in Life Reflection

Life’s ups and downs

There are just times when it’s easier to go into auto-pilot. Things get busy, tasks start piling up, and it becomes far easier to disengage and systematically cut through the chaos with the sharp knife of efficiency. I’ve grown accustomed to this kind of efficiency with my seminary schoolwork, and I’m sure you’ve found ways to be efficient in whatever it is that you do for a living. It’s far easier to “get things done” than it is to actually engage them with time, effort, and energy.

The problem is that I’ve transferred that auto-pilot efficiency to my relationship with God. It happens more or less on the unconscious level, though there are definitely conscious decisions involved. But it is, rather, the slow erosion of time spent in communion with God in exchange for a pep-talk with God. Instead of dying to myself by choosing to spend time in relationship with my Savior and my God, I blithely set out to live my life more or less on my own.

One of the most sinister deceptions of the Enemy is in the gradual way he works. It’s not like we’re confronted with an obvious “this or that” decision, it’s that we make small decisions, small sacrifices, that build up to become giant caverns putting more and more distance between us and God. It’s what happens when we do not consciously die to ourself every day, making the choice to lay our day before the Lord in humbleness and openness.

George MacDonald embodied exactly the opposite of this “auto-pilot efficiency” when he wrote The Diary of an Old Soul. The book is a small collection of poems written across an entire year, divided by month and day, all telling the story of the ups and downs of MacDonald’s life after the unexpected deaths of two of his children. Each day he sat down and wrote out a little poem, dealing with the joys of consolation and the depression of grief. They each tell a part of the larger story at work in his life.

What MacDonald was doing is what I am so bad at doing in my own faith walk: staying engaged. We can say we believe that God loves us, but when we put distance between us and God we are tacitly believing the lie that He does not love us.

It is far easier to disengage from God when life is particularly busy. But that is when we need His life-giving presence the most! You and I are absolutely so good at convincing ourselves that we can run our lives just fine, that we don’t really need God. Except for when things are really bad. But this is like a 4 year old thinking she doesn’t need parents. It’s just ludicrous.

I’ve been convicted to return to and dwell in the love of God, the love that He freely showed through Jesus Christ and freely continues to show each and every day. I need to ground myself in His love, ground my heart in the truth that His love is perfect, and that His love is perfecting me. I’ve been convicted of my tremendous need to die daily to myself and seek Christ instead of checking email and what’s happening on the web first. I need Jesus daily. I need the Gospel daily. It’s not the ABC’s of my life, it’s the A-Z.

Here’s one of MacDonald’s poems:

My Lord, I find that nothing else will do,
But follow where thou goest, sit at they feet,
And where I have thee not, still run to meet.
Roses are scentless, hopeless are the morns,
Rest is but weakness, laughter crackling thorns,
If thou, the Truth, do not make them the true;
Thou art my life, O Christ, and nothing else will do.

(February, Four)

in Seminary Things, Sermons

Sermon: Identity Crisis

Here is a sermon I wrote about Psalm 139 and what it says about our identity:

Sermon: “Identity Crisis”

Text: Psalm 139

Chances are, you have been labelled in your lifetime. And not just in middle school and high school. Labels follow us throughout our lifetime. There are those labels we pick up in high school: jock, cheerleader, nerd, shy, drama queen, partier. But underneath these basic labels there are all sorts of other more specific labels. You know, like the 20something indie who sports skinny jeans and has a love for flannel fabrics and facial hair. Or the corporate sell-out, constantly tethered to a smartphone and sporting dark suits and expensive ties. We have labels for everyone and everything: stay-at-home moms, hunting and fishing aficionados, and truck drivers. If we were to go even deeper, we would find that we have more insidious labels for specific racial and ethnic groups. Chances are you have been labelled at some point in your life by some overarching label. Perhaps it was fair, perhaps not. Regardless, what I’m here to speak to you today about is your real identity.

We find ourselves today in the book of Psalms, in the 139th chapter. This Psalm, one of the most famous in all the Psalter, has been hailed as one of the highest summits of Old Testament poetry. It is famous because of its emphasis on God’s transcendence as well as his personal relationship with every human. Maybe you have spent time dwelling in this poem, or maybe it is altogether new to you. Wherever you find yourself today, I want to encourage you to open your heart to what God wants to speak to you. I believe that God has a specific Word for us today, and that this Word has the power to change our lives. The main thing I want you to understand this morning, the main thing I want to encourage you to do, is to find your identity in what God says about you rather than what the world says about you.

There are three main things this Psalm teaches us about how we can understand our identity. While I encourage you to spend time soaking in this Psalm’s poetry, imagery, and mystery throughout this next week, today I want to give you three concrete truths to latch onto as we think about how God radically changes our understanding of what makes up our identities. Let’s dive into the text!

The first thing Psalm 139 tells us about our identities is that God created us individually. The world tells us from our earliest moments that we are the product of chance, a random series of DNA thrust into the world to “find our way”. We are bombarded with advertisements that tell us to live for the moment, reinforcing the idea that we are random, our lives are random, and that our futures are random too. The amazing theological truth of this passage, however, is so radical that it totally reshapes the way we think of ourselves. This Psalm tells us that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made…woven in the depths of the earth.” It tells us that God intimately “knitted” us in our mother’s womb. The language here is intimate, personal, direct, inward.

If you have ever done any knitting, you understand how much skill it takes. Well-crafted scarves, hats, and quilts do not just make themselves. You have to plan out in advance what you want the piece to look like, and the best knitters know how to add embellishments and creative flair to their works. God is the master knitter, laying out a distinct, individual plan for each of our lives, creating us to know Him and to make Him known throughout the world. He spent time thinking about you, designing you. The world wants you to believe that you are random, the product of chance. But I want to remind you this morning that you are a child of God, knit together by His hand with a purpose. You are not out there on your own, left to find your own way, you were created by the Creator.

The second thing this Psalm tells us about our identity is that God knows us better than we know ourselves. One of the most popular industries in America right now is the self-help industry. This industry is based entirely upon our guilt that we are not living up to what we know we should live up to. It then takes that guilt and channels it into action steps designed to help you improve yourself. The whole problem with this industry, however, is that it is built on the wrong foundation. This Psalm gives us an incredible insight into how deeply God knows us. The Psalmist declares that “even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.” God knows what we are going to say before we even say it. He “discerns our thoughts from afar”. God reads our minds, our motives, our very thought-life. No wonder the Psalmist cries out in response: “such knowledge is too wonderful for me!” What we find, over and over throughout our lives, is that we do not know ourselves as well as we think we do. We are constantly changing, and we’ve all had times when we couldn’t trust what our hearts were telling us. Isn’t it amazing to rest in the Biblical truth that we don’t have to seek to know ourselves better? That we can rest in the truth that God knows us better than we will ever know ourselves?

Paul is a perfect example of this kind of inner conflict. Romans 7 gives us a window into his heart. In that passage he discusses how he keeps sinning even though he desires not to sin. He does what he does not want to do, and winds up exclaiming: “wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” If Paul, one of the most heroic Christians who has ever lived, couldn’t trust his own heart and motives, can we honestly say that we can? The beautiful thing is that we don’t have to rest on what we think about ourselves. We can, like Paul, turn to God to find our identity. He finishes his question with a shout of praise: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” What he is saying is this: Praise the Lord that I do not have to depend upon my actions and my own self, that I can find my identity and value and place with God in Jesus Christ. He looked outside of himself to find his identity. He looked to what God said about him. And we would do well to do the same.

The third and final thing this Psalm tells us about our identity is that God is always with us, present in every moment of our lives. The crescendo of the poetic sequence of the Psalm occurs in verses 7-12, where the writer wonders if there is any place he can go away from the presence of God. “If I ascend to the heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.” The world tries to convince us that our lives are singular, disconnected, and up to our own making. We are all that there is, so we must pull ourselves up by our proverbial bootstraps and make a better life. This kind of philosophy does not know what to do with pain, suffering, and trials, though. The power of the Biblical truth about our identity is that God never abandons us, therefore we never face anything alone. Whatever you may be going through, whether it is a fight for your life with cancer, a difficult place in your marriage, the pain of losing a loved one, or the loneliness of feeling rejected, know that you are not alone. God is present with you in your Sheol. He is present in the darkest and most difficult parts of your life. Even when we cannot see any light or any hope in our situation, we can trust that God sees the bigger picture. “Even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.” God walks with us, but He also stands above us, leading and guiding us through the dark times. Whether you are going through an incredibly difficult situation right now, or whether you are experiencing the blessing of good times, know that God is with you in every moment of your life.

Let me close with this: Why is it so important that we find our identity in what God says about us? Why does it matter that we constantly remind ourselves of what God tells us is true about ourselves in the Bible? It is because we will never grow to become wise and mature Believers if we do not constantly soak in the liberating truth that we are God’s. Apostrophe s. The media, your friends, all these outside sources are constantly sending a message about who you are. The media wants you to believe you are primarily a consumer, constantly in need of something else. The only thing that will break you from the problems of self-image is to rest in the truth that God loves you and created you for a purpose.

So as I finish, think with me: where do you most doubt what God says about you? Do you doubt that He really created you with a purpose? Do you doubt that He really knows your deepest thoughts? Or do you find yourself doubting that God is really there right now in the midst of your suffering and pain? Locate that doubt and take it before the throne of God. Ask Him to make Himself present to you. Soak in what this Psalm declares about God and about you. Christian, you can rest in the truth that God created you, that he knows you, and that he is always with you. And once you start resting in that truth, you will begin more and more to see, along with the Psalmist, that God is indeed leading you in the “way everlasting”.

in Life Reflection

Easter Reflection

Something I wrote down as I was preparing for my college group sunday school class:

Wherever you are today, Easter means that through Christ you can have hope, through Christ you can have a new identity, through Christ you can experience resurrection power in your life, and it means that Christ is Lord over ALL things, so we can rest from our attempts to control everything. Remember, death will be swallowed up in victory. There will come a day where there is no more pain, no more heartache, no more tears. Jesus lives. Jesus reigns. Jesus saves. Let that truth change you life today and forever.

in Life Reflection, Seminary Things

Convictions: Back to the Basics

When I first started seminary, I expected to learn a lot, and, while I certainly have, my learning has become less and less about accumulating knowledge. I had so much to learn about the Bible, about how to read it, study it, and teach and preach it. I had so much to learn about ministering to people. And while I’ve certainly gained some valuable ground in those areas, I’ve realized that the most important thing that’s happened to me while in seminary has little to do with the kind of learning that comes from studying.

The most important thing that has happened to me while in seminary has been God pressing the Gospel deeper and deeper into my heart and my life. When I came in to seminary, I knew enough about the Bible and theology to talk about the big things, but I didn’t understand how it really fit together. I’ve come away with a deeper appreciation for the story and sweep of Scripture. I’ve come away with an appreciation for the way the whole story breathes life into our otherwise lifeless lives.

The Gospel has become, more and more, the main thing to me. It’s what I have to return to each and every day in personal discipleship. It’s what I teach, preach, and minister from, because without it, nothing else makes sense. I believe that God wants all of our lives, not just bits and pieces, and if I believe that then I have to believe that God’s Word speaks to every single part of my life. I’ve had a renaissance in my thinking recently by simply asking such questions as “How does the Gospel affect _____  in my life?” Instead of everything in the Bible being disjointed, out-of-date, or irrelevant, when seen through the prism of the Gospel the particular parts become sharper and (for the most part) more understandable.

At the same time, I’ve also had a deepening conviction that prayer is where the real work of ministry is done. If my growing appreciation for the Gospel has helped me see more clearly, this deepening conviction about prayer helps me engage the more mysterious and surprising elements of faith that are not quite as clear as the Gospel. The beautiful thing about the Gospel is that it is can be understood by a 5 year old, yet it is deeper than what can be learned and experienced in one lifetime. But while it is clear, there are so many times in life that seem unclear, foggy, hazy, downright dark. It’s during these times that prayer is what keeps us connected to the God who sees it all, who understands it all, and who guides through it all.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve realized that as a minister I’ve really got two main priorities: 1) helping people fall in love with the Gospel by teaching and preaching the Bible faithfully, helping them see how it dramatically impacts their lives, and 2) helping people learn how to pray. As a minister (and really, while ministry is my vocation and my call, it is every Christian’s call, so it’s your call too!) I’ve learned more than anything that these are my two priorities. There is a lifetime’s worth of work in helping people notice God’s activity in their lives as well as the lives of those around them.

It sounds rather simple: preaching and teaching the Gospel, and praying fervently. Most other things tend to work themselves out of these foundational elements of life, and I think that’s the way God wanted it to be. After all, at the end of the day, I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, conquering sin and death, that He is alive now, and that He offers new life to all people if they would repent and believe in Him. And I don’t have to bear the weight of convincing people of that: that’s what the Holy Spirit does. I just have to be faithful to keep proclaiming His name.

Praise the Lord!

in Just a Thought

What love is this?

I love the stillness of mornings. Even though it’s not always the easiest to get out of bed, there is something special about the early morning hours. I love how the Scriptures talk about the morning in various ways: His mercies are new every morning; I awoke again; for the Lord sustained me. I also love how the Gospel writers mentioned, ever so slightly, that Jesus often stole off in the mornings to with His Father.

We awake to our feelings, to the demands of the world, to the demands of our tyrannical schedules. But as I awoke this morning and was bombarded by all those elements, the Lord gently reminded me of who I am in Him. I began to sense His love and grace flowing down to me, giving me a fresh perspective and new hope. Yes, all those things: my mood, schedules, and assignments, still exist and are ever-present, however, there is a truth higher and deeper and wider than all of those: I am loved by my Almighty Father.

What love is this? I love the new song from Kari Jobe with this title. There is an element of surprise at being loved so deeply. I don’t know where you are today. I don’t know what hurt or what thing has you preoccupied and distracted, but this I do know: God loves you. Stop a minute and reflect on that. Let it guide your day. Let that fact draw you into thanksgiving and gratitude. We first know what love is from Christ’s love for us displayed on the cross. He shapes all our other loves. Whether you feel loved today, know that you are loved by God. He is always reaching out to you, extending grace you do not deserve. You are loved. As Paul reminds us, “Think on these things.”

in Wordsmiths

Wordsmiths: Wendell Berry, Sally Lloyd-Jones, and G.K. Chesterton

Back for another edition of wordsmiths! This time I’m featuring three of my favorite writers, each from different genres of writing and each with a particular, unique, and endearing voice. I will not mince words; these writers do not need description. I will only provide a twitter-sized introduction for each writer and let you read for yourself. So first to Wendell Berry, recent guest lecturer at my alma mater, Samford University.

Wendell’s writing is like a well-worn baseball glove, or an apple pie. It reminds you of the simple things in life, which are not so simple after all. He writes both poetry and prose, so I will feature two short selections from both. The first is from Jayber Crow, his most famous novel:

By that time the interstate highway was boring its way into our valley and across it and out again on the other side. Everything it came to looked smaller than it had looked before. Whatever it came to that was in its way, it destroyed. It was a great stroke of pure geometry cut through the country maybe five miles down the river from Port William–close enough that, now, when the town is quiet, it can hear the sound of more traffic in a few minutes than ever went through it in a month. (1)

The second comes from a compilation of poetry entitled Given:

Ask the world to reveal its quietude–not the silence of machines when they are still, but the true quiet by which birdsongs, trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms become what they are, and are nothing else. (2)

Our next writer is Sally Lloyd-Jones. She is noted for her uncompromising, yet accessible Jesus Storybook Bible. Don’t be deceived; this book isn’t just for tots. It’s just right for seminary students and all those who can use a good retelling of the biblical stories.

David was a shepherd, but when God looked at him, he saw a king. Sure enough, when David grew up, that’s just what he became. And David was a great king. he had a heart like God’s heart – full of love. Now, that didn’t mean he was perfect, because he did some terrible things – he even murdered a man. No, David made a big mess of his life. But God can take even the biggest mess and make it work in his plan. (3)

And we have arrived now at G.K. Chesterton. He isn’t talked about much today because he doesn’t fit in a specific category. He wrote everything from literature reviews to theology and satire. The best way I can describe him is to say this: he writes with verve. This selection comes from his short work The Man Who Was Thursday:

The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its skyline was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression that the two sovereigns were identical. (4)

Three writers I recommend heartily. As a writer and preacher, I’m trying all the time to find authors who tell good stories. Wendell Berry, Sally Lloyd-Jones, and G.K. Chesterton all fit the bill. I’ll occasionally come back to this post topic theme, but in the meantime I’d love to hear some of your favorite wordsmiths.

(1) Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow, 2000. Counterpoint: Berkeley, 281.

(2) Wendell Berry’s Given, Shoemaker Hoard, 97.

(3) Sally Lloyd-Jones’ The Jesus Storybook Bible, 2007. Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 130.

(4) G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, 2004. Barnes & Noble: New York, 1.

in Scripture, Theology

Jesus Provokes Astonishment

You must do something with Jesus. You cannot hold him at arms distance. You cannot put him off and wait for a better time. There has been a general sense in our culture in which we’ve come to categorize people who are quasi-interested in Christianity as “seekers”. We’ve built churches and programs to reach out to such people and spent enormous amounts of time and energy in an effort to win them over to Christ. But the curious thing is that the Bible does not speak so much of the seeker as it does the sought.

What has happened is that it has become acceptable and okay to leave Jesus at arms length, to “test him out”, if you will. And many of us who believe in Christ have let this come to influence our discipleship to Jesus. We would rather test out what he says to us than actually respond and obey him. I’m not saying skepticism is bad, but when you build an entire life around skepticism you have put your faith as it were in blocks of concrete, immobilizing yourself to move in response to Jesus.

I love how the Gospel of Mark captures the way Jesus provoked responses from people. Sometimes he didn’t even have to say anything, his presence alone would cause a stir. Mark 9:15 gives a beautiful window into the Jesus who provokes a response. Here is the verse in English:

And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him.

Here is where our English language has difficulty conveying the subtlety behind this verse. The Greek word that is translated here as “were greatly amazed” actually has a more multi-valent meaning. That is, it has two meanings at the same time. It means both “to be greatly amazed” and “to be alarmed, or fearful”. All at the same time. Amazement and Fear. We can understand that because, like the crowd, we also experience multiple emotions at the same time.

The amazing thing about this little passage, though, is that the people were amazed and fearful by merely seeing Jesus. His mere presence provoked astonishment among the people. Commentator William Lane has this to say:

The astonishment of the crowd was occasioned by the presence of Jesus, rather than by any particular aspect of the event. (1)

Over and over in the Gospels we encounter a Jesus who causes people to respond. He provokes anger out of some, fear and amazement from all, and love and gratitude out of few. But the point I want to make is that people do not leave Jesus without making a decision. You cannot encounter Jesus and leave unchanged.

We need a little more urgency in our churches today, a little more resolve that we have nothing else to offer but Jesus. And hearing the good news of Jesus is not so much just something for unbelievers as it is something to continually be reshaped by as believers. We need to continually come face-to-face with Jesus and ask what he would have us to do, this day, in response to him.

We cannot live our lives on our own. We don’t live on our own. Our very breaths are a mercy and gift from God. We need to be continually saturated with the truth that Jesus has done something amazing: he has taken our sins and our inadequacies and has borne them on the cross. He alone, through the most extravagant display of love, has given us the gift of new life through forgiveness and grace.

We don’t have to bash people over the head with Jesus, but neither do we need to be afraid of proclaiming who he is and what he has done. Maybe the best way to get to that place ourselves is to remind ourselves that we do not live in a separate sphere from God. Jesus name, Immanuel, means God with us. And God with us, as Karl Barth notes:

Tells us that we ourselves are in the sphere of God. It applies to us by telling us of a history which is by Him and from Him and to Him. The divine being and life and act take place with ours, and it is only as the divine takes place that ours takes place. To put it in the simplest way, what unites God and us men is that He does not will to be God without us, that He creates us rather to share with us and therefore with our being and life and act His own incomparable being and life and act, that He does not allow His history to be His and ours ours, but causes them to take place as a common history. That is the special truth which the Christian message has to proclaim at its very heart. (2)

Jesus continually calls out to us. He continually confronts us with his offer of forgiveness and love. And he calls out through us to a world in desperate need of that love and forgiveness. As D.L. Moody famously preached, “What think ye of Christ?” (3)

1) William Lane, The Gospel of Mark, in the New International Commentary of the New Testament (NICNT) 1973. 330.

2) Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: IV.1 The Doctrine of Reconciliation, the T & T Clark Study Edition, 2009. 5.

3) Dwight Moody’s sermon which you can find here

 

 

in Uncategorized

Hope and Healing

This is a brief manuscript for a sermon I gave in class recently. I don’t preach from a manuscript, so this isn’t word for word but more thought for thought. I hope you find it encouraging. The text is Acts 3:1-10

Laura Hillenbrand’s 2010 New York Times Best-Selling Unbroken tells the incredible story of Louis Zamperini. Zamperini was a famous American distance runner who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. His career in running was blossoming when the Second World War began and he was subsequently drafted into the Air Force as a bombardier. Hillenbrand tells how Zamperini and his crew were assigned to the Pacific theater, completing many successful missions before being shot down one fateful day and left for dead.

Zamperini and two others survived the attack but were left stranded in the middle of the Pacific ocean with only a small life raft and few provisions. To make matters worse, their being pursued by enemy aircraft for most of the flight had led them to be hundreds of miles off course from their flight plan, making rescue highly improbable. Louis Zamperini found himself in a hopeless situation.

The book of Acts, where we find ourselves this morning, is a book of hopeless situations by the world’s standards. It’s the story of a small band of believer’s empowered by the Holy Spirit to spread the name of Jesus throughout the world. Story after story recounts how the Gospel spread in spite of great opposition.

The specific story we are focusing on today is a small piece in the grand mosaic of Acts, but it is a story of salvation and transformation that illustrates the power of the Gospel. Just like many of the other stories in Acts, it is a story that, by the world’s standards, is hopeless. But with the power of Jesus, hopeless is turned into hope-filled. This story vividly reminds us that with Jesus Christ there is no such thing as an hopeless situation.

But why is it such a hopeless situation? Let’s look at the characters involved to find out how. First we look at the man who Luke tells us had been lame from birth. Luke the physician spares no detail in his writing. He picks up on the details of a situation, the details of people’s lives in a way that we would do well to learn from. He notices things. His description of the lame-man reveals to us that this man was in a hopeless situation. Every day his friends brought him to the same place in the temple, near the Beautiful Gate, to beg for alms. The Beautiful Gate was a symbol of what he was not: mighty, powerful, majestic. Long ago he had given up hope of believing he could live a full life. Now his only thought was to day-to-day survival. So he begged for alms.

Secondly we have the disciples, Peter and John. Last time I checked, these were the same two disciples who had made a mess of themselves in the Gospels. Peter denied Jesus three times while John bombastically asked if he could sit at the right hand of Jesus. These were two disciples who hadn’t gotten the message that their Master had been teaching them. They were failures.

But the reason this wasn’t a hopeless situation was because Jesus was involved with it. Left on their own, the lame man and the disciples were not the characters one would expect to find in a miracle. But Peter and John were changed forever by the resurrection. Their lives took on a whole new bent. Their lives were literally transformed by the power of their risen Savior. And so while from a worldly perspective these were the last two men the lame man would have wanted to see, in a spiritual sense they were exactly what he needed.

We live in a world that doesn’t believe in miracles. It’s been that way for a long time, but we can trace it back to the Enlightenment, when rationalism began to dominate the way society thought. Thomas Paine, an influential thinker who greatly influenced many of the founding fathers had this to say about miracles:

“All the tales of miracles, with which
the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for
impostors to preach and fools to believe”

Thomas Jefferson had a similar view of miracles and even went so far to edit his own Bible, cutting out all the parts that had any miraculous element to them and leaving on the moral teachings. He wanted Jesus without any ability to transform his own life. He wanted to keep Jesus at a distance. And many of us here today want to do the same thing.

David Brooks, New York op-ed columnist, provides a more contemporary observation about our culture’s propensity to run away from spiritual things:

“If you live in a society like ours, in which
people seldom object if they hear someone taking the
Lord’s name in vain but are outraged if they see a pregnant
woman smoking, then you are living in a world that values
the worldly more than the divine.”

We live in a culture that has learned to tune out the miraculous, to be skeptical of anything miraculous, and to be more comfortable with a Jesus that we can keep at arms distance.

And many of us in ministry have let the culture effect us to the point where we don’t believe what Peter believed in this passage: “Silver and gold have I none but what I do have I give to you.” Many of us believe the lie that we have something other to offer besides Jesus Christ. We erroneously believe that maybe what people need to hear isn’t more about Jesus but more about how to get ahead in life, how to be good people, how to live a good life. Every one of us in this room would assent to the resurrection, but the lack of resurrection power in our ministries would reveal our true beliefs. We have gotten so far away from our real purpose of existence that Jesus is obscured by our own egos. We need to get back to the simplicity and power of Jesus Christ.

What can we take away from this passage as we think about how it matters to us today? Why does it still matter for us today? I believe this text has two key things to tell us today. Two key truths I want to leave with you today. Number 1: You are never so far from God that you are without hope. It is so easy to get discouraged in this world, to believe that we are beyond the help of Jesus. You may find yourself like the crippled man, thinking your time has passed and there is no hope left for you. I am here today to tell you that with Jesus, there is no such thing as a hopeless situation. Or you may find yourself thinking that there is no way God can use you anymore. There are times in ministry when you will feel like Peter and John, that you have made a mistake that disqualifies you from being used by God. But the truth of the gospel is that it is not dependent upon your power to live it out but on the perfect life of Jesus. With Jesus there is always a way forward.

Number 2: This passage reminds us that we are healed in order to extend healing to others. Peter and John lived transformed lives because they had been transformed themselves by the power of the gospel. Jesus’ resurrection forever changed their lives. It provided them with a new way to live. It gave them fresh eyes to see. There is no way that Peter would have picked up on this man’s need if it hadn’t been for the gospel transformation that had occurred in his life. Thousands of people milled around in the temple at this busy hour of the day, but Peter noticed this man and was able to extend healing to him because Jesus’ resurrection had given him new eyes. And the same power that changed Peter’s life is available to change your life and mine today. We are healed in order to bring healing to others.

Eugene Peterson gives us a wonderful picture of the truth of this passage:

“The story of Jesus doesn’t end with Jesus. It
continues in the community of the men and women who
repent, believe, and follow. The supernatural doesn’t stop
with Jesus. God’s salvation, which became articulate,
visible, and particular in Jesus, continues to be articulate,
visible, and particular in the men and women who have
been raised to new life in Him, the community of the
resurrection.”

With Jesus Christ there is no such thing as a hopeless situation.

 

in Life Reflection, Theology

Restoration Hurts

There are some stories that instantly connect with you because they paint in poetry what you had only known in prose. I ran across one such story recently. The story was about an African-American man who was restoring a house formerly owned by a slave-owner. You can read more about the story here.

What fascinated me about the story were the photographs before and after the restoration. It was absolutely stunning to see the transformation that this one man had wrought on a place that had been so abandoned. The numerous hours that turned into days which became months and then years were all focused on one singular purpose: restoration.

The story grabbed ahold of me right there. I began to think about the work of restoration that Jesus takes on when He inhabits our hearts when we accept Him as Savior. I think about all the painful things that have to take place to ultimately restore us into the people God intended us to be.

Every old, warped floorboard has to be pulled up, sanded down, and either tossed aside or stripped to its core in order to be useful again. And no corner of the house is unimportant. You can’t have ultimate restoration while a part of the house still lies in shambles.

I think about the incredible act of love that Jesus did by bearing all our sin on the cross. His finished work there has provided any and all who confess His name to be ultimately restored. But the continual work of sanctification, being made holy, is what we experience as we grow in Christ. As we are being transformed more and more into Christ’s image, we are experiencing restoration. And it is one of the toughest things we will ever go through.

There are all sorts of warped floorboards and cracked windows and rotted-out walls in our hearts. But the amazing thing is that Jesus, the master carpenter, takes on this difficult task patiently and lovingly. Every time He rips a board up and it feels more like He is tearing us down than building us up it is because He is. He is tearing down our pride, our arrogance, our sinfulness and building in its place floorboards of love, windows of hope, walls of faithfulness.

There’s a certain quality you find in mature, wise Christians, a kind of deep submission to Christ. They have given themselves over fully to Christ and trust Him with every part of their lives. In return for such trust they aren’t guaranteed security or material wealth. But they have a treasure far more precious than those things, a treasure that cannot be measured by the scales of human understanding.

There are those parts of each of our hearts that Jesus is working on right now with more care and attention than we even can fathom. After all He knows us better than we know ourselves. I wonder if we could not all use a bit of encouragement to stay in a place of submission before Jesus and let Him continue to work even when it is most painful. I know I have experienced quite a bit of restoration-work recently and you no-doubt have too. But while it is painful and hard in the moment, it is producing for us in the end an eternal weight of glory.