Those Days

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer for Strength for “One of THOSE Days”

“This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts. Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain. And he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it!’” Zechariah 4:6-7

Dear Lord Jesus, it’s looking like one of THOSE days—one of those days I’m dreading like a root canal; like a busy interstate turned parking lot when I’m in a hurry to get home; like having to organize a garage filled with three years of clutter. I’m already wishing I was just finishing supper rather than soon enjoying breakfast. Am I whining? Yes I am, Lord, but I’m bringing my bad attitude and my very busy day to you.

You promised the sufficiency of your Spirit to Zerubbabel—the doubting governor of Jerusalem faced with the overwhelming task of rebuilding the Temple. My task is not nearly as daunting, neither am I facing a mountain than needs to be leveled. But I am no less in need of the power of the Holy Spirit today. I feel like my might and power are the equivalent of one AAA battery facing a day requiring a whole power plant. So I take you at your word, O LORD of hosts.

Jesus, please give me emotional strength to be really present with all the people I’ll meet with today. I’ve taken on more than is reasonable and my temptation will be to objectify each situation and move through my schedule as quickly as possible. But nobody is “just” an appointment to keep, a problem to solve or somebody to fix. I’ll be with your sons and daughters today—broken, like me; needing you, like me; precious in your sight, like me.

Please give me spiritual strength to be discerning, wise and faithful to the gospel. Enable me to listen below the waterline of normal conversation. Help me hear what’s really being said not spend most of my energy simply rehearsing my next words. Help me resist the “pulls” and the temptation to give pragmatic formulas for situations demanding a demonstration of the truth and power of the gospel.

Please give me physical strength as the day goes on. Doing hard and heart work is exhausting, and the more tired I get the less likely I am to love well. I can do all things through you, Lord Jesus, for you give strength that we simply do not have in ourselves.

Our great joy and hope is in knowing that you are the fulfillment of Zechariah’s vision of the completed temple. Lord Jesus, you are the top stone, capstone and cornerstone of the everlasting temple (1 Peter 2:4-10). When we trust in you, we are never shamed or disappointed. Help us fix our gaze on you today and offer heartfelt shouts of thanksgiving and praise. “Grace, grace from you,” O, faithful and loving Savior. So very Amen, we pray in your name, with anticipation and hope.

Joy, Joy, Joy

John Piper post:  Thank you, Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematical genius who was born June 19, 1623. After running from God until he was 31 years old, on November 23, 1654 at 10:30 pm, Pascal met God and was profoundly and unshakably converted to Jesus Christ. He wrote it down on a piece of parchment and sewed into his coat where it was found after his death eight years later. It said,

Year of grace 1654, Monday 23 November, feast of St. Clement . . . from about half past ten at night to about half an hour after midnight, FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars. Certitude, heartfelt joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. God of Jesus Christ. "My God and your God." . . . Joy, Joy, Joy, tears of joy. . . Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. May I never be separated from him.

In 1968 Pascal and C. S. Lewis and Jonathan Edwards and Dan Fuller and the Bible teamed up to change my life forever with those words, "Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy." Here’s how Pascal blew away my resistance to joy.

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

I suspected this was true. But I always feared that it was sin. That wanting to be happy was a moral defect. That self-denial meant renouncing joy, not renouncing lesser joys for greater joys.

But then God conspired with these writers to force me to reread the Bible. To give it a chance to have its true say. And what I found there concerning joy changed me forever. I have been trying to understand it and live it and teach it ever since. It’s not new. It’s been there for thousands of years.
I thank God today for Pascal’s part in my awakening.

Completely Free

What's Best Next post: The Counterintuitive Nature of the Gospel

CJ Mahaney, in The Cross Centered Life:  

Do you see any traces of [a sense of] condemnation in your life? Don’t be surprised if you do. But don’t keep carrying the burden! Because of the gospel’s power you can be completely free of all condemnation.

Not mostly free; completely free.

Don’t buy the lie that cultivating condemnation and wallowing in your shame is somehow pleasing to God, or that a constant, low-grade guilt will somehow promote holiness and spiritual maturity.

It’s just the opposite! God is glorified when we believe with all our hearts that those who trust in Christ can never be condemned. It’s only when we receive his free gift of grace and live in the good of total forgiveness that we’re able to turn from old, sinful ways of living and walk in grace-motivated obedience.

 

Both Avoidance and Engagement

Jonathan Parnell post:  Six Truths on Christian Involvement

In a 2000 sermon, John Piper draws out six truths from 1 Peter 2:9-17 about how Christians should be involved in society and culture.

________

1. We were once all in darkness, along with the whole world.

Notice the phrase near the end of verse 9: "Him who has called you out of darkness." We were once in darkness. The darkness of sin and unbelief and ignorance about God and his ways. It was the darkness of deadness in sin, as Paul says in Ephesians 2:5. This is the condition of our culture and our society. And we were once a part of it by nature. Why are we no longer?

2. God called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

This truth comes from the same phrase in verse 9: "Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." We are not by nature smarter or wiser or more courageous than those who remain in darkness. The difference is that God exerted toward us an absolutely undeserved and compelling kindness: he called us. Paul put it like this in1 Corinthians 1:23-24, "We preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." It was the omnipotent call of God that wakened us from the spiritual sleep of death and opened our eyes to the power and wisdom of God in Christ. Let us never forget: Free and powerful grace alone is the decisive reason that we are able to see the darkness of our culture and be free in some measure from it.

3. God's aim in calling us out of darkness is to send us back to (but not in) that darkness to "proclaim his excellencies."

Now all of verse 9: "But you are a chosen race, A royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." That is why you have been called out. That is why you are God's people, a chosen race. We exist to display with word and deed the excellencies of God. This is the way God's call came to us. Freely we received, now let us freely give. Our witness is not the same as the call of God. But God's call happens through our display of God's excellencies. When we speak and show God's excellencies to others, we provide the truth that God may grant the blind to see. If we say nothing, they will see nothing. Faith comes by hearing (Romans 10:17). And new birth is "through the living and abiding word," the gospel (1 Peter 1:23-25).

4. God's aim is that the way we make his excellencies known to the darkened culture around us take place both by avoidance and by engagement.

This is very crucial to see. Some err here by stressing one to the exclusion of the other. One group is swept away with social action. Another is absorbed in personal holiness. The Biblical way is both/and, not either/or.

Notice verse 11: "Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul." This is the avoidance ethic. And it is absolutely right and necessary. There are things in our culture that we should simply avoid and abstain from.

But notice verse 12: "Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation." Here we are "among the Gentiles." Here we are going on display to the Gentiles. Here we are not just avoiding their effect on us, we are aiming at having an effect on them with positive action. "They observe your good deeds and glorify God."

Over and over in the New Testament the writers stress that we were created and converted to be engaged relentlessly in a life of public good deeds. Indeed, Titus 1:14says that Christ died to "purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds." The term "good deeds" does not mean sitting at home watching wholesome videos instead of going out and watching dirty movies.

Good deeds means designing ministries for caring for AIDS orphans in Africa, and feeding the malnourished, and housing the homeless, and teaching the illiterate and ignorant, and freeing the addicted and fighting crime and visiting the prisoner and befriending the lonely, laboring in the cause of protecting the unborn and relieving the crisis of unexpected pregnancies, and a thousand other visible ways of doing good to others in the name of Jesus (see Titus 2:7-8;3:8; Hebrews 10:22; Matthew 5:16).

My point here is that, in relation to our sin-riddled culture, we should pursue both avoidance and engagement; both purity of heart and merciful involvement, both personal holiness and public justice. In short, we should with the mind of Christ be both culture-denying and cultural transforming. The transformed mind steeped in scripture will discern when and how.

5. Submission to cultural institutions (like the state, and places of employment and family) is not canceled out by our freedom in Christ (and our citizenship being in heaven, and our being "strangers and exiles on earth), but our submission is put on a whole new footing of submission to God.

You see the call to submission in verse 13: "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution." Christians are not self-assertive rebels who kick against the pricks of regulations in government and business and schools and home. We are eager to be supportive and compliant wherever it does not compromise our commitment to Christ our king.

But notice the words in verse 13, "for the Lord's sake." Or: "On account of the Lord." Once we may have been submissive out of fear, or out of conniving for advancement, or out of greed, or out of laziness, or because we believed that these earthly institutions really were our master. But that is not how Christians submit now. It is for the Lord's sake.

Verse 16 is Peter's interpretation of those crucial words: "Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God." We are free. We are not slaves to any human institution. So why submit? Why not drive at any speed we want? Why not pay whatever tax we feel like? Why not come to class late? Why not wear perfume to the first service and park in the most convenient place for ourselves? Why not come in at whatever hour you please as a teenager? Why submit to a hundred rules and laws and guidelines in our culture and work places and schools and homes?

The answer is, God freed us from these institutions as masters, and then sent us back into them to declare his excellencies as his servants, not the servants of man. We submit in freedom, for the Lord's sake. Everything is on a different footing. All is from the Lord and for the Lord. Christ died to purify us for good deeds and we enter the world and the culture with a view to displaying the glory and the excellency of this great Christ.

6. Finally, Christians honor all persons, and seek to do it in different ways that are not the same for each, but appropriate to their roles in life.

Verse 17: "Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king." There is a special kind of honor for the king. There is a special fear for God. There is a special love for fellow Christians. But there is an honor for all persons, including the wicked.

Matthew Henry wrote:

The wicked must be honored, not for their wickedness, but for any other qualities, such as wit, prudence, courage, eminency of employment, or the hoary head. Abraham, Jacob, Samuel, the prophets, and the apostles never scrupled to give due honor to bad men (Commentary on the Whole Bible [Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., n.d.], 1019).

So in conclusion, let us not simply be a passive and apathetic people priding ourselves in our avoidance ethic. Let us live in the power of the grace that called us out of darkness into light and let us turn back to that very dark and dying culture and declare the excellencies of the One who called us, and let us be rich in good deeds, so that people might see the kind of Master we serve and give him glory on the day of visitation.

Shouts in Our Pain

Words of Life Weekly Devotional | LIFE Today

Sacrificial Suffering
by Andy McQuitty

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” – C.S. Lewis

I struggled to figure out what God was doing when I was diagnosed with cancer. It was like He was tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Get on this train, I want you to make a journey for me.” It wasn’t as if I could say, "No, I think I won’t get on the train.” That wasn’t the choice God was giving me. I was getting on the train whether I liked it or not. The choice I did have was what kind of journey it would be – a good one or a bad one.

My prayer from the beginning was simply, “Lord, wherever this train takes me, make this a good journey.”

And it was.

It still is. And not only for me. I think in all my years of pastoral ministry, God has used my suffering and my cancer to encourage and bless more people than anything I’ve ever done. From a human (selfish!) perspective, that’s kind of sad. Like anybody in their chosen career, I suppose I started out years ago in ministry daydreaming of someday being famous as a world-renowned preacher, or consummate author, or powerful leader and influencer in the church. But God is laughing, because any notoriety I may have is not because I became successful, but because I got sick. I’m not famous for being great, but for being the dude who almost died and lived to tell the tale. So be it! This is my calling. . . and yours. The ministry of sacrificial suffering. It’s the most peculiar sacrifice you can offer because it’s the most redemptive sacrifice you can offer.

Sacrificial suffering is undeserved and unavoidable. Rob a bank and you deserve jail. Lie to people and you deserve mistrust. But Jesus didn’t deserve what He got. He committed no sin and told no lies, yet he was sorely persecuted. There was nothing about his suffering that he brought upon himself or that he could have changed.

“When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly." (I Peter 2:23, NIV)

Sacrificial suffering is consciously entrusted to God. It’s not just miserably enduring pain and hoping God sees your plight. It’s embracing the pain knowing God is using your plight for redemption. Such ones impress God Himself with their faith and insight.

"For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God." (I Peter 2:19-20, NIV)

Consciousness of God’s good purposes for sacrificial suffering leads us to endure those sufferings as an active choice. The Greek word for endure is hupomenō. It means “to remain under.” In order to voluntarily stay in the place of pain for as long as God chooses, we have to entrust ourselves to God like Jesus did. Christ’s sacrificial suffering was redemptive. It brought us to God. Now we follow in His footsteps and are amazed to find that our sacrificial suffering is redemptive as well.

“Jesus replied, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’” (John 12:23-24, NIV)

Wheat, in scripture, is the basis of life. Raw wheat can be powdered into flour, germinated and dried into malt, or processed into pasta or roux. Wheat is the basic ingredient in porridge, crackers, biscuits, Muesli, pancakes, pastries, cakes, cookies, rolls, gravy, cereals and more. All this goodness comes from the kernel of wheat which, when planted, produces a stalk of wheat with a head that contains many kernels. When many stalks are harvested and replanted, acres of wheat can be grown. Eighty pounds of wheat seed per acre will harvest about 60 bushels of wheat from that one acre!

All that is required is that the one kernel dies. If the grain of wheat remains the same, according to the word of Jesus, it will never change. "But if it dies, it produces many seeds." Thus, a plant teaches a powerful principle: Sacrifice releases power; the greater the sacrifice, the greater the released power.

Jesus willingly “fell into the ground and died.” He willingly sacrificed His life. And the result of that sacrifice is the multitude of lives eternally saved. Here is the great Christian paradox, the unmistakable mark of an authentic gospel. It begins with dying -- a cross – and that sacrifice releases great power. That’s not just true for Jesus. It’s true for us as well.

When I have difficulty understanding my suffering in light of the cross of Christ, this declaration, taken from the words of the great South African writer and minister Andrew Murray, Jr., has helped me. In times of suffering say:

He brought me here. It is by His will I am in this strait place. In that I will rest.
He will keep me here in His love, and give me grace in this trial to behave as His child.
He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons He intends me to learn, and working in me the grace He means to bestow.

In His good time He can bring me out again - how and when He knows.

The promises of Jesus seem like a paradox, but they are profoundly true. To be whole, you must be broken. To live, you must give up your life. To receive, you must give. To be exalted, you must humble yourself. To be strong, you must be weak. To be fruitful, you must die. Therein lies the power of sacrifice.

Andy McQuitty is the pastor of Irving Bible Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. You can read the blog “A Note from Pastor Andy” on Facebook.

Living Life

Stephen Furtick post:  How to Glorify God

By this is my father glorified, that you bear much fruit.
John 15:8

The glory of God is the single most important thing in the world to God. And therefore you glorifying God is the single most important thing you can do with your life.

But if we were honest, most of us have little to no idea what that actually means. We talk about God’s glory in abstract ways. We talk about glorifying God in convoluted ways. And so at the end of the day, we know what everything is for – the glory of God – and what we should do – glorify Him – but we don’t know how to actually do it.

Do we sing?

Do we simply go around saying “for your glory” after every little thing we do and at the end of every prayer?

Is it just that we know that everything is for the glory of God?

If I’m a professional athlete, is it mentioning God’s name after I win a game?

If I’m a designer, do I have to stitch a verse somewhere on my clothing?

It can get pretty complicated and nebulous. Luckily, Jesus says it’s actually pretty simple, straightforward, and concrete. It’s the practical fruit of your life that produces the glory of God.

In other words, I don’t know that it matters to God that you can articulate the Westminster Catechism’s definition of the glory of God and our duty to glorify Him. I don’t know that it matters if you top off your prayers with a little “glory of God” throw in at the end.

I think what matters to God and what actually glorifies Him is that you do life His way. That you live in such a way that God’s activity is actually visible in your life. And not just your words.

Let me put it simply:
When husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church, it glorifies God.
When you manage your finances God’s way, it glorifies God.
When you honor the people around you, it glorifies God.
When you love the waiter that’s serving you on Sunday and leave them a good tip, it glorifies God much more than when you sang about His glory an hour earlier.

Let’s all stop the abstract “glory” talk and lets get down to the business of actually doing it. Press into Jesus. Live life the way He intends it. And let the fruit you’re producing do the talking for you.

Fruit

Kevin DeYoung post:  Glory of God:  Fruit from the Root

John 15:1-11
“By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”  (verse eight)



Talk is cheap. Anyone can say he is a Christian. In fact, Jesus tells us that on the last day many will say “Lord, Lord” who never really knew Jesus. We must do more than say we are Jesus’ disciples. We must bear fruit like we are Jesus’ disciples. The Bible is very clear about this: we are saved by grace, but the grace that saves also transforms. It is joyfully and mercifully true that we don’t have to merit a good standing before God. Justification is by faith alone. But everyone who is truly justified–declared righteous–will also be sanctified–made more and more into Christ’s image. Bad trees bear bad fruit. Good trees bear good fruit.

Bearing good fruit brings God glory. When we look and act like Jesus, it shows that he is good enough to save us, valuable enough to be followed, and strong enough to change us. God is not glorified by nominal Christians who never lift a finger to serve others, or egg-headed believers who never pray or evangelize, or cranky disciples who show zero love, joy, patience, or kindness. God is glorified when we follow Jesus in all of life and bear fruit as his disciples.

Reveal More and More

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer for Seeing MUCH More of the Gospel

The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 2 Cor. 4:4

Lord Jesus, we thank you for the gift of another day. Please fill our gaze with your beauty, our minds with your truth, and our hearts with more of the gospel—MUCH more of the gospel. If the main strategy of the kingdom of darkness is to keep unbelievers in the dark about the gospel of your glory and grace, why would we think evil would choose some other tactic for believers—for us? So as we pray for our unbelieving friends today, we also pray for ourselves.

Jesus, reveal more and more of the gospel to us—more and more of who you really and fully are; more and more of what you’ve already accomplished by your life, death, and resurrection for us; more and more of your life of heavenly orchestration, intercession and advocacy on our behalf; more and more of what you’re continuing to do in your commitment to make all things new; more and more of what it’s going to be like to live with you and the whole family of God in the new heaven and new earth. Show us, convince us, dazzle us, change us . . . and then show us even more.

Lord Jesus, don’t let us frame any notion of God apart from you, for you are the very image of God—God incarnate. Don’t let us read any part of the Bible without thinking about you—for everything written about you in the law of Moses, the Prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled (Luke 24:44). Don’t let us desert you, even for fifteen minutes, by turning to some other gospel—which is really no gospel at all (Gal. 1:6–7). As the gospel is producing fruit and growing all over the world, so may it enlarge our hearts and bring forth lasting fruit to your glory (Col. 1:6).

Jesus, you’ve already moved us from total blindness to a 20/200 vision of the gospel. But take us on to 20/100, then 20/50, then 20/20, then 20/15, until the day we see you with glorified eyes. In that day we’ll see you as you are and we will be like you (1 John 3:2). Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! What a heart-liberating and life-purifying this hope is!  By the light of this hope, we surrender to your purposes for this day. So very Amen, we pray in your peerless and powerful name. Amen.

Restore Us to the Joy of Our Salvation

Tullian Tchividjian post:  Only The Gospel Fills Our Sails

Michael Horton rightly warns against depending on “guidance technology” to put wind in our sails:

Like a sailboat equipped with the most sophisticated guidance technology, our Christian lives are often decked out with the latest principles for living, with spiritual guidance counselors telling us what will make life really work for us and our families. Oftentimes, brand new Christians sail out of the harbor under full sail, eager to follow the guidance system, making use of all the gadgets, enthusiastically listening to every fellow boater who has some advice to offer. Yet as many long-time believers know, eventually the winds die down and we find ourselves dead in the water. Then when storm clouds gather on the horizon, we discover that all of the guidance technology and good advice in the world cannot fill our sails so that we can return safely to the harbor. The equipment can plot our course, tell us that a storm is coming, and indicate our present location, but it cannot move us one inch toward the safety of the harbor. In other words, if we are looking for motivation in the Christian life, it cannot come from motivational principles; only the gospel fills our sails…While God’s wise directions are necessary, apart from the ever present word of promise that despite our failures at sea, God is at the helm piloting us to safety, we will eventually give up on sailing altogether.  Purposes, laws, principles, suggestions, and good advice can set our course, but only the gospel promise can fill our sails and restore to us the joy of our salvation.

The Gospel Driven Life, pg. 143-144

Ultimate Allegiance

Excerpt from Stephen Um:  Discipleship and the Idols of Family and Culture

Much has been written about the cost of discipleship. Even more has been said. And yet, as often as we hear about all that Jesus demands of us as his disciples, we cannot avoid being set off balance when we run into a difficult passage like Luke 14:26-27, 33:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. . . . So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Who doesn’t bristle under the sharp language of hate, cross bearing, and renunciation? It seems to cut against everything that makes us who we are. Indeed, it does.

So what is Jesus up to in this passage? Is he really suggesting that we should “hate” our families, and even ourselves, with all that such a stance would entail? On the one hand, we must obviously say “no.” After all, Jesus is the one who perfectly fulfilled the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, and even calls us to love our enemies. Whatever he means, he is not contradicting himself, and he is not suggesting that we do something that is out of accord with the rest of God’s Word.

...


This call to ultimate allegiance challenges and cuts against the idols of every culture. We might certainly explore this on the micro-levels of nation, ethnicity, neighborhoods, and more. But in this context I’m particularly interested in the macro-level differences between a more traditional Eastern culture and a progressive Western culture. The costly call of Luke 14 challenges both the Eastern and the Western cultural mindset, and is seen clearly in episodes in which Jesus calls his disciples to follow him.

In Matthew 4:21-22 we find James and John in a boat mending their fishing nets, and their father was with them in the boat. It is at this point that Jesus “called them,” and upon hearing this call, the brothers “immediately left the boat and their father and followed him.”

Now, what’s intriguing here is the different ways in which this text could be read. On the one hand, a typical Westerner might look at this passage and see little challenge in a call that results in the leaving behind of one’s father. This is because, in Western cultures, greater allegiance tends to be given to the individual and his vocation, regardless of how it might affect one’s family, community, and others. In stark contrast, a more conservative Eastern culture often places more emphasis on family, community, and corporate solidarity.

Thus, this call, which is a shining example of the kind of commitment that Christ called for in Luke 14, is particularly challenging to more traditional cultures. While society itself, our local communities, and even our families may be demanding that we give our primary devotion to them, the call to discipleship always includes a drastic re-ordering of that which is most precious to us, and may sometimes include a departure from those things that refuse to come under the rule of our new Master.


Interestingly, however, Matthew 4:18-20 gives us a picture that equally challenges the overly individualized Western reader. It is there that we find Peter and Andrew in the middle of their day’s work—fishing. When Jesus sees them, he says, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Notice that the call here is in specific relationship to their vocation. Jesus wants to redefine their entire lives, and he does so by calling them to shift their line of work. Upon hearing the call they immediately leave their nets and follow him.

Such a call might not be all that hard for those in a more traditional culture to hear. After all, they may be accustomed to sacrificing personal ambition and dreams on the altar of community and family. But for the more progressive Western reader, it is almost unfathomable that devotion to Christ might mean that ambition and career-building would need to take a back seat to Jesus.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying that Christ is calling Easterners to leave their families, and Westerners to leave their careers. Rather, I am saying that the call to discipleship is a fundamental redirection of our human existence, a reorientation, an all-embracing turning about of our lives in order that our affections might be placed primarily upon Christ. And, this being the case, the call to discipleship will cut through and across every culture. So, for the progressive, part of the call will be to make sure that Christ is more important than one’s work. We must find our identity in being a disciple of Christ, rather than as disciples of our career development. As for the traditionalist, the challenge may be in making certain that Christ takes precedence in one’s life over and above family, community, and society. We must make sure that Christ is the supreme treasure in our lives.

Whatever the case may be, as disciples of Christ we are challenged to give him our ultimate allegiance, no matter our cultural background or social location. This being the case, our comfort and our energies must be derived from the fact that Christ not only transcends human culture, but he also entered into it. And, having entered into culture, he not only challenges the reigning paradigms, but also promises to redeem all that is broken about them.

...

Artesian Springs

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer for Pentecost Sunday

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. Rev. 22:17

Blessed Holy Spirit, it’s Pentecost Sunday, and how appropriate to be meditating on the last command in the Bible—the final invitation in which you beckon believers and non-believers alike: “Come, thirsty ones! Come, desiring ones! Come and take the free gift of the water of life.”

How we praise you for constantly preaching the gospel to our hearts and to the nations—making much of Jesus and helping us see how much we need the grace of God. Even to the very end of history, you will continue faithfully to do so. By your power, I remain redemptively thirsty. I have deep desire you alone can meet. I do come once again, gratefully and expectantly.

On the day you first convinced me of my need for Jesus and gave me gave me faith to trust him, you created an unquenchable thirst in my heart for more of the water of life—the artesian springs of eternal life. By your doing, I have discovered how the bitter waters of sin only make me sick; the deceiving waters of my broken cisterns satisfy me ever so briefly; and the illusionary waters of countless mirages are just that—empty illusions. I’ve paid a great price for all of these deadly waters, but the life-renewing water Jesus gives is absolutely free! Hallelujah!

So once again, I bring my ever-present thirst to you. I’m thirsty to know Jesus better and better. I’m thirsty to be quicker in my repentances and slower in my excuses. I’m thirsty to grow more of your fruit and less of my thorns. I’m thirsty to be freer to love others as Jesus loves us. Slake these thirsts by the water of the gospel, and then intensify them again and again.

I’m thirsty for the life we will enjoy in new heaven and new earth—where every magnificent promise God has made will be wondrously fulfilled. I’m thirsty for the wedding feast of the Lamb, when the Bride will no longer say, “Come!” but will say, “We’re here, all of us—the entire pan-national family of God!” I’m thirsty for the day of no longer knowing in part—the day when the knowledge of God’s glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. I’m thirsty for the day of no more thirst. Hasten that Day.

Indeed, on this Pentecost Sunday, we hear you, and we come and we cry, “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on us!” So very Amen, we pray in the fullness and faithfulness of Jesus’ name.

Calling and Cost

Steven Furtick post:  Great Calling, Great Cost

But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”
Acts 9:15-16

Most of us focus on the incredible accomplishments of Paul.
How he wrote 2/3 of the New Testament.
Took the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Became the greatest missionary and one of the greatest preachers ever.

Sometimes we’ll point out his suffering. But it’s usually isolated. We use it to talk about pain and trials and how to get through them. Or how God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. All of that is true, but I think we often miss a crucial point.

Paul’s accomplishments and his suffering went together.
And there’s a reason for that.

It’s not because God had some kind of a secret vendetta against Paul. He had killed Christians, so why not make him drink a little of his own medicine while using him to spread the gospel.

As others have pointed out before, it’s because for Paul to be used greatly, he had to be wounded deeply. The greater the calling, the greater the cost. Making a difference in the world means absorbing substantial pain. For the sake of God, and for the sake of the people you’re making a difference for.

That was true for Paul.

And it will be true for you, too.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you’ve got flogging to look forward to. But I am saying that most of us want to do the kinds of things Paul did without having to go through the kinds of things Paul went through. And it doesn’t work like that.

God has to bruise you before He can use you. So you’ll be sensitive to His touch. So you won’t have an ounce of self-reliance in you. So you’ll be able to relate to the people you’re ministering to. So when everything is dark around you, your light within you will actually have a chance to shine.

If you really want to be used greatly by God, accept this now:
You’re going to be tired.
You’re going to be betrayed.
You’re going to suffer.

Like Paul, your great calling will exact a great cost. You’ll be able to say, “For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body” (2 Corinthians 4:11).

But also like Paul, that won’t be the final word for you. You’ll be able to say, “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

God Himself: The Greatest Treasure

Excerpt from John Piper:  The Works of God and the Worship of Jesus

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The implication of this for your life is profound. No matter what mess you’re in or what pain you’re in, the causes of that mess and that pain are not decisive in explaining it. What is decisive in explaining it is God’s purpose. Yes, there are causes. Some of them your fault, perhaps, and some of them not. But those causes are not decisive in determining the meaning of your mess or your pain. What is absolutely decisive is God’s purpose. “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (verse 3).

And if you will confess your sins, and hold fast to Jesus as your Rock and your Redeemer and your Riches, God’s purpose for your mess and your pain will be a good purpose. It will be worth everything you must endure. We know this is true because God says so. Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”


Of course, none of this will make sense, or be helpful, if God himself, and the glory of his incomparable works, is not your greatest treasure. When Jesus says, the purpose of this blindness is “that the works of God might be displayed in him,” he assumes the manifestation of the works of God, has a value that outweighs years and years of blindness. Both for the man and his parents.

In order to embrace that, we have to value the manifestation of the works of God more than we value seeing. Indeed more than we value life itself. Psalm 63:3 says, “Your steadfast love is better than life.” And Jesus said to the prisoners in Smyrna, “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” Being loved by God, and being with God forever, is better than having eyes and better than being alive in this world. If we don’t believe that, then saying that God has wise and good purposes in all our losses, will not be much comfort. But if we do believe it, not only will God’s purposes comfort us and strengthen us, but they will make us able to patiently, and gently help others through their times of darkness.

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Vast Heart of God

Ray Ortlund post:  The love of God to you

“Oh, you are not dealing with trifles when you are dealing with the love of God to you.  It is not a spare corner of the heart of God that He gives to you, as you may give a little love to the criminals in the jails, but the great, inconceivably vast heart of God belongs as much to every Christian as if there were not another being in the world for God to love!  Even as Jehovah loves His Only-begotten, so does He love each one of His children.”

C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the Old Testament (London, n.d.), III:568.

Enduring Happiness

Josh Etter post:  Five Statements That Summarize Christian Hedonism

John Piper writes:

1. The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful.
2. We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse. Instead we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction.
3. The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God.
4. The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it expands to meet the needs of others in the manifold ways of love.
5. To the extent we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people. Or, to put it positively: the pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue.

Excerpted from the Desiring God Seminar, Part 1.

Glory

Kevin DeYoung post:  Glory of God: In Jesus’ Name

John 14:12-14

Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  (v. 13)


It didn’t take long for my children to finish my prayers. Whether by the bedside or at the dinner table, all I had to say was “in Jesus’ name…” and by two years old they could say “Amen!” Most Christians conclude their prayers “in Jesus’ name”, but we rarely think of this little habit as a means of giving God glory.

When we ask for good things in Jesus’ name, God gets the glory. This doesn’t mean God will give us more grandchildren, a house with 5000 sq. ft., or even healthy bodies just by tacking “Jesus” to the end of our prayers. It means that when we pray according to his revealed will in Scripture– asking for things like faith, godliness, and the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name–God hears, answers, and gets glory. If the kids in nursery started saying “By the name of Jacob [my five year old], give me that ball,” and it actually worked, I would get glory through my son. I would beam with pride (and arrogance in my case) as kids handed over their toys at the invocation of my son’s name. In the same way, the Father is glorified when we pray in the name of his Son.

Millennials Desire to Connect and Invest

Ed Stetzer post:  Leadership Book Interview: Jess Rainer on The Millennials

Today Jess Rainer is at the blog to discuss The Millennials: Connecting to America's Largest Generation, a book that he co-wrote with Thom Rainer and based on a LifeWay Research project.


Jess is not just an author, but is a friend and team member in a church plant. We are pastors at Grace Church (along with Jimmy Disney and Barry Peters.) So, not only do I believe that he says is good, but I also see he lives what he says.

You can actually get The Millennials as a free download from now through June 20, 2011 at Amazon, B&N, CBD, and iTunes.

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Ed Stetzer: Perhaps unsurprisingly, media was a big influence on this generation. What were some of your conclusions about media use and influence for Millennials, based on your research?

JR: Media and technology are not only a big influence on the Millennials, but my peers (and I) consider technology as vital to our lives. Three out of four Millennials agree that their cell phone is vital to their life. It is an understatement to say media is important to the Millennials. Social media is integrated into the life of a Millennial on a daily basis. It serves as a means of communication.

Forms of communication is changing not only from previous generations, but within the Millennial generation as well. The older group of our respondents differed in preferred communication forms from the younger group. The older group mentioned phone, text, and email as a primary form. The younger group preferred phone and text. The younger Millennials text almost 20 percent more than the older Millennials. Email appears to be loosing ground as a form of communication. I look forward to seeing exactly how this trend continues and how it will impact the workplace.

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ES: Millennials, you say, desperately want to make a difference. What might this look like? Are they confident about their ability to effect change? Why or why not?

JR: Nine out of ten Millennials believe it is their responsibility to make a difference in the world. This difference is propelled by the desire to make an impact on other people. Three out of four Millennials believe it is their role in life to serve others. As mentioned previously, this generation is not beyond being successful and making a good income. But is is their reason for being successful that is different than previous generations. The Baby Boomer generation largely spent their wealth on buying material items. The Millennials are using their extra resources to take trips or setting up a non-profit organizations to help the less fortunate.

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ES: When you interviewed Millennials about religion, you discovered that for most, religion isn't even on their radar screen. Why? Do Millennials believe in God? In heaven? What about prayer?

JR: The involvement and participation in religion continues to decline in every generation. For the Millennials, religion is indeed not on their radar screen. Millennials nominally participate in spiritual activities. 50 percent claim to pray once a week or more. About 25 percent attend a religious service at least once a week. 21 percent read the Bible once a week or more. 15 percent study the Bible once a week or more.

While spiritual activities are low, Millennials do still believe in religious concepts. 45 percent agreed strongly that heaven is a real place. 60 percent believe that hell is a literal place and that Satan is real being. 72 percent agree that God is a real being and not just a concept.

We found numerous statistics about the different activities and beliefs of the Millennials, but there was one that was the most staggering to me. We calculated that roughly 15 percent of Millennials are true Christians. Beyond that only 6 percent of Millennials held to the common beliefs of an Evangelical Christian. Many factors can be attributed to the decline of Evangelical Christians among the generations, but it is clear that Millennials are turned off to organized religion, specifically the church.

ES: What are some of the big turn-offs about organized religion for Millennials?

JR: Seventy percent of Millennials agree that American churches are irrelevant today. It is not only non-Christian Millennials who believe this, but Christian Millennials as well. Instead of looking at what turns away Millennials from the church, allow me to end by sharing what the Millennials say attracts them to church.

In the last chapter of The Millennials, we address how the church has the task of reaching both Christian and non-Christian Millennials. Since non-Christian Millennials compromise approximately 85 percent of the generation, let's briefly look at what attracts this group to church. It is important to note that the Millennial generation is not opposed to church, but rather, indifferent towards the church.

The first step in bringing America's largest generation to church is to invite them. Millennials are very social. A simply invite from a friend can often make a large impact. It is also important to connect the Millennials with their Christian parents. As mentioned before, parents play a large role in the Millennials' lives. Millennials' parents can make a large, positive impact for the church. There has to be an outward focus. Millennials want to see churches who are serving others, reaching their communities, and making an impact across the globe. An inward focused church will not attract Millennials. Additionally, leaders of the church must display transparency, humility, and integrity.

Churches must start demonstrating the deep meaning of following Christ. "Church-as-usual" is not effective in reaching this large portion of the American population. Millennials desire to connect and invest their lives in something that is bigger than themselves. They want to have a radical lifestyle. And there's nothing more radical than a true follower of Christ.

Truest Measure of Our Growth

Excerpt from Tullian Tchividjian post:  Work Hard! But In Which Direction?

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In other words, remembering, revisiting, and rediscovering the reality of our justification every day is the hard work we’re called to do if we’re going to grow.

Similarly, in Colossians 1:9-14 Paul says: You will grow in your understanding of God’s will, be filled with spiritual wisdom and understanding, increase in your knowledge of God, be strengthened with God’s power which will produce joy filled patience and endurance (v.9-12a) as you come to a greater realization that you’ve already been qualified, delivered, transferred, redeemed, and forgiven (v.12b-14).

Sanctification is a grueling process. But it’s NOT the process of moving beyond the reality of our justification but rather moving deeper into the reality of our justification. If sanctification could be likened to our responsibility to swim, justification is the pool we swim in. Sanctification is the hard work of going back to the certainty of our already secured pardon in Christ and hitting the refresh button over and over.

A couple chapters after Peter exhorts us to “make every effort” he succinctly describes growth in 3:18 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 justifying grace. 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 fighting to live in a more vital awareness of that grace.

The reason this is such an important theme in the New Testament is because every temptation to sin (going all the way back to the Garden of Eden) is a temptation 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, cleansing, forgiveness, a sense of identity, worth, value and so on. Bad behavior, therefore, 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 our rebellious regions of unbelief (what one writer calls “our unevangelized territories”) smashing any sense of a self-aggrandizing and narcissistic need to secure for ourselves anything beyond what Christ has already secured for us.

Justification alone kills all of our self-salvation projects that fuel all of our bad behavior and moral failures (Read Romans 6:1-14).

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? 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). As is often, and rightly, said: We work out what God has worked in. Well, what has God worked in and what are we therefore to work out? God works his work in you—which is the work already accomplished by Christ. Christ’s subjective work in us is his constantly driving us back to the reality of his objective work for us. Sanctification feeds on justification, not the other way around. This is why 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.

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 fight (with blood, sweat, and tears–”making every effort”) to receive and rest in our unconditional justification. As G. C. Berkouwer said, “The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.”

It is in this context that I’ve said before how sanctification is the hard work of getting used to our justification. Sanctification, as someone once put it, is not something added to justification. It is, rather, the justified life.

So let’s make every effort. Let’s work. But let’s not make the mistake of thinking that the hard work is anything smaller than daily going back to reality of our justification, allowing it to kill our self-centered unbelief (which is the root of all sin) over and over and over again.

Transforms and Transformed

Excerpt from Miscellanies post:  Books for the Beach

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This week the blog will be again quiet since I’m enjoying some time with the family at the beach (obx). It has been quite a lot of fun and I have enjoyed quite a lot of time to read on this trip. Anticipating this free time I brought two books with me: Jonathan Edwards’ Charity and Its Fruits (Gerstner edition) and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (Rose translation).

Don Carson calls Les Miz “magnificent” and an illustration of how “God’s love so transforms us that we mediate it to others, who are thereby transformed” [Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, 82].

Edwards and Hugo work nicely together. Edwards expounds love, Hugo models love. The one explains from Scripture the importance and value of love, the other reveals the radical life of one loving man. Edwards encourages me to love because of God’s value on love. Hugo encourages me to love because of Monseigneur Bienvenu’s loving life. Edwards does what great sermons are intended to do: biblically illuminate, convince, and then move to action. Hugo does what great literature can do: delight the reader and then instruct.

Edward is direct, Hugo is indirect, yet both authors are working on my hard heart, softening it one line after another, pulverizing my pride, dulling the edges of my self-centeredness, just like the ceaseless ocean waves rolling and smashing the hardest rocks, broken glass, and the sharpest shells, by first taking off the edges and then breaking them down again into sand with its peaceful violence.

Astounding Kindness

Ray Ortlund post:  Moved and melted

“Having some time today I set myself to pray more, confessing sin, asking, thanking and praising.  I am ashamed of my shallowness in knowledge, feeling and desire.  Most humbling.  On the other hand, how astonishing has been the Lord’s kindness to me, mercies like waves of the sea, bright mercies like the stars of heaven, mercies to my soul, mercies to me a sinner in every possible way, crowned with the unspeakable kindness of putting me into the ministry and using me to win souls.  I long more and more to be ‘filled’ with the Spirit, and to see my congregation moved and melted under the Word, as in great revival times, ‘The place shaken where they are assembled together,’ because the Lord has come in power.”

Andrew A. Bonar, Diary and Letters (London, 1894), page 333.

God's Success Stories

Thabiti Anyabwile post:  Numbers, Faithfulness, or People

Perhaps one of the most important things to settle in ministry and as a church is how to define “success.”  Without question, we all have some notion of what constitutes “success.”  And whether it’s explicit or implicit, whether it’s written down or unspoken, our notion of success drives our behavior and our self evaluation.

Very often churches and church leaders define their “success” in terms of numbers.  Some defend measurement as an acceptable approach to gauging progress and effectiveness.  They speak of the number of baptisms or converts, church attendance and budgets, and other numerical assessments as shorthand for “success.”  Others reduce “success” to one factor: faithfulness.  ”Whether the numbers change or not,” this group tells us, “is not the issue.  The issue is whether a leader and church have been true to God’s design and intent.”

Here’s what both points of view can sometimes miss: persons and their stories.  We can miss that behind every number are tons of persons.  And a “faithful” man may in his own way miss persons by making persons into an abstract mass of “people.”  I know that numbers tell us something about people, but only at aggregate levels, levels that become useless with individuals.  And I know that a faithful pastor will love and care for people.  But he can begin to think that people get in the way of being faithful.  What we need are ways of defining and talking about the church and the work of the ministry that tells the stories of God’s work in, with and through persons.  Isn’t the church and leadership about God’s design and will for persons?  Isn’t the best measurement of “success” what happens in, to, and with persons in all of their beauty and ugly?

When I worked in policy advocacy world, we used to spend a lot of time and money trying to tell stories.  Every set of stats needed a person’s story to lead it or illustrate it.  Policymakers and advocates do it all the time.  Journalists employ personal story.  Even businesses are getting much better at it.  Consider this commercial from Chick-fil-A (HT: Tim Peters):



Powerful, isn’t it?

As powerful as this is, the greatest stories to tell are the stories of God’s work in the persons that make up our church families. One wonders why that’s not how we view “success” and “faithfulness” more often. We have a lot to tell!

So, I suppose this post is an encouragement and challenge to all us pastors and churches to talk much more about God’s work in personal stories as a way of defining “success” and “effectiveness.”  It will also be a much more personal and intimate way of helping others to see the Lord Jesus at work in all the beauty and ugly.

For instance, instead of saying “We had 400 baptisms last year,” which only says one thing: “We’re big.”

Instead, how about saying something like, “The Lord blessed us with 400 baptisms last year.  Let me tell you about one of those.  Sarah is 17.  Her mom died during child birth.  Her father blamed Sarah.  Can you imagine being a little girl raised without her mom by a father who every day blamed you for your mom’s death?  By the time she was 17, she hated men, even though she had become sexually promiscuous.  She also hated God.  She cursed God, wondering why he brought her into the world and took her mom at the same time.  Why did he leave her with a father that hated her.  And why did God call himself a “Father” if that was what fathers were like?  She was hopeless, until Jesus invaded her life.  Another teenager at our church, Jenny, met Sarah during physics class.  They became lab partners, and one day Jenny spoke to Sarah about Jesus.  A miracle happened.  God gave Sarah a new heart and she put her faith in Jesus.  Sarah still has a lot of struggles, but we can see the new life emerging and the fruit of repentance beginning to blossom.  She confessed to her father her years of hatred and rebellion, and asked his forgiveness.  He didn’t forgive her.  He said he still blamed her.  But Sarah has committed herself to honoring her father and loving him in every way she can.” And so on.  You get the picture.

Our churches are full of persons radically impacted by the Lord Jesus.  Each and every Christian is a trophy of God’s grace, God’s success stories.  We should tell them more often and move away from numbers and claims to faithfulness that really keep the story focused on us.  After all, whose success are we really talking about?  Ours or God’s?

All Things

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer for Recovering Legalists

I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. 1 Cor. 9:23–27

Dear Lord Jesus, this is one of those passages I used to avoid as a recovering legalist. When I finally came to rest in your righteousness alone for my salvation, it was Scriptures like this one that confused me—at times activating that part of me that still thinks I can make you love me more by my striving, doing and discipline. I am so thankful for the ongoing teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. Keep showing me more about living in line with the truth of the gospel (Gal. 2:14)—a life of true freedom.

Indeed, I praise you for all the freedoms you have won for us, Lord Jesus, including the freedom to obey you because of your grace and love, not because of our fear and pride. For the gospel has obliterated a wage-earning view of salvation. We now run for a crown of grace and, ultimately, every crown will be laid at your feet, Lord Jesus. Our obedience profits a lot, but it merits absolutely nothing.

The gospel also sets us free from running aimlessly and vainly beating the air—a lot of self-centered commotion. We now live as your beloved servants in a magnificent story of redemption and restoration, For all of history is bound up with your commitment to redeem your Bride from the nations and to make all things new. We praise you for rescuing us from little narratives of self-fulfillment for a life of kingdom advancement.

The gospel also sets us free from beating ourselves up because of shame, guilt and pride. Jesus, you are the one Runner who has “won the prize” for all of us. Only the gospel qualifies us to “share in the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col. 1:12).  We now train ourselves for godliness by bringing our appetites and bodies in submission to the gospel (1Tim. 4:7–8)—not to the law, for the law has no power to change us (Col.2:23).

Thought we no longer fear losing our salvation, do let us grieve misrepresenting you by “frittering away” this one short life you’ve given us. Show us how to do all things for the sake of the gospel, by the grace and truth of the gospel. We are free, Lord Jesus, we would be freer still. We gratefully pray, in your most righteous and loving name. Amen.

God-Graced Effort

Kevin DeYoung post:  Make Every Effort

Count the letters carefully: effort is not a four letter word. Even those who believe in blood-bought, Christ-wrought, undeserved, sovereign, gospel grace do not despise effort in the Christian life. How can we? 2 Peter 1:5 tells us to “make every effort.”

Of course, anyone familiar with this passage will remember that the effort enjoined by Peter is God-graced effort. Verse 3 says we have divine power through “knowledge of him.” Verse 4 says we can become “partakers of the divine nature” through “his precious and very great promises.” Verse 5 harnesses these twin turbines of Spirit energy when it says “For this very reason, make every effort.” In other words, Peter holds up a pattern of godliness–increasing faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. This pattern relies on gospel power. And the gospel-powered pattern requires effort.

It is the consistent witness of the New Testament that growth in godliness requires exertion on the part of the Christian. Romans 8:13 says by the Spirit we must put to death the deeds of the flesh. Ephesians 4:22-24 instructs us to put off the old self and put on the new. Ephesians 6 tells us to put on the full armor of God and stand fast against the devil. Colossians 3:5 commands us to put to death what is earthly in us. 1 Timothy 6:12 urges us to fight the good fight. Luke 13:24 exhorts us to strive to enter the narrow gate.

Christians work–they work to kill sin and they work to live in the Spirit. They have rest in the gospel, but never rest in their battle against the flesh and the devil. As J.C. Ryle put it, the child of God has two great marks about him: he is known for his inner warfare and his inner peace.

Obviously, even when we work, it is never meritorious. Our effort can never win God’s justifying favor. In fact, whatever we manage to work out is really what God purposed to work in us (Phil. 2:12-13; cf. Heb. 2:11). The gospel is truly the A-Z of the Christian life.

But let us not misunderstand what it means to be gospel-centered. As gospel Christians, we are not afraid of striving, fighting, and working. These are good Bible words. The gospel that frees us from self-justification also frees us for obedience. In fact, 1 Corinthians 6 and Galatians 5 and 1 John and Revelation 21 and a dozen other passages make clear that when we have no obedience to show for our gospel profession, our conduct shows we have not understood the gospel.

God did not tell the Israelites, “Work hard and I’ll set you free from Egypt.” That’s law without a gospel. Neither did God tell them, “I love you. I set you free by my grace. I ask nothing more except that you believe in this good gift.” That’s gospel with no law. Instead, God redeemed the people by his mercy, and that mercy made a way for obedience. Gospel then law. Trust and obey.

Let us not make the mistake of Keswick theology with its mantra of “let go and let God.” Justification is wholly dependent on faith apart from works of the law. But sanctification–born of faith, dependent on faith, powered by faith–requires moral exertion.  “Mortify and vivify” is how the theologians used to put it.

When it comes to growth in godliness, trusting does not put an end to trying.

Easy and Light

Tullian Tchividjian post:  The Pitfall of Perfectionism

I recently read this from Steve Brown and had to share it with you:

She was only twenty-six years old. She was a Christian working in a church. After college she had served for a year on the mission field. I didn’t know her well, but I liked her a lot. She was a strong witness for Christ and she was an articulate spokesperson for evangelical Christianity. This morning I got the message that she had taken her life. I was absolutely devastated. I didn’t understand.

As if that were not enough, shortly after hearing about her suicide I got a call from a man who listens to my radio broadcast. “Steve,” he said, “I haven’t told anybody in the world what I’m going to tell you. I have decided to leave my wife and I told God that if I get through to you, I would do whatever you told me to do.”

I asked him what prompted him to decide to leave her.

He told me, “I became a Christian at fourteen and all my life I’ve been seeking to live up  to the expectations of others. I work full-time in a ministry, I teach the Bible, and everyone thinks I’m the model Christian. I’m just tired of it. I’ve decided to do something for myself for a change.”

Let me share a letter with you that I received a couple weeks ago. There was no return address and the  person gave me no name.

Dear Stephen,

Please pray for me as I am on the edge–a total failure as a Christian. I have  failed as a husband and as a father. God has probably given up on me. I feel so very alone and abandoned. It’s a horrible feeling that words alone cannot describe. Please don’t judge me. Pray for me.

At first these three incidents didn’t seem related. They were just about individuals for whom I prayed. But in the silence of my prayer it dawned on me that they all had the same problem: They all had created a false standard of perfection (or accepted someone else’s standard) and concluded they couldn’t live up to it.

What advice would you give them? If you had talked to the young lady before her suicide, or the man thinking about leaving his wife, or the anonymous correspondent–what would you have said?

Most Christians would say that they should try harder. The problem is that all three already had–and they were at the end of themselves.

Others would try to help them trace their despair back to some unconfessed sin in their lives–drawing a straight line between their spiritual depression and their spiritual failure.

And still others would tell them to have faith. And yet, they discovered that the faith they needed couldn’t be turned on and off like a faucet.

But what would Jesus have told them? We don’t have to guess: “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give  you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

Perfectionism (or performancism) is a horrible disease. It comes from the pit of hell, smelling like rotting flesh. Someone convinced these folks that they were called to measure up to an unattainable standard. They couldn’t do it and each in his or her own way simply quit trying.

Nobody told them that Jesus was perfect for them, and because of that they didn’t have to be perfect for themselves. They didn’t understand that if Jesus makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Christian, please remember that Jesus plus nothing equals everything. That,

Because Jesus was strong for you, you’re free to be weak;

Because Jesus won for you, you’re free to lose;

Because Jesus was Someone, you’re free to be no one;

Because Jesus was extraordinary, you’re free to be ordinary;

Because Jesus succeeded for you, you’re free to fail.

Preaching the gospel is the only thing that helps us take our eyes off ourselves and how we’re doing and fix our eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith. Jesus fulfilled all of God’s perfect conditions so that our relationship to God could be perfectly unconditional.

You’re free!

Swim In the Ocean of His Love

Ray Ortlund post:  The full enjoyment

“Then the church shall be brought to the full enjoyment of her bridegroom, having all tears wiped away from her eyes, and there shall be no more distance or absence.  She shall then be brought to the entertainments of an eternal wedding feast, and to dwell forever with her bridegroom, yea, to dwell eternally in his embraces.  Then Christ will give her his loves, and she shall drink her fill, yea, she shall swim in the ocean of his love.”

Jonathan Edwards, “The Church’s Marriage to her Sons and to her God,” in Works (Edinburgh, 1979), II:22.

Forgiveness, pardon, grace

Ray Ortlund post:  A pardoned soul

We swim every day in an ocean of criticism, negative scrutiny, accusation, finger-pointing, fault-finding, e.g., “Your carbon footprint is too big, you haven’t made up for the colonialism of the past, you aren’t feeding the starving millions as much as you can, you _________________.”  Add on top of all that our unmistakably real sins and failures and weaknesses, as God himself judges them, and how can we live again, breathe again?

J. C. Ryle:

“Where must a man go for pardon?  Where is forgiveness to be found?  There is a way both sure and plain . . . . That way is simply to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior.  It is to cast your soul, with all its sins, unreservedly on Christ — to cease completely from any dependence on your own works or doings, either in whole or in part — and to rest on no other work but Christ’s work, no other righteousness but Christ’s righteousness, no other merit but Christ’s merit, as your ground of hope.  Take this course and you are a pardoned soul.”

Then we can make a positive difference in the world.  The future opens up through forgiveness not judgment, pardon not penalty, grace not condemnation.

Don't Assume Too Much Too Early

Jon Bloom post:  It's Rarely Romantic at the Time

If you’re a romantic (and I think you should be) you love the book of Ruth.

This short story almost seems like it was made for film. It has all the components of a great romance: tragedy, loyalty, courage, virtuous love, unlikely lovers, a great obstacle, the triumphant moment, the happy ending, and the hand of Providence guiding it all. It’s a feel-good read.

But I don’t think Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz experienced it as romantic until they saw it all in retrospect.

Just think of chapter one. Naomi thinks her life is over. At this point she’s more “Ecclesiastes” than “Ruth.” With her husband and two sons dead, she has nothing. God appears to have turned on her. All she has to look forward to is destitution.

Ruth’s future doesn’t hold out much promise either. She’s a young childless widow. She has a fierce loyalty to her mother-in-law, but we don’t know why. Maybe she discerned in Yahweh a reality she couldn’t leave, though Naomi’s interpretation of God’s disposition toward them was not very optimistic. Or maybe Ruth’s family of origin was so painful that a life of poverty with Naomi in a foreign land was the much better option.

And what about Boaz? Polygamy was acceptable back then, but nothing is said of other wives, living or dead. He seems to be at least middle-aged (Ruth 4:10) and single. If that’s true, surely there are heartbreaks in his past; perhaps someone he once hoped for who is now another man’s wife.

And there they are, people of sorrows and acquainted with grief, just trying to hold it together in Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest.

So where are you in the real, living story God is telling? God is the great Romantic and all his children have roles that are far more significant than most of them know. But they are rarely romantic to experience at any given time.

Take a lesson from Naomi and don’t assume too much too early. Even if death is near. God is always up to more than you think and foresee. Remember, Boaz and Ruth both died before ever knowing that their child would grandfather Israel’s greatest king.

Perspective

Steven Furtick post:  Walls or Doors

I’m convinced now more than ever that perspective can change everything. And this is probably nowhere truer than when we’re talking about the struggles we face in life.

Most of us think of our struggles – our circumstances, obstacles, and enemies –  as walls. They’re there to set us back or hold us back. We avoid them at all costs. When we encounter them, we usually turn back because after all, who wants to climb a wall? Especially a wall that can sometimes seem insurmountable.

But the truth is your circumstances and obstacles aren’t walls. They’re not there to set you back. In reality, they’re there to set you up.

Your struggles are not walls, they are doors.

Doors to the next level in your relationship with God. Doors that lead to a new horizon of His favor. They’re the necessary passageways through which all of us must pass to get to the place God is taking us to. And until you go through them, you can’t get there.

You can see this truth repeat itself throughout the Bible:
Slavery and prison put Joseph in position and served as his door to save millions.
Goliath gave David a stage and served as his door to public promotion.
The cross gave Jesus the means of His death and served as His door to save the world.

Imagine if any of these men had not gone through their doors. Imagine if instead, they saw them as walls. As things to be avoided or run from.

Millions would have starved to death in Egypt.

The whole David and Goliath metaphor would be shot.

We would still be in our sins.

Luckily all we can do is imagine. I hope the same can be said about the doors you face in life. I’d rather you imagine what life would have been like had you not opened them, than to have to imagine what it might look like on the other side if you had.

Whatever circumstance, struggle, or enemy you’re facing, don’t turn around. God has something for you on the other side better than what you have now. And it’s something you’ll never experience until you walk through the door.

Yes, it’s a difficult door to go through. But that’s only until you realize that the cost of not going through it far outweighs the cost of making it into a wall and forever imagining what was waiting on the other side for you.

Growing

Ed Stetzer post:  Some Thoughts on Sanctification from Jerry Bridges

Probably one of the most frequently discussed topics I hear today is how we "grow" as Christians. Some seem to run away from the commands in scripture-- wanting all indicatives and no imperatives. For others, the Christian life is largely their effort-- God saves and then they sanctify (themselves).

While working on my Sunday message for this week, I found these quotes from Jerry Bridges to be helpful. They are found in his book, The Discipline of Grace. Bridges does a good job showing us that the imperatives are based on the indicatives.

"We take what we think are the tools of spiritual transformation into our own hands and try to sculpt ourselves into robust Christlike specimens. But spiritual transformation is primarily the work of the Holy Spirit. He is the Master Sculptor" (11).

"Some days we may be more acutely conscious of our sinfulness and hence more aware of our need of His grace, but there is never a day when we can stand before Him on our own two feet of performance, when we are worthy enough to deserve His blessing" (17).

"We must remember, however, that the gospel is for sinners. Jesus said, 'I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance' (Luke 5:32). The gospel is meaningful for us only to the extent that we realize and acknowledge that we are still sinful. Although we are new creations in Christ, we still sin every day in thought, word, and deed, and perhaps even more importantly, in motives. To benefit from the gospel every day, then, we must acknowledge that we are still sinners" (21).

"We readily acknowledge that we can never through our own sins attain a righteousness that is sufficient for salvation. But then as believers we act as if we can live lives acceptable to God" (48).

"To die to sin then means, first of all, to die to its legal or penal reign and, secondly, as a necessary result, to die to its dominion over us" (69).

"Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit in us whereby our inner being is progressively changed, freeing us more and more from sinful traits and developing within us over time the virtues of Christlike character. However, though sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit in us, it does involve our wholehearted response in obedience and the regular use of the spiritual disciplines that are instruments of sanctification" (94).

"We press the accelerator pedal of obedience until we have brought our behavior up to a certain level or "speed." The level of obedience is most often determined by the behavior standard of other Christians around us" (116).

"The most important message we need to hear as believers is the gospel" (124).

Beliefs and Practices

Justin Taylor post:  “Now That I’m a Christian”: A Discipleship Introduction

A new resource (DVDs and workbook) from the good folks at Credo House Ministries:

How do you grow as a disciple of Jesus? How do you develop deep roots and a fruitful life? The Discipleship Program is designed to help set you on a course toward becoming a fully-devoted follower of Christ. This 10-week program focuses on both Orthodoxy (correct thought) and Orthopraxy (correct action). The Discipleship Program is designed to be an ideal study for small groups.

The following is a brief video introduction, followed by the first 45-minute session:


Introducing The Discipleship Program: Now that I'm a Christian from Credo House on Vimeo.

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No Fishing Allowed

Excerpt from Tullian Tchividjian post:  Too Good To Be True

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What the Pharisee, the prostitute, and everyone in between, need to remember every day is that Christ offers forgiveness full and free from both our self-righteous goodness and our unrighteous badness. This is the hardest thing for us to believe as Christians. We think it’s a mark of spiritual maturity to hang onto our guilt and shame. We’ve sickly concluded that the worse we feel, the better we actually are. The declaration of Psalm 103:12 is the most difficult for us to grasp and embrace: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” Or, as Corrie ten Boom once said, “God takes our sins—the past, present, and future—and dumps them in the sea and puts up a sign that says ‘No Fishing allowed.’” This seems too good to be true…it can’t be that simple, that easy, that real!

It is true! No strings attached. No but’s. No conditions. No need for balance. If you are a Christian, you are right now under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ. Your pardon is full and final. In Christ, you’re forgiven. You’re clean. It is finished.

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An Infinite Personality

Ray Ortlund post:  A desert by comparison

“In 1952, when I was twenty-one and still an atheist studying philosophy at Yale, I picked up a copy of Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain and began to read about the author’s pilgrimage from secular intellectualism to the Trappist Order.  As I read, my mind became enlightened by the reality of the presence of God.  It suddenly became clear that behind all the beauty and order in nature and human art there lies a divine creative wisdom, an infinite personality whose beauty is past change.  In Merton’s metaphor, it seemed as though a window in the depths of my consciousness, a window I had never seen before, had suddenly been opened, allowing a blazing glimpse of new orders of existence.  My mind was suddenly filled with streams of thinking which reordered my understanding around the central fact of God, streams which I knew were not rising from any source within my natural awareness, which now seemed a desert by comparison.  Immediately, irrevocably I was no longer an atheist.  If someone had spoken to me about a ‘leap of faith,’ I would not have known what they were talking about; for there was no gap to leap.  I felt that I was in contact with God.”

Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life (Downers Grove, 1979), pages 229-230.