Thesis 84 We Must Seek the Spirit’s Guidance.
I suspect it is part of the craftiness of the Devil’s strategy, that when he encourages one part of the church body to misuse a gift from God he also through that misuse discourages the rest of the body from using that gift. We see, for instance, churches zealous for sound doctrine that lack zeal for godly living and suddenly, other churches are fearful of sound doctrine. So it is with the active guiding work of the Holy Spirit.
It is not a difficult thing to say, “The Spirit told me to…” when the Spirit said no such thing. It’s a genuine problem, and has been from the very beginning. Israel itself was so overrun with false prophets, so much so that even their heathen kings got sick of them. That some speak what the Spirit has not spoken, however, doesn’t mean the Spirit doesn’t speak. That some confuse their own internal desires for the prompting of the Spirit doesn’t mean the Spirit doesn’t prompt.
Consider Martin Luther himself. If ever there was a man who was both acutely aware of the reality of spiritual warfare, but likewise zealous for the Spirit’s guidance and insight, it was Luther. This was the man who threw his inkwell at the devil on one occasion. This was the man whose fervent prayer the night before he gave his “Here I stand” speech was so Spirit filled that you feel the Spirit’s presence even now as you read it, five hundred years later. The Reformation was driven by the Holy Spirit- giving light, giving life, giving courage, giving counsel.
How then do we seek the Spirit’s guidance? We seek it in prayer, and in His Word. We recognize that the church itself is defined by a living, breathing relationship. While we are united by what we affirm happened 2,000 years ago in Palestine, we are likewise united with the Spirit Himself. God is not just the object of our study, but the One with whom we walk.
Paul enjoins us to do just that in Galatians 5. We are to keep in step with the Spirit, not just walking with Him but walking to Him. We are to open ourselves such that we might bear the fruit of the Spirit. He, after all, is the means by which, in each of us, we are being brought to the fullness of faith. He is reshaping us, individually and corporately into the image of our Husband.
We must never downplay the power and calling of the Holy Spirit on the grounds that others wrongly speak for Him. We seek Him, earnestly, constantly, humbly and openly. We walk with Him knowing that His zeal for the reformation of the church is infinitely greater than our own. Like Joshua asking the Captain of the Lord’s Hosts outside Jericho is He was for Israel or their enemies, we must never lose sight that we are called to fight beside Him, pursuing His agenda, rather than the other way around. The Spirit of the Living God will accomplish His holy will. Let us follow.
I’ve long said that, for all its blessings, one failure of your typical seminary is that most graduates make it all the way through without either knowing, or caring that the whole of the Bible says not the first word about seminaries. In fact, in the two lists the Bible gives us of the qualities of an elder, a ruler in the church, thirteen of fourteen are character qualities rather than academic. Somehow we have come to believe that what equips a man to serve the body of Christ well is a graduate degree.
The Shepherd’s College is our plan to get back to the Bible in preparing men for gospel ministry. While a seminary focuses on academics, we focus on character. While the seminary teaches in the ivory tower, we teach in the context of the local body. Seminaries have not given us godly shepherds to watch over the flock of the Great Shepherd, but academics and entrepreneurs, professionals and psychologists, technocrats and hirelings. That’s what institutions create. Living bodies give birth to living bodies.
Our Lord’s model, though it was far too organic to be rightly called “a model,” was to disciple men. Jesus taught His disciples by investing His time and energy in them, by speaking with them of the things of God while about the business of doing the work of the ministry. Jesus never gave a lecture on the nature of sign gifts. Instead He gave a lesson on the folly of Job’s friends by healing the man born blind, that they, and we might know that He is the light of the world. The disciples witnessed Jesus as He ministered in Judea. They learned from His sermons. They asked Him questions touching on the lives of those to whom they ministered. As “graduates” the disciples went out as apostles, those sent to speak with the authority of the Sender.
The Shepherd’s College, while certainly potent enough to prepare men to be “able to teach,” is rounded enough to prepare men to be better men of God. The reading list includes the wisdom of Edwards, Murray, and Calvin. But it also includes the wisdom of C. S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, as well as the insight into the gospel that flows from the pen of Sinclair Ferguson.
The list is rigorous, but it is but a part of how we will prepare men for ministry. We will meet weekly to discuss the reading, as well as to cover pastoral issues as they arise in the local church. Students will visit the sick and the imprisoned with their pastor, tussle along with the elders over tangled relational issues in the church. Students will be instructed in both hermeneutics and homiletics, but in real time as their pastors prepare and deliver their sermons. They will be shown how the Bible washes the Bride of Christ.
We begin August 30, with our opening cohort, men ready and eager to test the waters, willing to risk reforming the status quo and zealous more to become better men than to get a better job. You can read more and apply here. We have limited scholarship funds available. If you are a church looking to come alongside this bold venture, you can reach us at theshepherdscollege2021@gmail.com. Please be in prayer for us as we seek to follow the Great Shepherd of the Sheep, to serve His flock, and to prepare others to do the same.
There are, no matter what may be happening around the globe, at least three wars going on at the same time. There is, from the garden of Eden to the consummation of the Kingdom of God the battle between the seed of the woman, and the seed of the serpent. God has divided all the world into two great armies, and all of history is the story of this great battle. In the end, though he succeeds in bruising the heel of the seed of the woman, the serpent’s head will be crushed. This the primordial battle, the paradigmatic conflict, the mother of all wars.
Both the second and third are intimately related to the first. The seed of the woman, we would do well to remember, joined this brightly arrayed army having been drafted from the army of the enemy. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, we were all by nature children of wrath. But the gospel promise is that He would put enmity between us and our natural father. He has given regenerated us, given us new hearts such that we now love Him whom we once hated, and hate him whom we once loved. Trouble is, we still struggle with what we once were. The old man is both dead and being put to death. It wars with our members. Thus the battlefield where this second great conflict takes place is within the very souls of the children of God. Once again, the promise of the gospel is victory. He has promised that if we confess our sins, not only will He forgive us of our sins, but will cleanse us of all unrighteousness. When we pass beyond the vale, we enter into peace, for this war will be over. All that is displeasing in the sight of God will be driven as far from us as the east is from the west.
The third battle is the mirror image of the second. The seed of the serpent not only wages war with the seed of the woman, but they too have an internal battle. Here the battle is not between an old man and a new man, but between their created nature and their fallen nature, between the remnants of the image of God, and the brokenness of the fall. This battle works itself out in this peculiar tension. The unregenerate man, because he yet carries the image of God in him, desires peace, order, joy, purpose and integrity. But because he is a sinner, a rebel, a pretender to the throne of God, he desires in turn that there be no God to whom he must one day answer.
It is a fools quest to seek both of these ends, for they are mutually exclusive. There can be no peace if there is no law, and there can be no law without a lawgiver. There can be no order if there is none to give the world order. There can be no joy, if there is no ultimate good who transcends us. There can be no purpose if all our lives are lived under the sun. We cannot be whole, unless or until we are remade into the image of God. God is our peace, our order, our joy, our purpose, our integrity. Lose one and you must lose the other. Keep God, and all your life is lived under the known threat of His coming judgment.
It is not difficult to measure how this battle is going, in the lives of individuals, or in the context of a given culture. The strung-out, self-loathing, skid-row bum is seeing the battle go toward the denial of God’s existence. The respectable, prosperous, loving father and husband bum is inching toward integrity. The same is true of a society. A nice, clean, safe society is one wherein the battle is currently favoring the remains of the image of God. A bloodthirsty, epicurean, baby-murdering culture is one that is more willing to give up the blessings of the image of God in order to escape God.
It is good and appropriate that we should seek, in the larger battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, to push our friends, neighbors and cultures in the direction of integrity. This is what it means, by and large, to pray for the peace of Babylon. It is, on the other hand, most important that we not confuse those enemies of the kingdom of God who yet have a better handle on the image of God, with our real friends. It is critical to the grand battle that we remember that upstanding, “moral,” citizens of the world are in fact citizens of the kingdom of darkness.
Jesus is not only our king, but He is our husband. We, the bride of Christ, are only whole, when we more clearly reflect our husband. He is our glory, our calling. When we love the world, whether it is the world of vile depravity, or the world of vile middle-class morality, we are still playing the harlot. Integrity begins with fidelity to our husband. As we practice this, as we exhibit a loyalty to Him and Him alone, He in turn blesses us. As we put aside our love of the world, no matter how clean it may be, our Husband showers us with grace. Or, to put it another way, as we seek first the kingdom of God, all these things will be added unto us.
It’s a crazy real estate market out there. Prices have shot through the roof faster than, well, faster than the last real estate bubble we had. My neighbor across the way had 31 live viewers the first day it was on the market and sold it for ten percent above an aggressive asking price. Which makes those who own their homes outright, or with solid equity rich, right? Well, no. Follow me through this scenario to see which part of the magic trick you missed.
Suppose I own a house that in this market could sell for a million dollars. It matters not how much I owe on it, if anything. It matters not what I paid for it, if anything. I sell it for a million dollars. Now, if I want a house in a similar neighborhood, or a similar size, you know, say an exact replica of the house I just sold, how much will I need to pay? Right, a million dollars. So how much have I gained through this red hot market? Nothing.
Still not seeing it? Ok, let’s try it this way. Suppose I buy a house for a million dollars. Now suppose the market tanks. I sell my house for a measly $10,000. Calamitous, right? No. I’ve lost nothing. What would it cost me to buy an exactly replica of the house I just sold? $10,000. Before the sale I had a house that the market valued at $10,000. After the sale and the buying of the other house I have a replica of the first house valued at $10,000. Samesies. What did I lose in this burst bubble market? Nothing.
In both scenarios I had a house and after selling it I’m able to buy a house that costs what I sold my house for. Moving from one market to another, moving from one sized house to another may change up things a bit but the bottom line is that whether it’s a buyer’s market or a seller’s market makes little difference if you’re both a buyer and a seller.
The key to understanding basic economics, it seems to me, is never leaving part of the equation out. Henry Hazlitt’s classic, Economics in One Lesson, which I commend most highly to you, upended the old saw that breaking things is the path to wealth simply be doing just that, showing the part of the equation we leave out. When we think we’re getting a free lunch, we can be certain we’re not looking at the whole thing. We know that because there isn’t such a thing as a free lunch. Wealth doesn’t come by invisible and unknowable forces but by creating it. That means working, producing, meeting the interested of consumers who will freely pay for what you provide.
Buying low and selling high is all well and good. But if you’re buying the same thing you’re selling and at the same time, you’ll not likely find yourself getting richer or poorer.
The Bible is replete with warnings. Those yet outside of His grace are warned of the certainty of judgment. Those weighing life and death are warned to consider the cost before taking up the cross. And those born from above are warned of persecution, hatred, and the many troubles of this world. We all walk the via Dolorosa.
Knowing these biblical doctrines, we are rightly put out by purveyors of popcorn prosperity. Whether it’s vapid promises of health and wealth or smiling faces offering you your best life now, we scorn the notion that God wants us to be happy. There is a certain charlatan appeal to the merry mongers. Who doesn’t want to believe not only that they can be happy, but that someone will provide them a map? But there’s another reason this dark distortion of God’s Word won’t die and go away- God’s Word.
The same Word that calls us to take up our cross told us that He came to bring life, and life abundant. The same Word that warns of persecution tells us that if we ask our Father for an egg, He will not give us a stone. The same Word that tells us how to be abased promises to tell us how to abound. The same Word that gives us the sorrows of Job tells us “Now the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning.” (42:12) One cannot choose either the idea that good times and pleasant circumstances are the will of God for all men everywhere, and every time, nor that God exclusively uses hardship and paucity to shape us for blessings that all reside on the other side of the vale.
The truth is that God’s will for His own is that we would be made ever more like Jesus. The glory of suffering and hardship is that it is potent to move us in that direction. It is a good thing to face dark providences and loss with joy precisely because such does the good work of making us more like Him. That doesn’t mean, however, that when we find ourselves in a bed of roses we are far from Him. He is the Great Gardener. He is the Groom who loves His bride and delights to shower her with every good gift. Hardship cleanses the bride. Blessed circumstances help the bride remember that she is His beloved.
Both are true, and both are beautiful. Does God want you to be happy? He wants you to both be remade into the image of His Son, and to feel His love and delight in you along the way, to receive the gifts of the bride. In hardship, remember the work He is doing in you, rebuilding you into the image of Christ, the express image of the glory of the Father. In blessing, know that He loves you, delights in you, rejoices over you, because you bear the image of the Son. In all circumstances rejoice, because He loves you.
