When Nelson Mandela was released from prison on February 11, 1990, he delivered a speech from the Cape Town City Hall balcony. In this speech, Mandela expressed his commitment to peace and reconciliation.

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I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I, therefore, place the remaining years of my life in your hands.

The above statement can only be made by a gospel-humble person. His faith restrained him from being rash in light of his years of mistreatment. He was not a fool. But like we will see in Abigail in our text today, he was a humble person who could have sought vengeance but instead sought reconciliation for himself and an entire country. 

This passage starts with a short account of Samuel’s death—no details, but a momentous death. In the chapters, we will see the lack of wisdom in Saul and David’s accounts. They needed direction and guidance. Yet the most important thing we are learning through our reading and reflecting on the story told in 1 Samuel is the kind of leadership God provides for his people—the type of leadership he has now provided for us in Jesus.

In 1 Samuel 25, we see God’s providence restraining the rash, punishing the foolish, and exulting the humble. 

1. Restraining the Rash

David was on the run from Saul, fresh off a chance to change his condition by his own hand. He recognized by grace that his desire to take the throne rather than receive it was sinful. Yet, in the next chapter, we see David nearly going out with his 600 men to wipe out an entire family, not because he was being hunted but because he was insulted. 

He protected the flock of a local tribal leader named Nabal. He sent a few of his men to ask if they could be repaid with a feast as a reasonable, humble request. His messengers were insulted and shamed. When they reported back to David, he was furious. 

Nabal had an opportunity to be generous and added insult to injury. And David was not impressed.  

1 Samuel 25:13 (ESV)

¹³ And David said to his men, “Every man strap on his sword!” And every man of them strapped on his sword. David also strapped on his sword. And about four hundred men went up after David, while two hundred remained with the baggage.

What we see is God’s providence restraining David’s rashness. Samuel is not around to give him wisdom and speak truth to him, but God, unlimited in his ways, uses the most unexpected means to restrain David. 

We are never in more danger of sinful rashness than when God intervenes on our behalf like the cave of Adullum, and we go on about our day attributing outcomes to our wisdom rather than God’s providential grace. 

A. W. Pink comments:

No man stands a moment longer than divine grace upholds him. The strongest are weak as water immediately the power of the Spirit is withdrawn; the most mature and experienced Christian acts foolishly the moment he be left to himself; none of us has any reserve strength or wisdom in himself to draw from: our source of sufficiency is all treasured up for us in Christ, as soon as communion with Him be broken, as soon as we cease looking alone to Him, we are helpless.

We tend to overreact to others who have sinned against us. We are not just. God is, and we are not. We see how we have been treated unjustly and maybe sometimes how others are, but what we lack is the wisdom that justice requires. When we have been insulted, our instinct is to fight. When we have been harmed, our instinct is to make people pay. 

Our hope as Christians is not just that God will make people pay but that he will make them pay perfectly because of his perfect love, perfect wisdom, and perfect justice. 

David’s reaction makes it clear that he had grown to expect a certain amount of respect to be paid to his person and name. It is especially easy for God’s choice servants to develop a prideful concern for their reputation so that they are easily vexed by the kind of insult that Nabal cast against David. How different was the attitude of Jesus, having humbled himself to the obedience of the cross, when he was mocked by the Jewish leaders and Roman soldiers? Peter writes to believers: “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.… When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:21–23). With this in mind, a good test of our Christlikeness is our response to those who speak ill of us or misrepresent our actions

 Richard D. Phillips

2. Punishing the Foolish

Nabal, in this story, is the fool. His name literally means fool. 

1 Samuel 25:2–3 (ESV)

² And there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel. The man was very rich; he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. He was shearing his sheep in Carmel. ³ Now the name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail. The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved; he was a Calebite.

1 Samuel 25:25 (ESV)

²⁵ Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him. But I your servant did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent.

He was from a good family. Caleb trusted God more than what his eyes could see. But his distant relative Nabal was a self-reliant fool. He could not see what he had as a gift, so he could not give it away to others. He was filled with a foolish heart and loved his things even to the contempt of God and those around him. 

When David’s men came to him, his response was telling. 

1 Samuel 25:11 (ESV)

¹¹ Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where?”

My bread, my water, my meat, my shearers. – My, me, mine. He could not meet the needs of others because he thought all his wealth was because of him and for him. He thought he was a self-made man. He loved his things, but it cost him his life. This is not an Old Testament struggle. Jesus himself addressed this very issue in Luke 12. 

Luke 12:13–21 (ESV)

The Parable of the Rich Fool

¹³ Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” ¹⁴ But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” ¹⁵ And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” ¹⁶ And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, ¹⁷ and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ ¹⁸ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹ And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ’ ²⁰ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ ²¹ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

A fool believes that your life consists of what you have acquired in this life. And you treat those who helped you with disdain. 

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How does God deal with fools who live their lives without regard to others or Him? The best answer to this question is answered in the New City Catechism. 

Q: Will God Allow Our Disobedience and Idolatry To Go Unpunished?

A: No, every sin is against the sovereignty, holiness, and goodness of God, and against his righteous law, and God is righteously angry with our sins and will punish them in his just judgment both in this life and in the life to come.

So, how do we know we are forgiven and belong to God? Paul answers that question perfectly in Romans 12. It’s amazing because the first part of this passage warns us against Nabal’s foolishness, and the second part warns us against David’s rashness. 

Romans 12:9-19

9 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not be slothful in zeal; be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. 17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 

God is saying humble yourself when you are slighted and slandered—and you will be, by the way. God is saying the mark of a Christian life is how they handle the difficulties and the deserts. Don’t seek vengeance. God will perfectly repay you. Give them over to God’s justice. 

3. Exulting the Humble

Abigail was what her husband was not, and she was what David needed most. She spoke God back in the situation, and David, in his Rash anger and hurt, did what Nabel the fool did not: He listened to Abigail and relented. 

1 Samuel 25:26–31 (ESV)

²⁶ Now then, my lord, as the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, because the Lord has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my lord be as Nabal. ²⁷ And now let this present that your servant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who follow my lord. ²⁸ Please forgive the trespass of your servant. For the Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be found in you so long as you live.

²⁹ If men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the Lord your God. And the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling. ³⁰ And when the Lord has done to my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you and has appointed you prince over Israel, ³¹ my lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause or for my lord working salvation himself. And when the Lord has dealt well with my lord, then remember your servant.”

Eugene Peterson does an excellent job of summarizing what Samuel is saying here.

Abigail witnesses God’s work on behalf of David: protecting, guiding, ruling, and intervening. She knows that the phrase “sling out as from the hollow of a sling” will be sure to touch David’s memory and make present that long-ago day when immersed in prayer in the Valley of Elah, he brought Goliath down with a single stone from his sling.

Abigail says, in effect, “Your task, David, is not to exact vengeance; vengeance is God’s business, and you aren’t God. You’re out here in the wilderness to find out what God is doing and who you are before God . The wilderness isn’t an experiment station in which you test yourself and find out how strong and resilient you are. It’s where you discover the strength of God and God’s faithful ways of working in and through your life.” 

How do we bring reconciliation to broken relationships?

1. Come in humility. She came looking for David. When she found him, she did not hesitate but fell on her face, seeking forgiveness. Her attitude and posture were clothed in humility. 
2. Confessed without hesitation – modern apologies are always fraught with deflections and avoiding responsibility. “If I offended you or you were hurt by anything I may have done, forgive me.” Abigail modeled for David the kind of repentance we would see from him after his affair with Bathsheba. Abigail says:
   1 Samuel 25:24–25 (ESV)
   ²⁴ She fell at his feet and said, “On me alone, my lord, be the guilt. Please let your servant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your servant. ²⁵ Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him. But I your servant did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent.

Abigail confessed on behalf of her house. She didn’t sit back and hoped for things to work out. She actively sought reconciliation in a situation she did not cause but had the power to change. Reconciliation requires us to be active in doing as much as it depends on us to be givers of grace and makers of peace.

3. Corrected what was wrong—She didn’t use words; actions followed. She couldn’t afford to take them to a feast, so she brought them a feast. She sought forgiveness and reconciliation by restoring what was wronged.
4. Seek the others’ forgiveness – Finally, she asked David for his forgiveness. 

Mandela ended that speech by quoting himself from his trial 26 years earlier. 

“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Where did Mandela get this idea of laying down his life to restore his country and his people? From the cross of Christ. 

Miroslav Volf concurs: “The cross is not forgiveness pure and simple, but God’s setting aright the world of injustice and deception.”

The cross of Christ perfectly accomplished what Mandela hoped to accomplish and did to a small degree. The cross made right what sin destroyed. As Volf says, Jesus came to forgive our sins, but it is more than that. He came to make to restore and is coming back to make all things new, to restore and bring justice to our broken world. 

If our blood does not boil at injustice, how can we be serving the God who said the following through his prophet Isaiah?

Woe to those who make unjust laws,

to those who issue oppressive decrees,

to deprive the poor of their rights

and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people.

(Isa. 10:1–2 NIV)

Where is the outrage? It is God’s own; it is the wrath of God against all that stands against his redemptive purpose. It is not an emotion; it is God’s righteous activity in setting right what is wrong. It is God’s intervention on behalf of those who cannot help themselves.

No one could have imagined, however, that he would ultimately intervene by interposing himself. By becoming one of the poor who was deprived of his rights, by dying as one of those robbed of justice, God’s Son submitted to the utmost extremity of humiliation, entering into total solidarity with those who are without help. He, the King of kings and Lord of lords, voluntarily underwent the mockery of the multitudes, and, in the time of greatest extremity, he could do nothing to help himself (Mark 15:31).⁵⁶

Even more astonishingly, however, he underwent helplessness and humiliation not only for the victimized but also for the perpetrators.

Fleming Rutledge

What we see in this passage is a roadmap for us to avoid the foolish and rash desires of our sinful hearts and how to train our hearts to trust in God’s justice with relationships that have been broken by the foolish, rash people in our lives, and how to repair and rebuild as much as it depends on us.

Your task is not to exact vengeance; vengeance is God’s business, and you aren’t God. You’re here in the wilderness to find out what God is doing and who you are before God. The wilderness isn’t an experiment station in which you test yourself and find out how strong and resilient you are. It’s where you discover God’s strength and faithful ways of working in and through your life.” 

Friendship has fallen out. We live in a culture that prizes radical individualism. C.S. Lewis says that friendship and love have no primal urge. 

“Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without Affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship. The species, biologically considered, has no need of it. ”

We see in books and movies examples of sexual love and familial love. We see fewer and fewer examples of friendship and love. Sixty years ago, Tolkien and Lewis, who were close friends, offered many examples of friendship. Of these many examples, one of the most profound examples of Biblical friendship is seen in the friendship that Samwise Gamgee and Frodo Baggins have for each other in JRR Tolkien’s epic work Lord of the Rings. 

One of the clearest examples of friendship in The Lord of the Rings. At the end of their journey to Mount Doom to destroy the ring of power. The journey and the burden of the ring have so weighed down Frodo that he can no longer walk; he can only crawl. 

“Now for it! Now for the last gasp!’ said Sam as he struggled to his feet. He bent over Frodo, rousing him gently. Frodo groaned; but with a great effort of will he staggered up; and then he fell upon his knees again. He raised his eyes with difficulty to the dark slopes of Mount Doom towering above him, and then pitifully he began to crawl forward on his hands.

      Sam looked at him and wept in his heart, but no tears came to his dry and stinging eyes. ‘I said I’d carry him, if it broke my back,’ he muttered, ‘and I will!’

      ‘Come, Mr. Frodo!’ he cried. ‘I can’t carry the ring for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So up you get! Come on, Mr. Frodo dear! Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where to go, and he’ll go.’

  “As Frodo clung upon his back, arms loosely about his neck, legs clasped firmly under his arms, Sam staggered to his feet; and then to his amazement he felt the burden light. He had feared that he would have barely strength to lift his master alone. and beyond that he had expected to share in the dreadful dragging weight of the accursed Ring. But it was not so. 

Whether because Frodo was so worn by his long pains, wound of knife, and venomous sting, and sorrow, fear, and homeless wandering or because some gift of final strength was given to him, Sam lifted Frodo with no more difficulty than if he were carrying a hobbit-child pig-a-back in some romp on the lawns or hayfields of the Shire. He took a deep breath and started off.

He had expected to share in the dreadful dragging weight of the accursed Ring. But it was not so. 

This is a perfect picture of friendship, as we will see in our text today. It’s also something each of you has experienced. You have faced hardship, and you will face hardship, and the only way you will survive those difficult seasons is not through rugged American individualism but God-given dependence on others. 

Jonathan Edwards, in a sermon on envy, said the only possible reason the first human being was lonely in the garden of Eden, that paradise wasn’t enough for that first human being, is that God made us need others besides himself. In fact, Jonathan Edwards says God must be the least envious, least possessive person in the whole universe because he designed and deliberately made us need others besides himself.

God put man in a garden surrounded by beauty, but he was alone, and God said that was not good. For a man to fully reflect his creator, he needed another to have a relationship with as God has within himself. 

We live in a culture that is obsessed with eros – sexual love. In fact we have so hypersexualized our culture that our kids only know how to have boyfriends and girlfriends because we have forgotten how to be friends. We make every relationship same-sex and opposite-sex sexual. In modern America, there is so many things that have created ease and comfort in so many ways compared to life here 200 years ago. It was much more difficult, but they had something we didn’t. They had a friendship that was not always sexualized. 

To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.

C.S. Lewis

Covenantal friendship is not something that is optional in the life of a Christian. It is something that reflects the person of Christ and the God that we serve.  

1 Samuel 20:1–17 (ESV)

Jonathan Warns David

20 Then David fled from Naioth in Ramah and came and said before Jonathan, “What have I done? What is my guilt? And what is my sin before your father, that he seeks my life?” ² And he said to him, “Far from it! You shall not die. Behold, my father does nothing either great or small without disclosing it to me. And why should my father hide this from me? It is not so.” ³ But David vowed again, saying, “Your father knows well that I have found favor in your eyes, and he thinks, ‘Do not let Jonathan know this, lest he be grieved.’ But truly, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, there is but a step between me and death.” ⁴ Then Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you say, I will do for you.” ⁵ David said to Jonathan, “Behold, tomorrow is the new moon, and I should not fail to sit at table with the king. But let me go, that I may hide myself in the field till the third day at evening. ⁶ If your father misses me at all, then say, ‘David earnestly asked leave of me to run to Bethlehem his city, for there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the clan.’ ⁷ If he says, ‘Good!’ it will be well with your servant, but if he is angry, then know that harm is determined by him. ⁸ Therefore deal kindly with your servant, for you have brought your servant into a covenant of the Lord with you. But if there is guilt in me, kill me yourself, for why should you bring me to your father?” ⁹ And Jonathan said, “Far be it from you! If I knew that it was determined by my father that harm should come to you, would I not tell you?” ¹⁰ Then David said to Jonathan, “Who will tell me if your father answers you roughly?” ¹¹ And Jonathan said to David, “Come, let us go out into the field.” So they both went out into the field. 

¹² And Jonathan said to David, “The Lord, the God of Israel, be witness! When I have sounded out my father, about this time tomorrow, or the third day, behold, if he is well disposed toward David, shall I not then send and disclose it to you? ¹³ But should it please my father to do you harm, the Lord do so to Jonathan and more also if I do not disclose it to you and send you away, that you may go in safety. May the Lord be with you, as he has been with my father. ¹⁴ If I am still alive, show me the steadfast love of the Lord, that I may not die; ¹⁵ and do not cut off your steadfast love from my house forever, when the Lord cuts off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth.” ¹⁶ And Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the Lord take vengeance on David’s enemies.” ¹⁷ And Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul.

What is the narrator telling us? “Eugene Peterson, who is a commentator on this passage, says this. It’s a very, very poignant, I think, observation. He says, in short, during this most dangerous, evil chapter in all of David’s life, this deep friendship with Jonathan bracketed the evil. That’s quite an insight. Literally, of course, in the narrative, in the story, the friendship with Jonathan is the bracket at the beginning and at the end.

What is Peterson saying? What are we learning? What we’re learning is the friendship with Jonathan literally contained the evil. It didn’t just drown David. It made it containable. It made it bearable. It made it survivable. He never would have made it, literally. He would never have survived without his friendship with Jonathan.”

Tim Keller

How does the passage redefine friendship for us. 

1. Transparent In its actions –

1 Samuel 20:17 (ESV)

¹⁷ And Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul.

1 Samuel 18:1 (ESV)

David and Jonathan’s Friendship

18 As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

1 Samuel 20:17 and 1 Samuel 18:1 say they were one in spirit and say Jonathan loved David as his own soul. To be one in spirit means friends are transparent with each other. That is, they open to let you see in. They open to let you see in!

Jonathan isn’t protecting himself he opens up to David we see him sharing his emotions to the point that this story is misunderstood as sexual love for each other. Because in our culture, we value individualism and invulnerability. When we see transparency and real love between friends, it is so foreign to us that we think it’s sexual.

You will never have a friend that you don’t open yourself to the possibility of being misjudged and betrayed.

You can not have intimacy without transparency. You will always be acting like a friend, or your relationship will be superficial.

This is what my culture tells us: we should keep our friendships. Particularly among men. We should talk about hunting, fishing, NASCAR, and baseball. Never getting beyond the external because every human’s greatest fear is being found out as a fraud.

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Every human heart desires to be fully known and completely loved. We are afraid that if someone really knew us they would never love us.

Jonathan didn’t hold back. He didn’t reserve part of himself. He was of one heart and one soul with his friend. That takes radical transparency.

We want someone to always let us in but that doesn’t happen without us letting them in.

Transparency requires vulnerability.

Lewis so brilliantly depicts the end result of a culture like ours that is obsessed with self-protection. That we are unable to be transparent and to love other person more than we love ourselves. Lewis says:

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

C.S. Lewis

2. Self-giving in its expression

1 Samuel 20:4 Whatever you say, I will do.

In 1987, English Rocker Rick Astley wrote the now-famous song “Never gonna give you up.” It was a classic 80s song in every way. It died the death of a million 80’s songs doomed to Lite Rock stations for life. It reemerged in popular culture because people would use it to play a joke on someone by having them click on a link they think will take them to a news report or some website, and instead, they are linked to the video of Astley dancing and singing. This bate and switch is called getting RIckRolled. It’s pretty funny but the message is much more interesting. It’s basically making a promise no friend, no spouse, no god with a small g can deliver.

Never gonna give you up 
Never gonna let you down 
Never gonna run around and desert you 
Never gonna make you cry 
Never gonna say goodbye 
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

This is what we want, but we don’t ever experience it because we want people to be friends to us in a way that we aren’t to anyone. We have this over-romanticized view of friendship that we look for the perfect friend and perfect mate who will never let us down and always let us in.

Jonathan says to David, ” Whatever you say, I will do. This required Jonathan to put his life on the line for David and required David to put his life in Jonathan’s hands. He renounces his claim to the throne.  It was identification with David’s sorrow. David suffered on the run from Saul. Jonathan protected David in a way that would be seen as dishonoring his father in the culture they lived. Jonathan suffered in proximity to Saul for the sake of his friendship with David. To the point that spears were thrown at him.

Jonathan didn’t just help his friend escape. He suffered along with his friend. He sat with him in his distress, laid aside his royal claims, and gave his friend not only emotional support but material support. He gave David a blank relational check because he trusted his friend. He said, “Whatever you say, I will do.” To say that to another person is to give of yourself to the other. 

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3. Covenantal in its promises – 

1 Samuel 20:14–17 (ESV)

¹⁴ If I am still alive, show me the steadfast love of the Lord, that I may not die; ¹⁵ and do not cut off your steadfast love from my house forever, when the Lord cuts off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth.” ¹⁶ And Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the Lord take vengeance on David’s enemies.” ¹⁷ And Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul.

Transactional is where so many friendships in culture live. To think that a covenant is a transaction is to misunderstand a covenant. A covenant makes promises and keeps them to your own harm. When you make a covenant, it isn’t dependent on the behavior of the other person. It doesn’t mean you say well, they aren’t keeping their end of the bargain; I’ll just move on. 

It doesn’t say if you do this, then I’ll do that. It says, my life is yours. Jonathan promised to protect David from his father. David promised to show Jonathan lovingkindness when he became king.

Eugene Peterson says, “Friendship is a much underestimated aspect of spirituality. It’s every bit as significant as prayer and fasting. Like the sacramental use of water [in baptism] and bread and wine [in Communion], friendship takes what’s common … and turns it into something holy.”

Peterson is saying that friendship is holy not because it’s exciting but precisely because it isn’t. Friendship, like the sacraments, takes the common and makes it holy. When you are transparent, self-giving, and keeping your promises, you can let people in, and you don’t need to hide your mess. You can allow them to see you as you are, knowing that you are loved still. 

The problem we run into is that we have experienced the goodness of friendship, and those we allowed it did the most damage. Because no one knows how to hurt you as deeply as those who know you most completely. The temptation is to “learn” from your mistakes, and instead of making boundaries, you build fences. The reality of friendship in a fallen world is there is no friend that can hold the weight of your need to be loved and forgiven. There is only one friend that can do that. Every human friendship will end in death or divorce. So we must allow our friendships to be what they are pointers to, not a substitute for the friend your heart needs most

Make Jesus the friend your heart desires, and you will have all the friends your heart needs

Keller continues…

There’s the ultimate friend. He lets you in. Also, he never lets you down. Because in the garden of Gethsemane, as he saw his best friends falling asleep on him, denying him, betraying him, the Father comes and says, “You are going to have to go to hell, or you’re going to lose your friends.” Jesus said, “I’ll go to hell.”

 Timothy J. Keller 

John 15 tells us we didn’t choose Christ. He chose us. 

C.S. Lewis puts it like this: “… we think we have chosen our peers. […] But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.’

This is such a comfort. If you belong to God, then Friendship is something God created us for and chooses for us. 

At the end of The Lord of the Rings, Sam and Frodo have saved Middle Earth and their own village. They have this powerful exchange as Frodo is on the edge of death. 

“Your  time may come. Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years.

         You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.’   

      ‘But,’ said Sam, and tears started in his eyes, ‘I thought you were going to enjoy the Shire, too, for years and years, after all you have done.’

      ‘So I thought too, once. But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. But you are my heir: all that I had and might have had I leave to you.”

This is what Jesus did for us. Things were in danger. Jesus entered the danger of the world he created, he willingly humbled himself and took on human flesh, he willingly gave up his life, lost his beauty, so that we could be saved, restored, and reconciled to God. 

This is why it is so hard to find friends: we are looking for someone to do for us what Christ has already done. We are looking for a friend who will always build us up, never give up, and never let us down. The problem is that there is no friend who can ever do that for you. The only friend who can do that has. For those who have put their trust in Jesus, you are freed to be the kind of friend that Sam was to Frodo, that Frodo was to Sam, that Jonathan was to David. 

When we were in danger, Jesus gave his life so we may find ours. We are Christ’s heirs. All that was his that he lost is now ours because of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. As a Christian, you are freed to be the kind of friend your heart longs for because you have in Jesus the friend that your heart most needs. 

I never wanted to attend Bible College because I never desired to be a pastor. It wasn’t because I didn’t know what a pastor’s life was like, but the opposite. Growing up in a pastor’s home, I understood the challenges and sacrifices that the call to ministry requires. We moved frequently growing up, sometimes out of a sense of call, others because of broken promises and damaged relationships. I wanted something different, so I fled to Tarshish.

I had planned on attending a school to learn radio and television broadcasting, or at least that is what I told the random adults in my life who would inevitably ask what I was doing. I was only a freshman in high school. My dad broke the news to me during my senior year. I was going to one year of Bible College, and I had no choice. I could do whatever I wanted after that. So I went…and stayed for four years.

The summer between my junior and senior year of Bible College. I spent doing ministry with my friend Mike. We restarted the youth group at his dad’s church. God moved powerfully. It seemed to me that God was up to something, and I wanted in on it.

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During my senior year in Bible College, I met the woman who would become my wife, and Mike’s dad offered me a job that required me to move across the country. I graduated in May, moved in June, and got engaged to Sandra in August. I was in a whirlwind, like times of change usually are, but God was up to something, and I wanted in on it.

The first fourteen years, I served as our church’s first official Pastor of Child Discipleship, then six years as the campus pastor at our main campus, as well as the pastor of next-generation ministry. In the last eight years, I served as the Pastor of Next Generation Ministry and as the executive pastor of Ministries for all our campuses. There were many God moments. A lot of tears and laughter. Funerals and weddings. Baby dedications and baptisms.

I remember when I started doing kids ministry at the ripe age of twenty-two. I had no idea what I was doing. There was no internet or AI, no conferences or resources to help you. I had no choice but to ask God for help. I learned to invert the process of making God my first option rather than my last resort. During that time of prayer, I felt that God gave me specific direction on what to do as a pastor of child discipleship. I was off to the races, and God was gracious.

Ten years in, I had accomplished all I felt God asked me to do. So I wasn’t sure if I was done or what God was doing. So, I had another meeting with God, and I asked Him what He had for me to do. I had accomplished all he had put on my heart. Was I done? He spoke to my heart and impressed this idea. “Be to other people what you wish someone was for you.” I didn’t know what that meant or how to make that work. I started a blog that my mom read, and five other kids ministry leaders who would become some of my best ministry friends who would walk through a lot of life together.

Blogging for me has always been an exercise in trying to be to others what I wish someone was to me. To help encourage and strengthen pastors and parents to lead well, to love well, and to point to Jesus in everything. I started writing in 2007 and haven’t stopped since.

Writing for me started as an act of obedience and has become for me one of the greatest joys of my life. Frederick Buechner, one of my writing heroes, says:

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” 

Frederick Buechner

In the daily discipline of writing, which I thought would be a gift to others, has been more of a gift to me than I ever dreamed. In the midst of COVID, I started to rethink some of my long-held assumptions about life and ministry. I wrote a blog post entitled “Why Our Kids Ministries Should Be More Like Mr. Rogers and Less Like Disney.“ It caught the attention of Matt Markins, who was in the process of becoming the CEO of Awana. That post led to my being invited to speak at the inaugural Child Discipleship Forum in 2021, which has become more of a blessing than I can clearly articulate. In 2023, Matt Markins and Mike Handler invited me to co-author Forming Faith, published by Moody Press.

Over the last five years, God has gone out of His way to shake me and form me in ways I would never have asked for and would never have expected. Still, I was writing. Those words for others were for me a whistling in the dark. In his powerful book The Clown in the Belfry: Writings on Faith and Fiction, Beuchner says this:

“Is that why we write, year after year, people like me— to keep our courage up? Are novels like mine a kind of whistling in the dark? I think so. To whistle in the dark is more than just to try to convince yourself that dark is not all there is. It’s also to remind yourself that dark is not all there is, or the end of all there is, because even in the dark there is hope. Even in the dark you have the power to whistle. And sometimes that seems more than just your own power because it’s powerful enough to hold the dark back a little. The tunes you whistle in the dark are the sound of that hope, that power. Like the books you write.”

Even in difficulty and sorrow, God brought me; He had taught me to whistle in the dark. In the dark, I wrote, and in the dark, I prayed. In the dark, God spoke. When we least expected it, God opened a door. Mike Handler asked me several weeks ago, “What would it look like for you to work at Awana?”

In the process, through my prayer times and scripture reading, and several words of encouragement from people who knew nothing of what was going on, it was clear God was leading us to a new season. This led to conversations with Awana and my church. The consensus was clear that God was at work.

To leave a staff I have been a part of for nearly three decades is no easy decision. Leaving a team led by my best friend and several others with whom I have served for decades is not something you do just because the offer is right. You need the wisdom of others and the clarity of God’s leading. Thankfully, my wife Sandra and I received both.

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I am pleased to announce that, starting September 29th, I will serve as the Director of ChildDiscipleship.com, where I will work with Awana to develop resources for pastors and parents. To represent Awana and its mission to equip leaders to reach kids with the Gospel and to engage them in lifelong discipleship. This is no easy task, but it is of the utmost importance. I am honored and excited to join their team and engage in the Gospel work they are doing.

Like most things in life, this is bittersweet for us. Sweet because we see it as the opportunity and honor to serve a mission close to our hearts with people at Awana, we love already, and are sure to grow to love. It is bitter because, as Semisonic famously said, “Every new beginning comes from some others begining end.” The bitterness is definitely softened by the remote first culture of Awana, which will allow me to stay on as an elder at Redeemer, as well as serve on the teaching team at Redeemer. My family will continue to serve and cheer on the work that God has called us to in our local church.

Pastor Mike, the Redeemer staff, eldership, and membership have been nothing but supportive throughout this entire challenging season. I am so grateful and humbled by a community that has been to us what a home I never had, having moved from place to place.

Wedell Berry says that every person needs a place and a membership. I have found a place in the small town we live in with no Target and no Starbucks, but with people who know us. We have found our membership in a church community that has become like family to us over the past twenty-eight years, marked by joys and sorrows.

“Members of Port William aren’t members by their own choice, and they can’t be members alone. They are members of each other and of the place.”

Wedell Berry

I am looking forward to what God has next for our church, our family, and the ministry to which God has called us. It seems to me that God was up to something, and I wanted in on it.

Fred’s set was tired, and his puppets seemed to age with him. Although his songs were not the most beautiful, their simplicity, purity, and clarity were captivating. His methods were not cutting-edge, but who he was and how he lived left a lasting mark on a generation.

The mistake we make is thinking that Fred was one of a kind and an anomaly. We are moved by his life, message, and story, yet we move on from his life so quickly. We love what he did but don’t connect what he did with WHY he did what he did. Fred was a loving person who believed that “The greatest thing we can do is let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.” He believed this because he had experienced that kind of love from God.

Over the course of the nearly thirty years I have been a pastor, one thing that the church has been obsessed with puzzles me: how the church in America can see a Fred and not understand the power that Fred had.

So many conversations I have had over the years with pastors and leaders revolve around the stuff that doesn’t ultimately matter: innovation, church size, and relevance. The desire to be cool, hip, or whatever the word is right now. Fred was a lot of things cool and hip where none of them.

People are impressed by the new and cool, but they are impacted by love. Genuine connections that are grounded in love.

“Love is at the root of everything: all learning, all relationships, love or the lack of it.”
– Fred Rogers

Love or the lack of it. Every virtue finds its home in love, and every vice finds its source in broken love. Love that is misdirected, misshapen, or excessive. Fred learned over the years that real connections with people are more important than new sets, fresh paint, and cutting-edge technology.

The first half of my time as a pastor was marked by churches strongly influenced by the seeker movement, which was more about marketing Jesus than it was about modeling Jesus. The seeker movement grew because people are in the market for hope, and seeker churches were professional marketers of hope. People in our broken world are desperately seeking to be loved. The seeker movement failed because modeling Jesus is much more costly and far less flashy than glossy handouts, bright lights, and rehearsed cover songs.

Modeling Jesus comes from a life of surrender, a life that has experienced suffering because of fallen nature and fallen humanity. Why did Fred feel for those who were hurting? He was bullied in school as a kid. He experienced love and the loss of love. That mixture of suffering and surrender creates in us a lasting awareness of our lack and God’s supply.Message Sam Luce

The early 2000’s was all about excellence and production value. Neither is wrong, but if elevated to be the goal of each weekend, they become idols where we produce perfect services at the expense of real community and genuine connection. In our desire to reach our neighborhoods and cities, we have turned to events, production, and invitations to what we are doing and have forgotten how to be present and the need we have for real connection and genuine relationships. Events complement connections. The substance of real relationships must never be replaced by flash or floating fame.

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How Did Mister Rogers model for us the genuine connections that were the hallmark of his life and ministry?

1. His reach was to thousands, but his approach was personal.

In a culture that values success at all costs. Fred was different. He wasn’t trying to build a platform. He was thinking of individual kids. He looked into the camera and talked to one kid at a time. His message wasn’t about mass consumption. He reached millions, but each kid felt like they were the only ones he was talking to. One of the most profound things Fred taught us was to remember what it was like to be a kid once. This is really just a more modern way of saying what Jesus says in Matthew 19:14 Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

2. He never outgrew one-on-one connections.

If you want to connect with people talk to them one-on-one in person. We love the efficiency of social media and text messages. Efficiency does not promote intimacy. Deep friendships and lasting relationships happen in unhurried moments over the course of months and years. In one episode, Fred introduced his friends to Jeffery Erlanger, a young boy who was a quadriplegic. Fred’s interactions with Jeffery speak to Jeffery’s dignity as an image bearer. Their connection was more than theater for views. It was like everything that was Mister Rogers; it was 100% genuine. In a touching moment many years later, Jeffery, now an adult, came on stage to honor Fred as he was being inducted to the TV Hall of Fame. Fred’s reaction was so moving, their connection so genuine. Fred knew that you entertain crowds, but you connect with people one-on-one.

3. His focus was on people, not fame.

Fred said in the above video “Fame is a four-letter word and like tape, or zoom, or face, or pain, or life, or love what ultimately matters is what we do with it.”

“Fame is a four-letter word and like tape, or zoom, or face, or pain, or life, or love what ultimately matters is what we do with it.”
– Fred Rogers

We do not have royalty by design in our country, but we have royalty nonetheless. Our Royals are stars and influencers. Fame is the bloodline that connects American royalty. Fred is perhaps one of the most beloved characters to have ever appeared on Television. He is beloved not because he is famous but because he loved people more than fame. He was the same person wherever he was because he had no persona. Mister Rogers was just Fred Rogers doing what he did in front of a camera in his everyday life. He was curious about the world, unconcerned about fame, and obsessed with kindness towards others.

4. He talked about difficult things, not just popular things.

We are in an election year, and this principle is everywhere around us. We have politicians who are trying to get us to like them enough to vote for them. What is their method to do this? Trying to stick to what is popular. Trying to say everything in a way that they think people will want to hear. If you watch any presidential debate. Questions are asked, and the answers are not given to address the questions. Hard topics are avoided. Fred never did this. His passion was not to win the popular vote. He believed that people, especially kids, deserve the truth. So he told it. So often, we shield kids from hard things and keep conversations superficial, but kids know when you are doing this. They want to be told the truth. Fred talked about assassination, divorce, racism, and death. If you want to connect with people. Tell the truth even if the truth is hard to tell.

Tell the truth even if the truth is hard to tell.

5. He was attentive.

If you want create real and lasting connections with others. Listen more than you speak. Fred would say it this way “Listening is a very active awareness of the coming together of at least two lives. Listening, as far as I’m concerned, is certainly a prerequisite of love. One of the most essential ways of saying “I love you” is by being a receptive listener.”

Really, listening to others fuses you with others because your unbroken attention honors them and honors God.

6. He allowed his own sorrows to soften his heart towards others.

Finally, a shared understanding of fallen nature and fallen man will create genuine connections with others. Part of the reason that Fred was able to show kindness to others is he understood what it was like to be the recipient of both kindness and derision.

“Fred described himself as a sickly, chubby boy. Peers called him Fat Freddy, and he struggled to fit in. His parents were very overprotective, especially because of being the wealthiest family in his small town. He had a chauffeur drive him to school and pick him up for lunch and after school each day. He always felt different because of his severe asthma and his status as the ‘rich kid’. Several factors helped Fred to overcome his adversities.

Early on, Fred did not want to voice his feelings for fear he’d be labelled a bad boy. He remembers not knowing it was okay to feel angry when bullied because adults had told him to, “Ignore the bullies and just let on you don’t care and then nobody will bother you.” Gradually, he refused to accept that pretending not to care about teasing would alleviate his pain and loneliness.

Music became his emotional refuge growing up. “I was always able to cry or laugh or say I was angry thru the tips of my fingers on the piano. I would go to the piano even when I was 5 years old and start to play how I felt. It was very natural for me to become a composer.”Fred sought out stories of other people who were poor in spirit and felt for them too.

Fred also spent countless hours in his bedroom playing with his puppets and using his imagination. His friend Peggy came home with him for lunch every day. They played in the attic where Fred entertained her with puppets and marionettes.

But it was in high school that Fred found his confidence. A popular football player, Jim Stumbaugh, had to spend a few weeks in the hospital, and Fred’s mom arranged for Fred to bring him homework and tutor him. The two boys became friends for life, and Jim helped Fred integrate socially back at school. Fred became confident, the stucco president, editor of the school paper, an actor in theater, and a great student. He was well-liked, dedicated to schoolwork and his piano. Mr. Rogers relates that his new football friend Jim told kids that Fred was a good guy, and “That made all the difference in the world for me. What a difference one person can make in the life of another. It’s almost as if he had said, “I like you just the way you are.”

If you are looking for more of my thoughts about what we can learn from Fred Rogers. In my recently released book Forming Faith, a book I co-authored with two of my friends. In chapter two of that book, I discuss Why our Churches need to be More Like Mister Rogers and Less Like Disney. I would love for you to read that chapter as well as the rest of the book we wrote together. Below is a link for you to order Forming Faith for yourself. If you like what you have read, please consider leaving a kind review on Amazon. Thank you so much for your constant support.

Some of the topics we work through are

• “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.” 
• We’re walking upstream in a flood of new realities 
• A Little Less Disney, a Bit More Fred Rogers
• Stuck on a sandbar
• New Barna Group Research
• Getting Un-Stuck from the Church Home Stalemate 
• The Forming Faith Pathway (A member of The Gospel Coalition recently called this “pure gold”)
• The Formational Church
• The Formational Home

Forming Faith aims to bring insight to church leaders and high-capacity parents on cultivating lasting faith in children even amid our highly secularized, hyper-individualistic, and post-Christian culture. By helping the reader grasp the pervasive power of cultural formation on today’s children as well as discovering the outdated map we are operating off of in our current church children’s ministries, the reader will gain insight as to why we must move to a new map (which is actually an ancient map) to reach and disciple this generation.

Forming Faith not only uses analysis and research combined with colorful metaphors to understand our times, but it also leads the reader forward with a proposed blueprint for forming lasting faith in children at church and at home and what the two entities must do to maximize our influence on their lives.

For those who have read Resilient: Child Discipleship and the Fearless Future of the Church (Awana), Forming Faith is the logical follow-up book to read, yet it’s also a stand-alone read as well

It’s not working, and everybody knows it. But no one seems to know what to do about it. Even before COVID-19, we were starting to have doubts, but during the height of COVID-19, it became abundantly clear that how we view children’s ministry and faith formation has to change. Parents are deeply concerned about how the culture forms their kids, and the church is frustrated by the lack of parental involvement in child discipleship. Forming Faith taps into these frustrations and fears with real solutions that are biblically based and backed by research.

It is our hope that you find this book challenging but also filled with hope, wisdom, and practical tools you can implement in your church and in your home to form the faith of the next generation.

In Matthew 16 we see one of the greatest proclaimations of the person of Christ in Scriptuer. Peter is asked by Jesus who do men say that I am. Peter tells Jesus who others say he is. Jesus then says Peter, who do you say that I am. Peter says you are the Christ (the anointed one). Jesus says, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.  And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” That is powerful stuff.

Jesus then goes on to “show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” Peter did not like this. He said Jesus, far be it that you should suffer and die. Peter saw victory as accomplishment, not relinquishment. Jesus’s rebuke was as effusive as his praise for Peter had been a few verses ago. He says get behind me, satan. It was one of the harshest criticisms any disciple would ever receive. Jesus was saying that suffering, death, and resurrection are not optional. They are central to God’s plan.

Then Jesus does something so powerful and so profound. He doesn’t just scold Peter for his pity but he invites us into where true joy and true victory is found. He calls us to relinquish our lives, our dreams, and our future. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

The key to greatness in God’s coming kingdom he told his disciples is not through power and accomplishment but through death and relinquishment. We as western Christians don’t like either. We experience the need for cross bearing in our relationships, in our careers, or in our marriage and family sisutiaions and we fight for control. We fight aginst the call to give up what was never ours. We join Peter in saying “surely not me Lord.” We wollow in the self-pity of those who feel that they have missed the best moments of life the best offers that they believe they deserve to have the success far to many preachers on TV have told them they are owed.

What we are called to do is put to death ever vestage of self pity. Put to death every desire for control. We are called to relinquish our rights and to walk in obedance to Christ and take up our cross daily. The problem for us is we see relinquishment as giving up what is ours we see it as weakness. We hate it. Controll is our precious. It is the things we love most in this life, because we feel that if we can control our present, it will repair the sorrows of the past and guarantee our future happiness. The Jesus way is relinquish what isn’t yours what never was yours because Christ gave up willing what actually was his. He relinquished glory to live for you, die for you, come to life again for you and acend to heaven and to plead for you to interceede on your behalf.

We see relinquishment as giving up what is ours or what is owed us. Or we see it as some act of resignation and fatalism. Far from it. It is a letting go of what was never yours so you can free your hands to accept from God’s goodness what he has already ordained for you, for your good and his glory.

Elisabeth Elliot in her book Finding Your Way through Loneliness talks about what she wrote in her journal after she came to understand that her husband Jim had been killed by the very people he had tried to bring the good news of God’s love.

Life begins a new chapter—this time without Jim. . . . I have been reading over some of the first part of this book—it is almost prophetic. They were days when God was teaching me to find satisfaction in Himself, without Jim. But always there was the hope that some day He would give us to one another. He did, on October 8, 1953. Two years and three months together.

If Thy dear Home be fuller, Lord, For that a little emptier My house on earth, what rich reward That guerdon were.
Amy Carmichael

These words come to me over and over. The peace which I have received is certainly beyond all understanding. As I went about my work in the house, on the station, with the Indians, I found peace as I looked up to the Father of Lights, from whom comes “every good endowment and every complete gift” (James 1:17 Phillips).

I say that I found peace. I do not say that I was not lonely. I was—terribly. I do not say that I did not grieve. I did—most sorely. But peace of the sort the world cannot give comes, not by the removal of suffering, but in another way—through acceptance. I was learning that the same Lord, in whom there is “never the slightest variation or shadow of inconsistency” (James 1:17 Phillips), the Lord who had given me singleness and marriage as gifts of His love, had now given me this one. Would I receive it from His hand? Would I thank Him for it?

Elisabeth Elliot

The call to follow Christ is not one victory after the next. Very often it feels like death after death because that’s what a cross produces. We are called by Christ if we are are to be his disciples to take up our cross daily and follow obedientaly. His call to us is the call to lose your life in order to find it. In our culture one that worships success to the point that we measure faithful ministry by success and not surrender. We must be a people who do not say “never Lord” when he places his good hand on something we believe to be most precious. Rather we must give what was never ours to gain what we could never earn.

Some of the arguments I have gotten about the subversive nature of having a family are based in a secular understanding of the world that is rooted in a toxic combination of fear and self-love. While they make sense in a secular world where we are the sum of our bank account and our social media score. They are not rooted in a Christian worldview. Our worth is not based on our production. We are more valuable than what we can contribute economically and socially.

This is why I referred to raising a family as the most subversive thing you can do in my previous post. In a world that tells you that your happiness and well-being are based on your present wants and desires, raising a family means delaying gratification, laying down your life, and trusting that the God who created you and all things is capable of providing for your needs.

It means daily picking up your cross and following him. In a culture that prizes safety and security above all else, cross-bearing is anathema. In her book on loneliness, Elisabeth Elliot reminds us that “safety, as the Cross shows, does not exclude suffering. All that was of course beyond me when I was a child, but as I began to learn about suffering, I learned that trust in those strong arms means that even our suffering is under control. We are not doomed to meaninglessness. A loving Purpose is behind it all, a great tenderness even in the fierceness.”

What is the basis for the Christian understanding of the subversive nature of family?

1. Obedience – God commands us to be fruitful and multiply. God’s command to Adam and Eve was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. This command is not connected to a particular age in time. Having children then was an act of faith and trust. Because they lived in a culture that was communal and family was central having kids was seen as a blessing. It required obedience and sacrifice; still, large families were not easy to provide for in nomadic and agrarian societies. In our radically individualized world of buffered self. We crave experiences and personal freedom, and the call to be fruitful and multiply comes at the expense of personal, financial, and career goals.
   
   Obedience to God’s commands comes with blessings, but those commands also require faith. St. Augustin addressed this obsession with self in one of the more famous sections of his seminal work, the City of God.
   
   “Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, “Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.” In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love,”
   
   Our obedience because it is directed toward God for the good of others will seem to those in a pluralistic, radically individualistic world as contempt of self. The obedience of selfish desires and the excess of personal ambition is seen as the goal of our culture in so many ways. The only way this can be achieved, as St. Augustin reminds is by contempt of God.
   
2. Love—We live in a world that has taken to define love by the logically self-defeating argument that love is love. No object can be defined by itself; it must be identified, observed, and contrasted. Self-love is antithetical to the Christian understanding of love. Love must be both shared and observed to be authentic. Love without an object is not love. God models this in the Godhead, where he has eternally experienced love within himself from eternity to eternity. He invites us into that love to observe, replicate, and ultimately experience forever.
   
   We have a cheap dollar-store version of Love because we reduced it to its lowest base version. We make it about a feeling we feel until it is gone, and then we move on to the next relationship or friendship. Lewis, in The Problem of Pain, says, “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” If you have ever had kids, you understand that there is an immediate sense of love for that child that could never be fully explained. Yet even that flood of affectionate feelings is not enough to maintain a relationship of love. It requires the sacrificial steady wish for that other person’s happiness.
   
   This doesn’t mean that everything you do for that person will make them feel happy. If you have teenagers, you know this to be true. It means that everything you do for that person is out of a willing for their good. It comes from a desire to see their highest good achieved, and sometimes, actually many times, that is achieved through difficult moments of pain.
   
   John tells us the mark of authentic Christianity is in our love for one another. They will see our love for God in our love for others. How we love others is a result of the love we have observed in God and experienced from others. John rightly asks, if you do not love those you can see, how can you love a God you can not see?
   
   Our families should be a model of love to a watching world. They should see a self-giving love in how we relate to each other that is more beautiful and deeply abiding than any feeling or external sense of love can bring.
   
3. Trust – Of all the things that children have taught me, I would have to say trust is priemenant. I have had to trust God to supply for our family. Four kids in a world where toothpaste is $20 and a gallon of gas is $12 (this is an exaggeration, but I’m trying to make this post relevant when read a year from now) is not easy. It’s easy to provide for yourself, go on beautiful vacations, and buy whatever you want, and it will magically arrive two days later. It takes trust to find meaningful work and make enough to provide for a large family.
   
   As a famous twenty-first poet says:
   
   What if you had it all
   But nobody to call?
   Maybe then you’d know me
   ‘Cause I’ve had everything
   But no one’s listening
   
   You can have everything this world offers but be filled with an aching loneliness. To do this requires trust.
   
   Family teaches us to trust God with outcomes. You can somewhat control the choices you make and what you do. You have some control over your kids but no control over nature or the sinful choices of others. Living in a world gone mad like we presently do, is not easy, and I would add that it is tempting to smother your kids and protect them from everything. The problems with this are many because we are not omniscient and omnipresent like God, and there are limits to our ability and capacity. Because this is true, we must protect our kids, but we must trust God more.
   
   Modeling this trust in the middle of danger shows the world and our kids that our kids are not the center of our universe. Copernicus’s heliocentric understanding was branded as heresy in a geocentric world. When we have kids in a world that is filled with danger, it shows the world that child-centric, me-centric worlds are faulty from the start. A family that is raised to see the gospel as central rather than them will locate their trust in the immovable reality of God’s love for us. In the reality that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
   
4. Hope – This world is not all there is. Having kids in a world gone crazy is an act of subversive hope in this world but also in the world to come. Hope sees this world as it really is. It doesn’t sugar coat or ignore anything but it also sees Christ as he is. Hope is not based in our present circumstance but in the future reality of all things being made new.
   
   Hope says we see the world as broken, but that brokenness is redefined on the cross. I recently read The Lord of the Rings Trilogy for the first time. Tolkien defined the perennial human condition and the reality of the present age he lived in and even the one we presently live in.
   
   “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
   
   May this be so. May we build families that are fair amid a landscape of love mingled with grief that one day will be marked by unending, immeasurable joy.
   

10. The Air We Breathe by Glenn Scrivener
Glenn is brilliant. His brilliance is seen not in how much he knows but in how he is able to distill what he knows into language that those of us who are less brilliant can understand. This book is well-researched and extremely accessible. In The Air We Breathe, Scrivener makes the case quite well that Christianity changed everything. This a book that is “should read” for every Christian and a “must read” for any teenager headed to college. Well done mate.

9. Confessions by Augustine translation by Thomas Williams
I have read Augustine’s Confessions several times and usually get pulled in when a new translation comes out. This translation did not disappoint. Scott McDonald says “Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine’s mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought—Augustine’s Confessions.” I couldn’t agree more. The beauty and readability make it a perfect translation for those who have never had the joy of reading this brilliant work of art in the form a prayer.

8. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman
Backman is a brilliant storyteller. This book was so profound and emotional. It tells the sweet story of death, loss, and redemption. The story is told through the eyes of Else, a young seven-year-old girl who, after her Grandmother dies, must go on the most incredible adventure of her lifetime that brings healing to her whole family. It was a brilliant story.

7. Leap Over a Wall by Eugene Peterson
It is no surprise that Eugene made my list again. His writing style of telling stories mixed with Biblical exposition is so unique and so profound. His books always challenge me to trust Christ and be a better pastor. I read this book because we are preaching through 1 Samuel. Peterson in his typical poetic, prophetic tone. “Evil doesn’t stand a chance against goodness. Persecution is futile in the presence of faithfulness. Hostility is picayune compared to friendship…Evil doesn’t diminish David; it doesn’t narrow him. Bound in the covenant of Jonathan’s friendship, David is protected; none of Saul’s evil gets inside him. In the face of such concentrated goodness, evil is powerless to maintain itself.”

6. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
I love Shakespeare. King Lear has to be one of my favorite plays of all time. I had never read Macbeth, and what a profound play. The themes of divine providence, human depravity, and wreckless ambition pervade the drama. Macbeth receives a prophecy, and it comes partly true rather than trust it produces sinful ambition. He says early on that the only thing that motivates him is ambition, which makes people rush ahead of themselves toward disaster. This play was a sobering reminder that we are to do as the preacher says in Ecclesiastes, “Tremble and Trust.”

5. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
This is my fourth time reading Mere Christianity, and it was special. I read it with a small group of High School students, and we discussed each chapter by Zoom. I would have to cut and paste the whole thing to quote my favorite parts. Lewis’ ability to distill complex ideas is second to none. It is a must-read for all who consider themselves Christian. Here is one of my favorite quotes from Mere Christianity “Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

4. Rembrandt is in The Wind by Russ Ramsey
This book was beautiful as it was profound. Ramsey’s words were a balm in a year that has been among the most difficult of my life. As an opening salvo, Ramsey says, “It is hard to render an honest self-portrait if we want to conceal what is unattractive and hide what’s broken. We want to appear beautiful. But when we do this, we hide what needs redemption, what we trust Christ to redeem. And everything redeemed by Christ becomes beautiful…pretending I’m okay when I actually need help— I’m concealing from others the fact that I am broken. But my wounds need binding. I need asylum, And if I can’t show that honestly, how will anyone ever see Christ in me?” Powerful.

3. Trust by Henry Cloud
This is the first book I have read by Henry Cloud. I found it challenging and enlightening. Cloud outlines how trust is broken and how it can be restored. Trust is lost by Lack of understanding, Motive, Ability, Character, and Track Record. “The process of trust begins by listening and by understanding other people—what they want and what they’re feeling—in short, knowing what matters to them. The task is to know them instead of to persuade them. People must feel known in order to trust. Trust begins not with convincing someone to trust you; it starts with someone feeling that you know them.”

2. Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Christ by Flemming Rutledge
This book was on my to-read list for a long time and did not disappoint. What a joy to read this book throughout the Advent season this year. Rutledge has such a way with words. “As Advent draws to its close, the special nature of the season summons us to sober reflection on the nature of the world without a Savior. It is no coincidence that the promise of an everlasting throne was given by God to a man who had even less control over his own household than does the present queen of England. The mercy of God does not depend on human virtue for its fulfillment. The mystery of the Advent season lies precisely in its location, placed as it is between the now of human failure and disappointment and the not yet of God’s coming kingdom.”

1. Biblical Critical Theory by Christopher Watkin
Of all the books I read this year. Biblical Critical Theory had the most acclaim. It was not a quick or easy read, but it was necessary. What Watkin does is brilliant. He addresses cultural issues with the truth of the Biblical theology mixed with a Christian worldview. Tim Keller, in the Intro, aptly says that “Christian theory must point to the beauty and truth of the gospel as the source of numerous fulfilling counternarratives.”

“Yeshua’s story has its happy ending because of its tragic one: happiness after tragedy, on top of it, through it, achievable only by going to the very end of the tragic road.”⁵⁴ It is, if you will, a mature happy ending, a happy ending that does not try to airbrush away all sorrow and sacrifice. It is neither a tragedy nor a comedy but the complex brew of reality from which both forms are distilled, with the complexity that they both betray.”

 Christopher Watkin

The Rest

• 11. The One Life Solution – Henry Cloud
• 12. Gospel-Centered Family – Ed Moll
• 13. Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West – Andrew Wilson
• 14. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – C. S. Lewis
• 15. The Rescuer – Jason Bautel
• 16. Humility – Gavin Ortland
• 17. Humility (a second time) – Gavin Ortland
• 18. Ordinary Heros:A Memoir of 9/11 – Joeseph Pfifer
• 19. Children’s Ministry in Crisis – Ester Moreno
• 20. Necessary Endings – Henry Cloud
• 21. Romeo and Juliet – William Shakespeare
• 22. The Faith of Our Children – Matt Markins
• 23. Life of the Beloved – Henri Nouwen
• 24. The Story of Reality – Gregory Koukl
• 25. Blood From a Stone – Adam McHugh
• 26. When Helping Hurts – Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert
• 27. Be Thou My Vision – Jonothan Gibson
• 28. How the Irish Saved Civilization – Thomas Cahill
• 29. The 1998 Yankees – Jack Curry
• 30. An Experiment in Criticism – C. S. Lewis
• 31. Finding The Right Hills to Die On – Gavin Ortland
• 32. Eat This Book – Eugene Peterson
• 33. The Book of the Dun Cow – Walter Wngerin Jr.
• 34. The Story of Abortion in America – Marvin Olasky and Leah Savas
• 35. On Asking God Why – Elisabeth Elliot
• 36. Journey to The Cross – Paul David Tripp
• 37. Gentile and Lowly – Dane Ortland
• 38. The Many Assassinations of Samir The Seller of Dreams – Daniel Nayeri
• 39. Don’t Burn This Book – Dave Rubin
• 40. The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness – Tim Keller
• 41. The Gospel Comes With a House Key – Rosaria Butterfield
• 42. Beowulf
• 43. From Plato to Christ – Lois Markos
• 44. Moby Dick – Herman Melvill
• 45. Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work – Eugene Peterson

I started this blog. 16 years ago. My wife and I had a one-two-year-old and another boy on the way. I started this blog to help change, encourage, and shape kids ministry culture. It was my desire to help other leaders lead better. I had been a pastor for ten years and knew more than most, I thought. You know who taught me to lead and love. My wife and my kids. The more I look back, the more I realize the most subversive thing I did wasn’t start a blog when no one had one. As I look back on how my blog evolved, I see that it was me that changed and my family that changed me.

So often in business and in the church, we want to leave a dent in the universe when we are called to do leave homes and make families. We were never called to make a dent in the universe. We were mandated not to make a name but to fill the earth. In a world where the wrath of God is most clearly evident in the strife between parents and kids, and kids and parents. Build a home that is filled with sacrificial love. That is marked by daily dying so that from your death as a parent, the fallen wheat of your life will not produce bread for a day but a field of wheat for eternity.

We live in a culture that tries to make their name known. We fear dying because we don’t want to be forgotten. But Jesus said in John 12 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. The fruit of your life will not be in the innovation you come up with, the money you leave, or the houses you have. But did you die to yourself? We have a leadership crisis on every level in every corporation and in every political party. Because no one wants to die, everyone wants to kill for position. Families do not prepare you for fame. They train you to die to yourself every day.

I grew up in the 80s, and the pastors in our circles said, “Take care of the church, and God will take care of your family.” I saw what that did to a generation of pastor’s kids and so many kids in the church as a result. Do not care for the church at the expense of your kids. Pastors be home for dinner. Treat your kids’ math problems they are having as important as someone in the churches marriage problem. Value your family and make sure they know they are loved and valued. Make your home a little church. Pastor your kids and the church.

The reason why Paul tells Timothy and Titus to look at the families of leaders is not because they are looking for perfection. They are looking for what the fruit of the life of the leader produces in the people in closest proximity. You reproduce who you are, not who you tell people you are. Your kids are the evidence of your faithfulness and your Christ-likeness. Not because their salvation depends on you but because their understanding of what self-sacrificial love looks like depends on you.

If you are young and married do not save money to have kids. You don’t make enough money and you will never have kids. Don’t wait to see the world. Don’t wait to buy a house. Start a family. You will never be ready. If you want to make a difference in the world. Start a family.

What does subversive parenting look like:
1. Ask your spouse how you can serve them today.
2. Tell your kids no.
3. Train your kids to pray in difficulty
4. Bring your kids to funerals
5. Read the Bible out loud to your kids.
6. Kiss your spouse in the kitchen with your kids walking by.
7. Find a church that expects your kids to be sinners, not perfect.
8. Find a church that confronts your kids in love.
9. Apologize to your kids when you have wronged them.
10. Train your kids to resolve conflict in a godly way.
11. Pick your kids friends for them when they are young.
12. When your kids walk into a room, put down your phone.
13. Eat dinner together.
14. Listen to your kids even when they are small.
15. Ask your kids questions.
16. Force your kids to read good books.
17. Encourage your kids to get married early.
18. Let your kids see that death is nothing to fear.
19. Tell your kids you are proud of them every day.
20. Tell your kids there are consequences for bad behavior, but you will never stop loving them.

Young people, school is important. I have three degrees, but families matter more. Have kids have lots of kids. Have so many kids that strangers count them as you walk by. Have so many kids people stop being excited for you and start saying Wow. Fill the earth. Raise a family. Proclaim the gospel to them in your words and in your sacrificial love for them daily. Die and be forgotten. There is nothing to fear and everything to gain.

We tend  “to romanticize the past, to see previous eras as magically halcyon and idyllic, and of no era would this be truer than the eighteenth century in Britain. Visions of powdered wigs and liveried coachmen dance in our heads. If forced to think of something negative about that time, we might come up with the charming anachronisms of chamber pots and wooden teeth. Perhaps someone will bring up the absence of anesthetics. But if the subject of slavery comes up, we will probably think of it as a grotesque aberration, as a single monstrous evil without much connection to an otherwise genteel and civilized society. That would be a gross mistake. Entirely surprising to most of us, life in eighteenth-century Britain was particularly brutal, decadent, violent, and vulgar. Slavery was only the worst of a host of societal evils that included epidemic alcoholism, child prostitution, child labor, frequent public executions for petty crimes, public dissections and burnings of executed criminals, and unspeakable public cruelty to animals. Of the many societal problems Wilberforce might have thought needed his attention, slavery would have been the least visible of all, and by a wide margin. In fact, the answer to how Britain could have allowed something as brutal as West Indian slavery to exist, and for so long, has much to do with its invisibility.” 

Eric Metaxas

What Wilberforce was facing was far worse than what we are facing today. As wicked as the slave trade was and is, to think that the sheer volume of cultural evils taking place made the slave trade invisible is staggering. What changed as a result of Wilberforce’s historic political career? Wilberforce lived a life of humble faithfulness that led to transformation; personal revival led to national and global transformation. 

We believe that Revival happens as a result of extraordinary miracles rather than the intensification of the ordinary operations of the Holy Spirit.

In Acts 18 and 19 we see ordinary people sharing extraordinary truth in an ordinary way, and as a result, God does extraordinary things. 

Revival in Acts 18 and 19 starts from Ordinary means 

1. Ordinary means of faithfulness 

We see in this passage a move of the spirit that led to the conversation of thousands, the birth of the church in Asia, and the saturation of the gospel throughout the entire region. How did this take place? By the ordinary means of faithfulness. The faithfulness of Paul and the Faithfulness of Apollo. 

Apollo was a gifted communicator. He was a passionate orator “²⁵ He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John.”

Apollo was faithful to what he knew. He preached accurately but not fully. He was faithful to the message he had been given. 

The first ten years of my pastoral ministry I have deep regret over the foolish things I focused on at the expanse of the beauty of Christ. I spent more time condemning Pokemon and Harry Potter than I did preaching the beauty of God in the person of Christ. Charles Spurgeon says you should keep your sermons long enough to weep over them. This I can tell you I have done.

What is remarkable to me was that in my faithful and sometimes ignorant mistakes, God was even more faithful to his word. Women who I taught as a kid reached out to me a year ago and told me how our church had been a refuge to her as a kid and she always remembered what she learned. That was not because of my powerful teaching but because of my simple faithfulness to teaching God’s powerful word.

The way the devil attacks our faithfulness is to get us to believe that we don’t know enough [pride] or fear that we will say the wrong thing [pride again]. 

Faithfulness is taking what you have been given in your faith through the ordinary reading of scripture. What you have been given in your faithful ordinary sitting under the word like you are today. Take that two loves and three fish and give it to Jesus. Preach the gospel with your life, preach the gospel with your mouth, and through the ordinariness of your faithfulness to your work, your family, and your God. 

What we often miss about Jesus is how ordinary his life was in so many ways. His years of faithful care for his family and faithful work as a carpenter. At Jesus’ baptism, God the Father said this is my son in whom I am well pleased. He had yet to do anything miraculous. What pleased God was who Jesus was. What pleased God was the perfect life of radical faithfulness to his heavenly father. 

We think revival is the by-product of the sensational and miss the essence of the ordinary nature of what it means to be faithful. 

2. Ordinary means of humility 

The next thing we see in Acts 18 is the humility of Apollo and the twelve. He was preaching with fever, but what he was saying was incomplete because he only knew of John’s baptism and not the promise of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection – ²⁶ He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

To sit and hear that what you are saying is incomplete can be hard to hear. It requires great humility to admit you don’t know everything. It takes great humility for you to stop speaking, sit, listen, and learn that you might be more accurate in your teaching. For this to happen well, we need pastors and leaders who approach others with humility. We need pastors and leaders who can humbly learn from those they teach. Our approach must be marked by the same humility our faith was born in.

So many people in Jesus day missed the promise of a Messiah because they were looking for a warrior king. God in his wisdom and kindness modeled humility for us not only by taking on flesh but also by coming as a baby.

The greatest Revolution that has ever taken place was a revelation of radically ordinary faithfulness that looks like humility. 

3. Ordinary means of daily discipleship

In this passage, we see individual, group, and corporate discipleship. 

Individual discipleship – Apollos, a gifted communicator who taught true things about Jesus, didn’t understand fully what Jesus had come to do. Was invited by Pricilla and Aquilla to their home, where they explained the way of God to him more accurately, resulted in Apollo’s passionate communication being filled with greater clarity and truth  ²⁸ for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus. 

Group discipleship – Paul comes to Ephesus and finds a group of self-professed disciples. Who knew nothing of the Holy Spirit of the work of Christ? Ephesian 

The disciples whom Paul met in Ephesus had received John’s baptism but did not understand the purpose of John’s mission. They needed to grasp where Jesus fitted into the picture, to be baptized in his name, and to receive the promised Holy Spirit.

David Peterson

We see a beautiful picture of how group discipleship works. Paul asked questions about the nature of their beliefs and then pointed them to the truth that required humble obedience. The group responded with faith-filled humility due to the ordinary means of discipleship.

The focus on the baptism of water and the work of the spirit in the believer’s life are interconnected. John’s baptism was a baptism in anticipation of the Baptism of Jesus by the Spirit. 

Through the ordinary element of water in this ordinary act of obedience and faith, we are reminded of the extraordinary work of the spirit to make us more like Christ. The 12 disciples Paul met in Ephesus were taught by Paul the truths and realities to which Baptism points. 

Corporate discipleship – By the power of the spirit, Paul and his disciples preached and proclaimed in the Synagogue and in rental space at a local philosophical hall of learning. This is public discipleship that was so effective that Luke tells us everyone in Asia heard that Jesus was the Christ. What a turnaround. An area so lacking in Biblical understanding that two years before, they only knew of the baptism of John. When Paul left, everyone had heard of the person and work of Christ. That is a revival of discipleship.

In this instance, Revival didn’t occur in a tent meeting. It took place in homes and places of worship through the ordinary means of discipleship. God, by his Spirit, did extraordinary things.

4. The Ordinary means of the Spirit’s work in our lives. 

Finally, we see the ordinary work of the spirit to save those who didn’t believe and those who falsely believed themselves to be disciples. 

R. Kent Hughes points to this in a story he tells of the great reformer John Wesley. 

John Wesley didn’t have much success in his early travels to America but all was lost, however, because in his earlier travels to America, he had encountered some Moravians whose living faith deeply impressed him. So upon his return to London he sought out one of the leaders and, to use Wesley’s words, was “clearly convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are saved.” On the evening of May 24, 1738, Wesley wrote in his journal:

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

John Wesley’s “warming” was the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Amazingly, until Aldersgate, John Wesley, a man who knew more theology and was more dedicated than most believers, did not know Christ or the saving power of the Holy Spirit. He was in the church but was condemned!

R Kent Hughes

We see in Acts heat and light, truth and power, spirit and word.

Revival in Asia was not primarily the result of miraculous signs and wonders it was the result of humble obedience and the ordinariness of daily discipleship.  

The beautiful thing the Holy Spirit does for us is he seals us. Paul asked those Ephesian disciples by what means did they belong to Christ. As John’s Disciples they identified with the messenger, John, not the message he proclaimed. That he was a voice crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord, we do this all the time. So often, we identify with the gifts and not the giver. It is far to easy to find our identity in what we have done, our job, and the kids we are raising. Rather than waking each ordinary day and remembering that the ordinary way we were submerged in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit where we, in an extraordinary way, belong to God. 

Our identity is not in what we know or who we know but in whose we are. We are not our own but we belong to God.

There is something that is so profound that when we start our day, “Remembering that we are forgiven for all that has come before and that there will be enough grace for all that lies ahead.” Martin Marty. 

“As Christians, we wake each morning as those who are baptized. We are united with Christ and the approval of the Father is spoken over us. We are marked from our first waking moment by an identity that is given to us by grace: an identity that is deeper and more real than any other identity we will don that day.”

Tish Harrison Warren 

The thirty years of Christ’s extraordinary ordinary life remind us that faithfulness matters, that humility trumps sensation, and that oftentimes revival is the result of God doing his best work in the ordinariness of our daily lives of humble faithfulness. 

Alfred Hitchcock said movies are “Life with the dull parts cut out.” That is what we think revival is. Christianity with the dull parts cut out. 

If Christ spent time in obscurity, then there is infinite worth in obscurity. 

Annie Dillard says that “how we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives.”

Let us spend our days in the ordinary faithful, humble pursuit of an all-powerful God and daily discipline those individuals, groups, and crowds God brings along our path so that His name by the power of His Spirit may cover the earth with His glory like the water covers the sea.