Free to Serve

The Church & Missions

For a few more weeks Bryan Pillsbury and I are teaming up to teach Sending MVBC, a class on missions. We are packing into a few hours the basics that we'd like every member of the church to know about the global evangelization of the world.

In the next session, I want to make the point that missions without the church is like flour without bread. Bread is the point of flour just as the church is the point of missions. We plant the gospel so that God will plant churches.

One of the amazing facets of God's plan is the way he uses congregations to promote the gospel. Individuals can certainly share the gospel. But God seems to delight in using a whole community of brothers and sisters in Christ who locak arms to see the gospel go forth.

Don Whitney commented on the remarkable power of a corporate witness:

In a world where everyone has broken relationships, supernatural unity in a church family bears to the power of the gospel in a marvelously God-glorifying manner. And as necessary as individual witnessing is, it can never show unity as a congregational witness can. Or, to put it another way, Jesus said that unity was essential for effective evangelism, and it takes a group of Christians to demonstrate unity. Therefore churches need to consider ways to exhibit unity in the presence of unbelievers, for this both brings glory to God and brings people to Christ. (Spiritual Disciplines Within the Church)

What are some ways that we can "exhibit unity in the presence of unbelievers"? In other words, how practically might God use our unity as a church to help unbelievers see the power of the gospel at work? Let me know what you think.

Helpful words from Colin Smith on moms and worry

Mothers, would you please read this post by Colin Smith? He lists what he considers the top five worries a mom faces. Then he goes on to show from Scripture how Jesus answers those worries. Here's a taste:

The length of a person's life is determined by God. It isn't something you can control. And no amount of worry will make a scrap of difference to it. But the root of all worry is that part of us feels that maybe we can control these things.

Be encouraged, Jesus really is in control. Our lives truly are in his hands. He can be trusted. 

Hope for Sinners

I have been very encouraged by Heath Lambert's new book, Finally Free. It is a hope-filled, grace-based, straight-talking approach to battling sexual sin. Sexual sin has its unique contours, but the fact of the matter is, sin is sin. The remedies for sexual sin find almost universal applications against any sin. The following paragraph is intended to be a word of hope to someone struggling with porn but willing to put his or her faith in Christ. But it's a good word for all sinners:

There is no porn user so enslaved that Jesus cannot set him or her free. There is no struggle for purity so intense that Jesus' grace cannot win the battle. There is no consequence so steep taht Jesus' power cannot carry you through. Jesus' grace to change you is stronger than pornography's power to destroy you. Jesus' grace is stronger than your own desires to watch sex. While there is no hope for you in looking at pornography, there is all the hope in the universe when you look to God and his grace.

Maybe you struggle with pornography, maybe you don't. You might struggle with anxiety, pride, laziness, covetousness, anger or something else. Re-read Lambert's paragraph, and simply replace the porn struggle with your struggle. That's good news, isn't it?

On Fearing God and Facing Death

People don't like to talk about fearing God today. It seems to some like an oppressive, even primitive idea. But for the Christian, nothing is sweeter than the fear of the Lord. In J. Gresham Machen's What is Faith? (which I just finished reading with a friend today), faith and fear in the face of death is presented in the most biblical and comforting of terms:

Even the Christian, it is true, must fear God. But it is a new kind of fear. It is fear, at the most, of chastisement and rebuke, not of final ruin; it is a fear, indeed, rather of what might have been than of what is; it is a fear of what would have come were we not in Christ. Without such fear there can be, for us sinners, no true love; for love of a saviour is proportioned to one's horror of that from which one has been saved. And how strong are the lives that are filled with such a love! They are lives brave not because the facts have been ignored, but because they have been faced; they are lives founded upon the solid foundation of the grace of God. If that is the foundation of our lives, we shall not fear when we come to the hour that otherwise we should dread. It is a beautiful thing when a Christian who has received Jesus as His Saviour comes to the moment of death; it is a beautiful thing to fall asleep in Jesus, and, as one enters that dark country of which none other can tell, to trust the dear Lord and Saviour and believe that we shall there see His face.

How Have We Loved One Another

No one I know has done a better job calling the church to be the church than Mark Dever. He was my pastor from 1994-2000, and I learned so much under his ministry. I got to see everything from hospital visits to Bible studies to preaching. Time and time again, he took us to Scripture to point out how often God reminds us that if we really love him, we'll love one another. 

In his helpful little book, What is a Healthy Church? Dever suggests that we should not be surprised to discover God, one day, asking us some very specific questions:

God will ask each member of the body, "Did you rejoice with the other members of the body when they rejoiced? Did you mourn with those who mourned? Did you treat the weaker parts as indispensable, and did you treat the parts that most think less honorable with special honor? Did you give double honor to those that led and taught you?" (see 1 Cor. 12:22-26 and 1 Tim. 5:17).

Christian, are you ready for the day on which God will call you to account for how you have loved and served the church family, including your church leaders? Do you know what God says the church should be?

If you haven't read it already, pick up a copy of What is a Healthy Church? and grow in your love for the body of Christ.

 

Thinking Theologically Together

There is a book that I'm trying to get every teacher at MVBC to read. It's Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church by Michael Lawrence. It is crucial for pastors in particular and Christians in general to approach their lives with a passion for thinking theologically about everything. Lawrence put it this way:

If we are to faithfully give witness to Christ, the Lord of life, in this age, then we must recover not simply the ability to think theologically, but the commitment to do so together in the life of the local church. Until we recover theological vision in the church, the nerve that gives rich and profound biblical life to our worship and mission will remain cut. Our public worship will remain shallow and entertainment-driven. Our mission will either be indistinguishable from the methods and goals of any sales organization, or it will be co-opted by the agenda of an untimely hostile culture. This culture will encourage us to do good things like caring for the poor, but it will only applaud us if we agree to leave Christ out of it.

It is not just that we must think theologically but the fact that we must do so together. So, instead of shying away from theology with the misguided notion that it divides, it is the calling of the church to come together with a biblical theology at the center of all we do. Instead of simply asking, "What do we want?" we need to ask one another, "What does God's Word say?"

The Need for Prayer

C. H. Spurgeon pastored roughly 5,500 souls. He was overwhelmed, "I find I have enough upon me to crush me unless heaven sustains me," he said. He loved to preach and to teach, but it was hard.

Very few of us are called to shepherd that many folks. But everyone from the pastor to the Sunday school teacher knows what it is like to stand before a group of people, feed them the Word of God, and feel responsibility for their souls. Whether it is a class of 5 or a church of 500, teachers need the prayers of the people they serve. For those of us who teach, much of our "success" is dependent upon our faithfulness and our preparation. But so much more is dependent upon prayer. Spurgeon felt this acutely:

You must uphold me by your prayers. If I have useful to you in any measure, pray for me; it is the greatest kindness you can do me. If the word as spoken by these lips has been a means of grace to your children, plead for me that others of the young may be brought to Jesus by my teaching. If you would find my ministry more profitable to your souls, pray for me still more; and let it not be said of your minister that you do not profit by his preaching, and that you have not, becasue you ask not. Beloved, let us wrestle in prayer; for untold blessings are to be had for the asking.

Another Perspective is Out

The February issue has an article on prayer and Doug Young offers a great review of the book, Practicing Hospitality. Here is his introduction. This is a good word for the church today.

Hospitality has always been of great importance to the church. But after reading Practicing Hospitality: The Joy of Serving Others by Pat Ennis and Lisa Tatlock, I’m convinced that most of us do not have a clear biblical understanding of hospitality. The problem is that most Christians have not understood the central role of hospitality for ministry, for outreach, and for gospel witness in our communities. We often offer up excuses or by default let the months slip away without opening our homes to fellow believers, the lost, those in ministry, neighbors, international students, widows, the grieving, or singles. At the heart of our neglect is thoughtlessness and lack of conviction that our homes are central to gospel ministry. 

 

 

Sanctification

At MVBC we are in the middle of a five week series on the doctrine of sanctification. So far so good. We've looked at the definition of sanctification: it is the process of a Christian growing increasingly holy, increasingly Christlike. We've looked at the ground or reason for our sanctification: God himself. "Be holy, because I am holy."

A book that has been helpful in my thinking and one that you might find helpful, too, is Kevin DeYoung's The Hole In Our Holiness. This is a good book. Here's how he ends chapter five:

The Bible clearly teaches that holiness is possible. This is good news, not bad news. You have permission to see evidences of grace in your life. You are allowed (and expected) to be obedient. You will never be perfect in this life. You cannot do anything to earn God's love. But as a redeemed, regenerate child of God you don't have to be a spiritual failure. By the mercies of God you can "present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" (Rom. 12:1).

He's right. It is possible to be holy!  The Christian has been filled with the Holy Spirit. Now God is at work in the life of every believer. Consider 1 Thessalonians 5:23, "Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

I want to be sanctified "completely." I want to be prepared for the return of Jesus--not simply because I have placed my faith in him but because I have become more like him.

 

 

Call to Service

Nate Palmer in his little book, Servanthood as Worship: The Privilege of Life in a Local Church makes a case for viewing service to others in the body of Christ as an indispensible part of the Christian life. It is demanding, rewarding, and God-glorifying. It is, as the title suggests, part of our worship of the living God. Palmer writes:

Often I prefer my own kingdom--the one where I am the object of worship and I get to define servanthood (usually as me serving me and others serving me). We always serve who we see as the king of our kingdom. That's why servanthood and worship are essentially the same thing.

Bu biblical service requires that we prefer others over ourselves, that we sacrifice willingly, giving time and energy that could have been used for personal benefit to benefit others. Biblical service calls us to direct our focus outward. In this we imitate Christ, who served others to the point of death. As I will emphasize throughout this book, serving God as a grateful response to the gospel is the calling of every Christian.

May God give us the grace we need to "direct our focus outward."