Tag Archives: Mount Zion Bible Church

Making Our Children Ready for Kingdom Battles

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

Last year Jeff Pollard of Mount Zion Bible Church invited me to address their annual family conference on the topic of making children ready for kingdom battles. Jeff is a dear friend and one of my favorite preachers, so I was delighted to be asked, especially since this gets right at the core of what we are praying would be accomplished in our local church life.

This message is about 50 minutes long, and it represents the “why we do what we do” with respect to Sovereign Redeemer’s weekly schedule, particularly the outreaches.

Listen to it here.

Living in Close Quarters

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

THIS JUST IN: Local church life isn’t for the faint of heart. There are people in those churches, and that means challenges for everyone who dares to engage in a meaningful way. That is as much a reality as gravity. What will we do with this reality? By the way we order our lives, we are choosing one of these options:

Option 1: Forget It

Simply exempt ourselves from it all. The bride has spots and wrinkles, so just steer clear. Sorry, not an option for Christians. Baby Christians might think like that, but people who have lived with that view for a long time need to be asking serious questions about why they are still so disconnected with the mind of Christ. Though she does have spots and wrinkles, Jesus Christ isn’t running away from His bride, He is running towards her: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27).

This text helps correct our inclinations to exempt ourselves from the local church in two ways. First, it forces us to consider that we, each of us individually, contribute to the spots and wrinkles. Not the nebulous “them”. The specific “me”. A heaping helping of humble pie is essential for life in close quarters. Second, if the goal is to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ and to have His mind, we need to see the church, and that means our local church, through His lenses of the ongoing, progressive sanctification that He is accomplishing in His people.

Option 2: Find the Perfect Church

There was a perfect church – God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day for two whole chapters, and then came chapter three. Sin entered the world, and churches have never been the same. Deal with it. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be careful about what church we join, and I’m not saying people can never leave one church for another. I am saying that too many people have wasted too many years chasing a fantasy. Find a sound church and literally spend your life there, by Paul’s definition: “And I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved” (2 Corinthians 12:15). As you can see, Paul did not suffer from naivety about church life. He simply pressed forward anyway.

Option 3: Keep It Unreal

Sinners in the church? No problem, we can just keep interaction at the surface level. Pre-damage control, as it were. Minimize the contact, minimize the risk. That way we can love doctrine without having to love people. But wait – isn’t the doctrine so we can love people? Matthew 22:36-40, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

If love for God and neighbor is the great frame for all of this law that we are so eager to parse and nuance, if love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10), then loving the law of God without loving each other – as the Bible defines love in 1 Corinthians 13 and elsewhere – is way worse than silly. And for anyone who thinks they can nurture love for God while staying above messy entanglements with fellow believers, check 1 John 4:20, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” It is clear that love for God and love for each other have an unbreakable connection, and that this isn’t cotton-candy emotion only love, it is meat-and-potatoes sacrifice for each other love.

A local church where everything operates at the surface level is a Frankenstein of our own creation, not the Bible’s. Search the New Testament for the phrase “one another” and feast your eyes on how God actually wants us to live together.

Option 4: Embrace, Cultivate, and Maintain the Close Quarters

Oh, that God would give us hearts so full of His forgiveness, grace and love that we could look at the inherent dangers of living in close quarters and say “BRING IT ON!” Let it be said that I feel the full fury of the proverbial three fingers pointing back at me. What rises in my heart during the inevitable dust-ups that occur when we live together in close quarters condemns me for my own lack of love. But I have hope, because I know that I need to be different, I want to be different, and little by little I am starting to be different.

What about you? God brings His people together into close quarters for His own purposes. Proverbs 14:4, “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; But much increase comes by the strength of an ox.” Do we want clean, or do we want strength for the kingdom of God? We have a big commission, a Great Commission, and when we settle for clean, we must understand how much strength is lost.

Trust God. He is right about the way we should live together. He is teaching me how to live in close quarters in a local church for His glory, and He is teaching you the same. Don’t exempt yourself. Call off the search for the perfect church. Commit yourself to a sound one and get below the surface in close quarter relationships for a long time. When we do that, though life together won’t always be “clean”, we will have the strength for serving God that we need and want.

Decades of Faithful, Sustained Focus

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

A thirteen hour drive to Pensacola was one of the best investments in recent memory. The return on those invested hours? A front row seat at a ministry that squeezes a lot out of a little. If you have ever read any of the tremendous literature printed and distributed by Chapel Library, you know the treasures in which they traffic. But if you actually saw first hand how much they do with a very few hands in an unassuming building tucked away in a small corner of town, it would get you thinking about your own church in your own town.

The Ministry

Chapel Library distributes over 800 titles, all rock-solid works that form an invaluable body of help and encouragement for the people of God all around the world. Prime example: I was there with five brothers from Malawi, Africa, and when the tour made it around to the shipping dock, there sat a pallet of literature ready for the long trip to their little book shop in Malawi, literature that is helping advance the kingdom of God in that African country. And all this without selling anything, being totally funded by what God sends them through people who are moved to give.

The Secret

God is the secret, and a poorly kept secret He is, at least in our circles. He does whatever He pleases, and it often pleases Him to accomplish mighty things through very surprising vessels. Frequently the vessels themselves are the most surprised, not that God is doing something great, but that He would condescend to use them. In this case, it all started with one man’s simple, clear vision, a vision that is alive and well a generation later. The man is gone, but the work is more significant than ever. And how did one man with a mimeograph in the basement evolve into a ministry which is a significant producer of reformed Christian literature? A few people had it clear in their minds what they should do. And they did it. Then they did it some more. And some more. For a long time. And with this faithful, sustained focus, ten titles became fifty, a hundred, eight hundred, and all the while the number of shipping addresses kept doubling.

What About Us?

Having seen first hand what can be accomplished when God is pleased to mobilize a small group of His people for persistent focus in a particular area of need, I can’t help but daydream about the possibilities in our little corner of the world. We should pray that God would give us a clear vision of where He would have us chip away for the next few decades. And when He does, let’s get after it, prayerfully, circumspectly, but also vigorously, passionately, and tenaciously. As Paul says in Galatians 6:9, “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”

In a sea of “flavor of the year” churches, where most of us have the attention span of a gnat, Mount Zion and their decades of faithful, sustained focus on building Chapel Library for the glory of God is inspiring.  May God continue to direct and bless their work, and may He be pleased to do something as significant with us.