|
Well, that’s a brutal subject line, isn’t it?
But seriously, what good are you? “Whoa, Chris… what got spilled in your Cheerios this morning? You’re not normally so mean.” Don’t misunderstand me. I am wondering what good you are… oh… wait, you’re not probably hearing me right. Let me explain… er, well… I don’t have room here, so let’s just clear this up in Deeper Thoughts below… But first… some big stuff is coming up! · Trunk or Treat is THIS Sunday evening, October 27, 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. for fun, games, candy, costumes, and decorations. Be sure to invite your non-church neighbors and friends! AND…it’s not too late to help! Volunteer to hand out candy, or help with games, set-up/tear-down, or greeting guests. Click here to let Chris Bowen know you’d like to help! · Will you seek God’s power and direction with us as we search out His will for our future? Click here to grab one or more 30-minute slots during our 24-hour prayer vigil November 9 – November 10 to cover our church in bold prayer. We’ll provide guided ideas on what and how to pray. Then we’ll wrap up with a mighty prayer meeting and worship night, Sunday, November 10 at 5:00 p.m. · Our Sunday morning Prayer Wall is a big deal to us… add a request or pray for others! Remember we also have a weekly prayer meeting every Sunday morning, 9:15 a.m. in the sanctuary! · Don’t forget “The Daily Six”, our 6-minute video released every Monday through Thursday as we study through the Book of Acts together. Click here to sign up for daily reminder emails—or you can just find the videos on our YouTube channel each morning. OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and those who just decided I have truly lost my marbles. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… “What good are you?” It is an abrasive question, I know. Some of you have let that question bounce around in your head for years. When you look in the mirror and contemplate your shortcomings and failures, your own voice has shouted that question in your brain many times over. Me asking it here merely triggers the sorrow and shame you’ve carried for decades. Perhaps others of you are offended by the harsh and condemning tone of the question. You’ve settled long ago that you were made in the image of God, that you were wonderfully designed, just as Psalm 139:14 declares. You understand that your value is immense, not because others have validated it, but because God has declared it to be so. If you hate my question because it violates your understanding of your deep and abiding value, good. You are healthy. If you are troubled because my harsh question sounds too familiar to the voice of low self-esteem rattling around inside your brain, then you are about to be set free… if you will let the Word of God speak. What good are you? A negative self-esteem hears the question presupposing there is no good to be found. It hears an accusatory tone that shatters all hope of a positive answer. A biblical, God-centered view of self hears the question as a positive quest to find the good that has been intrinsic to you all along—not because it’s good psychological self-help, "power of positive thinking" blather. No, the God-centered view of self recognizes that there is a mountain of good within you because God has created it by His sovereign will and in His limitless joy. You have been created by God as a mighty force of good. Period. End of story. (Perhaps you need to absorb some verses of scripture to confirm this: Psalm 139:13-18; Romans 11:29; Ephesians 1:4-6). But there is a twist. Two twists, in fact. Twist # 1: God created us good (Genesis 1:31). But the good that was created in you and me has been horrifically corrupted by sin. The result? “There is no one who is good, not even one,” David, Jesus, and Paul all declare in the scriptures (Psalm 14:3; Mark 10:18; Romans 3:10). But I have better news: For those who have trusted Christ, our sin problem has been eternally settled in the salvation of our souls. We are made good by the sheer act of God’s grace (Ephesians 2:8-10). Twist #2 (and most important to the point of this blog): You were not created with great value for your own sake. The good that God has baked directly into your specific, precise, and individual design is not so you can feel good about yourself. This isn’t just for your own joy and mental wellbeing. You were specifically and precisely created by God “for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). There is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit invested in each one of us, and it is for a very distinct purpose. Jesus told us that when the Holy Spirit comes upon us, we will receive power for the work of serving others with the good news of Jesus (Acts 1:8). The Apostle Paul tells us that this same Holy Spirit manifests Himself in us through a variety of gifts, and service, and outcomes—all to serve others and all given to us by the Holy Spirit just as He determines (1 Corinthians 12:4-11). This is all good. But good is not a status. It is not an identity. It is not a self-definition. It is an action. And it is always for others. Galatians 5:22 tells us that goodness is an outflow—a piece of evidence that the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives. “The fruit of the Spirit is… goodness…” the scripture reveals. The word “goodness” in the original Greek language does not mean you are a “goodie two shoes.” It means there is an active and purposeful outpouring of good from you towards others. Your life is good, in other words, because you do good things for the common good of others. You do these good things not in your own strength, but in the power of the Holy Spirit. The outflow of God’s Spirit in your life is actively good. Oh… and there is one more twist: If we do not recognize the good for which God has designed us, and thereby fail to actively engage that good, the whole body suffers. The Word of God again: “God has combined the members of the body… that its parts would have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it…” (1 Corinthians 12:24-26) This Sunday, let’s continue to explore “The Normal Christian Life.” It is not weird, it is not weak, it is not wandering. Let’s unpack together how God has brought together your beautifully created personality, your many life experiences, your passions and desires, and the spiritual gifts He supplies through the Holy Spirit. We will discover the very powerful purpose each one of us was uniquely created for. We’ll see exactly what our lives are good for. I hope we’ll see you Sunday for this tremendous discovery… 10:00 a.m. in-person (best!!) or online livestream (if you must). Can’t wait!! Much love to all… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend
0 Comments
Hey Friends…
I ran out of time last Sunday. I am glad I did. In His unlimited wisdom, the Lord wanted to slow me down so I could see something more clearly, more precisely, more thoroughly. And He knew I needed to have two conversations before I would be prepared to share this with you properly. I’ll tell you more in Deeper Thoughts below…and shoot really straight with you. But first…. · Ladies: Our one-day women's retreat featuring Cynthia Campbell and "The Steps to Freedom in Christ" and forgiveness is TOMORROW! Saturday, October 19, 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. Click here to RSVP! · NEXT UP: Trunk or Treat!! Sunday evening, October 27, 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. for fun, games, candy, costumes, and decorations. We need your help! Volunteer to decorate a car and hand out candy, help with set-up/tear-down, or greet guests. Click here to let us know… or sign-up at church on Sunday! Be sure to invite your non-church neighbors and friends! · Mark your calendar for a 24-hour prayer vigil November 9 – November 10 with 30-minute time slots for people to cover our church in bold prayer. We’ll provide guided ideas on what and how to pray. Then we’ll wrap up with a mighty prayer meeting and worship night, Sunday, November 10 at 5:00 p.m. · Don’t forget “The Daily Six”, our 6-minute video released every Monday through Thursday as we study through the Book of Acts together. Click here to sign up for daily reminder emails—or you can just find the videos on our YouTube channel each morning. · Are you praying with us every day this week? The Mt. Hope family desperately needs God’s power and direction as we search out His will for our future. Click here to see our call to 40 days of special prayer emphasis and join us by praying daily! OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and those who don’t like precision from the Lord. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… One of you stopped me after service on Sunday with an important word of encouragement. It was the first conversation I needed before we could move into this next layer of our study of “The Normal Christian Life: Not Weak, Not Weird, Not Wandering.” This beloved saint’s eyes were filled with conviction as she said to me, “Don’t be alarmed at the congregation’s silence. You are shocking us.” She meant this in the most positive of terms—we are tackling a critical subject matter from the Book of Acts that most American Christians have never explored. I unpacked with you on Sunday why many of us have never heard of these things (click here if you missed it… it would be worth picking up before this week’s “Part 2”). The shock is in the newness of this teaching for many. It is not a new teaching to the Word of God. It’s just that we’ve not spent much time in it as an American church culture. We need to recognize why this has been neglected so we can lean in with the importance it deserves. Let me tell you about the second necessary conversation. It was ten hours long. Just yesterday. Sherri and I spent the day over in southern Maryland visiting with the leadership of a very healthy church pastored by a dear friend of mine. Their church is identical to ours in style, theology, and specifically in their warm, inviting, and deeply caring relationships. But they excel in two unique areas far greater than any other church I know. First, their focus and success with practical mission to the poor and needy in their immediate community is remarkable. Second, the overwhelming unity, connectivity, and passion within their incredibly culturally and ethnically diverse church family is stunningly extraordinary. (Can I possibly squeeze any more superlative adverbs into one sentence?) “Do you realize what the very first miracle was after Jesus ascended into heaven?” one of these leaders asked with passionate fire in his eyes. “The Holy Spirit’s very first miracle was to pour out a supernatural manifestation of languages that immediately unified thirteen different ethnicities in one divine moment.” He was right. We’ve already read about this in Acts 2:4-12. Last Sunday, I thought my job was to give you a quick academic understanding of a controversial--and for some, perhaps even frightening—aspect of Christianity and the Bible. I thought the goal was to simply protect you from theological error, fear, or confusion. After yesterday’s conversation, it clicked for me in a way that it never has before. I see clearly that this is not just a passing oddity in the Bible that needs to be understood and protected. It is a pivotal aspect of God’s revelation of what He is capable of healing and restoring. Some folks have abused this revelation over the last 120 years in the Church. That’s why my impulse to protect you is so high. The scriptures reveal a supernatural spiritual gift of languages He gave to some who were baptized [filled] with the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2:4, Acts 10:46, and Acts 19:6). Most modern translations use the English phraseology “speaking in tongues” to render the original Greek text that would be better translated as “languages.” According to scripture, this gift is NOT given to every believer as some churches in America teach (see 1 Corinthians 12:27-30). Rather, at His discretion, God gives a variety of spiritual gifts to each believer “for the common good… just as he determines” (1 Corinthians 12:7, 11). There is solid scriptural evidence that this gift also has a manifestation of supernaturally anointed prayer in heavenly (spiritual) languages—what the Apostle Paul called “tongues of angels” (see Romans 8:26; 1 Corinthians 13:1; 14:1-3; 14:12-14). The manifestation of this spiritual prayer language is where many in our church tradition get weirded out and might even become fearful. And let’s be honest: Looking at it from any natural perspective, this gift is tremendously odd, unnatural, and could even appear silly or foolish. What’s worse, there are some churches who overemphasize and practice the manifestation of this gift in a disorderly and insensitive way that directly contradicts the clear teaching of 1 Corinthians 14:23-33. The misuse (or perhaps even abuse) of this gift is what I am fiercely protective over you and the culture of Mt. Hope. We cannot ever allow the violation of scripture’s clear instructions from 1 Corinthians 14 in our church. But let’s not toss out the baby with the bathwater either. God has demonstrated the power of the Holy Spirit to unify ethnicities, to unite people who were once alienated from one another, and to break down destructive walls of division (see Ephesians 2:12-18). He used one supernatural gift to do so in Acts 2:4-12. But throughout the early church He also used many other outpourings and spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit to bring healing to division, hatred, disunity, and darkness. I bet you’d agree there’s plenty of division, hatred, disunity, and darkness right here in our own neighborhood that could use an outpouring of the Holy Spirit to heal. Truth: Without the Holy Spirit's power, they will not heal. The strongholds are simply too strong. This Sunday, let’s pull up next to the scriptures for a careful study of exactly how He has gifted the Body of Christ to be His witnesses with the power of the Holy Spirit (see Acts 1:8). Let’s seek together what God has for us in careful conformity to the Word of God. I promise to fiercely protect our biblical and cultural integrity. But let’s also fiercely hunger for all that God has for us! See you Sunday… much love to each of you!! Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend Hey Friends…
Have you ever wondered who was the person that actually threw their baby out with the bathwater? You know that every warning label has a story behind it, don’t you? No joke: there’s a warning label on certain jet ski and ATV fuel caps that reads, “Never use a lit match or open flame to check fuel level.” Who did this once, prompting corporate attorneys to compel the ATV manufacturer to clarify this? So, when we use the phrase, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” who actually did this? And is there any chance we are doing this very thing with aspects of our spiritual lives? Let’s talk in Deeper Thoughts below…it’s important. But first… · Are you praying with us every day this week? Jesus told us if we pray together, God will answer. The Mt. Hope family desperately needs God’s power and direction as we search out His will for our future. Click here to see our call to 40 days of special prayer emphasis and join us by praying daily! o I trust you’re also praying boldly for the many people throughout the Southeast struggling to recover from two back-to-back major hurricanes. Let’s add to our prayers asking God for what our part should be to help! · Mark your calendar for a 24-hour prayer vigil November 9 – November 10 with 30-minute time slots for people to cover our church in bold prayer. We’ll provide guided ideas on what and how to pray. Then we’ll wrap up with a mighty prayer meeting and worship night, Sunday, November 10 at 5:00 p.m. · Trunk or Treat!! Sunday evening, October 27, 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. for fun, games, candy, costumes, and decorations. We need your help! Volunteer to decorate a car and hand out candy, help with set-up/tear-down, or greet guests. Click here to let us know… or sign-up at church on Sunday! Be sure to invite your non-church neighbors and friends! · Ladies: Our one-day women's retreat featuring Cynthia Campbell and "The Steps to Freedom in Christ" and forgiveness is Saturday, October 19, 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. Click here to RSVP! · ALSO… it’s not too late to join our 7-week Ladies Bible Study on Tuesday nights exploring “Jesus & Women in the First Century and Now.” Click here for details and to RSVP! · Don’t forget “The Daily Six”, our 6-minute video released every Monday through Thursday as we study through the Book of Acts together. Click here to sign up for daily reminder emails—or you can just find the videos on our YouTube channel each morning. · Click here for a personal update video from our Family Life Ministry Resident Chris Bowen as he and his wife work through her health crisis with leukemia. OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and those who don’t enjoy baths or babies. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… How about this one: On a Vidal Sassoon hand-held hair dryer, there is a label that offers “Instructions for use: Do not use while sleeping.” Or this one: on Nytol sleeping pills, the caution reads, “may cause drowsiness.” Or a placard on a chain saw that says, “do not hold the moving end of the saw.” Are people really so unwise that such warnings are necessary? It’s doubtful that anyone knows who it was that once threw a baby out as they drained their bath, but there must have been someone who did. The phrase first appeared in 1512 in a German writing called “Appeal to Fools.” The value of this warning stuck for centuries, to include an 1849 writing in the United States that recommended: “Fling out your dirty water with all zeal… but try if you can to keep the little child.” Regardless of where it started, the warning resonated because there is indeed a tendency in human nature to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Hopefully for you parents, we’re just proverbially speaking. Tragically, friends, I fear we’ve done this with more than one aspect of the Word of God and spiritual power. Let’s talk. We’ve been studying the bible book called “The Acts of the Apostles” in our quest to understand “The Normal Christian Life.” We’ve challenged you to read every verse of this book, two chapters each week. We’ve put together daily six-minute videos to model how to pull a present application from this important biblical text. We want to discover what normal Christianity is—not the Americanized, neutered, watered-down version of following Jesus, but rather the original Christian life initiated and empowered by Jesus Christ himself. As the very first church lived out their new relationship with Jesus, we see over and over again how the Holy Spirit filled the believers. This “baptism of the Holy Spirit” was promised by Jesus and would lead to profound power (see Luke 3:16-17 and Acts 1:4-8). But somewhere the universal body of Christ-followers abandoned this teaching altogether. Most of us have grown up in churches that never taught on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and God’s power. Why? Truth? The Church threw the baby out with the bathwater. Now don’t get me wrong. There has been plenty of foul water throughout the Church that desperately needed to be changed. “Drain the swamp,” is a popular partisan phrase decrying bureaucratic malaise often found in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C. But can I tell you that a far more prolific swamp of spiritual disease has existed throughout the history of the broad and universal church of Jesus Christ? On the one hand, the vibrant power of the early church was quickly traded for a wretched politicization of Christianity not long after Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christ. Popes and bishops saw their opportunity to gain power, and for more than a millennium the Church controlled the governance of most of Europe, imprisoning and torturing anyone who did not follow both their strict doctrines and their political demands. The Crusades, the Inquisition, and all manner of spiritual darkness enveloped the Church for over 1,000 years. There was no room for the baptism of the Holy Spirit in this Church. The Holy Spirit does not share His power with power mongers. Ever. On the other hand, there have been great awakenings and outpourings of the Holy Spirit throughout the Church’s history that have rescued pockets of believers from spiritual malaise. Their impact has been profound; their revival long-lasting; the transformation palpable. One of those awakenings nearly revolutionized western culture with a Holy Spirit-empowered deliverance from racism, prejudice, and hatred. I taught on this three weeks ago—if you missed it, click here for the video. (If you were there and want to brush up on the story, jump to the 23:00 mark.) But as we learned in that teaching, this early-1900s awakening was destroyed by the vile hardness of one pastor who split the church and headed off in a terribly unbiblical direction. The result? Churches in our tradition threw the whole thing out. That water needed to be changed, no doubt. It was filled with despicable ideology and a faulty interpretation of scripture. But there was a baby we shouldn’t have tossed down the drain along with it. This Sunday, would you allow me to delve into a somewhat academic discussion on what we have discarded and why, and to see if there is anything we should revisit in the revelation of scripture? We will clarify for you some controversial matters revealed in scripture that have often been misunderstood and misapplied in the Church—perhaps even in our church. You in? Do a little advance reading--which I hope you already did with me in Wednesday’s “Daily Six” (click here)--Acts 8:4-25. Broaden your view with Acts 10:44-48 and Acts 19:1-7. Then, let’s meet!! Much love… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend Hey Friends…
Would you like to see everybody get along—more than just tolerating each other, but truly enjoying, respecting, and engaging everyone? Would you like to see every needy person in our community supplied with all they desire? Or how about every hurting person healed? Or the discouraged truly happy? Or the fearful renewed with courage? Or the aimless given enthusiastic purpose? I know this sounds quite lofty. But I’m serious. Would you want all this if you could have it? How much would you pay for it? Let’s talk more about this—and an interesting problem called “dross”—in Deeper Thoughts below. I might have a deal for you. But first, just a few reminders / updates today… · Ladies: Join us for a one-day women's retreat featuring Cynthia Campbell and "The Steps to Freedom in Christ" with a special focus on the importance of forgiveness. Saturday, October 19, 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. Click here for more details and to RSVP! · ALSO… a new 7-week Ladies Bible Study led by Audie Hall kicks off THIS Tuesday, October 8, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. exploring “Jesus & Women in the First Century and Now.” Click here for more info and to RSVP! · It’s time for TRUNK or TREAT!! Join us Sunday evening, October 27, 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. for fun, games, candy, costumes, and decorations. This is a great event to invite your non-church friends as we reach neighborhood families with love at Mt. Hope! We need your help! Volunteer to decorate a car and hand out candy, or help with organizing, set-up/tear-down, or greeting guests. We’ll have more info and a sign-up at church on Sunday! · Are you keeping up with “The Daily Six” and our journey through the Book of Acts? Join me every morning, Monday through Thursday, as we work through Acts verse-by-verse. Click here to subscribe to our daily reminder emails, or just go to our YouTube channel and pull up The Daily Six videos each day! And… click here for this week’s study guide. It’s not too late to jump in! OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and those who prefer everyone stay a total mess. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… I hate prerequisites. They annoy me. Like when I go to the gas station and before I can start the pump, I have to first answer an inquisition about whether I am a loyalty member, or if I’d like to become one, or if I’d like a car wash today, or if I know there’s a sale on potato chips inside. (I’ve not seen that last one just yet. But wait. It’s coming.) Don’t give me a bunch of hoops to jump through. Just give me my gasoline. College prerequisites are the worst. They are always the terribly boring classes no one wants to take. But to get to the important stuff related to your chosen career, you must first confirm you have mastered everything known to man about Beethoven’s orchestral masterpieces or how the ancient Chinese handled agricultural economics 3,700 years ago. I hate being told that before I can get to what I want, I must first conquer a bunch of stuff I don’t care anything about. How about you? When it comes to spiritual stuff--the things we truly desire in life such as love, family, happiness, financial stability, purpose, and meaning—it seems there are always a million barriers and endless lists of hurdles to overcome. It’s as if God doesn’t really want us to achieve the most important things in life. If He does, why does He have to make everything so hard? But what if in spiritual realities, the hoops and hurdles and roadblocks really are prerequisites—that the most important things in life cannot be achieved without first passing through a series of genuine preconditions? I know there’s a brilliant PhD somewhere who will explain with a straight face how studying the composition of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is necessary for you to become an excellent certified public accountant. But I am talking about a much more realistic prerequisite—that for spiritual realities to actually occur as God intended, we must first work our way through a series of intentional hardships. I started today’s email asking how you’d like to see relational harmony, emotional healing, the absence of poverty, encouragement, and joy as the norm among us. “Unrealistic,” you might say. But is that because these spiritual wonders truly are impossible, or is it because the prerequisites for such spiritual victory are too costly for our tastes? Jesus promised--and delivered—the spiritual power to experience harmony, joy, healing, and deliverance that comes only from the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-8). The outcome of that mighty outpouring (Acts 2:1-4) did indeed bring unity and favor between all manner of different people (Acts 2:44-47). It erased poverty (Acts 4:34). It offered healing and recovery (Acts 2:43; 3:6-8; 5:12-16). And much joy was upon them all (Acts 2:47). His cousin John was a little more forthcoming about its cost: “One more powerful than I will…baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Luke 3:16). The scriptures often use the analogy of silver or gold making to describe the painful prerequisites to genuine spiritual power and victory (see Proverbs 25:4-5; Ezekiel 22:18-22; Malachi 3:2-5). If you know anything about precious metals, you know they don’t come out of the ground shiny and ready to wear around your neck. The ore is mined all mixed up with a variety of other elements—copper, tin, zinc, aluminum, etc. It must then be refined--or purified—where the precious metal is extracted from the unwanted elements which are called “dross.” The process of refining always requires heat. For gold, that heat is 1,948 degrees Fahrenheit to be precise. For silver, it’s a comparatively chilly 1,763 degrees. Ouch. The temperature is turned up. Everything melts. The heavier, more precious metals sink to the bottom of the cauldron. The dross rises to the top. The goldsmith uses a flat ladle to skim the impurities off the top over and over again until none of it is left. All that remains is perfect, pure, shiny, and precious metal. Jesus here: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so you can become rich…” (Revelation 3:17-18). Did you notice the problem starts with not realizing the actual poverty of our condition? We may think the worldly comforts and achievements we’ve built for ourselves are truly wealthy. But Jesus is offering a far richer reality—a spiritual preciousness that is achieved only by fire. As we continue our study of “The Normal Christian Life” on Sunday, let’s turn our attention to understanding the prerequisite of being refined by fire that comes with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I don’t like prerequisites. Especially when they involve painful things like fire. But the outcome is worth it. Jesus promised. And he delivered. Do a little advance reading if you’ve not already done so this week: Acts 4:31-5:16. Gonna be so good!! Here we go… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend |
Chris EadsMt Hope Pastor Archives
March 2025
Categories |
RSS Feed
Jesus said, “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, & with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” - Matt. 22:37-39
42507 Mt. Hope Road
Ashburn, VA 20148
[email protected]
703-729-2707