All posts by Don Stephens

I'm a musician, teacher, and "sheepdog" with a passion for the Kingdom of God. Currently I work with Youth With a Mission, traveling, investing in young people, and teaching Worldview and the Kingdom of God.
Grace

Do outsiders understand Him better than His own church?

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A little thought provocation from my current reading: The Misunderstood God, by Darin Hufford.  This seems especially appropriate in light of some comments I’ve read in the news lately.

“I am quickly coming to believe that this is the first time in history that people outside the church have shown more signs of knowing God’s heart than do the people within the church.  People in the world shake their heads in disgust at the things we teach about God.  They know we’re wrong, but for some reason the majority of Christians don’t see it.  I have found that the common bar-dweller knows more about the true heart of God than the dedicated churchgoer.

Christians think they know God because they read about Him in a book.  We’ve been taught that the more we read the Bible, the more we will know Him.  The Pharisees knew Scripture like the back of their hand, but when God stood in front of them, they didn’t know Him from Adam.”

Last Sunday in Amarillo, Texas, a group of church-goers gathered at the courthouse steps to burn a Quran.  As the preacher held the book in front of him and stoked the crowd, a young skateboarder whizzed by, snatched the Quran, and shouted back over his shoulder, “Dude, you HAVE no Quran!” What’s wrong with that picture, and how much more damage can we possibly do to our witness of the “friend of sinners”, (Luke 7:34), and the “Prince of Peace”?

The Kingdom, The Love of God

Insiders and outsiders

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I’ve been in Maryland since returning from my last teaching trip several weeks ago.  Home is always difficult for me.  I wrestle with issues here in my little home town that I seldom face elsewhere.  Like feeling included.  I haven’t sorted it all out yet, so I’m not sure what’s actually real, but the singers in my head locked arms this week and shouted like a Wagnarian chorus that I … just … don’t … belong.  It felt like there were walls to scale everywhere I turned.

We humans weren’t created for that.  We were made for community and designed for inclusion.  In fact, if I had to distill the Kingdom into one simple concept, I just might choose the word “relationship.”  Isn’t that what we see in Jesus?  The God-man invaded his world with arms wide open to publicans, pharisees, centurions, lepers, adulterers, drunks, and fishermen.  It’s a sad thing that we sons of Adam haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet.

Several years ago I received a desperate Email from a young friend: “Help,” she said,  “I’m in my last year of Bible school, and I’ve suddenly realized I’ve got a serious problem.  See… I grew up in a Christian home, went to a Christian high school, hung out with my youth group, and now I’m graduating with a missions degree from a Christian university.   And I’ve suddenly realized that I’ve never really had a non-Christian friend!”

Many of us have gone down that road.  It’s endemic in the church culture.  We divide people into two groups: believers and unbelievers.  And then we draw a circle around ourselves and make it our mission to draw the outsiders into our circle.  “Conversion”, we call it.  “Wouldn’t you like to be one of us?”  The problem with this model is that it doesn’t seem to fit the method of Jesus.   He simply included everybody, and invited those who would to believe and follow Him.   The traditional evangelical model looks like this:

Phil and Rachel are “in.”  Amer, Emily and Baxter are “out,”  and we find Annie troublesome since she “converted” last year, but hasn’t done anything with it.  So … is she in or out, because we really need to know.

I think Jesus did it more like this:

He includes everyone and invites those who will to follow him.  Notice Rachel, Baxter, and Annie are going their own way, and Phil isn’t moving at all.  And yet they’re loved and invited to the party nevertheless.  Jesus breaks down every wall and calls us into His presence and our neighbor’s presence as well.  Maybe we ought to organize our own chorus and sing an anthem of inclusion.  I’ll bet the angels would gladly join in.

Grace

The Real Test

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“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper.” (And for the sake of making a point, suppose it regards a politician you dislike!)  “Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out.  Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible?  If it is the second then it is, I’m afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into little devils.  You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker.  If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black.  Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything – God and our friends and ourselves included – as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed forever in a universe of pure hatred.”

– C.S Lewis, from Mere Christianity

Lewis’ brilliant point seems especially fitting in today’s polarized America.  I certainly had to stop and repent when I read it yesterday.

Only six more days before I return to Maryland and unpack my bags.  Since my last update I’ve had a splendid journey that’s reunited me with friends in Bosnia and Croatia, teaching at YWAM, Lausanne, (Switzerland), and then high in the Rockies above Denver in a School of Worship.  This week I’ll teach in a Discipleship Training School in Arvada, Colorada.  The trip has been full of grace and sweet surprises at every step along the way.  (And I never lost any luggage!)

Some of you will remember a year or so ago when I wrote about Nick Vujicic, the young Aussie who was born with no arms and legs.  He remains one of my heroes, and I hope to meet him one day.  But in the meantime, a friend just forwarded this extraordinary 20 minute film, The Butterfly Circus, that features Nick as the lead.  Grab some tissues before you watch, and be prepared to feel a WHOLE lot better about life at the end of the film.

The Kingdom

WE are the problem…

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“Influential Pastor Warns of Socialism, Departure from God.” So reads the headline of a video I recently viewed by a well known American preacher.  With the greatest respect, I beg to differ.  America faces the danger of Socialism precisely because the church has offered no alternative.  Let’s own up to some responsibility here.  It’s unfair to shove this mess off on unbelievers when we’re the ones who have failed so miserably at offering something better.  Yes, I know.  We preach heaven.  And that’s a very good thing when the time comes.  But we’re not there yet, and Jesus commissioned us to preach a message about the Kingdom of God, a message that touches every part of our metastasized nation.

Socialism has nothing to say about heaven, but much to say about life itself.   It offers inferior and ultimately unworkable answers to the problems of poverty, greed, health care, unemployment, labor, equality, and a host of other societal ills.  But the point is, it offers answers.  While the liberal media, Marxist professors and postmodern intellectuals of America at least have a plan in mind, the church wrings its hands and waits anxiously for Jesus to return and rescue us from this grand mess we’ve made of things.

Our last presidential election turned on the promise of “Hope and Change”, a distinctly Christian idea that finds its roots in the Scriptures.   Hope means we’re living in a story that has a good ending.   It means we’re going somewhere; that “the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it. ” (John 1:5)   The kingdom means that we have a story, that we have answers for the problems that choke our nation because the King is all wise, and He reigns over a good, and beautiful and true kingdom.  It’s time we recovered that message and repented of our escape-centered gospel.

On a personal note, I had a splendid time with the DTS students at Holmsted Manor, (England), last week and then traveled by air, rail, and bus to Sarajevo, stopping for a day to visit some dear friends in Switzerland.  Bosnia is much as I left it, with many people still struggling to find hope and encouragement.  I’m spending leisurely hours with friends, listening to their stories of both victory and failure.   The relationships here are as rich and challenging as ever, and it feels like a grand gift to have this time to reconnect.   Next week I’ll return to Lausanne to teach at the base there.  Your prayers are always appreciated.

Poetry and Prayers

A prayer in the making…

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For the past four months I’ve been piecing together a daily prayer to distill the intercession in my heart.   It’s in a state of perpetual refinement, but even so it helps me to stay focused on the primary burdens I carry every day.

Holy Father,

Let the beauty of Your character captivate our hearts
As your glad Kingdom is extended throughout the earth.
Send revival and reformation to the nations.
Raise up your glorious church,
And lay bare the enemy’s schemes of darkness.

Jesus Christ, I am Yours.
Save me to the roots of my being.
Change me where I need changed.
Strengthen me where I need strength.
And break me where I need to be broken.

All my sins, I send to the cross.
All my shame, I send to the cross.
All condemnation, I send to the cross.
And all of my hope I place in the risen Christ.

Work in me Your tender love towards all people;
Instruct me in wisdom, understanding, and insight,
And grace me to receive my inheritance in Jesus.

Teach me, Father, to be a faithful son.
Teach me, Jesus, to be a faithful friend.
And teach me, Holy Spirit, to be a faithful disciple.

Open my eyes to your Kingdom in all its goodness, truth, and beauty.
Give me grace to preach it with power,
To seek it with passion,
To serve it with honor,
And when the time comes, to suffer for it with joy.

For Your glory alone.

Worldview & Truth

Missing pieces: education and worldview

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Back in the early seventies I learned at a liberal denominational youth conference that life is really “all about sex.”  No kidding.  One dear counselor casually unpacked the idea that all our relationships, all our dreams, and all our motives were merely hormonal spark plugs firing in our adolescent bodies.  It was so jarring to my impressionable mind that I could barely concentrate on Kum Ba Yah for the next couple of days, until another man stood up and spilled the real beans:  It wasn’t about sex after all.   It’s about racism and the struggle for equality among people.   I didn’t understand at the time that I was being bombarded with worldviews, and non-biblical ones at that.  These were ideas that fell like a fog around my mind.

 

A worldview is a story line we believe about the world, an over-arching idea that organizes our experiences into a meaningful whole.  If life truly is about hormones, then that explains a few things about why I do the things I do.  But if it’s about racism, then it explains other things.  Virtually everyone  believes some sort of story about the world.  It’s nearly impossible to live in a world of random pieces which cannot be assembled into a story line.  Marx’s story was about wealth and freeing ourselves from the damnation of capitalism.   Margaret Sanger’s story is one of sexual liberation and emancipating ourselves from old fashioned morality.   Timothy Leary told a story about the promise of drugs and flower-power to redeem the world.

 

But of course the real question concerns the truthfulness of the story we believe.  Any old story will do to a point.  But only the True story will bring all the pieces together into a coherent whole.  And of course the only person who can verify the correct story is the Author who brought it all into being in the first place.   “Once upon a time”, (“In the beginning”), is the platform upon which the whole story will be built, and if we begin on a faulty foundation it’s a sure bet the whole system will crumble at some point.

Modern Western education is a house built on the sand of a false beginning.  It’s all well and good to fill young minds with stories of man’s descent from primates until you expect him to act like a human being, and not steal the banana you brought for lunch.   It all works well enough until those eighth grade primates begin to actually believe the idea that there really is nothing special about being human, and succumb to depression and suicide.  Who’s to say we should work and not live off the government?  Who’s to say we shouldn’t cheat our way through school?  Who’s to say we shouldn’t accept bribes or steal the neighbor’s vegetables from his garden?   Because if it’s all about sex, money, power, drugs, climate change, racism, or tolerance, then I’ve got quite the latitude to invent any old story I choose.  And society begins to crumble.

The Kingdom, Worldview & Truth

Missing Pieces: goodness, truth, and beauty.

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It’s been a delightful week here in Kona, (The University of the Nations), in a class of wonderful students grappling with the Kingdom of God.

When the first Universities, (Paris and Oxford), were founded in the twelfth century they featured a curriculum which focused on the three absolutes of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.   Within that academic trinity can be found all the glories of ethics, law, science, philosophy, and the creative arts.   And when taken together the absolutes point to the wonder of God’s Kingdom.   “Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8)   To sit in holy wonder before these absolutes is to seek God’s kingdom.

That’s a fair summary of what we did in class this week:  We examined beauty, truth and goodness, identified them as reflections of the Trinitarian God,  surveyed a few of the ways these absolutes are under attack, and reminded ourselves that the Father of Jesus will not be satisfied until every lost glory of His Kingdom is restored.   And that, I believe, is a true education.

The Kingdom, Worldview & Truth

Missing pieces: a return to school

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Hopefully my friends will forgive me if I confess that the reason I haven’t written lately is because I stumbled briefly into a swamp of despair.   My heart got slimed by news and politics and I lost sight of the dreams and promises of God.  But today I’m returning to the only foothold I can find in this messed-up world: the certain reality of Jesus and his kingdom.

I left off talking, (in “Missing Pieces“), about how the kingdom might influence the sphere of education.   With America spending in the neighborhood of 100 BILLION dollars per year on education, our schools remain in a state of crisis.  One National Geographic survey shows the disturbing trend that when American 18 to 24-year-olds were given world maps,

  • 87 percent could not find Iraq
  • 49 percent could not find New York
  • 11 percent could not find the United States

With such shocking results in a field as objective as Geography, who wants to even imagine our command of  Truth, reasoning, and understanding of the world itself?   In the diagram below the yellow circle represents Truth, which  ALWAYS produces life.  The red circle represents our beliefs.  Notice that when our beliefs intersect with Truth, the result is knowledge and life.  But when our beliefs fall outside the scope of Truth they produce death, whether it’s mathematical, scientific, psychological or spiritual.   Hosea 4:6 tells us “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…”

So how would the Kingdom influence education?  Just a few thoughts:

1. The church would repent of it’s narrow message which idolizes “personal salvation” and “getting into heaven” to the neglect of “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Personal salvation is the entry point into the kingdom, (John 3:3), but it is not the end-all of the gospel.   The church must re-embrace the entire gospel, which declares a kingdom plan for every sphere of life from schools to science, from films to families.  (Eph. 4:10)

2. The basis of Education would return to the focus of “These things are True,” rather than “This is the stuff you should know in order to enter the job market.” We are not perishing for lack of information and opinions, but for the lack of Truth.

3. Parents would assume the God-given responsibility of teaching their children.  “Teach these things to your children, and talk about them when you’re at home or away, when you lie down or get up.” (Deut. 11:19)  That doesn’t mean we need to home school every child, but that parents, (and not the government), should assume a primary role in educating their children.  When we allow the direction of our schools to be dictated by government bureaucrats we get exactly the kind of students we have today, who can’t locate America on an unmarked map.

4. Schools, (both public and Christian), would turn their focus from teaching students what to think, to training them how to think; how to assess truth, how to reason, how to employ logic and exchange ideas in constructive and meaningful dialogue.

One more idea I’ll save until next week.

News & Stories

Travel, fear and hope.

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Just a very quick note to mention that I’m on my way to Central Europe, and hope to update from there soon.   I’ll be teaching in Hungary, Romania, Macedonia, Hawaii, and Colorado in the next six weeks, and would appreciate prayers for effective communication, the freshness of the Kingdom message, and of course for all the issues of travel.

Hopefully this trip will be a respite for my spirit, which has been so heavy these past weeks.  There’s an unnamed fear that ambushes me daily in regard to America, and it’s been a constant battle to maintain hope in the midst of the “fundamental changes” in our freedoms, alliances, and national security.

Still… my confidence is in the promise of God’s Kingdom, and the Truth of His Word.   When everything else unravels at the seams, His promise and His Word remain.

The Kingdom

Alice in Wonderland and the Kingdom of God (a diversion from “missing pieces”)

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All the political dialogue the past few days makes me just want to step outside and spit.  I need a breather; need to write about something less intense.  And since several have asked about Kingdom themes in Alice in Wonderland,  I think I’ll have a go.   The new Disney movie is my one and only exposure to Wonderland, so please be forgiving if I miss something or get it all messed up.

God writes His kingdom story into every human heart.  He seems to imprint it on our DNA as a way of drawing us back to Himself and into His own epic Story.   In fact I’m quite certain that we humans judge the merits of our stories by how much they resonate with the kingdom template imprinted in our genes.   Alice certainly had the Story written in her heart from her earliest memory, and when at last she entered Wonderland, she knew exactly where she was.  She had “been there” all along in her dreams.

Here at the bottom of the rabbit hole is a kingdom that has fallen, much like planet earth, under the power of an evil ruler.   The land has been ruined and it’s creatures terrorized by the manipulative Queen of Hearts.  “Off with their heads” to all who resist her demands.   The kingdom needs rescuing, and not just anyone can do it.

So Alice is summoned from the outside world, much like Christ, to enter into the kingdom with a clear purpose of redeeming it. Even the Rabbit-hole prophets have foretold it all in their ancient scroll.  Like Jesus, Alice befriends the creatures of Wonderland, and because of her love for them, (especially the Mad Hatter), hazards the castle of the Queen of Hearts on a daring rescue mission.

Much like Satan, the power of the Queen is merely an illusion.  It’s a pretense of power backed only by her control of the Jabberwocky.  And of course the Jabberwocky is very much like the beast of Revelation 19.   The story culminates with Alice confronting the beast in faith, (“Sometimes I believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast”), and victoriously bringing it down to destruction.  With evil dethroned, and the creatures of Wonderland liberated from slavery and fear, we’re left with the distinct image of Wonderland restored in “righteousness, peace, and joy.” (Romans 14:17)

Did Lewis Carroll consciously incorporate these Biblical images into his story?   I doubt it.  Most story writers have no such intention.   But the fact is, it’s nearly impossible to write a good story without rich images of the Kingdom.  The heart understands these things even when the mind misses it.