Gospel Vaccination is a Bad Thing

"When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3:4)

There's certain times when I notice a sort of Gospel vaccination in myself. It's like I've got just enough Gospel truth on my mind and in my heart to render the Gospel ineffective to change me.

Then a text like this bowls me over with the unsearchable depths of God's love for sinners.

The text says that we who have made Christ our life by faith will one day appear with Him in glory. That is incredible news, and it's much better than the watered-down version of the Gospel that I settle for so often.

It would be good enough news that the God of the Universe, for whom and by whom we have been made, takes pity on those who have rebelled against his kingdom and taken the life of His Only Begotten Son, but that's not the extent of God's love.

God's love consists of much more than pity, it's more like God inviting us to inherit all that is His by the blood of Christ.

Far from an isolated text throwing out a tentative truth, this text functions as one thread in broad biblical tapestry. Consider a few more passages that draw out God's inviting us to glory:

"Fear not, little flock, for it is my Father's good pleasure that you should inherit the kingdom." (Luke 12:32)


"The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs--heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ..." (Romans 8:16-17)


"The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one..." (John 17:22)


If this is too much for you to handle in one sitting (which it sure is for me), then think about this: Jesus is not ashamed to be called our brother. My brother, Jesus.

Our perfect High Priest and holder-together of all things visible and invisible delights to share His throne with us, His brothers and sisters.

God save us from that false humility that robs us of the joy of anticipating that Day when we will appear with Jesus in glory.

The Awkward Dance, a.k.a. Corporate Prayer

You can picture the scene.

The young bucks cluster on one end of an empty dance floor and dare each other to go ask one of the pretty maids in row to dance. Meanwhile, the pretty maids--unbeknownst to the aforementioned bucks--secretly conclude that the reluctance of the bucks has everything to do with their own perceived unattractiveness.

"Dancing is for sissies anyways," declares a severely intimidated buck, but if he's like any of the others, he knows good and well the only reason that he hasn't broken the dance-floor-sized gender barrier.

He doesn't go because he's fearful. He doesn't go because he's anticipating (or recalling) a toe-curling turn-down at the other end of the floor. So, he resorts to comfort in the form of shooting spit-wads or kicking out his fellow bucks' legs out from from under them.

Who will be the one to cross the floor and extend his hand to an awaiting maid? I'll tell you who, it's the buck who knows (or is confident enough to assume) the response ahead of time.

Once the confident buck goes ahead and asks his pretty maid to dance, the party begins. Air is put back into the room and once-petrified stags take to the dance floor.

Praying together is a lot like the awkward dance.

We Christians know that we ought to pray together, and we even may agree that there's joy in praying together. We may even be comfortable complaining and moaning that we don't pray together enough, but when it comes time to take to the dance floor of prayer together, we wimp out.

Prayer is nothing less than communicating our hearts and lifting up our concerns to the God of the Universe, who created everything with the Word of His mouth and currently sustains everything by the Word Become Flesh.

Not only that, but when we pray, we have a great Mediator, a Great High Priest, who is interceding for us with the Father. Jesus himself is at the Father's right hand, pleading our case by His blood whenever we pray, and that give us confidence.

"Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

This is the kind of confidence it takes for the first buck to cross the dance floor and ask that pretty maid to dance. We know our God, and we know that His Son stands and pleads our case before Him. We know His response will be loving acceptance, as if Jesus Himself were coming to Him in prayer--which He is!

So why should we feel awkward to pray together? I may not know how you're going to react if I ask you to pray with me, but I do know how God will react. I'll be able to conquer the initial awkwardness of prayer only when I remember that you and I are approaching the Living God together, and He is on our side.

Cross the dance floor of corporate prayer, young buck. You first.

Jeremiah: Not for All Audiences

Last week, I told Janelle that I want to launch an intra-marriage campaign to name one of our future sons “Jeremiah,” after the weeping prophet himself.

In preparation to launch an all-out offensive, I went through and re-read Jeremiah and Lamentations this week, and let me tell you, the campaign is on.

Don’t get me wrong, though, Jeremiah’s life and the events that took place in Jerusalem at that time have to encapsulate one of the ugliest stories ever told.

Put it this way, Hollywood is never going to make a movie out of it, and if they ever did, I’d be the last to see it.

I really wouldn’t be able to stomach it.

Fast-forward all the way to Lamentations, which basically functioned in the same way that a presidential visit to declare a state of emergency does today.

Here’s Jeremiah, surveying the damage that he’s spent his whole ministry predicting, and borne constant persecution to that end.

The word “Lamentations”, of course, means weeping or wailing, and that’s what Jeremiah does plenty of as he sees what has become of God’s chosen people.

All along, he’s been speaking the Word of the Lord that instead of fighting against Babylon, the people need to surrender and go along with the program, and all along, they’ve resisted the Word of God and listened to false prophets declaring “Peace, peace” when there is no peace. (Jer. 6:14).

It’s a simple Word that he’s declared all along. Two options

A. Surrender to Babylon and keep your life as a price of war
B. Resist Babylon/flee to Egypt, and die of sword, pestilence or famine

Israel goes with Option B—kinda like we Sons of Adam are always going with option B—and God has carried out his promise for disaster, and as we come up to Lamentations, it’s just at the time when Jerusalem is surrounded by Babylon and basically starved to death until they surrender.

That’s why you see absolutely tear-jerking, gut-wrenching literal statements like these in Lamentations:

“Look, O Lord, and see! With whom have you dealt this? Should women eat the fruit of their womb,  the children of their tender care? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?” (Lam. 2:20)

“Even the jackals offer the breast; they nurse their young, but the daughter of my people has become cruel, like ostriches in the wilderness. The tong of the nursing infant sticks to the roof of its mouth for thirst; the children beg for food, but no one gives to them.” (Lam. 4:3-4)       

“The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they have become their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people.” (Lam. 4:10)

How in the wide world is Jeremiah going to handle this?

No wonder he’s the weeping prophet.

"For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for my comforter is far from me, one to revive my spirit; my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed.” (Lam. 1:16)       

“My eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babies faint in the streets of the city.” (Lam. 2:11)        

“My eyes will flow without ceasing, without respite, until the Lord from heaven looks down and sees; my eye causes me grief at the fate of all the daughters of my city.” (Lam. 3:49-51)

Is there any hope for God’s people?

Will the comforter from Lam. 1:16 ever come?

Will the Lord from heaven look down and see from Lam. 3:49?

Oh yes, there is hope. And the hope of Jeremiah is eternally tethered to both the steadfast love and the sovereignty of God.

It’s not enough if all we know about God is that he has a love that is steadfast. There’s no comfort for Jeremiah or the daughter of his people in a handcuffed lover.

On the other side of the coin, there’s no hope in a sovereign King who’s out to get you. In fact, there’s no more hopeless situation than to be God’s opponent—which we all are without Christ.

Just at the height of Jeremiah’s weeping comes some of the most staggering worship we could ever imagine or experience:

“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.” (Lam. 3:21-24)

Is there hope? Oh yes, there is hope. God’s steadfast love is absolutely unconquerable.

It’s unconquerable enough to sustain Jeremiah in a situation that defies the imagination or even description.

But God’s love is shown to be even more unconquerable than that at the Cross.

For Israel, there was judgment:

“We have transgressed and rebelled, and you have not forgiven.” (Lam. 3:42)

God was not about to let the idolatry of his people—the adultery of his wife—slide past the scales of justice. That’s why Jerusalem was besieged.

But at the Cross, Jesus endured the entirety of God’s wrath for his people. That’s why he says, “It is finished.” What is finished? God’s forgiveness of his people’s transgressions.

And what about hope? For Jeremiah, there was God’s never-ending love shown all down through Israel’s history, but on this side of the Cross, it’s the resurrection that secures our hope in his promise.

In the resurrection, God showed that he’s not only powerful, but that he’s for us.

To the believer in Jesus, God’s not a handcuffed lover, and he’s not a “bear lying in wait for me.”

The Good News is that the sovereign King is for me.

To Know You is to Love You

As always, the King is right.

B.B. King, that is.

In one of his signature songs, B.B. unwittingly makes a radically Gospel-centered connection: "To know you is to love you."

I say radically Gospel-centered because I'm starting to detect in my own heart that I artificially disconnect the concept of knowing a person from that of loving a person.

What has pointed out the artificial disconnect in my heart is a statement in Jeremiah 9:24.

Jeremiah is the weeping prophet, the one charged to deliver horribly sad news of the up-coming capture and slaughter of a people who will utterly reject his prophecy and persecute him all the way until the point when its gates are overrun by its foretold oppressors.

In the midst of this wave of bad news, there comes an incredible "Thus says the Lord."

Thus says the Lord, "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me..."

Knowing a person in the Old Testament was an inseparable concept from that of loving a person.

Three times in Genesis 4 alone, the expression for knowing is used as a figure of speech for sexual intimacy, and when God hears the outcry of his people in Exodus 2, the text says, "God saw the people of Israel--and God knew."

God knew. That is, God cared. We know that he cared because then he acted.

The more I've thought and mulled over the text in Jeremiah, the more I've started to realize how true it is that we can only really love people that we really know.

With respect to our relationship with the Lord, there's no loving Him without knowing Him. Not just knowing things about Him, either, but actually knowing--and caring about--what makes Him tic.

That's why the text in Jeremiah continues like it does:

"but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord."

What makes the Lord tic? In what things does He delight? Well, steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth.

Once we know that He really delights in these things, it becomes a litmus test for us on whether or not we actually love Him. Do we love the things that He loves? Because if not, then we don't love Him.

It takes a miracle of God's grace--God coming down and rescuing us by the death of His Son--to make us care about the things that delight Him. Sheer will-power won't get it done and self-improvement won't go far enough.

That's what I mean by radically Gospel-centered.

And what about this idea of knowing-loving as it relates to our love for others?

Jesus said that the world is going to know who his disciples are because of their love for each other, and we only really love the people who we really know.

That's shocking, I know, but bear with me.

Of course, there's a general love that we can have for everybody in the world--the kind that makes us want to join hands with everyone around the world and sing Kumbaya, but surely that's not what Jesus is calling us to as His disciples.

It's really not a radical call at all to invite you to want to generally love everyone everywhere.

Where the call gets radical is where it relates to people that we actually interact with and don't neccesarily--how should I say this?--like to be around.

A couple of guys that I interact with on a regular basis fit into this category. I feel like, instead of wanting to hold hands and sing Kumbaya with them, I'm constantly holding myself back from decking them (either physically or verbally).

So, what's the call for me, as Jesus' disciple?

It's first, to remember the Gospel. Remember that God knows me, He sees me, and in Christ He approves of me and loves me with a love that defys expression or overstatement.

Then, I'm called to actually care about the dude who I'm trying not to knock out. By actually caring, I mean trying to know him well enough to know what makes him tic.

• Why is he constantly chattering about nothing in particular?
• Why does he return my attempt at a conversation into an opportunity to slam others?
• Why does he go out of his way to be a general bonehead?

As a follower of Jesus, I want to be easily identified by my love. I want to actually care about people. I want to be willing to get uncomfortable and love others with the same type of love that God has shown me in the Cross.

God, give me the stregnth to pursue a knowledge of You that will cause me to delight in what you delight in. Give me the patience to love others with a Gospel-centered love.

Wish Shots and Worship

It's my job to hype sports, and most days, I like doing what I do.

Then, there's days like yesterday.

I was watching my adopted team of Concordia play at my alma mater California Baptist in a little game of men's hoops, when I suddenly experienced a rare moment of losing myself in the game.

I say a rare time, because I'm supposed to keep my head about me in the course of a game. I'm supposed to be analyzing field goal percentages and rebounding margins. I'm supposed to be as neutral as possible.

The play that made me lose myself and cross over (if only momentarily) from sports writer to sports fan went a little something like this.

Concordia had built up a 9-point lead with about 2:30 to go, and it looked like we had it in the bag, when all of the sudden, here comes Cal Baptist on a 9-0 run to tie it up at 63-63.

Concordia then scored to take a 65-63 lead with 33 seconds left, and stopped CBU on its next possession to take control of the ball with 7 seconds left and a two-point lead.

That's when things got interesting. Concordia--a team who turns the ball over 8 times per game fewer than its opponents--gave the ball up on its possession, and CBU tied the game at 65-65 on a layup with about 3 seconds left.

It looked like overtime all the way to the end, but then again, that's why the play 40 minutes and not 39:59. Concordia's Justin Johnson took the ball from the opposite baseline and sprinted for halfcourt, where he uncorked a game-winning three-pointer to end the game at 68-65.

The shot--which Johnson rightly called a miracle--also left a gym full of Cal Baptist alumni (including myself) speechless.

For my part, I instinctively sprang up from my seat at the scorer's table. I'm not really sure why I did, but like I already said, I had just made the shift from sports writer to sports fan.

In a real sense, I've been captured by that shot ever since it went in. Even though we were there and had the best seats in the house, Janelle and I must have watched the clip on YouTube (here) at least 20 times in the last 20 hours.

The more I think about that moment, and what it means, the more I think about the affections of my heart. I really think this has something to say about what I worship.

That which we worship is that which we value the most, that which we wait for and that which, when it's taken away from us, we are not quite ourselves anymore.

Worship captures us--all of us.

With that in mind, as I woke up this morning with my thoughts still revolving around the last moment of a basketball game last night, I knew that my heart was in need of something better to worship.

I don't want to settle for less than to be captured by the worship of Jesus.

As I thought about this, my heart was turned toward the glorious vision of Jesus, the Son of Man, in the first chapter of Revelation.

Here's how John--the disciple who knew Jesus best--describes the first scene of this book:

I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet...

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning, I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands was one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest.

The hairs on his head were white like wool, as white as snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.

In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full stregnth.

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.

My first reaction to seeing to seeing a great shot is to stand up like a yahoo. John's first reaction to seeing the Son of Man was to fall at his feet as though dead.

The glory of a game-winning basketball shot is one thing, but the glory of the risen Son of Man is another story altogether.

And, what, besides winning a basketball game and all assigned benefits did that shot accomplish?

For that matter, what did all my work writing about it accomplish?

So here's John, on the ground like a dead man before this unspeakably glorious Son of Man, and what's the Son of Man say?

Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one.

I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.

This unspeakably glorious One is for us.

He's the living One.

He's the One who died for us and conquered Death and Hades in His resurrection.

That's the worship I want to be captured by.

That's my King.

A Little Help from my Friends

If there's one thing I know I need to grow in it's being open to community.

Maybe it's got something to do with where we grew up. You could only see one house from our porch, and the only communication we had with those people consisted of my dad and the guy hitting golf balls back and forth from our hill to his.

Maybe it's got something to do with being a twin. It doesn't take a genius to tell you that twins have pretty solid built-in community that doesn't require a lot of intentionality to build.

Whatever personality traits may have conspired to create a natural barrier to sharing my life with others, and whatever effect the sleugh of John Wayne movies I've watched and Johnny Cash songs I've listened to may have had on me, this much I know: My God values community and He's shaping me into a community-valuer too.

This challenging and refreshing truth has come to me in two parts over the past couple of weeks. The first deals with a 2000 Nissan Sentra, and the second deals with a Psalm I like to refer to as #16.

Sentra first. This post is only one removed from the story of my 1989 Bimmer dying a year ago this February, and whether or not it's becoming an annual activity to get a new car every year I don't know, but I do know that I needed to ditch the Bimmer's replacement, and that right soon, about two weeks ago.

Said replacement, a 1999 Corolla that had been badly damaged in a wreck involving one parked vehicle and one vehicle in motion (that's all I have to say about that), began making the same hideous wheel-bearing noise it had made in October, that at the time had prompted me to give a temporary fix to the problem that I'd hoped would last longer than it did.

Well, it didn't last quite long enough, and so when the wheel-bearing noise reared its ugly head, I decided right then and there to get rid of the 'Rolla and locate a new car pronto.

Enter the Blakeys. Our good friends since before we were married (their wedding day marked the first day we Hobbs officially started dating), who had also been in our wedding, Billy and Cory had recently bought a car that made the Sentra their third car.

Short story kept short, the Blakeys made us an offer we couldn't refuse on the Sentra, and we are now the proud owners of the fine Japanese automobile.

Friends come in pretty handy around here, Bub.

But the functionality of friendships is never the goal. Otherwise, your friends become contacts and you become the pan-handler going down your contact list and offering your friends a chance to buy in to your deal-of-the-day goof ball product. Friends become contacts, which become alienated.

No, friendships serve a higher purpose, and I was reminded about that today while reading through Psalm 16.

Verse two struck me like a thunderbolt: I say to the Lord, "You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you."

No good. No good apart from the Lord. Do I live that? Can I come close to saying that apart from the Lord, I have no good, no rest, no solace?

I don't think I'm there yet. I want to be there, but I know I'm not when I overreact at a situation that threatens my dependance on comfort, like I did first thing when I walked through the door last night.

The claws come out and the fangs get sharp because I'm not finding all my good in the Lord, instead, I'm finding it in things that make me comfortable.

Reading through the Psalm, I thought that maybe I was done being challenged. But I read on to verse three:

As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.

Okay, no good apart from the Lord, check. All my delight in--the saints of the land?

How does this fit together? I think it has everything to do with community, that is, actually caring about our brothers and sisters, having a stake in their lives and making ourselves vulnerable to them.

When we find friends who help us to see that the Lord is all our good, then we've found the saints. We've then found the excellent ones.

I'm so grateful to my friends for helping me to find all my good in the Lord. Real friends do that. They're always bringing Jesus before us, always bringing us before the Savior's feet.

I want to be a friend like that. I want to be one who points everyone I come into contact with to go away refreshed and renewed to look upon the One in whose presence there is fullness of joy, pleasures forevermore.

At Ease, Soldier

"Resolved, never to allow the least measure of any fretting uneasiness at my father or mother. Resolved to suffer no effects of it, so much as in the least alteration of speech, or motion of the eye; and to be especially careful of it, with respect to any of our family." (Resolution #46, Jonathan Edwards)

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when we remember one great Christian leader and the changes that took place (and are still in process of changing) on account of his courage, I'm reminded of the above resolution by your friend and mine, Jonathan Edwards.

Throughout the past couple of years, I've tried to make a point of reading Edwards' resolutions as the new year approaches, and this January was no different.

While I've read through these resolutions, #46 has struck me as a bit out of place, to be honest. It seems clear enough that Edwards would want to fight against "fretting uneasiness" with his family in particular, but it seems out of place.

I mean, in a list that includes such lofty statements as to "live with all my might while I do live," and to never do anything "but what tends to the glory of God", a resolution to not sweat his parents seems a little bit trivial.

But as I've thought about this more and observed myself and the world in general, this resolution has started to make more and more sense.

I could be wrong, but I think that this resolution is as broad in its application as it is deep in its meaning.

Consider Resolution #46 in light of #25: "Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it."

Bear with me now, I think I may have just lost myself in a fit of Edwards-quoting that I'm not soon to come out of.

The fight to overcome uneasiness around authority figures, and parents in particular, was, for Edwards, a fight to find his rest in the love of God.

I can see so much of this fear-of-authority, fear-of-man idolatry in myself. Why is it that I care so much about peoples' opinion of me? Why is it that I can become so undone when a co-worker says something negative (true or false) about the quality of my work?

The answer gets right down to the core of my being, and it gets right down to the core of Edwards' resolution.

The anwer is that at that moment, when I'm rattled by someone's perceived low opinion of me, or when I am rendered nervous because my boss enters the room, I am failing to believe the love of God as my source of life and meaning. Something else has taken its place.

When I'm nervous and fidgety around authority figures or become undone by someone's perception of me, I'm dethroning the God who has won me back at the cost of His Son.

When this other god--who cannot satisfy and always holds its victims in slavery--sits on the throne of my heart, I'm dethroning the Son of God who has set me free, free indeed.

When I go to the temple of Man Fear, I'm missing out on the true temple, where I'm encouraged to "draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith" because of the "new and living way that (Jesus) has opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh."

Let's stand firm with confidence in the love of God. He won't waver and He won't fail us. His opinion of us won't change if a professor gets ticked at us, or if we spill food on a patron or if all of our game stories are boring and similar.

His love--His perfect love--casts out all fear, and it's His love that gives us true, God-centered and Christ-exalting confidence.