‘Restoration & Transformation’ – New Wineskins

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

It’s been a great joy these last two months to serve New Wineskins e-zine as guest editor of the January-February edition, themed “Restoration & Transformation.”

Early in the year, Senior Editor Greg Taylor and I discussed the possibility of recruiting a guest editor for each issue of the e-zine this year while he is shouldering the tremendous responsibility as lead minister at Garnett Church of Christ in Tulsa, OK (see his recent article segment in Christianity Today’s sister magazine Leadership Journal). Greg is also trying to arrange a return visit to Africa for his family, where they served as missionaries about a decade ago. That, on top of several other projects he has in the works!

I volunteered to helm the first issue while he has been leaning on some of our mutual friends and past writing contributors to serve as guest editors this year. I have to say, the response has been excellent and I am excited about the themes that they have proposed!

“Restoration and Transformation” is a compilation of some of the best blog posts, articles and other works that I could find on the subject of putting Christ first as the goal of restoring the church through the transformation of its people. Some – but not all! While there’s no limit on the number of pages or pixels I can squeeze into an issue, there is a limit on the amount of time I can spend toward it.

It’s been exciting to post works from Wineskins and New Wineskins contributors like Edward Fudge, K. Rex Butts, and Founding Co-Editor Rubel Shelly as well as bringing aboard some fresh, new talent like Ben Overby, Brian Mashburn, Tim Woodroof, Matt Dabbs and others. (I don’t want to spoil the surprise of articles yet to “go live” by naming them all!)

I hope you’ll lend an eye to each of these advocates for the kind of change churches need – restoration by way of transformation.

Pray Without Sneezing

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

A couple of nights ago, I dreamed I was telling a joke to some people around a table at a place that was kind of like the UALR student center, and that was the punch line: “Pray without sneezing.”

In the dream, everyone seemed to think it was pretty funny. I wish I could remember what the joke was.

I can tell you that the punch line has its origin in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 (“pray continually”; “pray without ceasing,” KJV), which is Paul’s practice two chapters earlier (“Night and day we pray …” ~ 1 Thessalonians 3:10 as well as in his other letter to them: “…we constantly pray …” ~ 2 Thessalonians 1:11).

But I think there’s a worthy principle in the idea of praying without sneezing, and it’s no joke.

When we sneeze and we’re around people, we almost expect someone to say, “Bless you!”

Maybe – even if just for Lent – we should pray without expecting to be blessed, or even asking for it. Perhaps instead of praying for ourselves, we should pray for others for a season.

And let the blessings fall where they may.

Bereans

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day …”

That’s where we usually stop, and our brains turn off. And there’s good stuff to ponder, digest and teach there.

But it’s important to consider, chew on and proclaim the rest of the verse, too:

“to see if what Paul said was true.”

Bereans were noble not just because they studied, but because they studied to see if what Paul taught was true. They were noble because they sought truth. They were noble because they accepted scripture as the final word on truth. They were nobler than Thessalonians because they hadn’t already decided what truth was and that Paul was lying because his truth disagreed with theirs; they were open to new truth and more truth and God’s truth.

Because you can study all you want to, and if it’s only to prove what you already believe – rather than to discover what God wants you to hear, know and put your faith in – you’re studying for ignoble reasons.

And you might just as well start a riot and run the truth out of town on a rail.

Check out Acts 17:11 – the whole verse; the whole context.

See if what I said isn’t true.

Praying for ‘Contending for the Faith’

/ W. Keith Brenton / 10 Comments

If you are already aware of this lectureship in Texas, the title of this post may take you aback.

But I’m serious about it.

The very nature, tone, and subject matter of the lectures deeply disturbs and even angers me. (I wrote in anger about it elsewhere, but am trying to get over the anger.)

Wednesday night, as I was brooding silently while the rest of the good folks in my LIFE Group were discussing Dallas Willard’s Hearing God, I asked Him what I should do to conquer that anger.

After a while, the answer became as clear as could be: Pray for them.

Pray for each one of the lecture speakers by name, every day of the lectures, February 28 – March 3.

Pray what you would pray for your own minister, any minister, even yourself – if you were speaking on behalf of the Lord anytime and anywhere:

That God would speak powerfully through you. That you would speak only His words. That you would speak words that would build up and encourage the fellowship of believers. That you would speak words that would sustain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. That you would speak words that would draw people closer to God through Jesus Christ, by lifting Him up.

That is what I intend to do.

I will pray for David P. Brown, Terry Hightower, Lester Kamp, Lynn Parker, Skip Francis, Daniel Coe, Sonya West, Bruce Stulting, Daniel Denham, Ken Chumbley, Paul Vaughn, John West, Danny Douglas, Gene Hill, Doug Post, Wayne Blake, Michael Hatcher, Johnny Oxendine, John Rose, Jimmy Gribble, Lee Moses, Gary Summers, Jess Whitlock, Dub McClish, and the elders of the host church, Kenneth D. Cohn, Buddy Roth and Jack Stephens.

And I invite you to join me.

Story

/ W. Keith Brenton / 17 Comments

I said this in my Bible class Sunday morning (we’ve been discussing the opening two books of the Bible, Genesis and Exodus):

“The older I get, the less problem I have with the idea of God creating and doing everything in pretty much exactly the way the Bible describes. The reason I think He might well have done it that way is because it makes such a great STORY. His whole plan was for man to take His Name and His Story and His love to every corner of the earth. We remember stories. We like to tell stories. So it makes every kind of sense to me for God to have done things exactly the way scripture describes it, so we can get the Story right.”

I know it’s not scientific. I know the Story doesn’t always fit the quantifiable facts as we understand them.

But, hey, we’re talking about the God who created science and quantifiable fact out of the deep nothingness of nonexistence.

Is the Lord’s arm too short? Is anything impossible for God?

I have said before – and still unwaveringly believe – that the Story of scripture points forward to, directly at, and back toward Jesus Christ. (And, I might add, then it points forward to Him again.) He is the Word, the Story.

Jesus is the One through Whom, by Whom, for Whom all things were made.

Is it any wonder that scripture tells the Story of God and man in a way that culminates in their reconciliation through One Who is both God and man; son of God and son of Man?

So, like Job, I have had to learn to stop denying or even questioning the testimony of scripture when it seems to disagree with what my finite, limited and ultimately microscopic brain has observed as science or verifiable fact.

Scripture is the way God wishes to tell the Story.

It is impossible for Him to lie.

So it is quite possible for it to be divinely accurate as well as poetically perfect.

Because we’re talking about God.

If the writers, anonymous though some might be to us, had wanted to tell it in a different way than God wanted, He could have easily flooded them away, sent fire from heaven to consume them, sent them grazing in the field like a woolly beast or simply dried up their inkwell each time they tried to write fiction.

Instead, I believe God breathed the Story into their hearts. He inspired it. He Spirited it into them, and it refreshed them and gave life to them and excited them, and they respired it as accurately as possible and to every person who would listen.

So to bloody blue blazes with the teachings of men.

To blazes with man’s logic, man’s perception, man’s interpretation, man’s conclusions, man’s doctrine, man’s tests of fellowship, man’s uninspired and breathless and lifeless brain-crap.

It’s all nonsense. Balderdash. Poppycock.

If it doesn’t square with what God says, it’s bunk.

If God says to do something, He knows it’s for our good, and we should do it.

If God says to not do something, He knows it will hurt or kill us and/or others, and we ought to run from it like the gates of hell itself.

If God expresses no opinion, we should ruddy well stop making out like He’s said something approving or condemning by His silence.

If God tells His Story, we should shut up and listen.

It’s His Story. His God-ness and our humanity. His perfection and our fallibility.

His Son.

And our only hope.

75,000

/ W. Keith Brenton / 6 Comments

Holy frijoles.

Every time I look at that little counter at the bottom right-hand column of my blog and see its disproportionately large number of unique visitors since January 7, 2005, I shudder a little.

I know I’ve fallen off the bottom of Matt Dabbs’ top 25-most-visited bloggers, and that’s okay. I know the views and comments have dropped off since I tried (and failed, thanks to illness) to blog daily through the Bible … and that’s okay, too. I know I have only a fraction of the followers that many even less-visited sites have … yup, okay with me.

And I’m even convinced that the content of this blog probably isn’t as exciting or fresh or topical or current or even as well-written as it used to be. Sorry about that, but you know, you can only say the same things emphatically a certain number of times before you sound like Johnny One-Note.

I don’t mind trying things and failing. It’s how I learn.

What I’m really looking for is a way to express Christ on this blog.

I tried a cooperative blog once – What Would Jesus Do Next? – and it was fun for a while, but it languished.

For several months, I attempted to write fifty-two communion meditations from all over scripture, each pointing to Jesus. Until I got to the gospels and the reality of the task; the complexity of the character of Christ just became too daunting to tackle.

So I’m asking.

All 75,000 of you. (Or whoever’s left!)

What do you suggest?

What resonates with you?

What did you feel blessed by reading?

What did you automatically skip?

What would you like to see through this Eye?

Once Upon a Faith

/ W. Keith Brenton / 16 Comments

Once upon a faith
there was a man who walked around doing good.
He really did; he walked around and hardly ever rode.
Walking put him among people … among whom he could do the most good.
So he did lots of good.
He never took any credit for it; hardly ever talked about himself; just talked about God.
He told them how much God loved them
and how much God wanted them to stop hurting
themselves
and each other
and him,
and repent.
He healed sick people, where people recognized what he was doing as from God.
He fed hungry people because he had compassion on them.
He thrashed evil from their lives and lovingly told them that they needed to repent.
He raised dead people to life and promised life without end to those who would live their faith in God.
He did not have a manager,
a handler,
a public relations and advertising firm,
a security detail,
a driver,
a transport and setup team,
a makeup artist,
a costumer,
a technical staff,
a caterer
or a personal assistant.
He did not take up collections,
and he did not promise results for belief
which should be expressed in generous giving to his ministry.
He did not dabble much in politics or religion,
except when the work and teachings he shared were opposed.
And when those people who thought they stood the most to lose from his words
finally sprang the one big “gotcha”
from which they thought he could not escape
there were no angels who rescued him
no legions who fought for him
no followers who stood faithful at his side
and he died
because the miracles had never been for him, but for them.
Then he escaped anyway.
And he shared the gifts of helping and healing
among the followers who repented
and were willing and walking
and did good for others
and who never took any credit for it
and who hardly ever talked about themselves
and who talked about God.
When their time came, they died too
because the miracles had never been for themselves, but for others
and they died believing
that they and many others would live again, forever,
because God sent a man walking
once upon a faith.

My Apologies

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

Traveling six states in 3 days last weekend, attending an all-Monday meeting, trying to catch up Tuesday, spending yesterday in a hospital ER and at home today because of a six- millimeter kidney stone has not been conducive to keeping up with daily blogging through The Story.

Yet I find that I have blessings that money can’t buy tonight … in Haiti or on Wall Street.

Give me a few days to recover, and I will try to get back on track.

Sibling Rivalry, Slavery and Subterfuge

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

Today’s reading: Genesis 37-38.

Whether your Bible version reads “coat of many colors” or “richly-ornamented robe,” it’s clear that the garment Jacob made for Joseph was special. And his twelve brothers were jealous of the special love their father had for him.

So when seventeen-year-old Joseph had a couple of seemingly-prophetic dreams that showed his family bowing down to him, and a teenager’s wisdom in sharing it with them, his brothers threw “that dreamer” into a pit or dry cistern out in the wild. Rueben – perhaps weary and wary of further bloodshed after violently avenging his sister Dinah against Shechem’s clan – talked them out of killing Joseph outright. He had hoped to come back and rescue Joseph. While Reuben was away, his co-leader in that raid – Judah – had the bright idea to sell Joseph as a slave to a passing Midianite caravan. We don’t know who got the money.

Then, painting his torn robe with the blood of a slaughtered goat, they showed it to their father and let him draw the conclusion that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.

Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said, “in mourning will I go down to the grave to my son.” So his father wept for him. Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard. ~ Genesis 37:34-36

“All his sons … came to comfort him ….” Even the ones who had conspired to sell their brother as a slave. Swell family, huh?

It gets worse.

Judah, old enough to be married to a Canaanite woman and have two sons of marrying age plus a younger one, lost his firstborn because the son “was wicked in the Lord’s sight, and the Lord put him to death.” Wanting his firstborn son’s clan to continue – Er gave Judah no grandchildren – Judah gave his second son Onan to Er’s widow Tamar. Onan didn’t mind sleeping with her, but didn’t want her to bear his children for Er. And, “what he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight, so He put him to death.”

Tamar, tired of waiting for the third son to be given to her – even though he was old enough, dressed up like a shrine prostitute with her face veiled. Judah, not recognizing her, negotiated payment for sex with her at one young goat and gave her his seal and cord.

When she became pregnant, Judah was told and – not knowing the child would be his – was ready to burn her alive. She sent the seal and cord to him with the message that they belonged to the father. Judah, with all of the patriarchal wisdom of the head of a kingly tribe, morally decided, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah” and spared her.

She gave birth to twins who – like their grandfather Jacob and great uncle Esau – jockeyed for first place in the womb, and Perez beat Zerah.

So these two chapters come full circle, right back to the theme of sibling rivalry.

But – as LaGard Smith notes in his commentary – Perez would eventually become one of the all-too-human ancestors of the Promised One, the Messiah.

In this study so far, God continues to work His will through these thoroughly messed-up families, through sin and slavery and shame and murder. It’s a pattern that continues in the Bible for generations of history, right up to the point where the Promised One is sold for the price of a slave, shamed before those who loved Him, and murdered for the forgiveness of sin.

Can God still work His will through completely flawed people like you and me? In spite of – but still using – our sin, does He even teach us the reason to avoid it by experiencing its consequences – then provide a costly Way of escape from it to buy us back from slavery to it?

Does He see our future as He saw Joseph’s, and give us glimpses of what it can be through a dream of revelation that awaits us at the close of scripture?

Names, Names, Names and More Names

/ W. Keith Brenton / Leave a comment

Today’s reading: Genesis 36.

There are passages of scripture which try men’s souls. (And women’s.)

There are others that just try our patience. (And our agility at attempting to pronounce early Hebrew and Aramaic names if we somehow get stuck reading them out loud and in public.)

I like to think that a genealogical list like this was as exciting to the people who originally wrote such scriptures as baseball or football statistics are to a live-feed researcher at ESPN. It sure isn’t to me. (Neither are baseball or football statistics, though.) When I’ve tried yearly Bible reading plans before, I usually didn’t get far enough to get Bogged Down in Leviticus. I’d hit one of these genealogical tables and immediately put it aside as a cure for some future night of really bad insomnia.

However, my mom loves genealogy. I enjoyed a quick visit with her yesterday and the night before, and a whole lot of our conversation was centered around ancestors she had been recording in a “My Family” book that my daughter left with her months ago – and also ancestors and family in the updated version of the genealogical book that she and I published for a family reunion on her side (Ellmore) of the family … in 1984.

She sent them both with me. Even though the technology I used to set the type for the reunion book probably doesn’t exist anymore – so I can’t update it to match – I will keep them safe for future generations. Someone will find them interesting – maybe because they reflect something of how times, names, and hairstyles have changed.

For the most part, both of those books name and describe people with about the same gender balance that you will find in real life: around 50%-50%.

The names, names, names of Genesis 36 are the descendants of Esau, the Edomites, who moved away from Jacob/Israel’s clan for a lack of supporting resources for all their flocks and herds, and later became a nemesis for the expanding nation of Israel. Most of the names are male.

Sons were very important to the nomadic families of that era. Daughters, apparently, not so much. (I don’t know whom they thought would bear all the children that those sons would father. Maybe Middle-Eastern people of that time just had more of a “Y” chromosome predisposition.) But it was a prejudice that may go back as far as the phrasing of Genesis 6:4 and it yielded a custom – only males inherit – that remained universal in Western civilization until only a couple hundred years ago. Males became patriarchs. Males became chiefs. Males became kings. (Well, some slaveries to bloodline-determined royalty ended that custom, and far longer ago. The “Y” chromosome does not always triumph!)

Having a lot of boys probably meant that you had more strong arms (yet see the unnamed woman Judges 9:50-53), and wise leaders (but see Deborah, Judges 4), and willing shepherds (though see Rachel, Genesis 29:9) and capable warriors to defend the women and children (however, see Jael, flipping back to Judges 4).

Somehow or another, Jacob and Esau both got twelve.

That’s the main thing I get from this nominal chapter: there was balance. There may have been a saying later that “Jacob have I loved and Esau I have hated,” but God pretty much evened out between them the material blessings that counted at that time: flocks, herds, possessions, wives, sons. (Okay, Jacob had one wife more than Esau’s three.) Esau fathered twelve chief-kings. Jacob fathered the heads of what would become known as the twelve tribes of Israel.

But it was God’s sovereignty that determined which of them would be the ancestor of His Promised One; there could only be one. It was Israel.

The Promised One would be the King who would put an end to male-female hierarchy in His kingdom (Joel 2:28; Matthew 19:4; Acts 2:18; Acts 21:9; Galatians 3:28; 1 Corinthians 11:3-16, etc.).

Maybe we’re not quite civilized enough that we’re there yet. But we’re inching toward it (remember, suffrage is still less than 100 years old in the United States), and there are still some Deborahs and Rachels and daughters of evangelists named Philip among us.

Thank God for them.

And let them speak of the Promised One of Israel.