Grayson Pope 6/20/17 Grayson Pope 6/20/17

Use Your Affluence for Influence

“If you engage in a geographically centered mission in an affluent area, how will you care for the poor and welcome them into your community?” — @BradAWatson

I saw that tweet right before bed and it kept me up most of the night. It's something I’ve wrestled with because I live and serve in an affluent community. How do you care for the poor and welcome them into your community if you live in a wealthy area?

The Bible tells us that God’s people are blessed so that they can be a blessing to others. That means our affluence should be used for influence.

The Biblical Mandate

God’s plan since the beginning has been to bless the world through his people. In the garden, Adam and Eve were told to be fruitful and multiply and to cultivate the world, making it a more perfect place (Gen. 1:28). God promised Abraham he would bless him and make him into a great nation, but that blessing was intended to flow into all the nations of the earth (Gen. 12:2-3). Abraham’s fruitfulness would be a blessing to his family, but it was primarily intended to become a blessing to all the families of the world.

This broader theme of blessing the world through one people carries over into God’s plan for Israel. At the same time, God’s heart for the poor is revealed throughout the Old Testament in passages such as Psalm 72:13, “He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.” More than the just the poor, we see God’s soft spot widened to include widows, orphans, refugees, and others, such as in Deuteronomy 10:18, “He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.”

The fullest display of God’s heart for the poor was incarnated in Jesus, who was born into a poor family. His statements about caring the poor were provocative and shocking, like when he said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God… But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation” (Lk. 6:20, 24). Jesus goes further to say that putting our money in earthly possessions is foolish when all of it will come to an end. Instead, Jesus says,

Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. – Luke 12:33

Perhaps Jesus’ most striking words about caring for the poor are found in Matthew 25:31-46, where he says that neglecting to care for the poor is the same as neglecting to care for him. Those who neglect the poor will then hear these words from Jesus,

Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. – Matthew 25:41-43

Clearly, Jesus expects his followers to use their blessings to bless others. For many of us, Jesus’ teaching should directly affect how we think about and use our affluence.

Own your affluence

Many of us don't think of ourselves as affluent. However, none of the worldwide statistics support this thinking.

At the same time, not everyone reading this is making ends meet, and I get that. I really do. I coordinate pastoral care and benevolence for my church, so I know people are struggling. Just because I live in an affluent area doesn't mean everyone around me is well off.

But for those of us who have a roof over our head, food in the fridge, and air conditioning keeping us comfortable, we need to own our affluence. Once we’ve done that, it’s time to start putting feet to our faith. Here are some ways to do that.

Spend time with the poor

If we want to care for the poor and invite them into our lives and communities, we have to spend time them. The biggest hurdle to caring for the poor in affluent areas is insulation—intentionally or unintentionally closing ourselves off. We don’t have to continue living this way this way though.

Even in a wealthy town like mine, there is almost always an organization, church, or non-profit that is serving the poor and working poor. Seek them out. Give them time and resources. Join their cause. As you read earlier, in Matthew 25 Jesus equated spending time with the poor to spending time with him.

We can't minister to people we don't understand. We can’t welcome people we don’t know. We must be serving the poor where they are.

Open your home

Here's something that would make a splash in your affluent neighborhood: invite a poor person or family to move into your home. Why don't more of us consider this?

Jesus' teaching is laden with instructions to care for the poor, minister to the down and out, and to be hospitable to the stranger. Particularly in the suburbs, many people have homes with extra bedrooms, bonus rooms, and basements, so why not use those homes for ministry?

The early church got a lot of things wrong, but this they got right. “And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:44-47 ESV).

Using houses as ministry bases has been a part of the church since the very beginning. Just because we live in an individualistic age doesn't mean we should be exempt from that history. Thankfully, we're living in a time where this ministry form is having a bit of a renaissance.

Move to the "poor part of town"

Here's another counter-cultural idea that would raise eyebrows in your affluent area: sell your house and move closer to the "poor part of town."

Every town and city has at least one area like this. In our affluence we actively avoid living close to these area citing crime, poor schools, and sagging real estate prices. These sound reasonable enough until you ask yourself if those would sound like good reasons to Jesus.

What kind of witness to the name of Jesus would it be if more believers sold their homes, moved closer to poverty, and used their affluence to enrich the lives of those around them?

A pretty compelling one if you ask me. And it sounds dangerously close to the early Christianity we all claim to long for.

Cultivate church gatherings that welcome the poor

Ask yourself: If I were to bring a poor person to church with me on Sunday, what would their experience be like? Would they stand out? Would they be welcomed? Would anyone talk to them? Would the service make sense to them?

These might be tough questions, depending on your answers, but we should be asking them. If we're surrounded by affluence, over time we'll only be able to relate to affluence, and everything we do will assume people come from the same background.

This mindset makes social diversity much more difficult and weakens our communities. Community thrives in diversity, not homogeneity. We should always be seeking to cultivate a community that welcomes people no matter where they fall on the income spectrum, particularly within the body of Christ.

James 2 harshly condemns partiality towards the rich over the poor when the church is gathered. If the poor aren’t welcome in the gathering of the body then there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the kingdom of God: “Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?” (James 2:5 ESV).

The Church should be marked by a counter-cultural blending of people; a people that no longer think in societal hierarchies or act according to cultural norms. The day of Pentecost brought together people from countries and people groups that actively hated each other, yet the world was turned upside down by the way they loved one another.

Could our churches facilitate this same counter-culture today?

Throw a party

In Luke 14:13, Jesus says we’ll be blessed when we invite people to our parties who can’t afford to pay us back. Why not throw a party for the poor in your area? Feed them a meal, give them space to rest and to laugh. Gather your friends or some churches and throw a banquet for the poor in your area where everything is free. Provide food, dental clinics, healthcare, and free clothing stores. Blessing people that way doesn’t make any sense according to the world, but it makes a lot of sense according to Jesus’ teaching.

Ecclesia Houston does something called a "simple feast" where they gather to share a pot-luck style meal with their homeless brothers and sisters. No money required, you just show up. Oh, and they do it every week.

Churches in wealthy areas often have facilities that are well-equipped to do this sort of thing. Why not use them to serve the poor and integrate them into the community?

The hardest part would be getting the word out to those who would benefit from it, but surely that's something that could be addressed through networking with other organizations and churches in your area.

Use your affluence for influence

When God blessed Israel, He had other nations in mind that He wanted to bless through them. Yes, it was about Israel enjoying the blessings too, but God was primarily interested in spreading His glory throughout the nations by blessing the world through Israel. The same is true of the Church today.

Owning our affluence should lead us to ask why we have resources. Why, out of all the places in the world, were you born in this country, and live in your town or city? It might just be that your affluence isn’t meant for you alone. Instead of seeing that affluence as something we should hold on to, it’s time to start seeing it as something we should give away.

Use your affluence for influence. But use it for the right kind of influence – the kind that brings flourishing and healing to our towns and city. The kind of influence that lifts up those around you and makes everyone better.

Grayson Pope is a husband and father of three. He serves as Pastor of Community at his church in Charlotte, NC and is currently pursuing a MACS at The Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Grayson's Passion is to equip believers for everyday discipleship to Jesus.

Justin Huffman 6/18/17 Justin Huffman 6/18/17

Blessed Are the Persecuted?

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. – Matthew 5:10-11

When I was recently speaking on the subject of Christian persecution, I told my wife how intimidated I was to make this topic piercingly relevant in our comfortable modern culture, with so much religious freedom. Her reply helped open my own eyes on the subject. She suggested we perhaps can see this issue best through its opposite: if being persecuted for righteousness’s sake means being insulted or rejected because we are speaking the gospel for Christ’s sake, then its opposite is being accepted, popular, or enjoyed because we are not speaking and living publicly for Christ.

When we consider the issue through this lens, we starkly see how applicable it is, how far short we often fall as Christians of enjoying the blessedness of unpopularity for Christ’s sake. And now the Beatitude that perhaps seemed least applicable to begin with becomes the most searching and convicting!

Am I truly hungering after righteousness? Then it will be evidenced in rejection for righteousness’s sake! Am I poor in spirit? Then I will not hesitate to be shamed by the world in order to speak well of my Savior.

What does it mean to be persecuted for righteousness?

What Jesus means by “persecution” is explained in his own words in the surrounding context. In verse 11, we see that persecution includes: being reviled (insulted, reprimanded, despised, rejected) and having people say negative things about you for Christ’s sake.

We must be careful to notice that Christian persecution always centers on Christ, not us. It is for Christ’s sake—not just our own unpopularity, our difficulty getting along with people, our offending people (even with the truth) by unkind and inconsiderate words or manner. (Remember 1 Peter 2:20: “What credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God”).

Yet we don’t see anything in Jesus’s description of persecution about being burned at the stake, chased out of your home, or thrown in prison—even though many of his disciples would eventually face these violent responses to their Christian testimony! Rather, the words Jesus chooses in order to describe persecution highlight the personal rejection and social isolation. Interestingly, Peter writes to those who are suffering physical consequences for their Christian faith, and his emphasis almost exactly mirrors that of Jesus: “if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed” (1 Pt. 3:14), and “If you are insulted [same word as “reviled”] for the name of Christ, you are blessed” (4:14).

Do we think there’s something unique about our culture or our generation, that the greatest deterrent to living and speaking publicly for the glory of Christ is what other people will think and say? Certainly not! Think about it: the difficulty of losing your house or being put in prison would be far less if your entire community and culture embraced what you were standing for and welcomed you afterward with open arms. Likewise, not losing your house or being put in prison does not shelter you from the serious and daunting loneliness, shame, and rejection that any culture can heap on those whom they despise and deride.

Have we been persecuted for righteousness?

In light of Jesus’s description of Christian persecution—which does not necessarily mean doing prison time, but will always mean sacrificing my personal popularity in order to speak well of Jesus in front of others—have we experienced the blessedness Jesus’s promises here?

Have I been passed over for promotion, have I had to stick out at a social event, have I been ostracized by my classmates, have I received odd looks or peer pressure for what I won’t let my children do for Christ’s sake? (Let’s not kid ourselves: peer pressure is not just a problem for kids! It is just as much a danger for adults.)

The point of Jesus’s beatitude is not just to make us feel guilty but to help us realize we are either trusting in the approval and acceptance of others or we are trusting in Christ’s promise: “You are blessed if you are insulted for me!”

This means any time I avoid speaking about Jesus, or go along with the crowd in order to fit in or not be rejected, I am disbelieving Christ’s assurance that it is a greater blessing and happiness to be reviled for Christ’s sake than it is to fit in for my own sake.

And it also means that we cannot excuse ourselves from this beatitude by just saying, as we often do, “Thank God we don’t live in a country that persecutes Christians.” Every country, in every generation has persecuted Christians when those Christians are boldly speaking well of Christ and living out his Word! Paul put it in no uncertain terms, didn’t he? “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). If we are not in some sense despised by, reviled by our unbelieving culture and co-workers and community then it necessarily means we have in some way been hiding the light of Christ. Those who bravely, although joyfully and winningly, speak well of Jesus in public will always suffer for it in an unbelieving world.

Some Bible-students have suggested this is the one beatitude not describing or based on personal character and actions. Yet Jesus insists it has everything to do with who we are and how we are living: “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (Jn. 15:19; see also 17:6-14). The goal of course is not ever to be “persecution” in and of itself, but speaking and living publicly for Christ… which Jesus says will always lead to severe social rejection on some level.

Are we being persecuted? More specifically, can you think of an instance in the last week in which you were insulted or rejected because you were publicly speaking and living for Christ? In the last month? The last year?

Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

What is the promise to those who, in boldly proclaiming the fame of Jesus Christ, suffer personally for it? “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

They appear to lose all; but not so, for they gain assurance that all is theirs. Everything on earth may be taken from them, but they have the astounding and everlasting promise that heaven is theirs.

The world opposes the name of Jesus Christ, either by discounting him or by ignoring him; it always has, and Jesus says it always will. The world is speaking evil of Christ; if Christians do not speak well of him, who will? Is Christ well-spoken of by you?

It is interesting and revealing, is it not, that we often thank God for the blessing of not being persecuted? Meanwhile, Jesus says the opposite! Blessed are those who are persecuted for his name’s sake. Your situation is a happy one when persecuted for Christ’s name because your life is counting for the only thing in all the universe that really matters and lasts.

Justin Huffman has pastored in the States for over 15 years, authored the "Daily Devotion" app (iTunes/Android) which now has over half a million downloads, and recently published a book with Day One: Grow: the Command to Ever-Expanding Joy. He has also written articles for For the Church, Servants of Grace, and Fathom Magazine. He blogs at justinhuffman.org.

R. York Moore 6/15/17 R. York Moore 6/15/17

Dreams of Another World

I don’t usually wake up laughing, but that morning I did. Head pressed deeply into the dense pillow, I awoke to my own laughter. The room was cold, which had caused me to sleep more deeply than usual. My legs were numb, but I was warm all over, except for my nose. A single beam of dusty light revealed an unfamiliar room of placard signs, mass-produced art and sterile chairs. Hotel room curtains never fully close, do they? A strip between the two panels allowed that beam of light to poke me in my sleepy head. I had slept so deeply that my first thought in that refrigerated state was, Who am I, and how did I get here? I wanted to disappear under the thick comforter, to roll my head between the three pillows and just dream. But I had laughed myself awake. I have no idea what I dreamt of that caused such morning hilarity, but as I flopped over, sitting next to me—also laughing—was my new bride. We had been married just three days.

“What were you dreaming of?” she asked, snickering. “I watched you toss and giggle for ten minutes before you woke up.”

“I wish I could remember,” I said with a laugh. Though the details of the dream were lost, I knew I had tasted another world. The dream had trailed off as light hit my head, and it was gone. Nothing left now but bad breath, a lined face and a deep sense of rest and peace. Though the dream had vanished, I lay there in the bed on my honeymoon with contentment and joy.

I wish I could have held that moment forever. It was a moment between two dreams—one an unconscious dream of peace and joy, and the other a waking dream of marriage with my new wife, Jodi, where everything was new and exciting.

What is it about a dream that beckons us, ever entangling us in its web of hope and longing? The elusive dream of our hearts fades out of reach each morning. With each sunrise, with each knock on the door, we awake with a realization that real life awaits us. But we long to go back, to pull the covers over our faces, to tuck our heads between the pillows and just dream.

Though the elusive dream of our hearts fades, we search for it because we’ve tasted it in small doses over and over again. In the breathtaking beauty of a sunset, the oblivious, innocent laughter of a child, through forgiveness and kindness, in expressions of love and selflessness, we’ve tasted a world we were meant for and want more of. Our soul remembers the aftertaste of a world we were destined for, because we have tasted it in small measure our whole lives. The taste is unmistakable. We know this taste of the world more viscerally than anything else, because it is at the core of what it means to be human. The dream is a foretaste of another world, a better world, a world where things are the way they’re supposed to be.

We are dreamers, every one of us. John Lennon’s song “Imagine” described a dream where the world would one day live as one. The dream Lennon sang of—though many would disagree with him—is a reflection of this other world, a world where greed, possessions, hunger, violence, nationalistic and religious beliefs no longer drown out love, companionship and peace. Lennon’s dream was very close to the dream of God, though Lennon himself would likely dismiss this. The amazing thing about the dreams of some of the people furthest from God is that their desire for a better world mirrors the ultimate dream of God to make all things new. We are dreamers because God is a dreamer.

Though we are often not able to articulate it fully, what we dream of is the same dream that God has dreamt since time began. The dream of God is at the heart of our dreams. We can know a great deal about our dreaming God by looking at our own dreams and the dreams of humanity throughout the world.

Dreams are powerful, but because the world is not the way it’s supposed to be, our dreams are often twisted—mere shadows of what they once were. Dreams can become misguided—expressions of exploitative power, excessive material acquisition, sensual indulgence. There’s no limit to how badly dreams can run amuck. Dreams can become nightmares, ruling and eventually ruining our lives. The longing to escape the struggles and disappointments of this world often tempt us to escape “reality” artificially. Drugs, alcohol, shopping, sex, pornography—anything to escape and “just be.” To be alone with ourselves, at peace with our mind, free from worry and pain—we just want to dream.

The longing to be transported from where we are to where we were meant to be is also powerful. Most people will risk everything they have and all that they are to reach for a dream. Some people do this in ways that are healthy and life giving, but most people settle for the easy substitute. We settle for a cheap version of the dream in a one-night stand, in dancing erotic pixels in dark rooms. We want a quick fix, and we find it at the baked-goods section at the grocery store, the bottom of a bottle or the pulsating floor of a dance club. We often pursue a dream in selfish and destructive ways, ways that are incompatible with God’s dream.

We long to go to that other world that lingers in our hearts. We are called to it in small ways each day. For me, it is the small “magical moments” of life that call me back, the little things that pull at my heart: a wispy meadow in late August, the sound of cicadas buzzing in the trees, the smell of dense, warm air before a storm. All of a sudden, my mind wanders away from my son’s orthodontics bill, the fight I’m having with my wife, Jodi, or the diaper that needs to be changed. Another world pokes in as I smell bacon in the morning or catch a glimpse of a hummingbird hovering over the lilies outside my office window. We live in a world where “real” is limited to what we can see, hear, smell, touch and taste. But these are hints of a world more real than what all our senses can tell us. Our dreams point us to another world.

The world we live in is caught between two worlds—a dream and a nightmare. But the good news is that the dream of God will come to pass and is coming to pass all around us. It will one day replace the nightmare of this world. In many ways, God’s dream is already breaking in. Every time a well is dug for a community, food is provided for the hungry, nets protect those at risk of mosquito-borne malaria or those who traffic in the flesh of prostitutes are brought to justice, the nightmare ends and the dream begins.

When we join God in bringing his dream to the world around us, we are fulfilling his plan and purpose for our lives. Joining in God’s dream is the most significant thing we could ever do. It is what we were created for. God’s plan for us begins and flourishes as we allow our dreams to merge into the great dream of God.

R. York Moore is a passionate and visionary leader. York deeply values spiritual formation, relational intelligence, innovation, and collaboration. An effective communicator and orator, York casts vision and leads change through his communication skills on-line, in publications, and with live audiences. York has traveled the world, working with organizational leaders and academic institutions in their context to mobilize constituents to more effectively engage their mission. He has led change organizationally in large not-for-profit organizations and in the local church. York is a published author and blogger in magazines like Outreach, Preaching Today, and EMQ . He also is a Cabinet member for Luis Palau’s ‘Next Generation Alliance‘ and is a Compassion International speaker. York holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Michigan and an MA in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary. R. York Moore lives in Canton, MI with his wife and three kids.

Bryan Green 6/13/17 Bryan Green 6/13/17

Understanding the Father Heart of God

I woke up suddenly at 2:30am in my parents room to the sound of my dad struggling to get out of bed while asking me, “Where’s mom? I need to go to the living room. I just need to get to the living room.” My dad had been battling cancer for four years now and was coming to the end of his life. My mom, the nurse, had called me the week before to tell me to fly home because dad only had about a week left to live. I helped him up, wondering how he even had enough strength to push himself into a seated position. He was so weak this final week of his life. We walked with my arm supporting most of my dad’s weight from his bedroom to the living room. He sat on the armchair, and I sat on the couch. My dad fell into a deep sleep which he wouldn’t wake up from. He passed into the arms of Jesus the next day around 2 or 3pm. I sat up most of the night wondering what I would do without him. The questions you ask yourself and God in the moments of pain are hard but precious. As I was watching my dad pass away, I asked God a series of questions that would lead me on a path of discovery into the depths of God’s heart as a Father. Theology helps you answer the question, “Who is God?” but in my painful situation I asked the question, “Where are you God?” More than ever, I needed the comfort of a father. I needed to know that God was near and that he cared about my pain. We all ask this question at some point in our lives. It’s the heart of God the Father to help us answer this burning question.

God’s Heart

When the Israelites were in slavery in Egypt they cried out in pain asking God, “Where are you?” Moses uses four important verbs to describe God’s response to their pain. “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel- and God knew” (Ex. 2:24-25).

God was not ignorant of the cries from his people, and he is not ignorant of our cries. God’s response to pain is all throughout the Bible, and the greatest expression we have of God’s heart for us is in the sending of his Son, Jesus.

In Jesus, Divine Love became human. He decided to experience our pain, sickness, our sin, and ultimately our death. He left perfection, heaven, to come into our broken world. It’s sort of crazy when you think about it. Why would you leave perfection to experience imperfection? The answer is love, but it’s still almost incomprehensible especially to us living in brokenness. But God the Father still sent Jesus and God’s expressive love for His Son directly relates to His love for us.

“This is my beloved Son”

There are two places in Scripture where we find God’s love for Jesus explicitly stated. One is at his baptism (Matt. 3:17), and the second is at his transfiguration (Matt. 17:5). God the Father says the same thing about Jesus with one addendum at the transfiguration. He says, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased,” and at the transfiguration He adds, “Listen to him.” God the Father speaks acceptance (This is my…), love (This is my belevoded…), identity (This is my beloved son...), and approval (listen to him) over Jesus. These four characteristics of God’s love for Jesus show us God’s heart for us.

Through Jesus, God’s love for us is revealed and God’s immanent presence is manifested. Behind my question of “Where are you God?” was a deep longing to be heard and an even deeper longing to be loved. As disciples of Jesus, we must remember that the main purpose of Jesus’s coming was to bring us into a reconciled relationship with God the Father.

We call him, “Abba” through the Holy Spirit because we are all in need of acceptance, love, identity, and approval from him. Abba is a deeply relational word, and it represents what we need most: a Father who will never leave us, who we can always trust, and who we can always come to in our pain for help. We need our dads to say these things to us, but they often fail and they won’t always be around (in some cases they never are).

In my life, I lost my dad and had to explore the world without him. My exploration was often not pretty. What I found was a God willing to speak into my life that which I had lost and that which I had never had in my relationship with my dad. I found a Father. Every disciple of Jesus will wrestle with the question, “Where are you God?” and our response reveals what we believe about him and the depths of relationship to which we are willing to go with him.

Our Response

We can have two responses to the question, “Where is God?” The first response reveals that we do not know God as Father. It is a response that says, “God has abandoned me so I must seek love elsewhere.” Some of us are living this response right now. I know I have lived it. This response believes God can’t be a good Father and won’t ever really be around. I minister to teenagers who never had a dad present in their lives and are ignorant of the love which God has for them as a Father. The first response isn’t meant to be our only response. When God’s love as Father is revealed to us, our response is much different.

The answer to the question, “Where is God?” was “Right beside you.” Just like with the Israelites, God heard my groaning, remembered his covenant through Jesus, saw my pain, and knew me. As a disciple of Jesus, I wanted to follow him to explore a relationship with my Abba. As I began sharing my story, I began hearing story after story of people who had found the love of God the Father. Our deepest wounds are addressed by a Father who's presence as “Abba” changes our very identity.

His presence as a Father through the Holy Spirit reminds us that even when we feel alone, cast off, in pain, and rejected we are actually not alone because God stands with us. Our response now says, “God is present in my pain through the work of Jesus Christ, and he is right beside me caring for me as a good Father should.” And He wants us to share these stories of pain and our wounded hearts so that others can experience the love of God.

“All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” — 2 Corinthians 5:18-21

Each time we share our story about the love of God the Father, we declare our ambassadorship about belonging to the family of God. We are showing the world that God loves us in our deepest pain and has not abandoned us. He is present in Christ Jesus and shows us that having a Father means we are never alone, we have an familial identity, we are loved, and we have a purpose. So share your story, even if it hurts. God is with you.

Bryan Green is an aspiring church planter, barista, seminary student, and servant at Soma Tacoma. He's graduating at the end of the summer with a M.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies at Western Seminary.

Courtney Yantes 6/11/17 Courtney Yantes 6/11/17

The Gospel Domino Effect

I love exploring history and the cause and effect relationship of certain actions. If you want to know why something happened, you have to consider what preceded it. Neither you, nor I, or our society live in a vacuum, so there are these constant push/pull, give/take, cause/effect scenarios playing out across our lives, culture, and history through time. If you want to understand why I behave and think and act a certain way, look to my parents, my family, and my upbringing, among a host of other influences which have shaped me along the way. I loved horses as a child because my grandfather had a barnyard full of Shetland ponies.

I’m terrified of ever snorkeling again because, to put it simply, my one and only experience just did not end well. I’m not a fan of banana-flavored foods or drinks because I once had to take an antibiotic as a child that tasted similar to bananas. It tasted so horrible I threw it up all over my dad.

I go to the gym now because I knew I needed to get my body in shape, and I vowed I was never going to go through the agony of having a herniated disc again.

I currently have short hair, and I have told myself for a long time now I would never want to grow it out again because I associate long hair with who I used to be in high school—and I did not like who I used to be. The list is a never-ending cause and effect relationships, and that’s just in my own life. The list is infinitely longer if we look at history at large.

The same is true when we consider the story lines playing out on the pages of the Bible. Why did Mary and Joseph have to go to Bethlehem? Because Caesar Augustus issued a decree for a census to be taken and each person had to return to his hometown.

Why did Eve eat the apple in the garden? Because Satan deceived her. Why did Moses have to flee Egypt? Because he killed an Egyptian man and Moses feared for his life. I realize these are overly simplified and generalized statements of what are complex cause and effect relationships, but you get the idea. It is the classic question of “why?” with the ever-informative answer “because.”

But do you want to know one of the ultimate cause and effect relationships that underlines the entirety of Scripture?

It is bound up in the simple sequence of just a few short phrases and a series of pronouns: That I may → that you may → that we may → that they may.

Jesus sets this grand chain reaction of dominoes into motion when he says, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again” (Jn. 10:17).

Why does he lay down his life? So that he may take it up again. He cannot be resurrected if he does not first die. He is the “I” in the sequence. That I may. He is the first domino to fall, which leads to the second domino.

Jesus lays down his life to take it up again. Why?

So that you may.

So that you may what?

The answer lies in John 20:31, “But [this book was] written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” The context of this verse applies directly to the book of John, a book which recorded the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Cause? Jesus laid down his life? Effect? You get to choose to believe and have life in his name. If you flip toward the back of your Bible to 1 John 5:13, you’ll see a similar echo, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” Jesus died and was resurrected, and these stories are recorded of him doing so you could believe in him and spend eternity in heaven.

That I may, so that you may.

Two dominoes fall. But they do not stop just yet. The story never ends with just you.

It continues with “we.”

That we may.

Paul shares in 2 Corinthians 10 a defense of his ministry. He speaks of how we can and cannot boast in who we are, how we can and cannot compare ourselves, and what the limits to our boasting are. He ultimately wraps up in verse 18 by saying, “For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.” It is a couple of verses just prior in vv. 15-16, however, that we must note, “But our hope is that as your faith increases, our area of influence among you may be greatly enlarged, so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you…”

That we may preach the gospel.

We want our area of influence to increase and be greatly enlarged so that we may tell others about this Jesus who laid down his life for us. Another domino falls.

The whole of Scripture paints this singular cause and effect sequence: Jesus laid down his life so that he may take it up again so that you may have eternal life and so that we may preach the gospel to all nations.

But is that the last of the dominoes to fall?

Hardly.

That they may.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:16, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

“That I may” crashes into “that you may” which knocks over “that we may” which collides with “that they may.”

The end goal is always others. Jesus died and was resurrected not simply so you could get yourself a get-out-of-hell-free card. Yes, he died for you personally and individually. But he did not die only for you. God told Abram in Genesis 12:2-3,

“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

The blessing might have begun with Abram, but it most certainly did not end with him.

The greatest cause and effect in my life and your life begins with Jesus and ends with others, and we get sandwiched in between.

Jesus is the single most magnificent cause in the history of mankind.

His effect?

That storyline has been unfolding for thousands of years and is still unfolding.

May we be a part of that effect and the preaching of gospel in lands beyond us.

So that they may share in the gift of eternal salvation.

The beauty of the story is that the first and the last dominoes—I and they—come full circle and crash into one another in John 10:10, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."

That I may.

So that you may.

So that we may.

So that they may.

Courtney Yantes spends her days as an event planner, coordinating events and conferences designed to inspire change and promote access for people with disabilities. She graduated from William Woods University with a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in business administration. She enjoys blogging, traveling, and generally organizing anything she can get her hands on. She is a lover of all things Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and relishes a life free of social media accounts.

Wendy Alsup 6/8/17 Wendy Alsup 6/8/17

Is the Bible Good for Women?

Is the Bible good for women? Growing up in the conservative South, I never considered that question. I didn’t understand anything of women’s rights except the caricatures I saw on the news during attempts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. But I was one of three daughters, no sons, born to a Christian dad who valued his girls well. Though I experienced my fair share of struggles growing up, female oppression in a patriarchal society did not seem to be one of them. As I got older and watched the news with a more critical eye, a different view of women came into my line of sight. There were countries where women couldn’t vote? There were cultures that would put victims of rape to death in honor killings? Then I moved to Seattle, where women’s rights and feminist issues are often center stage in local news and conversation. I couldn’t hide from these issues anymore. Female mutilation, legal oppression, and culturally accepted rape were much bigger issues affecting many more women worldwide than I had ever under- stood. And domestic abuse, the blaming of sexual abuse survivors, and discrimination in the workforce occurred closer to home. My experience of being valued as a female by the men in my life was not the norm worldwide, but I also came to realize it wasn’t the norm in the conservative South either. I was bombarded by women’s issues. As a believer in Jesus since childhood and one who loved and valued the Bible, I was barraged with criticism of the Scripture around women’s issues as well. Does the Bible address oppression of women in helpful ways? Or does it only perpetuate such oppression among its followers? In a world that is quite often very bad for women, does the Bible help or does it make it worse?

HARMFUL WORLDWIDE PRACTICES

National Public Radio recently highlighted a disturbing practice in western Nepal in which young women are banished to outdoor sheds when they are on their periods.1 The families interviewed believe that the girls could cause illnesses among the family’s elderly if they touch them while menstruating. The humiliation and stigma those girls endure is worth public outcry.

Hinduism is the primary religion (81 percent) in Nepal.2 Al- though Judaism and Christianity have made small inroads into the country, this practice of barring young menstruating women from their homes does not seem to have a direct relationship to Old Testament Law. Yet I can’t help but think of similar instructions in the Law (see Leviticus 15:19–33) when I hear of the Nepali practice. I know from Scripture that despite the similarities, the Nepali practice is a perversion of God’s intent in the Law. The Nepali tradition attributes to girls on their periods something Old Testament Law never does, it does so without the Law’s corresponding instruction to men, and it perpetuates a practice that Jesus said two thousand years ago was brought to completion through Him. (We will work this out in greater detail in chapters 6 and 7.)

But the comparison puts a question to us, one that many women ask themselves: Is the Bible good for women? How can a book that includes instructions on where a woman can sleep or sit when menstruating be trusted by women today when similar modern practices like that of the Nepalese are clearly harmful for women?

We have not always been suspicious about the Bible’s take on women’s issues. For long periods in history, people viewed the Bible and Christianity as powers that lifted the downtrodden and demoralized to new places of respect. During the twentieth century, the first wave of feminism gave voice to women whom society had long marginalized. In 1920, women finally won the right to vote in the United States, due in large part to the efforts of Christians. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union led this movement, seeking to apply biblical principles of social justice to larger society.3 Based in part on their understanding of Jesus and the Bible, men and women of faith fought together for women to have the right to vote. This first wave of feminism resulted in women’s right to vote and inherit land, along with subsequent benefits to both women and children as women gained a voice in legislation.

But as the century wore on, there came a fork in the road in which orthodox Christianity seemed to go in one direction concerning the rights of women, and second-wave feminism (which focused on birth control, abortion rights, and equal pay) in another. In the last few years, many pro-women authors (for lack of a better name), even Christian ones, have painted a picture of women in the Bible that is troubling, even referring to certain pas- sages concerning women in the Bible as “texts of terror.”4 According to many books and popular blogs, the view in our current culture is that an orthodox understanding of the Bible is threatening and even downright harmful to women. The similarities be- tween Old Testament Law having to do with women on their periods and the Nepali practice that results in shaming menstruating girls seem to only reinforce such a distrust of Scripture.

Other books have dissected the history of evangelical Christianity and the secular women’s movement.5 Rather than looking at how we arrived at the twenty-first-century general mistrust of the Bible regarding women, I would like instead to simply challenge it by encouraging us to discover and use a Jesus-centered under- standing of Scripture when reading the Bible. In turn, this gives us a Jesus-centered understanding of how the Bible speaks about women and to women in its pages. I believe this process will give us all a life-giving perspective of our gendered selves in God’s kingdom. It will help us see the profound difference in the shame that fathers project onto menstruating Nepali daughters and the dignity God places on His.

Editor’s Note: To find the answer to these questions and more pick up a copy Is the Bible Good for Women by Wendy Alsup where she dedicates a chapter to answer a single difficult question in-depth.

Wendy Alsup is the author of Practical Theology for Women, The Gospel-Centered Woman, and By His Wounds You Are Healed. She began her public ministry as deacon of women’s theology and teaching at her church in Seattle, but she now lives on an old family farm in South Carolina, where she teaches math at a local community college and is a mother to her two boys. She also writes at gospelcenteredwoman.com. She is a member of a local church in the Lowcountry Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America.

Excerpted from Is the Bible Good for Women by Wendy Alsup Copyright © 2016 by Wendy Alsup. Excerpted by permission of Multnomah, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Michael Guyer 6/6/17 Michael Guyer 6/6/17

Listen Up: A Much Needed Skill

“Christianity demands that we have enough compassion to learn the questions of our generation.” – Francis Schaeffer

Do you hear what Schaeffer is saying? Our witness and discipleship requires that we understand the questions our generation is asking. To understand these questions, we must listen. However, Schaeffer puts his finger on our problem, which is much the same as it was in his day:

“The trouble with too many of us is that we want to be able to answer these questions instantly, as though we could take a funnel, put it in one ear and pour in the facts, and then go out and regurgitate them and win all the discussions.” (2 Contents, 2 Realities, 414)

Schaeffer describes far too many of my witnessing opportunities and discipleship relationships. One moment still resonates in my mind. After sharing the gospel with a man during an outreach event, he looked at me and said, “Thanks for sharing your spiel, but you don’t even know me!”

I know I’m often afraid that if I slow down to ask questions and listen, I may encounter a difficult conversation. Schaeffer is right: “Answering questions is hard work.” He continues, “Can you answer all the questions? No, but you must try. Begin to listen with compassion. Ask what this man’s questions really are and try to answer. And if you don’t know the answer, try to go someplace or read and study to find the answer.” (414)

Are you listening?

We must listen with compassion, listen for questions, and seek to give an honest answer.

Easy enough. But how do we listen well? How do we listen so that we identify the questions people are really asking? And how do we then respond to these questions with gospel-shaped answers?

Here are three categories to think through to help us learn and answer the questions of our generation:

Tell me your story!

Jeff Vanderstelt brings this out clearly in his recent book Gospel Fluency. Everyone has a story and everyone’s stories reveal important truths and questions. It is in the sharing of stories that we have the opportunity to listen well.

“My regular counsel to Christians these days is to spend more time listening than talking if they want to be able to share the gospel of Jesus in a way that meaningfully speaks to the hearts of others.” (Gospel Fluency, 175)

– Listening well to people’s stories means listening with the gospel story in mind.

Ask yourself: In what ways are they looking for answers that the gospel provides? How does the gospel meet them where they are in their life? Who is the hero of their story? How is Jesus better than what they are pursuing or trusting in?

Vanderstelt provides the following list of questions that flow from the gospel story:

Creation – In what do they find their identity or sense of purpose and significance?
Fall – Whom or what is the fundamental problem they blame for the things that are broken in their lives?
Redemption – Whom or what are they looking to as their savior to rescue or deliver them?
New Creation – What does transformation look like and what is their ultimate hope for the future?

– Once we have listened well, we can begin to speak gospel truth into their story in a way they can understand and will hear.

Perhaps you are speaking to someone who has not yet trusted in Jesus Christ, you will be able to see where they are finding their identity, what problem they are facing, what functional savior they are trusting, and what hope they are holding on to in their lives. The gospel offers a better word—a new identity, an answer for our brokenness, a gracious Savior, and a secure hope.

This truth also applies in our discipleship relationships. Transformation happens when gospel truth meets real life. We must slow down and listen to one another’s stories rather than merely working through our bible studies. As we listen to another in discipleship, we can rehearse the gospel story and apply it to each other’s lives. The more we rehearse and apply the gospel to our lives in discipleship, the more equipped we will be to hear others and bring the gospel to bear on their stories.

Ask Questions…And Actually Listen

Francis Schaeffer once stated, “If I have only an hour with someone, I will spend the first fifty-five minutes asking them questions and finding out what is troubling their heart and mind, and then in the last five minutes I will share something of the truth.”¹

In order to do this you must think rightly about people. Every human being is made in the image of God, and we are called to display Christ-like love and compassion as we engage them. This skill also takes a level of curiosity, patience, and intentionality in our conversations. We must understand how people think, what questions they are asking, and what answers they are looking for. Not only that, but we must also find ways to ask them the questions that God asks of us. All of this will require us to ask questions and then to actually listen as they respond.

Jonathan Dodson captures this well:

“As you slow down, listen closely what people really believe; listen for the desire beneath the words. Where appropriate, ask questions like: How does that make you feel? What do you really want? If you could change the circumstances to fit exactly what you want, what would it be? Look for trigger words that indicate fear, joy, anxiety, hope, despair, concern, and anger. Then think about how Christ intersects that need. When you do this, you’ll find that the gospel says something that the person will find worth believing.” (Unbelievable Gospel, 50)

Dodson’s counsel brings to mind David Powlison’s x-ray questions. It probably should not surprise us that a biblical counselor would have great wisdom in helping us learn to listen well and apply the gospel to people’s lives. That is, after all, what biblical counseling is all about. By addressing the specific heart issues of people with gospel truth, true repentance and lasting change can occur. Notice that these questions can be used when seeking to share the gospel with a neighbor or encouraging a fellow believer in community:

What do you want out of that relationship?
What you working for in this job?
What do you fear in this situation?
What are your plans or intentions with this opportunity?
Who are you trying to please right now?
What really matters to you?
Where are you looking for comfort or security?
Whose opinion matters most to you?
How do you define success or failure in this particular situation?

Powlison offers the following explanation for these questions:

Notice that each question circles around the same basic issue: Who or what is your functional God/god? Many of the questions simply derive from the verbs that relate you to God: love, trust, fear, hope, seek, obey, take refuge, and the like. Each verb holds out a lamp to guide us to Him who is way, truth, and life. But each verb also may be turned into a question, holding up a mirror to show us where we stray.

Thinking this way and asking these kinds of questions is not a formula for success in evangelism or discipleship. However, it is a way of genuinely loving and compassionately engaging people. As we open ourselves up to others and they see our love for them, they will share their real questions, fears, and hopes. When they do, we must be ready to speak the gospel.

Speak the Gospel

Whether we ask these questions or use them as a filter to listen as people share their stories, we will be positioned to see real needs and point to real hope in Jesus Christ. Just as we must listen to people’s stories with the gospel story in mind, we must also be comfortable speaking gospel truth in response to people’s questions.

More than anyone else, Jonathan Dodson has helped me think through how to do this well. Dodson points out five gospel metaphors from the Scriptures that help us connect the gospel to people’s real needs in a believable way. Those metaphors are justification, new creation, redemption, adoption, and union with Christ.

These metaphors taken from Scripture display the richness of the gospel and its ability to speak to deep longings within the human heart—whether they are seeking acceptance, hope, intimacy, tolerance, approval, or community.

Listen to Jonathan explain this himself:

https://vimeo.com/107745823

The gospel is the answer to people’s deepest needs and most pressing questions. Dodson’s challenge to us is to ask, “How is the gospel the answer?” To answer that question, we must listen up. We need to share stories, ask good questions, listen with compassion, and then speak the gospel in a way that connects with real life and can be embraced by repentance and faith.

Michael Guyer is the Minister to Students at Open Door Church where he has served for the last five years. He gets most excited about good coffee, enjoying friends and family, making disciples, engaging culture, and planting churches. He writes to help others delight in, declare, and display the gospel in all of life. Connect with Michael on Twitter or his website.

This article was adapted with permission

Grayson Pope 6/4/17 Grayson Pope 6/4/17

Why You're Not Being Transformed

“In many cases our need to wonder about or be told what God wants in a certain situation is a clear indication of how little we are engaged in His work.” – Dallas Willard, Hearing God

As a pastor, I talk to people all the time who are frustrated with where they are spiritually. They want to be “better.” They desire to grow more like Christ. But they just aren’t getting anywhere.

They’re trying to address it, and many times even good things. They’re reading their Bible. They’re going to church every weekend. They’re even in a small group. But still, they’re not seeing any transformation. So what’s going on?

What they’re really saying is they’re not being transformed. That the power of God isn’t evident in their everyday life.

How transformation happens

Many of us have misconceptions about how we’re transformed into the likeness of Christ. We think we can just read different books or listen to different radio stations or go to church every week and somehow we’ll change into godly people.

The Bible teaches something very different, though. In terms of transforming the human heart, it teaches that we’re actually powerless to do anything. That left to ourselves we are incapable of being righteous before God. And that’s the glory of the gospel—that we are offered salvation and eternal life solely through the magnificent grace of God.

But when it comes to transforming how we live, the Bible’s teaching is that God transforms us through his Spirit by the power of his Word, and that we are to make every effort to strive to live godly lives. Most believers and their churches have at least a basic understanding of how God’s Word transforms and renews us. When it comes to making every effort to live godly lives, though, it seems that many of us are less clear.

Make every effort

The language of “make every effort” comes from the Apostle Peter’s epistle:

“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” – 2 Peter 1:5-7

We’re told that we should be exerting effort to supplement our faith with actions. That’s what the list that follows the command is referring to, these qualities of living that display on the outside how we’ve been changed on the inside. Now, notice that Peter says these efforts only supplement, not replace, our faith.

Perhaps nowhere is this same teaching seen as clearly as in the Apostle James’s writing, where we’re told simply to,

“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” – James 1:22

What James is saying here should shock us, because he’s saying that listening to the Word of God is not enough. Through James, the Holy Spirit is saying that listening to sermons and podcasts, reading Christian books, and even reading the Bible itself, none of these things are enough on their own. They must be accompanied by doing something, otherwise we’re just deceiving ourselves.

In John 8:44, the Apostle John tells us that Satan is a deceiver, using all kinds of schemes to distract us from obeying God. If we listen to the Word but never do anything with it, then we are doing his job for him. We are deceiving ourselves if all we’re doing is sitting through a church service on Sunday or even attending a group during the week, while not ministering to others in obedience to what we’ve heard.

Lack of Exercise

When someone breaks their leg and they can’t put weight on it, they have to do physical therapy when it’s time to walk again. That’s because their leg muscles have atrophied. They’ve shrunken from not being used.

When you exercise, you’re actually tearing muscle tissue. Muscle is being built up by continual tearing that is then healed by scar tissue. As that happens more and more, muscles begin to grow.

Many of us in the church experience spiritual atrophy. We’ve spent so much time taking information in that we’ve forgotten how to exercise what we’ve learned, and now our spiritual muscles have atrophied from lack of use.

What’s needed now is action—putting those muscles to use. And yes, it will be difficult. It may even be painful. But it’s only through the hard work of exercising our faith by the power of Spirit that we begin to see transformation. Because of his work of love in us, we work in love towards others. Exercise may tear your spiritual muscles, but the grace of God acts as the scar tissue that heals the wounds and builds you up into something more perfect along the way.

Doing and Sanctification

After James makes his case that believers should be doers of God’s Word, he says something very interesting:

“But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” – James 1:25

That last phrase, “he will be blessed in his doing,” points out something that’s so often overlooked: that our sanctification happens as we minister to others. Our sanctification, our being transformed into the image of Christ, happens as we put our faith into action.

Most of us think we need to be transformed before we minister to other people. But what the Bible teaches is that we’re transformed as we minister to other people. It is in dying to ourselves, taking up our cross, and being obedient to Jesus that we’re transformed into the image of Jesus.

And that’s really what being “doers” of the Word means—being obedient to Jesus. So if we want to experience transformation, we need to ask ourselves if we’re being obedient to Jesus’s commands. Are we making disciples? Are we living on mission? Are we sharing our faith?

We can’t expect to become like Jesus if we’re not doing what he did. We can’t expect to be transformed if we’re not obeying his commands.

But this obedience isn’t oppressive, or something that should cause us to groan. God created us for good works.

How obedience to Christ brings freedom

In Ephesians 2:10, Paul tells us,

“We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

We are God’s workmanship. Another translation says that we are his masterpiece. And he created us as masterpieces for a reason, which is what? For good works.

We were saved by Christ that we might do good works in Christ. Which means we won’t fulfill God’s purpose for our life outside of obedience to Jesus. But in that obedience there is outlandish freedom.

That’s why James uses that paradoxical phrase, “the law of liberty.” He knows that if we’re obedient to Christ then we are free from the law and, ultimately, our sin. If we’re obedient to Christ, we are free to experience the transformation God has in store for us.

If we are obedient to Christ, we are free in Christ. Which is why Jesus said,

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. . . . So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” – John 8:31-32, 36

Grayson Pope is a husband to Maggie, father to three kids ages five, three, and one. He serves as the Pastor of Community at Mecklenburg Community Church. He’s also a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he’s pursuing a MACS.

Ben Connelly 6/1/17 Ben Connelly 6/1/17

Existing for Our Mission Fields

We are releasing Ben Connelly’s A Pastor’s Guide for Everyday Mission—which is about how not to forget the great commission and how to make, mature, and multiply disciples. You can buy a digital copy for $4.99 or a paperback copy for $8.99. Below is an excerpt from the book.

Peter writes the following, to Christians living in a society that did not regard Christianity any more highly than our own does:

“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on m the day of visitation.” – 1 Peter 2:11–12

Peter’s imagery is poignant. Every Christian is a “sojourner” and “exile”; we live in a land not our own; our language, culture, goals, motives, and hopes are different than the inhabitants of this land. As ministers, we are the leaders of these sojourners and exiles modeling and helping God’s people live out their faith in this foreign land. Peter tells us how to model that well: on one hand, we “abstain from the passions of the flesh.” We do this by fighting sin and for holiness; and for ministers, we lead others in the same. On the other hand, we don’t do this by hiding away from the world where God has sent us. Instead, God’s people live out our faith “among the Gentiles”—the first century word for “not-God’s-people”! That means we display our true hope in Jesus and declare the gospel in the midst of that society who doesn’t believe in either; and, for ministers, we lead others in the same.

Several years ago, I attended a conference session called “for the city.” The presenters—a local church pastor and a non-profit leader who partnered with that church—described four different postures that ministries and leaders often take toward their mission field.

In the city – This posture simply exists in a certain locality, but has little impact on it; this leads to apathy toward the world God sent them into.
Against the city – This posture has a mentality that says “the church is good; the city is bad”; this leads to isolation from the world God sent them into.
Of the city – This posture look so much like the city that the gospel seems to make no difference; this leads to being taken over by the world God sent them into.
For the city – This posture seeks the shalom of the city or its overall welfare which is found most fully in Jesus; this leads to a deep care for the world God sent them into.

The world around us is broken. Sin and disbelief in God run rampant. Idols seem to be erected everyday. But rather than run from the souls God put us in the midst of, rather then give up our convictions and live like the culture around us, and rather than apathy toward the brokenness we see, we must lead our people to engage it—no matter how hard.

GOD’S MISSION; THIS CULTURE

The US Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling for same-sex marriage prompted an outcry from conservative American Christians: this may be overstated, but the theme of the mourning and anger (against both God and man) seemed to be that there had never been anything as evil or reprobate anywhere on earth or at any point in history.

Canadian pastor Carey Nieuwhof responded to the American Outcry with a blog post outlining five poignant perspectives from ministering in one of the twenty plus nations where similar laws had already been passed. His words are a helpful case study as we consider answering the needs that exist in our culture today:

The Church has always been counter-cultural – Regardless of your theological position, all your views as a Christian are counter-cultural and always will be. If your views are cultural, you’re probably not reading the Scriptures closely enough.
It’s actually strange to ask non-Christians to hold Christian values – Non-Christians usually act more consistently with their value system than you do. Chances are they are better at living out their values than you or I are. Jesus never blamed pagans for acting like pagans. But he did speak out against religious people for acting hypocritically.
You’ve been dealing with sex outside of traditional marriage for a long time – If you believe gay marriage is not God’s design, you’re dealing with the same issue you’ve been dealing with all along—sex outside of its God-given context. You don’t need to treat it any differently.
The early church never looked to the government for guidance – Rather than asking the government to release him from prison, Paul wrote letters from prison talking about the love of Jesus Christ. Instead of looking to the government for help, Paul and Jesus looked to God.
Our judgment of LGBT people is destroying any potential relationship – You were saved by grace. Your sins are simply different than others. And honestly, in many respects, they are the same. People don’t line up to be judged. But they might line up to be loved.

Nieuwhof says in his opening, “Even the first 72 hours of social media reaction [since the decision was publicized] has driven a deeper wedge between Christian leaders and the LGBT community Jesus loves (yes, Jesus died for the world because he loves it).”

I mention the 2015 decision and Nieuwhof’s response, not because of the issue itself but for two reasons. First, it’s simply one example among many of our shifting culture. Second, it contrasts typical responses that ministers—and Christians in general—can have, with some examples of thoughtful, biblical truths. Jesus’ followers need to be reminded of these as we learn to wrestle with our status as “sojourners and exiles” in a land not our own. Similar truths are needed for every issue, sin, and struggle—in our own lives and in society.

The response to an increasingly-pluralistic culture isn’t to retreat; it’s to advance. Christians are light into the darkness, ministers of reconciliation, humble servants of God and man, lovers of neighbors and enemies, and priests who declare the excellencies of Jesus to the world around us. And ministers must lead others to live as if that’s all true.

POINTING OUR CULTURE TO THE ONE TRUE ANSWER

May I close this chapter by musing a bit? Maybe Christianity truly is losing a cultural war. But maybe—just maybe—we have the wrong view altogether, and the realities of a shifting culture are awakening a giant who’s been sleeping since the days of Constantine. Maybe Christendom actually cheapened the true faith and life Christians are called to live. Maybe Christian values were never intended to thrive as an interwoven reality with government. Maybe culturally-accepted religious practice and the “return to Judeo-Christian values” many yearn for have done more harm than good to peoples’ pursuit of true holiness and understanding of the life of following Jesus.

The second chapter of Peter’s first letter—right after Peter charges Christians to live out their faith in the midst of people who disregarded and even hated them—specifically tells us that part of this counter-cultural life is submitting to the authority of “every human institution, whether it be to the emperor or to governors [or even] to your masters”—even when they’re “unjust” (2:13-18). First Peter 3 tells us that a Christian view of marriage is different than that of a pleasure-seeking world, who pursues its own definition and expression of beauty and self-fulfillment (3:1-7). And the rest of Peter’s letter explains that Christians will suffer, for our views and our lives that look different than those around us. We’ll be rejected, persecuted, and hated by the very people among whom God calls us to live out our faith.

If we didn’t know better, we might think that these words were written about today’s society. And yet they were written 2000 years ago to Christians like you and me, sent to a culture unlike their own just like you and me, and called to display and declare the gospel to that culture just like you and me, so that “they may see your good deeds and glorify God”—so that God might use our lives, lived publicly for him, to draw some to himself.

The truth of Peter’s words—to Christians then and now—is that Christians are freed to follow human authorities, because our hope lies in One True Authority; we can hold a biblical view of marriage, because we realize that it reflects something far greater than ourselves; we can suffer well, even for the sake of others, because we know we follow a true King who suffered on our behalf!

“What’s the world coming to?!” It’s coming to the same place as always, but rarely known: a desperate need for Jesus. And while that need may have seemed hidden, subtle, or buried during Christendom’s reign over our culture, the need is becoming more and more clear (if it isn’t already). Who are we, ministers? We are God’s missionaries and we have the answer to every need of the culture in which we exist. Let’s go into the darkness and by God’s grace help our world find the answer to its every need.

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

Josh Shank 5/30/17 Josh Shank 5/30/17

New Book Release | A Pastor's Guide for Everyday Mission

We are releasing Ben Connelly’s A Pastor's Guide for Everyday Mission—which is about how not to forget the great commission and how to make, mature, and multiply disciples. Here’s a description of the book:

After fifteen plus years of vocational ministry, Ben Connelly had an epiphany. He had missed the great commission. He was really good at keeping Christians happy and really bad at making disciples. A Pastor’s Guide to Everyday Mission helps those in paid ministry positions rediscover—and live—their life as God’s missionaries, even as they minister to God’s people. Without burdening you with the guilt and shame he once felt, Connelly charges his peers in ministry to look over the walls of our Christian castles and realize that there are always more people “out there” than there are “in here.” A Pastor’s Guide to Everyday Mission will free you to let down your drawbridge, go out to the people to whom God sent you, and lead others across the bridge and into the world with you.

You can buy a digital copy for $4.99 or a paperback copy for $8.99. Below is an excerpt from the introduction. We will share another selection from this book on Friday!

Mathew B. Sims, Managing Editor

“I’m really good at appeasing Christians, and really bad at making disciples.”

In 2009, this crippling epiphany overwhelmed me. I was in “vocational ministry” since I was a freshman in college. While reading the New Testament for a seminary class, I started to get the nagging feeling that something was off. I didn’t know what exactly, but clouds gathered at the horizon of my mind. As I read over and over about the New Testament Church and compared its life and ministry to the ministry of the churches I’d worked for, everything seemed to get eerily still. As page after page showed disciples made and sent, the church loving its neighbors and those in need, church leaders called to love not-yet-believers in their midst, and even Jesus’ prayer that his Father not take Christians out of the world, I became disoriented; everything seemed to go into slow-motion.

Then I read the Great Commission.

I’d read it maybe two-hundred times before. But not like this. A tidal wave rose from nowhere. Looming. Rushing toward me. It crashed down: I’m really good at keeping Christians happy and really bad at making disciples. We had a decent-sized college ministry and praise God, he used even our lack of missional intentionality to bring some students to himself. But by and large, I felt like I was paid to keep Christian students liking our church’s ministry more than other churches’ ministries.

But the Great Commission isn’t to appease Christians. It’s to “go make disciples” (Matthew 28:19)! Whether in our hometowns, across the world, or somewhere between, my calling—long before I was a pastor—was to be a missionary! The wave crushed me. Drenched in shame and remorse, I began to question my purpose in life and ministry. I wondered if, in God’s eyes, I was a total fraud.

Following that season, I walked through the feelings of shame, remorse, and hypocrisy. I realized that some of the feelings stemmed from emotion; others, however, I rightly repented of, and have come to rest in God’s grace. (At least most of the time.) But the principle stands: whatever role we play, every follower of Jesus on earth is a missionary, sent to make disciples. And that’s especially true for those of us in paid ministry positions.

Joey Tomlinson 5/28/17 Joey Tomlinson 5/28/17

Become Idolaters by Forgetting the Gospel

We all know people who are not Christians who live good, quiet, and moral lives (according to outward standards of living). Many non-Christians give to charities, help the poor, feed the hungry and clothe the naked. These people really do tangible good. These people are concerned about living a good and moral life for a variety of reasons—good reputations, species preservation, etc. We live in a humanistic age meaning we “live in the midst of people who argue that you can live a good life without being a Christian. They say it is about time people grew up and began to think and to cease to cling to this non-sense about God and an unseen world, and that all this talk of a so-called incarnation and redemption and all the rest of it.”^[1]

These people say, “We don’t need it anymore. We are no longer primitive. Christianity was our first attempt at understanding and morality, but not our best attempt. We are now enlightened and educated. It’s time to move on.”

There exist in our families and friends these types of people that live good, decent, generous lives according to outward standards and say—“See, I’m a decent person, yet I’m not a superstitious, brainwashed disciple. I don’t need the crutch of Christianity to live a good and decent life.”

As Christians we can and should acknowledge the reality that non-believers can be compassionate, loving, and generous. These acts are a part of God’s common grace to the world despite the whole world not acknowledging his universal Lordship.

However, there is no basis whatsoever for why moral and good non-believers behave the way they behave. They may appeal to common good or human solidarity, but our trendy culture dictates its definition. I contend that apart from the Infinite we appeal to the finite for truth and that’s a dangerous place to reside.

The very unusual thing to me is while Christians may boisterously shout “AMEN!” to what I just mentioned, we often (most of the time unintentionally) live this way ourselves. We commend ourselves toward good works apart from the gospel of God. We treat the Christian life as if one day we will stand before God hoping our good deeds will outweigh our bad deeds and that we will deserve a spot in eternity. We guilt ourselves toward good works and because of that our good works are no longer produced out of a gratefulness for the gospel but out of religious obligation.

Everything we do as believers should be inside the framework of the gospel. Good works apart from the gospel have no real foundation and are themselves idols leading us away from savoring Christ.

The Apostle Paul in Romans 8:12-17 gives us a great reminder as believers. He states,

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs- heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

The Apostle Paul reminds us of several truths in this passage:

You are no longer orphans, but adopted sons and daughters of the Most-High King therefore, act like it. Because of the perfect righteousness of the God-man, Jesus Christ you are no longer a hopeless orphan. You have a Father, so cease to behave as if you are an orphan.
Good works in the life of a believer are empowered by the Holy Spirit. One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to produce Christ’s character in believers (Gal. 5:22-23).
Those who persevere to the end are the true adopted sons and daughters of God. Let me be clear—our good works do not save us; we are justified by grace alone through faith alone. The Apostle Paul is saying that one of the evidences this side of eternity that we have been changed by the gospel is our repentance. Those who continually repent and believe the gospel are those God has adopted and those God has adopted will never be snatched away (Jn. 10:28-30). Those who do not continually repent and believe the gospel were never saved to begin with (Jas. 2:18-20).

How can we be sure we are commending ourselves to good works within the context of the gospel? Here are a few practical applications that I believe are grounded in God’s Word:

Read and study God’s Word – A great place to start is Romans 7 and 8. Paul reminds us of the deceitful heart (Rom. 7), which progresses into a clear reminder (Rom. 8) that we labor in good works as uncondemned men because we are in Christ.
Remind yourself of the gospel message daily – A great passage to memorize is 1 Corinthians 15:3-6.^[2] A gratefulness for the gospel will always fuel good works with Christ in view as supremely valuable.
Become a member of a local church (Heb. 10:25) – You want to be invested in a gospel-centered community of folks who are committed to reminding each other of the truthfulness of the gospel and the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:12-14).
Remember the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) – Your Christian testimony and character is important in fulfilling the Great Commission. Take your role and calling seriously.
To Pastors—preach the gospel from your pulpit every week (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 15:1-4) – When you fail to preach the gospel in your sermons you succeed in promoting behavior modification and this enslaves people (Rom 7:10). Every cult in the world teaches behavior modification. Preach the gospel always (2 Tim. 4:2).

As believers, we have a responsibility to pursue holiness and to flee sin by the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God and the sake of the gospel.

[1] Lloyd-Jones, Martyn, D. Spiritual Depression: Its causes and its cures. 1965.

[2] “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.”

Joey Tomlinson lives in Yorktown, VA with his wife, Brayden and their son, Henry Jacob. He has served as a pastor at Coastal Community Church for over 10 years and is pursuing his doctorate in biblical counseling at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also blogs over at Servants of Grace.

David Murray 5/25/17 David Murray 5/25/17

Someone More Important Than Your BFF

Relate

My ministry has taken me to many places in the world, but no matter how exotic or beautiful the location, it always felt empty and hollow without my wife and children to enjoy it with me. In contrast, my family and I recently traveled to the United Kingdom to surprise my parents on their golden wedding anniversary. It was one of the most memorable trips of my life, not only for the joy we gave to my parents, but also for the joy of doing such a trip together, sharing in one another’s lives. The joy of a journey depends so much on who’s riding with us.

As God said, “It is not good that man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18). If a perfect man in a perfect world in a perfect relationship with God needed to hear that, how much more do sinful men in a sinful world in far-from-sinless relationships with God? It is not good for man to be alone. Man. That’s me. That’s you. Yet so many of us still try to live largely independent, solitary, disconnected, and self-sufficient lives. The result, as predicted, is “not good.”

Central to God’s answer to this “not goodness” was his provision of a wife to move the state of men from “not good” to “very good.” But there are other key relationships in our lives we must consciously cultivate, especially in a fallen world, if we are to avoid “not good” and move toward “very good”: our relationships with God, with our wives, with our children, with our pastors/elders, and with our friends. Even if we just get that order of priorities right, it will make a massive difference.

Relationship with God

Like all healthy and satisfying relationships, our relationship with God needs time and energy. But giving time and energy to our relationship with God actually increases free time and energy because it helps us get a better perspective on life and order our priorities better, it reduces the time we spend on image management, and it removes fear and anxiety.

Here are some things that have helped me to keep my personal relationship with God personal and avoid falling into the trap of relating to him only through my ministry to others:

Guarded time. I try to guard personal Bible reading and prayer time as jealously as I guard my own children. I keep my six twenty appointment with God each morning as zealously as if it were an appointment for kidney dialysis.

Undistracted mind. In a survey of eight thousand of its readers, desiringGod.org found that 54 percent checked their smartphones within minutes of waking up. More than 70 percent admitted that they checked email and social media before their spiritual disciplines.¹ I agree with Tony Reinke, who commented, “Whatever we focus our hearts on first in the morning will shape our entire day.” So I have resolved not to check email, social media, or the news before my devotional time, as I want to bring a mind that is as clear and focused as possible to God’s Word.

Vocal prayers. As I always pray better when I pray out loud, I like to find a place where I can do so without embarrassment. Hearing my own prayers helps me improve the clarity and intensity of my prayer. Also, I cannot cover up a wandering heart or mind so easily when I pray out loud.

Varied devotions. Sometimes I read a psalm, a chapter from the Old Testament, and a chapter from the New. Other times I read just one chapter or part of a chapter and spend longer meditating on it. Or I may read through a Bible book with a good commentary. Though the speed varies, I do try to make sure that I’m reading systematically through both testaments and not just jumping around here and there.

Good sleep. If I get a good seven to eight hours of sleep each night, I come to God’s Word with more energy and concentration.

Christ-centered sermons. Using sites such as sermonaudio.com, I listen to many preachers outside my own tradition because I often find their approach to texts refreshing and stimulating.

Christ-centered books. Books that draw me into communion with Christ include John Owen’s The Glory of Christ and Spiritual Mindedness; John Flavel’s Christ the Fountain of Life; and, more recently, Mark Jones’s Knowing Christ.

Selfish reading. Sometimes I read a book exclusively for my own soul. I resolve that I won’t use it for any sermon, article, or lecture, and that I won’t share any of it on social media. This makes a significant difference to the way I read and the profit I get from it.

Daily reminders. In order to maintain or recover communion with God through the day, I link regular daily habits with prayer or meditation. For example, I may use a coffee break to remind myself to pray, or I may use a time of standing in line to memorize a verse written on a card.

This personal relationship with God is so important because character is so important. Dave Kraft, author of Leaders Who Last, quotes statistics that show only 30 percent of leaders finish well, and in his experience, failures to do so usually happened because popularity and professionalism took the place of character in Christian leaders’ lives. He writes that “in many quarters there seems to be a tendency to overlook a lack of character in one’s personal and private life in exchange for a high degree of success in one’s professional life. . . . Most leaders focus too much on competence and too little on character.”² General Norman Schwarzkopf agrees: “Ninety-nine percent of leadership failures are failures of character.”³ Character is formed primarily in communion with God. We put this relationship first because it is the most influential in all other relationships, not least in our marriages.

[1] Tony Reinke, “Six Wrong Reasons to Check Your Phone in the Morning: And a Better Way Forward,” Desiring God, June 6, 2015, http://www.desiringgod.org/articles /six-wrong-reasons-to-check-your-phone-in-the-morning.

[2] Dave Kraft, Leaders Who Last (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 95–96.

[3] Cited in James C. Hunter, The World’s Most Powerful Leadership Principle (New York: Crown Business, 2004), 141.

David Murray (DMin, Reformation International Theological Seminary) is professor of Old Testament and practical theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and pastor of Grand Rapids Free Reformed Church. He is also a counselor, a regular speaker at conferences, and the author of Jesus on Every Page.

Jeremy Writebol 5/23/17 Jeremy Writebol 5/23/17

The Liberating Grace of Generosity

What if I told you that you live daily wearing a straitjacket? How crazy would that be?! Thinking yourself free and unbounded you, like a person in need of restraint to keep from hurting yourself, you bind yourself up so that you don't become too excessive or lavish. The straitjacket is one you put on yourself, but it's also likely that the straps of this jacket have been pulled tighter by religious types. If you accomplish and achieve their standards, you feel better because you can check the box and validate your goodness. If you don't measure up to the straitjacket standard you feel shame, guilt, dishonor, and anxiety. The straitjacket is pulled tighter, and the pressure to perform is all the greater. Insanity! Is this what Christianity is? A straitjacket of rules and regulations? Is Christianity a set of metrics for the fruit of the Spirit? If Christ came to set us free then why do we wear a straitjacket of laws around our lives instead of being free to enjoy grace and flourish in holiness? If the gospel is "Good News" then where is the good news for us in the realm of giving and generosity? Are we bound to give ten percent?

I'm convinced that many Christians live with straitjackets around their hearts and wallets. The fear they live under demonstrates itself either by making them afraid to loosen the straitjacket and hold with open hands the resources they have, or it makes them tighten their fists around what they have all the more, lest they lose it. If they hit the magic "ten percent" mark though, all is well with God and man.

This kind of approach doesn't sound like generosity to me. It doesn't sound like “giving” either. I suppose if I had to compare the practice of giving ten percent to something, it would feel more like taxation. The danger could be we are expecting and believing that if we do our part, meet our quota, and hit the mark then we are living right.

Jesus and the Straitjacket

Lately, as I’ve read the four Gospels, I can’t help be struck by Jesus’s generosity. He is constantly giving in some fashion or another. The demands upon him were great—heal this friend, cast out that demon, teach at this town, feed that crowd, serve this poor woman, or pay that disciples’s taxes. I don’t ever recall Jesus saying, “No, I’ve hit my quota today. Ten percent is all I have to give. I’m done.”

If anything it was the other way around. The greater the demands and requests upon Jesus the more open his hands were to give, serve, and love. It doesn't seem that Jesus had many world possessions. He even told someone who wanted to follow him, "The Son of Man has no place to lay his head" (Lk. 9:58, CSB). We often think of Jesus’s lack of material wealth as a result of his vocational choices. But what if his material poverty was intentional? What if he actually gave away everything he possessed.

I'd like to think, through Paul's reflection, that Jesus was intentionally poor because he was intentionally generous. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8:9, CSB). Note the verb in this verse—“became.” Jesus’s poverty was an act of intentionality. He saw the need of the human race that could do nothing to rescue and help itself. He gave. He saw the way we suffocate ourselves with legalism and works and gave himself to free us from death-by-tithe.

Jesus didn't wear the straitjacket of ten-percent. He became poor so that he could liberate, model, and earn real generosity for all his people. He saw the straitjackets of the Pharisees and scribes. They wore them well and helped others suit-up into straitjackets of their own. Because they were so fearful of breaking the Law, they would go to the extreme of emptying the kitchen cupboards of their spices and measure out ten percent of the mint, cumin, and dill to be sure they could say they gave ten percent of everything away (Matt. 23:23, Lk. 11:42). As good as they were at honoring the tithe principle though, they lacked generosity, justice, and mercy. Real generosity eluded them.

Gospel-Informed Generosity

If generosity is not measured by a percentage (however high or low you want to make it) but by Jesus’s own example, it begs the question, how generous are we really? Could it be that we have not perceived the depth of the gospel to such a degree that we are changed by the gospel? Or are we afraid there won’t be enough of God’s generosity for us as well?

Fear not! By the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we too can become generous like Jesus. We can hold with open hands all that we have in order to love God and serve others. We can become poor so that through our poverty we might make others rich in Christ. The straitjacket can be loosed, and we can be freed to be gospel-generous people.

An Invitation to Gospel-Centered Generosity

I’d like to invite you as well to imitate Jesus’s generosity. My hope is that you are supporting the work of the ministry through your local church and giving priority to generously supporting the ministry and pastors that feed you the Word of God each week (see 1 Corinthians 9:14 and 1 Timothy 5:17-18).

As you give to your local church, I'd also like to ask you to consider giving to support the ministry of Gospel-Centered Discipleship. Our purpose is to publish resources to help make, mature, and multiply disciples of Jesus. While we operate each month on a limited budget and scope, our desire is—if God wills—to increase our reach and serve Christ by equipping the church with excellent resources for the advance of the gospel.

Practically speaking, we’d like to increase our reach through hiring more editorial staff, updating aspects of our website, and funding and developing creative writers who have the gifts of excellence with words. You can support us coming alongside the church and discipling writers in three ways:

If you have found an article particularly useful for your own growth would you toss a "tip in the jar" to support the development of more articles and resources? You can make a one-time donation here.
Would you consider being a monthly donor to our ministry and making a contribution to the work of our ministry on a regular basis? If one-hundred of our readers were able to give $5 a month to our work, we'd be able to move forward in some accelerated ways. You can contribute on an ongoing basis by following this link.
If you would like to fund one of our major projects like website development, staff positions, or other opportunities would you please contact me to allow me to share more of our vision with you.

May the grace of God through Christ be in your gaze. May you know and believe in him as the one who generously gave all he had, even his very life, so that, “He might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7, CSB).

Jeremy Writebol is the Executive Director of GCD. He is the husband of Stephanie and father of Allison and Ethan. He serves as the lead campus pastor of Woodside Bible Church in Plymouth, MI. He is also an author and contributor to several GCD Books including everPresent and Make, Mature, Multiply. He writes personally at jwritebol.net.

You can read all of Jeremy’s articles here.

SaveSaveSaveSave

Whitney Woollard 5/21/17 Whitney Woollard 5/21/17

3 Ways Jesus’s Priestly Work Destroys Soul-Fatigue

A pastor once told me that in his twenties he couldn’t fathom how his friends fell into moral failure or quit vocational ministry. But now, in his fifties, he understands the plausibility of both. I didn’t understand him then. I do now. Pressing forward in faith when you’re getting slammed with trial or temptation is exhausting. The truth is, life is exhausting. We’re bombarded with needs from the minute we awake to a screaming baby to the last text we send to someone we’re discipling. Over time those day-to-day pressures fatigue us. We push and press until one day we’re too tired to go on.

It’s possible to continue the outward mechanics of life, but inwardly check out. Or worse still, give yourself over to soul-numbing sin. Both are common responses to what I call “soul-fatigue.” Soul-fatigue isn’t “I need another cup of coffee” fatigue. It’s “I don’t see a way forward” fatigue. And, eventually, we all experience it.

So how do we persevere when everything inside of us wants to check out of life or find relief in sin?

Ask Your High Priest for Help

It might seem basic, but what you need most when you’re soul-fatigued is Jesus’s help. Whether your need stems from life’s external blows or your own internal temptation, Jesus’s priestly work draws you near to the throne of grace to help you persevere in your time of need.

Hebrews 4:14-16 says,

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

These verses are tucked within the larger context of Hebrews where the author is repeatedly calling his readers to persevere in the Christian faith despite persecution, temptation, and trial. They were growing weary in the faith and were tempted to give up and go back to their old way of life. They were ready to check out.

But the author urges his readers to press on in the midst of trials and temptations because Christ is superior to the angels, to Moses, to the former priests, and to the old covenant sacrificial system. Believers must not turn away. Rather, he admonishes them to look to Jesus, their great high priest. In him, they would find true rest for their souls and courage to persevere until he returns.

This truth is as true for you today as it was for them—Jesus’s priestly work draws you near to the throne of grace to help you persevere in your time of need. So, you need to ask him for help and allow him to minister to you.

3 Ways Jesus’s Priestly Work Destroys Soul-Fatigue

The ways in which Jesus’s priestly work helps you persevere through soul-fatigue are many. Here are three that stand out to me from Hebrews 4:14-16.

– Jesus prays for you.

Have you ever wondered what Jesus is doing in heaven until he returns at his second coming? He’s praying for you! Hebrews 4:14 says that he ascended into heaven and he now sits at the Father’s right hand (Col. 2:20) and intercedes for us (Rom. 8:34). He is exalted in this intercessory role.

Imagine the scene in the heavenly throne room. Jesus sits beside God and asks him to work on your behalf. “Father, [fill in your name] needs your help today. Increase her faith. Enable her to keep going. Send her encouragement for the moment.” Jesus prays for you, even on days you feel too weak to pray for yourself.

Meditating on this truth is one way to persevere in the faith: When you’re tempted to check out, remember that Jesus is praying for you. When you want to give up on that draining discipleship relationship, Jesus is praying for you. When you don’t know how you’re going to make your marriage work, Jesus is praying for you. When you can’t get out of bed, Jesus is praying for you.

– Jesus “gets” you.

Not only is Jesus praying for you, Hebrews 4:15 says he’s doing so as one who “gets it.” You have a high priest who empathizes with you in all of your weaknesses. He understands the limitations of a fallen body, the sting of injustice, the loss of loved ones, the frustrations of discipleship, the abandonment and betrayal by friends, the fatigue of ministry, and the full weight of temptation (though he never succumbed and sinned). He partook of everything you endure so that he could be your sympathetic priest.

It’s easy to think that “nobody understands” your struggles. How often have you dismissively said to someone, “You wouldn’t understand”? When we grow fatigued with the life or work God assigned us, it’s tempting to feel like we’re the only ones who has ever felt this frustration. But the truth is, Jesus understands exactly what you’re going through.

Reminding yourself that Jesus took on the full weight of humanity so he could be an empathetic high priest is another way you persevere in the faith. You’re not alone! The Son of God intimately understands your struggles and lives to help you in them. That’s the third point.

– Jesus helps you.

Hebrews 4:16 tells you that you can draw near to the throne of grace to get mercy to help in your hour of need. This is only because of Jesus’ priestly work. His sacrificial work on your behalf cleanses you of sin and enables you to approach God with boldness.

If you’ve put your faith in Jesus, you can go to God and pour out your honest thoughts, requests, and needs. You don’t have to be afraid that you will be punished. And you don’t have to be ashamed to ask God for help. It doesn’t matter how embarrassing your temptation is, Jesus stands ready to pour out grace to empower you to overcome sin. He wants to help you say “no” to temptation.

He also offers grace to you when you don’t say “no” to sin. Unlike Jesus, there will be times when you give into sin. You’ll bark at your spouse because you’re frustrated with yourself. You’ll binge eat after an emotional fight with your teenager. You’ll look at a website because you want immediate relief. You will fail. And when you do Jesus is right there ready to forgive you and lift you up out of that sin. He will do so again and again until the final day when you will perfectly submit to the Father just as Jesus did.

Run to Jesus

That pastor was right. There’s a kind of soberness that accompanies aging. As time goes by, you see and experience things that weary you. You get tired. You go through seasons where you sit behind the steering wheel of your car and dream of driving far, far away in a one-way direction. Checking out or giving in seem like the only plausible options. (Yes, even Christians experience this.)

But they’re not. There’s an alternative—You can run to Jesus. Or, maybe limp to Jesus. The point is, go to Jesus!

You have a high priest who is dripping with compassion. He’s not waiting to shame you for being weak or weary. He wants to sit with you; to listen to you and pray for you. He’s eager to give you the ministry of his presence and to bind your wounds with his healing grace. He’s there to strengthen you and help you persevere in your time of need. It’s only when you run to him that you’ll experience the rest and relief you need in your soul-fatigue.

Whitney Woollard is passionate about equipping others to read and study God’s Word well resulting maturing affection for Christ and his glorious gospel message. She holds a Bachelors of Science in Biblical Studies from Moody Bible Institute and a Masters of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary. Whitney and her husband Neal currently live in Portland, OR where they call Hinson Baptist Church home. Visit her writing homepage whitneywoollard.com.

Mark Sayers 5/18/17 Mark Sayers 5/18/17

Technology and Lost Art of Livedness

Another border to transgress is the border erected by emerging technologies between life and our online, disembodied lives. That Christianity could have anything to say about our approach to technology may seem legalistic at first, but an essential dimension of following Christ is participating in His body, and this is a flesh-and-blood existence. One of the most beautiful aspects of Christianity is that the incredible truth that Christ saves us in His body of flesh by the Spirit is not something we apprehend only spiritually. We meditate on it, we receive it, we build our lives on it, yes, but we can also have dinner with it. I’m talking here about the church.

The church is the body of Christ. Local assemblies are designed to bear witness to Him—to be His hands and feet. As Christ is love and lives His life in the Spirit, so the church is love and lives its life in the Spirit. “Such a community is the primary hermeneutic of the gospel,” declares Newbigin, for “all the statistical evidence goes to show that those within our secularized societies who are being drawn out of unbelief to faith in Christ say that they were drawn through the friend- ship of a local congregation.” Just as the temple was the magnet people were drawn to, the life of the Spirit lived in the temple “of a collective body” becomes magnetic itself. Faithfully proclaiming Christ and patterning our lives after Him—imitating His love, embodying His teachings, inviting outsiders to the table—this is how the world sees Christ.

The very lived nature of Christian communal life increasingly becomes rare in the twenty-first-century world, for livedness is downplayed in our culture. The organs of power increasingly communicate to us through the digital world. We rarely meet politicians; rather, we see their digitalized forms daily. We do not experience the influence of celebrities, sports stars, and the titans of business in an enfleshed form. Rather, to experience their impact we must consume images and information about them via the Internet or television. Less and less do we get to know our local bank teller, find out how their kids are, or chat with the cashier in our favorite store. Such interactions now hover in digital form on our screens, ensconced in a part of our consciousness.

One day, after entering this online consciousness to consume the news, I was confronted with a social landscape stretched to the breaking point. Divisions between left and right, angry tweets, indignant punditry, terrorism, tensions over the place of Islam in the West. Putting down my iPad and heading out the door to pick up my daughter from school, I reenter the lived world.

There I feel awareness of my body moving, my legs stretching as I walk down the hill. The sun warms the back of my neck. Entering the school, before me runs the gamut of Western multiculturalism. A myriad of different ethnicities and religions, all acting in a wonderfully mundane ballet of wiping kids’ noses, dragging along toddlers, holding basketballs and footballs under their arms, lugging scooters and schoolbags. Instead of a fractious, fragmented, fiery online reality, there is calm, peace, a pleasant parallel universe. Friendly nods, waves of recognition, the hum of small talk.

I watch a young mum arrive, holding in her arms a newborn baby. Smiles break out. Quickly she is surrounded by a handful of other mothers, all beaming at the new arrival, kisses and hugs of congratulations are exchanged. Women in tank tops and yoga pants, some in jeans and tattoos, others in multicolored Islamic scarves. There is no tension, no arguments, no flaming tweets, just a group of humans, interacting face-to-face as we have always interacted. United in the small bandwidth of mundane activities humans have always engaged in. This is the real world. This is the enfleshed world.

Despite all of the adulation given to the digital landscape, despite its increasing incursion into our lives, we still live in the enfleshed, ordinary world. Just look how we crane our necks, uncomfortably walk with our gaze set on our screens, commune with sofa and at screen. It is not our home, but a temporary place of residence for our attentions, a distraction, an echo chamber of opinions and vain words.

At risk of seeming to tell a sentimental story in which a newborn baby unites humanity and undoes all of the problems I have outlined in this book, I wish to clarify my point. We live most of our lives in the real world. We live part of our lives in the feverish, hovering space of the digital world. Such a world can overwhelm us with its immersive power, leaving us ill-equipped for the reality of livedness. The influence of the online world, with all of its divisions and distractions, can lead us even as believers to take it as normative. Fretting and fearing at our cultural turn. However, there is a hope that many have missed. Christians, formed by the church, shaped by its relational rhythms, abiding with Christ, fighting flesh and living in the Spirit, are built for the real world. It is the realm in which the church flourishes and creates community with a heavenly destination.

The church provides good news. Re-centering life around the worship of God, it is the perfect environment for human flourishing. It gives needed, but also tough, medicine for those formed and shaped by the contours of our digitized, consumer-driven world. For the change we are living through wrought by social media and the digital world is a technological one, yet it is shaped by an ideology, a dogma of techno utopianism.

The initial designer of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, states that the web is not so much a technological invention but a social one. It was a platform to create social change, one whose supporting pillars were radical individualism, mystical faith in the power of technology and innovation, and the Californian counterculture’s resistance to authority, which is soaked deep in the soil beneath the industrial parks of Silicon Valley.

The original visionaries of our online worlds, observes tech commentator Andrew Keen, “imported the sixties’ disruptive libertarianism, its rejection of hierarchy and authority, its infatuation with openness, transparency and personal authenticity, and its global communitarianism into the culture of what has become known as ‘cyberspace.’ Their vision was to unite all human beings in a global network linked by computers.” This vision is a digital non-place. It believes that digital networks and online worlds can offer us community and connection while preserving our individual autonomy and freedom. It is this ideology, not the technology itself, which does the damage to our psychological, social, and spiritual selves.

The anxiety that hums like a computer in the background of our contemporary lives alerts us—not to the inherent danger in technology—but rather the inability of digital networks to deliver human flourishing and the deep connection for which the human soul desires. Yes, the new digital landscape has delivered handy ways to connect, as well as unparalleled access to information. Yet its technological utopianism, now monetized and designed to elicit consumer desires at a neurological level, has profoundly formed us. To move from the pure “livedness” of this digital, consumeristic, constantly connected state of being, into the pure “livedness” of the church, can be a jarring one. The gospel invitation into the community of discipleship, which is the church, can seem far from good news. It can feel like a cold shower.

Mark Sayers is the Senior Leader of Red Church, and the co-founder of Über Ministries. He is particularly interested in the intersection between Christianity and the culture of the West. Mark lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife Trudi, daughter Grace, and twin boys Hudson and Billy.

Clay Adkisson 5/16/17 Clay Adkisson 5/16/17

3 Ways Sin Attacks

It was hard for me growing up to get at the root of my sin. Where was it coming from? It was hard to figure out how to fight sin, and I felt like I was constantly failing. The tradition I grew up in taught that sin primarily was “in the world.” So if I could keep myself unstained from the world, I would sin less. I tried to do this, but I didn’t sin any less. I grew frustrated and tired of trying to live the Christian life. Part of it had to do with me fighting in my own power, but another part of it had to do with my focus on where sin was attack me.

Depending on what tradition you grew up in, you most likely have a certain view of how sin attacks us. There seems to be three categories of how sin attacks us: Satan, the World, or the Flesh. As I have reflected more on these categories it got my wheels turning with two questions emerged:

What are the flaws in each category as it relates to how or why we sin?
Is one of these three categories more helpful than another in fighting sin?

Three Ways Sin Attacks

If you grew up in a more charismatic tradition, it probably was all about Satan and his demons. If your car broke down, it was the car demon. If you sinned, the devil tempted you to do it almost bordering on “the devil made me do it.” Therefore, the focus on fighting sin became to have enough faith and will power to withstand the devil and his attacks.

Maybe you grew up in a more conservative evangelical tradition, it probably was all about “the world.” We had to learn to be in the world, but not of the world. Sounds good, even biblical. But it became about hiding out from the world so we would not be tainted by “the sin out there.” We chucked the idea of being in the world because there was just too much sin out there. Then we huddled up together thinking we would not sin, while not engaging the world at all.

Perhaps you grew up in a more reformed tradition, it probably was all about “the flesh.” In this tradition, sin attacks us from within, while not paying much attention to the enemy or the world. This tradition sees us as totally depraved and corrupted the whole man. It is all about my sinful heart, and how I can’t do the things God is calling me to do.

All three of these are true. Satan schemes against us, the world is broken and filled with sin, and we are broken and corrupted by sin. Can it be dangerous to give one category of how sin attacks us more focus than another?

Flaws in All Three Categories

First, let’s look at the more charismatic tradition and the over focus on Satan. There is a real enemy seeking to destroy us like a roaring lion seeking to devour us (1 Pt. 5:8). He is a very real enemy who is looking to tempt us and entangle us once again in sin. We need to take our enemy seriously.

But the first part of 1 Peter 5:8, tells us to be sober minded and watchful. The devil can’t make us sin. Our sin isn’t ultimately the enemy’s fault. The Bible says,

“No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” – 1 Corinthians 10:13.

God will give us a way out, or a way to endure the temptation of the enemy. We don’t need to focus so much on the enemy and who is against us that we forget who is in us and fights for us. We are called to submit ourselves to God so we can resist the devil, and he will flee us (Jas. 4:7). It is not about mustering up enough faith, or conjuring up enough will power to resist the devil. It is about the object of our faith that is Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit in us.

Second, from the conservative evangelical focus on the sin “in the world,” we must not be of the world (Rom. 12:1-2, Jas. 4:4). There are things in the world that are not good for us to engage. But when we huddled up, we realize the fact that sin exists in us as well. It was not just about the “sin out there,” but the sin we could not escape.

Not only that, but God has kept us in the world that we might display his love and grace. We can’t do that if we don’t engage the world we are in because we are huddled up waiting for the rapture. God calls us to engage people who will be worldly that we might show them otherworldly love.

Maybe some of the problem is more our reputation, our self-righteousness, and the appearance of good. We abstain from the world because we don’t want to look like we are friends with it.

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.” – Matthew 11:18-19

Maybe we should worry less about our reputation, because people are going to say what they want no matter what we do. Being in Christ, frees us from what others think about us (we don’t need others approval). Being in Christ, frees us to not care what others think of us (meaning they don’t define or justify us). If we believed this, maybe it would free us to go places, without being “of those places,” because we are going to reach the people Jesus wants us to reach. Maybe it would free us to have “those kinds” of people over to our home, or go to their party for the purpose of loving them like Jesus.

Third, from the more reformed tradition of the sin of “the flesh, in some views of total depravity, we are “so bad” and “so sinful” why should we even try to fight sin? Then it can swing from “I so bad” to “I am so free” that I can do and indulge in anything. While it is true we are free in Christ, this freedom isn’t a license to sin which Paul warns us against (Gal. 5:13). Paul goes on to tell us that we are freed from sin so we could love our neighbor not ourselves. We have the Holy Spirit in us that gives us new affections and desires that we might not sin.

Is One Category More Helpful Than Another?

The reformed tradition helps us identify the root of sin better. Sin resides in us.

“But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” – James 1:14-15

While the world and the lies of the enemy can influence us, entice us, and deceive us, we chose to sin. We sin because we want to sin. We sin because sin is still in us. We can’t escape sin, but we can learn how to identify and fight our sin.

We must identify our sin. We need to see sins effects on those around us as well as ourselves. We need to know how we are being tempted, but when we stare too much at our sin we will find ourselves sinking deeper in it. The only way to find freedom from sin is in Christ Jesus. It is about remembering who it is that saves us, and what he has done for us. The key is to focus less on our sin, and more on our Savior and what he has done to free us from sin. We do this by looking to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.

We need to look at Jesus and see it is finished. When we remember our salvation accomplished by Jesus, God looks at us and doesn’t see our sin but Jesus’s righteousness, then we can look at our sin to address it. The way you deal with sin’s attack, whether it is the enemy’s deceitful voice or the influence of the world that lures and entices our desires, is to remember who’s we are, and what he has done to make us his own.

We need to remember who we are in Christ, and what he did to make us his (Eph. 1:3-14, 2:1-10). We need to listen to the Holy Spirit guiding us. The Spirit is applying all Christ has done for us, and testifies to our spirit that we are children of the living God (Rom. 8:15-16, Gal. 4:1-7).

When we see who we are in Christ, remembering what he has done for us by his perfect life, sacrificial atoning death, glorious resurrection, and that he is currently ruling and reigning over the universe, we can say no to sin and yes to his grace. His kindness leads us to repentance (Rom. 2:4). We can turn from our sin, and turn to our Savior. He stands to receive us, give us his grace, and empower us by the Spirit to seek new obedience in light of his gospel.

As pastors or small group leaders, let’s give people the gospel that transforms us from the inside out. As we point people back to Christ and all he has done, his grace transforms us and enables us to fight sin. With people being aware of their own sin and the one who has done something about it, our people are better equipped to withstand and fight the attacks of Satan and the attacks of the world.

Now, we can be better equipped to fight sin as it comes at from the other two categories of Satan and the world. We can tell the enemy he is a liar and needs to shut up. We can engage the world with love, grace, and truth without being of it. We can see the sin that remains in us, but not be lured and enticed by it because it doesn’t define us or have a hold on us any longer. We are God’s and he is ours. As the old hymn says,

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in his wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of his glory and grace.

Clay Adkisson is the Pastor of Discipleship at Double Oak Community Church in Birmingham, AL. He has a B.B.S. in Speech Communication from Hardin Simmons University, and a M.A. in Religion from Redeemer Seminary in Dallas, TX. He has worked in ministry for 13 years with youth, college, young adults, men’s ministry, small groups, as well as being on preaching and teaching teams. He has had the privilege of working in many different kinds of churches from church plants to mega churches. Clay’s passion is to see people find freedom in the gospel by seeing it transform their everyday lives.

Jake Chambers 5/14/17 Jake Chambers 5/14/17

An Invitation to Swim in a Different Current

Caught in a current. It happens so suddenly. You are swimming along just fine. Body wrapped in the coolness of the sea. Rolling with some waves and diving under others.

Floating, swimming, surfing. Enjoying the light flavor of saltwater on the lips. Just you and the vast ocean. Adventure. Peace. Place. It hits you.

The towels, umbrellas, kids running around on the shore all look small, too small. The shore is a ways off. Much further than what you feel comfortable with.

Your eyes scan the shore to find your lifeguard tower, chair or something familiar and realize you have not just drifted far out but far away from where you started.

You drop under the water to touch your toes to the ground and gauge the depth.

Your feet reach and flail desperately as you sink but they are nowhere near touching the ground.

It’s deep.

Too deep.

You start to swim in.

Try to ride the next wave and get some momentum towards the shore.

In the back of your mind you know it is too late.

All the warning signs start flashing through your mind.

The flags on shore cautioning of a strong current that you brushed off.

The way the waves were crashing against each other at angles instead of rolling in on smooth lines.

You feel stupid for ignoring all the warnings but hold on to denial for a bit longer as you dive under and swim a bit harder and faster to shore.

The waves are rougher now.

Your body senses your weakness; you feel your fatigue. How long have I been out here?

The salt on the lips reminds you of your thirst. When did I last drink fresh water?

The harder you swim to shore the more violently the current sucks you out to sea.

Rip tide. You are caught in a current.

You feel helpless, scared, small and can’t help but fear the worst.

Why did I go out this far? Why didn’t I pay more attention to the warnings?

I was just going for a short swim. I was having so much fun.

What was I thinking? What am I going to do now?

Caught in the Current

American Christianity is caught in a current. And pastors are leading the charge. This current seems harmless and the drift happens in small doses, but it is deadly nonetheless.

It is a current that commodifies Christianity. A current that packages, markets, and sells discipleship. A current that finds its way through the lure of performance, approval and comparison. A rip tide of celebrity pastors, conferences, twitter, blogs, promotion, numbers, always numbers.

It starts with a warped view of success. A plundering of other whys. Why do we do what we do? This view of success gets hijacked to be the same why of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street. The same strategies used to make it in a dog-eat-dog world are the same strategies used to make it in the church world.

Performance. Approval. Comparison. Numbers.

Churches don’t have meaningful partnerships or friendships and certainly would never sacrifice for the other church in their neighborhood. It is never stated, but we are both swimming along in the same current and looking out for number one. Striving for the same view of success to be bigger, better, and more known and the truth is there isn’t room for both of us.

Western Christianity is caught in the current. We are drowning. Some are swimming to shore, some are loving it, but more should cry out for help.

Help us God. We are drowning!

Pastor, are you caught in the current? Is your church?

We didn’t start out this way. We fell in love with Jesus. We fell in love with his Word. We felt his presence. We hungered for others to taste and see the goodness of this true, life-giving, world shattering reality of the gospel. We wanted more time with Jesus and for others to meet and know and follow Jesus!

We never thought it would go this far. We just wanted to dip a toe in the water. We saw the warnings, but thought it couldn’t happen to us. We couldn’t get caught in this current. We saw the danger from afar but up close it didn’t look so dangerous.

Surely, this small compromise is worth the growth. Certainly, the lead pastor needs to be shielded a bit from the people to focus on “vision.” It’s ok to build my platform, it’s for Jesus, right?

I need to be known, so I can make him known. If we got bigger, we could have more influence. If we could just get to that church size, or get that band, or that building then we could really do God’s work.

You’re swimming along and everything seems fine until you realize how far you are from shore. Your relationship with Jesus is strained. Your prayer life is dry. You are only available to your celebrity Christian posse on social media. You feel lonely in the church, lonely in your home. Old addictions that you thought were long gone are starting to creep back in. You try to swim to shore, you try to manage it for awhile, hide it, change it. But it is too late.

Rip tide.

Heed the Warning Signs

This pull away from shore in churches happens all around us and inside of us all of the time. Pastors, the warning signs are everywhere. Pastor wakes up and can’t get out of bed. Pastor has moral failure. Pastor can’t sleep with or without sleeping pills. Pastor blows up on his staff. Performance. Approval. Comparison. Numbers, always numbers. Burnout, moral failure, blow up. Rinse and repeat.

And it is not just pastors. Church members, deacons, volunteers, leaders. All following us pastors onto the same treadmill of performance until we have to get off and the only way it seems to get off is to leave the church, the ministry, and often the faith all together.

Pastors, what should we do?

An emergency sabbatical. Pay a bunch of money to celebrity Christian counselors. Schedule in some hobbies, change our diets, get better work rhythms, get a masseuse, hire an extra assistant, etc. We figure out how to solve it, manage it, and get back to it so our performance, approval, comparison, and numbers are not too damaged. Hobbies, vacations, sabbaticals, counselors are all great ideas and helpful. I am not hating on any of those things. My problem is what we do next!

We get right back in the exact same current.

Maybe this time we have a nice boogie board or a quality wetsuit to help us float a little longer, but it is the same current. Pastors, church, Christians, have we ever thought that maybe, just maybe we should avoid this current and swim somewhere else?

An Invitation to Swim in Another Current

That is why I am writing. I have been caught in the current and seen other pastors, Christians, and churches caught in the same current and I want to invite us all to swim somewhere else.

To recognize and heed the warning signs and choppy waters that are all around us proclaiming the danger of performance, approval, comparison, and numbers.

What if ministry is not about us?
What if we have everything backwards?
What if the least are the greatest in his Kingdom?
What if the greatest commandment was to love God and love others more than our platforms?
What if NO one could come after Jesus without denying himself?
What if we had to become a no name unrecognized servant to become great in his Kingdom?
What if we are supposed to avoid the crowds and seek his presence?
What if we are swimming in the wrong current all together?

I know that after calling out to God for help he is rescuing me and showing me a new path. It is a narrower path and it doesn’t make much of me, yet each step is so life-giving even if it often feels like I am learning the same step over and over.

It is not about me.

Step.

Nearly everything I do naturally is the opposite of what Jesus proposes and models in his Kingdom.

Step.

I can do things with Jesus and for Jesus in secret and with no need to broadcast it.

Step.

His ways are often secret, hidden, and small (Matthew 13).

Step.

If I am going to swim in this current it is going to have to be prayerfully and patiently.

Step.

There is no room for ego here.

Step.

He must increase, I must decrease.

Step.

Follow me. Follow me. Follow me.

Step.

He cares more about me being a follower who makes followers than being a leader who makes leaders.

Step.

Pray. No really, pray.

Step.

He has me right where he wants me.

Step.

The time, place, and size of my ministry is beautiful.

Step.

Contentment. Formation. Presence.

Step.

Jake Chambers is the husband to his beautiful bride Lindsey, and a daddy to Ezra, Roseanna, and Jaya. Jake is passionate about seeing the gospel both transform lives and create communities that love Jesus, the city, and the lost. He currently serves Red Door Church in San Diego through leading, preaching, equipping, and pastoring.

Jared Wilson 5/11/17 Jared Wilson 5/11/17

Curing the Taste for a Shiny Death

I remember walking into an adult bookstore for the first time. (This was before high speed-internet connections were common and you could get the crack delivered to your home in five seconds or less.) I wanted to be there; and yet I didn’t. I was trembling inside and a little bit outside. When you walk into one of those places, you are clearly crossing a line, and it’s as if that line demarcates a wall of glass. The porn shop is under a dome, keeping all the germs inside, and when you cross that boundary, it slices you in half. If you’re someone who claims to follow Jesus, you walk into a porn shop a totally bifurcated person—discombobulated, deluded, divided. I was driven there by a compulsion—to see, to get things I shouldn’t have, to know things I shouldn’t know. There are sections inside an adult video store, organized according to category; I hope you didn’t know that. Some of these categories repulsed me. Can you imagine that? Walking around a porno store and avoiding the “gross” stuff? As if it wasn’t all disgusting?

I knew I should not have been there but I wanted to be. Everything inside of me said it was wrong, and everything inside of me said it would be okay. Just push through, get what you want, and get out. Before you become numb to this battle and stop fighting it you must ignore the clapper of conscience clanging against the walls of your soul and push through it.

Was I in that store by my orientation? Absolutely. Was I in that store by my choice? Yes. The answer to this multiple choice question is yes.

And when I put Genesis 3:1 (“Did God actually say . . . ?”) together with Romans 7, I see why I believed it was ultimately better at the time to feel good doing what I wanted instead of suffering the internal agony of not being who I was. It felt so much better to give in than to fight. Which is why so many porn users don’t fight it at all. The porn promises release. The abstinence promises pain. And then there’s this voice saying, The pain means you shouldn’t be trying to change who you are.

But there’s nothing else in me God wants to change except who I am.

This change comes through the cross—Christ’s cross becoming my cross. What is better? To be warring all the life in Romans 7, denying urges and not feeling good inside, or doing what we feel is right simply because it feels good, better? One voice answers the latter, and it strokes the ear. The other strikes terror sometimes—okay, many times—but it takes us from Romans 7 to Romans 8.

Don’t believe the lie that struggling always to obey God is a worse lot in life than disobeying him with peace. God did not make us to “feel good inside” (or outside) all the time this side of heaven; he made us to share in the sufferings of Christ, that we might share in his resurrection. And the reality is, for many, the resurrection kind of life in these areas of death isn’t always postponed to the life to come. But you won’t know that until you’re willing to go to the cross for as long as it takes to die.

I was preoccupied with and perversely interested in pale imitations of glory. I was committing clear sins in engaging in this behavior. And staying away from the porno shop would be a good decision to make. But it was the allure inside of me—the desire for the glory that was being falsely promised—that just avoiding pornography wouldn’t kill. I didn’t simply have a behavior problem but a belief problem, a worship problem. And what eventually served to cure my taste for this shiny death was not “getting my act together,” but finally, truly seeing the glory of my crucified Savior.

In the warp and woof of this struggle every day, we cannot rely on the law to empower its own implications. We need the more glorious vision.

So long as we are living in the bittersweet limbo of Romans 7 through 8—simul justus et peccator, as the Reformers so nerdily put it in the Latin (righteous and at the same time a sinner)—we will be struggling to see the glory. We will always be fighting this battle. When I say it is better to behold than to behave, I do not mean that we are to be lazy Christians, ambivalent about personal holiness or actively following Jesus. I just mean that our ability to actively and persistently follow Jesus will be centrally driven by our comprehension of his glory.

Beholding Christ’s glory is the number one directive for following Jesus. And in fact, it’s sometimes the only effort us lousy disciples can muster up.

I think of that fateful Sunday a young Charles Spurgeon got waylaid by a snowstorm into a little Methodist chapel where a guest preacher filling in at the last minute was making a plainspoken appeal from Isaiah 45:22—”Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth!” He was not a great preacher; Spurgeon presumes him to be “a shoemaker, or tailor, or something of that sort” and actually refers to him as “feeble” and “stupid,”6 but he recalled the man’s invitation thusly:

Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pains. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just, “Look.” Well, a man needn’t go to College to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand a year to be able to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look.¹

That Sunday morning, with snow clouding the view outside, this simple message captivated the young Charles Spurgeon who for the first time looked at the glory of Christ and saw it.

Sometimes people are so busy trying to do great things for God they forget to look at his glory and therefore they never quite behold it. And sometimes looking is all the rest of us have the energy for. We are, whether spiritually or physically, out of “get up and go.” But as this stupid preacher reminds us, any ol’ fool can pick his head up and look.

[1] The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon, Vol. 1, 1834–1854 (Cincinnati, OH: Curts and Jennings, 1898), 106.

Jared C. Wilson is the Director of Content Strategy for Midwestern Seminary, managing editor of For The Church, and author of more than ten books, including Gospel Wakefulness, The Pastor’s Justification, and The Prodigal Church. You can follow him on Twitter at @jaredcwilson

Scott Fitzgerald 5/10/17 Scott Fitzgerald 5/10/17

Four Anchors in the Crucible of Pain

Last August I resigned my post as pastor for discipleship at a church I deeply loved. Uncertain if I would again land in a fulltime vocational expression of ministry, I accepted a job in the marketplace in an unfamiliar city with very unfamiliar people. A day before the orientation process began at my new job, I answered an emergency phone call that my 66-year-old father had fainted and was in need of an emergency quadruple bypass. Due to the severity of the situation, he was bumped up in the surgery queue and underwent the procedure on a Wednesday.

While in surgery, he suffered a septal-wall heart attack that caused his heart to endure ventricular fibrillations three times. His liver went into shock, his kidneys went into failure, his heart scarcely worked, and the doctors inserted a mechanical heart pump to sustain his life.

Now on full life support—with a ventilator to support his breathing, 24-hour dialysis to remove the waste from his body that was accumulating due to his failed kidneys, and the pump that was running his heart—the doctors induced medical paralysis and downgraded his condition from critical to grave.

I felt lost.

Prayer to Plea

What began for me as a simple prayer for Jesus to sustain my father on a Wednesday became, by Sunday, an all-out plea for the sovereign power of Christ over life and death.

Dad remained in a medically induced coma for 21 days. It was no small thing to see the strongest man I have ever known rendered utterly incapacitated by the failure of his own body. And in that hospital room, I hardly had time to process the disappointment and disillusionment of leaving ministry as a vocation.

My life was in need of an anchor, and like never before I felt as though all the anchors of familiarity I had held on to were now wrenched from their footings. Life for me felt very adrift.

In that place, my often repeated plea—“Come, Lord, Jesus!”—became my tutor, bringing me back to Romans 5:1–5, and tightening my grip on four anchors holding me in place in the crucible of pain.

Anchor #1 – Peace in the Person and Finished Work of Jesus

“Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). We all suffer this side of heaven, but in these moments we see that our pain does not shape the finished work of Jesus; rather, the finished work of Jesus shapes our suffering.

The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, who was faithful to finish the work his Father set before him, is the plan of restoration for God’s elect. This reconciling work transfers us from condemned enemies deserving of the full weight of God’s wrath to adopted sons and daughters who are inheriting an unblemished kingdom.

For the Christian, it is of utmost importance that we grasp this understanding of faith and how it not only secures our past, present, and future peace; it is our peace. The second coming of Christ will consummate a glorious new beginning in which evil, suffering, and death will be eradicated as far as the curse of sin is found. Our hope in that glorious day is intimately linked to the belief that Jesus has fully and perfectly justified us in his finished work in the here, in the now.

Anchor #2 – Peace in the Accessibility of God

“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2). Not only do we stand in all of the benefits that justification brings; we stand in Christ. We were justified in our embrace, by faith, of the justifier himself. This is unmerited, unwarranted, and unadulterated grace. This is what it means to be united with Christ.

Not only does our union with Christ affirm future promises of the restoration of all things, it also enables us to firmly stand in deep grace despite a world currently subjected to the curse of the fall, and in all of the daily insecurities and questions we will face along the way.

Anchor #3 – Peace Leading to Unfailing Hope

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom. 5:3–4). There is a peculiar way in which suffering shapes us. As we are united with Christ in his life, we are united with him in his sufferings as well, and as Hebrews 2:10 tells us, Christ was perfected through such hardships.

Suffering is a worker: it works for the good of God’s children (Rom. 8:28). We should expect no less; rather, we should pursue joy in the midst of pain, for God is using it to shape us into the image of Jesus.

Glorification awaits for when Christ returns to consummate all things under his rule and reign. And we long for this day! But we also take great hope in the present that he is transforming us from one degree of glory to another in the here-and-now (2 Cor. 3:18). Once again, as we are united with Christ even in our sufferings, it is Christ who is transforming us. And if it is Christ who is transforming us, then we have all we need, for we have all of Jesus.

Anchor #4 – Peace in the Presence of God Himself

“Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). Of all the anchors that held my soul in place in those critical moments of life, perhaps the strongest one was God’s commitment to give me all of himself.

God is the gospel—even in the pain. He is the one we get. He is the prize. He is the treasure. He is the everlasting anchor.

The Father sent his beloved Son to reconcile us to himself. Because of the Son’s work, we now have the Father. And because of the Father we have all of the Son. As if this was not enough, then the person of the Holy Spirit joins in to make the love and security of the triune godhead a reality inside of our hearts.

God gives all of himself to us so that, when it feels like all of life gives way and everything is desperate and unfamiliar, he is then my hope and stay.

As the old hymn says, “His oath, his covenant, his blood support me in the whelming flood; when all around my soul gives way”—when everything in life seems desperate and unfamiliar—“he then is all my hope and stay.”

Scott Fitzgerald is the Executive Pastor of Metro Church of Northwest Arkansas. He is currently pursuing his MDiv at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and blogs at thethrillofhope.com.

Grayson Pope 5/7/17 Grayson Pope 5/7/17

A Better Way to Find Leaders in the Church

With the fall of celebrity pastors becoming a normal part of life, many of us are wondering what's happening. Why is it that these men can build something so significant for the kingdom of God, yet fall into adultery, alcoholism, or narcissism? Their falls come at no small cost. As Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel have written,

"We live in the era of celebrity pastors whose platforms of influence stretch far beyond the walls of their local congregation, and who shake the earth when they fall off their pedestals."

In the wake of these collapses, we sound the alarm for more accountability and stronger community, and rightly so. None of these efforts appear to be working, though, as we see pastors and church leaders making the same mistakes time and time again. These events should drive us to reflect deeply on what is happening, and about how we find leaders in the church.

What if we're missing what's really going on? What if we're asking the wrong questions? And what if the fall of our pastors has at least as much to do with us as it does with them?

Goggin and Strobel suggest that's exactly what's happening. They go further to say that we as the Church need to take the log out of our own eye and start to see what's really going on. So what is going on?

AN INVERTED POWER STRUCTURE

Here again, Goggin and Strobel are provocative and insightful when they suggest,

"[T]he church has embraced a form of power that is antithetical to the way of Jesus, and her pastors stand on the front line of this destructive reality."

They go on to explain that the Church and her people have believed the same lie as Adam and Eve in the garden, that "dependence upon God is a place of scarcity and hindrance, while autonomy is a place of flourishing and fulfillment." Our culture and our church-culture in America lift up self-reliance and autonomy as cardinal virtues. These are prime examples of what it means to be successful, driven, and American.

Therefore, when pastors and leaders display these characteristics their vision and mission go forward unquestioned. The bolder, more powerful they seem, the more impervious to spiritual failure they seem, and the more they're praised. When their leadership results in “success,” they’re exalted for these character traits. But when they fall we scorn them for those very same traits.

As Goggin and Strobel write, it's time for the Church to see that,

“[T]he very narcissism, lust, and greed that has caused church leaders to fall is the same narcissism, lust, and greed that drove their ministries to 'succeed.”

They're talking about the fruit of the flesh here (Gal. 5:19-21). What they don't say is that these pastors simultaneously display many of the gifts of the Spirit. How can they display the gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the flesh at the same time?

CONFUSING SPIRITUAL GIFTS WITH SPIRITUAL FRUIT

I took a seminary class with Nik and Ruth Ripken where we talked mostly about the persecuted church, and their research findings (read this if you're unfamiliar with their story). As Nik started unpacking their findings related to leader selection in the church, he noted that some of those being persecuted experience the same problems with pastors that fall, either away from the faith or into moral failure.

But not all those in persecution experience this, and those that don't select their leaders much differently than we do in America. In the United States, we appoint leaders based on giftedness—speaking ability, charisma, knowledge, etc. But those believers thriving in persecution appoint leaders based on godliness. These believers choose leaders based on the fruit of the Spirit, not the gifts of the Spirit.

The problem with selecting leaders based on giftedness is that the presence and power of gifts don't guarantee godliness—but we assume they do. The danger in apparent giftedness is that it can fool us as to what's really going on in someone's heart.

Of course, if we were paying attention to the fruit of the Spirit in our leaders lives then we wouldn't be fooled. If we were looking closely, we would see that while some of our small group leaders or pastors appear to have the gift of leadership or teaching, they're also marked by lust, greed, narcissism, or arrogance. But in many cases we just don't see it. Why?

We confuse the gifts of the Spirit with the fruit of the Spirit. We assume that giftedness follows godliness. We assume their eloquence is preceded by gentleness, so we miss that they're abrasive in meetings. We assume their passion is preceded by joy, so we miss their inability to care what others have to say.

This blindness is misguided, though. Spiritual gifts don't qualify you for ministry, they simply tell you what to do. Spiritual fruit qualifies you for ministry. And the lack of that fruit disqualifies you.

A BETTER WAY TO FIND LEADERS IN THE CHURCH

There is a better, more biblical way to find leaders. A way that doesn't leave us stunned when our pastors fall because we were unable or unwilling to see what was really going on. Leaders found this way won't be without sin, and surely some of them will fall (even Jesus had Judas), but there will be less of them that pull the rug out from under the church and damage her witness. So how do we do it?

When looking for leaders, we must realize that it is a person's relationship with God that determines their Kingdom-effectiveness. We must prioritize the fruit of the Spirit over the gifts of the Spirit. We should look for those who are marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And if we don't see real evidence of the Spirit in their lives, we shouldn't let them near a leadership role—particularly a pastoral one.

Jesus kept his twelve disciples close for three years as he observed the fruit of their lives and ministry. Only at the end did he finally cut them loose, saying, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn. 15:15). Paul did the same with Timothy. Barnabas did the same with Paul.

Leaders in the Bible were commissioned after they had been tested and proven to display the fruit of the Spirit as they applied the gifts of the Spirit. They were surely gifted, but those gifts were preceded by their fruit. Once their lives gave sufficient evidence of the work of the Spirit, then they were ready to enter into leadership.

This is why 1 Timothy and Titus list qualities like being "sober-minded" and "self-controlled." The only thing listed in 1 Timothy 3:2-7 considered a gift or skill is being "able to teach." The rest are character traits that flow out of a life marked by the fruit of the Spirit.

A better way to find leaders in the Church is to look for leaders whose gifts are nested in their fruit. Leaders who display the fruit of the Spirit as they exercise the gifts of the Spirit. But to do it, we'll have to crucify our desire to build our kingdom, and instead focus on building his.

Grayson Pope is a husband and father of three, as well the Managing Web Editor at GCD. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship and has earned a MACS at The Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. For more of his writing check out his website, or follow him on Twitter.

The Biblical Mandate

Own your affluence

Spend time with the poor

Open your home

Move to the "poor part of town"

Cultivate church gatherings that welcome the poor

Throw a party

Use your affluence for influence

What does it mean to be persecuted for righteousness?

Have we been persecuted for righteousness?

Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

God’s Heart

“This is my beloved Son”

Our Response

HARMFUL WORLDWIDE PRACTICES

Tell me your story!

– Listening well to people’s stories means listening with the gospel story in mind.

– Once we have listened well, we can begin to speak gospel truth into their story in a way they can understand and will hear.

Ask Questions…And Actually Listen

Speak the Gospel

How transformation happens

Make every effort

Lack of Exercise

Doing and Sanctification

How obedience to Christ brings freedom

GOD’S MISSION; THIS CULTURE

POINTING OUR CULTURE TO THE ONE TRUE ANSWER

[1] Lloyd-Jones, Martyn, D. Spiritual Depression: Its causes and its cures. 1965.

Relate

Relationship with God

[1] Tony Reinke, “Six Wrong Reasons to Check Your Phone in the Morning: And a Better Way Forward,” Desiring God, June 6, 2015, http://www.desiringgod.org/articles /six-wrong-reasons-to-check-your-phone-in-the-morning.

[2] Dave Kraft, Leaders Who Last (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 95–96.

[3] Cited in James C. Hunter, The World’s Most Powerful Leadership Principle (New York: Crown Business, 2004), 141.

Jesus and the Straitjacket

Gospel-Informed Generosity

An Invitation to Gospel-Centered Generosity

Ask Your High Priest for Help

3 Ways Jesus’s Priestly Work Destroys Soul-Fatigue

– Jesus prays for you.

– Jesus “gets” you.

– Jesus helps you.

Run to Jesus

Three Ways Sin Attacks

Flaws in All Three Categories

Is One Category More Helpful Than Another?

Caught in the Current

Help us God. We are drowning!

Heed the Warning Signs

An Invitation to Swim in Another Current

[1] The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon, Vol. 1, 1834–1854 (Cincinnati, OH: Curts and Jennings, 1898), 106.

Prayer to Plea

Anchor #1 – Peace in the Person and Finished Work of Jesus

Anchor #2 – Peace in the Accessibility of God

Anchor #3 – Peace Leading to Unfailing Hope

Anchor #4 – Peace in the Presence of God Himself

AN INVERTED POWER STRUCTURE

CONFUSING SPIRITUAL GIFTS WITH SPIRITUAL FRUIT

A BETTER WAY TO FIND LEADERS IN THE CHURCH

Everything GCD offers—in one place.

For Pastors and Ministry Leaders

Articles

Books

Cohorts

Newsletter

For Everyday Disciples

Articles

Books

Newsletter

For Writers

Writers' Guild

Article Submissions