Make sure you listen until it picks up at the 3:00 mark. I love how this song blends the Augustinian idea, “you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” with the truth that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2nd Cor 5:17).
...
Since Your love got a hold of me
I'm a new creation
I'm forever changed
I was made by You
I was made for You
I am unfulfilled
Without full communion
-"Since Your Love" by United Pursuit
My family, like so many others, are indebted to Drew Jones, Bob Kauflin, and Sovereign Grace Music for “The Gospel Song.” It was the first song our firstborn learned to sing and it has been a steady gospel presence in our family times of worship for the past eight years. There is tremendous power in simple memorable songs that can be sung anytime, anywhere, and without musical accompaniment. If you are not familiar with the lyrics, here they are:
Holy God in love become
Perfect man to bear my blame
On the cross he took my sin
By his death I live again
Many a bedtime in Central Asia we have sung this song with our kids, sometimes alongside of Central Asian friends who were visiting when it was time for our kids to hit the hay. As an aside, bedtime bible reading, songs, and prayer as a family present a great chance to model family worship for new believers or to proclaim the gospel to unbelieving friends. Most who have joined us for this time have expressed that it was the first time they had seen something like it. And our family rhythm of read, sing, pray is very simple… and sometimes a little chaotic now that we have three kids.
Over time we desired to incorporate the resurrection of Jesus also into “The Gospel Song.” So we wrote a second verse for our kids and it stuck. Here it is:
On the third day he arose
Christ defeated all our foes
Satan, sin, and death can't win
By his life I die to sin
We wanted to stick to the song’s original AA BB rhyme as well as include the life/death contrast in the final line. In terms of content, we wanted to include Christ’s victory over our enemies through the cross and resurrection as important aspects of the gospel that go hand-in-hand with Christ being our sin-bearer. Growing up in tribal Melanesia, I remember the radical power of the idea that Jesus has defeated Satan, so we no longer have to be afraid of the spirits. As a young man fighting lust, I clung to the truth that I was now dead to sin through Jesus. I remember also being a pastor in the US and seeing that most prospective members of our church forgot to mention the resurrection of Jesus when asked to share what the gospel is. Now we serve in Central Asia, where the fear of persecution and death often cripple local believers from faithful obedience. These and many other reasons are why we want to build in wherever we can a steady emphasis on the resurrection alongside of our emphasis on the cross, for our kids and for our lost friends.
Though I am no songwriter by by trade, nor the son of a songwriter, I humbly commend this unofficial second verse of “The Gospel Song” to any families or teachers out there that may find it helpful.
I recently joined twitter after many years of conflicted avoidance. And I thought missionaries could fight. Wow. Twitter seems custom-designed to bring out the pugnacious side of the human heart. You know, the part that loves to lob verbal grenades and smash metaphorical bar chairs over others’ heads in a saloon. The global population lockdowns have probably made this worse. After all, fighting is better than doing nothing, as my Central Asian friends say, in a jaded logic that most of the world would probably agree with.
But we are those who know that the peacemakers are blessed, for they will be called sons of God (Matt 5:9). Still, we often find ourselves in need of practical spiritual help to not quarrel and fight, even if we’ve been believers for many years. Otherwise, why would Paul exhort Timothy regarding the relatively sound Ephesian church, “I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling“? All kinds of believers struggle in these ways. Yes, even pastors, theologians, and missionaries need to be reminded of these things. I need to be reminded of these things.
In this vein, I have found the doctrine of believers’ future resurrection to be a trustworthy friend and ally when I am tempted to fight and argue with other believers. This doctrine is the biblical teaching that when Christ returns he will raise the dead to life and believers will be given new, spiritual bodies. We are given fascinating hints of what this will be like in the scriptures. Passages like Daniel 12:13, which says that “those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the sky above; And those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” This future resurrected existence will not only include freedom from sin, but also a transformation such that believers will shine with glory, honor, and beauty. We will be clothed with a physical form fitting for the new heavens and new earth and for beholding the face of God. Resurrected humanity will be stunning, apparently even higher in glory than the angels.
This is true of my teammate. This is true of my supervisor. This is true of that messy new believer who keeps self-destructing. This is true of my spouse. This is true of that social media warrior who took that sentence out of context and is causing all kinds of digital mayhem. In spite of this present frustration, one day we will be sitting together on the banks of New Zion’s river, sipping heaven’s equivalent of cold brew and laughing together, filled with holy delight in one another’s glory and in the glory of the Lamb. Our friendship will be perfected.
Sometimes I imagine scenes like this when I’m about to head into a hard meeting or when I have to respond to a tense email or text. This use of biblically-informed imagination helps me to approach my brother or sister in Christ in a better posture, one informed by their future glory. I am better able to love my fellow believer and to speak and listen appropriately as I let our future resurrected friendship bleed into this present conflict.
If you are looking for practical, but biblical strategies for peace-making in the midst of conflict, for dealing with that frustrating relationship, consider turning your imagination toward the coming resurrection. There is some untapped power there that could be of some real help.
I love the chorus of this song, which looks back from the future resurrection. And, man, I love how those horns build at 2:20.
...
As I reach
For the bread and the wine
For the comfort I"ll find
Picture the scene
One days
To the table we'll come
Every daughter and son, finally free
We'll sing
Gone are the days
When we cry
Here are the days
When we'll fly
All our hopes will turn to sight
Beyond the veil, in the morning light
We'll sing gone
Are the days
One of the many benefits of reading scripture with your kids? Dad learns new things as well. Last night we were reading through the Proverbs and were forced to rub our chins and wrestle with this question: What does it matter that wisdom was there for the creation of the world? Well, here’s one powerful possibility. In these broken times, this truth reminds us that wisdom was there in the very beginning, before the fall, before the curse. If, therefore, we desire to return to Eden, to let the wisdom of God’s good creation bleed into our world of broken creation, then we should listen very carefully to God’s wisdom and seek it out as one seeks for hidden treasure. Finding it, we just may end up seeing previews of the new Eden coming to life around us.
[23] Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
[24] When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
[25] Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
[26] before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.
[27] When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
[28] when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
[29] when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
[30] then I was beside him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
[31] rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the children of man. (ESV)
Proverbs 8:23-31
My heart, my hands, they're kingdom bound
Glory
Where thorns no longer curse the ground
Glory
Trim the wick, ignate the flame
Glory
My work, it will not be in vain
Glory, glory
Oh, we labor unto glory
Till heaven and earth are one
Oh, we labor unto glory
Until God's kingdom comes
-We Labor Unto Glory, The Porter's Gate
But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in whichrighteousness dwells. 2 Peter 3:13 ESV
We are currently on a medical trip, back in the US for a few months. One big difference since we went overseas? Nearly all our peers have purchased houses. There was a time, about a decade ago, where I had no desire whatsoever to buy a house. In fact, if caught in an unguarded moment, I may have even said that those who purchased homes (especially in the suburbs) and settled down were in some way compromising, or least not living the kind of radical missional lifestyle that is really needed in this age. But things change after marriage and multiple children. Things change after a dozen more moves and a thousand more goodbyes. The valuing of thingsthat last grows stronger. Alongside of this also grows a deepened sense of true, biblical spirituality and the desperate need for not only those who will live like nomads for Jesus, but also those who will put down deep roots for Jesus. The sent ones simply can’t do what they do without being vastly outnumbered by the senders, those who have invested deeply enough in one place and one church so that they are able to send people like us to the nations. My family has been clearly called to go. Nevertheless, I feel a deep longing in this season of life to go and buy some farmland with a little patch of woods and to build a house there. Yet as far as I know, this desire is not compatible with our calling and dream to plant healthy churches among our Central Asian people group. So what is to be done?
Picture a battalion of Allied soldiers in WWI. Before the war, one was preparing to be an artist, one an athlete, another a musician. Then the war started. Now they spend their days in muddy trenches, hunkering down under artillery barrages or making yet another brazen charge to try to claim a few more meters of muddy earth. They do not doubt their duty to their country and are proud to be fighting for the defense of their homeland. Yet the dreams and the desires – to paint, to play, to make music – are still there. They even get chances to dip their toes in these pursuits occasionally during lulls in the fighting, when fellow soldiers make tea in the trenches and there’s opportunity to pull out that precious sketchpad, the cricket bat, or the fiddle. These men are called to fight as long as duty and honor requires, so what becomes of their dreams? They are deferred to the glorious future – after the war is won.
I find this to be a helpful analogy not just for missionaries, but for all believers. Which of us can say that we do not have unrealized dreams and desires? Is there any believer in the whole world who feels that this life is long enough to fit in every single good longing of their heart? It is not long enough. The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet there span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away (Psalm 90:10). This is why we so desperately need eternity. God has filled our hearts and our imaginations with many more desires than can be fit into one lifetime. We must die to most of them. The secret of the believer is that we only die to them temporarily. The end of the war is coming, and we are on the winning side.
I have been accused of being a dreamer, so this truth may be unusually sweet mainly for those like me who live with a head full of tantalizing ideas (which we compulsively share with our long-suffering spouses). But I find the idea of deferring dreams to the New Heavens and the New Earth ever so practical as I seek to be faithful in the ministry calling that God has given me, faithful in the dream of seeing an unreached people group saturated with true worshippers. What am I to do with the desire to buy some farmland and build a house? What about all those amazing languages I will never get to learn and all those books I will never have time to read? Will I ever have time to master an instrument, or to plant orchards and eat their fruit, or to learn how to sail? Perhaps. Yet if any of these things are given in this life, I will count them as an unexpected bonus, a gracious preview of what is coming. Not unlike a fiddle playing in the trenches.
If we believe what the scriptures say about a New Heavens and a New Earth, then that future will be just as real to us as the inevitable end of any earthly war. It’s coming, sooner or later. And in that world there will be all the time we desire, and then some, with which to worship God through the enjoyment of his new creation and the fulfillment of all his given desires. Until then, my wife and I will continue to express our many dreams and then when necessary, say to one another, “Let’s punt it to the new heavens and the new earth.” See, this hope is not a pipe-dream for us, not merely a coping mechanism, but something real. Something which is actually approaching the biblical understanding of hope – that which you can’t yet see, and yet you hear the sound of its sure and steady approach.
It was 1:00 am in Richmond, VA, 2015. I was sitting next to a young Middle Eastern immigrant, reminiscing about what we missed about his native region. This young man was in an enviable situation, one which many are in fact dying to achieve as they freeze to death in refrigerated lorries or drown in the waters of the Aegean. My friend had legal residency in the USA, was going to a good university, and had a steady job at his uncle’s Mediterranean restaurant. As we talked and sipped black tea (loaded with egregious amounts of sugar), the topic of ISIS came up. At that point they still controlled an area of the Middle East comparable to the size of many countries. While we spoke, this young man confessed to me that he watched ISIS propaganda videos and followed some of their accounts. And, in spite of everything, his heart was stirred. He still insisted that their violence did not represent true Islam, but it was clear that there was a powerful resonance in their message, one which at the very least caused some measure of internal doubt and wavering for a young Muslim with a promising future in the West.
There’s a good reason young men (and women) from all over the world joined ISIS, and continue to join it and similar groups. It has nothing to do with them being uneducated or from impoverished backgrounds, as is sometimes reported in the media. In fact, most who volunteer for jihadist groups are actually well-educated and from middle class or upper class families. Instead, many join because of a powerful understanding of history that goes like this: creation, fall, redemption, restoration.
No, I’m not speaking of that redemptive history, which begins with God’s creation of a good world, which then falls into a curse through man’s sin, a world that is redeemed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is now restoring all things, culminating in a new creation. That’s the original and true metanarrative, wonderfully fleshed out in the recent wave of biblical theology texts and children’s story book bibles. I am instead speaking of a diabolical hijacking of that story. It goes something like this. Creation: Long ago there was a united and just society, the Islamic Ummah. This society, established by God and led by the caliph, ruled a huge empire and ushered in an unprecedented age of justice and enlightenment. Fall: Sadly, this world was undermined by the scheming of pagan Western nations, who finally divided the Islamic Ummah and ended the caliphate at the close of WWI. The Muslims of the world have been under the curse of foreign domination and internal division ever since. They have strayed far from the teachings and lifestyle of Mohammad. Redemption: This tragic situation can be redeemed if faithful Muslims from all over the world are willing to sacrificially return to the true teachings and lifestyle of early Islam, spilling their blood in noble jihad to restore the caliphate once again. Restoration: The blood of the martyrs will lead to victory and a renewed caliphate, which will once again rule the world in righteousness and usher in the day of judgment and the resurrection of the dead. Cue the epic music and visuals and you have a very moving propaganda video, especially for those who have felt any sense of inferiority as Muslims.
What exactly does the secular West have to combat a powerful metanarrative like this? Be true to yourself? Follow your heart? YOLO? Human rights because… Nazis are bad? Story after story of Western converts to Islam contain the same line, “I found my partying and my secularism to be empty. In Islam I found meaning and purpose.” Many young Muslims, like people everywhere, want to be part of something greater than themselves. When an individualistic pursuit of pleasure or success comes up empty (and it always does), when a community experiences oppression (real or perceived), the metanarratives beckon, promising purpose, redemption, and eternal life. This is bad news for a Western world too jaded to believe in metanarratives anymore. The West pumps trillions of dollars into stopping Islamic extremism and yet only succeeds in tripling the global number of jihadist fighters. Sure, the West has better physical weaponry, but when it comes to ideology, they’ve brought their Beyonce CDs to a gun fight – at least when it comes to the radical minority that is awake to the desire for glory, honor, and immortality (Rom 2:7).
Once or twice I have tongue-in-cheek explained my job as taking potential ISIS recruits and turning them instead into Southern Baptists. No, this is not exactly what is going on, but there is a grain of truth to this playful distortion. The scriptures reveal to us the one true account of redemptive history, the authentic story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. We have access to the only metanarrative that can cut deeper to the heart of a young radicalized Muslim than the sermons of the late Al-Baghdadi. Sadly, as things currently stand many will never hear this true account, but only the hijacked version. As much as it is up to us, then, let us resolve that every potential jihadi recruit has the chance to hear the gospel in a language he can understand, and from the mouth of a believing friend.
This ancient Irish prayer was written either by Patrick or by one of his early Irish disciples. Notice how Trinitarian this prayer is. Notice how Christ-centered it is. Notice also how holistic it is – there is no sense in which the spiritual realm and the physical creation are against one another. Both belong to God and are on the side of the Christian. Notice the clues that show how real the persecution and danger still were when this prayer was written. The author reminds himself that he is not alone, but that he stands in a long and honorable line of spiritual beings and faithful believers. He constantly reminds himself that the true reward that matters is that which comes on the last day. As he preaches God’s word, he calls on all the power of God to protect him from enemies within and enemies without, among whom were the still-dangerous Celtic druids. The author doesn’t pretend their power isn’t real, but contends that the power of God is greater. Ultimately, the author trusts in the presence of Christ in the midst of the many dangers he faces. This is the kind of prayer we need to be writing in today’s contexts of persecution.
I arise today; Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity; Through a belief in the threeness; Through confession of the oneness; Of the Creator of Creation.
I arise today; Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism; Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial; Through the strength of his resurrection and his ascension; Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.
I arise today; Through the strength of the love of Cherubim; The obedience of angels; In the service of archangels; In hope of resurrection to meet with reward; In prayers of patriarch; In predictions of prophets; In preaching of apostles; In faith of confessors; In innocence of holy virgins; In deeds of righteous men.
I arise today; Through the strength of heaven: Light of sun; Radiance of moon; Splendor of fire; Speed of lightning; Swiftness of wind; Depth of Sea; Stability of earth; Firmness of rock.
I arise today; Through God’s strength to pilot me; God’s might to uphold me; God’s wisdom to guide me; God’s eye to look before me; God’s ear to hear me; God’s word to speak for me; God’s hand to guard me; God’s way to lie before me; God’s shield to protect me; God’s host to save us; From snares of devils; From temptation of vices; From everyone who shall wish me ill; Afar and near; Alone and in multitude.
I summon today all these powers between me and those evils; Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul; Against incantations of false prophets; Against black laws of pagandom; Against false laws of heretics; Against craft of idolatry; Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards; Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.
Christ to shield me today; Against poison, against burning; Against drowning, against wounding; So that there may come to me abundance of reward. Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me; Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me; Christ on my right, Christ on my left; Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise; Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me; Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me; Christ in the eye that sees me; Christ in the ear that hears me.
I arise today; Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity; Through belief in the threeness; Through confession of the oneness; Of the Creator of Creation.
Patrick or one of his spiritual descendants; Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, pp. 116-119
Entrusted to the Dirt 