“I am what I feel” sums up expressive individualism. Our culture frames identity around discovering what our deepest desires and longings are. To know our longings is to know ourselves.
In Billie Eilish’s 2023 song “What was I made for?” written for “Barbie,” Eilish reflects on the confusing journey to understand her feelings. It’s this journey, she assures herself that will lead to her happiness.
“The end is near!” “Repent!”
Have you ever seen a statement of prophetic warning spray-painted on a wall or in a subway station? got to be honest, I don’t take much notice to such warnings. But what if those warnings were for me and for you?
We are feeling all the feels. Our youngest, Soren, is about to graduate from high school. This has been a season of reflection for Angel and me and a season of preparation. In our children’s ministry hallways at New Life next to each age level we have containers that represent how many days of influence remain for you as a parent before your child launches. I recognize, of course, that there is no finish line for parenting, but one’s influence and role changes significantly in each season.
As we look back on our parenting, the most important things we taught our children were who God is and who they were.
Intrusive thoughts are unwelcome and hard to control. I can remember having intrusive thoughts from the time I was a child. When we drove, I often felt the compulsion to press one foot down on the floor between the telephone poles (and yes, I also hopped over the cracks in the sidewalk). At other times, when walking alone, I remember the persistent thought, “He’s watching you.” I would search the bushes and trees for the one my mind told me was watching me.
The aged prophet Isaiah showed up at the bedside of the middle-aged king. Hezekiah was only about 39 years old and terminally ill. But the prophet was not bringing good news, “Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover” (Is. 38:1).
The weak king cried out to God, “’ Please, O LORD, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight’. And Hezekiah wept bitterly.” (Is. 38:3).
Imagine if God came to you in a vision tonight and said that he is giving you a choice: you could live the rest of your life with Jesus as your neighbor and best friend, but you wouldn’t have the Spirit, or you could keep the Spirit, but wouldn’t meet Jesus face-to-face until heaven. How many of us would choose to keep the Spirit? But Jesus says option B is the better option.
Are you stuck? Do you fear that you will never be able to change, never break free from the sin that has you in its clutches? You can change! I promise. No matter what the sin is, you can break free from its clutches.
The most rewarding gift pastors and biblical counselors receive is the treasure of watching God transform hearts. God has blessed Angel (my wife, a counselor at Whole Hope Christian Counseling) and with the opportunity of seeing many break free from the shackles of sin.
Let me share with you one story of change. Kimberly (she has given me permission to share her story and her words, although I am changing her name), was trapped in bitterness toward God and her husband and ensnared by sexual sin. Her heart raged with hatred toward her husband: for the ways he had neglected her, not treasured her, and abandoned her spiritually, emotionally, and physically. In a desire to experience freedom and to make her husband pay for his neglect, she began to hook up with men and eventually had a series of affairs.
After years, the tip of the iceberg of her indiscretions were discovered. Despite her hardness of heart and spiritual blindness, Kimberly was willing to meet with her husband for counseling. Her rage so blinded her that she was unwilling to repent of her sin. She demanded that her husband repent to her, recounting detail by detail of his offenses to her numb husband. In fact, we would later learn that she was continuing on in her adultery even through our counseling. If you would have met Kimberly in this season, you would have likely thought Kimberly was a lost cause. Any time spent on her was wasted effort.
Many friends and family of hers voiced this opinion. Without the Spirit, they were right.
1. According to Research People With "Too Many Interests" Are More Likely to Be Successful: This is really interesting and runs against the prevailing wisdom, "The warning against being a generalist has persisted for hundreds of years in dozens of languages. 'Equipped with knives all over, yet none is sharp,' warn people in China. In Estonia, it goes, 'Nine trades, the tenth one — hunger.' If being a generalist is an ineffective career path, why do 10+ academic studies find a correlation between the number of interests/competencies someone develops and their creative impact?"
2. How to Move from Bitterness to Forgiveness: Roger Barrier responds to an important question that plagues so many. He begins his post with this advice, "Don’t minimize the hurts in your life. Mourn your hurts. Express them to a trusted friend or spouse and allow you to be comforted. Jesus died for those hurts. Talk honestly about them. Who has hurt you the most? With whom have you not reconciled? Who does the Holy Spirit bring to your mind when you think hurtful thoughts? Jesus said, "Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted."
3. What Does it Mean to Be Baptized in the Spirit? Clear and helpful post by Adriel Sanchez. He reflects, "Understandably, people typically focus on the miraculous signs that accompanied the Baptism of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2. In doing so they often miss the big picture the Bible gives us with regard to this significant event in the history of salvation. The Baptism of the Holy Spirit is not primarily about speaking in tongues but about the beginning of a new creation, the advancement of a new temple, the giving of a new law, and the commissioning of a new group of prophets."
4. How History's Revivals Teach us How to Pray: This is inspiring. Davis Thomas reflects on a very different sort of prayer than most of us are accustomed to, "I was confronted with how the Bible appears utterly unfamiliar with casual prayer, prayer of the mouth and not the heart. Travailing prayer—the kind of burdened, focused pressing my friends in the Hebrides described—seemed closer to the heart of prayer in Scripture. A stream of this manner of praying flows from the early church all the way through the Reformation."
5. The Best Weapon is an Open Door: Rosaria Butterfield on just how significant hospitality is. She concludes, "Perhaps our everyday lives would reveal that the hand of God reaches into the hardest situations imaginable and that nothing is impossible with God. Hospitality is the ground zero of the Christian life."
1. Three Predictors of Porn Use: Jay Stringer explains, "Perhaps you’ve found yourself not able to turn off your allure to porn. If so, a far more beneficial approach to recovery than combating lust is to focus on the themes that drive and necessitate your use of pornography. Until these themes are transformed, you will find yourself in the same, pernicious cycle of pornography use."
2. How to Heal the Damage Caused by Family Conflict: Mark Gregston wisely reflects, " Not following up on hurtful actions of confrontations to either correct the mistakes you’ve made or affirm the relationship is what allows conflict to cause damage to your relationship with your child. Remember that you’re not only resolving issues that you have with your child, but, more importantly you are setting the example of conflict resolution and teaching your child how to admit fault, assume a position of humility, and ask for forgiveness for any wrongdoing; all characteristics in a person’s life that are more caught than taught."
3. 5 Honest Struggles Church Leaders Don't Want to Admit: Carey Nieuwhof with a good reminder of the lies leaders can easily get entrapped by, "Greater faithfulness should result in greater impact in ministry. Pursue God, and pursue a great mission. Both are critical. But God doesn’t reward the most faithful with the best results."
4. The Best Preacher in the World: David Murray says, " Every church needs two preachers. We need a human preacher, one who is visible, audible, tangible. But we also need a divine preacher, one that is invisible, inaudible, and intangible. I’m speaking of the Holy Spirit, without whom the work of the human preacher is in vain."
5. Girl Scout Marketing Meeting: Jon Crist will have you laughing at the silliness of the Girl Scout's marketing plan.
1. What is the Biggest Factor in Economic Inequity? Marriage: Glenn Stanton reports, " Jonathan Rauch writing in the National Journal, certainly no conservative, notes that “marriage is displacing both income and race as the great class divide of the new century.” Isabel Sawhill, a senior scholar at the center-left Brookings Institute, boldly and correctly proclaimed some years ago that “the proliferation of single-parent households accounts for virtually all of the increase in child poverty since the early 1970s.” Virtually all of the increase!"
2. The Spirit is Always in Agreement with the Word: Aaron Armstrong battles a mode of argument in favor among progressives, that the Spirit can move us past Scripture, "[I]f we can’t use the words the Spirit inspired [the Bible] to be our norming-norm, what do we use to determine whether or not we’re resisting him? Shifts in culture? Personal feelings and preference?.. After all, the Spirit doesn’t work apart from the word he inspired...It’s important that we wrestle with what’s going on in our culture, the shifts in beliefs and behaviors especially. But if anyone is going to make a convincing argument on why Christians need to change their views on a number of key controversial issues, it’s not going to be pitting the Spirit against Scripture."
3. 10 Things That Require Zero Talent: I love this little list from Paul Alexander. #4 and 8 on his list are: "Body Language: You say more with your body language than the words that actually come out of your mouth; Being Coachable: You can learn from anyone, but you have to choose to."
4. Corporate America's Strange New Religion: Kevin Williamson reports on America's favorite new religion, "'Participants are regaining 62 minutes per week of productivity,' Stringer wrote. 'They are seeing an approximate dollar return, in terms of productivity alone, of more than $3,000 per person per year.' Never mind karma — this is a bottom-line issue. 'Mindfulness,' a meditation practice that is in essence Buddhism without Buddha, is everywhere in corporate America and celebrity culture."
5. National History Museum 2017 Photography Winners: Stunning photographs. This evocative photo is probably my favorite.
Happy Thanksgiving friends!
I am thankful for you. I echo Paul's prayer in Philippians 1:3-5, "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now."
It is a gift to walk with you as we grow in faith, in love, and in hope.
With gratitude,
John
1. Dads, We Have a Powerful Influence in the Lives of Our Daughters: Charlotte Andersen reports, "'I see too many men buy into the idea of 'that's a girl's issue' or 'only a woman can understand another woman' and avoid talking to their daughters about sex, dating, or other 'girly' topics. They may assume their daughters should automatically fit into preconceived gender roles,' Dr. Brown says. 'I also see men who are locked into their own narrow view of what it means to be a father to their daughter. They believe that their only role is as a provider and protector, and they end up working too much and missing out on those wonderful father-daughter bonding moments. It doesn't have to be that way at all.'"
2. The Worst Consequence of Skipping Church: Tim Challies reminds us that "Gathering with God’s people is not first about being blessed but about being a blessing. It’s not first about getting but about giving."
3. 5 Truths About the Holy Spirit: Alastair Begg on five important truths about the Holy Spirit.
4. Do You Love Your Wife Out of Obligation? The close of Brian Goins article shifts how we so often think about marriage: "In Scripture, God’s bride blossoms after the wedding day and becomes more beautiful and splendid over time, not because she “worked out” or “aged gracefully,” but because God loved her into radiance. If a man views the wedding day as the height of his bride’s beauty, then he will never love like Jesus. He’ll constantly be comparing what was rather than anticipating his role in what it could be. For Jesus, the wedding day was simply the start of a lifelong extreme makeover designed to advance His bride to royalty.
5. We Are Sinking! This Berlitz commercial still makes me laugh out loud.
Miles begins A God of Many Understandings? with an event I remember well: “On Sunday morning, January 18, 2009, Gene Robinson, the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, stepped to a podium near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, to open the inauguration festivities for Barack Obama with an invocation and began his prayer, ‘O god of our many understandings, we pray that you will…’” (1). That simple opening to his prayer hit me like a tidal wave that day. “O god of our many understandings (?!)” At the same time I felt befuddlement, anger, and a sense that in that very phrase, Robinson had profoundly captured the essence of our modern religious sensibilities.
There have been plenty of books published over the recent years that have decried the slippage in the American church’s commitment to the exclusive claims of the gospel. But I promise you none have been written that are quite like this. The ambitious nature of Miles’s book is remarkable. The book is a biblical-theological tour de force that deals with a host of issues relating to the topic of the exclusive nature of the gospel.
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