Category: Theology

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Canada Church Clint Gospel Spiritual Growth Theology

Is True Revival Possible Today?

I think it’s rare to find people talking about it, but is true revival possible today? I’m not talking about the revival which false teachers talk about incessantly. Nor am I talking about the civic, social revival of Western civilization which many Christians are captivated by. I’m talking about the filling of the Holy Spirit among many people at one time that yields keener attentiveness to the Word preached and produces a new promiscuous outpouring of prayer to God. In a true revival, saints are progressively sanctified rapidly, and the lost are converted decidedly. Revival is simply the ordinary intensified.

Jonathan Edwards is My Homeboy?

Among conservative churches, there seems to be an absence of any kind of expectancy for revival. Although it wasn’t too long ago that guys wore, “Jonathan Edwards is My Homeboy” t-shirts, the idea of a Great Awakening seems to be relegated to the distant past.

Since there have been such abuses by those promoting revival, I think the tendency is to reduce our expectations of God. When we do, we reduce our view to what God does in the ordinary means of grace, not looking for any intensification.

Revival for Cessationists

Since I am a cessationist, I believe that the sign gifts were uniquely given to the church in the apostolic age to vindicate the gospel message in that singular foundation-laying season. But being a cessationist doesn’t mean I’m an anti-supernaturalist. God can perform miracles. He can also use individuals in miraculous ways. Yet gifts correspond to ongoing roles, and I don’t see the warrant for continued apostolic roles, so those particular sign gifts have ceased.

The expectation of God to act powerfully and intensely can’t be abandoned just because a person confesses cessationism. If God is free to act, he can sovereignly save many people at once, or sanctify many saints in a church rapidly. None of this requires the manifestation of charismatic phenomena. Instead what we would see would be:

  • greater attentiveness to Scripture,
  • hanging upon the Word preached,
  • prioritized attention to prayer that is Scripture saturated,
  • and worship that is free, yet with great fear of God.

It is interesting for me to see that many churches that are continuationist (i.e. charismatic churches) have a lot of emphasis on subjective feelings attributed to God, but a remarkably thin emphasis on the kind of godly sanctification that I’ve described. I’ve also found that in good continuationist and cessationist churches, there is the same proper expectancy. In either type of church, there is a confidence in God to both sovereignly intensify the sanctification of saints and to rapidly save the lost according to his good pleasure. In these churches, there is no abandonment of the ordinary means of grace, but there is confidence that God could speed his works rapidly among the church in striking ways.

A Window Looking at Revival?

On Sunday, at the church where I serve, there was a window into this prospect of revival. My fellow pastors and I were overseeing the Lord’s Supper and we all noticed something. The singing had increased in volume and the congregation seemed attentive to the whole liturgy. After the service, people were noticeably moved by the concrete reality of the believer’s destiny in heaven (2 Timothy 4:8). We asked ourselves, “Is it possible that God was bringing a revival?” We had witnessed our church being broken down with grief and empathy for a suffering member. And we had also seen an outpouring of prayer to God. This had been capped off with greater attentiveness to what Scripture said about the glories of heaven.

But if we only look at worship volume and subjective impressions, then they are not the criteria which will ultimately mark out true revival. Rather when sinners are distinctly converted, and saints grow in the faith from being children to adults in a day, then it will appear that God has moved in a special reviving way.

Beyond Tim Keller’s Strategy

It is interesting to me that Tim Keller is cited by many pastors as having influenced their ministry strategy. Yet Keller himself recognized that for eighteen months he experienced something of a local revival at Redeemer in 1990-1991. Revival beats strategy every time. It doesn’t mean that we don’t employ strategy, because we must. But we have to also humble ourselves to ask God to work according to his good pleasure, whether it be in an ordinary way or an extraordinary way.

As the reformed renewal enters into the latter stage of its maturity cycle, (see this interview about the Young, Restless and Reformed 10 Years later), pastors and church members need to retrieve a theology of revival. We don’t want to fall back into the errors of what Iain Murray called, “revivalism”. But we can’t fall back into enclaves of dead orthodoxy leading to rationalism either.

Pray to God that you would grow in your expectancy of his ability to sovereignly, freely and decidedly revive the church and convert the lost. That would be a good start for all of us.

unsplash-logoMichael Bourgault

Categories
Canada Clint Gospel Society Theology

Equality in a Diverse World

Few people will deny that the topic of sexuality rises to the top of all other discussions in Canada. Even in my own church we talk about these issues frequently. The public tensions center around sexuality in relation to the notion of equality. Yet no one can doubt that the subject of diversity is just as prominent. A Christian cannot ignore these ideas of equality and diversity. And in an interesting juxtaposition, my church hosted a conference that addressed the topic of sexuality, only a week prior to the annual celebration of the local Gay Pride parade.

1. Equality of Humanity

Both the attendees at our conference and the attendees at the Gay Pride festival are all equal in worth, dignity and value. That is the Christian viewpoint. Since all the attendees are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27a), they have an equal standing as well designed, created beings. The design of the human body abounds with evidence of this design, from the microscopic universe of complexity in a human cell to the culture-producing capacity to make create art for the senses.

2. Equality of the Sexes

If the image of God is the first equality that human beings have, the second equality which humans beings have is the equality of sexuality. Since sexuality is the expression of sex, it finds its equal source in the binary sex displayed as male and female. When we consult with Genesis 1:27, we see that this binary division of male and female establishes equality in these two sexes

We know that this second equality applies to sexuality, because in Genesis 1:28, God commends and commands the equal male and female image bearers to be “fruitful and multiply”. This requires the sexual union of male and female; two equals, producing more equals. The equality status is built into God’s design because there are things that have a lower status. In fact, God commands equal, fruitful, human beings to “fill the earth and subdue it” (v.28). Equality is established because the earth, not other people, are placed below human “dominion”.

These equalites that God has established require the high valuation on life that ought to be confessed by all people. Terms today like “pro-life” are just as much “pro-equality”. The unborn child at conception is a human life, and so ought to be treated with dignity, worth and value. The same applies to the elderly or mentally underdeveloped, who are nevertheless equal in worth, dignity and value. No matter the nomenclature we ascribe to ourselves (Baptist, Hindu, Transgender, etc) we are equal in status, worth and dignity because we are created in the image of God.

3. Equality of Corruption

There is third equality that must be looked at before we can consider the diversities. The third equality is the status of fallenness or moral corruption. The tragedy that started it all is recorded in the third chapter of Genesis. Adam disobeyed God by eating what was forbidden (v.6). The result of his action was the equally affecting contagion which touched every human being:

Therefore just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned”

Romans 5:12

Prior to the spread of this corrupting contagion, human beings were equal in status. But afterwards, they remained equal in status, yet also equally contaminated and corrupt. This equality of corruption is not talking about the quantity of criminal acts. It’s not talking about individual’s lists of sins and their relative length. What it’s talking about is that every person from the goody-two-shoes to hardened prisoner has equality of corruption.

The equality of human beings is the reason why Adam’s sin corrupts all, not just some. The point is an important one because self-identified religious people can act like self-identified gay people are unequal and more corrupt. Of course the reverse is true too. Gay people can act like Christians are moral monsters, and undeserving of treatment as equals.

Celebrating equality is a good thing. It is the gift of a special status which God has given to all people. But we must also recognize that there is an equality of corruption which requires a deliverance, but deserves none. None of us deserves to be delivered from judgment. We are all equally under the condemnation of God (Ro 1:18).

Diversity of Equality

There can’t be a discussion of equality without a matching discussion about diversity. Diversity is built into the creation of equal human beings. Even as God created humanity in the image of God, he created two binary, biological sexes, male and female (Gen 1:27). The second chapter of Genesis shows that there was a diversity to the order of the male and female creation, with man being created first in time (2:7). Without a compatible, equal complement to him, God supernaturally created the woman from the biological material of the man (v.22). This diversity in time did not change their equality, but it established diversity within equality. The man was not a woman, nor vice versa. The man had responsibilities given to him by God, such as naming the animals and naming his co-equal corresponding image-bearer. Only the woman had the diverse characteristics to bear children. Yet equality remains.

Equality was not injured or altered by this diversity. But diversities developed, as equal human couples were tasked to socially separate themselves from their parents, being bound together in a union, and establishing new families. This extension of equality beyond one couple, or one tribe is the essence of equality for all of humanity. Although there is diversity in new heterosexual, covenanted unions that are blooming with new life, every new tribe inherently possesses all the equalities, both positive and negative.

Other Diversities

The binary diversity of sex, means that men and women will differ. They will have biological and social differences. Diversity, as in all art, provides variety and intrigue. The differences between men and women are not in terms of the quantity of their worth, but the characteristics of their design.

All peoples are diverse as descendents of Adam. The biological, genetic diversity cannot dispel the fact that we are all connected to each other at the root. We all possess the equalities, even as we celebrate the diversities. Although people may talk of races in the plural, there is really only one race, that is Adam’s race, which we all share in, however diverse we may be in other ways.

Sadly, all of us would like to deny the equality of value for all people, while at the same time selectively denying the equality of corruption for others. Due to sin, we are constantly elevating ourselves and denigrating others. People can celebrate pride as a virtue, when our equality should make us all humble, even repenting in dust and ashes. As Isaiah said:

“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

Isaiah 6:5

Retrieving Equality

I was confronted by the distorted views of equality recently when I had a conversation with a woman via social media.

She had been criticizing our church for promoting a conference on sexuality and gender. Her questions were about equality. Did we believe in ‘equality’? Did we support ‘marriage equality’?

I responded in as winsome a manner as possible, trying to articulate the biblical view of equality and diversity. But she responded that I was speaking in a non-secular way. In other words, my definitions of equality (in keeping with standard English usage) did not correspond to hers. When she said “marriage equality” she didn’t mean the equal status of two binary male and female people joined in a covenant with the design that their union be exclusive and fruitful. She meant homosexual unions being re-defined as marriages. We seemed to be speaking different languages.

So if I understood her correctly, she saw equality as requiring interchangeability or fluidity. Further, like Orwell’s Animal Farm, she also understood that all are equal, but some were more equal than others. I was confessing a realistic view of the world where human beings are equal in value, worth and dignity, yet diverse in binary sex, ethnicity and amazing productive capacities. But this confession was forbidden.

I came away from the exchange realizing that there is a vast language gap between what Scripture says, and what our neighbours are saying, even when they employ similar sounding ideas.

Equality and Diversity in the Message of Jesus Christ

The most important way to retrieve equality and diversity is not by playing language games, but by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Son of God took on the equality of human beings, by adding to himself a human nature (Phil 2:5-11). This was a condescension because the Son who is God is by definition unequally superior to all creatures. Yet by adding this second, human equality, he could welcome a great diversity of human beings to be united to him. He bore their sin, receiving their due penalty, giving them a renewed equality as children of God, objects of the Father’s love (see 2 Cor 5:21; 1 John 3:1).

There is a new message which diverse humanity must hear in all of their equal corruption. It the message of the gospel that will bring together people from every tribe, tongue and nation to worship at the feet of the one who is superior to all, the Lamb who was slain (Rev 7:9).

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unsplash-logoTim Mossholder

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Church Clint Society Theology

5 Doctrines That Get Switched By Sacred Gayness

In an article last year I wrote about a movement in the evangelical church to affirm gayness as in some way sacred or especially distinct as a gift from God. The impetus for that article was a conference put on by evangelicals, in fact, hosted by Presbyterians. I use the phrase ‘sacred gayness’ to describe the key quality which the advocates of that conference were trying to promote.

In an article at The Gospel Coalition, Becket Cook observed that there was a move toward making gayness “sacred”. He said:

In the last 20 years or so there has been such a huge push to make it sacred. It went from a sin to a sacrament. 

From Gay to Gospel: The Fascinating Story of Becket Cook

Others have also noted the religious overtones in descriptions of gayness. My concern is with the doctrinal confusion that this brings. Here are five doctrines that get switched by sacred gayness (SG).

Conversion

  • There is no real ‘turning’: no metanoia, no repentance.
  • If you place conditions on Jesus, before you will follow him, then your conversion is to a different kind of messiah.
  • I presented the gospel to a gay man and during our extended conversation, he admitted with tears that he didn’t think Jesus would let him keep his gayness. I told him he needed to come to Christ, and trust Christ to change his desires by starting with a new heart. At issue was whether he wanted Jesus and the new heart, or Jesus as an appendage on his old heart.

Sanctification

The ‘no-lordship’ position rises again.

  • Progressive sanctification is neither progressive nor sanctification. The Holy Spirit is viewed as powerless (contra, for instance, the Tim Chester book, You Can Change). Or, calls to holiness are viewed as oppressive or arrogant to claim that progress ought to be evidenced in sanctification.
  • Definitive sanctification is neither definitive nor sanctification. Because the same-sex desire is viewed as essential to identity, then definitive sanctification must make being gay sacred. Normally definitive sanctification is viewed as a positional status, but now being gay is included there, making gayness redeemed and sacrosanct.  This idea is developed in the language of ‘redemptive suffering’ which attempts to create a sacred, divine category, akin to a new monasticism, which is on a higher spiritual plane than those not ‘called to’ the sanctity of gay celibacy.
  • The ‘givenness’ of same-sex attraction would make it seem to be a gift, as in ‘the gift of singleness’ (cf.1 Cor 7), and this contributes to the self-understanding that ‘LGBTQ Christians’ have a role as ‘prophets’ to the rest of the church. In other words, they have a special ecclesiastical role to play which is distinguished by their ‘sacred gayness’. 
  • The identification of what is sinful as a mere cultural proclivity, leading to the redemption of ‘queer treasure, honor, and glory’ for Christ.

Sin

  • Sin is redefined and reduced to external acts only (such as same-sex intercourse).
  • Absent are the categories of a sin nature which would produce internal affections that are offensive to God’s designed order. Are you a sinner because you sin, or do you sin because you’re a sinner? The sacred gayness (SG) movement is not recognizing the call to mortify the flesh: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col 3:5).
  • No apparent clarification of the doctrine of the Spirit and the flesh in the Christian believer. It is as if the flesh has been mistakenly redefined as only referring to the physical, when it is actually a metaphysical principle of the old age, that must be mortified according to the power of the Holy Spirit in the new age of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

Marriage

  • SG advocates will be ‘prophetic’ in challenging ‘heteronormativity’ in evangelicalism, as they view it as the idolization of the ‘nuclear family’.
  • There is a desire for new Christian covenantal partnerships where two people of the same sex can be bound together in a Church-affirmed, Church-celebrated way.
  • If the Church affirms spiritually defined covenant partnerships, then you will have civil ratification for those partnerships. In this way you will have a church-branded version of same-sex marriage that enjoys the same privileges as same-sex marriage in the culture at large. It creates a parallel marriage structure for same-sex partners in the church.

Ecclesiology

Consider the false ecumenism of the sacred gayness movement:

  • Revoice was lead by Protestants and Catholics. Although Nate Collins affirmed a Protestant view, he was sharing platforms with Catholics (for instance, Eve Tushnet). This confuses the gospel and the fundamental question, “What is a Christian?”
  • As Al Mohler points out, SG endorses the Council of Trent’s view that concupiscence is not sin. So same-sex desire is permissible, but acting on it is not. This permissibility then allows them to build massive structures of sacred gayness, much like the declension in the monastic movement which the Protestant Reformers universally condemned.

This new movement is making an unholy demand upon the church. It is the demand to affirm the sanctity of gayness. To do so is to deny the holiness of God and the strong injunctions against same-sex desire in Romans 1:24, 26-27. It is a crafty way of creating a shadow culture that parallels the biblical culture. Yet affirming any sacred gayness is merely another example of permitting the worship of Baal in the house of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23:17).

We happily rejoice in the power of God to change our lives. That is why we wish to be clear about the changes he brings. That is the powerful truth we all need.

This article is a modified excerpt of a previous article published at clinthumfrey.com

unsplash-logoMatt Botsford

Categories
Church Clint Gospel Spiritual Growth Theology

Christian, Wash Your Ears!

When I was a boy my granny said that I could grow potatoes in my ears. These days I’m surprised at how much of a germophobe I’ve become. Dirt is still okay, but who wants to get those flu germs from a door handle?

Nowadays like most people, I wash my hands with that clear hand sauce in the little bottles. But there is another kind of germophobia we can easily neglect. Too often churchgoers will make choices to let their ears go unwashed. The kind of teaching that they listen to is very unhygienic.

People might be fussy about bacteria on their hands, but they are careless about bad teaching in their ears.

Wash Your Ears!

The bible’s exhortation to Christians is this: Wash your ears! The aim of biblical teaching is that the believer would be “hygienic” in their faith. This is the kind of language Paul used repeatedly in his correspondence with Titus and Timothy (Ti 1:9, 1:13; 2:1-2; 1 Tim 1:10; 1 Tim 6:3; 2 Tim 1:13, 2 Tim 4:3). Paul wanted the believers in the care of his apprentices to be given “sound” teaching. The original word for ‘sound’ transliterates to our word for hygiene.

We all know that we can choose to not be hygienic with our hands. So it’s likely that we can be unhygienic with our ears, and the unhealthy teaching that we can listen to.

Unhygienic Teaching

Paul observed that people can get so infected by false teaching, it will bring inflammation to our existing passions (see 2 Tim 4:3-4). Then on the power of those passions, we will actually seek out more unhealthy teaching to satisfy the crazy itch of our own desires.

When hygienic teaching is available, the spiritually dirty ears will keep turning away from the washcloth. I can only be reminded of the way that my granny would want to scrub the dirt out of my ears as a boy. Why did I squirm away? For little boys to get clean it can seem like torture!

Squirming Away

We can be like a squirming child who is unwilling to be washed. But if we refuse to be cleaned, or refuse the health-giving medicine, our infections will only fester. Our passions will not be suppressed but inflamed. We will freak out in chasing after quick relief. We will run around to teachers that will give a quick scratch to our passions, and then move on to another teacher when we need another scrape on our inflamed infections (2 Tim 4:3).

The Hygiene Jesus Brings

Thankfully, Jesus came to bring hygiene to our sin infected lives. His saving work brings about the fear of the Lord which is “clean, enduring forever” (Ps 19:9). He came to be a physician to those who are sick (Mark 2:15-17). And for those who believe in Jesus Christ, they are washed and cleansed from the pollution of their sins, no matter how dirty they were before (1 Cor 6:11).

If you’ve been squirming and running around scratching the itch of your preferences and passions, you need to stop and listen to the sound advice of Scripture and my granny.

Wash your ears.

unsplash-logoSharon McCutcheon

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Canada Clint Creation Family Gospel Society Theology

Christians Must Talk About Sexuality

No professing Christian can afford to ignore the topic of sexuality. The sexual revolution has swept across North America into unlikely places like Alberta the land of oil and cowboys. The sexual revolution refuses to be ignored. Conservative politicians would like to drop the topic. And Christians cannot merely act like it is a problem for “someone, somewhere”. Christians must talk about sexuality or else they are in danger of being blindsided by it.

Either Oil or Sexuality

Take Alberta for an example. The most prominent news events of the last decade, other than oil and natural disasters, have been issues relating to sexuality. In Alberta, school-based clubs have become a sexuality flashpoint. These clubs are places where children have legal privacy protections permitting them to pursue gay identities and activities. The name given to these clubs is Gay-Straight Alliances or GSAs.

Another sexuality issue shifted the politics in Alberta dramatically. That flashpoint was the so-called “Lake of Fire” blog post from a provincial political candidate, Allan Hunsperger. In the post, he spoke of the judgement which awaited those who will not inherit the kingdom of God (cf. 1 Cor 6:9-10). The problem was what he said about eternal judgement and how it applied to gay people. The 21st chapter of Revelation says:
“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (v.8). Connecting “the lake that burns with fire” to the LGBTQ community set off a firestorm.

The candidate’s party lost the provincial election which many thought they would win. The “Lake of Fire” became a slogan that stood for ‘hateful comments that bring political disaster’. Maybe the candidate should not have phrased things as he did, or he should have clarified that “the sexually immoral” of Rev 21:8 includes all sexual lust and activity outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage, not just homosexuality. Regardless, it is clear that the bible’s view of sexuality would not be accepted in the public square in Alberta anymore.

Sexuality Views: A Case Study

For Christians in Canada, I think they should take Alberta as a case study for why they should talk about sexuality. Alberta can no longer be associated with so-called social conservatives. The province’s society has departed from publicly favouring Judeo-Christian values, even if they had no interest in the gospel. Alberta has shifted as radically as the price of oil.

A bellwether of this radical shift can be observed in American theologian Albert Mohler’s regular commentary. Normally Canada doesn’t register too highly on the attention meters of Americans, so it is worthwhile to consider the number of entries in Albert Mohler’s The Briefing relating to Canada or even the province of Alberta. Most if not all of his commentary about Alberta has to do with the sexual revolution (For a list of The Briefing commentaries that mention Alberta goto this link). Of course, the sexual revolution is so significant that it has its own category tag on Mohler’s site.

The personal autonomy and individualism which have marked Alberta since pioneer days have turned towards a radical autonomy in sexuality. Mohler observed what happens:

If we buy into the worldview that is undergirding this moral revolution on sex and marriage and the entire society and its ordering, we would have to understand that worldview says that human beings have an absolute right of self-determination when it comes to personal autonomy, gender, gender identity, sexuality, definition of marriage, or virtually anything else. But if you buy into that worldview, you have to extend it everywhere the logic would take us, even into the public schools, even into the lives of children and teenagers, even into a government policy that officially advises the schools they are to take the children through the process of choosing their pronoun, deciding what name they want on their report cards, deciding whether they want to play for the boys or girls team, and on and on.

The Briefing (January 20, 2016)

We cannot afford to be unclear about issues of sexuality. Our purpose is not simply to be better culture warriors or political operatives. Christians need to know what the Scriptures teach about humanity created in the image of God. Christians need to be clear about the creation design of male and female—binary sexes, which are designed to complement one another in their capacities and roles. The foundation is supernatural, as in the creative power of God. Yet the evidence of binary sexes is what even non-theist scientists defend.

Start To Talk About Sexuality

Christians need to start somewhere. Obviously the first place to start is reading through the first three chapters of Genesis, the affirmation of Jesus in Matthew 19, the sophisticated awareness of what is sexual sin presented by Paul in the first chapter of Romans, and the brilliant depiction of marriage in the sixth chapter of Ephesians which points to a higher reality, namely the union of Christ with his people.

Two contemporary resources to help us talk about these things are statements issued by the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

The first, the Danvers Statement aimed to summarize the biblical teaching on binary sexes as designed to complement one another in marriage. The term ‘complementarian’ was coined to express this biblical viewpoint of equality in marriage with diversity in roles within marriage.

The second resource is the Nashville Statement which sought to address issues of transgenderism, homosexuality, polygamy, polyamory and more with biblical viewpoints in contrast to those beliefs.

So we can make a start. We can read the bible and learn from good resources. It can be uncomfortable, but we have to do it. If we start to be informed, we can “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15).

Let us be careful not to lose either truth or love.

If you are in the Calgary area, Saturday August 24 you should consider attending this conference:

Gender, Sexuality and Christian Witness Conference, Calgary, Alberta, Saturday, August 24 with Denny Burk, President of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

unsplash-logoToni Reed

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Church Clint Gospel Puritans Spiritual Growth Theology

Holy Violence Isn’t What You Think

Prayers

Christians are accused of being angry. They are even suspected of holy violence. But even if Christians are succumbing to horizontal outrage we need to recalibrate our artillery higher. Holy violence isn’t what you think. Our artillery should be aimed at heaven.

Aiming At God

The English poet George Herbert (1593-1633) described prayer in a series of phrases, and one of them clarified this blasting impulse we have. He called prayer an “engine against th’ Almighty”. What he meant was that prayer was like a medieval siege engine. It was a catapult or trebuchet by which a towering wall was assaulted and a breach was made. This picture is almost sacrilegious if you ever thought God was thin-skinned. But God is strong enough to receive our siege, since he welcomes the prayer, and has given us the Spirit in whom the siege is made (Eph 6:18). Herbert thought that prayer at it’s most basic level was like a cannon aimed at God.

Heaven Taken By Storm

If you are still uncomfortable with the idea of employing such a violent image to express the prayer of the heart, then think about what Jesus said in the eleventh chapter of Matthew:

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.

Matt 11:12

There are various interpretations of this passage, but an older view was held by Thomas Watson (1620-1686). He summarized the emphasis as “heaven taken by storm”. In other words, heaven was to be assaulted and pressed into by believing prayer. In this way, “the violent take it by force”. Watson said:

The more violence we have used for Heaven, the sweeter Heaven will be when we come there…For a Christian to think, such a day I spent in examining my heart; such a day I was weeping for sin; when others were at their sport, I was at my prayers: and now, have I lost anything by this violence? My tears are wiped away, and the wine of para­dise cheers my heart. I now enjoy him whom my soul loves; I now have the crown and white robes I so longed for. O how pleasant will it be to think, this is the Heaven my Savior bled for, and I sweat for.

Heaven taken by storm, or, The holy violence a Christian is to put forth in the pursuit after glory (1670).

Another Puritan, John Bunyan depicted one of his characters in the Pilgrim’s Progress in the same way. When Christian was being shown around the Interpreter’s house, one of the pictures was of a man “of very stout countenance” who wished to enter a palace. Many refused to sign up and enter for fear of armed guards. But Christian observed the stout man who said boldly:

“Set down my name, sir”; the which when he had done, he saw the man draw his sword, and put a helmet upon his head, and rush toward the door upon the armed men, who laid upon him with deadly force; but the man not at all discouraged, fell to cutting and hacking most fiercely. So, after he had received and given many wounds to those that attempted to keep him out, he cut his way through them all, and pressed forward into the palace; at which there was a pleasant voice heard from those that were within even of those that walked upon the top of the palace, saying,

“Come in! Come in!
Eternal glory thou shalt win.”

Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)

Bunyan knew how important it was to cultivate a vigorous, aggressive even violent assault on heaven. “Cutting and hacking” through the resistance around us was the prescribed action given by Jesus himself.

When compared to the outrage and aggression which social media can foster, devotion and spiritual desire toward God in heaven differs a lot. Imagine if Christians gathered together to aim their artillery, not at each other, but toward heaven?

Holy Violence at the Prayer Meeting

If there is one place where we need some holy violence it’s at the prayer meeting. The reason prayer meetings are poorly attended these days is that there is so little vigour for ‘heaven taken by storm’!

Imagine if your church’s prayer meeting resembled a series of artillery pieces, lined up to fire in succession towards heaven. That kind of prayer meeting would be different than the drowsy, half-believing, unexpectant gatherings which we all continue to suffer through. The problem isn’t the prayer, rather its the elevation.

When Charles Spurgeon witnessed the awakening at the New Park Street church he noticed this holy violence employed in prayer to God. Iain Murray records what Spurgeon said about the new holy violence:

What a change took place in othe prayer meetings! Now instead of the old, dull prayers, ‘Every man seemed like a crusader besieging the New Jerusalem, each one appeared determined to storm the Celestial City by the might of intercession; and soon the blessing came upon us in such abundance that we had not room to recieve it.”

Quoted in The Forgotten Spurgeon, 36.

We may not feel like our prayers are the artillery pieces that Spurgeon had in his church. We may feel like our siege engine is more of a pop-gun. But we can pray that God would redirect our perpetual outrage at the horizontal, and make us those who vigorously plead with God on the vertical.

Let us start with asking God to give us a bigger bore and a greater calibre to turn our appeals, supplications, laments, cries, and prayers toward Him in heaven itself. That’s where our holy violence ought to be directed.

unsplash-logoFranck V.

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Canada Church Clint Society Theology

Fortify Your Faith Today

In an article by David French, he looked at the deconversions of prominent figures in the Christian world. First was Josh Harris the former megachurch pastor. Now is Marty Sampson, a songwriter with Hillsong. French made the point that the problem wasn’t catechesis but fortification. 

What he meant was that people like these two men were informed about the Christian faith to a large extent (although I don’t think Hillsong’s Oneness Pentecostalism is orthodox). They had been taught lots, but they had not been tested that much. French said that they lacked the moral courage to withstand the cultural resistance all around them. 

I think French is exactly right. And I’d like to expand on what this means for churches. I’m going to suggest three ways that churches can cultivate moral courage, not just checked boxes.

Fortify by Returning to Prayer 

The first thing we can do is return to prayer. This is not to pit spirituality against doctrine. Instead, it is to cause our theology to have its end goal: doxology. I suggest that a return to prayer is the focal point because it includes worship, but has no danger of being co-opted by entertainment like so much of our worship currently is. 

Prayer is pure supernaturalism because it is predicated on faith in the unseen. It is not a leap, because there is so much evidence God has revealed to us that we can rely upon (Rom 1:19-20; . Yet we “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7). We are all used to visible affirmations in the form of likes and retweets. But if we are to gain moral courage, we will have to grow stronger in faith that doesn’t need social oxygen to breathe. Instead, faith respirates on the unseen promises, unseen character, and ultimately the unseen, yet true and living God. Prayer is the means for helping us gain that well-oxygenated courage. 

Fortify by Reminding of Heaven

Part of this pursuit of the unseen God requires reminders about the day when we will see him. In other words, Christians require reminders of heaven. Such reminders feed our prayers. We can pray and be reminded once again that while we are groaning, we are “longing to put on the heavenly dwelling” (2 Cor 5:2). 

Theologian Michael Allen follows James K.A. Smith and others in pointing out how ‘this-world’ oriented we’ve become. He calls even Reformed orientations, “Augustinian naturalism”.  The Catholic philosopher Charles Murray said that our lenses are set within “an immanent frame”. The possible consequence for many people is that heaven lacks definition and recedes to a fuzzy background.  

No one can dispute that we live in a world of immediacy. Fast food. Push notifications. Livestreaming. God calls us to resist this form of worldliness by setting our minds on things above where Christ is (Col 3:2), and to be “longing to put on our heavenly dwelling” (2 Cor 5:2). 

Churches should remind themselves that they are sojourners travelling toward a heavenly city “whose designer and builder is God” (Heb 11:10). By reminding ourselves that we are “strangers and exiles on the earth (v.13), we can enjoy a narrowed focus upon heaven and the special presence of God. When our focus is narrowed to heaven, we will be far more resilient when the world demands that we cling to it. 

Although we may ‘seek the peace of the city’ (Jer 29:7) as exiles on the earth, we need to remember that a different city is the one that God has prepared for us where God is not ashamed to be called our God (Heb 11:16). 

Fortify by Repeating the Witness

Few things stir fear in Christians than sharing the gospel. They are embarrassed, scared, timid,  and insecure. But bearing witness reflects the heart of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. So are we doomed to consign witnessing to the category of perpetual guilt inducement? 

Maybe we should work on repeating our witness in both simple and complex ways. Too many Christians think that they have to be experts on apologetics, worldviews, world religions and so on. What they need to be experts on is the simple gospel. Following a basic pattern of God-Man-Sin-Christ-Response, or similar, Christians can learn to bear witness to the simple gospel. 

Repeating our witness to the gospel in simple ways strengthens us to bear witness in complex situations. Sharing the gospel develops spiritual strength like repeated exercise creates muscle memory. Then when we are crowded onto lonely platforms, our spiritual reflexes can take over. 

Of course, Jesus promised this. He knew that his disciples would be put on the spot. When they were, Jesus knew that the Holy Spirit would provide for them spiritual agility to remain steady in the face of crosswinds. He said:

And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” Luke 12:11-12

These three emphases can help us fortify ourselves against the growing tide of opposition. If we ignore the wave and trust in our well-run programs or nuanced notions, then we shouldn’t be surprised when many people in our churches get swept out with the tide. 

unsplash-logoEvgeny Nelmin

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Canada Church Gospel Ministry Spiritual Growth Theology

4 Ways To Be More Precise

Are you finding it hard to sift through what’s true, what’s half-true and what is totally #fakenews? It can be challenging. Maybe our discernment muscles are starting to fatigue. We’re inundated with digital content that requires careful sifting and we’re being crushed by the weight of info. Yet for Christians, we are called to discern and to pursue precision. Pursuing precision is expressed in the Scriptures repeatedly as a warning not to move away from God’s precise commands, not to “swerve” or “turn aside to the right or to the left” (Deut 5:32, 28:14; Josh 1:7; Prov 4:27).

Jesus was concerned with this precision when he said that the smallest palaeographical bits of the Law would be accomplished (Matt 5:17-18). Even threats on Jesus’ life came down to his use of two words saying, “truly, truly before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8:58). He wasn’t saying he’s a divinized superhero, but saying in a precise way that any Jew would understand, that he was Yahweh, the true God of Israel (Exodus 3:14).

The history of the church has been marked by a pursuit of precision. Precision has been refined in the historic debates about the doctrine of Christ, or the Trinity, or justification by faith alone, or the nature of conversion.

More recently the 20th century saw the hard work of discerning the inerrancy of the Scriptures (Chicago Statement) and the relationship between men and women as equal, yet distinct and complementary in roles (Danvers).How can we pursue precision today? Let me make four suggestions:

Commit to staying on the line.

That’s the phrase that I picked up from the recent Simeon Trust workshop in Calgary. By “staying on the line” the idea is that you shouldn’t go above the line of Scripture by adding to it or making it say what it doesn’t. And you shouldn’t go below the line of the text, failing to say what the text does, emphasizing what Scripture emphasizes.

Commit to discerning between ideas and people.

Often we associate ideas with people to such an extent that the noble person with a wrong idea must be a villain, and the immoral person with ideas that succeed is treated like a hero.

This is not to say that there is no connection between what someone believes and their character. Character and conviction ought to be closely connected (cf. James 2:18). But we must also recognize that the deceitfulness of sin can make even a nice guy like Barnabas play the hypocrite and undermine the gospel (Gal. 2:13). Or on the flip side, even Judas was an apostle; Demas was on Paul’s team and then bailed on him.

Commit to discerning between ideas and styles of argument.

In Canada this is especially needed.  In our stereotypical niceness, we can accept ideas that may be weak or false, simply because they are presented in a magnanimous way. Likewise, we can be prone to reject ideas if they are presented in a harsh way. This goes for Canadian Christians too.

A possible case study for this can be seen in the movement by some evangelical churches to have women as pastors, elders and overseers (for the TGCC position see section #3 of the Confessional Statement). For those churches, the limitations of 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1 and the prohibitions of 1 Timothy 2:12 are minimized (see #1). But they are minimized, not because they are exegetically deficient, but because they are viewed as somehow expressing a harsh argument. Now certainly some have argued in favour of biblical positions in harsh ways, but it doesn’t change the biblical position. Like getting a package in the mail, we have to get into the ideas apart from all the wrapping.

Still, for those who wish to make a case from the text of Scripture, they can feel like they’ve been pre-judged. They’re already wearing the villain’s hat in the B-Western before they start.  When I talk with pastor friends who are thinking through these issues, one of the frustrations they have with their denominational leaders is that there is no willingness to discuss ideas.

The denominations aren’t wanting to do exegetical work in the Scriptures. Instead, the leaders have concluded that certain positions have a perception of having a negative style of argument, so their ideas are not worth discussing.  The better way forward is to welcome open discourse with sound exegetical work. That way we can pursue precision as best as we can, while developing our discernment muscles and our godly conversation skills.

Resist the ‘Who Knows?’ Response.

When thorny issues and complex characters appear in our lives, we need to engage faithfully and truthfully. What we don’t want is to resign ourselves to know-nothing-ism and conclude that because things are less clear, they are utterly unknown. All of life is “seeing through a glass darkly” (1 Cor 13:12 KJV), but the Scriptures have been given to the church as without error and fully sufficient for what we need to know and the degrees of clarity we require to live in the world (See 2 Timothy 3:16-17).

If Christians give in to laziness and don’t aim at precision in spiritual discernment, then they will be like that anchor-less boat that Paul talked about, “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Eph 4:14). When we pursue precision we are not ignoring the waves, but are aiming to “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful” (Heb 10:23).

The Hour of Precision

If we can practice being precise, using our discernment muscles and doing the hard work of drawing careful lines, we will stay faithful to our Lord. And we will do so as we walk in obedience to the truth that Jesus prayed for: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).

A version of this article was first posted at The Gospel Coalition Canada

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