The Unconverted State

An unconverted state will bear fruit corresponding with its own nature. It must, in the nature of things, be so. It would be a miracle, a miracle of grace, were it not. “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” So is it in the spiritual world. The enmity against God of the carnal mind, the rejection of the Lord Jesus, the governing principle of SELF, the supreme ascendancy of the world, the slavery of sin, indicate, unmistakably, the unrenewed, unregenerate nature from which they spring. Old things have not passed away.

We do not expect you to yield the fruits of holiness from an unholy nature. The life you live is in keeping with the unrenewed heart you possess. You are of the earth, earthly. It is consistent with your unregenerate nature that you should be of the world, should love the world, and that the world should love you and claim you as its own–that the things of the world–its pursuits, and pleasures, and sins–should harmonize with your nature, charm your taste, delight your senses, and bind your affections in their spell. It is only the thistle and the thorn yielding the fruit proper to their nature.

You walk, as others, according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, and so you clearly evidence that you are not born again. In the absence of the fruits of righteousness, your present religious condition, and your future and eternal destiny, are melancholy and perilous in the extreme. Lose not a moment in examining your true position for eternity! With death all around you, its sentence upon you, eternity before you, the judgment-seat of Christ soon to confront you, postpone not the consideration of the great matter of conversion, lest you should be compelled to take up the lamentation, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved!”

Grace To Glory

 

A Man Of Sorrows

Christ is ever with you — in suffering. He Himself was a sufferer. Oh, suffering never looked so lovely, martyrdom never wore a crown so resplendent — as when the Son of God bowed His head and drank the cup of woe for us! Himself a sufferer — is there a being in the universe who could take His place at your side in all the scenes of mental, spiritual, and bodily suffering through which your Heavenly Father leads you, comparable to Christ? What are your sufferings — contrasted with His? And what was there in the unparalleled greatness and intensity of His sufferings — to disqualify Him from entering with the warmest love and deepest sympathy into yours?

Suffering for His sake, or suffering His will — He is with you to sustain, to mitigate, to sanctify. It isgiven to you not only to believe — but also to suffer for Christ. Removed from the active sphere of your Christianity — the sphere and the service which, perhaps, you too fondly idolized — He has placed you in the school of passive endurance — a position the most irksome and trying to you. Look into the burning, fiery furnace of the three children of Israel: “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed — and the fourth looks like the Son of God!” (Daniel 3:25) So is Christ with you in suffering. You shall pass through the furnace — the flames only destroying your bonds and setting you free from some dominant sin, some potent spell, some slavish fear — bringing you more fully into the happy, holy, realization of your adoption, pardon, and acceptance of God. Treading that furnace at your side, controlling its flames, tempering its heat — is the same Son of God who trod it with them, and who says to you, “Surely, I am with you always!”

The blessed Savior is never more with His people than in suffering. He himself has been a sufferer, and He knows how to pity His people when they suffer; and if best for them — He can send them quick relief.

Christ Is Ever With You

“There Is No Demilitarized Zone in the Issue of Homosexuality”

All the participants of the panel on homosexuality at The Gospel Coalition Council meetings agreed that we have entered one of the most difficult challenges to a gospel-centered approach to evangelism. The reason is not that the center of the Christian gospel has changed, but the center of the cultural gospel has changed. That center for many is the freedom to be GLBT and to be approved.

Which means that whether we want to make this a frontline issue or not, increasingly it is. As one of the panelists said, “There is no demilitarized zone in the homosexual debate.” Pastors must address it. In fact, virtually everyone who communicates with mainstream cultural folk must address it.

The argument against Christianity today is not epistemological but moral. Christianity is rejected not because it is badly argued, or untrue, but because it is evil. And it is evil because it opposes homosexual practice. The panelists agreed that, at least in major metropolitan areas, the issue of homosexuality ranks near the top of the reasons people reject Christianity, along with the problem of suffering and the exclusive claim that Jesus is the only way of salvation.

It is almost impossible to express a compassionate disapproval of homosexual practice without being demonized. But this is not an entirely new situation for the church. On the one hand the state of our culture seems to have changed with lightening speed. On the other hand it may not be as new as it seems.

Consider what it must have been like for Christianity to take root in a totally pagan and debauched culture in the first century. Sometimes we are presented with an overly positive picture of the progress of the faith. We read of how the church was courageous and loving, and how the empire was won over. But here is what it looked like along the way. This is from the mid-first century in pagan Asian Minor (1 Peter 4:3–5):

The time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

This is not pretty. The gospel is landing with power in some lives. So much power that they not only believe in Christ for justification, but their life styles are radically changed. They stop doing certain things. “Sensuality, passion, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties . . . a flood of debauchery.” Believing in Jesus means they don’t do that any more.

The result? Not respect and tolerance, but slander: “they malign you.” That is where we are today in regard to homosexuality. And Peter’s counsel to the maligned Christians who do not approve of the “flood of debauchery” around them is:

Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings.” (1 Peter 4:12–13).

Peter also held out hope that if we do not grow weary in doing good we would see saving effects in the lives of people around us:

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. (1 Peter 2:12)

The panelists were sober-minded about the future. One of them suggested that if the cultural battle is lost on the nature and meaning of marriage then there will never be a complete cave-in in this country. Twenty percent of the people will always oppose same sex marriage, and many will go to prison.

Churches will be faced with new and unheard of cases of discipline. Suppose two so-called “married” men hear the gospel and one of them believes and comes to your church. Will you council “divorce” and moving out?

One final observation was made from the TGC panel: One of the most powerful things we can do is fold into our churches men and women who have same-sex attraction and surround them with a bigger vision of life and love and relationships that make it possible for them to flourish in families and friendships. These stories may be one of the most authenticating messages for the Christian gospel.

Christ Is Our Treasure, Not Our Homes

The home exists for Christ. Our marriages, our children, our physical spaces — all these are means of joyful response to Him. Through the home, we treasure Christ and show others how to treasure Him also (Titus 2:3–5; Proverbs 31:10–31).

Too often, however, we treasure the home more than we treasure Christ. As a result, what He has given as a blessing and an avenue of sanctification becomes a means of achievement or accomplishment, where our well-behaved children or our organizational abilities are an indication of our value and our righteousness. Our homes become a matter of pride, self-elevation, or comparison. And we cling to our treasure, thinking that the home is under our control, that it’s ours to possess, that we have somehow created and cultivated something special.

The temptation to treasure the home is especially intense on good days, when our children are playing nicely together, when we’re unified with our spouse, or when the house is bright and clean and everything is in order.

But on bad days? When a child throws a fit or disrespects another adult, or when communication is crossways? When the dishwasher leaks all over the kitchen floor or an appointment is forgotten? When a harsh word is spoken or priorities have been shoved aside? What about the days when life is thrown wildly off-kilter?

When the home is the treasure above Christ and our value is entwined with the circumstances of our home, the bad days are unsettling, even devastating.

On the bad days, we recognize the home acting similarly to the Law:

Our treasure, the home, speaks urgent, ever-changing, and unending demands for perfection that can never be fulfilled. (Galatians 3:10)Our treasure, the home, causes us to value and conform to what pleases others or earns their respect rather than what pleases God. (Colossians 2:20-22)Our treasure, the home, with its perfectionistic, image-maintaining urgencies, cannot bring life to our hearts and our families. (Galatians 3:21)

If we treasure our home as our righteousness, we subtly teach our children that behavior matters more than the attitudes of the heart, that a clean home matters more than relationships, that we are superior to others, or that we must cling to and control the things we love rather than trust God with them.

The good news is that even when we treasure our home more than we treasure Christ, our failings act as a tutor to bring us to Christ, the true Treasure, and to show us that we are incapable of righteousness apart from Him (Galatians 3:24). We recognize in our failings that we need something apart from ourselves to make a home as God intended, that something being the grace and power of Christ.

When Christ is our treasure, our homes consist of love, grace, and utter dependence on the Holy Spirit. We don’t chase self-righteousness, and we don’t cling to treasures that, despite all their goodness, can still be lost. We cling tightly to the only Treasure that cannot be stolen or tarnished, Christ Himself.

Dialogue on the Most Controversial Place on Earth

Some Muslims have vowed to extinguish Israel. Many Israelis feel the same animosity toward their Middle Eastern neighbors. Near-apocalyptic tensions rarely subside in Israel-Palestine, the most controversial place on earth.

How should Christians — carrying Bibles with lots to say about Israel, her land, and her enemies — orient today toward these ongoing pressures in the Middle East?

Christianity Today is hosting an online four-part dialogue between John Piper and David Brickner (Jews for Jesus) on whether Jews today have a divine right to "the Promised Land."

Brickner's first post comes in response to articles, sermons, and blog posts from John Piper in recent years — the following three most prominent among them:

"Do Jews Have a Divine Right to the Promised Land?"

"Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East"

"Israel, Arabs, and the Family of God"

He Knows Me

J. I. Packer:

What matters supremely is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it — the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind.

All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is not a moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters.

This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort — the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates — in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.

Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 41–42, emphasis added.

How Do You Relate to a Gay Family Member?

Is there hope for a relationship with a family member who is not a believer and is in a same-sex relationship, and who knows your Christian position?

Yes. One story went like this. An adult sister-in-law was in a lesbian relationship and would bring her partner to all the wider family functions when she was invited. She knew her brother-in-law’s position. Not only was she sinning to be involved sexually this way, but her very soul was in danger of eternal judgment if she did not repent. She knew that’s what he thought.

At first she was very angry and, no matter how kind or gracious or caring the Christian couple tried to be, this sister-in-law saw them as homophobic and bigoted. She assumed she was not loved and let that define the relationship.

Then one day the brother-in-law asked her: Are you able to love me in spite of my views that you think are so wrong? Yes, she said. Then, why, he asked, will you not give us the same courtesy and assume that we might be able to love you in spite of your wrong views?

Remarkably, this actually made a difference. She apologized for pushing them away, and for assuming they could not love while disapproving of her ways.

Perhaps this might help others open the hearts of relatives to their genuine care.

Meditate with Me on Isaiah 42:21

“The Lord was pleased, for his righteousness’ sake, to magnify his law and make it glorious.” (Isaiah 42:21).

God’s righteousness inclines him to make his own instruction great and glorious. “For his righteousness’ sake he magnifies and glorifies his instruction.”So we learn something crucial about divine righteousness. It is the consistent and compelling inclination to do what is right, which in God’s case is defined by his own infinite worth. No one outside God dictates what is right for him. What is right for God is what agrees with his infinite greatness and infinite value. Therefore, it is right (righteous) that his perfect instruction be magnified and glorified. We also learn something about unrighteousness. It would be unrighteous of God to act in a way that diminishes his glory. If he made little of his instruction or failed to magnify it and glorify it, he would be unrighteous. He would be acting as if some instruction were greater than his. That would be false, and God would be a liar. That is what unrighteousness is: Acting a lie. Acting as if God were not infinitely great and glorious and valuable.God loves to make his instruction great and glorious. He delights in it. It pleases him to make his instruction great and glorious. “The Lord was pleased to magnify his law and make it glorious.” He is not acting against his deepest desire, but in accord with it when he magnifies the value of his own word.Thus God acts in freedom. Freedom is doing what one delights to do, and delighting to do what is right. Thus God does what is right and he delights to do it. He is free.God’s nature is such that joy and righteousness are mutually defining. At his essence God is actively, infinitely delighting. And since what he has eternally delighted in is his own perfections standing forth in the Son, this delight is right. It is infinitely righteous. It is right that God delight infinitely in what is infinitely delightful. Therefore God’s being joyful and God’s being righteous are two ways of describing the same reality. He delights to do things because they are righteous. And he does righteous things because he delights to. “I practice righteousness. For in this I delight, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:24). Therefore, the biblical call for us to rejoice in the Lord and to practice righteousness is ultimately one united call. It is rooted in who God is. We have been redeemed by Christ to be conformed to God — that is, to become creatures whose identity is most fundamentally righteous joy and joyful righteousness. We will in the end be perfectly free — doing what we delight to do, and delighting in what is right. We will join him from the heart and “for his righteousness' sake, magnify his law and make it glorious.”

 

The Good News for All Sinners

The good news of Jesus is that God saves heterosexual sinners and homosexual sinners who trust Jesus, by counting them righteous because of Jesus, and by helping them through his Spirit to live lives pleasing to him in their disordered brokenness.

Now we go to verse 11, the most important verse I will read in this message. After warning the Corinthians not to fall back into lives of sinful practice Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 6:11, the implications are huge for us, “And such were some of you. 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.”

This is the heart of biblical Christianity. “Such were some of you.” There were Christians in the church at Corinth that everybody knew had been fornicators and adulterers and thieves and drunkards and "men who practiced homosexuality." Everybody knew it. Paul knew it. They were not driven away. They were folded in.

And the way they were folded in was that they were “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." So they heard the gospel, they turned to the Lord Jesus, and turned away from those practices, and held onto Jesus and were by faith united to Jesus and God looked upon them and said, "Not guilty. Innocent. Righteous in my son. Justified!"

They were washed. “Christ himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). Not only were they clothed with a righteousness that is imputed to them because of Christ, their shame and sin is washed away as far as the east is from the west, buried at the bottom, forgotten, as it were, by an infinite God.

And then they were “sanctified," which means, by the Holy Spirit they were set apart for God. You're mine! You're sanctified. You're consecrated. You're not that anymore. You're mine. And I'm pouring my Holy Spirit into you. And when I pour him into you I am going to swallow up your disordered desires in something greater and more beautiful and more desirable so that you can walk in a way that pleases to me even in your brokenness.

We've me them. you know them. Life that seemed to be reduced to eroticism has now been swallowed up into something so much more. This hasn't been healed totally. We know men who have married. it hasn't totally gone away. They deal with it. Others deal with other things. The relationship is unique and different. But the life is swallowed up. Love is so much more. Relationships are so much more. The erotic is now a piece of life, it isn't the consuming all of life. That's the sanctification. That's the Holy Spirit just enlarging and enlarging until there are so many fields and mountains and plains and glorious flowers and meadows in life that you don't have to stay there in that compost pile of eroticism all the time, no matter which orientation it has. He does that.

The heart of Christianity is that God saves sinners through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The best news in all the world is that Jesus Christ died and rose again so that the most bizarre sexual predator — homosexual or heterosexual — can be rescued from his path of destruction, washed, justified, sanctified and given a place in God’s all-satisfying presence, forever. This is the heart of Christianity.

The Message of the Bible in 221 Words

D. A. Carson:

God is the sovereign, transcendent and personal God who has made the universe, including us, his image-bearers. Our misery lies in our rebellion, our alienation from God, which, despite his forbearance, attracts his implacable wrath. 

But God, precisely because love is of the very essence of his character, takes the initiative and prepared for the coming of his own Son by raising up a people who, by covenantal stipulations, temple worship, systems of sacrifice and of priesthood, by kings and by prophets, are taught something of what God is planning and what he expects. 

In the fullness of time his Son comes and takes on human nature. He comes not, in the first instance, to judge but to save: he dies the death of his people, rises from the grave and, in returning to his heavenly Father, bequeaths the Holy Spirit as the down payment and guarantee of the ultimate gift he has secured for them—an eternity of bliss in the presence of God himself, in a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. 

The only alternative is to be shut out from the presence of this God forever, in the torments of hell. What men and women must do, before it is too late, is repent and trust Christ; the alternative is to disobey the gospel (Romans 10:16; 2 Thessalonians 1:8; 1 Peter 4:17). 

For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism, Past, Present and Future, ed. Steve Brady and Harold Rowdon (London, UK: Evangelical Alliance, 1986), 80.

Vote As Though Not Voting

It is easy to misinterpret the place of voting in the Christian life. For example, a recent StarTribune headline announced that Pastor John was "opting out of the marriage fight" in Minnesota.

That is not the case (and today's counterpoint attempts to set the record straight).

So why the misinterpretation?

The misinterpretation may originate in a misunderstanding of the Christian’s priorities. The Christian’s ultimate hope does not rest on political candidates or political power or political initiatives. Our ultimate hope changes how we view voting, and it changes our expectations of what the political process can achieve in the end.

In the weeks leading up to the fall 2008 election, Pastor John wrote an article to explain this dynamic, titled, "Let Christians Vote As Though They Were Not Voting." He opened the article by explaining, “Voting is like marrying and crying and laughing and buying. We should do it, but only as if we were not doing it. That’s because ‘the present form of this world is passing away” and, in God’s eyes, ‘the time has grown very short.’”

In applying 1 Corinthians 7:29–31 to voting, Piper made these five sober points about how Christians should vote as though not voting:

“We should do it [voting]. But only as if we were not doing it. Its outcomes do not give us the greatest joy when they go our way, and they do not demoralize us when they don’t. Political life is for making much of Christ whether the world falls apart or holds together.” “There are losses [in politics]. We mourn. But not as those who have no hope. We vote and we lose, or we vote and we win. In either case, we win or lose as if we were not winning or losing. Our expectations and frustrations are modest. The best this world can offer is short and small. The worst it can offer has been predicted in the book of Revelation. And no vote will hold it back. In the short run, Christians lose (Revelation 13:7). In the long run, we win (Revelation 21:4)."“There are joys [in politics]. The very act of voting is a joyful statement that we are not under a tyrant. And there may be happy victories. But the best government we get is a foreshadowing. Peace and justice are approximated now. They will be perfect when Christ comes. So our joy is modest. Our triumphs are short-lived — and shot through with imperfection. So we vote as though not voting.” “We do not withdraw [from politics]. We are involved — but as if not involved. Politics does not have ultimate weight for us. It is one more stage for acting out the truth that Christ, and not politics, is supreme.”“We deal with the [political] system. We deal with the news. We deal with the candidates. We deal with the issues. But we deal with it all as if not dealing with it. It does not have our fullest attention. It is not the great thing in our lives. Christ is. And Christ will be ruling over his people with perfect supremacy no matter who is elected and no matter what government stands or falls. So we vote as though not voting.”

Political involvement is important for Christians. In fact, the more far-reaching the issue for good or ill (like marriage) the more earnestly engaged we will be. But we do not engage those important matters as ultimate matters. We do act, we do vote, and we do get involved in social issues, but our expectations of what can be accomplished through politics are sobered. Which is to say we vote like those who don’t vote. Perhaps it is not such a bad sign when the local papers have a hard time making sense of that.

You can read the entire article here: Let Christians Vote As Though They Were Not Voting (2008).

When Homosexuality Became a Man

“Man, that guy’s got a voice!” That was my first impression of Joe Hallett.

In the fall of 1990, my wife and I joined Bethlehem Baptist’s young adult Sunday School class. And during the worship times Joe’s voice would soar above everybody’s. He wasn’t a big guy — about 5-foot-7, maybe 130 pounds. But when he sang he was a man among men.

Joe wasn’t shy either. In our first conversation he just laid it out there. A decade earlier he had left college to dive into the gay community — the bars, the trysts, the flamboyant clothes, everything. And it had been exciting and liberating at first, after the misery of his sexually abused childhood and depressed teens. But the “gay lifestyle” turned out to be an empty bag. Like all distortions of human sexuality, “queerness” never delivered the fulfillment it promised.

Then in 1985, through the patient, persistent, pursuing love of a Christian friend, Joe heard the voice of Jesus and left “the lifestyle” to follow him.  

But nine months later the doctor spoke the nightmare words: “your blood test was positive.” Joe had full-blown AIDS. In 1986, the prognosis was two years, maybe. Joe believed life was over.

But Jesus didn’t. In fact, what Joe saw as a scorched place God intended to turn into a watered garden (Isaiah 58:11).

God gave him a church family at Bethlehem Baptist and a supportive family in Outpost Ministries' men’s group. Rather than shriveling, Joe flourished, growing in grace and truth and leadership. Soon he was asked to be Outpost’s Ministry Director. An excellent writer and compelling speaker, Joe increasingly found himself publicly preaching the gospel, championing God’s good design in human sexuality, equipping the church to serve the homosexually broken, and comforting the suffering.

Year after year this went on. Joe stopped expecting to die. There was too much kingdom work to do. So much that he recruited me to help him. One night in 1991, he called me. “I need some help at Outpost. The guys I work with need to be around spiritually mature men who don’t struggle with homosexuality. They have to stop seeing themselves as freaks, but as men. Would you help me?” I said yes.

For two years we worked together with real men with real lives. Men I grew to love. Men who grew stronger and sometimes stumbled. Men who had to fight to believe in God’s promises more than the deceitful sin in their broken bodies. Men like me. Homosexuality ceased being a label and became men I cared for.

In 1994, Joe gave me the honor of being his best man when God gave him the honor of marrying his long-time friend, Nancy, with whom he got to experience God’s good design for 3.5 years.

Finally, in the summer of 1997, Joe’s health began to fail. He had been very sick before and recovered. But this was different. As weeks passed many of us could tell that he knew the end was coming. But still his joy was infectious.

Once, when pondering death, Joe had written,

I think people are like trees. Some of us will flame brilliantly like sugar maples as we approach death. We will look forward to the promises of God and surrender our lives into his care. But others will wither and cling to the dying ashes of this life. Their self-centered lifestyles will deform them, making them like a twisted oak clutching its dead leaves. I wonder what your autumn will hold?

Joe died September 20, 1997, just when the sugar maples were in flame. He had not clung to dead leaves. He died reaching for the Lord of the Tree of Life in whose leaves is everlasting healing (Revelation 22:2). So the Lord appointed the maples as an honor guard ushering Joe to the land of strong singing and no more sin.

Fifteen years later I miss you, Joe. I miss your soaring songs, your Monte Python quotes, your honest friendship, and your godly example. You were faithful to Jesus unto death (Revelation 2:10), you believed his promises more than you believed your body, you didn’t waste your life, and you didn’t waste your AIDS. The Truth (John 14:6) has now set you completely free (John 8:32). You now have what you longed for most. I wish I could hear you sing.

And since you always liked to have the last word, I’ll let you ask us one more time:

“I wonder what your autumn will hold?”

Your Pastor Is Not Your Political Activist

Don’t press the organization of the church or her pastors into political activism. Pray that the church and her ministers would feed the flock of God with the word of God centered on the gospel of Christ crucified and risen. Expect from your shepherds not that they would rally you behind political candidates or legislative initiatives, but they would point you over and over again to God and to his word, and to the cross.

Please try to understand this concluding point. When I warn you against politicizing me, or politicizing the institution called Bethlehem, or the church in general, I do so not to diminish her power but to increase it. The impact of the church for the glory of Christ and the good of the world does not increase when she shifts her priorities from the worship of God and the winning of souls and the nurturing of faith and raising up of new generations of disciples. It doesn't. It feels in the moment that it does. "Look at how many people showed up for the rally!" Or "Look how many signatures in that church they got!" Or "Look how that committee is functioning!" It feels powerful, but give it a generation. And little by little, that vaunted power bleeds away the very nature of the church and its power.

If the whole counsel of God is preached with power week in and week out, Christians who are citizens of heaven and citizens of this democratic order will be energized as they ought to speak and act for the common good. It's your job, not mine. Don't look to me to wave the flag for your vote. Or wave the flag for your candidate.

Let me read you from this week's WORLD magazine the editorial by Marvin Olasky. Many of you are familiar with WORLD. WORLD is a very political magazine, and it ought to be. I just love the Marvin Olasky and the team at WORLD. I'm glad they're doing what they're doing. This is what he said in the article, pleading with churches not to be politicized:

Wise pastors prompt [Christians] to form associations outside the church, and leave the church to its central task from which so many blessings flow. That pattern in the 18th and 19th centuries worked exceptionally well. New England pastors in colonial times preached and taught what the Bible said about liberty, and the Sons of Liberty — not a subset of any particular church — eventually sponsored a tea party in Boston harbor. Pastors through America during those centuries preached about biblical poverty-fighting, and in city after city Christians formed organizations such as (in New York) the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. (WORLD, June 16, 2012, 108)

My job is to feed the saints with such meals that they go out strengthened and robust and able to do the study and do the courage and do the action needed as salt and light in this world. And that will go away if you insist on the church and the ministry being the political leaders. It will and we can point to many where it has.

YouVersion Releases Daily Devotional from John Piper

The YouVersion Bible app recently reached 50 million downloads. A true leader in the market, they provide a free Bible app in over 144 languages, are ranked as the first Bible app on iTunes, and have a 5-star rating based on over 400,000 ratings worldwide.

So we're excited to announce that they have just released a new devotional plan from John Piper.

The devotional is a 15-day reading plan that features content on the sovereignty of God, personal holiness, joy, and more. It comes in an easily accessible interface that allows users to read it alongside the Bible.

Learn more and download the app today: 15 Days in the Word with John Piper.

The Benefit of Worry

Lifting weights once seemed to me very unnecessary—a curious activity for people who wanted to feel like athletes, while the real exercisers were off somewhere running. But as it turns out, I was wrong. Incorporating weight training into your exercise routine is beneficial on many levels: raising metabolism, increasing strength, reducing the risk of injury, heart disease, and other illness. I even read recently that lifting weights can help lift depression. Far from my initial theory, I have no doubt that using weights properly is a necessary part of building both muscle and health. I have also found it a helpful illustration even as I am discovering it physically true.

Counting to ten with a weight in my hand recently, I found myself worrying about upcoming events, things I needed to do, things didn't do well enough, and so forth. To be honest I can't remember exactly what I was worrying about that day. But I remember thinking about the weight I was physically lifting and the weight I was mentally carrying—and connecting with illustration in my hand.

What if it's possible to use life's resistances to build character, hope, and even faith? I believe it's quite possible. Yet even so, as it is in weight lifting, a weight is only beneficial to the body when it is lifted and released. Muscles grow during times of rest; to never release a weight would forfeit the benefits of weight lifting and only make way for serious injury. When it comes to worrying, it might resemble a person lugging around a barbell, stubbornly refusing to set it down for whatever reason or benefit they think they hold by perpetually carrying it.  

F.W. Boreham tells a story about a woman who spent her entire life as a worrier. As a small child she would sit in her father's lap and momentarily lay aside the weight of worry as he took his thumb and smoothed out the wrinkles on her forehead. "Now keep it smooth," he would say. "Don't let it pucker again." But it was of little help. Now a grown woman facing the final days of her life, she sat confessing to pastor Boreham—without seeing anything ironic in her words—that it worried her that she had been such a worrier all her life. I suspect in some way we can all be something like this poor woman, failing to see the absurdity of many of our worries.        

I can find many places in Jesus's Sermon on the Mount where reacting with a sense of worry seems almost appropriate, and I would guess in this assessment I am not alone: You have heard that it was said, "Do not murder." But I tell you that anyone who is even angry with his brotheris subject to judgment. Or, You have heard that it was said, "Do not commit adultery." But I tell you that anyone who even looks at someone lustfully has already done so.(1)

Can anyone stand in the kingdom Jesus describes in this sermon? Is it worth even trying? For worriers, there seems a great deal of material. But this is exactly what is so startling about Jesus's words about worrying, which come as almost a hiatus in the middle of his sermon. In between an exhortation to be perfect and a description of the narrow gate, he proclaims gently but confidently, "Do not worry!"  To those trembling with the fear of certain failure, it is an impossible, strange command. Yet it is one over which he seems to proclaim: It is my life that makes all things possible. He says: 

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?(2)

Worrying is something like picking up the weight that Jesus has removed and deciding to carry it around again anyway, causing injury with your refusal to set it down. If it is truly "for freedom that Christ has set us free," we can truly stand firm, not letting ourselves be burdened again by the slavery of worry. What if we can approach life's worries with the thought of building hope and even faith, growing closer to the God who lifts the burden? What if it is a matter of letting go, setting the weight we would carry again and again before the Cross? What if the only benefit of worry comes in lifting it up and setting it before the God who will hold it?

Of course, I realize this is easier to say than it is to do. But perhaps it is a reminder akin to Jesus pausing in the middle of his weighty sermon and smoothing out the wrinkles on our foreheads. Over each weight and worry, he repeats the resounding benefit: I will give you rest.   

(1) Matthew 5:21-22; Matthew 5:28-29. 
(2) Matthew 6:25-27.

Dream Houses

For the past week, I have been having the same conversation each morning with a spider on my front porch. Like a parent to a teenager with a messy room, my reiterated words don't seem to be making much of a difference. But I'm not asking my eight-legged friend to clean her room; I'm asking her to move it. 

Every morning on my way to the car I walk through a nearly invisible strand of her web. The problem (besides having to brush the spider web off of myself) is that it is a vital piece of her web. It is the strand of webbing that serves as an anchor for her well-crafted house. On the days that I remember to look for it, I manage to duck under it before hurrying through the walkway. But though this solves my sticky situation, it does not solve hers. For if I haven't caused her residence to collapse by walking through it, I have demolished her dwelling by driving away with its support beam. She has anchored her brilliant masterwork to the car am I about to remove from the driveway. 

I have tried to be patient. I feel really bad as I drive away knowing that I have entirely destroyed her night's work before I have even taken a sip of my morning coffee. I have reminded her that anchoring her web to an object that moves is futile (and no doubt incredibly frustrating to the architect). Yet so it goes each day. I drive away, and she finds herself needing to rebuild once again. 

When Jesus spoke of well-built houses, it is interesting that he made it a point to point out the obvious. Build a house on shifting sands and it, too, will shift until it is completely destroyed. The illustration is as clear as it is true; a house is only as good as its foundation. 

You would think that the poor, persistent spider on my front porch would have learned her lesson by now. But in fact she has only slightly altered her house plans each time—attaching her web to the mirror on my car or the windshield wiper instead of the driver's door. I can only hope one day she will learn. But then, Jesus's obvious words confront me, and I find myself wondering:  Have I learned? 

When I build my life around pursuits that suddenly shift, do I pick up and redraw the plans, taking into account all that shifted? Or do I simply pick myself up, cut my losses, and start once again? When my longing for a beautiful house gives me a mortgage I can't afford, when my hope for the next best thing is ever being replaced by the next best thing, when I have built my life upon the satisfaction of a successful career or great kids or a solid marriage and suddenly life shifts with blow of uncertainty, what have I learned? 

It is a lesson easier illustrated than understood. For more often it seems I am like the spider, intent on making my dream house work, willing to alter my plans only slightly, concerning myself with the busywork of building. It is easy to be so determined in the life we are constructing that a shifting foundation is viewed merely as a temporary set back, when in fact we are building our lives upon that which is temporary—health, careers, cars in the driveway.        

Thankfully, the God described by Christianity is not only more patient than I have been with my spider, but also more compelling than I have been in encouraging those God longs to see in the security of a well-built home. With long-suffering love for us, God picks us up when our dream houses have crumbled and shows us that we were meant to dream of unshakable fortresses. Christ stands at ground zero and gives us the grace and the strength to rebuild. 

We are building well, he says, when we hear his words and put them into practice. For to build on the enduring words of God in Christ by the Holy Spirit is to build lives that model their Creator, trusting that God is the holder of the best plans for the house. God's words are like God's character, lighting our way, standing forever, moving us to that place of refuge. The Father "does not change like the shifting shadows," writes James. He is, as David praised, and Hannah prayed, and saints continue to discover somewhere in the process of rebuilding, the Rock of Ages. 

Behold

Behold!

What are you looking at? Where are the anchors in your life? I imagine for many of us these questions are more than rhetorical or philosophical; they are truly heartfelt. 

Recently I was struck by this announcement in John's Gospel: "The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, 'Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!'" (John 1:29). John says, "Look, the Lamb of God." The question is posed, what are you looking at? John emphatically directs our focus: "Look at Jesus." In fact, he makes this declaration fifteen times in his gospel. This word is translated in the King James Version as Behold. Fifteen times he exhorts his readers to look at Jesus. Will you behold? This is astonishing. This is amazing. Look at Jesus.

My favorite hymnwriter is Charles Wesley and one of my favorite of his hymns is called, "Jesus! The Name High Over All." In the final verse of his hymn, he sings,

Happy, if with my latest breath

I may but gasp His Name,

Preach Him to all and cry in death,

"Behold, behold the Lamb!"

Now an account of John's death tells us that that is exactly what happened. As John lay dying, he uttered those words, "Behold the Lamb," and then took his last breath. John is telling us to look at Jesus—for our hope, for our provision, for our very lives.

In his gospel he invites us to behold Jesus through the lens of seven signs or miracles. That is, John deliberately chooses seven out of the many miracles that Jesus performed in order to give us a particular perspective of who this Jesus is. And the fourth miracle that he records is Jesus's feeding of the five thousand. Jesus himself beholds the crowd—he looks attentively at their need—and he responds with compassion and provision. We encounter a dramatic miracle: Jesus multiplies fives loaves and two fish to feed five thousand people. Then John tells us, "When they had all had enough to eat, [Jesus] said to his disciples, 'Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.' So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten" (6:12-13). What a picture of amazing abundance: the Son of God demonstrating the abundance of God to a hungry people.

Perhaps as you look at our world today you wonder if God is still at work in such a way. I want to encourage you that God is, for in my work and ministry I have seen this provision. Having been involved in Bible smuggling in China, I was intrigued to learn of a man named Chris who had gone out from the UK to do the same. Every three seconds someone in China becomes a Christian, but there's a real lack of the Word of God there. This is what happened to Chris: he and his team stood at the pickup point in China where they were to meet their contact, who would utter a password, and they would deliver their Bibles. They arrived with only minutes to spare, but the contact didn't show up. Knowing they were being watched, the team started walking towards the edge of town as though leaving. Hot and tired, they stopped at a nearby park for a drink of water, rest, and prayer. It was hard to understand why after all the difficulties God had brought them through that something had gone so wrong. They had looked to God for provision and direction, and yet their mission had seemingly failed.

Soon the team became aware of three very ragged and dirty men under a tree behind them. Chris felt the Lord leading him to go over with some water. When he offered it, one of the men suddenly spoke the password very clearly in English. The rest of the team hurried over in amazement and pieced together the men's story from the little Chinese that they knew. Two years earlier, God had given a word to these Chinese men in one of their services that they should plan for this trip. God would lead them to this park, on this date, and have Bibles ready for them, which would be brought by white men from far away. Since they were all poor farmers, it had taken a long time for them to save the money for food and shoes for the trip. The men had walked for two and a half months, mostly at night to keep from being arrested. Coming from the far north of China near Mongolia, they had climbed a range of snowcapped mountains, traveled through the desert, and crossed several rivers without a compass or any knowledge of the country. All they could explain was that God had shown them where to go.

How did they know the password? How could they speak it in English when they knew no English? How did they survive the heat and the snow without protective clothing? It could only be God.

When the men saw the Bibles, they cried and praised the Lord for a long time. They had brought cloth bags with them to carry the Bibles home, and inside each one was a small watermelon that they had carried all those miles as a gift of appreciation. Even though they had been without food for several days, they didn't eat a single watermelon. The team exchanged clothes with them and Chris explained what an honor it was to put on those dirty rags. The shoes were completely worn out, but the team chose to go barefoot and give up their own shoes. Many tears were shed as the team prayed for the Chinese and sent them back home with food and money for their journey.

Jesus is the God of abundance. He is the one within whom this provision, this abundance, is located. Look to him, behold him, and you will be amazed.

“Just As Long As It's Healthy...”

Every couple experiencing pregnancy gets this question: do you want a boy or a girl?  Many will respond this way, “we don’t care, just as long as it's healthy.”

But "healthy" exists on a spectrum of possibilities just like disability.  And that spectrum is becoming narrower with every year that passes.

Last week, The New York Times reported that University of Washington genome scientists were able identify the DNA sequence of a fetus with 98% accuracy, and with safer, non-invasive techniques.  This is a stunning achievement:

The accomplishment heralds an era in which parents might find it easier to know the complete DNA blueprint of a child months before it is born.

That would allow thousands of genetic diseases to be detected prenatally.

Currently, these tests are not yet accurate enough and too expensive for general use.  But it is anticipated, given current trends in scientific discovery and falling costs, that these tests could be available within the next five years.

The immediate consequence is that more children with disabilities will be aborted.  The tests that currently exist have already demonstrated that when Down syndrome or spina bifida is found, the child, statistically, will die. The child will die. The child will be killed. It is an anomaly if the child with a disability is allowed to live.

But the author of The New York Times article points out that with these tests, parents will be tempted to chase after more and more specific preferences.  Will our child be "smart"? Or "athletic"?  Will he be handsome or she be beautiful?

Most articles on this subject at least reference a possible dystopic future of designer babies.  Frankly, that’s of less concern to me than an increasingly idolatrous mindset that says I have the right and the responsibility to determine what is best for me — including the physical and/or developmental makeup of my children, or somebody else’s children.

That mindset has consequences beyond the obvious. Disability lives on one end of a spectrum of possibilities for any child. Once we determine any one of those possibilities is unacceptable, we open the door for "choice" on all of the possibilities, including sex, race, or varying degrees of what would otherwise be considered normal.

We must point to a different reality, even though it will appear foolish to most of the world:

All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:3)

God creates little human beings for his glory and for the good of his people. They are not accidents nor are they surprises to God when they come the way they do. 

Further, God has promised to send the helper (John 14:16), supply all our needs (Philippians 4:19) and turn all things to our good (Romans 8:28). That is a stunning reality that makes this genome discovery look very small in light of God’s omnipotence and love.

And it should fuel our hope that when God creates a child who will live, and maybe die because of his disabilities, God will help us love that child and welcome that child and let that child express his gifts, for God’s glory and for our good.

If you doubt that is possible, Nancy and David Guthrie have lived through the hard reality of losing two children to a rare genetic anomaly. And they found Jesus to be the greatest treasure. You can hear part of their story through this interview with Nancy last year. And you can hear directly from her this November at our conference, The Works of God: God’s Good Design in Disability. 

I hope you will attend to be encouraged in your own faith and to prepare yourself to treasure God in all circumstances.  The day is coming when you, or members of your church, will be given a choice that is not truly ours to make. On that day, the world will know who or what you treasure most.

God Desires All to Be Saved, and Grants Repentance to Some

Put two texts together, and see what you see.

“God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (eis epignosin aletheias)” (1 Timothy 2:4).

“God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth (eis epignosin aletheias)” (2 Timothy 2:25).

Here’s what I see:

1. Though God desires all people to be saved, he “may perhaps grant repentance.” Which I think means that God’s desire for all to be saved does not lead him to save all. God has desires that do not reach the level of volition. They are restrained by other considerations — like his wisdom, which guides him to display his glory in the fullest way. He has his reasons for why he “may perhaps grant repentance” to some sinners, and not to others.

2. The “knowledge of the truth” is a gift of God. God “grants [i.e., gives] repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.” Without the gift of repentance, we would not know the truth. This is evidently what 1 Timothy 2:4 means also: We must be “saved and [in that way] come to a knowledge of the truth.” Saved from our blindness to the truth.

3. Therefore the truth Paul has in mind is not truth that the natural man can see. But the natural man can see a lot of truth. Tens of thousands of truths are open to the natural mind. What truth can the natural man not see? The natural man cannot see the glory of Christ in 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 Corinthians 4:4).

4. This is why God must “grant” what it takes to see the truth of the gospel. We are blind to it. And Satan keeps us that way. Until God “grants” repentance (metanoia) — the change of mind that can see and receive the truth of the gospel.

5. Therefore, our prayers for the unbelievers we love, and our evangelism, should be driven by this one and only hope for their salvation: “God may perhaps grant them repentance.” Since he alone has the power to overcome spiritual deadness and Satanic blindness, we lay hold in prayer and witness on the truth: “God may grant repentance.” That is our only hope.

So let us follow Paul: “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1). And: “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).

Homosexuality and the Church’s Holy Tension

The core proclamation of the gospel declares that God made amends for human sin while humans were still ungodly and hostile sinners, that God experienced the pain and agony of offering Christ up to death in order to rescue the maximum number of people from sin and transform them into Christ's image. To denounce same-sex intercourse and then stop short of actively and sacrificially reaching out in love and concern to homosexuals is to have as truncated a gospel as those who mistake God's love for "accepting people as they are" and who avoid talk of the gospels transformative power. It is to forget the costly and self-sacrificial work of God in our own lives, past and ongoing. . . .

This book has been aimed at showing that affirming same-sex intercourse is not an act of love, however well meaning the intent. That road leads to death: physically, morally, and spiritually. Promoting the homosexual "rights" agenda is an awful and harmful waste of the church's energies and resources.

What does constitute an act of love is befriending the homosexual while withholding approval of homosexual behavior, working in the true interests of the homosexual despite one's personal repugnance for same-sex intercourse, pursuing in love the homosexual while bearing the abuse that will inevitably come with opposing homosexual practice. It is the harder road to travel. It is too hard for many people to live within that holy tension. Yet it is the road that leads to life and true reconciliation; it is the calling of the church in the world.

The real difficulty for the church lies not in assessing whether the Bible's stance toward same-sex intercourse is unremittingly negative, nor even (as is increasingly being suggested) in assessing whether the hermeneutical appropriation of the Bible's stance for our contemporary context sustains that witness. No, the real difficulty for the church lies in the pastoral dimension: the "nuts-and-bolts," day-to-day compassionate response to people whose sexual actions are recognized to be sinful and harmful to themselves, to the church, and to society at large. (492–493)

Is a Wife's Submission Culturally Outdated?

In our egalitarian culture, the debate over a wife’s submission to her husband is not going away anytime soon. Of course we start with Scripture, and the Bible is clear in calling the first-century Greco-Roman wife to submit to her own husband (Ephesians 5:22, 24, Colossians 3:18, 1 Peter 3:1). But is this command now applicable to 21st-century Christian wives?

Many say no, and one opposing argument goes something like this:

Paul commanded Greco-Roman slaves to submit themselves to their masters (Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, 1 Peter 2:18). It is in those same contexts that Paul commands a woman to submit herself to her husband (Ephesians 5:22, 24, Colossians 3:18, 1 Peter 3:1). Therefore, since these words to slaves and wives comprise one unified Greco-Roman household structure, and since a slave’s submission has obviously passed away, therefore the call for a wife to submit has likewise ended.

To respond requires that we take a careful look at both the theology of slavery and the theology of marriage — which is what Everett Berry does in a 2008 journal article critiquing the egalitarian views of Gordon Fee. Berry writes the following:

When Paul addresses slavery, he instructs believers on how to emulate a Christ-like spirit. We see this in his admonishment to Philemon as a slave owner to forgive and receive his former servant Onesimus back as a brother (Philemon 16). Obviously this makes perfect sense because this is a virtue that is indicative of all believers regardless of whether they are slaves or masters. Likewise, in another setting Paul claims believing slaves have permission to obtain their freedom if the opportunity presents itself (1 Corinthians 7:21–22). For Paul then, choosing to become or remain a slave is optional for believers, but the proper conduct as a Christian slave is not.

This means Fee is right to assert that Paul did not endorse slavery as a practice. He instructed believers on how to live in relation to it. What Fee refuses to acknowledge, however, is that Paul never claims that Greco-Roman slavery has its institutional roots in the theological fibers of creation or eschatological expectation. Only the family and the church are described as such (e.g., 1 Corinthians 11:7–9; Ephesians 5:31; 1 Timothy 2:12–15) because marital and ecclesiological concerns have theological strings attached to them that slavery does not.

When it comes to marriage, for example, Paul does not speak to husbands and wives in the same way he does to slaves or masters. He does not endorse a husband seeking freedom from his wife or vice versa in the same way that he advises Christian slaves to possibly obtain release (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:21, 27). Nor does he call a master the head of his slave as Christ is the head of the church, or command slaves to obey their masters as the church obeys Christ.

But he clearly interprets the marriage relationship with such constructs. Husbands typify Christ by sacrificially loving their wives, and wives typify the church by following their husbands. And as they do so, the balance between leadership and trust not only highlights the original reciprocation that Adam and Eve forfeited, but it also points to the unending submission that the church will experience under Christ’s headship (Ephesians 5:24–25). The eternal relationship that Christ will always have with his people is to be exemplified currently through the temporal relationship between husbands and wives.*

In other words, Paul does not root Greco-Roman slavery in creation or in eschatology. But the marriage pattern is clearly rooted in both. Thus, the Christian complementary relationship between husband and wife is established by God in a way that the Greco-Roman hierarchical relationship between slaves and masters is not. Therefore, Paul’s message to Christian husbands and wives remains timeless and valid. Paul treats marriage and slavery differently.

Meanwhile, some Christian men and women may believe submission is intuitively correct because it is a practice rooted in traditional American culture (rather than in Scripture). That would be a wrong basis. And submission may emerge out of a chauvinism or kind of patriarchalism that believes men are superior to women. And that most certainly contradicts the equality of men and women in God’s eyes. Worse, submission may be abused by men who use it as permission to abuse their wives. Such men are acting from cowardice, and not from the Christ-like sacrifice and love the gospel calls for.

But in the end, a wise wife will not take her cues about submission from ancient Greco-Roman cultural history. She will find her conviction rooted in something that stretches back to the beginning of time and that stretches into a future beyond her. And that is where a conviction about submission is to be found. In Scripture submission is embedded in the marriage pattern established in the pre-fall marriage of Adam and Eve, and remains to this day a bold and counter-cultural drama to our watching world of the Church’s submission to Christ.

 

Jay and Katrina Didn't Waste Their Lives

Jay Erickson thought about death. He and his wife Katrina, along with their two little girls, moved in next to a bush hospital in Zambia earlier this year where he wrote they could "hear quite clearly the wails of mourning with each death" (Pondering Death). Jay was trained as a bush pilot and aircraft mechanic at Moody Aviation. Seeking to make Jesus known, he and his family were serving a remote mission hospital along the banks of the Zambezi River too difficult to access by roads. He transported medical supplies and food along with doctors, patients, and missionaries.

On April 20, he wrote of how his current reading and this new context coalesced to make him ponder death.

[I]t has caused me to realize again in a new way that there is nothing sad about the death of a Christian. The only sadness (and I do not intend to belittle this aspect) is in the loss of companionship by those left behind. And yet, to contrast this, the level of tragedy is so vast for the passing of an unbeliever. 

On June 2, Jay's bush plane crashed into the Zambezi River killing both he and Katrina. Their two daughters, Marina and Coral, had stayed back in the village. A missionary couple in their late twenties are now dead in service to the gospel.

I am shaken by this event, maybe because Jay and Katrina are the same age as my wife and I, or maybe because they have small children around the ages of my own, or maybe it's because, in my gut, I find it hard to believe that many American Christians can agree with Jay's assessment of death. Many American Christians don't understand real tragedy.

And do I?

Now, I can recite the line from a 1998 Reader's Digest about "Bob and Penny's early retirement in Punta Gorda, Florida." And I don't want to "buy that dream." I don't want to spend my life collecting seashells or playing softball or wasting away on a boat. But do I really get it?

Do I really get that death is gain (Philippians 1:21), that Jesus really is worth the loss of all things (Philippians 3:8), that my citizenship really is in heaven (Philippians 3:20)?

Do I care that my life makes a difference, or do I just want to be liked? Is all I'm aiming for in this vapor of years just for me "to die easy and then no hell"? (See John Piper, "Boasting Only in the Cross.")

Jay and Katrina's witness is a wake-up call. It's a call for us to ask these questions to ourselves again, no matter how much Piper we've read, or Platt we've heard, or Bonhoeffer we can tweet. Now I don't mean we fixate our attention on how much we are compelled, or if it compares to this or that. Jay and Katrina's death doesn't leave us to marvel at how compelled they were, but to marvel at the One who compelled them.

Our brother and sister, along with several others over centuries whose names we don't know, have died for Jesus' sake and the point is that we see Jesus. That we see his worthiness and excellency. The point is that, as we're stirred by their sacrifice, we rediscover the absolute wonder that God became man and died to save rebels. That he did it not because of our works, but according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace. That Jesus' death in our place and victory over the grave frees our hands from the white-knuckled grip we once had on the comforts of this world.

Thank you, Father, for Jay and Katrina. Thank you for their witness, and for your glory that captivated them to pour out their lives in love. Make us to learn from them and know more of your surpassing worth in Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

Jesus Commends Shrewd Money Managers

In Luke 16:1–9, Jesus told his disciples an odd parable where he used a dishonest manager as an example of shrewdness. What did he mean? Imagine a discussion about this between disciples Simon (the Zealot) and Matthew.

________

“Matthew, you know more about these things than I do. Why did the Master commend the dishonest manager’s shrewdness?”

Simon’s question stung a bit and Matthew’s look said so.

“Oh. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

Simon and Matthew were unlikely friends. And it had been pretty rocky between them at first.

Simon had been a zealot with a lethal hatred of the Romans. He had once sworn himself to the sacred cause of driving them out of Israel. But even more he had loathed Jews who were complicit in the Roman subjugation and pillaging of God’s people. Jews like Matthew. Matthew had collected taxes for Rome — and himself. He had simply seen it as a shrewd and lucrative career move. And prior to Jesus calling him from his booth he had had zero time for the foolish zealot idealism of people like Simon. Theirs was a utopic delusion — a handful of angry Jews taking on Caesar’s legions. It was a death wish, an appointment with a Roman cross.

Now they, the former zealot and former tax collector, were friends. Only Jesus could have made that happen.

“What did you mean?” Matthew asked.

“I just meant . . . you used to be . . .

“A shrewd dishonest manager?”

“I’m not saying you were just like . . .”

“Stop tripping over yourself, Simon. I was every bit as shrewdly dishonest and worse. I know it. It’s just painful to remember what I used to be.

“Which master are you saying commended the manager?”

“Well, that’s where I’m confused. It almost sounded like Jesus commended the self-protective actions of the manager. But I know that’s not right. How is this corrupt scoundrel supposed to be an example for ‘the sons of light’?”

Matthew smiled and replied, “Generosity.”

“Generosity? The only thing he was generous with was his master’s money!”

“Exactly. Simon, that’s our Master’s point. The manager used his master’s money to win favor with those who could provide him a place to live when he lost his job.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“No. But as a ‘son of this world’ he knew how this world works. So he used worldly shrewdness so he wouldn’t be homeless. Even his worldly master appreciated his cunning. Jesus is saying that the ‘sons of light’ need to be at least as shrewd about how the kingdom works.”

Simon replied, “Which is completely different.”

“Completely. But what we do is similar to what the dishonest manager did.”

“You mean we’re generous with our Master’s money.”

“Right.”

Simon thought for a moment. “So, it’s just what he meant by “sell your possessions, and give to the needy” so that we will have “a treasure in the heavens that does not fail” (Luke 12:33). Shrewd ‘sons of light’ give away “unrighteous wealth” and make friends of God, who is our eternal dwelling (Deuteronomy 33:27).

“Exactly. That’s the shrewdness our Master commends.”

________

Our heavenly Master has made us all managers of “unrighteous wealth” (Luke 16:9). As John Piper says,

The possession of money in this world is a test run for eternity. Can you pass the test of faithfulness with your money? Do you use it as a means of proving the worth of God and the joy you have in supporting his cause? Or does the way you use it prove that what you really enjoy is things, not God?

These are questions we all must ask ourselves. Because Jesus wants us to be shrewd with our money (Luke 16:8–9), and kingdom shrewdness looks like this:

 Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Luke 12:32–34).

 

Jesus: Lord of Feast and Famine, Homeruns and Strikeouts

. . . I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:11–13)

Smash a homer. Climb a mountain. Blast through the pile for a touchdown. Run a marathon. Establish a new personal best on the bench press. Hit the game-winning shot. You can do it. I can do all things through him who gives me strength!

So some would say.

Snatch this powerful verse from its context and plug it right into your triumphalistic American athletic Christianity. Or take a step back and see the bigger picture. And see that there’s even more power than maybe you imagined.

Philippians 4:13 isn’t mainly about doing all the great things you’d want to do anyways, but sprinkled with a little Jesus gusto. Rather, the verse is mainly about how Jesus is strong enough to give us contentment in life’s very worst circumstances.

The apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians from a dirty, miserable first-century jail, not from the end zone or the top of a freshly scaled mountain.

Yes, he does want to make sure that Christians are able to handle the good times. He wants us to remember Jesus when all is well, when we’re at life’s peaks. To thank Jesus when we succeed. To express appreciation when there’s a feast set before us. To bring him to mind as the giver of every good gift when we’re swimming in abundance.

But just as much as he wants us to lean on Jesus when times are good, he wants us to have strength from Jesus to endure when things are hardest. Maybe even more so.

When we’ve been humbled or embarrassed. When there’s no food on the table — can you imagine that? When our team loses. When we’re unmotivated. When we err. When we’re feeling depressed. When we think we may have lost the strength to go on. That’s precisely when we need strength from Jesus.

Jesus is the one who by his Holy Spirit loves to give strength to his people both for doing life’s most enjoyable things and for enduring in life’s hardest things. Jesus is the strength-giver both for eating a good meal with thanksgiving and for missing one with thanksgiving. Jesus is big enough to sustain us when we’re low. He’s strong enough to hold us when we’re at our weakest. We can do all things — not just the things we want most to do, but even (and especially) the things we want least to do — through Jesus who strengths us.

Jesus is Lord over feast and famine. Lord over homeruns and strikeouts. He is Lord over touchdowns and fumbles. Lord over web-gems and errors. He is big enough to be relatively unimpressed with your greatest accomplishments and kind enough to be gentle in your greatest failures. He is Lord not only over champions, gold-medalists, and MVPs, but also Lord over losers, failures, and the disqualified.

According to 1 Corinthians 1:26–29, he is perhaps Lord all the more over the losers:

Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

So when you’re at your highest, turn to Jesus in gratitude and for the strength to take the next step. And when you’re at your lowest, turn to Jesus in faith that he’ll provide for you the strength to keep going.

It’s true — in Jesus we really can do all things — especially, be content in him in the midst of life’s most difficult, painful, and tragic circumstances. Leaning always on the Savior is learning the secret for everything.

Learning Fatherhood From the Father of Fatherhood

In Ephesians 3:14–15, Paul prays, "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father [pater], from whom every family [patria] in heaven and on earth is named." In the Greek it is easy to pick up on Paul’s pater/patria play on words. John Stott chose to translate this phrase as "the Father from whom all fatherhood is named." The ESV translation footnote makes a similar point.

God’s Fatherhood is the archetype of human fatherhood, a point made even more explicit in Hebrews 12:7–10. What that means for us fathers today is that we take our cues on fatherhood from the Father of Fatherhood, which is a great relief for any father today who was fathered by a sinful or absent father (which of course includes every one of us).

But what’s the point of this? In his most recent book, Douglas Wilson focuses one entire chapter (chapter 14) to a verse-by-verse stroll through the Gospel of John, highlighting every reference made to the Father/Son relationship. The book is worth its price for that chapter alone. At the end of his survey Wilson makes this summary observation:

The most obvious feature of the Father of Jesus Christ is His generosity. He is generous with His glory (John 1:14), with His tasks (John 5:18), with His protection (John 10:28–32), with His home (John 14:1–2), and with His joy (John 16:23–24). The Father gives (John 3:34–36). The Father gives His Son (John 3:16; 18:11); the Father gives His Spirit (John 14:16–17); the Father gives Himself (John 14:22–24).

Learning this about the Father who is a Spirit, who is intangible, should stir us deeply. He is seeking worshipers who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth — in short, who will become like He is. And what is He like? He is generous with everything. Is there anything He has that he has held back? And what should we — tangible fathers — be like? The question is terribly hard to answer, but not because it is difficult to understand. (Father Hunger, 204–205)

And that is a good challenge for me as a father because it makes me ask: from all the words that my children could use to describe me, would they choose generous? The answer spurs my attention to my Heavenly Father, the generous Father of all fatherhood.

 

Let Wonder Lead You to Worship (Don’t Let the Devil Dumb You)

How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep!
The stupid man cannot know; the fool cannot understand this” (Psalm 92:5–6).

The devil does not want you to wonder. Wonder is deadly to the domain of darkness because of its dangerous tendency to lead to worship.

So the devil is going to do his level best to keep you stupid — stupid in the sense of being sense-less. If he can’t damn you, he will try to dumb you. You must resist him (1 Peter 5:9)!

All the senses that God has given you are telling you about God today (Romans 1:20). And one of the healthiest things you can do for your soul after prayer and bathing in God’s living Word is to listen to creation tell you about the glory of God (Psalm 19:1).

You live and move and have your being in a world so full of visible and invisible, material and spiritual wonders that’s it’s a wonder you are not constantly overwhelmed by even the most ordinary things.

Look at the dead fly on your windowsill, for example. Could you have imagined such a creature? Its eyes gave it almost 360-degree compound vision and it tasted with its legs. Its transparent wings moved it faster than your hand. The most brilliant humans in history combined could not create one and God made this marvel mainly for manure.

Then look at the windowsill. If it’s wood it was once a living tree whose branches stretched to the sky and caught sunrays in its leaves for food. Where did that tree grow? How did light and water produce something so strong and durable that it now shelters you and frames your view?

Now look at the window glass. Who first discovered that by putting the seashore into the fire you could put the seashore into the side of your house and see through it? How God must have delighted the day the glass age dawned!

And as you look through your window know that each thing on which your eye rests has a story that stretches back, back into ancient ages before all memory except the Ancient of Days. Every living thing you encounter is a descendent of the Adam of its kind. Open your window and listen. Every sound is telling you something about that story. Every smell too. Get out into the sun or rain, heat or chill, wind or still and feel the real.

And wonder. Let yourself wonder. Let it lead you to worship the One who created it all (Colossians 1:16) and who is at this very moment upholding it all by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3).

But expect a fight. The devil wants you stupid, distracted from wonder, fearful of an imagined future, and deceived by his virtual, distorted counterfeit of God’s true world.

But don’t be fooled. All the awe and health and romance is in the real. Get into the book of Scripture first and then get out into the book of nature. Listen to them tell you of the glory of God.

“Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well” (Psalm 139:14).

 

Letter to a 13-Year Old Asking How to Go Deeper in Bible Study

Dear [Samantha],

I got your note about going deeper with your Bible reading. Thanks for asking.

First, let me say that I am really encouraged that you take the Bible so seriously. Sometimes I hold it in my hand and feel the wonder that it is the very word of the Maker of the universe. Amazing. 

You are right to read it every day and seek to let it permeate all your thoughts and feelings. When Paul says it is all inspired by God and that it is profitable so that you will be equipped for every good work, I believe he means that even the parts that are hard to read, or even sometimes confusing, will in the long run have an effect on your mind and your soul that will shape you into the kind of woman who can stand strong all your life for Jesus, and sniff out the errors of the world, and love all that is truly good and beautiful.

Here are a couple ideas for going deeper.

I think it is good to always be reading through the Bible as a whole. It sounds like you are doing that with the four book marks. That's good. I used the Discipleship Reading Plan for about 15 years and am now using McCheyen's Bible reading plan. It takes you through the whole Bible in a year plus the Psalms twice and the New Testament twice. If you wanted to try that sometime you could find it by just googling it.

In addition, it is good to focus on some unit of Scripture for going deeper, like a book or the Sermon on the Mount, or Romans 8. To go deeper, one way is to memorize it. I did that with the book of Philippians a couple years ago and then recited it in my January sermon on the importance of the Bible. Few things take you deeper into God's word like memorizing large portions of it. Here's a booklet you can download to show you how to memorize long passages.

Another thing to do with that special part of Scripture you are focusing on for a while, is to write it out longhand slowly in a note book. I do this with almost every sermon I preach. I don't fully understand it, but there are "eyes" in my pen. I see things when I slowly write the text. I see things that I see no other way. Another advantage of writing it out is that I can circle words that are repeated. I can underline phrases and draw lines between them. This helps me see connections in the passage. And connections are the key to meaning.

I think you should invest in a very good study Bible, like the ESV Study Bible, or ask your parents to get you one for your birthday. Or maybe just because you help wash the dishes! Then read the introduction to the part of Scripture that you are studying. And read the notes. Don't assume they are always right. Only the Bible itself is always right. But let it stir up thoughts that you can trace out for yourself.

With regard to prayer, this is absolutely crucial and I am glad you are doing it. God hears our prayers and helps us be humble enough and alert enough and in-tune enough to grasp what he says.

I use the acrostic I. O. U. S as I come to the Bible.

I. Incline my heart to your testimonies. Psalm 119:36 (Since my heart is inclined to sleep and to work and to lots of things other than the Bible.)

O. Open my eyes to see wonders in your word. Psalm 119:18 (Since my heart is so often dull and blind to the wonders of the word.)

U. Unite my heart to fear your name. Psalm 86:11 (Since my heart is often divided and distracted in many directions)

S. Satisfy me with your steadfast love. Psalm  90:14 (Since my heart is so tempted to be satisfied in other things.)

Besides these prayers, practice praying the prayers of the Bible. Besides the Lord's prayer my favorite is Ephesians 3:14–19. These prayers weave into our desires the kinds of desires that God taught us to have.

I hope that helps.

Grace be with you! Stay in the word! 

Did you ever notice that every letter of Paul has near the beginning the words, "Grace be to you" and near the end it has the words "grace be with you." I think the reason is that as we start reading the letters he knows that God's grace is coming to us through the letter. And as we get ready to leave the letter and go to school or to work, he knows that God's grace will go with us.

So as I close, I say with Paul, grace be with you. But that's because grace comes to you every day as you read the Bible. Keep it up. You will never regret it.

More on the Masculine Feel of Christianity

In his 2012 biographical address on "The Frank and Manly Mr. Ryle," John Piper highlighted the value of a masculine ministry — and with it, the importance of Christianity having a masculine feel. It's a provocative thing to say when, not only in our day, but throughout history, true masculinity has seemed too often like an endangered species, under assault from both the left and the right.

Such a controversial claim is open to swift misinterpretation, especially when heard from presuppositions not shared by the speaker. Does Piper mean that the church should be masculine only, and in no sense feminine? Or might he mean there's an essential place for both, relating to each other, all the way down, in a complementary way?

So we asked him in the speakers' panel, "Should Christianity also have a feminine feel?"

His response, in short: "The answer is yes. [In a] church . . . proscribed by and protected by a masculine feel, there will be a feminine feel in lots of places."

Here's his full response (with a transcript below) describing the complementary relationship of masculinity and femininity in the church:

If it is done right, this masculine feel creates a space. It is big, it's roomy, it's beautiful, it's peaceful. It's just full and radiates with all the good things of life and in it women, flourishing, will give it that feel. So that as you walk in on Sunday morning and strong singing, led primarily by men, and then a voice from God is heard, and women are loving this, they're radiant, they're intelligent, they're understanding, they're processing, they're interacting. Then all the gifts that were just articulated will flourish in that space. And as you navigate that community there will be feminine feels all over the place.

If I would have had another hour I would have like to spin out the benefits of that community. One of the things I would have said is that in a community where there is a secure, strong, humble, masculine feel, men are free to be appropriately feminine. And women are free to be appropriately masculine. In other words, when you look at any given human being, the most attractive, interesting, winsome human beings are not all masculine or all feminine. They are appropriately, if they are a man, prominently masculine. And there are things about this guy that are remarkably tender, kind, warm, nurturing (the kinds of things we would associate with a woman).

And when you look at a woman who is dominantly and prominently feminine, she will have a backbone, she will be articulate, she will be thoughtful (things we tend to think are male). And in a community that is well-defined there is freedom to have a man, who in some places might not be viewed as masculine. He is an artistic guy. I didn't want to create, and I want to uncreate, any sense that the only, appropriate masculine guy is the guy who hunts, or who does flag football, and doesn't like anything creative or artistic or doesn't like to write or make music. . .

So the flavor is yes. The answer is yes. The church, as you move through this community, proscribed by and protected by a masculine feel, there will be a feminine feel in lots of places.

Study the New Birth This Summer

Summer is a great time to set our minds on things above. One way to do that this summer is to study the new birth with your small group or church fellowship using Pastor John's book Finally Alive. We have a free study guide that can help you lead the discussion.

Why would a focus on the new birth be profitable study?

The reason I want you to know what happened to you in your new birth and others to know what must yet happen to them is threefold:

1) When you are truly born again and grow in the grace and knowledge of what the Lord has done for you, your fellowship with God will be sweet, and your assurance that he is your Father will be deep. I want that for you.

2) If God would be pleased to bring this kind of awakening to his church, then the world will get the real deal of radical love and sacrifice and courage from the church and not all these fake Christians that live just like the world.

3) If you know what really happened to you in your new birth, you will treasure God and his Spirit and his Son and his word more highly than you ever have. And he will be glorified. So those are some of the reasons why we are focusing on the new birth.

Summers Are for Gospel Reminders

Tragically for too many Christians, summer is the season of spiritual drift. As the days get longer and hotter we are tempted towards spiritual laziness. Which is why we cannot take a season off from making every effort to grow in godliness.

We must always — at all times — stay plugged into our power source of the gospel. Not only do we stay plugged in, we are exhorted to press on, to move forward, to strive ahead, and to make every effort.

The Apostle Peter focuses our attention on Christ-like qualities in 2 Peter 1:3–7. If these qualities are not ours and if they are not increasing, if we are not moving forward, then we may be drifting. Or to use Peter’s metaphor, we may be growing blind.

For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. (2 Peter 1:9)

Which is to say that if we stop growing in Christ-likeness we are nearsighted and have lost sight of the future and all the promises of God. We’ve forgotten, Peter says, that we were cleansed from our former sins. We've forgotten our cleansing from sin and the union with Christ it represents. When we stop moving forward in Christ, we run the risk of growing blind to the past and future work of God in Christ. We run the risk of being cut off from the power. And so we drift to destruction with no gospel and no hope.

That’s a breathtaking warning from Peter.

But following this warning is one of the precious and very great promises God uses to plug us into his divine power. That’s how he intends to use it.

Peter's words apply to summer:

Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things. (2 Peter 1:12–15)

Peter devoted the short time he had left on earth to stir up the saints by way of reminder, and if it was worthy of his few remaining days on earth, it is worth the rest of ours as well. It is a calling worthy of our summer.

But no matter how well we know the gospel, we need to hear it over and over because we are prone to drift from it. Summer is a season when we are especially likely to drift, and Peter is eager to warn us of this spiritual danger.

On the one hand, we believe the precious truth that a genuine Christian cannot lose his or her salvation. God is faithful and will preserve his own. But this perseverance is not automatic. Very often God preserves us by extending his grace through other saints. Saints who remind us of the truth we already know. We forget, we fall asleep, we get weary and so stop making every effort, which means we float on the tide of temptation and worldliness from time to time. And it’s when we drift we need to stir up one another by way of reminder.

We need to hear the words:

Wake up.

The gospel is true.

Jesus died so that you can be forgiven your sins and so that you can be set free of your sins.

Plug into the divine power source and receive the grace to press on in personal holiness.

We all need to hear that in one form or another from time to time. Eternity is at stake in how we live our life together. That’s not an overstatement. Our relationships have eternal significance because we are called to live together, stirring up one another by way of reminder, helping each other make our calling and election sure. And we don't take the summers off from this precious duty.

When you see a brother or sister drifting, don’t let them go. Don’t assume they know the truth and will remember it and come back on their own. Go out to them and tell them the truth of the precious gospel of Jesus Christ once again. It is likely they forgot.

The ministry of gospel-reminder is a significant ministry we offer one another. So as we enter this summer season, we do not take a vacation from making every effort to be more like Jesus, and we don’t take a vacation from stirring up one another by way of reminder. This summer we press on as we do in all seasons, by God’s power, to make our calling and election sure.

That Awkward Moment When We Speak the Gospel

Evangelism is counter-cultural. It's true everywhere on the planet, but perhaps it's especially so in our increasingly post-Christian Western society. We live in a polite culture, for the most part. Talk about religion? You just don't go there. Talk about how many tornadoes have come through, and how the team is doing, and how the city has new recycling bins. But Jesus Christ, crucified for sinners and risen from the dead? You just don't go there. So they say.

For the time being, it seems the greatest threat to gospel-telling in such a society is not that we will be hauled before the city council, beaten, and have our property taken away. What we are really dealing with is some awkwardness.

Awkwardness is perhaps the biggest threat to evangelism for far too many of us.

I've done a little research and can confirm to you that there is not one documented case of someone dying, or even being severely injured, by awkwardness. Not one.

But when I read my kids' Twitter, I see nearly half their tweets starting with "That awkward moment when… ." Awkwardness is catastrophic, and maybe especially so among the younger generation.

Awkwardness! It's as if we imagine fire and asteroids and dragons. As if people are running through the streets yelling, "Run from the awkwardness, it's going to get you! You might feel awkward. It would be terrible if you felt awkward!"

But a little awkwardness — or even a lot of it — is such a small price to pay for enjoying the power of God's Spirit using us to be his witnesses.

I write this as no super-evangelist. I'm right there with you, naturally fearful that things might be awkward. I sit on the plane thinking, "If the guy next to me doesn't like my talking about Jesus, it's going to be awkward." Oh, no, I'll have a hard life to deal with sitting next to this guy for two whole hours being awkward.

For the Christian, there is a joy and a privilege to suffer for Jesus, even a tiny little bit. Most of us can agree that when we do step out in faith, the awkwardness really wasn't that bad in retrospect. Awkwardness seems so horrible when it's in front of us. But it's not nearly as bad behind us. All my limbs are together, I'm okay, it's really not that bad.

The aim here is not to press any kind of guilt on you. But I think when we look at this issue of gospel witness, we have a tendency to do what they do in big cities when somebody is laying on the ground. Everyone walks past the victim like they didn't notice anything. Then the cops come around the corner and wonder why nobody responded. It was because nobody wanted to get involved.

Well, if you are a born-again believer, you are involved — really, really involved. The Holy Spirit lives in your heart. You cannot be more involved. You're in the middle of it. It's happening right there in you. You are the issue, you are the scene of the crime. You're involved. We cannot dance out of the way.

Why would God make something that we long to do so difficult to do?

For some Christians, it isn't that difficult to evangelize. In fact, these tend to be confused as to why so few Christians are involved in ongoing, bold evangelism. If this is you, I want to tell you, we praise God for your boldness. And you should know, you are a bit weird. For you, awkwardness is just an abstract concept. For the rest of us, awkwardness is like a plague to be avoided at all costs. But this is an example of the different parts in the body of Christ making their specific contribution to God's glory and the advance of his kingdom. So why is something so important and integral to the Christian life so difficult for so many?

Here's one answer: God gives most of us this awareness of awkwardness so that we would never, not for a second, trust in or magnify ourselves and drift away from the magnificence of the gospel. This awareness in evangelism makes the gospel tangible. It means I need the gospel right now myself. Not only does my hearer need Jesus at this moment, but so do I!

Jesus died for disciples who do a poor job of witnessing. He died for those of us who have all too often failed to commend him because we feared it might get awkward. But he also died to give us the grace to press through the awkwardness to testify to him.

May God give us the grace to rebound from our many failures and grace not to fold in the face of awkwardness in telling others the most important news in the world.