How to Guard Against Mission Drift

New pastors and/or church planters have extremely high aspirations for maintaining the purity of their church’s mission. All those churches they used to work for got too messy, complicated, and unfocused. “This church won’t be that way!” they vow to themselves and other leaders. This is easier said than done. For most, after a few years of ministry, the challenges of mission drift come fast and furious.

Jesus is clear that our job as Christians is to make disciples (Matt. 28:19-10). Any church that doesn’t have this aspiration as a focal point of their mission simply disobeys Jesus. But mission drift happens even in organizations with clear goals and objectives. Consider the following points to help guard against this tendency.

Be ruthlessly redundant. I recall a time when I was giving announcements during a church service concerning an upcoming marriage retreat. It was the third week in a row that I made this same announcement. After the service I saw my friend Laura and asked her if she and her husband would be attending the retreat. I know she was present in the service all three weeks I made this same announcement. Yet she said to me, “Marriage retreat? I didn’t know there was a marriage retreat!”

We have to over-communicate everything for anything to be heard. So dare to be ruthlessly redundant. We have to learn to creatively over-saturate people with various modes of communication so they truly know our values and what we are collectively doing in light of those values. The bigger your organization the harder you must work to keep everyone on the same page. It helps to keep your mission statement simple. Because if no one can remember your mission, you won’t have to worry about mission drift, because you won’t have any mission.

Put the right people in the right place. Is everyone on your team fully convinced of the mission? If not, you’re simply waiting for mission drift. I know that most leaders can’t simply remove people from their team without causing huge conflict. Nuanced and difficult situations demand wisdom, patience, and prayer as you handle the complexity of hiring and firing. If you can’t change the team, at least you must be careful about who gets added in the future.

Say no to some very good things. Make the mission of your church the filter by which you determine your yes and no. You will need to say no to some very good things that don’t hit the bullseye of what God is calling your church to do.

Prepare for people to get mad, leave your church, or write you angry e-mails. This is the cost of a focused mission, but make no mistake—the payoff is beautiful. “Don’t spread yourself too thin” is a cliché for a reason. Everyone has a tendency to do it. But if you are in the habit of saying no to some really good things it will most likely free up space for you to accomplish your church’s calling.

Remember that you are not accountable to people who leave your church or write you angry e-mails. You will answer to God alone on the day that he has fixed. That judgment should provide the needed motivation to stay focused on your vision and mission.

Drip mission in every sermon. Larry Osborne writes in his book Sticky Teams about how he used to think that the most important aspect of casting vision was his yearly “vision sermon.” Over time this sermon proved challenging because people didn’t show up and faithful members tended to tune out since they heard the same message, with the same point, the year before. Now he practices a new approach to guard against mission drift:

Rather than blasting it all at once, I drop vision and core values into every sermon I preach.

The result has been far greater congregational alignment. Dripping core values and vision into every sermon makes them unavoidable. Anyone who would have missed my vision series or who would have tuned out because they’d heard it before is now stuck. Each week I plant a seed or two and then move on, long before they have a chance to tune out or put up their guard. And if they missed this week’s sermon, I’ll get them next week.

Beware personal drift. Most organizations reflect the values and personality of their leader(s). How’s that for a scary thought? Is there mission drift in your life? Can anyone around you diagnose this drift? If there is any disconnect between the stated vision and mission of the church and the life of the main leader(s), is it any wonder the church drifts from it?

Leading any organization is hard work. Staying aligned to our core calling to make disciples takes continued focus. This can be exhausting at times. Remember, in the end, Jesus will build his church. When we fear that everything is falling apart, that is the time to fall apart in prayer to the Father. As we faithfully pursue him, he will provide what we need to make sure that his church (not ours) will be focused on the right things.

—

Zach Nielsen (@znielsen) is one of the pastors at The Vine Church in Madison, Wisconsin, where he serves in the areas of preaching, leadership development and music. He is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa and Covenant Theological Seminary and blogs at Take Your Vitamin Z.

Originally post at TGC. Used with permission of the author.

The Story Wars

Enjoy this excerpt from Sean Post’s The Stories We Live. Order your paperback today! Or use 1-click to purchase your digital copy from Amazon! —

Lawyers sometimes have a saying they use when building their case behind closed doors: “The best story always wins.” When it’s time to render a verdict, the judge and the jury won’t be thinking about the information presented as much as they will be asking, “Which story is most compelling and coherent?”

The courtroom isn’t the only place where story wars unfold. In the unseen corners of the human heart, they rage daily. These stories vie for supremacy on the silent channel of our thoughts. This battle is between the story of God and alternative broken stories.

Temptation is a Story War

In Matthew 4, Jesus experiences three temptations that highlight how many times the most powerful temptation is not to do something bad, but to do something good in the wrong way. Satan offers Jesus the chance to live into a story with the same ending as God’s perfect plan but with a different plot.

Specifically, Jesus is tempted to indulge a legitimate desire (eat), to believe something that is true (he is the Messiah), and to pursue a kingdom-minded shortcut (establish the Kingdom of God). These are all good things, which is exactly why these temptations were strategically chosen by Satan. Satan offers Jesus the chance to live a story with the same ending as God’s perfect plan but with a different plot.

So what’s the problem with these temptations? They don’t seem so bad.

In the first temptation, Jesus was tempted to indulge a desire at the cost of a greater desire. There’s a sad story in the Bible of a man who sold his birthright for a bowl of stew because he was hungry. This is the epitome of short-sightedness. It’s easy to allow a legitimate desire to crowd out things that may be even more important.

In the second temptation, Jesus was tempted to believe a truth in isolation. That is, a truth isolated from the rest of the story of Scripture. It was only Jesus’ knowledge of God’s broader plans and purposes that allowed him to reject the sound byte truth that Satan fed him.

During the third temptation, Jesus was tempted to establish the Kingdom by temporarily worshipping the wrong thing. Satan was saying, “We can get to the last chapter of the story without any conflict. All you have to do is worship me.”

As far as I can tell, every temptation I’ve ever faced has fit one of those three molds. Temptation comes to us in the form of a story. And that story will always tweak the details of the biblical story in some way. At that point, we are caught in the middle of two stories that war for our heart.

Sin is Trusting a Broken Story

The essence of sin is false love. When we love the wrong things in the wrong order, we’ve put our stock in a broken story. Rather than desiring God above all things, some misplaced desires flood our vision.

If you have some perspective, it’s probably not too difficult to look back and see how these broken stories have manifested in your life. You have pursued (and still pursue) loves that were “ultimate” for you but were also false.

Tristan’s Story

From the moment Tristan first stepped into my car on the way to the coffee shop, he seemed burdened. We ordered drinks, sat down, and the whole situation came pouring out. He was confused about why he continued to look at pornography even though he didn’t want to. Together, we began to unpack the broken story he was trusting in.

During our conversation, it became clear Tristan’s deep longing was to be a husband and a father. The porn was a cheap substitute for the intimacy his soul craved. The porn promised to meet this desire, but it couldn’t. His spirit was left sloshing around in a wake of sewage.

For Tristan, grasping the distinction between the true story of Jesus and the broken story of pornography was a turning point in his internal civil war. He was able to see that his good desire for intimacy was being hijacked and driven down a road that leads to death. So we talked about the road to life and truth. We spent the end of our time exploring the question, “How is God inviting you to you feed your desire for intimacy with him and with others?”

All of us are seduced by broken stories. For a moment, they promise hope, but if we follow them long enough they lead to frustration, pain, and an overwhelming emptiness. So how can we gain perspective in the midst of these story war?

The way we refuse false love is by catching a captivating picture of Jesus as the true and better lover of our souls. And our weapon for fighting the story wars is not willpower; it’s worship. As we fixate on Jesus, we see that he is the real picture of human flourishing. Other stories of our good can’t deliver. So worship (i.e., affection and desire for God) —not willpower—is what kills sin in our lives.

Trusting the Best Story

Actor Jim Carrey has famously said, “I wish everyone could get rich and famous and have everything they ever wanted so that they can see it’s not the answer.” Jim is saying, “Hey, wake up world. What you are chasing won’t make you happy. That story is broken.”

What if we took that advice? What if we allowed the Holy Spirit to begin to expose the emptiness of the stories we regularly trust in? How much more joy would we find in Jesus as we aligned ourselves with the true story of God?We would be free from lying successes, free from false loves, and free from broken stories. We would know the true story, trust the true story, and we would be set free to actually live a better story.

I can tell you that these ideas work with two-year olds. Parents, the beauty of grasping that sin is “loving the wrong things” is your toddler can understand it. I’m able to say things like, “Son, right now you are loving that toy more than your brother.” That really drives at the heart. My encouragement to you is this: help your child see the story war in their own heart. What false loves can you help them identify? When they demand a toy forklift or a snow globe or a skateboard or an iPod or a candy bar you can ask them, “How long will these things make you happy for?”

In our lives, in our families, in our churches, in our culture, may the best story win. The good news is, it will.

—

Sean (@Sean_Post) lives in Maple Valley, WA with his wife and two sons and leads a one-year discipleship experience for young adults called “Adelphia”. He is completing his doctorate in Missional Leadership.

Adapted from Sean’s upcoming GCD Books title The Stories We Live: Discovering the True and Better Way of Jesus. Coming June 2015.

Reconciled At the Table

The way many churches exclude the Lord’s Supper from their regular worship service deeply concerns me. The Lord’s Supper forces the church to look itself in the mirror. When Jesus welcomes the congregation to the table of fellowship, we are confronted with the reality that he is far more welcoming and hospitable than we are. Christians can often be fickle people. On the one hand, this is understandable. Christians have an objective standard from which to judge right and wrong. This is a good thing because Christians have a moral and ethical compass with which we can navigate the swells of an increasingly relativistic society.

On the other hand, this can be a bad thing. Christians are often prone to use God’s objective standards to shun and exclude people when the God they worship is neither shunning nor excluding.

Look around the congregation.

How many people can you count that you would not invite to your table? There are great sinners in the congregation. There are people you don’t like. But all of these people are welcomed to the Lord’s table at the his invitation.

Jesus once told his disciples that he will draw all men to himself when he is lifted up (Jn. 12:32). What happened to Jesus when he was lifted up? He was broken. What happens to the bread when the minister lifts it up before the congregation? It is broken. The Lord’s Supper is much more than an act of remembrance for individual Christians. The Lord’s Supper is a participatory event where all men find themselves drawn to Christ’s broken body.

When Jesus’ body was broken the walls of separation between Jew and gentile, male and female, slave and free, black and white were broken as well (Gal. 3:28). This happens in the Lord’s Supper. People who would not dine together at their own tables are brought together at the Lord’s Table, they are brought together by the broken body of Jesus Christ. At the Lord’s Table, we participate in and show forth the great reconciliation of mankind.

Moreover, because the table is fenced, it is not up to us whether or not our neighbor will participate or not, it is up to use whether we will participate or not. At our own tables, we decide who we will invite and who we will exclude. At the Lord’s table, we are all invited, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28), but we are also told that we are to examine ourselves (1 Cor. 11:28).

When we are invited to the Lord’s Table each week, we are taught to look at our own hearts in regards to fellowship rather than to our neighbor’s faults. Sinful hearts look outward for excuses not to commune with others, sinful hearts turn in on themselves. In the Garden, Adam’s sin was a sin of consumption and blame shifting. When he was confronted, Adam shifted the blame on Eve, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). In the Lord’s Supper, we are invited to eat rather than prohibited. Further, as we participate we are conditioned to remove the plank from our own eye before commenting on the speck in our neighbors (Matt. 7:5).

Look around the congregation.

How many people look just like you? Are they all white (let’s hope not)? Are they all black (let’s hope not)? Are they all republicans or democrats (let’s hope they’re libertarians)? No, there are people from all walks of life, all races, all socioeconomic classes, and all ideologies being drawn to the broken body of Christ.

In a world where selfishness has become a cultural virtue, the Lord’s table is hardly a place to perpetuate selfish interests. At the Lord’s Table, you dine with and commune with people you might never dream of inviting to your own table. But there you are, partaking of the same loaf and drinking from the same cup. In this act much is being proclaimed. Who you eat with says a lot about you and at the Lord’s Table we eat with Jesus, this cannot be overlooked. But while we eat with Jesus we are also eating with other people who are eating with Jesus.

The Lord’s table proclaims not only that we belong to Christ, but also that we belong to one another—all our differences and problems included. God’s people are not static in our relationships. Both vertically with God and horizontally with each other our relationships are dynamic. The Lord’s Supper images the dynamic nature to the life of Christ’s Body. We are growing, albeit with growing pains, further and further into the image of Christ, the head of the Body (Eph. 4: 15-16).

The church is a body of many members. Further, God’s word serves as a two edged sword cutting to the hearts of his people (Heb. 4:12) who have become living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1). Throughout each service God’s word has cut His church into pieces just as the levitical sacrifices are cut into pieces (the sermon). But the service does not end here. The church must learn that we are only broken by God’s Word because the Word of God was broken for us: “This is my body broken for you.” Moreover, as the body of many members (the church) partakes of the broken body of Christ we are made whole again by our participation in the one loaf (1 Cor. 10:17).

Perhaps the reason there is so much strife in the church nowadays is because we are not communing with one another as we ought. Our ultimate allegiances need to be formed not by who we would invite to our tables but by whom Jesus, weekly, invites to his.

Just food for thought.

—

Michael and his wife Caroline live in Athens, GA. Michael blogs weekly at Torrey Gazette. You can follow Michael on Twitter @_Michael_Hansen.

The Forgotten Essential of the Kingdom

We are starting a series that will explore the intersection between beauty, discipleship, mission, and the Kingdom of God. We will answers questions like: Why is beauty important for Christian living? Can we get by without it? What does the gospel teach us about beauty? How does the beauty of God inform lesser beauties? What is beauty in the Kingdom of God? This is part one. —

We hiked through the tangled woods searching for something beautiful. The trees had changed. We started on an open path with towering trees and far reaching boughs. As the path made its way closer to the water, the trees changed becoming smaller and reaching over the path which narrowed. These branches were bent and gnarled like the hands of my grandmother.

As the path descended, the air become cooler. We also heard the gurgling of water which grew into a growl as we approached our destination—a magnificent waterfall with a devastating 420-foot drop. This natural wonder is not the kind you walk by without awe at its beauty and danger. It demands you stop. We found a rock at the edge of the river looking over the waterfall and sat. We admired the beauty and danger of this tour de force of water.

Christians above all should be the kind of people who stop in awe of beauty.“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). The earth below and heaven above teach us how to declare the glory of God. They are beautiful for him. Yet some Christians think very little of beauty. Or maybe it’s not that they think little of it, but they don’t see where beauty intersects with their ordinary life. Our world is full of beauty. We have just lost the eyes to see it all around us. We are like a man who can only see the world in muted colors. We cannot live without beauty. We shouldn’t live without it.

Experiencing Beauty

In a recent article “Why Do We Experience Awe?” in The New York Times, Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner get at just this,

Why do humans experience awe? Years ago, one of us, Professor Keltner, argued (along with the psychologist Jonathan Haidt) that awe is the ultimate “collective” emotion, for it motivates people to do things that enhance the greater good. Through many activities that give us goose bumps — collective rituals, celebration, music and dance, religious gatherings and worship — awe might help shift our focus from our narrow self-interest to the interests of the group to which we belong.

They go on to introduce new research that may backup this initial thesis. In the research, people who regularly experienced awe in their life were more willing to help others. And it didn’t have to be ridiculously hard to reach Mount Everest type beauty. One group in the study spent time “on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, which has a spectacular grove of Tasmanian blue gum eucalyptus trees, some with heights exceeding 200 feet — a potent source of everyday awe for anyone who walks by.” This research tells us what Christians have been teaching for millennia, but many have forgotten: Beauty empowers love of neighbor. Let’s smooth the wrinkles even more: Beauty energizes love of God and, therefore, love of neighbor—because God is beauty and all beauty ultimately has its origins in his divine perfections. In the third century, St. Basil wrote, “Let us recognize the One Who transcends in His beauty all things."[1] And in the sixth century, St. Maximus the Confessor states,

Nothing so much as love brings together those who have been sundered and produces in them an effective union of will and purpose. Love is distinguished by the beauty of recognizing the equal value of all men. Love is born in a man when his soul's powers—that is, his intelligence, incensive power and desire—are concentrated and unified around the divine. Those who by grace have come to recognized the equal value of all men in God's sight and who engrave His beauty on their memory, possess an ineradicable longing for divine love, for such love is always imprinting this beauty on their intellect. (Philokalia, II)

Seeing the beauty all around us opens our eyes to seeing the beauty of the imago dei in all humans. In The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis plucks this same string:

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

Beauty Must Not be Ignored

Some Christians today might consider spending a day hiking through the woods a waste. Some might be too busy to stop to gaze at 200-foot-tall trees. They might finding reading great fiction boring or might say, “I just don’t have time.” They might scoff at spending money at a museum. Or laugh off traveling to the Grand Canyon to sit and wonder at its terrible beauty. Others may want to do these things, but not have the means. Others might not see the importance. Beauty, however, is all around us and must not be ignored. It is essential for making, maturing, and multiplying disciples of Jesus Christ.

The same New York Times article ends:

We believe that awe deprivation has had a hand in a broad societal shift that has been widely observed over the past 50 years: People have become more individualistic, more self-focused, more materialistic and less connected to others. To reverse this trend, we suggest that people insist on experiencing more everyday awe, to actively seek out what gives them goose bumps, be it in looking at trees, night skies, patterns of wind on water or the quotidian nobility of others — the teenage punk who gives up his seat on public transportation, the young child who explores the world in a state of wonder, the person who presses on against all odds.

Christians, we must insist on experiencing more beauty—even in the smallest ways like sharing acts of kindness or admiring that “mundane” summer lightening storm. Find beauty wherever you can and stand in awe.

Beauty and Sadness

But what do we do when the most beautiful things in our world are littered with sadness? What happens when a mother dies giving birth to a child? What happens when a terrorists group destroys an ancient and awe inspiring cultural artifact? What happens when war breaks out and priceless art is destroyed? What happens when a loved one dies and you cannot see the beauty in that thing you once shared with them? Because truth and beauty cannot be divorced for now, Christians must acknowledge this uneasy union between beauty and brokenness. Sometimes we need permission to experience beauty in the midst of our sadness and suffering. When sadness intersects with beauty, gaze at the cross of Christ for permission. It embodies beauty and brokenness. J. R. R. Tolkien called the cross the ultimate eucatastrophe (eu = good and catastrophe you know). There we have the brutal, de-humanizing Roman cross and the Savior of the world sacrificing himself for our sins. The truth is we live in that kind of world and our Savior came to show us how to find joy in its midst. The writer of Hebrews says,

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. –Hebrews 12:1-2 (italics mine)

This tension then between beauty and brokenness creates more longing for a true and lasting beauty, for the kingdom of Jesus Christ to come fully to this earth. Until that day, we cry out “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is heaven.” When the Kingdom is fully realized, all sadness will be undone and all things beautiful will be eternal. We will gaze at the beautiful unfiltered by sadness. We will truly see beauty because in the new heaven and new earth the King will return in all his beauty and majesty and his presence on earth will change everything forever.

Until that day we pursue the beauty we have. Not just for its own sake, but because God himself is beautiful, because beauty moves us with compassion for our neighbors, and because it creates longing for true and lasting beauty. Do not treat beauty as a luxury or something far off. Find beauty where you are and take the time to stand in awe of it. Consider how much more work we have to do in the world as we strive for the Kingdom coming.

It is meet and right to hymn Thee, to bless Thee, to praise Thee, to give thanks unto Thee, and to worship Thee in every place of Thy dominion: for Thou art God ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever existing and eternally the same, Thou and Thine Only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit. — St. John Chrysostom

[1] All quotations from the Church Fathers come from http://www.antiochian.org/node/23896

---

Mathew B. Sims is the Editor-in-Chief at Exercise.com and has authored, edited, and contributed to several books including A Household Gospel, We Believe: Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms for Worship, A Guide for Advent, Make, Mature, Multiply, and A Guide for Holy Week. Mathew, LeAnn (his wife), and his daughters Claire, Maddy, and Adele live in Taylors, SC at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains with their Airdale Terrier. They attend Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA). Visit MathewBryanSims.com!

SaveSave

Can We Do All Things?

It’s easy to misinterpret and accidentally use verses out of context. We all do it. Peter even tells us that Paul is hard to understand (2 Pt. 3:16)! However, one passage I see gets misused more than others. Paul writes to the Corinthians:

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body… Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. –1 Corinthians 6: 12-20

Let’s talk about how many people interpret this passage. By “all things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable,” many people assume Paul is saying we have the freedom to do quite a lot, but that we just sometimes shouldn’t. We are not really bound by any rules, but sometimes it is unhelpful to follow our freedoms. We might have the right to drink, per se, but sometimes it is not profitable for us.

That sounds good on the surface, and may even have some truth to it in other places in the Bible (Romans 12, for example), but this interpretation has many problems. First, is it true? Can we do all things? Is the same Paul who says he is bound by the law of Christ (1 Cor. 9:21) and gives us multiple letters full of commands saying “all things are lawful for me?” Is he really saying I can do everything (murder? sexual immorality?), but that I just shouldn’t because it’s not profitable? That’s probably not the best interpretation of this passage.

Second, these people then interpret verse 18 to say that sexual immorality is somehow worse than all other sins. Paul does say, “Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.” In other words, all sins are bad, but sexual immorality is against one’s own body, so it’s especially devious. Is this the right interpretation? Are there no other sins that are against your body (suicide, gluttony, cutting, drunkenness, etc.)? Is sexual sin worse than, say, assaulting someone?

This passage brings up so many questions. What does Paul mean by “All things are lawful for me?” What does he mean by “Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food?” What does he mean by saying, “Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body?” Does this make sexual sin some kind of “special” sin that is somehow worse than all the others? Why is this passage so difficult to interpret?!?!

Is Paul Stating His Own Position?

The problem with this passage (and the reason that it is so confusing) is because most people assume Paul is stating his own position. However, this text becomes clear once we realize he is quoting the position of the Corinthians then refuting it.

Before we delve into this further, three pieces of background information are needed:

• Slogans were as popular then as they are now. Our culture is rich with slogans. Nike has “Just Do It.” McDonald’s slogan used to be “Have you had your break today?” Now it’s “I’m lovin’ it.” Kay Jewelers has “Every kiss begins with Kay.” We are all familiar with slogans. In fact, we even have cultural slogans in the U.S. today. “To each his own,” “Don’t judge me,” “YOLO” (You only live once!) and many others. They had slogans in Corinth too. Some of which we will see in just a moment.
• The Corinthians separated their spiritual life from their physical life. Corinth was located in Greece and had been intellectually shaped by the philosophy of Plato who radically separated the concept of one’s soul from one’s body. Because of this dichotomy, those in the Corinthian church thought that they could commit sexual immorality with their body because it didn’t affect their spiritual life.
• The Greek New Testament was originally written with no punctuation marks, in all capital letters, with no spacing. Therefore, in English, the sentence: “Bob said, ‘I’ll go to the store tomorrow.’” Would look like this: BOBSAIDILLGOTOTHESTORETOMORROW

In fact, it looks much like a hashtag (#) on Twitter today. This means that we don’t have quotation marks to look for in Greek and have to discern who is speaking by context.

Using Their Arguments Against Them

With all that in mind, we are now ready to interpret this passage. The key to getting it right is to realize that Paul is quoting the Corinthians then refutes them and is not only giving his own thoughts. The ESV translation is helpful because it puts quotation marks around certain phrases (although it misses some other needed quotations). Here is what is going on, step by step.

The Corinthians say: “All things are lawful for me” (i.e. I can do whatever I want).

Paul refutes: “But not all things are profitable” (i.e. no you can’t).

The Corinthians say: “All things are lawful for me” (i.e. I can do whatever I want).

Paul refutes: “But I will not be mastered by anything” (i.e. you Corinthians are being enslaved by your sin and shouldn’t be).

The Corinthians say: “Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them” (i.e. if you have sexual organs you are supposed to use them).

To summarize thus far, the Corinthians falsely believe they can commit sexual immorality because 1.) All things are lawful for them and 2.) They have been given sexual organs to use them. Paul refutes them at every turn.

That’s verses 12-14. What about verse 18? Now, this could be a quotation from Paul. If so, then he is showing how sexual sin uniquely unites you to another person because you become “one flesh” with them. No other sin unites your whole being to another person like sexual immorality. However, other people see this phrase as a Corinthian quote. If so, then Paul is refuting their position. If it is a Corinthian slogan, then there should probably be quotation marks around the phrase as well: “Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body.” In this reading this is not Paul’s position; it’s the Corinthian’s. Also, it is helpful to note the word “other” is not actually in the Greek. The translators added it to clarify what they thought the verse meant. But the addition makes sexual sin sound like a “special” kind of sin. You’ll see this if you look at the NASB quotation I used above because the word “other” is in italics. Verse 18 literally says “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body.” Did you catch that? Every sin! If this is a Corinthian slogan then the Corinthians are saying that sins committed with the body don’t affect the soul and, therefore, all sins are outside the body.

If this Paul’s position the problem is he contradicts himself later when he says “but the immoral man sins against his own body.” So, all together, when we understand that Paul is quoting Corinthian slogans this confusing passage in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 looks like this:

Corinthians: I can do everything

Paul: No you can’t

Corinthians: I can do everything

Paul: No you can’t

Corinthians: If you have genitals, you are supposed to use them whenever you want.

Paul: No you shouldn’t

Corinthians: Every sin that a man commits is outside his body and doesn’t affect his spiritual life.

Paul: Sexual sin affects both your body and your spiritual life.

Paul is having a back and forth dialogue with the cultural and religious assumptions of the Corinthians. It is just hard to see because Greek didn’t use punctuation marks.

Doesn’t that make more sense? Isn’t that a better (and more probable) understanding of what Paul is saying?

Now, the idea of Corinthian slogans and quotations in this chapter is much debated. More research remains must be done. I personally still wrestle with verse 18 and whether or not Paul is separating the effects of becoming “one flesh” with another in sexual sin from other sins. However, knowing that Paul is quoting the Corinthians here helps us make more sense of God’s word to us in this difficult and multi-faceted letter. Though we are free from the Mosaic Law in every way we are still under the “Law of Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21) and all things are not actually lawful for us.

What About Discipleship?

Why write about this on a blog about discipleship? The answer: Holiness is a key aspect to growing in your faith.Not only will your spiritual growth be hindered by sin (sexual sin included), but you will also walk in less joy and freedom if you take up the Corinthian’s slogans. Now, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus’ lordship provides you with a loving God who forgives your sin no matter how much you mess up. We don’t “do better” by trying to do better. We “do better” by realizing that God loves us because of Jesus even if we don’t “do better.” We strive for holiness but it is a grace-motivated effort—not to make God love us but because he already does.

So make every effort to fight against sin. Get counseling, confess your dark secrets, get rid of your computer, cut off your right hand. Do whatever you must do to kill sin. All the while know that Christ has already and ultimately defeated sin and he loves you as you battle it. Whoever the Son sets free is free indeed—that includes freedom from minimizing sin like the Corinthians.

—

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

Our Freedom to Make Jesus Famous

In the months leading up to my daughter’s birth, I contemplated what it would be like to raise a child. I thought, if I can barely remember to put deodorant on in the mornings, how could I possibly steward another life? More importantly, how will I lead her to cherish Jesus? What if she one day rejects the gospel? I felt the enormous weight of Deuteronomy 6 where God commands his people to teach his statutes “diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut. 6:7). Raising an eternal soul was, and still is, terrifying.

The Bible tells us that the home is the most immediate context for discipleship. I am called to love God with all my heart, soul, and strength and to teach this diligently to my little girl. My wife and I have the unique mission of raising our daughter in a gospel-saturated home, reminding her about what God has done when we sit, when we walk, when we lie down, and when we rise. This is a beautiful calling, and totally beyond me.

When thinking of raising my daughter, I’m reminded that Jesus’s call for us to make disciples of all nations can also feel like a daunting task (Matt. 28:18–20). We wonder, how could I tell another sinner about Jesus when I myself am a sinner? What if I don’t say the right things? What if my own imperfections and foibles deter them from believing the gospel’s power?This calling, too, can be terrifying.

Beware the Obsession

I love being a dad. I thank God for my little girl every day. But as with any great blessing from God, the blessing of a child can make us want to squeeze too tight and never let go.

I have already been tempted to shirk the “prefab parenting models” in an attempt to raise my daughter the “right” way. There’s both an internal pressure within my own heart and an external pressure from the world to have a child who turns out perfect. I want her to love Jesus and to desire the supremacy of God above all things, but these pressures, and my inordinate concerns, often command me to focus on her conduct more than her heart. I hear others complain about unruly, bratty kids and I think, “That won’t be my girl!” This can be consuming.

When we invest ourselves in the lives of others, this tension is no different. We experience the extreme joy of God’s call to show them the ways of Jesus. Discipleship is wonderful. We feel responsible for their souls, and we long to see their lives radically transformed by the gospel. One of the greatest phenomena in God’s creation is watching the caterpillar become a butterfly, and this type of spectacle is beautiful to witness in the heart of an unbeliever.

The dangers lie in basing your own worth on the actions of those in whom you invest. It is tempting to allow our self-esteem to rise and fall based on another’s failures and successes. If the person you’re discipling fails morally, it is easy to blame yourself. If they show impressive growth theologically, it’s easy to congratulate yourself on the extraordinary ability to relay the deep things of God. This, too, can be consuming.

Certainly, there are many ways we can go wrong in discipling others. The sin that corrupts our hearts can lead us to dark places. Yet when we look to the cross, the hope we find in Jesus can take away all the anxieties and dangers of placing the results of discipleship on our own shoulders.

Pointing to Christ

In any discipleship relationship, whether our children or our neighbors, it is imperative that we continually point them to Jesus. And when we find ourselves getting rusty in this work, that’s when we need the gospel all the more.

Eugene Peterson says that “discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less attention to our own.” We were saved by grace through faith that was not, and is not, of our own power (Eph. 2:8). In the cross we see our need, how desperate we are, and the ultimate display of God’s love for us. The cross that we proclaim is also the cross that frees us from mistaking discipleship to be about us. This is the good news that we must keep at the center.

If we’re not seeing this glory, we cannot expect to lead anyone else to see it. At least, not in a way that will truly matter. However, Paul reminds us that “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). If we recognize this, the shackles of self-affirmation will no longer weigh us down. We can joyfully disciple others with the expectation that Jesus’s life-changing gospel will prevail regardless of our shortcomings.

Whether I’m holding my daughter or talking to my neighbor, I’m freed to make Jesus’s name famous rather than my own.

—

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.

Adapted from an article originally posted at Desiring God.

3 Meditations on Participation in Wasteful Worship

Televangelists. Is there any symbol of selfish religion more cliché than an over-emotive televangelists selling promises and prayers through the airwaves? Many of us see the televangelist and balk.

As Christians, we are disgusted or ashamed or angry or some kind of combination of all these and more. But as much as we’d like to distance ourselves from this kind of double-minded religion, it ought to hit close to home. Inside each one of us is a televangelist eager to use the means of religion for his own ends. The story of Mary anointing Jesus in John 12 confronts that darkness within us. Here’s the story:

Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it. Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” – John 12:1–8

In this story, we see an outwardly religious person bent on using religion for his own gain shame an outsider for her extravagant worship . . . all in the name of religion. Mary’s wasteful worship is nothing more than an offense to Judas. John, of course, opens up the hood of Judas’ heart and we see the engine of double-minded religion exposed as greed. Judas’ heart is contrasted with that of Mary’s who, being enamored with Jesus, is the image of single-minded devotion.

CONFRONTATION

Mary’s wasteful act brings out Judas’ corrupt and pragmatic heart. Whereas Mary understands the importance of Jesus’ presence and his limited time on earth, Judas focuses on the price of the perfume. Notice how he automatically prices the perfume: It’s 300 denarii?! If you can’t do the denarii math in your head, that was about one year’s wages. This is a significant amount of money! And Judas, focusing on the money, misses the priority of Jesus and the importance of his presence. Judas’ presence in this story is more than a way for us to feel self-righteous (“at least I’m not like that Judas!”). As we point the finger at Judas, we can’t help but point back into our hearts.

As much as we’d like to remove ourselves from Judas’ corrupt pragmatism, how often do we use religion for our own ends? I live in the American South. We are known for getting drunk on Saturday and attending church on Sunday. Do we think Sunday somehow cancels out the weekend? We use religion to offload guilt and feel better about ourselves. Or maybe you think yourself better or more special than others who don’t come to church on Sunday. You, like Judas, are using religion for your own ends of self-justification.

Like the corrupt televangelist on the screen using religion for their greedy gains, each Sunday we find ourselves in the pew using religion for our own greedy gain. We are Judas.

COSTS

Wasteful worship confronts our dark hearts, but it’s more than that as well. Wasteful worship is costly. For Mary, this perfume was tangibly a great cost. The amount of time and money put into this little jar is astounding. It came all the way from India, and some even think it was possible this was a family heirloom, passed down from generations.

This cost her reputation. If she was married, letting her hair down was a massive cultural taboo. Even if she was single, her act would have scandalized. People would have been talking about how inappropriate Mary’s affection was probably for weeks after this event. Though it was common for guests at banquets to be anointed and for them to wipe off excess perfume on others’ hair, that was a job reserved for the lowest servant. Mary is willingly taking a humble position at great cost to her own reputation.

This act also cost Mary emotionally. She didn’t just robotically go through motions of anointing; she is overcome and all in. Her heart is engaged with her hands.

Mary teaches us that worship rightfully cost. It cost our money, time, reputation, and emotions. We don’t mind costs when it comes to things we love. We willingly buy gifts and spend time with those we love. We risk what others might say about us for the sake of what or who we love. If we truly are engaged with whatever we desire, our emotions will follow suit. For Mary, the cost wasn’t calculated like it was for Judas. She was in awe of Jesus. Jesus had raised her brother Lazarus from the dead! This is the Son of God!

CALLING

Mary’s worship was a waste . . . a glorious waste. As quick as Judas is to shame her, Jesus defends her. Jesus is on the side of the wasteful worshipper. He tells Judas to back off, then gives the reason for his defense. “You will always have ministry opportunities with you, ” he says, “but I will not always be with you.” Jesus rebukes Judas’ priorities of work over worship, instructing us in our ultimate calling as humans—to worship our Lord.

Jesus then re-focuses this God-approved waste toward his impending death. The shadow of the cross looms over this banquet. Jesus on the cross confronts our greed and guilt that lead to death. He takes them on himself and puts those sins to death. Jesus, his body on the cross, pays the ultimate cost with his own life. This was his calling. As an act of worship in obedience to the Father, the Son offered up his life and died that we could live.

Jesus confronts death through his own death, that we may not die. This is the ultimate waste. He wasted his status as the Son of God, instead of elevating himself as he humbled himself. He wasted his power as the second Person of the Trinity; he could’ve crushed his opponents. He wasted his blood on those who spit at, cursed, and delighted to see him die. We get to enjoy the blessings of Jesus’ wasteful worship, presented to the Father as a fragrant offering for his satisfaction. The wasteful death of the Son of God allows us to now participate in wasteful worship, freed from our corrupt pragmatism.

This is, after all, our ultimate trajectory. John’s visions of what the new heavens and earth is like is an overwhelming image of wasteful worship—singing, feasting, enjoying the presence of the Lamb. What a waste! A glorious, hopeful, and joy-filled waste worthy of our lives today and forever.

—

Greg Willson is participating in God's work of renewal, planting churches in Manchester, England, creating music and writing about those topics and more. Follow him on Twitter: @gregoriousdubs.

Remembering Pentecost For Mission Today

Few things incite heated debate among evangelicals quicker than the mention of Pentecost. A mere reference to Acts 2 invites detailed discussions on the nature of glossolalia that disrupts even the best unity. In a church culture undeniably divided over the details of Pentecost, it’s important to remember the ultimate redemptive-historical significance of Pentecost and the implications it has for the mission of the church.

The Significance of Pentecost For Redemptive History

Pentecost marked the beginning of the end. It was the final event in the saving career of Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of the long-awaited promise of the outpouring of God’s Spirit that initiated the last days (Joel 2:28-32; Ezek. 36:22-32). Jesus lived a perfect Spirit-filled life, died in the place of sinners as a substitutionary sacrifice, was raised from the dead on the third day, and was exalted to the right hand of the Father after forty days. He received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father and ten days later, on the day of Pentecost, poured out the Spirit upon all those who were gathered together (Acts 2:1-4).

Salvation history would never be the same.

The outpouring of the Spirit completed the inauguration of a new era in God’s redemptive program—the messianic age or the age of the Spirit—that begun in the first coming of Christ. This epoch stretches from Pentecost until the Lord’s second coming and is characterized by the radical evangelization of the nations. During these last days, all who repent of sin and believe in the Lord Jesus become participants in the blessings of this new age.

When it comes to Pentecost, I’d urge you not to miss the forest for the trees. What you believe about the glossolalia or the work of the Holy Spirit prior to Pentecost is a secondary matter. The defining feature of Acts 2 is the outpouring of God’s Spirit in fulfillment of the new covenant promises. Oh, how God’s people had longed for this day! One flawed generation after another testified to the fact that fallen humans could never keep God’s law; they could never carry out his mission. They needed more than the law; they needed a new heart that desired to keep the law. They needed more than a mission; they needed a new Spirit to empower them for God’s mission.

Acts 2 clearly conveys that that day had arrived; the long-promised outpouring of the Spirit had finally come as a result of Jesus’ work. A new age had dawned and now people from every nation under heaven could experience the indwelling presence of the Spirit and receive a new heart leading to new life. These people—saved by grace and marked by the Spirit—were then tasked with and empowered for the greatest mission ever conceived.

The Implications of Pentecost For Life On Mission

Christian discipleship would be unthinkable, even impossible, were it not for the coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Before he ascended Jesus told his disciples,

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” – Acts 1:8

Remember the disciples spent three years doing ministry with Jesus before his crucifixion, forty days listening to him speak about the kingdom of God after his resurrection, ten days devoting themselves to prayer after the ascension and yet—and yet!—it was only after Pentecost that they began to boldly proclaim the Word of God in power and call all people to repentance without wavering. The differences in the disciples’ lives and their ability to carry out Jesus’ mission pre-Pentecost and post-Pentecost are striking. This is because the outpouring of the Spirit transforms the people of God. Look at what happens in Acts 2:

• Believers become an empowered people (2:14-40).
• Believers become a missionary people (Acts 2:41; 47).
• Believers become a unified people (Acts 2:42-47).

As present-day disciples of Jesus we need to realize, we are no different from those first disciples. We too would be powerless to carry out Jesus’ mission apart from the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Great Commission would feel like a mission destined to fail from the beginning were it not for the empowering presence of God’s Spirit. Praise God he did send his promised Spirit! Because of Pentecost we are now the empowered, missional, and unified people of God. We are commissioned by Christ to make disciples of all nations and equipped by the Spirit to live out that call.

Today, as you seek to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and make disciples of those whom God has entrusted to your care, don’t live as if Pentecost isn’t a reality. Many of you are excessively burdened by Jesus’ call to make disciples because you are trying to do it in your own strength. You are trying to give life without acknowledging the Life-Giver; you are trying to impart understanding without relying on the Spirit of Truth; you are trying to witness to the world without drawing from the Source of Power. You look all too much like the disbelieving, scattered disciples during Christ’s passion rather than the empowered people of God sent on mission.

Many of you need to repent of your self-reliance and man-centered methods of discipleship. Human programs are a poor substitute for the power of the Spirit of God. Turn from those ways and learn to listen to the leading of the Spirit through God’s Word and prayer. Daily ask Christ to fill you afresh with his Spirit so that you might be empowered to live life on mission. As you remember Pentecost, acknowledge the redemptive-historical significance of it for disciple-making and celebrate the fact that you have been equipped with power from on high to be Christ’s witnesses to the ends of the earth.

—

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

The Local Church: Love It or Leave It?

There is a trend, especially among younger generations, of people who are saying goodbye to the local church. We’ve heard statistics of those who leave because they no longer believe. But, surprisingly, others leave because they say they want more of God in their lives and the church just isn’t doing it for them.

Looking for God Elsewhere

Several influential Christians are among this group, including Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz and other books that speak meaningfully to younger believers. In 2014, Miller shared candidly on his blog that he did not attend church very often because he connected more with God in other ways, like through nature and through his work.

In a follow-up blog post, he added:

I’d say half of the most impactful people I know, who love Jesus and tear up at the mention of His name, who reach out to the poor and lonely and are fundamentally sound in their theology, who create institutions that feed hundreds of thousands, do not attend a traditional church service. Many of them even speak at churches, but they have no home church and don’t long for one.[1]

Why are so many believers dissatisfied with the church?

Often, their disenchantment with the church is justified. Instead of going to church, they are eager to be the church. Instead of being a face in the crowd, they are eager to be a known and needed member of a community. Instead of being passive observers of an event, they are eager to be active contributors to a shared mission. Instead of listening to a preacher pontificate and tell stories, they are eager to be welcomed into a Story that is bigger than the preacher. Instead of being around people who “accept” Jesus but who seem bored with him, they want to be around people who come alive at the mention of his name.

Where the local church is not fulfilling this vision, the temptation to “look for God elsewhere” is understandable. But is it the best solution? Most importantly, would Jesus, the Bridegroom and Head of the church, favor a churchless Christianity?

Romanticizing the Early Church

Many who are disillusioned with the church today romanticize the early church, not realizing how broken things were then as well. Take Corinth, for example. As the most prominently represented church in Paul’s letters, Corinth was also a dysfunctional mess. Factions, harshness, divisions, adultery, lawsuits, divorce, elitism, classism, and neglect of the poor were just some of their issues. The famous “love chapter” in 1 Corinthians 13 was written less as inspiration and more as a rebuke, because each love attribute was something that the Corinthians were not. They had trampled on the ideal of what Jesus’ church should be—an infectious community of prayer, truth, love, justice, and mission (Acts 2:42-47).

But Paul never gave up on Corinth. Instead of walking away, he pressed in. As he sharply corrected them, he also encouraged, affirmed, loved, prayed for, and thanked God for them. Like Jesus, he saw a broken church and envisioned beauty. He saw a sinful church and envisioned sainthood. He saw a band of misfits but envisioned a radiant, perfected bride. And he knew that God wanted him to participate in loving this church to life.

Whose Wisdom . . . Ours or God’s?

At her best and at her worst, Jesus loves his church. He will build his church and nothing will prevail against her (Matthew 16:18). He laid down his life for her (John 10:11). He will never leave or forsake her (Hebrews 13:5). He will complete the work he started in her (Philippians 1:6). In other words, Jesus knows nothing about having more of God by having less of the church. To the contrary, Jesus is married to the church. The church is his chosen, beloved Wife.

What does it say about us if the church is good enough for the Father to adopt, for the Spirit to inhabit, and for Jesus to marry…but not good enough for us to join?

In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that those who love their dream of Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of Christian community. He also said that the church, which may at times seem weak and trifling to us, is great and magnificent to God. Do we believe this? When tempted to hit eject on the local church, will we trust the infinite, perfect wisdom of God or our own finite, fallen instincts?

The wisdom of God says that we need the local church. This is both declared and assumed throughout the Scriptures, which don’t define the church as a free-flowing, self-directed spiritual experience, but as an organized, rooted, local expression of the body of Christ. Within this structure, things like oversight and care from ordained officers (pastors, elders, deacons), participation in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, weekly Lord’s Day gatherings with Scripture, preaching, singing and prayers, one-anothering and generosity practices, spiritual gift deployment empowering members to serve the body, evangelism, and neighbor love through deeds of mercy and justice, are assumed.

Jesus’ Bride . . . Also Our Mother

Tony Campolo said, “…you dare not decide that you don’t need the church. Christ’s church is his bride…and his love for her makes him faithful to her even when she is not faithful to him.”[2]

The church was God’s idea, God’s plan for His Kingdom on earth. As St. Cyprian said, “One cannot have God as his Father who does not have the church as his Mother,” and as Saint Augustine once said, “The church may be a whore, but she is still my mother.”

A Family, Not a Club

Family is the chief metaphor the Bible uses when it talks about the church. The church isn’t an exclusive, monolithic club. It’s a gathering of wonderfully and sometimes irritatingly diverse, divinely-selected brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, grandmas and grandpas. A dysfunctional family at times indeed, but a family nonetheless.

Family stays together. When one member is weak, the others lift her up. When another is difficult, the others confront him. When another is leading on mission, the others join, support, pray, and cheer her on.

Strength in Diversity

By design, God chose the church to be as diverse as possible. At Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, we have described our community this way:

We are builders and baby boomers, gen-xers and millennials, locals and internationals, conservatives and progressives, educators and athletes, struggling doubters and committed believers, engineers and artists, introverts and extroverts, healers and addicts, CEO’s and homemakers, affluent and bankrupt, single and married, happy and hurting, lonely and connected, stressed-out and carefree, private and public schoolers, PhD’s and people with special needs, experts and students, saints and sinners.

This isn’t merely a written description. It is an actual representation of our local church body. It is sometimes messy. In its messiness, it is always awesome.

We want to celebrate and learn from differences instead of dividing over them. We believe the best expressions of community happen when people come together with varying perspectives, personalities, cultures, and experiences.

A School for Learning to Love

Part of the Christian experience is learning to love people who are not like us. In the church, we are given a community of complicated, beloved-by-God, always in process, fearfully and wonderfully made, sometimes faltering and inefficient people we are called to love.

Including ourselves.

Reconciliation, peacemaking, relational perseverance, and loving the unlovely are difficult but necessary steps of discipleship. Without these things, we remain stunted in our spiritual growth. Our goal in Christian community is not just tolerance of others, but authentic love and relationship. In order to learn to truly love, we must stay in the Christian community and do the hard work of resolving conflict, redeeming differences, and building unity.

The Church Needs You . . . and You Need Her

As it is a family, the church is also a body. Without you, the church is missing an eye or an ear or a hand. Without you, the church is not whole.

Each of us is made in the image of God. As we live in community with one another, we grow in knowledge and experience of God by being with others who bear his image. As we learn from and rub off on one another we become better, more whole, more Christ-like, and ultimately better-for-the-world versions of ourselves.

If you are dissatisfied or disillusioned with the local church, don’t leave it. If the church stinks to you, then change its diapers. Make it better. Pray for it. Bless it. Serve it. Love it to life.

In the process, you may discover that it’s not only that the local church needs you. You may also discover that you need the local church as well.

[1] Donald Miller, “Why I Don’t Go to Church Very Often, a Follow Up Blog” Storyline, Feb 5, 2014 – http://storylineblog.com/2014/02/05/why-i-dont-go-to-church-very-often-a-follow-up-blog/

[2] Tony Campolo, Letters to a Young Evangelical (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008).

—

Scott Sauls is senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and author of Jesus Outside the Lines: A Way Forward for Those Who are Tired of Taking Sides. You can connect with Scott at scottsauls.com or on Twitter at @scottsauls.

Originally published at scottsauls.com. Adapted from Jesus Outside the Lines: A Way Forward for Those Who Are Tired of Taking Sides copyright ©2015 by Scott Sauls. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

What We Build Will Be Tested by Fire

“Alright guys,” I instructed, “I want you to build something beautiful with the materials in front of you. But whatever you build has to be able to stand the test.” For an hour these young men created out of the materials I’d provided them. They could build with any combination of modeling clay, copper pipe, lumber, cardboard, rocks, and a host of other materials.

When time was up we surveyed their work. Some creations had an artistic flair; others looked like child’s attempt to mimic a Michelangelo piece. Some projects were towered vertically—miniature Babels. It was clear much effort had been devoted just to keep the creation upright.

With each young man still wearing a smile of pride and accomplishment, I poured lighter fluid on each project and lit them on fire. This fire was the test I told them was coming. The aftermath was entertaining. Besides the shock on the faces of the guys, it was fascinating to watch their creations burn. Depending on what they had used to build, some had more and some had less of their work remaining.

Now before you start calling me some kind of psychopathic pyromaniac, let’s be clear. The scene I created that afternoon wasn’t an original. Our construction project was actually designed to mirror a biblical text from 1 Corinthians 3:10-15.

Your Life is a Building Project Followed by Arson

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. —1 Corinthians 3:10-15

Paul is saying to the church at Corinth, “Friends I laid a foundation for you. I brought you the message of Jesus. Now it’s up to you to build on that foundation—for better or for worse.”

Just like my students built with different materials, every Christian, is building on the foundation they have received in Christ. However, Paul surprises us when he says what we build with our lives will be tested by fire.

There are two judgments described in Scripture. One for believers in Jesus (the judgment seat of Christ), and another for those who have not believed (the great white throne judgment).

According to Paul, your life is a building project followed by arson. Jesus is offering us a heads-up that we will stand before him face-to-face. During this conversation, the quality of the story you lived will be revealed. (It is important to note that for Christians, this conversation does not result in a verdict of heaven or hell but rather, reward or loss of reward.)

I’m prone to view my life as a smattering of disconnected parts. I can survey the different areas—husband, father, professor, coach, student, writer, athlete—and things seem kind of hodgepodge. But the Bible says that my life is progressing towards a singular and united outcome. That product is the finished picture of the story I have lived. That story, this lifelong building project, will either leave me smiling after my conversation with Jesus or it will leave me weeping and he will wipe away those tears.

So what are the materials we have to build with? What is the “gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw” that Paul refers to?

The answer runs deeper than the good things we do or don’t do. The story you live will not ultimately be the sum product of your behavior. The story you live is actually molded by the subterranean desires that drive you forward. When you stand before Jesus, he will test the purity of your affections. Were you pursuing false loves or responding to the Lover of your soul? Did you build your life around the true story of the gospel or around a hollow and broken story?

The most important task any of us can ever undertake is to launch a full investigation into these questions. What you find through this personal inquiry might change the trajectory of your life.

 Life as a House

The film Life as a House opens with a stunning panorama of the southern California coastline. We see the sun rise as it peeks over the cliffs and you can hear the waves crashing below. The camera pans and we are introduced to the main character who is facing the ocean, stretching, and urinating off the cliff.

George Monroe is the owner of this magnificent property and his neighbors hate him for it. Surrounded by pristine mansions, his embarrassing shack is in disrepair (and no functioning toilet, thus, the need for the cliff). The great irony is that George is an architect. However, he hates his job. He is divorced and alienated from his drug-loving son.

Early on in the movie, George collapses after being fired. Doctors discover that he has terminal cancer. Mere months remain in his life. With the end in view, he sets to work on the project he’s always dreamed of—pouring his energy and skill into the house. He enlists the help of his son Sam who violently opposes the idea but is forced to help by his mother. Sam moves in for the summer.

George has not shared the news of his cancer with anyone, but as his condition worsens the secret leaks. Sam begins to soften towards his father. As the cancer slowly kills George, his house is being constructed and repaired. But even better, a relationship between George and Sam blossoms out of the rubble.

As summer fades, George is hospitalized and it is clear that his death is imminent. Sam places Christmas lights on the house so George can see it from a distance in his hospital room.

George dies. The building is finished. The movie ends with a voice-over of his final words to Sam.

“I always thought of myself as a house. I was always what I lived in. It didn't need to be big; it didn't even need to be beautiful; it just needed to be mine. I became what I was meant to be. I built myself a life . . . I built myself a house. . . . If you were a house, Sam, this is where you would want to be built: on rock, facing the sea. Listening. Listening.”[1]

You and I can still build. You are, in fact, building something with your life right now. It’s the story you live.               

[1] “Life as a House (2001) - Quotes - Imdb,” IMDb, accessed April 17, 2015, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264796/quotes.

—

Sean (@Sean_Post) lives in Maple Valley, WA with his wife and two sons and leads a one-year discipleship experience for young adults called “Adelphia”. He is completing his doctorate in Missional Leadership.

Adapted from Sean’s upcoming GCD Books title The Stories We Live: Discovering the True and Better Way of Jesus. Coming June 2015.

3 Essential Truths to Kill Our Desire to Prove Ourselves

Yes, my hand is raised. I am guilty. I didn't know it at the time. But my goal to become an Ironman was really an attempt to justify my existence—an opportunity to prove myself, to myself. I was a 27-year-old pregnant crying mess. Terrified by motherhood because my chance to make "something" of myself was passing. Sad that the next 20 years would not be all-about-me.

Deep down, I knew this was shallow. I wrestled with the value of temporary vs eternal success. My mind defined success as becoming a very obedient child of God, but my heart longed to defend its worth through achievement. This struggle birthed my theme song:

My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus blood and my success, I dare not trust in my own fame, But halfway lean on Jesus name.

Do those lyrics sound familiar? Are you worried your life will be a failure without a strong resume? Do you have a history of chasing achievement, hoping that your next win will bring self-approval? Have you divided your life into two categories eternal and temporal? Clinging to Jesus to justify your eternal soul, but also clinging to success to justify your temporal life?

For the next two years, after my darling boy arrived, Ironman ran my life. Motivated and scared by the impossible task of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and a 26.2 mile run. The fear of failure and a persistent hope for self-acceptance inspired my training. I wholeheartedly believed crossing the finish line would validate my personhood.

In the cool evening air, applause erupted and the loud speaker bellowed, "Now, crossing the finish line is Tracy Richardson, a 29 year old mom from Arkansas. Tracy, you-are-an-Ironman!"

I eagerly anticipated that upon hearing those words I would burst into a stream of hot joyful tears. That I would be overwhelmed emotionally. That this achievement would be cemented as my defining moment. Nothing happened. Instead, I was slightly disappointed. First, because I'm from Alaska, not Arkansas. Second, I shed no tears. No fireworks went off inside of me. I couldn’t celebrate my newly justified self. I was still-just-me, only exhausted.

Ironman was a great experience for me, but it was not enough. Several days later, after some good rest, I came up with a new dream. Opening my own business. This time it would be different. Building my own little kingdom, from the ground up, would absolutely certify my success as a human being.

OK, so, why do I keep repeating these works for self-validation? Why do you? Why do we default to achievement, positive that it will validate our lives?

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:1). Paul instructs us on three essential truths to kill our desire to prove ourselves. These three gospel truths will combat our self-justification and selfish ambition.

1. God holds the position of Judge over our lives, not us.

As disciples of Jesus we submit to the standard God sets as judge. Our sin nature loves to play judge. We must resist the urge to analyze our faults and decide what will make us right. Our value and worth comes as we accept God’s judgment against us and cling to Jesus’ death as payment for the penalty. Our identity is no longer flawed; we have a new identity. You are a true child of God who lives to show everyone how awesome your Fathers is.

2. Peace with God is our greatest need, not peace with ourselves.

We all walk around with a gapping wound in our hearts. The wound is where intimacy with God once dwelt.  We feel our brokenness. This ache compels us to do "things" to bring peace to our hearts. Some of us try achievement, some the perfect body, some relationships. For believers this will be an ongoing struggle until we are transformed by seeing “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). In the mean time, we must be in a community of believers who will faithfully point us back to the gospel. Brothers and sisters who will remind you that before you came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ you were spiritually dead, without hope, and facing eternal punishment. We need the daily reminder that peace comes from a right relationship with God, not achievement.

3. Christ's work on the cross is the most important accomplishment, not ours.

As a disciple of Jesus it is faith in his finished work on the cross that gives us merit. In a culture that stresses our accomplishments as most valuable, we are easily tempted to lean on our resume. When we focus on our achievements to bring us wholeness, we make little of the cross. If it is our success that makes us acceptable in our own eyes, then we have trampled the cross and raised up our own accomplishments. It is only the Holy Spirit who transforms our self-promoting hearts.

Friends, join me and repent from vain-justification. Turn and savor peace with God. Ask the Spirit to renew your mind with John the Baptists words about Jesus "He must increase, but I must decrease" (Jn. 3:30). We will recognize the Holy Spirits work in our lives when we begin to boast more and more of Christ's accomplishments and less of our own.

—

Tracy Richardson (@alaskagospelgrl) serves at Radiant Church in Fairbanks, Alaska as the Church Planters Wife. She loves to study scripture, throw parties, and run trails. She has a B.S.S. in Fine Art and Literature. She is also Mamma Bear to two wild cubs.

Jesus the Cowboy Hero

An isolated town is in trouble. Maybe it’s a gang of outlaws. Maybe it’s a greedy rancher, or a dictatorial mayor. In any case, bad men are having their way with the townsfolk. More importantly, there’s a beautiful woman in town and they’re after her too. She’s resisting tyranny—of course she is—while working to help the oppressed.

Then a cowboy rides into town. He’s tough. He’s quiet. He’s got a heart of gold. He’s drawn into the conflict. He shoots a bunch of bad people and works his way up to the chief bad guy himself. A showdown ensues—of course it does. The town is saved. The beautiful woman asks the cowboy to stay, but he can’t. He has to ride on, back into the wilderness. There are other good deeds waiting to be done.

I have always loved Westerns. I will watch any movie that features a cowboy with a six- shooter. I was born and raised in West Texas, and that is partially to blame for this affection. As a boy I would watch an episode of The Lone Ranger, then I’d put on my sheriff’s badge, grab my cap guns, and walk out onto the range, ready for adventure.

I’m not alone either. Americans love Westerns. We are fascinated by the myth of the cowboy-hero.

But of all the cowboy heroes, my favorite was Captain James Tiberius Kirk. Wait. What? Don’t act so surprised. Surely you knew that Star Trek was a Western, right? The only difference is that Kirk beamed in with a transporter rather than rode in on a horse.

Let us investigate: Captain Kirk, accompanied by sidekicks, rides down to the lonely planet on his transporter beam. He fights the bad guys, rescues the planet, and leaves the beautiful woman behind. He beams back to his spaceship leaving grateful aliens to stare up at the sky and wonder what life would be like if only Kirk wasn’t such a busy hero.

I had another sci-fi cowboy hero when I was a kid. This one I heard about at church. His name was Jesus. The Ascension of Jesus Christ sounds a lot like the Beaming of Captain Kirk. You remember the story. Forty days after the Resurrection, Jesus meets his followers near Bethany (Luke 24:50-53). He tells them to return to Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Holy Sprit. Then he’s gone, up into the sky. Luke describes it this way “he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven” (Luke 24:50-53, NIV).

Jesus the Cowboy Hero

Some Christians see the Ascension as the last page of a dime-store novel called Jesus the Cowboy Hero: Western Adventure. Earth was in trouble. The land was dominated by sin, the devil, and other ”bad men.” God’s people were trying to hold out and stay strong. Then one day Jesus rode into their midst. He conquered the bad guys. The people of God, the beautiful “Bride of Christ,” are grateful. They want him to stay but he can’t, he has to move on. So they are left staring up into the sky wondering if they will ever see him again.

Of course, most Christians don’t literally think that Jesus is a cowboy-hero. But unfortunately, some of our popular theology is so corrupt that we’ve essentially made him into one. We’ve created a cowboy god, a hero who cared enough to come down and save us from sin, but not enough to stick around. He left us tickets for the 3:10 to heaven, but staying in town to help rebuild after the showdown wasn’t of much interest to him, and off he rode, a beam of light into the sunset.

But that cheap dime-store novel is a lie. The God of the Bible stands in stark contrast to that irrelevant god. Unlike the cowboy who rides off when showdown is over, the Ascended Christ is now more invested in his Creation than ever.

It was an amazing thing for the non-corporeal God, a being who is not made of anything, to create everything. It was an act of incomprehensible humility for God to become a part of his creation by being made man. It was the greatest act of love imaginable for the God- man to die an insurgent’s death, to descend to the dead, and then to rise again to eternal life. It was absolutely inconceivable that this God-man would then take his whole self back into the throne room of his Father. One of the great mysteries of the universe is that Jesus Christ, who is fully God and fully man, now reigns forever in his corporeal body. When Jesus ascended he didn’t slither out of his skin, leaving the human part behind. God became a man and now that man is God. For God so loved his Creation (John 3:16), that he has now made himself a part of his Creation forever.

When Jesus was resurrected he appeared to his disciples in a perfect, eternal body, eating and drinking, but also walking through walls. Scripture says that when he ascended he sat down at the right hand of God (Ephesians 1:20). Because Jesus is still flesh he must be in some sort of physical location. But at the same time, he is God and sits at the right hand of the Father. Where is the “right hand”? Where is God? Everywhere. Christ is both present in a single place and also present everywhere. How? I have no idea. What I do know is that Christ is everywhere available, everywhere loving, everywhere knowable.

But “sitting at the right hand of the Father” is not simply about location; it’s about power. Jesus’ ascension is his enthronement. Paul writes: “(God) raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way is King of his Creation.” (Ephesians 1:20-23 NIV) Christ is the King who fills, with his own self, all that he has made. As Kuyper said. “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’”

The Ascension Changes Everything

The Ascension fundamentally changed the relationships between God, humanity, and the created order.Kirk comes and goes in fifty minutes. The planet he saves may be altered by his presence, but the Captain is always the same. Not so with Christ. The great Church Father St. John Chrysostom pointed out that the same Father who once said to flesh and blood “you are dust, and to dust you shall return” now looks at the flesh and blood of his Son and says “sit at my right hand.” Jesus’ story is the opening and closing chapter of the tale of us all. We were dust, now we’re flesh. We will fall to dust but be raised to a greater flesh than we can now imagine.

Chrysostom goes on to say that “we who were unworthy of earthly dominion have been raised to the Kingdom on high, have ascended higher than heaven, have come to occupy the King's throne, and the same nature from which the angels guarded Paradise, stopped not until it ascended to the throne of the Lord.” God has become Man so that humanity can now be welcomed into the divine life. Creation is already redeemed and awaits its coming restoration.

The Ascension is divine proof that the world matters. This world. The world of cowboys and townsfolk, bad men and heroes. If it did not, why would Christ fill it? Why would he reign over it? Why would he love it? Why would the Father accept the Created onto his own throne?

Because the Ascension changed the world it must also change the way we understand the world. The Ascension is like a new and better eyeglass prescription. When we look through it, we see what we have always seen; but we see it more clearly. This is especially true of our relationship to Creation.

Many years ago, I moved from Pittsburgh to San Antonio. I had to live apart from my wife for a couple of months. During this time I lived in an apartment with a month- to- month lease while I looked for a more permanent home. It was an old and dirty unit with broken appliances and dated wallpaper. I had several framed pieces of art with me, but I never hung any of them on the walls. I tried to ignore the walls and the faulty appliances. I never fixed the broken toilet in the second bathroom. Why not? Because it was a transitional place. I didn’t care about it.

Many Christians, lacking an understanding of the Ascension (as well as the Creation, Incarnation, and Second Coming) treat this world like I treated that apartment. While it’s true that we are sojourners (Hebrews 11:16), the Ascension must reframe our thinking. We are called to live here like my wife and I lived at our more permanent place in Texas. We bought furniture. We painted a room. We kept the place good repair. We hung up our pictures.

The Created World Matters

The Ascension shows us that the created world matters because it’s filled with Christ. As Christ’s brothers and sisters, we are called upon to care for creation. The curse is rolling back. Adam’s children may once again care for God’s garden. When some company wants to strip the land with no regard for our grandchildren, it should be the Church that rises up in opposition. When it comes to making decisions about how we consume the earth’s resources, it should be Christians who are most willing to sacrifice our convenience. Christians should be known for the creative ways in which we protect and restore the world we inhabit here and now.

We who bear the image of Christ should be leading the way in caring for our own physical bodies while also showing concern for the health of all people. Medicine, exercise, biology, nutrition, and a whole host of other disciplines are meant to bring glory to Christ. Eating disorders, drunkenness, and sexual immorality are symptoms of a population that has not been formed in the beauty of the Ascended Christ.

The Creation matters, and so does co-creation. By “co-creation” I mean our participation with God in bringing order, truth, and beauty out of chaos. All of Creation is now under the gracious dominion of Christ. When we co-create with him, our work becomes part of his glorious kingdom. Everything from our painting and songwriting to our baking and childrearing finds eternal significance at the Father’s right hand. The Ascension proclaims the validity of our work, our creativity, and the joys of this world.

The Ascension challenges us to rethink our cowboy mythology, our Captain Kirk worldview. Our stories, especially our fiction, should point to the Truth. The Hero of the universe is fully invested in building up his people, in loving his children, and in ruling all aspects of our lives. He hasn’t ridden off into the sunset. He hasn’t beamed back into the heavens. He’s moved in, and he’s done it in the biggest way we can imagine. When we tell our tales, are we representing this kind of heroism? When we consider the narratives of our own lives, what is it that we see as heroic? Is it the full engagement with, and care for, our communities, our families, and even our possessions? It should be.

All of us are storytellers, whether we have a large audience, or a small circle of family and friends, or even if we are simply whispering to ourselves. Some of us still tell our tales by the campfire, dusty from a day out on the range. We’re cowboys, but maybe we can be cowboys who stick around for a while. By the grace of God, maybe we can tell true stories. Maybe we reject isolation and self-sufficiency. Maybe we can know ourselves as fully accepted children of God, people whose work has eternal significance, and whose true value is a gift of pure mercy.

—

Thomas McKenzie (@thomasmckenzie) is the founding pastor of Church of the Redeemer in Nashville, Tennessee. He's the author of The Anglican Way: A Guidebook. Thomas writes for several websites, including ThomasMcKenzie.com. He lives in Nashville with his wife and two daughters.

Blessed Are Those Not Offended by Christ

Matthew’s story of John the Baptist asking who Jesus was (Matt. 11:1-6) deserves our undivided attention. This is a familiar passage and one we should run to in time of need. John the Baptist was imprisoned at the outset of Jesus’ public ministry (4:12), so he had heard about the deeds of Christ (11:2), but is somewhat baffled he’s still in jail. He wonders why cataclysmic judgment has yet to occur. Many at that time thought that the Messiah who was promised to come would bring fiery judgment against God’s enemies and vindicate his people. The prophets before had promised it. John himself continued to herald that message. But things hadn’t panned out for John. He was imprisoned somewhere east of the Dead Sea because of Herod’s self-involved infatuation and egotism, and Rome was still occupying the land. With a hint of bewilderment, John’s disciples ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (11:3).

A UNIQUE RESPONSE

That’s a loaded question—but one that would be asked several times until Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” How does Jesus answer this? His reply is puzzling. Jesus pulls from several passages in Isaiah describing what is happening under His ministry: the blind can see, the lame are now walking, lepers are cleansed, the deaf can now hear, the dead are raised, and the poor hear the gospel preached. Careful readers will note that in quoting Isaiah, Jesus leaves off two remarkable things: The day of vengeance (which would come in A.D. 70; cf. Is. 35:4 with Lk. 21:22), and the release of prisoners (Is. 61:1). No doubt John the Baptist would have been mildly shocked to hear that the Messiah’s work would not involve a rescue and release plan for him. A cruel fate under the Sovereign care of God would await John (Matt. 14:1-12).

CRYPTIC WISDOM

The real shock comes when Jesus sends John’s inquiring disciples away with this beatitude: “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me” (vs. 6). John was not offended with Christ; he was merely inquisitive about this Lamb who was to take away the sins of the world. Just prior Jesus had explained God’s Kingdom demands for his disciples (Matt. 10). Mockery, ridicule, slander, and even death awaits the disciple of Christ. John’s story is no different. Don’t we face real temptation to be offended by Christ? Or to be put off, embarrassed, or ashamed by him?

Jesus calls the one who is not ashamed blessed. Remarkable, isn’t it? In terms of worldly standards, Jesus was just a nice guy who got caught up in something nasty. Wrong place, wrong time. Why should we waste time giving him a second thought? He failed to meet so many people’s expectations, so why bother?

True Discipleship

Many are so offended and embarrassed they angrily persist in an unrepentant, unregenerate state. They find the claims of Christ to be a stumbling block and a waste of time. They are put off by Jesus’ followers, message, and truth. Ultimately they will never take up their cross and follow Him because to them there is no holy and righteous God and, because of that, his atonement is irrelevant. Who needs a savior if there is nothing to be saved from?

Others, as Spurgeon said, profess Christ, “Who join the Church of Jesus Christ [and] after a time are offended.”^[1] For them he explains, “The novelty wears off.”  Of course, it does. I’ve seen it in my church. People come, are excited about the music, the kids programs, the coffee, and maybe even the sermon! They commit to serving the body of Christ, even jumping head first into the next opportunity—then the novelty wears off. In a culture that thrives on discontinuous change, we must consider, whether or not with so many options inundating us we want to continue in this vein of pleasure. The modern church movement hasn’t helped. Flash-in-the-pan ministry may amp up a crowd and “prime the pump” with exciting commodities, but then things get hard because a loved one got cancer, a marriage fell apart, or depression sets in. Novelty won’t steer you through that pain—only a deep and wide understanding of the gospel will.

When it comes to being offended by Christ, Jesus envisioned this last category for blessings. For those not offended like John the Baptist, for those not put off by him, and for those not ashamed to call him “Lord,” Jesus had blessings in store. Counterfeit discipleship cannot, and will not, stand the test of time. True discipleship is not being offended with Christ. Discipleship does not get tripped up by Jesus’ message, demands, and calling. It does not look to the things of this world for happiness. It abides, not in the whims of man and the tides of contemporary culture—but abides in Christ. Because of that, the Lord Jesus calls all those who are his disciples blessed.

As a pastor, this is the type of discipleship I strive to promote. It’s the hard stuff of life that shapes us into disciples of Christ. It’s calling people to endure through the trials and tribulations, that inevitably come our way. Don’t expect worldly success. It’s not attractive. The culture we swim in here in America places high value on the new and shiny. We cater to this by giving the novelties, and get upset when we realize that it just doesn’t work. Success and blessings come in the form faithfulness. Faithfulness is found in refusing to be offended by Christ.

^[1] C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 24 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1878), 91.

—

Rev. Jason M. Garwood (M.Div., Th.D.) serves as Lead Pastor of Colwood Church in Caro, MI and author of Be Holy and The Fight for Joy. Jason and his wife Mary have three children, Elijah, Avery and Nathan. He blogs at www.jasongarwood.com. Connect with him on Twitter: @jasongarwood.

The Foundation for True Reality

“I feel abandoned and forsaken by God.” I’ve heard this sentence in one form or another countless times from people overcome by their feelings in the midst of life. I find feelings interesting because they can infiltrate our entire being and hold us captive to whatever impression they give in the moment. Although they aren’t bad in and of themselves, our feelings become problematic when they don’t reflect true reality.

As a “feeler” by nature, God’s constantly readjusting my feelings-based perception of reality to the truth of his Word. Recently, he used the book of Ezekiel to do this. Yes, Ezekiel comes to us from a distant land in the ancient world far removed from anything you and I experience. And, sure, this book is full of confusing imagery, strange sign-acts, and language that makes many modern audiences blush. If you’re willing to overcome some of its cumbersome content, you’ll discover that Ezekiel has profound implications for what it means to think and feel rightly as a member of God’s covenant community.

The Book of Ezekiel

Ezekiel 1:1 begins “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month.” Why begin with this date? Thirtieth year of what? Though it’s debated, many scholars believe it refers to Ezekiel’s age. If so, it was the year of the prophet’s thirtieth birthday. The significance of this lies in verse three, “the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the Chebar canal.”

Historically, we know Ezekiel as a prophet. As the son of Buzi, he grew up preparing to be a priest—the greatest calling one received in ancient Israel. His years would have been spent in preparation for the day when he would enter the temple in Jerusalem in holy service to Yahweh. Numbers 4:3 explains that priests were qualified to serve from the age of thirty to fifty; therefore, everything Ezekiel dreamed of doing from childhood on would come to fruition on his thirtieth birthday.

However his birthday had come and he’s not in the temple. Actually, he’s not even in Jerusalem. He’s “among the exiles by the Chebar canal” (1:1), “in the land of the Chaldeans” (1:3). Get this—Ezekiel’s in Babylon! He wasn’t ministering in the presence of Yahweh. He wasn’t enjoying the prestige of being a priest. He wasn’t even living in the comfort of his own land. Instead, he’d been taken as an exile in the first wave of the Babylonian captivity. He was living in an unclean land as a refugee surrounded by every imaginable evil.

“It was the fifth year of the exile” (1:2). He’d been there five years! Don’t miss the weight of this. He was ripped from his country, taken from his livelihood, denied the privilege of serving as a priest, and isolated from the presence of God . . . for five years. No Word of the LORD. No temple. No access to God. Furthermore, in the ancient world the victory of a nation meant the victory of their god. Thus, Babylon’s victory over Israel implied its victory over Israel’s God. Needless to say, Ezekiel was experiencing defeat in every conceivable way.

Humor me for a moment—imagine how Ezekiel must have felt.

Take him off his prophetic high horse and think about him as a real person. Do you think he felt abandoned by God? Possibly forgotten? Do you think he felt as if God were out of control or had given up on his people?

Christopher Wright insightfully writes,

“There is no reason to imagine that Ezekiel would have been immune to the doubts and questions that would have settled like the dust of the Mesopotamian plains on the huts of the exiles. For five years he had mourned and wondered and questioned. Five years is a long time for a refugee. The conclusion that Yahweh had abandoned them must have been close to irresistible.” ^[1]

Everything around Ezekiel pointed towards the conclusion that Yahweh had indeed abandoned him. But life is not always as it seems, nor is everything we feel the ultimate reality. Circumstances have a powerful way of shaping our feelings, but God stands above our circumstances and often works in mysterious ways. Thus, it is God’s Word, not our feelings, which offers the true interpretation of reality.

The Word of the LORD

Such is the case in the book of Ezekiel. It’s only when the Word of the LORD comes to Ezekiel that he understands what’s going on. He discovers all of his training as a priest was to prepare him for his true calling as a prophet. He realizes Babylon and its gods had not won the day. Instead, Yahweh, the God of all the heavens and earth, used Babylon as an agent of wrath to discipline wayward Israel. He learns the exile wasn’t happenstance; it was God’s sovereign plan to bring Israel to a place of recognition of sin and repentance from idolatry. He finds out God has a plan of restoration for his people, which he will initiate under the New Covenant.

Without the Word of the LORD coming to Ezekiel how could he have understood this? Praise God his Word did come to Ezekiel! We now have the written record of God interpreting redemptive history through Ezekiel in such a way that it gives us a filter greater than our feelings to make sense of circumstances. Ezekiel teaches us that despite everything we see and feel we can now we serve a God who is in control, meticulously working all things out to his ends for the glory of his name and the good of his people.

Ezekiel speaks powerfully to me about what’s really true. When I feel like God has abandoned me, I’m reminded God will never forsake those who have entered into covenant with him. When I feel like I’m spiritually and emotionally exiled, I’m reminded God pursues his children to the remotest parts of the earth—even into “Babylon.” When I feel like God doesn’t have a plan for my life, I’m reminded God is working all things out (including my life) for his purposes.

The Gospel of Christ

Moreover, Ezekiel points me forward to the supreme truth revealed in Christ. The prophet held out hope to languishing exiles that abandonment wasn’t the final word. God was going to bring about a New Covenant in which he would cleanse them and give them new hearts so they could be in right relationship with him (Ezek. 36:22-38). Christian, we are now living in the New Covenant. We are partaking in what Ezekiel longed to see. On this side of the cross, we have witnessed the climax of God’s prophetic promises in the person of the Son. Hebrews 1:1-2 says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”

You see, Jesus and his redemptive work is God’s final Word to us! The gospel, the good news that we can be in covenant relationship with God forever on the basis of the Son’s merit, is God’s definitive Word. God has spoken with finality about his love and commitment to us through the Son. So, when our feelings seek to distort this truth we must choose to believe the Word of the LORD as revealed in the gospel. Whatever you’re going through and feeling in this moment I want to remind you that Jesus is God’s Word to you—he’s your ultimate reality. His work on your behalf is the lens through which you can (and should!) interpret all of life.

^[1] Wright, Christopher J.H. The Message of Ezekiel: A New Heart and a New Spirit. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2001. Print.

—

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

4 Inner Rings You May Be Pursuing

What are you pursuing with your life? C.S. Lewis talked about a set of "Inner Rings" or societal clubs that we long to be part of or included in, but often take a high level of expertise, time, or master ability to achieve. These Inner Rings often become a set of values, goals, and ideals that we spend our life pursuing so that we end up being known as a certain kind of person. Lewis said as we pursue these Inner Rings we often transform into people we never intended to be. The reality is it isn't the Inner Ring itself that is the destructive reality for us, it's really the pursuit of them. If we are going to understand our pursuit of the Inner Ring and how those pursuits motivate and manipulate our behaviors and beliefs, we must know what we are pursuing. Without being reductionistic or missing the nuances of individual hearts, there are four principle Inner Ring pursuits each of us gravitate towards. While many of these pursuits can be fundamentally good, their gravity will cause us to acquire them in unhealthy ways. Here are the four principle Inner Rings manifested in our everyday lives.

1. The Inner Ring of Acceptance

No one wants to be excluded. In fact, living in isolation and estrangement can be hellish. We want to be loved, included, thought of, and affirmed as “the right people.” Socially we’ve engineered all sorts of structures, tribes, and means to make sure we are people who are known and accepted. Often we know where we stand with others by the invitations we do or do not receive for group conversations and activities. If we discover a particular circle of friends got together without inviting or including us a sense of jealously and dismay can overcome our hearts. We might ask, “Why weren’t we invited? Why were they included and we weren’t?” That exclusion might very well bring us to change our behavior when we are in proximity to that tribe. We can begin to think that our exclusion and the inclusion of others has us on the “outs” socially and we need to change something to get back in.

The sitcoms of our culture often identify this desire and pursuit of acceptance. Consider The Office boss Michael Scott. While possessing the authority of the office manager, Michael deeply longs to be accepted as one of the guys within Dunder Mifflin. His employees often hold him at a distance and fail to include him in their social gatherings and activities. This drives Michael into many awkward situations as he attempts, often with disastrous results, to attain the acceptance and inclusion of his employees socially. All of this plays out humorously for our enjoyment and also reminds us of “that guy” at our place of work.

The Inner Ring of Acceptance displays itself in every social environment of our lives. Where ever people gather, we want not only to be part of the club but also to be accepted. The way in which we seek to be part of an Inner Circle of Acceptance is to find that group or community that we desire to be part of and do whatever we can to be accepted. To hear the words “We like you, let’s be together” is a sure indicator of our acceptance by others. To feel the disconnect, disinterest, and avoidance of that same group ruins us many times. You can identify your Inner Ring pursuit by asking:

• Who excluding you would hurt you deeply?
• Who’s acceptance does your day hang on?

The people you desire the greatest acceptance from are the same Inner Ring you pursue for acceptance.

2. The Inner Ring of Authority

While many find themselves chasing acceptance from others as an ultimate pursuit, for others the pursuit comes in a different form. The great pursuit of life doesn’t come in having the affections of others. It reveals itself in the leadership over others. Not satisfied to just be part of a team, these people pursue control and power at the highest level. They feel they have the insight, capacity, drive, resources, or vision to lead people to greater and higher things. This extends far beyond a business environment and can play itself out in practically every sphere of life. God has ordered all society levels to have leaders and followers.

We need leaders. We need direction. Someone must carry the responsibility for decisions in society. The government needs leaders. Corporations without capable leadership fail. The church needs leaders to shepherd people toward maturity in Christ. A home structure without proper authority and responsibility fail to raise children who contribute to society. It is a fundamental mistake to think authority in and of itself is bad.

The pursuit of authority consumes and drives many into dangerous territory. Some climb the mountain to stand alone at the top—just to be seen as the expert, leader, guru, or boss. The Inner Ring of Authority only invites a select few, and as an exclusive club itself the attraction of being part of that select few is intoxicating to those who would have it.

Often to those pursuing the status of authority an internal voice says, “You won’t be anybody until you are _________.”  That blank can be filled in with a whole host of titles. You won’t be anybody until you’re the CEO. You won’t be anybody until you’re an elder at the church. You won’t be anybody until you’re leading the MOPS group in your city. You won’t be anybody until . . . What’s yours?

The people you desire the greatest acceptance from are the same Inner Ring you pursue for acceptance. It’s a high stakes drive to the top that destroys, diminishes, and derails anyone in the way of attaining to the highest throne. In House of Cards, Francis J. Underwood pursues authority with force unmatched. This pursuit leads him to lie, murder, abuse, and manipulate anyone and everyone to achieve the Presidency. At the core, Underwood tries to sell himself that he is doing it all for good reasons. But as the saying goes, “Power corrupts, and ultimate power corrupts ultimately.” Ask these questions to identify your Inner Ring:

• If you never rose to the highest position of authority in your sphere of life would you feel your life was a failure?
• If you never had power to control and lead others as greatly as you would desire, would you feel like you missed the purpose of your life?
• What would you do to attain authority in different spheres of your life?

3. The Inner Ring of Applause

While some pursue acceptance and others authority there are some that have a uniquely different pursuit. Some people don’t care about authority or acceptance. They don’t care who they lead or even if people like them. They just want to hear applause and cheers. They love the spotlight. Often we think of these people as the artists from Nashville or the actors and actresses in Hollywood. Seeing your name in lights and having the crowd acknowledge your performance becomes a powerful drive. Yet it’s not just our stars that struggle with the Inner Ring of Applause. It’s found in stratus of life.

We want to be approved and applauded. We want our work to be noticed and recognized as exceptional. We want others to affirm we’ve done a good job in whatever we are doing. For the mother at home she wants to be recognized and applauded as having good children, a clean home, and happiness and joy to go around. The engineer seeks acknowledgement for his innovative design that advanced his company’s product above the competition. Pastors hope to hear “Great sermon!” from their congregation as they shuffle out the doors of the church building. This helps them feel like their preparation was not in vain.

Just as acceptance and authority are not evil within themselves, neither is applause. It’s legitimate for our words to be used to encourage and affirm others. We should celebrate beauty, creativity, excellence, and truth. Being applauded for excellence mirrors the way we should glorify and exalt Christ for his excellencies. The applause, by and large, isn’t the proverbial fly in the ointment that spoils everything.

What destroys, however, is the pursuit of that applause. What will it take for you to get noticed and awarded? This pursuit can lead us to do all sorts of subtle, compromising things. Social media has become, for many, an applause factory. Someone asked me the other day why I rarely “liked” their posts of Facebook. They noticed I wasn’t noticing them. They began tagging me in their posts so I would be guaranteed not to miss the opportunity to applaud them. They were keeping a scorecard of "likes" and "shares" by their friends. They longed for the affirmation of others and were discouraged when I didn’t hang on every word they wrote, picture they posted, and story they linked. They perceived my lack of a “thumbs up” as a lack of approval for their life narrative on Facebook. Frankly, their “I have an awesome cat!” posts were a little obnoxious and tiring. Yet they desired my applause and were willing to go to extremes to get it.

Like acceptance and authority, applause is a powerful and intoxicating thing. The person who chases applause will rarely have their fill of it. To the heart unchecked, the pleasantness of the first trickle of applause will soon desire an avalanche of ovation. It won’t ever be enough. The pursuit of it becomes the goal and not the having itself.

If you are pursuing the Inner Ring of Applause, it can be identified by asking yourself:

• If no one every affirmed or approved of your hard work would you despair?
• Would depression set in on your heart if you weren’t recognized for your beauty or creativity?
• Do you do things at your work, church, home, and in your community so that others will affirm and applaud you?
• Do you compromise yourself in ways so that others will affirm you?

4. The Inner Ring of Abundance

This final Inner Ring isn’t built around people but possessions. The old saying goes, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Our culture reinforces and reiterates this position. Of course, Christians know he who dies with the most toys is still dead (Lk. 16:19-31), but that doesn’t mean we’re not impressed by those who have the resources to live up now. No one wants to live in poverty and I’m not saying we should. But the drive to acquire possessions and live in economic security and abundance crushes people those that live in our gravitational pull.

Scripture teaches us to pray for daily bread (Matt. 6:11) and offers this juxtapoistion between poverty and riches.

Remove far from me falsehood and lying;     give me neither poverty nor riches;     feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you     and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest I be poor and steal     and profane the name of my God. —Proverbs 30:8-9

Pursuing abundance in the wrong way leads to “be[ing] full and deny[ing the Lord]” (v. 9), but that doesn’t mean all acquisition of material possessions is an ungodly allowance. Having a well paying job, a nice home, a reliable vehicle, and enjoying a quality steak while on vacation are not damning vices to be rejected outright. Poverty is not necessarily a virtue—but neither is abundance.

Like acceptance, authority, and applause the trouble comes at the heart level. It’s not enough that we have nice things. It’s that those nice things eventually don’t fulfill us the way we thought they would, so we end up pursuing more. The home isn’t big enough, the car not luxury enough, the television not big enough, and the vacation not exotic enough. We begin to compare notes with our peers and friends and find what they have doesn’t match what we have so we get and get and get to “keep up with the Joneses.” As we pursue the Inner Ring of Abundance, we find that acquiring stuff allows us to enter different circles of identity and more Inner Rings.

I remember the first time I saw someone with Apple’s iPhone out in public. I was riding the ferry boat from San Francisco to Alcatraz with some friends. The owner of the magical device whipped it out to make a phone call and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The allure of that device was palpable. I could hear myself thinking, “If I had one of those I would be so cool.” The small circle of people who owned one of those devices was an attractive circle to join. The problem was the phone originally cost $599 with a two year contract. The price put it beyond the reach of so many of us. The iPhone was (and is) a status symbol and the pursuit of having it was a siren call to my heart.

Perhaps this is the trickiest pursuit to reveal and yet the most obvious at the same time.

• Could you do without something and be content? If your friend, neighbor, coworker or peer had all the things that you wanted and you did not would you be satisfied?
• Do you live beyond your means so that others will view you as affluent?
• When will enough be enough?

These are hard questions to wrestle with, but they can reveal a pursuit of abundance very clearly. The people you desire the greatest acceptance from are the same Inner Ring you pursue for acceptance.

Discerning Your Pursuits

Motives have to be questioned. Pursuits must be examined. If we will be people not driven by pursuits that will cause us to compromise and capitulate our convictions and values then we must understand where the battlefield lies. Ultimately, having acceptance, authority, applause, and affluence are not evil. We are hard-wired by God for them. Yet pursing these Inner Rings and the object of these pursuits may destroy our lives.

Ask yourself which pursuit do you most deeply identify with? Which “Inner Ring” do you deeply desire to be part of or known for? Do you want to be seen as someone with abundance and material possessions? Deep in your heart do long for people to applaud you and recognize your achievements? Are you eager to be part of a specific social group, network, or clique and have their acceptance? Are you frustrated if you aren’t the leader exercising authority and control over a group of people or organization?

Once we identify our core pursuits, we can address how to navigate those pursuits in a way that will free us from the ensnaring power of sin and death. To help us further diagnose our motivational drives and ambitions, we need to take a walk into the darkness. We need to step into our nightmares and look at our fears in the face. By moving the things that bring us the deepest fear and anxiety into the light, we can clearly see the pursuits that drive our daily lives.

—

Jeremy Writebol (@jwritebol) has been training leaders in the church for over fourteen years. He is the author of everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present (GCD Books, 2014) and writes at jwritebol.net. He is the pastor of Woodside Bible Church's Plymouth, MI campus. 

Living with Eyes Forward to That Day

“I just can’t beat it,” he said with his hands in his hair. He had been confronted with the reality of indwelling sin. “I’m just a guy. I’ll never break this porn habit.” I sat across from this man entranced by pornography’s mystical pull. As I look into the eyes of my brother, I want to say so many things. I begin, “You’re not alone” and go on “If I’m honest—the only thing that broke my porn habit was living in a van with three other guys when I was a traveling musician. There’s just not much room for porn when you can’t even change clothes in privacy.” Most of all, though, I want to ask him this question: “Can you imagine the Day when you will be physically unable to sin?”

Sometimes we are so overcome with our sin and so quick to make excuses we are in danger of overshadowing one of the most glorious truths of Scripture—one Day we will be made gloriously new, like our risen Savior.

Where the Discussion Starts

Without a robust understanding of depravity, we cannot have a correct understanding of the gospel. Recognizing sin as “within” rather than “without” must be the fuel that drives our desperation for redemption. In other words, we are not saved from the scary things out there; we are saved from God’s just wrath toward our own sinful nature.

This discussion is not new. Augustine argued in his own time that human free will is bent toward sin, and apart from a divine act of grace, humans freely choose evil. This is total depravity. The Reformation principle of unconditional election was founded on the same notion that man is totally depraved—nothing in any of us merits the gracious election of God from before the foundation of the world. We don’t bend toward him. He graciously condescends to us.

I’m all in on the discussion of total depravity, especially in light of today’s Evangelical climate—which for some can be summed up as simply, “You can do it.” Well, actually, you can’t. I can’t. That’s the point of grace. And without this understanding, when indwelling sin surfaces, we have no category by which to cry out for grace.

Where the Road Forks

However, there are two ways to frame the discussion of total depravity, as if we stand at a great fork in the road of Christian experience—one sign reading “slavery,” and one reading “freedom.” The first road is our default mode. It is a man-centered view of total depravity. Claiming to be wise, we show ourselves foolish when we declare, “wretched man that I am,” without also boldly proclaiming our redemption in Christ (see Paul in Rom. 7:24-25). Is that not the heart of what Luther was trying to communicate when he wrote to Melanchthon, “Let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger.”¹

The second way to frame this discussion must be God-centered. Here are the questions we need to ask: How long will God allow totally depravity to continue? What has he done to enter into our depravity and redeem it? What is the end of all this?

Where the Scriptures Meet us

And in the weeds of that discussion, we often find ourselves camping on this. Is this a post-Genesis 3 world, or is it a pre-Revelation 21 world?I completely understand that every fiber that God has intricately woven into his creation has been affected by man’s fall into sin. Total depravity is just that—total. However, as I look to the Scriptures, I see them more often pointing forward to a different world. I sense the longing of the prophets and the apostles for a time in which the effects of total depravity will be wholly reversed and when the redeemed of God will always choose righteousness.

When I read articles or hear sermons about the distortion of this post-Genesis 3 world, I want to scream out, “BUT A DAY IS COMING!” And I don’t think I am alone in this . . .

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. –Romans 8:18

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. –Philippians 3:20-21

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. –Isaiah 11:6

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. –Revelation 21:3-4

Here’s what I don’t see—excuses. I don’t see Genesis 3 being used as a crutch by which we might cry, “I wish I could do better . . . but I just can’t.” That notion is just not present in the Scriptures. To be fair, neither is the notion that we can do better, at least on our own.

This beautiful doctrine floods the pages of Scripture—we will be made new. In fact, everything around us will be made new. And, characteristic of the gospel of Christ, this is all by grace! None of it hinges on our own earning. Rather, God will make all things new at the consummation of his redemptive work in Christ.

Also characteristic of the gospel of Christ, this truth is compelling. It compels us, or drives us, to holiness. Or at least it did so for the biblical authors.

Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. —2 Peter 3:11-13

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Back to the young man in my office across the table, sulking over his porn habit and hiding behind a cup of coffee. When I asked him whether he could conceive of a time when he will be physically unable to sin, he answers honestly, “No.” I completely understand. I have no idea what that will feel like either. But here’s what I preach to him (and myself), “Don’t be driven to despair over your addictive habits. Look to that Day.” On that Day we will see our Savior face to face and be made new. We will simply be unable to sin. The physicality of the new earth should push us towards living holy now.

Christian, who does your depravity drive you to look? To yourself or your Redeemer? Where does your help come from? Are you looking back in despair, or are you looking forward with hopeful angst? Are you living in a post-Genesis 3 world, or in a pre-Revelation 21 world? Look to that Day, to your Redeemer.

^{1. Let Your Sins Be Strong: A Letter from Luther to Melancthon. “Letter no. 99, 1 August 1521. From Wortburg (Segment).” Translated by Erika bullman Flores. From Dr. Martin Luther's Saemmtliche Schriften. Dr. Johannes Georg Walch, Ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, N.D.), Vol.15, cols. 2585-2590.↩}

—

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.

The Secret to Making Kingdom Citizens

What is the Gospel? Some may wonder why I’ve started with such a simple question. Isn’t the gospel that we are justified by faith alone? Isn’t the gospel about personal salvation and faith in Jesus? Isn’t the gospel about how we can go to heaven when we die?

These are common answers to the question, but what if none of these are fully correct definitions of the gospel? What if these are true but minimize important aspects of the gospel needed to make disciples?

I want to contend that much of what we mean in evangelical Christianity by the word “gospel” is not how the word is actually used in the New Testament. Again, I’m not saying the emphases above are not true. They absolutely are! We are justified by faith alone; Jesus does give us personal salvation; and we will live forever with Jesus (in a resurrected body in a new heavens and earth). However, they cut short the full definition of the word “gospel” presented in Scripture

Allow me to explain what I mean. We often use the term “gospel” to mean one of two things:

1. Justification by faith – In this definition, the “good news” is that you don’t have to earn salvation.

2. Personal salvation – In this definition the “good news” is that you personally can be saved and escape punishment (usually by “inviting Jesus into your heart”).

3. Going to Heaven – Here, the "good news" is that your soul can go to heaven when you die. (Though people unfortunately forget about the Bible's teaching about bodily resurrection).

Now, some might respond with a possible fourth definition, which is much fuller than the other three presented, which is that the gospel is Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. This answer is absolutely true (1 Cor. 15:1-5) and it strikes at the heart of the gospel. However, even it must be understood in a larger theological context. Even the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus must be understood in light of the larger gospel theme of the “Kingdom of God.”

How the word “gospel” is used in the New Testament

Allow me to give just a few passages from the New Testament that show the above definitions of the gospel don’t work on their own:

Galatians 3:8 - And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”

What message was preached to Abraham in the Old Testament that Paul calls the “gospel” in this passage? Was it a message of personal salvation for Abraham? Was it a message of justification by faith? It is true that Abraham was justified by faith, but here the gospel message is that all the nations would be blessed by his seed and that “kings shall come from your own body” (Gen. 35:11).

Mark 14:9 - And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

What is the gospel according to this passage? Is it justification by faith? Is it personal salvation? I often like to tease my students and ask how many of them mention this woman’s story when they share the gospel with their neighbors. Jesus seems to think that her story will be proclaimed wherever the gospel is preached. Here the term “gospel” seems to be related to the entire ministry of Jesus and his program to renew the world.

Luke 9:6 - And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. And he said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics. And whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. And wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them.” And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.

In this passage, the disciples must preach the “gospel,” yet they didn’t preach justification by faith. They didn’t preach personal salvation. And, just to add a spark of controversy, the didn’t even preach about Jesus’ death and resurrection! They preached a message of the Kingdom of God breaking into their current situation and demonstrated the Kingdom coming by healing people and casting out demons. This is a message about the Kingdom of God and Jesus calls it the “gospel.”

Galatians 2:11 & 14 - But when Cephas [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned . . . [his] conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel.

This is a fascinating passage because Paul had to rebuke Peter because he forgot the gospel. Now, what did Peter forget? Did he forget that Jesus saves people personally? Did he forget that Jesus died for our sins? No, he actually forgot that God’s Kingdom is meant to go forth to all nations and that withdrawing from fellowship with Gentiles was tantamount to denying the gospel.

Then what is the gospel?

We have seen some of the definitions above don’t work on their own with the way the New Testament uses the word “gospel.” What is a better definition of the gospel? The way the gospel is described in the New Testament is a message about the Kingdom of God. It is a message about how God is reestablishing his perfect rule (Kingdom) over the cosmos and reconciling the world through himself by defeating his enemies and reversing the effects of the fall through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of his Son, King Jesus. To give the best definition of the gospel I can, allow me to quote G.K. Beale:

“The Old Testament is the story of God, who progressively reestablishes his new-creational kingdom out of chaos over a sinful people by his Word and Spirit through promise, covenant, and redemption, resulting in worldwide commission to the faithful to advance this kingdom and judgment (defeat or exile) for the unfaithful, unto his glory. Jesus' life, trials, death for sinners, and especially resurrection by the Spirit have launched the fulfillment of the eschatological already-not yet new-creational reign, bestowed by grace through faith resulting in worldwide commission to the faithful to advance this new-creational reign and resulting in judgment for the unbelieving, unto the triune God's glory.” –G.K. Beale

Wow! What a robust definition of the gospel!

Yes, justification by faith is true. Yes Jesus saves individuals and yes it is good that we don’t have to be condemned when we die. Yes the gospel is absolutely the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Yes and amen to all these things. However, these must be related to the larger gospel message to make any sense and to truly preach the “gospel” the way the Bible does.

Why is this important for discipleship?

Discipleship flows from the gospel message. Until we teach this larger Kingdom message we will never make the kind of disciples we were meant to. In fact, the reason the church produces converts and not disciples is because we preach a gospel that produces converts and not disciples—we preach an individualistic gospel of justification by faith instead of a holistic gospel of God’s Kingdom.

We often wonder why someone who claims to be a disciple of Jesus comes to church and reads his Bible but is also looking at porn and not serving the poor, not evangelizing his neighbor, and divorcing his spouse, and not studying theology. We often wonder why someone who claims to be a disciple of Jesus can so easily separate their “spiritual” life from their “secular” life.

We have preached a gospel that deals merely with personal salvation so once someone is “saved” there is not much else to think about. They “prayed the prayer” and now it is “mission accomplished.” However, if we realized that the gospel is not just about our “spiritual” lives but about Christ redeeming everything that has gone wrong in the universe it breaks down this sacred/secular divide.

Jesus isn’t just the “Lord of your heart.” He is the Lord of the universe. He is the Lord over your finances. He is the Lord over your sex life. He is the Lord over your marriage. He is the Lord over your hobbies. He is the Lord over your kids. He is the Lord over turtles, and chocolate, and electricity, and quasars, and grass, and everything that exists!

Before maturing disciples, we must teach the gospel in its fullness. A Kingdom gospel will produce Kingdom citizens.May King Jesus give us grace as we seek to love and obey him more.

—

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

Calling People to the Kingdom Through Feasting

“I’ll raise you a hundred,” Greg said as he pushed a stack of poker chips into the middle of the table to show he meant business. At the same time, laughter erupted from the next room, where the ladies were sharing stories about marriage and motherhood. Greg’s wife, Mary, listened as the women poured out their hearts to one another. This was the first time Greg and Mary had been at our house for one of our parties. Jayne and I had been in the Puget Sound area for about a year, and we were beginning to call people together to be the church in the greater Tacoma area. Parties and feasts were one of the means we were using to gather people and give them a taste of what it might look like to be the church in our community.

In the past, several of us in the Chicago suburbs had experienced community forming this way around meals and celebrations. Caesar and Tina had introduced us to the art of hospitality and the joy of the party. Tina is an amazing cook, and she and Caesar hosted the best dinner parties around. If they were hosting a dinner, you did not want to miss it!

A Kingdom Built on Celebratory Feasting

At one of these dinners, about three courses into an amazing five-course meal, it dawned on us: “This is a great picture of the kingdom of God!” While immersed in the feast of food and life together, we recalled Jesus comparing the kingdom of God to a feast where everyone is invited in (Luke 14:12–24). Together we started to imagine what the church would be like if we all believed we were a picture of God’s kingdom breaking into the world in ways that felt like a party. One of us said: “If the church believed this, it would radically change what we do and how we live! We would be known as the most celebratory people around. Word would spread. People who wouldn’t normally want to come to a church event would come to our homes. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?”

A seed was planted in our hearts at that moment, and the conversation never really ended. We began to ask questions: What if we were to start a church that feasted and celebrated around Jesus together? What if our homes were intended by God to be some of the primary spaces in which the ministry of the church should take place? People could be welcomed in, cared for, and experience belonging to a people who enjoy one another and life together. This would transform people’s perceptions of the church. Their understanding of who the church is and what she does would be very different from others’. As a result, people would come to understand Jesus in an entirely new way. If church were more like a feast and ministry took place regularly in our homes, everyone could join and anyone could do it. Everyone loves to feast and celebrate together, and anyone who knows and loves Jesus can host a party around him.

Jesus’s church celebrates and feasts together. His people live life to the fullest for his glory and learn how to do the normal, everyday stuff of life for his glory. Not just parties and feasts— everything!

Remembering God Through Feasts

This isn’t a new idea. God called his people Israel to remember him and show the world what he was like through the everyday stuff, the big and the small. The special feasts, which were extraordinary, were meant to remind them that everyday meals mattered as well. Parties are God’s idea. During the Israelites’ parties and feasts, they were to remind one another that all of life was to be done as an expression of their love for God. God called them to see their celebrations and feasts as an expression of their worship. He wanted them to use something mundane and everyday—eating—as a reminder that he is to be the center of all the everyday stuff.

God is brilliant, isn’t he?

He wants us to see that all of life, every aspect of it, is a good gift from him. He wants our hearts to cry out, “God is so good!” in the middle of everyday life. He wants us to eat, play, create, work, celebrate, rest, and relate to one another for his glory. God always intended that every part of life be a participation in his activity in the world and a celebration of his goodness to us all. So he told Israel to do all the stuff of life—working, resting, eating, and celebrating—in remembrance of him.

I love this about God!

I grew up believing that after I died, I would go to heaven, which would be like an eternal church service. As a teenager, I wasn’t too excited about that. All I could imagine was a bunch of us in white gowns floating on clouds that felt like hard wooden pews. We would forever listen to long sermons and sing songs from red hymnals. Later in life, as I read the Bible, I found out that this is not an accurate picture of our future with Jesus. The Scriptures tell of a day when we will dwell on a new earth and enjoy a sin-free existence, living life fully and abundantly with God in our midst. We will eat, play, create, work, celebrate, and rest in perfect harmony with God and one another. It will all be good and it will all be worship!

Imagine if the church was like this now.

— Jeff Vanderstelt (@JeffVanderstelt) is the visionary leader for the Soma Family of Churches and the lead teaching pastor at Doxa Church in Bellevue, Washington. When he isn't preaching or mentoring church planters, he and his family share life with their missional community. He is the author of Saturate: Being Disciples of Jesus in the Everyday Stuff of Life.

Jeff Vanderstelt, Saturate: Being Disciples of Jesus in the Everyday Stuff of Life Crossway, ©2015. Used by permission. https://www.crossway.org/.

3 Fundamental Reasons to Recover Fasting

Recently I was asked to preach on fasting. Better yet, I was asked to preach on fasting on Super Bowl Sunday. In my mind I was being asked to preach on a super spiritual topic to the super spiritual people in our church who would actually show up to our services. Because I’m still being trained for ministry and never turn a preaching opportunity down, I pursued this  curious assignment with excitement. As I studied and tried out what I was learning, I began to realize what a normal and important practice fasting was for believers in Jesus’ day, and more importantly I experienced why.

We talk a lot about spiritual disciplines (rhythms of grace, or whatever term you want to use for personal disciplines that help line our lives up with all that we have in the gospel) in the church today—and rightly so, because we need them. But for some reason we treat fasting as this abstract discipline reserved for only the spiritual elite, removed from normal, everyday Christian life and discipleship. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus only talks about three spiritual disciples (giving, prayer, and fasting), and treats them with equal weight (Matt. 6:1-18). In Matthew 9:15 Jesus explicitly states that he expects his disciples to fast.

So what is fasting? And why does Jesus treat it as important and normal in the Christian life? Fasting creates hunger to experience more of God.

Creating hunger

Creating hunger means we take something out of our lives for a period of time that will hurt. Usually this is food, but it can also be other morally neutral things that are staples in our lives and would hurt to go without (like Facebook, email after work hours, TV, shopping, etc).

To experience more of God

We are not ascetics that just enjoy pain. The hunger we create is so we can feast on something greater. So fasting involves not just the cutting out but adding in—you have to fill that space with something. Use the time you would have spent consuming food or something else with feasting upon God. It’s for this reason that fasting in the Bible is always tied to prayer.

Why fast? Here’s three ways we specifically see this play out in our lives:

1. To plead with God/seek guidance.

This is one of the most common ways we think of when we think of fasting. For me, it was the only way I had thought of fasting before this sermon. Some examples include the Jews when facing annihilation (Esther 4:3) and the church at Antioch considering whether or not to send out Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:2-3).

In this way, fasting creates space for us and reminds us to pray. It helps align our soul with an appropriate seriousness and tunes us to hear from God. Martin Lloyd Jones says it this way, “One any important occasion, when faced with any vital decision, the early Church always seemed to give themselves to fasting as well as to prayer.”

2. To help fight besetting sin.

Just as we might train in a gym for a big triathlon, so God calls us to train ourselves for godliness (1 Tim. 4:7). Fasting is one of the ways we do this. When we say no to bodily urges in the form of food or something basic, we are exercising the muscle to resist in other areas (i.e., sexual temptation).

Fasting trains us to not just gratify our bodily urges. This strength to resist will transfer to other areas where we fight against sin. Martin Luther says, “Of fasting I say this: it is right to fast frequently in order to subdue and control the body.”

3. To remind us of God’s presence.

Have you ever gotten through a day and realized you forgot about God all day? Me too. It’s madness! You know when this doesn’t happen? When you’re fasting. The hunger pains serve as a reminder that there is more going on beyond what we can see. Fasting tunes us to a deeper and truer reality. The sovereign King of glory is with us, in spite of how we are doing, and this is where we find true life in the midst of our crazy circumstances.

As I got up to preach this sermon to my church family, I was really preaching to myself all that God had been teaching me . Fasting is not something we must add to our lives in order to earn God’s love, rather fasting is a gift to help us live more awake to the undeserved love of God in Christ and to stay clear of distractions that numb and take our life .

If we’re serious about walking in the joy, freedom, and life of the grace of God, how can we neglect fasting? Incorporating fasting as a regular discipline into my life has taken me into much more vitality in my walk with the Lord .

What do you need to take out of your life, where do you need to create a hunger, to help you tune your thoughts, affections, and energies toward God?

—

Chad A. Francis (@chadafrancis) serves as the Ministry Coordinator at Garden City Church, where he is being assessed and trained for future pastoral ministry. He’s obsessed with grace and passionate about being a waker where complacency exists. You can read more from Chad at www.chadafrancis.com.

An Open Letter to Justine Sacco on Grace

Can your life be defined by one moment? By one mistake? By one infamous decision? For Justine Sacco it probably feels like it can. Maybe you have heard her story, but in case you haven’t, let me tell it the best I can. On December 20th, 2013 Justine sent out the following tweet before boarding a plane en route to Cape Town, South Africa: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” Now what Justine tweeted was irresponsible and misguided. These are the obvious facts.

But what happened to Justine Sacco after that tweet revealed how much our society really loves to see people destroyed. Social media exploded with outrage over the tweet, and Justine’s life suddenly took a swift turn for the worse.

However, I want to focus on this situation from an explicitly Christian perspective. How should we, as Christians respond to Justine Sacco’s mistake? Is there grace for her? Would Justine have a place in your church?

Now I believe that most Christians would say that there is indeed grace for Justine Sacco. Grace is the centerpiece of the gospel—the central message of Jesus. However, are Christians simply using “grace-talk” or actually believing that grace is big enough to cover sins that have been deemed unforgivable?

Finding Grace and Freedom

According to a recent story on Sacco in The New York Times, she admitted to “crying out (what seemed to be) her body weight in the first 24 hours” after discovering that her tweet had been retweeted and shared thousands of times. Sacco inevitably was fired from her job, and spent a long time wallowing in the guilt, remorse, and shame that comes from making mistakes, sinning, and it being exposed to the world.

Now over a year has past since Justine Sacco made a grievous mistake that ruined her life. I do not know what Justine is up to now, and I’m sure she is fine with that. I’m sure she prefers not being in the limelight anymore. Nevertheless, I do wonder if Justine found grace and freedom. Has she experienced the liberation of having her past mistakes redeemed and forgiven? Has she felt the burden of shame and guilt lifted from her?

Many people will say the church is “a hospital for sinners.” This seems right in light of the way that Jesus lived his life. Christ said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk. 2:17). In other places, Jesus dined with outcasts and tax collectors (Matt. 9:10). He seemed to have no problem in keeping company with those who were considered to be marginalized and wrongdoers (Jn. 4).

So what does this communicate to current Christians in an age of internet shaming? In an age of public shaming, is it possible for Justine to start over? No doubt Justine was wrong, but what should the consequences be for her mistake? Exile? Excommunication? Expulsion?

The Mentality of Karma

It’s interesting to me that Christians regularly use grace-language, but live out a karma-like mentality. When situations like Justine Sacco’s are brought before our attention, we tend to immediately think, “She is getting what she deserves.” But what exactly does she deserve? Is it really punishment, exile, and condemnation? I don’t think so.

What’s alarming though is that Christians tend to display this same karma-like mentality online. The culture of shame has infected the way that Christians conduct themselves on the Internet (just take a look at Twitter or Facebook on any given day). To be honest, do we really believe that the gospel message is going to bear fruit in an atmosphere of humiliation and reproof?

Imagine if Jesus would have said to Matthew, “Clean up your behavior and then you can follow me” (Matt. 9:9). Or when Jesus encountered the woman at the well. What if he would have said, “You have been sleeping around a lot, so I’m not sure that this living water is for you” (Jn. 4). What about in the last moments of the thief on the cross’s life (Lk. 23:32-43)? This man would have been considered to be one of the worst of the worst. However, Jesus offered unconditional grace to this man, and did not withhold forgiveness from him.

What if this was what immediately was offered to Justine Sacco? Grace, forgiveness, and love. I know that everybody is not a Christian, and she still would have faced consequences at work and from the world, but why couldn’t the Christian church rally around her and say, “There is room at the table for you”?

Why couldn’t the overwhelming response to Justine’s situation be more centered on Jesus Christ’s undeserved grace instead of on her ill-advised tweet? We now live in a culture where one mistake, tweet, lie, or video can ruin your life. Is this really the message of the Christian gospel? Of course not. But if the Christian church isn’t careful, she will let the secular culture influence her more than the liberating message of Jesus.

This is why I hope Justine Sacco, wherever she is, is confronted by someone who has been grasped by the now-power of the gospel. I hope she is floored by the amazing grace of Jesus Christ. That is my hope and prayer for her, and for many more like her (i.e., Peter Jennings, etc.).The good news really is that good, even though Christians might not present it in that light always.

So Justine Sacco:

I pray that you will be liberated by the good news of Jesus Christ. He died so that we would not be defined by one mistake. He died so that we could be made alive (Eph. 2). If you are still experiencing overwhelming guilt, shame, and distress, I hope that you will recognize that the Christian God is a God who removes our sins as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:11-12). Our sin may run deep, but God’s grace runs deeper still. Realize that.

Your friend and fellow-sinner,

Matt Manry

—

Matt Manry is the Assistant Pastor at Life Bible Church in Canton, Georgia. He is a student at Reformed Theological Seminary and Knox Theological Seminary. He also works on the editorial team for Credo Magazine and Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He blogs regularly at matthewwmanry.com.