There are some ideas within the framework of Biblical Christianity that long-time believers assume everyone among us just knows. And yet, if we aren’t deliberate about teaching the whole counsel of God (cf. Ac. 20:27), we may find that some among us simply don’t know certain Bible doctrines that we had assumed to be common knowledge. Additionally, when commonly-accepted doctrines are questioned or rejected by the world, some Christians can become convinced to go the world’s way unless we periodically make plain statements of Biblical truth.

So, in the interest making sure that the the whole counsel of God is spoken with conviction among us, consider these straightforward reminders of some basic morality of Christians’ sexual behavior.

The Bible is clear that sexual activity is right in only one relationship: a righteous marriage between a biological man and a biological woman. This is implicit in the creation story (cf. Gn. 2:24-25), and it is made explicit in the Ten Commandments (cf. Ex. 20:14) as well as many of the laws that God gave to the Hebrews after they left Egypt (cf. Lv. 18 & 20:10-21). With only a very few exceptions, these rules are restated by the Apostles in the New Testament (and good arguments can be made in favor of the unmentioned ones), with the apostles often just assuming the righteous ways in which Christians would behave in these ways (cf. 1 Cr. 5:1, Rm. 7:1-4, 1 Cr. 7:15, and other examples).

The bottom line is this: According to the Bible, sexual activity outside of a righteous marriage between a man and a woman is sinful. That means that a dating couple sleeping together before marriage is sinful. It means that homosexual activity by either gender is sinful. It means that sex with someone other than a person’s spouse is sinful. And the Lord himself added to all of that a prohibition against lustful thoughts about a person of the opposite sex, noting that such sexualized thoughts are also sinful (Mt. 5:27-28).

Does all of this really matter? Yes. A great deal. And we’ll talk in another writing about the many deep reasons why that is, but it’s one area where Christians ought to be exceedingly clear and convicted about who we are and how we are to faithfully serve God our king.

- Dan Lankford, minister

I was in a room full of more than 200 preachers, and a general poll question was asked: “What’s the hardest thing you face as a preacher?” Answers varied: meeting Sunday’s deadlines, dealing with the people who don’t understand that we actually work, attending meetings, working with incompetent secretaries, etc.

But among them, two men confessed some rather more serious struggles. One of them said, “Marriage. My wife is a hindrance to my ministry and to the Lord’s church.” And another man said, “I work with a lot of teenagers in a really, really bad neighborhood. Many of them arrive at church after having been threatened, mugged, starved for days, or verbally abused by family and friends.”

The response to both from the event hosts was a jovial, “Woah! I think that’s above my pay grade!” Followed by a chorus of laughter from the rest of the room.

That kind of callousness was shocking then and still is to me as I think about it again. A couple of observations have stuck with me since that day. First, that if our chief concerns with the job of ministry are administrative, we should take stock of whether we are truly fulfilling the biblical mandate of ministry, because it’s about MUCH more than meeting Sunday’s deadline. Second, that when someone faces a serious struggle in their lives, Christians have a responsibility to help and encourage. When a Christian reaches out for help from the depths of a spiritually dried-up marriage, or when he or she fears daily for the lives of loved ones, he or she needs help—not for their problems to just be laughed off.

And so all Christians ought to give thought to how we will show up with compassion to those who need it most. There may be struggles that we are unable to overcome for them, but let us never dismiss those struggles. God does not ridicule or dismiss when his people suffer in doing good, and we must not allow ourselves to treat others’ pain with triviality.

- Dan Lankford, minister

It’s been noted by psychologists at both the intellectuals’ level and the layman’s level that the modern West is defined by an extremely high level of individualism. Each person is considered sovereign over himself. “Personal rights” are considered inviolable whether they are legally protected or not. And disagreement with a principle has become synonymous with attack on a person. Some writers have cleverly defined our cultural moment as “the iWorld” in tribute to Steve Jobs’ branding of a whole line of devices like iPhone, iPad, etc.

While the manifestations of the issues are new, the problem is not. Humans’ self-centered way of thinking always presents a strong challenge to The Gospel, in which Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt. 16:24-25) It’s understandable why some struggle with these words from the Lord. It sounds like the Gospel would take away all individual expression from those who follow it. Is that right?

No, the Gospel does not take away all individuality. It does not make us into robotic, mindless drones all cut to the exact same pattern. Rather, it is in Christ that we find real individual freedom. And the promise of this is found even in his words quoted above: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” The Gospel doesn’t take away who we are; it asks us to forfeit ourselves and to receive the gift of a whole new and better personhood—one that is made holy and right-eous by faith in Jesus Christ. We will not be individualistic any more, but we will be transformed into the individual and free and holy image of God that we were created for in the first place!

- Dan Lankford, minister

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

Those who serve others spend a lot of their time doing what others ask of them or expect of them. If a spouse has an emotional need, a servant-oriented spouse will not resent their partner’s need, but will serve them by doing what they can to meet it. If a church has spiritual needs, her servant leaders will not begrudge the members for that, but will do their best to meet said needs. If a stranger is in need, servant-minded Christians will not turn a blind eye, but will do what we can to meet those needs as a demonstration of Christ’s love. And beyond the concept of need, many acts of service are simply done to give another what they want. If we love them, we find ways to serve them and bring them joy.

But of course, all these are just smaller versions of Christians’ greater goal of serving God in the way we live our everyday lives.
That’s what he meant in the simple statement quoted above. If we love him, then we will serve him. We will never begrudge being instructed or corrected by his word; we will do what needs to be done to live rightly before him. And more than that, we will look for things that we can do to make God “well pleased” (i.e. happy) with us. 

As a father, there is one expression of my sons’ love that is exceedingly simple and yet is also quite elusive: the simple response of agreement and obedience when I ask them to do something. That simple act of willing obedience goes such a long in declaring their love for me. And it must surely be the same with God, who says to all people throughout all time in the words of his Son: “If you love, you will keep my commandments.” 

- Dan Lankford, minister

The formula for all healthy, peaceful relationships is:

Everyone Gives + No One Takes+ Everyone Receives = 
Enough Blessings for Everyone

Everyone gives. That means that all parties in the relationship are altruistic. That is, they are purely thinking of how to be a blessing to others. No one worries that they themselves will be hurt, taken advantage of, or forgotten. They simply give to others.

No one takes. Nobody in the relationship is a consumer any more often than they absolutely have to be. Each party is so focused on giving (see the paragraph above) that there is little time to consider their own needs and feel slighted for unmet expectations.

Everyone receives. When kind things are done by others in the relationship, they are never rejected or downplayed. Because each party understands that taking is selfish, but receiving what another has given is actually a sign of humility. And so the key to relationship is not to give everything away and be miserable with nothing, but to perpetually give and also happily receive the good that others give.

Our natural human fear is that if we give to others all the time, there will not be enough left for ourselves. But when we learn to properly balance giving and receiving, God has promised that we will all have enough to meet our needs. Remember Abraham’s faithful words: “God will provide” (Gen. 22:8).

These principles are true of each person’s relationship with God, of our family relationships, of our work teams, and of our church family relations. If we want to have peace and God’s abundant blessings, then we must each learn to live out these mentalities as God does toward us.

- Dan Lankford, minister

Last Sunday was Mid-Year’s Day: the exact middle date of a calendar year. And while the middle of a year is accompanied by far less pomp and circumstance than New Year’s, it does present us with an opportune reminder to occasionally take stock of our spiritual state.

How has our discipleship progressed through the first half of this year? Have we grown? Have we met our goals? Have we pursued them with the effort they merit? Have we set ourselves up for future success? Or are we on a downward trend in in our discipleship?

In 1 Samuel 7, under the leadership of Samuel and the protection of God, the Israelites had begun to move toward a time of renewed faithfulness. Their progress wasn’t much yet (remember that they were coming out of the time of Judges when things were truly terrible), but every step in the right direction matters and Samuel knew that. So, after the Lord had given them a significant victory over their enemies, Samuel set up a stone to memorialize God’s grace to them. He named it Ebenezer, which means “stone of help,” to remind them that, “Till now YHWH has helped us.” (1 Sam. 7:12)

What is your Ebenezer? What are the things that you can look to in your life that show how God has helped you to this point? Especially as you think back on the first half of this year, where can you see God’s hand at work for good in your life and the lives of those around you? What are the markers that show how far he’s brought you?

It’s good for us to always live with a general sense of God’s provision, but it’s all the better when we put in the effort to specifically notice his goodness and thank him for it. I hope that at Mid Year’s Day, you can say happily: “Till now the Lord has helped me.”

- Dan Lankford, minister

In Sunday’s lesson, we talked extensively about the unity that is supposed to characterize God’s people. But it may be that some questions linger in our minds after a discussion like that: “I see the value in those relationships, but what if they let me down or hurt me in some way? What if they have hurt me when I thought I could trust them in the past? What if we’ve known each other through church for all these years and that’s never been what our relationship was like—how would I start fixing that when it’s been broken for so long?”

The answer to all of those questions is simple to understand, but it’s difficult to do:

Choose to trust.

Every human relationship comes with risk. Parents risk their children breaking their hearts. Spouses inherently risk something by committing lifelong faithfulness to each other. Even building a friendship with anybody comes with an inherent risk: the closer they are to us, the more potential they have to hurt us. And the same is true of relationships in our church family. Will someone among God’s people hurt, disappoint, or frustrate us at some point? Probably. But are we willing to risk that happening because it’s what God has called us to in Christ? I hope so.

We have to choose to give trust in relationships. Especially after our trust has been broken, we must decide to extend it again if our relationships are to be healed. When we choose to do that, we will find that it’s reciprocated—maybe imperfectly, but still honestly—more often than not.

And so we repeat the Lord’s words again: “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

- Dan Lankford, minister 

The word “harm” gets used with more variety of meaning than most of us are likely to realize. Some examples: “I don’t see any harm in it.” “This could harm his/her prospects of advancement.” “The crash didn’t do any harm to the vehicle’s frame.” “He suffered no physical harm from the incident.”

For Christians, though, a new usage of the word in recent years has probably piqued our interest more than any of those examples. In the last several years, it’s become common to hear any disagreement with a person’s beliefs as “harm” to that person, particularly those living out any lifestyle described in the LBGTQ+ acronym. When some express conviction that those activities and ideologies are wrong, they are said to do “harm” to those who embrace them.

But wise and honest people are able to know the difference between something that is done maliciously and harm that must be inflicted in order to bring about good outcome. Like a surgeon who cuts into the body’s tissues in order for it to heal back to how things should be, truth cuts us so that we will grow better when the cuts heal. Small wonder Luke said that the audience were “cut to the heart” when they heard Peter preach about their sins in Acts 2:37.

So there is value in the “harm” that’s done by the truth, and we need to see that. And that ought to teach Christians two lessons:

1) When we speak the truth that cuts, let’s remember to do it with the proper blend of conviction and gentleness, speaking the truth in love. 

2) If the preaching and teaching of God’s word ever feel like an attack to us, we’d better take a hard, honest look at how we need to change to be more of what God has called us to be in his grace.

The harm that the truth does is for our ultimate good. And maybe some believers need to learn the lessons that we would like our enemies to learn: That when the truth from God feels like a personal attack, we're doing something wrong.

- Dan Lankford, minister

“A living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.”
“There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?”
Bible students recognize both of those quotes as inspired words from the book of Ecclesiastes. And that makes us wonder: “How could that be a healthy, godly view of the world? Aren’t faithful people supposed to be joyful, hopeful, and positive?” Well, the answer is yes. We are supposed to be joyful. And yet our joy must be built upon godly wisdom.
Ecclesiastes is written by a man who, to use his own words, “Has his eyes in his head” (Ec. 2:14), which is like our saying that a person has his head on straight. And a person—especially a Christian—who sees the world as it is will understand that some things simply are. People are prone to wickedness, death comes to all, and history eventually forgets almost everyone. Are these grim realities? Yes. But are they realities? Yes.
So how do we process this? Should we become cynical, bad-mouthing the world, its happenings, and its people? Or should we continue to serve our Father, continually trusting that he is working out his ultimately good plans in this world and the next? Christians can hold both perspectives simultaneously: seeing the world as it is and believing that God is working to make it better as we march toward eternity.
- Dan Lankford, minister

When is your best not your best?

When you have a powerful, well-trained singing voice, but your voice must blend in the overall harmony of a chorus. You can’t just sing what is your best; your best is what brings about their best.

When you are the fittest and most motivated one in your squad, but everyone must move together to an objective or target. You cannot simply run at your best pace; your best is what brings about their best.

When you could finish a project more efficiently and impressively by yourself, but it’s assigned as a group project. You should not depend only on your efforts; your best is what brings about their best.

When you are a serious student of deep Biblical things, but you are teaching a group of saints whose spiritual maturity isn’t at that same level yet. You can’t always present your best study; your best is what brings about their best.

When you could raise your kids all on your own, but you’re married and your spouse has contributions to make too. You can’t sideline them and just do your kind of parenting; your best is what brings about their best.

When you could make a great name for yourself by hard effort, great charisma, and novel ideas; but you are a servant to Someone greater than yourself. You can’t always do life in your self-empowered way; your best is what shows others His best.

When is your best not your best? When you’re holding back what could be your own greatness in order to be a servant to others. Then that service is the best thing that you can do.

- Dan Lankford, minister