One Last Revival?

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I’ve been thinking about and praying for a revival. For years. Specifically, and more so even lately, I’ve been praying and hoping for a Josiah revival.

What’s a Josiah revival? It’s a last ditch kind of revival … one more mighty move of God before judgment falls. And fall it most certainly will.

Consider the sin of Sodom. Usually, we equate the sin of Sodom with overt and aggressive homosexuality. Yet those were only the final symptoms of their sin. God Himself describes what they in Sodom had done:

“Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: she and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. {50} And they were haughty and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw fit.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50)

First, Sodom was proud. Pride is a reflection of self-sufficiency, that somehow we have accomplished or gained what we have on our own. President Abraham Lincoln ascribed this meaning of pride to the United States, mired at the time in a brutal Civil War which would ultimately take the lives of as many as 750,000 Americans. In his 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation, Lincoln wrote of the untold blessings that our nation had received. After citing what he called the choicest bounties of heaven, he mourned:

“…We have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.” 

That is precisely what Sodom had done. They were a successful city-state, rich with agricultural and commercial success, wealthy and prosperous. But they thought they’d done these things themselves. They were proud, fat, and with much discretionary time on their hands. Their work week was short, they were materially satisfied, and so they turned their attention to pleasure and the lusts of the flesh. And because the flesh can never be satisfied, they devolved further and further from Divinely ordained sexual relations between a husband and wife. They ended up with total sexual confusion and perverted expression of their sexuality.

We (in the United States) are much like Sodom. Our lust and will to live without truth and accountability to the God who made us has led us to unimaginable national sin.

At the top of the list of our national sins has been the holocaust of abortion. This holocaust has claimed the lives of at least 54,000,000 innocents since 1973. How large is this number? It represents 1,367 million babies per year that have died. That number is far greater than ALL casualties of war from every war in which the U.S. has been involved since 1775.

President Lincoln believed that the Civil War was God’s just judgment for the sin of slavery. A former professor of mine once queried our class, “If the blood atonement for the sin of slavery was the Civil War, what do you suppose will be the blood atonement for the sin of abortion?”

It is evident to many that judgment is on its way (remember the Billy Graham quote, “If God does not judge America, He owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah”?).

But … perhaps … there can be one last mighty move of God prior to that judgment falling. A Josiah revival.

Josiah was the grandson of Manasseh, and the son of Amon. Manasseh reigned in Judah for fifty-five years, and Amon for two. The spiritual wickedness that accumulated in those years is unimaginable. Even though Manasseh repented and was forgiven, the damage had already been done. The LORD spoke through Jeremiah to say that judgment was inevitable, and that it would be horrible.

Then the LORD said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel stood before Me, My mind would not be favorable toward this people. Cast them out of My sight, and let them go forth. {2} And it shall be, if they say to you, ‘Where should we go?’ then you shall tell them, Thus says the LORD: “Such as are for death, to death; and such as are for the sword, to the sword; and such as are for the famine, to the famine; and such as are for the captivity, to the captivity.”’ {3} And I will appoint over them four forms of destruction,” says the LORD: “the sword to slay, the dogs to drag, the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. {4} I will hand them over to trouble, to all kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem.”

After Manasseh and Amon, Josiah became king when only 8 years old. Somehow, by the sovereign grace of God, he was cut out of a completely different bolt of cloth. At age 16 he began to seek the God of his father David, and at age 20 he began to aggressively purge idolatry from Judah and Jerusalem. And at 26 he was exposed to the Word of God through Hilkiah the priest and Shaphan the scribe.

What happened then was amazing and incredible. Covenants were made, purging and repentance continued, Passover was observed, the Word of God spread. All told, Judah experienced the effect of Josiah’s reign from the time he was twenty to the time he died at thirty-nine.  The land which had been so full of sins and idolatry of every kind was now a nation under God. Such a drastic change could only be produced by God Himself, using His Word and anointed leadership.

After Josiah died, they lived once again with no fear of the LORD. It was only a matter of time before the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity.

A Josiah revival.

One last time when someone … when many some ones … begin to seek God with all their hearts.

One last time when idolatry and sin is purged.

One last time when the Word of God is discovered, preached, taught, believed, and obeyed.

One last time before the inevitable judgment of God falls upon America.

Can we pray for revival? Should we hope for revival? Is it possible that one last Josiah revival will come?

Circumcision Saturday – What are your thoughts?

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I received this question after teaching of about the Sign of the Covenant. An interesting way to look at it.

What do you think?

Please tell me is you think i’m pressing the bible text with these thoughts. I think the Holy Spirit was impressing upon me that 1) Abraham was, in circumcision, making himself a living sacrifice in that in response to God’s directive he and his chosen people were offering themselves to the covenant promise wholeheartedly. They were self-purifying before there was a sacrificial system, but using their personal body as a foreshadowing of what Jesus would later do. Abraham was preparing himself to beget God’s chosen seed in Isaac. And he and his household were in faith and deed commiting an act in belief that set them apart as God’s chosen. I realize that Jesus was the first and only man to offer His body to God to show personal dedication to the will of God, and the initiation of the New Covanant started as a response to that (Heb. 5,10,16-20, esp. 20). Do you think circumcision could be an OT foreshadowing of Jesus offering His body to establish God’s chosen people?

God’s Kingdom and the U.S.A–separating the transparencies

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It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that culturally and politically, the U.S.A. is in the midst of radical change.  And as with all change, a segment of people rejoice at what’s “finally” happening while others are absolutely disgusted with the way things are “these days”.

And although there is a huge division among those who are viewing the changes, there is unity regarding the fact that fundamental change IS taking place.

Below is an illustration that I believe is one of way of describing what’s happening.  In my next post, I’ll share what I believe is the proper way for followers of Jesus to view these changes and how best to respond.

Not too long ago, businesses, churches, and many other types of organizations used what seems like an ancient form of visual media to communicate in a group setting.  That visual media tool was called an overhead projector.  It was a revolutionary invention which is actually still in use in many parts of the world.

The actual information that this wonder of modern technology projected on to a screen or a blank wall had to be placed on a transparent sheet of glass or a sheet of plastic-type material.  (When I first began attending an evangelical church back in 1981, the words to the worship songs were either typed or hand-written on these sheets of plastic that many of us referred as “overheads” or “transparencies”).

One of the coolest aspects of the era of transparencies was that you could  have information on one transparency, lay it on the projector and project it up on the screen, and then lay another transparency with more or different information on top of it so that it looked like there was just one transparency that was being shown on the screen.  In other words, two separate transparencies with different information on each could be layered together in such a way that the audience would conclude that what were they were viewing actually came from one source.

Now…please keep the layering capability of transparencies in your mind and the reality that transparencies can present what are separate sets of facts in a way that gives the appearance of absolute unity.

Shifting gears, I’d like you to also begin thinking about the documents that form the foundation of the United States of America.  Specifically, think about the Declaration of Independence and the constitution, especially the first 10 amendments that we refer to as the Bill of Rights.

We know for a fact that many of the founding fathers were real followers of Jesus and absolutely believed that the bible was God’s word and that it contained truths and principles that if relied upon and put into practice, would benefit all of mankind.  We also know that although some of the founders were not followers of Jesus and therefore wouldn’t agree that the bible was fully inspired, they did recognize that the “worldview” derived from the bible and the truths and principles contained within the bible  were probably the best foundation for a truly representative type government to be formed upon.

Now imagine that overhead projectors and transparencies existed when the founding fathers were wrestling with constructing the framework that our government was built upon.

On one transparency, they might have listed the truths and principles that govern the Kingdom of God that are contained in the bible.  This list would have contained certain words and phrases that were taken directly from the scripture, maybe even including the specific biblical references they were drawn from.

When the list was finished it would have been clear to everyone present that what was described on the transparency was actually an attempt at giving expression to the Kingdom of God as depicted in the bible.  But, they also would have recognized that only those who truly know, love, and serve the King of Kings, whose Kingdom is not of this world, would truly desire and attempt to live as described.

Since that would have been the case, then clearly, what that transparency describes would not be respected or followed by those who haven’t already surrendered to the King of Kings.  At the same time, they also would have recognized that many of the principles and truths were capable of standing alone.  In other words, they would have understood that these principles and truths are also a description of what basic goodness is and therefore are universally true. In a sense, they are “generic” principles and truths that anyone from almost any back round could easily embrace.

At that point, they may have grabbed another transparency and then created a new list of selected portions from the first transparency.   But on this one, none of the principles or truths summarized were written in a way that clearly shows their origin is actually found in the bible.

This second transparency was then fine-tuned, agreed upon by all, and the foundational document the country was built upon was projected for all to see, marvel at, and implement.

But here’s what happened:

1.  Those that love the King of Kings and live in His Kingdom recognize that the the principles and truths written on the transparency that the U.S. government is built upon have a biblical foundation even though the documents themselves don’t indicate that.

2.  So these people pick up the first transparency, the one that contains principles and truths from the Kingdom of God, the one that wasn’t really useable to base an earthly government on, and they lay this transparency on the one that the founding fathers created for the formation of this government.

3.  Because the information in both is so similar, so seemingly compatible, so apparently non-contradictory, they began believing, thinking, and acting as if what is written on the two transparencies actually describes the same entity.  In other words, in their minds, based on what they see projected on the wall, the Kingdom of God and the United States of America….are one and the same!!!

4.  And eventually they come to believe and act as if the Kingdom of God is somehow dependent upon or helplessly influenced by the things that are taking place within the U.S.A.  That because the two are one and the same, if the U.S.A. collapses culturally or economically, the Kingdom of God will struggle and potentially even cease to exist if the U.S.A. ultimately ceases to exist.

Keeping the layered transparency illustration in mind, it is my conviction that God is permitting things to unfold in such a way as to make clear to His people and to everyone else, that His Kingdom and the U.S.A. are not the same thing.

And that He has decided that His people that live in this country have lived long enough under a deception that has actually crippled them and left them incapable of caring about and actively participating in what He is really doing in this world.

Since so many of His people seem incapable or unwilling to distinguish between the two transparencies that they have chosen to project and view as one, He has chosen to begin the incredibly painful but completely necessary process of forcing the transparencies to be separated.

I’m convinced that this separation of the transparencies is going to continue at an even faster pace….for everyone’s good and God’s glory.

 

The Four Essential Practices of Pastoral Ministry

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Without controversy, the greatest work accomplished by Jesus Christ was His death and resurrection.  Yet these two events don’t exhaust the full scope of the assignment given to Him by His Father.  They are the pinnacle of His life, but there’s a lot of mountain underneath.  Though the essence of His mission was redemptive, we can see in the practice of His ministry His shepherd’s heart, His pastoral concern for the people He came to save.  He is not only the Redeemer of His people, He is our Shepherd, too.  His death was redemptive and His life was pastoral.

Though the focus of the gospels is clearly on the last week of Jesus’ life – His death and resurrection – there is much material devoted to His pastoral ministry among the people.  The death and resurrection of Jesus are the main themes of the gospels, but not the only themes.  Without His pastoral ministry among the people, the hostility of the Jewish leadership would be without context.  The gentleness of Jesus and His care as He moved among the people were in stark contrast to the indifference of the career minded, ego-driven religious leaders.  His pastoral ministry emphasized the twin virtues of servanthood and humility, virtues sorely lacking among the clergy of His day.

In John 17:4 Jesus refers to the work He has already accomplished.

I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work  which You have given Me to do.

Some might argue that Jesus is using the proleptic here, that He is referring to a future event as already accomplished – that He is summing up the whole of His life in one grand statement – that He is referring to His death and resurrection as past events, though future.  If suffering a sacrificial death and experiencing a resurrection in power were the only assignments given to Jesus, that might be an attractive interpretation.   But the work God had given Him to do, though culminating in the cross and empty tomb, were not exhausted by them.  In referring to the accomplished work in John 17:4, Jesus is looking back on the work He completed as a Shepherd among the people.

We are not left in the dark about the work that Jesus accomplished.  In John 17:6-13, Jesus reviews the work He completed whereby He glorified God.  They outline the pastoral ministry of Jesus Christ.  These verses set before us the four essential practices of ministry.  What Jesus exampled in His ministry and reviews in prayer here before His Father are the essence of being a shepherd to the flock of God.  Whatever our ministry training and ongoing theological education is, let’s master these four essential practices of pastoral ministry first.  The mature pastor and effective spiritual leader will be one who follows the pastoral example of Jesus and mimics the rhythm and patterns of His life.

Many who are reading this will, no doubt, find that they are already practicing the four essentials.  These practices of pastoral ministry do not exhaust the full scope of pastoral care, but, eliminate any one of them, and you will cripple the shepherd and impoverish the sheep.  OK – what are the four essential practices of pastoral ministry?

#1                 Manifesting the name of God –

I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world.   John 17:6

#2                 Giving the Word –

I gave them Your word…   John 17:8

#3                 Praying for the people –

I ask on their behalf…   John 17:9     

#4                 Guarding the flock –

I was keeping them in Your name…I guarded them…  John 17:12

#1 has to do with the messenger whereas #2 has to do with the message.  If the messenger is rejected, the message will probably be rejected, too.  If we don’t manifest the character of God we become ineffective in speaking the word of God.  There is more to preaching than insight and delivery.  #3 is largely private whereas #4 is very personal as we get one-on-one with people and rebuke and challenge and encourage and weep with them.

In my next four blog pieces I will enlarge on each essential pastoral practice.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it…

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Last night, my wife, Dianna, and I saw the latest Mission Impossible film. The Mission Impossible franchise is based on an orginazation called IMF (Impossible Missions Force) that embarks on the kind of missions that nobody else can do. Ethan Hunt and the other agents are presented with missions using the phrase “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…” If they accept that mission, then they set out to do the impossible. They set out to do what no other group can do. They are missional. They are on mission.

If you want to sound hip and cool, just tell people that your church is missional. Actually, I like the term missional. In fact, I really like it. It’s fresh sounding and provocative. It also implies that the church has a mission. But unfortunately it seems that there are numerous definitions to this term. In telling our church that we are called to be “on mission”, I must underline what we mean by mission, lest I fail to clearly communicate our mission.

For many when they hear missional, they think social, you know soup kitchens, taking care of widows, stopping sex trafficking, helping people become better stewards of their finances… This is not what I mean by mission. This isn’t to say that these things are unimportant. I would say that these are important, even commanded in Scripture. But when we make these things the mission of the church, we then define the mission ourselves.

To help us gain an understanding of biblical mission, we need to understand the word mission. “Mission” is from the Latin word missio which means “sending”. It is a sending. In other words, if we are on mission, then we are sent, and the question is who sent us? Jesus’ words in John 20:21 are a clue; we are sent by Jesus, as Jesus was sent by the Father. In other words, Jesus defines our mission. After Jesus commissions his followers, he begins to reveal to them what the mission is. The mission is the forgiveness of sins (John 20:23). We know Jesus is the one who saves. Jesus isn’t implying that we go on our own rescue mission. We join him in his rescue mission. The mission of God is to bring people into a right relationship with God. Our mission then is to serve his mission.

When we make the mission social, we strip away the distinctiveness of God’s saving work. The mission God gives the church is unique. It is our Mission Impossible. The mission has to do with declaring God’s saving work to a lost world. If the mission were social, there is nothing unique about God’s mission. The church’s mission becomes just like anyone else’s. Here’s a question. If it can be done without Christ, can it be God’s mission for the Church?

The fruit of a people in alignment with God’s heart, being changed by his grace will be love for neighbour and pursuit of moral purity. These things are not the mission, but they spring forth from missionaries (people on mission).

We are not on Christ’s mission, if our mission is soup kitchens. But, it must be said that if we are on Christ’s mission, we will care about hungry people. Why? Is God’s great plan to feed people food? No, Jesus rebuked the crowd that followed him for physical food (John 6:26). But because God’s mission of salvation is fuelled by his love for those he created in his image, so too, we should actively love people. So our social action is not the mission, but accompanies it.

For some, this may seem like semantic chicken and egg stuff, but we need to get this right. The particular mission of Jesus for the church is to preach the forgiveness of sins (Acts 13:38). No charity, no club, no philanthropist can carry forth this mission. However, if we are on Christ’s mission, we are going to love people in their deep needs (social) as well as their deepest need (spiritual). But if we lose the cutting edge of Christ’s mission, we are no different from any other charity or club. Our mission is impossible for man, but possible from God.

The Loss of Community – Reconcile, Week 1

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Pastor Miles DeBenedictis

Reconcile – Week 1
The Loss of Community

 

 

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Radically Subversive Living – Daniel Fusco

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10 things on my mind this week…

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1. Blessed to hold the hand of and pray with a sister about to step from this life to the next after a battle with an aggressive cancer. Her words to me, “I want to live.” You will, because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, let not your heart be troubled.

2. Like eating Greek far more than reading Greek. Prepositions, participles, imperfect, active, indicative, third person singular… O my (or perhaps ομαι, which would of course be a deponent ending). Not sure just how well I’m getting it, but Greek class is mind bending. So wish I would have paid more attention in high school English class.

3. Find it interesting that it’s “wrong” to write an article in a public venue (i.e. blog) that can be openly challenged, but it’s perfectly acceptable to privately circulate a dozen page+ letter among ones peers and associates condemning and falsely labeling them, without their knowledge.

If someone has issue with something I’ve said or written they can comment here, email me, find me on Facebook, twitter, google+ or call my office.

4. Amazed by the spiritual insights gleaned from (1) raising Ethan, Addie & Eva, and (2) pruning the grape vine in my backyard.

5. So blessed by my mom and my wife as I approach Mother’s Day.

6. Intrigued by President Obama’s non-evolutionary “leap” to supporting gay marriage this week.

7. Thankful for the men God has put in my life that challenge me to be a better follower of God, husband to my wife, father to my kids and pastor of Cross Connection Escondido.

8. Excited by the several projects I’m collaborating on in multiple spheres. Am regularly blown away that I get to do what I get to do.

9. Consistently surprised by the graciousness of people to bless me and my family in very tangible ways that express their genuine love for us.

10. Praying for wisdom in unearthing and implementing a new paradigm in Christ honoring community for CCEsco.

Big Church, Small Church = Same Church

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As many of you know, I am a blogging veteran. It dawned on me recently that I have been blogging for over 10 years at this point. But is also interesting is that I find myself interacting on them less and less (although ironically, this article is on a blog). Why? Well because I have little bandwidth these days for incessant arguments. When I think about some of the most common arguments about church on blogs (whether ministry-minded blogs like CrossConnection or other Christian blogs), it is the church size preference argument. Most of the arguing, as I have thought about it, is actually from people who prefer smaller churches and then vilify larger churches. Although I don’t know of any larger church pastor starting a blog argument over church size, it is far to common to hear a mega church pastor speak down about a smaller church. I once stood in horror as a large church pastor asked a faithful brother of a smaller church, “How is your little work going?”. The work of God in salvation and in His people is never little. It is always huge.

But, for me, I feel that I have a unique vantage point on this because of how the Lord has led me. I have been involved pastorally in 4 churches (3 as the church-planter and senior pastor). The three churches I planted were turned over to other pastors with less than 100 people. Now I pastor a very large church. Here’s what I have learned. Simply stated, the church is the church. Whether large or small, the church is the people of God together in community. Every church is flawed in some way, yet being grown up into her head, Jesus. All churches have budget problems, building (or lack thereof) issues, committed members and folks who just come and go. On every level, the church is the church.

This was brought into stark focus for me recently as someone asked me how it was to teach at a large church. I said simply, it’s exactly the same, just more people hear the message at one time. I haven’t changed, the only difference is that now, if I look to the left or the right when I’m teaching, I’ll see myself amplified on jumbo screens (a terrifying sight). I still study the same, deliver it the same, pray that God uses it the same. After service, just like in a smaller body, some folks head for the doors and other folks want to spend time and talk. There are all the same people issues. In any church, large or small, most people have 10 truly close friends. That doesn’t change. A large church is not any less intimate than a smaller church. Why? Because intimacy is a heart issue not a size issue. Again, it’s all the same church.

So why do I write this? Well maybe it is my hope that people will be okay with simply stating their preference for church size and dynamics instead of seeking to justify the preference by vilifying the other side. I also say this because as a church planter and smaller church pastor, I also tried to vilify larger churches. It don’t think I did it maliciously. I did it naively. But my experience has taught me that the church is the church, no matter how many people are gathered together. We are all one big family in Jesus. I, for one, am grateful for that.

MOTIVATION AND MISSION

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Recently I’ve been reconvicted all over again on the issue of motive in mission.  I’m not generally one of those guys who struggles to have joy in ministry.  My problem is that I don’t always do ministry from a place of having joy in enough of the right things.  I love studying the Word, preaching the Word, training up leaders, designing discipleship processes, and so on.  My joy can terminate on those things in and of themselves.  It isn’t inherently wrong to enjoy those kinds of things.  But I need to do what I do in response to more than the joy I experience over performing those functions alone.  What is the great motive from which all my activities should flow?  How about love for God and love for people!  Take it from the Bible:

 “And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This [is] the first commandment. And the second, like [it, is] this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31)

 “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have [the gift of] prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed [the poor], and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

 There it is!  Love for God and people must be the motive for everything I do.  If my motive for doing what I do isn’t love for God and people (even if my activities are amoral) they are of no credit to me in the perspective of God.  My problem is that I can enjoy building systems, preaching sermons, counseling people, and raising up leaders, while thinking and feeling next to nothing for God or people.  I simply enjoy the processes inherently.

So let’s be honest with ourselves today.  God knows the truth already, so hiding is of no value.  Why are excited to preach that message this week?  Why are you looking forward to that meeting with those leaders?  Why are you looking forward to that upcoming ministry opportunity?  Why are you buzzing with zeal on the inside over expanding the scope of your mission?  Is the foundational motive of your mission love for God and people, and the knowledge that these other things merely facilitate the expression and expansion of that love?  Or is the foundational motive of your mission and activities simply an enjoyment of the processes, roles, and opportunities themselves?

Let’s take a love test.  If the verses were expressing your motive for mission, how would Mark 12:30-31 read?  Would it be, “My motivation for the mission comes from loving the ministry my God (processes, sermon, study, counseling, opportunities, prestige) with all my heart, mind, strength, and soul.  And I don’t think much of my neighbor, but I love myself.”?  Or would it read, “My motivation for the mission comes from actually loving THE LORD MY GOD and MY NEIGHBOR as myself.”?  Think about it.  Pray about it.  Respond appropriately.