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Month: May 2014

A Tale of Three Moms

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 11, 2014

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So here is a tale of three moms…

First, there is a mom and grandmother whose heart of service could be rivaled by none. If anyone, especially family, were to enter her house and not feel blessed to be there, it was a rarity.

Most often, her way of service was in cooking. There was no such thing as a small meal. Even partaking in a “light” breakfast with only toast meant having the option of 3 to 4 home-made jellies and jams. There was no such thing as leaving her house hungry.

Second, there is a mom who was an example of grace. Forgiveness flowed from heart to those around her. Most often, such grace was needed for her son. Many times, her kindness and forgiveness were enough to change his course of direction.

For this mom, it was never about her for some reason. She never boasted in herself. In fact, it wasn’t until she died at an early age that her son began to hear just how much she cared for others at her job. True, she was a nurse and caring was her job, but there was something different about the way she took care of others. Most likely it was because of her grace-filled life.

Finally, there’s a mom who is filled with love. There is not a day that goes by in which she does not show love to her kids in one way or another. And there’s not a day that goes by in which she doesn’t tell them how much they are loved. Her favorite words to her children are “I love you!”

Her love has not only blessed her children, but her husband as well. Her love has made the home a place of laughter and peace. Bottom line: her love has transformed her home and is molding her children to become true servants of others.

Now this tale of three moms is not just about some random folks.  It is a tale about my grandmother, my mom, and my wife. And though there is much more that could be written, each, by the grace of God, has modeled for me a heart of service, grace, and love. And for that I am most thankful today.

Happy Mother’s Day!

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The Growth of Christianity In The First Centuries

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 10, 2014

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The growth of Christianity in the first centuries is quite staggering when looking at the numbers. Robert Wilken in his book, The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity, writes:

At the end of the first century there were fewer than ten thousand Christians in the Roman Empire. The population at the time numbered some sixty million, which meant that Christians made up 0.0017 percent.

By the year 200, the number may have increased to a little more than two-hundred thousand, under one percent (0.36).

By the year 250, however, the number had risen to more than a million, almost two percent of the population.

The most striking figure, however, comes two generations later. By the year 300 Christians made up 10 percent of the population, approximately six million.

Sociologist Rodney Stark looks a bit more closely at these numbers in his book The Rise of Christianity and wonders if such growth is possible.

He concludes that if Christianity grew at a rate of 40 percent per decade, “there would have been 7,530 Christians in the year 100, followed by 217,795 Christians in the year 200 and by 6,299,832 Christians n the year 300.”

This is an encouraging find for Stark as it is close to the growth rate of the 43 percent per decade that the Mormon church has maintained for the past 100 years.

Therefore, “the numerical goals Christianity needed to achieve are entirely in keeping with modern experience…and history allows time for the normal processes of conversion, as understood by contemporary social science, to take place.”

Now just because Stark writes that such growth “is possible” in keeping with our experience and historical understanding does not negate the miraculousness of God in growing His church. What it shows is how God works through His people in bringing about His Kingdom. And that in itself is quite miraculous!

In considering the growth of Christianity in the beginning centuries, we need to remember that the Roman Empire was very religious and had many gods. And though they were always open to new gods, they were not open to any religion that would worship only one God.

Therefore, though Jews were found throughout the Empire, the Romans did not think much of them. Why? Because they only worshipped one God and forsook all the others.

So when Jesus came, the Romans didn’t care who he was. The Jews were obviously interested because of the claims Jesus made in relation to Yahweh and the Old Testament, but the Romans had other things to worry about than what was happening in Jerusalem.  Besides, if Jerusalem were to be a problem, Rome could just destroy it and go about their business (Rome did actually destroy Jerusalem in 70 AD)

So for a small Jewish group, of whom Rome thought nothing about, to grow into something that in 300 AD would estimate to over 6 million people, is quite an interesting story.

So how did it happen?

 

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Around The Web

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 8, 2014

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Faith and Reason: Is Christianity Irrational? – Should Christians believe what is unreasonable? That’s the question here. I’m more concerned for the moment with Christians who consider the best faith blind faith in what is irrational. My question to secularists is from Pascal: “Do you love by reason?” And I would say to them what he said: “The heart has reasons the reason knows not of.”

Field Trip to a Junkyard – How can we teach our children the emptiness of materialism in a direct and memorable way? Take them to a garage sale and show them how things that people spent great amounts of money on are now sold for pennies.

Church is For Messy People – Church should be a place where messy people feel comfortable. When I say “messy people”, I don’t mean people who are willfully engaging in unrepentant sin. I mean people who are seeking to follow Jesus, but who often find themselves struggling, and falling, and failing. I’m talking about the weak, weary, and worn out.

The Problem With Seeking God’s Will – I have spent too much of my life, and my prayer life, asking for God to lead me into His “perfect will”. “God lead me”. “Guide me”. “Use me”. “Bless me”. While I know that God is a gracious, condescending God who meets us wherever we are, I sometimes wonder if God has been up there saying….

Top Ten Causes of Depression in Pastors – As Pastors and Ministers, we have had opportunities to experience the highs of ministry and being used by God to bring healing in many situations. Unfortunately, on the flip side, many pastors have difficulty fighting through the challenges of ministry. The expectation is that the pastor would never reach the depths of depression, but persevere despite all challenges.

5 Observations About Younger Southern Baptists – What about younger Southern Baptists? What does the future of the SBC look like?

Kevin Durant’s MVP Award Acceptance Speech – POWERFUL!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehlBKRqPveQ

 

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God Uses The Unlikely

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 7, 2014

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Do you have a hero of the faith? Is it Paul? David? Abraham? Ruth? Esther? Or maybe it’s someone like Jim Elliot who was killed trying to share the gospel with the Auca Indians. Or it could be someone in your family like a mom, dad, or grandparent.

As you consider these heroes, do you ever say to yourself,  “I could never be a Paul, David, Esther or Jim Elliot. I’m too quiet and reserved to lead or start anything. I just don’t have what it takes to do anything like they did.”

First of all, I’m not sure God wants you to be Paul, David, Esther, etc…. He created you to be you. Second, just because you may not preach to thousands or have your name in the headlines of Christian ministry doesn’t mean God is not changing the world through you. Consider the ranch hand who said, “I may not be Billy Graham, but I can serve God in a blue collar job.”

Finally, I want us to consider who our heroes of the faith actually are. Are they not mere men and women in whom God used to glorify Himself? When you look at the lives of David, Paul, Esther, etc…, they were folks who did not have it all together. They weren’t super heroes.

We must remember this because sometimes we think we are not talented enough for God to use.  If you feel this way, then you need to consider 1 Corinthians 1:26-31.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

In this passage, Paul reminds those in Corinth that God does not necessarily use the strong and wise, but the weak and foolish. Consider the cross. What kind of god uses such a vile method of execution to show his glory? It was unthinkable, and yet today, it is the cross in which we boast.

So if you think you “ain’t got what it takes,” then you are in great shape! Why? Because God is not looking for self-reliant glory hounds, but humble, weak, servants in whom his glory can shine.

When we look at the lives of David, Paul, and anyone else who follows Christ, God wants us to see his glory, not theirs. We must remember that God does not and will not share his glory (see Isaiah 48:11).

Consider the words by Kent Hughes:

Life is not as it appears to be. We are led by today’s culture to imagine that God pitches his tent with the especially famous and powerful – those who can speak of ecstasies and miraculous power and who command large crowds as they jet from city to city and enjoy the spotlight of center stage – but it is not so. Christ pitches his tent with the unknown, the suffering shut-in, the anonymous pastor and missionary, the godly, quiet servants in the home and in the marketplace.

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Jesus: Another Failed Reformer?

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 6, 2014

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Ivor J. Davidson:

The story of the Christian church has its genesis in the belief of a small group of Jews in the first-century Palestine that a man who had been crucified had been raised from the dead. Jesus of Nazareth, the charismatic prophet, teacher, and healer whose ministry had caused a storm in Galilee and Judea, appeared to have died in defeat and he had been put to death by crucifixion, sentenced by the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate, around the year A.D. 30.

This ought to have been the end of the matter. Jesus, it seemed, was just another failed reformer–courageous, no doubt, in his protest against religious and moral systems that he felt were wrong; commendable, certainly, in his principled concern for the needs and the marginalized and his practical efforts to address social injustices; but in the end just another pious martyr to a cause.

Jesus had been an impressive teacher and miracle worker; and his brief ministry had made an impact on a wide variety of people, but he had died a common criminal’s death, crying out to God in an apparent sense of being forsaken. His death left his band of followers without a leader and without any obvious sense of direction.

Whatever Jesus had stood for; it appeared either that he had been mistaken or that his mission was a failure. 

What changed all this was the conviction that though Jesus had died a violent death and been laid in a tomb, he was dead no longer. Within a matter of days of his crucifixion, stories were circulating that his grave was empty and that he had been raised from the dead.

The belief that Jesus was raised was not some pious idea that the events of his crucifixion had been reversed or that the dreadful reality of his suffering had somehow been cancelled out. The Jesus who appeared was not a resuscitated corpse, amazingly brought to life again. Nor was he a ghost or a phantom pictured in the minds of grieving–and perhaps guilt-ridden–disciples, looking back sentimentally on the individual they had known and failed in the hour of his greatest need. 

At the heart of the first-believers’ faith was a conviction that Jesus was alive as a concrete, flesh-and-blood reality. 

His followers believed his appearances were confirmations that God had vindicated him and that his life and death, far from being in vain, were in fact the decisive means by which God was acting in history to effect not only the renewal of Israel but the redemption of the world.

-Ivor J. Davidson, The Birth of The Church: From Jesus to Constantine AD 30-312 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004), 11-12.

 

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7 Ways To Advance The Gospel In Everyday Life

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 5, 2014

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Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.

Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

  -Colossians 4:2-6

In these verses, Paul encouraged those in the church of Colossae to live in ways that served to advance the gospel to those around them. They are…

1. Pray for opportunities.

We must be disciplined in prayer. Prayer is not something we fall back upon when all else has failed. It must permeate our lives as believers. And one thing we need to continually pray for in our lives is opportunities to converse about the gospel. Are you praying for opportunities each day?

2. Live lives that reveal the credibility of the gospel.

It’s not that perfection is required, but if we claim to follow Christ, our lives should be a reflection of His grace. We must be careful not to unsay with our lives what we espouse with our lips.

3. Pay attention to who is around you.

We must take note of those around us who are not-yet-believers. In the book Right Here, Right Now, authors Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford point out that “we don’t need to add ‘spiritual activities’ to our life as much as we need to make our actual, everyday life spiritual.” We must realize that the normal routines of life can present themselves with tremendous opportunities for spiritual conversations.

4. Develop a sense of urgency.

To develop a sense of urgency is about being intentional. A sense of urgency is not about you rushing around living a hurried life trying to save the world, but neither is it just sitting back waiting for someone to knock on your door asking you how to be saved. It has been said that “if men are to be won to Christ before he comes to judgment it must be done now.”

5. Be gracious.

Do we seek the good of others? When we talk with those around us are we really interested in them? When we share the gospel with those around us, are we seeking to just get our point across or do we really listen to them? A major ingredient of graciousness in conversations is us giving up our need for it to be all about us. No one-up-man-ship allowed! Our talk should be for the good of others.

6. Be lively.

I like what David Garland wrote in his commentary on Colossians. He wrote, “Many believe that obedience to God is ‘tedious, boring, dull’; and many believers ‘do their part to confirm this attitude by being tedious, boring and dull, seasoned with nothing. Godliness is not to be equated with stodginess.”

I don’t think this means that to share the gospel with others that we must be entertaining, but nonetheless, it should be something more than a formula we recite. Should we not as believers be most alive and enjoy more than anyone the life that God has given us? Shouldn’t such joy come through in our speech?

7. Be prepared.

No doubt, there are difficult questions that will come our way concerning our belief in Christ. As we live lives that reflect God’s grace and speak in graciousness and kindness the good news of who Christ is, there will be questions.

Responding to questions of the faith is more than just giving some type of “Sunday school” answer. And not all questions are the “hard questions” of the faith. However, for those hard questions that do come your way, be gracious in answering and be gracious and humble in admitting you don’t know the answer if such is the case.

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Have You Lost The Wonder?

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 4, 2014
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Have you lost the wonder?

Vance Havner, (1901-1986) an old southern preacher, preached a sermon entitled, Have You Lost The Wonder? In that sermon he refers to an evangelist by the name of Gypsy Smith. Here is what he says about him…

Gypsy began to preach at 17 and died at the age of 87. He was simple, original, and colorful. He said he was born in a field so don’t put me in a flowerpot.

The President of Fleming Revell, the publishing company who used to publish Gypsy’s sermons asked him one time, “What is the secret of the freshness of your preaching well into your eighties?” And Gyspy replied, “I have never lost the wonder!”

Jesus says in Matthew 18: 3 that unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Havner speaks of us not becoming childish, but childlike in that children have “not lost the wonder.” They “have not been here long of enough to get used to it. There is still a sense of surprise. Anything can happen.  Everything’s new. With a child, every turn of the road may hold some new discovery.”

As I thought about Havner’s sermon, I began to ask myself of whether I have lost the wonder of knowing God?  Do I stand at awe at the grandeur of His holiness? Do I marvel at His amazing grace exhibited on the cross?

For me, it’s easy to work at knowing so much about God, which I hold to be very important, that at times, I forget how marvelous the truths are that I am discovering. I should remember that even how I discover what I know about God should be held in wonder as that too is by His grace.

My prayer is that I not “lose the wonder” today and not take the grace of God for granted. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever (1 Timothy 1:17).

 

 

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Mission Was Not Made For The Church

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 2, 2014

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“It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world,” writes Christopher Wright, “as that God has a church for his mission in the world.” In other words, “mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission–God’s mission” (The Mission of God by Wright).

The church therefore, God’s people, have purpose. And that purpose is wrapped up in what God is doing in the world. So what is God doing? What is God’s mission?

Andreas Kostenberger, in his book Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A Biblical Theology of Mission, has a fairly good summary of the mission of God. He writes,

The Lord himself is the missionary who gathers and rescues, not simply the dispersed of Israel, but also people from “all nations,” in order that they may see his glory. The goal of mission is the glory of God, that he may be known and honored for who he really is.  

I think it’s imperative we understand that this mission of rescue, redemption and salvation is God’s. It is for His glory. It is not something we created for ourselves, but was given to us as part of His plan.

Wright’s God-centered definition of mission is helpful at this point. He writes, “Mission means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation” (see The Mission of God).

Though mission is wrapped up in who God is and his plan for brining back His people unto himself, this does not mean that we as the church do nothing. Did you notice how Wright mentions that we as God’s people join God in what He is doing? We, as the church, participate in this mission. It’s why we exist.

Jesus was fairly clear to his disciples as to what they were to be and do in this world. It’s why they were left behind (see John 17:15-19). Jesus said, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20).

It is this Great Commission of Jesus that has formed for many, and rightly so, the heart of what it means to join God on mission. Kevin DeYoung in his book What Is The Mission of The Church? writes,

The mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into churches, that they might worship the Lord and obey his commands now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father.

“Christianity is in its very essence,” writes Michael Horton in his book The Gospel Commission, “a mission to the world.” The bottom line is that “if it is not reaching, teaching, baptizing, and multiplying disciples, it is not Christianity.”

The mission of the church is clear. And for many of us, this is not new information. What we must continue to ask ourselves however, is are we as the church living out why we were created? For me personally, mission is not a knowledge problem, but an obedience problem.

May God, therefore, grant us grace today to allow us to see his heart for the world around us. And may such a glimpse of his heart and his grace toward us for our own salvation push us to join Him in where he is working. For it is in participation with God in his mission to the world for which the church exists in this world and by which true joy springs to life.

 

 

 

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