Tag: Gospel

Trying to Make the Good News Better

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Recently I was asked by some members of our church to listen to a sermon from a church their friends attended, who had been alarmed by some things the pastor had been saying, and they wanted my 2 cents.

I listened to the message and agreed with them that the things they had been concerned about were indeed alarming – but aside from that particular issue, which I won’t go into detail about here, there was something else I heard in the message which caused me to pause.

The pastor was talking about a trip he had taken and how, as he was preaching, people were live-tweeting his message, and the most tweeted phrase was: “I am a good person, I just forgot.” The idea being, that you really are a good person, you just haven’t been acting like one. You just forgot to be good.

He then went on to say this: “When people come to church, they don’t want to be told about their shortcomings, they come to church because they want to hear some good news, and this is the good news: you really are a good person! You just forgot.”

On the surface, that might seem nice, but here’s the thing: is this really the “good news” that Christianity has to share with people? That ‘I am a good person’ – even though people innately have a deep-rooted sense of their own inadequacy? Isn’t the “good news” of the Gospel not that I am a good person, but that God loves me even when I’m not a good person?

The “good news” of the Gospel is not that I’m a good person, but that God loves me even in spite of the fact that he has seen me at my worst and even knows the darkest thoughts of my heart that, although I didn’t act upon them, I wished to do them?

Isn’t the “good news” of the Gospel rather that I am more flawed than I can even imagine, yet at the same time I am more loved by God than I ever dared dream possible – which He proved by giving Himself over to death in my place to rescue me, because I was so lost and so far-gone that I couldn’t save myself? Isn’t the good news of the Gospel that I am so broken that GOD HIMSELF had to die for me, yet against all odds or reason, I am so loved by God – undeservedly – that in some cosmic miracle of grace, he was GLAD to die for me?

It would seem to me that in an attempt to make the Good News better, they have lost the heart of the Good News! But in my opinion, when you really understand the weight of the predicament of human fallenness, and then you see the amazing grace and love of God in light of it, that is what sets your heart on fire, and stirs up hope and gratitude in your heart that a lifetime is not enough to express.

What we need is not to make the Good News better – as if that were even possible. It is already the best news in the world. We just need to let it sink deep down into our hearts and reflect on all the wonderful implications of it.

Worst Sermon Ever

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On Saturday night I was struck with a feeling that I have from time to time: that my sermon for Sunday was not good. I was convinced it was one of my worst sermons ever.

As I looked it over I thought: My exegesis and hermeneutics are good, I’m presenting the Gospel and talking about how the Gospel speaks to all of life…  The essential elements were in place, so what was I worried about?

Maybe I was just tired from the long drive back from California, maybe I was just feeling that the final draft wasn’t like the way I originally envisioned the message. But I went to church on Sunday morning asking God more than usual to speak through me, even through this message.

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way. But here’s the irony: it seems that every time I feel this way, convinced that my sermon – although it has all the right elements – is not my best, God seems to use it in an extra special way.

This Sunday, through this message, I had more than one person respond to my invitation to give their life to Jesus and make a decision for him. Another person told my wife that it was the best sermon I had ever preached. I got several emails and text messages after church about the message from people saying they were encouraged and blessed by it.  Here’s the audio of that message.

On a previous occasion, where I specifically remember telling my wife that my sermon was going to be my worst ever, I preached a message which again someone afterwards told me was my best ever, and now has also become one of my favorite sermons as well. When it recently aired on our radio program on GraceFM, we had several people contact our church asking for copies of it. A newer member of our church ran across that message a week or so ago and shared it on Facebook, and then wrote me that if I preached that message every Sunday, he would come – it was the best sermon he’d ever heard in his life. Here’s the audio of that message.

What should I make of this?

I heard Timothy Keller say once in a lecture to pastors about preaching, that we should always seek to prepare “Good Sermons” – meaning that we should make sure all the essential elements are in there: good exegesis and hermeneutics, good presentation of the Gospel and of Jesus as the answer to all the riddles, that they are “Good”. Our job is to prepare “Good Sermons” – because only God can make a sermon “Great” – and that happens, when the Holy Spirit takes our “Good Sermons” and makes them “Great” in the hearts and minds of our hearers. If we try to make “Great Sermons” we will be trying too hard to do something that only God can do.

When I heard him say that, I agreed in theory that he was right, but more and more I am experiencing the reality myself. God likes to glorify Himself, and it’s less about me that I am inclined to think. Praise God for that.

Thoughts on “Unbroken” and the Power of the Gospel

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On my recent road trip to Minnesota, my friend lent me an audio book of Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption.

I listened to about half of the book while driving, and when I got home I purchased a copy of it because I wanted to know how it ended. I had heard that Louie Zamperini had became a Christian, and was curious to hear how that would be depicted in the book. I had also heard that the movie about the book hadn’t been such a big box office hit as was expected, partly because of the brutality of the depiction of Zamperini’s time as a POW in Japan.

I found the book incredible, and was moved to tears at the account of Zamperini’s conversion and how his heart and his life were transformed by the Gospel. It seemed that everything that had happened until that point – all of the brutality, all of the providence – had been building up to the radical redemption that God worked in his life.

Zamp became a man who was so changed by the Gospel that he was willing to forgive his abusers and was set free from addiction to love his family and work to see other broken people redeemed.

The title of the book has an intentional dual meaning: He was unbroken in the sense that he had survived intensely trying and difficult experiences – and he was un-broken in the sense that his brokenness was healed and he was restored by the power of the Gospel.

I’m not sure if I want to see the movie now after having read the book… I can’t imagine how they could fit into a relatively short film all of the aspects of Zamperini’s life and conversion that were so important to the story.

Here is a quote from the book I found particularly insightful from the period of Louie’s brokenness, before he received the Gospel:

The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent on those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only from making their tormentors suffer. In seeking [his tormentor]’s death, Louie had chained himself once again to his tyrant.

All he had left was his alcohol and his resentment, the emotion that, Jean Améry would write, “nails every one of us onto the cross of his ruined past”.

How to Truly Live

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The final paragraph of CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity is incredible.  He’s speaking on the issue of how to truly live, and his point is that selfishness is not actually in our best self-interest.

Check it out:

The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.

What Makes for Good Preaching?

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What differentiates good preaching from mediocre preaching?

Surely you know it when you hear it, but it can’t be just a subjective thing – there must be some criteria that differentiate good preaching from not-as-good preaching.

I recently heard Timothy Keller differentiate between good preaching and great preaching. He said that “good preaching” is the altar and that “great preaching” is when God brings the fire upon the altar. In other words: preachers shouldn’t strive to preach “great” sermons, but should work to preach “good” sermons – because only God can take a “good” sermon and by the power of the Holy Spirit make it a “great” sermon within the hearer.

So what makes for good preaching?

Here are some thoughts:

  • A good sermon, no matter what text it is preached from, has to preach the Gospel. Just as every town in England has a road which leads from it to London, every text in the Bible has a road from it which leads to Christ. If all the Scriptures ultimately point to Him, a good sermon must preach the Good News of Jesus Christ.
  • Yet, a good sermon must be faithful to the text. It must not manipulate the text to simply be a “proof text” to back up the point that the speaker wants to make; it must be true exegesis, which determines what the author, and God through the author, intended to communicate through that text.
  • Furthermore, good preaching is an art form – it must be informative, it must be touching emotionally, and it must be moving inspirationally.  I heard Timothy Keller say that when you are preaching, people should be taking notes, but when you get to the part of your sermon that is about Jesus, you should seek to portray him as so captivating that people can’t help but stop taking notes when you talk about Him, and when they leave, they should leave wanting to do something because of what they’ve heard.
  • Another friend of mine – and an elder at White Fields Church – put it this way:

    • In our conversation he even put it this way: “A good sermon takes you to a place you’ve never been before, or it takes you to a place that is so intimate that you are emotionally moved”

What do you think?  What are other essential elements of “good” preaching? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Redemption: Jesus’ Family Tree

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In the Gospel of Matthew, the Christmas Story doesn’t begin with a baby born in Bethlehem and placed in a manger. When Matthew wants to tell us the story of Jesus, he takes us back hundreds, even thousands of years, to look at the family line from which God chose to bring the Redeemer into the world. Matthew starts by giving us a genealogy — which gets skipped over by many people, because it reads like a Hebrew phone book!
But, if you look closely, you’ll find that Jesus’ family tree contains a lot of knots: people we have read about in the Old Testament, whose stories were full of scandal and intrigue…and sin. Yet, these people each represent a story of redemption, in which God blessed a mess and brought beauty from ashes and salvation from brokenness. Ultimately, it was from this group of people that God brought The Savior, The Redeemer, Jesus Christ into the world.
In Matthew 1:21, we read this glorious proclamation: “Mary will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  
Jesus came to save you from your sins. That is what Christmas is all about.
I invite you to join us at White Fields Church in Longmont every Sunday in December and on Christmas Eve for “Redemption: An Advent Series” – in which we will be looking at the knots in Jesus’ family tree, and how God redeems.

 

The Problem with Free

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Several years ago, my wife and I moved to Eger, Hungary to plant a church. Eger is a college town, and the first members of our church were college students, so we did a lot of outreach at the college campus.

One of the main ways we did outreach in the early years at the college, was by organizing lectures on various topics, such as intelligent design, business ethics – we even did a cultural night with Indian dancing and food as well as a lecture on the veracity of the Da Vinci Code, back when that was a hot topic. Each of these events was done for the purpose of evangelism and introducing people to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and they were very effective.

The first such event we organized at the college was a lecture on intelligent design from an American speaker who is a friend of ours. We rented out a lecture hall at the college, organized all the logistics – and asked a friend of ours to be in charge of designing a flyer.

The flyer he designed had all the pertinent information on it – including the fact that this event was FREE.  At the very bottom of the flyer was a line of text which read: “And the best part is: It’s Free!”

After the flyers were printed, we began handing them out on the campus, inviting students to join us in the evening for this lecture. As I handed the flyer to one student, he stood and read it, and then handed it back to me and said: “If the best part of this event is that it’s free, then I think I’ll find something else to do.”

This gets to the idea of “Perceived Value”. Perceived value means: “the worth that a product or service has in the mind of the consumer. The consumer’s perceived value of a good or service affects the price that he or she is willing to pay for it.” (source)

In this situation, the ‘perceived value’ was ZERO, because we told everybody that the BEST thing about this event was that it was free!  #epicfail

In spite of this, we did pack the lecture hall out that night, and the event was a success, but we learned a valuable lesson. Interestingly, our most effective outreach in Hungary was (and still is) a camp, which the campers pay full price to attend!

What we have found is that when something COSTS someone something, the perceived value is higher. This has led to discussions about whether we should charge for outreaches, such as concerts, not because we have to, but because ironically more people come when something costs something – because we are wary of things that are free, wondering what the agenda or the catch is behind it being free.

I say all that to say this: I think one area where the Christian church has missed the mark, is when we say basically the same thing about God’s grace as we said on that flyer:  The BEST part is: It’s FREE!

Yes, Grace is freely given by God to the repentant – but in a very important way, Grace is not free: there is a cost to that Grace > it cost God EVERYTHING, it cost Jesus His whole life, AND it will cost YOU everything!  It will cost you your whole life, in order to take hold of it!

This is made very clear by Jesus, who tells parables about a man who found a treasure in a field, and, in his JOY, went and sold ALL THAT HE HAD, that he might purchase that field. Jesus says that you must take up your cross, you must DIE! – you must give up your whole life in order to take hold of the new life that He is making available to you!

Here’s the thing: when we portray that the BEST thing about the Gospel is that it is free, we are diminishing the perceived value. No wonder some people react with a less than enthusiastic response! No wonder some people say: Well, maybe later – you know, once I’m done doing my own thing – if that ever happens.

The point of what Jesus says when he says that the Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man finds and in his joy goes and sells all that he has and returns and buys that field – is that the knowledge of God, the ways of God, eternal life – these things are such incredible treasures, that if you could only understand how great they are, you would be willing to do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING necessary to take hold of them. In other words: No cost would be too high!

And it is only then, once we have helped people to understand this, that we bring them the good news: that it is God’s free gift to them. But the only way to take hold of it is to give all of yourself over to him who gave all of himself for you.

That kind of understanding is one that brings a person to their knees, to tears of thankfulness and gratefulness, where they are overwhelmed with the kindness and goodness and love of God.

The best part about grace is not that it is free. That’s just the icing on the cake. 

May we portray the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its true infinite value: something worth living for, something worth dying for, something worth giving EVERYTHING for.

English Camp in Hungary

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This July I was in Hungary for just under 2 weeks, leading a team from White Fields Community Church in Longmont to serve at the English Camp outreach hosted by Golgota Eger.

My wife and I started this camp when we were living in Eger and looking for a way to effectively reach young people with the Gospel. This was the 9th English Camp in the hills outside of Eger – and over the years, we have seen God do such great things through it and so much great fruit come out of it.

For the past several years, the camp has been at full capacity of what we can fit at this location, and the amount of kids we can reasonably handle and minister to well – around 130.

Here is are 2 short videos which highlight the long-term impact that this outreach is having on youth in this part of Hungary:

 

Give…expecting nothing in return

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One of the sayings of Jesus that I find most inspiring and challenging is in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 6, where Jesus says:

“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

(Luke 6:32-35 ESV)

Most of us do things for others with at least some expectation that we will receive something in return. If we are nice to others, we expect that they will be nice to us in return. If they are not, we tend to get upset about it.

Many of us give with the expectation, that at least the recipient will be appreciative of our generosity.

Many of us love, with the expectation that our love will be reciprocated – and if it is not, then we tend to “clam up”, because to love is to make oneself vulnerable, and unreciprocated love leaves us more vulnerable than reciprocated love.

But here is Jesus challenging us toward something that does not come naturally: to GIVE, expecting nothing in return.

Nothing.

Why? Because that is how God loves.  And if you do that, then you will understand the heart of the Father in a profound way, and you will be like Him. Because He gives to the ungrateful and the evil – He blesses people who don’t deserve it and don’t even appreciate it.  

If He gets nothing out of it, then why does He do it?   Because that is what divine love does: it gives, not as a means of coercion, but simply gives out of pure love.

I want to be that kind of person, to my wife, to my kids, to those around me – even to my “enemies”. This is the vision; only by the grace of God can I carry it out.