The Pastors Conference is excellent all the way around. I was refreshed, inspired, and challenged. Kevin DeYoung’s message on Preaching was filled with wisdom for preachers old and new.
I had the opportunity to speak on the Holy Spirit and covered three areas: the Personal Spirit, Powerful Spirit, and Creation-Perfecting Spirit. Most of this content will be available in my forthcoming book, Here in Spirit: Knowing the Spirit who Creates, Sustains, and Transforms Everything.
This summer I had the privilege of serving pastors in Ireland. The theme of the conference was The Mission of God. Dr. Tim Ward also gave two helpful lectures on preaching and application, with some interesting reflections on generating application that is, and is not, warranted from a text in redemptive-historical preaching. Here is the audio:
Session One – Jonathan Dodson  “Surviving God’s Mission in the City, Genesis 18:22 – 19:38″
Session Two – Jonathan Dodson  “Evangelism in a Secular Cultureâ€
Session Three – Tim Ward  “Effective application (part 1)â€
Session Four – Tim Ward “Effective application (part 2)â€
Session Seven – Jonathan Dodson  “Gospel community in a secular society, 1 Peter 2:1-11″
T.C. Hammond Theological Lecture with Q&A: “Spiritual Friendshipâ€Â (Jonathan Dodson)
CONFESSION
Lord God,
We praise you for sending your light and love—Jesus the Messiah—into this world.
We confess that we often live like the light did not defeat the darkness.
We confess that we often live as though Jesus is not returning in glorious light.
We sometimes confine Christ to parts of our lives and our faith becomes small.
We do not joyfully serve and expectantly worship.
Forgive us for ignoring Jesus’ light.
Prepare us for His return.
Help us rejoice in the light,
So your grace illumines the dark places of our hearts, our city and our world.
Amen.
ASSURANCE
The God who promised never to leave us or forsake us,
has come to us in Jesus Christ, the light of the world.
He binds up the broken-hearted,
heals all our infirmities,
and relieves our burden of sin.
While it is true that we have sinned,
It is a greater truth that, in Christ Jesus, we are forgiven.
God has shown his love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died and rose for us.
Arise, shine; for his light has come,
And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
Thanks be to God!
*Taken from City Life Church Christmas Eve liturgy.
A friend recently confessed political views in her church are so tense and divided, she can’t bring up politics with her fellow Christians. A member in my own church asked me if it was okay to not call himself an evangelical at work because he’s concerned people will draw the wrong conclusions. Many people I talk to are reluctant to evangelize for fear of losing their jobs. It’s been a dizzying year, asking it easy to feel disoriented within our own society, churches, and even with God.
Although the details were different, the Apostle Peter wrote to people facing similar challenges. He sent a couple of letters to Christians from across five diverse regions who were experiencing cultural disorientation. His letters are saturated in wisdom for times like ours. Perhaps the most important piece is this: cultural disorientation is an opportunity to re-center hope.
Cultural disorientation is an opportunity to re-center hope.
It’s easy to slip into hoping people will accept us or our views. We often go to considerable lengths to make sure people think being Christian doesn’t mean being weird, “You should come on Sunday, there are a lot of really cool people there.†Or we may avoid gospel conversations altogether. But shouldn’t being holy make us stick out a bit in an unholy culture? When cultural relevance becomes dear, we compromise our hope. Peter steers clear of this impulse to soften Christianity with the hope of cultural acceptance.
He also steers clear of cultural dominance, a posture more assertive and critical, more prone to attack or withdraw than to appease. When our hope slips into cultural dominance, we tend to get heated in political conversations, rant on social media, and subtly hope the government will become more like us. Sensing this temptation, Peter writes: “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless†(1 Pet. 3:9). He heads off a domineering, tit-for-tat attitude with an exhortation to bless those who call us names or show us evil.
So how do we move toward blessing others amidst the confusion?
Whenever we get lost, we’re told to find a landmark, a star, a street name, something familiar and fixed, and work our way home from there. To re-center, we must fixate on God’s call to be exiles of hope.
Biblical hope is neither passive nor aggressive; it does not strive for cultural relevance or dominance. Instead, it operates on a different plane. It steps out of the cultural moment, refuses to be defined by it, and tries to view everything from the “eternal moment.†Peter writes: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you†(1 Pet. 1:3–4).
Peter expresses hope sometimes in an event, other times in an age, but always in a person: “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.†Jesus came from the future into the present, bringing some of heaven with him, to secure a resurrected future for us. In Jesus, life climbed out of death . . . and we climb out with him, with hope for a whole new world. So how does re-centering around this hope alter the way we respond to those around us?
Immediately, Peter says our hope affects how we suffer: “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials†(1:6). When our hope is recentered in the risen Christ, we can rejoice in trials of all shapes and sizes. If the conversation gets tense around politics, we need not grow angry and embittered because we share a joyful inheritance in Christ’s future and just rule. However, we shouldn’t avoid uncomfortable debate either, knowing that our hope compels us to bring some of heaven to earth now. Viewing our work from the eternal moment, we can risk disapproval by sharing hope for a just world in Jesus, while also laboring towards one.
A version of this post originally appeared at Crossway Books as a part of a Knowing the Bible series, for which I recently wrote the 1-2 Peter & Jude study.
