This is Church

A couple weeks ago, we at New Life Church wrapped up our Leadership Training program for the summer of 2010. I was so invested in the day-to-day life transformation, that I felt no great desire to take chunks of time away from it to blog. We had open mic testimonies at our closing ceremonies, and after 2 hours, had to cut off many of the additional students who wanted to share about what God had done that summer. It’s been an absolutely wild ride, and God is clearly raising up a new generation of leaders and world-changers at the University of Michigan.

And as I make plans for the fall semester, I still feel a great desire to be off the computer and in the trenches. So, rather than write extensively of all that God did this summer, I thought I’d show you a taste in video form from our weeklong LT kickoff retreat at Spring Arbor University:

There are certain things I deeply believe to be true about the world. One is that God created human beings with a perfect knowledge of what He was making. Nothing about us surprises Him; He knows what makes us elated, devastated, irate and terrified ["joy", "sadness", "anger" and "fear" are often dubbed "the four core emotions", I believe that the first three of them are elements of God's Image in us (Genesis 1:27), but that fear is a result of the Fall of Man (Genesis 3:10)]. God is not surprised by our reactions to life’s circumstances, for he knows our very inner knitting (because it started with His very inner knitting, and only later became corrupted); He has the comprehensive blueprint of our souls, if you will. (Psalm 139:1-16).

And His depth of understanding is way beyond what you or I think we might know about ourselves, or even what your most intimate friends or relatives know about your quirks, habits and peculiarities. He knows them better. He actually endowed you with them and it gave Him great pleasure to behold the unique “you” (Ephesians 2:10).

And just as physicians are required to study the human anatomy exhaustively before they are licensed to procure remedies for its ailments, so it is with soul work. We are only qualified to distribute applicable wisdom or healing care for the human soul to the extent that we know its landscape (as the Holy Spirit reveals to us). And in this trade, no one belongs in the same league as the Master Craftsman of us all. God knows perfectly what will bring you fullness of life, because he perfectly knows you. And this is why we can say that God’s commands are good (Nehemiah 9:13), or even more specifically, they are for our good (Deuteronomy 10:12-13, Matthew 19:17) and bring us freedom rather than constraint (Psalm 119:32, Psalm 119:45).

So if we believe that God actually longs for our healing and wholeness (John 10:10), and knows perfectly what affirmations will bring it to us, it begs the question:

What kinds of things does he say to us?

If we can answer this question, I think we will similarly be able to bring healing to those around us if we can just learn to imitate him (Ephesians 5:1). And who doesn’t want that?

So now I’m going to let the Scriptures answer the above bolded question (from the book of Mark, in case you were still confused by the title).

God the Father talks audibly to Jesus twice in the gospel of Mark. I want to look deeply into these two Father-Son interactions to help discern what the Father finds to be the most healing words in light of his perfect knowledge of his son (and the rest of us). The first of these audible interactions is found at Jesus’s baptism in Mark 1:11, where the Father says:

“You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”(NIV)

The second interaction happens on the Mountain of Transfiguration in Mark 9:7, where the Father says:

“This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” (NIV)

If you’re simple like me, you look at that and say “Hmmm. They’re kinda the same. But they’re also kinda different.” I hope to distill some actual wisdom from that simple observation.

Let’s start with their similarity: “You are my Son, whom I love.” In both instances, the Father finds it of primary importance to affirm his love for his son. It’s the first and most common thing out of his mouth here. I think that’s because an assertion of love is both the most fundamental and the most essential thing a son needs from his father. It’s worth noting that the Greek form of “love” here is agape, a form of love that goes beyond mere companionship and carries heavy connotations of self-sacrifice. I’ll call this declaration of love The First Affirmation.

But God doesn’t stop there. In the first situation, the Father goes on to add “With you I am well pleased.” I don’t know of many fathers who talk like that nowadays, so I prefer the New Living Translation (“You bring me great joy.”) and The Message (“You are the pride of my life.”) for this part. It helps me connect with and begin to hear the immense satisfaction in the Father’s voice (and see the huge smile on his face). The Father is intentional to assure Jesus that not only does He love him, but he actually LIKES him. He absolutely enjoys him and takes incredible pleasure simply in who he is. I’ll call this declaration of enjoyment The Second Affirmation.

Let’s now turn our focus to the third unique declaration, found on the Mount of Transfiguration. The last thing the Father says to Jesus in these interactions (again, following The First Affirmation), is “Listen to him!” Imagine how you’d feel if your Father saw you in a crowd of people and exclaimed at the top of his voice that they absolutely MUST listen to what you have to say. I’d feel so incredibly honored, that I’d probably assume (even in all my arrogance) that my dad is way overestimating my capabilities. Being believed in like that is a pretty uncomfortable thing. In so many words, the Father communicates once more that He is proud of his son, that He thinks he is a powerful and respectable man, worthy of the utmost honor and consideration. I’ll call this declaration of respect The Third Affirmation.

Let’s recap/rephrase the Three Central Affirmations:

1st:  “I love you.” / “I am committed to you.” / “I would lay down my life for you.”
2nd:  “I like you.” / “You bring me incredible joy.” / “You delight me.”
3rd:  “I respect you.” / “I’m proud of you.” / “You have what it takes.” / “I believe in you.”

I believe that in the two direct interactions between the Father and Jesus where we see the Father speak, we are given the three most fundamental affirmations for a healthy relationship between father and son. But I think it applies much more broadly; I believe these affirmations are the three most central affirmations for any relationship where one person (the Son role) looks to another (the Father role) to hear and know their identity. And though none of us can bestow identity (because God has already determined it), we can communicate it to one another as his ambassadors and Body. I truly believe that these simple but profound affirmations enable and encourage the “Son” to become all that he/she can be more than any others. They’re the precious few the Father chose to audibly declare to his beloved Son.

So I have some questions for you.

Where in your life do you find yourself in a “Father” role, where others are looking up to you?
Do you regularly give your “sons” these affirmations?
Do you dare to begin affirming them in this way?

Where do you find yourself in a “Son” role, where you are looking up to another person?
Have you acknowledged your desire for these affirmations?
Are you grounded and secure in them?
Do you dare to begin asking for how your “Father” sees you?

If nothing else, I think I could use to seriously examine that first set of questions by asking how much I resemble God the Father in my leadership of others, and examine the second set of questions by asking how much I’m actually hearing what God is already saying about me. Because He also calls me his Son (Romans 8:14).

I recently listened through the book of Mark on my awesome audio Bible (The Bible Experience). I think there’s something I get by listening through a whole book in one sitting that I don’t quite get when I read it piece-by-piece or even the whole way through. So the next series of posts is going to be about things I picked up as I listened through Mark that struck me in ways I hadn’t experienced before. The first is on the power and limitations of Jesus.

The Scripture makes it pretty clear that Jesus was incredibly powerful. Meditate on his own words (from Matthew 28:18):

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

The stretches of his earthly authority are incredible: He has authority over chemical phenomena (John 2:1-11), biological phenomena (Mark 5:39-42 and countless others), and physical phenomena (Mark 4:37-41, Mark 6:41-44, Mark 6:48). His disciples saw his power to perform miracles, and knew He was someone to be followed.

And his “authority in heaven” is apparent in his ability to rebuke demons and their absolute powerlessness against him (Mark 5:6-13). But I was struck by some inherent tension in a very short passage in Mark’s gospel. Take a close look at Mark 1:40-45 and see if you find anything strange there. A man comes to Jesus and wants to be healed. Jesus has compassion on him, desires to heal him, and so he needs only to say “Be clean!” and the leprosy leaves the man immediately.

That’s power.

But here’s what I found a bit odd: Jesus doesn’t want the guy to go and tell people about what he’s experienced, so he tells him not to tell anyone, but the guy does it anyway. If it’s still unclear to you what I found strange, let me state it plainly:

Apparently leprosy has to obey Jesus, but people don’t.

Apparently Jesus’s “all authority in heaven and on earth” doesn’t include Jedi mindtricks to keep people from sharing information. It’s clear that Jesus doesn’t want the man to tell others, but he can’t force him not to. When I read the passage, I was just struck by the immediacy with which I was shown Jesus’ incredible power over disease starkly contrasted with his lack of power to control a human being. Now, I realize that pretty much anyone gets into trouble when they begin sentences with “Jesus can’t…” and I’ve read plenty of the philosophical papers on things that the Trinity can’t do because it would contradict their character, but I’m not so interested in all that. Whether this situation of a man disobeying Jesus’s desires is more a matter of “Jesus can’t” or “Jesus doesn’t” isn’t particularly important to me.

What is important to me is how God sees me, and what that means for who I am to be in this world. Like I mentioned earlier, Jesus has all authority in heaven, and passages like Mark 5:6-13 speak a similar truth to the one outlined above:

Apparently demons have to obey Jesus, but people don’t.

Jesus exercises authority over demons (heavenly beings), making them do things they don’t want to do, but there isn’t a single biblical story I can think of where God does the same to a human being, who are his unique image-bearers. It seems that he honors our desires and wills immensely, to the point where he would never exercise his earthly and heavenly authority to make us violate our will, even if it violates his. This is why we can even claim we have choice. God is sovereign; I believe he knows the future perfectly, and yet he allows us to do things that He doesn’t like, which is why Jesus can pray in Matthew 6:10 that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven (meaning that it isn’t already).

Unlike some, I don’t believe God is evil for allowing us to disobey Him, as this healed man did in Mark’s gospel. To disallow it would mean we would no longer be creatures in His image; we would be like demons or like leprosy, under his control, coerced for his glory.

But He does not coerce us, because it would not bring Him glory.

We bring Him glory as we bear His image to this world, making choices freely to incarnate His essence, creating goodness and spreading love. This is something a choiceless being cannot reveal to the world about God. A choiceless being cannot create good as God does (in fact, he cannot create anything), and we know that creating good was God’s first (and in some ways, trademark) act (Genesis 1:3-4).

So live your life knowing that God honors you. He honors your ability to choose between Him and darkness. And He does it in the hopes that you might choose Him, and thus fulfill your purpose in life to make his character known to this world, bringing it back into reconciled relationship with Him. May your goal be that the world witnesses a God who creates goodness out of darkness by the way you do the same thing here on this earth.

Like a lot of churches, we enjoy making funny videos that may or may not illustrate some deep spiritual truth to our congregation. The latest installment from the creative masterminds at New Life Church is probably the best Hillsong United-themed broadway musical there ever was. Ok, maybe not the best ever, but if you know of a better one, I’d seriously love to see it. If there’s a part you don’t think is that funny, just trust that it’s an NLC inside joke, because they’re all over the place. Without further ado:

For those of you who find yourself quite drawn to the practicals of life, I apologize for the rather abstract nature of the last three posts (kind of). I wanted to set a biblical foundation for a system of accountability among friends that is based on encouraging daily walking by the Spirit over trying really hard (in the flesh) not to sin. But I kind of left you hanging regarding what that could look like in everyday life. I hope there’s a healthy sense of “So how the heck does someone even do that?!?!” growing in you as a result. Because let’s be honest, it’s way easier to just yell “Stop It!” than it is to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in encouraging righteous living in others that actually perseveres.

Well, today’s your lucky day, because I’m going to share practicals! They are by no means the best practicals, or even necessarily excellent ones. They’re just what I’ve tried and seen God use for His glory. But they’ll have to wait for the end, because there are still a couple things I want to say first.

A grave reality of the spiritual war we find ourselves in is that no attempt to communicate God’s truth to someone about their behavior is exempt from Satan’s attack. He has been leveraging God’s word for evil by twisting truths into lies since the dawn of man (Genesis 3:1, Matthew 4:5-7), and he seems to be pretty relentless in his methods (1 Peter 5:8, Revelation 12:10). Thus, in your accountability meetings, a well-intentioned reminder of “God calls us to live in purity, but you’re being lustful” unknowingly turns into “You’re a pervert, you’ll never change, and I see you as dirty and godless” somewhere between your mouth and their brain. And if we’re to be the Body of Christ, then we’re called to be the ones interceding on behalf of the saints against Satan’s lies and accusations (Romans 8:33-34), not aiding their propagation.

So ultimately, the problem with “You’re doing this all wrong!” approaches to personal accountability is not that “You’re doing this all wrong!” is untrue. The problem is that, when you tell someone that, they very rarely just hear something about their behavior. When someone says that to my friends and me, we actually tend to hear something about our identity. So, while you might have the purest intentions to motivate righteous living by screaming “Stop it!” at your friends in accountability group, you may actually find yourself playing the role of Accuser rather than Advocate. And if you recall from Part I, accusation is a weapon found in Satan’s arsenal, not God’s.

But I’m not going to be naive here. If you’re like me, you have moments of weakness where you actually want to accuse someone under the guise of reproof or accountability. Regarding that situation, you get a freebie from me:

Don’t reprove a brother or sister when you’re feeling hurt by them or angry toward them.

If you’re not in a place where you’re demonstrating fruits of the Spirit and have genuine love for your brother or sister, do both of you a favor and keep your mouth shut until you can speak God’s words to them about their sin rather than some horrid sequence of blame and accusation. Because when you’re under the influence of lies in a certain situation, those lies will come out. And like I said, you’ll find yourself in the Accuser role rather than the Advocate role.

The ultimate goal here is to spur one another on toward love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24), so that we might be a beautiful picture of Christ in the world, bringing God great glory. The Greek paroxysmos (“to spur”) in this verse in Hebrews actually implies that the process of doing this hurts or irritates to some extent (as a spur does). So it’s clearly biblical that we should avoid accountability methods that are overly soft and insincere (Romans 12:9, Ephesians 4:25), which gives Satan the opportunity to convince our brothers and sisters that their sin is without consequences or unimportant to God. But we must be just as vigilant about avoiding overly harsh methods (Galatians 6:1) that give Satan the equally devious opportunity of further accusing our brothers and sisters that they are irredeemable, unlovable, and hopelessly lost.

So how can we actually do this?

How can we hold others accountable in a way that, to the best of our ability, communicates the gravity of sin and the need for repentance, but also makes a serious attempt to filter out the lies and accusations that can accompany these truths? How can we simultaneously communicate the truth about their unrighteous behavior and call them to a more righteous standard of living while affirming their righteous identity in Christ?

I think the Bible might have some examples:

1 Peter 1:14-16 — Peter reminds us that we are God’s children before he calls us to be holy as God is holy.

Revelation 2-3 — On numerous occasions, the Spirit assures the churches that he sees and knows them intimately at the beginning of the letter, and often offers praise before reproof.

Romans 6 — Paul bases his entire plea to abstain from sin upon the freedman status of all believers.

1 Corinthians 1 — Paul begins perhaps the harshest letter in Scripture with an encouragement and reminder that they have every spiritual gift that they need, and that God will make them strong.

I could go on. Now, nowhere in Scripture is it commanded that you offer someone affirmation, praise, or encouragement before reproof. It is, however, commanded that you love one another, and be sensitive to weaknesses in the consciences of your brothers and sisters (John 13:34, 1 Corinthians 8:9-13, Mark 9:42). Scripture also teaches that a wise person makes knowledge appealing to others (Proverbs 15:2), and that the ideal outcome for reproof is not guilt, but repentance (2 Corinthians 7:8-11). So none of the following practicals are in any way commands from Scripture, but I do believe they can be wise and help you obey the commands in Scripture. And they’ve undoubtedly produced fruit in my own life and ministry. So, without further ado…

Mikey’s Ideas for Successful Accountability Times

1) Affirm their identity in Christ and their identity to you.
Quick disclaimer: if you’re struggling to see them as God does, then scratch that second part and just tell them what the Bible says about their identity. But my hope is that when your friend sins, you don’t see them as a hopeless, irredeemable wretch forever bound to a lifestyle of sin that is the overflow of their eternally soiled identity. That’s what Satan wants you to believe. Instead, give them Scripture that reminds them that they are not condemned (Romans 8:1), but are new creations (Ephesians 2:10, 2 Corinthians 5:17), freedmen (Romans 6:6-7), victors (Romans 8:37-39), beloved children (John 1:12, Ephesians 1:5), co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17),  the light of the world (Matthew 5:14), and perfectly righteous in God’s sight (Ephesians 1:4, Colossians 1:22). Then remind them that this is not just something intangible written about them thousands of years ago, but that this is how you see them also (as the Holy Spirit has allowed you). I think that helps to make it a little more believable. This is not a surefire way to guard against identity accusations of the enemy, but it can sure help (see Ephesians 6:11-17 for the role of God’s word in spiritual warfare).

2) Honestly evaluate their current behavior
Now that we’ve done what we can to destroy the lies and accusations in which Satan trusts (Proverbs 21:22, Luke 11:22), we hopefully have a good opportunity to speak earnestly with our brother or sister about their lifestyle, and pray that the Holy Spirit uses the truth to convict their hearts. I usually use this opportunity to call out the false identity that Satan would have them believe. You might affirm them this way: “Look friend, I see and know that you’re a victor in Christ, but your lifestyle has been more of that of a victim. You’ve been allowing circumstances and the opinion of man to determine how you see yourself and how you respond to others. As a result, you’ve been irritable, angry, and insecure when I know that’s not who you are.” Give them time and space to honestly evaluate their current lifestyle in light of Scripture.

3) Encourage living out of their true identity
The Bible is littered with examples of encouragement (Colossians 4:8) and commands to do likewise (1 Thessalonians 5:11). You have the priceless opportunity here to actually add strength, courage and comfort to your brothers and sisters by telling them you believe in them. You believe that they have power to put off the old self which is being corrupted, and to live out of their new self, which is godly (Ephesians 4:22-24). You believe that victory is already theirs, and that they only need to lay hold of it. I can’t tell you how powerful it’s been for my life to know that my brothers believe in me; it truly helps me believe that God could see me likewise.

Well, I hope those help to give you a vision of what accountability time could look like. For years I played the game of dreading accountability time, because I knew I would feel like crap as all my sin would come out into the light and I would be told how wrong it is. But I think we should actually all rejoice at the thought of accountability time, because it gives us the opportunity to grow in godliness and receive encouragement. May we always be growing into a Church that loves discipline (Proverbs 12:1) and encourages one another daily (Hebrews 3:13).

As you know (from Part I), I can struggle to feel responsible for “fixing myself” as it relates to my sin. I spent most of Part II trying to convince you and me that God has a much better path to righteousness that involves a lot less exasperation and a lot more dependence. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for the wicked thinking that they could somehow cleanse themselves of sin apart from God’s constant intervention and regenerating work. And I think that any model of accountability founded on the power of white-knuckle abstinence from sin makes the Pharisees’ same fundamental error.

I’d be willing to bet that even the worst of pornography addicts could choose to keep away from their obsession for a month if motivated by a billion dollar prize. But is he/she any less addicted after the month is over?

Of course not.

Something more intoxicating has temporarily taken the place of the addiction, but when the month ends and the prize is won, the addict binges on what was fasted from. Thus, we lead our brothers and sisters down a dangerous path by only giving them lifeless rules and rituals to abstain from sin without working with them to consistently renew their minds with truth (Romans 12:2) and walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, which is the only way to conquer the power of the sinful nature (Galatians 5:16).

It’s the worst of sins to lead our brothers and sisters into the idolatry of the will that says all we need to do to get past our addictions is “Stop It!” Jesus seemed to respond pretty strongly to the Pharisees when he saw this attitude of theirs, anyway. We need a strong man to guard the house of our hearts, or else we’re defenseless. White-knuckle abstinence is a cheap illusion of safety from spiritual illness; we can look clean, but if we have not replaced our desires for idols with an equally fervent desire for God, the roar within our souls that longs for satiation remains (Colossians 2:20-23). Experts on the psychology of addiction agree that a person can stay away from something for years and still be addicted to it.

That’s what happened to me. In high school, I became excellent at staying away from internet pornography and masturbation (over a year at a time, people!), but my freshman year of college, whenever I found myself in the dorm room of a girl who wanted physical intimacy with me, I was utterly hopeless. I couldn’t control myself, and I had no idea why. All along I thought I had conquered this sin called Lust by keeping my thoughts and computer screen clean by my consistent self-sufficient effort, but in the right situation, my “clean house” was shown for what it was: an empty building with no one to guard it from spiritual attack. I kept the Spirit from dwelling in that part of my heart by my Pharisaical dependence on fleshly obedience, and so it was only a matter of time before I was overcome.

This led to a massive internal confusion in my life. On the one hand, I was so good at “staying pure” throughout the day; I was the master of my thought life, or so it felt. But I couldn’t tell you why a real flesh-and-blood person in front of me, offering me physical affirmation, made me feel much more like a victim of flesh and circumstances than master of my domain. Was I addicted, or wasn’t I? Did I need this or not? I determined that there was just no way to have victory over these fleshly impulses; no matter how hard I tried, I was never “better”, even after years of effort. And here’s the kicker:

I was half right.

Years of effort weren’t going to fix me, but ultimate victory was mine.

I just needed to understand how.

What the summer of 2006 actually did for me was to help me identify lies in my life that Satan was using (“the armor in which the strong man trusted”) to tell me that I needed a female’s physical attention to prove myself attractive, desirable, and masculine. I needed to know that God calls me his masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10), and that no worldly attention can convince me of what is only true in Christ (which I had been learning the hard way for a year, but was slow to acknowledge it). I needed to see that events in my past that Satan leveraged to plant and reinforce his constant lie of “You aren’t desirable” were not determinants of my identity. The Word of God determines my identity. And then I needed to genuinely trust what He says, and walk according to it. And what do you know, He actually proved it to me.

So how, then, can we hold our brothers and sisters accountable in a way that doesn’t encourage dependence on the flesh, but on the Spirit of God? How do we help others identify crippling lies of Satan that were planted long ago and reinforced over years, to the point where they were wooed so subtly into slavery that they can no longer recognize their chains? That, my friends, will just have to wait until the next post…

But for now, you can listen to Dallas Willard talk about these same ideas much more intelligently:

Jesus and the Moneychangers

In Part I of this series, I wanted to lay a groundwork for why I feel the need to even talk on the topic of “accountability time”. I have a history of accountability-time-gone-bad in my own life, and it set me on a course to figure out why Christians do this sort of thing, and if it can be done in a way that brings more glory to God than to human willpower. Before moving on, though, I want to apologize for something I didn’t make clear in the last post.

When I’m using the word “accountability” in these posts, I’m using the word in a very specific sense in which it’s come to be used in Christian verbiage. I am not talking about accountability as a structure in leadership or a posture of life (which are unquestionably biblical in my mind), but rather as a specific meeting between believers where lifestyle patterns (particularly the sinful kind) are being discussed.

That being said, I don’t think you’ll find an explicit passage of Scripture that outlines how the Church ought to “do accountability” in this kind of meeting sense. It’s thus worth asking if and why it’s a good thing, and even more, how we can make it the best thing. Despite my troubled history with “accountability time”, I’ve come to believe it can be a really great thing. And though the Bible doesn’t explicitly use the word or prescribe a specific practice for it, I think it it’s loud and clear on how it can be done well.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on Matthew 12:29-35 and Luke 11:21-26 through the lens of what it means for how I ought to deal with my sin (and others’ as well…hence the connection to accountability). I recommend reading them right now if you want the rest of this post to make any sense. In these passages, Jesus gets done telling the Pharisees that it’s silly that they would think he uses the power of Satan to drive out demons, and then he starts talking about a strong man and a house.

Disclaimer: I’m about to interpret Scripture. I’m no Bible scholar, but I do have the Spirit of God living in me, and sometimes He reveals true things to me. So there’s a chance that the following has a grain of truth.

Jesus says that if someone is going to take over a strong man’s house, he needs to be stronger than him and tie him up first (verse 29 in Matthew, 21-22 in Luke). Then you can rob his house and take away all of things he trusted in to keep his house safely under his control. It seems to me that the strong man in the parable is Satan (or one of his demons) and that the stronger man is Jesus. Jesus has power to bind the work of Satan and then dispose of all the things he used to keep your heart, thoughts, and will captive (those tend to be things like lies, accusations, and temptations… see John 8:44, Revelation 12:10, and Matthew 4:3). That’s really good news, but then the teaching gets even more interesting.

Basic Outline: In Luke’s gospel, the next teaching (verses 24-26) is about how an evil spirit, once it leaves a person, will come back to find this person (in this metaphor, the house that was previously occupied by the strong man) nicely swept clean. The strong man and all his armor are gone, but nobody has taken his place. It’s nice and clean, but most of all, empty. Simply awaiting a visit by the evil spirit who will take more evil spirits (“strong men”) with it, and then the person’s condition will be even worse before because he/she is ruled by even more evil spirits. This is a bit scary.
In Matthew’s gospel, the next teaching verses 31-32)  is about how God will forgive all blasphemy against Jesus, but not this kind of blasphemy the Pharisees are leveling, which attributes the work of the Holy Spirit to demons. Then he quickly shifts (verses 33-35) to teaching about how if you make a tree good, then all of its fruit will be good, but if the tree is bad, then all of its fruit will necessarily be bad also.

It’s a good question to ask, “What does the blasphemy against the Spirit have to do with trees and fruit? And are these in any way related to the teaching about the clean house that occurs in the same place in Luke’s gospel?” I’m not going to pose a “right” answer to these questions, but I hope to shed some light on what the thread of these passages might be.

I think the first thing to keep in mind is that Jesus is telling a parable to Pharisees. Generally, he did this kind of thing to creatively illustrate to them that they had entirely abandoned the God of the Scripture to serve an abominable idol named Religion. And even worse, they were in total denial about it. They appeared righteous and clean on the outside, but inwardly, they were God’s fiercest opponents (Matthew 23:23-28). I don’t think these stories are any different.

I think Jesus is calling out their inward wickedness here.

He tells them that many (in their ignorance) will speak blasphemy against Jesus, but they will be forgiven. Remember, God is merciful toward ignorance, even the hateful kind (1 Timothy 1:13-14). But the Pharisees commit a far greater sin, one that has its origins in a hopelessly stubborn refusal to acknowledge the work of God. By this they conclusively show that they do not know God, nor do they want to. There is no forgiveness for the person who, despite a world of evidence before them, never yields their heart to the Holy Spirit.

And Jesus goes further. He says that an evil spirit (call it Lust, Malice, Greed, etc.) can leave someone and come back. How does this happen, according to the story? Every strong man (evil power) can be conquered by an even stronger man (Jesus).  When an evil spirit is driven away from someone, it wanders for a while, and then returns. It re-invades with many more demons along with it because it “finds the house swept clean and put in order”.

The nagging question in your mind ought to be where is the stronger man?! I mean, if the powers of evil are weaker than those of good (1 John 4:4, Revelation 20:7-10), then the demon can bring with it however many more demons it wants; if the house is occupied by the Holy Spirit, they don’t have a chance. But they go in because the house is empty. Perhaps Lust left, but it was not replaced by the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit does not enter and take up residence, the person-house remains empty and waiting to be conquered by a crowd worse than the one that left.

This was the fundamental error of the Pharisees. Though they seemed to expel all kinds of evil from themselves (by living in strict adherence to the Law of Moses), they did not fill themselves with God, and thus were prone to the greatest of evils (what Jesus calls “neglecting the more important matters” in Matthew 23:23). They gave a tenth of their income (expelling a single demon of greed), yet remained without the Holy Spirit, and so succumbed to the far greater evil of systemically robbing the poor by allowing moneychangers to charge unfairly for temple sacrifices in the Gentile courts (influenced by seven demons of greed).

Jesus’ response is violent (Matthew 21:12-13).

And I think Jesus is equally zealous for our personal holiness. He longs for us not to simply expel isolated sinful actions, but be regenerated. Enter the teaching on the tree and the fruit (verse 33 in Matthew). We cannot make the tree good by making the fruit good. Rather, we make the fruit good by making the tree good. In simple terms, cleaning up our actions will not increase our right standing with God. He’s calling for us to allow the Stronger Man to take up residence in our hearts; a far higher calling than merely cleaning up the outside. In my next post, I’ll share what I think this means for our church accountability practices.

I confess that “accountability” has been a bit of a taboo word for me until recently. Months ago,  if you caught me on the right day, you could tell me that you were were going to have an accountability time with your small group, and I would have had an internal response that sounded something like:

“Oh please. The word ‘accountability’ isn’t even in the Bible! Repent of your dead religious practices right now and live by the Spirit, lest you fall under the same judgment as the Pharisees.”

Ungracious and quick to pass judgment.

That’s how I get when I’m not walking in the Spirit and people touch on my unhealed wounds.

Clearly that wasn’t the Holy Spirit talking, but there’s always a kernel of truth beneath our wounded responses. We respond to something evil that has hurt us. Generally we give it the wrong name, blame someone who isn’t responsible for the evil, and respond in a way that doesn’t actually help anything, but we respond to evil nonetheless. As you can probably see, I’ve encountered an evil and have mistakenly called it “accountability”. First, let me start by telling you about the soapbox I stand on when the wound gets touched.

Like I said, I tend to lash out at people by telling them that “accountability” isn’t even biblical. Although I’m sure plenty of Christians can give you Bible verses for why they “do accountability” (which will mean something different for each person using the term), I still haven’t found a clear biblical precedent for using that particular language. I also have yet to find in the New Testament any kind of system where certain saints distribute consequences (beyond the natural ones) to others for sins that do not divide the church.

If you know of a passage in Scripture that suggests or commands this, I’d really love to learn more about it. I just haven’t found it yet. I legitimately think this deserves discussion in the Church, but like I said earlier, since there is pain behind this issue for me, I can leverage these points as weapons rather than something that brings greater understanding and healing to the Body of Christ. I hope to do the latter in this series of posts.

Now to let you in on the stories behind the wounds. You see, I was involved in a ministry for some time where “accountability time” meant a few things. First, we confessed to our brothers (or sisters if you were a girl) whether we had sinned that week in particular areas we wanted to be honest about with each other. That’s the part that you can find in the Bible (James 5:16). But then we did some things you won’t find in the Bible, like either adding to our tally of weeks of victory (if we didn’t sin), or taking our tally count back down to zero and receiving optional “floggings” from the other men (a practice meant to symbolize consequences of our actions and motivate our righteous behavior for the next week). And that was pretty much it. Every week.

I’m not here to condemn that way of doing things. Just because something isn’t in the Bible doesn’t make it wrong, and I’m not trying to suggest that what we did was inherently “bad”. I’m eternally grateful for that ministry and thankful for all the truth I first learned through those groups. I learned that many men struggle with the same things I do. I learned that self-control is a really important thing in our Christian walk, and that with victory over sin patterns comes freedom. I learned that it’s a very good thing to have other men in your life who are committed to your daily walk with God.

But somewhere along the line, I also began to believe that the goal of the Christian life was to love God, love others, and then try really really hard not to sin. The evil part wasn’t necessarily in what we were doing, but the lies that Satan subtly communicated to me through those times. I began to think that the only way I could have victory over certain sins was to psych myself up enough every day to stay away from them, and remind myself that if I messed up, I was going to experience physical pain on Wednesday night. I could espouse doctrine about how we are saved by grace through faith and not by works, but deep down I believed that right standing with God entirely hinged on how hard I tried at this Christianity thing.

I didn’t understand that the Holy Spirit had a great healing work to do in my heart that would begin to free me of my sin patterns by giving me a new set of desires rather than just a new set of actions.

I didn’t understand that self-control was a fruit of the Spirit and not something you do with will power alone.

I didn’t understand the immense grace God gave me every time I sinned, and how much love He felt for me in those moments.

I didn’t understand that God was way more interested in replacing the sin patterns than He was in just removing them.

I didn’t understand that the reason I had so many of these struggles was because of some key lies I had been believing about God, myself, and the world for years.

Those things had to wait until the summer of 2006. I learned some pretty important things then about what the Bible teaches about sin, grace, obedience, and righteousness, and it turned out that they were quite different than some of the things I had been believing. In this series of blog posts, I’ll try to walk through some things God has taught me about how to discern lies from truth as it relates to my own sinfulness and how to grow in righteousness and godly character.

First, I should start by acknowledging that I did, in fact, notice that it’s been two months since I last blogged. Hopefully that shouldn’t happen again for a little while, but no guarantees. In case you didn’t know, I was busy getting a job, an apartment, and a wife. I’m not going to write much about that here because I share those sorts of things in my monthly ministry updates. If you’d like to get those, please email me about it, but I’m going to try and keep this space reserved for deeper inner thoughts rather than a summary of my life’s plot line.

I’m writing this because I’ve come to some humbling realizations in the last couple of months that sound something like this:

Marriage and church leadership call for substantially more maturity than I currently have.

For now, I’m going to just focus on sharing some thoughts on the church leadership aspect, because I’m still essentially clueless when it comes to marriage. When I was a college student, New Life Church gave me incredible training in character, doctrine, and ministry skills. I went to four summer Leadership Training programs, spent countless hours with pastors and senior staff members learning how they do ministry, and spent considerable time  myself in the trenches with students in all different kinds of situations, needing to know God more.

As a result, I could tell you all sorts of things that “worked” and “didn’t work” in ministry. I’m the kind of guy who flourishes with structures and systems, and likes making them more efficient. I could tell you all the ways in which the systems of various churches were flawed and could use improvement. I could tell you how to improve your discipleship methods, your counseling, your teaching, your music, your greeting, the list goes on. But when I was told I would be leading a house church at New Life, a lot of that changed.

I mean, I knew it was coming for some time, but it’s a bit different when the moment actually hits you. All along, I was telling people in my mind how to “do church better”, but now that I was given a flock and told, “Go, lead these people” I suddenly wasn’t so full of answers. I mean, where do you even start? I could tell you where everyone else’s ideas were lacking, but now that I was given space to move forward with my own brilliant plan, I was suddenly the one who was lacking in the ministry intelligence department. I finally began coming to terms with the following reality:

Ministry is not a science, it’s an art.

I’ve even heard our lead pastor use that exact phrase before, but I really didn’t know the first thing about what he meant until now. There just isn’t a “best” way to do it; I think all the “best practices” manuals had me fooled. Someone forgot to tell me that even if I’m careful to put into practice all seven of Andy Stanley’s Practices of Effective Ministry (which is a fine book), I could still have a horrible ministry.

Perhaps there are ways to do do ministry better, but there are no magic formulas. Like art, the main ingredient in effective ministry is much more inspiration than it is ingenuity. As obvious or trite as it might sound, leading people into greater intimacy with Christ actually requires the Holy Spirit’s leading and blessing at every step of the way. If at any point you begin leading out of your own understanding, you’re actually taking people backwards (Proverbs 3:5-8, 1 Corinthians 3:18-23). And since most things our culture calls “successful” are the products of human understanding, it’s really easy to think the same can apply to church. As a result, many ministries that look effective actually aren’t, and vice versa. It’s all a part of the methods of a God who turns the patterns of this world upside-down, I guess. The last finish first, the humble are exalted, and the high-and-mighty crumble.

As I sifted endlessly through vision statements, teachings, and models for ministry, I realized that none of them could change the world. All the “best” ideas sound surprisingly empty without the Spirit’s inspiration and confirmation. We’re not here to transform people’s minds; we’re here to listen to where Christ is leading His Church and to shepherd his people in that direction. I found this realization equally freeing as it was disturbing. While it forced me to temporarily scratch my endless strategizing, I found great comfort in the fact that I don’t have to be a genius to do ministry well.  I found great comfort in Matthew 6:7-8.

Let me explain why. The pagans Jesus is referring to would enlist the help of many different gods in their prayers by listing them all out, and constantly repeating them in the hopes that they would call on the name of the god that could help them with their particular request. I found Jesus’ response to them very comforting:

“Stop trying so hard to make sure that God’s blessing is in what you’re doing. I already know what you need. Just be like a child before me, depending on me for every step you take, and I’ll make sure everything works out just right.” (my paraphrase)

That was a pretty crazy realization for me, but it brings more peace than you can imagine. How cool is it that my day-to-day success has nothing to do with how smart or capable I am, but only how much I depend on the One who is infinitely capable? I think it may just be the stress remedy the world’s been looking for.

I want to finish with a scene from Prince Caspian that’s been especially poignant for my wife and me as we take on this new position of leadership together:

[Caspian, Peter, Edmund, and Susan all kneel in front of Aslan]
Aslan: Rise, kings and queens of Narnia.
[Peter, Edmund, and Susan stand up, but Caspian stays on one knee]
Aslan: All of you.
Prince Caspian: I do not think I am ready.
Aslan: It is for that very reason, that I know you are.

Last night, New Life Church held its annual end-of-the-school-year celebration service, Overflow. We probably had about 300 in attendance (during finals!), soaking in all that God has done this school year. We danced, sang at the top of our lungs, heard story upon story of lives that have been radically transformed by the love and grace of Jesus Christ, and bid farewell to the senior class, wishing them all the greatest in their kingdom-building endeavors around the world. It’s so incredible to think of what God has done in each of those students’ lives in their 4 short years at New Life.

As I wrote about months ago, our pastors declared this school year to be “A Year of Freedom”. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen. We had an entire spring break trip to South Carolina dedicated to finding freedom through Christ from past wounds (it was one of our fastest-filling trips). In addition, our campus director, Nik Spasovski, shared last night that 875 different people had attended a New Life small group this year, and that 520 of them were regular attenders. That makes this (from a purely numbers standpoint) the most influential year on campus in New Life’s history! What an incredible thing God has done.

And he’s not just doing it at New Life, either! At this year’s Great Commission Ministries Churches conference just a week ago, New Life joined with 12 other campus churches to celebrate what God has done in college churches around the country. The statistics were so encouraging. New Life’s lead pastor, Steve Hayes, reported 15+% growth in worship service attendance, small groups, student leadership, full-time staff, and pastors. Most incredible was the 42% growth in small group attendance and 46% growth in total full-time staff nationwide.

It couldn’t be more clear to me that God is undeniably on the move on America’s college campuses. I overflow with joy at the thought of what this kind of growth in ministry involvement for college students will mean for the next 30 years of our country. I long to see transformation in the so-called “7 Mountains of Culture” (Arts & Entertainment, Business, Education, Family, Government, Media, and Religion), and tomorrow’s leaders on all 7 mountains can be found right now, concentrated in patches of just a couple square miles all over the country.

We call them college campuses.

What an opportunity! To know that Kingdom influence is growing where the campus churches are right now energizes me like few other things. I only hope that those campuses with little church influence are being prepared for workers who will go and plant churches there. Beginning in just a few weeks, I will join the workers’ ranks doing ministry full-time on campus at U of M, and I couldn’t be more excited and ready. Friends, keep praying for workers to be sent out into the fields (Luke 10:2). We have every indication that they’re just as ripe as Jesus said they were.