Until the Return

Fourth of July

So, it’s another Fourth of July in the suburbs.

I’m looking at generations of faces looking back at me as we both watch the parade flow down Main Street.

Flecks of Lady Liberty hats, red, white and blue flags, and kids with face paintings dot the crowd, while the patriotic pageantry kaleidoscopes and meanders like a stream.

The scene is the essence of America. It’s a celebration of freedom deep in the heartland.

Freedom is a core American value. We think of ourselves as “free.” So, today, on July 4, we celebrate our freedom as a nation.

But right now I'm wondering how strong or deep is our freedom for the ten percent unemployed or the multitude of people whose jobs nervously sit on an financial knife's edge?

We celebrate independence, yet this week we found out we’re 11 trillion dollars in debt.

We celebrate our freedom, yet our insatiable hunger for more material things, our greed, and fear-driven meritocracy drive and enslave us.

We celebrate our liberty, yet is seems we often so easily let this freedom pervert us. We make personality cults of people—be it entertainers, athletes, CEO’s, military leaders, or our president.

Our “freedom” becomes our master; We worship created things instead of the creator and in the process become slaves.

We're Americans. We say we are free, but are we really?

I may be free from dictators, despots, or more coercive forms of government, but I am not free from my greatest threat of all: sin within me.

This Fourth of July reminds me again to not only honor the men and women who have served or paid the ultimate price for our country but, even more, to reserve my highest honor and praise to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit who has created the path to enjoy lasting freedom.

It is one thing to be freed from the tyranny of a dictator or despot, but quite another to be freed from sin’s domination of the heart.

I may not be totally freed from sin’s force in my life, but in Christ I’ve been freed from sin’s dominion. This is good news and I'm thankful for it this Fourth of July.

I'm buoyed by the hope that the coming day of Christ's return is also the ultimate and final Independence Day.

Ribaudo on Romans 1:5

". . . to bring about the obedience of faith . . ."

Paul was a multi-dimensional yet singular kind of guy. He was a church planter, pastor, teacher and mentor. At the same time, he did all these things to achieve one purpose, “to bring about the obedience of faith” in people.

It’s easy to let Paul's words here slip by because they are personal. Paul is talking about his life and ministry. Furthermore, the words seem a bit removed because, unlike Paul, we are not apostles. We’re just “ordinary” people with average jobs.

But think more closely about this. When you break it down, what is Paul really saying? When he writes that he is laboring “to bring about the obedience of faith” in people, is he saying anything different than what Christ commanded in The Great Commission in Matthew 28?
Laboring to bring about faith or more faith in Christ in others explains the very essence of what it means to "make disciples."

All believers, not just the apostles, are commanded to live Great Commission lifestyles. Do we? How high does bringing about the obedience of faith in others rank on our ladder of priorities? How often do we think or pray about it? How often do we allow it to shape our plans, our family interactions, or conversations with friends or colleagues at work?

Life is busy. Ministry is busy. But in all this hectic activity, are we busy about the single Gospel-strategic priority of living each day “to bring about the obedience of faith” right where we are?

May we grow in obedient faith in our minds and hearts first, so that we may be used more by the Spirit to bring about obedient faith to Christ in others.

Sound and Sense

Here's a poem from another of my favorite contemporary American poets, poet laureate, Ted Kooser. You can learn more about him here.

Father
Today you would be ninety-seven
if you had lived, and we would all be
miserable, you and your children,
driving from clinic to clinic,
an ancient fearful hypochondriac
and his fretful son and daughter,
asking directions, trying to read
the complicated, fading map of cures.
But with your dignity intact
you have been gone for twenty years,
and I am glad for all of us, although
I miss you every day—the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
On this day each year you loved to relate
that the moment of your birth
your mother glanced out the window
and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you.

Worth Noting

Tim Keller on idolatry and the need to bring the Gospel to our personal idols. Notes on the talk are here, or you can watch the video here.

Spiritual meat for hungry hearts.

Sound and Sense

Here is a poem from a fellow Chicagoan and one of my favorite contemporary American poets, Li Young Lee.

The Gift
To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he'd removed
the iron sliver I thought I'd die from.

I can't remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy's palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife's right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he's given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

Pray for Boldness

Having had the privilege again of filling the pulpit and preaching this morning, it's on my heart tonight to encourage any who read this and love Jesus Christ to pray for pastors who preach.

There are many things that could be prayed for--accuracy, clarity, or that sermons wouldn't be boring lectures or empty entertainment. This is all well and good.

But I'm moved to encourage us all to pray for courage. Specifically, pray for preaching and teaching from our pulpits that unflinchingly proclaim the full Gospel. Pray for preachers who will teach as much on sin, repentance, and carrying one's cross in following Christ, as they will on God's love, grace, forgiveness and heaven.

The reason why the Gospel is Good News is because it also contains the bad news: in Adam all have sinned, there is no one born who is righteous, or not under the wrath and judgment of God.

These are terribly hard sayings, to be sure. Many inside and outside the church today will not listen or endure this kind of messaging for a variety of reasons. But no matter. These hard, negative truths must be said--if the Gospel's Good News is to make any kind of sense or the believing in Jesus, as a kind of personal, therapeutic genie, is to be avoided at all.

So, pray. Pray for the preachers around the world. Pray for yourself, too. For are we not all called to be ambassadors for Christ and to do the work of The Great Commission in our daily lives?

I need boldness to speak as I ought when the opportunities arise. All believers need boldness and courage, and so do our pastors.

We need to speak the whole truth of the Gospel with love, wisdom, and humility--today more than ever.

Faithfulness to the historic, biblical Gospel is the heart of missional ministry and living today.

May the Spirit bless us to do it. Pray.

Reflections on Romans 1:2-4

" . . . by his resurrection from the dead" (4)

Although Easter is celebrated for one day, its significance must carry on in your mind and heart for the rest of the year. An ocean of Christian truth hinges on Paul’s three droplets of words, “ by his resurrection.”

By is resurrection, Paul says you know that Jesus of Nazareth  was the Christ “promised beforehand through his prophets.”

By his resurrection, you know that Jesus was fully man, according to King David’s lineage, and fully God, the very “Son of God.”

If Jesus Christ didn’t raise from the dead, then Christianity is a myth and your faith is worthless. As a recent ad campaign by an atheist group in Britain recently proclaimed in a blitz, “There’s probably is no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

The problem with this version of peace and joy is that they really don’t work in the real world.

Many brands of Jesus are offered by clergy today. Which one is real? Paul says here the one that is fully man, fully God, and who has historically risen from the dead is the real one.

Determine to worship the risen Jesus in your heart today and everyday this year.

Stay close. Follow this Jesus alone.

Reflections on Romans 1:1c

". . . set apart for the gospel of God."

Paul says that he was set apart for “the gospel of God.” He wasn’t just set apart for Gospel ministry, but for a whole new way of living. In Christ, he was now a “gospel man.” Notice this was “the gospel of God.”  The determining realities of his life were not from man, or himself, but from God.

God is the center of Gospel living--God the Father designed the Gospel plan in his eternal decrees, God the Son accomplished the Gospel through his birth, death, and resurrection, and God the Holy Spirit applied Christ’s work to your heart so that you became a new creation, and continue walk with him until glory.

Since the Garden of Eden there have been Gospel messages that seem to place the accent on what man does in salvation--what he believes, what he repents from, and what he does to come to and stay with God.

Life based on this belief isn’t Gospel living; It is living by another gospel--”the gospel of you” or “the gospel of man.”

But authentic Christian living is based on what Paul writes of, “the gospel of God.”

What does living like this mean? At a minimum it means two things. First, true Gospel living produces good activities and deeds. Faith without works is dead. It doesn’t produce a perfect life. It produces a life characterized by activities and deeds that are genuinely good in God’s eyes. But, secondly, and this is equally important, it means that you understand your doing in such a way that places God as the key agent and not yourself. It produces gratitude and joyful humility.

How do you think about your Christian conversion? Is it something that you did on your own, or something you did because God mercifully and graciously worked in you first?

Was your conversion a result of just your doing or mixture of God’s doing and your own decision or efforts, or was it totally a result of God’s divine power and work within you?

Knowing the difference is critical to a healthy, growing, personal walk with God.

Paul’s Gospel in the New Testament is exactly the same as the prophets proclaimed in the Old––”Salvation belongs to the Lord” (Jonah 2:9). 

Rest in God today. Give him all the glory for your life.

Reflections on Romans 1:1a

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus . . . .

Who are you? Are you clear about your identity today?

How we perceive and understand ourselves—our identity—powerfully influences how we live, relate to others, and the world.

The Gospel had a revolutionary impact on Paul’s identity and perception of himself. He daily listened to what God said about himself, in Christ, over what other voices said or, even more, what his own voice said. The Good News changed Paul's conscious self-perception, from a high status religious teacher to a slave, from a Pharisees to a follower, from a self-sufficient man, who worshiped himself, to a servant of Jesus Christ.

Paul’s identification with Jesus as a servant wasn’t an act of grudging yielding. Instead, daily himself with Jesus as a mere “table waiter,” (the literal meaning of “servant” here), was a willing, joyful, act motivated by the Redeemer's goodness grace.

Are we satisfied and content to see ourselves solely in terms of our union with Christ, as Paul does here? Are we willing to allow the fact of our union with Christ to trump all other ideas, roles, titles or notions that compete and attempt to define us? Until we are we, it’s difficult to see ourselves as Paul does--just “a servant.” We’ll be tempted to add other conceptions, words or titles to our identity. In doing this we denigrate the Gospel. We delude ourselves and believe we are more self-made than God-made. We think we are stronger to deal with the matters of the day, when in fact, we are weaker.

You can be a healthy, joyful, well-adjusted person today just being a slave of Jesus Christ. Does this seem unbelievable or crazy? Of course it does. Does this surprise you when you remember, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25)?

Christian, your joy and freedom today isn’t found in your bank account, accomplishments, or agreeable life situations. They’re experienced in being content to be “a servant of Christ Jesus” by grace alone through faith alone in the Son of God.

"Servant of Christ Jesus," calles us to the paradoxical reality of having an identity with a high call and humble walk.

Modern Take on Children's Classic Literature

Here's a story about combining some classic children's literature with the illustration at re-interpreted by contemporary illustrators. Beautiful. Enjoy.