Ryan Hale

Grow Where You’re Planted

I’ve moved around quite a lot in my life. Because of my Dad’s changing job situation and some other factors at the time, I went to a different school in each of my four years of high school.

That was followed by my first and second years of university at different schools.

Gina and I were then married and moved near Louisville, Kentucky for my student teaching, only to move back to Indianapolis for a couple of years, living in two different apartments there.

I was then offered a new job in St. Louis, where we went to live for 11 years and were in two different houses and an apartment there.

Another job offer and we moved to Denver. Two different houses there as well.

And finally (or at least “finally” up to now), our move to Catania on the island of Sicily.

By my count, that is 11 cities, in at least 15 homes, in 2 different countries and 3 US states over the last 30 years. It makes me tired just doing the counting!

So you might think that I would be the last person to talk about growing where you’re planted, but I prefer to think that having had these experiences helps me to see the significance of what I read and saw while in Israel last October:

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.

Mark 1:14

This seems like a fairly innocuous verse, at least until you take a look at the context of what had just happened. Jesus had just seen two very significant things happen in his life.

First, Jesus had just been baptized by John the Baptist, was given the Holy Spirit, and God Himself speaks from heaven, telling Jesus who he is and that he loves him.

At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Mark 1:9-11

Second, the Holy Spirit takes Jesus into the wilderness where he would be tempted by Satan. Satan speaks to him to offer him food to overcome his hunger, tests his identity, and offers him power over the kingdoms of the world. In the end, though, Jesus defeats Satan and doesn’t fall victim to his temptations. Satan leaves and the angels are watching over him.

Given this context, it puts that first scripture in a completely new light for me. For most people, I think that, if we know that we have been called and blessed by God, and especially if we sense that we have any power whatsoever – both of these things happened to Jesus prior to him returning to Galilee – we would be thinking of the most strategic location in which we could be setting up a ministry work. In other words, my guess is that we would be thinking of the best way to grow the largest ministry to affect the greatest number of people. In Jesus’s case, if he were to follow this path, I would have thought that he would have immediately entered Jerusalem. That is the capitol, the seat of power, both religiously and in the government. I would have thought that is where he would have gone.

But here, we see Jesus return to Galilee. Do you know what is in Galilee? Outside of the “Sea” that we read about in the scriptures (really, a large lake), there are some small towns, but even today, there isn’t much. 2000 years ago, there would have been a lot less!

Just to give you some perspective, here is a picture that we took on a plateau that overlooks the northern side of Galilee.

Somewhat strangely, we see that this is the area where Jesus calls and teaches his disciples. This is the area where he teaches most of the parables and performs most of his miracles. It isn’t in Jerusalem. It is here in Galilee, where there aren’t a lot of people. There isn’t a seat of political power. In fact, among the Jewish leaders, there is at least indifference, if not disdain, for this area. There was even a saying amongst the Jewish people that no prophet would come from Galilee, even though the scriptures didn’t say this. The Jewish people’s dislike for this area blinded them such that they couldn’t see what God was doing through their own nation.

As I’ve thought about this over the last couple of weeks, I was reminded of something that we learned while on this trip to Israel, seeing this area, and understanding that this was Jesus’s home for most of his life. The lesson that I learned was that, regardless of where we are, God’s desire for us is to be faithful, to live lives that honor God, to make disciples and teach others to do the same. There is no need to do what seems heroic to other people. The primary thing that we should do is figure out how God is working around you where you are and be part of that work, being faithful to follow Him throughout our time.

Commentary

The Power of Simplicity

On Thursday, Paul and I met a good friend from Gambia after not seeing him for several months. As we were catching up, we learned that he had recently baptized another young man and was now going on to disciple him to follow Jesus. It was great news, and it seemed that he was developing a vision for making disciples of other guys.

At one point, I asked him, if he had to teach his new friend to share the Gospel with someone else, would he know how to do it? He thought for a moment and said, “No, I don’t think I know what I would teach him.”

I asked him if I could quickly show him a way to share the Gospel and he said Yes. We walked through the Three Circles in about five minutes, and then, without preparing him that he would need to do anything, I asked him to share with me the same thing that I showed him, meanwhile hiding what I had shown him. He missed a few details, but certainly was able to explain the primary gist of the Three Circles, and thus the good news of the Gospel of Christ.

So, why is this story important? I think there are two main reasons:

Our friend now knows at least one way to share the Gospel with other people.
He now has a simple way to teach his new disciple how to share the Gospel.

This is critical because we now have the ability to duplicate our efforts.

Very frequently, we talk about wanting to do what Jesus told us to do, to make disciples and teach others to do what Jesus taught us to do, but we miss making it practical. Somehow, it seems that we believe that we’ll learn to do it someday, but if we are truthful, that day rarely comes for most people. And because it never comes, we have millions of Christians who could be sharing with others, reaching their friends, their family, or others across their community or across the world, but it doesn’t happen because they simply don’t know how.

At one point in our conversation, I asked my Gambian friend, if I gave him a cup, if he would know what to do with it. Of course, he said. It was a hot day, and we were sitting outside, drinking a lot of water. The cup was a simple tool that allowed him to take a drink of water. We discussed that the Three Circles is like the cup. It is a tool that, because of its simplicity, you can easily understand how to use it to do what you want to be able to do.

I believe that it is very important that we both read and understand the scriptures, but I believe we must also find ways to put them into practice in very practical ways. And beyond this, we must teach those around us to be able to do the same themselves. We shouldn’t wait to find the “right person” to share with our friends or family. We shouldn’t need to wait until we think the time is right and invite them to our churches. No, instead, for each person to be both ready and able to share in simple ways what God has done through Jesus in our lives and for the whole of humanity.

To do this, we need to use the power of simplicity. We need to be able to share this amazing message in a way that someone else, within a few minutes, can learn and understand, and be ready to turn around and teach it to someone else. If we do this, then I believe that we can see the good news of Jesus travel from one person to the next, moving ahead without limits.

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Praying for Grandchildren – Pt. 3

Post author By Ryan Hale
Post date August 9, 2019
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So as I wrapped up my session talking about birthing spiritual grandchildren (see the previous posts on part 1 and part 2), we moved to Matthew 13. We read verses 1-9:

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. 2 Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. 3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

Jesus seems to have a clear priority for fruitfulness, but let’s make sure that we have an understanding of what he is talking about here. The disciples asked him to explain the parable, so later, Jesus provided some definitions:

The farmer: Someone who is sharing the message of the Kingdom of God.

The seed: The message about the Kingdom.

The four different types of soil: The different ways that people might receive the message.

As I read this, I see that there is actually only one type of soil where the message isn’t received or not believed. That is the first type of soil, and because the message isn’t received, Satan takes it away.

In the second and third types of soil, I see that these people do believe. They have accepted Christ, but they have difficulties in continuing to grow and be fruitful.

For the second type of person, they are experiencing trouble because of their new faith. They are afraid of what people are thinking of them, or they don’t believe that this new faith is actually worth the persecution that they are receiving from others. The root of their newly planted faith doesn’t go deep into the ground, so despite initially believing, they fall away.

The third type of person is similar, but it is because they are prioritizing the things of the world, whether because they think they don’t have enough money and spend their lives trying to make more, or they have enough that they do everything they can to protect what they have. In either case, they have believed, but their priorities are connected to the kingdom of the world, not to the Kingdom of God, so those misaligned priorities crowd out their ability to be fruitful.

The fourth soil person is someone who both receives the seed and believes, but then goes on to produce a harvest. In the same way that I remember farmers where I grew up in Indiana planting corn, beans, or other kinds of crops, I know that they put the seeds into the ground in the spring with the intent to receive back a great harvest in the fall, and that is what this type of person will do. By planting that seed within them, the farmer sees a great harvest come through the planting of this one seed.

So in my talk, I simply asked the question: Should this parable have any bearing on how we think about our ministry work? If our time is limited – and it is! – how should we be spending our time?

Clearly, we should be like the farmer, spreading the seed. I don’t see that the farmer is trying to take his time to figure out what type of soil the person is in advance. In fact, he doesn’t seem to care very much. Instead, he is just spreading the seed.

But once we can see which type of soil the seed has been sown into, should there be a priority in our ministry time and work on those who are the good soil?

For example, if I were to tell you that you could invest one dollar in a company, and at the end of one year, you would receive one dollar in return, would you do it? Of course not.

But if you could invest your one dollar and make $100, my guess is that you would invest that money quickly.

So I believe that this is what Jesus is saying. Sow the seed. Find the good soil. See and help this new disciple become fruitful.

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Praying for Grandchildren – Pt. 2

Post author By Ryan Hale
Post date August 3, 2019
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As I was preparing to speak, I had thought of the people that Paul had been greeting in Rome. They were people that he clearly knew, and had been some of the same names that I had read about working in other places while reading in the book of Acts. In short, they were now Paul’s spiritual children who were going on to continue to make spiritual grandchildren by sharing the good news of the Gospel and discipling others as well.

I thought it would be important to go back one generational step and think about Jesus. Did he have a particular method for making disciples? Did he have a vision of what that meant? Was he also thinking about generations of disciples making disciples?

I think that Jesus had been preparing his disciples to make disciples for quite some time. I won’t go into detail on this just yet, but just to make one example, I think that if we look in the book of Mark, starting in chapter 3, we can see that he appoints his disciples and then in chapter 4, he begins teaching them his disciple-making plan. Once he finishes teaching them his plan using the parables of the soils, a lamp on a stand, the sower, and the mustard seed, he tells them it is time to go over to the Gentile side of the lake where I believe he intends to start putting them into practical training.

Jesus teaches them the importance of faith as he calms the storm. He teaches them the importance of walking within the authority and power of Christ with the demon-possessed man, the bleeding woman, and the girl who had died. He even shows them the importance of sharing with others as he sends out the healed Demoniac to the Decapolis cities. And now finally, he sends them out two-by-two to do all of this themselves, to replicate what they had seen Jesus doing. I think this is all training for his disciples to make disciples, just as Jesus had shown them how to do it.

In my talk, I paused on this time that Jesus sent out the seventy-two disciples and focused on Luke 10:2:

He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

I wanted to stop here because I always thought that it seemed a bit odd that Jesus would tell his disciples, within the context of sending them out, to pray for more workers. It seemed odd because our application today just never fit within the context of what Jesus was teaching his disciples at this time.

Typically, I think we would respond to this scripture by saying, “OK, let’s pray for more leaders, more pastors, more missionaries who will go to reach others.” But in this time, Jesus and these disciples that he was sending out were all there were – there were no other believers. There were no other believers to pray for that God would send. So why would Jesus be telling the disciples to pray that God would send out workers into his harvest field? Why not instead tell them to pray for new people who will believe in Jesus, or who will enter the kingdom of God, since that is the message that he is sending them out with? They are supposed to tell the people that the kingdom is near. Isn’t that what they should instead be praying for?

I think the answer here is that Jesus isn’t just thinking about new believers. Yes, he wants people to enter the kingdom, but he is telling his disciples to go beyond this in their prayers. He is telling them to not just pray for believers, but for fruitful disciples who will become workers.

The key point here is that they are to pray for these workers from the harvest field. These new workers would come from the non-believers that Jesus is sending them to meet within each of the towns he will soon visit.

Jesus doesn’t tell them to go make more converts. He wants them to go make fruitful disciples. He tells them to pray for workers. Jesus is thinking about generations of disciples, and I believe that he wants his disciples to stay in the house of those new disciples because his intent is that this new home will be the “home base” for kingdom of God in that town, the place that has learned about Jesus the Messiah and will be the new generation of workers within their own town. The disciples won’t be just eating and drinking, doing nothing, laying around throughout the day. They will be talking about what Jesus has taught them and the miracles they have seen, and the people in the house will be learning about the reality and the ways of the kingdom of God.

To me, it already seems clear that Jesus isn’t just thinking about gathering the disciples around him, but instead is thinking about how his kingdom can travel and spread out everywhere, to all people, through the disciples who will be fruitful workers.

To go one step further, though, how do we see Jesus praying? Does Jesus have a desire related to spiritual generations of believers for which he asks God to intervene?

In John 17:20, we can see that Jesus prays for spiritual grandchildren as well. He says:

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message…

I once asked a group who Jesus was saying that he was praying for. The group responded that he was praying for us! That wasn’t the answer I was thinking of, but it is still correct. Jesus is praying for those who will become his followers, generation after generation. Again, Jesus is thinking about, and praying for, spiritual grandchildren.

So what does this mean for us? Is there a lesson that we should learn as followers of Christ? Shouldn’t we also be praying for workers and not just believers? Would anything need to change in our approach if we were to think about, pray for, and practically prepare the people that we are discipling to become workers? To, themselves, make spiritual children and have spiritual grandchildren?

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Prepare the way for the Lord

Post author By Ryan Hale
Post date August 1, 2019
1 Comment on Prepare the way for the Lord

Tomorrow morning, we will begin to meet as a 3/3rds Group in the large park in Catania called Villa Bellini. I’m looking forward to having a weekly rallying point that will include a time of thanksgiving and praise, prayer for one another, scripture study and discussion, thinking of how we can put God’s word into practice, and prayer for our friends who do not know Jesus. Of course, each thing that we do in making disciples has an impact for the future, whether for good or bad, but I have sensed that now is a time in particular where we are setting the stage for the future, where we are “putting our hands in the wet cement”, if you follow my expression.

This week, I have been reading Mark 1:1-8, thinking and meditating on it in advance of our discussion on it tomorrow morning. I will be trying to facilitate a discussion, not necessarily teaching the passage, but I like to try to think in advance about the passage to consider some of the main things that I can see within it. Here is the passage:

The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, 2 as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”— 3 “a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’”

4 And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. 6 John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

As I’ve thought about this passage, here are some simple observations that I have made:

Jesus is called the Messiah and the Son of God, which means that he is, himself, God.
Mark points back to the prophet Isaiah to talk about John the Baptist, but it seems that the point is ultimately that God is preparing the people to hear about Jesus, initially through John.
John would preach a message of repentance. It is a message that the forgiveness of sins starts with repentance, a humble heart before God that admits what we have done wrong.
The people of Jerusalem and Judea responded to John’s message. They recognized that he was right and God was moving (actually, literally!) at that time. This “made the way” for Jesus to come and bring the Spirit of God.
Despite John’s great ministry and great response of the people, he says that he is nothing compared to the one who would come after him, namely, Jesus.
John says that Jesus will baptize them with the Holy Spirit. I believe this means that God himself washes over us to make us clean.

As a primary takeaway, I think this passage is speaking of Jesus coming as the king, a king over the entirety of the world, and John is showing how the king wants to interact with us. Typically, in our own strength, we believe, and try to show others, that we can take care of ourselves on our own. We are proud people, and this extends directly into our spiritual interactions with God as well. We don’t humble ourselves before him because we believe that we can take care of our problems on our own.

But the king is coming, and his herald, the one who will prepare the way, the one we call John the Baptist, is telling the people that they must be prepared for him. To be prepared for him means that we must come in repentance, in humility and in surrender because we have rejected him before. But now, he is coming, and he is bringing with him the Holy Spirit, who will spiritually baptize those who have been prepared in repentance and humility for the coming king.

So what does this mean for me, to put this into practice? Over the last few weeks, we have had a leader’s meeting where we have discussed what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit and what we can do on our part to be ready and prepared for this. Following teaching that we have learned, we have been attempting to learn what it means to surrender to God’s will and wait on him. This week, I have been trying to slow down the time of reading in the scriptures and prayer, writing what I have been learning as well, in an attempt to hear more of what God wants to say to me instead of imposing my schedule and steps upon my time with God. It has been a necessary time for me to chew and digest the Word, attempting to listen to the Spirit through this week. In short, attempting to come before God in humility to hear what he has to say instead of doing all as I typically do with super-imposed timetables.

God, I pray that you will help me to continue to slow down to listen to you. You are the energy in all that I do, and without your leading, nothing moves forward. I certainly want you to use me, but I first want to connect with you, so I pray that you will help me to take the steps to practically do this today and as I go forward.

General

Praying for Grandchildren – Pt. 1

Post author By Ryan Hale
Post date July 30, 2019
1 Comment on Praying for Grandchildren – Pt. 1

This last Saturday, I was given the privilege of speaking at a missions camp just outside of Vittoria, Italy. They gave me two 45-minute sessions, one for a Biblical teaching, and another to introduce our ministry work. There were about 50 or 60 people in attendance, mostly younger people from around Europe, including Italy, France, Germany, and Sweden. We even had the great opportunity to meet some people from Pakistan who are doing great work here in Europe.

I thought that it would be a good idea to write down the main points that I spoke about and post them for future reference.

On Thursday morning, our family drove down to Vittoria, in the southern part of Sicily, where we found Camp Bethel. It is a nice camp with great facilities, including bunk houses, bathrooms and showers, kitchen, meeting space, pools, a small soccer field, and a nice open grassy area for various activities. The camp was full, so we took three tents with us to accommodate the six people in our family and made our first camping trip in Italy. It was at the end of July, and it has been hot, so I was expecting to be sweating while sleeping, but the weather turned out to be great at night. The only rain that we had to worry about was with the camp’s sprinkler system and the heat abated in the evening, making the sleeping comfortable.

As we entered the camp on Thursday morning, the participants were starting their first time of praise and worship for the day. Walking into the session, I began to think more about what I would say to the group on Saturday morning and sensed that I should share the idea of working alongside, and partnering with, people that don’t really look like, sound like, or think like “us”. When I say “us”, I was thinking about the generally-white Europeans, along with “us”, the one American family in the room. Instead, I had a vision in my mind of a mission camp meeting like this in the future that was full of Africans, Far-Easterners, Middle-Easterners, and others sitting alongside Europeans and Americans, truly representing the populations that we were wanting to see become part of the expression of the Kingdom of God here in Italy.

f2c53a5e-ea3a-452b-956a-c40598519902 — A time of prayer for one another in small groups at the camp.

As I sat down, I began to think of Romans 16 and the greetings that Paul gives to the church in Rome. As I opened it, I read the first few verses and greetings:

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. ²I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.

³Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus. ⁴They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them.

⁵Greet also the church that meets at their house.

Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia.

⁶Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you.

⁷Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me.They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.

⁸Greet Ampliatus, my dear friend in the Lord.

⁹Greet Urbanus, our co-worker in Christ, and my dear friend Stachys.

¹⁰Greet Apelles, whose fidelity to Christ has stood the test.

Greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus.

¹¹Greet Herodion, my fellow Jew.

Greet those in the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord.

¹²Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord.

Greet my dear friend Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord.

¹³Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too.

¹⁴Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the other brothers and sisters with them.

¹⁵Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the Lord’s people who are with them.

¹⁶Greet one another with a holy kiss.

All the churches of Christ send greetings.

As I read this, I began to realize that these people that Paul was greeting were some of the same people that I had been reading about in the book of Acts. Through his missionary journeys, Paul had gone throughout the areas of Galatia, through Asia, into Corinth and Athens and had sowed seeds of the Gospel, made disciples, and left behind churches.

Now, in this last chapter of Romans, we see that several of these people that he was working with in those areas have, for some reason, moved on to Rome. They have become disciples and are now workers in the church, or possibly churches, in Rome.

Sitting there in the first session, I was thinking of how great of a legacy and testimony that this represents! These are workers in the Kingdom of God that have come from being non-believers to not only believing, but who themselves are becoming fruitful by making disciples, even going on to live and work separately from Paul. Paul discipled and trained them well enough to become workers within the Kingdom themselves.

I can’t imagine that we will ever do it as well as the Apostle Paul, but I certainly do believe that this is the fruit that we hope to see from our work. We want to start to pray now for our spiritual children who will become workers like those that Paul is greeting here. Even more, as we will see what Jesus taught us to do, we want to pray and work to see spiritual grandchildren so that the work of making disciples of Jesus will continue generation after generation. Like those that Paul is greeting here, I believe that this is a vision of the future impact of our work and the legacy that we can leave behind.

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Centro Agape Before and After Pictures

Post author By Ryan Hale
Post date February 14, 2018
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At the inaugural ceremonies on Saturday, Marco showed a few Before and After pictures that I thought would be good to share as well. Even these Before pictures show the building after tons (literally!) of the trash inside had been removed, so it is difficult to get a true picture of the scale of work that our partners have accomplished, but hopefully this is a peek into the work that was done.

Screen Shot 2018-02-14 at 8.17.57 AM — Outside of the building before. Major water damage, fascia damage, and bad windows and doors.

Screen Shot 2018-02-14 at 8.29.08 AM — Restored exterior, no more water damage!

Screen Shot 2018-02-14 at 8.18.24 AM — Bathrooms before and after (the Afer picture is in the “almost complete” stage

Screen Shot 2018-02-14 at 8.18.41 AM — Two large upstairs rooms. Can anyone say mooooolllllllddddddd?

Screen Shot 2018-02-14 at 8.18.57 AM — Large upstairs rooms after restoration

Screen Shot 2018-02-14 at 8.19.11 AM — Halways and bathrooms before

Screen Shot 2018-02-14 at 8.19.28 AM — And now…

Screen Shot 2018-02-14 at 8.19.45 AM — The large room downstairs. Missing from this picture is the floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets full of dusty old social records and dead animals.

Screen Shot 2018-02-14 at 8.19.58 AM — Downstairs meeting room when nearly complete

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Centro Agape Opening Ceremonies

Post author By Ryan Hale
Post date February 13, 2018
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This last Saturday, our Italian partners, working together as one organization called Missione Agape, coming together from nine different churches, opened a new Community Center that will be available to people from the immediate community, children, immigrants, and many others. We have worked to try to help make it a reality and are proud and excited for the work that they have done. We are looking forward to seeing how this new facility can be used for great connection and training.

On Saturday, our partners held a morning ceremony for the public, media, and politicians, while then also having separate opening ceremonies in the evening for the people of the churches represented within Missione Agape. Here are a few pictures from the day:

Front of the building from the street. The center is walled from the outside with a small parking area in the front.

Large meeting (and eating!) room in the lower section of the building.

Walking and talking flower garden path behind the center

There is still a lot of work to be done, but it is a start and there are new activities that we will be starting here very soon. Looking forward to reporting more on how God will use this new Center!

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The Father’s Heart – Part 1

Post author By Ryan Hale
Post date February 1, 2018
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God, as our Heavenly Father, has a heart that loves and beats for each of us. From the day that Adam and Eve disobeyed God, he has been working to provide us redemption and bring us back to himself. God is, himself, our redeemer.

God plan culminated in Jesus, who was sent to earth to announce and demonstrate a new kingdom that would be placed here on the earth. It is God’s kingdom. By coming to earth, Jesus established God’s kingdom and then took on the burden of providing for us by being a sacrifice for us for our sins. Before Abraham sacrificed the ram instead of his son Isaac, Abraham told Isaac that God will provide the sacrifice. In the same way, God provided Jesus, the visible form of God himself as the sacrifice for our sins.

So by coming to earth and dwelling with us, and then becoming the sacrifice for our sins, Jesus established the kingdom of God here on earth. This kingdom isn’t a geographical location or a political nation like a kingdom built by men. Instead, it is a group of people who look to God as the king and ruler of their lives. They willingly give their allegiance and obedience to God, receiving Jesus’s sacrifice in faith for the forgiveness of their sins, and live their lives as ambassadors of this kingdom for the purpose of seeing others become subjects to that same kingdom.

As Jesus was teaching the people, he spoke to them about how they should pray. He told them:

“This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6:9-10

Jesus goes on with his teaching of prayer, but it is an astonishing start because it lays the groundwork for how God thinks about people. Here are the parts of the prayer that I find so amazing:

God is our Father. He is in heaven, not here on earth, but he is our Father.
He says that we should both recognize and call out the holiness of God in worship.
We should pray for real change. God has a kingdom and we should pray for it to come and spread out across the earth.
And how will we know that the kingdom has come? When God’s will is done here on earth in the same way that it is here in heaven.

What would that look like, that God’s will is done here on earth, just as it is in heaven? What would be different? What would be different in my own life? What would be different in the world that I live in every day? What would the TV news look like if God’s will were done here on earth just as it is in heaven? Wow, what an amazing change that would be!

This is the first thing that Jesus teaches when he teaches us to pray. God himself is on a mission to see his kingdom, consisting of his rule and reign, done here on earth, and so I believe that we can say that this is foundational in understanding the Father’s heart for his people.

General

Living Under a Curse?

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to give a short Christmas devotional talk at a center for refugees near where we live. I accepted and decided to keep it simple and just tell the Creation to Christ story as a way to explain why it is important that Jesus came to earth, and therefore why celebrating Christmas is so important. You can see that story here:

As I was coming to the end, because I was speaking as a guest, I thought I would just end the talk, pray, and be finished for the day. However, at the end, another friend of mine who had come with me that day spoke up and suggested that we should take questions as we had both Christians and Muslims with us and some people may wonder about parts of the story.

The first question that came up was what Adam’s sin has to do with my sin. It is the first part of the story in the Creation to Christ story, so this man wondered why it mattered that Adam’s is part of the story.

The discussion that ensued, and even continued in a subsequent visit to the center yesterday, left me thinking about the precision of what the Bible says and what I understand and believe related to that very question. What does Adam’s sin have to do with me?

At the time, I answered the question this way:

Obviously, Adam’s sin of eating the fruit from a tree in a garden is not my sin.
But in the same way that Adam made a decision to walk away from God and do his own thing, aside from what God want me to do, I do the same. I disobey God on a regular basis, choosing my own way instead of God’s way.
Regardless of how you think about the nature of Adam’s sin and its connection to us today, the effect is the same. God cannot abide with sin. This is why Adam and Eve were punished and needed to be sent out of the garden, and this is the same reason that our sins are also punished and we are separated from God because of our sins.

There was a subsequent conversation about how the curse that God placed on Adam and Eve affects us to this day, and in later reports that I heard yesterday, it sounds like this was understood better, especially by some of the Muslim friends that were there that day, but the more that I’ve been thinking about this, the more that I’m wondering if this curse that God placed on Adam and Eve actually is directly related to the nature of our sin or not.

So, this post should probably be a really long one, primarily intended to help me think through my own understanding about how Adam’s sin relates to me today. But I think that I am going to need to break this up into at least two posts, possibly more. Also, I want to say that I think that #3 above remains true regardless of the outcome and whether or not you agree with any of the conclusions that I might come to here. In the end, I think that most of this may be academic because the result is ultimately the same. Whether my sin is based on something that I inherited from a curse and it was not theoretically possible for me to live a perfect life as Jesus did, or whether it is just the nature of being a human and like Adam I make my own decisions and willingly rebel against God through my sin, I have still sinned and still need forgiveness and mercy from God!

My primary question at this point is whether or not the curse from God is the reason that I am considered a sinner before God. When God administered punishment to Adam and Eve, he said to them:

¹⁶To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you.”

¹⁷To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
¹⁸It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

Genesis 3:16-19

So, I think that if you believe that our sin today is a result of the curse from God, I think that this is the nature of where that would come from since this is the curse that God pronounced. But the difficulty that I have here is that I don’t see something here that is related to sin coming from Adam, at least here in the pronouncement of the curse. I see pain, authority, work, sweat, and death as the result of the curse, but I don’t see a pronouncement of guilt for all humans, at least not here.

As a result, at least from what I see here, I’m not sure that it is right to say that we live under a curse from God. So far, that idea doesn’t really make sense to me. I will pick up on some other scriptures soon, though, that I think should help fill this out further.