Several years ago I wrote a poem for Good Friday, using the seven last words of Christ from the cross. I’ve posted it each year during Easter Season on this site. Here it is again. I hope it encourages you. Below the poem are some thoughts about Holy Saturday, the day after Good Friday.
A Poem For Good Friday
Hoisted upon Calvary’s tree
To rectify the sin in me
Jesus looked upon the crowd
Announcing in a voice so loud
“Father forgive them for they know not what they do”
Beautiful words spoken to Gentile and Jew
Callously gambling for a piece of His clothing
The soldiers oblivious man’s redemption He was buying
“Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!”
Crowd spoken mockery on Golgotha’s sod
Criminals, on either side of the Lamb
Both facing life’s final exam
“ Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
Criminal’s jeering words in the form of a cuss.
“Jesus remember me when You come into Your Kingdom!”
Contrasting words, heart changing, unable to stay mum.
The lips of our Lord move a second time
Responding to the one convicted of crime
Looking straight at the man, knowing all of his vice
“Today you will be with me in paradise.”
That’s when His gaze came upon those He loved,
Some women, a disciple and the mother beloved.
“Dear woman, here is your son,” pronounced He to Mary.
“Here is your mother,” to John, while so wearied.
And then in the middle of that solemn day
Darkness hovered, black sky, not just gray
He who was holy became sin, no facade
And for the first time God was separated from God
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Was the awful cry that came from that tree.
The only thing in all the world capable of dividing the Trinity
Was the sin of every man, every woman, every boy, every girl, yes even you and me.
Later knowing that all was completed
That sin and Satan would soon be defeated
Jesus, all divine, showed His humanity
“I am thirsty,” He said, displaying no vanity.
When He received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.”
His time had come, His work was accomplished.
“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
At that moment the world reacted
But most of humanity was too distracted
To notice the veil in the temple torn in two
From top to bottom what should we construe?
That Jesus’ death on the cross paved the way
For us to have access to God when we pray
The earth shook and the rocks split
On the day God was hit and we offered spit.
The bodies of some dead were raised to life that day
Holy people appeared in Jerusalem to convey
That Jesus is God, He is the way, Centurion and squad
Declared, “Surely He was the Son of God!”
No bones were broken
Prophecy spoken
Declared body piercing
Blood and water producing
As evening approached so did two powerful men
Perhaps they were remembering when
Jesus had spoken and challenged their thinking
Waiting to live for Him until the world was sinking
They took His body, wrapped it in a shroud
Just as Pontius Pilate had allowed
To the tomb He was taken
Christ had been forsaken.
Forsaken by man and forsaken by God
So great was the cost on the road that He trod
But great is the victory He won on Golgotha
A victory summed up in the word Maranatha
The Lord is coming soon is the word’s special meaning
Three days later, He arose and sin took a beating
He will come again soon to take those who are His
Truer words never spoken, it’s the truth, that it is
Will you be like humanity’s generations?
Too busy, distracted, for His interventions?
Don’t miss Calvary’s message of Christ’s great love
Offered to all of us who are undeserving of.
– Brian Schulenburg
April 9, 2009
The Saturday of Holy Week always makes me think of what it must have been like for the disciples to have lost all hope. Many times I’ve thought of this day as the Day When Hope Disappeared. Disciples were scattered in clusters. One was dead - a betrayer with such guilt that he hung himself. Some were alone, hiding in fear. Some were together.Was the last 3 1/2 years just an empty adventure? Was it possible that their eyes had deceived them? Was it possible that Jesus was not who He said that He was? Why hadn’t they stayed true? Why hadn’t they fought for Him? What had He done that merited death on a cross? What would become of them?Sunday morning was coming . . . but they didn’t know what Sunday would bring.What are your questions today? What are your doubts?
It may be the day when your hope is gone, but HOPE is not dead. HE is alive! And Sunday? It’s coming!
Over on my e-book blog tonight, I posted the following.
Earlier this month, Al Mohler, the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky published an important article entitled, The 2012 Preaching Survey of the Year’s Best Books for Preachers. It’s an article that I believe every preacher should read, no matter what your denominational background.
At the end of the article Mohler includes his annual Ten Books Every Preacher Should Read. Many of the readers of this blog are pastors. I hope this post is a blessing to you as you shepherd the church. My hope is that many church members will read the books in this list as well.
Because many of these books are Academic books, you’ll find that the Kindle prices, while higher than most books on this site, are much lower than the hardcover or paperback editions.
Pop worship music. Falling in love with Jesus. Mission trips. Wearing jeans and T-shirts to church. Spiritual searching and church hopping. Faith-based political activism. Seeker-sensitive outreach. These now-commonplace elements of American church life all began as innovative ways to reach young people, yet they have gradually become accepted as important parts of a spiritual ideal for all ages. What on earth has happened?
In The Juvenilization of American Christianity Thomas Bergler traces the way in which, over seventy-five years, youth ministries have breathed new vitality into four major American church traditions — African American, Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, and Roman Catholic. Bergler shows too how this “juvenilization” of churches has led to widespread spiritual immaturity, consumerism, and self-centeredness, popularizing a feel-good faith with neither intergenerational community nor theological literacy. Bergler’s critique further offers constructive suggestions for taming juvenilization.
What is a church? This can be a difficult question to answer and Christians have offered a variety of perspectives. Gregg Allison thus explores and synthesizes all that Scripture affirms about the new covenant people of God, capturing a full picture of the biblical church. He covers the topics of the church’s identity and characteristics; its growth through purity, unity, and discipline; its offices and leadership structures; its ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and its ministries. Here is a rich approach to ecclesiology consisting of sustained doctrinal reflection and wise, practical application.
This textbook on how to read the Gospels well can stand on its own as a guide to reading this New Testament genre as Scripture. It is also ideally suited to serve as a supplemental text to more conventional textbooks that discuss each Gospel systematically. Most textbooks tend to introduce students to historical-critical concerns but may be less adequate for showing how the Gospel narratives, read as Scripture within the canonical framework of the entire New Testament and the whole Bible, yield material for theological reflection and moral edification.
Pennington neither dismisses nor duplicates the results of current historical-critical work on the Gospels as historical sources. Rather, he offers critically aware and hermeneutically intelligent instruction in reading the Gospels in order to hear their witness to Christ in a way that supports Christian application and proclamation.
The appeal of biblical theology is that it provides a “big picture” that makes sense of the diversity of biblical literature. Through the lens of biblical theology the Bible ceases to be a mass of unconnected texts, but takes shape as a unified metanarrative connecting the story of Israel with that of Jesus. It presents the whole scene of God’s revelation as one mighty plan of salvation.
For fifty years Graeme Goldsworthy has been refining his understanding of biblical theology through his experiences as a student, pastor and teacher. In this valuable complement to his , Goldsworthy defends and refines the rationale for his approach, drawing especially on the work of Australian biblical scholar Donald Robinson.
Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world’s foremost scholar of late antiquity.
Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven.
Through the Eye of a Needle challenges the widely held notion that Christianity’s growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.
From the bestselling author of Losing Ground and The Bell Curve, this startling long-lens view shows how America is coming apart at the seams that historically have joined our classes.
In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.
Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship—divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad.
The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk.
The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America. Its message is about all of America.
Tolerance currently occupies a very high place in Western societies: it is considered gauche, even boorish, to question it. In The Intolerance of Tolerance, however, questioning tolerance — or, at least, contemporary understandings of tolerance — is exactly what D. A . Carson does.
Carson traces the subtle but enormous shift in the way we have come to understand tolerance over recent years — from defending the rights of those who hold different beliefs to affirming all beliefs as equally valid and correct. He looks back at the history of this shift and discusses its implications for culture today, especially its bearing on democracy, discussions about good and evil, and Christian truth claims.
Using real-life examples that will sometimes arouse laughter and sometimes make the blood boil, Carson argues not only that the “new tolerance” is socially dangerous and intellectually debilitating but also that it actually leads to genuine intolerance of all who struggle to hold fast to their beliefs.
As the youngest-ever op-ed columnist for the New York Times, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. In Bad Religion he offers a masterful and hard-hitting account of how American Christianity has gone off the rails—and why it threatens to take American society with it.
Writing for an era dominated by recession, gridlock, and fears of American decline, Douthat exposes the spiritual roots of the nation’s political and economic crises. He argues that America’s problem isn’t too much religion, as a growing chorus of atheists have argued; nor is it an intolerant secularism, as many on the Christian right believe. Rather, it’s bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional faith and the rise of a variety of pseudo-Christianities that stroke our egos, indulge our follies, and encourage our worst impulses.
These faiths speak from many pulpits—conservative and liberal, political and pop cultural, traditionally religious and fashionably “spiritual”—and many of their preachers claim a Christian warrant. But they are increasingly offering distortions of traditional Christianity—not the real thing. Christianity’s place in American life has increasingly been taken over, not by atheism, Douthat argues, but by heresy: debased versions of Christian faith that breed hubris, greed, and self-absorption.
In a story that moves from the 1950s to the age of Obama, he brilliantly charts institutional Christianity’s decline from a vigorous, mainstream, and bipartisan faith—which acted as a “vital center” and the moral force behind the civil rights movement—through the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s to the polarizing debates of the present day. Ranging from Glenn Beck to Barack Obama, Eat Pray Love to Joel Osteen, and Oprah Winfrey to The Da Vinci Code, Douthat explores how the prosperity gospel’s mantra of “pray and grow rich,” a cult of self-esteem that reduces God to a life coach, and the warring political religions of left and right have crippled the country’s ability to confront our most pressing challenges and accelerated American decline.
His urgent call for a revival of traditional Christianity is sure to generate controversy, and it will be vital reading for all those concerned about the imperiled American future.
While there is no substitute for personal, faithful, and careful Bible reading and prayer, the Bible’s vast size and diversity can make distilling its truth a daunting task. Thus most Christians benefit from supplemental resources to help learn and apply what Scripture teaches.Renowned theologian, Gerald Bray has produced just such a resource in his new systematic theology. Though packed with robust content, he writes about this volume: “the aim . . . is to reach those who would not normally find systematic theology appealing or even comprehensible.”This volume is unique from others in that Bray traces the common theme of God’s love through the Bible categorically—from God’s love for himself and his creation to the cross as the ultimate expression of God’s love, among other categories. The centrality of God’s love in Bray’s theology reflects a deep conviction that the Bible shows us God for who he really is. This volume will be of interest to Christians seeking to grow in their faith.
In this brief and winsome book, Michael Reeves presents an introduction to the Christian faith that is rooted in the triune God. He takes cues from preachers and teachers down through the ages, setting key doctrines of creation, the person and work of Christ, and life in the Spirit into a simple framework of the Christian life. A rich and enjoyable read on the basic beliefs of Christianity that avoids dumbing down its profound and life changing truths.
Lecrae is one of Christian Hip Hop’s leading voices. He is also an author, theologian, speaker, and cultural architect. I appreciate the impact that Lecrae is making is making on this generation.
PBS recently interviewed Lecrae for their Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly program.
Check out this interview and ask yourself how you are influencing those around you.
Randy Mortensen, the President of Worldwide Village will be our guest speaker on Sunday, February 3. I recently had a chance to visit Haiti with Randy and Worldwide Village.
Randy will be sharing his amazing story of God’s grace in his life. For years, Randy searched for meaning in life. Outsiders looking in would have thought that Randy had it all — a great job, wonderful family, prestige. But inside, Randy was searching.
You can read more about Randy’s remarkable story here.
This is a Sunday you won’t soon forget. Invite some friends and prepare for God to speak to you through Randy’s story.
The work that Randy and his team are doing in Haiti today is truly extraordinary. If you are a Senior Pastor, I’d highly recommend the vision trips that Worldwide Village offers for free for pastors. You can find out more about the two trips planned for 2013 right here.
A little over two years ago, I received my first Kindle as a Christmas gift from my wife. I had no idea at the time how much I would enjoy that little device. I have found myself reading more in the past couple of years than at any other point in my life. I also found myself mining Amazon and other websites for freebies or inexpensive e-books. It’s been a fun process. Searching for these books has introduced me to a host of great authors, whose books I probably would not have read had I not been introduced to them with a free e-book.
I’ve been posting links to free e-books on my Facebook and Twitter pages for a couple years now. Over those years, people have continually told me that I should start a webpage for people looking for free or inexpensive e-books. So today, I took the plunge. I’m excited to introduce you to www.superebookdeals.com. Here you’ll find free and inexpensive e-books on a daily basis. Share the news with your reading friends, and happy reading!
First, take a few minutes to read this article about my friend, Randy Mortensen, who runs World Wide Village, the organization that I recently traveled to Haiti with. Randy was a corporate executive, whose search for meaning eventually led him to a relationship with Jesus Christ and a new calling in Haiti. This is a great story.
Louie Giglio has had a busy couple of weeks. Just ten days or so ago he was leading 65,000 college students in a four day conference, in Atlanta, called Passion 2013. The Passion conference was a major success, where major strides were made to free people from modern day slavery. President Obama took notice and Giglio was asked to deliver the inaugural prayer. Giglio was dis-invited when his belief that homosexuality is a sin was discovered by a watchdog group that alerted the President’s inaugural committee. You can read a great piece about the entire debacle here. Giglio wrote an incredibly gracious reply to his church here.
I’ve been blessed by Louie’s ministry for several years and found some of his writing to be some of the most encouraging in my Christian life. One of my all time favorite books is I am not but I know I AM. If you are looking for a quick read this weekend you can download it here. The book is a reminder that we are only here for a little while. History is God’s story. We need to live our lives for His glory and His renown. What part are you playing in God’s story?
Another great Giglio book is Indescribable: Encountering the Beauty of God in the Beauty of the Universe. The book is the result of Louie’s famous sermon in which he encourages us to consider the vastness of outer space and the depth of the soul, and the God who created it all. Giglio’s sermon Indescribable was the inspiration behind the worship song Indescribable that he wrote with Matt Redman. You can download the book here.
You can download the song, as preformed by Chris Tomlin, here.
One final Giglio book that I highly recommend is The Air I Breathe: Worship as a Way of Life. Almost every worship pastor that I have met has used this book with a worship team at some point in time over the past three years. Giglio is passionate about worship. It’s one of the reasons that he founded the Passion Conferences. He writes as a man in love with Jesus, calling us to not miss out on living our lives as an act of worship to the God of the universe. You can download the book here.
Looking for something fiction? New York Times best-selling author, Ted Dekker has released the first three of four novellas in his new Eyes Wide Open series of books. The final novella will be release this coming Tuesday. You can download book one in the series, Identity, for free by clicking here.
Here is a brief description of the series from Amazon -
Who am I?
My name is Christy Snow. I’m seventeen and I’m about to die.I’m buried in a coffin under tons of concrete. No one knows where I am. My heart sounds like a monster with clobber feet, running straight toward me. I’m lying on my back, soaked with sweat from the hair on my head to the soles of my feet. My hands and feet won’t stop shaking.
Some will say that I m not really here. Some will say I’m delusional. Some will say that I don t even exist. But who are they? I’m the one buried in a grave.
My name is Christy Snow. I’m seventeen. I’m about to die.
So who are you?
In a return to the kind of storytelling that made Black, Showdown and Three unforgettable, New York Times bestselling author Ted Dekker drags that question into the light with this modern day parable about how we see ourselves.
Humming with intensity and blindsided twists, Eyes Wide Open is raw adrenaline from the first page to the last pure escapism packed with inescapable truth. Not all is as it seems. Or is it? Strap yourself in for the ride of your life. Literally.
Books two and three are available for just $2.99 each.
Book two is called Mirrors and can be downloaded here.
Book three is called Unseen and can be downloaded here.
Happy Reading!
******* ADDITION
Book four came out early! Here is the link to purchase Seer.
When a church calls a pastor, the expectations that are made upon that person can sometimes be unrealistic. In a few instances, the expectations of a pastor can border on abuse. When counseling pastors who are considering a call to a church, I often times tell the pastor to take a long look at the job description. After looking at that, I tell the pastor to ask about any expectations that are not listed in the job description. Sometimes the assumed expectations that a congregation has about what a pastor will or will not do are even more important than the job description itself. In my years of ministry I have heard nightmare stories from pastors and churches about misunderstood expectations that have led to incredible pain on the part of the pastor or congregation.
So, what are some of the promises that every pastor should make to the Lord, their family, and to the church that they serve?
Here are some things that I think the Lord, my family, and my congregation should expect from me. These are areas that every pastor struggles with. Every pastor will fail on these from time to time. We are, after all, human. But, that should not stop us from striving to do our best to keep these promises. These promises should motivate us to get back up and try again whenever we fail.
In my relationship with God:
I promise to make Jesus Christ the greatest Love of my life. I will pursue a growing relationship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I will make God my top priority. I will seek the approval of the Lord over the approval any human being. I will strive to live my life in such a way that those around me will see Christ reflected in me; following in the servant way of Jesus. I will seek to make much of Jesus and little of me. I will strive to do the work of ministry through the power of the Holy Spirit, knowing that anything I accomplish of eternal significance will be because of His power at work within me. I will make my prayer life a priority, seeking God’s face continually throughout each day. I will seek to understand God’s preferred future for my life, my family and the church that He has called me to serve. Then, I will follow His path no matter the cost. I will recognize my spiritual poverty and need of God’s grace, and forgive as God has forgiven me. I will confess my sin, daily, to the Lord; and seek to join Him, daily, in His mission of making more disciples. .
In my relationship with my family:
I promise to love my family more than the church that I serve, the work that I do, and the personal dreams that I have. I will seek to be the shepherd of my family more than being the shepherd of the church God has called me to serve. My spouse will be my greatest love after the Lord. My spouse should know that she is more important to me than the church that I serve. I will model to my family that loving God and loving the church isn’t the same thing. I am called to love God first, my family second, and then others.
To my children, I will strive to love your Mom as Christ loved the Church; laying down my life and my dreams, for our life and our dreams. I will love you for all of my life. I will recognize that you are the greatest gift that God has ever given me, next to Himself and your Mom. I will not let the busyness of ministry crowd out the life that God has planned for our family. You are my greatest priority – after God and after your Mom. I will disciple you at home, and be a volunteer in some of the ministries that you are a part of. I will do my best to not embarrass you, and will ask your permission before using you as an illustration in a sermon I preach or a lesson that I teach. I will take an interest in the things that you are interested in; because if it is important to you, it is important to me too. I will not expect of you the perfection that belongs to God and God alone. I will love you when you make mistakes and not allow the unrealistic expectations of those in our church to be expectations that I place upon you. I will pray for your future spouse and when the time comes to let go, I will give you back to God, recognizing that you were never really mine to begin with.
In my relationship with my church family:
I promise to remember that the church that I pastor is God’s church. It doesn’t belong to me. I will seek His direction, in tandem with the leaders that God has placed around me, for this church body. I promise to love you, with the hopes that the community around us will know that we are Christians because we love one another. I promise to work hard. I will study God’s Word and do my best to accurately teach what Scripture teaches. I won’t be perfect. When I make a mistake, and realize it, I will own up to it and do my best to correct the problem. I will be an advocate for the pastoral and support staff that you have entrusted me with. I will pursue integrity in all areas of my life, seeking to be someone that you can trust, surrounding myself with people who will hold me accountable to God’s standards. I will do my best to not embarrass you, or the cause of Christ, by bringing shame upon His name. I will do my best to treat each attender of our church with honor, respect, fairness and confidentiality. I will speak the truth in love, even when it may not be what you want to hear, and I will welcome the same from you. I will welcome all, but not affirm the sin in any – including myself. I will recognize that there will be some people at our church who will be difficult for me to love, and try to remember that I am many people’s person who is difficult to love. I will recognize that I am not the Savior, and therefore won’t have the solution to every struggle that our church has. God does. I am not ultimate authority. God is. I am not going to be competent in every area that our church will face; so I will work together with the beautiful body that Christ has built here to accomplish His purposes. I will recognize that the church that I serve does not have the “corner on the market” on God. I will live a life of inter-dependency with other pastors and church leaders across denominational lines.
We will pray as a body. We will serve as a body. We will learn as a body. We will worship as a body. I will seek to make sure that the vision that we pursue as a body comes from Christ speaking to the church and not just to me. I will do my best to help you discover your gifts so that you can honor God in the unique way that He has made you. I will recognize you as a gift to the body of Christ. That said, I will not reward dysfunction or those whose motives prove to be detrimental to the overall body. I will hang out with people who don’t know Jesus so that you can see modeled in me someone who is actively living out the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.
