As of July 1, federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Administration for Children and Families, implemented new policies for all state-run foster care programs. Advocates claim these changes provide “safe and proper care” for children by ensuring their safety “from harassment, mistreatment, and abuse.” Specifically, the new rules require states to support a child’s “self-identified sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression,” and provide access to resources that support their health and wellbeing. This means that foster parents would be required to ensure access to “affirming” mental health providers and “gender-affirming care” such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical procedures.  

Of course, this would squeeze Christians out of a system already in desperate need of willing families.
The recent movie, The Sound of Hope, tells the true story of 77 foster care children finding homes with 22 families from a small church community in Possum Trot, Texas. The movie depicts the struggles and abuse that many children in foster care experience, including mental health struggles, depression, self-harm, and other coping mechanisms. Still, the 22 families in Possum Trot followed the Lord’s example of being “fathers to the fatherless,” as Psalm 68:5 says. Their story is a chapter in the long history of how Christians have, from the beginning of the Church, obeyed Christ’s words:  
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. 
Increasingly, Christians are being prevented from their good work, especially in adoption-related situations. In the past two years, two families in Vermont, who had both previously adopted, were refused additional children because of their religious beliefs. The state revoked the foster care licenses of Bryan and Rebecca Gantt and Brian and Katy Wuoti after new policies regarding sexual orientation, gender ideology, and gender expression were implemented. The Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Vermont on their behalf.  
Even worse, Vermont banned these two loving (and licensed) families, despite the growing number of children without a home in the state system. According to ADF, Vermont’s Department for Children and Families has placed children with unlicensed families, in hospitals, and in police stations to temporarily address the need.  
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In 1 Peter 3:15, the apostle urged his readers toward “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks [them] for a reason for the hope that is in [them].” Scripture memorization is the best way to do that. Yes, the drilling will be worth it.

When I was in third grade, my mother enrolled me in Children’s Bible Drill. It was certainly a well-titled activity. After hours of memorizing Bible passages, the class “drilled” together, competing to find and recite passages the quickest—at military attention, no less.
I can’t say I enjoyed those drills. But what I’ve enjoyed over the past 30 years is being able to share the gospel using all the Scripture coded into my memory. You can do the same—and you don’t even need to sign up for Children’s Bible Drill. The key is memorizing some of the Bible’s simple verses for evangelism (besides the “Romans Road”). Let’s consider a few.
Memorize the Gospel
If you’re going to share the gospel, you’ll want to know verses that succinctly summarize the good news of Christ. One of my favorites is from 1 Corinthians 15:3–4, but there are others. These are passages that get to the gospel’s heart in a few short words:

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3–4).
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18).
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Memorize the Bible’s Storyline
You might also consider memorizing verses that follow the Bible’s storyline of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Even if you don’t quote them verbatim, they can help you remember the movements of the gospel story. Here are some suggested verses to learn:

Creation: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
Fall: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).
Redemption: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4–5).
Restoration: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Rev. 21:3).

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The Westminster Confession with its over 4000 direct quotes of the Scripture, chose not to leave creation to a direct quote in 4.1, but instead to interpret the creation. Not as the ancients in seeing creation as instantaneous; not as the medievals who saw adornments and literary features; but as Calvin would understand it–a literal six day creation. 

The Westminster Confession makes over 4000 direct references to and quotations of the Scriptures. “In the space of six days” is not a reference to or quotation of the Scriptures.
The Westminster Confession of Faith 4.1 says: “It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good.”
“In the space of six days” is not a biblical phrase, but a theological phrase, intended to interpret the Scriptures rather than quote them.
Basil, referencing Origen said, “This beginning was instantaneous… in a rapid and imperceptible moment.” Origen said the world as we know it was created in one day, but many of the ancients thought the world was eternal (including Origen). They reflect Plato who said that the world was created out of preexistent matter.
Augustine also believed in an instantaneous creation. He wrote, “[God] created all things simultaneously and also created this one day, seven times repeated. The need for these six days to be set out was to teach those who could not understand simultaneous creation…God accommodated himself to the capacity of weaker intellects and presented creation as if it were a process.” (Works, 4.51-52; 5.5)
Medieval thinkers followed suit with Augustine. Bede, Anselm, and even Aquinas followed Augustine. But Aquinas “distinguished” in scholastic format saying that the creation was three-fold and there was an adornment process that occurred.
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While some people pick and choose the verses in the Bible that they think are most important, God has given us every single word for a good purpose. Rejoice that the Bible is filled with knowledge of God and wisdom to live life well, but rejoice most of all that the Bible communicates to us God’s redemptive plan in Christ.

Some Bible translations print the words Jesus spoke out loud in red letters, which may lead people to think that those parts of Scripture are more important than others. Is this true?
Jesus is the Word of God.
Many people think that only the words Jesus spoke out loud during his physical time on the earth are his actual speech; yet, the Bible tells us that Jesus himself is the Word of God:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made….And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1–3, 14)

All Scripture is God-breathed.
The apostle Paul writes the following to his young charge, Timothy, about the divine authorship of the Bible:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16–17)

The entire Bible is God’s revelation to us.
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If we don’t look to Jesus, sermons will be dull, and television will be more appealing than God’s Word. The way to stay awake is by remembering what Christ has done for us on the cross, how he washed our sins away, and that he will return to call his children home. We do not stay awake by sheer determination and conflict with the world. We do so by living in gratitude for the cross. 

He sat in church while the pastor delivered eternal truths but could not stay awake. Soul-saving exhortation was coming at him, but he was busy catching his head every time he nodded off. It wasn’t that he had had a busy week or even stayed up too late the night before; it was that he was bored. He felt he had heard it all before, so he let his eyelids droop.
His sleepiness also manifested itself in other ways. The surrounding culture had been moving further and further away from the truth, but it happened so subtly that he didn’t find it interesting enough to note. Sure, there were the occasional moments when it became so glaring that he couldn’t help but notice, but he would be asleep again in a few days. For example, he recently saw the uproar about the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. The controversy was whether the creators meant to create a scene that resembled DaVinci’s Last Supper painting using transvestites. He was fired up for a while because he thought they had mocked his faith. He settled down when the creators said everyone misunderstood their intention. His once crystal-clear perception of the situation was now muddied, so he let go of his concern.
The problem was the culture had already desensitized him enough that he failed to realize that even if they didn’t intend to mock his faith, it was still the normalizing presentation of transvestites, and other strange pagan perversions on a world stage. Those depravities had become so commonplace that it didn’t register on his Richter scale.
Later that week, he intended to pick up his Bible and read it, but there was a new movie streaming that he wanted to watch, so he opted for that instead. Afterward, he called his friend to rave about how much he loved the show, unconscious of the fact that the film promoted some of the same sexual deviations represented in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies.
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, August 25, 2024
We need to understand the unique challenges to following Jesus here and now. Inevitably the way to live among those challenges will be found in the scriptures and the Christian past. Our faith is shallow because our lives are shallow, because our cultural moment is shallow. Many like it that way as it makes it easier to sell us stuff. Jesus is calling us to depth, further up and further in forevermore.

Matthew Lee Anderson says that our culture is in a crisis of attention. I think we all know this, even if we haven’t used this language. Have you noticed that it’s increasingly difficult for you to read books with sustained or difficult arguments? Or to read a physical book at all? Have you noticed how you want to skip from app to app as you scroll and tap? Have you noticed how you can’t even queue for the bus or watch the adverts without needing to pick up your phone?
Our capacity for attention has been eroded. Though, for all the smartphone has been a culprit here, Neil Postman was decrying a similar problem caused by television in Amusing Ourselves to Death. Nicholas Carr said similar things about the internet in The Shallows. This isn’t a new problem, but it’s an accelerating problem, I fear. We see this play out in many directions, not least in our politics, but I’m trying to explore the causes of our shallow faith.
My concern is that this inability to give sustained attention to one thing is a cause of our shallowing faith. To put it another way, along with the shift in our Sundays and preaching; the loss of community and catechism, we have a fifth problem: the rise of entertainment.
Is entertainment bad? No. But the modern entertainment systems—and I think particularly of the physical technologies, but it would also be true of the content of what we ‘consume’—have shifted us in some ways that are counter to Christian formation.
There are two aspects of this, the first one could be overstated, but essentially we spend an inordinate amount of time consuming entertainment. If the aspects of Christian discipleship that we’ve touched on take time—and most do in one way or another—we don’t have much time. Sometimes because we’re living lives that are too busy, and this is often what people blame, but I suspect that for most people it has more to do with the amount of entertainment we watch.
I can’t remember the last time I met a Christian who didn’t have a TV. 20 years ago I knew several. I have a TV. I probably watch too much of it. I also use social media a fair bit, maybe too much. If you’re in a young enough generation that you’d never watch TV, assume that I mean YouTube. People find it strange that we don’t pay for a streaming service, which has been an economic decision rather than a moral one and we have access to some from family members. People seem surprised that we only have some of them.
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As David makes clear in these verses, he is no stranger to the “secret plots” of the wicked (v. 2). He is well acquainted with those who “hold fast” to their evil purpose and talk of laying snares in secret (v. 5). But even so, he doesn’t busy himself with trying to unravel their conspiracies. Nor does he waste time trying to peer into their hidden counsels, as if his hope depended upon exposing every twist and turn of their evil machinations. Instead, David sets his heart upon the sure foundation of God’s immutable and perfect justice.

Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked, from the throng of evildoers, who whet their tongues like swords, who aim bitter words like arrows, shooting from ambush at the blameless, shooting at him suddenly and without fear. (Psalm 64:2–4)
When the human heart bumps up against a lie, and it recognizes it to be a lie, its natural response tends to be one of mistrust. When confronted by another lie, the mistrust deepens. When met by still another, followed by more, which are then sweetened with yet more falsehood, the heart’s initial mistrust quickly ferments into outright skepticism. Unable to cope with the bombardment of deceit, the person soon begins to doubt everything, until eventually the hope of ever arriving at the truth grows dangerously bleak.
This phenomenon is something akin to what many in the West have experienced ad nauseam over the last several years. Whether one points to the masking debacle, the Covid vaccine catastrophe, the “transgender” nightmare, or the sudden ubiquity of creepy, bearded weirdos with a fetish for dresses and young children, the Western mind has been sold a barrel full of steaming horse dung. It has been subjected to a near ceaseless stream of deceit and told to drink without question. Like Winston in Orwell’s 1984, we have been commanded to say that two and two make five, with all the levers of cultural and social pressure applied to procure our compliance.
But, as mentioned above, the outcome of such treatment has not been to produce a serene and glassy-eyed servility among the masses. For many, it has had the opposite effect, resulting in a pervasive and needling skepticism that now colors their entire outlook on culture, politics, and the world at large. For these folks, everything must be questioned. Nothing can be taken at face value. For who can tell how far down the lies go?
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Proverbs says that wise discretion will keep your foot from stumbling, and you will walk securely. It will bring you life and be an “adornment to your neck,” i.e., it will grace you with the right spiritual and moral clothing. An indiscreet woman or man loses their spiritual and moral beauty and descends to the lowest rung.

Keep sound wisdom and discretion, so they will be life to your soul and adornment to your neck. Then you will walk in your way securely and your foot will not stumble. (Proverbs 3:21-23)
How important is discretion? It is not a word often used or a trait often seen in our society.
The 1828 Webster’s Dictionary defines it this way:

Prudence, or knowledge and prudence; that discernment which enables a person to judge critically of what is correct and proper, united with caution; excellent discernment and judgment, directed by circumspection, and primarily regarding ones own conduct.

The origin of the Hebrew word is “loose conduct, lewdness.” An indiscreet man doesn’t pay careful attention to his life, speech, and conduct. He has few boundaries. The Hebrew word carries a sexual meaning.
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God is a God of relational intimacy through proximity. He walked in the cool of the garden with Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:8). Jesus ministered through proximity with his disciples. The first-century church was marked by communal living day by day (Acts 2:42–46; 4:32–35). Not all regions lend themselves to living within walking distance from where a church gathers, but in all situations, we must pastor our churches to fight the cultural bent toward isolation. 

Peter commands pastors to shepherd the flock that is among them (1 Pet. 5:2). Therefore, actually living among them—and your flock living among one another—is invaluable.
When we planted a church in the outskirts of New Orleans, one of the most significant decisions my family made was to move into the neighborhood. Many of our core team members moved as well.
I, along with more than ten other families, now live on the same avenue as our church. Out of 160 covenant members, more than half live within a couple miles of the church building. Here are three reasons why I would encourage every pastor to teach his congregation the value of proximity.
For Your Church’s Affection
Salvation is a community-creating event. The abundant life Christ offers is lived out in a family of brothers and sisters, living in harmony with one another (Rom. 15:5). Church is not an event you attend but a household you join (1 Tim. 3:15).
Many Americans leave worship on Sunday, return home, close the garage door, and are content not to re-engage their church until next Sunday.
Proximity combats this instinct. By reducing our distance, it increases our opportunities for the one-another commanded throughout the Bible. Organic relationships develop more easily and create a culture that affects the whole.
Pastors can lead the charge by prioritizing proximity themselves, modeling hospitality, and encouraging members to do the same. The community cultivated through this effort will then draw in the lost and lonely to hear the gospel preached and see the gospel lived out in the life of the church.
For Your Neighbors’ Salvation
Paige, Kelsi, and Carly all worked at the po-boy shop at the end of the street our church sits on. They were young adults with little religious background who also lived near our church.
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We could not atone for our sins. Our seemingly good works could not resolve the crisis. Only Christ’s substitutionary death would accomplish the necessary atonement. Once accomplished on the cross, there was no need for any other work to be done.

It is one thing for us to have come to the knowledge of our sin and need for Christ on our own … to have figured this out by our ability.
But that is not how this happened. It was God’s initiative and action. The proof of this is that Paul reminds us of our true condition: We were dead in our trespasses and sin and entirely under Satan’s domination. It’s impossible for a dead man to accomplish anything (Ephesians 2:1-5).
Look what Christ did when we were utterly helpless to remedy our separation from God.
“For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.” (1 Peter 3:18)
“CHRIST ALSO DIED FOR SINS”
We could not atone for our sins. Our seemingly good works could not resolve the crisis. Only Christ’s substitutionary death would accomplish the necessary atonement
“ONCE FOR ALL”
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