With election season now fully upon us, I think it’s important that we be reminded of a few powerful, life-shaping truths:

First, that the church’s primary tool for changing the world is not politics; it’s The Gospel. Our task is not necessarily to get Christians into high offices; it’s for us Christians to be “the salt of the earth” that makes a positive impact on the world through our relationships in everyday life. Would it be better for everyone if our country’s laws were more faithful to God’s character and the Bible’s teachings? Yes. But will we still be able to serve God faithfully if the laws are not according to his ways? Also yes. Our king is Jesus, no matter who our President is.

Second, that there is no Bible command for who we should vote for. If you have convictions about that, keep in mind that while they may be Biblically informed and dearly held, it’s not a Christian’s place to bind them upon others as a matter of their righteousness.

Third, that neither political party will do the work of God in this world—that’s the job of Jesus’ church (which is his people). When I look at the two predominating political parties in this country, I see institutionalized error and attempts at righteous things in both. And so our choice is not between one that is right and the other that is wrong; our choice is which group of flawed humans and their ideals we will entrust to lead our country for the next four years.

And finally, that no matter who gains The White House in next month’s election, God will still reign over all the world’s kingdoms. Psalm 2 reminds us that YHWH and his Son reign above all the earth’s kings, and Psalm 1 reminds us that his righteous ones always put our total confidence in him alone!

- Dan Lankford, minister

It’s now been one year since the terrorist organization Hamas sprang their surprise attack on the civilian population of Israel. In the year since, Israel has continued to fight back against Hamas and other groups that are hostile to them, such as Hezbollah. Like with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, many across the world were surprised that any modern people group would even consider war, as though it were only an ancient practice for ancient peoples. And yet, both conflicts have continued—Russia against Ukraine for over two years; Israel against terrorism now for a whole year.

What are Christians to make of these conflicts?

Especially as regards Israel’s conflict, many evangelicals have been either very worried or very excited that this war should be alerting us to the coming of a great tribulation and Christ’s return. On the Sundays immediately following Hamas’ attack last year, countless churchgoers heard dozens of Bible passages misapplied as preachers purported them to be warnings that armageddon is imminent. And yet, here we are, one year later, still watching the conflict ebb and surge, escalate and de-escalate. And so what are we to make of these events and the teachings? Is the end of the world coming soon? Is it even tied to the nation of Israel?

It probably doesn’t surprise most of my readers that I don’t see a reason to believe the end of the world is more likely now than any other day. Our Lord will return like a thief in the night, with no warning, and we should be ready for him all the time (see 1 Ths. 5:2). But, I think that perhaps it’s worth us revisiting these ideas and considering the relevant Bible teachings that can help us know the truth. So, if the Lord wills, that’s what we’ll talk about this coming Sunday morning: How exactly does Israel factor into the grand plan of God’s saving his people? How should we think about the conflict from this side of the world? And what comfort do we have from God for the whole situation? See you on Sunday morning!

- Dan Lankford, minister

“Now also finish the task, so that just as there was an eager desire, there may also be a completion…” (2 Cor. 8:11)

Zeal. Passion. Enthusiasm. Fire. Excitement. Drive. Eagerness.

Those words communicate the Christian mentality to all that is truly virtuous. They don’t necessarily mean that a person has a vibrant, outgoing personality. They do mean that when we observe behaviors like Bible study, prayer, church participation, generosity, moral purity, and teaching the lost about Christ… a person with “eager desire” will show ample evidence that those things matter to them.

I hope that each of us could say honestly and humbly that our lives demonstrate eagerness and zeal for the things of God. I hope that our preparedness and participation in Bible studies demonstrates that our zeal for those things overshadows our fear of what others will think of us because of our comments. I hope that our eagerness to bless others by hospitality outshines our concerns about messing up or looking silly in some way. I hope that our drive to help others by leading them in true worship eclipses our fears of being thought of in a negative light. I hope that our eagerness to participate in good works of the church compels us to be quick to sign up for all sorts of things when opportunities present themselves.

Holding back our enthusiasm for the things of God may be wise on a few rare occasions, but those occasions are just that: rare and few. Overall, saints are supposed to be people whose lives are defined by a fire that burns more and more brightly as time goes on. And that’s an act of will—a thing that we must decide. So are you deciding to live out genuine zeal for the things of God? If not, then it’s time to make some changes, so that where we have set our minds to becoming great Christians, we may finish what we have started and fully become who Christ calls us to be!

- Dan Lankford, minister

“When Joab saw that the battle was set against him both in front and in the rear, he chose some of the best men of Israel and arrayed them against the Syrians. The rest of his men he put in the charge of Abishai his brother, and he arrayed them against the Ammonites. And he said, ‘If the Syrians are too strong for me, then you shall help me, but if the Ammonites are too strong for you, then I will come and help you.’” (2 Sam. 10:9-11)

Joab was David’s top-ranking general—a man with ample knowledge of both politics and battle tactics. He was a man who had fought for his king against impossible odds, who had seen the king fight his way out of his enemies’ traps, and who had seen YHWH defeat great hordes before the army of Israel. And he was also a man who knew when he needed help.

When the general was pinned between two armies, he turned to his brother for help. Each had their own battle to fight, but each knew that the other would come to help immediately if he saw a brother losing a battle. And by God’s grace, both of them stood victorious that day (see vv. 13-14).

The willingness of those brothers to fight side-by-side—to drop everything when needed and run to a brother’s aid—is a powerful model for us to follow today. It’s the calling that we will be exploring in this week’s lessons by our brother Jim: the call to strive side-by-side with others in the work and the fight of discipleship. Even great warriors need help sometimes to win their battles, and the same is true for great spiritual warriors. Let’s keep our eyes up and face our great enemy together, for the glory of God!

- Dan Lankford, minister

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of cars around town with the stickers that plead, “Be patient. Student driver.” And they’ve got me thinking about all the timidity, missteps, halts, false starts, and distractedness that are common with new drivers. It’s to be expected in the process of learning the new skill, but it would be a big problem if someone continued to act like a rookie driver, even years into the process.

I think there’s a good comparison in that to the Christian walk. Because it’s to be expected that new Christians won’t navigate The Way like their more experienced faith siblings. There will usually be timidity—a persistent fear of messing up. There will be mistakes—a sin of omission or of commission that is committed unknowingly (Lev. and Num. speak often of sins unintentionally committed).

There will be halts and false starts and hiccups as each new level of working in the Kingdom begins. And there are likely to be strong distractions—things that try hard to draw our attention away from the things of God when we are just getting started (cf. Mt. 13:22). Those of us who are mature should expect these things of new believers, and we should help them work through it all. “Be patient. Growing Christian.”

But when we have been in the faith long enough to grow beyond those spiritual upstart struggles, if we’re still experiencing them, we have a serious problem on our hands. That is a lack of spiritual maturity, and it ought to wake us up, call us to prayer, and compel us to repent. A certain level of spirituality is expected of us after a certain time (cf. Hb. 5:11-6:3), and we’d better be diligently seeking it every day. “Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity” (Hb. 6:1).

- Dan Lankford, minister

So, now we come right down to it. With the preponderance of evidence in favor of the Gospels, and with the undeniable fact that Jesus existed, we have to face the question that everyone who dealt with him in person had to face: “Who is this man?” (Mt. 8:27, Mk. 6:1-3, Lk. 7:49, Lk. 9:9, Jn. 4:28-29ff, etc.). Especially in light of his claims to be God incarnate—the Lord of Heaven and Earth—every person in all of time must answer the question for ourselves: “Who do I believe that Jesus is?”

Josh McDowell has spent his career writing evidences materials, and he’s been saying for fifty years that, “Jesus claimed to be God. He did not leave any other options. His claim to be God must be either true or false.” Others have insisted that it is foolish to say Jesus was just a great teacher nothing more. Because with the claims that he made about being God, Messiah, and master of other’s lives; he must have been either a blatant liar, a delusional lunatic, or truly the Lord of Creation.

If he was a liar, he was one of the most dastardly liars of all time, because he claimed that others could trust him with their eternal destiny while knowing that he could do nothing for them. Does that fit the Bible and all the evidence?

If he was a lunatic, then was paradoxically the most grounded, rational, and sane lunatic to ever exist. We would need some way to explain how his teachings can be so deep and so perfectly suited to reality if his mind was so broken that he would believe a delusion. Such a paradox is too great to even be considered plausible.

If he is the Lord—God come in the flesh—then he not only demands, but deserves the devotion of our hearts and souls. Obviously, this kind of belief may be long in coming for many people, but it is the only reasonable conclusion about him. And more than that, it’s the only option for a soul-saving conclusion. Peter said that he believed Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16:16). What do YOU believe about him?

- Dan Lankford

Recently, while visiting a church like ours, I heard a brother speak the following prayer: “Lord, we pray that you would not hold our sins against us. Please ignore our failings of the past.”

While I’m sure that most of you immediately realize the problem with that request, I feel compelled to point it out so that we can all learn from it. The problem is this, and it’s a serious one: God forgiving a sin is not nearly the same thing as his simply ignoring it. Ignoring means just pretending that a thing never happened, while forgiveness is fully conscious of the sin that has been committed and is willing to pay the necessary cost of atoning for it. To think that God simply ignores our sins is to cheapen the high cost that Christ paid for our forgiveness—the cost of his own life.

Brothers and sisters, let’s be impressed with two important takeaways from this: First, that our choices of words in worship to God matter a great deal, and we’d better speak truth when we speak on behalf of God. And second, that we owe an incalculable debt of gratitude to God, our Father—not for simply ignoring our sins, but for paying the price to completely, truly, graciously forgive them.

- Dan Lankford, minister

This past week, a sister from another state asked me, “How do you stop someone that you’re discipling from thinking that they are just a project to you? I feel like when I work with someone to help them understand God and live as a Christian, I’m making them feel like they’re just a charity project—like a statistic that I need to earn.”

How would you answer that? At the time, I said, “I think it’s ultimately about an authentic relationship. You have to really be building that relationship so that they don’t fear that you’re breaking away from them once they are ‘completed.’” Having thought about it for a few more days, I think one word would capture that truth best: LOVE.

As Jesus’s people, we must love others the way that he did. That means that our evangelism and the whole discipling process will be naturally motivated by genuine love for the people we help. It won’t be about successfully using a certain system, adding them to our “stats” as a Christian, making them “just like us,” or even about getting them strong enough to let you ‘move on’ to someone else. Evangelism will always be about loving others and helping them believe in Jesus to be saved and transformed by him. Loving them enough to do that will lead to quality, loving relationships based in all that we share in Christ.

Paul told the brothers and sisters in Ephesus to go about life, “speaking the truth in love, [so that all may] grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…” (Eph. 4:15) An attitude like that won’t think of anyone as a statistic or a project, but always as a person in need of genuine, selfless, wholesome love—both from Christ and from us.

- Dan Lankford, minister

“Leaders must be aware of who they’re working with. If you have a team of people whose ability level is a 4 or 5 out of 10, you can’t just throw all the policies and doctrines at them and expect them to turn into 9’s and 10’s. But if you’re leading a group of 9’s and 10’s, you can’t treat them like 4’s and 5’s because they’ll easily become discouraged.”

So goes the wisdom from leadership teachers everywhere: that our leadership must be tailored to our followers in order to best help them. The leader must not see his followers as his servants; he must be their servant and lead in a way that is attentive, dignifying, and respectful of whatever level they are at… while still seeing the potential for what level they could be at.

This mindset is eminently Biblical, and it’s easiest to see in the shepherd model. In contrast to cowboys, who drive cattle from the rear of the herd, shepherds lead sheep from the front. But in that we have an even finer lesson: A shepherd cannot take off running at his full speed and expect the sheep to keep up. He does best to go just a touch faster than sheep-speed, so that they will move in the right direction but not be left behind.

It’s no wonder that Solomon’s wisdom was, “Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds” (Prv. 27:23). This wisdom will help us whether we are leaders at work, in our homes, or in our families. In order to lead well (which is really to serve and be a blessing to others), we must know who we’re leading and use wisdom to help them in the way that is most helpful for them.

- Dan Lankford, minister

A friend of mine from Florida made an interesting statement in his sermon this past Sunday as he was discussing 1 Kings 19:19-21 — the passage where Elijah literally gives his mantle (a cloak or jacket) to Elisha as a sign of the one’s ministry passing to the other. This was the quote from my friend that caught my attention: “We need to note that Elisha wasn’t a bad guy being called out a life of sin. He was a good man being called out of a life of comfort.”

My friend’s point in the sermon was that Elisha was doing good and honest work in God’s world, but he was needed for something more meaningful. In order to do what God called him to, he had to accept something beyond his well-worn groove of a comfortable life. Elisha had to leave some of the life he knew to follow a better path outlined for him by God. And you a similar thing in the callings of other prophets: Moses made excuses to God (cf. Ex. 3-4). Gideon did too (cf. Jdg. 6). Isaiah presents us with a positive example, but could have just as easily said to God, “Here I am! Send someone else?” (cf. Isa. 6:8). And then Paul presents yet another example of someone who, at one point in his life, was doing right things, and yet was called by God for something more needed (cf. Acts 16:6-10).

That’s the same call for all of us—not always to leave a life of sin, but often to leave a life of comfort—especially in matters of church family, church life, teaching, and relationships. How many of us are uncomfortable with any number of church involvements, and yet we don’t seek the teaching or guidance or practice to improve our skill and actually accept the responsibility we’re being called to? How many of us could take on more responsibility for everything from basic organizational tasks to visiting orphans and widows to showing hospitality, and yet because we’re uncomfortable with some aspect of it, we continue to hope that ‘someone else’ will do it?

Let’s just commit to picking up the mantle of the things that matter most and giving what God asks of his people in his kingdom. That doesn’t always mean that we need to be doing more, but it does mean that we need to be giving him our best… even when that requires a step out of our comfort zones.

- Dan Lankford, minister