Daniel Darling's Blog, page 79

3 Reasons Your Pastor Probably Doesn’t Preach Politics

I’ve written on this issue before, but it’s probably worth revisiting in an election season. And new research has been released by Lifeway that affirms what I’ve always believed: generally Bible-believing pastors shy away from overt political endorsements and preaching politics in the pulpit.

I wrote a piece for Relevant not long ago on this subject in which I said this:

[To preach] is a humble and holy task because the people who attend churches arrive with the assumption that what is said comes from the Bible. To cut and paste partisan talking-points or to substitute consistent exegesis with sample “election season” sermons is spiritual malpractice.

 I want to expand on this with three important points on why pastors don’t and probably shouldn’t preach politics in the pulpit:

1) Our Text Must be the Word of God

This sounds like a cliche, but it bears saying: faithful Bible preachers use the text of the Word of God as their source of preaching. Anything less is simply a speech, which may be inspirational, moral, or even Christian-themed. But if our basis is not the text, we’re not preaching.

Sometimes a given text will make political or moral statements. For instance, if you’re preaching through Psalm 139, you cannot escape the references to the sanctity of life. Or if you are preaching through Proverbs you will encounter many economic truths that shape capitalism. Or if you are preaching through parts of James or Timothy, you will find it inescapable to avoid the harsh condemnations of greed.

But as a rule pastors, especially those who preach in an expository (taking a book at a time, chapter at a time, verse at a time) approach, will be guided by the text. To parachute political talking points into the text is spiritual malpractice.

One caveat is this: perhaps a pastor will do a topical series on key issues of the day and how Christians should think through them biblically. I’ve done this as a Sunday Night series. This can be helpful, however, a pastor must be faithful to let the text speak to the issue and not wedge your particular political opinion into the text.

2) The Bible cuts both ways

I find it fascinating that certain groups on the Right want pastors to “speak up.” What they mean by this, of course, is to more overtly endorse their preferred candidates and/or moral issues. But what they don’t understand is that pastors are speaking up, it’s just that what pastors are speaking up about may not be the taking points of the current season.And, the Bible cuts against both parties, against all political persuasions. Yes, there is much in the Scripture affirming the prolife (Psalm 139; Genesis 2-3) and traditional marriage (Mark 19:5) positions. You can also make a good argument that the Bible affirms the idea of limited government (1 Timothy 2:2; Mark 12:17) and some of the root ideas of capitalism. So some would say the Bible is very conservative. And yet that would be incomplete, because you will also find in Scripture many texts on justice, the plight of the poor, treatment of the immigrant. And who Jesus’ chief antagonists were in the gospels? The Pharisees, the Religious Right of their day.

Should pastors speak about in the pulpit about contemporary issues? Yes, but only when the texts of Scripture clearly articulate it. They shouldn’t bow to any party’s talking points. They shouldn’t slant their sermons to fit a political profile. They shouldn’t become wannabee pundits in the pulpit. They should preach the Word and let it do it’s work in the hearts of the people, who will then go influence their communities.

3) We must never dilute the message of the gospel. 

The Church should be counter-cultural and should engage the issues of the day. But this engagement should be an outgrowth of the gospel’s sanctifying work in each believer. In other words, the political issues shouldn’t be the main thing that characterizes a church. The gospel should be the main thing. The Scriptures should be the main thing. Christ should be the main thing. This is why pastors often shy away from endorsements or public pulpit activism. It sends the wrong message that the main purpose for gathering on Sunday is to stir up the troops and get “our guy” elected. But what of the brother or sister of the other party or the soul seeking God who only hears partisan talking points? If this happens, we’ve failed in our mission.

To be clear, pastors are citizens, too. And so in other venues, such as op-eds, blogs, books and other places of influence the pastor may speak his mind. Even so, he must jealously guard that influence and always speak winsomely. Again, as a minister of the gospel, he must not make politics more important than his pastoral duties.

Pastors should also coach their members to winsomely engage the culture. We need gospel preachers at all levels of society and in all spheres, politics included. Pastors should equip, encourage, and support those who enter public service.

Summary: In conversations I’ve had and in my own experience, it is mission that keeps pastors from overtly preaching politics in the pulpit and not the IRS.

Les Lofquist on Leadership and Preaching

I especially loved this piece by Les Lofquist on how to respond to a criticism of preaching:

I think the only way is to be determined to be prayed up and studied up the next time you’re in the pulpit. Resolve to get up early each day the next week and pray as a man of God should. Then study seriously. Grapple with next Sunday’s text. Turn off the television. Stop surfing the web. Put away your fantasy team rosters. Dig into the Bible. Pull off from your shelves those theology books and commentaries of yours and pore over them. Review your old Bible College / seminary class lecture notes. Accept the challenge of that passage you’ll be preaching and wrestle with its meaning and outline and application.

Approach next Sunday with all the earnestness you can. After all, it’s God’s holy and written Word you are handling! Get serious about it once again, like you did when you first began preaching. Shake off the cobwebs and preach with fire in your soul, accepting the calling from God to be the spokesman to your people in your congregation for Him. Let them see His glory through you as you seriously handle His words. And don’t be afraid of being appropriately direct and bold, assuming nothing with respect to the spiritual condition of the individuals in your congregation. Preach with the authority of God, bearing God’s message, speaking God’s Word and forget about yourself and your own authority.

via Leadership … and Preaching | Fire In My Bones.

Chocolate Faith

  Within the church of the living God, we must become excited about the gospel.  That’s how we pass on our heritage

– D.A. Carson

If you want to impress the woman you love and happening to be traveling through the northwest suburbs of Chicago, my advice to you is to spend a significant amount of time in the quaint village of Long Grove and its famous Confectionary. This niche candy shop is a must-stop for those who live and visit the Midwest. I know because my wife considers chocolate as important as oxygen and I consider my wife as important to me as breathing. Those two factors have kept me visiting and browsing the Confectionary’s many aisles of cocoa creations.

Interestingly, it wasn’t my wife’s longings that first acquainted me with this tiny slice of chocolate heaven. When I was around six years old, my father, a licensed plumber, was contracted to work at the Long Grove Confectionary as part of the team that built and installed the chocolate pipelines. I remember him coming home every day with large boxes filled with “bricks” of chocolate. We had a supply of chocolate in the house that looked like it would last until Lord returned. Or at least until the next church potluck.

Dad regaled us with stories of working at the plant. I found most interesting the intricate work involved in building a complex chocolate-making system. Dad and his crew created the chocolate channels with threaded steel. When they were finished, however, they didn’t flush the system with the usual mix of water and bleach. Instead, they pumped piping hot cocoa through the lines. The highly secretive chocolate recipe was so precisely engineered that any water that hung up in the lines could alter the formula. They would rather waste several batches of chocolate than risk diluting their recipe.

This is a story I think of often when I contemplate the difficult task of passing the gift of faith from my generation to the next. I wonder if we stop long enough to consider the purity of the faith send through the parenting pipeline. Are there any impurities that might dilute or even pollute the Bible’s central message?

What Do We Believe Anyways?

Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” is one of my guilty entertainment pleasures. It’s interesting to see how people answer seemingly easy questions about life and history and current events. Perhaps it is a way to feel better about myself, because surely I could ace such an easy quiz.

But I wonder what we’d hear if we “Jaywalked” the average person on the street and asked the simple question, “What is Christianity really about?” Perhaps they’d say something like, “Christianity is about being good.” Or “Christianity is a set of moral codes.” Or “Christianity is about politics.”

Some of this can be chalked up to our culture’s warped sense of our faith or perhaps a skewed portrayal of Christians by the media. But I wonder if much of the blame can be laid to rest on the Christian community itself. Perhaps we’ve not been as clear about defining our faith. What is the big story of the Bible?

But even more important than articulating our faith in the broader culture is how we articulate our faith to ourselves, to the generation that now sits at our feet, the children we teach who will one day form the pillars of our culture.

What is it that we are passing down to our children? I wonder if we have cluttered up the gospel’s central message with good, but not ultimate things, such as our methodologies, our systems, our denominations.

And perhaps we don’t even know we’re doing this. I think of the steaming hot mix of chocolate coursing through the steel pipes at the Long Grove Confectionary.

Imagine, for a moment, if the proprietors of this chocolate shop weren’t as rigid in their guarding of the recipe. they pushed bleach and water instead of chocolate through those new pipes? What if they were careless about what they sent on as finished product, thinking, a little water or pipe residue won’t be noticed.What if

I’m guessing that little confectionary would cease to be one of the most visited places in the Chicagoland area. Retailers would probably stop filling their shelves with Long Grove creations. And the chocolate factory would probably close its doors.

Since chocolate is the lifeblood of their business, they guard the formula with critical care. And so it should be with the faith we stream from one generation to another. We have the recipe for life eternal—the gospel message. Jesus was both God and man who came to earth in love, bore the wrath of a holy God, rose from the dead and now offers new life.

It’s a simple message with profound implications. But for some reason, we think we have to clutter it up with good, but not ultimate, things. And we wonder why the next generation tastes what we’re offering and pitches it. We think they’re rejecting the gospel, but it could be that they’re simply rejecting the impurities we’ve attached to it.

Excerpted with permission from  Real, Owning Your Christian Faith

Three Dangers of Simplistic Evangelistic Methods

If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, undoubtedly you’ve been exposed to one or more “proven” methods of sharing your faith. In my lifetime I’ve been exposed to a few of these. They have been helpful in narrowing down the message, helping me get more comfortable sharing the gospel, and summarizing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

But there is a danger in relying too heavily evangelistic methods or tools. Here are three that concern me:

1) We send the message to ourselves and our hearers that the gospel is simplistic. The truth is that the gospel is simple–simple enough for a child to grasp, Jesus said (Matthew 10:14-15). Paul articulated a one-sentence gospel in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4. And yet, the gospel, while being simple is not simplistic. There are many mind-boggling aspects about which we will never understand. We will never fully grasp the Incarnation, how Jesus could be fully man and fully God. We’ll never fully understand the Trinity. We’ll never fully understand how Jesus could rise from the dead and can live in us through the Spirit. Peter said in his letter that prophets who predicted it didn’t understand it and the angels, who daily behold God’s glory, long to know it. Paul said a few times that God’s grace–it’s vastness and richness are “unsearchable” Romans 11:33; Ephesians 3:8. The gospel is a beautiful treasure whose value we will study and love for all of eternity. Sometimes, in an effort to be simple, we reduce the gospel down. We restrict it to the language we prefer or the method we use or our favorite verses. As if that’s all the gospel is. We forget that the gospel is both simple and yet beautifully magnificent.

2) Methods tend to emphasize an impatient, one-shot-only approach. One thing that has hurt my own personal evangelism, at times, is the idea that I have to “close the deal” with people. That I must push them so far that they must bow their head in repentance, right here, right now. Now there are some gifted evangelists who routinely bring people to a point of decision on their first try. But for me, and I suspect for the rest of us, it will take many conversations over a long period of time before someone crosses the line from death to life. The problem with “proven methods” is that they often convey the idea that if you do it right, it will work every time on every person all the time. But this is just not true. Some may understand and see the light. Others may need time. Furthermore, closing the deal puts the evangelistic onus on the person, rather than trusting the Holy Spirit do his work in converting the sinner. If its all on me and I must executed perfectly the “proven method”, then if that person doesn’t nod their head and accept Christ, I have failed. This can also lead to false conversions–someone nodding their head in agreement to get me off their back. Rather, I believe it is God who does the saving and he uses flawed, human vessels to share his message. His timing is different than ours. Evangelism is not about “how many did you lead to the Lord this week” but faithfulness in sharing the gospel when you have an opportunity. When you are free of having to use a method, you are free to allow the Spirit to work in you to apply the Scripture to each person’s specific spiritual questions. If you embrace a whole-Bible, big-gospel approach, all of God’s revelation is available to you to apply to the person God has called you to evangelize.

3) Methods tend to create a false gospel dichotomy. What I mean by this is that when we reduce the gospel to a method, we tend to think the gospel is something for the unregenerate sinner and not for me, the Christian. We think it’s something we tack on to the end of a moralistic message rather than the power that enables us to live daily for Jesus. In other words, we convince ourselves that because we are “in”, we don’t need the gospel anymore. But the gospel is big. What saves us from eternal death is what empowers us to be disciples. When we stop thinking we need the gospel, that it’s the big-bad sinners who are in need of grace–we lose our humility and we begin to embrace a religious moralism that doesn’t really need Jesus in order to work. This is at odds with New Testament theology. When you read the letters of Paul, for instance, he always grounds what we are to do with who we are in Christ. Christianity is not simply about “not doing bad stuff” but transformation and regeneration. It’s not a new lifestyle, it’s a new life.

Summary: I’m not against evangelistic methods, but I think we should hold them loosely. We should shift our approach based on the audience. And we should not think that the gospel is merely the few cherry-picked verses I’ve chosen.Remember, the gospel is simple, but not simplistic. 

If we are all priests, then this is our calling:

Martin Luther, in his commentary on 1 Peter 2, writes this about the implication Peter’s declaration that all believers are priests:

A priest must be God’s messenger and must have a command from God to proclaim His Word. You must, says Peter, exercise the chief function of a priest, that is, to proclaim the wonderful deed God has performed for you to bring you out of darkness into the light. And your preaching should be done in such a way that one brother proclaims the mighty deed of God to the other, how you have been delivered through Him from sin, hell, death, and all misfortune, and have been called to eternal life. Thus you should also teach other people how they, too, come into such light. For you must bend every effort to realize what God has done for you. Then let it be your chief work to proclaim this publically and to call everyone into the light, which you have been called. Where you find people who do not know this, you should instruct and also teach them as you have learned, namely, how one must be saved through the power and strength of God and come out of darkness into the light.

Luther’s Works (American Edition), Volume 30, “The Catholic Epistles” pp 65

God’s Adjustment Bureau

Several years ago, I sat with a trusted counselor, seeking wisdom on how best to counsel a friend crushed under the weight of his upbringing in an abusive home. With tears, I poured out my frustrations at my friend’s parents, whose hypocrisy and heavy-handedness had warped the soul of their son. The counselor’s response reset my thinking and adjusted my theology.

The counselor told me, “Dan, his parents caused grave spiritual and mental anguish. And yet you must know that God is not in Heaven today questioning Himself for placing this boy in that home.” Those were not words I wanted to hear. But he continued. “As hard as it is, he must come to the place where he accepts the sovereignty and goodness of God in his situation.”

My response was to create a list of abuses.

What if he had been shown a little love?

What if they had nurtured his creative side?

What if he’d been put in a good school?

What if they gave him some sense of acceptance and belonging?

The what-ifs rolled off my tongue in rapid succession. The gray-haired, wise old counselor waited and then responded with gentle grace:

“Dan, I wish, too, that those things would have happened for your friend. It would have made his life less challenging, wouldn’t it? Yet, here’s the important thing. They didn’t happen. Apparently the life you sketched out for him, that you think would have been the most ideal, was not the life God intended. You will only help him as you show him how God employs the unfair hardships of this world to shape a man’s soul—if only he will allow God to do that work.”

Over the years I’ve reflected on that conversation. It marked a seminal point in my understanding about God and about life. Academically I’d always believed in the sovereignty of God. But those seemingly abstract concepts matter in the black and blue of real life pain.

I’m continually drawn to the biblical narrative of Joseph, whose story is a real-life Adjustment Bureau, only with better theology. Born the favorite son of a Jacob, Joseph was raised in a highly dysfunctional home. His father was a worshipper of Jehovah, yet he had multiple wives, a passive-aggressive leadership style, and a habit of cruel favoritism. By the time Joseph reached the formative years, he would be the target of hatred by his brothers. His brothers could do nothing about Dad, so they executed their vengeance on Joseph. Ultimately, they kidnapped and nearly killed their brother, selling him like merchandise to a traveling band of merchants who sold him into Egypt, where he would do nothing but serve others. He went from the privileged son of a wealthy landowner to an immigrant slave in Egypt.

The highlight of this story is that Joseph rises to the top leadership position in Egypt. His journey has given hope to millions over the ages, as we watch God help him along a rocky path from servitude and injustice to leadership. But buried in his epic is a powerful nugget of theology that helps us cultivate a fresh intimacy with God from a messy past.

In Genesis 50:20, Joseph is surveying his entire life, his reconciliation with his family long since completed. By now, he has provided his father and brothers a comfortable new lifestyle in Egypt. And yet the fear of retaliation by Joseph, now a powerful political figure, lingered in the minds of the siblings. They wondered if or when Joseph would use his power to exact revenge on them. Joseph dispels this by sharing a perspective about God that would become the guiding principle of his life:

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. Genesis 50:20 (ESV)

Notice the lack of regret or bitterness in Joseph’s words? He could have easily rattled off a long list of “what if’s” and “if onlys.”

What if Dad hadn’t been so passive?

What if the brothers would have let me explain myself?

What if Dad had given them a bit more fatherly affirmation?

But Joseph doesn’t have this backtrack. He had long buried the futile quest to rewrite the scenes in his life script over which he had little control. Instead, he prevailed upon the character of God. Looking back on his chaotic home life, the betrayal by his brothers, the injustice in Potiphar’s house, the lonely languishing in a foreign prison—he saw all of these, not as unfortunate injustices, but as tools in the hand of a loving and sovereign God.

The sin and evil of others brought about good, not simply in Joseph’s life but in the lives of God’s people. Joseph’s story continued Jehovah’s promise to grow the family of Abraham. In Egypt, Joseph’s family would flourish, growing into a nation through whom the Messiah, Jesus, would be born.

Joseph learned that God was more powerful than an abusive and dysfunctional upbringing. God was bringing purpose out of the messy details of Joseph’s life. God wasn’t caught off guard by the injustice in his young man’s life.

And so it is with you and me.

The truth is that all of us have some regret about our upbringing, even those like me who hail from fairly safe, normal households with biblically functional Christian parents. The reason is that our parents, our pastors, coaches, youth leaders, and Sunday school teachers—each is a sinner with unique sins and weaknesses. None of us grew up in Eden. So we can easily pick apart our life story and find areas we wish might have gone differently. But this is an exercise in futility, because the past is the past. It’s set in concrete and cannot be changed.

 

However, God is not like the Chairman in The Adjustment Bureau, with good intentions that often go bad. There won’t be a day

We may not understand this aspect of God’s character and we don’t get to choose our spiritual heritage. But we do have a choice of how we react to the good and bad parts of growing up Christian. We can spend our lives cursing an unchanging past or we can where He will nod his head and say, “Yes, you were right. Things should have worked out differently.”

Furthermore, God isn’t surprised by the injustices we suffer. He’s not in Heaven beating fist against head in frustration over the way your life or my life or anyone’s life has played out. Somehow, in ways we don’t fully understand, God weaves the good and bad choices of men to fulfill His ultimate purposes.

move forward with forgiveness and faith. Faith in the goodness of God who transforms our afflictions from a source of sorrow to a fountain of joy.

Excerpted from  Real, Owning Your Christian Faith

What Pastoring Taught Me About Spiritual Growth

As a lifelong Christian, I’ve always known the importance of spiritual growth. But when I became a pastor, suddenly my ideas about this were bigger than simply what was going on in my life. As an undershepherd of God’s people, now the spiritual growth of other people is my concern. You could argue that this should have been my concern all along, since every follower of Jesus is tasked with discipleship. But as a pastor, this is a primary job description.

What surprised me is how much I learned about what growth actually looks like. Here are five ways in which pastoring shaped my views:

1) Everybody doesn’t grow like I grow.  Subconsciously, we use our own lives as the template for growth and maturity. I do this because I’m the person I know the most. But I’ve learned that my growth process is unique to me and I shouldn’t force that onto another follower of Christ. God designed each of us uniquely with differing circumstances, gift mixes, talents, and missions. There are basic elements of spirituality that apply to all believers, but they unfold and look different on different people. As a pastor, I can frustrate someone’s walk with God by continually making them try to do like me when their real model should be Christ. Ultimately I should want my people to become the people God wants them to be rather than who I, in my fallen imagination, desire them to be. (By the way, this is essential in parenting.)

2) I can’t actually produce spiritual growth in anyone, including myself. There is a role for a pastor to encourage, provoke, push, love, pray, and teach his people. There is a role for this for every follower of Christ. But the role of a Christian is simply that: to influence. Only the Holy Spirit can produce growth in someone. I can’t do that. I can’t even make myself grow. There is a reason Galatians 5:22 says that the characteristics like love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, etc are “fruits of the Spirit.” The point is that the Holy Spirit takes the Word of God and changes a person’s heart. That’s work I can’t do. What I can do is influence, love, encourage, confront, and pray. I can also get in the way of the Spirit. I can frustrate someone because they are not growing according to my timetable or my template for them. I have found that often the best tool I have in “getting someone to change,” is simple prayer. I’ve seen more growth in people when I’ve closed my mouth, stop stressing, and just got on my knees.

3) There are seasons of growth for every person. There are seasons of planting, seasons of tilling the ground, seasons of watering, and seasons of harvest in a person’s soul. There are years of bountiful growth and there are years of famine. Don’t you see this in your own life? I do. This was especially illuminated for my by Mark Buchanan’s excellent book, Spiritual Rhythm. It’s a worthy read if only to make you more aware of the rhythms of spiritual growth. This means that as a pastor, I should know in what season of a person’s life to push and what season to wait for the hard to work fully take root in the soil. And, I must trust the Lord of the Harvest, that his timing is much better than my rushed impatience. Interestingly, I’ve found I’m much more impatient with other’s spiritual growth than mine. All this impatience has down is stunt other’s progression. I don’t want to do that.

4) Spiritual maturity is manifested in ways that are not always visible. Because we are an impatient people, we often create man-made lists for what spiritual growth looks like. The lists look different from church to church or denomination to denomination. It could be the type of haircut or the language someone uses or the types of media they consume. But real fruit, the Scripture says, is internal. Things that can’t be developed in a weekend or at the barber shop. Traits like love, joy, gentleness, goodness, peace, temperance, etc. The best things for us to do as pastors and influencers and disciple-makers is to help someone cultivate their inner life with Christ, not measure someone’s progress by external, extra-biblical checklists.

5) Sometimes I’m not the best person to nurture someone’s spiritual growth. This can be a matter of pride. For me, I wanted to be the one that new Christian pointed to as the key to their spiritual growth. I wanted to have a leading role in the story. But God has the leading role, not me. He’s much better at that role than I am. So my job as pastor is to let go of myself and serve in any way I can. Sometimes that’s active discipleship. Other times I need to point them to a book that can profoundly shape them. Or it could be as simple as pointing them to another person much more suited to their spiritual needs. In other words, I have to admit that there may be a better person or resource for their spiritual growth than me. When I do this, I allow God to do His work and I get out of the way.

 

 

Is there something wrong with our love?

I’ve been preaching through the book of 1 Peter for our Exiles series at church on Sunday mornings. It’s a powerful book. Just this Sunday I preached on 1 Peter 1:22-25 where Peter calls the church to a deep kind of love. What struck me most about this chapter is a simple, seemingly throwaway line, in the middle of verse 22. Peter says simply that the object of our love is to be “the brethren.” In other words, the gospel in us, the new life of Christ, should make us burst with love for fellow Christians. And this is not the first time this is mentioned in the New Testament. Over and over and over again we are told that Christians should have a special love for our brothers and sisters in the Lord. In Peter’s letter, he says this should be a “fervent” love. This implies a stretching, at-all-costs-exhaustive love from the heart.

I wonder, though, if we Christians are any good at doing this. It seems that most of our love, our outreach programs, everything is motivated by a love for those who don’t know the Lord–the unsaved, the lost. And this is important and good. This is our mission in the Great Commission. We should weep with love for the lost on their way to a Christless eternity.

But this love for the lost shouldn’t come at the expense of love for the brethren. In fact, Jesus said that love for the brethren would be the very thing that attracts those lost to Him (John 13:35). The purpose of the Church is to be a called-out community of Christ’s own who love each other with a deep and abiding and supernatural love that is unseen in the world.

But does that characterize us? I’m amazed at how often we get it exactly backwards. We say things like, “I don’t care what those other Christians think, I’m busy loving the unlovable and the lost.” Or we dismiss critique by other believers with a shrug. I heard a famous pastor recently say something like, “Well, God didn’t call me to listen to my critics. I’m called to preach the gospel.” Well, yeah, but aren’t you called to love first and deepest your fellow Christians?” I think of this when I read and survey blogs, magazines, and other content that mocks other Christians. Blogs that rip overly conservative Christians or blogs that rip some of the more crazy contemporary ideas. Or blogs whose sole purpose is to rip, denigrate, and attack those who don’t see it quit their way. I think this about commentators who make cheap rhetorical points by ripping other Christians in the secular media. As if they want to say, “I’m not one of those uncool Christians. Look at me.” The problem with this approach is that you are called to love that uncool Christian fervently. 

The entire context of 1 Peter implies that the gospel transforms the way we love. The deeper we dive in, the greater our capacity to love the way Jesus loves. What convicts me is that a lack of love for fellow believers is a signal of something deeper in my heart. My inability to love my brother or sister in the Lord is a signal that God has more work to do inside of me.

Your Jehoida Moment

Few have entered the world with such a dramatic story as Joash. Born in the midst of a bloody revolution in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, Joash barely escaped the edge of the sword wielded by his Grandmother, Athalia. Athalia was a ruthless monarch, who clawed her way to the throne after her husband’s death by murdering nearly every male heir.. But her royal and bloody ambitions conflicted with God’s promise to preserve the bloodline of King David. Unbeknownst to Queen Athalia, a courageous woman, Jehosheba and her husband, the priest Jehoiada, hide baby Joash, the last remaining heir, in a hidden room in the Temple, where they covertly raised him for six years. When Joash turned seven, Athalia was defeated in a military coup and Joash was crowned king.

Joash began his reign with great promise. Preserved by God for this moment, he led necessary reforms in Judah. For most of his tenure, he wisely adhered to the biblical guidance of his uncle, Jehoiada, the nation’s spiritual leader.

But after his uncle died, Joash’s faith collapsed and the child of promise became an enemy of God’s people. In the last years of his reign, Joash allowed Judah to pursue false idols; he participated in the lynching of a prophet, and was eventually killed by his own advisors.

The one line bio offered in 2 Chronicles shares the tragic reality of Joash’s unfulfilled life:

And Joash did what was right in the eyes of the LORD all the days of Jehoiada the priest. 2 Chronicles 24:2 (ESV)

Joash did was right in the eyes of the Lord, as long as his mentor, Jehoiada was around. But when the priest passed from the scene, Joash’s faith was found to be empty, even nonexistent. And the last years of his life were so full of wickedness that they eclipsed the good work of his earlier life. The Scriptures tell us that Joash was not even buried among the great kings of Judah (2 Chronicles 24:25).

Joash’s life is a cautionary tale for those born with such promise. Jesus reminds us that a heritage alone doesn’t guarantee spiritual success. “To whom much is given,” he said, “Much is required” (Luke 12:48). Joash was given great tools for spiritual impact, but failed to personally wrestle with the faith and accept it as his own. This hand-me-down approach failed him in the end.

If you’ve grown up in church, you can be sure that you will, in some season of our life, face a “Jehoiada Moment,” where you will be forced to decide what it is that you believe. That moment may be in the University classroom with a hostile professor. It may be in a private moment with an attractive coed. It may be when you become a parent and have an innocent set of eyes staring back up at you. It may be in the boardroom as the pressure to make a deal overwhelms the ethics of your Christian upbringing.

At some point you’ll have to dig deep and ask yourself, what is it that I actually believe?  Not what you’re parents taught you to believe or what your pastor preached or what your campus leader encouraged you to know. You must have you’re own encounter with the risen Christ, appropriating the truth of Scripture to your heart.

What is interesting to me is how long Joash survived with a hand-me-down faith. From all appearances, he seemed to be on track to becoming one of Judah’s great kings. But it seems as if Jehoiada was pulling the spiritual strings. The Scripture is pretty sparse on the details of Joash’s life, but it seems as if he had no personal quest for godly wisdom, no intellectual and spiritual curiosity. He was content to merely coast on the devotion of his uncle. His was a stale, borrowed faith.

It’s easy and comfortable to live the Joash life, isn’t it? To settle for a spoon-fed spiritual diet, scraping out a lowest-common-denominator Christianity, pursuing the minimum level of engagement with truth and doctrine. But this is dead, lifeless religion that collapses under the weight of life’s many challenges.

The writer of Hebrews compares such spiritual laxity to the eating habits of young children. I’m the father of four young kids, including a baby girl, Lilly Mae, who is under a year old. Like the rest of our children, we started Lilly off with simple milk in a bottle. We have formula designed specifically to meet her nutritional needs. But as she grows, her digestive system is ready for more solid foods. Soon, like the rest of our children, she’ll be eating chicken and bread and ice cream and hot dogs. But imagine, if in a couple of years, she is still receiving her primary nutrition from a baby bottle. Something would be tragically wrong. We’d consult every pediatrician and consultant in the country to find the problem with her digestive system.

It’s much the same with Christianity. A new believer needs to absorb the “milk” of the word, in smaller doses and easily digestible forms. But the goal is to spiritually grow. The writer of Hebrews says that there are some followers of Christ who are still sucking milk from a bottle, when they should be knocking down the “steak” of God’s Word.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, (Hebrews 5:12 ESV)

Excerpted from Real, Owning Your Christian Faith.

Peggy Noonan on Abortion

This is a memorable quote from the always eloquent Peggy Noonan:

The Democratic Party is the party of abortion; it supports the widest possible interpretation of choice, and is heavily funded, literally, by the abortion industry. Abortion involves the killing of children. Sometimes Democrats speak of it, publicly, in such a way that it sounds like a small thing, a tooth extraction; sometimes they speak of it in a way that suggests it is a holy right, a high value, a good thing.

Read more here: Noonans Blog: The Democrats Rally – Peggy Noonans Blog – WSJ.