5 Crucial Ways Churches Can Pursue Racial Reconciliation

Over the past several years, a gospel-soaked spirit of ongoing repentance has been growing within my heart with regard to my personal neglect for racial reconciliation. I am talking about an active ministry of reconciliation, based on the core tenets of the gospel, which I believe the Scriptures beckon all Christians to. And while my first step must be toward personal repentance, I wonder if it might be time for a collective repentance as well. Many church leaders have entered the fray in this regard, calling those under their care to repent and seek God’s face with regard to race relations. But in spite of my personal desires to repent, I can’t help but wonder why this issue of racial reconciliation burns in my heart, often swelling up in lament for the general complacency of today’s Church around this issue. In a panel discussion, hosted by Kainos Movement, Christianity Today, and Ministry Grid, several evangelical leaders gathered around the topic of racial tension in America. Naturally, I tuned in live to listen and learn from people like Thabiti Anyabwile, Derwin Gray, Matt Chandler, Trillia Newbell, John Piper, Eric Mason, and others weigh in on this important issue. But perhaps the most meaningful portion of the evening—at least for me—came in the form of a comment made by Derwin Gray, lead Pastor of Transformation Church in Indian Land, SC. Derwin’s comment was not original—he openly cited the Apostle Paul. But it was so poignant and appropriate for the climate of the American Church today.

Gray skillfully drew the listener’s attention to Ephesians 2, one of the key passages relating to the issue of racial reconciliation. He reminded us that the heartbeat of the gospel is the blood of Christ. If the blood of Christ was spilt to raise dead men and women to life by his grace, then the whole flow of Ephesians 2, up to and including verse 14 is founded on this very blood! For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility (Eph. 2:14)

There you have it. Racial reconciliation has burned in my heart because it is a gospel issue. It’s not peripheral. Paul made this clear when he confronted Peter for withdrawing from the Gentiles in the presence of the Judiazers (see Gal. 2). When Peter slipped back into deep-seeded racism and ethnic superiority, Paul entered in bold confrontation in order to defend the gospel. And when the gospel is under fire, the Church must not remain silent and still. We must act. We must defend it, fighting to maintain and uphold it, as those who have gone before us for centuries have sought to do. The whole thrust of Ephesians 2 should compel Christians to act on the issue of racial reconciliation because our peace is blood-bought. Therefore, it is not enough to sit. If we remain complacent here, we demean the blood-bought peace in Christ the gospel gives us freely.

I’m not an expert on racial reconciliation. I’m a young man. But I have an immense desire for my generation to not let this moment pass. Not for our glory, and not because this is our time to shine, but simply for the following reason. Over my lifetime, I have witnessed an explosion of gospel-centeredness—a modern reformation of sorts. I have seen the advent of websites, blogs, movements that have formed for the sole purpose of defending and heralding the gospel. But if we are to be truly gospel-centered, how now could we remain silent with regard to racial reconciliation?

My concern is this—where does the Church go from here? Here are five crucial ways the church can pursue racial reconciliation.

1. Start with empathy.

To listen is not equal to remaining silent. To listen is to actively pursue the understanding of another. I mean this no matter which political persuasion, ethnic group, or socioeconomic background you come from. Put yourself in the shoes of another. Often, I hear Christians using words like they and us when referring to people of other ethnicities. Most of the time they are used in the context of explaining why a certain group acts a certain way. But what if we tried to put us in the shoes of them? What if we empathized? Empathy, after all, is also at the heart of the gospel. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (Heb. 4:15)

2. Take part in the global conversation.

Say what you will about technology, but one thing is certain—global conversations thrive in their sandbox. In many ways, the eyes of the world are on the American Church. But what does it mean to enter into such a conversation? Perhaps the best sources of information—from a Christian worldview—are ministries and people invested in the issue:

• Thabiti Anywhile
• Kainos
• RAANetwork
• Derwin Gray
• Pastor Bryan Lorrits
• Dr. Rev Carl Ellis Jr. and Karen Angela Ellis’ Ellis Perspective
• Desiring God
• Dr. Anthony Bradley
• Brian Dye’s Vision Nehemiah

Tune into panel discussions (you can view the one from December 16th on the Kainos website). Learn what other Christians are saying about these issues. And if God has given you a platform, speak. But, leaders and pastors beware this promise from Hebrews 13. We will give an account for those to whom we minister. Let us heed the words of John Piper from the panel discussion, in which he advised us to speak biblically about these issues, providing our people with a biblical framework and vocabulary for discussing such issues.

3. Take part in the local conversation.

It is not enough to sound off on Twitter. No matter how many followers you have or how big of a reach your blog may draw. We must have this conversation on the local level. Dr. Eric Mason, pastor of Epiphany Fellowship in Philadelphia and president of Thrive in the City, called for a nationwide solemn assembly around the issue of racial reconciliation. Dr. Mason provides instructions for hosting such a gathering in your church. Maybe you have other ideas to engage your community. Great! Meet at a coffee shop. Host a discussion in your home. Find a way to get involved. Let’s not neglect the local body for the online community.

4. Pursue racial reconciliation in your personal life.

There are a million ways to do this. Make it a point to pursue relationships with people from varying ethnicities and backgrounds. Build these times around fellowship and food in your home. Get involved in your community whether that’s a sports team for your kids or a neighbor project or a local school. Or why not attend church with your black neighbor?

If you live in a city, your neighborhood is already diverse. And suburban neighborhoods are following suit. What a wonderful opportunity for Christians of all ethnicities to embrace the gospel and develop relationships within our neighborhoods. As I said, everyone is watching the Church right now. Who’s watching you?

Get your church involved in local public schools. Hands down, one of the best times of ministry in my week is the Tuesday afternoon FCA club at Southwest Middle School. This is easily the most diverse societal group I am part of. Southwest is situated in a radically diverse neighborhood. When I serve there, I always learn something huge about the gospel. White people don’t hold a corner on gospel truth. Each week, I am encouraged to see young people from numerous ethnic groups who are being transformed by the gospel and are transforming me. Through this club, our church has had countless opportunities to minister to families of all ethnicities. We have had chances to develop relationships. We’re not perfect; we’re not saviors. But it’s a step. And I love it.

5. Pray for racial reconciliation.

In the end, God is the one who reconciles men and women to himself and to one another. It is absurd to leave prayer out of the conversation. We must seek the Lord. We must plead with him for reconciliation. We must not grow weary in this. We must pass this practice on to our children so that, fifty years from now, they are still praying for reconciliation until Jesus returns (may it be soon)!

So, there it is. Where can you seek to get involved in any or all of these areas? How can you help to mobilize your church? In the end, racial reconciliation is central to the gospel. It is an issue of discipleship. Jesus told us to make disciples of all nations. Will we heed his words?

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Alex Dean (@AlexMartinDean) is a pastor in Lakeland, Florida. Holding an undergraduate degree from Dallas Baptist University, Alex is currently completing his graduate work at Reformed Theological Seminary. His book, Gospel Regeneration: A story of death, life, and sleeping in a van, is available on Amazon, iBooks, and other online retailers. Follow his blog at www.GospelRegeneration.com and follow him on Twitter.

3 Reasons We Must Not Forget the Psalms

A few weeks ago, someone asked me, “How can I be a disciple if I must endure highs and lows, faith and doubt, trust and fear? I feel like I must doing something wrong.” If someone had asked me that question a year ago, I would have responded with a solution and a relevant quote. But that day, I suggested we read the Psalms. This was not my relationship with the Psalms twelve months ago. Before this past year, I only read the Psalms to complete my Bible reading plan. I decided that I was too left-brained to enjoy the Psalms and that maybe they were only helpful for the more creative-types.

Then, as I was reading and studying, I started to notice a recurring theme—almost everyone I admired was into the Psalms from George Muller to J. Hudson Taylor to Eugene Peterson to Tim Keller. As I was reading the gospels, I noticed Jesus was into the Psalms as well—quoting or alluding to them in hillside teachings, temple courts, and from the cross.

The same thought kept nagging at me—if I am learning to live like Jesus, how can I ignore the Psalms? I began to realize that true gospel-centered discipleship requires us to become friends with David, Asaph, Solomon, the Sons of Korah, Moses, Ethan the Ezrahite, and the dozens of other unknown Psalmists.

In response, I started reading and praying the Psalms as an integral part of my own discipleship. Before long, the Psalms influenced the way I discipled others—especially in the way the Psalms validate our emotions, shape our imaginations, and teach us to pray.

1. The Psalms Validate Our Emotions

From the cross Jesus cried out Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Not only did Jesus have the Psalms so rooted in him that they were his words in the most agonizing moment of his life, he experienced abandonment—a feeling shared with the author of Psalm 22.

When I started ministry, people (including my wife) would approach me with emotions they were experiencing. I made the rookie mistake of subtly (and not so subtly) downplaying the truth of their emotions. “Sadness and abandonment didn’t line up with the truth of the gospel,” I would tell them. The more time I spent in the Psalms, though, the more I realized that the gospel is roomy enough for all human emotions.

As a pastor to young adult, I’ve seen how liberating it is for their emotions to find a home in the Psalms. In a letter titled “On the Interpretation of the Psalms” Athanasius writes, “You find depicted in [the Psalms] all the movements of your soul, all its changes, its ups and downs, its failures and recoveries.” You cannot read the Psalms without seeing delight (Ps. 1:2) and depression (Ps. 42:5), gratitude (Ps. 100:4) and grief (Ps. 42:3), and nearly every other emotion (John Piper has a good list). The Psalms teach us that it’s okay to ask God why (Ps. 10:1) or how long (Ps. 13:1-2) and to be honest with how you feel.

The Psalms don’t leave our emotions as they are though. They shape our emotions and give them proper context. I had professor in college who said, “The Psalms provide direction for our emotions without repressing them or giving full vent to them. The Psalms help you learn how to feel.” Each of the Psalms has its own rhythm. We enter these through our emotions and are carried into deeper emotions. Although this rhythm may be compressed into a few verses in a Psalm, our experience may last days or even years.

2. The Psalms Shape Our Imaginations

If we want to live like Jesus, our imaginations must be flooded with what he knew about life with God. What we believe and how we think about God are critical to living the gospel-centered life. Where, then, can we learn to think and believe like Jesus? The Psalms.

The Psalm writers were deeply familiar with God, his plans, and life in his kingdom. Here are just a few examples of how the Psalms shape our imaginations:

• That life with God is the good life (Psalm 1)
• That God is our refuge and safety (Psalm 16)
• That God always provides what we need (Psalm 23)
• That God is full of grace for sinners (Psalm 51)
• That God’s heart is for the nations (Psalm 96)
• That God is always present with us (Psalm 139)

The Psalms train our imaginations to chew (Ps. 1 “meditate”) on truth about God. Jesus saw the world through the lens of the Psalms (e.g. Ps. 37:11 & Mt. 5:4, or Ps. 8:2 & Mt. 21:16). And in the long history of the church, the Psalms have been one of the primary resources for the “renewing of the mind” (Rom. 12:2). In my own experience, the Psalms have dramatically altered the way I see the world in daily life.

As growing disicples, we often draw conclusions about God based on what we are enduring (especially when things aren’t going well). I’ve often heard things like, “I’m suffering . . . so God must be mad at me.” When we let the Psalms shape our imaginations though, we see how suffering are a normal part of life on fallen earth and God will redeem it for good (Rom. 8:28, Ps. 73).

3. The Psalms Teach Us to Pray

In The Contemplative Pastor, Eugene Peterson writes, "The great and sprawling university that Hebrews and Christians have attended to learn to answer God, to learn to pray, has been the Psalms.” This was a strange for me. Although I knew the Psalms were written as “sung-prayers," I had difficulty seeing how praying someone else’s words would be a helpful practice. It seemed inauthentic.

Then I hit a season of life where I struggled to pray. Prayer had been easy and natural, but now I didn't know where to start. So I began praying the Psalms—sometimes line-by-line and sometimes just one line for a half-hour—and God began to shape the vocabulary and tone of my prayers into something new. In his Letter on the Psalms, Athanasius also describes this, “In the case of all the other Psalms it is thought it were one’s own words that one read; and anyone who hears them is moved at heart, as though they voiced for him his deepest thoughts.” It’s possible praying the Psalms might be one of the ways that the Spirit intercedes for us (Rom. 8:26-27).

The Psalms teach us how to confess (Ps. 51), how to hope (Ps. 42 & Ps. 43), how to plea (Ps. 69), and how to worship (Ps. 100). Now when I am helping new disciples learn how to pray, I guide them through the Lord’s Prayer and through the Psalms.

The Psalms & Discipleship

As I have discovered the beauty of the Psalms and their practical benefits for gospel-centered discipleship, I’ve started a few new discipleship habits.

First, I’ve started reading through a few Psalms each day. In the morning, during lunch, before dinner, and before bed, I’ve let the Psalms interrupt whatever happens in my mind and surroundings. Sometimes I’ll read a Psalm and get back to work while other times I’ll read a Psalm and chew it over for the entire afternoon. Sometimes I read five Psalms and sometimes I read one.

Second, I often read a Psalm when I get together with other disciples. This subverts our discipleship in important ways. I love the unplanned conversations or listening to the way someone prays differently. If you’re reading a Psalm with a new disciple, the writer often provides fodder for a discussion about theology they might not be familiar with (which is something I learned from Justin Buzzard’s “Discipleship 101: How to Disciple a New Believer”). The Psalms are filled with good news about Jesus.

Returning to the story I started with, after reading through some Psalms, my friend realized life is messy and that’s okay. Highs and lows are normal. Faith and doubt exist together. David, amidst his enemies, summarizes this tension when he prays, “Teach me your way, O Lord; lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors” (Ps. 27:11).

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Austin Gohn (@austingohn) serves as the young-adults minister at Bellevue Christian Church in Pittsburgh, PA. He holds a B.A. in intercultural studies and never intended to be a pastor. He’s been married to Julie for two years and you can follow him on twitter @austingohn.

How Christians Should Mortify Sin

Hostile To God

Romans 8: 7 is simple and stark: “The sinful mind is hostile to God .” The mind is not neutral ground, and cannot love one preoccupation without rejecting the other. A mind “that is set on the flesh” (ESV translation) must also be treating God and the desires of his Spirit as an enemy. This is why our minds are, naturally, unable to deal with sin. We may realize that a particular impulse is unhelpful, or that a certain course of action is destructive. We may even decide to cut it out, and may do so successfully. But the root of sin is still implanted in the mind— hostility to God. So sin will still grow unchecked in our lives.

And that hostility makes us incapable of pleasing God. Verse 8 is an equally striking statement : “Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.” Left to ourselves, we are totally unable to live in a way that causes our Creator to approve of us. Why? Because the mind that drives the actions is acting out of hostility to him. The person controlled by their own flesh is able to have a thought that is good, or perform an action that is right. But it cannot please God, since it is thought or done in enmity toward him.

Here is a helpful illustration: a man in a rebel army may look after his comrades, may keep his uniform smart, and so on. Those are “good”— but they are done in hostility to the rightful ruler. You would never expect that ruler to hear of this rebel’s conscientiousness or generosity and be pleased by his conduct in rebellion!

But none of this needs to be, or ought to be, the way “you”— Christians— live (v 9). Every Christian is “controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit,” since the Spirit lives in anyone who belongs to Christ. When we received Christ and became righteous in God’s sight, the Holy Spirit came in and made us spiritually alive. The Christian has a body that is decaying (v 10), yet also enjoys a spirit, a mind, that is alive.

And, Paul says, not only must our spirits/ minds not follow our flesh now, but one day our flesh will follow our spirit. In Greek thought, the physical was bad, to be rejected and hopefully one day to be left behind; the spiritual was good, to be embraced. Verse 11 overturns all this: ”He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” Someday, even our bodies will be totally renewed and made eternally alive by the Spirit. There is no dualism (body bad, spirit good) here— one day, both will be perfected.

For now, though, there is still within us the remaining sinful nature, which is hostile and inimical to our growing spiritual life. And even as we look forward to our bodies being given life (v 11), we must “put to death the misdeeds of the body” (v 13—the end of this verse is best seen as the end of a sentence, unlike in the NIV). As John Stott argues, Paul is still likely referring to an experience of life, and death, now— not in the future. Paul says here: If you let the remaining sinful nature alone— if you allow it to prosper and grow— there will be terrible trouble. Instead, you must by the Spirit attack and put it to death. The more you put to death the sinful nature, the more you will enjoy the spiritual life that the Holy Spirit gives— life and peace (v 6).

Mortification

This process of “putting to death” is what earlier theologians used to call “mortification.” They got it from the old King James Version translation of the verse: “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (v 13).

So what do verses 12-13 tell us about what mortification is, and how we do it? First, it means a ruthless , full-hearted resistance to sinful practice. The very word translated as “put to death” (Greek word thanatoute) is violent and total. It means to reject totally everything we know to be wrong; to declare war on attitudes and behaviors that are wrong— give them no quarter, take no prisoners, pull out all the stops.

This means a Christian doesn’t play games with sin. You don’t aim to wean yourself off it, or say: I can keep it under control. You get as far away from it as possible. You don’t just avoid things you know are sin; you avoid the things that lead to it, and even things that are doubtful. This is war!

Second, it means changing one’s motivation to sin by remembering to apply the gospel . This process of “mortification” goes deeper than merely resisting sinful behavior. It looks at the motives of the heart. Verse 12 says: “Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation— but it is not to the sinful nature.” This is a critical statement. “Therefore” refers to the statement before, in which Paul tells us we have been redeemed by Christ’s righteousness and will someday be totally delivered from all evil and pain in the bodily resurrection. Then Paul turns and says: “Therefore ... we have an obligation…” Some translations express it differently: “We are debtors, not to the flesh” (NRSV). Paul means that if we remember what Christ has done and will do for us, we will feel the obligations of love and gratitude to serve and know him.

Paul is saying that sin can only be cut off at the root if we expose ourselves constantly to the unimaginable love of Christ for us. That exposure stimulates a wave of gratitude and a feeling of indebtedness. Sin can only grow in the soil of self-pity and a feeling of “owed-ness.” I’m not getting a fair shake! I’m not getting my needs met! I’ve had a hard life! God owes me; people owe me; I owe me! That’s the heart attitude of “owed-ness” or entitlement. But, Paul says, you must remind yourself that you are a debtor. If you bathe yourself in the remembrance of the grace of God, that will loosen, weaken and kill sin at the motivational level.

Therefore, “put to death” (v 13) is just a sub-set under “mind the things of the Spirit” (v 5). Mortification withers sin’s power over you by focusing on Christ’s redemption in a way that softens your heart with gratitude and love; which brings you to hate the sin for itself, so it loses its power of attraction over you. In summary, then, we kill sin in the Spirit when we turn from sinful practices ruthlessly and turn our heart from sinful motivations with a sense of our debt to love and grace, by minding the things of the Spirit.

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Tim Keller is senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Manhattan, New York, and author of numerous books. He is also co-founder and vice president of The Gospel Coalition. For more resources by Tim Keller visit Gospel in Life. You can follow him on Twitter.

Timothy Keller, Romans 8-16 For You, The Good Book Company ©2015. Used by permission. http://www.thegoodbook.com/

Should We Kiss Evangelism Goodbye?

In the Huffington Post, writer Cindy Brandt recently declared she “kissed evangelism goodbye.”¹ Many have joined her in the break up. According to one survey, two out of every three active Christians today have all but abandoned evangelism. In slight contrast, another study noted marginal rises in evangelism but concluded, “we need a lot more evangelizing going on . . . ”² Regardless of how the statistics shake out, many people find evangelism hard.

Good Reasons Not to Witness

The typical evangelical response to an ebb in evangelism is to beat the evangelistic drum louder. Leaders preach the Great Commission more, tell us to value comfort less, and ask us to consider the cost by “considering people’s eternal destiny.” But appeals to guilt, sacrifice, and an “eternal perspective,” even if biblical, often fall on deaf ears. These responses are superficial. They don’t explore the intricacies of intellectual objections or the depths of human motivation to consider why people are disillusioned or unmotivated to share their faith.

The fact is people often have really good reasons for not evangelizing. Some of those reasons include the evangelists. The popular impression of evangelism isn’t positive—impersonal and uncaring, preachy and self-righteous, bigoted and hateful. None of those impressions would stick with Jesus. If we are going to experience a renaissance of evangelism, we must stop beating the drums long enough to hear evangelistic concerns. Some of the concerns include treating people less like projects and more like persons, distinguishing evangelism from proselytizing, and valuing others’ perspectives instead of rejecting them out of hand. These concerns, if heeded, can lead to greater compassion and evangelistic wisdom for gospel communication.

Defeating Defeaters

However, evangelistic concerns can quickly turn into evangelistic defeaters. Good concerns to not come across as impersonal, preachy, intolerant, or shallow can defeat us from sharing good news. As a result, people don’t get to hear about the victorious work of Christ to defeat sin, death, and evil to make all things new. They miss the opportunity to understand the difference between religion, relativism, and the gospel. In the moment of evangelistic opportunity, these defeaters keep us from discussing the fantastic news about Jesus. How do we defeat the defeaters in order to communicate the person-liberating, sin-forgiving, life-renewing, love-imparting, world-altering news about Jesus?

There is a defeater underneath the defeaters—fear of what others think of us. “The fear of man is a snare but the one who trusts in the Lord is safe” (Proverbs 18:25). We can avoid all the evangelistic pitfalls and still refuse to speak about Christ because we are afraid of what people will think about us. Therefore, both evangelized Christians and insufficiently evangelized cultures need a fresh preaching of the gospel. To do this, I commend gospel metaphors—personally discerning and culturally sensitive ways to communicate grace. People are seeking good things in the wrong places: intimacy, tolerance, approval. The gospel offers all of this in a profound, redemptive way.

Seeking Intimacy

Our search for intimacy is in relationships seems to never end. Even the best friendship or marriage inst enough for our insatiable demand to be noticed, loved, and cared for. We all want a place where we can be ourselves and know that we are accepted. We want relationships that are secure, where we feel safe to share our innermost thoughts and darkest struggles.

When we begin to discern that a person is seeking intimacy, we can explain that, through union with Christ, people can enter into the most intimate, loving, unbreakable, fulfilling relationship known to humanity, which can bring deep healing and joy.

Seeking Tolerance

Many people are seeking tolerance. Some don’t know the difference between classical and new tolerance. Old tolerance says every belief has a right to exist. New tolerance says every belief is equally true. Classical tolerance is spot on. New tolerance is inconsistent. This discussion alone can be an illuminating conversation that deepens mutual respect and admiration between people.

Others will not like the exclusive claims that Christianity makes. However, before scoffing at their perspective or trying to crush their worldview, ask questions to get on the inside of their perspective and appreciate their views. Build bridges not walls. They often have good reasons or difficult stories attached to their objections.

Respectful dialogue can go a long way in over-turning bigoted impressions of Christianity. In fact, it can open doors that would remain closed otherwise.

Getting to know someone who values tolerance, you might share that, through redemption, Jesus offers a redemptive tolerance that gives progressive people an opportunity to experience grace and forgiveness in a way that doesn’t demean other faiths. This can be very liberating.

Seeking Approval

The thoughts and opinions of parents matter to their children. What my dad and mom thought about me as I was growing up meant a lot. Their thoughts and opinions could crush or lift me in a moment. We are made for approval, and though our parents are often the first ones to give this (or withhold it from us), the truth is that we seek this approval from others all the time.

As you get to know someone, you might pick up that they need to hear the gospel of adoption, that God the Father offers an undying approval in his Son Jesus. This is unlike the undulating approval of others. This can radically change people’s view of God, and thrill them with the hope of a Father’s love.

Don’t kiss your evangelism goodbye; just give it a facelift.

What is Re-evangelization? from Jonathan Dodson on Vimeo.

* * * *

^{1. “How I Kissed Evangelism Goodbye” August 11, 2014 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cindy-brandt/how-i-kissed-evangelism-g_b_5667662.html↩}

^{2. Ed Stetzer, “The State of Evangelism” May 12, 2014 http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/may/state-of-evangelism.html?paging=off↩}

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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, 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.”

Working on Learning to Rest

If you’re anything like me, you know that you have to be intentional about learning how to rest. It’s hard for some of us to downshift. Some have a bent toward laziness and others a tendency to overwork. Phil Ryken has made the helpful observation that busyness stems from the same sinful root as laziness. Both are sinful manifestations of an idol of control. When we overwork, we are trying to control our own life and guide it to a selfishly motivated outcome. We are trying to secure what makes us feel good in life. Those who are lazy do exactly the same thing as those who overwork. If Satan can’t get us to try to do so by the vehicle of laziness, he will do so by tempting us to burn the candle at both ends. There is a sense in which just as those who are lazy need to turn to the Lord in repentance and faith and work hard at learning to work, so those of us who are inclined to overwork need to turn to the Lord in repentance and faith and work hard at learning to rest. In order to grow in our ability to rest, we must know ourselves. We must be able to examine the patterns of our thoughts and actions. After all, the Proverbs tell us that “the prudent considers well his steps” (Prov. 14:15).

Know Your Context 

Additionally, if we are to overcome our sinful tendency to overwork we must first be mindful of the way in which our culture encourages overworking. Tim Keller, in his sermon “Work and Rest,” makes the following observation:

The most workaholic culture in the history of the world (that’s us!) dare not turn up its nose at any effort–even misguided efforts–to giving to people one of the things most crucial to making life even human, which is rest. . . . The modern situation means that the eternal human need for rest is enormously aggravated. Let me give you four trends:

A. More and more, at least in Western culture, jobs are insecure. Jobs, whole departments, if they don’t perform and if they don’t turn profit, they’re eliminated. There has never been a culture where job security has been so bad.

B. There has been a lot of research done on the fact that where it used to be that people at the top of the company used to make maybe 10 or 20 x what people at the bottom of the company make; now, it’s more like 100 to 200 x. And partly as as a result of this, to some degree, increasingly, people who make large amounts of money and it’s expected to put in enormous numbers of hours–it’s just expected. If you don’t want to do it, there’s a line behind you. Whereas people on the bottom are having to take multiple jobs. So everybody’s overworked. It doesn’t matter  where you are on the scale. In order to make ends meet, they have to take multiple jobs.

C. Technology. Ah, technology! You can work anywhere, which means now, we work everywhere. It means you can’t stop work from spilling out of every nook and cranny of your life.

D. Whereas traditional societies said that you got your meaning in life from your family, and through fulfilling a fairly prescribed social role. And work wasn’t as important as that.  You define yourself. There’s never been more sociology and emotional pressure on work.

Know Your Limitations

We are finite creatures. We were created to have limitations. Our great problem is the problem of accepting what it means for us to be creatures and not the Creator. When Satan tempted our first parents, he did so by insisting that they could be like God. Ever since the fall, the history of man is the history of trying to attain God-like status. Strange though some may find it, the Lord deemed it necessary for us to be told through the Psalmist, “It is He who has made us and not we ourselves” (Ps. 100:3). Overworking is one of the foremost ways in which we act as if we do not have creaturely limitations. Phil Ryken, in his article “Embracing Finitude,” draws out the major application of this point he says:

Embracing finitude also means living by faith. I need to trust that God has given me enough time to do the things he has actually called me to do. This doesn’t mean that I have enough time to do all the things I want to do. Nor does it mean that there won’t be times when, through my own negligence and sin, I won’t have enough time. If I squander the time God has given me, then I won’t have all the time I need to do what I’m supposed to do. But I still need to trust God for time as much as for everything else. Rather than stressing out over all the things I don’t think I have time to do, I need to live by faith, trusting God to give me the grace to do what truly needs to be done.

This is especially something pastors must learn. Ryken again notes:

I also need to trust God to take care of the things I don’t have time to look after. As a pastor, I get plenty of practice with this. Every week there are needs in the church that I am unable to meet personally. Some of them are needs I am not equipped to meet anyway. Others are needs that I’m equipped to meet, but not called to meet. Fortunately, God has made us one body with many gifts. No single Christian is designed or called to meet anyone else’s total needs. Only God can do that. But God uses his people—with all the variety of their gifts—to help do his work in people’s lives. It doesn’t all depend on me. When there is a need, often there is someone else who can meet it better than I can. So I simply need to trust the sovereign God to take care of all the things I am unable to accomplish.

Know the Work of Christ

We must not only know ourselves, our context and our limitations, we must have our minds fully convinced of the saving work of the Lord Jesus. Jesus worked for our salvation; then, He rested from His labors on the Old Covenant Sabbath as He lay dead in the tomb. In His work and in His rest, we have had our salvation accomplished for us. As Israel was commanded to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord” as they faced what seemed like their inevitable destruction (i.e. trapped between the Egyptians and the Red Sea), so we are to do the same as we face the inevitability of the eternal judgment that we deserve for our sin. In the same way, Israel was told, on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16), “you shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all” (Lev. 16:29). When we hear the Lord Jesus crying out “It is finished,” and are told that “He by Himself made purification for our sins” we are assured that He is able to provide what He promised when He said, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls”  (Matt. 11:28-29).

The effect of resting in the finished work of Christ ought to be a restful attitude in our everyday work and rest. William Still explained this so well when he wrote:

We must learn to act properly, with a due balance of rest and work, which we may say is to work from a position and attitude of rest . . . as Christians we ought to live with a restful ease, even in busyness and in energetic activity, which not only ought to enable us to get through our work, but to do so more efficiently and therefore also more enjoyably. (Rhythms of Work and Rest, pp. 39-42)

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

Originally published at Feeding on Christ. Used with permission.

Women in the Local Church: A Conversation

Today we are hosting a conversation with Lore Ferguson, writer and speaker. This conversation centers on how the local church can make, mature, and multiply stronger women disciples.

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Gospel-Centered Discipleship: There are many opinions about what Christian women need most in and from the church. In your opinion, what's the greatest need for women from the church?

Lore Ferguson: What women need most is the same as what men need most—to understand and see the power and effects of the gospel made clear in their lives. I think we often think of the men as the gospel proclaimers and the women as the gospel enactors. Men teach and preach, women serve and build. Even if we wouldn’t draw such clear distinctions with our words, it is the way the local church seems to function. In the same way the gospel is for all people, though, the effects of the gospel are for all people all the way through.

GCD: Pastors have not always honored or considered the needs of women in the church. How can pastors grow in their understanding of the needs and meeting the needs of women in the church?

Lore: Ask us! Whenever my pastor is asked by another man how to lead his wife, my pastor says, “I know how to lead my wife. You ask your wife how to lead her!” It’s the same with us. Keep an open dialogue with the women in your local church (not just the wives of your pastors/elders). Many pastors seem to have similar personalities and marry women with similar personalities/giftings, which enables them to minister well to women of the same personalities. But the local church is made up of every personality and gifting. Ask women—aside from your wives—how you can serve them and help them flourish.

GCD:

What are the biggest hurts for women in our churches that we are overlooking and missing?

Lore: Every woman is different, so my answer here might not be helpful in the sense that it might reflect more what’s going on in my heart than in the average woman’s heart. I think there seems to be a universal desire for us to be loved and cherished as an essential part of the body. This includes being heard and not having to fight for a voice, but recognized as someone who has an equal and distinct voice (the essence of complementarianism). We understand the distinct part, and feel that often, but we don’t feel the equal part quite as much.

GCD: As a follow up to that, I’ve heard from women that they desire a voice on the front end of the decision process as opposed to hearing about it after the fact and being asked for feedback. How would you recommend pastors change their approach in decision making to include a broader range of voices and specifically women?

Lore: If the approach is that they’re asking women’s input after the decision, or the only women they’re asking on the front end are their wives, I’d just say invite more women into the front end fact-finding mission. I regularly have men from my church seek me out for thoughts on how we minister to women in different contexts. In no way do I assume I’m part of the final decision making process, but I hope and pray my words are considered as a part of the water that ship sails on. As I say further down, a woman’s role is to help, but sometimes we’re better helpers on the front end of things.

GCD: One of the biggest conversations in the church has to do with women's roles and opportunity in the church. Many women feel there isn't a role for them in the church, yet when someone reads how Paul praises women's involvement in the church, we can't help but ask—How did we get here? Why is our experience of church seemingly different than Paul's?

Lore: There seems to be a lot of fear in some complementarian churches. Fear of the messiness of life on life, fear of sexual brokenness, or fear of being seen as a place where the women wear the pants (whatever that means). What that results in is the staff can become a Good Ole Boys Club instead of a place where we see, value, employ, and utilize the gifts of women in an equal measure. I don’t mean women are given equal authority—eldership in the local church is clearly for men, but the disparity in staffing and investment in women does not reflect the equality we say we believe.

GCD: From the outsider's eye, there seems to be a rise in women bloggers, women's books, ministries, and bible studies. How have these helped in empowering women? In discipling women? And what are the dangers of these in relation to discipleship in the church?

Lore: In regard to empowering women, the internet/publishing world has empowered every voice, so I don’t know that we’re moved the conversation that far forward as a whole. For every woman who speaks out, there’s another voice speaking against her. I’m not sure the quantity has helped the quality. I do think that all the voices might have harmed the discipleship of women because it’s taken discipleship out of the local context and made it global. Women are getting their theology, encouragement, teaching, etc. from blogs and books in an unprecedented way. Meanwhile face to face engagement within the local church has suffered.

GCD: In this conversation, there seem to be polar extremes of complementarianism and egalitarianism. Have those terms clouded the conversation or helped the conversation in empowering women?

Lore: They’ve done both. Whenever we have terminology for something, it helps make the conversation more clear. The problem is when our experience differs from the actual definition, and I think the complementarianism/egalitarianism debate is a cesspool for disparate experiences and definitions. We’re talking past one another most of the time instead of really sitting down and understanding culture, context, history, and how the Bible speaks to all people for all situations.

GCD: Women on staff at complementarian churches are the minority and, when they are, they are rarely in roles beyond children and women. How can complementarian churches seek to empower women better in staff roles?

Lore: Hire them! The benefit of elder led churches is you have men whose responsibilities include shepherding and discipling men. We would think it was foolish if that wasn’t a qualification for an elder, but we don’t have women in those official roles (or if we do, they’re in charge of “women’s ministry” which is a fuzzy, unhelpful term). We need women whose job it is to disciple and shepherd women. Not necessarily lead women’s events, organize meals, or teach VBS or kids church. We need women who will walk faithfully with women in discipline, holiness, Bible study, teaching, etc. One thing to note is that I’m speaking from the context of larger more urban churches with more resources, you’re going to be able to hire more women. In a smaller church where hiring more women isn’t possible for various reasons, it should just be on the minds of the leaders there that they’re going to need an extra measure of intentionality in making sure their women are shephered and are discipling.

GCD: I've heard many women express a lack of discipleship while they watch men experience it. How does this happen? How is it fixed?

Lore: I don’t think the lack of discipleship is a distinctly female issue. Discipleship is going to be hard no matter our context or gender, otherwise we wouldn’t have needed to be told to do it so emphatically by Christ. Men experience a lack of discipleship too, but I think what happens is, especially in complementarian contexts, men are more visible, so we see the resources being poured into them in a more visible way. If there is a lack though, this is how it happens: many women only know how to contextualize the gospel in one situation or life-season, i.e., their marriage or home. The result of that is you have single women and empty-nest women who don’t have specific people within the sphere of their influence with whom they’re walking in discipleship. But it secondly happens when the local church doesn’t prioritize the discipleship of women. It’s fixed by prioritizing it in your staffing and ministry paradigm.

GCD: How have you heard gifted, godly, and strong women express their desire to serve the church and their elders?

Lore: In every way and every day. Women were uniquely designed to be helpers, so we see possibility in every situation. We’re not just helpers in the sense that we come alongside what’s already happening, though, we’re also helpers in the sense that we see things men just don’t see. That’s actually a beautiful thing! We don’t want to do the same thing as the men do, or overtake their God-given roles. We do desire to play our equal and distinct part though.

GCD: There seems to be an unnecessary awkwardness in male and female relationships. Many fear inappropriate relationships. How does the gospel free us from this fear and empower our relationships?

Lore: All through the New Testament Paul uses shockingly inclusive language to refer to the church, familial language. It’s not shocking to us because we’ve used it for two thousand years, but to the early church, calling one another brother and sister and father and son without the blood bond would have been shocking. In the western church we’re very accustomed to holding the opposite gender at arms length—which actually provides more room for fear than if we drew our brothers and sisters close and engaged in the messiness of family. There is righteous wisdom when it comes to avoiding sin, or the appearance of evil, but there’s also so much we miss out on when we hold our brothers and sisters away from us and don’t engage their distinctiveness from us. The gospel is marked by hospitality, by being drawn close to God (who is the most holy of us all!). By drawing us near, He is saying, “Your soiled self doesn’t sully me. I will engage that and cover it and love you all the more through it.” I say embrace that awkwardness, press through it, hug generously, listen fearlessly, counsel wisely, and live as though you’ll give an account for every action. My lead pastor does this better than almost any man I know. He simply isn’t afraid of women and always draws near to us. As much as he’s able and it’s appropriate, he closes the gap.

GCD: What levels of leadership and responsibility can a woman have in the church without encroaching on a pastoral role?

Lore: This is a tough one partially because I think it does depend on the pastor(s). If you have strong and humble men leading, men who will listen and lead well, a woman has a lot of freedom within those bounds. But if you have timid and/or young immature men leading, there’s going to need to be more restraint by the women. As far as biblically and theologically, that’s an issue for the local church elders to navigate.

GCD: A misconception seems to exist that complementarian and strong, gifted, and godly women don't go together. In this misconception, egalitarianism seems to draw the strong women. How can complementarianism strengthen women?

Lore: By majoring on the majors. We believe that women are equal and distinct, but too often we only feel our distinctiveness, our otherness. If we believe women are equal, then we have to begin to treat them as such. And—forgive me for encouraging men to be like Sarah—but we have to do it without fearing what is frightening (I Pt. 3:6). It will be messy or difficult—but so is gardening, child-rearing, and building a house, and we know we don’t do those things in vain.

GCD: Men can be taught, encouraged, and impacted by the gifts and lives of women. This seems lost in opportunities given to them to teach class, lead mixed small groups, and even in everyday church relationships. How do we move away from this gap?

Lore: Again, I think it needs to be reflected in staffing/ministry paradigm. We don’t need wide here; we need deep. By that, I mean we don’t need a huge women’s ministry. We don’t need more conferences or retreats, etc. We need to staff women who will go deep with few, disciple them in a long-suffering, difficult way, so those they disciple are empowered to do the work of the ministry. The more we are building healthy, discipled women, the more confident those women will be in engaging men in right and biblical ways, and the more happy they’ll be to submit to God’s good design for them as equal, distinct image bearers.

GCD: Paul highlights many women as “partners” with him in the gospel. It is safe to say that women don't often feel that way. What would a great partnership look like to build the church without compromising a complementarian approach?

Lore: If complementarian churches would gather and staff an equal amount of women as men, I think they’d be surprised at how effective the ministry of their local church would be. We seem to assume a church with strong leadership means a church with more men on staff, but staff isn’t eldership. Our elders/pastors ought to be men, but we should have a clearly reflected equality throughout the rest of our ministerial staff. In the same way as a marriage in which there is a clear partnership is effective, the local church that reflects this equality would thrive. And I don’t mean it would thrive in the sense that it would grow leaps and bounds (though I think it would), but their people would thrive under the firm, godly, nurturing, gentle, wise unification of their male and female leaders.

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Lore Ferguson is a writer whose deepest desire is to adorn the gospel in everything she says and does. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and is a covenant member at The Village Church. Lore writes regularly at Sayable.net, and you can follow her on Twitter @loreferguson.

Confessions of a Recovering Missionary Hipster

We had just moved from a place far, far away. Our life was anything but ordinary, or at least, so it seemed. Temperatures didn't get above the 0 degree mark in the winter, and most people in America (particularly people in American churches) that we talked with thought we were either crazy or some sort of modern day super hero. The accolades were nice, honestly. I was pretty good with the humble response.

"It's a calling"

"We're just being obedient"

But the fact remained, it was an unusual life and I more or less liked it.

The Unconventional Life

The word hipster has been rebirthed in the past few years. Hipster used to refer to someone who was into jazz music. Now (at least from what can I gather from today's kids), a hipster is someone who is intentionally unconventional and aloof from the popular and the ordinary. I think the modern idea mostly involves odd beards and indie music. I'm not 100% on that though. It does seem that the term still has a a lot to do with music. Apparently, a hipster (as defined by this generation) can't listen to the same music everyone else does. As soon as a band gets too popular, they're finished in the hipster community. Sell-outs. Mumford and Sons used to be a hipster band, until they won a Grammy. I used to boast to my kids that I was listening to U2 in the early 80's when they were still an underground, post-punk band from Ireland that no one had ever heard of. Unimpressed, I was promptly dubbed a U2-hipster and we moved on. The things we learn from the kids these days.

Hear what I'm saying. I loved my work in Ulaanbaatar. College students crammed into my living room every week, sharing the Kingdom of Jesus with young people who had never heard about Jesus in that way before, late night discussions with young men about life, family, girls, and the future: I lived for this. I still miss the work, and deeply, deeply miss the Mongolian people who had become such a part of my unconventional life in Central Asia.

We’re the Missionary Hipsters

Unconventional. That's an American living someplace other than America. There's something strangely appealing about unconventional. To me, the original U2 hipster, anyway. Dealing with time zones and talking about travel plans and concerning one's self with language and culture and lamenting the lack of peanut butter. There's something appealing to the human ego about that. Any expatriated person would admit it, in an honest moment. There's an embraced identity. We're not the norm or the ordinary. We're the missionary hipsters.

Last year was the year our life as Americans abroad ceased. We are no longer recognized as missionaries. It was a tough year at many levels, and the culmination of difficulty and displacement hit me one morning last summer. We had moved back to America and were house-sitting for a friend. I was taking my coffee on the front porch early, before the South Carolina summer sun could gain too much heat and intensity. I watched home after home come to life that day. Little white sedans leaving cookie cutter houses going to 9-5 jobs somewhere in Greenville. I had this sinking feeling that this was now my life. Normal. Ordinary. American.

I didn't want that. I liked my life before.

Wait . . . I take that sentence back. I liked my identity before.

Grace in the Ordinary

That moment of sinking into a sea of ordinariness was over six months ago. I've learned something really important since then. Grace is the water that makes up this sea. In reality, Grace is demonstrated in the ordinary much more than it ever is in what we call extraordinary. I'm finding it astounding, really.

I shouldn't be surprised. The Bible gives illustrious examples of grace in the everyday. From an ordinary man like Abraham and an ordinary public speaker like Moses to an ordinary young lady like Mary and an ordinary fisherman like Peter. There is remarkable beauty in the things we see every day, no matter where one lives. I'm learning to look for it, to see it and to celebrate it. The best stories, the one's that carry real meaning and have real impact, are the one's that celebrate ordinary people doing ordinary things, demonstrating amazing grace and beauty. It's there. It's really there.

I am seeing that now.

Small white sedans and cookie-cutter suburban houses contain a thousand flashes of grace and when looked at from just the right angle, breath-taking beauty is there.

My eyes are now wide-open to this. I'm looking. The great thing is that I don't have to look far to see.

I still miss my old life and ministry—and painfully miss my Mongolian friends and colleagues. But, I no longer want to be aloof from the ordinary. I don't need to be unconventional. Embracing the everyday and the stuff of earth and life is a better way to live. God is in the ordinary. Grace is in the ordinary. Our lives are a series of simple stories with simple beginnings that a sovereign, wise and good God is moving toward a glorious end.

That's not ordinary or cookie-cutter at all. That's magnificent.

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Bernie Anderson and his wife Renee’ have been married for 25 years, and have two grown children. After serving in the pastorate for 13 years, the Andersons moved to Mongolia, where they served college students and did leadership development for 8 years. Currently they are living in South Carolina and Bernie works with World Relief, as a director for church partnership. Bernie regularly blogs, posts photographs and tweets at branderson.me and @mongolman.

Originally posted Branderson.me. Used with permission.

Making Peace Through Confronting And Repenting

Everyone assigns a different meaning to the word “peace.” To some, peace is a calm feeling, an ability to relax, and a care-free life. To others, peace is the end of hostility, a white flag raised to end a terrible war. To others, it is something that happens when we avoid conflict, ignore faults in others, affirm and flatter and “sweep it under the rug” rather than challenge hurtful actions or patterns. Biblical peace is none of these things. Rather, biblical peace is something that we make by engaging in healthy, redemptive, life-giving conflict when necessary—especially with those whose actions and patterns are hurting us, other people, and/or them. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peace-makers.” But what does this mean?

To make peace is to rescue a hurtful person from himself

Paul writes that if anyone is “caught” in a transgression, those who are “spiritual” should restore him (Gal. 6:1). If a person is caught in a transgression, it means he has actually been overtaken by a sin. It now controls him and, if he is to be freed of it, he will need outside intervention. Some of us have participated in an intervention with a drug addict or an alcoholic. When friends or family notice that a loved one is being overtaken by an addictive substance, they come together and lovingly seek to rescue the addict from his own, self-destructive patterns. To ignore the problem would be terribly unloving. To do everything in your power to block a person from continuing in destructive patterns—this is true love and true peace-making.

Peace-making is counterintuitive

None of us wants to confront. We fear uncomfortable conversations and potential rejection, so we may choose to ignore hurtful patterns in others, or, perhaps worse, to flatter them into thinking that there is nothing wrong with their behavior. When Paul says to “restore” a person caught in transgression (Gal. 6:1-2), the same word in other ancient writings refers to the re-setting of a broken or dislocated bone. The re-setting of a bone is excruciating at first, and is usually followed by a low-grade pain that could last for weeks or even months. But once the bone is fully healed, it is usually stronger than it ever was before it was broken. When friends confront friends, and loved ones confront loved ones for sinful and destructive patterns, it is comparable to the re-setting of a bone. But instead it is a re-setting of the heart and of the person’s character. It flows from a vision to see God restore the person’s original moral beauty to him, to heal and re-align his life to the way things are supposed to be. It is a small, tangible way to bring the peace or ‘shalom’ of heaven to the present earth.

True peace-making is done in a gentle, humble inviting spirit

Galatians 5:15 warns against our potential to “bite and devour” each other. We are warned because whenever we are offended—whenever someone fails (fails us!)—we tend to become aggressive toward the perpetrator in one of two ways. We may become active-aggressive (the fight impulse) by telling them off, asserting our rights, pointing fingers, making ourselves out to be the sole victim, beating them up with our words. Or, we may become passive-aggressive (the flight impulse) by withdrawing relationally, making the person pay with our silent snubs, gossiping about them to others, or even leaving the relationship altogether.

We must see that both forms of aggression—active and passive—are self-medicating strategies employed to soften our own pain by increasing the pain of the enemy. But the Bible calls for a different kind of confrontation—the kind that prizes the healing of the enemy and the restoration of the relationship. So we are to approach this effort in a spirit of gentleness and humility. Biblical peace-making is confrontation in a sinner-safe environment. The goal is two-fold. First, we must do everything in our power to ensure the person feels safe with us and not condemned (because we are just as capable of the sin). Second, we must do everything in our power to ensure that the person is rescued from patterns that are harmful to him and/or to others.

Peace-making requires a heart that is saturated with the Gospel

The only way to gain the emotional wealth needed to respond to an offense with gentleness and humility instead of active or passive aggression, is if our hearts and identity are secure in the gospel. To the degree that we are experiencing freedom from condemnation in God’s eyes through our union with Christ, we will not fear rejection from the person we confront. If we understand that we are fully loved and secure in our relationship with God as Father—that God loves us as much as he loves Jesus, all the time—we will envision even our enemies flourishing in the gospel. We will view ourselves as partners with God, on a mission not to put offensive people in their place but, as JI Packer says, to make people great by calling them to a more beautiful, Christ-like heart and character.

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Scott Sauls, a graduate of Furman University and Covenant Seminary, is foremost a son of God and the husband of one beautiful wife (Patti), the father of two fabulous daughters (Abby and Ellie), and the primary source of love and affection for a small dog (Lulu). Professionally, Scott serves as the Senior Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Prior to Nashville, Scott was a Lead and Preaching Pastor, as well as the writer of small group studies, for Redeemer Presbyterian of New York City. His first book Jesus Outside the Lines: A Way Forward for Those Who Are Tired of Taking Sides releases March 1. Twitter: @scottsauls.

Originally posted at www.scottsauls.com. Used with permission.

Reflect Christ, Deflect Satan

Paul’s story is well documented. He was a killer of Christians and an adamant opponent of their faith (Acts 8:1-3). Later, as a man saved by God’s grace, he constantly urged believers to turn away from their old lives and to press into their new natures in Christ, just as he did. He didn’t harp on rules and regulations, but rather exhorted them to look to Christ for their reason for living. And as a hate-monger transformed into a humble servant, Paul knew the benefit of receiving and offering Christ’s compassion. Few passages in the New Testament describe the character of Christ as a weapon against Satan’s work as clearly as Ephesians 4:25-32. In this passage, Paul makes a very clear assertion to believers: Christians are freed through the sacrifice of Christ, by the power of the Spirit, to reflect him and deflect Satan.

Speak Truth (v. 25)

Paul states, “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” In short, he is telling his audience to be honest with one another. He does not issue this warning against lying in order to be seen as righteous to outsiders or to prevent themselves from consequences later on; rather, Paul says that Christians should speak the truth because they are one body.

The word for “members” in the Greek, mele, literally means “a bodily organ or limb,” giving the metaphor that Christians are plainly, not just figuratively, connected as flesh and bone members of a body. It is indispensable for believers to understand that, in a sense, they should treat each other how they themselves want to be treated. If a believer lies to a brother, he is simply sinning against every other Christian and, essentially, himself. Paul carries this thought from verse 24 in which he tells believers to “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Although Christians will always struggle with Satan’s temptation to speak falsely until the moment of death, they become new creations in Christ with the ability to walk in a manner that reflects the likeness of God himself.

Control Anger (vv. 26-27)

The passage continues, expanding on the statements made in previous verses, saying, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” These two verses combine to explain that such characteristics belong to the devil and not to God. Anger in and of itself is not a sin when exercised appropriately. Even Christ, who did not sin (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15), was angry (without sinning) as he rebuked the “money-changers” in the temple (Matt. 21:12-13). When Christians act in such a way that they are representing Satan’s lies and not Christ’s model, they are in danger of, or already participating in, sin. Francis Foulkes clarifies, “The Christian must be sure that his anger is that of righteous indignation, and not just an expression of personal provocation or wounded pride. It must have no sinful motives, nor be allowed to lead to sin in any way.”

Christians are a new creation with a new attitude and a new power to overcome the traps of Satan. Given the opportunity to hold a grudge, the Christian must turn away from their anger and forgive immediately. If “the sun goes down” on a person’s anger, it will continually eat them alive, just as Satan has planned. Satan is a powerful trickster, looking for and providing any avenue for a person to give into temptation and give him a place to work. The gospel affords the opportunity to escape such traps.

Be Generous (v. 28)

For the Christian, there is a new outlook on the idea of giving and receiving: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” Once given this new life in Christ, a person is called to view their possessions differently. Once a thief himself, the new believer must now work honestly for their income and turn it into a gift.

One only needs to look at the life and ministry of Jesus to see that servanthood is the paramount trait of a holy person. Christ was and is God who stepped into human history and lived a perfect, sinless life. As an eternal king, he had no true reason to be humble or to serve anyone, but he did. He gave all of himself in order that Christians might have a life more than they ever imagined (Jn. 10:10-11). Though Satan makes selfishness appealing, the humble character of Christ cannot be overlooked by anyone seeking to model themselves after him. Dishonest gain may often be the easy route to travel, but believers are commissioned to take the road less traveled.

Show Grace (v. 29)

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Here, believers are told not to speak in such a way that someone will be hurt or pushed away by their words. Satan will use biting words to attempt to destroy not only the body of Christ, but relationships they have with outsiders.

Society often judges Christians based upon their actions. The world is not merely looking for a show, but an authentic lifestyle that promotes goodness. While it is rather easy for the Christian to settle into moralistic behavior modification in order to attempt at pleasing Christ and appearing righteous to those around him, the new man cannot stop there; he must act in sincere concern for those looking to him for answers on Christ.

Any person can modify behavior, but a true disciple of Christ lives with a transformed heart that sees other human beings as lost souls in need of Christ’s redemption. Satan will try to distract believers from the Great Commission, but this must be fought against. There is no escaping the call to love others as Christ does.

Do Not Grieve the Spirit (v. 30)

Paul advises Christians: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” This is a simple caution with huge implications. When sinning, one must remember that their sin is not only damaging to others; it’s an affront to God.

The Holy Spirit is God, the third person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit may sometimes be under appreciated and overlooked by many Christians, but the he is the actual person of God dwelling within the Christian. As the Holy Spirit dwells in the believer, he is rightly and justly saddened and angered by the direct disregard for his holy standard. When the Christian sins, it is not to be forgotten that the holy and righteous God of the universe takes full notice. God is not a distant being, floating in the outskirts of creation; God is an active and living being dwelling in and standing beside each person every day of their existence with full knowledge of their transgressions against him. John Calvin once exhorted Christians to “endeavor that the Holy Spirit may dwell cheerfully within you, as in a pleasant and joyful dwelling, and give him no occasion for grief.”

Christians should give thanks for the seal of redemption (Eph. 1:13-14) given to them by God through Christ on the Roman cross. It is in him and him alone that the old man dies and the new man is raised to new life. This new life holds the promise of eternal liberation, while Satan only offers bondage and destruction.

Attitude Matters (v. 31)

Paul collects all wrong attitudes together in one verse, telling his audience to “let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.” Though surely a problem in the church that Paul is writing to, any and all Christians can attest to struggling with these very things. As a Christian, this desire does not simply disappear on the day of new life. There is still constant battle within the soul of a Christian to do what is right and holy when Satan’s temptation seems to be the correct—or at least easier— way to handle the negative situation.

The simple response for the Christian is to ignore a person who wrongs them by “turning the other cheek.” This is true and virtuous. However, with the power of the Holy Spirit within the believer, there is far more power over sin than merely walking away or pretending that an offense didn’t occur. A new creation in Christ has every resource imaginable to actively pursue radical forgiveness and grace. The act of loving an enemy is far and above the call of mere forgiveness. After all, even a non-believer with no supernatural power at all can turn away from a person who insults, attacks, or demeans them. God promises something better; he promises “a way of escape” for believers (1 Cor. 10:13).

Be Kind and Forgiving (v. 32)

Paul concludes the passage with this statement: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Believers are called to such a lifestyle because they are new creations with a new heart, first forgiven by God so that they may show grace to the world. The selfish Christian is a contradiction; no one set free from sin can simultaneously be a captive to it. Paul is entirely clear in verse 24 that there is no such thing as a Christian that lives as he once did.

A major facet of the gospel is that having the inclination to continue sinning does not grant a person the excuse to maintain the same pattern of living. In describing a new creation in Christ, Paul uses the adjectives “kind,” “tenderhearted,” and “forgiving.” These are not natural dispositions of the natural human being; these are supernatural reactions to the broken mess of creation.

Saved For a Purpose

Paul says in Romans 5:14 that Christianity is foundationally void and useless if Christ did not resurrect from the dead after his crucifixion. For the Christian, this has massive connotations. If Christ did not rise, he did not conquer death and in turn conquered death on behalf of anyone else. If Christ was not raised, his forgiveness would mean absolutely nothing. Believers cannot understate the grace that must be shown to others in response to the magnificent and unbelievable power exemplified in Jesus Christ. The final words of a risen Savior are not comforting promises of eternity, but an insistence on being light in the midst of darkness (Matt. 28:18-20).

God’s will is not aimed entirely at the Christian going to Heaven, but rather for his people to represent him well and live according to his immutable standard in the here and now. The gospel frees us from our own interests. Christians have an obligation to love God and love others well precisely because of the cross.

The character of Christ, this gospel-infused sword we wield, is at the forefront of the Christian witness to a lost world. And Satan cannot deflect its blows. As Jesus proclaims, not even the Gates of Hell can stop his Church (Matt. 16:18).

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Brandon D. Smith serves in leadership and as an adjunct instructor in theology and church history at Criswell College, where he is also associate editor of the Criswell Theological Review. He recently edited the book Make, Mature, Multiply and is a contributor to Designed for Joy (forthcoming from Crossway, 2015). Follow him on Twitter.

Bending the Heart for the Impossible

After unearthing the themes of prayer, discipleship, and humility in Luke 18, what remains of the chapters seem less applicable to encouraging Biblical discipleship. Perhaps this is true, but Luke’s story placement for the rich young ruler is fascinating. Jesus has just finished comparing a Pharisee and tax collector (Lk. 18:9-14) and exalted the person that the Jewish society disdained. Christ has exalted little children into the kingdom and rebuking the disciples (Lk. 18:15-17). It is not on a mere whim that Luke records this infamous question and answer. “What does entering the kingdom then look like?” is the natural question arising from these teachings of Jesus. Poor discipleship has been exemplified, but what does proper discipleship look like?

18 And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” 21 And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” —Luke 18:18-21

Perhaps parents relate more to this formulated question. “Dad, what must I do to go out tonight?” or “Mom, what must I do to be done with dinner?” There is not anything wrong with be willing to act and work. These types of questions are certainly better than the truisms my daughter has been spouting lately, “Dad, if I have to watch TV than I have to watch TV.” This young rule understands he did not naturally deserve to inherit eternal life. In religious fervor, he was bent on doing what needed to be done to earn God’s favor. But he was guilty of “a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge” (Rom. 10:2).

Christ’s Confusing Answer

Christ’s answer honestly addresses this fervor. And perhaps Christ’s answer has left many confused about the nature of justification. The reason Christ does not say, “Hey dummy, just believe in me and you will be justified by faith” is because the rulers desire for eternal life is not bad. Christ condescends to the rich ruler’s thinking in an effort to show him that earning his justification is an impossibility (Lk. 18:27). In fact, apart from Christ this is the greatest impossibility (2 Cor. 1:18-20). For this reason, Christ responds,“Why do you call me good?” and concludes with “One thing you still lack” (Lk. 18:22). The rich young ruler misses out on Christ’s point that God is the high standard and that no disciple, through adherence to the law, could achieve this. The teacher standing right in front of him was the only exception. He was the impossible possibility. Christ’s second response seeks to push the point, he strikes to the heart of the ruler and the ruler breaks. He breaks apart from Christ. He has missed out on Christ revealing that through him, the “good teacher,” is the inheritance to eternal life. What is “impossible with man” has become possible through the God-man that stood before the ruler.

Check List Discipleship

What does this story communicate about discipleship? It re-iterates that completing a check list, even a holy one, is not the equivalent to following the Good Teacher. The root issue of discipleship is the heart. So, when our discipleship programs become merely external rituals we should be willing to acknowledge what they are and what Paul would say about them,

For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. —1 Timothy 4:8

True discipleship has to be convinced that its programs must die to themselves in order to follow Christ. True discipleship must be bent on affirming the greatest impossibility and that all of the physical effort in discipleship is non-meritorious in making us a disciple. Instead the church needs to stress the grace of God.

It is true that one does not explicitly hear “what must I do” often in the church today. The truth is the religious answer lies before us. Sunday School, good church attendance, Bible study, fellowship, and un-healthy food at the potlucks. These are the marks of religious fervor and remain a blessing (especially the food part) from God for his disciples. We must return to instructing new Christians that taking on a loaded schedule of godly things does not a disciple make. Instead, the bending heart that merely asks “Who then can be saved?” will find the God-man ready to accomplish the impossible. This will affect how we counsel parents to disciple their children. This will alter how we view parents with children who cannot attend Bible study. This must transform our vision of who Christ’s disciples are and how we can edify each other.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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, 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.

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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.

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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?

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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.