May
18
For a long time, God had made writing my primary passion. I wrote quite a bit and then began dabbling into photography. Last year it was a professor at UMass who helped me discover my new passion and favorite storytelling device: videography. I pray that God would use this new and exciting medium to glorify himself.
So here’s my first shot at it. This video was made for my last project as a UMass student. It explains the enslavement of addiction and the freedom in Christ.
Apr
15
Someone asked me the following question:
What does Jesus’ death and resurrection mean to you?
And here is my response to them:
In the most general sense, Jesus dying and resurrecting is the most important thing to Christianity. It is the cornerstone to everything that our faith is built on top of. Let me tell you what I mean: his death is crucial because it assumes that he was alive. Many will tell you that Jesus never existed, never lived. But half of this equation requires that you believe that he walked, talked, breathed, and even burped on this earth. So to believe that he died, means believing he first lived. This is only half of what you’re asking. The second part is the resurrection. This is even more crucial, because we’re not just asking did Jesus live, but did he do something that no other human being on the face of this earth has ever done before?
Now, you may hear that resurrection was seen differently back then. That maybe he lost his pulse but regained it and was resuscitated with some CPR. Or maybe resurrection wasn’t that big a deal back then. They just didn’t understand science or medicine enough. Let me assure you, the word “resurrection” hasn’t lost any meaning in translation. It means just what we think it means today: coming back to life from death. And that’s a crazy idea today just as it was back then. Just look at peoples response: “Now when [the people] heard of the resurrection of the dead [from Paul], some mocked.” (Acts 17:32) “That’s crazy,” they said when Paul and the other apostles would tell them how Jesus came back from the dead. “You’re stupid for believing that rubbish.”
The biggest take-aways that I want you to hear from this is that Jesus’ death and resurrection are crucial because of what they imply. His death implies that he was alive to begin with, and his resurrection implies that his words were true. Think of everything Jesus had said while he was alive, everything written in red before his death, as being the writing of a check. When Jesus was resurrected, it’s like cashing that check. The check didn’t bounce because Jesus didn’t write a check that was too big to cash. He wasn’t just talk, but his resurrection testified to everything he had said while on earth.
I don’t want to go on forever because I want my words to count. What I’ve written so far is why Jesus’ death and resurrection are crucial to Christianity. But I’ve avoided the question of what it means to me personally.
It means four things to me:
1.) That Jesus’ promises can be trusted.
2.) I will be resurrected too.
3.) I am not powerless.
4.) God is worth following.
I pray that the idea of Jesus’ death and resurrection pierce your heart like it has mine. Don’t down play it because you’ve always heard it growing up. For it to hit your heart, you’ll need to really think about it. Think for a minute of what it means.
Close your eyes and imagine a man being whipped, lashed, beat up, and nailed to a cross where he would suffer for hours. The wounds inflicted on his back scraping up against the splintered wood of the beam he was nailed to. Hands and legs exhausted from holding his own weight and as they weaken, he slowly suffocates, taking smaller and smaller gasps for air. And finally he dies, naked, exposed, bleeding, ashamed, for something he didn’t do. And then imagine, three days later, when his corpse should have already begun to rot and fester, he stands in victory over death. The one person to ever be able to do this. If you can believe this, wrestle with it, digest it, it will change the way you live. It has to.
Sep
24
The next four blog posts will be devoted to questions surrounding the role of the local church in today’s world. Being a senior at UMass I’ve been blessed to meet a good amount of Christian students and faculty over the years. As a freshman I discovered that many Christians I met through a club or student organization, although attending a campus fellowship weekly, were not active members in a local church. Three years later I’m learning that this wasn’t a fluke—it’s a trend that affects not just students but most people in America.
This points out some pretty important questions for all of us today. I wrestled them myself and I want to do my best at responding to them with scripture and reason.
The question I’ll be looking at now is whether or not there should be a local church at all. If we don’t need to have a local church, then there is absolutely no problem with the trend I was highlighting earlier. If, however, the local church is actually a part of God’s design for those who walk in faith then we need to step it up and get into gear.
What is a church?
Basic but fundamental. To go anywhere we need to make sure we’re in the same boat about what I’m talking about when I use the word church. There are a lot of ways that we can look at this, but here’s what we’ll use: the church is a body of people who believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We’ll expand and construct this on a much deeper level as the series continues. Please note that the church is not a building, it’s the people. The church is not a building, it’s the people.
Local Church vs. Universal Church
The next step, purely for discussion’s sake, is giving us some new vocabulary when talking about the church. Notice that our definition for a church doesn’t have a size, or limitations in time. Scripturally speaking, there is no distinction. The same word (Gk. Ekklesia) is used since the establishment of the early church to refer to a church in a house (Romans 16:5), to the church of whole city (1 Thess. 1:1), to the church of an entire region (Acts 9:31), and to the church of the whole world (Eph. 5:25). Although it’s the same word, it is used in different contexts. To avoid confusion, we will use “local church” when referring to a local body of Gospel believers who physically interact on a regular basis, and “universal Church” to refer to the whole church of all believers.
Looking Back to see the Present
I will say at this point that since we believe that all of scripture is breathed out by God (2 Tim. 3:16) and his inerrant Word (see Pastor Nate Cartel’s latest sermon on biblical in errancy), we need to look back to see what the bible has to say about church to figure out if we should have a local one or not.
Has there always been a local church?
When we understand that a church refers to the population of believers and not just a pretty building or cathedral, then yes; a body of people who believed in Jesus and his teachings existed as soon as Jesus died on the cross and “gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25) So there was a group of believers but did they fit into our “local” definition of interacting regularly? According to Acts 2:44, “all who believed were together and had all things in common.” Yes, from the beginning, the local church existed.
Was the local church acknowledged?
As we saw earlier, the local church was referred to specifically in Romans 16:5 (“Greet also the church in their house”) and in 1 Thessalonians 1:1 (“The church of the Thessalonians”). More than this, all of the letters that Paul wrote (excluding the personal letters to Timothy, Titus and Philemon) are addressed to groups of believers and directed to the local community who lived life together. He not only acknowledged Christians living in the same community but commanded it. “Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mine. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:1-5). These are not commands for the Church at Philippi in regards to interacting with non-believers—God is showing us how the local church ought to behave as they live together on a day-to-day basis. While this could be interpreted on the Universal Church level, in context it was written to a local church.
Was the local church just around at the beginning?
The office of Apostle may be the only special “limited-time” aspect of the early church, depending on where you stand theologically and how cessational you are. Regardless, one might argue that, “the local church was just a response to Jesus’ resurrection and was only meant to kick-start the spread of the Gospel.” What I see in scripture, however, is God commanding that the local church be taken care of (“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which [Jesus] obtained with His own blood.” Acts 20:28. There is no conditional given for when this is care-taking should end, so we should understand it to be indefinite until otherwise noted.
Reading the first few chapters in the book of Revelation you will also see that Jesus cares for the local church and actually judges them (which would make sense considering he obtained them with his own blood, Acts 20:28). Chapters two and three deal with seven local churches which Jesus addresses personally the things they are doing well, and the things that need to change. The local church was not just designed as a platform for spreading the Gospel at the beginning, but was established by Jesus and designed to be taken care of and watched carefully through the present time and into the future.
Closing Thoughts
The original question we tried to answer is whether or not there should even be a local church for people to attend. We came up with three major facts: The local church was always around since the very beginning, the local church wasn’t just a coincidence of believers living together but acknowledged by God through Scripture, and the local church was designed to be taken care of and exist beyond the early stages of faith in the Gospel. The idea of a local church existing isn’t absurd or fabricated after the scriptures, but is an integral part of Christian doctrine. It’s a part of God’s design for those who walk in faith.
If you’re a Christian and actively a part of a church (we’ll discuss what this means in great detail later), then know that you’re not crazy and add this to your understanding of the Gospel for your encouragement and its defense.
If you’re a Christian reading this and don’t attend a church, this probably won’t convince you to start (don’t worry, I have four more of these to do that). Hopefully what it will do, however, is soften your heart to the local church enough to see that it’s scripturally warranted in being there.
Aug
16
Paul writes a second letter to his protégé and spiritual son Timothy for a reason. Just by looking at chapter one you can see generally why– Timothy is in a bit of a rut. He’s weary and tired from the work he’s been doing particularly by not having his mentor and father Paul around to encourage him on. More than not being there as a motivator and friend, Timothy’s only news of Paul is that he’s suffering in prison. In some form or another, we all have found ourselves (if not right now) in a similar spot of spiritual discouragement.
Now I know I’ve written about weariness, what it looks like to run this race of Christ, and even the violent oppression that comes when actively living out the Gospel. But I think Timothy’s case is much more specific than what I’ve addressed, Paul’s response to it is much more focused than what I’ve written, and the topic can’t be exhausted anytime soon.
How do I know when I’m in a similar spot of discouragement like Timothy’s? I start asking questions. Lot’s of questions. You see, it’s not the man who’s full of joy and happiness who is going to meditate into the late hours of the night why he’s feeling the way he does. You never hear a woman yearning for the answer to her question of why everything is going so well. “Why, oh why! Why is everything going according to plan?”
If you’re like me, then we’re like David as we see him writing the Psalms. It’s always pretty clear when David is in a spiritual depression or period of discouragement:
“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?” Psalm 42:5, 43:5
As David writes his songs, he’s constantly questioning God, himself and others around him when he has spun into his (frequent) depressions which usually were brought on by hardships around him.
“How long O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” Psalm 13:1
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” Psalm 22:1
Even as Job endures hardship:
“Why did I not die at birth, come out of the womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?” Job 3:11-12
If you’ve found yourself asking questions like this, Timothy can relate. For him, the questions centered around the calling that he had received from God to live the tremendously hard lifestyle of an early Christian. He’s supposed to be proclaiming the Gospel and news of Jesus to everyone, yet it’s this Gospel that’s causing him to suffer and putting his mentor into shackles. If this was good news, why was it making their lives a living hell?
I think we all have these moments, and if you haven’t then you will. The moment comes when the “Jesus Way” is opposite of the “Easy Way.” When the road of the Cross leads you toward ridicule and not praise, suffering and not comfort, prison and not freedom, death and not the fantasized life of growing old while rocking in a wicker chair on your porch as the sun sets. The fork in the road will appear if it hasn’t, dividing into separate paths what you desire and think you need with what God demands of you.
Yes, a perfectly loving father of a God would do this. Yes, there are biblical and non-biblical historic accounts of it. Timothy, along with any other Christian who were able to say at the end of their lives like Paul does at the end of this letter, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” are examples of men and women who have come to that fork in the road and chosen God.
But how? Why? There are countless places in scripture we can go to answer this but I want to just stick to how Paul exhorts Timothy to get through this discouragement, or what I’ll dub the “rocky road” in the first chapter of 2 Timothy.
“… as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day.”
One of the reasons that Timothy got through his weariness was because he had someone who was lovingly invested into him, who would be willing to pray for them day and night and take the time to encourage and build them up. No one could console you better than Jesus himself, but it was through Paul that Jesus worked to provide that consolation in a physical form to Timothy. (Col. 1:24)
What’s this mean for you? Plug into a Christian community if you haven’t already, and look around for older Christians. They don’t have to be antique, but it certainly helps to have a “Pauline” figure who’s been around and fought his or her good fight for a little while. When you find them, begin building that relationship. Paul’s relationship with Timothy, which I talked about in my last post, didn’t happen over night. It took a while of running the race with each other, but it had to have started somewhere.
I know some of you whom I’m writing to don’t have a Christian community and this wisdom seems useless. But begin praying for a person like this and working harder to find and be a part of a Christian community– it can be life for your faith to have one, and death without one.
“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self control.”
It is the Holy Spirit, which God has given us as Christians, that empowers us with the same strength, encouragement, and hope that Jesus himself had while enduring the sufferings of the road to Cavalry. Paul is reminding Timothy that he indeed has been given a Spirit and that the Holy Spirit is not one of fear. It is of power, love, and self control. Be reminded of spirit which dwells inside of you, that very same dosage that Jesus had, which is the power of God to get you through the rocky road.
“Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord.”
There’s a conscious decision in our minds to either be ashamed, or not to be ashamed of something. Paul is telling Timothy to do the latter for the Gospel. Yes, it is God that empowers us to get through the rocky road that would otherwise be impossible without his help, but that doesn’t mean we don’t do anything. Actively affirming to ourselves the message of the Gospel and what Christ has achieved on the cross is vital, especially when that truth is the motivating factor of walking the rocky Christian road to begin with.
“Share in the suffering for the gospel by the power of God.”
Here’s a hard part to it– don’t run from the hard things that come up. Paul says, “Share in the suffering,” which can interpreted as “take it when it comes.” Why? Paul rejoices in his sufferings, “knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produce character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame.” (Romans 5:3-5) Hebrews 2:10 explains how Jesus was made perfect through suffering. Suffering, like the training leading up to a marathon run, isn’t bad; it’s just uncomfortable.
“Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”
Paul is talking about his written and spoken word, the former of which we have in our possession today. The Bible is the most important tool we could have as we walk on the rocky road. It is a navigational map and instruction manual for life– “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Psalm 119:105 Heck, it’s where all of these ideas were gathered from to begin with! Read it, meditate on it, follow it. Paul will say later on in the letter to Timothy, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” (v. 7)
That’s it. Thank God for Timothy who’s learning of this rocky road was documented for us. The road that Jesus calls us to walk on is hard, but not impossible. Others have done it and are doing it now.
“Know that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 5:9-11)
Jul
19
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus,
To Timothy, my beloved child:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy.
Apart from the words beings inspired by God Himself, the letters written by Paul to Timothy can be appreciated further if we’re able to step into the relationship that they had. We can see it in part by looking at the letters themselves. Paul, in his first letter, opens with the statement, “To Timothy, my true child in faith.” In this second letter he addresses Timothy as, “My beloved child.” In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he writes:
I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you. For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel.
Paul was a man of men. I’ve raved about him and his significance as a personal role model in past blog entries, pointing to scriptural accounts of his life which was radically transformed by the Gospel. He’s been beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, lashed, caned, bit by poisonous snakes, and all the while suffering from an unknown chronic pain. And this is on top of his radical devotion to God and the Mission of advancing the gospel which he would pursue at absolutely any cost, including his life. (Philippians 1:19-21) Paul was not a mere salesman or peddler of a product, he was a sold out die hard example of Jesus’ call to a revolutionary lifestyle.
But this is not to take away glory from God, whom Paul’s strength, courage, boldness and dedication admittedly came directly from. Paul attested to the fact that he is the chief of sinners, useless in his flesh, but empowered by Christ, his death and the Holy Spirit from God. In fact, Paul would go on to say that God is seen as that much more awesome in showing patience with a person such as himself. (1 Timothy 1:16)
I say all this to frame the idea of Paul, a model of Godly manhood, having a protege. But this is more than just having Muhammad Ali as your boxing coach, or Lance Armstrong as your biking coach, because Paul is so deeply invested into Timothy on an intimate level.
As I spend the next couple of blog posts going through 2 Timothy, we need to remember that these letters aren’t written to Paul’s employees. They’re not memos being faxed over to a random peon under Paul’s authority. They are letters of great intimacy with the heart felt wisdom of a father being given to a son.
For those of us who lack a Spiritual father or someone who carries scars from years of running this race and is lovingly invested into our faith, stepping into the position of Timothy and having Paul’s words be read to us can be extremely encouraging and challenging. As any good mentor does, Paul will lift us up and kick our butts.