Gerald's Blog

Come - I'll Show You How

2012-01-17T22:48:00.000-05:00

Christian discipleship is both show AND tell

This past Sunday we began looking at spiritual heroes from Hebrews 11. I made application by encouraging us to be intentional in setting good spiritual examples for others to follow. That afternoon I read the following quote from DA Carson that beautifully reinforces this idea.

In his book From the Resurrection to His Return: Living Faithfully in the Last Days (Christian Focus), Carson asks: “Do you ever say to a young Christian, ‘Do you want to know what Christianity is like? Watch me!’ If you never do, you are unbiblical.”

Carson goes on to write:

You who are older should be looking out for younger people and saying in effect, ‘Watch me.’

Come—I’ll show you how to have family devotions.

Come—I’ll show you how to do Bible study.

Come on—let me take you through some of the fundamentals of the faith.

Come—I’ll show you how to pray.

Let me show you how to be a Christian husband and father, or wife and mother.

At a certain point in life, that older mentor should be saying other things, such as: Let me show you how to die. Watch me.

Source: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2012/01/14/how-to-influence-a-younger-christian

We Should Not be Surprised – We Should Be Broken

2012-01-09T21:56:00.000-05:00

It's been over a year since I posted this blog. It's a graphic and disturbing now as it was when it was first reported. I repost it because we need to remember. We need to repent. We need to be ministers of truth and grace.

Even a society that can’t wait for the next graphic horror film seems to be repulsed by the news this week from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

“In his squalid West Philadelphia abortion clinic, Kermit Gosnell had a surefire way of dealing with the unwelcome complication of a live birth: He'd allegedly plunge scissors into the squirming newborn's neck, killing it by severing the spinal cord.

Sometimes, the elderly physician didn't do this right away. Often, he allegedly gave the chore to his unlicensed office staff. One premature infant wiggled around on a counter for 20 minutes before an untrained worker slit his neck - after first playing with him.

Those allegations were among countless bombshells in a 261-page grand-jury report that District Attorney Seth Williams released yesterday.

Gosnell killed "hundreds" of babies and at least two women during abortions from 1979 to last year at his Women's Medical Society at 38th Street and Lancaster Avenue, according to the grand jury. Further, he and his unlicensed, unskilled staff overdosed patients with drugs, perforated their wombs and bowels, and spread venereal disease by using unsterilized equipment, the report said.” (http://www.philly.com)

The Inquirer reported that a Grand Jury charged Gosnell with infanticide in the deaths of seven viable infants and with murder in 2009 of a Nepalese refugee who died of too much anesthesia at Gosnell's clinic. Other charges against Gosnell include conspiracy, solicitation to commit murder, abuse of a corpse, and corrupt organizations, corruption of minors, drug offenses, hindering prosecution and violations of abortion law.

The District Attorney Seth Williams called is a “House of Horrors” that was so filthy that grand jurors, visiting the clinic months later, wore hazardous-materials suits.

In his blog that addresses this issue Dr. Al Mohler writes,

These cases illustrate the pattern of moral confusion found among the public. News of the “house of horrors” in Pennsylvania brings prompt moral outrage, and understandably so. But is the abortion clinic on the corner, established for the purpose of killing unborn children, any less a house of horrors?

Millions around the world seem outraged……, but having accepted the basic logic of abortion, they are hard-pressed to define when any abortion demanded by a woman might be unjustified and thus illegal.

The Christian revulsion over abortion and the destruction of human life is based in the knowledge that God is the Author of all life and of every life, without exception. Abortion is the business of death, and it is the great wound that runs through the nation’s conscience. These shocking accounts may sear their way into the nation’s collective conscience, but unless the basic logic of abortion rights is overturned, such accounts will erupt again and again. Once we buy into the logic of abortion, there is no end to the trail of tears.

Amen, Dr. Mohler! We should not be surprised when this kind of atrocity is ultimately uncovered. Indeed I’m surprised we don’t hear of it more often. As Dr. Mohler says, “is the abortion clinic on the corner any less a house of horrors”?

We should not be surprised, but we should be broken. We should be broken over the sin that covers our self-centered, “it’s all about me and my choice” nation. Our nation is stained by this travesty. So same stain covers the church that remains apathetically silent.

We have a responsibility to warn. This responsibility to “warn the wicked to turn from his way” is one that God takes very seriously (Ezekiel 33:8)

We have a responsibility to point to and light the way so those in darkness can by God’s grace see where they should go. Paul’s words to the church in Philippi and for us as well. “…that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life.” (Philippians 2:15-16)

Shine church, and hold fast to the word of life. Our nation is dying without it.

Child of Rape

2012-01-09T08:51:00.001-05:00

Sunday, January 22 is the National Sanctity of Human Life Day. This week I will be focusing on this important matter in my blog. The following article was posted last week by Tim Challies.

For most of her 100 years, Minka Disbrow tried to find out what became of the precious baby girl she gave up for adoption after being raped as a teen.

She hoped, but never imagined, she’d see her Betty Jane again.

The cruel act of violence bore in Disbrow an enduring love for the child. She kept a black and white photograph of the baby bundled in blankets and tucked inside a basket.

It was the last she saw of the girl — until the phone rang in her California apartment in 2006 with the voice of an Alabama man and a story she could have only dreamed.

Disbrow, the daughter of Dutch immigrants, weathered a harsh childhood milking cows on South Dakota dairy farms. Her stepfather thought high school was for city kids who had nothing else to do. She finished eighth grade in a country schoolhouse with just one teacher and worked long hours at the dairy.

On a summer day in 1928 while picnicking with girls from a sewing class, Disbrow and her friend Elizabeth were jumped by three men as they went for a walk in their long dresses.

Both were raped.

“We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know what to say. So when we went back, nothing was said,” Disbrow recalled.

Months passed. Her body began to change.

Disbrow, who had been told babies were brought by storks, didn’t know what was happening. Her mother and stepfather sent her to a Lutheran home for pregnant girls. At 17, she gave birth to a blond-haired baby with a deep dimple in her chin and named her Betty Jane.

In her heart, Disbrow longed to keep her. But her head and her mother told her she couldn’t bring an infant back to the farm.

A pastor and his wife were looking to adopt a child. She hoped they could give Betty Jane the home she couldn’t.

“I loved that baby so much. I wanted what was best,” Disbrow said.

She never met them, or knew their names. But over the years, Disbrow wrote dozens of letters to the adoption agency to find out how her daughter was faring. The agency replied faithfully with updates until there was a change in management, and they eventually lost touch.

Disbrow’s life went on. She married a fruit salesman who became a wartime pilot and drafting engineer and they had two children. She worked as a dressmaker, silk saleswoman and school cafeteria manager in cities spanning from Rhode Island to Minnesota and Northern California before moving to the seaside town of San Clemente an hour’s drive north of San Diego.

Every year, she thought about Betty Jane on her May 22 birthday.

Five years ago, Disbrow prayed she might get the chance to see her. “Lord, if you would just let me see her,” Disbrow remembers praying. “I promise you I will never bother her.”

On July 2, the phone rang.

It was a man from Alabama. He started asking Disbrow, then 94, about her background. Worried about identity theft, Disbrow cut him off, and peppered him with questions. Then, the man asked if she’d like to speak with Betty Jane.

Her name was now Ruth Lee. She had been raised by a Norwegian pastor and his wife and had gone on to marry and have six children including the Alabama man, a teacher and astronaut Mark Lee, a veteran of four space flights who has circled the world 517 times. She worked for nearly 20 years at Wal-Mart — and especially enjoyed tending to the garden area.

Lee knew she was adopted her whole life, and grew up a happy child.

It wasn’t until she was in her 70s that the search for her biological parents began. Lee started suffering from heart problems and doctors asked about the family’s medical history. She knew nothing about it. Her son, Brian, decided to try to find out more and petitioned the court in South Dakota for his mother’s adoption records.

He got a stack of more than 270 pages including a written account of the assault and handwritten letters from a young Disbrow, asking about the tiny baby she had cradled for a month. He then went online to try to find one of Disbrow’s relatives — possibly through an obituary. “I was looking for somebody I thought was probably not living,” said Lee’s now-54-year-old son. He typed Disbrow’s name into a web directory and was shocked when a phone listing popped up. “I kind of stopped breathing for a second.”

On the phone with her biological daughter, Disbrow was in disbelief. Her legs began to tremble. She couldn’t understand how a naïve dairy farm girl without an education could have such accomplished grandchildren.

A month later, Ruth Lee and Brian Lee flew to California. They arrived at Disbrow’s meticulous apartment on a palm tree-lined street armed with a gigantic bouquet of flowers.

Disbrow couldn’t get over how Lee’s hands were like her mother’s. Lee was amazed at the women’s similar taste in clothing. They pored over family photo albums and caught up on the years Disbrow had missed.

“It was just like we had never parted,” Disbrow said. “Like you were with the family all your life.”

Since then, the families have met numerous times. Disbrow has gone to visit grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Wisconsin and Texas. She is planning to travel to Alabama in the spring, where they will celebrate her recently marked 100th birthday.

Disbrow has started sharing her story with members of her church and community. The Orange County Register ran a story about Disbrow’s journey in December. The family’s improbable reunion also made the local newspaper in Viroqua, Lee’s hometown in western Wisconsin.

“It has been such a surreal, amazing experience that I still think sometimes that I will wake up and it will just be a beautiful dream,” the 82-year-old Lee said.

Disbrow’s daughter Dianna Huhn, 55, of Portland, Ore., said the reunion has filled a void for her mother — one that for many years, the sharp, stylish woman with sparkling blue eyes kept a deep, dark secret.

“I have never seen my mother as happy,” said Huhn.

Sharing the Meaning of Christmas in Central Asia

2011-12-22T04:05:00.001-05:00

The following story was written by Shawn Hendricks, Managing Editor of the Biblical Recorder, and published in the December 19 edition. "Jack" and "Jane" grew up here, so Westwood knows them well.

Jane was in the middle of explaining how God had called her family to one of the toughest areas in Central Asia when the Skype connection went dead.

A few minutes later the couple called back. Their backup generator kicked on and the conversation resumed. Jane and Jack, who are unable to use their real names for security reasons, seemed almost apologetic about having a generator in a place where most of the locals at that moment were without power and sitting in the dark. Still, through Southern Baptists’ support of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and Cooperative Program, this IMB (International Mission Board) couple is able to do their work with as few interruptions as possible. Jack and Jane, both of North Carolina, are two of nearly 5,000 IMB missionaries serving overseas. Most live in challenging parts of the world where there is little to no access to electricity, running water, Wal-Mart – and most importantly – access to the gospel.

For more than a year, the couple and their two children have lived in a Central Asian city. Because of the risks involved with living there, few details about the people, the city and their work can be shared in this story. It’s a difficult and spiritually dark place where fathers have been known to kill their own sons or daughters for converting to Christianity.

“That is a big issue here – persecution,” Jack said.

“What do you do? How do you handle it? How do you spread the gospel in the midst of persecution? I mean violent persecution – even from family.”

The couple already had to move earlier this year out of one house into another because of security issues. Leaving their house to run a simple errand can even become a logistical nightmare.

Being there, however, has already created some unexpected ministry opportunities for the family – especially during the Christmas holiday season.

“The holidays have been a huge way to talk about [faith],” Jane said. “You can actually prepare a little speech,” she added, noting her struggle to learn the local language.

“You can memorize three or four sentences of why you’ve done what you’ve done – whether it be decorating your house or whatever.”

In recent weeks the couple has put up a Christmas tree with all the lights and decorations. But step outside their door, Jack said, and it’s “just another day.”

“We play Christmas music to get us in the mood, but once you hit the street ... it’s not a holiday season at all.”

Living in this part of the world as missionaries wasn’t always something the couple thought they’d be doing with their lives.

“We never – as children, as teenagers, after we were married – had any intention of being in any sort of ministry role much less anywhere other than small town North Carolina,” Jane said.

“We were set up on the family farm with our house, and our jobs and our cars and set to do small-town life. It’s very different than we thought our lives would look like, but we don’t doubt that this is what God had planned.”

Early next year, Jack plans to begin teaching a local believer what a church would look like in that part of the world. Jack and Jane also will continue their language lessons.

“Language learning has definitely been more challenging than I was anticipating,” Jane said.

“It’s been a hard thing. You’re pumped up ready to be here, and you get on the ground and can’t speak a word. [But] we’ve seen a lot of God’s goodness and bringing people across our path … who have been a huge encouragement to us.”

Jane remembers telling one local friend – while practicing the language – about how Jesus rose from the dead three days after being crucified.

“Her eyes just got so wide, and she looked at me and she [said] ‘Back to life? After death, he came back to life?’ The truth of such an unbelievable story was really hitting her.”

Jane spoke of another woman with whom she continues to build a relationship.

“She’s not open right now to having a copy of [the Bible] in her home,” Jane said.

“We’re praying she would be willing to take a copy of it and read it herself. She’s very close. Every time we talk about it … I think she is getting close. That’s encouraging to me to stick it out and try to pursue these relationships.”

Jane remains thankful for support from Southern Baptists. It allows her family and other IMB missionaries to live among their people group and build ongoing relationships.

“[Without the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering,] we wouldn’t be able to have the conversations we’re having with people … to be able to tell somebody ‘yea, Jesus is alive’ and them be shocked because they have never heard.”

That support also gives missionaries the opportunity to provide logistical support and advice for churches with a desire to engage – or “embrace” – unengaged, unreached people groups and build relationships over time.

Southern Baptist churches – including many N.C. churches – continue to seek to help engage people groups with no church planting strategy and less than a 2 percent evangelical presence.

Relationships must be built in order to talk about deep spiritual issues, Jane said.

“You can’t build relationships with people … over the Internet or by just sending funds for food distribution,” she said. “You have to have a relationship with these people [for them] to be comfortable … to ask you questions.”

“If there is nobody here [to build those relationships] they’ll never know,” she added.

“They’ll never hear [the gospel]. How can they hear it unless somebody tells them?”

The Legacy Lives On

2011-12-13T09:51:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday I mentioned Mrs. Eldora Windham as an example of faithful obedience (in the pattern of Jesus’ mother, Mary and SBC pioneer missionary Lottie Moon).

We saw an old picture dated November 16, 1952 of the Windham family at church the day before they left for the mission fields of India. The writing on the edge was faded and impossible to read.

After the service Sunday Mrs. Rosalind Tolin came up to me thanking me for introducing Lottie Moon to many who did not know her story. She went to on share how she and a couple of other Westwood members were present that day in 1952 when the picture was taken.

Here are ‘folks from around here’ packing up, loading up their kids, leaving their family and going far away to tell others about Jesus. The setting was Clement Baptist Church, and the image was still fresh on the minds of those who were there. And the Windham’s were not the only ones to go from Clement!

This morning I received the following email from onother Westwood member, Phyllis Clayton:

Dear Gerald,

I understand you nor Jeremy could read or understand the writing on Eldora’s picture you showed on the screen. Let me share with you about that picture.

When we cleaned out Mother’s things after Christmas (being the first of this year), we found some pictures that were in reference to Clement history. Mother was the church clerk as well as the historian for Clement Baptist Church for many years. Apparently these pictures got “lost” in the shuffle. But about Mrs. Windham.

The picture was taken at the bottom of the front steps of Clement Baptist Church. It was taken by Mrs. Addie C. Wilborne, who was a VERY missionary minded lady in the church. (That is her husband with his hand on his hip in the background). And she wrote on everything.

The caption on this picture reads: Sun. Nov. 16, 1952. They left next day to help let people of India know of Savior born on Christmas Day.

In the picture are: Eldora and husband Milton, the little boy is Wray, and the girl is their oldest child, Bobbie. Youel would have been the black blob. Twila was born later in India.

So yes, I grew up always knowing that Clement had a missionary in a far away country, India. and always knowing Eldora was from “just across the creek” from us.

And when Eldora and I met again at Westwood, I felt like I already had family there. She was a person I hold dear in my heart, and yes, I miss her still.

Thank you, Gerald for letting me share.

Phyllis (Clayton)

THANK YOU Raye and Phyllis for sharing this with us! What an amazing testimony to the influence of faithfulness. Faithfulness demonstrated not just in going to the mission field, but faithfulness demonstrated in a lifetime of humble Christlikeness and obedience. I am so thankful for people like Eldora, who even though they are gone they are still influencing the lives of others. Their legacy lives on.

"The last thing that turkey will see is me screaming at him at about 900 feet per second!"

2011-11-18T10:00:00.001-05:00

The following was posted by Greg Gilbert on the 9Marks blog. I LOVE IT!!

When he dies, Clem Parnell expects his soul to ascent heavenward. He wants his ashes to be loaded into a shotgun shell and blasted at a turkey.

"I will rest in peace knowing that the last thing that turkey will see is me screaming at him at about 900 feet per second," Parnell said.

Parnell and his business partner, fellow Alabama state game warden Thad Holmes, believe other hunters have similar hankerings. This summer, they launched Holy Smoke LLC, which offers to load the cremains of customers into shotgun shells, rifle cartridges, and bullets.

For about $850, a customer wil receive 250 shotgun shells, 100 rifle cartridges or 250 pistol cartridges packed with the deceased's ashes. Discounts are available for the military, police, and firemen.

After most funeral rites, scattered remains become trodden dirt; gravesites go unvisited; and ash-filled urns sit unnoticed, Holmes said. Loading up a loved one for one final duck hunt would be a more fitting send-off, he insisted, especially for an avid outdoorsman.

"We want to give people an alternative to celebrate a person's life," he said.

Holy Smoke insists that remains are handled reverently by a team of ATF-trained loaders. There is no commingling of ashes, and unused cremains are returned. Parnell, a Southern Baptist, said all seven Holy Smoke employees are "good Christians, with good moral values."

"Just because you're getting shot out of a gun doesn't make it irreverent," Holmes assured.

Putting the Brakes on Our Impulse Toward Luxury

2011-11-16T17:29:00.000-05:00

As December approaches you will begin to hear more and more from me about our upcoming Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions. Over the past couple of weeks I have used the phrase “Lay Away for Lottie”. This is a takeoff on all the Christmas spending commercials we are seeing that encourage “lay-away” to buy your gifts early and “pain-free”. My point in “Lay Away for Lottie” is to encourage you to begin now praying, planning and setting aside weekly (or each pay period) a sacrificial financial gift to go towards this annual missions offering.

(More info in Lottie Moon and this offering can be found at http://www.imb.org/main/give/pagelm.asp?q=Lottie+moon )

I read an interesting article by John Piper in which he outlines several benefits of faithful Christian giving. Biblical stewardship “puts the governor on our natural impulse toward luxury”. Piper writes:

There is an almost infallible human rule: spending expands to fill the income. If you make more, you buy more, and the things you buy have to be stored and repaired and insured. Spending begets spending. If you have less at your disposal, you spend less. And most of the time you don't even think about it. I spend absolutely no time thinking about world cruises and $30,000 cars. But if I made two or three hundred thousand dollars a year, pretty soon things like that wouldn't seem any more strange to me than all the stuff I buy now—because I could afford it.

If this is true—if expenses almost inevitably expand to fill the income—how shall we restrain ourselves from accumulating more and more stuff and more and more expensive stuff, and looking to the world like we have all the same values they do in our little earthly prelude to eternity? The answer is that as our income grows, we move beyond the tithe. We resolve to give a greater and greater percentage of our income to advance the kingdom. This puts the brakes on our natural impulse toward luxury.

Illustration: John Wesley

Take John Wesley for example. He was one of the great evangelists of the 18th Century, born in 1703. In 1731 he began to limit his expenses so that he would have more money to give to the poor. In the first year his income was 30 pounds and he found he could live on 28 and so gave away two. In the second year his income doubled but he held his expenses even, and so he had 32 pounds to give away (a comfortable year's income). In the third year his income jumped to 90 pounds and he gave away 62 pounds. In his long life Wesley's income advanced to as high as 1,400 pounds in a year. But he rarely let his expenses rise above 30 pounds. He said that he seldom had more than 100 pounds in his possession at a time.

This so baffled the English Tax Commissioners that they investigated him in 1776 insisting that for a man of his income he must have silver dishes that he was not paying excise tax on. He wrote them, "I have two silver spoons at London and two at Bristol. This is all the plate I have at present, and I shall not buy any more while so many round me want bread."

When he died in 1791 at the age of 87, the only money mentioned in his will was the coins to be found in his pockets and dresser. Most of the 30,000 pounds he had earned in his life had been given away. He wrote,

"I cannot help leaving my books behind me whenever God calls me hence; but in every other respect, my own hands will be my executors."

In other words, I will put a control on my spending myself, and I will go beyond the tithe for the sake of Christ and his kingdom. (Quotes from Mission Frontiers, Sept./Oct. 1994, nos. 9–10, pp. 23–24.)

Trapped in the Cult of the Next Thing

2011-11-07T12:39:00.000-05:00

The following essay was written in 1999 and published in Christianity Today. Susan and I often use it when we counsel couples and individuals about their finances. I’ll confess we don’t use it enough to counsel ourselves! I offer it to you for your careful consideration as we work our way through 2 Corinthians 8 and 9.

Trapped in the Cult of the Next Thing Mark Buchanan

If ever there was a cult that gave us stones when we asked for bread, this is it.

September 6, 1999

I belong to the Cult of the Next Thing. It's dangerously easy to get enlisted. It happens by default—not by choosing the cult, but by failing to resist it. The Cult of the Next Thing is consumerism cast in religious terms. It has its own litany of sacred words: more, you deserve it, new, faster, cleaner, brighter. It has its own deep-rooted liturgy: charge it, instant credit, no down-payment, deferred payment, no interest for three months. It has its own preachers, evangelists, prophets, and apostles: ad men, pitchmen, celebrity sponsors. It has, of course, its own shrines, chapels, temples, meccas: malls, superstores, club warehouses. It has its own sacraments: credit and debit cards. It has its own ecstatic experiences: the spending spree.

Most of us spend more time with advertisements than with Scripture.

The Cult of the Next Thing's central message proclaims, "Crave and spend, for the Kingdom of Stuff is here." Sanctification is measured by never saving enough: for the cult teaches that our lives are measured by the abundance of our possessions. Those caught up in the Cult of the Next Thing live endlessly, relentlessly for, well, the Next Thing—the next weekend, the next vacation, the next purchase, the next experience. For us, the impulse to seek the Next Thing is an instinct bred into us so young it seems genetic. It's our paradigm, our way of seeing. It's our unifying Myth. How could the world be otherwise?

For Christians, this is a problem. The problem is ethical, spiritual, theological. And, of course, practical. The one time Jesus got violent was when the temple had been made into a marketplace. Jesus brooked a lot of things with uncanny calmness—demoniacs yelling at him, religious leaders plotting against him, thick-headed, slow-hearted disciples bossing him. But moneychangers and holy-trinket sellers put a wildness in him. And lest we miss the object lesson, Jesus puts his opposition to the Cult of the Next Thing in plain speech:

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. … So don't worry about having enough food or drink or clothing. Why be like the pagans who are so deeply concerned about these things? Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs (Matt. 6:24, 3132, NLT).

Paul, too, had a thing or two to say about the cult:

People who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is at the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows (1 Tim. 6:910).

We know all this, but simply knowing it doesn't usually help. The cult is big, powerful, well organized, flawlessly run. It is so dominating it can usurp almost any impulse—even the impulse toward simplicity: You can package it, market it, and make a profit off of it. It renders even its enemies into minions, turns even protests against it into pithy slogans. Recently, a whole range of ads—from cars to clothes to CD players—have traded on a growing resentment against commercialism. Forty-thousand-dollar sports utility vehicles are touted as the magic means of escaping the artificiality of a world locked into work and shopping. These ads are put together without any hint of irony.

No satisfaction I am writing this on a computer I bought a little over a year ago. Then, it was one of the most powerful and advanced machines available to the ordinary consumer. Now, a year and some months later, it is, by industry standards, sluggish and clumsy, unable to handle the latest innovation in software.

But here's the real problem: all that bothers me. I look, every week, at the fliers from computer and electronics superstores and see computers more powerful, with greater speed and bigger monitors and much more memory—and for considerably less money than I paid—and it bothers me. I feel cheated. I feel saddled with a clunker. I wonder: Should I upgrade? Should I trade up? Yet here I sit, the words popping up as fast as I type them, amenable, at the stroke of a key or the click of a mouse, to all kinds of effortless manipulation—cut-and-paste, deletion or duplication, spell and grammar checks, graphic enhancements. I have dozens of fonts and pictures, and if that doesn't please me, I can pull up endless more from CD-ROMs.

This computer will play music while I work. It can answer my phone. It can link me to the resource catalog of the New York Public Library. I can shop for just about anything, pay for it, and have it delivered, all without leaving my chair. This computer talks to me—a lovely, slightly seductive female voice, perfectly pitched between a business tone and an intimate one. I have a microphone, and if I could figure out how it worked, I could talk to this computer. This machine is more than I'll ever need. It is, in truth, more than I'll ever use: whole sections of its labyrinthine workings are terra incognita to me, a middle earth of the grotesque and the exotic. But every week the fliers come, and this computer doesn't seem enough.

I told you, I belong to the Cult of the Next Thing. If ever there was a cult that gave us stones when we asked for bread, this is it. It promises so much. Look at the ads. If you get this car, take that trip, buy these clothes, use this detergent—what joy! What fulfillment will finally and fully be yours!

One of the strangest ads I ever saw was a television commercial for Kool-Aid. It showed a bunch of kids sitting slumped and sullen on a gorgeous summer day. They're bored, numbed with it. It's almost a portrait of suicidal despair. Why go on living? Then the mother brings out a round, dew-beaded pitcher of Kool-Aid, ruby red and jiggling with ice. The kids go crazy. They leap, they clap, they cheer, they run, they gulp. This, yes this, is something to live for! The impression we're given is that the exuberance over that moment lives long past the moment: that there is something redemptive about the pitcher of Kool-Aid, that it restores purpose and hope to all of life. Well, my own children like Kool-Aid. Just not that much.

The silence of simplicity I'm working on the discipline of ignoring the god of Things, of dropping out of that cult. What helps best is to cultivate a substitute discipline. I practice simplicity.

I built a shed this past summer. My garden equipment—shovels and rakes, a fertilizer broadcaster, a lawnmower, hoses and sprinklers—were aging and rusting too quickly leaning against the house. And someone kept stealing my gas can. So I decided I needed a shed. I went down to the building supply store in town. The cheapest one—emphasis on cheap—was $500. That was too much. But while I was looking at one store, I noticed a large lot of cedar two-by-fours being cleared out—600 feet for $50. I bought it, and went home and framed up the shed. It sat, skeletal, for several weeks. Then a friend offered me the sheeting board to cover its exterior; he had bought a lot of wood on clearance the year before and wasn't going to use the sheeting. Over the next month, I scavenged. Driving by a house that had just been built, I noticed that several bundles of unused shingles and a partial roll of tar paper sat in the side lot. I tracked down the contractor and made a deal. I got them for half price. I found an old door and some planks for shelving in the crawl space at the church. And so it went: foraging, salvaging, bartering, scrounging, improvising. In the end, I had a great shed. It cost about $300, but I recently saw one like it in a catalog for $1,800.

In one sense, this wasn't simple. It took more time—a lot more—than if I had simply bought a kit and put it together in a day. Sometimes simplicity is just trading one complexity for another. But the time, most of it, was spent en route, as I went. It was more adventure than project. In the course of it, I had some good conversations, met some new people. My wife and children got the benefit of my childlike joy when I came home to announce, "You won't believe it. I've just been given all the batting for finishing the edges on the shed."

There's a deeper lesson here. In the midst of living this way, I have come to appreciate small things more. I made a garden in the front of my house. I gathered all the elements—granite rock to edge it, soil, trees, flowers, driftwood—the same way I got the material for the shed. Because it took work—a dedication to simplicity doesn't always come simply—I delight in the color of the flowers. I see the bees flit from one to the next, and it gives me a deep down satisfaction. Those bees are a signature of divine pleasure—God must like what I've done. I'm not sure I would think that—or even much notice the bees—if I had paid a landscaper to do the work.

But sometimes simplicity means forsaking the garden for the wilderness. Nehemiah did that. He was willing to walk away from the luxuries of the lavish Persian court—the gardens and pools and palaces—to go live among the miseries of ramshackle Jerusalem, with its open sewers and piles of rubble. Why? God had put it in his heart (Neh. 2:12).

The quest for simplicity can lapse into legalism. It can decay into brittle, mirthless austerity, or puff itself up into heroic do-it-yourselfism. And then it's as barren as the Cult of the Next Thing. I once spoke with a man who imposed on his family fasting from television for a year. He said it was terrible. His family still resents him for it.

Simplicity is something more, something other than just doing without or doing it yourself. Its essense is neither forsaking nor striving. Its essence, rather, is listening: What has God put in your heart? Simplicity is, once having discerned that, being content with it. Simplify it further: simplicity is being content with God.

Mammon is a good servant—obliging, gracious, versatile. As a servant, he's willing to be used for anything. He'll slum or hobnob, it doesn't matter. I've used money for a holiday in Thailand, bought Thai silk, rode an elephant, snorkeled amid schools of bright-colored fish. And I've used money to buy those sticky wax rings that seal sewer pipes on toilets. Mammon was handy in both instances.

But Mammon makes a poor god—demanding, capricious, conniving. He's surly and brutish, rarely lets you sleep well or long. He is sometimes generous, in a fickle way, but has a well-practiced habit of depriving us of taking deep and lasting pleasure in his gifts: he brings with his gifts the sour aftertaste of ingratitude (it's not enough), or fear (it won't last), or insatiableness (I want more). Maybe this is the worst irony of the Cult of the Next Thing: It trains us, not to value things too much, but to value them too little. It teaches us not to cherish and enjoy anything. Otherwise, we might be content and not long for the Next Thing.

And this: Mammon outshouts God. It's hard to hear what God has put in your heart with Mammon roaring. I write this on an island between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland. Earlier in the day, I walked along a forest trail and returned to my cabin along the shoreline. The greenness of the water, the clatter of stone and shell underfoot, the natural sculpture of driftwood: it is a gallery of art. I sat on a shelf of sandstone that sloped down to the water. The sandstone, with its pits and ridges where the water's persistence has pried loose embedded stones, resembled a rough lizard hide, hugely magnified. This is a place of good silence. There are sounds, but they are woven into the texture of air and earth and water. It is a place for listening.

Walking home, in early evening, I heard voices. They sounded near, but they weren't. They came from across a vast expanse of water, sweeping effortlessly, like herons skimming the water's surface, over the distance. The voices traveled that distance intact, the shades of inflection still in them, no echo blurring their edges. I heard every word.

Simplicity is like a silence. It is a place for listening to a Voice that otherwise we might never hear.

Enough is enough After silence comes speaking. There are two sayings, plain sayings, that are helping me live into simple contentment with God and what God puts in my heart. The first is "thank you."

I was in Uganda, Africa, about seven years ago, in a little township called Wairacka. Every Sunday evening, about 100 Christians from the neighboring area would gather to worship. They met under a tin-roof lean-to that was set at the edge of a cornfield. They sat—when they did sit—on rough wood benches. The floor was dirt. The instruments were old. Some of the guitars didn't have all the strings. But could they worship! They made hell run for shelter when they got loose. There was one guy with us, a real stiff-backed, buttoned-down white boy who liked his worship staid and orderly and brief, and even he couldn't stand still: he was jumping, clapping, yelling out his hallelujahs.

One Sunday evening, the pastor asked if anyone had anything to share. A tall, willowy woman came to the front. She was plain featured, but she was beautiful. "Oh, brothers and sisters, I love Jesus so much," she started.

"Tell us, sister! Tell us!" the worshipers shouted back.

"Oh, I love him so much, I don't know where to begin to tell you how good he is."

"Begin there, sister! Begin right there!"

"Oh," she said, "he is so good to me. I praise him all the time for how good he is to me. For three months, I prayed to the Lord for shoes. And look!" And at that the woman cocked up her leg so that we could see one foot. One very ordinary shoe covered it. "He gave me shoes. Hallelujah, he is so good." And the Ugandans clapped and yelled and shouted back, Hallelujah!

I didn't. I was devastated. I sat there hollowed out, hammered down. In all my life I had not once prayed for shoes. And in all my life I had not once thanked God for the many, many shoes I had.

As I later tried to sort that out, I looked at a lot of Scriptures about being thankful. I discovered that being thankful and experiencing the power and presence of Jesus Christ are tightly entwined. As we practice thankfulness, we experience more of God's transforming grace, God's thereness.

I looked again at 1 Thessalonians 5:18: "No matter what happens, always be thankful." And then at Ephesians 5:20: "Always give thanks for everything to God." And it came to me that the deepest theological concept is not the doctrine of the Incarnation, or the theories of Atonement, or the arguments for theodicy. Not views on premillennialism or supralapsarianism, nor ideas about tribulationism or dispensationalism. No, the deepest theological concept is thankfulness. Because to know God is to thank God. To worship God is to thank God. And to thank God in all things and for all things is to acknowledge that God is good, perfectly good, and perfectly just, and perfectly powerful—and that all things do work together for good for those who love God and have been called according to God's purposes.

Thankfulness is an act of subversion against the Cult of the Next Thing.

The other saying, like "thank you" both simple and hard, is "enough." In the Garden of Eden the first thing the serpent did was create in Adam and Eve a sense of scarcity. "Did God really say you must not eat any of the fruit in the garden?" (Gen. 3:1).

God did say—commanded, in fact— that they "may freely eat any fruit in the garden except fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat of its fruit, you will surely die" (Gen. 2:16). The serpent's trick, then as now, is to turn this staggering abundance and gracious protection into frightening scarcity and bullying deprivation, the stinginess of a despot.

The serpent lied, and we got taken in. Now, despite the overwhelming evidence that we live amidst overflowing abundance—abundant food, clothes, warmth, friends, things—we always feel it's not enough. We sense it's running out, it's insufficient. We live for the Next Thing.

There is an Indian parable about this. A guru had a disciple and was so pleased with the man's spiritual progress that he left him on his own. The man lived in a little mud hut. He lived simply, begging for his food. Each morning, after his devotions, the disciple washed his loincloth and hung it out to dry. One day, he came back to discover the loincloth torn and eaten by rats. He begged the villagers for another, and they gave it to him. But the rats ate that one, too. So he got himself a cat. That took care of the rats, but now when he begged for his food he had to beg for milk for his cat as well. "This won't do," he thought. "I'll get a cow." So he got a cow and found he had to beg now for fodder. So he decided to till and plant the ground around his hut. But soon he found no time for contemplation, so he hired servants to tend his farm. But overseeing the labors became a chore, so he married to have a wife to help him. After time, the disciple became the wealthiest man in the village.

The guru was traveling by there and stopped in. He was shocked to see that where once stood a simple mud hut there now loomed a palace surrounded by a vast estate, worked by many servants. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked his disciple.

"You won't believe this, sir," the man replied. "But there was no other way I could keep my loincloth."

I know this trap. Earlier, I held up my shed as an example of simplicity. But why did I build it? There was no other way I could keep my rakes and shovels, my lawn mower and gas can. This business of enough is slippery: the staked pit of legalism on one side, the quicksand of rationalization on the other. What is enough? I think I'm learning to live with enough, but what I call enough is staggering lavishness to most of the world.

A woman from a poor village in Bangladesh was visiting a Christian family in Toronto, and the morning after she arrived she looked out the kitchen window of the people's home. "Who lives in that house?" she asked the woman from Toronto.

"Which house?"

"That one, right there."

"Oh, that. No one lives there. That's a 'house' for the car."

The woman from Bangladesh was nonplused. "A house for the car," she kept saying. "A house for the car."

I picture that woman, looking out my kitchen window and seeing my garden shed, puzzled, saying again and again, "A house for the shovels. A house for the lawn mower."

We live in a culture of excess. A culture of more. A culture where we need to accumulate endlessly just to keep the loincloth. And the only way to break it is deliberately to lay hold of another way of seeing and living: we need an attitude of enough. G. K. Chesterton said, "There are two ways to get enough. One is to accumulate more and more. The other is to need less." The attitude of enough—actually, it's a spiritual orientation— is marked by trust, contentment, and thankfulness. It is the decision, with- out rationalization, to say, "This is enough. My home is big enough. My car is new enough. My possessions are plenty enough. I've eaten enough. I've taken enough. Enough is enough."

And when we begin to live out the spirituality of enough, there comes a point when we see that maybe we have more than enough.

Just say no.  There is a lady I know who lives this way, thankful with enough. Her name is Helen, and she attends the church of which I am the pastor. Helen is who I want to be when I grow up. She lives, as far as I can discern, completely outside the Cult of the Next Thing. She doesn't even defy it: she ignores it.

Helen has every reason to fear scarcity: never to say enough, never to say thank you. She grew up in Russia during Stalin's purges and engineered famines, and her family, of German origin, suffered terribly. When she was still in her early teens, she and five other girls from her village fled to Germany. It was a harrowing journey—across frozen or muddy fields, slipping through tangles of barbed wire. They left almost everything. They lost two children on the way from disease. Several times they came close to starving. There are photos of them with stark flesh and sharp bones, eyes defiant and sorrowful and afraid, gathered in a huddle. Their clothes hang loose.

Her family later tried to join her. But the Russians caught up with Helen's parents and siblings and sent them in stinking, crammed cattle cars to Siberia, where her parents died.

Helen remained in Germany. She worked there for a woman who threatened to shoot her if she ever tried to leave. She didn't try. Anyway, Hitler found her useful: he put her to work digging ditches for his war. There is a photo of Helen, rawboned in a plain dirndl, standing with other women beside a pile of raw, wet earth. They hold shovels. Guards are in the background, at the edge of the photo. The women smile. The guards don't.

After the war, Helen came to Canada. She had a cousin in Manitoba, a prosperous realtor and a church elder, and he and his wife took Helen in as their housemaid. Helen believed the grief was over, now only a memory to scatter under the weight of forgetting and forgiving. She was wrong. Her cousin raped her, repeatedly. She owed her cousin and his wife the money for sponsoring her trip to Canada. She didn't yet speak English. Alone, afraid, she gave in to him. Helen got pregnant. Both the church and her cousin's family banished her and the child.

Helen came west. In time she married and lived modestly. Several years ago, her husband died and left her a small pension. She has every reason to hoard, to hide, to be angry. She has every reason to have banished the words thank you and enough from her speaking and thinking. And yet those words define her life, shape its inner places and outward forms.

Money, things—they don't give freedom.

One day in church as I led prayer, I asked if there was anyone who would like to thank God for anything. Helen stood up. "Oh, Pastor Mark," she said. "I praise God!"

"Tell us about it, Helen."

"Well, the other day, it was such a beautiful day. I decided to wash my car, and as I'm washing, what do I notice? My insurance expired three days earlier. Well, right away, I walked downtown and bought new insurance. Then, I was telling a friend of mine about it, and she said, 'You're lucky. That happened to me, and the police stopped me. I was fined $300.' "

I thought that was the end of her story —praising God that the police didn't catch her. But it wasn't the end of the story.

Helen says, "God has given me $300. That's how I see it. The Lord has done this. So I asked, 'Lord, what am I to do with this $300?' He said, 'Give it to the church.' So today, I have $300 to give to the church, and I'm praising God.' "

Another time, our church held a business meeting. The big vote that night was whether to hire a youth pastor. Our church finances had not been strong, and many people were saying that we just couldn't afford a youth pastor, even though the need was great.

Helen got up. She is 73 years old. She has one daughter—her child from her cousin—who is middle-aged. She has four grandchildren, who live in another city. Helen has two stepdaughters with children. They also live elsewhere. She has no vested interest in youth work in our church.

Helen said, "When I lived in Russia, growing up, I wanted so much to have a piano and to play it. But I could never afford it. When I married, we had a piano, but I never learned to play it. Last month, I decided that I could now afford $60 a month and fulfill my dream since I was a girl. I signed up for piano lessons." She stopped. Her voice was breaking. She continued, slow, soft. "Tonight, I realize that our young people are far more important than my learning how to play the piano. I love young people and want them to know about Jesus. So I am going to quit piano lessons and give that money every month for a youth pastor."

That changed everything. The church voted unanimously to hire a youth pastor. It's what one person can do who, having enough, being continuously thankful, pays no tribute to the Cult of the Next Thing.

God vs. the pig-god Money, things—they don't give freedom. Freedom, rather, is in the opposite direction, in refusing to love money, to pay Things an honor they don't deserve, to give to the Cult an affection it will never requite. To live, real freedom requires something more than, other than, force of will. Earlier, I spoke about defying Mammon, breaking out of his cult. But that in itself leads nowhere. Once we defy it, then what? If we refuse the lure of the Next Thing, what will we replace it with?

The answer is God. We will live—fully, joyfully—in the presence of God. Consumerism's worst effect is it shunts us away from God's presence. It always ushers us into the wrong place. Is it possible that the God who made the heavens and the earth, who hewed mountains and poured seas, the God who raises the dead, the God who knit you together in your mother's womb, numbered your days, knows your thoughts, knows you by name, and says to you, "Everything I have is yours"—is it possible, I'm asking, that that's not enough? That we won't be happy until our kitchen is renovated, or we've bought a better car, or visited Europe? And then we won't be happy anyway? Is that possible? The Cult of the Next Thing guarantees it.

Is God who he says he is? That is the crux. If God isn't, then "let's eat, drink, and be merry. … What's the difference, for tomorrow we die" (Isa. 22:13; 1 Cor. 15:32). But if God is God, it is only a cruel form of self-spite to spurn the true God for a lesser god—especially a sloppy, bullying ingrate like Mammon, the pig-god, and his miserable cult.

Joyce Carol Oates wrote a novel a few years ago called Because It Is Bitter, & Because It Is My Heart. The title comes from a Stephen Crane poem about a beast who devours his own heart and, when asked why, responds with that line. Oates's novel is about a young black boy and a young white girl in middle America in the 1950s. They fall in love, but of course everything in their world wars against their doing anything about that. Their options are completely shut down. All they can do, all they have freedom for, are acts of self-spite—self-mutilation, self-humiliation, self-recrimination, self-punishment. They resort to it and destroy the promise of their own lives.

The only freedom the Cult of the Next Thing grants us is acts of self-spite. Be cause it is bitter, and because it is my heart. Mammon has no need to hurt us. Worship him, you devour yourself. The stunning folly of this, the bewildering tragedy, is that we can choose otherwise. "Stay away from the love of money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, 'I will never fail you. I will never forsake you' " (Heb. 13:5).

Is that enough to be thankful for?

Mark Buchanan is pastor of the New Life Community Church, Duncan, British Columbia, Canada. This essay won the first place in CT's "Faith and Consumerism" contest, funded by the Global Consumption project of Pew Charitable Trusts, Inc.

A Simple Shoe box Changes Izabella’s Life Forever

2011-11-05T21:15:00.000-04:00

The Biblical Recorder ran the following story on their website this week. I hope you and your family and getting your shoe boxes ready!

Anytime Izabella saw a crowd running she started running, too, as fast as she could, even if she didn’t know why the crowd was racing to the grocery store. “We knew that whatever was on the new shipment we didn’t have at home. So we were taught to run. My brother and I got a place in line and then my parents caught up with us, bringing the money,” she said.

Izabella’s family was allowed only to shop at their assigned grocery store. She remembers one time waiting in line more than 24 hours for four bananas, and after waiting in line all that time, waiting several days before eating them.

“My mom put the bananas on the top shelf, out of reach, and told us we couldn’t eat them yet. She said they had to turn yellow. I had no idea why we had to wait for them to turn yellow, and I had no idea how she knew they would turn yellow,” Izabella said.

Growing up in the Communist-ruled country of Romania was not easy. Izabella’s parents worked hard, but there was still no money for electricity. They went to work very early in the mornings, and Izabella and her brother, with only the help of an alarm clock, were left to get themselves up and ready for school. Izabella was 3 years old and her brother was 6 years old when this became their normal pattern of life.

They walked to and from school by themselves. They did their homework and then waited for mom and dad to come home.

Izabella and her brother enjoyed reading books to help pass the time. They only had four or five books and knew them cover to cover. When they discovered a new book hidden under the floorboard in the living room they couldn’t wait to read it.

They began reading from page one and set out to read the entire book. “To me and my brother, this was just a new book filled with exciting stories,” Izabella said. They did not yet know the stories in the book actually happened.

Izabella McMillon, seen here with her family, went to her home country of Romania to distribute Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes last year. Izabella was given one of these boxes when she was 13.

One day they told their dad about the book they found. “He told us we could never tell anyone we had that book in our house. We knew he was serious,” Izabella said.

Her dad knew if anyone found out they had the book, which they later learned was the Bible, in their home their family could die. Just walking on the street holding a Bible was illegal and grounds for government officials to kill someone on the spot, no questions asked.

But Izabella and her brother couldn’t put the new storybook down. They continued reading every day huddled under a blanket with a flashlight. From their upstairs window they could see their parents walking home from work, giving them time to return the book to its hiding place.

Izabella knew her dad didn’t want them talking about the Bible, but that didn’t stop her from asking to go to church with a classmate on Saturday nights. After saying “no” for a long time her parents finally gave her permission.

Izabella had many questions for the pastor. “I had never heard anyone pray. I told the pastor I was reading about prayer and wanted to know how to pray,” she said.

“He told me to talk to God like I would a friend, and that God would always hear and answer my prayers.”

To a young girl looking at months of dreadfully cold weather, she knew just what to pray for: snow. She prayed for weeks that turned into months and still no snow. Izabella’s pastor told her that God always answers prayer, even if not in the way she expected.

Izabella continued praying for snow, and still nothing. She began doubting that God existed and was ready to give up ever having her prayer answered.

God did answer, and He did so in a way that changed her life forever. When Izabella was 13 she received an Operation Christmas Child shoe box from Samaritan’s Purse. She remembers running to catch up with a crowd of children and thinking they were headed to the store like usual. The crowd gathered around a truck and a group of people passing out shoe boxes. Izabella hesitated at first when offered a box because no one ever gave her anything for free. A woman knelt down, told her the gift was free, and asked if she had any prayer requests.

“She didn’t laugh at me or tell me my prayer request was silly. She prayed with me right then for snow,” Izabella said.

Izabella had to wait for the other children to get their boxes. When it was time to open them, one of the toys inside Izabella’s box was a snow globe. She didn’t know what it was or what to do with it until a boy standing next to her took her hand and turned the snow globe upside down.

As Izabella watched the snow fall inside that small globe her heart was overwhelmed. “That was a life-changing moment for me,” she said. “Of course I had a lot of growing and learning to do, but in that moment, I decided that if there was a God who would orchestrate such an event in my life just to show me He loved me and cared about even the small things in my life, I wanted to follow Him.”

When Izabella grew up she worked as a teacher in Romania and Hungary before coming to the United States in 2002. She lived in Pennsylvania two years before moving to Durham, N.C., to teach at Gorman Christian Academy, a ministry of Gorman Baptist Church. She met her husband, Joel McMillon, at Gorman Christian Academy and they married in 2006. Joel is now the youth pastor at Gorman.

Izabella did not know until 2004 that the box she received as a child came from Samaritan’s Purse and Operation Christmas Child. That year students from Gorman Christian Academy packed 100 shoe boxes. Since then, a school of about 200 students has packed more boxes every year, with 1,463 boxes packed last year.

“Every year God provides,” Izabella said. “We set our goal, and every year God shows us He is able to do far more than we can imagine.”

Last year Izabella and her family traveled to her hometown in Romania to help distribute shoe boxes.

“I met this one little girl, and when I looked into her eyes, I could see myself. She couldn’t believe anyone would give her something for free,” Izabella said.

Before opening her box the little girl told Izabella she really wanted something pink; she didn’t have anything pink at all. As Izabella watched her open the box, all she could see was pink. Every single thing in her box was pink.

“We hear stories like that all the time,” Izabella said. “One little boy in that village was always being picked on because he wanted to be an artist. When he opened his box, it didn’t have any hygiene items or socks or a toothbrush. It was filled with nothing but art supplies.

“These boxes are called GO boxes because they are gospel opportunities. God is using something simple to change lives all around the world.”

Collection week is Nov. 14-21. Visit samaritanspurse.org.

Reformation Day - Here I Stand

2011-10-31T14:26:00.001-04:00

Today is Reformation Day. As Protestants it is good for us to reflect on the significance of this day. Reformation Day is celebrated on October 31st or the last weekend in October in remembrance of the Reformation.

In 1517 Martin Luther posted a proposal at the doors of a church in Wittenberg, Germany to debate the doctrine and practice of indulgences. This was not an act of defiance or provocation as is sometimes thought. Since the Castle Church faced Wittenberg's main thoroughfare, the church door functioned as a public bulletin board, and was therefore the logical place for posting important notices. Also, the theses were written in Latin, the language of the church, and not in the vernacular. Nonetheless, the event created a controversy between Luther and those allied with the Pope over a variety of doctrines and practices.

While it had profound and lasting impacts on the political, economic, social, literary, and artistic aspects of modern society, the Reformation was at its heart a religious movement. The Reformation was the great rediscovery of the good news of salvation by grace through faith for Christ's sake. For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church had been plagued by false doctrines, superstition, ignorance, and corruption. Since most ordinary Christians were illiterate and had little knowledge of the Bible, they relied on their clergy for religious instruction and guidance. Tragically however, monks, priests, bishops, and even the popes in Rome taught unbiblical doctrines. (Source: Monergism.com)

These false doctrines and practices included:

**Who could interpret scripture and who controlled that interpretation?

**A false system of merits centered on indulgences

**The church taking on itself Christ’s role as mediator between God and man
**Deep seated corruption in the church

**A chasm between Biblical teaching on salvation by grace through faith and the church’s teaching of salvation through good works.

Following is Luther’s testimony in his own words.

Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, "As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!" Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.

At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, "In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, 'He who through faith is righteous shall live.'" There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, "He who through faith is righteous shall live." Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me. Thereupon I ran through the Scripture from memory. I also fount in other terms an analogy, as, the work of God, that is what God does in us, the power of God, with which he makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.

And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word "righteousness of God." Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise. (Source: Here I Stand)

Three years later, in 1520, the pope issued a bull decree, calling Luther’s teaching poisonous. He demanded that Luther recant in 60 days or be excommunicated. Instead of acquiescing this request, Luther publicly burned the pope’s bull decree.

Luther would have normally been executed for his actions; however, Friedrich the Wise demanded a hearing before a German court. In 1521, Luther was summoned to the town of Worms to appear before Charles V, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. Luther was commanded to recant of all his teachings against the Roman Church. Luther requested one day to think through his position. After one night of prayer and pleading with God, Luther returned to the Diet of Worms and declared the following:

Since then your serene majesty and your lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, plain and unvarnished: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason, for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they often err and contradict themselves, I am bound to the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand. May God help me. Amen

Albert Pujols - More Than a Baseball Player

2011-10-28T14:15:00.001-04:00

In my stack of 'books currently being read' is a new biography by Scott Lamb and Tim Ellsworth entitled Pujols -More Than the Game. This is a great book about a faithful follower of Christ who also happens to be one of the greatest baseball players of all time.

Albert Pujols and his wife have been gifted with three children, one of whom is a beautiful daughter named Isabella, who has Down Syndrome. Following is a brief excerpt from a chapter entitled Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, which discusses the impact this child has had on their lives and what an impact the Pujols’ family is having on their community.

Baseball is simply my platform to elevate Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.
—Albert Pujols

Jordan Henderson was a sixteen-year-old who brimmed with baseball ability and college aspirations. But in July of 2007, the teen from Tennessee died in a car wreck. His parents, Doris and Ken Frizzell, grieved and wept as any parent would do in the face of such loss.

In making funeral preparations for Jordan, a folded and worn piece of paper was pulled from his wallet. It was a “My Story” feature about Albert Pujols, clipped from Sharing the Victory, a magazine produced by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. In just a few paragraphs, Pujols explains why his relationship with God is “more important than anything I could ever do in baseball.” He appeals to readers to “accept Him as your Lord and Savior, and you will have eternal life and peace here on Earth.”

The local paper, the Daily News Journal, reported that a thousand copies of the Pujols piece were distributed at Henderson’s funeral. Word about the story got around, and Todd Perry made a few phone calls. Doris and Ken were brought to a Cardinals game and showered with love by Albert and Dee Dee.

The following year, the entire team for which Jordan had played was brought to Busch Stadium for a special day on the field, touring the clubhouse, and watching the game from the owner’s suite. The Daily News Journal story said that the team “joined Pujols, the Frizzells and Riverdale parent Greg Hart outside the Cardinals locker room for a prayer.”

“Make sure that you stand up for Christ,” Pujols said that night. “If you look at the whole picture, hopefully some of these kids take [Jordan’s life] as an example. Our lives are so short.”

As followers of Christ, Albert and Dee Dee seek to obey him in the commissioning that he spoke to his disciples before ascending into heaven:

All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:18–20)

And again:

You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

Jesus’ command is straightforward and simple—share the good news of Christ with everyone. Or, as it was once well said, “Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”

Every Christian is to be a witness for Christ. When Albert and Dee Dee share Christ, they are not doing something reserved only for the so-called celebrities of the faith. However, it is also true that Pujols’ baseball prowess supplies him with the incredible opportunity to “find bread” with huge numbers of people. Telling others about Jesus is a stewardship and responsibility embraced by the Pujolses.

Even mainstream journalists stop and take note of the centrality of Christianity in Pujols’ life. In a candid article titled, “Pujols is a faith-based mystery,” Yahoo.com sports columnist Jeff Passan wrote about the relationship between Pujols’ faith and his talent:

As conditioned as we are to hear the word God out of an athlete’s mouth and immediately tune it out, knowing well the hypocritical piety perpetuated by so many, what if there really is something to Pujols’ devotion? What if it weren’t so much faith vs. science but something more symbiotic: faith driving science? Without God, Pujols might be like a Bentley without a key. Belief in God ignites something inside of Pujols, something that motivates him to train, to draw out whatever resides inside of him, no matter whether inborn or developed. He traces all those hours in the cage and all that natural ability to the breadth of his belief.

The Pujolses use the word platform to explain their understanding of why God gave Pujols such phenomenal baseball talent. Pujols said, “God has given me the ability to succeed in the game of baseball. But baseball is not the end; baseball is the means by which my wife, Dee Dee, and I glorify God. Baseball is simply my platform to elevate Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.”

The Pujolses express passion and joy when they speak about Christ. Their faith animates them. “It is a wonderful paradox that the more of Christ’s love you share with others,” Todd Perry said, “the more you are blessed in return.”

And they share a simple message of Christ’s love that can be understood by anyone willing to listen. “He’s very vocal and very simple. If anybody has talked to Albert at all, he probably told them that they need Jesus,” said Grant Williams, Baseball Chapel leader for the Cardinals. “At the end of the day, Albert is right when he says that Jesus is the answer. You know where he is coming from.”

Pujols talks in plain language: “How do I know that I will spend eternity with God in heaven? It goes back to the original discussion—faith. The Bible says, ‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.’ It is my faith in Jesus Christ’s work in my life that grants me eternal life with God. Nothing more, nothing less.”^{^[1]}

^{^[1]} Lamb, S., & Ellsworth, T. (2011). Pujols: More than the game. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

Much Spiritual Work to Do at Home

2011-10-27T15:15:00.002-04:00

“Spiritual pride is very apt to suspect others, whereas a humble saint is most jealous of himself. He is so suspicious of nothing in the world as he is of his own heart. The spiritually proud person is apt to find fault with other saints . . . and to be quick to discern and take note of their deficiencies. But the eminently humble Christian has so much to do at home, and sees so much evil in his own heart, and is so concerned about it, that he is not apt to be very busy with others’ hearts.”

Jonathan Edwards

Our Families Are Not Ours

2011-10-26T21:58:00.000-04:00

Ray Ortland, pastor of Immanuel Church in Nashville, Tn. posted the following on his blog last week. Parents, how would you respond to a letter such as this?

Our Families Belong Not to Us, But to Christ

“I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure to a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India, to every kind of want and distress, to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of Him who left His heavenly home and died for her and for you, for the sake of perishing, immortal souls, for the sake of Zion and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with a crown of righteousness brightened by the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Savior from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?”

Adoniram Judson, writing to the father of the girl he loved and wished to marry, anticipating his departure for the mission field, quoted in John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life (Wheaton, 2003), page 158.

How Is Christ Present in the Lord's Supper? Pt 3

2011-10-19T16:19:00.000-04:00

In this past Sunday’s message focused on the how we worship during the Lord’s Supper (I Corinthians 11: 17-32) I briefly discussed the different views on the presence of Christ during the Lord’s Supper. The three views I mentioned were the Roman Catholic position (Transubstantiation); the Lutheran position (Consubstantiation), and the generally accepted Protestant view (the Symbolic and Spiritual Presence of Christ).

Since there was not time to fully discuss these positions, I have followed up by posting excerpts from Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, An Introduction to Bible Doctrine that deal with the subject. Yesterday’s was post was Grudem’s summary of the Lutheran View (Consubstantiation).

Today we conclude our review with of the Protestant View (the symbolic and spiritual presence of Christ)

The Rest of Protestantism: A Symbolic and Spiritual Presence of Christ.

In distinction from Martin Luther, John Calvin and other Reformers argued that the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper did not change into the body and blood of Christ, nor did they somehow contain the body and blood of Christ. Rather, the bread and wine symbolized the body and blood of Christ, and they gave a visible sign of the fact that Christ himself was truly present. Calvin said:

By the showing of the symbol the thing itself is also shown. For unless a man means to call God a deceiver, he would never dare assert that an empty symbol is set forth by him … And the godly ought by all means to keep this rule: whenever they see symbols appointed by the Lord, to think and be persuaded that the truth of the thing signified is surely present there. For why would the Lord put in your hand the symbol of his body, except to assure you of a true participation in it? (Institutes 4.17.10; p. 1371)

Yet Calvin was careful to differ both with Roman Catholic teaching (which said that the bread became Christ’s body) and with Lutheran teaching (which said that the bread contained Christ’s body).

But we must establish such a presence of Christ in the Supper as may neither fasten him to the element of bread, nor enclose him in bread, nor circumscribe him in any way (all which things, it is clear, detract from his heavenly glory). (Institutes 4.17.19; p. 1381)

Today most Protestants would say, in addition to the fact that the bread and wine symbolize the body and blood of Christ, that Christ is also spiritually present in a special way as we partake of the bread and wine. We meet him at his table, to which he comes to give himself to us. As we receive the elements of bread and wine in the presence of Christ, so we partake of him and all his benefits. We “feed upon him in our hearts” with thanksgiving. Indeed, even a child who knows Christ will understand this without being told and will expect to receive a special blessing from the Lord during this ceremony, because the meaning of it is so inherent in the very actions of eating and drinking. Yet we must not say that Christ is present apart from our personal faith, but only meets and blesses us there in accordance with our faith in him.

In what way is Christ present then? Certainly there is a symbolic presence of Christ, but it is also a genuine spiritual presence and there is genuine spiritual blessing in this ceremony.

How Is Christ Present in the Lord's Supper? Pt 2

2011-10-18T15:47:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday’s message focused on the how we worship during the Lord’s Supper (I Corinthians 11: 17-32) In the message I briefly discussed the different views on the presence of Christ during the Lord’s Supper. The three views I mentioned were the Roman Catholic position (Transubstantiation); the Lutheran position (Consubstantiation), and the generally accepted Protestant view (the Symbolic and Spiritual Presence of Christ).

Yesterday’s was post was Wayne Grudem’s summary of the Roman Catholic position (Transubstantiation) as published in his Systematic Theology, An Introduction to Bible Doctrine.

Today we see his discussion of the Lutheran View (Consubstantiation)

The Lutheran View: Consubstantiation.

Martin Luther rejected the Roman Catholic view of the Lord’s Supper, yet he insisted that the phrase “This is my body” had to be taken in some sense as a literal statement. His conclusion was not that the bread actually becomes the physical body of Christ, but that the physical body of Christ is present “in, with, and under” the bread of the Lord’s Supper. The example sometimes given is to say that Christ’s body is present in the bread as water is present in a sponge—the water is not the sponge, but is present “in, with, and under” a sponge, and is present wherever the sponge is present. Other examples given are that of magnetism in a magnet or a soul in the body.

The Lutheran understanding of the Lord’s Supper is found in the textbook of Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics. He quotes Luther’s Small Catechism: “What is the Sacrament of the Altar? It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and to drink, instituted by Christ Himself.”⁷ Similarly, the Augsburg Confession, Article X, says, “Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat in the Supper of the Lord.”

One passage that may be thought to give support to this position is 1 Corinthians 10:16, “The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?”

However, in order to affirm this doctrine, Luther had to answer an important question: How can Christ’s physical body, or more generally Christ’s human nature, be everywhere present? Is it not true that Jesus in his human nature ascended into heaven and remains there until his return? Did he not say that he was leaving the earth and would no longer be in the world but was going to the Father (John 16:28; 17:11)? In answer to this problem Luther taught the ubiquity of Christ’s human nature after his ascension—that is, that Christ’s human nature was present everywhere (“ubiquitous”). But theologians ever since Luther’s time have suspected that he taught the ubiquity of Christ’s human nature, not because it is found anywhere in Scripture, but because he needed it to explain how his view of consubstantiation could be true.

In response to the Lutheran view, it can be said that it too fails to realize that Jesus is speaking of a spiritual reality but using physical objects to teach us when he says, “This is my body.” We should take this no more literally than we take the corresponding sentence, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). In fact, Luther does not really do justice to Jesus’ words in a literal sense at all. Berkhof rightly objects that Luther really makes the words of Jesus mean, “This accompanies my body.” In this matter it would help to read again John 6:27–59, where the context shows that Jesus is talking in literal, physical terms about bread, but he is continually explaining it in terms of spiritual reality.

Tomorrow we will look Grudem’s summary of the generally accepted Protestant view (the Symbolic and Spiritual Presence of Christ)

How is Christ Present During the Lord's Supper?

2011-10-17T16:30:00.000-04:00

I appreciate the comments you've offered on this past Sunday’s message from I Corinthians 11, Worshipping at the Table. In the message I briefly discussed the different views on the presence of Christ during the Lord’s Supper. The three I mentioned were the Roman Catholic position (Transubstantiation); the Lutheran position (Consubstantiation), and the majority Protestant view (the Symbolic and Spiritual Presence of Christ). I didn’t have time in the message to go into much detail on these.

So instead I will post the best brief summary of these positions I’ve found, which is by Wayne Grudem, in his Systematic Theology, An Introduction to Bible Doctrine.

Today we see his discussion of the Roman Catholic View. (Found on pp. 991-993)

The Roman Catholic View: Transubstantiation. According to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ. This happens at the moment the priest says, “This is my body” during the celebration of the mass. At the same time as the priest says this, the bread is raised up (elevated) and adored. This action of elevating the bread and pronouncing it to be Christ’s body can only be performed by a priest.

When this happens, according to Roman Catholic teaching, grace is imparted to those present ex opere operato that is, “by the work performed,” but the amount of grace dispensed is in proportion to the subjective disposition of the recipient of grace.² Moreover, every time the mass is celebrated, the sacrifice of Christ is repeated (in some sense), and the Catholic church is careful to affirm that this is a real sacrifice, even though it is not the same as the sacrifice that Christ paid on the cross.

So Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma teaches as follows:

Christ becomes present in the Sacrament of the Altar by the transformation of the whole substance of the bread into His Body and of the whole substance of the wine into His Blood … This transformation is called Transubstantiation. (p. 379)

The power of consecration resides in a validly consecrated priest only. (p. 397)

The Worship of Adoration (Latria) must be given to Christ present in the Eucharist … It follows from the wholeness and permanence of the Real Presence that the absolute worship of adoration (Cultus Latriae) is due to Christ present in the Eucharist. (p. 387)

In Catholic teaching, because the elements of bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ, the church for many centuries did not allow the lay people to drink from the cup of the Lord’s Supper (for fear that the blood of Christ would be spilled) but only to eat the bread. Ott’s textbook tells us,

Communion under two forms is not necessary for any individual member of the Faithful, either by reason of Divine precept or as a means of salvation … The reason is that Christ is whole and entire under each species … The abolition of the reception from the chalice in the Middle Ages (12th and 13th centuries) was enjoined for practical reasons, particularly danger of profanation of the Sacrament. (p. 397)

With respect to the actual sacrifice of Christ in the mass, Ott’s textbook says,

The Holy Mass is a true and proper Sacrifice. (p. 402)

In the Sacrifice of the Mass and in the Sacrifice of the Cross the Sacrificial Gift and the Primary Sacrificing Priest are identical; only the nature and mode of the offering are different … The Sacrificial Gift is the Body and Blood of Christ … The Primary Sacrificing Priest is Jesus Christ, who utilizes the human priest as His servant and representative and fulfills the consecration through him. According to the Thomistic view, in every Mass Christ also performs an actual immediate sacrificial activity which, however, must not be conceived as a totality of many successive acts but as one single uninterrupted sacrificial act of the Transfigured Christ.

The purpose of the Sacrifice is the same in the Sacrifice of the Mass as in the Sacrifice of the Cross; primarily the glorification of God, secondarily atonement, thanksgiving and appeal. (p. 408)

As a propitiatory sacrifice … the Sacrifice of the Mass effects the remission of sins and the punishment for sins; as a sacrifice of appeal … it brings about the conferring of supernatural and natural gifts. The Eucharistic Sacrifice of propitiation can, as the Council of Trent expressly asserted, be offered, not merely for the living, but also for the poor souls in Purgatory. (pp. 412–13)

In response to the Roman Catholic teaching on the Lord’s Supper, it must be said that it first fails to recognize the symbolic character of Jesus’ statements when he declared, “This is my body,” or, “This is my blood.” Jesus spoke in symbolic ways many times when speaking of himself. He said, for example, “I am the true vine” (John 15:1), or “I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved” (John 10:9), or “I am the bread which came down from heaven” (John 6:41). In a similar way, when Jesus says, “This is my body,” he means it in a symbolic way, not in an actual, literal, physical way. In fact, as he was sitting with his disciples holding the bread, the bread was in his hand but it was distinct from his body, and that was, of course, evident to the disciples. None of the disciples present would have thought that the loaf of bread that Jesus held in his hand was actually his physical body, for they could see his body before their eyes. They would have naturally understood Jesus’ statement in a symbolic way. Similarly, when Jesus said, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20), he certainly did not mean that the cup was actually the new covenant, but that the cup represented the new covenant.

Moreover, the Roman Catholic view fails to recognize the clear New Testament teaching on the finality and completeness of Christ’s sacrifice once for all time for our sins: the book of Hebrews emphasizes this many times, as when it says, “Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the Holy Place yearly with blood not his own; for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself … Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many” (Heb. 9:25–28). To say that Christ’s sacrifice continues or is repeated in the mass has been, since the Reformation, one of the most objectionable Roman Catholic doctrines from the standpoint of Protestants. When we realize that Christ’s sacrifice for our sins is finished and completed (“It is finished,” John 19:30; cf. Heb. 1:3), it gives great assurance to us that our sins are all paid for, and there remains no sacrifice yet to be paid. But the idea of a continuation of Christ’s sacrifice destroys our assurance that the payment has been made by Christ and accepted by God the Father, and that there is “no condemnation” (Rom. 8:1) now remaining for us.

For Protestants the idea that the mass is in any sense a repetition of the death of Christ seems to mark a return to the repeated sacrifices of the old covenant, which were “a reminder of sin year after year” (Heb. 10:3). Instead of the assurance of complete forgiveness of sins through the once for all sacrifice of Christ (Heb. 10:12), the idea that the mass is a repeated sacrifice gives a constant reminder of sins and remaining guilt to be atoned for week after week.

With regard to the teaching that only priests can officiate at the Lord’s Supper, the New Testament gives no instructions at all that place restrictions on the people who can preside at Communion. And since Scripture places no such restrictions on us, it would not seem to be justified to say that only priests can dispense the elements of the Lord’s Supper. Moreover, since the New Testament teaches that all believers are priests and members of a “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9; cf. Heb. 4:16; 10:19–22), we should not specify a certain class of people who have the rights of priests, as in the old covenant, but we should emphasize that all believers share the great spiritual privilege of coming near to God.

Finally, any continuation of the restriction that will not allow laypersons to drink of the cup of the Lord’s Supper would be arguing from caution and tradition to justify disobedience to Jesus’ direct commands, not only the command to his disciples where he said, “Drink of it, all of you” (Matt. 26:27), but also the direction Paul recorded, in which Jesus said, “Do this, as often as you drink it in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:25).

Why Are So Many Men So Immature?

2011-10-16T15:05:00.000-04:00

The following posted by Dr. Danny Akin and Dr. Alvin Reid on the betweenthetimes.com

Question: What do you think stands as the main contributing factor in why many men today seem to be less mature than the generations of old? What do you feel are the spiritual applications?

Reply: (by Danny Akin and Alvin Reid): This is an excellent question and one that is quite relevant and extremely important for our times. When we see beer commercials mocking the immaturity of young men in our culture, we know that we have a problem! More significant individuals have addressed this issue as well, including a recent article entitled “Why men are in trouble?” by William Bennett. One of the better articles written some time ago is “Wimps and Barbarians” by Terrence Moore.

Dr. Reid addresses this in every class and preached on this subject in chapel (Click here for chapel message on October 28, 2010). Dr. Akin deals with this topic on a consistent basis in forums on campus and elsewhere. He especially raises the issue in the context of female/male service on the international mission field where women serve in massively superior numbers to men. In June 2009, for example, there were 331 journey girls and 126 journey men serving among the nations.

We live in a day when the average purchaser of video games is a 34 year old male; a time of prolonged adolescence and delayed responsibility. The root of this, in part, is sociological and goes back a few generations. The rise of the common school which led to public school education, housing massive numbers of children with one another more than being integrated in society with multiple generations, child labor laws which protected children from working in factories (a good thing) while failing to give responsibilities they could handle (a bad thing), and the practical reality that the median age in the United States has grown from 16 in 1800 to 35 in 2000 all play a role.

However, more recent factors include the rise of adolescence as a separate category fueled by such literary pieces as “The Lord of the Flies” and “Catcher in the Rye,” both published in the 1950s; the movie “Rebel Without a Cause” in 1954; the rise of rock and roll and a growing juvenile culture have all accelerated the growing immaturity of young men. Where once upon a time young men trained for war or for industry, young men today train for video games and play fantasy football.

We have a generation of soft boys. We have had several generations of wimps!

Add to that the reality of the absentee father, what we would argue may be the most dire of all other factors, and you can see to some extent how we have gotten to the place we are today. For the first time in American history we have a generation today where close to 40% are growing up without a father in the home. As we look ahead, at least one estimate has 55% of Millennial children growing up without a father in the home (Parenting the Millennials, 7).

We believe one of the most fundamental challenges of the church today has to do with raising up a generation of young men who become men of God, not spiritual wimps on the one hand or boorish barbarians on the other. We simply have too many who can be described as BANs, or half boy, half man.

What is a man? More specifically what is a man of God? Paul addresses this in I Timothy 6:11f. Here is a great place to begin the construction process of a man of God. First, Paul says recognize who you are! We are men of God. “You, man of God.” This is indicative. If you are a man and a believer, you are a man of God, so be who you are! Now, what are the marks of this man?

He is a runner: Paul says to flee and to pursue (verse 11). We are to run from the things listed in 6:3-10 such as false doctrine, slander, the love of money, useless arguments, etc. It is not the mark of a man of God to be constantly arguing over secondary issues. We are to run after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.

Men of God respect authority. And, they keep their word! They persevere, even when it is hard. One of the marks of this immature generation of men is their inability to persevere. More young men that women drop out of Alvin’s workout group each semester. More young ladies than young men are heading to the mission field. This is pathetic.

Men of God are also gentle. Being a man does not mean you watch MMA or talk tough. That may actually demonstrate adolescent behavior. Grown men can cheer for their sports team with gusto, speak to a child with gentleness, and love on their wives with tenderness.

Men of God are runners; they are also fighters. We are to “fight the good fight of faith” (v. 12). Some things are worth fighting over. Let us fight against Satan and his kingdom. Let us wage war against heresy on the one hand and legalism on the other. Let us man up and take a stand when necessary. Shepherds of local churches do not only guide the sheep with gentleness; they confront wolves with ferociousness.

Men of God are also wrestlers: we are to “take hold of” or “grasp firmly” eternal life (verse 12). Men do not spend their time and emotions fooling around with insignificant matters. Men of God give their lives to matters of eternity.

Finally, men of God are guardians. In verse 14 and following Paul reminds us to guard the things God commands. We must stand on the message of God and live out the message of God in our generation.

One of our students fought in Somalia and was rightly portrayed as a hero in “Black Hawk Down.” He talks about the wimpiness he sees in churches and how effeminate it is!We are convinced that the quota for wimps has been met in the church! It is time for a “man of God revolution!”

So what can you do? Get men involved in the lives of younger men. Challenge them to go on mission assignments nationally and internationally. Get them into the Word. Teach them theology. Read Titus 2 carefully and put it into practice for both men and women in your church. See the prolonged adolescence of young men as an idol in our time that must be confronted by the gospel. Be the man God saved you to be. The time is now and the need has never been greater.