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A regular antagonist of mine recently publically made the comment, “A good God wouldn’t send the ones He ‘loves’ to Hell.” He was mocking me and my belief that those who spend their lives rejecting Christ will spend their eternity not with God in Heaven, but without Him in outer darkness as recipients of His judgment. 

Many people ask the question, “How can a good and loving God send people to Hell?” It’s a legitimate question and perhaps the most prevalent one as people try to understand God’s role as eternal judge. 

Jesus came to earth with a message. He said He came into the world not to condemn us but to save us. His plan for salvation is that we simply believe in Him as God’s Son and acknowledge that He gave His life on a cross of Roman execution to satisfy our sin debt and that we accept His gift of forgiveness and eternal life. He told Nicodemus that whoever believes in Him will not be condemned but whoever does not believe is condemned already. 

So it isn’t God condemning us, but our stubbornness to not accept the forgiveness that He offers. 

Let me illustrate it with this scenario. A person is walking down a certain path. God sees the path the person is on and calls out to them: ”Don’t continue down this path! It will lead to the worst possible destruction! Stop! Turn from this path onto this other one I have made that will lead you to the best possible experience. The destinies of both these paths last forever; there’s no end to the destruction of the one you’re on, and there’s no end to the joy of the one onto which I’m inviting you. I’ve made the path to this wonderful life and I’ve prepared its destiny for you. I’ve done all this simply because I love you and I want you to be with Me, because I’ll be there with you in that life of eternal ecstasy. One thing you must do; I cannot do it for you: you must choose My way. It’s your choice.

The person continues down the path they’re on, rejecting God and His call. As they get closer to the end of the path, they begin to complain against God, “How could a loving God say He loves me, yet send me to eternal destruction!? I would never listen to any message from such a God!”

You see how illogical it is to reject Jesus? All He’s doing is offering everlasting life and deliverance from eternal destruction. If this scenario depicts your attitude toward Jesus and His offer of salvation, I beg you to turn to God and accept His offer. Read John 3 for the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus. Later, in John 19, we read of Nicodemus being involved in the burial of the soon-to-be-risen Savior, indicating that he had chosen to believe in Him. Please do the one thing God cannot do for you: choose Him.

A friend of yours is having big trouble with his attitude toward God. He’s so distant from Him that he’s stopped attending worship service. He’s stopped participating in the downtown street feed, something he’d done faithfully for years. He’s withdrawn from his friend groups and has been isolating. His isolation is brooding, unhealthy, pessimistic, suspecting that God has changed His mind about him and now has it in for him. He confides that it’s been months since he spent devotion time praying and perusing the Scriptures.

Eventually, your friend lashes out at you, “You’re an idiot!“

            “Where did that come from?” you wonder, “What have I done?”

            “Think you’re so much better than everybody else!” as he exposes more of his heart.

            He’s critical of everybody, not just you, but he’s particularly belligerent toward you.

            You drive into the church parking lot excited to connect with God, to worship Him with your friends, to offer a gift to the Lord, a gift of praise, a financial gift for the offering, a gift of time hearing God’s Word with a surrendered heart.

As you’re walking up to the doors of the church, a memory invades your mind. You recall with clarity a conversation you had with someone when you were talking about a mutual friend, the one with the negative attitude. You were saying to that person that your mutual friend could be more effective for God if he would stop pursuing earthly success so vigorously.

            “That’s it!” you realize, “That’s the problem he has with me. It must’ve gotten back to him, what I said.”

            Just as you’re reaching your hand out to open the door and enter to church lobby, these words come to your mind as if someone is speaking them: “Leave your gift and go.” The Scripture immediately comes to mind. The pastor spoke on it several weeks ago and you ran across it again in your morning Bible reading just the other day.

            It’s unmistakable. You know what you have to do. You turn around and walk back to your car, get in and drive to your offended friend’s house.

“We need to talk.” You say when he answers the door. “I think I must’ve hurt you with something I said about you.”

            Your friend nods his head. “Come on in.”

            You and your friend get out of your car and walk toward the entrance to the church.

            “Thank you.” he says, “this is the first time I’ve actually wanted to go to church in a good while.”

            “I just thank you for forgiving me so quickly.” You say with relief, “I’m sorry I caused you such problems.”

            “It’s not all your fault. I didn’t have to take offense.”

            “Let’s go get our praise on.”

But I [Jesus] say, if you are angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought to court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.

            So, if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your gift there at the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:22-24)

My favorite parable is The Parable of the Sower (or The Farmer Sowing Seed), from
Mark 4. After telling this parable, Jesus told His disciples that, if they couldn’t understand it,
they wouldn’t understand any of His parables. Then He did something for which I’m supremely thankful. He explained it. Had He not, I doubt I would’ve ever understood it.

So a farmer (preacher, whether in a pulpit or having coffee with a friend) sows some
seed (His Word). He’s broadcasting it, not planting it in rows, which means it covers a broad
area. Much of the seed lands in unfruitful places, but also in a fruitful area.

These 6 Ps categorize these areas for us.

1. Porch Pirates. These seed land on the path and are taken immediately by the birds. This
is like when Satan, ever ready to rob us, plucks God’s Word from the path between our
ears and our minds; he usually does this with a distraction – some bad seed to grab our
attention while he pirates our good seed. In the age of so much cyber-shopping and
items delivered to our porches, porch pirates are more common than ever. Sadly,
though, spiritual porch pirating is even more common. God, may we be ever attentive in
2023 to the deliveries of Your Word, precluding its pirating by drinking it quickly into our
hearts.

2. Persecutions. These seed germinate and spring up quickly. But because they’re in the
rocky soil and have under-developed root systems, the sun scorches and kills them. The
sun represents the persecutions that come with following Jesus in an anti-Christian
world. (If anyone is offended by the anti-Christian world term, just follow Jesus and you’ll feel for yourself how real it is.) Lord, please give us the resilience to
persevere all the fiery trials we encounter.

The next three seed categories are those that landed in the thorns. They grow up but
eventually lose the battle, dying and giving way to the plants competing for existence.

3. Preoccupations. It’s very easy to become preoccupied with tiny, trivial worries that eat
away at us until we have nothing productive left by which to live. Lord, please strengthen our focus on You that will burn away the distractions of the enemy.

4. Possessions. It’s also easy to become so focused on managing our resources that they
take up a disproportionate amount of our attention. So our heart is where our earthly
treasure is. God, help us to store up treasures in heaven.

5. Pleasures. The flesh is tricky because many of its desires are good to a point – like food,
sexual intimacy and relaxation. But they quickly and easily become gluttony, lust and
laziness or addiction. At that point they’ve become unfruitful and destructive. Oh Lord, that we would find our pleasure fully in You.

6. Produce. The final one – only one – of the six categories produces a great harvest for
God. This ground is fertile and free of contaminants. This is a heart that’s soft toward
God and hungry for His Word. God, please help us to keep our hearts soft and pure,
always ready to accept and apply Your Word.

May the Lessons from this parable bring much fruit for God’s kingdom in our lives!

Mark 4:3-20
 3  “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow.  4  And it happened, as he
sowed, that some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds  [a] of the air came and devoured
it.  5  Some fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth; and immediately it
sprang up because it had no depth of earth.  6  But when the sun was up it was scorched,
and because it had no root it withered away.  7  And some seed fell among thorns; and the
thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no  [b] crop.  8  But other seed fell on good
ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced: some thirtyfold,
some sixty, and some a hundred.”
9  And He said  [c] to them, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

The Purpose of Parables
10  But when He was alone, those around Him with the twelve asked Him about the
parable.  11  And He said to them, “To you it has been given to know the  [d] mystery of the
kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables,  12  so that
‘Seeing they may see and not perceive,
And hearing they may hear and not understand;
Lest they should turn,
And their sins be forgiven them.’ ”

The Parable of the Sower Explained
13  And He said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you
understand all the parables?  14  The sower sows the word.  15  And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes
away the word that was sown in their hearts.  16  These likewise are the ones sown on
stony ground who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness;  17  and
they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time. Afterward, when
tribulation or persecution arises for the word’s sake, immediately they stumble.  18  Now
these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word,  19  and
the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things
entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.  20  But these are the ones sown on
good ground, those who hear the word,  [e] accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some
sixty, and some a hundred.”

The one trait that sets Christianity apart (or should) from every other religion, philosophy and belief system is grace. Grace is simply the undeserved favor God generously offers everyone willing to accept Jesus Christ as God’s Son sent to save us from our sin problem. Every other religion/system is predicated on getting what we deserve and, therefore, earning what we want and need. 

Judaism, the very system from which Jesus, a Jew, brought freedom after fulfilling its requirements and its prophecies is built on the Law of Moses, which delineates consequences for each violation of one of its 613 laws. In Hinduism and Buddhism, Karma assures justice is served, even if it takes multiple generations through reincarnation to accomplish it. Crimes and punishments under Islamic Sharia law dictate very strict dos and don’ts, with the harshest of resulting punishments, especially for women. Those are the big three besides Christianity, and as we journey through the other less known systems we don’t find anything resembling the grace of Jesus.

There really is a constant string of surprising pieces of good news as a Jesus follower walks out their faith with Jesus. What makes it so surprising is the “you-get-what-you-deserve” environment we all come from and must continue to walk through. Grace surprises me everyday and it’s been doing it for almost forty years now. (I came to Christ in 1983.)

​Grace is the favor of God (FOG) and all us recipients of life in Christ walk in it, often without even knowing it. It’s so counterintuitive to our original nature, so foreign to our current culture, that we scarcely believe or recognize it. 

​Grace will always be foreign to whatever culture exists in this world – that is, until Jesus reigns those one thousand years on the earth. That shouldn’t surprise us. But the FOG shouldn’t be counterintuitive to those walking in it, to those who have accepted God’s grace by accepting Jesus. Anyone who doesn’t recognize the FOG, will never live as a DOG.

​A DOG is exactly the life God wants for us. One of the main ideas Jesus tried to instill in His disciples, and the Spirit tries to instill in us modern age disciples, is that we are to dispense what has been so lavishly poured out to us. I am to be a dispenser of grace (DOG)

​ Jesus said people would know his followers by the love we have for one another…we are to love our enemies, those who mistreat us…it’s no longer eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but give another chance to the one who just slapped you in the face…don’t repay evil with evil but give even more to the one who just stole from you…don’t stone the adulterer but let them go without condemnation and help them where they need help…don’t help only the ones who can repay you, but precisely the ones who can’t and leave it to God to repay whatever recompense there’ll be. 

​This idea is radical, and that’s exactly the point. FOG is foreign to this world, but a DOG can change that. Imagine what an entire worldwide church of us can do.

​I must say, lest I be a hypocrite, that I am not the model DOG. I’m definitely still orienting to the concept. But God has taught me that, while writing about, or preaching about, something may not make me exemplary in it, it must challenge me to apply it along with – yea, ahead of – my readers/listeners. So His Spirit is giving me individualized directions as I’m typing. Will you join me by seeking Him for yours? I’ll be your DOG; will you be mine? After all, we are in the FOG.

I turned sixty this week. To do battle against the idea that I’m now officially old I wanted to do something epic (for me, at least).

Since I’ve always had a fear of heights, I thought skydiving would be a good way to finally face and conquer that fear. So several months ago, I made a decision and commitment to go skydiving on my birthday. Well, three of my four sons (and Luke would’ve been there if it’d been possible, and with much less fear than I had) surprised me on the eve of the skydive by showing up at my house and announcing they were doing it with me. I was touched. Touched by both their gesture of support and the hardening reality that I was actually going to jump out of an airplane the next morning. 

Once on the plane, I sat fearful five feet from the doorway into the arid blue sky. Rock-paper-scissors had providentially determined that I go first. Terrified at the idea of rising and taking the two steps to the threshold, I searched my mind for any comforting thought. I rejected thoughts of parachutes not opening, becoming detached from my instructor and a thousand other ideas designed to strip me of my courage. Then it came: if Jesus can forgive all my sins and take me into His eternal kingdom, He can certainly take care of me as I do this thing that people do everyday. I knew it was a Scriptural truth but the actual verse was too vague in my mind for me to remember. Chris, the instructor who would tether himself to me and expertly assure all went well on the dive (and whom I thank from the bottom of my heart for making it as smooth and easy as possible for me), said to me, “Just hold your hands close to your chest; be sure to not stick your hands out as you go through the doorway.” As I rose, stepped forward and placed my feet on the threshold, my hand instinctively went up onto the wall above the doorway. 

Nothing in me wanted to exit that plane. Chris politely pulled my hand down and nudged me forward. I leaned forward and off we went into the wild blue yonder. 

It was nothing like what I anticipated. I expected serenefloating in the sky. But it was loud, hectic and chaotic. Chris pointed out geographical features down below as we rushedtoward our drop zone target, but I was distracted by all the wind noise to really take in what he was saying to me.

Soon after he opened our chute I became nauseous and dizzy. I told Chris how I was feeling, so he took it easy the rest of the way down, making as few turns and spins as possible.

Still, by the time we landed I was weak and white as a sheet. My co-divers, my three sons, helped me to the seating area, since my knees were weak and my legs shakey.

So my skydiving experience wasn’t what I hoped it would be. I envisioned myself standing strong and tall, having conquered my fear by heroically jumping from a plane and landing on the ground in the posture of a Marvel character. Instead, I cowardly leaned out of the opening of the plane, somehow survived my anxiety throughout the fall and landed on weak legs and groped for someone to help me back to the hanger. I was embarrassed.

I didn’t really feel like I accomplished my goal of overcoming my fear of heights. But I think I did accomplish something else. I soon searched and found the verse of Scripture I needed that would help me put my day into perspective. It was Romans 8:32, and it’s simple logic. If God has done something as great as sending His Son to die for us, which of our smaller needs would He be unwilling to meet? 

My plan is to remember my skydiving sixtieth birthday experience and Romans 8:32 to remind me that God will always take care of my needs, whatever they are, since He’s taken care of my greatest need via the cross. Whether my need is for courage, peace, provision, protection, or whatever, it’s smaller than the gigantic need He’s already met through the greatest act of sacrifice in history. That’s the promise of Romans 8:32, and it’s more reliable than the strongest of parachutes and the best of skydiving instructors (which would be Chris).

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

It was more than twenty years ago now that I was serving as associate pastor at a
church in Dunn, NC. I was fulfilled in my role there, but at the same time, I longed for an
opportunity to do more than I could do in that role.
I saw Chris, the leader of our denomination, at a meeting and conveyed my sentiments to him.
“If something comes up that you think may a good fit for me, please let me know; I’d love an
opportunity to take on more.”
He said he’d keep that in mind and called me one evening a few weeks later. He told
me there was a church in the town a half hour from ours that needed a lead pastor, and he
thought I could be effective there. He told me the likely salary, which was a step up from my
current salary at that time.
I told him I’d like a night to pray about it and that I’d give him an answer the next
morning. He seemed surprised at my response. Maybe he thought I’d jump at the opportunity especially since I’d recently conveyed my desire for a change and it seemed like a natural next step for a pastor on their ministry journey. But he agreed to give me the night to seek God about it.
I hung up the phone and immediately got on my knees beside my bed. I said, ”Lord, I’m
not sure what to do, so if I don’t hear otherwise from You, I’ll call Chris in the morning and tell him I’d like to pursue that lead pastor role.” I told my wife, Sharlene, what had transpired and went to bed.

I’m not a person that often has meaningful dreams. I usually can’t remember my dreams
longer than fifteen minutes after I wake up, and even then struggle to make sense of the
jumbled abstract pieces I can recall at all. But the night I prayed about how to respond to Chris, I had a dream that was vivid when I awoke and still is to this day. In my dream, I was standing in a freshly plowed field; the hand of God came down and made three furrows in the dirt. The first one was relatively shallow, the second one deeper and the third deeper still.
Then, God asked me, “Which one do you want?” I can’t describe how I knew, but I knew
the first furrow represented staying where I was. No change, no risk, just remaining in my
comfort zone. The second furrow represented the lead pastor role Chris invited me to consider. The third one represented planting a church, going into “Satan’s territory” and helping people find freedom in Jesus and live as citizens in God’s kingdom.
“I want the deepest one, Lord,” The answer seemed obvious to me.
And the Lord’s reply made me think it indeed should’ve been obvious. “That’s the one I
want for you, too.”
I woke the next morning excited to have heard from God in such a vivid dream, that He
had answered my prayer, and that He wanted me to do something that would have deep
impact. I could hardly wait for Sharlene to wake up so I could tell her what I had experienced. I knew she’d be excited too, and I was right – she was!

A few months later we moved to Wilmington, NC and led a team to launch a church. Our
new church, Grace Harbor Church, had an intense focus on outreach into the underprivileged, underserved community, many of whom struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. Out of GHC, we helped launch Christian Recovery Houses, a discipleship ministry for people recovering from addiction. CRH just celebrated its fifteen year anniversary. Many times over the past several years, CRH’s founder and president, CJ, has reminded me of my dream and choosing that deepest furrow.

I grew up on a farm and have spent a lot of hours on a tractor pulling a bottom plow
over hundreds of acres. When you use a bottom plow, it’s called breaking land because the bottom plow point breaks through a low layer of soil and turns it up (kind of like a surfer’s wave rolling water up and creating a tunnel) toward the top of the ground. It’s important to go slow enough for the plow point to reach deep below the top layer of soil. So you can’t go very fast when you’re breaking land; you have to go slow, sometimes annoyingly slow. If you go too fast, the plow will just ride along on top of the bottom layer of soil and defeat the purpose of using a bottom plow. When you plow deeply enough, it creates a deep furrow in which you drive the wheels on one side of your tractor each pass you make through the field. Shallow furrows mean you aren’t plowing effectively.
Once, when I was about thirteen years old, my dad was planting corn when he whistled
and motioned for me to come over to him. I ran across the field and got up on the tractor with him and rode along standing on the footrest. The tractor and planter were bouncing along as we rode because the ground was bumpy.
“You feel how bumpy this ground is?” my dad asked me.
“Yessir.”
“That’s what happens when you’re in too big of a hurry, and you go too fast for the plow
to go as deep as it’s supposed to.”
I had no defense. I was busted.
“Now some of these corn seed are planted deep enough and some of them ain’t.”
All I could do was ride along, embarrassed, not daring to look him in the eye.
“If you ever do this again, I’ll…” (I’ll spare you the unpleasantries.)
He never had to… I learned my lesson.

Deep furrows take time to make. They go at a different pace than we’d often prefer to
go.
When I chose the deep furrow in my dream, I was choosing to invest deeply in the lives
of people, helping them overcome difficult barriers and learn to walk in the profound freedom God offers us through Christ Jesus. Real ministry – serving people – takes time. It can be tempting to glide over the difficult issues people need help with, but that’s when I usually remember the deepest furrow commitment. That dream has come to mean more than launching Grace Harbor Church or helping lead Christian Recovery Houses. I now know God was inviting me to a lifelong lifestyle of working in the deepest furrow. I’m so thankful He led me to that choice. I deeply recommend it to anyone.

It was the best of days. It was the worst of days. 

It just depends on who you are. If you’re a Heavenly being – divine or angelic – it was the best of all days ever.

If you’re a being in the kingdom of Hell – Satan or one of his angels – it was your worst nightmare. If you’re a being of the human variety, it was the best of all possible days. The most painful day anyone has ever experienced proved the most beneficial anyone could ever imagine.

Jesus hung on the cross a relatively short amount of time. In comparison to other Roman crucifixions, that is. He was on the cross a mere six hours, ending far short of the typical full day or more. The reason His time was shorter is because of the circumstances around His cross experience. There are three major factors. First was His fatigue. He got no sleep the night before and was taken through such torturous treatment that he was utterly exhausted, so badly that he collapsed while carrying His cross to the crucifixion site. The second – and this intersects with the first – was His extreme anxiety and emotional stress.

The night before, in the garden of Gethsemane, His stress was so intense that He bled through the pores of His skin, this after pleading with the Father to make a path to atonement different from the cross, ultimately knowing and accepting that the cross was the way, as they’d decided, planned and begun prophesying millennia before. And what must’ve been the most stressful of all was the sense that His Father had turned from Him and left Him to be tortured to death by malicious, godless terrorists. The third factor, the spiritual one, which also overlaps with the first two, was the burden of sin He carried while hanging by three nails driven through His extremities. Considering the load of guilt we each carry because of our sin, imagine the weight of all of everyone’s sins – throughout human history, past, present and future, from Eve’s bite of the fruit to the last transgression before the end of time. Jesus boar that entire burden on His cross. All of these huge factors combined to intensify His pain. 

Since the sabbath was only three hours away (It’s now 3:00 and He was nailed up at 9:00.), and those on the crosses had to be dead, taken down from the crosses and placed in their graves before dark, the Roman soldiers went around breaking their legs, disabling them from lifting themselves to prevent asphyxiation, thereby bringing about their deaths more quickly. But when they came to Jesus, they found Him already dead. They, therefore, didn’t need to break His legs (This fulfilled the prophecy that He would have no broken bones.), so they confirmed that He was indeed deceased by piercing His side (fulfillment of yet another Messianic prophecy) and seeing the mixture of blood and water pour from His torso. 

This day on which the Messiah was crucified was pivotal because it redirected everything from law and judgment to grace and freedom. 

I titled this blog Time’s Pivotal Day. I don’t mean, by that, that the calendar pivoted from one era to the next. That happened some thirty-three years before, at the birth of Jesus. This day of atonement on a cross was pivotal, not for the calendar, but for our destiny. Not for time, but for eternity. Not for something new to do, but Someone in whom to believe.

For some it was the best of days, for others the worst. For Jesus Christ it was both.

I grew up on a fairly large family farm in North Carolina. One day, my parents, my four siblings and I were picking cucumbers. It was a nice, clear day and we were all having fun while we worked. 

​Suddenly, my dad shouted to everyone, “Everybody go get in the pickup! Right now! Let’s Go!

​We were all puzzled. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. No danger anywhere that any of us could see. Never ones to question it any time Daddy called us off our work, we sprinted and all seven of us crammed into the cab of the pickup truck as quickly as we could. 

​It wasn’t fifteen seconds after we got both doors closed that the bottom fell out of the sky above us. A dusky darkness overtook the landscape under a smothering black cloud as the monsoon saturated the field from which we’d just fled. Thunder cracked and rumbled and lightning interrupted the dimness in flashes and bolts.

​We were all entertained by how quickly this magnificent electrical storm came about, but, mostly, we were amazed that Daddy could detect it before anyone else sensed any sign at all. We all questioned what wisdom he used to discern this veiled, looming storm.

​“Any time you see wind blowing the tree leaves upside down, run for cover.” It seemed pretty simple when he said it, but it was a new nugget of wisdom for us all. 

​Secret signs aren’t so secret anymore once the secret gets out. I’ve shared the upside down leaves secret with many people since that day in the cucumber field. A lot of secrets about the weather and such have been gathered over history, but what I really love is when those secrets serve as a metaphor with a greater application than itself.

​Jesus, when asked to provide a sign from heaven, replied by quoting an old saying about the weather. It was, essentially, “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight; red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning.”

​It’s true. (Of course it is! Jesus said it!) Just pay attention and you’ll realize that any time you see a red sunset, you’ll have nice weather the next day; and any time you see a red morning sky, take the clothes off the line and try to stay in if you can, because it’s gonging to be a nasty day. 

​Knowing these little secrets that help prepare for upcoming weather is really cool. But God has shared secrets with us to help us prepare for more significant upcoming phenomena than atmospheric conditions. 

​Jesus was pretty perturbed at the Pharisees’ and Saddusees’ request. If it was really proof that He was the Messiah they wanted, all they had to do was open their eyes; He’d been performing public miracles more than long enough to make them jealous, which is really why they were confronting Him, hoping He’d say something contemptable for them to leverage against Him.

​But for those who genuinely do want to know the secret signs, Jesus shed some light on what to look for. Not that we need another sign validating His identity. He settled that long ago, by appearing after risen and giving His Spirit to reveal Him to our hearts. But to help us recognize when the end of this age is near, He revealed that the tell tale sign that the end is very near is when the gospel has been shared throughout the whole earth.

​Once that has occurred, my understanding is that the rapture of the believers in Christ will take place, after which a chain of epic end-of-the-age events will unfold.

​So if you’re like I am, this age (the church age) has gone on surprisingly long. And every time someone learns about the salvation offered through faith in Jesus, we’re one step closer to its end. 

​So our job, as followers of Jesus, is to do whatever we can to make Him known and to be ready for His return. That means we stay faithful in believing in Him and doing His work. 

​So the secret’s out. It actually has been for a long time. We just need to remember it. The not-so-secret sign we have the power to help bring about. 

​We may not be able to blow the tree leaves upside down, but we can tell the story of how Jesus saved us.

And this gospel will be preached to the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. – Matthew 24:14

There have been some amazing counterpunchers in boxing history. Muhammed Ali would be at or near top of anyone’s list. Others, like Benny Leonard, James Toney and Joe Gans, consistently hold spots near the top. Personally, I’ve always marveled at Floyd Mayweather. 

Any successful counterpuncher has three things in their corner.

1. Strategy. Since counterpunching is, by nature, a reactive style of fighting, the fighter must resist the urge to initiate contact. They have to wait until their opponent throws a punch and then throw their counterpunch with greater speed and force than the opponent’s punch that they’re countering. Since counterpunchers can usually hit faster and harder than their opponent, they must resist the temptation to abandon their strategy and initiate contact. If they forget their strategy they give up their advantage, which is their opponent’s vulnerability for the split second they’re throwing their punch, compromising their balance and defense.
2. Quickness. If a fighter doesn’t have superior quickness to most other fighters, they can’t be a counterpuncher. They must have the ability to land a punch between the time their foe starts their punch motion and the time they land it. Remember, they aren’t fighting slow people, but skilled, trained and conditioned fighters. So the counterpuncher’s got to be cat quick.
3. Early Detection. For a fighter to respond super-quickly to a punch – quickly enough to land the counter before, or at least at the same time as the opponent’s punch – the counterpuncher has to detect that the punch is coming very early in its motion. All the quickness in the world isn’t enough to counter a punch detected too far into its motion.

Now, it’s fun to talk about boxing, but let me apply all this to something far more important. In this more important application, the greatest all-time counterpuncher is Jesus Christ. His counterpunch is grace. He is undefeated and established the model for His followers to imitate. Let’s take the application deeper.

1. Strategy. Jesus came to earth as the Messiah knowing He would be persecuted verbally and physically, His strategy was to respond with immediate love and forgiveness. “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing,” He prayed for the very people who were crucifying Him. Also, consider the grace He showed to Judas as he was betraying Him and to Simon Peter after he three times denied knowing Him. Although He was tested in every way we are, He never abandoned His strategy of responding to ill treatment with loving grace.
2. Quickness. Jesus never had to take time to process His thoughts and emotions so He could show grace to someone. It was instinctive to Him because He was and is love. When He walked on the earth, He didn’t have a sin nature like all other people; He lived out of His Divine sinless nature, so His counterpunches of grace were speed-of-light quick – like immediate. 
3. Early detection. Jesus’ ability to detect what was coming flowed from His supernatural knowledge of God’s prophetic Word. The foretellings of Isaiah, the Psalms and the other prophets about Messianic events were at the core of His thought life, so He had a literally supernatural advantage in seeing when a blow would be thrown at Him. He knew about occurrences before they occurred. Now that’s early detection. And it’s also the secret to His being super-prepared to counter with grace.

There exists one more layer of application to this counterpunching metaphor, and it’s to us. We know that because of Jesus’ words…love your enemies…when they revile and persecute you…rejoice and be exceedingly glad…if your brother sins against you…and…he repents, forgive him. 

And His Spirit continues along the same line with similar instructions to us in the church age…love is patient…do all you can to live at peace with one another…do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult…bless others because you were called to inherit a blessing. 

So let’s make this most important application, the one to our own lives, by looking at the three counterpuncher characteristics.

1. Strategy. Our biggest challenge isn’t the devil. It’s holding on to our strategy. The primary temptation is to counter with a different punch than the one our Trainer (God) has equipped us with. MLK got it; he said: Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out; only love can do that.
2. Quickness. The real objective in responding to the hater with love is to win the heart of the hater. Nothing will do that more effectively than an immediate love response, one taking zero time to choose love. It says, “I decided to love you before you even threw your punch at me, and your punch hasn’t changed my mind.”
3. Early detection. Just as Jesus saw punches coming before they were thrown, he warns us that they’re in our future, and lays out our response: blessed are you when [people] revile you and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.

What if we, by our consistent actions, created a love-grace counterpunch culture? I think that’s exactly what the Lord has in mind for us.

Your friend is the judge in a courtroom. It’s a hearing to decide whether Jesus will be the Lord and Savior of your friend, the judge. The court is actually your friend’s heart, and he gets to decide what to do with Jesus. 

Many witnesses have already testified. The first was Scripture, the Bible. Its testimony was powerful and effective. The judge understands the New Testament is the written testimonies of the twelve apostles who were with Jesus for nearly all of His earthly ministry, plus Paul whom Jesus selected post-resurrection to be an apostle with a special assignment. The judge also sees that, when viewed through the lens of the New Testament, the Old Testament also reveals the Messiah-ship of Jesus.

The second witness was the Holy Spirit. Being the very Spirit of Jesus, His testimony was perfectly accurate. But most effective about the Spirit’s testimony was that He, and He alone, was able to speak into the judge’s spiritual ears, not just his outer ones, but into the judge’s very heart; He was able to reveal the truth about Jesus in a way no other could.

Adding immensely to the power of these two witnesses was the corroboration factor. It isn’t surprising that the Holy Spirit would corroborate Scripture’s testimony, since He also inspired the humans whose hands wrote it. It seems this should be case closed. But the judge is somehow still undecided. 

The problem is that some of the witnesses, Christians who believe completely in Jesus, gave testimony that conflicted with those of the Holy Spirit and Scripture. It wasn’t their oral testimony that caused confusion in the judge, but their lifestyle testimony.

Remember when Jesus told His followers to do what the Pharisees told them to do but to not follow their example? He said their hypocritical lifestyle didn’t match up with what they required others to do. He was saying their actions were a part of their teaching, just as their words were, but His students were not to accept that part of the Pharisees’ teaching.

Likewise, our lifestyle serves as a more powerful witness than our words.

The judge’s confusion has come from the lifestyle testimony of several Christians. Their testimony didn’t corroborate the Holy Spirit’s or Scripture’s. 

The word corroborate comes from a Latin compound word that means, literally, to add strength to. So the question is: does our lifestyle testimony add strength to, or weaken, the testimonies of the Holy Spirit and Scripture?

The Law of Moses, as have many other legal systems, required two or three witnesses for an assertion to be established. 

The two star witnesses have testified. Now our testimony is needed. Hopefully, the judge will rule in Jesus’ favor (which will actually also be the judge’s own favor).

The question is: will our lifestyle testimony add strength to (corroborate) the two star witnesses’ testimonies, or not?

The judge is calling us to the witness stand.