New Book Release | That Word Above All Earthly Powers

Today we release our newest book, That Word Above All Earthly Powers. Pick up the paperback or Kindle edition at Amazon.com.

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The Protestant Reformation means many things to many people. More than just a movement of people away from an ecclesiological structure filled with abuses, the Reformation was a movement back to the truth of God contained in the Scriptures.

THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE

Underneath this movement was the question where does the authority for life and salvation rest? In answer to that question, the Reformers declared Sola Scriptura, or Scripture alone possesses the authority to command our lives and declare where salvation is found.

Scripture has the final word to determine how we should live—not the Roman Catholic Church.

Scripture alone possesses the truth of how we are rescued from our sin and rebellion against God. For the Christian, the Scripture is the highest authority over and against any church tradition or structure.

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE

As we look back 500 years, we give thanks to God for his grace to inspire and embolden men and women to work for the reform and purity of the gospel for the good of the world.

And, yet, we must also give thanks for the Scriptures themselves. As God's revealed, pure, and complete Word for us containing all we need for salvation and life, we must humble ourselves to its authority. The Reformation reminds us of the emboldened passion to lift high Christ above all and to bring to the center God's Word for the shaping of our lives.

This collection of reflections written by the GCD Staff Team and noted writers and theologians like Dr. Gerry Breshears, Micah Fries, and Jonathan Dodson is our effort to spur you on to listen to the voice of God through his Word and humbly receive his grace for all of life.

Our prayer is that this book will bolster your confidence in the authority of God's Word, and encourage you to see his grace for all of life.

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Purchase That Word Above All Earthly Powers in paperback or Kindle edition.

Dressing Up as Jesus for Halloween (and Every Other Day)

As October comes to an end, the question on every kid’s mind is, “What are you going to be for Halloween?” If you’re a parent, you’ve probably overheard your kids discussing their wardrobe plans, or found yourself doing recon on Pinterest to figure out the year’s best costumes. The holiday aisles of Walmart and Target are fully stocked to help the less crafty among us outfit our children for the occasion. If Jake wants to be a ninja, all he needs is the right mask, a sword, and a black suit. Anna can be a princess by donning a crown, sparkly shoes, and a poofy dress. When little Kevin knocks on his neighbor’s door expectantly awaiting Snickers and Kit Kats, he wants his neighbor to see a fireman, not the little boy from next door who leaves his toys all over the lawn. So he wears the helmet, coat, and boots of a fireman. He pretends to save the day by putting out fires.

Wouldn’t it be great if we really could put on different clothes and transform into someone other than who we are? God’s Word has much to say about the kind of clothes we should put on.

WE NEED A WARDROBE CHANGE

Prior to repentance, the filth of sin covers us. When we live by the flesh we wear soiled garments all day long. Jude 23 teaches the appropriate response to sin is to, “hate even the garment stained by the flesh.” What we wear on the outside reflects what we look like on the inside.

God commands us in Ephesians 4:22-24 to, “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Our old clothes are no longer appropriate; they reflect our old lives. The Bible says we used to wear our corruption. But if we are in Christ, we are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17) and we need new clothes.

Paul tells us to put off our old life of sin and to, “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10). As image-bearers of God (Genesis 1:27), we reflect him to the watching world. We must dress appropriately for this task. We can’t walk around with the stench of our filthy garments of sin clinging to us. We must instead, “cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:12).

We must, by God’s grace, exchange our old life and its filthy clothing with the new life found only in Christ and his righteousness. God tells us how we should dress in Romans 13:14: “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Once redeemed, don’t continue to allow sin to stain your new wardrobe. James is very direct when he says, “keep yourself unstained from the world” (James 1:27).

GOD CLOTHES HIS CHILDREN

God showed Zechariah a vision of him providing new clothes for the high priest, Joshua. Joshua was impure and God cleansed him of his dirtiness. He also gave him new clothes once he was clean. Zechariah 3:3-4 says, “Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Remove the filthy garments from him.’ And to him he said, ‘Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.’ ”

Luke’s gospel tells of the prodigal son’s father clothing him by commanding his servants, “Bring quickly the bests robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet” (Luke 15:22). The prodigal’s status had gone from lost to found, and his father wanted his clothes to reflect that change in standing. He needed new clothes and his father provided them.

Isaiah’s heart was filled with gratitude for the new clothes his Father gave him. He says, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Isaiah 61:10).

God has been clothing his creation since the beginning. Genesis 3:21 says, “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” When we, by his grace, reject our old life and turn to him in repentance, he gives us a new wardrobe appropriate for his children. He clothes us in the beauty of the gospel.

SHOW OFF YOUR NEW CLOTHES

When our children put on their costumes this Halloween, they will want everyone to see their new look. Moms and dads will follow them around like paparazzi to document the transformation from little girl to Superwoman, or from little boy to Batman. As we watch our children dress up for the day, we can rejoice knowing we get to wear the new clothes our Father gives us for all eternity. Unlike our children, we don’t have to pretend to be something we’re not.

We belong to God. He has adopted us and clothed us with the garments that reflect our new identity as heirs (Romans 8:15-17). We’ve traded in our filthy rags and are now clothed in his righteousness. We should be excited for everyone to see our new look, too!

Our spiritual clothing communicates identity and belonging. As God’s children, we must dress accordingly. Job says he dressed in righteousness and justice. “I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban” (Job 29:14).

What is your spiritual wardrobe telling the world? When others see you, do they see the righteousness of Christ, or do they see garments stained by the world?

Put on Jesus. Show him off. Let others see how your Father has dressed you.

We want the world to see what he looks like on us. We want the world to see what he looks like through us. We wear Christ for the glory of God.

Let’s show the world our new life and the wardrobe that comes with it. Let’s tell others how they can trade in their old, dirty rags for the finest clothes.

The Spiritual Angst of Martin Luther

Martin Luther experienced angst in the extreme. Born five hundred years ago into a humble copper miner’s family, it was neither career uncertainty nor economic worry that most troubled young Martin, though I’ll bet that German winter got him down. Martin experienced anxiety of cosmic dimensions. He was petrified by death, hell, and the avenging wrath of God. At twenty years old, weeping and wailing, trembling and doubting, Martin despaired over the salvation of his own soul. He was convinced that God’s grace was utterly blocked by his mortal guilt and that there was just no way out. “To cry unto the Lord, that is beyond us,” he lamented, “for our bad conscience and our sin press down on us, and lie so about our necks so badly that we feel the Wrath of God: and the whole world could not be so heavy as that burden.”

The Jesus of Martin’s imagination promised no refuge; he never showed up as a brotherly Savior offering comfort. When Martin kneeled on the stone floor of the unheated church, the young man looked up to the crucifix with the suffering Christ hanging there—and he saw a harsh judge from whom he wanted to flee. Martin turned pale, terrified by the very name of Jesus; Christ’s accusing gaze was, he said, a lightning stroke to him.

But one day, Martin was caught out in an open field during a violent thunderstorm, convinced that a fiery death was at hand. In desperation he cried out for rescue and vowed to become a monk if only God would spare his life. Martin survived the storm. I’ve also made some impulsive, emergency promises, bargaining with God and then always managing to forget, but Martin actually made good on his prayer. He gave away his possessions and signed on at the Augustinian monastery before even checking with his parents. They’d been pushing him to become a respectable lawyer. Eager to go all the way, Martin, at twenty four, became a priest.

Unfortunately, Martin’s new religious vocation provided zero relief from his anxiety. Martin found no peace within the monastery walls despite his scrupulous regimen of vigils, fasts, confessions, and grueling self-punishments. Plagued by distress, he was tormented by the vision of an irate God who set impossibly high standards then damned him for failing to achieve them. Martin came to hate the God he was commanded to serve.

Disillusioned, melancholy Martin lost all hope in the church’s claims to salvation. The corruption of the medieval church, with its pay-your-way-to-heaven scams, pushed him over the edge. On October 31, 1517, Martin nailed his famous protest declaration, his Ninety-Five Theses, onto the massive door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, declaring war against the Christian establishment. With that, the Protestant Reformation began.

Martin antagonized the church elites and then stubbornly refused to recant. The authorities excommunicated him as a heretic, vowing fatal penalties. Martin, a convicted clerical outlaw on the lam, hid out behind the walls of Wartburg Castle for almost a year.

Driven by rebellion and despair, Martin turned to the Bible. Paul’s words in Romans captured his attention: “‘He who through faith is righteous shall live” (Romans 1:17). With that truth, everything changed. Martin found relief from his doomed efforts to win God’s pleasure, the impasse of church dogma and religious piety. Faith, he realized, is simple trust in God’s promises, no matter how we feel or what we accomplish. What an unexpected, astounding revelation: salvation is a gift! In a profound emotional rush, Martin declared, “When I realized this, I felt myself born again.” It was as if “the gates of paradise had been flung open” and he’d walked in.

Did Martin’s newfound spiritual freedom heal his heart and calm him down? Hardly.

Intense, complex Martin launched ferocious doctrinal debates and waged personal battles. Unwilling to back down, Luther vilified his opponents as dragons, specters and witches, monsters of perdition, and enemies in a pantheon of wickedness. (You did not want to get on this guy’s bad side.) Martin’s countercultural ideas took off and ignited violent peasant uprisings. Historians say that his theological revolution ushered in the modern era of Western history. So, uh, no. Martin never calmed down.

Martin did find some relief in human love. No longer a monk in good standing, Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, a runaway nun. She’d escaped the fortifications of her convent hidden in an empty fish barrel, a display of her innovative spirit. Katharina was one no-nonsense wife. She ran a buzzing household, supervised their six children, hosted mobs of relations and theology students, and all while she managed her brewery, vegetable garden and fish hatchery. It’s no wonder Martin utterly adored the woman. He warmly declared, “There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage.”

Even with intimate family affection, close community, prayer, biblical conviction, and outsized courage, Martin was still plagued by chronic anxiety to the end of his life, a condition he named Anfechtung, with its connotation of assault. At fifty, Luther lamented that his dark emotional afflictions, those “weapons of death,” were still troubling him—more worrisome than any of his intellectual labors or personal enemies. One strategy usually helped. When things got bad, he said, he got into bed and embraced his Katy until her nearness sent the demonic depressions away.

In Martin’s time, fellow sufferers came to him and begged for counsel. Pastor Martin first responded with theological insights. Jesus knows that we worry, he truly does, Martin assures them (and us). So listen deeply to Jesus’ words, he’d say, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Trust in God.” In your hopelessness, your angst, your helplessness, there is a clear divine command: Rejoice! Yes, Martin, insists, “The Christian should and must be a cheerful person.” I for one read this and ask: isn’t cheerfulness a lot to expect? I know I can hardly complain, compared to some impoverished Germanic peasant in the year 1500. But still. I can’t just put on a happy face.

It is said that Martin prayed the Lord’s Prayer eight times a day. I don’t think he did it as an act of rote religiosity. Instead, I think Martin was daily tested by his apprehension, continually forced back to ask for

God’s help. Only in prayer was Martin assured, as he said, that Christ loved him, that the Father loved him, that the Holy Spirit loved him.

I imagine going back to sixteenth-century Wittenberg for an afternoon. I walk along Collegienstrasse and through the Katharinenportal to enter the Luther-Von Bora house. I pull a chair up to the heavy wooden table in the Lutherstube and join the men for several hours of heated intellectual debate. In the courtyard, the Luther kids scramble after squawking chickens beyond the smoky kitchen. The chatter, the commotion, the conflict. It’s just too much. I have to get outside and walk.

Katharina and Martin guide me into the medieval streets. We push through the crowded market square, past crofters’ clay and straw huts, through the ramparts and city gate and into the open summer fields of Saxony. Here, with the sun on our faces, Martin drops his cantankerous tone for a more pastoral, reflective manner.

Martin quotes Jesus, who said, “Do not be anxious, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ Your heavenly Father knows that you need these things.” As we amble through the grass, I picture Martin as the young man who bolted across this very meadow, caught in the stormy terror of God’s wrath. Here he is, speaking of grace. I know that it’s not easy for him.

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Adapted from Vintage Saints and Sinners by Karen Wright Marsh. Copyright (c) 2017 by Karen Wright Marsh. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

Karen Wright Marsh is executive director and cofounder of Theological Horizons, a university ministry that has advanced theological scholarship at the intersection of faith, thought, and life since 1991. Karen directs daily programs, writes resources and curriculum, teaches weekly classes, mentors students, leads the staff, and speaks at retreats, churches, and campus ministries. She holds degrees in philosophy and linguistics from Wheaton College and the University of Virginia. Karen lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband, Charles Marsh.

Glorifying God in Our Ends and Means

A few years ago, my kids participated in an AWANA program at our local church. This ministry strives to teach kids the Bible. All week long, my boys worked hard to memorize several verses. I’ll admit I was tempted to think my mom game was strong—I clearly was raising kids who loved God’s Word. But as time passed, I realized my boys were working hard to memorize verses so they could receive AWANA bucks—play money to be used in the AWANA store to buy toys and candy.

My dreams of raising the next John Piper were crushed. As it turns out, my little guys loved candy and did what they could to get more of it.

At the time, memorizing Scripture was just a means to an end for my boys. They valued treats and trinkets, not truth. I explained to them that learning God’s Word is a reward in itself. As with many aspects of parenting, through correcting my children, God began to reveal ways I devalued processes in my own life.

WHEN OUR GOALS AREN’T GODS

We can all be tempted to only value the final product, not the process. Often we value the destination, not the journey.

But our invested time and labor is not just a means to an end. It's in those processes and journeys that God is making much of himself in us. God is transforming our character and revealing himself. We would be wise to see the value in the means.

We work hard for rewards and value them. We desire to be thinner and healthier, so we diet and exercise. We are motivated by the end result of getting back into those jeans and watching our blood pressure go down. Diet and exercise can easily be viewed as a necessary evil to accomplish our goal of getting fit.

We want to get a good grade on a test, so we study hard to learn the material and get an A. Studying is a discipline endured to achieve a goal.

We want our children to obey, so we train them to respect our authority. The time spent teaching them is difficult and draining. But we know it’s the only way to accomplish our desired goal: having obedient children.

We desire to provide for our families, so we work hard five days a week to receive a paycheck.

The goals we work for can be good, and God can be glorified in them. But we shouldn’t be negligent in seeing and desiring God’s glory in the labor towards our goals. We miss out when we only see the process as the means to an end. God redeems our means and glorifies himself in them.

FINDING LIFE IN THE MEANS

Valuing the process is not a new idea; it’s a biblical one. When God rescued the Israelites from Egypt, their destination was the promised land of Canaan. They arrived via a 40-year detour in the wilderness. This was their means. Yes, this means was a time of punishment, discipline, and refinement (Joshua 5:6), but God was with them and displayed his glory to them.

He provided for his people with manna in the mornings and quail in the evenings (Exodus 16:12). He gave them water from a rock (Exodus 17:6). He kept their clothes and shoes intact for 40 years (Deuteronomy 29:5).

The Israelites were focused on getting to Canaan. In the meantime, God was with them, teaching them to trust him.

The ends we strive for make up very little of our lives. Most of our lives are lived in the means. The means may be pretty or messy, but God is sovereign over them all. He’s with us in our weakness, making us strong (2 Corinthians 12:10). When we believe, it’s because he was with us in our unbelief (Mark 9:24).

God is transforming us while we’re in the meantime.

God values a mother’s work training children. In doing so, she is loving him through her obedience (Proverbs 22:6). A student’s hard work has eternal value when it’s done for the Lord (Colossians 3:23).

We bring God glory as we display his self-control in our lives by eating enough to sustain our bodies, not overindulging. We can value this discipline by eating to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). God values our hunger for him that surpasses our hunger for anything else.

God values our time at work as a place we make disciples (Matthew 28:19).

Yes, we want to see God glorified in our achievements. But it’s short-sighted to stop there. We should seek God’s glory in the means, processes, journeys, and methods. We can glorify God in where we go as well as how we get there. We can bring him glory in what we do and how we do it. God should be glorified in our ends and our means.

GOD’S MEANS

Even God’s plan to reconcile his creation to himself was a process. God could have simply desired it and it would have been so. But he chose a means to an end that involved him giving of himself to accomplish our redemption.

This method required decades of his Son humbly living the life we couldn’t here on earth, in perfect obedience, and without sin. It will require millennia of his patience toward us as he desires to see everyone repent (2 Peter 3:9). God is not wasting thousands of years, though. This time is valuable and transformational for his people.

One day our earthly pilgrimage will be over. We will be completely conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29), forever with him in glory (Colossians 3:4). We will have a beautiful story to share of how our Father transformed us into Christ’s image “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Each degree of glory is another beautiful and valuable means to an end. As we look to that end, may we value the meantime.

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Christy Britton is a wife, homeschool mom of four biological sons, and soon-to-be mom of an adopted Ugandan daughter. She is an orphan advocate for 127 Worldwide. Her family is covenant members at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, N.C. She loves reading, discipleship, spending time in Africa, hospitality, and LSU football. She writes for various blogs including her own, www.beneedywell.com.

Confessions of a Connoisseur

I recently read an interview conducted with the few common citizens who were able to obtain seats for the Academy Awards in Hollywood.  “It's American royalty,” said Barbara Doyle, 57. “We don't have the queen. We have actors and actresses.” “I've always wanted to do this,” said 48 year-old Pam Ford, who won front-row seats from a TV station. “To win and sit in the front row, it's beyond comprehension, anything I ever dreamed of. I could die tomorrow.”

Really? That’s the greatest dream she could envision? Surely there has to be more to life than this! Indeed, there have been those (including movie stars themselves) who have set much higher goals and pursued much greater pleasures, yet have still found they over-estimated the fulfillment even the grandest physical and mental achievements can provide.

A CONNOISSEUR CONFESSES

The dictionary defines a connoisseur as “a person with expert knowledge or training; a person of informed and discriminating taste.” Given that description, we might well say that the entire book of Ecclesiastes is the confession of a connoisseur, not just in one area or discipline, but every aspect of life and living.

Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, was one of the wealthiest and most intelligent men who has ever lived. He had everything—and tried everything—in order to find happiness. He makes the startling claim, “I have seen everything that is done under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:14), and goes on to challenge the reader to find a more experienced connoisseur: “What can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done” (Ecclesiastes 2:12).

This book, then, is the remarkable journal of a connoisseur who tried it all and has passed his findings on to us. It is important to realize that Solomon was not merely a whining failure who couldn’t reach the top and so despised and disparaged it. No, Solomon was a success in every area of life and is speaking to us from under the sun, but also from on top of the world!

I TURNED MY HEART TO KNOW

Solomon gave himself wholly to the pursuit of personal pleasure and knowledge: “I turned my heart to know…” (Ecclesiastes 7:25). And because Solomon was a man of tremendous power, influence, intellect, and resources, he was successful to the extent that he experienced everything the world has to offer. He became “a person of expert knowledge” in every area of life. He tried it all, with all his might.

In order to appreciate the extent of Solomon’s existential research, we could summarize his experiences in six categories.

Knowledge and Education

Solomon says, “I applied my heart to know wisdom” (Ecclesiastes 1:17). Solomon was the scholar’s scholar, the academic’s academic. He excelled in science, architecture, philosophy, religion, literature—you name it, he had mastered it. In fact, the queen of Sheba tested him in exactly this manner, pressing him with every hard question she could think of and observing first-hand all his accomplishments. Even this wealthy, intelligent, and powerful woman finally admitted that “the half was not told” her in relation to Solomon’s wealth of wisdom (1 Kings 10:1-7).

The Arts and Entertainment

Solomon frankly states, “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself’” (Ecclesiastes 2:1). He said he listened to a variety of singers, musical instruments, etc. (Ecclesiastes 2:8). There was no end to Solomon’s resources, and he dedicated his bottomless assets to the pursuit of every escape and amusement money could buy.

Temporary Highs

As is common, Solomon combined his pursuit of entertainment with other opportunities for temporary excitement. He says, “I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine” (Ecclesiastes 2:3). It appears Solomon was not half-hearted about anything he did, including partying and drunkenness.

Accomplishments and Luxuries

“I made great works,” Solomon boasts, including houses, gardens, and water features he designed himself (Ecclesiastes 2:4-6). Even though he was a king, he was also what we call a “renaissance man.” He was not idle but used his massive talents and creativity to push the boundaries of accomplishment in every direction.

Power and Wealth

Solomon was king of Israel during the zenith of its influence and prosperity. “I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces” (Ecclesiastes 2:8), he says. In fact, we are told that in Solomon’s time silver was not even highly regarded because gold was in such abundance! Take a trip to Tiffany’s today and you’ll see that even in the U.S. we have not approached this level of wealth.

Companionship and Sex

The most infamous lady’s man in modern history could not hold a candle to the exploits of Solomon. He furnished himself with 1,000 women of his choice, who were always at his beck and call (1 Kings 11:3).

We can sum up Solomon’s endeavors with this simple observation: in Ecclesiastes 2:4-10, Solomon uses the words “me,” “myself,” “I,” or “mine” over thirty times. Solomon gave himself to himself in order to pursue the greatest pleasure and fulfillment he could find for himself!

ALL IS VANITY

It’s easy to identify other people’s idolatry. But our own idols often have a way of hiding from our soul-searching gaze. Tim Keller provides some insight to help identify our personal idols. Keller observes, “An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, ‘If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.’”

What has been occupying your thoughts, your ambitions, your affections lately?

Millions of people were waiting with great anticipation for the next iteration of the iPhone, although a new version is sure to come out next year and make this year’s obsolete. Others may not care a thing about the latest tech, but feel their life will surely be fulfilled if only they can get into the right school, win the state championship, get that next promotion, find the right person to marry, or . . .

From the man who had it all, tasted it all, and tried it all, comes this intensely disappointed testimony: “all is vanity.”

His experiences “under the sun,” or without God, are summed up with the single word vanity—emptiness. Solomon uses this word over thirty times in this single sermon. Vexation is used 4 times; folly 7 times. Solomon found life empty, frustrating, and foolish without the purpose and power of God.

After giving himself, with all his unparalleled skill and resources, to find happiness under the sun, Solomon comes to this tragic conclusion: “I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:17).

His gaping void reminds me of an interview I came across several years ago with Halle Berry, an Academy Award-winning actress. When asked what if felt like to have so much success and beauty, Berry responded with indignation: “Beauty? Let me tell you something—being thought of as a beautiful woman has spared me nothing in life,” she said. “No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory.”

THE HAPPY LIFE

Ecclesiastes has been called a lesson from “the discipline of a divine education.” Solomon learned through bitter experience the same reality that Augustine came to also: “There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this it is, and there is no other.”

Your house doesn’t really protect you. The food in your fridge won’t ultimately sustain your life. Your smartphone can’t make you truly wiser. In fact, no amount of family, friends, promotions, luxury cars, or philanthropic efforts will be able to fill the void in your eternal soul.

God, however, is everything your soul has been longing for, and more.

We often quote the human maxim, “Experience is the best teacher,” but Solomon reminds us this is emphatically not the case! The best teacher is the divine instruction of God’s Word, and it tells us of One who has come and who is even greater than Solomon.

Rather than giving himself to himself, Jesus Christ gave himself to death for sinners! And those, like Augustine, who love him for his own sake, find in him the joy never found by the ungodly.

Life with Christ, life in Christ—this is not life under the sun, but with the Son. This is the happy life . . . and there is no other (John 14:6)!

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

Uncomfortable Holiness, and Why It's Essential for Christian Community

The bar was full of people, full of smoke, full of that loud, sustained decibel hum of alcohol-fueled chatter that makes shout-talking into someone’s ear necessary for a conversation. The music was bumping, full of profanity. At one point a few people were dancing on a table. Bursts of laughter and the occasional shattering of glass punctuated the noise. All manner of tobacco was being smoked: cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, pipes. And almost everyone in the bar had just finished a day of sessions at a major Christian conference. I was a part of that scene, one of the evangelical revelers whose behavior was such that no observer could have distinguished us as believers in any holy God, in any “set apart” sense. Of course in the moment it was fun, joyful even, and we relished blending in with the bar crowd. But in retrospect I wish I’d contributed a better witness, living at least part of the call to “not be conformed to this world” (Rom. 12:2). I wish I’d been more mindful of how, even in a bar, I was called to be different, to let my light shine before others (Matt. 5:16). I came home from that conference and penned thoughts about the problematic desire for faith to “fit in” with the cool kids of the world.¹

Like many of my Christian peers who grew up in a rather moralistic, protective, separatist evangelicalism, I fell prey to the all-too-common pendulum problem in my twenties. I attended parties (and hosted some) with Christian college students and graduates where kegs, beer pong, sake bombs, and vomiting were among the evening’s amusements. I watched movies and TV shows with little filter for unsavory or explicit content. In my efforts to avoid legalism, I abused Christian liberty.² Because who wants to be prudish or lumped in with the hypocritical, holier-than-thou evangelicals so despised by society? No one.

But as uncomfortable as it is to embrace holiness and be noticeably different in the way we live in the world, it is essential for our vocation as the people of God.

WHY WE HATE HOLINESS

In today’s world, holy is the most offensive of all four-letter words. It’s far more acceptable to say, “My life is so messed up,” than it is to say, “I am striving to be holy.” For many, Christianity’s seeming obsession with holiness is one of its most distasteful qualities.

Why is holiness so reviled? One reason is simply that the pursuit of holiness also involves the acknowledgment of sin and the necessity of repentance. These are two words that are incredibly unfashionable: sin and repentance. In addition to implying that we are not good people, the words sin, repentance, and holiness conjure images of nuns with paddles, deceptively sweet (but kind of creepy) church ladies, and hypocritical pastors who decry the deviant sexual ethics of liberal America while they ravenously consume pornography behind closed doors.

Hypocrisy is a huge reason why we hate holiness. We’ve witnessed the inconsistencies of a “moral majority” that often failed morally, and fundamentalists who railed against the evils of pop culture while they perpetuated the evils of racism and sexism. We’ve seen too many people use the word holy while simultaneously ignoring the poor, condemning the homosexual, turning away the refugee, and covering up various forms of abuse.

For some nonbelievers, the idea that Christians are called to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48) is naive but innocuous, so long as believers keep their holiness and sin talk to themselves. What is abhorrent is when Christian morality is felt to be imposed on others or suggested as the preferred program for human flourishing. One man’s morality may be OK for him, but it’s not OK to suggest it is right for another. This implies a holier-than-thou superiority, and nothing is worse than being holier than thou.

OUR WARINESS OF "WORKS"

Even devout Christians can be uncomfortable with the word holiness. Many Protestants are skeptical of too much emphasis on sanctification, for example, lest it morph into works-merited righteousness. But the history of God’s covenant relationship with his people has always been one of both God’s sufficient grace and his desire for our response of obedient living. In his biblical theology of covenantal discipleship, Jonathan Lunde argues for a continuity between the old and new covenants in terms of the holy living that, though not understood to merit the covenantal blessings, is nevertheless expected of God’s people:

Though always established in grace, each biblical covenant also includes demands of righteousness from those who trust in [God’s] faithfulness to fulfill his covenantal promises. This means that covenantal grace never diminishes the covenantal demand of righteousness—righteousness that flows out of covenantal faith. As a result, faith and works of obedience will always be found in God’s true covenant partners.³

Jesus and Paul do not dispense with the importance of holiness for God’s people in the new covenant. In some cases Jesus actually calls his disciples to even higher standards than the Mosaic covenant, for example in the area of divorce (Mark 10:2–12), the expansion of the murder prohibition to also include anger (Matt. 5:21–26), or the elevation of the prohibition on adultery to also include lust (Matt. 5:27–30). But why? Jesus is not upping the expectation of righteousness to make it harder for people to enter his kingdom. No, salvation is by grace through faith, not of our own works (Eph. 2:8–9). Jesus is raising the bar because he wants his people to be noticeably different, a light in the dark world. It’s difference for the sake of mission.

THE DIFFERENCE OUR DIFFERENCE MAKES

Ever since Abraham was called by God to leave his homeland to found a new nation in an unknown land (Genesis 12), uncomfortable obedience and uncomfortable difference have been a part of what it means to be the people of God. Why? Because God is perfectly holy. “Be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:45; 19:2; 20:7; 21:8). God’s holiness is no joke. It’s why the Israelites crossing the Jordan were instructed to stay a thousand yards or more away from the ark (Josh. 3:4); it’s why Uzzah died for touching the ark (2 Sam. 6:6–7). It’s why the entire book of Leviticus is devoted to holy worship (chapters 1–10) and holy living (chapters 11–27). The minutiae of holiness in the Old Testament may seem a bit bizarre to us today, but that was sort of the point. Holiness is difference.

It is strange. But not for the sake of strangeness. For the sake of Yahweh.

The theme of holiness and separation is reiterated in the New Testament: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). Jesus also uses the light imagery when he says his followers are to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13–14). As Lunde notes, “Whatever Jesus intends by the images of ‘salt’ and ‘light,’ it is clear that his followers are to be different from those surrounding them in the world.” Salt was used in the ancient world for flavoring, for fertilizer, and as a preservative, in each case bringing something different and beneficial to the substance around it. Light also brings something different and beneficial to its surroundings (darkness).⁴ Like a lamp in a dark house, our light shines for a purpose: “So that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).

For Christians, there is a discomfort in being different, but it is for a missional purpose. It is for the sake of the world. As Rod Dreher notes in The Benedict Option, embracing a countercultural identity as Christians is not about our survival as much as our task to be a light to the world: “We cannot give the world what we do not have.”⁵

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING COUNTER-CULTURAL (IN GOOD WAYS)

As historians of the early church have pointed out recently, the earliest Christians recognized the vital importance of habits and behavior that were starkly different from those of the surrounding culture. For them, more important than believing in Christian virtues was living them, “embodying the Christian good news, bearing it in their bodies and actions, living the message visibly and forcefully so that outsiders would see what the Christians were about and, ideally, would be attracted to join them.”⁶

But our pursuit of holiness is also an act of worship, a response to God’s grace. The opening of Romans 12 calls Christians to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (v. 1). And the next verse underscores the connection between holiness and difference: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (v. 2).

“Do not be conformed to this world” is one of the most grating verses of the Bible to many modern ears, yet it is not just a Pauline one-off. The nonconforming set-apartness of God’s people is a major theme of the whole Bible. But it’s an unpopular idea these days, both for Christians who wish they could blend in and for nonbelievers pressuring religious institutions to compromise on their different-ness (for example in the recent push for Christian colleges to abandon their policies on sexual conduct, or for Christian business owners to provide services or insurance policies that compromise their beliefs).

But the logic of groups necessitates difference. In order for any group—whether a Jewish seminary, an African-American college fraternity, or an LGBT advocacy organization—to have a meaningful identity and flourish in its function, it must have boundaries. If a Jewish seminary started enrolling radical, Jew-hating Muslims, or if an African-American fraternity allowed white women to join, or if GLAAD hired James Dobson as its new president, these groups would cease to have any meaningful differentiation. In the same way, a Christian college or church ceases to be relevant when it abandons its conviction-driven distinctions to fit the prevailing winds of politics and culture. Pluralism only makes sense if individual groups are allowed to be themselves. When boundaries are blurred and set-apartness is lost, everyone loses.

FROM MORAL MAJORITY TO PROPHETIC MINORITY

This is why Christian difference matters. When we blend in, when our boundaries are blurred or disappear altogether, our light in the darkness fades. Our salt loses its saltiness. This is why the shift Russell Moore describes in Onward, from an evangelical “moral majority” to a “prophetic minority,” is a good thing. It doesn’t mean we disengage from culture or build impenetrable, dialogue-averse walls around our institutions. What it means is engaged alienation: “a Christianity that preserves the distinctiveness of our gospel while not retreating from our callings as neighbors, and friends, and citizens.”⁷

The more Christians look, talk, act, and believe like the culture around us, the less interested others will be in what we have to offer. Why would anyone go to church and bother with Christianity if it is only a replica of the sorts of things they can find at the mall, movie theater, community center, or nightclub? It is the different-ness of the gospel, not its hipness, that changes lives and transforms the world.

1. Those written thoughts eventually became my book Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010). ↩︎
2. I explored the healthy balance between the two extremes in Brett McCracken, Gray Matters: Navigating the Space between Legalism and Liberty (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2013). ↩︎
3. Jonathan Lunde, Following Jesus, the Servant King: A Biblical Theology of Covenantal Discipleship (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 50. ↩︎
4. Ibid., 172–73. ↩︎
5. Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Sentinel, 2017), 19. ↩︎
6. Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 13. Kreider illustrates this focus on behavior and habitus by quoting early church leaders like Cyprian: “We know virtues by their practice rather than through boasting of them; we do not speak great things but we live them” (p. 13). Or Lactantius on a non-coercive missional strategy that is focused on embodying truth: “We use no guile ourselves, though they complain we do; instead, we teach, we show, we demonstrate” (p. 34). ↩︎
7. Russell Moore, Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel (Nashville: B&H, 2015), 8. ↩︎

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Content taken from Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community by Brett McCracken, ©2017. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

Brett McCracken is the managing editor of Biola Magazine at Biola University and the author of Hipster Christianity and Gray Matters. He writes regularly for the Gospel Coalition website, Christianity Today, Relevant, and his website, BrettMcCracken.com.

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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