Meditations

Now concerning the collection for the saints: you should follow the directions I gave to the churches of Galatia. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come. And when I arrive, I will send any whom you approve with letters to take your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me. 1 Corinthians 16:1-4

“In contemporary society we are very much prone to ad hoc practices of generosity (such as crowdfunding) in response to specific identifiable crises of need. That generosity is all to the good. It is, however, not sufficient for responsible
materiality. Beyond ad hoc acts of giving, mature generosity requires planned, regular, disciplined budgeting for sustained giving. Such intentionality makes it possible not only to respond to dramatic crises but also to provide sustained support for social institutions upon which community health depends. The amount of such giving is flexible. We may note, however, that the notion of a 10 percent tithe of income is not a maximum; it is a baseline against which we may reckon our measure of generosity. Obviously the more we practice the restraints indicated above, the more we are able to maximize our generosity in a way commensurate with our gratitude.”

Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), 25-26.

I loved every word here, especially the ending: “maximize our generosity in a way commensurate with our gratitude.” Responsible materiality requires diligent planning. It starts with a baseline. But the grows from there.

And the growth links to gratitude. As we find joy and life we increase our sharing. God supplies and it goes from there. So what is the role of “crowdfunding” per se. I think it’s the on-ramp for new people to join in giving.

And the apostle Paul provides a good example of this. Notice how he does a crowdfunding project called the Jerusalem Collection. But he gives instructions with it so they learn to do the diligent planning..

If you serve with a church or ministry, do crowdfunding projects to get everyone giving. Couple it with instructions to help everyone set a baseline and grow in diligent planning.

People will not become generous overnight. Your job is to teach them maximize our generosity in a way commensurate with our gratitude. The generosity will flow when you move beyond collecting gifts to growing givers.

I urge you, as I did when I was on my way to Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach different teachings and not to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than the divine training [literally, οἰκονομίαν θεοῦ or the economy of God} that is known by faith. But the aim of such instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. 1 Timothy 1:3-5

“Responsible materiality depends upon glad generosity that is grounded in deep gratitude for the gift of life in all its abundance. In a society of competition among individuals for scarce goods, the pressure to get ahead is without restraint.

But responsible materiality does not inhabit a world of scarce goods. Rather it resides in a creation of God’s good abundance. Thus, responsible materiality is exactly a contradiction to the impulse for competitive accumulation. The ground for generosity is the awareness that the world is funded by a generous, active God who has made creation as a gift that keeps on giving, and that we are on the receiving end of that endless gift-giving!

Thus we need not and cannot imagine that we are self-made or self-sufficient. Nor does it follow that “I made my money and it belongs to me.” Responsible materiality recognizes that we are each and all embedded in a life-giving network, and we are permitted the glorious chance to be full participants in and contributors to that life-giving network.”

Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), 24-25.

Competition to accumulate puts people on a path that causes them to miss out on life. And the operating system of this way of living is fueled by scarcity thinking. People step on each other to get ahead and they never have enough.

Because responsible materiality functions in God’s abundant economy and represents a life-giving network, we get the opposite. It’s a contradiction that puts us in a place where we realize only by living obediently do we always have enough.

Hear that again. I will put it plain and simple. Competition and scarcity lead to death and never having enough. Contradiction and abundance lead to life and we always have enough. The right path is only “known by faith.”

I stumbled on this idea of life-giving network or abundant economy of all things in my doctoral work related to Ephesus, 1 Timothy, and Ephesians. The idea of God’s economy appears in today’s Scripture.

And in Ephesians 1:7-10 it says that the One that brings this life-giving economy together is Christ. And in Ephesians 3:8-12 it tells us that the church is God’s channel for making known his economy or this life-giving network.

Furthermore, 1 Timothy 6:17-19 teaches us that the enjoyment and sharing of resources is the pathway to grasping this life. We only figure it out as we live it out. Again, the life-giving path, the only right way is “known by faith.”

All that said, responsible materiality and rich Christian generosity simply cannot happen in a world of competitive accumulation. No wonder Jesus is so explicit about where he wants us to store treasure. We only find life in obedience.

We can do this. God’s got us.

When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this. Deuteronomy 24:19-22

“A responsible practice of materiality might consider two other dimensions of saving. First, save the earth as our natural habitat. The earth is now being wasted and devastated by our industrial practice of excessive fossil-energy use coupled with a throwaway attitude toward consumer products. Mature materiality will usefully take a plunge into the inimitable work of Wendell Berry, our great apostle of frugality:

“We have only one choice. We must either properly care for all of it [nature] or continue our lethal damage to all of it. In the age of industrialism, this relationship [of mutuality between nature and human beings] has been radically brought down to a pair of hopeless assumptions: that the natural world is passively subject either to unlimited pillage as a “natural resource,” or to partial and selective protection as “the environment.”

We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. We are going to have to learn to give up things that we have learned (in only a few years, after all) to “need.” It is surely the duty of the older generation to be embarrassingly old-fashioned.”

Such a saving is not storing up for one’s self; it is rather saving in a way that articulates our lives as a part of a larger web of creaturely life to which we may contribute. The great decision for materiality is to be a contributor to creaturely well-being or to be a user who diminishes and exhausts our common creatureliness.

Second, our mandate to “save all you can” means to save our neighbors. In the Bible the “quadrilateral of vulnerability” includes widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor (see Deut. 24:19–22), all those who have no standing or leverage in a predatory patriarchal economy. Such saving would entail sustained acts of charity whereby the disadvantaged share in the wealth and property of the community.

Ownership is everything! Beyond charity, however, the great marker of saving the neighbor in the Bible concerns the regular cancellation of debt, and that in a society that willfully creates a debtor class in order to ensure a pool of cheap labor! Thus Moses provides for a periodic cancellation of debt in the “year of remission” (Deut. 15:1–18) and a restoration of lost property in the practice of Jubilee (Lev. 25).

The Lord’s Prayer, the one that Christians pray most habitually, has at its center a petition for debt forgiveness: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). The intent of these provisions is to preclude the formation of a permanent poverty class and to permit the disadvantaged to participate in a viable economic life. Clearly “save all you can” draws energy away from a simple private accumulation of money to a wise deployment of money for the sake of the
neighborhood and for a neighborly creation.”

Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), 24-25.

Brueggemann has used the famous statement from John Wesley, “Gain all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can” as his outline for engaging the topic of money with a lens of materiality. Today’s focus is saving.

I have taken my stewardship more seriously linked to creation care after two things happened in my life. I met Dr. Milan Hluchy, and I became a grandfather.

Dr. Hluchy of Czech Republic is a world authority in organic plant protection. He cares about the healthy ecology for plants and I work with GTP to advance the healthy ecology of churches and ministries.

His work has caused the same number of hectares (think: acres only bigger) of grapes in Czech Republic to increase both yield and quality by ceasing all use of pesticides.

The President of Czech Republic seeks his counsel for all agriculture in the country. The European Union wants his advice for many nations. And on two trips to Ukraine during the war, we have serve in the war zone and met with the top agriculture figures in the nation.

What’s my point? If we do any saving, we need to care for creation and care for the quadrilateral of vulnerability that God cares about throughout the Old and New Testaments: widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor.

Most Americans save to care for themselves and have rationalized so much disobedience they don’t know right from wrong with regard to money and faithful stewardship..

As I have arrived in India I see a world filled with an overabundance of people and unspeakable pollution. The needs of the quadrilateral stand out even more dramatically.

I shot the new header photo from Conquerors Software Technology where I had strategic meetings today regarding possible technology services. This view features a rare stretch of green space to “Cyber Towers” in the Silicon Valley area of Hyderabad.

Whether in America, India, or elsewhere, most people seem to focus on how they care for themselves.

Regarding saving, I always go to what my mentor and friend John Stanley has taught me. Saving is simply creating margin. We need margin in our finances and our schedules to show our love for God and neighbor.

Without margin, there’s no hope for creation (we trash the place) and the quadrilateral of vulnerability (we have no time and resources for those less fortunate).

When we were less fortunate, God sent Jesus to sort our sin problem. And He’s commissioned us to serve as His hands and feet. Will we? The future of the widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor depends on the choices we make.

Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest. Deuteronomy 23:19

“How much is enough? Is “enough” less than “all you can”? In a time of mobile capital and the technological capacity to accumulate endlessly, “all you can” has no limit or restraint. Work may become a passion and an end in itself, so that accumulation of wealth becomes an addiction that expels the human dimensions of our lives.

On the one hand, is payment for honest, productive work different from investment income, contradicting the old TV ad about “making money the old-fashioned way,” which meant managing one’s investments wisely? It is an illusion to think that investment income is “earned” or that it entails work.

Roland Boer points out that in the ancient world those who lived on surplus wealth were in fact “nonproducers”: “The system of estates sought to deal with a very practical matter: how does one feed and clothe the nonproducers? Or rather, how does one enable the nonproducing ruling class to maintain the life to which its members had quickly become accustomed? Directly or indirectly (via tenure), managed estates were the answer.”

Of course it is not different in our world, in which the “nonproducing ruling class” depends on the (poorly paid) work of others. We are wont, in our society, to regard the indigent and unemployed as the “nonproducers” when in fact the “nonproducers” include those who rely on surplus wealth and investment income for which “earning” is a misguided misnomer.

On the other hand, what of those who lack earning power? The Protestant work ethic has pertained primarily to white males in our society as the ones who by work gained the virtue of wealth and success. But of course most such high earners, from the outset, had unacknowledged advantages. What of racial or ethnic minorities, women, the disabled, and especially those who carry the legacy of enslavement who never gain access to well-paid honest work? Our society has done almost nothing to guarantee or ensure just earning for so many.

And for so many disinherited by our economy, their work is not adequately rewarded, so that honest work is not rightly well paid, rendering a viable life impossible. Conversely the well-connected high earners protect their edge through tax arrangements, legacy education, and other advantages that are denied those willfully left behind in our economy.

The work of mature materiality concerning “earn all you can” is to expose in critical ways the privatized, individualized notion of earning so that earners can begin to see themselves situated in a community of earners, some of whom enjoy huge advantage, some of whom are denied access, and all of whom are skewed by the pernicious norm of privatized wealth. When earning is set within community, earning power, its expectations, its promise, and its restraints may take on a very different texture.”

Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), 22-24.

I am safely in Hyderabad, India. Notice how Brueggemann addresses the broken patterns of modern life that most people, even Christians, participate in and even promote.

The “earning” of money by the wealthy through charging interest runs directly against how God wanted his people to live in the Old Testament Law. The Bible calls it usury. We can find no support for using money to make more money in Scripture. Why? Using Boer’s word, it turns stewards into nonproducers.

Perhaps one of my top ten most memorable posts out of more than 5,000 would be “C.S. Lewis: Usury or Generosity. Find it here. Ironically, obedience to Jesus delivers us from usury.

When we store up treasures in heaven and live on a mina (3 months income), we actually do not need to participate in interest system. We don’t worry about market fluctuations.

If we save for purchases to pay cash and avoid debt, we amass capital. Rather than investing to get a return, we can invest it for kingdom impact and common good. We can put the money in kingdom impact funds where the money is used to do things like build churches, employ marginalized workers, or other productive things.

There are ways to navigate materiality in alignment with our Christian faith. The key, so far as I read this book, may be to question everything related to money in modern society.

Imagine if instead of trying to make the broken system work to our advantage and then give some money to God, we lived according to the system He outlines for us in Scripture?

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21

“An obvious place to begin critical reflection on the materiality of our lives is with money. Money is a useful vehicle for the exchange of goods, a use that justifies market transactions. Money is, however, at the same time a powerful symbol (variously socially constructed) of influence, power, success, and virtue. It is to this latter function of money that material direction must attend, for in our society most of us are quite innocent about the spiritual propulsion of which money is capable.”

Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), 21.

The reason Jesus explicitly instructs disciples not to store up treasures on earth is not because He wants our money. He does not need it. He wants our hearts.

Money has “spiritual propulsion” power. When stored in heaven, money moves us toward God. When stored up on earth, money moves us away from God.

We must each ask ourselves real questions if we want to grasp the materiality of our Christian faith. What direction is money moving me? Then go deeper.

What does it look like to treat money as a useful vehicle? And, what message does my handling of money send to God (who sees everything)? To others?

This message will post whilst I am traveling on a long flight (14.5 hours) from Newark to Dubai. When I read the word “propulsion” I thought of the jet engine.

Imagine everyone reading this treating money as a “jet engine” to advance the things that God cares about. Ponder what you want that to look like in your life.

You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached — how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with Him. Acts 10:37-38

What follows here is a study of some of the dimensions of faith that are front and center when we consider the materiality of our faith. That material aspect of faith is grounded in our conviction about creation: the world is God’s creation that God has called good. It is further grounded in our conviction concerning the incarnation, the confession that God has come bodied (“became flesh,” John 1:14) in Jesus of Nazareth, who “went about doing good” (Acts 10:38) of a vigorously material kind: The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them (Luke 7:22).

That materiality performed by Jesus is not to be confused with materialism, because the gospel accent on the material is grounded in the conviction that the truth of our life summons us to hope-filled obedience, an obedience that is always referred back in gladness to the goodwill of the creator God. Nobody called Jesus a “materialist” because He healed the sick or brought good Jubilee news to the poor. I judge that, after the manner of His ministry, attention to the material dimensions of our common life and our capacity for critical, honest, faithful thought and action is urgent in our cultural context.

I intend to suggest that the church, and most particularly its leadership, have both an obligation and an opportunity to reengage the materiality of faith after a very long run of avoidance. In what follows I explore aspects of our shared bodily existence wherein all of the gifts and tasks of evangelical faith are deeply operative. I can readily think of five dimensions of this materiality – money, food, the body, time, and place – and readers may think of many others as well. The aim is that we may ingest “solid food” and become more “mature,” with skills and faculties for moral thought and moral action in the real world. I have no wish to deny the personal or the otherworldly aspects of our faith, but I have no doubt that redress about the centrality of the material is urgent among us.”

Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), Introduction.

I board a plane for Newark, then Dubai, then Hyderabad, India, were I will serve until 30 August. Thanks for your prayers. In the meantime let’s lean into our obligation and opportunity.

Rather than allow those we serve linked to the gospel to fall into materialism, let’s challenge them to a life of doing good everywhere with materiality. And notice why we can do this from today’s Scripture.

Jesus did good everywhere, the text says, because God was with Him. God is with us too. And Jesus said the same power at work in Him to cause Him to rise from the dead is at work in us.

I go to India expecting to do good, to bring healing to broken lives, and to bring deliverance from the power of the devil. Why? Because I know that God is with me.

Let’s do this. Let’s make this journey from materialism to materiality. Let’s invite others to explore money, food, the body, time, and place. And let’s do this not just as an obligation but making the most of the opportunity!

In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5:12-14

“In the Early Church, Christian congregations and their bishops paid generous and deliberate attention to the plight of the poor and managed to give relief. In the sixth century (long after the much-maligned Constantine) there was a rather abrupt turn away from this attentiveness, as the church became private about wealth and otherworldly in its hope. The cause of this abrupt turn, Peter Brown has shown, was that the wealthy population became dominant in the church and did not want its wealth subject to the needs of the poor in the church. This turn toward the private and otherworldly is evident, as Brown documents, first of all in the erection of grand mausoleums as hope for another life and as an ostentatious exhibit of wealth. And second, there was an “othering” of the clergy, so that priests and bishops were distanced from “the real world” and assigned to be representatives of the sacred.

Brown writes: “Hence we witness a progressive “othering” of the clergy. They became a sacral class. Their dress, hair style, and sexual behavior were increasingly expected to be sharply different from that of the laity. Religious dress became sharply distinguished from lay dress. The tonsure was taken on as a sine qua non of both the clerical and the monastic state. It is notable that the origins of the tonsure did not lie in any clerical regulations. It came from the ground up. The cutting of hair (both of beards and of the top of the head) had long been treated by Romans as a sign of special dedication. The tonsure emerged as a response to lay demand for such a sign. Those who interceded for the laity, as a sacral class, were to be clearly designated by means of a ritual of shaving the crown of the head that had deep roots in the ancient folklore of hair.”

In effect the church gave up its preoccupation with material matters and became busy with spiritual matters of “soul-making” for the next world. That turn away from the material has continued in wealthy churches to this day, as is evidenced by the gentle admonition often made to pastors, “Don’t become political.” This familiar mantra of course is not against being “political,” but only against the type of “political” that disturbs the comfort zone of the parishioner. It is much preferable to have the pastor confined to matters “sacral.” (Shades of the sixth century!) The matter is very different in the churches of the poor that do not hesitate to address matters of materiality.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the writer generally appeals to the addressees of the letter with positive encouragement to greater faith and bolder testimony. In 5:12–14, however, the writer chides the addressees because they “refuse to grow up.” They continue to rely on “baby food” of the gospel and so wish to remain “infants” who lack skills to address urgent matters of good and evil. It is my thought that in the contemporary wealthy church (most of the Western church!), by happenstance or by intention many members remain “infants” in faith about matters of materiality. They prefer the “milk” and pabulum of a convenient, private, otherworldly gospel about “souls” rather than the solid food of informed critical thought about the materiality of our faith. As a consequence, much of the church is resistant to engagement in real-life material issues of faith and is quite content to settle for “innocent religion.” And in much of this the pastors of the church collude because it often too hard and too risky to do otherwise. The result is a church that is weak or lacking in moral passion about the great issues of the day.”

Walter Brueggemann and Peter Brown in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), Introduction.

I head to India and Nepal tomorrow. I got a new book to read on my trip. Enjoy the journey with me.

From the introduction we note that the Church today looks nothing like the Early Church. Brueggemann and Brown highlight a key difference: care for the poor.

Christianity has become private and otherworldly and lost connection with the granular nature of the gospel.

Let’s learn from Brueggemann, a prolific Old Testament scholar who went home to be with the Lord back in June. He ranks among of the most influential Christian writers of the last century.

Track with me if you want the Church to grow up, to go beyond baby food.

To live, give, serve, and love generously means exercising our Christian faith with materiality. And today I want to shout out happy birthday to my sister Heather. I thank God for the materiality of her faith.

As we start this journey, be prepared to care more about more than souls. Our sacred faith should permeate all corners of our lives and society. Let’s aspire not to be a rich church but a global Church rich in good works.

Praying for materiality. And Happy Birthday Heather.

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:3

“Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah was born on 17 August 1874, in Vellalanvilai, Tirunelveli, South India. Few Westerners have heard his name. But not only did Azariah found two successful missionary societies to bring the gospel to India, not only did he help bring about the unification of India’s Protestant churches, but he also grew an impoverished diocese of 8,000 Christians to over 200,000.

Azariah’s father was an Anglican evangelist and his mother a devout laywoman. Azariah himself trained for the ministry at Madras Christian College. One evening, while visiting a mission work in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Azariah was deeply moved thinking of India’s lost souls and the little work that its own Christians did among them. He prayed and wept under the stars. Back in India, he organized young churchmen into the India Missionary Society of Tinnevelly.

Making an intensive study of the 1901 India census and contacting the leaders of foreign mission societies, he discovered that one hundred million Indians were out of the reach of the Gospel. He invited India’s Protestant denominations to form another mission society. The result was the National Missionary Society of India with Azariah as general secretary.

Azariah soon became convinced he should resign his leadership posts and become a missionary himself. His took as his field the small Diocese at Dornakal, one of the poorest regions of India. People lived on an average of five cents a day. When he was appointed bishop, he was the first native-born Anglican bishop in India. His diocese numbered eight thousand Christians, six Indian ministers and one hundred and seventy two laymen coworkers.

By his death on 1 January 1945, Dornakal had one hundred and fifty ministers and two hundred and thirty thousand Christians. Despite India’s fundamental hostility to Christianity and the opposition of Gandhi to Christian evangelization efforts, his diocese of Dornakal averaged over three thousand baptized converts a year. Astonished by the “impossible” transformation of outcasts, thousands of higher class Indians in Dornakal also joined the church.

Azariah was shocked by the lack of unity among all Christians and the arrogance of Western missionaries toward Indians. “Unity may be theoretically a desirable ideal in Europe and America, but it is vital to the life of the church in the mission field,” he told the 1927 Lausanne ecumenical conference. “The divisions of Christendom may be a source of weakness in Christian countries, but in non-Christian lands they are a sin and a scandal.”

In 1919, Azariah organized the Tranquebar Conference. It issued a manifesto which declared: “We believe that the challenge of the present hour…and the present critical situation in India itself, call us to mourn past divisions and turn to our Lord Jesus Christ to seek in Him the unity of the body expressed in one visible Church. We face together the titanic task of winning India for Christ—one-fifth of the human race.” Two years after his death, the Union Church was inaugurated.”

“V. S. Azariah: India’s Amazing Home-Grown Apostle” in Christian History Institute blog post on 17 August 2025 shared with me by Pat Tennant, a faithful Daily Meditation reader.

I loved it because of the quote and because I fly to India this Thursday and will serve as a speaker to the India Missions Association conference.

I really appreciated what he wrote about the negative impact of divisions and the importance of unity.

For example, the India Missions Association serves 317 agencies who send 60,000+ international missionaries from India and who serve 300,000+ home missionaries across India. That’s a lot of gospel spreading workers.

But the agencies have given little attention to administration and governance and are struggling.

Pray for me that my call to serve as faithful stewards who follow standards will bring order and oversight, strengthen unity in the community of agencies, and that our pilot group will shine.

Working closely with Rebecca Nilanjana, the NobleRank Growth Strategist (NobleRank is the peer accountability group I helped establish there like ECFA in USA) to help 10 of the 317 agencies get accredited to standards.

Imagine their testimony at the conference. Pray with me they inspire their peers to put their houses in order.

May God help us spread the gospel to millions who need to hear it across India like Azariah.

Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by His Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh — though I myself have reasons for such confidence.

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. Philippians 3:1-9

“In order to take a man into his wound, so that he can heal it and begin the release of the true self, God will thwart the false self. He will take away all that you’ve leaned upon to bring you life.

In the movie The Natural, Robert Redford is a baseball player named Roy Hobbs, perhaps the most gifted baseball player ever. He’s a high school wonder boy, a natural who gets a shot at the big leagues. But his dreams of a professional career are cut short when Hobbs is wrongly sentenced to prison for murder.

Years later, an aging Hobbs gets a second chance. He’s signed by the New York Knights – the worst team in the league. But through his incredible gift, untarnished by the years, Hobbs leads the Knights from ignominy to the play-off game for the National League pennant. He rallies the team, becomes the center of their hopes and dreams.

The climax of the film is the game for the championship. It’s the bottom of the ninth; the score is Pittsburgh 2, Knights 0. The Knights have 2 outs; there’s a man on first and third when Hobbs steps up to the plate. He’s their only chance; this is his moment.

Now, there’s something you must know, something absolutely crucial to the story. Ever since his high school days, Hobbs has played with a bat he made himself from the heart of a tree felled by lightning in his front yard. Burned into the bat is a lightning bolt and the words “wonder boy.” That bat is the symbol of his greatness, his giftedness. He has never, ever played with another.

Clutching “wonder boy,” Hobbs steps to the plate. His first swing is a miss; his second is a foul ball high and behind. His third is a solid hit along the first-base line; it looks like it’s a home run, but it also lands foul. As Hobbs returns to the plate, he sees his bat lying there … in pieces. It shattered on that last swing.

This is the critical moment in a man’s life, when all he has counted on comes crashing down, when his golden bat breaks into pieces. His investments fail; his company lets him go; the church fires him; he is leveled by an illness; his wife walks out; his daughter turns up pregnant. What is he to do? Will he stay in the game? Will he shrink back to the dugout? Will he scramble to try to put things back together, as so many men do?

The true test of a man, the beginning of his redemption, actually starts when he can no longer rely on what he’s used all his life. The real journey begins when the false self fails. A moment that seems like an eternity passes as Hobbs stands there, holding the broken pieces, surveying the damage. The bat is beyond repair.

Then he says to the bat boy, “Go pick me out a winner, Bobby.” He stays in the game and hits a home run to win the series. God will take away our “bat” as well. He will do something to thwart the false self.”

John Eldredge in Wild at Heart (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001) 66.

Much like Robert Redford in the movie, the apostle Paul could have gotten the label, “wonder boy” on his proverbial bat. He had credentials and opportunity to “put confidence in the flesh” but he would not do it.

Neither should we. In today’s post, we start the week realizing that sometimes the best thing our generous God does for us is take away our bat. He removes that thing (or things) that we put confidence in instead of Him.

As Eldredge writes, some people trust in investments. Others put confidence in a job, health, or human relationships. Trust placed anywhere but God is misplaced trust. Don’t wait for God to take away your bat.

Surrender it to Him. Then do what Roy Hobbs did in the movie. Go to God and say, “Go pick me out a winner.” He will. He has good plans for you. For me too. But we must put no confidence in the flesh.

Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors! Let all the fighting men draw near and attack. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, “I am strong!” Joel 3:9-10

“Summers in the eastern Oregon sagebrush are hot, dry, and dusty. When the sun was high the temperature could soar into the 90s, so whenever possible we saved most of the hard labor on the ranch for the early morning or late afternoon and evening, when the cool air drifted up from the river valley below. Sometimes we’d fix irrigation ditches during the heat of the day, which for me was a great excuse to get really wet. I’d tromp along in the ditch, letting the warm muddy water soak my jeans. But most of the time we’d head back to the ranch house for a glass of iced tea. Pop loved his tea sweetened with a healthy dose of sugar, the way they drink it in the South. We’d sit at the kitchen table and have a glass or two and talk about the events of the morning, or a plan he had to sell some cattle at the auction, or how he thought we’d spend the afternoon.

One day late in the summer of my thirteenth year, Pop and I had just come in for our ritual when he stood up and walked over to the window. The kitchen faced south and from there gave a view over a large alfalfa field and then on toward the pastureland. Like most ranchers Pop grew his own hay, to provide feed for cattle and horses he kept over the winter. I joined him at the window and saw that a steer had gotten out of the range and into the alfalfa. I remembered my grandfather telling me that it’s dangerous for a cow to stuff itself on fresh alfalfa; it expands in their stomach like rising bread and could rupture one of their four chambers. Pop was clearly irritated, as only a cowboy can be irritated at cattle. I, on the other hand, was excited. This meant adventure.

“Go saddle up Tony and get that steer,” he said, sitting back in his chair and kicking his boots up on the one in front of him. His demeanor made it clear that he was not going with me; he was, in fact, not going anywhere. As he poured himself another glass of tea my mind raced through the implications of what he’d said. It meant 1 first had to go catch Tony, the biggest horse on the ranch. I was scared of Tony, but we both knew he was the best cattle horse. I had to saddle him up by myself and ride out to get that steer. Alone. Having processed this information I realized I had been standing there for who knows how long and it was time I got going. As 1 walked out the back porch toward the corral I felt two things and felt them strongly: fear … and honor.

Most of our life-changing moments are realized as such later. I couldn’t have told you why, but I knew I’d crossed a threshold in my life as a young man. Pop believed in me, and whatever he saw that I did not, the fact that he believed made me believe it too. I got the steer that day … and a whole lot more….

A young man recently lamented to me, “I’ve been a Christian since I was five-no one ever showed me what it means to really be a man.” He’s lost now. He moved across the country to be with his girlfriend, but she’s dumped him because he doesn’t know who he is and what he’s here for. There are countless others like him, a world of such men-a world of uninitiated men. The church would like to think it is initiating men, but it’s not.

What does the church bring a man into? What does it call him out to be? Moral. That is pitifully insufficient. Morality is a good thing, but morality is never the point. Paul says the Law is given as a tutor to the child, but not to the son. The son is invited up into something much more. He gets the keys to the car; he gets to go away with the father on some dangerous mission.

I’m struck by the poignancy of the scene at the end of the Civil War, just after Appomattox, where General Robert E. Lee has surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant. For five years Lee has led the Army of Northern Virginia through some of the most terrible trials men have ever known. You would think they’d be glad to have it over. But Lee’s men hang upon the reins of his horse and beg him not to go, plead for one more chance to “whip those Yankees.” Lee had become their father, had given those men what most of them had never had before-an identity and a place in a larger story.

Every man needs someone like Robert E. Lee, or that brigadier general from the 29th: “You’ve seen how to take a house. Do you understand? Do you know how to do it now?” “Yes, sir.” We need someone like my grandfather, who can teach us how to “saddle up.”

John Eldredge in Wild at Heart (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001) 60-62.

As I feel gifted by God to serve as an apostle and prophet, I love echoing the words of Joel in today’s Scripture: “Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors!’

At GTP part of our work relates to multiplying faithful stewards. We want to rally warriors for God, men and women, around the world. And our focus links to this phrase in the text: “Let the weakling say, “I am strong!”

We invite people to take a course called Journey of Empowerment. On the journey you fix your identity in Christ, you discover how to turn brokenness into blessing around you by practicing the disciplines of fasting, confession, and prayer.

And you discover so much more. The current cohort of about 100 stewards from 40 countries is learning this now. The next cohort for Journey of Empowerment runs in October. But why mention it?

Wherever we are, whether or not we take the course, changing our situation links to rooting our identity in Christ, setting aside our desires, and confessing that we are the problem and God is the solution.

And from there, in prayer, we ask God to come do a new thing. But the reality is, the evil one does not want that to happen, and he will do everything in his power to stop it.

We are in a battle and the weak can proclaim they are strong, not because of the size of their muscles but because of the size of their God. But, the reality is, that most people are just scared, moral people.

They do what society expects of them. They don’t ruffle anyone’s feathers. As a result, they will never saddle up Tony and never wrangle any steers. Where do you fit in this picture?

As for me, my job is to “Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors!’ If you care to join me, first you need to saddle up!