Down with "Have-it-togetherness"

From Andrew Peterson:

Jesus is making us into something. C. S. Lewis wrote that God is making us into “little Christs.” We all ache for the day when we’ll be free of our sins, our bad habits, our bitterness, the things about us that we think ugly or undesirable. But perhaps the road of sanctification will be an easier one when we recognize in ourselves the sin of self-consciousness, the sin of reputation management, the sin of lying to ourselves. To live our lives with a pretense of self-sufficiency, strength, and have-it-togetherness is to diminish the visible work of God’s grace. One of your greatest blessings to the community around you may be your utter brokenness, it may be something about yourself that you loathe, but which Christ will use for his glory. When Jesus is Lord of our brokenness we are free to rejoice in the mighty work he has yet to do in us. We are free to enter the stage in the face of the devil’s accusation, “You’re not good enough.”

Zack Eswine: A Message For Ordinary Pastors

An amazing message for ordinary pastors. God doesn't think any more or less of you based on if we measure up to our perceptions of success.

No Not One!

Sung this hymn in church on Sunday. Music to the sinners ears!

1. There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus,
   No, not one! No, not one!
   None else could heal all our soul’s diseases,
   No, not one! No, not one!
2. 
   
3. Refrain:
4. Jesus knows all about our struggles,
5. He will guide till the day is done;
6. There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus,
7. No, not one! No, not one!
8. No friend like Him is so high and holy,
   No, not one! No, not one!
   And yet no friend is so meek and lowly,
   No, not one! No, not one!
9. There’s not an hour that He is not near us,
   No, not one! No, not one!
   No night so dark but His love can cheer us,
   No, not one! No, not one!
10. Did ever saint find this Friend forsake him?
    No, not one! No, not one!
    Or sinner find that He would not take him?
    No, not one! No, not one!
11. Was e’er a gift like the Savior given?
    No, not one! No, not one!
    Will He refuse us a home in heaven?
    No, not one! No, not one!

The Meaning of Grace

"What act could be more one-sidedly free and non-negotiated than one person raising another from the dead! This is the meaning of grace."
-John Piper

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved and raised up with him..."

Ephesians 2:1-6

Recovering Eden

Zack Eswine:

"But I commend to you that God has been about nothing but seeking to restore and recover what was lost in Eden."

In other words, grace restores nature. What was corrupt and lost in the fall, is now being regained in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Welcome to the Church of Brand Jesus

"A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code.Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God."

Romans 2:28-29

Commenting on these verses, Tyler Wigg Stevenson, author of Brand Jesus, asks, "...why are so many self-proclaimed Christians buying into the religious lifestyle, image, and identity, but not making the radical spiritual-ethical commitment to discipleship? How is it that there is so much Christian hypocrisy?"

The heart of these verses is that being part of God's family (Jew in the Old Testament, Christian in the New Testament) is not primarily an external matter, but is rather an internal matter with external fruit. In these verses, the Apostle Paul is critiquing the Jews of his day who claimed God, but did so only externally. They were good Jews because they were circumcised. Paul counters by saying that the external act of circumcision is ultimately meant to be an external mark of an inward reality, namely a life that has been transformed by the Spirit of God. 

Stevenson applies these verses to the contemporary Church by pointing out our tendency, much like the Jews in Paul's day, to rely on external marks as the evidence of our faith. For example, we might believe ourselves to be Christians merely because we belong to a church, or were baptized, or align with the religious right politically. We have external badges of honor, but our hearts are far from God. 

The problem, according to Stevenson, is that the Jesus we claim to believe in, is in fact, not Jesus as all:

"The startling question is, then, is Jesus Christ actually the one whom many self-proclaimed Christians have accepted? Or, as seems to be the case,  have consumer-minded Christians been led from the narrow road, drawn by the promises of an impotent spiritual commodity masquerading as the power of God? Welcome to the church of Brand Jesus." pg. 101

Stevenson's point: External badges of religion are insufficient. As Paul stated in Romans 2, the mark of a true believer is a circumcision of the heart, or, a transformed life. External badges (church membership, political affiliation, occasional acts of charity) are insufficient because they don't have any power. They give the mere appearance of Godliness, but are just as Stevenson describes 'impotent spiritual commodity masquerading as the power of God." These badges are not the result of a radical internal transformation. They are not the result of totally new, born again life in Christ. No, they are the rather feeble attempts to construct our self-justification. 

The only solution to this problem is the true gospel of Jesus Christ; namely, that our attempts to build our own kingdom, wherein we attempt to build our own identity, our justification, and our very sense of life before God is completely insufficient. But, in his great mercy and love, Christ came to give us life. Through his life, death and resurrection, Jesus has come to free us from this death sentence of self-sufficiency. 

But herein lies the problem. Stevenson's point is that if you look at the life of the American Christianity, it is clear that we are not living or preaching this true gospel, wherein lives are truly transformed. Rather, we are preaching and living a different faith; the faith of Brand Jesus. 

And this Brand Jesus fits in perfectly with our consumer mindsets in that it gives us exactly what our sinful selves want, all the while wearing a mask of true spirituality:

"Brand Jesus takes the promise of the Kingdom of God and offers another pseudo-Christian vision instead...Brand Jesus takes the tragedy of sinful life and without asking us to change our behavior in the plot, promises a happy ending. Brand Jesus takes everything our species' depraved imagination wants to believe is true about the world and feeds it back to us." pg. 104

"We are in fact, wholly conformed to the pattern of this world. So, while Christians should be radically different from everybody else, we find that Christians are no more different from practitioners of other lifestyles than those folk are from each other. We've made discipleship into one option among many, when it ought to stand separate, as different from other ways of living as Christ was from the world." pg. 103

In short, the American Church has submitted to a form of Christianity (Brand Jesus), wherein they are allowed to continue in their current desired lifestyle without any real transformation. Although they may have external badges, there is no power behind it. There is no real knowledge of the God. There is no real experience of God's grace. It is a pseudo-Christianity, giving the people enough religion to soothe their spiritual conscious, but denying the very nature of Jesus Christ. 

The only answer is to run to the gospel of God's grace. 

Tyler Wigg Stevenson, Brand Jesus: Christianity in a Consumerist Age (Seabury Books, New York, 2007). 

God With Us

Advent: God With Us from The Village Church on Vimeo.

I Like Adoption

A beautiful video. This is one of the clearest pictures of the gospel I have ever seen. Wow!

New Film Premiere - I Like Adoption. from ILikeGiving.com on Vimeo.

Forgive Me Asking

One from Propaganda's new album, "Excellent". Beautiful stuff here.

A Warning to My Readers

A poem from Wendell Berry:

Do not think me gentle

because I speak in praise

of gentleness, or elegant

because I honor the grace

that keeps this world.

I am a man as crude as any,

gross of speech, intolerant,

stubborn, angry, full

of fits and furies. That I

may have spoken well

at times, is not natrual.

A wonder is what it is.

"Every good and perfect gift is from above" James 1:17

A sobering reminder that everything and anything good in us is the result of God's grace. 

Once You Know That God Loves You

"If I speak in the tongues of mean 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. 

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritating or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends..."

1 Corinthians 13:1-8

"Once you know that God loves you as you are, you are free to make the choice that love makes: not to rejoice at wrongdoing but to rejoice with the truth that God has grace for other sinners. You are also ready to do what love does: you are ready to forgive, ready to serve, and ready to pour our the treasure of your heart for Jesus."

Phil Ryken, President of Wheaton College, commenting on 1 Corinthians 13.

Pictures of Grace

A testimony from Tullian Tchividjian's church, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.



Everything we so desperately seek and long for, Christ offers to us in himself. Jesus is the end of the endless treadmill of trying to be good enough. Jesus is the end of having to constantly compare yourself to others to see if you stack up.  All the acceptance and worth we so desperately want, in Jesus, we already have. 

You Are That Very Person

Good post from Erik Most, not to mention, a great quote from Charles Spurgeon's blog inspiring book, 'All Of Grace'. 

Spurgeon:

I have no gospel to preach to the self-righteous, no, not a word, Jesus Christ Himself came not to call the righteous, and i am not going to do what he did not do, No, I ask you rather to look at that righteousness of yours till you see what a delusion it is. It is not half so substantial as a cobweb. Be finished with it! Flee it!

"They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick" (Mark 2:17). Is it not equally clear that the great remedies of grace and redemption are for the sick in soul? They cannot be for the whole, for they cannot be of use to such. If you feel that you are spiritually sick, the Physician has come into the world for you. If you are altogether undone by reason of your sin, you are the very person aimed at in the plan of salvation. I say that the Lord of love had precisely such as you in his eye when he arranged the system of grace.

He that is a dirty sinner is the kind of man that Jesus Christ came to make clean, Come in your disorder. Come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. come to Jesus just as you are: leprous, filthy, naked. Come, though despair is brooding over you, pressing upon your chest like a horrible nightmare.

Brian Regan On Grace

Not sure if there are any Brian Regan fans who read this, but I randomly came across this post from Barnabas Piper (yes, that is the son of John Piper) where he expounds on a Brian Regan comedy bit. First off, the clip from Brian Regan is absolutely hilarious and is a stunningly accurate picture of our self centeredness. Second, Piper does a fantastic job of using this video to expound on gospel truths. For your entertainment and edification, I encourage you to check it out.

Brian Regan On Grace

Do Not Presume

"Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, 

'we have Abraham as our Father,' for I tell you, 

God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham."

Matthew 3:9

In this passage, John the Baptist is speaking to the Pharisees and Sadducees as they came to him to be baptized. John's message to the religious leaders was clear (like it was clear to the other people he preached to in Matthew 3:1-2). They needed to repent. In this case, it meant repenting from their presuming upon God. What exactly was their presumption ?

According to the passage, the Pharisees and Scribes assumed their position with God based on their religious heritage. They presumed that they were children of God because they were from the same bloodline as Abraham. They were good with God because of their tradition.

I love the gospel because it speaks to each of us in our self-inflated efforts to gain God's acceptance. It bids us to repent; to literally turn from trusting ourselves, to trusting in Christ. To those who think they are good with God because they are moral people, the message of repentance is that we could never be good enough to earn God's acceptance. In fact, the only one who did that was Jesus. Therefore, we must turn from our own moral record and trust Christ's moral record on our behalf. To those who try to be their own god, the message is repent. Turn from trusting yourself as god and turn to the one true and living God. To those who think they are good with God because they come from a rich religious tradition, God's message is repent. Your religious heritage cannot save you; only I can. So, stop trusting in yourself and turn to trust in me. Don't assume you are a true child of Abraham and thus a child of God because of your families religious tradition.

This makes me ask, in what ways do I presume upon God? In what ways do I think my self-efforts earn my acceptance with God. To me, I can imagine this passage saying something like, "Do not presume to yourself that you are a child of God just because you go to seminary, or because you are an active member at a church, or because you are in ministry."None of those are bad things. However, when we trust in these 'things' to give us acceptance before God, they are wrong. The gospel is that we are only accepted by God by grace through faith. It is Christ's finish work that gains our acceptance. There is nothing we could ever do to earn it. To attempt to do so, is to minimize Jesus Christ as our Savior. This is what this passage demands we repent of. Join me in doing so. 

The Object of Our Faith

"See, then, that the weakness of your faith will not destroy you. A trembling hand may receive a golden gift. The Lord's salvation can come to us even though we have faith only as a grain of a mustard seed. The power lies in the grace of God and not in our faith. Great messages can be sent along slender wires. The peace-giving witness of the Holy Spirit can reach the heart by means of a threadlike faith that seems almost unable to sustain its own weight. Think more of Him to whom you look than of the look itself. You must look away even from your own looking and see nothing but Jesus and the grace of God revealed in Him."

- All of Grace by Charles H. Spurgeon

"You No Longer Have to Spend the Rest of Your Life Chasing Your Tail"

A great post from Erik Most @ Glimpses of Grace. I am thankful for the gospel ministry of Tullian Tchividjian. This 6 minutes is well-worth listening to. Tullian is answering the questions posed in the book of Ecclesiates on purpose and meaning.


"He's saying look again at your sin. And be reminded that there is nothing you can do to save yourself. Then come up from that examination, and praise God! That in Christ, Jesus has done for sinners, like you and me, what we could ever do for ourself, EVER! And we can celebrate in this truth, that in my place he stood condemned, and sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior!"

Ministers, Not Messiahs

A great quote from Bishop Oscar Romero. This is a helpful reminder to me that ministry is God's work. It is something he is doing. I simply have the privilege of participating. It is a work that is far beyond me. It doesn't depend on me and my performance. I don't have to be a messiah. I am a minister of what God has done, what he is doing, and what he will do. He is the master builder and messiah.

"It helps now and then to step back and take the long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetimes only a tiny fraction of that magnificent enterprise that is God's work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. 

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church's mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything. 

That is what we are about. 

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. 

We lay foundations that will need further development. 

We provide yeast that will produce far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something and to do it very well. 

It may be incomplete, but is is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and to do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. 

We are the workers, not the master builder; ministers, not messiahs. 

We are prophets of a future, not our own."

True Community

"There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community."--M. Scott Peck

I like this quote because I think it captures one of the immanent desires of every human heart; the desire to know, and to be known. Or, in other words, to love and to be loved. As humans, we were created for community. We were made to be in communion with God, and we were made to be in communion with one another. As Peck states, ultimately, there is no life without community. 

But what holds us back from this community for which we were created? What holds us back from the peace and life we all long to experience and feel through this transparent community? It is the fear of being known fully. It is the fear that when we are vulnerable, and people see the real us, there will not be community, but there will be rejection. 

The gospel allows us to experience true community, with God and with others, because it frees us to openly recognize our hidden mess. It frees us to acknowledge our sin, our brokenness, our fears, our inadequacies. So, as Peck touches on, experiencing true community or "life", starts with taking the risk of being vulnerable. It starts with the recognition of our own need and our own longing to be known and loved amidst our hidden mess. It starts with coming to Jesus as we truly are, poor and needy sinners. Here, is where true life is experienced. This is where we experience grace, joy, and love the most. 

I Asked the Lord that I Might Grow

A great hymn by written by John Newton (guy who wrote Amazing Grace). I don't think there has been a time in my life where these words have been so true. Here is a video of the song with the lyrics. They are well worth listening to and meditating upon.

"These inward trials I employ

From self and pride to set thee free

And break thy schemes of earthly joy

That though mayest seek thy all in me"