Myra Dempsey 10/21/15 Myra Dempsey 10/21/15

Removing Fear Out of Friendship

She sits across from me, perched on the edge of her seat, with her ankles crossed and fingers interlocked over her knee. She makes limited eye contact as she begins to describe the circumstances that brought her to this room. It’s obvious that she isn’t comfortable, but the hope for help and expectancy of change hold her here. She’s weary and searching for a hand to reach out and grab on to. I’ve had the privilege of being the biblical counselor sitting on the other side of this scene, asking the Holy Spirit to give me wisdom and gospel-clarity to share. These kinds of moments, however, when pain reaches out and love attempts to reciprocate, should not be unique to a counselor’s office. This is what should happen every day in living rooms, coffee shops, and crowded playgrounds. God, in his mercy and through his Spirit, has equipped every follower of Christ to be able to speak gospel truth and encourage others with the Word. Unfortunately, I haven’t witnessed this to be the norm for relationships in local gatherings of the Church. The need for more relationships saturated with the gospel and facilitating effectual growth, healing, and change should drive us to ask, “What keeps these kind of friendships from happening? What keeps me from pressing in to this?”

In my life the answer to those questions has been fear. Various fears—judgement, rejection or ineffectiveness—have driven me to stop short when it comes to developing deep relationships. By God’s grace alone I’ve learned how the gospel speaks directly to my fears and have been freed to taste and see how good true community can be.

I can remember thinking and operating this way. I was so afraid my friends would find out how truly sinful I was and that they’d politely opt out. I was worshiping others’ perception of me and denying what God had already declared about my identity! When God, out of the overflow of his love and by his grace alone, brings a dead heart to life and grants sight to spiritually blind eyes, he doesn’t begrudgingly tolerate us. He adopts us into his family and delights in welcoming us to his table! The perfect blood of Jesus atones for our rebellion and changes our identity completely. The Father looks at Jesus and says, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.” The Father looks at me and sees Jesus. The Father looks at me and is well pleased! When my heart is awakened to this beautiful truth, my worry of how I will look to others begins to fade. Humble gratitude stirs worship within me, and I let the veil of my own perceived self-righteousness be torn down. I can share my struggles openly, as well as extend judgment-free grace to others.

In addition to the fear of judgment or rejection, I have also seen how the fear of “not having anything good to offer” keeps women hiding behind the walls of surface-friendships. In Christ, we see that we can actually look this fear dead in the eye and say, “Yep. You’re right.” In our own flesh we don’t have anything good to offer. But by God’s grace we can echo Paul and affirm, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

They don’t need impressive sounding advice or more how-to’s; they need Jesus. So, all I need to do is move out of the way and let him love on her. How God actually works in each relationship will look very different, but we can trust that he will work.

And what a joy it is to be a part of sharing Christ’s love with someone else! God doesn't need me in order to accomplish his will. I get to be a part of his work, and as my joy in him grows, he is even more greatly glorified through me.

Remember, you have been redeemed for a reason. Jesus not only saves us from; he saves us to. When we are rescued out of the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of the Son, it’s for a specific mission. God has chosen to use each of us to bring the message of hope to the hurting world around us,and it is solely in him that we will find the ability to do so. The same Spirit who defeated death, indwells each regenerate believer, empowering us to do his work in our own small circles of influence! So take heart, you do have something great to offer, the most beautiful Gift to give. Trust the Wonderful Counselor to lead, he is forever faithful.

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Myra Dempsey lives in the Columbus, Ohio area with her husband, Andrew, and their 3 children, Eli (5), Esther (3) and Gideon (1). Myra works part-time as a Licensed Professional Counselor and School Psychology Assistant. She blogs at dependentongrace.com, contributes to the blog for her home church, at vineyardgrace.org, and has been blessed to be the keynote speaker at the iAm conference in Powell, Ohio, an event for teen girls. She loves reading, writing, and talking about God’s glorious grace!

Brad Watson 10/19/15 Brad Watson 10/19/15

4 Lessons for Making Disciples from Jan Hus

Editor: In our Family History Series we are seeking to understand how Christians of the past have pursued making disciples. We want to connect the church’s current efforts to make, mature, and multiply disciples to its historical roots as well as encourage the church to learn from her rich past. So far in our series:

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Yesterday I meandered through Prague with my friend Nuno. Nuno used to be a student of my father’s in Lisbon, Portugal, and we now oddly find ourselves sharing a few days together in Prague, his adopted city. Prague is everything I thought it would be: craftsmanship in every detail of the city—the rails, the sewer caps, the windows, the roofs, the palaces, and the cathedrals. We walked through cramped cathedrals with thousands of others who could barely get enough space to take photos. We walked over the Charles Bridge, passed snake handlers, beggars, artists, and tourists rubbing statues for good luck and blessings. We escaped the crowds when we went to the cemetery of the Jews and the oldest standing synagogue in Europe. It was preserved, unlike the jewish people in Prague, during world War II because Hitler wanted it to be a museum or monument to the extinct race. On our walk, I learned the mixed history of this city. It was central in trading, the arts, and religion. Now it’s central in human sex trading, the arts, and atheism—the brand of atheism that refuses to even think about God.

Then we stepped into a nondescript building donated and built by a shopkeeper where the Bible was to be preached in Czech. I found this fact both inspiring and disappointing, what were all the other cathedrals for?

An old Czech woman walked us into the vast silent chapel where, 700 years ago commoners, business owners, nobleman, and university students pilled in by the thousands to hear the gospel in their language, many for the first time. They say it seats 3,000 people. Historians note it was normal for upwards of 5,000 to gather there. To the side of the pulpit where Jan Hus preached the gospel is a deep, ancient well. Literally. On the walls you can see slight remnants of hymns etched in stone where people sang the gospel in their language. The room itself was powerful. More powerful than the massive gothic cathedrals crammed with tourists, because of the significance of what happened in that space and in the souls of thousands hundreds of years ago.

My friend Nuno and I, who hope to give our lives to seeing everyone in our cities experience the deep well and life found in Christ, sat quietly meditating on the reality that we wouldn't be where we are in life without the ministry and discipleship of Jan Hus.

Jan Hus was a Czech priest and a professor at the Prague University which was established by Charles IV, the Holy Roman Emperor. Hus was given the privilege of being the preacher of the Chapel of Bethlehem where he was charged with delivering sermons in the language of the people. This is what Jan Hus did and the impact was astounding. It’s amazing how such a simple act can have massive global, historical implications and how at the time it was seen as a small charitable work of an entrepreneur.

As Hus preached the gospel, people responded. As he declared the gift and mercy of Christ, his convictions hardened against the system which kept people from receiving that. Jan Hus stood as a sign post in one of the Church’s major forks in the road. Would the church be given to the lives of everyday people? Would she include them or would she be kept exclusively for the ruling class? Hus, emboldened by the fruit of the gospel, knew instinctively that it should be given to the people. He worked to have the Bible and his works published into Czech and allowed every believer to take part in communion—to drink the cup and eat the bread for themselves.

Jan Hus came into the reformation movement after Wycliff and before Luther and Calvin. On my tour through his small apartment attached to the chapel, I saw a piece of art that depicted Wycliff lighting a spark with stones, Hus lighting a candle, and Luther carrying a torch. Hus stands firmly as a major player in our family history. Luther would say later that he was Hus’ “disciple” despite the time and place that separated them.

In the fall of 1414, Hus was called to attend the counsel of Constance and speak before the rulers of Europe and the Catholic Church about his beliefs and teachings. He was granted safe passage, but once he arrived and shared his beliefs they demanded he recant his teachings and his reformation ways. Hus was soon put into prison to await a trial. At the trial, he refused to recant unless they could prove his error through the Scriptures. In the summer of 1415, he was condemned a heretic and sentenced to death. He was burned publicly at the stake in the center of town and in the shadow of the cathedral. Dying, he sang hymns to God as worship before breathing his last as flames blew in his face.

Here are just four lessons on gospel-centered discipleship I learned from Jan Hus in the old city of Prague:

1. Unleash the Artists to worship God through their work in the Cities

“I entreat all artisans faithfully to follow their craft and take delight in it.”

This is so evident through out the city. The wealth that flowed through Prague and the vision of Charles IV attracted hundreds of artists to build temples, bridges, theaters, clocks, statues, and palaces. Jan Hus continued to press the creative tradition and took it further. Ultimately God commissions the artisans to create beauty in the world, notnobility or bishops .

2. We want to be pastors for respect and admiration, but instead we lose our lives and it is sweet

“I was anxious to take the holy orders to have a life of comfort and the admiration of the people.”

Hus’ desire to become a priest was rooted in his desire for comfort and respect. He saw the life of a priest accurately in that time. Instead of the life he envisioned, he found the gospel to be everything his heart desired. As a pastor, his life models mine. Honestly, my heart often seeks admiration from people through my vocation. I don’t simply just want to be liked but revered. Hus’ life and writing teach me to be honest about that while pursuing the greater calling which is to give your life away and find the deepest life possible in the gospel.

Hus stood in front of kings, emperors, and a pope knowing he could have their affection by recanting his beliefs. Yet, he sang hymns to God amidst flames in death. He found God to be more worthy of worship than himself. Then, he found God more worthy of worship than his peers.

3. The Gospel is For Everyone

During Hus’ lifetime, many church leaders were separating people into categories—who is important and who is not. For them, the church existed for the wealthy and powerful more than the people. The church played the role of power broker and power keeper more than a place for everyone to know the love of God and to love one-another.

This is our family history, too. We cozy up to the influential and use the uneducated, the burdened, the insignificant as collateral damage in kingdom building. Many times we are more like the Catholic church of 700 years ago than we would like to admit. We prefer to imagine ourselves and our family history beginning with Jan Hus; however, all of it is our history. And some of it ought to be a caution to us as we build kingdoms, seek the influential, and disregard the un-cool. This problem isn’t new—Jesus critiqued the Pharisees, Paul fought Jewish leaders to include Gentiles, and James rebuked the church for keeping special seats for the “important.”

Jan Hus teaches us that the gospel is for everyone and for every aspect of life. The gospel is grace, mercy, and faith—not power, money, and control.

4. Proclaim and Die for the the Gospel alone

“I hope, by God's grace, that I am truly a Christian, not deviating from the faith, and that I would rather suffer the penalty of a terrible death than wish to affirm anything outside of the faith or transgress the commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I love how Hus describes his reasons for persevering to death. He would not let go of what he knew and believed to be central to his faith. He died for refusing to give up anything central. He didn’t die for the fringe, he didn’t stir up conflict, and he didn't try to start a revolution.

He was fixated on making the gospel clear, understood, and experiential. He wouldn’t recant that. He couldn’t stop preaching the gospel. Because to stop proclaiming the gospel andto stop inviting people to the communion table would make his life in Christ void.

The gospel of free salvation and mercy in Jesus was controversial and it still is. As we make disciples this has to be our focus, too. We have to put all our efforts into making the gospel central and clear. As we make disciples in community and in our cities, we need to create a space for the gospel itself to be controversial. Step into conflicts about those things that without you would not be a Christian.

Conclusion

We are in the midst of many conflicts, disagreements, and issues in our culture. I pray that we are fighting with the gospel in mind and for the gospel. I pray our hope in talking about sexuality is rooted in the gift of God’s love in Jesus. I pray that our discussions about racial reconciliation are directly sourced in the reconciliation of God to man in Christ. I pray that our motivations in government are founded on God’s love for all men and women. Above all, I pray that we are motivated and empowered by the Spirit of God to make the gospel plain and clear to everyone around us.

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Brad Watson (@bradawatson) serves as a pastor of Bread&Wine Communities where he develops and teaches leaders how to form communities that love God and serve the city. Brad is the author of Raised?, Called Together: A Guide to Forming Missional Communities, and Sent Together: How the Gospel Sends Leaders to Start Missional Communities. He lives in southeast Portland with his wife and their two daughters. You can read more from Brad at www.bradawatson.com.

Joshua Waulk 10/18/15 Joshua Waulk 10/18/15

Fulfilling the Law of Christ Through Biblical Counseling

“Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” —Galatians 6:2 (HCSB)

The mental health community recognizes September as National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. As a biblical counselor and former police officer who responded frequently to calls for service involving human tragedy (i.e., suicide, domestic violence, child abuse, rape, etc.), I’m reminded of the urgent need for spiritual hope in our communities and of the church’s role in providing the hope that so many desperately need.

Over the course of my law enforcement career, followed now by several years of pastoral and counseling ministry, I have grown increasingly convinced of the power of the gospel to not only save us in eternity, but to redeem us in this lifetime, including our disordered thoughts and troubled emotions.

When we acknowledge this, we are not denying the role of appropriate medical care—to be human is to possess both a body and a soul. Neither are we making outlandish declarations about the cure of organic mental illness through prayer and the reading of Scripture alone. But to deny the gospel’s power to restore the mind is to suggest that for most of human history, that is, until the advent of psychoanalysis and psychotropic drugs, that we were without any tangible hope for the restoration of our minds or the alleviation of emotional suffering.

A History of Care

“Counseling belongs in and to the church of God.”

This mantra of the greater biblical counseling movement raises eyebrows in an age that dismisses the authority and sufficiency of Scripture while uncritically assuming the efficacy of secular mental health care. This phenomenon exists despite serious questions about secular treatment methodologies based on research outcomes that cannot always be reproduced and counseling theories that do not otherwise align with Scripture.[1]

Through the effective use of media and its dominance in academic and medical arenas, secular psychology has a firm grip on societal mental health structures. Accordingly, mainline and evangelical churches have too often surrendered control of counseling to those who adhere to theories established by Freud, Jung, Rogers, Skinner, et al. The result is that today’s most common approaches to counseling reflect a societal shift away from a biblical worldview while embracing a medical model of mental health care that more often than not establishes a pathology for nearly every problematic behavior and emotion.

Dr. David Powlison observed that following the Civil War, “Professional jurisdiction over Americans’ problems in living gradually passed form the religious pastorate to various medical and quasi-medical professions: psychiatry, neurology, social work, and clinical psychology. . . . Psychiatry and psychotherapy displaced the cure of souls.”[2] While the debate concerning the church’s ongoing embrace of biblically questionable counseling theories continues, what is clear from Scripture and church history is the church’s responsibility to provide biblically faithful, clinically-informed counsel in the context of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20).

A Biblical Foundation for the Care of Souls

Galatians 6:2 is one important verse that urges the church to re-engage in the counseling task. Paul instructs the church, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” To understand this verse and apply it properly, we need to consider what “burdens” Paul had in mind. Were these burdens primarily physical (i.e. food, shelter, and clothing), or more holistic? Further, we need to consider what Paul meant by the “law of Christ,” because for Paul, its fulfillment was the desired outcome.

Although a few scholars find that 6:2 is independent of 6:1 because of the absence of a connecting article in the Greek text (as happens at 6:3), Paul’s point does not arise in a vacuum. Restoring a “brother” who has fallen into some type of “wrongdoing” is accomplished in part when burdens are shared. How then do we practically observe this passage? For many people, a season of intentional and systematic counseling of God’s word is central to their discipleship.[3]

It was in this context that Paul called upon the church to “bear one another’s burdens” and in so doing “fulfill the law of Christ”—a law that, according to Paul, transcends the law of Moses (3:2-3). To this point, Bruce wrote, “The ‘law of Christ’ is for Paul the whole tradition of Jesus’ ethical teaching, confirmed by His character and conduct and reproduced within His people by the power of the Spirit.”[4]

This law of Christ was nothing less than the command of Jesus for believers to love one another and their neighborsas they love themselves (Jn. 13:34; Matt. 22:39).

With the call to love one’s neighbor in view, the command to “carry one another’s burdens” takes on clearer meaning and may be applied more holistically to the whole man. Carrying one another’s burdens certainly includes meeting physical needs, but it does not end there. The spiritual and emotional concerns of those who suffer fall within the scope of Paul’s intent and may be properly addressed through biblical counsel.

Rapa agrees in his commentary on 6:2 that sin is, at a minimum, included in Paul’s admonition. He wrote, “Joining together to restore one who has sinned or to prevent others from being ‘caught in a sin’ in the first place is a way that believers may ‘serve one another in love’ (5:13; cf. Ro 15:1-3).”[5] Moo, on the other hand, takes an expanded view of “burdens” in 6:2 to include “all those problems that afflict our brothers and sisters”(emphasis added).[6] In light of Christ’s command to love, Moo’s interpretation should be preferred.

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all those who believe and by it sinners and sufferers experience transformation rather than conformity to the patterns of the world (Rom. 1:16; 12:2). Paul understands, however, that people live in the context of a world marred by sin and

‘[‘ therefore will go on experiencing the varied effects of the fall, both physical and non-physical (Gen. 3). For this reason he calls upon his audience to fulfill the law of Christ by carrying one another’s burdens in whatever form they may come (i.e. sin and suffering).

Tim Lane and Paul Tripp wrote,

“Kind people look for ways to do good. Patient and faithful people don’t run away when people mess up. Loving people serve even when sinned against. Gentle people help a struggler bear his burden. Galatians 5 and 6 are filled with hope.”[7]

As with Moo, Lane and Tripp see Christ-like love as the source of hope in 6:2 along with a call to enter into the suffering of others across the full spectrum of human struggle. This is the essence of biblical soul care and why the church must re-consider its obligation to provide intentional forms of counsel.

The Stakes Are High

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, in 2013 there were approximately 43.8 million adults aged eighteen and over in the United States with some form of diagnosable mental illness.[8] That statistic excludes children, which would only serve to increase the extraordinary figure.

While the definition of what constitutes “mental illness” is not a settled debate, that people struggle with a multitude of problematic behaviors and emotions that help fuel significant societal concerns is evident even if the source of those troubles are also debated (i.e. biological or spiritual). Whatever the cause of one person’s mental, behavioral, or emotional trouble, the gospel is everyone’s preeminent need and those needs are often properly addressed through a word-based counseling ministry.

With significant numbers of those diagnosed or diagnosable being found within the church at large, the issue of mental health and mental illness is one that affects the mission of making disciples. This ought to communicate to the church an area of immediate gospel-need and missional opportunity, yet many people, both inside and outside of the church, perceive the church to be less than responsive. This communicates to some a casual indifference to emotional suffering or even an unbelief in the sufficiency of the word of God to actually transform the mind (Rom. 12:2). The church can and must do better.

Paul’s command to bear one another’s burdens is founded upon the law of Christ, which calls us to love one another. As we’ve seen in our survey of Gal. 6:2 and the surrounding verses, the burdens Paul demands we carry run deep and the law of Christ that calls us to love our neighbor is necessarily wide.

The church has historically responded well to the physical suffering of others through such things as food pantries, clothing closets, and soup kitchens. The past one-hundred years or so have not been equally distinguished by soul care through counseling. With the advent of quality training programs available at both the academic and lay levels, inadequate preparation is no longer an reasonable excuse to ignore this critical ministry concern.

Whether that counsel is provided for through a lay ministry, pastoral position, or some other arrangement such as a para-church ministry is a separate matter for the local church to decide. My hope is to persuade Christians that counseling ministry is not an something the church should outsource to the state, rather it fits squarely within the command of Paul in Galatians 6:2 to fulfill the law of Christ by carrying the burdens of one another, whether physical or spiritual-emotional.

The church must recall that if it does not love people with the gospel in this way, that the secular world waits with a “gospel” of its own—and its “gospel” cannot save. Paul states this more positively in Rom. 15:14, where he writes, “I am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.”

[1] A.D.P. Efferson, “How Many Laws Are Based On Psychology's Bad Science?,” The Federalist, September 8, 2015, accessed September 14, 2015, http://thefederalist.com/2015/09/08/how-many-laws-are-based-on-psychologys-bad-science/.

[2] David Powlison, The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2010), 22.

[3] John Strelan, “Burden-Bearing and the Law of Christ: A Re-Examination of Galatians 6,” Journal of Biblical Literature 94, no. 2 (June 1975): 266, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost.

[4] F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians (The New International Greek Testament Commentary), Reprint ed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013), 261.

[5] Robert Rapa, ed., Romans - Galatians (The Expositor's Bible Commentary), Revised ed., ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 634.

[6] Douglas J. Moo, Galatians (Baker Exegetical Commentary On the New Testament) (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 376.

[7] Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp, How People Change, 2nd ed. (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2008), 214.

[8] “Any Mental Illness (AMI) Among Adults,” National Institute of Mental Health, accessed September 6, 2015, http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/any-mental-illness-ami-among-adults.shtml.

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Josh Waulk is the Founder and Executive Director of Baylight Counseling, a nonprofit biblical counseling ministry in Clearwater, Florida. He is married with four children, three of whom are adopted. Josh earned the MABC and is now pursuing the D.Min. in biblical counseling at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is ACBC certified.

Dave Jenkins 10/15/15 Dave Jenkins 10/15/15

4 Dimensions of Exposing Faulty Worldviews

Few issues today are as important as understanding the connection between the gospel, discipleship, missions, and apologetics. I’ve learned these truths through ministering on the streets of Seattle, being in college campus ministry, and at local coffee shops around my area. Engaging in discipleship, missions, and apologetics in a manner worthy of the gospel means understanding how they relate first to the gospel and then to the Church’s mission. I hope to trace out some of these vital connections and in so doing help readers understand that the story of Jesus exposes faulty worldviews. For example, in John 4, Jesus unveils the woman at the well’s faulty worldview. He asks her questions designed to draw her closer to understanding who he is. As the woman’s understanding grows, she sees her need for Jesus. She understands that Jesus is the Son of God. Then she becomes a disciple of Jesus and goes on mission for Jesus in reaching her neighbors and town for him. This is how the gospel works. Jesus exposes faulty worldview stories by showing us our need for his better and truer story,then he saves us by showing us the majesty of his death and resurrection. From there he grows our understanding of himself and sends us out on mission. Part and parcel of this mission is to show the truthfulness of his story in history in comparison to the faultiness of every other story.

Gospel

As the Church, we come together on the Lord’s Day because of the gospel. We gather to be reminded of what Jesus accomplished in his death, burial, and resurrection. We assemble together because God has taken those who were formerly not his and redeemed us through the blood of the Lamb of God. The Apostle Peter calls us to “give an answer for the reason for the hope that we have but to do so with gentleness and respect” (1 Pt. 3:15) because we are honoring Christ the Lord as holy in our hearts (1 Pt. 3:15).

Apologetics exist not because we know all the right answers but as a result of a life centered on Christ. This is what Peter emphasized in 1 Peter 1:13-17, namely that God who is holy has called us to be his own and as a result, we’re called to manifest godly character in keeping with our status as his beloved.

Redeemed people long to see Christ formed not only in their own lives but in the lives of others and to share their stories with others. The real work of apologetics is sharing the stories of God’s grace, goodness, and work in our lives with others. Part of apologetics does deal with objections and responds to error, heresy, and false teaching, but, before we do that, Christ must be honored preeminently in our hearts as noted in 1 Peter 3:15. We’ve been called as a people because of the gospel to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pt. 3:16) and to have a Christ-like character being formed in our lives (2 Pt. 1:3-15).

Discipleship

Because we are disciples of Jesus, we must grow in Christ-like character. Jesus had much to say to the disciples about discipleship. Luke’s Gospel is arranged around the question of “Who is Jesus?”, a question explored in great detail from Luke 1:1 to Luke 9:51. Luke also spends considerable time noting the training of the disciples in his Gospel. This training focuses on helping the disciples learn about Jesus. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a learner of Jesus. To be a disciple of Jesus means to grow in understanding of who Jesus is, what he has done, and what he demands.

This is why exposing faulty worldviews as I mentioned at the outset is so important. Faulty views of the gospel, discipleship, and missions abound today. One prime example of a faulty perspective on these issues can be found in the book Heaven is for Real. In Heaven is for Real, the author promotes a worldview where God’s words are not enough, instead suggesting that in some way we need more assurance than Christ has given us that we will rise from the dead. The truth is one day when we die we will be with Jesus. This truth compelled the Apostle Paul to long for this Day, the Day Jesus said we would receive the crown of righteousness (2 Tim. 4:8). Mature disciples of Jesus are those who are growing in their understanding of the gospel and can apply that knowledge in real-world situations. As disciples of Jesus therefore, we must grow in our understanding of Jesus for the purpose of exercising godly discernment so we might speak the truth in love to people.

Mission

The message of the King demands faithfulness to the means the King has given. King Jesus died on the cross, was buried, and rose again. Jesus, through the work of the Holy Spirit, indwells believers for the task of growth in him and also to be about doing the work of the Kingdom. When either growth in him or missions for him are emphasized above the other, the redeeming message of the gospel is compromised. The gospel’s call is personal in that it alone justifies the sinner, as well as transforming every area of one’s life. Furthermore, the gospel is corporate in that it calls people everywhere to repent and believe in who Christ is and what Christ has done in his death, burial and resurrection.

The reason we engage worldviews comes from the mission of Jesus who came into the world to redeem man from sin. By coming in human form, the God-Man Jesus lived a sinless life, performed miracles, taught his disciples, and demonstrated how to engage people with the truth in love. When dealing with the religious leaders of Israel, Jesus often asked questions and went against the grain of theological thought of his day. Jesus was not novel with the Old Testament, but he did interpret it through the perspective that he came to fulfill its meaning. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, and the Prophets all looked ahead to the hope they would have in a coming Savior. New Testament believers today look back to what Jesus has done in his finished work. Jesus engaged people where they were and helped them to understand who He is and what he has done. This should provide believers today with the urge to engage people through a biblical worldview.

The mission of Jesus is to rescue sinners (Lk. 19:10) from sin through his death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus called his disciples to mission. During his earthly ministry, Christ called his disciples to a small missions trip to prepare them for future service (Lk. 9), he called the seventy-two to ministry (Lk. 10:1-16), and now he calls believers in our day to a mission to make disciples. While the mission of Jesus is to redeem lost sinners, his mission is also to grow in intimacy with those who follow him. Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 that the gospel is both inward and outward. The gospel is a message that one first must believe personally and then confess outwardly. The gospel is a message we first must apply to our own life and context before we can ever hope to confess it outwardly with any degree of effectiveness. Preaching the gospel to ourselves is the greatest way to fight against sin and grow in sanctification. We first must be a disciple before we can do the work of a disciple. Jesus taught that a disciple is not greater than his master, so a disciple must first learn from his master before they do the work of the Master.

The mission of Jesus is to go out and make disciples (Math. 28:18-20, Lk. 24; Acts 1:8). As a result of going out on mission, we will engage all manner of worldviews and the interaction with these various worldviews is ultimately a Great Commission concern. The gospel is the timeless message we are to preach but the way one ministers that message may change depending on the context we find ourselves or the background of the person we interact with. Regardless of context or background, the Christian must preach the gospel in such a way as to make it clear to the person listening that Christ died, was buried, and rose again.

We live in a rapidly changing world where many voices are calling for Christians to compromise on matters related to the gospel, the Bible, and ethics. Christians have been called to be in the world but not of the world. This is why as Christians we must know what we believe so we can accurately, boldly, and precisely represent Christ as his ambassador in a pluralistic therapeutic culture. This is why understanding the gospel will help us to have a biblical view of discipleship and missions with the result that we’ll be able to be an effective witness for Christ in the world in the context of the local church that makes, matures, and multiples disciples to the glory of God.

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Dave Jenkins is the Executive Director of Servants of Grace Ministries, and the Executive Editor of Theology for Life Magazine. He and his wife, Sarah, are members of Ustick Baptist Church in Boise, Idaho, where they serve in a variety of ministries. Dave received his MAR and M.Div. through Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. You can follow him on twitter @DaveJJenkins. Find him on Facebook or read more of his work at servantsofgrace.org.

Brad Andrews 10/12/15 Brad Andrews 10/12/15

Idolatry: A Fatal Attraction | Part 2

It’s one thing to understand the category of idolatry, but quite another to isolate what deities you worship. It’s the difference between knowing what a steak is and actually tasting a perfectly grilled morsel of meat melting on your tongue. Today we take the first step in diagnosing idolatry. ****

I’m a sucker for the occasional B-movie escapism. Replete with a low budget, painful dialogue, and a severely undefined story arc, it can be the perfect silliness for a Friday evening. Enter Anaconda. As only 1997 could deliver, the film chronicles a documentary crew headed into the jungle to shoot footage on a mysterious Indian tribe. On their way, they pick up a stranded man who then takes the team hostage on his quest to capture the world's largest and deadliest snake: a record-breaking green Anaconda.

The thrust of the storyline in one sentence (spoiler alert!) is: people scanning the crest of the river to determine where this deadly snake might be. That’s it. You can imagine the dialogue: “Is that it?” “Did you see that?” “I think I heard something” “Watch out, I see it coming!”

I’ve been thinking lately about the ways we pursue happiness and my drifted to Anaconda. Though most of us wouldn’t articulate it this way, we stroll through our human existence, scanning the surface of our hearts until we find what we think we are looking for. Our time, our energy, our attention, and even our money is devoted to a quest of self-assurance and self-significance.

The Great Hunt

We want to be loved. We want to belong. We want to make a difference. We want to feel important. And we’ll look endlessly until we have found something we think might satisfy us—much like the documentary crew looking for what lies at the crest of the river. But the fruit of our self-salvation projects lie at the surface of a greater hunt in our lives.

Want happiness? It’s important to identify what is at the surface of our hopes and desires. In order for us to find real satisfaction, we must start here. We must ask, “Is that it?” “Did you see that?” “I think I heard something” “Watch out, I see it coming!” The Bible calls this self-diagnosis idol detection (1 Cor. 10:14). Today, we are discussing step one of this self-diagnosis: unearthing those idols that lie on the surface.

Many times these idols are easily discernible, because they are on the surface but there’s always deeper root idols. You can identify them by listening to your prayers. What do you ask God forgiveness for? Maybe it’s an anger problem. Maybe it’s an issue with lust. Maybe you have bitterness in your heart towards another.

While it is good to ask God to cleanse you of unrighteousness, prayer is the first leg in the race to kill your idols. Anger, lust, and bitterness are exterior sins indicating deeper root sins. These are branch idols. You can see them easily but the root sins are what’s actually feeding them.

Hunting for Your Idols

Here are some questions as you look for your surface idols.

Do I need to be esteemed by people?
Do I demand order in my world?
Do I compare myself favorably to others?
Am I angry or defeated if things are not accomplished immediately?
Do I have to be the center of my family life, my job, or my church?
Do I dictate that people must submit to me?
Do I think my opinions are all-wise and correct?
Do I do whatever pleases me?
Is my appearance—whether religiously or physically—ultimate?
Do I desire to be accountable to no one?
Do I have to win at everything?

If you notice, these questions require a sense of self-awareness. Tim Keller says that one way you can identify your surface idols is by looking at your most uncontrollable emotions

Just like a fisherman looking for fish knows to go where the water is rolling, look for your idols at the bottom of your most painful emotions, especially those that never seem to lift and that drive you to do things you know are wrong . . . when you ‘pull your emotions up by the root,’ as it were, you will often find your idols clinging to them.

So what are your surface idols? Look at where the water is rolling on the crest of your heart and you will locate them. It’s an essential first step to reversing the fatal attraction of idolatry in our lives.

Next time, we will look at why we can’t stop at just identifying our surface idols if we want to find true significance and happiness. To find real peace and contentment in life, there is something that lurks beneath the surface that we must address because our surface sins are only symptoms of much deeper sins.

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

Matthew D. Adams 10/11/15 Matthew D. Adams 10/11/15

3 Lessons from John L. Girardeau for Crossing Divides

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I remember as a young kid waking up in the middle of the night and walking into my parent's room and just staring at them. It sounds creepy, but I'm sure that many parents know exactly what I am talking about. I did not want to wake my parents, so I decided just to get right in their face and stare. They would wake up, startled, and fuss over the mild heart attack I just gave them.

In a way, this is the story of the old Presbyterian churches throughout the South. Looking back into the early nineteenth century, the Southern Presbyterians were solid in their doctrine, but inconsistencies in their practices and teaching were staring them right in the face. Slavery.

Didn’t slavery in the antebellum South not go against the grace and compassion that the Southern Presbyterians preached? Was this not breaking the commandment to love your neighbor? One minister —a Southern Presbyterian—struggled with these questions.

John L. Girardeau is not a household name, but his boldness for the Scriptures and his heart for discipleship should not be forgotten. Early on Girardeau desired to minister to the slave community in the low country of South Carolina. He graduated seminary in 1848 and went on to be a famous pastor to the slaves of Charleston, SC.

Through his pastor's heart, his Biblical convictions, and his boldness to break the great divide of race, he has a lot to teach us today about discipleship.

1. A Pastor to the Least of These

Girardeau spent much of early life around slaves because his father ran a small plantation. His mother’s compassion for the slaves made a strong impression on the young John. He watched as she would care for them while they were sick and share Bible stories with them. Girardeau's love for the slaves as people and his desire to see them know Christ would grow.

Conviction, compassion, and a pastor’s heart starts in the home—even when inconsistencies and sin are present. His home was full of regular family devotions, his parents taught him what it meant to pray without ceasing, they worshipped faithfully together at their local church, and observed the Lord's Day with great reverence and admiration. Later in his life Girardeau shared these practices and his knowledge of Christ with slaves.

As he grew, he attended college and enrolled in seminary at Columbia, SC. He would regularly listen to the preaching and teaching of James Thornwell and Benjamin Morgan Palmer. These men's theological convictions and walks with Christ were instrumental to Girardeau. All the while, he still longed to minister to the "least of these."

Even in his time in the midlands of South Carolina, Girardeau would spend time in the streets ministering to the homeless. He would travel to the local plantations and preach the gospel to the slaves. He would continue to do this while fervently studying with the goal in mind—go back to his home region and preach and teach to the slave community.

As he returned to the low country of South Carolina, his longing became a reality as he began his ministry to the slaves. At his first church, he would preach in the mornings to his white congregation then for the slaves on Sunday afternoons. He would travel around to the different plantations in the surrounding area and preach from the porches of the slave houses. Girardeau would sometimes preach six or seven times on a given Sunday. He would eventually be called to serve as the minister of a mission church built for the slaves in the Charleston area. In 1854, he had a regular attendance of thirty-six people and six short years later would preach to a congregation of over 1500.

Through his preaching there was never a doubt where his theological convictions were founded. Girardeau held fast to the Scriptures and found the Westminster Confession and Catechisms a faithful exposition of biblical truth. He would use both throughout his preaching and ministry.

Ultimately, the small mission church Girardeau was called to pastor was too small for the crowds that were gathering to hear him preach. The plantation owners in the Charleston area built another church for the slaves. The slaves would call it Zion Presbyterian Church. Zion Church would continue to grow and its influence in the lives of the slaves and in the community would not be surpassed.

2. A Barrier Breaker

Girardeau has been considered by some to be the "Spurgeon of America." He preached with a clear and gentle voice. His sermons were always Christ-centered and applicable. The congregation was regularly brought to deep conviction of their sins sometimes to the point of tears.

His proclamation of the gospel was clear and precise. He handled the Word rightly. He always presented the gospel then underlined the believer's response to the gospel as he called the people to love God with all of their heart, body, and soul and for them to love their neighbor as themselves.

Girardeau, in the new Zion Presbyterian Church, established a thorough education program where the catechisms, hymns, Psalms, and Scripture memorization were practiced. This entire education program came at a time when it was illegal to teach a slave to read and write. Girardeau and the elders of the church would be criticized and sometimes were physical intimidated by those who disagreed with their ministry.

However, the church stayed true to its vision and taught the slaves fervently through what Girardeau called Sabbath Schools. The slaves would be discipled in classes and spiritually strong men would be trained to be future leaders of the church.

As the Civil War began, Girardeau was called to be a chaplain for the Confederate Army. However, his intentional discipleship of the "least of these" never stopped. These classes were continued even in his absence. As the war ended, Girardeau was begged to come back to the Zion Church. Dr. C.N. Willborn writes in the Presbyterian Church in America history logs,

"[The Zion Church] desired to have their white pastor whom they knew, loved, and respected, rather than a black missionary from the North." [1]

Even with this pleading from the congregation, because of Reconstruction and the Freedman's Bureau happening throughout the South, he could not return.

Davey Salley, in his article for Banner of Truth, writes,

"It was a sad situation: many of the Southern whites were defensive and bitter; and the policy of the Freedman’s Bureau, set up by the Northern government, was to divide the now free black citizens from the Southern white populace."[2]

Nevertheless, Girardeau still trained the newly freed slaves through Sabbath Schools and taught them the same as if he was their pastor.

This discipleship process culminated in 1869, after the Civil War, as Girardeau nominated seven newly freed slaves to become elders of the Zion Presbyterian Church. Later that year he preached the ordination service and along with his white elders, they laid hands on their black brothers ordaining them to the office of ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church.

3. A Reformer Who Stood Alone

Stepping across the great divide of race within the South before and after the Civil War did not come without a price.Girardeau and some of his elders were criticized and even threatened for teaching and training the slaves. Even after the Civil War when the slaves were freed, Girardeau still faced great opposition for his desire to disciple the "least of these." One particular instance would pin him against one of the very men who he was mentored by during his time in seminary. Willborn again writes,

"The pressures of Reconstruction and the Freedmen's Bureau, and the hardened positions of notables like B. M. Palmer [who Girardeau would sit under the preaching of during his time in Columbia] and R. L. Dabney brought the church to a pivotal moment. The weight of political and social issues eventuated in "organic separation" of white membership and black membership and the formation of churches along the color line. Girardeau alone dissented against the resolution at the 1874 General Assembly in Columbus, Mississippi, for which he served as Moderator." [3]

Girardeau was the only dissenting vote. He boldly stood. He believed the Scriptures demanded loving and teaching the "least of these" and his convictions held fast. He would stand alone if that is what it took, and sometimes he had to do just that.

Girardeau would continue to preach and teach until his death. He would be nominated to take the endowed chair at Columbia Theological Seminary and is still recognized as a prominent professor. However, we should rejoice and take note of his work discipling the slave community where he lovingly pastored the "least of these," faithfully taught them while breaking barriers, and many times stood alone.

[1] Dr. C.N. Willborn. http://www.pcahistory.org/HCLibrary/periodicals/spr/bios/girardeau.html

[2] Davey Salley. https://banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2015/john-l-girardeau-minister-to-the-slaves-of-south-carolina/

[3] Willborn.

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Matthew D. Adams is the Director of Youth and Family Ministries at First Presbyterian Church, PCA in Dillon, SC. He is currently a Master’s of Divinity student at Erskine Theological Seminary in Columbia, SC. He lives in a small town by the name of Hamer, SC and is married to Beth. Follow him on twitter @Matt_Adams90.

Kevin Garcia 10/7/15 Kevin Garcia 10/7/15

A Case for Public Discipleship

What we talk about and the words we use when we approach discipleship are important. If the direction of our discipleship is unclear or incomplete, that shortcoming will affect our pursuit of the image of Christ. For example, if you were asked what do spirituality and discipleship look like what are your initial thoughts? Does it include people’s work place? Does it include business, art, or music? Just completing a quick search for “what is discipleship” pulls up this definition:

A Disciple is one who grows in Christ and in so doing models and teaches Christians the precepts of the Bible, prayer, doctrine, relationship, Christian living, service, and worship, to name the main ones.

This plays out in a discipleship relationship where we often, subtly, are just transferring information. For some this can be an emphasis in theology, for others it’s Scripture memorization, and in other groups it’s a deeper “level of the Spirit.” In the best case scenarios, we see how this knowledge applies to our hearts practically and what steps can be done to continue this walk.

While we should celebrate any areas where a believer is discipled I would contend that large portions of our lives remain untouched with this kind of knowledge transfer approach to discipleship. I am not saying the traditional approaches are bad or inherently wrong. Having a sharpened focus on spiritual disciplines and obtaining knowledge are a vital part of discipleship and should be integrated into any approach. Rather this approach alone is incomplete. It doesn’t integrated with our daily lives, work, or human flourishing through loving our neighbors in politics, art, education, culture, and other public spheres.

Why Is This?

As we approach discipleship, we assume that the focus should be primarily, if not entirely, on spiritual disciplines. Songs are written, blogs shared, books authored, and sermons preached that teach exclusively that this world is not our home and that one day we will escape from it to float in heaven and sing songs. This kind of teaching implicitly prioritizes “spiritual” practices like Scripture reading and prayer; meanwhile because this world is not our home, it implicitly teaches Christians to neglect “worldly” practices like taking care of the world, creating excellent art, or focusing on social justice.

Dr. Anthony Bradley writes that this deficient view is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of where our gospel begins. He argues that when we begin with man’s depravity in Genesis 3 rather than man’s creation and cultural mandate in Genesis 1 our starting point is faulty:

A Gen 1 and 2 starting point views the gospel as a means for human beings to have a realized experience of what their humanity was meant to be and to do, whereas a Gen. 3 orientation sees the gospel as a means of saving us from our humanity in preparation for the eschaton (heaven).

In order to see the need for our public lives to be discipled along with our private ones we must understand that our good news begins in creation, not the fall. This creation based approach prevents us from seeing creation as an evil to be avoided rather than a good to be stewarded.

When God created us he created us good. Sin marred this inherent goodness that Christ’s victory through the cross and resurrection has started to restore in us and the world. In a sense when we are being disciple, it is not to become more otherworldly in our discipleship process but rather more human, how God intended us to originally be from creation.

Public Discipleship

Misunderstanding the fundamental goodness of creation fosters a lack of engagement in our world.When Scripture speaks negatively of the world, it is not speaking to the material form we see around us but rather the sinful systems, desires, and worldviews that oppose God.

God created the world as inherently good in the same way that man was originally created as good. In the same way that God works a particular type of grace to save people there is also a type, called common grace, in which he works throughout his creation. This common grace restricts the affects of the fall on mankind as well as empowering us to better cultivate creation and serve the world.

In Exodus 31 tells us that Bezalel was “filled with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability, and knowledge in all kinds of crafts to make artistic designs.” Also, Isaiah 28:23-29 teaches us how God gives the farmer his abilities to cultivate the ground correctly in order to produce crops. God reveals his truth in a way that advances human culture beyond just personal piety. In every advancing stage of society, God is the one working through people and society to further display his glory in the world.

This is not just limited to farming but extends to all advances in human culture such as the utilization of electricity, the invention of personal computers, or even the mapping out of DNA by the Human Genome Project. These all imprint God’s restoring work in creation that we should fully embrace rather than ignore in our discipleship efforts. Abraham Kuyper, Dutch Reformed Theologian, in his Lectures on Calvinism says:

Henceforth the curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life.

This “every position of life” emphasis in discipleship could be termed—“Public Discipleship.” Practically this would encourage believers to steward creation in whatever area of influence they find themselves in and to do it well. This could be milking cows to produce the best milk possible or creating jobs by being a successful entrepreneur. This public discipleship is not less than spiritual discipline and knowledge but more as we work them out in our everyday lives.

However, if we see discipleship intersect with our jobs or the public square, we are prone to give lip service to Jesus when given a platform. Musicians are given quotas on how often they must say the name of Jesus, artists with how many crosses are painted in a picture, and businessman charged with how cleverly they can fit a Scripture into a business plan. Let’s honestly answer: Does this advance the kingdom?

Most jobs don’t provide daily opportunities to evangelize and pray with co-workers, clients, or customers. For those in these other jobs they might start to wonder how the grand scope of Scripture informs how they work if their discipleship is only knowledge transfer. Scripture tells us that that our faithfulness to work helps bring God’s plan for all of mankind to fruition.

In his recent work, The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life, Vincent Bacote promotes an idea called “Public Holiness.” This approach teaches how our sanctification overflows from our lives into the public arena and our interaction with those around us. This means that not only do we individually become more like Christ but we also extend that into making society more reflective of God’s intentions as well. He writes,

Though we may often think of holiness in in terms of our personal piety (and indeed we should), the pursuit and expression of holiness is hardly antithetical to Christian engagement in public concerns such as politics.[1]

This approach prevents the promotion of biblical values in issues of personal morality to the neglect of what God says on public morality. This approach engages our areas of influence holistically no matter where we have been placed by God. This approach means applying the ethics of the entirety of Scripture to the entirety of life.

How Does This Happen in Discipleship?

You may be saying to yourself, “Well that sounds good and we should affirm God’s plan in our vocation but what now?” There are numerous ways to highlight how our discipleship is related to all of life. In whatever discipleship approach your denomination or church may practice whether community-centered, one-on-one relationship, or another form the public discipleship emphasis can be adapted into the approach.

Affirm Vocation – Communicate this clearly and consistently. Just that emphasis alone would be a great place to start. Timothy Keller’s Every Good Endeavor might be a good tool to jump start the conversation in small groups or traditional information transfer discipleship programs.
Find Their Role – Encourage people to find how their work specifically relates to God’s work in this world. For example, if someone is building fences we could show how this demonstrates God’s common grace in restraining sin and protecting people and their property.
Connect – Connect with others who value excellence in their craft. Often people in non-explicitly Christian vocations feel alone in their pursuit of doing things well. Help them connect with others in their field which can create persistence in serving in their role well.
Challenge – Challenge people to be creative to help them serve better. That can be a more efficient way to work, starting a business to help create jobs, or providing quality care for their peers or employees. This challenge is to start viewing work as a way to extend God’s kingdom rather than just getting a paycheck.

What we talk about and the words we use in discipleship matter. It affects our emphases in how we seek to glorify God and become increasingly Christ-like. When all of Scripture informs all of life we have a public discipleship that extends inwardly to our personal piety as well as outwardly to loving/serving those around us. As we pursue various ways to disciple people in our given contexts, let’s affirm this area and make much of God and his reign wherever we can.

This worldview has reshaped my way of working at my current job. Daily I would have such a struggle to see how my work was accomplishing anything meaningful. I would have days of working on multiple accounts and clocking in that I felt would be better served preaching, teaching, serving at the church, or other more direct forms of what I understood ministry to be. Once I began to understand the way my work connected to God’s work in the world, it reinvigorated my appreciation for the purpose of work.

The majority of people we focus on in our discipleship relationships will be in the same boat. They may be working at a job they find purposeless or mundane. We should aim to affirm their vocational calling and encourage everyone to make much of God in their 9-5.

[1] This chapter and idea is where the aforementioned public discipleship term is based off of.

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Kevin Garcia is married to a beautiful woman, Miriam Garcia, and is a senior at SAGU. He will be continuing his studies in seminary afterwards particularly to study in the areas of philosophy, theology, social issues, and apologetics. He is passionate about seeing God work in urban contexts and examining the worldviews that influence people. He serves in a variety of areas at his church including teaching and preaching at LifePoint Church in the OakCliff neighborhood of Dallas, TX. Follow him on Twitter at: @kevingarcia__

Matthew Forrest Lowe 10/6/15 Matthew Forrest Lowe 10/6/15

4 Gifts to the Church from Mechthild of Magdeburg

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A week after I started reading Mechthild of Magdeburg[1], my wife asked jokingly (I think) whether she should be worried about my new 13^th-century girlfriend. It was an understandable question: I’d never read anything quite like Mechthild’s The Flowing Light of the Godhead and I was eager to tell anyone who would (pretend to) listen about this fascinating writer. Mechthild (her name looks complicated, but it’s closely related to “Matilda”; the ch is hard, like in character, and the th is more like a t) lived most of her life as a beguine[2]—a member of a lay sisterhood, living in chastity, poverty, and community—before entering a convent in later life. She and her book became inspirational models for contemplative prayer; but soon after her death, Mechthild’s work was known only in bits and pieces, often anonymously. So if you haven’t heard of her, that’s not surprising. As I’ve continued to study Mechthild’s life and work, I’ve found four significant gifts that she gave to the church—gifts that I’ve experienced personally, and that I think can be profoundly helpful for discipleship today.

1. The gift of creativity in prayer and writing.

Mechthild’s book is a mixture of visionary journeys, images of courtly love drawn from her medieval world, conversations between her soul and the Lord, sympathetic observations on characters from Scripture, and other meditations. But later, she asks God to let her stop writing: she feels “just as weak and unworthy, and more so, than . . . when I was required to begin.” God responds by showing her “a spiritual convent” of personified virtues. For example, the “abbess is sincere love”; the choir mistress, hope; the schoolmistress, wisdom; and the “mistress of the sick is toiling mercy.”[3] In these personifications, perhaps Mechthild’s prayerful imagination is rising to the challenge of relying on (and identifying with) her new sisters, even in the frustrations of writing. It’s as if she’s looking at the flawed, flesh-and-blood sisters around her, and seeing, in their actions, reflections of love, hope, mercy, etc. What would happen if we asked the Holy Spirit to use this text to shape our perceptions of others in our churches and communities? Individually and together, how are we embodying such virtues? Where might God be calling us to nurture, complement, and pray for one another in our practices of love, generosity, or peacemaking?

I’ve also found that Mechthild’s book fuels my own reading and writing. In my journaling, her tendency to align her character with those that inspire her in Scripture—not just for their heroics, but for their approach to suffering—has transformed the way I identify with the oh-so-human thoughts and reactions recorded there. Mechthild’s honesty about her failings and weaknesses has changed the way I see the Examen, the prayer in which we take stock of our day and ask for God’s help in remedying the moments that require forgiveness. I’ve even found Mechthild’s work helpful for my own creative writing, as I’m working on a novel that draws significantly from her life experience. Not that I always agree with her theology or her interpretations of Scripture; but when I part company with her, I have to discern what it is that I disagree with and why. Prayerfully cultivating such discernment makes us more sensitive to the voice of God, more faithful in our imagination and discipleship, and that’s never a bad thing.

2. The gift of seeing estrangement and exile as welcome gifts.

One of the most consistent notes in Mechthild’s writing is her yearning for God’s presence. To express this yearning, she often used images of estrangement and exile, as though she were living in another country, separated from her true home and her Lord. These metaphors helped her face challenges in her life, coming to see them as bittersweet blessings from God. It probably shouldn’t surprise us that she found help in identifying her feelings of estrangement and exile with similar experiences of the Bible’s cast members, including Jesus, Mary, John the Evangelist, Peter, Paul, and Stephen. In the following short excerpts, Mechthild speaks respectively to Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, and Mary, Jesus’ mother:

“I live with you in the desert wilderness, because all things are foreign to me except God alone”;

“To the extent that we live a holy life in exile,” we resemble John the Baptist;

“Ah, Lady, remember all my longings and all my prayers . . . when I leave this deplorable exile.”[4]

Desert wilderness. Foreign. Deplorable exile. With these images, and in solidarity with biblical figures who had undergone similar experiences, Mechthild transforms her feelings of estrangement and exile into heartfelt prayers of hunger for God. Amid the rapid religious, political, and cultural shifts that are re-shaping our world today, the image of exile is receiving a lot of attention: in some instances it’s being used to describe a sense of loss and nostalgia for the Christendom of the past, while in other cases it’s employed as a picture of Christian mission in an uncertain future, and it’s not easy to tell where one ends and the other begins.[5] And in the current Syrian refugee crisis, we should be careful not to use images of exile too easily, as exile is a very real thing for so many. But in all of this, exile and estrangement should never be left as merely abstract concepts. They certainly weren’t just images for Mechthild; they were at the heart of her prayer language, shaping her prayers for herself and for others in their suffering.

3. The gift of following Christ as a pilgrim.

400 years before John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress, Mechthild envisioned her life as a pilgrimage, following a path that Jesus had walked as a pilgrim before her. In her younger days, she had observed,

“God guides his chosen children along strange paths . . . that God himself trod: that a human being, though free of sin and guilt, suffer pain. Upon this path the soul that aches for God is joyful.”[6]

Years later, ravaged by age, illness, and blindness, she returns to the exile theme as she laments:

“This is how the tormented body speaks to the lonely soul: ‘When shall you soar with the feathers of your yearning to the blissful heights to Jesus, your eternal Love? Thank him there for me, lady, that, feeble and unworthy though I am, he nevertheless wanted to be mine when he came into this land of exile and took our humanity upon himself.’”[7]

The younger Mechthild understands this path is “strange” not merely because it carries both pain and joy, but because God himself has preceded her on it and is now her guide. Looking back upon the same path, her older self is thankful for the same grace, in a different key: Christ “wanted to be mine when he came into this land of exile and took our humanity upon himself.” Here—and in other places in her book, where she envisions Christ himself as a pilgrim[8]—Mechthild reminds herself, and us, that if the hard moments of our lives feel like estrangement, alienation, and exile, then there is consolation in knowing that God himself knows what it is like to have been estranged, alienated, and exiled. As if that were not enough, God wants to identify so closely with us in our hardships that he belongs to us, and we belong to him.

4. The gift of submitting our gifts to our community and the church.

Having spent her earlier life serving in what today we might call “intentional community,” when Mechthild transitioned to the convent in later life and poor health, she struggled with letting others serve her, as well as with the question of whether to keep working on her book, as we’ve already seen. But her writing shows how she brought these challenges back to God. Even when she struggled most with her longing for God’s presence—confessing, once, that when God “chooses to withdraw,” to temporarily estrange or absent himself from her, “My longing is higher than the stars”[9]—even then, her life points to a submission to Christ and to the church. In continuing to live in community with her new sisters, in submitting to their Cistercian order, and in completing her book as an example of contemplative prayer that would inspire them even after her death, Mechthild’s path of discipleship wasn’t just a “vertical” relationship of disciple and Master, but a “horizontal” relationship with other disciples in her community, too. She might not have put it quite this way, but Mechthild was contributing her gifts to what has been called the maintenance of longing:[10] a mutual support of one another’s hopes for God’s kingdom, when facing a deeply fragmented world.

In all of these gifts—and perhaps in others that I haven’t yet discerned—Mechthild’s discipleship isn’t a new thing. It is a well-worn path, which she followed with faltering but prayerful steps, inviting others to follow along. She was well aware of the company of saints who had preceded her on this path, and of her own frailty and faults that kept her from walking it as confidently as she might have liked. But she allowed Christ to use these challenges to conform her more closely to his image, so that others might meet Christ while following the written “footsteps” she left behind in her book.

[1] Much of this post is adapted and expanded from a longer paper that I hope will be published in an upcoming issue of the Canadian Theological Review.

[2] Yes, as a matter of fact, the word is distantly related to the Cole Porter song, “Begin the Beguine.”

[3] Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, Book 7.36. Quotations in English are from Frank Tobin’s translation (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1998).

[4] Ibid., 2.24, 6.32, and 7.20, respectively.

[5] For a helpful study of this image of exile in biblical tradition and the church today, see my friend Lee Beach’s book, The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015).

[6] Ibid., 1.25.

[7] Ibid., 7.65.

[8] Ibid., 6.33, 7.13.

[9] Ibid., 7.8.

[10] Sherrie Steiner and Michelle Harper Brix, “Mark 7: Nurturing Common Life among Members of Intentional Community,” in School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism, edited by The Rutba House (New Monastic Library 1; Eugene: Cascade, 2005), 97–111, citing 102 here.

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Matthew Forrest Lowe is a freelance editor, professor, and writer, specializing in spiritual formation, biblical theology, and imperial contexts. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where he co-directs Lectio House, a retreat house startup, with his wife Karen.

Chris Crane 10/5/15 Chris Crane 10/5/15

Jesus Loves the (Unborn) Children

Within the past couple of months, the conversation over abortion in America has changed forever with the scandal surrounding Planned Parenthood and their use of fetal tissue and handling of aborted babies. Through several scathing videos, both sides of the political aisle and much of the culture was left stunned by what they saw and hear. Several state and federal agencies investigated Planned Parenthood resulting in several states removing funding. Most recently, the House of Representatives has attempted to defund Planned Parenthood which the Senate chose to block. Many companies—such as Coke, Xerox, and Ford—instructed Planned Parenthood to remove their names from the list of company donors, while other major companies—such as Avon, March of Dimes, Macy’s, and the American Cancer Society—have made it clear that they have no direct involvement in giving financial support to Planned Parenthood. Even StemExpress, the company featured on these videos, has chosen to cut ties with the company. Regardless of the national outcome, we can now say along with William Wilberforce, “You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.” Margaret Sanger in Woman and the New Race writes,

[We should] apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.[1]

Furthermore, in the Birth Control Review in 1932, she wrote “Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”[2] In Woman, Morality, and Birth Control, Sanger absurdly writes,

We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.[3]

This is sad, evil, and heartbreaking. It is certainly evidence of a Western cultural narrative that has no place for God, only radical individualism, a incurvatus in se, a life oriented towards the self rather than towards God or in service to others. It’s a revelation of how American consumerism funnels into our view of life, where lives are expendable and meaningless if they don’t somehow benefit us. This is the world we live in. So how can churches respond to this culture of death? How can we faithful live out the gospel in our communities?

1. Know the Science

For example, Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth, associate professor of medicine at Harvard University Medical School says, “[It] is scientifically correct to say that an individual life begins at conception.”[4] Furthmore, Dr. Alfred M. Bongiovanni, professor of obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania says, “I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception. . . . [H]uman life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood. . . . [Any] interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life.”[5] Lastly, Randy Alcorn writes,

At eighteen days after conception the heart is forming and eyes start to develop. By twenty-one days the heart pumps blood throughout the body. By twenty-eight days the unborn has budding arms and legs. By thirty days [the baby] has a brain and has multiplied in size ten thousand times.

By thirty-five days her mouth, ears, and nose are taking shape. At forty days the preborn child’s brain waves can be recorded, and her heartbeat, which began three weeks earlier, can be detected by an ultrasonic stethoscope. By forty-two days [the baby’s] skeleton is formed and [their] brain is controlling the movement of muscles and organs.[6]

Science is clear—abortion ends a human life, created in the image of God. Alcorn again is helpful, arguing that as you look through Scripture, what you see is that personhood was never predicated upon “age, stage of development, or mental, physical, or social skills. Personhood is endowed by God…at the moment of conception.”[7] In Scripture, such as Lev. 18:21, Deut. 19:10, 2 Kgs. 24:3-4, Ps. 72:12-14, and Prov. 6: 16-17, we learn that God hates the shedding of innocent blood. Also, the grand narrative of Scripture shows us how God loves children and that his people should care for the orphans (Lk. 18:16, Ex 22:22; Ps 146:9; Isa 1:17; Jam 1:27). We cannot ignore or be silent about abortion.

2. Encourage Adoption

As John Piper writes, “The deepest and strongest foundation of adoption is located not in the act of humans adopting humans, but in God adopting humans. . . . It is at the heart of the gospel.” He goes on to say,

There are huge costs in adopting children. Some are financial; some are emotional. There are costs in time and stress for the rest of your life. You never stop being a parent till you die. And the stresses of caring about adult children can be as great, or greater, than the stresses of caring for young children. There is something very deep and right about the embrace of this cost for the life of a child!

Few things bring me more satisfaction than seeing a culture of adoption flourish [as a church]. It means that our people are looking to their heavenly Father for their joy rather than rejecting the stress and cost of children in order to maximize their freedom and comforts. When people embrace the pain and joy of children rather than using abortion or birth control simply to keep children away, the worth of Christ shines more visibly. Adoption is as far as possible from the mindset that rejects children as an intrusion. Praise God for people ready to embrace the suffering—known and unknown. God’s cost to adopt us was infinitely greater than any cost we will endure in adopting and raising children.

Aside from marriage, what better way to live out the gospel story? Foster a culture where adopting children is encouraged, whether orphans, from broken homes, or unexpected pregnancies. Welcome these children into a new family, with a new name, and give them unconditional love and full acceptance. Adoption is a way to display the better story of life, one under the reign of Jesus, one in which there’s no “unwanted” children. Ask God to raise up men and women who would adopt children and raise them in families who love the Lord.

3. Drive Home Hope

As children of God, we have the undeserved privilege of calling God “Father” and this God who adopted us, to paraphrase John Piper, hasn’t just brought us into his family, but has brought us into his arms. Abortion can cause shame that has lasting effects on the women. It can also cause guilt for men who stood idly by instead of taking responsibility for the life they helped create. Listen to their stories. Be slow to speak and slow to spout off stock answers. As rapper Trip Lee says, “Keep all your anecdotes and cute quotes / I’ll pass on clichés for true hopes.” When men and women who are reeling from the effects of abortion feel like they have no place to go, the church should be a place where they are welcomed with open arms.

The gospel should be a reality that changes the culture of our churches. People won’t see the gospel as good news if we don’t actually live like it really is. If Christ welcomed all sorts of sinners into his midst and welcomed prodigals and Pharisees into his family, what does that say about how our church should welcome those who are considering an abortion, have had abortions, or have performed abortions? No one is beyond the grace of God and the gospel can set people free from even the strongest bondage to sin. Lavish grace and mercy upon them and show them how, in Christ, they are not their sin. We point them to the Savior who gives rest and takes their burdens on himself (Matt. 11:28-30). To be pro-life means being pro-resurrection life as well, an eschatological life that proclaims the reign of King Jesus, a good king who will “will wipe away every tear from their eyes” and where, in his kingdom, “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.” Abortion does not have the last word. Shout hope from the rooftops.

Through God’s work of creation, the church champions being made in the image of God and the value of human life. Through the gospel, we not only maintain the value of human life, but seek to proclaim the restoration of it, even if you ended someone else’s. Let the gospel bring the healing it can, showing and proclaiming to families affected by abortions and to abortion clinic doctors and staff members that “if the Son sets free you will be free indeed” (Jn. 8:36). And no amount of shame or guilt is too powerful for that kind of love and grace.

[1] Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, MT, 2010).

[2] Margaret Sanger, “A Plan for Peace” in Birth Control Review, April 1932, 108.

[3] Margaret Sanger, Woman, Morality, and Birth Control (New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922), 12.

[4] Quoted in Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life?: Revised and Updated (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 2012), 14.

[5] Ibid., 13.

[6] Ibid., 17.

[7] Ibid., 132.

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Chris Crane is a Th.M. student in Historical and Systematic Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary. He previously served in various church ministries around Dallas, TX and in campus ministries with Dallas Baptist University. He is a freelance writer and occasional blogger at chriscrane.net. You can follow him on Twitter @cmcrane87.

Zach Barnhart 10/4/15 Zach Barnhart 10/4/15

3 Essentials of Discipleship According to Herman Bavinck

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You probably haven't read much, if anything, by Herman Bavinck. I hadn't either, but after hearing what impact he had on some ministers that I deeply respected, I decided to take the plunge and purchase his seminal masterpiece, Reformed Dogmatics, a four-volume, 3000-page collection that was translated into English only seven years ago. As I finish reading through the last of the four volumes, I now treasure Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics as an essential piece of my library. I have gleaned a wealth of learning from Bavinck and I know I'll return to these again and again throughout my ministry. Even if you are familiar with Bavinck's work, many are tempted to view him as only a systematician, doctrinal explanation without application. My aim is to not merely draw your attention to a man worthy of it, but also to show that we can learn much from Bavinck in terms of how we apply these critical teachings in our lives as we pursue a historically rooted discipleship.

The Preface of Discipleship: God's Revelation

Our quest for discovering the depths of discipleship through Herman Bavinck's eyes starts with a focus on God's revelation. Oftentimes, especially in systematic treatments of theology, revelation is placed at the forefront, serving as a sort of apologetic. After all, if God can or does not reveal himself generally and specially, what argument is there for him? This point certainly should be emphasized, especially for the unbeliever. Yet, in our approach to thinking about God's general and special revelation, we face the temptation of limiting its importance to only the unbeliever. We feel like revelation must be talked about only for the sake of those who need to be convinced of its reality, and it is often treated in such a way that Bible-believing Christians are exempted from the discussion. But "general revelation," Bavinck observes, "has meaning not only for the pagan world but also in and for the Christian religion."¹

The primary Greek word for disciple is mathetes, which means "a learner." If we can reduce the concept of God's revelation to knowing, we can reduce the concept of Christian discipleship to learning. Bavinck connects the task of discipleship with the function of revelation here:

"Now special revelation has recognized and valued general revelation, has even taken it over and, as it were, assimilated it. And this is also what the Christian does, as do the theologians. They position themselves in the Christian faith, in special revelation, and from there look out upon nature and history. And now they discover there as well the traces of the God whom they learned to know in Christ as their father."²

Discipleship starts with revelation, because it is in that moment that we are "equipped with the spectacles of Scripture" and thus "see God in everything and everything in God." Revelation does not only help the Christian "feel at home in the world," but also gives Christians "a firm foundation on which they can meet all non-Christians."³ Revelation is critical to our foundation as disciples of Christ.

One last word from Bavinck on how discipleship finds its origins in revelation:

“The purpose of revelation is not Christ; Christ is the center and the means; the purpose is that God will again dwell in his creatures and reveal his glory in the cosmos...In a sense this, too, is an incarnation of God.”⁴

While Christ is the ultimate instrument of revelation, the highest purpose of revelation itself is that God may be glorified by dwelling with his people. As we will see, once the revelation of God captivates the heart of the believer, not only can the journey of discipleship begin, but also the horizon of its purpose will come more plainly into view.

The Purpose of Discipleship: Union With Christ

If you went to one hundred Bible-believing, evangelical Christians and asked them to define "discipleship," you'd likely get one hundred unique answers. Because of its broad scope, everyone's definition may look and sound slightly different. As we examined earlier, discipleship at its core is learning. Here's my imperfect stab at a more broad, yet succinct definition: Discipleship is a faithful striving towards the heart of God and the love of man. This idea is summed up well by Luther's famous charge, "Love God and do what you will." Ephesians 4:1-6 is a perennial passage for determining what discipleship looks like. Paul's words in these verses can be rightly narrowed to two: love and unity. Paul is not only helping us to understand the importance of love and unity in the body, but ultimately, love and unity to Christ. This is the entire purpose, the entire hinge on which the door of discipleship opens or closes.

Maybe your proof-text of a lifestyle of discipleship is summed up as "walking in the Spirit" (Rom. 8:4). Maybe it's becoming "a new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17). Maybe it's Galatians 2:20, or Ephesians 2:5, or 1 John 4:13, or another. What Bavinck would argue is that all of these verses, among others, have one similar aim or goal: union with Christ. In a section called Becoming Spiritual Persons, Bavinck proves his point from a slew of verses, all of which ironically written by Paul:

"The new life is the life of the Spirit but just as much the life of Christ in us (Rom. 6:8, 23; Gal. 2:20; Col. 3:4; Phil. 1:21). Believers have been crucified, have died, been buried and raised, set at God's right hand, and glorified with Christ (Rom. 6:4ff.; Gal. 2:20; 6:14; Eph. 2:6; Col. 2:12, 20; 3:3; etc.). They have put on Christ, have been formed in his likeness, reveal in their bodies the suffering as well as the life of Christ, and are perfected in him. In a word, "Christ is all and in all" (Rom. 13:14; 2 Cor. 13:11; Gal. 4:19; Col. 1:24; 2:10; 3:11), and they are "one spirit with him" (1 Cor. 6:17). In Christ, by the Spirit, God himself dwells in them (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 6:19)."⁵

Bavinck's understanding of Pauline theology is that at the heart of every hint of discipleship is a motivation to be united with Christ. If God is going to accomplish his highest purposes of revelation, dwelling in his creatures and revealing his glory, we must set before ourselves in our journey of discipleship this sole intention of union with Christ.

If union with Christ is a fundamental of discipleship, it cannot be something we achieve by our own volition. "Union with Christ is not the result of human decision, striving, seeking, yielding, or surrendering, but of Christ's."⁶This is what Paul meant in Ephesians 2:20 when he calls believers "[God's] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." We do not walk alone. We do not earn his love through measuring up. His grace has perfectly covered our transgressions, and because we belong to the true vine, we are therefore branches who produce fruit.

Not only this, but being united with Christ means the Spirit is empowering and enabling us for His glory. "The spirit . . . poured out in the church is not only a Spirit of adoption, who assures believers of their status as children, but also the Spirit of renewal and sanctification."⁷Oftentimes our view of discipleship is strictly limited to what we do and how we do it. When we think about the journey, all that often comes to mind is our Bible reading habits, our prayer life, our evangelism opportunities . . . all of these are discipleship, but discipleship is more than all these things. Bavinck places a great deal of emphasis on the work of the Triune God in our lives, taking us beyond what we do and onto what God is doing. Dead men cannot raise themselves, but united to the resurrected Jesus, he has no problem restoring what's broken. Unloving attitudes become Spirit-enabled love (1 Cor. 13). Formless groans become Spirit-articulated thoughts (Rom. 8:26-27). Remarkably, after the end of his letter to the church at Thessalonica, after Paul gives them plenty of practical tips and charges for how to grow in sanctification (5:12-22), he says in the following verse, "May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely" (5:23). Paul and Bavinck both recognize the ultimate purpose of discipleship is not only being united to Christ, but letting him move in and through us.

The Process of Discipleship: Ordinary Obedience

So we've got some principles for discipleship in our pockets now, but how do we actually implement this stuff in our lives? Discipleship is often seen as a tiered system, where those who courageously live in bold, radical situations for the gospel are elevated above simple professions of faith. John Bolt fabulously labors to explore this idea deeper in his new book, Bavinck on the Christian Life: Following Jesus in Faithful Service. Bolt discusses Bavinck's disapproval of this celebration of only striving for or trying to live out acts of "radical discipleship." The most radical thing we can do, according to Bavinck, is being faithfully obedient to God with ordinary simplicity. This is true "radical discipleship," and arguably, more extreme and "heroic" than a life spent selling all possessions, taking vows of silence, and so forth. Bavinck elaborates in The Certainty of Faith:

"Nowadays we are out to convert the whole world, to conquer all areas of life for Christ. But we often neglect to ask whether we ourselves are truly converted and whether we belong to Christ in life and in death. For this is indeed what life boils down to. We may not banish this question from our personal or church life under the label of pietism or methodism. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, even for Christian principles, if he loses his own soul?"⁹

If the summary of discipleship is to learn, we have been commissioned by Christ to go and make learners. But in what way will such people learn? Are we going to win souls to the gospel with scientific defenses of God alone? Do we win people with personal and character attacks, or endless banter back-and-forth on social media? Discipleship is first and foremost ordinary obedience. Making disciples, then, is letting others see the ordinary obedience of Jesus in our lives, and showing them how the same can be true of them. Some may think this is an oversimplification; but in a culture warring as hard as ever at Christianity "dying to self and taking up our cross" is becoming a practice less and less about heroism and more about holding fast to him in the small and insignificant. Even Jesus's exceptional acts of death and resurrection are truthfully simple, unflashy acts of obedience to the Father. More from Bavinck:

"All work which man undertakes in order to subdue the earth, whether agriculture, stock breeding, commerce, industry, science, or the rest, is all the fulfillment of a single Divine calling. But if man is really to be and remain such he must proceed in dependence on and in obedience to the Word of God. Religion must be the principle which animates the whole of life and which sanctifies it into a service of God."¹⁰

Bavinck makes discipleship simple: By God's revelation, we become true disciples by being united to Christ and thus equipped by the Spirit for the extraordinary life of ordinary obedience.This Dutch Reformed theologian may not be a marquee name (yet) among evangelicals, but if you want to learn the essentials of the Christian life, look no further.

¹ Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, 2003. I.320.

² ibid. I.321

³ibid.

⁴ibid. I.380

⁵ibid. IV.89

⁶Horton, Michael. "Union With Christ." Accessed September 23, 2015, at http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/questions/horton/union.html

⁷Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, 2003. IV.251.

⁸Bolt, John. Bavinck on the Christian Life: Following Jesus in Faithful Service. Crossway, Wheaton, 2015. 44-47.

⁹ Bavinck, Herman. The Certainty of Faith. Paideia Press, Ontario, 1980. 94.

¹⁰Bavinck, Herman. The Origin, Essence, and Purpose of Man. Accessed September 23 at http://www.the-highway.com/origin_Bavinck.html

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Zach Barnhart (@zachbarnhart) currently serves as a church planting intern with Fellowship Church in Knoxville, Tennessee and is pursuing pastoral ministry. He is a college graduate from Middle Tennessee State University and lives in Knoxville with his wife, Hannah. He is a blogger, contributor to For The Church and Servants of Grace, and manages a devotional/podcast at Cultivated.

Brad Watson 10/1/15 Brad Watson 10/1/15

Introducing Our New Staff Writers

GCD had two two goals this year: consistent quality and diversity in perspectives. Our desire is to see a growing ministry that helps churches equip the saints for the work of ministry. We want the content to have a consistency in the quality of writing, theological thought, and robust application. GCD is also as committed as ever to helping new writers grow through opportunities and the editing process. To do this, we have created a solid core of writers who are able to demonstrate the quality we are looking for.

Along those same lines we want to become a diverse representation of theology and practice in discipleship. This means we want to have a regular writers who engage unique topics, approaches, and themes. This goes along with our goal to promote different voices. Too often sites become an echo chamber of theology, practice and, homogeneous contexts. That’s why we have created a staff writer team that has excellency in writing but also diversity of perspective.

We’ve already started to form this team and we’ve seen growth in these areas already. Our staff writers video chat monthly to engage and sharpen each others’ ideas then each contributes two articles a month. This collaboration has already produced a few great writing series—first our series on the Gospel of Matthew in August and our currently running Family History of Discipleship series.

Our current Staff Writer team consists of four fantastic writers:

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.

You can read all of Jason’s articles here.

Chelsea Vaughn has served a ministry she helped start in the DFW Metroplex since she graduated from college. She received her undergraduate degree at Dallas Baptist University in Communication Theory. She does freelance writing, editing, and speaking for various organizations and non-profits. She hopes to spend her life using her gift for communication to reach culture and communities with the love of Jesus.

You can read all of Chelsea’s article here.

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.

You can read all of Whitney’s articles here.

Jeremy Writebol 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.

You can read all of Jeremy’s articles here.

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Brad Watson serves as a pastor of Bread&Wine Communities where he develops and teaches leaders how to form communities that love God and serve the city. Brad is the author of Raised? and Called Together: A Guide to Forming Missional Communities. He lives in southeast Portland with his wife and their two daughters. You can read more from Brad at www.bradawatson.com

Matthew D. Adams 9/29/15 Matthew D. Adams 9/29/15

Diligently Teaching Our Children to Spot Counterfeit Gods

I have a friend who works in the banking industry, and as he was training I was fascinated by a particular story that he shared with me. He was sitting in the training room and his manager began to lay twenty-dollar bills on the table. As he laid them down he looked up and asked, "Which one is a counterfeit?" My friend carefully examined the bills and chose one. He chose the wrong one. The manager picked the bills up and began to teach him how to spot the counterfeit bill. This happened everyday until he could spot the counterfeit within seconds. Likewise, we must train our children so well that they can spot the counterfeit gods that our society invites them to serve within seconds. These brazen invitations to serve counterfeit gods are the reason our children need to be trained just like my friend who works in the bank.

Teach Them Diligently

These are the words of God in Deuteronomy 6:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and 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.You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. –Deuteronomy 6:4-9

When we think about raising children, these words from God come quickly to mind. God commands believing parents to raise their children diligently.

"You shall teach them diligently to your children, and 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."

This training is a lifestyle and you must teach it to your children.

We must answer the question, "Why?" Why do we need to be teaching this to our children? It is quite simple—because as believing parents, we are the primary means of discipleship in our family. God tells us to teach our children diligently and that is exactly what we must do. Besides, as you may have figured out, this command has many practical implications for your life and your children.

God is very clear in why he commands his people to train their children up in the way they should go; because when they go into the land that he has promised them, there will be counterfeit gods and they will be tempted to go and worship them! Well, we know that the only God that must be worshipped is the Lord and he is a jealous God for his people (Deut. 6:15). He demands we worship him and him alone (Exod. 20:1-6).

My mind immediately goes to Galatians as Paul warns those believers not to turn to a "different gospel" (Gal. 1:6). Well as frankly as I can put it, believers are finding their children turning to a different gospel and falling into the temptations from its counterfeit gods because we have not followed the command from Deuteronomy 6 to diligently teach our children.

More times than not I hear parents say, "I'm just going to let my child be a child. They don't need to worry about things like homosexuality or abortion until they're out of college."

This response is oblivious at best because everything that surrounds them in life pushes them to counterfeit gods and their “gospels.” Our children are pushed by the media to care more about Brady's deflated footballs than the devaluation of human life. Their schools teach them that it's foolish to believe in God and that only science should be trusted . I could go on and on about how our world is telling our kids to run far away from God and into a different gospel of false love and acceptance—where anything goes and God does not exist.

Three Common Counterfeit Gods

As a youth director, I regularly encounter these three counterfeit gods: the counterfeit god of choice, the counterfeit god of sex, and the counterfeit god of acceptance.

First, our children are being proselytized by the god of choice. This is the idea that they are entitled to live life the way they see fit. This counterfeit god’s gospel proclaims that how they and others choose to live their lives is no one's business. There is no absolute truth; there are no rules for life only whatever they see as right. Jesus rebukes this counterfeit god by saying, "Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth" (Jn. 17:17). The Word of God is the only absolute truth. The Word of God tells us what is right and points us to Jesus. Many today see the Word of God as binding them, but the Psalmist David exclaims that the Word of God makes the believer's paths wide (Ps. 119). The Word of God is where our children will find their perfect joy and peace in this life, and ultimately, Christ prays that his people will be sanctified by it.

Second, our children are being proselytized by the god of sex. We live in a culture that glorifies sex without consequence. The television shows, the movies, and the music that surrounds our children shove a sexual lifestyle that carries no future weight in their lives. Our children see this bogus glorified lifestyle and they begin to desire to live their lives this way. This counterfeit gods gospels proclaims that they know what true love is and a rampant pornography industry says they know what sex is designed to be. Our children fall into this trap time and time again. The gospel counters this counterfeit god by reminding believers that their bodies are temples of God and that sexual immorality should not be named among believers (Eph. 5:3). Jesus is clear in his definition of marriage and beyond that definition is against the will of God (Mark 10:6-9).

Last, our children are being proselytized by the god of acceptance. As our children fall into the lies of counterfeit gods, so do their friends. As their friends begin to believe a different gospel, they proclaim the gospel of acceptance and urge our children to follow suit in esteeming the opinion and acceptance of man above the one true God. What does the true gospel proclaim? Our reward for faithfulness is in heaven (Matt. 5:12). Our children must live a life that is always ready for eternal life and able to say, "Come Lord Jesus, Come quickly, Amen" (Rev. 22).

So, as parent's, how do we disciple our children, and stop this constant sliding into a lifestyle that is led astray by these counterfeit gods? We must teach our children that the only way to discern what is important in our world is to look at what is important to Jesus. We must teach our children how to spot counterfeit gods and different gospels.

And this must start at the home! Parents must diligently disciple their children in the faith once delivered. Parents, you spend the most time with your children and you must be intentional about raising them up in the faith so that they will not be like the house built upon the sand that falls when faced with the great storms of life (Matt. 7:24-27).

Two Means to Recognize the Counterfeits

I think we have two primary means to disciple our children:

1. Go to Church Regularly as a Family

I do not know of a better place to have your children other than in the church—where we are called to worship in the very presence of God. They will be accustomed to hearing the Word preached, the sacraments being practiced, and prayers being made. These aspects of worship are the primary ways by which our God pours out grace upon his people. Parents, why would we not want our children in church? For children to see their parents worshipping God, to see them fellowship with other believers, and to see them serve the church faithfully—there is no greater training that you can give!

If you worship God together in the church fifty times every year over the course of your child’s life, they will have heard and seen the gospel over 600 times. Don’t miss these opportunities. Families who worship in the church together help to counter the current trend in our culture because when you know what true worship looks like on Sunday, you can truly worship rightly on Monday through Saturday.

2. Worship with Your Family at Home.

Because family worship is often neglected in the church, it is a practice I’m intentional about promoting to the children and families I help shepherd. How can we obey Deuteronomy 6 without setting aside time for family worship? If your children see God being glorified in the home, if they see their parents living out their worship that takes place on Sunday morning through the rest of the week, and if they feel encouraged to live their life for Christ, they will be more prepared to boldly stand for their faith outside of the home when the time comes.

Parents, it is not good enough to live for Christ on Sunday morning and not the rest of the week because your child will grow up and do exactly the same thing. These two practices go hand-in-hand. Our worship on Sunday flows into our family worship throughout the week. We worship in our churches, the benediction is proclaimed and the service ends, and now we are sent out into the world. However, discipleship cannot end there. We must worship in our homes so that as the counterfeit gods of our culture assault our children they instinctually recall what we have diligently taught them in our churches and in our homes.

Through worshipping together on Sunday mornings and worshipping throughout the week in the home, our children will have been in the presence of God so much that they know exactly how these counterfeit gods look and their response will be to flee from them. Parents, disciple your children. Make going to church a habit and worship regularly together, in your church and in your home. Teach your children diligently. It's vital for your family and our culture. Now the time to take Deuteronomy 6 seriously.

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Matthew D. Adams is the Director of Youth and Family Ministries at First Presbyterian Church, PCA in Dillon, SC. He is currently a Master's of Divinity student at Erskine Theological Seminary in Columbia, SC. He lives in a small town by the name of Hamer, SC and is married to Beth. Follow him on twitter @Matt_Adams90.

Brad Andrews 9/28/15 Brad Andrews 9/28/15

Idolatry: A Fatal Attraction | Part 1

I was just a young boy when it first happened. Gazing out the window of our sedan, my heart leaped when I saw a cityscape scuff the sky. I was mesmerized. Growing up in small-town southeast Missouri, the tallest building I had ever seen was our town’s three-story red brick high school. Now in my purview was a gray jungle spattering the horizon, with yellow lights placed perfectly like stickers in rows. Bright lights, big city.

The jutting skyscrapers and surrounding city felt like Oz. But unlike the movie where this magical land was just a dream, this was real. And this material city had a certain allure to it. One that I haven’t been able to get away from since. Looking upon the urban panorama as a child, I had no need to click my heels. I was home. It had captivated me. Why?

Underneath the awe, it promised me something that I thought I wanted—fulfillment, significance, worth. Even as a young boy, those yearnings were there. And the city tugged those yearnings.

All of us could make a short list of the things that have caught our fancy. But many of us could take that same list and wax eloquently about how things have failed to deliver what they pledged. That’s the problem with allurement. All that glitters really isn’t gold. Sometimes our magnetisms are just gold-plated rubbish.

The Charm of Idolatry

The Bible calls our misguided pursuits of what charms us idolatry.And we aren’t talking golden calves here either. As a Christian, idolatry is anything that supplants God in my life with a lesser god. It’s an inverted move of the soul. When our hearts engage in idolatry, we have to ask ourselves the question that the Avett Brothers sing: “Are we growing backwards with time?”

Theologian Doug Stuart masterfully explains idolatry’s attraction in Exodus: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture (The New American Commentary). He says there are a few things in an idol’s appeal:

Idolatry obliges: Fashion your god out of stone or wood or precious metals and a god would enter the idol. No need to wait on a god to answer your prayers anymore. Summon him and get what you want without delay.

Idolatry gratifies: The motive of idol worship was to get what you needed, when you needed it. It was entirely centered on the person seeking — not the one being sought.

Idolatry numbs: Ancient idolatry took the place of fervent spirituality. It stimulated vain religious hullabaloo. It anesthetized individuals because what kept you good with the gods was not relational but sacrificial. Bring your gods a scapegoat for your sin and you were exonerated.

Idolatry indulges: Find a divinity that meets your needs and bow down to it. Or better, find a few idols that meets your specific desires and worship them. The glut of deities available created a smorgasbord approach to spirituality. And why not? One God over all? Hogwash, they would say. Find whatever works for you.

Idolatry reassures: Worshiping an invisible deity was not comforting. A god you could see — now that was the ticket. Tangible divinities make more sense, don’t they? Surely, the gods would want us to see them instead of placing our faith in the unseen.

Idolatry impresses: With an invisible deity, it was almost impossible to astonish your fellow man with your sacrifices. An unseen God who looks at the heart — above all else — has no usefulness in vain, repetitious activities. But bring a costly sacrifice to a lifeless idol? It was a sight to behold. And the bigger the sacrifice, the bigger the show.

It’s easy to see what the central “thing” is in idolatry. It’s not the wooden or golden deity esteemed. It’s actually us. It’s the individual. Our personage is principal when we chase after blessing. We are the “blesser” and the blessed—we fashion divinity for our own sake.

The Fatal Attraction

So what’s the big deal? The raw truth about replacement gods is that they don’t deliver. The illusion of interim happiness is just that—a mirage. Therein we find the treadmill we all run on.

We run from one promising oasis to another only to find its promise evaporates before our eyes. But we are so desperate to belong, to be loved, to feel significant, to feel secure, the never-ending hunt overtakes us. Before we know it, we are knee-deep in our own despondency scanning the horizon for something new that allures. Something novel that will once-and-for-all deliver the goods.

In its truest sense, idolatry is a fatal attraction. It’s not that it literally kills us in an instant (although, I guess it could in some instances). It is more a slow slink backwards within the soul. It’s the actuality of the question the Avett Brothers sing about: “Are we growing backwards with time?” We are. And it’s more than “growing” backwards—we are “dying” backwards. It’s a dawdling succession of little deaths, decision by decision, day after day.

Pastor and author Greg Dutcher says it this way:

Idolatry . . . is not a showboat. It does its best to work in subtle ways. Like a puma lying low in the gentle grass, taut muscles held in place like a coiled spring, sin waits in the “safest” of places. . . it waits patiently for a chance to creep in unaware.

That is why it’s a fatal attraction. We are typically naive to its creep. And at the right time, it pounces on our insecurity. It ambushes our anxiety. It attacks our uneasiness.

The good news is that there is a new way to be human. We can reverse our worship and find what is behind the delusion of our self-made gods. But first, we need a deep diagnosis. It’s one thing to understand the category of idolatry. It’s another to isolate what deity (or deities) you bow down to.

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Guest User 9/27/15 Guest User 9/27/15

4 Convictions for Boldness from John Knox

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John Knox was born in Haddington, c. 1514, though admittedly there is some debate on the exact date. We do know that Knox was born into a poorer family with not a lot of resources. Upon completion (another point of historical contention) of University in 1536, Knox was ordained as a priest. By 1543 he was converted to Christ after a couple of years working as a tutor and notary. While not much is known regarding the context of his conversion, so began the journey of the man who would thunder the gospel in a dark Scotland.

As a pastor, I am intrigued by the life of John Knox and taken back by the trials he persevered through. For example, in 1546, the French took the castle at St. Andrews and the aftermath led to Knox’s enslavement for 19 months. Yet Knox persevered. Eventually he went back to England to preach the gospel during one of the more difficult times of English history.

While history is undoubtedly under the control of the sovereignty of God, Knox would contend with both the religious establishment (fighting against Anglican formalism in worship and Roman Catholicism) as well as the civil establishment. The latter contention would escalate when in 1553, Mary Tudor (“Blood Mary”) would rise to power after King Edward VI died. Knox lived in a time of political uncertainty—something we can learn from indeed.

As God would have it, Knox fled to Geneva in 1554 where he developed a friendship with John Calvin. Knox would visit Geneva several times, but in 1559 returned to Scotland to pastor at St. Giles, Edinburgh. From there Knox wrote, taught, preached, and fought for the gospel, eventually dying in 1572. You can find his grave underneath a parking lot at St. Giles Church today.

1. Power of Prayer

It is said that Mary, Queen of the Scots, feared the prayers of John Knox more than the assembled armies of Europe. Though weak in stature, the Reformer was a man broken before the Lord. He was a humble man who trusted not in himself but in the greatness of God. Prayer is a sure and steady sign that reads, “God is really great and powerful, I am not.” Knox was this type of man.

From his rough childhood, run-ins with various Cardinals and Bishops, to his time in captivity and on the run—Knox knew that in the midst of all these circumstances that he had to commit himself to the Lord. And what better way is there to do so than through communion with him in prayer? A humbled soul is a prayerful soul.

Perhaps one of the most telling aspects of Knox’s prayer life was his ability to pray in defense of the gospel and pray for his enemies. A prayer for Queen Mary is worth noting,

Behold our troubles and apparent destruction, and stay the sword of the thy vengeance before it devour us. Place above us, O Lord, for thy great mercies’ sake, such a head, with such rulers and magistrates, as fear thy name, and will the glory of Christ Jesus to spread. Take not from us the light of thy Evangel, and suffer no papistry to prevail in this realm. Illuminate the heart of our sovereign lady, Queen Mary, with pregnant gifts of thy Holy Ghost, and inflame the hearts of her counsel with thy true fear and love.[1]

The prayers of John Knox were answered no different than our prayers today. In some circumstances, the Lord grants our requests according to his sovereign will. In other cases, the prayer is not answered. Either way, our God is the Lord and he knows what is best.

The power of prayer lies not within the sinner but the Savior. Getting this order right for discipleship is crucial. The disciple of Jesus is to be a man committed solely to the glory of God through a prayer life marked by a humble posture and persevering spirit. Such was the great Scottish Reformer.

2. Necessity of Conviction

John Knox was man with conviction running through his veins. Much like the Apostle Paul who “[proclaimed] the kingdom of God and [taught] about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance,”[2] Knox believed in both the grace and severity of God. His prayers, preaching, writing, and actions all aligned in a such a way as to demonstrate the reality that conviction is necessary if reformation is desired.

Perhaps one of my favorite pictures in history is a painting of John Knox preaching before Queen Mary and her council that was drafted in such a way as to demonstrate the conviction that poured through the life of Knox. Towering in the pulpit above the crowd, Knox thundered the gospel to the magistrates present. As D. Martin Lloyd-Jones has pointed out, Knox was a man with “astounding energy,” “shrewdness,” and “courage.”[3] His ability to discern, press on, and courageously preach the gospel was rooted in his conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that his crown rights must be acknowledged by all nations, especially his beloved Scotland.

Knox saw compromise and darkness in his homeland. It was in poor condition and immersed in moral decadence. What is someone to do in a situation like this? Have conviction. The world could use more conviction. For disciples of Jesus, conviction is a prerequisite, which is why Paul told Titus that an elder “must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). Disciples who make disciples must be men and women who are committed to standing on the truth of God’s Word convicted to the deepest parts of our souls that Christ is King and that his gospel is sufficient. Nothing short of all-out commitment to raising the banner of Christ crucified will suffice.

3. Priority of Preaching

At one point in Knox’s young life, he didn’t want to preach. In fact, when he was confronted about this issue, it is said that he left the room in tears, buckling under the weight of the task. For Knox, preaching was an incredibly large task, not because the preacher was anything special, but because the message was so precious.

During Knox’s young life, preaching wasn’t the focus in the Roman Catholic Church. After his conversion, his chaplaincy at St. Andrews proved an opportunity for him to teach. Knox feared the pulpit, but not because the message wasn’t powerful to transform, or because he could never do it—no, the fear was the weight of its importance. It was of utmost importance which meant it must be done soberly.

His zeal for the gospel led to his power in the pulpit. Like a man wielding a sword in battle, so was Knox in the pulpit with the Bible. He didn’t shy away from cutting through the stone hearts of people with the truth of the sinfulness of man and the holiness of God and offering those same sinners hope in the gospel. Christ was the focus of his preaching because Christ was the focus of his life.

“When Knox stepped into the pulpit to preach the Word of God, he opened with a half hour of calm exposition of the text before him. Thereafter, he became more vigorous.”[4] The Bible was a priority for Knox because the gospel was the priority of the church. It was this prioritizing of the gospel that fueled the fire that came from Knox. That fire led to the Spirit of God working in the lives of many people.

As disciples, we must commit ourselves to preaching. Like Knox, we must see it as the priority because God uses the foolishness of ourselves and the cross as the means by which He saves sinners. Knox’s example here is worth our consideration. Do we truly value preaching? Are we humble in our approach to this daunting task? Do we really believe that the preaching of God’s word is enough?

4. Need for Perseverance

We are in desperate need of perseverance. Some say desperate times call for desperate measures—we might say desperate times call for faithful measures. Without perseverance, which is a repeated theme throughout Scripture, discipleship falls flat.

The life of John Knox briefly outlined above demonstrates quite clearly that 1) Most of us haven’t walked through the things he did, and 2) We have no excuse for choosing to abandon the mission of God. Knox trusted in the sovereignty of God believing that God writes the story of history and he does so with us as his characters. He had a big God and big theology to boot. No doubt there were times of deep sorrow for the great Reformer—indeed there are plenty of times of sorrow for each of us!—but let us learn this last thing from Knox: Perseverance is water we drink during the times of seemingly unending fiery trials.

“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

Jesus endured for us so we in turn endure because of and for him. He gives strength. He gives wisdom. He gives conviction. He gives courage. He gives righteousness. Christ gives hope. Oh how prone we are to wander! God, grant your servants an unending supply of perseverance!

Follow Knox As He Follows Christ

Knox is a man worth emulating. While no stranger to controversy, Knox was committed to the kingdom of God first and foremost. Like today’s culture, Scotland was a religious wasteland. Everyone did whatever was right in his own eyes. Knox reformed Scotland because the gospel light was dim. Though several hundreds years from our context, we can learn a lot from Knox. Knox had a sense of urgency—to make the gospel known everywhere. That, after all, is the heart of a disciple.

We don’t look to John Knox because he was great in and of himself. We don’t look to John Knox, we look to Jesus Christ, the King who John Knox served. We learn from this humble servant of history how to follow someone who is following Christ (1 Cor. 11:1). May the Church in America never lose hope, but instead cling so dearly to the gospel of King Jesus that John Knox so fervently clung to.

[1] John Knox, The Select Practical Writings of John Knox (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2011), 25.

[2] Acts 28:31, emphasis mine.

[3] See: D. M. Lloyd-Jones and Iain H. Murray, John Knox and the Reformation (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2011).

[4] Douglas Bond, The Mighty Weakness of John Knox (Sanford: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2011), 55.

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Mark Hampton 9/23/15 Mark Hampton 9/23/15

Do We Worship Words or The Word?

The Bible is an undisputed masterpiece of literature. The authors weave a grand narrative and an intricate plot of love, redemption, and reclamation that has baffling depth. For example, we see how a lamb’s blood spread on a doorpost in Egypt foreshadows Christ’s blood spilled out to declare sinners justified and free from judgment. Or, how a promise to King David around 1,000 B.C. would be fulfilled on a joyous Sunday morning with a resurrected Messiah who now reigns eternally. Or how the Psalmist speaks of the Messiah’s pierced hands and feet, long before the crucifixion happened, perfectly describing what would take place at Golgotha. Technically, we can look at the genius writing style of Isaiah or Luke or Paul and see their use of irony, poetry, logic, and numerous other literary devices, which demonstrate a mastery of language, intertwining and mingling with the themes, imagery, and storyline from writers who preceded them by hundreds of years to develop a fully unified narrative of redemption history. We can see all these things working in conjunction in an unparalleled fashion and see that the complexity and simplicity and beauty of Scripture surpasses any piece of literature the world has ever known. However, we can see and wonder at all these things—yet completely miss the point.

A High View of the Word

In many traditions that hold to a high view of Scripture and its authority such as my own, we are even more susceptible to miss the point. We easily fall into the trap of worshipping the Bible’s stories and authority, but forget who the Bible points us toward. Often, we think of the Bible as the ultimate foundation of our faith; however, when we do so we fashion the Bible into an idol. Tim Keller undresses our tendency to idolatry when he says, “[Idolatry] means turning a good thing into an ultimate thing.” We’re not alone in this tendency. Even Israel turned good things—the temple, tradition, and the law—and made them ultimate—what they worshipped, rather than the God all those things were intended to point them towards. None of these things, the Bible included, is the ultimate foundation of our Christian faith.Jesus, the Son of God and God himself, is the ultimate foundation and the cornerstone of our faith. When he is pushed aside, even for good things like the Bible, we miss the point and become idolaters. When we worship words instead of the Word we have completely lost the meaning of the Bible.

Most importantly, Jesus Christ deserves every ounce of our devotion and worship. We cannot serve two masters—either Jesus receives all our worship or we slip into idolatry. The Bible is our important, but it cannot usurp from Jesus Christ the role of Master of our lives. Certainly, the Bible is our way of knowing and seeking Christ, but it is a means to an end, not the end himself. Let me give you an example: Have you ever wondered what heaven will be like? Of course you have, we all do! Now, when thinking about heaven have you ever thought to yourself that you cannot wait to be there so you can read your Bible for eternity? I know that I haven’t, not once! In Christ’s Kingdom Jesus will be physically with us, the Word of God living and breathing, and we will dwell in his presence, basking in his glory. We seek the Kingdom of Heaven because it is where his presence is. If we remove the King from the Kingdom and are left with only the Scriptures, what would be the point? To have the best reading for an infinite amount of time?

The Purpose of the Scriptures

In John 5, Jesus deals with this same issue of identifying the purpose of Scripture. He tells his audience, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” Again, as he covertly walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, he taught them “beginning at Moses” concerning himself. Why? Because we can read the Scriptures and still not have any idea who Jesus is. To know Scripture but to not know Jesus is a failure.

Jesus is trying to get his audience to understand that the Scriptures point to a person. Someone who lived and walked this earth and felt human emotions and hunger and pain. Someone who shed tears over a dead friend and was amazed at the faith of a soldier despised by Jews. Someone who healed the sick and raised the dead and comforted the oppressed and hurting. Someone named Jesus Christ who desires that all who come humbly to the words of Scripture to know him! He is the ultimate foundation and cornerstone of our faith and the thread that holds the grand narrative together. He is the very reason for Scripture’s inspiration to mankind! So, when the Bible’s stories and wisdom come before Jesus we sell ourselves drastically short of what God intends for us. When this happens, we practice idolatry and, instead of being about Jesus, Scripture becomes a how-to or self-help book. God desires to be known and went to immeasurable lengths for us to know him, and not just to have general ideas, but also to know him personally and intimately. If we are not careful, the Bible can even hurt this relationship.

Life in Christ

If the Bible does not point us to the life that is found in Christ then it is simply empty words on a page. If it does not cause us to confess that Jesus is Lord then it is merely scribbled ink. If it does not point to the Word of God, Jesus Christ, then you may as well place your Bible in the fiction section of your bookshelf and move on to the next thing in your reading list. If it is not God’s word revealing the Word then it is merely idle words. However, since we have a Bible pointing to the life that is found in Christ, that leads sinners to confess Jesus is Lord, and declares that the Word of God has been made flesh and died and rose from the dead, we have reason to treasure it and cling to it as it steers us towards our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We have hope that all the promises God makes in Scripture are “Yes, in Christ!” He is the Living Word, he has fulfilled Scripture in His life, and he shall be forever exalted. Therefore, we worship him and him alone.

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Mark Hampton is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity degree from Duke Divinity School with a focus in theology and history. He also works as a Graduate Assistant in the America Reads and Counts program at Duke University reaching the schools in Durham, North Carolina to promote education. Outside of school and work he likes to read, cycle, and travel. You can follow him on twitter here: @ma rkismoving

Guest User 9/22/15 Guest User 9/22/15

2 Principles for Living Free from J. R. R. Tolkien

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Like many during the early twentieth century, John Ronald Ruel Tolkien’s family moved around the globe. His father Arthur was a banker and took a job in South Africa, but tragedy struck the family. After only four years, Arthur Tolkien died. Mabel, his wife, Hillary, his sons, and young John moved back to England where they would stay. Less than ten years later Mabel would die leaving her two sons and daughter to be raised by family and their priest. Early on John showed a unique grasp on linguistics and he even started a literary club the “T. C. B. S.” (Tea Club, Barrovian Society) during his grammar school years.

He followed his passion for language to Exeter College, Oxford where he would go on to spend the majority of his professional career. The first World War interrupted his studies. Many believe his experience in the War forever altered his worldview and informed his later writings especially The Lord of the Rings. After the War was over, he worked in several positions in his field until finally returning to Oxford as a professor of language.

Before his arrival at Oxford, the world of Middle-earth had already started taking form as he had been in continuous work on The Lost Tales as well as an Elvish language. However, while at Oxford, the story goes, while grading papers, he stopped and jotted on one paper, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”—one of the most memorable lines in literary history. This started Tolkien’s more conscious journey through Middle-earth.

His writing were also influenced by a second literary club he started while at Oxford called The Inklings which included C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Neville Coghill to name a few.

While The Hobbit sold well, it wasn’t until The Lord of the Rings that his reputation was launched in earnest. A loyal and passionate following gathered around Tolkien which continues to this day. After his rise to fame and following his death (due in part to his plodding writing pace), many of his more “historical” and often unfinished works were gathered and edited by his son Christopher and published.

It should also be noted that he was a loving husband until the end. One of his most passionate stories Beren and Luthien—a man Beren who loved and wed the elf Luthien—was inspired by his own affection for the love of his life Edith. Their shared tombstone carries the inscription “Luthien” under her name and “Beren” under his. His faith played no small role in the world that he built and so many things can be learned from Tolkien’s Middle-earth, although the lessons may take the skill of a Dwarf to unearth.

PROVIDENCE

The theme of sovereignty must not be underestimated in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (TLOR). Sovereignty and providence play major roles in the affairs that we uncover in Tolkien’s major works. Consider the tale of the One Ring. In the second age, the free peoples were laying siege to Mordor and Isildur, the King of Men, cut the One Ring from Sauron’s hand. Against the wishes of Elrond and Círdan, the fallen elf lord Gil-galad’s lieutenants, Isildur keeps the Ring as a family heirloom. Evil befalls Isildur on his journey home when a band of orcs waylay him and the One Ring is consider lost in the great river Anduin.

Long after these events, a hobbit-like creature Sméagol (you may know him as Gollum) possessed the Ring by treachery. He was cast out of his community for using the Ring for evil purposes. He kept it hidden and safe for many years until Bilbo encountered him by “chance” during the tale that began in The Hobbit and “found” the Ring. He carried it to the Lonely Mountain and then back home to Hobbiton where it stayed with him for many years. It was finally discovered that this ring was the One Ring and Gandalf the wizard encouraged Biblo to pass it along to his heir Frodo. That it was freely given is a crucial element to the tale because none had done so before Biblo—and one that didn’t happen by chance.

What’s so amazing in all of this (and we will return to this later) is that creatures so homely, unknown, and small are able to possess the Ring for so long without being destroyed. Even gollum as evil as he is has held up well by all accounts and in TLOR shows glimpses of good in the sometimes humorous dialogue when journeying with Frodo and Sam to Mount Doom. This kind of “luck” in the Ring’s lineage is nothing short of miraculous. Tolkien describes the Ring as having a will bent towards Sauron, but there seems to be something else at work ordering even the evil intent of the Ring.

[Gandalf says,] “Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.” The Fellowship of the Rings, Chapter 2 “The Shadow of the Past”

“‘I wish I had never seen the Ring! Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?’ ‘Such questions cannot be answered,’ said Gandalf.” The Fellowship of the Rings, Chapter 2 “The Shadow of the Past”

This providence draws the Ring into the hands of hobbits who are unexpectedly hardy and good-hearted. They remind me of what man and woman were pre-Fall.

Also, TLOR reads much like Esther in the Old Testament. No explicit mention of God but his hand present in every thing. You have bread crumbs of providence, sovereignty, and governance through out TLOR. Here are a few examples drawn from The Fellowship of the Ring and its major chapter concerning the lore of the One Ring. Especially note how the twisted desires of Gollum are turned to good in the end:

[Gandalf says,] “And he [Gollum] is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many – yours not least.” The Fellowship of the Rings, Chapter 2 “The Shadow of the Past” (also, Gandalf emphasizes this later in chapter 11, “But he may play a part yet that neither he nor Sauron have forseen”)

Early on as the hobbits journey out of the Shire, Tom Bombadil rescues them from their first danger by chance:

“At last Frodo spoke: ‘Did you hear me calling, Master, or was it just chance that brought you at that moment?’ Tom stirred like a man shaken out of a pleasant dream. ‘Eh, what?’ said he. ‘Did I hear you calling? Nay, I did not hear: I was busy singing. Just chance brought me then, if chance you call it. It was no plan of mine, though I was waiting for you.” The Fellowship of the Rings, Chapter 7 “In the House of Tom Bombadil”

“‘That is the purpose for which you are called hither. Called, I say, though I have not called you to me, strangers from distant lands. You have come and are here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem. Yet it is not so. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world.” The Fellowship of the Rings, Chapter 11 “The Council of Elrond”

Every step of the way as the Ring makes its way out of the Shire and into Rivendell something is guiding Frodo. Tolkien masterfully describes what God working all things together for good looks like. If you wish to live like free people in Middle-earth than you must realize everything is orchestrated by God for the good purpose of his will (if you want to see Tolkien flesh this out even more, read The Silmarillion’s opening chapters).

As we navigate this dark world and the “Shadow takes another shape,” we must acknowledge there’s much about the way God orchestrates our lives we don’t understand. We must humbly acknowledge just because we cannot in our finite understanding see any good purpose amidst the pain, suffering, and evil, we mustn’t assume God has none.

FRIENDSHIP, FELLOWSHIP, & FOOD

The Hobbit starts with the unlikely friendship of Biblo and Gandalf. This friendship binds this story together. Without it, you do not have Gandalf’s counsel of Frodo and the Ring may have fallen into the hands of Sauron. To the wise the friendship of the hobbits and Gandalf seems foolish. Saruman didn’t understand the value of hobbits and would not have sullied himself by being friends with those of a lesser station than him unless he was using them for his purposes.

The dwarves are unwelcomed friends at first but soon enjoy table fellowship—feasting, eating, and singing. They rehearse their shared history in Middle-earth. As the story proceeds, you have the lack of hospitality by the goblins in the mountains and the friendship of the eagles. They repeat the slow arrival technique practiced at Bilbo’s at Beorn the shape-shifter’s home as they escape the goblin’s lair. Beorn is dangerous but hospitable.

From there, the party enters Mirkwood and the hand of fellowship is not extended by the wood elves. They capture and imprison the dwarves and later lay siege to the Lonely Mountain asking for a split of the treasure. The dwarves and Biblo are welcomed by men but are not welcomed by Smaug.

After Bard the Bowman kills Smaug, the dwarves now reject friendship of men and elves (maybe justly in the case of the latter). This lack of hospitality brewing in the story comes to a head here and is only relieved by Gandalf and the common enemy of the goblins as they attack the companies of men and elves and the Lonely Mountain. In this battle, Thorin Oakenshield, the leader of the dwarves dies which brings us to a major passage in The Hobbit:

“Bilbo knelt on one knee filled with sorrow. “Farewell, King under the Mountain!” he said. “This is a bitter adventure, if it must end so; and not a mountain of gold can amend it. Yet I am glad that I have shared in your perils—that has been more than any Baggins deserves.”

“No!” said Thorin. “There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell!” The Hobbit, “The Return Journey”

This same theme is carried over to TLOR (I’ll be briefer here). The book starts with a farewell party for Biblo. He disappears leaving Frodo everything and lives with Elrond at the last homely house. From the start, Frodo’s journey is uncertain, but is unexpectedly bolstered by the friendship of Sam, Merry, Pippin, and Fatty. They have been spying on him and plan to accompany him from Hobbiton to Rivendell. In another twist, they are adamant about joining the fellowship of the Ring. As the name of first book in TLOR suggests fellowship is central to the ring-bearer’s quest. That quest is almost destroyed by the lust of Boromir, but is saved by his final act of friendship and sacrifice.

In the second book, The Two Towers, friendship is again central. The friendship of Glóin the dwarf and Legolas the elf and also the deep bond between Glóin and the lady of Galadriel (although in book one). Also, the friendship of Aragorn (and the kingdoms of men, in general) and the men of Rohan is essential. The unlikely friendship of Merry and Pippin and the ents. And most importantly the friendship of Frodo and Sam which is contrasted with the twisted relationship of Frodo and Gollom. However, the relationship of Sam and Frodo carries the theme of friendship through out the entire journey. It’s also the reunited friendship of the free peoples of Middle-earth which makes the defeat of Sauron possible.

This truth that friendship is absolutely necessary is one that is also through out Scripture. Not only that, the importance of fellowship around the table and the rehearsal of our common story of the gospel is central to Christian discipleship. That kind of rehearsal of common history is paramount in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. It’s the suspicion of friends which causes damage in Middle-earth and friendship’s restored and a remembered save the day.

Tolkien does something that few other writers I’ve encountered do—he makes me long to return to his created world Middle-earth. It’s hard to walk away from that place and not find yourself more concerned with the world around you, more joyful in your fellowship, and more willing to sacrifice for the good of others. Tolkien gives us a glimpse of the good life and does so in a way that’s not preachy or superficial.

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!

GCD Editors 9/21/15 GCD Editors 9/21/15

Are Children a Barrier or Blessing for Missional Communities?

Missional Communities are a beautiful mess, especially when they have kids! I remember the first Missional Community (MC) that my wife and I led. We had a diverse group consisting of college students, singles, married couples, and lots and lots of kids. I remember one time we took a photo in our backyard. It looked like we were running a pre-k program every Thursday night. Not only were my wife and I trying to plan and prepare for our community's meeting every week, but we also found that we needed to dedicate and intentionally build in planning time for the children. Week in and week out, we'd have 10-14 kiddos at our house. We quickly learned that it was a beautiful mess—one that called us to steward well the responsibility of having children in our groups. In talking with others leading or participating in MCs, one thing has become apparent—trying to meaningfully incorporate children into the life of a community on mission is relatively new territory. I've seen the church build momentum with this in large corporate gatherings, which is a beautiful evidence of grace upon the church. However, the church must shift focus and begin building similar systems and rhythms for the children in our groups. For most missional communities, the extent that children participate is coming with their parents, usually destroying the host's home, enjoying unlimited lasagna and cookies, watching a movie, and then leaving at the end of the night. For children under 3, that's not bad. We want them to enjoy their time. That doesn’t mean they can’t digest basic ideas, songs, and stories about Jesus, but we shouldn’t drowned toddlers under 3 with theology.

My focus, in this article, is missional communities with children 3 and up, especially those with children 6 and up. Why? Because developmentally, children between 3-6 can start learning basic concepts building to more advanced concepts as they approach 6. They're learning to learn and are able to do things like sit for longer periods of time and be attentive to instruction. Kiddos 6 and above have clearly learned the "learning to learn" skills to be successful with just that, learning! One final comment on developmental appropriateness; not all children develop at a typical rate. There are lots of kiddos in each and every community that require special attention and have specific learning styles. That said, keep in mind that we'll have to be flexible as we plan for the group at large, knowing that we'll have to adjust instruction and teaching for certain learners that are wonderfully different.

Intentional Incorporation

What would it look like to intentionally incorporate children? First, we must instruct and teach them at their level each and every week—whether you're taking the concepts that the whole MC is learning and making it developmentally appropriate for children, or whether your lesson planning new concepts altogether. The idea is that we're intentional and we're planning. In addition to planning lessons and units of teaching, we want to engage the kiddos in community by encouraging the sharing of their hearts, the confessing of their sins, and by sharing the good news of the rich grace that more than covers their iniquities. If we do one thing well with our kiddos, let's teach them the concept of grace. Let's teach them how sweet it is and the cost that was paid for their sins. Not only will our children grow in grace, but also they'll learn to lead well in a generation that truly needs it. You want revival beyond us and our generation, focus on the children in your groups.

Luke 18 helps us understand why we should do this well. In Luke 18, Jesus encounters a group of children. Essentially, we know that Jesus calls the children to him yet let's look deeper. I'm going to make an assumption in examining this passage as to Jesus' heart in calling the children to himself. As opposed to saying, "Hold up kids! I'm not sure you know this, but I'm Jesus, you know, the Son of God. I'm busy preaching and teaching. You'll have to come back later." Was that Jesus' heart and attitude towards the kiddos? Did he take himself so seriously that he sent the children on their way? Absolutely not! He calls them to himself. That's an example for us leaders. You might be thinking “I’ve never turned away the kiddos during MC,” yet in your heart, I’m sure you’ve felt like they're getting in the way. You've probably felt like putting them in a room for the sake of peace and quiet. The heart there is what we're aiming for and where I want to focus. As opposed to viewing children as a barrier, let's view them as a blessingYes, it's chaotic. Yes, it can drive us crazy. But, despite that, let's model graciousness in our families and groups towards our children. After all, what must God think of our messy lives? The Father looks down and extends grace, rather than becoming irritated with us.

Deuteronomy 11:18-20 also supports this rationale. Moses gives a clear command for us to teach "these things" to our children. When? Where? While we're sitting at home, walking along the way, and in every part of our life. It's very casual, yet important. This passage gives the sense that teaching our children is to be done on a regular basis, both informally and continually. If we're called to do this so informally in our homes, that's all the more reason to better steward a structured time like MC.

Practical Recommendations

So how should we do this well from a practical standpoint? I want to be pragmatic and practical in this section. How are we going to do this well? Remember, these are recommendations and should be modified to fit the context of your MC and its participants.

Ask for volunteers. Volunteers can make the MC more life giving for the families participating. I'd encourage the MC to look for an individual within the church that can serve each week. We had a faithful servant in our missional community that loved our kiddos. We loved her and demonstrated our appreciation for her in tangible ways. She loved when we gifted her the ESV Study Bible. It was a little gesture to show our appreciation of her commitment. A good volunteer can make the group more engaging for the parents participating.
Provide Direction. A good way the church can serve these volunteers is by providing support in the way of lesson planning and strategic vision and direction. This can be done by a paid Children’s Director or by partners in the church that are gifted in working with children. Remember, it takes a village.
Plan. Plan ahead for the kiddos that are there. Putting them into informal "clusters" will help you keep the expectations appropriate for each respective grouping.
Kiddos under 3 need to have a good time. Cookies, cake, toys they like, and other special activities (Play-Doh, bubbles, etc.) will keep them engaged and loving the weekly rhythm of MC, which is worth its weight in gold. Parents will tell you—they're thrilled if they can meaningfully participate in MC because their under 3 kiddo enjoys being there. Gold I tell you.
Kiddos between 3-6 can start to learn Scripture and enjoy the stories found in a good kids Bible. We recommend the The Jesus Storybook Bible. We love that the main Hero in the Story is Jesus and that's what we'd love for kiddos in this cluster to start learning. Jesus is the main character and all of Scripture points to him. It's our job to model a love of Scripture and an excitement for what’s found within the Book.
Kiddos 6 and up may also like the Action Bible. It's with this group that you can expect more (sharing their hearts, confessing sin, understanding and applying grace, praying for one another, etc.)
Look for leaders within this cluster. My sons are 6 and 8, and by God's grace, they're good leaders. They have 2 little sisters so they've had lots of opportunities to practice leading as tough and tender boys. I’ve also met lots of little girls that are firm and enjoy “mothering.” These kiddos will be the best helpers in the group; they can support the volunteer in reading to the younger children or playing games with them. This also gives us the opportunity to build them up as they embrace responsibility. Find leaders and equip them just like you would their parents!
Have a rough schedule planned out but be flexible. The most successful leaders are agile, especially when you’re working with children.
Work Together. Make sure there's gracious collaboration between the volunteers and family. The volunteer is not going to be perfect nor will they know the children as well as the parents. There's a learning curve involved but collaboration is important.
Pray with and for all the children regularly—it's vital!

What Works for Your MC

In light of the different directions you could take, I’d encourage you to prayerfully consider what might work for your MC. Ultimately, we want our children in the church to grow up knowing what it looks and feels like to have authentic community. If we can accomplish this, the ripple will be far beyond anything we can ever measure. Lives will be changed and the gospel will move forward. We must take and win this territory. It's untouched and ripe for the picking. Jesus says in Luke 10 that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Let's cultivate what's needed from an early age to raise up laborers for the kingdom of God. They're right there in our groups, you know, the ones reaching for the cookies.

—

Rob Fattal serves as CEO and BCBA in high-touch boutique firms providing educational services to children. He started his career as a credentialed teacher and served in both the public school system and at the university level. He and his wife have 4 kiddos of their own and have led and coached MCs and MC leaders. Ultimately, they love the church and hope to serve it well.

Chelsea Vaughn 9/20/15 Chelsea Vaughn 9/20/15

3 Counter-Cultural Lessons from Elisabeth Elliot

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I remember embarking on my first attempt to read a book written by Elisabeth Elliot. I figured the best place to start would be her first Through The Gates of Splendor. I sat comfortably on a lawn chair by the pool and a bubbly girl came to sit beside me. I could see her eyeing my book, so I turned towards her with a smile and asked if she’d read it before. To which her smile contorted and she said, “Her husband had a cool story, but it’s just too sad. Their lives were all about being missionaries. After reading some of her book I stopped because I didn’t like the lack of love they shared. Their marriage wasn’t about love, it was all about mission.” I was taken back by the abrasive truth she presented me and spent the next hour reconsidering my interest in her book. If marriage isn’t about love, then why be married?

I came across Elisabeth Elliot’s works several times through the years and passed by them with caution. Even if they were profound, I consistently had the mindset that she lacked the kind of passion I desired for my future marriage. I couldn’t embrace her wisdom because her will was too strong for my liking.

“Sometimes it is absolutely necessary for God to yank out of sight whatever we most prize, to drag us into spiritual traumas of the severest sort, to strip us naked in the winds of His purifying Spirit in order that we should learn to trust.” –Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity

I have three constant mentors that I turn to for advice, wisdom, and exhortation. One of which I do life with, one of which knows me deeper than anyone else, and the last knew me at my lowest. In the past four years, each of these highly admired women has quoted Elisabeth Elliot to me in times of need. Ironically, I started noticing something about this strong willed woman. Her words prodded at my spirit in a way that stuck. Her objective devotion to the Lord made me uncomfortable, and though I didn’t like it, it frustrated me in a convicting way.

1. Uniting Marriage and Mission

“From a respectful distance, with no knowledge on his part, I had the opportunity to observe the character of Jim Elliot. He was a man careful with his time. Friendly, and enthusiastic. I knew what kind of student he was. I watched him wrestle. I heard him pray and watched him lead. There was nothing pompous or stuffy about him. Long before I had any reason to think he might be interested in me, I had put him down as the sort of man I hoped to marry.” –Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity

“In regards to dating, many times the best thing to do is pray steadily and wait patiently till God makes the way plain.” –Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity

I was discontented when I was told to sit, wait, and pray. I am not a girl content with uncertainty. I covet understanding, value clarity, and seek insight. I cling to the truth in 1 Cor. 14:33 that declares confusion is not of God. In the past, I chose to ignore the patience required to labor in prayer. God has used countless trying relationships to refine me, but deeper than that, he has used those times to speak identity to me. The waiting, the watching, and the praying have been more sanctifying than the actual person and relationship. That is certainly because it’s in those times that God has been the center. God uses his people to sanctify his people, and that happens (most often) when the Church is on mission.

Elisabeth and Jim were not seekers of self but of God’s Great Commission. Their top priority was not to have a pleasing marriage by the world’s standards, but to glorify God through a sacrificial love in marriage. They met in college, then left for Ecuador both following God’s individual plan for their lives, then later got married in the mission field. When the two were not in physical company, they pursued the relationship as one with God’s mission. It was not separate from their call to share God’s gift of life, but a tool to use in the pursuit of his mission. Even afterwards, when Jim was killed and Elisabeth lived alone, she shared God’s glorious story and how her husband served to fulfill it with his life. The mission was never driven by their marriage, but the mission always drove their marriage.

How can we ever expect to go seek a relationship then find God’s will after we find the person? I don’t believe that was God’s initial intent for covenant marriage. The pastor of the church I attend often says, when speaking to singles, “Know who God has called you to be, pursue what he has called you to do, then watch for someone doing the same. Who can you imagine being on mission with you? They will, most likely, be God’s holy match.” Praise God for their example of pure, unbridled affection for the Kingdom of Heaven.

2. Loving Unto Death

In Let Me Be a Woman, one of her most popular books, Elliot paraphrases the biblical design of steadfast love.

This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive. Love is not possessive. Love is not anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own ideas. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. Love is not touchy. Love does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails. Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that stands when all else has fallen. –Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be A Woman

If this is the biblical design for steadfast love, then we can examine it in light of God’s love and the love shared in marriage. I can return to my initial question with a revised question. Can you truly love a person and not be on mission with them? I’m not sure if it’s even possible to devote one’s life to God and neglect a shared mission with a spouse. Consider the depth of love Elisabeth Elliot had when she returned to serve the same tribe that killed her husband. Her love did not lack passion, but had unconditional passion and compassion—because her love for God was ultimate.

This love carries the story of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot. These two lived to tell God’s story and their story challenges because of the drastic measures they took to love the world. They lived counter-cultural lives. The world sees the loss of life and tragedy, whereas Elisabeth and Jim saw gain for the kingdom.

3. Counter-Cultural Manhood and Womanhood

Our culture shouts out their corrupted view of marriage. I contend that because our understanding of womanhood and manhood is fractured the culture has made headway with their own vision for each. I found that my own assumption was similar to that of Betty Elliot’s:

“In a civilization where, in order to be sure of manhood (or, alas even “personhood”), men must box, life weights, play football, jog, rappel or hang-glide, it was startling to realize that there was such a thing as spiritual commitment as robust, as total, and perhaps more demanding than the most fanatical commitment to physical fitness. It was a shock to learn that anybody cared that much about anything, especially if it was invisible.” –Elisabeth Elliot, Through The Gates of Splendor

The power of her words expose the culturally-twisted understanding of manhood/ womanhood. The standards of the world lack commitment, growth, and deep affection. Often, it seems like men do not care to persist or endure with something they can’t see. Yet, Elisabeth watched her husband and his team faithfully and fearlessly seek God’s will. She also risked her life in hopes of bringing life to this same violent tribe. She breaks free of the caricature of the passive, beaten down Christian woman and the aggressive, independent woman of our postmodern culture. She modeled biblical strength, dignity, submission, grace, and love.

Upon first hearing of Betty’s strong willed character, I was rattled and frustrated by her. I couldn’t support the seeming lack of passion found in her mission-fueled marriage. However, the past four years have led me to the truth of God’s intention for covenant marriages, and thus, deconstructed my rose-colored cultural expectation. This woman unknowingly discipled me by her deep devotion to the steadfast pursuit of God’s affectionate call. Her wisdom, life story, and fervent words have refined me to be a better woman, servant, and future wife. Sometimes the things that frustrate you the most, are the very things that your spirit needs to embrace.

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Phil Ryken 9/17/15 Phil Ryken 9/17/15

Grace's Humbling Necessity

From the moment we came into the world as helpless babies, right up until this exact second, we are utterly and completely dependent on the grace of God for everything we have, including life itself. What is more, if we have any hope of life after death—eternal life—it is only because of God’s free and undeserved grace for us in Jesus Christ. Until we understand this, it is impossible for us to have the relationship with God that we truly need. But when we do understand this—when we understand our absolute need for Jesus—then his grace changes everything.

PAST EXPERIENCE, PRESENT NEED

Our need for grace may seem obvious at the beginning of the Christian life, when we first put our trust in Jesus. Then we know that if there is anything we contribute to our salvation, it is only the sin that necessitates a Savior. According to the good news of our salvation, Jesus died and rose again so that in him we would receive forgiveness for our sins and enter into everlasting fellowship with the true and living God. We are not saved by anything that we have done, therefore, but only by what Jesus has done. It is all by his grace, not by our works. Yet grace is not something we leave behind once we decide to follow Jesus.Grace is our present need as well as our past experience. The gospel is not just the way into the Christian life; it is also the way on in the Christian life. We continually need to remember that God “saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:9).

In my first chapel address as president of Wheaton College I said something that took some people by surprise, maybe because it’s something that many Christians forget. I said that I don’t know of a college anywhere in the world that needs the gospel more than Wheaton does.

In saying this, I did not mean to imply that there aren’t a lot of Christians at Wheaton. In fact, every student, every professor, and every staff member on campus makes a personal profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Still, it wouldn’t be surprising to find unbelievers on campus: in most Christian communities there are at least some people who do not yet have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

This is not what I meant, however, when I said that Wheaton College needs the gospel. I meant that the gospel is for Christians every bit as much as it is for non-Christians. We never outgrow our need for God’s life-changing grace— the gospel of the cross and the empty tomb.

A SELF-CENTERED PRAYER

The main reason we continue to need the gospel is that we continue to sin. To experience God’s life-changing grace for ourselves, therefore, we need to recognize the deep-seated sin that necessitates our salvation.

One of the best places to see our need for grace, and also the way that God answers that need, is in a story Jesus told “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9). In other words, this is a story for people who will not admit their need for grace. It is a story for us, if we are too proud to confess our sins. It goes like this:

Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. - Luke 18:10–14

The story opens with a surprise, because in those days everyone knew that tax collectors did not go to the temple and did not pray. Tax collectors were employed by the Roman government, and thus they were considered traitors to the Jewish people. Many practiced extortion. Thus one preacher compared them to “drug pushers and pimps, those who prey on society, and make a living of stealing from others.”1 Make no mistake about it: this tax collector was a crook!

The Pharisee, by contrast, stood for everything that was right and good. The Pharisees were widely regarded as spiritual overachievers. They were theologically orthodox and morally devout. Possibly our respect for this particular Pharisee increases when we overhear his prayer. He comes before God with thanksgiving. He testifies that he is not an extortioner or an adulterer. Rather than taking money for himself, he gives it away to others. He not only prays, but also fasts. In contemporary terms, this man would be a pastor or a theologian—or maybe the president of a Christian college.

Yet for all his devotion, the Pharisee was not righteous in the sight of God. Why not? His most obvious problem was pride. Although he began by addressing God, he spent the rest of his prayer talking about himself. In only two short verses he manages to mention himself five (!) times: I . . . I . . . I . . . I . . . I. It gets worse, because if we translate verse 11 more literally, it reads, “The Pharisee, standing, prayed about himself,” or even “with himself,” in which case he was not talking to God at all! He did not truly ask God for anything or offer God any praise but simply reveled in his own sense of moral superiority. In other words, the Pharisee was exactly like the people listening to Jesus tell this story: confident of his own righteousness. Here is a man, said London’s famous preacher Charles Spurgeon, who thought he was “too good to be saved.”

It is easy to see how self-righteous the Pharisee was, but what we really need to assess is the same attitude in ourselves. If we are living in Christian community, then either we will grow strong in the grace of God or else we will become bigger and bigger hypocrites. So we need to ask ourselves: When am I like the Pharisee in the story Jesus told?

Here are some possible answers: I am a Pharisee when I care more about my religious reputation than about real holiness. I am a Pharisee when I look down on people who are not as committed to the cause of mercy or justice that I am committed to. I am a Pharisee when I look around and say, “Thank God I am not like so-and-so” and then fill in the blank with whatever person in my neighborhood, or student on my campus, or colleague at my workplace, or family in my church, or group in my society that I happen to think is not as whatever it is as I am.

When else am I a Pharisee? I am a Pharisee when I am impressed with how much I am giving to God compared to others. I am a Pharisee when other people’s sins seem worse than my own. I am a Pharisee when I can go all day, or all week, or even all month without confessing any particular sin.

ANOTHER WAY TO PRAY

Thankfully, there is a totally different way to pray—a way that will save your sinful and maybe hypocritical soul. Unlike the Pharisee, the tax collector did not count on his own merits but begged for mercy instead: “The tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” (Luke 18:13).

There are three parts to the tax collector’s prayer: God, the sinner, and the merciful grace that comes between them. The man’s prayer started with God, which is where all prayer ought to begin. The first act of prayer is to approach the majestic throne of the awesome and almighty God. When the tax collector made his approach, he refused even to look up to heaven, because he had a right and proper fear of God’s bright, burning holiness.

So the tax collector’s prayer began with God. It ended with himself, the sinner. I say “the” sinner, rather than “a” sinner because the Greek original of this verse uses the definite article. As far as the tax collector was concerned, he was the only sinner that mattered. Rather than comparing himself to others, he measured himself against the perfect holiness of God. And by that standard, he saw himself for what he was: nothing more and nothing less than a guilty sinner before a holy God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wisely wrote, “If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all.” One good way to avoid this error and acknowledge the true extent of our sin is to identify ourselves as “the” sinner when we pray, as if we were the biggest, most obvious sinner in our congregation, corporation, family, or dormitory. “It’s me, Lord,” we should say when we begin our prayers. “You know: the sinner.”

AT THE MERCY SEAT

This brings us to the most striking feature of the tax collector’s prayer: in between God’s holiness and his own sinfulness he inserted a prayer for mercy. Like King David, he stood before God and said, “Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; listen to my plea for grace” (Ps. 86:6).

When the tax collector prayed, “Have mercy,” he used a Greek verb that essentially means to atone for sin by means of a blood sacrifice. To understand this, we need to go back in the Old Testament to Leviticus 16. Once a year, the high priest would make atonement for the people’s sin. He would take a perfect male goat and sacrifice it as a sin offering. Then he would take its blood into the Most Holy Place of the temple and sprinkle it on the mercy seat.

What did this priestly act signify? The sacrificial goat represented God’s sinful people. In a symbolical way, their sins were transferred or imputed to the animal. Then, having been charged with sin, the animal was put to death. The goat thus served as a substitute, dying in the place of sinners.

Once a sacrifice had been offered, the animal’s blood was the proof that atonement had been made for sin. The sacrificial blood showed that God had already carried out his death penalty against transgression. So the priest took the blood and sprinkled it on the mercy seat, which was the golden lid on the ark of the covenant. This sacred ark was located in the innermost sanctum of the temple— the Most Holy Place. On top of the mercy seat there were golden cherubim, symbolizing the throne of God. Thus the ark served as the earthly location of God’s holy presence. Inside the ark, underneath the mercy seat, was the law of God as a covenant that the people had broken. Sprinkling blood on the mercy seat, therefore, was a way to show that an atoning sacrifice had come between the holy God and his sinful people. The sacrificial blood showed that their sins were covered, that they were protected from the holy wrath of God.

In effect, this is what the tax collector prayed for when he said, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” He was asking God to make blood atonement for his sin. There the man was, praying in the very temple where the sacrificial blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat. When Jesus says that “two men went up to the temple to pray,” this is generally taken to mean that they were there around three o’clock in the afternoon, with the crowds that attended the daily sacrifice. Knowing that he was under God’s judgment because of his sin, the only thing the tax collector could do was ask for mercy to come between his guilt and God’s wrath. So he begged for God to be “mercy-seated” to him. He was asking God to atone for his sins, to cover his guilt, and to protect him from eternal judgment.

The order of the tax collector’s prayer echoes the Old Testament pattern for sacrifice: “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” First comes God, who is perfect in his holiness. Last comes the sinner, who deserves to die for his sins. But in between comes the sacrificial blood that saves his sinful soul.

SAVED BY THE BLOOD

This is a good prayer for anyone to pray: “God, be mercy-seated to me, the sinner.” Not counting the Lord’s Prayer, or the words of thanks I give before eating a meal, it is probably the prayer I offer more than any other. It’s short and easy to remember. I pray it first thing in the morning or the last thing at night. I pray it before I preach, or any time I am feeling weighed down by guilt: “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.”

When I pray this way, I am really praying the gospel. By shedding his blood, Jesus Christ became the atoning sacrifice for my sins. His death is my substitute; his cross is my mercy seat; and the blood that he sprinkled on it is my salvation.

To say that Jesus died for sinners is to say that his sacrifice accomplished what the blood on the mercy seat accomplished. Like the sacrificial animals of the Old Testament, Jesus died in our place. Our sins were transferred or imputed to him: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24). As a result, our sins are covered; our guilt is taken away. The Scripture says Christ “has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26).

Our mercy seat is the cross of Jesus Christ, where the atoning blood was sprinkled for our salvation. In fact, to explain what Jesus was doing on the cross, the New Testament sometimes uses the noun form of the same verb for mercy that we find in Luke 1. We see this terminology in Romans 3:25, which says that God presented Jesus “as a propitiation by his blood,” and again in Hebrews 2:17, where he is described as a “merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God,” who has made “propitiation for the sins of the people.”

This is mercy-seat vocabulary, which assures us that our plea for grace will always be answered. When we say, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner,” we are making an appeal to the cross. We are asking for the blood of Jesus to cover all our sins.

GOING HOME JUSTIFIED

Has God been mercy-seated to you? What compels me to ask this question is the conclusion to the story Jesus told. Two men went to the temple, where they offered two different prayers and, as a result, met two entirely different destinies.

In the end, the tax collector got what he asked for. His prayers were answered. God was mercy-seated to him. Thus Jesus closed his story by saying that this man (and not the other) was “justified.” In other words— and we will say more about this in a later chapter—the tax collector was counted righteous. He was justified by God’s mercy on the basis of the atoning blood of a perfect sacrifice, which he received by a prayer he asked in faith.

God did not justify the Pharisee, however. This would have come as a total shock to anyone who was listening to this story when it was first told, so Jesus was very specific about it. Although the Pharisee declared his own righteousness, he was never declared righteous by God, and therefore he went home unjustified. Sadly, his righteousness was part of the problem. He was too busy being self-righteous to receive God’s righteousness, which comes only as a gift.

The Pharisee’s prayer was all about what he could do for God: “I thank . . . I am . . . I fast . . . I give.” All his verbs were active, in the first person singular. What made the tax collector’s prayer different was that he was asking God to do something for him. Therefore, the only verb in his prayer is passive: “God, be mercy-seated to me, the sinner.”

Pray this way, and you too will be justified before God. What is more, you will be so humbled by your desperate need for God’s life-changing grace that you will not look down on anyone but live instead with the humility, joy, and gratitude that only grace compels.

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Philip Graham Ryken (PhD, University of Oxford) is the 8th president of Wheaton College and, prior to that, served as senior minister at Philadelphia’s historic Tenth Presbyterian Church. He has written several books for Crossway, and has lectured and taught at universities and seminaries worldwide. Dr. Ryken and his wife, Lisa, live in Wheaton and have five children.

Excerpted from Phil Ryken’s Grace Transforming, published by Crossway, and used with permission.

Jonathan Romig 9/15/15 Jonathan Romig 9/15/15

5 Ingredients for Spiritual Meal-Making

My mom is a great cook who would make three delicious meals a day for my brothers and me. I wish I could say I inherited my mom's love for cooking, but I never did. She tried and tried to teach me how to cook, but I never wanted to learn. Now my wife is away for a few weeks and I'm counting down the days until the lasagna she made and so lovingly stored in the freezer is gone. As this terrible deadline approaches, I have several options: 1) I can starve; 2) I can eat out; 3) I can ask for handouts; or 4) I can cook for myself. I don't want to give up food for the next three weeks even though I could potentially fast for some of that time. I don't have the money to eat out daily and although I do have several friends who are going to invite me over for meals, begging for food just doesn't seem like the grown-up option. The last option is the hardest one, but that one has the most benefits. If I learn to cook while my wife is away, imagine how I could surprise and bless her when she returns. I could make her a date-night meal and maybe cook one-night a week. I could even invite friends over and be the one to prepare the meal. The benefits of learning to cook for myself are pretty much endless.

Why Do It Yourself?

I don't know many pastors who are good at cooking, at least, in the literal sense. However, I do know many pastors and teachers who are great at cooking spiritually-filling meals. They can prepare a great Bible lesson or sermon that provides you something to meditate on for the week. They're so good in fact, and you get such great nutritional value from what they're teaching, that you're a bit wary of your own cooking. Why study the Bible for yourself when your pastor can do it so much better?As a pastor, I'm here to encourage you that nothing brings me more joy than seeing people learn to “cook spiritually” for themselves then nourish others. In other words, I love it when you learn to love and know God for yourself through the Bible and when you share that love with those around you.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:12-14 ESV)

The book of Hebrews is written to early Christians who aren't maturing in their faith as they should. All they want is to be fed and not even with food that meets their spiritual need. The author of Hebrews has a double challenge for them: hunger for spiritual food and become cooks ("teachers" v. 12). Notice that those who are mature and feeding on solid Christian teaching are themselves responsible to duplicate the task. They should be "trained" so that they can understand what is "good."

Spiritually filling food is for those who have "powers of discernment" and are "trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil" (v. 14). Christians need to get involved in the cooking process. We are to take ownership for what we're learning. Other passages also encourage believers to prepare themselves to receive real food (1 Cor. 3:2) and to desire good food to grow strong (1 Pt. 2:1-3). So not only should we desire good teaching, we need it to mature, and we should desire to share what we are learning with others.

Ingredients for Spiritual Meal-Making

What are some practical ways we can learn to cook?

1. Study the Bible individually and in a small group; 2. Use outside resources to double check your recipe (i.e., use reference tools and commentaries like your pastor does); 3. Pray and meditate on what you're learning; 4. Take what you're learning to your pastor and teachers so they can help you; and 5. Finally, share what God has taught you with friends, family members, and fellow pilgrims.

This doesn't mean we should stop learning from pastors, teachers, and others, but we should become less dependent on them even though we value and honor their teachings. We come under their authority but not passively. A strong faith produces active discipleship. We don't desert the church for our own personal devotion, but we realize both personal and corporate learning together make the most nutritionally healthy Christians. Good shepherds should always feed their flock, but the goal is not to just eat another good meal, but to feed the starving and teach the full how to cook.

While my wife was away I went to the store, purchased chicken thighs, and spent around 45 minutes baking them when they probably should have only taken around 20-25 minutes. I couldn't get the chicken to cook like I wanted and when I did eat them, I was very much suspicious that I was poisoning myself. I don't enjoy cooking but I'm willing to try again. I want to help my wife and grow as a person. You're first time cooking “a spiritual meal” will probably go something like mine. Nobody ever learned to cook the first time they tried. Try again and see how you grow in Christ and mature as a follower of Jesus. The best cooks all started by making one meal.

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Jonathan Romig (M.Div., Gordon-Conwell, 2013) is the Associate Pastor of Immanuel Church in Chelmsford MA (CCCC) and the Church Planting Pastor of Cornerstone Congregational Church in the neighboring town of Westford MA. He has taught New City Catechism as a year-long adult Sunday school class and recently self-published his first e-book, How To Give A Christian Wedding Toast.