Redeeming Church Archives - Page 3 of 21

Since the gospel is about way more than just receiving eternal life but is also about how God’s people are to live their lives in this world, then the goal of living out the gospel is not primarily to rescue people from hell so they can go to heaven when they die.

The goal is not to get people into heaven from earth.

Instead, the main goal of the gospel is to get heaven down to earth.

The goal of the gospel is to reconnect heaven and earth. To reintroduce the rule and reign of God to earth. To reinstate the Kingdom of God on earth so that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

While this perfect reunion between heaven and earth will never fully be accomplished until Jesus Christ returns and the new heavens and new earth are recreated as one, the goal of the gospel is that we live now in light of that future reality.

The gospel calls us to live as if that future reality existed now.

The goal of living out the gospel in this way is to show people that God is redeeming and restoring and reconciling all things through the gospel. The gospel invites us to begin right here and right now to experience some of these future realities by how we live and love and act among each other in this life.

We are not here on earth simply to twiddle our thumbs while we wait for heaven.

Instead, we remain here on earth to model for other people the gospel way of life that God has built and prepared for us and which we can experience in all its glory in the future heaven and earth.

The goal of the gospel is to live out the reality of the gospel here and now so that heaven and earth are reunited in small ways as they will ultimately and finally be reunited in all ways. When people see our lives lived in light of this future reality, they recognize the desires of their hearts, and will long to join with us in our gospel-filled lives.

While it is good to be excited about going to heaven when you die, Christians should also get excited about bringing heaven to earth while we live.

Want to learn more about the gospel? Take my new course, "The Gospel According to Scripture."

The entire course is free for those who join my online Discipleship group here on RedeemingGod.com. I can't wait to see you inside the course!

Don’t become a Christian clone

By Jeremy Myers

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If Scripture reveals anything to us about people who live in light of the gospel, it is that the gospel does not make us into clones. The gospel is not about making Christian clones.

Humanity consists of a wide diversity of people, which means that when the gospel is lived out in human life, it will take a wide diversity of forms and applications. … So be generous and gracious as different people live out the gospel in different ways.

Instead, the gospel calls out the best in people so that they can use their God-given strengths, talents, abilities, and desires to glorify God and further amplify the impact of the gospel in this world. The gospel, when rightly lived, will not cause all Christians to look, act, and talk the same, but will cause all Christians to celebrate their diversity and follow Jesus wherever He leads, even if it is in opposite directions.

The sooner we recognize this, the better off we’ll be. Gospel unity does not mean Gospel uniformity, but the willingness to allow gospel diversity.

Ministry Disagreements with Paul and Barnabas

Take Paul and Barnabas as an example. In their first missionary journey, they brought John Mark with them. But for various reasons, John Mark returned home before finishing the trip. Because of this, Paul insisted that John Mark not go with them on a second missionary journey, but Barnabas, being the encourager that he was, wanted to give John Mark a second chance. When they were not able to agree, Barnabas went off with John Mark and Paul chose Silas as his missionary companion (Acts 15:36-40).

So who was right and who was wrong?

The eventual answer of Scripture is that both were right. Paul and Silas get most of the attention in Acts, but John Mark later becomes very important and helpful to Paul (Col 4:10).

Apparently, God preferred to have two teams of people living out the gospel in opposite directions and in different ways than just one team. It is not that one person was right and one person was wrong. Both had different visions, plans, dreams, goals, and strengths, and God wanted each to use these differences in their own way to live out the gospel in the various ways He had called them.

How to live in unity with others

This idea might help various groups of Christians understand each other better and work together in peace and unity.

If there is a local church where half the people want contemporary music and half want traditional hymns, both sides can stop accusing the other of cultural compromise or religious traditionalism and instead recognize that it takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people, and that the two groups can either go their separate ways in peace.

Maybe God prefers to have two teams of people joyfully singing about the gospel in their own ways than to have one team of people where everybody is bitter, bored, and angry about the music that touches none of their hearts. The same sort of approach could be applied to nearly every divisive issue in the church.

The truth of the gospel is that when we live it out in our lives, there is no perfect, biblical blueprint that we are to model ourselves after. God needs all kinds of people to reach all kinds of people.

Want to learn more about the gospel? Take my new course, "The Gospel According to Scripture."

The entire course is free for those who join my online Discipleship group here on RedeemingGod.com. I can't wait to see you inside the course!

How you can reach 54,000 people with the Gospel

By Jeremy Myers

2 Comments

Did you know I recently started a membership area on my website?

Well, I did.

But it definitely wasn’t so that I could charge you for my teachings. Frankly, if I could give away for free everything I write and teach, I would.

No, the actual reason I started a membership area was so that I can hopefully continue to write and teach on this site. Recently I have been wondering if I should just shut it all down. The membership area is my attempt to say “Open.”

Let me explain …

I am a Missionary

Though you may not realize it, I am a “missionary” to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Every month, about 250,000 people read articles from my website, and a large percentage of those people are from Africa and Asia. In North America and Europe, a large percentage of the people who read my site are High School and College students.

Many of these people are hearing for the very first time about God’s love, grace, and forgiveness for them. People around the world send me scores of personal emails every single week about sins they have committed and questions about whether not God can forgive them and still love them. My online “mission” work allows me to share the good news with them about God’s grace, love, and forgiveness as found in Jesus Christ.

But all of this work I do is not without expense. Everything I do online costs me about $500 each month.

My Missionary Expenses are $500 per Month

My hosting fees, email company, software licenses, and audio file storage fees average about $500 each month. I do not take a salary or pay myself for my time. This website is not my job. The 30 hours per week I devote to this website are my donation to the mission of the site. But I don’t make enough from my regular day job to also cover all the expenses of running this site.

In the past, I have tired to cover the costs of running this website through book sales and advertising, but my revenue from these only cover about 60%-80% of my expenses. Somehow, I need to make up that deficit of $100-$200 each month.

Last year, I put out a call for donations. Several people generously donated, allowing me to operate “in the black” for a few months.

But I hate asking people for money. I hate asking for people to give to me their hard-earned income. Asking people to donate money makes me feel queasy.

So this year, I decided to start a membership area on my site. This allows people like you to support the work I am doing around the world, while at the same time, it allows me to give something valuable and beneficial back to you. The membership area of my site allows me to say “Thank you” in a big way to those who choose to support my writing and teaching.

So would you please consider joining me in this way?

If you think about it, I am reaching 250,000 people per month for only $500. That’s five people per penny. If you join my “Hope” Membership level at $9 per month, you are helping reach 4,500 people per month with the truth about God’s love and grace. That’s 54,000 a year! I challenge you to find another mission or ministry which can do that.

And guess what? Right now, I only need 15-20 people to make up the deficit in my monthly budget. Would you consider being one of those 15-20 people? I would really, really appreciate it, and so will the millions of people of Africa and Asia and the high school and college students who will visit my website this coming year. Go here to join now.

Now, what happens if I get more than 20 people to help support my work? The answer is that I will start making scholarship memberships available to those who need it most.

Since I started the membership area on my site, I have received dozens of requests from people around the world for free memberships. People from Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Philippines, and Indonesia, as well as several people here in the United States have emailed asking if there are scholarships available to my site. They want to take the courses and learn about the Gospels, but they don’t make enough money to afford the $9 per month. I understand. In many places in Africa and Asia, $9 per month is A LOT of money.

If I end up getting more support than I need to cover my expenses, I will start giving away free membership scholarships to people who need and want them, but who cannot afford them. My long-term goals include a certification process so that we can train and send out local missionaries in Africa and Asia. But that is getting way ahead of ourselves…

So if you want to help me reach 54,000 people with the Gospel this coming year, would you become a “Hope” or “Love” member of RedeemingGod.com? The “Hope” Membership costs $9 per month, and the “Love” Membership is only $89 per year. Both get full access to all my online theology courses, as well as several free eBooks and other benefits. Most of all, those membership fees help this site stay up and running, and enable me to keep writing and teaching so that others around the world can hear about the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ.

Would you join my Membership area this year and in so doing, let me become one of the missionaries you support? Thank you so much.

Does a Muslim need to become a Christian in order to follow Jesus?

By Jeremy Myers

57 Comments

This is a guest post by Jim Baton. Jim is an author and peacemaker between Christians and Muslims. Learn more at www.jimbaton.com

Note from Jeremy Myers: If you would like to write a Guest Post for RedeemingGod, begin by reading the Guest Blogger Guidelines.

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but a book with a poorly arranged or offensive cover rarely tempts you to pick it up and look inside. On the other hand, packaging that’s attractive to you can move you to take a closer look.

A few years ago a young Muslim woman came to us in great need. She had encountered Jesus through a dream and a dramatic healing, loved him whole-heartedly, and loved reading the Bible. But her family reacted as though she was betraying them and was hunting for her to kill her!

At first I thought her biggest issue would be the rejection of her family. I was surprised when she said that she came to us to learn how to tell her family about Jesus in a way they could understand. And the deepest struggle in her life was actually that she felt like a fish out of water in the church!

My family had lived for many years in a Muslim nation and understood this complex social dynamic well. The young woman had left a community where religion and extended family were a part of every aspect of her life. Losing that sense of community created a profound loneliness. She knew no one she could share this faith-journey with who was from her own language and culture.

Meanwhile, she’d been accepted into a local Christian community of a different ethnicity, language and culture, that encouraged her to dress differently (remove her head covering), eat differently (try some pork!), pray differently (fold your hands), change all her holidays (dropping Idul Fitri for Christmas), and so on.

She never felt like she belonged. She never felt like she could be herself.

Then we told her something that brought life back into her eyes. She told us this was the best news that she’d ever heard.

We told her she didn’t have to become a Christian to follow Jesus.

What did we mean by that? We meant that she didn’t need to join a local church, change her habits and holidays, or start identifying herself by the religion of “Christian.” She had already received the Gospel—she’d received Jesus. He is the Good News, and he doesn’t require us to accept him with unwanted, even offensive, packaging.

What would be better, we told her, was if she would bring Jesus into her world of head coverings and kosher food and Idul Fitri celebrations, and into her family.

Jesus experienced a similar encounter in John 4 when he met the Samaritan woman at the well. The religious culture of his day dictated that there should be a firm wall between Jews and Samaritans, between men and women, between the righteous and the sinner. Jesus didn’t call out to her from his side of the wall for her to change before she could approach him. He crossed over to her side of the wall.

When she brought up the theological wall that should separate them (the proper place of worship), Jesus emphasized that what God was really looking for was worship that came from the inside—“worship in spirit and in truth.” The word “spirit” is the same word for “breath”; the word for “truth” is where we get the word “reality.” God was looking for those whose very breath called out to him; whose worship was real.

The Samaritan woman got this revelation—she could be a worshipper too, just the way she was! She raced back to tell her village, and brought Jesus home to them. So we have the very first account in history of an entire village believing in Jesus as their Messiah, and they weren’t even Jewish! They were from a different religion! They may have never accepted the truth if Jews had brought it to them in a Jewish package, but Jesus broke through every wall for them. They got the Gospel because they got Jesus.

There are people all around us from different ethnic, cultural and religious (or non-religious) backgrounds who have no interest in our churches or our institutional Christianity. They feel they wouldn’t fit in there. But that doesn’t mean they might not want Jesus. They may need to encounter him freed from our unwanted Christian packaging. It may require us going to where they are instead of waiting for them to come to us.

Today my Muslim friend still covers her head, eats no pork, and celebrates Idul Fitri. She’s also introduced her whole extended family to Jesus, and many have received him as their Messiah too. She’s learned to build friendships with Christians, while being herself, and letting Jesus incarnate once again into her skin.

She got the Gospel—she got Jesus.

What do you think of how we responded to this woman? Should we have told her that to truly follow Jesus, she needs to give up her head coverings, start eating pork, and start celebrating Christmas instead of Idul Fitri? Or was our response in line with the Gospel and the example of Jesus, as we allowed Jesus to truly incarnate Himself and the Gospel in this woman’s life, family, and culture? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Is God a wife beater?

By Jeremy Myers

9 Comments

Here’s a question for you:

Is God a wife beater?

The God that is often portrayed by many pastors and many Christian books is a God who wants to inflict pain on you for your sin.

His wrath is terrible. His vengeance fierce. His anger is poured out upon sinners.

And so when you sin, you better watch out, because God is going to get you!

When we remember that the church is referred to as the “Bride of Christ” and we recognize that Jesus represents God, this whole angry-God imagery makes people think of God as a wife beater.

And do you want to know where this imagery of God begins? It begins in the very beginning, when God sets out to inflict pain on Eve because she ate the wrong piece of fruit (Genesis 3:16).

Imagine you are walking through the park one day and you hear a man saying this to his wife:

I can’t believe you ate my pear! When we get home, are you ever going to get it! That was MY pear! I told you not to eat it! When we get home I am going to beat you so hard! I am going to pound you into a pulp. You have never have known such pain! I will inflict pain on you such as you have never imagined! And you know what? I’m going to beat our daughters too. They need to learn to mind me and obey me. They need to learn to do what I say. So I’m going to whip you good and then whip our daughters.

I believe if you heard this, you would call the police immediately. At least, I hope you would.

And yet, in Genesis 3:16, here is what God says to Eve:

I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children.

Why does God say He is going to “bring the pain”? Because Eve ate a piece of fruit she wasn’t supposed to. Yes, yes, I know there was more to it than this, but even still ….

It just doesn’t seem right for God to inflict pain on Eve for what happened, and not only on Eve, but on all women who follow after her as well.

The traditional way of reading Genesis 3:16 has God inflicting pain on Eve and all her daughters because Eve ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Does this sound much like a God you want to love, honor, and serve?

Well…

I’m going to try to resolve most of these issues in an upcoming podcast episode. This episode was supposed to be done this Thursday, but I’ll be honest … Genesis 3:16 “brought the pain” to me as well. So far, in the last two weeks, I have logged over 20 hours just studying this one single verse. Actually, I spent this time on just the first half of the verse, the part I quoted above.

I think I have a pretty good solution to the problem of God inflicting pain on women, which I will present in my podcast when it comes out, but I am not yet ready to record it. Hopefully by next week.

But guess what? There is still plenty you can listen to between now and then! I was recently interviewed by two different podcasts, and here the links so you can go listen to them. The “Life Uncut” podcast will have a “Part 2” later, so I will include it then. Make sure you subscribe to both of the podcasts as well, since both are fantastic.

Holy Soup Podcast

Thom Shultz, CEO of Group Publishing, Interviews me about Biblical Illiteracy (and why I don’t think it is a crisis in the church).

Listen and subscribe Here

Life Uncut Podcast

A Discussion with Tom Walter and Jeremy Myers. This is only Part 1, and I imagine that Part 2 will be out next week.

Listen and Subscribe Here

1 Goal for living out the Gospel in your life

Don’t become a Christian clone

Ministry Disagreements with Paul and Barnabas

How to live in unity with others

How you can reach 54,000 people with the Gospel

I am a Missionary

My Missionary Expenses are $500 per Month

So would you please consider joining me in this way?

Does a Muslim need to become a Christian in order to follow Jesus?

Is God a wife beater?

Is God a wife beater?

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Life Uncut Podcast

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