5 Principles

04/28/2026

04/28/2026

Help for the Hypocrites

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:18-19

People who do not want anything to do with the church often accuse it of being “full of hypocrites”. I have a theory about why they say that…

…because we, the church, are in fact full of hypocrites. We are bad about that.

I am certain you can fill in some of your own favorite examples of this. Paul’s remarks to the Corinthian church above point out one of my favorite examples.

Paul reminds us in the church that we have been given BOTH the message of reconciliation AND the ministry of reconciliation. They go hand-in-hand. The message is shallow and powerless without the ministry. The message (i.e., that God loves you and forgives you) requires the ministry (i.e., that we love and forgive each other as well) in order to have any power, any credibility at all. Otherwise, it is just…hypocritical.

It makes complete sense if you think about it. It requires us to practice what we preach. Those of us in the Christian church have preached the message well for a long, long time. “No matter where you have come from, no matter what you have done, God loves you and forgives you.” But if we are not, at the same time, willing to act out the ministry of reconciliation, i.e., “…and I love you and forgive you as well…” then the message rings shallow no matter how eloquently we speak it. All the cool videos and all the polished Power Point presentations, all the great books and all the amazing sermons, all the wonderfully conceived lessons and all the powerful tracts…none of these masterful presentations of the message mean anything at all…they are all just the height of hypocrisy without on-going living and demonstrating of heart-felt forgiveness.

I have said it here before, but it bears repeating: for the Christ-follower, forgiveness is like breathing. It is something we do all day, every day, as often as we have opportunity to do it. It is our ministry.

The good news is this: there are Christians and groups of Christians all over the world who understand this and who really have been good stewards of both the message of reconciliation and the ministry of reconciliation. There are probably even groups of them near you. Maybe you are one of them. Maybe you will rub off on the rest of us as you continue breathing out forgiveness day in and day out. In the end, after all, none us of really wants to remain a hypocrite. We want to get this right. And with a little help, maybe we will.

Coffee

04/28/2026

Loving God’s Word
Psalm 119:1-16

04/27/2026

For Christ followers, there is a specific category of spiritual blessings which follow from our devotion to God’s Word.

04/25/2026

Human frailty and the inferiority of the powers of this world make God the perfect refuge for us, His followers. His steadfast love and His sovereign power, two sides of the same coin, are where we can find rest from the chaos of this world.

04/24/2026

The promise of rest and refuge is not only God’s promise to us as individuals, but also to entire communities of believers. We reap the benefits of God’s refuge together when we seek God in community with one another.

04/24/2026

God is Our Refuge
Psalm 62:1-12

04/23/2026

Leaders Wobble But They Don’t Fall Down

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4:7-9

Is it just me? Does anybody else read these words from the Apostle Paul and remember those silly Weebles ads about “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down” (with apologies to all my international friends who all think I have finally lost my marbles!)? Weebles are those cute little Hasbro/Playskool toys with the weighted bottoms so that they literally cannot be knocked over. They are a near-perfect illustration of this revolution we call Christianity. No matter what the world tries to do to stamp it out, it just gets back up and keeps growing.

And it is that same “struck-down-but-not-destroyed” spirit which inhabits you and me as church leaders today. That is the encouraging word here from Paul to us. We are filled with this same indestructible spirit. The question is, does it feel like that to you? And if it does not, how can you recapture it?

It seems clear to me that this spirit of “indestructibility” which Paul talks about in verses 8-9 is very much tied to his “jars of clay” illustration in verse 7. In other words, it is only when we lose sight of our position as flawed and fragile vessels that we begin to set ourselves up for destruction. When we, as leaders, begin to believe people’s scouting reports on us as “amazing communicators” or “extraordinary people”, when we begin to see ourselves as being just a little bit better than most of those around us, when we tend to forget that it is only the Spirit within us which makes us any kind of leader at all, then we begin putting into place the very cancer that will eventually become our demise. Rest assured, when your leadership rests on your human shoulders, it is doomed from the start. When you allow yourself to be placed high on a pedestal, you only ensure a much higher fall in the end.

But when we can say (with Paul) that we are mere earthen vessels, flawed and fragile, but carrying an invaluable and indestructible Spirit given to us freely by the grace of the sovereign God for purposes of His own glory and not for ours, then we can indeed be hard-pressed but not crushed, struck down but not destroyed. We can survive even the most painful season of grief and betrayal and failure…not because of who we are, but because of Who we have with us.

That encourages me greatly! I hope it encourages you as well.

Coffee