Tag: web hosting

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Everything you (truly) Need

 

Why do you do what you do?

It seems a strange question, right?

“Because I have to, or else things will fall apart” could be one answer.

“Because I want to, out of gratitude” is a much different one.

At Truepath, we opt for the second one.

In our efforts to provide you with everything you need to create a first-class ministry website — from easy-to-use WordPress software, to friendly, knowledgeable technical support that’s dedicated to answering your questions online or by phone — we’re here for you.

Ultimately, it’s a reflection of what we believe about the Gospel.

That might sound like religious jargon, but it’s not. Let me explain.

Despite the word’s meaning, there’s a universal tendency – born of our fallen desire to rely on ourselves – to warp “Gospel” into “advice.”

We reinterpret a word that literally means “good news” as: “If I just work hard enough, clean up my act, and do these 8 things, God will accept me.” 

In fact, if you really think about it, every religion tends to approach God that way.

Whether it’s the attainment of Nirvana by overcoming your desires (Buddhism); prayer and charitable deeds and making atonement/repentance (Judaism); moral living and belief in karma and reincarnation (Hinduism) – or a legalistic, works-oriented understanding of Christianity –  they all ultimately depend on our performance. 

And that’s not good news. After all, how do you know if you’re ever worthy or have done enough?  

Not only that, it’s the opposite of what the Gospel actually is. As Tim Keller has said, 

“The founders of every major religion said, “I’ll show you how to find God.” Jesus said, “I am God who has come to find you.” 

We can even be more specific as to how this looks.

At root, these “self-salvation projects” – or ways of trying to save ourselves – typically look one of two different ways. 

Again, Keller says,

“There are two ways to be your own Savior and Lord. One is by breaking all the moral laws and setting your own course, and one is by keeping all the moral laws and being very, very good.”

We could elaborate, but Jesus already did for us – by putting it in story form. It’s the well-known parable of “the prodigal son.” (That title is actually unfortunate since it’s actually about two brothers and two approaches to the Father!)  

The younger son breaks all the laws and considers his father dead, and squanders his inheritance; the older brother claims to do everything his father wished and yet won’t join the party (a celebration of grace) at the end. 

(Strikingly, since Jesus was actually telling this parable to the Pharisees (the very moral, religious types), we can actually discern that the older brother part was really the main focus!) 

So what is the Gospel, then?

Thankfully, there is a third way to relate to the Father.

Something wonderful has taken place – completely apart from you and I and our moral performance – and it’s been announced to the world. It’s news – not advice that you have to discover in a TedTalk or “how-to” instruction manual (“for dummies”) to live a more successful life.   

Think of it as a birthday or Christmas gift that you didn’t earn, expect, or work for. When it comes, you just receive it with open, grateful hands.

And what is the gift? It’s that God himself has secured the way to be right with him, and has come to find us when we’ve gone astray. 

Jesus has kept the law perfectly in our place and died the death we deserve. Now, forgiveness and full acceptance is ours, as a free gift – and so is the faith to receive it (Eph. 2:8,9)

Just like no one does anything in order to to be born into this life as a human baby, the new birth that makes us alive to God and able to trust him is itself a gift from God (Jn. 3:4-6). 

And so here’s the thing about moral living and obedience: as believers in Jesus, we don’t now obey out of fear of punishment, or to win or keep God’s affections. We obey because we already have God’s affections, and so want to please him. 

Truly, we have all we need in his finished work:  

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32)

and

“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness, through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” (2 Pet. 1)

In this same spirit…

Truepath’s goal is to give you all you need for your website to run smoothly.

That’s why we provide feature-rich apps and top-tier security to keep your site protected from malicious attacks, or unwanted material.  

And just like grace, we don’t require you to be skillful or clever; we’ll take care of it for you – whether migrating existing content, set-up, or ongoing maintenance.

And not only that. We’ll even – if you desire – provide you with expert web design services.

That’s the bottom line: Jesus has given us everything we need, so we want to reflect that heart to his world. And so…

Truepath is here to serve you!

 

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A Kingdom-Centered Website for Questioners, Part 1

If there’s one thing that’s true of all of us – embedded deep in our hearts from creation – it’s that we ask questions. 

We ask because we’re not self-sufficient; we’re dependent creatures. We need to wonder, wrestle, and learn – it’s actually a good thing. 

Relational inquisitiveness propels exploration, and deepens knowing. Gracious questions can be an expression of love, a way of not being preoccupied with self (1 Cor. 13:5).  

Yet sometimes our questions do reveal our unbelief:  

“Did God really say…?” (Gen. 3:1)

But then God himself comes asking us a question (though he already knows the answer!): “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9)

It’s a way of helping us face ourselves; we’re meant to hear and reflect: “Where am I indeed?” And, “Will I be honest about my hiding, and my guilt and shame?”

Now, since that great fracturing of our relationship with God, we ask even more questions, expressing our deepest fears, hopes, and longings:

“Am I loved? Will I be Accepted?”

“Can I really be forgiven? If so, will I always feel it?””

Is there healing for my shame?”

“What am I looking to (trusting in) to find meaning in my life right now?”

etc. 

Multitudes of self-help gurus offer answers to these questions – yet their answers send us inward, and leave us wanting. After all, a curved-in self is part of the problem.  

But what if we linked our questions to God’s unfolding story?

The gospel – this “divinely orchestrated narrative” of good news (what “gospel” means) actually drives us outward, away from our own schemes, to the true King.

In other words, as Tim Keller notes, the gospel is news, not advice.

And the good news is, his heart is not set on crushing us (2 Pet. 3:9). He asks us to simply admit what we are, and come open-handed.

When we do, we see that this King is unlike all others, for he stoops from his throne to personally come and rescue us. The devastating effects of our cosmic treason – guilt and shame – are answered with unimaginable grace. 

The Kingdom

Yet what makes the gospel especially good news is that it’s not only our past and future hope, it’s our present hope in the face of heart struggles and sufferings as well.

We may have come to trust Christ as our Savior, yet our deepest questions about being loved, accepted, and finding true meaning still persist.

Thankfully, they find their ultimate answers not in ourselves, but in the finished work of Christ – including what he is now doing: interceding for us, and “making all things new” (Isa. 43:19).

Faith may wax and wane, but the cross and resurrection changed everything; now, wherever the King is, there you will find the kingdom.

So how do we understand this kingdom?

Unlike many conceptions, the kingdom of God isn’t an ethereal, pie-in-the-sky, off-in-the clouds reality. Rather, it’s an unfolding story now taking shape; a King ushering in his new society.

As theologian Nicholas Perrin says, it is a “sphere of reality conspiring with a community of human image-bearers in the task of restoring creation to the worship of the one true Creator God.”

The resurrection of Jesus has opened that door. 

NT Wright fleshes this out for us when he writes:

“The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether…They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.”

Your Website

When it comes to your website, you may have heard the popular saying “content is king.” If you listen to marketing experts, they’ll tell you that you need to use keywords (that come up in searches), well-written content, and good visuals.

These things are helpful, and shouldn’t be neglected.

Yet, we also do justice to God’s work and his unfolding kingdom when our content helps questioners grapple with the true King and his kingdom. As we’ve noted in past posts, your site should anticipate the things they will ask about, with a posture of warm and loving welcome.

We facilitate this welcome by acknowledging that every person has a story. Because we were made for this King, the questions that arise in our stories can be answered in the most healing of ways: 

“Am I loved?” The gospel answers, Yes, you are loved more than you can imagine, for the king has suffered and shed his blood to rescue you (dying the death you deserve) and welcome you into his family.

“Am I accepted?” The Gospel says you’re accepted – even on your worst day. 

“Am I forgiven?” Yes, through faith in Jesus you are completely forgiven. Jesus has sealed the adoption papers in his blood. He will bring the good work he has begun in you to completion.  

“Is there healing for my shame?” Yes, but like our other questions and because of our sin, this is easy to forget. We need continual reminders that through his cross, he has separated our sins from us “as far as the east is from the west, ” and has taken our shame upon himself.  Though we want to take it back sometimes (we insist on self-salvation projects), he says “it is finished.” 

“What gives me meaning in my life right now?” Because we’re still prone to wander, the question of where we look for meaning is always relevant. Even as believers, our heart’s worship can deviate to “self-made, artificial saviors” – whether relationships, jobs, success, feeling good and always entertained, etc. The Gospel reminds us that Jesus is better than all. 

These kinds of questions must be unpacked carefully and continually – on your site, in sermons, conferences, Sunday School lessons, etc., – and especially in God’s new community, the welcoming fellowship of believers. 

It’s easy when it comes to questions of doctrine to simply proof-text answers without fleshing them out. Your website can offer more; inquirers need to hear down-to-earth stories from those in your church family to help them. 

In our next post, we’ll add to the questions above to help your site anticipate the questions that inquirers are asking.

 

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Children are a “Gift from the Lord” – but do We Treat them as Such?

It’s a precious truth, often quoted: “Children are a “gift from the Lord.” (Ps. 127:3) And it’s most certainly true !

Unfortunately, there’s another aspect of truth that we must take to heart: instead of being filled with gratitude for these little image-bearers of God, there are many ways we can mishandle the gift.

Here are some common ones:

1. Make children the center of your life — a child-rearing idol

2. Make work the center of your life — an idol of vocation

3. Make anything but God the center of your life — modeling idolatry to your family

4. Be harsh/abusive with your children in words/actions — akin to hate… the seeds of murder

5. Fail to pray with and for your children — unbelief; modeling self-trust to them

Sadly, the list goes on. We could take a separate article to unpack each of those points alone!

Take heart – there is grace…

As we remember how the Gospel applies to us as children — that God treats us, his beloved and redeemed children and image-bearers with great delight and as his partners in the Gospel — we can repent and learn to love and see our children in new ways.

But this goes further. We also need to ask: might there be a systemic approach to “mishandling this gift” in our churches as well?

For instance: many churches, while rightly emphasizing growing and maturing in discipleship, practically assume a posture of “children should be seen (in the other room) and not heard.”

It’s really the adults, they say— the supposedly mature — that should do the work of ministry. One day children will grow up and participate in ministry too. At least, that’s the message that gets sent.

But think about it: was this the posture of the One who called little children to sit on his lap, and even used them as a kind of model that adults should imitate if they would enter the kingdom of God? (see Matt. 18:2–4)

A Radical Idea

No doubt, this statement of Jesus to “become like children” was radical to his hearers; a Greco-Roman culture would’ve surely interpreted it as absolutely backward  — even insulting.

But what Jesus meant by holding the child up as an ideal, as scholar D. A. Carson says, was not as a model of “… innocence, purity, or faith,” as we often think, “but of humility and unconcern for social status.”

In other words, as author Jared Kennedy puts it,

“Jesus wants his disciples to be childlike because young kids don’t pretend to have it all together. They poop and cry and get into things. Jesus wanted his team of disciples to see they were just as needy, and he wants us to see it as well.”

So there’s our starting place — neediness. It’s a call for us to empty our hands, instead of touting our record or living for another’s approval. You can’t receive a gift if your hands are full.

But what does this look like, practically?

Partners in Ministry

Kennedy suggests that we start by committing to “valuing children enough to build a relationship with them.” For example, learning their name is powerful, and communicates, “You’re part of this community” and “I was expecting you.”

Further, if we would nurture our children with the same grace we ourselves need, bible lessons must not degenerate into mere downloading of bible facts, or moral lessons that usually amount to: “be like David,” and “don’t be like Jonah.” As if David hadn’t committed adultery and murder along the way, and wasn’t in need of a Savior himself.

In other words, lessons should aim toward seeing the “gospel center” of the passage. Ultimately, we want to be asking, “how is Jesus our true hope?”

Blake Hardcastle summarizes this approach well when he writes,

“A church member doesn’t need seminary training or loads of experience with the Bible to practice these methods. Volunteers, with a little effort, can navigate the four questions:

1. Who in this story needs good news?

2. What is God doing for his people in this story?

3. How does God do the same for us-only better-in Jesus?

4. How does believing this good news change the way we live?

Answering these questions guides the teacher to the key truth of the Scripture passage [which is what we all need]. It will make an impact on young learners by constantly presenting Jesus as he’s revealed in the Word.

This approach is key to understanding and teaching the historical narrative genre which makes up a disproportionate amount of children’s curriculum. You can stop searching for the perfect lesson plans; use the ones you already have and apply Kennedy’s grid to convert them to gospel-centered lessons.”

So what about your church? Has your children’s ministry primarily become a babysitting sitting service, waiting for them to grow up? Or do you actually see them as engaged in ministry with you — right now? What does your website communicate about how you view and minister to kids?

These are important questions if we would model the love of Jesus to our kids.

Want to explore how you might embrace this important move from “child care to soul care?” You can find the article containing many of the above ideas here.

Truepath’s vision is to empower Christian organizations and businesses to take full advantage of their online presence by providing affordable and best-in-class applications and dedicated, live customer support. You can reach us at: (760) 480–8791.

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Seven Passages of Hope

“The resurrection is not a stupendous magic trick but an invasion…” – Timothy Keller

In Jesus, God has broken into time and space; the future into the present. As CS Lewis said, “a cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world.” Nothing will ever be the same.

As ambassadors declaring that “invasion” of love, we must always return to the well to be refreshed. Here are seven earth-shattering passages to read and meditate on this Easter, reminding us of our source of true life and hope.

May your love and ministry be fueled anew by the self-giving, death-defeating love of Jesus – the God who took on flesh to make “all things new”:

1. John 20:19–23

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

2. Ephesians 2:4–7

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

3. Isaiah 53:11–12

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.

4. Genesis 22:9–14

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

5. Romans 5:6–11

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

6. Romans 8:3

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 5:14–21

7. 2 Corinthians 5:14–21

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised… Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

 

Truepath’s vision is to empower Christian organizations and businesses to take full advantage of their online presence by providing affordable and best-in-class applications and dedicated, live customer support. You can reach us at: (760) 480-8791.