(FREE Audiobook) If God's already planned it, what's the point of praying, preparing & sharing my faith?

There is an argument against evangelism goes like this: 

"If God knows all things, is in charge of all things, and has planned all things, my friend, neighbor or co-worker will trust Jesus no matter how much or how little I pray, prepare, or share with them."

In what is probably the New Testament's paramount passage on evangelism, the bottom-line, takeaway action verb is "persuade others" (II Corinthians 5:11). It is interesting, however: The Apostle Paul makes clear that neither the persuading nor the converting ought motivate us. Indeed, you can imagine how our persuasive performance (or lack thereof) might lead to disappointment about ourselves, bitterness toward God, and even frustration toward the slow of heart we are trying to persuade. Accordingly, Paul gives two motivations to open our mouths about Jesus: (1) The fear of God (II Corinthians 5:11); (2) The love of Christ (II Corinthians 5:14). 

He will ask us to one day give an account of how we have stewarded the good news and the tongue that GOD the Holy Spirit has entrusted to us (fear - see II Cor. 5:10) and Jesus has given his life for us (love). 

With such teaching, J.I. Packer reminds us in Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God that it's not up to us and, yet, there are enormous and compelling reasons for us to share. Indeed, adopting a vision of a God who is both Large and in Charge can significantly aid us in the cause of evangelism. J.I. Packer is arguably the greatest theologian of the late 20th century. While I don't agree with a couple of his finer points in explaining the doctrine of God's sovereignty, I wholeheartedly recommend downloading and listening to this Free audiobook for the month of May.

Providence or Parasite? (Sun Am Follow-up)

Sunday morning I had the privilege of leading our people to consider and apply Mark's version of one of Jesus' most famous and beloved miracles - the Feeding of the 5k (I can only assume because everyone loves food especially when super-sized miraculously!! Hollywood made their own version of miraculous food multiplication but Jesus' is the original). Mark's version focuses intently on the need for rest or, more broadly to include fun & play, "leisure" (6:31). Disciples of Jesus Christ are called to work hard and be used by Jesus (6:7-13), risk much for Jesus (6:14-29), but also plan to rest with Jesus (6:30-47). However, along the way, to increase our trust in Jesus, he may plan to satisfy you with a season of more work or more rest. The point is: Doing His will & letting his will, whatever it may be, satisfy you is the best R&R we can get. It was out of trust in His Father that Jesus himself said when his disciples were encouraging him to rest & eat: "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish his work" (John 4:34). 

So plan for work for and be used by Jesus, plan to rest with Jesus, but satisfy yourself with whatever Jesus brings your way.

The set-up. That's about as far as I could get on Sunday. But I left out an important question when it comes to "whatever," or more specifically, "whomever," Jesus brings your way. Some thing or, rather, some ones come between the prospect of rest and the reality of more "work" for the disciples:

"Now many of them saw [the disciples and Jesus retreating by themselves to a desolate place] and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them" (Mark 6:33). 

Some of you know this scene from your own life. Understand, due to the position of the Sea of Galilee set in a bowl from which you could see people heading down from the hills and the relatively small size of the Sea, the disciples were watching as in slow motion the reality ahead of them developing. Tired, having given all you can give, people - perhaps some of them the same people you just ministered to - are U-turning back your way to ask for more. Is such a person part of God's providence - His gracious plan for every thought, action, and member of His creation - OR parasite - someone who has begun to look to you and depend on you for what only Jesus can provide them? Providence or Parasite?  (**Please note: I recognize each person as inestimably valued by God and created in His image - only that some persons begin to function parasitically in certain relationships)

Fleshy hearts are always the right start. Something happens when you trust your life to Christ and begin to walk with him: You wish to pass on the same love with which Jesus has loved you. You are not only gifted with a new kind of love but a totally new heart: 

Ezekiel 36:25-27   ²⁵ I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  ²⁶ And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

You may have cared for people before, but there always a hint of selfishness - whether it be to 'have that good feeling,' elicit a response from another, or what at the time seemed like a wholly altruistic purpose but now you recognize: "that was mostly for me." When Jesus invades your life, you learn to love freely because He puts His free love into this free heart given to you. Something else happens: You learn that growth as a Christian continues along as you begin to help another along to further trust and grow in Jesus. It was as a young Christian I heard Dr. Howard Hendricks say: "We begin to grow when we begin to take responsibility for another person." All of this is good and right. But there is a seedy underbelly for taking responsibility for growth of others that begins to show itself when (not if) others exploit it. Please hear me: As a Christian you can't avoid being exploited and used - when you offer to others in word & deed a message of a free gift apart from works - some will take the free gift and rob your works. However, I'm talking about the occasional person you will run across who takes and takes and takes. How can you tell such a person apart from them being someone God has providentially put in your path?

Understanding shepherds. I think our first clue in answering this question comes in Mark 6:34: "When [Jesus] went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things." Jesus had compassion. Though the crowd was filled with liars, cheaters, hypocrites, users-of-people, holier-than-thous, it is toward such (like us) Jesus has compassion. Compassion is a fantastic word - the Gk. is splangnizesthai which lit means "a longing from the bowels." This suggests that Jesus' physical constitution was affected - their pain literally makes him sick to his stomach. Again, the tender, responsive, fleshy middle - where the heart is located - is exemplified in Jesus. Why is Jesus splangnizethai'd? "Because they were like sheep without a shepherd." So Jesus will be their shepherd, right? He will hold them in his arms, cuddle closely, feel the warmth of his heartbeat against theirs. Except that would entirely misunderstand what Jesus means here by "shepherd." The shepherd/sheep metaphor in the Old Testament is indeed a rich one, but also perhaps misunderstood. James Edwards notes in his commentary on Mark: 

"As a metaphor, the shepherd of sheep was a common figure of speech for a leader of Israel like Moses (Isa. 63:11) or more often of a Joshua-like military hero who would muster Israel's forces for war (Num 27:17; 1 Kings 22:17; II Chronicles 18:16; Jeremiah 10:21; Ezek. 34:5; Ezek 37:24; Nahum 3:18; Zechariah 13:7). It is, in other words, a metaphor for hegemony, including military leadership and victory. In his compassion, Jesus sees a whole people...without a leader." 

In other words, these aren't people looking to mooch off the disciples, tell their sob story for the umpeenth time hoping someone will finally take them in as their own, nor be adopted as the sole and consuming pet project of one of the disciples, nor stop by every so often fishing for affirmation and compliments - these in Mark 6 are looking for a strong leader to lead them that they might become strong. Another way to put it: Some are looking to stay coddled lambs always nursing on newborn milk, but not here - these are looking to be healthy functioning, and productive sheep - dare I say: Strong Rams. Such people approach you in weakness but also seek guidance toward deliverance and change. 

Don't get me wrong, these are all wonderful images of Jesus that you may find in any church nursery built in the 1970s.

Teach us to care through prayer. Jesus leads others to himself by teaching them "many things" (v.34). This is how he begins to shepherd people looking for genuine change. While teaching truth about Jesus has a critical place, we can begin to lead others to the Shepherd through prayer. One reason prayer I have found prayer not just spiritually but also practically so helpful is that early on in an encounter or relationship prayer begins shed light upon whether the person has come to find life or to rob it. 

A busy man once relayed to Oswald Sanders: 

"Up to some years ago, I was always annoyed by interruptions...then the Lord convinced me that He sends people our way. He sent Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch. He sent Barnabas to Saul. So when someone comes in, I say, 'The Lord must have brought you here. Let us find out why He sent you. Let us have prayer.' This does two things. The interview takes on new importance because God is in it. And it generally shortens the interview...pleasant but brief." 

What I have found fascinating is that often times people don't really want prayer - they get antsy when I suggest it or, upon saying "Amen," immediately continue on with the complaint right where they left off as if prayer were a sneeze or a yawn mid-sentence that has no bearing on one's stream of thought - not to mention attitude or perspective. Prayer then either: (a) Brings the person to the One who can give life, sustain growth, and transform weakness to strength; or (b) Exposes an unwillingness to change. I've found great assistance from the Psalms so that I'm not just praying my own words but God's and subtly teaching the person to develop their own prayer language with Him also. I've also found it helpful to have a "go-to" Psalm. Mine is Psalm 130 (It gives a person words to the need for both help from circumstances and forgiveness from sin, truth that God alone can forgive, insistence on how we are to wait upon the Lord, and why God alone satisfy us - all in 8 verses!). Sometimes I'll pray it out loud but if I have a second Bible handy I encourage the person to look and pray with me.

Eugene Petersen wrote a brilliant article years ago, which was also a chapter title in a book of his, called "Teach us to care, and not to care." His thoughtful expose really helped me answer the question: How do you help people who wish to be helped and how can you tell who those people are? I'll leave you with this lengthy excerpt:

I do not mean simply praying for people, although that is involved. I mean teaching them to pray, helping them to listen to what God is saying, helping them to form an adequate response. Teaching people to pray is teaching them to treat all the occasions of their lives as altars on which they receive his gifts. Teaching people to pray is teaching them that God is the one with whom they have to deal, not just ultimately, and not just generally, but now and in detail.

  Teaching people to pray is not especially difficult work — anyone of us can do it, using a few psalms and the Lord’s Prayer — but it is difficult to stick with it, for we are constantly interrupted with urgent demands from family and friends to, as they say, “do something.” And it is difficult to get the person who has asked for help to stick with it because there are a lot of other people in the intersection, offering short-cut approaches for providing care, shortcutting God and promising far quicker results. It is difficult for all of us to stick it out, for often in the confusion and noises of wasteland traffic, it is hard to stay convinced that sin and God make that much difference.

   But difficult or not, this is our calling. Whatever else we are doing is with our hands, with our feet, with our minds — bandaging, directing, giving. This is the core of what we are doing, getting them in touch with God, with neighbor, receiving love, grace. If we do not use these occasions of need to teach people to pray, we cave in to the pressures of care in which there is no cure.

Paul's advice: Look around for reasons to Hope

Former U.S. first lady Laura Bush visits with Karen Refugees
in Thailand (Aug 2008).

I can't wait to tell you a (true) story. But first, a little context to help grasp its relevance to our lives. This Sunday under the big top, I had the privilege to continue to preach through Paul's letter to the Colossians. Paul reminds the Colossians of how good judgment day will be if they continue to with a rooted and steadfast faith "not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard" (Colossians 1:23b). One of the most reliable evidences of a genuine faith is an ongoing hope in the gospel over performance. When you mess up, screw-the-pooch, jump the shark (a.k.a "sin against a Holy God"), the habit of how you respond is perhaps the most critical inward series of decisions one makes in the Christian life. 


Really there are two roads to take: Hope in the person & work of Jesus Christ expressed through the gospel to forgive you of sin, restore you to God, and change you OR hope in anything else (your own performance and so in failure spiral into guilt & shame; next time - as in convincing yourself to work harder next time; plans & checklists you make so it won't happen again; the rationalization that "everyone makes mistakes")? 


Look Around for Hope. But hoping in the person and work of Christ can be challenging so Paul follows up "not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard" with an interesting statement:

which [the gospel] has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister (Colossians 1:23c-d).

Seems to be one of those verses you just read, acknowledge and go on. But having studied this a bit, I believe what Paul is doing here is saying: "Here's how you can begin to reinforce and access hope. LOOK AROUND and see the gospel spread before you. It made me - the persecutor/killer - into a someone who loves it & would give his life for it and it's influence is spreading universally ("in all creation under heaven")." It's for hope that Paul mentions 500+ persons who witnessed the resurrected Christ (1 Cor. 15:6 - Paul mentions this for those who doubt: "Hey, they are still alive, go ask 'em yourself"). It's for hope that 10 out of 12 apostles - simple men from different backgrounds die for the gospel (the 11th is permanently exiled...and the 12th, well, after betraying Christ he dies a death worse than anything in the opening scene of "Saving Private Ryan"). We garner a little hope in the fact that their are an estimated 2.5 billion persons in the world trust the person & work of Christ as we do.


"But Christianity is the norm." One of the major objections I hear to all of this, especially by folks from the UK, U.S., Canada, South Africa, and Cayman, is that we were merely "born into it." Christianity is the dominant religion in each of the cultures and so we were culturally conditioned to adopt and accept that "Jesus Christ died for my sins." The anomaly, the radical act is when people choose not to believe that into which they are born. That's a fair point. However, it overlook the hundreds of documented cases in which people from cultures/tribes/societies who previously had little to no Western/Christian contact were radically, supernaturally, & providentially prepared to both hear & receive this gospel. I didn't get a chance to share an example of this on Sunday and it's what I wish to share over the blogosphere today. This particular story (though there are, remarkably, many like it) radically reinforced & breathed new life into my hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ and is an example of what Paul means with regard to the gospel's influence "in all creation under heaven" (Col. 1:23c). May it likewise renew or reinforce your hope.


The Karen of Burma: People of the Lost Book. (Recounted from Don Richardson's book, Eternity in Their Hearts). In 1795, a British diplomat was visiting Burma (In 1824, Britain would launch a series of attacks against this country which borders Southeast China and for about a century ruled this otherwise closed and reclusive nation as one of its colonies). While in the more rural parts of Burma, the diplomat ran across a different group of people known as the Karen (pronounced "Carian"). The Burmese hated the Karen because they had stuck with their own "folk religion" and refused to adopt the national religion of Buddhism. 


The Burmese guide explained to the British diplomat, "This is most interesting. These tribesmen think you may be a certain 'white brother' whom they as a people have been expecting from time immemorial!...This 'white' brother is supposed to bring them a book. A book like one of their forefathers lost long ago." Upon returning, the diplomat reported this bizarre experience to his superior, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Symes. Symes in turn mentioned it in a manuscript entitled An Account of an Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava in the Year 1795, published 32 years later in Edinburgh, Scotland. 


In 1816, a Muslim traveller happened upon a remote Karen village about 250 miles south of Rangoon. He was "light-skinned" and thus, according to this 'prophecy,' examined thoroughly. In a bizarre twist, he ends up giving them a book he claims contains writings about the true God ("What?! The Koran???!!"...wait for it...). The village sage kept the book wrapped in a muslin and it was venerated. Years later a anthropologist named Alonzo Bunker would live among the Karen and he reported that their sages would teach the people ancient truths through songs/hymns and stories. First, an example of a hymn:

Y'wa formed the world originally.                                                                             He appointed food and drink.                                                                                    He appointed the "fruit of trial."                                                                                  He gave detailed orders.                                                                                    Mu-kaw-lee deceived two persons.                                                                                               He caused them to eat the fruit of the tree of trial.                                                         They obeyed not; they believed not Y'wa...                                                                        When they ate the fruit of trial,                                                                                               They became subject to sickness, aging, and death...                          

Um...wow!  They believed that because of the people of Karen transgressed the commands of Y'wa (I mean how much closer can you get to Yahweh?!), they were specifically cursed with no books. So all of their sacred truths are passed on through centuries of oral tradition. Listen to another such truth that involves the temptation of Mu-kaw-lee. Having gone through a scene already strikingly reminiscent of Genesis 3: "Then Mu-kaw-lee replied: 'It is not so, O my children. The heart of your father Y'wa is not with you. This is the richest and sweetest...If you eat it, you will possess miraculous powers. You will be able to ascend to heaven." 


There are also songs of hope. Here's just an excerpt from one (think the Book of Isaiah): 

When the Karen king arrives,                                                                                There will be only one monarch.                                                                                        When the Karen king arrives,                                                                                          There will be neither rich nor poor. 

Despite the ubiquitous, pervasive and sometimes violent influence of Buddhist idolatry in Burma, the Karen held fast to the hope of these prophecies fulfilled - of a Book & a King.


In 1817, an American Baptist missionary, Adoniram Judson, journeyed and settled near Rangoon, Burma. After diligently learning the Burmese language, he found little response to his attempts to share with them the gospel. One day, a tough-as-nails Karen man approached the household where Judson was staying. Gradually Judson began sharing with him the gospel. At first, he didn't seem to be able to make sense of it all. But then this man, Ko Thah-byu, began asking questions about the origin of the gospel and these "white strangers" who had brought the message (and the book that continued it) from the West. Suddenly, it all fell into place for Ko Thah-byu, and he trusted his life to Christ. Concurrently, a newly recruited missionary couple - George and Sarah Boardman, arrived to assist Judson. George Boardman opened a school for illiterate converts. Ko Thah-byu quickly enrolled. Soon he realized he was the first among his people to read "the lost book." When the Boardmans were to leave for southern Burma, Ko That-byu begged them to take him with them. There, they baptized Ko That-byu and immediately commissioned him for a journey into the hills of Southern Burma.


Villages flocked to hear Ko Thah-byu until finally he and the Boardmans encountered that sage who had received that precious book from the 'light-skinned' Muslim just years before. They carefully unrolled the Muslin and opened the cover of the book, which proved to be: The Book of Common Prayer and the Psalms. Turns out it was the only book the Muslim man happened to have on him. "It is a good book," remarked Boardman, "I will teach you to worship the God whom this book reveals and of the greater book from which this is written." The sage consequently became a humble, godly man, having trusted his life to Jesus Christ. 


Well, you can guess what happens from here. Having clearly but mysteriously prepared a people to hear and receive it, God spread His gospel like a brush fire among the Karen. Hundreds of thousands trusted their lives to Christ. Within 90 years, 250,000 Kachin people (neighbors of the Kachin people) professed to trust Christ. 


A really cool "little-thing-through-which-God's-reminds-us-of-His-awesome-soveriengty-over-all-things," happened to me this past Friday -- I received in my inbox an update about the Karen people from Voice of the Martyrs Ministries. The email came to my inbox before I learned about the Karen people but didn't open and read the email until after learning about them. A local Buddhist monk recently drove 300 Christians from their homes after they refused to participate in Buddhist-sponsored activities & rituals. Voice of the Martyrs has helped them buy land, pay taxes, and already build five new homes. Seems that this is a people whose faith has endured, "not shifting from the hope of the gospel" (Col. 1:23c).


So when you begin to doubt the power of the gospel and start to hope in people, plans, pleasures that seem to provide at least a temporary balm amidst a cruel world, remember the gospel isn't just for Westerners, for the country of which you're a citizen, for the church which you grew up in, or the family in which you were raised, it is, in the Paul's words, "the power of God for salvation" (Rom. 1:16) and is effective everywhere - even in the most remote place - you might look. It goes far beyond anything our puny hearts or minds could dream up as a reliable hope - it was global before globalism and the age of internet and it will be the only global message when all is said and done. 


To the praise and glory of Jesus Christ!

What's the Particular Grace God has given you?

Particular Grace in Prison

Last night I had another opportunity to speak & visit with prisoners at Northward Prison out toward the Savannah area. Every time I go, I'm convinced that I'm exceedingly more blessed listening to the Spirit speak through these men than they are by hearing from me.

Anyhow, last night I spoke on the "Importance of WHY." I knew they'd been asked by so many persons-- Guards, Wardens, Pastors, Volunteers, & society-at-large -- to reform. When I asked them: "Reform what specifically?," they all agreed -- their behavior. I communicated to them that God cares about WHY? because He cares about our hearts & He has far greater and more certain reasons for reforming than the other reasons they told me they'd been given. I shared a few verses about this and closed by challenging them to think, really take time to think about: "Why do you do whatever it is you do?." And make a little list (even if it's a mental one).

Why did I go in this direction? Well, I was recently considering God's immense goodness towards each person no matter their current situation. God gives saving grace through faith in His Son. He also gives general grace -- God "sends rain on the just & unjust" (Matthew 5:45). But I also think he gives another kind of grace that I'll call, for lack of a better term, Particular Grace.

Particular grace is a blessing given by God that is remarkably unique to one's circumstances & situation in life. I asked the prisoners to tell me about a typical day and then I asked them, "How much time to you get to think?" The response was overwhelmingly in the favor of "plenty" to even "Too much." For these prisoners, one particular grace God had afforded to them was time to think. Few others outside prison walls are either afforded or take advantage of time given to think & ponder.

This truth really resonated with them. So much so that one inmate who is in prison for life, got up after me and started challenging the other 30 or so men regarding if they ever stop to think about why they do what they do. He said he'd been asking himself the same question. He pressed home the gospel message as the superior answer to "Why?" Men then began to share both with everyone and then privately afterwards that they'd heard so much from preachers and thought they knew right answers and right reasons, but recognized their real reasons for doing things were way off.

Particular Grace in the Bible

One of the foremost examples of this notion of particular grace is the Apostle Paul and his calling to minister the gospel to Gentiles (ie. the non-Jewish world):

Of this gospel I was made minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ (Ephesians 3: 7-8).

Paul woke up to the notion: "Of course God would put me, of all people, in this situation & circumstance." He implies just this above: "I am the very least of the saints." But because of his past of persecuting Christians and thinking he would please God by being a model Jew, he was even more convinced:

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life (I Timothy 1: 15-16).

"Of course it was me. I was complicit in murdering Christians while being more zealous than anyone about earning favor with God through righteous acts. If God forgives & has a plan for me (of all people), He supremely demonstrates the infinite, mind-blowing nature of his forgiveness & patience." As a side note: We can also see that particular grace is mingled with the idea of calling. But not only can calling be a more general calling toward all persons (see I Thess. 5: 16-18), but calling also connotates burden & responsibility. There is a sense in calling can be a burden & it is certainly a responsibility -- but for today, I'm choosing to focus on such a particular blessing as grace.

Particular Grace allows for an Opportunity to Respond

As you might be able to tell from the previous examples, particular grace allows for an opportunity to respond. And this is true of grace in general -- the responses of faith, then repentance, & then obedience to saving grace through Christ. Responses of thanksgiving to unmerited favor when we receive rain & sunshine from Above. Furthermore, particular grace is often borne out of hardship -- consider prison for the inmates & going immediately blind when first meeting Jesus to significant persecution for the remainder of his life in the case of Paul.

Particular Grace applied to Us

So I've been considering the particular grace God has given me. I want to offer two. The first is God calling & moving us here to pastor a church in Cayman. On the one hand, what God has called us to is tantamount to a church plant. It has been filled with a lot of excitement as we watch God work to grow His church, but it has also required a lot of extra hours of tender and watchful care. On the other hand, island life is laid back. We're more isolated and there isn't as much to do. For instance, Scuba Diving is good times -- but usually lasts 4-5 hours and isn't conducive to the Saturday of a husband and father of two young kids. The particular grace given ever since God called us out of our old church and we had some time to regroup is: Extra & more focused time with the fam. It has proved to be a tremendous blessing just to hang more with my family. The opportunity to Respond: Stepping up to be more intentional as the leader of my family. Christ-centered family traditions, taking opportunities with boys to share with them their need for Jesus, praying and reading God's Word with Katie, setting an example of love & holiness as I'm around them more. All are blessed opportunities to respond.

A second involves Katie specifically. In order to cover Mason's tuition, Katie is currently teaching Art part-time at a small, private school (first time she's ever taught). Concurrently, she's being certified to teach on the island through a full school year of classes. Sufficed to say, some particulars have changed since the beginning of September. Obviously, a number of challenges presently exist for Katie (but I won't speak for her...she has her own blog). The particular grace in this for me is to step up in dying to self and sacrificing as a husband and dad. Why is this a grace? I know relying on Christ's help to die to self and give of myself, I'll become more & more like Him! The opportunity to Respond: For the first two years of being a dad, I was so selfish (still am). I've always been stubbornly independent. But my Father has patiently helped me gradually die to self toward my family. Now, he's asking me to die further -- which really is just further life ("He who loses his life for me will find it"). Plus, the high degree of laundry-folding improvement makes Katie think I once worked retail at Old Navy...maybe even Abercrombie.

What's the particular grace God has given you?

What opportunity for response has He laid at your feet?