Valentine’s Day Meditation

By / Feb 14

It’s Valentine’s Day. The day that most people pretend to hate because they either don’t feel loved, or don’t want to show love, but mostly because they always wish the love they had was more intense, more real. So, it’s the day that we eat candy and have nice dinners and buy flowers and try to imagine a love that is so powerful that romance bursts out of us spontaneously, without even trying.  But for the most part, people are disappointed because they see that even love itself is too often a fleeting feeling that we can’t create even in the perfect of circumstances. That’s why love can’t be defined in terms of experience, merely, but must be defined in terms of underlying reality, eternally. A reality that shapes every day and every thing, not relegated to the convenient or designated times.

God is love (1 John 4:8). He is not love because we exist. That would mean he needs us to be who he is. We exist because of his love. Without that love of the Father, there would be no reason for us. That is the underlying eternal reality. Because God is love there has never been a day in all of existence that wasn’t defined by love. Love itself is the foundation and ground work, it is the structure and frame, the heartbeat and skeleton, the flesh and blood that reverberates throughout each day. So, why do we not feel it moment by moment?

If God is love and God upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3) would not love then be even the ruling reality of the universe? It’s more than foundational, it’s governmental as well. The love of God literally sustains the entire cosmos. Love then is meant to be intense and real because God himself is intense and real and God himself is love.

So, here on Valentine’s Day we look out on all those disappointed in the world. Their experience of love isn’t working. They feel let down. They feel betrayed. They feel as if something as good as love should be more real and so why isn’t it? Simply put, their eyes are too low.

God is love. I am not love. I love, but I’m not Love. But God is. So, on Valentine’s Day, if we want love, we have to raise our sights to him. We wouldn’t go to someone who has water and expect for them to be the satisfying reality of water. We must go to the water itself for that. So, if we want real love, shouldn’t we go to the source? And the good news is that this Love isn’t unavailable to us. He is there. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

Do you want a love that exceeds even the most thrilling of Valentine’s Days? Go to him and get it. After all, it’s the most real thing in the universe. Ultimate reality is a God who is love.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at thingsofthesort.com. 



What About Me Right Now?

By / Feb 8

Promises, promises.

God’s announcement of His plan of salvation and blessing to His people in Christ is one of the unifying themes integrating the message and the deeds of the Old and New Testaments. All throughout the Bible, God’s people have received the gift and legacy of God’s divine promises.

After the fall into sin, we immediately have the first gospel promise (Gen. 3:15). This is soon followed by covenantal promises with mankind represented by Noah (Gen. 8:21–22). Then, we see continued promises with Israel in the person of Abraham (Gen. 12:2–3; 15:18–21), in the assemblage of Israel at Sinai (Ex. 19:5–6), and in the “new covenant” (Jer. 31:31–34).

Within that framework, we find God promising and blessing his people, through Moses, with redemption from bondage in Egypt. There is the promised land, rest, light, and most importantly, the promised Messianic deliverer. In the promised Messiah, “all the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Cor. 1:20). Those of us who live in this messianic age of the kingdom await the blessed promise of his return: “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

In Isaiah, chapters 1–39 focus on judgment and chapters 40–66 on hope. While there are glimpses of hope in chapters 1-39 and glimpses of judgment in 40-66, the reader who comes to Isaiah 40:1, feels the relief it brings: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” This promise of comfort is embodied in the Servant of the Lord in the four poetic Servant songs (Is. 42-55). In the first song, the Servant, empowered by God’s Spirit, will bring forth justice (revelation) to the nations (Isaiah 42:1-4). In the second, the Servant will be a light to the nations and lead his people to the Jerusalem above (49:1–6). The New Testament clearly identifies the Servant as Jesus Christ.

These amazing Servant songs of promise provide a peek behind the curtain of God’s eternal plan to deliver his people, summing up all things in Christ (Eph. 1:10). In response to this prophetic look into future deliverance we find this statement: “But Zion [Jerusalem] said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me’” (Isaiah 49:14). Why? I am sure the reason given would be, “Look around! Promises, promises. But what about now? Based on what I see I feel forgotten and forsaken, not loved!” The people returning from Babylonian captivity had legitimate reasons to feel defeated and despondent. They saw ruins and rubble.

Based on the circumstances we see around us, we too seem to have many reasons to believe contrary to gospel promises and to exclaim, “But what about me, right now?” What do we do when what we feel and see is at odds with the hope of the promises? How do we reconcile the reality of what we see with the promises of what we do not see?

What about when the promise is, “Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing!” (Isaiah 49:13), but what you see is the very place of worship itself in rubble, reduced to a pile of rocks that makes you want to weep rather than sing? Revelation 7:16 can feel so distant: “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat.”

Here is a sad truth: sometimes we prefer the safety of our misery to the promises of God. We actually become comfortable in surrendering to our own misery. We make peace with it, envisioning ourselves a heroic figure because we endure it. We can begin to think, “I know I matter because I’m pressing ahead in this misery.” 

If this narrative were to change, it would mess with our story. Acting on the promises of God is often frightening because doing so will inevitably lead to change. Acting on the promises of God will take us to places we would never go if we did not. The peace we have made with our misery will be disturbed.

But in the freeing gifts of God’s promises, he beckons us to something braver, an arena where we are no longer the center. He welcomes us into a reality, where what he promises eclipses what we feel. It does not often feel like victory. The sinless Son of God crucified did not look or feel like a victory. In fact, all across the Bible, obedience rarely ever immediately looks like victory. As 1 Peter relentlessly reminds us, it is suffering that leads to glory for Christ and us (1 Peter 1:6-12, 3:13-4:19).

Believers must actively surmount the evidence to the contrary with the reality of eternal gospel promises. God’s promises are the story of the believer’s life; the challenges, setbacks, and obstacles are but the footnotes of the story. When we fail to see the reality of the promises, we are guilty of what Israel was rebuked for in Isaiah 1-36: attempting to secure hope by stealing from other sources such as alliances with or acceptance from worldly powers. The fear of nations and the fear of man both demonstrate a failure to reverently fear God (Gal. 1:10). 

No matter what you are going through, there is purpose in it. How do you know? Because the greatest act of injustice in the history of the cosmos is the perfect son of God crucified like a guilty sinner. This is a seemingly senseless act, that in the wisdom of God provides the only way we can be saved. We may see rubble but we also see a cross and an empty tomb. This is the nature of faith. It always has been. After all, the Suffering Servant of the Lord tells us, “Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:16).

Promises, promises. Yes, and Amen!

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at davidprince.com.



The Pronouns Preach: Lessons on the Glory of the Church

By / Feb 6

When reading the Bible, parts of speech make a big difference in our understanding. There are many examples, but here is one that demonstrates my point perfectly. It is found in Ephesians. I will be so bold as to say, “If you miss the pronouns, you miss the entire meaning of the epistle,” and you will miss a particularly important lesson we need today.

An Illustration

Ephesus was a center of pagan worship boasting one of the seven wonders of the world, the Temple to the Goddess Artemis. This temple was more than twice as large as the Parthenon in Athens, and attracted many from all over the world. There, in that great city, was the church God had birthed, made up of Gentile-born believers and Jewish-born believers.

The Ephesian church is one the most talked about churches in the Bible. We have two accounts of Paul’s journeys there in the book of Acts and Paul’s letters to Timothy concerning the same church. We also read of the church at Ephesus as one of seven Christ speaks to in the first part of Revelation. Finally, we have an entire letter by Paul to them.

Among so much that Paul wishes to say to these people, one thing stands out in the book of Ephesians—although they came from extremely diverse backgrounds, they must learn to live together as believers.

“You” and “We”

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians assumes their great diversity, which comes to us in the form of his use of pronouns. When Paul speaks of “we,” he mostly means, “we who were born Jews but are now believers.” When Paul uses “you,” he mainly means, “you, the Gentile-born believers.”

Though the pronoun distinctions show up in the very first chapter, we perhaps can see it easiest in chapter two. Notice how this works:

And YOU [Gentile-born believers] were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which YOU formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. (Ephesians 2:1)

Now see the shift in the next verse:

Among them WE [Jewish-born believers] too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath EVEN AS THE REST. (Ephesians 2:3)

Now he brings both groups together by using “we” and “us” for all of them:

  • But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved US [Jewish born and Gentile-born believers together], even when WE were dead in our trespasses and sins, made us alive TOGETHER WITH CHRIST . . . (Ephesians 2:4)

Get it? Paul is preaching his great theme with these pronouns. The letter explains how Jewish-born believers and Gentile-born believers are brought together in Christ (Ephesians 2-3), and how Jewish-born and Gentile-born believers live together in Christ (Ephesians 4-6).

So What’s the Point?

Let’s put it this way. God receives glory from the church which He has made up of people of diverse backgrounds. In fact, He displays this glory to heavenly beings because it magnifies His grace. Diversity in the backgrounds of believers is something the church should aim for because it screams out praise to God.

Ever think of church life like this? This means that we should not seek to only bring one kind of Christian together in the churches. Rather, we should seek to cooperate with God in displaying His glory though our diversity. Paul is so burdened about this that he devotes much of almost every letter he writes to work on it. He simply refused to build a Gentile-born church on one side of town and a Jewish-born church on the other. They had to come together, because the gospel and God’s grace were on display. Only complete inability to speak the same language should make us separate.

So, you may be a “cowboy” church, but you better not try to be a cowboy church. You may become a wealthy church, but you better not try to be a wealthy church. You may be a church that has only one age group or one racial background, but you must never try to be such a church. If so, you are stealing away the glory of the church and are forsaking one of the most often repeated emphases of the New Testament. Don’t do it.

Let the pronouns preach.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at ccwtoday.org. 



Why Every Day is Thanksgiving

By / Feb 3

Which element of prayer is harder to practice? Confession or thanksgiving? This would seem to be an easy question to answer. The confession of sin is obviously more difficult than the offering of thanksgiving, right? Not necessarily. Pride makes our flesh resist both elements.

  • A proud heart cannot admit in confession, “I did it.”
  • A proud heart cannot acknowledge with thanksgiving, “I didn’t do it. God did!”

For that matter, pride makes adoration, supplication, intercession difficult to practice, as well. A godly heart is filled with perpetual thanksgiving. It is not merely a national holiday. For the humble spirit that knows where its help comes from, every day is a day of thanksgiving!

Psalm 100:1-4 records seven calls to worship: shout, serve, come, know, enter, give thanks, and bless. Psalm 100:5 explains why God is worthy of our grateful praise: “For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”

The three reasons for thanksgiving in this verse have nothing to do with the physical, material, or relational blessings we receive. Indeed, God is the source of these benefits and we should give thanks for them. But that is not the focus of this call to worship. The psalmist exhorts us to give thanks and praise to God for God’s sake, not ours. True worship is God-centered. It is rooted in the person, nature, and character of God.

Psalm 100:5 gives three reasons why every day is a day of thanksgiving:

God is good.

James 1:17 says: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Everything God gives is good. His plans are good. His providence is good. His provisions are good. His protection is good. His patience is God. His pardon is good. But Psalm 100:5 is not a statement about what God gives; it is about who God is.

Nahum 1:7 says, “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.” When bad things happen, God’s goodness is demonstrated in the fact that he is a stronghold in the day of trouble. The goodness of God is not always obvious by sight. But it is always evident by faith. Psalm 34:8 says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.”

God is love.

Verse 5 says: “His steadfast love endures forever.” Steadfast love is loyal love. God’s love is based on his promise, not our performance. God does not love us because we are worthy of his love. God loves us because God promised to love us and God always keeps his word.

Malachi 3:6 says, “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” If God changed his mind about us, we would be consumed forever by his righteous wrath. But his steadfast love endures forever. People tend to love you until you give them a reason not to love you. But Romans 5:8 says: “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

God is faithful.

Verse 5 ends: “and his faithfulness to all generations.” God is a God of truth. Everything God speaks is true. God only and always acts according to the truth. This is the faithfulness of God. Lamentations 3:22-23 says, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

God’s faithfulness is great because it endures to all generations. God was faithful to past generations. God will be faithful to future generations. Psalm 100 begins by broadening our perspective to all the earth. It concludes by lengthening our perspective to all generations. We acknowledge the faithfulness of God by thanking him for what he has already done. We also acknowledge the faithfulness of God by trusting him for what he is yet to do.

Psalm 100:5 is a summary of the character of God. God is good. God is love. God is faithful. But there is a better way to see the character of God than these statements of his attributes. God’s goodness lived in a human body. God’s love died on an old rugged cross. God’s faithfulness conquered the power of sin, death, and hell. The Lord Jesus Christ is the walking, talking, breathing incarnation of divine goodness, steadfast love, and faithfulness.

“Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” – 2 Corinthians  9:15

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared at HBCharlesJr.com.



The Bible Warned Us About This

By / Jan 30

It feels all too common. I open Twitter and find news I wish wasn’t true. I hope it’s not true. But as I read I realize, tragically, it is all too true. A well-known Christian leader has fallen. He wasn’t what he seemed to be. His sins, as the Bible promises, have found him out (Numbers 32:23).

I could list names, but you know them. We all do. Each one, whether in our theological tribe or not, causes grief. They seemed so gifted, so persuasive for Christ, so used by Christ. How could they do what they did? What will happen now? What else don’t we know?

Ancient Israel knew the feeling. In the Old Testament, we find the most complete biography of anyone in the ancient world: King David. From his anointing to his death, we live David’s life along with him through the books of 1 and 2 Samuel and, perhaps more poignantly, through the Psalms. All of David’s life is before us—his righteousness and his sins, his faithfulness and his disobedience, his heroics and his failures. It’s all there for the reading and the re-reading.

As the story begins, 1 Samuel 16-26 tell of David’s ascent. Samuel anoints him as king. Saul welcomes him into the palace. Jonathan befriends him and helps him. When Saul eventually turns on him, God clearly protects and delivers David from all evil. He’s the golden child who can do no wrong. Even when his men plead with him to execute Saul as he is at the mouth of the cave, David strongly denies them. He will not put his hand against the Lord’s anointed. Not once, but twice, David proves he means it.

After David spares Saul’s life a second time in 1 Samuel 26, he refuses to return home to Israel. He still fears Saul, and rightly so. But instead of staying where he is, David flees to a surprising place: into the land of the Philistines, Israel’s arch-enemy.

Go read 1 Samuel 27. It’s not a bright spot in David’s life.

In fact, it’s difficult to know what to do with it. Faithful David seems lost. He gives himself over to a foreign king in a foreign land, hiring himself out as a mercenary. Though the cities he raids aren’t Israel’s, he lies about what he’s doing, kills everyone so no one can break his cover, and puts himself in a deeply compromising situation. It’s the kind of season of David’s life that he wouldn’t put on his resume. Reading it later on as a member of the nation of Israel would have surely been jarring. His actions seem so out of character. No inquiring God for direction. Just merciless killing and lying. By this point of the story, we’ve become fans of David. It was clear he was the chosen one, the king Israel longed for. But why does it feel like a different person in this chapter?

As commentator Dale Ralph Davis says, by the time we finish the chapter, we’ve likely become an angry reader. Perhaps we even feel betrayed by him. Who is this David? What is he doing? These are the kinds of things that we’d see on the back-alleys of Twitter today, the rumors we hope aren’t true.

David is a sympathetic figure. He’s relentlessly hunted by Saul. He’s away from home. David is as good a guy as a good guy can get. But now? He’s a disappointment. There isn’t even a mention of God 1 Samuel 27. That’s no oversight. It’s an insight into David’s mindset. Far from depending upon God in the wilderness, he’s left him to make his own path.

For all the questions we have about David, Dale Ralph Davis helps us see what’s going on inside our hearts as we read the story

Did you ever think that perhaps the writer is trying to correct your mistake? Yes, you, Bible reader that you are, may have fallen into the trap of hero worship, of looking on your pet Bible characters and exalting them too highly. Why should you be surprised, shocked, off ended? Why should you talk about “betrayal”? The text is saying that this chosen, anointed servant is made of the same stuff as all the Lord’s people. Must we throw out God’s kingdom because not only its subjects but even its premier servants are sinners? Karl Gutbrod is right: the text will not allow us to view Saul with only contempt and save nothing but admiration for David; the text resists every attempt to make David the mirror of all virtue.[1]

What Davis says about looking on our pet Bible characters and exalting them too highly has sprung out of the Bible and into the Church. We do this all the time, don’t we? A gifted preaches rises to prominence and we jump on the bandwagon. We don’t mean to make more of him than we ought, but it happens anyway. His leadership seems impressive. People come to Christ from his preaching. He moves us deeply, and we thank God for him.

Then it crumbles.

Heroes fall apart.

All but one.

And that’s the point. That’s where a chapter like 1 Samuel 27 can help us. There is only one hero. Others may good models in some areas, maybe even in most areas, but all but Christ are fallen.

The Bible warned us about this. We could overlook David’s actions here, but even if we do, we cannot when he takes advantage of Bathsheba and kills her husband. David’s sins, too, will find him out, and the whole nation will be impacted.

Putting our faith in someone other than Jesus will inevitably lead to disappointment. Yet we do it anyway. That’s why it hurts so bad when our heroes fall.

The solution isn’t to never have a hero. I don’t think we can live that way. We need someone to look up to. We just must be sure we’re looking to the right one. Jesus is all the hero we will ever need with none of the failures of all the others.

He will never let us down.

[1] Dale Ralph Davis, 1 Samuel: Looking on the Heart, Focus on the Bible Commentary (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2000), 286–287.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at thingsofthesort.com. 



Considering Grief

By / Jan 26

My kids love stories, and honestly, I would argue that we all do.

I remember around the age of ten, my dad would read a chapter of the Hardy Boys before bed. As my brothers and I listened, we would become engulfed in the story. However, as exciting as it was, there was always a quiet depression that would begin to set in upon realizing that the chapter was ending. 

As we consider grief there are three points that we should consider:

  1. Realizing Grief Will Come

Many times, the experience of a loved one’s death will bring the same sense of Déjà vu as their story comes to an end. Since the fall, loss has become a continued reality. The scriptures explain that as the descendants of Adam, humanity longs to do whatever can be done to add to the story of life. In the book of Hebrews, the author explains this by saying, that because of the fall, all have been placed under the bondage of death and will do anything and everything to outrun it. (Heb. 2:15) However, just as God brought grace to the garden after the fall, there is grace for our grieving as well.

  1. Redeeming Our Grief

The good news, the grace, is that the scriptures also give the hope that there is One that has already outrun death on our behalf. When faced with grief, the story of redemption and the new Creation gives hope and comfort. Without the story of redemption pointing to the future, those who grieve must settle for memories of the past. Memories that, while they are wonderful to enjoy, only leave emptiness, longing, and sorrow. (1 Thess. 4:13) But it is in the story of redemption that graces for grieving can be found. Isaiah writes that Christ took our griefs and bore the sorrows that we could never bear. (Is. 53:4) Grief for the sins that we or a loved one committed were borne by Him. The grief over times of failure has been swallowed up by His success. The grief that the loved one has departed is turned into a hope that we will see them again. Because of Christ, even in grief, redemption can be celebrated.

  1. Resting in Peace

The time at the grave is utterly difficult and the pain of loss is terrible, but it is at an open tomb that we can find an unexplainable peace. As believers, we don’t have to grieve like the rest of the world. (1 Thess. 4:13) We know that because of Christ’s declaration that “it is finished”, we have the promise that the sting of death has been taken away. Because of this, we can rest in peace knowing that at the end of the book of the believer’s life, God has written: “to be continued.” 



Why Your Students Need a Reading Plan

By / Jan 19

To be totally honest, I didn’t start reading the Bible on a consistent basis until I was in college, I didn’t read much of anything until I was in college. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the Bible or think it wasn’t important, I just didn’t know where to start. The Bible is a big book with 66 books within it, where would I begin and why would I begin there? It took getting a reading plan before my daily Bible reading took off. It gave me a rhyme and reason to the daily grind of jumping into God’s word. Sure, some days I didn’t feel like it, but I had a passage to check off, a place I was going, the hope I would soon finish Leviticus! I had a guide taking me through the Bible one day at a time, and the fact is your students need one too.

Of course, there is the main reason of having a reading plan, spending time with the Lord, it is the best way to nurture a relationship with Him, and to grow in Christ-likeness and seek God’s will for our lives. However, I want to offer some practical benefits a reading plan can give students that will hopefully carry on into their adult lives.

Biblical Literacy

I don’t know about you, but in teaching every week I usually found myself giving 10+ minutes to the explanation of overall general biblical ideas. Everything from who Noah was to why Israel is such a big deal in the Bible. This is not because I want to study more and impress all my students with my vast biblical knowledge, it is because I cannot assume most of them know what I am talking about. I have found that most students are simply biblically illiterate, and so are many members of our churches.

You cannot just jump right into Jonah and expect students to know that Tarshish is the opposite direction of Nineveh, or why he didn’t want to go there in the first place. In many cases, most students don’t have any context of a passage and how it relates to the overall story of the Bible. Therefore, having a reading plan can help a student understand the story of the Bible. Reading through the Bible gives them a context to fit passages in, and helps them locate what part of the overall story they fit into. Two great plans for this is the Bible in one year plan for ambitious students and the Bible in three-years plan, reading one chapter a day for students who are maybe just starting out.

Vocabulary

Justification, sanctification, propitiation, and redemption are all amazing words packed full of books and books of theological truth. They are words that describe the depths of the gospel and the foundation of our faith. However, many of our students have no idea what these words mean. They don’t know that sanctification is the process of becoming more Christ-like, or that Christ is our substitute, our propitiation. Having a reading plan will put these words in their view and cause them to seek out their meaning by looking it up themselves or coming to ask you. Having a reading plan allows students to become more familiar with the vocabulary of the Bible that is used in church services, conferences, and a plethora of Christian books. A great reading plan for this is the one year plan through the new testament. This can help them get more acquainted with the theological vocabulary used to describe the gospel and possibly allow them to see aspects of the gospel they haven’t seen before.

Habit

We’ve all been there. It’s time for you to spend time in the word and prayer, your quiet time, or whatever you like to call it. But there are 100 things on your mind that need to be done. So you make a list, send that email, or make that phone call. It will only take a second right? Then you realize 30 minutes later your time is gone.

Our students do the same thing. They have the best intensions. They are going to read right before bed, then the Xbox calls their name or they had practice that evening and are whipped out. There goes their good intentions. Having a Bible reading plan helps make the practice of spending time with the Lord a habit, just like brushing your teeth, eating a meal, or having a date night with your spouse. Planning the time with the Lord already gives you a place to go in the word and leaves you looking forward to what will be read tomorrow. Having a plan to spend time in the Word can lead to a healthy habit of Bible intake that can carry on into adulthood.

So as January kicks off the year of 2023, be sure to have some reading plans available for your students. Create an atmosphere of expectant Bible reading, check up on those students who take a plan and ask where they are. Share what the Lord is teaching you through your reading plan and it can act as an everyday guide taking students to the scriptures and into a deeper walk with the Father.



How to (Actually) Reach Your City for Christ

By / Jan 18

This is a story about how a really discouraging Easter led to one of the healthiest seasons in the life of our church.

We had been working hard for months to plan the service, outreach events, and more. We spent money on door-hangers, invitation cards, and Facebook ads. Mission teams and church members went door-to-door, inviting thousands of people to our Easter services. Finally, when Easter arrived, I stood in our church lobby, eagerly waiting to see who the Lord would bring into our doors that day.

And after all of that effort, we had a whopping grand total of two first-time guests, one of which was a Christian visiting from out-of-town. Incidentally, neither of them heard about our services as a result of any of our expensive, labor-intensive “marketing” efforts.

After all of those weeks of planning and really hard work, we had one non-Christian from our city come to our service that day.

After a long morning of church activities, my kids fell asleep in the car while we made the hour-long trek to my parents’ home for more Easter festivities. And as our car rolled down the interstate, I began to reflect on the day.

That Easter, I was reminded that hosting big, splashy services wasn’t going to be an effective strategy for seeing lives changed in our post-Christian city. I realized that if we were going to see people come to Christ, it was usually going to happen as individuals reached out to their friends, neighbors, and co-workers.

So we launched an effort in our church, encouraging every member to read Mark’s Gospel with a non-Christian friend. I created some discussion guides to use, a simple tool to help our church members have confidence to open God’s Word with people that don’t know him.

In the past six months, our people have responded incredibly. More than half of our members have started one-on-one Bible studies with non-Christians, and God’s Word is going out to more and more people.

Jesus seemed to do ministry this way. He spent much of his time and energy investing in twelve and he frequently departed from a place once a crowd began to form (Matthew 8:18, Mark 1:38). In the same way, Paul’s letters to Timothy don’t contain practical guidelines on attracting a big crowd. Instead, they encourage Timothy to teach a few “faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (1 Timothy 2:2). The norm in the Christian life seems to be the gospel going from one person to another. One at a time.

So pastors, work to equip every member in your church to “do the work of an evangelist.” Just consider these comparisons:

  • An attractional service enables a few people to use their gifts in a public setting. But if everyone in your church is engaged in evangelistic Bible reading, then everyone is involved in God’s work and using their God-given gifts.
  • An attractional service enables us to reach people one day a week. But if everyone in your church is engaged in evangelistic Bible reading, then we know God’s Word is going out from our church seven days a week.
  • An attractional service enables us to invite people to an event. But if everyone in your church is engaged in evangelistic Bible reading, then people are engaged where they already are. People may be uncomfortable to come a church service but are willing to read with a friend.
  • An attractional service enables us to reach a few guests every week. But if everyone in your church is engaged in evangelistic Bible reading, then we have the potential to reach many more. Everyone in our churches knows a bunch of people. What are we doing to equip them to share Christ with those people?

Whenever I encourage our church to read the Bible with a non-Christian friend, I always tell them that they will be surprised by three things:

  • You will be surprised about how equipped you are to do it. God has given you gifts. If you know the gospel, you can share it with others.
  • You will be surprised about how willing non-Christians are. Our church has been asking non-Christians to read Mark’s Gospel with them for six months, and I’ve only heard about one person getting rejected. People are willing to read the Bible and consider the claims of Christ.
  • You will be surprised about how much fruit comes. God’s Word never returns void (Isaiah 55:11) and faith comes through hearing the Word (Romans 10:17). When we share God’s Word with non-Christians, the Lord will act. And it will be glorious.

 

Pastors, you have been called by God to pursue a “ministry of reconciliation,” calling sinners to know the one true God (2 Corinthians 5:18). This ministry comes to us (and all Christians) “by the mercy of God” (2 Corinthians 4:1). So don’t hog God’s mercy; invite your church to get involved.



Keeping the Faith: Spurgeon and the Downgrade Controversy

By / Jan 13

As Christians, we are called to share our faith, but we are also called to keep it. Like the Apostle Paul, every believer should aspire to the epitaph, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”

Perhaps no one in Baptist history better kept the faith than the illustrious Charles Spurgeon—especially as seen through the prism of the Downgrade Controversy.

The year was 1887, and Spurgeon was in the winter of life. For more than three decades, he had enjoyed singular status as the world’s most well-known preacher, but just over the horizon, storm clouds gathered.

The Downgrade Controversy began slowly at first, with three anonymous letters appearing in the March, April, and June (1887) editions of the Sword & Trowel. The three letters (later revealed to be authored by Spurgeon’s friend, Robert Shindler) warned of doctrinal slippage on a downhill slope, thus, a downgrade.

While the anonymous letters drew interest, the controversy did not explode until a few months later when Spurgeon directly entered the fray. In the August 1887 issue of the Sword & Trowel, Spurgeon threw down the gauntlet in his six-page editorial entitled, “Another Word on the Downgrade.”

At that time, Spurgeon was less than five years from his death. He was near the height of his popularity both in the Baptist Union and globally, but near the depth of his personal anguish.  Physical ailments like failing kidneys and chronic gout wracked his body, and depression plagued his soul. Simply put, he did not need, nor was he much poised for, the conflict he was about to enter. Withdrawing the largest Baptist church in England from the Union would have dire consequences.

Nevertheless, Spurgeon entered his Westwood study, fountain pen in hand, and proceeded to join the battle himself by drafting for publication the six-page article.

I own the original six-page manuscript Spurgeon wrote that day in 1887. It is fascinating to review his words, penned in his hand, with his markings, alterations, and emphases. It radiates the spirit of Paul and the urgency of keeping the faith.  The first paragraph especially has taken on immortality:

No lover of the gospel can conceal from himself the fact that the days are evil. We are willing to make a large discount from our apprehensions on the score of natural timidity, the caution of age, and the weakness produced by pain; but yet our solemn conviction is that things are much worse in many churches than they seem to be, and are rapidly tending downward. Read those newspapers which represent the Broad School of Dissent, and ask yourself, How much farther could they go? What doctrine remains to be abandoned? What other truth to be the object of contempt? A new religion has been initiated, which is no more Christianity than chalk is cheese; and this religion, being destitute of moral honesty, palms itself off as the old faith with slight improvements, and on this plea usurps pulpits which were erected for gospel preaching. The Atonement is scouted, the inspiration of Scripture is derided, the Holy Spirit is degraded into an influence, the punishment of sin is turned into fiction, and the resurrection into a myth, and yet these enemies of our faith expect us to call them brethren, and maintain a confederacy with them!

Spurgeon goes on:

The case is mournful. Certain ministers are making infidels. Avowed atheists are not a tenth as dangerous as those preachers who scatter doubt and stab at faith… Germany was made unbelieving by her preachers, and England is following in her tracks.

Most prophetically, Spurgeon argued true believers cannot be ministry affiliates with those who have compromised the faith. His words portended the schism to come. Spurgeon was a lone voice, but he was the loudest and most revered voice of all, calling for doctrinal fidelity over programmatic confederation.

Spurgeon’s “Another Word on the Downgrade” landed like a bombshell. It sent shockwaves throughout the Baptist Union and British Evangelicalism. It reverberated throughout the Protestant world.

For decades the press had attacked Spurgeon, but now he would be savaged by his own Baptist Union. Prior to the Downgrade Controversy, if the Baptist Union had a papacy, Spurgeon would have been its unquestioned pope. But now, his erstwhile brethren brutalized him. They charged him with pugilism, and being a schismatic. They even questioned his sanity with a whisper campaign that his physical maladies had made him mad. Graduates of Spurgeon’s College turned on him, and the leaders of the Baptist Union pilloried him.

Over the next two months, Spurgeon penned two more articles on the Downgrade in the Sword & Trowel. Then, on Oct. 28, 1887, Spurgeon wrote the General Secretary of the Baptist Union, Samuel Harris Booth, to announce his withdrawal from the Baptist Union.

Three months later, in January 1888, the Baptist Union Council voted to accept his withdrawal, and then, the Council of nearly 100 members voted to censure Spurgeon, with only a meager five men supporting the Prince of Preachers.

The Baptist Union adopted a compromise doctrinal statement, which was altogether too weak, neither clear nor comprehensive enough. Though outside the Union, Spurgeon opposed the statement for its obvious deficiencies. Nonetheless, it passed overwhelmingly, by a vote of 2000–7, and can appropriately be interpreted as a second vote against Spurgeon. Most tragically, Spurgeon’s brother, James, seconded the motion to pass the compromise doctrinal statement.

Spurgeon, the “Lion in Winter,” was prophetic, if not popular. He said, “I am quite willing to be eaten of dogs for the next fifty years, but the more distant future shall vindicate me.”

Indeed, Spurgeon has been vindicated. The British Baptist Union is a shadow of its former self. Moreover, Spurgeon’s Downgrade foreshadowed the Fundamentalist/Modernist Controversy of the 1920s and the great SBC Controversy at the end of the 20th century. Doctrinal decay always brings dire consequences.

The controversy cost Spurgeon dearly. It cost him his friendships. It cost him his reputation. Even his own brother disowned his decision. Yet, for Spurgeon, to remain within the Union would be tantamount to theological treason.

Less than five years later, Spurgeon would die. Against his previously stated wishes, his supporters erected a massive burial tomb in the Norwood Cemetery. Ensconced on the front of it, beneath the marble replica of his likeness, is a marble Bible, open to 2 Timothy 4:7 –  “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”

Indeed, Spurgeon kept the faith, and his accomplishment must be our aspiration—to keep the faith even when confronted with our own Downgrade Controversies.

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared at JasonKAllen.com.



Worship: The Completion of Our Affection

By / Jan 12

C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors. One of the most impactful things he has written in regards to worship isn’t about the subject of worship in particular, but it definitely helps my heart to feel and my mind to know what is true. He says this in “Reflections on the Psalms” :

    “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”

Lewis helps crystallize in this short paragraph what I feel immensely when I am leading worship. It’s what I want my church to understand. It’s what I aim for as I am leading. Lewis helps us understand that our affection and our delight is incomplete until it is expressed. Imagine if you never told, showed, or acted upon your affection for your spouse. They would feel dejected, unloved, and unimportant. If we have affections… we act on them. This is true in all of life as we worship and in the corporate gatherings as we sing, feast on the Word, and partake of communion together. If we have affections for the Lord and His gospel, then we will worship Him with all of our lives as we obey His commandments, serve Him in gospel ministry, and join Him on mission. Our affections will be completed as we act upon them.

This is also true when we gather as the church to worship Him corporately. Our affections well up within our souls and we complete the delight by expressing our worship with hands lifted, songs raised, as well as hearts and minds reveling in the glory of our Savior together. I truly believe we are missing out when we stand with arms crossed, sipping coffee, and half-way singing out. Our affections are either dim in our hearts, or we are missing out on completing the cycle by expressing them to the Lord. We don’t do this because the worship leader is singing our favorite song or because all of our preference boxes are being checked. We complete our affection by acting on them because God is worthy… so, so very worthy.

If there are two things I want you to take away from this very short treatise on affections and worship, it is this:

  1. As a worship leader: a major part of our job is to stir people’s affections towards Christ. No, you cannot make them worship… that isn’t your job… but you can (over and over) point people’s affections to the Son of God who came, died, and rose again. Then you can encourage them to complete that affection by expressing their delight in Christ alone. They are missing out if the affection stays hidden in the depths of their heart.

  2. As a worshiper: what if this Sunday you made the worship leader’s job easy? What if you came with your affections having been freshly stirred by your own heart prep in the Word of God, on your knees in prayer, and in just daily delighting in the God of the Bible? What if your affections were bursting in your heart… ready to be completed in their being acted upon through engagement in song, prayer, and the Word? Let your affections lead you to smiling, lifting your hands in victory or surrender, singing with all you have, and delighting in the beauty of your Savior.

There is nothing better than on a Sunday morning standing next to brothers and sisters in Christ and (metaphorically) “to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur”. And instead of having no one to share in the beauty of the Savior with,… to look around with delight in your heart and point to the glory of Jesus in song with others and say, “look at how great He is!” May we find this to be more and more true in our lives: “… we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment.”