The Tillinghasts Panama Update May 2013 SPECIAL EDITION

The Tillinghasts Panama Update March - May 2012

The Tillinghasts Panama Update February 2012

The Tillinghasts Panama Update - January 2012

The Tillinghasts Panama Update December 2011 - Feliz Navidad!

Happy Beneficiaries

By Todd Tillinghast

Many Christians, if asked and if they answered honestly would characterize their Christian walk with the following phrase:

If I do.......   then God will …....

and the idea is basically that if I:

• Pray
• Read the word
• Go to church
• Share my faith
• Do acts of service
• Be a good Christian boy or girl

then God will:  

• Answer my prayers
• Bless me
• Open doors for me
• Give me what I want

when the true biblical characterization of what Christianity really is looks more like this statement:

Because Christ …...  Now i can …......

Because Christ:

• Died on the cross
• Rose from the dead
• Completely fulfilled the law and lived a sinless life
• Made me righteous

Now I can:

• Die to my flesh
• Have Spiritual life within
• Obey His commandments out of love
• Rest in His righteousness and forsake my own righteousness.

When we are able to step back from the rampant humanism that consumes our media and modern day culture and look at the gospel the way that God meant it to be seen we are acutely aware that the gospel is not man centered.  The Gospel is about God and what He has done for man.  It is not about what man can do for God.  It is not about what man has to offer God.  It is not about man’s works.  The gospel effectively relegates man to a place that he was always meant to be by His creator and that is as a recipient of a great gift called Grace.  God is the benefactor and man is the beneficiary.  Not the other way around.  

When we can embrace the true gospel as it was delivered by Christ and the Apostles and communicated to us in His word a whole different worldview begins to emerge.  We begin to realize that it is not what we have but what we don’t have that qualifies us for this great Grace that we receive  (2 Cor 12:9).  It is not about what we can do but what Christ already did.  (RM 5:6) These revelations can be so freeing if we just allow ourselves to accept and believe them.  

But in order to accept and believe them we have to lay down something that we have clung to for our entire lives.  Something that we have nurtured and spent much time, money and care protecting and that is our selves.  And it comes as a death blow to our self centered, man centered worldview to accept that it’s not about what I did and it’s ultimately not about what I do but it’s about what Christ did and what He set me free to be able to do in His power.  The point in all of this is to say that it’s not about us!!!!!

But how liberating those words are.  I for one am so glad that my salvation is not based on something as flimsy as my own works or my own capacity to do the right things because I would surely loose it.  God created us to be beneficiaries of a great benefactor, Himself.  And He gifts us with grace.  Not grace that we deserve, not grace that we could ever earn but just simply Grace that he has decided to give us.  And without this grace there is no hope for any of us.  So, when I can begin to understand the gospel of grace in those terms it makes me a happy beneficiary for sure!!!!

TOO MANY PHARMACISTS AND NOT ENOUGH SURGEONS

by Todd Tillinghast

we usually approach the human dilemma as something that needs to be cured.  Sure there’s a problem in the world but it’s not man.  Man does many foolish and unhealthy things, that we readily admit but he can change and do many great things if he is just shown the way, just given the right formula, just taught how.  So many of our churches are led by pharmacists.  Pastors and bible teachers who treat man’s problem as a sickness or a malady that can be cured by exercise and the right kinds of prescriptions.  So by necessity they treat the word of God like an encyclopedia of medications for all of life’s maladies.  But when we treat the Bible, God’s living word, His redemption narrative, His holy revealed oracle to us today as nothing more than an encyclopedia meant to be leafed through to find the answers or the prescriptions for a better life we necessarily do violence to the Scriptures.  Now prescriptions by nature are simple little concepts.  They are characterized by phrases like:  

• Take two of these and call me in the morning
• Take this with food
• Take one in the morning and one at night

Prescriptions aren’t meant to be complicated they are meant to be easy solutions to problems.  So, in order to create the prescriptions that give us the quick answers that we want and think we need we have created a devotional culture in the church.  We read our Psalm and proverb for the day or we read someone Else's devotional in a devotion book and we say our little prayer and off we go living a better life by the minute.  

The problem is that when I read the Bible I don’t see it described by itself as

• A dictionary for life’s maladies
• An encyclopedia of prescriptions for a better life
• A road map for life
• God’s little prescription book

No, I see it described as things like:

• A sharp two edged sword.  Hebrews 4:12, Ephesians 6:17
• A mirror that reveals my weaknesses.  James 1:22-25
• Something that by knowing sets me free.  John 8:31,32
• A belt that girds me up with strength and prepares me to fight.  Ephesians 6:14
• Something I have to work at and be disciplined in studying in order to rightly handle.  2 Tim 2:15
• Something that, in it’s entirety, is breathed out by God and is profitable for correction, rebuke, teaching and training in righteousness. 2 Tim 3:16

Too many teachers of God’s word seem to fancy themselves as pharmacists dolling out portions of scripture, a verse here and a verse there in order to make their constituents feel better about themselves when the real issue is that the problem is their selves.  We don’t need our egos to be medicated, we need to be extricated from our egos.  This is what the teacher of God’s word is to address in His teaching because this is what God’s word deals with.    

For those of us who have been given this awesome and fearful responsibility to teach God’s word every week, we must be ready to bring our scalple to the pulpit on Sunday morning rather than a prescription pad.