This post is a part of the Soveriengty of God Blog Series going on throughout the months of July and August. You can read about the series and see a schedule of the posts here. You can subscribe to all the posts here.

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Today’s post is from John Saddington. John is the Creative Web Director for North Point Ministries and is a WordPress genius. He blogs at Human3rror and also at ChurchCrunch, one of my favorite blogs.

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It’s amazing how simple and yet complex the theology behind the sovereignty of God is. Perhaps that’s our fault though.

One of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned in the past few years though, especially in terms of web technology and the internet (where I apparently live most of my life), is that God is more mystery than anything else.

As much as we’d like to think that we know God and about Him, either through our studies, empirically, or just plain intuition, we really have no clue, which is kind of like the internet and the Gospel, from a very general perspective.

Regardless of where you sit you must admit that the internet is, most simply, a communication platform and medium. It is a valuable one as well, and we have the opportunity to leverage it both appropriately and wisely to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But who would have imagined, even a few decades ago, that God, through His infinite wisdom, would use a bunch of 1’s and 0’s for His Glory?

See, that’s just mystery. And I like that about our God. As “knowable” as He is and as “personal” of a relationship that I have with His Son, He continually surprises me. A completely knowable god wouldn’t really be a god at all.

And so it comes full circle; the sovereignty of God married with the mystery of His Good and perfect Will, moving into spaces like the internet to save men from the eternal damnation. It gives me goosebumps.

God is sovereign over all creation, including the digital pipelines of information zooming at near-light speed. That’s not too hard (or complex) to understand, right? But honestly, who would have thought?

Often times I find myself fighting between the thought that I’m perfect or that I’m worthless. Take a look in the Bible and you’ll find verses for both.

Over the weekend I hurt my wife. Not physically…worse: emotionally.

I degraded her and made her feel worthless at the cost of me feeling like the top dog.

She doesn’t tend to be an overly emotional type, so when I hurt her it becomes pretty obvious to me.

The whole thing was a reminder of how worthless I am. Of how unable I am to love Rose the way she deserves to be loved all the time. I simply can’t do it.

I’ve titled this blog “man of depravity” for a number of reasons, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how I write with a voice or personality that seems to have it all together. Or at the very least, my writing provides the idea that I have a perspective on what the answer to the question should be.

I often succumb to the thought that nobody wants to read the musings of someone who doesn’t have it together and can’t provide the answers to the tough questions. So instead of showing you who I am, I show you who I want to be.

The reality is I don’t have it all together.

The reality is I hurt the person most important to me.

The reality is I don’t measure up.

This post is a part of the Soveriengty of God Blog Series going on throughout the months of July and August. You can read about the series and see a schedule of the posts here. You can subscribe to all the posts here.

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Jonathan is the Managing Director of Thrive Ministries, a non-profit ministry focusing on creating missional discipleship communities and spiritual formation. He blogs at Missio Dei and is very consistent at it too. He lives in Folsom, CA with his  wife and three kids. What I love about Jonathan is that he thinks in a way I don’t (in a good way), and he is definitely one of the few bloggers who I can learn from even though he is a lot smarter than me.

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My God Is Bigger Than Your God

What if winning means losing?

When I was young I used to play with the other kids in the neighborhood.  Eventually someone would push someone for something.  Chests would stick out and a shouting match would ensue. And someone would inevitably say, “My dad is bigger than your dad,” as though our dads were really going to show up and fight.  We thought so, or at least we pretended we thought so.  Looked good for the rep.

And when I look back on those moments I wonder how I could I reduce my father to a tool to win an argument.  It did nothing but produce fear in the eyes of the other.  By increasing my father’s stature, I had in my defense actually reduced my father stature in the eyes of the other.  Because now, the other saw my father as someone who wanted to beat his father up.

Sadly, we do the same with God.  In the desire to win an argument about God we throw out the sovereignty of God as some ultimate trump card.  God becomes a tool for an end purpose.  But in that desire to win, we often end up doing exactly the opposite of what is intended. We place God on our side and exclude the other.  In trying to increase God in the eyes of the other, we inadvertently reduce him in the process.

This is what I love about the cross.  When it came time to truly retaliate, God lifted his arms and said, “Go ahead. Hit me.”  Just when God could have really beaten everyone up, he lets us beat him up. It reminds us that winning in the kingdom of God is actually backwards.  Winning was about who loves the most, not who wins the argument.

It’s like God is saying, “If you really want to win the argument, you have to lose it all.” Truly winning was found in love, in being Jesus to the other, and lifting up the other, including the other, not simply in trumping the other.  In the end it didn’t matter what we said we believed UNLESS we revealed that we believed it through love.

Love meant building a bridge of relationship not a wall of protection.  It meant seeing God in the other.  In losing we actually won. And in revealing love we became the image of God to the other. We lost the argument but gained our own humanity in the process.

You might remember the article the New York Times ran on “The Facebook Generation.” It was basically an article that looked at the implications of the how emerging generations view leadership, power, and influence.

Rhett Smith recently dove into one of the points the article brought out: All ideas compete on equal footing. I really love what Rhett had to say about this subject and I think it is a common situation at many churches.

Now, if you have spent anytime in the Church…on staff, volunteering, or just attending, this becomes pretty obvious, pretty quickly. Not all ideas compete on equal footing, and often many ideas aren’t even allowed to enter the conversation. Where I have often seen this played out is in the ideas between staff/church members of different “ranking”, i.e. ordained vs. non-ordained, associate vs. executive, senior pastor vs. youth pastor, volunteer vs. staff, etc. Though this is not to become a versus situation, it often breaks down into that when ideas are not allowed to be shared and considered equally among all staff members, volunteers and attending members.

I think many in previous generations are comfortable and accept the fact of hierarchical leadership. It submits to that leadership and accepts almost every decision reached without much second thought. I do think there is a decent amount of Biblical support for this mindset. But, my generation does not think this way. So when people say it is a reality of how churches work, I say that is why you have the “emerging church.” Young people left their traditional churches to go to a place where their ideas would be received and used.

Essentially I think this problem comes down to how comfortable we are with change. Certainly CEO leadership is a normal thing with the American culture, but it is a dying breed. Pastors today can either choose to invite young leaders into the decision making process or they can disenfranchise them and force them to go elsewhere. Rhett also speaks to this:

For the younger generations, the Church can often just be seen as “red tape.” Nothing is more discouraging than a person bringing a great idea to senior leadership, and having that idea shut down (if it’s even heard) as it navigates it’s way through the CEO/Business Management models that most churches operate from. Pretty soon, these people just take their ideas online where there is no “red tape”, and start changing the world…without the Church.

Do you see this happening in churches today?

This post is a part of the Soveriengty of God Blog Series going on throughout the months of July and August. You can read about the series and see a schedule of the posts here. You can subscribe to all the posts here.

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Jeff is a fellow seminary student with me at Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland, Oregon. Jeff blogs at detheos.com (and uses Twitter as well) and is also the Associate Pastor at Willamette Christian Church in West Linn, Oregon. Jeff was the teacher’s assistant (TA) for my Theology I and II classes during my first year of seminary.

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A Story of Sovereignty

Discussing sovereignty is like two out of shape ex-ball players arguing about baseball. And not the real game, but rotisserie baseball – a fantasy league. Being self-proclaimed experts on the subject, we can’t actually get in the game. Look at us: we’re old, fat and slow. Our arms are tired, and if you’re like me your rotator cuff scrapes when you throw. Our problem? We’re not free and able. When it comes to God, He is. God is absolutely free and able.

Many talk about God as if He’s merely trying to overcome sin and Satan. (I won’t label these theological positions.) The Creator means well, but either He set it up so His power is limited, or He doesn’t really know what to do. After all, does He really know the future? Is He experiencing the present like we are, on His tip-toes peeking over the horizon, straining to see what’s next?

If evil exists, then where’s God? (That’s the real issue at play when we talk about sovereignty, right? We don’t see the purpose in all this pain.) If God is here … is He good? Powerful? Does He know what’s going on? Does God permit sin, cause evil, or even author it? Where is He in this story of ours?

I won’t be able to answer all of these questions (or any of them, depending on how you look at it). Statisticians talk about needing a representative sample in order to arrive at overall conclusions. When we look at our lives and the stories of tragedy, injustice and sin do we have enough experience to make verdicts on God? (Coming back to that in a moment.)

Dealing with Suffering in real-time

As a pastor I deal daily with people who experience great pain. Not in the physical sense primarily. My own pain is from a fractured vertebrae, an ever-present reminder of my frailty, first experienced 15 years ago this month. And a foot I ran over with my Jeep Wrangler (long story). Others have far worse ailments, including shattered hopes, unrealized dreams, broken families. Those are the greater pains. Tragedies engulf us. Innocent people killed in the crossfire of senseless violence. The dreaded biopsy result of a young mother with children. The little boy enduring radiation while his friends are playing t-ball. The weight of their suffering collides with my heart like a tree bending beneath a hurricane. We are dealing with broken people, a jacked-up world, and really deep hurts. The list is seemingly endless. What resources can we draw from to make sense of all this pain?

Again, the problems are many — not for God, needing to explain Himself — but for us in passing judgment on the Creator. Where were we when He set all this in motion? We lack a representative sampling of data to draw conclusions. At least not enough from our experience living in affluent suburbia (or anywhere else). What do we have? God’s Word. Both written and Incarnate. The Designer has left the Story of His glory for us to know, experience and be satisfied with Him. What’s more, He entered this Story. The Designer willing to become part of His design, to experience the full brunt of the brokenness of our existence. Who suffered more evil that Jesus? Who deserved more good than He?

The crux: God has entered our suffering

So much talk about sovereignty (or theodicy) seems to miss the chief argument. If His attributes were to be aligned (goodness, power, knowledge), we see all three to be all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing. I’m not imposing presuppositions here — for those are the very perfections God asserts Himself (Mark 10:18; Psalm 115:3, Matthew 19:26; Psalm 147:5, Ephesians 1:11, et al). We don’t make a solid case based on our finite (read: tiny) experience; it must come from God’s words, the Scriptures.

If those are the three legs of this 3-legged-stool (that never wobbles), then the intersection at the top — where the world sits — is the greater truth. (Don’t miss this.) God has entered His Story. All stories have depths of conflict and triumphal resolution. In comes the Hero, the conflict and resolution all centered around Him. The worst of the evil? He received it. The harshest rejection? He felt it all. He was willing to empty Himself of glory, to take the lowest place possible — a slave, condemned to die — and walk through this furnace of suffering as we should. In total submission to the Triune God, the second Person of the Trinity became the one worthy of being called the name above every name (Philippians 2:1-11).

This all-good-and-powerful-and-knowing God, who is above all holy (altogether separate, distinct, and well, whole) saw that it was not enough to be outside the suffering and evil overtaking His  fallen creation. At an intersection of transcendence and immanence we see a God who cares. Enough to take our place, bear our shame, and reassert His claim as the Sovereign King of the universe. Compelled by love and for His one glory, He must draw near. He must enter this mess, and He must make it beautiful. How? (I state it again, if only for my own reminder.) By entering our suffering. By turning evil on its head. The greatest evil ever devised was used (permitted, designed, caused) to accomplish the greatest good this world has ever known. God overcame evil on the cross. Plus, the Creator forced evil to serve the overcoming of itself. He made evil commit suicide in doing its worst evil.

The apex of God’s revelation of Himself is the suffering God-Man on a cross, forsaken, beaten, spit upon, and in our place taking the full wrath of God. Oh what depths of judgment vented on Him! Those present sufferings in the physical realm from human hands were but a drop in the bucket of the cup of the Father’s wrath. Joy and love mingled down in His blood, He took death (the inevitable goal of evil and sin) and threw it away like a rag doll. Death could not defeat Him. He conquered the grave. He is the Man — the God — no one can kill. Jesus is the Hero. The Good, Knowing, Sovereign One — totally free and able — did all this on purpose (Acts 2:23). The Author wrote Himself in the script, right next to us.

Entering the Story

I first encountered this Story as a willing participant about a dozen years ago. Having suffered that broken vertebrae – it became the greatest act of mercy I’ve experienced to date. Before I could say God is sovereign (by theology), I knew He in total control by personal experience. God literally broke me, ruining my life for His good. Oh, how awesome it is to live with the sharp pains of grace shooting up this spine. (They are not meant to be compared horizontally with yours or anyone else’s. They were designed to make me yearn for Christ. Not having control is a good thing for us.) They remind me how little I do suffer, for Christ has rescued my soul, repaired my spiritual spine, and made me His. I’m so vain I thought this Story was about me. I can know shout with the writers of Scripture as they proclaim this Story is about the free and able One. The Author has many pages in this beautifully woven Grand Story. If we could only turn the page from our short paragraph we could see His purposes (Isaiah 55).

Fewer people could die. Death could be banished. Hunger erased, all thirsts satisfied. Evil, that which displeases God and prefers all things contrary to Him, should be gone. But how? When? What is it that we are assessing? The God-Man taught us to pray to “Our Father,” proclaiming that His will should be done, done here as it always is done up there. For His is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory (Matthew 6:5-13). He has a plan, the Story’s in motion, and He’s directing it. When we look at the plot, do we not like the conflict before we get to the resolution? How then would we hope for the re-creation of all things? (Colossians 1:15-21) The Creator has a design in all this. Before asking Him to get us out of this, can we ask Him, “what should we get out of this?” Can we hear His voice as He shouts to us in our suffering? “He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity” (Job 36:15).

Author-Story

Every author writes stories full of conflict, before the resolution. Why would it not be the same with The Author? If we take out the pain, the suffering, the frustration, will the end result make us happier and more whole? No, it will leave us with with all white-space on these pages. Nothing would be on the pages of this Story, and we would have boring, nothing-ever-go-’wrong’ lives. In the end I doubt we will tell God it wasn’t worth it. But without the remembrance of the Story that gripped us so deeply we had to worship.

Alas, the Sovereign King has come. All things exist for Him and by Him (Eph. 1). He calls for our allegiance. He offers our protection — in the ultimate sense (Romans 8:28-39). He longs for our affection. The Father, Son and the Spirit have done everything necessary to make Their joy ours. It will be worth the wait. The pain will be seen as what it is: temporary, short-lived. For those who trust in Christ alone — the innocent (Him) in place of the guilty (us) — our pleasure is eternal life staring at God forevermore. We’ll learn of all the kindness He showed us through the Son, never exhausting of a new facet to behold (Ephesians 2:7). The free and able One will right every wrong and unleash His love on our undeserving hearts. Truth is, we deserve far worse. In a few short seconds this life passes and we inherit the world. The weight (and wait) of suffering will be far outweighed by the glory to be revealed (Romans 8:17ff).

I wish I could explain how valuable this pain is, for it makes God my Treasure. I pray He is yours. Enter His script, and let’s together worship the only One worthy. He alone is sovereign. He wrote the Story.

Hope you all have a wonderful Independence Day and enjoy the long weekend.

I have 3 tickets to the Coldplay show in Portland this coming Friday. I’m trying to either sell them or sell 2 of them to friends so I can go with them. Let me know if you are interested or know someone who is.

Blogs

1. The top 10 objections to Twitter with answers by Michael Hyatt.
2. Adam Walker Cleaveland with some interesting thoughts on pastoral compensation.
3. Matthew Paul Turner’s letter to God.
4. A post that resonated with me a big way. Thoughts on Michael Jackson’s death and not caring about it.
5. Good list of books to read on church leadership.
6. For those of you who have been following the Derek Webb drama, here is the song that caused all of it.

News

• How high school students really choose a college.
• Some incredible desktop wallpapers that you can use.
• Funny story of a 13 year old trading in his iPod for a Walkman.
• A pastor who recently cut jobs at his organization is now building a $4 million home for his family. Yuck.
• It is unbelievable how much money Simon Cowell makes. Unbelievable.
• The lone survivor of a plane crash that killed over 150 said she didn’t feel a thing.

Those of you who are around Portland. You don’t want to miss the first 2 songs at Sunset tomorrow morning. Going to be awesome in both the 9am and 11am.

I was thinking about how many great songs Hillsong United has come up with. We are talking about a LONG list. They’ve been pumping out great album after great album for over 10 years now. After thinking long and hard about it…this is my favorite:

All I Need is You (you can listen to it here).

What is your favorite United song?

Kurt and I were recently talking about topical and exegetical preaching. I saw this video and showed it him to, and that framed our conversation (RSS readers you can watch it here):

• Topical preaching:
  • Looks at what the whole of the Bible has to say on a specific subject.
  • Speaks directly to subjects relating to today’s world.
• Exegetical preaching:
  • Looks at the Bible as it was written, piece by piece.
  • Focuses on specific books of the Bible, with a few supporting verses from outside the main text.
  • What does this specific text have to say about God and us?

(This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive description list of topical and exegetical preaching.)

Couple thoughts:

• I tend to prefer exegetical preaching, though there are few things more inspiring than a great topical preacher.
• There are a lot of pastors who kind of mix topical and exegetical preaching I can’t name very many who are good at it.
• If you are looking for immense Biblical support for one or the other, be prepared to look for a while.

Which one do you prefer?

Which one do you think is the most Biblical?

I’ve been reading The Cost of Discipleship by Bonhoeffer the past few weeks. It has been recommended to me so many times that I finally decided to pick it up used at Powells a while back. And now I know why it was recommended…phenomenal, just phenomenal book (and I’m only 2 chapters in).

So far this one section has stood out to me the most. I know this is a long quote but stick with it, it just may change how you think of God’s grace for you (it did for me).

“If grace is the data for my Christian life, it means that I set out to live the Christian life in the world with all my sins justified beforehand. I can go and sin as much as I like, and rely on this grace to forgive me, for after all the world is justified in principle by grace. I can therefore cling to my bourgeois secular existence, and remain as I was before, but with the added assurance that the grace of God will cover me. It is under the influence of this kind of “grace” that the world has been made “Christian,” but at the cost of secularizing the Christian religion as never before. The antithesis between the Christian life and the life of bourgeois respectability is at an end. The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured my sins are all forgiven” (emphasis mine).

If that doesn’t feel like a punch to the stomach I don’t know what will.

(Photo: Dave Ross)

The sovereignty of God is such a key theological subject that many other subjects hinge on. How much does God control? How much do we control? Did we choose God? Did God choose us?

(An example of this is how can we reconcile Jonah 3:10 and Isaiah 46:9-10)

These are the kind of questions I’ve been wrestling with and continue to do so. I’m hoping that this series can help bring some clarity to the subject from many people I respect.

This summer I’m spending some time doing a study of the Bible and a book on the sovereignty of God. Soon after starting I had an idea of not only learning from the book and from conversation with Kurt, but also to hear the perspective of some of the best bloggers out there.

To make sure you see all these posts you can subscribe to the RSS feed here. I’d also really appreciate you helping get the word out about this on Twitter and your blog.

The subject is fairly open because sovereignty is such a broad subject, but all the bloggers will share how their life experiences and studies have led them to interact with God’s sovereignty (or lack of sovereignty).

Here is the schedule of posts over the next 2 months:

Mon July 6th: Jeff Patterson // Sovereignty post
Wed July 8th: Jonathan Brink // Sovereignty post
Fri July 10th: John Saddington // Sovereignty post
Mon July 13th: Kyle Welstad // Sovereignty post
Wed July 15th: Anne Jackson // Sovereignty post
Fri July 17th: Ross Gale // Sovereignty post
Mon July 20th: Eugene Cho // Sovereignty post
Wed July 22nd: Adam Walker Cleaveland // Sovereignty post
Fri July 24th: Aaron Ivey // Sovereignty post
Mon July 27th: Kurt Brandemihl // Sovereignty post
Wed July 29th: Justin Wise // Sovereignty post
Fri July 31st: Jenelle D’Alessandro // Sovereignty post
Mon Aug 3rd: Jake Bouma // Sovereignty post
Wed Aug 5th: Tammy Hodge // Sovereignty post
Fri Aug 7th: Jake Belder // Sovereignty post
Mon Aug 10th: Rhett Smith // Sovereignty post
Wed Aug 12th: Ryan Guard // Sovereignty post
Fri Aug 14th: CS Lewis // Sovereignty post
Mon Aug 17th: Tyler Braun // Sovereignty post
Wed Aug 19th: Andrew Jones // Sovereignty post
Fri Aug 21st: Brent Hodge // Sovereignty post
Mon Aug 24th: Ric Wild // Sovereignty post
Wed Aug 26th: Scott Burns // Sovereignty post
Fri Aug 28th: Jan Owen // Sovereignty post
Mon Aug 31st: Rose Braun // Sovereignty post