A Conversation about Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity

Brian McLaren, I Accept Your Invitation

Welcome: You’re reading “Part 1” of my blog series responding to Brian McLaren’s book A New Kind of Christianity. Many people have engaged Brian’s thinking—most focusing on a systematic theology response (you can visit here to see a boatload of links). I’m thankful for their foundational responses. My focus is on “pastoral theology” or “practical theology.” As a pastor, counselor, and professor who equips pastors, I’m accepting Brian’s invitation to interact about the implications of his views for the everyday life of one-another Christianity—the “personal ministry of the Word.” My posts will be “periodic” so that I can intelligently, carefully, fairly, and thoroughly engage Brian’s thinking.

Brian’s Invitation

Throughout A New Kind of Christianity Brian invites conversation. He calls it an invitation for discussion not a “debate that creates hate” (p. 17). Using a sports’ analogy, Brian writes about his views, “They are offered as a gentle serve or lob; their primary goal is to start the interplay, to get things rolling, to invite reply” (p. 23). Brian also notes concerning those who may disagree with him that, “We welcome their charitable critique” (p. 25). In summary he says, “This quest must instead work more like a wedding proposal, an invitation. It must be about free conversation, not forced conversion” (p. 27).

To this generic invite, Brian adds a very specific invitation to pastors and counselors. When I read the following words, my ears perked up higher than Mr. Spock from Star Trek.

“This Greco-Roman framing may help explain why Christian pastors and counselors have such a hard time convincing Christians that God actually loves them” (p. 266).

Game On

Until reading that quote, my plan was to let the “theologians” converse with Brian. Of course, theology intimately relates to everyday life, so I should have been willing to join the conversation from the get-go. But when I read that quote, it was “Game on.” Brian had served up his “gentle lob” and I would volley back.

This is why the specific emphasis of my tennis match, er, conversation, with Brian focuses on:

What are the implications of A New Kind of Christianity for “the personal ministry of the Word”—pastoral counseling, one another ministry, soul care, spiritual direction, biblical counseling, spiritual formation, Christian counseling, pastoral care, spiritual friendship, personal discipleship, one another ministry?

Call it whatever you want. I’ve spent the past quarter-century in the trenches of pastoral ministry comforting grieving parishioners, counseling struggling Christians, equipping lay people, pastors, and professional Christian counselors for “the personal ministry of the Word.”

Brian’s “ten questions” deserve a “pastoral ministry response.” Game on.

A Few Ground Rules

Any good tennis match must have a few ground rules (even in post-modern tennis—sorry, I couldn’t resist!). Any healthy conversation ought to include some communication skills and relational competencies. I’ll “basically” let Brian set those ground rules.

Ground Rule # 1: Q and R (Sorta’)

Brian asks not for Q/A, but for Q/R. Q/A, of course, equals Question and Answer. Brian says he thinks most questions aren’t suited for a simple answer (I’m not sure any questions are suited for a simple answer…). So he prefers Q/R: Question and Response—stimulating, open-ended, conversations starters.

So here’s my intention:

To engage Brian in stimulating Q/R about how his ten questions relate to the personal ministry of the Word (pastoral care, small groups, personal discipleship, spiritual direction, biblical counseling, spiritual formation, spiritual friendship, soul care, one another ministry, etc.).

Now, that said, I will try to do not just what Brian said, but what Brian did. As much as Brian likes to focus on “responses,” his book is filled with his answers to his ten questions. That’s not a critique. It’s an observation. And…it set’s the ground rules fairly so that we’re both playing by the same norms. Yes, I will give my answers. And I’ll give them in the form I often tell my students, “This is my current best attempt to respond to this question.” So…please be charitable when you read not only “responses” from me, but also “answers.” I want to be like Brian.

Ground Rule # 2: “Charitable” (Faithful Are the Wounds of a Friend)

Brian repeatedly asks that people who respond to him do so charitably. I want to do that. In fact, I hope I do it more consistently than it felt like, to me, Brian did it.

I don’t have the time or space in this first post to share the many examples of Brian’s less-than-charitable interactions, but I will share a few samplers…to set the ground rules. Brian starts the book by illustrating his innocent speaking engagement being bothered by four people placing leaflets on car windshields talking about Brian as a “known heretic” (p. 1). He responds by asking the rhetorical question, “How did a mild-manner guy like me get into so much trouble” (p. 2)?

Now, now. Is that any way to start a friendly conversation? So…those who disagree or have different responses from Brian are illustrative of heresy hunters. Brian and those with views like him are innocent mild-manner guys. I know, it’s subtle (well, kind of). I know, Brian didn’t say everyone who disagrees is a “heresy hunter.” He didn’t say everyone who agrees with him is a good guy. But… come on… is that really an open-ended invitation to a charitable conversation?

But that’s topped by the page where Brian introduces the first five questions. The illustration now changes from parking lot heresy hunters to evil guards at a concentration camp (p. 31).

And who are these concentration camp guards? They are pastors (who disagree with Brian).

For Brian, the reason others are not on his quest is because they’ve been locked in a closet, cell, or concentration camp by guards (pastors) motivated by a desire to keep people under their control by making them fearful of the real world. These guards (pastors) are like Satan masquerading as an angel of light. “We see our guards not as guards at all, but as pleasant custodians in clerical robes or casual suits. They’ve been to graduate school (seminary) where many of them mastered the techniques of friendly manipulation…” (p. 31, parenthesis added).

Brian, come clean. That’s not a shout out, is it? That’s a bit of an introductory dig. We’ve been dissed, right? Is this really how we want to invite charitable conversation?

So…now…if I “respond” to Brian with any difference of opinion, that puts me in the camp (remember, he said “many of them” not a few) of those manipulative pastors who seek to control their congregations through fear (techniques learned in “graduate school”—where do pastors go for graduate school?—seminary). So I’m in a double-bind because I’ve pastored three churches and I now equip pastors at a seminary.

The examples could go on and on. These are simply two of Brian’s somewhat subtle illustrative introductions. Read the book and you’ll stumble upon a batch of specific less-than-charitable statements about those who disagree with Brian.

They don’t feel like a “gentle lob” in tennis. They come across like the gauntlet being laid down in a jousting match, like an En Garde” in fencing, like a “glove slap” in a duel, or like a Klingon Bat’leth line-up (you have to be a Star Trek fan).

I’m going to try to follow Brian’s ground rules of charitable conversation, but hopefully more as a friendly tennis match than as, “I challenge you to a duel!” Perhaps the imagery from Proverbs fits best, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6). Some of Brian’s words are biting, wounding, sarcastic, in-your-face (yep, mild-mannered Brian). I’ll try to take them as faithful wounds from a friend (believing the best about Brian’s intentions). So…when I’m a tad playful, or sarcastic, or telling-it-like-it-is, please allow me the benefit of the doubt, also.

The Rest of the Story

In “Part 2,” I’ll further explain my focus—what I’m calling “the personal ministry of the Word.” In relationship to Brian’s ten questions, I’ll introduce two themes—the sufficiency of Scripture and progressive sanctification—as they relate to “biblical counseling” and “spiritual formation.”

Join the Conversation

What implications do you see for “the personal ministry of the Word” from Brian’s ten questions in A New Kind of Christianity?

Tags: A New Kind of Christianity, Biblical Counseling, Brian McLaren, Christianity, McLaren

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Crying Out to God: I Surrender All

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here. To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: Crying Out to God: I Surrender All.

Bargaining/Works: A Tit-for-Tat God

The typical third stage of the grief journey moves from denial, to anger, and then to bargaining and works. The dying people that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross interviewed entered into spoken and unspoken bargains with God. They believed that God would reward them for their good behavior and grant them special favors.

They reasoned that, “If I’m good, then God will be good to me.” Their unstated theology said, “Good things happen to good people.” So, of course, they told themselves, “God will stop the bad things that are happening to me if He sees what a good person I am and what good I can do.”

Job’s miserable counselors followed the identical mindset. Their God was a tit-for-tat God. “If you do bad, then God does bad back to you. If you do good, then God does good to you.”

We can summarize their entire counsel to Job as, “Behave, be good, do right, be righteous, and God will treat you right.” This is why they wrongly assumed and cruelly asserted that Job’s suffering was all a direct result of Job’s sinning.

Frank Lake has harsh words for such harsh counselors then and now. Speaking of innocent sufferers and one-dimensional counselors, Lake explains:

“These passive evils, which are not of the soul’s own making, are not accessible to a pastoral care which can talk only in terms of the forgiveness of sins. Such sufferers are usually not insensitive to their status as sinners. They have sought God’s forgiveness. But like Job, they complain of the comforters whose one-track minds have considered only the seriousness of sin, and not the gravity of grinding affliction.”

Such false counsel leads to bargaining that knows nothing of grace. It is all works, self-effort, and self-sufficiency. Bargaining attempts to control and manipulate God. That’s why it’s so vital to move from bargaining and works to cry—crying out to God for help.

Crying Out to God: Open Palms and Pleading Eyes

Crying out to God is a faith-based plea for mobilization in which I humbly ask God for help based upon my admission that I can’t survive without Him. Crying is reaching up with open palms and pleading eyes in the midst of darkness and doubt.

Psalm 56:8 teaches that we pray our tears and God collects them in His bottle. Psalm 72:12 assures us, “For he will deliver the needy who cry out” (KJV—when he crieth).

Psalm 34 reminds us, “The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:17-18).

Crying out to God is a testimony that God is responsive, while all false gods and idols are non-responsive (1 Samuel 12:20-24). When we cry out, we entreat God to help because expressed neediness compels God’s very character to act. God acts on voiced pain. He is not a deaf and dumb idol.

Crying empties us so there is more room in us for God. David wept until he had no strength left, but then he found strength in the LORD (1 Samuel 30:6). His cry, his confession of neediness, summoned God into action—supportive action.

Suffering is God’s primary way of uprooting our self-reliance and complacency. He uses suffering to gain our attention. Suffering is a slap in the face, the shock of icy water, a bloodied nose; meant to snatch our attention. Crying out to God is our admission that God has our attention, that God has us.

Join the Conversation

Why do some counselors and spiritual friends act like Job’s counselors: with one-track minds considering only the seriousness of sin, but not the gravity of grinding affliction?

Tags: God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Grieving, Suffering

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Complaint: A Lament for Your Loss

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here.

To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: Complaint: A Lament for Your Loss.

Facing Destructive Anger

Anger is the typical “second stage” in the world’s grieving journey. After denial ends, the truth sinks in. Something bad, horrific has occurred. We’ve lost something or someone dear to us.

Our loss frustrates our desires and blocks our goals. It ticks us off. We’re mad. We want to lash out. At life. At the world. At . . . God.

This is where grief gets very confusing for the committed Christian. We love God; we know He loves us. We know God is good; we know life has now turned bad. So we want to know, sometimes we want to scream it, “How could a good God allow such evil and suffering!?”

God Invites Lament

But dare we ask? Do we dare verbalize our complaint, our lament to God?

The Scriptures are clear—God invites lament, complaint. The Bible repeatedly illustrates believers responding to God’s invitation with honest words that would make many a modern Christian shudder.

I know what you’re thinking. “Didn’t God judge the Israelites for complaining?”

There are different words and a distinct context between the sinful complaint of the Israelites in Numbers and the godly complaint/lament of Job, the Psalmists, Jeremiah, and many others. Biblical complaint complains to God about the fallen world. Ungodly complaint complains about God and accuses Him of lacking goodness, holiness, and wisdom.

We must remember that Satan is the master masquerader (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). His counterfeit for biblical complaint is unhealthy, destructive anger. Satan wants us to substitute cursing for complaint.

Job’s wife fell into Satan’s snare when she urged Job to “Curse God and die!” She encouraged him to give up on God, on himself, and on life.

Cursing God demeans God. It sees Him as a lightweight, as an arid desert and a land of great darkness (Jeremiah 2:5, 19, 29, 31). Cursing separates. Complaint connects. Complaint draws us toward God; hatred and anger push us away from God.

Biblical Complaint: Telling God the Truth

What then is complaint? In candor we’re honest with ourselves; in complaint we’re honest to God. Complaint is vulnerable frankness about life to God in which I express my pain and confusion over how a good God allows evil and suffering.

We needlessly react against the word “complaint.” “Christians can’t complain!” we insist. Yet numerically, there are more Psalms of complaint and lament than Psalms of praise and thanksgiving.

Complaints are faith-based acts of persistent trust. They are one of the many moods of faith. Psalm 91’s exuberant trust is one faith mood while Psalm 88’s dark despair is another faith mood. A mood of faith trusts God enough to bring everything about us to Him. In complaint we hide nothing from God because we trust His good heart and because we know He knows our hearts.

Join the Conversation

So what do you think. Can and should Christians “complain” and “lament” to God?

Tags: Complaint, God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Grieving, Lament

The Best of the Best Around the Net

One of my passions is bridge-building, connecting, and highlighting other ministries and ministry resources—so that the Body of Christ is built up and Christ is magnified (Ephesians 4:15-16). My weekly post, The Best of the Best Around the Net, links you to blog posts that provide robust, rich, and relevant insights for living. Check out the following links you can trust.

Power for Preachers

My friend, Mike Pohlman, over at The Gospel Coalition, asks, “Where does the preacher’s power reside?” His post shows how and why preacher and listener can go confidently into church. Check out Power for Preachers.

A Reformation of Worship

Prolific author and blogger, R. C. Sproul, explains in Seeking a Reformation of Worship that, “The sacraments are not naked symbols. They must be clothed with the Word. Word and sacrament must go together.”

Two Ships, Two Sinkings, and Two Worldviews

Al Mohler shares a fascinating story, really two stories, with a deeply relevant moral. What explains the difference in how men responded to the sinking of the Titanic and the sinking of the Lusitania? In Women and Children First, Mohler contrasts Scripture/revelation with science/research and shows where we find our true answers in life.

The Masculine Mandate

Tim Challies, who blogs as often and as effectively as any Christian blogger, is also Evangelical Christianity’s preeminent book reviewer. In this post he reviews the new book The Masculine Mandate. Here’s his summary, which hopefully entices you to read the full blog and in turn the full book. “Well-written and presenting tough truths within such a simple grid of work and keep, this book is a very useful call for men to live out their mandate before God.”

Join the Conversation

Of the Best of the Best Around the Net, which post impacted you the most? Why? 

Tags: Challies, Mohler, Sproul, The Best of the Best, The Gospel Coalition

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Candor: Telling Yourself the Truth

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here.

To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: Candor: Telling Yourself the Truth.

Moving from Denial to Candor

The world has its way of grieving. But, when our fallen world falls on us, when suffering crushes us, we need much more than research. We need revelation—we need God’s inspired truth about how to grieve as those who have hope.

God’s Word offers us profound practical wisdom for moving from denial to candor. What exactly is biblical candor? Candor is courageous truth telling to myself about life in which I come face-to-face with the reality of my external and internal suffering. In candor, I admit what is happening to me and I feel what is going on inside me.

Biblical Candor Samplers: Fearlessly Facing the Facts

Does God really allow and even invite His children to be brutally honest about life? David practices candor in Psalm 42:3-5.

My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?

Notice that David is honest about his external suffering. He describes his losses—the loss of fellowship, leadership, and worship. He also is candid about his internal suffering. He depicts his crosses—accurately labeling his soul as downcast and disturbed within him.

Job consistently models candor throughout his response to his losses.

What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil (Job 3:25-26).

Again we witness brutal frankness both about external losses and internal crosses.

We could profitably examine the accounts of other biblical characters who practiced candor—Jeremiah, Solomon, Asaph (Psalm 73), Heman (Psalm 88), Jesus, Paul, and so many more. They all convey the same inspired message: it’s normal to hurt and necessary to grieve.

No Grieving;No Healing. Know Grieving; Know Healing

The Apostle Paul does not tell us not to grieve; he tells us not to grieve without hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). He chooses a Greek word meaning to feel sorrow, distress, and grief, and to experience pain, heaviness, and inner affliction.

Paul is teaching that grief is the grace of recovery because mourning slows us down to face life. No grieving; no healing. Know grieving; know healing.

The only person who can truly dare to grieve, bear to grieve, is the person with a future hope that things will eventually be better. When we trust God’s good heart, then we trust Him no matter what. We need not pretend. We can face and embrace the mysteries of life.

On the Road to Hope

Candor or denial. The choice is a turning point. It is a line drawn in the sand of life, a hurdle to confront.

Faith crosses the line. Trust leaps the hurdle. We face reality and embrace truth, sad as it is. If facing suffering is wrestling face-to-face with God, then candor is our decision to step on the mat. Will you?

Join the Conversation

How can people begin to move from denial to candor?

Tags: Candor, God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Grieving, Healing

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

A Portrait of Your Healing Journey

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here.

To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: A Portrait of Your Healing Journey.

The Way of the World: Is This All There Is?

How do we move from suffering to creative suffering? How do we suffer face-to-face with God rather than turning our backs on God during suffering? How do we find hope when we’re hurting?

We have two basic options. We can turn to the world’s way. Or we can follow the way of God’s Word.

Students of human grief have developed various models that track typical grief responses. Swiss-born psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, in her book On Death and Dying, popularized a five-stage model of grieving based upon her research into how terminally ill persons respond to the news of their terminal illness. Her five stages have since been used worldwide to describe all grief responses. While her research describes the typical response, they can’t begin to capture or address whether this is God’s designed response or desired plan for our healing journey.

The Way of the Word: All We Need for Life and Godliness

Believing in the sufficiency of Scripture, we will focus on a revelation-based model. The biblical approach to grieving and growing identifies eight scriptural “stages” in our responses to life’s losses. God’s way equips us to move through hurt to hope in Christ—from grieving to growing.

The first four stages involve what we call sustaining in suffering, which we will explore in chapters two through five. The second four stages relate to healing in suffering, which we will explore in chapters six through nine.

Please always remember that these “stages” are a relational process, not sequential steps. Grieving and growing is not a neat, nice package. It isn’t a tidy procedure. Grieving and growing is messy because life is messy. Moving through hurt to hope is a two-steps-forward, one-step-backwards endeavor. We don’t “conquer a stage” and never return to it.

Rather than picturing a linear, step-by-step route, imagine a three dimensional maze with many possible paths, frequent detours, backtracking, and even the ability to reside in more than one “stage” at the same time. However, positive movement is possible. In fact, it is promised. You can find God’s healing for your losses. You can find hope in your hurt.

Join the Journey

Whatever your grieving experience has been like up to this point, don’t quit. Don’t give up. Join the journey.

Experience the biblical reality that it’s normal to hurt and necessary to grieve. Learn how to move from denial to personal honesty (candor), from anger to honesty with God (complaint), from bargaining to asking God for help (crying out), and from depression to receiving God’s help (comfort).

Stay on the path. Experience the biblical reality that it’s possible to hope and supernatural to grow. Learn how to move from regrouping to trusting with faith (waiting on God), from deadening to groaning with hope (wailing to God), from despair to perceiving with grace (weaving in God’s truth), and from digging cisterns to engaging with love (worshipping God and ministering to others).

God truly does provide you with everything you need for life and godliness. Through the Word of God, the Spirit of God, and the people of God, you have all you need for your healing journey.

Our Healing Journey

Here’s an overview portrait of the healing journey we’ll take together. When life’s losses invade your world, learn how to face suffering face-to-face with God. Learn how to journey:

 From Denial to Candor: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

 From Anger to Complaint: A Lament for Your Loss

 From Bargaining to Crying Out to God: I Surrender All

 From Depression to Comfort: God Comes

 From Regrouping to Waiting: When God Says “Not Yet”

 From Deadening to Wailing: Pregnant with Hope

 From Despairing to Weaving: Spiritual Mathematics

 From Digging Cisterns to Worshipping: Finding God

Join the Conversation

How have you journeyed with God from suffering to healing hope?

Tags: Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Grieving

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Spiritual Depression and Spiritual Separation Anxiety

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here.

To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: Spiritual Depression and Spiritual Separation Anxiety.

Satan’s Scheme in Our Suffering

How does Satan want to trap, trick, and trip us up when suffering enters our world? Here’s his persistent ploy. “Life is bad. God must be bad, too.”

Here’s another way to put it. The theological reality of suffering teaches that our world is fallen and it often falls on us. The personal reality of suffering tutors us in the truth that our world is a mess and it messes with our minds. Suffering is not only what happens to us, it is also, and more importantly, what happens in us.

All suffering and mourning amount to a sense of death, divorce, aloneness, and forsakenness. The doubts that we endure while in the casket of suffering lead to a potential hemorrhage in our relationship to God so that we end up feeling spiritual abandonment.

Spiritual Abandonment: “I Feel Forsaken”

In spiritual abandonment, Satan tempts me to see God as my enemy (Job 3:1-26; 6:4; 10:1-3; Psalm 13; 88; Jeremiah 20:7-18; Lamentations 3:1-20; 5:20). Luther called this spiritual depression. It’s the trial of faith produced when I reflect on and interpret my suffering with reason unaided by faith.

It results in a terrified conscience in which I perceive that God is against me, and in the sense of ultimate terror that God may have forsaken me. The presence of suffering can result in the absence of faith.

I call it “spiritual separation anxiety”—the terror of a felt sense of abandonment. Satan incites this terror when he whispers, “Life is bad. God controls life. God must be bad, too. How can you trust His heart? He has left you all alone. Again.”

Spiritual depression and spiritual separation anxiety are the results of our internal interpretations of external events. They are satanic temptations to doubt God, spiritual terrors, restlessness, despair, pangs, panic, desolation, and desperation. The absence of faith in God in the presence of external suffering leads to a terrified conscience which perceives God to be angry and evil instead of loving and good.

Jeremiah felt and expressed such condemnation and rejection. “Why do you always forget us? Why do you forsake us so long?” (Lamentations 5:20). In Jeremiah 20:7, his language is even stronger, making us squeamish. “O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed.”

Heman, considered one of the wisest believers ever (1 Kings 4:31; 1 Chronicles 2:6), pens the “Psalm of the Dark Night of the Soul” (Psalm 88) in which his concluding line summarizes his spiritual struggle. “You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend” (Psalm 88:18).

If you’re honest; if I’m honest, we admit that we’ve felt what Heman felt. We’ve thought what Jeremiah thought.

The Rest of the Story

You say, “Bob, you can’t stop here!”

Interestingly, Psalm 88 does. It stops with verse 18 that I quoted above. Life is not a situation comedy where everything is wrapped up in twenty-two minutes. It’s messy.

However…you’re right. We can’t stop with Satan’s scheme. We have a choice when faced with Satan’s temptation to doubt God. In fact…we have two choices. Tomorrow’s post outlines our options when suffering enters and Satan enters with it…

Join the Conversation

When life is bad, how do you defeat Satan’s temptation to believe that God is bad, too?

Tags: God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Healing, Spiritual Depression, Suffering

The Story

At RPM Ministries our story is all about changing lives with Christ’s changeless truth.

We’re always asking people, “Want to change lives?”

But, what if your life is unchanged? What then? How do you participate in life’s greatest adventure of empowering others to live a changed life if you remain powerless to change?

Then our question for you is entirely different. The new question, really the first question, is “Want a changed life?”

How do people change? Why do people need to change? Change to what?

The story that answers those questions is the story God is telling in the Bible. His story is summarized below. To read about it in narrative form, click below on the image of The Story.

When you’re done, tell us what you think. Ask us any questions that you have. Contact us at rpm.ministries@gmail.com

Tags: Christ, Christianity, Gospel, Salvation, The Story

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

The Lesson Plan of Suffering

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here. To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: The Lesson Plan of Suffering.

Opening Our Hands to God

The Apostle Paul teaches us suffering’s lesson plan. Suffering and death are meant to teach us our need again.

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9).

In suffering, God is not getting back at you; He is getting you back to Himself. The actual experience of dying persuades the little god that he is finite after all. When Paul felt the sentence of death, he understood that his only hope was the dead-raising God.

Suffering opens our hands to God. It was Augustine who declared, “God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full—there is nowhere for Him to put it.”

Delicious Despair

Moses taught the same truth in the passage Jesus quoted during His temptation. Why does God allow us to endure desert wanderings? According to Deuteronomy 8 and Matthew 4, it is to humble us, teaching us how desperately needy we are.

God loves us too much to allow us to forget our neediness. God makes therapeutic use of our suffering. Luther taught that suffering creates in the child of God a delicious despair. Suffering is God’s putrid tasting medicine of choice resulting in delicious healing.

Healing medicine for what? For our ultimate sickness—the arrogance that we do not need God. Suffering causes us to groan for home and to live in hope. The author of Hebrews, surveying the landscape of Old Testament journeys, shows us the way home.

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them” (Hebrews 11:13-16).

God refuses to allow us to get too comfy here. Instead, He allows suffering—daily casket processionals—to blacken our sun so we cry out to His Son. Suffering reminds us that we’re not home yet.

At least, that’s God’s intent. Satan plots an altogether different strategy. We learn about his scheme in our next post.

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What lessons are you learning from suffering?

Tags: Augustine, God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, Grieving, Healing, Luther, Suffering, Sufferology

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

GPS: God’s Positioning Scriptures

Countdown to God’s Healing: I’m excited to announce that BMH Books will release my fifth book soon (in April 2010). To read a sample section of God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting click here. To pre-order your autographed copy at 30% off, visit here.

As we countdown to the release, I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts, such as today’s post: GPS: God’s Positioning Scriptures.

A Personal Journey with a Personal God

Moving through hurt to hope is a journey—a personal journey. Finding God’s healing for life’s losses is a trek—a messy trail with far more detours than we would ever wish.

That’s why I’m not promising you eight easy steps. However, as we journey together, I will offer you eight biblical markers on your personal healing journey. As you begin exploring these trail markers for life’s trials, you’ll experience the ups and the downs, the hills and the valleys, the zigs and the zags.

View these markers as your personal suffering GPS: God’s Positioning Scripture derived from God’s Word. Nothing ever written can compare with the honesty and reality of the Word of God. It is totally sufficient to light our path. It is utterly profound in its capacity to resonate with our experiences.

The various “stages” we’ll explore in the grief journey provide compass points in God’s process for hurting and hoping. They empower us not to evade suffering, but to face suffering face-to-face with God.

A Crisis of Faith

When tragedy occurs, we enter a crisis of faith. We either move toward God or away from God. We’ll probe how to move in the direction of finding God in the midst of our suffering.

The end in sight is not quick answers through easy steps. Our goal is deep healing through a personal journey . . . with God, in Christ. He never lets you walk alone.

Our Journey Together

Through God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, I invite you to walk with God and God’s people. At the end of chapters two through nine, you’ll find a built-in “Grief and Growth Workbook.” You’ll be able to trace your journey and you’ll be able to journal about your healing process.

While you can read and apply God’s Healing for Life’s Losses alone, I’ve also designed it for group use. Consider gathering with some other spiritual friends to share your progress along your journey. At the very least, invite one other friend in Christ to be “Jesus with skin on” for you.

Grief tends to tempt us to walk alone. Fight against that temptation. Walk with God and His people as you journey on the healing path.

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How has God’s Word been a GPS for you in your suffering?

Tags: God's Healing for Life's Losses, GPS, Grief, Healing, Scripture, Suffering