The idea that a timeless, eternal Being could be confined to space and time, or that the all-powerful Creator of the universe could make his appearance in the form of a fragile human infant, absolutely dependent upon the care of human parents that he created, is too much to take in. It’s no wonder so many still choose to close their eyes to the blinding light of truth that Jesus Christ really is the Son of God.

I have often wondered: How much did Joseph and Mary really comprehend about their son? Considering their backgrounds and culture, they would have been as much “in the dark” as everyone else concerning the foretold Messiah.

So when did their eyes and heart adjust to the blinding light of truth that Jesus really was the Son of God? How did they adjust their lives to the truth that the almighty, holy God who created them and would one day judge them was with them in human flesh—entrusted to their care?

Even after a visitation by the angel Gabriel with news that Mary would conceive by supernatural intervention of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35-38), even after Joseph’s dream (Matt 1:20-21), even after a visit by shepherds with reports of angelic messengers telling them of the birth and where to find the baby (Luke 2:8-19), Mary’s eyes and heart are still adjusting to the blinding light of truth that her baby is indeed the Son of God (Luke 2:20).

A few days later when Mary and Joseph took their newborn son to the Temple, a devout man and woman named Simeon and Anna bumped into the family and confirmed through prophetic messages that Jesus was the promised Messiah. And Mary and Joseph are still adjusting to the blinding truth that their son is the Son of God (Luke 2:25-35).

Twelve years later, Mary and Joseph take Jesus to Jerusalem for the Passover and lose him in the crowd. After a three-day search they find him in the Temple among the religious experts and teachers—and he is the one instructing them! Mary and Joseph’s eyes and hearts are still adjusting to the blinding light of truth that Jesus is the Son of God (Luke 2:41-51).

As you continue to read through the entire life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, you will find hints of how Mary and others were constantly caught in the blinding light of truth about Jesus—and themselves. Each time, there was an opportunity to close their eyes, retreat to the dark, and disbelieve what was revealed, or to allow their eyes and heart to adjust to the light of truth.

The light of truth may be a truth about your finances, your marriage, your career, your kids, your addictions. It may be a truth about God, your sin and moral failures, or your need for salvation, or a truth about Jesus. In every case, you can choose to walk in the light of truth, or close your eyes and disbelieve what has been revealed, retreating back to the dark and the way things used to be. But regardless of whether you choose to walk in the light or walk away from it, the light of truth will continue to shine and increase in intensity, becoming stronger and brighter, until it is obvious, unavoidable, and undeniable.

In Revelation 20:11-15, the Bible says that one day every person will stand before God’s “Great White Throne” of judgment. A literal translation would be “Great LIGHT Throne.” It will be the moment when the light of truth about who we are, all we have done, and who Jesus is and all he has done for us, shines the brightest upon us. We cannot hide from it, deny it, or turn away from it. Those who have chosen to walk in the light are welcomed into an eternal dwelling described as a City of Light. But those who have chosen to close their eyes and retreat to the dark are sent away into an eternal existence described as darkness—a place where there is no light. Jesus said if we hold to his teachings, we are his disciples, and eventually the truth that was once blinding will be liberating (John 8:31).

Are you walking in the light of truth about God, Jesus, yourself, and life, or are you choosing to close your eyes and walk away?

There are moments in life when we come face to face with reality—a truth that we did not know, or once knew but disregarded, or that we misunderstood. Suddenly it seems that everything we believed in, fought for, worked for, placed our future hopes and dreams upon, was wrong.

Let’s face it: There are some truths we just don’t want to know. Truths like: your kids aren’t perfect, your fiancé isn’t the person you thought they were, your marriage is in trouble, your budget is not sustainable, your business is not as successful as you want it to be or tell people it is, your health is in jeopardy.

We keep going, as if ignoring the truth will somehow make it not true. Ignorance may be bliss but it is temporary bliss. Families fall apart; businesses crash; homes are lost to foreclosure; all because we sometimes ignore what we know to be true.

Just as ignoring truth and reality never leads to a good outcome in relationships, families, business, and finances, ignoring truths regarding your relationship with God and your spiritual condition never leads to good outcomes either.

Everyone has a picture of how we want God and faith to be. Anything that deviates from our views and our desires about God and faith makes us very comfortable, and we often respond by becoming defensive and combative. But with every distorted view we have about God, there is a corresponding negative consequence. If we were brutally honest with ourselves, we might be dismayed to realize how much of our life is not based on truth, but on what we want to be true.

So what do you do when you realize you may be wrong?

In Acts 22:3-11 of the Bible, Saul (whose name was later changed to Paul) tells how he came to the realization that all of his conclusions about Jesus were wrong. Saul had devoted his life to learning all he could about Jewish faith, law, and prophecies, and along with most of his colleagues, concluded that Jesus was NOT the Son of God or Savior. Saul had it all figured out, until he figured out he had it all wrong.

Before his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus spoke directly to Jews who had no doubt had the same religious upbringing as Saul but had begun to believe in Jesus’ claims and teachings. Apparently they were struggling to fully embrace him as the Messiah, because so much of what he taught was different from what they had been previously taught or had come to believe.

John 8:31 says, “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”

Jesus knew that encountering truth is like walking out of a dark room into the bright sunlight: blinding, disorienting, paralyzing. The urge is strong to run back into the dark; to retreat to the old way of thinking and living. But Jesus encourages us to hold to His claims and teaching, to follow them, to live according to them, and stay in the light. He knows that eventually our eyes and heart will adjust. Then, over time, we will begin to see what we missed before. The truth that was offensive, annoying, and uncomfortable becomes liberating! 

What do you do when the claims or teachings or life and ministry of Jesus contradict what you were taught by others and believe to be right and true?

You can retreat from it, reject it, fight against it and go back to the old way of living, and hope that the truth will eventually no longer be true; or you can hold to it, align your life to it, until your eyes and heart adjust and you discover the freedom that comes from walking out of the dark and into the light.

Being a skeptic myself, I have personally wrestled with most of the questions submitted by people from our church and community. To be quite honest, I continue to wrestle with some of them. Yet I am still able to move forward in my faith and in pursuit of a relationship with God; not out of ignorance or arrogance but because in my faith, as in most areas of life, having all the answers is not necessary in order to keep moving forward. My faith continues to grow and flourish because I recognize that in others areas of life in which I do not have good answers to tough questions, the lack of answers doesn’t keep me from growing.

For example, I have lots of tough questions about our government that make me very skeptical. But I am a proud American, and I love my country and continue to move forward in participating in the political process. I have lots of tough questions about parenting; but I continue to move forward in my role as father to my four kids. I have lots of tough questions about marriage; but I continue to move forward in my role as a husband.

I know. Some of the hard-core skeptics out there are probably thinking, “That’s naïve and exactly what I would expect from a person of faith.” I’ve known many people who find the lack of answers to their tough questions paralyzing, preventing them from having faith in Christ or being open the reality of a loving God who is personally engaged in creation and the lives of people. I find it interesting that so few react that way to the tough questions about other issues of life, or in other fields of study.

Even if you had definitive answers to your toughest questions about life and faith, there are bound to be tougher question that we have yet to even ask. God is not threatened or insulted or in any way offended by our tough questions. The truth is that He invites us to present them and wrestle with Him over them. Isaiah 1:18 says, “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the LORD.” The word that we have translated as reason literally means “debate” or “argue.”

A woman at our church once commented, “I am glad I can finally come to church without feeling like I have to check my brain at the door.” Another recently wrote, “I have never been to a service where a pastor stated that they did not know the answers…and that is what we have been looking for: a person with the strength to admit that.”

I read an article a few years ago about NASA’s plans to send four astronauts to the moon in 2018. One of the NASA engineers made a statement I found particularly interesting. He said that the biggest difference between the mission planned for 2018 and the past lunar missions is that today we have answers to the tough questions that were basically unknown 40 years ago. Not having the answers to tough questions in 1969 did not keep us from reaching and walking on the moon; we just kept moving forward, basing our decisions and actions on what little we did know, until we reached the goal.

The prophet Isaiah wrote concerning God (55:9): “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are [God’s] ways higher than [man’s] ways and [God’s] thoughts than [man’s] thoughts.” The tough questions should always remind us of this truth. The tough questions should keep us moving forward towards God and not away from Him.

Patrick Ballington

The story of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was kidnapped at the age of 11 and spent the last 18 years living in her kidnapper’s backyard in a cluttered system of tents and storage buildings, has raised so many questions: How could she live so long in such deplorable conditions? How could she bond with her kidnapper and begin viewing him as a friend or family member who had her best interest at heart? How could she raise the children that resulted from her assailant’s sexual abuse to view him as “father”? Why did she not try to get away?

There’s a lot we could learn from Jaycee’s story. And perhaps the questions we want to ask her could be answered by asking them of ourselves.

To suggest that Jaycee’s abduction was traumatic is a massive understatement. This young girl was ripped from the safety and security of a loving and nurturing family by a man with purely selfish motives. She was used to feed his ungodly lust for control, power, and supremacy. It may never be known exactly what he said or did to convince Jaycee that she was better off with him than her real family; but over time Jaycee began to trust her captor and consider him her family. Gradually she became comfortable in the most uncomfortable of living conditions, and would call the filthy, cramped prison of her captor’s backyard “home.” She would give birth to children she conceived by force and who never knew life outside the confines of bondage and never had a relationship with a loving father who placed their needs above his own.

Eventually, the memories of the life she had before she was snatched away faded and were replaced by the reality of fear, sorrow, pain, and suffering. Since this was the only life her children ever knew, they considered this “normal.”

So we are left to wonder: Why didn’t she try to break free?

I don’t know. Why don’t we?

Think of the people living in the world’s “backyard” in bondage to drugs, alcohol, violence, abuse, poverty, greed, sexual immorality, anger, fear, gluttony, selfishness, and all kinds of sin. Some have been snatched away from the safety and security of our loving and nurturing Heavenly Father by the enemy of God and all humanity, while others have been enticed into walking away from God, deceived into believing they are better off on their own. We are all children born in captivity and told all sorts of lies about our Father and convinced that the life we have among the filth and depravity is normal. So many living right next door to us are deceived into believing it is normal to be addicted, normal to be beaten, normal to abuse their children, normal to neglect them, normal to live without food or shelter, normal to be violent, normal to be suicidal, normal to be greedy, normal to use others and be used by others, normal to lie, normal to steal, normal to cheat on a spouse, normal to believe that God has forgotten about them. They have been told over and over by the world, the educational system, the government, their fellow prisoners, and even by “the voices in their head” that there is no God—and if there is, He is not good, is not caring, is not loving, and is not concerned about them.

I can only imagine how difficult it was for Jaycee’s rescuers to convince her that the man she grew to accept as friend and that she introduced as her husband was actually her enemy. I can only imagine her disbelief as she was told of a better life outside the life she had been living, and her confusion and anxiety at being reunited with the real family she’d spent most of her life not knowing. But I have had many opportunities to witness the disbelief of people who have lived most of their lives far from God as they come to the realization that they have been kidnapped by the world and that there is a better life for them than the one they are now living. I have seen their anxiety as they wrestle with the realization that God loves them and has never forgotten them, but has been hidden from them by a deception that kept them running away from God instead of toward Him. And then there are those special, emotional moments when I have had the thrill of helping those held captive by sin and selfishness to be liberated and reunited with their loving Father, who was always near and just waiting for them to call out to Him.

So again, why didn’t Jaycee call out for help?

To begin to get at that answer, just ask yourself: “Why don’t I?”

The part about remaining in Christ (that is, staying fully engaged in a relationship with him and committed to his claims, teachings, example, and works) is often a challenge, but it’s very appealing to anyone who is searching for meaning and purpose in life, and a right relationship with God. The part that’s not quite so appealing is the part where Jesus suggests that God is active in pruning our lives.

For whatever reason, the vast majority of us tend to read the Bible and evaluate the activity of God solely through the filter of America. Doing so has sometimes resulted in subtle but dangerous interpretations that come more from a capitalistic free-market economic society than from Scripture. We tend to focus on verses that speak to our prosperity and filter out those that speak to our depravity. We interpret the abundance that comes with economic growth as coming from God, and difficult times of shortage and loss as attacks of Satan. But real life would suggest otherwise.

Just look at the many celebrities who acquire riches and financial security through moral compromise and depravity. They prosper but are clearly living lives disconnected from God and Christ, and are fruitless with regard to the Fruit of God’s Spirit described in Galatians 5:22.

But Jesus suggests that God is the one who causes us to produce fruit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control) and does so by pruning us. So, what if God is the one bringing us to our knees financially? What if God is the one trimming away the boat or car we cannot afford, the vacation, the retirement fund, or even the job, in an effort to produce in us peace when the economic world is crumbling, kindness to one another, goodness in meeting the needs of others, faithfulness to God instead of to the dollar, and self-control with our finances and resources?

Every good gardener prunes his crop to enable it to produce more, not less. Perhaps our problem is that we have lived and worked too long trying to produce money instead of fruit.

God's Stimulus Plan
February 6, 2009
Patrick Ballington 

In Psalm 121, King David indicated that in tough times he looked to the hills for help. But I assure you the hills that he looked toward did not include Capitol Hill. The second verse clarifies that David's hope and help "comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth."

The Church is God's continuing agent in the world, commissioned by Christ to reveal His Kingdom, fulfill His purpose, and carry out His mission of bringing hope, salvation, and redemption to a world that is far more bankrupt spiritually than it is financially. Bill Hybels of Chicago's Willow Creek Community Church declares that when the Church is healthy and functioning properly, she is "the greatest hope in the world." "The Church" is not an organization, a denomination, or an institution, but a global community of devoted followers of Christ empowered by the Spirit of God to work together to declare the message of Christ and its relevance to the needs of humanity. Yes, those needs include spiritual needs?but also include physical needs, relational needs, emotional needs, and even financial needs. The

Unfortunately benevolence tends to be the most poorly planned, least funded, and least supported ministry in most local churches. And it tends to be the first ministry to be trimmed or eliminated during economic downturns. However, this is an incredible opportunity for the Church and all of us who profess to be followers of Christ to rise to the occasion and put our faith into practice. 

First century Christians faced enormous economic strain due to cultural rejection and social persecution, especially among believers in Jerusalem. But when times were at their worst, the Church was at her best. Acts 2:41-47 records how believers shared resources with one another, even selling property and possessions to help those in need. In fact, the only reason offerings were collected by the first disciples and the early Church was to help provide financial assistance to the poor, the widows, and the orphans. We are experiencing similar things taking place every week at The Bridge and it is nothing short of miraculous.

I challenge every pastor, every Christian, every person of faith, and every congregation in White County and beyond to be like the Macedonian churches written of in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9: "Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity." I urge you to give more than you have ever given to help those in need. Make benevolence the highest ministry priority of your life and your fellowship. And do not limit your compassion and assistance only to fellow Christians, or those in your family and fellowship, but consider this a time to reveal the extravagant grace and love of God, who "causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matt 5:45). Do not let the storehouse of God's provision for the people in the Old Testament become the barns of the greedy landowner of the New Testament (Luke 12:16-21). Instead, consider ways to trim your operational budgets and personal budgets to be able give to those in dire need of help and hope. More than ever, keep your focus of ministry and your flow of resources outwardly focused more than inwardly focused. If your local church does not have an organized benevolence program in place or if you do not have a regular and recurring practice of giving to help others in need, then financially support local organizations such as White County Caring and Sharing, the White County Food Bank, the newly opened Caring Hands Clinic, or some other benevolence organization and encourage your friends and family to give to, and volunteer with, these much-needed organizations. You may not be able to help everyone who turns to you for help, but make every effort to help as many as you can, as much as you can.

Remember that in the story Jesus told in Matthew 25 about separating the sheep from the goats, the separation was based solely on how they had responded to those in need. Caring for those in need is the responsibility of all of the residents of God's House - not just the residents in the White House. 

How Would Jesus Vote?

October 15, 2008

Patrick Ballington

Electing our national and local leaders is more than a choice between conservatism and liberalism. It is also a choice of economic models and social responsibility.

Capitalism says that what we earn belongs to us individually, and we can do with it what we want. Freedom and individual responsibility are predominant, but too often give way to selfishness and the exploitation of the weaker and less capable (subprime loan, anyone?).

Socialism says that what we earn belongs to the larger society and should be redistributed to everyone evenly; but that model destroys ambition and motivation and results in lazy people living off the hard work of others.

Communism says that what we earn belongs to the government, and the government will distribute to the people according to the determined need. Such power has always resulted in dictators and tyrants who do more harm than good for the people under their authority.

So how would we describe the political and socio-economic views of Jesus?

According to the Bible, everything belongs to God, and all that we have comes as blessing from him. We are therefore stewards?managers caring for all of God's stuff. Sounds like communism. But then, unlike the human dictators and tyrants of history, God gives us complete freedom of choice to determine what we do with all he has given us. We can earn more or less, control more or less, steward more or less, based on our individual effort, ambition, and drive. Sounds like capitalism. And then Jesus teaches us to care for one another, share with one another, provide for the needs of one another, and live sacrificially for one another. Jesus and the Bible speak of the rich giving freely to the poor and of the early church voluntarily having "all things in common." That's the essence of socialism.

Instead of voting along party lines, I believe Jesus would look to the man or woman who understands that God is sovereign over all and owns it all. Jesus would likely look for the one who views leadership and government as a stewardship of authority, whereby they are responsible for managing God's resources and leading and caring for God's people. Jesus would also look for the one who would lead others to give and care for one another, especially the poor?not through legislation or taxation (which would completely violate the freedoms that are intrinsic to the Gospel), but by inspiration and the personal example of voluntary sacrifice of self for the sake of others.

In a few weeks we will have the opportunity to take part in the selection of our national and local leaders. More importantly, we will have the opportunity to participate in the activity of God, and be the agents through whom he accomplishes his will and purpose for our nation and the world. My prayer and hope is that we will have the wisdom and humility to reject partisan politics and cast our vote for the candidates who understand that God owns it all, and has blessed us so that we can bless others?out of changed hearts, not just changed laws. Borrowing a quote from Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church, "Leadership is stewardship. It will come to an end and [leaders] will be held accountable."

Missional: Connecting Life and Faith
August 2008
Patrick Ballington

Buzzwords such as emergent, post-modern, second reformation, and others are being tossed around to describe the next church movement in western culture. The one I most subscribe to is the word missional. "Missional" creates the image of people following Christ and living as missionaries in a specific time and culture and context, taking the Gospel into the culture by living it among the people, rather than screaming from a distance for sinners to get saved in response to a Gospel they may have heard but have never seen lived out in front of them. To live and minister missionally means that people take the Gospel to where they are, through a language and context they understand.

It seems to me that the Pharisees and religious leaders during Jesus' day spent most of their time determining who was in (in the faith and in the subculture of Jewish faith according to their interpretations) and who was out (out of the faith and outside of God's reach). They sought to widen the gap between God and man as an effort to make it especially obvious who was on the side of God and who was not. It also seems that many followers of Christ today spend most of their time doing the same. Despite Christian radio, television, bookstores, web sites, and other Christian media outlets, we are increasingly ineffective in seeing people choose to follow Christ.

It may be surprising to Americans to learn that while our nation was founded in large part on the Christian faith, North America is now considered the third largest mission field after China and India. Sadly, the explanations that I keep hearing?blaming the culture and the media and the breakdown of the family?all sound a lot like blaming the river for not flowing under our well-built bridges. Water takes the path of least resistance?so does sin. The church should be active where sin flows. That means the church should be active within the culture. Instead, too many of us hold "Come out from among them and be ye separate" as our ministry directive, more so than "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel."

Meanwhile, missionaries overseas approach ministry and the role of the church in a vastly different way. They seek to learn the language, the music, the art, the trades, the habits, and the values of their mission fields. Missionaries tend to dress like the natives, eat the local food, shop at local stores, have conversations about local events and topics. They share in the suffering, and labor alongside the people, while abstaining from sin and moral compromise. Missionaries do more than preach the Gospel?they live it! They are as concerned about the physical, emotional, and economic health of the people as they are about their spiritual health.

Like Christ, missionaries become "one of them," while most North American pastors and Christians seem to want to be "nothing like them." Missionaries must rely on building trust and relationship over time and through shared experiences and shared life as the context for sharing the Gospel. This is what it means to be missional and to become incarnational.

Lesson from The Bridge to Nowhere
July 2008
Patrick Ballington

And it did its job quite well. When Hurricane Mitch hit the area in 1998 and dropped historic amounts of rain, the bridge survived virtually unscathed. The roads leading to either end of the bridge were destroyed, however. More significantly, Mitch's catastrophic flooding caused the wide river that ran under the bridge to change course, and now the bridge stands on dry ground, with the river running in its new channel off to the side.

Christianity has always had to adapt to cultural changes. But the New Choluteca Bridge seems to embody all that I have been wrestling with for many years as a pastor and as a follower of Christ. The church (at least the Americanized, southern Bible Belt, denominational, and televised version) seems to be growing more and more like this bridge: Proud of how effective we have been in resisting the cultural and social changes going on around us, while growing increasingly isolated from the very people we were commissioned to reach, and increasingly ineffective at leading them to faith in Christ.

After the river moved out from under their bridge, the designers of the New Choluteca Bridge suggested that their next challenge was going to be to get the river to flow back under the bridge. I thought, "Are these guys serious? Why not extend the bridge?"

I have had many conversations with Christians who are waiting for the day when, miraculously, people will once again start flowing back into their churches the way they did in our past.

But we must realize the landscape has changed and the pathways of the past no longer exist.

Jesus Christ's life and sacrificial death on the cross created a bridge that spanned the gap between sinful man and a holy God. In many ways, access and entrance to the bridge is controlled by the network of Christ followers called the church; we either point the way or obstruct the path.

The Great Commission requires followers of Christ to engage the culture, adjust to changes, and extend the bridge (the Cross of Christ) into the world?not retreat from it. Celebrated church leaders and pastors of past years have established the strong foundations of today's church, and these godly leaders are worthy of the greatest respect. But it is not necessary?sometimes not even useful?for us to reproduce their efforts. We would do better to "extend the bridge" that connects our firm spiritual legacy to the contemporary, post-modern culture we find ourselves in.

The Cross of Christ is a bridge that is to be traveled in both directions. Travel in one direction leads those who are separated from God by sin and death into a vibrant relationship with God. But going in the other direction are those who have secured their relationship with God through faith in Christ, now traveling back into the world and the culture, to live among those who are far from God, helping to lead the way back across the bridge. Christ entered our broken world and laid down his life for us. His followers are called to follow His example and do the same.