I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from him who was before you, but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.

13 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from him who was before you, 14 but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.’” (1 Chronicles 17:13-14 ESV)

God is Sovereign. He is at no one’s beck and call. He is not subject to anyone. Men may indeed insist that God must follow their ideas of who He is and what He will or won’t do, but these things come from flawed Human reason. Men are arrogant creatures who have been trying to usurp God’s place on His throne since the fall in Genesis 3. Most people do not correctly understand God’s revelation of Himself that we find in the Sacred Scripture, therefore, their doctrines are more man based than God centered.

One of the most important teachings about our Lord Jesus Christ that is missed by so many professing Christians and their leaders is that all of creation is really all about Him. He created it for Himself, that He would be glorified in it. After His resurrection just prior to His ascension He told His disciples and us something we would best not forget.

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (Matthew 28:18 ESV)

He is Lord over all. His people are those whom are saved from the penalty for their sins by the grace of God, through His blood, which He shed for them. Because of His victory at the cross, our enemy, Satan, is defeated. He cannot keep the elect from hearing the Gospel or believing in it. He has lost his authority that was given to him at the fall. He is subject to the will of God. Believers would do well to understand that our enemy cannot move against us without God’s permission. Even then, God will allow Him to affect us for our best and for His glory.

Believers serve a risen and victorious Saviour. His reign is forever. Therefore let us stop listening to those who are going all out to change Christianity from its proper God-centeredness into a man-centered counterfeit. Why? They are serving a different Jesus, one of their own making.

13 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from him who was before you, 14 but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.’” (1 Chronicles 17:13-14 ESV) 
“Human reason objects to this passage. Considering itself ten times wiser than God, reason asks, “How can God give his eternal power to someone else? What would he be keeping for himself?” Now, it’s true that God has said, “I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols” (Isaiah 42:8). It would be especially difficult for God to give his glory to a mere human being, who was born in time and not eternal. But Christians do acknowledge that Jesus was a human being. He was Mary’s son and David’s descendant. He was born and he died.”
“Furthermore, people of other religions deduce that God can’t have a son because he doesn’t have a wife. Why do these people think they can contain the incomprehensible nature of God in the nutshell of their human reason? Shame on you, Satan, as well as all others who are students of blind foolish, miserable human reason. No one can fully understand these lofty matters, but God alone. All we know about them is what the Holy Spirit has revealed to us through Scripture.”
“Christians can answer these objections correctly, clearly, and accurately because they have insight from the New Testament. God’s Son has two natures in one inseparable person. He is one Christ, not two Christs. The Father gave Christ, his Son, eternal divinity, not in time, but from all eternity. The Father gave his divinity to Christ completely and fully, just as the Father himself possessed divinity from eternity. When he gave it to Christ, the Father didn’t lose any divinity himself. Rather, he gave to the Son the same power, which he still retains in eternity. There are not two deities. Rather, God the Father and Christ are united in one deity.” – Martin Luther

Human reason is not capable of understanding God fully. Our puny attempts at trying to explain the Holy Trinity always have holes and problems and come up far short. What we must do is simply believe our Lord, obey Him as we accept that He is reigning now and will do so forever.

The in Between

There lies not a thin line but a great open plain between remembering and forgetting. This open space is perhaps best called haunting. Recently I was driving my thirteen year old back from an orthodontist appointment. What could be more ordinary, more suburban? We waited in our average sedan for the light to turn green when I asked her a question I never would have anticipated when she had been born: When we are sitting here at this light, does it cross your mind that your mother and your sister are buried right over there?

This was, as my daughter well knew, a genuine question, and not in any way an accusation. I wasn’t scolding her for not noticing, or, if noticing, not saying anything. It just struck me that sometimes I go weeks without driving by the cemetery where my precious ladies’ bodies are planted. Sometimes I drive there, walk to where they are buried and pray, cry, and remember. But then there were these times, when the cemetery is not my destination but it is just there, right next to me.

There are no moments when I am not conscious of their absence. But there are moments when I am less conscious. Like the constant ringing in the ear that assaults some people my lonesomeness for them cannot be escaped. To enter into missing them is in many ways easier than living in the in between. When I remember, when I weep, I am entering in. When, however, the reminders come to me, it is entering in, nagging. Their absence is always announcing its presence.

It was three years ago, just a few days before Valentine’s Day. I was, I suspect, unloading some groceries on the shelf in our rec room. Beside me was our ping pong table. She stood at the entrance of the room, looking like she had seen a ghost. “They just called,” she told me, gingerly taking steps toward me, “It’s leukemia.” I held her there as we cried, in the same spot I pass through now everyday. Here, by the shelf, beside where the laundry gets folded, here is where I first knew that we were facing a problem I couldn’t fix, where I first heard her death sentence.

I sleep now, as I have done since the day she died, on her side of the bed. Not, strangely, that I might be close to her, but that I might be farther from where I used to sleep when she was with us. So each morning I wake where she is supposed to be.

While this reflection is more an exposition of the constant, nagging pain rather than a revelation of those moments of the blinding pain, while I am merely sad, not flirting with despair, I still have no answer. I will not scrub my life clean of these landmarks of our journey through the valley of the shadow of death. I will not pretend that my wife or my daughter were Enochs, who walked with God, and then were no more. Instead I will continue to be haunted. I will continue to walk where they walked. And He will continue to walk with me.

The Christian's Glorious Freedom

You may have been a Christian for some time and yet not grasped your new status in Christ. You may still be intimidated by the domineering character of the tyrant who once ruled over you.

Believers sometimes wrongly assume: “I have sinned; therefore, sin still has authority over me. I cannot possibly have ‘died’ to sin.”

Paul unambiguously contradicts this thinking. Sin has no authority over anyone who is in Christ. You are no longer under its dominion. You have received a new identity. You have died out of that old kingdom. You have been raised through Christ into the new kingdom where He—not sin—reigns. From this vantage point, you can look back to your former king and his kingdom, and say: “You once ruled over me, but no longer. I am a citizen of the kingdom of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He alone reigns over me now.” You may not yet be what one day you shall be; but thank God you are no longer what you once were (Rom. 6:17–18).

Paul asks the Roman Christians: “Don’t you know this? Was there a slip-up in the teaching you were given? Around the time you were baptized and came into the fellowship of Jesus Christ, did no one tell you that this is what it means to be a Christian?”

Perhaps that was true in some of the early churches. Believers did not always know these things. Perhaps no one told them. If so, it is all the more likely to be true in contemporary churches. Perhaps no one has explained to you that no matter what Tyrant Sin, in all his various guises, may say, we are no longer under his dominion. He no longer has grounds for blackmail. He has no right to paralyze us into thinking that we can never make any real advance in the Christian life because we will never be free from this prevailing sin.

I enjoy reading crime novels and have frequently relaxed on long journeys by reading the novels of Margaret Perry. Many of them are set in nineteenth-century London.

One of her central characters is a detective named William Monk (not to be confused with the American TV detective Adrian Monk). His life and adventures are made the more intriguing by an event in his past. While a police officer in London, he was thrown from a horse-drawn cab driven at high speed. Monk survived but lost his memory. As a result, he finds himself in situations where he is at a great disadvantage because he has no memory of what happened to him in the past. He does not know who he really was, so he does not clearly understand who he really is.

That is a basic problem for many Christians. We lose touch with the person Scripture says we really are. Perhaps we never really understood that becoming a Christian meant receiving a new identity in Christ.

Paul is saying: “Christians of Rome, you need to understand who you really are. You are people with a new citizenship. You are no longer under the dominion of sin. That makes a radical difference to the way you live the Christian life. It releases you from captivity.”

It is easy to read this passage, and say: “Paul, you are not talking about me. I certainly don’t think of myself as someone who has died to sin.”

If that is true, a serious accident has taken place. You are like William Monk, constantly in situations you cannot handle properly because you suffer from spiritual amnesia. You do not clearly understand your identity in Christ. You are always trying to piece things together, but never getting the picture clearly.

But when you begin to understand that in Christ you died to sin and have now been delivered from the dominion of sin; that you are no longer under its bondage; that you no longer need to be a victim of its subtle paralysis—then you find yourself saying not only “Isn’t this amazing grace?” but “What glorious freedom Jesus Christ has bought for me on the cross.”

What’s Your Gospel Response Plan (GRP)?

Growing up in North Alabama, I remember going through specific routines in the event of an emergency. I doubt there was a kid who did not know why or when you need to stop, drop, and roll. We were trained in protocols in the event of a tornado, calmly lining up in the hallway and securing our heads from potential debris. We knew how to exit the buildings in case of a fire in a single-file line to safe zones outside. All of these procedures were responses to various kinds of potential disasters we could encounter while in school.

Now what, do you think, are the possibilities that I as a kid in elementary school would actually need to follow through on those drills? How often would a tornado tear through our building? How often would a fire consume the classrooms? Hardly ever, it at all, right? But we were still trained in how to respond in the very unlikely event that they might occur.

What if I told you that on a daily basis you are going to be faced with potential crises or disasters that required a response from you? What if it was not a distant potentiality but an eminent reality? How would you prepare yourself for such situations? Would you be trained to know how to respond?

Let me break this down and make the case why every follower of Jesus must have a gospel response plan (GRP).

Have you ever been hurt by someone else?Have you ever been criticized?Have you ever been offended?Has someone ever sinned against you?Have you sinned against someone else?Has your day ever taken one unexpected turn after another?Have other people let you down or betrayed your trust?Have you faced days of disappointment and despair?Have you experienced frustration and anger at the failure of others or yourself?

These are just a few questions addressing realities you and I face on a daily basis, and with every question/situation, a response will manifest from your life. But what kind of response will it be? We have a choice to respond out of our sinful nature (Gen. 3) or out of our new identity in Christ. Will our response be driven by guilt and shame, hiding and pretending, blaming and fearing like Adam and Eve in Genesis 3? Or will our response arise from repentance and faith out of a heart resting in God’s acceptance of you in Christ?

You are a sinner living among sinners. You are a desperately needy person rubbing shoulders with desperately needy people. What weak, needy sinners need in every moment is to look to a strong, sufficient Savior. That’s what we do when we respond to the gospel–we turn from looking to ourselves (whether out of self-pity or self-righteousness) in repentance and we look to Christ in renewed faith and trust.

The problem we have today, I fear, is that most Christians do not have a developed gospel response plan and, therefore, there is no functional repentance and faith response when things happen (internally or externally) in their lives. The default, then, is to look somewhere other than Jesus in our response. And this, I find, is a massive discipleship breakdown for believers.

Someone is going to sin against you. Will you handle that situation with a response that honors the gospel? Will you pursue reconciliation through forgiveness and view that person through the lens of grace? Or will you come across self-righteous and force that person to make atonement for their sin by working their way back into a right relationship with you based on their efforts?

You are going to sing against someone else. Will you handle that situation with a response that honors the gospel? Will you make excuses for your sin? Rationalize it? Blame others for it? Or will you own it, humbly confessing it to God and those whom you sinned against, seeking forgiveness? Will you hide away playing the victim card in self-pity, sulking in your failure, or will you take your sin to the throne of grace to your merciful High Priest?

Paul said, “as you received Christ Jesus the Lord so walk in him…” (Col. 2:6). You receive Jesus by repentance and faith, and you walk in that same repentance and faith. That is to say, this is how we “learn Christ” (Eph. 5:20) and “put on our new self” (i.e., our new identity in Christ). I think the most practically and helpful tool that Christians have today is to be trained to know how to respond to various situations they will encounter in a way that commends the gospel and flows out of a heart fully resting and secure in Jesus. We are not talking about potential dangers here. We’re talking about actual, real-life situations happening every day where Christians will either act out the old man of Genesis 3 or the new man being renewed by the Holy Spirit.

Think back in your life where sin has impacted your relationship with God and others. Are there people that are no longer in your life because of the functional absence of a gospel-driven response? Sadly, I can say that is true for me, and I suspect that if we are cognizant enough, nearly everyone would consent to that reality. But we don’t have to continue that way!

So what is your Gospel Response Plan?

You are sinner living in a fallen world. You are going to be hurt, betrayed, frustrated, prideful, annoyed, judgmental, pitiful, and so much more. It’s going to happen. But are you going to be trained as a follower of Jesus Christ to know, almost instinctively, how to respond with the gospel through premeditated prescriptions of specific ways to walk in repentance and faith?

Perhaps what we need to do each morning is prepare ourselves with some “gospel drills”. Think about one possible situation a gospel response will be required of you. For example, you are at a restaurant and your server is extremely slow and the food is cold. The server asks you if there is anything else you need, and you are tempted to treat her like her actions deserve. But instead, you respond by saying, “Thank you for serving me today, and by the way, as I pray over my food I would like to know if there is anything I can pray for you about?” Who knows? The server may already be feeling guilty and embarrassed by their service and surprised by your gracious response. They could be going through a terrible crisis in their lives, and they open up to you and provide an opportunity for you to minister to them (and perhaps introduce them to Jesus).

Why that gospel drill? Because you will get bad service and cold food. You will be tempted to act out of the old Adam and not out of the risen Christ. And this is one of countless other ways we need to “learn Christ” and “put on the new self” with a strategy to approach whatever comes our way to walk in repentance and faith and show the transforming power of Christ’s abundant grace actively working in our lives.

They Do It Better Than We Do

Imagine with me a disciple-making culture that looked something like this.

Disciple-makers have decided to commit a minimum of 9-10 hours a week providing hands-on practical training. This commitment did not coming with compelling arguments. The disciple-makers love it. They want to invest their time in the work. There is a team of disciple-makers–seven in all–committed to making a total of 12 disciples together over the course of several months. The kind of teaching and training they provide is not a classroom lecture, though there certainly is an intellectual component to it. But it is more than that. It is hands-on with a high level of participation and practice where those being discipled have an immediate opportunity to work it out. Along with the practical instruction and increasing depth of knowledge, there is constant encouragement from the team of disciple-makers. Any opportunity to affirm change and progress is acknowledged, not only by the team of disciple-makers but also those being discipled. Corresponding to the high level of challenge is a high level of celebration as it becomes evident that there is a high level of change taking place in those being discipled. The heads (instruction), hearts (encouragement), and hands (practical application) of those being discipled are trained by those modeling the life and work before them in their own context.

Sounds like a pretty amazing disciple-making experience, right?

What I just shared with you is my 6-year-old’s city league baseball team.

One year ago, my son was playing tee ball with 4-year-olds, where toddlers would race to wherever the ball was hit (and then the gang pile). Now, he is learning game scenarios and fielding techniques from his coaches, and kids twice the age of those he played with last year modeling for him how to do everything from running bases to cheering on his fellow teammates. For the past 2-3 weeks, it has been an amazing sight to watch my son go from making “confetti” with grass in the outfield to learning how to react differently to fly balls and ground balls.

My son’s team practices three days a week, and each practice is approximately two hours long. Most of the seven coaches arrive 30 minutes early for kids who want to shag balls or get some extra one-on-one instruction. Each kid invests a minimum $200 for the season, which includes registration, batting helmet, glove, and bat. None of this is coerced or has to be explained. Both players and coaches just know these are the expectations, and the desire to play the game is greater than any of these expectations placed on them.

As I began to process what was taking place here, I could not help but notice the dynamic disciple-making culture of the team and wonder why the church does not take a similar approach to making disciples. If we took baseball out of the equation and placed it with gospel-centered living, would we find 7 disciple-makers committed to 12 disciples for 10 hours together each week over the course of 4 months? Would each disciple be willing to not only invest the time but hundreds of dollars to get the necessary resources and tools to be well-trained as a follower of Jesus Christ? Such a commitment seems ridiculous for Christians these days, but it is normative and expected for little league baseball run by the public recreation department! What gives?! And we wonder why disciples are not being made and lives are not seriously being impacted with the transforming power of the gospel?

The fact is: my son’s coaches make disciples better than us. They are more committed than we are. They are more excited and desirous to make disciples than we are. They don’t complain about it. They celebrate it. It’s a privilege and joy. They are not going through some pre-packaged “discipleship curriculum” for one hour a week with a few questions. They are on the field, not the classroom, and they are asking dozens and dozens of questions and helping kids answer them with application, not just information. They are doing it one-on-one, and they are doing it as a team of 7 dads serving as coaches to get the most out of these boys. And the boys are loving every minute of it because they are being challenged and changed in the process.

It’s a sad commentary and indictment when little league baseball coaches are more successful and committed to training and developing boys into baseball players than disciple-makers are to making and maturing disciples of Jesus. They have a sport; we have a Savior. They are given trophies; we are trophies of grace. They a game to win; we have a life to gain. At the very least, I have enjoyed going to school in learning how to make disciples of Jesus by being one of the seven coaches on the field training kids to play baseball. I’m going to be a better discple-maker for the sake of the gospel because of this. I just wish I had this kind of disciple-making training earlier.

Join Me for the 2014 Know More Orphans Conference!

There’s no shortage of conferences in the evangelical world today. Over the past couple of years, I forced myself to limit the number of conferences I attend to be more effective on the ground, and the decision-making process developed into a grid that filtered out the conferences that are fun (and enjoyable) but not necessary. Today, I want to share with you a conference I personally find necessary, and I hope you do too.

My good friend Johnny Grimes leads a great organization called Altar 84, which is dedicated to orphan care through the local church. On March 7th & 8th, they are hosting a conference at The Church at Brook Hills called “Know More Orphans.” Here is a summary of the conference theme:

The Church has always been God’s plan for building his kingdom, and this includes securing justice for the poor and most vulnerable. Altar 84 desires to work intimately with the Body of Christ to care for the least of these, the orphan. On Friday, March 7th and Saturday March 8th, 2014, Altar84’s kNOw More Orphans Conference will seek to unite the church community for the call to care for orphans and vulnerable children – right here and around the world. The conference will provide AWARENESS of God’s Word and his command to take ACTION.

If you are a church leader interested in leading your church to care for orphans and build a culture of adoption, I encourage you to take advantage of this conference. Perhaps some of you may be interested in local foster care or adopting orphans internationally, I believe you will be blessed by the main sessions and helped with the practicality of the breakout sessions. Speakers at this conference include David Platt, Russell Moore, Tony Merida, and more.

Early bird registration ends one week from today (Jan. 17th), so take advantage of the special rate and register soon! I will be going and representing The Haiti Collective, along with some of our team. It should be a great time channeling our resources and leverage our lives for the sake of orphans here and around the world. Hope to see you there!

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What Gospel Communities Can Learn from The Transfiguration

I’ve been slowly working through the Gospel of Luke, reading, and rereading chapters and focusing on various sections at a time. This morning, I focused on Luke 9:28-36, the passage on the transfiguration of Jesus. As I reflected on this text, I realized that what was happening was a heavenly form of gospel community, with God the Father, God the Son, Moses, Elijah, and Peter, James, and John.

What I found particularly impacting to me in this text was the topic of the community discussion. Verse 30 says that Moses and Elijah were talking with Jesus, and the centerpiece of that discussion was “his departure” or exodus through the cross. Moses (representing the Law) and Elijah (representing the Prophets) are figureheads of redemptive history up until the time of Jesus, and much like all of the Scriptures, they made the conversation about Jesus and His work on the cross.

Gospel communities can learn much from this conversation. We can learn from Moses and Elijah that all of Scripture testifies about Jesus (Luke 24:27). Moses and Elijah knew this. They were not interested in talking about types and shadows; they were interested in what those types and shadows pointed to–Jesus. This in no way diminishes Old Testament Scripture or the role Moses and Elijah played in redemptive history. In fact, it heightens it, knowing their stories are interwoven in the bigger story of God’s redemptive purposes in history culminating in Christ.

But not only does it culminate in Christ, it climaxes in Christ. When the cloud overtook the disciples, and God chose to speak, the Father declared that it is all about His beloved Son. And when God spoke, Jesus was all alone–alone because there is no one else like Him. Alone because Jesus has supremacy over all things and superior to all prophets, kings, and priests. Alone because Jesus is preeminent and holds a place in history that demands our unconditional loyalty and submission as Lord and King.

Moses spoke about Jesus. Elijah spoke about Jesus. The Father spoke about Jesus and gave a heavenly charge to everyone else to listen to Jesus. At no other point in the earthly life of Jesus was there a more heavenly moment, and it is evident to everyone that this community was all about Jesus. In fact, when Peter wanted to make tents for Elijah and Moses was when they disappeared, leaving them with no one but Jesus.

As simple as it may sound, what we can learn from the Transfiguration is this: Christian community that pleases the Father and honors His Word is all about Jesus–who He is, what He has done, and what that matters. Christian community is preoccupied with Jesus because heaven is preoccupied with Jesus. We don’t get over Jesus. We are never bored with Jesus. We don’t keep silent about Jesus. We don’t change the channel or turn it down. Instead, we rediscover again and again by the Spirit’s work in our lives more and more the beauty and brilliance of our Savior. To the degree that our conversations center on Jesus, we can say we functionally have a gospel community. To the degree that we adore and treasure Jesus, we can keep our community from lesser lovers and broken cisterns.

If we could have a conversation today with the greatest figures in the history of redemption, they would be talking about Jesus–His life, death, and resurrection. But if people could have a conversation today with you and me, what would we what we want to talk about?