Tag: Gospel

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5 Reasons Churches Should Talk a Lot More About Leadership

Leadership is extremely important. Few things happen in this world without it. We all recognize this. For example, when our favorite sports team is not doing well, who do we blame? The coach. Then, the team ends up hiring a new coach. People are excited . . . or worried. Why? Because leadership matters.

So, if the church is concerned about making people better and making this world a better place to the glory of God, then it should teach on leadership. However, I’ve seen mixed reactions to instruction on leadership. Here are a few of the objections/comments I have received to teaching on leadership. I put my answer next to it and then the positive reason for teaching on leadership in the church.

Reason # 1: Leadership is an inescapable part of the human way of life created by God.

1. Objection: Leadership is a secular topic. Answer: I do not call secular that which belongs to normal human life. It is part of God’s created order. Just as work, marriage, and education are part of life, so leadership is part of life. All of these are part of God’s creation. Faith in God and His Word reorients our way of thinking about all of life, including leadership. If God exists and created this world in which leadership matters so much, then we would expect that He would have something to say about it.

Reason # 2: We all do have and should have people we want to lead to a better place.

2. Objection: I’m not a leader. Answer: people often think of leadership in terms of a leadership position such as a boss, teacher, or pastor. However, leadership is a broader concept than that. We are leading someone whenever we want to influence people to move to a place where they could and should be. Anytime we are concerned about people’s behavior or character and want to see it changed, this involves leadership. Anytime we are concerned about a community, group, or individual, this is an opportunity for leadership. In addition, we not only are already seeking to lead, but we ought to have concern about the people around us and want to see them in a better place. This is our just duty. Continue reading “5 Reasons Churches Should Talk a Lot More About Leadership”

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Emotions, Spirituality, and the Gospel

Emotions drive our lives. They can drive us forward to accomplish great things, or they can drive us into a ditch. But they are the drivers. So, as we seek to live a life that connects to God and serve Him, we cannot neglect this important aspect of our lives.

Rafael Pardo’s book Emociones, Espiritualidad, y Evangelio helps us integrate our emotional life into our spiritual life. Pardo’s first goal is to help Christians embrace emotions as a positive force in the Christian spiritual life. He contends that they have often been neglected or downplayed. A simple example of this is the book of Job in the common Christian consciousness. Job’s famous statement is often remembered: “The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Viewed in abstraction, this phrase might seem to downplay the emotions associated with loss. However, the rest of the book of Job is all about his emotional struggles processing his great loss! The former is remembered. The latter is forgotten. Pardo wants to remind us of all the emotional struggles in the Bible, including those of Job and Jesus!

Emotions, according to Pardo, help us adapt to our environment. They begin with a cognitive evaluation of something as pleasurable or unpleasurable and move us toward the former and away from the latter.

The problem with emotions is that our cognitive evaluations are often wrong or irrational. Examples of irrational beliefs are “I cannot live without you,” “I should never make a mistake,” “no one should ever criticize me,” “everyone should like me,” etc. These irrational beliefs give us emotions that move us away from things that we should embrace or accept and toward things that we should move away from. Continue reading “Emotions, Spirituality, and the Gospel”

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In the Bible, Anxiety Is the Occasion of Sin

In the Bible, anxiety is the occasion for sin. Anxiety is not in itself sin, but it is the occasion that tempts us to sin. Thus, there is nothing wrong with seeing a threat, difficulty, or challenge. The question is, what do we do with it?

I believe that this is a true analysis of sin in our life based on several considerations. I was surprised, though, at how explicit this is in the Bible as I reviewed its various stories of sin. Here are just a few examples that demonstrate the connection between anxiety and sin. Continue reading “In the Bible, Anxiety Is the Occasion of Sin”

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Manhood & Rudyard Kipling’s Poem “If”

Every time I recite Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If,” I feel inspired and encouraged to work and keep going forward. Many people feel the same. It is a widely praised, quoted, and printed poem.

I was so inspired by it that I decided that I would try and do a “Bible” study on the poem in our church. No, I don’t think the poem is part of the Bible. Rather, I thought it would be worth considering what Kipling is saying and seeing how it fits into the Bible’s picture of manhood.

Here’s how we did it. We would take a line or two from the poem and ask four questions:

  • What is Kipling saying?
  • Is it biblical?
  • What would it look like to implement it in our lives?
  • How does the Gospel empower us to move toward the ideal in the poem?

It all turned out quite well. We had a lot of good discussion about what it meant for us to live as men of God in this world.

Here’s a few things we discovered.

There are many parallels to Ecclesiastes and particularly Ecclesiastes 7 in the poem. For example:

  • The caution against anger (7:9)
  • Not getting stuck longing for the past (7:10)
  • Accepting conditions as they are without judging them (7:13)
  • Accepting good days as well as bad days with equanimity (7:14)
  • Not being too righteous (7:16)
  • Not getting upset by slander or what people say (7:21-22)

We learned something about the power of poetry. You can say, for example, “use your time well,” but it’s much more powerful to say, “if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run . . .” Writing a poem of moral imperative is difficult, but Kipling makes it work by his continual use of the word “if.”

The poem challenged us to work through the things of the past and keep pressing forward to the future. This is in line with what the Apostle Paul said, “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward” (Phil. 3:13-14).

The poem encouraged us not to get bogged down with the wrongs people do to us and to keep loving and honoring people no matter what. In other words, pay attention to your duty toward others rather than fretting over how they respond. We found this aspect of the poem in line with Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere.

While we did not reject outright any of the “ifs” of the poem, we did have questions about some of the statements and how they might be taken. For example, is it good to make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss, and is Kipling advocating this? Is the idea of neither foes nor loving friends hurting you consistent with the Bible’s view of grief? Would the idea of filling the “unforgiving minute” with “running” lead to frantic lives?

We also considered how the Gospel would encourage us to implement these things. The hope of the future that the Gospel provides can help us to move forward in the face of loss or past hurts. Trust in God’s justice can help us let go of the wrongs that others commit. Trust in God’s strength can empower us to do right in the face of pressure. We found many other encouragements. The Bible continually presents God’s power, promises, and presence when it encourages us to do our duty.

Finally, how does all this help us become “a man”? The promise at the end of the poem is, “you’ll be a man, my son.” The definition of manhood is complicated and controversial. In my view, the male orientation is fundamentally outward. The female is inward or home-oriented. I do not mean this to be an ethical prescription. It is a description of what actually happens. If you take maleness as that outward orientation, then you can see how this poem helps. These prescriptions help you move forward and move outward to do and act in the world in the face of the most common difficulties and entanglements that keep us from doing so. If we can keep ourselves moving forward in the face of loss, failures, enemies, and temptations, then we will really be able to do things that bless ourselves and others and glorify God. More importantly, we will live as we were meant to live. In that sense, we will find satisfaction in simply being “a man, my son.”

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The Utterly Crucial Act of Giving Joyful Thanks to the Father

Why do we get so discouraged? For one, the world is discouraging!

But there are also good things, and we don’t see them in the way that we should. I wrote about this in my post last week that you can see here. In this post, I want to speak about the thing for which we should be most thankful. I want to speak to Christians for a moment about giving thanks to the Father for all that He has done for us in Jesus Christ.

I have studied a lot of theology in my life. I’m glad that I have. However, several years back, the Lord reminded me in a powerful way not to forget the simplicity of the message of good news in Jesus Christ. He called me to remember three things.

  1. Whatever we have done and wherever we’ve been, God offers free forgiveness and eternal blessedness and happiness to all as a free gift, if they will only accept Jesus as their Savior.
  2. If someone has accepted Jesus, however else they may differ from me, they are fundamentally at the same place as me and worthy of my special affection.
  3. If someone has not accepted Jesus, then they are only one act of faith away from fundamentally being at the same place as I am. So, I am not that far from anyone I meet.

So, I started preaching the simple message of the good news of Jesus Christ, the simple Gospel, week after week.

Then, one woman came up to me and said, “I appreciate what you are preaching, but how long are we going to go on with this? What difference does it make? I want help living a better life.”

I thought that was a great question. What difference does the simple Gospel make? I began to think about it.

The conclusion that I came to was that it made a huge difference. To the degree we could see all that we have through a relationship with Jesus, to that degree we could live more joyful and peaceful lives that glorified God in the world.

What do I mean?

  • Sometimes we feel shame, but then we remember that God has qualified us to participate in the kingdom of light.
  • We feel guilty, but we can remember that God has forgiven all our sins!
  • We feel alone, but we can give thanks that God is with us!
  • We feel like we don’t belong, but then we remember that we belong to the people of God.
  • We feel like we can’t get ahead, but then we give thanks to the Father that we have an eternal inheritance far surpassing anything we will ever have on earth.

I realized that this has the power to radically change the way we view and live our lives. The good news about what we have in Jesus is life altering!

That’s why it’s utterly crucial to give thanks. Thanksgiving is seeing the good we have and acknowledging God as the source of it. Joyful thanks blesses and transforms us and gives glory to God. And there is nothing for which we should be more thankful than the good news about what Jesus Christ has done for lost people like you and me.

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