We aren’t colleagues. We aren’t comrades. We aren’t neighbors. We are family. If we are to understand the nature of the relationship between believers, we don’t need to understand work, politics, or geography. We need to understand family.

The Bible displays this truth in any number of ways. Together we call God “Father,” and if he is Father, then we are sons and daughters. We call Christ our elder brother, making us his siblings as well as one another’s. Young men are told to relate to older men with all the respect of sons to fathers and to older women with all the love of sons to mothers. They are to treat younger women with all the purity of sisters and to relate to widows as if they are their very own mothers. We are to love one another with brotherly affection and to understand that whoever does the will of the Father is a brother, sister, mother.
We see it in another way as well—in the way pastors are to be evaluated for their suitability to the office. If the church is more like a family than a business or nation, then pastors are more like fathers than bosses or managers. There is a closer relationship between church and family than between church and corporation or church and country. This is why a pastor must be evaluated on the basis of his home life more than his work life or political life. A man may be a great boss or an electrifying politician, but if he is a poor father he has no business leading a local church, “for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?”
What is true broadly across all of time and space is true more particularly in the context of the local church—especially if that local church makes membership truly meaningful. While Christians who lived centuries ago and Christians on the far side of the earth are brothers and sisters, there is a special way in which the family relationship is manifested and displayed in the local church. It is there in the context of living and worshipping together that we see mostly clearly how Christians relate as members of the same family.
If all of this is true, there is an interesting implication that is especially relevant in these days of turbulence. We read often in the news about “The Great Resignation.” Beginning in early 2021, great numbers of people began to resign their jobs, some looking for new work and some content to quit working altogether for a time. Economists are divided on the reasons for the trend, but whatever the case, they seem to flow from a discontentment deep enough to have impacted churches as well. Churches are seeing a Great Resignation of their own in which an unusual number of people have resigned their membership to move to another local church (or sometimes to settle in with a distant church’s livestream). Almost every church has some seats conspicuously absent, and remaining members who dearly miss the ones who have departed—people they loved, people they ministered alongside, people they rejoiced with and wept with. Almost every pastor has some fresh wounds, some fresh sorrows, as he has learned that yet another person, yet another family, has decided to move on—precious people he has counseled, preached to, prayed for, and attempted to serve with love.
In those situations when we consider whether it’s time to pull up roots and move to a new congregation, there is something we ought to deeply ponder: To leave a church is more like seceding from a family than resigning a job. It is more like removing yourself from a household than emigrating from a nation. It is not like working your way up the corporate ladder by moving between companies as much as it is like revoking your participation in one family to establish yourself in another.
In few places do we see our inner individualist more clearly displayed than in the ease and carelessness with which we bounce from church to church. In few places do we see our predilection for selfish decision-making with greater clarity than when we think so little of removing ourselves from one family in preference for another. While granting that there are many good and legitimate reasons to leave a church, I’d wager there are far more that are unnecessary, unwise, or unkind. And I’d wager that the most common reasons are the least legitimate of all.
With all that being the case, it seems that when we are in any doubt at all, we ought to stay put. When we are uncertain, we ought to stay the course. When it is not perfectly clear that we must leave or when we haven’t received wide affirmation that it’s wise to leave, we ought to set aside thoughts of finding a new family and instead joyfully recommit ourselves to loving the family we are already part of.

Good morning! Grace and peace to you.

(Yesterday on the blog: To Plumb Depths that Have No Bottom)
Does Romans 7 Describe a Christian?
I’m surprised it took almost 1800 episodes of Ask Pastor John to cover this one.
Freedom not to speak
Janie Cheaney recounts a well-known tale from Acts, then says “The hysteria of crowds hasn’t changed much. I’m reminded of the Ephesian dustup after every widely reported campus disruption, like the one at Yale Law School on March 10.”
My Journey with Jesus
It often does us good to read how others became Christians…
Does Evangelicalism Have a History?
Michael Reeves writes about the history of evangelicalism. And yes, it does have a history.
Is Easter Believable?
This article makes the argument that, indeed, it is.
A Call For “Enlightened Patriotism”
Kevin DeYoung looks to the past and says, “The dream was not a Christian takeover of government, but a nation founded on God-given freedom, shaped by Christian values, and filled with Christian teaching.”
Flashback: I Wish I Was Rich
Rather than spending your days dreaming about what you would do if you had more, spend your days working hard to make a living and then give with joyful generosity.

The sermon always sounds better to me on Sunday when I have had a shake of my minister’s hand during the week. —Theodore Cuyler

Today most of us will join with other Christians to worship our God together. As we do so, it is fitting that we consider just how much Christ loves his church. Dustin Benge does that well in this brief excerpt from The Loveliest Place.

To grasp Christ’s love for his church is to plumb depths that have no bottom, find a treasure with no bounds, and climb heights that have no peak. As believers, we never move past the love of Christ. We never tire of the love of Christ. A true believer is one who never gets over the profound words of the childhood song “Jesus loves me! This I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
All of our redemption and salvation flows freely from that never-ending fountain of divine love. And such boundless love can only rightly be understood by visiting a bloody cross and an empty tomb.
With an interleafed blank Bible before him to write down his endless meditations, Jonathan Edwards savored the love of Christ: “Everything that was contrived and done for the redemption and salvation of believers, and every benefit they have by it, is wholly and perfectly from the free, eternal, distinguishing love and infinite grace of Christ towards them.”
Everything we have as the church. Everything we are as the church. Everything we could ever hope to be as the church. Everything—wrapped up in the “free, eternal, distinguishing love and infinite grace of Christ.”
This infinite love is comprehensive and causes the bridegroom to rescue his bride from the depths of her sin and depravity by taking his lover’s place at the bar of holy judgment. Greater than spinning the worlds into existence is this selfless act of sacrifice that makes Jesus both a Savior and head of his church.

May God bless you as you worship and serve him this weekend.

Westminster Books has a sale on a new book by Dane Ortlund.
There are some new Kindle deals to look at today.
(Yesterday on the blog: What Kind of Men Does the Church Need?)
Laura to Jake and back again
This is a fascinating story that tells of one women’s transition and de-transition.
Painful Surprises and the Emmaus Road
This article is about those times when “something unexpected and unwelcome occurs, and you are stunned by the pain. The most painful surprises are the ones you never saw coming.”
How can I get out of my bad mood?
How do you get out of a bad mood? This article offers some direction.
One Step Deeper
“Whoever you are and wherever you are in your journey of studying the Bible, you can go one step deeper.” You can and should!
Serving from the Shadows
“We have all been conditioned by the celebrity culture in which we live to fall into the trap of believing that truly great Christian ministry should be placarded on a platform and subject to public accolade. This is one reason why so many have given their praises to celebrity pastors in America over the past fifty years. However, it is a yet more subtle evil in our hearts…”
A tale of two taxis
Here’s a reminder that there are opportunities to share the gospel if only we’ll take them.
Flashback: How Many People Go To Your Church?
I wonder, what would happen if we found better questions to ask and better ways to answer them. Instead of going to the easy question of, “How many people go to your church?” why don’t we ask things like this…

The race conversation often feels like talking to each other at the Tower of Babel. We may be trying to build together, but we’re frustrated and speaking past one another. —Isaac Adams

Masculinity has become complicated. At least, it has become difficult to be confident about what it means to be a man—to be a man as God has designed men to be. The culture has plenty to say about masculinity that is toxic, but far less to say about masculinity that is good and honoring. We hear more about women becoming men than men simply being men. And many wonder: What are men meant to be and what are men supposed to do?

Into the fray steps Brant Hansen with a wonderful new book titled The Men We Need: God’s Purpose for the Manly Man, the Avid Indoorsman, or Any Man Willing to Show Up. “This book is about a big vision for manhood,” he says. “We’ve lacked that vision, and all of us—men, women, and children—are hurting because of it. The vision is this: We men are at our best when we are ‘keepers of the garden.’ This means we are protectors and defenders and cultivators. We are at our best when we champion the weak and vulnerable. We are at our best when we use whatever strength we have to safeguard the innocent and provide a place for people to thrive. This is the job Adam was given: keeper of the garden.”
I need to say right away that this is not one of those books—those trite and cheesy books for men that focuses on a clichéd version of masculinity bound to a particular culture and a bygone century. Hansen isn’t advocating a form of masculinity that depends on swinging hammers, wrestling bears, or distributing swords. In fact, he says he’s not even capable of writing that book because “I don’t even hunt. I play the accordion. … I’m an avid indoorsman. I own puppets.”
The heart of masculinity, he says, is taking responsibility—responsibility for those things God has made men particularly responsible for. “God gave Adam the job of looking after the garden and the things within. He was to guard it, tend it, and help it flourish. He was responsible for it. I believe looking after our own ‘gardens’ remains our masculine purpose, and we all implicitly know it. Our culture is in chaos regarding what masculinity really is, so it’s dangerous to suggest there’s a distinct, wonderful thing called masculinity. … Masculinity is about taking responsibility.” Hence, true masculinity is not displayed in flexing muscles or fixing stuff or achieving sexual conquests. Rather, true masculinity is displayed in being humble, responsible, dedicated keepers of the gardens God has given us.
Once Hansen lays a foundation for masculinity, he leads readers through “Six Decisions that Will Set You Apart.” They are:

Forsake the fake and relish the real. His focus here is rejecting pornography and video games and other fake forms of virtuous longings. “The hurting world and our hurting communities need us to solve real-world problems, protect real-world people, and fight real-world injustice. Actually, let me rephrase that a bit. The hurting world and your hurting community need you to solve real-world problems, protect real-world people, and fight real-world injustice. Please don’t waste your God-given desire for adventure and accomplishment by being a fake hero fighting fake injustices in fake worlds.”
Protect the vulnerable. Here he says that “The people in your neighborhood, at your school, or at your workplace should be safer because you’re there. Even if they don’t know it.” This means men must be willing to protect others and must be steadfastly unwilling to become a threat to others.
Be ambitious about the right things. “You will struggle with feeling meaningless when you choose to invest your time and energy in meaningless things,” he says. Hence, we must use our God-given ambition to pursue causes that actually matter.
Make women and children feel safe, not threatened. Here he calls upon men to invest themselves in helping the people around them grow and thrive. “I’m trying to be this kind of man, a man who makes his wife feel secure and protected. I know my wife is every bit my equal. I know she’s highly intelligent and strong and creative and funny. I know she can survive with or without me. But it’s my goal to see her thrive and flourish. I believe in her so strongly, I’m excited about what she can yet become.”
Choose today who you will become tomorrow. Quite simply, who we will be tomorrow is a direct result of what we pay attention to today. For this reason we must take great care when it comes to those things that earn our attention.
Take responsibility for your own spiritual life. This final chapter is dedicated to forming a real, open, honest relationship with the Lord—a loyalty to the God who is so very loyal to us.

At a time when masculinity is viewed as a liability more than an asset, as something that is more likely to harm the world than help it, Brant Hansen describes and celebrates a form of masculinity that is good, pure, and true—a form of masculinity that will serve families, serve the church, and serve the world. He calls men to embrace it and display it in their lives. It turns out that in this time of confusion, The Men We Need is exactly the book we need.

Buy from Amazon

The Lord be with you and bless you today.

Today’s Kindle deals include a couple of good picks.
In Defense of the Gender Binary
“The plausibility structure of the gender binary is losing its grip on contemporary consciousness. And, it’s not just in contemporary culture writ large, but we are seeing and experiencing shifts in the Church.”
A Time to Hustle & A Time to Stroll
“Maybe it was the pandemic slow down, or just people getting fed up with it, but the last couple of years have seen a backlash against what has been termed ‘hustle culture.’”
Get the Best Deal on Al Mohler’s Grace & Truth Study Bible
Follow the link or use Promo Code 10CHALLIES and take an additional $10 off any print edition on Amazon. That $10 on top of Amazon’s already-discounted price. Under the guidance of general editor Dr. Albert Mohler, the NIV Grace and Truth Study Bible paints a stunning canvas of the goodness of God’s redemptive plan revealed in the gospel of Jesus. (Sponsored Link)
Zombie Sins
Chris Thomas: “Here’s what I am learning. Paul asks me to slay sin, a theme that John Owen would later riff off as he famously quipped, ‘Be killing sin or sin will be killing you,’ and I thought I was. But I was wrong. Burying sin is not the same as killing it.”
Spiritual Resilience
“Your life’s adversities serve a purpose. We may want our spiritual life to be as leisurely as a man lying on a couch, watching TV while eating comfort food, but a body that does too much of that will rot and never win the race. Do not run from every difficulty that comes your way today. Trust in Jesus, move forward, and see what God can do.”
Quick Guide to Christian Denominations
Trevin Wax has put together a not-so-quick guide to Christian denominations.
Worthy of Worship
Nick Batzig has a good one here. “To whom do we owe all of our admiration, affection, and allegiance? Who is worthy of our worship? The answer is straightforward. God, and God alone, is worthy of our worship. But, what about God incarnate, Jesus Christ? Can we worship the Man, Christ Jesus?”
Flashback: Shades of Love
I have been thinking about all the different kinds of love I have been able to experience, I have been considering how each one is unique, and I have been pondering how together these loves point me to one that must envelop and transcend them all.

The goal of missions isn’t quick gains but lasting results. —Elliot Clark

Grace and peace to you today.

(Yesterday on the blog: The Joy of Forgetting What You Need To Remember)
An Open Letter to the Christian Disheartened by Ongoing Temptation
You may appreciate this letter from D.A. Carson and John Woodbridge.
What Exactly Does 1 Timothy 2:12 Teach?
“Applying 1 Timothy 2:12 in the local church setting is tricky: ‘I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.’ What exactly does Paul not permit?” Robert Yarbrough offers a response to the question.
How To Turn A Clique Inside Out
“Cliques. They’re awful, aren’t they? We love to hate them (probably because we feel like they hate us). They’re easy targets for our criticism, all selfish and exclusive and proud, and who do they think they are treating other people like they don’t matter and barely exist at all? Cliques are bad. That is, until we’re in them.”
Sinclair Ferguson: Live at 7:30 p.m. EST
Sinclair Ferguson will be live with Ligonier Ministries this evening at 7:30 PM. He’ll be answering biblical and theological questions submitted live.
Fighting Flat
“Part of our challenge as preachers is to fight flatness in our preaching. This could be in terms of delivery, structure, or content. Perhaps you would add more areas too.” This article may help preachers understand and combat “flatness.”
Triggers and Tender Mercies
I’ve been blessed to read Donna Evans’ blog as she grieves the loss of her son James Bruce. In this article she writes about triggers that catch her off guard.
Flashback: The Best Tool for the Job
…the danger of thriftiness is that it can easily tip into stinginess. (Of course, in the same way, free spending can tip into a profligacy.) We can elevate the joy of finding an item at a low cost, while overlooking that this low cost may necessitate low quality.

Our perverse mistake is that we demand that God shall explain Himself at every step, instead of waiting for Him to unfold His intricate purposes at His own time and in His own way. —Theodore Cuyler

If I have my timing right, the last conference I spoke at was the 2020 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors. It was early February and we were just beginning to hear unfamiliar words like “COVID” and “coronavirus.” (A search through my inbox shows that the first mention of it was from an old Adam Ford newsletter in which he speculated that the outbreak in China was far worse than anyone was letting on.) I didn’t think much about the virus as I traveled to Minneapolis and at that time never would have imagined the way it would slam borders shut, disrupt travel, and close down the conference industry. I never would have imagined I wouldn’t attend another event for more than two years.

My topic at that conference was “Pastors and Productivity” and I enjoyed leading a seminar that took pastors through the opening steps of constructing a system meant to help them become more productive. It was based, of course, on the system I outline in Do More Better. I led the seminar, spent some time in meetings and fellowship, and then flew home. Just a few weeks later Ontario was locked down, the borders were closed, the airliners were in long-term storage in Arizona, and my entire calendar was blank.
A couple of weeks ago my church hosted a Weekender event for pastors and I was asked to dust off that very same seminar and to present it again. So I printed the same worksheet, opened the same slideshow, and presented pretty well the same content. I was gratified to see that it stood up pretty well, but did have to acknowledge how different my life has become in the two years between. The pandemic massively simplified my life and did so primarily by taking away almost all travel. I could still write the blog and work on books, but all speaking and all travel was gone. I could see how what I presented there had been flexible enough to easily bend with the changing circumstances.
As I led the pastors through the seminar, I saw that one core idea is still the most helpful of all: A good system of productivity allows us to experience the joy of forgetting what we need to remember. One of the great difficulties many of us wish to overcome in life is the fear that we will miss something, neglect something, forget something. We fear that we will miss an appointment, neglect a responsibility, forget a deadline. And as long as such fears remain present, we have trouble relaxing, we have trouble setting our minds at ease. One productivity writer wants his readers to have a “mind like water” but I’m content to help people achieve a mind that is at rest.
It’s for this reason that the main idea I present in the book and seminars is the value of creating and then perfecting a system that you trust to such a degree that you become confident it will remember what you need to remember, prompt you to do what needs to be done, and remind you to complete what is due. The practice I want people to aspire to and them embrace is getting things out of your head and into your system. This may have the side benefit of allowing you to attempt more and accomplish more. It may have the side benefit of convincing you to attempt less and accomplish less—less overall, but more of what really matters. The main value, though, is not accomplishments, but peace.
Ultimately, a strong system of productivity isn’t necessarily meant to help you do more, but to ease your mind, to calm your heart, to allow you to have confidence that your system is good enough, perfected enough, robust enough to grant you the joy of forgetting what you need to remember. Whether you learn that system through Do More Better or through one of a hundred other worthy books, I highly recommend creating some kind of a system—a system that fits your personality, a system that suits your life, a system that puts your mind at rest. You will know that system is where you need it to be when you trust it enough that you can forget what you need to remember, confident that the system will remember it for you.

A number of people who receive this content via email are having trouble clicking links. I am waiting for the newsletter service to fix it. In the meantime, clicking the headline will take you to my site where the links are working as they should!

We Live in Confusing Times
Kevin DeYoung leads an intellectual exercise meant to prove that we live in confusing times, especially as it pertains to matters of gender and sexuality.
Weak for Those We Love
Chris Martin shares a sweet reflection on fatherhood.
Struggling on Your Behalf in Prayers
“It may be one of the most overlooked ministries we can perform for others: to struggle on their behalf in our prayers.” Darryl Dash explains.
Get the Best Deal on Al Mohler’s Grace & Truth Study Bible
Follow the link or use Promo Code 10CHALLIES and take an additional $10 off any print edition on Amazon. That $10 on top of Amazon’s already-discounted price. Under the guidance of general editor Dr. Albert Mohler, the NIV Grace and Truth Study Bible paints a stunning canvas of the goodness of God’s redemptive plan revealed in the gospel of Jesus. (Sponsored Link)
Why Did Jesus Speak in Parables?
“Why did Jesus speak in parables?” The answer is quite interesting.
What Convinced James His Brother Was God?
“My brother isn’t God. It’s pretty obvious (we grew up together, after all), and nothing he could do or say could convince me of his divinity. I’m not God, either, and nothing I could do or say would convince him otherwise, too. Yet somehow, Jesus convinced his brother he was God. And James was so confident, he was willing to die for his belief. How did Jesus do it? What convinced his own brother to acknowledge Jesus was God and worship him?”
When “I” Becomes “We”
“I’ve always been independent. Maybe it’s because I’m the firstborn of three children, or maybe it’s my personality, but doing things on my own is my default.” Allyson Todd considers the end of a good measure of such independence through her impending marriage.
Flashback: Rule #4: Watch for Temptation (8 Rules for Growing in Godliness)
One of the means God uses to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ is temptation. Though we must never seek or desire it, still we have the confidence that God redeems the crucible of temptation to refine his people, to remove their sin, and to instill his righteousness within them.

A religion that is of no use to you while you live, will be of no use to you when you die. —De Witt Talmage