worship

Spiritual Pivot

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Starting this Sunday, my church will be temporarily meeting in a new location. We’re doing some upgrades and improvements to our sanctuary, so we can’t meet in the building for a few weeks. That means that we’ll be in the Fisher Center at Belmont University for a bit, then over to Sevier Park for an outdoor worship service.

It will be different, and different isn’t necessarily bad. Sometimes, different can be a good thing. I imagine people that have no connection to The Church at Avenue South might be intrigued by Sunday services on the Belmont campus. Some people might be driving by the park one Sunday and see a bunch of people gathered in worship. People who might not step foot in our present location might still hear the gospel and see the tangible love of Jesus on display.

That’s definitely a good thing. I know ideally in a perfect world, all the improvements would have been completed before we moved into the present location. But as my pastor always says, this is a beautiful but broken world we’re living in, so perfect doesn’t exist. Still, God can take what’s less than perfect and work good from it.

I imagine when the people of God first arrived into their new homes in Babylon, it took some adjusting. They had lost everything they knew and loved back home and were completely unfamiliar with their new surroundings in Babylon. But what did God say? He said to plant gardens and get married and have lots of kids. You’re going to be here for a while.

In our case, the exile is only for four weeks, but God is reminding us that the Church is not brick and mortar or a location. It’s the people of God gathered to proclaim the praises of God and live out the purposes of God through the preaching of the Word and worship. We are the living stones that make up God’s dwelling place in this world.

Right now around the world, people are gathering together in homes and in sheds and under a canopy of trees to worship. Some aren’t allowed to have large gatherings. Some don’t have a building to meet in. But they are serving and singing to and loving the same God as the ones meeting in megachurches. It’s the same Holy Spirit power that lives inside of them that lives inside the ones sitting in comfortable chairs in air-conditioned buildings.

It’s like in the Christmas Vacation movie when the kid asks how Santa will know where to find them since they’re staying with the Griswolds. Church isn’t like that. The Holy Spirit knows exactly where to go on Sunday when the people of God are temporarily displaced. God is still showing up and we can still experience that presence if we’re prepared and prayed up.

Thank You, Lord, that wherever Your people are gathered in Your name, even if it’s only two or three, You’re there in the midst of them. Make Your name famous wherever we are, whether it’s at 901 Acklen Avenue or 2020 Belmont Boulevard or 3021 Lealand Lane. Do what only You can do and draw people to Yourself and thank You that we get to be a part of it. Amen.

The Christ We Preach

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“The One we preach is not Christ-in-a-vacuum, nor a mystical Christ unrelated to the real world, nor even only the Jesus of ancient history, but rather the contemporary Christ who once lived and died, and now lives to meet human need in all its variety today. To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because he assures us of God’s love for us. He sets us free from guilt because he died for us, from the prison of our own self-centredness by the power of his resurrection, and from paralysing fear because he reigns, all the principalities and powers of evil having been put under his feet. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship. He introduces us into his new community, the new humanity he is creating. He challenges us to go out into some segment of the world which does not acknowledge him, there to give ourselves in witness and service for him. He promises us that history is neither meaningless nor endless, for one day he will return to terminate it, to destroy death and to usher in the new universe of righteousness and peace” (John Stott).

That is the Christ we preach. This is the Jesus from the Bible, specifically from the Gospels. You can summarize it all up very neatly in John 3:16: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, NLT).

If you go to a church that teaches you anything else, don’t walk out. Run. If your church preaches any kind of gospel other than the one from John 3:16 that Jesus and Paul preached, leave. Paul said that if anyone preached another gospel, even an angel from heaven, let that one be accursed.

The beauty of the true gospel is that it’s for everyone. It’s for anyone who will receive it. Anyone can be born again. Anyone can become a new creation. Anyone can be forgiven and set free from sin. Anyone can become a son or daughter of God through the adoption made possible through the cross.

That’s the Christ we preach and teach and worship and serve and love.

Sin Avoidance Mode

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The sermon in church was on Genesis 3 about the whole deal with the serpent and the fruit and sin. Basically, Adam and Eve messed up. I don’t presume to know what they were thinking about but if they were anything like I am, then I imagine they went around all day chanting the mantra, “Don’t eat the fruit. Don’t eat the fruit. Don’t eat the fruit.”

Of course, that’s not the best way to avoid sin, but it’s the way most of us try to live. We have our sin avoidance mode where we’re constantly thinking about what we shouldn’t be doing. All the focus is on the fruit (or whatever it is that’s bad and sinful). The problem is that when that’s all you think about, then that’s all you want to do. It doesn’t work.

The Bible talks about setting our minds on things above. We’re to think about whatever is pure and lovely. We’re to fix our eyes on Jesus as the author and finisher of our faith. Nowhere does it say to avoid sin by constantly dwelling on the concept of not sinning and specifically that sin you should never do.

I had a friend once who told me that if you’re trying to break a bad habit or overcome an addiction. you don’t want only to stop doing the bad habit. You need to replace it with something godly. You need to replace it with a spiritual discipline. Otherwise, you wind up trading one addiction for another.

In one of His parables, Jesus spoke about the demon that was cast out and left the person, but found the place he left had been swept clean but left vacant, so he came back and brought seven friends with him who were even more evil than he was. If your aim is solely to stop sinning, then you risk ending up falling to a deeper temptation or a worse sin if you don’t add a good habit in its place.

Paul says to put off, be renewed, and also put on. In other words, stop doing that sinful activity. Confess your sin. Be cleansed and renewed. But don’t forget to practice daily habits of prayer and Bible study. Don’t forget to tap into the power of the Holy Spirit to enable you to live godly.

Lord, help us to focus on pleasing You more than avoiding sin. Help us to see no so much that sin is bad but that You are glorious and worthy of our holiness. May Your love for us fill us up and compel us to live in love toward You and toward everyone else so that they too can know of Your goodness and love. Amen.

Faux Omniscience

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“The serpent told the Woman, “You won’t die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you’ll see what’s really going on. You’ll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil” (Genesis 3:4-5, The Message).

The lie from the garden was that if Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they’d have the knowledge of good and evil. They’d be like God. The serpent told them the truth — mostly. And it’s that 2% lie mixed in with the 98% truth that got them in trouble and caused them to rebel against God.

Maybe one way that knowledge of good and evil has expressed itself is that we’re currently in an age of information overload. I recently ran across a statement that we consume in 30 minutes the same amount of content that our grandparents got in a month. That floored me.

Having social media and 24-hour news channels has created an unlimited access to everything happening around the world. I heard it referred to as a faux omniscience. We end up being burdened with all the tragedy from all around the world, somehow feeling like we’re supposed to do something to fix it.

Knowing more doesn’t automatically make you wiser. Sometimes, we can know more than our capacity to process it all in a healthy way. Spiritually, sometimes we can be informed and educated past our capacity for obedience. We become consumed by fear and rage and try to take the place of God in figuring our the solutions to all the world’s problems when in spite of all our learning, we’re still quite finite and limited in our understanding.

Only God has the capacity to know everything plus the wisdom to know what to do about it. Only God is in control and sees everything in the world with perfect clarity. Only God is the one who can fix it. And God has already provided the solution through the cross in Christ Jesus. His victory is already assured and all the evil in the world is from a defeated foe.

Perhaps we need less doomscrolling and news bingeing and more time spent with God. Maybe we need less consuming information, especially from secular sources, and more time spent learning the heart of God through the Bible and prayer. I heard once that the antidote to anxiety is always adoration and worship. That’s the best way.

Waiting with Hope

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“There are times when everything looks very dark to me——-so dark that I have to wait before I have hope.Waiting with hope is very difficult, but true patience is expressed when we must even wait for hope. When we see no hint of success but refuse to despair, when we see nothing but the darkness of night through our window yet keep the shutters open because stars may appear in the sky, and when we have an empty place in our heart yet will not allow it to be filled with anything less then God’s best—- that is the greatest kind of patience in the universe. It is the story of Job in the midst of the storm, Abraham on the road to Moriah, Moses in the desert of Midian, and the Son of Man in the garden of Gethsemane. There is no patience as strong as that which endures because we see ‘him who is invisible’ (Hebrews 11:27). It is the kind of patience that waits for hope.

Dear Lord, You have made waiting beautiful and patience divine.You have taught us that Your will should be accepted, simply because it is Your will. You have revealed to us that a person may see nothing but sorrow in his cup yet still be willing to drink it because of a conviction that Your eyes see further then his own.

Father, give me Your divine power—- the power of Gethsemane. Give me the strength to wait for hope—to look through the window when there are no stars. Even when my joy is gone, give me strength to stand victoriously in the darkest night and say, ‘To my Heavenly Father, the sun still shines.’ I will have reached the point of greatest strength once I have learned to wait for hope. Strive to be one of the few who walk this earth with the ever present realization– every morning, noon, and night that the unknown that people call heaven is directly behind those things that are visible(Galatians 5:5). By faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope” (George Matheson).

The Quiet Miracle

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Today, I was listening to a podcast from Sally Lloyd-Jones, author of the Jesus Storybook Bible. She was conversing with Sir David Suchet, best known for his portrayal of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, about several topics of faith.

One topic of interest to me was when they talked about the miracle at Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine. David noted that one particular thing struck him about the miracle in that Jesus appeared to say or do nothing to bring it about. He didn’t offer a blessing. He didn’t wave His arms or lift up a prayer. He told the servants to fill up the large pitchers with water and when the taster got to them, the water had become wine.

It was a quiet miracle. Michael Card calls it the unmiraculous miracle. It’s notable that presumably no one at the wedding ever found out about the miracle except for the servants who poured the water. Not the wedding hosts or the guests. Not the bride or groom. Only the servants.

Jesus was quietly inaugurating His kingdom and only a few servants were in on it. I’m reminded of how the first people to witness the Incarnation were shepherds who had been out in the fields tending their flocks. The first witnesses of the resurrection were the same women whose testimony would not have counted in a court of law back in that day.

Again and again, Jesus chose the nobodies of the world to be the first to hear His good news. The gospel wasn’t given to the famous or the rich or the powerful at first, but to those discounted and outcast and disregarded by everyone else. But they were the ones Jesus chose.

Isn’t that how it works even now. To those who feel forgotten or left out, Jesus sees you. To those that nobody counts as worth anything, Jesus thought you were worth dying for. To those who sometimes feel like they’re taking up space in the world, Jesus has invited you to be a part of His Great Commission and to be His disciples. Even now, the gospel of Jesus is for you. Even you. Even me.

Easter Monday 2026

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I stayed up late on a school night, but it was worth it. I may feel like a complete zombie in the morning, but I have complete confidence that even this zombie will be resurrected one day just as Jesus was raised from the grave that Easter Sunday morning so long ago.

Seeing Andrew Peterson and company on Easter Monday is my new favorite Easter Monday tradition. There’s something special about hearing and singing the Easter story one more time. I don’t know about you, but I need to be reminded of the gospel as many times as I’m prone to be forgetful, which is often.

My favorite part is the part where they leave Jesus in the tomb and all the lights go out. Then the drums kick in and the crowd goes crazy because we all know what comes next. Death is defeated forever. The grave that could not hold the Messiah will not hold anyone who belongs to Him. Sin and condemnation will not have the last word.

For me, both Christmas and Easter need more than one day to appreciate fully the incarnation and resurrection. Sometimes I wonder if a lifetime’s not long enough to grasp everything that Jesus accomplished for us in fulfilling all the prophecies and breaking the curse that sin held over us. It will take an eternity to thank Him properly.

I love how Easter heralds in Spring and the annual advent of new life. Gone is the barrenness of winter as flowers bloom and trees bring forth leaves and all is green again. It’s a beautiful picture of life from death, a yearly reminder of the resurrection. We can hope in the fact that since we are in Christ, our story does not in in ashes. We are not left in the dark of the tomb.

May we not relegate the celebration of the resurrection to one day out of the year but to all the days for all the years God gives us. May we always be bold to proclaim that Christ is no longer dead but risen and alive and able to save to the uttermost. May we live as those who have been transformed by this resurrection power that now lives in us through the Holy Spirit. He is risen! He is risen indeed!

Invited (Good Friday 2026)

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I got a last minute invite from a friend to see Chris Tomlin’s Good Friday worship concert at Bridgestone Arena. He knew someone who had a suite and couldn’t use the tickets, so he got one and invited me to tag along. We got to sit in comfortable chairs and eat free food. Plus there was a concert.

The concert itself was amazing. Chris sang all of his familiar songs that churches have been worshipping with for years. He had a few special guests, including one Michael W. Smith, to help lead us in worship. The highlight of the evening was hearing David Nassar speak. He mentioned hearing a young Iranian girl named Goinosh singing the song Holy Forever in Farsi at 4 am. Lo and behold, they brought her out on stage to sing it in Farsi while the crowd sang it in English.

The best part was that I didn’t have to pay. I knew someone who knew someone, so when I arrived, all I had to do was walk into the suite and enjoy the show. My ticket had already been paid for.

It struck me how that’s a picture of heaven. One day, I’ll show up at those proverbial pearly gates. I won’t have to fork over a large sum of cash or prove a lifetime of good deeds to get in. When I arrive, I can honestly tell them that my purchase price to get in has already been paid in full.

I love the illustration that Allistair Begg uses about the thief on the cross on his first day in heaven. There’s all these angels asking him all sorts of questions about theological concepts that he doesn’t know the answers to. When they ask how he got in, he said, “The Man on the middle cross said I could come.”

That will be my answer if anyone asks. It won’t be because of my sinless life. It won’t be because my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds. It won’t be because God ignored my sin. It will be because once I asked Jesus to save me from my sin and to be my Lord and Savior. I invited Him to live in my heart.

This invitation isn’t just for a future residence in heaven. It gets me into the throne of grace anytime I’m in need. It gets the Holy Spirit inside of me, enabling me to live a life worthy of God. Right now, I have everything I need for life and godliness. Right now, I have 100% of God in me and with me and for me.

My invitation, bought and paid for, is the same that’s offered to anyone who says yes to Jesus. Anyone who repents and believes in Jesus Christ for salvation. It’s not just a ticket to get into heaven, but an invitation into an abundant life in Jesus that starts right now.

Maundy Thursday 2026

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I love a good Maundy Thursday service, or at least the way my church does it. After growing up in old-school Baptist churches, I’ve loved being introduced to some more liturgical aspects of the calendar year, like Advent and Lent. I especially love the idea of commemorating the week leading up to Easter Sunday.

Our Maundy Thursday service is very low-key. We typically have one person playing music in an atmosphere of reflection and contemplation. There’s no sermon, only a rotating set of slides with verses from Isaiah 53 and other verses relating to the crucifixion. Two deacons stand in the front of the sanctuary ready to offer the elements of the Lord’s Supper.

To appreciate Easter Sunday more fully, it’s good to remember what led up to it. We need to walk through the last supper of Christ with His disciples. We need to see Him in the garden, praying that the cup might pass but also praying not my will but Thine. We need to relive the arrest, the trial, and the crucifixion.

It’s easy to read those passages in light of the resurrection, but I think we miss something. Those disciples were genuinely grieving the loss of their Lord. They had no idea that the bloodied body they saw buried in the tomb would rise out of it three days later. Sure, they heard what Jesus had told them, but it didn’t make sense, along with 90% of what Jesus spoke to them.

Easter means something because Jesus really was dead. Not to go into graphic gory detail, but most paintings and other depictions of Jesus on the cross don’t really do it justice. Isaiah 52 says that He wasn’t even recognizable as human. I still think that if you filmed the crucifixion with 100% biblical accuracy, it’d get an NC-17 or get censored because it would be way too gory and graphic for most people.

That’s what was in the tomb. That’s why Easter is a big deal. Easter means that there’s no such thing as a lost cause or a hopeless situation. Easter means that the same death that couldn’t hold Jesus in the grave will not have the last word. Jesus has overcome death, the grave, and hell and the victory is already won.

I don’t want to rush into the celebration this time. I want to take it all in as best as I can. I want to weep with the disciples and remember that Jesus wept over Lazarus as well, knowing full well that He was about to call him out of his own grave. Easter means that just as Jesus endured the cross for the joy that awaited, so we can endure anything when we know that Easter Sunday is on the other side of our suffering.

The Rock of Ages

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I learned something else new today. Or at least I made a connection that I hadn’t previously.

It’s from a daily email I get with snippets of writings from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, former pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.

He starts off by describing the Israelites wandering in the desert, complaining as usual. This time it was a lack of water, which is a very real threat when you’re in the desert because the human body can only go without water for a very short amount of time and water sources in your typical desert are scarce.

But God leads them to Rephidim and commands Moses to strike a large rock with his staff. Lo and behold, water comes forth from the rock, enough to quench the thirst of every last one of the Israelites. 1 Cointhians 10:4 say that they “all drank from the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock, and that Rock was Christ.”

Fast forward to Jesus on the cross, the Rock of ages cleft for me (as the old hymn goes). What happened? After He died, the soldier stuck a spear into His side and what came out? Blood and water. Isaiah 53 says that He was stricken and smitten by God because of our sins, and what flowed out was water that gives life.

He had said earlier to the woman at the well that He was the Living Water, and whoever drank from Him would never thirst again. Once again, the Old Testament is pointing to Jesus for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. We only have to know where to look and what to look for.

I’m thankful every day that the Rock of Ages was crushed and smitten for us. I’m thankful that He laid down His life for His people so that we could live. I hope I never get tired of hearing the Easter story as much as the Christmas story, because they both point to a Savior who came for me to rescue me from myself and my sin. When we couldn’t get to God, He came to us.

Hallelujah! What a Savior!