Yield

Merry Christmas Friends! We hope and pray that you'll have a refreshing and restful break as you celebrate the birth of our Lord with family and friends (maybe a thousand new ones at RADIATE - it's not too late to register!).

If you remember back to our Govember series at Cru, I closed it by mentioning that I'd be writing periodically on the topic and specifically on applications for our lives. The purpose that God designed for us is to glorify Him and fully to enjoy Him forever. The plot of history - God's purposes and plans that we find ourselves a part of - gives feet to this purpose and a context to live it out in. That plot is God's desire and work to redeem for Himself a people from every tribe, tongue, language, and nation - a plot that is accelerating to its finish and promised end that we can see in Revelation 7. As it accelerates toward the end, we have a significant place. It is conceivable that the Great Commission - the making of disciples of all nations - will be complete before the end of your lifetime. We didn't ask to be alive in this climactic age, but God has graciously placed us here, and we cannot ignore that and go on our merry way with our own merry plans for life. We'd miss the joy and the privilege of being part of eternal history!

Mobilization of God's people into His mission is what is needed. My hope is to help share stories and vision that helps you get swept up in this eternal story, help you discern your specific place and role, and give ideas and present opportunities to be involved.

Have you ever wondered why we don't see God move in more significant ways in our midst? Why we don't see dozens, even hundreds of students coming to Christ? Why we don't see a flood of financial resources coming in, helping us expand Cru's ministry to more campuses and people? We do see God working, to be sure, but it often feels so difficult and ministry is fraught with as much or more setback than victory.

I was praying yesterday about the next semester and beyond for Cru, and as I was asking God for some of these noticeably significant things to happen, a nagging question rippled through my mind: "What if it doesn't happen?" This is typical for me - I tend to be of little faith - but as it struck me I was forced to examine the question rather than pass it off. Often when these sorts of doubts or questions hit me I wrestle with doubt - either about God's ability or His desire to produce this fruit. Or I wonder if I'm asking too much, if His plans for our ministry are smaller or more subtle. But in doing so I'm putting the blame, so to speak - whether it be a lack of fruit, or the product of unrealized vision, or ministry failure - on God. And unrightly so. 

Whatever vision or dreams we have are not beyond God's ability or resources. Ephesians 3:20 tells us that He is "able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine." Immeasurably more! If we can dream it, God can do far more. We can dream about every student in Pittsburgh bending their knee in humility to follow Christ. God can do more. We can dream about hundreds of students entering the mission field every year from Pittsburgh. God can do more. We can dream about the corporations and government and culture of Pittsburgh being radically transformed by an army of sold-out, on-fire believers living out their faith and values in their workplaces and neighborhoods. God can do more.

So the reason we don't see more fruit has nothing to do with God's ability. He is abundantly able. 

I don't think it has anything to do with His desire either. The Bible reveals a God who delights in lavishing blessing on His children (Ephesians 1:3-14), and who is "not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9) He gave His only Son as a sacrifice to save the world from sin and death. He is not short on desire to save and to bless! 

Why don't we see more, then? It's probably a more complex question than I'm making it out to be, with an abundance of reasons, but I can think of two that I'll mention here.

One has to do with God's timing. We are often impatient, but God is patient - perfectly so. He can see the end from the beginning, and He may have a myriad of reasons for waiting to move powerfully. A speaker I heard at a conference recently said the phrase "we don't know what we don't know." In other words, we are incredibly limited in our perspective and knowledge. There is a wealth of knowledge we simply don't have, and we often don't realize that we don't have it! So we make judgements based on our incredibly limited insight. But! "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law." (Deuteronomy 29:29) "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:9) 

God is God, we are not. We must trust Him. For me, this means not believing the doubts and objections than come to mind. I have to believe the truth - that God is able, that He desires to save and to bless and to use us, that His plans for myself, my family, and Pittsburgh Cru aren't small or insignificant - and walk in it. I may not know the details of how He wants to use us, or how He may fulfill a vision He lays on my heart, but I can rest in His goodness and power and sovereignty. 

And the longer I walk with God and serve in ministry, the more I see God using the setbacks, hardships, and failures to develop and transform me and those around me. Whether He intentionally leads us into trials or He uses the natural setbacks and difficulties we face, I cannot deny His working through them for His glory and my good. Perhaps He values that more than the outwardly impressive fruit I envision, or perhaps He is preparing me for that sort of fruit in the future, when right now I'm not mature enough to handle it well. 

Secondly, I think there is a hindrance within ourselves that prevents us from seeing more. I don't want this to come across wrong. We've all probably heard the sort of theology that says, "if you only had more faith, God would heal (or move powerfully, or bring prosperity, etc.)". With what I'm going to say, I'm NOT saying that. 

I think the hindrance, though, is summarized in the word YIELD. I bet you were wondering why that picture a million miles above this paragraph is there. Now you know.

British revivalist Henry Varley said the following phrase to famous American evangelist D.L. Moody:

"The world has yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to Him."

This phrase lit a fire in Moody, as he sought to be that man. You could substitute the word Yield in the place of the world Consecrate. This is perhaps God's greatest desire for us - that we would yield fully to Him. It's the heartbeat of Paul's words in Romans 12:1 - "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is your true and proper worship."

The Bible and history are full of testimonies of men and women no different from you and me, who yielded to God, and God has used them mightily. Abraham, who followed God into the unknown, surrendering security and a home, and who was molded into the father of Israel. David, who abandoned himself to God and became a man after His heart, and became Israel's greatest king. Esther, who yielded her safety and status as queen with the hope of saving her people. In more modern times we see Billy Graham, who submitted himself continually to God in humility, and has had the most prolific public ministry this century. Even within Cru, Bill Bright, who founded the ministry, did so after he and his wife signed a contract, offering their whole lives and all they had to God for His glory. It was after this that God gave him a vision that led to the beginning of Campus Crusade for Christ, which has seen hundreds of millions of people come to Christ and thousands and laborers equipped and sent into the harvest fields of the world.

Perhaps God is simply waiting for us to yield more fully to Him, and to step away from prayerlessness into dependence, and more mighty works will follow. As large as our visions and dreams might be, as well thought out our strategies and plans are, and as much as we fervently pray and work toward seeing them come to pass, what's far more crucial is for each individual heart to be yielding to Christ. This is a daily practice, surrendering ourselves, our possessions, our time, our rights, our plans, our everything to Him, and continuing to determinedly re-submit and re-yield. It won't matter what big dreams we have if we aren't surrendering ourselves to Him.

The perfect example of this is Jesus. And that's not a cliche. He is the greatest testimony of a yielded life. He submitted fully to His Fathers will, even unto death. He even said that His food was to do the will of God (John 4:34). He laid down everything - His heavenly residence and His human life - in surrender to the will of God. In doing so He accomplished the greatest work of all - the salvation of our souls, something that was impossible otherwise (Luke 18:18-30). 

Jesus is our perfect example and our perfect substitute, and He calls us - His followers - to join Him in this yieldedness. He calls His disciples to deny themselves and take up their crosses daily (Luke 9:23), and to remain in Him, for apart from Him we can do nothing (John 15:5). It's a difficult invitation, but a worthwhile one. True delight and reward, which outweigh anything we can experience in this world, will follow.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart." (Hebrews 12:1-3)

Who knows what immeasurably more He may do through us as we yield.


- In what ways have you been frustrated by lack of fruit in ministry, or in your personal life? Are you blaming God for this? What are, perhaps, some other culprits?

- What areas of your life do you have difficulty yielding to God? Is it a relationship, your time, your career and future, your finances?

- Why is it so difficult to yield these areas? 

- What are the eternal rewards and promises and hopes that we can look to? What is the joy set before us that will make it more attractive to yield?


-- Jason

On Fasting

Isaiah 62:6-7

On your walls, O Jerusalem,

            I have set watchmen;

all the day and all the night

            they shall never be silent.

You who put the LORD in remembrance,

            take no rest,

and give him no rest

            until he establishes Jerusalem

            and makes it a praise in the earth.

I read this passage in a recent quiet time and it struck me as an appropriate reminder of how earnestly God wants us to pray. Isaiah, as you probably know, is a prophetic book – perhaps the most famous of the Old Testament books of prophecy – and as you near the end of the book you find more and more reference to the coming time when God will complete His redemptive work, destroying sin and evil once and for all and bringing forth a New Jerusalem, filled with His presence and righteousness, in which sin and pain will be no more. His Kingdom will fully come.

The verses quoted above follow a passage that fits this prophetic description of God’s coming Kingdom. Isaiah writes that “the nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory..” (v. 2), and that “You shall no more be called Forsaken…but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her….” (v. 4) He also uses marriage as a metaphor, in which God is described as rejoicing over His people as a groom rejoices over his bride (v. 5). Revelation 21 and 22, the Bible’s last 2 chapters, describe this New Jerusalem in more detail, describing the city coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. God will dwell with His people, crying and pain will cease, the Kingdom will be established permanently.

Both for an Israelite hearing these words in the day they were written, and for us reading them now, a hopeful longing for this beautiful day to come ought to spring forth. This is desirable, worth fixing our eyes upon and dreaming about. More than any other hope of a bright future ahead, this is the brightest, the one we ought to keep in front of us. It’s better than graduation day, better than wedding day, better than anything that happens to be the top of our life’s bucket list. It’s better than a Pirates World Series win (and if you know me, you know that’s a pretty lofty future I hope for).

In light of this vision of what is to come and the longing it produces, we have verses 6 and 7.  God says that He will set watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem who will not be silent. So what is a watchman and why will these ones not stop talking?

In ancient times, cities were walled – fortified against any enemy attack. Often, watchmen would stand atop these walls, scanning the horizon for any threats, or, as in this case, any signs of good news on its way. The watchmen would then alert the city accordingly. It seems that these watchmen, though, are not silently waiting, but constantly speaking. Or in this case, praying.

The following words in the passage indicate this: “You who put the LORD in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest, until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth.” Those who put the LORD in remembrance, I believe, describes those who pray. And these people who pray are told to give God no rest, or to take rest themselves, until the establishment of this coming Kingdom.

Now I don’t know exactly how God hears and answers prayer, or determines what He’ll answer when and how. It’s mystery that continues to confound and amaze me, but passages like this give no doubt that He considers it vital and uses it in His grand and global plans. He uses the prayers of His people in the accomplishment of His purposes. That’s astounding! God, the Creator and all-Sovereign King, will establish His eternal Kingdom – that’s a fact – and our prayers are an essential part of the process. In some way, He waits for us to ask and seek.

Beginning this week, Pittsburgh Cru has entered into a time of fasting together. We’re inviting everyone involved with Cru to participate by joining in a daily lunch fast from Oct. 13 to Nov. 21, or by fasting in a way that God may specifically lead you or would make more sense for you. We’re doing this because we desperately need God. We need Him to move in our individual hearts and we need Him to move on our campuses and in our city, to draw people to Himself, revive the hearts of His people, and bring the values and presence of His Kingdom here to our city.

Pittsburgh is not Jerusalem. But this passage doesn’t speak just to that city in Israel; it also speaks of a coming day when the new Jerusalem will be the eternal home of all who believe and proclaim Christ as Lord. And this passage reminds us that we are to give God no rest until that day comes. To persistently ask, plea, and beg for Him to bring this end of time and establish His heavenly reign on earth. To cry out to Him for His move. To continue to go before Him and not stop until that day comes. He invites it! He wants us to do this.

As we fast together, let’s pray with this persistency and earnestness, for God to bring His Kingdom in its fullness quickly, and also for Him to bring His Kingdom - which has come to the world through Christ and is spreading and growing even now – more fully and tangibly here. Let’s pray for the lost to be saved, for the hearts of God’s people to be revived and transformed and moved to worship and to action, and for the joy, freedom, peace, healing, life, justice, reconciliation, and all the other wonderful elements of His Kingdom to be more realized here, in Pittsburgh.

If you’re free, the staff will be meeting daily from 12-1 to pray together, and we’d love for you to join us. Let’s seek the Lord together! We’ll usually be at the random stairway to nowhere in the Tansky Lounge of the Pitt union, but text one of us to double check.

-- Jason (412-354-0942)

Cru Talk #1: WITH

Hey everyone! Jason here. I've decided that, since when I prepare talks for Cru I write it all out verbatim, it would be easy to post the transcript on the staff blog, to keep a record of what we've addressed at Cru, and for people who can't make it that week to read what everyone else has heard. What follows is my talk from August 27, the first Cru of the year. Hope it's helpful for review and to direct any friends to!

My wife, Maria and I have been married for 11 years, on staff with Cru for the same length of time, and in Pittsburgh since 2006. When we refer to being “on staff with Cru”, it simply means that it’s our full time job to help introduce college students to Jesus and help them grow in both following Him and leading others to do the same. It’s a fantastic job, and the reason we still do it, and the reason Cru exists, is because we believe that quite literally you will change the world. The university is probably the most influential place in our culture - it’s an innovation and idea factory, a research hub, and a hotbed of social activism. What happens here shapes the world. And you - students - are the leaders of tomorrow. You’ll go on to lead in business, government, medicine, church, and community. Our hope is to see Jesus change your life so that you change the world for good and for His glory. We believe Jesus is the only solution to the brokenness and pain we all experience in our hearts, and to the brokenness and pain in the world. So our mission is to share Jesus and His love with every student on every campus, to help those who follow Him be built up in that faith, and then mobilize you - students, future leaders and culture shapers - to change the world for Christ. That’s why we’re here.

Tonight I want to talk a bit about how we, as humans, relate to God. And I want to kick that off by sharing a bit of my background and story with you.

Many years ago, way back in 1998, in fact, when those of you who are freshmen were just 4 or 5 years old (which is crazy to me), I was also a college freshman. I went to Penn State, and I spent much of that freshman year inventing crazy games and in general wasting a lot of time. It seems to be that when you get several guys together and give them copious amounts of unsupervised free time, they’ll invariably invent something that they compete over. Even if it’s something completely made up. This is probably how Cornhole, Washers, Ladderball, lawn darts, Kan-Jam, and all those sorts of things were created. A particular one we created involved wrapping a ping pong ball with several layers of duct tape, then going out into the hallway of the dorm, with 2 of us spaced about 20 feet apart, one with a golf club and the other with a baseball glove. We’d then proceed to take full golf swings to try to hit the duct-taped ping pong ball past the other. I don’t recommend this. Your RA may not find it as amusing as you do.

Two of the guys I created this and many other games with became my closest friends, but only partly because of the games. We also ended up in a small group Bible study together, and I began my journey of faith with them. They helped me understand Jesus, they stood by me in my best and worst moments, and we had many significant conversations that helped shape the course of our lives and spiritual direction. They even stood by me on my wedding day.

I also started following Jesus my freshman year of college. That was the time and place that things began to click into place spiritually for me - my eyes were opened to understand the significance of Jesus life and death and resurrection, and my need to respond in some way. I had grown up in church and heard the phrase “Jesus died for your sins,” but never grasped what that meant until college. As I began to explore and learn more, my response was eventually to acknowledge that I did believe that it was true, and then to surrender myself to Jesus - to accept the fact that I needed help, I needed a Savior because my life was broken and messy and I couldn’t repair it myself; and to cry out to Him to come into my life and be that Savior.

Before that, I related to God in a very different way. I saw Him like a watchful judge, marking down the things I did wrong and the things I did right, and hopefully I’d have enough good to “pass the test” and be granted Heaven. That was essentially my viewpoint of life - that it was a test and that God was the grader. Our afterlife was determined by how well we did on the test. Much of my spiritual life, then, revolved around the things I did or didn’t do: Did I go to church this week? Was I nice to other people? Did I do well at school? Did I avoid drugs and sex? As a result I was a pretty good kid outwardly, though occasionally that rebelliousness and tendency toward evil and wrongdoing that we all have did come out. But I couldn’t have been more wrong about God and how He relates to us.

I read a book last year, called With, about the different ways people relate to God. The author - Skye Jethani - used 5 prepositions to describe the typical postures toward God. Four are ultimately empty, unsatisfying, and unbiblical, and the fifth is what God has designed and desires (and deep down, we do too). My viewpoint and the way I related to God fell into the category of life UNDER God.

In short, you can define this posture in this way:

“We obey God’s commands and He blesses our lives; when we act outside of His commands or fail to appease Him, He withholds blessing or even brings curse.”

This actually summarizes a majority of human religions. We face a world of uncertainty and chaos, which brings fear, and so we react by trying to control. In this case, we try to control life by controlling God. If we obey and please Him, He will reward us. If we don’t, He won’t. You can see this play out all over the place:

• performing religious rituals like burning incense or repeated, recited prayer in order to acquire God’s blessing
• blaming catastrophe that befalls a nation or a place on the fact that it is “godless” or “immoral”
• the concept of karma - if you do good, good will come back to you, and vice versa
• the concept of reincarnation - what you do in this life determines what you’ll be in the next, all in the hope of reaching some sort of higher level eventually
• a comical example is from the NFL a few years ago. Stevie Johnson, then of the Buffalo Bills, dropped an overtime TD pass that ultimately resulted in defeat. After the game, he tweeted this: "I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO…" Stevie was operating under the expectation that his devotion to praise God constantly would be rewarded with success, and when God didn’t hold up His end of that bargain, or so Stevie thought, he was dumbfounded and angry.
• my (and many others) viewpoint that my works and behavior determined God’s love, acceptance, and reward. 

When Christianity is practiced in this way, you could simply call it works-based. We need to do something to inherit God’s favor. And it’s easy to slip into. But the Bible clearly declares that this is not how God relates to us:

“For by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

The second posture is Life OVER God. Atheism is the most clear form of this. It says “God doesn't exist. The world operates on scientific, natural principles, and we can learn what these are in order to have a measure of control over the world around us.” In a way, we replace ourselves with God as the masters of our own domain. We determine our own fate, we can do as we choose. God is marginalized from life - if we simply understand the way the universe works we’ll be fine on our own.

This is exactly what Adam and Eve famously did in the Garden of Eden:

“the serpent said to the woman…’God knows that when you eat of it [the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” (Genesis 3:4-5)

Adam and Eve then took the fruit in their desire to be like God. Instead of submitting to God and living in communion with Him as His created children, they sought to chart their own course and be their own master. You and I do this as well - whether it’s blatant, like denying His existence, or subtle, like declaring Him our Lord yet choosing to let our agendas and hopes and dreams be what determines our choices and direction. A “Christian” form of the Life OVER God posture is reducing the Bible and its teachings to a self-help manual or set of principles like natural laws - in this we, as Skye Jethani puts it, “put [our] faith in the watch rather than in the watchmaker.”

Many people, both in Christian circles and apart from them, live in a Life FROM God posture. Not long ago I read that in a sermon delivered to her church, Victoria Osteen - famous and widely televised pastor Joel Osteen’s wife - made the following remarks:

“I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God–I mean, that’s one way to look at it–we’re doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we are happy. . . . That’s the thing that gives Him the greatest joy. . . .

So, I want you to know this morning — Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. . . . When you come to church, when you worship him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy.”

Yikes. This hits the mark of a Life FROM God posture - the idea that God exists to make us happy, healthy, and well-fed. That our devotion to God isn’t about Him at all, but about us. He’s just there to hand out things (money, cars, houses, etc.) that will make us happy and prosperous. A common term is the “Prosperity Gospel.” It’s a distinctly American creation that has spread throughout the world, that ultimately, when you strip away some of the near-biblical language and thought, carries the message that God exists to serve us and please us, not the other way around.

This posture ultimately reduces God to a Santa Claus like figure - we pursue and follow Him based on what He can do for us, rather than to enjoy and have communion with Him.

The last unhealthy posture is the Life FOR God posture. This is especially dangerous because it sounds right, and it can be hidden behind many good things. You could simply describe it as “putting God’s mission ahead of God Himself.”

Now, I’ve just described Cru earlier as a very mission-focused organization. We want to change the world for Christ. And there is nothing wrong with this, just as there is nothing inherently wrong with living in obedience to God, living according to His principles, or even experiencing blessing from Him that does at times come materially. It’s just that these things must be offshoots of the truer, more biblical posture of relating to Him, which I’ll describe in a moment.

When you’re involved in a more activist faith - whether that be in taking the good news of Christ to the world as a missionary, working to end poverty and hunger, freeing people from sex trafficking, or a myriad of other wonderful, godly endeavors we are to pursue - the danger is for us to find our significance and worth in what we do FOR God.

Many of you, as you come to college, are probably asking questions like “What does God want me to do with my life? How can I make an impact in the world for Him? What more can I do with my time and my talents to serve Him?” Again, these aren’t necessarily bad. But it’s so easy to assume that God values what we do FOR Him over anything else. So we wrestle with guilt or a sense that God is disappointed in us when we sin or fail, or even devote time to things unrelated to the “mission”, whatever particular one it is. And we pursue holiness not to become more like Christ, but to be more effective or ready to do whatever service for God we feel called to. If we take this posture too far, we cut the heart right out of Christianity.

The antidote, or the posture the Bible points us to, is Life WITH God. With. That simple preposition makes all the difference. This is what we were created for.

Remember the passage from Genesis I quoted earlier - the serpent deceived Eve with the promise that she and her husband would be “like God.” Before this they were “with” God - living in a perfect Creation, enjoying daily communion with their Creator, living out His purposes for them out of the context of relationship. But they gave it up, as we all have. We all trend toward one or more of the other postures. But God persistently is inviting people back into communion with Him. We can see the fruit of it when Paul, in the book of Philippians, describes what is most valuable to Him:

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him…” (Philippians 3:8-9a)

The surpassing worth of knowing Christ. Being with Him in relationship. Gaining Him was the utmost. It isn’t about what we can do FOR Him or get FROM Him. It’s not about having control and mastery over the world around us by living with an UNDER or OVER posture. He Himself is our greatest treasure. Jesus Himself even describes eternal life - what many would see as the ultimate thing to gain, Heaven itself - in relational terms:

“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)

Eternal life is knowing Jesus. Being with Him. This must be our foremost pursuit. I’ve already described tonight how we are all estranged from God. We stubbornly and selfishly seek to chart our own course and be “like God” - in control of our lives. It might result in us outwardly making a mess of things - abuse, addiction, hurting self or others - or it might simply be in our hearts. But this is why Jesus came to earth, died, and rose again. Our rebellion and seeking to live with ourselves in charge carried with it the penalty of death (Romans 6:23) - which in its deepest and most spiritual form is separation from God. If God is the source of life, death is being apart from the Giver of Life. We are all in danger of existing in this separation for all eternity. But Jesus, being perfect and being the one person who perfectly lived life WITH God, made Himself a substitute. He exchanged our death for His blameless record and His righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). And then He rose, conquering death and offering to us this eternal life of everlasting relationship and communion with Him. What’s left for each of us is a response - will we accept it or not. I, by God’s grace, accepted Him as a college freshman, and though it’s had its ups and downs, and though I still weave in and out of those alternative postures of relating to God, it has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

What we learned at Radiate

Pittsburgh Metro Cru,

Over the break, many of us had the awesome opportunity to go to RADIATE 2012: Restore. If you were there, this post can be a fun recap and refresher. For the many who weren't able to join us, here's what we learned about from speaker Tim Henderson:


God's restoration of us and all things

To be 'restored', something must first be created/obtained, then suffer some sort of damage. This is true of us:

1. We were created in God's image. We are who we are because He is who He is. This means He gave us:

• Rank: we have real, innate value because we are like Him who is infinitely valuable
• Rule: just as He rules over all things, we exercise rule over things (nature, numbers, projects, etc.)
• Relate: the triune God is a Relationship, and likewise we are made for relationship
• Reflect: just as He is glorious, we in our worship and obedience are glorious in the sense that we reflect His glory

2. We suffered great damage at the Fall when we bought into Satan's con. It was truly a con in the sense that he promised Eve what she already had (likeness to God), and she lost that very thing in the process. Our ability to bear God's image has been marred and warped. This is evident in all those ways we were meant to bear His image:

• Rank: we look for value in status, wealth, romance, popularity, achievement...
• Rule: humans' leadership and authority trends either toward cowardly passivity or oppressive tyranny
• Relate: broken families and damaged relationships are everywhere
• Reflect: rather than reflect His glory, we attempt to create our own; we seek to be suns rather than moons

Jesus restores us back to the image-bearers of God. It's beautiful how God has been planning this since before creation:

We were made in God's image so that
The Son of God could be made in our image so that
We could be truly restored to His image through our union with the Son

Jesus can restore us because He offered Himself as a perfect sacrifice. His perfection can be seen in many ways. Not only did He perfectly bear God's image in that He had the Rank of a child of God, His Rule was decisive but humble, He Related to people with grace and truth, and He continually Reflected the Father's glory, but He also:

• went where the Father wanted Him to go
• did what the Father wanted Him to do
• said what the Father wanted Him to say
• gave what the Father wanted Him to give

We who now by faith are one with Christ and share in His likeness are invited to do the same! Will you go, do, say, and give whatever God wants?

Finally, we looked at Revelation 21 and at how God is restoring not just us, but all things, to Himself!

"Behold, I am making all things new."
-God, Revelation 21:5

A great (and timely) resource

Cru friends (Criends? too much?),

We hope you've enjoyed our Cru talk series on Evangelism Design that will culminate this Wednesday in a night of outreach! We've taken a look at the various elements involved in God reaching the world:

the Master -- God
the Masses -- all those who don't know God personally
the Messengers -- all those who do
the Message -- the great news of Jesus Christ reconciling us to God
the Methods/Modes -- the various ways we share the gospel

I wanted to bring to your attention an amazing (and free!) resource to delve much more deeply into what the Bible says about all these M-words. It's a Bible study tool that is perfect for individual study and can also work well in a discipleship relationship or a small group! It's called Getting Biblical About Evangelism (by Keith Davy) and here it is for free online.

If you're interested in being used by God to impact your friends and family, if you'd like to grow in your understanding of the gospel, if you want to be challenged to take steps of faith, or if you just want to know more about God's heart for people... we recommend this study tool!

So, if you're in a small group, discipling someone, or being discipled, maybe ask about using Getting Biblical as your next curriculum. Or, if that doesn't work out, you can use it for your personal devotional times.

If you have any questions about evangelism, this tool, etc., please feel free to contact any of us.

The Pittsburgh Metro Cru staff team
www.pghcru.com