Stevie Johnson: A man just like you and me

Recently, NFL wide-receiver Stevie Johnson ran a deep post corner route and dropped what would have been a game-winning touchdown pass thrown by his quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. It was the kind of catch that Johnson could make in his sleep, but this time around he didn't make the catch despite the fact that he was wide awake, not to mention wide open. The nearest defender was five feet away (and in the NFL if a defender is five feet away on a deep ball, he might as well be a mile away). He caught the ball for a brief second and then all of a sudden the ball seemed to just squirt away from him.

Johnson sat dejected in the end-zone. I can't imagine what was going on in his head as he sat there thinking whatever he was thinking. Actually, that's a lie, I know exactly what he was thinking. Johnson let the whole world (or at least those of us on Twitter) know exactly what he was thinking while he sat there. After the game, Johnson "tweeted" this: "I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO..."

As you can imagine, and as you've probably already heard, many Christians and non-Christians alike are all over this guy for his Twitter to God. Now, some people see a huge problem with his tweet and I'm sure somebody out there has even said something like, "He's an idiot, You can think that kind of thing but you should never say it, let alone put it on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace (does anyone still use MySpace?). But I would like to put some things into perspective for you...

First of all, this guy is just being honest and transparent with God (to a fault). This is something more Christians should do. Most of us just stuff these things deep or drop the Christian F-Word and act like everything is okay. The Christian F-Word, by the way, is: Fine.

"I'm fine. How are you?"
"That's good. I fine."

No you're not! Come on! How many times have you said "I'm fine" when you weren't "fine" by any stretch of the imagination. Life sucks sometimes...why can't we be honest and say, "Hey, things are awful right now and I'm doing...well, I suck too"?

Johnson did something that would be healthy for all of us to do. Yeah sure, his heart was postured poorly toward God, but so is yours every once is a while...but are you ever honest about it? Johnson had a very bad moment and he had a very open conversation with God about it. Was it wise to have that via Twitter? No. Because now his thoughts will be out there for all to see until the internet is no more. But it could be worse...

Think about it for a second. Eventually, all the Tweets and Facebook Status Updates will be forgotten and they will end up as dust or ash in eternity. But the Word of the Lord is forever (1 Peter 1:25). I have no doubt that His written Word (the Bible) is apart of that package deal. So this could mean, that while Stevie Johnson's Tweet of Anger will last a long time, the questions and statements of other men (who have their moments of frustration with God quoted in the Bible) will be around long after Johnson's disappear along with Twitter and Facebook.

Jeremiah, for example, is quoted for all of eternity as he tells God that God has seduced him into serving God. Jeremiah would do exactly what God told him to do and almost always catch a beat down for it from the audience. That's way worse than dropping at catch when you play for the Buffalo Bills but his words will be immortalized!

Think about Job and the things that he said! Think about all of his idiot friends that "advised" him during is suffering. Their words live on thousands of years later for all of us to see how ridiculous they were! God even showed up in the middle of their conversation to clarify how dumb their words were.

David, the schizophrenic shepherd-warrior-king-poet can't seem to make up his mind! One minute he's talking to God as if they were sharing a gourmet parfait in the botanical gardens and the next he's crying out, "Where are you? God you've abandoned me! Whyyyyyyyy?!"

And in the New Testament we see that even the disciples, the guys who walked with Jesus Christ (i.e. God in the Flesh), are also pretty lame at times. James and John had their mom asked Jesus embarrassing questions, Peter constantly sticks his foot in his mouth, and three clowns are "The Inner Three" for goodness sake!

The point is, we've all blamed God for things or been wrongfully angry toward Him. We've all blasphemed and said stupid things to God or about God. Stevie Johnson just happened to do it on Twitter and get all over the media air waves for it too. When all is said and done, it could be worse. The bright side is that Johnson's outburst could have been captured in the Word rather than in the media and on the internet. Get off of the man's case...you're just like him, and if you're honest, you'll admit it.

Book Review: "The Gospel & Personal Evangelism"

Title: The Gospel & Personal Evangelism
Sub-title: (not applicable)
Author: Mark Dever
Publisher: Crossway
Book Type: Evangelism (Christian Living)
Page Length: 124
Chapters: Foreword (by CJ Mahaney), Introduction, 7 Chapters, Conclusion
SRP: $9.99
Suggested Audience: All Christians, all ages.


Strengths: This book is short, so those of you that feel like you have the attention span of Dory from Finding Nemo, you have no excuses to not finish this book if you dare to pick it up. This book is organized well and it is by no means boring. If you have any desire to learn about evangelism or live out a life of evangelism, you will like this book.

Weaknesses: I feel like every time I write a book review I end up writing this, “I don’t think this book has any weaknesses.” And, honestly, I don’t feel badly about that fact because most books that I read are really good. I don’t usually pick up a book if I have a feeling that a book is going to be a bad read. With that said, this book hits the target that Dever was aiming for when he wrote it.

My thoughts: I love this book. I feel like it’s the unofficial sequel to Greg Gilbert’s “What is the Gospel?” and that is not too much of stretch considering that Greg Gilbert is a pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church just like Mark Dever. So my theory is that Gilbert wrote his book to establish what the gospel is and to clear up what the gospel is not. Then, Dever came along behind him and wrote “The Gospel & Personal Evangelism” to show us how to respond to the gospel of Jesus in light of what the Bible shows it (the gospel) to be. The problem with that theory is that Dever published his book first, so maybe Gilbert wanted to clarify the gospel for readers so they could better understand the gospel before moving on to Dever’s book about how the gospel demands that we live out personal evangelism. But I digress…

Dever’s book boldly declares what a Christian’s biblical response to the power of the gospel should be. Chapter by chapter he answers the various Who, How, What and Why questions of the gospel and personal evangelism. His methodical, systematic, and academic approach is make so personal by his writing that you don’t feel like a professor is teaching you from a chalk board, you feel like you’re being discipled in personal evangelism by a guy who loves Jesus and cares about you the reader.

Notable quotes: “My blindness to God’s provision is voluntary. I don’t consider the reality and finality of death, judgment, and hell.”

“In biblical evangelism, we don’t impose anything. In fact, we really can’t. According to the Bible, evangelism is simply telling the good news. It’s not making sure that the other person responds correctly. I wish we could, but according to the Bible, this is not something we can do.”

“Interrupting someone in the process of deciding to follow Christ can actually help him.”

“You may not remember a time when you didn’t follow Christ. But the Bible tells us that we are all by nature at enmity with God. And at some point, our hearts came alive to God and our wills bent to his. We were converted. That’s what we want to see as a result of our evangelism.”

“God is glorified in being known.”

“If you think that the gospel is all about what we can do, that the practice of it is optional, and that conversion is simply something that anyone can choose at any time, then I’m concerned that you’ll think of evangelism as nothing more than a sales job where the prospect is to be won over to sign on the dotted line by praying a prayer, followed by an assurance that he is the proud owner of salvation.”

“The Christian call to evangelism is not simply a call to persuade people to make decisions, but rather to proclaim to them the good news of salvation in Christ, to call them to repentance, and to give God the glory for regeneration and conversion.”

The Condition of Man: Part Two

"And you were dead in your trespasses and sins..." -Ephesians 2:1

Some months ago I concluded a blog entitled "The Condition of Man: Part One" by stating that man was spiritually dead. I mentioned the fact that Jesus is standing at the spiritual door of mankind and He is knocking while He waits for us to answer. The question I asked was this: "What is the condition of the man on the other side of the door?"

My thesis is that mankind is in no condition to make spiritual decisions to follow Jesus unless some outside force first changes their hopeless condition. I claimed that the first evidence to support my thesis was the Biblical idea that the man on the other side of the door is spiritually dead and therefore unable to answer the door at which Jesus stands and knocks. To live, he must answer the door and to answer the door he must be made alive.

In the same way, a dead man can't drink water unless he first becomes alive. If he must drink water to become alive, then he will remain dead because a dead man can't drink water. Someone else can pour water down a corpse's throat but that's not drinking, that's just pouring water into a dead man's mouth. For that dead man to drink, he must first live again.

In Ephesians, the Apostle Paul writes some amazing things about who God is and who we are in light of God being who He is. One of the passages that is amazing is Ephesians 2:1-10 which says in verse one that we (Christians) were dead (spiritually) and we were headed for a big heaping dose of God's nasty, righteous, good, just wrath and that non-believers are still on the path for it. Verse 5 seems to clearly state that for some reason God gave us life even when we were dead and unable to do anything to please him (Romans 8:7-8).

Paul writes something similar to the Church at Colossae:

"And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses..."

There's no doubt that Paul believes there is something spiritually dead about us. If you read Romans 8 you get this picture that the physical state of a man will line up with the spiritual state of him as well. If I live by the flesh, my physical body and soul will go the way of the flesh which is death. The Spirit is life and peace, so if I live this life by, in, and through the Spirit, I will live spiritually and live once again physically when resurrected by Christ. That is an overwhelming theme in the writings of Paul. My physical life in the flesh will line up with the posture of my soul.

So, if we are dead spiritually, what can we on our own merit and under our own power do to change the state our spiritual condition? The answer is: nothing. When was the last time you saw a corpse do anything but decompose? The only time truly dead things come to life again is by the power of an eternal force. So in the case of spiritual deadness, what external force intervenes for the corpse on the other side of the door upon which Jesus knocks? The corpse must come to life for it to answer the door and inviting Jesus in. But we've established, at the cost of me sounding redundant, that life won't happen apart from an outside granting life.

So the conclusion is: Man is dead spiritually and there's nothing we can do about it. But that's just the beginning of our problems. Because even if the spiritual corpse comes to life, the now living corpse is hostile toward the one who stands at the door and knocks. The key word in that verse is "hostile."

Hostile: "Of an enemy, pertaining to an enemy, or characteristic of an enemy; opposed in feeling, action, or character; not friendly, not warm, not generous, not hospitable."

We've got a huge problem: The God of the Universe is standing at our door...and we hate him.

Thoughts on Grace

I've grown up a lot in the past three years. Which is to be expected. I was 21 and now I'm 24. We could only hope I'd grow at least a little I guess. But I think my understanding of Grace has had a lot to do with it.

For a long time, I've known academically and intellectually what Grace is, but it was only after becoming a Christian that I knew of Grace in the sense that my knowledge of it and experience of it collided into something that was very personal. But lately, I've seen in my own life how little I understand it even now. I mean, I've grown leaps and bounds in Grace. I'll never forget the time Jake Peterman and I were talking about a guy who we felt deserved the wrath of God and Divine justice (who doesn't right?) and I said, "We just gotta show him a little grace."

We were walking on campus when I said that and Jake just stopped. He was in shock that he was hearing those words from my mouth. I was too, I suppose. But that's what happens when you're being transformed. You start to become unrecognizable when compared to the person you were before Christ.

But, somewhere along the road, I've become numb to Grace. I've once again become so Truth heavy that I've forgotten Grace. I'm a little Grace retarded. I don't say that to be funny. It's pretty serious, actually. When you find yourself thinking that God loves some future version of you rather than understanding the fact that God, because of Grace, loves you right now, right where you are...even though you're a jacked up, messed up, screw up. Grace is Grace because you can't do anything to alter your position. Grace is unmerited.

Lately, I've found myself thinking thoughts about how God will be pleased and love me more when I reach certain spiritual goals and levels. It's so weird to operate in a way that mentally, intellectually, and academically you know is just absolutely crazy. It's actually quite insane. it's like driving on the left side of the road while muttering, "Drive on the right dummy, driving on the left is crazy, driving on the left is wrong, driving on the left ends badly, driving on the left is a terrible idea."

But...that's where I've been lately. I've been in this ridiculous cycle of "let me clean up my act and then God will be approachable again. Lemme fix myself so I can go back to Jesus and hangout again." How dumb is that? Yeah, I know...it's pretty dumb in light of Grace. Don't get me wrong, I am well aware of Romans 6. But if I try to run from God until I can get myself clean first, I'll be running forever--because it will never happen.

Grace it what allows me to approach God and cry out, "Look I really suck at this whole life thing and if you don't do something in me, I'm never going to be able to make it. You've told me to pick up my cross and follow you, but if my heart doesn't continue to be transformed by you, I'm never going to hold up under the weight of discipleship and sanctification."

Oh God, thank you for Grace. Thank you that it's free and unmerited. That you that Grace means I'm yours right now. Thank you that you don't just love some version of me that's 20 years away. Thank you that you love me right now.

It's because of Grace that I'm confident that God will continue to show me and remind of His Grace throughout my journey. I'm quite sure this won't be the last season of life in which I'll find myself not walking in light of Grace...because I am so prone to wander and discard my understanding of Grace. What a tragedy it is to lose sight of such a beautiful thing like Grace.

Book Review: "Let the Nations Be Glad"

Title: Let the Nations Be Glad!
Sub-title: The Supremacy of God in Missions
Author: Dr. John Piper
Publisher: Baker Academic
Book Type: Mission/Theology
Page Length: 280
Chapters: Preface, Acknowledgements, Introduction, 7 Chapters, Conclusion, Afterword
SRP: $15.99
Suggested Audience: All Christians who plan on being involved with missions in any way (sending or going), which Biblically, should be all Christians everywhere.


Strengths: It's meaty. It's deep. It's weighty. I love this book. Piper is just so good at exposing the realities of your soul and this book will rip open the corner of your heart labeled "missions." It will leave you thinking every time you put it down. It's so grounded in Scripture. Almost every page is covered with God's Word.

Weaknesses: This book isn't weak. People are. You will feel faint of heart throughout this book, but it's not because this book has weaknesses, it's because we as humans suck and we need grace from Jesus...even if we hope to finish this book.

My thoughts: Read this book with a group or you'll never finish it. Watch the DVDs/video sermons that go with it if you can. I love Piper and this book is pure gold for anyone that loves Jesus and missions to the world. I read this book with a group of people that I love very much while we were doing ministry in New Zealand. This book pushed us all toward Jesus and the lost around us. Read this book. Think. Pray. Journal. Wrestle. Chew. Press in. Go out. Pray some more and then start reading again. Do that and you'll feel your heart ignited to worship this awesome God in whom the Nations are glad.

Notable quotes: "The most passionate heart for the glorification of God is God's heart. God's ultimate goal is to uphold and display the glory of his name."

"Life is war because the maintenance of our faith and the laying hold on eternal life is a constant fight."

"Life is war. Paul assumes this..."

"The point rather is that as long as the Lord has not returned, there must be more people groups to reach, and we should keep on reaching them."

"God willing...I shall return."

Today is my last full day in Dunedin, New Zealand. I feel like there’s a Hobbit stepping on my sternum. Like, I feel a tiny weight in and on my chest right now. It’s pretty weird and all I can do is chalk it up to the love and burden I have for this place and these people. It’s been pretty life changing being here for 11 weeks.

As a ministry team, we’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we’re all completely at the mercy of God for everything. We are totally dependent on Him to move in men to meet with us. We’re totally dependent on Him to grow the seed that we’ve planted and watered. We’re totally dependent on God to save. We can’t “lead people in prayers.” We can’t convince them to “get saved.” We can’t articulate the Gospel so well that their eyes get opened. And on and on I could go.

All we can do is faithfully live out and share the gospel, and pray that God does something supernatural. All we can do is live faithfully and hope God does something incredible, because even if we live faithfully according to His word, He can still tarry and withhold His loving hand from those with whom we labor—He owes men nothing (Romans 9 and 11). But praise God that He takes great pleasure in the salvation of men. For His Glory, he calls men and women out of spiritual death and into life with Him.

I don’t know much, but if He chooses to save the guys I’ve labored with, I’m going to go be an absolute, over-joyed mess. I will probably cry in a way I’ve never cried before. I’ll dance in a way I’ve never danced before. I’ll laugh in a way I’ve never laughed before. My hope is in Christ alone, but a deep-heart felt prayer is for the salvation of these dudes here at this university.

I told Megan the other day that this place has cut me deep. I feel the weight of this country’s desperate need for Christ and this place has helped me sense my own continual need for Jesus as well. A question that haunts me (in a good way) is: “Why me? Why did He save me?” I mean, he could have left me alone in my sin and allowed it to destroy me. But, he didn’t. He saved me. I see this country’s apathy—most of them just don’t care about Christ at all. But, I care and I want them to know Jesus. God willing, I’m coming back here. I’m coming back to this place if He’ll let me.

Tomorrow, I am leaving New Zealand. Tomorrow, I will rejoice in who Christ is and what He is doing in New Zealand. Tomorrow, I will have clear eyes. Tomorrow, I will have a full heart. Tomorrow, I will say, “God willing, I shall return.”

-Nate Xanders

The Supremacy of Christ in Carpentry and Patience

When everyone abandoned me here—I mean, when everyone left for the States, I had to break down all of our bunk beds and stuff. Then Josh informed me that we would build a shelf in the shed/garage so we could store the mattresses and broken down bunk pieces. So we started doing this little project and about four hours later we (and when I say we, I mean Josh, because I knew from the start this would take forever) realized how deep we were into this thing. So we kept at it and with about an hour worth of work left, Josh looked down at his watch and said, “Well, time to go home.”

I’m still blown away by the fact that we were so close and he called it a night. So a week later, here I was by myself looking at this cluttered shed. And I finished the carpentry alone. As I was cutting the wood and nailing it into place, I thought about how amazing it is that Christ spent years and years as a carpenter and never sinned. It’s such a frustrating task. Cutting wood in that shed just warred against me—and that’s what Jesus did for a living. He was a carpenter. The tools he had to work with were archaic compared to my power saw and drill. Now, I would argue that He, as the God of the universe, had a “slight” carpentry advantage, since He did it professionally for over two decades and, oh I don’t know, made all the trees by speaking them into existence and then holding them in place by the power of His word. I’m just saying, I don’t think Jesus ever cut the wood incorrectly—but that’s complete conjecture, I know. None of that is really the point.

One thing is for sure, I don’t think I have the patience to do carpentry six days a week for over 20 years. But Jesus did. Carpentry takes unbelievable patience. And we know that Christ is perfectly patient. As I thought about Christ as a carpenter, I couldn’t help but think of His patience as Savior and Lord. I thought about His unreal patience with me and with us. My prayer is that His patience with these guys here in Dunedin would be displayed to them. Our prayer should be that they would come to Christ and taste His mercy, His grace, His love, and His patience—just as we have.

Please pray for Hugh, Team Duff and Team Studholme as I labor with them. They have all returned from their semester break and today I get to hangout with these guys. Hugh has been reading “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel and is really enjoying it. Team Duff is still reading John and still asking great questions—please pray that I would ask great questions as well. Join me in praying that God would reveal Himself to them and display His supremacy and His supreme patience to them.