When renewal begins

After Romans 12:2 and Luke 6:43-45 

When renewal begins,

the old is gutted or

torn down, replaced 

by the new and lasting.

Renewal can be painful,

a tearing out, not unlike

removing a hurting,

diseased, rotting tooth,

extracted for our good,

replaced for our renewal. 

Renewal is a process,

not a transformation

overnight. Renewal is

lifelong, dismantling

the old to establish

the new. And sometimes

progress can only be

seen and understood

at the end. In the meantime,

all creation groans.

 

Photograph by Marek Studzinski via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Resurrection – poem by R.S. Thomas at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Why Does John Mention That He Outran Peter to Jesus’ Tomb? – A.W. Workman at Entrusted to the Dirt.

 

Jesus Lives! – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Easter Isn’t Over – Seth Lewis.

 

“A Cowboy’s Prayer,” poem by Badger Clark – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

What we bear

After Romans 12:2 and Luke 6:43-45 

We are known

by the fruit we bear,

and we all bear

fruit. A good, healthy

trees bears good, healthy

fruit; a bad tree, and 

an evil tree, do not.

Good comes from good,

evil comes from evil.

Our hearts are storehouses

of treasure, an abundance

of treasure. Good treasure

produces good; bad treasure

produces bad. Good treasure

comes from renewal, 

renewal of your heart,

renewal of your mind,

renewal of your soul,

not from the word but

from the Spirit. Renewal

becomes transformation

becomes production

of good.

 

Photograph by Mary Jane Duford via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

On Netflix and Narnia: Three Questions and a Convicting Scene – Ryanne Molinari.

 

Hymn for Advent: Or Christ’s Coming to Jerusalem in Triumph – poem by Jeremy Taylor at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

Five Years After Gentle and Lowly, Evangelicals Still Need to Remember the Love of Jesus – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

“Children of the Heavenly King,” hymn by John Cennick – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Learning to Listen: Engaging with Longer Prayers in Worship – Erik Raymond at The Gospel Coalition.

 

“Renewal: The Church That Expands Outward” by Luke H. Davis

Until now, about the only thing I associated with the famous minister Jonathan Edwards was the sermon often mentioned (and often reprinted) in American history books. The title and the substance of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” gives an impression of a fiery sermon, with much shouting and a voice that was threatening and perhaps scary. The way it’s portrayed in history books certainly gives that impression. 

Then I read Renewal: The Church That Expands Outward by Luke H. Davis, and I discovered how wrong my understanding was. Edwards didn’t give fiery sermons; he spoke in a monotone and low-key voice because he believed the content didn’t need dressing up with theatrics. He faced concerns from his own church leaders. And Edwards eventually became a missionary to Native Americans in Massachusetts and president of Princeton University.

 

So much for the stereotype.

 

Renewal is the fourth in Davis’s series on church history for young people. It focuses on the years 1600 to 1900, what Davis calls the Age of Expansion. The chapters are generally organized around people; Davis writes an engaging story based on fact about each and then follows with a short factual paragraph. He also inserts “Fact File” chapters, where he provides more in-depth background on events, movements, and periods of church history. 

 

Luke H. Davis

The people covered include Edwards, John Bunyan. George Whitefield, William Wilberforce, Charles Spurgeon, Sojourner Truth. Hudson Taylor, Dwight Moody and several others. The structure is similar for each; I found myself particularly taken with the fictional stories based on real events.

 

Davis teaches at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis and chairs the Bible Department there. He’s also taught at schools in Louisiana, Florida, and Virginia. He describes himself as “Presbyterian body, Lutheran heart, Anglican blood, Orthodox spirit,” all of which have served him well in writing the Cameron Ballack mysteries. He has published three Ballack mysteries, Litany of Secrets (2013), The Broken Cross (2015), and A Shattered Peace (2017), and the first book of a new series, Joel: The Merivalkan Chronicles Book 1 (2017). He blogs at For Grace and Kingdom.

 

Renewal, like its predecessors, is aimed at young readers (roughly 10-14) but, as in my own case, even adults who think they know a lot can discovered they know – well, less that they thought. It’s an engaging way to teach church history and whet the interest for more.

 

Last Week: Reform: The Church at the Birth of Protestantism by Luke H. Davis.

 

Related:

 

My review of Redemption: The Church in Ancient Times.

 

My review of Reign: The Church in the Middle Ages.

 

Reading a Novel that Stars Your Hometown.

 

My review of Litany of Secrets.

 

My review of The Broken Cross.

 

My review of A Shattered Peace.

 

My review of Tough Issues, True Hope by Luke Davis.

We waited for renewal

We waited for renewal,

resurrection of the world,

makeover yet unseen yet

imminent, not understanding

the renewal was underway,

had been, stones grinding

and transforming, tectonic

plates above the surface,

mountains reshaping, oceans

cleansing and oxygenating,

forests, fields, prairies

renewing, we waited and

didn’t see it in front of us,

around us, not grasping

we were in the throes

of the firstfruits.

Photograph by Lillian Newman via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Renewal/Revival

My wife and I were married at a Baptist church in Shreveport, La. – Mildred Crowe Baptist Church, to be exact. The church building is still there on North Market Street but the name and denomination have changed.

Our wedding was at 5:30 p.m., followed by the reception in the church hall. The church was crowded – all my wife’s family lived in the Shreveport/northwestern Louisiana area, as did and my father’s side of my family .

The wedding ceremony took less time than the bridesmaids and bride took to walk up the aisle. I mean, it was fast. And there was a reason for the speed.

A revival service was scheduled at 7:30, and while we could stay in the church hall, the cars had to be gone from the parking lot.

So I always associate our wedding with revival, or renewal. Revivals are an opportunity for churches and the people in the communities surrounding them to take stock, renew vows, and rededicate themselves. It’s both a corporate thing (for the church) and an individual thing (for the people).

I’ve attended a few revivals (almost always at Baptist churches) and one Billy Graham Crusade, which was a kind of “mega-revival.” (The Billy Graham Crusade was a date – the girl wanted to attend it.) The speakers are usually outstanding (a good speaker not necessarily meaning a fire-and-brimstone speaker); there’s a lot of singing, and then someone leads the congregation in singing “Just As I Am” while people make their way to the front.

The New Testament model for revivals is found in the gospels – John the Baptist preaching the need to repent and preparing the way for Jesus. Jesus didn’t so much preach and teach revival as much as he did something entirely new – the gospel among us. In the Old Testament, there are numerous examples of Israel turning from its ways and turning back to God.

The revival/renewal that always creates a sense of wonder (and some foreboding) for me is the story told in 2 Kings 22-24. The King of Judah, Josiah, is 26, and in the 18th year of his reign. He is trying to do what is right. He sends his secretary to the temple to have the high priest get the funds together that have been collected to repair the temple. The secretary goes to see the high priest, named Hilkiah. And Hilkiah – the high priest! – says something that is startling.

“I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.”

Things had gotten so bad that the high priest didn’t know where the Book of the Law was, and then found it somewhere in the temple. That’s the equivalent of a church minister announcing the congregation that he has found the Bible, hidden away in a closet, that no one's seen for a few generations.

The secretary returns to the King Josiah, tells him what’s been discovered, and proceeds to read from it “in the presence of the king.”

And a revival starts. Josiah tears his clothes, consults a prophetess (who has good news for the king but bad news for Judah), renews the covenant at the temple, and cleans house. He throws out the pagan priests appointed by previous kings, takes the Asherah pole from the temple and burns it, tears down the temple quarters for the male prostitutes, destroys all of the pagan altars, shrines and high places throughout the country, and then eliminates the mediums, spiritists, household gods and idols in Judah and Jerusalem. And then he orders the Passover to be celebrated – the first time since the days of the judges almost 400 years earlier.

It didn’t last, of course. Josiah was followed by a line of evil kings and then the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. And it never lasts, human nature being what it is.

That’s why the final revival, the last renewal, began when a young teenaged girl in Nazareth was told she was going to bear a child. The child.


To see other posts on renewal, please visit the One Word Blog Carnival sponsored by Peter Pollock.