s hard to get irritated at others if you merely wave at them when putting your garbage at the curb.”

If you’re reading this, what’s holding you back from going to your knees tonight and just asking God, “What’s next?” Be careful. Once you’ve let this Lion of Judah out of the cage, he’ll take over the neighborhood.

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Seth McBee is the adopted son of God, husband of one wife, and father of three. He’s a graduate of Seattle Pacific University with a finance degree. By trade. Seth is an investment portfolio manager, serving as President of McBee Advisors, Inc. He is also a MC leader/trainer/coach and executive team member of the GCM Collective. Seth currently lives in Phoenix, AZ with his wife Stacy and their three children: Caleb, Coleman, and Madelynn. He is also the artist and co-author of the wildly popular (and free!) eBook, Be The Church: Discipleship & Mission Made Simple. Twitter: @sdmcbee.

Men, Don’t Just Talk the Talk

If you were to read the hobbies section on my Facebook, you would notice I am into reading, blogging, and running. I do all those things almost every week. If you keep reading, however, you will notice it also says I like to work out, rock climb, and surf. While those things are listed, if I am honest, I haven’t done any of those activities in quite a while. Now, I can talk to you for hours about each of them. I know the lingo, but I don’t actually climb, surf, or workout anymore. So while I can talk the talk, I am not walking the walk.

Talking the Talk Without Walking the Walk

Often times a lot of churchgoers know how to talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk—especially those who have been around church for any length of time. They can talk all about the Bible and “churchy things” because they have been around it for most of their lives. However, when it comes to obeying all of Jesus’ commands (Matt. 28:20) they don’t do it. They aren’t walking the walk. Instead, they are just talking the talk.

Disciples of Jesus—those who have been regenerated by the Spirit, repented of their sins, and placed their faith in Jesus—not only talk about Scripture, they also allow it to guide their lives. They walk the walk.

Walking the walk is an everyday activity that involves us applying God’s Word to every area of our life. Family, work, play, and community involvement should all be informed by God’s Word. One major area is our families. God commands men to lead their families. Specifically, the husband is to be the leader and shepherd of their family flock.

Family Shepherding

Since we are to walk as Jesus walked, imitating him in all things, it is only right we look to Jesus for the “how to” of family shepherding (1 Jn. 2:6, Eph. 5:1, 1 Cor. 11:1). Let me offer you a few guiding principles to get you started.

First, we must know those we are shepherding. In John 10:14, Jesus tells us he is the Good Shepherd. After which, he tells us what the Good Shepherd does, namely, he knows his own.

Applying Jesus’ idea of the Good Shepherd to our own Christian walk means we have to know our families. The best way to get to know our family is to spend time with them. Family time doesn’t just occur because we are in the same room with them. It’s more involved than just being in close proximity. It requires us to engage them in conversation. Conversation that gets to know the heart of your family in an effort to draw out their interests, fears, and concerns. We cannot effectively draw out the hearts of our family if they have to compete with the television, Facebook, or our iPhones, so we have to disengage from our technology in order to engage with our family.

Second, we must protect our families from spiritual danger. Jesus tells us the Good Shepherd is willing to lay down his life for his sheep in order to protect them (Jn. 10:11-13). If we are going to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, we must do the same.

In order to protect our family, we have to know their world. We have to be aware of what they are watching, reading, and their friends. Also, we must understand the culture in which they live and know how to combat its worldview with the gospel.

Lastly, we must instruct our families. During his earthly ministry, Jesus intimately instructed his disciples, teaching them how to both read and understand Scripture (Acts 1:3). We must do the same.

There is no one size fits all way to instruct our families. Some may choose nightly family devotions, other families may benefit from weekly Bible studies, and still others from discussing that weeks sermon over lunch. The method will differ from family to family, but the principle remains the same—men, who walk in Jesus’ footsteps, instruct their families in the Lord.

You see, being a believer means more than posting spiritual quotes or Bible verses to Facebook, knowing the lingo, or making a claim of faith. Being a believer means we live according to God’s will; it means we walk the walk. So it doesn’t matter what you say. What matters is what you do.

Gospel Change Causes Us To Walk the Walk

Now, I am not trying to frustrate you by telling you you have to work harder or that you have to produce change on your own. Change doesn’t occur solely through our effort. Instead change primarily occurs through the gospel. When the gospel pierces our heart of stone, it does something we could never do. It causes our heart—our will, desires, and wants to change. It’s that change which is necessary for us to walk the walk.

However, gospel change doesn’t mean all we have to do is believe and all of a sudden we are perfectly walking as Jesus walked. We must still put forth effort. We must still work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12) Even so, we can be assured that while we work, God is working in us, changing our will to be more in line with his (Phil. 2:13).

Since God changes us, we know change is possible. In fact, we will be changed into the restored image of Christ (1 Cor. 13:12). Put another way: if we are disciples, there is no way we won’t change to live more inline with God’s will throughout our Christian walk. We may hit some valleys along the way, but we will always be moving up the mountain. Since that is true, men, walk the walk, don't just talk the talk.

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Casey Lewis currently serves as the Senior Pastor of Sycamore Baptist Church in Decatur, TX. He is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a husband, father, and a follower of Jesus Christ . He currently blogs at ChristianityMatters.com. Follow him on twitter: @caseylewis33