Written by Amy K. Hall |
Thursday, September 23, 2021
Jesus is worthy of unleashing final judgment not because he’s righteous (though his righteousness made it possible), but because he died for our sins, purchasing people for God with his blood. His loving, self-sacrificial grace on the cross demonstrates the pinnacle of God’s glories, and all of God’s eternal judgment against evil must be seen in light of what Jesus first did for us—his suffering and death for his enemies. 

I fairly regularly get asked this question in various forms: How will the people in Heaven view Hell? How can they enjoy the glories of God while others are suffering? My answer has two parts—a direct answer and a crucial context for that answer.
First, we get a sense of the direct answer in Revelation 19:1–6 as part of John’s vision of the end times:
After [the declaration of judgment against Babylon] I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying,
“Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God; because His judgments are true and righteous; for He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and He has avenged the blood of His bond-servants on her.” And a second time they said, “Hallelujah! Her smoke rises up forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sits on the throne saying, “Amen. Hallelujah!” And a voice came from the throne, saying,
“Give praise to our God, all you His bond-servants, you who fear Him, the small and the great.” Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying,
“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.”
Here is the direct answer: Those in Heaven praise God when they see his judgments against evil. We will praise him for fulfilling his role as the perfect judge. I’ve written before that “It’s Not Wrong to Long for Justice.” Justice is good. It’s desirable. It causes us to worship. And in the Revelation passage above, we see an example of that. In fact, if you read the psalms while looking for examples of God being praised for his judgments against evil, you might be surprised by how often you run into it. “Our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God” when he “inflicts his wrath” against it, according to Romans 3:5.
As I wrote,
Our love of justice is a reflection of our love for the perfections of God’s character. He is righteous. He is loving. He is good.
Read More

Jesus tells the disciples, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God” (v. 10). In other words, the message of the gospel that Jesus preached is “the secrets of the kingdom” that must be revealed. It is the light that ignites the lamp of our lives. And that light must not be hidden but must shine so that others may see it too.

“Getting the Most Out of Expositional Preaching”
When I was a teenager, I often failed to do what my parents asked of me in a timely and adequate manner. At the root of my problem, they had often to point out, was the fact that I “just didn’t listen.” In many ways, a failure to listen lies at the root of most of our struggles to grow as Christians. We hear partially. We hear what pleases us and edit out the rest. We mishear. We ignore. We reinterpret what we hear. It’s not simply that we have failed to understand what God is saying to us. It’s that we have preferred not to listen.
Jesus’s famous parable of the sower in Luke 8 outlines various responses to the Word of God. Given how famous the parable is, the passage that follows is often overlooked, yet it has much to say to us about how we listen to God in the preaching of his Word. First, Jesus imagines a ridiculous scenario: lighting a lamp and then putting it under a jar or a bed. This, of course, defeats the purpose of lighting it. It makes no sense. Instead, the lamp goes “on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light” (v. 16). That’s why we light lamps. In the context of the chapter, read alongside the parable of the sower, Jesus is saying that those who have received the Word in faith are like lamps that have been lit. Their purpose is to shine the light of the Word in such a way that others might be drawn to it and welcomed in.
Jesus reinforces that point with this principle: “Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light” (v. 17). To understand what is being said here, we should not miss how Jesus uses the same language to talk about his own message. He tells the disciples, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God” (v. 10). In other words, the message of the gospel that Jesus preached is “the secrets of the kingdom” that must be revealed. It is the light that ignites the lamp of our lives. And that light must not be hidden but must shine so that others may see it too.
Well, so what? What difference should Jesus’s teaching about the Word here really make? Jesus drives home the implications: “Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away” (v. 18). This verse serves as a conclusion for the whole section of Luke 8, beginning with the parable of the sower, that deals with the way the Word of God works. Verse 18 tells us that the key issue, the vital factor, must be how we hear the Word.
Hebrews 2:1 makes a similar point. The author urges his readers to “pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” When it comes to the way we listen to preaching, the stakes are far higher than we may at first imagine. Hebrews 2:1 warns us of spiritual drift. Luke 8:18 goes even further and warns of eternal consequences if we “have not” when, through the preaching of the Word, every opportunity to “have” has been afforded us. So what does it mean to take care how we hear? How shall we “pay much closer attention to what we have heard”? These are the questions we hope to answer in this chapter. Put more directly, we need to know how we can get the most from expositional preaching.
The Westminster Larger Catechism offers some important help. It asks, “What is required of those that hear the word preached?” and answers, “It is required of those that hear the word preached, that they attend upon it with diligence, preparation, and prayer; examine what they hear by the scriptures; receive the truth with faith, love, meekness, and readiness of mind, as the word of God; meditate, and confer of it; hide it in their hearts, and bring forth the fruit of it in their lives.”
This is an excerpt from the chapter, “Getting the Most Out of Expositional Preaching” from David Strain’s book, “Expository Preaching,” part of the Blessings of the Faith series. Pick up a copy of “Expository Preaching” for more insight into the importance and benefits of this approach to the Word of God. Used with permission.

Those who come to the Father by faith, in repentance, will receive all the kisses of God. He gives us the kiss of a new heart and a new spirit. Our hearts of stone are turned to hearts of flesh by the grace of God. We are kissed with strong assurance. Though the prodigal may have intense fears of walking away again, we see that the father is not apprehensive that the son will disgrace his mercy and forgiveness. For the Father knows that of those who are His, He will not lose one of them.

But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. – Luke 15:20
The kiss of the father in the parable of the prodigal son is full of meaning. The prodigal has returned home, but only after forsaking his father and laying waste to his inheritance. Living comfortably in his father’s house, the son wells up with pride and renounces his father’s authority. He requests his estate and leaves. Filling his life with evil, he takes harlots as his companions, feeds his lusts, and squanders his father’s precious gifts. Oh’ but the child of God is never outside their Father’s providence, and famine hits the land. The prodigal’s hopes are soon dashed upon the rocks of vanity and sin, and he finds himself in bondage.
He is joined to a citizen of that country where he is required to feed pigs. In this state, the lords of this country offer him nothing but to eat and sleep in the pig stalls. For a Jewish man to live with pigs is but another image of his descent into spiritual impurity. Sin brings temporary satisfaction but piles on long-lasting burdens, impossible to remove. The prodigal is in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction and delusion, but the grace of God is far-reaching, and the prodigal comes to himself and says, “It would be better to be a slave in my father’s house than to live here.” What a shame it is that many never come to themselves and never feel the burden of sin on their back, and what a pity many who do feel it never venture to go home. They die in their despair, seeking some way to have the burden removed. They sink ever slowly into the “slough of despond.” What a shame many have even taken their own lives in this despair.
In his unworthy state, covered in the stains and wounds of the foreign land, the prodigal walks slowly home, crestfallen, seeking only servitude in the house of his father. However, he is not even worthy of that, for dishonoring your father and mother is a crime worthy of death under the law.
When he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion. Our Father’s eyes are ever on us, even when we cannot see Him. When our heads hang low, dejected from our sin, He looks and has compassion: even when our pain is self-inflicted. The prodigal’s father then ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. Before the son could say a word, the father had placed his lips upon his son. He did not wait until the filth was washed away. Nor was he concerned with any of the scoffings that the community might bring.
Oh, the kiss of the Father says so much. Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon on this parable, highlights what this kiss shows us. Here are a few of his points. The kiss shows much love for the son. There has been no loss of love in the heart of the father. No uncertainty in the love for his child has occurred due to his son’s crimes. The kiss demonstrates complete forgiveness, as it speaks of absolution. The debt the son incurred has been forgotten, and the burden of sin and guilt is gone. In the kisses of God, we see full restoration. The son is as much a son as he had ever been; the thoughts of servitude in his father’s house are to be rejected. No more food fit for swine, nor clothes fit for prisoners. There shall be a feast fit for royalty, a new robe is to be placed upon him, and a ring to signify to the world that he is part of his father’s family. The son has complete restoration, and all this happens before the son can speak his confession, which he has undoubtedly been rehearsing.
There is a beauty in true humility, for it does not flow from our natural self. It is the direct result of the working of the Spirit of God.
Read More

Written by R. Scott Clark |
Thursday, September 23, 2021
There is such a thing as a message of “cheap grace” and the Dela Cruzes would seem to be the poster children for it. Any preacher who only offers “free salvation” but who omits “take up your cross” as a consequence (not a prior condition) of that grace is a preaching a false, antinomian, Gnostic, therapeutic gospel.

Julie Roys ran a story yesterday by Sarah Einselen about a new congregation, which apparently opened this summer, in San Diego. Living Faith Church is a small congregation pastored by a husband and wife team, Stephen and Angela Dela Cruz. The salacious part of the story is that she was (is?) a porn star and he is a business coach. They met at the former Bethany University, which closed in 2011, an Assemblies of God related school. Together they claim to run ten multi-million dollar businesses. They do not say of what sort. It is not clear whether Angela Dela Cruz is still active in the porn industry but the two are clearly capitalizing on her past to generate “buzz” and interest in this congregation. One social media ad identifies her as an “adult actress,” which is code for pornstar. Judging by what one can see from videos of the services the porn angle may be generating more outrage than new members. They are clearly meeting in a very small space with relatively few people. What is more impressive, however, is how formulaic everything is. We see three musicians on a platform singing the same awful “praise music” as every other would-be mega-church in America. The messages seem to be firmly in the middle of the American evangelical therapeutic religion. Stephen is the poor-man’s Joel Osteen and he is going to help you live your best life now.
Your Porn Life Now
For the sake of discussion, since they are clearly capitalizing on her life in the porn business, let us presume that the Stephen and Angela believe and are teaching others that a being a Christian and living a judgment-free successful life are entirely compatible.  The congregation’s statement of faith looks as if it were written by students from an AOG “university” circa 2011. Whoever wrote the confession wants to be an orthodox, Arminian, Baptistic, Pentecostal. It has a relatively high view of Scripture:
The Bible is God’s Word to all people. It was written by human authors under the supernatural guidance of the Holy Spirit. Because it was inspired by God, the Bible is truth without any mixture of error and is completely relevant to our daily lives.
The Holy spirit is said to be given “subsequent to salvation” and the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” is a second blessing. “This immersion into Spirit-led living provides the Christian with the power to live a fruitful, victorious life, understanding of spiritual truth, and boldness in sharing the good news with others. He also gives us spiritual gifts. As Christians, we seek to live under His daily guidance.” If Mrs Dela Cruz is impenitent about her role in the porn industry, a major source of human trafficking and exploitation and a source of spiritual destruction for many, then they are proposing a definition of the victorious higher life hitherto unknown. Without a hint of irony their statement of faith unequivocally affirms the existence of a literal hell. Salvation is said to be by grace but the statement offers nothing on the doctrines of mortification of sin or vivification in the new life.
Therapeutic Gnosticism
If the mainstream of American evangelicalism has become entirely captive to what Christian Smith, in 2009, called “moralistic therapeutic deism” much of the rest of it has become a subsidiary: Gnostic therapeutic pentecostalism. In Deism God is largely absent. In Pentecostalism, especially of the sort being marketed by the Dela Cruzes, God is a cosmic Door Dash driver. This is not old-school Pentecostalism, which was rooted in the Holiness tradition. As Marx materialized Hegel (by turning the dialectical process of history into class warfare) so the real second blessing offered by the likes of Stephen and Angela Dela Cruz is an emotionally satisfying, financially prosperous life now. Joel Osteen has routed the Azusa Street Revival. Like all the other second-rate business coaches in the world they have the secrets to success. Mind you, unlike Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos, they are not actually producing wealth themselves but they will show you how you can do it. Instead of cheesy late-night television commercials they are holding church services with the requisite praise music, which promises to give participants that shot of endorphins followed by a rousing pep talk.
This is fundamentally Gnostic because it offers a perverse salvation through secret knowledge (Gnosis). This, of course, is what the Gnostics offered in the second century. Like the Gnostics, they hijacked Christianity through redefining terms and changing the story dramatically. In Gnosticism the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh, was rendered a mean, demiurge tied to creation, which was said to be inherently evil. The immaterial, i.e., the spiritual, was said to be good. The key to deliverance from the material world is a secret known only to true Gnostics. They developed an elaborate hierarchy of being and promised to guide followers through the maze. The Jesus of the second-century Gnostic texts is not the Jesus of the Gospels.
Read More

Then as now, cooperation between researchers is the optimal way to leverage all the skills and knowledge available. It is precisely this cybernetic enhancement of our individual powers that can make the sciences today so much more effective than in Galileo’s time. At least, they are when we do not block productive cooperation by censoring disagreements and excluding the most important objections from the debate.

What are we to make of Galileo Galilei? A scientific hero whose revolutionary ideas were quashed by the institutional authority of the early 17th-century church? A natural philosopher who defended Copernicus’ mathematics and astronomy valiantly but was prone to vanity and arrogance? Or even, as Babette Babich reports that controversial philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend repeatedly asserted of Galileo, a “crook”?
It is important to understand in the first place that to ask this question is not to ask a scientific question – the sciences have absolutely no way of answering a question in this form. True, we could choose to reduce Galileo to his astronomical work and then make an assessment of his heliocentric model based on current data. But this would be grossly unfair to Galileo, for if we do this we’re forced to admit that his model is far from accurate, getting right mainly the placement of the sun at the center of the solar system, as Copernicus had already proposed. Galileo needed Kepler’s insight about elliptical orbits to get close to what we now understand as the cosmology of our solar system – without it, divining between the geocentric and heliocentric models was by no means a slam dunk with the evidence available at that time. Indeed, if we look just after the Galileo affair, we will find the astronomer Giovanni Batista Riccioli in 1651 publishing a list of 126 arguments regarding whether the Earth does in fact move, 49 of them in favor and 77 against.
How then can Galileo be enshrined as a scientific hero of any kind? The question is not a trivial one, and opens the door to extremely important and timely questions about scientific practice that matter even more today than in Galileo’s time. What we cannot legitimately conclude without acting prematurely is that since Galileo supported one fact we accept today as scientifically justified – the Earth moves around the sun – he is automatically a heroic figure. On the contrary, the basis of the heroism being asserted here gains its context from the fact the Galileo opposed institutional authority in his time – which means to truly address such a question today is primarily a historical investigation, and also a philosophical one, since a judgment of heroism is a moral judgment rather than a matter of simple fact.
To answer the question ‘What are we to make of Galileo?’ we must therefore commit to much more than a ‘fact check.’ We must undertake a detailed investigation that is not, in neither form nor content, scientific in nature, for all its deep connections with astronomy. What I wish to do in this discussion, however, is not perform that specific investigation (several books already cover this well) but rather to raise a question about contemporary scientific practice against the backdrop of this ambiguity over whether Galileo is to be seen as a hero or a crook. For the matter of the modes of scientific practice and their tensions with institutional authority are acutely relevant to the crisis of knowledge we face today epitomized by the accusation of ‘fake news.’ And in this regard, we have much more to gain from pondering Galileo than settling the status of a mere astronomical fact.
Three Propositions Concerning Scientific Knowledge
Despite our widespread commitment to scientific discovery, the vast majority of us are quite unprepared for dealing with the complexity of authentic scientific problems. This happens in part because of the faith we possess in the work of the sciences to solve problems. Having witnessed technology utterly transform our planet over the last century we afford to the sciences a tremendous power, one that is not unjustified but which is also highly problematic, in ways that greatly exceed the scope of this particular discussion. Because of our collective faith in scientific research, many of us have come to expect that:

An answer can always be provided by scientific means
A single successful experiment can provide clear answers to our questions
Scientific theories have emerged from such successful experiments

It is no wonder we think like this; we’ve been telling this story since at least the 19th century when an argument between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Whewell gave us the term ‘scientist,’ if not perhaps earlier, say, since Boyle’s vacuum pump offered the tantalizing possibility of resolving questions of truth in the laboratory.
Yet all three propositions above are false.
It is this schizophrenic clash between our faith in scientific methods and the unseen yet immense complexities we thus tend to ignore that lies at the heart of the key question we must ask about contemporary scientific research. Once we step beyond merely believing and begin to understand that the work of the sciences is much more fragile than we tend to expect, we may come to recognize that the institutional power that oppressed Galileo is as much a threat to assembling a true picture today as it was in the 17th century.
Not All Questions Can Be Answered Scientifically
This is perhaps the single greatest misunderstanding about the sciences – not every question can be answered by these methods. This is not even one of those points of caution that is superseded by future advances in technique (“in the future, we can answer this, but not now…”). Rather, we must distinguish between questions suitable for answering by scientific methods, questions suitable for answering by other methods, and questions that do not lend themselves to being answered at all.
I foreshadowed this point with the opening question about Galileo – a quintessential example of a problem requiring a historical investigation. The late Mary Midgley was always keen to point to historical methods as an example of questions that can be answered, but in ways that were not in principle scientific. When we want to establish the facts of a prior event, we must make use of all the available evidence, study all the surviving written accounts, and then use deductive reasoning to draw conclusions (often provisionally). Scientific techniques sometimes contribute to this process – if you find a corpse in a bog, carbon dating will get you a time frame, for instance. But these contributions to any given historical puzzle are typically quite minor. What is paramount is a capacity to bring together all the evidence along with our understanding of human life and culture at the relevant place and time. We deduce historical answers through the methods of the detective. That these include scientific evidence, or that other sciences also use deductive reasoning isn’t enough to allow history to be swallowed up by the sciences. On the contrary, these different methods are distinct – and as such, can learn from each other.
As with the historical aspects of the question of Galileo, so with the moral dimensions of the issue – hero versus crook, after all, is more than a simple question of ‘fact checking.’ It requires an understanding of what we mean by heroism, or what justifies the accusation implied in being a crook. Moral or ethical issues belong to the domain of philosophy, but we should not assume from this that philosophers have authority over them – indeed, there is supposed to be no singular source of institutional authority over such matters today, since we are all (quite unlike those living in Galileo’s time) entitled to make our own moral judgments, another point that Midgley was keen to stress.
Much as we hate to admit it, there are also some questions that simply don’t have definitive answers. The very concept of metaphysics is to mark questions beyond (meta) physics i.e. subjects without certain answers. Traditionally, this topic has revolved around theology, but there are also vast landscapes of untestable postulates in ethics, politics, gender, and more besides. That’s not to say mistakes around these issues don’t cause people to erroneously assume that the sciences can muscle in – it happens all the time. It’s rather unsurprising, since it’s easy to confuse the importance of gathering evidence (where experience in a scientific field is usually essential) with the separate process of evaluating it (where non-scientific competences can have just as much bearing).
The reason we value scientific methods for answering some of the tough questions is precisely because where they can be brought to bear, the methods of the sciences can crack some major mysteries wide open. But ‘some’ is the word that gets overlooked in this regard. The destiny of the sciences is not total knowledge of everything but an ever-adapting set of frameworks for understanding the world around us. It is far from clear that we should assume an end point for the scientific adventure – unless, alas, it is human extinction. Rather, a great deal of what we want the scientific community to investigate are questions that relate to what we happen to be doing now, and these will not hold the same salience in the future. The parallax of stars and their apparent sizes is no longer of interest to contemporary astronomers even though it was of vital importance when comparing the differing predictions made by geocentric or heliocentric cosmologies in Galileo’s day. We misunderstand the nature of knowledge production entirely when we imagine a simple kind of ratcheted progress, new discoveries adding to an ever-growing pile of knowledge. On the contrary, the vast majority of all scientific work is destined for immense and eternal obscurity, since it depends for its significance entirely upon the circumstances of its commission.
It is not because the sciences can answer all questions that we esteem their achievements. Rather, it is because when a topic is amenable to scientific study we have a hope of definite answers that are denied to us in most aspects of life. But this yearning for certainty is both a powerful motivating force and an immense liability when it comes to trusting experiments to answer questions for us…
Singular Experiments Reveal Almost Nothing
We’ve all seen those movies where, after a laborious research montage, the scientist finally has a breakthrough and achieves the MacGuffin the heroes desperately need. This is the heroic legend of scientific research epitomized in The Flaming Lips song, Race For The Prize, and it is just as active in our mythology of Galileo as anywhere else. We love to say that Galileo built a telescope, saw that the Earth revolves around the sun, and discovered the truth. But he didn’t do anything of the kind, and the telescope was not even an appropriate instrument to settle that particular argument. Rather, it was Foucault’s pendulum that was to have the pivotal role – and even that it could not have done were it not for the groundwork laid by Ibn al-Shatir, Copernicus, Galileo, and many more besides.
One of the reasons we have adopted this kind of mythic rendering of scientific work is that our way of telling the stories of famous researchers is to repackage their lives to make them into glorious lone heroes for truth, often and especially against a closed-minded dogmatism attributed to religion or government. Since the early 20th century, Galileo has been the poster child for this. Bertolt Brecht’s 1938 play Life of Galileo may have accelerated the adoption of this narrative, although Brecht’s Galileo says much in the service of its author’s philosophy that would have been vile to Galileo himself. Arguably, his fight with the church authorities was closer to the 17th century equivalent of a nerd flame war (and displaying the same degree of ill-judged social awkwardness as that analogy implies) than anything heroic, although the stakes (pun intended) were certainly far higher.
Read More

Written by Jesse T. Jackson |
Thursday, September 23, 2021
A professor from the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Christopher B. James, gave his thoughts as to why he believes the trend of pastors leaving ministry is occurring. James said, “In addition to being a hard job with mediocre pay, many pastors don’t think it’s worth it to try to maintain dying churches and are curious what Christian life & leadership might look like outside the clergy role. It’s part of a wider unraveling and reconfiguration of church.” White replied to Prof. James, “I think you’re on to something.”

High numbers of pastors leaving ministry are an an exodus that’s concerning to pastors‘ coach and co-founder Dan White Jr. of The KINEO Center, a place focused on offering healing for tired and traumatized leaders. On May 3, 2021, White posted on Twitter that he knows 28 pastor friends who have resigned this year, most of whom are leaving pastoral ministry altogether. White coaches approximately 70 to 80 pastors a year in his circle of about 500 or so.
Why Are Pastors Leaving Ministry?
White, a former pastor himself, asked “What is occurring?”
It doesn’t seem to be in any particular denomination as White shared that his friends come from a mix of denominations including Baptist, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Anglican, Methodist, Mennonite, and Christian Reformed. Only nine of them were Evangelical pastors and just 10 out of the 28 he mentioned were bi-vocational.
“I’ve been coaching for about 10 years, never seen this kind of disruption.”- Dan White Jr.
White replied to a follower’s question about the average age and lifestyle of those he has seen transitioning out of pastoral ministry, saying in his experience they’ve been between the ages of 35 to 50. Some have served as many as 25 years in the pastoral ministry. “I do think it’s some kind of inner crisis with ‘what are my desires, really?’ coupled with a pain threshold ‘the attacks and loss are just too much; I’m miserable,’” he wrote.
He revealed that about half the 28 pastors he referred to were “People of Color” when someone asked if the majority of those who have left the ministry were African American pastors. He also stated that all of the 28 left by their choice; they weren’t forced out or fired.
A professor from the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Christopher B. James, gave his thoughts as to why he believes the trend of pastors leaving ministry is occurring. James said, “In addition to being a hard job with mediocre pay, many pastors don’t think it’s worth it to try to maintain dying churches and are curious what Christian life & leadership might look like outside the clergy role. It’s part of a wider unraveling and reconfiguration of church.” White replied to Prof. James, “I think you’re on to something.”
The active Twitter thread contains a handful of pastors currently in ministry and some who have left the ministry. One pastor told White, “As a minister struggling with whether to stay in parish ministry, I’m so hurt by all the replies that blame clergy for quitting. I’ve given my life to the Church, asked my family to sacrifice & ended up with my a** kicked. American church is broken.”
A former pastor of 30 years also wrote, “I’m one of those. After 30 years I felt God was calling me out of paid ministry into the marketplace. I’m convinced that many, many pastors have lost the ability to speak the same language of those outside of the church.”
Read More

We also must not be reckless or foolish in putting ourselves in danger. As is so often the case, it is a matter of seeking what it is that God wants us to do, and then doing it. But it must be done in God’s way. When Moses killed the Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew, he meant well, but he was acting in the flesh. But many years later when he stood before Pharaoh and defied him to his face, he was acting according to God’s express command. Both actions were very risky, and both had consequences, but only one was done in God’s way, in God’s time, and with God’s enabling.

Lately I have been speaking about the issue of risk and how life is always about trade-offs: getting the right balance between sensibly being safe and secure, yet not becoming a virtual slave with no freedoms to achieve such safety. Governments have to weigh up the pros and cons on such matters as do individuals.
So too do Christians. We do not want to be reckless and foolish when it comes to putting ourselves or others in danger, but we do not want to be paralysed by fear and never take any risks. Biblical balance is needed here, along with some common sense.
All this has especially come to the fore over the past 18 months as we have dealt with Covid. I have written often about the issues of fear, risk, freedom and safety. An early piece on this is found here: billmuehlenberg.com/2020/04/18/corona-and-the-elimination-of-risk/
And a much more recent piece is this: billmuehlenberg.com/2021/09/11/fear-safety-and-slavery/
I revisit this set of topics again because I was recently asked by someone how I might reconcile various biblical themes. He wrote:
I’ve been praying a bit about whether I should fight for the helpless or not. I see things of Evil everywhere and only desire to honour God in His ways. I’ve made many wrong choices by thinking I was doing things Gods way, then realised later it was not His will. I came across this proverb 27:12 today and even though it seems wrong to hide, yet it’s seems clear to me, it’s His way. I was reminded of Gideon hiding in the wine press from his enemies. What’s your thoughts in this please?
A fair question, and an important one. I did offer him a short reply at the time, and I trust he does not mind if I speak to this matter further here. What follows then is a much larger version of the response that I gave to him:
As to this proverb, it is actually repeated twice. The ESV rendering of Proverbs 22:3 and 27:12 puts it this way: “The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.” The HCSB renders the verses this way: “A sensible person sees danger and takes cover; the inexperienced keep going and are punished.”
These two proverbs speak to the matter of being wise in the face of danger, and of not putting ourselves in harm’s way unnecessarily. As such they offer good, sound advice to all of us. We always need to take care, to be cautious, and to avoid recklessly endangering ourselves and those around us.
But that is not the end of the matter of course. Sometimes we must do risky things – things that may well result in harm to ourselves – even death. That too can simply be a matter of common sense. Most people, if they hear a child screaming as a stray dog is attacking him or her will rush in to try to rescue the child. They know full well that this can be risky, and they may well get hurt in the process.
Read More

To prepare is not to build a boat in the backyard, but to eat and drink, speak and marry all while looking and waiting for Christ’s promised coming. We live mindful of eternal souls. We live expecting rain. We live in reverent fear of God. What does the world see you building? Is there anything in your life that can only be explained by Christ and his return?

Life as usual, many will come to realize, was never life as usual.
When Christ returns, many will discover too late that they lived within a dream. Years came and years went. Spring turned to autumn, autumn to winter. They grew and grew old but never awoke. “Normal life” lied to them. So, Jesus foretells,
As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. (Matthew 24:37–39)
The world-ending return of Jesus will be as the world-ending days of Noah. Of what did Noah’s days consist? Busy people unaware — eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, going about life “as usual.” The very morning of the flood, people simply concerned themselves with whatever laid before them. The immediate seemed most urgent, most real. Planning meals, changing diapers, preparing weddings, working, buying, and selling — these seemed to them the greatest verities of life. Until the rain began to fall.
Texture of Days
Like many today, the people of Noah’s day abstracted the meaning of life from the texture of their average days.
They touched Wednesday and it felt like every other Wednesday. They began work and finished work. They ate, ate again, and finished their work to eat. They played with kids on the floor. Busied with homework and house projects. They talked and listened, laughed and yawned, rose from sleep and slept — nothing extraordinary. Each day didn’t feel like it held eternal significance. Nothing otherworldly felt at stake. Today didn’t feel like anything but today.
God, demons, souls, eternity didn’t grow before their eyes like grass that needs mowing. They did not stir to consider the unseen. And when they did, the unreality of it seemed as implausible as rain drowning a dry land days away from sea. They intuited what is ultimate about life from the ordinary experiences of life. A fatal mistake. And as the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
Man and His Boat
While they considered their daily planners, anxious about what they considered the real contents of Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays, Noah worked with his sons on the unlikely, the unthinkable. While the world ate and drank, he labored. While they went on with things as usual, he and his sons prepared a stadium-sized boat to shelter the family. “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household” (Hebrews 11:7).
Imagine the scene. Decade after decade, children were born, diapers were changed, houses were built, adults looked out their window and saw what they had seen since childhood: Noah and his sons laboring on the ship. And Noah spoke a message as strange as the boat he was building: he warned of divine judgment. Perhaps some listened the first week. But eventually, the listeners needed to get back to real life.
Read More

David’s great psalm employs the simplest of images—that of a shepherd and his sheep—and assures of the greatest of truths—that God is forever present with his people. “The LORD is my shepherd” he says so simply, “I shall not want.”

No work of art is more beautiful, more valuable, more irreplaceable, than the twenty-third psalm. It has stood through the ages as a work of art more exquisite than The Night Watch, more faultless than Mona Lisa, more thought-provoking than Starry Night. The lines of the greatest poets cannot match its imagery, the words of the greatest theologians its profundity. Credentialed academics may wrestle with it, yet young children can understand it. It is read over cradles and cribs, over coffins and crypts, at births and deaths, at weddings and funerals. It is prayed in closets, sung in churches, and chanted in cathedrals.
This psalm dries more crying eyes, raises more drooping hands, and strengthens more weakened knees than any man or angel. It tends to every kind of wound and ministers to every kind of sorrow. To trade it for all the wealth of all the worlds would be the worst of bargains. I’d have rather penned the twenty-third psalm than written Hamlet, than painted Sunflowers, than sculpted The Thinker, for when Shakespeare’s play has been forgotten, when Van Gogh’s painting has faded, when Rodin’s sculpture has been destroyed, David’s song will remain. We impoverish ourselves if we do not read it, do not meditate upon it, and do not treasure it. We weaken ourselves if we do not drink deeply of it in our deepest sorrows.
David’s great psalm employs the simplest of images—that of a shepherd and his sheep—and assures of the greatest of truths—that God is forever present with his people. “The LORD is my shepherd” he says so simply, “I shall not want.” Because the LORD is his shepherd, this sheep can have confidence that he will never lack for any necessity, for the shepherd loves his flock and will faithfully attend to their every need. When they are tired he will make them lie down in green pastures, when they are thirsty he will lead them beside still waters, when they are downtrodden he will restore them, when they are lost or uncertain he will lead them in the right paths. The sheep can rest in peace under the shepherd’s watchful eye, they can be assured of every comfort under his tender care.
Read More

Written by Guy M. Richard |
Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Prayer is not preparation for the real work that leaders do. It is the real work. Prayer gives us access to God and to every help that we need to live the Christian life and to minister where God has placed us. For, as Paul said under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).
Prayer Is Our Lifeline on the Battlefront
Paul teaches us in Ephesians 6:10–20 that our lives will be characterized by war—not war against earthly powers and armies but war against “the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, [and] against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (v. 12). The devil and all who do his bidding, Paul says, are seeking to thwart the Lord’s work in the world by destroying his people, leading us astray, and rendering us ineffective.
But the Lord has not left us alone in our struggle. He has given everything we need to take our stand and fight. He has given us the “belt of truth,” the “breastplate of righteousness,” the “readiness” that comes from the “gospel of peace,” the “shield of faith,” the “helmet of salvation,” and the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (vv. 14–17). What is more, he has also given us access to him in prayer. That is why Paul encourages us to give ourselves to “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (v. 18). He knows that we are at war, and because we are, we need to be able to call in to our commanding General for help at every moment.
John Piper has helpfully referred to prayer as “a war- time walkie-talkie” that connects us to our commanding General and enables us to “call in firepower for conflict with a mortal enemy.”8 In speaking this way, Piper reminds us that we are not alone in our fight. It’s not that God has given us everything we need to make our stand and then left us to fend for ourselves. God has given us every- thing we need, and he has also given us ongoing access to himself. We have access to his limitless supplies of wisdom, power, and grace. We have access to all that he is, in and of himself, whenever and wherever we may need it. And that is a tremendous blessing!
Prayer is necessary precisely because you and I are at war. God has given us prayer so that we can survive. It is our lifeline that connects us to him. When we realize that, we will be more motivated to give ourselves to prayer and, specifically, to kingdom-focused prayer. Praying for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven (see Matt. 6:10) is not simply an optional luxury when we are at war. It is an absolute necessity. It is life itself.
Given the importance of prayer as a lifeline to secure the help of our commanding General in our fight against Satan and his armies, it should be no surprise that the apostles give pride of place to the role of prayer in their exercise of leadership. They see that their primary responsibility is to “devote [themselves] to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4). Note the order—first prayer, then the ministry of the Word. Since the apostles were also elders in the church (see 1 Peter 5:1), what they say about the place of prayer in their own ministries applies to all those who serve as elders. In fact, I would apply it to every follower of Jesus, because we are all called to some kind of ministry, whether that takes place within our group of friends, our family, our workplace or community, or our church.
If everything we have said about the nature of the Christian life and the role of prayer in it is true, then it makes sense that those who take up the mantle of leadership would give first place to prayer. The degree to which we don’t is the degree to which we misunderstand what prayer is and why we should be doing it. Prayer is not preparation for the real work that leaders do. It is the real work. Prayer gives us access to God and to every help that we need to live the Christian life and to minister where God has placed us. For, as Paul said under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).
This is an excerpt from the chapter, “Prayer is Necessary” from Guy M. Richard’s book, “Persistent Prayer,” part of the Blessings of the Faith series. Pick up a copy of, “Persistent Prayer” for more gospel encouragement and practical tools for growing in prayer. Used with permission.