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Category: Discipleship

Analyzing God?

Published by Jeff Kennon on February 18, 2015

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While reading Philip Yancey’s book Disappointment With God, I was halted by a personal discovery of his. Writing about his research for Disappointment With God, he comments: “After two weeks of studying the Bible, I had a strong sense that God doesn’t care so much about being analyzed.”

“God doesn’t care so much about being analyzed.” So what does this mean? Do we dispose of  any serious thinking and discussing of God’s nature and actions? I don’t think so. Plus, if that were so, then Yancey’s book goes against his own conclusion.

What I think Yancey is pushing us to reflect upon is not whether we should do theology and think about God and who He is, but the way we do it. Martin Luther wrote that one must grow “worried when people become scholars through writing lots of books—but do not have the slightest idea what it means to be Christian.” Such scholars were termed by Luther to be theologians of glory. These scholastics spent a great deal of time in speculating about God, but they did not know him.

“What God wants,” writes Yancey, “is to be loved.” Not loved because  He is in need, but to be loved because it is our need and His passion. Our estrangement from God is what God seeks to reconcile. And He does so by the cross. For it is by the cross that we know what love is. John writes that this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10).

Walter von Loewenich has written that it is the cross that “leads a person out of his or her spectator stance and propels him or her into the decision of faith.” In other words, when considering the cross, it cannot just be “analyzed,” but moves those who are Christ-followers to a deeper relationship with God characterized by trust and obedience.

I believe we ought to think deeply about God. We should not be afraid of theology as it is the task of the community of God. But Yancey does well at calling us to remember that our task of “studying God” is more than just attaining some facts. It’s about pushing us into a deeper love relationship with our Creator. Doing good theology should leave us in a sense of awe of who God is and what He has done.

May we, as we grow in the knowledge and grace of God, declare the words of Psalm 100…

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!
Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;[a]
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!
For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.

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When Does Theology Cease To Be Theology?

Published by Jeff Kennon on February 16, 2015

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When does theology cease to be theology?

Just as the church ceases to be the church if it is not missionary, theology ceases to be theology if it loses its missionary character. We are in need of a missiological agenda for theology rather than just a theological agenda for mission; for theology, rightly understood, has no reason to exist other than critically to accompany the missio Dei. So mission should be the theme of all theology. 

-David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission, p. 494

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Living Like Christ Involves The Cross

Published by Jeff Kennon on February 11, 2015

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As Christ-followers, we are constantly encouraged to “live like Christ.” What would Jesus do? we are often asked. And rightly so as John himself writes that whoever says he abides in him [Christ] ought to walk in the same way in which he walked (1 John 2:6).

But what does it mean to “walk like he walked?” I think theologian Kelly Kapic nails it when he writes…

The short answer is that Christians are called to imitate Jesus’ self giving love on the cross, not his crown as a king of his career as a carpenter. The point is clear: Jesus cross provides the primary pattern for our faithfulness to God in the present.  

It was the cross of Christ in which humility, sacrifice, and love were exhibited. Therefore, for us to imitate Christ leads us to a life of humility, sacrifice, and love as well.

We are told by John that by this we know love, that he [Christ] laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth (1 John 3:16-18).

Our lives should be one of cruciformity. To be saved by the power of the cross is also to be transformed by it. Christ made us alive with Him so that we could freely live and find true life; the true life that goes counter to the ways of this world as it lives out the ways of the cross.

This life of the cross, along with the message of the cross, will look foolish to the world. Paul writes that 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[d] might boast in the presence of God (1 Corinthians 1:27-29).

“When we remember,” Kapic writes, “just how radical the cross is, keeping in mind how it was considered ‘folly’ to worship a crucified Lord, we see how radical this metaphor becomes for shaping the Christian life.” The world glamorizes comfort, ease, and personal honor, but the cross is one of suffering, humility, and sacrifice.

However, though such suffering, humility, and sacrifice look weak to the world, they are really the ways in which God is shown to be most powerful. God does not and has not used the ways of our fallen world to reveal himself. Our King came to the earth by being born in a stable and died by way of a cross. Not exactly the way we would visualize the Creator of the universe coming to the world to restore it. And yet it is through such foolishness that we are being saved (see 1 Corinthians 1:18).

To walk as Jesus walked, therefore, and to live as he lived, is one which is shaped by the cross. It is a life of humility empowered for service and obedience. It is a life of self-sacrifice. And, contrary to the world’s thinking, it is a life of joy!!

 

 

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Do We Crave Distraction?

Published by Jeff Kennon on February 3, 2015

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We love chaos, busyness and noise. To sit still and to be alone and quiet is torture. Why? Because when we are alone, all we have is our thoughts. And for many, such quiet solitudinous thinking only leads to the realization of how empty and bored and mortal they really are.

Consider the words of Blaise Pascal…

Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things. Despite these afflictions, man wants to be happy, only wants to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy.

But how shall he go about it? The best thing would be to make himself immortal, but as he cannot do that, he has decided to stop himself thinking about it. 

So instead of being alone and having to think about the inevitable reality of the dilemmas of human depravity and death, we seek busyness and noise. And the busyness and noise we crave usually takes the form of work, social media, and entertainment. We will do anything in order to not to have to think about the realities of the human predicament.

The danger is, however, that our desire for happiness that mutes our thoughts of mortality is really no happiness at all. It is only when we face our emptiness and boredom that we start the journey of searching for a cure. Covering up the fears we face is not the answer. Nor does it alleviate them. Just because someone or something speaks over another does not mean the quieter and more subtle voice is still not present.

We must, therefore, remove the distractions and see where the mortality of life points us. Though initially it might lead us to despair, we must look deeper. There is hope. There is a cure. But it can only be found by going back to the beginning and coming to grips with why we were created, what went wrong with everything, and what our Creator has done to restore it all.

Solomon, with his wisdom, sought to discover where true meaning and happiness in life could be found. After seeking it in prosperity, prestige, and power, he came to this conclusion: The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

To become one who is able to “stay quietly in his room,” as Pascal writes, we must daily return to who we are “in Christ.” We must remember the goodness of God found in the sending of His Son to do for us what we could not and can not do for ourselves. But this is not always easy to do. We struggle. We have days where we wonder where God is. And when we do, we turn up the noise not wanting to have to think about it. This is okay and necessary for a while, but when it becomes a lifestyle, we deceive ourselves into thinking that we are really happy.

We live in a fast-paced society absorbed with noise and distractions. And before reading Pascal, I always thought that such busyness was just a product of our advancement in technology. But now, I wonder if it’s not a deeper sign of how lonely, empty, and bored we really are. We don’t want to face the reality of why we are truly not happy and so therefore, “the only good thing for men,” writes Pascal, “is to be diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some occupation that takes their mind off it, or by some novel and agreeable passion that keeps them busy.”

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Why We Never Graduate From The Cross

Published by Jeff Kennon on January 27, 2015

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What actually happened  when “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ” is a mystery whose depths we shall spend eternity plumbing –John Stott

We will never fully comprehend the love God has for us. A love and commitment to His creation that was so great that it resulted in the crucifixion of His Son. For many of us, John 3:16 is the first verse we learned and memorized and one in which we now tend to just quote from rote memory. However, the intensity of this verse still remains as we are told  exactly how much God does love us…

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

God loves us SO MUCH that HE GAVE HIS SON. And when God the Father gave us His Son, the world didn’t even recognize him. John writes, He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him (Jn. 1:10-11).

In place of bestowing a crown upon the King of Kings, we nailed Him to a cross. Instead of building Him a palace, we placed Him between two thieves. But all was a part of the plan of God. Christ did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Jesus gave Himself up for us (see Gal. 2:20). Though He knew no sin, He became sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21).

So as we gaze upon the cross, we witness the inexhaustible love of God. A love in which we must continue to remind ourselves of. In a graceless world in which love is shallowly rewarded according to merit and charm, the cross tells us that we are loved unconditionally by the one who created us. Though we look for love in all the wrong places, hoping it will fulfill the cravings of our heart, there is no other love than that found on the cross which will fill the deepest longings of our soul.

Jesus words that greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends, were not just proverbial fluff for Jesus, but were demonstrated upon the cross. Jesus words took on flesh and blood at the place of the Skull. Jesus, who is the very “radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and [who] upholds the universe by the word of his power (see Heb. 1:3), laid down His life on our behalf.

We cannot, therefore, graduate from the cross. The love of God is too deep to plumb it’s depths and our need to be loved is to great to be met anywhere else. Isaac Watts, in his hymn “When I Survey The Wondrous Cross,” concludes it by writing…

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

When we survey that wondrous cross, we come face to face with the amazing grace of God and begin to realize that there is no greater love. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:6-8).

John writes that this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn 4:10). As it has been written over and over, we cannot, and must not, graduate from the cross! For it is our continual gaze upon the cross in which we begin, as well as continually feast upon, the unending love of God.

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We Never Move Beyond The Cross

Published by Jeff Kennon on January 23, 2015

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“‘We never move on from the cross, only into a more profound understanding of the cross.” –David Prior

Paul, in writing to the church in Corinth, reminded them that when he was with them, he “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Now I’m pretty sure he preached and taught other things. In fact, if you read the rest of 1 Corinthians, his writing has various concerns with the church. However, I think it’s the cross that forms everything he does teach and write.

For Paul, the gospel was the sole focus of his preaching. And as we read in his letter to the Galatians, it was his only boast! Paul did not move beyond the cross because the crucifixion of Christ was the event in salvation history in which our guilt, shame, and sin were placed upon Christ and absolved. It is the message of our salvation. It is our reconciliation with God and where all things are made right.

It is quite an incredible thought that the creator of the universe would limit himself in becoming a man in order to pursue his rebellious creation. And we must remember that his pursuit involved a cross. Yes, the God of the universe took upon himself our sin and died a most humiliating death. It is this message, the message of the cross, from which we never graduate.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

–Romans 11:33-36

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Do You Find People Interesting?

Published by Jeff Kennon on January 20, 2015

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To love one another is a common command in Scripture. In fact, if you were to ask any Christian what a core principle of following Christ might be, they would no doubt probably mention loving others.  Just consider the following verses…

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:34-35).

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law (Romans 13:8).

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart (1 Peter 1:22).

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God (1 John 4:7).

But what does it mean to love others? Though there are many things that could be written, I just want to mention one idea that, for me, is important to consider. And it is this: be interested in others!!!

The idea of being interested in others moves loving others from the abstract to the concrete. For me, it’s easy to love others from a distance. To get up close however, is altogether different. To know another’s story and to be responsive to it is where love moves from the classroom to the field.

So how do we love and show interest in others? Here are a few thoughts…

1. Realize that people are interesting!

There are no boring people! I know that’s hard for some of us to imagine, but it’s true. C.S. Lewis writes that “there are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” He reminds us that “the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would strongly be tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.”

2. Understand that it’s not all about you!

There is a tendency in us to find our jokes funnier, our stories more interesting, our days busier, and our pain and hurt more severe than those around us. So as a result, since we are the “life of the party,” its important that others make way for our schedules and listen to what we have to say.

We have to be reminded therefore, that we are not the center of the universe. God is! And since it’s not about us, but about Him, then humility should characterize our life. We should have the mind and attitude of Christ who gave himself up for us. Our lives should be one of self-sacrifice.

Paul wrote: Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:5-8).

3. Ask “How ya doing?” and then listen!

When we ask how those around us how life is going for them, is it just chatter? I know many times asking “How are you?” can be a greeting in which we really do not expect an open and honest answer (Therefore, maybe we should come up with a different way of greeting others and save that question when we really desire a response).

As we do ask “How are you?” to others, however, are we ready to listen? And I mean really listen. I think we might be amazed at how many of those around us are just wanting to be heard. So listen to them. Be patient. Hear their stories.

4. Be careful not to devalue the response of others.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone and were excited to tell them something that had happened to you only to have them say, “Oh yeah, I’ve done that!” or “Yea, that happens to me all the time”?

Or, maybe you are talking about some calamity (maybe how you broke your arm) only to hear someone say, “Oh yeah! You think that’s bad, you should hear what happened to me!”

You probably have not only encountered such interjections by others, but have done them yourself. Our fallenness always seems to want to one-up everyone else and when we do, we devalue not just their story, but them. It’s as if we are saying to them, “Your story or what has happened to you is not that big of deal…at least not compared to my life.”

5. Pray for others.

You cannot love others without praying them. If you are really interested and concerned for those around you, praying is one of the best things you can do for them. This is not a revolutionary idea. Nonetheless, it is vital. Plus, when you pray for others, you might discover that you want to know more about them so you can pray more specifically.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others (Philippians 2:3-4).

 

 

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Do We Measure Spiritual Growth Superficially?

Published by Jeff Kennon on January 6, 2015

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Do we measure our spiritual life in superficial ways?

This question, written by John Ortberg, is one that I continually have to ask myself. And I think it’s one every believer needs to consider.

So let’s think about it. How do you know if you are growing spiritually? Does it mean you read the Bible every day, write in a journal, and pray for your family and neighbors? I do believe praying and reading the Bible are important, I’m not saying they are not, but is that the end goal?

John Ortberg writes…

For many years I thought about [spiritual growth] only in terms of a few special activities. If someone asked me how my spiritual life was going, my first thought would be how I was doing at having a quiet time–praying and reading the Bible each day. If I had prayed and read the Bible for several consecutive prior days, I was likely to say that my spiritual life was going well. If not, I was likely to feel guilty and downcast. So prayer and Bible study became the gauge of my spiritual condition. As long as I did those two things I could go though the day confident of God’s approval (The Life You’ve Always Wanted, p. 42-43)

Our spiritual life should not be measured, therefore, by our reading the Bible through in a year or praying for 30 minutes a day. “The real issue,” writes Ortberg, “is what kind of people are we becoming.” “Practices such as reading Scripture and praying are important” continues Ortberg, “not because they prove how spiritual we are, but because God can use them to lead us into life.”

The question we need to be asking ourselves is: “Am I growing in love for God and people?”

I’m always reminded of my grandfather when I think about loving God and loving others. His motto was: “You gotta love people!” No doubt he read the Bible and prayed, but it wasn’t his Bible reading plan that had a huge affect on me. It was his life. I’ve had the opportunity, because of seminary, to read much more theology and Biblical studies than my grandfather ever did, and yet, I still have so much to learn from him in regards to loving others.

Don’t misread what I’m writing here. I think one ought to spend one’s life seeking to understand the Bible. If you have opportunity, read theology and anything else that will help you to grasp God’s Word. I think my grandfather loved others because of the impact of Scripture upon his life. It was through God’s Word that he arrived at a deep understanding of the grace of God. But let’s be careful in assuming that our knowledge of Scripture, along with our daily Bible reading and praying, are marks of our spiritual maturity.

We do well to constantly remember the words of Jesus…

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Mt. 22:36-40)

Are we growing in our love for God and others? It is this question that should provide the mark for our spiritual maturity!

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