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Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

Posted by Rev. Bro. Coach on May 14, 2021
Posted in: The Mindful Minute. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

What would Jesus do? If only we would be more like Jesus, the world would be a better place. Jesus would never be a democrat. Jesus would never be a republican. ALL you have to do is believe in Jesus and then be the best person you can be. Over the course of almost 14 years in ministry, I have heard all of these phrases at some point come out of the mouth of Christians and non-Christians alike; and the conclusion I’ve come to is this…Do we know who Jesus really is anymore? These popular sayings range from really cool Christian catch phrases to a completely false teaching of who Jesus is. So, when I hear things like “be like Jesus,” I often follow up with the question of “who is Jesus?” I think it’s worth noting that I DO NOT ask “who is Jesus to you.” That would imply that the character of Christ is pliable to fit our specific wants and desires. I want to know if the person knows who the Jesus of scripture is- the ONLY Jesus there is. These other notions about Christ are nothing short of a man-made, self idealistic dream of a genie in a bottle here to grant our every wish and desire; loosely backed by pieced together scripture taken out of context to fit our preconceived social or political notions. The truth is, there is only ONE Jesus, ONE Christ, ONE savior of mankind; and He is the Jesus found in the pages of God’s perfect and infallible word, not taken out of context, but alive with all the truth, mercy, and grace that point to Him on every single page- whether it steps on our toes or not. So, will the real savior of mankind please stand up?

I think it’s helpful to expose a couple of these popular false Jesuses in order to better understand the real Jesus that reigns at the right hand of the Father. First, there’s the Jesus of only truth or as I like to call him Rambo Jesus. Now, hear me- Jesus is truth, but Rambo Jesus is the representation that Jesus is ONLY truth, often filtered through legalistic scripture that never takes into account the situation for which it was written and tends to gloss over the mountains of scripture that depict God’s grace through His son. This Jesus is wielded like a weapon in order to put people in their place or have an epic “mic drop” moment as some non-Christian is “schooled” with theological might. The person wielding Rambo Jesus often does not understand or has lost sight of what the real Jesus did for them on a cross, after all, we aren’t born into our faith. At some point, we had to acknowledge our own sinfulness and repent of that sin. I have often felt that one of the most crippling aspects a Christian life can have is the lack of true understanding & acknowledgement of our sinful nature. Yes, the truth is important. God has set standards and expectations of us which Jesus taught. Jesus demonstrated righteous anger in the temple when He drove out the money changers, but the real Jesus is not one dimensional. The Jesus of scripture is much bigger than that. Rambo Jesus is not Jesus at all.

Then you have the Jesus of only grace, or as I call him Hippy Jesus (you know- peace, love, and whole wheat kind of thing). So many truths today. It really is mind blowing. We are living in a world where truth is now whatever you want it to be according to many. If you don’t like what’s going on in your life, change it. Declare your situation to not be true. In fact declare whatever, whoever, and however you want life to be and THAT can be truth. There are so many dangers in this line of thought. Personal “truth”, just because it is declared by a person, is in no way reality; but there are plenty of people attempting to push legislation to make it legal (notice I didn’t say true). In fact, the very definition of truth is: “that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.” We have seen this spill over into the realm of spiritual life as well. Hippy Jesus is an active attempt to shape the image and character of Christ to look like whatever the currently accepted “truth” is. This often comes with justifying our sins through scripture, particularly the words of Jesus, as they are pieced together, completely out of context, in order to make it seem like Jesus condones or is in some way ok with our sinful actions (i.e “I haven’t killed anybody”). When confronted, you hear things like “Jesus loves everyone,” “Jesus doesn’t care what we believe as long as we believe,” (see, I told you John 3:16 can be dangerous if not taught correctly) or my personal favorite (thick sarcasm inserted here) “Jesus just wants me to be happy” (Thanks to the toxic & heretical prosperity gospel message). Hippy Jesus is the one that Mahatma Gandhi mistakenly took to be the real Jesus when he quipped that “I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians…” Yes, Jesus was a force for social justice. Yes, Jesus loved the world. Yes, Jesus healed the sick. And yes, Christians should be doing all of this. But that is not ALL Christians should be doing. Yes, Jesus dined with sinners, forgave the adulterous woman, and healed the lame man; but Jesus ALSO did not want them to stay where they are. He told sinners to go and sin no more, called out the woman at the well for her lifestyle, and told the masses wanting another free, miracle meal that HE was the bread of life. And when they realized Jesus wasn’t just handing things out, they left Him. God wants to save His people and He did that through Jesus and that requires difficult and often times uncomfortable realizations about ourselves and how we live. The Jesus of scripture is much bigger than that. Hippy Jesus is not Jesus at all.

The truth is the Jesus of scripture, the REAL Jesus, is both truth and grace. John 1:14 says it best:

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

Jesus is not a political figure, nor a mascot for a social justice movement. He is much, much bigger than that. He is the savior of ALL mankind, not just the ones we deem worthy, but those who He has established a relationship. The message of the gospel is going to step on our toes, it is going to give us a gut punch at times, and it is going to call out the way we live. The message of the gospel is also going to love you when you feel unlovable, give you worth when you feel worthless, and lift you up when everyone else has let you down. The true Jesus calls us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take in the stranger, visit & care for the sick and the criminal; and He calls us to do so whether we find them worthy or not because HE finds them worthy. This is not possible following Rambo Jesus, only by following the REAL Jesus can this happen. The true Jesus ALSO calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross every day, and follow Him. He tells us that HE is way, the truth, and the life and only through HIM can we get to the Father and that is going to cost us our selfish desires. This is not possible following Hippy Jesus, only by following the REAL Jesus can this happen.

It is my honest hope and prayer that we can come together and begin displaying the truth, grace, and character of the Jesus found in God’s Word- not a Jesus used as a weapon, but as a means to show the world the grace of love and peace as well as offering the truth of the hope and eternal salvation that comes from turning away from our sins and giving our lives to Him. “If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.” At the same time, we can take all the mission trips we want and feed all the hungry people in the world; but unless we share the the gospel of Jesus Christ, these are all just temporary fixes to a very eternal problem. I have grown weary of world focused on self. So, will the real Jesus please stand up?

In Christ Alone,
Rev. Bro. Coach

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God Revealed Part 1: Revealed in the Word

Posted by Rev. Bro. Coach on January 29, 2021
Posted in: The Mindful Minute. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

“And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”

Mark 16:15

Go and tell the world about Jesus. It’s a must, but it isn’t as easy as people make it out to be. You are essentially sharing the gospel about a savior that people don’t realize they need, yet. Thankfully, the results are not up to you, those are God’s. You job is to deliver the message. While the delivery of the message is all we are responsible for, we must be ready for the response. 1 Peter 3:15 reminds us,

but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.

1 Peter 3:15

Are you ready to do that? Are you ready for the questions? Why do you believe in something you can’t see? Why do you think Jesus is my only option? Are you saying I’m not a good person? How is my life different from these other “christians” out here? The list really can go on and on. Are you prepared to answer more than just “the bible says so” that why. While that is an accurate answer, if I was the unbeliever, I’d say, “ok, show me.” Are we ready for that? Now, don’t get me wrong, you will NOT have all the answers, you will NOT be able to quote every verse and passage off the top of your head (even though the more you interact with God’s word, the more often you will be able to do it- just sayin’), and you will NOT understand all of the questions; but you DO have a responsibility to find out. You can say, “I don’t know”, but you need to follow up with, “but, I will find out.”

On top of that, are you ready for the misinformation and misunderstanding of the Bible? How do you respond when someone says, “but God loves everyone, a loving God won’t send His people to hell.” Then there is “The bible says that I should be like Jesus. I volunteer at the homeless shelter, I feed the poor, and donate to several charities which is more than other christians are doing.” How about this dangerous one, “I walked down the aisle at VBS or summer camp when I was 9, prayed a prayer, and asked Jesus into my heart, so I am good.” These are just a couple of common ones. Do we know God’s word well enough to show the problems in that thinking? While, asking Jesus into our hearts is an easy way to explain salvation to little kids, that and the sinners prayer are actually nowhere in the Bible. Do we know the Bible well enough to know when its being twisted, manipulated, or just misinterpreted? If we don’t, then someone who has read some of it and is more confident in what they are saying can convince us that the bible says that.

My son asked me the other day how you talk to someone about God when they won’t believe in Him unless they can see Him. That’s an excellent question that many believers don’t know how to respond to. The answer is we do see God everyday. God revealed Himself to us two ways: through His creation (which we will look at next week) and through His Word. The bible is the infallible work of God, divinely inspired through human hands, without fault or blemish. Look, there are people who are going to try to refute this. There are even people calling themselves Christians who will refute this and I say with all the genuine love in my heart, they are mistaken. Oh, people will come up with clever paradigms and apparent contradictions that they believe they have found in God’s Word. This is because they look at the Bible through the human lens and not the divine. Man has a desperate need to understand everything and man has trouble accepting the fact that there will be things that we will not understand this side of eternity. The Bible even tells us that we won’t understand it all. We see in Isaiah 55:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways. This is the Lord’s declaration.”

Isaiah 55:8

And they ask if I truly believe that…well, yes, I do. I don’t need empirical evidence. I don’t need a mathematical formula to prove the validity and accuracy of God’s Word. I’ve seen too much evidence in my life where every promise God made in there has been kept over and over. So, yes, we can believe in God without seeing Him- it’s called faith after all.

If we are going to be effective witnesses for God’s kingdom and if we are going to be fulfill the commission He left with us through Jesus, we are going to have to become intimately involved in God’s Word. Stop reading it like its a high school English assignment. Stop reading it like its 66 independent books; and start reading it like it’s one complete story that points us to the same place- the cross. Jesus revealed this to us in Luke on the Emmaus road:

” Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted for them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures.”

Luke 24:27

Do we know God’s Word well enough to show the world the powerful message of hope and salvation from their creator; not only so that we can give a defense of why we believe what we believe, but also so that we can identify when something is not right. God is revealed through His perfect Word.

In Christ Alone,
Rev. Bro. Coach

What If We Actually Allowed God to Speak?

Posted by Rev. Bro. Coach on December 18, 2020
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It’s an interesting question you know. What if we actually allowed God to speak into our lives? I mean really speak- allowed Him to call us out, to convict us when we were wrong. We don’t like being wrong, have you noticed? We don’t like the idea that what we are doing or saying is not correct, and it gets worse the older we get. At least when we are younger, we can claim some level of naivety. As we get older, though, we are supposed to be experienced….wise….knowledgeable. That is definitely true to a certain extent. Between my wife and I we have 5 college degrees, yet when our first son started crying and we couldn’t figure out what was wrong, we called our parents who do not have college degrees. What they do have is a lot of wisdom and experience that we do not and it’s valuable. But, I think we all too often make the mistake of thinking that we are done learning, done growing- especially when it comes to our spiritual walk.

Today, let me be blunt to the believer and say what many don’t want hear. WE ARE NOT DONE! We haven’t figured it out yet. God is still working on us, in us, and through us. We haven’t graduated to Christian Emeritus. We are still on a journey of growing and being sanctified. and we need to come to grips with the fact that our spiritual walk did not end at salvation and it will not be be over until God calls us home. The free gift of salvation is a lifelong process that will cost us a lot- mainly our pride.

The church (not the gospel) is in a desperate need of a reboot, a reboot that I alluded to in last week’s article (shameless plug- go read it). We have a unique opportunity to get ourselves back on track to following Christ, sacrificing our wants & our desires so that they would align with God’s wants & desires for our lives. That is going to require us to admit and face some very difficult things that are going to be damaging to our ego. So many people approach church with the mentality “what have you done for me lately.” While they would never say it out loud, their actions, their words to others, their attitude toward church is “I want to be entertained with good music that I like and am used to. I want to hear good preaching that is funny, light hearted, and make me feel good about myself afterwards. I want to be noticed and spoken to by the right people and if I can’t get that week in and week out, I’m leaving.” This is not a problem localized to any one area. This is the lament of pastors EVERYWHERE!!! I’ve seen it in so many places- this is not the mark of maturing Christians- it is well….to be honest, infantile.

As churches, we need to stop worrying about being culturally relevant and trendy and be more concerned about being biblically accurate. Sure, the culturally relevant church is usually big. It has a lot of members because it’s appealing. You can come and never have to worry about being offended by God’s Word. You never have to worry about feeling bad for your sinfulness. Repentance is only for the unsaved, right? You can catch young, hip worship and a youth group that will spend more time improving their dodgeball game on Wednesdays instead of their spiritual walk. [*Disclaimer: I am not throwing shade at every mega church. If you want to see a huge church do it right, check out The Village Church pastored by Matt Chandler in Houston- big church, great biblical preaching, no smoke and light shows, just truth.] But, what if we allowed God and not culture to speak into our lives. What if instead of church hopping to avoid dealing with our sin, we no longer become content with messages that tickle our ears? What if we adopted a very realistic view of our human condition and instead of getting offended, we decide to dig in and allow God to mold & shape us. So many of the same people who will complain about cancel culture, will bail on a church the moment God starts trying to shape them and deal with sin and pride in their lives. They often blame the pastor for not feeding them when in truth, they just didn’t care for what was on the menu- His truth. The gospel is a message of exoneration in the fact that, thanks to Christ, we do not have to pay the price for our sins. It is not a message that we get to do whatever we want after we accept Christ because we no longer have responsibility. The gospel is a message of hope, but also one of transformation. Jesus loves us way too much to leave us where we are. If we expect to encounter God’s Word without being convicted, then we don’t have a realistic view of our own sinfulness and need to for that very gospel. The bible is convicting because we are sinners. We need to swallow our pride, allow God to speak truth into our lives, and acknowledge who we are- sinners saved by grace. In fact, if you think about it, if we do not have a desire for the bible to correct us (which means biblical preaching) then we are failing to acknowledge the need for a Savior.

Christians, let’s swallow our pride, admit that we are sinners in need of God’s constant love and correction, and join together on a journey of sanctification as we grow in Christ and become mature disciples instead of lifelong spiritual infants.

In Christ Alone,
Rev. Bro. Coach

Finding Faith That Lasts

Posted by Rev. Bro. Coach on December 4, 2020
Posted in: The Mindful Minute. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

I took a week off to be in Tennessee for Thanksgiving visiting family. I missed this. I missed sitting in JJ’s, eating my breakfast sandwich and writing down what is on my mind. It’s good to be back. Routine is good. It’s comforting, you know. It allows you to feel purposed, like you are going to accomplish something today. It’s predictable and predictable is in short supply these days. Routine is as welcome as my favorite comfort food or my reliable Cariloha (shameless plug) lounging pants/sweatshirt on a cold night.

Another thing in short supply this year is sustainable faith. I spend way too much time on social media for someone who wears their heart on their sleeve. I hurt for my friends struggling with depression, health issues, wayward children, job loss, death, and other trying and tumultuous occurrences. At the center of all of these situations, everyone is asking the same question…..”Why?” Believers and non-believers alike are questioning why things are happening to them. They have asked why such a loving God would allow them to suffer. For many believers, 2020 has shaken their faith to the core and for the non-believer, it has driven a wedge even further between them an accepting the idea that there is a God who loves them.

Now, 2020 has been anything but a minor event, but you have to wonder how our faith has been rattled so violently- some to the point of walking away for good. There will be time when your faith will be tested and it will legitimately be difficult to see to the worth of surrendering your entire life to God just to drag yourself through the muck of a sinful world. So how do believers latch on to a faith that may be rattled, but stands strong through any storm that is thrown its way? Likewise, how do we share the gospel of a loving God during such a difficult time to live? The answer isn’t easy to digest and its one that I am constantly working through and growing from. I believe we lose faith in Christ as the answer because the faith we have in Him was misplaced or wasn’t genuine to begin with. We placed our faith in a “genie in a bottle” and once the first sign of trouble happens, life doesn’t go our way, or the first prayer isn’t answered the way we want, then we dismiss Him like a fad diet that didn’t work.

I will be the first to admit that my faith is shaken every now and then. The profession to which I am called does not make me immune from periods of doubt. I think the key to sustainable faith is getting back to the foundational word of God. There we will find a faith that lasts, that stands up against anything, and a God in whose plan we can trust no matter how tough things get. In this media saturated age, we can find clips and snippets of “preachers” who will tell us exactly what we want to hear. This isn’t a new phenomenon- we’ve seen it for years- it’s called church hopping (going to a church until they step on your toes and then find another to tickle your ears), the internet has just made it convenient to do it from your home. They will give emotionally charged messages about how you can be David and slay your giants. Which will have you pumped up & ready to run through a wall by the end. The problem is- we aren’t David in that story, Jesus is. Like everything else, the story is about Christ, not us. The truth is the Bible will convict you. It will step on your toes and it will make you constantly re-evaluate how you’re living your life; and quite frankly we don’t like that. The Bible, however, also heals. It comforts and it guides. It reminds us that we don’t have to worry about the results because we are not in control of them. That is a faith that is sustainable because it’s not about doing the right thing or accomplishing a task, it’s about leaning on Christ who has taken care of it. Unsustainable faith tells us to “do,” but the Bible tells us it’s already done.

We don’t need a motivational speaker on Sunday mornings to get us pumped up like we are getting ready to play in the Super Bowl. We don’t need a smoke and light show or Sunday morning concert entertainment. We don’t need another religious TedTalk that uses the Bible as a reference. We need to let the Word of God speak and speak truth, to humble us. Sustainable faith is rooted in humility- humbleness before a creator and in our pursuit of holiness. To borrow from an idea given to pastors by author Jared Wilson, I think sustainable faith is found not in a religious, righteous “swagger”, but in a humble “limp”. The bottom line here is this- is the Bible all you need? Pastor and author, David Platt, gives us a chilling thought about where we have placed our faith. He said:

“What if we take away the cool music and cushioned chairs? What if the screens are gone and the stage is no longer decorated? What if the air conditioning is off and the comforts are removed? Would His Word still be enough for His people to come together?

-David Platt

Sustainable faith comes not from a posture of expectation, but from a posture of surrender. Sustainable faith comes from grounding ourselves in the truth of God’s word, even when that truth is hard to swallow. Sustainable faith comes from building our foundation on the truth of God’s word, not the momentary emotion of a rehearsed speech or stirring motivational story. There will be more 2020’s in our lives. We will lose loved ones, we will hit speed bumps, we will have our faith tested. Are we preparing our faith to weather the storm? We see this imagery in Matthew 7:24-27, at the end of Jesus’s sermon on the mount. One house was built on the rock and the other was built on the sand. When the storm came, the one on the sand was destroyed, while the house on the rock stood firm- but remember…..they BOTH went through the storm. Sustainable faith is built on the truth of God’s word, anything else is…well, quite frankly, shifting sand.

In Christ Alone,
Rev. Bro. Coach

It’s Time to END IT

Posted by Rev. Bro. Coach on February 5, 2019
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What if I told you that slavery never went away? What if I told you slavery existed in 161 countries today- including 60,000+ in the United States? What if I told you that each year 1.2 million children are enslaved through forced labor or exploited in the sex industry? What if I told you that the majority of these modern day slaves were between the ages of 18-24? What if I told you the average age of a sex trafficked girl was 13? What if I told you that the sex trafficking industry affected girls as young as 6 years old? What if I told you the average cost of a modern day slave was a mere $90. What if I told you that slavery never went away?

Human trafficking has become the 3rd most profitable crime industry in the world next to drugs and illegal arms trafficking, and some project it to be the number 1 crime industry in the next 5 years- that’s right, some have projected it to make more money than the illegal drug industry within 5 years. Total yearly profits of human trafficking are now over $150.2 billion annually, and the total estimated population of modern day slaves is believed to be more than 30 million.

There are many organizations fighting this disease of forced child labor camps, to indentured servitude, & sex trafficking. Many of these organizations are at the heart of this industry, pulling young women out of their prisons, rehabilitating and renewing their will to live, and putting them back in the world on track to make a new, meaningful life for themselves. These organizations such as: A21, The Exodus Road, the International Justice Mission (IJM), Polaris, and Bombay Teen Challenge are on the ground actively freeing slaves from their captives and working with local authorities to prevent further spread of the trade.

Now, what if I told you that there was something we could do about it? If organizations such as A21, The Exodus Road, or the IJM hope to succeed, then the word must get out that this problem is going on today. Here, in our little corner of East Tennessee, a major corridor runs Interstate 40 connecting the Washington DC/Atlanta pipeline. Awareness of this issue cannot and MUST NOT be understated. Every 2 minutes, a child is bought/sold for sex in this country and the vast majority of people do not realize it is happening.

But that is all changing. Through the help of awareness programs like the End it Movement, former Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, and with the aid of some big voices, congress, over the past 3 years, has allocated serious financial backing to end modern day slavery and human trafficking in this country. We cannot stop there. We cannot stop until every person knows freedom. We cannot stop until every child is safe from sex trafficking, we cannot stop until we decide as a world community that one slave, is one slave too many.

Thursday, February 7, 2019, is national Shine a Light on Slavery Day. People all over the country will be wearing red X’s on their clothes, hands, lapels to let everyone know that this problem still exists. It is fitting that the date is right after the Super Bowl since more people are trafficked at the Super Bowl than any other event. Please, let me encourage you to join me and the rest of the End it Movement community as we Shine a Light on Slavery to let the world know- to let traffickers know- that we are in it to END IT!  

 

In Christ Alone,

Rev. Bro. Coach

 

 

 

 

*Please visit these non-profits such as A21, Exodus Road, & IJM and help support them in their fight against Human Trafficking*

 

References:

http://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/Modern_Day_Slavery_Statistics

http://www.enditmovement.com

https://www.tn.gov/tbi/crime-issues/crime-issues/human-trafficking.html

https://humantraffickingcenter.org/problem/