Daniel Darling's Blog, page 74

Friday Five: Mike Lambert

Today, it’s my privilege to welcome to the blog, Mike Lambert. Besides being our friends, Mike and his wife, Wendy and their three boys are also members of Gages Lake Bible Church and are missionaries with Trans World Radio. Mike currently works as an engineer with Shure, the microphone company. The Lambert’s have a terrific story. They came to faith in Christ a few years ago, began attending church and also listening to Moody Radio here in Chicago. They began to really grow in their faith as a result of the preaching and teaching on Christian Radio. Then, one day, Wendy heard an appeal from Trans World Radio about the need for missionaries to help bring the solid teaching of Christian radio around the world. Fast forward to today and Mike and Wendy are beginning their journey as missionaries for TWR. They will serve the Lord in Guam. Recently, Chris Fabry interviewed Mike and Wendy on his national radio show. I asked Mike if he’d stop by my blog so I could interview him here. 

What was it that first motivated you to go into full-time missions? To be perfectly honest, I was pretty reluctant.  Wendy had heard about the need TWR had for engineering support on Guam and looked it up on line.  When she told me about it, I looked and thought “that looks perfect, except it’s a missionary position”.  I had never considered becoming a missionary.  I prayed about it for nearly a year.  During that time, I was constantly reminded of Guam and TWR’s need.  Finally, one Sunday in particular, the sermon was about Peter walking on the water.  I prayed what Peter said, “if it’s you Lord, call to me and I will come”.  I felt like he was saying to me “I think you know I already have”.  That was it, I went home that day and filled out the preliminary questionnaire.

It is quite a radical lifestyle change. Was that hard to get used to? Not really.  I really feel like we are doing what the Lord is leading us to.  Now that we are in this process of support raising and looking forward to starting our mission, I can’t believe I resisted it for so long.  I see now that I was trying to reach heaven while still holding on to the world.  Letting go and submitting to His will is very liberating, not to mention exciting.

Explain the work of Trans World Radio.  TWR broadcasts Christian radio programming in over 160 countries in over 230 languages.  Each year, they get over one million listener responses from around the globe.  From the station in Guam, the high powered short wave transmitters reach as far north as Japan and Russia, as far West as eastern India, and down into Australia and New Zealand.  China has one of the fastest growing Christian communities, but trained pastors are scarce.  To assist, TWR distributes Radio Church Kits to supplement radio broadcasts for China’s house church leaders. Each kit contains a radio, a Bible, and discipleship materials, carefully designed to ground Christian leaders in solid biblical truth.  In addition, they also broadcast a program called Seminary on the Air to help train new leaders.


Why Guam? When we interviewed at the TWR headquarters in Cary, NC, they asked if we were open to other locations or if we would only serve on Guam.  We told them we would go wherever we were needed.  Right now, the need is greatest on Guam for engineering support.  I recently saw a quote from the station manager on Guam that, in order to properly run a station that size, they need a minimum of two transmitter engineers.  Currently, they only have one.  That is one person on staff to respond if a transmitter goes down, or if there are problems keeping them from getting their signal out to the 1+ billion people in their broadcast area.  That is why there is such a critical need there.

Most people don’t understand the lengthy process of getting to the field. Can you share that and how individuals and churches can help? It has been quite a journey so far with the application process, screening, interviewing, and training.  Support raising can be the most challenging part, though.  We need people and churches to partner with us to help us reach people for Christ.  To learn more, people can see our TWR staff page.

*The Lamberts are currently raising support for their mission to Guam. If you’d like to consider supporting them, please click here. 

 

5 Hard Truths for Parents

I hesitate to write a parenting post, only because I’m not an expert, just a father trying his best to parent the way God wants me to. Our kids are still young, so there is no “finished product” to evaluate to see if what I’m saying even makes sense. So when you read the following, take those above caveats in mind.

Parenting involves hard truths. It is a way that God searches your heart, humbles you, and softens you for His service. I’ve learned five hard truths about being parent, that I’d like to share with you:

1) There is no guarantee that your kid will be great. When I say greatness, I mainly mean biblical greatness, which involves knowing, loving, and serving God. It means living above the world, living an extraordinary life on mission. I’m referring to kids who become adults who have an impact for Christ on their generation. It’s hard to accept the fact that God doesn’t really give us a guarantee that our kids will achieve this. We need to disabuse ourselves of the bad theology that says Proverbs 22:6 is an ironclad guarantee that if we “follow the formula”, inserting our kids in one end of the evangelical assembly line, that they will come out at the other end as perfectly formed Christians. This is not a note of despair, but a breath of fresh air. It means that our job is to simply be faithful with our children, to provide the kind of loving, nurturing, providing, spiritual environment where faith can best grow. We’re to sacrifice for them, discipline them, teach them, and motivate them to fulfill God’s call on their lives. But we cannot change our children. We cannot alter their hearts. Only God through the regenerating work of His Holy Spirit can produce the kind of righteousness we would like to see. This is very important, both for lazy parents who are tempted to be less than faithful and overly analytical parents who bludgeon themselves daily with the false notion that they are constantly failing.This reality is why we must pray fervently for our kids.

2) Your child, upon entering life, is a sinner in need of regeneration. Nobody likes to think of their child as the bad kid, right? I’m amazed at how blind we parents can be to the faults of our own kids and supersonically sensitive to the faults of the kids of other parents. It seems our generation is likely to be more defensive on this than our parent’s generation, but maybe that’s just my experience. It seems that we parents are more likely to defend our child at all costs against any accusation of misbehavior and constantly point it back at the other kids, whose parents are obviously less intentional than we. But if we believe what the Scripture says about humanity, about the Fall, about every person’s desperate need for redemptive grace, then we’ll stop hurting our children by defending their sin. The truth is that one day it may be the other kid that commits the outrageous acts in the church nursery and then the next week it may be my child. I must constantly remind myself that my child needs a work of the Spirit as much as the other kids. Parents, we need to be less sensitive when it comes to criticism and/or correction of our kids by other parents and we need to acknowledge that our kids are not the perfect angels we like to think they are.

3) There is no method, no strategy, no system that can do the work of the Holy Spirit. We evangelicals love our parenting formulas and every year the strategies seem to change. Now, I’m grateful for the many tools provided by ministries like Family Life Today and Focus on the Family and other organizations. They have helped Angela and I immensely. I’m grateful for books, for seminars, for conferences. But I have come to realize that I must first pray for my child’s salvation. That is to say that it is my hope and prayer that each of one of our children come to faith in Christ as their Lord and Savior. Why? Not only do I care deeply about their eternal destiny and their intimacy with God now, but the Holy Spirit is the only agent who can actively change my child’s heart. Parenting is much more of a joy when the Holy Spirit is doing His work in the lives of my children. The Spirit can take my faithfulness, my teaching, the environment I create and can use that to work in the heart and lives of my children. There is a great temptation to sort of “forget” or “eliminate” the role of the Spirit in parenting. We can too easily become enamored with our system of character-formation (which is important) and almost convince ourselves that parenting is all up to us. Yep, our kids will be good because we did it right! That’s humanism. You don’t have to be a Christian to parent this way. It leaves no room for the miracle of the gospel.

4) You will make a lot of really big mistakes You are not going to get it all right in your parenting. You will have glaring blindspots that your kids will one day lament as they consider their own parenting. But guess what? This is where God’s grace bleeds through. Be faithful, be humble, be apologetic, be present–and God will use you to mold the lives of your kids. It’s better to realize this up front than to fool yourself into thinking that you’ll be perfect, that whatever mistakes your parents made you will now iron out. It’s better not to convince yourself that you’ve finally mastered the balance between grace and law in your home. It’s better to go through your parenting years with the humility to realize you don’t have all the answers, the grace to apologize when you mess up, and the confidence that God can somehow take your flawed efforts and shape the hearts of your children. What encourages me about my children is to know that God loves them infinitely more than I love them, that God wants their spiritual success, their wholeness, their character more than I do. It encourages me to think that the huge, glaring gaps in my parenting will be filled by the Heavenly Father.

5) You need to unselfishly prepare them for their mission. The biggest temptation we parents face, I think, is to consider our kids as our kids rather than God’s children. Don’t misunderstand me, when I look at my children, I think all the time, Wow, these are my kids, this is awesome. And yet I have to remind myself that they are God’s children more than they are my children. This matters because it affects the way we parent. If we have children for our own pleasure and enjoyment, they will ultimately disappoint us. And we will ruin them by trying to mold and shape them, either into our own image or into the person who completes what we feel we lack. Instead, like Abraham, like Hannah we must relinquish control of our children to the Lord for his mission. This means rather than overprotecting them in a germ-less Christian bubble, we teach them and train them and equip them for life. We don’t assume the gospel and the great doctrines of the Christian faith, we drill these truths deep into their hearts and souls, so that they can carry this deposit of faith in their generation. It means we start teaching them essential life skills so they can go into the world and make a difference. It means we work hard at identifying their gifts and talents and how so they can discover their God-given vocation. Preparing our children for life means we slowly prepare our own hearts for the moment they will leave the nest, so we don’t hang on and destroy their adulthood, so we don’t hover over their relationships, their marriages and hurt their mission.

*This is by no means an exhaustive list of principles and truths, just some that I’ve been reflecting on lately. 

Embracing The Tension of God

This last Sunday we continued our series through The Lord’s Prayer. This week we examined the phrase, “Our Father in Heaven.” As a model for prayer, this doesn’t look too different from the way we might pray today. Perhaps we begin our prayers with something like, “Heavenly Father . . . ” But to the disciples who heard Jesus’ instructions for prayer, applying the word, “Father” to prayer was radical. The word, “Father” is “Abba” and is a more personal term than Yahweh or Elohim. It’s something a bit more formal than “Daddy,” perhaps “Dearest Father.” At any rate, it indicated intimacy and closeness. It indicates active, personal care.

There are glimpses in the Old Testament of this father relationship. In Psalm 103 David describes God’s care as that of a father to a child. And in 2 Samuel 7, you can’t escape the powerful imagery God uses to talk to David, “I shall be your father and you shall be my son.” Proverbs 3:12 says that “the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.” But typically, they thought of God in reverence and fear. We think of Moses experience on Sinai, when he came down from the mountain and his face glowed.  We think of the entire sacrificial system and tabernacle and temple structure. It reinforced the idea that God was transcendent, great, and to be feared.

Jesus, however, introduced a new concept, the signaling of a new covenant between God and His people. It began with Jesus himself referring to God as his Father. Jesus first words, were “I must be about my father’s business” (Luke 2:49). And many times the gospels record Jesus referring to God as his Father.

But the Sermon on the Mount takes this further, by instructing the disciples to call Jesus father. Particularly in this prayer, Jesus is instructing his followers to consider Elohim, Yahweh, their father. How can disciples of Jesus have this kind of closeness with God? Through Christ, who is the mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5). All humans are, by creation, children of God in a corporate sense. They were created and are sustained by God’s sovereign grace. But only those who have put their faith in Christ experience the closeness of God as their father and came come boldly before God (Hebrews 4:16). Consider what John writes in the first chapter of John 1:

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1:12-13 (ESV) 

John further distinguishes those who have God as their father through Christ and those who do not:

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 1 John 3:1 (ESV) 

Paul affirms this in Romans 14:

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 

We, who have been redeemed by Christ, are children of God. He is our Father. This is a special, exclusive relationship with God through Christ. And how do we know we have this, how do we know we are children of God? The Holy Spirit reminds us, He speaks to our hearts and reminds us that God is our Abba Father. 

So there is an intimacy, a tenderness, a closeness we experience with God. Theologians call this immanence. 

However, Jesus’ intructions on how to begin our prayers don’t stop there. He says to open our prayers, “Our Father in Heaven. The phrase, in Heaven implies two things, I think:

First it reminds us that we are not of this world. If our Father is in Heaven, that means that our home is in Heaven. This means that we will not ever be totally comfortable on this earth. In 1 Peter , Scripture describes our condition as “exiles” and temporary residents.” This should inform our prayers in that while we pray for “daily bread” to a father who knows what we need before we need it, we should pray with a kingdom mindset, not merely seeking complete and total comfort on earth, but that God’s mission through us might be fulfilled.

Secondly, and most importantly, it reminds us of the authority of God. If the word Father speaks to God’s closeness, his intimacy, his immanence, the phrase in Heaven speaks to God’s transcendence. Heaven, in Scripture is the seat of power and authority. There is a tension here in the text that reflects the rest of Scripture, of how we should think about God. He is both transcendent and immanent. That is to say His all powerful and sovereign and just and yet he is also near and loving and available. Both of those are true of God. His transcendance isn’t diminished by his immanence.

This sounds like an egghead discussion for a few theologians, but it actually has implications for the way we approach God and the way we worship. Jesus instructed us to begin our prayers this way to reminds us of these two important attributes. We pray to a powerful, transcendant God who has chosen, in His grace through Christ, to be close to us. This gives weight to our conversation, to our prayers. We are not simply praying to another friend who is as limited as we are. We are praying to a transcendant God who can act.

This should also inform our worship. We tend, in modern evangelicalism, to emphasize the closeness of God, but we are in danger of ignoring the transcendance of God. We tend to fashion a God who is like us, we are often flippant in our worship. We’d do well to embrace this tension we find in the Lord’s prayer. So with equal weight, we should, for instance, sing, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and “Immortal, Invisible.” We should be humbled and awed before the majesty of God and yet praise Him at the privilege of an intimate relationship with Him through Christ.

Friday Five: Steve Mathewson

I’m thrilled to welcome my good friend, Steve Mathewson to the blog today. Steve is a fellow pastor in the Chicago area and also is a adjunct professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School where I’m studying for my Mdiv. Steve pastors Crosslife Evangelical Free Church in Libertyville, IL Steve received a Master of Arts Degree in Old Testament in 1986 from Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Portland, Ore. and a Doctor of Ministry in 2000 from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. He and his wife, Priscilla, have four children.

Steve is also an author. I wanted to talk to him about his latest book, one that I’m very, very excited about, Risen, 50 Reasons Why the Resurrection Changed Everything. It’s good reading for Christians as they prepare their hearts for Easter.

What motivated you to write this book on the Resurrection?

Three years ago, I had challenged the church I pastor to read through John Piper’s Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die in the fifty days prior to Easter Sunday. On Good Friday morning, as I was nearing the end of Piper’s book, the thought struck me that we needed a similar book for the resurrection. I had been doing some reading on the resurrection and had been studying Romans 8. So I set aside my preparation for the meditation I was to deliver at our Good Friday service and spent a few hours compiling an initial list of “50 reasons why Jesus was raised from death.” I was so moved and in awe of what God had done for his people through Christ’s resurrection that I started writing! I figured I could use this with our church family. But God in his grace has allowed it to be published and available to churches and believers around North America.

You seem more motivated in this book to talk of the theological significance of the Resurrection rather than defending it’s truth claims. Why this approach?

You’re absolutely right, Daniel! This approach has grown out of my conviction that we spend so much time defending the validity of the resurrection that we have little time or energy left to focus on how it has changed everything. We spend a lot more time, it seems, talking about the significance of the cross. This stands to reason because few people dispute that a Jewish man named Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem about two thousand years ago. We rarely have to defend the validity of Jesus’ death. The dispute, of course, is over the meaning and significance of the cross. But the idea of Jesus being raised bodily from death is so controversial! So, when we discuss or preach the resurrection, we usually focus on an apologetic defense of it. This is entirely appropriate, but we cannot afford to lose touch with the theological significance of this element of the gospel.

It seems the Resurrection often gets short shrift in our gospel proclamation? Seems like we emphasize the cross and atonement and “Oh yeah he rose again.” Why is this so harmful?

It’s harmful, I believe, because the gospel consists of two main elements: the death of Christ and his resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 makes this clear. Both elements happened according to the Scriptures and were verified by history–the cross by Jesus’ burial and the resurrection by the witnesses to his post-resurrection appearances. If we underemphasize the resurrection, we lost sight of many blessings of the gospel, including the resurrection-like power we have available to us (see Ephesians 1:18-20). In Philippians 3:10-11, the Apostle Paul says that he wants to know both the power of Christ’s resurrection and participation in his sufferings. If we focus on the latter but ignore the former, we run the risk of becoming gloomy, negative, and joyless.

I wonder if Christians understand all the wonderful ramifications of the Resurrection, especially with renewal and the Kingdom?

I’m not sure that we do! In my experience, we tend to forget that the resurrection of Jesus guarantees our future bodily resurrection (see 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 and 1 Thessalonians 4:14) and that these bodies will be heavenly, imperishable bodies (1 Corinthians 15:42-48). That’s simply amazing! Furthermore, we do not make the connection that Christ’s resurrection has set in motion a series of events that will culminate in creation being set free from its bondage to decay (see Romans 8:21-22). I wonder if we realize how the resurrection makes it possible for Jesus to be our good shepherd forever (see Hebrews 13:20)? I confess that while I’ve studied and preached Acts 17:16-34 several times over the years, I had not really realized how the resurrection is proof of God’s commitment to justice. I could go on, but I think you get the idea!

What is one thing you’d like readers to take away from this book?

Wow, it’s hard to narrow it down to one thing! I suppose, though, that I want readers to take away the New Testament’s emphasis on the present blessings of the resurrection as well as the futureones. In addition to guaranteeing our future resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus Christ changes everything about our current lives. For example, Colossians 3:1-4 makes it clear that the reality of our future resurrection has been pulled back into the present and has reoriented our desires. It makes us fruitful (Romans 7:4) and delivers us from a life of self-indulgence (1 Corinthians 15:32. In short, what I want reads to take away is that the resurrection of Jesus Christ has changed everything–now and forever!

Prayer That Starts With God

On Sunday I started a brand-new series on the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) entitled, “Teach Us to Pray.” Let’s remember that this is not a prayer Jesus prays, but that a prayer He offers for his disciples to pray. One of the things that really strikes me about Jesus’ model prayer is just how God-centered this prayer is. The Lord’s Prayer contains six humble requests, the first three are God-directed and the last three involve human needs. This is very similar to the structure of the Ten Commandments, which first begin with our vertical relationship to God and then end with our horizontal relationship with our fellow man. It’s similar to the way Paul constructed his letters to the churches: he often began with who we are in Christ before fleshing out how that affects the way we live.

A.W. Tozer said this (and I paraphrase), “The first thing that comes to your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.” I hear a lot of Christian says things like, “I don’t worry about theology.” Well, yes you do. Everybody has a theology, whether flawed or otherwise. Sadly, most of our theology begins with me. We start our prayers with what we think we need and then, if we have time, throw in a few God cliques. But the most healthy theology begins where the Bible begins: with God. You will notice that the first words of the very first book of the Bible begin like this, “In the beginning, God.”

It’s easy to subtly devalue God by our prayers and our life. We say things like, “I don’t imagine God is like this.” Or “The God I worship doesn’t do this.” But if God is truly God–that is to say if God is sovereign, powerful, holy, compassionate, just–then it behooves us not to define God on our terms, but to bow before the God who is already there.

How does this affect our prayer life? Why did Jesus say to start our supplications with God? Because the way we view God affects the way we live. How much we reverence God informs the respect we have for our fellow man. And beginning with God in our prayers filters out the frivolous. It considers prayer as an act of worship, an acknowledgment that we are, in deed, not God. That God is God.

It means our prayers are in God’s will. It keeps us from destructive theology. It prevents us from saying foolish things like, “God told me to (fill in the blank)” when really it was our own fleshly desires that spoke. I once had a person tell me, with a straight and somber face, that God was telling her to divorce her husband of 15 years and go marry a convicted felon. Um, God won’t tell you to do something against His sovereign will.

Praying God-centered prayers takes some discipline and practice. I’ll admit that this is a struggle for me. I often want to begin what I think are my own needs rather than letting my Father in Heaven shape my them. But there is something refreshing about beginning with God. It reminds us of the awesome miracle of access to the throne room of Heaven, purchased at great price by Christ on the cross. It reminds me that God takes great delight in hearing my prayers and meeting my needs, needs he knows well before I know them. It comforts me to realize that I do, indeed, have a Father in Heaven with a hallowed name.

What Evangelism Is

I’m highly skeptical of mechanics. If you are one, I’m sorry, but I think you probably realize that it goes with the trade. It’s this way with pastors, too, so perhaps we can commiserate some time.

But there is one shop in our community who does exceptional work, whose proprietors rise above the usual price-gouging and fake repair needs. These are guys I trust with every need my car has. They give good advice. They only fix what is needed. They give good referrals for other work. And when you are with them you just get the vibe that they are genuine real men, not slick salesman trying to make a deal.

Here’s the thing about service like this. It’s so rare that when you find it, you want to tell the world about it, is that not right? That’s what marketing experts get paid big money to tell their clients: perform good service and let the word of mouth build your business. Why is this? Because people are natural evangelists.

I think about this when I think about evangelism. If you have had a great experience with something, you don’t have to be prodded to tell ten people. It’s the same way with a bad experience. Guarantee you that you will not only tell ten people, you’ll post on your social networks. Companies are desperate for this.

When we evangelize the gospel, that is when we fulfill our calling to share the good news of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, it should be as natural as me telling ten people about my experience at Hainseville Firestone near my house.

And herein lies the problem with our evangelism for God. It’s not that we are afraid to tell people. It’s not that we want people to like us. The deeper reason we don’t share Christ is because we’ve lost our first love. We’ve forgotten how great Christ is. He’s become sort of familiar to us, Someone we aren’t all that excited about, not excited enough to tell people.

I find it interesting in the Great Commission verses in Matthew and Mark and Acts that the imperatives are not in the going and telling, but in the teaching and baptizing. Why is that? I think this is because Jesus assumed the disciples would tell everyone the gospel. And why wouldn’t they? They’d just seen Jesus rise again from the dead. They’ve had a radical, life-changing encounter with the Risen Lord. Who could shut up about that?

Perhaps the key to our evangelism is not adopting a new strategy or finding the perfect method or being guilted by Hellfire, but simply to revisit the wonders of the gospel message itself, to reread passages like Ephesians 2 to realize how sick and dead and lifeless we were before we met Christ. To bask in the wonders of regeneration and rebirth. To look at ourselves before we were Christians and how we are now.

Evangelism is really a natural human instinct. Every single one of us is an evangelist of something. Listen to yourself talk. What do you tell your friends and neighbors about? What excites you? What is that you can’t wait to share with someone?

The 4 Elements of Courage

I recently finished a sermon series in the book of 1 Peter. It’s a remarkable book, really. Peter addresses the Church and reminds them they are exiles, they are temporary residents of this world. They belong to another Kingdom, the Kingdom of Christ.

At the end of 1 Peter, the apostle closes with a stirring call to courage. You will notice in the text the words, “stand firm” and “be firm.” He encourages the believers to “resist, to testify to the truth.” In a word, Peter is telling the people of God to summon up courage, the courage to stand strong, defending and proclaiming the very words of life found in the Scripture: the gospel story that God has rescued mankind from sin and offered hope and forgiveness in the person of Jesus Christ.

These are words that must be given to every generation of believers. Every generation must rise against evil. Every generation of the church must “hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21) must “guard the deposit of faith” (2 Timothy 1:14), must “contend for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3).” We cannot just “assume” the gospel, we must study it, articulate, and proclaim it anew in our day.

D.A. Carson has said that a church is never more than three generations from losing the gospel: one generation to believe it and proclaim it, a second generation to assume it, and a third generation to lose it.

For this, we need courage. Every generation needs leaders willing to sacrifice, to stand, to hold firm to the faith once delivered to the saints.

Peter here is writing to the believers—he’s an aging apostle passing from the scene shortly. And his parting words of this letter contain a stirring call to courage. One of my favorite quotes on courage comes from Winston Churchill:

To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour. Winston Churchill

In his final words, Peter gives us a four-fold blueprint for courage:

1) Embrace Godly Ambition (1 Peter 5:6-7)

We often talk of ambition as something less than godly. But clearly, in Peter’s famous words about humility, he doesn’t condemn ambition. Notice Peter says that “in due time” God will exalt you. Now, this exaltation likely isn’t a promise of success in the way we identify it. It could be pointing to exaltation in Heaven, when we’ll be in glory with Christ. But the words “in due time” seem to indicate, to me, that this is referring to the point in your life when you are most used by God, when your gifts, your desire, and the world’s needs maximize into God’s calling for your life.

You will notice that the pathway to this kind of platform is humility. You’ll notice that it is God who exalts, not us. You’ll notice the words “in due time.” I think courage has to include the willingness to live out a radical mission for God and the humility to accept the call when that opportunity comes. It turns the world’s economy on it’s head by reminding us that greatness in God’s kingdom begins by stooping low and grabbing a towel. Too often Christians confuse courge with incivility. But disciples of Christ are called to be both gracious and stedfast.

2) Engage the Battle (1 Peter 5:8-9)

It’s not fashionable to talk about such things in polite company, but the Bible teaches us that there is an enemy out there who prowls the earth looking for souls to devour. Sometimes Christians say ridiculous things about the devil that are worthy of satire. But a courageous Christian is mature enough to understand reality. He realizes that he is in a war, not against people, but a spiritual war against the “rulers of darkness” (Ephesians 6). Every temptation, every opportunity to sin, every chance to give up the gospel is a skirmish in a long, cosmic war between God and Satan.

Courage rejects both head-in-the-sand naiveté and conspiracy-mongering panic. Peter’s letter warns against both. Genuine courage has an honest appraisal of the war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, understands that God’s people are enlisted soldiers in the war, and rests in the confidence that God has already won at Calvary. In my experience as pastor, I find two disheartening extremes among Christians: those who see a world-dominating conspiracy behind every news article and those who are blissfully ignorant. Satan feasts on both.

3) Entrust Your Life to God (1 Peter 5:10-11)

Peter reminds us that our lives are not our own. To be a disciple of Christ is to die to the old life and to live a new life. It is to entrust ourselves to God. At first glance, courage seems like the opposite of faith. How can one be brave and yet dependent  fearful and yet fearless?  The answer is this: we are not the source of our own strength. I love how Peter writes that God will restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

God purposely calls us to things greater than us, to a life that is impossible to live. The only way we can live for God is to live in God through Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who equips us for the battle. All Jesus asks for is the one thing we can give: our lives. Surrender. Are you willing to live?

4) Enjoin Yourself to Christian Community

Courage is not a solo enterprise. When you are baptized by the Holy Spirit into the Christian community, you are enjoined to the family of God, with members of every nation, tribe and tongue. You are joined not only to God’s people alive today, but to God’s people gone before, the great “cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1)” who have gone before. You are linked to 2,000 years of Church history.

American Christianity has often invividualized the faith, often over-emphasizing the personal, the private walk with God. But it’s a mistake to live apart from Christ’s body, for doing so severs you from the life and love and fellowship you need to fight the good fight. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with God’s people is courage. Standing alone is foolishness.

5 Reasons We Don’t Share Our Faith

Let’s face it. As Christians, we all know, by now, that we are supposed to share our faith. Most of us have heard countless sermons on the importance of evangelizing. But . . . most of us don’t take the time to do it. Or we do, but not nearly as much as we should. So what’s the problem? Why don’t Christians share the good news of the gospel message?

Looking at my own life, my own disobedience in this area, I’ve found five reasons we aren’t more vocal about telling others what we ourselves believe:

1) We don’t share our faith because we don’t realize we have a mission. The command to follow Christ as a disciple, as an ambassador, as a proclaimer of the good news is just that . . . a command. And yet if we were honest, most of the time we treat our mission in this world as something that is optional. We look at the calling of a Christian, to die to ourselves, to take up the cross, as something we should do, if we have time. We don’t take our mission seriously. Or we think that perhaps this mission was given only to a select few specialists, such as the pastor or the missionary. This is why the world hardly notices a difference between God’s people and the rest of the world. We are so preoccupied with our own well-being, our own survival or success, that we blow off the mission of God.

2) We don’t share our faith because we misunderstand our mission. Even if we want to obey the sending mission of God, we often fail because we misunderstand the mission. Let me explain. I think much of the fear that keeps Christians from sharing the good news of the gospel with their friends and neighbors and coworkers stems from a confusion of two things: method and message. Sometimes we confuse the method with the message. So to evangelize means to dump the entire book of Romans on an unsuspecting mall clerk or it means reciting a memorized spiel of the steps to salvation. But while methods are good–they change with the audience. Paul knew this and so he didn’t necessarily try out the same method on every people group. When we do this, when we put so much confidence in a few Christianese phrases and memorized, out-of-context verses, we end up sounding like a salesman for something we don’t really want to sell. I think much of the fear would go away if we, instead, relied on the Holy Spirit to guide us in each interaction, if we resisted impatience, and worked to build long-term relationships that can one day lead to conversion. What if we were so in love with the gospel message, if we never lost our awe and wonder, if we made it a lifetime study? Perhaps that passion would so fill our souls that it would leak out into every single sphere of life and thus . . . the good news would be less of a canned pitch and more of a lifestyle. The gospel is good news, after all.

3) We don’t share our faith because we misunderstand the Holy Spirit’s mission. Many evangelistic methods, while good and helpful and fruitful, put an emphasis on “closing the deal.” We mistakenly think that it is the cleverness of our methods that turns a soul from death to life. But it is the Holy Spirit who does the work of regeneration in a heart, it is God who saves people, not mere men. Our job is to articulate, to share, to proclaim and then we must trust the Spirit to do the work we cannot do. I want to be careful here, because part of our mission is to persuade  to exhort, to call people to repentance and faith. Yet it is God who saves, always. Every time. Releasing ourselves from the pressure to “close the deal” and “make the sale” allows us to be faithful. It releases us from the humanistic thinking that wrongly puts confidence in a method. It often takes several contacts in a person’s life before the Spirit helps them understand the message of the Gospel. Sometimes you may be the person present when someone trusts Christ and in doing so, you see the harvest of many years of careful work by others. And at times it may be that your first conversation with an unbeliever is just the mustard seed that the Spirit implants in their heart, a seed that others will water and see brought to full flower.

4) We don’t share our faith because we misunderstand what it means to be a friend of the world. There is a certain tension in Scripture. On the one hand we are called to be different from the world. We are called to live above the world. We are citizens of another kingdom. Christians should live and think and act differently than nonChristians. And yet, we are called to go into the world and make disciples of Jesus. We are to bring the gospel to the farthest reaches of the planet. Sometimes we put such an emphasis on our difference that we intentionally avoid unbelievers. But while we are called to live differently, we are also called to live among the lost of the world. If we are really on mission in our communities, if our commission from the Lord is to spread the fame of his name among all peoples, we need to start making intentional connections. It’s hard to share Christ with people we don’t actually know. It’s hard to love people from a distance. As our culture becomes more and more post-Christian, it will become even more important for Christians to develop intentional relationships with unbelievers. It’s pretty difficult to obey the Great Commission if we are never actually exposed to people who don’t know Jesus.

5) We don’t share our faith because we are ashamed of our identity. Christians should be wise to articulate the gospel in the way that most suits their audience. But even if we perfectly “get out of the way” of the gospel, there is a point where the cross of Christ becomes a point of conflict. Some will embrace the message of salvation and others will reject it. And sometimes our refusal to evangelize is tied to our desire to be liked by the people who may not like Jesus. We don’t want to be social martyrs. We don’t want to be uncool. We don’t want to lose friendships and alienate important people. So we stay silent. But the call of the gospel is the call to come and die, the call to give up our prestige, our desire to be affirmed by the world. We shouldn’t be obnoxious jerks. We should be kind, loving, gracious, giving, generous. But we can sometimes do all these things and still be considered a backwards bigot, simply for loving Jesus. It’s a question of what we value. Do we value the limitless grace of the gospel that brought us from the enslavement of sin to the arms of the Father or do we value our own fleeting approval by world system? The way to get motivated to share the good news is not by guilt or manipulation, but by plunging once again into the heart of the very gospel itself.

Friday Five: Andrew Walker

[image error]I’m thrilled today to chat with my friend, Andrew Walker. Andrew researches and writes about marriage, family and the moral principles that support civil society. As a policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, he also focuses on how ethics inform public policy decisions and investigates the role that religion plays in American political culture.

Before joining Heritage in November 2012, Walker was a policy analyst and lobbyist with the Family Foundation, a public policy organization in Kentucky. He worked on issues related to education policy, opposition to casino gambling, and the defense of marriage, life and religious liberty.

Walker has been published in outlets such as The Louisville Courier-Journal, The City, The Weekly Standard, Christianity Today, Touchstone, The Gospel Coalition, MereOrthodoxy.com and — as a freelance writer — by the Institute on Religion and Democracy. His broadcast experience includes appearances on Louisville’s Fox and NBC affiliates.

A native of Jacksonville, Ill., Walker graduated summa cum laude from Southwest Baptist University with a bachelor’s degree in religion. He received the highest departmental honors as a theology student. In 2010, he earned a master of divinity degree in theology from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is pursuing a master of theology degree in ethics there, focusing his studies on political ethics and church-state relations under theologian and ethicist Russell Moore. He is active on Twitter at: @Walker_Andrew

I asked Andrew a few questions about his work and the Heritage Foundation:

1) For people who may not be familiar with the Heritage Foundation, explain the mission and purpose: 

The Heritage Foundation began in 1973 under the direction of Dr. Ed Feulner. In many ways, it has become the standard bearer for conservative policy and the conservative movement in America. Heritage came to prominence under Ronald Reagan, whose administration adopted and implemented many of the policies crafted by Heritage scholars. Since then, Heritage has amassed a large grassroots coalition of over 600,000 members who partner with Heritage to see conservative principles advanced across American culture and public policy. Our mission bears repeating, which is to formulate and promote conservative policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. Heritage’s main audience is Congress, so we’re located right in the heart of Washington D.C. on Capitol Hill.

2) 2012 was not a good year for evangelicals at the voting booth. Are you disheartened about Christianity’s so-called waning influence?

I’m not convinced there’s been a drastic plunge in Christianity’s numbers as much as a precipitous decline in the cultural capital that Christianity once wielded. Christianity is no longer a label of cultural validation that it once was. In some places, the label ‘evangelical’ is a term of derision. While we should regret “Christophobia,” increased hostility towards Christians does provide a new context for faithfulness. We shouldn’t resign ourselves to despair, fatalism, or defeatism. Hope should be our sign because, frankly, we don’t determine outcomes by the present. Moreover, if you’re in Christ, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we inherit the cosmos.

But let’s tackle the political aspect. The 2012 election showed, again, a hardening of political divides, with the evangelical voting bloc especially. Precise statistics aside, if you self-identify as a white evangelical, you’re overwhelmingly likely (75%-80%) to vote for one party over another. Why is that? Some critics will accuse Christians of voting in ways to recover the loss of Christian America. Some will accuse Christians of cozying too closely with political powers in order to ingratiate themselves with power. For me, the answer is found in the Christian ethical witness. One party in America demonstrates open hostility to core beliefs of Christian doctrine and ethics. You probably wouldn’t expect Christians to be voting in droves for this party. If there comes a time when both parties are hospitable towards a culture of life, then I think you’ll see political divides begin to weaken. I want Christians to debate the merits of minimum wage laws (and they can), not whether we should allow marriage to be redefined. So, depending on how you measure success, Christians might have been on the losing side of the issues, but they were more united on key aspects related to Christian ethics. If our beliefs should form a consensus, 2012 reveals that, like in 2004 and 2008, evangelicals have a strong united vision for certain public issues of our day. I should issue a word of caution, however, and say that Christians ought to be fiercely independent and not beholden to any party. If there comes a day when both parties demonstrate hostility to marriage and life (and that could be on the horizon), I think you’ll see a mass exit of Christians voting for the GOP. I’m with Peter Leithart who recently remarked that “If the Republican party can’t bring itself to endorse a traditional understanding of marriage, let it split. If the Republican party can’t be bothered about the slaughter of the unborn, let it shatter into a million little pieces.” To that I reply with, “Amen and amen.”

3) Evangelicals today seem to be reexamining their engagement in the public square. What are your thoughts on Christian political activism in the 21st century?

What a question! As many have observed, there are growing pains within evangelicalism and its relationship to politics. I think this is overall very healthy. On the face of it though, rethinking how we’ve engaged in politics isn’t a confession that we ought to abandon politics, which some tragically advocate for.

Evangelicalism’s past engagement with politics has gone in cycles. When Carl Henry awakened evangelicals to the necessity of public engagement, he wasn’t focused exclusively on politics. He did, however, help lay the firmament for what has been known as the Religious Right and its direct engagement on the political process. Today’s evangelicalism is moving in a direction (a good one, I think) that sees politics following downstream from culture. Moving forward, I think you’ll see evangelicals marked for concern with the institutions of culture perhaps more so than direct political advocacy. My friend Thomas Kidd at Baylor very recently remarked that he can’t control the voting patterns of Ohio, but that he can control the culture of his dinner table. That seems about right to me. At the same time, we shouldn’t think of everything in black and white categories. I’m in Washington that has Congress as its audience. Dan Darling has his church as his audience. Congress and families are but two components of culture. The message is that Christians should use whatever platform or venue they’ve been placed in to love their neighbor and to seek the welfare of their city.

We’re also seeing evangelicals adopt the “Common Good” into their political lexicon and as a motive of their engagement. Christians shouldn’t be motivated by social prestige or social privilege; we should be motivated by the Common Good, which means loving our neighbor and advocating for the institutions that facilitate access to human flourishing. One example is marriage. Today’s marriage debates assume that Christians advocate for marriage for exclusively theological reasons. That isn’t accurate. While marriage is an ultimate Christian ‘good,’ is isn’t exclusively a Christian ‘good.’ Marriage is a creational ordinance that fosters well being for all—atheist, Muslim, Jew, or Christian. I want a strong marriage culture because I want kids in my neighborhood to experience life at its fullest—and a Mom and a Dad is a feature of that. Lastly, I also see an evangelical openness to Natural Law—a concept that allows for a common ethical and moral grammar with our non-Christian neighbors. For all the talk of evangelicals lacking a coherent political theology, the Common Good and Natural Law approaches are quite promising.

My present concern is that in overreacting against the Religious Right, some evangelicals are advocating for a very hollow program of post-partisanship—this idea that Christians can largely escape political controversy and the so-called “Culture Wars” by resigning themselves to  silence or as above the fray. Any whiff of political talk and certain evangelicals will pounce, decrying the fusion of religion and politics. Frankly, this is profoundly naïve and glosses over the complex layers that motivate Christians to enter the public square. Are Christians motivated by amassing power? I don’t think so. I think it’s more accurate to say that Christians are motivated by ethical witness and forming what Robert George calls humane “moral ecologies.”

When political and cultural forces unite on issues that Christians find disturbing, Christians have the opportunity and I’d argue, obligation, to confront Caesar. Let’s use Hobby Lobby as an example. Are the owners of Hobby Lobby trying to carve out exceptions in the law in order to arbitrarily flout government authorities? By no means. The owners of Hobby Lobby are defying an unjust policy imposed by the federal government because their Christian faith imposes certain ethical (not political!) standards related to human sexuality and human dignity. Moving forward, I’d ask evangelicals and their critics to think about how ethics is the bridge between religion and politics. This changes things, I think.

To me, it seems that some evangelicals are really anxious to be martyrs; that they find sordid delight in Christianity’s lost influence. Fine. Swell. If the time for martyrdom comes, let us be faithful. But remember: Martyrdom comes only when Christianity has been ruled out-of-bounds. I don’t want Christian faith marginalized in America just because we think being on the margins will make us better Christians. Being on the margins or promoting life on the margins doesn’t necessarily make one a more faithful Christian any more so than the profoundly immoral Anabaptist who doesn’t want his or her taxes supporting “empire.” I want a culture responsive to Christian mission, and we don’t have to disentangle ourselves from issues of political importance in order to succeed. The pro-life advocates who counsel a post-abortive woman to Christ are demonstrating both a political and evangelistic witness. That’s not theocracy; that’s evangelism. We just need to be responsible in our politics, which means both boldness and humility, or as someone once said, “Grace” and “Truth.”

4) You studied at Southern Seminary under men like Albert Mohler and Russell Moore. Explain how their scholarship has informed the work you do now.

It was a real blessing to study at a seminary led by two evangelical and intellectual giants. Dr. Mohler’s influence has been instructive for me in seeing how the dynamics of culture work—for good or bad—with the Christian narrative. Dr. Moore combines a perceptiveness about human nature that is uncanny, to be frank. The Christian political task must have an accurate biblical anthropology and both Mohler and Moore understand the nature of man and his proclivities in a way that makes political realities discernible and unsurprising. When you understand the fallenness of man, redemption in Christ, and the unveiling of His Kingdom, you’re rescued from despair but also freed from pursuing some type of Christian utopia. The Christian political program should be one where our view of the Ultimate informs and shapes life in the Penultimate. Both Mohler and Moore are models for that perspective.

5) If you were to recommend a particular book to someone wrestling with the intersection of faith and culture, what would that be?

It’s a little complex and academic, but Robert P. George’s The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis is a clear presentation of how divergent understandings of ethics and morality often lead to cultural conflict.

Bonus Question:  I know you’re a huge fan of West Wing. So what’s your favorite character?

The quick response is Ainsley Hayes, because she put the Bartlett administration’s unchecked liberalism on its heels from time to time. As for a main character, Josh Lyman really grew on me as the show progressed. He was tactical, shrewd, unapologetic for his views, and fiercely loyal.

You May Have Something that Michael Jordan Doesn’t

Over the weekend, I stopped what I was doing to read this brilliant ESPN piece on Michael Jordan by Wright Thompson. The article, a transparent window into the soul of this great athlete, left me a bit sad for Michael.

You have to understand that I grew up in Chicago during the apex of Jordan’s athletic career. To this young boy, Michael defined sports and life in many ways. I had the privilege of playing on the basketball team at our little Christian school. I am not athletic, but for several years basketball was the air I breathed. In our world, there was no other sport.

You have to understand that in Chicago, this sport was not always popular. My grandfather told me of getting seats at the old Chicago stadium close to the floor. Before Jordan, these were seats you couldn’t give away. The stadium during Bulls cames was empty and cavernous. Chicago is largely a Cubs town and a Bears town. (Sorry Sox fans, but this is truth.)

But Jordan transcended sports. His exploits seemed superhuman. He could take off from the free throw line and dunk. He had a 48 inch vertical. He stayed up in the air longer than the other guys. He could score at will. And you didn’t want to get him mad because he’d get even with you by torching you for 50 pts (ask New York Knick fans).

Our whole family were rapid Bull’s fans. I remember fondly spending game nights at my grandparent’s condo. The ladies would sit in the living room and the guys would spend the night in the den, not only watching the Bulls, but breaking down every play. Sometimes the post-game chatter was more fun than the actual game. Even my mom was into it. I remember the time we wanted to see the Bull’s play, but couldn’t get tickets at the United Center. So we travelled up to Milwaukee’s Bradley Center and scalped tickets from a guy on the street. My mom was the one who negotiated the price, telling the guy, “C’mon, I’ve got three kids in the car, they are crying. Can you help us out here?”

And I still have, in my parent’s house, video tapes of the first Finals series against the Lakers. In Chicago, we followed Jordan’s every move. We knew his life story. We cried when his father, James, was found murdered at a North Carolina truck stop. We forgave him when he left basketball to fulfill a childhood fantasy to play baseball for the White Sox. And when he faxed the media a two word statement: “I’m back,” all of Chicago stopped and pumped their fists.

That’s why it’s kind of unsettling for us to see Michael at 50 years old. That competitive spirit that fueled his passion for excellence at the game seems to have no outlet. I don’t know if there is a pinnacle higher than the one Michael Jordan has reached. Blessed with the rare combination of gifts and drive, rewarded with billions of dollars, served by a coterie of capable staff, Jordan is, for all intents and purposes, on the top of the world.

And yet, having conquered all, Jordan seems restless. A wanderer. The same gnawing drive that compelled him to punish his body and will himself to the top now haunts him. There are no more rungs to climb. No more battles to fight. No more victories to achieve.

I want to tread lightly here, because I don’t know the state of Michael Jordan’s soul. But viewing Michael from afar, it seems to me that the one thing the world’s greatest athlete doesn’t have, but desperately wants is something even the poorest follower of Jesus has: peace with God. I don’t want to be crass here. I’m not saying that all Christians are always happy all the time. The same afflictions that torment the world torment God’s people: depression, anxiety, temptation, idolatry.

And yet it strikes me that you can gain the whole world as Michael has done and yet not find peace for your own soul. All my life people have wanted to be Michael Jordan. Who would’n't trade places with him? The talent, the endorsements, the money, the fame. And yet . . . if you know Jesus Christ, you might have something Michael Jordan has searched his whole life for. You might have, through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus, something that often eludes the famous and rich. You might have peace with God, which gives you the peace of God.

This is not to say that ambition is inherently, always empty. Sometimes Christians act as if striving and working hard for excellence in your profession is somehow sinful. But it is not. The pursuit of success can be a testament to the Creator. But success as a single-minded pursuit, as an object of worship, becomes a tormentor, a soul-eating monster when severed from its proper intent: to glorify the Creator who gives those good gifts. Success is a lousy idol. It promises peace, but ultimately fails to satiate the soul. It leaves you spiritually hungry, wanting, and raw.

Again, I don’t know the state of Michael Jordan’s soul. I don’t know if he is a Christian who has been alienated from his Savior or if he’s a lost mine desperately searching for his way home. If Jordan is a Christian, I pray he embraces repentance and faith and again places Jesus at the center of his affections. If he is not a believer, I pray he finds Christ and thus, the only deity worth his worship.

For Michael fans like me, his life is a cautionary tale. It reminds us that those thing for which we so desperately grasp cannot ever, ultimately, satisfy the deepest longings in our soul. It reminds us that if we have Jesus and Jesus has us, then we really have all we’ll ever need.