Gospel

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God’s Grace in the Desert


Plenary Session One with Tim Keller

Here’s a sample:

God and Moses basically said to Israel, “Trust us.” And Israel trusted. Now, at Sinai, they are actually further away from the Promise Land than Egypt was.

He told them He was taking them to a land flowing with milk and honey. But He meets them in the desert. A place worse than where they were in Egypt.

It’s like this for us sometimes. We give Christ everything, our whole lives, and things get worse from there. It seems God is taking us away from where He says He’s going to take us.

This is so often the story of grace in our own lives as well.

For the rest of the notes, head over to kd316:

Plenary One: Tim Keller, Exodus 19

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Don Carson, Pre-Conference: Preserving the Gospel


Take away: We cannot assume the Gospel. When we assume the Gospel, it is valued less by the next generation and forgotten by the one after that. The Gospel MUST be the center of what we do. Value the Gospel and not the method through which you deliver it.

Don Carson Pre-Conference: Preserving the Gospel

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Tim and Kathy Keller, Pre-Conference


Marriage is a picture of the Gospel, but it is so much more…

The take away quotes in this talk are amazing. Not for married women, but for all who love Jesus and desire to live the Gospel in their lives.

Tim and Kathy Keller, Pre-Conference

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Comfort and Affliction


“You have a subtle gift for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” Dr. Dan Wilson, speaking to me. 🙂

At first I wasn’t sure how to take that statement, but it’s grown on me in the last year or so. I like it because it means that, hopefully, my ministry more and more consistently reflects the Gospel because that’s exactly what the Gospel does. It comforts and afflicts. It encourages and convicts.

Jesus was the Word personified, and He both comforted and  afflicted. He cleaned out the Temple and confronted the Pharisees, afflicting the religiously comfortable.

But He also gave the Samaritan woman a look at her hopeless life that had been afflicting her and comforted her by offering the Living Water of Himself.

The Gospel still comforts and afflicts us today. Or at least it should. It afflicts the areas of our life in which we fall into comfortable religion, challenging us back to relationship. It comforts us with grace and forgiveness when we fall one more time to our sin that so easily entangles, whatever that sin may be.

Do you allow the Gospel to both comfort and afflict you? Do you allow God to use you as an agent of both comfort and affliction in the lives of those around you?

When we speak and live the Gospel consistently, we can’t help but do both, because the Gospel made Flesh did both. As believers, Little Christs literally, we should both afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

Just make sure you allow the Word to do the same to you first. Acting in the flesh gets it backwards every time and we end up comforting the comfortable and further afflicting the afflicted. Just ask Jesus- He was the afflicted that was afflicted by the comfortable.

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Giving Jesus a Bad Name


“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Ghandi

Author Anne Rice recently announced that she is renouncing Christianity. I can understand her feelings. It is quite easy to look at the world today– full of legalistic, condemning statements, judgmental attitudes, hatred spewed publically in the name of Christ– and wonder why anyone in their right mind would want to be a Christian. Most of the air time dedicated to Christianity highlights the ranting of Pat Robertson or the alleged affair between Benny Hinn and Paula White or Ted Haggard proudly delcaring that he now says “hell” from the pulpit (and he isn’t referring to the place) or Westboro “Baptist Church” protesting at soldiers’ funerals. We see people teaching their children to protest by allowing 5 and 6 year olds to carry “God hates Fags” posters. It’s enough to make me want to tell them that the closest Jesus came to hating a group of people was his disgust not with sinners but with the Pharisees, the religious legalists who hated the sinners that He came to save.

Some have apparently already been quick to pass judgment on Rice’s announcement and on Rice herself, only further confirming that many in Christianity have bypassed Jesus and returned to a legalistic rule-keeping religion that couldn’t be further from the relationship Jesus died to provide for us. I wish that my friends who are not believers would have the opportunity to hear and see true faith in a widespread realm like social media or the evening news. Unfortunately, calm, rational, and loving but firm grace isn’t interesting enough to make the news. So I wanted to share this post from Russell Moore as an example of what “real” Christianity looks and sounds like. Not harsh, judgmental and self-righteous. But wise, forgiving, calm and humble. Real Christianity doesn’t lord over unbelievers (or the wayward brother or sister) as if we have done something to deserve the salvation we claim to be our own. Rather, true Christianity remembers daily, “Were but for the grace of God go I.”

If all you know of Christianity is the close minded, hateful rants of the self-righteous, read this, and know that most of us dislike them as much as you do. But we don’t rant against them. We try to follow our own advice. We pray for them. We encourage them to compare their lives to Scripture. We hope they meet Jesus and recognize (or at least remember) their own sin and need of a Savior. And we firmly hold to the faith that God is Sovereign and the loud screaming of a few will not so defame his glory as to derail His plans for his people.

Jesus didn’t condemn people into saving faith. He challenged them. He spoke truth, but he spoke it in love, with compassion. We would be wise to do the same if we wish to consider ourselves capable of carrying the title Christian, which means “Little Christ”. If your attitude and actions don’t make people see Jesus in you, either change your actions or change your title. The Gospel itself is offensive enough on its own; it doesn’t need our help.