“I have calmed and quieted my soul.”  Psalm 131:2

“There has been a long tradition which sees the mission of the Church primarily as obedience to a command. It has been customary to speak of ‘the missionary mandate.’ This way of putting the matter is certainly not without justification, and yet it seems to me that it misses the point. It tends to make mission a burden rather than a joy, to make it part of the law rather than part of the gospel. If one looks at the New Testament evidence, one gets another impression. Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact? The mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is more like the fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal but life-giving.”

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, 1989), page 116.

The mission of the church flows out of the renewal of the church.

The Countess of Huntingdon recalled the funeral service of Rev. Howell Harris in 1773:

“On the day Mr. Harris was interred we had some special seasons of Divine influence both upon converted and unconverted. It was a day never to be forgotten, but I think ought to be remembered with holy wonder and gratitude by all who were present. . . . Though we had enjoyed much of the gracious presence of God in our assemblies before, yet I think I never saw so much at any time as on that day; especially when the Lord’s Supper was administered, God poured out his Spirit in a wonderful manner. Many old Christians told me they had never seen so much of the glory of the Lord and the riches of his grace, nor felt so much of the gospel before.”

Who wrote that? Hardly a nut. She was upper-class British, 18th-century, Jane Austen’s world. A highly structured culture. Everything just so. And in that culture, in a Bible-believing, standard-brand, non-eccentric theological setting, both the converted and the unconverted were receiving an unforgettable outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones asks, “Does our doctrine of the Holy Spirit and his work leave any room for revival either in the individual or in the church, or is it a doctrine which says that we have all received everything we can have of the Spirit at regeneration, and all we need is to surrender to what we have already? Does our doctrine allow for an outpouring of the Spirit, the ‘gale’ of the Spirit coming down upon us individually and collectively? . . . Is not the greatest sin among Evangelical people today that of quenching the Spirit?”

The longer I live, the more intensely I long for the end of quenching and the return of outpouring.

Quotes from D. M. Lloyd-Jones, The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors (Edinburgh, 1987), pages 301-302.

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Psalm 32:3-4

We hate owning up. Maybe nothing is more painful than facing ourselves and admitting the ugly truth God shows us. We’d rather die than go there. So the Lord helps us get there by making us thoroughly miserable, until our hearts finally crack open, and the confession pours out. Then, what relief!

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Psalm 32:5

It was when David came out in confession that, to his astonishment, he was “surrounded with shouts of deliverance” (verse 7) among God’s penitent people.

A strong evidence of revival power is when we get so fed up with our wretched excuses that we fall at the Lord’s feet, face into what we’ve been avoiding, and there discover new depths of his mercy for the undeserving. This is especially compelling when our confessions become public, as that may be appropriate. Consider this eyewitness account of revival in Korea from a missionary there in 1907:

“Then began a meeting the like of which I had never seen before, nor wish to see again, unless in God’s sight it is absolutely necessary. Every sin a human being can commit was publicly confessed that night. Pale and trembling with emotion, in agony of mind and body, guilty souls, standing in the white light of their judgment, saw themselves as God saw them. Their sins rose up in all their vileness, till shame and grief and self-loathing took complete possession; pride was driven out, the face of man forgotten. Looking up to heaven, to Jesus whom they had betrayed, they smote themselves and cried out with bitter wailing: ‘Lord, Lord, cast us not away forever!’ Everything else was forgotten, nothing else mattered. The scorn of men, the penalty of the law, even death itself seemed of small consequence, if only God forgave. We may have other theories of the desirability or undesirability of public confession of sin. I have had mine; but I know now that when the Spirit of God falls upon guilty souls, there will be confession, and no power on earth can stop it.”

The Lord is moving in our own day too, and we are grateful. But we are not yet consumed by this urgency to get right with God and with one another. We seldom hear such cries of repentance.

God longs to bless our churches and our ministries. But if we think, Our image must not suffer, then we don’t really want God’s blessing. And he knows how to take a hint.

But what if our long-unconfessed sins gush out in repentance before God and one another? We too will be “surrounded with shouts of deliverance” under the mighty outpouring of revival God will send down.

In 1851 a group of British missionaries to Tierra del Fuego was forced to winter in the bitter cold while they waited for their supply ship to arrive. It came too late. They all died of cold and starvation. On Good Friday, April 18th, Richard Williams, a surgeon and Methodist lay preacher, wrote in his journal, “Poor and weak though we are, our abode is a very Bethel to our souls [Genesis 28:10-19], and God we feel and know is here.” On Wednesday, May 7th, he wrote, “Should anything prevent my ever adding to this, let all my beloved ones at home rest assured that I was happy beyond description when I wrote these lines and would not have changed situations with any man living.”

“If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”  John 14:23

“. . . and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God.”  Philippians 1:28

When opponents do their worst, and we’re still standing for Christ, that is “a clear sign,” a prophetic warning, that God is with us. For example, when the Empress Eudoxia, in the fourth century, threatened John Chrysostom with banishment, he told her, “You cannot banish me, for this world is my Father’s house.” “But I will kill you,” she said. “No, you cannot, for my life is hidden with Christ in God.” “Then I will take away your treasures.” “No, you cannot, for my treasure is in heaven, and my heart is there.” “But I will drive you away from your friends, and you will have no one left.” “No, you cannot, for I have a friend in heaven from whom you cannot separate me. I defy you, for there is nothing you can do to harm me.”

John Chrysostom’s courage made him “a clear sign” of the weakness of her power and of the power of his weakness.

How can our generation see the glory of Christ? Through our courage.

Friends have asked how I came to serve in the Anglican Church in North America. It’s been a journey. A good one.

The Lord has been faithful all along. Not that I’ve always felt him to be so. Some years ago I was compelled to dig back down to the very foundations and ask, “Have I been wrong, thinking God loves me? Isn’t it possible that God hates my guts? After all, look at the facts. Look at this bombed-out, smoking rubble called my ministry. Has God rejected me?” Eventually, I realized I’d been right the first time. God does love me. And I didn’t think my way from pain to joy. I didn’t even theologize my way from there to here. God lifted me up. “He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure” (Psalm 40:2).

Those years of anguish, intense though they were, did not swallow me up. My journey in Christ started long before, and it continues long after.

God put me in a truly Christian family. My dad was a saintly man. A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, he served for some years as a minister in the PC(USA). Then God called him to Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, which I will always cherish as the nursery of my boyhood faith. It was a mainstream evangelical church, back when the word evangelical meant something positive. It was a Billy Graham, “The Bible says,” “You must be born again” kind of church, with Reformed theology pervasive as an unstated presence throughout. I learned about Jesus. I heard the Bible preached. I sang the hymns. My foundation went deep.

Then in the late 60s and early 70s the Jesus Movement radicalized me. I saw thousands in my crazy generation do an abrupt about-face and run toward Jesus. You cannot imagine the joy of it all. Revival became my lifelong passion.

In 1971 God entrusted to me the most magnificent person I have ever known – my wife Jani. She has been my faithful friend through good times and bad. This December we will celebrate fifty years of marriage. Under Christ, I owe her everything.

After calling me to the ministry, God gave me the privilege of attending Dallas Theological Seminary. My theology is no longer dispensationalist. But I will go to my grave thankful for the seminary’s commitment to the original languages and exegesis. I was marked for life as a biblical scholar, a man of the text.

During my doctoral work in Scotland, the Westminster Standards and Presbyterianism compelled my attention. My friends in the Church of Scotland showed me a depth of pastoral and devotional theology I had not seen before. It was profoundly enriching.

Returning home to this country, the Presbyterian Church in America graciously welcomed me into their ranks. I did a mediocre job planting a church for them. But Mission to North America stood by me, and the church was indeed planted. I will always owe the PCA a debt of gratitude for this and more.

My nine years of teaching Old Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School relocated me again within mainstream Evangelicalism. Eating lunch in the faculty lounge with such giants as Don Carson, John Woodbridge, Murray Harris, Doug Moo and others – I had to pinch myself. At times we disagreed with one another. It’s what thinkers do. But we all revered the biblical basics, and we all believed in our work together.

After more pastoral ministry in PCA churches – and as I was rediscovering the simple truth of “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so” – the Lord guided me and others to plant Immanuel Church Nashville, an Acts 29 church. The best therapy I have ever experienced is basically simple. It’s just being among Christian friends, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, who like me and aren’t trying to fix me. Adding up the brief greetings, the lengthy conversations, the songs sung, the discoveries shared, the laughter and the tears, sharing Holy Communion, kneeling in prayer, mercy upon mercy for eleven years – the cumulative effect was, for me, life-transforming. It was how the category “gospel culture” came into clarity. I finally saw how the theological truth of the gospel proves itself in the relational beauty of the gospel, whenever the doctrine is allowed to exert its full and intended authority. Faithfulness is more than sound biblical doctrine; it includes shared human beauty.

Now Jani and I serve with Renewal Ministries. We are praying and laboring toward revival, as gospel doctrine creates gospel culture more and more, until it starts feeling like Jesus has come to town – everywhere.

Now to wind this up, one more thought looking back, and a final thought looking ahead, all the way to the end.

Looking back, I am grateful that, in my journey with Evangelicalism, Dispensationalism and Presbyterianism, at no point along the way have I heard any responsible leader say of their group, “We are the people, and wisdom will die with us” (cf. Job 12:2). Through it all, I have heard the leading voices giving thanks to God for the insights they have received, while also giving honor to other Christians who see some things differently. Each theological community has been, at their best, both rightly confident and rightly modest. I respect that.

Looking ahead, as I announced in an earlier blog post, I am grateful for my new theological community:

“The Right Rev’d Clark W. P. Lowenfield, Bishop of the Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast in the Anglican Church in North America, has graciously called me to serve him as a Catechist and Canon Theologian.”

The Creeds, the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal, my Oath of Conformity, my Oath of Canonical Obedience – these are now my green pastures and still waters in Christ. And I say it in so personal a way for a very personal reason. At 71 years of age, I am in that season of life when I must begin preparing to die. Not that I am panicking. Not at all. I am just being realistic, and even expectant. I want to get ready, more and more. I watched my dad live out his final years in the nearness of God, and he was ready. I can be too. And I am convinced that the best way to navigate this final passage in my own journey is to be where communion with God has been nurtured so richly for so long. That is Anglicanism. Yes, my theology aligns with Anglican conviction and mission; but in addition, my soul needs the depth of Anglican tradition.

I look forward to learning from my new friends in the ACNA, and I hope to contribute to them, as we devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers (Acts 2:42) – all to the praise of the glory of his grace.

“May a merciful God preserve me from a Christian Church in which everyone is a saint! I want to be and remain in the church and little flock of the fainthearted, the feeble and the ailing, who feel and recognize the wretchedness of their sins, who sigh and cry to God incessantly for comfort and help, who believe in the forgiveness of sins.”

Martin Luther, in Luther’s Works (St. Louis, 1957), XXII:55.

“It is one thing to love the Lord and His service, and quite something else to have an inexpressible longing for revival that cannot be denied.  It is one thing to wish for revival, and yet it is something in addition to be willing for revival at any cost to come in any way through any means that God may choose.”

V. Raymond Edman, quoted by my dad in a sermon at Lake Avenue Congregational Church, Pasadena, California, 1 February 1976.

This post is difficult to write, not because the news is so horrible but because it is so wonderful. But first, the backstory.

Since her first public ministry on Easter Sunday 2008, Immanuel Church Nashville has experienced the most striking, sustained blessing of the Lord I have ever seen. Even as the risen Jesus breathed on his little band of fearful disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22), he breathed upon us at Immanuel, with obvious effect. Pastoring Immanuel wasn’t a non-stop joyride. We all worked hard, did our best, and made some mistakes. But the divine beauty resting upon that church, the heart-melting culture of honesty, gentleness and joy – we didn’t mastermind it. The Lord led us into those green pastures and beside those still waters, for the display of his glory.

The Acts 29 Network encouraged us all along the way. We love all our friends in A29.

Then in 2019 Pastor TJ Tims received the Lead Pastor position at Immanuel, with my joyful support. The church continues to bear fruit, and I love worshiping there when I am in town.

Since the pastoral succession at Immanuel, Jani and I have been serving together with Renewal Ministries, the non-profit my dear dad and mom handed down to us. At RM we believe that, in a world of exhaustion, everyone needs renewal. So Jani and I speak, mentor and write, spreading the life-renewing gospel of Jesus, especially among younger leaders. Our Board is fantastic, and we couldn’t – and wouldn’t – do this without them.

Now Jani and I find ourselves in our 70s. We feel like we’re in our 40s. We feel more energized now than we ever have before. But we won’t be feeling this great forever. Sooner or later, something bad will come take us out. Fine. At last, we’ll see Jesus – and be fully alive forever! But until then, we are resolved to keep serving his cause of renewal and revival and awakening with everything we’ve got.

That is why I am thrilled to announce a new path of service now opening up to me. The Right Rev’d Clark W. P. Lowenfield, Bishop of the Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast in the Anglican Church in North America, has graciously called me to serve him as a Catechist and Canon Theologian. He has kindly extended the same call to my dear friend, The Rev’d Sam Allberry.

The Bishop’s tender heart for the Lord, his sacrificial courage for the advance of the gospel, his steadfast faithfulness to the truth of the Bible, his bold and sustained prayers for revival – all this, and more, has endeared him to me and stirs me to labor with him for the sake of these sacred glories.

Jani and I will keep serving with Renewal Ministries, and we’ll keep worshiping at Immanuel Church. But now I rejoice in this added dimension of ministry within the ACNA. I am profoundly grateful, and I purpose to steward this privilege with reverence, by God’s grace.

The ongoing life of prayer, so deeply embedded in the Anglican tradition, will do my soul a lot of good, I am sure, as I walk these final years of my earthly pilgrimage.

So now, to my amazement, I find myself “striving side by side for the faith of the gospel” with so many in the Anglican Church whom I have long admired – like J. C. Ryle, Charles Simeon, C. S. Lewis, John Stott, Festo Kivengere, Alec Motyer, Derek Kidner, J. I. Packer and Bruce Waltke. I am unworthy.

God has been good to me.

And if you think of me, please pray for me. Thank you.

“I love the simplicity of the Scriptures, and I wish to receive and inculcate every truth precisely in the way, and to the extent, that it is set forth in the sacred Volume. Were this the habit of all divines, there would soon be an end to most of the controversies that have agitated and divided the Church of Christ. My endeavor is to bring out of Scripture what is there, and not to thrust in what I think might be there. I have a great jealousy on this head—never to speak more or less than I believe to be the mind of the Spirit in the passage I am expounding. I would run after nothing, and shun nothing. . . . The truth is not in the middle, and not in one extreme, but in both extremes. . . . I formerly read Aristotle, and liked him much. I have since read Paul, and caught somewhat of his strange notions, oscillating (not vacillating) from pole to pole. Sometimes I am a high Calvinist, at other times a low Arminian, so that if extremes will please you, I am your man. Only remember, it is not one extreme that we are to go to but both extremes.”

— Charles Simeon, quoted in H. C. G. Moule, Charles Simeon (London, 1956), pages 77-78.

My brother pastor, to preach with biblical fullness, rising above our biases, our best course is to preach through the Bible, passage by passage, letting each passage make its unique contribution, confident that over time the fullness of it all will serve people well with a clear vision of the Triune God. But let us never force a passage to say what we think it ought to have said and thus complicate the work of God.

For example, if a biblical passage teaches imputed righteousness, let’s not “balance” it by inserting into the sermon a counter-emphasis on imparted righteousness. And if a passage teaches imparted righteousness, let’s not “balance” it with a forced counter-emphasis on imputed righteousness. That is not biblical preaching. And Scripture, not the categories of Systematic Theology, is our final authority.

Humility allows God to speak through his Word, yielding to him passage by passage, Sunday by Sunday, so that he enriches us with one precious gospel gift after another, each one a new facet of the many glories of Christ. This kind of preaching—oscillating, not vacillating—can raise up wise and healthy churches, not limited by any pet doctrine, but enlarged by the grandeur of Scripture.

Pat Macmillan, in “The Mission-Directed Ministry Team,” RTS Ministry, Winter 1994, quotes Peter Senge: “When a team becomes more aligned, a commonality of direction emerges, and individuals’ energies harmonize. There is less wasted energy. In fact, a resonance or synergy develops.”

To achieve that powerful alignment among the individuals on a team, the stated mission must meet four criteria:

1. Relevant.  “I want it.”

2. Significant.  “It’s worth it.”

3. Achievable.  “I believe it.”

4. Clear.  “I see it.”

Macmillan goes on: “Don’t assume that the benefits are as clear to others as they are to you. Don’t gloss over the pragmatic elements of the team mission and the goals that flow out of it with eloquent generalities. Cooperation based on warm fuzzies, cliches and platitudes will soon break down.”

Interestingly, he also notes that it’s the individuals who are just a little out of alignment who blunt the effectiveness of the team. People who are way off are obvious. It’s the not-quite-there people who are more difficult to discern but who make the task tedious.

“A clear, certain mission . . . serves as a gyroscope providing stability and allowing the team to maintain its footing and sense of direction in turbulent, fast-changing environments. It provides boundary lines in which the team can set realistic, but exceptional, goals. It also enables the team to monitor and evaluate progress.”

Macmillan’s article has been important to us at Immanuel Nashville for leadership development. Highly recommended.

“Unbelief says: Some other time, but not now; some other place, but not here; some other people, but not us. Faith says: Anything He did anywhere else He will do here; anything He did any other time He is willing to do now; anything He ever did for other people He is willing to do for us! With our feet on the ground, and our head cool, but with our heart ablaze with the love of God, we walk out in this fullness of the Spirit, if we will yield and obey. God wants to work through you!”

A. W. Tozer, The Counselor (Camp Hill, 1993), page 116.

Galatians 2:11-21 has been unsettling me for forty years. Paul rebuked Peter publicly — for what? They agreed on gospel doctrine: “We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (verse 16). But they clashed on gospel culture: “How can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (verse 14). For that, Paul rebuked Peter openly and bluntly.

Gospel culture is not an optional add-on. It is as essential to our integrity as is gospel doctrine. But we pastors who preach the doctrine might neglect to nurture the culture, because the preaching is more easily defined, while the nurturing requires relational sensitivity and personal vulnerability. But without the ministry of gospel culture, our churches risk standing as living denials of the very truth we preach. And then we wonder why people don’t respond, why our churches don’t get more traction.

This being so, nothing is more essential to our churches than building them as gospel cultures. If we must preach the gospel in our church doctrine, then equally, we must embody the gospel in our church culture. But if we forsake the fullness of this pastoral responsibility, we allow our churches to believe the truth as theory only, while practicing lies in reality. And Jesus did not die and rise again so that we who name Him live by lies.

Several years ago I presented a paper at The Gospel Coalition national gathering in Orlando: “How to build a gospel culture in your church.” The PDF is here: GDGC. I hope it helps.

I  believe in common grace. John Calvin taught me that it is God who lavishes giftedness on his human race. We may therefore enjoy his bestowments wherever we encounter them, with gratitude to God (Institutes 2.2.15).

That gives me three categories of music. First, music devoted to God. Hopefully, this is great music everyone will fall in love with. Second, music opposing God. Hopefully, this will be rotten music people cannot stand. Third, music neither devoted to God nor opposing God. If it happens to be good music, by God’s common grace, I for one will enjoy it and thank him for it. Good music does not have to be devoted to God for me to be okay with it — though, if it were devoted to God, I’d be thrilled.

One thing I love about the gospel is its promise of the new heaven and new earth. In eternity, God will not delete all the culture-creating we’ve done throughout human history; he will redeem it. The Bible says that, in the New Jerusalem above, “the kings of the earth will bring their glory into [the holy city]. . . . They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it” (Revelation 21:24-27).

The glory and honor of human cultures — the music, the clothing, the literature, the dance, the languages, the customs, the humor, the traditions, and so forth — it will be cleansed, perfected and brought in forever. So Eric Clapton’s blues guitar, for example, is a preview of coming attractions. The blues will be brought into heaven. But there it will be even better — fully devoted to God.

I hope and pray Eric himself will be there too.

A nice church filled with nice people doing nice things will make no impact in the intensity of our times. Every hybrid form of “Christianity” deserves to die, and it will die, because it simply is not of God. But here is a pathway back into the prophetic power of apostolic Christianity.

In 1974 I heard Francis Schaeffer preach at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. His sermon was unforgettable. Schaeffer asked the question, What is the Christian’s task in the world today? A clearly focusing question. And his answer was not evangelism. Evangelism can seem canned and mechanical, he said, like a sales pitch. But when evangelism is pursued as part of something larger, something beautifully humane, it will be convincing, even captivating. What then is that larger whole, embodied in a truly biblical church? Two contents and two realities, Schaeffer proposed.

Two contents

1.  Sound doctrine

“The first content is clear doctrinal content concerning the central elements of Christianity.” This strong biblical message stands in contrast to the content-weak philosophical and pragmatic rolls-of-the-dice people are settling for all around us.

2.  Honest answers to honest questions

“The second content is honest answers to honest questions. Christianity demands that we have enough compassion to learn the questions of our generation.” We must listen respectfully to all around us and try to satisfy their questions by reasoning thoughtfully from the wisdom of the gospel.

Two realities

1.  True spirituality

“There must be something real of the work of Christ, something real in Christ’s bearing his fruit through me through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing more ugly in all the world, nothing which more turns people aside, than a dead orthodoxy.” Moment-by-moment reality with the living Christ—apart from him, we can do nothing.

2.  The beauty of human relationships

“True Christianity produces beauty as well as truth. If we do not show beauty in the way we treat each other, then in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of our own children, we are destroying the truth we proclaim.” This is a common blind spot among us. An orthodox doctrinal statement on paper can make us proud, but it alone will not make us convincing. Gospel doctrine creates gospel culture. Without the human beauty that Jesus died to create among us, we only show that we are trifling with his truth even as we think we are upholding his truth.

“When there are the two contents and the two realities, we will begin to see something profound happen in our generation.”

Francis A. Schaeffer, 2 Contents, 2 Realities (Downers Grove, 1975), pages 1-32.

These four categories offer a hopeful agenda for any church today that, for Jesus’s sake, longs to speak with prophetic power.

“In Kiev, where I found myself on a Sunday morning, on an impulse I turned into a church where a service was in progress.  It was packed tight, but I managed to squeeze myself against a pillar whence I could survey the congregation and look up at the altar.  Young and old, peasants and townsmen, parents and children, even a few in uniform – it was a variegated assembly. . . . Never before or since have I participated in such worship; the sense conveyed of turning to God in great affliction was overpowering.  Though I could not, of course, follow the service, I knew from Klavdia Lvovna little bits of it; for instance, where the congregation say there is no help for them save from God.  What intense feeling they put into these words!  In their minds, I knew, as in mine, was a picture of those desolate abandoned villages, the hunger and the hopelessness, the cattle trucks being loaded with humans in the dawn light.  Where were they to turn for help?  Not to the Kremlin, nor to the forces of progress and democracy in the West. . . . Every possible human agency found wanting.  So, only God remained, and to God they turned with a passion, a dedication, a humility, impossible to convey.  They took me with them; I felt closer to God then than I ever had before, or am likely to again.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time: The Green Stick (New York, 1982), pages 258-259.

“We should never come to [differences] with true Christians without regret and without tears. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Believe me, evangelicals often have not shown it. We rush in, being very, very pleased, it would seem at times, to find other men’s mistakes. We build ourselves up by tearing other men down. This can never show a real oneness among Christians.

There is only one kind of man who can fight the Lord’s battles in anywhere near a proper way, and that is the man who by nature is unbelligerent. A belligerent man tends to do it because he is belligerent; at least it looks that way.

The world must observe that, when we must differ with each other as true Christians, we do it not because we love the smell of blood, the smell of the arena, the smell of the bullfight, but because we must for God’s sake. If there are tears when we must speak, then something beautiful can be observed.”

Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian (Downers Grove, 1970), pages 26-27.

Whatever the current controversy may be, are there tears? Do we express our differences with such care that a reasonable unbeliever could say, “There is no blood-lust here. This is different. There is sincerity of heart here, even beauty”?

On Sunday, September 8, 2019, I will conclude my ministry at Immanuel Church Nashville. From the earliest days of Immanuel, I told the elders I should leave by the time I turn 70, to make way for a younger man. My 70th birthday will be on September 7. So I am breaking my promise by one day, I suppose. And that younger man is already chosen by the members, Pastor TJ Tims, a magnificent pastor:

My heart is overflowing with gratitude to the Lord for the privilege of serving this wonderful church. Here are some reasons for my gratitude, in no particular order. And this is just for starters.

I love the Immanuel Mantra:

I love her Call to Worship every Sunday:

I love her people:

I love her pastors and leaders:

I love her Jesus-focused mission:

I love her music. I heard the Beatles live, and the Immanuel band is way better:

I love our Acts 29 Network, led by men who aren’t out for themselves but only for Christ:

I really love the fact that no one open to Christ has anything to fear at Immanuel Church:

I could go on and on. But the best part is this: “It is he who made us, and we are his.” Immanuel Church does not stand as a monument to our glory but as a movement of his grace. Really. That isn’t an empty slogan. I cannot account for what this amazing church has become in any other way except, Jesus did this. He gave this. He gave us himself. There is nothing greater, nothing more satisfying. I am profoundly grateful.

The Lord be with you, Immanuel.

Dad’s assistant used this book to keep a record of the various aspects of his pastoral ministry through the years, starting with his ordination in 1950. There are 486 pages in the book, most of them filled out—pages and pages and pages recording weddings, funerals, baptisms, new members, sermons. For example, here are his sermons from March to October 1963:

These pages record, one by one, more than 1,800 sermons preached during his ministry at Lake Avenue Congregational Church alone, and by no means a complete record even during those years.

How many hours of preparation and prayer and study are represented by this simple but eloquent written record, I wonder? Add to that the weddings, funerals, ordinations. Add to that the committee meetings, the personal evangelism and counseling, the social events. Add to that the seasons of strife and opposition he had to endure, all the while keeping up the steady output of gospel ministry without being crushed. Add to that the way he came home every evening with something emotionally positive to give to the family. Add to that the fact that he not only came to all my high-school football games but even to many practices during the week. Add to that . . . .

I am not impressed by young pastors who seem too eager to publish books and speak at big events and build “a platform.” They are doing the work of the Lord, which is good. But I’m not impressed. What impresses me is my dad’s daily slogging, year after year, in the power of the Spirit, with no big-deal-ness as the goal or the payoff.

This is the pastoral ministry that brings Jesus into the world today, and it takes a lifetime to develop.

Remembering David Powlison moves me deeply. When everything was on the line for Jani and me, David and Nan were there for us.

We spent a day together in 2007—for Jani and me, a catastrophic disaster of a year. David was an oasis of calm, gentleness and reasonableness amid a swirl of accusations, loss and heartbreak. David, with Nan, kept our hope alive.

One suggestion David made became so significant that I have passed it along to many others since then. I can’t remember his exact words. But it went something like this: “Ray and Jani, you are suffering. And it isn’t going to get better any time soon. So here is an idea. Ask the Lord for a verse of Scripture, a promise in the Bible, to help you get through this. And when that verse jumps off the page into your heart, make it the theme of your life while you slog your way forward. However dark the nighttime sky might be, you can always look up at that North Star promise, get your bearings again, and keep going. But wallpaper your reality with the Word of God.”

So we did. We asked the Lord to personalize to us some biblical encouragement of his own choosing. And he did. Jani was reading 1 Peter 5 soon thereafter, and verse 10 was a direct hit—in the best of ways: “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” We seized that verse.

We memorized 1 Peter 5:10, discussed it, prayed over it. Jani wrote it out on 3×5 cards and taped them to the inside of the kitchen cupboards, so that every time she went to get a glass or a plate, there was 1 Peter 5:10. I wrote it out and stuck it to the visor in my truck so that, at a red light, I could look up and be strengthened by 1 Peter 5:10. We never let that verse out of our sight. And in ways we could not have imagined, God has proved faithful to his promise. To this day, whenever Jani and I experience some restoring, confirming, strengthening, or establishing mercy, we look at one another and say, “1 Peter 5:10!” In fact, we did so just yesterday. That word from above didn’t merely help us cope. It redefined how we experience reality. It kept me in the ministry.

David Powlison understood human despair. He understood how God helps sufferers. He understood that what we need is a hope dependent on nothing in this world but grounded in God alone. The word himself in 1 Peter 5:10 has become, to me, one of the most precious words in all the Bible—God, not delegating the task to any angel, but God himself getting personally and directly involved with us in our real need. How glorious.

At the time, I have to admit that, though my heart resonated with 1 Peter 5:10, I struggled to believe it. Jani believed it more than I could. But David was right. And thanks to his wise counsel, I turned toward the Lord with the weak faith I had. And gradually I was enabled to believe it more and more. And now I know, at a deep and personal level, that God himself restores, confirms, strengthens, and establishes us, when we have nothing to offer him but our sorrow and need.

Thank you, David. Thank you.

I believe we are nearing a tipping-point, as pressures upon us and within us intensify. We feel more urgency to face ourselves and come clean about our unconfessed sins. We feel less concern to save face and defend the status quo. Surely, the Lord is in this. Here is one way it could go, and should go, and must go, if we hope to have any integrity, any credibility, any prophetic edge as we go into the uncertainties of the future:

“The evening meeting connected with the Bible conference began January 6th, in the Central Church, with more than 1,500 men present. Women were excluded for lack of room. Different missionaries and Korean leaders had charge of the evening meetings, all seeking to show the need of the Spirit’s control in our lives and the necessity for love and righteousness. After a short sermon, man after man would rise, confess his sin, break down and weep, and then throw himself on the floor and beat the floor with his fists in a perfect agony of conviction. Sometimes, after a confession, the whole audience would break out into audible prayer, and the effect of that audience of hundreds of men praying together in audible prayer was something indescribable. Again, after another confession, they would break out into uncontrollable weeping and we would all weep together. We couldn’t help it. And so the meeting went on until 2:00 A.M., with confession and weeping and praying. We had prayed to God for an outpouring of His Holy Spirit upon the people, and it had come.”

“Then began a meeting the like of which I had never seen before, nor wish to see again, unless in God’s sight it is absolutely necessary. Every sin a human being can commit was publicly confessed that night. Pale and trembling with emotion, in agony of mind and body, guilty souls, standing in the white light of their judgment, saw themselves as God saw them. Their sins rose up in all their vileness, until shame and grief and self-loathing took complete possession. Pride was driven out, the face of man forgotten. Looking up to heaven, to Jesus whom they had betrayed, they smote themselves and cried out with bitter wailing, “Lord, Lord, cast us not away forever!” Everything else was forgotten, nothing else mattered. The scorn of men, the penalty of the law, even death itself seemed of small consequence, if only God forgave. We may have other theories of the desirability or undesirability of public confession of sin. I have had mine. But I know now that when the Spirit of God falls upon guilty souls, there will be confession, and no power on earth can stop it.”

Eyewitness accounts of the Korean revival of 1907, quoted in Young-Hoon Lee, “Korean Pentecost: The Great Revival of 1907,” AJPS 4/1 (2001): 77-78.

“I pray for you very earnestly, and I am deeply pained that you keep sucking up cares like a leech and thus rendering my prayers vain. Christ knows whether it comes from stupidity or the Spirit, but I for my part am not very much troubled about our cause. Indeed, I am more hopeful than I expected to be. God, who is able to raise the dead, is also able to uphold his cause when it is falling, or to raise it up again when it has fallen, or to move it forward when it is standing. If we are not worthy instruments to accomplish that purpose, he will find others. If we are not strengthened by his promises, where in all the world are people to whom these promises apply? But more of this another time. After all, my writing this is like pouring water into the sea.”

Martin Luther, writing to despondent Philip Melanchthon, quoted in Theodore Tappert, editor, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel (London, 1955), page 147.

When God wants to drill a man
And thrill a man
And skill a man
When God wants to mold a man
To play the noblest part

When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!

How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him
And with mighty blows converts him
Into shapes and forms of clay
Which only God can understand.

How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes
How He uses whom He chooses
And with mighty power infuses him
With every act induces him
To try His splendor out —
God knows what He’s about.

Author unknown.

In his prophetic book, The Mark of the Christian, Francis Schaeffer related two examples of reconciliation among Christians, which remains such an urgent need in our own times. Here is his first example:

One happened among the Brethren groups in Germany immediately after the last war [World War 2]. In order to control the church, Hitler commanded the union of all religious groups in Germany, drawing them together by law. The Brethren divided over this issue. Half accepted Hitler’s dictum and half refused. The ones who submitted, of course, had a much easier time, but gradually in this organizational oneness with the liberal groups their own doctrinal sharpness and spiritual life withered. On the other hand, the group that stayed out remained spiritually virile, but there was hardly a family in which someone did not die in a German concentration camp.

Now can you imagine the emotional tension? The war is over, and these Christian brothers face each other again. They had the same doctrine, and they had worked together for more than a generation. Now what is going to happen? One man remembers that his father died in a concentration camp and knows that these people in the other group remained safe. But people on the other side have deep personal feelings as well.

Then gradually these brothers came to know that this situation just would not do. A time was appointed when the elders of the two groups could meet together in a certain quiet place. I asked the man who told me this, “What did you do?” And he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what we did. We came together, and we set aside several days in which each man would search his own heart.” Here was a real difference; the emotions were deeply, deeply stirred. “My father has gone to the concentration camp; my mother was dragged away.” These things are not just little pebbles on the beach; they reach into the deep well-springs of human emotions. But these people understood the command of Christ at this place [John 13:34-35], and for several days every man did nothing except search his own heart concerning his own failures and the commands of Christ. Then they met together.

I asked the man, “What happened then?” And he said, “We just were one.”

“I remember on one occasion [the censor] shaking his head and saying to me, ‘You can’t say that, because it’s true.’  It seemed like a basic twentieth-century text.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, as a British journalist in Russia in the 1930s, Chronicles of Wasted Time: The Green Stick (New York, 1982), page 223.

Attached is the text of my breakout session from Tuesday, “Pastor, you and your church can get healthy again”: Health

“In our quest for the fullness of the Spirit, we have sometimes forgotten that a Spirit-filled intelligence is one of the powerful weapons for pulling down satanic strongholds.”

Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life (Downers Grove, 1979), page 183.

Henry Martyn (1781-1812), Anglican missionary, was the guest of a Muslim friend for dinner. His host described for him a painting he had seen of Jesus bowing down before Muhammad.

Martyn tells us what happened next:

“I was cut to the soul at this blasphemy. Mirza Seid Ali perceived that I was considerably disordered and asked what it was that was so offensive? I told him ‘I could not endure existence if Jesus was not glorified; it would be hell to me if He were to be always thus dishonored.’ He was astonished and again asked ‘Why?’ ‘If anyone pluck out your eyes,’ I replied, ‘there is no saying why you feel pain; it is feeling. It is because I am one with Christ that I am thus dreadfully wounded.'”

Quoted in Constance E. Padwick, Henry Martyn: Confessor Of The Faith, page 265.

If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.  2 Timothy 2:13

In thinking through how to promote the cause of revival, Jonathan Edwards urged prayer and fasting, first and foremost. But he also pointed out that prayer, while vitally important, is less personally costly to us than “moral duties, such as acts of righteousness, truth, meekness, forgiveness and love towards our neighbor, which are of much greater importance in the sight of God than all the externals of his worship.” Our hearts before God are the essence of true faith, Edwards agreed. But costly acts of sacrifice and service are more opposite to our natural selfishness and are, therefore, more striking in the sight of God. He cited Luke 3:1-17 and how John the Baptist called the people to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” and thus prepare the way of the Lord. Then Edwards wrote:

“If God’s people in this land were once brought to abound in such deeds of love, as much as in praying, hearing, singing, and religious meetings and conference, it would be a most blessed omen. Nothing would have a greater tendency to bring the God of love down from heaven to earth, so amiable would be the sight in the eyes of our loving and exalted Redeemer, that it would soon as it were fetch him down from his throne in heaven, to set up his tabernacle with men on the earth and dwell with them. I do not remember ever to have read of any remarkable outpouring of the Spirit, that continued any long time, but what was attended with an abounding in this duty.”

Jonathan Edwards, “Thoughts on the Revival,” in Works (Edinburgh, 1979), I:429.

True revival is not a private religious joyride. It is a divine power for advocacy, starting with us Christians who not only pray but also act boldly for the sake of others.

“Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical and totally focused on physical needs inside the church or on personal needs of the people present.  But frontline prayer has three basic traits: a) a request for grace to confess sins and humble ourselves, b) a compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church, and c) a yearning to know God, to see his face, to see his glory.”

Tim Keller, “Kingdom-centered Prayer,” Redeemer Report, January 2006.

Gospel doctrine creates a gospel culture. The doctrine of grace creates a culture of grace, as Jesus himself touches us through his truths. Without the doctrines, the culture alone is fragile. Without the culture, the doctrines alone appear pointless. But the New Testament binds doctrine and culture together. For example:

The doctrine of regeneration creates a culture of humility (Eph. 2:1-9).

The doctrine of justification creates a culture of inclusion (Gal. 2:11-16).

The doctrine of reconciliation creates a culture of peace (Eph. 2:14-16).

The doctrine of sanctification creates a culture of life (Rom. 6:20-23).

The doctrine of glorification creates a culture of hope (Rom. 5:2).

The doctrine of God creates a culture of honesty (1 John 1:5-10). And what is more basic than that?

If we want this culture to thrive, we can’t take doctrinal short cuts. If we want this doctrine to be credible, we can’t downplay the culture. But churches where the doctrine and the culture converge as one bear living witness to the power of Jesus.

Churches that do not exude humility, inclusion, peace, life, hope, and honesty—even if they have gospel doctrine on paper, they undercut their own doctrine at a functional level, where it should count in the lives of actual people.Churches that are haughty, exclusivistic, contentious, exhausted, past-oriented, and in denial are revealing not just a lack of niceness; they are revealing a gospel deficit, a doctrinal betrayal.

The current rediscovery of the gospel as doctrine is good, very good. But a further discovery of the gospel as culture—the gospel embodied in community—will be immeasurably better, filled with a divine power such as we have not yet seen.

It’s what revival will look like next.

Is there a valid place among us for apologies, restraint, caution? Obviously, yes. Indeed, it is mystifying how rarely we, who say we value repentance, repent and back up and correct our wrongs and reconcile with one another. But that is not my concern in this post.

In this post my concern is the opposite. When we are serving the Lord, following his call on our lives, doing the obviously right and biblical and Christ-honoring thing, advancing the gospel, we can be wrongly hesitant, timid, apologetic. But the apostolic church was bold. In fact, the key word in Acts chapter 4 is “boldness” (verses 13, 29, 31). Those stalwarts were a force to be reckoned with, for the Lord’s sake.

Some of us should resolve, by God’s grace, that in 2019 we will quit apologizing and serve him boldly. We have been intimidated too long, knocked back on our heels too long, perhaps even cowardly. But we don’t have to stay that way.

Here is an illustration of what our needed change can look like, from the life of Winston Churchill. He took up painting—of all things—for personal renewal amid his demanding responsibilities. At first, it was hard for him to throw himself into it. Something held him back. Then a friend, Hazel Lavery, herself a painter, visited Churchill one day while he was at his easel. Here is what happened, beginning with his visitor’s exclamation:

“‘Painting! But what are you hesitating about? Let me have a brush—the big one.’ Then, Churchill recalled, ‘Splash into the turpentine, wallop into the blue and white, frantic flourish on the palette—clean no longer—then several large, fierce strokes and slashes of blue on the absolutely cowering canvas. Anyone could see that it could not hit back. No evil fate avenged the jaunty violence.’ Lady Lavery had done her work well. ‘The canvas grinned in helplessness before me,’ Churchill wrote. ‘The spell was broken. The sickly inhibitions rolled away. I seized the largest brush and fell upon my victim with berserk fury. I have never felt in awe of a canvas since.'”

Martin Gilbert: Churchill: A Life (New York, 1991), pages 322-323.

Quit apologizing for serving the Lord. Go boldly into 2019. Paint onto its canvas what the gospel demands. It awaits your strokes.

Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Revolution is seeing each other a lot.”

The power of a cohesive church — as in Acts 2:42-47.

Quoted in Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts about the Sixties, page 80.

And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”  Mark 9:29

“You failed there, he said in effect to these disciples, because you did not have sufficient power. You were using the power that you have, and you were very confident in it. You did it with great assurance, you were masters of the occasion, you thought you were going to succeed at once, but you did not. . . . You will never be able to deal with ‘this kind’ unless you have applied to God for the power which he alone can give you.

You must become aware of your need, of your impotence, of your helplessness. You must realize that you are confronted by something that is too deep for your methods to get rid of or to deal with, and you need something that can go down beneath that evil power and shatter it, and there is only one thing that can do that, and that is the power of God. . . . We must become utterly and absolutely convinced of our need. We must cease to have so much confidence in ourselves, and in all our methods and organizations, and in all our slickness. We have got to realize that we must be filled with God’s Spirit.

And we must be equally certain that God can fill us with his Spirit. We have got to realize that, however great ‘this kind’ is, the power of God is infinitely greater, that what we need is not more knowledge, more understanding, more apologetics, more reconciliation of philosophy and science and religion, and all modern techniques — no, we need a power that can enter into the souls of men and break them and smash them and humble them and then make them anew.  And that is the power of the living God.

And we must be confident that God has this power as much today as he had one hundred years ago, and two hundred years ago, and so we must begin to seek the power and to pray for it. We must begin to plead and yearn for it.  ‘This kind’ needs prayer.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Revival (Wheaton, 1987), pages 18-19.

“When we go to a town to start a church, are we going there with the primary motivation to build a church which is loyal to Presbyterians and the Reformed faith, or are we going there to build a church which will preach the gospel which historic, Bible-believing Christianity holds, and then on this side of that chasm teach that which we believe is true to the Bible in regard to church government and doctrine? It makes a difference to our mentality, to our motivation, and to the breadth of our outreach. I must say, to me one view is catholic, biblical and gives good promise of success; the other is introverted and self-limiting, yes, and sectarian. I spoke of a good promise of success. I mean on two levels: first, in church growth and a healthy outlook among those we reach; second, in providing leadership in the whole church of Christ. . . . To put the chasm in the wrong place is to fail to fulfill our calling, and I am convinced that when we do so we displease our Lord.”

Francis A. Schaeffer, “We Don’t Have Forever,” 1980.

“‘Immanuel, God with us.’ It is hell’s terror. Satan trembles at the sound of it. . . . Let him come to you suddenly, and do you but whisper that word, ‘God with us,’ back he falls, confounded and confused. . . . ‘God with us’ is the laborer’s strength. How could he preach the gospel, how could he bend his knees in prayer, how could the missionary go into foreign lands, how could the martyr stand at the stake, how could the confessor own his Master, how could men labor if that one word were taken away? . . . ‘God with us’ is eternity’s sonnet, heaven’s hallelujah, the shout of the glorified, the song of the redeemed, the chorus of the angels, the everlasting oratorio of the great orchestra of the sky. . . .

Feast, Christians, feast; you have a right to feast. . . . But in your feasting, think of the Man in Bethlehem. Let him have a place in your hearts, give him the glory, think of the virgin who conceived him, but think most of all of the Man born, the Child given.

I finish by again saying, A happy Christmas to you all!”

C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the Old Testament (London, n.d.), III:430.

Our hearts don’t crack open easily. Many of us who believe the gospel still live day-to-day in avoidance, rather than relief, of our pain.

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis, Eustace needs Aslan to get through his outward dragon scales: “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.” But the lion’s claws only freed Eustace from the prison of his dragon-self.

Like Eustace, we need the gospel to go way down deep. We sing our Christian songs, we hear our gospel sermons, we enjoy honest fellowship—all sincerely, too. And it’s wonderful. But there are episodes in our past that are so threatening to us, so beyond our capacity for coping, we cannot face them. What we don’t realize is that our most shocking failures are where Jesus loves us the most tenderly. And he is able to break through our defenses and touch us with his gentleness in ways we have never experienced before.

Music helps. It goes deep. That’s why I love the new live CD from Immanuel Church Nashville, available today on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, and so on.

The fifth track, “Missing Not One,” written by Will Duvall and sung by Jessica Waterman, cracks my own heart open. It draws on Isaiah 40:26-27, Ephesians 3:17-19, and Romans 8:31-39 to help us open up to the perfect love of Christ. I hope you’ll check out all these great songs. Thanks.

You shall have no other gods before me.  Exodus 20:3

I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  John 14:6

“This intolerant claim to exclusive worship is something unique in the history of religion, for in antiquity the cults [the various centers of worship] were on easy terms with one another and left devotees a free hand to ensure a blessing for themselves from other gods as well.”

Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology (New York, 1962), I:208.

We experience three kinds of suffering in this life.

One, deserved suffering. We sin, and we suffer misery for it. Sin always spawns misery. It’s all sin can do. So, deserved suffering is inevitable: “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Num. 32:23). When our sins catch up with us and we feel the pain, let’s humble ourselves and accept it and, as fully as we can, make right the wrong we did.

Deserved suffering is hard to bear. But our suffering can be even harder:

Two, innocent suffering. We do not sin, we do nothing wrong, but we still suffer. A natural disaster brings innocent suffering. Racial prejudice brings innocent suffering. Abortion brings innocent suffering. “Manasseh shed very much innocent blood” (2 Kings 21:16). We should respond to the innocent sufferings of a natural disaster with whatever help we can provide. And we must courageously oppose the powerful who torment the innocent, as much as we are able.

Innocent suffering is horrible. But our sufferings can be even more intense:

Three, righteous suffering. We not only do not sin, but we do what is right, we stand for Jesus and his gospel, and we suffer for it. Why did Cain murder Abel? “Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s were righteous” (1 John 3:12). Abel’s crime was his integrity, which made Cain look bad, and Cain couldn’t stand it. Abel was persecuted for righteousness’ sake (Matt. 5:10). His death was among “the righteous blood shed on earth” (Matt. 23:35). This world dishes out righteous suffering to us all: “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). It happens even in churches.

Not all of us will experience the innocent suffering of, say, racial injustice. None of us should experience it. We should oppose it bravely, no matter what the personal cost. If we chicken out and keep our heads down while innocent people are suffering, we offend our Lord and erode our own credibility. But it is righteous suffering where all of us who love the Lord, every one of us without a single exception, can gather at the feet of Jesus and weep together with the deepest understanding.

Righteous suffering is a powerfully unifying force in the body of Christ.

This is my grandson.  He is lost in thought, contemplating a toad.  All else has faded away, for a toad is at hand.  And, surely, this is why God made toads.  For little boys to meditate upon.  At this moment in my grandson’s existence, he has no thought but concentration, no feeling but fascination.  This is one of the ways God cares for little boys, drawing them into the experience of curiosity and even wonder — like training wheels on the bicycle that one day will become the Maserati.

What is a toad?  I think of it as a frog – already an absurd creature – but with more camo and warts.  And it prefers to walk on land.  So that little boys can see one in the back yard.  And grow up to be men in Christ with hearts alerted to the out-there-ness reality of things infinitely greater than toads, worthy of endless wonder.  So thank you, Father, for the toads of this world.  For this toad.  For this boy.  For this moment.  For all that it means for the future, including the future of the whole world.

Is there, built into the total creation, an intrinsic necessity for toads?  If all the world’s toads were suddenly to disappear, would the universe be diminished?  My hunch is, no.  But is there, built into the total creation, an intrinsic necessity for little boys?  If they were all to disappear, would the universe be diminished?  Yes.  Little boys can grow up to be mighty men of Christ, to rule majestically over all things, under their King and Brother (Psalm 8).

It all starts so humbly, so delightfully, with a toad in the back yard.

“. . . men sure of God, sure of his will, sure of the absolute duty to act in his sight and for his approval. Nothing else mattered by comparison. Consequences were of no account. Obedience alone held the secret of freedom, courage, peace, power, happiness and salvation.”

The Puritans, as described by F. J. Powicke, quoted in Iain H. Murray, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years (Edinburgh, 1982), page 97.

We should not idealize the Puritans. But the value of this statement lies in its clear description of Christian men to whom God is real and supreme, men not confident in themselves but certain about God.

In our time we have rejected certainty and replaced it with confidence. Certainty gazes outward to Another, while confidence looks within to oneself.

Men sure of God are truly humble. And they cannot be ignored. They stand out. They alone have something to say. Who is willing to bear the reproach of walking through this world humbly as a man sure of God?

“What is the indelible mark of the Shorter Catechism?  We have the following bit of personal experience from a general officer of the United States army.  He was in a great western city at a time of intense excitement and violent rioting.  The streets were overrun daily by a dangerous crowd.  One day he observed approaching him a man of singularly combined calmness and firmness of mien, whose very demeanor inspired confidence.  So impressed was he with his bearing amid the surrounding uproar that, when he had passed, he turned to look back at him, only to find that the stranger had done the same.  On observing his turning, the stranger at once came back to him and, touching his chest with his forefinger, demanded without preface, ‘What is the chief end of man?’  On receiving the countersign, ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever’ — ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘I knew you were a Shorter Catechism boy by your looks!’  ‘Why, that was just what I was thinking of you’ was the rejoinder.

It is worthwhile to be a Shorter Catechism boy. They grow up to be men. And better than that, they are exceedingly apt to grow to be men of God.”

John E. Meeter, editor, Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield (Phillipsburg, 1970), I:383-384.

John Wesley finally saw how little he knew of Jesus in the middle of the Atlantic, on board the Simmonds, when a storm suddenly broke out. A group of Moravian missionaries happened to be having a worship service on deck at the time. Wesley records that, when the storm became intense, “a terrible screaming began among the English.” But “the Germans looked up, and without intermission calmly sang on. I asked one of them afterwards, ‘Were you not afraid?’ He answered, ‘I thank God, no.’ I asked, ‘But were not your women and children afraid?’ He replied mildly, ‘No; our women and children are not afraid to die.'” Wesley then knew that something was missing from his life. He found it in Christ. He found all he needed to face life and death in Christ alone.

As we are buffeted by the political storms hammering our nation, may we who believe in Jesus not yield to hysteria. May we calmly sing on, because we have in him a hope that nothing in this world can destroy. Our serenity will make an eternal difference to others.

The Wesley episode narrated in A. Skevington Wood, The Inextinguishable Blaze: Spiritual Renewal and Advance in the Eighteenth Century (Grand Rapids, 1968), pages 105-106.

Other Christians seem “all openness.” Maybe it makes them feel humble. But they see too few black-and-white areas. They have a liberal mindset—though they may demonstrate a surprising certainty against certainty.

The Bible is our authority as we sort out what deserves certainty and what deserves openness. For example,  1 Corinthians 15:1-4 defines the gospel of Christ crucified for our sins, Christ buried and Christ risen again on the third day, according to the Scriptures, as “of first importance.” Here is the center of our certainty.

From that “of first importance” theological address, we move out toward the whole range of theological and practical and worldview questions deserving our attention. The more clearly our logic connects back with that center, the more certain and the less open we should be. The further our thinking extrapolates from that center, the less certain and the more open we should be. When a question cannot be addressed by a clear appeal to the Bible, our conclusions should be all the more modest.

The gospel requires us to have high expectations of one another on central doctrines, unmistakable views and obvious strategies, and it cautions us to be more relaxed with one another the further we have to move out from the center.

Building our theology and worldview is not like pushing the first domino over, which pushes the next over, and so forth, down the line—each domino of equal weight and each fall equally inevitable. Rather, building our theology and worldview is more like exploring a river. We start out at the mouth of the river. It is wide. There is no decision to make. But then we start paddling up-river. As each tributary forks into the river, we must decide which way to go. Indeed, it may eventually become difficult to distinguish between the river itself and a tributary. But many decisions must be made along the way, not every one equally obvious.

This is why we need a map of the whole, noting the main features of the topography, such as 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 provides. There are other scriptures that help us globalize our biblical thinking in this way. For example, Exodus 34:6-7 is quoted multiple times throughout the rest of the Old Testament. Clearly, it is an atomically weighted passage that other biblical authors treated as a sort of theological North Star for guidance. There are other passages meant to help us improve our overall theological wisdom and a fair-minded sense of proportion and legitimate expectations of one another.

A church or movement may desire, for its own reasons, to define secondary and tertiary doctrines and convictions as important within their own ministry. That’s okay. But then it’s helpful to say, “We know this isn’t a dividing line for Christian oneness. It’s just a decision we’ve made for ourselves, because we think it will help us in our situation. We realize that other Christians will see it differently, and we respect their views.”

May we become more certain where we’ve been too open, and more open where we’ve been too certain, according to the totality of Scripture. And where it seems helpful to provide further definition on our own authority, may we do so with candor, gentleness, and humility.

John Owen, Works (Edinburgh, 1980), II:63.  Style updated, italics added.

“Pseudo-faith always arranges a way out to serve in case God fails it.  Real faith knows only one way and gladly allows itself to be stripped of any second way or makeshift substitutes.  For true faith, it is either God or total collapse.  And not since Adam first stood up on the earth has God failed a single man or woman who trusted him.”

A. W. Tozer, “True Faith Brings Committal,” In The Root of the Righteous (Harrisburg, 1955), pages 49-50.

What new step of obedience is God calling you to venture, by the sheer audacity of taking him at his word?

“A strangely fascinating power is exerted by those who are utterly sincere.  Such believers attract unbelievers, as with the case of David Hume, the eighteenth-century British deistic philosopher who rejected historic Christianity.  A friend once met him hurrying along a London street and asked him where he was going.  Hume replied that he was going to hear George Whitefield preach.  ‘But surely,’ his friend asked in astonishment, ‘you don’t believe what Whitefield preaches, do you?’  ‘No, I don’t,’ answered Hume, ‘but he does.’

I am convinced that in our day simple sincerity has not lost any of its power to appeal or to impress.  It was in 1954 that Billy Graham first hit the headlines in Britain, with his Greater London Crusade.  Approximately 12,000 people came to the Haringay Arena every night for three months.  Most nights I was there myself, and as I looked round that vast crowd, I could not help comparing it with our half-empty churches.  ‘Why do these people come to listen to Billy Graham,’ I asked myself, ‘when they don’t come to listen to us?’  Now I am sure that many answers could have been justly given to that question.  But the answer I kept giving myself was this: ‘There is an incontrovertible sincerity about that young American evangelist.  Even his fiercest critics all concede that he is sincere.  I really believe he is the first transparently sincere Christian preacher many of these people have ever heard.’  Today, twenty-five years later, I have found no reason to change my mind.”

John Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today (Grand Rapids, 1982), pages 269-270.

“God has two problems with us.  The relationship can be broken in two ways.  The first would be by our failure, our immorality, our vices. . . . That problem is usually quite obvious.  But the second problem is not so obvious.  It is precisely our supposed success, even our ‘morality,’ our virtues — the relationship with God is broken to the degree that we don’t think we need unconditional justification . . . .

The first problem, our failure and our immorality, is usually most easily recognized and generally condemned because it has consequences, both personally and socially.  But the second problem, while generally approved in human eyes because it is advantageous and socially useful, is more dangerous before God . . . precisely because it is praised and sought after.”

Gerhard O. Forde, “The Lutheran View,” in Christian Spirituality, edited by Donald L. Alexander (Downers Grove, 1988), page 26.

Weep, weep for those
who do the work of the Lord
with a high look
and a proud heart.
Their voice is lifted up
in the streets, and their cry is heard.
The bruised reed they break
by their great strength, and the smoking flax
they trample.

Weep not for the quenched
(for their God will hear their cry
and the Lord will come to save them)
but weep, weep for the quenchers.

For when the Day of the Lord
is come, and the vales sing
and the hills clap their hands
and the light shines
then their eyes will be opened
on a waste place,
smouldering,
the smoke of the flax bitter
in their nostrils,
their feet pierced
by broken reed-stems . . .
Wood, hay and stubble,
and no grass springing,
and all the birds flown.

Weep, weep for those
who have made a desert
in the name of the Lord.

Evangeline Paterson, “Lament,” in Francis A. Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian (Downers Grove, 1970), pages 37-38.

This past week Jani and I had the privilege of serving the pastors and wives of the Acts 29 Network, Southeast Region, in Vail, Colorado. Here is the message I brought, which I believe is critical to our authenticity and power in these momentous days: A29SE2018.

Richard Ellsworth Day, on pages 223-224 of The Shadow of the Broad Brim (1934), writes of “a prayer service in Metropolitan Tabernacle that dragged wretchedly,” when one of the leaders finally suggested to Spurgeon, “You had better take the meeting.”  So Spurgeon rose to pray: “O God, here is the devil doing his best to break up this prayer meeting.  I hear him say, ‘The church is dead, faith is dying out.’  I hear him, Lord, claiming that the people are satisfied with great congregations and that they are letting go of the right hand of the Lord Jesus.  It is a lie, O God!  We trust in Thee, Jesus!”  On Spurgeon went, Day relates, praising Christ, with “Amens” beginning to rise from the people.  Spurgeon continued, “Come, Lord Jesus, lift us out of ourselves and into Thee!”  An eyewitness records, “‘Amen!’ was our united shout, and the work was done.  The tide of redeeming love came in.  We were out on the ocean of God’s love, sailing.”

How many pastors today have the courage to lead the ministry of prayer in their churches so boldly?

“‘Edith, I wonder what would happen to most churches and Christian work if we awakened tomorrow, and everything concerning the reality and work of the Holy Spirit, and everything concerning prayer, were removed from the Bible.  I don’t mean just ignored, but actually cut out – disappeared.  I wonder how much difference it would make?’  We concluded it would not make much difference in many board meetings, committee meetings, decisions and activities.”

Edith Schaeffer, The Tapestry (Waco, 1981), page 356.

The Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea.  Jonah 1:4

The lot fell on Jonah.  Jonah 1:7

The Lord appointed a great fish.  Jonah 1:17

The word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time.  Jonah 3:1

The Lord God appointed a plant.  Jonah 4:6

God appointed a worm.  Jonah 4:7

God appointed a scorching east wind.  Jonah 4:8

The Lord has more ways of confronting us than we have ways of evading him.

“This book [of Acts] contains unanswerable evidence of the truth of the Christian religion.  It is a record of the early triumphs of Christianity.  Within the space of thirty years after the death of Christ, the gospel had been carried to all parts of the civilized, and to no small portion of the uncivilized, world.  Its progress and its triumphs were not concealed.  Its great transactions were not ‘done in a corner.’  It had been preached in the most splendid, powerful, and corrupt cities; churches were already founded in Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, and at Rome.  The gospel had spread in Arabia, Asia Minor, Greece, Macedon, Italy, and Africa.  It had assailed the most mighty existing institutions; it had made its way over the most formidable barriers; it had encountered the most deadly and malignant opposition; it had traveled to the capital [Rome] and had secured such a hold even in the imperial city as to make it certain that it would finally overturn the established religion and seat itself upon the ruins of paganism.

Within thirty years, it had settled the point that it would overturn every bloody altar, close every pagan temple, bring under its influence the men of office, rank, and power, and that ‘the banners of the faith would soon stream from the palaces of the Caesars.’  All this would be accomplished by the instrumentality of Jews – of fishermen – of Nazarenes.  They had neither wealth, armies, nor allies.  With the exception of Paul, they were men without learning.  They were taught only by the Holy Spirit, armed only with the power of God, victorious only because Christ was their Captain, and the world acknowledged the presence of the messengers of the Highest and the power of the Christian religion.  Its success never has been, and never can be, accounted for by any other supposition than that God attended it.  And if the Christian religion is not true, the change brought about by the twelve apostles is the most inexplicable, mysterious, and wonderful event that has ever been witnessed in this world.  Their success will stand until the end of time as an argument for the truth of God’s plan, that shall confound the infidel and sustain the Christian with the assured belief that this is a religion which has proceeded from the almighty and infinitely benevolent God.”

Albert Barnes, Notes Explanatory and Practical on the Acts of the Apostles (New York, 1851), page vi.  Italics original.

We are accustomed to the biblical message that we should trust God.  But here is another — smaller and subordinate, but still important — category: that God would trust us.  If we are not faithful (pistoi) with money, which is unrighteous and not worth much, who will entrust (pisteusei) to us the true riches of spiritual wealth and power?  In other words, if we can’t handle cheap things wisely, why would God put far more precious things into our hands?

I wonder if we have connected these dots: our prayers for revival, and our use of money.  We cannot buy the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:18-20).  But how we use our money is one indicator, in God’s sight, of our maturity and wisdom and readiness and trustworthiness with greater things, like revival.  Francis Schaeffer:

“The ‘true riches’ [of Luke 16:11] obviously have nothing to do with money.  To have spiritual power to overcome the awfulness of the post-Christian world — that is true riches.  The church is constantly saying, ‘Where’s our power? Where’s our power?’  Jesus’ statement here gives us at least part of the answer.  We must use money with a view to what counts in eternity.  If a child cannot take his father’s money, go to the store, purchase what is requested and return home with the change, it does not make sense for the father to increase his allowance.  So since . . . the money we handle is not our own, if we do not bring it under the lordship of Christ, we will not be given the greater wealth of spiritual power.”

Francis A. Schaeffer, “Ash heap lives,” in No Little People (Downers Grove, 1974), page 266.

Can we in this generation be trusted with the glorious powers of revival?  God assesses us not only by listening to how we pray and plead but also by looking at how we spend and give.

“I hold myself bound, in conscience and in honor, not even to imagine that I have attained a proper knowledge of any one article of truth, much less to publish it, unless through the Holy Spirit I have had such a taste of it, in its spiritual sense, as that I may be able from the heart to say with the psalmist, ‘I have believed, and therefore have I spoken.'”

John Owen, Works (Edinburgh, 1976), X:488.

HT: Justin Taylor

“When we are united to Christ a mysterious exchange takes place: he took our curse, so that we may receive his blessing; he became sin with our sin, so that we may become righteous with his righteousness. . . . On the one hand, God declined to ‘impute’ our sins to us, or ‘count’ them against us, with the implication that he imputed them to Christ instead.  On the other, God has imputed Christ’s righteousness to us. . . . We ourselves have done nothing of what is imputed to us, nor Christ anything of what is imputed to him. . . . He voluntarily accepted liability for our sins.”

John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, 1986), pages 148-149.

O. Hobart Mowrer, in the course of his service as a psychologist, set himself to understand more deeply our hollowed-out emotional lives. He noted that, commonly, when we perform a good deed, we advertise it, display it, draw attention to it, at least hint at it, hoping to collect on the emotional credit of it. But when we do something cheap, evil, or stupid, we hide it, deny it, minimize it, for obvious reasons. But the emotional discredit from our bad moments stays with us and even accumulates with each successive hypocrisy. The result is, we make ourselves chronically empty in conscience and heart and feeling. Our lives are required of us, and we are found wanting. No felt “net worth.” Lost confidence, no pizzazz. Our positive energies are depleted by our fugitive concealing.

1.  Get thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself.  Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. . . . When speaking of earthly goods Paul could say, “I have learned to be content,” but when referring to his spiritual life he testified, “I press toward the mark.”  So stir up the gift of God that is in you.

2.  Set your face like a flint toward a sweeping transformation of your life.  Timid experimenters are tagged for failure before they start.  We must throw our whole soul into our desire for God. . . .

3.  Put yourself in the way of the blessing.  It is a mistake to look for grace to visit us as a kind of benign magic, or to expect God’s help to come as a windfall apart from conditions known and met.  There are plainly marked paths which lead straight to the green pastures; let us walk in them.  To desire revival, for instance, and at the same time to neglect prayer and devotion is to wish one way and walk another.

4.  Do a thorough job of repenting.  Do not hurry to get it over with.  Hasty repentance means shallow spiritual experience and lack of certainty in the whole life.  Let godly sorrow do her healing work. . . . It is our wretched habit of tolerating sin that keeps us in our half-dead condition.

5.  Make restitution wherever possible.  If you owe a debt, pay it, or at least have a frank understanding with your creditor about your intention to pay, so your honesty will be above question.  If you have quarreled with anyone, go as far as you can in an effort to achieve reconciliation.  As fully as possible, make the crooked things straight.

A. W. Tozer, quoted in Stephen F. Olford, Heart-Cry For Revival (Westwood, 1962), page 30.

“We sit by and watch the Barbarian.  We tolerate him.  In the long stretches of peace we are not afraid.  We are tickled by his irreverence.  His comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us.  We laugh.  But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there is no smile.”

Hilaire Belloc, This and That and The Other (New York, 1912), page 282.

In a blog post entitled “4 Types of Mercy,” Matt Perman proposes that four mercies are to be discerned in the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10.  They are:

1. Advocacy
2. Assistance
3. Finances
4. Spiritual

Matt continues: “When we think of showing mercy and serving others, we don’t often think of advocacy.  But it is often a critical, and simple, form of mercy. Just advocating for the person—taking up their cause, defending them, supporting them, advocating for them.

Advocacy is different than encouragement. Encouragement is something you do to the person—building them up and strengthening them with your words. Advocacy is something you do for them in relation to others. When the real need is advocacy, encouragement alone can come across as hollow. On the other hand, real and sincere advocacy is a very encouraging thing.”

Advocacy is also evident in the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18. The parable is about prayer (verse 1). A widow has been wronged. She keeps appealing to an unjust judge, “Give me justice against my adversary” (verse 3). Eventually, he gives in, does the right thing, and stands up for her. The Lord’s point, of course, is that God is not an unjust but a just Judge. How much more should we keep praying to him. He will be just. The only question is, Do we believe that enough to keep praying, even until Jesus returns (verse 8)?

The parable also implies the advocacy we should assert for powerless people. Every one of us knows someone who has suffered wrong, someone who needs and deserves justice. If we say, “But justice is a misguided goal,” then we should read the parable again. The key word in the text is “justice,” appearing four times. Justice is the very thing Jesus makes prominent. Or if we say, “But there is always wrong on both sides,” then we should read the parable again. Jesus includes no hint that the widow too was at fault. For that matter, what about Cain and Abel, Saul and David, Ahab and Naboth, Paul and Alexander the coppersmith, and so many others throughout the Bible? Let’s not allow glib slogans to undermine both our relationships with one another and, even more, our understanding of the gospel itself. Justice is essential to the gospel (Rom. 3:21-26).

As in Saliger’s famous painting above, advocacy turns the abstract ideal of justice into a practical reality for an accused person when everything is on the line. To hold back from advocacy, to keep a low profile until the storm blows over, to keep quiet, to adopt a “wait and see” neutrality when an accused person justly needs courageous advocacy—to stand by in silence when we could make a real difference for a person under fire is cowardice.

Who needs your clear, biblical, courageous, non-angry, Christlike advocacy today?

The following is a letter my dad wrote several years before his death, which he left in his desk, where he knew we would find it:

Dear Family,

“The time has come for my departure” (2 Timothy 4:6). It’s strange to write this when I’m feeling well and vigorous, but unless Christ returns first that departure time will come. When you read this, it will have happened.

I have had a great journey with Jesus Christ. From childhood I have known about God and revered Him. The name of Jesus has always been precious to me. I thank my dear parents for this heritage. Now, life on earth is over, and I go to meet the Lord face to face. I trust in Him as my sure Savior and rest in His grace at this momentous time of my death. I do not fear death. (I don’t like the pain, blood, and guts of it all!) Actually, I have been anticipating this new adventure and at the time you read this I will be with Christ in Heaven. So it’s happened, and I’m now in God’s presence, probably shocked at all I’m seeing for the first time.

I am sorry for my sin and failures, which have been many, but I know Christ has forgiven them. “There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Some of those sins have been against you, my dear family, and I am sorry. You probably know my sins better than I. Some you don’t know, I know all too well. But “where sin abounds grace does much more abound” (Romans 5:20).

My dear Anne has been my most treasured friend. If she is still living as you read this, I know you will treat her well. When she goes to Heaven, God will give her blue ribbons and gold medals. What a great woman and wife! She has loved and stood loyally by me all our life together. And our last years have been our best. May God reward her for hard work, a forgiving spirit, relentless faith and enthusiastic acceptance of life as it came. She is a woman of God. We shall meet on the other side and sing a duet of praise to God. As you know, Psalm 34:3 has been our verse. We trust you’ve seen that we did magnify the Lord.

Each of you children and spouses have been the joy of my life, as have been the grandchildren. I include Melinda and John in this because they are family to us, too. I have never doubted your love for me, and you have been too kind. I will see you in Heaven, and we’ll bless God together.

I urge you to remain true to your Savior. I have no doubt that you will. Love each other deeply in your marriages. Keep your family ties strong. Lay up treasure in Heaven, because the stuff of earth is empty. Bank accounts, houses and furniture mean nothing to me now. Actually, they never did. Beware of sin, and confess it as soon as you discover it in your life. And let the Spirit’s gift of joy color all your life. As you mature, remain a happy person in Christ. Get even sweeter as you get older. Sour old people are a pain.

In my death, be sure God is glorified. Jesus glorified the Father most in His death. John 17:1-5 tells us He faced impending death with that prayer for the Father to be glorified. So at my memorial service, glorify God. Have a holy party. I was saying to Anne recently that this world has become less attractive lately, and I feel a bit out of place. So it’s good to go “home” now. I’d like my burial made simple. Cremation is fine with me. Bury my remains in a simple container to wait for the resurrection of my new glorified body. If cremation upsets you, then don’t do it, of course. I want you to be comfortable with it all.

Hebrews 13:20-21: “May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

I love you all, and each one. I’ll see you sooner than you think!

Dad

“It is very apparent from the Word of God that he is wont often to try the faith and patience of his people, when they are crying to him for some great and important mercy, by withholding the mercy sought for a season; and not only so, but at first to cause an increase of dark appearances. And yet he without fail at last succeeds those who continue instant in prayer with all perseverance and ‘will not let him go except he blesses’ (Genesis 32:26).”

In other words:

An obvious pattern in the Bible is that God tests the faith and stamina of his people as they cry out in prayer for some significant mercy. He tests them by withholding the mercy they are asking for. Not only that, but first he makes things worse, sending them discouraging setbacks. But count on it—he will eventually prosper those who push through in urgent prayer without quitting and will not take no for an answer.

Jonathan Edwards, “A Call to United Extraordinary Prayer,” in Works (Edinburgh, 1979), II:312.

“Walking around St James’s Park I thought intensely of the difference between Tolstoy and St Augustine. Tolstoy tried to achieve virtue, and particularly continence, through the exercise of his will; Augustine saw that, for Man, there is no virtue without a miracle.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge (London, 1981), page 434.

The work of the gospel includes doctrinal content, which is vital, but not doctrinal content alone, nor even doctrinal content plus human resolve alone. The true work of the gospel includes the miraculous power of God entering into our experience (1 Thessalonians 1:5), and especially our experience at its worst.

Authentic Christianity is not sporadically but pervasively miraculous, moment by moment. This inspires both humility and hope. Humility, for there is no progress for which we can take credit. Hope, for there is no defeat over which we must finally despair.

Led by Zwingli, the church in Zurich studied the Old Testament at a level of care which will doubtless amaze us today but which was certainly an evidence of the power of the Spirit in their midst.  A contemporary account paints the picture:

“This gathering began with intercessions.  Uniting in common forms of prayers, they supplicated the almighty and merciful God, whose word is a lantern unto our feet and a light unto our paths, to open and enlighten our mind, that we might understand his oracles purely and holily, and be transformed into that which we had rightly understood, and that in this we might in no way displease his majesty, through Christ our Lord.

After prayers, a very young man, a scholar of the church, read over side by side with the Vulgate, which they call Jerome’s version, that passage at which they had, in the due progress of exegesis, arrived for discussion.  It should be said that persons of good and promising intelligence are supported by a payment from the ecclesiastical chest and educated in arts, languages and sacred literature, that they may one day repay the church by whom they are supported and be of the greatest service in the sacred offices . . . .

When the young man who had read in Latin the passage which came up for discussion, a Hebrew reader rose and repeated the passage in Hebrew, occasionally pointing out the idioms and peculiarities of the language, sometimes giving a rendering of the sense, sometimes translating word for word, and moreover reading the comments of the Grammarians and Rabbis. . . .

The Greek reader followed the Hebrew.  He ran through the Septuagint, or whatever Greek translation it might be, compared it with the Hebrew and showed how far it differed from it.  Sometimes too he emended it, and always fixed his attention on it with unflagging carefulness.  Zwingli himself discharged this office as long as he lived. . . .

The words which had now been read in Latin, in Greek and in Hebrew were enunciated with the utmost conscientiousness and complete good faith.  He showed how the present passage had been treated by the old writers, what the Jewish commentators had thought about it, and what the Catholic.  He taught what it had in common with the sacred literature, the putting together, coherence and force of the words, the sublimity and high morality of their meanings, the strength of substance and delicacy of style to which everything must be referred — in short, he expounded the real meaning and also the profit and use of this passage and how a lesson in faith, devotion, piety, justice and loyalty might be learned from it.”

Quoted in Edwyn Bevan and Charles Singer, The Legacy of Israel (Oxford, 1927), pages 345-347.