by Stacey | May 24, 2012 | Devotionals, reflections, and encouragement
Define the gospel. As a long time believer in Jesus Christ you would expect that to be a simple request. Yet many believers struggle to put into words the essence of the Gospel, especially into understandable words.
With the help of my husband (guys check out his blog here) we have attempted to explain the Gospel, simply, honestly, and with the hope you will consider how this truth affects you and your loved ones.
- Always start with God. The gospel is what God has done for us, to extend His grace to us, to bring glory to Himself. God is holy, perfect, righteous, pure, and just. We are not any of those things. Therein lays the problem. God will not tolerate our sin.
- Us: We are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), created to be in a relationship with him, but sin separates us. Every person sins (Romans 3:23) and the penalty of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Our problem just got bigger.
- Solution -Jesus. Jesus is God’s son (Luke 3:22), is fully God (Titus 2:13) and became fully man (1 John 4:2, 2 John 1:7). He is the exact representation of God (Hebrews 1:3). He is sinless (1 Peter 2:22). He died in our place as the only perfect sacrifice, paying the penalty of our sin and absorbing the full wrath of God (1 Peter 2:24). He was forsaken so we don’t have to be forsaken.
- Faith. God requires faith that Jesus’ death on our behalf is all that is needed to declare us clean before God (John 3:16-17). Then we act on that faith by living according to His Word (James 2:14-17).
- Victory. After he was dead three days Jesus rose from the dead (Luke 24:39) by the power of God accomplishing full victory over sin and death. He extends the invitation to all individuals to accept his sacrifice on their behalf. I trust that despite the guilt of my sin God will declare my payment has been made in full by Jesus and I will be able to enter into eternity with Him.
- Help. God sends His Holy Spirit to live inside each individual that accepts Jesus’ sacrifice. It is by the power of the Spirit that I can obey God, seek forgiveness, and live a transformed life no longer defined by my sin (John 14:16-17).
- Future: Christ will return for his followers! Until then, we live in anticipation of His return and in anticipation of reigning with Him in glory forever (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
Good News
Life goes on forever. Not physical life, of course, but our spiritual life. Once our physical life comes to an end, all who die in an unforgiven and sinful state do not enter into Heaven, but instead spend eternity separated from God in torment. The Good News is that Jesus solves the problem that we cannot solve on our own. It is called Good News because without it, we have no hope.
I cannot earn God’s acceptance. I cannot be good enough. Gaining God’s forgiveness for my sin requires a payment, it requires death. Either my death, both physically and spiritually resulting in eternity apart from God or Jesus’ death, which is already done and already victorious. I need to confess my need and accept the payment made on my behalf.
This is the Gospel. This is the Good News of Jesus. This is the central message that God has given us to pass to our kids, and their kids, and on and on and on. It is a multi-generational message of Good News not meant to be kept to yourself.
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:56-57
Suggested further reading:
How can Jesus be God and Man
by Stacey | May 12, 2012 | The Weekend Visitor
Whenever I start to get discouraged about the future of the church, I remember a conversation I had a few years ago with evangelical theologian Carl F. H. Henry on what would turn out to be his last visit to Southern Seminary before his death.
Several of us were lamenting the miserable shape of the church, about so much doctrinal vacuity, vapid preaching, non-existent discipleship. We asked Dr. Henry if he saw any hope in the coming generation of evangelicals.
And I will never forget his reply.
“Why, you speak as though Christianity were genetic,” he said. “Of course, there is hope for the next generation of evangelicals. But the leaders of the next generation might not be coming from the current evangelical establishment. They are probably still pagans.”
“Who knew that Saul of Tarsus was to be the great apostle to the Gentiles?” he asked us. “Who knew that God would raise up a C.S. Lewis, a Charles Colson? They were unbelievers who, once saved by the grace of God, were mighty warriors for the faith.”
Of course, the same principle applied to Henry himself. Who knew that God would raise up a newspaperman from a nominally Lutheran family to defend the Scriptures for generations of conservative evangelicals?
The next Jonathan Edwards might be the man driving in front of you with the Darwin Fish bumper decal. The next Charles Wesley might be a misogynist, profanity-spewing hip-hop artist right now. The next Billy Graham might be passed out drunk in a fraternity house right now. The next Charles Spurgeon might be making posters for a Gay Pride March right now. The next Mother Teresa might be managing an abortion clinic right now.
But the Spirit of God can turn all that around. And seems to delight to do so. The new birth doesn’t just transform lives, creating repentance and faith; it also provides new leadership to the church, and fulfills Jesus’ promise to gift his church with everything needed for her onward march through space and time (Eph. 4:8-16).
After all, while Phillip was leading the Ethiopian eunuch to Christ, Saul of Tarsus was still a murderer.
Most of the church in any generation comes along through the slow, patient discipleship of the next generation. But just to keep us from thinking Christianity is evolutionary and “natural” (or, to use Dr. Henry’s term “genetic”), Jesus shocks his church with leadership that seems to come like a Big Bang out of nowhere.
Whenever I’m tempted to despair about the shape of American Christianity, I’m reminded that Jesus never promised the triumph of the American church; he promised the triumph of the church. Most of the church, in heaven and on earth, isn’t American. Maybe the hope of the American church is right now in Nigeria or Laos or Indonesia.
Jesus will be King, and his church will flourish. And he’ll do it in the way he chooses, by exalting the humble and humbling the exalted, and by transforming cowards and thieves and murderers into the cornerstones of his New City.
So relax.
And, be kind to that atheist in front of you on the highway, the one who just shot you an obscene gesture. He might be the one who evangelizes your grandchildren.
Dr. Moore is the Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice-President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as a preaching pastor at Highview Baptist Church, where he ministers weekly at the congregation’s Fegenbush location. Moore is the author of several books, including The Kingdom of Christ, Adopted for Life, andTempted and Tried.
Used with permission
by Stacey | May 10, 2012 | Devotionals, reflections, and encouragement
Submission. Just hearing the word can put us on the defensive. In a culture steeped in personal rights and freedom, the idea of setting aside our desires to bow to authority can raise our hackles.
Yet, submission is biblical. Scripture portrays it in many forms. Children submit to their parents (Ephesians 6:1), employees submit to their employer (1 Peter 2:18), citizens submit to the government (1 Peter 2:13, Titus 3:1, Romans 13:1), a believer submits to God (James 4:7), a wife submits to her husband (Ephesians 5:22), Jesus submits to the will of God the Father (Luke 22:42).
Like most, I struggled with submission as a child and teen and acted out in disobedience. As an adult, I am surprised to learn I still struggle with submission. The struggle just shows itself in subtler forms. Instead of labelling it disobedience I called it demanding my rights (what’s fair, my due, you fill in the blank).
Our adult Sunday school class is working through the book of 1 Peter. Chapter 2 verse 13 and onward hit me with all the subtlety of a 2×4.
“Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor. Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God (1 Peter 2:13-19).”
Submitting to authority willingly, without grumbling, keeping Jesus as my example is hard, especially when the figure of authority is wrong, unfair or cruel. Yet, notice what Scripture doesn’t add. Scripture doesn’t say submit if your employer is kind, it is not submit if your government follows God. Just submit – “not only to the good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh (vs 18).”
Yikes. That hits me right between the eyes prompting a fair bit of time confessing my sin of failed submission to God.
Under the pretense of fairness and wanting what is mine I have failed to submit the way God requires. How much more would have Christ been glorified if I had endured the pain of unjust suffering and entrusted myself to God? Perhaps respectful and gracious conduct would have won my tormentor to Christ.
We’ll never know.
Living for Christ is such a journey. Always learning. Always humbled. always seeing afresh my great sin. Always grateful for the grace of God that covers even this.
***
Author’s note: If you are not currently attending an adult Sunday school class, I encourage you to find one. It is a great way to dig deeper into a text and discuss with other believers the challenging words of God.
by Stacey | Apr 21, 2012 | The Weekend Visitor
Someone once said the unexamined life is not worth living. I imagine that’s right. In the same vein, I would like to propose that the unexamined worship is not worth offering.
Worship that is not examined tends to sink to the lowest common denominator.
Being retired now and in a different church almost every Sunday, I see every kind of worship service you can imagine. Some give evidence of much thought, serious planning, and loving attention. Others appear to be the same form that congregation has followed since the Second World War, with even the hymns being unchanged.
Once or twice the thought has popped into my mind that it would be interesting to stop that deacon in the middle of his prayer or the song-leader in the midst of his/her exercise and say, “Hey! What is this all about? Why are you doing this?”
Those are good questions. I suggest anyone involved in worship leadership pose them (and a few others) to himself.
Why are we doing church this way? Why do we sing these hymns and not those? Why do our prayers sound the same week after week? What would happen if we changed the format? Why would I want to do that? What are we doing here on Sunday mornings? What is our purpose? What do we expect to get out of this?
Worship that is not examined tends to become routine quickly.
By “routine,” I mean the worship service is characterized by a sameness in form, a dullness in expression, a pointlessness in purpose.
C. S. Lewis once said something to the effect that he could worship in any kind of format so long as it was unchanging and unvarying from week to week. He clearly liked the sameness and predictability of his worship service. I expect he has plenty of company, but I’m equally certain this is not good.
The human mind needs to be awakened and challenged in church, not sedated. It needs to be redeemed and focused, not lulled into a lethargy.
When Hosea and later Jeremiah called on God’s people to “break up the fallow ground,” they were calling for a personal humbling and repentance before a Holy God. However, that command pertains to worship also. So easily do we fall into our ruts, offering up hymns and prayers mindlessly, giving offerings thoughtlessly, hearing sermons passively.
Worship that is not examined soon ceases to focus on God and turns its attention to man.
Listen to the congregation as they exit the worship facility. “I got a lot out of that today.” “I didn’t get anything out of that sermon today.”
Man-centered. The object of worship deteriorated into meeting the needs of the worshipers, a task no human agency on earth (the pastor, the staff, the choir) can meet. Only God can meet people’s needs at the deepest level. And those needs are met best through worship.
Recently, in an article on this website, I suggested many in our churches are going about worship all wrong. They go to church for what they can get out of it, rather than to “give unto the Lord the glory due to His name” (Ps. 29:2).
The reaction to that article was divided. Some sent notes of appreciation for awakening them to how they had been worshiping wrongly–coming to ‘get’ instead of to ‘give,’ putting too great a burden on their minister, and then blaming him when they were not fed adequately.
Others treated that line of thought as though it were blasphemy. One person (who did not write me; I found his blog accidentally) called it “utter nonsense.” The very idea that we do not “go to church to be fed spiritually.” I left a response, but have had no communication from him.
At no point did I suggest that we do not need to be spiritually fed. We all need to have our minds awakened and our hearts moved in worship. We all want to leave church different from the way we entered. However–and this is the point–it should be something God did, not the preacher. Something God gave us, not something we worked up. Something God chose to bless us with of His own will and for His own pleasure, not some kind of bargain we made with Him.
Examining our worship means to ask the right questions of ourselves.
1. Why am I here?
Today, as we enter God’s house for the umpteenth time, we will be doing much the same things we have done all those other times. We will sing the same songs, voice prayers similar to countless others we have offered, give offerings, hear sermons–most of them undistinguishable from thousands of others throughout our lifetime. Why?
How we answer that tells worlds about us.
If our answer does not center in God (the Father, the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit), then we are giving the wrong answer.
Here are three wrong answers to the question “Why am I in God’s house today?”
- “I’m going through a hard time and need the Lord.” (So, once you get through this and back on easy street, you’ll not need Him any more, right? And we’ll miss you in church.)
- “I’m facing a tough decision and need some guidance.” (The Lord is your counselor? That’s good. But when do you NOT need guidance?)
- “I feel bad over what I’ve done and need God’s forgiveness.” (That’s good, too, as far as it goes. It’s just not enough. You’re treating the Lord like a confessional: get forgiveness, then you’re off to sin again?)
Any answer to the question “Why am I in church today?” that does not center in God Himself is inadequate.
2. Why am I doing what I’m doing?
Why sing these songs, pray these prayers, bring this offering, participate in this Lord’s Supper, hear this sermon? (Or, in the case of the pastor, why preach this sermon?)
Asking “why?” has a glorious tradition. God likes it when His children raise that question. Again and again He told Israel, “So it shall be when your son asks you in time to come ‘What is this?’ that you shall say to him, ‘By strength of hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.'” (Exodus 13:14)
(Other places where God says children will be asking these questions include Exodus 12:26; 13:8; Deuteronomy 6:20; and Joshua 4:6,21. You’d think we would figure it out by now, that it’s normal for them to ask and important for us to answer.)
Children have a way of asking pertinent questions. “Why do we have to go to church again this Sunday?” “Why is the sermon so long?” “Why is it so boring?” Rather than rebuking the little one, we should give a well-thought out answer.
If we have one.
The person participating in unexamined worship has no answer other than “this is how we do it in our family.” That sloppy response accounts for children growing up with a disrespect for the religious faith of their youth. They deserve an answer.
And that starts with your finding your own answer. Why do you bring offerings? Why do you sing hymns (and those particular ones)? Why do you sit and hear sermons? Why do the sermons last so long? And why is church pretty much the same every week?
3. What does our kind of worship say about God?
As a Southern Baptist living in New Orleans, I find myself wondering about people who pray so many “Hail Marys” every day. Bumper stickers urge worshipers to “Pray the Rosary.” What, I wonder, does this kind of mindless repetition say about God in the minds of those reciting such prayers? And does the Lord’s comment that “the heathen think they will be heard for their much speaking” (also called “vain repetitions”) apply here (Matthew 6:7)?
If it does, does that caution also apply to my prayers which have a way of sounding fairly like all the prayers of former days? Am I guilty of vain repetitions? And if so, what does that say about how I see God?
The Old Testament book of Malachi deals with this very issue. God in Heaven looked down at the sick offerings worshipers were bringing, the casual attitudes with which they went about His service, the boredom in their minds, and the impurities in their personal lives, and He announced He had just about enough of it. You have wearied the Lord with your words. (Mal. 2:17)
You priests despise my Name, God said (1:6). By offering defiled food on the altar, they were dishonoring the Almighty. When you offer the blind as a sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it then to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? (1:8)
The overall thrust of Scripture from start to finish is that acceptable worshp to our God is not an interruption of our daily lives but a continuation of the holiness that characterized our daily walk. Here is the prophet Micah: With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings? With calves a year old? Is that what God wants?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? With ten thousand rivers of oil? A lot of people in that day thought so.
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? What could be a greater expression of devotion that offering up one’s own child as a sacrifice to God. That’s how pagans thought, and to their everlasting shame, a number of God’s own people bought into that heresy .
He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you,
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God? (Mal. 6:6-8)
Our worship activities should be an outgrowth of our daily life of devoted obedience to the Father, otherwise we are playing at worship and wasting our time.
When King Saul decided to do things his way instead of obeying the Lord–he was so sure that since he “meant well” the details did not matter–the Prophet Samuel announced, Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. (I Samuel 15:22)
A similar theme is sounded after David’s sin with Bathsheba and the forgiveness he received with the Prophet Nathan in the wonderful 51st Psalm. For you do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; you do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart–These, O God, you will not despise. (Ps. 51:16-17)
Does God want our hymns and offerings? Our prayers and our sermons? Does the Father in Heaven desire our worship? The answer is: He does, so long as these are expressions of our love and faithfulness. He does, so long as they are not attempts to buy His favor. He does, so long as we are making ourselves available to Him–for whatever His will may be–and not seeking His approval on our disobedience.
A well-known preacher of a previous generation used to tell of the time when he was ten years old and experimenting with smoking. On a downtown street, he was puffing on a cigar butt he had found. At that moment, he looked up and saw his father coming down the sidewalk toward him. Thinking quickly, he stashed the burning tobacco into his pocket and rushed forward. “Father,” he said, “Did you see the posters? The circus is coming to town? Can we go? Please?” His father said, “Son, never ask your father for a favor when you are hiding a smoldering disobedience from him.”
Dr. Joe McKeever is a retired Baptist pastor who lives in New Orleans. His articles and cartoons can be seen at joemckeever.com
by Stacey | Apr 19, 2012 | Devotionals, reflections, and encouragement
Our furnace shut off in the night causing the temperature inside the house to drop to an uncomfortable degree. A morning spent trouble shooting revealed an unexpected problem. Four year old hands had stuffed stones and gravel into the furnace exhaust pipe. Stones that could neither be dumped nor removed.
Deep breaths.
Was I angry? You bet! I had a good idea which mischievous boys under my care had been playing in the stones and they had been warned multiple times not to touch or play with those pipes.
Thankfully God interrupted my internal rant. As a mother, every moment of every day I am teaching. Whether I recognize it or not, act purposefully or not, choose wise words or not, I am teaching.
What does this moment teach? About life? About God? About forgiveness?
A 4-year-old boy will never tell an angry adult the truth. Anger breeds fear and he will lie to protect himself. Feigning calmness to turn on him afterwards breeds distrust.
Abstract ideas like forgiveness solidify when taught in the moment.
It took about 45 minutes for me to ask the question with a proper heart. The boys were honest, repentant, and sad they caused so much damage. They understood this was big and they didn’t need me to raise my voice or shake my finger to drive that point home.
A call the furnace company further revealed the repair cost. Yikes!
More deep breaths.
What did they boys learn in this moment? Hopefully more than just to leave the pipes alone! I hope they learned that I am a safe, trustworthy person – even when they mess up. I hope they learned that forgiveness and grace can be expected because I have experienced them. I know what it is like to stand before the judge aware of my sin yet hoping for undeserved grace.
What did I learn? Children respond to gentle corrective discipline while outright anger intensifies their defiance.
Okay, I knew that already.
But on this day I had the chance to live like I believed it and it made all the difference in the world. I hugged the boys, told them I love them, told them I forgive them, and that we all make mistakes. Now we learn from them and move on.
They ran off to play and I walked into the cold, cold living room to wait for the repair man. A smile appeared out of nowhere. Anger evaporated. Grace in the moment.
Thank you God.
Good News
