Trust

First portion of lyrics from Laura Story Blessings

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us/is way too much to give us lesser things

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

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Our Portrait of Jesus

Excerpt from Dan Kimball post: Hope University: speaking on the organized church, types of Jesuses and emerging history

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I'll be teaching a class which I will be presenting something I never have taught before. It is based on how often I have heard said "We just need to follow Jesus" in terms of being Christian and leading churches. But my point will be that we all have versions of Jesus that we think of when we say that.And depending on what version of Jesus we lean towards, we will then create churches who reflect this.

Now I know that there is but one Jesus. So I am not saying that there are multiple Jesuses. BUT.... it is fascinating when you ask an extrovert what Jesus is like, they will say Jesus is extroverted. If we are introverted, we often think of Jesus more introverted. Taking it beyond that, if our primary portrait of Jesus is the defender of truth, then we will have a church that is likely to be one that points out the wrongs in things a lot. If we primarily think of Jesus as feeding the poor, then that is what our churches will likely be like. I just want to bring up how we need to think holistically about Jesus, not just on our own temperaments, backgrounds, experiences with church or Christians etc. and end up focusing on one thing. It does show up in church personalities.

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Living Out the Implications

Excerpt from Ed Stetzer post:  Releasing the Missional Manifesto
  

Today, I want to point you to a newly released Missional Manifesto.

You can find the full document here. Our purpose is to encourage and bring clarity-- to encourage believers to live missional lives and to clarify what we mean when we use the term "missional."

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But, the primary focus is on the affirmations. It is our hope that these affirmations will encourage us toward biblical fidelity and missional engagement. Here are some excerpts from those affirmations:

We affirm that God, who is more holy that we can imagine, looked with compassion upon humanity made up of people who are more sinful that we will admit and sent Jesus into history to establish His kingdom and reconcile people and the world to Himself. Jesus, whose love is more extravagant than we can measure, gave His life as a substitutionary death on the cross and was physically resurrected thereby propitiating the wrath of God. Through the grace of God, when a person repents of their sin, confesses the Messiah as Lord, and believes in His resurrection, they gain what the Bible defines as new and eternal life. All believers are then joined together into the church, a covenant community working as "agents of reconciliation" to proclaim and live out the gospel.

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We believe the mission and responsibility of the church includes both the proclamation of the Gospel and its demonstration. From Jesus, we learn the truth is to be proclaimed with authority and lived with grace. The church must constantly evangelize, respond lovingly to human needs, as well as "seek the welfare of the city" (Jeremiah 29:7). By living out the implications of the gospel, the missional church offers a verbal defense and a living example of its power.

It is also a manifesto -- it calls us toward action. Our hope is that it might help Christians, churches, and denominations to press toward missional activity in the world. The last paragraph hits on this important part:

Because we believe these things, we are compelled to action. We urge God's people to align around the lordship of Jesus, the missional nature of His church, and the reality of His kingdom. We invite the body of Christ everywhere to see people and the world through the lens of God's kingdom, to live holy lives as Jesus' disciples, and to intentionally represent Him together as the church. We affirm that Jesus was sent to fulfill God's purposes in the world through His perfect life, substitutionary death, and physical resurrection so that redemption could be made available to us. With Christ as our focal point, His kingdom as our destiny, and His Spirit as our empowerment, we accept the privilege and joy of His mission.

Something to Shout Over

God rules: there's something to shout over! On the double, mainlands and islands—celebrate!

 ² Bright clouds and storm clouds circle 'round him;
   Right and justice anchor his rule.

 ³ Fire blazes out before him,
   Flaming high up the craggy mountains.

 ⁴ His lightnings light up the world;
   Earth, wide-eyed, trembles in fear.

 ⁵ The mountains take one look at God
   And melt, melt like wax before earth's Lord.

 ⁶ The heavens announce that he'll set everything right,
   And everyone will see it happen—glorious!

 ^7-8 All who serve handcrafted gods will be sorry—
   And they were so proud of their ragamuffin gods!
   On your knees, all you gods—worship him!
   And Zion, you listen and take heart!
   Daughters of Zion, sing your hearts out:
   God has done it all, has set everything right. 

Psalm 97 [Message]

Full Measure of Joy

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer for the Restoration of Our Joy

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Psalm 51:12
“Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10

     Lord Jesus, surely, none of us is as joyful as you intend, So I make King David’s prayer for the restoration of joy mine. But as I do so, I pray as well for a bevy of family members, friends, and colleagues. Everybody is hungry for the bread you alone can give. Like David, all of us has stories of heartache and weariness, failure and fear, brokenness and weakness. The details differ, but each of us needs you, just as much as the other.
     Knowing you intend for the “full measure” of your joy to be in us (John 17:13), makes it easy to ask with confidence.  So I pray boldly and with great anticipation, restore to us the joy of your salvation. It’s your salvation, because we could never ever save ourselves, though we still foolishly try at times.  Like Jonah, we humbly cry from within our own hard places, “Salvation comes from the Lord!” (Jonah 2:9).
     Bring us back to the joyful, childlike love we had for you at first, Jesus (Revelation 2:4)—a love totally generated by grace, and a joy compelled in response to the undeserved, unparalleled, unwavering love lavished upon us in the gospel (1 John 3:1-3; 4:19).
     We crave fresh and more joy, Jesus, because your joy is our strength—strength for repenting, strength for obeying, strength for hoping, strength for serving others. Above all, it’s strength for adoring and worshipping you, with everything we have and are. So, Jesus, fill us again with inexpressible joy—a joy filled with your glory. (1 Peter 1:8)
     Because the gospel is true, we pray with contrite but condemnation-free hearts and with brokenness, but penance-free faith. Jesus, because you are our faithful Advocate, always praying for us, we wait expectantly.  In you most holy, loving and faithful name, we pray.

Whereupon

Ray Ortlund post:  Because Jesus is our resurrection and our life

“During the persecution under Gallus (252), when the pestilence raged in Carthage, and the heathens threw out their dead and sick upon the streets, ran away from them for fear of the contagion and cursed the Christians as the supposed authors of the plague, Cyprian assembled his congregation and exhorted them to love their enemies; whereupon all went to work; the rich with their money, the poor with their hands, and rested not till the dead were buried, the sick cared for, and the city saved from desolation.”

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids, 1973), II:375-376.

Increase in Both

Stephen Furtick post:  Be a Childlike Grownup

I was recently listening to a pastor I love and respect talk about childlike faith and how the Bible teaches us that we need to be like children. You get this from verses like Matthew 18:3:
I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

I was flowing with him. But then I also started thinking about all those verses where we’re told to be mature. Verses like Hebrews 5:13-14:
Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature.

That seems a little bit contradictory. We’re supposed to be like children. But we’re also supposed to grow up and be mature. How do we handle this tension?

Here’s where I’ve landed:
Be a childlike grownup.

When it comes to your faith and your prayers, be naïve. Never lose your sense of wonder. Never get to the point where you know better. Always come before God with the belief that He’s your Father and is ready, willing, and able to do anything you need Him to. That the only limit to His power is your ability to believe Him for it.

But when it comes to things like your decisions, your ambitions, and what offends you, be a grownup. Continually increase your responsibility. Continually grow in wisdom. Make sure the development of your character keeps pace with the advancement of your years.

Far too many Christians have equated maturity with what is really cynical unbelief.
Far too many Christians have equated childlike faith with what is really juvenile immaturity.

While increasing in your maturity, never decrease in your faith. Or vice versa.
Do what the Bible tells you. Increase in both.

Be a childlike grownup.

Reflecting

Miscellanies post:  Reading, Thinking, and the "Violent Visual Impact"

Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word (Eerdmans, 1985), page 221:

We are arriving at a purely emotional stage of thinking. In order to begin reacting intellectually, we need the stimulus of an image. Bare information or an article or book no longer have any effect on us. We do not begin reflecting on such a basis, but only with an illustration. We need violent visual impact if thought is to be set in motion. When we jump from image to image, we are really going from emotion to emotion: our thought moves from anger to indignation, from fear to resentment, from passion to curiosity. In this manner our thought is enriched by diversity and multiple meaning but is singularly paralyzed with respect to its specific efficacy as thought.

Finishedness

Excerpt from Tullian Tchividjian post:  God's Final Word

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All sinful behavior–even in Christians–can be traced back to the death that happened in Eden. To address behavior without addressing death is to perpetuate death. The Pharisees were masters of this and Jesus called them “white-washed tombs.” Many of us Christians are guilty of making this same mistake. We tend to think of the gospel as God’s program to make bad people good, not dead people live. The fact is, Jesus came first to effect a mortal resurrection, not a moral reformation–as his own death and resurrection demonstrate.

The following excerpt is from Senkbeil’s excellent article in Justified: Modern Reformation Essays on the Doctrine of Justification:

Most people think that the human dilemma is that our lives are out of adjustment; we don’t meet God’s expectations. Salvation then becomes a matter of rearranging our priorities and adjusting our life-style to correspond with God’s will. In its crassest form, this error leads people to think they earn their own salvation. More often in today’s evangelical world, the error has a more subtle disguise: armed with forgiveness through Jesus, people are urged to practice the techniques and principles Christ gave to bring their life-style back into line.

It is certainly true that sinful lives are out of adjustment. We are all in need of the Spirit’s sanctifying power. But that comes only after our real problem is solved. Sins are just the symptom; our real dilemma is death.

God warned Adam and Eve that the knowledge of evil came with a high price tag: “. . . when you eat of (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Our first parents wanted to be like God and were willing to pay the price. And we are still paying the price: “the wages of sin is death . . .” (Rom. 6:23); “. . . in Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22); “. . . You were dead in your transgressions and sins” (Eph. 2:1).

The real problem we all face is death. Physical death, to be sure. But ultimately and most horribly, spiritual death–being cut off from God forever. And everyone must die. You can either die alone or die in Jesus.

In his death Jesus Christ swallowed up our death, and rose again triumphantly to take all of the teeth out of the grave. In the promise of the resurrection, death loses its power. When we die with Jesus, we really live!

Sanctification consists of the daily realization that in Christ we have died and in Christ we have been raised. Life change happens as the heart daily grasps death and life. Daily reformation is the fruit of daily resurrection. To get it the other way around (which we always do by default) is to miss the power and point of the gospel. In his book God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis makes the obvious point that “You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.” Behavior (good or bad) is a second thing.

Preachers these days are expected to major in “Christian moral renovation.” They are expected to provide a practical “to-do” list, rather than announce, “It is finished.” They are expected to do something other than, “more than”, placarding before their congregations eyes Christ’s finished work, preaching a full absolution solely on the basis of the complete righteousness of Another. The irony is, of course, that when preachers cave in to this pressure, moral renovation does not happen. To focus on how I’m doing more than on what Christ has done is Christian narcissism (an oxymoron if I ever heard one)–the poison of self-absorption which undermines the power of the gospel in our lives. Martin Luther noted that “the sin underneath all our sins is the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ and that we must take matters into our own hands.”

Moral renovation, in other words, is to refocus our eyes away from ourselves to that Man’s obedience, to that Man’s cross, to that Man’s blood–to that Man’s death and resurrection!

“In my place condemned he stood, and sealed my pardon with his blood–hallelujah, what a Savior!”

Learning daily to love this glorious exchange, to lean on its finishedness, and to live under its banner is what it means to be morally reformed!

Remembering

Excerpt from Michael Johnson post:  "So, How Was Your Easter?"

You’ve likely already been asked (or asked someone else) this question today: “So, how was your Easter?” Around the water cooler or over coffee, we recount our big day: where we went to church, what was on the menu, was familial catastrophe averted, etc. And by the time Wednesday rolls around, people’s attention will have shifted to the royal nuptials. The common assumption is clear: Easter? That was so last Sunday. Indeed, I just now received an e-mail from a Christian acquaintance wishing me a happy belated Easter.

But what isn’t lost on many of our brothers and sisters in other Christian traditions is this truth: Easter hasn’t ended.


For example, consider the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, which has Scripture readings beginning today designated as “Easter Week,” followed by readings for five Sundays after Easter. (This is in addition to the Lent readings.) Combining the Lent Scripture readings with post-Easter Sunday readings, Easter officially spans 14 Sundays!

Now I’m not arguing for a more liturgical expression of Christianity (nor am I arguing against it!). Rather, I’m acknowledging our modern propensity to compartmentalize and isolate this most glorious season. Visit most stores this week and you’ll see what I mean. Easter displays are already being dismantled to draw our increasingly short attention spans to Mother’s Day. By next Sunday, church displays are already neatly boxed and stored away for Easter 2012.


And so the commerical and Gregorian calendars keep their hurling pace. Combine this reality with our culture’s assault on our senses, and it’s no wonder by mid-week Easter 2011 is already yesterday’s news.

The end result? We forget. We don’t merely forget Easter. More tragically, we forget the implications of Easter’s ongoing realities in our lives. It’s a form of early onset spiritual Alzheimer’s disease.


So what’s the remedy? How can we we be an Easter people 24/7, 365 days of the year?
There’s no simple answer, but I suggest we start with remembering.

Remember God’s words in Deuteronomy 6:12 (right after he gave the Ten Commandments), “…take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

Remember Psalm 119:93, “I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life.”

Remember 1 Corinthians 11:23-25, when the Apostle Paul recounts Jesus’ words that as we partake in communion, we do so in remembrance of Christ's death.

In other words, cultivating a presence of Easter’s ongoing realities begins with remembering that we all too often forget the central truth of Christianity summarized in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

In light of what Christ has done for you, remember who you are in Christ. 1 Corinthians 6:11, “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

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The Freer, The More Sanctifying

Ray Ortlund post:  Only grace has the power to change us

“The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one; and by the love of what is good, to expel the love of what is evil. . . .

Thus it is, that the freer the Gospel, the more sanctifying is the Gospel; and the more it is received as a doctrine of grace, the more will it be felt as a doctrine according to godliness.  This is one of the secrets of the Christian life . . . .

Salvation by grace – salvation by free grace – salvation not of works, but according to the mercy of God – salvation on such a footing is not more indispensable to the deliverance of our persons from the hand of justice, than it is to the deliverance of our hearts from the chill and the weight of ungodliness.  Retain a single shred or fragment of legality with the Gospel, and we raise a topic of distrust between man and God.  We take away from the power of the Gospel to melt and to conciliate.  For this purpose, the freer it is, the better it is.  That very peculiarity which so many dread as the germ of antinomianism is, in fact, the germ of a new spirit and a new inclination against it.  Along with the light of a free Gospel does there enter the love of the Gospel, which, in proportion as we impair the freeness, we are sure to chase away.  And never does the sinner find within himself so mighty a moral transformation as when under the belief that he is saved by grace, he feels constrained thereby to offer his heart a devoted thing, and to deny ungodliness.”

Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.”

Present Blessedness

Is it true that "Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal?"  It is true!  That is precisely the Beatitudes.  And you don't have to wait until you're dead.  Jesus offers to all such people as these the present blessedness of the present kingdom -- regardless of circumstances.  The condition of life sought for by human beings through the ages is attained in the quietly transforming friendship of Jesus.

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Speaking to these common people, the "multitudes," who through him had found blessing in the kingdom, Jesus tells them it is they, not the "best and the brightest" on the human scale, who are to make life manageable as they live from the kingdom (Matt.  5:13-16).  God gives them "light" -- truth, love, power -- that they might be the light for their surroundings.  He makes them "salt" to cleanse, preserve, and flavor the times through which they live.

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, pp. 124-5

Rhythms of Worship

Excerpt from TGC Asks: How Do You Use Liturgical Elements in Your Church Worship?

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For whatever reasons, the interest in the use of liturgical elements has increased in recent years. So I asked Scotty Smith, Mike Cosper, and Bob Kauflin, “To what extent does your church use liturgical elements such as responsive readings and creeds? Why?”

Scotty Smith, founding pastor of Christ Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee, and TGC council member:

We in Christ Community Church (PCA) are increasingly enjoying the richness of responsive readings and creeds as we develop our liturgy week to week. In our first years we pretty much decried the use of such aids, but we now realize their doxological beauty and benefit. In fact, for many years, the word liturgy was almost a four-letter word in our reactionary infancy as a church family. We wanted to cultivate a free, Spirit-led worship culture, and wrongly assumed that creeds would lead to formalization and dead orthodoxy.

In our current calendar year, we are praying our way through the Heidelberg Catechism. We also include prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, responsive readings from the Scriptures, and confession and professions from the pen and hearts of our leadership family. In recent years we have also celebrated the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed as a part of a gospel-driven liturgy. Let me be clear: we still want a “free and Spirit led worship culture,” but now we clearly see the place of responsive readings and creeds as a means of helping us offer our Triune God the worship he deserves and in which he delights.

Mike Cosper, pastor of worship and arts at Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky; regular contributor to TGC’s site on the gospel and the arts:

At Sojourn, we came to embrace a loosely liturgical model about seven years ago. The decision came not out of a desire to reform our worship services, but out of a broader desire to root everything we do in the gospel. As we dialogued about worship, we came to see that the historic rhythms of liturgical worship helped to reinforce and remember the rhythms of the gospel. Our gathering has four general movements: adoration (God is holy), confession and lament (we are sinners), assurance (Jesus saves us from our sin), sending (the Holy Spirit sends us on mission). Within these broad categories are weekly practices, including a call to worship, confession of sin, passing the peace, and so on. Each service comes to a climax at the communion table and ends with a sense of commitment and commission. It’s like “Gospel Practice”—a rehearsal of the rhythms of the gospel that not only mark conversion, but mark the everyday life of Christians.

The liturgy is a broad architecture upon which can hang any number of practices. We read a lot of Scripture together in our gatherings, and most of our transitions and calls to action (like a call to confess our sins) will be connected to a Scripture reading. But we also like to incorporate other kinds of content, like historic confessions and pastoral prayers. Here’s a few reasons why we find the liturgical structure helpful.

• Worship is a weekly spiritual discipline, and Sundays are like “practice” for the rest of the week. Rehearsing the gospel is like rehearsing a jump shot. When the clutch moments of life happen, what kind of praying, thinking, and singing will our people fall back on?
• Using historic resources like creeds, catechisms, and pastoral prayers demonstrate our connection with a church that is bigger than us. It helps to humble our own church’s view of itself and broaden our view of God’s work in history.
• No single song, sermon, or service can tell the whole story of the Bible, and we shouldn’t feel burdened to communicate the whole in each individual moment of the service. If we do, we end up with something that’s reductionistic (i.e., we only sing songs about atonement). The beauty of a gospel-shaped gathering is that it allows the church to fully enter into each movement—deeply confessing, deeply lamenting, or deeply hoping—without feeling the need in every other breath to relieve the tension. This works because the next movement of the service is just around the corner, and the service as a whole speaks a more holistic message than any individual component is capable.

No model for worship has a lock on the Spirit of God. The best way we can prepare for the Spirit to work is to center our gatherings on the things the Spirit gets excited about—namely, the person and work of Jesus Christ. A gathering centered on the story of the gospel and the person of Jesus doesn’t ensure revival but seems the wisest way to pursue an encounter with his Spirit.

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Yet To Come

Tullian Tchividjian post:  The Best Is Yet To Come

With Christ’s first coming, God began the process of reversing the curse of sin and redeeming all things. In Christ, God was moving in a new way. All of Jesus’ ministry—the words he spoke, the miracles he performed—showed that there was a new order in town: God’s order. When Jesus healed the diseased, raised the dead, and forgave the desperate, he did so to show that with the arrival of God in the flesh came the restoration of the way God intended things to be.

Tim Keller observes that Christ’s miracles were not the suspension of the natural order but the restoration of the natural order. They were a reminder of what once was prior to the fall and a preview of what will eventually be a universal reality once again—a world of peace and justice, without death, disease, or conflict.

In his book This Beautiful Mess, Rick McKinley describes the response of a pastor’s response to the death of a friend:

A pastor friend of mine told me that as he was preparing for a funeral once, he decided to go through the Gospels to see how Jesus dealt with funerals. What he discovered was that Jesus did not care for them much. Every one He went to He raised the person from the dead. Jesus doesn’t do funerals, not even his own.

The resurrection of Jesus is the greatest proof of God’s intention to revitalize this broken cosmos. His rising from the dead was “just the beginning of the saving, renewing, resurrecting work of God that will have its climax in the restoration of the entire cosmos,” as K. Scott Oliphant and Sinclair Ferguson remind us. The bodily resurrection of Jesus “was the first bit of material order to be redeemed and transfigured,” writes John Stott. “It is the divine pledge that the rest will be redeemed and transfigured one day.” Christ’s resurrection is both the model and the means for our resurrection—and the guarantee that what he started, he will finish.

The day will come when Christ returns and completes this process of transformation (read Revelation 21, for instance). Psalm 96:11‑13 gives us a poetic glimpse of what will happen when Jesus returns to rule the earth:

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
let the field exult, and everything in it!
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
before the Lord, for he comes,
for he comes to rule the earth.
He will rule the world in righteousness,
and the peoples in his faithfulness.

For those who have found forgiveness of sins in Christ, there will one day be no more sickness, no more death, no more tears, no more division, no more tension. For the pardoned children of God, there’ll be complete harmony. We’ll work and worship in a perfectly renewed earth without the interference of sin. We who believe the gospel will enjoy sinless hearts and minds along with disease-free bodies. All that causes us pain and discomfort will be destroyed, and we will live forever. We’ll finally be able, as John Piper says, “to enjoy what is most enjoyable with unbounded energy and passion forever.”

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Joy to the World -- He Is Risen

John Piper post:  The Overflow of Easter:  A Whole Theology of Resurrection in One Chapter

He is risen! And O the overflow of that single event. It was the cosmic Yes! from God the Father that the death had done all it was meant to do. And it was the beginning of the eternal existence of the God-Man in a glorious new body in which he would finally reign on the earth forever. And so much more.

There is a whole theology of the resurrection and its achievements in 1 Corinthians 15. Here’s a summary. Let each of these sink in. Savor each one. Then start your new week (the rest of your life) abounding in the work God calls you to “knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

1. Christ died for us and rose again.
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and . . . He was buried, and . . . He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

2. He verified his resurrection by large public appearances.
After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep. (1 Corinthians 15:6)

3. Because Christ has risen, we are not still in our sins.
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. (1 Corinthians 15:17)

4. Because Christ has risen, our afflicted lives are not pitiable.
If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:19)

5. We who trust Christ will be raised from the dead at Christ's second coming.
For as in Adam all [his posterity] die, so also in Christ all will [his posterity] be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming. (1 Corinthians 15:22-23)

6. Christ now reigns invincibly over the universe.
For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. (1 Corinthians 15:25-26)

7. Our resurrection body will be imperishable, glorious, powerful, and spiritual.
[Our resurrection body] is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:42-44)

8. Living or dead, we shall be given new bodies in an instant at Christ's coming.
Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. (1 Corinthians 15:51-52)

9. Death now has no sting and will be swallowed up in victory.
But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" (1 Corinthians 15:54-55)

10. Christ suffered for sin and satisfied the law for us.
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:56-57)

11. Therefore, do huge amounts of Christ-exalting work because none of it is in vain.
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:58)

He Is Risen Indeed

Worthy Is the Lamb

Excerpts from Kevin DeYoung post:  Lest We Drift Away:  A Sermon for Good Friday

Almost everyone has flown on a plane before. So you’ve all sat through those opening instructions from the flight attendants about what to do in the event of an emergency. They say the same thing on every flight, every day, on every airline. And every day, on every flight, on every airline, almost no one pays attention to the message. I’ve flown several times in the past couple months and I can’t recall seeing anyone looking at the flight attendants or giving one second of thought to what they were talking about. No one pays attention to these instructions.

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So we don’t pay attention. We hear the gospel a hundred times and we don’t think anything of it. We celebrate dozens of Good Fridays and it never makes a difference. Jesus, cross, death, resurrection–it’s all just noise in the background of our lives as we try to get our seats to recline and open the tiny bag of peanuts. No one is listening.
But listen to Hebrews 2:1-4.

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

This is one of five warning passages in Hebrews. These five passages are not teaching that genuine Christians can lose their salvation. What they are teaching is that some people with an external connection to Christianity will not in the end by saved. And further, these passages suggest that those who are saved at the end, will be saved by means of these warning. These passages are danger signs that keep the elect persevering to the end.

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Most church people drift away from God not because they meant to, but because they got busy, they got lazy, they got distracted, they had kids, they got a mortgage, a few illnesses came, then some bills, then the in-laws visited for a week, then the mini-van broke down, and before you knew what was happening the seed of the word of God had been choked out by the worries of life.

That’s the way it happens for many people. They never dropped anchor, and so they simply floated away when the currents got strong. They used to pray. They used to be interested in the Bible. They used to talk to God. They used go to church. They never woke up and decided “Today I’m going to stop being a Christian. They just drifted. That’s why Hebrews 10:24 says “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching.” Some of the Hebrews had checked out, stopped going to church, just floated away from the whole thing.

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First, we must notice that it is a reliable message. Both of those words are important, reliable and message. The gospel is not the same as asking Jesus into your heart. The gospel is not a program for becoming a better you. The gospel is not a series of ethical commands. The gospel is not an experience of generic spirituality. The gospel is the good news that God so loved the world that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, to fulfill the law, to suffer as a man, and to die on the cross, bearing the penalty for sin the we deserved, and being raised on the third day that we might be declared innocent and righteous before God. The gospel is a message.

And it is reliable. Eyewitnesses saw it and passed it on to others who in turn told others. The story of the gospel took place out in the open for all to see. This was no secret, mystery religion. These things did not happen in a cave somewhere. The miracles of Christ and the gifts of the Holy Spirit testified publicly that Jesus was not just another Rabbi or another prophet or another teacher, but he was, in fact, the Christ, the Son of the living God.

We must pay attention to this reliable message, lest we mistake false gospels for the real gospel, and end up believing in the Jesus of good causes, or the Jesus of good coffee, or the Jesus of good examples, or life coach Jesus, or greeting card Jesus, or prosperity Jesus, or positive thinking Jesus, instead of Jesus Christ crucified, dead, and buried for the sin of the world.

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We must pay much closer attention to the gospel, to Jesus, and to the cross, lest by an imperceptible current we drift away. Heaven never tires of the cross, and neither should we. The saints in glory never grow weary of the singing the old, old story: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

Do not let Good Friday pass you by like a set of airline instructions. Fix your eyes on the cross. Not as the place to show us our worth, but to show us the weight of our sin. Not as the pace where Jesus simply felt our pain, but where he bore our penalty. Not as the place where God overturned divine justice, but where God in mercy fulfilled his justice. Not as the place where love died, but where love reigned supreme. Pay careful attention to the cross. Here we see a great salvation, delivering us from a great wrath, revealing to us a great Savior who was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, that by his stripes we might be healed.

No Clearer Evidence

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer for Thursday of Holy Week

     It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. John 13:1
   ”A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:34-35

     Lord Jesus, as I meditate and pray my way through these Scriptures, quite literally, I’m undone. What but the gift of faith can enable us to grasp the wonder of these words and the magnificence of this moment? What but the power of the gospel can enable us to believe and obey them? Grant us both, I pray, grant me both.
     On our calendar we call this day, Maundy, or Mandate Thursday. A day in the history of redemption brimming over with glory and grace. On this day in Holy week, Passover became the Lord’s Supper—your supper. The promises of the Old Covenant would soon be fulfilled by the blood of the New Covenant—your blood.
     Having shared eternal glory with your Father, you showed stunning grace to your disciples. Having loved this rag-tag bunch of broken men—who squabbled with each other hours earlier for positions of honor; who within a few hours, would all scatter and deny you—having loved them so well for so long, you then showed them the full extent of your love. You loved them to the end. You loved them through and through.
     Your disrobing to wash their feet was with a full view to your being stripped naked to wash their hearts, and our hearts. Indeed, the measure of your love isn’t just the basin and towel of the upper room, but your cross and death on Calvary’s hill. What wondrous love is this indeed—how wide, long, high and deep?
      Thus you command us, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” This is the new and never-ending mandate we live under as your disciples—a mandate, not a suggestion. There is no greater love than the love you have for us, none. And there is no clearer evidence of our love for you than the way we love each other.
     Jesus, we acknowledge and grieve the multiple ways we love poorly—in our churches, in our families, in our communities. We offer no lame excuses and make no empty promises. As you continue to convince our unbelieving, dull hearts of your great love for us, convict us, humble us and love through us to your glory. So very Amen, we pray, in your holy and passionate name, on this Maundy Thursday.   

Hope

It's Good Friday, so I have to post Carman's Sunday's on the Way

So Profoundly Satisfied

John Piper post:  Salt, Suffering, and Satisfaction

Try this interpretation of what it means for Christians to be salt.

I suggest that being salty as a Christian means at root being so profoundly satisfied by Christ as our eternal reward, we are freed from fear and greed for the sacrifices of love, while rejoicing at persecution.

Let’s see if that works in three texts.

Matthew 5:11-13

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. 13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

The immediate context of “You are the salt of the earth” is “Blessed are you when you are persecuted . . . . Rejoice and be glad . . . because your reward is great in heaven.” When someone lives like this, it is so utterly unnatural and amazing and wonderful, it tastes really good. Joyful suffering for the sake of Christ is startling, spectacular, salty.

Mark 9:47–50

And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, 48 “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” 49 For everyone will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.

Jesus moves from the fire of hell to saying “Everyone will be salted with fire.” I take that to mean, everyone will encounter fires of trouble and pain in life, and this experience can make you salty. It salts you. In other words, close calls with eternity, where you can smell the flames of hell and the scents of paradise can fill you with an amazing dissatisfaction with this world and a profound satisfaction in Christ as your eternal reward.

Verse 50a says this is good, and if you lose it, you may never get it back. Then verse 50b says, “Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with each other.” Few things make for greater peace than freedom from the need for this world’s affirmation and rewards. Such people don’t return evil for evil. They rejoice when reviled. They are peacemakers. And that freedom for love comes from the salt of satisfaction in the reward of Jesus now and in the age to come.

Colossians 4:6

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt,
so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

The question here is: How does being seasoned with salt help us “know how to answer each person”? How does being salty make you more discerning? Answer: If we are deeply satisfied with Jesus as our reward, and freed from the cravings for approval and for reward on earth, then our faculties of discernment about what is loving, will be less clouded with selfish distortions. We will “know” more readily what love calls for, because we will be more ready to love.

Conclusion

This is my suggestion: to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world means that at root Christians are so profoundly satisfied by Christ as our eternal reward, we are freed from fear and greed for the sacrifices of love, and are able to rejoice at persecution. When the world sees this, they see the glory of Christ and taste the satisfying pleasure of who he is.

What Do You Think

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer for Wednesday of Holy Week

     While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Christ?” Matthew 22:41

     Dear Lord Jesus, it’s Wednesday of Holy Week. The question you directed to Pharisees en route to the cross, you still put before us. “What do you think about the Christ?”  There’s no more important question for us to wrestle throughout our lives. No other question has the power to disrupt us and delight us like this one.
     What  do I think about you, Lord Jesus? Who do I think you are? You are God and I’m a mere man. I would despair if you were anything less and I get weary of trying to be more. You are the creator, sustainer and restorer of all things. You don’t just care about my soul, you care about everything you have made. One day you will return to finish making all things new.
     Lord Jesus, I honor you as the promised Messiah—the one who fulfills every promise the Father has made. You as the second Adam—our substitute in death and in life. You lived a life of perfect obedience for us and you exhausted God’s judgment that stood against us. You are our complete forgiveness and our perfect righteousness before the Father. Nothing will every separate us from your love. I humbly and confidently stake my life and my death upon what you’ve done for us.
     Lord Jesus, there’s so much more to who you are, and eternity will be a perpetual discovery of the inexhaustible riches found in you. But this particular holy week, I’m especially comforted to know you are always thinking about us. It’s what you think about us that makes all the difference to me.
     We are in your heart and on your mind all the time. You are always praying for us and advocating for us before the Father. You greatly delight in us and you will never be ashamed of us. Indeed, you know us the best and you love us the most. With fresh gratitude and knee-buckling awe, we worship and adore you on this Wednesday of Holy Week.  So very Amen, we pray, in your name-above-all-names name.

Just As You Are

Ray Ortlund post:  The world is too respectable

“The world picks up its skirt and passes by.  It leaves you alone, it does not want to associate with you, you have gone down, you belong to the refuse and the gutters, and the world is too respectable to have any interest in you.  Here is One who is ready to receive you and to accept you. . . . ‘Just as you are, I am ready to receive you.  In your rags, in your filth, in your vileness.  Rest.’”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross (Westchester, 1986), page 170.

Gospel

Set Free

Tullian Tchividjian post:  You Have An "A"

My friend Steve Brown tells a story about a time his daughter Robin found herself in a very difficult English Literature course that she desperately wanted to get out of.

She sat there on her first day and thought, “If I don’t transfer out of this class, I’m going to fail. The other people in this class are much smarter than me. I can’t do this.” She came home and with tears in her eyes begged her dad to help her get out of the class so she could take a regular English course.

Steve said, “Of course.”

So the next day he took her down to  the school and went to the head of the English department, who was a Jewish woman and a great teacher. Steve remembers the event in these words:

She (the head of the English department) looked up and saw me standing there by my daughter and could tell that Robin was about to cry. There were some students standing around and, because the teacher didn’t want Robin to be embarrassed, she dismissed the students saying, “I want to talk to these people alone.” As soon as the students left and the door was closed, Robin began to cry. I said, “I’m here to get my daughter out of that English  class. It’s too difficult for her. The problem with my daughter is that she’s too conscientious. So, can you put her into a regular English class?” The teacher said, “Mr. Brown, I understand.” Then she looked at Robin and said, “Can I talk to Robin for a minute?” I said, “Sure.” She said, “Robin, I know how you feel. What if I promised you and A no  matter what you did in the class? If I gave you an A before you even started, would you be willing to take the class?” My daughter is not dumb! She started sniffling and said, “Well, I think I could do that.” The teacher said, “I’m going to give  you and A in the class. You already have an A, so you can go to class.”

Later the teacher explained to Steve what she had done. She explained how she took away the threat of a bad grade so that Robin could learn English. Robin ended up making straight A‘s on her own in that class.

That’s how God deals with us. Because we are, right now, under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ, Christians already have an A. The threat of failure, judgment, and condemnation has been removed. We’re in–forever! Nothing we do will make our grade better and nothing we do will make our grade worse. We’ve been set free.

Knowing that God’s love for you and approval of you will never be determined by your performance for Jesus but Jesus’ performance for you will actually make you perform more and better, not less and worse.

If you don’t believe me, ask Robin!

Fallen Away

Steven Furtick post:  Tiger Woods, Charlie Sheen, and you and me

I always used to associate the expression, “fall from grace,” with major acts of sin. Enormous failures. Significant falls.

People who fell from grace were people like Ted Haggard who lost his church and nearly lost his family after admitting to a homosexual affair after years of speaking out against homosexuality.
Or Tiger Woods who had an affair that cost him his family and tens of millions of dollars.
Or Charlie Sheen who…well, pulled a Charlie Sheen.

So falling from grace was where you had an affair. Cheated people. Engaged in an addictive behavior. Melted down in public. In general, had some kind of an enormous moral failure and lost everything. Your reputation. Your family. Your livelihood. In the case of Charlie Sheen, your sanity.

That’s what I used to think. And if you were honest, it’s probably what you associate falling from grace with as well.

But we’re both wrong. That’s not what it means. The true definition is astonishing. And infinitely more threatening, convicting, and relevant to most Christians than the stories of the men above.
If you go back to where the phrase comes from in the Bible, here’s what you read:
You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace (Galatians 5:4).

Crap. Ted, Tiger, and Charlie can no longer be our punching bags for falling from grace.

I understand why they are. They’re easy targets. They warn us of the danger of falling into sin and ruining our lives. And if we’re honest, they make us feel better about ourselves. But here’s the truth: Most Christians aren’t in danger of pulling a Charlie Sheen or a Tiger Woods or a Ted Haggard. We’re in danger of something far more deceptive and equally offensive to God.

And that’s living as if we have no need of His grace. It’s believing that all of our good deeds actually put us in a better position before God. That because we’re not Charlie, Tiger, or Ted, we’re closer to God, even if only by an inch.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Even if you read your Bible everyday and now have it memorized in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and the 1611 KJV.
Even if you never have an affair.
Even if you live a life that makes the Pharisees look like cat-strangling, coke-snorting, Wiccan worshippers.
Even if you have it all together.

When Jesus comes back and every knee bows and every tongue confesses that He is Lord, your head won’t be one centimeter higher than Charlie’s. Or Tiger’s. Or Ted’s. Or anyone else’s.

The quickest way to fall from grace is to think that there is an ounce of your life that isn’t dependent on it. Every step that you take to be acceptable to God in your own effort apart from Jesus and the cross is actually a step away from God.

Don’t fall away from grace. Ted needs it. Tiger needs it. Charlie needs it.

But so do you. And so do I.

Greater Percentage Every Year

Excerpt from Mark Batterson post:  Tax Day

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Lora and I circled Luke 6:38 a long time ago. You can’t out give God. It’s the law of measures. Our goal is to give a greater percentage of our income every year.  I’m reminded of it every time tax season comes around.  Our tax return isn’t just a way of measuring how much we’re making or how much we’re paying in taxes. It’s also a way of measuring how much we’re giving.

I certainly love the tax write off that comes with giving, but that is a minor benefit compared to the eternal dividends of investing in God’s kingdom.  Compound interest forever!

Being Leads to Action

Excerpts from Ed Stetzer post:  Developing Missional Churches for the Great Commission, Part One 

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We need a shift in the conversation. I am amazed at how many churches (all models, sizes, and locations) are having the same (and often tired) conversations about how many people showed up to attend their services, classes, and events. New churches talk about it. Older, more established churches talk about it. Traditional and contemporary churches talk about it. Sometimes it sounds like the most important thing is how many attended our services and programs. Lots of warm bodies make us feel better about ourselves and what we are doing. Thus, attendance is the primary scorecard for most churches. And, I would add that budget is the close second. We seem content with this as the scorecard. But the term missional is slowly shifting the conversation away from discussions on attendance and budgets to commission and relationships. So, new words are not bad things, because new conversations are needed to engage the new circumstances of culture.


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Missional is a way of being that leads to a way of acting. The missional church is made up of Christians who are called through God's gracious redemption to live for Him and His great mission throughout the world and who are sent out to be co-laborers with God to accomplish His mission in the world. This is the mission that God sent His Son on, and it is the mission that He sends His people on. So, missional Christ-followers and missional churches are joining Jesus on mission. They care about the things that Jesus directed us to care about: serving the hurting and loving others (the Great Commandment), and seeking to proclaim the gospel to the lost (the Great Commission).

If missional churches are joining Jesus on His mission, it includes much more than God's heart for the lost people groups among the nations and your lost neighbor, but being missional should never be pursued in way that excludes, lessens the emphasis upon, or fails to see that what is ultimate is God's heart for the lost. In the name of "missional," we must not lose a focus on just how great the Great Commission really is. Part of being a missional church is to be passionate about what matters to God. So, missional churches should care deeply for the ta ethne' (tribes and tongues) of their community and world. Not only does this mission matter to God. It is the mission that we were created for. God created the world with people who bear His image, and commissions them to fill the whole earth with worshippers of Him. Therefore, it is no surprise that the status quo of the bigger, busier church leaves many (rightfully) dissatisfied. We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves--and rightfully so, for we were created for that. And, I believe a global evangelistic engagement in our communities and into the whole world is a significant part of the answer.

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Too many churches and Christians ignore the biblical theology of a sent church and God as a missionary. The institutional church is not the dispenser of salvation. It is the message bearer of that salvation. We criticize Catholics who consider the church a vehicle of grace, yet we embrace an "invest and invite" mentality that requires people to show up on Sunday morning in order to receive the message of new life. The churches that are exclusively working in a solely attractional model may have a passion to see people experience transformation, but it seems to me that they are missing the inherent flaws in the attractional mindset.

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The attractional-only church, whether on purpose or unintentionally, conditions everyday Christians to feel no responsibility to have Gospel-focused, spiritual conversations. The "invest and invite" church makes the institutional church (contemporary or traditional) and their trained platform leaders the dispensers of salvation. If people need to go to the pastor to meet God, someone is confused about "who's who" in the gospel story and its proclamation.

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Something Better

Ray Ortlund post:  Desperate

“And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him.  And he became captain over them.” 1 Samuel 22:2

David attracted desperate men, men who were passionate for change, men who longed for something better.  The empowered and the privileged did not gather to him.  They had too much to lose.  But the distressed, the debtors and the fed-up rallied to him.  And under his leadership, this rabble redefined the future.

If your heart is at rest with the status quo, you have no incentive for all-out commitment to Jesus.  You will just get in the way.  But if you are in distress, if you are in debt, if you are bitter in soul, there is a mighty Captain who is not ashamed to have you in his army.  He turns no one away, no one who is desperate for change on his terms.

Freed from Soul-Sucking Parasites

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer of Hope

     Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans 5:1-5

     Gracious Father, hopeless whining, faithless complaining and maudlin murmuring have all met their match in the gospel. To stay alive to every good thing you’ve done for us in Jesus is to be freed from these soul-sucking parasites. Fill our hearts today with the power of hope. Let us see Jesus big and loving that we might live to the praise of your glory and grace.
     We praise you that we’ve already been justified though the faith you’ve given us—declared righteous in your sight, once and for all. Instead of standing condemned for our sins, we now stand firm in your grace, for you’ve made peace with us through the work of Jesus. We now live with unobstructed access to all the grace we need, in life and in death.
     We no longer boast in ourselves, for there was never really anything to boast in. We now boast, exult, rejoice and revel in the hope of your glory. We are thrilled to know that all of history is bound up with your inviolate commitment to bring much glory to yourself by bringing many sons and daughters to glory—to experience and enjoy your perfections forever. What an outrageously generous God you are!
     Father, the gospel is so good and powerful, we’re also learning how to boast in our sufferings—the painful realities of living in a fallen world; the hard providences for which you promise sufficient grace; and the veiled mysteries only heaven will resolve. Indeed, in and through suffering, you’re making us like Jesus and are producing even more hope in our hearts. We believe, help our unbelief.
     The glorious hope you’ve given us in Jesus will neither shame us or disappoint us. You’re not into false advertising, or bait and switch. For you shamed Jesus in our place upon the cross, and through his resurrection you’ve poured your love into our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit. O Father, keep pouring your love in and keep filling us with your Spirit, until the Day of consummate hope—the day when Jesus returns to finish making all things new. So very Amen, we pray with great gratitude, in Jesus’ name and for your glory.

Cry to God Incessantly

Ray Ortlund post:  Among the saints

“May a merciful God preserve me from a Christian Church in which everyone is a saint!  I want to be and remain in the church and little flock of the fainthearted, the feeble and the ailing, who feel and recognize the wretchedness of their sins, who sigh and cry to God incessantly for comfort and help, who believe in the forgiveness of sins.”

Martin Luther, in Luther’s Works (St. Louis, 1957), XXII:55.

Cultivation of Unhurried Intimacies

Thinking About ... post from The Wellspring

I want to tear down the fences that we have erected between language that deals with God and language that deals with the people around us. It is, after all, the same language. The same God we address in prayer and proclaim in sermons is also deeply, eternally involved in the men and women we engage in conversation, whether casually or intentionally. But not always obviously. God's words are not always prefaced by "Thus says the Lord." It takes time and attentiveness to make connections between the said and the unsaid, the direct and the indirect, the straightforward and the oblique. There are many occasions when the imperious or blunt approach honors neither our God nor our neighbor. Unlike raw facts, truth, especially personal truth, requires the cultivation of unhurried intimacies...God does not compartmentalize our lives into religious and secular. Why do we? --Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers

Friendship of Jesus

Is it true that "Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal?"  It is true!  That is precisely the gospel of heaven's availability that comes to us through the Beatitudes.  And you don't have to wait until you're dead.  Jesus offers to all such people as these the present blessedness of the present kingdom -- regardless of circumstances.  The condition of life sought for by human beings through the ages is attained in the quietly transforming friendship of Jesus.

The Divine Conspiracy Participant Guide

Receive the Finished Reality

Excerpts from Tullian Tchividjian post:  Rethinking Progress

The gospel has me reconsidering the typical way we think about Christian growth.

It has me rethinking spiritual measurements and maturity; what it means to change, develop, grow; what the pursuit of holiness and the practice of godliness really entails.

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For example, when we read passages like Colossians 3:5-17, where Paul exhorts the Colossian church  to “put on the new self” he uses many behavioral examples: put to death “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” He goes on and exhorts them to put away “anger, wrath, malice, slander” and so on. In v.12 he switches gears and lists a whole lot of things for us to put on: “kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” just to name a few.

But what’s at the root of this good and bad fruit? What produces both the bad and good behavior Paul addresses here?

Every temptation to sin is a temptation, in the moment, to disbelieve the gospel–the temptation to secure for myself in that moment something I think I need in order to be happy, something I don’t yet have: meaning, freedom, validation, and so on. Bad behavior happens when we fail to believe that everything I need, in Christ I already have; it happens when we fail to believe in the rich provisional resources that are already ours in the gospel. Conversely, good behavior happens when we daily rest in and receive Christ’s “It is finished” into new and deeper parts of our being every day— into our rebellious regions of unbelief (what writer calls “our unevangelized territories”) smashing any sense of need to secure for ourselves anything beyond what Christ has already secured for us.

Colossians 3:5-17, in other words, provides an illustration of what takes place on the outside when something deeper happens (or doesn’t happen) on the inside.

So, going back to Philippians 2:12, when Paul tells us to “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” he’s making it clear that we’ve got work to do—but what exactly is the work? Get better? Try harder? Clean up your act? Pray more? Get more involved in church? Read the Bible longer? What precisely is Paul exhorting us to do? Clearly, it’s not a matter of whether or not effort is needed. The real issue is Where are we focusing our efforts? Are we working hard to perform? Or are we working hard to rest in Christ’s performance for us?

He goes on to explain: “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:13). God works his work in you—which is the work already accomplished by Christ. Our hard work, therefore, means coming to a greater understanding of his work. As I mentioned a few posts ago, in his Lectures on Romans Martin Luther wrote, “To progress is always to begin again.” Real spiritual progress, in other words, requires a daily going backwards.

I used to think that when the Apostle Paul tells us to work out our salvation, it meant go out and get what you don’t have—get more patience, get more strength, get more joy, get more love, and so on. But after reading the Bible more carefully, I now understand that Christian growth does not happen by working hard to get something you don’t have. Rather, Christian growth happens by working hard to daily swim in the reality of what you do have. Believing again and again the gospel of God’s free justifying grace everyday is the hard work we’re called to.

This means that real change happens only as we continuously rediscover the gospel. The progress of the Christian life is “not our movement toward the goal; it’s the movement of the goal on us.” Sanctification involves God’s attack on our unbelief—our self-centered refusal to believe that God’s approval of us in Christ is full and final. It happens as we daily receive and rest in our unconditional justification. As G. C. Berkouwer said, “The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.”

2 Peter 3:18 succinctly describes growth by saying, “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Growth always happens “in grace.” In other words, the truest measure of our growth is not our behavior (otherwise the Pharisees would have been the godliest people on the planet); it’s our grasp of grace–a grasp which involves coming to deeper and deeper terms with the unconditionality of God’s love. It’s also growth in “the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” This doesn’t simply mean learning facts about Jesus. It means growing in our love for Christ because of what he has already earned and secured for us and then living in a more vital awareness of that grace. Our main problem in the Christian life is not that we don’t try hard enough to be good, but that we haven’t believed the gospel and received its finished reality into all parts of our life.

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So, by all means work! But the hard work is not what you think it is–your personal improvement and moral progress. The hard work is washing your hands of you and resting in Christ finished work for you–which will inevitably produce personal improvement and moral progress.

The real question, then, is: What are you going to do now that you don’t have to do anything? What will your life look like lived under the banner which reads “It is finished?”

What you’ll discover is that once the gospel frees you from having to do anything for Jesus, you’ll want to do everything for Jesus so that “whether you eat or drink or whatever you do” you’ll do it all to the glory of God.

That’s real progress!

Perceptual Frames

Mark Batterson post:  Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I’ve always been a huge C.S. Lewis fan. He was a rare combination of right-brain creativity and left-brain logic. And who doesn’t love the Chronicles of Narnia, the book and the movie.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader DVD releases on April 8. Just thought I’d share a thought from a very metaphorical movie. It’s a must-see.

My favorite moment in the movie is when the framed picture of a ship on the high seas becomes a porthole and water starts flooding the room through the frame. That frame is a portal to another world—the world of Narnia. The frame is the difference between Edmund being a kid and a king.

Lucy and Edmund and their cousin Eustace, go through the frame, step into the picture, and find themselves in a totally different reality called Narnia. I know that’s fiction. But it’s a picture of the importance of our perceptual frames. Our perceptual frames are portals. Our perceptual frames eventually become our reality. We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. And the way we see the world shapes the world. Our perceptual frames become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you frame the world the wrong way, you become the wrong person. If you frame the world with faith, that becomes your reality! That is what happens to Edmund. The frame becomes the reality.

Are you allowing your circumstances to frame God? Or is your faith in God framing your circumstances? The choice is yours.

Hallelujah, What a Savior

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer of Praise for the Love of Jesus

     Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

     Dear Jesus, the portion of your Word creates a holy ambivalence in my heart this morning. On one hand, I feel great despair, for my thoughts, words and deeds contradict the beauty of the love described in these few verses. On the other hand, I feel overwhelming delight, for this is exactly the way you love me and every member of your babes-in-agape Bride.
     Indeed, we would eternally despair if the gospel wasn’t true. May your lavish love for us be so convicting, compelling and transforming that we will fall down in worship of you today and rise to love one another as you love us. Have mercy of us, Jesus, have mercy on me.
     No one is as patient and kind as you, Jesus. You never get disgusted with us or roll your eyes in contempt. Your kindness is not connected to anything in us, for we give you plenty of reasons to be angry and harsh. You certainly don’t envy anything we have or are, for there is nothing to envy. In fact, you’re the opposite of envy—you’re generous. You’ve taken our poverty and have given us your riches. You’re the only one who can boast about anything, yet you emptied yourself of your glory, taking the nature and posture of a humble servant—the Servant of the Lord, dying in our place that we might live with you forever.
     Your matchless humility exposes our pervasive arrogance, and your constant tenderness shames our penchant for rudeness. Far from insisting on your own way, you called the Father’s will your bread. Our selfishness stands condemned. Jesus, you never get irritated, as hard as that is to conceive, and you don’t resent anything or anyone, even for a nano-second. Your heart breaks over evil and no one delights in truth more than you, for you are the Truth.
     Jesus you bear all things, because you bore the full weight of our sin upon the cross. You believe all things, because you know all things. Nothing will ever surprise you. You hope all things, because you know the end of God’s Story and have made it ours. You endure all things, because you are presently making all things new, including us. Hallelujah, what a salvation! Hallelujah, what a Savior. Live and love more fully in us and through us. So very Amen, we pray, in your merciful and matchless name.
  

Look for the Indicative

Tullian Tchividjian post:  Promise Driven Commission

About 10 days ago, Mike Horton’s new book on the Great Commission came out entitled The Gospel Commission: Recovering God’s Strategy for Making Disciples.

Mike spoke on this topic during his session at our inaugural “Gospel-Centered Life” conference at Coral Ridge back in January (you can listen to the audio here). He began by asking the audience to say the opening words of the Great Commission from Matthew 28 out loud. As you can imagine, almost everybody started with the words, “Go therefore…”. Mike rightly pointed out that the Great Commission actually begins with the words, “All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me” (v. 18). It’s only after Jesus says that, that he says, “Go therefore…” (v.19).

This may seem like an insignificant thing but it’s actually a paradigm shattering observation. In fact, if we don’t see it, our understanding of the church’s mission will be weakened.

In an article Mike wrote for Modern Reformation magazine entitled The Great Announcement, he expands on this idea:

Just go. Just do it. “Get ‘er done,” as they say. Reflection slows you down.

The same thing can happen with the Great Commission. It doesn’t really matter if we don’t get all the details right as long as we are zealous. It is easy to subordinate the message to the mission, the evangel to evangelism, as if being busy with outreach could trump the content of what we have been given to communicate.

Of course, it can work the other way, too. We can be preoccupied with getting the message right without actually getting it out. The evangelist D. L. Moody once quipped to a critic of his methods, “I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.” If “zeal without knowledge” is deadly (Rom. 10:2-3), then knowledge without zeal is dead. The Great Commission doesn’t give any quarter to either of these extremes.

“Go therefore into all the world and make disciples.” This is the version of the Great Commission that many of us memorized. However, it leaves out a great deal. To begin with, it leaves out the whole rationale for the commission in the first place. Although it sounds a little corny, a good rule of thumb in reading the Scriptures is that whenever you find a “therefore” you need to stop and ask “what it’s there for.”

When we see an imperative such as “Go therefore,” we need to go back and look at what has already been said leading up to it. There is no reason for us to go into all the world as Christ’s ambassadors apart from the work that he has already accomplished.

The Great Commission actually begins with the declaration, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18). This is the rationale for everything the church is called to do and to be. The church’s commission is indeed directed by a purpose (“making disciples of all nations”), but it is driven by a promise.

Read the whole thing here.

Mike’s excellent point is one that I’ve made time and time again. Namely, that imperatives – indicatives = impossibilities! Whenever we see an imperative in the Bible (what we must do) we need to look for the indicative that grounds it (what Jesus has done). Because, no matter how hard you try or how radical you get, any engine smaller than the gospel that you depend on for power to do what God has called you to do will conk out…most importantly, the Great Commission!

Not Victims

Stephen Furtick post:  Use it

In my high school wrestling days, my coaches taught me a technique that seems to work well in every area of life.

Whatever your opponent gives you to work with, use it.

For instance, if your opponent gives you only one vulnerable arm to work with, use it to your advantage. If your opponent aggressively attacks you, use his own momentum to bring him down.

I think you see this same kind of technique in the lives of people like the apostle Paul. And it’s the reason why he was so effective. He used whatever was given to him. He saw the potential in every situation and this allowed him to be adaptable and useful in every situation.

If he was put in jail, he converted the guards.
If he was executed, he saw it as gain.
If they let him live, he’d preach the gospel.
If he was given a thorn in his flesh, he’d use it as an opportunity to let God’s power shine in his weakness.

This made Paul the freest and most powerful man on the planet. And there’s no coincidence that he walked in a level of joy and intimacy with God that most of us fall cosmically short of.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. The same technique that worked for him can work for us too.

The circumstances, struggles, and attacks you face are not the ultimate determining factor of the kind of life you live. How you use them is. And there isn’t a single situation in your life that can’t be used for your good and God’s glory.

If you’re facing adversity, use it to develop patience and endurance.
If you’re in a place of financial scarcity, use it to display God’s sufficiency.
If you’ve failed, use it to learn.
If Satan is exploiting one of your past failures, use it to display God’s past faithfulness on the cross.
Whatever you do, refuse to be a victim of what’s thrown at you.

Whatever you’re given in life, use it. And God will use you.

For Your Life

Ray Ortlund post:  Do not starve yourself any longer

“What has exceedingly hurt you in time past, nay, and I fear, to this day, is lack of reading.  I scarce ever knew a preacher who read so little.  And perhaps, by neglecting it, you have lost the taste for it.  Hence your talent in preaching does not increase.  It is just the same as it was seven years ago.  It is lively, but not deep; there is little variety; there is no compass of thought.  Reading only can supply this, with meditation and daily prayer.  You wrong yourself greatly by omitting this.  You can never be a deep preacher without it, any more than a thorough Christian.  Oh begin!  Fix some part of every day for private exercise.  You may acquire the taste which you have not; what is tedious at first will afterward be pleasant.  Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily.  It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days, and a pretty, superficial preacher.  Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow.  Do not starve yourself any longer.  Take up your cross and be a Christian altogether.  Then will all the children of God rejoice (not grieve) over you, and in particular yours.”

John Wesley, writing to a younger minister, quoted in D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, Letters Along The Way (Wheaton, 1993), page 169.

Now My Eyes Have Seen You

Excerpt from Stained Glass Pickup post:  Job's Resolve

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In the Bible, the written account of Job’s story drops us into the middle of his existence. He is wealthy, has a wife, sons and daughters. And he faithfully sacrifices and prays for his children, in case any of them inadvertently sin. All is well in Job’s world when we first hear about him. The only trouble is that we’re hearing about Job because a conversation is going on between God and Satan, and Job is the topic. God’s portion of that talk praised his servant Job: “[H]e is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (1:8). But Satan goads God by naming all of God’s “umbrella” blessings: A hedge of protection for Job and his family, and he has massive wealth. Satan then wagered if God stretched out his hand and struck Job and everything he has “he will surely curse you to your face” (vs. 11).

I don’t pretend to understand what happened in that context or happened next, but I do know that God took a stand for Job’s integrity and right thinking, saying in essence, “I know my servant Job’s heart and I can count on his faithfulness.” Satan was given permission to strike out against Job. In a single day, he lost his family and wealth, and all that was left was his wife. When Job refused to turn against God, then Satan gained permission to bring illness upon Job, but that’s where God’s permission stopped. He would not allow Job’s life to be snuffed out.

Job’s already pitiable life got really rough, and Job described the wretched misery of his illness: “My body is clothed with worms and scabs; my skin is broken and festering” (7: 5). Besides the physical pain, his four friends came to commiserate with him, but they salted and vinegared his open wounds by their judgments and words expressing that surely Job’s personal sins had brought about his affliction. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Being misunderstood. Getting bad advice. Needing relief. Wanting empathy. Yearning to know why he suffered so much loss. Finally, a message came to Job from God himself. God told and showed Job that he doesn’t think, do, or imagine as man does. God revealed to Job that the human experience involves mystery and faith. And that some things we will never know.

Job’s faith might have trembled during his horrific ordeal, but he remained firm in his resolve that even if God allowed his life to be taken, God remained trustworthy: “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (13:15).

The epilogue of Job’s story tells us that God blessed his latter years even more than the first of his life (42:12-16). Our index card scripture for this week is a portion of Job’s response when God “answered” Job out of the storm. God often brings deeper understanding to us during our storms. And we, along with Job can express our praise when God allows us deeper glimpses into his loving kindness.

Index Card Scripture for Week 14: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5). 

Overflows with Happiness

"God is more aware of the pain in this world than we are.  Yet, he is a God of joy and overflows with happiness.  When his joy is in us and we let it resonate wherever we go, the kingdom of God is near."

The Divine Conspiracy Participant Guide