It’s you I like,
It’s not the things you wear,
It’s not the way you do your hair–
But it’s you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you–
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys–
They’re just beside you.
But it’s you I like–
Every part of you,
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you’ll remember
Even when you’re feeling blue
That it’s you I like,
It’s you yourself,
It’s you, it’s you I like.
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
"On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn.”
G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 192.
“God intends us to penetrate the world. Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars; our place is to be rubbed into the secular community, as salt is rubbed into meat, to stop it going bad. And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: Where is the salt?”
John Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, 65.
Breathe in me O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy.
Act in me O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy.
Draw my heart O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy.
Strengthen me O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy.
Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy. Amen.
Father,
I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures.
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to you
with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord,
and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands,
without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.
"... what else should be done if we hope to see conversions? Assuredly we should be careful to preach most prominently those truths which are likely to lead to this end. What truths are those? I answer we should first and foremost preach Christ and him crucified. Where Jesus is exalted souls are attracted – "I, if I be lifted up will draw all men unto me." The preaching of the cross is to them that are saved the wisdom of God and the power of God. The Christian minister should preach all the truths which cluster around the person and work of the Lord Jesus, and hence he must declare very earnestly and pointedly the evil of sin, which created the need of a Saviour. Let him show that sin is a breach of the law, that it necessitates punishment, and that the wrath of God is revealed against it. Let him never treat sin as though it were a trifle or a misfortune, but let him set it forth as exceeding sinful. Let him go into particulars, not superficially glancing at evil in the gross, mentioning various sins in detail, especially those most current at the time: such as that all-devouring hydra of drunkenness, which devastates our land; lying, which in the form of slander abounds on all sides; and licentiousness, which must be mentioned with holy delicacy, and yet needs to be denounced unsparingly. We must especially reprove those evils into which our hearts have fallen, or are likely to fall. Explain the ten commandments and obey the divine injunction: "Show my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins." Open up the spirituality of the law as our Lord did, and show how it is broken by evil thoughts, intentions, and imaginations. By this means many sinners will be pricked in their hearts. Old Robbie Flockhart used to say, "It is of no use trying to sew with the silken thread of the gospel unless we pierce a way for it with the sharp needle of the law." The law goes first, like the needle, and draws the gospel thread after it: therefore preach concerning sin, righteousness, and judgement to come. Let such language as that of the fifty first Psalm be explained: show that God requireth truth in the inward parts, and that purging with sacrificial blood is absolutely needful. Aim at the heart. Probe the wound and touch the very quick of the soul. Spare not the sterner themes, for men must be wounded before they can be healed, and slain before they can be made alive. No man will ever put on the robe of Christ's righteousness till he is stripped of his fig leaves, nor will he wash in the fount of mercy till he perceives his filthiness. Therefore, my brethren, we must not cease to declare the law, its demands, its threatenings, and the sinner's multiplied breaches of it."
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 337-338.
"The reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace – bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started. Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale, neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.”
Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace, 109-110.
“I think the greatest weakness in the church today is that almost no one believes that God invests His power in the Bible. Everyone is looking for power in a program, in a methodology, in a technique, in anything and everything but that in which God has placed it—His Word. He alone has the power to change lives for eternity, and that power is focused on the Scriptures.”
R.C. Sproul, The Prayer of the Lord, 101.
“We have spread so many ashes over the historical Jesus that we scarcely feel the glow of his presence anymore. He is a man in a way that we have forgotten men can be: truthful, blunt, emotional, non-manipulative, sensitive, compassionate–his inner child so liberated that he did not feel it unmanly to cry. He met people head-on and refused to cut any deal at the price of his integrity.
The Gospel portrait of the beloved Child of Abba is that of a man exquisitely attuned to his emotions and uninhibited in expressing them. The Son of Man did not scorn or reject feelings as fickle and unreliable. They were sensitive emotional antennae to which he listened carefully and through which he perceived the will of his Father for congruent speech and action.”
– Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging, 71.
Here's a very brief background to the Sermon on the Mount that I put together for our people at Redemption Church! Join us on Sunday at 10 AM!
The background study is here!
For anyone who would follow the Lord Jesus, baptism is a commandment. Like all of his other commands to disciples – they are just that commandments, not suggestions. And if we understand who he is and what he’s done then we can agree with St. John's and say from the heart “his commands are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3).
The glorious sacrament of baptism speaks directly to who God is and what he has done in Christ, through the Holy Spirit for the sake of the Church! Here at Redemption Church we rejoice from the heart each time a brother or sister repents to Jesus, trusts in Jesus, and follows after Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
The New Testament teaches us much about the meaning of baptism. Here are three things we gleam from the gospel, history (Acts), and the words of St. Paul to the church at Corinth.
Jesus commanded that all who would come after him as his disciples are to follow him in being baptized. This action of being submerged in water and being raised out of the water is public declaration that one has been plunged into a living relationship with the Triune God, remembering that we are “baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). Notice here that Jesus says “name” and not “names.” Why because of the Oneness and Three-ness of our God.
"Baptism was to conversion something like what the engagement ring is to many engaged couples in modern Western society; the official, public declaration of the commitment."*
As a church family, we joyfully heed Paul's instructions to "do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers" (Gal. 6:10).
In addition to a living relationship with the Triune God, baptism also is a picture of a particular kind of cleansing; a cleansing of sin. Look at this beautiful statement from Ananias to Paul upon his conversion to Christ, “And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name” (Acts 22:16). Notice the close connection between baptism and "calling upon his name." Australian scholar, David Peterson says,
“Outward washing with water expresses the cleansing from sin that is proclaimed in the gospel and received by faith sacramentally in baptism.”*
We are now cleansed before God through Jesus. Baptism points to this reality.
Nearing the end of his letter to the Corinthian church, in his lengthy treatment of the resurrection, Paul writes,
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…” (1 Cor. 15:3-4).
Baptism is a picture of Good Friday and Easter! When someone goes into the water, they’re declaring that their sins are buried with Christ. When someone comes up out of the water, they’re identifying with the resurrected Lord Jesus!
There is a saying from the early church that can serve to help us better understand what water baptism is and what it represents. Sofia Cavalletti, a woman who lived in Rome and worked with young children on their spiritual formation, writes in her book Living Liturgy: Elementary Reflections:
“The catechumens [Christian converts awaiting baptism] went down into the baptismal pool, which was considered both the tomb of the old person and the motherly womb of the church, which gave new birth to the new person. Going into the pool was like going down into the tomb, and coming up out of the pool was the return to a new life, the life of the risen Christ.”
So, if you walk into your church and you see the baptismal font, think to yourself, from death to life. You see, when you're baptized, you’re in a sense reaching back in time to hold the hands of the saints who have gone before us, and remembering the stark reality that our old lives with all of our sin and folly are buried in the tomb, and by the grace of God, we emerge to live new lives from the womb as the people of God.
The baptismal font is the tomb and the womb.
So if you’re a believer in Jesus and are ready to take your next step of faith and be baptized, please fill out the form and one of our pastors will follow up with you right away.
____________________________
[1] Ryken, Wilhoit, and Longman III, gen. eds., “Baptism,” Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, 73.
[2] Peterson, D. G. (2009). The Acts of the Apostles (p. 603). Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[3] This article is a brief summary of the chapter entitled "Baptism" in my book The New Believer's Guide to the Christian Life: What Will Change, What Won't, and Why it Matters.
We’ve all done it. From the least to the greatest, the dumbest to the smartest, the most vile to the most honorable – we have all taken that which did not belong to us.
St. Augustine, (354-430 A.D) the Bishop of Hippo (North Africa, Algeria) was no exception. Prior to his conversion to Christ, he lived a wild life, indulging the flesh in every way. Writing book two of his legendary “Confessions” his mid-40s, he reflects on his teenage years back when he ran with a few friends that consistently found themselves getting into trouble. Can anyone relate? I know I can. The boys moved in together and called themselves something to the effect of “The Destructors.”*
One evening, The Destructors we’re up to no good. Across the way from Augustine’s parents home was an orchard belonging to someone else. The boys decided to help themselves to some pears. These boys weren't Robin Hoods - stealing to give to the poor. They didn't steal out of hunger. They stole but simply because it was wrong. There was a law to break and they broke it. They simply threw them away to some nearby hogs.
Augustine writes:
We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart–which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself.
Stealing pears to give to hogs may not seem like a major sin compared to countless horrendous acts through world history. However, this "small" sin gave an excellent read on his (and our) heart. I'm under the impression that the Holy Spirit coupled with midlife reflection tends to put things in perspective. As he thought about his friends, the laughing, the pears, the thought of getting away with something, and the hogs laid up against the grace of God, he saw his heart for what shape it really was in when Jesus saved him.
It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error–not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself.
It was a love of sin.
We've all been there. Even those we refer to as "Saints."
How'd he go from sinner to saint? The same way you and I do. Through the truth that where sin abounded grace abounded all the more (Romans 5:20).
Justo González, The Mestizo Augustine: A Theologian Between Two Cultures, 34.
Here at Redemption Church, we're all about Enjoying Jesus, Loving People, and Making Disciples. Click here to get your copy of "A Theology of Care." This essay is written with the intention of helping understand a bit more of the "why" behind the "what" as it pertains to us being the caring community that Jesus is building here in Greenlake. Join us on Sunday at 10:00 AM!
Silence in Liturgy
Nearly every week in our corporate worship gatherings at Redemption Church we intentionally place a time of silence into our liturgy. Yes, a moment of to be completely silent, with no agenda before Almighty God. Why on earth would we do this? Isn't church already the most awkward hour of our lives? We read from a book a few thousand years old, sit on wooden pews, gaze up at stained glass, in reverence of our God, who we cannot physically see! What does sitting in silence actually accomplish? What's the purpose? How is it pragmatic?
The answer is very simple.
Practicing silence in Seattle flips our busy routine on it's head. Here in our ever-growing, fast-paced, ever-changing city, most people never stop for a full 60 seconds to just be still. As Seattleites, we wake up looking at our phones. We talk all day in conversations, are on our phones as we head to another meeting, another lunch, another meal, and then make it home, turn on Netflix, and stare out our phones until it's time for bed. Then it starts over.
It is as though we are unwilling and unable to sit completely still with our souls before Almighty God. The implications affect not only our understanding of who God is but we also end up not really knowing ourselves. You and I are very complex and complicated beings. The only way we can really know ourselves; what makes us tick, what makes us happy or sad, or what gives us meaning, purpose, and direction is the discipline of sitting still long enough and to pay attention to the voice of the Holy Spirit, calling us deeper still as he forms childlike faith in us as the children of God.
We are silent in our liturgy not because we don't know what to do with 60 seconds of time. We are silent because we think we always think we do know what to do with 60 seconds of time. It is in the silence that things, people, events, and desires, all come to mind that otherwise remain buried in the busyness of life. As they come to our minds, we give them to our God.
In short, silence is a gift.
Silence at Home
When was the last time you tried sitting in total silence on your own? That is, without a Bible, a phone, a pen and journal, but simply just you and your awareness of the God who is present? I've noticed that in those moments of taking slow deep breaths and becoming aware of my Abba who loves me, likes me, and is quite fond of me, that my priorities shift, confession flows freely, and that self hatred, doubt, and skepticism float off. The result is worship of God, acceptance of self, and heartfelt tenderness towards others in born. God accomplishes and teaches more in 60 seconds of silence than what anyone could gain in 60 hours of theological research.
Perhaps you could try just 5 minutes today? For some, 5 minutes will fly by. But for many of us, those 5 minutes require training the mind to stay present, the heart to stay engaged, and the body to stay completely still.
Attention, all! See the marvels of God!
He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,
Bans war from pole to pole,
breaks all the weapons across his knee.
“Step out of the traffic! Take a long,
loving look at me, your High God,
above politics, above everything.”
– Psalm 46:8-10, The Message
"One Saturday morning as I was running on a trail that wound through a neighborhood park, a group of boys from two college cross-country teams flew past me. Their bodies were sleek and strong. They wore uniforms that made them all look like Olympians. They were so fast that I began to feel like a lumbering truck that wasn't going to make it up the hill. About the time I had recovered from this indignity, the girls' team raced past me with all of the grace and speed of gazelles. When I finally got to the end of the trail, all of the real runners for long done and were talking with their coaches. And there I was, doubled over, sucking wind, and telling myself there's no such thing as a good run.
As I slunk away from the crowd toward my car, I noticed another group of runners starting to reach the end of the trail. This group had no fancy uniforms. They wore baggy gym shorts and T-shirts with something hastily scrawled cross them. A few were running hard, but most had a clumsy pace. the cross-country teams immediately moved back tot he finish line and began cheering wildly as each of these last runners stumbled to the end. Curious, I went over to get a closer look and noticed that this last group of runners were all developmentally disabled. Some of them had very obvious handicaps, but they still ran. They had not interest in the coaches' clipboards and stopwatches, and they seemed oblivious to the fact that this was a race. They were running with abandon for the sheer delight of it. A few were being pushed in wheelchairs. Then two girls who had Down syndrome appeared at the end, walking, holding hands, smiling and waving to those of us who clapped and kept on clapping. No one cheered more loudly than I. And when I got back to my car, I couldn't stop crying.
Why were we all cheering so enthusiastically for these kids with handicaps? Maybe it was because we were proud of their resolve not to be limited. Maybe. But a poet would wonder if there is something in all of us, something essentially human, that envies those who are graced with the opportunity to live without veneer. They certainly knew more than I did about the joy of running in a park on a crisp fall morning.
Joy cannot be analyzed, strategized, or explained. It can only be entered, and the portal into joy is confessing the truth: We are not whole. No one has to pretend, and the truth feels so good that we just want to cheer whenever someone exhibits it."
M. Craig Barnes, The Pastor As Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life, pp. 37-38.
Rembrant's "The Return of the Prodigal Son"
Over the past couple of years I've often been asked whether or not I believe in repentance or the pursuit of holiness because I talk so frequently about the love, grace, and compassion of almighty God. Questions about whether or not I’m being faithful to the entire witness of Scripture pop up, and I find myself giving the same answers again and again. I thought it might be helpful to put a few thoughts down here.
Burned Believers
First, I’m unapologetic about being so brazen with my commitment to be “that guy” who goes on and on and on and on about the love of God. In my 37 years in the church, I’ve never heard too much about the love of God. In fact, I’ve never met a single Christian from Lima to London who has been overly saturated in the love of God. Instead, I’ve met countless believers who’ve been burned in all kinds of fires. Some have been burned badly by horrible church leadership, and they’re at home on Sunday mornings missing Jesus and his people. Others are burned out through religious performance, serving God and others, frantic Marthas who can’t just sit still for a moment and let God be God. Still others have been burned by particular sermons on the dreadful wrath of God, the incomprehensible nature of God, or the overwhelming lip-searing holiness of God, leaving so many outside in the front yard as a stranger, rather than snuggled up in the living room as a child with their Abba.
Snuggled
Yes, snuggled. I used the word snuggled in reference to the God of the universe, maker of heaven and earth, the one to return to judge the living and the dead. Snuggled is a personal word, an intimate word, a sacred word, because it communicates vulnerability, childlike trust, and unwavering confidence that God can be who he says he is and not what the religious cops of the day portray him as. Being hell-bent on rule keeping and tedious nitpicking reveals that it is possible to read all about someone (i.e. God) but never actually know them or be changed by them.
Hallmark Christianity
When Jesus says “come to me and rest” (Matt. 11:28), or “make your home within me” (John 15:4), or “as my father loved me, so I have loved you” (John 15:9), he is not establishing a hallmark card Christianity, filled with trite sayings, something to give a little pick-me-up on a gloomy Monday Seattle morning. He’s offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for rebels on the outside to pull up a seat at the table on the inside, receiving what was theirs from eternity past—a glowing, vibrant, unshakable identity as Abba’s child.
This does not for one moment downplay the holiness of God (1 Sam. 2:2).
This in no way diminishes Jesus commands to walk in holiness (Matt. 5:30).
Kindness that Leads to Repentance
Embracing our identity as the beloved children of God in no way pushes us away from repentance. In fact, the first stop on the journey of God’s kindness is repentance! For it is the kindness of God that is intended to lead us to repentance (Rom. 2:4)! What I’m committed to preaching to myself, my wife, my children, and anyone who will give me the time of day is this—God is love, and God welcomes us on the grounds of the Good Friday cross in which he suffered the wrath of God in our place for our sins, and to dine, eating fish on the beach with his grinning Easter-face by, in, and through the Comforter, the gracious Holy Spirit who draws us even now to sit still, feel his hand on our shoulders, and hear the words spoken to St. John on the Isle of Patmos, spoken now, "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever!” (Rev. 1:17-18).
The grace of God is in no way in opposition to holiness, God's grace, applied by the Holy Spirit leads us deeper into Christlikeness which is another way of saying "holiness."
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness,
Through the confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the Judgment Day.
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me:
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me
From snares of demons,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.
Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.
–St. Patrick, 5th Century
