Category Archives: Gospel

The Interests of Others

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We’re Too Bratty & Hard To Please

Is it just me, or are Christians far too easily offended? It seems like there are an awful lot of really “thin-skinned” believers, and modern culture and technology provide them with an unprecedented number of places to vent their wrath. Social media, reality TV, the internet, and talk shows all offer platforms to puff up our feelings of self-importance and fuel our self-righteous attitudes. It seems incredibly reflective of our idolatrous society that even Christians have become bratty and hard to please. I’ve eaten out at a restaurant with a Christian friend who berates a waitress for bringing the wrong dish and then decides to write a scathing online review for everyone to read. Where are grace and mercy?

It’s Embarrassing

It’s really embarrassing when compared to the real persecution that believers face in other parts of the world. I mean, what else might be on that poor waitress’s mind? A severely ill spouse? Up all night with a baby? Why aren’t we asking—with genuine concern—if they’re okay? Why not offer to pray with her? This behavior is epidemic, and surveys are revealing that one of the main reasons the lost aren’t coming to church is because of the conduct of those who claim to be following Jesus. Instead of enhancing the gospel of Christ, as Jesus intends, we’re part of the problem.

We’re Too Easily Offended

Several years ago, one of my best friends in ministry was fighting a battle for his pastoral life because he “dared” to lovingly confront a mom and dad over their out-of-control toddler, who screams during the entire worship service, and they refuse to take him out. They were “offended” that he would ask them to remove the screaming child for the benefit of the rest of the faith community. I remember a Thursday morning men’s small group from a few years back, and one of our members mentioned that of all the people he’s known who have left the church over the last twenty-some years since his conversion, no more than three or four actually had biblical grounds for leaving. The rest left over purely selfish reasons. And one day they will stand before the One who was beaten, mocked, spit upon, and finally hung on a cross to die, and hear, “You left your church over that? Really? Go get a cross and deny yourself!” 

Loving Others

We need to beat the drum to love others. We need to preach that message better and more often, because most in the church today just don’t get it. We need to preach and teach the church how to love others selflessly and assume personal responsibility to deal with personal sin, resolve conflict, and restore wounded relationships. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Philippi: “Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” — Philippians 2:4  That last line is perhaps the most significant. If we’re going to be part of the solution, church, we have to “look also for the interests of others.” Don’t just focus on your own interests, Paul says. We need to be rescued from our idol of narcissism, church.
 

Freedom From Cannibalism

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Biting One Another

In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Church of Galatia, he wrote: “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another” (Gal. 5:15). In the context of this letter, Paul’s main theme is “freedom.” The genuine follower of Jesus Christ is set free from their previous bondage to the flesh! We are free from the slavery of capitulating to the demands of our broken and depraved natures. No longer does sin have power over us! Jesus, upon His ascension to the Father, sent the Holy Spirit to indwell us and empower us with the ability to say “no” to sin’s demands!

Called To Be Free

So Paul the Apostle tells this church: “Christ has liberated us to be free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery… For you were called to be free, brothers; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. For the entire law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:1, 13–14). The essence of Paul’s words is this—the Gospel of Jesus Christ sets us free from Christian cannibalism! It is only Jesus’ Gospel that empowers us to love others like this! When our love for others grows in this way, it’s a powerful endorsement of the validity of our words when we share our faith. Conversely, it is a blatant and ugly contradiction of Jesus’ Gospel when we “…bite and devour one another…” (v. 15).

Preying Like Cannibals

When we prey on one another like cannibals, we sabotage the glory of Jesus’ cross! We cover up the beauty of Christ, who gave Himself up in payment for our self-centeredness! I saw the ugliness of Christian cannibalism played out as a Bible college student, when half the church I was attending walked out on the other half over the color choice of the ladies’ restroom during a building program. Their testimony in that rural community was ruined! I saw it happen! Oh, how we need the Spirit’s help to learn how to deal with conflict in a way that’s redemptive rather than destructive! A church that does not serve one another in love like Jesus will cannibalize itself! We can only love like Jesus if we’ve been set free by the power of His Gospel! God can and does deliver churches from Christian cannibalism!

Overcoming The Past

Only the Gospel of Christ can deliver our churches from such ungodly behavior! Some of you have experienced a church that devoured itself. You still struggle with the pain. It’s still raw. And you are broken at the thought that some unbelievers will never come to faith in Jesus Christ because of the relational damage they’ve seen inflicted on others by so-called Christians. And don’t forget to praise God if you’re part of a community of faith that truly loves, honors, and respects one another! That is truly a work of God! Be encouraged and pray regularly for continued peace and harmony in your church. Pray daily for spiritual renewal and revival. And remember that it’s the Gospel of Christ that frees us to be Jesus to everyone we meet!
 

Free To Serve Others

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A Dog Eat Dog World

In the world, it’s “dog-eat-dog.” If you want to climb up the corporate ladder, you have to be a relational piranha—taking advantage of the brokenness and inconsistencies of your co-workers to gain a personal advantage! That’s not Jesus’ way! He was known as the “friend of sinners.” He healed the wounded! He forgave even those who nailed Him to the cross! The Gospel frees us to serve—even those with whom we may be in competition for that promotion! And it’s all because we can trust a sovereign God’s plan!

Our Freedom And Our Calling

In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatian church, he says that our call to freedom and our call to serve are synonymous! In other words, we actually lose our freedom when we fail to serve! We were saved from slavery to sin and self; so when we fail to serve—and even expect to be served—we fall back into the old slavery to the flesh! He says we, “…submit again to a yoke of slavery…” (Galatians 5:1). Don’t surrender the freedom you have in Christ—who satisfies your every need—for the fleshly desires of the world: to be served or to be promoted! When we serve others instead of using them, we testify to the world that Jesus truly is enough! He is all we need!

Jesus Served Us

We don’t need to fill any emptiness inside us with the need to be served! Jesus served us, and that’s enough! It’s the Gospel of Christ that frees us to love others…even strangers! More than service, the Gospel actually gives us a heart of love for those we serve—“For the entire law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5:14). Paul is quoting Jesus’ answer when He was asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” And Jesus said, “To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your might! And the second is like it (or second only in importance!): Love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself” (Matthew 22:34–40). Then Jesus illustrated that with His parable about the Good Samaritan, who acted as a neighbor to someone he didn’t even know! That’s why a “neighbor” can actually be anyone we have the opportunity to serve—even someone who’s a stranger! “And love them,” He said, “in the same way that you love yourself.”

Gospel Freedom

Only the Gospel sets me free to want to feed someone who’s hungry just as much as I want to feed myself when I get hungry! Only the Gospel sets me free to want to help my neighbor find a job just as much as I want to find a job—or to want a raise or a promotion for my co-worker just as much as I want that raise or promotion for myself! And to care about what happens to that guy down the street—that you don’t even know—just as much as you care about what happens to you! That’s powerful! And only Jesus’ Gospel empowers us to love that way! And when we grow in our love for others like that, it’s an incredible endorsement of the validity of the words we share with others about our faith! It makes us real! Genuine!

Jesus In The Flesh

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Do We Look Like Him?

In a conversation one of our church family members had with someone who was struggling to understand and accept the Gospel, she said to them, “I just need to see Jesus in the flesh!” She meant by that that she needed to see what it looked like for someone claiming to be a follower of Jesus to actually live it. That’s a powerful statement! And the Gospel of Christ actually frees us to be “Jesus in the flesh” to everyone we encounter.

It’s A Radical Transformation

When we truly humble ourselves before God and submit to Him, Jesus moves into our lives—by the power of His Holy Spirit—and radically begins to transform us in every way, including our relationships. We can actually become Jesus to everyone we meet. Let me explain. When humanity, in Adam, sinned, it was a complete breakdown of our ability to image God. We were broken! Because of our fallen nature, we are born into this world with an inability to love like God loves. So we hate others. We lash out. We become self-absorbed. We use people for what they can do for us. That’s our default condition at birth.

Everything Changes In Jesus

But when the Gospel of Christ is introduced to us and accepted, everything changes. Just read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John’s accounts of Jesus’ life and marvel at the way He loves—even His enemies! And we are transformed into His image as we dwell in His presence through the written Word. The Apostle Paul described it like this when he wrote to the church of Corinth: “We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). By the power of the Gospel, we see God’s glory—in Jesus—and we are transformed into that same image from one glory to another.

Re-Imaged Into Jesus

We are being “re-imaged” into Jesus! We need to hear this. Far too often, the interpersonal relationships within the body look no different than the relationships among unbelievers. And I submit to you that this plays a huge part in the overall ineffectiveness of the Western church when it comes to making disciples and attracting people to the church. So how do we change this? How can this trend be reversed?

Jesus’ New Command

Jesus told His disciples, “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34–35). As He transforms us to love others in the same way He loves us, the world will know we belong to Jesus! They’ll know we love Jesus because we love them! Here’s what I believe God wants us to do about this: He wants us to repent over our broken relationships. To repent literally means “to change your mind.” So God wants us to change our minds about our broken relationships. We used to think they were okay, but they’re not okay. We need Him to fix them so the world can see Jesus in us.
 

Don’t Eat Each Other

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Leaving For Vacation; Next Post February 4th

Not All Cannibals Are Alike

Did you know that not all cannibals are alike? An “exo-cannibal” eats only those outside his immediate social circle (i.e., his “enemies”), while an “endo-cannibal” eats those within his immediate social circle (i.e., his “friends”). But a “pan-cannibal” is indiscriminate and will eat anyone! Bet you didn’t know that! You probably thought that all cannibals were alike! Let me share a true story with you. The world’s most infamous cannibal was the legendary Fijian chieftain, Ratu Udre Udre.

A Guinness World Record

Listen to this—he actually holds the Guinness World Record for eating the most people! I was personally surprised to discover that Guinness actually kept such a record! Ratu Udre Udre ate between 872 and 999 people, according to his son—whom he did not eat! (Guess that made him a “good father.”) Ratu Udre Udre kept a stone for each body he ate. Now, unfortunately, many Christians have more in common with Udre Udre than you might think because many Christians “eat” their own. You might say they’re “church cannibals,” and Paul’s letter to the church of Galatia bears that out. His fifth chapter begins like this: “Christ has liberated us to be free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). That’s the “good news” of the Gospel! We’re born into this world with a yoke of slavery around our necks, and we can try with all our might to get out from under our sin; but we’re incapable. Jesus liberates us by His atonement for sin on the cross. He liberates us from the penalty and power of sin over our lives.

Don’t Devour One Another

So “stand firm,” Paul says, “don’t submit to that old yoke of slavery again!” Continuing in that context, he speaks to the Gospel’s power to affect our relationships with people. We’re no longer enslaved to the world’s way of “devouring” one another—or hating one another and holding grudges. That’s what Paul says a little later in the same chapter: “For you were called to be free, brothers; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. For the entire law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another” (Gal. 5:13–15).

Are You Drinking Poison?

Someone has accurately stated that “unforgiveness is the poison you drink, hoping it will kill someone else!” In this Scripture, Paul is reminding this local church that the Gospel sets us free from those kinds of toxic relationships. The Gospel of Christ frees us to be Jesus to everyone we meet! When we truly humble ourselves before God and submit to Him, Jesus moves us—by the power of His Holy Spirit—and radically begins to transform us in every way, including our relationships. When humanity sinned in Adam, it resulted in a complete breakdown of our ability to “image” God, the Father and our Creator. We’re broken! We’re all born into this world with an inability to love like God loves because of our inherited fallen nature. Only a conversion to Christ can change us! We’ll pick it up there at our next post!
 

God Makes Us Fruitful

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Through An Encounter With Jesus

No one has a genuine encounter with Jesus Christ and walks away unchanged! The deaf were made to hear. The blind were made to see. The lame could walk again. The hungry were filled. The ignorant were instructed. The guilty were forgiven. And sinners were set free from their sin!  There is nothing in Scripture to support the “cheap grace” religion so prevalent in the Western church—that someone can be saved without becoming Jesus’ disciple. Repeating words in some kind of “sinner’s prayer” is not a “get out of hell free” card!

Saved From A Self-Absorbed Life

Jesus didn’t save us to live a self-centered, self-absorbed life. He didn’t just die on the cross so we could listen to a good sermon and some worship music every Sunday morning. This post is about fruitfulness! God makes us fruitful when we enter into a genuine salvation relationship with Him. Just as you anticipate that an apple seed planted in the ground will grow into an apple tree that produces more apples, so God will produce the fruit of the Spirit in us when the seed of the Gospel is planted and His Spirit begins to indwell us. Always. Every time. Let me tell you why that’s important. It’s important because if you don’t get this right, it could lead to eternal judgment and condemnation.

Gotta Get This Right

If you’re holding on to some prayer you repeated in third-grade Children’s Church as proof you’re going to heaven, you may have been misled. The Scriptures never encourage us to hold onto something we did or said—or something our parents or pastor did or said—as proof of our salvation. God’s Word focuses on a changed life and a progressively changing life now. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) “If you love Me,” Jesus said, “you will keep My commandments.” (John 14:15) Our life will be marked by a love for obedience to God’s Word and a hatred and abhorrence for all sin we stumble into. The Apostle John wrote: “I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13) The written Word, inspired by God’s Spirit, was given to act like a mirror to reflect back to us our spiritual condition.

Test Yourselves

Seek proof of your conversion from the Scriptures! “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves,” the Apostle Paul wrote, “Or do you yourselves not recognize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless you fail the test.” (2 Corinthians 13:5) Test your life according to God’s Word. Examine yourselves. Is there any evidence of a changed life? Is there fruit in your life that can only be produced by a genuine encounter with Jesus Christ? Listen to Jesus’ words: “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:1–2) Evidence of genuine faith is produced by life in Jesus!
 

How God Uses Prayer

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To Show His Great Power

A survey of God’s Word reveals how God uses prayer in our lives in a number of ways. In this post, I want to ask you to consider how God will often answer your prayers with a display of power in order to strengthen your faith. In Acts chapter 12, we find the Apostle Peter imprisoned by King Herod. The text says that the church was earnestly praying for his release. With great power, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in the prison where Peter was being held and released him from his chains. The angel then escorted him out of the prison, safely passing two separate guard posts and out through an iron gate. From there, it says: “When he (Peter) realized this (that the angel had freed him), he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many had assembled and were praying. He knocked at the door in the gateway, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer. She recognized Peter’s voice, and because of her joy, she did not open the gate but ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the gateway. ‘You’re crazy!’ they told her. But she kept insisting that it was true. Then they said, ‘It’s his angel!’ Peter, however, kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astounded. Motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he explained to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison.” (Acts 12:12–17)

To Astound You

They were astounded! I’ve often thought about Herod and his guards when reading this text. What a display of power was evidenced to release Peter from his chains and imprisonment! The same display of power God used to confront Herod and the Jews—revealing their helplessness to stop Him when He determines to act according to His sovereign plans—is the same display of power God uses to strengthen our faith. The same power that buckled and weakened the knees of unbelievers strengthened the faith of believers. When you study the Gospels, you see that Jesus kept growing the faith of His disciples. For three and a half years, He kept convincing them that the work of God can never be done in the power of the flesh or by the world’s methods, but only by the supernatural power of God alone. God wants to engage us in prayer so that we see His power.

To Build Your Faith

He also intends to build our faith and belief in Him as He answers our prayers. Why do we see the supernatural work of God in the book of Acts? Acts 2:42 says the believers:  “…devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.” The early church was birthed in prayer! It says they devoted themselves to prayer. James identified that prayer was a problem for some: “You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your evil desires.” (James 4:3) God doesn’t answer selfish prayers. He does, however, answer the prayers of helplessness and utter dependence on His power. Jesus taught His disciples that God answers prayers that are God-centered and God-focused. So, how might your prayers need to change?
 

How Pain Brings Us To Our Knees

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Does God Really Love Us?

We are tempted to ask how it is that God could truly love us if He allows us to suffer through painful experiences. In fact, it is because He loves us that He choreographs pain and suffering into our lives. Let me explain. It is not our natural tendency to seek closer fellowship with God when our lives are filled with blessings attached to this world. No — it is our tendency to stray from God when life is good! We become more comfortable leaning on this world’s blessings for our daily support. So God — in His love and sovereign grace — places a “wake-up call,” in the form of a painful experience, in front of us. He shakes us back to reality with something that refocuses our attention on Him, forcing us to our knees in prayer.

Our Greatest Satisfaction

He does this because He knows that nothing will ever offer us greater satisfaction than a Spirit-filled relationship with Him. All of this world’s goods and services are but cheap substitutes for a walk with God. If you follow the narrative from the first chapter in the book of Acts, you’ll see 120 disciples waiting in an upper room in Jerusalem for the promised Holy Spirit. Then, in chapter 2, the Spirit comes to indwell and fill the believers so they would have the supernatural power of the Spirit to obey Jesus’ commission to take the gospel to every people group and disciple them. Immediately, God begins to use them in His supernatural work as 3,000 were saved and became disciples that day — and then more and more were added!

Comfortable and Complacent

But as you read the next few chapters, it seems the church becomes complacent and comfortable with their success, and God’s work begins to slow down. So God, in His sovereignty, brought persecution. Stephen is stoned. Then James is killed, and Peter is imprisoned. It’s this crisis of faith that unsettled them, and they returned to their knees in prayer. They were humbled. They got back to biblical prayer. They expressed their helplessness and total dependence on God’s power to see Peter released from prison: “So Peter was kept in prison, but prayer was being made earnestly to God for him by the church.” — Acts 12:5. In the verses that follow, God sends an angel to spring Peter from prison (vv. 6–11).

The Lost Confronted By Answered Prayer

There’s another prayer principle that God reveals to us through His answered prayer to release Peter from incarceration: God will use a mighty display of His power to confront the lost with their sin. King Herod had imprisoned Peter and assumed he had more power than he actually had. But God says, “No, Herod — your plans to kill Peter won’t work!” Someone once said, “We make our plans, and God laughs.” I love that! Don’t lose heart, church. It may appear the world is out of control, but God hasn’t lost it. In His sovereign timing, He will display His power again and confront the lost with their need for repentance. So let’s get the bigger picture when we find ourselves in a painful place. Don’t pray that God will take it away — He may be doing a special work in your life or in the life of someone watching. Trust His plans!
 

Honoring Jesus With Our Gender

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The Culture Doesn’t Get It

We honor Jesus in our hearts when we obey Him with our lifestyles. And by our obedient lifestyle, we create curiosity. The answer the culture is giving about our sexual identity isn’t working—and it never will. But when we live sexually in obedience to God’s Word, we earn the right to share it when the world gets curious—to share with them the Gospel and God’s purpose for gender. This is difficult subject matter! It’s layered with lots of abuse and painful injuries dating all the way back to the Garden of Eden, and it’s just not easy to jump into without laying a foundation of understanding, empathy, and love.

Say It With Empathy & Love

And that is what the world needs from us: understanding, empathy, and love. It’s simply not helpful when, instead, we offer them self-righteous judgment and vindictiveness. So, let me try to unpack some of the main points from the first two chapters of Genesis—especially as it relates to gender and sexual identity. We need to take note of some of the implications it has for our homes, our families, and how it plays into our child-rearing. Keep in mind, from an interpretive standpoint of the text, that Genesis chapter 1 presents the “big picture” of God’s creative act, and chapter 2 fills in the details. Chapter 1 is like the Super Bowl headlines the day after—“Patriots Win the Most Boring Super Bowl Ever”—and chapter 2 is like the story that fills in the details of how the Patriots pummeled the Rams into submission.

What Shapes Our Opinions?

Let’s also remember the most important detail as followers of Jesus Christ: when determining our roles as men and women, God’s Word must shape our opinions—not the culture! And perhaps the most significant point of the text is that God created humanity to reflect His image: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth’” (Genesis 1:26). God created humanity to function as His living image over the creation. And I believe it’s correct to interpret “man” here as “mankind,” including both man and woman. I believe the next verse bears that out—God created humanity to bear His image as male and female.

God Created Maleness & Femaleness

The text says:  “So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female” (Genesis 1:27).  Our “maleness” and our “femaleness” are essential parts of being God’s image-bearers. Somehow—and I don’t want to get weird here—but somehow it seems that God is saying it was in the complementing or the completing of the man with the creation of woman that humanity was created in the image of God. That image wasn’t clear or evident until woman complemented God’s creation of man. So here’s my plea: Men and women—we need each other to correctly image God in His creation! When we grasp the significance of that, we’ll begin to glory in both manhood and womanhood. Together, we are God’s intentional design of human diversity!
 

Determining Gender Roles

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The Culture Is Broken

Our culture is broken! Have you noticed that? It’s broken because it’s made up of broken people who are born into this world totally depraved and separated from God because of their sin! Only the Gospel of Christ can adequately and accurately direct us to solutions that restore our homes and our communities! Our broken culture can’t help us! When determining our roles as men and women, God’s Word must shape our opinions, not the culture!

The Original Design

God’s original design, at Creation, can be found in Genesis, the book of beginnings! After creating Adam, “…the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper as his complement.’” (Genesis 2:18) So, God designed the woman to “complement” the man— not “compliment” (as in, “Why, Adam, what a handsome, rugged man you are”)—but to “complement” or “complete” him. Yes! That means that the man was NOT complete by himself! Eve was his “completer”; and, by implication, she was also made complete by Adam! Adam and Eve, man and woman, were created and designed by God to “complement” and “complete” one another… NOT to compete!

Happiness & Fulfillment Realized

The way that men and women find genuine happiness and fulfillment is in owning the identity given to them by God, their designer! The culture is WRONG! Ladies: You will not find meaning in your life by becoming more manly and aggressive! And, men: You will not find meaning in your life by becoming more passive, effeminate, and unsure of yourself! And, for the same reason we needed to shed the ethnic jokes, we need to quit making fun of those who’ve become so twisted in their logic that they think the answer is in self-mutilation—removing the sexual organs they were created with and adding sexual prosthetic organs.

Anger With Their Creator

How sad! Their gripe is ultimately with their Creator! They’ve fallen into the same trap as Adam and Eve in the garden, when the tempter convinced them that life would be so much better if they could be their own god! Somehow, he convinced them that an all-wise God didn’t know what He was doing when He created them! So, how’s that working out? Not very well for the human race! We’ve never been more confused!

God, Help Us Love The Broken

The Apostle Paul asks, “But who are you, a mere man, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” (Romans 9:20) And yet, that’s exactly what we do when we fight God on the way He designed us! If you’re a follower of Jesus, let me challenge you to love the broken world of people we’re surrounded by! Jesus wept over people! He saw them as sheep without a Shepherd! We won’t win the culture wars by arguing and shouting down those who disagree with us on this issue! We won’t win with our rants on Facebook or Twitter or the blogosphere! When we’re quoting 1 Peter 3:15, “…always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you…” don’t forget the rest of it: “…however, do so with gentleness and respect…”
 

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