God's Will For You

My devotional reading brought me to 1 Thessalonians 5 today. Here is what struck me:

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Is this even possible? Aren't there times when rejoicing or giving thanks would be inappropriate, like in the wake of a natural disaster? Is it reasonable to command people to be in constant prayer? What would that even look like?

I don't know if any of these are possible, but I think there's a deeper principle at work here, and it's this: Your character can exceed your circumstances. Don't let the circumstances of your life bring you down to the pit, or shut your mouth from prayer, or make you embittered and ungrateful. No matter what comes your way, the way you respond is entirely up to you. Rejoicing, prayer, and thankfulness are always a conscious choice. You don't just fall into those responses by accident; you do them on purpose.

It is God's will for you that your character be determined by the power of Christ in you rather than on your instinctive reactions to the various circumstances of your life. You might say that your natural response to your circumstances is what is true, and to force yourself to respond another way is hypocritical. Not so. If you follow Jesus, what is truest about you is Christ in you. Jesus Christ is what is most true of you. Not your sin. Not your past. Not your temper. Not your attitude. Not your instinctive reactions to your circumstances. Through faith in Christ, you are no longer a "natural" person, but a "becoming-supernatural" person by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. The old is gone, crucified with Jesus, and the new is here, resurrected with Jesus. You are new, through faith in Christ.

You have power, in the Spirit, to rise above your "natural" reactions and instincts. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying you can change overnight. But you can learn to walk in the Spirit--and to rejoice always, to pray continually, and to give thanks no matter what--the same way you learned to walk as a toddler. By falling down a lot, and getting back up.

I'm a pastor, and I'm still learning to walk. It's hard. Sometimes I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, which really just means I'm choosing to be a frustrated, mean-spirited, downcast jerk like I am today. I don't always remember these things, but that doesn't make them any less true. My character can exceed my circumstances, but only as I lean into the power of Christ within me through the presence of the Holy Spirit. The same goes for you. And be encouraged, because you'll learn to walk someday.

New Sermon Series: Titus

This week at Ember we're launching a new sermons series on the book of Titus called Further the Faith. Titus is a very short letter, written by Paul to his friend Richard Titus, who was ministering on the island of Crete. As far as books in the Bible go, this one is about as different from the book of Jeremiah as it gets. While I thoroughly enjoyed our long series through the long and dark book of Jeremiah, I'm looking forward to the new challenge of preaching the short letter to Titus.

Titus had a difficult job in front of him. Paul left Crete after being there for only a short time, so there was much work to be done. His charge to Titus is found in 1:5, "The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town as I directed you." For whatever reason, Paul was not able to see the work on Crete through to the end. In fact, it seems as though the work was just getting started. The Gospel had been preached throughout the island, and some had converted to Christ, but there were not yet leaders in every town. Titus's task is to further the faith by setting things in order in all the churches, and by raising up leaders in each town.

Our task, at Ember, is similar to Titus's task on Crete, albeit on a much smaller scale. We have intentionally been very simple about the way in which we have begun the church. We don't have any extra events (besides the Trunk or Treat). We don't have small groups. We just have our weekly worship service. But, as you know, that is not all that a church is, nor is it enough to sustain the lives of individuals or a community. So we have to "put in order what was left unfinished", and one of the things we're going to do is small groups. Ember was born out of a small group, after all, so it's kind of in our blood. We'll be talking about this more in the coming weeks, with groups starting up soon.

So we approach the book of Titus, expecting to see God move in our midst, furthering our faith to others and deepening it within ourselves. God has something for you here; I am confident of that. Come further your faith at Ember Church.

Ember Monday

We had our Trunk or Treat yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. Lots of folks from the neighborhood came out, and we gave away a ton of candy. I have to say, my costume was pretty amazing. Yes, Ember, that's your pastor, wearing a giant whoopie cushion. Be proud, friends. Be very proud.

So many people did such great work to pull this event off, and Tim Evans is at the top of that list. What he and Jenny did to their car was amazing: Strobe lights, smoke machine, and a tunnel of darkness. It was incredible!

We had our usual service immediately after the Trunk or Treat, and we finished up our 12 week series on the book of Jeremiah. The passage we looked at was from Jeremiah 44, the final recorded prophecy of his life. Sadly, it was essentially the same message he had been preaching for 40 years. The people refused to listen to him or heed his warnings, even after Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Idols have a stranglehold on our hearts, and most of us don't repent of our idolatry after the first message. The point of the sermon was to say this: If we don't repent of our sin, we're doomed to repeat it.

The band played a song that I hope will become a regular one in our rotation. Kelly sent me a video of the song to share on the blog. (This is not our band.)



Next week we start up a new sermon series on the book of Titus called Further the Faith. I'm really looking forward to getting into a New Testament book, and am excited about what God has to say to us through Titus!

Trunk or Treat

This Sunday at Ember is our first public event (besides worship services). We're having a Trunk or Treat, which I've never done before. It's going to be a lot of fun, and I'm hoping we get a good response from our neighborhood. We hung over 500 door hangers in the homes around our neighborhood, so hopefully the word will get out a bit.

Hanging door hangers was an interesting experience for me. I felt like I was trespassing at every home I snuck up to and stealthily placed the door hanger over the front door knob. I felt as though I was violating a bit of my idealism, that we shouldn't have to "stoop" to door hangers or other such marketing devices to get the word out about Ember. But in the midst of it, I felt the Lord challenge me with this question: Are you willing to compromise your idealism in order to fulfill my mission? Ouch.

Because maybe it wasn't simply about my idealism; maybe it was about my pride and my fear. Maybe I thought that what we were doing at Ember was so overwhelmingly awesome that the word would just get out and the masses would flock to our church. And maybe I was so afraid of rejection that I didn't want to put myself or Ember on the line by doing any kind of marketing in the first place. Double ouch.

But God's question to me haunts me, and I suspect that it won't be the last time he asks me that particular question. Am I willing to compromise my idealism in order to fulfill God's mission? I am. Especially when my idealism is just a cover for my pride and fear.

Well, with all that introspection aside, we're having a Trunk or Treat Sunday afternoon at 4, right before our worship service. We're giving away free candy, and it's going to be a lot of fun. Also, I have an epic costume, though I haven't yet decided to preach in it. Come Sunday and find out. 4pm, 401 E. Schrock Rd.

New Books

Make no mistake about it; I am a huge nerd. I got a small book order in the mail yesterday, and I am so excited to dive into these books! Check them out:

The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight is one of the books I've been waiting to get my hands on for a while. Though it did come out this year, I wasn't able to pick up a copy right away. But now that I have it, I'm very much looking forward to reading it. McKnight is, for me, a breath of fresh air. So much of contemporary evangelicalism has been bifurcating between the emergent church (Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Chris Seay, and you could throw Rob Bell in there as well) and the neo-reformed movement (Mark Driscoll, Francis Chan, David Platt, with John Piper playing the role of the Godfather). I don't identify with either of those groups--the former because they seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and the latter because they've made the tub so small the baby doesn't fit in it anymore. While I don't agree with all of McKnight's views either (for example, I'm not a pacifist), I find that he is a reasonable voice of Arminian centrism within American evangelicalism, and perhaps the only one. All of the popular-level, American evangelical pastor-theologians seem to be coming from a Calvinist perspective. I'm beginning to feel like an evangelical without a place in American evangelicalism, and I'm curious to see what will happen to believers who, like me, reject reformed soteriology. Will there be an evangelicalism for us? This is why I'm so excited to read The King Jesus Gospel.

Ember's next preaching series will be through the book of Titus. Because I somehow managed to make it through seminary with barely a commentary to my name (thank you, Gordon-Conwell library!), I try to purchase the best commentary for each book and rely on the work of that scholar. Towner's commentary on the Pastoral Epistles comes highly recommended from several sources, and is a part of an important commentary series, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, which is edited by the brilliant Gordon Fee.

When I get a commentary, I try to find one that's been written recently. This is not because I'm a cultural snob (though I probably am), but because the newer commentaries, at least the good ones, will deal with the most important, relevant, and best material from the older commentaries. Biblical studies is a field that has developed and changed over time, and methods of interpretation have evolved since the Bible was first written. A good commentator will give you the best thoughts of those who have written before him, as well as adding the best of his own research and thinking.

I am a huge, huge fan of N.T. Wright. His books, particularly The New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, The Challenge of Jesus, and What Saint Paul Really Said (as well as his more popular level works like Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, and After You Believe) have dramatically changed the way I think about and live out my faith. For so long I had been hoping that he would put out a translation of the Bible, and here it is! I'm so looking forward to adding The Kingdom New Testament to my devotional reading, as well as to my study, particularly for the upcoming Titus series at Ember. I've had a chance to briefly scan through his translation, as well as read the introduction, and I think it's going to be very good. I'm particularly interested in reading his translation of Romans, because he once quipped that if you've only read Romans in the NIV, then you've never really read Romans. I have been reading the new NIV this year in my reading plan, but that's already taken me all the way through the New Testament, so I'm going to substitute The Kingdom New Testament on the second go around.

And then there's this last book, Simply Jesus. It's also by N.T. Wright, and I don't know anything about it. I had no idea he was writing about Jesus again; but I suppose this could also just be an updated version of The Challenge of Jesus. Whatever it is, I'm very excited to dive into it, as I'm sure that anything Wright writes on Jesus won't disappoint.

I don't know what kind of a value you place on reading, but I can honestly tell you that I would not be where I am, who I am, or doing what I'm doing right now if it weren't for the books I have read in the past decade. Reading is my primary form of learning. I take in information, process it internally or here on the blog, and then it slowly integrates its way into my life, forming me and shaping me. I believe this process is taking place under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and it is a part of what he is doing in and through me to conform me into the image of the Son of God. Not only that, but as the pastor of a church, I take it as my responsibility to engage with serious thinking regarding Scripture, Theology, and Doctrine on behalf of the congregation, and then to translate that information in such a way that it works into their hearts as it has worked into mine. That is part of what I try to do in my preaching, and also, in a freer way, here at the blog.

Before I can get to these books, I have to finish King's Cross by Tim Keller, which is also an excellent read. I hope to get back into the habit of doing book reviews here. Lord knows I've got plenty of good material to work with!