A Hymn for 2020

I realize no one has made me in charge of such things, but I’m just gonna go ahead and re-name this: “The Hymn for 2020.”

“A Hymn: A Prayer for Forgiveness and Deliverance⠀

O God of earth and altar,⠀
bow down and hear our cry,⠀
our earthly rulers falter,⠀
our people drift and die;⠀
the walls of gold entomb us,⠀
the swords of scorn divide,⠀
take not thy thunder from us,⠀
but take away our pride.⠀

From all that terror teaches,⠀
from lies of tongue and pen,⠀
from all the easy speeches⠀
that comfort cruel men,⠀
from sale and profanation⠀
of honor, and the sword,⠀
from sleep and from damnation,⠀
deliver us, good Lord!⠀

Tie in a living tether⠀
the prince and priest and thrall,⠀
bind all our lives together,⠀
smite us and save us all;⠀
in ire and exultation⠀
aflame with faith, and free,⠀
lift up a living nation, ⠀
a single sword to thee.”

-G.K. Chesterton, 1906⠀

My husband stumbled on it earlier this year in my Chesterton book of poems (because #readapoemaday) and I haven’t quite shaken it off.

**Vintage artwork shown was done by Chesterton’s pal Tolkien. One of many original illustrations that accompanied The Hobbit manuscript when he submitted it to his publisher in 1936. Check out this amazing book for more of them.

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What is Truth?

Truth. That word getting thrown around like wildfire lately. Twisted on all sides, for all purposes.

Let’s clear the smoke a bit, wipe away the mire, breath deeply, and be refreshed — because Truth is a balm, not a bomb.

Disordered and weaponized it becomes something no longer itself, spreading and infecting all it touches (1 Cor. 5:6-8), but sought after like the costly pearl and the oft-forgotten treasure it is, kept intact, not an atom in the cosmos is immune to its ability to enliven and heal (Matt. 13:31-33).

  • Truth is not facts, something to be voted on, a thing one can censor or own (John 14:6).
  • Truth is walked in, not won; clung to, not fought for. It is freely offered, freely given, and then lived. It’ll look more like worship than war (John 4:23-24; 2 John 1:4).
  • Truth is not something we speak so others will listen to us, it’s something we “become of” so we may hear the voice of Christ (John 18:37).⠀
  • Truth is not something to win arguments or prove points with, it’s something that gives life and sets people free (John 8:32).⠀
  • Truth overflows from its source, reflects its source, glorifies its source, leads back to its source (John 16:13).⠀
  • Truth is for every class, color, creed, and party (Acts 10:35).⠀
  • Truth is something Love rejoices in, not something Anger throws (1 Cor. 13:6; Eph. 4:15).
  • Truth is something we “belong to.” A belonging that can be identified in ourselves and others because it’s woven with right actions and hearts at rest in their Maker’s presence (1 John 3:18-19). Anyone can say something that is true, but severed from its roots, it will wither, die.⠀
  • Truth inaccurately handled or wrongly offered (“the wrangling of words”) is birthed of this world. It becomes useless babble, leading its hearers to ruin rather than life, spreading like cancer. To present truth rightly is a solemn charge, to do so rightly is a holy and pleasing offering to God (2 Tim. 2:15).
  • Truth is not a political platform or the possession of any man-made institution or denomination, it’s the living God. The foundation of his Church who is commissioned to carry his unity, truth, goodness, and beauty to every inch of our world (1 Tim. 3:15).⠀
  • Jesus flipped tables only because he embodied Truth. He flipped what was hindering people from that Truth, then stuck around to heal, feed, and lead them there (Mark 11).
  • The world, like Pilate, is asking: “What is truth?” (John 18:38). They are fearful, weary, angry, and hopeless. But we’ve been handed the reason we need never fear. We’ve been offered unmitigated rest and given the Spirit of peace. We have lasting hope because we know Truth, and only by embodying that truth, through the work of the Spirit, will we be offering anyone anything worth taking—something that can feed, heal, change, and last.⠀
  • So while the world argues about current events, let us be people who walk and live the narrow, yet beautiful way of Truth.
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On Covenants and the Common Good: Toward a Renewed Politics

[Originally posted Here at Mere O]

Only a few paragraphs into Genesis and the age-old tensions between the individual and society are already beginning to emerge. The story begins with one Individual formed in the image of God, with individual dignity and worth. Yet it is not good for man to be alone and the first community is formed. By the hand of God someone once singular was made plural, then joined right back together again by a covenant and a command to remain one and yet multiply. This beautiful, albeit enigmatic tension was born, then asked to birth more. And in one bite followed by another, individual choices were made that led not only to individual and immediate consequences, but societal and far-reaching ones. The very tension woven by its Maker, seemingly unraveling beyond repair. Yet it remained. Wrought with enmity, but commanded to carry on.

Society grew, and its birthing pains only increased. The tensions that began in marriage carried on through family then tribes then nations then humanity.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in “Individual and Collective Responsibility,” draws our attention to the Flood, brought about by the violence and anarchy that occurs when society is sacrificed on the altar of the individual, and the Tower of Babel disaster, brought about by the tyranny and oppression that occurs when individuals are sacrificed on the altar of society. He claims that “The Flood tells us what happens to civilisation when individuals rule and there is no collective. Babel tells us what happens when the collective rules and individuals are sacrificed to it.”

We seem destined to repeat this disastrous pendulum swing, ad infinitum, until God steps in. Out of the post-Babel wreckage of disunity and disarray, he calls upon an individual, Abram, to form a new community that revolved neither around the individual nor the collective, but what Sacks describes as “a new form of social order that would give equal honour to the individual and the collective, personal responsibility and the common good.”

And a covenant was “cut”—the Brit Bein Habetarim, or “ Covenant of Parts.” And Abram, like Adam, fell into a deep sleep as God walked through that which had been separated. Abram, like Adam, was told to multiply, yet this time God himself would take care of the math. Abram and Sarai stepped out of the darkness in faith, trading barren wombs and severed flesh for offspring like the stars, an everlasting land of promise, and the opportunity to share their blessings with all of humanity—the future restoration of the unity destroyed at Babel. God was throwing us a literal life-line: Give up your individual and collective toiling and striving that keeps breaking you, join my covenant, and Iwill accomplish great things through you, and for you. I will save you from yourselves.

This shows us how covenants can transform both the singular individual and the collective society. It can provide both with common values, purpose, identity, stability, and shared strength through shared sacrifice. They’re held together not by self-interest or force, but fidelity and faith.

As the Israelites passed from slavery through the waters of the Red Sea into a covenant of freedom through fidelity, so the believer passes from death through the waters of baptism into a covenant of life through faith. A covenant with the Trinity itself, culminating on the day of Pentecost when the curse of Babel was dissolved and rather than “one lip” united for evil there could now be one lip (one “pure lip” as prophesied by Zephaniah) united for good through the covenantal sign of the Spirit. Abraham’s far off promise of unity is now offered to the entire world.

A Covenantal God

Christianity must be understood covenantally because that’s how God has chosen to relate to humankind. Biblical scholar Thomas Schreiner defines a covenant as “a chosen relationship in which two parties make binding promises to each other.” Over and again, we see covenants as a means of God demonstrating who he is, binding himself to his people and creation, providing a means of flourishing, limiting and hedging in destruction, and forging paths of reconciliation between humanity and himself. Herman Bavinck reminds us that “God is the God of the covenant;” it’s what joins us through the infinite distance to God, not as a master and a slave but in comunion and friendship—it’s “the essence of true religion.”

Covenants Distorted and Broken

But we like to take what is covenantal and make it hierarchical. We reduce it to its lowest common denominator; to a contract riddled with loopholes giving us an out. But a covenant is freely chosen, not forced; relational, not contractual. By its very nature, it counteracts hierarchy, power grabs, hoarding, oppression, discrimination, and abuse. It fights fear.

In Os Guinness’s upcoming book, The Magna Carta of Humanity, he describes a covenant as, “promise keeping and trust writ large and made lasting. It is the trust that underlies all healthy families and all good relationships now expanded to become the foundation of an entire society, and even a nation. A covenant is a commitment that makes life worth living and enables life to be lived well. It is a word of honor given at a point in time that binds together past, present, and future, making possible lasting love, enduring freedom, flourishing lives, and a healthy community.”

When our world, our communities, our news feeds, our families, and our thoughts fill with fear, like frightened animals we fight and fly. We forget we are more than animals. We forget we have souls that can be eternally covenanted with the One whose words spoke us into being and whose very breath made us more than dust. Because dirt plus the breath of God, is a life intrinsically and individually valuable because it was breathed upon and imprinted with his very image—the face we cannot see. Imprinted in unique ways with the potential to be. To become an individual reflection of him, breathlessly magnified and intensified when covenanted together. The God who values and makes valuable, created us so that our worth is as an individual but our purpose is through a community.

The Greek root of “Devil” is derived from “dia-balein”: to throw apart, to scatter. Satan hates unity because he knows those beautiful reflections of God joined together in one voice and one accord would destroy him. He could never gaze upon the face of a unified Church, filled with the Spirit of God, and survive. It will end him.

Unity is the breath of the Church. We suffocate without it. Its necessity mirrors not just the glory, but the necessity of the Trinity. God is Unum, Bonum, Verum, Pulchrum—Unity, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty—and so must his Church be.

Covenants Absent, Forgotten, and Unseen

Reinhold Niebuhr argues that humans tend to lack the rationality and moral imagination to extend empathy beyond a certain point. So when we see fear, anger, death, destruction, and unmet needs further from us than our screens or our circles, we resort to tribalism and we throw platitudes. Well, “Jesus is the answer” we say. Maybe if others behaved better or worked harder or made better choices, we say. Vote differently, we say. Yet, here we are, nursing and feeding our babies, caring for our parents, fighting for our marriages, working our vocations, advocating for our child’s IEP or education, tending our gardens, or listening to a friend bare her soul. Why? Because whether we realize it or not, we are covenanted to those things and that leads us to action. We care about what we are bound to. Niebuhr suggests some form of “social coercion” to bridge the chasm between our circles and others, rather, I believe covenanting—freely offered—is the only way to effectively and lastingly graft the two.

We forget what Walter Brueggemann describes as our first tastes of “covenanting,” as infants experiencing the omnipotence of an other (in this case, mother) slowly developing a sense of self and learning the act of “othering” which requires the ability to both assert and surrender. We don’t see how our marriages, our deep friendships, our children, even our gardens, all providentially give us glimpses of what a covenantal relationship ought to look like. That far off promise whispered to Abram on that clear night, as brilliant as the stars, yet as touchable as his wife and his baby boy and the dirt beneath his feet.

We must look to our existing covenants to remember what covenant-keeping means and looks like. How the life of our marriage is dependent on the life of its entities. Unable to live if one dies. Unable to flourish against the atrophy of the other. How our children cannot grow to discover who they were created to be if we don’t feed them, and learn their struggles and gifts, and put them to bed, and keep them from dying.

Covenants Misunderstood

Covenants build bonds that run deeper than politics, denominations, race, or even kinship. They are the blueprints handed to us by our Creator and modeled by the Trinity. In fact, if our lines and points neatly match up with the outlines of any group or person who did not make us, we’re likely being unfaithful to the most important Covenant of all, and party to a dying contract that will never bring life and flourishing to our story or this world.

Here’s the thing that should strip us of excuses—we don’t even have to agree with what someone believes or does to covenant with them. It’s not unequally yoking, it’s not being of the world, it’s reflecting the God who was willing to covenant with us. It’s why Jesus loved his enemies, broke bread with sinners, and forgave those who killed him. It’s why we’ve been given so much and are told to give it away freely. It’s why every Christian should be able to say to each and every person before us: I see you, I care for you, I love you, I will hold what I’ve been given with an open hand so youdon’t have to be so fearful, because I have the best reason of all to never fear.

We worry it may bolster a political party not our own, Christians we don’t think are theologically sound, a cause we don’t want to advance. It seems messy and uncomfortable. It felt threatening to the world Jesus was born into as well. It didn’t mesh with how they pictured God’s kingdom being built. “Follow me,” he assured them. In doing so, we are led along the way that often looks like weakness and feels like a death of sorts, but it’s the strongest, most life-producing thing we could do. It’s not sitting still and it’s not conquering. It’s both surrendering and asserting. Covenanting with those around us allows them to taste and see the source of holiness, peace, justice, mercy, and love.

The Call of the Church

Where covenants are absent, fear is present; but where covenants are made and kept, faith and trust can grow.

We are tribal creatures. Tribalism kills, but it also protects. What if we were part of a tribe that anyone could find a home in? Be fed in, seen, protected, valued, and loved in? A tribe bound together by a covenant with the very One who created us each and sees us as who we could be both individually and collectively? We can be and it’s called the Church. And if our churches don’t look like that and we don’t look like that, we are not living by the Spirit and covenanting in the image of God. We must lament and repent.

Why We Lament

We lament because not one of us has kept our covenants perfectly—not our covenant that grafts us onto Life, our covenant that binds us to the Church, our covenant to serve and preserve the land, and especially not our covenants that connect us to others providing the conduits for that Life to spread and draw them to its source.

We lament because we have not cared for the whole body of the Church. We have forgotten that if one part suffers, every part suffers .

We lament because we have cared about property more than people and we’ve reduced people to property. We are unwilling to look others in the face or through our screens and see the unique fingerprints of God upon them.

We lament because we have not yet gone to the ends of the earth, bringing the source of life and flourishing to every corner. Carrying his breath to the dying. Bringing the temple to them.

We lament because we have broken our covenant to bless humanity through us, to be a city on a hill, the salt of the world, a light in the darkness. We have not lived out the very words God whispered to Abram on that starry night.

We lament because we respond to the weeping and gnashing of those broken by our broken or non-existent covenants, with “Go and be well fed.” “Choose peace” we say. “Choose life” we say. We offer words that cost us nothing; doing nothing to feed them, pursue peace, or help them imagine how to live and not feel so powerless. Nothing that would lead them to the well of peace, provision, and strength.

We lament because we make excuses to not do what’s right. We say justice and mercy are replacing the gospel, forgetting they’re intrinsically intertwined. That if justice and mercy aren’t pouring out, it’s not truly the gospel. If justice and mercy are built upon anything less, they will fail. One cannot live, while the other dies.

We lament because we’ve reduced the gospel to a few bullet points on how to get to heaven when we die, forgetting that it’s actually about a new way to live here—the offer of a covenant that grafts us to Life and severs us from Death.

How the Church Can Change the World

God’s kingdom was inaugurated with a covenant and it’s the act of covenanting that will build it and bring it. Here and now. There’s no other way. Jesus didn’t embrace death so he could dole out life, like individual stimulus handouts, enabling us to survive alone and build our own tiny little “saved” kingdoms. He chose to surrender to Death, going where it had no choice but to look upon his face—knowing it could never survive. Knowing we could never survive, much less flourish, if Death lived.

With not an “I do” but rather a barren soul that accepts his “I have done”—one breath, one body, one flesh—and our contract with Death is shattered. A new creation and a new covenant arise from the dust, and once again the breath of the Spirit gives us life. Life that Death no longer has claim to. This covenant finally resolves the tension between the individual and community. We are forever bound to something greater and bigger than ourselves that will finally allow us to become who we were created to be.

It seems these days more than ever, that the world is falling apart. And it is. But every cry and every failure of the world is a calling and a requirement for the Church to show them a better way. We are being given an opportunity to individually and corporately lament, repent, and seek the Spirit of the living God to do a work in us and through us, walking in the footsteps of Jesus. The Church, of whom every believer is bound to and part of, is called upon to change the world. Not because wecan, but because we are covenanted with and filled by the only one who is able. Because the God who made creation good, can and will redeem it, restore it, and make it good again, and he longs to begin his work through us.

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Strong Emotions and Weak Prayers

Originally published HERE at www.desiringgod.com

Prayer is hard. It’s always been the spiritual discipline I struggle with the most. I blame it on all sorts of things — my busy life, my easily distracted mind, my loud children, my personality, how I’m better at communicating through writing rather than verbally — the list goes on. “It’s not my gift,” I say. Some people are just gifted prayer warriors while I really love reading and studying God’s word, so God must have just wired us to serve different purposes and that’s okay, right?

No.

A thousand times, no. I thought like that for a long time and believing that lie was a tragedy. It’s ignoring one of the greatest gifts ever given to us.

Prayer is the recognition of and participation with God in our life. Our deficiencies in prayer cannot simply be compensated by increased Bible reading, ministry, community, or listening to sermons. Nothing can take the unique place of prayer in the Christian life.

I can say from experience that a prayerless soul is a dead soul.

Blessed Aren’t the Poor in Prayer

Realizing my struggles with prayer, I set out to study it. I talked to people about it and read sermons and commentaries on prayer from other generations, trying to figure it out. In doing so I came to the realization not only of my own poverty in prayer, but the depth of those deficiencies in much of the church — and in particular, my generation.

While it might not be fair to generalize an entire generation, virtually everything about our western culture and way of life is at odds with prayer in ways not at the forefront in generations past. Our schedules are filled to the brim. Smartphones and technology keep us connected to everyone but God. We pour out our lives and emotions on any number of social media platforms, leaving us little to set before God in prayer.

As I poured over commentaries and sermons about prayer from over a hundred years ago, I was struck, not only by how seriously they took prayer, but how much they discussed the care that should go into our prayers in order that they not be careless and ineffectual. They really got into the specifics of how to pray and how not to pray. *not* to pray.

This can be hard for us. We live in a culture of ‘anything goes.’ We often think that prayer should be anything we want it to be in any way we want to do it. It becomes primarily about us and our preferred methods of communicating and our preferred style. We don’t like being told how to do things that feel so personal. The result, however, is that our prayers can be weak and ineffective when they are meant to be a mighty weapon against darkness and accomplish great purposes.

Does God Get Your Leftovers?

For our own sakes, and the sake of our families, churches, and nation, we must not settle for a “something is better than nothing” approach. As Charles Spurgeon said:

There is a vulgar notion that prayer is a very easy thing, a kind of common business that may be done anyhow, without care or effort. . . . We should plow carefully and pray carefully. The better the work the more attention it deserves. To be anxious in the shop and thoughtless in the closet is little less than blasphemy, for it is an insinuation that anything will do for God, but the world must have our best.

Does prayer require so little of us that we’re content to give God our careless leftovers, when there’s nothing particularly pressing at work or interesting on Facebook? If we want to revive our families, and our church, and our nation, then we must revive prayer — and it must begin with us.

A good place for me to start was to understand what prayer is and what it isn’t.

What Prayer Is Not

Prayer is not a rote and empty ritual. How often do our lips move, yet our hearts are still? We “say our prayers” so very often, and yet how often do we really truly pray? If all we are offering is words, we may as well offer them to an idol of stone. May our prayers never be less fervent than our strongest opinions and emotions and social media posts.

Prayer is not simply “chatting” with God. “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) doesn’t mean we just incessantly chatter to God about anything and everything while neglecting the act of intentionally coming before the throne of God for focused and fervent heart-searching, soul-seeking, honest-to-goodness prayer. It’d be like a marriage that consisted solely on texting. I love when my thoughts wander to God as I offer up little praises and prayers all throughout the day. That should happen, but that can’t be it — we must go deeper.

The free access which Christ purchased for us is not a liberty for flippancy before God — it is an invitation to approach the throne of almighty God. The freedom to come boldly before God’s throne of grace does not change who God is (Hebrews 4:16). It was our status that changed, never that of the unchanging King.

Prayer is not about us; it’s about God. It’s the thing that draws our eyes away from ourselves and fixes them on our good and powerful God. The recipe for weak and barren prayers is self — self-sufficiency by thinking we don’t really need prayer in the first place; self-conceit by thinking much of our goodness and little of our sin; and selfishness by thinking primarily of our own needs and wants in prayer. Adore God for who he is, not for what he can give to us. God must be the object, Christ must be the medium, and the Spirit must help us.

What Prayer Is

Prayer is the turning of our soul towards God. It is communication with our heavenly Father, and the powerful force that links child and Father, earth and heaven, man’s impotence and God’s omnipotence. This direct contact is only made possible through Christ Jesus, whose righteousness covered us and provided us unlimited access to confidently approach a perfect God. It is accomplished by the Spirit’s groaning within us and supplicating on our behalf (Romans 8:26–27).

Prayer is the unified work of the triune God to connect with us himself — the Holy Spirit within us communicating through Christ the Son, to God the Father. When God feels distant, more often than not it’s because we are neglecting the very thing that spans the distance between Creator and creature. It is we who are distant, refusing the vital breath of our souls, without which our spiritual life cannot survive.

Lord, Teach Us to Pray

May our prayers not be careless or weak but powerful instruments of change through which the Spirit moves and breathes and eternity is impacted. Our Father is holy and good and worthy of excellent prayers, and he loves giving good things to his children:

Lord, teach us to pray! Against all odds, may we become mighty prayer warriors who in turn teach the next generation, because we have no hope of change apart from youin the name of your Son, for the sake of your church, and for the display of your glory. Amen

[Read part two that covers practical ways to do this HERE!]

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The Post-Election Calling of the Church

post-election church

I’m just going to say it, this election has been horrible. And the anger and division and conflict did not magically disappear on Wednesday morning—in a lot of ways it got worse. It has stretched the church in ways I have not seen before. We had the chance to show the world a people with a single alliance and a single purpose to demonstrate our utter need for that alliance, and if we couldn’t figure out how to do that leading up to Tuesday we must figure out how to do that now. In fact, we have one of the biggest opportunities the church has ever had to be the healer and the helper it was designed to be. So many are in need of healing and help at this moment. There haven’t been a whole lot of winners here.

For once we actually have common ground with much of the world on something. They’ve seen in leaders the blatant sin and character flaws that are utterly opposed to the character of God. Don’t waste that. Don’t try to minimize it and shove it under the rug merely because it might weaken some political agenda or give more validity to political alliances we may hold. How many opportunities have we had to rally alongside the world and tell them, “You are right, this is disheartening! This is not the way this world should be and we are sorrowful with you.”

Let’s not throw phrases at them like “God is on his throne!” and “Let’s all pray for our new president!” as a way to illegitimize their fears and shut down conversation. Yes, those things are completely true and bring comfort to God’s children as they rightly should, but not the world—especially when our words are saying that God is all-powerful while our actions are saying that political positions are. Storms are scary and dangerous when you have no anchor of hope; let’s not ignore their cries for help.

Who we’ve been

I fear the church is forsaking their ability to be an influential voice of truth to our culture. There is a great opportunity before us that is lost when our political allegiances are stronger than our heavenly one. We say they’re not but actions and internet comment sections speak louder than words. After shouting at them (and each other) about politics what makes us think they’ll want to stick around to hear our far quieter message of salvation? The church was designed to be the representation of Christ when he left, and our purpose is to carry on his work not to get more votes for our personal political party regardless of what truths they do or do not stand for. While not mutually exclusive, we cannot forget our highest calling or in any way impede the former with the latter.

The danger of the church being entangled in politics is we become complacent and distant which does not lend itself to being a voice of truth. Relying on politics and ballots to fight our battles just makes our functional deism more palatable, as our opinions and Facebook posts far outnumber our prayers. It makes us feel as if we have more control than we do while fooling us into thinking that change requires little cost or effort.

Who God is

As Christians our battle cry should never be to “Make America Great,” as if we’ve learned nothing from Babel: “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name” (Genesis 11:4). We all remember how that ended.

It is God who raises up kings and nations and people like Daniel and Esther and Moses, but never us. It is God who tells his people: “And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing” (Gen. 12:2). As participants in this world who are blessed enough to be able to be involved in our country’s political process, God can use us for his purposes and impact politics, but let’s not pretend like he cannot do it without us. Let’s not pretend we know who will be a Nebuchadnezzar or a Daniel. Let’s not assume America is Israel when we could be Babylon.

Who we could be

As the hands and feet of Christ in this hurting, messed up, politically-charged world we have an enormous opportunity right now to be the salt and the light. We must be both. We can’t be the salt that preserves a decaying world without being the light that leads them to it—anymore than we can be their warmth and comfort while choosing not to provide them with the true solution to their dying. We can be really good at throwing salt because that’s the easiest thing to do from a distance and it costs us little, but the last thing the church should be doing right now is rubbing salt on the open wounds of the world. It is beyond me why we would rather be part of some moral majority that shouts our righteousness and others’ sins from the rooftops, than a loving minority that understands our own depravity apart from Christ and seeks healing for us both. Jesus offended the “established church” far more than he offended sinners.

There is a trend within the church of sacrificing truth for love and this travesty cannot be ignored, but church listen—the worst possible response we could have to this is to forfeit compassion and love. We need to seek the Spirit in this and pray for a real and effective outpouring of love that’s built on a foundation of truth, but we can’t remain at a distance and expect to impact others for eternity. It is not easy or without cost or comfort, but our light could shine so brightly right about now.

Thanks to this tumultuous election season we literally have a list of issues and areas where the world is hurting and in need of help:

  • There are people feeling cheated and lied to—we must display truth and transparency because Jesus is truth (John 8:32; John14:6).
  • There are youth feeling disenfranchised and hopeless—we must find ways to encourage and give them a reason to hope because Jesus is hope (I Peter 1:3; I Thes. 2:19).
  • There are women feeling devalued and victimized—we must figure out how to protect and value them because Jesus valued women in a culture that didn’t (Luke 7:36-50; Luke 13:16; Mark 8:48).
  • There are minorities carrying the weight of prejudice and discrimination who feel that their lives aren’t valued as much as another’s—we must understand how and what we can do to stop this because Jesus sought out the discriminated and fought for their equal worth (Gal. 3:28; James 2:8-9).
  • The LGBT community is feeling ostracized and hurt—we must figure out how to love them so much better in order for there to be healing because Jesus was a friend to the marginalized. Jesus was a healer (Mark 12:31; John 8:7; Rev. 21:4).
  • There are immigrants and refugees feeling oppressed and invisible—we must figure out how to protect them, and help them, and clothe them, and feed them because Jesus was a protector. He cared for the aliens and fed the poor  (James 1:27; Gal. 2:10; Matt. 25:40).
  • There are mothers facing abortion and women fearful of a reality without that option—we must figure out what is creating an environment so broken that a choice like that would be made and how we can improve it as well as care for these mothers because Jesus cares for the weakest—whether an unborn baby or a hurting mama. He is the reason we have nothing to fear (Matt. 18:10; John 14:27; Matt. 11:28).

This is not the first time the church has had to navigate being a light to a dark culture in need. The Christians in fourth century Rome set out to so love and care for those around them—the poor, the refugee, the sexually deviant, the murderers of babies and the disabled, the victimized women—that the pagan emperor, Julian the Apostate, had to brainstorm ways to create government programs—not out of need, but out of embarrassment that his people relied on the Christians rather than their government. He complained that their benevolence to strangers, their compassion, and their holiness were causing his people to turn from their pagan Roman gods. He goes on saying:

“These impious Galileans not only feed their own, but ours also; welcoming them with their agape, they attract them, as children are attracted with cakes… For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us. …Then let us not, by allowing others to outdo us in good works…Whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity… See their love-feasts, and their tables spread for the indigent. Such practice is common among them, and causes a contempt for our gods.”

Salt and light. Their light of true love and compassion for all drew the world in like hot cakes, while their salt of truth and personal holiness eventually led to the salvation of many.

It wasn’t a voted in leader, or a ballot, or a governmental program, or a new or repealed law that led to change (while all potentially very good things)—they didn’t wait for the government to do what the church was made for. We were made for so much more and our impact should be far greater. Let this nasty, loud, depressing election of 2016 be a turning point for the church. In our love, may we point ourselves and our hurting world to the only source of truth and hope and change.

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