Embodying a Decision

Billy Graham had a weekly radio show titled The Hour of Decision. Normally it was a tape recording of the service and message he’d given at a recent evangelistic rally. And at the conclusion of every message, Graham would issue an invitation for anyone to make a commitment to Jesus Christ, and to do so by getting up out of their seat and making their way to the front, where Graham had been preaching.

Coming forward, Graham would say, was an outward demonstration of this inner desire. He insisted that those so moved would take these physical steps to begin a new spiritual journey. This was, for them, the hour of decision. Billy Graham was tapping into something perhaps even deeper than he knew. Any time a person feels prompted to leave the present in order to embrace a new pathway in life, a decision is required. It’s not a decision just made in the head, or even the heart; it’s something embodied. It requires a physical step forward, leaving behind our desk, or friends, or comforts as we start to walk, vulnerably, into an unknown future.

Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, Without Oars: Casting Off into a Life of Pilgrimage, Broadleaf Books, 2020.

Grace for the Long Road of Obedience

Grace is not only needed for the occasion of conversion, the moment we suddenly (or slowly) come to our senses and realize that we are spiritually bankrupt, having nothing to bring to God and everything to receive. Grace is also required for the long season of cultivated growth that follows that rebirth. By grace we set out. By grace we are also sustained. Grace has as much to say about endings as it has to say about beginnings.

Taken from Teach us to Want: Longing, Ambition, and the Life of Faith by Jen Pollock Michel Copyright (c) 2014 by Jen Pollock Michel. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

Out of the Center

The word eccentric comes from a combination of the Greek terms ex (out of) and kentron (center). When combined, ekkentros means “out of center.” The term gained currency in the late Middle Ages, when astronomers like Copernicus dared to suggest that the earth was not at the center of the solar system. By claiming the earth in fact orbited the sun, Copernicus became the original eccentric. Enter Richard Beck, a professor from Abilene Christian University, who pushes the definition of eccentricity a bit further.

In his book The Slavery of Death, Beck takes its literal meaning (“out of center”) and suggests that an eccentric identity is an identity where the focal point of the self is shifted to God. He says, “The ego, in a kind of Copernican Revolution, is displaced from the center and moved to the periphery. The self is displaced being the ‘center of the universe’ so that it may orbit God.”…

The alternative, Beck says, is what Martin Luther called incurvatus in se, the self “curved inward” upon itself, with the ego at the center of our identity. “Incurvatus in se suggests that human sinfulness is rooted in self-focus, self-absorption, and self-worship.”  It’s me at the center. A true conversion to Christ involves displacing me and becoming truly “off center.”

Michael Frost, Keep Christianity Weird: Embracing the Discipline of Being Different, NavPress.

The Payoff

If we are honest with ourselves, for many of us who celebrate the sacraments on a regular basis, at times we take them for granted. We lose sight of their nature to inspire and remind us of our covenant relationship with the Triune God. Thankfully, there are examples, especially from Missionaries to remind us of just how significant they are to those who get to experience them for the first time. Take for instance, the example of John Paton, a missionary in the 19^th century to a cannibalistic tribe in the New Hebrides archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean (modern day Vanuatu):

For years we had toiled and prayed and taught for this. At the moment when I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism but now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer’s love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well-nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself.

James Paton, ed., John G. Paton—Missionary to the New Hebrides: An Autobiography (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1891), 376, quoted in Philip Graham Ryken, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 915.

Baptized but not Converted

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame became a zealous spiritualist later in life. He would often give public lectures on the subject. At one such meeting, he gestured enthusiastically while speaking and accidentally spilled a glass of water on some reporters seated in the front row. I’m “so sorry,” Doyle exclaimed.  “I seem to have baptized you, even if I don’t succeed in converting you!”

Stuart R. Strachan Jr.

Conversion in the Heartbreak Hotel

It was on November 28, 1965, that fighter pilot Howard Rutledge’s plane was shot down right into the hands of the North Vietnam Army. Quickly he was shuttled to the “Heartbreak Hotel,” one of the notorious prisons in Hanoi. These are his own words describing the experience:

When the door slammed and the key turned in that rusty, iron lock, a feeling of utter loneliness swept over me. I lay down on that cold cement slab in my 6×6 prison. The smell of human excrement burned my nostrils. A rat, large as a small cat, scampered across the slab beside me. The walls and floors and ceiling were caked with filth. Bars covered a tiny window high above the door. I was cold and hungry; my body ached from the swollen joints and sprained muscles…

It’s hard to decide what solitary confinement can do to uneven and defeat a man. You quickly tire of standing up or sitting down, sleeping or being awake. There are no books, no paper or pencils, no magazines or newspapers. The only colors you see are drab gray and dirty brown. Months or years may go by when you don’t see the sunrise or the moon, green grass or flowers. You are locked in, alone and silent in your filthy little cell breathing stale, rotten air and trying to keep your sanity.

During those long periods of enforced reflection, it became so much easier to separate the important from the trivial, the worth-while from the waste…

My hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for steak…I wanted to know about the part of me that will never die…I wanted to talk about God and Christ and the church…It took prison to show me how empty life is without God…

On August 31. After twenty-eight days of torture, I could remember I had children but not how many. I said Phyllis’ name over and over again so I would not forget. I prayed for strength. It was on that twenty-eighth night I made God a promise. If I survived this ordeal, the first Sunday back in freedom I would take Phyllis and my family to their church and…confess my faith and join the church. This wasn’t a deal with God to get me through that last miserable night, it was a promise made after months of thought. It took prison and hours of painful reflection to realize how much I needed God and the community of believers. After I made God that promise, again I prayed for strength to make it through the night.

When the morning dawned through the crack in the bottom of that solid prison door, I thanked God for His mercy.

Howard and Phyllis Rutledge with Mel White and Lyla White, In the Presence of Mine Enemies-1965-1973: A Prisoner of War.

From Atheist to Metropolitan: Andrei Bloom Meets Jesus

From his start in life, you would not have expected Andrei Borisovich Bloom to have ended up Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, founder of the Russian Orthodox diocese for Great Britain and Ireland.

Born in 1914 to members of the Imperial Diplomatic Corps, he was uprooted by the Russian Revolution and forced to relocate in Paris. The relative peace of Paris left him feeling that life was aimless and meaningless. He told himself that, “I would give myself a year to see whether life had a meaning, and if I discovered it had none I would not live beyond the year.” [1]

A leader in one of the Russian youth organizations in Paris approached him and asked him to attend a talk about a priest they had invited. His reaction was immediate: “I answered with violent indignation that I would not. I had no use for Church. I did not believe in God. I did not want to waste any of my time.” [1] The leader persisted, telling him that others had responded the same way and he was concerned that their organization would be embarrassed if no one attended his talk. Out of loyalty, Andrei reluctantly agreed to attend.

Andrei listened with “increasing indignation and distaste” and saw “a vision of Christ and of Christianity that was profoundly repulsive to me.” [1] So upset was he by the lecture that he decided to investigate for himself. Acquiring the gospels from his mother, he chose to read the gospel of Mark because it was the shortest, so as not to waste any extra time. The reading was transformative. He later wrote:

I do not know how to tell you of what happened. I will put it quite simply and those of you who have gone through a similar experience will know what came to pass. While I was reading the beginning of St Mark’s gospel, before I reached the third chapter, I became aware of a presence. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. It was no hallucination. It was a simple certainty that the Lord was standing there and that I was in the presence of him whose life I had begun to read with such revulsion and such ill-will.

This was my basic and essential meeting with the Lord. From then I knew that Christ did exist. I knew that he was thou, in other words that he was the Risen Christ…. Because Christ was alive and I had been in his presence I could say with certainty that what the Gospel said about the Crucifixion of the prophet of Galilee was true, and the centurion was right when he said, ‘Truly he is the Son of God’. It was in the light of the Resurrection that I could read with certainty the story of the Gospel, knowing that everything was true in it because the impossible event of the Resurrection was to me more certain than any event of history. History I had to believe, the Resurrection I knew for a fact. [1]

Thus began the Christian life of Anthony of Sourzoh, with God’s revelation of himself through the Gospel of Mark, a man N. T. Wright called “one of the great Russian Orthodox bishops of our generation.” [2]

[1] Anthony of Sourzoh, “I Believe in God” in We Believe in God, ed. Rupert E. Davies (Allen and Unwin, 1968)

[2] N. T. Wright, The Way of the Lord: Christian Pilgrimage Today (Eerdmans, 1999).

William Rowley

From Dropout to Disciple-Maker

I (Josh) know a young man named Mark who was on the brink of self-destruction. He partied away his first semester of junior college and was later kicked out of school. He was devastated by his loss and ashamed of his behavior. Soon afterward he came home one day, went upstairs to his room, closed the door, and laid face down on the floor, sobbing, praying, and lamenting what he had done. When he finally got up from the floor, he reached for a Bible and turned to Ephesians 2. He will tell you that as he read the first ten verses of Ephesian 2, something supernatural happened to him. He fell into a deep sleep that night and awoke the next morning to a sense of peace that he’d never known before. Over the next few hours, Mark set out on a trajectory of redemption. He broke up with his girlfriend because he knew in his heart that their relationship was impure. He gave away his expensive designer clothes because he felt too attached to his wardrobe. He went to work that day and shared what was happening to him with his boss, a man named Collin, who was a bi-vocational pastor and a committed disciple maker. God forged an unbreakable bond between these two men, and over the next three years, Collin spent a lot of time with Mark, encouraging him, listening to him, correcting him, reassuring him, calling out good in him. He helped Mark discover his spiritual gifts, and in a three-year period Mark went from an unbeliever to a disciple maker himself, investing in the lives of others. This is the handiwork of Jesus!

Bobby Harrington and Josh Robert Patrick, The Disciple Maker’s Handbook: Seven Elements of a Discipleship Lifestyle (Zondervan, 2017).

Conversion Near Death

A woman visited a pastor in his office to ask him to come see her grandson, Jimmy. Jimmy was dying and wanted to talk. He had an inoperable brain tumor and had very little time left.

He wanted to “get right with God.” He wanted to confess, be baptized, and get the Holy Spirit.

The pastor writes,  

He started talking and talked for a couple of hours. His story was hard for me to hear; I never worked so hard at listening in my life. His sins were real, not imagined, his guilt was deserved, not imposed. There was nothing exciting or interesting, or titillating about his sins, they were the ordinary products of lust and desire, and a real disregard for the welfare or rights of others. Here was the real character: a sinner!

The pastor struggled with his request for absolution. Jimmy had no time to reform his life, to make things right with those he had hurt, or even simply stay out of trouble. Still—there was time for grace. The pastor listened to the confession and pronounced forgiveness. He would baptize him the next day in his uncle’s above-ground pool.

When the pastor arrived, he found that Jimmy’s church-going family and his friends from “the other side of the tracks,” too. They had all come to witness.

The pastor writes:  

I went into the water first, Jimmy followed. I said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father of the Son, and the Holy Spirit,’ and dunked him under the water. He came out, sputtering and cussing, and said “Bleep! That bleepin’ water is bleepin’ cold.” And, on impulse, I said, “Oops, looks like that one didn’t take,” and dunked him again, much to the delight of all around. The second time he came up, he grinned, and he held his tongue, hugged me, and then pulled me under. It was a good baptism.

Jesus took Jimmy’s sins—numerous though they were—and gave him new life in Chirst. Two weeks later, the pastor was able to proclaim this at Jimmy’s funeral, assured that Jimmy was in paradise.

William Rowley, source: Delmer Chilton, Lectionary Lab Commentary, Year A (The Lectionary Lab, 2013).

Jesus the Irresistible One

‘Irresistible’ is the very word an Iranian student used when telling me of his conversion to Christ. Brought up to read the Koran, say his prayers and lead a good life, he nevertheless knew that he was separated from God by his sins. When Christian friends brought him to church and encouraged him to read the Bible, he learnt that Jesus Christ had died for his forgiveness.

‘For me the offer was irresistible and heaven-sent,’ he said, and he cried to God to have mercy on him through Christ. Almost immediately ‘the burden of my past life was lifted. I felt as if a huge weight…had gone. With the relief and sense of lightness came incredible joy. At last it had happened.

I was free of my past. I knew that God had forgiven me, and I felt clean. I wanted to shout, and tell everybody.’ It was through the cross that the character of God came clearly into focus for him, and that he found Islam’s missing dimension, ‘the intimate fatherhood of God and the deep assurance of sins forgiven’.

Taken from The Cross of Christ by John Stott. Copyright (c) 1976, 2006 by John Stott. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

A Little Girl and The Founding of World Vision

In 1947 huge crowds came to hear a thirty-two-year-old Californian preach at mass evangelistic rallies throughout China. Although Bob Pierce had no knowledge of Chinese language or culture, his message of American old-time religion was warmly received, reportedly reaching tens of thousands and even converting twenty members of General Chiang Kai-shek’s personal bodyguard. But despite these impressive results, Pierce’s trip to Asia would be most remembered for his brief encounter with a single little girl.

In Xiamen, Dutch Reformed missionary Tena Hoelkeboer invited Pierce to preach to four hundred girls at her school. When one of her students, White Jade, informed her father that she had converted to Christianity, he beat her and threw her out of the house. Hoelkeboer was distressed at the prospect of taking on yet another orphan and demanded of Pierce, “What are you going to do about it?”

Deeply moved, Pierce emptied his wallet of the five dollars it contained and promised to send the same amount every month. When he returned to the United States to report on his evangelistic exploits, Pierce told the story of White Jade in churches across the United States. In 1950 he founded World Vision in order to sponsor more needy Asian children like her.

By the turn of the century, World Vision had become the largest privately funded relief and development NGO (nongovernmental organization) in the world, and White Jade’s story continued to be used both in advertising and in recounting World Vision’s history. Even at the time of this writing, White Jade remains central in defining World Vision’s identity and approach for its employees and donors.

Because of its deep rhetorical resonance and staying power, Pierce’s encounter with White Jade and Hoelkeboer might possibly be the single point at which North American Evangelical Christians began to reprioritize compassion for the poor.

Soong-Chan Rah and Gary VanderPol, Return to Justice: Six Movements that Reignited our Contemporary Evangelical Conscience, Brazos Press, 2016.

The Payoff

If we are honest with ourselves, for many of us who celebrate the sacraments on a regular basis, at times we take them for granted. We lose sight of their nature to inspire and remind us of our covenant relationship with the Triune God. Thankfully, there are examples, especially from Missionaries to remind us of just how significant they are to those who get to experience them for the first time. Take for instance, the example of John Paton, a missionary in the 19th century to a cannibalistic tribe in the New Hebrides archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean (modern day Vanuatu):

For years we had toiled and prayed and taught for this. At the moment when I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism but now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer’s love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well-nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself.

James Paton, ed., John G. Paton—Missionary to the New Hebrides: An Autobiography (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1891), 376, quoted in Philip Graham Ryken, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 915.

The Story of Amazing Grace

John Newton authored one of the most beloved hymns for English-speaking black Christians in the world, yet he spent his early life transporting African slaves to the New World.

He was born in 1725, went to sea at the age of 11 with his father, and was pressed into the Royal Navy at the age of 18. Eventually, he would find his way onto slave trading ships, which he found to be “an easy and creditable way of life.” Even after his eventual conversion to Christianity in 1748, he continued in the trade, seeing no conflict between his faith and occupation.

However, after poor health drove him back to land in 1754 and ordination in the Church of England, his views on slavery were dramatically transformed. He authored an account of his life as a slave trader, publicly repenting his earlier life, which was widely circulated in Britain, even among members of Parliament. In 1787 he, together with William Wilberforce founded the Anti-Slavery Society and he campaigned until the end of his life to end the slave trade in the British realm, which happened only nine months before his death.

“Amazing Grace” is a song written by a new man, one who recognized what a “wretch” he had been before the grace of Christ found him and reflective of the radical change Christ wrought in him. It is an act of grace that the descendants of those he so terribly abused sing the song of their transformed brother in Christ.

William Rowley

What Do You Believe Doc?

 In a quiet hospital room in North Carolina, an eager young doctor with a bright future evaluates his elderly patient with not much future left at all. She has a terminal heart condition, inoperable. All he can do is treat her symptoms and pain as the two of them wait for her time to run out. As the physician visits the dying woman during his daily rounds, they gradually get to know one another.

During one particularly poignant conversation, he learns that the woman is a deeply religious Christian. As a confident atheist, he assumes that as her condition deteriorates, her faith will do the same, as she realizes her God is not coming to the rescue. Yet with every passing day, his patient’s faith seems to grow stronger even as her body weakens.

Having been exposed years earlier to the writings of Heisenberg, Dirac, and Einstein, the doctor finds his patient’s religious beliefs antiquated but charming. But then, he is taken aback by her forthright inquiry: “Doctor, I have been telling you what I believe, but what do you believe?”

It’s not that he takes no joy in what his patient would call “creation.” Rather, he finds the universe deeply satisfying. He has long relished the idea that it can be understood and explained in discrete mathematical formulae—that it can present no dilemma that a robust theorem cannot answer. But in this case, he is shaken a bit when asked about belief.

He murmurs something about the beauty of the natural world and leaves the conversation with a degree of unease. He is one of the best trained scientists of his generation. By his own reckoning, there is no one who better understands the systems and laws that keep nature running. But he is deeply unsettled by the way the dying woman sleeps peacefully in her hospital bed while he lies awake each night haunted by her question.

…Over the next two years, the young physician reads voraciously about Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, examining the data about their roots and their claims, seeking to find one that would help him satisfactorily answer the dying woman’s question.

Ultimately, while hiking in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, he comes to the conclusion that the claims of Christianity best explain what he sees around him. He begins to embrace the faith of his former patient, who had begun a kind of “cascade” within him with her one honest question. His radical internal shift doesn’t change much on the outside. He still loves his work as a scientist and doesn’t intend to redirect his efforts into religious service.

His sense of meaning and purpose, however, has refocused entirely. Indeed, this faith decision would become the fulcrum for a career that would eventually reach the apex of scientific renown and public service. This is the story of Francis Collins, one of our generation’s leading scientific authorities.

…His faith decision became a significant turning point, one that not only shaped his life but—by virtue of his leadership roles in the decades since—the lives of many others.

Taken from Hinge Moments by D. Michael Lindsay. Copyright (c) 2021 by D. Michael Lindsay. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com

What if I Mess It Up?

Some time ago I heard a dear friend describe the day she became a Christian as the most wonderful day of her life. She said the next day was the worst day of her life. I asked why. She explained, “I awoke with the thought ‘What if I mess it up?’” Can you relate? Do you fear your faith might fail?

Max Lucado, Help Is Here: Finding Fresh Strength and Purpose in the Power of the Holy Spirit (Thomas Nelson, 2022).

The Evolution of the Rose

A couple years ago I got to take a tour of the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California. The name is a bit misleading because what they are most known for are there amazing gardens. And so we were on this tour and I got to learn something about the history of roses. And it goes something like this.

There have been roses since we have been on this planet, but the wild roses in Europe, while all different colors and quite beautiful, would only bloom once a year, and so for most of the warm months you would be looking at a bunch of ugly green canes with thorns, no flowers. But then, some botanists in the late 18th century began experimenting by grafting the Chinese wild rose, which was only green, but bloomed all summer, with the European rose, and after a bunch of testing, created what we know to be the modern rose, which blooms from June through October, but not only in green, but in a myriad of colors. 

Isn’t that interesting, so roses as we know them are really a modern invention, and because of the grafting of the wild Chinese rose with the roses of Europe, we have this stronger, much more beautiful flower than we ever had before. And that is what Paul is getting at, but instead of it being one wild rose and another, we are grafted into Christ, God incarnate.

Stuart Strachan Jr.

Out of the Center

The word eccentric comes from a combination of the Greek terms ex (out of) and kentron (center). When combined, ekkentros means “out of center.” The term gained currency in the late Middle Ages, when astronomers like Copernicus dared to suggest that the earth was not at the center of the solar system. By claiming the earth in fact orbited the sun, Copernicus became the original eccentric. Enter Richard Beck, a professor from Abilene Christian University, who pushes the definition of eccentricity a bit further.

In his book The Slavery of Death, Beck takes its literal meaning (“out of center”) and suggests that an eccentric identity is an identity where the focal point of the self is shifted to God. He says, “The ego, in a kind of Copernican Revolution, is displaced from the center and moved to the periphery. The self is displaced being the ‘center of the universe’ so that it may orbit God.”…

The alternative, Beck says, is what Martin Luther called incurvatus in se, the self “curved inward” upon itself, with the ego at the center of our identity. “Incurvatus in se suggests that human sinfulness is rooted in self-focus, self-absorption, and self-worship.”  It’s me at the center. A true conversion to Christ involves displacing me and becoming truly “off center.”

Michael Frost, Keep Christianity Weird: Embracing the Discipline of Being Different, NavPress.

Waking Up

What happens when you wake up in the morning?

For some people, waking up is a rude and shocking experience.  Off goes the alarm, and they jump in fright, dragged out of a deep sleep to face the cold, cruel light of day.

For others, it’s a quiet, slow process.  They can be half-asleep and half-awake, not even sure which is which, until gradually, eventually, without any shock or resentment, they are happy to know that another day has begun.

Most of us know something of both, and a lot in between.

Waking up offers one of the most basic pictures of what can happen when God takes a hand in someone’s life.

N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006).

Baptized but not Converted

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame became a zealous spiritualist later in life. He would often give public lectures on the subject. At one such meeting, he gestured enthusiastically while speaking and accidentally spilled a glass of water on some reporters seated in the front row. I’m “so sorry,” Doyle exclaimed.  “I seem to have baptized you, even if I don’t succeed in converting you!”

Stuart R. Strachan Jr.

Related Themes

Click a topic below to explore more sermon illustrations! 

Baptism

Confession of Faith

Faith

& Many More