Daniel Darling's Blog, page 74

Easter’s Big “If”

What are we saying when we gather to worship on Easter Sunday? We are actually saying something radical, are we not? We’re saying that an itinerant rabbi who lived 2,000 years ago in a backwater town in the Middle East is actually God. But we’re saying more than that, aren’t we?

We’re not only saying that we believe Jesus was God, but that his life and death and resurrection proved this. We’re saying that Jesus’ predictions of his future death and resurrection tell us that He was no ordinary human, but that he was God in the flesh. But we’re saying more than that, aren’t we?

We are not only upholding the apologetic of the Resurrection, we’re not only affirming that the historic Jesus did indeed rise again and was seen by 500 witnesses. We are also saying that “if” this is true, then it changes everything about us, about the world, and about what we think we know about God.

We’re saying Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures, the hope of Israel, the Promised One who will not only satisfy God’s just punishment of sin against humans. We’re saying that the fallen corrupted world, a world of war and disease and famine and strife and murder and corruption, will one day be restored. We’re saying that the utopia we long for, the blessed, beautiful world that we all want to see happen, but seem powerless to effect–we’re saying that Jesus’ resurrection signals that this kingdom will one day happen. That’s what we’re saying.

But we’re saying even more. On Easter, we’re saying that “if” this is true, if Jesus was God, did suffer the death for sin we should have suffered, if He indeed rose again, than death is defeated, the invisible enemy was crushed, and restoration is on the way. Easter is a kind of spring season, it reveals the first colorful shoots and seedlings that point to a new a brighter day. It gives us hope that the world’s long winter freeze has been lifted. Instinctively, we all long for a better world, we all want things to change, all want personal renewal and corporate renewal. But we all know that mankind, at his best, cannot bring this to pass. The 20th century marked the century of the most human progress. And yet, it was the century that arguably saw the most blood shed. So, by Easter, that’s what we are saying.

But we’re saying so much more. Easter also says that Creation itself, the world, the planet, the universe, will also one day be restored. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ not only defeated the death brought to mankind by sin, but it defeated the curse placed by sin on creation, a planet and universe that now rumbles with trouble, unleashing devastating natural disasters. Easter says that there is renewal around the corner. But Easter says even more than this.

What we are saying at Easter is that there is a new Kingdom and a new King coming. We’re saying this new King is calling citizens of a new Kingdom, enlisting them in the immediate task of creating an alternate community, the Church, who is to be a window, a glimpse into the final Kingdom. These kingdom people, empowered by the king, live by a different set of values. The poor, the peacemakers, the virtuous, the humble, the forgiving, the courageous. But we’re saying more than this.

Easter says that God not only came in Christ to renew the earth, rescue humanity, and reverse sin’s curse, but He came to offer personal salvation and access to God. By his life and death and resurrection, Jesus grants those who believe personal intimacy with God. Easter says that this access, citizenship in the new Kingdom, is not given because of merit or birth but by personal regeneration. Consider Jesus’ words to Nicodemus, the most religious man in Israel (John 3). Jesus said that this eminently religious and presumptively qualified man that despite his religious devotion and spiritual heritage, he too needed spiritual rebirth. He too needed a new heart, a new allegiance, a new life. By putting his faith in Christ, Nicodemus and all who believe, become citizens of this new Kingdom.

All of this is what Easter is saying. It is declaring the Bible’s beautiful narrative: Life was once good and beautiful, how we all think it should be. It tells us that man was created uniquely to image God. It tells us what happened to this beautiful world and to man himself. -An enemy seduced humankind into rejecting the Creator. It tells us the consequences of sin: death, destruction, evil–every imaginable horror. It tells us, though, that God already had a plan to restore his creation and his people, through the death and resurrection of Christ. Easter tells us that the centuries-long desire for rescue–the arc of the Old Testament–was fulfilled in Jesus. It tells us that because of Easter, there is a better world coming.

Easter is an invitation into this new world through faith in the King who died, was buried, and rose again.

This, my friends, and not any other reason, is why we celebrate Easter. If this is true, it truly changes everything.

Thy Kingdom Come

I’m currently in the midst of a series on The Lord’s Prayer. This past Sunday I preached on the phrase: “They Kingdom Come.” I came across some great quotes in preparation:

From Ray Pritchard‘s excellent book, And When You Pray: 

Consider the matter this way. Every time you pray you must say one of two things. Either you pray, “Your kingdom come,” or you pray, “My kingdom come.” Those are the only two possibilities. But note carefully: When you pray, “Your kingdom come,” you must of necessity also pray: “My kingdom go.” God’s kingdom cannot “come” unless your kingdom is going to “go” They both can’t coexist at the same time and place.

From D.A. Carson‘s commentary, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: 

“Your kingdom come.” Christians ought not to pray this prayer lightly or thoughtlessly. Throughout the centuries, followers of Jesus suffering savage persecution have prayed this prayer with meaning and fervor. But I suspect that our comfortable pews often mock our sincerity when we repeat the phrase today. We would have no objecdtion to the Lord’s return, we think, provided he holds off a bit and lets us finish a degree first, or lets us taste marriage, or give us time to succeed in a business or profession, or grants us the joy of seeing grandchildren. Do we really hunger for the kingdom to come in all it’s surpassing righteousness? Or would we rather waddle through a swamp of insincerity and unrighteousness?

The Rise of the Thin-Skinned Radicals

I was in a conversation the other day with some friends about some of the latest debates in the evangelical church. One of the things that struck us is just how thin-skinned we tend to be when our ideas are challenged. What’s particularly interesting is how intolerant we are of people we think are intolerant. A few examples come to mind:

There’s a rich market of progressive evangelicals who like to skewer the evangelical church. Every day, it seems, a book comes out that essentially makes the case that the church has gotten it all wrong and should should reexamine orthodoxies and beliefs. A good example is Rob Bell’s infamous book, Love Wins and his recent marketing of his latest: What We Talk About When We Talk About God. Many of Rob Bell’s fans (though not, seemingly, Rob himself) seem to wince at every criticism of Bell and label it “mean-spirited” and “ugly.” To be sure, there have been mean-spirited and ugly denunciations. But what’s interesting is that Bell’s fans don’t consider his own rhetoric “mean-spirited” or “ugly.” Consider this statement about evangelicals, “We have supported policies and ways of viewing the world that are actually destructive. And we’ve done it in the name of God and we need to repent.” or “people see Christianity as this endless list of absurdities and inconsistencies” Bell is writing and speaking to be intentionally provocative. He’s essentially making his point by calling out core evangelical convictions. I’m not saying Bell doesn’t have the right to do this–he does. But what I’m saying is that when people push back and explain the views they hold that Bell has called destructive and absurd–this is considered by Bell’s fans to be “ugly.” This charge effectively shuts down any constructive debate.

Lest you think I’m picking on people “outside my tribe”, so to speak, let me raise an example from the opposite side of the ledger. There have been a rash of books out lately calling Christians to radical commitment  pushing against the consumerism and spiritual laxity of the American Church. I happen to agree with much of what has been written in books like Radical, and Not a Fan and others. But I find it funny that some proponents of these books get upset at critical analysis, such as the piece in Christianity Today by Matthew Lee Anderson. Again, it’s ironic that some who make a living criticizing other Christians get upset when they themselves are criticized.

I think much of this is due to a lack of maturity on our part. Part of growing in wisdom is the willingness to accept helpful rebuke. It’s the humility to realize that our understanding of God, the world, and the Word is finite. Even at our best, we see, “through a glass darkly.” Our vision is tainted by the Fall.

Immaturity is thinking we are always right all the time. Immaturity is shining a spotlight on the faults of another (whether a movement, an organization, a person) and thinking we are above their flaws. It’s engaging in criticism and being unwilling to be criticized in return.

We seem to be courageous when it comes to “speaking out” against others, but remarkably cowardly when others “speak out” against us. We’re a tribe of thin-skinned radicals.

A Big Announcement

So I have a big, really cool announcement about my blog. Over the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of interviewing all kinds of Christian leaders on this blog in a feature I call “The Friday Five.” I’ve learned a lot, made some great friends, and have heard from lots of people about how much they enjoyed learning from this diverse group of Christian leaders.

Well, starting in April, I’m moving The Friday Five over to Leadership Journal, the fine print and online publication of Christianity Today. I’m excited to team up with my friends Skye Jethani and Drew Dyck and Marshall Shelley and Paul Pastor who operate this incredible publication. This is a great opportunity to bring these types of interviews to a wider audience. And I’m pinching myself, because LJ has long been one of my favorite publications both in print and online. I’ve learned so much from the terrific content. Now I’m part of it, in a small way.

So what this change means is this:

We will begin fresh at Leadership Journal with all new interviews. I will probably re-interview folks that I’ve talked to in the past, based on new projects and new ideas. 
They will still post on Friday. Most will be print interviews, but we may feature a few Skype ones.
The archive of interviews will remain here on my site, so you are free to browse those still.
I will have access to a wider array of leaders thanks to the resources of Christianity Today and Leadership Journal.
I will continue to offer fresh, original blogs here at my personal site, just not the Friday Five interviews.

I always gain so much wisdom by asking questions of people who know much more than I do. I hope questions I ask will benefit you as much as they do me.

BTW: You can follow Leadership Journal on Twitter: @Leadership_jnl

 

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?