Easter…Now What?

Though we celebrate Easter on one specific day, the impact of Easter is eternal. Easter changes everything. Easter makes all the difference in this world and the world to come.

Why? Just what happened at Easter? What difference does Easter make?   

John Flavel’s (1671) Easter sermon, The Fountain of Life Opened Up, teaches us what happened to Christ and what happened to us because of Good Friday and Easter. May his words pierce our hearts and prompt praise for the glorious Easter exchange.

The Glorious Easter Exchange

Lord, the condemnation was yours, that the justification might be mine.

The agony was yours, that the victory might be mine.

The pain was yours, and the ease mine.

The stripes were yours, and the healing balm issuing from them mine.

The vinegar and gall were yours, that the honey and sweet might be mine.

The curse was yours, that the blessing might be mine.

The crown of thorns was yours, that the crown of glory might be mine.

The death was yours, the life purchased by it mine.

You paid the price, that I might enjoy the inheritance.

Join the Conversation

How will you be applying the glorious Easter exchange to your life and ministry?

Why Jesus Is Infinitely Better Than Santa Claus

Source: My good friend and sister in Christ, Krista McKenzie McElwain, sent me the following comparisons. Many thanks for such a wonderful Christmas gift and Christ-reminder.

Santa lives at the North Pole … JESUS is everywhere.

Santa rides in a sleigh … JESUS rides on the wind and walks on the water.

Santa comes but once a year… JESUS is an ever-present help.

Santa fills your stockings with goodies … JESUS supplies all your needs by the riches of His grace.

Santa comes down your chimney uninvited … JESUS stands at your door and knocks, and enters your heart.

You have to wait in line to see Santa … JESUS is as close as the mention of His name.

Santa lets you sit on his lap … JESUS lets you rest in His arms.

Santa doesn’t know your name, all he can say is, “Hi little boy or girl, what’s your name?” … JESUS knew our name before we did. Not only does He know our name, He knows our history and future, and He even knows our hearts and how many hairs are on our heads.

Santa has a belly like a bowl full of jelly … JESUS has a heart full of love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

All Santa can offer is “HO HO HO” … JESUS says, “Cast your cares on me, for I care for you.”

Santa’s little helpers make toys … JESUS makes a new life, mends wounded hearts, repairs broken homes, and builds mansions.

Santa may make you chuckle but … JESUS gives you joy that is your strength.

While Santa puts gifts under your tree … JESUS became our gift and died on the tree, for you and for me.

It’s obvious there really is no comparison.

Yes, JESUS is better, He is even better than Santa Claus—infinitely better!

We need to remember WHO Christmas is all about.

Jesus is still the reason for the season.

God Is a Rewarder, Not a Hoarder

Nothing is more important about us than our image of who God is. Satan understood this from the beginning of creation. His seductive scheme with Eve focused on tempting her to believe that God was a Shalt-Not-God.

Satan as the Grinch

In conveying the essence of faith in God, the author of Hebrews reminds us that “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). In Soul Physicians, I develop this biblical truth by reminding readers that God is a Rewarder, not a Hoarder. 

Satan want us to believe that God jealously hoards His blessings. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Of course, God said something entirely different. “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

Satan’s original lie continues through the ages. “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” (1 Timothy 4:1). So just what demonic deceptions is Paul talking about? “They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods.” What? Paul calls that deceptive demonic doctrine? Why?

God As the Eternal Gift Giver

Because God who is a Rewarder created marriage and food “to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:3-4).

James shares the same concern that Paul shares. In the context of people tempted to be enticed by sinful desires, James doesn’t counsel us not to desire. Instead, his biblical counsel is to remind warn us against demonic deception. “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:16-17).

And what good gift does the giving Father give His children? “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created” (James 1:18).

Am I Like Scrooge or Santa?

Interesting, isn’t it, that James makes a specific personal application. Those who see God as a Rewarder and not as a Hoarder should then be like God—the firstfruits of all He created. Like Father like son and daughter—we live out the image of God in us by being a Rewarder—a gift-giver, a Santa, a type of Christ; not a Hoarder—a Scrooge, a Grinch, a type of Satan.

Here’s the thing. When we believe that God is a Hoarder, then we believe that He limits His resources. And when we believe that God limits His resources, then we hoard our resources. We live life in a competitive mode and a miserly, selfish mood.

When we believe that God is a Rewarder, then we understand that He lavishes His unlimited resources. We believe that He can do exceedingly abundantly above all that we think or imagine (Ephesians 3:20). And when we believe that God lavishes His unlimited resources, then we give away our resources. We don’t see others are our competitors but as our teammates and family. We live life in a sharing mode and a giving, unselfish mood and spirit.

Walking the Talk

In leading RPM Ministries, I’ve tried to walk the talk and practice what I preach. I mean, it’s fine for me to write that God is a Rewarder and not a Hoarder, but am I eating my own dog food? Am I living out what I say I believe?

I’ve tried to do so by writing affirming, fair and balanced book reviews about other people’s books—books that some people might see as competitors to my own books. But, by God’s grace, I don’t see books on similar topics as competitors but as complimentary and as God’s gift to the church.

I’ve tried to practice what I preach with RPM Ministries by posting my weekly The Best of the Best Around the Christian Net. I link you to the top five Christian blog posts of the week. Some might see those websites as “competing” with RPM Ministries for your time, attention, focus, and loyalty. That’s Satan talking, not God.

I don’t share this to say, “Ain’t Bob grand.” I share this to say, “Ain’t God a grand Giver!” And to say, “Shouldn’t we give also?”

Does that mean that we give in order to get? That we give so that we can manipulate God into giving us back ten-fold what we have given? That’s not God’s economy. God doesn’t promise some health and wealth gospel.

God’s reward is not first and foremost a material reward or a temporal reward. His reward is spiritual and eternal as James already reminded us—new birth. But as the Giver of new birth, God the Father never abandons His children. Because I believe that, I give away book reviews, and shout-outs to other web sites, and hundreds of free resources—because God has never failed to provide for me.

What About You?

What’s your image of God—a Rewarder or a Hoarder?

If your image of God is a Rewarder, then how do you show it, demonstrate it?  Where are you giving more than you get? Who are you sacrificing for, without any demand that they give back to you in return? 

Join the Conversation 

This Christmas season, how will you demonstrate that you believe that God is a Rewarder and not a Hoarder?

“Our Forgiving Father”—Luke 15

Part 2: Leaving Home

Welcome: Thanks for reading my Passion Week blog series as we reflect together on Our Forgiving Father. Today in Part 2, we see that we’re all Prodigal Sons or Prodigal Daughters. However, there’s hope—when we put our ear to the chest of Christ we hear the heartbeat of God—the heartbeat of our Forgiving Father.

Part 2: Leaving Home: Luke 15:1-2, 11-14

The opening of Christ’s parable in Luke 15 is delightfully conventional, even to the point of being childlike. “There was a man who had two sons.” It’s almost as if Jesus begins His story with the words, “Once upon a time.” What happened once upon a time to this father of two sons?

“Father, I’m Leaving You!”: Luke 15:1-2, 12

Jesus begins the action with the youngest son’s demand. To us the words seem innocent enough. “Father, give me my share of the estate.” To the father, the words are radical—suggesting heartless rejection.

Jesus tells it all so simply and matter-of-factly that it is difficult to realize fully that what is happening here is unheard of: hurtful, offensive, and in radical contradiction to the most venerated tradition of the times. Kenneth Bailey, in his penetrating explanation of Jesus’ story, shows that the son’s manner of leaving is tantamount to wishing his father dead. Bailey writes:

For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan, about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has always been emphatically the same. The conversation runs as follows: “Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?” “Impossible!” “If anyone ever did, what would happen?” “His father would beat him on the head, of course!” “Why?’ “Because the request means that he wants his father to die.”

The implication underlying the son’s request is simple. “Father, I cannot wait for you to die. Get out of my way, old man! Drop dead!”

Can we imagine the pain? Some parents today with teenage or grown children have faced just such hurt and humiliation. There can be no greater pain than the ache in our soul when the child we love says those dreaded words, “I hate you Mom!” “I hate you Dad!” Or perhaps we know the pain from the other side. In a moment of bitterness and rage, maybe those death words slipped out of our mouth. “I wish you weren’t my parents!” Or worse, “I hate you!”

Having wished his father dead, this younger son wastes no time collecting his new-found wealth and travelling to a distant country. In our culture, this seems harmless enough. A recent survey of Americans found that 67% of us no longer live in the same state in which we were born. Not so for this young man and his father. In their day, moving away from the family home was a sign of tremendous disrespect. This loving father now feels the same agony as the parents of a runaway child. Such a homeleaving produces immense sorrow and shame in the heart of the father.

Awayness

To understand the father’s pain and the son’s shame, we must place ourselves in the social context of Christ’s parable. In Luke 15:1-2 we read, “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” The religious leaders of the day are complaining because Jesus does not keep respectable company. He welcomes sinners! He receives and accepts them.

In response, Jesus tells three parables, each portraying the same theme. The portrait Christ is painting impresses upon our senses the truth that sin is awayness. The son moves away from the father. Nothing breaks the heart of God our Father more than His children moving away from Him spiritually.

Why do we all need forgiveness? Why do we all “have it comin,’” as Clint Eastwood says? We all have it comin’ because all of us like sheep have gone astray. All of us, like the prodigal son, have gone our own way. We have chosen to leave our Father and live on our own.

The Rest of the Story

Like a lot of things in life, it gets worse before it gets better. Please join me for Part 2, where we hear the words every sinner speaks to God the Father, “Father, I don’t need You!” Some of us say it in overt rebellion, while others of us say it with cloaked self-righteousness. But we all declare our independence from God.

Join the Conversation

Why do we insist on awayness—on running away from our Father’s home, our Father’s heart?

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

Responding to Brian McLaren’s Question # 4: The Jesus Question

Welcome: You’re reading “Part 6” of my blog series responding to Brian McLaren’s book A New Kind of Christianity (read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5). Many have engaged Brian’s thinking by focusing on a systematic theology response (visit here for a boatload of links). My focus is on pastoral theology or practical theology. As a pastor, counselor, and professor who equips the church for biblical counseling and spiritual formation, I’m asking: “What difference does our response to each question make for how we care like Christ (biblical counseling) and for how we live like Christ (spiritual formation)?”

Jesus: A Community Organizer

Early on, Brian asked, “What are the deep problems the original Christian story was trying to solve?” For Brian, the deepest problem is not original sin and relational separation from God. He says the “Fall” is not a fall into sin, depravity, and alienation. Rather, Genesis 3 narrates a “compassionate coming-of-age story” (p. 49). Specifically, Genesis depicts humanity’s movement from hunter-gathering to agriculturalist and city-dweller (p. 50).

It’s against this backdrop that Brian asks, “Who is Jesus and why is he important?” Brian’s clear on who Jesus is not. In the Gospel according to Brian, Jesus did not come to address and remedy the Fall so that we could avoid eternal condemnation due to original sin (p. 128). By eternal life, Jesus is not promising life after death or life in eternal heaven instead of eternal hell (p. 130).

In two chapters, covering sixteen pages, and using over 8,000 words, Brian never once calls Jesus God; never calls Him Savior, and never mentions His crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection in a salvation-from-sin context. However, Brian does save enough words to talk about “his loyal critics” eight times.

When Brian quotes John 1:29 about Jesus being the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, he interprets it to mean not the sacrificial lamb of Leviticus, but the lamb slain in Exodus to liberate people from oppression. The one time Brian mentions Jesus’ death and resurrection, he makes it mean liberation from physical oppression, not from spiritual condemnation. “Jesus and his message have everything to do with poverty, slavery, and a ‘social agenda’” (p. 135). Everything? Really?

For Brian, Jesus came to save us from the sin of oppression, not to save us from the oppression of sin. Read that again. Slowly.

In Brian’s new kind of Christianity, Jesus is our example who models the way of peace. He is a liberator of the oppressed. He is not our Savior from Sin. Jesus is…a community organizer.

Is this a new kind of Christianity or is it the old kind of liberalism? H. Richard Niebuhr aptly described it in 1959, explaining that liberals believe that, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

Practical Implication # 1 for Biblical Counseling: Our Greatest Problem Is the Oppression of Sin, Not the Sin of Oppression

Of course, the ultimate practical implication is clear—we’re going to die in our sins with this “Jesus.” I’m struggling to write anything else in today’s blog post. What’s left to say? However, my self-chosen task is to respond with a biblical counseling perspective to Brian’s handling of each of his questions. So I shall continue.

In my book Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction, I quote ex-enslaved African American Pastor James W. C. Pennington. Reflecting on his conversion, he seamlessly expresses his understanding of suffering and of sin. Without minimizing for a moment the evils of slavery, he maximizes for all eternity the horrors of his own enslavement to sin and Satan.

“I was a lost sinner and a slave to Satan; and soon I saw that I must make another escape from another tyrant. I did not by any means forget my fellow-bondmen, of whom I had been sorrowing so deeply, and travailing in spirit so earnestly; but I now saw that while man had been injuring me, I had been offending God; and that unless I ceased to offend him, I could not expect to have his sympathy in my wrongs; and moreover, that I could not be instrumental in eliciting his powerful aid in behalf of those for whom I mourned so deeply.”

Our deepest problem is not our emotional woundedness for which we need a therapist. Our deepest problem is not our societal oppression for which we need a community organizer. Our deepest problem is sin—our personal, willful, relational, stubborn, spiritual rebellion against God for which we need a Savior.

Practical Implication # 2 for Biblical Counseling: Even in Facing Suffering (Being Sinned Against), Our Greatest Need is a Suffering Savior

Let’s be clear. Christians should be concerned about social issues, social justice, the needs of the poor and the oppressed. But that’s not the social gospel. The social gospel is no gospel at all—it removes the need for a Savior from sin because it removes sin. Christians practice a Gospel-Centered concern for social issues, believing that our ultimate problem is sin and that those rescued from the sin problem gratefully share the good news of salvation from sin and compassionately meet the needs of the hurting, suffering, wounded, and oppressed.

Let’s also be clear that truly biblical counseling deals both with the sins we have committed (practical implication # 1), and with the evils we have suffered (practical implication # 2). As I frequently say, we live in a fallen world and it often falls on us. That’s why I wrote God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting.

However, even in a biblical sufferology (a biblical theology of suffering), our greatest need is a crucified, resurrected Savior. The Apostle Paul did not want the believers in Corinth to be ignorant of the suffering he endured in Asia Minor. So he candidly shared his heart, explaining that he despaired of life and felt the sentence of death (2 Corinthians 1:8-9a).

Paul doesn’t stop there. He continued. “But this happen to us so that we might not rely upon ourselves, but upon God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9b). The casket of suffering draws us to the empty tomb of our resurrected Savior.

Do we really want to help the oppressed? Do we have deep compassion and empathy for the suffering? Do we have hearts that long to comfort the hurting? Then for goodness sake, don’t practice identity theft on Jesus! Don’t make His eternal existence, life, crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, present intercession, and future return simply be about “Jesus meek and mild” the community organizer!

Rev. Pennington got it right. The enslaved, the hurting, the wounded, and the oppressed first and foremost need a Savior from sin. Then they can find healing hope by celebrating the resurrection of their loving, forgiving, reconciling, redeeming Savior. Biblical counseling deals thoroughly with suffering and with sin through a Christ-centered focused on Jesus the God-man. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16).

The Rest of the Story

In our next post, we explore the gospel question. Brian asks, “What is the gospel?” We’ll respond to his gospel presentation through the lens of biblical counseling and spiritual formation.

Join the Conversation

What difference does Jesus make for biblical counseling and spiritual formation?

Why Jesus Is Infinitely Better Than Santa Claus

Author Unknown

Technocratic Claim Code: 6T6HCXV4SV3

Source: My good friend and sister in Christ, Krista McKenzie McElwain, sent me this. Many thanks for such a wonderful Christmas gift and Christ-reminder.

Santa lives at the North Pole … JESUS is everywhere.

Santa rides in a sleigh … JESUS rides on the wind and walks on the water.

Santa comes but once a year… JESUS is an ever present help.

Santa fills your stockings with goodies … JESUS supplies all your needs by the riches of His grace.

Santa comes down your chimney uninvited … JESUS stands at your door and knocks, and enters your heart.

You have to wait in line to see Santa … JESUS is as close as the mention of His name.

Santa lets you sit on his lap … JESUS lets you rest in His arms.

Santa doesn’t know your name, all he can say is, “Hi little boy or girl, what’s your name?” … JESUS knew our name before we did. Not only does He know our name, He knows our history and future, and He even knows our hearts and how many hairs are on our heads.

Santa has a belly like a bowl full of jelly … JESUS has a heart full of love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

All Santa can offer is “HO HO HO” … JESUS says, “Cast your cares on me, for I care for you.”

Santa’s little helpers make toys … JESUS makes a new life, mends wounded hearts, repairs broken homes, and builds mansions.

Santa may make you chuckle but … JESUS gives you joy that is your strength.

While Santa puts gifts under your tree … JESUS became our gift and died on the tree, for you & for me.

It’s obvious there is really no comparison.

We need to remember WHO Christmas is all about.

We need to put CHRIST back in Christmas.

Jesus is still the reason for the season.

Yes, JESUS is better, He is even better than Santa Claus—infinitely better!

Join the Conversation: What additional amazing ways is Jesus infinitely greater than Santa? 

Jesus and Santa