In saying “we have come to know and to believe” God’s love for us, John reminds us that our theological convictions are proven and deepened by living experience. Just as a good marriage takes seriously the vows made on the wedding day, each spouse learning to daily rely on the other’s love, so in our relationship with God do we learn to rely on His love. In Christ’s economy, trials and tests come if for no other reason than that we might learn to rely on God’s love for us.

Doubt isn’t unusual for the Christian. If we take a brief inventory of our spiritual pilgrimages, many of us will recall times when we’ve faced uncertainty, wrestling with whether our faith is genuine. Aware of this, John said that he wrote his first epistle “that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13).
The basis of our certainty isn’t merely that we’re religious, that we joined a Christian club, or that we subscribe to the Ten Commandments. Believers know God personally and experientially. Central to the Christian claim is that God lives in us, and we abide in Him (John 1:12; 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 John 2). Indeed, we may summarize the message of 1 John in a statement: we are God’s children, and our Christian experience is real.
In 1 John 4:13–16, the apostle expounds this claim, providing three evidences of God’s presence in our lives.
We Are Given God’s Spirit
We can say that God lives in us, first, because He gives us His Spirit:
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” (1 John 4:13)
While it’s impossible for us to have only a portion of the Holy Spirit, it is possible for Him to have less than all of us.
A number of things happen to us when we’re born again of God’s Spirit. Not only does God wipe the record clear of our sins and adopt us into His family; He also unites us with Christ in His death and resurrection. United to Christ, we become God’s sons and daughters (Rom. 8:15–16). And, as John reminds us, we receive the Holy Spirit.
The fact that we receive the Holy Spirit at conversion is a biblical reality, though certain groups deny it. Some teach that we receive the Spirit at conversion, but not in full; they assert that He’s given progressively in installments, so to speak. But the Bible teaches the very reverse of that. When we receive the Spirit, we receive all of Him. It isn’t possible for us to have Him at 60 percent, for He’s an indivisible unity. The Spirit is one divine person.
Now, while it’s impossible for us to have only a portion of the Holy Spirit, it is possible for Him to have less than all of us. That’s why Paul warns against Christians grieving God’s Spirit (Eph 4:30). Instead, we are to “be filled with the Spirit” (5:18). By this Paul means not that we receive more of what we don’t already possess but that we experience a constant renewing and directing of God’s Spirit in our lives. And the degree to which the Spirit has fullness in our lives is the degree to which we may experience assurance that God lives in us.
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Written by Robert A. J. Gagnon |
Thursday, April 13, 2023
In early 2020, Saddleback pastor Chris Clark and his wife, Elisa, co-founded a Saddleback chapter of Embracing the Journey, a ministry for parents of LGBTQ children, with long-time Saddleback members, Doug and Shauna Habel. By the end of 2021, an ETJ newsletter revealed that Saddleback was hosting four ongoing ETJ support groups and one small group.

“Embracing the Journey: A Christian Parents’ Blueprint to Loving Your LGBTQ Child” by Greg and Lynn McDonald
Megan Carl Basham has done some fine work exposing the movement in Saddleback Church toward embracing homosexual practice and transgenderism. It’s not just Andy Stanley’s church that is going under. Here Megan speaks about the impact of the stealth homosexual front organization (my phrase), “Embracing the Journey,” the group that is putting on a conference for Stanley’s church in September, making inroads at Saddleback as well (all that follows is a verbatim quotation from Megan’s article:
‘In his podcast interview with Russell Moore, [Rick] Warren insisted that concerns of leftward drift in the SBC generally and Saddleback specifically are unfounded. “This is not a battle between liberals and conservatives,” he said. “All the liberals left a long time ago.” Yet there is significant evidence that his church is already sliding toward liberalism when it comes to homosexuality and gender identity.
In early 2020, Saddleback pastor Chris Clark and his wife, Elisa, co-founded a Saddleback chapter of Embracing the Journey, a ministry for parents of LGBTQ children, with long-time Saddleback members, Doug and Shauna Habel. By the end of 2021, an ETJ newsletter revealed that Saddleback was hosting four ongoing ETJ support groups and one small group.
While ETJ does not specify whether it affirms LGBTQ lifestyles and identities, its founder, Greg McDonald, sits on the board of Renovus, another faith-based non-profit that does assert that homosexuality and transgenderism are compatible with Christianity. The two organizations are closely linked.
Billing itself as a religious nonprofit that exists to “[reclaim] faith for LGBTQ+ Christians,” Renovus says its vision is “a world where no one has to choose between their faith and sexual orientation or gender identity.” While McDonald does not offer his views on homosexuality or transgenderism in his ETJ bio, in his Renovus bio, he shares, “It simply breaks my heart when people are told they can’t be a Christian and LGBTQ.”
Along with recommending ETJ, Renovus endorses groups like The Reformation Project, GayChurch.org and Q Christian Fellowship. All are dedicated, in the words of The Reformation Project, to “advancing LGBTQ Inclusion in the Church,” and all claim that “church teachings that condemn same-sex relationships and transgender people cause serious harm in the lives of LGBTQ Christians.” One more commonality: all three activist groups endorse ETJ.
And the connections continue.
On its events page, Renovus lists an upcoming ETJ conference in Atlanta. The lineup of speakers includes Saddleback Pastor Chris Clark, Renovus board member Debbie Causey, as well as a number of authors like Matthew Vines, David Gushee, and Justin Lee, who are well known for rejecting biblical orthodoxy on homosexuality and transgenderism in favor of full LGBTQ inclusion in the church.
But even if ETJ were not so deeply intertwined with openly affirming organizations and influencers, its recommendations and activities should still call Saddleback’s discernment in deciding to partner with the organization into serious question.
Nowhere in its online materials does ETJ characterize LGBTQ identities or behaviors as sinful. Indeed, the vast majority of its recommended resources are explicitly affirming (again, from Gushee, Vines, and Lee, as well as John Pavolitz, Brian McLaren, Colby Martin, and more).
To return again to those who launched ETJ at Saddleback — a close examination of Shauna Habel and Chris Clark’s activism suggests that fears about the connection between churches who shift stances on ordaining women and those who shift on LGBTQ issues are well-founded.
In a Facebook fundraising video for the documentary 1946, which argues that the traditional Christian condemnation of homosexuality traces back to a modern translation error, Habel (who sometimes goes by Habel-Morgan) explains how she came to share this belief.
Describing her attendance at a 2016 Reformation Project conference with her daughter, Habel says, “I saw gay Christians worshipping God. I saw the Holy Spirit. And I knew that God was in that place.”
Habel has been clear on Twitter that part of her mission is persuading churches to abandon biblical orthodoxy with respect to sexuality and gender. In response to trans-identifying actress Ellen Page’s criticism of non-affirming churches she posted, “Churches like Hillsong that mandate queer celibacy should try a year of solitary themselves…God’s end game is love.”
When a journalist posted a story about the gay marriage of Department of Transportation head Pete Buttigieg, Habel replied that she “works with conservative parents to help them become affirming.” And she replied to author Beth Moore’s explanation for why she removed a passage condemning homosexuality from an older book, “I believe the sin the Bible spoke about in regard to homoerotic behavior was the abusive rape or lust of others and not love.”
Habel is also at work on her own affirming materials, assisting LGBTQ activist Kathy Baldock on a forthcoming book titled, How The Bible Became Anti-Gay: Forging a Sacred Weapon.
Chris Clark has little online presence either as a Saddleback pastor or as an activist with ETJ, but he, Habel, and McDonald were all speakers at The Reformation Project’s 2020 conference, “Reconcile and Reform.” Again, The Reformation Project was founded by gay activist Matthew Vines to “equip and empower Christians to advocate for LGBTQ inclusion in their faith communities.”
It’s worth emphasizing that according to ETJ’s newsletter, the Clarks and Habels introduced ETJ to Saddleback two-and-a-half years before Warren retired in September 2022. It’s also clear the church is well aware of its activities as the ministry is listed on Saddleback’s website under “care and support” events.
Though Clark’s LinkedIn page no longer appears to be available, it previously revealed that he has been affiliated with Saddleback in some professional capacity since 1989. It also showed that he has been a Saddleback care pastor at the Lake Forest campus for four-and-a-half years.
His ETJ bio provides the further detail that he leads Saddleback’s counseling training—a role that would presumably include teaching lay counselors how to respond to congregants dealing with homosexuality or transgenderism. Further, both The Reformation Project and ETJ cite Clark as a “Saddleback pastor” in his speaker bios, suggesting the church endorses his activities in this arena.
Finally, the couple Warren selected to lead Saddleback don’t seem entirely clear on the Bible’s stance on homosexuality either. When asked whether a gay “married” couple should carry on with their sinful relationship after coming to Christ, Andy and Stacie Wood answered, “I don’t know. That’s really hard.”
They went on to say “there is no black-and-white answer” and they’d have to ask the couple how they “feel the Holy Spirit is leading them.” The Woods did not cite any Scripture in their response.
I reached out to Saddleback about their decision to partner with ETJ and about the involvement of one of their pastors and two of their ministry leaders with The Reformation Project and did not receive a reply.’
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Your Bible reading habit (or lack thereof) won’t increase or decrease God’s love for you. But your spiritual discipline will very much affect the warmth of your heart toward truth. Your devotion to Scripture will very much impact your delight in the glories of Christ and the gospel.

The claim in my title might seem like nonsense to some people, because maybe they’ve tried to read the Bible and just can’t engage it very long or with much interest. I can imagine pushback from someone who says, “Some people like fish; some don’t. Some people like watching baseball; some don’t. Some people find the Bible interesting; some don’t.”
But I’m contending that my claim isn’t subjective in the way that a food preference or a sports interest is subjective. I’m saying that, objectively, the Bible isn’t boring. It is the revelation of the living God to us. If we find the Bible dull or boring, the problem is with us and not with the Bible.
In a previous article, I talked about four reasons why people might struggle with an interest in Scripture. And in this article I want to list reasons five through eight.
Fifth, maybe you’re unaware of certain historical matters. No matter what chapter or book you open in Scripture, you are thousands of years removed from the composition and content of what you read. You should expect, then, that more understanding about certain historical places or customs or laws would fill in the gaps in your mind.
But how curious are you? Learning about biblical background issues takes work, some research, some resources. There are atlases and commentaries and study Bibles that can illuminate what seems perplexing at first glance. So be a curious reader. Ask yourself, “Why is this here? What role does this passage/chapter play in the surrounding flow of Scripture? What details about ____ do I not know and need to investigate further?”
Sixth, maybe you’re reading too quickly. Bible reading is not a race. What if you slowed down?
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