High Schoolers Can Be Church Members, Too

By / Feb 9

Student ministries like other age-based ministries tend to help students value Jesus but fail when it comes to helping students value the local church.

I’ve been in student ministry at a local church for 3 years now. In the new year I’ve made it a goal of mine to encourage a select few of our high school students to pursue church membership. In the past three years I have seen most of my students pursue church membership. These students are fruit-bearers. They’ve completed membership classes and have gone through the waters of baptism. The elders have affirmed their profession of faith. I’ve been able to hear their testimonies and watch them grow in maturity.

When you think of student ministry, does church membership also come to your mind? Typically, things like a pizza party, lock-ins, and chubby bunny can come to mind. But this doesn’t have to be the case! Student pastors should go into each year praying, encouraging, and equipping their regenerate students to join the local church. It should be an expectation!

According to a 2017 Lifeway Research poll, students between the ages of 18-22 stop attending church regularly.[1] What is the local church calling these students to commit to when they gather during their high school years? Church membership, or nothing?

Here are three reasons I believe we should not shy away from inviting born-again high school students to covenant with their local church.

Distinct for Discipleship

During the Spring of every year, our momma cows would begin to calve on our little farm I grew up on. Dad and I had the task of tagging each of the calves so we would be able to identify which cows belonged to us and which ones did not. One of us would watch the momma cow while the other would gently approach the calf to catch it. We would tag it in the ear and then let it go.

Our little farm was surrounded by other farms with cattle. The reason we tagged the calves was to identify them as our own. When you join the church you won’t get a tag in your ear, but hopefully you will be encouraged to pursue the distinguishing mark of church membership.

Within student ministry, it is difficult for student ministry leaders to tell who believers are and who are not. Church membership helps this issue. Student ministry is a ministry to those who have not responded in faith to the gospel and a ministry to engage students with the ministry of the Word. The task of the church is ensuring that those who proclaim to be in the faith are being discipled.

Why is church membership important for high school students?  It makes them identifiable as believers because the entire church has collectively said, “Yes, we can say that this person is a follower of Jesus Christ, and we will help them follow Jesus.” There’s nothing in Scripture that gives me the authority to make disciples of students who are not following Jesus. I can present the gospel. I can teach the Word. I can assist their parents in leading them to Christ, but Christian discipleship is reserved for born-again, regenerate Christians and the responsibility to see this carried out is the covenant members of the local church.

Committed to Serving the Church Now

How are students within the church typically viewed? Distracting? Rowdy? Immature? But when it comes to moving equipment, taking out the trash, or setting up for the Christmas play, we look to students for their help. Why not call these Christian school-age students to covenant with the Body of believers? If you have students that you can affirm who bear fruit, and are genuine Christians, then encourage them to join the church.

When they join the church, they won’t be viewed as just warm bodies that are limber enough to climb a ladder to clear out clogged gutters. They will be viewed as brothers and sisters in Christ who are to be held responsible for how they serve the Body. If we are being intentional about sharing the gospel, charge these students to consider whether they are in Christ or not. If they are, encourage them to pursue church membership.

Within the student ministry in my church, we have had students serve on the A/V team, connections team, or in our children’s ministry. Serving the church now sets up students to serve the local church in the future. Helping born-again students see that they should covenant with the church tears down any barriers that would prevent them from spiritual growth later.

We should not look to the Christian students within our church as free labor, but as freed laborers who are set apart by God to serve His church.

Equipped for the College Years

College students are trying to figure out if they will commit to a church or not now. I was a sophomore in college before I took the local church seriously. Some of them do not know what they are even supposed to look for in a church. Some believe that their church membership back in their hometown is sufficient.

Dave Russell in his article “Church Membership ‘Back Home’ is not Enough” writes, “Living somewhere temporarily doesn’t negate the call to be in the fellowship of the local church.”[2] But students have not been equipped by previous churches or student ministries to see the need to commit themselves to a local church in their college years. So, they default to their campus ministry as their local church and visit the church they grew up in only when they go back home.

While campus ministries are helpful, they are not the church. The four years students spend in college is a pivotal time for them to search for a church that will encourage them to press on in their faith. How will these students know how to find a church? Were you equipped to find a church when you went off to college? Should parents just sit back and hope they stumble through the doors of a church? Will just any church do?

Every March I take my students through three weeks of digging into what a healthy church is through a series called Marks in March. We look at three marks of a healthy church from Mark Dever’s book, 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, and I stir discussion that helps my students be ready to know what to look for in a church. Is it my ambition that these students would know Jesus? Yes! But it is also my ambition that the born-again students would see the importance of the local church and commit to serving the church wherever they go.

We should not view the students within our care in their junior high and high school years like a paper sailboat that we push out into a stream hoping that the rushing waters and wind will navigate them to the right destination. We should not leave it up to chance that our students will somehow stay committed to the local church. Brothers and sisters, if students are church members coming out of high school, I guarantee that it will be an easy transition to a church as they head off to college.

Fellow student pastors and ministers, charge your high school students to commit themselves to the local church now.

[1]  https://lifewayresearch.com/2019/01/15/most-teenagers-drop-out-of-church-as-young-adults/

[2] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/college-students-and-church-membership/

 



Hope Beyond Heaven and Justice Now

By / Feb 8

An angry mob seizes an innocent man on the street. They beat him with rocks. They drag him as a lifeless animal and dump him in an unmarked place. They leave him for dead in dust and blood. They walk home, unaccountable.

Many Christians crave heaven as an escape from such unjust realities on earth. Yes, but the Bible presents something better.

Hope within Injustice

The situation above is accurate to experiences of numerous minority Americans. In this instance, it actually describes the apostle Paul’s experience in Lystra, Galatia (Acts 14).

Paul suffered unjustly many times and for various reasons. It always involved his voice for the truth of Jesus, the Lord. But Paul was no stranger to other intertwined factors. Economic greed easily trumped truth and justice (Acts 16:19; cf. 19:23–27). Ethnic prejudice incited mobs (Acts 16:20–21). Power, force, and incarceration were abused by government officials and local law enforcement (Acts 16:22–24). His rights as a citizen were ignored (Acts 16:37).

Yet Paul had hope. But not the kind to which many American evangelicals cling.

A Popular Hope that Falls Short

American evangelicals tend to latch onto a true hope that is nonetheless insufficient. It neither matches God’s full plan nor is fully effective on earth now in the way God has designed.

You may hope to be with Jesus in heaven when you die. Me, too. Just imagine seeing the one whom you already know and trust for his self-sacrifice, honor, power, wisdom, and goodness! This is a true hope of Christians. Paul implies such a heavenly life-after-death in 1 Thessalonians 4:14 and declares it truly desirable (Phil. 1:23; 2 Cor. 5:8). Bask in Revelation 4–5 a while; heaven sounds breathtaking!

But heaven is not the end, which is why theologians call it “the intermediate state.” There is something more, something better.

According to Scripture, God wants his children and world to be anchored within this painful, groan-filled life. So he gives us a hope for what is more eternal and more fully alive than our beautiful but bodiless and intermediate life-after-death in heaven. In fact, did you know that frustration still exists in heaven?

A Popular Hope with In-Built Frustration

The main hope that many Christians cling to is less peaceful than God ultimately wants for us, and this is important.

When [Jesus] opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” 11 Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. (Rev. 6:9–11)

The souls are in heaven. They are with Christ. And still they cry out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, how long…?!”

Heaven is not the end, for not every injustice on God’s groaning earth is fixed yet. This rightly matters to those in heaven. It rightly bothers them. It righteously frustrates them—even in heaven.

Our Hope Beyond Heaven

For Paul, hope is “eagerly waiting.” For what if not heaven? For starters, we “eagerly wait” for all things to be right (Gal. 5:5) and “eagerly wait” for the resurrected Son’s physical return (1 Cor. 1:7).

Even in our groaning, we are not ultimately to eagerly wait for an escape, some white light flight to heaven. No. God’s creation itself “eagerly waits” (hopes) with its own groans, but not for us to be taken away from it.

God made us creation’s kings and queens, and he has never abandoned his purpose, even though we’ve made a royal mess. Those who trust Christ—the King of creation—are being re-formed into his royal image. He will complete this transformation by resurrecting our bodies and glorifying us (1 Cor. 15:49–58), and toward this we “eagerly wait” (Rom. 8:23).

But toward what end? To give us back to creation, not take us from it.

This is why creation itself “eagerly waits” and “hopes,” as if with outstretched arms, for this reunion. Creation craves this glorious, embodied, perfected, God-given reunion with its perfected kings and queens (Rom. 8:19), wherein creation itself will be liberated from its slavery to decay (Rom. 8:20–21)!

God is giving us something much bigger than our souls going to heaven when we die. In fact, it is “into this very hope we were saved” and for which we “eagerly wait”—bodily resurrection and liberated creation (Rom. 8:24–25). What is more, this hope should shape our actions now.

Our Full Hope is Active for Justice Now

Recall what rightly frustrates souls in heaven now: unresolved injustice against them on earth. Too many Christians on earth, perhaps especially in America, do not share their brothers’ and sisters’ heavenly frustration.

But even when our embodied souls do learn such heavenly frustration with injustice on earth, there is a difference between how God calls those in heaven and us to react. To them belongs rest, to us action.

Our full Christian hope is connected to our current actions in two directions. We tend to miss or ignore the second.

One directional connection we all know: as we make wise decisions as his stewards in this life, the King will give us charge over more in the new creation when he returns (Luke 19:15–17). What about the other direction?

Paul uses eschatological logic (“eschatologic,” perhaps?) in the other direction. Our future reality must bounce back to profoundly affect our action now, and specifically in terms of justice—i.e. judging complex situations rightly:

Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! (1 Cor. 6:2–3)

Paul sets his mind beyond our life-after-death enjoyment of heaven. He latches onto some inheritance rights of our final future. Namely, we will judge the world and angels when he returns! (It turns out our hope for full justice is not as simple as, “When Christ comes he’ll set all things right.” We’re involved more than we may realize.) And Paul uses that reality of post-heaven justice on earth to launch us into practicing such just action now.

What’s more, his logic flips ours. We typically think, “Of course we should judge justly now. But how much more should we do so in our participation in the full eschatological judgment!” But Paul reasons: “Of course we will judge the world and angels, so how much more the matters of daily life now!”

Conclusion

We experience personal injustices, subtle and overt. Complex webs of damaging biases are laced throughout society. Some face raw, violent, undeserved hate. Paul could deeply empathize with the painful plight of both martyrs and many minorities. And he extends hope. Should we continue promoting the popular but insufficient hope that stops with pre-resurrection and pre-recreation heaven? If so, we will continue short-circuiting the very aspect of God’s full Christian hope that is supposed to bounce back from beyond heaven and activate our hard work against injustice now.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at Credo Magazine. 



The Strengths of Plural Leadership

By / Feb 8

Several years ago a pastor friend from a nearby First Baptist Church invited me to share with his congregation some biblical teaching on plural elder leadership. As I waited for the service to begin that evening, a display in the church’s foyer caught my attention. It was the original minutes from the founding meeting of the church in the 1800s. Prominent throughout the handwritten record was the title, “elder.” Several men were referred to as “Elder Smith,” “Elder Jones,” and so on. As I began teaching that evening, I noted that the concept I was presenting was nothing new but the recovery of something old. When I mentioned the minutes on display, two chuckling ladies caught my attention. One stated with a smile, “We just thought ‘elder’ meant they were old!” With a grin I emphasized that this was the title of their office!

Many Baptists today, if they have any familiarity with the term, mistakenly believe the “elder” office is something exclusive to Presbyterian denominations. The reality is that it is a biblical term used frequently throughout our New Testament. In fact, “elder” is more common than “pastor.” Together with “bishop” or “overseer,” these terms are used interchangeably in the New Testament to describe the same office. A pastor is an elder who is an overseer (Acts 20:17-28; 1 Peter 5:1-4). Many are noticing a resurgence of Baptist churches returning to a plurality of pastors/elders in our day. Those churches are following the example of Titus who appointed elders in every town in Crete (Titus 1:5). Since most towns likely had only one congregation at this early point in church history, it is possible that multiple elders served a single congregation. Even if one elder was appointed per house church, it seems plausible those elders would have shepherded the church in their town together. The clearest reference to multiple elders in a single congregation is Acts 14:23 where Paul and Barnabas appointed elders (plural) in every church (singular).

In our own day, plural elder leadership looks diverse across the landscape of evangelicalism and even among Southern Baptists. Some churches are “elder-ruled” rather than “elder-led.” My view is that “plural-elder-led congregationalism” most closely reflects the polity of the New Testament. Since a historic tenet of Baptist ecclesiology has been congregationalism, some view plural eldership as incompatible with congregationalism. But plural leadership need not threaten congregationalism any more than “mob rule” can threaten healthy congregationalism. History testifies that Baptists in previous centuries happily employed the title “elder” and embraced plural structures seeing no contradiction in “elder-led congregationalism.”

A number of excellent works are available today to further investigate the biblical arguments for a plurality of elders or elder-led congregationalism.[1] My primary intent for this article, however, is to speak from my experience as a pastor who has benefited from this leadership structure in two different ministry contexts.

As a former church planter, I was able to establish a new work with this structure. The blessings that came with serving with other qualified men were so refreshing that I made “elder-led congregationalism” a priority when I returned to an established church context that had been committee-driven.

Why is polity so important to me, you ask? I have many reasons, but two major ones are because, first, I have seen isolation destroy faithful men, and second, I might not be in ministry today if it had not been for team leadership. Here are eight strengths I see in this form of leadership.

1. Unity in Diversity

God is one being who is three persons. The persons of the Godhead are co-equal with diverse roles in creation and redemption. The triune nature of our God is depicted in plural eldership as multiple leaders oversee a fellowship together. Even if an eldership appoints a “lead pastor” or designates other titles for some elders, a healthy eldership leads together and in harmony with one another. Every pastor/elder possesses the full authority of the office even if functional differences exist between them.

2. Safety in Numbers

A solo pastor is an easy target for Satan and those with hostile agendas. Ecclesiastes 4:12 reminds us that though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken. When a leader is under attack, he needs protection. One man is easier to pick off than two, or three, or a dozen working in tandem. If one pastor becomes the object of unjust accusations, others can come to his aid.

3. Stability for the Church

What typically happens when a church’s lone pastor leaves or dies? The church flounders. As months or even years pass, the church’s ministry takes a hit. While a congregation waits on its next leader, a void of leadership can create a vacuum for bad things to fill it. But what if your church never needed a search committee again? What if multiple qualified men could lead? Perhaps one could become the next lead pastor. Even if they looked outside the church, the existing eldership would already be in place to assess the next lead guy.

4 . A Wealth of Wisdom

Early in my current revitalization work, I felt very alone. I had been used to the comfort that comes with making decisions with other godly shepherds. I quickly understood wise King Solomon’s words, “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14). No one but Jesus Christ has perfect wisdom. Confidence grows when leaders wrestle through complicated matters together.

5. A Range of Gifts

Every believer is gifted by the Holy Spirit to serve and pastors must be especially able to teach (1 Timothy 3:2). Some pastors are strong in the pulpit, but not as adept one-on-one. Other men are excellent disciplers, counselors, classroom teachers, or small group facilitators, but struggle in larger public settings. Each of these settings requires different skills and not every elder is strong in every context but multiple gifted leaders can round-out the team.

6. Shepherding for Shepherds

I once heard a seasoned pastor with over 50 years in ministry say, “I never had a pastor.” His words troubled me. There must be a better way! There is! Every pastor should have a pastor. Where can a shepherd turn to find someone who understands? I’m very thankful for local associations and our conventions but only someone inside his congregation really understands what a pastor is facing. Sometimes the lead pastor simply needs to sit with his family and be fed by another shepherd, not only when he’s on vacation but within his own fellowship.

7. Encouragement when Depleted

Burnout is one of the leading causes for short tenures in churches and premature departures from ministry altogether. Carrying the burdens with others lightens the load. What pastor isn’t discouraged or despairing at some point? One of the greatest joys in my ministry are regular elders’ meetings where shepherding is done together. The only thing more disheartening than feeling alone is actually being alone with no one to talk you down from the proverbial ledge.

8. Personality Cults Discouraged

The charisma of some lead pastor types can draw a crowd by the sheer force of personality. But a healthy local church is more than a crowd. Some men are magnetic due to strong entrepreneurial skills, entertaining rhetoric, and some have made a name through publishing and the conference circuit. Platforms can produce a fan base, but groupies disappear when their favorite personality departs. We must make disciples who love God’s Word and are mature enough to receive it from multiple faithful expositors.

9. My Closing Plea

Some reading this article will not be convinced of plural leadership for a host of reasons. You may even have a list of objections or concerns. Nevertheless, the resurgence in this approach to shepherding seems steady, if for no other reason, because the challenges of pastoral ministry continue to mount in our day. My plea is for fellow shepherds reading these words to flee isolation and surround themselves with other godly men in some form before it’s too late.

[1] A few of my favorites are Phil Newton and Matt Schmucker, Elders in the Life of the Church: Rediscovering the Biblical Model for Church Leadership, Jeramie Rinne, Church Elders: How to Shepherd God’s People Like Jesus, Mark Dever, A Display of God’s Glory: Basics of Church Structure, and John Hammett, Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches: A Contemporary Ecclesiology.



A Tender Approach to Anxiety

By / Feb 7

I spend a lot of time sitting with suffering people. As a mental health counselor, I frequently hear about painful experiences pertaining to clinical anxiety, which often have their root in traumatic events. The affected person is marked by a chronic sense of feeling unsafe in their own bodies because of the danger inflicted upon them. Some weeks, the anxiety of my clients becomes my own, and I find myself with increased levels of weariness and irritability and doubt, all residual effects of chronic anxiety. When we encounter anxious people, we look into the face of someone who does not feel safe. And the reality is, in this strange land outside of Eden, danger really does lurk about. No longer nestled in a garden of safety, we are exposed to the elements of evil and fallenness. But the good news is that God has come down and offered a safe refuge of steady faithfulness and provision for scared, trembling sheep. And, as he often works in the world, he calls his church to be a refuge of safety for people who are lost, stranded, and unsure whether their need for safety will be met.

In the book of Job, we read of a man whom God loved and was pleased with. But Job was still living in an unsafe, fallen world, and disaster came knocking at his door. After Job suffered loss and tragedy, we are introduced to three of his friends. Though these friends are often criticized for their insensitive explanations for why God allowed such suffering to befall Job, they actually did one thing right. When they heard of Job’s losses, “they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great” (Job 2:13). Job’s friends enter into folly when they attempt to explain away his suffering, but their initial instincts were right. They sat in faithful silence with their friend who must have been wracked with anxiety after experiencing such devastating loss. This is what our anxious friends need from us when they are deep in the pit of despair.

One way to define anxiety is to relate it to loss. Anxiety can be a result of past loss, such as a loss of control or safety in a traumatic experience. It can also be an emotional response to an anticipated loss of control or safety in the future. In both cases, our friends need physical reassurance that they are safe and are not alone in the present moment.

When a grieving person experiences a loss, they are often showered with care from friends and family for the first few weeks following the loss. Unfortunately, sinful human beings have a propensity toward folly, and after a couple of weeks we grow tired of being patient with the wounded and move on to our own cares. It may take grieving people months or years to heal from their loss, and the same is true for healing from anxiety. Our impatience with the suffering reveals our sinful preference for folly over faithfulness.

As Christians, we would do well to treat anxiety as an issue under the umbrella of sanctification that requires both discipline and patience. We often set anxiety aside as a special type of sin and struggle, heaping shame upon those plagued by this particular affliction. No anxious person desires to be endlessly anxious, and the Scriptures make it clear that because God is gracious and desires to bestow goodness upon humanity, neither does he want anxiety to be our lot. As with any other issue, healing from anxiety takes time. Sanctification is a slow and grueling process. We ought to applaud our brothers and sisters when they make even the smallest stride toward endurance and hope in the midst of anxiety. Human beings do not change overnight, and patterns of sin and struggle and unbelief often take repeated practice and discipline to change. We must remember that holiness and belief are commanded, but they take time. We do not reflect God’s heart when we demand that anxious believers instantaneously halt all anxious feelings by sheer willpower. We want our brothers and sisters to believe in the gracious care of our God, but we must be willing to care for them as they heal and grow toward greater belief, dependence and trust.

For people to grow out of anxiety, they need to grow into a sense of tangible, felt safety. This happens through consistent, safe, reliable relationship, one of the gracious designs God has ingrained into human beings. A child cannot recover from horrific abuse inflicted upon her by adults who were supposed to care for and protect her unless she receives the opportunity to re-experience reliable care from safe, consistent adults. So too, anxious Christians cannot grow out of anxiety until they experience the safe, consistent, provisional care of their Holy Father in heaven, and he often demonstrates his love for us through the hands and feet of other believers.

In the Old Testament, Israel was meant to be a light for the nations precisely because humankind wanders through a dark, scary forest outside of Eden. The Christian church is still God’s place of solace and safety in a dark and unsafe world, a haven where he cares for his flock and uses his children to bind up one another’s wounds and redirect their attention to the healing, life-giving glory of God. His glory shines into dark places through his church who demonstrates visibly that God has not forgotten us in this dark pit but will come back soon in glorious triumph to bring us into his marvelous light where fear and death and unsafety will be no more (1 Peter 2:9, Revelation 21:4).

Matthew 6:25-34 is an oft-cited passage on anxiety, and many believers avoid it for fear of shame. Unfortunately, this passage has been used to heap burdens upon already suffering sheep. What we often miss in Matthew’s discussion on anxiety is that the main focus of chapter 6 is not on the command to not be anxious (though it is commanded), but rather focuses on God’s provisional care for his people as they “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” Matthew 6 hinges on the command to seek first the kingdom of God, and all the benefits previously promised to us in the beatitudes will be ours. The focus is not on shaming the weak in faith, but on re-directing our attention to the provisional nature of God. In effect, Jesus says to us, “Do not be anxious, because I will provide all these things for you as you walk with me and seek my righteousness and build my kingdom.” The reason to not be anxious is simply because God is merciful to his core and loves to provide for the needs of his flock! We do not have to twist his arm to get him to care for us. He loves to do it.

What he said to Israel, he said in the gospel of Matthew, and he says to us now: “Fear not, for I am with you” (Isaiah 41:10). He is a near God who is personally involved in the pains of his people. And because he is merciful and provisional, we need not fear if we will have what we need. Even if we feel we lack something, in the end we will lack nothing, for no one and nothing can separate us from the love of God and the future he has secured for us, not death, not anxiety, not our own failure or unbelief or even Satan himself (Romans 8:31-39, Colossians 2:15).

Anxious and traumatized people need to re-learn safety through relationship, and you are their first line of hope to demonstrate the consistent and unwavering care God has for them. As they learn safety through relationship with you, they become calm enough to re-learn the great truths about the great reality our Lord Jesus is ushering us into. A word of caution: In order to express tender care for struggling saints, we need to engage in disciplines that remind us of our own feebleness, sin and personal need for our gracious God. We must not forget our own weaknesses and sin, for when we do, we slip into the folly of Job’s friends who grew impatient with sitting in the sorrow of their friend.

When dealing with Christians who are struggling with anxiety, remember the admonishment of Jude: “Have mercy on those who doubt” (Jude 1:22). It seems that Satan’s main strategy in dismantling the image of God is to instill doubt about God’s good character. Have mercy on the one who gets ensnared in fear that God isn’t who he says he is and won’t do what he said he will do. Take them by the hand to bring them back to the kind face of their Father. Sit with them in their sorrow, and gently walk them toward the reason for the great hope that lives in you: that Jesus Christ is gentle and lowly in heart, a friend of sinners and sufferers, a brother, a friend, an advocate, a Savior, a deliverer who is coming back for those who are weak and heavy-laden and weary in faith (Matthew 11:29, Luke 7:34, Hebrews 2:11, 1 John 2:1, Revelation 22:20). And as you take them by the hand in mercy, slowly but surely, your own hope may become theirs and so revive their weary souls. Your Father in heaven will be well-pleased with his children who share in one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2).

I often have to hope on behalf of my clients who feel small and powerless that there is healing and safety on the other side of anxiety and feeling unsafe. And indeed there is. Jesus will come back soon with a shout to judge both the living and the dead (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 2 Timothy 4:1). He will return in great power and judgement to punish all wrong-doing and deliver his precious people from peril. In the meantime, he calls his sheep to walk just as he walked (1 John 2:6), in all gentleness and lowliness and tenderness of heart, for this shared burden-bearing is what he uses to transform scared and scarred hearts. He uses his church to demonstrate his tender, loving and provisional care. As you encounter anxious Christians, know these wonderful realities for yourself and arm yourself with these great truths so you can enter into the trenches and sit faithfully beside the mourning, the wounded and the weak in faith. As you do, they receive the opportunity to experience and re-learn the safety found in their Holy God. And for you who are anxious, know your deliverer is coming soon and walks with you the whole way until his return, even as anxiety looms.

Our Savior has promised to personally wipe every tear from our eyes (Revelation 21:4). This promise communicates one of the most wonderful realities in the universe: God is a Holy, healing God who is also deeply relational. He calls himself Immanuel, God with us, who comes personally to sit with us in the trenches of sin and suffering, and who takes us by the hand into a restored Eden where he takes the time to wipe each of our tears from our face. He is fiercely relational, and intimately concerned with his children. May we be like our Savior as we await his return.



The Unrepenting Repenter

By / Jan 19

The believer in Christ is a lifelong repenter.  He begins with repentance and continues in repentance. (Rom. 8:12-13). David sinned giant sins but fell without a stone at the mere finger of the prophet because he was a repenter at heart (2 Sam. 12:7-13). Peter denied Christ three times but suffered three times the remorse until he repented with bitter tears (Mt. 26:75). Every Christian is called a repenter, but he must be a repenting repenter. The Bible assumes the repentant nature of all true believers in its instruction on church discipline. A man unwilling to repent at the loving rebuke of the church can be considered nothing more than “a heathen and a tax collector” (Mt. 18:15-17).

What is repentance?

Repentance is a change of mind regarding sin and God, an inward turning from sin to God, which is known by its fruit—obedience (Mt. 3:8; Acts 26:20; Lk. 13:5-9). It is hating what you once loved and loving what you once hated, exchanging irresistible sin for an irresistible Christ. The true repenter is cast on God. Faith is his only option. When he fully knows that sin utterly fails him, God takes him up (Mt. 9:13b). He will have faith or he will have despair; conviction will either deliver him or devour him.

The religious man often deceives himself in his repentance. The believer may sin the worst of sins, it is true; but to remain in the love of sin, or to be comfortable in the atmosphere of sin, is a deadly sign, for only repenters inhabit heaven. The deceived repenter would be a worse sinner if he could, but society holds him back. He can tolerate and even enjoy other worldly professing Christians and pastors well enough, but does not desire holy fellowship or the fervent warmth of holy worship. If he is intolerant of a worship service fifteen minutes “too long,” how will he feel after fifteen million years into the eternal worship service of heaven? He aspires to a heaven of lighthearted ease and recreation—an extended vacation; but a heaven of holiness would be hell to such a man. Yet God is holy, and God is in heaven. He cannot be blamed for sending the unholy man to hell despite his most articulate profession (Heb. 12:14).

What are the Substitutes for true Repentance?

1. You may reform in the actions without repenting in the heart (Ps. 5 1: 16-17; Joel 2:13). This is a great deception, for the love of sin remains (I Jn. 2:15-17; Acts 8:9-24). At this the Pharisees were experts (Mk. 7:1-23). The heart of a man is his problem. A man may appear perfect in his actions but be damned for his heart. His actions are at best self-serving and hypocritical. What comes from a bad heart is never good. “Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh” (Jas. 3:11-12).

2. You may experience the emotion of repentance without the effect of it. Here is a kind of amnesia. You see the awful specter of sin in the mirror and flinch out of horror yet immediately forget what kind of person you saw (Jas. 1:23-24). It is true, repentance includes sincere emotion, an affection for God and a disaffection for sin. Torrents of sorrow may flood the repenter’s heart, and properly so (Jas. 4:8-10). But there is such a thing as a temporary emotion in the mere semblance of repentance; this emotion has very weak legs and cannot carry the behavior in the long walk of obedience. Your sorrow may even be prolonged. Yet if it does not arrive at repentance, it is of the world and is a living death—and maybe more (2 Cor. 7: 10). It is an old deceiver. Judas had such remorse but “went and hanged himself.” (Mt. 27:3-5)

3. You may confess the words of a true repenter and never repent (Mt. 21:28-32; 1 Jn. 2:4, 4:20). Confession by itself is not repentance. Confession moves the lips; repentance moves the heart. Naming an act as evil before God is not the same as leaving it. Though your confession may be honest and emotional, it is not enough unless it expresses a true change of heart. There are those who confess only for the show of it, whose so-called repentance may be theatrical but not actual. If you express repentance to appear successful, you will not be successful at repenting. You will speak humbly but sin arrogantly. Saul gave the model confession (1 Sam. 15:24-26) and later went to hell. Repentance “from the teeth out” is no repentance.

4. You may repent for the fear of reprisal alone and not for the hatred of sin. Any man will stop sinning when caught or relatively sure he will be, unless there is insufficient punishment or shame attached (I Tim. 1:8-11). When there are losses great enough to get his attention, he will reform. If this is the entire motive of his repentance, he has not repented at all. It is the work of law, but not grace. Men can be controlled by fear, but what is required is a change of heart. Achan admitted his sin after being caught but would not have otherwise. Find his bones in the valley of Achor; his soul, most likely, in hell (Josh. 7:16-26).

5. You may talk against sin in public like a true repenter but never repent in private (Mt. 23:1-3). The exercise of the mouth cannot change the heart. Your sin is like a prostitute. You are speaking against your lover in public but embracing her in the bedroom. She is not particular about being run down in public if she can have your full attention in private. “Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (Jas. 4:4)

6. You may repent primarily for temporal gains rather than the glory of God. There are gains for the repenter, but the final motivation for repenting cannot be selfish. Self is a dead, stinking carcass to be discarded. We are to repent because God is worthy and is our respected authority, even if we gain nothing. Indeed, our repenting may appear to lose us more than our sin had gained (Mt. 16:24-26; Phil. 3:7-8). And this is a test of true repentance.

7. You may repent of lesser sins for the purpose of avoiding the greater sins (Lk. 11:42). We try to salve our nagging conscience by some minor exercise of repentance, which is really no repentance at all. The whole heart is changed in the believer. The half repenter is a divided man: part against sin and part for it; part against Christ, part for Him. But one or the other must win out, for man cannot serve God and mammon (or any other idol); he must love the one and hate the other (Mt. 6:24).

8. You may repent so generally that you never repent of any specific sin at all. The man who repents in too great a generality is likely covering his sins. (Prov. 28:13) If there are no particular changes, there is no repenting. Sin has many heads, like the mythological Hydra. It cannot be dealt with in general, but its heads must be cut off one by one.

9. You may repent for the love of friends and religious leaders and not repent for the love of God (Isa. 1: 10-17). A man talked into repentance may reform for the love of friends or the respect of the spiritually minded, yet do nothing substantial. If a man turns from sin without turning to God, he will find his sin has only changed its name and is hidden behind his pride. Now it will be harder to rout for its subterfuge. You have loved others but not God. And you have loved yourself most of all. Lot’s wife left the city of sin at the insistence of an angel and for the love of her family, but turned back. She had left her heart. “Remember Lot’s wife” (Gen. 19:12-26; Lk. 17:32).

10. You may confess the finished action of sin and not repent from the continuing habit of sin. If a man is honest, he is a good man in human terms; but he is not a repenting man until the sin is stabbed to death. He must be a murderer if he would be God’s: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8: 13). God knows what you have done; what He wants is obedience (Lk. 6:46).

11. You may attempt repentance of your sin while consciously leaving open the door of its opportunity. A man who says, “I repent,” but will not leave the source or environment of that sin is suspect. Though some situations which invite temptation cannot be changed, most can. A man who will not flee the setting of his temptation when he is able still loves his sin. A mouse is foolish to build his nest under the cat’s bed. “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” (Rom. 13:14).

12. You may make an effort to repent of some sins without repenting of all the sin you know. The businessman learns to show concern for the needs of his clients, yet he batters his wife through neglect. Another gives his money in the offering plate weekly but steals time from his employer daily. Every man boasts of some sins conquered, but true repentance is a repulsion of sin as a whole. The repenter hates all sin, though he fails more readily in some than in others. He may not know all his sins, but what he knows he spurns. Repentance is universal in the believer; the spirit is willing even when the flesh is weak (Mt. 26:41).

Repentance and faith are bound together. A repenting man has no hope for obedience without faith in the source of all holiness, God Himself. In repenting of sins, he loses his self-sufficiency. God is his sanctifier. (Jude 24-25; 1 Thess. 5:23-24; 1 Pet. 1:5)

Repentance is a gift of God (Acts 11:19; 2 Tim. 2:25) and a duty of man (Acts 17:30; Lk. 13:3). You will know if it has been granted by the exercise of it (Phil. 2:12-13). Do not wait for it; run toward it. “Be zealous and repent” (Rev. 3:19). Pursue it and you will find it; forget it and perish.

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



Never Underestimate the Value of Ordinary, Brief, Christian Conversations

By / Jan 18

Language learning is a time-intensive activity, and language students sometimes dread those long hours of concentrated study, when their head is down in a book or they’re sitting in a language class. They forget they’re also learning the language when, in a foreign nation, they listen to the radio, watch cartoons with their kids, or enjoy conversations with the old men at the post office. None of those are intensely focused opportunities, but they count as exposure nonetheless, and a language student can be intentional with them.

In Praise of Christian Conversations

Most Christians—and dare I say, pastors—fall into a similar error when it comes to Christian discipleship. We count the big stuff. The things we can put in our calendar. And because we neglect to notice the myriad small discipling moments, we neglect to utilize them. We overlook the value of ordinary, brief, Christian conversations.

Pastor, consider how many brief interactions do you normally have in those 20 to 30 minutes at the back door after your sermon? What questions do you hear? What situations do you learn about? Who do you get to care for, just a few minutes before they walk into their week?

In such moments, I learn a marriage is in trouble. I counsel a brother whose boss pressured him to lie to a client. I apologize to a member I offended by some careless word. I usually meet many non-Christians there. It’s a vital time.

Now multiply my handful of interactions throughout the rest of our members. How many conversations happen in that room? And you know what? In every single interaction, there’s an opportunity for Christians to influence one another, for the gospel to be conveyed and clarified and applied. These opportunities aren’t typically impressive or even memorable—but they’re cumulatively significant.

Now, I’m certainly not claiming that these conversations are always deeply spiritual. That’s not the case in my congregation, and it’s probably not the case in yours. Odds are, many of them are about the game last night, or the game that’s about to start, or just a repeat of the same conversation that happened last week and will happen against next week: “How are you?” “Busy. You?” “Same.”

Two Assertions

I want to make two assertions about these conversations: they’re more significant than we think, and they can become even more significant than we think.

A passing comment can have an enduring influence on someone’s life. How many times have you had a member bring up something “they’ll never forget you said one time”—and, even after they tell you what it was, you can’t remember saying it? A dear brother once told me I had shaped his understanding of the local church more than anyone else. I was encouraged, but also humbled because I couldn’t remember a single time I had intentionally taught him anything about the church. He’s now a faithful pastor in Illinois. I hadn’t counted our conversations as all that important. But cumulatively, they shaped his view of and affection for the church.

Now, again, stack up those uncounted conversations across the weeks and months and years. How much good has been done by your words that you don’t even know about?

Of course, most Christian conversations don’t contain life-changing wisdom. But every Christian conversation does convey an example of how fellow Christians view the world (for good or ill!). The way that single sister responds to the children interrupting her “adult conversation”; the way that man speaks gently but sternly to another brother; the way that couple mention in passing that they’ve been struggling with arguing a lot lately—all these provide a fleeting but vivid image of Christian faithfulness.

Such interactions function as tiny course corrections as you drive down a long, straight highway. Many of them don’t even register on your consciousness. But thank goodness you make them. Individually, they don’t count for much. But cumulatively, they keep you on the straight and narrow.

Once you recognize the value of mundane conversations like these, their significance increases. You’ll begin to utilize your own passing conversations with greater intentionality.

What do you choose to talk about after the corporate gathering? As long as I’ve known him, my friend Brinton has consistently turned to whoever’s next to him and asked them what edified them from the sermon they just heard. What a simple and obvious thing to talk about after church! He’s done this for nearly twenty years. I wonder how much good that simple question has done.

I’ve mainly referred here to those conversations that happen around a congregation’s corporate worship. Obviously, the same principle holds the other six days in a week. But the conversations around our corporate gatherings are especially useful. This is, after all, the time and place with the most opportunity.

Perhaps I should have started with this. But I’m convinced these kinds of intentional conversations are commanded of us in Scripture. Hebrews 10:23–25 exhorts us not to neglect meeting together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. And how are we meant to encourage each other? By meeting together, and by stirring one another up to love and good works.

That happens in our formal worship, yes. But we also stir one another up in those conversations on the way out the door. Christian conversation is the most overlooked conveyer of Christian doctrine and Christian ethics. It’s often the means by which believers better understand the implications of the Word they’ve just sat under.

Conclusion

Raising up believers to maturity in Christ is a daunting task. It’s only possible due to the Spirit’s enlivening and sanctifying work. But beloved, be encouraged in the task. The Lord uses more than the scheduled events, the carefully planned sessions, and the lovingly crafted sermons. He’s also ordained ordinary Christian speech as a means to maturity in Christ.

Consider Ephesians 4:15–16. How do grow up in every way into him who is the head? How are we to be joined, united, and equipped by our Savior? How might we help the rest of the body build itself up in love? By “speaking the truth in love.”

Now go and do likewise.

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared at the 9Marks blog and is used with permission.



After you Preach, Pray

By / Jan 13

In his classic book Between Two Worlds, John Stott writes, “I have always found it helpful to do as much of my sermon preparation as possible on my knees, with the Bible open before me, in prayerful study.” This image of John Stott kneeling over his Bible comes to mind weekly as I begin my sermon preparation, reminding me that prayer is not an optional “add in” or a step in the preaching process, but an essential element that should permeate the journey from sitting to study to standing to speak. We are dependent upon the Spirit of God to illuminate the Scriptures to us, to guide us in our preparation, to give us unction in the pulpit and to soften hearts in the pew. We pray in our preparation to preach because preaching without prayer is presumption.

Then each week, after worship, I return to my car to drive home and my soul sighs from the exhaustion of exposition. The joyful labor complete, my heart turns from the Word preached to the day of rest ahead. But though my work is complete, the work of the Spirit is just beginning. The battle is afoot for the hearts of the flock. Will they slot my exhortations away with the hundreds of other sermons they’ve heard, filing any encouragement or conviction away to be dealt with later, or will the Spirit use the truth proclaimed to work a lasting change in the lives and hearts of my people?

Our dependence upon the Lord drives us to our knees all week as we prepare to preach, but once the joyful labor of preaching is complete, do we pray for the Holy Spirit to continue using the preached word to work in the hearts and lives of our people? After you preach, pray!

Here are three things to pray as you drive home on Sunday afternoon:

1. Pray Against Distraction

It’s amazing how easily we file away God’s preached word. One moment we’re overwhelmed by the majesty of God or deeply convicted of sin and the next moment we’re focused on where to have lunch. Lunch is good, watching football on a Sunday afternoon is good, but using good things to distract us from the most important things is a subtle yet well worn tactic of the enemy.

After you preach, pray against distraction. Pray that the Spirit would protect his truth from being like a seed amongst the thorns, choked out, or like a seed in the rocky soil, springing up only to be scorched. Pray that the Spirit would dangle his truth before your people throughout the day and the week, not allowing them to slot it away. Pray that the Spirit would prompt conversation in cars on the drive home and across lunch tables. Pray that the truth would linger long enough to shape the hearts and lives of the people you love.

2. Pray Your Application

As we bridge the cavern between the world of the Bible to today’s world, we long to see God’s ancient truths shape the hearts, minds and lives of our people. We expound God’s word for a response, applying it as salve to weary souls, a goad to exhort the immobile and a call to the unrepentant. Our sermons result with a call to action where we help our people apply God’s eternal truths to their minds, hearts and lives today.

After you preach, pray that week’s application back to the lord. Pray, that those you exhorted would now be prodded to respond. Pray that the Spirit would remind and empower their responses. Pray broadly for the church family and narrowly for those who you know need that week’s exhortation.  Pray that the unregenerate would turn to Christ in repentance and faith. Pray that the fruit of the Spirit would flourish in the hearts and lives of your people.

3. Pray for Worship

Our highest goal in preaching is that by it and through it God would be glorified. We put on display the majesty of God in order to magnify his glorious goodness, his unfathomable attributes. We seek to apply the passage in a way that, if heeded, will lead our people to live lives that bring glory to their king. We seek conversion so that, by repentance, these lives once in rebellion would turn to worship the one for whose glory they were created.

After you preach, pray that your people would stand in awe of God’s splendor and majesty. Pray that this would lead to a still deeper hunger to seek and savor the things of God. Pray that they would be struck afresh by the scandalous beauty of their Savior’s love and long zealously for others to be struck as well. Pray for them to share the message with others, believers and non-believers in a genuine and winsome way. Pray for ripples of obedience and joy that will catch others in their wake.

When the work of preaching is complete, the work of the Spirit is just beginning. Pray for him to do the work that only he can do.



Praying for a Golden Age of Gospel Preachers

By / Jan 6

We often hear in the media of the blunders of false preachers spinning tales of over-spiritualized ecstasy and practices that have no reference in the Bible. We hear tele-evangelists begging for money to be given to them so they may impart some blessing to the watcher. Many dare to teach without even using the Word of God. While such teachers are growing in popularity and number day-by-day, many churches find themselves looking for a faithful preacher of the Gospel to shepherd them during these uneasy times. How many churches have been without a pastor for months, even years, and are still waiting for a faithful preacher of God’s Word? For all these people, Spurgeon offers a word of hope.

Preaching in the fall of 1874 on, ‘the Power of the Risen Saviour,’ he longs for another golden age of preachers by the power of the Holy Spirit. And to all those longing with him, Spurgeon calls them to pray:

Often do I pray, and I doubt not the prayer has come from you too, that God would raise up leaders in the church, men full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, standard-bearers in the day of battle. The preachers of the gospel who preach with any power are few; still might John say, ‘Ye have not many fathers.’ More precious than the gold of Ophir are men who stand out as pillars of the Lord’s house, bulwarks of the truth, champions in the camp of Israel. How few are our apostolic men! We want again Luthers, Calvins, Bunyans, Whitfields, men fit to mark eras, whose names breathe terror in our foemen’s ears. We have dire need of such. (MTP 20:751)

Prayer for a faithful preacher is the key. Of all the things that Christians ought to pray for, this should be at the top of the list. Rather than taking faithful preachers for granted, Christians should pray that God would “raise up leaders in the church.” What do these leaders look like? We need pastors committed to a steady diet of preaching and rightly dividing the Word of God as it says in 2 Timothy 2:15. If we are to see an age of “standard-bearers” come about again, these “bulwarks of the truth” should be full of faith and the Holy Ghost, powerful preachers of the Gospel, men who stand out as pillars of the Lord’s church, and men of integrity.

Now, Spurgeon was known in his day as a powerful preacher of God’s Word. For him to call his people to pray for a resurgence of faithful preachers must have seemed strange. Many in his congregation experienced the saving work of Christ as they listened to their pastor preach. Yet, Spurgeon understood that he was the exception and not the norm. Many churches either limped along with dry and gospel-less preaching or were taken in by innovations and distractions from the Word of God. Like our day, the spiritual landscape of London, England, and the world was marked by a lack of faithful preaching. And so, Spurgeon called on his people to pray.

But for all those who longed for God’s Word to flourish, Spurgeon believed that we could pray with great hope. Why? Because it is the Lord Jesus Christ who gives gifts of preachers to his church. He is not dependent on us, but is able to bring back again “a golden age of preachers.”

They are the gifts of Jesus Christ to the church, and will come in due time. He has power to give us back again a golden age of preachers, a time as fertile of great divines and mighty ministers as was the Puritan age, which many of us account to have been the golden age of theology. He can send again the men of studious heart to search the word and bring forth its treasures, the men of wisdom and experience rightly to divide it, the golden-mouthed speakers who, either as sons of thunder or sons of consolation, shall deliver the message of the Lord with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. When the Redeemer ascended on high he received gifts for men, and those gifts were men fitted to accomplish the edification of the church, such as evangelists, pastors, and teachers. These he is still able to bestow upon his people, and it is their duty to pray for them, and when they come, to receive them with gratitude. Let us believe in the power of Jesus to give us valiant men and men of renown, and we little know how soon he will supply them. (MTP 20:751)

If your church is marked by faithful pastors who are committed to God’s Word, then give thanks to Christ for his good gifts. And pray for other churches, even as you continue the work of raising up those who are able to teach. If your church is looking for a pastor, then heed Spurgeon’s words. Pray as a church for Christ to give the gift of a faithful preacher. Do not relegate this matter to the pastoral search committee. Come together as a church to pray and ask God to bring you a powerful, faithful, Spirit-filled man. Then, pray that you would be ready to follow that preacher as he preaches God’s Word. May our churches be marked by another golden age of faithful preachers.

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared at the blog for the Spurgeon Library.



Global Missions and the Treason of Conversion

By / Dec 30

Is following Jesus inherently dangerous?

Luke 14:27 says, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”

Verses like this, though often quoted, raise challenging questions for missionaries. When Jesus urged his followers to count the cost of discipleship, what did he mean? Did he simply mean that following him involves significant commitment? Or was he implying something else?

If Jesus meant the former, the warning almost seems a bit overblown. After all, we make difficult or expensive choices often. Buying a house, for instance, is costly. Choosing a spouse can be hard. Deciding on a college major is another big choice. To lump ones’ commitment to Christ in with these “hard” or “costly” choices seems trivial.

But what if Jesus meant that conversion itself is dangerous by design?

Throughout Scripture, when individuals convert, their communities often feel betrayed. To embrace the Triune God as Lord is to repudiate all other lords, identities, and systems. This decision, in the eyes of the world, amounts to treason.

Treason.

If true conversion is indeed a form of communal “treason,” this has inestimable implications for the missionary task.

But before we turn to consider these implications, let us survey several biblical examples of “treasonous” conversion accounts.

Abraham: Leaving a Family

Abraham’s conversion took the form of leaving his family: “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).

Further, God changes Abraham’s name—reworking his identity—to focus on the future: “No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations” (Genesis 17:5).

Though we often emphasize Abraham’s relocation as his major sacrifice, we forget the communal and relational loss he underwent.

Imagine the response of Abraham’s family. How could you? What about us? Are you sure you heard right?In his cultural context, to leave his father’s household would have amounted to personal betrayal.

Betrayal.

For Abraham, the call and cause of God were more important than his family’s potential disappointment or anger. Abraham, like all disciples, was to count the costs of family scrutiny, heartache, and accusations of betrayal.

This is what Jesus meant about counting the cost.

But Abraham’s conversion was not the only one of its kind.

Rahab: Leaving a Nation 

In Joshua 2, Rahab had heard awe-inspiring accounts of God of Israel laying to waste the whole Egyptian nation. It is possible Rahab had friends and family in Egypt, and possibly imagined the suffering these loved ones experienced under the plagues.

One can also imagine Rahab’s fellow Canaanites warning one another: Don’t listen to stories of Israel’s God. They are false, and if you repeat them, your family will die.

But when Rahab placed her faith in Israel’s God, she did so at the risk of putting her family in the crosshairs of her government. Her allegiance to Yahweh caused her to lie to the king’s men (Joshua 2:4-6)—a literal act of treason against Jericho’s government and gods.

Treason.

Rahab counted this cost, realizing her fellow citizens would be destroyed, because she was convinced that the God of Israel was the true God.

Ruth: Leaving a People

Another heroine of the faith, Ruth, also illustrates the dangers of conversion. In her case, Ruth committed herself to the Lord and followed her mother-in-law rather than returning to her own Moabite people.

We might imagine the bewilderment of her Moabite relatives: Why would she stay with the desolate woman Naomi instead of returning to Moab, where her people will love her and provide for her? Why are you walking out on us for some old widow? Are we worth that little to you?

Ruth’s conversion may have looked like abandonment to her family.

Abandonment.

Yet when Ruth chose Naomi, she was grafted into the family of God—eventually becoming the great-grandmother of King David (Ruth 4:18-22) and entering into the lineage of Jesus (Matthew 1:5).

What appeared to be abandonment was really faithfulness. And because Ruth was willing to abandon her kin, God gave her a new family, a new story, and a new hope as the elders of Israel pray for her: “May the LORD make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the family of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem” (Ruth 4:11-12).

Paul: Leaving a Tradition 

The New Testament is replete with examples of costly conversations, not the least of which being the Apostle Paul. In his sovereignty, God drew Paul to Christ even while Paul “was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” (Acts 9:1).

As a prestigious Pharisee trained under Gamaliel (Philippians 3:5), Paul certainly faced opposition from the religious community for committing what was perceived to have been religious and political treason in his conversion.

Once more, we can imagine the refrain: How could you do this to God? How could you betray your religion?

In this case, Paul’s acceptance of Christ was interpreted by his peers, almost exclusively, as apostasy.

The missionary’s job is to call people to betrayal, treason, and abandonment of family, country, and false gods, apostatizing from any and all unbelieving worldviews.

Apostasy.

Though, in fact, Paul had in noway abandoned the true teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures (cf. Acts 26:6-7, Romans 10:4), in swearing allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, he effectively nullified his Jewish credentials. For a season, the Jewish religious class scorned him, and the church feared him. He became the troubler of Israel. He had to start over—alone (cf. Galatians 1:17-18).

An Invitation to Treason

Scripture clearly paints the cost of discipleship in deep tones. Unbelievers will interpret a disciple of Christ’s actions in terms of betrayal, treason, abandonment, and apostasy.

In our culture’s concern with acceptance and tolerance, pressure has been exerted both on the church and the foreign missionary to deemphasize the exclusivity of Christ and the arresting, confrontational nature of the gospel.

Yet the missionary’s job is to call people to betrayal, treason, and abandonment of family, country, and false gods, apostatizing from any and all unbelieving worldviews.

These points bear repeating:

  • The missionary’s job is to call people to betray their families, like Abraham—to relinquish the old ties that prevent them from believing and obeying the radical commands of Jesus.
  • The missionary’s job is to call people to treason, like Rahab—to rebel against their false gods and become citizens of the kingdom of Christ.
  • The missionary’s job is to call people to abandonment, like Ruth—to realize that “whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37).
  • The missionary’s job is to call people to apostasy, like Paul—to turn one’s back on religious traditions that contradict with gospel truth and live publicly and openly as disciples.

We must allow our theology of conversion to inform our missiology. When we send a missionary into an Islamic context, we are asking converts to commit treason against a false god and a host of unbiblical cultural expectations. In Hindu contexts, we are asking converts to believe in Jesus as the only way, the truth, and the life, over and against the innumerable idols revered by various families and sects.

No Small Gods

The reality, however, is that people don’t convert to small gods. Unbelievers will not leave behind families, religions, or political allegiances for generic theism, nor for a merely human Jesus who teaches new moral maxims and little else.

We must allow our theology of conversion to inform our missiology.

Rather than seeking to make the unbeliever as comfortable as possible in his present state, missionaries must instead paint a picture of the weight of glory lying just over the horizon of the decision to embrace grace.

Missionaries must present the kingdom of God as the new and better country of Abraham. Missionaries must present false gods as the doomed king of Jericho. Missionaries must present the body of Christ as far surpassing the joys of family and relationships. Missionaries must present apostasy from false religion as resurrection into the new and living way of faith in Jesus Christ.

As we witness to the world, let us present a God worthy of the treason of conversion.

It is this kind of conversion that creates believers who, together with us, will boldly and publicly worship the God who is worth the cost to follow.



Little Ones Receive Power

By / Dec 22

Two months ago, my husband and I packed all our belongings into our car and drove across the country to live in a state we had never visited. The problem was, not all our stuff fit in our car, so the rest of it ended up strapped onto the back, piled on top of a hitch basket purchased in a last-minute panic.

As we drove away from our home in Oregon, I began my week-long obsessive worry about the luggage strapped onto the exterior of our vehicle. Would it get stolen? Would it fall off on an interstate somewhere in the middle of America? How would we stay at a hotel without someone taking all the stuff piled up high on the hitch?

I worried about this more than I’d care to admit, and in my silly desperation, I was driven to prayer. I began to ask God to keep our belongings secure, and as the week progressed, so did my awareness of my smallness and my inability to control anything. My prayer began to sound something like this: “Lord, I really can’t do anything without you. I can’t even keep my belongings from being stolen off the back of my car. I need you to help me, because I really can’t do anything without you.”

In the grand scheme of things, my worry was silly. I can always replace a bike, a cooler, and backpacking and camping equipment. My world would not have been shattered. But God is kind and often trains us toward greater holiness and dependence in even the smallest of worries. In this small worry of mine, God taught me something beautiful about the extent of his care for his children and the realization that is necessary for us to receive it. He says to little, powerless ones like me, “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Modern Christians have a bounty of privileges. We don’t want for much. Most of us have food in our fridges every day. Most of us have jobs, and we have money. We have talents, knowledge, and skills, so we can do most “anything we set our minds to,” as the culture would have it. We are independent, capable, smart, and, as the culture would tell us, do not need help from anyone but ourselves. This is a silly thing to believe. In fact, it is a grievous, dangerous mistake to believe we are capable on our own. The narrative of the Bible tells us the opposite. Jesus says, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” Nothing. He could not have said it more plainly. We delude ourselves when we think we are capable of controlling our little corner of the universe, and we become angry and anxious when we attempt to exert control over the little things that arise which, in reality, we have no control over.

I cannot control whether someone steals my belongings off the back of my car as I drive across the country. I am not omniscient or omnipotent. I can’t have eyes on it at all times, and I don’t have the power to determine what ultimately happens to me or my belongings. So, God tells us, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” But this is not meant to drive us into deeper fear or deeper despair. It is meant to be good news, gracious news! God loves to care for our needs. He is merciful and provisional to his core. We do not have to coax him toward providing for us or twist his arm into caring for us. He is ready, and he is inviting us to humble ourselves before him and admit, “Father, apart from you I can do nothing.”

The beautiful irony is that when we admit our powerlessness, we invite God to be powerful for us in ways we could not have dreamt or imagined. God longs for us to accept his invitation for him to work on our behalf. He has provided his Holy Spirit as a counselor, a guide, a protector, an instructor (John 14:26, 16:13-15). The Holy Spirit is the one who will lead us in the way we should go, who will put the wisdom into our minds that we need, who will put words into our mouths so that we do not need to fear what we will say (Matthew 10:19-20). He loves to work powerfully on behalf of his people, but it requires something of us. It requires something simple, yet difficult for hard-hearted, self-sufficient sinners: supplication, a humble begging of God to rescue us and work on our behalf. We tend to reserve supplication for only the circumstances in life that are the most filled with suffering and fear. Yet how do we expect to be equipped to humble ourselves in moments of overwhelming suffering if we have not practiced how to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God in “small,” day to day needs and fears?

The Apostle Paul begins his letter to the Corinthian church with the following statement: “I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling” (1 Corinthians 2:3). We tend to paint an all too simple picture of the Apostle Paul as the powerful church father who taught doctrine mightily and who exhibited a holiness which we all should follow. This is all true of Paul. However, we often miss the reason behind Paul’s holiness and his powerful testimony about Christ. Paul came to the Corinthians in weakness, in fear and in trembling. This is not the image we tend to associate with Paul, but it is his own self-description. How does such a man pen the soul-piercing words we read in the letter of Romans? How does someone who is small, trembling, weak and fearful exude such power to write the majority of the New Testament letters and build the early church? Paul himself tells us why: “My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Cor 2:4-5). Paul’s life was powerful in building the kingdom because he first came in weakness and trembling. There is no receiving of the Lord’s power without first coming in weakness and humility. Living a powerful life requires we admit we don’t have any real power—not a single ounce—without the gracious intervention of the Holy Spirit. The power of God is demonstrated as a result of admitting we need his power and intervention, and this was something Paul was well-acquainted with (2 Corinthians 11:23-33).

There is good news in the gospel for weak people, and the gospel is only good news for people who acknowledge their weakness. Jesus Christ saves sinners and draws near to the suffering. The good news even goes so far as to remind us that God does not send away the needy (Matthew 11:28-30). He does not shun the anxious (John 6:37). He does not shame the struggling (Isaiah 42:3). Our anxieties and struggles range from sin to suffering and may be a result of unbelief, trauma, or both. But the good news remains the same: God has put on flesh and has dealt with both our unbelief and our suffering, and he offers his own power instead. We can draw near to the throne of grace in our time of need, whether the need be laced with sin, suffering or both, and he will be faithful to draw near to us (Hebrews 4:16, James 4:8). In fact, his very presence dwells within his people and he draws near to us before we even realize that we need to draw near to him.

God is inviting us into a life of Spirit-filled power that will change not only us but the world around us and the eternity to come. This requires something simple yet difficult of us—that we admit we need God’s help in every moment and every hour of our time here on earth. We must train ourselves to recognize and accept our smallness. When we lift our prideful, self-sufficient eyes to heaven, we see a God who is high and lifted up, powerful and holy, and we see him stoop down low, lending his ear to hear us and bending his hand to help us. He imparts his power to lowly people who recognize their position, and in a graciously ironic twist, he raises us up in power with his Son to expand his kingdom (1 Corinthians 6:14). When we admit our need in issues both big and small, we are ushered into a life of Spirit-filled power. As a result, we experience joy and freedom and have the privilege of seeing a big God work on behalf of very small people. These very small people are very precious in his eyes, and he delights to work for them and demonstrate his power toward them.

I invite you to join me in training yourself toward a dependence on the power of the Spirit through “silly” and “small” prayers. Recognize your need, your smallness, your inability to enact any form of change on your own. But take heart and don’t be discouraged by your smallness, because our really big and really good God wants to provide you with his power so that you and all the world may see that he really is a God of total power and utter goodness. He loves to help small people, but his small people must see and admit their need. There’s no problem too small or too big for our holy God to handle. So go ahead, little one—admit your need to him. He’d love to hear all about it and offer you his power.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).