If have been brought into the kingdom of God and bowed the knee before Jesus Christ as our Lord, we are to conform our will to His, to follow His directives, and be grounded and growing in Him. 

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught.Colossians 2:6–7, NKJV
What does adulthood look like? Likely most of us would agree on certain standards like physical development that comes with age, becoming responsible members of society, and establishment of a household of our own.
But what about spiritual adulthood, where we are no longer children? What are the hallmarks of that maturity?
Paul describes maturity as a goal under the shepherding supervision of pastors. Notice the flow of ministry he lays out for pastor/teachers: “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph, 4:12–13, ESV).
The measures of spiritual adulthood are unity of the one faith, knowledge of Jesus, and Christ being formed in us.
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The best way to combat the forces of expressive individualism is full frontal attack. By showing up every week to church and to the table, we train ourselves to believe that feelings of authenticity are not our lord. Christ is.

In July 1798, John Leland, elder of Third Baptist Church in Cheshire, Massachusetts, decided that he could not in good conscience continue to administer the Lord’s Supper to his church. Admittedly bothered by the hypocrisy of his church members using harsh language with one another before joining in an ordinance symbolizing unity, Leland’s real problem was that “he had never enjoyed the Lord’s Supper, as he had preaching and baptizing.” He later discontinued his own participation in Christ’s ordinance.
Leland’s refusal initiated a heated controversy within the church that would last more than a decade and result in several members facing excommunication for their criticisms of the esteemed pastor. Eventually, Leland issued a lengthy statement clarifying his views: “For more than thirty years experiment, I have had no evidence that the bread and wine ever assisted my faith to discern the Lord’s body. I have never felt guilty for not communing, but often for doing it.” Interpreting his own feelings, he concluded that “breaking bread is what the Lord does not place on me.” His own attendance at church meetings would be determined by whenever he thought he could “do good, or get good.”
Leland’s biographer, Eric C. Smith summarizes well the implications of his position: “The cascade of personal pronouns, and the conspicuous absence of Scripture references, announced that Leland had unmoored himself from every authority outside of his conscience—his own church, eighteen hundred years of Christian tradition, and even the Bible. Leland saw himself as perfectly capable of arriving at religious truth all by himself.”
John Leland was a strange figure in the context of the 1790s, but his reasoning about the Lord’s Supper would have fit quite comfortably within today’s worldview of “expressive individualism.” Mark Sayers summarizes several tenets of this mindset in his book, Disappearing Church. Expressive individualists believe “the highest good [in society] is individual freedom, happiness, self-definition, and self-expression.” Consequently, “traditions, religions, received wisdom, regulations, and social ties that restrict individual freedom, happiness, self-definition, and self-expression must be reshaped, deconstructed, or destroyed.” Leland’s approach to the Lord’s Supper has now become the dominant approach to life for many in the modern world.
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Carey argued that the commission given by Jesus to the apostles in Matthew 28:18–20 “laid them under obligation to disperse themselves into every country of the habitable globe, and to preach to all the inhabitants, without exception, or limitation.”

On October 7, 1805, nine men signed their names to a document that would govern their lives and efforts to proclaim the gospel throughout India. The document became known as the Serampore Form of Agreement (sometimes inaccurately called the Serampore Covenant). The signers, many of them pioneers in the history of baptist missions, included William Carey, Joshua Marshman, William Ward, John Chamberlain, Richard Mardon, John Biss, William Moore, Joshua Rowe, and Felix Carey (William Carey’s son). In the Agreement, the signers accepted eleven principles that would henceforth guide the mission work in India, with the “hope that multitudes of converted souls will have reason to bless God to all eternity for sending His Gospel into this country.”
Reading the Agreement today, we might be surprised by the number of themes that continue to prevail among missionaries and missiologists: an emphasis on cultural anthropology, the desire for self-supporting churches, the priority of Bible translation and education, and more. So, although originally written to guide missionary work two centuries ago, this document remains profoundly relevant today, not only for missionary service but for every disciple of Christ seeking to make him known in an increasingly globalized world.
Wherever we need to remember our priorities as pilgrims in this present world—at home, school, or work, or while traveling, running errands, or hosting neighbors—the Serampore Agreement serves as a timeless teacher.
Serampore Priorities
William Carey arrived in India in 1793, sent out by the recently formed Baptist Missionary Society. After first establishing work in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Carey relocated to Danish-controlled Serampore in West Bengal in 1800, where he ministered until he died in 1834. There he joined Joshua Marshman and William Ward, and together they formed a new church, with Carey as the pastor and Marshman and Ward as deacons.
Five years later, with an increasing number of new missionary recruits arriving and new converts being added to the fellowship, they agreed to review the church-leadership structure and recent progress of the work and establish parameters for future ministry. It was in this missional-ecclesial context that the Agreement was formed.
The document consists of eleven convictions that set forth “the Great Principles upon which the Brethren of the Mission at Serampore think it their duty to act in the work of instructing the Heathen.” The Agreement calls the missionaries to fix their “serious and abiding attention” on these principles. Recognizing that the Lord, in his sovereignty, had planted them at Serampore and given them difficult work to do, they wanted to put their hands to the plow with diligence and perseverance under his own mighty hand.
In what follows, I do not summarize every article in the Agreement (though I encourage you to read the short document yourself). Instead, I aim to highlight three priorities expressed in the document that characterized these early missionaries and that remain priorities for Christians today.
“May Our Hearts Bleed”
What drew Carey and others to India in the first place? In his Enquiry, published about thirteen years prior to the Agreement, Carey argued that the commission given by Jesus to the apostles in Matthew 28:18–20 “laid them under obligation to disperse themselves into every country of the habitable globe, and to preach to all the inhabitants, without exception, or limitation” (An Enquiry, 7). Carey’s claim did not fall on deaf ears. Fired by zeal to see people from across the globe yield to Christ, scores of missionaries were sent out by churches to the far reaches of the world.
This same zeal sets the tone for the whole Serampore Agreement. Article 1 states,
In order to be prepared for our great and solemn work, it is absolutely necessary that we set an infinite value upon immortal souls; that we often endeavor to affect our minds with the dreadful loss sustained by an unconverted soul launched into eternity…If we have not this awful sense of the value of souls, it is impossible that we can feel aright in any other part of our work.(Article 1)
Remembering that many millions of people lay under the power of darkness was indispensable for the multiform work of missions in West Bengal. Though the missionaries engaged not only in evangelism but also in education, cultivation, business, translation, and much more, the lost state of souls and the danger of eternal damnation was the raison d’être for their labors. Forgetfulness of such an awe-full reality would result in work that focused merely on temporal needs—perhaps improving the conditions of unbelievers but failing to hold forth salvation.
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“If you and I find ourselves afflicted by this condition, there is only one thing to do, it is to go to Him….He is our joy and our happiness, even as He is our peace. He is life, He is everything. So avoid the incitements and the temptations of Satan to give feelings this great prominence at the centre. Put at the centre the only One who has a right to be there, the Lord of Glory.”

Reversing the order of my title, we all have feelings, most of us have known depression at one time or another, and many of us know about the great Welsh expository preacher of last century, Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981). In this piece I will discuss all three. And my audience here, like that of Lloyd-Jones, is the Christian.
Yes, Christians can and do experience depression, struggle with despair, and can be overcome by what they are going through. I am one of those. Lloyd-Jones knew much about this as a minister of the gospel, and sought to help his people by extensively dealing with it.
As with so many of the vital books that we have from him, the volume I am quoting from here began as a series of 21 sermons which he had delivered at Westminster Chapel in London over consecutive Sunday mornings in 1954. He had been concerned about the rather joyless condition of many English Christians, especially just after WWII.
These sermons were put together in book form in 1965 and titled Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures. I have the 1998 Marshall Pickering edition, so my page numbers refer to that volume. In this book of 300 pages, he looks at a number of aspects of depression and how the believer should deal with it. The 21 chapter titles are these:

General Consideration (Psalm 42:5, Psalm 42:11)
The True Foundation (Romans 3:28)
Men as Trees, Walking (Mark 8:22, 26)
Mind, Heart and Will (Romans 6:17)
That One Sin (1 Timothy 1:16)
Vain Regrets (1 Corinthians 15:8-10)
Fear of the Future (2 Timothy 1:7)
Feelings (2 Timothy 1:6)
Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16)
Where is Your Faith? (Luke 8:22-25)
Looking at the Waves (Matthew 14:22-33)
The Spirit of Bondage (Romans 8:15-17)
False Teaching (Galatians 4:15)
Weary in Well Doing (Galatians 6:9)
Discipline (2 Peter 1:5-7)
Trials (1 Peter 1:6-7)
Chastening (Hebrews 12:5-11)
In God’s Gymnasium (Hebrews 12:5-11)
The Peace of God (Philippians 4:6-7)
Learning to be Content (Philippians 4:10-12)
The Final Cure (Philippians 4:13)

In this article I am drawing from just one chapter—Chap. 8 on “Feelings”. The 12-page chapter is loaded with helpful insights and spiritual truths, and here I simply want to offer a number of key quotes from it.
“There are those, I know, who will not recognise the condition at all but will brush it aside impatiently, and say that a Christian is one who sings all the day long, and that that, ever since they were converted, has been their story—never a ripple on the surface of the soul, and all has been well. Since they will not recognise the condition at all, they have grave doubts about those who are given to depression and even doubt whether such people are Christians at all. We have shown repeatedly that the Scriptures are much kinder to such friends, and do grant clearly by their teaching that it is possible for a Christian to be depressed. Not that they justify this, but they do recognise the fact, and it is the business of anyone who is concerned about the nurture and care of the soul to understand such cases and to apply to them the remedy that God has provided so freely in the words of Scripture.” p. 107
“Feelings are meant to be engaged, and when the gospel comes to us it does involve the whole man. It moves his mind as he sees its glorious truths, it moves his heart in the same way, and it moves his will.
“The second statement which I want to make is this—and these are very simple and elementary points, but we are often in trouble because we forget them. The second is, that we cannot create feelings, we cannot command them at will. Let me put this quite plainly. You cannot generate feelings within yourself. You can, perhaps, make yourself weep and bring tears to your own eyes, but that does not of necessity mean real feelings. There is a false sentimentality very different from true emotion. That is something beyond our control; we cannot create it. However much you try you will not succeed. Indeed, in a sense, the more you try to produce feelings within yourself, the more you are increasing your own misery. Looked at psychologically it is one of the most remarkable things about man that in this respect he is not master of himself. He cannot generate or produce feelings, he cannot bring them into being, and to attempt to do so directly is always to exacerbate the trouble.
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God has purposes in our grief. He means for us to carry them without being fully healed, to bear them with confident submission, to carry them all the way to the finish line. He means for those griefs to shift our eyes and hearts from here to there, from time to eternity, from this place of sorrows to that place of bliss.

I am often asked what churches and individual Christians can do to care for and comfort those who are enduring times of grief. It is a question I am always glad to receive and one I am always glad to attempt to answer. And there is a lot individuals and communities can do to bring comfort—they can pray, they can be present, they can provide meals and other forms of help, they can remember important dates and continue to express care for months or even years into the future. In these ways and so many others, they can help bear the burdens of those they love.
Yet I also feel the need to speak a word to those who are enduring the time of trial and it’s a word of realism. Over the past few years, I have had a lot of grieving people reach out to express a sense of deep loneliness. They sometimes wonder if their friends have failed them or whether their church has neglected to fulfill its duty toward them. And for those who are enduring the trial of grief compounded by the trial of loneliness, I say this: Grief is lonely. Grief is lonely even in community, lonely even when surrounded by loving and helpful people. Grief is lonely when you are the only one grieving and lonely when you are grieving with others. Unfortunately, but unavoidably, it’s just plain lonely.
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Written by Jared C. Wilson |
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
 In groups where transparency is expected, a pastor goes first. In the humility of service, a pastor goes first. In the sharing of the gospel with the lost, a pastor goes first. In the discipleship of new believers, a pastor goes first. In the singing of spiritual songs with joy and exuberance, a pastor goes first. In living generously, a pastor goes first. In the following of Christ by the taking up of one’s cross, a pastor goes first. All I am saying is that one who talks the talk ought to walk the walk. Don’t lead your flock through domineering; lead by example.

God forbids pastoral domineering but commands instead “being examples to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:3). Therefore, pastor, whatever you are, your church will eventually become. If you are a loudmouth boaster, your church will gradually become known for loudmouth boasting. If you are a graceless idiot, your church will gradually become known for graceless idiocy. The leadership will set the tone of the community’s discipleship culture, setting the example of the church body’s “personality.” So whatever you want to see, that is what you must be.
This is another reason why plurality of eldership is so important. The most important reason to have multiple elders leading a church is because that is the biblical model. A plurality of eldership also provides unity in leadership on the nonnegotiable qualifications but works against uniformity in leadership by establishing a collaboration of wisdom, diversity of gifts, and collection of experiences.
Elders must be qualified, so in several key areas they will be quite similar. But through having a plurality of elders, a church receives the example of unity in diversity, which is to be played out among the body as well. Every elder ought to “be able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2), but not every elder must be an intellectual sort (if you follow my meaning). Every elder must be “self-controlled,” but some may be extroverts and some introverts, some may be analytical types and others creative. Every elder must be “respectable” and “a husband of one wife,” but some may be older and some may be younger. The more diversity one can manage on an elder board while still maintaining a unity on the biblical qualifications, the fellowship’s doctrinal affirmations, and the church’s mission, the better.
A plurality of elders can be an example to the congregation of unity of mind and heart despite differences. Pastors are not appointed to a church primarily to lead in the instruction of skills and the dissemination of information; they are appointed to a church primarily to lead in Christ-following.
A different set of traits is needed for pastors than for the business world’s management culture. Paul writes, “But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” (1 Thess. 2:7).
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Written by R.C. Sproul |
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
The Scriptures are concerned about three dimensions of the Christian life: the good, the true, and the beautiful. But we have cut off the third from the other two. In fact, sometimes Christians reduce their concern of the things of God purely to the ethical realm, to a discussion of righteousness or goodness. Others are so concerned about purity of doctrine that they’re preoccupied with truth at the expense of behavior or of the holy. But in fact, the biblical concern is for all three.

When we look at the role of art in the Christian life and community, we find that there are simple, foundational principles about the nature of beauty. If you were to look up every reference to “beauty” or “the beautiful” in the Bible, you would see that the word “beauty” in one form or another occurs frequently in the pages of sacred Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament. To set a framework for our investigation, let’s begin by looking at a psalm written by David, which we find in 1 Chronicles:
Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;bring an offering and come before him!Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;tremble before him, all the earth;yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved. (1 Chron. 16:28–30)
Two words in this psalm stand out. One is “glory.” The idea of the glory of God is pervasive throughout Scripture. It refers to His majesty, His heaviness, His weightiness, His worth, His significance. Closely connected with His glory is the concept of “holiness.” The psalm enjoins the people of God to worship God in the “splendor of holiness”; the holiness of God and the glory of God are conjoined here with respect to this idea of splendor or beauty.
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As Christians, we work with a gospel-fueled, Spirit wrought gumption. This is a move-forward attitude that trusts in the grace of God alone. This is a diligent working that is prayerful and trusting in the Spirit of God for the accomplishing of all things. I’m convinced that this mindset in our labor will produce the greatest fruit and the most restful souls. With the gospel as our fuel, we dodge the trappings of works righteousness. With the Spirit’s power, our labor will actually be profitable.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
1 Corinthians 15:10
As Christians, we are rightly concerned with living in such a way that magnifies the grace of God. We don’t want to be those who fall into works righteousness or Pharisaism, but rather we are those who trust in the grace of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But sometimes I’m afraid that we overcorrect. In an effort to be gospel-centered, we forget that we are supposed to put our hand to the plow (Luke 9:62). So I want to commend good old fashioned, gospel-fueled, Spirit-wrought gumption.
God’s Means
We are absolutely not saved by our works, and God works in every Christian to be more like His Son. But did you know that God uses certain means to conform us into His image? Sometimes we act as though God is going to sanctify us while we laze about in our newfound salvation. This mindset goes something like this: “Well I’m haven’t really beat that sin yet. God just has to work it in me.” But this mindset essentially makes your sinful behavior God’s fault. Is that really how we want to approach God? Or what about a lack of knowledge in God’s word? Do we expect that God will unscrew the top of our heads and pour knowledge into it? No. God has no plans to marionette-puppet us around in our sanctification. He calls us to attend to the means of grace.
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Written by Benjamin L. Gladd |
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
The Christian life is marked by trust in God and his promises. At our conversion, we trust God’s promise to deliver us from our sin on account of Christ’s work. But don’t we continue to trust those same promises throughout our lives? Every morning, we must remind ourselves of God’s faithfulness in the gospel. Christ lived, died, rose, and ascended to the heavenly throne for us.

There’s nothing better than a good night’s sleep. When my wife and I had our first kid, Judah, 14 years ago, we prized sleep above all else. One of us napped while the other took care of the baby. We’ve never been so tired in our lives.
In his narrative account of the stilling of the storm, Mark tells his readers that Jesus was “asleep on the cushion” (Mark 4:38). Why mention that Jesus was sleeping? Was he exhausted from a hard day’s work?
From Teaching to Sleeping
Grasping the context of Jesus’s sleeping during the onslaught of the storm is critical. After Jesus relates several parables on the kingdom of God (vv. 1–34), he commands the disciples to “go across to the other side” of the Sea of Galilee (v. 35). We also learn that the sea crossing takes place “on that day, when evening had come” (v. 35). This is the same day that Jesus taught the parables on the kingdom. By aligning the sea crossing with the kingdom parables, Mark invites his readers to relate the nature of the kingdom with what will transpire on the sea.
As the storm rages and waves crash into the boat, we encounter one of the strangest lines in all of Mark’s Gospel: “But he [Jesus] was in the stern, asleep on the cushion” (v. 38). The flow of the narrative is jarring, since we expect Jesus to be awake in such dire circumstances. His behavior is also perplexing because this is the only passage that mentions him sleeping. You typically sleep because you’re, well, tired, and this passage mentions nothing of the sort. Why is Jesus asleep? Let’s consider the significance of the sea and the symbolic value of sleep.
Chaos of the Sea
God’s enemies dwell in the sea, as the Old Testament is replete with texts that describe the sea as the embodiment of death, rebellion, and chaos (e.g., Ex. 14:16–31; Ezek. 32:2; Dan. 7:2). Even Mark’s use of the word “sea” is noteworthy, because “lake” is a more apt description (e.g., Luke 5:1, 2; 8:22, 23). Could it be that the storm on the “sea” of Galilee symbolizes a demonic horde’s attempt to thwart the gospel’s spread? I think so.
While it may seem strange to view the storm as a demonic attack, notice Jesus’s response: “He [Jesus] awoke and rebuked [epetimēsen] the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still [pephimōso]!’” Why rebuke a storm?
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So it’s easier in that you don’t have to have a PhD in cultural apologetics; and it’s harder, but also better, in that what God calls us to do is to love them, to speak the truth to the next generation, to be the sort of person whose life is marked by holiness. Second Peter says if you have these godly qualities in your life in increasing measure, you will not be ineffective or unfruitful.

The Easier Thing
It is true there’s an easier and a harder to reaching the next generation. Let me start with the easier. Sometimes we feel this burden that if we’re going to be effective as pastors, Christians, or parents that we need to have this cultural expertise. You need to know what Taylor Swift is singing about. In fact, my kids will just say, “Dad, please don’t ever mention Taylor Swift in a sermon. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Or at a more sophisticated level, we think we have to understand what’s being put out in The New Yorker or what exactly critical theory is. Those things do matter, and we need people—at least with some of it, not as much the pop culture end of things—who really can help us understand how we got here and how we dissect things.
But the fear is that we’ll be so tied up in knots thinking, I can’t possibly reach the next generation because I don’t understand how TikTok works. I don’t know what they’re into.
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