Every Good Endeavor - Connecting Your Work to God's Work

Greetings All!

     This week's "thought" comes to you from Tim Keller's book "Every Good Endeavor - Connecting Your Work to God's Work."   I have not finished it yet (just over half way through), but what I have read is enlightening, inspiring, well-thought-through (as is typical for Keller) and so helpful for those seeking to find meaning and purpose in their jobs or work.  Better yet (as the title suggests), it is helpful for those who would like to connect their work to God's work in this world, and bring redemptive change into their workplace.  In my humble opinion, this book really is a must read.

     We all function according to some type of underlying worldview -- a worldview that guides our choices, priorities and pursuits. "Our worldview," says Keller, "places our work in the context of a history, a cause, a quest... and in so doing it frames the strategy of our work at a high level."  My challenge to you today is to see if your worldview is Christian, non-Christian, or a mixture of competing worldviews spliced together?  Read below and find out...  Enjoy.

The Gospel and Other Worldviews

     "Any worldview consists of posing and answering three questions:  1. How are things supposed to be?  2. What is the main problem with things as they are?  3. What is the solution and how can it be realized?  Leslie Steven's book (Seven Theories of Human Nature) includes Christianity among its "theories," but the author points out how different Christianity is from the alternatives. He observes that "if God has made man for fellowship with Himself, and if man has turned away and broken his relationship to God, then only God can forgive man and restore the relationship." In other words, the biblical worldview uniquely understands the nature, problem, and salvation of humankind as fundamentally relational.  We were made for a relationship with God, we lost our relationship with God through sin against him, and we can be brought back into that relationship through his salvation and grace.

     Plato, Marx, and Freud all identify some part of the created world as the main problem and some other part of the created world as the main solution. The protagonists and antagonists of their respective world-stories are played by finite things.  Thus, Marxism assumes that our problems come from greedy capitalists who won't share the means of economic production with the people. The solution is a totalitarian state.  Freud, on the other hand, believed that our problems come from repression of deep desires for pleasure. The villains are played by the repressive moral "gatekeepers" in society, like the church. The solution is the unrepressed freedom of the individual.  Many people have a worldview that to some degree is indebted to the Greeks or Plato. They think the problem with the world rests in undisciplined and selfish people who won't submit to traditional moral values and responsibilities. The solution is a "revival" of religion, morality, and a virtue in society.  Philosopher Al Wolters writes: "The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God's good creation and identify it, rather than the alien intrusion of sin, as the villain. Such an error conceives of the good-evil dichotomy as intrinsic to the creation itself...  Something in the good creation itself is identified as the source of evil.  In the course of history this "something" has been variously identified as the body and it's passions (Plato and much of Greek philosophy), as culture in distinction from nature (Rousseau and Romanticism), as authority figures in society and family (psycho-dynamic psychology), as economic forces (Marx), as technology and management (Heidegger and existentialists)...  As far as I can tell the Bible is unique in its rejection of all attempts to either demonize some part of creation as the root of our problems, or to idolize some part of creation as the solution. All other religions, philosophies, and worldviews in one way or another fall into the trap of idolatry -- of failing to keep creation and fall distinct.  And this trap is an ever-present danger for Christians [as well]."

     Look again at the uniqueness of Christianity. Only the Christian worldview locates the problem with the world NOT in any part of the world, or any particular group of people, but in sin itself (our loss of relationship with God). And it locates the solution in God's grace (our restoration of a relationship with God through the work of Christ).  Sin infects us all, and so we cannot simply divide the world into the heroes and the villains. (And if we did we would certainly have to include ourselves among the latter as well as the former.) Without an understanding of the Gospel, we will be either naively Utopian or cynically disillusioned We will be demonizing something that isn't bad enough to explain the mess we are in, and we will be idolizing something that isn't powerful enough to get us out of it. This is, in the end, what all other worldviews do... The Christian story line, or worldview, is: Creation (plan), Fall (problem), Redemption and Restoration (solution): 

     1.  The whole world is good.  God made the world and everything in it was good. There are no intrinsically evil parts of the world.  Nothing is evil in its origin... You can find this "creational good" in everything. 

     2. The whole world is fallen.   There is no aspect of the world affected by sin more or less than any other. For example, are emotion and passions untrustworthy and reason infallible?  Is the physical bad and the spiritual good?  Is the day-to-day world profane but religious observances good? None of these is true. But non-Christian story lines must adopt some variations of these in order to villainize and even demonize some created thing instead of sin.

     3. The whole world is going to be redeemed. Jesus is going to redeem spirit and body, reason and emotion, people and nature. There is no part of reality for which there is no hope.

     The Gospel is the true story that God made a good world that was marred by sin and evil, but through Jesus Christ he redeemed it at infinite cost to himself, so that someday he will return to renew all creation; end all suffering and death; and restore absolute peace, justice, and joy in the world forever. The vast implications of this gospel worldview -- about the character of God, the goodness of the material creation, the value of the human person, the fallenness of all people and all things, the primacy of love and grace, the importance of justice and truth, the hope of redemption -- affect everything, and especially our work." 

     That's obviously a bit to chew on!  But I hope it helps you see how the worldview one chooses to adopt will have great effect on how they view their work, carry out their work, and choose to live. My question is:  Do you have a Christian worldview?  Or, like many, have you adopted elements of a Marxist, Greek, Capitalist, or Freudian worldview?  Everyone has a worldview that under-girds their life choices and endeavors. Is your a Gospel worldview, or a syncritistic mix of many others with a small element of Christian lingo or references to Jesus added in?

     And I must stress that it is NOT irrelevant.  Since God commands us: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all you soul and all your mind and all your strength," it would seem to lay upon us as believers an unavoidable responsibility to think things like this through as best we possibly can.  For whatever worldview we have has a profound effect on influencing the choices we make, why we make them, and what we will pursue. It will impact how we treat people, why we love and value the things we do, live as we do, and view work the way we do. 

     So my prayer for everyone is this:  If you have come to Christ, yet retained a non-Christian worldview (or elements from various ones), you will seek (by the grace God gives) to root those elements out and replace them with distinctly Christian or Gospel elements -- something Keller's book distinctly aims at helping us with! 

In His Service, Pastor Jeff 

A Selection of Short Thoughts

Greetings All!

     Sometimes you can say a lot in very few words!  Therefore,  today, instead of one longer thought, I offer you many short thoughts -- all which struck me as worthy of sharing.  I trust one or more may hit home for you as well!   Enjoy!

     “Prosperity cannot be a proof of God’s favor, since it is what the devil promises to those who worship him.”

John Piper

     “When we deal seriously with our sins, God will deal gently with us.”

Charles Spurgeon

     “Evangelism must start with the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the demands of the law, and the eternal consequences of evil.”

Martin Lloyd-Jones

     “I frequently hear persons exhorted to give their hearts to Christ, which is a very proper exhortation. But that is not the Gospel. Salvation comes from something that Christ gives you, not something you give to Christ.  The giving of your heart to Christ follows after receiving from Christ the gift of eternal life by faith.”

Charles Spurgeon

“I’m just a nobody telling everybody about somebody who can save anybody.”

Anonymous

“Your personal testimony, however meaningful to you, is not the Gospel.”

R. C. Sproul

     “In our day it is considered worse to judge evil than to do evil.”

Os Guiness

     “Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible. There is no glory for God in that which is humanly possible.  Faith begins where man’s power ends.” 

George Muller

     “Worry is believing God will not get it right, and bitterness is believing God got it wrong.”

 Tim Keller

     “You will derive far more benefit from a single verse of Scripture read slowly and prayerfully and duly meditated on than you will from ten chapters read through quickly.”

A. W. Pink

     “I must listen to the gospel. It tells me not what I must do, but what Christ the Son of God has done for me.”

Martin Luther

     “If you are really saved, brethren, not a hair of your heads belongs to yourselves. Christ’s blood has either bought you or it has not. And if it has, then you are altogether Christ’s – every bit of you – and you are neither to eat nor drink, nor sleep, but for Christ.”

Charles Spurgeon

     “The doctrine of grace and redemption keeps us from seeing any person or situation as hopeless.”

Tim Keller

     “God has given me everything, forgiven me everything, promised me everything, and I lack nothing except the faith to believe it.” 

Martin Luther

     “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.”

Elisabeth Elliot

     “You have become blind when you see nothing wrong with something God has called sin.”

Anonymous

Many blessings in Christ, Pastor Jeff

The Reason For God - Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Greetings All!

     Today I bring you a selection from Tim Keller's best-selling book "The Reason For God - Belief in an Age of Skepticism."  If you have not read it, you have missed out on some very wise and convincing arguments for the Christian faith.  Many people have what we could call their "pat objections" for why they reject the Christian faith.  "There can't be just one true religion."  "How could a good God allow suffering."  "Science has disproved Christianity."   "How could a loving God send people to hell?"

     Keller takes on such objections and offers many well-reasoned responses to them.  In an age where people often tend to do little more choose a view that fits with their personal preferences (whether they've thought it through or not), Keller offers us some very logical and well-thought-through alternative perspectives, which challenge such pat objections to the core.  If you really want to be challenged to reconsider many issues from a fresh perspective, you will want to pick up a copy. For to miss out on this book is to miss out on an apologetic treat similar to that of reading C. S. Lewis, Os Guinness, Ravi Zacharias, and others.

       Our particular "thought" for today addresses the objection voiced by people who say, "I can't believe in Christianity because I believe in a God of love."  Enjoy.

I believe in a God of Love

       "During my college years and my early twenties, I, like so many others, questioned the Christian faith I was raised in. There were subjective reasons for my doubts. Christianity just didn't seem real to me experientially. I had not developed a prayer life and had never experienced God personally.  There were also intellectual problems I was having with Christianity, all of which I address elsewhere in this book. There was one, however, I will talk about here.  I was troubled by those Christians who stressed hellfire and damnation. Like so many of my generation I believed that if there was a core to all religions, it was a loving God. I wanted to believe in a God of love who accepted people regardless of their beliefs and practices.  So I began to take courses in the other major religions of the world -- Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Confucianism, and Judaism.  I have profited to this day from those studies. However, my explorations in other faiths proved me wrong on this particular point about the centrality of a loving God.

       I found no other religious text outside the Bible that said God created the world out of love and delight. Most ancient pagan religions believed the world was created through struggles and violent battles between opposing gods and supernatural forces. I turned to look more closely at Buddhism, the religion I liked the best at the time. However, despite its great emphasis on selflessness and detached service to others, Buddhism did not believe in a personal God at all, and love is the action of a person.

         Later on, after I become a minister, I was a speaker and panelist for several years in a monthly discussion program in Philadelphia between a Christian church and a mosque. Each month a speaker from the church and a speaker from the mosque would give a Biblical and Qu'ranic perspective on the topic. When we covered the topic of God's love, it was striking how different our conceptions were. I was told repeatedly by Muslim speakers that God was indeed loving in the sense of being merciful and kind to us. But when Christians spoke of the Lord as our Spouse, of knowing God intimately and personally, and of having powerful effusions of his love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, our Muslim friends balked. They told us that it was disrespectful, in their view, to speak of anyone knowing God personally.

       Today many of the skeptics I talk to say, as I once did, they can't believe in the God of the Bible who punishes and judges people, because they "believe in a God of Love."  I now ask, what makes them think God is love?  Can they look at life in the world today and say, "This proves that the God of the world is a God of love?"  Can they look at history and say, "This all shows that the God of history is a God of love?"  Can they look at the religious texts of the world and conclude that God is a God of love?  By no means is that the dominant, ruling attribute of God as understood in any of the major faiths. I must conclude that the source of the idea that God is Love is the Bible itself. And the Bible tells us that the God of love is also a God of judgment who will put all things in the world right in the end.

       The belief in a God of pure love -- who accepts and judges no one -- is a powerful act of faith.  Not only is there no evidence for it in the natural order, but there is almost no historical, religious textual support for it outside of Christianity.  The more one looks at it, the less justified [this objection] appears."

       Though many today will say, "all religions basically teach the same thing," all it takes is actually reading their religious texts to see that this is not so, as Keller, who has read them testifies.  In fact, when it comes to the issue of love, the Bible separates itself even further from the others by not only speaking of the love of God frequently, but even going as far as to declare that "God IS love" (I John 4:16).  God is not just loving, He is love.  In this regard as well, no other religion comes close.

       What many in western society today fail to see (disconnected as we are becoming from our past) is that our culture was influenced for two millennia by Christian thought and practice.  And, therefore, scores of the virtues that have come to be the rallying cry of our secular society, are not virtues our secular culture developed on it's own, but virtues our culture borrowed (or stole) from Christianity, washed of their rooting in Christianity, and tried to claim as their own.

       It's what could (or should) be called, cultural plagiarism -- with no credit given to the original author of those virtues.  Or as one friend put it, our culture has borrowed "lumber" it removed from the structural framework of the house called Christianity, but washed of all it's Christian moorings and meaning, and then made to fit a secularized ideal.  Other cultures stress honor and shame, compliance and conformity, obedience and punishment.  But in a culture influenced for many centuries by the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the redemption that came to us through the sacrifice of Himself for those who didn't deserve it; a culture influenced by the truth that love is the greatest of all gifts (I Corinthians 13), and that God himself is love (as His disciples alone declared), it is quite impossible for love not to be seen the queen of virtues.

In the Bonds of Christian Affection, Pastor Jeff

Sanctification

Greetings All!

     Not too long ago I was speaking with a group of college-age Christians when I brought up the topic of sanctification. There was dead silence.  “What’s sanctification?” one boy asked.  “It’s being set apart for God, or as belonging to God,” I said. “It means growing in holiness.”   Since they still looked a bit confused and didn’t totally understand the term holiness, I said: “You know, like growing to be more godly or coming to reject sin more and more. Seeking to do what Christ wants and resisting the things of the world.” 

     Yet, try as I might to explain it, it was a topic they found hard to grasp.  And these weren’t unbelievers or non-churched people, they were churched people, one young man being a pastor’s kid.  So, I figured that if they struggled with the concept of sanctification, maybe others do as well.  And if so, to help remedy that lack of understanding, I offer these quotes on sanctification from well-known Christians.  I trust they will help!  Enjoy!

     "There are three things which the true Christian desires in respect to sin: Justification, that it may not condemn; Sanctification, that it may not rein; and Glorification, that it may cease to be."       Richard Cecil

     "I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: If I was saved by my good works – then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through.  I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace – at God's infinite cost – then there's nothing he cannot ask of me."    Tim Keller

     "Associate with sanctified persons. They may by their counsel, prayers, and holy example, be a means to make you holy."    Thomas Watson

     "The Christian life requires hard work. Our sanctification is a process wherein we are co-workers with God. We have the promise of God's assistance in our labor, but His divine help does not annul our responsibility to work (Phil. 2:12-13).”    R. C. Sproul

     "Some Christians overlook the blessing of sanctification, and yet to a thoroughly renewed heart, this is one of the sweetest gifts of the covenant. If we could be saved from wrath, and yet remain unregenerate, impenitent sinners, we should not be saved as we desire, for we mainly and chiefly pant to be saved from sin and led in the way of holiness.”     Charles Spurgeon

     “Is my wife more like Christ because she is married to me? Or is she like Christ in spite of me? Has she shrunk from His likeness because of me? Do I sanctify her or hold her back? Is she a better woman because she is married to me?"    R. Kent Hughes

     "The one marvelous secret of a holy life lies not in imitating Jesus, but in letting the perfections of Jesus manifest themselves in my mortal flesh. Sanctification is "Christ in you."... Sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy; it is drawing from Jesus the holiness that was manifested in Him, and He manifests it in me."  Oswald Chambers

     "The sanctified body is one whose hands are clean. The stain of dishonesty is not on them, the withering blight of ill-gotten gain has not blistered them, the mark of violence is not found upon them. They have been separated from every occupation that could displease God or injure a fellow-man."    A. B. Simpson

     "Those who have been justified are now being sanctified; those who have no experience of present sanctification have no reason to suppose they have been justified."   F.F. Bruce

     One of God’s primary purposes in the life of everyone He saves is to restore His sin-damaged and sin-fractured image within us.

     This is one of the three primary aspects of “salvation” which includes: 1^st) JUSTIFICATION or being “saved” from the wrath of God against our sin, and brought into a pardoned, reconciled, or right standing with God, by grace, through atonement and faith in Christ or His blood (Rom. 3:21-26).  2^nd) SANCTIFICATION or being “saved” from the power and personality-distorting effects of sin in two ways: In an immediate way at the time of our conversion (definitive sanctification), and then in a gradual way for the remainder of our lives (progressive life-long sanctification) where God conforms us more and more into the likeness of Jesus, who is “the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His being" (Heb. 1:3).  And 3^rd) GLORIFICATION or being “saved” from the indwelling presence of sin within us all together at the time of our death and/or resurrection.

     So, "salvation" is to be saved from sin’s penalty (justification) and power (sanctification) and presence (glorification). It's one of the reasons you can't really speak about salvation from a biblical perspective without speaking of sin!  It also explains what Richard Cecil means in the first quote, and why F.F. Bruce can say what he says in the last quote. "God chose us before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in Him"  (Eph. 1:4) and "predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son" (Rom. 8:29).  That was His eternal purpose for us, and it always involves sanctification!

In the Bonds of the Gospel, Pastor Jeff 

Four Wrong Answers to the Question “Why Me?”

Greetings All,

This week's "thought" comes from Tim Keller's blog ( www.Redeemercitytocity.com ) in an entry dated August 6, 2012.  It is a little lengthy, but who can honestly deal with the question of why there is suffering in the world in just one or two paragraphs?  If you have ever asked, or had someone ask you the question, "Why Me?"  it will be worth the time it takes for you to read this entry.  Obviously, I offer it to those earnestly interested in knowing how to respond to such a question since those who aren't truly interested will not take the time to go through it.  Keller (as usual) offers some very good insights. Enjoy.

Four Wrong Answers to the Question “Why Me?”

     When I was diagnosed with cancer, the question "Why me?" was a natural one. Later, when I survived but others with the same kind of cancer died, I also had to ask, "Why me?” Suffering and death seem random, senseless… As a minister, I’ve spent countless hours with suffering people crying: “Why did God let this happen?”  In general, I hear four answers to this question—but each is wrong, or at least inadequate.

     The FIRST answer is: "This makes no sense—I guess this proves there is no God." But the problem of senseless suffering does not go away if you abandon belief in God. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” said that if there was no higher divine Law, there would be no way to tell if any particular human law was unjust or not. If there is no God, then why have a sense of outrage and horror when suffering and tragedy occur? The strong eat the weak—that’s life—so why not? When Friedrich Nietzsche heard that a natural disaster had destroyed Java in 1883, he wrote a friend: “Two hundred thousand wiped out at a stroke—how magnificent!” Nietzsche was relentless in his logic. Because if there is no God, all value judgments are arbitrary. All definitions of justice are just the results of your culture or temperament. As different as they were in other ways, King and Nietzsche agreed on this point. If there is no God or higher divine Law, then violence is perfectly natural. So abandoning belief in God doesn’t help with the problem of suffering at all, and as we will see, it removes many resources for facing it.

     The SECOND answer is: “If there is a God, senseless suffering proves that God is not completely in control of everything. He couldn’t stop this.”  As many thinkers have pointed out—both devout believers as well as atheists—such a being, whatever it is, doesn’t really fit our definition of God. And this leaves you with the same problems mentioned above. If you don’t believe in a God powerful enough to create and sustain the whole world, then the world came about through natural forces, and that means, again, that violence is natural. Or if you think that God is an impersonal life force and this whole material world is just an illusion, again you remove any reason to be outraged at evil and suffering or to resist it.

     The THIRD answer to seemingly sudden, random death is: "God saves some people and lets others die because he favors and rewards good people." But the Bible forcefully rejects the idea that people who suffer more are worse people than those who are spared suffering. This was the self-righteous premise of Job’s friends in that great Old Testament book. They sat around Job, who was experiencing one sorrow in life after another, and said, "the reason this is happening to you and not us is because we are living right and you are not." At the end of the book, God expresses his fury at Job’s "miserable comforters." The world is too fallen and deeply broken to issue in neat patterns of good people having good lives and bad people having bad lives.

     The FOURTH answer is: "God knows what he’s doing, so be quiet and trust him." This is partly right, but inadequate. It is inadequate because it is cold and because the Bible gives us more with which to face the terrors of life. God did not create a world with death and evil in it. It is the result of humankind turning away from him. We were put into this world to live wholly for him, and when instead we began to live for ourselves everything in our created reality began to fall apart—physically, socially, and spiritually. Everything became subject to decay. But God did not abandon us. Of all the world's major religions, only Christianity teaches that God came to earth (in Jesus Christ) and became subject to suffering and death himself—dying on the Cross to take the punishment our sins deserved—so that someday he can return to earth to end all suffering without ending us.

     Do you see what this means? Yes, we don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, or why it is so random, but now at least we know what the reason isn’t—what it can’t be. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us! It can’t be that he doesn’t care. He is so committed to our ultimate happiness that he was willing to plunge into the greatest depths of suffering himself.  He understands us, he’s been there, and he assures us that he has a plan to eventually to wipe away every tear…

     Someone might say, "But that’s only half an answer to the question 'Why?'" Yes, but it is the half that we need.  If God actually explained all the reasons why he allows things to happen as they do, it would be too much for our finite brains. Think of small children and their relationship to their parents. Three-year-olds can’t understand most of what their parents allow and disallow for them. But though they aren’t capable of comprehending their parents’ reasons, they are capable of knowing their parents’ love, and therefore capable of trusting them and living securely. That is what they really need. Now the difference between God and human beings would be infinitely greater than the difference between a thirty-year-old parent and a three-year-old child. So we should not expect to be able to grasp all God’s purposes, but through the Cross and gospel of Jesus Christ, we can know his love. And that is what we need most.

     In Ann Voskamp’s book, One Thousand Gifts, she shares her journey to understand the senseless death of her sister, crushed by a truck at the age of two. In the end, she concludes that the primary issue is whether we trust God’s character. Is he really loving? Is he really just? Her conclusion:  "[God] gave us Jesus... If God didn’t withhold from us His very own Son, will God withhold anything we need? If trust must be earned, hasn’t God unequivocally earned our trust with the splintery wood on the raw wounds, the thorns pressed into the brow, your name on the cracked lips? How will he not also graciously give us all things He deems best and right? He’s already given the incomprehensible.”

In the Service of Jesus, Pastor Jeff

Gospel in Life - Grace Changes Everything

Greetings All!

     This week's "thought" comes from one of my favorite author/preachers - Tim Keller.  It is taken from his book entitled, "Gospel in Life - Grace Changes Everything."

     As the title suggests, this book deals with how to live out the Gospel in every part of life.  It shows how to apply God's redemptive grace to every sphere of our existence, since many Christians have adopted the unbiblical idea or assumption that the Gospel is simply to "save one's soul," guide us in relation to church, or simply encourage us in our "private life, or spiritual life."  Keller challenges this idea and rightly points out that the Gospel is meant to do much more than that, as I will let him explain. Enjoy!

     "British theologian Lesslie Newbigin observes: The Gospel does not become public truth for a society by being propagated as a theory, or as a worldview, and certainly not as a religion. It can become public truth only insofar as it is embodied in a society (the Church) which is both abiding in Christ and engaged in the life of the world."  Likewise, Abraham Kuyper once wrote: "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not say: "Mine!"
     Christianity is not simply a set of beliefs to be held in order to save my individual soul. It is also an interpretation of -- and a distinct way of understanding -- everything in the world. Both ancient Greek and modern thought, however, tend to separate faith and beliefs from the rest of life in what is known as "dualism." Dualism seals off personal beliefs and faith from the way we actually live and work in the world.

     Moreover, it leads to a widespread assumption that the only way to truly serve God is through direct ministry -- teaching (the Bible), evangelizing, discipling.  The church and its activities are seen as good and untainted, while the secular world is seen as bad and polluting. This feeling is understandable. Many workplaces are so filled with excessive competition, superficiality, politics, greed and cruelty that it is tempting to leave a secular job and just minister within the context of the Christian community. Even if we don't do that, we may simply opt to spend our life in more traditional, less difficult environments. This has effectively removed Christians from places of cultural influence.

     The Bible does not support a "sacred" versus "secular" distinction.  We cannot separate our faith from our work and life in the public sphere. Every part of our lives -- work, family, civic involvement, recreation -- is to be done for God's glory (Isaiah 43:7 / I Corinth. 6:19-20 / I Corinth. 10:31). The Bible tells us that Jesus has to be Lord of every area of our life, not just our private lives. The gospel shapes and affects the motives, manner, and methods with which we carry out every task in life. Living like this is not easy, but it offers a profound way to have an impact on the world around us.

     N. T. Wright in his book "The Challenge of Jesus" urges us to be at the leading edge of our culture. He writes: The gospel of Jesus points us, and indeed urges us, to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology... a worldview that will mount the historically rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and post-modernity, leading the way into the post-modern world with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and wisdom. I believe we face the question, "If not now, then when?" And if we are grasped by this vision, we may also hear the question, "If not us, then who?"  And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?"

     I understand the desire to withdraw from the world and cloister ourselves away in a safe Christian bubble. It is so appealing to the person pursuing godliness. I have entertained it seriously on quite a few occasions -- until I pray and God says, "no."  The fight is hard, and seems to get harder all the time!  Yet to give into the lure to escape from the world is counter to what Jesus says in John 17:15 and 18: "My prayer is not that you (Father) take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one... As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world."

     It is true that the world can make us feel dirty. That's why we tend to want to run to a monastery in some beautiful country location and lock the door behind us!  But we are endued with divine authority to be ambassadors or soldiers sent out into the battlefields for Jesus.  And soldiers don't run from the battle, they train for it, and then learn in it, to be better equipped to defeat the enemies' (Satan's) schemes.

     Jesus never advocated a self-protective escapism. Love drove Him to go where the most need was -- and that was usually where the worst of sinners were. He went to the places where He could do the most good. He did NOT cloister Himself away from sinners, and the staining effects associating with them could have, but went into it knowing that His holy love would be a power and agent for change in those places -- places where most other religious people refused to go.

     It's by no means an easy calling, but Christians are called (as the saying goes) to: "Be in the world, but not of the world."  We are called to be salt and light in a dark and tasteless world. We are called to be risk-takers for Jesus, because refusing to take those risks leaves the lost at an ever greater risk of never hearing the gospel brought to them personally by someone who cares enough to go where they are at. Not unprepared or naive, but in faith, wisdom, and with needed prayer and preparation, remembering this one needed caution: Jesus always sent people out in two's, or groups, not as lone-wolf individuals, so as to minimize the potential casualties.

In the Service of the Gospel, Pastor Jeff

The Reason for God - Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Greetings All,

      Today's "thought" comes from Tim Keller's bestselling book, "The Reason for God - Belief in an Age of Skepticism."  Keller, if you know him, is a deep thinker who filters all he sees through a solid Gospel grid.  Alongside Ravi Zacharias, Os Guiness, D. A. Carson, and a few others, he  ranks as one of the most astute Christian apologists and preachers of our day. Most anything he has written is well worth your time in reading, including the above mentioned book.
     This particular thought addresses the common complaint of many non-Christians that, "If God is a God of Judgment He Can't be a God of love."   In fact, that is the heading for this particular subsection of the chapter dealing with God's more unpopular characteristics -- His justice, judgment and wrath. It is well worth the minute or two it will take you to read it.  It really is rather profound.  Enjoy.

       "In Christianity God is both a God of love and of justice. Many people struggle with this. They believe that a loving God can't be a judging God. Like most other Christian ministers in our society, I have asked literally thousands of times, "How can a God of love be also a God filled with wrath and anger? If He is loving and perfect, he should forgive and accept everyone. He shouldn't get angry."

     I always start my response by pointing out that all loving persons are sometimes filled with wrath, not just despite, but because of, their love. If you love a person and see someone ruining them -- even they themselves -- you get angry. As Becky Pippert puts it in her book 

"Hope Has It's Reasons":

"Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships.

Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference... God's wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer...which is eating out the insides of 

the human race he loves with his whole being."

     The Bible says that God's wrath flows from his love and delight in his creation. He is angry at evil and injustice because it is destroying its peace and integrity. "The Lord is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made... The Lord watches over those who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy" (Psalm 145:17-20).  It is at this point that many people complain that those who believe in a God of judgment will not approach enemies with a desire to reconcile with them. If you believe in a God who smites evildoers, you may think it perfectly justified to do some of the smiting yourself.

     Yale theologian Miroslav Volf, a Croatian who has seen the violence in the Balkans, does not see the doctrine of God's judgment that way.  He writes:

If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence -- that God would not be worthy of worship... The only means to prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves is to insist that violence is legitimate only when it comes from God...My thesis that the practice of non-violence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many... in the West... [But] it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human non-violence [results from the belief in] God's refusal to judge.  In a sun-scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die...

[with] other unpleasant captivities of the liberal mind." 

       In this fascinating passage Volf reasons that it is the lack of belief in a God of vengeance that "secretly nourishes violence." The human impulse to make perpetrators of violence pay for their crimes is almost an overwhelming one. It cannot possibly be overcome with platitudes like, "Now don't you see that violence won't solve anything?"  If you have seen your home burned down and your relatives killed and raped, such talk is laughable -- and it shows no concern for justice. Yet victims of violence are drawn to go far beyond justice into the vengeance that says, "You put out one of my eyes, so I will put out both of yours." They are pulled inexorably into an endless cycle of vengeance, of strikes and counter-strikes, nurtured and justified by the memory of terrible wrongs.

     Can our passion for justice be honored in a way that does not nurture our desire for blood vengeance? Volf says the best resource for this is the belief in the concept of God's divine justice. If I don't believe that there is a God who will eventually put all things right, I will take up the sword and will be sucked into the endless vortex of retaliation. Only if I am sure there is a God who will right all wrongs and settle all accounts perfectly, do I find the power to refrain." 

     Those who are biblically astute will have already noticed this is nothing more than what Paul tells us in Romans 12:19 where he writes: "Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge, I will repay says the Lord." 

     In the context of that verse it is both sincere love (v. 9) bolstered by the belief that God is a God of justice who will one day right all wrongs, that gives people the power to refrain from feeling the strong  urge to right them themselves.  It's not just love alone that restrains retaliation.  It is love combined with the assurance that God will one day (and not always in this lifetime) right all wrongs. As many of you can attest: If we don't believe God will avenge all evil, we will feel the nearly irresistible need or compulsion to avenge it ourselves. That is, when we let go of belief in a God of justice and wrath -- in the face of terrible violence and injustice -- we will seek to execute that justice, judgment and wrath ourselves. It is only the assurance that God will do it, as Paul points out, that frees us from the deep inner compulsion to do it ourselves.

     Thank God we can trust Him to avenge such things -- as His Word assures us He will -- or this world would be an even more violent place to live.

With prayers for the blessing of God upon your day, Pastor Jeff