Tag: Resurrection

The Source of a Leader’s Character

I recently had the honor of speaking to a number of my colleagues on the importance of character in leadership development. The following is from the beginning of that talk, from the section focusing on the source of a leader’s character. Today, as we reflect on what we are thankful for, I am thankful for these truths, that we have a sure and steady eternal source for godly character – and because of that we have hope in the often long and painstaking work of leadership development, and hope for our own slow character growth as well.

“As we begin today, we need to step back and look at the source of a leader’s character. How, given the history of fallen man, how is it even possible that a man would have godly character? How can this be when the image of God in was shattered in Adam and we continue to smash it through our own sin?

2nd Peter 1:4 says – scandalously – that we become partakers of the divine nature – sharers in the divine character. Well, what changed to make that possible? What happened to ‘They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one?’ (Ps 14:3)

Well, the character of God was restored to humanity in the coming of Jesus Christ. God’s eternal word, the eternal Son, became a human, became a servant in human form (Phil 2), and thereby smuggled in divine character behind enemy lines. Through his coming, his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, he has now made a way for any who believe to share in the nature of the god-man, Jesus Christ. This has been accomplished in the past.

Now, in the present, those who repent and believe experience two stunning realities – the new birth and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come’ (2 Cor 5:17).

The miracle of the new birth makes us a new creation, we get a new heart and a new Spirit, a new core and a new nature – a godly one. As we live in the present this is who we are!

Further, Romans 8:15 says that we have received the Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’ This Spirit bears witness in the present that we are children of God. And he also bears fruit in us – the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5, a portrait of godly character: Love, Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

But the source of a leader’s character is not just located in the past and the present. It’s located in the future too – the coming resurrection.

Again, Romans 8. ‘And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved’ (v. 23-24).

Or, take 1st Cor 15:52-54 ‘We will not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.’

Every day, we are moving closer to this coming transformation, when the character of Christ in us will be perfected. The source of a leader’s character is also this coming resurrection hope, just as it is the present new birth and indwelling of the Spirit, and the past work of Christ.

Why does it matter that we know the source of a leader’s character? Why spend all this time talking about the past, present, and future? So that we will know where to ground our hope in the difficult and slow task of character development.

We have a small core of guys in our church plant that we have been walking with for years now. And to be honest, we had hoped that some of them would be a whole lot further along by this point. Many times we’ve started the conversation on our team about moving some of them into more leadership. And then something happens that shows us that their character is not yet ready.

We go to a training conference and they fight like middle-schoolers. We try to plan a baptism picnic and they fight some more. Persecution ramps up, an alleged spy enters the group, and some disappear. Or hidden dynamics at home emerge that show the good theology hasn’t been translating into being a godly husband.

It gets discouraging. When will they be ready and our consciences permit us to entrust them with leading God’s church? We must regularly remind ourselves of the source of a leader’s character if we are to persevere in this long-term work that tends to go in fits and starts.

Remember that the work of Christ is accomplished and sure for that struggling local brother, remember that it is a new heart that beats within him, the Holy Spirit that indwells him and won’t let him go. Picture that brother one day, resurrected, free from sin, shining in eternal glory.

‘It’s a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses,’ as C.S. Lewis puts it, ‘to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to [or that struggling local leader in training] may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.’

Friends, remembering their future resurrection helps us persevere in the messy present.

Remembering the source of a leader’s character keeps hope alive in the long task of character development.”

Photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Unsplash

A Song on the End of the World

We don’t have very many contemporary songs written about the end of the age. I appreciate this one by Jess Ray, which combines serious references to Christ’s return with mentions of zombies and EMPs – and puts it all to a driving folk melody.

Select Lyrics: 

Will there be zombies? 
Fires and floods? 
Will there be an EMP? 
Moons turned to blood?

Blessed is the man 
If he knows the lamb when he sees him
Cursed is the man who has money and food
And a place to hide
And a head full of knowledge 
And a heart full of pride
Cursed is the man if he does not know the lamb

“There’s Still Time” by Jess Ray

When the Beauty Never Leaves

I love our local bazaar in the fall. A gentle and steady wind blows down from the mountains, stirring the tree branches and their yellowing leaves. The summer heat has passed, and the buildings, the people, and earth itself seem to sigh contentedly in the cooler weather. Some trees and plants even celebrate the lower temps with a second, mini Spring. Pomegranates are ripe, piled high on carts, red and crunchy. Olives are ripening also. The autumn sun, lower and playfully angled to the south, shines through the swaying branches. Street musicians play classic melodies on stringed instruments and traditional flutes.

Every believer likely has certain places where they feel eternity bleeding through into the present. Places where the beauty of this world awaken some kind of deep memory – or prophecy – of another world. Eden that was lost, or Eden to be remade. These longings, as Lewis pointed out, can be sweeter than the deepest pleasures realized in this life. As penned by The Gray Havens, we “can’t find something better than this ache.”

I wonder what kinds of scenes awaken this inner longing for eternity in other believers. Is it something we all experience? Are some of us for some reason particularly haunted by these tantalizing flashes and whispers? If so, then it is a good haunting. Even if at times it leads to tears.

For me, it’s often angled, gentle sun. The wind and the branches softly dancing together. The happy sounds of a bazaar in Autumn. A warmth in my chest and an echo of a memory in my mind of something wonderful and somehow also painful.

I’ve felt it elsewhere also. When sun flicked the waves as the seagulls dove and cried and our ferry made its way across the Bosphorus. Or when we waded into an ancient river barefoot during a summer sunset. Watching a Melanesian island sunrise as the waves smash the coral shores. A silent snowfall over a lamp-lit Minneapolis footbridge. An orchestra playing Handel’s Elijah. A particularly sweet conversation with a local believer over a cup of chai. A moment of Edenic intimacy with my wife.

These echoes, these previews, remind me that I am not yet fully alive. But that one day I will be. The groaning creation will then be set free into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:21). Its resurrection will follow ours, just as its fall followed ours. No more hints, previews and echoes on that day. But face to face, unveiled glory. The creation, the resurrected ones, the king himself.

Sometimes all of this really is present in an afternoon moment in a Central Asian bazaar. It comes, it sings, it fades again. Eternity has bled through once again. And I am left behind. Yet not forever.

Steady on, my soul. One day the beauty will come – and it will never leave.

Photo by Ali Kokab on Unsplash

Jesus Spoke a Persian Word From the Cross

One way to distinguish Central Asia as a region is to say that it is the part of the world dominated by Turkic or Persian-related languages. When it comes to Persian-related languages, we’re talking groups like the Dari, Tajik, Kurdish, Luri, and Balochi. There are hundreds of millions of people who speak Persian itself (also known as Farsi) or languages closely related to it.

These hundreds of millions of people are overwhelmingly Muslim – and they might be surprised to hear that Jesus spoke a word from their ancestral language while on the cross.

That word is what we know as paradise. I won’t get into the details of the etymology, but this ancient Persian word for walled enclosure and garden came into many of the languages of the ancient world, including Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic forms. No doubt the Jewish community living under Persian rule is where much of this linguistic influence came from. Plus, the Persians were the superpower of the region for quite some time. The vocab of the superpower tends to spread, just as here the local Central Asian form of laptop is, well, laptop (but said with an “ah” and an “oh”).

The old Persian term’s connection to a garden is what linked it with Eden, and thus with our concept of paradise – not only Eden lost, but heaven as well, and Eden one day restored.

And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43 ESV)

These are the words Jesus spoke to the dying thief on the cross who simply asked to be remembered. In this saying Jesus uses the word paradise to refer to having died and being welcomed into the presence and rest of God – Abraham’s bosom as it were.

This is not the only Persian loan word in the Bible. There are dozens of them. Somewhere around eighty in the book of Daniel alone. Yet Jesus’ words on the cross are coming at the very climax of redemptive history. And one of them is Persian. I find this fascinating. Iranians I’ve shared this with are struck as well. It’s one more example of the capacity for any human tongue to be redeemed and used in the service of God.

And what a great opening to go on and share the gospel.

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A Song for Struggling Saints

I love this song. I find it to be a good example of using holy imagination to explore true themes that resonate with Scripture and the experience of believers. In it the songwriters craft a fictional conversation between a struggling saint and Jesus. Notice the desperation of the saint, “the devil; Rides on my back every mile; And he won’t take his claws out of my skin; I’m sorry if I’m bleedin'” This broken saint is met by a laughing and welcoming savior, who engages him and then lavishes on him a tour of biblical history and the created universe. The song contains a promise that the struggling saint will be singing with Christ and the angels when “the army comes marching right down from the sky” and that “All of this is Mine! And yours too.” This saint is so beat up he is apologizing to Jesus for bleeding and doesn’t even know how to ask for help. But Christ laughs kindly because the the reality he knows is one in which this struggling saint is the heir of the universe. I love the line, “stuck our tongues out at the earth and slowed its rotation.” Ha! I guess that’s one way to demonstrate being a true heir of the world. The interwoven melody of the older song, “When the Saints Come Marching In,” is great as well. Lyrics below. 

He said to me where is your halo
Where are your wings your black book bible
I’ve lost them all but you know it’s not your fault
He asked me how I said 'the devil
Rides on my back every mile
And he won’t take his claws out of my skin I’m sorry if I’m bleeding'

He bent down and wrote it in the sand
Made a wave and spelled it out in the ocean
Said we’ll be singing those angel hymns all together
When the army comes marching right down from the sky

'I can help' is what came from His mouth
I’d yell yes please but I’ve never spoken to the clouds
The weight it grows everyday ever hour second and eternity
He laughed out loud and asked me to explain
Forever, no-end, death, and being born again
If it’s the universe you want to see, come and take a walk with Me

I told myself son you better listen...

And we went into the garden and saw Adam die alone
Saw a baby in the water floating to a safer home
Saw the walls fall to the trumpeters then to Gilead we ran
By the time we made it to the top we were out of breath again
Then we stood on the moon, moved the craters to make faces
Stuck our tongues out at the earth then slowed it’s rotation
It was July in the winter before we moved it back to June
Passed the speed of sound, the speed of light and the speed of time too and he said,
'All of this is Mine, and yours too'

“Saints” by Poor Bishop Hooper

A Song For Mourning Turned to Gladness

“Gone are the Days” by the Gray Havens and Julie Odnoralov

I’ve posted the original version of this song in the past, but I really enjoy this remix as well. The lyrics look back, post-death, to the sufferings of this life and the new reality of sorrow turned to gladness.

It is a fitting song for today, when I get to attend a very special wedding. My mom, widowed twenty eight years, is getting remarried. Her new husband is himself a widower, and one of his daughters one of my classmates and friends from high school in Melanesia. As such, it is a very different kind of wedding, where everyone’s thoughts are not only on the bride and groom, but also on the parents and spouses who have departed and gone to be with Jesus. There has been great loss, but there is also new joy.

He makes all things new. This song, and this wedding, provide me glimpses of how he will do this for all eternity.

A Song on the House of God

Sojourn Music has done it again. This is a song that celebrates what has been called The Great Reversal, how the kingdom of God lifts up those the world despises and brings them full and eternal restoration in God’s presence and house. These things are coming true, imperfectly though truly in this age, but wonderful and complete in the age to come. 

Blessed are the ones who will eat the feast in the kingdom of God
Blessed are the blind that will finally see in the kingdom of God
Blessed are the poor, oppressed, and abused
Blessed are the weak, distressed, and accused
When you strike up the band...

“Your House” by Sojourn Music

A Song on Gloryland

We’ll need no sun in gloryland

The moon and stars won’t shine

For Christ himself is light up there

He reigns on love divine

Then weep not friends

I’m going home

Up there we’ll die no more

No coffins will be made up there

No graves on that bright shore

“Gloryland” by Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys

I like the haunting beauty of this A Cappella bluegrass song. Bluegrass harmony is itself a lovely thing, but notice also the earthiness of the suffering mentioned in this song and how the theology of heaven provides strength to face death. Was there in previous ages of evangelicalism an underdeveloped understanding of salvation? Sure. Forgiveness of sin and eternal life in heaven were emphasized to the exclusion of the Spirit’s power for true life in this age and the ultimate hope of the new heavens and new earth. But I think we often underestimate how practical this focus on victory over death was for a humanity that simply faced death on a more constant basis.

My grandmother’s line were all Scotch-Irish stock who spent their lives in the mountains and coal mines of West Virginia. All the men were miners. And all died early of black lung. Infant mortality would have been exponentially higher than it is now. I suspect that if we feel any smug superiority to the bluegrass theology of the coal miners, that might also say something about how hard we in the West have tried to isolate ourselves from pain and death.

A Song For Those Made For Endless Summer

I really love this new song by the Gray Havens. “Have you ever missed somewhere that you’ve never been?” Yes… yes I have. Reminds me of this quote of Augustine’s where he muses on the “memory” of Eden that each of us somehow carries.

However, I have to say that while endless summer in North America sounds lovely, an endless summer in our corner of Central Asia – with its 115 F/46 C temps – is not quite as pleasant a prospect. Can I have an endless spring, perhaps? Much better for eternal picnics.