Continuing in my birthday series, my next post is in honor of my sister.
When We First Met
Caley and I met on July 29, 1993. She stole my heart that day.
My Earliest Memories
Thanks to a home video, I remember the day my mom told me I was going to have a baby brother or sister. I wrinkled my nose and pouted at no longer being the baby of the family and all the stinky diapers that were to come. From that point on, I nicknamed the baby Barney after the giant purple TV dinosaur I despised. I was jealous until the day I first held her at which point she melted my heart. I may or may not have been jealous as we both got a little older. I remember the first time I successfully babysat her and got her to sleep on my own. I also remember the time I placed her in a corner of my room with all my stuffed animals. I made a video called, “Find the Baby.” Like a champ, she sat silently still appearing to be a baby doll until the appropriate time when I yelled, “There she is!” and she grinned on cue. We actually submitted that video to America’s Funniest Home Videos but they never used it. I also remember the many nights she slept in my room. I remember her mimicking everything I did. I remember all the misspoken words like:
shakemilk instead of milkshake
carshwalf instead of washcloth
freneral home instead of funeral home
goru instead of girl
reeled instead of world
Another memory of her is of her reading the phone book on car rides. She would list off a name and ask if my dad knew the person, who the person was and/or why my dad didn’t know them.
My Favorite Memories
Some of my favorite memories are from the days when she first got a cell phone. We were better able to keep in touch through texting during those early teenage days. I also remember her coming to Cookeville to spend the night with me. Sometimes on her visits she would go to work with me. We had a blast and I was able to spoil her. In Cookeville I have been able to introduce her to sushi, Ralph’s donuts, movies, kite-flying. We have made movies, taken pictures, laughed our heads off, stayed up way too late. Another favorite memory was our sister-sister trip to Orlando. We spent 2 days at Universal Studios, 1 at the beach, and 2 in the car driving.
Nicknames
Cricket - the name given by my grandpa.
Caley Brookenstein - my dad’s name for her
Turtle Patronus - my nickname for her.
Facts About Her
-Had she been a boy, she would have been named Caleb Benjamin.
-She was almost named Caley Beth but my parents switched her middle name to Brooke at the last minute.
-She is slow moving.
-She gets stress paralyzed.
-She is a Pharmacy Tech.
-When she cleans, she does a very thorough job and it takes her forever.
-She loves chocolate milk.
-She tends to get hyper during the dead of the night when she should be sleeping.
-She will be 21 this year.
-She has a great eye for photography.
I found this gem as a gift she had left on my computer without my knowledge
Characteristics I Love About Her
-I love that she has a huge heart and has a lot of compassion for others.
-I love that she puts up with my craziness of new foods and experiences that I have found to be treasures.
-I love that I get to be her sister. God knew what He was doing when He gave our family a new baby.
-I love that when she does a job, she does it thoroughly.
-I love that she has good hair.
-I love that she still makes special time for me even though she is married.
-I love to see her excited about things.
-I love that she makes pretty good financial decisions for someone of her age.
The death and resurrection of Christ rescuing and restoring us yields a beautiful thing. It is amazing that we can gain his righteousness, find eternal life and restoration beginning now on this earth. As beautiful as this is, redemption does not magically cover all of humanity. Rather the cross of Christ demands a response. Hearers must either follow Christ in faith or reject Him. Some will be drawn to Jesus and others will despise Him. To some the gospel will be a scent of life and to others a scent of death.*As much as we try to be seeker sensitive, we can’t make the gospel so cool that everyone will want it.** In essence, the cross calls people out as sinners and rebels and informs them they can no longer be their own god.
As we challenge hearers to respond to the Good News, it is important to remember that faithfulness to share and not fruit is the indicator of our success. It is not our job to make people believe and want to follow Jesus. Rather, that is the work of the Holy Spirit. Some will reject and it has nothing to do with how knowledgable or eloquent we are with our presentation and this thought can take the pressure off of us. I do think it is important to be studied and have legitimate arguments to help defend our faith but ultimately if a person rejects Jesus it’s because the Holy Spirit didn’t open their eyes to the glory of God. In addition, just because a person rejects Jesus in today’s conversation doesn’t mean the person’s eyes might not be opened in a future conversation. God is a patient and likes to take people on beautiful journeys discovering His glory. Our job is to merely plant, water, or reap the seed/fruit. This reality is a freeing thing and helps us realize, “the hearer’s response is not our responsibility.”***
As we give hears a chance to respond, it is important to emphasize the costs at stake for following Jesus. I have heard believers categorized into 3 separate groups: those who believe the gospel enough to either benefit from it, comfortably contribute to it, or lay their lives down for it. Based on Scripture and the teachings of Jesus, I believe two categories exist, namely those who lay their lives down for Jesus and unbelievers.
In our desire to ease our consciences and to see many spend eternity in heaven, we have cheapened the gospel into a mere prayer where a person can gain a “get out of Hell free card” and live an essentially unchanged life. I fear many are deluded into thinking their eternities are secure when in reality we have led them down to easy path to damnation.
Yes, salvation is through faith alone in Christ alone and does not require additional works to earn salvation; however, when a person hears and is captured by the gospel, that person willingly will abandon all to gain the treasure of Christ.****In other words, true faith will naturally produce fruits/works of repentance.
Jesus makes it clear that those who wish merely to comfortably contribute to the gospel will not partake in His kingdom. Consider His words in Luke 14:26-27,33
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. - So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”
This passage is not an isolated case. Search out the examples below:
-Jesus turned the young ruler away because he wanted to gain eternal life while holding onto his wealth (Matthew 19:16-24).
-Jesus did not entrust Himself to those who only wanted His miracles (John 2:23-24).
-Jesus demanded new birth of Nicodemus (John 3:3-5).
-The woman at the well was eager to gain living water but Jesus first made her acknowledge her sin rather than letting it be an add-on to a sinful life (John 4:6-26).
-Jesus offered his rest only to those who would take his yoke of servitude (Matthew 11:28-29).
-James explained that even demons believe in God but no one would think that demons are going to Heaven (James 2:19).
-Paul wrote to the Corinthian church that believers conclude that since Jesus gave them His righteousness they should live for Him rather than themselves. He also explained believers are new creations, connoting a verifiable change had taken place (2 Corinthians 5:14-21).
-Likewise in Romans, Paul wrote that wrath and fury, was waiting for those who were self-seeking and obeying unrighteousness rather than truth (Romans 2:8).
-In Hebrews 11, faith was always accompanied with action.*****
-In the parable of the sower and other fruit bearing imagery in the gospels, fruit-bearing is the whole point of agriculture/gospel sowing. The seed that produced foliage for only a season or produced bad fruit was an impostor and was eventually destroyed by fire (Matthew 3:10, 7:19, John 15:2).
-Jesus spoke of a wide and easy gate leading to destruction with many people. He spoke likewise of a narrow and hard gate leading to life with few. The wide gate isn’t marked, “This Way to Hell” but rather both are marked “Heaven.”****** (Matthew 7:13-14).
Jesus demands all. He is God. He is Master. Becoming a Christian means becoming His slave, but we become a slave to a Good Master. I want to stress that in sharing the gospel we must emphasize the costs of following Jesus. As Master, He has full authority in one’s life. Following Him may mean being faithful to live and share in the comfort of America or it may mean a life overseas, a life of singleness or a life of marriage, having 5 kids or no kids, a good long life or a martyr’s death.
We export too frequently this false idea that Jesus is safe when in reality He can be dangerous. At times His ways seem insane, weird, and disastrous. For many Christians worldwide, there is nothing safe about following Jesus. Following Him will most likely mean losing a job, being disowned by family, having children taken away, being tortured, and possible death. I spoke with some Egyptian believers recently and they explained that this type of persecution was normal and had been a part of the lives of Egyptian Christians for 2,000 years. They also explained that many around them believe these truths but choose to not follow Jesus because they’re not ready to pay the cost involved. I see a pattern in the American church that when life gets a little rough, believers end up abandoning their faith because when they said a prayer, no one emphasized the words of Jesus that in this life we will have trouble. I wonder how full our churches would be here in America if following Jesus meant imminent death or imprisonment like it is for many among the nations and for the saints of history? Do we agree with Peter and Paul that our true hope and home is not in this life but the next? Are we so grounded in our future hope that we would literally be killed for this gloriously Good News?
Furthermore, when we preach a ‘safe’ gospel, we produce ‘disciples’ unwilling to go to hard soil where being a Christian may mean imprisonment or death. The safe and easy gospel gives ‘Christians’ an excuse from helping “the least of these” because helping means getting "dirty hands" from the homeless, destitute, drug addicts, orphans, prisoners, sick, abortion-minded, homosexuals, etc. A safe gospel causes people to insulate themselves from pain, discomfort, or persecution. Evangelism likewise gets thrown out the window because it is uncomfortable and surely Jesus doesn’t expect us to be uncomfortable. Many never read the Bible even once because reading is boring and Jesus doesn’t want us to be bored. In due course commitment to a local body goes out the window because being a Christian can mean an essentially unchanged life. Eventually the ‘Christian’ is so navel focused that he or she can no longer help themselves much less others.
I fear that many friends and family prayed a prayer once but haven’t counted the cost. I fear many we know and love have false faith and think they’re on the path to Heaven but are actually headed for destruction. Many want to escape Hell but they don’t want to fall in submission to God. Let us no more export this false gospel that deceives others into thinking Heaven can be obtained by a prayer of a few empty words.
In my next post I will continue with the theme of our hope in the next life. In the meantime, perhaps you should examine your own heart now to see whether or not you have truly counted the cost of following Jesus. Is your salvation based merely on the fact that you didn’t want to go to Hell but your commitment goes little further than that? Have you been so captured by the gospel that you have laid down ALL of your rebellious arms and rights to be a slave to this Good Master? I have written more extensively on the subject of counting the cost here if you want to explore the topic a little deeper. In my next to last post I will offer some advice on how you can find assurance for your salvation because perhaps I now have you doubting. I don’t want anyone to merely “think” they are secure, I want people to KNOW.
I have one last note on this subject. If someone responds in faith and surrender, it is important to encourage them to be baptized to make their faith public and then begin discipling them. Don’t merely leave them where they crossed the line of faith, but please, please, please teach them the things that Jesus taught. Walk with them to the point of maturity. Teach them how to study the Bible, how to pray, share their faith, fast, tithe, confess sins, etc. Continue to preach the gospel to them. Believer and unbeliever alike need to hear the Good News over and over so it grows roots and begins to take over lives that will then love sacrificially as Jesus did. The song for this post is 'Take My Life.'
As usual, if at any point in the series you have questions or comments you can either comment below or email me at lookingforgreenergrasses@gmail.com Please correspond with me also if you have gospel related topics you would like me to address.
Continuing in my birthday series, my next post is in honor of my brother-in-law.
When We First Met
Josh and I met on Valentine’s Day in 2012. He came over the meet the family. I think we played a board game.
My Earliest Memories
Outside of our first meeting, I remember my sister telling me about some special, thought out gifts he gave her.
My Favorite Memories
I feel like I’m still getting to know Josh so my memories are still faint. As of now, I think my favorite memory was from a couple months ago. He and my sister spent the weekend with me. We went to dinner at Cheddar’s and then hung out at my house watching a movie. He spent some time in another room studying and letting my sister and I have special time together for part of the weekend. It was fun hanging out with the Morgans.
Nicknames
Cowboy - The name given by my grandpa after seeing a picture of him. His clothes made my grandpa think of a cowboy and the name stuck.
Da - My nephew’s version of Josh
Joshie - What I call him when I ask my sister what he is doing
Facts About Him
-He loves sports.
-He loves animals.
-He is tall and lanky.
-He is something of a picky eater.
-He wants to be in ministry and is currently a traveling evangelist/speaker.
-He likes to have lighthearted arguments with my sister.
-He will be 24.
-He loves the beach.
Characteristics I Love About Him
-He likes to play games and is very competitive. A characteristic we share.
-He convinced my sister to stop using her credit cards.
-He adores my sister.
-He comes up with creative and thoughtful gifts for my sister.
-He has been a gentleman to me helping me into the back of a truck, letting me sit in the front of the car, helping me carry heavy things.
Enjoy these words by Lilias Trotter as she meditates on the ways God makes our impossibly difficult things seem rather easy with His glorious power.
“‘I am come into deep waters’ took on a new meaning this morning. It started with perplexing matters concerning the future. Then it dawned that shallow waters were a place where you can neither sink nor swim, but in deep waters it is one or the other: ‘waters to swim in’ - not to float in. Swimming is the intense, most strenuous form of motion - all of you is involved in it - and every inch of you is in abandonment of rest upon the water that bears you up.”
“The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” -Deut. 33:27
“Take the very hardest thing in your life - the place of difficulty, outward or inward, and expect God to triumph gloriously in that very spot. Just there He can bring your soul into blossom!”
“Today’s find was beautiful to the inward vision as well as to the outward. It was clusters of exquisite wild lilies - white and fragile and fragrant - growing out of the hot salt sand that drifts into dunes round the stunted juniper and lentisk bushes that fringe the shore. Down below the surface, the storage of reserve material in the lily bulbs had silently taken place...and there they had lain, shrouded and waiting. The hour had come now, and no adverse condition could keep back the upspringing. The same Lord over all can store the roots in His spiritual creation, even though they have but smothering sand drifts around them.”
“He maketh small the drops of ‘water’ (Job 36:27, KJV). I have never seen how literally true that is till I began studying the dew these mornings. Let a drop fall from your finger and you will see its natural size. But that would be too heavy for the frail little blades to bear. It would slip off them from its weight. So He weighs out to each the tiny measure that it can bear without even being bowed down, yet enough to ‘drink into’ in abundance. On one wee filament of moss I counted through a magnifying glass forty-six little globes of water in what just looked like moisture to the naked eye.”
“All the more beautiful will be God’s triumph when it comes. The highest music is not the music where all goes on simple and straight and sweet, but where discord suddenly resolves tensions with harmony.”
“We were noticing as we came down into the Taberkatchent valley, how the mules who had stepped with absolute surefootedness on the steep difficult tracks - often on a double slope, downward and outwards towards the edge - stumbled along the government road below. It was because creatures of the mountain are so at home in difficult places that they are the easiest of any to them. Praise God that our Beloved finds difficulties the most natural places to act in and the easiest way of approach to our souls.”
“The things that are impossible with men are possible with God. May it not be that the human impossibility is just the very thing that set His Hand free? And that it is the things which are possible for us to do that He is in a measure to let alone?”
“Far up in the Alpine hollows, year by year, God works one of His marvels. The snow patches lie there, frozen into ice at their edges from the strife of sunny days and frosty nights; and through that ice-crust come unscathed flowers in full bloom.
Back in the days of the bygone summer, the little soldanella plant spread its leaves wide and flat on the ground to drink in the sun-rays, and it kept them stored in the root through the winter. Then spring came and stirred its pulses even below the snow-shroud. And as it sprouted, warmth was given out in such a strange measure that it thawed a little dome in the snow above its head. Higher and higher it grew, and always above it rose the bell of air, till the flower bud formed safely within it; and at last the icy covering of the air-bell gave way and let the blossom through into the sunshine, the crystalline texture of its mauve petals sparkling like the snow itself, as if it bore the traces of the fight through which it had come.
And the fragile thing rings an echo in our hearts that none of the jewel-like flowers nestled in the warm turf on the slopes below could waken. We love to see the impossible done. And so does God.”
“The miracle of Cana has been shining out these days. ‘Fill the waterpots with water‘ has been their watchword. Undiluted weakness transmuted with undiluted strength. It seems to me as if the first thing we expect of God is that He will tinge our water with the wine of His power. Then as we progress in our faith understanding we look for its wine, but feel it must still have an admixture of our water. It is but slowly that we come to see that the mingling is not His way with us. It is ‘all weakness‘ - up to the brim - exchanged for His ‘all power.’”
“The things that are impossible with men are possible with God.‘ Yes, face it out to the end. Cast away every shadow of hope on the human side as a positive hindrance to the Divine; heap the difficulties together recklessly, and pile on as many more as you can find; you cannot get beyond that blessed climax of impossibility. Let faith swing out on Him. He is the God of the impossible.”
“Two glad Services are ours,
Both the Master loves to bless:
First we serve with all our powers
Then with all our helplessness.”
“Those lines of Charles Fox have rung in my head this last fortnight - and they link on with the wonderful words ‘weak with Him.’ For the world’s salvation was not wrought out by the three years in which He went about doing good, but in the three hours of darkness in which He hung, stripped and nailed, in uttermost exhaustion of spirit, soul, and body - till His heart broke. So little wonder for us if the price of power is weakness.”
In my last post, I gave the bad news and explained that our rebellion causes us to justly deserve God’s wrath as our punishment. We sin against this Holy God and He demands justice and payment. He cannot overlook our sin as though they are tiny indiscretions to be tolerated. Rather, sin leaves defilement and evil in it’s wake and must be purged. This is bad news but thankfully it is not the only news.
The most tragic chapter in all of Scripture, also contains the greatest hope imaginable. The chapter ends with a foretelling of a Rescuer, One who would crush the head of the serpent. Even at the beginning of our failure, God made a way to end our destructive sin. He made a way for us to have a pure, white box again like His own. Remember the illustrations shown below:
God (no sin)
Self
Enter Jesus. Enter the cross. Enter the scandalous self-sacrificing and untiring love of God. Yes, the punishment had to be paid, the wrath absorbed. God could not overlook sin. We could never do enough to escape His wrath. Jesus came. He became man and took on the skin of flesh. He lived perfectly the life that we could only thirst for. In a garden on a dark night, He was so sorrowed by the wrath and divine separation He would face, not to mention the physical torture He would endure, that He was “grieved to the point of death.” He begged God to take this punishment away. God did not. Unlike Adam, unlike you and I, Jesus chose obedience even though it meant facing consequences that He alone did not deserve. In the greatest love story ever told, Jesus pursues His bride incessantly, whore though we are, until we fall in surrender at His beautiful feet. He died for our sins taking the punishment we rightly deserved. He conquered death by dying and rising, thus defeating the power death holds over this broken planet.
“The cross is the response of God to men for belittling his name.”* Consider Paul’s words:
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us - for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’”**
and
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”***
We are sinners indeed and deserve Hell for our rebellion but Christ has made a way for us even though we have failed to keep all of the law. He kept the totality of the law and now offers us his perfection in exchange for our sin. Check out our revised box:
Self + Christ’s purity = pure
Meditate on those truths. We are the sinner. We fail. We need to be only good/righteous and yet we fail often. And Jesus who was sinless willingly took our sin. He took God’s wrath that mankind justly deserved and in the least fair trade of all of history He gives His righteousness instead to those who place their absolute trust in Him. He takes a sinner’s blackened box and gives His pure, white box. As Athanasius said, “He became what we are that we might become what he is.” He died and conquered death through His resurrection so that we might live.
Those of us who follow Him in faith have no more condemnation. We are set free from sin and death. We have no reason to fear. We are now adopted children and heirs of God. We now have God on our side which means nothing can come against us. No one, not even Satan himself can bring a charge against us or condemn us. Jesus is the only one who can do those things and instead He is praying for us. Nothing in all of creation can separate us from this kind of love and hope. We are more than conquerors now through Jesus (Romans 8).
And it’s not just about getting a white box and a “Get Out of Hell Free” card. The whole purpose of the cross is to reverse the curse, “to restore and refashion” our relationship with Him “to it’s intended fullness.”**** To continue with the Romans 8 line of thinking, our bodies will be redeemed, the Spirit now lives in us, we’re being conformed back to our pre-Eden selves into the image of Christ. If you need a visual of this, check out this video.
Perhaps Bruce Ware sums it best in this narrative:
“And what does God do to make this a reality? The God who doesn’t need us comes to us. He enters our space and time. He speaks our language. He meets us where we live. He chooses to be affected by us as part of the Grand Plan to bring about the most incredible effect upon us. He accepts ridicule and rejection when he deserves nothing but laud and honor. He makes pledges and promises of merciful salvation, when he could abandon and condemn. He accepts what it means to be in relationship with us, even though he demonstrated from the very beginning how much he hated our defiance. Biblical accounts of the flood, and God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, and the incident of the golden calf, and Korah’s rebellion - these and so many more picture for us how detestable our sin and rebellion is to this glorious God. But his love endures forever, and so he perseveres in this relationship. The God who exists in glorious independence apart from us is determined, and he will not fail, to bring about the truest of all relationships for us human creatures, and this with a formerly rebellious people, but a people of his choosing. In this relationship, God enters our world, comes to us, seeks us out, accommodates himself to our level, accepts how we affect him, and experiences all that is needed to seek and make and remake those who will be forever worshipers of him. As seen most fully in his Son on the cross, God demonstrates a determination unparalleled in seeking and saving that which was lost, yet seeking, to be sure, that which he does not need.
In the end, relationship with God is as different as infinite is from finite. And yet, by God’s grace and condescension, it is at the same time the epitome of what intimate and joyful relationship with another should be. And indeed, it is a relationship in which so much of the joy and the fulfillment is found precisely in remembering always the infinite disparity that exists between God and us. We must call to mind always Who is glorious and why. Only then will we cast aside our sinful pretense and bow, receive, delight, and worship in a joyous intimacy unrivaled by any human relationship.”*****
I hope this Good News has brought joy to your heart and stirred your affections for Jesus. In my next post, I will discuss how this Good News must change us. Today's song is 'Jesus Paid It All'
As usual, if at any point in the series you have questions or comments you can either comment below or email me at lookingforgreenergrasses@gmail.com Please correspond with me also if you have gospel related topics you would like me to address.
