How do you get ready for Christmas? A beautiful tree with ribbons and ornaments? Mantle decorations and table treatments? One too many trips to the mall or site visits to Amazon? In my case, guilty as charged.
We typically begin our Christmas planning right after October and start the set-up Thanksgiving week. Yes, we’re those people. We love Christmas and surrounding ourselves with physical reminders of the season.
We’re not alone. During the Christmas Season, everywhere you look there are signs of preparation: wreaths, store decorations, snowmen, plastic Santas and reindeer on the neighbors’ lawns … everyone has their own way of preparing for Christmas celebrations. Anticipation fills the air.
God prepares
God also prepares. In fact, since the beginning He’s been preparing. His preparation also includes decorations and ornaments, although of a different sort. At times, His preparations have taken an entire people into captivity and exile. At other times, He calls new leaders onto mountain tops or into deserts. He has prepared by dressing elaborate temples with gold and fine linen, as well as lowly barn stalls with straw and rough hewn wood.
And God’s preparations have required much longer than a few hours over the weekend to set up. Countless people and many centuries were needed to unfold His perfect plan that mankind’s Savior would be born at a specific place and time, to a specific woman He anointed, in a specific town according to His prophetic instruction, to fulfill a specific mission at a perfectly appointed date.
This event was foretold, rehearsed for centuries, and planned by God at the origination of creation. And it is the very reason we celebrate Advent.
As early as Genesis 3:15, following the fall of Man in the aftermath of Eve’s temptation, God revealed the beginnings of His plan warning the serpent “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.” These earliest foreshadowings of God’s prophesied the eventual conquest of the serpent by God’s chosen offspring. The offspring descended from a fallen woman and eventually born to a Virgin. A perfect preparation for a perfect answer to our frailties and imperfections.
“The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden” by Michelangelo, 1509
The journey from Eden to Calvary was long, just as our own plans are often long. Of course, God’s plans infinitely overshadow our own. Still, we are asked to prepare. Every Christmas we remember Son of Man’s coming with decorations and carols and cards and presents. We prepare for his return in the season of Advent by remembering the past while anticipating the future.
The most important preparation
Yet the most important preparation we can make every Advent Season – indeed, every day of the year – is to prepare our hearts and the hearts of those around us for what is to come. As Believers, we’re ordained to be God’s beacons in the here and now, offering a glimpse of eternity to those who will receive. Regardless of life’s distractions, no matter what we see or hear every day whispering to turn away from God, our charge is to prepare for the future.
God had the expanse of time to prepare us for the birth of His son. We aren’t given that luxury. Instead, our role is to share the miracle of Christmas every day to anyone and everyone we encounter. To those who have never experienced the joy of God’s love. To those who feel abandoned in the world. To those who have lost all hope.
We prepare for Christmas every year because God has prepared the way before us. As we remember this Advent Season, let us never forget the least of our brothers and sisters. Preparing our hearts means preparing theirs.
Today, tomorrow, or even right now – find someone you don’t know and wish them a Merry Christmas. Or tell a friend you love them, remembering with gratefulness what God’s love means to us all.
“The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.” Psalm 34:19
Pain. Loss. They’re difficult.
In the past two years I’ve lost my beloved mother, my amazing father-in-law, six high school and college classmates and three friends from church. Eleven losses in such a short span of time. And if my social media feeds are any indication, multiple other friends and acquaintances are suffering from any number of afflictions.
In many ways, this Advent Season feels very much like a Season of Suffering.
It’s in times of suffering and loss that many of us get closer to God. Or, sadly, farther away. Things happen. Sometimes unexpected. Sometimes expected but dreaded. Sometimes pointless and preventable. Sometimes unspeakably tragic.
As Believers, how do we cope with such losses? Our immediate and understandable reaction is “Why, God? Why did you let this happen?” Often, we echo the words of the prophet Habakkuk who wrote 600 years before Jesus’s birth:
“How long, O Lord, will I call for help, And You will not hear? I cry out to You, ‘Violence!’ Yet You do not save.” (Habakkuk 1:2)
It’s natural to want explanations, to seek answers. If we can understand God’s Will and His purpose, we can accept His plan. When we don’t have those answers, we often remain trapped in a cycle of “if only” and “I/he/she/they should have.” Without an explanation, our lives can splinter into 10,000 fragmented pieces impossible to put back together.
Answers give us closure, and closure allows us to move on.
Unthinkable Trust
It often seems God asks the impossible of us. To simply trust Him when we have no way of understanding how or why. To turn our lives over to Him in complete obedience, submit to His sovereignty when nothing is certain. To accept His purpose even when we can make no sense of what He wants.
This isn’t what many of us expected when we accepted the baptismal call. God never mentioned trust in Him might require surviving illness, death, shattered marriages, lost jobs, ruined finances. With every tragedy, our faith is tested, raising the familiar questions of those around us who don’t share our beliefs. “How can a loving God let this happen? Why do you believe in fairy tales? Why don’t you realize the truth that we’re alone in this world?”
Freedom through trust
Trust us difficult. Trust requires unnatural reactions to what the world throws at us. We want to question, to revisit, to blame. With every passing moment, our efforts to understand make us more anxious, more angry, more hurt. The very thing we try to help us through the pain makes that pain more real.
Yet with every moment God is whispering to us that His will is in motion, His purposes are at work. If we simply trust. Eventually, through acceptance and trust and submission and belief something amazing and transformational happens – we begin to heal.
The Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio, 1603
It’s a mystery, a paradox. The same process we fight against is the very process that frees us. Jesus tells us in John 8:32“and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” That truth, the only real Truth, is that when we trust in God and His infinite wisdom – as hard as that might be – we find peace and purpose.
God is the answer to our “Why?”
As strange as it seems, suffering invites us to see God in ways we’ve never imagined. Just as Job learned to trust in God more deeply and completely after his trials and tests, we learn how possible it is to trust God with our own lives through grief and suffering.
When we place our trust in God, even in the face of things and events we may never understand, a beautiful transformation takes place. Although we may not have a concrete answer, we’ll find peace that God truly does cause “all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
There are always “whys” to our suffering, no matter how difficult that suffering might be. While we may never fully understand the reasons for our grief, during this Advent Season we can take comfort in one ultimate truth. When we surrender our “whys” to God, He will always answer with the perfect answer: Himself.
“Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.” Matthew 24:12-13
I travel. Like, a lot. As in over 210,000 miles on planes and 118 nights in hotels this year alone. A good 1/3 of my life is spent on the road either going to, participating in, or returning from business meetings. It’s a grueling pace.
One inevitable topic of conversation with new acquaintances is “how do you do that?” A more pointed version is “why do you still do it?” Ignoring the implied age reference, the second question is easy: I love what I do, and I’m fairly good at it. The answer to the first question? Technology. I confess: I embrace technology in every facet of my life where it can help me be more productive.
I’m old enough to remember not having a device in every hand. No texting, no smartphone with GPS and Google Maps, no social media, no Uber at my beck and call. I chuckled several years ago when my youngest daughter innocently asked “Dad, what grade where you in when you got your first cell phone?” I jokingly replied “Um, 20th grade?” I was 26 before I ever saw my first cell phone, one of those Dick Tracy in-the-car monstrosities used by the CEO of the company I worked for and charging $12 per minute.
What does technology have to do with Advent?
Convenience. Pure and Simple.
We live in the Convenience Revolution. Digital assistants organize our lives. Amazon delivers our most immediate “gotta have it right now” same-day urges. Skype or Google Hangouts allow us to reach out and “touch” someone face-to-face from our kitchen tables. We pay our bills from our cell phones. Selecting that “special” gift for a friend or loved one now is as easy as 15 minutes on Etsy.
For the truly connected, we’ve eliminated any need to deal with stress, boredom, discomfort, or pain. We can talk with distant friends and family on a whim – or just as easily avoid them. We can secretly laugh at those old classmates who haven’t “aged” all that well. Or (perhaps even more secretly) covet the “great family lives” they share on social media.
There’s another side to this coin, of course.
Technology and convenience have created an entire generation of human beings with virtually no basic human socialization skills. Uncomfortable with real interaction, many of us spend hours every day “interacting” online. We choose Netflix over the messiness of Cinemark. We live in gated communities with wifi-powered camera systems ensuring we never actually have to see our neighbors. Homework and research? Just download it.
Sadly, this also seems to have found its way into our churches and our relationship with God. We crave convenient sermons about topics that won’t make us too uncomfortable. We prefer tech-savvy “worship experiences” with pyrotechnics and high entertainment value over intense, prayer-infused scriptural examination that might ask us to look just a bit deeper into our own lives. We pass the peace of Christ to our neighbors, never even knowing their names.
In short, we’ve become numb. Numb to struggle, numb to pain, numb to God’s voice, numb to the Holy Spirit’s longing for our hearts. Numb to anything except convenience, stimulation, and endless commentary on everyone else’s shortcomings.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Immediate gratification inevitably leads to longing for greater levels of stimulation. Where a Toyota once met our desires, now a Lamborghini satisfies our need for speed. Yesterday’s Coach Messenger Crossbody In Signature Jacquard Bag is replaced with today’s Christian Louboutin Cabata East-West Tote. (Ok, I’m a little scared I even know what those are.)
The funny thing about numbness is that the more we have of something, the more numb we become to it. We forget the yearning hearts of our youth, when simple things satisfied us. Sadly, for many of us this same thing happens to our relationships with God.
Remember when we started, when the feeling was new and we were ALIVE with passion for God? Stories in the Bible leapt off the page at us, speaking truth into our lives with every read. Sermons had us talking for days and our pastors were AMAZING.
Then, something happened. We allowed our relationship with God to become, well, casual. We got numb. What once held us in awe now barely amuses us. We lost the wonder, the reverence. We forgot David’s words from Psalm 147: “The Lord favors those who fear Him, those who wait for His lovingkindness.” (emphasis mine)
The same God we once revered became a God we now critique. The same God who saved mankind through the sacrifice of His only son is no longer big enough to save us from the world of man without a serious makeover. We redefine His words. We water down (or, in modern language, “edify”) His commandments. We demand the God we selectively deign to worship change to see us through our eyes, agreeing with who we believe ourselves to be.
Something has changed
Soon enough, our faith becomes little more than veneer, a love grown cold. We transform into the very people Jesus describes in Matthew 23:27, appearing whitewashed and beautiful on the outside, but on the inside full of “dead bones and uncleanness.” This type of faith, while not deeply fulfilling in our souls, works in the 21st Century because it doesn’t require much commitment.
Funny thing – we don’t see the irony. Yes, something has changed. But that something isn’t God, it’s us. We have changed, wanting immediate satisfaction. God is the same as He told us in Malachi 3:6and Hebrews 13:8 and Revelation 1:8.
What has changed is that we’ve become numb to God’s voice. We don’t want to wait and anticipate, we want to receive and appreciate.
God’s promise is for all of us. He never asked us to live passionless (or painless) lives – just the opposite! His love for us surpasses our understanding. He provides an endless supply of all we need to walk in the fullness of His life.
During this Advent season, push beyond the numbness. Wait with the same fresh anticipation you felt when you first discovered His love. Renew the expectation of His promise for peace and salvation in your heart. And let go of the idea that convenience is in any way a synonym for God.
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” – Romans 12:2
Dear Christian – we live in confusing times. Every day it seems we’re bombarded with admonitions and rebukes:
“You can say this but you can’t say that.”
“Live the way we think you should and embrace anything anyone else feels or you’re X-cist and X-phobic.”
“You don’t really believe that stuff about a literal Hell do you?”
“What?? You actually buy that immaculate conception story? Are you crazy”
“Don’t tell me you actually think the Bible is literally the inspired Word of God. Surely you must realize it’s just a book written by men with all their biases and limitations.”
Or one of my favorites from a recent popular daytime talk show featuring five B- and C-list celebrity women commenting on the weighty matters of the day: “Talking to God and hearing Him talk back is what I call mental illness.”
Things Have Changed
Life for Christians today seems different than when many of us first became Believers. Back before social media created John the Baptists out of anyone with a laptop or a smartphone or offered easy pulpits for anyone with a grievance of hate to spew.
Credit: Diialia from youtube.com
Before it seemed like our Bibles had been tossed into cultural blenders, only to be rearranged and reinterpreted to mean anything anyone wishes, at any time and for any reason.
Before secular debates forced changes in our understanding of sacred Scripture to conform Christian faith to the sensibilities of “enlightened” Society.
Before faith was publicly ridiculed as casually as we comment on the weather.
Before our sensitivities to “feelings” overshadows our concerns for the very lives of those around us.
As an unashamed follower of Christ, I’m saddened by what is happening to the message of love and authentic obedience to God’s Word espoused by the Jesus of scripture.
I’m disappointed with celebrities and pastors who place their number of followers, book sales, and secular adoration over Truth and Salvation. With religious pundits politicize faith.
I’m angered over preachers of the Word who build treasures for themselves at the expense of the very congregants they profess to serve.
I’m disheartened by churches that remove crosses and sermons about sacrifice in favor of blithe self-help sermon series and bland walls filled with nondescript portrayals of perfect lives because Biblical truth is somehow “too harsh and depressing.”
Listening to The Truth
When God’s Word became flesh, and God’s voice spoke to both that generation and all of creation about His son, saying a “Listen to him,” His instruction wasn’t a suggestion, or an illustration of just one out of many ways to reach salvation. Jesus embodied the definition of received grace and substitutionary atonement.
Jesus’ life was the fulfillment of God’s promise first made in Genesis 3:14-15, where in response to the serpent’s lies and the subsequent downfall of man God proclaimed: “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Credit: www.e-watchman.com
We see this struggle playing out daily before our very eyes.
Rebellion in Our DNA
When we read this account of Genesis, and then the next few chapters, we get a more complete picture of the fullness in God’s promise of a Savior, and how deeply desperate we are in need of salvation. Rebellion is in our DNA, embedded at the core of our collective psyche, masquerading as “enlightenment” and “independence.” Our search for self-salvation allows sin to constantly lurk outside the doors of our hearts, desiring to consume us.
Every day, each of us makes moral/spiritual decisions. The pressure to make those decisions based on ever-changing social “norms” is overwhelming. We’re told to “feel” our way through life using contemporary measurements, not make decisions based on outdated and archaic writings of men who lived 2,000 or 3,000 years ago.
And so it’s been from the beginning, even with Jesus’ earliest followers after his resurrection and ascension. We read in Paul’s epistles an admonition to the congregations in Galatia to turn from prideful legalism as they fell away from the gospel of grace. He rebuked the church in Corinth not turn a blind eye to the division and rampant immorality that had crept into its midst. To the Colossians he warned against the false teachings of those who were questioning the very identity and deity of Jesus.
Credit: www.messianicpublications.com
Late, when John penned the Book of Revelation as a letter to the seven churches in Asia Minor, Jesus’ own words reinforced the message of vigilance against a diluted faith. They – like many today – had abandoned God’s Word as the only standard for guiding belief and behaviors.
Unchanging Hearts
Yet have we as a people really changed that much over the centuries? Our technology may be different, our ability to see the world in larger terms has expanded, but have our hearts grown?
Just like Christians today, early Believers were surrounded by those advocating lifestyles and philosophies in direct conflict with scriptural teaching, often in the name of “tolerance” and “love.” And just like many of us today, early Christians faced harsh criticism, ridicule, and ostracizing for holding to the authentic teachings passed from God through Jesus.
Even popular pseudo-pastors with catchy-sounding blog sites tell us our faith is wrong, distorted, irrelevant in a world where nothing is out of bounds if it’s done under the catch-all of “love,” nothing is counter to God’s direction (unless, of course, it disagrees with their vision of the world).
A Hard Truth
Here’s the hard truth for all who believe in the timelessness of God’s sovereign Word. If we are to heed Paul’s warning not to conform to this world, to immunize ourselves from the moral and spiritual confusion surrounding us, we must first resist the pressure to conform to the Godless standards of our culture.
In his epistle to the Romans, acknowledged by many as the clearest and most systematic presentation of Christian doctrine in all Scripture, Paul warns us that the pagan world system will continually pressure us to fit in and endorse its belief system, to be “normal” and “mainstream.” The true #Resist movement in society is pushing back against this system of societal enslavement.
The enticements never feel like shackles, of course. Just as the Moabites corrupted the Israelites in Numbers 31-33, or the Nicolaitans attempting to corrupt the Ephesians in Revelation 2, these seductions are most often presented as assurances of pleasure, self-gratification, and personal gain. False teachings are filled with prisons masquerading as promises.
Avoiding False Teachings
How do we avoid the whispers of an enemy waiting at our door? At some point, we must simply choose not to listen, refuse to embrace them as enlightened truths of a more openly aware society, and shut them out.
False doctrines, watering-down our beliefs to accommodate a more “tolerant” expression of faith, are like poisonous vipers. We may escape unharmed after one or two encounters. Over time, their bite becomes toxic to our spiritual health.
The lure of cultural conformity works its way into every aspect of our lives – how we live, how we relate, how we worship, how some in society respond to social pressures. When we remove the guardrails of obedience to God’s Word from our lives, all we have left is moral equivalency (that is, morality is what I say it is). And with every example of behavior straying from ever-evolving social norms, the outcry for another man-made remedy in the form of a law or rule emerges.
We’ve forgotten the direct simplicity of God’s plan, replacing it with a society demanding only one rule: agree with us or be exiled. How much more infinitely pure is the direct Word of our Creator?
Scripture tells us “every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood,” (Genesis 8:21). How much truer is that today, as the world crowds in to replace God with cultural conformity?
Over the next few days, pause a moment and reflect on where you look for guidance. Is it from the peer pressure screaming at you to fit in or is it from the timeless, inerrant Word of God? The answer may surprise you.
“If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:3)
How do you get ready for Christmas? A beautiful tree with ribbons and ornaments? Mantle decorations and table treatments? One too many trips to the mall or site visits to Amazon? In my case, guilty as charged.
We typically begin our Christmas planning right after October and start the set-up Thanksgiving week. Yes, we’re those people. We love Christmas and surrounding ourselves with physical reminders of the season.
We’re not alone. During the Christmas Season, everywhere we look there are signs of preparation: wreaths, store decorations, snowmen, plastic Santas and reindeer on the neighbors’ lawns … everyone has their own way of preparing for Christmas celebrations. Anticipation fills the air.
God Prepares
God also prepares. In fact, since the beginning He’s been preparing. His preparation also includes decorations and ornaments, although of a different sort. At times, His preparations have taken an entire people into captivity and exile. At other times, He leads new leaders onto mountain tops or into deserts. He has prepared by dressing elaborate temples with gold and fine linen, as well as lowly barn stalls with straw and rough hewn wood.
And God’s preparations have required much longer than a few hours over the weekend to set up. Countless people and many centuries were needed to unfold His perfect plan that mankind’s Savior would be born at a specific place and time, to a specific woman He anointed, in a specific town according to His prophetic instruction, to fulfill a specific mission at a perfectly appointed date.
This event was foretold, rehearsed for centuries, and planned by God at the origination of creation. And it is the very reason we celebrate Advent.
As early as Genesis 3:15, following the fall of Man in the aftermath of Eve’s temptation, God revealed the beginnings of His plan warning the serpent “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.” These earliest foreshadowings of God’s prophesied the eventual conquest of the serpent by God’s chosen offspring. The offspring descended from a fallen woman and eventually born to a Virgin. A perfect preparation for a perfect answer to our frailties and imperfections.
“The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden” by Michelangelo, 1509
The journey from Eden to Calvary was long, just as our own plans are often long. Of course, God’s plans infinitely overshadow our own. Still, we are asked to prepare. Every Christmas we remember Son of Man’s coming with decorations and carols and cards and presents. We prepare for his return in the season of Advent by remembering the past while anticipating the future.
The Most Important Preparation
Yet the most important preparation we can make every Advent Season – indeed, every day of the year – is to prepare our hearts and the hearts of those around us for what is to come. As Believers, we’re ordained to be God’s beacons in the here and now, offering a glimpse of eternity to those who will receive. Regardless of life’s distractions, no matter what we see or hear every day whispering to turn away from God, our charge is to prepare for the future.
God had the expanse of time to prepare us for the birth of His son. We aren’t given that luxury. Instead, our role is to share the miracle of Christmas every day to anyone and everyone we encounter. To those who have never experienced the joy of God’s love. To those who feel abandoned in the world. To those who have lost all hope.
We prepare for Christmas every year because God has prepared the way before us. As we remember this Advent Season, let us never forget the least of our brothers and sisters. Preparing our hearts means preparing theirs.
Today, tomorrow find someone you don’t know and wish them a Merry Christmas. Or tell a friend you love them, remembering with gratefulness what God’s love means to us all.
“They preached the good news in that city and won a large number of disciples. Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. ‘We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,’ they said. Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust. After going through Pisidia, they came into Pamphylia, and when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia. From Attalia they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.” – Acts 14:21-27
I was not a particularly enthusiastic Boy Scout. Sure, I diligently worked my way up the ranks, earning merit badge after merit badgeand achieving each level with dutiful pride. I always kept my uniforms tidy (secret confession, I ironed my scarves; yeah, I was sick, I know). And I even helped the proverbial elderly lady across the street once.
Problem is, I had an issue with the whole “Be Prepared” thing. “Be prepared for what?” I used to ask myself. When am I ever going to need to start a fire with two wet sticks and a clump of moss? That’s why God invented matches! My experience with scouting was more like falling off a bicycle rather than a purposeful race. I was “transactional” in my scouting.
The fathers of the emerging church in Jerusalem had a somewhat different perspective.
The Apostles’ initial outreach is in red…
Following the charge given them by Jesus in Acts 1:8 to witness and proclaim the Gospel in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to “the ends of the earth,” the Apostles, Paul, and early disciples of the Church faced a daunting task: how would they equip themselves to carry out what has become known as “the Great Commission?”With one or two exceptions these weren’t men with deep religious backgrounds. In fact, except for the brief time they spent with Jesus they were rather ordinary – kind of like you and me. What possibly steeled them for the journeys resulting in the planting of Christianity across breadth of the Roman Empire?
We read in Acts 8 how a great persecution befell the church at Jerusalem, and just as Jesus had foreseen, scattered its members throughout Judea and Samaria. Yet Jesus has prepared his disciples – even as they could not have planned for such a potential disaster. Rather than forsaking their faith, they were strengthened by it and spread the Gospel wherever they went. Ultimately, a foothold was established where Barnabas and Paul spent their early ministry teaching and growing disciples (still predominantly Jews although with an increasing interest from the Gentile population).
As I read through Acts 14, which opens this post, it strikes me that there were four specific areas of preparation the Apostles undertook to ensure they were equipped. These four areas are not so different from what you and I can do today in our own walks.
1) They prepared with a defined strategy (verse 21). The Apostles’ plan of action was simple, direct, and easily understood: Preach to Gospel to the lost, with intentionality to go where people could be found – the cities. Notice where time and again the Apostles took their message. Not into the barren wilderness, but rather, into the cities where the Good News could resonate and be magnified.
2) They prepared with steadfastness (verse 22). The early Church faced obstacles its modern descendents can hardly conceive, including persecution and even death. Still, the Apostles remained unwavering in their commitment to build community and reach the lost. They continued in faith no matter the obstacles.
God’s succession plan is the force of the Gospel multiplied by the believers passing it on, raised to the power of the Holy Spirit going before them
3) They prepared for succession (verse 23). Jim Collins’ seminal book “Good to Great,”describes in detail the importance of a succession plan in business. How much more important is it that the Church – arguably the greatest enterprise of humanity – also have such a plan. Fortunately, the Apostles adopted Jesus’ (and God’s) own design – build and work through people.Pastor Bobby Welch, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, described it this way: God’s succession plan is the force of the Gospel multiplied by the believers passing it on, raised to the power of the Holy Spirit going before them.
4) They were prepared to succeed (vs. 24-27). The New Testament clearly lays out a plan to accomplish the Great Commission. First, the Apostles took action based on their convicted faith in the power Jesus’ death and resurrection as Christ. Next, they communicated the incredible and indescribable wonders of God’s work amongst them. This ensured the news was continually spreading. Third, they were energized to recruit, or “call” brothers to join them and continue the fight for Kingdom building.
This is one of the most essential messages of the Gospel: trust in God to provide, let His Word inspire us to action, and then go share that abundance with others by enlisting them into the joy of the Gospel.
Not long ago I was returning to Austin from a business trip to Boston and had to connect through Chicago. As I settled into my seat and prepared for the final leg, a lady boarded and sat next to me. I was reading Tim Keller’s “The Reason for God,”and had tucked it into the seat pocket in front of me. It turned out my seat mate had serious issues with the “Christ” part of “Christianity.” She much preferred, in her words, “the more enlightened view” of Unitarianism. She just didn’t believe in the “chains” of Christianity.
Anyone who knows me can guess my reaction. Laptop snaps shut, and I go into engage mode. In the end, we had a lovely conversation. She seemed amazed that I listened and conversed without judgment, and actually considered her point of view. I promised to send her a copy of Keller’s book, which I did (Tim can thank me later).
Small steps, but steps nonetheless. In this case, I was prepared for this unexpected conversation by regular reading and studying of the Word coupled with regular conversations with others. Ultimately, planning only prepares us for when we are in the path of action. The Kingdom is won not by great speeches and comprehensive policies, but one relationship at a time.
This is the kind being prepared I can get used to.
from childhood,” (
