God is not interested in simply re-tweaking a few behaviors and calling them good. He is about repentance and radical transformation in our lives! Jesus is not about behavioral retraining of a therapeutic relationship which is reward-based. That is basically to stop bad behavior and start doing good behavior like training a dog! How does he sanctify us and make us more like Jesus? 

“You’re Ready to Go!” Those are the words I received from my Senior Pastor! I felt pretty good about myself. I was 20, single, and was still in Bible college. What can go wrong right?
Now that I’ve been 15 years fast forward, I have been in ministry, and some may have the idea that it was an easy-breezy journey as it led to where I am today. But that was not the case. I went through a significant church conflict as a young pastor that has shaped the rest of my ministry.
Knowing where you start helps us understand how we can end at the final destination. Hope while suffering and strife, gives them fuel to run together.
God is not interested in simply re-tweaking a few behaviors and calling them good. He is about repentance and radical transformation in our lives! Jesus is not about behavioral retraining of a therapeutic relationship which is reward-based. That is basically to stop bad behavior and start doing good behavior like training a dog!
How does he sanctify us and make us more like Jesus? Sometimes, he brings great affliction. There’s nothing like the school of suffering is there? Trial, tribulation, testing, and temptation…. These were all part of the equation of becoming the person I am today.
What is Your Life About?
“What brings you in today?” That is often how I begin a counseling session. I sometimes wonder, how Jesus would approach us in the mess.
A humanistic approach in psychotherapy would say, “Not get too involved” because of transference. The clinical model is where you are the authority in the room and that is under your tool so you can be trusted and have a “cold” and “distant” relationship.
I’m thankful Jesus was not sent for a professional relationship, but Jesus seeks for a personal relationship. The world avoids messed up people, but Jesus runs to messed up people. Jesus would look at our suffering and he would give a word, a look, and a touch.
Jesus began his ministry of service by proclaiming the good news of God.  What is this good news? Gospel which means “good news.” Specifically, it refers to the good news of salvation through Jesus. It comes from the Old English word god-spell (meaning “good news”) which comes from the Greek word euaggelion (Strong’s #2098, eu = “good,” angelion = “message”).
The good news is all about Jesus! The good news is both from God and about God. As one commentator put it this way, “Men and women have been longing to hear such a message. Now they not only hear it but encounter the One who can deliver it.”
Jesus then called the disciples to himself with his life. He wanted to communicate with a life of discipleship which is not easy. He sees the life of the disciples and they will suffer for their faith. Jesus’ call to discipleship is the main point that we see. What it means to carry the cross.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34).  What does carrying the cross cost look like? Christians ought to believe and obey: It is not just knowing the Word of God.
So, what does a follower of Jesus look like practically? What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ? What is the cost of the call to “discipleship” in the process of learning to become like Christ?
Who is Jesus Christ?
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” (Mark 1:2-3). This was a quotation from Isaiah from the Old Testament. He was quoting from the Old Testament Isaiah 40:3 with Elijah the eschatological prophet, “a voice crying in the wilderness”
Later in the context says, “Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.” (Mark 1:6). You may be thinking, what is up with this weird dude?
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The painter, not just the canvas, is in view for the Christian writer. He speaks the truth truthfully, sincerely, as he knows it before God. Out of the overflow of the heart, the pen writes. He says with Job, “My words declare the uprightness of my heart, and what my lips know they speak sincerely” (Job 33:3). And with Augustine, “What I live by, I impart” (quoted in James Stewart, Heralds of God, 10). We err if we finely craft content but not our lives. Christian writing is done from a higher art.

The Wisdom Literature (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) is not simply insightful in its content, but delightful in its craft. As dwarves with rare jewels, these authors didn’t just discover golden nuggets of wisdom; they shaped them, forged them, hunched over their obsession, inspected them, held them up to the light, cut them, and framed them into sentences poetic and memorable.
We are wise to enter their mines and learn their skill, not just to discover beauty but to adorn it beautifully. Briefly, then, I want to travel into the mountain of these sages’ eloquence, exploring the deeps of their craftsmanship. Notice what was spoken of one such sage:
Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. (Ecclesiastes 12:9–10)
Handcrafted writing, beautiful writing that adorns God’s wisdom, weighs and studies, arranges with great care, and seeks out words of delight and writes words of truth uprightly.
Weigh the World, Study Scripture
Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying.
First, to write well, this master-jeweler prepared well. Superior gifting did not alibi sloth. That the Preacher possessed superlative wisdom (Ecclesiastes 1:16) did not shorten his preparation. He pored over the wise sayings of others; he wrote wise sayings of his own. And we, with lesser wisdom and ability, also measure and ponder, read and study, roast the truth over in our minds, never tire to hunt each morning for fresh discoveries in the forests of God’s Book.
Particularly, we do not just study how to write, but what we write about. We must have knowledge to teach. Here, some of us step along a cliff’s edge, tempted to preoccupy oneself with how we say over what is said. Many have lost their footing. Pride drags much of man’s toil over the edge to shatter upon the rocks. I grimace when I discover myself painting, like the worst of modern art, indistinct displays of my own artistry, instead of the landscape or the glories beyond.
No, the writing life gropes for metaphor and imagery and beauty because it has heard creation singing God’s praises and has seen his beauty in the face of Jesus Christ. In other words, we love God’s diamonds more than our metal rings and sentences that hold them. In all things, his Son must have preeminence (Colossians 1:18). The wise never lose sight of a God greater than our pens can ever tell. “What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as [the reader’s] servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). So, first, we weigh and study and place all in the light of God and his truth.
Arranging the Flowers
The Preacher did not merely weigh and study, however; he “taught the people knowledge, . . . arranging many proverbs with great care.” He made straight, he put in order, he composed. He forged proverbs, wisdom compressed into Hebrew poetry, what Robert Alter calls “the best words in the best order” (The Art of Biblical Poetry). He engraved the truth to be remembered, considering both style and structure. He knew that to add order was to add beauty and force. He knew a proverb or poem could be less or more than its parts.
Whether compiling proverbs of others or composing his own, he saw that truly beautiful writing has pleasing cohesion. One note out of place disrupts the recital — and is detected even by those who have never heard the music before. How? Because beauty has its anatomy, its symmetry, its mathematics, its order. Assonance, alliteration, metaphor, contrast, and more — the science of lovely prose.
Our God is a God of order and beauty, and he will not have his children fight. Beautiful writing is not a collection of notes struck on a whim, but a symphony; not a handful of casually picked flowers, but a pleasing bouquet. Marvel has their Avengers; Christian eloquence her Arrangers — of words and phrases and paragraphs and chapters. Such writers position their thoughts, others’ thoughts, and (most importantly) God’s thoughts into the vase with “great care.”
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Written by Ben C. Dunson |
Wednesday, June 12, 2024
We all feel shame when we do wrong. We should. It shows us that our consciences are working as God intended. But if we will lay down our claims to self-righteousness and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ we will be saved, we will be justified, we will be in the right with a holy God. And that is the only way sinners can find the solution to their shame.

Repentance vs. Emotional Healing
The western world is not united on much. However, there may be one thing that draws nearly everyone together. It is the attempt to banish the idea that we should ever be ashamed of ourselves or our actions. You see this mentality everywhere you turn. Oprah Winfrey recently commented on her use of a weight loss drug, despite the stigma attached to such weight-loss “cheating”: “‘I now use it as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing,’ Winfrey said, adding that she’s ‘absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself.’”
I’m not particularly interested in how people feel about taking weight loss drugs, but I am interested in the modern quest to banish shame to the outer darkness of polite society. As a part of thinking through how modern therapeutic thinking has gained ground (and done much harm) in the church, I keep coming back to the idea of shame. Shame is also treated in Christians circles much like the plague: we must rid ourselves of shame at all costs. And by this I do not mean rid ourselves of shame by taking our guilt to the cross to find forgiveness from the Lord. No, many in the evangelical church, taking their cues from the wider culture, insist that we must instead make sure that we never feel shame. Shame is treated as a disease. And the cure is convincing ourselves that we have nothing to be ashamed of in the first place. Are you a mom who feels shame because you can’t live up to the Instagram ideal? Are you a dad who struggles with shame because you work too much due to anxiety about paying the bills? Banish the thought.
There are, of course, all sorts of unrealistic, and frankly unbiblical, expectations we can face in life. Mothers are called to be faithful to what God commands, not to some bogus influencer lifestyle, and so on. But the contemporary evangelical aversion to shame goes much further than that. It is an attempt to eliminate the very idea of shame, to portray shame as a harmful feeling to be jettisoned, like any other injurious emotion. Popular authors such as Brené Brown have had a large impact on many in Christian churches. She defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance, connection or belonging.” Following her lead, one Christian author (selected at random from countless possibilities to be found online) insists that “living in shame is neither healthy nor part of God’s plan.” Dealing with shame is routinely put in therapeutic terms by Christian counselors adopting the therapeutic models of worldly psychologists:
Shame is one of the most difficult emotions that can affect you. It is hard to spot on your own, yet it can pervade through almost every area of your life. Overcoming shame is difficult to do. Yet by meditating on Bible verses about shame, you can walk toward the light of healing that God provides.
In a culture defined by the “triumph of the therapeutic” shame needs healing, not repentance.
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