the good news

Rider on the White Horse by Robert Wright

It’s dark. I can only see my fellow humans as dim, shadowy shapes in a sick reddish light. I hate them, and at the same time I cower among them, using them as a fleshly shield against the pain that never lets up. I’m so used to it now that I have almost grown numb: the moment-by-moment stings of my master’s cruel prod, which I can’t stop running into even though it hurts every time. It’s like a drug, destroying me even as it wraps me tighter in its grip, and I know there is no hope. This is my existence. This was yesterday, this is today, this will be tomorrow. Darkness. Pain. The haunting, but somehow also stupid, moans of the bodies around me as they, too, endlessly run back into the stinging prod.

Every once in a while, I’ll watch blankly as one of these human shapes strikes down another in a cold rage. Death is a near and familiar companion. Sometimes it almost seems like a friend. 

What’s that? Something breaks up the endless chaos of red and shadow. It’s white, even brilliant–it hurts my unaccustomed eyes, piercing straight through me like a knife-beam of light, a thing I have never seen. I blink, but it’s still there, getting closer and bigger and spilling radiant white light over this shadowy valley of death. The bodies around me crush in and scatter like rats, desperate to avoid revelation, desperate to hide from whatever it means to be seen. I instinctively cower back, too, even though I can feel the prod sink into my spine. It’s too bright. It’s too much. I can’t see. I cover my face with my hands and fall facedown on the ground, stumbling over the bodies of the dead, thinking that if only I can be dead, too, I will be spared this probing, blinding light–whatever it is.

Then there’s a voice.

It’s no voice I have ever heard. It doesn’t hiss or snarl, like my masters. It doesn’t moan, like my fellow humans. This voice thunders.

“Get up! You, follow Me!”

I am shaking uncontrollably, but this is a command that overpowers every instinct of self-preservation in my body. I instantly rise to my feet. Still shielding my face from the light, I look up, seeking the Source of this voice.

And in that moment the light shifts from blinding to brilliant. I can see. I can see Him. He is a King, a Conqueror, riding astride a white horse. He wields a sword, but the blade is clean; only his robes are dripping with blood–blood that seems to have come from a wound in His own side, from scars in His own hands.

There are words written into His robe. “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”

He rides forward until I can feel His horse’s breath on my neck. I am still shaking, but I can’t move–can’t so much as bow my head. It’s as if, by seeing Him, I can suddenly see myself clearly.

And I am dead. Dead in my trespasses and sins. I cannot escape this hell that I live in or this master of sin and death that I serve. The pain that I was numb to moments ago is now excruciating, and it’s only sheer terror that keeps me from writhing in agony in His presence.

As if separated from my own body, I am vaguely aware that He has leaned down and taken my hand in His, and somewhere in the recesses of my mind I become conscious of the bloody hole in the middle of His palm.

He speaks again at last, but this time, His voice is as gentle as a rippling brook. “Little girl, I say to you, get up.”

And there falls away from my eyes something like scales. My vision becomes clear for the first time in my existence. I can see the massive army behind the King, a cavalry all clothed in white. And I realize why He is here: to win this dead hellscape for His kingdom. I can either surrender or die.

And I have already been dead once. Whatever this King might do to me, I would rather be on His side than return to the reign of death.

“I surrender.”

Instead of binding my wrists and banishing me from His presence, wretch that I am, I hear Him give orders that I be clothed in white and given a mount. The whole army breaks into cheers of celebration, and I feel tears of what must be joy stream hot down my face as the embrace of what must be love wraps around my soul. I am alive, and I am at peace. I am His.

I fall into the ranks of the rest of the army. We are forward-bound behind our King, spilling the light into more dead and dark places, gathering up everyone who will surrender on our way and welcoming them into what must be a family.

My King has come, and He is taking back all Creation from the power of sin and death. My allegiance is to Him now—Him alone. Hallelujah.

learn from Me

I recently interacted with someone in a Facebook group who said she’d just started attending a Christian church and was loving it, but didn’t know how she felt about the idea that one’s eternal future is decided by whether or not one declares Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. In her words, “That’s not the god I want to believe in.”

I don’t think a Facebook group full of strangers is necessarily an effective place to get into theology and apologetics, but I did briefly point her to John 14:6 and what Jesus declared about Himself: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” I was immediately advised by a group moderator to “tread lightly.”

If you don’t tend to frequent the areas that Millennials and Gen-Zs congregate, I want to let you know that this is one of the major frontlines of spiritual warfare right now. In these trenches, truth is always expected to “tread lightly” while the emotions and ego are massaged by deception. It is an incredibly complex and dangerous situation, where the Enemy delights to turn truth into evil and lies into goodness.

I find in these trenches that the name of Jesus is very welcome, but the actions and words of Jesus as presented by Scripture are not. “Jesus” has come to mean anything that makes everyone feel good about their decisions and affirmed in their beliefs, even when those decisions are sins and those beliefs are lies.

The Jesus of Scripture, from all I can gather, was not known for treading lightly.

And yet I’m sympathetic to what brought us to battle here. A generation that has been battered by a hell-centric and fear-based theology will tend to swing hard to the other end of the pendulum, instead of seeking out a more whole and healing knowledge of who God is. When you’ve been taught that the goal is merely to avoid punishment, it’s difficult to take up the yoke of Christ and make relationship with Him the objective instead. It’s hard to fathom moving closer to a God you’ve been subconsciously conditioned to believe is angry and vindictive, even though it’s only in knowing who He really is, in all His glory—not the often-oversimplified and reactionary version of Him we’ve learned from others—that we find rest.

That brief interaction on Facebook left me with many questions. What would Jesus have said to her? Would He have tread lightly, knowing better than I how fragile her soul might be? Would He have been direct, knowing better than I how to wield the Sword of the Spirit in a spiritual war? Christ spoke of Himself as “gentle and lowly,” and yet He never diluted the truth. He was deeply compassionate toward the deceived, the broken, and the suffering but unapologetically harsh toward deceivers and perpetrators.

These questions brought me to Matthew 11:28-30:

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

It’s the phrase “learn from Me” that I keep coming back to. I want to learn from Him—how to be like Him in this world that consistently rejects Him. How to respond to questions like the one in that Facebook group. How to discern where gentleness is called for and where only the sharp truth will do.

And I want to point anyone who questions whether He is the God they want to believe in to these verses, too. I want to beg them—learn from Him! Let Him teach you who He is. Let Him show you. Don’t take any one pastor’s word for it, don’t go to Facebook or YouTube for the answers. Go to Him. He is gentle. He is humble. In Him, there is rest.

It doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean you will agree with His truth or find His character palatable. And as I’ve written before, you are free to choose not to follow—we all get to pick where our allegiance lies. We can create a god of our own choosing (which usually looks a whole lot like us), or we can follow the God whose name is “I AM THAT I AM,” or better translated, “I Will Be What I Will Be” (Exodus 3:14).

Even in Jesus’ inviting words from Matthew 11, He uses a quotation from another part of the Bible that gives us a subtle reminder that this “easy” yoke is not easy because it’s like one we would choose for ourselves. “You will find rest for your souls” is a reference to Jeremiah 6:16, which reads,

Thus says the Lord,
“Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths,
Where the good way is, and walk in it;
And you will find rest for your souls.
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”

The yoke of Christ is the yoke of obedience. It is the yoke of submission, surrender to the Lordship of God. It’s easy and light because this “good way” is the only path toward true rest, not because it demands nothing from us.

And like the Israelites of old, we do have a choice. We can say, “We will not walk in it.” We are free to tell God, “You’re not the God I want to believe in.” It is our choice, and God is not codependent—He won’t force us into a relationship with Him or shift His own character to make us comfortable in it.

In some ways, I’m glad the culture has reached a point where so many people are honest enough to say out loud, “That’s not the God I want to believe in”—because this is far from the first generation that has sought after a god of its own choosing. This has been the story of humanity from the very beginning, only some us have hidden our idolatry better than others, coloring it over with Bible verses to make it pass for true faith—often deceiving even ourselves. When God is not quite showing up the way we’d prefer, we are all apt to throw our gold into the melting pot, pull out a golden calf, and say, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4b).

If we would be useful to the Father in this moment of the spiritual war, we must be certain that we are learning from Him—that we know Him for who He is. It will require incredible discernment, solid spiritual armor, and the highly skilled use of our Sword to do battle well. We must ensure that our highest pursuit is relationship with the One True God, because there are counterfeits being advertised everywhere.

And we must remember that our fight is not against flesh and blood. The Millennials, the Gen-Zs, the people who are honestly telling us “I don’t know if I can follow that God” are not the enemy. They are prisoners of the “spiritual forces of wickedness,” and they deserve our compassion, our love, our grace, and our commitment to the truth.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6:12

Jesus invites us to learn from Him as He walks with the Father in “the good way.” He calls us, paradoxically, to do spiritual battle by seeking spiritual rest. Let’s go to Him, learn from Him, and come to know this One called “I Will Be What I Will Be.”

Whatever comes to pass on the frontlines of this battle, we know He wins the war.

---

WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHO GOD IS?

The best place to go is to the Word. The Bible is the story of who God is, and who God is changes everything for you and me.

To that end, I have a couple resources that may help you get started in your journey through the Bible:

• The Bible180 Challenge is an opportunity to read through the Bible in 180 days, according to a thorough chronological schedule. You get a day of rest each week as well as an email offering accountability, support, and the very best study resources I’ve found to help you understand what you read. You can also use the Bible180 Challenge Journal to help you focus, stay on track, and build good study habits!

• Bedrock: A Foundation for Independent Biblical Study is a comprehensive textbook/workbook that will teach you how to dig DEEP into each of the seven types of Biblical literature. It’s a great next step for anyone who feels ready to surpass the typical milk of sermons and Bible studies, and desires to learn how to serve themselves on the meat. Find it on Amazon.

Jude 17-25 - a call to fight back

Welcome to Part Three of our in-depth study of the book of Jude. We've covered Jude's call to vigilance (in Part One) and his call to discernment (in Part Two) - now, we learn how to respond, how to fight back against the threat of the enemy and the deceptions of "these men."

A study in Jude - part three

“But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.” These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. And have mercy on some, who are doubting; save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

— Jude 18-25

Our battle plan

In the beginning of his letter, Jude urgently called the Church to vigilance, because deception was creeping in and going unaddressed. Godless men disguised as believers - wolves in sheep's clothing - were perverting God's grace and denying Christ's mastery in a way that imperiled souls.

Then he told the Church what traits to watch for in order to pick these men out from the crowd: they would be revealed by their disdain for authority, their reckless reliance on feelings above the truth, and their ultimate fruitlessness for the kingdom of God.

This letter is no less important for us today than it was for the churches of Jude's era. It may even be more so, because the wolves we are dealing with now have the ability to take their deception to a far higher platform - a worldwide audience. They are turning the grace of God into licentiousness by misusing sacred words like love, grace, and judgment; they are teaching, more loudly every day, that "it doesn't matter" what you do or what name you use for God or how you choose to identify yourself.

Now we know we must be watchful. We know what to be watching for. But what's the battle plan?

Remember the truth

But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.” These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.

If we are to have victory in this war, if we are to fight the good fight of the faith in a way that honors our Lord and Master, then a firm knowledge of and reliance on the truth of His Word is a nonnegotiable. If we have that, then we will not be surprised by the brutality of the fight, by the shrewdness of the enemy, or by the vileness of the worldly and Spiritless. We'll see it coming and we'll be able to make ourselves ready.

The truth will also help us to come into the battle from a right perspective, knowing that it is the mockers who cause the divisions, not we who fight back. So many times we back down from the battle in the name of preserving unity, but all we achieve is unification around the wrong thing. Going to war for the truth is not what divides us - the deceivers are already doing that. Yes, the call to war will inevitably divide the disciples from the deceivers, but that is the nature of truth - that's truth doing its job, and we can't be afraid of it.

Remember who you are

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.

Jude started his letter with a reminder of our true identities if we are followers of Christ, and he makes it part of his concluding call, too - because this matters. It is vitally important that we remember who we are, and our rightful role in the war.

But you, beloved: Jude just finished describing the mockers as those who are "devoid of the Spirit," and then says the word but. But you, beloved. Some are Spiritless, but we are loved - there is something different about who we are because we are in Christ, and beloved. That is powerful.

Building yourselves up on your most holy faith: Our foundation is faith - but it's not static. We are building on it. If we're good soldiers, we are growing, day in and day out, in our faith - in the ability to see things (including ourselves) the way God says they are, not the way our eyes see them.

Praying in the Holy Spirit: We have a weapon in hand that the Spirit-devoid mockers do not: access to God Himself in prayer. When the war is overwhelming and we are weak, do we remember that we are those with the unique privilege of access to God's throne?

Keep yourselves in the love of God: In verse one, Jude called us "the called, beloved, and kept." Here it is again: We have the opportunity to be kept (watched over, guarded) in God's love. Regardless of what is going on around us, we are safe.

Waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life: I love that phrase "waiting anxiously." In the Greek it communicates not just of waiting, but of expecting, and of opening oneself to eagerly receive. We have already benefited so much from God's grace, but there is more to come - and we are the recipients of mercy as vast as eternity!

We're loved, firmly founded, privileged with God's presence. We are carefully guarded by God's love and we are still waiting for the rest of His mercy to be showered on us. When we remember that this is who we are, and that this is how He has transformed us, we can do battle well - not because we need the affirmation or revel in the bloodshed, but because we see the value of what we have in Christ, and feel honored to contend earnestly for it.

Remember who you were

And have mercy on some, who are doubting; save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.

But we were not always whole in Christ. We were once lost just as these deceivers and their prey are lost, and we don't fight them ruthlessly, but compassionately - because we know what it is to stand exactly where they are. We need to remember who we were, and thereby remember who to look out for:

The doubting: Those who doubt don't need to be bludgeoned by our sense of certainty or self-righteousness, they need our mercy. Doubt is a very desperate place, because it becomes difficult to tell what is true from what is false, and our fears often muddy the waters and leave us feeling alone, unsure, and terrified. As we do battle compassionately, we need to reach out to the doubting not with a stack of Scripture verses to convince them of the truth, but with a mercy that actively demonstrates the truth of God's mercy toward us.

The lost: The lost, meanwhile, need straight-up saving. They are already in hell's clutches and it is imperative that we have the boldness and courage to run into the burning building and rescue them. It's dangerous and it's not pretty, but it is a crisis. These people don't need to be sermonized on how much better their lives will be with Jesus, they need to be snatched from the sinking talons of hell itself! 

The unwise: These are the people who play perilously close to the cobra's den. They indulge the flesh and make poor choices, and every day they become more vulnerable and more deeply entrenched in the bondage of sin. Like the doubters, these souls need our mercy - but with fear, which is actually closer to the word "terror," and with a hatred for the flesh. Why? Because they are not the only ones who are tempted by the flesh. We all are. Even we who are new creations carry around the "old man" with us, and if we don't tread carefully as we offer mercy to the unwise, we too can get trapped in its grip. When we try to strip the "garment polluted by the flesh" away from someone else, we must hate it so much - and fear our God even more - that we fling it away before it can defile us, too.

If we want to fight this fight with the compassion it demands, we have to remember where we came from. We need to be able to empathize with the doubting. We need to recognize what's really at stake for the lost. And we need to know ourselves and our weaknesses, so that we don't track the same muck we were saved from back into the Church after trying to pull out someone else.

Remember who our God is

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

Finally, and most importantly, Jude's battle plan against deception ends with a simple picture: This is who God is. This is who we have on our side, fighting with us and for us.

He is able. When we don't have the strength to carry on, He can keep us from stumbling and make us stand firm. When we keep screwing up and feel lost in our shame, He still welcomes us into His presence, sees us as blameless, and offers us His joy. When we forget who we are in Him, we can look to who He is, because He is always the same - the only God, our Savior.

To Him be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever.

He will be glorified. He will be King. He will dominate and rule over everything we are battling against - we cannot lose this war, because He is on our side. We need only to contend earnestly for the faith.

Remember the truth. Remember who you are. Remember who you were. And remember who He is.

That's the battle plan. That's the strategy that has already changed the world, and will continue to do so until the day that the King Himself returns to claim the victory.

Are you ready?