imagination as a gift

There are a lot of things I have come to believe by God’s grace.  I do believe.  And then, in a moment of intimacy with my children, I realize that it is one thing to believe a propositional declared truth… it is another thing altogether to imagine such good truth to be TRUE.

Last night, Lina and Meggie and I were finishing the last chapter of The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones.  It was all about the kingdom of Christ and his heaven coming to earth.  It was biblical theology that mattered and could be imagined.  Lina – “Linna” (5) – sat up and her eyes conveyed the imaginitive glory.  “So, daddy, it’ll be like a whole new world.”  Yep.  “So, if I die and then Jesus breathes on me to come into his new world, I might not live here anymore… I might live in that state where Uncle Kurt and Aunt Carla live.  Or maybe in Georgia.”  Maybe Lina, but I like how you called it ‘Jesus’ new world.  That makes a lot of sense to me.  “But daddy, I might be scared in heaven because I won’t find you.”  No Lina, it’s impossible for you to be scared in heaven… because in heaven there will be no tears or pain, not even fear.  And Jesus won’t let you be alone.  And I don’t think we’ll be apart, because we’ll all be doing the same thing – praising Jesus together!

I could go on.  But I would rather “treasure these things in my heart” – in a sense they are wordless anyway.  The point is, last night, through my child’s imagination, I experienced real belief.  I couldn’t paint a picture for her of something I casually held to.  What a gift.  Thank you God for your work in my children “of promise” who make your promises new to me day after day.

community of weakness

“Community” is not just a loaded postmodern word.  It is biblical and should be life for believers – “for we are members of one another”(Eph. 4:25).  Thought I’d share a quote or two once again.  Challenging to be sure, and right up the weakness alley for good reason.

  

   

“Community is the place where our limitations, our fears and our egoism are revealed to us.  We discover our poverty and our weaknesses, our mental and emotional blocks, our affective or sexual disturbances, our seemingly insatiable desires, our frustrations and jealousies, our hatred and our wish to destroy…  An experience in prayer and the experience of being loved in community, which has become a safe place for us, allows us gradually to accept ourselves as we are, with our wounds and all the monsters.  We are broken, but we are loved.  We can grow to greater openness and compassion; we have a mission.  Community becomes the place of liberation and growth.” – Jean Vanier

   

  

“We grow as we commune.  Because information has been the sacred cow of the Protestant tradition, we have minimized the importance of community growth out of fear that the information will be compromised.  Sadly, in doing so, the church has allowed the greatest stumbling block to be put in the path of the believer – the demand for growth without the support of community.”  – Kyle Strobel

passing on the wisdom…

This post is less for people reading and more for the one writing (me). 

Kyle Strobel briefly attended TEDS (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) while I was there.  Yep, his dad is Lee Strobel.  His book, Metamorpha is challenging me – not just in the sense that I think the worldview of the church needs to be challenged (I do, continually…), but how my own worldview is often calcified and solidified and I have my own presuppositions about everything.  Yes, I’ll say it – even this weakness thing.  So here are some of his words from Metamorpha by which God engaged me in a devotional way (O, and for me, it helps that Kyle and I are the same age, writing from a similar demographic in the same generation).

 It may sound strange, but I believe much of Jesus’ ministry was about worldview development.  The disciples had a very solidified understanding of what the kingdom would be like (political, military, religious)…  [Jesus helped them deconstruct their worldview.]

We should have some beliefs that we hold strong against critique.  But we must not allow our way of looking at reality to permanently set, and this is just what many of us have been taught to do…  Our worldview can become so inflexible that we see our personal views about the Bible as authoritarian and certain, and we regard any new or different information as dangerous and wrong.  Sadly, what we call “faith” is more like self-trust because it is rooted in our ability to wrap our minds around the things of Christianity and is not oriented toward God himself. 

The longer we live as Christains, the easier it becomes to have rigor mortis of the eyes – to solidify our presuppositions about the Christian life so that we only see the text through our worldview.  In this way, to a very real degree, we fail to see the text at all.

We need an entirely new way to engage reality – one that refrains from arrogance and seeks God’s redemption.  The Christian life is a journey of redemption, a developmental process of growth.  Our visions of life [worldview] should constantly be changing and re-forming [via the Word, Spirit and community];  the enemy of a healthy faith is a worldview that is static and “complete.”

May Kyle’s words not just be used by the younger evangelical generation to critique our spiritual parents’ worldview… but as a critique and challenge for ourselves as God would transform us anew (metamorphosis) through his gospel.  May the weaknesses of our inexperienced-yet-often-dogmatic-worldview be exposed and redeemed.

If interested, Kyle is a cofounder of an online Christian community for transformation: www.Metamorpha.com. 

redeeming our worldview before redeeming the world

“Our Christianity can often look more North American and modern than distinctively Christian.  Our churches often take their priorities and values directly from the society in which they exist and simply Christianize them.  The story we are telling has everything to do with the worldview we have, and redeeming this worldview should be central to our lives as disciples.”   – Kyle Strobel, Metamorpha: Jesus as a way of life

He says better than me what I am trying to say.  Maybe this whole weak Christian bit is about redeeming a worldview of strength that is so commonplace in our churches.

a hospital not a museum

My dad recently had surgery - though he’s not in the hospital… so this is not about him.  But get better dad. 

I recently had a conversation with a fellow-pastor.  In our banter, he referenced the adage, “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”   Kinda goes with the “strong faith is for weak people.”  In fact, he had been told to use the word “strong” as many times as he could in our conversation just to see if he could tick ole weakchristian off.

Most of us have heard the statement before.  A nice saying.  Catchy and memorable.  But actually, it’s a harsh saying that won’t win many points among “strong Christians” if pastors/teachers/believers actually believe and declare such a thing.  It is one thing to say it (it sounds great to the strong and the weak) it is another thing to BE it.  It is anything but normal and expected and politically correct in the church.   Yet it is biblical – “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”(Mark 2:17). 

Imagine the mess if the church were truly a hospital for sick sinners with no place (but the waiting room, I guess) for self-declared healthy people!

Think about it.  This kind of a church has to be oozing and gross and urgent.  It calls all of us to look BOTH at our wounds/weaknesses and those of others (not just our closest friends – would never work in a hospital).  It calls for that kind of self-discovery and divulgence!  We only know a wound if it is visible (external authenticity) and we only know an illness if it has manifestations (internal tranparency).  That is the description of the church.  Kinda like in Patch Adams, all patients are doctors, because no doctor is exempt from being a patient. 

The church is a gospel hospital where the balm is always the gospel and the patients are the doctors who are the patients. 

OK, so that was one conversation last week (about the church being a hospital).  Then this week, Kori (my wife) said to me – “I think I have it figured out.”  Figured what out, I asked.  She said, “Why life and relationships (etc.) often seem harder for believers than unbelievers.”  She went on: “Because if Jesus came to call the sick, not the healthy…  and those who are in Christ’s church are the ones he has called… then we’re all the messed up really sick ones who need his grace the most.”  And I think she’s not funny.  Nice.  (Not implying that those outside the church are healthy and don’t need the gospel – my wife is orhodox.)

So 2 recent conversations, both without Scripture reference, yet both pointing me to Mark 2:17.  THEN, I got up this morning and studied for my sick soul what I’ll be preaching in 2 weeks.  Go figure, Mark 2:13ff.    p-r-o-v-i-d-e-n-c-e.  These conversations will reappear from a pulpit near you.

gospel preaching

Yesterday I went to a church planting seminar that focused on gospel centered preaching.  If you read weakchristian regularly, you’ll recall that a few weeks ago, I posted about my philosophy of preaching.  Surprisingly – I received many comments evidencing your intrigue and/or thanksgiving for the post (even though preaching is not something most of you are passionate about).  So, that being the case, I figured I would pass on some ‘sermonic’ gospel-preaching quotes I received yesterday.  It helps me to type them out – go figure, my fingers help my memory.  Enjoy.

___________________________________

From a sermon by C. H. Spurgeon: 

” A young man had been preaching in the presence of a venerable divine, and after he had done  he went to the old minister, and said, ’What did you think of my sermon?’ 

‘A very poor sermon indeed,’ said he.

‘A poor sermon?’ said the young man, ‘ it took me a long time to study it.’

‘Ay, no doubt of it.’

‘Why, did you not think my explanation of the text a very good one?’

‘Oh yes,’ said the old preacher, ‘very good indeed.’

‘Well, then, why did you say it is a poor sermon?  Didn’t you think the metaphors were appropriate and the arguments conclusive?’

‘Yes, they were very good as far as that goes, but still it was a poor sermon.’

‘Will you tell me why it was a poor sermon?’

‘Because,’ said he, ‘there was no Christ in it.’

‘Well, said the young man, ‘Christ was not in the text’; we are not to be preaching Christ always, we must preach what is in the text.’  So the old man said, ‘Don’t you know young man that from every town, and every village, and every hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London?’

‘Yes,’ said the young man.

‘Ah!’ said the old divine, ‘and so it is from every text in Scripture, there is a road to the metropolis of the Scriptures, that is Christ.  And my dear brother, your business when you get to a text, is to say, ‘ Now what is the road to Christ?’ and then preach a sermon, running along the road towards the great metropolis – Christ.    And,’ said he, ‘I have never yet found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if I ever do find one that has not a road to Christ in it, I will make one; I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savour of Christ in it.’ 

Tim Keller: “The Bible’s purpose is not so much ot show you how to live a good life.  The Bible’s purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome… religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted.’  But the gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted [by God in Christ], only then will you ever begin to obey.’  Those are two utterly different things.  Every page of the Bible shows the difference.” 

Steve Brown:  “If I have to tell people either how to be good or how to love Jesus, I don’t even question which to say.  If they love Him and mess up everything else, it’s no great loss.  If they don’t love Him and do everything else right, they can lose eternity.” 

C. H. Spurgeon:  George Whitefield and John Wesley may have preached the gospel better than I, but they could not preach a better gospel.” 

Martin Luther:  ”Preach the gospel to yourself every day, because you forget it every day.” 

Jerry Bridges: “When I understand the gospel, I understand that there is nothing I can do to make God love me less, or to obligate God to love me more.” 

D. Martin Lloyd-Jones:   “It does not matter… if you are guilty of murder as well as every other vile sin, it does not matter from the standpoint of being justified before God.  You are no more hopeless than the most respectable person in the world.  Do you believe that? 

The church in a position of cultural weakness

This is long.  But please read all of it slowly.  Chew the cud with me.   

_________________________________________________________________________________ 

I was cleaning up my office last Friday, going through the papers and magazines I had set aside months ago… and I found the February/March 2007 edition of byFaith magazine.  The cover caught my eye: Finding Strength Where We’re Culturally Weak.  Interesting, I thought. 

I have wrestled, written and preached so much about weakness as a theological concept, that I inadvertently have found myself considering weakness to be the position of strength in ministering to our weak culture.  But this article took a different tact: we must not simply think about the weakness of the culture, but about the fact that in today’s culture, the church is in a culturally weak position (as regards influence compared to yesteryear). 

The article was written by Sam Wheatley, pastor of New Song Salt Lake Church (PCA).  His thesis was poignant: “In most of the United States, the Christian church is in denial.  We played such a vibrant role for so long that it’s impossible now to believe that our respected position is eroding – and that a generation is growing up around us without even a basic understanding of our faith.  The reality is that North America is now a mission field, and this is a fact we can no longer ignore.”  In other words, the church is no longer in a position of cultural influence and prominence (except maybe in the Bible belt, but even that is questionable) – we are in a position of cultural weakness.  According to the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey: 30% of all regular churchgoers are over 65, while only 11.6% are between 18-30.  Yep, cultural weakness.

So, I guess we put it together like this: The church is called to minister to a weak culture enslaved to sin and pain, and we are to do so from the reality of our being in the position of cultural weakness.  This is money, and here’s why:  How in the world are we to show the culture its weakness and need of the gospel if we deliver our message from the angle of cultural superiority or influence?!  We can’t – not effectively anyway.  Try as we may, it won’t be as effective as our humbly being the beggars at the table (the positionally weak) who serve the culture of this world to expose its weakness. 

Here’s how Wheatley puts it for all of us (not just his missionfield in Utah): 

“Utah matters because it is a preview of America’s future – where historic Christianity exists as a minority faith – where our tried and true ministry approaches are suspect; where something more solid than pragmatism is needed; and where we must determine how to salvage the essentials, retool the important, and jettison what doesn’t matter.”  (Nice writing.)

“Being an outsider, the church regains its role as servant.  When Christianity is not the dominant faith – as in Utah – when it’s forced to take the lowest seat at the table, it renews its understanding of service, and rediscovers the promise that the greatest is least (Luke 22:@3-30).  From a position of cultural weakness, the church renews her dependence on the Lord.”

This has HUGE implications!  I told someone recently that I see myself as a missionary as much as a pastor (and I need more work at being a missionary than a pastor, to be true).  He responded almost inquisitively… So you actually see yourself as a missionary.  Yes I do.  I must, because times of have changed!  I cannot presume that my neighbor or grocery clerk thinks highly of God or the gospel or the church, let alone understands such things!  And then in THAT place, where there are no presumptions about my cultural influence, there is such ministry freedom!   I no longer try to minister the gospel with a ’tried and true’ mentality.  Rather, it is a no holdsbar mentality – just engage the weak culture through my position of weakness!  Freedom.

According to Wheatley, here are the advantages for the church that is “culturally weak.”

The church becomes a praying congregation.  “Being an outsider drives us to pray, not as a duty to be checked off the list, but as a means of survival.  The church that grasps the human impossiblity of its task will become a praying congregation.”  “Prayer is not the icing for the ministry, it is the bread.”

The church becomes a listening congregation.  “Being an outsider gives us power in evangelism because it forces us to listen.  When we are not driving the cultural agenda, we have the luxury of being able to listen, and to do so with genuine curiosity.” [Why would we ever trade the privilege of listening to individuals in a broken culture for being the aloof drivers of some cultural/political agenda? Never!]

The church has to rethink its practices in light of Scripture alone.  “Because our worship and behaviors are not like those of the normative culture, we regularly have to explain and defend our positions.  The servant church finds only one source sufficient in guiding these interactions – the Word of God.”  In other words, from a position of cultural weakness, the fact that we have “always done it this way” doesn’t gain much creedance.  (This is not to say that church history and practice doesn’t matter.  Integrating history with redemptive cultural creativity is a whole other topic.)

Thank you Pastor Sam.  What truth.  What privilege.  What preference (for me).   We (the church) should not lament being in a culturally weak position!  

Because when we are in the position of weakness, we – as persons and churches – have to rely on the gospel. 

Because when we are in the position of weakness, we get to serve those who think they are strong (culturally, anyway) while we teach them about their weakness. 

For the sake of the gospel, could it be that it is a good thing that, in today’s culture, “our respected position is eroding”?  Well, maybe it’s not a good thing.  But if we are the missionaries we are called to be in this culture of weakness, it most certainly doesn’t have to be a bad thing.    

taking gospel naps when we are weak

Today I was reading a work by Edmond Clowney, How Jesus Transforms the Ten Commandments.  I am on the chapter about the fourth commandment – “Remember the Sabbath Day by Keeping it Holy.”  I found some insightful things regarding my preoccupation with weakness.

I don’t know where you are in your wilderness of weakness.  Maybe neck deep in rising floodwaters.  Maybe knee deep in quicksand.  Maybe scratched and bruised as you bushwhack through life’s jungle.   Maybe frustrated with people who write in metaphor.  I don’t know your weakness – but I KNOW this: rest is possible here and now for those who are in Christ – no matter how exhausted you feel.

Clowney makes the point that not only has God called us to rest on the Lord’s Day… he has told us something about himself through the very Sabbath command.  “The Sabbath marks the fact that God delights in the presence of his people” – enough that he would command us to stop and sit down and just be with him in the middle of the desert (or floodwaters, or jungle) of life.  Say it slowly: “My God delights in me enough that he wants me to rest from surviving this world of weakness to be with him in my weakness as I am.”  Nothing more.  Not Sabbath performance.  Not Sabbath discipline (though it requires it).  Just Sabbath rest.  Can I do that for even 5 minutes without the TV on?  Hmm…

And here’s the thing: this is all more spiritual than it is physical!  Christ fulfilled the Sabbath rest for us – see Colossians 2:16-17.  The Sabbath day (when we rest and recognize our physical weakness) is but a shadow of the rest Christ has purchased and promised to his people (a spiritual rest borne out of our recognition of spiritual weakness)!  Jesus is Lord of your rest because He is Lord of the Sabbath.  This is speaking of gospel rest! 

So I guess we could say it like this.  God has called us to take gospel naps in the midst of our weakness in anticipation of the eternal gospel rest where we will experience the pleasure of God and will pleasure in God forever – no weakness to wake up to then.  “There still remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God”(Hebrews 4:9).

So, try God on this one.  Take a gospel nap in your weakness.  Set aside time.  Preferably on the Lord’s Day before or after all of God’s people gather in corporate gospel rest time (like kindergarten, I guess).  But do it.  Rest in your weakness.  We need physical naps when we are tired.  We need spiritual gospel naps when we are weak. 

When have you let the Lord of Rest recalibrate you for the weakness of this broken world? 

“Only united to Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath, can we fulfill all our Sabbath duties, finding rest in God’s presence and entering into an eternal rest that satisfies all the hope of the original Sabbath day of rest.  Not only will we find rest for our bodies, as they are transformed in resurrection, but we will find in Christ both our place of rest and our time of rest…”  – Edmund P. Clowney

There is more here… so email me/comment if a conversation would help. 

Psalm 116:5-13

I am working on my project again – specifically on the chapter about a “theology of weakness.”  Any verses of Scripture that you hold dear that speak to your weakness and enable you to live in the power of the gospel?  Share them!

For example, this morning I saw the gospel engage my weakness yet again in Psalm116:5-13…

Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful.  The Lord preserves the simple; when I was brought low, he saved me.  Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. 

For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling;  I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. 

I believed, even when I spoke, “I am greatly afflicted”; I said in my alarm, “All mankind are liars.’

What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?  I will lift up the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.

wilderness of weakness

Today I preached.  At the end of my sermon I referenced two quotes that people asked me for.  I told some of you that I would pass them on through the blog. 

Mark 1:9-13 – “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being opened up and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.  And he was out in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan.  And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.” 

^{Robert Murray McCheyne –  “You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness.  Then, he is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation.”}                   

^{NT Wright -   “The whole Christian gospel could be summed up in this point.  That when the living God looks at us, at every baptized and believing Christian, he says to us what he said to Jesus on that day.  It seems impossible, especially to people who have never had this kind of support from their earthly parents, but it is true: God our Father looks at us, and says, “You are my dear, dear child; I am delighted with you.”}                                                                

I then closed my sermon:

“Is it enough for you, right now, that in the howling wilderness of sin God has sent someone different for us to relate to – his Son who was victorious in our wilderness- so that we could relate to him as his beloved children?  Is it enough?  Or is it your demand that the wilderness go away?  Listen, the truth that God has come to relate to us in Christ is not only for your salvation in the wilderness… it is for your survival.”