GUEST BLOG: A YOUNG CHRISTIAN’S VIEW

Austyn Riley, now in his early 20’s and starting his career, has grown up at Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin, Texas where I have been pastor for 17 years. I have known Austyn since he was in the 2nd grade. In the last few years, since graduating from college, Austyn has grown much more committed to Christ and the calling of God upon his life. I have asked him to write a “guest Blog” on anything he cared to choose. He chose to write this convicting and direct challenge to a one sided view of God which leads to a kind of idolatry. He calls his Blog entry, “The Supremacy of God.”

                          THE SUPREMACY OF GOD

What do you think is the biggest problem in our churches today? Greed? Lust? Pornography? Pride?  Alcohol or drug addiction?  All of the above?  Personally, I think the real problem with Christians today is the sin of idolatry.

But wait… idolatry is defined as “the worship of a physical object as a god.”  How can that be the biggest problem in the church?  We don’t worship physical objects anymore.  Sure, back in the day, when Abraham, Solomon, and Daniel roamed the earth, this was a big problem.  But now, we’re much more civilized than that, right?  I don’t think so.

Idolatry has also been defined as “immoderate attachment or devotion to something.”  Now that sounds more like us.  Greed is not our main problem, but if we idolize greed and the things we desire, those things becomes more important to us than God is.  And that makes greed a big problem.  Lust is not the problem either, but if we care more about sex or finding a spouse than we do about serving God, it becomes the problem.  Every sin can be traced back to some kind of idolatry.  By letting our priorities get out of sync and putting something else where God deserves to be, we commit a sin of idolatry and relegate God to a place He does not deserve to be.

So why do we do this?  Why do we constantly push God further down our list of priorities?  Why do we worship things that He has created instead of God himself?  I think it’s because we have a grave misunderstanding of who God is.  Growing up in church and a private Christian school, I was always taught about the merciful, loving God who saved me from hell. But I don’t ever remember hearing anything about God ordering the death of all the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15), regretting that He ever created mankind (Genesis 6), or killing Ananias and Sapphira for their sin (Acts 5).

Both the loving forgiveness and the perfect righteousness of God are equally beautiful and equally important traits that we desperately need to understand.  By only focusing on His loving side and ignoring His perfection, we have essentially created a “hippie Jesus” who just wants to love everybody and see us all be happy.  This is not Jesus.  This is not biblical.  Likewise, if we just focus on God’s perfection and wrath, we totally remove love from the equation.  That’s not Jesus, either.  And it’s not the gospel.

Jesus Christ is the currently reigning King of the universe who loves us more than we could ever imagine and hates our sin just as much. Because of that love, He took on the wrath of God that we deserved and absolutely everything we do should be in service and adoration of Him.  By misunderstanding who God actually is and what He has done for us, we miss the point of the gospel and we think it’s all about us.  It’s not about us, it’s about Him. Everything is about Him. Once we realize that, we can stop idolizing ourselves and we are able to put God where He deserves to be, at the center of everything.  God is the supreme ruler of the universe and we should treat Him as such.

This supremacy of God is by far the most impactful thing I have learned in my spiritual life in the past year.  I hope that all of you who read this will take a serious look at your own heart and contemplate whether you are serving God or just using Him.  If He truly is the Lord of your life and everything you do is for Him, awesome!  Keep on serving and chasing after Him.  If not though, I hope you will bow before Him today and sincerely ask: what can I do for you, King Jesus?  Not the other way around.

~ Austyn Riley

    WHY EASTER ON THE GREEN? (Taking Jesus to the People)

We are presenting Easter On the Green (www.easteronthegreen.com), an outdoor festival event, for one primary reason: We want to reach people for Jesus Christ! The bands, the food trucks, the volleyball games, bounce-houses, the big outdoor stage, the free gifts, and all of the money and effort that have gone into this event are secondary. Reaching people for Christ is central.

Large, outdoor spiritual gatherings are as old as the Bible! Moses, David, Solomon, and Ezra, to name a few, excelled in hosting outdoor spiritual gatherings, bathed in the presence of God and deep spiritual conviction. No one, however, did it like Jesus! On one occasion He fed 5000 men plus their families. On another occasion He fed 4000. Did all of them stick with Him after the feeding of the 5000? No. John’s Gospel reminds us thousands of them rejected Him after lunch (John 6:66)! Was it worth it? Absolutely! It was His greatest miracle- the only miracle recorded in all four gospels!

Outdoor worship events are biblical. What about evangelistic events when lost people are present? Are they biblical? Yes, they can be. Do you remember that the Church of Jesus Christ was born at an outdoor event called Pentecost (Acts 2)? The crowds were drawn by curious sounds (the sound of hurricane force winds) and spectacles (the miraculous gift of international languages given to the disciples). Once the crowd was present many of them scoffed at the Apostles and ridiculed the entire event, insisting the Christians were all drunk! But the Apostle Peter seized the opportunity in order to preach the first sermon of the church, and that day 3000 people were saved and baptized! It was worth it!

I am not suggesting live bands, bounce-houses, and Texas barbecue are equivalent to Pentecost, but I am praying the results will be similar! (In a city like Austin, with it’s massive unchurched population, and unusual city motto: “Keep Austin weird,” an outdoor Easter event with frisbee competitions and iPad Mini’s given as prizes might be exactly what it takes to attract some so we can share the Good News about the cross and resurrection of Jesus.) 

Please join us in prayer for a spiritual awakening Sunday April 20. It may be one of the most memorable days in the life of The Quarries Church, a turning point in the evangelistic commitment of Hyde Park Baptist Church, and more importantly, the day many hear the gospel and believe for the first time! -jkb

                         FORGET OR REMEMBER?

I am sure you’ve heard about the guy who sowed his wild oats and then prayed for crop failure! In a similar way, too many of us have lived with little or no spiritual accountability, and then at some point tried to easily forget what we did. Memories, as the old song goes, become “too painful to remember, so we simply choose to forget.” But at what cost do we live in a world of deliberate amnesia about our own past? Of course, many at this point will quote one of my favorite passages of Scripture. “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14 ESV) To that great advise I can only say “amen!” It seems, however, at first glance to easily excuse a generation that wants to disavow any memory of people or places that remind us of our past mistakes.  But, is “forgetting” the only advise Paul gives regarding our pre-Christian past? Hardly!

In Ephesians 2:11-12 Paul insists we remember what we were when we were not saved! “Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands-remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” He told the Corinthians something similar: “Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you.”(1 Corinthians 1:26 NLT) And, in a personal example, Paul shared his testimony all of his life and said toward the end of his life, “…Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners–of whom I am the worst.” (1 Timothy 1:15) Earlier he had observed, “For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” (1 Corinthians 15:9) Clearly Paul never forgot who he was or what he did before he came to Christ! 

So which is it? Forget or remember? It is both. The Bible does not allow for spiritual amnesia- but neither should we spend our lives dwelling on past mistakes, losses, sins, and pains we cannot undo. The Bible mentions memory over 200 times and in one sense it is a great tool. For one thing, we can remember NOT to do some things again, precisely because those actions were so costly the first time!

The experiences in the past that immobilize us with pain must be surrendered to God who forgets our sin when we repent of it. “…I will remember their sins no more.” (Hebrews 8:12) The sins you can’t forget are the same sins God can’t remember! The word “forget” in the famous Philippians passage about “forgetting the things which are behind” isn’t even the greek word usually used to describe memory. Paul wasn’t saying he had no recollection of his past, was he? Of course not. Rather, he refused to give his pre-Christian past much consideration. He left painful events behind him, and refused to encourage them. The word translated “forgetting” actually means he “neglected” the past rather than merely losing his memory of the events.

When we come to Christ we don’t wake up one day with a memory edited by the Holy Spirit like an accidentally deleted computer file. We are not left wondering where we’ve been for the last 25 years!  We will always be people with memories not easily forgotten, and we can learn from our memories- even the painful ones- and hopefully even use them as examples for others who might avoid our same mistakes!

-jkb

  WHY ARE WE SO EMPTY? 

Emptiness is that weird sensation of missing something you can’t identify-or of wanting something but not being certain what. Some people feel emptiness because they suffer from other psychological disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder or Narcissistic Disorder. Anyone diagnosed with one of these disorders needs to talk to a professional and follow a doctor’s guidance. But for many others, the feeling of emptiness isn’t part of a larger disorder, but it has become a way of life.

On one hand, we might argue that a wealthy nation like the United States, with so much entertainment, technology, options for education, travel, and personal freedom should not, at least on the surface, have much excuse for feeling empty. On the other hand, the abundance of all of those things points to the reality of the problem-if a nation of consumers can’t be filled with all we have, the problem of emptiness must go far deeper than what we can acquire or achieve. Emptiness defines us, on one level, as a culture. 

One friend of mine described a man he knew this way, “You could sense the presence of his absence!” How many of us are painfully aware of the “presence of our absence?” Something is missing and we are not sure what it is. It’s something just not there! It’s the presence of an absence. 

Psychology Today, in an article about relationships and our natural longing for other people, acknowledges that when we are lonely we self medicate in “typical” ways with alcohol, meaningless sexual relationships, and food. Those abuses are so common they are proverbial in America. But notice what the article says about the feeling behind the longing for relationships. 

“If you are without the love you need, you may be compelled to bury your longing in any of the typical ways that can serve to disavow what you feel: an indulgence in alcohol or substances; pursuing sexual relationships that are otherwise meaningless; an overconsumption or over-restriction of food; or various other diversionary activities. Longing is painful, but emptiness that may exist beneath such yearning is dreadful.“ (March 26, 2013:  “Longing and the Dread of Emptiness”)

When we look for love from others and don’t find it, and then attempt to cover the pain, it is the deep sense of emptiness that we are really trying to fill. We try relationships, sex, food, work, pleasure, drugs-anything to avoid the confrontation with our own emptiness. But we don’t really need a psychologist to tell us that do we? The emptiness of our lives and those around us is self evident.

What does God say about it? Actually, the Scripture acknowledges our struggle with emptiness. As I was reading Scripture this week, I became fascinated with how many times the Bible promises that we can be “filled.”

^“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,” (Ephesians 5:18 ESV)

“…and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God…” (Ephesians 3:19 ESV)

“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:11 ESV)

God knows we battle an empty life and He offers the only solution that doesn’t add more emptiness to the emptiness! He promises “fulness.” We can be filled with the Spirit, filled with the fulness of God, and filled with joy. Who needs fulness? People who are empty! 

-jkb

                                      HEARING GOD

“I Brake for the Voices In My Head” In a town full of clever bumper stickers-that may be one of the most memorable I have seen around Austin lately. Sometimes, however,  I worry that’s the impression people have when a Christian talks about “hearing God”. Even other Christians sometimes have a hard time with the idea of hearing God. But it isn’t weird- at least it doesn’t have to be.

We should expect God to speak to us. After all, He reveals Himself as the “WORD” (John 1:1-2). The God who wants us to know Him by the name WORD must have plenty to say! Remember Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice” (John 10:27). Perhaps it’s the word “hearing” itself that for us probably implies audible voices. But God can speak directly to our spirit. He does not need to speak audibly for the spiritually trained believer to “hear” Instead, you should be prepared for a very distinct impression upon your spirit or your “inner being.”

When you need spiritual direction or guidance in life, or when you simply desire a closer fellowship with God, you need to be able to hear Him. Let me suggest an environment for learning to hear the voice of God.

1) GET ALONE Your life is crowded with noise and distractions. It’s good to love people but be like Jesus and look for a “solitary place” (Mark 1:35) to listen to God and give Him the audience of your undivided attention. Don’t you think He deserves that?

2) OPEN THE WORD God communicates clearly and directly through the Bible. Read a familiar or favorite passage thoughtfully and prayerfully while continually asking the Holy Spirit to guide you into the truth (John 16:13).

3) PRAY Tuning into God’s voice requires an attentive spirit. That quiet openness is a by product of prayer. As you pray, listen and reflect upon the Word of God. Ask Him to speak to you. Don’t be surprised if He does!

4) OBEY Hearing God implies we are ready to do what we hear Him say. Scripture says, “The Lord confides in those who fear him;
    he makes his covenant known to them.” (Psalm 25:14) 

Remember, hearing God through Spirit filled, prayerful, Scripture meditation is not a game, it is a gift God gives His people so we can become like Him, and respond to His direction as He leads us to serve Him. ~jkb

      5 WEEKS OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH!

Five weeks ago we started this journey of Spiritual Growth together. We have covered 5 areas: Faith, Church membership, Scripture, Prayer, & Evangelism. Sunday I am speaking on the 6th and final message in this series: It is about the gift of living free- by the power of the Holy Spirit! Join us Sunday at Hyde Park Baptist or The Quarries Church for the message “Strong in the Spirit!” (Galatians 5:16-18)

I will keep posting these daily posts through next Saturday. But today is the last of the Scripture readings associated with this series. I hope you were blessed. I will continue to suggest chapters for you to read next week but I encourage you to use the previous posts as a way to get caught up if you fell behind! God bless you!- jkb

SCRIPTURE READINGS: 

Express: Romans 16

Advanced: Mark 15-16

Challenge: Acts 25-28

SPIRITUAL QUOTES:

“In our day heaven and earth are on tiptoe waiting for the emerging of the Spirit-led, Spirit-intoxicaed, Spirit-empowered people. All of creation watches expectantly for the springing up of a disciplined, freely gathered, martyr people who know in this like the power of the Kindgom of God. It happened before, it can happen again.” ~ Richard J. Foster

“The prayer offered to God in the morning during your quiet time is the key that unlocks the door of the day. Any athlete knows that it is the start that ensures a good finish.” ~ Adrian Rogers

The Good News!

Someone once saiid, “It’s not good news if it doesn’t get there in time!” There is an urgency about the gospel since those who need to hear it won’t be around for ever. Neither will we!

SCRIPTURE READINGS:

Express: Romans 15

Advanced: Mark 14; 2 Timothy 4

Challenge: Acts 21-24

               MOTIVATION FOR EVANGELISM!

SOMETIMES IT TAKES A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT to remind us what God expects, and what He empowers us to do! God can and will use you if you share your faith with a lost friend. I hope this message will motivate you to evangelize! Here is last Sunday’s message at Hyde Park Baptist Church, Austin, Texas. It’s about evangelism! -jkb

SCRIPTURE READING:

Express: Romans 13-14

Advanced: Mark 13;  2 Timothy 3

Challenge: Acts 17-20

         THE WORK OF EVANGELISM! 

Jesus was fond of describing world evangelism as if He were a farmer considering the potential of a field. He repeatedly referred to the results of evangelism as a “Harvest” (Matthew 9:37ff; Luke 10:1-2; John 4:35). He knew that crops don’t harvest themselves- it takes work!

When I was a teenager, visiting my grandparents one summer, I got hired to haul hay. Our job was to pick up the bales laying in the field and throw them onto the wagon as the tractor pulling the wagon drove by. We had to keep up an aggressive pace all day. It was blazing hot and the bales seemed to get heavier as the day wore on! Our skin was scratched from the roughness of those bales and the sweat stung my back as we picked up, threw, stacked, unloaded, and re-stacked in the barn, hundreds of bales of hay. Farm work is hard work! Evangelism can be like that. Jesus said we should pray for more laborers to go into the fields of evangelism to harvest souls. It isn’t easy but it’s worth it! -jkb

SCRIPTURE READINGS:

Express: Romans 12

Advanced: Mark 11-12; 2 Timothy 2

Challenge: Acts 9-16

MY SERMON NOTES FROM LAST SUNDAY:

LOVING THE LOST
Luke 10:1-2

James Merritt: “We need God’s army of soldiers to get out of the barracks and onto the battlefield to bring men and women to The Lord Jesus Christ.”

JESUS CALLS US TO INTERCEDE FOR AN INGATHERING (vv.1-2)

Bailey Smith: “The task before us demands an all out effort in at least two areas:the reaching of the lost and the motivation of Christians to be consistent soul winners.”

– promise (v.2)

– problem (v.2)
Amy Carmichael: “We have all eternity to celebrate our victories but only one brief moment before twilight to win them.” 

– plan (v.2)
Dawson Trotman: “When you pray, believe the impossible.”

                           THE POWER OF YOUR TESTIMONY!

The last book of the Bible assures us that our personal story of faith in Christ is powerful! “And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” (Revelation 12:11) I’m certain the testimony mentioned here is more comprehensive than merely a brief overview of how conversion took place but our personal experience with Christ is, none the less,  held out as one of our most powerful spiritual weapons.

When sharing your personal testimony you should practice with an accountability partner. Then, when the opportunity presents itself to witness you will be confident and prepared. The main reason we share  our testimony is to point others to Christ-not cover every detail of our personal life! 

Our evangelistic testimony should be brief and include 3 main points:

1) my life before Christ

2) how I became a believer

3) the differences faith in Christ made in my life

Will you share your testimony today? If not, will you ask another believer to work with you to sharpen your testimony? Time is short- eternity is long. Do something today that moves you closer to sharing your faith with a lost friend or family member. ~jkb

SCRIPTURE READINGS:

Express: Romans 11

Advanced: Mark 9-10; 2 Timothy 1

Challenge: Luke 21-24; Acts 5-8

SCRIPTURE MEMORY THIS WEEK:

1) Matthew 28:19-20

2) Acts 1:8