Jared Longshore's Blog, page 38

Eleanor Update: Thanks Be to God

We thank you for your prayers for little Eleanor. The Lord has answered them, and quick. In the wake of all the prayers going up, Eleanor began breathing smoothly with high oxygen levels. They have moved her to heavy flow (very good step) and are even weaning her off that with good results. Feeding tube removal and some liquids and solids by mouth are in her near future. All to say, we ask you to turn those petitions into high thanksgivings; and turn those heavy firepower petitions to the next battlefield. All quiet on the Eleanor front.

Below is a short video from our helicopter ride. Eleanor was just behind me on a stretcher receiving great care from two members of the Life Flight medical team. I was not flying this bird, but I was tempted to and resisted manfully.

Thank God for:

Christ Church and the whole Kirker Community in Moscow, Idaho. They were the Marines of this prayer operation, being the first in.Story Family Medicine in MoscowSacred Heart Hospital here in Spokane, Washington. Their medical staff from doctors to nurses and in between have provided great care for Eleanor. The Life Flight team; they are professional and know just what they’re doing.Gritman Medical Center, the hospital in Moscow. Their staff did a great job caring for Eleanor initially.Saints from here to Timbuktu who interceded on our behalf.

We asked the Lord to answer our prayers for Eleanor in such a way that the world would know that He is God in heaven and rules the kingdoms of men (Daniel 4:17). He has done that and we are grateful. He is the God of miracles and medicine, BiPAP machines, angels, and nurses fingers. He is the God who sent the Second Adam into the world to save it. And that Adam, laid down his life and rose again to save sinners. He is a Good Savior. He is our King. Lift high the name.

From my household to yours, thank you for your prayers.

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Be Converted, O Canada

One year ago, Canada established a law that bans conversion therapy, that is a practice or service designed to get men (who are thinking and acting like women) to think of themselves as men and conduct themselves sexually as men; and the same goes for women (who are thinking and acting like men). You may not convert them. If you provide such a service in Canada, then you could go to prison. You are free, however, to teach men to think of themselves as women and conduct themselves sexually as women; and the same goes for the women, you can teach them to be men all you’d like. 

 

This is a sign that God has handed over Canada’s leadership to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. Romans 1 speaks of this kind of sexual perversion occurring, and it occurred in the wake of people turning away from worshipping the Creator to worship the creature. Such idolatry results in people doing what is contrary to nature. Canada’s leadership is not only in support of doing what is contrary to nature. They have outlawed nature. You may not help men to be men. If this keeps up, expect future legislation to forbid the rain to fall. And soon after, any human breathing whatever will be criminalized.

We have reached day of which G. K. Chesterton testified when he said, “We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which furious party cries will be raised against anybody who says that cows have horns, in which people wil persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure.”

 

In the face of this brazen attempt to defame the image of God in man, and thereby to strike at God himself, the Christian Church speaks, she embodies the truth that modern man wants to ignore. She is the Bride of Christ. And Christ is the Groomsman. You cannot escape the reality of the marriage supper of the Lamb. But you can escape being left outside, in the outter darkness. If you would join this wedding feast, you must hear and believe: The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come, be converted every one of you, and wash your filthy garments white in the blood of the Lamb.”

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That We Would Ride World-Shaking Horses

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“Where our fathers, peering into the future, saw gleams of gold, we see only the mist, white, featureless, cold and never moving. The thought at the back of all this negative spirituality is really one forbidden to Christians. They, of all men, must not conceive spiritual joy and worth as things that need to be rescued or tenderly protected from time and place and matter and the senses. Their God is the God of corn and oil and wine. He is the glad Creator. He has become Himself incarnate. The sacraments have been instituted. Certain spiritual gifts are offered us only on condition that we perform certain bodily acts. After that we cannot really be in doubt of His intention.

To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from horses instead of learning to ride. There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room (more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. But behind all asceticism the thought should be, ‘Who will trust us with the true wealth if we cannot be trusted even with the wealth that perishes?’ Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot control even an earthly body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King’s stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else—since He has retained His own charger—should we accompany Him?”

C. S. Lewis, Miracles, 265-266

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Food For Your Faith

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It indeed is hard to renounce our faith in the static and fixed nature of the created world. You don’t have to look far to find a man who will say, “There are only so many fish in the sea.” Or, “a loaf of bread can only be cut into so many slices.” But the next time you bake that salmon, or the next time you place that sourdough on the cutting board, call to mind that you live in a world where five thousand men, and their households, can be fed from five loaves and two fish. Not to mention, after everyone has eaten their fill, you could take home twelve baskets full of leftovers.

Creation is not a closed system. There is something beyond creation. That something beyond creation is called the Triune God and he has not left his creation to fend for itself. We must shake off this way of thinking. It was the very error the disciples made, “Send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves food” (Matthew 14:15). But Jesus said, “They need not depart.” 

As you hear every week, you must come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ. But as you examine yourself and discover that you only have five loaves and two fish worth of faith (or for the great ones among us, you have seven loaves and three fish of faith), whatever the size of your faith, the message is not, “Go off into the villages and fend for yourself, and be quick about getting more faith, there is only so much it in the world. No, Scripture says, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). Here is the Word made flesh. You come to eat the Word. And this Word is food for your faith. So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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5 Magic Arts for Raising Middle Schoolers

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So there you are, having just gotten the toddler discipline thing under your belt. You have trained tiny Tim to say “please” and “thank you.” You have taught him to eat all of the food on his plate. But, just about the time you had a rhythm going, the kid grew. He’s now 9 years old, or 13 years old, let’s take an age range slightly broader than middle school, say 8 to 14 years old. He cleaned his room, but not well. He loaded up in the car for school, but he looked a bit like Eeyore sitting there in the back seat. She’s doing her homework, but it just isn’t up to snuff and you can tell she’s teetering on the edge of doing her best Veruca Salt.

The middle years of child-raising reveal what has always been the case, “not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord” (Zechariah 4:6). Or, “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders lose their pain; unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen watch in vain” (Psalm 127:1) .Yes, these truths have always been there. But the middle-years deliver these truths to the soul like the stepped-on nail delivers pain to the foot, like the swiftly opened oven delivers heat to the face. . . singed eyebrows and all. 

The first thing that must be done is you have to get Narnia into your bloodstream. None of this, “I’ll read it to the kids because I know it is good for them.” I’m talking about Narnia in the parents’ veins. I’m talking about grasping the magic world we’re really living in where fish can swallow men alive and spit them up on the shore, where the sun stands still while armies battle, and angels march atop the mulberry trees to wage war against humans. Raising middle schoolers requires the help of heaven, and the help of heaven is just what God has given us. 

Said another way, we need to grasp what Chesterton did,

“All the terms used in the science books, ‘law,’ ‘necessity,’ ‘order,’ ‘tendency,’ and so on, are really unintellectual …. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, ‘charm,’ ‘spell,’ ‘enchantment.’ . . . A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched” (Chesterton, Orthodoxy).

Now, you are wondering what this has to do with getting your mid-aged child to have a better attitude. I’m going to get to those five points in just a moment, but it is of the utmost importance that you see these are “magic arts.” Modern man is unaccustomed to thinking like Narnians and Chestertonians. And if we do not adopt this mindset, which is to say if we do not come to grips with the world God made, then the five magic arts below will slip off of us like a well-cooked egg off a greasy frying pan. So, one step back, and then we will get down to the nitty gritty.

Naturalism and Supernaturalism

In his book Miracles, Lewis does some necessary spade work before addressing the topic of miracles. The foundation clearing that he does in that work is also needed for our topic at hand. Lewis explains that one man is a naturalist and the other a supernaturalist. In order to have an honest conversation about the miraculous, you must first distinguish between the naturalist and the supernaturalist.

The naturalist believes that the “ultimate Fact, the thing you can’t go behind, is a vast process in space and time which is going on of its own accord” (Lewis, Miracles, 7). Naturalism then is a complete interlocking system. The naturalist could admit a certain kind of god. But this god would be produced by the “great interlocking event called Nature . . . Such a God would not stand outside Nature or the total system” (Lewis, Miracles, 11). In other words, you have some form of pantheism for “what Naturalism cannot accept is the idea of a God who stands outside Nature and made it” (Lewis, Miracles, 11).

“The Supernaturalist, on the other hand, believes that the one original or self-existent thing is on a different level from, and more important than, all other things” (Lewis, Miracles, 10). This self-existing thing is the Triune God. The Supernaturalist knows this God who is other, holy, and not like man, has not left the world to click on like a watch. Don’t get me wrong. There is an order to creation. There is a flow. But remember Chesterton. That fruit hangs on a magic tree. Those are enchanted apples. 

We sow. And there is a sowing and reaping principle. But the middle-aged years are a reminder that the Lord brings the growth; and he brings it however he pleases. Modern man is tempted to forget how sowing and reaping really work. We are tempted to substitute four quarters in a soda machine for four seeds in soil—”Didn’t I teach him to control his emotions just yesterday? How long is a man to wait around for the gears of this machine to produce my soda?”

If a parent drifts into naturalism—and we live in times when naturalism is running wild so beware—he will become a prayerless, micro-managing, manipulating, impatient, burden of a father. A mother who falls prey to this naturalism will be a fault-finding, knit-picking, anxious wreck. Machines, after all, have glitches. What’s to say the cosmic machine—the complete interlocking system with no God outside of it—won’t jam, chew little Tommy up, and spit him out to be a foolish son who is a grief to his father and bitterness to his mother (Proverbs 17:25)?

The answer to that question is Pauline: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:25). But faith in that Christ requires a full-scale repudiation of naturalism. God is not the greatest created being. He is not the best component of the self-contained system. He is not in the system. He is beyond it. And he is your hope for raising the kiddos. “Oh, it will take miracles, a string of them,” you say. Asaph replies, “Thou art the God that doest wonders” (Psalm 77:14).

With the groundwork of supernaturalism laid, here are those five magic arts for raising mid-range children.

First, ask the Lord for wisdom. Solomon knew the job was too big for him. He wasn’t sure how to keep the people under his care out of the ditches, “And now, O LORD my God, thou hast made thy servant king instead of David my father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in . . . Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people” (1 Kings 3:7, 9). 

Now you are likely familiar with Solomon’s request for wisdom. So it would be easy to file this in your been-there-done-that-Sunday-School file. But recall the foundation we just laid. I’m not merely telling you that you need to ask for wisdom. I’m talking about you actually obtaining heavenly wisdom like the magic apple tree gets its fruit, or coming up empty like the withered fig tree cursed by our Lord. God really gave the requested wisdom to Solomon. He will really give it to you. Would you lead a middle schooler to cheerfully do the dishes? Would you train him so that when he shoots a big, fat, brick-shot in overtime, and loses the game for his team with all of his friends watching, he still controls his emotions? God gives that kind of wisdom. Ask and you shall receive.

Second, lead by example. Paul could say, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). The truth is you are always leading by example, for better or worse. And middle school eyes watch closely. The eye gate is broader than the ear gate in this season of the child’s life. And something more than a strict science is going on here. You see your temper in them. You see your pride in theirs. There is more going on than meets the eye in this enchanted world we inhabit. Joy is contagious. Laughter spreads faster than the flu. If righteousness exalts a nation (Proverbs 14:34), can it not exalt a home? 

Third, talk to the Lord about them. One of Saul’s big problems was that he did not inquire of the Lord. One of David’s keys to success was continual prayer about practical matters. When you see something slightly bent in your child, talk to the Lord about it before you talk to your child about it. Now, if he’s throwing dishes and kicking puppies, go ahead and speak directly with the youngsters. But when the problem is run-of-the-mill, ask the Lord to restore to them the joy of his salvation. Ask the Lord to make them diligent. The naturalist can’t do anything but tinker with the machine. You speak to the God who knows where the Philistines are encamped, and can send his angel by night to hamstring their horses. This is shepherd-like prayer. It requires that you know the sheep, what they’re struggling with, what their temptations are. Keep an eye on what is going on, and talk to the Lord about it. 

Fourth, sacrifice for them. Paul told the Corinthians that death was at work in him and life in them (2 Corinthians 4:12). That is quite a transfer. God, of course, has to make the whole thing work. But there is no way of escaping this principle. God has established how things work, how things grow. You have to die for the welfare of your children. You have to deny yourself, clean the house, cook the meals, pack the bags, work the job, haul those soccer players around in the minivan, sing them songs, choose good movies, read the stories, and listen to theirs. All of that dying, that daily dying, requires energy. And the God beyond the stars, the God outside creation, supplies that strength.

Fifth, rejoice over them with loud singing. God does so for his children (Zephaniah 3:17). Just before Zephaniah spoke of God singing over his people, he said, “In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, ‘Fear thou not:’ and to Zion, ‘Let not thine hands be slack'” (Zephaniah 3:18). Don’t let your hands be slack because God rejoices over you with a song. One of the reasons that children have slack hands is because their father and mother are not singing over them with joy. Nothing gets hands moving like fatherly joy. We are to show them what the Father is like. If he sings over us with gladness, why shouldn’t we rejoice over our children?

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Like a Knocking Widow

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One of the bigger slices of humble pie we have to eat is that we don’t do nearly enough with the gifts we are given. Now this is humble pie, not condemnation pie. You’re not permitted to eat any cursed-on-a-tree pie. Jesus finished that one off for you.

But we do have to face up to the fact that prayer is a blessing and we do far too little with it. Here we are, with access to the One who spins Jupiter like a top and slings its many moons around in circles. We have the ear of the One who straps each and every calf muscle to its companion heel bone, tying them together with more Achilles tendons than any one man could count. This God breaks cedars and makes deer give birth. And He listens to us.

Jesus said to pray like that persistent widow. There is Margaret, purse in hand, she’s making her way to the judge’s chambers yet again. She was there yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. She will be back tomorrow if he doesn’t give up already. He’s getting tired of her visits.

How many blessings have we missed out on because we weren’t as steady in prayer as this widow? Like clockwork, she ate her toast, shoed her feet, and politely went off to remind a godless judge to avenge her of her adversary.We ask the Lord four or five times, and receiving no answer, start sleeping through the alarm clock. How many blessings could you have if you had a little more Mrs. Margaret in you? You do not have because you do not ask. “Really,” you say, “is it that simple?” Well, “ask, and it shall be given you; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” But you have to knock like a stubborn ‘ole widow.

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A Vineyard Which Ye Planted Not

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One of the shocking things about grace is how uneven it is. Man can keep his wits about him when observing the soda machine. One dollar in, one soda out. Two dollars in, two sodas out. It seems fair enough. Even if a man doesn’t have a dollar, and subsequently, no soda, he can still sleep at night because the world seems to be clicking along like a machine, no need to look up, no sign of a benevolent benefactor in the sky.

But when a man comes face to face with grace, without partaking of it himself, ruffled go his feathers. There he is, having worked a full day for a full day’s pay. And all is well in his world. But then comes a co-worker who worked only one hour, and the boss gives him a full day’s pay just the same? Grace abounds. But to unbelieving man, this is a miscarriage of justice. There’s a glitch in his soda machine.

Grace is supernatural. It is otherworldly. It is a reminder that blessings come from somewhere, from someone.

God gave Israel land for which they did not labor and vineyards which they did not plant (Joshua 24:13). And he has done the same for us. Here is bread from a field we did not plant. Wine from a vineyard we did not work.

But the One who did supply this bread and wine owns every field and every vineyard. So come and buy without money (Isaiah 55:1). Come eat his bread, he gives it to you. Come into his vineyard. Drink deeply of this cup of grace. It will never run dry. Come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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7 Hard Steps Reformed Evangelicals Must Take To Win in 2023

Let’s get started with two quotes, one from the old church father of church fathers, the other from a modern author who may well be a wizard:

“An evil is eradicated not by the removal of some natural substance which had accrued to the original, or by the removal of any part of it, but by the healing and restoration of the original which had been corrupted and debased” – St. Augustine

“You have hands, blister them while you can.” – N. D. Wilson

That’s right, if you want the evil to go away, then you have to get to fixing things. You have to restore the damage. You can’t just renounce it, abhor it, complain about, whine about it, get all poutsy poutsy, and tee up another doctrinal watchdog YouTube clip.

You’re quite bent out of shape by all of the bent out of shapeness you see in the world. So you need to get on with setting some things back into place.

Thus far, Augustine. 

And if you’re going to actually get down to restoring something, then you will have to sweat, bleed, and blister. You will have to do some real work, something practical, something close by, something more (not less) than think. Oh, and you’re on the clock because soon your fingers will be worm food.

Thus far, N. D. Wilson.

Hello There Beloved Reformed Evangelicals

I’ve put Reformed Evangelicals right up there in the title because they have a special place in my heart. Now I do not want to transgress step number two below, so if you don’t fit the Reformed Evangelical bill, that OK, the hard steps outlined below apply to you as well. I don’t mean to leave you out, but I would like a word with those who have been to a Desiring God conference, or the Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel, or Reform Con, or Acts 29 and the like. If we break things down by denomination, we have any of you from the CREC, the PCA, the OPC, the ARP, all of you non-denominational Calvinists, all of you thankful for John McArthur and 9Marks Ministries, as well as those Reformed brethren still soldiering on in the SBC. I’m sure I left some institution or organization out, but you know who you are.

The year that we have begun to set out on will end with us having made an advance, or it will end with us having suffered casualties. And just look around, we’re not in a position to drag our feet.

The Lay of the Land: Genuine Wildness

The lesson from the boy who cried wolf is not lost on me. One really shouldn’t go crying about danger when there is none. If you do that kind of thing, people won’t pay attention when there really is a big nuke headed their way. So with Aesop’s counsel seeding my mind, you will still find me up on the wall doing backflips with my hair on fire in a desperate, and I hope faith-filled, attempt to get your attention. Not only is there an enemy at the gates, but many are asleep in the camp. Not only are many asleep in the camp, but these sleepers are dreaming about their cultural impact and changing the world. But, I repeat, they are dreaming. Thus me doing my best Cirque Du Soleil atop the wall in order to rouse the troops and encourage some much needed changes.

A word about the enemy, or perhaps better, the lay of the land. You have likely heard of the religious Nones. Over a decade ago, Pew Research reported that the Nones were on the rise, making up 20% of all U.S. adults. You are well-acquainted with the decline of Christianity in the United States. But, these shifts need to be seen as seed. This rising and falling is the seed that spouted the chaos we have endured the last few years. According to an article from Gallup last year, U.S. church membership has fallen below 50% for the first time. Only two decades ago, church membership was around 70%, and had been hanging around that 70% number since the 1930s. That’s a graph that stayed steady for a long time and then dropped faster than a politician’s N95 mask after the cameras stop rolling.

The last two decades of Christianity’s decline has born the rotten fruit of Obergefell, COVID insanity and tyranny, BLM riots, and both the White House and the Department of Education flying the rainbow flag. The recent (Dis)Respect for Marriage Act is the latest installment of our idolatry.

The Pulpit is the Prow

Now here is the essential thing, this is the root of the matter and you must make sure you get all the way down in this dirt or we will just plucking dandelion flowers. Melville was right, “The pulpit leads the world.” And the pulpits in the land of the free have led us into declining church attendance, Intersectionality, Queer Theory, and COVID pandemonium.

Ours is not a peculiar disease, but it is a particular type. Our error is that of hearing the word but not doing the word. “Woe to you American Evangelicals, for I sent you more Bible conferences and books than you could ask for. If the mighty works which were done in you, had been done in Saudi Arabia, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”

Now I am not simply looking for the young energetic youth who has just come back from Bible camp to “Amen!” my rebuke in the last paragraph. I mean that rebuke in a particular way and I welcome an interlocuter asking, “Is that really the case? Have the Reformed Evangelicals in the states really been guilty of hearing and not doing?” My reply goes like this.

You can surely find faithfulness in many places. It is no objection to my main point to highlight Mrs. Johnson the widow who is doing all our Lord requires. I will not disagree that there are many salt-of-the-earth-saints laboring along, doing that which pleases the Lord. But, as a whole, Reformed Evangelicals have not discipled our nation, which is expressly commanded by Christ in the Great Commission (Matthew 28). In the first place, we have not taken to heart all that Christ has commanded. And in the second place, we have not taught the nation to obey all that Christ has commanded. 

While I am on this point, our greater error is that we have not actually known the doctrine. We have been quite eager to spread the good news. You can find evangelistic outreaches and youth group car washes all across this land. You can find sharp looking ministers spending big dollars on high-tech media to find a way to get people into the doors of their church. Lots of energy has gone into this kind of outreach. But we haven’t actually done the word of Christ. We haven’t taught the nation how to do it.

One of the main reason that we have not done the word is because it is flat terrifying to do so. We sanitize the story in our dream world, “By faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing wither he went” (Hebrews 11:8). “Amen,” we say. Amen huh?

Us: Here am I send me, Lord!

The LORD: OK, go.

Us: Go where?

The LORD: That way.

Us: Anything else?

The LORD: No.

Us: But where am I going, LORD?

The LORD: I told you. That way.

Us: And LORD, where might I end up?

The LORD: Reread Hebrews 11:8.

We love our stats and our data. We love living by sight. When you go out on faith like Abraham did, the result is that you are a foreigner. You don’t know the customs. You don’t know the traditions. You’re ignorant of the songs. Where is the post office? Is there a post office? And there is no one to answer your question because you haven’t yet found an interpreter yet. I repeat: Trusting God and going out in obedience like Abraham is terrifying.

The truth is that the knowledge we so often seek only comes after we have got on with obeying Christ. Jesus said, “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God” (John 7:17). So there is understanding. If you will get on with obeying Jesus, then you will get the flow of things. But feeling the rhythm (and feeling the rhyme for that matter) comes after you’ve stepped out in the direction God said to go, after you’ve enfleshed the word.

So, with all of this in mind, here’s those seven very hard steps, in no particular order, that we must take in the coming year if we’re going to turn this game around:

First, remove your children immediately from the government schools and provide them with a Christian education. All of the talk about Christian culture and dominion is meaningless if the pagans have the catechism, “For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes” (Luke 6:44). Your public education growing up was different, we’re agreed. Your parents public education was different, also agreed. But take a look again at the stats from the last two decades. Things have changed. And you are a conservative, so it is hard to change, spend, and advance. Like Abraham, you have no idea where the journey is going to end if you remove your children from Caesar’s household and tutelage. Welcome to the party. Go ahead and get out of there. God has a great inheritance, but you’ve got to get moving.

Second, reckon yourself and your household as one among the household of faith. I mean something specific by “household of faith.” Galatians 6:10 says we are especially to do good to the household of faith, which should leave you asking, “Who is a part of that household and how do I know?” The answer is straightforward. Those in the household of faith are baptized Christians. They sit with you at the Lord’s Supper. This particular step is more of a paradigm shift than most realize. You must love the saints. The weird ones? Yes. The ones with whom I have doctrinal disagreements? Yes. The ones that have slighted me? Yes. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. There is a type of unity that we will not know until the return of Christ. But that is no excuse for our hyper-fragmented American evangelicalism. Until we really get serious about maintaining the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, we will be divided and conquered.

Third, do good Christian business, especially with those of that household of faith. If my Christian brother who runs the pub downtown is burning my burger every Tuesday and charging me twice as much as the unbeliever across the street, you will find me enjoying the well-cooked and fairly priced patty. But we need to consider afresh the wisdom of doing business within the house of faith. It is a genuine application of the Galatians 6:10 passage above.

Fourth, sing psalms. Yes, sing psalms. No, this is not a throw away step. Lewis spoke of stealing past people’s watchful dragons. Reformed Evangelicals have those watchful dragons up. There are certain truths that they have not believed and obeyed. They are not accustomed to obeying them. And they don’t really want to. The psalms contain those truths and have a way of getting past those flying lizards. Drunk on modernity as we are, we need to be reminded of our heritage. And nothing can do that quite like psalm-singing. God brought us out of Egypt. He brought us through the Sea. He sustained us in the wilderness. He conquered the Promised Land through us. We will not recognize how far our modern worship music has fallen until we start working in some psalms. And I know. I said these were hard steps. 

Fifth, find and worship in a church that conceives of worship as Elijah did when he set up the altar on Mount Carmel. Even among the Reformed, our worship doctrine has gone the way of the world. When we assemble, we assemble before the Living God who still sends the fire and the rain. He changes hearts. He humbles. He saves. He does this as we appear before him to call upon His name. When we assemble on the Lord’s Day, we do so asking God to act such that the world would know there is a God in Israel. This step is a central one. It is a foundational one. The rest build upon it.

Sixth, fulfill family duties twice as hard as you did last year. These family duties are much like weeding a garden and planting some seed. They are not fancy. Moreover, weeding and planting are tasks that are particularly hard to do when chaos ensues. “You want me to plant in this weather?” Yes. Help you kids with their homework. Talk with them about their day. Work out the knotty issues. Sing songs with them around the table. Cook. Eat. Clean. Read them a book before bed. Tuck them in. Pray for them. Bless them. Expect God to do greater works through them and their children than he has done through you. Go to sleep and do it all again when the sun rises. You shall not labor in vain, for you are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and your offspring with you (Isaiah 61:9).

Seventh, find and live with others who are reading the same page that you are. You need to sing with those who are singing off the same sheet music. The kind of work that must be done in the days ahead is the kind of work that cannot be done alone. Given the reach of the internet, many Christians are receiving stronger teaching than they have been able to access in days gone by. Many Christians are being put in touch with other saints around the nation who are tracking with this healthy teaching. But we are in a weird moment where all of this teaching has not quite yet, but must, bear local fruit. Pray for God to put you in touch with others where you live so that all of the solid teaching you’re receiving doesn’t die on the vine. The doctrine has to be lived out. We must be more than hearers of the word. Find those who are doing it, and do it with them.

Stay Low and Hustle

When God’s blessings abound, two temptations crouch at the door and would rule over us. The first is the temptation to pride. Moses warned Israel that when they entered the Promised Land and their goats and gold multiplied, they would be tempted to say that their own power had gotten them their wealth (Deuteronomy 8:17). The wise man knows that God uses means. A successful business does not simply fall out of the sky. Cheerful children don’t appear out of thin air. And a pleasant and well-run home does not come out of nowhere. Skill is involved and there are tools of the trade that are both learned and applied. So when there is growth, it is easy to trust your skill, your system, and say with Israel, “Look what our own hands have done.”

The second temptation when blessings abound is laziness. Like that jackrabbit in the Tortoise and the Hare, we decide that a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest won’t hurt. And while we are resting upon last year’s victories, poverty is climbing through our kitchen window and emptying out the refrigerator.

The antidote to both of these temptations is faith. When blessings meet unbelief, you’re on your way to joining Nebuchadnezzar, with fingernails like buzzard claws and a mouthful of grass as if you were a cow in the pasture. You will no doubt soon be turning on your bed like a door on its hinges. 

But when blessings meet faith the opposite occurs. When blessings meet faith, the result is humility and even more hard work. 

Take a look around. God’s blessings overflow. So you must stay low and hustle. God looks upon the humble man who trembles at his word. And the hand of the diligent shall rule (Proverbs 12:24).

Let’s Go for Christian Towns in 2023

As many of you know, the Longshore clan has gone on quite a journey over the last year and some change. We trekked our way from the Southeast to the Northwest with nine souls in the van. With gratitude, we left off the work of Founders Ministries down in Florida, which was growing at rocket speed, to land in Moscow, Idaho at Christ Church. Founders, by the way, has their national conference coming up later this month which will no doubt be fantastic so you should take a look here.

Our trip from one corner of our nation to the other came at a tumultuous time. God was and is shaking things in our nation. God was and is shaking things in his church. It is one thing for God to move some of the furniture around in your own life and family. It is another for him to do so among his covenant people. And it is yet another for him to do so in a nation. But when he does all three at the same time, there’s nothing to say but, Wooha.

One of the things I have aimed for in ministry is to be a son of Issachar who knows the times and what Israel ought to do. Now, you might say I am a young son of Issachar, or a son of Issachar who often doesn’t know quite what the temperature is. But I’ve at least got my eye on the weather. And it is fair to say that our cross-country move, with all of the aforementioned divine remodeling involved, has provided some confirmation about our times. If God shakes the things that can be shaken so that the things that cannot be shaken remain, you could say that I have some confidence at least in the big picture concerning our civil and ecclesiastical moment. That big picture has not been shaken. It has become much more clear. 

That big picture is that the church in America truly must go through renewal and reformation. But that sentence needs a good deal of explaining. If we would see health, blessing, and growth, the church must operate in a significantly different way than she has before, while at the same time pressing on with all of the many good things she has been doing. The change must come along the lines of civil and cultural engagement. But that change requires changes below the surface on doctrinal issues concerning the nature and purpose of the church, the world, the Lordship of Christ, and much more.

Moreover, this civil and cultural engagement change is coming whether we like it or not, and we will change on the matter for the better or the worse. The present situation is simply not sustainable. 

Most of the reformed and evangelical in the states know that we’re on our way to developing a civil theology of some sort. They see this is inevitable. But many think that developing this civil theology is like getting a new haircut. When in reality it is more like getting a new liver. All of the tumult we have been experiencing is a sign that something must change down among those critical organs found around the core of our person.

The church in the states must go through one of the doctrinal “aha” moments, when you discover something that has been right there on the surface of the text the whole time you’ve been reading the Bible. That kind of “aha” moment leaves you thinking everything has changed and at the same time, none of the fundamentals have changed, like when you discover God is sovereign, and ask, “What in the world do I do now?” Well, you go on praying as you did before and yet your newly invigorated praying is such that you wonder if you’ve every prayed before. You have of course, but isn’t life on the other side of this “aha” moment awesome? We all need to ask God to do something like that for his church in the states in the year of our Lord 2023.

If God answers our request, you will hear much more from Christians about seeking a Christian town. And you will see them making the changes necessary to make their town a Christian one. Now I imagine there are several of you out there who choke a bit on this idea. I could have said something like, “If God answers our request, it will look like Christians grasping the Lordship of Christ,” and everyone would say amen. Or I could have said, “it will look like Christians not being woke,” and all the conservative Christians would say amen. But there is a good bit baked into that “Christian town” terminology, and that is why I chose to use it. That term possesses some key ingredients that the reformed and evangelical saints in our land must come to store in their pantry and employ in their kitchen. 

We may not need to adopt it as our life verse. But we should at least make our 2023 verse Revelation 11:15, which is to say that we need to sing Handel’s Hallelujah chorus and mean it: “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.” Notice the language. The kingdoms of this world are become. The ESV says that they have become. The orginal Greek (ginomai) is in the aorist tense, which is a simple past tense; not future. We’re not talking about a future date when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. We’re talking about waking up to the reality that the kingdoms of this world have already become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.

That means nothing is off limits. We’re talking fundamental, ground-level restructuring of worship, education, home economics, civil-engineering, business, civics and the like. There is a rich and potent way to go about Christian living in this world that smells of the kingdom of heaven. And there is an anemic way to go about it that amounts to posting your Christianity on secularism like one of those Christmas cards on your refrigerator. We must renounce the latter way and pursue a Christendom that includes customs, rhythms, practices that are indeed Christian. 

We need a collective doctrinal discovery. And we are on the clock. Things are deteriorating. And if you are not building in summer, how will you build in winter? “If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry” (Luke 23:31)?

P.S.

If this post encourages you to look for next steps, I’d point you to Pastor Doug Wilson’s book Gashmu Saith It as well as the recent documentary from Canon called How to Save the World in Eleven Simple (But Not Easy) Steps.