Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit.
By Albert Shim, Pastor
Albert and Tina Shim and their three girls are leaving our community to share the love of Christ with Cambodia. Below is a farewell from Albert to our church. (To hear Tina’s farewell message and Albert’s sermon from this past Sunday, click here.)
I’ve never felt quite so clumsy and defeated at a keyboard, but I’m just certain that I will not be able to express here just how much you have all meant to us over these past nine years. You have loved us so well – carried us at times, such as you did six years ago during a time which I have written about elsewhere:
Five months after our first daughter was born, I was rendered temporarily paraplegic. In response to a viral infection, my body began to attack my spinal cord so that my nerves weren’t working properly. It began with an intense tingling in my hands that I just dismissed, but then at around 2:30 am, I woke up with a searing, burning pain in my back. To this day, it remains the worst pain I’ve ever felt and it was a pain that would only later be relieved with a medication seven times as strong as morphine.
I remember vividly, crawling out of bed to the top step of our staircase in our apartment, just praying, “God, please make this pain go away. God, please make this pain go away.” And that prayer was just on repeat. Less than a minute into that prayer, God moved me in such a way as to re-direct my prayer. I can’t explain it in any other way except to say that I knew instinctively that I was not to pray that anymore in that moment. And the prayer He gave me to pray instead was: “God, just let me know that You are with me. Just let me know that You are with me.” And I prayed that over and over again. That was the prayer that God answered. In those two weeks of uncertainty and fear, in and out of the hospital on two separate occasions, God met me with a tenderness and a sweetness that I did not even have a mental category for to that point in my life as a Christian.
One very real way that He answered that prayer was by His love – His presence – that I perceived in the presence of this community. I remember the presence of my community group that gathered to have a weeknight meeting around my hospital bed. I remember meeting Rankin for the first time in that hospital room, who stopped by to pray with me after his first sermon at Crossroads as a visiting teacher months before he would accept his position here. I remember the presence of Peter and Lisa, who one night brought by fruit from the Farmer’s Market, and in my mind I can still taste how sweet it was. I remember the look of concern on Walter and Terry’s faces when they saw how I struggled to take a step. I remember Arthur, who is always trying to get me to watch more movies, brought over a DVD and we watched it together one afternoon. And of course, there was my wife Tina who was there to cry and to pray with me every limping step of the way.
This is but one dramatic example, but there have been countless others like it in kind. Your faithful and loving presence with us these past nine years has been a gift to us from God, quietly and steadily assuring us that He is Himself with us. We have known His presence by yours, and for that we are in your debt.
It has been the greatest honor to have had the opportunity to serve you. You have loved us so well and we will miss you so much. Please remember us as we go. We will never forget you and are already anxious for the time when we’ll see each other again.
In this final lesson, we explore the divinity of Jesus.
In this lesson, we explore the humanity of Christ.
By Rankin Wilbourne, Lead Pastor
Doubts are not simply questions. They are real, painful questions: “Are You there?” “Are You good?”
And these questions are like termites. If you don’t attend to them, they will slowly but surely eat away your shelter.
If you were to ask any Christian, “Why do you believe in Jesus?” there might be any number of answers: “Because He makes the most sense of my life – my sense of justice, my thirst for beauty, my need for forgiveness, for atonement.”
But the most compelling answer is always the same: “Because He changed my life, and He can change yours.”
No one has ever said, “I was addicted to alcohol and then I discovered the theory of natural selection.”
No one has ever said, “I was trapped in isolation and depression and then I read about the Big Bang.”
Jesus is a person. And He is God. That means we can take our doubts directly to Jesus, and only Jesus can quiet our doubts.
When you are disoriented, go and ask Him again: “Are You the One?”
How can you know that you have truly become a Christian?
Jesus is not a part of your life that you come to make sense of. Jesus comes to make sense of all other parts of your life.
In Jesus Christ, God has acted decisively for the whole world. As Lesslie Newbigin put it, “That’s either the rock on which all other knowledge about life becomes centered or else the stone on which one stumbles.”
And that is shattering because it begins with an offense. It tells us that we are not sovereign explorers. We are not honest, open-minded explorers of reality. We are alienated from reality because we have made ourselves the center of the universe.
We are lost. We must be rescued, and in Jesus Christ the God of the universe has come to rescue us. Do you know this? Have you been shattered?
Can you, then, be certain about your faith in Christ?
Yes, but here’s the secret; here is the type of certainty the Bible promises:
I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed,
and I am convinced that He is able to guard until that day
what has been entrusted to me (2 Timothy 1:12).
Do you hear? The ground of our confidence is NOT in the competence of our own knowing, but the certainty we have rests on the faithfulness and reliability of the One who is known.
I know in whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard until that day.
Until that day – reminds us that we are still on the path that leads to the fullness of truth. We don’t have all the answers to our questions; the story is not yet finished. But until that day, I am convinced that the One in whom I have placed my trust will lead me home.
Herein is Biblical confidence:
It can’t be gained from a book or lecture. It can’t be found in a therapist or a preacher.
It is a kind of certainty inseparable from trust, a kind of knowledge inseparable from obedience.
A knowing that cannot be severed from living and following Jesus: “Follow Me and and you will come to know.”
We say, “When I understand, then I will believe.” But Jesus says it doesn’t work that way, because ultimate reality is a person. Follow Me – and then I will lead you into understanding.
That is a certainty that is neither facile nor fairy tale but is arrived at, and it can take a long time.
Faith is not simply believing that God exists, nor is faith simply comprehending the facts of Christianity:
God is Holy; I am separated from God by my sin
and God in Christ has bridged that distance,
by living the life I could never have lived and dying the death I deserved
To be a Christian means to assent to those things, but that’s not faith.
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1).
John Calvin put it famously:
Faith is a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us
founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ
both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the
Holy Spirit.
Faith is scandalously, boldly believing that the holy and transcendent Creator of the universe is “benevolent toward us.”
He’s very fond of me. Faith is the living in and living out of that awareness.
Psalm 126:1 When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.
Selected by Tim Olshefski, Communications. His thoughts:
“We get so used to life being so full of pain and sorrow that it’s hard to believe in a life without it. That’s why we say things like ‘I must be dreaming!’ or ‘It’s too good to be true!’ Because we know that real things hurt. But when we enter into eternity with Jesus, there will be no pain. And at first it will be like we’re dreaming, but we won’t be dreaming.”
Click here to learn more about our scripture memory challenge.
In this lesson, we explore sin and how it affects our lives.
The Bible says that humans are created “in the image of God.” What does that mean and how does that affect our lives?
By Rankin Wilbourne, Lead Pastor
Atheists, agnostics, seekers, even the “none”s (the fastest-growing census box of American religious preference) – every person is a person of faith.
Those who ask that Christians provide reasons for their faith might begin by acknowledging a type of faith hidden in their own reasoning.
The scientist Michael Polanyi says that all thinking people should begin with a critique of doubt. Here’s what he means: however skeptical or cynical they may be, all doubts are really a set of alternate beliefs. When we undertake to doubt any statement, we do so on the basis of beliefs that, in the act of doubting, we do not doubt.
We talk about blind faith and honest doubt, but I can only doubt the truth of a statement on the ground of other things that I believe to be true. You cannot doubt Belief A except from a position of faith in Belief B.
Let me give you some common everyday examples:
“I don’t believe Christianity because it can’t be proven, and I’ll only believe that which can be empirically demonstrated by science.”
Here’s the hidden faith assumption in that statement:
The whole work of modern science rests on a faith commitment that cannot be demonstrated by the method of science.
Science progresses on one core belief: the universe is rational.
If different instrument readings at different times and places were simply random and couldn’t be compared to one another, then science would be impossible.
But – and this is what amazed Albert Einstein – the rationality of the universe is not something science can prove. It has to be assumed as a starting point. And that assumption is a FAITH COMMITMENT, which is why Einstein said the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is its comprehensibility.
Another example:
“I don’t know about all that. To each his own. I simply feel no need for God.”
Hidden within this common statement is a very modern American belief: that the existence of God is a matter of indifference unless it intersects with your emotional needs.
You are betting your life that no God exists who would hold you accountable for your life and your choices. Maybe that’s true – but that is a leap of faith.
If you don’t identify yourself as a believer in Jesus, do you know what you believe in? Do you have good reasons for believing it? Do you require from Christians greater justification for their beliefs than you do for your own?
If you say, “My head hurts – I don’t want to play,” it was William James who pointed out that simply by virtue of being alive you are forced to make a choice.
And you will, whether you realize it or not. You make decisions according to your core beliefs, your mental map. And trying to put off what to do about God is like jumping off a diving board and trying to put off actually entering the water.
The most intellectually honest and most practical thing for you to do is this: doubt your doubts.
We need to examine our doubts, but where does that leave us? Are we just stuck here? Can we be convinced about anything? Can we have real confidence that holds up against our real experience?
To be continued next week…
Psalm 84:5-6 Blessed are those whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.
Selected by Alex Scott, Volunteer Coordinator. Her thoughts:
“These verses are an assurance to me (as I often feel like an alien, tired and bereft of song) that even though this journey towards the City of God seems at times too long, wearisome, and desolate, in the Spirit I will be sustained by God, and in the good company of Christ there will be joy and merciful refreshment.”
Click here to learn more about our scripture memory challenge.
By Rankin Wilbourne, Lead Pastor
We all realize that our world is increasingly polarized over religion.
Belief and unbelief are both growing at the same time with each side vilifying the other as what’s wrong with the world.
It seems naïve to assume that simply more dialogue is the way forward when there doesn’t seem to be even what the poet Adrienne Rich called “a common language.”
Echoing Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, I’d like to suggest that a way forward for all of us – believer and skeptic – is to reconsider the role of doubt in our lives.
Doubt is demonized in the church as something to be ashamed of or gotten over. The skeleton in the closet of faith. But prized in the culture as the hallmark of intellectual integrity is “honest doubt.”
Doubt is not unbelief. Unbelief means you are of one mind in rejecting something. To doubt is to be of two minds – and that’s why it’s so hard. The heart in doubt is a divided heart.
The Psalmist describes doubt as a “foot slipping.” You’ve lost your footing. Unstable, you are disoriented. “As for me, my feet had almost slipped.”
The church doesn’t handle doubt well. It’s either too hard on it or too soft. George MacDonald called doubts “messengers of the Living One to the Honest.” And Tim Keller adds:
“A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who refuse to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of an informed and curious skeptic.”
The Bible doesn’t seem to be nearly as nervous about admitting doubt as the church is. I’ve always been struck by the last words used to describe the disciples in the Gospel of Matthew, our last glimpse of those who followed Jesus for three years, learned from Him, saw Him crucified, and now saw Him resurrected:
“Then the eleven disciples went to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw Him, they worshipped Him, but some doubted” (Matthew 28:16).
Have you ever noticed that little phrase?
Amazing. All they had experienced and the last thing we read about them is “and some doubted.” And Matthew doesn’t cover it up – he points it out!
Dale Bruner says that this is where Christians live – worshiping and doubting, trusting and worrying. In fact, it is almost impossible to find a Christian biography of great faith that was not forged in the furnace of doubt.
Understanding this makes real conversations possible. It makes you more sympathetic to those who don’t believe, more understanding. It makes you more humble, more respectful of where skeptics are coming from.
And even more confident yourself, because then Jesus sends His disciples out – “Go, be My witnesses!” – He looks at these worshiping doubters and says, “Go! You, too! Go! Risk your lives for Me. Change the world for Me.”
And you will discover as you go that your own doubts are being healed.
But what does it mean for skeptics to doubt their doubts?
To be continued next week…
Psalm 27:13-14 I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
Selected by Jeremy Weese, Pastor. His thoughts:
“I love these verses because they remind me that God’s goodness is not simply something I will experience one day, after I die; rather God’s goodness is real, it is present and it is now.”
Click here to learn more about our scripture memory challenge.
In this lesson, we explore the triune nature of God – God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.