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“God wants me more than he wants anything I can do for him”: a meditation on Genesis 22:1

May 14, 2019

This morning, during my quiet time, I saw a connection between Genesis 22, the Sacrifice of Isaac, and God’s words to Israel in Psalm 50. Most of what follows comes from handwritten notes in my ESV Journaling Bible, Interleaved Edition.

22:1: “God tested Abraham”: After all that Abraham has been through, what more—one might wonder—does God need to learn? Hadn’t Abraham done everything he needed to do to ensure that God’s plan of salvation through Christ was set in motion? Hadn’t he accomplished his mission? One warning for me here is that God’s testing of us will not necessarily cease, even after we’ve reached what we believe is a sufficient level of Christian maturity. As if!

Besides, this test demonstrates that there’s something that God wants far more than any service we render to him: he wants us! He wants our love. He wants to possess us entirely. “I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills… If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine” (Psalm 50:9-10, 12).

In other words, if God can’t have our hearts—our wholehearted devotion, our love (as expressed in the psalm through the thanksgiving offering)—God doesn’t want anything else!

This test proves it. It’s as if God were saying, “I know you’ve served and sacrificed for 25-plus years to serve me, but I want your love more than I want your service! Because if I don’t have you, Abraham—if I don’t have your love, your whole heart—I don’t want anything that you can do for me. I want you more than I want my mission. In fact, I’m willing to set my mission aside—even at the risk of jettisoning it altogether—in order to have you.”

As in Psalm 50, if God can’t have Abraham’s heart, he doesn’t want anything Abraham can do for him.

As astonishing as it is to say, God values his relationship with Abraham more than he values the most important task that Abraham, or any person in history up to this point, has ever accomplished for him. Does Abraham value God in the same way? That’s what this test will determine.

But I know what you’re thinking: “Sure, God may value his relationship with Abraham like that, but who am I in relation to him? I’m a nobody compared to him!”

But that’s where you’re wrong! First, the gospel proves that your value isn’t determined by anything that you do. (Even Abraham, as Paul labors to point out in his two most theologically rich letters, was justified by faith, not by works.) And the doctrine of imputation says that you’re infinitely valuable to God! If you’re in Christ, you’re a beloved “son” of God;[1] you’re highly favored by God. You stand before God perfectly righteous—not through your own efforts, but through Christ’s; he has made you righteous with his righteousness.

When you read about saints in the Old Testament like Abraham, and the favor that God showed them, resist the temptation to think that they possess or enjoy something you don’t have! If anything, on this side of the cross and resurrection, you have infinitely more! Tell yourself something like this: “If this is true for Abraham, then it’s at least as true for me! Because I have Jesus!”

By all means, we must decrease in relation to Christ, and Christ must increase (John 3:30), but we never cease to loom large in God’s love, God’s esteem, God’s affection. Do I dare believe that God loves me this much?

If so, then the ways I poor-mouth myself, denigrate myself, put myself down are completely incompatible with God’s view of me!

Another implication for me (and us Christians): In my haste to “get things done,” I must never forget why I do them in the first place: to love God! Before I do anything else, I must foster my love for God.

Also, Brent, God wants you to love him more than he wants you to succeed as a pastor.

Let me repeat that: God wants you to love him more than he wants you to succeed as a pastor.

Do you believe that? Because nothing you accomplish for him is more important than that.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

1. I’m not being sexist. All Christian believers, male or female, are “sons” of God, because sonship in that first-century world (unlike “daughtership”) implies full inheritance from our heavenly Father. Being called a “son of God” should bother women as much as men are bothered to be counted among the “bride” of Christ!

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Sermon 05-05-19: “The Most Important Healing”

May 8, 2019

I’m happy to report that I will once again be preaching regularly! For the next seven Sundays I’ll be preaching at the Lavonia United Methodist Church in Lavonia, Georgia. After that, in late June, I will be appointed senior pastor at Toccoa First UMC. I’ll be posting sermons here and on my podcast each week.

You can subscribe to my podcast in iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher.

Sermon Text: Luke 5:17-26

The following is a manuscript I prepared from my outline. It will differ slightly from the sermon I delivered, which you can listen to above.

Last week I listened to a podcast from the Gospel Coalition, an evangelical Christian ministry. It featured an interview with New York Times columnist and political writer David Brooks. Brooks was raised in a secular Jewish family. Throughout most of his adult life he would have identified as either an atheist or an agnostic at best. But recently something changed, and in this interview he described his conversion to Christianity.

He said he knew he had a profound spiritual problem 15 or 20 years ago… when his dreams came true; when he satisfied what he believed was his heart’s deepest desire; when he wrote his first New York Times-bestselling book. Isn’t this what all aspiring authors dream of? To land a book on top of the bestseller list! Brooks thought, “If only I could write and publish a #1 bestseller, my problems would be solved. My life would change dramatically! I could have lasting happiness and joy. If only...” Yet he said that when his publisher called to give him the good news that he had a bestseller, he felt “completely empty.” It didn’t make him happy. It didn’t change his life for the better. It didn’t fulfill him—even though it meant greater fame, more career opportunities—not to mention more money.

He needed something more… something else… Someone else to satisfy him.

And I believe the paralyzed man and his friends in today’s scripture aren’t so different from David Brooks. They undoubtedly had an “if only” condition as well. I’m sure that before he encountered Jesus, the paralytic thought something like this: “If only I could walk again, then I would be truly happy, then my life would be everything I want it to be, then my problems would be solved.” Read the rest of this entry »

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“Behold, your servant has found favor”: a meditation on Genesis 19:18-22

May 2, 2019

I’ve appreciated the following words about prayer from pastor Tim Keller since I first heard them many years ago:

“God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he knows.”

Among other things, this idea helps explain “unanswered” prayer—or, more accurately, prayer that God answers by saying “no.” We simply can’t foresee the myriad consequences that would result from God’s giving us what we ask for. To say the least, each petition that God grants us would have a ripple effect through time and space that would affect many lives, including our own. We don’t know the extent to which these ripples would be helpful or harmful. God knows; we don’t. And God’s Word promises us that in all things, including our prayer life, God is working for our good (Romans 8:28).

Moreover, the Holy Spirit is praying through our prayers: “For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). So even when God doesn’t give us what we pray for, he will—without fail—give us what his Holy Spirit prays for. In other words, God always answers his own prayers for us—and we can be confident that what he prays for us is always for our good.

Keller is helpful here, too: I’ve heard him also preach that God always answers the “prayer underneath the prayer.” I believe this idea does justice to what both Jesus and the rest of scripture teach.

All that to say, Keller’s maxim is true, as far as it goes. But for my own sake, if not yours, Dear Reader, I would add this corollary:

God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he knows—and you had bothered to ask.

In other words, in order for God to grant us the “prayer underneath the prayer,” there has to be a prayer to begin with!

I’ve heard otherwise faithful Christians justify what amounts to a lazy prayer life by appealing to the pious-sounding idea that we want God’s will, rather than our own will, to be done: “I don’t need God to do anything for me; he’s done so much for me already.” Perhaps they don’t ask for God to do anything because, too often, they don’t believe he will! (Believe me, I’m preaching to myself, too!) This hardly accords with Jesus’ own example and teaching about prayer (one passage of which, Luke 11:5-13, I’ll be preaching on on May 26).

Just yesterday, I was journaling my way through the story of Abraham’s nephew, Lot, in Genesis 19:15-22. In this passage, the two angels who have come to rescue Lot and his family from the imminent destruction of Sodom, urge him, “Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away” (v. 17).

And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords. Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life. But I cannot escape to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me and I die. Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!”

I was indignant when I read this: Lot’s request is bold to the point of brazenness! After all, I thought, when firefighters rescue you and your sleeping family from an inferno, you don’t also ask them to clean the soot off the carpet!

But not so fast, Brent…

Lot acknowledges that he has “found favor” in the sight of these angels (and the God on whose behalf they’re working); God and these angels have shown him “great kindness.” He isn’t exactly presuming upon God’s grace; he recognizes that the angels could tell him no.

Besides, if we follow the logic of my objection all the way through, on what basis could I ask God for anything? God has given me my life in the first place, and he sustains it at every moment. Even more, he has redeemed my life through the infinitely valuable blood of his Son Jesus. Isn’t it presumptuous of me to ask God to do anything else? Hasn’t he done enough? Am I not being ungrateful in asking?

No… As in the case of Lot and so many other Old Testament saints who are as badly flawed as I am (including David and the psalmists, who frequently ask God to show favor, to rescue, to vindicate, and to make prosperous), we Christians can rightly tell ourselves something like this: “If it’s true that someone like Lot has found favor in God’s sight, how much more true is it for me? After all, unlike Lot, through faith in Jesus and his atoning work on the cross, I am a beloved child of the Father with whom he is well pleased; I am the one ‘on whom God’s favor rests’ (Luke 2:14); I am a brother [or sister] of Jesus himself (Mark 3:34-35; John 20:17), loved by my Father exactly as much as he loves Jesus (John 17:23, 26), entitled to a full inheritance befitting a son of the Father (Luke 15:22-23; Romans 8:17; 1 Peter 1:4-5).

I have exchanged my unrighteousness for Christ’s righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21; Philippians 3:9). The blood of Jesus cleanses me from all sin (1 John 1:7). Therefore I stand before God as holy and righteous, not because of who I am and what I’ve done, but who Christ is and what he’s done. On this basis alone, I approach the throne of grace with confidence (Hebrews 4:16) and ask my Father for what I want or need—believing that he will give me what I ask for (Mark 11:24).

(Or don’t I?)

Indeed, Jesus says that unless we become like little children, we will “never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). One characteristic of children is that they ask their parents for things—with boldness, with importunity, with no expectation of earning it or paying it back. The relationship of parent to young child is one of utter grace!

So be like Lot! Be as righteous and God-honoring as Lot is! Ask!

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“Behold, I have two daughters”: a meditation on Genesis 19:8

April 27, 2019

The following reflection on Genesis 19:8 comes in part from handwritten notes in my ESV Journaling Bible, Interleaved Edition.

Genesis 19:8: “Behold, I have two daughters”: Lot proposes a wicked, callous, and cowardly solution—inexcusable even if, as some commentators believe, he were only “bluffing” (knowing, perhaps, that the men of Sodom would reject his offer). From our perch on the moral high ground, we say, “Lot should have laid down his life to save the lives of both his two visitors (who were angels in disguise) and his two daughters!”

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

But what about me? I’m a preacher who believes nothing less than heaven and hell are at stake in people’s decisions concerning Jesus and his gospel. I believe that hell in eternity is far worse than any hell on earth—which this scripture passage describes. Yet every day I encounter people who haven’t yet received God’s gift of salvation through Christ. Unless they change course and believe the gospel, I believe they are bound for hell.

Yet how often do I share with them God’s rescue plan through Christ? How do I even pray for opportunities to share the gospel? Do I not believe that the gospel itself has power through the Holy Spirit to effect transformation, as Paul implies in Romans 1:16?

If Paul is right in Acts 20:26-27 (“Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.”), at what point is the blood of others on my hands? Would I sacrifice people to hell for the sake of my comfort, my respectability, my desperate desire to blend in? How could I say otherwise given my own cowardice and indifference about evangelism?

See, not only am I afraid of dying for my faith, I’m afraid of dying of embarrassment for my faith.

Holy Spirit, give me the power to change!

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“Release to us Barabbas”: a meditation on Luke 23:18-25

April 24, 2019

This is the second in a series of posts on Good Friday and Luke 23. The following reflection on Luke 23:18-25 comes, in part, from handwritten notes in my ESV Journaling Bible, Interleaved Edition.

Last week, I reposted this article from The Gospel Coalition on my Facebook feed with the following comment:

If you are skeptical of penal substitutionary atonement (as I once was), please consider reading this brief defense. To be sure, there are caricatures and distortions to guard against, as this author rightly notes, yet our Sunday school teachers and youth ministers, often lacking the nuance, the subtlety, and the vocabulary that a theological education affords, were not ultimately wrong.

Besides, let me tell you the truth about me (your mileage may vary): the older I get, the more readily I affirm that everything I believed about the gospel when I first responded to that preacher’s altar call to accept Christ as my (yes!) personal Savior and Lord at age 14, I still believe. It was all true—however more deeply I now understand those truths.

Anyway, this article is beautifully written. Please read it.

“It’s no use pitting ‘vindictive God’ against ‘innocent Jesus,’ for the one nailed to the tree is himself the sin-hating, sinner-saving God. The Son’s complicity in his own condemnation as our substitute is one of the gospel’s most glorious truths. Being clear about this truth doesn’t just safeguard our faithfulness; it displays Christ’s beauty and love.”

As if on cue (thank you, Jesus), the episode described in Luke 23:18-25 paints a beautiful picture of penal substitutionary atonement.

23:15: “release to us Barabbas”: Substitutionary atonement is literally enacted in the life of this one man, Barabbas [literally “son of the father”], a terrorist and murderer. Unlike Jesus, Barabbas deserves death; to say the least, he’s sinned against God and harmed others in the worst possible way. Yet because Jesus dies in his place, Barabbas goes free. Moreover, Barabbas does nothing to deserve this grace.

Barabbas is a living illustration of what Jesus will soon accomplish on the cross for all of us who have become “sons of the Father” through faith in the Son:

Jesus receives the guilty sentence that we deserve. He bears the punishment that our sins deserve. He suffers and dies in our place.

Meanwhile, like Barabbas, our representative, we are released from our sins. We are forgiven under the law. We are treated as if we never broke the law.

Perhaps God even uses his name, “Barabbas,” as a providential clue to our change in status before God: Just as Barabbas is a “son of the father,” so we Christians become, through Christ’s atoning death, “sons” (and daughters) of our Father and siblings of Jesus (John 20:17).

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“Are you the King of the Jews?”: a meditation on Luke 23:1-5

April 22, 2019

Today I’m beginning a short series of meditations on Good Friday as described in Luke 23. The following reflection on Luke 23:1-5 comes, in part, from handwritten notes in my ESV Journaling Bible, Interleaved Edition.

Then the whole company of them arose and brought him before Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king.” And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And he answered him, “You have said so.” Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no guilt in this man.” But they were urgent, saying, “He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place.”

Why do we sympathize with Pontius Pilate?

After all, to the credit of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council who turned Jesus over to the Romans on Good Friday morning, they were correct to see in Jesus a threat to their very way of life. From their perspective as unbelievers, this man, Jesus, was “misleading our nation,” saying that “he himself is Christ, a king” (23:2). Granted, they misunderstood the nature of the Messiah’s kingship: he would never be a king—one king among others—but the king—the King of Kings.

But at least they understood the danger that Jesus posed.

Not so Pilate: “I find no guilt in this man” (23:4).

Pilate is wrong to dismiss Jesus’ kingship so lightly. As Jesus tells his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? (Matthew 26:53) (Twelve legions would be 72,000 angels: If these angels chose to protect Jesus from Pilate and his military might, they would have wiped the Roman Empire off the map!) Also, in his conversation with Pilate he tells him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been give you from above” (John 19:11). So even one of the world’s most powerful men is doing nothing more than what Jesus’ own Father wants him to do. So much for Pilate’s great power!

Pilate should have fallen on his knees and begged Jesus for mercy!

But still we sympathize with Pilate. Why?

Perhaps because his view of Jesus isn’t so different from our own. Jesus is a “king,” we may say, but he isn’t one to whom we owe absolute allegiance. This king won’t require us to change our lives or make any sacrifices. This king poses no threat to our own little “kingdom.” Jesus will be “king” over one small part of our life rather than the One to whom we owe our entire lives; the One who owns us because we were “bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20).

How has my own life failed to come to terms with Jesus’ kingship?

Is Jesus someone to whom I offer everything because, after all, he’s my greatest treasure (Matthew 13:44)? Is he a King for the sake of whose honor I would be willing to die? Are Jesus and his kingdom, and his gospel, and the words that his Spirit guided the biblical authors to write down, the Rock on which I can build my life? (Matthew 7:24-27). Do I trust that this Rock will support my weight—and the weight of every other concern in my life?

Sure, like Pilate, I have “said” that Jesus is “King of the Jews” (v. 3). And like Pilate that acknowledgment too often makes little difference.

Lord Jesus, forgive me for being like Pilate, for acknowledging with my tongue that you’re the King, yet so often failing to let that truth penetrate to the core of my being. No more half-hearted devotion to you! Give me, by the power of your Spirit, the ability to surrender to you. Don’t wait for me to “want” to do it, either; you’ll be waiting forever! Or, better yet, just change what I want. Bend my will to your will. Besides, it’s not like my efforts to be “king”—to be in charge of my own life, to dictate to others, to pursue my own interests ahead of your own—have made me happy. I need you to take over. Please! Amen.

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“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”: a meditation on Genesis 18:22-33

April 18, 2019

The following reflection on Genesis 18:22-33 comes from the handwritten notes in my ESV Journaling Bible, Interleaved Edition.

Then Abraham drew near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

18:32: “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it”: Undoubtedly, Abraham’s chief concern is not so much with God’s justice as a general principle as for the safety of his nephew Lot, who lives in Sodom. Surely, Abraham reasons, God won’t “sweep away the righteous with the wicked.” But exactly how confident would Abraham be in Lot’s own righteousness?

Abraham himself, you may recall, didn’t earn justification before God through his own good works but through faith: “And he believed the Lord, and he counted it as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Unless Lot was likewise justified (and where’s the evidence?), we should be unimpressed that Lot is relatively more righteous than the citizens of Sodom! Scripture tells us why:

“None is righteous, no, not one… no one does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10, 12).

“If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3)

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

“For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:6).

In Jesus’ parable of the two debtors and its application to Simon and the prostitute (Luke 7:36-50), Jesus doesn’t deny that Simon is relatively more righteous than the woman. But it doesn’t matter: each owes a debt before God that he or she is unable to pay. The woman realizes it; Simon doesn’t. Therein lies the problem.

But maybe Abraham knows that Lot isn’t righteous. Maybe he’s counting on someone else’s righteousness to save his nephew. Otherwise, why not simply ask God—who would be unjust to “put the righteous to death with the wicked” (v. 25)—to rescue only the righteous in the city? If Lot and his family were among the righteous, then so be it. But that’s not what he asks. He asks, ultimately, if God would destroy the city for the sake of as few as ten righteous. God answers “no” before abruptly ending the conversation.

Yet we the readers might continue this thought experiment: “Suppose there were fewer than ten… Suppose, in fact, there were only one righteous person in the city? Would God destroy the city for the sake of one?”

But we Christians already know the answer to that question, don’t we?

Because, regardless whether Lot, his wife, and his two daughters were righteous, we sinners know ourselves. We know our own hearts. We know that if God were destroying cities because of the unrighteous living within it, we certainly wouldn’t be the basis on which the city is spared! Right? We would need someone else to be righteous for us!

And here’s the good news: Our Lord Jesus is that one righteous man!

He is the One on account of whose righteousness we will be saved. All we need to do is “move in with him” and “live with him.”

I can tell you how to do that!

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“Why are you cast down, O my soul?”: a meditation on Psalm 42:5

April 16, 2019

The following reflection on Psalm 42:5 comes from the handwritten notes in my ESV Journaling Bible, Interleaved Edition.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
    and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
    my salvation

42:5: Notice the psalmist is now talking to his soul, not God. And one thing he is telling it, as in v. 4, is to remember those times in your past in which you experienced the fullness of God’s presence. If God seems absent at this moment, it is only temporary.

I’m unimpressed with well-intentioned social media memes that urge us to “move on” from the past, to get over it (as if our therapy bills don’t prove how difficult that is!), to look to the future alone. “You can’t change the past,” they tell us.

Respectfully, I disagree: While we play a role in shaping the future—by all means—the future is largely outside of our control. (Think of tourists in Paris right now who are changing their itineraries because of yesterday’s out-of-control events! A building that stood for almost a thousand years and survived two world wars, among other things!)

So, no… it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the past is practically the only thing we can change! Not the events themselves, obviously, but our interpretation of them. We can grab hold of the promises of God’s Word, which assure us that nothing happens to us, his children through faith in his Son, except that which he causes or allows for good reasons, and always in the best interest of our souls (Rom. 8:28; James 1:2-4; 1 Peter 1:6-7)—given the freedom he grants us to disobey him and make mistakes.

We may experience a healthy kind of regret and shame over events in our past, which are fruits of true repentance, but we don’t stop at regret and shame: We go one step further. We tell ourselves (and pray) something like this: “Gracious Lord, if it took that mistake, that failure, that setback, that heartbreak, that disappointment, that suffering, that sin, to bring me to this place of greater love for you, greater trust in you, greater dependence on you, then I thank you for these events in the past![1] They have made me into this person that I am today—and the person I am becoming in the future.

“If anything had happened differently, I would be someone else. But you want me to be the person I am today—not because I’m perfect right now but because I’m one day closer to becoming that person you are making me into! After all, you did not create me once, when I was born, or even twice, when I was born-again through faith in your Son.

“Rather, you are ‘creating’ me through everything that happens to me—good, bad, or indifferent.

“So I will be grateful. Indeed, along with the apostle Paul, I will give thanks, not in spite of everything, but for everything (Eph. 5:20)—because everything that happens to me has been sifted through your redemptive, providential hand.”

“Why are you cast down, O my soul?”

That’s an excellent question!

1. Please note: I’m not for a moment implying that we should “go on sinning so that grace may abound” (Rom. 6:1). Rather, I’m saying that God “factors in” our sinful choices and uses their often harmful consequences for our good. Consider the younger son in the parable of Luke 15: Would he have been better off had he never left home, squandered his father’s wealth, and brought himself to utter ruin? Of course not! He was saved through the experience! Apart from it—had he stayed home—he would have remained as lost as his older brother—even if he were outwardly obedient to his father.

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Allow me to reintroduce myself…

April 15, 2019

Good news! At the end of June I’m being appointed as the senior pastor of Taccoa First United Methodist Church. Also, beginning May 1, I’m serving for several weeks as interim pastor at Lavonia UMC. If my blog stats are any indication, more than a few new people are interested in learning about me.

With that in mind, I’d like to re-post the following from June of last year… Enjoy!
—

Last week was an emotionally heavy week, for several reasons. I’ll talk about one of those reasons in today’s post.

I’m an itinerant United Methodist pastor, and this year it was my turn to move. I said goodbye to beloved brothers and sisters in Christ—and friends—to whom I’ve given much of my life over these past five years. After I preached my farewell sermon, on Acts 20:17-27, the church presented the following video tribute as a parting gift to me. It’s the best gift anyone has ever given me!

In addition to heartfelt tributes from many of my parishioners, two of my heroes in the faith—genuine heroes—contributed to the video: N.T. Wright and Paul Zahl.

As longtime readers of the blog may guess, Wright, more than any living person, is responsible for what I’ve called my “evangelical re-conversion,” an experience that began around the time I started this blog in 2009 (even if it took another year or so to complete).

Wright, a retired bishop of Durham in the Church of England, is a world-renowned New Testament scholar—not to mention, for what it’s worth, the most famous. How many Bible scholars, after all, were able to match wits with Stephen Colbert on his old Comedy Central show, for instance?

But it was Wright’s massive book The Resurrection of the Son of God that turned my life around. Here was Wright, an evangelical who has spent his long career within the world of mainline, critical scholarship—a world in which I was immersed for three years in seminary—offering an energetic defense of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, along with the scriptures that bear witness to it. His writing gave me a greater confidence in the authority of scripture at a time in my life when I needed it. He also helped me understand how seamlessly the gospel fits within the story of Israel and the Old Testament.

His writing affirmed for me classic doctrines of faith that were minimized or neglected in seminary—such as penal substitutionary atonement, Final Judgment and hell, a literal Second Coming, and the infallibility of scripture—if not without much nuance and qualification. But Wright’s qualifications never come from a place of skepticism about the reliability of scripture, only his effort to be more faithful to it. How can I not respect that?

So I love Wright and owe him a debt of gratitude. God used him to make me a more faithful follower of Jesus today—which is to say, a happier, more joy-filled person. And here he is, from his home near St. Andrews in Scotland, congratulating me on my new appointment!

My other hero of faith in the video is Paul Zahl, a retired Episcopal minister and theologian. For the past four years, the Very Rev. Dr. Zahl has been “living in my head” through his preaching, his writing, and (especially) his podcasts. More than anything, Zahl helped me fall in love with Jesus again. (As you hear in the video, this has been a theme of my recent preaching—not a coincidence.) He did so by enabling me to reconnect with a part of myself I lost too many years ago: that gawky 15-year-old who once wore the cover off his 1984 NIV Study Bible. “To find God,” Zahl said—paraphrasing Meister Eckhart—“you have to go back to where you lost him.” Or, put another way, to make sense of your life, you have to go back to that point in time—for me, around age 19 or 20—at which life stopped making sense. Truer words! And his reflections on those words in one of his podcasts—drawing on both Citizen Kane and the great Burton Cummings of the Guess Who—changed my life! Only Zahl could say, without irony, that if you want to understand what God’s love is like, “You need to listen to more Journey.” Indeed!

That these two men—who’ve helped shape me into the pastor and person that I am today—were part of this tribute moved me deeply!

And for good measure, because of my abiding and long-suffering affection for my alma mater, Georgia Tech, and my beloved Yellow Jackets, head basketball coach Josh Pastner offers his well-wishes.

(Special thanks to my friend and brother Matthew Chitwood for reaching out to all these people and putting this video together.)

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“The Lord has prevented me”: a meditation on Genesis 16:2

April 11, 2019

The following reflection on Genesis 16:2 comes from handwritten notes in my ESV Journaling Bible, Interleaved Edition.

And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.

16:2: “The Lord has prevented me”: Sarai’s view of God’s sovereignty is correct: her inability to have children is a purposeful part of God’s plan for her life.[1] What she should have said, however, is not “the Lord has prevented me,” but “the Lord has prevented me so far.” After all, on what basis can she presume to believe that too much time had passed for God to keep his promise and fulfill his plan? It will take a miracle, regardless—whether Sarai conceives a child today or ten years from now.

Nevertheless, instead of waiting on the Lord, she takes matters into her own hands.

And here’s the problem: Up to this point in the story, God has made his will known to Abram by speaking directly to him. Surely if God wanted Abram to take Hagar as a secondary wife by whom God would fulfill his promises, God would have revealed that to him.[2] Besides, since when is it our job to “help God out,” or “improve God’s plan,” or “speed up God’s timing”—especially when doing so masks a lack of trust in God?

Not that I’m one to judge. I’m the biggest hypocrite! I like taking matters into my own hands. I like feeling in control. I like depending on myself.

By contrast, waiting on God, surrendering to God, depending on God alone—it makes me feel deeply insecure.

I would much rather know, regardless what God does or doesn’t do for me, that I have options. Like Sarai: “I’ll wait on God to help me for a certain amount of time, but if he doesn’t come through in the way that I expect, I’ll always have a ‘Plan B’ to fall back on.” How comforting! Hagar was Sarai’s Plan B.

What about me? Do I have a Plan B?

At this moment, for instance, for reasons of which you may be aware, the future looks far less secure than it used to look for United Methodist pastors. “Will I still have a career if this or that other ‘worst case scenario’ happens?” One anxious family member said, “At least you have that engineering degree to fall back on.”

Ugh! No! Don’t tell me that!

I know he meant well. And I’d be lying if I said the thought didn’t cross my mind, too—along with this troubling thought: “I’ve forgotten all engineering knowledge. I have nothing and no one to fall back on if this career doesn’t work out. I have no Plan B.”

But that’s beside the point: Following Jesus means that I shouldn’t have a Plan B! Either I’m all in for Jesus or I’m not!

Either Jesus is going to be my rock, my fortress, and my refuge (Psalm 31:3-4), or he’s not. He’s going to “supply every need of [mine] according to the riches of his glory” (Phil. 4:19), or he’s not. He’s telling the truth when he says that “all these things will be added to [me]” (Matt. 6:33), or—make no mistake—I am “of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19), and I have wasted my life.

But as his disciple, I’m supposed to be willing to bet my life that Jesus is telling the truth!

Am I betting my life? Or am I the Rich Young Ruler? “I’ll trust you, Lord, with 90 percent of my life. Ninety percent! That’s a lot! Just let me have 10 percent for myself.”

If so, be sure of this: Jesus has been and will continue disciplining me until I surrender that ten percent. Maybe that’s what “sanctification” is.

It hurts. But it’s good for me. So thank you, Jesus.
—

Footnotes:

1. One of those purposes, as with the blind man in John 9:3, is likely that “the works of God might be displayed” in her. Regardless, Christians who deny God’s meticulous providence over events in the world will hardly find evidence for their view in this particular scripture.

2. Not to mention the potential sinfulness of doing so: God’s intention for marriage, as revealed in Genesis 2:24, is one man and one woman only in a lifelong monogamous relationship.

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