Lessons I Learned from Next 2011

Here are some lessons for my spiritual life that I took away from this year's Next Conference. The sessions did not cover these points, but I thought of them as a result of worshiping God and having fellowship with other believers there.

1. Do not think of corporate worship as a performance where you must be seen by God or others. After a couple sessions, the passion of the worship sets started to get to my head. Before one session, I went down the stairs of the hotel like an arena announcer was about to call my name to get on the court in the NBA Finals. And I had my hands in the air like a lot of other people, but no tears in that worship set. I could not really think about God. I wondered why I could not behold the beauty of Christ or really think about what I was singing. I was doing what I was doing not in order to be close to God and worship Him as I ought, but to get the emotional high and the general sense of euphoria first. Crying in a song is stupid unless the subject of the song means more to you than life.

2. If you see someone who you will probably never see again and you know that they also know the Lord, maximize that short time with them by pouring into their life and being a blessing. Similarly, lean upon and learn from the words of Scripture to a point where, as C.H. Spurgeon said, if people cut you, you bleed Scripture. This can be a great encouragement to others.

3. My "bachelor pack", as Brother Washer calls it, is a great help to me spiritually, but is not forever. Four of us made the trip to Next and stayed in two hotel rooms. My roommate, who has been a great friend to me during the several years that I have known him, will be married by the end of this year. One of the other men has been pursuing a young lady for a year. And the other one seems to meet a new young lady every other week! (Only an inside joke. :-) ) As a career-age single, I know that people get married and move on. Several men from my previous church with whom I used to spend a lot of time are now married and have been mostly or completely out of touch with me since their weddings. (It's almost comedic, the responses I may get from saying this. Even recently, someone told me, "You're 25? You're so young. You shouldn't be married yet!" And I'm sure many people from my old homeschool group would think I belong in a monastery because I am not married at my age. Silly culture! ;-) )

4. Thy bachelor pack is not sufficient for thee. There are times when I cannot continue hanging out in my bachelor pack; I must be alone with God. Spending time with them is very edifying but does not, in the end, leave me satisfied. Regularly, I just need to cordon off certain times in my life and say that only God can go there with me. And this does not come, necessarily, at a set time. I can't just schedule certain times in my life for God to reveal more of Himself to me and leave me undone. My schedule is subject to Christ's Lordship. Sometimes He just calls me to come away with Him, and I must do it, or else miss a time of deep and abiding fellowship with my Lord.

5. I was bolder in evangelism on this trip than I am at home. In my own town, I almost never witness, since my work is very busy and tiring and most of my free time goes to either the church or solitude with God. At Next, around many other Christians, I had a few minutes to explain to a Catholic man at the resort why so many people were there for the conference, and hopefully left him with a better understanding of who the God of Scripture is and why we should worship Him. The conference itself could be used as a means to witness to others in the host city.

6. Sometimes the best worship is just to sing the words of God back to Him. The song I will remember the most from this conference is Shane & Shane's "Worthy of Affection", based on Hebrews 1:

"We are the broken down, and we are the beaten up.

But what could stop us from a song of unending love?

Holy is the Lord!

You are a treasure, the hope, the bright and Morning Star.

You are the Lover of our Souls, and You've won our hearts.

We sing of Your great love.

So we sing. We lift our hands and sing:

"You are worthy of affection!

You're the radiance of all of His glory.

Let adoration fill this place.

You hold everything together

By the word of Your immovable power.

We sing a song of praise!"

-----

"1:1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

5 For to which of the angels did God ever say,

“You are my Son,
today I have begotten you”?

Or again,

“I will be to him a father,
and he shall be to me a son”?

6 And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says,

“Let all God's angels worship him.”

7 Of the angels he says,

“He makes his angels winds,
and his ministers a flame of fire.”

8 But of the Son he says,

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.
9 You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
therefore God, your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

- Hebrews 1:1-9 (ESV, emphasis mine).

My Trip Report from Next 2011: Part 1

Having a church camp and the Next Conference on back-to-back weekends is, to say the least, a great spiritual high. This year I was pleased to attend Next with three other young men who I knew from Bible studies at my previous church. The theme of Next this year dealt with God's sovereignty over all things and how that should influence our worldview and our work here on earth. The books that they sold at the conference this year all centered on that focus. Having a long reading list for right now and trying to concentrate on finishing Future Grace by John Piper and Abide in Christ by Andrew Murray, I decided to only buy one: The Heavens: Intimate Moments with Your Majestic God by Kevin Hartnett. So far, that book has been a blessing as it helps me to consider the vastness and beauty of the universe and how it reflects the beauty of the God who made and is sovereign over it all.

I felt like I had stepped back in time several years when the speakers addressed postmodernism. My previous church, which I attended for about 22 years, has tended to embrace evangelical fads throughout its ministry. When this means a change in worship style, they change their worship style. When it means catering to a particular audience, they cater to that audience. Their pastors quote teachers from many areas of the evangelical map, from Reformed theologians to moralistic therapeutic deists. Several years ago they became emergent-friendly, quoting Rob Bell and others from that movement. (This was before he wrote Love Wins and came out of the universalist closet.) Around the same time, I read Why We're Not Emergent by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck to become more educated about the movement and why I wasn't part of it either. I was only then starting to become Reformed and was still a cage-stage Calvinist. I was also reading the Pyromaniacs blog several times a week, where they often discussed postmodernism and "emerg*". But my current church, which has many international members from the Philippines, has to deal with different issues than postmodernism and the emerging church. Those issues don't have as strong of a hold in the Philippines. Our pastor preaches against Ang Dating Daan, Iglesia ni Cristo, the prosperity teaching of Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer, and so on. So I felt like I had taken a step back to 2008. Are postmodernism and the emerging church still big problems across the wider scale of evangelicalism?

Since Next had five general sessions, three breakouts, and the Next conference website has most of the messages, I won't repeat too much of what was said on my blog, but just give thoughts about my general experience going to the conference and list what struck me the most from the sessions.

Before the conference started, I was reading my Bible and jotted down Hebews 12:4-6: "In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives." I was still thinking about this in the context of my courtship. Ending my courtship in early March, I thought of Next as the big Reset button on my life that would save me from the memories and the sadness and let me get on with life. It was only on the way there that I realized that it could be discipline from the Lord. So I also wrote down a line from DJ Official's song "Chisel Me": "If you love me, Lord, then chasten me."

We were privileged to have a brother in the Lord drive us to the hotel. He only had a few short minutes with us and sought to really maximize that and encourage us in our faith. We will probably never see him again in this lifetime, but we knew that we had a brother in Christ there with a strong appetite for Scripture and a strong desire to encourage others with it. He got the four of us going on justification and the gospel. That really set the tone for us to glorify God at this conference.

Pastor Jeff Purswell spoke in the first session about how God will not relinquish His creation to evil. His first point was "The created world, though affected by sin, is nevertheless God's creation and is to be valued, appreciated, and cared for." I had become somewhat put off by environmentalists in the secular world, figuring, "I don't do anything that intentionally damages the created order, so I'm good. Why do you continue talking about this so much?" A biblical worldview does not merely acknowledge the existence of created reality, but joins God in affirming it as good as He did when He created it. When I put down my various kinds of entertainment to go on a hike in the woods, meditate on the beauty of God's creation there, and exalt Christ as more beautiful, that is a way of celebrating the most basic distinction in the universe, the one between Creator and creature. Without it, I would worship nature.

Pastor Purswell also mentioned that everything created by God is good, not amoral, as long as we receive it with thanksgiving and do not worship or exploit it. He applied this more specifically to our vocations. So do I thank God for my work as something good, not just something to give me money or keep me out of trouble? Do I still act like the work that I am given is a good thing when it does not go well, or do I curse in reaction to Adam's curse? How do I display the character of God as I work?

In session 2, Dr. K. Scott Oliphint spoke on "The Role of Reason in the Life of Faith" from Romans 1:18-32. If you follow the Next Conference on Twitter, you may have seen a quote from this session: "Western philosophy is simply articulate unbelief." Hegel and other philosophers like him have spent their lives attempting to explain, in all kinds of intelligent-sounding language, how there is "an absolute" but denying that God is that absolute.

Two other things also stood out to me from this session. First, everyone has a relationship with God. For unbelievers, this relationship is not saving knowledge. They will still relate to God on judgment day when they attempt to give Him a defense for their unbelief and He sends them to hell. No one can tell Him, "Not enough evidence", because His revelation of Himself through creation does not return void. Second, the words "worshiped" and "served" the creature rather than the Creator are very strong words and reflect how we are all creatures who must worship. Suppressing the truth forces people to create idols to worship and serve. In our culture, this rarely looks like an idol that people literally bow down to. Dr. Oliphint gave the example of addictions as a choice to serve something other than God, effectively saying, "I will pick my idol. This I will worship... because no one who is created in the image of God will worship nothing." Worshiping the true God, however, allows us to revel in the fact that we cannot figure Him out!

I attended Pastor Kevin DeYoung's breakout session titled "Jesus and Other Religions". This was my second time to see him speak. He summarized Christianity as believing in one God, two ontological realities, and three Persons. He contrasted "one God" with Buddhism, which seems to not believe in any God at all, and Hinduism, which believes in many gods. Most other religions are "one-ism", saying that man is at one with nature, but Christianity is distinctly "two-ism". He gave 7 reasons for the Trinity which are all in Scripture: there is one God; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God; the Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. I look at this as a concise way to defend those who do not believe that the Christian God is a Trinity. The other thing he said that struck me was that without a Trinity, love is not eternal, because if God were only one Person He would not have been able to express love to anyone before He created the world. This reminded me of the first chapters of The Pleasures of God.

He gave the practical application for the uniqueness of Christ:

1. The well-being and salvation of the lost is at stake; go where Christ has not been named, out of love for the lost (broken heart, not a clenched fist) (Romans 10:14). (And my parents, who are not Reformed, say that Reformed people are against missions and evangelism!)

2. The courage and joy of our missionaries. The uniqueness of Christ shows that their work is not in vain.

3. The health of your soul is at stake. It is never good to see what God's word says and find out a way to disbelieve it.

4. The glory of Jesus is at stake. "A Jesus of 'a way' is a Jesus of lesser glory."

During the session break, I worked out to some gospel rap from my Canon playlist: his features "Refocus" with Brothatone, "116 Canon Remix" with Pro, and "Blow Your High" with Lecrae, among others.

Dr. D.A. Carson gave a message called "The Gospel and the Postmodern Mind" in session 3. He began by stating, "Postmodernism is dead in some pretty fundamental ways", because postmodernism started in France and the French no longer buy into it. One thing he said that struck me was that when you talk about the gospel, you are not writing on a blank hard drive. When the Apostle Paul preached in Acts 17, he was preaching to pagan Biblical illiterates (like many in today's culture) and starting from their angle, discussing Christianity in terms of philosophy. He was cut off while he preached but continued taking questions about the gospel in the marketplace. He highlighted many important doctrines about God in his message in Acts 17. For brevity, I won't include it here, but please take time to listen to this session. One more point that struck me in the application was that good theology is like a well-oiled machine. If you take anything out to make it sound better, it falls out of line until the machine stops.

Later that night, I listened to a short message from Brother Paul Washer called "A Young Man's Invitation to a Life of Sacrifice." This message is only 10 minutes but deserves its own post. Young men and women, please listen to this one. Brother Washer does not go on the attack, necessarily, against people who speak at conferences but challenges us to do missions on the front lines where we won't be famous, but Christ has not been named there. We shouldn't be writing blogs where we discuss fine points of theology that we know nothing about when there are people out there. "Young man, go somewhere and die, where only God and hell will know your name - God because He loves you and His Spirit is powerful upon you, and hell because hell hates you." Oh, that I could go. I want to at least take one trip. Listening to this highlighted the tension in my life about whether I should continue attempting to glorify God in a secular job here or leave it all and go to the Philippines. I am speechless even now about what I should continue to write at this point.

But this post is getting quite long, so I will write about the rest of the conference next week, Lord willing.

Retreat Reflections: 2.

After we arrived back at church that Sunday, we had the Session 4 message during our regular church service with the rest of the church present. This message hit me even harder than the others:

1. What justification is and is not. He discussed "counterfeit idols" as described by Tullian Tchividjian. A good summary of those "counterfeit gospels" is here. Most idols lurk and pervade in church:

- Formalism: church activity / "always in church" / judgmental / imposing your standards on everyone: This is what I grew up in. I spent a lot of time around church, especially in the summer because my mom is her church's longtime Vacation Bible School director. But most of the time I would rather be somewhere else, or I would need a distraction such as basketball to avoid being bothersome. But hey, I was always in church whenever the doors were open, even if I never listened to anything the pastor said because I was drawing pictures all the way through the sermons, even in high school and college.

- Legalism: living by rules you create for yourself and others; there is no joy in your life because there is no grace to be celebrated. I grew up imposing my moral standards on everybody and defining myself by my morality. For me, that typically looked like imposing Biblical standards on everybody. The way I looked for a wife during that period was particularly telling. In college I was trying to date a girl who was not a Christian, but that didn't matter much to me because, like me, she was still a virgin and I found that more important than even faith in Christ. I became broken about my recreational dating practices in 2007 because one of the girls offended me so deeply by drinking alcohol on one of our dates - never minding that it isn't actually a sin to drink, only to get drunk, and the main reason why I don't drink at all is family history with alcoholism. Yes, as this sermon said, a Pharisee is the kind of boy you would want to bring home for dinner.

- Mysticism: "Retreat junkie" - incessant pursuit of emotional experience with God; changes churches often. The first half of that describes where I am right now to a T. After I started attending my current church and saw people with their hands raised during worship and I started doing it too, first I was doing it because I felt closer to God when I did and my Christianity up to that point had almost never been emotional, only rational. Sometimes I am only after that spiritual high and not after real closeness to God, real memorization of and obedience to Scripture, and real rejection of sin. And I was almost tempted to switch churches when most of the other hand-raisers left my church due to its shift in emphasis toward sound doctrine and started going to a Charismatic church. Praise God for books like Why We Love the Church, which tell me to be a plodding visionary in a church that faithfully serves Him and gets rid of the temptation to seek the constant emotional high and what I want over taking responsibility to serve.

- Activism: Stands for what is right but doesn't pursue God. This describes quite a lot of the people that I know, including the ones who make 3/4ths of their posts on Facebook about gay marriage. This is an area where, I admit, I'm quite skewed in the other direction. Growing up in a formalist/activist environment, when I got out of that I only wanted to pursue God. But even though His kingdom is not of this world, He does not call me to stick my head in the sand and keep it there regarding the problems in the world either.

- Biblicism: I didn't have time to write down what he said for this one. But an Awana Citation Award in the next room which I earned years before I started listening to sound preaching says that I have roots in this.

- Therapism: Makes Jesus more therapist than Savior and sees hurt as worse than sin ("moralistic therapeutic deism"). I've been around this and felt, honestly, pretty turned off by it, maybe because I am a legalist at heart. But killing sin is very hard to say the least, and we don't always realize what a war it is. Some of my best weekends spiritually, I have listened and rapped along to Tedashii's "Make War" over and over again. But most people don't really want to fight sin as sin, and some sin is rooted in events that happened to them through no fault of their own. I can definitely see why this would be a draw to people.

- Socialism: The body of Christ has replaced Christ Himself. This is the other half of where I am right now with regards to what God has taught me about learning to love the church. At camps I spend very little time with God on my own. At the two church camps I barely read any Scripture except for right before the sessions to prepare myself for worship. I was more content with getting to know other people - a very good thing, but not the best. Sometimes, I just need to hit the trail alone for an afternoon. And thank God for the chance to do that - "wanting nothing in life but to just be with Him, as if nothing in this world could ever compete with Him" (116 Clique).

2. Augustine said that the root of all sin is disorderly love. "No other gods before Me" includes even cute ones and noble ones. Family can be an idol of our heart. A lot of people seek the church as a place to get glory for themselves because there is less competition. For example, people who are not talented enough to join a rock band may be able to join a praise band. Your children were not born for justifying your existence through your vicariously living through them. The worst result of self-justification is that your rob God of His glory.

3. Being a Christian means that you are a failure, but an honorable failure; a sinner, but a righteous sinner. "I need Christ to pay for all of the ways that I tried to justify my life." "At least I'm not a porn star" is not God's standard. When you are justified, you do not hate others.

Here are some things I learned at the young adults camp outside the sermons:

1. Activity can be an enemy of spiritual discipline. Brother Paul Washer actually said this, but I realized this experientially here. After the sermons, I felt led to pray for the other people at the camp, that the points of the sermons would really be driven home to them. However, our schedule was very fast-paced, which meant I had to continue to the next activity. I am not using this as an indictment against those who scheduled this camp, but against myself for forgetting about the need to pray for these people when I got back from the camp and resumed work the next day.

2. True Christian fellowship can result in very deep and lasting bonds between Christians forming over a very short period of time. One brother from the Philippines spent his vacation from law school (March through June there) in the US attending several conferences and serving in several churches around the country, including ours. He is a friend of my pastor from his 5 years as a missionary in the Philippines. He and I only had a few hours to interact during his trip, but our friendship was fast and deep. We were quite open with each other and have stayed in touch now that he is back in the Philippines. Yet what kind of love would drive someone to decide to fly around the world to help with a two-night camp? Only God could do such a thing. And I do have the resources to fly to the Philippines without needing to raise support. I want to fly there and see him again on this side of glory, for my joy and his joy in the glory of God, so that we would not waste our lives but serve Him more effectively on this earth. If we can encourage each other on the internet, how much more side-by-side? I've seen it!

3. There is value in play, even among adults. You learn to respect someone faster if he is bigger than you and you play tug-of-war with a tire against him! American football has nothing on this game; this is anarchy! And I cringed when I saw the tire at the next camp. In a camp with 44 guests plus leaders, it is impossible to quickly form a deep friendship with everyone. But the playing field does allow some level of relationship to be built.

4. I need to expect to sacrifice some of my "sacred" schedule for a camp. This was predominantly a college camp. I graduated from college several years ago and now work in a job that requires a good night's sleep every night. At this camp, we played Capture the Flag in the dark at midnight. Then at 7am we had a morning workout. In between times, one of my roommates played his violin until about 2 in the morning. During the second night, people played hide and seek in the lodge in the middle of the night and were running up and down the halls. I learned at the next camp that earplugs are great. :-)

5. Getting home from a camp is pretty hard because at a camp, other people do most of my spiritual feeding for me. Outside the sessions, I did not have time to read my Bible. So after getting home, I had to adjust to my normal routine of reading, working, and praying again.

Lessons Learned from My International Courtship, Part 2

9. My love for the Philippines is not tied to her. I still have a deep love for that country and its people! At nag-aaral pa ako sa wikang Tagalog... :-) More than ever, I want to take a missions trip there. In part, this courtship has helped me to define why I want to go and what work desperately needs to be done there. Their love for others is great, but their doctrine is shallow. I wish that they would learn our doctrine and we Americans could learn their love. Love is, in fact, a much greater sign that someone truly knows Christ than good doctrine; anyone can memorize. Although I am but a layman, I would love to go over there and teach young men about how to read Scripture in context and discern truth from error. Many preachers do not know how to do this, especially in the Third World. American Reformed Christians, we have an abundance of theological resources that we must use to reach the world and build up Christ's pan-national Bride!

10. My desire to go to the Philippines is now more about edifying specific brothers. After my church's young adult group's camp, I tweeted that one brother had made the trip from the Philippines to our church to help out with our camp. He was only here for a little while, but I grew close to him quickly. I honestly want to fly around the world just to see this brother and spend more time with him. And the original reason for wanting to go remains. I sponsor two children in the Philippines through Compassion and want to see them. There is only so much I can do for them when I am at a distance and only have small amounts of time to write. Even when I can't have intimacy with God very often, I still think about missions. Even when I am at work in my "secular" vocation, I think about missions. And what part of "go" don't I understand??

11. Loving the Bride of Christ is more important than finding love. When I met her, I had never been a member of a church and had barely any clue how to love the local church. I was also outside the will of God because the Holy Spirit had been prompting me for many years to be baptized and I didn't want to be. I was using this blog as a way to love the global body of Christ while not identifying myself with a local body. I signed my church's membership covenant last fall and took water baptism soon after. Since then, God has shown me more about what loving the church means, by putting me in a local church where no one looks like me and where the people my age are overwhelmingly male. If you think a young man should come to church to find a wife, you would say I probably went to the wrong church. But this church is a great place for me to serve.

12. Not delighting in God more than her during a courtship will result in idolatry. Not delighting in God more than her after a courtship ends will result in insanity and resentment toward Him. He is glorified, and I am properly happy in Him, when I delight in Him alone.

13. God can teach through the scars of self-inflicted wounds. I use this language to describe wounds of the heart; I have never cut myself, although I have recently found myself listening to emo! Although my friends initially looked at this courtship quite favorably, as we kept learning more and thinking about it more, we realized it really was not good. And I have realized that, as a man, this was all my fault.

14. Don't move too fast. Because she was only in the United States for 5 weeks, I felt like I had to be utterly convinced that she was right for me before she boarded her plane to return home. I felt like I had to spend every waking minute with her while she was here. This is infatuation, not love. Trying to do something like this will not allow you to look at the whole situation with your eyes open and determine which imperfections you are willing to accept. Everyone, aside from Christ, has them. Even as we follow Christ, we (especially in my generation) tend to find some aspects of Him that we do not want to follow. We want the crown, but not the cross. I want to worship Him, but I rarely want to evangelize; and some of my peers are the opposite.

15. Solitude with Christ is still precious, and I must fight for it to remain solitude with Christ. Before and during the courtship, solitude was a great luxury for me. I could spend whole days alone in the presence of the Lord. But during this season, when in solitude for extended periods, I have found myself thinking about her, about what might have been. And it has led me to resent God. I need time to just read and write and pray without distractions. Thoughts about her are crippling to my fellowship with Christ because they take my focus off of Christ, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross to bear the wrath of His Father for each of my sins - oh, to meditate on just that for days and to worship Him Who paid it all! He is worthy of all affection and adoration!

16. I must go on serving the Lord. We make much of God when we contribute to the work of the Bride of Christ on this earth. This does not only mean money; it also means using the spiritual gifts that He has given me to exhort and teach His followers. The work is still there even when I do not feel strong enough to do it. In fact, continuing to do it when my spiritual life is not going as well requires a greater trust in Him than it does when I feel strong. Who am I to ever call myself strong? I am weak by nature; I see something of this weakness every time I sin! The Lord calls the weak and the broken!

16. Even in despair, I must remain in gospel-driven community and keep that community gospel-driven. I need brothers in Christ to help me keep my focus on Him and not on myself. Sometimes I am discouraged by how little godly fellowship I actually get and how the people that I fellowship with tend to center it on things other than God or just talk about problems they see in the church. And hanging out talking about nothing only masks problems rather than solving them with more of Christ. I don't want to dwell on problems in the church, because she is the bride of Christ and Christ does not see His bride as unfaithful. Sometimes during this season, I really have not desired God. But He is still God. He is still my Lord and my Master. He still has a hold on me, even when I don't like that. He disciplines and chisels those who are really His. And the chisel only gets stronger until we meet Him in glory.

17. I should never boast to anyone about my love for Christ. Last year, I was listening to a sermon by Paul Washer where he mentioned that he finds it hard to sing about his love for Christ because it pales in comparison to Christ's love for Him. During this season, I have learned this more deeply and experientially. Christ died for my resentment of Him regarding her and having to give her up as part of the cost of following Him.

The Proper Place of Sports and Delighting in God

At my old church, whose members are predominantly American, the following is a common sight from September through January: People show up to every service wearing American football jerseys. I remember one guy, a grown man in his late 30s, who enthusiastically supports the Dallas Cowboys. He would sit near the front of the sanctuary wearing a hat with blue and white dreadlocks, matching his team's colors. Our church was nowhere near Dallas, and most of our pastors supported other teams. Yet he wanted everyone to know that he supports the Dallas Cowboys.

Naturally, their love for sports, usually American football (I only use that term for it because in other countries, most equate "football" with FIFA or the World Cup), flows out into their conversations. Some people are able to treat it as just a game and take a win or loss in stride. Others live and die by it and use a win or a loss, especially to rival teams, as a great chance to trash talk others in the church who support their teams' rivals. So instead of discussing with others about what the Lord has done in their lives, they relegate that to times of "ministry" and, apart from that, wonder out loud about whether their team's third-string tight end is "questionable" or "probable" for Sunday's game - on the previous Tuesday. Give a tenfold increase in this effect to owners of fantasy teams. (Fantasy sports could be a separate rant in itself.)

For a while, I thought I was better than this. I do not follow American football; if that makes me less American, oh well!

Then Spring Training happened.

My sports to follow are baseball and ice hockey. Basketball is my favorite sport to play, but I don't follow it closely. Recently, the baseball magazines with my name on it started arriving at my house. And I realized that one Major League Baseball team's closer had a great season last year and I didn't know his name. And that left me beside myself. I went on Wikipedia asking myself, "So who is this guy?" He didn't even play for one of my team's rivals. Every day, I come home from work and wonder what happened in baseball that day. My walk with Christ has at times grown very dull, and one of the ways that manifests itself is through an increased interest in sports. Although a win or loss by my teams does not have a great effect on me, sports is still a broken cistern that I run to when Christ is not satisfying enough.

For those in full-time ministry, following sports or being entertained may be an interesting diversion from the duties of ministry. But those who work full-time in secular jobs must at times make a choice between God and entertainment. If work takes up most of life and entertainment takes up the rest, life is not Christ-centered; Christ becomes a mere afterthought at best.

The Christian's relationship to sports must become somewhat of a balancing act. Saying no one can ever watch a game is legalistic, using outward obedience to a revolting law to try to force inward change in the heart, when it just cannot do that. This can be said of any kind of entertainment that is not inherently sinful: movies, video games, the arts, and so on. These can all be used to make much of the Lord. And sometimes people legitimately need a break. Scripture does recognize a benefit in physical exercise as well. I have told some people that if they are fat as a result of not keeping a proper diet and exercise routine, they are in sin. But the passion that leads people to spend whole days bodybuilding in the gym or sitting on the couch watching pregame shows, games, postgame shows, and SportsCenter must be tempered in the life of the Christian. Just today, God brought to my attention that I read an entire sports magazine (I only read the ones that only discuss sports! ;-) ) before I read anything in the Bible. I should be diving into Scripture, because it is life. Why is Scripture so often familiar and dull to me? Why must I rely so heavily on preachers and writers to expound it for me so that I may see its value and beauty? Yet if I sit in a half-billion-dollar sporting cathedral that I helped pay for as a taxpayer and I see a new player on my team, I want to read all of his statistics and scouting report and know all about him. I will probably never meet the guy.

Some of my friends are up in arms about the NFL lockout and its possibility of canceling the NFL season this year. I submit to you that a loss of an American football season may be the best thing that can happen to the American church this year, particularly to its men. Yet in 2004-2005 when the NHL lost a season to a labor dispute, I still found other places to get my hockey fix: video games and listening to juniors games via internet radio. Even now I take some pleasure in the fact that some of those juniors players have made it to the NHL and become stars there. So a lost season by itself will not do anything to drive American men away from chasing these inferior pursuits instead of Christ and Biblical manhood, which gives them a full-time calling to represent their families before God, represent God to their families, and provide for and protect them. Many will still run to college football or to other sports or other hobbies to get their fix. God must do a work to set our affections on Him alone. If He does this to save even one soul or to draw even one soul nearer to His heart, even the economic impacts of a lost season would be worth it, because Christ has infinite worth and you therefore cannot quantify the value of knowing Him.

I have even noticed the impact of sports on my life in what I wear. Any time I wear a hat or a shirt with a team's logo, I give them some sort of homage or support. Yet it would be absurd to say that it is wrong for a Christian to wear anything that supports a sports team, that they can only wear plain colors and patterns or that they must wear Christian t-shirts all the time. (I used to be a church kid that always wore Christian t-shirts. And I was a hypocrite in doing it!) And it is pointless to add man-made rules on top of God's law, when none of us can obey the whole law of God in the first place. One broken rule at any time in life, and we are a goner; we might as well have broken every law. And everyone has. This is why we need the gospel!

Culture is ingrained in us and has a deep influence over what we buy and sell; everything in any economy (save for probably subsistence farming) is strongly influenced by what culture believes we need on top of what we actually need. The only way to escape this is to leave American culture, and even then that does not diminish the importance of the calling that God has given me to be a light where He has placed me and feel my way towards Him in this cultural context for as long as He would have me live in it. Leaving where He has placed me for an ascetic life somewhere else does not destroy the root idols of my heart, although if He sends me I must be willing to go; maybe that is what He wants in order to glorify Himself in me. We must know when to take part in the different areas of our culture and when we need to separate from them for a time to draw closer to the Lord. Putting a regulation on this is impossible because, although all Christians must be growing closer to God, what that looks like practically can vary significantly from one Christian to another.

Yet my point is this. I don't want people to look at me and only see my work or my interests - or to see some condescending church kid who is so holy that he does not need Christ - and judge me based on that. I have great need of Him. I want to be like Him so that when others see me, they don't see me, and they don't see some level of self-willed holiness that they must attain to be close to God. If they look at me and see my Jesus and nothing else - if nothing stands in the way of His person and work being demonstrated in my life - if they see me attacking my many sins with violent, grace-driven effort, consumed by a desire that Christ alone be praised in my life - that is a blessing. Is there anything I would not give to let this happen?

Chisel me, Lord.

This Entertaining Truth, Part 4: The Sufficiency of "Christian".

There is something else I wanted to discuss now: the sufficiency of "Christian". I could identify myself as a "Reformed Baptist" or "Christian Hedonist" or an "I'm of John Piper". The guys at TeamPyro describe themselves as "Calvidispiebaptogelical". And of what use is that in describing what saves me? It's a cute label and something that people in my school of thought would chuckle at and possibly unite under. There are two problems with that.

First, it is not good for the unity of the church. If a Christian labels themselves as anything other than Christian, it can divide them from other legitimate believers. I am not talking about "Christians" that prayed a prayer and went back to sinning so that grace would abound. I mean others that have turned from their sins, believed in Christ alone for salvation, and have been given a persevering faith in Christ that stands up to trials so that God will find them faithful when they stand before Him at the end of their lives.

Second, you are not saved by a theological framework! Jesus did not die on the cross and say, "The limited atonement is finished! I didn't die for you, Caesar! Haha... gotcha!!" Everyone who is saved, regardless of their background, becomes a Christian when they repent of their sins and believe in the gospel (Mark 1:15). Those are the only essentials, though they carry a much higher cost than most people think.

Strangely enough, most of my close friends are Christians who do not agree with me theologically. Some of them are from my old church, a church that calls itself Baptist but does not preach a gospel of repentance. Yet some people there (including the aforementioned friends) have truly repented from their sins and believed in Christ and remained in that church, more or less, as missionaries to it - teaching what they know is right even though the pastors don't always agree with them. And one of my best friends is a member of a Pentecostal church. He does not personally subscribe to the health-and-wealth gospel, but he goes to that church because that is what he has always done.

See, in most contexts, enjoying fellowship with another believer until I find a disagreement with them, then spending all subsequent time disagreeing with them until we both just say "hmph!" and part ways does not help. It is important to fellowship with those who are like-minded. But if someone really is a believer and is not like-minded, and it really is that important to win them over to my side, I need to win them over with love. And if "love doesn't work", I need to repent of my pragmatism and continue giving them the truth in love anyway.

Here is another thought just in case I have made it seem that theology is not important. Many of the differences across Christian theologies boil down to one question: Does God exist to make me look great, or do I exist to make God look great? Phrased another way, who is at the center - man or Christ? Our answers do a lot to shape our views of Him and of the world around us.

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Tim Conway from Grace Community Church and I'll Be Honest said the following in one of his Q&A sessions. My apologies for not remembering which one:

"There are Calvinists in hell. ... Whatever Bible you have, it ought to be teaching you how to love other Christians more. Whatever doctrine you have - whatever theology you have - it ought to be revealing Christ to you more and more, that you will want to love Him more and more."

"If your doctrine makes it harder for you to get along with - if it makes you more difficult - if it makes you unbearable - if it makes you ungracious - if it makes you unloving, then ... you're making an idol out of that. And I'll say the same thing about Bible translations, about denominations. If your denomination, or being a Baptist, or clinging to a certain Bible translation makes you ugly towards other people, makes you bitter towards other people, you've made an idol out of it."

"Many times, discipline is right in the area of the sin. You know what sin a lot of times He comes after us for? Idolatry. A lot of times, we tend to treasure something in our lives more than Christ. ... He will come to us right at that idol. ... If you are in sin and you can just keep on going at it, beware."

Godly Fellowship, Part 10: Some Closing Meditations.

"After the show, after the set, after the music stops, what's next?
Will there be fellowship, prayer, disciples, will you open your Bibles after the music stops?
After it’s over, after it ends, after the music stops, what then?
Will you understand that Christ is King?
Or will you just like the words we sing after the music stops?"
- Lecrae, "After the Music Stops"

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"The fellowship of the church is part of God's good news to men. It imparts to the gospel one of its most thrilling notes—that when Christ saves a man He not only saves him from his sin, He saves him from his solitude."
- Frank Colquhoun, Total Christianity

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"[O]ur thoughts and words and feelings concerning our fellow men are His test of our humility towards Him."
- Andrew Murray

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²⁰"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, ²¹that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent me. ²²I have given them the glory that You gave me, that they may be one as We are one: ²³I in them and You in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent me and have loved them even as You have loved Me. ²⁴"Father, I want those You have given Me to be with me where I am, and to see My glory, the glory You have given Me because you loved Me before the creation of the world. ²⁵"Righteous Father, though the world does not know You, I know You, and they know that You have sent Me. ²⁶I have made You known to them, and will continue to make You known in order that the love You have for Me may be in them and that I Myself may be in them."
- John 17:20-26

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"In and of itself, your longing for acceptance isn't a bad thing; God, in fact, created you for acceptance. This longing, however, was meant to be satisfied by God alone. But because of sin, we look to things smaller than God for it - things incapable of providing this infinite approval we crave. Your deep longing for acceptance can only be satisfied when you're accepted by the One Who made you for Himself. If you embrace what Christ has done on the cross for sinners, you're in! Your infinite hunger for approval will be forever satisfied, because you'll be unchangeably accepted by the only One Who offers eternal acceptance. You'll no longer have to depend onfinite things like your size, your stuff, or your smarts to get you in so that your life will matter. Once you understand that in Christ you're accepted by God, you're free and empowered to live unfashionably, because you won't need the acceptance of the world around you. You won't care if you're in with them, because you'll already be in with Him."
- Tullian Tchividjian, Unfashionable.

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"O Lord, we honor you for the gifts you have given in our churches - all of these men and women of whom the world is not worthy. And if we could do just a small part in our small days to be another stone - another living stone - in Your building, we would be thrilled with that - as long as we are built on the cornerstone."

- Kevin DeYoung.

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"You know, I have talked to so many old missionaries - seen them in nursing homes, seen them buried.... I have never in my life heard a missionary that regretted that he gave so much or that he invested too much in eternal things! But I have met countless men who have regretted investing everything in this world. You want to live for that which is profitable. Listen: Every Bible study, every bit of prayer, every Godly fellowship, every sitting under Biblical preaching is an investment in eternity. ... Everything lost for the sake of Christ is not lost at all! Everything kept outside of His name is lost! We shouldn't live as fools but should live as wise. We should walk circumspectly, knowing that time is fleeting, strength is fleeting, physical beauty is fleeting, wealth is fleeting; it's all fleeting. But he who does the will of God abides forever."

- Paul Washer, “Things Applicable for God’s Servants”

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"We also tend to worry [too much] about being good examples to the outside world... We ought to also concern ourselves with being examples to our brothers and sisters in Christ. How my life has benefitted from examples! I have known men and women who glowed with Christ. What an example they have been to me! The greatest thing I could do for the world: if I could just somehow bring them all onto one platform and just let you look at them - the glory, the kindness, the love, the knowledge! And I need them! ... We ought to surround ourselves with godly men and women who are alive, and with godly men and women who are dead - because though they are dead, they still speak."

- Paul Washer, “Things Applicable for God’s Servants”

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“Let there be something of benevolence, in all that I speak.”

- Jonathan Edwards.

Godly Fellowship: Part 9: A Barkada, Pan-National: The Greatest of These Is Love.

"Be not proud of race, face, place, or grace."

- Charles Spurgeon.

The cross of Christ levels the playing field by truly eliminating all boasts of man before God. The Lord saves poor and rich, educated and uneducated, criminal and self-righteous. He created us equal, and as Christians we really cannot name any factor that sets us in a "better-than-equal" position before Him. He does this to show his all-surpassing power to save even the most unlikely man and, ultimately, to glorify His name. God glorifies Himself as much when He saves an uneducated serial killer from a poor background as He does when He saves a suburban church kid who has dotted every "i" and crossed every "t" for twenty years. Both have repented, and thus both cause a remarkable amount of joy among the angels in heaven, who have no need for the gospel for themselves because they lack the sin nature of fallen man.

About “race”: The construct of "race" to mean anything other than the human race is largely societal. If anyone could lay claim before God to be closer to God because of their race or ethnicity, it was the Jews in the Old Testament. Yet in Christ, there is no distinction between Greek and Jew. In surrendering this part of our identity, we can see more of how God has glorified Himself by saving people from many different backgrounds from, for, and by Himself. To put it another way, most of my Christian friends do not look like me. Some of them do not speak my native language most of the time. Yet, by taking the time to know them and look at their lives, I have seen God's hand working in and through them - in different ways than I have seen in my own life. Doing this has encouraged my walk with the Lord and enhanced my worship of Him.

About "face": I am currently reading through 1 Chronicles after completing 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. King Saul - the ruler that the people picked - was famous for his dashing outward appearance. God, by His sovereign hand, ordained that he be the first human ruler of Israel. Yet He was not pleased with Saul. A shepherd boy who killed a lion, a bear, and a nine-foot-tall Philistine giant spent his life with his heart overjoyed in God's presence and enthralled with the Word and the will of God. He did not look like much when he was called to succeed Saul as king. And Christ did not look like much when He came to Earth. He laid aside His glory and took on a physical frame with physical needs. Rejected by religious and civil authorities and possessing no good looks or noble birth to cause men to esteem Him, Christ lived the truth that "God looks at the heart". It shows me the importance of not allowing human culture's preoccupation with the outward appearance to dictate my thoughts about a brother or sister in Christ. Outwardly, they may look like a fringe figure in society. But if I dig deep in examining their life inwardly, I may be able to see how much they love God more than I do.

About "place": We use "place" to mean several things, such as a place in society or a geographic area. How many times have I thought that God could not save someone just because they work in Hollywood? How many times since September 11, 2001, have my fellow Americans thought that Muslims were beyond saving? "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save", as Isaiah, inspired by God, gloriously wrote.

And about "grace": I have seen several definitions for this: "God's Riches At Christ's Expense", if you like a memorable acrostic... "God's unmerited favor towards us"... either way, it is driven by God's desire to magnify His own name in us. My church has a very faithful servant who cooks very well for us and participates in many ministries. One of our pastors said that if we were justified by works, this man would be at the front of the line going into heaven. But not even he trusts in his own works. He leans fully on Christ.

Our effort to please God is driven by grace and a heart that He has caused to love Him. Matt Chandler said, "The law was given to show me I can't be perfect, that I'm going to fall short, that I am in desperate need of a Savior (Romans 1-7). When we stumble and fall, the Spirit reminds us of the Scriptures that promise that there has been a death for those failures and that there is a new covenant resting on Christ now and not on my ability to obey the law. This allows me to pursue Christ without fear and by 'beholding His glory I am transformed'." There is no right, biblical way to be proud of ourselves for that. Oh, may I boast in God!

"When you do talk about race, root the conversation in the Gospel."

- Thabiti Anyabwile, “Thabiti’s Top Ten Tips for Talking About Race”.

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“Thou our Father, Christ our brother,

all who live in love are Thine;

teach us how to love each other,

lift us to the joy divine.”

- Henry Van Dyke, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”

I take issue with how many larger churches handle the matter of cross-generational fellowship among the brethren. In many large church settings, children grow up in Sunday school, where they change classes from year to year and rarely spend time with anyone outside their own grade. When they become junior high or high school students, they attend their respective youth groups and, again, try to figure out matters of maturity with each other or with young adults leading them who usually are telling them that their parents are not cool.

And there are groups within the youth group of kids with common interests and/or common dislikes who often only spend time with each other. When I was growing up there were cliques in my youth group of kids that either were preps, were jocks, or hated both. (Being hated by both, I hated both and started a group of “freaks” that I called the “freakish brotherhood”… separate rabbit trail.) Generally, there was exclusivity between the groups; and friendships were usually not lifelong – just the typical friendships in my area of the US with an attitude of, “This is where I am right now. I’m not staying. But I might as well have a few friends here, and then I’ll find some new friends after I leave.”

I think the Philippines, with its concept of the barkada, has a huge advantage over America in regards to how people in the two countries treat friendship. I had read about barkadas in several books about the Philippines, but there is no true English translation for the word. Basically, a barkada is a group of friends that feels like a family. Loyalty runs high, and they remain friends after they move away. Some of them have reunions. The friendships can legitimately be lifelong friendships.

And shouldn’t we think of our church family this way? Let us replace our surface, Facebook-level friendships with ties closer than blood brothers and sisters. Blood is thicker than water? Our identity in Christ is thicker than blood and stronger than steel.

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To me, a church like mine is sort of like a larger-scale barkada that is not constrained by age. Sure, there are groups-within-the-group of people who do things outside church together. But I can freely fellowship with almost anyone there, whether we are chopping up divine truth, praying together, discussing work, or playing with cute babies.

And the local church is “a microcosm or a small-scale example / but it is the Church, even though it’s just a sample / invisible, spiritual, physical, visible / not a brick temple, never that simple” (Lecrae, “The Bride”). In heaven we will see the full-scale barkada, comprised of untold numbers of people representing every tribe, language, and nation. This tells me that we have no reason for racism or xenophobia in dealing with our Christian brethren, even those who come from countries with which my country is at war. Here on this earth, we have no lasting city; we seek the Celestial City, which is eternal and far better (Hebrews 13:14).

Let me clear up something: Jesus and Allah are not the same God. Islam is a religion of works, where its adherents work their way to God by keeping the Five Pillars of Islam. Islam sees Jesus Christ as a prophet and has no savior or means of forgiveness. And it does not allow any kind of assurance of salvation. It’s just, “I think I’ve been good enough that I will probably go to paradise.” On the other hand, Christians become saved by repenting of their sins and trusting in Christ. God alone can give them the faith to do that and the assurance that they have been born again. And Christians are called to suffer for the cause of Christ as much as necessary, even to the point of death. These two gods are not the same god. The scandal of the Christian gospel is that the Bible says that Christ is the only way to be saved.

But if I met a brother in Christ who came from the Arab world, grew up in the Islamic faith, and left that faith in favor of Christ, should I not seek to have meaningful godly fellowship with him? And similarly, most of the people that have spoken God’s truth to me through song recently have been Christian rappers, most of whom are from the inner city, and many of whom have a lot of scars in their past. They still minister for God in their cities, and with the changes in their lives they can point to the power of God! Similarly, if I were to meet a man from, say, Venezuela who had converted from Santeria (a Catholicism/animism/Satanism hybrid) to Christianity and displayed a desire for God, should I not discuss the things of God with him as well?

Yes to all of those questions, even if they do not have all their facts about the faith correct – and even if you think there is little or nothing for you to gain from being friends with them. The Bible is a very rich book, and no one aside from God knows the correct answers to every question about theology, soteriology, Christology, eschatology, and so on. However, the biggest item that postmodern thinkers misunderstand or outright deny is the truth that we can know the truth. Jesus Christ Himself even said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). And the more of the truth you know – even by wrestling with it – the more that you can pour into other believers, so that they may use it in better imitating Christ.

“If your theology’s bangin’, I hate to offend you.

But where are the faithful men you’ve been pouring it into?”

- Json, “Run”

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To sum up, my favorite Christian bumper stickers out there (no, they are not all kitsch) says this:

Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation – Or Bust.

And God’s Word says He’s going to do exactly that.

But you don’t just need to spread the gospel wide. Spread it deep.

Paul planted the seed. Apollos watered it. God made it grow. (1 Corinthians 3:6)

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“ ⁷ The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. ⁸ Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. ⁹ Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. ¹⁰ Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. ¹¹ If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.”

- 1 Peter 4:7-11

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For further reading, please check out the prayer at the end of David Legge’s message, “Sins We Have Sanitized, Part 4: Cultural Sins”. Indeed, as he says well, “our love should mark us out”.