This won’t make some people happy, but the message is pretty clear. Life is not all about playing it safe. Thanks to Francis Chan for the challenge:
Category: Christian Worldview
Don’t be a hater: Get to church
Ted Kluck and Kevin DeYoung, who teamed up to write “Two Guys Who Are Not Emergent” and the just-published “Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion,” recently wrote an article for the On Faith section of the Washington Post. For two young guys, they sound a chord not heard often in this culture. That is, the church is important in our society:
Here’s what Bono, Oprah, and the guru speakers on PBS won’t tell you: Jesus believed in organized religion and he founded an institution. Of course, Jesus had no patience for religious hacks and self-righteous wannabes, but he was still Jewish. And as Jew, he read the Holy Book, worshiped in the synagogue, and kept Torah. He did not start a movement of latte-drinking disciples who excelled in spiritual conversations. He founded the church (Matt. 16:18) and commissioned the apostles to proclaim the good news that Israel’s Messiah had come and the sins of the world could be forgiven through his death on the cross (Matt. 28:18-20; Acts 2:14-36).
Now, these guys are not naive. They know what churches can be like and how they have received a reputation for not being the most loving places in the world:
We’ve been in the church our whole lives and are not blind to its failings. Churches can be boring, hypocritical, hurtful, and inept. The church is full of sinners. Which is kind of the point. Christians are worse than you think. Our Savior is better than you imagine.
But the church is not all about oppression and drudgery. Almost every church we know of visits old people, brings meals to new moms, supports disaster relief, and does something for the poor. We love the local church, in spite of its problems, because it’s where we go to meet God. It’s not a glorified social/country club you attend to be around people who talk and look just you do. It’s a place to hear God’s word spoken, taught and affirmed. It’s a place to sing praises to God, and a place to serve others. It’s a place to be challenged.
Their new book “provides a solid biblical mandate to love and be a part of the body of Christ and counteract the ‘leave church’ books that trumpet rebellion and individual felt needs.” I know that there are many of us who have in the past gone through or currently are going through difficulties with your fellow believers in the church. Don’t despair — and don’t leave the church.
Download the study guide to go with the book.
At best we are just men — and at worst
Thinking of the celebrity news of the past week and what it means in my life, I come away thinking that it is futile to put your trust in men because, in the end, they are just men. Men are fallible, born to sin and not perfect. Only Jesus is. The good words of Kevin DeYoung at DeYoung, Restless and Reformed are good to review and as he considers the case of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, although they apply across the board:
The person who thinks they are immune for the temptation, should read up on Romans 7. The flesh will sell us out in a heartbeat. Why do powerful politicians and pastors and pastor’s wives throw everything away for a few minutes of pleasure? Why did Esau sell his birthright for a mess of pottage? Because we are sinners, worse than we think, more capable of wickedness and stupidity than we imagine. You can have all the hedges of protection in the world, but without the gospel and the transforming power of Christ that comes through the word of God and prayer, we still have the same heart. “Lead me not in temptation, but deliver me from evil”–pray it every day. We all have the ability to be moral morons.
Do people who sin and are caught publicly look stupid? Sure, but they are just like us. Don’t be so proud. Pray for deliverance. And for mercy. Read the rest of DeYoung’s post and consider where you are at.
God’s grace in the hurts others do to us
This talk, by Mark Talbot at the 2005 Desiring God National Conference, really ministers to me. Because I am surrounded by fallen, sinful people (like myself), there are numerous times where I have been injured, insulted, violated, offended, shocked, disappointed, slighted, overlooked, disparaged and generally hurt. It’s hard to “get along” sometimes.
The conference theme was Suffering and the Sovereignty of God. Regarding suffering: Why does God allow these kind of things happen? Is is OK to complain to God? Does God make mistakes? How do we think biblically about suffering? These are questions Talbot addresses in his talk.
Mark Talbot will be speaking again this year at the Desiring God national conference, which is themed With Calvin in the Theater of God.
Remember Ed Thomas and what he treasured above all
Ed Thomas may have been remembered as the man who coached football (successfully) at Aplington-Parkersburg High School in Iowa. He may also be remembered as the man who was shot early Wednesday morning by a former student and died shortly afterward at a high school. To those who knew him, however, he will be remembered as a man who followed a greater mission in life than football. From a report Wednesday by the Associated Press:
“Coach Thomas was very special to me and many other young men from the Aplington-Parkersburg communities,” said Green Bay Packers linebacker Aaron Kampman. “His legacy for many will be associated with his tremendous success as a football coach. However, I believe his greatest legacy comes not in how many football games he won or lost but in the fact that he was a committed follower of Jesus Christ.”
At times like these we must step back and wonder about how God works mysteriously. It’s a mystery in that he does not tell us his plans, but it is enough to know that it is to bring himself glory. Our success is not his ultimate goal, but there will be times when it works out that way. Our failure or suffering is not his ultimate goal, but there will also be times when that will come about. What is his ultimate goal? Having people see Him as supreme. And people like Ed Thomas do that. Today, through the testimony of those who knew him, we are reminded of that.
The gospel does away with pride in my abilities
Thanks much to Of First Importance for this:
“The gospel . . . is the wisdom of God because it doesn’t praise our intellects or advertise our strengths. It causes us to fall on our knees and acknowledge our weakness, our dependence, our terrible need. It causes us to look up to God as the great Savior. ‘It is by his doing that we are in Christ Jesus’ . . .. The gospel teaches us that our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption, and our wisdom are all gifts of God. The message of the gospel scuttles human pride because it reminds us that our life did not start with our choosing God but his choosing us. Therefore, all the glory is God’s.”
– Thomas Schreiner, “The Foolishness of the Cross” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology (Fall 2002)
Humility: Clothes I’m having a hard time wearing
Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.
I Peter 5:5-7
Here’s the thing. God, I trust. He knows everything. He is all powerful. He is all wise. He is loving. He is holy. But a man, like me, is sinful. I know that I am a wretch. I have loved these verses for almost all my life as a Christian. I understand the need to be humble. I know God will take my anxieties and care for me because he is great. The part where I stumble is the first part, where it says to be subject to my elders and to clothe myself with humility toward another. And it makes me miserable.
I’m miserable because it shows my trust in God is a lie, and I’m not fooling anyone. Well, maybe myself until I see how I cannot trust God to work in a situation with another person. So, I act like I think God is big and I’m small and yet you’re somehow smaller than me. It’s not a good thing, and I see it like cancer in myself and people around me. These are clothes that we don’t want to wear, this humility to one another. Yes, it is so easy to see the sinfulness in those around us. But that is not the point. The point is to be humble to God, who made that person, and trust him to work things for our good and his glory.
American Idolatry: When your pleasure becomes your god
There is a danger every day to make an idol out of something or someone in our lives. Because I live in a country and in a time when there is such a great deal of luxury and leisure time, it is a great danger. With that in mind, John Piper has written about 12 ways we can recognize the rise of covetousness in our lives:
Most of us realize that enjoying anything other than God, from the best gift to the basest pleasure, can become idolatry. Paul says in Colossians 3:5, “Covetousness is idolatry.”
“Covetousness” means desiring something other than God in the wrong way. But what does that mean—“in the wrong way”?
The reason this matters is both vertical and horizontal. Idolatry will destroy our relationship with God. And it will destroy our relationships with people.
All human relational problems—from marriage and family to friendship to neighbors to classmates to colleagues—all of them are rooted in various forms of idolatry, that is, wanting things other than God in wrong ways.
Piper goes on to identify 12 ways we can do this when it comes to enjoyment. He says enjoyment is becoming idolatrous when:
- It is forbidden by God.
- It is disproportionate to the worth of what is desired.
- It is not permeated with gratitude
- It does not see in God’s gift that God himself is more to be desired than the gift.
- It is starting to feel like a right, and our delight is becoming a demand.
- It draws us away from our duties.
- It starts to awaken a sense of pride that we can experience this delight while others can’t.
- It is oblivious or callous to the needs and desires of others.
- It does not desire that God be magnified as supremely desired through the enjoyment.
- It is not working a deeper capacity for holy delight.
- Its loss ruins our trust in the goodness of God.
- Its loss paralyzes us emotionally so that we can’t relate lovingly to other people.
This is just the list, read the article to get the full explanation. Be happy in God.
And now, some words for the nonrevolutionaries among us
Ted Kluck, by way of coauthor Kevin DeYoung’s blog, has some words for you in an excerpt of their latest great book, Why We Love the Church:
A search on a popular Christian bookseller’s Web site revealed no less than sixty-two items with the word manifesto in the title and hundreds containing the term revolutionary. There are revolutionary books for teens. Ditto for stay-at-home moms. There’s a book about how Jesus was a revolutionary communicator, and how you can use His revolutionary communication skills in your home/business/church. The question then becomes, If we’re all revolutionaries, are any of us an actual revolutionary? Being a revolutionary used to mean that you overthrew a government; now it means that you’re a courageous enough visionary to have church on a golf course or in someone’s living room.
My point in all of this is not to make not-so-subtle jabs at revolutionary culture (maybe a little bit); rather, it is to encourage the scores of nonrevolutionaries in our midst, of which I am one. I want to encourage those of us who try really hard to pray for our families and friends, try to read our Bibles consistently, and share the gospel with those around us. Those of us who aren’t ready to chuck centuries worth of church history, and years of unglamorous but God-glorifying growth in the name of revolution.
I’m also a part of the generation that has produced more memoirs before the age of thirty-five than any other in history. We’re crazy about Christian narrative nonfiction, especially those “on the road” stories, no matter how trite or contrived they may be. We’re journeyers. We’re wanderers. We still haven’t found what we’re looking for. Jack Kerouac’s (or Donald Miller’s…or Lauren Winner’s) wayward children are all over the Christian book landscape.
These narrative titles all follow a similar pattern, in that in them experiences are had (a cross-country road trip, a self-finding excursion through Europe, a documentary chronicling the lameness of American Christians, a chronicle on how the author dropped out of church and subsequently “found” Jesus), and then those experiences are shared in book form. Many of these books are supposed to tell us that “community” is the answer, and individualism is bad, but at the end of the day these books are largely about the individual and his or her discoveries.
I am looking forward to this book. Both Ted and Kevin have a great way of getting right to the point in a helpful way. Don’t go find yourself. Find God and love the church.
Overcome the fear of living
I have mentioned it earlier, but I can’t recommend high enough Kevin DeYoung’s excellent “Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will.” This little book will have a deep impact on your view of approaching God’s will and what it means. Here is how DeYoung puts it:
The will of God isn’t a special direction here or a bit of secret knowledge there. God doesn’t put us in a maze, turn out the lights, and tell us, “Get out and good luck.” In one sense, we trust in the will of God as His sovereign plan for our future. In another sense, we obey the will of God as His good word for our lives. In no sense should we be scrambling around trying to turn to the right page of our personal choose-your-own-adventure novel.
God’s will for your life and my life is simpler, harder, and easier than that. Simpler, because there are no secrets we must discover. Harder, because denying ourselves, living for others, and obeying God is more difficult than taking a new job and moving to Fargo. Easier, because as Augustine said, God commands what He wills and grants what He commands.
Thank you to Kevin DeYoung for writing this book. Just do something. Buy this book and read it.
Rockstanding 
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