David Platt at Campus Crusade for Christ Staff Conference

Good Morning,

I wanted to write y’all to provide a free resource. One of Alana and I’s favorite pastors, David Platt of Brook Hills Church in Birmingham, AL spoke passionately at the US Staff Conference we just returned from. Here is a link that gives you free access to David’s talk, as well talks from Francis Chan, international president of Campus Crusade for Christ Steve Douglass, CCC US VP Steve Sellers:

http://www.ccci.org/csu/index.htm

Scroll down through the talks, David’s talk is last.

I highly recommend his two books, that craft the argument that Jesus saves us from American Dream and His grace should move us to radical abandonment to follow after Him. Here’s the Amazon link to his two books, one for personal growth (Radical), the other how to pursue Christ as a church (Radical Together) :

Amazon for David Platt

Thank you and hope you can enjoy.

a thought from Deuteronomy

Pretty intense...

Good Morning,

I hope everyone is well and I have been reading through Deuteronomy wanted to highlight a thought:

“¹⁸“And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. ¹⁹And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, ²⁰that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.”

- Moses, Deuteronomy 17:18-20

The book of Deuteronomy is Moses (the Hebrew people’s leader for past 40 years and out of Egypt) pouring out all his wisdom, all the commandments he had received from God and establishing laws for the Israelite nation to serve and live before God as Moses will soon die and they will settle in the Promised Land. Moses in this passage is establishing laws about Israel’s future kings. Verse 18 instructs that the kings must be careful to work with the priests to have a usable copy of the Scriptures. Verse 19 explains that for a true king of Israel this copy of Scriptures will ‘be with him’ and he will be an active reader & study ‘all the days if his life’. It goes on to explain this is not an academic measure nor pursuit of knowledge, but rather the king is to ‘learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping the law…doing them’. This connection is all through Scripture that we truly are not ‘learning’ or ‘growing’ unless the words of Scripture impact our life and actions. I love that it includes ‘doing them’ (Luke 6:47, many others) as so often we can lazily focus on what we refrain from, rather than what we are called to do like love, serve, pray, give, read, be a part of community, share the Gospel, fulfill the Great Commission or live by the Spirit.

Verse 20 addresses that if a king fails fear God subsequently not keeping or doing the law that he will surely become conceited ‘heart lifted up above his brothers’. Pride is the anti-god according to C.S. Lewis and our refusal to obey is an act of pride that we functionally are believing that somehow God is not God and we instead claim we are god knowing what is best for ourselves.

I think we can have two big takeaways on top of all this:

1. This is all a little overwhelming and we have failed at all of this. But Christ is the true King of Israel. In fact Christ is the King who had the Scripture ‘be with him’ in His heart and mind ‘all the days if his life’. Christ alone ‘ fear[ed] the LORD his God by keeping the law…doing them’ and never became conceited with a ‘heart lifted up above his brothers’. Christ was perfect and had every right to pridefully and disdainfully look at his brothers around Him, but instead He hung out with the ‘worst’ of us (prostitutes, tax collectors, me) and eventually went to the Cross for us, a bunch of conceited sinners.

2. We have a great privilege as a believer in Christ to be a king now as a son of the living God and to read the Scriptures as this passage tells the kings of Israel to do! To read God’s Word is the work of kings! We have our own copies, helps and others to converse with! This is a great and special opportunity as most of Christian history the average believer has not had a personal copy of the Scriptures, but we do! So let us delight in His Word! the book of John is a great place to start! There are many great Bible translations and study Bibles, but my personal favorite is the pictured ESV Study Bible. Check it out here or email me to talk Bible translations…:   http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_15?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=esv+study+bible&sprefix=esv+study+bible

So let us reflect on failings briefly, so we can deeply appreciate and experience our perfect Savior King who fulfilled the Law and sits as the rightful King of Kings and Lord of Lords. (1st Tim. 6:15, Rev. 19:16)

Thank you.

A quick guide to finding a great church: observables & questions for the pastor

This is a resource built for college seniors exiting our campus ministry to go re-locate and in our hopes find a great church quickly to start serving, growing and living with. Hopefully, this will be useful to you as you are looking for a church, pass on to some else or help improve awareness to how your current church presents itself to the first time attendee:

Seniors, this is an easy sheet of observables and questions to ask a pastor of a potential church in a sit down setting. A great and realistic goal is for you to be in the membership process at a local church within 6 months of graduating and re-locating to your new home! Church hopping quickly becomes church dodging and remember there are no ‘perfect’ churches. At the end of the day ask the Holy Spirit to guide you to a church, ask for His choice and make sure it is clear that the church loves Jesus and strives to love others.

What do I look for / easy observables in a church? 

-  Are people happy to be here? Both in and around service or do they rush out?

-  Is the way of salvation or the Gospel (Jesus) clearly taught each week?

-  Is Scripture used and taught from each week, whether in studying a passage or in a topical manner?

-  Is this church truly local to you (under a 20 minute drive, preferably under 10 minutes)? Eventually a distant drive will keep out effectively keep you out of church life and community.

-  Does this church have an obvious vision / purpose or not?  A clear direction in serving Jesus as a body?

In a sit down with a pastor of a potential church, what are 5 good questions?

-  What would you say is the overall purpose of this church?

*Good answers:  the glory of God, loving Christ & loving others, reaching this city, Great Commission, equipping of the saints, serving God.

*Bad answers: just having a great community, learning, any long hesitation…if it’s not on his mind than whose is it on?

-  What is your view and this Church view on how a man/ lady is saved?

*Good answers-  By grace through faith, repenting and believing in Christ.

*Bad answers- Baptism, church membership, good deeds, or anything that isn’t central upon a personal decision to trust Christ relying on His grace He obtained through the Cross.

-  What is your view on the inerrancy of Scripture?

*Good answers- It is inerrant;  Inerrant means that in the original autographs of the writers were inspired from God, to be trusted as the words of God and the copies we have now are over 99% accurate and any imperfection does not effect orthodox doctrine in any way; the Bible is to followed, studied and trusted as the Word of God.

*Bad answers- Most of it can be trusted, truth is relative, or it means different things to different people (this not meaning that we can’t learn different things from the same text, but that Scripture as clear propositional statements to be obeyed), or it’s not relevant.

-  How will this church like to be involving me in community, building me in Christ and equipping me for personal ministry?

*Judgement call for you, will you be growing or not?

-  How will this church be fulfilling the Great Commission?

*Judgement call for you, does this sound like a good plan? A Christ saving sinners sort of plan both locally and for the world

Remember no matter the attractiveness of the Body, nor the eloquence of the pastor, if core convictions of God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Bible and Salvation are not met then the church may not belong to Jesus at all. You must see the ship (body of the church), but also know the Captains (pastors) to know where the ship is going.

plumb our hearts

It’s been a wild couple of months, but I wanted to share a brief devotional. Alana and I are progressing well from the devastation and are currently working hard amongst a variety other of commitments to find suitable housing for the fall and going forward in Tuscaloosa. Housing and rental markets are not easy right now to find a good situation either by buying a home or renting; so we’d appreciate prayers for our wisdom, financial providence and ultimately clarity of opportunity & action. Here we go:

“How many are my iniquities and my sins?
Make me know my transgression and my sin.”

-Job 13:23, Job is lamenting to God after losing much of his family, health and possessions. 

Today is simple, this passage has meant much to me recently. It confronts us, will we boldly ask God to further show us our hearts? Do we really hate and abhor our sin, whether thought, deed, attitude, the past, enough to ask God set it front of us and deal with it? Or will we just be happy eliminating obvious or obnoxious outward sins that are difficult to not notice? 

I ask that you would join me, as I continually am asking God this. Let us have the Holy Spirit plumb our hearts and show us what we ignore to conform to the perfection of Christ. If our life is truly about His glory, we will set aside every hindrance. Let us not grow weary, but ask ‘Make me know’ Lord. I don’t want to be ignorant. 

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”  - Hebrews 12:1-2

Thank you and For His Kingdom, 

Justice, Mercy, Grace.

what is His gift?

Good morning,

This morning I wanted to share a bit of how I teach the students. I really try to deconstruct ‘church words’ that have lost meaning to many. A great example and what we’ll work with in this post is GRACE. Here in the south the word grace is often reduced to nice part of a double name (Hannah Grace, Mary Grace, etc. not a bad thing to use as a name, probably will use if Alana and I get blessed with a daughter one day) or grace is merely a way to refer to small prayer to bless a meal.

However, we must have a keen understanding of what GRACE truly is and means to understand some of the beautiful & integral parts of Scripture like :

“⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

- Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, 2:8-10

We can only really understand grace in context and contrast to how it differs from other treatment we can receive, specifically between: Justice, Mercy & Grace. This is an example I use to explain grace:

If I punched you in the face, what would be Justice? For you to punch me in the face right back. That’s justice, ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ – Exodus 21:24 & many other places. Justice is getting what we deserve.

If I punched you in the face, what would be Mercy? For you to fully acknowledge the offense, but choose to not inflict punishment and in effect do nothing or withhold just punishment. Mercy is not getting what we deserve.

If I punched you in the face, what would be Grace? For you to fully acknowledge the offense, but then hand over all of your money, not all out of fear, but out of love for me and then ask is there any other way you could serve me. Grace is not only not getting the negative just punishment we deserve, but receiving positive benefits that we also do not deserve. Grace is getting forgiveness and righteousness from Christ, even though we deserve punishment.

Grace is the amazing gift of God, that we do nothing to deserve, but merely repent & trust/ believe in Christ to receive. Christ took our just punishment for our sins on the cross ( Ephesians 5:2; Hebrews 10:12; & all over) so He could hand us grace to all who would receive Him (John 1:12; John 3:16 & all over)

Read the Scripture above and apply the this definition of grace, this grace of God transforms us and what we aim to preach, teach and live (Acts 20:24). Short post on an endless topic.

Thank you and for His Kingdom,

What’s next?

friends.

Good Morning Gentlemen,

We are back from New York City (leading a mission trip to give students an alternative Spring Break) and a bit exhausted, but very encouraged by the trip. Many students shared their faith for the first time, just getting in conversations with local students and sharing about Jesus. Very cool, to see Hindi, Muslim and irreligious students in New York be intrigued to hear about Christ.

Here’s our short devotion:

^“9As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ”Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.¹⁰And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.”  - Matthew 9:9-10

Jesus encounters Matthew. Matthew is never the same, he goes from depised sinner (and traitor in the eyes of Jewish brethren for being a tax collector for the Romans) to one of the twelve disciples. But what it interesting in this text, is what Matthew does as he follows. Matthew follows and then tells everyone he knows by inviting tax collectors and sinners who were his friends over to his home to meet this Jesus in verse 9.

Our proper response when we come to know Jesus is to tell everyone else. The same as true when we experience Jesus anew in our walk, it should push us to love and share Jesus with others. We adopt the mission of Christ, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” – Luke 19:10  Let’s take the initiative with others, no matter how that looks for you and those around you, that just as someone introduced us to Jesus our proper response to introduce our friends to Jesus for a lifetime.

 

be on Guard

on defense

Good morning,

It’s been a very good week. Alana has worked extra hard taking over the Operations roles for our campus over best couple months as well as heading up Operations for Greek Summit (summer project we are helping lead) and for the summer project our campus is sending to East Asia. All kinda flew into top gear for her this week. So thankful for Alana and her diversity of skills. Here we go:

^“1 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. ² Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.” – 2nd Peter 2:1-2

A cryptic passage. In the first and second centuries the early church had to battle false teachers and so it should be no surprise today to us. I decided to write this that we may be on our guard not only for our personal walk with the Lord, but also because we are the gateway to family, friends and others’ who would respect our opinion. With the responsibility we are charged with over and over to lead and love as Christ to those around us, it is also our duty to listen carefully to what people teach about God and carefully reflect on it making sure it is keeping in line with the Gospel and truth of the Bible.

You may be asking ‘well how can I quickly tell if what is being preached or I am reading is false teaching?’ This passage shows two quick (certainly not exhaustive) litmus tests that we can apply immediately:

1.” They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them” – If at anytime someone teaches that we are saved by anything else than the blood of Christ, than that is straightaway problem. Furthermore if they deny Christ existed, or if He wasn’t fully man or fully God or that Jesus was anything short of what the Gospels teach Him to be the God-man Savior of the world who won our salvation through a perfect life, ending in a perfect sacrifice on the Cross and triumphing in a crowning resurrection.

2. ‘Many will follow their depraved conduct’ – Look at the life of the one sharing the message, does it clearly show that he submits to the Lord or not? Good trees produce good fruit. Bad trees produce bad fruit.  Simple as ‘consider the source’ as my dad would say.

Not all encompassing, but can be applied right away in your frist impressions to new teaching or new pastor you hear.

For His Kingdom,

 

Psalm 127:1

architecture

Good morning,

I hope y’all have had a great week. Let’s get in:

^“1Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.” – Psalm 127:1

Simple, yet how often do we dive in without a second thought to the Lord and His plans or ways? We have all had it happen: a new opportunity or a venture ripe for the taking presents itself and boom we hit like a large mouth bass on a spinner bait. Yet do we really believe “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” ? Or do we believe some version of “I am going to do this, it seems like a good idea, if things go haywire I’ll throw up a prayer and keep going”.

My charge to us is this: If we really want to be a part of what Christ is doing on this earth we must ask, listen and obey His command and direction. This means weighing out opportunities, going to His Word on how to carry out life and work and ultimately trusting Him with everything and not taking credit at the end of the day. It takes humility of knowing Jesus is Lord and Savior to be able to say “watchman stays awake in vain” that if we are build anything of true eternal lasting value…our hard work apart from Christ is worthless (John 15). The Lord is the builder and watcher/maintainer, let’s submit to Him, be filled with the Spirit and build according to the Great Architect in all aspects of life.

For His Kingdom and thank you,

J Karl

charity water

charity water

Hey y’all,

I wanted to throw a promo out there for a great friend (Nathan Bruno) of mine who has undertaken an effort to raise $5,000 to dig a clean water well in Africa with Charity Water. He’s over 20% done and working on multiple ways to finish the cost. This is a spectacular way to serve “the least of these” on our planet.

So please check it out, learn more and invest in the less fortunate’s lives:

http://mycharitywater.org/p/campaign?campaign_id=11927

100% of your donation directly funds clean water projects in developing nations!

That would be Nathan.

cover a matter

are we working towards forgiveness?

Good morning,

Hope y’all have had a good week. It’s been a busy one on my end and tomorrow Alana sets out to lead the Atlanta Women’s retreat with other female staff as Jeff and I take the guys to Memphis for a Men’s Retreat. So not much rest in sight, but should be a lot of learning about the Lord for the students, community building and fun. So today’s devotional is short, but important to me lately:

“⁹Whoever covers an offense seeks love,
but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.” -Proverbs 17:9

Simple, yet how often do we repeat or mess up again hurting those we love? Whether out of our maliciousness, carelessness or stubborn heart to change our ways. So simply, when we run into conflict with those we love much or love not at all, are we going to be people who try to fix the conflict and make necessary changes to avoid it? To walk out the love of Christ in forgiveness, reconciliation and sharing truth to bring about peace?

Or will we be lazy and sinful and let it be matter of time till we repeat a matter and eventually “separate close friends” ?

Covering and working on conflict shows and exemplifies love and shows Christ’s nature. Christ came to resolve the greatest conflict in history: that our sins set us against God. Yet Jesus came to take the punishment for our sins showing His great love (Romans 5:8) so we may have restoration with God. Let us restore with others as so.

Thank you and please pray for us this weekend, for His Kingdom.