I have prayed for Josh Hamilton more than any other professional athlete. Just to be honest I don’t pray for professional athletes all that often. But, every time I see Josh Hamilton on the field or in an interview, I am prompted to pray for him.

The reason I pray for him really has little to do with his success. Except that I would know nothing of him if he wasn’t a successful MLB player. These days my prayers on behalf of Hamilton have much more to do with his failures.

Hamilton has been very open about his past drug addiction and his continued struggles. I cannot help but feel if he had been more private about these things I would never have been prompted to pray for him in this way. I actually believe that if he hid them, as a fan, I would feel betrayed each time I found out about them. And yet, the opposite has been true for me and many more baseball fans. It’s the openness about his struggles that have caused me to be concerned with his spiritual welfare.

The church can learn from such openness. We are subtly convinced that it is our successes as Christians that bind us together. Tragically, this is why so many in the church struggle with serious sin and we never know about it. When such sin is uncovered and brought to light both sides feel betrayed.

The exact opposite should be true. It’s our collective need for Christ that binds us together. We are to be reminded of this need as we all continually cultivate a healthy openness in the life of the church concerning our failures. The more we hide our sin the more we lessen the awareness of our need for a Savior.

Let me be clear, in no way should we create environments that magnify sin for sin sake. Satan loves it when Christians worship their sin more than they worship Jesus. If we stop at sin and never get to the Savior we are just as bad off. And yet, being honest about how good we are at sinning, magnifies the greatness of our Savior’s success in saving us. Being honest about our struggles brings us together and ties our hearts together to the cross.

Here’s a video after from Hamilton’s four HR game earlier this week. Admire and appreciate the success of this talented athlete. Join me in praying for him in his continued battles with sin. May his story remind us to pray more fervently for one another.

From Southern Racist to Adoptive Dad 

I was born and raised in the South. The roots I have in the state of Tennessee run deep.  I firmly believe that in Heaven my granny’s syrupy sweet tea will be served with lunch on Sundays. I still love the same kind of country music our local station played through the static on my great grandmother’s cheap kitchen radio.

With much pride, I embrace my southern heritage. And yet, there is one connection with my past for which I am abundantly ashamed.

I was a racist!

It turns my stomach but I cannot deny that racism was a part of the way I was raised.  Now, it wasn’t the sort of violent racism of the 50s and 60s. I wasn’t scandalized that black people drank from the same water fountains I did. We attended the same schools, played on the same sports teams, and it all seemed right.

It wasn’t until we gathered for dinner on Sundays that the racist residue of our past could be smelled.  It was in the secret of heated church business meetings that our prejudices were defended as even being biblical.

For reasons unknown to me at the time, we still had to protect our families and churches from becoming ‘mixed.’  After all we were told, “Birds of a feather flock together.”  And even, Moses was forbidden to intermarry. (Numbers 12:1)

Such thinking didn’t stop us from praying for the lost in Africa during our prayer meetings. We even held backyard bible clubs in predominantly black areas in nearby inner cities. We had no problem going to them.  We just didn’t want them ever coming to us.

The subtly of the sin I willingly embraced was just as loud as the color of orange I still wear as loyal Tennessee Vol fan.  Its hard to believe I didn’t see it just as clearly.

As a young Bible college student I began to see that God’s family, the church, is designed to be a mixed with more than just different skin tones. His plan is to adopt people from every race and culture into one family. (Revelation 5:9)  I came to see that using, ‘ya’ll’ when talking about the church is more than acceptable. And yet, Jesus’ bride isn’t just white with a southern accent.

This new way of thinking led to some heated debates with a few relatives.  It also led my wife and I to adopt two boys from Ethiopia.  It was on July 13, 2009, that these abstract theological concepts of race and adoption became a living, breathing rebuke to all I use to think and believe.

The racism I formerly embraced now followed me to the grocery store. I began to notice second glances from others upon seeing a white dad with two black sons.  My prejudices cornered me when people would ask me, “Why black kids?”  The sins of my past haunted me when I heard folks begin their sentences with, “I’m not racist but…”

For some time I found myself constantly irritated with the racist tendencies of others. Then I realized why. The reason I know what’s behind their stares and comments, is because the same foolishness was once in me.  No longer was my anger directed solely toward relatives who still use the ‘N’ word.  My indignation toward racism had to first be stared down in the mirror.

Through the process of adoption that God has thoroughly transformed my thoughts about race. He is also changing many in my family through two black boys who now share the same heritage and last name as their white grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

And yet this is the same story Jesus is telling over and over in the world.  As He builds his church, racists from Tennessee to Zimbabwe are to take notice of the many shades and colors of Jesus’ brothers and sisters.  Our prayer should be that they not only hear us sing, “Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world.”  But that they will come to know its true and begin to sing with us, “Red, yellow, black and white, and even former racist like me.”

I’m thrilled to be one of the pastors who will be preaching through this sermon series at Ashland. I am anxious to see how God uses this series in my own life as well as our church family in Lexington and Madison County. Check out the outline of the series below and begin praying for Resolve in your own life.

Acts 1 The Plan of Acts

• Kingdom Purpose Acts 1:1-11 April 29

Acts 2-7 Jerusalem

• Kingdom Power Acts 2:1-13 May 6
• Kingdom Community Acts 2:42-47 (4:32-37) May 13
• Kingdom Witness Acts 3:11-26 May 20
• Kingdom Boldness Acts 4:1-31 May 27
• Kingdom Servants Acts 6:1-7 June 3

Acts 8-12 Judea and Samaria

• Kingdom Warfare Acts 8:1-13 June 10
• Kingdom Conversion Acts 9:1-19 June 17
• Kingdom Vision Acts 11:1-18 June 24

Acts 13-28 The Ends of the Earth

• Kingdom Missions Acts 13:1-12 (14:24-28) July 1
• Kingdom Preaching Acts 13:13-43 July 8
• Kingdom Hope Acts 16:1-15 July 15
• Kingdom Apologetics Acts 17:16-34 July 22
• Kingdom Advance Acts 28:17-31 July 29

This can be found as a chapter in “A Guide to Adoption and Orphan Care” Edited by Dr. Russell Moore. The whole book can be purchased here.

By Jeremy Haskins

Lunch time can be a chaotic in our home. Each day, when my wife calls our six kids to the table, it can get crazy.  To help with the chaos, our kids have assigned seats. However, one day my wife decided to break the norm and let the youngest, Jonah, assign everyone different seats.

Jonah lined everyone up and began seating them by saying, “Okay, I want the boys on this side of the table.  Now, I want the girls on that side of the table.”  Then turning to his brother Isaac, who was adopted from Ethiopia along with him, he said, “Okay Isaac. Now, I want the Browns to sit over here.” Everyone in the kitchen burst into laughter!

Apparently, in Jonah’s eyes, we have girls, boys, and browns in our family. My wife and I made sure to use this as an opportunity to teach our kids how to delight in their differences without segregating the lunch table.  While we must point out the wonderful distinctions we have in our family, we must make sure our kids know they all have the equal standing as Haskins.

This tendency to segregate around the table has always been a problem for the church. We see all over the churches in our New Testament.  As folks enter the church, first-century ushers were meeting them at the door directing traffic, “Jews over here.  Gentiles over there. Masters over there with your slaves seated at your feet.  Men here. Women there.”  And yet the Spirit stepped in to speak to the distinctions in the church saying, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

And the Spirit’s message still has to be applied to the church today. While the categories are different in our churches, the problem is still the same. And yet, through preaching of the gospel that cultivates a culture of adoption we are called to change the way we view seating charts in the church.

Adoption Culture: Not just tacking it on

I can assure you that all the sermons I heard in the small town church I grew up in had the gospel in them.  My pastors where intentional in this way. If the passage didn’t seem to be evangelistic enough, he would make sure to tack on John 3:16 and an invitation at the end.

All of my pastors growing up loved the gospel and wanted people to come to Jesus. Their heart was to make sure they got the gospel in every service.  And yet, such practice often leads to a tack it on kind of understanding of the gospel. Whatever you’re going to do you’ve got to tack on the gospel.

This is how many view the ministries we have in the context of our churches.  People who truly love the gospel see needs.  They start meeting those needs.  They then petition the church to make meeting these needs official ministries in the church.  To make the ministry legitimate we have to somehow tack the gospel onto it.  The thought is that if the gospel doesn’t fit with the ministry we should not be doing it.  The problem too often with this approach to ministry is that when the people who started the ministry fizzle out so does the ministry.  And by just tacking the gospel on its sure to eventually fizzle out.

The most effective way to create and cultivate our ministries in the church is to let it flow out of our understanding of the gospel.  And there is no other ministry where this is more important than ministering to orphans and vulnerable children.

This is why at Ashland Avenue Baptist in Lexington, Kentucky, where I serve as the Mission Pastor, we consciously chose to avoid using the phrase ‘adoption ministry’ when we talk about leading and helping families adopt children and caring for orphans.  Our desire is to cultivate a culture driven by the truth of our adoption in Christ.  A culture of adoption when cultivated by the constant and consistent preaching of the gospel not only leads to church unity but a greater fervency to rescue children from around the world who need adoption.

Adoption Culture: Understanding who we “really” are

An adoption culture begins with the constant reminder that we are all ex-orphans. What changed everything for us? Adoption! The good news of the gospel is that by God’s grace through faith we have experienced adoption. In the Son, our status is transformed from poverty stricken orphans to wealthy heirs of God’s eternal kingdom. This truth of the gospel for us has got to be cherished in every home, not just in homes with adopted children.

The danger of creating an adoption ministry apart from this truth is that it only leads to another line in your church’s budget.  It will become a ministry relegated to only adoptive families and social workers in your church.  People who are personally affected by the orphan crisis on a daily basis.  In an adoption culture, everyone has been transformed by the act of adoption and this naturally leads to a desire to rid the world of orphans, both physically and spiritually.

Adoption Culture: Helping Everyone Make the Connection

The doctrine of adoption in our churches moves us beyond the thought that adoption is only something for infertile couples and families who really love children in need.  We have to make the connection for our people between the act of adoption and our existence in the church.  The terms brother and sister have to be more than cordial greetings.  When we do folks begin to realize these people really are my brothers in Christ! And a whole new family life is opened up for them in the context of the local church.  This requires that we be intentional and concrete about what the gospel means.

There is much talk today about being gospel-centered.  I believe this is good and healthy for the church, as longs as, it doesn’t keep concepts of grace and mercy in the abstract.  Being gospel-centered must also move people beyond individualistic approach of applying the gospel to seeing how the gospel applies in the context of their own local church.

To do this you have to be intentional and specific.  People have to be taught to see how our adoption in Christ changes the way we think about our fellowship with the single mom sitting next to us on Sunday whose rowdy kids continue to distract us in worship.  In Christ, she is a fellow heir not someone who deserves to be seated with her disruptive kids some where else.

We have to be led to recognize how the family with one kid from Kentucky and another from Kyrgyzstan signals to the cosmos that the gospel transcends bloodlines and makes Christian unity possible.  This can only be done through an aggressive intentionality in our preaching that is constantly and consistently applying the gospel to the life of the church.

Adoption Culture: Ex Orphans Together For Adoption

How does this affect the plight of 145 million orphans and vulnerable children around the world?

To begin with we need everyone in the church involved in orphan care.  We need the 90-year-old woman on a fixed income, who will never adopt.  She will never travel to Peru and serve in an orphanage. But you need her connected to orphan care somehow. How are you going to connect her to the need?  What is the best way to make the orphan crisis real to her?  When the reality that she is an ex-orphan who has been rescued by the grace of God in Christ becomes real, she will not want to just sit on the sidelines.

But apart from the gospel and outside an adoption culture this call to every member makes no sense.  By cultivating an adoption culture, through connecting the dots for people, they realize that no matter who, they are have a responsibility to care for all orphans physically and spiritually in some way.

In an adoption culture, this reality is constantly pressed upon us.  Not just the way we cast a vision for caring for children without families.  Its how we understand our mission to reach those apart from the family of God.

Adoption Culture: A Theology of Mission

In an adoption culture, the church is able to develop a clear theology of God’s mission in the world.  They begin to understand that God is not just generically collecting a faceless group of people out of the world. But, He is determined to form a specific family for Himself, the church. Within an adoption culture they realize this family is their family even though it is ultimately made up of people from every tribe, language, nation, and people. (Revelation 5:9)

In their minds, missions means family and central to the creating of this family is adoption.  And adoption is something they taste and see in their small groups each week as they live out gospel unity together in their church.  They begin to take on a new wisdom that Paul declares is, “the manifold wisdom of God is made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 3:10)

Adoption Culture: Even in the Andes Mountains  

In an adoption culture, we point out that this theology of mission, this wisdom, is not to be abstract it is to be experienced in our pews each week, as well as, the church’s we plant around the world.

For example, one of our church planting efforts is taking place in the village of Cordova, Peru, in the Andes Mountains. The driving hope of each child in Cordova is to simply endure each day long enough to get a well paying job in the mines or head to a nearby city to further their education. And yet, making their way through college or finding a better life outside of Cordova as ‘mountain people’ is very difficult in Peru.  The possibility that they would end up homeless in one Peru’s major cities is very real for each of the children we minister to in the village.

Over the last five years this void of love and hope has, to some extent, been filled by a group of “gringos” from Lexington, Kentucky. We have personally witnessed a transformation among the youth of the village just by our presence.  Behind their shy looks and whispers to one another, they are overwhelmed with the fact that a group of American’s would travel to Cordova just to spend time with them.

Ministering to children in Cordova has helped to move forward our church planting efforts.  However, we must make sure not to see it as a ploy just to reach the adults.  We are actually demonstrating pure and undefiled religion in the face of this mountain’s ancient pagan practices.  This is crucial to the church-planting mandate that Jesus commanded when He called us to make disciples of all nations by, “teaching all that I have commanded you.”

The day we leave Cordova we must turn to see a church waging war against the Evil One through preaching the gospel, baptizing new followers of Christ, and gathering around the Lord’s Table.  And if we are to really teach them what these things mean, we will also turn to see them fighting back darkness by defending the fatherless and visiting the suffering children in their homes and on their streets.

Conclusion

An adoption culture is much bigger than one segmented group of people who are simply more passionate than everyone else in the church about helping kids in need.  It’s the whole church realizing we all are needy kids.  We all need a loving Father to rescue us and give us a family.  We need His care and discipline that teaches us how to love one another and serve those apart from our family.  This need can only be met by the power of the Spirit, through the kind of consistent preaching the gospel that constantly presses it’s implications upon the church, the adoptive family of God.

And, then there comes the news that another friend has cancer.  Or there is that voicemail from your own doctor that they need to run a few more tests. And we are found sitting in the surgery waiting room clasping the hands of our spouse wondering what’s next. That feeling of panic and anxiety keeps punching you in the gut while you grasp for some kind of power and realize, “I really have no control over any this!” Death reminds us whatever control we thought we have is only facade .

Try as we may to fight it with antibiotics, cosmetics products, and hand sanitizer, we cannot stop death. It’s coming.  We can’t stop it. We can’t control it.  Our only hope is One who can stop it. The One who does control all things, including our checking accounts and the food we stock in our kitchen pantry.

While death comes for us, there is One who came for death!

But it’s the way He, Jesus, came for death that is so scandalous. He came in a way that left those who saw Him wondering if even He could take control of this fierce opponent. He didn’t come for death blazing in with horses, tanks, and planes. Jesus chose to come in the form of a man.  And not the super-human type of man who defied gravity. He became the type of man who would eventually be susceptible to death. The enemy we fight against and try our best to avoid, He marched right up to… and He let win? He let death defeat Him!

And it’s the way that He let death win. He let death absolutely destroy Him. He subjected Himself to the most heinous of executions the world has ever seen and didn’t even put up a fight.  Being beaten to a bloody pulp, mocked as some clown – king, dragged through the streets with a 30 pound piece of wood falling off the mutilated flesh on his back, He didn’t say a word. (Mark 15:16-20)

Looking through His busted face and swollen eyes, He found no one to help Him. None of His friends were there.  There would be no rescue plan for Him. No jail break by the disciples who followed Him. He was left to a tourist to carry His cross.  Outside the city of Jerusalem, a place where He was suppose to plant His eternal throne, He was stapled to a pole and He suffocated to death. Death drug Him to a God forsaken trash heap for criminals and left Him to die.

Death in those moments seem to prove He had no control. There didn’t seem to be any Sovereignty on that day. Only Suffering.  And we are left with the question,”How could the One who was on mission to destroy death be left helpless hanging to death on a pole outside His city?”

He could have ransacked Jerusalem, over turned the government, and rightfully taken His throne in the middle of the city. He chose to be left helpless far from any sign of power, nailed to a cursed cross. And yet, it’s in His choosing to be there that we find His power.  For three days later, just like He said beforehand, in the most unlikely of ways He proved His Sovereignty.  He did something that no one else who has faced death has done.

As His corpse lay lifeless in the ground for two days, there didn’t seem any difference with this man and any other man.  But then, His eyelids flickered as His brain waves began to surge again. His lungs filled with air as His heart began to push the once stale blood through His body again. He stood up, stretched out His legs, and removed and folded the grave mask that was over His face. The moment His feet touched the concrete beneath His feet it all made sense. He really is the Defeater of death! The enemy we have no control over He had whipped by being whipped to death!

The penalty that all men deserve for their sins He endured.  That penalty of death was used up on Him. The One who never deserved to face the punishment of death faced it. (Romans 6:5-11) The One without sin died as a sinner forsaken by God. Now God has raised Him from the dead declaring it’s possible for anyone who believes in Him to have their sins forgiven. (Romans 4:23-25) By faith in Him, His death becomes your death and He promises, though you may die, you will never see death. You will live forever after walking from your coffin the same way He did. (John 8:51, Romans 6:5))

We have no control over death. Nor do we have the power for a resurrection. Jesus is the only one who has ever left his coffin empty by His own will. And it’s this vision that the word of God gives us to remind us that He is the only one who can raise us from the dead.

This vision of a death destroying Savior is the one we must have at those doctor’s visits and in those visitation lines at the funeral home. Places where our enemy reminds us we are not in control should remind us the enemy is no longer in control either. But, not only in these places where the aroma of death still lingers. It’s the vision of a once crucified Savior standing over His own grave that we must have while paying bills, changing diapers, and providing for our families.

After all, this is why God raised Him from the dead. So that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He, Jesus, is Lord. (Philippians 2:9-11)  Not just Lord over death but Lord over all of life as well. This is why God commands all men everywhere to repent and look to Jesus who He raised from the dead to rule forever. (Acts 17:29-31)

Death reminds us we are not in control. Death also drives us to the One who has complete control over life, death, resurrection and everything in between.

You probably won’t find too many churches following the liturgy in Leviticus. From a distance, it reads like a manual for some cult secretly meeting in a cave out in the woods somewhere. There’s lots of blood, guts, and animal skin. And yet, we cannot read this book from a distance. It has everything to do with life in your computer cubicle this morning and your bed time prayers for your children tonight.

This week our Equipped Wednesday Community Bible Study starts back up with the book of Leviticus. I’ll be posting the audio of our study here with some thoughts and reflections from time to time.

Here are some initial thoughts about the importance of studying Leviticus.

• Leviticus is in the Bible.

Leviticus is included in God’s Word that 2 Timothy 3:16-17 declares is, “breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. ” If it’s in the Bible, at some point, we have to deal with what God is trying to teach us about Himself and our lives from Leviticus.

• Leviticus is about Holiness.

Too often, we hear the word holiness and only think about the way we dress or the movies we watch. Some of us begin to think about all the Bible studies we have completed. All of this is involved in being holy, but it’s not all that’s involved.

Holiness is much more about God than us. The message of holiness in Leviticus is all about the authority of God to set us apart to Himself. The command rings throughout the book, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” And yet, the command is mixed with promise for the believer in Christ. For the One with the authority to demand it also has the authority to make it happen.

Dr. Allen Ross says this about Holiness in Leviticus:

“Holiness is its goal. Holiness is its character: the Lord is holy; His sanctuary is holy; its vessels are holy; the garments of the priests are holy; the sacrifices are most holy to the Lord; and all who approach him whose name is “Holy” – whether the priests who minister or the people who worship must themselves be holy. It is as if throughout Israel’s holy place was the earthly echo of that seraphic song in the courts above that never ceases to proclaim “holy, holy, holy.”

• Leviticus is about Jesus.

We read the book of Hebrews or Romans and realize very quickly that the scenery in Leviticus laid the theological foundation for what Jesus’ death on the cross provided for us before God. Jesus Himself taught His disciples about Leviticus and the rest of the Old Testament that, “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44) We cannot read Leviticus without hearing His Galilean accent leading us to His cross and resurrection.

We must also realize for us to be totally set apart to God the way in which He intends there has be the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. We are only holy when we are found in Him. Ultimately, this holiness is accomplished by the authority of Jesus to set us apart to Himself by calling us away from our own kingdom to follow Him and join His eternal kingdom.

•  It is anchored by the belief that there is something vitally unique and important about the preaching of the Word in the context of God’s people. This will hopefully lift up that time of preaching in my mind and heart to the place it should be.
•  It will allow me to meditate more fully on a single text each week and ask the Holy Spirit to deeply affect me with those truths.
• It will focus my mind and my heart in a single direction for a sustained period of time.
• It will aid my Scripture memory, allowing me to choose a single key verse from the weekly passage to continue to practice each day.

For anyone attending Ashland who may want to use this plan in 2012,  I wanted to post the next sermon series that will take us through Easter. As you can see, it moves through the book of Mark. You may want to read a chapter in Mark each day or narrow it down to the specific passage that we will be preaching.

 Jesus Changes Everything Expository Sermons from the Gospel of Mark

Jesus Changes . . .

• Our Direction Mark 1:14-20          (January 8)
• Eternity Mark 2:1-12                     (January 15)
• Relationships Mark 2:13-17        (January 22)
• Religion Mark 3:1-6                     (January 29)
• Our Family Mark 3:20-35            (February 5)
• Perception Mark 4:35-41           (February 12)
• Success Mark 6:14-29                (February 19)
• Hearts Mark 6:14-29                   (February 26)
• Power Mark 8:31-38                     (March 4)
• Hope Mark 9:14-29                      (March 11)
• Greatness Mark 10:35-45             (March 18)
• Our Fears Mark 14:66-72             (March 25)
• Suffering Mark 15:21-39               (April 1)
• Death Mark 16:1-8 8                     (Easter)

Second only to God’s grace to me in Christ, He was bringing into the world the greatest gift I have ever received. In Winter Garden, Florida, Rachel Danae Hoffmann was born. Danae is the most vivid example of the love and sacrifice of Jesus in my life.

As Charles Spurgeon once said of his wife, Susannah:

I have been thinking over my strange history, and musing on eternal love’s great river-head from which such streams of mercy have flowed to me. . . . Think of the love which gave me that dear lady for a wife, and made her such a wife; to me, the ideal wife, and, as I believe, without exaggeration or love-flourishing, the precise form in which God would make a woman for such a man as I am, if He designed her to be the greatest of all earthly blessings to him; and in some sense a spiritual blessing, too, for in that also am I richly profited by you, though you would not believe it. I will leave this ‘good matter’ ere the paper is covered; but not till I have sent you as many kisses as there are waves on the sea.

Happy Birthday Danae! You are the greatest of all earthly blessings to me!

“it’s like saying that the party that uses candles must be the true one because they’re shaped so much like sticks of gospel dynamite. The gospel was meant to explode with saving power the lives of politicians and social activists, not help them decorate their social agenda.” (John Piper Bloodlines pp84-85)