Everyone Hides, But Where?
When the news stirs fear in you, do not choose distraction and pretend all is well. Instead, hide in a healthy way – running into the fortress that is our God. That is, our God, the God of angel armies, the God who has chosen to be with us.
For several generations, some of us have lived with relative stability. Yes, our cultures have shifted and changed. And yes, we have seen our military forces participate in conflict. But seismic shifts that rock our world have not been so familiar to many of us. The past few years have changed that. If the world can change so suddenly, then maybe we would do well to be ready for significant events. Actually, if we are involved in church leadership, we should be both preparing our people for the future and preparing ourselves for major moments that will surely come.
Recently, my wife and I enjoyed another anniversary and took some time together in Psalm 46. This is a great passage to soak in for your own benefit. And it is a great passage to be ready to share with others both before and when the need arises. It is a Psalm of healthy hiding.
When the constant stream of news is suddenly shattered by something genuinely significant, where can we go? When the normal rhythm of daily tasks grinds to a halt because something huge is happening, how can we find safety? And when we look beyond the normal news narrative and see such significant and terrible agendas at play, who can be trusted? Psalm 46 points us to the answer.
Psalm 46 falls neatly into three stanzas, neatly demarcated by a Selah to give us the opportunity to contemplate. The first stanza establishes a key thought that is then picked up in a refrain at the end of stanzas two and three. It is a clear Psalm, easy to read, and probably well worth committing to memory!
Stanza 1 serves to establish a truth that will weave through the whole Psalm. Our refuge and strength is God himself, and our God is always accessible to us. The result is that we will not fear. Four situations are described to underline how secure we are in our God. Even an earthquake, even mountains being relocated, even raging seas, even the normal secure boundaries of creation trembling – even if the whole created order should revert to utter chaos, we will not fear. The character of God is more trustworthy than the apparently permanent mountains and boundaries of the seas? Yes. Selah.
Despite appearances in the first three verses, I do not think the writer is really focused on natural disasters. He seems to be using them as descriptions of having your world rocked. Even a hypothetical upheaval that impacts everything considered permanent and stable would not undermine the reality of God being our ever-present refuge and strength.
In the second stanza, from verses 4-7, the writer zeroes in on the threat of war. He begins with two verses describing the tranquil city of God, the place where he reigns and is present.
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How to Recover from a Toxic Church and Bounce Back Even Better
Prioritize healing, but don’t use recovery as an excuse to become apathetic. Seek the help you need and do not walk alone. No one should navigate a difficult season solo. Make phone calls to your mentor, counselor, and close friends. Be grateful for those who respond positively.
When the church causes hurt, it pollutes God’s calling and creates a toxicity that works against the gospel.
The goal is to minimize church hurt and maximize church unity. Here is reality. Something will happen in almost every church because ministry includes people. In some cases, the pastor is the cause of the hurt. In other cases, the people of the church hurt the pastor. Pastors can be responsible for church hurt, but this article focuses on how pastors should respond when experiencing a toxic church culture.
Pastors can experience various forms of church hurt, some more painful than others.“I’m not being fed, so I’m leaving.”
“People are saying. . .”
“I love you, but. . .”
“I noticed you bought a vehicle. How can you afford that?”
“You should listen and learn from my favorite YouTube preacher.”
“I support you, but I don’t want to talk to my friends about their negative attitudes.”
“Why do your kids act that way?”
“Why is your spouse not more involved?”Now, there is a difference between hurt and toxicity. The former is personal. The latter is cultural. You may experience toxicity but not be personally hurt. You may be personally hurt but not in a toxic culture. Or you may feel the compounding effects of both.
Not toxic or hurtful: A healthy church acts as God designed.
Toxic, but not hurtful: The culture is poisonous, but the people are not after you personally.
Not toxic, but hurtful: In these cases, an individual or small group is attacking you unbeknownst to the rest of the congregation. This situation is usually short-term, as even a small group will eventually affect the church’s culture.
Toxic and hurtful: The culture is hurtful, and at least some people are after you personally.Though there is much overlap between toxic church culture and personal hurt, making this distinction is critical for pastors. The pathway to reconciliation is clearer when a toxic culture is not present because the process involves a small group of people (perhaps just two) rather than the entire congregation. What are some warning signs of a toxic church culture?
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Even Fevers Matter to Jesus
Written by A.W. Workman |
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
All of our physical, emotional, spiritual suffering is welcome in the practice of the great physician—even the seemingly-small stuff. He will not despise us if we come or send us away. He won’t sigh and help us reluctantly. He’ll take our hand, and sooner or later, help us to rise up, well again, and able to serve.I’ve always loved the placement of the story where Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law. The account is a short one. She has a fever, so Jesus touches her hand. She is healed, rises, and like a good Middle Eastern mom immediately begins to serve her guests. In Matthew, this non-flashy miracle comes directly after Jesus has healed a leper and a paralyzed servant who was suffering terribly. And it’s followed by Jesus casting out demons and healing all the sick brought to him in Capernaum. In Luke and Mark the preceding account is of the showdown with the demonized man in the synagogue. (Matt 8:1-17, Mark 1:21-33, Luke 4:31-41).
In this context, the healing of a fever seems like a small thing. “Big deal, fevers are ho-hum, everyday stuff. Casting out demons and healing those with life-threatening diseases and excruciating pain? Now that’s what really counts.” Yet there it is, a simple healing of a simple illness, placed in all three synoptic gospels, a reminder that Jesus cares about fevers too. Apparently, he does not scoff at requests to heal the little stuff, but even there he delights to show his compassion and power.
Perhaps fevers were more life-threatening in first century Galilee. But still, a qualitative difference remains. The doctors in Capernaum would have felt like they had adequate medicine for fevers. There were treatable by normal means, as it were. Leprosy and demon-possession? Not so much. Peter’s household may have felt some temptation to not ask for healing. After all, shouldn’t Jesus’ power and attention be saved for the big stuff, especially when local remedies existed for things like fevers? Whether they felt this or not, we are not told. We are simply told that they told Jesus about her fever and he healed her.
This is the logic of faith functioning as it should. Jesus can heal bigger and badder things, so therefore let’s be quick to ask him to take care of this fever also. This is true humility, faith like a child. Yet so often we fall into a different kind of logic, where because we know Jesus can heal bigger and badder things, we think he shouldn’t be bothered with our little forms of suffering – if we even put them in the category of suffering at all. I know that I for one am often guilty of taking headache medicine without praying for God to heal. Even today my kids are home sick from school, yet it took me until I wrote this post to actually pray for them. My underlying assumption seems to be that it’s not worth bringing the little stuff to God, that either he or I really can’t be bothered.
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Read God’s Law for Maximal Application
Written by William B. Fullilove |
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
The Divines provide us a powerful biblical training that forbids us from adopting a merely privatized faith. Their call on our lives is to emulate their patterns of interpretation and to apply God’s law to every area of life. This is what godliness looks like.When we confess our sins in worship, we confess both the wrong we’ve done and the good we’ve left undone. In so doing, we follow a long Christian tradition that deeply considers the full implications of God’s commandments, reading them expansively—never narrowly—to search out both the positive and negative implications of each commandment for the Christian life.
It’s this maximal reading of the law, a thirst to apply the principles—not merely the letter—of God’s commands into every area of life, that we see modeled throughout the Bible and with great depth in our Reformed tradition.
In the Law Itself
We see this model envisioned in the way Leviticus 6 works out the implications of the eighth commandment:
The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “If anyone sins and commits a breach of faith against the LORD by deceiving his neighbor in a matter of deposit or security, or through robbery, or if he has oppressed his neighbor or has found something lost and lied about it, swearing falsely—in any of all the things that people do and sin thereby—if he has sinned and has realized his guilt and will restore what he took by robbery or what he got by oppression or the deposit that was committed to him or the lost thing that he found or anything about which he has sworn falsely, he shall restore it in full and shall add a fifth to it, and give it to him to whom it belongs on the day he realizes his guilt” (Lev. 6:1–5).
Leviticus makes clear that “stealing” is far more than simply taking something from your neighbor.
Deception in issues of a deposit, oppression of another, finding something lost and avoiding returning it, misleading others —all these, and by implication even more, would count as violations of the spirit of the eighth commandment. The law itself indicates the commandments should be read expansively, not narrowly.
By Our Savior
We see the same model in the words of Jesus in Matthew 19:
And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions (Matt. 19:16–22).Christ’s point, of course, was that the young man’s piety was not as exemplary as he would have hoped. True piety doesn’t simply end with avoiding sins of commission, being able to say, “These I have kept.” Keeping the law includes avoiding sins of omission as well.
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