Jul
24
Shepherding and transformation
Filed Under Around the Church, Christian Living, The Church | Leave a Comment
1 Peter 5 says that elders are to shepherd the flock of God. Shepherding the flock involves defending and confirming the Gospel, pursuing lost and wandering sheep, restoring the repentant, equipping and building up the saints, and encouraging practical godliness. These are tasks your elders take seriously. It’s hard work. Our enemy is always on the prowl. Situations can be thorny. Needs are constant. People can be difficult (except for you and me, of course!).
Almost a year ago we began implementing a new shepherding system at FPC Kosciusko with the goal of helping the elders lead and care for the flock in a way that encourages mutual sharing of spiritual gifts and care for one another—in other words, developing a community of elder-led priests. The vision is for each adult Sunday School class to work together, under elder leadership, to identify and address needs. We must transform the “Why doesn’t somebody do something?” mentality into a “Why don’t we do something?” mentality, whether it involves outreach, enfolding prospects and new members, contact with members who are no longer attending and participating, or members with acute or chronic needs.
A year later I see that transformation taking place in some places, and I thank God. I also see areas where we still have our feet nailed to floor and are not moving toward each other and toward our community, and I ask the Lord to be merciful.
This transformation is ground war, not an air war. It involves ongoing effort and attentiveness. It involves elders and everyone else living sacrificially for our brothers and sisters, and not just out for ourselves (1 John 3:16). Take a moment to reflect on some of the people on your class roll: the elder-leader, a close friend, someone who hasn’t come to Sunday school or attended worship in a while, a difficult person you might usually try to avoid, or someone you just don’t know at all (and maybe don’t care to know!). With these people in mind, consider Christ’s grace and service to you. Consider the practical commands of Scripture. Think of ways you can serve these people in the coming weeks.
• Be devoted to one another (Romans 12:10). We are united spiritually to each other through God our Father and our elder brother Jesus. Whom do you need to rally around as if they were “kin”?
• Honor one another (Romans 12:10). Are you treating them as people of value and taking them seriously?
• Accept one another (Romans 15:7). Whom do you tend to exclude? What non-essential, secondary convictions do you allow to get between you and another Christian? Who needs your acceptance right now?
• Bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2). Where do you need to help shoulder someone else’s burden? How might that change the way you spend your time, talents and treasure?
• Bear with one another (Ephesians 4:2). With whom do you get easily irritated? If Jesus is being patient with you, can you be patient with others?
• Forgive one another (Ephesians 4:32). Forgiveness is costly, but not forgiving is more costly (Matthew 18:21-35). If you are a beneficiary of God’s costly grace in Christ, can you practice costly grace toward others?
Finally, regularly pray for and express your appreciation and support to the elder(s) who serves you. Slap him on the back or write him a note or ask how you can pray for him. Such humble service is a mark of the Spirit’s work in you. May it be increasingly evident in all of us as we grow in grace.
Jul
21
What a team of friends we have through Jesus
Filed Under Christian Living, Holiness, Prayer, Trinity | Leave a Comment
Here’s some profound insight from Dr. J.I. Packer from a recent interview in Modern Reformation:
J.I. Packer: “I’m a great believer in the importance of Trinitarian thinking in discipling. A lot of what has weakened discipling is the result of thinking of only one person of the godhead at any one time–think about the Holy Spirit and what he does; think about Jesus and his death on the cross for us; think of the Father and of his love and goodwill. But you’re not thinking, you see, of the three together: the divine team which works in the unity of a single program and plan, each person in the team fulfilling his part in our salvation, so that the gospel is much less ‘what a friend we have in Jesus,’ but ‘what a team of friends we have through Jesus’–it’s the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our discipling instruction will be infinitely strengthened if we present it that way. Sometimes people say, ‘I’ve never heard it put like that before.’ People will be deistic unless they are taught the Trinity.”
Jul
16
A word from our namesake
Filed Under Christian Living, Holiness, Holy Spirit, Prayer, Puritans | Leave a Comment
The Sweet Dropper is named for English Puritan Richard Sibbes (1577-1635). Read our tribute to Sibbes. These words come from Sibbes’ The Soul’s Conflict, and Victory over Itself by Faith:
It were an easy thing to be a Christian, if religion stood only in a few outward works and duties. But to take the soul to task, and to deal roundly with our own hearts, and to let conscience have its full work, and to bring the soul into spiritual subjection unto God, this is not so easy a matter, because the soul out of self-love is loath to enter into itself, lest it should have other thoughts of itself than it would have.
The words speak of the depravity of the heart and the deceitfulness of sin. It’s no easy or pleasant task to think rightly about our lives. Many of us may enjoy analyzing our problems, but are we doing so in the light of God’s Word? Perhaps we are analyzing our lives in a self-serving, self-justifying way. We replay the mental DVD of wrongs committed against us. We sooth ourselves with arguments that hide the truth and shift the blame to others. None of us wants to acknowledge things about ourselves that we would rather deny. How do you learn to see straight when something inside is bending in the wrong direction? My old campus minister, Hal Farnsworth, is fond of asking people, “If you were deceiving yourself, would you know it?”
Join me in asking God to overthrow self-righteousness–yours and mine. Ask the Spirit to help you have “other thoughts of yourself” and to see clearly the grace of Christ Jesus coming to you in your sin and misery. Face up, and find mercy.
Apr
22
Exegesis and lovers
Filed Under Bible, Books, Christian Living | Leave a Comment
Exegesis is what I do. I bring the text of Scripture to bear upon my life and upon the lives of others. A dictionary definition of exegesis looks something like this:
explanation, critical analysis, or interpretation of a word, literary passage, etc., esp. of the Bible
I strongly prefer Eugene Peterson’s definition from Eat This Book:
Exegesis is the furthest thing from pedantry; exegesis is an act of love. It loves the one who speaks the words enough to want to get the words right. It respects the words enough to use every means we have to get the words right. Exegesis is loving God enough to stop and listen carefully to what he says. It follows that we bring the leisure and attentiveness of lovers to this text, cherishing every comma and semicolon, relishing the oddness of this preposition, delighting in the surprising placement of this noun. Lovers don’t take a quick look, get a “message” or a “meaning,” and then run off and talk endlessly with their friends about how they feel.
I love the title Eat This Book. My children, unaware of the allusion to Ezekiel 3 and Revelation 10, look at me quizzically as I read it, with a look that says, “If you decide to do what the title says, I want to be there to watch.”
Apr
10
I don’t see how…
Filed Under Bible, Christian Living, Culture, Family, The Church | Leave a Comment
“I don’t see how a Christian could…
• Vote for a Democrat
• Practice birth control
• Send his children to public school
• Drink beer
• Play along with the Santa Claus myth
• Allow his wife to work for pay outside the home
• Watch TV on Sunday
• Vacation at a Disney theme park
• Use an epidural during childbirth
• Let someone else care for his child more than ___ hours a week
• Listen to secular music
• Take an antidepressant
• Bottle-feed a baby.”
Over the last twenty years I’ve been around fellow Christians who have voiced those exact opinions, and each time a compelling, confident biblical justification followed. I must admit that in the past I have held some of the above opinions with great confidence. In fourteen years as a minister I’ve also had to let go of some of those things and clean up the mess behind those who won’t.
These are the kinds of things the Apostle Paul calls “disputable matters” in Romans 14:1ff. In that setting the issues were voiced as “I don’t see how a Christian can eat meat” or “I don’t see how a Christian can ignore the Jewish calendar.” To this Paul says, Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind…Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another…And in v.19 he says, So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.
Even if we have strong convictions about what we think is right, we are to respect the choices that other believers make in them, even if we are convinced on biblical grounds that they are wrong (Rom. 14:1-15:7). Further, we need to come to terms with the reality that we sometimes lack the “clear, biblical evidence” we like to claim. Each one should be convinced in his own mind, Paul teaches us; yet we also must accept one another in order to bring praise to God and not judge our brothers and sisters for whom Christ died.
Did you notice that about half of the items on the list above deal directly with issues regarding women and children? Sadly women are particularly (though not exclusively) prone to divide and despise and devour one another over disputable matters regarding childrearing, work, education and social involvement. My wise wife reminds me, “Women are sensitive creatures. Sensitivity is not a liability; rather, it is an asset for which we should be thankful. It makes us loving moms, daughters, sisters, and friends. Imagine the Church without the love and care of women. Then again, you probably wouldn’t want to do that. What would things be like in time of crisis and celebration if women were not around to carry the load?” The downside of this wonderful sensitivity is that women can live lives full of doubt and anxiety, victim to the opinions of others and threatened when other Christians disagree. Matters of childrearing, work, and social involvement particularly get under our skin.
It reminds me of an incident in Judges 12. In the midst of a civil war, the Gileadites hold the Jordan River, and whenever anyone comes to cross, they ask him to say the word “shibboleth”—a Hebrew word whose meaning is uncertain. The Ephraimites had a distinct dialect in which they can’t pronounce the “sh” in “shibboleth” and say “sibboleth” instead. “Thereupon [the Gileadites] would seize him and slay him.” More than 40,000 Ephraimites fall into this language trap and are killed. (Wouldn’t you think the Ephraimites would have figured this out at some point? They certainly weren’t the brightest of the tribes!)
At those times when modern-day Gileadites whip out their shibboleths, remember Paul’s questions in Romans 14:10: But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Should I judge the Disney vacationing, beer drinking, brother who wears an “Obama for President” t-shirt while listening to “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” on his iPod? Should I despise the brother or sister who has never stood beneath the shadow of Cinderella’s castle and who curses every yellow school bus? The answer to both questions is “no.”
Quarreling over opinions causes division within the church and ignores the immense sacrifice of Christ on the cross in favor of a self-made righteousness. Ladies and gentlemen, we must be very careful about such things, for none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s (Romans 14:5-8).
I don’t see how a Christian could disagree with that.
Apr
8
Tops of the mountains of our guilt
Filed Under Christian Living, Evangelism, Holiness, Justification | Leave a Comment
“Standing at the foot of the cross, and beholding the Redeemer in his expiring agony, the Christian may indeed gather courage. When I think of my sin, it seems impossible that any atonement should ever be adequate; but when I think of Christ’s death it seems impossible, that any sin should ever be great enough to need such an atonement as that. There is in the death of Christ enough and more than enough. There is not only a sea in which to drown our sins, but the very tops of the mountains of our guilt are covered. Forty cubits upwards hath this red sea prevailed. There is not only enough to put our sins to death, but enough to bury them and hide them out of sight. I say it boldly and without a figure, — the eternal arm of God now nerved with strength, now released from the bondage in which justice held it, is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Christ.”
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled “The Believer’s Challenge,” delivered June 5, 1859