The First Time I Hoped For A Good News Day

Photo by emsago

The First Time I Hoped For 
A Good News Day

Or:  

“How to Have a ‘Good News Day’ Part 2”

A few mornings ago I spent some time talking to one son about some of the mistakes I had made in parenting, and some of the bad habits that he and I had fallen into in our relationship.  I sprinkled some Gospel truth into the discussion, and the whole interchange was friendly and pleasant.  The morning routine ended up going fairly well.

As usual, after the kids left for school and I had breakfast, I read my morning devotionals and had some prayer time.  During that time, I was strongly moved with gratitude for all of God’s grace over the years in my life.  God’s sweetness felt truly amazing to me, and our time together was precious.

And, as usual, I hoped it would continue to be a “good day.”  Then that hope began to rise up as a sense of tension, of worry, of even a subtle demand toward God.  “I hope nothing bad happens” morphed rapidly into “Nothing bad had better happen!”

That was when God, for the first time, introduced me to my need to hope, plan, and pray for a Gospel-centered day in advance, instead of only applying the Gospel “as needed” if things got ugly.  This is what He impressed on my heart:

You want your son to understand and believe the Gospel, right?  
Do you think I want anything less for him?
Do you trust me that I know how to bring him to that point?
Do you remember that I had to bring you to a place of brokenness before you would repent and believe in me?
Are you going to demand that I not do the same for him?

That’s when I realized that I needed to hope, plan, and pray, NOT for a “good day,” but  for a Good News Day.  I needed to prepare my heart to live the truths of the Gospel no matter whether my circumstances turned out to be pleasant or horrible.  I needed to trust God that He was going to bring circumstances tailor-made for the kind of Gospel example (and perhaps even Gospel instruction) that my son would need that day.  
And it was not my place to tell God how to do His job.  It was my place to trust and obey.

So that’s what I prayed for.  Lord, help me to live the truth of the Gospel and to be prepared to speak that truth in love in whatever circumstances You wisely bring my way.  I am willing to be a tool in Your hands for the sake of my son, rather than trying to usurp Your throne.  Of course, I would LOVE it if You arranged pleasant circumstances, and I ask that You would do so if that would be best for my son.  But I yield to Your better judgment.   As Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done.”

It was a whole different mindset.  And I had a lingering suspicion that He was not planning a pleasant set of circumstances for us.  But it was okay.  It was okay.

It wasn’t long before the phone calls started coming.  The school is a very good one, and the staff are wonderful, but by the second phone call it was clear that I had to come pick my son up.  He was suspended for the rest of the day.  Deservedly so.

Of course, that was not happy news.  Of course it was scary to go pick him up in the dean’s office, and even hear the dean somberly tell my son that, if he continued his current trajectory, they might have to think about expulsion.

But the Gospel tells me that we’re ALL hopeless without the Savior.  So I’m in no position to think myself superior, or to get up on my high horse.  In other words, the Gospel requires (and enables) me to be humble.

And the Gospel tells me that God so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus, to bridge the gap between man and God.  Jesus came to live a perfect life on our behalf, so that those who are united to Him by faith could have His righteousness credited to our account.  In other words, the Gospel gives me REAL hope to offer to someone in an increasingly hopeless-looking situation.

And the Gospel tells me that Jesus died to absorb the wrath of God on behalf of those who are united to Him by faith.  (It also tells me that His wrath remains stored up for those who will not believe.)  In other words, the Gospel gives me the proper perspective on sin (it really IS heinous), and does not belittle my concerns about the things my son is doing wrong.  But for those who come to Christ in faith, all of that is dealt with.  Real hope for real sinners.  The kind of hope that a sinner like me can gladly share with another.

And, the Gospel tells me that Jesus rose from the dead in order that all who are united to Him by faith might also have new life.  It also tells me that He sends His Holy Spirit as a seal on the hearts of those who put their faith in Christ.  This Spirit changes our spiritual DNA, if you will.  He begins to change us from the inside out.  The Spirit within us is our ONLY hope for real change.  My anger can’t change anyone.  That fact used to only increase my anger, fanning it to a helpless rage.  But with the real hope of the Spirit to offer, it’s safe to lay the rage aside.

So, when I talked to my son that day, I had Gospel truth with me.  Truth that enabled me to be brutally honest about the awfulness, of sin, but without arrogance or rage because I’m a fellow sinner.  It enabled me to offer real hope, to point my son to all that Christ has done for us on the cross, and to what He offers us now as mediator.  It gave me the priceless promise of the indwelling Spirit to share.  All things I’d talked about before, but that needed to be said again.  After all, I need to be reminded of these truths multiple times a day as well.

My son responded in ways that seemed hopeful, though I can’t know his heart, of course.  But the Gospel allowed me to come away from a painful experience with no regrets.  I know that I gave my son the best that I had to give.

I knew I wanted more Good News days.  After all, I’ve got plenty of regrets about my selfish “good days.”  That kind of living was yielding me a bitter harvest.  I wanted to put it behind me.

But the Enemy of Our Souls doesn’t let go.  Ever.  Until, of course, we go to Glory.  So he attacked viciously after this hopeful experience.  But that’s something for another entry.

How to Have a "Good News Day" - Part 1

Photo by Marcelo Terraza

How to Have a “Good News” Day

Part 1

Laying the Foundation

It’s a bad habit of mine to expend a lot of time and make a lot of compromises in order to get what I call a “good day.”  You know the kind of day I’m talking about … all pleasantness, few responsibilities (at least, few that I can’t ignore), and plenty of enjoyable things to do.  Plus, of course, having everyone around me cooperate with my selfish plans.

Oops.

As you can imagine, my “good day” plans get smashed rather often.  And I tend to not be pleased about it.

What’s the solution?  Should I struggle to get more control over those around me, so I can force my plans on them?  But what about people and circumstances I can’t control?

Maybe I should just give up in cynical despair.  If I can’t give myself a good day, and God doesn’t seem to be bending over backwards to make life a bed of roses for me, what’s there to hope for?

Ghastly, isn’t it?  Yet I’d have to say that most of my adult life has swung between those two options.  Godless, self-centered, unloving, miserable options.  Sure, the ugliness has slowly gotten less pronounced as God has worked on my heart these past few years, but a lot of this nonsense has remained in my heart.

But, just within the past few days, I’ve been getting acquainted with an exciting new option.

What if I trade in my “plans for a good day,” not taking cynicism in exchange, but rather choosing instead to make plans for a “Good News day?”

What is a Good News Day?

If you’ve spent much time around Christianity, you probably know that the word “Gospel” is taken from the Greek for “Good News.”  And the more I learn about the Gospel and how it relates not just to salvation but to everyday life, the more I realize that I need to aim for Good News Days every day.

Good days, by my selfish definition, are often impossible.  Please bear with me as I explain...not for the sake of “complaining about my problems,” but just so that you, dear reader, won’t think I’m talking to you from my castle in the sky.  

My day-to-day life is complicated by such family funzies as Asperger’s Syndrome, full-blown autism, bipolar disorder, the teenage hormones of three boys, and all the ordinary challenges of family life.  One of my teens has been in a really bad state of rebellion lately, and has been getting in lots of trouble at school.  My husband’s job requires lots of odd hours on phone conferences with people halfway around the world, and frequent trips that last for weeks at a time.

To top it off, I deal with chronic back pain and occasionally recurring cardiac pain (despite being on daily cardiac meds since a heart attack in 2004).  Years and years of severe internal problems finally culminated in major surgery in November of 2011, which (thank the Lord) cleared up a lot of problems, but some pain still recurs.

So no, no ivory tower here.   And few entirely “good” days.

But every day could have been a Good News day, if I had only known.  Lately I’ve been having them.  And I know I always can have them.  Not because I’ve become an overnight expert in some divine secret, but because God gives a continuing supply of the good news freely to anyone who understands and believes in its simplicity.

A Good News Day is a day when the Gospel shapes my beliefs, my hopes, my plans, my actions, my interactions, and how I deal with sins and failures (both my own sins and those of others that impact me).

I’m finding that Good News days can be full of bad things, painful things, disappointing things...even failure.  And yet, at the end when I look back at them, they’ve lost their sting.  What once would have beaten me down no longer has that kind of power.  (Which, now that I think about it, is an answer to my regular prayer that I wrote about here, based on 2 Cor. 4:8-11.  Thank You, Lord!)

Have I become a stronger person?  No, not really.  I’ve just found the inexhaustible power of the Good News.

How have I found it?  Well, for years I’ve been steeping myself in excellent books like Future Grace, Holiness By Grace, Transforming Grace, Because He Loves Me, Give Them Grace, and many more.  (Please get these books and savor them if you can!)  The glorious truths in these books have gone a long way towards helping me change my hindsight.  They have helped to heal many of my hurts, by teaching me to look back on them through the lens of Gospel truth.  This is true for long-ago hurts and hurts from just a moment ago.

But that is only half of what they were designed to teach me.  And because I only got that half, the retrospective half, I still lacked a lot of Gospel power.

I still have tended to PLAN and HOPE for “good days” (as selfishly defined), while only applying the Gospel to comfort myself if the “good day” didn’t happen.  

Without meaning to, I had lumped Gospel truth into the category of “consolation prize.”  I’d hoped to get the million bucks, and I’d tried my best, but I’d lost.  So I would gratefully (and a little ruefully) accept the parting gifts instead.  They were better than nothing.

Oh, how tragic it is when we fail to see the lavish gifts we’ve been given as the treasures they really are!

It’s time to start hoping and planning for Good News Days.  Such days are not second best, they are what it’s all about.  They are the days of gold, silver and precious stones that will survive the test of God’s purifying fire (1 Co. 3:11-15).

Let me say it again:

A Good News Day is a day when the Gospel shapes my beliefs, my hopes, my plans, my actions, my interactions, and how I deal with sins and failures (both my own sins and those of others that impact me).

In future entries we’ll look at how we can plan and hope for such days, how we can live them, and what they might look like.  

Lost in Translation

Photo by juliaf

Just yesterday a gunman murdered 20 kindergartners and 6 school staff members in Newtown, Connecticut.  I spent yesterday buried in the news, numb with the shock of it all.

Yet today I am working on translating and perfecting my presentation of Christmas Carols in American Sign Language, so I can be ready for church tomorrow.  I believe in the true Christmas...one that has nothing to do with trees, elves, white bearded men in red suits, or greed, so I'm dealing with songs that celebrate the incarnation of God Himself.

It's been hard, hard work.  Not just because of the struggles that always come with interpreting from one language to another.  That's a challenge I actually enjoy.  Usually (for example), fitting the convoluted, implied-subject, passive-descriptive imperative form found in the single line, "Veiled in flesh the Godhead see" into ASL grammar within the confines of artistic style and musical speed...well, I would normally relish it. I don't actually know the right grammatical terms for all of it, but I can feel it in my heart, and I love to coax it out and watch it dance on my fingers.

Not this time.  Not with a soul that is stunned by the horror of yesterday.

It's so tempting to say that yesterday threw Christmas into the dust, that the bleating of manger-side sheep is drowned out by gunfire, that the cries of labor pains pale next to cries of terror and death, that the message of peace on earth has been disproven.  Rendered trite.  Annulled.

But, of course, the millennia that have passed since Christ's birth have been full of horrors.  If Christ's coming to earth could have been rendered meaningless, it would have happened long before now.

But how can we sing "Peace on Earth, and mercy mild" so soon after Newtown?  Can we only sing it wishfully, wistfully, as a prayer for what we hope will happen someday?

How can the truth of these songs not get lost in translation when "the real state of things" is interpreted to us by the hands of madmen?

How can "Peace on Earth" be communicated in a world like ours?  The first step is to remember that the song of the angels was not about peace.

It was about the Prince of Peace.

The angels didn't sing a sermon that told people how they ought to live peacefully.  They sang an announcement of the One who was, and is, Peace Incarnate.

Incarnation is not the same as interpretation.  Some things can't be expressed in language.  They have to become flesh and blood.

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us..."  (John 1:14).

Humanity has tried countless ways to interpret the message of peace, but unlike any other communication, this one cannot truly be received without receiving the Messenger.

Oh, it is undeniably true that there are many good, peaceful people who do not know Christ.  They are as good as they are by the grace of God, whether they know it or not.  If He did not bestow such "common grace," Newtown would happen every day.  There is not a single good person on the planet; not one who, if left to his or her own devices, wouldn't become a horror (Isa 53:6, Isa 64:6, Jer 17:9, Mark 10:18, Rom 3:10).  So God gives a common form of goodness with the same mercy that makes Him send rain on both the just and the unjust (Matt 5:45).   It's a providence largely ignored.  It's also a providence that will someday be withdrawn, if I understand 2 Thess 2:7 correctly.

But every human being, even those with a measure of sweetness, kindness, and goodness, needs to be saved from their own sin.

This is the kind of message that the religious elite of Jesus' times could not stand.  The kind that made their rage murderous against the most innocent one who ever walked.  Think of it... a perfectly innocent adult, telling the religious elite that they needed to repent and turn to Him so they could be saved.  They wanted Him dead...and temporarily got their wish.

The world hates that message today, too.  Oh, they believe that some people need to be saved, for sure.  But they bristle at the thought that they themselves need to be saved from the evil within themselves, and that only Christ can do that.  They can't imagine that they could be capable of truly heinous acts, even though history is full of people who, under the right (wrong?) circumstances, did things they never thought themselves capable of.

If they're not a Hitler or a Klebold or a Breivik or a Lanza, they're just fine, thank you.

They want humanity to find a workable interpretation of the message of peace, but without the incarnation of the Prince of Peace in their own hearts.

And peace gets lost in the translation.  Because without Christ Himself... trusted, worshiped, indwelling... there is no power for peace with God (the ultimate peace) or for the truest peace with neighbors.

But with Him, everything is possible.  And there can be no doubt...if Christ had sat enthroned in the heart of Adam Lanza, conforming him to ever-increasing Christlikeness, including love of neighbor, love of enemies, peace, joy, righteousness...the Newtown Massacre would never have happened.  Christ's Spirit inside makes that much difference.

And so I must Sign the songs of incarnation tomorrow with a heart full of hope, and joy, and peace.  Because the message has not been annulled, nor can it ever be, as long as The Eternal One lives in people's hearts.

Does He live in your heart by repentant faith?



Isaiah 9:6 (ESV)
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.


John 14:27 (ESV)
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. 




1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 (ESV)
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

How I Mock Jesus (And You Do, Too)

Imagine, if you will, a classic tragic tale.  (And if you think from the beginning that you know where it's going, hang in there.  It might surprise you.)


Ours is the story of a prince (the best, most noble sort of prince) who dearly loves a peasant woman, though she seems incapable of returning his devotion.  One day he hears that his beloved is sick, near death in fact, and that nothing can save her but a transfusion of his rare blood type.  And her condition, he's told, is so desperate that it will take every drop of blood he has to save her.  He will have to die.


Because of his love for her, he donates all of that blood.  But as the last light of life is fading from his eyes, his beloved walks into the room.  She takes in the scene, is told why the prince is dying, and responds condescendingly.  


"Well, that was so very noble of you," she says with a pat on his arm.  "I will do my best to remember your sacrifice, and I'll sing songs of praise to your memory every Sunday.  But it was really a waste, you see.  Noble, but unnecessary.  You completely overreacted...my disease really wasn't that serious."


To her dying day, though she cherished sentimental thoughts of him, she remained mostly puzzled by the foolishness that had driven him to such extremes over nothing at all.  She couldn't quite bring herself to honor his memory as she should, because she found his foolishness pitiable, and just a tad embarrassing.


I've been that peasant.  Far more often than I care to admit.  And I'm willing to bet that you have, too.  Think not?  Hear me out.


This morning I was in the mood to coddle one of my pet sins.  And so I coddled away, not caring that I was doing so.  It really wasn't a big deal.


My condition wasn't that serious.


Then I found myself in a conversation with one of my sons... a son who was once again revealing his love of  "sin for sin's sake."  He really loves badness because it's bad, and bad is fun.


As He so often does, my Prince of Peace convicted me by what came out of my own mouth.  Here's the gist of what I heard myself saying:

"Son, Jesus wasn't a fool for coming and suffering the way He did, and dying the way He did, to save us from our sin.  He didn't overreact to sin, as if sin really weren't the "big deal" that He thought it was.  Look at Calvary and understand.  Calvary paints a picture of how much God loves us, but don't miss what else it tells us.  Calvary paints the very truest picture of just how horrible our sin really is.  The God of the universe looked at our condition, lost in sin, and decided that we were in such a desperate state that it was worth Him coming and being tortured and dying to save us from that sin.  Do you want to look at Him and tell Him He was a fool for doing that?  If the God of all the universe says that our sin is that big a deal, then it really is.  And one of the worst things our sin does to us is blind us to how bad it really is.  And it blinds us to the glorious wisdom and love of the God who chose to save us from sin, at great cost to Himself."

I had to slow down as I heard the irony of what I was saying. 

Whenever I coddle my favorite sin, calling it "no big deal," I am mocking the One who thought (or rather, who KNEW) it was worth His very life's blood to save me from it.  I set myself up to think of Him only sentimentally, as the noble but pitiable fool who overreacted.  I prime my heart to sing songs of praise condescendingly, instead of in awe and wonder of the love that saved me from my worst enemy...my own sin.

That's how I have unknowingly mocked Jesus sometimes, and I bet you've done it, too, without realizing it.  I hope you'll join me in repenting and re-discovering the awe of what really transpired on Calvary, the horribly glorious truth of what we were really saved from.  May it infuse our prayers, our praises, our lives with joyful love for Him, and an ever-growing hatred for the sin in our own hearts.  May the Gospel, and the God of the Gospel, free us to walk in greater holiness today.

And may we love our wise, gloriously loving Prince as He deserves to be loved.

Should We Really Want to Return to Mayberry?

I read a hopeful-sounding article today. It was called, "RIP: Girls Gone Wild?" I appreciated the news it shared; namely, that there are signs that Hollywood may be toning back on the level of filth it chooses to spew.

I celebrate the idea of a "cleaner Hollywood"...but with caution.

It is 100% good that Hollywood might clean up its act. The raunch and filth are a disgrace to our nation, and lend tragedy to the fact that we are still thought of (in some circles) as a "Christian" nation.

But oh, how deceptive sin is! And one of its favorite deceptions is called, "Playing dead" (link leads off-site). It doesn't mind lying low for a while, as long as its apparent absence lulls people into a false sense of security.

I cannot help noting how the debauchery of the '70's and its "Sexual Revolution" came out of the womb of the 50's and 60's, when TV was so good and clean, and not even Rob and Laura Petrie (The Dick Van Dyke Show) slept in the same bed. The adults watching the younger generation throwing virtue to the wind often asked themselves and others, "Where did we go wrong?"

I love the Dick Van Dyke Show, and other good clean oldies. They are a symptom, not a cause. Humanism began its takeover long before most homes even had televisions. I don't blame these shows for what happened. I enjoy watching them with my kids sometimes. But I see how Satan took a fairly benign thing and twisted it for evil, as he so loves to do.

You see, there was a loud, unspoken message in the good, moral oldies, a message that not only reflected its era, but reinforced that era's values.

We are fine without God...or at least with only the occasional tip of the hat to him.

The Petries didn't center their lives around Him, and they were good people. Same for the Ozzie and Harriet Nelsons, the Ward and June Cleavers, Andy Taylor and little Opie, and all the rest. They were all so very likeable, so very clean, certainly not sinners in desperate need of a Savior. Few viewers minded the relative absence of a holy God in their favorite characters' good lives.

Being "good people" was enough. Our TV favorites may have ignored God for the most part, but they certainly wouldn't have cursed Him. They were safely neutral, and we could safely amuse ourselves as we immersed ourselves in their neutrality. Except, of course, that we forgot the words of the Holy One:

Whoever is not with me is against me,

and whoever does not gather with me scatters. (Matt. 12:30)

The church fell asleep on the job, smugly satisfied with the moral superiority of our modern American people. God was declared to be a figure of total benignity, without wrath for sin. The basic goodness of mankind, as preached from the grave by Ann Frank, on the screen by the best of TV, from the vaunted halls of the UN, and from countless other sources helped push God to the back burner even in the mainline denominations.

Again, the good old shows are merely symptoms, not root causes, though they did have strong power to reinforce the "spirit of the times." (If you doubt that power, just go to any show or article which tries to define the spirit of any decade in the era of film or television. Images from the entertainment media will figure prominently in that definition.) But perhaps nothing is more deadly to the spread of the Gospel than the spread of moralism. If we're fine without God, and we're basically good, then Calvary can be nothing but disgustingly offensive. "Sin" ceases to exist, or is re-defined as "a weakness to work on," or even just low self-esteem. Worse, churches jump on the "morality" bandwagon and work to create either a liberal man-centered theology (on the left), or a self-righteous pseudo-piety (on the right). In moralism, depravity finds a most fertile breeding ground.

"We're fine without God" is NOT a morally neutral position. It is total antagonism to God, and no matter how well-intentioned it might be, it leads inevitably to decadence. And so, while the Petries slept in separate beds, their viewers geared up for the time when they could take godlessness to its logical conclusion in the beds of total strangers any time they wanted to (while destroying any resulting offspring with impunity). And somehow, American Christendom largely failed to see the connection between the two.

How could an era of such harmlessly amusing godlessness have gone so wrong?

And what happened back in the '80's when "religious political conservatives" really got upset about the rampant moral decay happening all around them? They decided to try to use politics to force the culture to act like Christians even when the people were lost. They tried to use political clout to "redeem the culture," as if the culture were a force and not a collection of lost people who need Jesus. The Moral Majority might not have admitted it, but what the movement as a whole boiled down to was a desire to whitewash the lost more than to save them. Hollywood stars can go to Hell, as long as they don't flaunt the pleasures of their downward path before our innocent eyes. (That may not have been the attitude of everyone who sympathized with the Moral Majority, but as one who was coming of age in the late 70's and early 80's, I know how the wind was blowing, even in my own heart.)

And yet, what are whitewashed lost people, except precious souls who cannot see their eternal peril? And what are whitewash-painters, except Pharisees? If we could have "redeemed the culture" and forced them to act "just fine without God," would our children really have grown up in a safer world?

How safe were the Pharisees under Jesus' gaze?

What if Hollywood cleans up its act and the culture at large decides to "act better" for a while? Will we breathe a sigh of relief and get back to the business of happily entertaining ourselves in its neutrality? Will we teach our children to care more about behavior than about the eternal destinies of souls who reject Christ? Will we deceive them (and ourselves) that being "good people" is good enough? Will we forget the Gospel yet again in favor of moralism and/or legalism?

I hope that the entertainment industry cleans up its act. But I also hope the church does as well. I pray that the church will embrace the long-lost, long distorted Gospel in its full glory. The fact is, whether we're as squeaky-clean as the Petries or as decadent as Desperate Housewives, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And the wages of sin is still death. And the deadening power of sin doesn't wait for the grave. It kills all that is decent and good in people (regardless of external appearances). And there is NO answer for the problem of sin except the grace and mercy of God, extended through Christ's atoning death on the cross on our behalf, and received by faith in Jesus the Lord.

If we forget the Gospel, and fail to share it faithfully, the best we can hope for is a return to Mayberry. And Mayberry was just the calm before the storm.

(P.S. If you, like me, have a strong nostalgic bent, don't be discouraged by the fact that there never really has been an era of idyllic innocence since sin entered the world. God gave us nostalgia for a reason... a very beautiful reason. Like everything else, it's meant to point us to Him. Read about it here.)

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The photo used in this article was taken by familylife.

Offending People, Jesus-Style

Image via Wikipedia

This morning I read a blog post by Al Mohler called, "The Osteen Moment – Your Own Moment Will Come Soon Enough." It discusses a recent televised interview in which Joel Osteen squirmed under Piers Morgan's relentless gaze. Piers had asked him the worst question you can ask a "Prosperity gospel" kind of preacher who craves public approval but still feels any allegiance whatsoever to the Bible. Piers asked, "Is homosexuality a sin?"

Dr. Mohler's blog entry pointed out that every one of us who claims biblical Christianity will get hit by that question soon enough. And it left me wondering how I should answer.

There's no question that homosexual activity is sinful and prohibited. The Bible makes that absolutely clear. The question is, how do we present that reality when challenged by the Piers Morgans of our world (or our homosexual next door neighbors, family members, or co-workers)?

Most of the time, we see only a few possibilities. We can evade the question altogether, we can couch it in the most squirmingly cowardly language, or we can barrel on ahead without caring about the feelings of those around us.

Given a choice in our culture, most of us would prefer not to offend. And yet, if we're true to our Bibles, we know that Jesus often chose to be offensive (Mat 15:12-14 , John 6:48-64 , just to name a few). And we know that Jesus did all things well, so it must be okay to offend, right?

Yet we've all met plenty of Christians who not only aren't afraid of offending, but who actually love it. They're arrogant, in-your-face, obnoxious people who give Christ a black eye even as they name His name. In our guts we know that they offend with a different spirit than the one with which our Savior offended people.

How will I answer that question when it comes to me? Most of us go round and round in our minds and end up coming to one conclusion.

I hope nobody asks me that.

Not exactly helpful.

Folks, we're sometimes going to have to offend people. There's no getting around it. The question is, how did Jesus offend people? If we're going to do it, we want to do it His way, right?

When it comes right down to it, Jesus offended people with the Gospel. Sometimes they were offended with the part of the Gospel that revolved around His Lordship. Sometimes they couldn't stomach the way He refused to be chained to their legalistic rules.

But if you boil it all down, the part about the Gospel that offended them most was this:

You are a sinner who needs a Savior, and I am that Savior.

When someone asks us, "Is such-and-such a sin?" and they're waiting with sharpened claws to rip us up as soon as we answer, we become very un-Christlike. We follow the rabbit trail, when Jesus would have gone straight to the heart. The offense of the Gospel does not revolve around whether or not such-and-such is a sin. It revolves around whether or not you and I are sinners.

Right now, homosexuality is the untouchable sin, the rallying point for those who can't bear the doctrine of sin at all. The world says, "Don't you DARE call it sin." To do so is political suicide.

Our Lord never got into politics. He got into hearts and souls. And this is where we lose our edge. We want to let people move the battleground to the arena of action only. The Gospel insists that the arena exists in a much deeper place.

The message of the Gospel is much more offensive than the fact that homosexual acts are sinful. The Gospel tells me that my BEST acts are sinful. That's why, of all the people in Israel in Jesus' day, no one hated Him more than the Pharisees, the religious leaders who were so sure of their own righteousness.

No matter what the question, don't get defensive. Go on the offense with the best offense the Gospel can offer. Because the best offense of the Gospel is one that you can't present arrogantly.

Here's what I hope I would say to Piers Morgan and all those who ask if homosexuality is a sin.

"Piers, you know what? I have something more offensive to say than that. What true Biblical Christianity teaches me is that sin is not just what a person does, it's who he is. Sin is part of my DNA. It infects everything I do, and not just the things that look bad. If I reach out my hand to give $5 to a homeless person, it was a sinful hand that gave the money, and a sinful heart that decided to do even that good act. The news of the Gospel is offensive not because it labels certain things as sins, but because it labels all of us as hopeless sinners in need of a Savior. Did you know that the Bible says that all of our righteousnesses are like filthy rags? That's all of the best things that you can do, Piers, and the best things that I can do. Filthy rags. That's why, though the word 'Gospel' means 'Good News,' it's only good news to people who are humble enough to look at themselves and say, "I am sinful and I need a Savior." The Gospel is the worst possible news, the most offensive news, to the proud person who wants to worship himself. God resists the proud. He gives His grace, His mercy, His forgiveness to the humble. So behind every heart that angrily asks, with fists clenched, 'Is such-and-such a sin?' lies a heart that is yelling at God, 'Don't you dare call ME a sinner.' But for those whose fists are unclenched, for those who see their own sinfulness and hate it, the Gospel is the best news of all, because it says, 'There is a Savior, and He came to earth and lived a perfect life and died a horrible death and rose from the dead to pay the price for all of my sin…ALL of it, no matter what that might look like when it's acted out. He came to die because of the sin that's in our DNA, that infects our very best acts and leaves us desperately lost. That's the Gospel. So don't waste my time with asking me, 'Is ______ (such-and-such) a sin?' No matter what you fill in the blank, the answer is the same. It's either an outright sin, or it's a good act that is still tainted with sin. We need the Savior because we are sinful to the core. All of us. I need the Savior…heterosexual, non-drinking, non-smoking, non-cussing, non-you-name-it me…I need the Savior. And Jesus Christ is that Savior. Those who believe that they are sinners, who know that they cannot impress a holy God, and who put their trust in Jesus to save them and forgive them and cleanse them and make them new, they are saved and forgiven and cleansed and made new because of His mercy. That's the message of true Christianity. And it's much more offensive than what you hoped I would say. Do you believe that you need the Savior, Piers?"