God Changes Us From the Outside In
We talk about God changing people “from the inside out.” This is an accurate, biblical way to speak.
God is not interested in external moral conformity. God goes after the human heart, the transformation of the total person. Deep sanctification, deep change, happens as the Holy Spirit transforms our heart (our inside), which then transforms our outside.
However, I think we should also talk about God changing people “from the outside in.” This is also an accurate, biblical way to speak.
The gospel, God’s sovereign grace, comes from outside of us, not inside of us. And, often, God’s greatest means of sculpting us is our circumstances. Circumstances stand outside of us. God sends circumstances into our lives, circumstances full of sharp edges, that prune us into the people God calls us to be.
May God change us from the inside out and the outside in.
Photo: Salt & Pepper Bridge, Boston, 4th of July 2010.
San Jose: The Most Innovative City in America
This May Forbes Magazine crowned San Jose as “the most innovative city in America”:
For our ranking we started with the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. and used data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to determine number of patents per capita. Then we combined it with venture capital investment per capita from the National Venture Capital Association, along with those cities’ ratios of high-tech, science and “creative” jobs from ZoomProspector.com and Payscale.com.
It’s no surprise that Silicon Valley, specifically the city of San Jose and neighbors like Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Cupertino, ranked first in all four of those categories.
Living in Dead Churches
Many churches are declining and dying in America.
Two weeks ago I checked out a church building in downtown San Jose. The church secretary, who is in her 40s, was born at the church. She told me nostalgic stories of how full of people and full of life the church used to be. In the good old days, the church building swelled with 600 people on a Sunday. Today, a good Sunday is about 60 people. They’ve removed many of the pews so that the sanctuary feels less empty. There is another “church” that also meets at this church facility. A few weeks ago a Transgender Mormon male gave the morning sermon. This is not good.
When a church loses the gospel, its people, its mission, and its money, if that church owned a building, they will sell that building. The picture above is of St. Mark’s Methodist Church in Brookline, Massachusetts. Decades ago, the church closed its doors and sold its doors. The building is now a condo complex. Go here to see more pictures. People did a nice job remodeling the place, but it’s a depressing site to see people living in a dead church.
What should we do about this? Let’s pray.
Pray for the continued health of your church. Pray for the planting of new churches in your city. Pray for church planting networks. Pray for the young, aspiring pastors you know who are being trained up to lead in the church. Pray for old, dying churches to experience renewal. And pray the prayer that every church planter prays: “Lord, that’s a great looking church building on the corner of 1st and Broadway. That church has died. The gospel isn’t preached there. Send me to preach your gospel there and let a new, healthy church once again fill that building with your praise.”
I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. -Jesus
Darrow Miller Interview
One of the best books I’ve read this year is LifeWork: A Biblical Theology for What you Do Everyday by Darrow Miller. I’ve also enjoyed getting to know Darrow Miller a little bit through conversation over email and the phone. Because I want all of you to read LifeWork and become familiar with Darrow Miller, I’m posting this interview with Darrow.
Read the interview, then read the book. Also, check out the Monday Church website which is staked with helpful resources related to the message of LifeWork.
1. Darrow, how would you summarize the message of LifeWork in a paragraph?
For too many years much of the church has been functioning from a dualistic paradigm - the spiritual is separated from the secular and is deemed higher. This dualism is not Biblical; it is an ancient Greek mindset. It affects every area of life including how one answers the questions: What is the church? What is the role of the church in society? What is the gospel? What does it mean to be a Christian? And etc. In the realm of work, ecclesiastical calling (being a pastor, evangelist, church planter, or a cross-cultural missionary) is viewed as a higher calling. Being an artist, engineer, farmer, lawyer, or auto mechanic are seen as secular and thus a lower calling. This flawed understanding has effectively disengaged the church from culture. We no longer function from a theology of vocation, nor do we connect our work to the advancement of the Kingdom of God. We are Christians on Sundays but not Monday Christians. The book is a call to connect our life and work to the coming of God’s Kingdom.
2. What do you hope happens as a result of people reading LifeWork?
There are three main hopes for the book. First, I hope that people who are working among the poor would understand the Biblical framework of work and will begin to disciple the people they are working with to see that work is part of human dignity. Most cultures that are poor believe that work is a curse. Having worked for 27 years for an international relief and development organization, I have come to see that physical poverty is a direct result of the lie that work is a curse. Second, I hope the book will help Christians who are working in the home, marketplace or public square see that their work is important and that Christ wants to advance his Kingdom through their work. I want to break down this unbiblical dichotomy. Third, I want to challenge pastors to begin to teach again on a theology of vocation. The people who congregate on Sunday spend most of their adult life and a larger part of their waking hours at work. And yet there is so little encouragement from the pulpit to help the congregation understand the vital role their work plays in the advancement of the Kingdom.
3. Why should pastors read LifeWork? How can pastors help spread the message of LifeWork in their churches?
They need to read the book and begin to develop a series of sermons from the book. There should be a time each year when pastors teach on the theology of vocation. Sunday school classes and Bible studies can be started around vocational themes to help prepare Christians in their congregations to think Biblically in terms of their work. Too often Christians think like the world thinks in terms of their vocation. This is one reason the United States is in such moral bankruptcy in the market place and public square. There could be commission ceremonies for vocational workers after they have explored how to apply Biblical principle to their vocations. Pastors could band together with other pastors to begin a “church in the city” where Christian leaders will work together to begin to impact the city and their state. These could be modeled after the Clapham Sect in England that the Lord used to bring and end to slavery in the British empire.
4. What motivated you to write LifeWork?
The Bible is true to the reality that God has made. The Biblical worldview is the “reference point” to which all of life is oriented, including work. When our work is defined in terms of a materialistic reference point, life unravels. My desire is to help Christians around the world to understand the need to reference their work to the Biblical narrative.
5. Darrow, tell us more about yourself: your background, the work you’re doing now, what you’ve written, etc.
I have been the husband of the bride of my youth, Marilyn, for 44 years. We have four children and eleven grand children and counting. Marilyn and I live in a log home in the Coconino Forest where I spend half of my time writing and corresponding with young Christians from around the world. I came to know Christ when I was thirteen years old and an ex-convict named Cass Shrive shared the gospel with me. I always mention his name in sharing my testimony as I only knew Cass one day in my life and am always hoping someone will know him to help reconnect us. The two most important experiences in my life were a trip to Mexico City as a college student. It was there that I saw poverty for the first time and my heart was broken for the plight of the poor. The second event occurred in my mid-twenties when Marilyn and I studied at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland under the late Francis Schaeffer. It was there that I understood that I had a “born again “heart but an unregenerate mind. Having grown up in America, I thought like an atheistic materialist and needed to be “born again, again” - to begin to think like a Christian.
For a few years I was a student pastor at Northern Arizona University and then a pastor of a church in Denver Colorado. Then God called me to work at Food for the Hungry an international relief and development organization, of Christian motivation, that works among the poor in about 30 developing countries. It was at this time that my broken heart for the poor and my understanding of the power of ideas and the importance of the Biblical worldview came together. As I began traveling around the world, witnessing immense poverty, I realized that the billions of dollars in international aid made very little difference. In fact, too often the aid created dependency and thus greater poverty.
It was then that I realized that the root of poverty was not lack of resources, but it was lack of truth in the culture. Poverty was rooted in lies, in faulty paradigms. In many of the poorest communities in the world people are fatalistic – they think they are poor and there is nothing that they can do about it; they see women as inferior to men, work as a curse, the universe as capricious – leads to a culture of corruption, and etc. In order to see people lifted out of poverty they needed to come to operated in the frame of reality that God had made. History is not something that happens to you, it is something you created. Women are not the property of men, they are made in the image of God and are the equals of men. Work is not a curse, it is part of our dignity. The universe is not capricious, it is orderly. Fools deny this order. The wise discover this order and walk in its frame. The concept of development that I first learned at FH was “need based development” NBD, where well intentioned people go into a community do an needs survey and then seek to supply the needs of the community from outside resources. Over the years I concluded that this approach did little to help people out of poverty. Then we began to understand a new (or rather ancient) concept, “asset based development” – ABD. This concept of development helps people see and access the assets they have in their own lives and communities and begin to use them for their own development.
A number of things have been born out of these insights. The first has been a partnership between FH and another non-profit organization, Harvest Foundation. This partnership has become known as the Disciple Nations Alliance www.disciplenations.org and is working organically with people in 60-70 countries. Our primary focus is on envisioning and equipping local churches to engage in the development of their own communities with their own resources. A number of books have come from the things we have learned. Discipling Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures was published in 1997. The Kingdom Lifestyle Series, written with Scott Allen and Bob Moffitt, was published in 2005. Nurturing the Nations: Reclaiming the Dignity of Women to Build Healthy Cultures was published in 2007. LifeWork: A Biblical Theology for What You Do Every Day was published in 2009. In addition, Dr. Bob Moffitt, the President of Harvest Foundation and co-founder of DNA has written If Jesus Were Mayor: How Your Local Church Can Transform Your Community.
The Most Joyful Book in the World
Update: A reader sent me the full quote from Denney. Here it is:
”Christianity has been named, sometimes patronizingly, sometimes sentimentally, sometimes honestly enough, the Religion of Sorrow; but there never was a more complete misnomer. It is not the religion of sorrow, but the religion which, because it is inspired by One who lives and was dead, gives the victory over every sorrow, even the crowning sorrows of death and sin. There is not in the New Testament from beginning to end, in the record of the original and genuine Christian life, a single word of despondency or gloom. It is the most buoyant, exhilarating, and joyful book in the world” (Denney, James. Studies in Theology. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1895, p 171).
…there is not in the New Testament from beginning to end, in the record of the original and genuine Christian life, a single word of despondency or gloom. It is the most buoyant, exhilarating, and joyful book in the world.
-James Denney
Take God Seriously, Not Yourself
I find most energy in ministry comes when I take God very seriously and don’t take myself too seriously. We last in ministry when we learn to accept our shortcomings, admit our mistakes, and laugh at ourselves as we place the focus on Christ.
-Dave Earley
Idolatry is Like a Pacifier
The idolatry in our lives is like a pacifier problem I recently observed.
My friend has a two year-old son who is always sucking on his pacifier. Always. He sucks on his pacifier all day long. He sucks on his pacifier all night long. Two years of all day and all night pacifier sucking has caused a big problem: this toddler’s teeth have hinged forward and up like an old fashioned garage door because of the constant shape and suck of the pacifier.
A pacifier is a good thing. But a pacifier becomes a dangerous and idolatrous thing when we give it our ultimate allegiance–when we suck on it all day long, all night long, for two years. This pacifier has changed the structure and appearance of this little boy’s mouth, and now significant corrective action is required.
Job security, relationships, success, reputation, money, planning, and comfort are also good things. But these become dangerous and idolatrous things when we give them our ultimate allegiance–when these things become the central fixation of our lives rather than our Triune God. Like the pacifier, our constant suck of idolatry slowly but surely changes the deep structure and appearance of our hearts, leaving us in need of significant intervention.
My friend is a good father. He knows what he has to do now. He has to take away the pacifier from his son. With this son, cold turkey is the only method that will work. Daytime will be full of confused crankiness as the son cries out for his familiar pacifier, not understanding why his father withholds it. Nighttime will be the worst. The son has never slept without his pacifier. My friend the father will have to listen to the uncomfortable sounds of tears, restless exhaustion, and anger coming from his son’s crib. This will go on for many nights. It won’t be until many years later that the son understands why his father took away his cherished pacifier.
We all have our pacifiers. We’ve come to love them too much.
Much of this is our fault, our sin. Some of it is not. Had my friend been a more discerning father, he would’ve spotted and stopped his son’s pacifier problem earlier. But he didn’t, and his son’s inordinate love for the pacifier only grew stronger.
This is why the allure of idolatry is so strong in our lives. We attach our attention, affection, and assurance to created things rather than the Creator because of the sin in our own hearts and because of the many ways other people have sinned against us. There’s a double power at work here. When we were young, probably without even knowing it, many of us determined to never again experience the hurt and shame that came from the hands of another person, so we selected a pacifier of self-protection to carry with us at all times.
Some of us chose to not feel. Some chose to always be in control. Some chose to hide. Some chose to be religious. Some of us chose to run away.
Now we’ve grown older. And in rare moments of honesty we’re able to admit, or start to admit, that we have a problem. The pacifier that we thought would protect us and satisfy us, has only hurt us. It’s actually caused us to hurt other people too. This is what always happens when we let something be for us what only God can be for us.
Some of you hurt so bad right now. You hurt because your pacifier has been taken away. Like me, you don’t know how to do life without your pacifier.
But this is what I know about my Sovereign Father: he loves his kids. This never changes. All who repent of running their own life and trust Jesus as Savior have inherited an invincible love relationship with the Father.
And the reason the Father has ripped the pacifier from your clenched mouth is the same reason he chose you before the foundation of the world, justified you at your conversion, and will one day glorify you in his presence: because he loves you! Don’t just read these words, believe these words.
He loves you! He loves you! He loves you!
Child of God, you had a problem and you didn’t know it. You’ve been sucking on a pacifier for years and it’s been damaging you and damaging others. You’ve refused to give it up. Now God has arranged the circumstances of your life to decisively pull the pacifier from your grip. You’re shaken up, but he has you right where he wants you. The only way forward is to trust your Father. Trust him! Let him love you. Trust his plan. Trust him and love him with all your heart. New territory will open up before you.
Christianity: A Revitalization Movement
Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world…[It provided] new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers as well as strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity…And to cities faced with epidemics, fires and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services…For what they brought was not simply an urban movement, but a new culture capable of making life in Greco-Roman cities more tolerable.
Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity. Quoted in Darrow Miller, LifeWork.
