0 - 2020 - Jeremiah's Vow

I Still Miss Him

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of my brother-in-law Jacob’s death. He died a young man in the prime of his life.

I jumped on Facebook for a moment and saw a memorial posted about him. I was caught off guard. The emotions it stirred up came like a flood. I was surprised by that. I don’t really know why it surprised me, but it did.

The awful reality of losing someone we care about, especially when they are young, is the lingering feeling of all that was missed.

I remember Jacob’s sense of humor, his deep passion for ministry, his love for his family. All the things that point to a life, but are not the totality of it. They are merely the outlines we use to give form to our memories. But he was more than that.

As the years pass by, the greater my appreciation for the promise of God we share. That some day I will see him again. That some day the surprise of his death will be gone because I will see him. And we will rejoice together.

When I think about Jacob, it is a mix of mourning and sadness, anger and frustration, joy and peace. It can be so confusing. And yet, each of them crash over me like random waves on the shore.

It caught me off guard, the memory of Jacob’s passing. It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten years. But in a way I am glad it did. It reminded me that I still miss him. And I pray I always will, until I don’t have to anymore.

Give us ears to hear Ep. 2 – Racial Reconciliation

In this conversation we are talking about racial reconciliation, and how we must listen & learn when it comes to issues of differences. If you’d like to continue the conversation, leave a comment or send a message. I would love to hear from you!

You will hear about a few of my thoughts on racial reconciliation, as well as how to base the entire conversation in relationships. In my years of working toward multiethnic ministries and working again racial injustice (specifically within church contexts) I have seen that the greatest key to successfully navigating this conversation is listening and empathy. May we grow in those areas as we seek the good of our communities and our world. Check out the video:

Give us ears to hear – 2 Chronicles 7:14

This is the first conversation of the Give Us Ears To Hear series.

In this episode we are listening to what God has to say thru 2 Chronicles 7:14 and learning to pay attention to context and to ask questions.

Please comment or message me, and share it with others, to keep the conversation going as we walk thru this series!

Give us ears to hear – An introduction

This will be a video series about listening – both listening to God and others – and learning to think reflectively – both about Scripture and culture. This is meant to be an on-going virtual conversation, so please interact with each video whether it’s through comments or direct messages. Others will likely join me along the way in the videos to have conversations with me, and the goal is really that we might have ears to hear what God is saying to us in our lives and in our world today.

Here is the introduction video:

A Warning to The Church in America

It is with a deep sense of foreboding that I reflect on the world in which I find myself and speak this word of warning to my brothers and sisters in Christ.

As with every previous generation, we are living in the times that future generations will talk about. They will look back on us and judge the depth of our ignorance and the shallowness of our wisdom. They will discuss with gasps of astonishment at how little we considered the consequences of our actions or the ramifications of our inaction.

There is one significant difference between us and generations past. A difference which I have felt pressing on me like a crushing weight. In this time, like few before, we can train our minds on the present situation. We have the tools and near instantaneous access to consider how to proceed. We can look at what is transpiring around us and seek the Lord BEFORE it is too late to turn back. The precipice is drawing ever closer, but there may still be time to reverse course.

It is with a deep sense of foreboding that I reflect on the world in which I find myself and speak this word of warning to my brothers and sisters in Christ.

The world into which we were born has been in moral and societal decline for the better part of a century. The decadences we have indulged and the vices we have tolerated have yielded the bitter fruit of division and loathing. The real isolation of a global pandemic has exposed the anemic and fraying sinews of our civic bonds. The polarizing rhetoric in our current political climate has eroded the cohesion of our national peace. The fervent and insatiable need to be right, to prove others wrong, and to revel in ones own moral superiority has undermined many, if not all, of the opportunities for reconciliation.

If you think I am exaggerating, or being overly dramatic, or unnecessarily pessimistic you would be wrong. I say these things, not because I have seen into the future. No, I have looked into the annuls of our shared past and seen the cyclical nature of human affairs. The great and wise king of Jerusalem, Solomon the son of David, rightly remarked that there is nothing new under the sun. Everything old becomes new again. And everything old fades into memory. The cycle resets and repeats.

What’s more troubling, and equally as predictive, is the history of our predecessors in the faith. The people of Israel served as the custodians of the mysteries of God until the revelation of the eternal Logos. In Jesus the fullness of what was hidden in the Old Testament broke forth into time. And these special people ought to cause us to stop and consider the cycle we are repeating.

The book of Judges serves as a perpetual witness to our personal and national capacity to be fools.

We turn to God only when the turbulence of national unrest has reached its zenith. But not before.
We cry out to the Savior of our souls when we have reached the end of our own brilliance. But not before.
We fight the battles and attend worship services and serve those downtrodden when we can feel the excellence of our charity. But not before.

We feign virtue and frolic in trivialities. We forsake those in greatest need by comparing ourselves to others. We serve no one but ourselves, sacrifice nothing but what is expendable, and then wonder why we feel empty and unfulfilled.

These are the hallmarks of a people who have a form of godliness, but deny its power. These are the characteristics of a people who have not fully turned their hearts to God. Instead, we have offered to God sacrifices he has not asked for. Only to be surprised when the blessings we expected are not granted. Why? Because we have begun to treat the True God as one would a god made with hands. We dishonor what we do not properly revere. And then we bristle with disdain when the farce has been exposed.

The world is being turned upside down and the Church rejoices like a thrill-seeker on a carnival ride. We have let go of the wheel, but rather than entrusting it to Jesus we have turned it over to those who neither know God nor seek to please him. Hedonism is too generous a term for this generation. Debauchery and wickedness, may be closer to the truth. We wallow in the muck and mire of our own depravity as a nation and rejoice in its warmth. But when the consequences of our laxity comes to deliver we are aghast at the prize we have earned.

The year 2020 will go down in history as the year when all pretense was exposed. At least for those willing to look and see it. Now, as the year draws to a close, another revelation. Another moment of clarity has been exposed. And this one cannot be covered up. It can be ignored. It can even be dismissed. But it can never be denied. The sordid alliance between the world and wolves in sheep’s clothing is being brought into the open.

“Where is it?”, you may be asking. Well, it can be difficult to see sometimes. However, when you see it, it’s hard to unsee it. In our time it has manifested itself in the always turbulent political process. The diagnosis is grave. But the great physician is still willing to administer the balm of salvation.

I will pick just one of several examples of the trajectory we are on that has become most apparent in the last few weeks.

There appear to be more “Christian” apologists for political candidates, parties, and movements than there are ardent and obedient disciples of Jesus Christ.

The level of passion and panic, frustration and fear, vitriol and vindictiveness on display has exposed that the idolatry of our nation still manifests itself and is embodied in the gods we can see with our physical eyes. What does that mean? It means that the eyes of our hearts are not only closed for too many in the church, but they have also been willfully stapled shut and are blind to the malevolence being enacted in plain sight.

The lack of self-awareness we have on display reveals that we have decided to continue eating the deadly fruit of Eden and it has consumed the minds of those claiming to be aligned with the One and True God. The fruit of Eden is the choice we make to assume the role of God in our lives. We have chosen to bear the responsibility of knowing good and evil for ourselves, rejecting the guardianship of God in the process. But we often learn too late the damage of that exchange.

In a more expanded way, we have chosen to live according to the false wisdom of men rather than the eternal wisdom of God. We have flexed our atrophied moral muscles and have put ourselves in opposition to the grandeur of God’s mighty power. What we seemingly fail to comprehend is that we are not what we imagine ourselves to be. We think we can drink the poison of worldly wisdom and vain philosophy and become like God. We have become so convinced of our own righteousness we stand over others as God. What’s worse, we conduct ourselves with an impunity that riles up the wrath of God against his wayward people.

In the Scriptures, over and over again, God calls his people to himself. He beckons them to live under the shadow of his protection. God declares his desire to pour out the immeasurable riches of his grace upon us. And what does he ask for? He asks for our love and obedience. He calls us to live in conformity to his law. But rather than accept these terms, we turn to our own way. We declare our emancipation from God’s superintendence. But that act of rebellion cannot go unpunished because it cannot be ignored.

You don’t get to do both. We don’t get to sit on the throne of our hearts and expect God to come and save the day when it all goes to hell. For every stone we lay on the altar of God with spiritual sounding words and altruistic actions of “faith”, we remove them when we entangle ourselves in the affairs of this world’s systems. Salt water and fresh water can’t come from the same mouth. Life and death can’t be uttered by the same tongue. And our allegiances can’t be masked by simply claiming to be impartial. No one is unbiased. And yet we perpetrate the farce so we don’t have to face the truth. We are not God, but have been pretending for too long to be able to rise into the very place of God.

13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. 15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. 16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; 17 That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners? 18 All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house. 19 But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet. 20 Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy people: the seed of evildoers shall never be renowned. (Isaiah 14:13-20 KJV)

How have we gotten here? What has happened to us that we have drifted so far off course?

We have confused faithful biblical conduct with social engagement. We have contorted civic responsibility into political activism. We have challenged the placing of the old boundary stones but have not stopped long enough to ask why they were put there in the first place. All the while we have not stopped to realize and consider that we are not citizens of this world. That our primary and singular focus should be the proclamation of the Gospel.

When we participate in political tribalism, we are abdicating our true power. The power that can actually bring about the transformation our souls long for.

How do you know you are yielding to the seduction of becoming a political tribalist? When your side can do no wrong, and the other side can do no right. When you will defend your side’s every action without question and call into doubt every motive of your opposition without consideration.

The irony in all this is that when you read that last paragraph you probably had names and examples in mind. And that is the problem.

I want to implore you to repent of that inclination to label and malign those with whom you disagree. If your perception of another person, who is an image-bearer of God, is that they are evil or irredeemable, you must repent. No one can stand in mortal judgment of another. There is not a single person in this world who has the right or the authority to condemn another human soul.

If you feel that you must stand in judgment. You are wrong.

If you feel that they deserve to be condemned. You are wrong.

If you feel that they are unworthy of grace and forgiveness and charity, you are most definitely wrong. For you and I all stood condemned and yet God withdrew his hand from us!

God has used unbelievers and the enemies of his people to accomplish his purposes. But that is God’s prerogative. We have no place in trying to figure out what God is doing. Our call is to submission to what we know. And what is that?

That there are lost souls in need of hearing about the glorious salvation of the Cross.
There are hurting hearts in desperate need of a kind and loving touch.
There are hungry people who must be feed the life giving bread of life.
There are thirsty people who can be satisfied by the cool waters from the wellspring of eternal life.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, we must heed the prompting of the Spirit of God and reject the spirit of the age. To throw our hands up is to surrender where victory has already been won. We cannot do this. We must not do this.

If the last few weeks have revealed anything, it is this: The light of Jesus has been hidden under the bushel of political perfervidity. We must let our light shine once again. We must do all we can to let what God has shone in our hearts to shine in the world once again (cf. 2 Cor. 4:6).

Lord help us. For if your people continue down this road, we will come to the end of our days, to late to realize we have chosen the wide path.

Maranatha!

A Partisan Church: The Effect of Politics on the Gospel of Grace

We can no longer escape the obvious fact that the world has changed. And that it has not been for the better.

The World Has Changed

It’s getting to the point where it is hard to ignore the volume of political speech on social media. I don’t know if you have noticed it. We may have been there for quite some time. We may have just hoped it would trend back in the other direction.

We can no longer escape the obvious fact that the world has changed. And that it has not been for the better. The drift away from faith in God has become more pronounced. More than I have ever seen it in my lifetime. When I look at the world I sense the fraying of edges of our shared experiences. They seem to be fewer and farther between.

The passions of so many are being constantly inflamed, and not in a healthy way. The rhetoric of so called thought leaders is getting evermore hostile, with the stakes being raised everyday. The opinions of an ever growing percentage of the population is solidifying in ways that defy reasonable discourse. Where is all of this leading us? We are beginning to see the first signs of what led to the Tower of Babel. We have started to believe that we are a species on ascendancy. But we are merely laying the foundation of our own destruction.

The Spiritually Blind Are Driving Now

Jesus looked at the wise and the educated of his day and chided them, calling out their hypocrisy. Jesus exposed the duplicity of claiming earthly wisdom as a cover for not having true divine insight. He listened to their bombastic claims and marveled at the the shallowness of their purported knowledge.

1 And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. 2 He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ 3 And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. 4 An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed. (Matthew 16:1-4 ESV, emphasis added)

The same is true today. Too many claiming the name of Christ behave and speak as if they know what is “really” happening around them and in the world at large. But they fail to discern that only God superintends the affairs of men. Just ask Abraham or Jacob or King David or the Apostle Peter if they knew what God was “really” doing? No they didn’t and God was walking with them, talking to them, and they still didn’t understand. They still couldn’t see.

The Church Has Been Enthralled By Another Lover

If that were not bad enough. What is most disheartening is that this trend has taken root in the Church as well. We have begun to measure the “goodness” or “vileness” of a person by what hashtags they do or do not confess and promote. The pithy slogans of divergent factions have begun to affect how the church engages the important questions of justice and reconciliation (to name just a couple).

The modified and augmented versions of these beautiful concepts have shifted the focus from God’s character onto the unbridled sentiments of human imagination. We have substituted the grace of an impartial God for the vengeance of an impassioned politico. Seeming to always question the motives of the former and accepting as pure those of the latter. The people of Israel made this mistake too. They preferred the onions and bricks of their former masters to the milk and honey of the one true God. The pain we know has become better to us than the peace we do not. This is the trap. One that has been sprung on us over and over again.

We are hoping to fashion a new world in our own image. An image we forget the moment we move away from the mirror. We just cannot seem to see that this is a project that has never worked and never will. We are trying to create life with borrowed clay.

The Truth Gets More Painful…the Longer We Wait

Now, I’m not saying that there are not problems that need to be addressed. There certainly are. What I am saying is that any and every attempt made from a terrestrial framework will fail. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But eventually. It will come to a disastrous conclusion. We have an avalanche of historical reference points demonstrating the results of human political and societal ingenuity. They have marked the landscape of history with the bones and graves of the countless nameless dead.

And this is the problem and outworking of Adam and Eve’s sin. They thought that because physical death did not meet them at the moment of sin and disobedience, that somehow they had outwitted God. That they had outmaneuvered the omniscient Creator. This is the great folly of sin. Punishment delayed is not punishment denied. The day of reckoning will come.

No dear friends, you have not outsmarted God. I have not.

The unfortunate trajectory of a politicized Church is an impotent and neutered “gospel”. That is to say, there is no gospel at all. And the fact that the Gospel shall endure is not because of any strength in us. No, it is by God’s good grace that the Church will not die, even if it finds its numbers contracted for a time.

I cannot sustain the Church. Only God can do that.

I cannot grow the Church. Only God can do that.

I cannot improve the Church. Only God can do that.

We must stop behaving as if we are not contributing to the decline. The problem plaguing the Church is not what we are being told by the mouthpieces of our culture. The loudest voices are not the most correct. They are merely drowning out the still small voice of God.

The problem the world is facing, the church is facing, is in fact not something new. It is the only problem that has hampered the human race from the moment of creation. We like to think we are like God. That we can eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and suffer no consequences.

It May Be Too Early To Agree, but it’s Not Too Early to Tell

Am I overstating the situation? I don’t think so. I may only be saying it too early. There are still too many who want to give this old approach a new try. Always with the same refrain: “Our predecessors just did it wrong. But we have learned from their mistakes.”

No, we have not learned. The well-intentioned goals of broken people mean nothing when built upon the faulty foundation of human will. The human being simply does not have the moral engine required to move the sin-soaked-souls of men one molecule in the direction of righteousness.

Yes, I am speaking too soon. There are not enough ready to hear what I am saying. Too many have vested too much of themselves into their “side”. A side that stands in opposition to the character and will of God. I may be speaking too soon, but I am not getting the result or effect wrong.

As a Christian, it is important to not lend our allegiance, whether actively or passively, to anything that clouds our witness. Anything that blurs the work of Christ is not worthy of our overt or tacit approval. It does not matter how well-intentioned the cause, the cost is too great.

The current cultural climate has highlighted several important realities. Realities that have been dismissed but cannot be denied any longer. I will simply list them without much commentary.

Political speech is always partisan. No one who is political can be objective. That is a convenient lie we tell ourselves to assuage our consciences, but it is grounded in self-righteousness, not true holiness. Our politics are more transparently visible than we think. And some are too comfortable with that.
Professional political pundits are not as good at what they do as they think. (See #1 above). What makes us think we can do it any better? We are far worse at it than we may wish to believe.
We risk more of our witness than we can calculate when we enter into an arena in which we have no reason to be. (See #4 below).
The truth of God supersedes the politics of our current national affiliation. If we claim to be Christians, we must remember we are not citizens of this world but of the kingdom of God. This means that we should not speak politically, but prophetically. (And if you can’t tell the difference refrain from doing it until you can. And if you think you can, you are probably wrong.)
This one is directed specifically at pastors. You can be a pundit or a pastor, not both. Thinking you can be is part of the problem. If your punditry is more important to you than your prophecy, it may be time for a change of vocation. Punditry is a seductive harlot and she ravages all who entertain her advances.

A partisan church is not the church of Jesus Christ. We must accept this to our shame and to our peril if we do not.

I offer this prayer in conclusion.

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.
# 27, For the Peace of the World
A Book of Prayer and Order (2020), pg. 408

Calm Down and Shut Up, Listen and Live.

Stressed, depressed, busy, angry, anxious, tired.

I bet you identify with one or all of those, or have gone in and out of them for the last 6 months. I have.

And in the last month God has clearly spoken similar words to my soul as the brother of Jesus wrote in James 1:19-27…except this is how I heard it: Calm Down and Shut Up, Listen and Live.

This is how James says it:

19-21 Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.
22-24 Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.
25 But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.
26-27 Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.
[The Message Paraphrase]

I’m not sure what you gather from those passages, but for me it boils down to 2 essential rhythms: Listen & Live it out.

Seems simple enough, right? Except it obviously isn’t as evidenced by the roller coaster of our spiritual lives that COVID has revealed.

Our Lives Need To Be Broken

One thing I have realized during this time is that the gardening and farming analogies used by Scripture are very intentional. In order to have the “good soil” of healthy rhythms in your life, the “hard soil” you’ve likely created (or at least allowed to form) needs to be broken up…

And that starts with the first 2 things I heard: Calm Down (both your emotions and your schedule) and Shut Up (both your mouth and your mind).

Many Christians simply go throughout our weeks trading the busyness of one thing (maybe work) for the busyness of another (likely kids activities), the distraction of one thing (likely social media) for the distraction of another (maybe sports), and the consumerism of one thing (usually materialism for most Americans) for the consumerism of another (usually a religiosity that touts itself as Christianity but really looks only partially like Christ).

What COVID has revealed is a disturbingly ugly truth about many Christians in America: we actually live very little like Jesus did.

Jesus was calm and never hurried. Jesus listened and had compassion.

We are anxious & stressed and always in a hurry for one reason or another. We can’t stop long enough to actually listen, let alone have compassion.

Many in the American Church seem to be worried about many things today, mostly concerning COVID: masks, whether the numbers are accurate, gathering in person, government overreach, and so on.

And while those are not unimportant things, they are certainly not the better portion. The better portion is what Jesus said Mary chose – sitting at Jesus’ feet as a disciple – when Martha was worried about so much (Luke 10:42).

Rebuilding Our Lives To Look Like Jesus

If COVID was a test, I’d say the American Church has widely failed it if I had to be honest. I’d say most have still missed what Jesus has been trying to say, because we haven’t really sat at His feet. We’ve been afraid (of the disease or of the economy) and we’ve been rushing to get back to some semblance normal (which clearly wasn’t working anyways).

What if Jesus wanted to use COVID to get us to Calm Down and Shut Up, Listen and Live like He lived? To change the rhythms of our lives and our churches which continue to produce rampant spiritual and relational immaturity? To make us more compassionate, more connected, more Christlike?

There’s a line in one of my recent favorite songs: “So don’t tell me God is silent when your Bible is closed.” [“Enough” by Social Club Misfits]

Have you been listening to God? Are you even stopping long enough to?

Or are your thoughts and your actions keeping you so busy you can’t hear Him? Are social media and the voices of others creating so much noise that you can’t even hear His voice?

Maybe we’ve missed the opportunity to hear from God. Or maybe the opportunity is still here.

For us to learn to listen.

Listen to Jesus.

Not to ourselves.

Not to others.

Just to Jesus.

Will you Calm Down and Shut Up, Listen and Live like Jesus?

Listening Is An Intentional Act

So go ahead and make plans to do it. Not a “one off” period of listening. But a consistent, daily (throughout the day) & weekly rhythm of stopping your busyness, resting in His presence, calming your mind, and slowing down long enough to actually hear His voice.

Make these rhythms a priority in your life, but especially in this season more than they’ve ever been.

Listen in the morning, in the middle of your day, and in the evening.

Once a week, set aside a half day (or even better a whole day – a Sabbath), to listen more closely and with others.

Figure out simple ways you can hear from Him and live like Him: reading Scripture (alone and with others), spending time in prayer (alone and with others), recreating & eating (definitely with others), showing compassion toward those who are hurting by listening to them (definitely with others), and engaging in meeting the physical needs of those around you (also definitely with others).

It’s these rhythms of life that like a plow running through the ground will actually break up the hard soil that has been there. Plowing is intentional, it takes action, and its hard work. So will living in healthy ways during a season that could only harden you more, make you more busy, and make you less likely to listen (to anyone, let alone Jesus).

Calm down.

Shut up.

Listen.

Live.

It’s not just good advice. It’s how you will tend for your stressed, depressed, busy, angry, anxious, and/or tired soul.

Confession & Prayer: Why we don’t experience healing from our sins

Growing up in a Protestant tradition I’ve noticed that we don’t have much of a concept of why confession matters and to whom we are called to confess.

Growing up in a Protestant tradition I’ve noticed that we don’t have much of a concept of why confession matters and to whom we are called to confess. Most of the Protestant faith tradition today focuses primarily on the vertical relationship of an individual person with God. Our main emphasis is that if we can just get enough people into a right relationship with God, then everything else will fall into place.

Anyone who’s worked in ministry for more than a day will tell you that is hardly the case. Sure, that is the foundation necessary for transformation in someone’s life – it must start with a relationship with God. But that is just the beginning of what transformation looks like, and most of what will need to be transformed in our lives will have to do with our horizontal relationships.

Tending the Seed of the Gospel

The best analogy I can think of for the process of salvation, and specifically sanctification, is one the Bible uses: gardening or farming. We know that ultimately God is who controls the most necessary parts of the process – rain, sunshine, hot or cold weather, etc. All of that is true.

However, the other necessary part to the process involves us as humans. We must till the soil, prune the plants, potentially assist with nutrients in the soil or bees to pollinate the flowers, harvesting at the right time, etc. And this process is not an individual effort for a Christian. It involves others in our lives. John Wesley termed this as the idea of “social holiness.” He said: “There is no holiness apart from social holiness.”

What he meant, and what many others before and after him have said in different ways, is that salvation is a process that involves both God as primary actor and us as secondary actor. And when I say “us” I mean it as a plural “us” – not just you working on your salvation alone in your closet somewhere, but you working on your salvation with other believers alongside you.

So That You May Be Healed

This is where a passage in James 5 comes in that helps explain the process of healing in the life of a believer. In James 5:13-18 it says:

“Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.”

The picture we get here is of a group of believers who are pursuing healing and holiness together! Yes, this description of healing includes physical healing, but if you read closely the emphasis is ultimately on healing of the whole person. This is why confessing your sins and praying is included as a vital element to the healing process. It’s not a “spiritual formula” you use for physical results. It’s a spiritual rhythm you participate in that produces fruit.

And it is not a spiritual rhythm you can do alone! This passage implies that the full experience of the forgiveness of sins actually involves others (which should not be ground-breaking for us as Christians since Jesus’ Prayer in John also says something similar – “Forgive us as we forgive those who sin against us”).

The last part of the passage reiterates the use of the analogy of gardening or farming when it comes to our spiritual growth. It shows how Elijah joins God as the secondary actor in God’s plan of caring for the world. Paul uses this story to show how we join God as his people in his work in our lives. It’s powerful, and very humbling. But it’s God’s plan.

Recovering Confession

The lost practice of confession of sin to other believers I blame partly on the Protestant desire to separate ourselves so distinctly from the practices of the Catholic Church. However, it has hurt us that we do not have healthy contexts in which to express this vital part of the healing and holiness process.

Without someone else there to hear our confession, remind us of our forgiveness, and pray for the power of the Spirit in our lives to overcome sin, Scripture implies that our growth in those areas will be stunted.

And what it says to us from a Biblical Theology perspective is that we are being terrible “stewards” of the Gospel. Meaning we are not fulfilling God’s created purposes for our lives as stewards of his garden (our lives, his people, and the world).

To start practicing confession in your life it will certainly be awkward at first. But every important area of growth in your life is awkward at first. There’s always a hurdle to get over. Whether it’s changing your diet, balancing your budget, or in this case rediscovering Scriptural Christianity, you will have to push thru what’s uncomfortable to get to what is transformative.

So now you just have to decide whether you will or not.

Is healing and holiness what you want for your life? Do you want to be spiritually whole and on track with Jesus? Do you want people around you who fully know you (even the most difficult parts of who you are) and fully love you?

Let me tell you from experience: it’s worth it. It doesn’t make it easier. You will still want to revert back to old ways even after you get into it. But in the long run, you will notice the change in your soul as you recover the rhythm God intended to heal you of your spiritual sickness: confession and prayer.

The Gospel & Race: A Conversation

Pastor Victor Scott, Executive Pastor of Ambassadors of Christ Ministries, and Pastor Drew Anderson, Lead Pastor of Sumter Chapel, will have an important conversation. They will focus on issues surrounding the Gospel and Race.

What is the Church’s role in addressing issues of race and injustice?
How do we declare the Gospel and stand with the disenfranchised?

Pastor Victor and Pastor Drew do not have all the answers, but they hope to continue to talk about these important issues and find meaningful ways to bring the Gospel to bear on them.

A Definition of Spiritual Injuries, Updated and Expanded

We continue see those failures and injustices that we should have “learned” to overcome by now. The deeper problem is that we cannot learn out way out of spiritual trauma. We must be healed from it first!

UPDATED: June 1, 2006.
Originally Posted September 19, 2016 as Spiritual Injuries: A Definition.

In light of the circumstances in which we find ourselves in the United States, I felt compelled to revisit this post. Bishop Luis R. Scott has also updated the book in which the concepts and definitions below are contained. I felt it prudent to take some time to update and amplify this article.

It is my conviction that the conversations that many desire to have around the issues of racism, justice, and the Church’s role have been hampered by a deficit in the language we use. To that end, I resubmit this article as a jumping off point to reframe the conversation in language that points us to the truth of the Gospel, the reality of God’s healing power in the human heart, and the place the Church needs to play in our journey toward peace and lasting justice.

Bishop Scott has also graciously allowed me to share Chapter 3 of the 2nd Edition of his book, Healing the Broken Spirit. This chapter deals specifically with the issue of Blind Spots, namely, what they are, how they develop, how to spot them, and what can be done to address them. Please take the time and read it. It is long, but if you are interested in having better and more fruitful conversations, take the time and prepare yourself for them.

Download Chapter 3 | Blind Spots: Instinctive Reactivity by Bishop Luis R. Scott, Sr.

Over the last 20 years my father, Bishop Luis R. Scott, Sr., has been thinking about and refining the idea that God desires for all of his children to experience spiritual healing and live in spiritual health. The challenge that seems to persist in our world, and more specifically the Church, is that we do not have the framework to work towards these realities. We continue see those failures and injustices that we should have “learned” to overcome by now. The deeper problem is that we cannot learn our way out of spiritual trauma. We must be healed from it first!

While there may be some who use similar sounding language, the concepts that are described in my father’s book and have been manifested in day-to-day ministry at our church are truly unique. I have come to this conclusion for two main reasons. First, we have heard so many stories from those who have learned about the concept and reality of spiritual injuries who have told us about the impact this understanding of spiritual health has had. Second, we have continued to refine the concepts and those who claim some awareness of the words we use do not really understand the conceptual framework that we are using in our conversations about spiritual health. In short, we believe that what we are doing is unique and we humbly embrace this as a calling and a great responsibility we must guard. Continue reading “A Definition of Spiritual Injuries, Updated and Expanded”