Mom as Unsung Disciple-Maker

By / May 9

I work at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where we are unabashedly and full-throatedly “For the Church.” We have only this one note to strike to the glory of God. We don’t shy away from this. Along with this territory comes a necessary gravity towards training up steely, carnivorous preacher types. We’re cranking these men off the assembly line like gospel-built locomotives from a Chevy factory somewhere in Detroit. We’re catapulting them off our campus into the sin-dark corners of the earth, to ungospeled regions of North America, and into rural, dying churches. These are hardy, gospel-saturated, manly expository machines.

But what I’ve noticed over my time at Midwestern is that behind most of these expository machines is often an even more impressive wife! She’s often the steel spine of this dude! Usually she’s also a mom with kids in tow. What’s more, these amazing mom-wives have quite literally given their lives away for the gospel ministry, thus evidencing Jesus as their obvious Lord. They are the often unsung heroes of ministry. They have unflinchingly run headlong into the supposed storm of our culture, that is, what America calls an “identity crisis.”  They hear regularly from feminists, family, culture, and even their own self-condemning inner voice, “Stay-at-home-mom, huh?” “So, why did I send you to college, then?” “Why would you waste your life like that?” “So you’re going to give up your career to wipe snotty noses!” “Don’t lose your dreams following your man around!”

If it’s true, and it is, that the first shall be last and the last first, there are going to be a lot of moms who wind up first in the ultimate line. My suspicion is that they’re going to have some fairly heavy crowns to cast before their Lord (cf. Revelation 4:10).

If you’ve ever had occasion to run into one of these selfless, majestic mom-creatures, you know they are no normal “moms.”  It’s sort of like bumping into velvet steel! They live their lives by their Lord’s leave. They don’t know when or where they’ll receive their deployment orders, but go they will. These are disciples of Christ, gospel soldiers of which the world is not worthy. They don’t talk about following Jesus in theory. No, they do it every day in an Ephesians 5 way. They are blazing a trail, with their husband at the helm, and they’re eager to glorify God with all their minutes, pennies, and tears. They’re wicked smart—no mindless drones here. No, these are calculated, sharp, and cunning Kingdom women. They walk a road in life that is peppered with geographical moves, hard good-byes, and at times dark loneliness. But yet they abide! They stay the course.

This post is written in praise of these majestic mom-creatures. I salute you, mom! I raise my metaphorical Southern Baptist grape juice glass to you. You’re God’s beauteous, gospel-bearing feet that occupy his deployed boots-on-the-ground!

What I want to do in the rest of this post is to help you see the evangelistic and/or discipleship thread that streams through all the normalcy of everyday mom life. My aim is to transform in your mind what seems to be merely normal into the eternal. I am intentionally conflating the categories of evangelism and discipleship because in the theater of the home, they often collapse on themselves to the visible eye (Deuteronomy 6:7–9). The category would be most strongly expressed through “the fear of the Lord.” That is what you are doing, moms; you are teaching your children to fear the Lord above all else.

Manners

Mom, the raw materials of the Kingdom are sitting before you in all their diaper-bound, sticky-fingered, snot-prone glory. As you teach them to use a fork properly, to say “please,” to wipe their mouth, and not to burp aloud, you are laying the groundwork for Christian hospitality, that most important reality to the Christian faith, the field upon which Christians relate to one another in homes.

Hospitality is one of the most important means by which Christians are viewed as an attractively peculiar people in this world. It is how we care for one another. It is also how we bring a lost world into our homes to see a loving, well-ordered household. Hospitality is the oft-viewed theater in which the world becomes convinced that the gospel powerfully changes people. You, dear mom, are laying the groundwork for your child’s hospitality, not to mention that you are constantly doing hospitality yourself. Imagine if your child never learned these basic manners! They would be a social pariah. You may think what you are doing is the height of normalcy, but the Bible would say you are the mechanism of God’s great boon of discipleship.

Feeding

What Deuteronomy 8 teaches us is that God brought Israel out into the desert, at least in part, to show them their utter dependence upon him as their guiding Shepherd. They had no food or water without God providing it. Not one ounce! This is likened to your feeding of the five children! They are helpless without you. They are not even equipped to fend for themselves without you. Ultimately, you are one of the many building blocks that God is using to teach your children their dependence upon him for everything. You may even be the most important building block in that particular foundation. They are helpless outside the help of the Lord. And you are the hinge point, daily, that stands between that knowledge of God and your child. You’re a living parable of the care and sustenance we have in the Father, as well as a parable of our utter reliance upon him. So, when you repeat to your baby one hundred times over, “Here comes the airplane!” you are evangelizing and discipling.  You are teaching them the fear of the Lord. Just like Israel, it’s not really about the bread; it’s about God.

Sleep

When you teach, or better yet, enforce, your children to adhere to a sleep schedule, you are upholding the long-prescribed practice of Sabbath rest. It’s through sleep that God gets at our finitude. Sleep is an acknowledgement of our humanness. It’s one of the ways we maintain the Creator/creature distinction. We are unarguably dependent upon the Lord. Set in the DNA of your child is the need for Sabbath, and you are helping them to see that. You are helping them to realize their absolute dependence upon their good Creator for provision and all things good.

No

The world has realities that are bigger than we are and that stand outside us. Realities such as these: Adultery brings utter destruction. Cops have the power to arrest you. There are consequences for your choices. If you ride your bike into the road, you can be killed. If you jump off the counter, it’s highly likely you’ll be maimed. When you teach your child to understand these realities using the word, the truth vehicle, “no,” you are evangelizing and discipling. Maybe it is more proper to say you are laying the groundwork for the Holy Spirit to convict and enliven (salvation), but evangelizing and discipling you are, nonetheless.

The concepts your children associate with “no” are the very foundational building blocks that God uses to help lost image-bearers grasp their need for his forgiveness. This is the fodder of regeneration. The realities that accompany the concept of “no” are often how God displays our need for Christ’s substitutionary cross work in our stead. You’re teaching them the Law, mom. You’re “doing Torah.” Don’t fall to the sin of minimizing your role. These children are the future inhabiters of the New Heavens and the New Earth! These are the future justice-makers, lawyers, teachers, counselors, preachers, moms, and dads. Take heart, dear struggling mom; you are pointing the way to the narrow road. You are indispensable as a means of God’s grace in your children’s lives.

Alphabet

Mom, you will be the precious touchpoint between your child and his or her reading the Word of God! The mechanics of learning to read are the eventual lens through which your child’s eyes will be opened to the basics of the world and to the magnificent universes of knowledge that rest in God, just waiting to be discovered. Imagine all the frontiers they’ll discover in God! You are the foundation of this. Imagine what they would miss if you didn’t teach them A, B, C, D, E…. Again, A, B, C, D, E. Never lose heart. God is using you to shape the inhabiters of eternity. Those little pudgy-faced gremlins are actually immortal, and you’ve been called before the foundation of the earth to be a tool in the hands of God to mint them into his image.

Abortion

Mom, with every wiped nose, you stand in utter defiance of the abortion culture. Our age has tragically fallen into the sin of slaughtering image-bearers. We as a nation, and notion, have called light darkness. We have attempted to construe blessings as curses. But you, mom, stand against this every day. With every hug, every meal, every answered question, you are picketing Planned Parenthood. You don’t simply espouse sanctity of life; you live it! So teach the elementary principles of logic to those babies to the glory of God. Answer a thousand and one seemingly aimless questions to the glory of God. Adopt too many children to the glory of God. Clean up dropped bowls of food 37½ times to the glory of God. The world needs you to be the most glorious mother you can possibly be—the world needs your mothering, in a manner of speaking.

Teaching and Transforming

So, moms, you are a bright-shining city on a hill. You are the means by which God unleashes his compassion on the world. And by the grace of God and the love of Christ, you will stand resurrected before your Lord and Savior something different than you currently are, not that what you are isn’t already the stuff of amazement; but know that God is transforming you. God is discipling you as you disciple your children. He is running you through the gauntlet of motherhood with great purpose. He is changing you as your children change before your eyes. And your children are the next era of the Kingdom.

__________

Editor’s note: This article was originally published at For the Church on October 31, 2016.



The One Life Dream That Makes a Girl Blush

By / May 7

Editor’s note: We’re celebrating 10 years of FTC.co this spring. The article below is one of the most read articles in our history, originally published on March 22, 2019. We’re thankful for our readers and for the many authors who have contributed to our mission to provide gospel-centered resources for the Church.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Because of my work, I sit down regularly with single young women. Single young women who want nothing more than a wedding ring, the kids, the house, the whole lot. And mind you, their wishes are never wicked or wrong. What they desire is not evil. What they hope for isn’t silly. They are not glassy-eyed about their future. They are not sitting across from me wondering where Prince Charming is. They are faithful young women. Hard-working. Funny. Beautiful. Smart. And they have done well to steward what they have up to this point.

And yet, I see it. When the water is poured again and they lean back after a dish is served to their friends. When they take a breath and their shoulders slump a little. After they’ve told me all of they’ve said of their current life, their work, their time, their goals. They don’t want to say it, for fear that admitting it will make them look weak.

“I know it’s silly,” one girl said. “I know. But…” She hesitated, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I really just want to be married. To raise some kids. To take care of a home.” She’s almost embarrassed by the time she’s finished saying the sentiment. As if admitting it has made any impressive strength and wit she had fade away into a pile of proverbial laundry and dishes. As if she’s ashamed for wanting something so “trivial” and simple. “Is that silly? I mean, it’s really all I really want to do.”

We’ve gone so far down the road of feminism that we’ve forgotten how to proudly be feminine. You want to carry a child in your bones and lay down your life for them for more than 18 years? You want to lay down your life and learn to die to self for the rest of your life? You want to serve someone with all your heart, body, and soul? You want to master the art of cooking for a crowd and have clean clothes and end each day knowing that there’s a group of people who look to you as one of their anchors and rocks? You want to work your tired body from dawn to dusk for love?

How silly it is not. How trivial is no way to describe it.

I wish we loved the strength it takes for a woman to become a wife and a mother. We marvel at her physical strength when she births a child. But we forget what invisible strength she shows when she lays down her life for her home every day after that. Social media spends all its energy telling women to remember who they are, to fight for their sacred spaces, to become the women they want to be. All things that feel confusing when you’re holding a newborn baby and learning to forget your self-centeredness, to allow others into your personal space, and to become the woman that you are becoming and not who you thought you’d be.

I wish that as a culture we understood what happens in those four walls when two adults decide to sacrifice for one another, be good stewards of their money, welcome in guests, and raise a generation to know the heritage of the Lord. I wish we called it more than a contract, an agreement, or even a commitment to vows. I wish we called it holy, beautiful, other-worldly.

We’ve tried to make it easy. We’ve updated our lives with gadgets and gizmos aplenty. We’ve made our machines smarter. We’ve made our cleaning supplies more time efficient. We’ve scrubbed the hard work right out the door. We don’t even need to meal plan or grocery shop anymore. Fresh groceries can show up at our door, pre-measured, pre-planned, ready to go to the table within 30 minutes.

We’ve turned our properties into museums. Instead of well-loved they are well-liked on social media and we’ve forgotten how to create a home; instead we curate a scene for those who will never step foot through our door. We’ve replaced hard conversations with texts.

We’ve told husbands and wives that the primary goal of their marriage is their own happiness. We’ve sold them the lie that once it gets hard, tired, menial, once it gets weary, someone raises their voice, or someone says something they regret, that we can get out with a white flag that says, “This just isn’t for me anymore.”

We’ve made love about sex. And sex about self.

When a woman says she wants to make dinner for her family, we crack a joke about June Cleaver and we laugh because who wants to waste their time with that? When a woman says she wants to stay home and raise children, we give a curt smile and say, “But what do you really want to do with your life?” And should she decide to pursue that, other women will be the first to look down their noses at her, tell her she’s not adding anything, that she’s slowing down progress.

As if giving up your life for others isn’t an incredible thing. We applaud heroes on the battlefield, social justice workers on the borderlines, desperate souls who risk everything for the ones they love.

But marriage? Motherhood? Small living? Psh. *eye roll* It’s 2019, right?

As if the woman who chooses such things has given up. As if her internal engine doesn’t weary. As if she’s not feeling incredibly alone because all of her 9–5 friends have opted for happy hours and bursting bank accounts while she empties herself for souls who need every ounce of her life.

Children have become the last resort. The final hurrah for a marriage that spends years “finding itself.” Career trumps caretaker. Independence is king. Personal happiness above that insane idea of laying it all down.

This is not to say that those who can’t have children, don’t have children, or aren’t married are inherently wrong. I’m just wondering if we have to speak so condescendingly about those who have said the hard “Yes” to the humbling and long-term work of marriage and family. Can we stop acting like they’ve chosen a simple and silly life? Can we stop talking about children like they’re soul-sucking, dream-killing, money-grabbing leeches on society? Can we stop treating wives and moms with the eye-rolling disdain that says, “Only the simple-minded woman would choose such an outdated path”?

We all buy into this narrative so much that when a 21-year-old girl sits across the table from me and tells me that she wants to be a mother, she blushes and gives a thousand caveats as to why she knows it’s not the optimal choice.

And yet—here’s what I know to be true. I’m nearly 36. I’ve carried two children in these bones and I’ve nursed them, held them, and wept over them, and because of them, I’ve planned meals for more than 10 years now for hungry bellies and bottomless pits. I’ve had seasons of scratching the bottom of empty bank accounts and seasons where I’ve forgotten to worry about money at all. I’ve forgotten myself entirely and sometimes thought of myself only and always too much.

Everyone in their 30s is talking about a rebirth and I’m still learning how to die.

But the souls that move in bodies in and around my home? They are a legacy and an investment that I do not ever regret giving it all for. When I’m weary and feeling empty, when my life goals feel lifetimes away and my body isn’t the one I hoped I’d have, I can promise you that I wouldn’t give them up for a thousand trips around the world, a perfect waistline, or a name linked to fame.

The world can forget me, but they will not.

Last summer, while the kids chased fireflies and the men smoked pipes, while the bonfire’s flames licked the edge of the summer sky, my friend turned to me and said: “Do you ever feel like you found the secret to happiness?” Her long legs crossed, a toddler tucked on her lap, she smiled. “You know—you see all these people out there chasing happiness? Adventure? Purpose? And do you think we’ve found it? Right here in our simple homes, good husbands, these kids…” she trailed off.

“I do think we’ve found it. It’s all right here,” I nodded back.

So, my dear friends, as the poet Wendell Berry said:

“…every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.”

And don’t blush for saying that’s all you really wanted anyway.



Why It’s Good to Be a Needy Person

By / Apr 16

Editor’s note: The following article was adapted by the author from his book Pour Out Your Heart: Discovering Joy, Strength, and Intimacy with God through Prayer (pp. 33–41). Pour Out Your Heart is available now from B&H Publishing and wherever books are sold.

I don’t watch much TV these days, so I rarely see any commercials anymore. But even I noticed that commercials in mid-2020 took on a totally new tone. This was, of course, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, and large corporations were scrambling to maintain their sales during a national lockdown. Let me remind you of the basic commercial script during these months.

Let’s say the product is Reese’s peanut butter cups. The scene opens with dramatic, inspiring music. There’s a sunrise, or sunset, we’re not sure. Children are dancing. They’re talking with grandma by video. Parents are smiling from their laptops. And the narrator, in a deep and reassuring voice, says: “In these uncertain times…now more than ever…we are resilient, we will make it through…nothing can stop us…Reese’s. You can eat them at home.”

Whatever the product, the message was the same. But immediately, an internal inconsistency was evident. “Nothing can stop us,” they would say. Well, Covid can stop us. “We will make it through.” Well, not everyone.

This was the problem revealed: We are needy creatures, and life is far more fragile than we realize. Denying this will do us no good. Trying to motivate ourselves to overcome is sure to run out of steam. For millions of people, Covid meant the death of loved ones, losing their jobs, financial hardship, strained relationships, political strife, church conflict, and persistent despair. (A more honest commercial would have been: “Everything is awful. There’s not much to say. But Reese’s might help you feel better for a few minutes.”)

To be “a needy person” is one of the great insults of our performance-based, success-oriented culture. But the truth is that we are creatures of need. There will never be a time when we are no longer in need.

And believe it or not, that’s a good thing. Jesus invites us—commands us, even—to acknowledge our need and bring it to God.

Why We’re Needy Creatures

We were designed to have needs long before sin and all its effects entered the world. Adam and Eve needed God for life. They needed God for provision. They needed God’s world as a home—a habitat in which they could live, move, multiply, and cultivate good things. To be needy, then, is not the same as being sinful. Further, even Jesus, in his humanity, experienced need.

When the Son of God came to earth, he came in need. He didn’t descend in glory. He didn’t come as a young adult, strong and well-educated and self-sufficient. He came as a baby. He spent nine months in Mary’s womb. He was completely dependent on others, like all other babies. Luke 2 says “he grew in wisdom and stature” as a young man. He was needy and dependent because he was fully human—as well as fully divine. He needed his Father’s presence; he needed food, water, and rest.

Not only did Jesus exhibit human neediness, he taught it. In his parables and teachings, Jesus shows us our need. Remember Jesus’s Beatitudes? If we could distill them down, they’d be this, simply put: Blessed are the needy, for they will be satisfied. In fact, it seems like Jesus came especially for those with the most significant, immediate needs (Luke 4:18–19).

To be human is to be in need. To resist your neediness is to dehumanize yourself and reject God’s design. We reject our neediness often out of pride, but also because we have a low view of our physical world, which is the environment by which God meets so many of our needs.

Being a Christian is not first about being a good person like Jesus. It’s about being the kind of needy, broken person that Jesus loves to forgive and heal and restore.  The needy receive forgiveness and respond in love. The proud tragically secure their own future—life without God. It’s haunting that Jesus lets the rich young ruler walk away from him; Jesus doesn’t pursue him (Matt. 19:16–22). Why? The young man has no need of Jesus. Or rather, he has no awareness of his need.

Could it be that Jesus doesn’t reluctantly meet our needs, but that he actually delights in meeting our needs? As the pastor Jon Tyson has said, “Jesus is drawn to your need.”

Jesus Is Drawn to Your Need

On one occasion, Jesus is moving through a crowd, and a synagogue ruler named Jairus approaches him and begs Jesus to heal his only daughter (Luke 8:42). Jesus is making his way through the crowd, headed for Jairus’s house, when a woman with great need interrupts him—she had had a chronic health issue for twelve years—and reaches out to touch Jesus’s clothes. Why? “Because she had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, ‘If I touch even his garments, I will be made well’” (Mark 5:27–28). The result?

“Immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease” (Mark 5:29). Instantly, Jesus realizes power has gone out from him, and he stops to ask who had touched him. When the woman sees she can hide no longer, in a moment of great shame, she reveals her condition and approaches Jesus “with fear and trembling… and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth” (Mark 5:33). And—don’t miss this—she doesn’t do this in private. The crowds are still around. When she falls in front of Jesus and explains why she is making physical contact with him, we see that she “declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him” (Luke 8:47). She is doing this in front of a massive gathering of people who will look down on her for her uncleanness and neediness. And yet Jesus raises her up out of her shame and says, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be healed from your affliction” (Mark 5:34).

Now, pause and recognize the difference between these two individuals. Jairus was a man, a respected leader of the synagogue, a pillar of the Jewish community. This woman, who is not named in the story, is likely older, unmarried or widowed, and lacks any social status; even more, she’s chronically ill and unclean. Jairus stands at the center of Jewish life with so much influence; this woman cowers outside of it, with none. You’d expect Christ to be more drawn to Jairus’s need—after all, healing the daughter of a synagogue ruler would certainly circulate the news of Jesus like wildfire. Not to mention, Jairus isn’t the infected one. He’s still in good standing before the community. If the aim is ultimately to spread the good news and reveal Jesus as the divine Son of God, pushing past this woman and getting a move on to Jairus’s house would be the efficient and effective method for ministry growth. Draw near to the one in good standing—the guy with influence—right?

This woman, on the other hand, is the infected one. When Jesus realizes power has gone out from him, he could have just moved on to the more important ministry with the more important person on his schedule for the day. Why stop? Especially with such a “better” ministry opportunity waiting for him at Jairus’s house? And once he discovers the identity of the person who touched him, why address her further?  She got what she wanted, after all. Why linger even longer—long enough to call her daughter, and bless her in the sight of the crowd?

Because Jesus is drawn to need—in all its forms and from all kinds of people. And he can meet more than one at a time. He can be on his way to meeting one and make time to be interrupted by another. So, on the days you feel like your need isn’t as important as the next person’s, remember this woman and tell yourself the truth: Jesus is drawn to need, and he likes when you interrupt him with yours.

More than that, he’ll bless you for coming to him and telling him the whole truth about your needs. Of course, Jesus is the only one who can meet our deepest need—our need of forgiveness and salvation. But he’s drawn to all our needs because he is drawn to us in love.

When we come to Jesus with great need, he responds by giving us his full attention. It doesn’t matter where we stand in society. When we muster up all the faith we can, though we struggle to believe, Jesus stands ready to respond. When we realize we can hide no longer, he is ready to embrace us.

It’s good to be a needy person. Jesus loves to meet your needs.



Harnessing the Winds of Revival

By / Apr 7

Editor’s note: This article is taken from the introduction to C. H. Spurgeon’s Sermons (Expanding Ministry—Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: 1861 to 1876, Volumes 7–22) in vol. 7, pp. v–vii and pp. xiv–xv. Used by permission of Reformation Heritage Books. This collection is now available for purchase.

The first seven years (1854–1861) of C. H. Spurgeon’s ministry in London were accompanied by a surprising revival. No one could have expected it. Through a nineteen-year-old country preacher, a dying congregation was revitalized, and hundreds—perhaps thousands—were converted under his ministry during those early years. Though only a few dozen were in attendance when Spurgeon first arrived at New Park Street in 1853, by 1861 membership was at 1,473, with thousands more regularly attending.

But revival also brought its challenges. During those years Spurgeon warned his congregation, “If the Lord sends his Spirit like a hurricane, it is ours to deal with skill with the sails lest the hurricane should wreck us by driving us upon some fell rock that may do us serious injury.”[1] Spurgeon had seen churches shipwrecked in the winds of revival.[2] One church boasted of taking in a hundred or so new members in a year, only to excommunicate eighty of them the following year for “disorderly conduct and forsaking the truth.”[3] Other churches were happy to swell their ranks but gave no thought as to how to disciple or engage their people in ministry.[4] Some self-proclaimed revivalists had begun resorting to new tactics and emotionalism, hoping to fabricate the work of the Spirit.[5] Even as Spurgeon experienced a revival in his church, he refused to compromise his theological and ecclesiological convictions. “Take care, ye that are officers in the church, when ye see the people stirred up, that ye exercise still a holy caution, lest the church become lowered in its standard of piety by the admission of persons not truly saved.”[6]

At the same time, Spurgeon did not want to let the winds of revival simply pass by. There was such a response to his preaching that he contemplated at one point becoming a traveling evangelist. But in his experience of itinerant preaching, it was hard to know what the long-term effect was. While preaching in an open field in Wales, Spurgeon describes how “the Spirit of God was poured upon us, and men and women were swayed to and fro under the Heavenly message.” Still, once the meeting ended, the people went their separate ways, and he would never see them again.[7]

While one must be careful not to let the winds destroy the ship, the skillful sailor will look for ways to harness that wind. But how does one harness the hurricane winds of revival? Spurgeon believed it was through the church. As converts gave credible professions of faith, they were brought into the membership of the church, where they could be cared for by the elders and discipled under the ministry of the word. Not only that, but these church members were then engaged in the work of ministry, in both caring for one another and bringing the gospel to the lost around them. Spurgeon’s effort to harness the winds of revival was represented by the building and opening of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1861. This magnificent new building that seated six thousand would become the base of operations for Spurgeon’s ministry for the next thirty years.

If the New Park Street Pulpit tells the story of a revival in London, then the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit tells the story of the harnessing of that revival through an established and expanding church ministry. Like the previous volumes, they are a collection of the published Sunday morning sermons that were being preached week by week at the Metropolitan Tabernacle and then collected into a single volume at the end of each year. But just as God uses the preaching of the word to revive His people, He also uses it to sustain them and send them out. These sermons were the lifeblood of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, establishing that congregation in the word and providing the spiritual vitality needed for all the endeavors that would flow out of it.

~

The stories from Spurgeon’s ministry are remarkable: the vast audiences, the sermons published, the pastors trained, the churches planted, the orphans fed, the missionaries sent out, and the battles fought, all on a vast scale that is hard to imagine. Truly, it was a surprising work of God. It must be remembered, however, that Spurgeon did not do all that alone. He was surrounded in this work by his congregation. These sermons are a reminder that what motivated and sustained these congregational efforts was not human creativity or industry but God working powerfully through the preaching of the gospel. Through these gospel-rich sermons, God brought many to repentance and faith, uniting them to the church and motivating their service.

Church growth experts today will have thousands of new ideas on how to grow a church and keep people engaged. Some of those ideas may be useful. But not if they come at the expense of this one central call of the minister: preach Christ. Spurgeon’s fruitful ministry stands as a stirring commendation to the power of faithful gospel preaching. That’s not to say we can ever presume a particular kind of result. Spurgeon’s story was a surprising and unique work of God in a particular historical context.

Still, those who preach the gospel faithfully can pray and expect that God’s word will not return void. In his one thousandth published sermon, from the parable of the prodigal son, Spurgeon stated the aim of his sermon, once again echoing his words at the opening of the Tabernacle and continuing in the themes that he had already preached thousands of times before:

My desire this morning shall be to put plainly before every sinner here the exceeding abundance of the grace of God in Christ Jesus, hoping that the Lord will find out those who are his sons, and that they may catch at these words, and as they hear of the abundance of the bread in the Father’s house, may say, “I will arise and go to my Father.”[8]

__________

[1] C. H. Spurgeon, New Park Street Pulpit (1855–1916; repr., Grand Rapids: Refor- mation Heritage Books, 2024), 4:167.

[2] Though in some of these cases, Spurgeon would have questioned whether a real, Spirit-wrought revival took place at all.

[3] Spurgeon, New Park Street Pulpit, 2:76.

[4] Spurgeon states, “Alas! there is such a thing as having a large addition to the church of men that are of no use whatever. Many an army has swelled its ranks with recruits, who have in no way whatever contributed to its might.” New Park Street Pulpit, 2:76.

[5] Spurgeon recounts, “I have heard of the people crowding in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening, to hear some noted revivalist, and under his preach- ing some have screamed, have shrieked, have fallen down on the floor, have rolled themselves in convulsions, and afterwards, when he has set a form for penitents, employing one or two decoy ducks to run out from the rest and make a confession of sin, hundreds have come forward, impressed by that one sermon, and declared that they were, there and then, turned from the error of their ways.” New Park Street Pulpit, 4:162.

[6] Spurgeon, New Park Street Pulpit, 4:167.

[7] C. H. Spurgeon, C. H. Spurgeon’s Autobiography: Compiled from His Diary, Letters, and Records, by His Wife and His Private Secretary (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1897–1900), 2:93–94.

[8] Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 17:386–87.



Awake! This Morn My Heart Would Rise

By / Mar 24

Editor’s Note: To encourage those considering a call to ministry, Midwestern Seminary is giving away an e-book copy of Christ Our All: Poems for the Christian Pilgrim by Charles Spurgeon during the month of March. Download your copy today and be encouraged by the reflections of a faithful minister as you follow the call of Christ.

Prayer: Awake! This Morn My Heart Would Rise[1]

Awake! This morn my heart would rise
Above this world to see thy face;
Beyond these narrow-cloudy skies
To gain from thee, supplies of grace.

Arise! O King thy people wait
To speak with thee, to feel thy love.
We come and waiting at thy gate,
Desire thy blessing from above.

Alone with thee, the world behind,
Our hearts are waiting thee to meet.
Still hoping in thy love to find
Our help while waiting at thy feet.

O can’st thou spurn us from thee[,] Lord
And disappoint each waiting soul?
Then thou must take away thy word,
Which bids us on thy name to call.

But wilt thou have us here to doubt
Thy goodness, love, forgiving heart?
Shall our petition be cast out?
Once sav’d, Lord, wilt thou from us part?

O Lord we cannot think of thee
With such hard thoughts, thy Life, thy Death
Thy rising, it was all for me
And all who love thee, Scripture saith.

For further reflection: Psalm 63:1–4

__________

[1] This poem was written by Charles Spurgeon and compiled by Geoffrey Chang in Christ Our All: Poems for the Christian Pilgrim (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 24. It is reproduced at For the Church by permission of B&H Academic.



The Real Reason We Struggle to Pray?

By / Mar 18

A few weeks ago, my friend pulled me aside after our community group gathering. We had finished our discussion time with about 20 minutes of prayer together, and he was both challenged and encouraged. He said, “I’ve been a Christian for decades, but I’ve never learned to pray.” He continued, “I know I’m supposed to pray. But I don’t know what to do. I love Bible study, and I like serving. But for some reason I can’t explain, I just don’t really pray.”

I have some version of this conversation at least monthly, typically when a new person or couple joins our church and is trying to make sense of our significant emphasis on prayer. Why is this the case? Why is prayer so difficult? If prayer is such a constant theme in the Scriptures from beginning to end, why do so many Christians feel like they don’t know how to pray and feel little desire to develop a praying life?

Of course, there are many folks who love prayer. They don’t just value prayer as a concept; they actually pray. Deeply. They believe it really does something. They feel intimately connected to God, and as a result, their lives are marked by a gentleness, increasing maturity, and relational quality that many of us are seeking. What do they know that we don’t?

There are many reasons why prayer doesn’t come easily for us. We’re busy people. We haven’t been trained in prayer. It’s just difficult to sit still for more than five minutes without sweating in distraction. These are all true, but I think it goes deeper than all this. Recently, an unexpected source helped me see this clearly.

Why We Really Struggle with Prayer

Ricky Gervais is a British comedian and actor best known for writing and starring in the original BBC version of The Office. Gervais’s standup comedy specials are not exactly clean, and he is an outspoken atheist. But on a recent tour, he joked about his atheism and shared his views on prayer.

“People ask me, ‘Do you pray?’ No. I don’t mind if you pray. People say, ‘I’m praying for you,’ and I say, ‘Thank you.’ But if you cancel the chemotherapy, I’ll say, ‘Don’t do that.’ Do both. Pray and do the chemotherapy. Because doing both is the same as just doing the chemo. If you’re going to do one, do the one that works.”[1]

I laughed at first. Gervais is a master of delivery. But then something settled in like a dark cloud. At the time, I had been a Christian for most of my life—one who regularly prayed at the start of every day. But as I reflected, I realized Gervais’s remarks might indeed represent my own view of prayer more than the biblical vision. (More than might; they did.) My commitment to prayer was often agnostic—as if I believed in the existence of the Divine and mentally assented to the importance of prayer but didn’t engage deeply with a personal, living God.

If you had witnessed the weakness and inconsistency of my prayers in that season of my life, you’d likely conclude that I didn’t really expect all that much out of prayer, opting instead for the things that “worked.” Following my life closely, you’d undoubtedly conclude that I relied far more on my intellect than the Holy Spirit, more on my own energies than the power of God. You’d watch every morning pass as I, functionally speaking, said a few weak prayers and then opened my eyes, laced up my Nikes, and got to work as if it all depended on me.

Or at least, that’s until a few years ago, when I began to discover the joy and power of prayer.

Rediscovering the Joy and Power of Prayer

Toward the end of 2019, I was experiencing a dangerous level of fatigue and apathy. Nothing was utterly falling apart, but I was struggling through daily life. My spiritual life was dry, and I could barely feel God’s presence and love. Our little church plant was stumbling through its infancy stage, and our three boys were wonderful and exhausting at once. I was keeping my rhythms of Scripture, prayer, and fellowship, but I felt discouraged and powerless.

I was running on the mercies and energy of the past, and I was reaching the bottom of the tank. I began crying out to God with a mixture of lament, accusation, and petition. Desperation, as it turns out, is a key ingredient in prayer.

In this wilderness season, I cried out to God in the spirit of Lamentations 2:19.

“Arise, cry out in the night,
as the watches of the night begin;
pour out your heart like water
in the presence of the Lord.” (NIV)

The Lord met me powerfully and gently in that wilderness season of pouring out my heart. I can’t say it was a sudden or explosive experience—like the ones I’ve read about in memoirs by Augustine and Blaise Pascal—and I didn’t reach the third heaven. But nonetheless, over the course of a few days, I felt swept up in the powerful mercies of God. His presence felt so real and tangible. His Word leaped off the page. I prayed for hours on end. I even gave fasting another try after years of avoiding it.

Now, let’s be clear: I have not become a prayer expert, nor have I become a super Christian. My journey is simply deepening. Said another way, I’ve come to understand these moments as personal “times of refreshing…from the Lord” (Acts 3:19–20, NIV). For the next few months, my prayer life came fully alive. I had newfound energy for life. My sweet wife, Jessie, was overjoyed that I had been lifted from my funk. My boys could notice a difference in me. In my ministry relationships, I timidly brought up my renewal to our leaders, and several of them were experiencing something similar. Something remarkable was happening.

Over the past few years, my prayer life has ebbed and flowed; many dry seasons and powerless morning quiet times have come and gone. But as I’ve pressed further into the presence of God, He has been gracious and faithful to meet me with an increased love for Him and for others. Perhaps you know this feeling well, too. Or perhaps you long for it.

These days, I’m simply asking for more—more of God’s presence, more of His Spirit’s fruit ripening in my life, more Christlikeness as I walk with Jesus. To seek more of God is not to be discontent, but rather it’s a content, sitting-on-the-Father’s-lap prayer of a weaned child, seeking to be fully engaged in God’s presence (Psalm 131).

What Prayer Does

These days, I still reflect on the comedian’s words—“don’t do prayer, do something that works”—but I’m seeking to remind myself just how much prayer really does.

What exactly does prayer do?

Prayer welcomes us into the embrace of the Father and retrains us to live from belovedness.

Prayer uncovers our fragmented lives and invites us into wholehearted living.

Prayer is the means by which God moves history toward the renewal of all things; it leads to breakthrough.

Prayer invites us to face pain and suffering with honesty and hope.

Prayer opens us to a life of celebration and thanksgiving and teaches us to praise.

Prayer connects us to other believers more deeply and the mission of God more fruitfully.

Prayer increases our experience of the Holy Spirit’s presence and power.

Prayer reorients us to eternity—the coming new creation.

In short, prayer does stuff. And I’m not the only one who’s discovered this.

Over the past few years, along with my own spiritual awakening, our church has caught a vision for prayer. We have a long way to go, but we have become a praying church. Our calendar is filled with prayer meetings, and people are praying with joy, passion, and power. We’ve seen people experience profound inner healing. We’ve seen marriages restored. Members have seen their long-time friends come to Christ and be baptized. Lives are being changed, and it’s not our music, our level of production, and (certainly not) our preaching skills. It’s prayer.

Our lives are powerless apart from prayer. Prayer is the way in which we enter the presence of God and gain access to His strength, peace, and wisdom. And the more we experience God’s presence in prayer, the more we will keep turning to Him. Prayer cultivates a hunger for God. Prayer makes us more content (we are happy with less) and hungrier for God’s presence (we want more of Him).

There are many reasons it’s hard to pray deeply. But we don’t have to be afraid that prayer doesn’t do much. Prayer is powerful because God is powerful. Prayer works because we have a loving, sovereign Father who loves to answer prayer. And He invites us to pour out our hearts to Him. Why hold back?

__________

[1] Ricky Gervais, Netflix special, “Supernature,” 2022.

Editor’s Note: For more encouragement in prayer, see Jeremy Linneman’s book Pour Out Your Heart: Discovering Joy, Strength, and Intimacy with God through Prayer, available today from B&H Publishing.



Captain of Our Salvation, Prove

By / Mar 14

Editor’s Note: To encourage those considering a call to ministry, Midwestern Seminary is giving away an e-book copy of Christ Our All: Poems for the Christian Pilgrim by Charles Spurgeon during the month of March. Download your copy today and be encouraged by the reflections of a faithful minister as you follow the call of Christ.

Prayer: Captain of Our Salvation, Prove[1]

Captain of our salvation, prove
The greatness of thy saving love;
Teach thou this wayward heart to know
What made thee love poor sinners so.

Was it for aught that we had done
For thee, that thy great pity came?
Or that because our helpless state
Bespoke the rebel sinner[’]s fate?

Was it for love we bore thy name
That made thee bear the cross and shame?
Or that because our sins were deep
That made thy loving heart to weep?

Lord, did our ruin bring thee down
And make thee leave thy royal crown?
To wander here, endure the grave
Our sinful souls to buy and save?

Did our condition grieve thy heart
And bring thee down to bear our smart?
Or did thy loving heart desire
To save us from eternal fire?

If such great love as this was thine
To us a mass of guilt and sin,
Let me adore thy sovereign grace;
Save me, and let me see thy face.

For further reflection: 1 Timothy 1:15–16

__________

[1] This poem was written by Charles Spurgeon and compiled by Geoffrey Chang in Christ Our All: Poems for the Christian Pilgrim (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 23. It is reproduced at For the Church by permission of B&H Academic.



Praying Psalm 62 with Charles Spurgeon

By / Feb 25

“If God is real, I’m sure He’s too busy to care about the details of my life.” A friend said this to me years ago with exasperation and resignation in his voice. Perhaps you’ve heard some version of this yourself. Maybe you’ve even heard it inside the church. “You should only pray for really big things, like God’s glory among the nations—don’t pray for little things like a good parking spot.”

These statements reflect a deeper question: Can we really approach God with confidence? Can we actually bring Him our smallest, most earthly requests? There’s a Psalm just for these questions, and the 19th-century preacher Charles Spurgeon helps us discover its riches.

How to Pray from the Heart

There are many Psalms that invite us to bring ourselves honestly and completely before God. But in my opinion, Psalm 62 is the most powerful of them all.

David opens his song with a word of praise, as he often does: “Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him” (v. 1, NIV). As soon as he praises God like this, though, David reaches the purpose of his prayer. “How long will you assault me? Would all of you throw me down—this leaning wall, this tottering fence?” (v. 3).

What a vibrant illustration of David’s situation. His enemies are after him. They’re cursing him and intending to knock him down from his royal position. He feels like a leaning wall, a broken-down fence. At any moment, he could come collapsing down.

No doubt, you’ve felt like this before. You know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed with life. Work is too much, people are demanding, and someone seems out to get you. It feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, and you’re not sure if anyone can help you. Where do we go with all this pressure and fear?

David knows he can approach God with all this. It’s not too much for God. David can come directly to the Lord of Hosts with his immediate needs and urgent requests. He continues:

“Yes, my soul, find rest in God;

my hope comes from him.

Trust in him at all times, you people;

pour out your hearts to him,

for God is our refuge” (v. 8, emphasis added).

Here, the king vacillates between preaching to his own heart and calling Israel to trust in the Lord. “Rest in God!” he tells his own soul. “Trust in him at all times, you people!” he adds. And he speaks to us—all of us in our own desperate situations wondering if we can bring our grandest and most insignificant requests to an almighty God. David says, “Pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” Centuries after David, Jeremiah picks up his phrase, writing, “Pour out your hearts like water in the presence of the Lord,” in calling Israel to repentance in Lamentations 2:19.

Now, this is a beautiful phrase: Pour out your hearts to God. It’s not hard to understand, but if we can fully internalize its powerful invitation, it will truly transform our prayer lives. And there’s a sure guide to help us there.

Charles Spurgeon on True Prayer

In his majestic, three-volume Treasury of David, Charles Spurgeon meditates on this phrase for no small amount of time. What does it mean to pour out our hearts? And how can we know we can do this? Spurgeon writes:

You to whom his love is revealed, reveal yourselves to him. His heart is set on you, lay bare your hearts to him. Turn the vessel of your soul upside down in his secret presence, and let your inmost thoughts, desires, sorrows, and sins be poured out like water. Hide nothing from him, for you can hide nothing. To the Lord, unburden your soul… To keep our griefs to ourselves is to hoard up wretchedness. The stream will swell and rage if you dam it up; give it a clear course, and it leaps along and creates no alarm.[1]

The Psalms are God’s way of saying, “Don’t make sure you sanitize your prayers.” You can come to God just as you are. Your prayers can’t be too honest for God; He knows what’s going on in your heart already.

Give the Lord your everything; He can handle it. We don’t have to hold it all together and clean ourselves up. We don’t have to do this life in our own strength. God wants to give us His joy, peace, and strength. And He desires to pour these gifts into us through prayer. Our job is to empty ourselves first, so that we might have ample room to receive them.

But why do the psalmist and prophet call us to pour out our hearts like water? Spurgeon reflects:

Pour [your heart] out as water. Not as milk, whose color remains. Not as wine, whose savor remains. Not as honey, whose taste remains. But as water, of which, when it is poured out, nothing remains. So let sin be poured out of the heart, that no color of it may remain in external marks, no savor in our words, no taste in our affections.[2]

David and Jeremiah (and Spurgeon) want to show us something of the nature of our prayers. Rather than a slow, careful reciting of words, our prayers can be the natural, unfiltered overflow of our hearts and minds. When we are bursting at the seams with the worries and demands of this life, God has given us a release valve. When we are full, we can pour out.

We’re not just pouring out prayers though; we’re pouring out our very hearts. Our hearts can remain largely hidden from us. We barely understand why we do what we do and why certain things just poured out of our mouths. Prayer is a way of discovering our own hearts. As we give our hearts to God in prayer, we are giving Him the core and essence of our lives. We are giving ourselves completely to Him. Spurgeon adds:

If you fear lest there remain anything in your heart not poured forth, bring the whole heart, and cast it before the eyes of the Lord, and sacrifice it to him, that he may create a new heart in thee.[3]

This is the image God has chosen to give us for our praying lives. Just pour it out. Let it flow. Don’t hold back. Spills and messes will happen, and there will be days when you feel like a puddle on the floor. But God’s welcome is simple: Pour out your heart.

God Pours Out, Too

Beautifully, there’s another side to this. When we pour out, God pours out on us, too. God’s blessing also flows like water. He is the God of abundance and overflow. As the self-existent source and replenisher of life, our Father pours out His own goodness and peace, even as we pour out our hearts like water before Him.

Sound too good to be true? Romans 5:5 promises, “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts by his Holy Spirit.”

God’s blessing being poured into us happens simultaneously to our pouring out our hearts in His presence. The weak pouring out anxiousness, confusion, and need, and the strong pouring out love, strength, and blessing in response—all like water.

Our hearts were made to be poured out. Your ever-loving Father waits for you to bring all your rants and ramblings to Him. Spurgeon concludes,

Sympathy we need, and if we unload our hearts at Jesus’ feet, we shall obtain a sympathy as practical as it is sincere, as consolatory as it is ennobling.[4]

This, Spurgeon knew, is the essence of prayer: Pour out your heart to God, and He will pour His joy, strength, and love back into you. Amen and amen.

__________

[1] Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David: Volume 2, 51.

[2] Spurgeon, 58.

[3] Spurgeon, 58.

[4] Spurgeon, 58.

Editor’s note: For more encouragement in prayer, see Jeremy Linneman’s forthcoming book Pour Out Your Heart: Discovering Joy, Strength, and Intimacy with God through Prayer, available this March from B&H Publishing.



God’s Covenantal Hospitality

By / Feb 18

Editor’s note: This article is part one of a four-part series. Access the full series here.

From Genesis to Revelation, God reveals Himself to be a host. The Garden of Eden can be viewed as God’s creative activity to host Adam and Eve as His vice-regents who manage the banquet hall of creation. God hosts Israel for 40 years, providing food for the duration of their wilderness wandering (Exod. 16). Isaiah prophesies that the mountain of God will be an end-times banquet hall where the Lord of hosts will prepare a feast to celebrate death’s defeat (Isa. 25:6­–8). The final scenes of John’s vision in Revelation include the Marriage Feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6–10).

In most instances, the Lord’s hospitality in the Old Testament had Israel in view. One such occasion is reported as part of the covenant ceremony Moses enacted for Israel in Exodus 24.

In the first entry in this series, I want to note how the Lord’s hospitality to Israel’s leaders in Exodus 24 contributes to Moses’s covenant ceremony. I will then note points of contact with Jesus’s hospitality to the eleven after His resurrection, suggesting ways that Jesus’s seaside hospitality contributes to His dialogue with Peter and new covenant ministry.

After establishing the covenantal framework of divine hospitality, in successive entries, I will observe how hospitality is a task leaders in Scripture undertake with great haste and how it qualifies men for pastoral ministry in the local church. I will conclude with a fourth post demonstrating how hospitality contributes to church health.

The Lord’s Hospitality to Israel’s Leaders

Among the Lord’s personal manifestations in the Old Testament, His invitation to Israel’s leaders in Exodus 24 casts a long shadow. This scene serves as a pivot point in a unit that begins with the Lord’s appearance on Sinai in Exodus 19 and culminates with Moses descending the mountain with the stone tablets at the end of Exodus 31. In Exodus 19, the Lord commanded Moses to have the people stand at a distance as He descended upon the mountain and covered it with smoke, fire, lightning, and thunder. These visible manifestations confirm Moses’s words to the people. The Lord was with them and had instructed them through His servant Moses.

The frightening appearance of the Lord on Sinai in Exodus 19 establishes two features of the Mosaic covenant. First, the Lord is holy, and His people must revere Him. In the immediate context, this included keeping themselves at a safe physical distance (Exod. 19:9–13, 19–25). Second, the Lord chose Moses as His spokesman, and the people must heed Moses’s instructions (Exod. 19:7–10; 20:18–21).

These two themes place in bold the Lord’s invitation for Moses and Israel’s leaders to join Him on the mountain for a meal in Exodus 24. The covenant ceremony Moses led in Exodus 24 began with his instruction to the people and their pledge of obedience (v. 3). After writing the Lord’s instructions for the people (v. 4), Moses sent young men to sacrifice bulls for burnt offerings and fellowship offerings (v. 5). Moses took the scroll he had written and read it to the people, sprinkling them with the blood of the bulls that had been sacrificed (vv. 7–8). Moses’s leadership in Exodus 24 directly fulfills the Lord’s intentions for Moses described in Exodus 19 and 20. Moses was the Lord’s authoritative spokesman.

And the Lord wanted to host Moses and Israel’s leaders on the mountain. In obedience to the Lord’s invitation in Exodus 24:1–2, Moses led Aaron, Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu, and Israel’s 70 elders up the mountain (v. 9). They saw the Lord but were not consumed, eating in the presence of the Lord (vv. 10–11)! From the moment the Lord descended on the mountain in Exodus 19 to this point in the narrative, the Lord had demanded that Israel stay away from Him lest His holy presence consume them. But now, in Exodus 24, He hosted Moses and Israel’s leaders in near proximity, disclosing Himself to them as they ate. Moses and Joshua then proceeded up the mountain, and Moses stayed in the Lord’s presence for 40 days and nights. (vv. 13–18).

The Lord hosted Moses on Mount Sinai to establish Moses as His authoritative spokesman, the one He chose to mediate His instruction to Israel. Having hosted Moses to prepare him for leadership, the Lord sent Moses down the mountain with the stone tablets (Exod. 31:18).

Jesus’s Hospitality to the Eleven after His Resurrection

The Gospel of John is not short on drama, and the final chapter does not disappoint. It all begins with Peter leading the disciples on a fishing expedition (John 21:3). But they caught nothing. In the morning, Jesus called to them from the shore. Two of Jesus’s statements informed the eleven about who was calling to them. First, Jesus was aware that they had caught nothing. Second, He told them to try the other side of the boat, and they would have a full catch (vv. 5–6). After the eleven did so and saw many fish in the net, Peter recognized that the resurrected Lord Jesus was speaking to them from the shore! In high drama, Peter disrobed and swam to Jesus as the other disciples followed in the boat (vv. 7–8).

Jesus was prepared to host Peter and the other disciples. Already, He had fish cooking over the fire (v. 9). Peter dragged the full net to the shore, and they added some of the day’s catch to what Jesus had on the fire. The eleven were in the presence of the risen Lord Jesus. He was hosting them for brunch, and John writes, “This was now the third time Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead” (v. 14, CSB).

Jesus’s hospitality to the eleven, framed by Peter’s robust pursuit of the Lord, becomes the setting where Jesus restored Peter to ministry. In vv. 15–19, Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Him, challenging Peter to embrace his leadership role despite the suffering that would come with it.

Though Jesus’s hospitality to the eleven in John 21 lacks the formal language of the covenant ceremony Moses enacted in Exodus 24, points of contact remain. In both scenes, divine hospitality is extended to human leaders to equip them for their ministries in God’s redemptive program.

This conclusion will frame my third post, where I will look at the pastoral qualification that elders must be hospitable (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:8). In my next post, however, I will highlight a key characteristic of biblical hospitality: urgency.

Responding in Worship and Work

But before wrapping up here, let’s consider: How should we respond to the thought of God hosting us? This is a gospel fact that compels our response in two ways.

First, let us worship God for His kindness in inviting us into His presence and serving us. How do you picture Jesus’s face as He, the eternal Son, taking up human flesh, showed Peter and the eleven the fish He already had cooking over the fire? See that smile? Worship Him!

Second, let us get to work. God has gifted His people with abilities, and if you are reading this blog, He has likely given you abilities to lead the church. Do you love Jesus? Feed His sheep.



“Lest We Drift”

By / Feb 6

Editor’s Note: The following excerpt is taken from Lest We Drift: Five Departure Dangers from the One True Gospel by Jared C. Wilson. Copyright © 2025 by Jared C. Wilson. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.harpercollinschristian.com

Lest We Drift is now available wherever Christian books are sold.

Theological drift is always a danger within evangelicalism. When Reformed evangelicals are not drawing their polemical passion from the rise of Protestantism beginning in the early sixteenth century, they are inspired by the cautionary guidance of more recent historical episodes like the Downgrade Controversy in the late 1800s of Victorian England, the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy of the 1920s–1930s, the Southern Baptist Convention’s “conservative resurgence” in response to liberalizing influences in the denomination in the late 1970s–1980s, and the concerns in the mid-1990s over Evangelicals and Catholics Together. If the early history of Christianity was fraught with the codification of orthodoxy, late Christianity has been about the enforcing of it.

We are well acquainted with the danger of drift; we seem less acquainted with our own susceptibility to it. And while we are accustomed to noticing the drift of others, we are woefully blind about noticing it among ourselves.

While the bulk of this book is concerned with the kinds of drift threatening our fidelity to the gospel—and our unity around it—it is important to establish first (and reestablish throughout) how such drift occurs. And this is the implicit claim of gospel-centrality as an ideology: that the moment we take our eyes off the center is when we begin to move away from it.

After expounding the wonders of Christ’s glory in the gospel (and the prophetic freight with which it culminates), the author of Hebrews warns us, “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (2:1). One primary implication is clear: Drift from the gospel is possible, and it happens when we stop paying ever-closer attention to it.

And since we are people constantly distracted by a million things inside and outside of ourselves, the potential for drift is constant in our lives. Every movement, no matter how faithful, remains vulnerable, and we fool ourselves if we think we’re the first to finally exorcize our institutions and organizations of this temptation. The shifts are subtler than we usually realize, but they have widespread ramifications.

D. A. Carson remarks thusly on the generational impact of drift:

I have heard a Mennonite leader assess his own movement in this way. One generation of Mennonites cherished the gospel and believed that the entailment of the gospel lay in certain social and political commitments. The next generation assumed the gospel and emphasized the social and political commitments. The present generation identifies itself with the social and political commitments, while the gospel is variously confessed or disowned; it no longer lies at the heart of the belief system of some who call themselves Mennonites.

Whether or not this is a fair reading of the Mennonites, it is certainly a salutary warning for evangelicals at large. [1]

It absolutely is.

I have sensed a parallel phenomenon in the generational succession of the gospel-centered movement as well. With the increased speed of information transfer, the full descent of the internet age, and the reality of globalization, what once might have taken generations can now transpire in the span of a few decades. For a great many of us who came of age at the height of the seeker-sensitive church movement—initially influenced by and trained in ministry to emulate pastors like Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Andy Stanley—the rediscovery of Reformed theology provided a canvas upon which to work out our growing angst with the attractional ministry paradigm. In the beginning, younger Boomers and older Gen Xers set about cherishing—or at least enjoying the newness of—gospel-centrality, especially in reaction to what we were rebelling against. From this interest arose the young, restless, and Reformed phenomenon, but in just ten short years, what was new to us had become the established norm for the next generation.

Many younger Gen Xers and Millennials effectively grew up with the gospel-centered movement as the wallpaper of their church experience. This was the generation of “assumption,” for which the implications proved more interesting than the gospel itself. It didn’t help that many of the “cherishers” pastoring and influencing them turned out merely to be dabblers.

The watchword of the Reformation was semper reformanda—“always reforming”—which for its originators meant always returning to the gospel of grace, always and ever conforming to the centrality of Christ. In the spirit of Luther’s first thesis, the whole life of the Christian is to be one of constant repenting, which means constantly turning from sin and constantly turning to Christ.

Gospel-centrality, in other words, is not something you can set to autopilot.

This is true even if your doctrinal fidelity is to the true gospel! The true gospel may be de-centered, placed in the lockbox of our theological basement, or simply hung on the wall of the church website. Accordingly, it provides the background for all manner of functional, ministerial, and cultural drift. For instance, nearly every mainline church where Christ and his gospel are not preached biblically or with conviction claims to affirm the historic creeds. And nearly every conservative church where political rants and legalistic tirades dominate the pulpit maintains an orthodox statement of faith in their church documents.

Drift does not usually begin at the places of doctrines and documents but at the places of discourse and disposition.

Tim Keller writes:

Both the Bible and church history show us that it is possible to hold all the correct individual biblical doctrines and yet functionally lose our grasp on the gospel. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones argues that while we obviously lose the gospel if we fall into heterodoxy, we can also operationally stop preaching and using the gospel on ourselves through dead orthodoxy or through doctrinal imbalances of emphasis. Sinclair Ferguson argues that there are many forms of both legalism and antinomianism, some of which are based on overt heresy but more often on matters of emphasis and spirit. It is critical, therefore, in every new generation and setting to find ways to communicate the gospel clearly and strikingly, distinguishing it from its opposites and counterfeits. [2]

We will examine some of these alternate emphases in subsequent chapters, but as the urban legend tells us, the best way to spot counterfeits is to become familiar with the real thing. Since part of our tendency toward gospel drift is in fact a pervasive gospel confusion, it behooves us to establish and constantly refamiliarize ourselves with the true gospel and the substance of what is meant by “gospel-centrality.”

__________

  1. D. A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry: Leadership Lessons from 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 63.
  2. Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 21.