Jesus is Better Than Kingdom Building

One of my favorite quotes comes from Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, who was a catalyst for the 100-year long Moravian prayer movement. It’s reported he said, “Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.” However, that’s only half true. I mean, I want it to be one of my favorite quotes, at least the principle behind it: embracing the obscurity of my vocation—which in my case, is pastoral ministry—and being content with my name not being recognized, except by the people I shepherd. What if I never write a book or even another article? What if I never get to speak at a conference or have the type of “ministry success” that seminary students only dream of? I come back repeatedly to these questions as I continue to battle this one nagging temptation: I want my name to be great.

Feeding the Monster

As a seminary student, the battle is often subtle. However, between the several thousand pages of reading and the many writing assignments, not to mention conversations with those clearly more brilliant, reflective, and academically gifted than myself, there’s a dullness that builds, a frustration if you will. Instead of seeking to celebrate how these fellow brothers and sisters of mine are truly gifts to God’s church, I find a discontented soul.

I find myself asking God, “Why do they have that much influence? Why can’t I do things like that? After all, I’m more educated than they are and more thoughtful than they are.” However, the opposite is true as well, which can be even more paralyzing: “Why am I not as smart as them? Why do the original languages have to be so hard for me? Why can’t they come naturally? Man, I can’t look stupid in front of them. I want them to approve of me and think I have something to offer to the conversation.” It haunts me. In fact, just like all idolatry (at least, at some point), it’s debilitating. Too often, I let my heart drift away from the reality of the gospel in my life and I seek to find contentment and identity in other places, building my own kingdom one lie and unmet expectation at a time.

As a millennial, I am often burdened by the implied expectations (or perceived expectations) that much of this radical, go-go-go, social justice-y, don’t slow down until you’re dead, type of Christianity that seems to be so common with Christians my age. Because I see what other Christians my age are doing, how much influence God has given them, I often try to one-up them, overcommitting myself, neglecting rest, and feeling guilty when I have to say, “No.” I’ve become perpetually exhausted and overworked. I put too much on my plate because I don’t want to disappoint anyone. The most ludicrous thing about seeking to make my name great is trying to please people I don’t see on a regular basis. It’s as if I am trying to please the idea of that person. I’m paralyzed by an abstract, hypothetical person. I can’t really please what isn’t really real, yet I try often.

It is these temptations, fears, insecurities, and atmosphere that many current ministry leaders, seminary students, and future pastors and church planters find themselves in. With all the gospel-centered, missional living talk, we can easily go from trying to proclaim the gospel in a culturally sensitive and relevant way to trying to build an empire, complete with full-blown PR campaigns and speaking engagements. We may even launch a new website or two. None of this alone is bad, of course. I have seen these used well and I have seen these go terribly, terribly wrong. Nonetheless, it should give us pause as we are about to tweet that pithy theological reflection, sign that book contract, build that blog, or speak at that big event to ask ourselves the pointed question, “If Jesus was not glorified and I got all the credit for this, would I be okay with that? Is this platform about the gospel or about me?” That’s a painful question to ask because if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll find many messy things in our hearts, stuff we would rather leave alone. We’ll come across mixed motives and unchecked pride. We may find a love for theological systems or projects rather than people. We may discover that all our efforts are spent in building and maintaining a platform, a name, which seeks to make much of us—but belittles Christ. This kind of honesty, it hurts. It’s painful, but it’s good. It’s good because the more we admit our brokenness, the more we admit we don’t have it together, that we have limits, that we truly are human and that means something, we will be able to more confidently proclaim the joy of the Christian life—Jesus is better.

Free Delight Forever

In Jesus, we are free. In fact, the greatest truth we can ever experience as believers is that of our union with Christ. As ministry leaders, we must daily come back to this well and drink deeply from it. We must not neglect to see this truth deeply hidden in our hearts and change the way we “live humanly in Jesus.”¹ In other words, we must cease to depersonalize the cross and understand what it means to be “in Christ.” As Marcus Peter Johnson writes, “Christ is our salvation and that we are the recipients of his saving work precisely and only because we are recipients of the living Christ. Our union with the living Christ is, in other words, what it means to be saved.”² This is the greatest news in the world and between all the blogs, sermons, office work, hospital visits, and dying saints, our weary hearts must come back to this repeatedly. Christ is our salvation. Christ is our salvation.³ Let it echo.

Otherwise, the daily “long obedience in the same direction” will become less important to us because platforms seem to offer more excitement than what we’re living. Deep down, we would rather be remembered than remain faithful. It’s a bad trade. Don’t fall for it. As we become experientially aware of our union with Christ as we are cognitively aware, we begin to live less and less for platforms and people-pleasing. We recognize that while being made in God’s image, we possess dignity and value, that reality never trumps the preciousness and worth of Jesus Christ. It gives us perspective and helps us to live rightly and serve in our ministries in a health, sustainable way. We can be content with being finite and having limitations, knowing fully that we have Christ, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).

In God’s grace, he may give some of us platforms for which to speak from, names for which people will know us, and ministries that will outlast us. These are good gifts from the Father and we can accept them as such. However, we must never seek the gifts themselves and ignore the Giver. Jesus is better than our names being great and that may mean we will simply “preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.”

^{1. This phrase comes from Zac Eswine’s excellent book Sensing Jesus: Life and Ministry as a Human Being (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2012).↩}

^{2. Marcus Peter Johnson, One With Christ: An Evangelical Theology of Salvation (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2013), 18.↩}

^{3. Johnson rightly recognizes that within the Pauline and Johannine corpus, there are a plethora of verses that describe the believers union with Christ in such terms as “possessors of eternal life in Christ” (Rom. 6:23), “created in Christ” (Eph. 2:10), “crucified with him” (Gal. 2:20), “buried with him and baptized into him and his death” (Col. 2:12; Rom. 6:3), “united with him in his resurrection and seated with him in the heavenly places” (Rom. 6:5; Eph. 2:6), among others. See Ibid., 19-20. ↩}

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Chris Crane serves as High School Small Group Leader at Lake Highlands Baptist Church in Dallas, TX. He holds a B.A. in Biblical Studies from Dallas Baptist University and is currently pursuing a Th.M. at Dallas Seminary. He has previously written for Gospel-Centered Discipleship, as well as The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Occasionally, he writes at chriscrane.net. You can follow him on Twitter: @cmcrane87

Re-Narration Takes Practice

“Through worship God trains his people to take the right things for granted.” —Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells

Let’s return to where we began: Christian worship and Christian education both have the same end. Both the church and the Christian university are institutions caught up in the missio Dei, recruiting the hearts and minds of the people of God into the very life of God so that we can once again take up our creational and re-creational calling—to bear God’s image for and to all of creation. The church and the Christian college (and Christian schools) are sites of formation that culminate in sending: to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord” by taking up our cross along with our commission to cultivate the earth. Christian worship and formation, as practices of divine action, culminate in Christian action—being sent as ambassadors of another “city,” as witnesses to kingdom come, to live and act communally as a people who embody a foretaste of God’s shalom. This is not to “instrumentalize” worship as merely a means to an end, nor is it to reduce worship to a strategy for moral formation; neither should it be confused with an activism that sees Christian action as some Pelagian expression of our abilities. Worship and the practices of Christian formation are first and foremost the way the Spirit invites us into union with the Triune God. Worship is the arena in which we encounter God and are formed by God in and through the practices in which the Spirit is present—centering rituals to which God makes a promise (the sacraments). As Boulton observes, while John Calvin persistently emphasized a “preferred suite of formative practices” as “disciplines of regeneration,” he also constantly emphasized that these were not routines of spiritual self-assertion or human accomplishment:

Disciples may and do perform these sanctifying practices, but their performances are themselves divine gifts, and they take place properly and fruitfully—that is, in ways that produce genuine humility and insight for them and others—only by way of divine accompaniment and power. . . . Thus following Calvin, we may reframe “spiritual practices” as in the first place works of the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, the sanctifying, regenerating, restorative labor of God with us and in us. . . . Each of the church’s key practices is still something human beings do, but they do it neither alone nor as the act’s primary agent. Rather, in and through the practice, they participate in divine work.

So in the practices of Christian worship, and in related spiritual disciplines, we encounter the Lover of our souls. We are drawn into the life of the One our hearts were made for, the Lord of heaven and earth.

And it is that creating and re-creating God who tells us to go even as he goes with us, “even to the end of the age.” Christian worship culminates with a sending (“Go!”) accompanied by a promise (“And as you go, you go with his blessing”)—the benediction that is both a blessing and a charge, a co-mission-ing accompanied by the promise of the Spirit’s presence. So while we are sent to act, to labor in love for God and neighbor, the Spirit of Christ goes with us so that even “our” Christian action, undertaken as we are recruited into the missio Dei, is never merely “ours”; we “act in communion with God.” Worship is not merely time with a deistic god who winds us up and then sends us out on our own; we don’t enter worship for “top up” refueling to then leave as self-sufficient, autonomous actors. “In the conception of Christian praxis,” Ward notes, “there is no room for such a modern notion of self-sufficiency.” Instead, the biblical vision is one of co-abiding presence and participation (“I in you and you in me”). In other words, our Christian action is bound up with the dynamics of incorporation. “By the act of receiving the Eucharist,” for example, “I place myself in Christ—rather than simply placing Christ within me. I consume but I do not absorb Christ without being absorbed into Christ. Only in this complex co-abiding are there life, nourishment, and nurture because of, through, or by means of this feeding; there is both participation of human life in God’s life and participation of God’s life in human life.” So our action is not merely motivated by worship of the Triune God; rather, it is in worship that we are caught up into the life of God, drawn into union with Christ, and thus recruited into this participation that generates Christian action as we “go.” “The Christian act,” Ward continues, “has to be understood in terms not just of the church but also of the church’s participation in Christ, the church as the body of Christ. That is, the Christian act is integral to the church’s participation in the operations of the Triune God within realms created in and through Christ as God’s Word. Discipleship is thus not simply following the example of Christ; it is formation within Christ, so that we become Christlike. And the context of this formation is the church in all its concrete locatedness and eschatological significance.”

To emphasize the s/ending of Christian worship is not to reduce worship to moral formation or to treat the presence of God as a tool for our self-improvement. Rather, the centrifugal end of Christian worship is integral to the Story we rehearse in Christian worship; sending is internal to the logic of the practice. To emphasize that Christian action is the end or telos of Christian worship is not to instrumentalize worship but is rather to “get” the Story that is enacted in the drama of worship—the “true story of the whole world” in which we are called to play our part as God’s image-bearers by cultivating creation. Integral to that Story, and to the practice of Christian worship, is the sense that we are now enabled and empowered to take up this mission precisely because of the gift of the Spirit (Rom. 8:1–17). At the same time, the Spirit meets us where we are as liturgical animals, as embodied agents, inviting us into that “suite” of disciplines and practices that are conduits of transformative, empowering grace. So even if there is a centrifugal telos to Christian worship and formation, there is also a regular centripetal invitation to recenter ourselves in the Story, to continually pursue and deepen our incorporation. It’s not a matter of choosing between worship or mission; nor are we faced with the false dichotomy of church or world, cathedral or city. To the contrary, we worship for mission; we gather for sending; we center ourselves in the practices of the body of Christ for the sake of the world; we are reformed in the cathedral to undertake our image-bearing commission to reform the city. So it is precisely an expansive sense of mission that requires formation. It is the missional telos of Christian action that requires us to be intentional about the formative power of Christian practices.

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James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he also holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. He is the editor of Comment magazine. Smith has authored or edited many books, including Imagining the Kingdom and the Christianity Today Book Award winners Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? and Desiring the Kingdom. He is also editor of the well-received The Church and Postmodern Culture series (www.churchandpomo.org).

James K. A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, ©2009. Used by permission. http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

The Guest List

My daughters received an invitation to attend a birthday party for our neighbors recently. If you’ve ever wondered how screams could be collected for energy (see Monsters Inc.), you’ve never been in the same room when young girls receive soul-thrilling news in the form of an invitation. My daughters’ hearts could have burst and their shrieks could have powered a small village—easily. Ecstatic joy flowed out of my daughters so naturally, I felt like I was being let in on something. We like to be invited to things. It makes us feel loved. It makes us feel like we belong. Jesus once told a parable about an invitation. It was an invitation, not to a birthday, but to a dinner—and at its core, it was a very unusual invitation.

The Parable of the Great Banquet

In Luke 14, Jesus first tells the Pharisees that when you give a banquet or a dinner, don’t invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors so they will invite you in return. Jesus instead says when you give a feast, invite the typically uninvited—the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

Now, this is counter-intuitive because the Pharisees and scribes felt a sense of supremacy in their separation from those on the fringes. When the Pharisees and scribes would throw a party, they would only invite the people who could invite them back. In other words, the Pharisees manipulated hospitality for their own self-glory and reputation. Parties were about raising your social capital. Only those who could further that agenda were welcomed.

But the marginalized—those on the outside looking into the cultural upper echelon—had no way of doing this. In fact, if they were invited, they wouldn’t accept the gesture because they knew they would be required to repay the courtesy and they knew they couldn’t do that. It would be too humiliating to accept that type of invitation because they did not have the means to reciprocate, so they would refuse.

To further make his point, Jesus launches into a story to illustrate his teaching with the opening line, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many.” This was going to be a huge event thrown by a very wealthy man. The Jews would have understood this. To be at this party would be the height of social recognition. In fact, when you were invited to a large dinner like this, you would typically get two invitations. The first invitation acknowledged you as an honored guest. The second invitation would come to alert you that the party was about to officially begin.

Now, when the second invitation comes in this parable, we go from the invitation to excuses. Every single person highlighted in this passage says, “I can’t come.” All of them. The Pharisees would have said, “Nobody would do that. This is disrespectful. This is uncivilized.” But in Jesus’ story, they all decline. So the wealthy man does the unthinkable. He tells his servant to go out and seek another group of people. He tells him to bid the outcasts to come to the banquet—the poor and crippled and blind and lame.

In the minds of the Pharisees, the first group wouldn’t turn down the invitation and the second group would never have been invited. But in this story, the master says go and bring them in. In Greek, the verb bring in highlights that they would have to be taken in because they would resist. They knew the etiquette—they would have to pay the master back with an even greater feast. And that would be impossible.

Pursue the Cast Outs and Marginalized

Then, Jesus introduces another wrinkle in his story. Seats at the banquet table are still vacant. So the master tells the servants to go out into “the highways, along the hedges and compel them to come in.” The master was saying to his servant that their venture out into the surrounding city was going to be a unique challenge.

Those they were now going after didn’t even have homes. They were not permitted in the city. They lived in places like brothels and inns and along the road and in the trees and in the bushes. That would be like us going to the overpasses, the Section 8 housing, the massage parlors, the meth houses, the gangs, and to the prisons to bring people to Thanksgiving dinner at our home. It would have been a scandalous request. Essentially, Jesus has the master say, “I had you seek the outcasts. Now, go find the outcasts of the outcasts and bring them to my party. We have open seats!”

Now, why did Jesus share this parable? Like the master, we must be willing to go out and find the people who are broken and hungry—those who know they don’t belong at the banquet of God because of their wretchedness. We must be willing to go find the untouchables—those who are spiritually aware of their other ineptness, desperateness and unworthiness. And when we do, we invite the broken and famished to share their lives with us and in turn, we share our mutual, spiritual jaggedness.

In a way, Jesus is showing us here that the real banquet table is our hearts and we must be generous with the guest list of our lives, regardless of the social capital we may lose or the hope we may receive something in return. Jesus says inviting people into your life who have nothing to repay you is the way of Christ. It really is the biblical doctrine of hospitality—the idea of welcoming the stranger. They may not have social prestige. They may not have prosperity. They may not have influence. Many will not have possessions. They may not have anyway to pay you back. But they do have one thing they can give and it is a priceless gift.

Reaching out to the marginalized will remind you how God went out in the person and work of Jesus to find you in the gutter of your sin and invite you into the banquet of his stunning salvation. It will remind you that God sought you when you did not have a spiritual “home”—when you were spiritually unaware of your unworthiness—and he said “You’re worthy now because I love you.” It’s the only invitation that really matters. An invitation into feasting on the inexpressible hope that comes from belonging to the High Holy One. And it just might make your heart burst with joy.

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

Growth in Grace Advances Knowledge of Sin

Not long ago, I read the true story of Nick Lannon, Editor-in-Chief of LIBERATE, who was serving as a chaplain at a VA Hospital in Pittsburgh. The story goes that Nick walked into the room of a sick man. And when he asked the sick man how he was doing, the man said, “Son, I’m dying.” Nick was actually shocked at this man’s brutal honesty, and Nick said, “Well, how do you feel about that?” And the sick man said, “Well, I think I’ve lived a good life. I’m just not sure it was good enough.” After telling that story, Nick writes this:

God never looks at a Christian and says, “Good enough.” There’s no such thing. Instead of waiting for us to become something we can never be, God gives that which he requires: perfection. In exchange, he takes our imperfection onto himself. He speaks a loving word over his righteous son, and that word is applied to us. He calls us perfect, he calls us holy, and he calls us beloved. And since God’s words call into being the thing which he speaks, we become what are naturally not: perfect, holy, and beloved.

It is this exchange that forms the center of Christianity and allows Christians to be honest, with themselves and with others. … We can say, “I am a liar.” We can say, “I am selfish.” We can say, “I am a sinner.” Finally, we can say, “I am dying.” Into the darkness of those admissions comes the fire of new truth: though I am not good enough, Christ was good enough for me.

At my church, we went through a sermon series on how we grow in grace in the Christian life—how we mature as believers. Sometimes we get the wrong idea about maturity. We think maturity is simply being able to obey God more and more. Of course, that’s what we want. We don’t want to sin. We don’t celebrate failure. We want to see the fruit of our faith in Jesus. At the same time, though, our obedience cannot be our only measure of faith.

Why? Because it will lead us down one of two roads—either we’ll look at our fruit and say, “Man, I’m pulling this off. I’m a pretty good guy now.” And it leads to pride, self-righteousness, and the sense that we can be less dependent on Jesus. Or it could lead the opposite way. We could say, “Whoa! There’s a lot of commandments in here. Even the two commandments that sum everything up—love God and love my neighbor—I’m not doing that perfectly. I could never be good enough. God, how can you still accept me? Broken as I am? A sinner. Every bit in need of your grace as I was the day I first trusted you?” And it leads to shame and guilt and despair. We forget that Christ is good enough for us.

I want to look at three different letters that Paul wrote to the church, and, through these letters, we’ll see what Donald Grey Barnhouse called Paul’s “strange advancing knowledge of sin.”

The Already But Not Yet

Let’s consider that we live in a time of great tension. We live in what’s called the “already but not yet.” As believers in Jesus Christ, we have already been saved from our sins. We have already been set free from our chains. Christ has already come to pay our debt in full on the cross, but we have not yet arrived into the future kingdom that God promises us in his Word. There is still a future hope that we look forward to. We are on what John Bunyan called The Pilgrim’s Progress.

The tension is that we have been set free from sin, but we have not fully arrived. Even though we are no longer under condemnation for our sin, as Romans 8:1 affirms, we still struggle. In this in-between state, this “already but not yet,” we give in to temptation each and every day. We are not there yet. We have not yet reached the glory that God promises.

We see this more clearly in Paul’s letters to the church. We have two natures at war against one another. We have the old nature—the one where we were born in sin. That’s our sin nature. Then we have the new nature in Christ, which belongs to the Holy Spirit. We are being re-created by the Spirit, re-fashioned back into the perfect image of God. Yet, that old, pesky nature of sin continues to pull us back down.

So Paul said in Romans 7:15, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” And in Galatians 5:17 he says, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”

This is what Martin Luther and others meant by the Latin phrase simul justus et peccatur, which simply means we are simultaneously righteous and a sinner. Because of Christ’s finished work on the cross and resurrection from the dead, we are declared righteous before God. The Bible calls us saints. But we sin daily, and we are still affected by our old, sinful nature. So we are still sinners in daily need of grace.

As Jono Linebaugh said, “The Christian, in him or herself, is totally a sinner while at the same time being, in Christ, totally righteous before God. In other words, Christians are fully human—real people with real problems and real pain. But Christians, at the same time they’re sinners, are fully and savingly loved.”

Living in this state of “already but not yet” is scary. We are often afraid of our real selves. On our church’s men’s retreat last year, Nate Larkin told us how, as a minister, he would regularly look at pornography. And then it escalated to soliciting women to satisfy his desires. So he lived this double life of good Christian minister by day and sinful adulterer by night. He said he was simply playing the role of Jekyll and Hyde. And he was afraid of what would happen if someone found out about the real Nate Larkin. But it was only when he presented the real Nate Larkin to Christ that he was able to begin to repent and heal.

Advancing Knowledge of Sin

Paul did advance in life, but Paul did not advance to a state of arrival in the Christian life. As he progressed through life, he gained a greater awareness of himself—his own sin and need for constant renewal.

On Paul’s third missionary journey, he wrote to Corinth.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:3-10a)

He’s saying, “This is the gospel that I’ve been preaching to you. Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared to many people. And then he appeared, last of all, to me.” Paul understood the grace of God. He understood that if it were not for an act of sovereign grace, he would still be spiritually dead in his transgressions and sins and dragging Christians off to be persecuted. So he proclaims in 15:9, “For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle.”

But then if we turn over to Ephesians 3, we see how Paul’s self-awareness evolves. Again, Paul talks about how he was called to be a minister of the gospel. He says, “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (3:7).

Look at that again. “The very least of all the saints.” Not just last of the apostles, unworthy to be an apostle. Now it’s “very least of all the believers in Christ.” The way Paul speaks here is not simply in the past tense. It’s not, “Well, I used to be least in the kingdom, but now I’ve matured.” No, it’s just the opposite. Paul’s maturing faith leads him to the conclusion that, like King David said in Psalm 51, his sin was ever before him. He wasn’t worthy to be counted as great in God’s kingdom, much less as an apostle, a witness to Christ’s resurrection.

That leads us to 1 Timothy, where Paul is nearing the end of his life. He says in verses 15-16,

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

Do you see the progression? “I am the least of the apostles.” “I am the very least of all the saints.” “I am the worst sinner.”

Not long ago, I was reading through the Gospel of Matthew and came to chapter nine. Jesus healed a paralytic, and then he called Matthew, the tax collector, to follow him—to be his disciple. Jesus ate with Matthew and his tax collector and sinner friends. The Pharisees saw that this happened and said, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Jesus responds in Matthew 9:12: “‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’”

And after I read that, I found myself asking, “Am I a Pharisee?” Now, we all do this, don’t we? We read about what the bad guys do in Scripture, and we say, “Yeah, I do that sometimes. I grumble. I complain. I sin in this way and that way.” But what I’m saying is that, for the first time, I was identifying as a Pharisee. Not simply like a Pharisee or one who has Pharisee tendencies. I am a Pharisee. I desire sacrifice over mercy.

There’s nothing wrong with sacrifice. But desiring it over steadfast mercy and love toward others is what the Pharisees were guilty of. It’s what I am guilty of. I love being right and following the rules, and it’s often at the expense of loving my wife, my children, my friends, the church, or my neighbor.

So then I get to this place of, “Man, I’m worse than I thought I was. I’m not just Pharisee-esque. I am a Pharisee. I don’t just sin. I am a sinner.” So as you progress in your Christian maturity, you may find yourself saying, “Wow, I didn’t realize how selfish I am when I drive. I used to think it was everyone else around me.” Or maybe you think, “I was never aware of how unloving I was to my wife. It always seemed like she was just critical of me.”

Christian maturity is not advancing from one stage of goodness to another, but, by God’s grace, recognizing more and more our need for faith and repentance—recognizing our need for the Holy Spirit to renew us from the inside out. Why is that? Well, I love how the Heidelberg Catechism Q&A #115 helps us out here:

Q: “If in this life no one can keep the ten commandments perfectly, why does God have them preached so strictly?”

A: “First, so that throughout our life we may more and more become aware of our sinful nature, and therefore seek more eagerly the forgiveness of sins and righteousness in Christ. Second, so that, while praying to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, we may never stop striving to be renewed more and more after God’s image, until after this life we reach the goal of perfection.”

Abundance of Grace

By now you have probably heard the story about Ray Rice, former running back for the Baltimore Ravens. Back in February 2014, he was arrested for striking his fiancée, Janay. He came forward with Janay, to whom he is now married, and spoke to the media. He said, “I failed miserably, but I wouldn’t call myself a failure because I’m working my way back up.”

Now, I love that he came forward. But here’s the thing, and this what I would say to him if I could, “Ray, you failed, and it’s not just because you make mistakes or because you slipped up here or there. You failed because you’re a sinner. You can’t work your way back up. You need someone outside yourself to restore you.”

And that’s why Paul’s words to Timothy are such good news: “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners like Ray Rice. He came into the world to save Pharisees like me. He came into the world to save Paul, the chief of sinners and persecutor of Christ’s church. And it only magnifies the patience and the grace of God. To receive this abundant flow of God’s grace, we must be in a position of need. A position of weakness, not strength. We receive grace at the bottom, with our hands open as poor beggars.

So where is hope when our disobedience to the Father is revealed more and more? When we increasingly find that we are not perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect? When we reach the end of our life and we see that, “I am dying, and my life was not good enough”? We have hope, because Jesus was more than good enough. And our faith in Jesus is what makes us righteous before God. When the Father sees us, he sees Jesus.

That’s why Paul says in Romans 4:20-25,

No unbelief made [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

The strong may survive in this life, but it’s the weak who are raised to new life with Christ. As Tullian Tchividjian writes in One Way Love, “God doesn’t select His team the way the NFL does in the April draft. He isn’t looking for the best athletes around, or even those with the most potential. . . .  God lavishes his grace on the foolish, the weak, the despised, and the nothings so He alone will get the glory.”

May God be glorified and praised for sending the Son to come into the world to save sinners, of whom I am foremost.

—

Ethan A. Smith (@EthanASmith) is a thirty-something seminary student trying to juggle work, study, husband, and father duties, while also finding his identity as an adopted son of God. He blogs at Overwhelmed Again.

Adapted from Overwhelmed Again. Used with permission.

Trusting God’s Sovereignty

Can God be sovereign and humans still have free will? Are our destinies simply set?

Philip K. Dick was arguably the most influential science fiction writer of the late twentieth century. Several of his works, adapted as screenplays, explore the concept of free will. In Blade Runner we are brought face to face with the tension between genetic control and genuine feeling. The Adjustment Bureau pits choice against fate, as Matt Damon’s character attempts to alter the master plan for his life.

It all brings up an interesting, age-old question: Is it possible for there to be a sovereign God and for humans to have free will?

The stakes are high in this debate. If we surrender free will, life becomes bleak and hopeless. If God possesses exclusive control over our destinies, why should we do anything? What difference does anything make if life is all mapped out? If we surrender divine sovereignty, life loses transcendent meaning and purpose. We exist and then we die. The better the choices we make, the more apt we are to survive the race of the fittest, but for what—the mere propagation of our species? On the one hand we are left with unfeeling determinism, and on the other, a free-falling individualism.

Millions of people view the Bible as a source for knowing God. What does the Bible have to say on the topic of will?

A Glance at the Bible

There are stacks of biblical texts that underscore divine sovereignty, and even more that appeal to human will.

For example, the story of Job opens with a dialog between Satan and God. Satan questions the naked free will of “righteous Job.” Satan is convinced that without God’s sovereign hand of protection, Job will freely renounce God. Satan asks God to remove all aid and then is permitted to wreak havoc in Job’s life. The story concludes with Job expressing his steadfast hope in a sovereign God: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”¹

The will of Job meets, with hope, the sovereign plan of God. Avoiding the extremes of cold determinism and aimless individualism, Job presents divine sovereignty and human choice as entirely compatible.

In fact, the Bible consistently puts sovereignty and choice together:

• “To humans belong the plans of the heart,
 but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue.”²
• “In their hearts humans plan their course, 
but the Lord establishes their steps.”³
• “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”⁴

These texts appeal to our heart and ability to act, while at the same time recognizing that God ultimately determines the action. We are responsible, and he is sovereign. Decisions are made from the heart, while God is sovereign over those decisions.

Sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? How can those two things be compatible?

The Nature of the Will

The apparent contradiction is resolved when we understand the nature of the will. The will expresses our heart’s desire. Whatever we want most, we do. The will surveys the motives in the heart and always, always acts upon them. To give a Western example, if I desire a new TV, my will acts on that desire, and off I go to Best Buy.

But what happens when there are competing motives? What if, on the way to Best Buy, you stop at the ATM machine—and get held up? The thief tells you that if you don’t empty your entire account and give it to him, he will take your life. You really want your money—and you still want that TV—but you decide to give it all to him so you can live.

In that instance, were you prevented from exercising free will? Not at all. You simply did what you desired most. Being an ever-so-smart person, you desired to live more than you wanted a full bank account or a new TV. Whatever you desire most, your will acts on.

Freedom

Now we have stumbled into the matter of freedom. We often conceive of freedom as the absence of constraints. We think, “To really live, we need to be free to do whatever we want, free from restrictions.” Freedom, we argue, is the path to true flourishing.

But if we think on this, we’ll quickly see it isn’t entirely true. What would happen if every country in the world abolished all laws? Would that “freedom” increase life or decrease life? We all embrace certain restrictions because we know they lead to human prosperity.

Or consider the self-imposed restrictions of every musician in an orchestra. They willfully restrict their “freedom” to play however they want. Instead, they play the notes indicated on their music. What happens? Are the musicians oppressed, angry, and put down? No, they actually flourish. The restrictions enable them to create sounds they could never manage on their own—beautiful symphonies.

Putting It All Together

Now what does this have to do with God and free will? As a sovereign God, he imposes restrictions for our good. He composes the notes to life. He establishes moral laws so that we will flourish, but he does not force us to carry out these laws. In fact, we are free to do whatever our hearts desire.

If we desire to break the law, we do. If we want to reject God’s salvation in Christ, we can. We all make genuine choices, decisions that align with our heart’s desire. But this freedom is also the problem.

We are free to live for ourselves—even for others—but we are unable to live for God. Apart from gracious divine intervention, we simply don’t make God the north star of our life. As a result, we don’t gain Job-like confidence that, even in suffering, God has good purposes for us. Our wills are bound to broken hearts.

Consequently, we find it unappealing—if not impossible—to embrace God’s sovereignty, because deep down, we really want to be in charge. We want to make the rules. We want to set our own course, and it doesn’t include the path of self-denial and submission to God the Father. Our broken hearts have convinced us that true joy and flourishing are found outside of God.

 A New Heart

What we all need isn’t a free will (we already have that) but a new heart. We need new capacity to choose God, to love his ways, and to embrace his “restrictions” as the path to true life.

Jesus is the only person who did this perfectly. His heart was pure. He chose to follow the Father’s will, even when it meant suffering and death. He did it for us—for stubborn, short-sighted people who insist on their own way. He gave up his right to live so that we don’t have to die. If we relinquish our fixation on self-sovereignty and receive God’s gracious, righteous love and forgiveness, we will actually find true life.

When we come under the umbrella of God’s will, we are showered with the grace of true freedom. Transcendent purpose meets genuine, heartwarming choice. When we follow God’s master plan in Christ, we actually discover true love.

We come face to face with the only man who can love us perfectly and truly. If we receive it, that love gives the heart a whole new capacity to trust God’s sovereignty. In Jesus, we have the opportunity to flourish.

—

Jonathan K. Dodson (MDiv; ThM) serves as a pastor of City Life Church in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Gospel-Centered Discipleship, Unbelievable Gospel, and Raised? He has discipled men and women abroad and at home for almost two decades, taking great delight in communicating the gospel and seeing Christ formed in others. Twitter: @Jonathan_Dodson

The Lord of the Sparrows

“All the way my Savior leads me; What have I to ask beside?Can I doubt His tender mercy, Who thro’ life has been my Guide? Heavenly peace, divinest comfort, Here by faith in Him to dwell! For I know, what’er befall me, Jesus doeth all things well; For I know, what’er befall me, Jesus doeth all things well.”

—Fanny J. Crosby

Two Hard Truths

There are two kinds of God's sovereignty that are difficult for our human minds to grasp. The first is his sovereignty over the big, terrible events of our lives. This is because we cannot understand how a good and loving God could possibly be orchestrating the devastating, debilitating, and often deadly circumstances that we find ourselves subject to as humans living in this sin-infested world.

Indeed, we are often met with a crisis of faith when a spouse leaves us, when a pregnancy ends in miscarriage, or when we get the awful news that we are dying from cancer. In these times we are forced to decide whether we truly believe in the God of the Bible—a God who is incomprehensibly sovereign over evil events and at the same time good in all he does—or whether we will invent a more palatable god of our own design. When catastrophic events happen in our lives we must trust—with God-given faith—his revealed Word when it says that he "works all things for the good of those who love him."

The second category of God's sovereignty we have difficulty accepting—that I see my own heart struggling to believe—is his control over the minute, the tiny details of our lives. This, perhaps, is an even greater struggle than the first because it confronts us every moment of our lives. It is the unbelief that continually fails to recognize God's continual, purposeful interaction with the moments that make up our days.

It is seen in the fiery anger that burns within in our chests when we are delayed at a stop light. For we fail to recognize that it is God himself who controls all things and who has chosen to delay us for his own purposes. We fail to believe that it is for our good.

It is seen in the frustration that festers in the heart of a teacher when her student struggles to understand the concept of blending consonant sounds as he struggles to read. She forgets that it is God who controls her student's faculties, that his struggle is part of our loving Lord's plan for both him and her. She forgets to trust that such a challenge is for their good.

It is seen in the exasperation of the homemaker whose war against the never ending piles of laundry tempts her to resent the precious souls who add to it every day. She does not believe that God himself has given her this task, that he is blessing others through it, that he could use such a mundane chore to sanctify her. She does not believe that its is for their good.

The Lord of the Little Things

Yes, it is seen every moment of every day when we fail to acknowledge him as Lord over the little things.

"Are not to sparrows sold for a penny?" Jesus said to his disciples, "And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father."

Oh soul, remember that it is he, the Creator of heaven and earth, who controls the birds of the air. Is he not also in control of your crying baby, your complaining child, your car that won't start? "Even the hairs on your head are all numbered by him," our Lord Jesus says. Does he not then also control the blemishes that plague your skin? How different our attitudes would be if we met every frustration, every annoyance, and every difficulty that comes our way with the knowledge of our loving God's sovereignty.

For we do not view the events of our lives through rose-colored glasses, but rather through blood-drenched ones.

If we could but remember the price he paid to save us, would we not view the inconveniences of life with greater appreciation? Would they not drive us to the throne of grace rather than our keyboards where we share quick, relieving complaints disguised as Facebook statuses? Would we not find ourselves beseeching the Lord for wisdom every moment of every day, as James tells us to? For it is he who "gives generously to all without reproach!" Soul, make use of his generosity, for your need is great!

And how differently our days would transpire if we could see his sovereignty in the small blessings he lavishes upon us. For indeed, so great is our sinfulness, that we don't even find it easy to recognize the constant good that flows from his wounds to his beloved bride.

Prayer and Praise

We take for granted every breath that enters our lungs, every smile we receive from our children, every kiss we enjoy from our husbands, every hug we get from a good friend. We enter into soft, comfortable beds each night relieved that the day is over, forgetting to thank him for the many blessings we've received—not the least of which being the soft, comfortable bed we lay on!

Would our countenance not be characterized by peaceful joy rather than frenzied exhaustion if we could but keep the cross ever before us, seeing all the good things that come our way as loving gifts from a bridegroom to his purchased bride? Would our lips not be filled with his praises? Would our love for him not spill out upon all who are in our presence?

Perhaps this awareness of God residing over the little events of our lives would yield an attitude of ceaseless prayer and praise. Maybe we would come closer to obeying Paul's command to the Thessalonians to "rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." (1 Thess. 5:16-18)

Can we live as those aware of the Savior's leading? Can we trust him with the little things, whether they be good or bad? Lord give us the grace to live in this blessed awareness, for we long to see you.

—

Jessalyn Hutto (@JessalynHutto) is the wife of a church planter, a mother to four, and a very part-time writer. Most of all she is a ransomed sinner, living in the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ. You can learn more about her at JessalynHutto.com.

Originally published at JessalynHutto.com. Used with permission.

2 Big Reasons Evangelism Isn’t Working

One in five Americans don’t believe in a deity. Less than half of the population attends religious services on a regular basis. People simply find our evangelism unbelievable.

Why?

While a person’s response to Christ is ultimately a matter that rests in God’s sovereign hands—something we have no control over—a person’s hearing of the gospel is a matter we do have control over and responsibility for.

• “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season…” 2 Tim. 4:2
• Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. – Col. 4:4-5
• So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.  Romans 10:17

The first reason our evangelism isn’t believable is because it isn’t done in grace for each person.

Paul isn’t just saying evangelism is our responsibility; he’s telling us to do it “in person.” Unfortunately, a lot of evangelism is an out of body experience, as if there aren’t two persons in a conversation. It’s excarnate, out of the flesh, not incarnate—in the flesh.

I’m reminded of the more passive Christian who looks to get Jesus off his chest at work and into a conversation. “Check!” Or the time in college when I pretended to share the gospel with a friend in Barnes & Noble so others would overhear it! Alternatively, an active evangelist might troll blogs and start conversations to defeat arguments, while losing people in the process. “Aha!” The comment section on a blog is the new street corner.

These approaches are foolish because they treat people like projects to be completed, not persons to be loved. Have you ever been on the other end of evangelistic project? Perhaps from a Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon at your door. Or a pushy pluralist at work? You don’t  feel loved; you feel used, like a pressure sale.

Paul says we should “know how you ought to answer each person.” This means that most of your gospel explanations will be different, not canned. It also implies a listening evangelism. How can we know how to respond to each person, if we don’t know each person?

When Francis Schaeffer was asked how he would an hour with a non-Christian, he said: “I would listen for fifty-five minutes, and then, in the last five minutes I would have something to say.”

A second reason people find our evangelism is unbelievable is because it is foolish.

Paul isn’t just telling us evangelism is personal; he’s telling us to do it with wisdom. Wisdom possesses more than knowledge; it expresses knowledge through understanding. It considers life circumstances and applies knowledge with skill. Another word for this is love.

Love is inefficient. It slows down long enough to understand people and their objections to the gospel. Love recognizes people are complex, and meets them in their need: suffering, despair, confusion, indifference, cynicism, confusion. We should look to surface these objections in people’s lives. I was recently having lunch with an educated professional who had a lot of questions. After about thirty minutes he said, “Enough about me. You’re asking me questions. I should ask you questions.” I responded by saying, “I want to hear your questions, but I also want to know you so that I can respond to your questions with wisdom.” He told me some very personal things after that, and it shed a lot of light on his objections to Christianity. It made my comments much more informed, and he felt much more loved, declaring at the end, “I wish every lunch was like this. Let’s keep doing this. I have a lot more questions.”

Rehearsing a memorized fact, “Jesus died on the cross for your sins,” isn’t walking in wisdom. Many people don’t know what we mean when we say “Jesus,” “sin,” or “cross.” While much of America still has cultural memory of these things, they are often misunderstood and confused with “moral teacher,” “be good,” and “irrelevant suffering.” We have to slow down long enough to explore what they mean, and why they have trouble with these words and concepts. Often they are tied to some kind of pain.

We need to explain these important truths (and more), not simply assert them. When we discerningly separate cultural misunderstanding from a true understanding of the gospel, we move forward in wisdom. But getting to that point typically doesn’t happen overnight.

We need to see evangelism as a long-term endeavor. Stop checking the list and defeating others. Be incarnate not excarnate in your evangelism. Slow down and practice listening and love. Most conversions are not the result of a single, point-in-time conversation, but the culmination of a personal process that includes doubt, reflection, gospel witness, love, and the work of the Holy Spirit.

And remember, don’t put pressure on yourself; conversion is in God’s hands. We just get to share the incomparable news of Jesus.

In sum, how you communicate the gospel matters.

Does Anything Need to Change in Personal Evangelism? from Jonathan Dodson on Vimeo.

—

Jonathan K. Dodson (MDiv; ThM) serves as a pastor of City Life Church in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Gospel-Centered Discipleship, Unbelievable Gospel, and Raised? He has discipled men and women abroad and at home for almost two decades, taking great delight in communicating the gospel and seeing Christ formed in others. Twitter: @Jonathan_Dodson

Jonathan’s new book is The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing (resource website here). You can also get his free ebook “Four Reasons Not to Share Your Faith.”

Re-posted with permission from Desiring God.

Cherishing the Foreverness of Jesus’ Work

Who has done more for us than Jesus? Who’s ever come close? No one loves like Jesus. No one and nothing delivers on their promises like Jesus. The good news of forgiveness from all of our crimes, being made a child of God and a co-heir with Christ, does the heart good . Forever. Jesus has wounded the Dragon, and he is coming back to get his girl, his beautiful church.

the tale of tales

The Bible is the tale of tales. A Jesus-exalting view of the Bible means that you refuse to view the Bible (and the Christian experience) as mere regulations and sanctions for life on earth. The Bible is way more than that. Children’s book author Sally Lloyd-Jones says it best:

No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules , or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne —everything— to rescue the ones he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life! You see, the best thing about this Story is— it’s true.

There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.

It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby . Every story in the Bible whispers his name. He is like the missing piece in the puzzle—the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture.

What beautiful picture? A crucified, risen, sin-pardoning hero—your hero. Your Savior. Your Jesus, and he killed the big bad wolf. Your sin is finished. Do you believe it? As in all good tales, the enemy is vanquished. It’s time to believe it— that’s part of the “happily ever after.” As in all good tales, the enemy is vanquished. It’s time to believe it – that’s part of the “happily ever after.”

As in all good tales . . .

As in all good tales, the enemy is vanquished. It’s time to believe it—that’s part of the “happily ever after.” How would you describe your relationship with sin? For the Christian, only one word in the Bible fits: deceased. God’s Word doesn’t say that we are simply weakened, cold, hardened, or numb to sin; it declares that we are dead to sin and alive to God because of Jesus. “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6: 11). If you’re like me, you probably don’t always feel this way toward sin, but the gospel brings great news. You are no longer under the power, control, and kingdom of Satan and his toxic meal-deals

If you are in Christ, look at how the Bible describes your relationship with sin. I heard these from the great Scottish theologian Sinclair Ferguson, in a seminary class, and I pass them on to you:

• Sin is no longer your king: “Let not sin therefore reign” (Rom. 6: 12).
• Sin is not your commander: “Do not present your members to sin as instruments [weapons]” (v. 13).
• Sin is done being your dictator: “For sin will have no dominion over you” (v. 14).
• Sin is no longer your master: “You were slaves of sin” (v. 20).
• Sin is no longer your employer: “The wages of sin is death” (v. 23).

Sin controlled you, but no more. You are free. Jesus smashed sin’s scepter, and now he reigns forever. The Lion of Judah roars against all other predators.

back to the gospel—again

Go back to the gospel—again. Not for conversion, but for comfort.

But maybe you don’t feel like you are dead to sin. There is hope. If you are a Christian and your life still sleeps in the pigpen—it is time to confess, repent, and walk in the freedom that Jesus has already purchased for you. Go back to the gospel—again. Not for conversion, but for comfort. The gospel— Jesus’ death and resurrection—is a one-time event, but we believe it more than once—we believe it and re-believe it every day. God’s gospel declares that you are free. You are safe in Christ, and he is ready to help you. Go to God. Cherish the foreverness of Jesus’ work for you, walk in grace, and life change is on the way. In fact, it has already touched down.

Paul’s instruction from Romans 6: 11 is clear: “You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Believe it. Don’t close this book till you do. Your being dead to sin is as true and real as Jesus being alive. Christian, you must consider your ties with sin to be forever severed by the blood of Jesus. This is what it means to believe the gospel again—believing the glorious gifts of the gospel.

We will still sin, and Jesus will continue to own us. Sin is no match for Jesus. He’s already shown what he can do. Jesus is bigger, stronger, faster, and greater than all our sin: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3: 3). Do you believe that you are dead to sin? Do you believe that you are alive? What sin do you think you’ll never have victory over ? Today that lie ends; the crimson flood swallows it up—your joy is found in gospel truth. Jesus is the great curse -lifter promised in the garden of Eden (Gen. 3: 15), the great gloom-cleanser of the land, the heavenly and human harbinger of joy.

—

J.A. Medders is the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Church in Tomball, TX. He and Natalie have two kids, Ivy and Oliver. Jeff digs caffeinated drinks, books, and the Triune God. He blogs at www.jamedders.com and tweets from @mrmedders. Jeff’s first book, Gospel-Formed: Living a Grace-Addicted, Truth-Filled, Jesus-Exalting Life, released this November from Kregel.

Excerpted by permission. Gospel Formed: Living a Grace-Addicted, Truth-Filled, Jesus-Exalting Life by J. A. Medders, Kregel Publications 2014

4 Ways to Serve a School

One of the simplest ways to love a city is to serve its schools. Education, among other structures, is one of the main components on which a city thrives, creates culture, and builds the wellbeing of the population. We are called to seek the welfare of a city (Jer. 29:7), and you can do no better than to invest your time and energy into a local school. The school that my wife and I serve needs a fair amount of help. We have been serving there for the last seven years. We enjoy serving there, because of the relationships we get to build with normal everyday people, and the opportunities we get to bless them. More than just the practical and social reasons, though, there are theological reasons. We get to serve there, because we have a great Lord and Savior who served us perfectly, laying down his life and dying for us while we were still sinful and rebellious. We would confess, however, that often our reasons for serving the school do not always fall in line with this truth. Sure we want to see the people of the school come to know Jesus; sure we want to see people’s lives changed and we want God to be glorified through us—all good evangelical notions.  Sometimes we might have other practical or quasi-selfish reasons for serving the school, such as for the betterment of the school, or that our kids will benefit from our time there. Those are not bad reasons. However, in the gospel we need to remember that all our motivation, strength, and the resources we need to serve, come from how Jesus served us. This is the truth by which we are often convicted and what causes us to repent and seek the best reason.

With the gospel in mind, then, here are four ways to serve and bless a school. These simple methods are transferable for any school context in any city.

1. Pray for the school 

We share this first, because it is the most important. Prayer works, because God works. It is not a magic formula, but a command and reality that God has called us to. Our family does not have a systematic way of doing this; mostly we pray when the Holy Spirit reminds us. When we take my kids and our neighborhood friends to school, we pray for them, their teachers, and the school as whole. It is an encouragement for us to just pray, because we are being reminded of how much we need his power and grace to work in and through us at the school.

2. Ask how to help and show up

We began to realize the significance of this when we first moved to our city and began serving. Derek had called around to a few schools asking how we could help. One of them had a laundry list of ways that we could serve, so we decided to show up and help there. At the time, they were doing these monthly Family Fun Night events, so we showed up to serve the meal and clean up afterward. This was a good, tangible way to serve and meet people. Also, it came with the by-product of giving us and our kids a context and familiarity for where they would eventually attend school.

Also, extracurricular clubs and organizations are great places to show up at. Our school has a unicycling club led by a family in the school. We decided to team up with the family to try it out. Initially, we knew nothing about unicycling except that you sit on one wheel and try to stay on the thing. Our oldest daughter picked it up quickly and our other two younger kids are still learning. These kinds of clubs and activities are such great ways to serve and build relationships with people. Being a part of the unicycle club as a family has been so good for us to share in outreach together (Plus, if everything else in life falls through, we can always run off and join the circus!)

Another good way to show up and help is to serve in a classroom. Colleen makes time once a week, outside of her work schedule, to serve in one of our kids’ classes. Derek has been able to come a few times to serve, and it has been a great way to connect with some of the boys. Colleen has served on the PTA board in the past. Derek currently serves on the Site Council. There are so many ways that you can show up and serve—in the classroom, extracurricular events, committees, fundraisers. Schools have so many needs and just showing up and asking, “How can I help?” will be your first step in real palpable service.

3. Give generously of your time and resources

Another way to serve a school is to give generously. Generosity is part of the definition of grace—giving extravagantly to someone who doesn’t deserve or expect it. You might bring high-quality and generous portions of food or other items to bless the students and staff. If you have kids at the school, you can send them with the best snacks or cupcakes on their birthday, or send extra money with your kids to give to other kids to enjoy using during PTA fundraisers. Bless the teachers and staff with donuts and coffee. Give them coffee gift-cards as an expression of thanks for their hard work. Or, instead of just giving material items, you can give generously of your time and energy. Spend a whole day at the school, and get to know the life of the school. Eat lunch with some of the kids. Hang out at recess and help monitor the activities there. Often it seems we give according to cultural standards of what is assumed to be expected and appropriate, which often can translate to just giving the bare minimum. However, to bless someone is to go above and beyond the normal expectation. Honestly, this is something we are still growing in. Practicing generosity is difficult, because our default mode is to give minimally, not extravagantly. We need to remember how much we’ve been given in Christ, so that we might be convicted to give generously.

4. Practice hospitality

Finally, a good way to serve a school is to practice hospitality outside of the school. Besides being a practical tool to reach out to people, it is also a command from Scripture (Heb. 13:2). You can invite kids and families into your home for the purpose of building community, shared life, and celebration together.  You might plan a fun event centered on a season, or a rhythm in the calendar year like the beginning or end of school. Our kids’ school celebrates “100 days of school,” which is a great time to celebrate with a party. At the beginning of the school year, we hosted a “Back to School Bash” party for some of our kids’ friends. It was awesome! It gave us the opportunity to meet some of the kids’ parents, and it was a great way to help bring momentum to the school year. We hope to continue with more fun events throughout the year.

In reality, our ministry at the school can feel long and slow. We often don’t get to see the fruit that Jesus is growing in people’s lives. There are some things we’ve done in the past that haven’t worked as well, but there are things we are doing now that seem to work.  Either way, we are benefiting from the maturation of disciples, as we learn to more fully pour out our lives, share our resources, and give time and energy to the school. And as we enjoy the goodness and grace of Jesus poured out for us generously, we get to funnel some of that grace to others at the school, in order that the school might enjoy the grace and presence of Jesus.

—

Derek (@derekhiebert) and Colleen Hiebert and their three kids live in Parkland WA. Derek works as the Director of the Western Seminary Seattle Teaching Site, while Colleen works part-time as a nurse. They both serve bi-vocationally with Soma as missional leaders and take pride in their kids’ school.

5 Obedience Killing Lies

When Mirela and I loaded up our belongings and headed to the northwest, we were filled with an incredible blend of expectation and zeal. We knew something major was happening, and God was going to let us be part of it. We didn’t have a grand plan. We just had a genuine desire to serve and start a church in Portland. It was a big adventure and we felt like pioneers on the Oregon Trail. As we crossed the Walla Walla mountains in eastern Oregon, we listened to Rich Mullen’s song, “You’re on the Verge of a Miracle.” We couldn’t wait to see mass revival in Portland. God placed us with a remarkable church planting team. We’ve seen lots of evidence of God’s grace in our lives and in the church. He has continually provided for our small church plant. We are thankful for many things. From the outside, it looks pretty good. Church planters come from all over the world to learn about what we are doing. Our missional communities multiply every year. We even have a cool website.

The reality is—life lived on the frontier is hard. We have seen only a handful of people come to Christ and be baptized. Church conflict is constant. It seems as though every time someone joins our church, another person leaves. About a third of the missional communities we start fail. All the while, our city continues to be desperately far from knowing the riches of the gospel. My neighbors constantly reject the good news of Jesus despite our best attempts to demonstrate and proclaim it to them. The city is not flourishing in the peace of salvation, but struggling in the chaos of brokenness. It doesn’t feel like the miracle is happening. We sometimes wonder, “When will the revival come? Will we be around to see it?”

Lessons from China

It reminds me of the church in China. No, not the Chinese church of today, where thousands are baptized daily and they can’t print enough Bibles or equip enough pastors to keep up with the rapid multiplication of the church. Not that movement. I am reminded of the Chinese churches of Hudson Taylor, Robert Morrison, and the Cambridge Seven. They spent the best years of their lives laboring with little or no fruit. Despite decades of evangelism and service, they only witnessed a few conversions and a few new churches in their life times. By the time Mao banned religion, many, even within the missions movement, assumed China was unreachable. These missionaries had seemingly wasted their lives.

However, the house church movement that began to erupt in the 1960s and continues today was built on the foundation of these missionaries. The converts they baptized became the backbone of today’s movement. The few disciples they made, made more disciples, who made disciples, and so on. The revival those missionaries prayed for came. It was just decades after they had died. The pioneering missionaries never saw the packed house churches or the all night baptism services. They didn’t see their prayers answered. Yet, they faithfully served at great personal cost for years. They obeyed the call to go and make disciples without knowing what the lasting affect would be.

The Rewards of Obedience

What do you get for all your anonymous and resultless faithfulness? Nothing short of God. “Discipleship,” Bonheofer writes, “means joy.” The reward is Christ himself. Often we get confused and think the rewards for obedience are big churches, lots of twitter followers, and the approval of our peers. And we miss the promise of Christ.

How sick are we when we lust for the results of Christ’s work, thinking it could belong to us? When we prefer convert stories to Christ? Sadly, many of us will hope more for success than we will hope for Christ.

If you follow Jesus, you may never see revival. Though you love your city, you may never see it transformed. But if you follow Jesus you are guaranteed this one thing—Jesus. Your fruit is the joy of obeying Jesus. Nothing else. The baptisms and church plants belong to God. Those are God’s work, not yours.

Our ability to quit and become sidetracked is great. Our hearts are constantly being attacked by lies that keep us from persevering in faith. These five lies are particularly successful. They are deceptive and effective in killing our conviction to follow Jesus and trust in his work.

1. “You are above this.”

This is the lie of strong pride. That the grunt work isn’t for you. I first heard this lie when I cleaned toilets for a church in Los Angeles. You may hear it while you are watching babies in the nursery Sunday after Sunday. Or when you get stood up once again by your not-yet believing friends for dinner. You hear it when your neighbors shun you for being crazy people who believe in Jesus. The lie is, “You are better then this.” When you believe this lie, you think you are entitled to fame. In reality, you are only entitled to be called a child of God, and that right was purchased by Christ. Don’t settle for position and fame. If you think you are above the job and task, you will not persevere in obedience.

2. “You are below this.”

Many times it also sounds like, “You don’t belong and you don’t deserve this.” This is a lie attacking Christ’s ability to work in and through you. If you believe this lie, you believe that God is not at work, but you are the one at work. This lie leads to fear and rejection of your identity as a son or daughter of God. It is also born out of comparison to others instead of Christ. What is so devastating about this lie is it paralyzes folks from obedience that would give God glory. No one is capable or skilled enough to do what God has called them to do. The Holy Spirit empowers us for the tasks and God is glorified in using us.

3. “If you were better, it would be easier.”

This one comes when things feel incredibly hard. It leads to self loathing and increased suffering. This lie shakes your sense of purpose. You begin to place yourself as the focal point of God’s work and conclude you are either in the way or driving it forward. When things improve, you believe it is because you have done better and have earned it. When things fail, you are certain it is your fault. Similar lies are, “You have to be good to be used for good.” Or “You have to be smarter, better, quicker, more talented, more educated, rich and moral in order to do good.” This leads to a personal quest for self-rightness, excellence, and God’s job. This lie essentially says, “You are this city’s savior.” Eventually you quit in desperation because you have labored without a savior.

4. “If it isn’t happening now, it never will.”

This lie says, “today is all there is and God can’t work tomorrow. If God hasn’t answer your prayers for revival by now, he never will.” When you believe it, you lose perspective on the scope of life and count everything you are doing as worthless. You are no longer content in obedience alone, but want to see what your obedience will create. This is nearsighted dreaming. This lie results in quick quitting or shrinking versions of worthwhile-God-given dreams. This is a lie people believe when the settle for less then the radical surrender and obedience God called them to. When we believe this lie we are saying, “God doesn’t care anymore or he can’t do it.”

5. “You are alone.”

This is the hardest one. Our sinful hearts leap to this lie when we are tired and discouraged. The goal of this lie is to isolate you and make you think no one else cares, and no one else is coming to help. No longer are you being obedient to God’s work, but now you feel like a hired hand. It is as if God is paying you to establish a franchise of his kingdom and is looking for a return on his investment.  Your belief in this lie says, “Jesus doesn’t love me or this city. He didn’t died for this city of for me . . . God abandons his people.”

Gospel Motivation

At the heart of each these lies is an attack on your motivation and an attack on the gospel. The truth is Christ died for you. You are loved and you are his son or daughter (1 John 3:1). He has empowered you with his Spirit to be his witness (Acts 1:8). He will work in you and through you as he works all things together for good and conforms you to the likeness of Christ (Romans 8:28-29). He is with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28).

When I was 11, my family moved to Lisbon, a city of five million people with fewer than 4 percent believing the gospel. Shortly after we arrived, my family went to a hill that overlooked the city we came to win for Christ. My dad wept over it as he prayed for the people and for the gospel to take root and free people. We all cried. We had put everything on the line to follow Jesus to this city. We loved the city and we loved Jesus.

Soon it will be two decades since that day we prayed for that city, and the statistics are the same. My parents saw only a couple people baptized in over a decade of ministry there. They will never see or experience his prayers for the city being answered. What did they experience? God’s lavished grace in new ways; the gospel.

Are you willing to weep over your city for decades and never see your prayers answered, and plant seeds you never see germinate? What if your church never becomes nationally known? What if you don’t write books or speak at conferences? Is the gift of the gospel enough for you?

—

Brad Watson (@BradAWatson) 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 Called Together. His greatest passion is to encourage and equip leaders for the mission of making disciples.

The Deconstructed Gospel

What is the gospel? My first semester at seminary I showed up feeling called by God to become a pastor and I couldn't say what the gospel was. Sure I had an idea. Isn't the gospel that we're "saved by faith" or that "Jesus rose again"? The word gospel comes from the Greek word that means "good news." Mark 1:1 tells us the gospel is "the good news about Jesus the Messiah." So what about Jesus' life and ministry is good news for us? Just about every Christian I know has trouble answering this question. Usually someone will bring up Jesus' life, death, and resurrection (something I like to call the three days gospel) and how through them God gives us eternal life. That is absolutely true and so beautiful. But what about the other thirty-three years of Jesus' estimated lifespan? Do those years matter for us too? This is why I break down the gospel into three days and thirty-three years.

The Three Days Gospel

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

Day 1 - Friday: "Christ died for our sins"

This is a great starting point for defining what the gospel is. Jesus died for our sins. That's a huge statement and is summed up in the fancy theological term "atonement." The Day of Atonement described in Leviticus 16 was the day the High Priest of Israel slaughtered a goat and sprinkled its blood in the Most Holy Place of the temple before God. This sacrifice atoned for the sins of the people for another year. On Good Friday, Jesus atoned for our sins when he became the final sacrifice. He died an innocent victim in the place of guilty sinners.

Day 2 - Saturday: "He was buried"

True, Jesus was buried in the tomb on Friday, but he stayed dead on Saturday. Friday and Sunday of Easter weekend get all the credit, but Saturday played an important part too. Saturday proved Jesus was really dead. He wasn't just passed out or dying. He was locked away in a tomb with no breath in him. Hebrews 2:9 tells us Jesus "suffered" or "tasted" death. He went through all the pain of Friday so he could be dead on Saturday. This is the same death you and I face for all eternity if Sunday's miracle never comes.

Day 3 - Sunday: "He was raised"

Jesus rose from the grave conquering sin and death on Sunday morning. Resurrection! He returned to the living in his old yet newly glorified body. This is what we who trust in Jesus will experience at the final resurrection when Jesus returns. Christ will call us forth from our graves to spend eternity with him in a whole new creation. We who trust in Jesus die spiritually with him on Friday. One day our bodies will really be dead, like Saturday. But our hope is in what Jesus did on Sunday so we too will rise again. The resurrection is good news!

The last three days of Jesus' life matter for you and for me. Those three days are what most people think of when they think of the gospel. We turn to them first because they're what drive us to put our faith in Christ. Jesus offers forgiveness for our sins through his sacrifice on the cross on Friday, through our fear of death on Saturday, and through the hope we have for eternity on Sunday. We turn to them because they matter for us when we die. Even in our last days, we still have hope.

The Thirty-Three Years Gospel

So what about the rest of Jesus' life? How are they the gospel? How does how he lived matter for our lives right now? Usually when I ask this question, everyone goes quiet. It's because we don't usually think about the gospel from this angle. We love our hope in eternal life, but haven't considered what Jesus may have done for our present life.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Jesus lived a perfect life: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,"

Jesus was born, and then he lived. But he didn't live like you and I live. He lived a life of perfect obedience to God, his Father. He "knew no sin.” That means he never lied to his parents, stole from his employer, cheated on a test, lusted in his heart, drank too much alcohol, or got angry for the wrong reasons. He lived without sin through all life's stages. Jesus was a toddler, but he wasn't terrible. He was a teenager, but he wasn't angsty. He was a man, but he wasn't prideful. He was on his deathbed made of wood, and he died with grace.

Not only did Jesus never sin, he also lived a holy life. This means he always did the right thing. He prayed enough, fasted enough, read the Scriptures enough, and gave enough to the poor. He did all those right things and more. Luke 2:52 gives us a glimpse of Jesus' godly character. "And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man." Jesus was a person like us in his experience, yet unique from us in his perfection. Don't you wish your everyday was more like Jesus' everyday? Don't you wish that you weren't the sinner you are? Don't you wish you are as holy and good as Jesus? Here's the good news . . . you already are!

We get credit for Jesus' perfect life: "so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Jesus trades his righteousness for our sin. This is the great exchange. Through Jesus’ perfect life and substitutionary death, God has taken your sinful life and placed it on Jesus and taken his holy life and placed it on you. That's what grace does. When God looks at you, he sees the life of his Son! God has permanently credited the righteousness of Jesus to your account. This truth is as old as Abraham trusting Yahweh in Genesis 15:6 and as fresh as Paul writing to the early church in Romans 3:21-26. The gospel is for every believer every day.

This means that when you wake up and blow it sometime this morning, afternoon, or evening—you are holy. This means that when you cuss out the driver in front of you for driving too slow and the driver behind you for driving too fast—you are holy. This means you don't have to regret your teen years, or your college years—you are holy. This means when you forget to be polite and you don't help your neighbor because it's inconvenient—you are holy. This means that the hidden sin you don't want anyone to know about are forgiven in God's eyes,—you are holy. This means your worst offense is completely forgiven at Christ's expense.

Not only does the gospel forgive our outward acts of sin, it cleanses our inward rebellion. Ezekiel 36:26-27 tells us the gospel has changed our very hearts. God takes your old hard heart and gives you a new soft one filled with the Holy Spirit. Where your life was empty, now your life is full. You are awash in righteousness where you once were lost in unrighteousness. When you sin today, remember that God sees you as he sees his son, forgiven and holy. One day your sin will be completely gone, and God's righteousness will become intrinsic to who you are, but until then God has credited us with a spotless record that you may enjoy today. Thank you, Jesus.

Jesus has traded his thirty-three years of perfection for your whole life of disobedience and sin. This means you no longer have to wallow in despair, guilt, and doubt, because you are seen through the lens of Christ. One day soon our sin nature will go away, but until then we hope in Jesus and enjoy his righteousness. As one friend said when he finally understood the gospel, "That's so unfair!" My dirty record is gone. Jesus' fresh record is mine.

So What is the Gospel?

The gospel is the good news that Jesus lived a perfect life, died an innocent death, rose again so that we may spend eternity with him, and now credits us with his holy record so that we may enjoy a guilt-free life today. We make disciples by helping the lost believe the three days gospel and we mature those disciples by helping them live every day in appreciation for the thirty-three years gospel. We need the full gospel message to truly make, mature, and multiply disciples of Jesus.

—

Jonathan M. Romig (M.Div., Gordon-Conwell) is the associate pastor at Immanuel Church in Chelmsford Massachusetts (CCCC). He blogs at PastorRomig.blogspot.com and recently finished teaching New City Catechism to his adult Sunday school class and self-published his first ebook How To Give A Christian Wedding Toast.

Simple, But Not Easy

“We've had more decisions for Christ in Africa than there are people." The words of the missionary visiting our church service stuck in my head like the chorus to a pop song.

It reminded me of the quote by Francis Chan, "Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.”

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to become “successful” at running up the score on decisions for Christ while neglecting the great commission of Jesus to make disciples for Christ.

Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: “God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” —Matthew 28:20, The Message

Discipleship Takes Time

We've dedicated ourselves to the glorification of a one-time act and abandoned the transformation of the journey.

Not because it's complicated to make disciples, but because it's difficult to make disciples. It takes time, and we're in a hurry for some unknown reason, racing against an imaginary clock to see who can “die with the most things.” We humans are funny that way.

Discipleship is Messy

Have you ever built anything with your hands? Making things is intrinsically messy. Whether it's your favorite meal in the kitchen or something you build in the garage . . . you always end up with a mess on your hands that you have to clean up.

True discipleship is like making things—it’s making people for God—and it’s messy. When Jesus said, "Go and make disciples,” he definitely knew it was going to take time, and be messy. Jesus himself had spent years investing into a small crew of guys—teaching them all he knew, and showing them the way to true life.

Discipleship is Difficult

It's a simple command that Jesus gave us, yet extremely difficult. True gospel-centered discipleship not only produces difficult personal transformation in the people we are discipling; it also produces difficult personal transformation in our own hearts as well.

Don’t be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. – James 3:1-2, The Message

It takes an investment of our time, attention, and resources. But what is made through this process stands the test of time like a beautiful piece of antique furniture.

Our Purpose is Clear

The primary purpose in life for every disciple of Jesus couldn't be any clearer in the Bible—to disciple others.

We should all have people in our lives who are discipling us, and we should all embrace our chief purpose by eventually looking for other people we can disciple. This isn’t just a job for pastors.

Good friend, don’t forget all I’ve taught you; take to heart my commands. They’ll help you live a long, long time, a long life lived full and well. —Proverbs 3:1, The Message

Disciple Three People for Life

You may never fill large stadiums through the simple, yet difficult process of discipleship . . . well, at least not at first.

If you discipled just three people over your lifetime, with the purpose of them each finding three people to disciple over their lifetime and continue to pass on this process . . . you are traveling a very slow road, which does not lead to earthly fame.

In fact, after five years of this grueling, messy and time consuming life, you’ll find that because of your dedication to obey Jesus’ command, you will have become the catalyst for a whopping 363 disciples.

I don't think any statues will be built in your honor or roads named after you for this crowning achievement. But, you might begin to see something amazing as those 363 grow deeper and mature in their faith, being transformed into the image of Christ.

Don’t give this vision up. If you keep going, you'll find yourself five years down the road and those original three who you are still making into disciples for a lifetime have become the catalyst for 88,572 maturing disciples.

Now, you might start turning heads, but I doubt it, because if you're doing it right, you're still humbly devoted to the insignificant beauty of leading just three disciples you've been entrusted with for a lifetime.

Just as we entrust the earth with an insignificant seed, so are we who are entrusted to disciple. And the last time I checked, no one was throwing any celebrations for dirt. Unless you count earth day I guess.

This dedication to discipleship is simple, not rocket science. But don’t let that fool you into thinking it's easy.

By now it gets even more exciting, because as you are still discipling just three other people into disciples over your lifetime, you’ll find yourself twenty-one years down the road from when you started making your three disciples for a lifetime. And while you are still only directly connected to the one who is making you into a disciple, the others that person is making into disciples with you and the three you are making into disciples; your little seed has grown into a mighty giant redwood.

In fact, in those twenty-one years your little discipleship group has grown to cover the entire planet with maturing disciples of Jesus. "How many?" you ask. It's 15,681,672,913 disciples. There are not even that many people on the planet yet.

So you see, true discipleship isn't easy, but it is simple, and it's the command we've been given. Will you accept the challenge? We hope you will, and we look forward to meeting you and the three people you are making into disciples for a lifetime on the journey of discipleship.

—

Joe Jestus is the Vice President of Development at Targeted Content Marketing, husband of 13 years, and happy dad of four amazing kids.

Matt Brown is an evangelist, author of Awakening (2015) and founder of Think Eternity.

(Re)Introducing Our New Executive Director, Brad Watson

When I took the helm at GCD in 2013, I saw great potential in the ministry's ability to continue its already stellar reputation for resourcing churches to make, mature, and multiply disciples. Since then, our site traffic has continued to improve, GCD Books has grown exponentially, and our has staff expanded. Further, the Director role at GCD expanded to Executive Director, shifting from managing articles and social media to vision-casting, fundraising, and oversight of our incredibly talented staff. We also created a more official Board to advise the Executive Director. Needless to say, we are thankful for all God has done over the past two years. I took over as Director for Brad Watson in 2013, and he's been a faithful member of the Board ever since. In Board meetings, he always seems to find a way to offer the most practical, gospel-driven solution to our biggest concerns about the ministry. After extensive prayer and considering several candidates, we believe that God kept Brad around for a reason. When looking at the qualifications for Executive Director, the Board decided that it was clear: Brad needs to retake the helm. He is one of the most God-honoring, visionary leaders that I know, and we are overjoyed to have him back in the day-to-day of GCD!

In case you don't know him, Brad serves as a pastor of Bread & Wine Communities in Portland, Oregon and is co-author with Jonathan Dodson of Raised? and Called Together. His greatest passion is to encourage and equip leaders for the mission of making disciples, and this is evident if you spend any time with him. His love for Jesus feeds into his love for the Church, which feeds into his love for making disciples, which feeds into his love for GCD.

Please pray for Brad and for GCD as he begins as Executive Director this week, and as I step into my new role as a Board member. Also, follow Brad on Twitter at @BradAWatson and congratulate him! Thank you for your love and support of GCD.

Telling the Same Story a Thousand Ways

“He’s got one trick to last a lifetime, but that’s all a pony needs.” — Paul Simon

In preaching the gospel, we are essentially telling the same story a thousand different ways. Movie-maker Wes Anderson seems to understand this concept.

Moonrise Kingdom, one of Anderson’s most recent movies, tells a beautiful story. It’s a story of very different people who, oddly enough, have something central in common—they are all broken people who feel cast off, confused, and unwanted. The privileged 12-year-old Suzie Bishop, who lives in an idyllic New England home with her attorney parents and three younger brothers, would seem to have nothing in common with Sam Shakusky, an orphan and recently resigned Khaki Scout, who has been traipsed from one boys home to another many times over the course of his young life.

Suzie’s attorney parents—Walt and Laura Bishop—far from feeling grounded and accomplished with their giant home, boat, four children, and successful law practice, are painfully aware that they don’t have what it takes to be the parents their kids need them to be, nor the spouses they need to be for one another.

Laura is having an affair with Captain Sharp. As upset as her husband is when he finds out, he can barely react because he knows their marriage is not working. Scout Master Ward, whose job it is to keep all of his Khaki Scouts safe and productive, is shocked to discover Sam has run away, and even more surprised to find out he’s an orphan. Why hadn’t Sam said anything?

The gnawing uncertainties of life are lifted in the unifying pursuit of bringing Suzy and Sam back to where they belong safely. It is not perfect—people get stabbed with left-handed scissors and dogs get impaled with arrows. But this is not to be judged, just accepted.

“Was he a good dog?” runaway Suzie asks her companion, Sam, as they stand over the corpse of Snoopy, the accidentally arrow-pierced pooch.

“Who’s to say,” Sam intones, with the detached timber of a yogi.

The Story of Hope

As characters begin to bear with one another and learn to rely on one another, things change. Families are created or reunited. Couples form meaningful relationships. Kids learn to help other kids and bullies are overthrown. Each finds a sense of purpose and community when they accept themselves and one another.

The baseline plot won’t come as a surprise if you are a Wes Anderson fan. He has the same message in almost every film. It’s in the Tenebaum household, among the brothers seeking to mend a family in Darjeeling Ltd., and among the animals Anderson takes on in Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

It is a message that resonates with me. In a broken world, where things aren’t right, love somehow makes it beautiful. People are still broken and, at times, outlandish—but beautiful.

The Gospel Story and the Church

The reason the gospel story can be told a thousand different ways is because of its depth. The gospel tells us the core of orthodoxy, the kerygma of Jesus, the fundamentals of the faith, the statements of the Apostle’s Creed—it is the eternality of the gospel. When Peter declares that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt:16), Jesus responds, “Blessed are you, Peter son of John, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father in Heaven.” The Divine mysteriously interacts with creation and that which is eternal and unseen is made known to mere humans.

The gospel also tells the story of pilgrimage. It speaks of how we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. But God doesn’t leave us alone in this. First, he is with us. God works within us both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil 2:12-13). We have God himself with us, but we also have his reflections—his people. The other pilgrims are with us.

A pilgrim differs from a hermit. The hermit isolates, while the pilgrim triangulates. The pilgrim heads to a fixed point—namely Jesus—and finds along the way more pilgrims. They come from different places, but join their journeys because they have a common destination. The Church is the gathering of broken people who have encountered Jesus and are journeying together with him towards home.

The gospel also tells the story of ambassadors from another kingdom. It tells of how we have become a people unique to God among all the peoples on the earth. It tells us we are a royal priesthood. We are to serve the world around us. The gospel, through the revelation of God, transforms us so that we demonstrate life in Christ—in word and deed—to the community around us. Mission and evangelism are part of the story of this same gospel.

An Eternal Story

We tell this story.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

We tell it in pulpits, at our family table, where we work. It is in how we work, why we work. We tell it in our leisure time. We tell it to our spouse. We tell it to ourselves.

Take time to hear the gospel again. Tell the story so well that you want to hear it again and again. A good message lives in many constructs and has many iterations. As we live and breath, the gospel continues. We tell the same gospel story in a thousand ways.

—

Ed Marcelle (@emarcelle) is Lead Pastor of Terra Nova Church in Troy, N.Y., and Northeast Regional Coordinator for the Acts 29 Network. Marcelle holds a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Dallas Theological Seminary. He and his wife Diane have four children: Alfonso, Isaiah, Bethany, and Abigail. 

Redeeming Theology

I knew it was coming. The conversation was inevitably leading to one of my least favorite assertions. I thought to myself, “Please don’t say it, please don’t say it.” Too late—the familiar words spilled out of her, “I’m not into theology. I just love God and people.” I cringed. Another well-intentioned believer had fallen prey to the false dichotomy between thinking well about God and living for God. 

Theology As A Bad Word   

Believers choose to live in a certain amount of ignorance when they claim they aren’t into theology. In their defense, I know what they mean. They’re communicating disdain for the abuse of theology. Many have been recipients of ridicule from theology-mongers who insist on setting everyone straight and causing division. It only takes a few encounters with that guy for the idea of theology to be warped in one’s mind. It’s associated with abrasive people who would rather argue theological views than show Christ’s love. In many circles “theology” now carries with it a stigma analogous to a four-letter word. This creates an unfortunate gap between those who are into theology and those who love God and people.

Theology Has Been Misunderstood

This distinction is flawed. Contrary to popular opinion, theology is not defined by intellectual scholars reading books or arrogant seminarians picking fights. The term theology means “the study of God.” It comes from the Greek words for God (theos) and word or body of knowledge (logos). At its root, theology is the process of thinking about our lives in light of the faith we proclaim. It’s faith that seeks understanding. When we do theology we are attempting to understand who God is, who we are, and how we should live in view of God.

To study theology is to study God—to know him better and delight in him more accurately with the hope of glorifying him through our love and obedience. The Apostle Peter understood this connection between knowing God and glorifying him. He says that believers have been granted “all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence” (2 Pt. 1:3 [emphasis mine]). He continues by exhorting Christians to “make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge” (2 Pt. 1:5).

Therefore, believers who want to love God but not do theology may be sincere but are terribly misguided for at least two reasons:

First, all Christians are already doing theology. As image-bearers of God, humans are interpreters of meaning. Every day we receive data from the surrounding world and systematize it. If you are a believer, at some point you received information about God, the world, and your life and systematized it into a Christian worldview. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you live from this functional set of theological presuppositions.

Everything you do, every choice you make, flows (perhaps unconsciously) from these beliefs—when you process pain in light of a sovereign God, you are doing theology. When you pray with your children before bed, you are doing theology. When you tell your unbelieving neighbor about Jesus, you are doing theology. When you overcome fear and step onto a plane, you are doing theology. When you assess if a Christian should take anti-depressants, you are doing theology. In fact, when you say, “I just love God and people” you are doing so from several theological assumptions about God, man, salvation, and reconciliation.

Second, Christians’ love for God requires knowing God. We grow in our knowledge of God so we can love him, and then grow in our love for him so we can serve him. Just as a husband grows in his affection and devotion to his wife as he studies her over time, so the believer grows in his affection and devotion to God as he studies him over time. It’s the growing knowledge of a person that enables one to love him or her more appropriately.

I’ll never forget how excited my husband was during our first year of marriage when he threw me a surprise birthday party. It was sweet, but topped the charts as my worst birthday to date. He didn’t know I was an introvert disguised as an extrovert. And there is nothing worse for a true introvert then unexpectedly walking into a room full of people and calling it a party. However, over time he learned to love me well by mastering the intimate dinner together or planning an evening in on my birthday. Nothing makes me feel more celebrated than this. In the same way, knowing God and loving him cannot be divorced. The more you study God, the more you learn to love and serve him well. As you grow in the knowledge of God you will be able to celebrate and glorify him in ways he desires and finds pleasing.

Theology Is For ALL Christians

One of my passions is to see theology redeemed in the lives of ordinary disciples. I refuse to believe it’s reserved for brilliant scholars or theology-mongers. It’s for all Jesus-followers. It’s for you! How desperately the church needs good theologians filling its pews today. Can you imagine the transformation of local churches if every Christian became a robust theologian who loved God and people in a biblically informed manner? This may seem like a pie in the sky idea, but it doesn’t have to be. The change begins with you and your local faith family. Take a moment to consider the atmosphere within your home and local church. Does your family and faith family value theological reflection? Have you cultivated an environment that encourages thinking well about God? In what ways are your family and church being intentional about doing theology in the context of community?

You don’t have to be a scholar to begin implementing theological dialogue in these key areas. Take your family for example: If your wife is battling despair, ask how the gospel affects her fight of faith. If you get a bonus at work, ask your family if there is anything in the Bible that informs how you spend it together. If you’re at a stoplight and see a homeless man, talk to your kids about what it means biblically to love and serve someone different from them. Or consider your community group at church. If your group is asked to bring canned goods for a food drive, discuss why Christians should do justice from a biblical standpoint. If someone in your community is struggling with sin discuss what it means to live in the tension of being justified, but not yet glorified. If someone comes to group but not the corporate gathering, discuss why Christians should gather together for worship.

You see, there are hundreds of ways to intentionally practice discipleship through theological reflection in a manner leading to gospel transformation. My hope is that the idea of theology would be redeemed and all would come to see the value that doing theology has for every sphere of life. I echo the prayer of the Apostle Paul asking, “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him” (Eph. 1:17) so that you would come to know him more deeply and be motivated by this knowledge to love, serve, and obey him all of your days.

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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.

Carried unto Christ

My children are frequently disobedient—as children tend to be. They got it from their mother, my wife, and . . . from their grandparents. Okay, they got it from me too. But my involvement is more or less irrelevant at this point. So tuck my disobedient children away for a moment. We’ll be returning to this them.

Blessing the Little Children

In developing the theme of discipleship in Luke 18, it has been seen that unceasing prayer in to be honored (18:1-8) as well as the ministerial truth that mercy and humility must be at the root of prayer (18:9-14). In a natural continuation out of Christ’s parable, Luke shows how these elements come into play in practical life. It is at this point in his Gospel, Luke tells the infamous story of Jesus blessing the little children. Since most scholars of the synoptic Gospels presume Luke did not arrange his material chronologically, it is safe to assume that the prayer laden instruction from Jesus is actually tied into this event. As one might expect then, Luke uses some different wording than the other Gospels that helps present some insight to the why of the story,

15 And they were bringing even their babies to Him so that He would touch them, but when the disciples saw it, they began rebuking them. 16 But Jesus called for them, saying, “Permit the children to come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 17 Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” —Luke 18:15-17

The first difference in Luke’s rendition is “infants” (translated “babies” above), so these weren’t just children being brought before Jesus. These babies could not have reached Christ on their own. They were, in fact, carried. This is hardly meaningless. Scripture regularly shows the potential for blessing even for those incapable of understanding what was happening to them. This theme of people being brought to Jesus because of physical infirmity, being ill, or demon possessed is common throughout the Gospels. People of all ages and ailments were physically brought to Jesus because they could not bring themselves.

The second difference in Luke’s rendition is that the babies are brought to be “touched” by Jesus. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus lays hands on the children and prayers (Matt 19:13), but for Mark and Luke the word “touch” is used. This slight word change ties the activity of Jesus back to His numerous healings throughout the gospels. Both Luke and Mark focus intently on how healing occurs when Christ touches (Matthew includes these stories but also emphasizes how Christ can heal with his words). Taken at face value, Luke could be insinuating that these children needed healing but that makes the disciples’ decision even stranger. Instead, it should be read as a general insight that what the Messiah touched was often healed, made clean, and pronounced as purified. And to the disciples this status seemed wasted on babies.

Carried unto Christ

These are the truths of the gospel. People are carried unto Christ because they are spiritually infirmed. It is the real touch of Jesus Christ that purifies people. Christian discipleship should recognize all these things to be true and facilitate them. However, unchecked discipleship can result in the mannerism of the disciples. They “rebuked” the infirmed and those carrying them. Perhaps they were concerned about the Savior’s precious time. Perhaps he was extra tired from the healing or was unable to teach them as much during such days. In either case, the disciples had decided that they were not (yet?) worth of Jesus’ time.

Now reintroduce my disobedient children. As their father before them, they are a rebellious lot. Sinful and fallen decisions are made that should not be made. And yet it would be silly for me to propose that my youngest, Judah, apologize to me and explain why he desires my love and forgiveness. No. To a certain symbolic degree he is infirmed. He cries when punished and does not understand the torments of a fallen world. I cannot wait for him to come to me. I must go to him and reassure him that my forgiveness is there. Sometimes, when he has sinned against his mother I pick him up and take him to her so that she can show him the forgiveness that he does not yet know he needs.

As a parent I am called to make forgiveness, comfort, and love accessible to my children. I do these as a stand-in example of the Father and Son. True Christian discipleship should not make Christ less accessible. This can be done through our attitudes, preferences, and behavior. We can obscure the Lord with our theological language, Bible studies, and commentary quotes. The growing disciple of Christ should be increasingly sensitive and compassionate to the infirmed who cannot bring themselves to Christ and who may not remember their encounter with Christ. For it is in these encounters that Christ touches and heals people for His kingdom.

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Joshua Torrey is a New Mexico boy in an Austin, TX world. He is husband to Alaina and father to Kenzie & Judah and spends his free time studying for the edification of his household. These studies include the intricacies of hockey, football, curling, beer, and theology. You can follow him @benNuwn and read his theological musings and running commentary of the Scriptures at The Torrey Gazette.

Missional Lessons for the Holidays

GOD CREATED HOLIDAYS

Cultural celebrations are not man-made institutions. Like much of God’s creation, holidays can be—and have been—distorted for all sorts of less-than-holy purposes. But what if “Santa” really isn’t an anagram for “Satan”? What if we can we redeem this holiday season, and use it for God’s work?

Seen throughout the Old Testament, and most clearly in Leviticus 23, God commanded His people to pause several times each year, simply to feast and celebrate. Here are far-too-brief summaries of Old Testament Israel’s national holidays:

• The Festival of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) kicked off the Jewish New Year with the blast of a ram’s horn. God’s people gathered as one, as Israel kicked off each year with ten days of feasting, celebrating God, and ceasing work to rest in Him.
• The Day of Atonement was an annual reminder of Israel’s sin and God’s forgiveness. In a solemn service on the most important day of the Jewish year, one ram was killed as a symbol of appeasing God’s wrath, as another symbolized  God’s removal of sin, being sent into the wilderness never to return.
• The Feast of Booths saw Israel praying for her upcoming harvest. To visibly recall God’s past deliverance from Egypt, they lived in tents for a week. As they then returned to their homes—seventeen days in total after gathering for Rosh Hashanah—they celebrated God’s gift of their permanent dwellings, symbolic of His giving them the Promised Land.
• Passover remembers the biggest event in Israel’s history: God’s original rescue of His people, in His plaguing power over Egypt. Israel sacrificed and roasted a lamb, and still tangibly recall God’s work through readings, foods, and glasses of wine.
• Passover kicked off the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days, Israel recalled the speed with which their ancestors fled Egypt the night of the original Passover.
• The First Fruits Offering marked the beginning of the harvest. A day of thanksgiving, the celebration included offering Israel’s best produce to God, and recalling God’s power and grace in sustaining and providing for His people.
• The Feast of Weeks (called Pentecost) again pointed to God’s provision. Another offering made; more feasts occurred; more thanks shared—this time at the end of the wheat harvest.

LESSONS FROM THE STORY OF ISRAEL

This is more than a bit of Jewish history. Each feast foreshadows God’s work in Jesus’ death and resurrection. These celebrations were celebrated by Jews for centuries and by Jesus Himself. And they inform our own celebrations:

First, Leviticus shows that God instituted intentional celebration into the annual rhythm of His people. God’s people ceased from work and partied. They cooked meat—a luxury in those days—and enjoyed good drink. They made music, relaxed, and played together. They laughed and grieved together. Celebrations are right and good.

Celebrations also cut to the heart of mission: God’s people didn’t celebrate by themselves. They included those around them. Even people with different beliefs. Consider this instruction: “You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns.” This idea echoes through the Old Testament Law: “sojourners” were foreigners in Israel who joined the feasts; “servants” from various nations celebrated with God’s people; “strangers” and “aliens” weren’t Israelites but joined their events.

A final Levitical lesson is that people, events, and even milestones themselves were never the focus of Israel’s celebrations. Israel celebrated one thing, in many ways throughout each year: God. They didn’t celebrate grain; they celebrated the Giver of that grain. They didn’t celebrate their power over Pharaoh; they had no such power! They celebrated God’s power. These lessons combine to show us not only that not-yet-believers were invited to Israel’s feasts; they observed—and in ways, even participated—as God’s people celebrated God, on days God created for just that occasion.

REDEEMING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

If Israel—geographically set apart from the rest of the world—publicly celebrated God in the midst of strangers, foreigners, and sojourners, there’s hope for us as we consider holidays. Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25, and God didn’t invent Halloween or Thanksgiving. But these and other annual days have been carved into our culture, to cease work, celebrate, and engage others. Gifts abound in December, giving us an easy chance to surprise coworkers and classmates with cookies or a brief note. And the world still rings in the New Year with gatherings and far more pomp than Israel’s trumpet blast.

Instead of celebrating this Christmas season, New Years Eve, and other occasions alone or with just-Christian friends—and instead of creating “Christian” versions of special events already happening in our city and neighborhood— let’s celebrate these occasions on mission. Let’s display the gospel through generosity, grace, conversation, and joy. And let’s declare the gospel through stories, toasts, and prayers. Sure, many cultural celebrations have long forgotten God. But we haven’t, and we’ve been sent to those who have. God is sovereign, even the fact that someone declared certain days holidays. God uses even the most broken things—and days—for His mission. How can we do the same?

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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: Used with permission from the authors. This is adapted from A Field Guide for Everyday Mission by Ben Connelly & Bob Roberts Jr. available from Moody Publishers. )

Culturally Literate Evangelism

Cultural shifts have resulted in the collapse of Christendom, an official or unofficial relationship people have with their country and its civil religion. In America, moral views typically associated with Christianity have been replaced by more progressive views associated with libertarianism on marriage, sexuality, and gender. In addition to loosening the American moral fabric, the collapse of Christendom has left behind a rubble of theological understanding. As the dust settles, we can no longer assume that people know what words like Christ, sin, faith, and God mean. For many, these words may no longer carry their original biblical meaning. We need to become culturally literate in order to be evangelistically fluent. If we don’t, the gospel gets lost in translation.

In secular culture people may actually hear us saying teacher for Christ, bad deeds for sin, wishful thinking for faith, or moldable deity for God. Today, it is a mistake to assume theological literacy. If we are to move forward, the Church must develop its ability to listen to new questions people are asking and learn how to translate the gospel into words and concepts that speak to the heart.

The Need for Cultural Literacy

Consider the need for cultural literacy in this story. A church planter in my city planted little wire signs in grassy medians around the city that read “RepentAustin.org.” I’ll admit it’s a pretty gutsy and confrontational tactic, but Jesus did call people to “repent and believe.” Yet, as I thought about this evangelistic approach, a major objection came to mind. These signs did not take into account contemporary understandings associated with the word “repent.” They conjure up images of judgmental people, filled with hatred toward “sinners,” who self-righteously speak words of condemnation. Instead of intriguing people, it probably elicited disinterest and, perhaps, unduly promoted a distorted view of the Gospel.

What makes this way of presenting the Gospel distorted? First, it does not call attention to Jesus — it focuses on a person’s need to change before they even get to hear about Jesus and what He has done. Second, there are strong cultural memories associated with the word, especially in the South, that are connected with a return to good, moral living — again, a response that has nothing to do with Jesus and what he has done. Many youths, when they hear the word “repent,” associate it with things like: stop listening to secular music, stop sleeping with your girlfriend, and start going to Church. This kind of repentance does not involve turning away from trusting in yourself to trust the Savior. It is simply a switch in lifestyles, secular to Christian. You can alter your behavior without altering your savior.

People adopt the trappings of faith—the religious habits, attempts at moral living, even a new Christianized culture that entails wearing a purity ring and listening to Christian music. But this cultural repentance is not a true turning to Christ; it is a turning to Christianity, to a religious subculture.

Slowing Down to Understand

To be effective in our new cultural landscape, we will have to slow down long enough to understand what people hear and how they speak in order to communicate the gospel in intelligible ways. This involves listening to what people think in order to communicate meaningfully what God thinks. This doesn’t require a PhD in Bible or theology. It requires love: sacrificing our time, tweaking our crammed schedules, putting away our canned responses, and actually conversing with people.

People don’t just need to hear a thirty-second gospel presentation. They need to understand why the Gospel is worth believing. To do this, we must learn their language and know their stories. We need to become “culturally literate in order to be gospel fluent, communicating the gospel in words and idioms that make sense to the people we talk to.

Why Do People Find the Gospel Unbelievable? from Jonathan Dodson on Vimeo.

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Jonathan K. Dodson (MDiv; ThM) serves as a pastor of City Life Church in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Gospel-Centered Discipleship, The Unbelievable Gospel, and Raised? He has discipled men and women abroad and at home for almost two decades, taking great delight in communicating the gospel and seeing Christ formed in others. Twitter: @Jonathan_Dodson

Jonathan’s new book is The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing (resource website here). You can also get his free ebook “Four Reasons Not to Share Your Faith.”

5 Reasons to Give Your Church Jesus

We have the tools and know the motives, but how do we give our churches Jesus? By preaching the gospel to ourselves and to one another. “What you really need is good news,” I told him. He didn’t understand. We had met time and time again and unknowingly, he was trying to perform his way into the kingdom. “You can’t do that,” I exhorted. “Otherwise you miss the entire point of Jesus and His performance on your behalf!”

Whether we acknowledge it or not, we all need good news. Not just good news, but better-than-anything news. News that announces something spectacular—like nothing you could ever imagine or fabricate. And until you recognize this need, you’ll be helpless. Like an engine with no gas, your life, without a constant barrage of Jesus-is-King news, will stall.

I often tell my congregation that I have thirty-four years left in my ministry here, and for those thirty-four years, you will hear the gospel over and over again, not because you don’t know it in your brain, but because knowing it in your brain isn’t enough. We must know it—I must know it—in our hearts, and in our hands. Remember, the gospel isn’t the starting point—it is the point. It’s the point of everything! And until we understand this truth, we will continue to be lured away, enticed by other false gospels that over-promise and under-deliver. These things distract us from making war.

Martin Luther is reported to have said that he continues to preach the gospel each and every week because each and every week his people forget it. I’m sure he would include himself in this assertion because let’s face it, we’re all guilty as charged.

Because of this, there are five simple reasons why we need to hear about Jesus and His glorious gospel each and every day. “Give us Jesus” ought to be the rally cry of the church. If we are to make war, we must do so here. Over and over again, our hearts should be yearning to hear the gospel again and again—like my two-year-old daughter begging for a “horsey-ride” on my back, let us go back to the truth that sets us free. We make war using the preaching of the gospel to ourselves and each other:

1. So Our Affections Are Stirred

Our emotions are impressed with many things. Whether a good movie, television show, football game, or shiny new Apple product, we love an emotionally stirring experience. We thrive on it. But what happens when those emotions become sour? What happens when we just don’t feel like worshiping Jesus and finding joy in him? What do you do when your affections are clouded with bitterness, jealousy, envy, and anger? What happens in war if you are tired and just don’t “feel it”?

Jonathan Edwards is helpful: “Upon the whole, I think it is clearly manifest, that all truly gracious affections arise from special and peculiar influences of the Spirit, working that sensible effect or sensation in the souls of the saints.”

It is the Holy Spirit that drives our affections towards gospel holiness and one of the means by which He does so is through gospel proclamation. We need it. Fighting for joy is absolutely that—a fight; but joy in Him is absolutely worth it (Ps. 16:11). Only when old affections have been expunged by greater, far superior affections can we be free from idolatry.

You see, in war time, your affections can take a beating. You can be side-tracked by other things. You don’t have time to sit around and worry about those distractions. Making war is an all-out declaration that the only thing that matters in this moment, at this time, is that the gospel takes precedence against the enemy. You will feel overwhelmed. God gives you more than you can handle because the idol of self-sufficiency is destructive. You can’t make your heart feel good towards God. You need something from the outside, namely, good news. The gospel stirs up affections, like bubbles in a glass jar, so that what comes out of you is holy.

2. So Our Identities Are Clarified

Whether it is a counseling appointment with a young man trying to understand what he should do with his life, or a newly engaged couple looking for some premarital help, I am convinced that the root issue with all of our problems is an issue of identity. For example, no matter the marital issue, I can always trace the issue between the husband and wife back to the problem of a husband not being a biblical husband, and a wife not being a biblical wife. Identity matters tremendously.

If you think about it—sin is a loss of identity. When Adam and Eve sinned against God in the garden, they lost their identity as a covenant people with their covenant God. Subsequently, because of their transgression, their lives were marred by sin and ever since then, man, made in God’s image, has simply forgotten who he is in relationship to God. Everyone knows He exists (Rom. 1:20); however, the issue is identity amnesia.

Take the example of the pursuit of holiness. For the Christian, the battle of sanctification is a battle to be who you are. If you’re a redeemed saint, then act like one! When we give ourselves to sin, we lose our identity—hence the need for the gospel. We need a constant reminder that we are freely justified in Christ to rest in Him. Wartime has a tendency to distract us, so it is important to know who you are.

3. So Our Idols Are Uprooted

John Calvin wrote, “The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols.”32 Calvin was on to something. Every time we lose sight of the gospel it is because we have taken our eyes away from Jesus and placed them on an idol. Idols can be subversively deceptive, or they can be patently obvious. Either way, this side of glorification will undoubtedly be marked by a constant fight with idols. That’s what happens in war.

An idol cannot be uprooted by mere moral effort. It has to be uprooted and replaced by something far superior, namely, the gospel. And what better way to see an idol uprooted, than the goodness of the good news? The intensity of pain we feel when an idol is removed from us is directly proportionate to how far away we walked from belief in the gospel. If sin and idolatry is trusting, confiding, believing, and gaining identity from something other than God, then it follows that we ought to, through repentance and faith, trust, confide, believe, and gain our identity in Jesus. Idols are destroyed when good news is heeded.

4. So Our Covenant Is Kept

As talked about in the previous chapter, the New Covenant instituted by our Lord is meant to be kept. Sometimes we do not often talk like this, mostly because in portions of our culture we’ve lost the key concepts behind covenant. Regardless of unconscious ignorance, it is our duty—indeed it is commanded of us!—to “be holy” (1 Pt. 1:15-16; cf. Lev. 11:44). To be sure, Christ is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30). However, we are still called to the covenant obligations of obedience. And because of the indwelling power of God the Holy Spirit, we can follow Jesus in obedience (Jn. 14:21) because the law has been written on our hearts (Jer. 31:33; cf. 2 Cor. 3:6). This happens through the work of the Spirit leading us to truth (Jn. 17:17) and glorifying Christ (the power of the gospel in us). You need to hear it, because the Spirit uses it to drive your obedience.

5. So Our Mission Is Spurred On

So having had our affections stirred, our identities clarified, our idols uprooted, and our covenant in check, what do we do? The answer? Make disciples. This is our mission. The gospel is news; therefore, it should be proclaimed. Boldly, I might add. After all, Jesus has been given all authority—we need not fear (Matt. 28:18; more on this in the next chapter).

If we do not continue to go back to the good news again and again, we will lose sight of our identity and purpose. The gospel is the engine that drives this whole thing. Without it, we are lost. Again and again, we need to hear, see, believe, experience afresh, enjoy, and understand the good news of Jesus’ work on our behalf: His virgin birth, His perfect life under the law of God, His perfect fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures (Israel’s story), His substitutionary death, His resurrection, His ascension to the throne, and His current mediation—this is our gospel! Let it spur us on to do His work.

“I have stored up your word in my heart,” the writer says, “that I might not sin against you” (Ps. 119:11). The issue is not just hearing the gospel, but marinating in it as well. Whether proclaimed from the pulpit or shared over a cup of coffee, the gospel must take center stage, because we do not want to sin against God. When it is stored in our hearts and minds, we get all of the benefits mentioned above. But the ultimate benefit is that we get God. We need the good news because we need God. The war against sin is not a war against sin in and of itself. The war against indwelling sin is a war to get God. He is the prize worth pursuing.

Will you rest in the righteousness of Christ credited to your account? Will you walk in peace, knowing that peace is at the heart of gospel? Will you put on the helmet of salvation, knowing that your salvation has been secured because of Christ’s perfect work? Will you tighten the belt of truth so that your life is held together by the truth of God’s word? Will you hold fast and “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3)? Will you boldly take up your sword, trust in the authority of Scripture, and wield it with humility? If so, then you must wage war knowing the battle has already been won. Christ is victorious. Christ is King.

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Rev. Jason M. Garwood (@jasongarwood) serves as Lead Pastor of Colwood Church in Caro, MI. Jason and his wife Mary have three children, Elijah, Avery and Nathan. He blogs at www.jasongarwood.com. Connect with him on Twitter.

Excerpt from Be Holy: Learning the Path of Sanctification available from G4S Books (2014).

Guilt Isn’t Just a “Religious” Problem

I’m pretty sure everyone’s had one of those conversations where days or months afterwards you think to yourself, “Man, that’s what I should have said to So-n-so!” After analyzing the problem with the heat turned down, you end up spotting the fatal flaw, or key unquestioned assumption that was driving it in the direction it was going. Unfortunately, I have those all the time, both because I overthink things, and because I’m not always as quick on my feet as I’d like to be. One such conversation arose in one of my philosophy classes in my undergrad. We were talking about the ethics of belief, the sub-section of philosophy that deals with when it’s okay to believe something. Questions such as: Can you believe something just because you want to? Is evidence always necessary for every belief you hold? Is it ever okay to believe something you can’t prove? That kind of thing.

Well, we were discussing Pascal’s famous (and widely misunderstood) argument The Wager. Pascal was writing in Catholic France at a time when philosophical skepticism had made a comeback and the classic arguments for the existence of God were in doubt. As part of a broader apologetic, he proposed a little thought-experiment to show that even without evidence skepticism still wasn’t your best option.  

The gist of it is this: you’ve got two things at stake when it comes to belief in God, the truth of the matter and your happiness in this life. What’s more, you’ve got two faculties you use to come to your belief, your reason and your will. He says, “Well, say the odds for and against the existence of God are 50/50—there are good arguments both ways, and so your reason can’t settle the issue and the truth is unverifiable. Then what? Well, you shouldn’t consider the issue settled. You still have your will and your happiness to think about.” In Pascal’s view, it makes sense that you should still go for belief in God because that’s the only way to achieve the joy of meaning, purpose, and so forth that comes with belief in God. For the purposes of the story we don’t need to go further. For a better explanation, consult Peter Kreeft’s excellent summary and retooling of the Wager.

Here’s the payout for the story. Pascal argued that believing in God had benefits and joys for this life like meaning, purpose, virtue, and so forth. As we discussed this, my professor—let’s call him Professor Jones—said something I’ll never forget. He asked, gently, but with a hint of sarcasm, “Oh, you mean the joy of going around feeling guilty all the time for your sins?” In Professor Jones’ mind, the corollary of belief in God is an overwhelming and unrelievable sense of guilt for violating his rules. This clearly didn’t seem like a step up to him.

Now, at the time, I didn’t have conversational space, or wherewithal to respond adequately, but if I had, I would have said, “Oh, but Professor Jones, you already walk around struggling with guilt over failing your god.”

Failing Your Gods

Now, what do I mean by that? Well, let me break it down in a few steps.

Everybody Has a God. The first step is understanding that everybody has a god of some sort. The world we live in tends to split people up between believers and non-believers. The Bible has a different dividing line—worshipers of the true God or worshipers of something else. See, everybody has something in their life that they treat as a functional god. Whatever you look to in order to give you a sense of self, meaning, worth, and value is a god. Martin Luther put it this way,

A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. –Large Catechism

So whether you believe intellectually, in a deity or not, you still worship something. This is because we were created by God for worship, so if we won’t worship him something else rushes in to plays that role in your life, be it money, career, status, relationships, and so forth. It’s either God, or an idol. There is no other option.

Everybody Follows and Fails that God’s Commands. Following this, every god has commands and demands worship. If you make money your god, then you are under command (compulsion) in order to do whatever it takes to acquire it. You will work as hard as you need to (become a workaholic) and sacrifice whatever you have to (relationships, kids, ethics) in order to get it. When you have it, you feel secure. You’ve achieved and obeyed so the god has blessed you. The flip-side is, if you fail it—make a bad investment, lose your cash in a housing crash—then you feel the loss of security, but also the crushing sense of guilt that comes with failing your god. Wrath descends.

With a few moment’s reflection you can see this everywhere: from the careerist who can’t forgive herself for blowing that promotion, to that bitter young scholar struggling to live up to his father’s expectations, to the mother who crushes herself because her child-god didn’t turn out picture perfect the way she needed her to. All of them struggle under the weight of the guilt brought on by their failure to please their functional gods. All of them suffer guilt and shame, even if we don’t call it that.

David Foster Wallace has a justly famous quote on the subject:

Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already—it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

Only the Biblical God Offers Forgiveness and Grace.

Here’s where it all clicked for me, though. I was reading Tim Keller’s The Reason for God and I ran across this brilliant passage at the end of his chapter breaking down this idolatry dynamic:

Remember this—if you don’t live for Jesus you will live for something else. If you live for career and you don’t do well it may punish you all of your life, and you will feel like a failure. If you live for your children and they don’t turn out all right you could be absolutely in torment because you feel worthless as a person. If Jesus is your center and Lord and you fail him, he will forgive you. Your career can’t die for your sins. You might say, “If I were a Christian I’d be going around pursued by guilt all the time!” But we all are being pursued by guilt because we must have an identity and there must be some standard to live up to by which we get that identity. Whatever you base your life on—you have to live up to that. Jesus is the one Lord you can live for who died for you—who breathed his last breath for you. Does that sound oppressive?

. . . Everybody has to live for something. Whatever that something is becomes “Lord of your life,” whether you think of it that way or not. Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfill you completely, and, if you fail him, will forgive you eternally.

–The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (pp. 170-171)

So to sum up: Everybody has a god. Every god has rules and everybody fails their god. Everybody walks around with guilt and shame. But only the God we find in Jesus Christ will forgive those sins so that we don’t have to walk around feeling guilty all the time. Ironically enough, believing in God isn’t the road to more guilt, but the road out from underneath the guilt you already struggle with.

This is the answer I’d wish I’d given Professor Jones.

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Derek Rishmawy is the Director of College and Young Adult ministries at Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Orange County, CA. He got his B.A. in Philosophy at UCI and his M.A.T.S. (Biblical Studies) at APU. He also contributes at the Gospel Coalition, Mere Orthodoxy, and Leadership Journal, as well as his own Reformedish blog.

Original posted at DerekZRishmawy.com. Used with permission.