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What Is Perfectionism?

By Lou Priolo — 4 months ago

Perfectionism is expecting God to give me in this life what He has promised to give me only in the next. Perfectionists want to live in a world without sin, sickness, suffering, and Satan. The problem is, except for the first and last two chapters of the Bible, we find at least one of these four Ss on every page. It is not until the next life that those of us who know Christ as our Savior and Lord will be free of them.

The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom. 8:20–21 ESV)
Perhaps you’ve heard a perfectionist humorously described as “someone who takes great pains and gives them to others.” Today let’s look at a biblical definition of perfectionism: perfectionism is expecting God to give me in this life what He has promised to give me only in the next. Perfectionists want to live in a world without sin, sickness, suffering, and Satan. The problem is, except for the first and last two chapters of the Bible, we find at least one of these four Ss on every page. It is not until the next life that those of us who know Christ as our Savior and Lord will be free of them.
Have you come to grips with this reality? Or are you frustrated with God for forcing you to live in a corrupted environment? Because of the fall, we live no longer in the garden of Eden but in a world bereaved of its splendor. Perhaps you understand this on an intellectual basis, but do you live your life as though it is true?
Our passage reminds us that, as a part of God’s creation, we have been involuntarily subjected to futility. The world in which we live is broken and full of misery. Apart from Christ, and our belief in the new heavens and new earth, our world is a pretty miserable place to live. But Christians don’t live “under the sun,” as Solomon repeatedly declares in Ecclesiastes—we live “under the Son.” We live not for this life or for this world but for the world and the life that are to come.
The first step in learning to overcome your perfectionistic tendencies may be for you to reevaluate your thinking about the world in which God has placed you. You are living not in paradise but on a battlefield to which He has drafted you to serve as His soldier. To strive for perfection now is an exercise in futility.
Yesterday, we looked at the primary Old Testament word for repent. Today, I would like you to consider the New Testament Greek word for repentance. It is a compound word that combines a word for think with a word for again. In Greek, to repent means to “think again” or to “rethink” something.
To have any hope of losing your perfectionistic tendencies, you must change how you think and how you interpret the world in which you live. You will have to learn to think biblically about all of God’s creation—including yourself. And you will have to reset your affections from this life to the next one.
As you go through your upcoming day, why not meditate on specific ways you can begin to adjust your thoughts, motives, and especially your values in order to gain an eternal perspective on living as a fallen creature in a fallen world? Then give some thought to what it will be like to be free from sin, sickness, suffering, and Satan when the Lord Jesus Christ reveals His glory in you.
Reflect: What exactly do you have to rethink and reinterpret about living in a world that has been cursed by sin?
Act: Spend five or ten minutes today thinking about what it will be like to live in a world without sin, sickness, suffering, and Satan.
An excerpt from Perfectionism: Pursuing Excellence With Wisdom by Lou Priolo. Used with permission.

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Evangelism as God’s Work

By Andrew Miller — 4 months ago

This is important because one reason Christians struggle to evangelize is that we forget that God is out ahead of us. We think we’re alone. We think that people’s response depends on us and our presentation. But as A.W. Pink points out, “When God calls any of his people to go to a place, they may rest assured that he has fully provided for them in his foredetermined purpose.”1 God’s servant Elijah, for example, went to the brook Cherith with God’s promise: “You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there” (1 Kings 17:4). He went to the widow of Zarephath with God’s promise, “Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you” (1 Kings 17:9). It’s the same in the New Testament; in Acts 18:9–10, God tells the Apostle Paul, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.”
God is ahead of us: this is a liberating truth for Christians in the great privilege of sharing the gospel. God has already been at work. You don’t know how God will use your witness in a person’s life. It may be at the beginning of God’s work, the planting of seed. It might be at the end of God’s work—the harvest. It might be during God’s work—the watering. But God gives the growth; He gets the glory. We see this very clearly in 1 Corinthians 3:5–9:
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
Every stage matters. This means that what you are doing is important and that its effectiveness belongs to the Lord.
Jesus declared in John 10:27–28 that people’s response of faith to His Word is rooted in His first making people His own. He said: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27–28). While “Calvinism” unfortunately gets dismissed by many Christians as being deterministic and anti-evangelism, you can’t get around the logic of Jesus’s statement: something makes a person Jesus’ sheep before they believe. The theological term for this is election.
Adolf Schlatter, who managed to hold influential scholarly posts in Germany and produce massively popular devotional material as an evangelical in the days when theological liberalism was taking hold, put it this way in his landmark biblical-theological study Faith in the New Testament: “Faith is preceded by an original relationship to God, which reaches its active conclusion and fruitful result in faith.”2

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Happy New Year!

By Bill Elliff — 4 months ago

At an opportune moment on the final day of the retreat, Christopher was now ready. He kept telling me, “Well, I need to learn more and grow into this.” Finally, I said, “No, it’s time right now to ask Christ to come in and take control. Are you ready right now to do that?” “Yes,” he said humbly. I called his brother over, and the three of us prayed as Christopher applied the blood of Christ to the doorpost of his life. He was born again.

Where has your life been and where is it now? God is the God of new beginnings. Regardless of where your life has been, if you come to Him in faith, He can make all things new.
A National Delivered
Moses and his kinsmen (several million Israelites) had been in cruel bondage in Egypt for 430 years. There was nothing they could do: no way out and no human means of deliverance.
God knew what He was about for His people to whom He had pledged the Promised Land. On a perfect day, He instructed the people to take an unblemished lamb (a picture of Christ, the Lamb of God who was to come) and place the blood of that Lamb on their doorposts. It would protect them from the judgment coming across the land of Egypt.
All of this was God’s means of deliverance but also a foreshadowing of the future, as everything is. The Messiah (the Lamb of God) was coming. He would become a man and live a sinless life and then die a sacrificial death. His death in our place would be the means of our deliverance from sin, death, and hell.
But …
Something had to happen. The people must believe in God as their only Deliverer, partake of an unblemished lamb, and the blood of that lamb had to be APPLIED to their doorposts.
Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. (Exodus 12:7)
The whole nation of Israel—every household—believed and trusted in the blood of the Lamb to save them. The blood was applied to their doorposts and the Death Angel passed over their lives.
A New Year
God now gave a significant command to Moses and the people.
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Strategic Planning in the Local Church

By Simon van Bruchem — 4 months ago

As churches grow, the need for careful strategic planning becomes more important. Many things just happen in a small church; you notice when people are missing, you know each other well enough to understand the needs, and you can welcome any newcomers well. If God blesses a church with growth, it will become impossible for one person to know everyone well, and more than possible for new people to be missed or pastoral needs to be neglected. Structures are needed to do this well, and structures need planning.

Some people like to plan for the future; others just seem to deal with whatever might happen to them. I am a planner. I like to make lists. I like to know what my diary is likely to look like next week, and what major events are planned next month. I realise that not everyone is wired like I am, and the idea of strategic planning to some people seems as interesting as watching paint dry. Yet hear me out: leaders in the local church need to plan for the future.
The local church is not like a company. It would be foolish to measure the performance of a church by the number of new members, for example, when we know that so much is due to God’s work and unpredictable from our perspective. We always need to take into account the fact that whatever we might plan, God might have other plans for us:
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”- 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
(James 4:13-16 ESV)
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t plan for the future. Traditionally, churches have often added “Lord willing” after their planned events to remind us that nothing we plan is certain; God might have other ideas. We plan to meet together next Sunday, Lord willing, for example. This means that we think we will meet as brothers and sisters next Sunday, but perhaps there will be a riot, a building fire, or maybe Jesus will come back this week.
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4 Important Aspects of the Noahic Covenant in Redemptive History

By Nick Batzig — 4 months ago

Every time we see the rainbow we should remember God’s covenant faithfulness in sending the Redeemer to save a people for himself. Just as God had placed a rainbow in the sky to show his steadfast covenant fidelity, so there is a rainbow around the throne of Jesus Christ in glory (Rev. 4:3). We, like Noah, are beneficiaries of the mercy established in the Noahic Covenant in Jesus Christ.

The Noahic covenant was the first covenantal administration after God’s initial covenant promise to redeem and restore humanity (Gen. 3:15). It is also the first time that the word בְּרִית (Berith, translated Covenant) is used in the Scripture (Gen. 6:18). What has not been frequently observed, however, is how the Noahic covenant falls squarely in the realm of redemptive history.
Consider the following ways in which Noah and the Noahic covenant play a part in redemptive history:
1. The Redemptive Role of Noah as a Type of Christ
Noah was a type of Christ. He was a typical second Adam, a typical redeemer, and a typical rest giver. Like Adam, God gave Noah similar instructions with regard to being fruitful and multiplying, filling the earth and subduing it. He was not the second Adam but was a type of the second Adam who pointed to Christ.
Jesus is the second and last (eschatological) Adam who redeems his people and fulfills the creation mandates. Noah was a typical redeemer. Everyone with Noah on the ark was saved. Everyone in Christ is saved. Noah was not “the Redeemer.” He was a typical redeemer, providing typical redemption for all those who descended from him. Jesus came to redeem all those he represented spiritually.
Noah was a typical rest-giver. Noah’s name meant ‘rest.’ His father had named him ‘Rest,’ saying, “This one will give us rest from the ground which the Lord had cursed.” Noah only gives typical rest, as the remainder of the Bible bears witness to the ongoing need for redemptive rest.
Jesus is the one who finally and fully gives rest to the people of God and to the creation that was brought under the curse at the fall. He is the one who said, “Come unto me and I will give you rest for your souls.” He is the one who takes the curse on himself when he wears the crown of thorns—the symbol of the curse on the ground.
2. The Redemptive Foreshadowing of the New Creation
The book of Revelation tells us that the “new heavens and the new earth” will be the new Temple where God dwells fully and permanently with the redeemed. Noah and all of creation were together in the ark, as in a typical temple. This was foreshadowing the new creation-temple. Interestingly, the ark and Solomon’s Temple had three levels. It seems that the biblical data substantiates that the ark was a temple where God dwelt with his creation.
Noah also led the way into a typical new creation when he and his family stepped off of the ark and into a world that had been typically cleansed of pollution. Jesus brought about the new creation through his death and resurrection.
Noah knew that the flood had not really made “all things new,” because he sacrificed when he stepped off of the ark. The flood waters could never cleanse the evil out of the heart of man. God had destroyed the earth with a flood because “every intent of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5).
God promised never to destroy the earth with a flood again because “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21).
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Holiness & Politics?

By Mark Tooley — 4 months ago

Benjamin Rush notes that Christianity should support government “only from the love of justice and peace.” And he warns against clergy “settling the political affairs of the world.” This advice seems wise. Clergy are called to a particular vocation, to preach the Gospel, to disciple believers, to administer their churches. They are not generally invested with particular political wisdom and authority over their flocks. They are equal citizens and have every civil right to speak, of course. But wisdom and a proper regard for their office should generally restrain them on political topics, lest their flocks conflate the Gospel with political opinions.

Historian of American religion Thomas Kidd of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary recently shared a quote from Benjamin Rush to Thomas Jefferson:
I agree with you in your wishes to keep religion and government independent of each Other. Were it possible for St. Paul to rise from his grave at the present juncture, he would say to the Clergy who are now so active in settling the political Affairs of the World. “Cease from your political labors, your kingdom is not of this World. Read my Epistles. In no part of them will you perceive me aiming to depose a pagan Emperor, or to place a Christian upon a throne. Christianity disdains to receive Support from human Governments. From this, it derives its preeminence over all the religions that ever have, or ever Shall exist in the World. Human Governments may receive Support from Christianity but it must be only from the love of justice, and peace which it is calculated to produce in the minds of men. By promoting these, and all the Other Christian Virtues by your precepts, and example, you will much sooner overthrow errors of all kind, and establish our pure and holy religion in the World, than by aiming to produce by your preaching, or pamphlets any change in the political state of mankind.”
Rush and Jefferson were corresponding within the context of government established religion, which of course had been the norm in Europe, and really throughout the world, since nearly the beginning of civilization, whether Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or paganism. Jefferson and James Madison successfully worked to end the established Church of England in Virginia, which was supported by tax dollars, and under which dissenters were sometimes persecuted, even imprisoned. The vision of non-established religion eventually prevailed throughout the United States, to the benefit of vibrant Christianity.
Methodists and Baptists at the time Rush wrote this letter, and who supported non-establishment, were surging during the Second Great Awakening, as they evangelized the frontier. Non establishment never meant that religious people or religious institutions should withhold their views from public life. Unlike in post-revolutionary France, the American republic deemed religion in civil society to be a cornerstone of healthy democracy.
Rush notes that Christianity should support government “only from the love of justice and peace.” And he warns against clergy “settling the political affairs of the world.” This advice seems wise. Clergy are called to a particular vocation, to preach the Gospel, to disciple believers, to administer their churches.
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Adoniram Judson and Deconstructing One’s Faith

By Vance Christie — 4 months ago

True biblical Christianity provides the clearest understanding, the strongest support, and the greatest assurance to get through this life and to prepare for eternity. We put ourselves at peril in this temporal earthly life and in the eternal life to come if we ignore the Bible’s Christian truths.

We hear a lot these days about professing Christian young people deconstructing their faith. The experiences of Adoniram Judson in turning away from, then coming to the Christian faith speak with relevance to those who are questioning their faith today.
Judson eventually became America’s first foreign missionary, serving for nearly forty years in Burma (modern Myanmar). However, as a young college student he rejected Christianity for a time. Here’s the dramatic true story of how God graciously led him through his unbelief to genuine faith in Christ.
Adoniram’s father was a conservative Christian minister who served a series of three Congregational churches in Massachusetts. Adoniram was an extremely intelligent boy who by age ten gained proficiency in both Greek and Latin. Barely one week after his sixteenth birthday in August 1804, Adoniram entered Rhode Island College in Providence (soon thereafter renamed Brown University).
Adoniram’s scholarship and outward conduct were highly commendable. But he had not yet been spiritually regenerated (born again) and manifested little interest in spiritual matters. In addition, he soon fell under the influence of one Jacob Eames of Belfast, Maine, an upper classman at Brown.
Eames was intelligent, talented, witty, and amiable, but a confirmed Deist. Deism was a popular, rationalistic belief system in that era. It taught that a Supreme Being had originally created the universe, but after that was totally uninvolved with the universe or humankind. Owing to similar tastes and sympathies, Adoniram and Jacob quickly became fast friends, and before long Judson joined Eames in his disbelief of Christianity.
After graduating from Brown, Adoniram taught school for eleven months in Plymouth, where his family was then living. But he wanted to see more of the world and to make much more of his life. He also felt shackled and like a hypocrite living in his parents’ home and attending their church, never having revealed to them the change of religious beliefs he had come to have while in college.
Consequently, on his twentieth birthday, he abruptly left his teaching position and announced his intention to travel for a time. When his father pressed him for an explanation of that sudden change of course, Adoniram was forced to divulge his newly held beliefs.
His father responded with accusations of irresponsibility and ingratitude as well as warnings against rushing to his own destruction. His mother responded with tears and pleading. After enduring a week of domestic anguish, Adoniram mounted a horse and rode westward out of town.
Making his way to New York City, he joined a small traveling theatrical troupe. “We lived a reckless, vagabond life,” Adoniram later confessed, “finding lodgings where we could, and bilking the landlord where we found opportunity – running up a score, and then decamping without paying the reckoning.” He soon grew tired and disillusioned with such a lifestyle and left it without notice one night.
Continuing his journey on horseback, he stopped at a country inn where the proprietor, while showing him to his room, stated apologetically: “I have been obliged to place you next door to a young man who is exceedingly ill, probably in a dying state. I hope that will occasion you no uneasiness.”
Adoniram assured him it would not, but it proved to be a very restless night. What really disturbed him was the landlord’s statement that the young stranger was in a dying state. “Is he prepared?” Adoniram kept wondering. “Is he a strong Christian, calmly anticipating glorious immortality, or an unbeliever shuddering on the brink of a dark, unknown eternity?” Entirely against his will, Adoniram could not help but imagine himself on that deathbed facing eternity.
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How Jesus Satisfies Our Desire for Authentic Beauty

By Carly Buchwald — 4 months ago

The resurrection points to the importance of our bodies. Gnosticism claims the body is bad, but Scripture says our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (6:19). We glorify God by taking care of our bodies, but we can go too far if we seek to glorify them now rather than waiting for God to do this in eternity. One day, we’ll receive glorified bodies and be presented without spot or wrinkle (15:5–53; Eph. 5:27). But even better than this, we’ll gaze on our beautiful Savior.

The beauty industry is rapidly changing and growing, and Gen Zers and millennials are leading the way. According to Revieve, a beauty and wellness platform, “Gen Z is changing the face of beauty.” In their eyes, beauty is defined by “freedom of individuality, authenticity, and diversity.” It’s about being yourself but also about being your best self.
Gen Zers seek brands that support their values and complement their identity, so they look to the wellspring of all wisdom—YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
This fount provides a never-ending supply of make-up tutorials, beauty hacks, and product reviews. According to a 2023 survey, millennials spend an average of $2,670 per year on beauty products, followed by Gen Zers at $2,048; and 64–67 percent say it’s because of social media’s influence.
As a millennial, I’m aware of this influence, yet I still willingly give in. When I don’t like what I see in the mirror, a voice whispers, “We can change that.” An article here. A TikTok tutorial there. Another order on Amazon. But in the end, I’m left feeling empty. And the pattern repeats.
Our longing for “authentic” beauty drives us to a cacophony of voices that promise solutions but lead to dissatisfaction. Trends change. Fads fade. Anything “authentic” is just another counterfeit.
Then where are we to look?
Look to Christ’s Beauty
What we find in God’s Word turns our culture’s definition of beauty upside down through the life and death of God’s Son. We were designed to treasure beauty; we just look for it in the wrong places. Here are four reasons we’re to look to Jesus, not social media, to satisfy our desire for authentic beauty.
1. Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory.
When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God told him no one could see his face and live (Ex. 33:20). But he’d be willing to show Moses his back. As he passed by Moses, God spoke these words:
The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation. (34:6–7)
When Moses came down from the mountain, his face was shining. To see God’s glory, to gaze on his beauty, is to know his character and be in his presence. This is why David says his one request is to gaze on the beauty of the Lord (Ps. 27:4). He knows God as the merciful and majestic King over all creation and desires to behold him by worshiping him in the temple.
Some caught glimpses of his glory, but no one had ever seen God (John 1:18)—until Jesus came.
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Natural Disasters—Chance or God?

By Daniel Rowlands — 4 months ago

Natural disasters and the destruction they produce—especially to human life and to property—bring to mind our desire to explain both cause and effect. Normally, there are two choices: chance or God. Even as we find scientific cause and effect, the ultimate cause is often thought of as chance—these events just happen.
On the other hand, the destructive nature of natural disasters such as hurricanes and fires fueled by fast-moving winds has led some within and without the church to rightly attribute the cause to God but then to specifically assert that God’s motive is his wrath for some perceived human failing. What should we make of this? Chance or God? And what is the reason or motive behind these destructive storms, floods, and fires?
Power, Terror, Destruction
First of all, this is not a discussion in the abstract. The power, terror, physical destruction, and psychological fear these events bring upon us are real—they can be seen, they can be felt, and they change us. Unless one has “ridden out” the terror of howling wind, rain, thunder, lightning, and fire, or lost a family member or friend, suffered injury or loss of property—along with the memories that are embedded in our homes—it is very difficult to imagine what these catastrophic events are like. Hurricanes, floods, and burning are terrifying and destructive. Our hearts reach out to everyone, friend and foe alike, who falls into their path.
Are these natural disasters the products of chance, fate, or the wrath of God? To what do we attribute them?
Considering Psalm 29
Psalm 29 describes a storm building over the Mediterranean Sea while moving from west to east with rain, thunder, and lightning:

The voice of the Lord is over the waters;the God of glory thunders,the Lord, over many waters. (Ps. 29:3)

The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. (Ps. 29:7)

The thunder and lightning are described as the voice of the Lord. The lightning of his thunderous voice comes forth like flames of fire. The power of the storm is seen and heard, and it is so powerful that it breaks trees in Lebanon. Surely such a storm strikes fear in those who experience it. Boarding up homes and businesses, evacuation orders, the painfully slow escape on a jam-packed freeway—these are all actions born from a healthy fear and respect for the power of the storm.
Yet the Psalmist has more to say—

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Be Radical: Don’t Let Politics Hijack the Pulpit— Christ is King

By Bryan Schneider — 4 months ago

There’s only one cornerstone of the church that the world is constantly trying to pull us away from—Jesus. I’m begging you not to forget your identity in Christ during this political season. Do the radical thing. Keep your eyes fixed on Christ, the author and perfecter of your faith.

Man, has that junk mail button been getting hit a lot lately. Why? Political email, political email, political email.
I’m not here to say politics aren’t important. I’m not here to convince you that culture, philosophy, or politics don’t matter to the people of God. This isn’t some wimpy attempt to get you to forget God’s commands, close your eyes to the evil around you, or stick your head in the sand.
But there is a massive pull in our hyper-polarized society to make the church’s identity all about politics.
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