Only a few dozen pages into the new Total Church book. It arrived this week in the mail — 4 weeks before it’s official publishing date — and I was hoping to dig into it this weekend if possible. Last night I couldn’t put it down. Looking forward to interacting with the UK authors’ concepts, as they try to unfold what they mean by the subtitle: "A radical reshaping around Gospel and community."
The publisher gives a summary:
"As two pastors outline the biblical calling to make both the gospel and community central in the Christian life, they apply this dual focus to evangelism, social involvement, church planting, discipleship, youth ministry, and more, urging the body of Christ to rethink its perspective and way of life."
Here’s a sampling from chapter one, a quote I sent this morning to a friend about the both/and of being Word-centered and Spirit-centered (not either/or). I think they nail it on the head.
"Spiritual experience that does not arise from God’s word is not Christian experience. Other religions offer spiritual experiences. Concerts and therapy sessions can affect our emotions. Not all that passes for Christian experience is genuine. An authentic experience of the Spirit is an experience in response to the gospel. Through the Spirit the truth touches our hearts, and that truth moves our emotions and affects our wills.
This also means that Bible study and theology that do not lead to love for God and a desire to do his will — to worship, tears, laughter, excitement or sorrow — have gone terribly wrong. True theology leads to love, mission and doxology (1 Timothy 1:5, 7, 17 ). We should not expect an adrenaline rush every time we study God’s word. We all express our emotions in different ways. But when we study God’s word we should pray that the Spirit of God will not only inform our heads but also inspire our hearts.
Part of our problem is that we often assume an experience of God will be some kind of revelation — a dream, an inner voice, a guiding sense of peace, an encounter, a word. This assumption is reinforced by mysticism and existentialism. But we have no reason to need or expect a revelation from God. God as revealed himself in his Son and in his word. And God’s word is whole adequate and sufficient. But the Bible does lead us to expect other experiences of God through the Holy Spirit — love for God, love for others, assurance, joy, confidence, peace, and so on. Word and Spirit give us a new desire for God (Romans 8:5-9; 4; 17 ; Galatians 5:17 ).
True Christian experience is experience that arises through the Spirit from by the revelation of God in Jesus contained in the Bible. God rules through his word, and the Spirit applies that word to our lives. The Spirit opens blind eyes to see the truth and melts cold hearts to respond to God’s word. The word of God comes in the power of the Spirit (Acts 10:44; 1Corinthians 2:4; 1Thessalonians 1:5-6 ). If we want to see the Spirit of God at work, we must proclaim the word of God.
We might say that being word-centered is synonymous with being Spirit-centered. The difference is that we cannot control the Spirit. We cannot determine or even predict when and how he will work (John 3:8 ). Our role is to read, hear, proclaim, teach, and obey the word. The Spirit’s role is to do the work of God through that word. Through the Spirit our words become the living word of God (2 Samuel 23:2 ). And so we center our lives and ministries on the word of God while praying that God’s Spirit will do the work of God through that word."
I listen to messages by handful of different preachers on a semi-regular basis. One is the pastoral team at The Journey Church in St. Louis. Jonathan McIntosh, executive pastor at The Journey Church, used the following quote from Dallas Willard in a recent message introducing their summer series on the Sermon on the Mount: A City on a Hill .
"At the literally mundane level, Jesus knew how to transform the molecular structure of water to make it wine. That knowledge also allowed Him to take a few pieces of bread and some little fish and feed thousands of people. He could create matter from the energy He knew how to access from the heavens right where He was. He knew how to transform the tissues of a human body from sickness to health, and from death to life. He knew how to suspend gravity, interrupt weather patterns, eliminate unfruitful trees without saw or axe. He only needed a word. Surely He must be amused at what Nobel Prizes are awarded for today.
In the ethical domain He had an understanding of life that has influenced world thought more than any other. Death was not something imposed on Him by others. He explained to His followers in a moment of crisis, He could at any time call for 72,000 angels to do whatever He wanted. A mid sized angel or two would surely have been enough to take care of those who thought they were capturing and killing Him. He plainly said, Nobody takes my life. I lay it down by choice. I am in a position to lay it down and I am in a position to resume it. My Father and I have worked all this out.
All these things show Jesus’ cognitive and practical mastery of every phase of reality—physical, moral, spiritual— He is Master only because He is maestro. Jesus is Lord can mean little in practice for anyone who has to hesitate before saying Jesus is smart. He is not just nice. He is brilliant. He is the smartest man who ever lived. He is now supervising the entire course of world history while simultaneously preparing the rest of the universe for our future role in it. He always has the best information on everything and certainly on the things that matter most in human life."
– Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy
Note that Jesus is better than just nice … "He is brilliant … [and] is now supervising the entire course of world history while simultaneously preparing the rest of the universe for our future role in it." Amen.
“The gospel shows us that our spiritual problem lies not only in failing to obey God, but also in relying on our obedience to make us fully acceptable to God, ourselves and others.
Every kind of character flaw comes from this natural impulse to be our own savior through our performance and achievement. On the one hand, proud and disdainful personalities come from basing your identity on your performance and thinking you are succeeding. But on the other hand, discouraged and self-loathing personalities also come from basing your identity on your performance and thinking you are failing.
Belief in the gospel is not just the way to enter the kingdom of God; it is the way to address every obstacle and grow in every aspect. The gospel is not just the “ABCs” but the “A-to-Z” of the Christian life.
The gospel is the way that anything is renewed and transformed by Christ — whether a heart, a relationship, a church, or a community. All our problems come from a lack of orientation to the gospel. Put positively, the gospel transforms our hearts, our thinking and our approach to absolutely everything.”
"We conclude, therefore, that a Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbor. Otherwise he is not a Christian. He lives in Christ through faith, in his neighbor through love. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor."
- Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty
Next to our kitchen sink we have a "slop bucket." It serves in the way a garbage disposal does for most Americans: all the food scraps go in it. At least once a week we take it out before the flies congregate too much. (I’m told it was the norm of previous generations to have slop buckets in their homes.)
It seems that many Christians have a "slop bucket" when it comes to sin. We simply dump our little sins throughout the days and weeks with hardly any care at all, and then go to Jesus seeking forgiveness when things get really bad (or the slop bucket is full). We repent of our slop buckets being too full, and not really of the idolatry of our souls in finding satisfaction outside of Him. (Perhaps we need to repent of our shallow and incomplete repentance?)
The quote on Of First Importance today relates completely to our need to treat Jesus as more than a slop bucket:
“I ought to go to Christ for the forgiveness of each sin. In washing my body, I go over every spot, and wash it out. Should I be less careful in washing my soul?
I ought to see the stripe that was made on the back of Jesus by each of my sins. I ought to see the infinite pang thrill through the soul of Jesus equal to an eternity of my hell for my sins, and for all of them.
I ought to see that in Christ’s bloodshedding there is an infinite over-payment for all my sins. Although Christ did not suffer more than infinite justice demanded, yet He could not suffer at all without laying down an infinite ransom.”
“Our only hope for living the radical demands of the Christian life is that God is totally for us now and forever. Therefore, God has not ordained that living the Christian life should be the basis of our hope that God is for us. That basis is the death and righteousness of Christ, counted as ours through faith alone. On the cross Christ endured for us all the punishment required of us because of our sin. And in order that God, as our Father, might be completely for us and not against us forever, Christ has performed for us, in his perfect obedience to God, all that God required of us as the ground of his being totally for us forever.
This punishment and this obedience are completed and past. They can never change. Our union with Christ and the enjoyment of these benefits is secure forever. Through faith alone, God establishes our union with Christ. This union will never fail, because in Christ God is for us as an omnipotent Father who sustains our faith, and works all things together for our everlasting good. The one and only instrument through which God preserves our union with Christ is faith in Christ—the purely receiving act of the soul.”
Sometimes we say our words must be a balance of love and truth . Think about that phrase.
A balance? As if truth and love are to be weighed in comparison? Shall we have 50% love and 50% truth, or if we are really bold, then 80% truth but keep the loving flowing a little at 20%. The concept comes from Ephesians 4:15 : "speaking the truth in love." Our truth must be filtered in love, and our love must be filtered in truth. There is a happy tension in there for sure. People deserve 100% of both, for love and truth are not enemies but rather best of friends. God is Truth; He is Love; He is neither one in part, but both in His fullness. Jesus’s incarnation reveals this much for in Him dwells all the fullness of grace (love) and truth (John 1:14 ).
"Balance" is a metaphor, and I contend, it is an incomplete one. We use it to talk about balancing work and play, our finances, our relationships, our emotional and chemical state, and just about everything else it seems here in the West. Do you have a balanced diet? The picture of "balance" is, at the very least, incomplete, in my humble opinion. For is God (and are we?) solely interested in finding out how to balance our careers and our families? Isn’t there more to this vapor of a life than simply finding our inner balance?
Enter a better, more descriptive word: Rhythm .
Rhythm (from Greek rhythmos , "any measured flow or movement, symmetry") is the variation of the length and accentuation of a series of sounds or other events.
The Christian life is a journey towards realizing God’s rhythm. (I would say ‘finding’ it, but must confess I don’t think we are capable of looking for or finding it ourselves.) All things in the end will be brought into full harmony through Christ (Eph. 1:10 ), while in the interim we endure this broken, unrhythmic world. Through Christ’s redemption from our fallen state, the Spirit’s renewing us and empowering His community of believers, and the Father’s joy in making us full sons of God, we get to join in the dance (perichoresis ) with the Triune God.
It seems that the New Testament vision of Christ is less about bringing balance to our lives, and more about restoring the underlying rhythm of the entire universe, us included as the most important aspect of creation (Romans 8:18-27 ). Perhaps the reason why so much of our "preaching" these days (How To …) does not transform is because it is aimed at this make-believe balance rather than transforming the whole person to live in the whole rhythm of our Creator.
I don’t know much about music and cannot carry a tune, but when I hear good music, it makes the soul groove. The harmony and melody and beats come together in a true concert of sounds, which makes one think ‘ah, that’s how it is supposed to be!’
How about you? What makes (musical) rhythm attractive to you?
And how do we go about achieving God’s harmony for our lives?
Kari and I are committed to finding out what it means to live in the Gospel rhythms, or to use the NT wording, walk in step with the Spirit, in His rhythm. We find our balance living in His rhythm.
“Transcendent living is Christ-centered living. Living for Christ is the only way you will ever be liberated from your bondage to the overwhelming tendency to shrink the size of your life to the size of your life. The only way to spin free of the narrow confines of your little cubicle kingdom is to live in the big sky country of Christ-centered living. You will never win the battle with yourself simply by saying ‘no’ to yourself. The battle only begins to be won when you say ‘yes’ to the call of your King, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
- Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2007), 99.
“Only love for Christ has the power to incapacitate the sturdy love for self that is the bane of every sinner, and only the grace of Christ has the power to produce that love.” (p. 105)
I’ve recently come to see how un-humble I am (read: prideful), and am desperately in need of the Gospel, and being specifically humble before my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
Humility is a reoccurring theme, and truly the answer for all my problems in this two-second earthly life. A right assessment of self (humility), and a proper view of circumstances, as in contentment (see here ).
On this theme, there seems to be a strange paradox at work in my life. Why is it that sometimes I am more authentic with people I know are not Christian than with fellow believers and leaders in the church. Not overall as a huge difference in character on display, but in spots and situations. Why is that? Why do I ‘edit my story’ and try to come across as competent and gifted and a good leader? Anyone else struggle with this? (It is sin, and we must repent of it, and flee it .. but how?)
An incisive quote by Tim Keller addresses part (or at least the center) of my dilemma in his book The Reason for God . He writes:
"Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from him…Sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God" (p. 162).
That is my problem — making good (not at all sinful things) into the ultimate things. I suffer with this self-idolatry, being a task-oriented, generally productive and competent (with a Type-A personality fueling it all). By default I find significance in what I do , which is a perversion of identity and life purpose before God. Rather, my significance is found in Christ, my life hidden with Him in God — in fact, Jeff is dead (Col. 3:3). That’s the reordering of life under the Gospel.
Unless we are diligent in seeking humility (since we cannot simply "do" it) we will not be progressing on the trajectory towards Christ-likeness. To long to fulfill what Andrew Murray defines humility as: "simply the sense of entire nothingness, which comes when we see how truly God is all, and in which we make way for God to be all " [Andrew Murray, Humility , p. 12].
Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.
It probably took about three hours wrestling with those verses to scratch the surface of what they mean for my identity, seeking knowledge and loving God in all things. (Still wresting with it.) Knowledge is not bad, nor is seeking knowledge a vain pursuit. The issue is with motives, issues of the heart and mind. Why am I seeking knowledge? For God’s glory and my joy? Is my learning a loving act towards God and others? Loving God is the chief goal (display His infinite worth and glory, by enjoying Him through love). And all knowledge should serve to help us know, love and enjoy God above all else. But of course none of this can be done in a vacuum, to the exclusion of others. We do not live to ourselves, and even in living to God we affect (and should) others greatly. If we wish to help others see Christ as beautify and glorious as He is, then we must be actively loving others. That is how the world will know Christ is in us, that He knows us (John 13:35). And that is what I am learning. Humbled, learning contentment. Happily.
I guess that if you are a Christian reading this then I’m being authentic with you after all…
The two Greek words de ("but") and Theos ("God") are the first two words of Ephesians 2:4: "But God, who is rich in mercy..."
Because of God's great love and grace extending to us in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven, redeemed and able to know, love + enjoy God more fully, ever-increasing and forever.
This site contains the thoughts and conclusions and journeys of the Patterson family -- Jeff, Kari and Dutch -- who have experienced the front-end of God's amazing grace, and continue to delight in His unfailing love.
Read more about us, and what we hold most precious.
Only a few dozen pages into the new Total Church book. It arrived this week in the mail — 4 weeks before it’s official publishing date — and I was hoping to dig into it this weekend if possible. Last night I couldn’t put it down. Looking forward to interacting with the UK authors’ concepts, as they try to unfold what they mean by the subtitle: "A radical reshaping around Gospel and community."
Next to our kitchen sink we have a "slop bucket." It serves in the way a garbage disposal does for most Americans: all the food scraps go in it. At least once a week we take it out before the flies congregate too much. (I’m told it was the norm of previous generations to have slop buckets in their homes.)
“Our only hope for living the radical demands of the Christian life is that God is totally for us now and forever. Therefore, God has not ordained that living the Christian life should be the basis of our hope that God is for us. That basis is the death and righteousness of Christ, counted as ours through faith alone. On the cross Christ endured for us all the punishment required of us because of our sin. And in order that God, as our Father, might be completely for us and not against us forever, Christ has performed for us, in his perfect obedience to God, all that God required of us as the ground of his being totally for us forever.
