Posts by Garrett E. Wishall

SBTS chapel live blog: David Uth – Psalm 137:1-6 March 23, 2010

Preacher: David Uth, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Orlando, Fla.

Text/title: Psalm 137:1-6 - "Remember"

Uth told the story of his father coming to Christ and telling his own father that he had quit his job and was going to be a preacher. His grandfather was an atheist and told his father that he was a fool.

Uth said he told the story because he never wants to forget where he has come from. He always wants to remember.

There is a danger for us who hang out around holy things. It is the danger that the holy becomes common.

1. Sooner or later we are all going to be in a foreign land (137:1-3)

Uth told the story of his college roommate driving and wife driving back to Arkansas to meet him one Christmas break. Uth was a seminary student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and his friend was a student at Southern Seminary. On the trip back to Arkansas, his friend's wife was driving and she was getting sleepy. Uth's friend told her to pull over and he would drive. She did, but when she did she didn't pull far enough off the road. An 18-wheeler hit the car from behind and the car burst into flames. Uth's friend was able to get out, but he could not get his wife out in time.

When Uth and his friend arrived in Arkansas, Uth's friend looked at him and said, "Life really is fair. Sooner or later it breaks everyone's heart."

Sooner or later we will all suffer. We will all go to a foreign land. What will we do when that happens?

2. Will we get angry and quit singing (137:4)?

When life gets hard - when our marriage gets harder than we thought it would be, when the report comes back and we learn we have cancer - what are we going to do? We will be tempted to get angry at God. We will get angry and be tempted to stop praising God.

But we must keep singing. Down through church history, many martyrs for the faith died singing. They died with the praises of God on their lips.

How do you sing the songs of the Lord when your world changes?

This year has been tough for me. I lost my father this year. I also lost my father-in-law, who I had become very close to. As I was working through those losses, the Lord challenged me to remember. To remember the cross and to remember His love extended to me in Christ and the hope that He gives me in Christ.

I worship God because He is good, not because life is good.

3. Remember (137:5-6)

Remember what God has done for you. Remember the sacrifice of His Son. If God never sends me another blessing, I should remember what God has done for me and I should sing His song forever. I will sing His song forever not because life is good, but because God is good.

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SBTS chapel live blog: Joshua Harris – Proverbs 3:5-6 March 18, 2010

Preacher: Joshua Harris

Text/title: Proverbs 3:5-6 - "Total Trust"

The most important decisions we make in life revolve around whom we choose to trust.

Think about the moments in your life when you have made an unwise choice. There is a very good chance that they have involved trusting the wrong person or the wrong people.

Maybe it is misplaced trust in a politician, friend or car salesman. Or maybe even who you married.

Who we trust determines the course of our life and the course of eternity.

Proverbs was written to help people gain wisdom. Proverbs communicates a vision of life from a heavenly perspective.

In Proverbs, the father is pointing His son to the one in whom he should place his trust.

1. Trust in the Lord with all your heart

What do we mean by trust? To trust someone is to have confidence in their reliability. To believe that they have your best interests in mind. God wants us to believe and to have a firm confidence in his intentions, that He has our best interests in mind.

Trusting in the Lord is a key aspect of fearing the Lord. Fear of the Lord is an awesome respect and reverence and it is deeply relational. It is a trusting fear. It is a reverence that draws near to God and believes that He is both holy and powerful and merciful and loving.

Trust is like the oil of an engine in every relationship. When there is a loss of trust, it is difficult to relate to another person because you are constantly questioning their motives. That is why lying is so damaging to a relationship. Lying causes you to lose your trust in a person.

Do you trust God? Do you interpret God's actions in your life with suspicion? One of Satan's biggest lies to us is that God can't be trusted. That God can't deliver you from the situation you are in. Don't believe that lie.

God's arm is not too short to save. And whatever your circumstances, God is working for your good. God has freely given His Son to save you from your sin. What more can God do to express His love for you? And God has promised to complete the good work that He has begun in you, conforming you to the image of Christ.

As you battle against sin, I encourage you to ask the question, "Where am I distrusting God in this situation?" As you battle against counterfeit gods, I exhort you to ask that question. Go to the heart of the matter.

A lot of us, when we think about trust, we think about God doing what we want on our timetable.

2. Do not lean on your understanding

Part of total trust is not leaning on your understanding. To trust in the Lord with all your heart is to not trust in your own understanding.

The idea of lean here might give us the picture of being propped against a wall. We are sort of leaning against the wall, but if the wall crumbled we would be okay because we aren't leaning that hard. That is not the correct picture.

The correct picture is a lean that puts our full body weight on the thing on which we are leaning. If we were leaning on a wall in this way and the wall crumbled, you would fall on your face.

Too often, when you trust the Lord, your trust is like barely leaning against a wall, while your feet are firmly planted on the ground. If the wall fell away, you would be fine (or so you think) because you are standing on your two feet. That is really where your trust is.

People who are trusting the Lord are desperate. People who are trusting the Lord are aware that if the Lord does not come through then they will fall flat on their face. People who are trusting the Lord are often compelled to pray.

Are we living in a place of total trust in the Lord?

Or are we trusting in ourselves, even a little bit?

3. In all your ways, acknowledge God

In every situation, we should acknowledge the lordship over our life. When you are alone in your room with a computer and you are tempted to go to place on the Internet that you should not go, you acknowledge the lordship of God in your life, you trust in Him and you follow after Him.

When you are at work and your boss asks you to do something that is unethical, you acknowledge the Lord and you turn to your boss and you say no.

When you are in your home and you are tempted to act in such a way that you get your way, the best way in your mind, with your wife and kids, you acknowledge the Lord by realizing that there is Someone else in the room. You acknowledge the Lord by stopping and praying, holding your tongue, thinking before you speak and then speaking gracious words.

This is the heart of wisdom: living all of our life with the recognition that God matters the most.

Summary

Living a wise life requires total trust in the Lord of all wisdom. A whole-hearted trust in the Lord of all wisdom. For Christians, wisdom is not just a lifeless set of principles or memorizing a few insightful proverbs. At the heart of wisdom is a relationship with the Lord.

A relationship of trust. A relationship where you say, "May your will be done," because you trust God and His promises. The heart of the relationship is a relationship of trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's trust Him. Every promise that He has made has proved true. Let's trust Him with all our hearts.

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Observations on the GCR Task Force report March 9, 2010

The following article is by Chuck Lawless, Dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at Southern Seminary

In my current roles, I have had the privilege of educating young SBC ministers, assisting state conventions in conferences, working alongside the North American Mission Board (NAMB) in training leaders and consulting with the International Mission Board (IMB) in theological education.  Our denomination has much room for improvement, but I am more excited today about Southern Baptists than I have ever been - and the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force progress report is one reason for my excitement.  Southern Baptists must still address a final report when meeting in Orlando in June 2010, but this progress report is filled with possibility and hope.

First, the report begins with a call to repentance over our disunity, arrogance, selfishness and caustic rhetoric.  Southern Baptists have unfortunately assumed that our size is evidence of God's blessings on us, and seldom have we been accused of humility.  The GCRTF report is a jolting call to repent of our belief that the evangelical world somehow revolves around us. We have no right to think such about ourselves, especially when our denomination is in decline.

Second, the report calls for a return to the primacy of the local church.  A Great Commission Resurgence will occur only when local churches led by God-called pastors grieve over lostness and share the Gospel message with people outside of the church.  That is, a GC Resurgence begins and ends with my personal willingness to be obedient to the GC task.  Waiting for the denomination to "vote in" a resurgence is not only an abdication of personal responsibility; it is a guarantee that no resurgence will take place.

Third, the report calls for funneling more Cooperative Program funds to the task of international missions.  A one percent increase may seem insignificant, but the increased dollars are both symbolic and real.  For the first time in our denominational history, we will have affirmed that more than one-half of our cooperative giving goes to international missions.  Moreover, a one-percent increase will surely result in more real dollars given to missions -- a positive move that we must celebrate.

Fourth, the task force recognizes that North America is changing and has challenged NAMB and the IMB to cooperate in reaching our continent.  God is bringing the world to our continent -- most often to our cities -- where the Great Commission task is so large that both mission agencies will have much to do in assisting our churches to reach our contexts.  God alone knows how much more we could do if our agencies and entities worked together under a common vision rather than duplicating efforts and competing against each other.

Fifth, the report emphasizes the necessity of training missional leaders to reach our world.  While the task force has proposed that NAMB and LifeWay share the duty to help "heighten our commitment to equip current pastors to missional leadership," all of us must accept this responsibility.  As a seminary professor and dean, I can affirm that we are producing men and women who believe the Word.  I fear, though, that we are not as intentional about producing strong missional leaders.  Our graduates seldom struggle because their theology is bad, but they do not always know how to relate to their context as a mission field.  Leaders with a healthy understanding of contextualization are a must if Southern Baptists are going to reverse our decline.

Sixth, the task force affirms the Cooperative Program while also celebrating "Great Commission Giving" beyond the CP.  I am convinced that cooperative giving is still the best way to support the global cause of Christ, and I am grateful every day for the benefits I have reaped because of the Cooperative Program.  At the same time, though, I rejoice as more local churches prayerfully and seriously seek the best way to support missions causes.  A "both-and" approach to giving toward Great Commission causes (rather than "either-or"  between the CP and Great Commission Giving) may well result in even more dollars supporting the work of missions at all levels of Southern Baptist life.

Seventh, the report calls for continued honest evaluation of our current work.  Four billion people around the world have little or no access to the Gospel. More than 250 million people in North America are not believers. Meanwhile, Southern Baptists baptized no more in 2008 than we did in 1950.  Honest, gut-wrenching, God-honoring evaluation of our structures, processes and programs is thus in order.  This process is difficult and never-ending -- but only through accountability can we improve our Great Commission efforts.

What, then, should we do in response to this progress report?  Because Southern Baptists will be changed only through the power of God, prayer is a non-negotiable response.  I invite you to join me in praying these prayers:

I pray that I will be ever aware of my own arrogance.As an older Southern Baptist, I must not get frustrated with younger Southern Baptists who are calling for change; instead, I must hear them even while helping them to stay properly focused.  Younger Southern Baptists who continue to call for correction must do so with gratitude to God for the rich heritage of this convention.  All of us must humbly pray for the Great Commission Task Force as they continue their work on this report.

I pray that I can genuinely say, "Not my will, but God's be done."For some Southern Baptists, the suggestions of this report may go too far.  For others, they may not go far enough.  In either case, though, this report is not about what I want.  Any unwillingness to change for the sake of the Gospel will result only in a retaining of the status quo -- and the status quo will not work anymore for this denomination.

I pray that I will be patient with this process. The SBC will consider this report in Orlando in June, but any proposed changes will take time.  Ours is a large denominational ship that is not turned quickly.  Patience is imperative, as impatience can result in poor implementation of otherwise good plans.  Now is not the time to jump ship because changes are not occurring quickly enough; instead, it is time to jump in, help us steer the ship and rejoice over every move in the right direction.

I pray that the discussions at the SBC meeting in June will be God-honoring. Change is seldom easy, especially when structures and processes to which we have become accustomed are challenged. This report calls for an intense Great Commission focus that will require hard choices.  I am praying now that the world will see us discuss the issues with fervor while still rallying around the Great Commission.  Anything less will harm our witness.

I pray that the Great Commission Resurgence begins with me now.To be sure, this final prayer sounds "preachy."  The point, though, is this: no report from any committee will in itself produce a Great Commission Resurgence.  A genuine GCR will begin when I pray for a lost world, give sacrificially to God's work and personally tell others about Jesus.  A resurgence will grow as I disciple others to do the same.  To begin these tasks, I need not wait until the SBC gathers in June.

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SBTS chapel live blog: Dan Dumas – Proverbs 1:20-33

Preacher: Dan Dumas, senior vice president for institutional administration at Southern Seminary

Text/title: Proverbs 1:20-33 -- The Dangers of Being a Professional Sermon Listener

Students at Southern Seminary will spend 3,700 hours listening to lectures. Add to that hundreds of sermons from your pastor, in chapel and via podcast: listening to teaching is a huge opportunity for sanctification.

But that opportunity is missed if you listen to these sermons with no intention of applying them to your life.

Listening to sermons has never been intended to be a spectator event. It is supposed to be participatory.

Biblical listening entails the hearing and heeding of the Word of God. It is dangerous to procrastinate submitting to the Word of God. What starts out as a small act of hypocrisy, becomes a habit and what becomes a habit becomes a pattern and what becomes a pattern - if unchecked - leads to a lifetime of not listening to and applying sermons.

The Bible was written not merely to grow us in knowledge, but to transform us into Christlikeness.

I have experienced seasons in my life of being a professional sermon listener. You would never know it from the outside. The hard cold fact is that my sloppy lack of discipline replaced zeal for the application for the Word of God in my life.

Being a professional sermon listener is a danger that we are susceptible to, being around good teaching regularly. It is imperative that we not be professional sermon listeners. You can't take people where you are not going yourself in the context of ministry in the local church.

The dominant theme in Proverbs is wisdom. Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God. Wisdom is the ability to have spiritual "street smarts."

Right out of the gate, Solomon says, "Listen, son: you need to learn to fear God" (Prov 1:1-7). The second thing Solomon says is honor your father and mother (Prov 1:8-9). Then he says choose your friends wisely (Prov 1:10-18). Then we encounter our passage (Prov 1:20-33). The admonition here is: obey Scripture immediately.

You must learn, seminary student, to follow Christ now. You can't wait until you get to your ministry post. You must obey now. Being under the truth is not enough. The truth must be in us, it must grip us, it must lay hold of us.

The thesis is this: if you shun wisdom today, wisdom will shun you.

It is deadly dangerous to postpone obedience and to suppress the conviction of God's Word in our lives.

1. Wisdom screams to the unteachable (Prov 1:20-23)

Solomon portrays wisdom as a bold, attractive woman. Wisdom makes herself available. She cries out on the streets. Accessibility is important to lady wisdom. She is on the corner of the busiest intersection of the gates of the city. She understands the principle of access. She positions herself to be heard.

Her message is one of urgency: she is on mission. Wisdom shouts in the streets. She is not hidden, unclear or passive. Rather, she is bold, boisterous and in your face with her wisdom. You would have to intentionally avoid her. You cannot say, "I didn't know."

We have an amazing collection of resources available to us today: books, podcasts, small groups, conferences, etc. Wisdom is readily available and is screaming for our attention and our allegiance.

To hear and to not obey is not just sloppiness or laziness: it is sin. Obedience is expected of us. Obedience is doing what God says, when He says to do it with the right heart motivation.

Look at the progression in 1:22: from naïve (ignorant) to scoffers (arrogant) to fools (belligerent). This is the progression. Procrastination is not neutral: you are moving one direction or the other.

The ignorant like having their ears tickled, but Scripture calls us to box people's ears.

The arrogant like to write blogs and hear themselves talk, but they do not obey Scripture or apply Scripture.

Whatever category you find yourself in, you must repent. Repent of your unteachability. Repent of the idol of ever learning and not applying Scripture to your own life.

2. Wisdom indicts the procrastinator (Prov 1:24-31)

We learn from this section that wisdom's patience is long, but not unlimited. To reject truth is dangerous. There is a serious price to pay.

If you turn your back on wisdom, wisdom will turn her back on you. This sounds a lot like Galatians 5:8: you reap what you sow.

There are four results from spurning wisdom:

  • Wisdom will laugh

Wisdom will laugh at our calamity. When you need the most, she will not be available. When the storms come and the difficulties come, you will not be able to find wisdom, because you have built a habit and a pattern of ignoring the Word of God. You thought there were no consequences for ignoring sermons and ignoring the Word of God.

Do you know why wisdom laughs? Because you laughed at her. You ignored clear, diving truth from the mouth of God Himself for your own wisdom.

  • Wisdom grows deaf

Wisdom will not answer in the time of calamity. This is not a question of "if." It is a matter of "when." Life's adversities happen in a moment. You need wisdom before calamity strikes.

  • Wisdom will hide

Do you sense the movement in the text? From laughter to deafness to hiding. Wisdom is actually actively evading the person who is seeking her out. Wisdom will be known when she chooses to make herself known. This is a spiritual enterprise.

  • Wisdom will judge

Because they spurned my reproof, so shall they eat of the fruit of their own way and be satiated with their own devices.

It is a bad habit to procrastinate applying God's Word your life. It is spiritual insanity for us at Southern Seminary to not apply the Word of God to our own lives. We cannot lead people where we have not gone ourselves.

You can fake it during the easy times when everything is going smoothly in your life. But what about the difficult times? The difficult times reveal the spiritual sloppiness in our lives. And it is not just knowledge. It is life change.

Stop becoming a professional sermon listener. If you minister in the flesh, you get the fruits of ministry in the flesh. And then when trials come at an inconvenient time you will have nothing. You will wonder why you are blown so easily off course.

3. Wisdom exhorts the foolish (Prov 1:32-33)

The ball is in your court to apply wisdom to your life. Wisdom leaves us with a decision.

The waywardness of the naïve kills them; the complacency of fools destroys them. There is dread here.

But delight is available. To those who hear and heed comes blessing. Those who hear and heed will know how to respond in calamity. They have poured the Word of God into their lives and they now live like Jesus Christ.

Biblical listening means not only hearing, but also heeding the Word of God. The sermon is not over when the preacher says "amen." It is then incumbent on us to apply the Word of God.

Don't be a professional sermon listener.

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March 8 Towers: Adopting for Life 2010 and the GCR task force report

Roughly 600 people came to Southern Seminary to hear about embodying the Gospel by responding to the cry of the orphan at the 2010 Adopting for Life conference at Southern.

Russell D. Moore had this to say, among other things, in an article reflecting on the event:

"On Friday night, the chapel floor here was filled with people on their knees, seeking the face of God, with brothers and sisters laying hands on them and praying. People hugged one another, encouraged one another, and (to that point) total strangers cried as they prayed for new friends.

"I was able to pray with people who are infertile and grieving, with people who are thinking about whether God is calling them to adopt, with people who are discouraged about the prospects of starting orphan ministries. One man sought prayer in repentance for being an orphan maker, having abandoned his wife and children years earlier through divorce.

"There was a freedom in prayer. It wasn’t 'habbity-habbity-habbity, in Jesus name, Amen.' Broken people and hopeful people were crying out 'Abba.'"

This issue of Towers includes an article on the three main speakers at AFL 2010: Moore, senior vice president for academic administration and dean of the School of Theology at Southern; Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans, and David Platt, lead pastor of the Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala.

Another story provides a summary of several of the breakout sessions held at the event. The breakouts were largely geared toward practical application, addressing the topics of funding an adoption, nuts and bolts of international and domestic adoptions, ministry to the birth mother, developing an orphan care culture in your church and other issues.

Ronnie Floyd also delivered a Great Commission Resurgence Task Force progress report to the SBC Executive Committee near the end of February. Towers features a first-time published response article by Chuck Lawless, dean of the Billy Graham School at Southern, and a response article by Aaron Coe, lead pastor of the Gallery Church in New York City. R. Albert Mohler Jr. has also written an article specifically focusing on the task force's recommendations relating to the North American Mission Board.

We were grateful to Andrew Peterson for taking the time to do a 3 questions feature, and to Trent Hunter an SBTS alum who briefly detailed and reflected on he and his wife Kristi's two recent adoptions.

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SBTS chapel live blog: Russell D. Moore – 2 Corinthians 3:11-4:6 March 4, 2010

Preacher: Russell D. Moore, senior vice president for academic administration and dean of the School of Theology at Southern Seminary

Text/title: 2 Corinthians 3:11-4:6 - "You are not your worldview: finding the freedom to let the faith defend itself."

Moore shared the story of accidently sending a text message to Matt Hall, Dr. Mohler's executive assistant, instead of his wife. It was an endearing message meant for his wife and it went out to Hall instead.

It doesn't matter how well-crafted your message is: if it is going to the wrong audience it is saying the wrong thing.

We spend a lot of our time thinking about Christian apologetics and talking about defending the faith. We spend great amounts of time talking about Christian apologetics and different defenses of the faith with other believers. But when we go out and start telling these arguments to non-believers they just look at us and they are bored.

At the core of the reason why we are failing at defending the faith to our non-Christian loved ones and to non-Christian strangers around us is because we don't understand why people find the Gospel hard to believe and we don't understand why people don't believe the Gospel.

Why don't people understand the Gospel?

The problem, first of all, is with a voice.

In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul recounts the people of Israel not accepting the voice of Moses. The problem is not intellectual and it is not cognitive. The problem is personal. People did not accept the voice of Moses because Moses was speaking about Christ. Moses was the voice of Christ.

Adam is scared of the voice of the God in the Garden of Eden after he sinned. Israel is scared of the voice of God at Mt. Sinai. When Moses read the law, people would find anything they could to hide behind because they did not want to be exposed to the voice.

The problem, second of all, is with the light.

It was painful for people to look at Moses when he came off Mt. Sinai because it is painful to look at glory when you are a sinner. People don't want to see the light that is on the face of Jesus. Jesus tells us why in John 3. Jesus tells us that the light and glory of God that goes forth with the proclamation of the Word of God is a Who. The Light is Jesus. People have an aversion to the light. Why? It is not primarily intellectual or cognitive. It is because their deeds are evil and the light is a reminder of their condemnation and so they hid from the light.

There is a personal activity involved in this blindness. The god of this age has blinded the mind of unbelievers to that they cannot see the light. Satan is actively working to blind the mind - which is the core of who you are. Satan is in conspiracy with the sinful nature, working to keep people from seeing the light.

But Paul says, "Don't lose heart," even when people reject you. Don't lose heart because our enemy is not people, our enemy is the devil who is blinding those people.

We can't view unbelievers as people who merely have a different worldview than us. We must rage against the reptile, not against his prey.

How do people come to believe?

People come to believe by giving them the thing they are shrinking back from.

We give them the voice.

We give people the open statement of the truth. We openly speak of the Gospel, we openly speak of the crucifixion of Jesus, we openly speak of condemnation, we openly speak of the days when graves will be ripped open by Christ and we openly appeal to people to repent and believe.

It is not just that we deliver the facts of the Gospel. We openly speak of the truth and we commend ourselves to everyone's conscience.

There are a lot of people right outside these doors who don't know that the Gospel is directed to them. They think it is for someone else. There are a lot of people with consciences that are awakened to a Romans 2 understanding of judgment and condemnation and when they hear people speak the Gospel who are not willing to directly address the conscience - who say I know what you are suppressing, I know what you are running from, when you identify yourself as one who was a sinner: the worst kind of sinner like Saul before he became Paul - when you don't do that then you don't have an impact. But when you do that you come as the voice of Christ.

We give them the light.

The light transforms through the open statement of Christ Jesus as Lord, crucified and risen from the dead.

I am grateful for brilliant Christian apologists. But it is interesting that most brilliant Christian apologists were not converted through the ministry of brilliant Christian apologists.

What ultimately convicts of sin is the open proclamation of the Gospel. When you hear of the life-changing and forgiving power of Jesus and you want to get up and follow after Him that is the light invading your heart.

Paul said we do not just proclaim the message: we proclaim the message as those who are slaves of Jesus Christ. We present ourselves through service as we proclaim the message.

We preach in the church to those who are slaves along with us.

Apologetics are important. Apologetics are important not because people come to believe through the proof for a complex molecular structure of the eye. People are saved when you talk to them about what they are hiding behind. People are saved when you talk them about whatever presuppositions they are hiding behind and whatever supposed evidences they are hiding behind, but they are saved when you ultimately get to the real issue: people's sin that they don't want to expose to the light. This is what Jesus did with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4).

The voice of God we are afraid of is the voice that speaks and says, "Let there be light." What happens when the voice of God says, "Get out of the grave?" People come out of the grave. When the voice of God speaks there is light.

Thus, we should not be intimidated by lost people. There is nothing more significant to say than the Gospel. Ultimately, we heard the Galilean Gospel whether we were sitting in the honky tonk or whether we were sitting in the back row of the Baptist church.

People believe through the voice and the light of the Gospel that comes through the open presentation of it.

If you are apathetic or afraid toward people around you then you do not understand the Gospel that saved you. Paul was saved by a blinding light and the voice of Jesus.

Initially, we are blinded and we are scared. But when the voice of God speaks and sheds His light upon our hearts, we believe.

If you think that your mission is primarily intellectual or cognitive, then it is no wonder people do not hear you. It is no wonder people are bored by us. You are not your worldview. The people you are engaging are not disembodied worldviews. Lost people holding up worldviews are holding up those worldviews so they can avoid the real issue: their sin.

We come not with plausible arguments. We come as the voice of Christ with the light of Christ. We come proclaiming the word of the cross, because it pleases God to save people through the folly of what we preach.

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AFL 2010 live blog: David Platt February 27, 2010

David Platt is the lead pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala.

Ruth 2

Ruth and Naomi came back from Moab with nothing. They had no family and no food.

Isn't it true that God often ordains sorrowful tragedy to set the stage for triumph?

Boaz is introduced. He is from the clan of Elimelech - Naomi's deceased husband - and Boaz is a worthy man with property. So, Boaz is a worthy man and he is able to provide.

God had set up a way in Israel for the poor to be provided for. The poor could glean in the field after the reapers.

Ruth went to glean and she came to the field of Boaz. The text conveys the idea of Ruth just happening to end up in Boaz's field. Just happening to be there.

Nothing happens by accident. Everything is by appointment. There is a God who is sovereign over detail of your life, a God who is always plotting for your good and His glory.

It just so happens that a hurricane (Hurricane Katrina) wiped out our house in 2005. It just so happens that I had more time to look on the Internet and explore the possibility of adoption. And it just so happens that we decide to adopt from this obscure country of Kazakhstan. And it just so happens that we adopt a son from Kazakhstan. God is sovereign over every detail of life and He works for the good of His people and for His glory.

Boaz notices Ruth. "Who does this woman belong to?" Boaz asks.

Ruth is a Moabite woman. Ruth belongs to no one. Isn't that a picture of adoption, spiritual and physical?

No one wanted our son. We went over to Kazakhstan and we went to the orphanage and they told us that no one wanted our son. It was one of those moments when we wanted to stand up and shout, "We want him!"

Boaz approached Ruth and told her to not glean in any other fields. He told her that he had charged his young men to not touch her. Boaz was providing for Ruth.

Platt recounted going to a local foster care office in Birmingham and asking them how many families they would need to care for all the children. They laughed. Platt asked again. They said 150 families. Platt went back to the Church at Brook Hills and preached on orphan care from James 1 (v. 27 in particular). As a result, 160 families signed up to serve as foster care families. As they began to start serving as foster care families, Platt was meeting again with the local foster care officials. One of the women there pulled him aside and asked him what he had told those people that caused them to come and serve through foster care. Platt told her that he did not tell them anything that caused them to come. He said they came because the God who loves people told them to come and reflect His love to people around them. To reflect His love for children to the children around them.

God has ordained His people to be a reflection of His care for His people.

What would happen if we unleashed the resources that God has entrusted to us, as churches and as individuals?

Boaz ate a meal with Ruth. Then Boaz told his men to make sure that she got plenty of food.

Ruth went home and took food to Naomi. Naomi asked, "Blessed are you. Where did you go to glean?" Ruth still doesn't know who Boaz is. The writer saves the name of Boaz for the last word of the sentence.

Naomi is amazed.

Naomi tells Ruth, "He is one of our redeemers." Key word in the whole book: redeemer.

In chapter 4, Boaz redeems Ruth. Boaz has the right, resources and resolve to redeem. This is a great parallel with adoption. You must gain the right to adopt, you must have the resources to do so and you must have the resolve to carry it out.

The text says that Boaz carried through on his resolve and he and Ruth were married. Ruth had a son, she who was barren.

The story began with two women in need of food, provision and family. The story ends with Naomi holding Ruth's son, with Ruth and Naomi provided for.

And this son is named Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David.

And that is where this story ratchets up to another level. The story of Ruth and Boaz is the story of God keeping His people alive, of God sustaining His people. Of God sustaining His people through a king, and not just king David.

Ruth is in the family line of Jesus. She is there not because she earned it or deserved it.

Brothers and sisters, we are Ruth. We have done nothing to earn or deserve the favor of God. We were wandering with nothing and God has pursued us. God has stooped to save you from harm. God has protected you and provided for you. God alone has the right to redeem us. God alone has the resources to save us. And He, praise God, has the resolve to redeem us. And Jesus has resolved to obey to the point of death. Jesus has taken a cross and taken my sin and your sin and taken it upon Himself to die in our place.

That is the Gospel. That Gospel is how God saves us and that Gospel should be the backdrop in our minds as we carry out physical adoption.

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AFL 2010 live blog: Russell D. Moore February 26, 2010

Russell D. Moore is the senior vice president for academic administration and dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Luke 9:44-51

Moore recounted revealing to his 8-year-old son the reality of slavery that used to be present in the United States. His son was totally incredulous. "How could anyone practice slavery?" "How could anyone fight for slavery?"

It is interesting to note that they are times when people blindly go along in life, oblivious to something like slavery that goes on around them and that they even support. Things like this happen around us all the time.

Some of you in this room have adopted, some are thinking about adoption, some have been adopted, some are here to learn how to promote adoption in your local church and some of you are called to work in the foster care system right where you are.

The question that all of you must consider is, when we are talking about orphan care are we talking about something different than the Gospel? When slavery was a reality, there were people who said, "We are not going to focus on slavery, we are going to focus on the Gospel."

If you do not speak to those things that Jesus says are the sum and substance of the Gospel: love of God and love of neighbor, then you cannot preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Preaching Christ and Him crucified means you must preach Christ and what it means to follow after Christ. And preaching Christ does not mean that you merely preach about who Christ is and what He did, you must be crucified along with Christ. You must be crucified with Christ as you do your orphan care and as you practice adoption.

What does the Bible say about orphan care and the crucified Gospel?

This is the question that you must answer when it comes to orphan care and adoption.

When Jesus would speak about the fact that He would have to die, His disciples did not want to hear about it. His disciples did not understand and they did not want to understand. In Luke 9, you have an argument arising among Jesus's disciples about who is the greatest. This looks like a bare, haughty move to us, but it probably did not seem that way to them. Jesus had already given the disciples power to cast out demons and heal people. Jesus's disciples were likely talking about Kingdom service and discussing who had the most zeal among them to proclaim, "Jesus is King."

But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, called a child to stand by Him. What is critically important to everybody in this room that God is calling to orphan care is to understand why Jesus did this. Jesus put the child by His side and said, "Whoever receives this child, receives me." Why does Jesus do this?

They have already seen Moses and Elijah by Jesus's side. Now they see a child. Now Jesus puts a child right were Moses and Elijah were standing and he shows the disciples that any identity, ministry and initiative that they have must be derived by and from Jesus Himself. Jesus says the issue here is not about the power and the greatness of the people involved or about the ministry, it is about Christ.

You must become as the least: that is the one who is great.

In order to carry out the Gospel, you must see what God is doing in Christ and you must have a transformation of the imagination. Whether that is in conversation with your children, or the people in your congregation or out on the mission field, Jesus understands that wherever we are, the human heart is going to go toward self-exaltation. Jesus knows what is going on in our hearts, but He does not leave us there.

Jesus here is speaking to the imagination of His followers and He is showing them here with the presence of this child that the issue is, in order to follow after a crucified Jesus and to announce a Kingdom of a crucified Jesus, there must be crucified followers.

If we are going to have Gospel-centered orphan care, we must stop having the perspective that we are rescuing orphans from impoverished situations to bring them into a white, middle class American home. If we have that perspective, we are not bringing Gospel-centered help and care to orphans.

We are not the solution to the orphan crisis. The cross is the solution to the orphan crisis and the cross is the solution to our crisis.

Malaria kills and we must fight malaria. Aids kills and we must fight Aids. But prosperity kills and we must recognize that too. Moving children from suffering to prosperity is not enough and we must recognize that.

We must turn ourselves and our attention toward the cross, reminding ourselves that we are the people who are following after the man who is classified as a terrorist, staked to a stake and left to drown in His own blood. We must have the perspective not of being the rescuers of the world, but of being the rescued who love and receive those who have been given to us.

We must become orphans before we become orphan ministers.

You and I have to be driven to adoption and orphan care because we believe the Gospel. We are the people who were abandoned and given up on, but who were found and who were found through the cross and the empty tomb.

That means a humbling of ourselves as we see ourselves as bought by blood.

Jesus says you must see yourselves in the cross before you proclaim to others the cross. It is a crucified Gospel.

Why does Jesus choose the child? Because everyone would have seen this child as a waste of time. The disciples were probably thinking, "Why would you waste your time on this child, when you have a Roman empire to take over, when you have synagogue rulers waiting to talk to you?"

Ministering to a baby who will die in the next 30 days, who will never be around to give a testimony, is it worth it to receive that child? Absolutely. That is not a waste of time. Jesus says, "Let the little children come unto me." What is ultimately and really important is Jesus and in the faces of the least of these Jesus says "I am there."

It is a Gospel issue to receive the least of these.

It would seem as though love of neighbor is an issue that is entirely separate from the Gospel. Believe and love God? That directly relates to the Gospel. But love of neighbor? Surely that is a separate issue, right?

Often we interact with people in a way that is driven by self-justification. We seek to justify ourselves in our interaction with others instead of loving them. The Gospel blows self-justification away. Love of neighbor relates directly to the Gospel.

Jesus announces, "All things are made new: come and follow me." That is the message we proclaim.

The mission of God is not dependent on us.

We have to see and welcome those who the culture says are marginal.

The mission of God is coming, crucifying this imagination and removing this kind of haughtiness that says, "We will carry on the mission." God will remove this haughtiness by using Nigerian Pentecostals who don't have a dime to their name to save people and God will say, "That is just the way I like it."

The reason why it is so difficult for us to see why orphan care is so important, the reason why I didn't want to adopt, is because I wanted first to have children of my own. I wanted my own genetic material. I wanted my own biological pattern. I was haughty, self-exalting and absolutely unaware that God doesn't owe me fulfilling my life plan for the rest of my life. Instead, His plan for my life is to conform me to the image of Christ.

Not all of you in this room are called to adopt. Not all of you in this room are called to start an orphan care ministry in your church.

But all of us in this room are called to recognize the face of Jesus in the least of these. And all of us in this room are crucified people ministering to a crucified cosmos in the name of a crucified Messiah who nonetheless lives by the power of God.

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Adopting for Life live blog: Jedd Medefind

Jedd Medefind is the executive director and president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans. Medefind previously served as special assistant to President George W. Bush.

Medefind said he is aware of people all across the nation who are awakening to a desire to adopt. Henry Blackaby says when you see God doing something, join Him there. That is what we are doing here.

Medefind read verses from six different Psalms to begin: Psalm 118, Psalm 22, Psalm 34, Psalm 102, Psalm 24, Psalm 88.

Medefind challenged people to respond to the choice at the crossroads of light and darkness because God beckons people through orphans at this crossroads.

Medefind recounted a difficult situation in an orphanage of a two-year-old girl who spent more than 23 hours a day lying on her back in a crib. Medefind held this girl and the smell of human urine and feces almost overpowered him. As he walked out of the orphanage, Medefind was almost in tears at the profound fallenness of the situation.

This is our world.

And yet, this is not the whole story.

Light in darkness

The language of darkness and light is the language of the Bible from the very beginning. Darkness hovered over the waters and God said, "Let there be light." The same imagery is used to describe the incarnation. John called Jesus the Light of the world.

Isaiah says, if you spend yourselves on the needs of the hungry then your light will rise in the darkness. Our role is to be light in the midst of this darkness, reflecting the glory of God. And light shines the brightest in the midst of darkness.

Rwanda

I spent time in a genocide museum in Rwanda and I left stunned. There were tens of thousands of people in prison. A few years later, the governor of Rwanda - under a lot of outside pressure - released the prisoners. Adopting someone coming out of this situation is being light in the midst of intense darkness.

Personal adoption story

A year and a half ago my wife and I began an adoption process from Ethiopia. We were waiting and waiting. Finally, we got a picture in the mail from our adoption agency of the girl who would be ours. We began to make plans to go get her. Then, one afternoon I got a phone call. Our adoption agency was calling and they told me to go home and call them back from home because they had some difficult news. I drove home and we called and they told us that our little girl had died from pneumonia. She was only six months old and her body was not very strong. We shed many tears in the months that followed.

We knew that we were tasting a small piece of what goes on in Africa every day: parents losing children.

On the day of that little girl's death, there was no one there with her who would claim her and say, "She is ours." But on that same day, there was a mother and father and siblings and our whole church family who would say, "She is ours."

Portraits: light in darkness

Medefind showed a series of portraits that depicted darkness, twisted darkness, and a series that showed light. Medefind said portraits that are all light do not depict the life that Christians are supposed to live. Christians are to be light in the midst of darkness. Medefind showed portraits by Rembrandt and Caravaggio, portraits that depict light in the midst of darkness (including a portrait of Abraham and Isaac by Rembrandt). These portraits are what should characterize Christians.

Someone once said to me that people are afraid to get close to suffering because they fear that it is contagious. The purpose is not to seek discomfort, but it is to seek the place of great darkness where light can shine the brightest.

Even the Son of Man did not come to serve but to be served and to give His life as a ransom for many.

What does this mean for Christians?

There are three important implications for Christians:

1. We need to count the cost.

A few months ago, I learned of a story of family who had adopted a Russian orphan who was a special needs child. The mother told me that this has been the hardest year of her life. We need to realize that.

We need to know up front that it will difficult. We need to count the cost. If we imagine that we are exempted from suffering because we are responding to a call of God, then we are going to be disappointed. We cannot obligate God. God has loved us and we are to respond to that. We can know that all be well in the end, but between now and then anything could happen.

Hebrews 11, the hall of faith, is one of the most inspiring and at the same one of the most terrifying chapters in all of Scriptures. That chapter carries verses that speak of people putting foreign armies to flight and people being fed to lions and being sawn in two.

We need to know that if adoption is something we are thinking about, we need to be frank up front and count the cost.

2. We must speak openly and boldly about the struggles.

I am passionate for the cause of orphans and I am passionate about adoption. Adoption is a beautiful thing, but we need not be merely cheerleaders for adoption and orphan care. We can't be like Toyota. Toyota was not upfront about the problem with their vehicles. They tried to downplay it at first. They tried to keep it out of the limelight. We can't that be that way. We have to be honest.

If we are honest, we can bear one another's burdens. We can say, "Hey, I am having problem in this area." We can ask each other for help. We need not run away from the whole host of issues we will face. We can talk about those. There is no need to push issues to the side. We must speak honestly about the issues.

If we are afraid to acknowledge issues and speak frankly about them, then we are not going to be the free, open and loving people that we need to be.

The analogy of this is marriage and preparing people for marriage. We want to be upbeat, we want to be positive and we want to share with people that there are challenges in marriage. People spoke honestly with me about challenges in marriage up front and because of that I went in prepared and it has been amazing.

This is a healthy way to approach marriage and it is a healthy way to approach adoption and other forms of orphan ministry as well. The church needs to be the community that wraps around adoptive families and walks with them through this journey.

3. We need to know why we are getting involved.

When we realize the magnitude of what we are up against, our work in orphan care and adoption cannot be merely a response to what we see. Don't get me wrong: we should weep at the brokenness of the world.

But here is the thing: the world's pain will always overwhelm your enthusiasm. Going up against the world's great sufferings equipped only with a sense of obligation or righteous anger or guilt is like trying to cross the Sahara Desert with only a canteen: you will run dry.

Guilt and duty are powerful forces. Enthusiasm as well. We should feel holy pleasure in using our energy and gifts to serve the Lord. But these things are not enough. They will not sustain us.

But there is one wellspring that never runs dry. We love because He first loved us. Those are springs that never fail. We serve a God who pursued us when we were wayward and alone and He draws us to Himself and He invites us to call Him, "Abba," to live as His sons and daughters. And it is this God who calls us to do the same throughout the world. And to be as He is, as a match in a cave.

When we choose to enter such places it will not leave us the same. When we come as Christ's light into the blackest places it is a powerful, transformative thing. It transforms the places we go and it transforms us as Christians as we encounter Christ in the flesh in a way that we never have before.

And it doesn't just transform orphans and it doesn't just transform us and the churches we are a part of. It has a transformative effect in the world as well because we are making the Gospel visible.

I believe God is once again waking us to be a people who respond to the call of the fatherless.

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SBTS chapel live blog: David Platt — Luke 9:57-62 February 25, 2010

Preacher: David Platt, lead pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala.

Text/title: Luke 9:57-62

Platt said he was humbled and overwhelmed to open the Word of God and preach. He said he was humbled and overwhelmed to lead Christ's church.

6.8 billion people in the world. The most liberal estimates say that 1/3 of those are Christians. Even with those estimates that would leave 4.5 billion people in the world without Christ and on their way to an eternal hell.

Along with this great spiritual need comes physical need. 26,000 children will die today of either starvation or a preventable disease.

If these things are true, then we do not have time to play games with our lives or His church. We do not have time to waste our lives and ministries on the American Dream. We have a master that demands radical sacrifice and a mission that demands radical urgency.

Luke 9:57-62

Isn't this text odd? Doesn't it seem like Jesus is trying to prevent these people from following Him. Isn't this odd? We will do everything we can to get people to follow Jesus. But whenever large crowds were following Jesus, He would turn around and say things like, "Whoever would follow after me must hate his father and mother." He would turn around and say things like, "Pick up your cross and follow me." Pick up your instrument of torture and follow me.

Jesus has said these things to us. He has told us to give up everything we have. He has told us to love Him in a way that makes our closest relationships in the world look like hate compared to our love for Him.

But we begin to twist this picture and redefine Christianity according to our thoughts and our ideas. We twist Jesus into a Jesus who wants us to avoid danger altogether. The problem is when we do this we are twisting Jesus into a white, middle class American man, and when we worship this Jesus, we are not worshipping Jesus, we are worshipping ourselves.

1. Are we going to choose comfort or the cross? (Luke 9:57-58)

In Luke 9:51, the book of Luke shifts. There Jesus sets His face to go to Jerusalem.

You do not follow Jesus to advance yourself. Jesus is the end, in and of Himself. When you follow Jesus, He is all you have. You may not even have the basic need of shelter. You find your sufficiency in Christ.

And I look at my life and I see how tempted I am at every turn to use Jesus Christ to advance myself and to attain more comforts in this world.

My wife and I were living in New Orleans and our house went under water and we lost everything that we had. It was a sanctifying time for me and my wife. What we discovered was an incredibly satisfying place. We were stripped of the comforts of this world in order to find our sufficiency in Christ.

But it didn't take long. I was invited to preach in a large church in Birmingham and a year later we had more than we ever had. From the world's perspective, we were living a dream. But inside I had sinking feeling that I was losing what it meant to trust in the sufficiency of Christ.

I went to Cuba recently. When you go to Cuba, you don't see the church as buildings. You can't find the church in buildings. You find the church in people. I went to Cuba and I met a pastor who had planted 60 churches. 60 churches. I asked him how he did it. He looked and me and he said, "We just make disciples of Jesus."

Jesus is enough for him. He is enough for our brothers and sisters in underground locations. Imagine going to a location at night dressed in dark clothes. You go to gather at the risk of your life. You enter a little room with 60 believers crammed in. There is one little light bulb hanging in the room and they say to you, "Will you preach for at least two hours?"

These people have gotten the idea that all you need is the Spirit of God and the Word of God with the people of God to carry out the mission of God and they are right.

We are coming up on the time when we set the budget for the next year. I hate budget time. We evaluated our budget and I said, "We have got to cut stuff." We cut our worship budget by 83%.

2. Are we going to settle for maintenance or are we going to sacrifice for mission? (Luke 9:59-60)

There is a man who wants to go back and bury his father. Jesus says to him, "Leave the dead to bury the dead."

I got a call one day telling me that my dad had died. I cannot imagine not going back to do his funeral. What is Jesus saying? Jesus is saying that when we follow after Him, there is no higher priority in our lives. There is no higher obligation and responsibility on our lives than to advance the name of Jesus.

There is an urgency that resounds here that beckons us to leave behind the maintenance, business-as-usual mentality in the church to move ahead in advancing the kingdom of God to the ends of the earth.

We cannot settle for maintenance in the church. We cannot settle for a Christianity that designs endless programs that revolve around us. We cannot see missions as a program. We were created to take the Gospel of Christ to the ends of the earth. This consumes us, this saturates us, this motivates us, whatever position we have, we are doing it to proclaim the Kingdom of God to the ends of the earth. Every single follower of Christ. I want the people that God has entrusted me to lead to see that there is a grand purpose of God for their lives. They were created to impact the nations for the glory of God.

Does this mean we are all supposed to go overseas? Many, but not all. Every job we have is intended for one thing: to proclaim the Gospel to the end of the earth.

3. Are our lives and ministries going to be marked by indecisive minds or undivided hearts? (Luke 9:61-62)

The last guy Jesus talks to wants to go back and talk to his family before he goes. This is the same thing we would want to do. Jesus said if you follow after me, there is no looking back. Our hearts are the issue. Where we find our delight, joy and satisfaction is the issue.

Isn't this why those believers in those house churches are in those churches for hours at a time? Isn't this why our brothers and sisters in the Sudan are dancing in war-torn villages in the midst of persecution?

Does Jesus have our affections? Do we believe that He is supremely satisfying? Will we let go of everything that we have and go and follow Jesus?

Brothers and sisters, we have Someone worth losing everything for. Are we willing to forsake the pleasures, pursuits and stuff of this world to forsake everything to follow Him?

Let's lead people to see another way to live. The cost of discipleship is great, but the cost of non-discipleship is far, far, far greater. The cost of non-discipleship is great for the lost and the poor around us and it is great for us who would never know the supreme satisfaction that is found in following Christ.

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