Gospel renewal is a life-changing recovery of the gospel. Personal gospel renewal means the gospel doctrines of sin and grace are actually experienced, not just known intellectually. This personal renewal includes an awareness and conviction of one’s own sin and alienation from God and comes from seeing in ourselves deeper layers of self-justification, unbelief, and self-righteousness than we have ever seen before. There is anew, commensurate grasp of the wonder of forgiveness and grace as we shed these attitudes and practices and rest in Christ alone for salvation. Perhaps we have previously said that we were “resting in Christ’s work, not our own work” for salvation, but when we experience gospel renewal, we have a new clarity about what this means in our mind and a new experience of actually doing it with our heart.
The problem with power
The problem with power is that those who seek it are often the ones least qualified to wield it. This is no less true in the church than in society at large. Many great minds have spoken out about the seeking and wielding of power. I cannot add any pithy sayings about power to the list but I do wish to challenge how power is viewed in the church at large.
Any person in a position of leadership wields some power over others. In the church, there are two important questions about how that power is used:
- For whose benefit is the influence exerted? Will the leader use his power to bolster his position or will he use his power for the benefit of those he leads?
- Will the leader recognize his dependence upon God and seek God for how he should lead?
For whose benefit is power wielded?
In his letter to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul spoke to this issue when he wrote:
“So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:1–8, ESV)
While this applies to everyone, not just leaders, it is more important that leaders in the church operate with the motive of benefitting others.
But too often, pastors operate to consolidate their own status and position within the body of Christ. They jealously guard the pulpit and seek to put a leadership team around them who agrees with their agenda. This is done in the name of “ministry vision.” But it should not be this way.
Is power wielded in dependence upon God?
In 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul encourages his readers to imitate him, but only in so far as Paul himself is an imitator of Jesus. There are two aspects that I see to operating in dependence upon God. The first as Paul mentions is to imitate the example of Jesus we see in the Gospels. Jesus served others rather than have them serve him. Jesus put others’ needs before his own.
The second aspect of cultivating dependence upon God is to have an active relationship with him. Is the Bible merely the textbook from which the sermons are prepared or is it the tool which God uses to shape the heart of the pastor? Does the pastor seek to deepen his own relationship with God so that he can be more effective in bringing others into a similar relationship? Does the pastor recognize that he is deeply flawed, but deeply loved by God? Does the pastor understand that he will give an account to God, not for the number of people in the seats but for the condition of the hearts he was to shepherd?
Why is an important question
When a man or women steps forward to be a leader, the most important question is why they want to do so. Is it to serve or to be served? Does the prospective leader demonstrate dependence upon God? As followers, we need to make wise choices as to what leader we will follow. As leaders developing leaders, we need to exercise due diligence in our choice of who to develop and how to develop them.
When church leadership falls into the wrong hands, neither the church nor the society at large fares well. People get hurt and it is not pretty.
On the other hand, when a leader operates with a proper sense of calling and with a proper humility, that leader can be used by God to produce amazing results.
Sidenotes – A new feature at Attempts at Honesty
Update: Attempts at Honesty is no longer using Livefyre or Sidenotes for comments. This change was made for several reasons; the main reason is the negative effect Livefyre had on page load speed. Also, Livefyre limited commenting to those who are willing to create a Livefyre account and Livefyre controls all the comments. I’d rather have the control within my own domain.
You may have noticed that at the end of every paragraph there is a little icon. That icon is there because I have installed Livefyre Sidenotes to allow for increased interaction. The beauty of Sidenotes is that you can comment on a paragraph or even a word or two in the post.
The hyperlink in the previous paragraph takes you to a post in the Livefyre blog that explains what Sidenotes is all about. You can learn about it there or you can just play around with it and see if you like it. I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts.
Give Sidenotes a try. You can select text in this post and a box pops up which allows you to share the text to Facebook, Twitter or add a Sidenote regarding the selected text. You can also click on the little icon at the end of a paragraph to make a comment on that paragraph.
I think this is a pretty cool feature, but I’m not sure how much interest there is in using it. Therefore, I’ll keep Sidenotes live for the month of August and will then evaluate if there is sufficient use of it to warrant keeping it installed. If it is not helpful or not used, I will remove Sidenotes to keep the page load speed to a minimum.
Let me know what you think.
A tale of two cities
With an apology to Charles Dickens for the theft of his title, rather than Paris and London, I’m thinking of Sychar and the Decapolis (which is actually ten cities).
In one city Jesus did no miracle other than tell a woman about her past. In the other cities Jesus delivered a demon possessed man in a spectacular manner. It is interesting to note that where Jesus did no miracle, he was received and the people believed. In the other they could not wait to get Jesus to leave them alone.
Often I am tempted to think that it would be so much easier for me and others to believe if only we saw some incredible miracles like the ones recorded in the gospels. But would it? Did the people seeing the overt miracles show any increased tendency to believe?
I am reminded that we cannot say that there are no miracles around us. Is there any question that a changed life is in itself a miracle? Maybe the change is so gradual that it seems a natural process, but the fact that I am not what I was is testimony to God’s power.
We must be careful not to ignore the clues all around us. Like the Samaritans in Sychar, we need to be listening for the truth in what we hear and act upon it. If Jesus is correct and one day we will all give an account for our belief and consequent actions, we cannot lightly dismiss the evidence in favor of Jesus being who he claimed to be.
We need to come to grips with the fact that some will see miracles and hear truth and walk away in complete rejection. We can be cavalier about this and offer our proof texts about election and predestination and wash our hands of it. Or, we can be like Jesus and weep for those who reject the truth. We can turn up our noses at those who most loudly oppose Christianity or we can pray for them and implore God to intervene and have mercy upon them.
Yes, we should be confident that God knows who will accept and who will reject his offer of salvation, but he sees fit to keep that knowledge from us. Therefore should hope and pray that all accept Jesus, even while knowing that all will not.
We should stand waiting by the roadside with the loving father for the prodigal to come home.
