Today is Monday, yesterday was Sunday, and tomorrow is Tuesday.  This is the way it has worked for a long time, but when you see this typed out on a page, it is common sense to you.  But for me, this signifies a progression of emotions and energy that leaves me deep in a pit of fatigue.  Tuesdays for me are often the hardest days to get through.

The reason?  A combination of things comes crashing down on me when Tuesday rolls around.

1.  Sunday - Most Sundays, I preach somewhere.  It requires me to prepare a message, make sure I have directions, pack a bag and rise early to either fly or drive there, then arrive and deliver a message from The Word, empowered by the Holy Spirit.  I meet people, shake hands, offer counsel and prayer.  I do this with everything I’ve got, but instead of leaving feeling drained and empty, I actually feel the opposite; stoked, excited, and energized.  The reason?  ADRENALINE.  During a 30 minute message, my body will release enough adrenaline in my system to last 8 hours.  I usually preach about 40 - 45 minutes.  And yesterday I preached at one of my favorite churches, ELEVATION CHURCH.  And I preached 4 times.  So yesterday, I preached to 4,000 people at 8:30, 10:00, 11:30 and 1 PM.  I spent nearly 200 minutes onstage.  I had enough adrenaline in my system when I left Charlotte yesterday to last for 3-4 days.

2.  Monday - I usually wake up after a big Sunday before 6 M.  I read, study, check email, and take the boys to school.  Mondays are great for me because I still have tons of adrenaline in my system, so today, after I dropped the boys off at school, I went to the gym, worked my upper body til I could barely move, then ran 45 minutes on the treadmill and 30 minutes on the track.  I hit my maximum heart rate 4 times (at age 35, 180 is my MHR but I usually hit 200 easily.  The adrenaline is still working).  I wear myself out, take it easy the rest of the day, and hit the sack early.

3.  Tuesday - CRASH.  I usually wake up and feel like I have been in a fight with Chuck Liddell.  My eyes won’t focus.  My joints ache.  I stumble around the house in a stupor.  I have no patience with my kids.  I don’t want to get dressed or even eat.  I just want to go back to bed but that doesn’t work cause I can’t go back to sleep.  I feel short and irritable with everybody.  Why?  The adrenaline that made me feel so good and energized is simply gone, and it has left me reeling with an adrenaline hangover.  My body craves more, but I don’t have the energy to do anything.  I waste the morning getting nothing accomplished and usually have to apologize to my family for being so grumpy.  By Wednesday morning, things are back to normal.

Archibald Hart in his amazing book called Adrenaline and Stress explains this physical phenomenon as adrenaline surge and depletion.  As I get older, my body creates less adrenaline and my body crashes harder once it is gone after a big surge.  Many have theorized that this is one factor that leads many men of God into moral failure in the forms of porn, addictions, affairs, and money issues.  Their bodies “trick” them into doing crazier things for the rush of adrenaline.  Of course it is still sin, but there is a physical component to it that cannot be ignored.

You have no idea how liberating it was for me to realize WHY I feel this way on Tuesdays.  My next post will explore the steps I now take to pre-empt a Tuesday morning meltdown.  So if you are a pastor or in ministry of any kind, you may want to forward this link or this blog to all your colleagues and friends.  This is a conversation that ministers need to be having, and I am happy to start it.  I will continue it in the next post.

If you read this blog or if you have heard me preach before, you are well aware of my obsession with my family.  They are life to me, my greatest joy and the anchor that holds me steady in life.  My wife is the most lovely, Godly person I have ever met and my boys are simply unbelievable.  Each day of my life, I awake to a world I did not create and do not deserve, one that is filled with the joys and rewards of following Jesus Christ and receiving His grace in the form of Charie, Jacob and Joseph.  In the words of that great Bible scholar and theologian Edwin McCain, “I could not ask for more.”

Tomorrow will be one of the greatest days of my life.  I am not overstating or embellishing.  At 3 PM tomorrow, I am going to have the honor of baptizing my son.  

In June, Jacob made what us evangelicals call a “profession of faith” in Christ.  And before you begin to question whether or not a 5 or 6 year old can even understand the depths of our sins, God’s grace and the salvation Christ brings, let me assure you I questioned it first.  But over the past 3 months, my son has proven to me that he understands the gospel; his own inability to do good without God, his own sin and wickedness, and what Christ did on the cross.

Charie and decided that we would never rush or push our boys into Christianity, but that we would instead live the gospel in front of them, singing it and praying it and talking about it, modeling it for them.  We pray together as a family and read Bible stories, we are part of a healthy church community and a great para-church ministry, and so our boys have been exposed to the faith of many adults in our “tribe.”  And since Jacob learned to talk, he has had an awareness of God that developed into an awareness of his own sin and the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, taking Jacob’s deserved punishment on Himself.  After Jacob responded publicly in June (he stood up in a church service with over 300 people watching to repent of his sins), Charie and I have been watching and listening to him, asking him lots of questions about his faith and what he believes in his heart.  And I was determined to wait until he demonstrated to us that he understood the essentials of faith and baptism before we “stirred the waters.”

Let me replay the conversation we had just a week or so ago, and you will understand why I am so excited about tomorrow.

Me:  Jacob, are you sure that you are ready to be baptized?

Jacob:  Yes, daddy.  I really want to show the world that I love Jesus and that I am a Christian and His disciple.

Me:  Then can you explain to me what baptism means and how that shows the world that you are a Christian?

Jacob:  Yep.  It is a symbol, which is kinda like something that represents something else.  So when I am standing up in the water, that is like when Jesus was hanging on the cross where He was crucified.  Then when I go down in the water, that is like when those people buried Jesus and put Him in the ground.  Then, when I come up out of the water, that is sort of like when Jesus came up out of the ground, like when He came back from the dead.  And He is the only person that ever did that, really.”

Me:  Wow.  OK, you are ready to be baptized.

The day that Jacob was saved back in June, he told me on the ride home that when he got baptized, he wanted to do it in a real river because Jesus was baptized in a real river.  It just so happens that we live on a real river, the Broad River, and it is just a short walk down the hill from our house.  So tomorrow, friends and family will gather at the river and be witnesses to a little boy’s public identification with Jesus.  We will sing and rejoice and laugh and worship, and I will have another brand new experience that I have never had before.  God is indeed a good God, and I could not ask for more.

God has a funny way of shaking things up in our lives, doesn’t He?  Just when we think that we have it all figured out, or that we have everything set up just right, He throws a monkey wrench inside the gears that grind our daily lives.  In the movie “Bella” which I recently watched (with great delight) with my wife, one of the opening quotes simply said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”  

Recently, I have been inspired, or convicted (depending on the day) to really ask myself if I am willing to move with the Holy Spirit?  Does He have the authority in my life to stop me dead in my tracks when I already had my mind made up and my course charted?  Will I drop everything when He speaks, especially if He leads me to do something sacrificial or take a risk that has has big consequences if it fails?

This past Sunday our local church body began meeting in a new location and because my pastor was convalescing from knee surgery, I had the honor to preach for him.  And I sensed that God wanted to say something to us as a community: that we could either follow His lead or chart our own selfish course in the future.  This is a message that applies to every church and every believer, a daily and constant discipline to be people of the spirit (pneuma in Greek and ruach in Hebrew, meaning “wind”).  Will I be the kind of Christian who is led by the wind of God’s Holy Spirit or the kind of Christian who wants my own way, my own security, my own predictable and comfortable Sunday worship experience?  My entire Christian life, I have despised that kind of Christianity.  I have seen it split churches and ruin pastors.  But now, I am 35 years old and I kinda like things done a certain way.  Am I settling into the very kind of Christianity that I have hated my entire life?  The kind that never seeks the Spirit, that never moves, that becomes rigid and legalistic and unmoving, that turns away people and opportunities because they both require us to move from where we are and go “to a place we have never been?”

Are you willing to move?  No matter where He might send you?  Are you willing to obey a command that forces you to confront your own fear of losing control?  Am I willing to lose control?  

The truth is, I have never been in control anyway, no matter what false sense of security I have operated under.  So since I can never be in charge, it is best for me to submit to The One who is, and just go from there.  So I set my sails and see where The Wind takes me.

As promised, here is my final email correspondence with a friend, hero and mentor who abandoned a belief in the Biblical reality of hell (for every time heaven is mentioned in the New Testament, Hell is mentioned 3 times, and Jesus spoke of it frequently).  It seems to be fashionable to question the existence of hell or to avoid the subject completely when asked about it, or to give vague and uncertain explanations without ever actually saying what you believe (2 examples are Rob Bell and Brian McLaren).  So read on and if you are still confused and all sources leave you pondering, as a last resort, try reading the gospels.  And as a short reminder, ministers of the gospel are not called to flashy, trendy or popular.  We are called to faithful with the Word of God and the gospel.  The results are up to God.

Dale,

Thanks for the time it took to send your response, I also appreciate the spirit in which you responded as well.  Even if we disagree, we can do it with kindness and the love of Christ.

Since there is no way I will persuade you with argument (no you me), I just wanted to give you something to think about.  (I will not try to apologetically prove the existence of hell, but rather want to point out to you that you must contradict the witness of scripture and church history to remain in the error of your new universal theology).

In your lengthy defense of your new convictions that everyone will be saved and there is no hell, essentially a Universalist theology (all will be saved, none will be lost, no matter what their belief, even a wilfull rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ), you used lots of scripture, some of it was proof-texting and some of it was, in my opinion, handled correctly in context and the pericope of the certain book and author.

However, there are two major flaws in your interpretation. 

First, you start off with an assumption or a theological belief (everyone will be saved and there is no hell) then you cherry pick passages to support that stance.  At the same time you carefully dismantle all the  passages and verses that would contradict your position by in-depth language analysis and koine-Greek exposition.  You have essentially taken the same tract that cults take…decide what you believe, find verses to support it, and come up with explanations why the verses that prove it wrong “do not actually mean what they say.”  This is not only what the Mormons and Jehovah’s Wintnesses do, it is the very heart of Liberal Christianity that was in part born out of German higher criticism, textual criticism, and what I call Biblical Dismantling-ism.

I am not saying that you are part of a cult, but I am saying that you employ their liberties with scripture.  You are very much like a true theological liberal, however.  The very first element of traditional Christian doctrine that is abandoned in Liberal theology is hell.  You have fallen in line with that.

Secondly, and most disturbing to me, is that you (though not only you, to be fair), have decided that the church has been wrong for two millenia about one of it’s doctrines and that you are right.  This is troublesome Dale. 

Having been around the academic world of theological education for so many years, I have grown to love the deep study of historical context and languages to gain meaning to a passage (your explanation of the valley of Gehenna was excellent, I was actually there in Jerusalem last week and not only saw Gehenna but also the valley of Kidron that runs parallel to the Old City).  But the academic world also has a potentially negative side: one can assume that they have figured out a great mystery, something that the entire church has been wrong about for hundreds or thousands of years, and it is their job alone to correct it (and to be fair, God does call men like Luther and Calvin to correct the church, but a brief study of those two will prove they were not perfect saints).  Our human pride can begin to be stroked, even subconsciously, when we feel like we are uncovering a plot, illuminating the whole world to the truth when Satan has had it veiled from their eyes for so long.  I am not accusing you of this, because I believe that your heart began as pure and authentic.  I just know my own human propensity to unknowingly feel like I am on a special mission from God and I am one of the few people who “really know the truth.”

So, to assume there is no hell because everyone will be saved is to contradict not only 2,000 years of church history and orthodoxy, it is also to assume that 2,000 years later, with some study and a lexicon, some commentaries and books, that you know more than the apostles who actually walked with Jesus, heard Him speak, and passed down His teaching both orally and written.  The Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, not to mention countless writings and treatises down through the ages, from those who had seen the resurrected Lord up to the present day, have held to a theology that you now have figured out is wrong.  Not to call it conspiratorial, but just to point out the great cloud of witnesses you now stand against. 

The one thing that I do respect about  you is that you have lost everything for your belief.  I know that to be true, esepecially knowing your conviction and personality as I have for many years as a fan of your music and ministry.  But sincere belief in something does not make it true.  I am saddened that you have lost it all for a lie.

It does suit our own sensitivities to bend the witness of scripture to  God who will eventually save everyone, even the one who wilfully rejects the gospel with a full understanding of it.  But there is no way, with the whole witness of scripture and 2,000 years of the church behind it, that you can say there is no judgement, no hell, and that everyone will be saved.  In essesnce, your new theology is a strange breed of Universalism (everyone will go to heaven no matter what) and Calvinism (God makes all the decisions, we only think we have a free will, because eventually He will save everyone, even those who did not want to be saved).

To end on a positive note, though, I do sense your desire to make much out of God’s love and grace, His mercy and kindness to His people.  That is always something beneficial, until it comes at the expense of God’s revelation and disclosure in scripture, as interpreted by the Church, His (not yet perfect) Bride, since His ascension.

Thanks again for your spirit, I know you are convinced in your convictions, but I also know you are strong enough to handle the debate and not take it personally.  We do disagree, and I do believe you are wrong, but we can continue to debate and dialog if you so desire.

My final admonition to you is a strong warning.  If you are wrong on this issue, and there really is a hell, and you are leading thousands of people astray, causing them to stumble and not just to fall, but to be careless with their souls and eventually lose them, then you had better heed the warning Jesus gave to those who hurt little children.  If you are wrong, then it would be better to have a millstone tied around your neck and thrown into the sea, for the blood of many could be on your hands.

Your Brother in Christ,

Clayton

I have been holding off on this subject for over a year, but something tells me that it is time to open Pandora’s box and tackle the subject head on.

Instead of just quoting scripture and taking the traditional approach to the subject of hell, let me share with you why this issue has been on my mind for the last 12 months.

One of the greatest theological influences in my life recently decided that he no longer believed in hell.  This man was the lead singer for a christian hard rock band that has been around for two decades and their concerts were some of the best rock shows I had ever seen.  What impressed me most, however, was the strong element of theology in their lyrics and his bold proclamation of the gospel at their live shows.  While their music was akin to Guns-N-Roses, his preaching was like a combination of a Black pastor and a Pentecostal preacher.  Never in a million years would I have guessed that he would have lapsed into heresy.

Over the course of several years and after reading countless books by liberal scholars and strange authors nobody ever heard of, he embraced Universalism (the belief that a loving God would never send anyone to hell and would ultimately save everyone).  This gentleman and I have exchanged countless emails and it is obvious that neither of us will convince the other of the error of their ways.  I still remain a lifelong fan of their music but am amazed at how easily a strong man of God was led astray by crafty teaching and doctrines that suit our cultural sensitivities while leaving the Bible and church history behind.

I have saved my final email to my friend because I think it might be beneficial to those of us who hold a Christian worldview.  While the culture we live in moves further and further away from traditional values and Christian orthodoxy, it is imperative that we know what we believe and how we came to believe it.  And when the authority of scripture is questioned, and eventually abandoned, the very first orthodox Christian doctrine to be denied is the doctrine of hell.  It is indeed a slippery slope, and my next post will be the exact email that I sent to a friend who is in error, as my humble and bold attempt to correct him from his error and hopefully to stop him before he influences thousands of his fans and readers that no matter how you live or what you believe, Jesus will save you ultimately.

Numerous books have been written and countless studies have been funded and carried out in order to get a handle on, or an understanding of, the current generation of teenagers in America.  They are known by names such as Boomerangs, Echo, Millenials, or Gen Y.  Whatever name you call them, there are millions of them in this nation and they are a generation that I am called to reach with the gospel.

I have no desire and no time to give you a short rundown of all the intricacies and trends in this generation, but I do have time to tell you what I am noticing about them, specifically this past weekend as I spoke to or preached to many thousands of these Boomerangs.

This generation has very little, if any, exposure to the gospel.  The first 20 years of ministry for me were largely centered around preaching to “churched” people.  My crowds had been exposed to Christianity by way of their local church or religious culture, from their parents and grandparents, etc.  Christian phrases, jokes, references to Christian subculture, and even passing references to Bible stories were met with looks of familiarity.  Many of the people who I saw repent of their sins and put their faith in Christ were people who had been in church their whole lives but simply missed it; they missed the gospel, or had a false sense of security based on church attendance, family faith, or acts like baptism, confirmation, or church membership.  By and large, those who were converting to faith were converting to faith from within the church.

My how times have changed.  Now, a greater number of students who are coming to faith in Christ are coming to faith from outside the church because they simply have no history with it.  They were never taken to church, they have never endured a bad sunday school class or watched a baptism or followed along with the lyrics on a screen or in a hymn book.  This is a brand new day.  I find myself preaching to young men and women who have zero exposure to Christ, the church, or the gospel.  It is fresh and unfamiliar to them.  AND I LOVE IT!

I am seeing more and more of them respond to the gospel, and the more difficult I make the invitation, the more they seem to get it.  They hang on my every word.  They tend not to zone out like church kids do.  They lean forward to listen, they sit in rapt attention when I recreate the narratives from the Old Testament, and they are filled with honest and sincere questions about matters of faith, politics, and relationships.  

In short, they have not been programmed into a churchy mindset so they don’t have to be de-programmed and then re-programmed to see Jesus as a real person who died on a cross in our place and demands allegiance from us.  They seem to get it better, and quicker, than the kids who have heard it their whole lives.  By no means I am advocating a mass exodus from the church.  But I am forced to ask what exactly has the church been giving our students when the vast majority of students raised there leave there as soon as they leave home and have independence and freedom.

This past Friday I spoke in 5 public high schools in the mountain of Western North Carolina.  I met students from every possible walk of life.  I preached twice in Andrews, North Carolina and we saw nearly 200 students make professions of faith.  It seemed like the more difficult I made the invitation, the better they responded.  I did not dumb down theology or back away from preaching against sin.  Kids were getting saved left and right, wearing Insane Clown Posse and Marilyn Manson shirts, with tattoos and piercings and long hair and purple hair, and it just seemed like the more I told them that God loved them and wanted their hearts, the more they believed it!

I have many more thoughts on this, it is all I have been thinking about this weekend.  I am sure I will share more of them here.  Feel free to share yours, too, by leaving a comment.

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