God’s Sovereignty Prepares Us to Proclaim Hope

Matthew 28:19 and 1 Peter 3:15 are two verses that have launched a thousand personal evangelism programs. I’ve participated in enough of them to learn I’m terrible at almost all of them. But a recent encounter on an airplane reminded me that when we take an overly prescriptive approach to disciple-making conversations, we fall prey to the mistaken belief that they’re more complicated or difficult than what God actually has in mind. I was flying home after attending a business planning conference related to my consulting work. I had arrived at the conference full of ideas and optimism about all I was going to accomplish. But I was leaving it demoralized and full of doubt. I stood in line waiting to board my flight home, wondering what God had intended the four days away from my family to be for.

THAT AWKWARD MOMENT WHEN YOU TELL YOUR SEAT-MATE YOU’RE A CHRISTIAN

I exchanged the usual pleasantries with my seat neighbor as you do when you’re trying to deftly maneuver your person and your stuff into your allotted space without violating theirs. We continued our small talk as the plane took off.

Fred and I had many things in common. We were both married and raising kids. We were both self-employed, navigating circumstances where hopes and expectations were exceeding actual outcomes. Almost without thinking, I steered the conversation towards the spiritual roots of our collective frustration, describing myself as a Christian who was wrestling deeply with Silicon Valley’s determination to define humanity in merely technological terms when we were created to be so much more.

Fred’s posture shifted at my statement. “I’m  a Christian too!” he said, with hushed excitement. “ I go to the evening service at this little Episcopal church where there are, like, twelve other people. I’ve been reading my Bible every day for the past fifteen months. I just finished the book of Colossians (he pronounced it “Colloh-see-ans”), and now I’m reading the Old Testament. But I’m having a hard time sorting all the names and events out—it’s complicated!”

MORE THAN A “CHANCE” ENCOUNTER

For the next ninety minutes, until we were on the ground and getting ready to deplane, Fred and I talked nonstop about God, the Bible, and the gospel. Our conversation weaved its way through topics like:

• Luke 24:26 and how the most helpful way to read through the Old Testament is to find how people and events point to Jesus.
• Boaz as a case study, not just as a practical story about how to be a better businessperson in a broken world, but how the stories of where he’d come from, what he did, and who his descendants became were an integral part of, and pointer to the story of, his greatest descendant, Jesus Christ.
• The differences between Genesis one and two and how humans are unique in all of God’s creative work because of the manner in which humans were made, and that Adam was the real person who ushered in creation’s greatest problem, just as Jesus is a real person who came to redeem and restore it.
• The thief on the cross, who died knowing the most important thing (that we’re all—to quote Fred, “dirty wretches who need forgiveness”), and the blessing we have in pursuing the implications of what that means for us (otherwise known as regeneration, justification, and sanctification—for a lot of reasons, I chose not to use those words).
• Bible translations and study Bibles, including how many there are, and how to discern what’s inspired (the text) and what’s not (the notes).
• What Bible reading actually is; not just intellectual study, but active listening to the voice of God speaking to us, and giving us the power to understand and respond to it. How Fred could help his wife, who was slightly behind him in his journey, to hear God’s voice as he shared with her all that the Bible was helping him to understand.

Engrossed in our conversation, the jolt of the plane’s wheels bouncing down on the tarmac startled us both. “You’re like a library of knowledge!” Fred exclaimed as we started to gather our things. “It’s like God sent you to me just to answer all these questions!”

I demurred with a laugh at the first half of his statement, but wholeheartedly agreed about the second. I hadn’t shared too many details about the immediate circumstances that had brought me to the seat next to his on the airplane.

After we said our goodbye’s and God-bless-you’s, I walked through the terminal to catch my connecting flight home. My thoughts turned to the broader circumstances of my own journey of faith, and how so much of my personal study from the last several years, and even months,  found its way into our conversation, and how God brought all of it together for that single conversation.

PREPARING TO PROCLAIM MY FAITH

As a fifth generation Reformed Baptist pastor’s kid and Bible college graduate, I’d been steeped in the vocabulary and grammar of theology and doctrine practically from birth. But God had used marriage and the challenges of motherhood to first upend everything I thought I knew about the gospel, then lay it all back down so it finally moved from my mind to my heart, and then to the rest of me. I read book after book to make sense of what God was doing in me, and I wrote to work it into my heart and out into my everyday life.

I read John Piper’s Finally Alive and David Needham’s book Birthright , which together helped me understand the glorious “on-the-ground” implications of what had formerly been dusty ideas. Then The Ongoing Feast by Arthur A. Just, Jr. left me with a particular and permanent love for Luke twenty-four as a launch point for a Christocentric Old Testament hermeneutic.

As my daughters grew out of their toddler years and into girlhood, I became interested in the idea of biblical womanhood. Hannah Anderson’s Made for More coached me in the topic, and her writing, along with Wendy Alsup’s, helped me navigate the twists and turns of the biblical womanhood conversation (along with a lot of processing through my own writing about the imago dei, gender, and Genesis one through three).

This summer, my pastor lead a group of women, including myself, through a ten-week class on principles of Biblical hermeneutics using the book of Ruth and Paul Miller’s layperson-level commentary as our texts. So I studied more, and I wrote more.

Many Christians I respect would have invested the time spent shuffling my way onto the plane that day in a more sanctified way than I had, perhaps praying for who they were going meet and for opportunities to share the gospel. I was in a far less holy frame of mind. I’d been turning over some things I learned through my study of Ruth, and indulging my mind in a kind of holy pity-party over some perceived slights I’d experienced by way of several male colleagues during my meetings. I was far from the frame of mind that would be preparing for a “Philip and the Ethiopian”-style conversation with a stranger.

And yet God had been preparing me for it. For years.

THE CONTEXT OF GODLY PREPARATION

We often forget that the context in which Peter expects us to be asked about our hope in Christ isn’t a shopping mall or a front porch, but suffering. I wasn’t walking onto that plane having experienced anything like real suffering—just some slights that may not even have been intentional. Yet hope was the last thing I was feeling.

But in the process of shoring up a brother’s growing faith, God gave me renewed hope for my own. Not because I had any evidence that my circumstances were going to change, but by reminding me that the work he was doing in Fred, and thew work he was doing in and through me as we talked, was of far greater and lasting significance than any earthly work I thought I had been traveling to accomplish.

Fred wasn’t the kind of conversation partner I’d been taught to think of in Matthew 28:19 seminars. He was already committed to being a disciple of Jesus. But his commitment was generating some questions—really important ones—and he needed help to uncover the answers from God’s Word for himself. And in God’s sovereignty and timing, that’s what God helped me to offer him.

We often spend our daily time in God’s Word focused on how it will work in us, or in the families and friends closest to us. But in our study and in our prayers, we can also ask God to work through his Word in us, so that, whenever and however the time comes, we’ll be ready to take what he’s taught us in the past to bring the hope of Christ to someone in the here and now.

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Rachael Starke has lived and worked in Silicon Valley for over 18 years. She writes about the intersection of the gospel with technology, gender, food, and other cultural artifacts. You can connect with her on Twitter, LinkedIn or her blog. 

How Thrill Seeking Relates to Disciple-Making

Imagine this: a gorgeous, snow-capped mountain overlooking a range of other peaks covered with pine trees, carrying a magical sense of awe and wonder. Perhaps a bird soars effortlessly in the background, and a girl sits at the peak, snuggled under an Aztec blanket holding a coffee mug. Have you seen this photo? I have too. Probably fifteen different times. The baffling thing is how it continues to evoke a sense of longing within my soul every time I see it. I’m drawn to nature in a way that makes my heart beat faster, my soul sing louder, and my flesh desire deeper.

I’m not alone in this. My generation is enthralled with traveling the world, fighting for meaningful causes, and seeking fulfillment in adventure.

ETERNITY IS WRITTEN ON OUR HEARTS

This desire has been intentionally and beautifully stirred inside of us.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 sings in my soul as I reflect on our unattainable longing for more.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Instead of letting the Lord gloriously reveal himself to us, though, we’ve grabbed onto our ideas of eternity and created realities out of them. We do it in church, at universities, even in business.

And quite honestly, I’m overwhelmed with how many movements, upgrades, and “once in a lifetime” experiences exist. The need for everything to be a necessity, a guarantee for life-changing transformation, is exhausting and unrealistic.

Have we left behind patience for God’s movement and instead created our own?

REACHING BEYOND OUR GRASP

Our longing for more may be leading us to build up experiences so high and mighty that we're trying to reach God's height.

I’m not setting myself against this persona. I can very much be classified with the majority in this. But the difference I hope to make is not to kill dreams, but to purify and purpose them.

Our churches and ministries are either full or void of young people, and the ones that are there are probably consumed with this zeal for adventure. What do we do with them? As disciple-makers, we should learn to come alongside this culture (inside and outside the church) and witness for Jesus.

More specifically, we must find ways to challenge the spirit of worshiping creation over Creator. The photo of the girl on the mountain stirs a desire to go see the mountains, but also to feel that wonder and awe. We’re not just idolizing the physical mountain; we’re idolizing experience and the emotional thrill that comes with it.

A recognition of the object of our worship would actually refocus how we seek fulfillment. In this we are led to redefine what fulfillment is, and discover the omnipresence of God.

I remember hearing the term “mountain top experience” in youth group, and at summer camp we would come home with  “camp high." The term was used to describe the heightened awareness of God at work within us. Every time I heard it, though, I was a little frightened that I may lose track of his presence. We all tried to doubt and dismiss the idea until a few weeks later we were left slightly disappointed with the normalcy of life.

It’s natural to elevate a time or experience that’s especially impactful to our spiritual well-being. It’s not good to expect that every day.

COMING DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN TOP EXPERIENCE

In my younger years, I think the crashing reality of this mountain top experience was helpful in encouraging me to build healthy spiritual disciplines. I was drawn to pray for God to not leave me, I was inspired to remind myself of his character through his Word, and I was provoked to ask older and wiser friends how they would deal with this disappointment. The cultivation of these very necessary Christian principles showed me how my faith could be sustainable in normal life.

As much as I wanted to live at summer camp forever, I knew that was not a possibility. The daily search for Jesus was attainable, however, and that sense of awe and hunger for more helped train me to look for Jesus in my local surroundings. This has been so vital to my faith that I don’t know if I’d still be walking with him had I not learned.

However, it still cost me disappointment when I saw people growing faster or deeper than I was. It also cost me a lot of time that was seemingly worthless at the moment. But the most costly was the deep grief I felt when others didn’t understand what God was doing inside me. I haven’t grown out of these costs, and I still have to endure their price as I walk forward in faith.

I’ve learned, though, that daily and weekly practices like Bible reading, prayer, and living in community with the church are some of the most influential tools in carving out intimacy with Jesus. The costs revealed that no community, mentor, or experience compares to knowing Jesus. And I know him better because of my daily practice of acknowledging his presence.

MY SPIRITUAL HIGH IN THE LAND DOWN UNDER

I spent a short time of my life living in Australia. My season there was marked by the deepest union I’ve ever felt with God. I could physically see mountains, but I also felt that spiritual high I referred to earlier.

I remember one night I was praying and reading Scripture on my bed, and I noticed a warm glow outside my window. I walked over to the window and peered out into the darkness. Flickering stars covered the sky with dazzling light while the moon was a perfect crescent shape framing the sky, producing a remarkable glow. My breath was literally knocked out of me, and warm tears blurred the scene in my eyes.

My physical response was weak compared to the way this moment impacted me spiritually and emotionally, however. One of my greatest friends always quotes Psalm 19:1 which reads, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” I couldn’t ignore the powerful declaration of God’s glory because my eyes were witnessing it in the skies. This verse came to life.

God is the most magnificent artist, and his earth manifests the work of his hands. When we witness this, our hearts are moved to worship with an incomparable fullness. It’s a heavenly fullness, one spoken of in Ecclesiastes 3:11.

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM ELIJAH’S MOUNTAIN TOP HIGH

This same heavenly fullness was experienced by Elijah when he was on a mountain.

And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. —1 Kings 19:11-12

Elijah experienced the mountain top high, am I right? This movement of God is not to be downplayed or ignored. When the world around us is quiet enough for us to listen, we become divinely aware of God. It’s in these moments that we hear the Spirit gently speak to our hearts, and remind us that we have been created for eternity.

The peak of the mountain doesn’t compare to the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s a sliver of a glimpse, but it can’t be manufactured by mankind. We can’t stir the Holy Spirit with our overdone methods and strategies; we have to trust and remember that the Spirit is who stirs us.

HOW THRILL SEEKING RELATES TO DISCIPLE-MAKING

This wave of thrill seeking, adventure, and passion to change the world is moving people to do more than they ever have. It’s challenging people to venture outside their comfort zones and to think beyond their normal capacity. It’s a trend inside and outside the church, and it has the potential to be incredibly helpful to both.

However, if we aren’t producing healthy, loving, disciple-makers then these sentiments and actions will only fall flat. Our first and foremost pursuit must be loving God. Things will begin to crumble if we aren’t intentional about this first pursuit. It can’t be the spiritual high, new experiences, or even service. The fruit of our labor is only a result of loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind. That’s where fulfillment is found, and that’s where transformation begins.

Ask those you disciple, your community, and yourself questions like these:

• If I was called to invest in one community for a decade, would that be enough?
• What do you spend most of your time praying for/ about?
• How do you define fulfillment? Do the ways you find fulfillment point you to God, or do they simply leave you wanting to chase another experience?

We are created to seek fulfillment in God, not this world or the experiences it has to offer. When we become vulnerable to the incompleteness of us, we become aware of the very complete presence of God.

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Chelsea Vaughn (@chelsea725) is currently living in Nashville but has spent time in Texas, Thailand, and Australia. Obviously travel is a passion, along with hours in the kitchen or across the table from good friends. She does freelance writing, editing, and speaking for various organizations and non-profits. She hopes to spend her life using her gift for communication to reach culture and communities with the love of Jesus. You can read all of Chelsea’s article here.

The Baffling Call of God

August 5, 2014 was the darkest Tuesday of my life. My mother, critically ill with the Ebola virus, was returning from Liberia to the United States for treatment that we hoped would save her life. The previous ten days had been a whirlwind of emotion. On July 26 my father had called late in the evening from Monrovia to say that mom had contracted the disease. She was serving as a nurse’s assistant in the isolation unit of a mission organization hospital when she became ill. Since Ebola was becoming an epidemic in West Africa, international news media quickly inundated us with requests for information regarding my mother’s condition and the family’s response.

I had placed it in my mind that mom would—like so many overseas missionaries before her—lose her life to a foreign disease. We’d been told there was no possibility of transport from the small house where she was being isolated to a first-world medical facility capable of better fighting the virus.

So it was a great surprise when we learned that she would be medically evacuated to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. She was due to arrive on August 5.

THE RIGHT WORDS FOR THE MOMENT

As my father and I spoke during the time between mom’s diagnosis and her transport and arrival in Atlanta, he shared how timely and encouraging Oswald Chambers’s devotional had been to him. He would read My Utmost For His Highest outside the bedroom window of the house where my mother was growing more and more ill, and it would sustain his heart through the gravity of the situation.

When my brother and I arrived in Atlanta we too began to read Chambers’s meditations along with some close friends. On the morning of August 5, as we awaited mom’s nationally televised arrival and transport to Emory, we read the entry titled “The Baffling Call of God.”

Confident of God’s call on my parents to serve Him in Africa, I was baffled by what they were enduring for the sake of the needy there. Furthermore, as I dealt with my own weary and broken heart, I was baffled at what God was doing in my own life. None of it made sense.

It all seemed like failure—and the conclusion of the matter would be death. I could relate to the disciples when they heard about Jesus’s mission to go to the cross: “They understood none of these things” (Luke 18:34 ESV).

THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS

We live in a cause-and-effect world, so trials and suffering bear down on us in ways we would never imagine. We desire—we insist on—lives that are clear-cut and explainable. We hate it when circumstances we can't control threaten our comfort and security.

When hardships, suffering, and trials hit our lives, our faith can be jolted deeply. It’s not uncommon for sufferers to bellow out to God, “Why?” And yet Jesus “led every one of [His disciples] to the place where their hearts were broken.”

Suffering feels like failure, like complete and utter defeat. The world calls it foolish.

From a certain perspective Jesus’s life looks a lot like this. As he left his family and carpentry trade at the age of thirty to begin an itinerant preaching ministry, he confused his family. They heard the reports of His ministry and miracles and concluded, “He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21).

He labored for the kingdom of God without a place to lay his head or call home (Luke 9:58). His teaching became difficult to understand, and the number of those who followed him dwindled (John 6:66). As he confronted the religious establishment, he created powerful enemies who sought to have him killed (Matthew 26:59). One of His own friends and followers betrayed him for a small sum of money. He was slandered, beaten, abused, mocked, rejected, unjustly tried, and ultimately executed as a criminal, in shame and disgrace.

The cross is foolishness if the “Savior of the world” hangs dead upon it.

FOOLISHNESS TURNED TRIUMPHANT WISDOM

Yet, from another perspective—the biblical one—we can see our sufferings in another light. The apostle Paul called the cross the wisdom and power of God. He saw from God’s standpoint a “tremendous triumph.”

Through the suffering and death of Jesus we have one who can stand in our place for our sins—and take them away. We have one who can mediate on our behalf and reconcile us to God. We have one who, by laying down His own life, won righteousness, peace, and life for us. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Following the utter defeat of the cross, the powerful resurrection of Jesus on the third day verified, vindicated, and validated all the suffering he endured for our sake. “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:12–14 ESV).

BAFFLED BY OUR SUFFERING

This leads us back to our own trials. The Scriptures show us we should not be surprised by “the fiery ordeal” (1 Peter 4:12). The Christian life is one that includes persecution (2 Timothy 3:12). We can expect difficulty and trials as marks of discipline from the hand of a heavenly Father who loves us and longs for us to be mature and complete (James 1:2–4, Hebrews 12:5–11). Suffering is a mark of the Christian life.

Still, like so many in the world today, we want to know the reason behind it.

But the gospel allows us to move ahead without having all the answers, without knowing perfectly the purposes of God. This doesn’t mean we can’t ask the "why" question or ponder the bigger picture; we simply become, as Chambers states, “less inclined to say—‘Now why did God allow this and that?’”

If we see the goodness of God in the seemingly foolish decision to send his Son to die on our behalf, then we can embrace his call to what may feel like an “unmitigated disaster” in our own lives.

CAN I TRUST GOD?

This is what the whole of faith truly boils down to: Can I trust God?

If we affirm that God is trustworthy and does all things for His glory and our good, then we can live with an unparalleled freedom to receive both the triumphs and the trials of life from his gracious hand. If all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28), then we are liberated from having to hold all the answers in our own hands.

The baffling call of God, although it can bewilder us, is ultimately a safe and rewarding call. It’s a release from the ever-present desire to control and maintain all things by our own power. It means I can be a child, safe in the hands of an omnipotent and gracious God, and he will lead me through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4).

Whatever God may have planned for my future—whatever he may have planned for your future—he is working out his purposes.

THE LEISURELINESS OF FAITH

As the air ambulance carrying my mother landed at Dobbins Air Reserve Base outside Atlanta on August 5, I could only wonder at the baffling call of God. The aims of God’s work and call in the life of my family were not clear. The anguish and turmoil of our hearts swelled as we became a public spectacle of suffering. My parents’ mission to Liberia looked like an utter failure.

And yet, in God’s hands and by his power, we could trust his great purposes. As a child of God I could cling to his mercy and ask for his grace in my pain. I could trust “the wits and the wisdom” of God, to use Chambers’s phrase, that ultimately everything would be okay—even if that meant my mother’s death.

I could even trust God’s baffling call when mom’s health made an incredible turn for the better. I could rest with joy when God healed her of the terrible Ebola virus. I could trust his providence when he called my parents back to Liberia—back to the mission—even when others might argue the cost was too great.

I can walk with a leisureliness of faith because what looks like failure to the world is, from God’s perspective, the fragrance of life.

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Taken from Utmost Ongoing: Reflections on the Legacy of Oswald Chambers, © 2017 by Discovery House. Used by permission of Discovery House, Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.

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.

How Foster Care and Adoption Shine the Light of the Gospel

It was 2:30 a.m. when we received the call. After months of training, house inspections, CPR certifications, and background checks, we were finally approved to be foster parents. Half asleep, my wife answered the phone. A five-year-old girl had been rescued from the hospital and was in need of a home, so we agreed to take her. About an hour later, a little girl with pink pajamas and a teddy bear was fast asleep in our living room. My wife and I gazed with a nervous excitement at this child who was now in our care. Had we made the right choice? Were we really qualified? All we knew was this little soul had been through a lot. She was exhausted. She missed her mom. She needed to be loved. She needed Jesus.

Oftentimes, the most meaningful things in life are also the most difficult, and caring for children in need is no exception. There are long and challenging days. Sometimes I’m tempted to quit and just go back to “normal.” Not having this child might make the day somewhat easier, but what a great opportunity to show the love of Christ to a family in need.

FOSTERING AND ADOPTION REFLECT THE GOSPEL

Is it hard to get attached to a child only to have them removed a few months later? Absolutely, but the same Christ who gave his life for others also empowers us to do the same. On my own, I lack the strength to be a foster parent, and often it’s more than I can bear. “Perfect” foster parents simply do not exist.

However, the Lord’s grace is sufficient for each day, and he won’t ask us to do something he doesn’t equip us to do. He takes unqualified, imperfect people and uses them for his glory.

Caring for orphans through foster care and adoption is such a beautiful picture of the gospel that Scripture often uses it as an illustration. “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!’” (Romans 8:15). In Ephesians 1:5, we are told that God “predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.”

Basically, you and I were born in sin, an enemy of God, thus an object of his wrath. God was under no obligation to do anything for us and could have let us slide into eternity without him. Yet, even though he didn’t have to, he called a people to himself. John 1:12 states, “But to all who did received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…” When God adopts us, it is at that point we can call ourselves children of God. He, by his grace, has brought us into his family. Now, we can call him Father.

FOSTERING AND ADOPTION ARE FRUITS OF THE GOSPEL

Not only is foster care and adoption a picture of the gospel, it is also a fruit of the gospel. When the gospel changes a person’s heart, that person now looks not to their own needs, but to the needs of others. We begin to see the needs of those around us and we are burdened by them. James 1:27 says it like this: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction…” Fostering and adopting are one of the many avenues we have to care for orphans.

A CHANCE TO SHINE THE LIGHT OF CHRIST

There are many children in need of a home. Some need permanent homes while others need temporary homes. This is an area where the church can make a difference in their community and shine the light of Jesus Christ. David Platt, president of International Mission Board and a former pastor in Alabama, tells this story:

"One day I called up the Department of Human Resources in Shelby County, Alabama, where our church is located, and asked, 'How many families would you need in order to take care of all the foster and adoption needs that we have in our county?'

The woman I was talking to laughed.

I said, 'No, really, if a miracle were to take place, how many families would be sufficient to cover all the different needs you have?'

She replied, 'It would be a miracle if we had 150 more families.'

When I shared this conversation with our church, over 160 families signed up to help with foster care and adoption. We don’t want even one child in our county to be without a loving home. It’s not the way of the American Dream. It doesn’t add to our comfort, prosperity, or ease. But we are discovering the indescribable joy of sacrificial love for others, and along the way we are learning more about the inexpressible wonder of God’s sacrificial love for us."

What a testimony of God’s people! What a picture of the power of the gospel! This is the church being the church. Can you imagine the impact to the surrounding community? Not only were they ministering to those children, they were ministering to all in that county who had heard that there were no more children in the system.

TEN WAYS YOU CAN GET INVOLVED

Are you willing to pray about your role in helping the children in your areas? Not everyone will be able to invite a child into their home, but we all can contribute. Here are some ways you can be involved:

• Pray
• Become a foster parent
• Adopt a child through the Foster Care System
• Encourage those who are fostering/adopting
• Provide Respite Care (those who are trained and certified to babysit)
• Financially support and/or raise funds
• Help raise awareness of those in need
• Become a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) volunteer
• Volunteer on a local Foster Care Review Board
• Talk with the local schools about needs of enrolled foster children

Would you consider where you might be willing to help? Would you commit to do something, no matter how small it may seem? Yes, it may require sacrifice. Yes, it could be difficult. And yes, you will likely get attached. But, that’s what it means to minister to others.

We die to ourselves so that others might live, just like our Savior.

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James Williams has served as an Associate Pastor at FBC Atlanta, TX for four years. He is married to Jenny and they currently have four children in their home (three biological, one in foster care). He is in the dissertation stage of a PhD in Systematic Theology. You can follow James on Twitter or his church's blog where he writes regularly.

Be Like Me: Discipleship's Roots in the Rabbinic Tradition

The last words of Jesus contained the command to “make disciples” (Matthew 28:19). The implication of this command is multiplication; followers of Jesus are expected to make new disciples. Christians today are descendants of disciples who made disciples. But how many churchgoers have been exposed to an intentional discipleship process? How many church leaders have an actual plan for making disciples? Or do many of us just stumble into it? Is there a model we can follow?

A CLOSER WALK

After I made a public confession of faith in Jesus, my youth minister would try to meet for lunch several times a month, go through a book study, and discuss what we learned.

But the thing I remember most was him pushing me toward a closer walk with Jesus. Teaching me how he applied Scripture to his life; how he was attempting to live like Christ.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t ready for anything deeper at the time; I was too immature. But over time, those lessons caught up to me.

A few years later, one of my pastors and his wife spent significant time with me. I saw them raise their kids and shepherd a church. Some of the lessons I learned previously were being modeled on a deeper level.

During this time I began to sense a calling to ministry, and they helped guide that call. That pastor also gave me my first full-time church position, and I joined his staff in Texas.

Even as a pastor, he continued to disciple me, though I don’t think we ever called it that. We spent time together and I learned how to shepherd people through his example, and by going along with him as he did it.

At this church, I began a friendship with a young man in our college ministry. He was still faithful while many of his friends were away at school or had dropped out of church.

We started working out together in my garage. This went on for several years before I realized it was discipleship.

He would see me interact with my family, talk about church life, talk about his work and his vocational call. I didn’t even see it as discipleship until another staff member asked what material we were working through in our discipleship meetings.

We weren’t working through any material, just sharing our lives. Our meetings expanded to include another young man and soon there were three or four of us. I had the privilege of sharing life with these young men over the last three years I was at the church. These relationships have even extended over ten years and 500 miles. What I discovered is that this informal plan of discipleship is connected to the models we are given in the New Testament.

LIVED GOSPEL TRADITION

I recently re-read a little book, The Origins of the Gospel Traditions by Birger Gerhardsson, a distillation of two of his earlier works. He discusses how rabbis would pass down their teachings to their students and how faithful these students were to commit them to memory.

As I was reading, I noticed how the process of discipleship has been passed down from the rabbis through Jesus and Paul; there is much we can learn from this process.

The first five books of the Bible are known as the Torah in Hebrew. Torah means “instruction.” Great importance was given to the study of the laws and commands of the Torah.

To learn the Torah one must go to a teacher. Students would then flock around teachers. Such a group became something of an extended family. The teacher was the spiritual father, the students his spiritual children.

They spent time with him, followed him, and served him. Students would learn much of the tradition by listening—to their teacher and his more advanced students.

They learned by posing questions and making contributions of their own within the bounds prescribed by modesty and etiquette. But they also learned a great deal by simply observing: with attentive eyes, they saw all the teacher did, then proceeded to imitate him. The Torah is above all a holy, authoritative attitude toward life. Students can then learn by simply watching and imitating those who are educated.

The Talmud is the collection of the exposition of the Torah by the great rabbis of Judaism. In the Talmud ,the teachings of the great rabbis were preserved, but so were their actions: “I saw rabbi so-and-so do thus and so.”

The rabbinical tradition preserved examples of how bright and eager students followed their teachers’ actions even in the most private situations, motivated by the belief that “this has to do with Torah, and I want to learn!” This includes a humorous story of students hiding in a rabbi’s bedroom because they wanted to learn the Torah in that “situation.”

TORCHES LIGHTING TORCHES

Seeking to preserve their teachings on the Torah, the rabbis were not only interested in what Gerhardsson calls the “cramming and mechanical recitation” of their teaching. They were very conscious of the importance of comprehending and personally applying what had been impressed upon one’s mind. For this reason they carried on an energetic struggle against lifeless knowledge.

According to the rabbis, a disciple shouldn’t be a dead receptacle for received tradition. Rather, a student should enter into a discipleship relationship so that he or she understands and is in agreement with it. Only that way can they actually live according to it, be a faithful steward of it, and pass it on to others in an infectious way.

A living bearer of the tradition is to be like a torch that has been lit by an older torch, in order that it might itself light others.

Paul picks up this mantle of rabbinic discipleship, seeing himself as a spiritual father to those who have been won for the gospel (1 Corinthians 4:17; Philemon 10). He encourages his congregations to be imitators of him in all respects, even as he himself is an imitator of Christ (1 Corinthians 4:16, 11:1; 1 Thessalonians 1:6; 2 Thessalonians 3:7).

The life of imitation comes into being when obedient disciples receive (and pattern their lives according to) the instruction of their teacher. After his admonishment to “be imitators of me,” Paul follows with this statement:

“For this reason I am sending to you Timothy… He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church” (1 Corinthians 4:17).

When Paul speaks of “my ways” he is referring to patterns of his life and teachings. Imitating Paul means receiving and living according to the teaching he proclaimed in all his congregations. Paul isn’t just passing down oral or written teaching, but the very way he lives.

We see this fleshed out even more in Philippians 4:9: “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice.”

The Philippians were even told to look in their own community for imitators of Paul: “Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you” (Philippians 3:17).

Paul is passing down a tradition of rabbinic discipleship. Just as the rabbis gathered students and passed on both instruction in the Torah and a lifestyle that exemplifies the Torah, Paul exhorts his followers to not only hold fast to his teaching, but to imitate his lifestyle as well.

BE LIKE ME

We see that for the rabbis and Paul, discipleship is not a program or a book study to take someone through, but an opportunity to live out their teaching (in Paul’s case, the gospel) in front of students, encouraging them to follow along. It might seem deeply personal and time-consuming, but it is the model we have been given.

While I was sharing life with these young men, I was tempted to feel bad because we didn’t go through organized study material. But we were already involved in Sunday School, corporate worship, and other activities.

Instead, our discipleship was allowing them to observe me applying the lessons of Scripture to my life and to speak into issues in their lives.

If you are walking with someone who is not currently involved in any kind of Bible instruction, by all means, incorporate that. But more importantly, let your people see how you apply those lessons to your life.

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Bill Victor works for the Missouri Baptist Convention as a team member of the Making Disciples Group. He helped start Missio Dei, a campus ministry at the University of Missouri. He is currently an adjunct professor of New Testament at Liberty University’s School of Divinity and Regent University. He also has worked in various pastoral roles.

Four Critical Values for Pastoral Accountability

Let’s face it. If a pastor's accountability isn't in the local church, it's probably not real accountability. It's the illusion of accountability so we can traffic in the vocabulary without the entanglements of the substance. Here’s the problem: Not everyone is clear on what they mean when they use the word "accountability." Let me suggest four specific values we should seek to experience in accountability of plurality.

• Intentionality
• Self Disclosure
• Approachability
• Appeal

Below we’ll look a bit at each of these values. But before we do, there is one overarching principle we must never overlook. If you want to know the secret underlying the kind of loving accountable relationships where elders grow more in love with Jesus, their wife and their ministry, it’s humility. That’s right, humility.

AN IMPORTANT WORD ON HUMILITY

Humility is the oil that lubricates the engine of plurality. When one considers all of the polity options God could have chosen for governing churches, I theorize that God chose plurality because he loves humility.  And plurality can’t work without humility because in plurality, God imposes a governing structure that can’t be effective without embodying humble values. God loves unity, so he calls us to plurality where we must humbly persevere with one another to function effectively. God loves making us holy, so he unites us to men who will make us grow. God loves patience, so he imposes a way of governing that requires humble listening and a trust that God is working in the lives of others.

God has decided the church will be governed in ways that value both the ends and the means. That is, God values decision making, but he also values the way we relate to each other in the decision making process. We often think what’s “best” in polity is what’s most efficient, easiest, or most effective way of doing something. Instead, God’s best way is whatever is the most beautiful way. The standard of beauty is God, specifically the interplay of his own unity, diversity, and harmony. God throws together diverse men with different gifts who have strong opinions and then insists upon their unity. This does not always look or feel “beautiful”. But God still charges elders to lead the church. As they lead, they are also called to grow in their exercise of authority as they remain mutually accountable and responsible to one another. The only hope for such a dynamic to exist in a group is for us to make humility our aim.

But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. (Isaiah 66:2)

God made healthy plurality dependent upon accountability because he loves humility. Now we’ll turn our attention to the four values of accountability, the first one being "intentionality."

FOUR CRITICAL VALUES FOR ACCOUNTABILITY

Intentionality means I will have some defined, regular and consistent context in my life where guys who know me can encourage me, pray for me, and understand my patterns of temptation. It’s saying, “I love my wife enough, my family enough, the church enough and fear God enough, that I’m actually going to define the contexts for my accountability. And rather than sharing in a generic manner, or in vague generalities, or using amoral words to remove any sense of my own moral agency, I’m going to ensure they know me all the way down to where I am most tempted. This way they can pray for me, encourage my growth, and ask about how I’m doing.” We must press down into all the areas that could potentially detonate our family or ministry and define when and where these will be discussed. That’s intentionality.

Self-disclosure means while you are always welcome to inquire about my soul, it is not your job to investigate my life, my sin or my temptations. Self-disclosure brings forth humility by making it our responsibility to humbly open our souls to those to whom we are accountable. Fellow elders are not prosecuting attorneys cross-examining your life. Instead, you are a witness to your own life, sharing truthfully, freely, and happily with little or no provocation. In Christ, we have God’s self-disclosure (John 1:18). Jesus is God moving towards us making himself known. Self-disclosure stems from the incarnation by communicating we too want to experience deep community. We move towards one another by beginning with making ourselves known first. The burden is on me to disclose my joys and struggles.

This small distinction in how we view self-disclosure results in a far more gracious approach to accountability and respects the believer’s relationship with God. Behind this value is a confidence that God’s work in our lives propels us towards an honest life before Him and one another. Placing the accent on our disclosure creates an arrangement where accountability is not rigged to find sin or places us in the role of the Holy Spirit.  Rather, it is transformed into a context to trust God’s word and encourage the exercise of humility. When I make self-disclosure my responsibility it’s easier for others to ask me questions about my soul, my marriage, my parenting, my ministry, or to share their heart for me.

Approachability is best described by Ken Sande who writes about the importance of conducting ourselves in a way that makes us approachable, generous, and easy to talk to--even if our conversation is about something hard. Sande says when we live humbly, resonate with openness, and become more Christ-like, we gain ‘passports’ into the lives of others. This is an important concept for anyone who wants to experience genuine, meaningful, and fruitful accountability.

Simply belonging to a group is not passport into the lives of others. A passport, remember, is an authorization to enter and travel in a foreign land. Similarly as we are intentional, self-disclosing and approachable with one another, we gain passports into the lives of the other people in our group. These “passports” are earned bestowals of trust that come when others feel they can trust us with their own self-disclosure and with the care of their souls amidst their struggles.

If you want to experience real accountability and helpful feedback from others, you will need to be known as one who is approachable and trustworthy.

Appeal recognizes accountability is hard and sometimes needs help. Maybe the experience of fellowship breaks down due to a conflict that can’t be resolved, or maybe one person in the group feels permanently tagged by something they’ve confessed. Maybe it’s something more serious:  You seem to be caught in sin and the group feels unable to help, or your wife feels trapped by some pattern of behavior you’re exercising in the home and just doesn't know what to do.

The value of appeal says, even before we start our group, we are agreeing a plea for help may be necessary and we are defining the person or group within the church to whom we will appeal. Appeal says that seeking outside help is not betrayal or slander, but sometimes necessary when sinners are trying to help each other. Appeal says we are agreeing up front we will not allow our homes to become tightly controlled, closed systems; that our wives can appeal to others for help if they feel it is needed. Our cycles of accountability can be appealed if something becomes an albatross. The value of appeal anticipates that sometimes we are blind and need help and in that moment, we are far less likely to want to seek it. So we agree now to protect ourselves (and those we love) then.

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Dave Harvey serves as the Executive Director of Sojourn Network and a Teaching Pastor at Summit Church in Fort Myers, Florida. Dave is also the founder of Am I Called.com, a leadership resource site helping pastors, leaders, and men who sense a call to ministry. He has 31 years of pastoral experience, with 19 years as a lead pastor. Dave chairs the board for the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF) and has traveled nationally and internationally doing conferences where he teaches Christians, equips pastors, and trains church planters. Dave has a D.Min from Westminster Theological Seminary, writes regularly for TGC and FTC, and is the author of When Sinners Say I Do, Am I Called, Rescuing Ambition, and Letting Go: Rugged Love for Wayward Souls. Married for 35 years, Dave and Kimm have four kids and two grandkids.

You can find this Sojourn Network e-book here on Amazon, iTunes, or at the Sojourn Network bookstore.

You can find out more about the Sojourn Network here.

What Coaching Soccer Taught Me About Leading Small Groups

When my oldest son decided to play soccer, I was a little nervous. I wanted to be involved in his life, but I grew up playing football. All I knew about soccer was that you couldn’t use your hands, and the weirder your hair, the better you probably were. When the county soccer league sent out an email to parents asking for volunteers to help coach, I felt more than underqualified. But I said yes because I wanted to meet a need and be involved. When I went to the first coaches meeting, I had a realization—small group leaders at church must feel the same way I do right now. Pastors and ministry leaders live in ministry 24/7, and it’s easy for us to forget what it feels like to step into leading ministry for the first time. We have a desire to see our churches multiply disciples, but it’s easy to forget the perspective of those we’ve asked to fulfill the mission. They’re scared, nervous, unsure what exactly they signed up for, or how they’re going to do it. They feel the same way I did in that coaches meeting—nervous, unsure, unqualified, wanting to meet a need but also wondering if they’re enough.

I left that meeting knowing more about coaching soccer, but I also left having learned about how to mature followers of Christ. Here are three lessons coaching youth soccer taught me about equipping small group leaders.

THEY NEED A CLEAR JOB DESCRIPTION

When I walked into that coaches meeting, I knew I would need to be at practice and show up to games, but that was about it. The Director of Coaching walked us through a very clear and well done packet that outlined what we were expected to do throughout the season. Everything from calling parents, getting cones, balls and nets, scheduling practice times, sample practice outlines, age appropriate expectations, drills and rules, etc. I knew what I was expected to do, and how they wanted me to do it.

Small group leaders need the same. What exactly do we want them to do? What is a win? If we want mature leaders, we need to put them in a position where they understand what they are supposed to be doing beyond a weekly list of questions to ask the people in their group.

Some leaders will have an expectation that they’re supposed to show up to group and preach a sermon or teach a lesson. Others will think their job as a group leader is to set out great snacks and provide a clean house. Others may see their group as an opportunity to promote their theological or political agenda. Still others may have absolutely no idea, but they are willing to show up and fill a need.

Small group leaders will not mature if they do not have a clear understanding of what you are asking them to do. There is no silver bullet job description to mature your small group leaders understanding of their mission, however. It will be largely dependent on your context, strategy, and philosophy of groups. If you don’t help your people to understand what you’re asking of them, they will drift into the assumptions they bring with them.

THEY NEED EFFECTIVE TRAINING

In the coaches meeting, I found out I could take a coaching certification course online through USA Soccer at my own pace and get an “f” license, and the program would pay for it. So I did. And I learned a ton! The video sessions were five to ten minutes long, easy to understand for a beginner, and came with a quiz afterwards. I moved from knowing that you can’t use your hands and off sides is bad, to understanding how USA Soccer believes soccer players develop. I learned skills to grow and mature players, drills and exercises to employ at practice, and how I could avoid harmful mistakes.

The soccer program invested in formal training for their coaches. It made me exponentially better at developing my team because I had high level, professional training. Churches can talk about training and developing leaders, but if we do not make training effective, accessible, and attractive, we won’t see it bear any fruit. They gave us a coaches meeting, but also provided engaging and accessible on-going development opportunities.

I was learning and growing as a coach every week. Are we giving our leaders the same opportunities to mature and grow in their leadership? Are there online resources you can equip them with? Is there space in your budget to provide them with equipping opportunities at conferences, or with coaching or online courses? Is there a local ministry or seminary that can provide resources or training to your leaders?

Any level of formal training we can provide our leaders will mature their faith and ministry. It doesn’t have to be complicated, expensive, or require a large chunk of our time. With all the digital options at our fingertips, we can cheaply and effectively train and equip our small group leaders. They almost all desire more training, we just have to show them where to find it.

THEY NEED COMMUNITY

Leadership is lonely. Anyone in ministry has learned that very quickly. They need a community of leaders and mentors to lean on when small group life gets discouraging, when they’re criticized, when they make a mistake, or when they feel unsure or lonely. Aside from the great information our soccer league gave us at the coaches meeting, we also walked away with a sense of community. We had a director of coaching who was available to help us build a practice plan, and as a go-to with questions about player development. We had a commissioner we could go to with problems like angry, disruptive parents, referee issues, or conflicts with other coaches.

Where can your first-time small group leader go for help when a group member confesses an affair, is dealing with addiction, has significant conflict with another person in the group, or the church? If our leaders are isolated as they shepherd a group, then hurt, conflict, and difficulty will overwhelm them and make it much more difficult for them to lead their group into a healthy obedience to Jesus Christ.

One of the greatest challenges church leaders face in maturing small group leaders is in seeing the ministry from the perspective of a person who has never done it before. We can’t assume maturity and confidence of the people leading a group. Anyone in church leadership would say mature and effective small group leaders are a cornerstone of the church blossoming into the body of Christ and multiplying disciples, but if we are not intentional about understanding and equipping our leaders, they will not mature into the leaders their groups need them to be.

Coaching soccer is a weird place to learn about maturing small group leaders, but it has radically changed and challenged the way I view leadership development in my church, and I hope it will for you too.

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Nick Strobel lives in Terre Haute, Indiana and serves as the Discpleship Pastor at Marlyand Community Church. He and his wife Kayleigh have two boys Ethan and Sawyer, love Jesus, old houses and animals. Follow Nick on Twitter for church stuff, Stars hockey and West Wing quotes.

Let's Get Real About Women's Discipleship

Less than a year ago, I helped organize a women’s ministry event focused on discipleship. During this hour-long event, we offered women the chance to ask anonymous questions to a panel of female leaders in the church about the practice of discipleship.

It went well. Frankly, a little too well. The five of us participating on the panel ran out of time long before those in attendance ran out of questions. While I was encouraged by the interest women showed in the topic, I left the panel feeling somewhat burdened by the trend I saw in the questions women were asking us.

Many women in my church seemed to struggle with the essential rhythm of discipleship, mostly because they had unrealistic ideas about what discipleship should look like in the first place. They were frustrated by their lack of theological prowess or their inability to squeeze a group Bible study into their schedules, and rather than doing discipleship “wrongly” they were just foregoing discipleship completely. 

In his book Discipling, author Mark Dever offers a to-the-point definition of discipleship as “helping others follow Jesus”. This doesn’t seem to be the definition many women are applying in their personal lives. If Instagram is any clue, most Christian women think discipleship is limited to hosting thoughtfully curated Bible studies in tasteful homes where shrieking children and dirty dishes don’t exist. This glossy ideal sits like a yoke on many women’s shoulders rather than spurring them onward in Christ’s Great Commission.

That yoke leads to many problems, all of which could be rectified by letting go of perfectionism and getting real. Here are three ways to start getting real about women's discipleship.

1. STOP SEARCHING FOR THE UNICORN DISCIPLER

The most common question I hear in women’s ministry is some variation of “where can I get a Titus-2 woman to disciple me?” This isn’t a bad question, but it is sometimes asked with something unhelpful in mind. I’ve watched repeatedly as Christian women adopt a heavy-handed application of the passage in Titus 2:1-5. In these verses, godly, well-respected older women are instructed to teach younger women in the church. While this is clearly the Father’s intended model within a congregational family, sometimes our expectations are more detailed than the text itself!

I know too many women who are desperately holding out for a discipler that looks more like a unicorn than an actual human being. In our minds we sometimes conjure up this image of what sort of woman we want pouring wisdom into us: at least twenty years older, maybe she’s the pastor’s wife or women’s ministry leader; she’s got kids, preferably a lot of them. Yet this older woman with a pastor husband, a women’s ministry to run, and a bunch of kids to raise can magically find the time to meet with us three times a week at a coffee shop to read the Bible.

Not only do we sometimes have unreasonable expectations for those we want to disciple us, but sometimes we find ourselves unintentionally ignoring women in our midst who already want to pour into us. That single sister or college girl is just as capable of reminding you of the gospel as anyone else, and may be the very woman God has put in your life to help you grow and mature as a believer. Let go of the unicorn, and praise God for any woman of any age or life stage who is willing to disciple you.

2. SIMPLIFY DISCIPLESHIP RHYTHMS

Another concern women have about discipleship is about “how” to do it, with many convinced the only acceptable way to disciple someone is to have one-on-one Bible discussions. Interestingly enough, the Bible shows us that discipleship takes many forms.

The book of Acts describes the death and resurrection of a disciple named Tabitha (Acts 9:36-43). She specifically cared for women in Joppa who lost their husbands. As this community was grieving the loss of their beloved sister-disciple, nobody mentioned Tabitha’s hostess skills or if she coordinated the best Bible studies. Instead, these widows wept into the clothes that Tabitha made for them in their time of need. With this simple, unflashy act of faithfulness Tabitha deeply influenced the women of her church community. So much so that when she died two men ran to another town to find the Apostle Peter and ask for his help.

Peter raised this woman who was “filled with good works and charity” from the dead so that she could continue discipling and serving her sisters in the church. She may not have led a Bible study, but Tabitha was a discipleship powerhouse by simply living alongside these women, observing their needs and doing her best to meet them in Jesus’ name. Our own discipleship can be that simple too.

However, the practical servant discipleship of Tabitha is not our only example. In the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul writes a letter to the believers in Thessalonica. Paul is actually engaging in discipleship just by writing this letter of encouragement and instruction to other believers. In chapter 5 of this letter, Paul gives the church some specific charges in discipleship; “admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all”. All of the things Paul detailed here are considered discipleship actionables, and all of these things are incredibly powerful in the life of believer.

Think of the last woman you spent a significant amount of time with. Did she have a physical need? How could you meet that physical need and use it to remind her of her great need for a Savior? Is she experiencing a personal trial? How can you encourage her and remind her of God’s goodness? Are you aware of any sin patterns this woman may have in her life? What words and approach should you use to gently admonish and restore her?

Asking yourself these kinds of questions and letting the answers guide your interactions is discipleship in its simplest form.

To be clear, there is great value in dedicated time for discussing scripture with other women. But if you want to develop a rhythm of discipling others and being discipled, you are also going to have to embrace the messiness of life, and that often means organized study sessions take a backseat. You will have to talk over screaming kids. You will have women flake out because of other responsibilities. You will often talk about scripture while one of you folds laundry or finishes up a work project. All of these things are okay. There is a lot you can learn from another woman just by observing her in her daily routine without any special appointments or studies.

3. KEEP IT ALL ABOUT JESUS

Ultimately the kind of discipleship women need is the kind that stirs their affections for Christ and encourages them to become more like him. But many women worry they aren’t theologically capable of discipling or teaching someone else.

Luckily for believers, there is no prerequisite for discipleship. If God’s word is living and active, then God’s story has the power to challenge and mature believers independent of our abilities or intellect. Your job as a discipler is to simply show others who Jesus is and remind them what he did for them, over and over again. When they are hurting, remind them. When they are angry at their co-worker or spouse, remind them. When they are sinning, remind them. When they need grace, remind them.

THE SIMPLE GOSPEL

The simple message of the gospel is what changes our lives both in the temporal and eternal sense, and the gospel didn’t lose its power after that happened. To assume that God cannot continue to change a person’s heart or sanctify them despite our bumbling words or lack of apologetic knowledge is to underestimate his power. The good news of Jesus Christ and someone willing to speak it is all that is truly necessary for discipleship.

Rachelle Cox converted from Mormonism six years ago and is now passionate about helping women understand God’s good word and good theology. She is a women’s ministry intern at Karis Church, and is beginning her theological education at Boyce College. She loves serving her husband and two children, and writes at http://eachpassingphase.com .

Taste and See that the Bible is True

How do you know that God is good? That He’s trustworthy? How do you know the Bible is true? Many times we’re told we just have to believe these things by knowing and accepting them. In my life, these questions required much more than acquiring knowledge. Coming to answers involved knowing about God, yes, but also experiencing God.

TASTE AND SEE

Psalm 34:8 says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good."

Notice the progression in this verse. First you taste, experiencing the fullness of flavor as your taste buds fire signals to your brain about what you’re eating.

Then your brain interprets those signals and you notice the food is perhaps a bit undercooked, too salty, or—like those scenes in Ratatouille—fireworks go off in your mind as you’re overcome with delight.

Tasting opens our eyes and allows us to see—to know—something for ourselves. Taste and see are experiential words. They involve the senses, which are able to bring abstract concepts to life.

When I think of food, I think of donuts. I’m an evangelist for Jesus, but I’m also a part-time evangelist for a local donut shop.

These things are amazing. The donuts themselves are like a mix between funnel cakes and the donuts most people think of—crunchy and slightly crisp on the outside, soft and delicately fluffy on the inside. And then come the toppings. Oh, the toppings! The glazes, frostings, sprinkles, even bits of bacon. My personal favorite is a simple maple glaze.

Now, I heard about these donuts for a while before I tasted them for myself. Everyone promised me I would love them, and I figured I would because, hey, I like donuts. But I wasn’t able to understand the fullness of their glory without tasting them for myself, allowing me to experience them through my senses in a way that brought those promises to life.

“Taste and see that the Lord is good” works in the same way. It's an invitation to try out the promises of God, and as you do, you'll find that He is good.

PREPARING FOR THE FEAST

This is how I came to trust that God is good and trustworthy. It’s how I came to know that Scripture should be my source of truth and only guide for living. Several years ago my heart was gripped by the reality of what the Scriptures teach, and the eyes of my heart began to be enlightened (Eph. 1:18) to the truth of God’s word.

I began to understand that Jesus’ promise to be with us in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) was linked to our participation in disciple-making. I came to see that if I wanted to experience the power of God’s Spirit, I had to be engaged in speaking the gospel, the primary purpose for which the Spirit was sent (Acts 1:8). I realized that how I treated the poor and spent my money were measures of my faith and how much of my heart Jesus really had.

As I came to understand what the Scriptures were teaching, I had to know if it was true. I was tired of the supernatural stuff being stuck between the pages of Scripture. I wanted it to break out into my life in the here and now. So I started tasting.

TASTING DISCIPLESHIP

The first thing I “tasted” was discipleship. I had never been discipled one-on-one or as part of a group, so I didn’t really know what it looked like. But if it was the last thing Jesus said to do before ascending to his heavenly throne, it must be a big deal.

I read some books, talked to some people, and started praying for God to send me guys to disciple. I knew, based on materials I had reviewed, that one of the crucial elements in discipleship is availability – the person you disciple needs to be available to spend time learning to study and apply the Scriptures.

So I prayed along those lines. Within a couple of months, God made it clear who the guys were going to be. And the guys he sent me had just been laid off – making them highly available and incredibly open to learning and applying Scripture to their lives.

The next six months was a prolonged opening of my eyes. I had never really committed to investing in the lives of other men in the ways we see in the New Testament – spending time with them, encouraging them, challenging them, memorizing Scripture with them – which means I had never experienced the transformative power of the Holy Spirit in these awesome ways. I witnessed all of us grow closer to Jesus, and become more like him, as we spoke the truths of Scripture into one another’s lives.

I tasted the Lord and came to see that what God promised is true – that we sense Jesus’ nearness as we make disciples; that we tap into the power of the Spirit as we speak the gospel; and that wherever two or three gather in the name of Jesus, he is there with us (Matt. 18:20).

Not only are those things true but they are so, so good. For the first time in my life I felt like I was participating in the New Testament for myself and seeing the promises of Scripture come to life in my time.

Naturally, I wanted more. So I kept tasting.

TASTING MERCY

I was convicted by the materialism that ran rampant in my heart. I knew Jesus called us to put our treasure in heavenly things, not things of this world.

I read Luke 12:33 and didn’t see any wiggle room in the command to “sell your possessions and give to the needy.” At the same time, I wondered why Christians don’t use their homes for ministry as in the early church, and wrote an article suggesting ways to do so. One of my suggestions was to invite a homeless family to live with you, particularly if you live in the suburbs. So I started praying for God to show me what he wanted me to give up or to be open to.

A week later, I was notified at church that someone needed to speak with a pastor. I headed across the building to speak with them. After a couple of minutes of waiting, a mother came to me with tears in her eyes and told me the story of how she lost her home and ended up sleeping in her car. Her three kids were sleeping at their dad’s place so she could keep it a secret that they didn’t have a home anymore.

It was about a week before Christmas, so none of the normal referrals I would connect her with would be open, and she had no family nearby because she was an immigrant. As I was listening to her story, God showed me that this was what I had been praying for. I’m a middle-class guy with a wife and three kids in an affluent suburb—precisely what I had written about a week earlier. It was time to taste and see.

So on Christmas Day, this woman and her three children showed up at my house and spent the evening with my family. It was awkward at first. We didn’t really know each other well; my family wasn’t quite sure what we were doing; and my children moved into the same bedroom to make room for our guests.

But the discomfort was nothing compared to the blessing we received by having their family join ours for a time. We bonded with her children, and they joined our family worship times. We cooked meals together and laughed and cried together. That time transformed my family’s willingness to be obedient to whatever God calls us to do.

SWEETER THAN HONEY

So why do I trust God? How do I know He’s good? How do I know the Bible is true and its words are authoritative?

Because I have tasted God’s promises and seen that they are true. I have savored His goodness and found myself craving more.

Now, when I taste God’s Word, I have the same experience as Ezekiel. In a vision, God told the prophet to consume a scroll with his words written on it. As Ezekiel eats God’s words, he finds that “it was in my mouth as sweet as honey” (Ezekiel 3:3).

Scripture is not only the authority in and for my life, it is “sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Ps. 19:10).

Grayson Pope is a husband and father of three as well the Managing Web Editor at GCD. He serves as Pastor of Community at his church in Charlotte, NC and has earneda MACS at The Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Grayson’s passion is to equip believers for every day discipleship to Jesus.

Book Re-Release | Sent Together by Brad Watson

Today we are re-releasing one of our most popular and helpful books, Sent Together by Brad Watson. Sent Together is helpful for both leaders and churches looking for wise and practitioner tested strategies to make disciples through community. The Second Edition includes updated content and has been thoroughly edited. If you have not picked up Sent Together today is an excellent time to get this into the hands of the leaders you are equipping to see gospel-centered discipleship move forward in your city.

Pick up a Kindle or paperback copy here.

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Jesus does not simply call us to be a lovely community together, but he sends us out to our neighborhoods, towns, and cities to declare and demonstrate the gospel. In fact, the gospel beckons men and women to take up the call of leading and starting communities that are sent like Jesus.

In Sent Together, Brad Watson helps leaders discover what it means to start communities centered on the gospel and mission. By exploring the gospel motivations that send leaders to start missional communities, Watson gives readers a framework for the purpose and ways of building a community that is deepening its understanding of the gospel, while also sharing it. Sent Together will serve as a field guide for leaders and training guide for those called to start missional communities.

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Brad A. Watson enjoys encouraging, challenging, and helping followers of Jesus to live on mission in community by helping them connect the gospel with its implications to their daily lives.Brad serves as an equipping elder of Soma Culver City in Los Angeles, California, where he lives with his wife and their three children. Globally, he has the privilege of coaching and resourcing church leaders on how to form gospel-centered communities that love God and serve their cities.

Brad is the author of the Together series of missional books (GCD Books) and co-author of Raised? Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection (Zondervan). He also serves as a board member of Gospel Centered Discipleship. Connect with Brad at BradAWatson.com where he writes about community, mission, coaching, and leadership.

The Freedom to Slow Down

WHY YOU CAN STOP FOCUSING SO MUCH ON YOU

It seems counterintuitive to look at the tension Bob is facing about change in his life, his family’s life, and the life of his friends outside the church, and say to him, “You need to slow down if you want to see that dream move from a thought in your head to a reality in your midst.”

So welcome to one of the many paradoxes of the gospel.

Perhaps one of the best places to view this paradox is in the story we often refer to as "The Good Samaritan." If anything unveils the root reason why Bob can slow down to love and disciple others, it’s this story from Jesus. Simon Sinek is right…we should always start with the “why.”

We find the parable recorded in Luke 10:25-37, and the name we have given it is often used for hospitals, justice ministries, and as the battle cry for those staring down the racial divide, educational gaps, refugee crisis, and many other injustices. These are real issues where we want to see what is good and right have its full effect.

But, in further study of this passage, we find, like the disciples who spent years with Jesus, we may have missed a deeper meaning to what Jesus is declaring in this ancient parable. In fact, we may have missed the very connection he’s making between what we want to see come to fruition in our world and how we actually arrive at this desired destination.

The story begins with Jesus’ encounter with a lawyer, “For behold, a lawyer stood up to put him (Jesus) to the test” (Luke 10:25). This is a man, mind you, who was extremely well educated in the Jewish Law. To say he had the Law of God and all its many facets memorized would not be an understatement. From what we can tell, he apparently has heard about Jesus from others, has gone to listen to Jesus, and in his observation felt there is a serious divide between what God has declared in the Law and what Jesus is teaching.

So, right out of the gate, the lawyer begins his onslaught with one simple question: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (v. 25).

It’s a simple, straightforward question, and with death being a destiny awaiting us all, a very relevant question. Jesus, as a skilled teacher, begins the process of answering the lawyer's question by asking him a question, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” (v. 26).

Ready to share his immense knowledge of the Law in a moments notice, the lawyer responds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (v. 27).

Ding. Ding. Ding. “You have answered correctly,” Jesus said. “Do this, and you will live” (v. 28).

You could have heard a pin drop as the lawyer was assured that Jesus' beliefs about the Law and his teachings on eternal life were in line with what God has declared in the Torah. But instead of being satisfied with Jesus’ answer, an eerie look comes across his face as he quickly, and quietly realizes: “According to the Scriptures, If I 'do this,' this Law, this act of loving God with everything I am, and loving my neighbor in the same degree that I love myself…then I ‘will live.’”

Most of us read this and think, “Alright. A clear to do list. I got this. Thank you, Jesus!” But for the lawyer here, this wasn’t a moment of gratitude… it was a moment of sheer panic.

As a lawyer, he knew better than anyone else in his day, how the perfect Law to “love God with all” of your being and to “love your neighbor as yourself” is only done, only met, only fulfilled, if it is done with perfection. Yes, righteousness, “rightness,” is our need to live in the presence of a holy God. There is no such thing as imperfect obedience.

The very Law the lawyer had just used to justify himself incriminated himself.

So rather than face the reality of his need and his inability to meet it, “he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (v. 29).

The question is an escape tactic; a backpedal plot rooted in a man-made spin on the Law, aimed at helping the lawyer get around the demands of loving God and his neighbor with perfection. In response to this move, Jesus goes into a story of a man who was traveling on a long stretch of dangerous, isolated terrain from “Jerusalem to Jericho,” where he “fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.” Scene one of the opening act is set with a character who is broken and desperately in need of someone outside of himself to save him.

Jesus goes on and says, “a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side,” followed by a “Levite” who took this same course of action (vv. 31-32). With scene two, two new characters are added to the plot, one representing the Law of Moses, and the other it’s role in the world. Both are naturally good, informative, and even directive, but neither have any ability to actually bring change to the human heart. Like a mirror, the Law can reveal the dirt on your face. Amen. However, rubbing your face on a mirror will never make it clean.

From here Jesus brings the story to its climax as He says, a “Samaritan,” unlike the Priest and Levite… “when he saw him, ...had compassion.” Jesus went on to spell out what this loving compassion looked like as the Samaritan “bound up his wounds, …set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn to take care of him,” and then covered this stranger's medical expenses as he paid the innkeeper to take care of him until he returned (vv. 33-35). Think of the medical cost today entailed in nursing someone to health who was almost dead. The estimate is upwards of an entire year's salary.

With the full scenario and each character’s role in view, Jesus moves to the heart of the lawyer's question and asks: “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" (v. 36). In other words, in light of the Law you quoted just a minute ago about what you need to do to inherit eternal life, the question here isn’t “Who is your neighbor?” but rather “What kind of neighbor are you?” The lawyer answers, “the one who showed him mercy.” And with the lawyer’s ploy exposed, Jesus makes sure his original question is clearly answered: “You go, and do likewise” (vs 37).

The parable is pure genius.

Jesus uses a story about a man who is desperately in need of someone else to save him after being “beaten half dead”…a guy the lawyer refuses to identify with, who was loved by a “Samaritan”…someone the lawyer will not identify with, to show him what he “must do to inherit eternal life”…a task he cannot identify with.

And perhaps that is the point.

With the beliefs most likely held by the lawyer in regards to what is wrong with the world and what the solutions are to fix it, he was looking for a Messiah who was coming to make the world straighten up and fly right, not “the Lamb of God” who is slain to take “away the sins of the world” (Jn. 1:29). It’s the same song and dance with everyone in Jesus’ context, including the disciples themselves. So, as people who were thinking they needed a guide rather than a Savior, they would naturally see themselves as the Samaritan in Jesus’ story, not the helpless man on the side of the road. Ironically though, it's only in recognizing our death, our inability to live out the demands of the law with our righteousness of “filthy rags,” will we cling to the only One who’s in the resurrection business (Isaiah 64:6).

It is Jesus and Jesus alone who fulfills the Law and “inherits eternal life.” By God’s grace, he has announced his Father’s dealings with the sin problem of our world are “finished,” forgiven (John 19). By God’s grace, his “righteousness” has been attributed to all who believe (Rom 3-4; Eph 2:8-10). And by God’s grace, “all things,” as in everything that feels lost from our acts of pride, greed, fear, hatred, racism, sexism, manipulation, abuse, theft, lying…“has been reconciled” in the life, death, and resurrection of the one who made us, loved us, forgave us, and sustains us all (Col. 1:15-20).

In Jesus, reality has undergone a major shift.

We need nothing else…except to believe in the One who’s made this life-changing news a reality.

Believing we stand complete in Jesus is what allows us the freedom to look at the purpose of the Law, this beautiful picture of love for God and others, not as a to-do list to obtain the holiness the Law demands, but as a picture of what harmony with God and others truly looks like. This by no means removes the call on our lives to what is good and worthy of pursuit, it just changes the posture of our pursuit as the Law, this “ministry of death,” reveals the impossible feat of us ever walking in our own righteousness (2 Cor 3:1-9). It’s a journey marked not by determined action, but rather complete dependence on Jesus who is our salvation and sanctification (Heb. 10:13).

Believing we stand complete in Jesus is what allows us the freedom to die to the project of self, the tyranny of more, and the need to posture ourselves as someone who has it together. The independent life, apart from Him who is “life,” is a myth (John 14:6; Gal. 2:20). We are completely “hidden” in Him (Col. 3). There are no levels in the kingdom, no ladders to climb in hopes to reach your next breakthrough… just a Savior to dwell in. So you’re free to stop giving away all of your limited margin to church programs centered around your growth, and like the disciples, run with Jesus as He ministers to those outside—an actual place of need that drives your dependence and shapes your life.

Lastly, believing we stand complete in Jesus is what allows us the freedom to stop racking our brains in search of the magic bullet to help us build the church. Jesus said, “I will build my church,” so it’s not something we do (Matt. 16:18). It is easy to lose sight of this promise when we mistakenly place this task upon ourselves or when we face trials, fail, and feel defeated. Just as it’s easy to forget how the early church was a vast movement that brought the news of Jesus to much of the known world with only one resource: his Spirit. No copy of the Scriptures for everyone to study, no seminaries, no large Sunday venues, just the Spirit at work through everyday people who had been “given the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5).

Knowing what He would accomplish on the cross, Jesus slowed down to disciple others.

Knowing what He has accomplished on the cross, we can slow down to disciple others as He works in us, with us, without us, and even in spite of us.

Such good news for the lawyer in us all.

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Gino Curcuruto is part of the Directional Team for The Table Network. He and his family lead a new expression of the church, known as The Table Philadelphia. He, along with fellow The Table Network leaders Russ Johnson & Tony Sorci, co-authored the book, Slow Down: A Timeless Approach. 

Content contributed from Slow Down: A Timeless Approach by Russ Johnson and Gino Curcuruto, ©2017. Used by permission of Missional Challenge Publishing.

A Long Obedience In an Instagram Age

If the results of Microsoft’s infamous study are correct, you have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. That means I have eight seconds to grab your attention before you click away from reading this. The study led Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, to conclude we live in a world where “the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention.”

We’re more distracted than ever, constantly feeling overwhelmed by the torrent of information that floods our eyes and ears each day. Arcade Fire’s newest album, Everything Now, captures the spirit of our distracted age. In a surging song that sounds like several playing at once, frontman Win Butler holds up a mirror to the modern world with these words:

Infinite content Infinite content We're infinitely content All your money is already spent on it All your money is already spent Infinite content

Butler is warring against the Instagram age, mocking our contentment with endless streaming, infinite music, and never-ending social media feeds.

One of Eugene Peterson’s books on following Jesus is titled A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. His message is that discipleship to Jesus takes discipline and attention, and he’s right.

But how do we get people's attention long enough to disciple them? Here are four ways to encourage people toward a long obedience in an Instagram age.

1. EDUCATE YOURSELF (AND YOUR DISCIPLES)

You probably feel like Tony Reinke about your phone:

My phone is a window into the worthless and the worthy, the artificial and the authentic. Some days I feel as if my phone is a digital vampire, sucking away my time and my life. Other days, I feel like a cybernetic centaur—part human, part digital—as my phone and I blend seamlessly into a complex tandem of rhythms and routines.[1]

We can’t go on living as if constant connection to our devices isn’t changing anything. Paul tells us we are to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). If our attention jumps every eight seconds, we don’t stand a chance against an enemy who would love to distract us to death.

Christians must become more educated about the good and bad of smartphones and other devices. We are a people of the word, a people who lift up the Son of God as being the very Word of God. If anyone is to take their attention seriously, it should be disciples of Jesus.

There are some great resources about technology and faithful discipleship to Jesus. Andy Crouch’s The Tech-Wise Family and Tony Reinke’s 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You are both excellent at giving an overview of the pros and cons of technology and how to live wisely with our devices.

Tristan Harris, the former design ethicist at Google, has some great articles and videos from a secular perspective that explain what’s really going on at big tech companies, and how they design their apps and products.

Educate yourself on what’s going on, then educate those you disciple as well. It would be a major disservice to those you’re discipling to never address the device that’s likely sucking up two or more hours of their day.

2. TEACH THAT SPIRITUAL GROWTH DOESN’T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT

There’s a reason almost every metaphor for spiritual growth in the Bible relates to gardening. Spiritual growth takes time, and much of it is out of our control. Just like with gardening, disciples of Jesus will experience seasons of growth, seasons of drought, and times of harvest. There will be times to celebrate, and times to grieve.

We have to remember that the men and women we’re discipling are living in an “everything now” age. The titular song of Arcade Fire’s album exposes the desire pulsing through those you disciple:

I need it (Everything now!) I want it (Everything now!) I can't live without (Everything now!) I can't live without (Everything now!) I can't live (Everything now!)

If this is the internal dialogue of many in the church (and I think it is), then our constant reminders to have a quiet time or serve their neighbors can become really frustrating when they don’t see progress, especially when they’re used to Amazon bringing whatever they want to their door in two days.

We’re programmed to want immediate satisfaction, but that’s simply not how spiritual growth works. We want a microwaveable faith, but the one we’ve been given is a crockpot faith. Low and slow is the key to following Jesus—it’s how you get that unmistakable flavor of someone who has simmered in the flavors of Christ.

We have to constantly remind those we disciple that following Jesus is a lifelong pursuit. What they’re after is a life that’s more and more obedient to Jesus every day, even if they have trouble seeing the daily change. The good news is we’re not alone in our pursuit of holiness. This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6 ESV).

Even though we’re guaranteed to screw up along the way, God will see through the work he started when he saved us. Teach your disciples that spiritual growth doesn’t happen overnight, and remind them they’re not in it alone.

3. ASK MORE, NOT LESS

The temptation is to cater your approach in order to get people’s attention. In the church, that means we start shortening services, asking less of volunteers, or lowering the bar for membership. But to ask less is to miss the point.

Jesus was constantly surrounded by people claiming they wanted to follow him. Every time people asked how they could become one of his disciples he responded not by lowering, but raising, the bar.

• “I will follow you wherever you go!” someone proclaimed to the Messiah. “Think again; I don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight,” Jesus answered (Luke 9:57-58).

• “I’ll follow you. Just let me bury my father first,” another said. Jesus replied, “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke 9:59-60).

• “I’ll follow you too!” said another. But Jesus turned and said, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:61-62).

Jesus responded to sincere requests by raising the bar so high it forced his would-be disciples to count the cost of making him their Lord. And he calls us to do the same today.

We cannot respond to an eight-second attention span with ten-second devotionals. Not if we’re going to build the kingdom of God. The Master himself spent three years of concentrated time with those he discipled. He walked, talked, taught, and slept right alongside them. That’s far more discipleship than most of us fit in over cups of coffees in the same amount of time.

Asking more of our disciples means we set the bar high from the outset. In my own discipleship groups, I’ve been clear about the expectations on the front end. I tell them it won’t be easy, that it will be more work than they’re used to, but it will also be a time of accelerated spiritual growth they won’t regret if they see it through. I let them know I’m asking the following of them over the next 12 to 18 months:

• Daily Scripture reading (in the beginning, the willingness to form this habit)

• Weekly Bible study homework (Discipleship Essentials or Multiply)

• Weekly memory verses

• Weekly meetings

• Participation in serving opportunities throughout the year

They’re given time to think through and pray over that list before the first meeting, so they have plenty of time to count the cost. That way, if they know they’re not going to commit to those things, it saves both of us time and allows me to focus my attention on someone who is ready.

If we’re going to get our disciples’ attention, we have to raise the bar to the same place Jesus did. In a superficial time of excess, the call to true discipleship will surely be off-putting to some. But for those who are willing to make Jesus their Lord, the call to more is a call they’ve been waiting for.

4. SHOW THEM JESUS

While the answer to discipling men and women with tiny attention spans lies in asking more of them, we still have to be realistic about what we can expect, especially early on. They’re trying to become disciples of Jesus, but they’ve been discipled by the culture for far longer.

When a guy commits to being a part of a discipleship group with me, I know he’ll struggle with reading the Bible daily and memorizing Scripture. His attention span is short, he’s easily distracted, and might have trouble completing tasks on a routine basis. He’s used to looking at Facebook, Instagram, or email first thing in the morning, not Matthew, Mark, or Luke.

The same is probably true of those you’re trying to teach to follow Jesus. Know that growth may come slow. Expect to have the same conversation about turning off Netflix and opening the Bible over and over again. But beware of the temptation of frustration.

As disciple-makers in an Instagram age, we can end up being distracted by frustration over our disciples’ pace of growth, which causes us to miss explaining the most foundational thing in discipleship—Jesus.

When the weekly meeting comes up and the guys I’m discipling explain they didn’t get their reading done or didn’t memorize the verse, I can either get frustrated, or I can see the moment for what it is—a chance to give them grace and show them Jesus.

If you pay attention to the Spirit’s work, you can seize these kinds of opportunities and watch God make the most of it. These are the times when a man or woman looks up with guilt in their eyes and, instead of sighing and telling them to try harder, you get to say:

“I’ll be glad to help you come up with some strategies for getting up on time and getting your reading done. But first we’re going to talk about guilt, which is not from God. God convicts; only the devil condemns. When we put our faith in Jesus, it is no longer our performance that counts, but his. His perfect righteousness covers up our imperfect sinfulness. You don’t need to wallow in that guilt. Look to Jesus, believe your sin has been paid for, and keep moving forward.”

When they hear the gospel spoken into their life in a specific way, they’re driven to awe that Jesus laid down his life for theirs. The fledgling disciple’s heart is softened to the work of Christ, and the work of gospel change begins.

KEEP GOING

Following Jesus means entering into a lifetime of continual transformation. It means settling into a long obedience in the same direction.

And to teach others how to do it means we have to learn how to get—and keep—their attention.

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[1] Tony Reinke, 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, p. 15

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Grayson Pope (M.A., Christian Studies) is a husband and father of four and the Managing Web Editor at Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship. For more of Grayson’s writing check out his website or follow him on Twitter.

Polishing an Eternal Treasure

My life was in a strange mix in mid-2009. I was about four years deep into knowing Jesus, and I was conflicted about the first-ever wave of doubt that had come into my life. I was not raised in a church, so much of what I believed came from initial experience and, afterwards, a lot of examining what Christians believed and how areas like history, science and philosophy helped support Christianity as a rational belief.

This ran a bit counter to the type of church I was saved in. I was all in on the Pentecostal tradition, which often emphasizes the expressive work of the Spirit and not merely logic or information transaction as many churches do. Not all Pentecostals are emotional, but the areas in which I first came to know God definitely emphasized this aspect more.

During this time I loved God and felt him calling me to do something specific, to serve him with my life. I began to speak at churches frequently and even traveled to multiple places sharing about Jesus and giving my testimony. After high school this led me to a discipleship program to develop this gift and grow in leadership.

However I began to grow weary of seeing a lot of social issues that often crop up in conservative circles.

I still remember being at a pastor’s house and him just openly saying “You know how those black pastors are,” suggesting they were more prone to have affairs.

I overheard church leaders refer to immigrants as “dirty rats” that needed to go back to their own countries. I overheard the poor described as leeches that mooched off the system.

This was all coming to someone who had always possessed a deep concern for people and for the rights of others. I found myself wondering how there could be such a disconnect between the people I heard and the God of the Bible who seemed to get the most angry at those who mistreated orphans, immigrants, widows, and the poor.

In church services, I found myself observing how a drummer making a certain pattern made people “feel the Holy Ghost” more than they did earlier. I am a skeptical person by nature but this, combined with my frustration about how people were being talked about, was a nasty concoction bent on destroying my faith.

Reading Galatians As If For the First Time

In the midst of this, I was still part of a program that emphasized spiritual disciplines so I remained committed to prayer and Bible reading as part of my daily habits. One night I found myself alone in my dorm room with an NLT Study Bible, starting the book of Galatians. I planned to read the introduction, and maybe read through the book once.

What happened next is something I am still unable to explain merely in words. I found myself reading Galatians and there were things about the book, and the gospel in general, that I felt I had never heard before. There was an actual loss of time as I was just reading Paul’s letter.

The feeling would be similar to discovering a piece of paper telling you that you had several bank accounts in your name and these were the codes to get into them.

For the first time ever I was reading a portion like Galatians 2, which I now understood to say it was not by my effort that I kept my salvation, nor my disobedience that I could throw it away. I had never heard this before!

In a world of constant self-help tips, I had just thrown in belief in God and had yet to understand that if my “righteousness were through the law then Christ died for nothing!”

This was not the first time I had read Galatians. I had even taken a class on this very book, understanding the context and issues that Paul was addressing.

However there was something in my spirit confirming these truths in a way I hadn’t yet known. Martin Luther in his Latin works describes a well-known tower experience in which a similar thing happened, opening “the very gate to paradise.”

It is not an exaggeration to say this help saved my faith when other factors in my mind wanted to separate from it. I do not believe God would let me go, but I do know that he uses certain means to keep us abiding in him. I truly believe this moment was crucial to experience the Holy Spirit not only through exuberance in praise, but in a quiet time through His word. The very same words that birthed the entire universe into existence were now re-birthing my relationship with him through scripture.

Scripture and the Spirit 

The Reformation helped recover the Christian ideal that there is an objective standard of truth not relative to one’s interpretation. This is often called “Sola Scriptura” or “scripture alone.” This term argues that, in all matters of life and doctrine, the final, albeit not only, authority is scripture itself.

Reformed people of all tribes often joke that when it comes to the Trinity there is the Father, Son, and Holy Bible. The underlying connotation is that when it comes to the Holy Spirit, it’s often more dangerous to understand him than to read about him. We are often a people who value knowledge and information much more than mystery and wonder when it comes to our right view of God. I often have this same temptation.

However, according to John Calvin there is a very particular way in which the Holy Spirit actually works hand-in-hand with one’s interactions with Scripture. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin doesn’t separate the Spirit from the Word and speaks strongly about the intertwined nature of the two.

Professor Michael Williams of Covenant College summarizes a view Calvin would have of the Bible and how he would answer the question “What is the Bible?”:

It is the declaration of God's redemptive activity centering in Jesus Christ. Faithfully inspired by the Holy Spirit. And illuminated in the people of God by the Spirit.

John Calvin and other Reformers recovered, not simply access to information, but also a Spirit-illuminated understanding of God’s Word. This work is not like digging up a new treasure, but rather polishing off an old one that had been there the whole time but had not been seen in all of its beauty or with clarity. The Holy Spirit reveals these things to us “that we might understand the things freely given us by God.”

The Holy Spirit and scripture work hand-in-hand because he is the author and speaker of these very words. This does not mean that an individual’s interpretation holds weight over common hermeneutic methods. It simply means that the Spirit can impress on our souls the truths our minds may understand, but which have yet to change us in the most fundamental areas of our beings.

I am deeply grateful that God has given us so many means of his grace. He has given us nature to see endless wonders. He gave us himself when he came to earth and invaded this world with a glimpse of the future kingdom. We have so many other things like community, music, technology, family, friends, love, joy, and more. They have been provided for us, causing us to wonder at the one who actually made them.

Finally, He has given us his Word, drenched with the power of his Spirit to guide us in our day-to-day lives until he returns. He does this without prejudice and freely gives all of himself through the very words written thousands of years ago.

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Kevin Garcia leads Spiritual Formation at Lifepoint Church in Dallas, TX. He has his B.A. In Church Leadership and is pursuing his M.A. In Ethics, Theology, & Culture from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. His passions are in theology, writing, justice, apologetics and how discipleship intersects all areas of life in particular the public square. He also loves sports, hip-hop, and listening to tons of podcasts.

Gospel Glories from A to Z

Today we want to share an excerpt from our latest release Gospel Glories from A to Z. Kelly Havrilla works to reflect some of that glory onto each page as she connects deep biblical truths through the structure of the alphabet. Our hope is is that this reflection will spark a desire to venture into deeper waves of gospel glories. If you love rich theology and beautiful design, pick up our first ever full color edition.

– GCD Team

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Jesus

Though his ministry lasted only three short years, Jesus’ impact on the world has been immeasurable. What he said about himself was extraordinary. He claimed to be the Son of God, to be the only way to God the Father, and to have come to earth to save sinners. His teachings, miracles, resurrection and ascension are proof positive that Jesus is exactly who he said he was. The writers of Scripture call him: Emmanuel (God with us), the Holy One, the Savior, King of Kings, the Lamb of God, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

These titles provide only a glimpse into his greatness. Jesus is the only way to God and the only source of eternal life. Jesus lived a completely sinless life, died an obedient death, was raised from the dead as proof of his righteousness and God’s acceptance of his sacrifice, and is now seated at the right hand of God the Father. He is fully God and fully man; therefore, he can represent mankind perfectly to God the Father. God declares the believer righteous, not by the worthiness of his faith, but by the worthiness of the one in whom he has faith. Jesus Christ is God’s solution to man’s most significant problem—sin.

Righteousness

Righteousness is the character quality of being right according to God’s holy standard. Simply stated, it is glorifying God with our lives as perfectly as Jesus did. This high and holy quality of righteousness applies to will, motive, thought, action and word. It is an attribute that we must possess in order to be justified by God. It is unattainable in and of ourselves. Why? Because every part of our being is infected and influenced by sin.

We cannot be as perfect as Jesus. Consider the following things that many religious people would say if asked why God should accept them: I am a good person; I give money to a church; I read the Bible; I was baptized; I help my neighbors. And on and on it goes. Every sentence starts with “I”! Does anyone do any of these things perfectly? Of course not!

But here’s the fantastic news of the gospel—at the point of saving faith, the sins of the Christian are imputed to Christ (and punished by God) and they are forgiven. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to the Christian, and the believer is declared righteous by God. Trust in Christ alone, and let his righteousness be your righteousness.

Zion

Zion in Scripture is often used as a synonym for Jerusalem, and even more specifically of the mountain near Jerusalem. Zion was also the name of the temple mount within Jerusalem, which was the seat of the first and second Holy Temple. Zion’s meaning broadened to God’s eternal kingdom through the Old Testament prophets who foretold of a time of great joy when the Savior of Israel will appear in Zion at His second coming.With the temple and prophetic ideas in view, the New Testament authors envision Zion as the heavenly dwelling place of Almighty God.

The author of Hebrews penned it this way, “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” The writer declares repeatedly that there is only one road, one gate, one way that leads to Mt. Zion, to the city of the living God. It is by faith in Jesus Christ alone. He is the preeminent one, the one for which the prophets of the Old Testament had been waiting. He is the Savior, and it is through Him alone the believer may roam the heavenly streets of Zion.

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Kelly Havrilla lives in Plymouth, MI, with her husband David. They are both outdoor enthusiasts, love hiking in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and enjoy spending time with family and friends. After a career in marketing at General Motors she has pursued a variety of creative endeavors. However, her greatest passion is the gospel. Over the years God has graciously opened numerous avenues into several local and international communities into which she and David have opportunities to minister and share the gospel. From this passion and desire was born the Gospel Glories project.

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Why Plan B Must No Longer Be An Option

We are a nation and culture of “Plan B” kind of people. We live as though there is always a backup plan. In fact, we love backup plans so much, we often create a backup plan to the backup plan. We like to reserve a few extra options in the back of our minds that if Plan A doesn’t work out, well, there’s always Plan B. Every smart bride who has an outdoor wedding as Plan A also selects an indoor location for Plan B, in the event of rain or some other unwelcome weather. Football teams keep second and third string quarterbacks on the sidelines so that if their Plan A quarterback gets walloped, well, there’s always the Plan B quarterback. Some people keep a “rainy day” savings account; you know, that extra stash of money that gets set aside so that if life should throw a curve ball, you’re prepared. “Rainy day” savings account is still code for Plan B.

For so long in my own life, I made one excuse after another to not physically exercise or be active. Lazy. Indifferent. Uninterested. Didn’t like sweating. Didn’t want to pay for a gym membership. Didn’t care. Didn’t have time for it. Plan A would have simply been to make working out a priority so that I could be healthy, but instead I came up with one Plan B after another. Other options simply took precedent. There were also Plans C, D, and E. It was easy for me to shrug my shoulders and say, “I just don’t like working out so I’m not going to.”

For some people, though, we walk through life with more significant Plan B's, which carry far more weight. Don’t like your marriage? There’s always divorce. Hate your job? You can always quit. Don’t like what the pastor preached this week at church? You can always find somewhere else to go. Tired of riding the bench while everyone else gets plenty of playing time? You can always throw in the towel. Don’t have the cash to buy something but you really, really want it? You can always swipe that little piece of plastic called a credit card.

Can there be legitimate causes for the above Plan B decisions? Yes. There are some jobs we need to leave and some relationships we need to exit. I’m not addressing those kinds of scenarios. I’m talking about the scenarios when we simply take the easy way out because it just got too hard. I’m talking about the scenarios when we decided that Plan A was no longer worth fighting for because Plan B simply looked that much more appealing and seemed that much easier, and because, quite frankly, we just didn’t want to do the hard work to see it that Plan A stayed Plan A.

We’ve got to stop living as though there is always a Plan B. You know all that physical exercise I didn’t like to do? That decision and that lack of discipline resulted in experiencing months of the most excruciating physical pain I have experienced in my life to date. After those health problems, I did a one-eighty, and you better believe my backside has been working out regularly at least a couple times a week, because I realized with stunning clarity that if I never wanted to experience that kind of pain again, I was going to have to do things differently. I couldn’t just keep doing what I had always done. I had to stop living as though there was an alternative option or Plan B.

And here’s why we all have to stop living as though there is a Plan B—God is a God of Plan A.

When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit in the Garden of Eden, God was not suddenly wringing his hands out wondering what on earth he was going to do now that those two had just waved bye-bye to Plan A. He wasn’t racking his brain, scrambling to figure out how to patch up the mess he was now in, and he certainly wasn’t losing sleep at night (not that he would anyway since he doesn’t sleep) trying to sort out how he would redeem what was now broken. He didn’t spend the moments immediately after humans ate what was forbidden, with his palm to his forehead, in a state of distress, thinking, “Well, this is not at all how I planned on this working out. Now what I am going to do?”

From the beginning of time and till the end of time the cross will forever and always stand as Plan A in response to our sin.

Let that settle in for a moment.

The cross was not some cosmic afterthought.

The death of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, was Plan A before sin entered the world, and his death was still Plan A after sin entered the world. John writes in Revelation 13:8,

“All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (NIV).

The apostle Peter echoes this idea in 1 Peter 1:18-21,

“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.”

Jesus was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world—long before Adam was created, long before Eve ate of the apple, and long before sin entered the picture and ushered in death and destruction. The cross stood as Plan A since before there was time.

And it has been Plan A ever since. The plan of the cross never faltered, never wavered, and was never negotiated in the hope of a better plan. God was not functioning out of the idea he was going to keep the crucifixion and death of his Son in his back pocket just in case things went haywire. They went haywire. He knew they would. And the death and crucifixion were Plan A all along. Sin did not come along and suddenly catch God by surprise or catch him off guard.

But what is to be our response to the weight of this truth?

Our response must be that we need to spend our days making Jesus Plan A in all that we do because he made his atonement for our sins his Plan A. Just as he was chosen before the creation of the world to die for our sins, he chose us to be holy and blameless. Paul declares in Ephesians 1:3-4,

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.”

He chose us to be holy and blameless, which means we’ve got to decide that knowing and studying and memorizing the Word of God is Plan A, and not Plan B for whenever we feel like. We’ve got to decide that loving, serving and pursuing those around us is Plan A, and not Plan B for when we have the time and energy. We’ve got to decide that time in God’s presence must trump all else as Plan A, and not Plan B for when we happen to find some blank time in our days and in our calendar. We’re not always going to feel like it, we’re not always going to have the energy, and we’re not always going to find blank time.

But Plan A must become non-negotiable and our excuses must fall by the wayside. When it comes to spiritual disciplines, we must rid our vocabulary of phrases like “Plan B,” “someday,” and “eventually.” These words can have no place in our lives if we are to follow hard after Jesus.

When we realize and truly believe that Jesus’s death on the cross was Plan A before the creation of the world, then we have no choice but to make him our Plan A in all that we do.

In the spiritual disciplines of a Christ-follower, Plan B can no longer be an option.

Because Plan B was never an option for God.

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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.

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New Book Release | Kelly Havrilla’s Gospel Glories from A to Z

We are releasing Kelly Havrilla’s Gospel Glories from A to Z in three formats—a digital edition, a black and white paperback, and a full color edition (click “look inside” to view full color images for the first several chapters). The Christian life is knowing God. It is not an impersonal knowledge of bare facts but one rooted in wonder at "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6). It is knowing that basks in the glories of the gospel.

In Gospel Glories from A to Z, Kelly Havrilla works to reflect some of that glory onto each page as she connects deep biblical truths through the structure of the alphabet. Useful for both those new to the beauty of Christianity and those looking for a fresh way to grow deeper this book aims to make God's grace abundantly clear and accessible. Our hope is is that this reflection will spark a desire to venture into deeper waves of gospel glories.

If you love rich theology and great design, don’t hesitate to pick up our first ever full color book! Enjoy this excerpt from the “Preface.”

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God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” That is the good news about Jesus Christ in a sentence, and that is the best news of all time for the entire world. The gospel, which means good news, is the centerpiece of the Christian message. It explains that although every person is separated from God because of sin, God in his justice, mercy, and love has made a way for us to be made right with him. And that way is remarkably simple—trusting in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The Bible teaches that Jesus brought peace between God and man through his perfect life, sacrificial death on a cross, and resurrection from the grave. Jesus himself proclaimed in the Gospel of John, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6) This is an extraordinary claim. C.S. Lewis, Oxford theologian and author of the famous Chronicles of Narnia series, posed a compelling statement about Jesus. He said in view of all that Jesus did and said about himself, one cannot view him as merely an incredible teacher, a remarkable Prophet, or an exceptionally moral man. He must be either a liar, a lunatic, or he is who he said he is—Lord of all.

It’s a wonderfully amazing thing that we have the most credible and well-attested books of all time testifying about the life and works of Jesus—the Bible. Comprised of both Old and New Testaments with 66 books written by about 35 authors over a period of some 2000 years, the Bible has God’s ultimate plan of redemption as its singular theme. It repeatedly points to Jesus as the only person qualified to accomplish the task. The Bible authoritatively and accurately records who Jesus was, what he did, what he said, what others thought of him, and how they reacted to his claims. His greatest claim is that he is the very Son of God, sent by his Father—who so loved the world—on a rescue mission to save people on planet earth. And that is indeed good news!

In a New Testament letter to the church in Corinth, the Apostle Paul wrote, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). This is the good news from the pen of the great Apostle in concise form. God sent Jesus to earth to die for sins, and to rise again, so that those who trust in him can be forgiven of their sins and be declared righteous.

In the following pages, we will navigate our way through the alphabet of twenty-six gospel rich words; words which will enlighten, encourage and challenge us all. The gospel is the only true life-giving message in all the universe. I pray you learn it, believe it, and embrace it for yourself.

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Kelly Havrilla lives in Plymouth, MI, with her husband David. They are both outdoor enthusiasts, love hiking in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and enjoy spending time with family and friends. After a career in marketing at General Motors she has pursued a variety of creative endeavors. However, her greatest passion is the gospel. Over the years God has graciously opened numerous avenues into several local and international communities into which she and David have opportunities to minister and share the gospel. From this passion and desire was born the Gospel Glories project.

God’s Eclectic, Intriguing, and Quirky Construction Crew

I’m weird. I actually enjoy going to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I find it intriguing to spend part of an afternoon at the DMV because it offers the best glimpse of diversity in our culture today. Skinny or stout, tall or short, married or single, successful or struggling, we all spend a day paying our dues at the DMV. Paying for the right to be part of the community of transportation. The Department of Motor Vehicles gives us an accurate view of the people who make up our local culture. There are businessmen in dress slacks, hairdressers clothed in black, and homemakers looking casual with their kids in tow. There’s the middle-aged woman who will slide into her Mercedes Benz adorned with a personalized plate, and the elderly man who struggles to find the flexibility to attach this year’s tag to his Buick.

Diversity. That’s why the DMV is such a great place to spend part of a day.

It’s different from hanging out at Panera Bread. Only a certain type of person is going to grab coffee and a cinnamon crunch bagel, enjoy some classical music, and respond to e-mails from a laptop at Panera.

It’s not like spending time at the local Cabela’s store. Only a specific segment of our population is going to be testing the weight and feel of the newest fiberglass fly-fishing rod. (Likely, this isn’t the same person sitting in his second office—Panera.)

It’s not like meandering around Bath & Body Works sniffing the soft fragrances of their body lotions and triple-wick candles. Folks who spend time and hard-earned money at Cabela’s aren’t typically concerned about eucalyptus spearmint hand lotion.

Sweet bagel, new fly rod, and aromatherapy lotion aside—everybody needs transportation. It’s a commonality that unites us all. The DMV offers me a genuine glimpse of the broad spectrum of people in my local community. Folks I might not run into at Panera or Cabela’s or Bath & Body.

But there is another reason I enjoy the Department of Motor Vehicles. Whenever I sit and wait for my number to be called, I’m reminded of another more significant picture of diversity. One with a global reach. A collection of individuals with a wide expanse of socioeconomic, cultural, political, and theological differences. A group with more examples of uniqueness than even the DMV can attract. God’s church!

By design God draws to himself teachers and artists, contractors and caregivers, to be part of the unique group of people he calls his church. He created it that way.

God calls the poor, the wounded, the opinionated, the nosey, the caring, the broken, the seemingly unlovable. He calls them his own. He welcomes all of us, with our quirks and our maladies, into his unique community of love and acceptance, of grace and truth.

This community is far different from anything you or I could ever dream up! Not because we couldn’t pull together a group of folks that would resemble the famous “Buy the World a Coke” television commercial from the 1970s.¹ With a little help from our Facebook friends, we could gather a group from across the globe. Problem is, we wouldn’t. The power of diversity is lost on most of us.

You and I would likely pick a group that looked a whole lot like us. We’d choose people who wear the same Eddie Bauer jeans, Gap sweatshirts, and Clark’s shoes that we do—folks who drive Honda SUVs, make the same schooling choice that we make,² and live in three-name subdivisions.

If it were up to us to choose, God’s church would look a whole lot like you and a whole lot like me. The Church of the Mirror.

Fortunately, God in his great wisdom, didn’t draw unto himself a collection of clean-cut-Christian look-alikes, dressed in white polo shirts and khaki pants. He didn’t draft a fantasy faith team of the smartest, funniest, best looking, and most creative.

The church that Jesus is building is an eclectic, intriguing, quirky, diverse mess of humanity. That’s God’s way. (Which couldn’t be more different than our personal view of the world—and the church.)

It’s All about Me! 

Simple fact: you were made in God’s image. It’s true. Here’s the evidence in black and white:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . .”

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:26–27)

Because we were made in the image of God, bearing his likeness, we are really significant. We carry with us the image of the Creator and sustainer of the entire world! (Take a moment to ponder that.) It’s an amazing and humbling truth wrapped up tight in a skin-covered package that is uniquely you and uniquely me.

How amazing are we? God himself smiled on his creation. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good” (Gen. 1:31).

It was very good!

But now, the very good thing has a problem. Our significance often causes us to idolize the created instead of the Creator. We worship self instead of worshipping the Holy.

Here’s how it works: instead of thankfully and joyfully being little images of the living God, we make big images of ourselves and consider God the little one. We don’t say this, of course—that would be blasphemous. But what we practice is a world centered on our thoughts, our actions, and our dreams.

Don’t believe it? Consider for a moment the way you and I typically determine the quality or value of a photograph. It’s a great photo if you look good! Right? Not such a good shot if your eyes are shut or your smile reveals a front tooth with a piece of the broccoli you had at lunch.

Here’s another one: Consider the appropriate driving speed on the highway. You set the curve. Everyone else needs to stop driving like your great-grandmother and get out of your way, or they’re certifiable speed demons driving like NASCAR star Jimmy Johnson! Right?

We tend to be the barometer of all that is right and true and correct in the world.

Obviously, these are two seemingly insignificant ways we position ourselves as the ultimate authority in our day-to-day experience. What we’re really doing is slowly developing a mind-set where we elevate our thoughts and actions above God’s plan and his desires. Unfortunately, our experience with other Christ followers often puts them on the receiving end of our elevated view of self. And, typically, we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

Anne Lamott captures the essence of this thinking when she writes of some honest counsel she once received: “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”³

Can’t see this sort of thinking in your own life? Consider how easily the mind-set takes over after a weekend worship service or a midweek small-group gathering.

• Are you critical of the music style of worship unless it matches the tunes in your iPod?
• Are you disappointed in the pastor’s sermon unless it’s filled with enough funny stories and memorable illustrations that you can bluff your way through a dinner conversation about the message’s application for your life?
• Do you disapprove of the newly appointed elders who were selected to lead your church because none of them are guys you play golf with each week?
• Are you unhappy with the new person who’s been added to the teaching team of your Sunday school class because he’s been influenced by the wrong theologians and Christian thinkers?
• Are you critical of the book you’re studying in your weekly small group because it’s challenging the way you and your spouse are parenting your two children?

Your dissatisfaction and angst might be warning signs that you’ve begun to attend church made in your own image. Built on your opinions. Fashioned after your desires. You’ve made yourself the senior pastor of the Church of the Mirror.

Unfortunately, this happens in the hearts and minds of Christ followers every weekend. You do it. I’m guilty. It happens in churches of every denomination, of every size, in every city. The Church of the Mirror mind-set infiltrates congregations everywhere—without much opposition.

Church databases are filled with people who came from the church across town. Christ followers shuffle from one local body of believers to another. Why? Because something’s always wrong—the worship style, the volume, the pastor, the elders, the lady who wears too much perfume, the guy who’s got too many tattoos, the folks whose tongues are too loose in the lobby following the service—all are very important. The real problem? Other people who aren’t like that person in the mirror.

That’s why longtime pastor Eugene Peterson says:

The people we encounter as brothers and sisters in faith are not always nice people. They do not stop being sinners the moment they begin believing in Christ. They don’t suddenly metamorphose into brilliant conversationalists, exciting companions and glowing inspirations. Some of them are cranky, some of them are dull and others (if the truth must be spoken) a drag. But at the same time our Lord tells us they are brothers and sisters in the faith. If God is my Father, then this is my family.4

As the pastor who oversees the small groups at my church, I see this I-want-to-pick-my-family thinking with regularity.

If some members classify themselves as “deep” biblically and theologically, they’re typically only interested in connecting with a group of Christ followers of similar depth. And if they can’t find others to discuss the nuances and differences in the Synoptic Gospels or kick around the theological similarities of John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, they’re looking for another group of believers where they can experience “deep” community.

While there is certainly something unique in our culture about folks who still value a deep biblical or theological discussion, this desire often makes me wonder; who will be left to guide the younger, less-mature believers if all the people with biblical and theological depth are off swimming in the deep end of the pool of Christian community?

Another example I see often is the common interest in being physically active. Active people often want to invest only in others who’ll bike and hike, camp and fish, and exert their inner Bear Grylls on the weekends. Common activities aren’t wrong. Doing life together in a small-group community that has similar interests can provide us with powerful experiences and lifelong memories. But this active group is typically a made-in- my-image community. It’s too narrow. Too self-serving. Too me-focused. It pays little respect to the diversity of God’s church.

Pastor John Ortberg wrote an entire book on the oddities and quirkiness of God’s people. In it, he says, “The yearning to attach and connect, to love and be loved, is the fiercest longing of the soul. Our need for community with people and the God who made us is to the human spirit what food and air and water are to the human body. That need will not go away even in the face of all the weirdness.”⁵

Most of us long for a church community that is rich in worship, teaching, and relationships. We yearn for a worshipping community that regularly leads us into the presence of the Father. We desire a teaching community that is rooted in Scripture and is theologically rich. And we long for a community of Christ followers who are honest about living out their faith in word and deed. Problem is, we too often want all of these communities created in our image.

Rick McKinley pastors the Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon. His church is a diverse collection of urban professionals, former drug addicts, and young middle-class families. His clarity on this diversity of God’s people is refreshing: “Jesus created the community of the church to be a family that comes into being by a new birth in Jesus and the miracle of our union with him. Jesus didn’t create a product for us to evaluate and decide if we like it or not.”⁶

The diversity that we see among the unique community of people that God is building called his church is something that we should run toward—not away from. It should intrigue us to know people—at a deep, spiritual level—who are unlike the person we see in the mirror.

The security that we have as men and women of our heavenly Father should open doors of opportunity that nonbelievers can only dream of having. Is there a safer person from whom to learn about an opposing political view than a fellow believer? Could there be a less confrontational environment to discuss racial issues? Isn’t a fellow Christ follower the best person to help you understand the economic challenges faced by the poor, or the weight of responsibility carried by the wealthy?

The community God is building is incredibly diverse. And every one of us is better because the rest of the community doesn’t look just like us.

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1. The 1971 advertisement with teenagers from across the globe made the song “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony)” such a part of our culture that many Coca-Cola-drinking adults can still sing it today some forty years later.

2. A pastor friend of mine once told me that he could look out over his congregation of three hundred on a Sunday morning and see the dividing lines of homeschool, Christian school, and public/charter school families in the seating patterns at the worship service.

3. Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (New York: Anchor, 1994), 22.

4. Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 176.

5. John Ortberg, Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them (Grand Rap- ids: Zondervan, 2003), 18.

6. Rick McKinley, A Kingdom Called Desire: Confronted by the Love of a Risen King (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 139.

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Rob Bentz (MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary) is the lead pastor of Woodside Bible Church in White Lake, Michigan. Rob has written numerous articles for various ministry websites and is currently a featured blog writer at ChurchLeaders.com. He and his wife, Bonnie, have two children and live in Highland, Michigan.

Content taken from The Unfinished Church: God's Broken and Redeemed Work-in-Progress by Rob Bentz, ©2014. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

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A Great Idea, A Better Mission

“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9). This is wisdom that rings true for much of life. But when it comes to race relations, particularly in my United States of America, I pray (and know confidently from Scripture) that one day those words will no longer describe the racial climate I find myself immersed in. For me to feel the intensity of it all is really something. I’m a white male, and I have the privilege of being able to put thinking about my skin color to bed most days, while those of another ethnicity are kept awake at night. I am never subjected to criticism, slander, threats, or violence on the basis of my whiteness. I don’t fear for my life when pulled over. There are no pictures of my ancestors being treated inhumanely.

RECONCILIATION: ESCHATALOGICAL IDEAL OR PRESENT DAY REALITY?

“Racial reconciliation” has for a long time seemed a nice thought that makes sense on paper. I read it implicitly in Scripture and wholeheartedly agree:

• David writes about the pleasantness of Christian unity (Ps. 133:1).
• Paul tells of Christ’s breaking down the dividing wall of hostility (Eph. 2:14), and
• John foretells the forthcoming multitude of nations and tribes and peoples and languages, present before the Lamb of God himself (Rev. 7:9).

These are common Scriptural principles, but they’ve always seemed like an ideal. Racial reconciliation has always been something I’ve had more of an eschatological hope for, an eager anticipation to see take place one thankfully glorious, but sorrowfully distant day.

Martin Luther King Jr., the prophetic leader of the Civil Rights Movement, did not see racial reconciliation in the same light. Of course, he looked forward to the day when the sins of racism, prejudice, and ethnocentrism would pass away forever, but Dr. King never viewed racial reconciliation as limited to the future—he saw it as a mission for the present day. Dr. King’s words, penned in the famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, highlight King’s focus on the need for current reform:

“In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, ‘Those are social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern.’ . . . The judgment of God is upon the Church as never before. If the Church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early Church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”

I am horrified to ponder what Dr. King would say of our churches today.

THE TIME IS NOW

In the wake of the hate and vitriol spread by White Supremacists in Charlottesville, the innocent people dying in the name of protest, and the hostility surrounding our administration’s action/inaction over that weekend, the burden for those unlike me in ethnicity is heavy. Yet, I can only imagine how heavy their shoulders must feel.

There is no more time to sit on our hands or pontificate. This is our moment: will we be people of the gospel, or will we become the “irrelevant social club” King lamented?

At a practical level, how do we foster gospel-driven racial reconciliation in our churches today? How do I, as a white pastor, move my thinking about such matters from an eschatological ideal to a present reality I am pursuing, in the flesh, in real time?

I don’t have a manual. There’s no silver bullet to right race relations. These matters are complex and built over time—but this shouldn’t discourage us from getting to work.

A ROMAN ROAD TO RECONCILIATION

Fortunately, Paul has given us a “manual” of sorts in Romans 12. Though it is not exhaustive, Paul’s words in Romans 12:9-21 offer plenty of places to start for how we should pursue racial reconciliation in our churches and beyond:

“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” – Romans 12:9-21

Below are some reflections on this passage, as well as some shifts and ways in which pastors, elders, and church bodies can work to implement these principles real-time.

#1 – Be with, listen, and learn

We have a wealth of opportunities to be people of the gospel in racial reconciliation when we commit to simply being there. We are to “seek to show hospitality . . . [weeping] with those who weep” (12:13, 15). Notice there is no emphasis on providing answers or offering insight. Those of us who are not living the reality of racial discrimination are well-served to take a posture of humility, seeking to learn and understand, valuing our minority brothers and sisters enough to be taught by them. An easy way to do this? Invite them to preach, lead panel discussions, or conference sessions at your church.

#2 – Condemn racism from the pulpit

The pulpit is a primary avenue through which we should talk clearly and honestly about the sin of racism. Church leaders, we shouldn’t expect people to believe we are a church that cares about this issue if we make no attempt to formally and routinely address it.

#3 – Make racism a church discipline issue 

Practice what you preach. We are called to “abhor what is evil” and to “not be slothful in zeal” (Rom. 12:9, 11). When it comes to racism within the church, it is often sadly overlooked, shrugged off, or swept under the rug. This is pastorally lazy. People of the gospel cannot, and must not, stand for such adamant and explicit rejection of man’s dignity under the banner of the gospel. Churches must be willing to protect the flock enough to enact church discipline for overt, unapologetic racism. We should have nothing to do with such activity (Eph. 5:11).

#4 – Pray for the marginalized, and those who marginalize

Paul's petition to be “fervent in spirit” and “constant in prayer” (Rom. 12:11-12) cannot be overstated. One crucial way for churches to commit themselves to racial reconciliation is by tenacious, tireless prayer for change in the body, the city, and the nation.

We are compelled by the gospel to “love one another with brotherly affection” (Rom. 12:10), to take it upon ourselves to make their issues our issues and their prayers our own. Even in an area where there is little racial diversity, prayer for the nations is an easy way to practically address these issues. Not only should we commit to praying for those who are oppressed, but the oppressor as well, in hopes that he will repent and believe in the gospel of reconciliation by God’s grace.

#5 – Serve beyond your church walls

We “outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom. 12:10) to those unlike us, not out of pity or out of a desire to be seen, but out of a conviction that we have been made one in Christ. Partnering with churches that look ethnically different but share a common vision for gospel reconciliation is an easy way forward. Getting involved locally or globally with those of different ethnic backgrounds is another to work towards reconciliation.

#6 – Don’t limit activity to online engagement

One of the easiest ways Satan would love for people of the gospel to approach racial reconciliation is to think of it only in the realm of social commentary and never in terms of actionable steps. If all we do is lament the state of American race relations from behind a screen, we will never truly effect change in the real world. The lives and souls of image-bearers are too important to leave all of this to mere talking points. Paul, again and again in this passage, is pointing to physical and incarnational relationship.

Paul calls the gospel “the power of God,” good enough for Jew and Greek alike (Rom. 1:16). We have a significant gospel moment before us. This is the time for each of us to grab a chisel and hammer in the name of Christ and begin to chip away at the wall of hostility racism has built in this country—and one day the wall will break.

Inaction when it comes to racism and prejudice stinks before God.  It repulses him. Racial reconciliation is a great idea—and an even a better mission.

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Zach Barnhart currently serves as Student Pastor of Northlake Church in Lago Vista, TX. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University, and is currently studying at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, seeking a Master of Theological Studies degree. He is married to his wife, Hannah. You can follow Zach on Twitter @zachbarnhart or check out his personal blog, Cultivated.

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10 Family Worship Ideas for Busy Families

Honestly, family worship has intimidated me since my wife and I first had children. Sure I have seminary training. Sure I love to talk about theology. But how do I transfer all of that to family worship? Does it even help? Family worship was nearly non-existent for the first several years of my marriage, but I realized something. My trepidation revealed a misgiving in my own heart. I confessed with my mouth that the gospel had changed my life. I confessed that it had the power to change others’ lives. But in my shepherding responsibilities as a husband and father I acted like it wasn’t enough and that my family needed something more than the ordinary means of grace.

Have you ever felt that way? That you had to put some extra oomph into your family worship to make sure it was effective? Don’t put the weight of what only God can accomplish on your shoulders. Obey what you are commanded to do, claim God’s promises, and trust in the Spirit’s effectual work.

Here are my practical tips for family worship.

#1 – Get into a rhythm

I recommend having a flexible routine that your kids can count on. For instance, we struggled to find a time that worked for my family for a long time. Years back I realized when we eat dinner, I’m frequently done five minutes or more before my family (I’ve always been a fast eater). For a time this worked great. I would eat my food, and it was a natural time for our family to talk, share, and pray.

My schedule has since changed and now mornings work better. Figure out what works best for your family. Adapt when necessary. Don’t let the rhythm become an unbreakable rule and don’t miss the spare time (Deut. 6:1-4).

#2 – Don’t sweat the busy day or week

Here’s the good news. You have your kids for at least eighteen years. If you miss a day or even a week it’s not the end of the world. We have a flexible schedule, but if something happens we don’t sweat it and plan to pick up family worship as soon as we can. Also, these busy days or weeks are a great time to take advantage of those minutes in the car or elsewhere that can be redeemed. They key is to make returning to family worship a priority.

#3 – Read Scripture

Don’t neglect reading the scriptures. It doesn’t need to be an entire chapter. It can be just a couple verses. You could also use a good audio bible like Max Mclean’s The Listener’s Bible. Or you could have fun with it and act out a story from the Old Testament. Just don’t neglect the word.

#4 – Ask questions about the text

When you read scripture, ask your family questions relevant to them and always point them back to Jesus. The younger your kids are the more basic these questions will be. Don’t get fancy. Simple questions to drive their hearts toward Jesus and to get them thinking.

#5 – Sing with your kids

For years I was really discouraged because I don’t sing well, and I don’t play instruments. Neither does my wife. We could’ve taught my kids songs without music, but it just didn’t seem the same.

However, with the explosion of smartphones and streaming music services we’ve found a great way to incorporate music into our family worship. We use Spotify to access our favorite songs, and we belt it out. I’ve kept my old Together for the Gospel hymnal/booklets and use those as a road map, but you could just as easily repeat the songs you sang in church on Sunday or purchase a hymnal.

#6 – Use Catechisms

Catechism are old school. Don’t hate the tried and true. They are a great way to teach your kids systematically through the big truths of the Bible. My personal favorite is the new New City Catechisms (which bring together the best of the reformed catechisms).

For your classic creeds, confessions, and catechisms, I've collected the essentials in We Believe: Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms:

• The Apostles' Creed,
• The Nicene Creed, and
• The Athanasian Creed;
• The Dutch Reformed Three Forms of Unity;
• The Westminster Confession and Shorter Catechism;
• The London Baptist Confession and Spurgeon's A Puritan Catechism;
• The Augsburg Confession and Luther's Small Catechism; and
• The Anglican's Thirty-Nine Articles and
• An Outline of the Faith

Your favorite catechisms have probably been set to music too. For the Westminster Shorter Catechism check out The Westminster Shorter Catechism Songs: The Complete CD Set.

Also, Starr Meade has developed a devotional based on the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Training Hearts, Teaching Minds) which is top notch and the Heidelburg Catechism. Of course, there are also the Baptist catechisms.

#7 – Use story books

In addition to reading scripture, there are also some story book bibles which will really help familiarize yourself with the big picture of scripture. Check out The Jesus Story Book Bible, The Gospel Story Bible, and The Big Picture Story Bible.

#8 – Teach them to pray

Start with the Lord’s Prayer. It’s short and theologically rich. You can start reciting this together and soon your family will know it by heart. And if you need help praying from there check out The Valley of Vision. It will draw your focus to God.

But also pray for your kids in front of them. Here’s an example of what I pray,

Dear Lord, thank you so much for Claire, Maddy, and Adele. You’ve blessed us with these children, and they have truly been a gift. Father, we know you love to show yourself faithful in families and you have promised to keep your covenant to a thousand generations. I plead with you, Father, that you would work in their hearts. Help them understand their need for Jesus. Cleanse their heart and draw them to yourself so that your faithfulness would be praised and your name would be made great. Do it for your glory, Lord. Amen.

It's good to teach them early and often that we all depend on God. Pray for your spouse. Have your children pray for the family and your marriage. If you have a sick friend, pray for them. Pray for their pastors, teachers, Sunday school teachers. Pray for your country's leaders.

#9 – Memorize Scripture

Don’t stress. Small portions. Little bit at a time. Get in a rhythm. Do it as a family and talk about what the truth in that verse is. One way to make it fun is to use Seeds Worship, which puts Scripture to music. Also, if you need a plan, Desiring God offers its Fighter Verses, which you can download as an app for most smartphones.

#10 – Make it fun

Don’t be so up tight. Don’t be the family worship Nazi. You know who I’m talking about. Teach your kids to reverence the Lord. Teach them to honor God. Teach them he is holy. But don’t make him out to be the Grinch who stole Christmas. Have fun. Laugh. Be joyful.

Don’t lose heart parents. The gospel is powerful and saves. No additives needed. Just apply consistently in ordinary ways.

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

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An Unredeemed Sense of Guilt

The human conscience is a like a fine musical instrument. When in tune, it plays lovely music. When out of tune, it sounds wrong notes. A conscience rightly oriented has three characteristics: What is the standard? You evaluate yourself (and others) by God’s standards of right and wrong.

Who is the judge whose opinion matters? How God views you matters more than how you view yourself (self-esteem) or how others view you (reputation).

Where do you turn when you fail? You rely on God’s mercies in Christ.

Experiences of sexual darkness bring disorientation to the conscience. We will look at two problems: the self-righteousness of a seared conscience and the self-condemnation of an anguished conscience.

First, a dull or seared conscience is a deadly affliction. Many sexual behaviors are misbehaviors, but the conscience feels no guilt or shame. Instead, wrongdoing is defended and even extolled as normal and desirable—the wrong standard. Appeal is made to the authority of personal desires and popular opinion—the wrong judges. There is no need for mercy because people are okay as they are—self-salvation by self- righteousness is assumed. The conscience reassures itself, “Peace, peace,” but there is no peace. The operations of the conscience fail the test of reality on all three counts. But God can take such a heart of stone and make such a person come to life.

Second, an anguished conscience is an exceedingly painful affliction. Feelings of guilt and shame become stuck in a vortex of self-condemnation. Rightly aroused guilt and shame are good gifts of God. They signal that something is wrong. Guilt senses failure against a standard that matters; shame senses failure before the eyes that matter. These feelings are natural, God-given repercussions when our conscience is alive to genuine personal failure before God. But guilt and shame are meant to go somewhere good.

What do you do when you find yourself drowning in self-condemnation? The normal aftermath of doing wrong (or thinking you have done wrong) is to feel guilt, shame, regret, and remorse. But what comes next? We are meant to seek and find mercy and refuge in the loving welcome of our Father. But when we are not alive to the mercies of Christ, what follows is a predictable cycle of repetitive self-reproach, resolutions to change, self-punishing penance, attempts to forgive ourselves, hollow rationalizations, trying to make up for the wrong by compensating actions, self-concealment, escapism to numb pain and shame, and, finally, despair.

Consider two self-condemnation scenarios. What happens when the conscience is accurate—for example, “My girlfriend and I were wrong to do that”—but blind to the mercies of God? Right standard, right judge. But this true sense of guilt spirals in many fruitless directions. And what happens when the conscience is inaccurate? For example, “I should have done something to avoid being sexually abused. It must have been my fault. I feel horrible about myself and ashamed to let anyone know.” Wrong standard, wrong judge. And self-blame for wrong reasons is inevitably blind to God’s mercies, so it spirals in further fruitless directions. The second scenario calls for a more comprehensive reorientation of the conscience, but both forms of self-condemnation need to find the mercies of God.

Consider a situation where actual sin has occurred. An unmarried man and woman have not treated one another respectfully, as brother and sister, but have indulged in heavy petting. They know they’ve done wrong. But, like many strugglers, they oscillate between moments of obsession with erotic pleasure and days of obsession with moral failure. Guilt turns them inward.

But grace invites them out of themselves. So simple to say, so hard to do. We routinely underestimate how radically faith relies on fresh mercies freely given. Grace means that what makes things right comes to this brother and sister from outside themselves. It’s a sheer gift from their Father and their Savior given courtesy of the Holy Spirit. They don’t get it by self-laceration, by trying to work up a different set of feelings, by trying to say it’s not that big a deal, by resolutions to do better, by distracting themselves. They are forgiven, accepted, and saved from death by God’s mercy. Listen to how Scripture shows a person dealing candidly with his former and current sins. The italics highlight how much his hope amid guilt lies outside himself:

Remember, O Lord, Your compassion and Your  lovingkindnesses, for they have been from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; According to Your lovingkindness remember me, For Your goodness’ sake, O Lord.

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For Your name’s sake, O Lord, Pardon my iniquity, for it is great. (Ps. 25:6–7, 11 NASB)

David’s sexual sin was high-handed. It tore his conscience (Psalms 32, 38, 51). It brought immediate and long-lasting consequences (2 Sam. 12:10–12, 14–15). Yet David was truly forgiven (2 Sam. 12:13). He experienced the joy of repentance and the wisdom, clarity, and purposeful energy that real repentance brings—captured in those same psalms and the rest of 2 Samuel 12. Notice how David radically appeals to the quality of “Your compassion . . . lovingkindnesses . . . goodness . . . O Lord.” David’s own conscience remembers only too well what he did. But he appeals to what God will choose to remember. In effect, “When God looks at me, will he remember my sin or his own mercies? O Lord, when you think about me, remember yourself.” Understanding these last few sentences will forever change your experience of failure.

So let’s make it personal. Are you haunted by your sins in the eyes of God, in the eyes of your conscience, and in the eyes of others who might find out? Your sin may have just occurred a few minutes ago; or it may be a distant but potent memory. Perhaps you don’t commit that sin anymore. You’ve come far and no longer feel any allure to a lifestyle you once avidly pursued. Or perhaps you just did it again. But the memory—whether fresh-minted or ancient history—fills you with dismay. Perhaps immediate and long-term consequences of your sin run far beyond the repercussions within your conscience: abortion, STD, inability to bear children, ongoing vulnerability to certain kinds of temptations, a bad reputation, ruined relationships, wasted time, failed responsibilities. Nobody did this to you; you did it to yourself. The sense of shame and dirty distaste haunts your sexuality just as it haunts those who were victimized. Only you victimized yourself (and others you betrayed). You, too, feel like damaged goods. Sex is not bright, iridescent, cheerful, restrained, generous, matter-of-fact. It is not a flat-out good to be enjoyed with your spouse, or saved should you ever marry.

You might live with such guilty feelings in your singleness. You might have brought them into your marriage. Perhaps you are afraid of relationships, because you know from bitter experience that you can’t be trusted. Perhaps it’s hard to shake off the train of bleak associations that attach to sexual feelings and acts.

Just as sin and suffering turn us in on ourselves, so guilt and shame spiral inward. But living repentance and faith turn outward to the one whose opinion most matters. What God chooses to “remember” about you will prove decisive. Your conscience, if well tuned, is secondary. (This retuning is the core dynamic in renewing an inaccurate conscience.) Your self-evaluation depends on the evaluation he makes and the stance he takes. If the Lord is merciful, then mercy gets final say. It is beyond our comprehension that God acts mercifully for his sake, because of what he is like. Wrap your heart around this, and the typical aftermath of sin will never be the same. You will stand in joy and gratitude, not grovel in shame. You’ll be able to get back about the business of life with fresh resolve, not just with good intentions and some flimsy New Year’s resolutions to do better next time. This is our hope. This is our deepest need. This is our Lord’s essential and foundational gift.

You need to know how faith in Christ’s mercy decenters you off of yourself and re-centers you onto the living God’s promise and character. You know other people who need to know this. We typically mishandle the aftermath of sin with further forms of the God-lessness that manufactures sin. The One “to whom we must give an account” freely offers mercy and grace to help us by the loving-kindness of the Lord Jesus Christ (Heb. 4:13–16).

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David Powlison (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a teacher, a counselor, and the executive director of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation. He is also the senior editor of the Journal of Biblical Counseling and the author of Seeing with New Eyes, Good & Angry, and Speaking Truth in Love.

Content taken from Making All Things New: Restoring Joy to the Sexually Broken by David Powlison, ©2017. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

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