All lessons end in the same place. Regardless of the topic, no matter the text, all lessons end with the same question:

What do you want to do about what you heard today?

There are several key words in this sentence. Let’s look at a few of them.

What do YOU want to do about what you heard today?

Application is general. We have been there: what are ten ways we could apply this to our lives. The freedom from commitment is important at that stage because it frees the mind to be creative. By thinking of all the ways we could apply, we are not burdened down by having to ask if we want to do this or that. But, somewhere along the way, we have to narrow the focus. We need to pick one or two things from the list that we want to do.

Commitment is personal. It is not general. It is me and God and what am I going to do. Not “What should Christians do to clean up the environment?” Not, “What should politically active people do about abortion?” Not, “What should the church do to be more effective evangelistically. The question is: what are YOU going to do about what you heard today?

What do you WANT to do about what you heard today?

Based on the cost/benefit that we have looked at today, what do you want to do? Not …

• What do you think you should do?
• What does your wife want you to do?
• What do good Christians do?

The question is, “What do you want to do?”

In the long run, people do what they want. Christian teaching is about changing what people want to do. If we don’t change what they want to do, we don’t change them enough. Effective teaching gets people in touch with their God-given passions.

Good passions must overcome bad passion. We overcome evil with good.

• We overcome stinginess by getting people in touch with their desire to be a generous person. Don’t you want to be a generous person? Aren’t all the people you admire in this world generous people?
• We overcome inappropriate sexual desire by getting people in touch with their desire to be pure. How do you feel about adulterers? Do you want to be one? Do you want your kids to think of you that way?
• We overcome laziness by embracing the benefits of diligence. Every goal we have takes work. I want to do some things. I want to accomplish some things. Laziness won’t get me there.

Effective teaching gets people in touch with what they want—really want to do with their lives. Effective teaching changes people’s “wanter.”

What do you want to DO about what you heard today?

It isn’t about what you think or whether you agree or what your opinion is. The question is, “What are you going to do about it?” There are two ways to go at this.

Baby steps

Sometimes we fail to live the Christian life because it is so daunting. We have been fat and out of shape our whole lives and now you tell me to make a decision to live a healthy life? Really?

Sometimes, you do better to ask for baby steps.

• Could you cut out French Fries?
• Could you take a fifteen minute walk before work?
• Could you, just for this week, have fruit around the house as a snack?

Did you see the movie What About Bob? This was the mantra of the character played by Bill Murray: Baby steps; baby steps.

Small difference can make a big difference over time. Tiny, incremental differences can make a huge difference. One percent improvement per week in almost anything will make radical differences in a year. The problem is we sometimes don’t change at all. I know churches that have not changed in years. Their service is the same. The music is the same. The building is the same. Everything is the same. Small changes can make a big difference if consistently implemented.

Small changes are doable. Small changes don’t scare us. Small changes we can handle. But, not too small. Remember the narrow way.

If the change is too small it doesn’t challenge us and we don’t find any motivation for it. The challenge to loose one pound this year may be doable, but it doesn’t motivate us. Find the narrow way. Find a challenge that is big enough to challenge, but small enough to be within our grasp.

Ask for the big order

Sometimes, we don’t need to ask for baby steps at all. Sometimes we need to ask for the big order. Sometimes we need to make the big ask. Generally speaking, most Sunday School teachers are too timid. They don’t make the big ask.

Change is sometimes incremental, like erosion. But, often times change is all-at-once, like an earthquake. Suddenly everything is different.

I have heard teachers make compelling arguments for tithing for example. They provide the biblical exposition. They talk of the reasonableness of it. They speak of the cost and the benefit. Everything is moving along nicely until it comes time to land the plane. The closing goes like this: “Maybe some of you have heard what we talked about today and it is too much for you. You can’t imagine giving 10% of your income away. You have too much debt, too much financial pressure and you just can’t get there. Here is what I recommend. Start giving something today. Something. Anything. Some small little something. One year from now, make a commitment to start giving 1% of your income, then 2% a year later, and so on. Ten years from now, you will be tithing.”

I have asked hundreds of teachers if they tithe and if that is how they got to tithing. It has happened, but it is pretty rare. Most people who tithe got there because someone made the big ask. Someone asked for them to give not 10% to God by 100%. The 10% is just a reminder that it all belongs to God.

What do you want to do about what you heard TODAY?

You can’t change everything all at once. You can’t ask people to get in shape, start having a quiet time, start sharing their faith, start tithing and discover their spiritual gift all at once. It is what I call the dead bug syndrome: if you ask me for too much all at once I freeze up and just lie there like a dead bug with my arms and legs up in the air.

The question is not, “What do you want to do about all the commands in the Bible?” The question is, “What do you want to do about what you heard TODAY.”

Matthew 18 says, “If your brother sins against you …” Notice that “sins” is singular. One sin. Deal with one sin at a time. If you ask me to be more grateful, more generous, more kind and more diligent all in one day, I just freeze up like a dead bug.

It is not all about doing

Christian living is not all about doing right. It is also about feeling right and believing right. The commitment question, then, could be about any of these:

• What do you want to do about what you heard today? Or
• What beliefs do you want to turn from based on what we have talked about today?
• What feelings do you want to cultivate? Do you want to become a person who feels more grateful or content or loving?

Conclusion

It is often said that effective teaching is all about application. That is not exactly right. Application is a necessary first step, and a step that a lot of teachers don’t take. But the next step is even more important: the commitment question.

Based on what we have said in this chapter, how do you want to change your teaching this weekend? Be specific and personal.

Josh Hunt, How to Use Questions to Stimulate Life-Changing Discussions, Good Questions Have Small Groups Talking (Las Cruces, NM: Josh Hunt, 2010), 113–117.

I work full time training and challenging Sunday School teachers to double every two years or less. One question I have asked myself a million times is, “Why doesn’t it happen already? Why doesn’t it happen routinely? Why doesn’t it happen all the time?

I can show you examples of where doubling groups is happening routinely, and it is resulting in explosive growth. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that there is an unprecedented movement of doubling groups going on right now. God is up to something in a big way.

Henry Blackaby taught us that if you want to follow God what you must do is discover where God is at work and join Him in what He is doing. One thing God is doing is orchestrating a global movement of doubling groups. I could write a book on that. In fact, I have written a book on that, but it is not the topic of this book. The question is, why doesn’t it happen all the time?

When I ask this question, most people can think of one or two answers. I want to illustrate how asking, pushing, and asking some more can reveal more and more obstacles in the way of any goal, using the goal of doubling groups as an example.

1. We don’t know how

My core assumption for many years was that teachers did not know how to double. I spent all my time teaching a five step strategy on how to double a class:

Teach a half-way decent lesson each and every week. Nothing less will do. You don’t have to be Chuck Swindoll. It does have to be half way decent.

Invite every member and every prospect to every fellowship every month. I teach a party-driven strategy. I have seen it happen more times than I could count that if we can get them to the party, we could not keep them from class.

Give Friday nights to Jesus to an informal time of Diet Coke, coffee cake and card playing.

Encourage the group toward ministry. We need everyone in the group involved in this process of doubling groups.

Reproduce your group. Doubling a group is not so much about going from ten to twenty as much as it is about going from one group to two.

There is a five step strategy for doubling groups. I have taught this hundreds of times to tens of thousands of teachers. Why isn’t it happening all the time? Is it just that we don’t know how? Or, are there other reasons?

2. We didn’t realize the significance

Another reason groups are not doubling is we don’t think of the significance. We thought doubling was about taking my happy group of thirty and splitting it up into two grumpy groups of ten. We didn’t realize that a group of ten that doubles every eighteen months or less can reach a thousand people in ten years. Go ahead, check out the math for yourself.

3. We didn’t think it was possible

Reaching a thousand people in ten years doesn’t sound possible. It doesn’t sound realistic. In my seminars I tell story after story of where it really it is happening.

4. None of our fellow teachers are doubling

We are profoundly influenced by what social scientists call social proof—in lay terms—peer pressure. We think of it affecting kids, but there is a preponderance of evidence that suggests that everyone is strongly influenced by the people in our reference group. For most teachers, the teachers in their reference group don’t double, so they don’t double. Recently I have been video taping the stories of teachers who have doubled in order to overcome this obstacle.

5. The pastor doesn’t model it

I heard an Andy Stanley sermon recently where he stood before his people and said again as he has said many times,

“Our group started up three weeks ago. [Their groups take a summer break at Northpoint. This message was delivered late summer—August, I think. So, what he means, in context is, “our group started up from our summer break.”] We are dividing this fall. Sandra says every time, “This is the best group we have ever had, I wish it never had to end.” And, it has been an incredible, incredible group I wish it wouldn’t come to an end, but every eighteen months or so, my wife and I, we divide our group and start new groups, because we are so committed to this.

As I reflected on this, it occurred to me that this is the only time I have ever heard a pastor say this. I have never heard a pastor stand before his people and say, “I am in a group that is committed to doubling; I want you to be in a group that is committed to doubling.”

Surely one of the reasons this is not happening already is because pastors are not modeling and vision casting about doubling groups. Nothing is important till the pastor says it is important.

Why don’t pastors say it is important?

6. Pastors are told to think about the stage

Most conferences for pastors emphasize what pastors do. They emphasize the preaching. Or, the talk about what kind of music we should have. They talk about the stage. They talk about what pastors should do. Pastors are not being taught to stand before their group and say, “I am in a group that is doubling; I want you to be in a group that is doubling.”

7. We think it will all work out anyway

There is a common sentiment that “If we don’t do what we are supposed to do, God will raise someone else up and it will all get done anyway.” I don’t have time to go into it now, but let me just say, I disagree with that statement.5 There may be some things that God will raise up someone else to do, but I believe there are many things that if I don’t do them they just won’t get done.

8. We think it will compete with our happiness

“But I am happy as I am.” You will be happier if you are in a movement of doubling groups.

9. We have other things that God has called us to do

I hesitate to admit this, but there might be other callings besides doubling a group for some people. Doubling a group might not be the calling for some.

This may be true in some cases, it may be true in many cases. But being part of a group is basic to the Christian life. Being part of a group that wants to live out the five purposes of the church is basic. A common, bread and butter strategy for many is to be in a group that doubles.

10. We are too busy

I have a shocking answer to this one: don’t spend so much time at church. Many church members are spending Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night at church, and we can’t figure out how to make time to give Friday nights to Jesus. Here is a thought: cut something out. Don’t go on Sunday night. Stay home on Wednesday night.

Rick Warren taught us that there are five purposes of the church and we do well to giving some thought to balancing them all. Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night are about discipleship and worship and fellowship. We might do well to cut out one of those nights and spend it on ministry and evangelism.

If I were your pastor, I would invite you to move this up, way up, in your priority structure. I would invite you to make it your second church priority. First, is Sunday morning. Second is giving Friday nights to Jesus. Then, if you have time you can come on Sunday night or Wednesday night.

Another option is to repurpose Sunday night. Make it a night of outreach fellowships where each class has a party and they invite recent visitors, absentees and prospects to the dinner.

11. Life gets in the way

Why don’t we double? Life. Kids. Soccer. Bills. Lawns. Work. Life gets in the way.

12. It just doesn’t matter to us

This is the one I don’t know how to get past. I don’t know how to make people care. Sadly, in many cases this is the problem.

Conclusion

When I asked the question, “Why aren’t we doubling already, you probably thought you knew the answer. It probably didn’t feel like all that of significant of a question. The more you keep asking, “Why? Why? Why? Why is that true, why not?” the more obstacles you will uncover. Unless we uncover those obstacles, we won’t remove them and they will block our progress.

We will have to deal with all of those obstacles if we want to see a doubling group movement.

It is true in every arena. What are the obstacles to having a daily quiet time. Make a long list. Add some more things to it. Think about it some more. Make it longer. Then, address each of those issues. This is the only way we will get people in a daily quiet time.

Two follow-up questions to what are the obstacles questions work like this:

• Which of these are the biggest obstacles for you personally?
• How can we remove these obstacles?

Pushing harder is seldom the answer in any arena. You have to get the rocks out of the way. Once you do, you come to understand the words of Jesus when he spoke of an easy yoke.

Josh Hunt, How to Use Questions to Stimulate Life-Changing Discussions, Good Questions Have Small Groups Talking (Las Cruces, NM: Josh Hunt, 2010), 105–111.

There is nothing like an example.

Obviously, you could just tell them:

• Here are five steps to being consistent in your daily quiet time
• Here are three keys to effective financial management
• Here are four principles that will help us to raise godly children

You could just tell them, but it is inherently more interesting to ask them. Let them tell their story. Let them share.

• How did you come to enjoy consistency in your daily quite time?
• What has God taught you about effective financial management?
• What do you think it takes to raise Godly children?

If you have some points and you want to make sure they are covered, keep the list in front of you. If your group does not mention one of the things on the list, you can participate in the conversation. Add your point. You will be surprised how seldom this is necessary. You will also be surprised how often people will come up with some truly brilliant answers that are not on your list.

But, testimony questions do more than make class more interesting. They make class more life-changing.

How God changes us

Anyone interested in teaching would do well to give some careful thought to how God changes people. Check the spiritual temperature of the average church goer and you will see that we are not doing as well at this as most of us would like. We are not creating fire-breathing, God-loving, Bible-reading, money-sharing, people-serving disciples. At least not consistently.

The question is why? How does God change people and how are we missing it?

Let’s look at some of the popular approaches and some strengths and weaknesses of each.

Discipleship by hanging around

This is the most common approach to discipleship. It assumes that if people hang around church long enough, they will become disciples.

This is not altogether untrue. If people hang around church, they will hear some teaching, hopefully some good teaching. This teaching will transform their thinking. We are transformed by the renewing of our minds.

They will not only be taught they will be loved. Love changes people. They will be challenged to act. They will be given opportunities to serve. Lots of good things will happen if people will hang around at church.

I was talking to a friend recently who was bemoaning the fact that we don’t have in our churches a systematic and thought-through process of turning sinners into saints. We have not thought through a simple path to move people from where they are to becoming fully devoted followers of Christ. I pushed back: “That may be true, but the odd thing is this: you and I consider ourselves to be disciples and somehow we got here. Somehow we became disciples and we didn’t have a clearly delineated plan to become disciples, yet, we became disciples. Somehow our messy approach does produce results.

Results, but probably not as consistently as most people would like.

Behavior modification

Somewhere along the line we realize that teaching is about application. It is about making doers of the word and not hearers only. We must constantly ask our listeners, “What do you want to do about what you heard today?” Without a rigorous and consistent emphasis on application we run a great risk of, on a good day, making smarter sinners, and, on a bad day, doing no good at all. On a really bad day, we turn people toward becoming Pharisees. Application is a critical component of all effective teaching. Most teaching would greatly improve by doubling or quadrupling the emphasis on application.

But, this approach to teaching has a problem. If we are not careful, we are simply saying to people, “You are sinning and you need to quit!”

• You need to be consistent in your quiet time.
• You need to quit eating so much and exercise more.
• You need to find a place to serve according to your giftedness.
• You really need to quit smoking.

That last one provides a good illustration. You need to quit smoking. Of course they need to quit smoking. Don’t you think they know they need to quit smoking? One problem: they can’t quit smoking. And they can’t figure out how to be consistent in their quiet time either. And they can’t figure out how to forgive in the really important matters. The list goes on. They would like to, they just don’t seem to be able to. They have tried many times, but discipline alludes them.

This raises another question: what is the difference between this kind of emphasis on application and old-fashioned worldly behavior modification? To hear some people teach, we ought to be able to live the Christian life without God: just try hard, work at it, be disciplined.

Others teach a more passive approach: let go and let God. Just get out of the way and let God work through you. Whatever else we say about Christian living, a casual reading of the New Testament would reveal it is not passive. Paul spoke of striving, running, pushing, stretching. These are not passive concepts.

Beliefs drive behavior

There is a simple and easy-to-understand reason we do what we do. We do what we do because we believe it is in our best interest to do so. We are irrevocably hard-wired to pursue what we believe to be in our best interest. Beliefs drive behavior. There is a world of difference between disciplining yourself to have a quiet time and coming to understand what the hymn writer had in mind when he wrote the words, “Sweet hour of prayer.” Prayer either become a sweet time for us or we don’t do it. Which is it for you?

Behavior modification can never work without belief modification. We must come to believe something different and we will come to behave differently. Beliefs always drive behavior.

Next question: what drives beliefs?

Beliefs are supported by the people in our reference group We tend to believe what the people in our group believe. We tend to believe what our reference groups believes.

A great deal of research has also been done on the concept of social proof-the idea that most people follow the crowd.

• One researcher discovered that if he artificially increased the number of times a song was downloaded, that song was downloaded even more. People like to buy what everyone else is buying—that is why we pay attention to the best sellers lists.
• Candid Camera featured an episode called, “face the rear” where an unsuspecting man gets onto an empty elevator. Soon, the elevator begins to fill up. What the man doesn’t know is that everyone in the elevator were part of the Candid Camera cast. They were all instructed to face the rear of the elevator when they boarded. After the fifth person faced the rear, the original man also faced the rear.
• One experiment featured a number of versions all centered around people coming into a doctor’s office. Everyone in the waiting room waits quietly for a while, then gets up and does something bizarre. First, one at a time, they get up, grab a pencil, and break it. One by one, each person does this, until, you guessed it, the original man gets up and breaks a pencil as well.
• In a similar experiment, people in the doctor’s office got up and tore off a page from a calendar. Sure enough, the original man gets up and tears off a page as well.
• In the most extreme example, people were instructed to sit quietly for a while, then stand up and undress down to their underwear. One by one, everyone in the room undressed to their underwear. (They were all men.) Unbelievably, the subject of the experiment does so as well.

Think about your own life …

• When did you start using a DVD player, when you saw it in a store? When you read technical reviews? When all your friends did? When you could no longer rent or buy VHS tapes?
• When did you start using email? When you read the specs or when a friend told you about it?
• If you were to move to a new town and were looking for a church, what would be more likely to persuade you, a billboard or the recommendation of a friend?

The odd thing is, it doesn’t feel like this to us. If I asked you, “Do you make decisions based primarily on the merits of the issue at hand, weighing out the pros and cons for yourself, or do you just follow the crowd?” Most people will say they do not follow the crowd, they make independent, objective and thoughtful decisions. The research strongly suggests, however that most people are not reading the information about what to buy and wear and where to buy what they wear. Most people talk to their friends.

Imagine this

Imagine three classrooms. The same question is asked in each: How did you learn to eat healthfully and exercise regularly?

Room #1:

In room #1 you find a room full of overweight and unhealthy people. They laugh out loud at the question.

Room #2:

This room is the exact opposite. It is filled with muscular, athletic, health-nuts. They jump on the question, all trying to out-do each other with the best story. They all exercise for more than an hour a day and the consistently eat healthful foods. They make references to books and magazine articles and web sites that you have never heard of.

Room #3:

This room is filled with normal people: people like you. They are about your age, your build, your stage in life. There is a slight pause after the question is raised, then one person, to your right, speaks up. “It was about five years ago for me. My dad died of a heart attack at age fifty-eight. I want to live long enough to see my grandkids grow up. I started exercising and eating better about five years ago. I don’t do it perfectly, but I do far better than I did. I have lost about thirty pounds and have kept it off for five years now. My deal is tennis. I had to find an exercise I enjoyed. I joined a local tennis club and play about three or four times a week. I feel better, and my wife tells me I look better.”

Let’s imagine five other people speak up with similar testimonies. One after another someone speaks up and talks about how they won the battle of the bulge and how they are so much happier now. These are not marathon-running jocks. They are just normal people like you that have found a way to joyfully work exercise into their lives. They have come to love eating right and their bodies show it.

How do you feel after leaving room #1?

How do you feel after leaving room #2?

How do you feel after leaving room #3?

Room #4

Now, imagine a fourth room. In this room, there are no testimonies. No one talks about how they are doing. The teacher give some helpful information on steps to healthy living. They are all steps you heard before: eat right, get enough exercise, etc. All stuff you have heard before. All stuff you could have taught. All stuff you know you should do. All stuff you don’t do.

How do you feel after leaving room #4?

Conclusion

If you are normal, one of the most persuasive influences in our life is the influence of our reference group. The question for most of us is not so much about what is right or what we believe as much as it is about what the people in our group practice. By accenting the positive behavior of some in your group, you draw the rest of the group along.

• Some people in your group are having a quiet time, let them share.
• Some people are ministering according to their giftedness, let them share.
• Some are tithing and beyond. Let them share.
• Some are exercising and eating right. Let them share.

Josh Hunt, How to Use Questions to Stimulate Life-Changing Discussions, Good Questions Have Small Groups Talking (Las Cruces, NM: Josh Hunt, 2010), 97–104.

These two magic questions are based on two deeply held convictions. I have talked to thousands of believers about these convictions, and they all agree with them. But, they stand in stark contrast to the conversations that often go on in small groups. Here are the convictions:

• It is always in our best interest to live the Christian life.
• We are irrevocably hard-wired to pursue what we believe to be in our best interest. In the long run, we will do what we believe to be in our best interest. This is why our belief is so important to the Christian faith.

I have asked thousands of believers if they agree with the first statement. They all agree. I press them: always? Are there ever any exceptions? Won’t you pay more taxes? Won’t you get there later? Mightn’t a little lie get you out of a bind from time to time? Is it always in your best interest to live the Christian life?

Over the long run, it is. In the short run, it might cost you. In the short run it might be painful, but it is always in our best interest to follow God in the long run.

The Bible says, “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.” 1 John 5:3 [NIV] Not burdensome. In the long run, it is always in our best interest to live the Christian life.

In Deuteronomy it says, “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.” Deut. 30:15 [NIV] If you want life, here is one word formula: obedience. If you don’t care about life, go the other way, choose disobedience. But, the end is death.

Stating the same thing from the back side, it goes like this: Self-discipline is generally over-rated in Christian teaching. Not that there is not a place of self-discipline. There is. But, it is like a spare tire. Sometimes you need a spare tire. Spare tires are good. But, if you try to live your whole life on a spare tire, you will soon be in trouble.

Self-discipline, by which I mean forcing yourself to do what you basically do not want to do is over-rated. It is a spare tire. Sometimes, you and I will need to do that. But if we try to live our whole life forcing ourselves to do what we basically don’t want to do, eventually we will get tired and we do what we want to do.

You must come to love the Christian life, or you will never come to live the Christian life. You must discover what the hymn writer had in mind when he wrote, “Sweet hour of prayer” or you are likely not praying very well. We either learn to “love to tell the story” or we don’t tell the story much. We must love it, or we will never live it.

This is not only my opinion, but also the opinion of smart people. One of them is C. S. Lewis. Observe what he says about self-discipline, or, in his words, self-denial.

The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965], pp. 1–2.)1

The reference to Kant, by the way, is explained by Ayn Rand this way:

Ayn Rand (novelist and atheistic philosopher): “An action is moral, said Kant, only if one has no desire to perform it, but performs it out of a sense of duty and derives no benefit from it of any sort, neither material nor spiritual. A benefit destroys the moral value of an action. (Thus if one has no desire to be evil, one cannot be good, if one has, one can.).” (For the Intellectual, New York: Signet, 1961, p.32)2

Why the juxtaposition?

It is always in our best interest to live the Christian life. Why then, do we so often hear teaching along these lines:

• Choose God’s way, not your way!
• It is not about you. It is about pleasing and glorifying God.

If it is in our best interest to live the Christian life, it seems this creates an artificial tension. It creates an imaginary choice that, on the surface, sounds spiritual: chose God’s way, not your way! Sounds good, but, if we are thinking rightly we understand that God’s way is always good for me. It is always in my best interest to live the Christian life. Choosing God’s way is the best thing I can do for me. If I want the best life for me, I will always choose God’s way.

In a way, if I were truly pursuing my self-interest, and were thinking rightly about it, I would always pursue obedience. This is what John Piper means when he says, “let your passion be single.” It is one single desire to please God and to please myself. Here is Piper’s way of saying it:

A Summary of Christian Hedonism in Five Statements

1. The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful.
2. We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse. Instead we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction.
3. The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God.
4. The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it expands to meet the needs of others in the manifold ways of love.
5. To the extent we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people. Or, to put it positively: the pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue.3

Another saint that saw this truth was George Muller:

The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit (Autobiography of George Mueller, compiled by Fred Bergen, [London: J. Nisbet Co., 1906], pp. 152–154].4

An everyday example

Most of us struggle to one degree or another with issues of health—eating healthful foods, exercising and maintaining our weight. Have you ever known someone that didn’t seem to struggle?

I have a friend that doesn’t seem to struggle with these issues. I have known him for twenty-five years and for twenty-five years he has exercised at least five times a week. We have gone out to eat hundreds of times over the years and nine times out of ten he gets salad or grilled chicken and broccoli. He is slim, trim and in-shape.

Do you know anyone like that? How do they feel about fatty foods? How do they feel about healthful foods? How do they feel about exercise? My friend tells me he just loves this warm feeling he has in his muscles after a good work-out. (I don’t actually know what that feeling is!)

People that win the war of healthful living always feel this way. They love it. They love eating healthful food. They love exercise. We either come to love it, or we never do it consistently.

I had another friend who represents the opposite. He told me he had just LOST FORTY POUNDS going through the Weigh-Down workshop. We were sharing a meal and one of those greasy spoon diners in central Texas. The parking lot was packed. He explained to me that people came from all over to enjoy the incredible chicken-fried steak they had at this place. He described it as being bigger than Texas—a big old fried steak with greasy gravy all over it and mashed potatoes and greasy gravy all over that and it was like heart attack on a plate but it was sooooooo good! What would my friend do? He was torn. He wanted the chicken fried steak with the greasy gravy and mashed potatoes and greasy gravy all over that, but he should have grilled chicken and broccoli.

Now, the real question is not what did he do that day. The real question is this. What chances do you give my friend of keeping that weight off? What chances do you give him of being slim, trim and in shape a year later?

I give him no chance at all. Why? What does he believe to be in his best interest? He believes that life is about eating chicken fried steak with grease gravy but he should eat grilled chicken and broccoli. And as long as he believes that, in the long run he will do what he believes is in his best interest. He is hard wired for that.

It is like the auto-pilot on a plane. You can set an auto-pilot to take you from Dallas to Chicago. You can turn the stick on the plane and force it to go South instead. But, eventually, you will get tired and the plane will make its way North again. So it is with our desires. We can force ourselves to do what we don’t want to do for a time, but eventually, what we want to do wins out. Eventually we do what we want.

I knew a woman once that was deeply in love with a man that was not her husband. The man was married as well. They were both active church members in the same church. This is the way she saw life. “I know I should cut off this relationship, but it just feels like life to me. I know pursuing that relationship doesn’t honor God, and God would be happier with me if I would break it off, but he just makes me feel so alive. I should choose God’s way, but I want so badly to choose my way.”

As long as she feels this way, there is not enough will power in the world to keep them apart. Eventually we all do what we believe to be in our best interest. We must come to love the Christian life, or we will never come to live the Christian life.

An extreme example

“Always?” you might be wondering. Is it always in your best interest to live the Christian life? Aren’t there some exceptions?

Take the case of Cassie Bernall. She was one of the High School students who was gunned down in Littleton, Colorado. Before he shot her, her killer pointed a gun in her face and asked her a simple question: Do you believe in God? (The forensic evidence suggested the gun was touching her face when he pulled the trigger.) Cassie had a simple choice. It is fairly clear what God would have her do. The Bible says, “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” Luke 9:26 [NIV] God’s calling on her life is pretty easy to understand at the point.

I have a biography on Cassie’s life. The title is She Said Yes. She said yes, and he blew her head off with the gun pushing against her face.

One might be tempted to ask, “Mightn’t it been in her best interest to not be so bold? Mightn’t it be in her best interest to cave? Mightn’t it have been in her best interest to say, ‘I don’t want any trouble. Please spare my life.’?”

The Bible teaches that reality is like a line that stretches forever and ever.

Reality

Not just to the edge of this page, but forever. All of time can be pictured as a dot that sits on the line.

All of time sits on that dot—from Adam and Eve to the disasters to Abraham to Jesus to Columbus to you and I and our great-great-great grand kids if Christ waits that long. All of time fits in the dot and the lines lasts forever.

Those who are martyred for their faith will receive a greater reward in heaven—throughout the whole line—than will the rest of us. (Revelation 4)

I am not exactly sure what is involved in that greater reward, but I picture it is\n somewhat material terms:

• When we go to a concert, Cassie will get a front row seat and a back stage pass. We might be sitting in the balcony.
• When we get in line to eat, she will get in the front of the line.
• When we go on a trip, she will get to sit in those big seats up front.

That may not be exactly right, but the Bible does teach she will get a greater reward in heaven. And heaven is the line. It is forever. Ten million years from now, she is still getting in the front of the line.

I think if Cassie could listen in on this, she would say, “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, it is always in your best interest to live the Christian life over the long run. In the short run it might cost you and cost you dearly. In the long run, you will always be glad you lived the Christian life.”

Making the two magic questions work

It is always in our best interest to live the Christian life. It is always in our best interest to:

• Forgive when we are tempted to hang onto our bitterness.
• Serve when we would rather not.
• Give when we would rather spend on ourselves.
• Pray when we would rather sleep in.

Your job, as a teacher is to get your students in touch with this. Your job is to make them believe it. We do this by asking two magic questions:

• How will it benefit you to live for God?
• What will it cost you if you don’t live for God?

So, imagine several topics where this might work:

Forgiving:

• How does it benefit the forgiver to forgive?
• What does it cost us if we don’t forgive?

Serving

• How does it help us to help others?
• How does selfishness cost us?

Giving

• How is it that “it will be given to us” as we give? (Luke 6:38)
• How do the stingy harm themselves?

Prayer

• Describe a time when prayer became for you a sweet hour.
• How would you describe what happens to our soul as we neglect prayer?

Why don’t we get this?

You might think that if we are naturally predisposed to pursue what is in our best interest, and if it is always in our best interest to live the Christian life, that we would naturally and normally—somewhat automatically—live the Christian life. Why don’t we?

Why don’t we live the Christian life easily if we tend to pursue what is good for us and it is good for us to follow God? I have asked a number of groups this question. The most lucid answer I have had came from a pastor, “Because people are stupid, that’s why!” Well, that pretty well says it.

2 Corinthians 4:4 teaches that the evil one blinds our eyes. He makes what is bad for us look good. He puts the poison in sugar. People are blinded. The people you teach are blinded. Your job is to open their eyes. Your job is to convince them to the core of their beings that is always, always, always in our best interest to live the Christian life.

Josh Hunt, How to Use Questions to Stimulate Life-Changing Discussions, Good Questions Have Small Groups Talking (Las Cruces, NM: Josh Hunt, 2010), 87–96.

Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. James 1:22 [NAB]

The goal of Christian teaching is not to cover the material, or to dispense information or to make smarter sinners. The goal is to make saints. The goal is to make disciples. “Doers of the word and not hearers only.” The goal is application. The goal is changed lives.

I work full-time persuading and training groups to double every two years or less. The more I do it, the more I am convinced that the problem with Sunday School is not a Sunday School problem. The problem is we have failed to create soldiers. We have failed to create saints. We have failed to create disciples.

“But we are comfortable.”

I am fond of pointing out that a group of ten that doubles every eighteen months will reach a thousand people in ten years. We can do that by growing a group by 40% every nine months, or going from 10 to 14 in nine months. In looking at whether or not this is possible, I often ask groups, “Could you do it if I offered you a million dollars to get it done?” We could do it, oh, we could do it. The question is, do we want to? The most common reaction to this challenge is not that it is not realistic or that it can’t be done. It is this: “But we are comfortable.”

Quite honestly, I can’t believe that believers have the nerve to say that out loud. Tell me it is not possible. Tell me I am a dreamer. Tell me it is not strategic. Tell me you have a better plan. But, don’ tell me you agree that we could reach a thousand people in the next ten years but you would put your comfort above that.

This is not a Sunday School problem. This is a values problem. This is a discipleship problem. This is an application problem. We are not creating doers of the word.

I thought it was all about …

Here is another response I received once to the vision of doubling groups reaching a thousand people in the next ten years by doubling every eighteen months, “But, I thought Sunday School was all about me going deep with a handful of people and developing relationships and getting close and cultivating intimacy and how are we going to do that if we split up our groups every eighteen months?”

I didn’t say it, but here is what I was thinking. That is just it, isn’t it? It is not all about you. It is about God. It is about a cause. It is about the advancement of the kingdom. It is about God being glorified and thanked and acknowledged and enjoyed and treated better than He is treated in your neighborhood and mine. It is about the lost missing spending an eternity in hell separated from God and instead spending eternity with God enjoying his pleasures forevermore. In light of that, going deep with some friends pales in comparison.

And, it is not like you have to say good bye to all your friends. A dirty little secret of the doubling group strategy is we get to take our best friends with us. And, there is no rule that says you can’t see people who are not in your group outside of class.

God wants to give us life and give it to us to the full. He wants to thrill us, to fill us, to forgive us, to give us peace and joy and abundance. But, we have to do it His way. His way is all about losing ourselves in the cause of advancing the kingdom.

Again, this is not a Sunday School problem. It is a discipleship problem. It is an application problem. It is doer of the Word problem.

We are not willing to do that

A man spoke to me before a conference once. “I don’t think we are going to be able to double our class.” “Why not?” “Well I am in a room that holds twenty chairs and we have eighteen of them filled on an average Sunday.” “Have you thought about dividing your class? Have you thought about moving nine of the men down the hall to start a new group?” I will never forget his response: “Oh no, we are not going there. My pastor has talked to me about that. We have talked about that. We are not willing to do that.”

Willing.

The word rings in my ears. Willing. We are not willing to do that. I have been thinking about this for a long time, and here is the conclusion I have come to: that is a phrase that no Christian ought to ever say to the Lord about anything: “We are not willing to do that.”

Somewhere along the line in our journey we face a door I call the door of Lordship. We go through this door and acknowledge that God is God and I am not. He is boss and I am not. He is Master; I am slave. Christian living is all lived on the other side of that door. It is all lived on the other side of the door of Lordship.

Before we walk through that door, it is walking in the flesh. It is a life of religion. There is no abundance. There is no joy. There is no fulfillment. There is no fruit. Christian living is all lived on the other side of the door of Lordship.

The issue is not that we cannot figure out how to double a class in two years or less. The issue is we are not willing to do so. It is not a Sunday School problem. It is an application problem. It is an obedience problem.

How to ask effective application questions

The key to making application questions work is to distinguish them from commitment questions. In a way, commitment questions are the point, and we will get there soon.

At this point, we are not actually asking people to do anything. We are asking them what they could do. We are asking how someone might apply this to their lives.

In my seminars I teach on a party driving strategy. It is a strategy modeled by Levi:

After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. Luke 5:27–29 [NIV]

It is commanded in several places in scripture:

• Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 1 Peter 4:9 [NIV]
• Get into the habit of inviting guests home for dinner or, if they need lodging, for the night. Romans 12:13b [NLT]
• When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends. Luke 14:12b [NIV]

Often, I will conclude this section of the seminar with an application question: what are twenty ways you could do this? What are twenty kinds of banquets, dinners or parties you could have and invite outsiders to attend?

The list might look something like this:

New years eve party

Super bowl party

Valentines Day party

Labor Day party

July 4 party

Fall Family Festival

Memorial Day Party

Shopping trip

Guys night out

Ladies night out

Back yard barbeque

Bowling party

Baseball game

Dinner and a movie

Card night

Game night

Fishing trip

Camping trip

Here is the key point: I have not asked them to actually do any of these parties. I have only asked them to make a list. I have only asked them how they could apply the principle of offering hospitality.

Husbands, love your wives

The Bible commands husbands to love their wives (Ephesians 5:25–27). Here is an application question that flows from that: What are ten ways a husband could love his wife? Or, perhaps you could divide the men and women up. Let them both come up with a list. See how many the women come up with that the men cannot even think of. Answers might include:

Take out the trash

Watch the kids

Send cards

Send flowers

Set up a date night

Remember our anniversary

Non-sexual physical affection

Long, unhurried walks

Again, the point here is that you have not yet asked the men to do anything. You have only asked them to think to things they could do.

By separating the application questions from the commitment questions, you unleash everyone’s creativity. They are not evaluating each item and deciding whether or not they will do it. In the next section we will talk about the benefits of doing this application and the cost of not doing it. When we finish with that, they will be far more motivated to do some of these things. For now, we just want to brainstorm as many applications as possible.

Josh Hunt, How to Use Questions to Stimulate Life-Changing Discussions, Good Questions Have Small Groups Talking (Las Cruces, NM: Josh Hunt, 2010), 81–86.

Fifteen years ago, Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill took a close look at the religious beliefs held by American teenagers—they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came down to something the researchers identified as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”

As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) consists of beliefs like these: A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth; that god wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about one’s self, and God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when needed to resolve a problem. Finally, good people go to heaven when they die.

That, in sum, is the creed to which much adolescent faith can be reduced. After conducting more than three thousand interviews with American adolescents, the researchers reported that, when it came to the most crucial questions of faith and beliefs, many adolescents responded with a shrug and “whatever.”

As a matter of fact, the researchers, whose report is summarized in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Eyes of American Teenagers by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton, found that American teenagers are incredibly inarticulate about their religious beliefs, and most are virtually unable to offer any serious theological understanding. As Smith reported,

To the extent that the teens we interviewed did manage to articulate what they understood and believed religiously, it became clear that most religious teenagers either do not really comprehend what their own religious traditions say they are supposed to believe, or they do understand it and simply do not care to believe it. Either way, it is apparent that most religiously affiliated U.S. teens are not particularly interested in espousing and upholding the beliefs of their faith traditions, or that their communities of faith are failing in attempts to educate their youth, or both.1

Their research continued to highlight, “For most teens, nobody has to do anything in life, including anything to do with religion. ‘Whatever’ is just fine, if that’s what a person wants.”

The casual “whatever” that marks so much of the American moral and theological landscapes—adolescent and otherwise—is a substitute for serious and responsible thinking. More importantly, it is a verbal cover for an embrace of relativism. Accordingly, “most religious teenager’s opinions and views—one can hardly call them worldviews—are vague, limited, and often quite at variance with the actual teachings of their own religion.”

The kind of responses found among many teenagers indicates a vast emptiness at the heart of their understanding. Yet teenagers are not inarticulate in general. As the researchers found, “Many teenagers know abundant details about the lives of favorite musicians and television stars or about what it takes to get into a good college, but most are not very clear on who Moses and Jesus were. This suggests that a strong, visible, salient, or intentional faith is not operating in the foreground of most teenager’s lives.”

One other aspect of this study deserves attention at this point: the researchers, who conducted thousands of hours of interviews with a carefully identified spectrum of teenagers, discovered that for many of these teens, the interview itself was the first time they had ever discussed a theological question with an adult. What does this say about our churches? What does this say about this generation of parents? What does this tell us about the gathering storm of secularism, already drenching the upcoming generations with ambivalent theological beliefs?

In the end, this study indicated that American teenagers are heavily influenced by the ideology of individualism that has so profoundly shaped the larger culture. This bleeds over into a reflexive non-judgmentalism and a reluctance to suggest that anyone might actually be wrong in matters of faith and belief. Yet paradoxically, these teenagers are unable to live with a full-blown relativism, for the researchers note that many responses fall along very moralistic lines—but teenagers reserve their most non-judgmental attitudes for matters of theological conviction and belief. Some go so far as to suggest that there are no “right” answers in matters of doctrine and theological conviction.

The researchers concluded that MTD promotes “a moralistic approach to life. It teaches that central to living a good and happy life is being a good, moral person. That means being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, responsible, at work on self-improvement, taking care of one’s health, and doing one’s best to be successful.” In a very real sense, that appears to be true of the faith commitment, insofar as this can be described as a faith commitment, held by a large percentage of Americans. These individuals, whatever their age, believe that religion should be centered in being “nice”—a posture that many believe is directly violated by assertions of strong theological conviction.

MTD is also about “providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents.” As the researchers explained,

This is not a religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of a sovereign divinity, of steadfastly saying one’s prayers, of faithfully observing high holy days, of building character through suffering, of basking in God’s love and grace, of spending oneself in gratitude and love for the cause of social justice, et cetera. Rather, what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people.

Smith and his colleagues recognize that the deity behind Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is very much like the deistic God of the eighteenth-century philosophers. This is not the God who thunders from the mountain, nor a God who will serve as judge. This undemanding deity is more interested in solving our problems and in making us happy: “In short, God is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.”

Obviously, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is not an organized faith. This belief system has no denominational headquarters and no mailing address. Nevertheless, it has millions and millions of devotees across the United States and other advanced cultures, where subtle cultural shifts have produced a context in which belief in such an undemanding deity makes sense. Furthermore, this deity does not challenge the most basic self-centered assumptions of our postmodern age. Particularly when it comes to so-called lifestyle issues, this God is exceedingly tolerant, and this religion is radically undemanding.

As sociologists, Smith and his team suggest that this Moralistic Therapeutic Deism may now constitute something like a dominant civil religion or the underlying belief system for the culture at large. Thus, this basic conception may be analogous to what other researchers have identified as “lived religion” as experienced by the mainstream culture.

Moving to even deeper issues, these researches claim that MTD is “colonizing” Christianity itself, as this new civil religion seduces converts who never have to leave their congregations and Christian identification as they embrace this new faith and all of its undemanding dimensions.

Consider this remarkable assessment:

Other more accomplished scholars in these areas will have to examine and evaluate these possibilities in greater depth. But we can say here that we have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually [only] tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but is rather substantially morphed into Christianity’s misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

They argue that this distortion of Christianity has taken root not only in the minds of individuals but also “within the structures of at least some Christian organizations and institutions.”

This radical transformation of Christian theology and Christian belief replaces the sovereignty of God with the sovereignty of the self. In this therapeutic age, human problems are reduced to pathologies in need of a treatment plan. Sin is simply excluded from the picture, and doctrines as central as the wrath and justice of God are discarded as out of step with the times and unhelpful to the project of self-actualization.

All this means is that teenagers have been listening carefully. They have been observing their parents in the larger culture with diligence and insight. They understand just how little their parents really believe and just how much many of their churches and Christian institutions have accommodated themselves to the dominant culture. They sense the degree to which theological conviction has been sacrificed on the altar of individualism and a relativistic understanding of truth. They have learned from their elders that self-improvement is the one great moral imperative to which all are accountable, and they have observed the fact that the highest aspiration of those who shape this culture is to find happiness, security, and meaning in life.

R. Albert Mohler Jr., The Gathering Storm: Secularism, Culture, and the Church (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2020).

The questions up to this point help to establish the high bar. They answer the question, “What does God want us to do?” From this point, we turn a corner. We want to talk now about how we are doing. We want to talk about the gap between how we are doing and how God would have us to live.

Exposure to the gap can be contrasted with what I call, “yup-yup” teaching. This is teaching where we just affirm what we already believe. The teacher presents truth and everyone nods and says “yup-yup.” There is more to good teaching than that. Somewhere along the line we need to communicate, “You are sinning and you need to quit.” Of course, I don’t recommend using those words, but we much communicate the message of the gap between God’s high and holy calling for out lives and how we are living right now.

But, don’t people know that they have a gap? Well, no, as a matter of fact, they don’t.

Why people don’t see the gap

There are two reasons people don’t see the gap: pride and denial. Denial says we don’t think about the gaps. Pride says that when we do, we tend to minimize them.

This tendency to think about ourselves in a more flattering light than is warranted is well documented in psychology. It is called the self-serving bias. Here are some examples.

Researchers surveyed 829,000 High School Students and asked them if they were above or below average in terms of their ability to get along with others. Obviously, 50% are below average. 0% rated themselves as below average. 25% thought they were in the top 1%.

• Most drivers think they are above-average drivers including drivers who have been hospitalized for a crash that they caused.
• George Barna found that 90% of all pastors rated themselves as above-average in teaching and preaching. These are people who have to preach on Romans 12:3, which says, “Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought.”
• 94% of college faculty members think they are above average teachers.
• When the concept of self-serving bias is explained to people, most people rate themselves as above-average in not falling prey to the self-serving bias.

The gap exists, but we don’t see it. Where are you at questions can help us cut through the denial and the self-serving bias.

Making “Where are you at?” questions work

Most people think of themselves as normal. So, one of the easiest ways to start with where are you at questions is to ask about normal people:

• How often do most people have a quiet time?
• What percentage of their income do most people give?
• What percentage of the people who were in church this morning could name their spiritual gifts?

When people answer these questions, they will generally—though not always—be talking about themselves. From here, you can pull the noose.

• What about the people in this room, how common is it for us to share our faith?
• How would you say we are doing as a group in terms of creating authentic community?
• What keeps this group from doubling every two years or less?

From here, we can pull the noose even tighter:

• What about you, when is the last time you and your wife had a date night?
• What fears keep you from abundant Christian living?
• If you knew Christ were coming in twenty-four hours, what would you need to do to be ready?

From here, the questions will go into 1) application: what could we do to close the gap? 2) motivation: what are the benefits of closing the gap? and what will it cost you if you don’t? and 3) commitment: what do you want to do about what you heard today?

Before we get into these next three steps, let’s explore a little more carefully the hidden benefit—the magic of the where-are-you-at question.

The hidden benefit

The Bible says: Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. James 5:16

It is interesting to me what this verse does not say. It does not say that healing comes from trying hard, or being disciplined or even letting go and letting God. This verse teaches us that healing comes as we confess our sins. As we acknowledge the gap, the gap gets smaller. There is something magical about acknowledging the gap.

I take a pretty broad definition of sin. The Bible speaks of sin as everything that falls short of God’s glorious ideal. Anything in your life and mine that is not glorious and ideal is my sin. My debt, my anger, my depression, my purposelessness, my prayerlessness and everything else in my life that is not glorious and ideal is my sin. It could be the sin that I committed, or it could be the sins committed against me. Christian counselors and participants in the recovery movement will attest that great healing comes to us as we confess sins committed against us. The odd thing is, I don’t necessarily need a solution. I just need someone to whom I can confess my sins.

In the Bible we call this person a priest. A priest is one who represents God to me and represents me to God. I think one of the reasons we miss this point is out of a misguided reaction against the Catholic application of James 5:16. The Catholic approach is to go to a priest. Now, let’s think about this.

True or False:
We don’t need a priest.

I have asked this question to hundreds of groups. Ninety-five percent get it wrong. The correct answer is False. We do need a priest. We believe in the priesthood of all believers. Now, if we believe in the priesthood of all believers, it stands to reason that we need these priests for something. Our difference with the Catholics is not about whether or not we need a priest, it is about who the priests are. We believe that all believers are priests. “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2:9 [NIV]

It is true that we can go individually and directly to God. We don’t need an intermediary. But, there is great healing in confessing our sins to one another.

Ted Haggard needed a priest

Ted Haggard was the pastor of New Life Church-a true mega-church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was the president of the National

Association of Evangelicals. He was an author, a leader, and a hero of mine. I had enjoyed several of his books and had conducted an interview with him. I really was in rapport with his approach to small groups and ministry.

But Ted Haggard had a problem. This is a little difficult for us to relate to because we may not have the same particular flavor of problem. But, at the end of the day, we are just talking about different flavors. Ted Haggard’s flavor of temptation was, he wanted to be with a man.

One winter day, Ted’s life came crumbling down when a male prostitute in Denver accused him of having a three-year professional relationship with him. His story was that he had not known who Ted was through most of that relationship. Not until he saw Ted on T.V. did he realize that Ted was a famous preacher. Ted was publically opposed to homosexuality. The hypocrisy of it drove him crazy. It drove him to get on T.V. and tell the world about their relationship.

It was quite the scandal. For a day or two Ted denied it. But the Bible says, “What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.” Luke 12:3 Things have a way of coming out. Secrets have a way of being told. For a day or two, Ted denied it, but then, he had to come clean. The following is an excerpt from a statement he had read before his church. Read carefully:

The public person I was wasn’t a lie; it was just incomplete. When I stopped communicating about my problems, the darkness increased and finally dominated me. As a result, I did things that were contrary to everything I believe.

What is amazing to me about this statement is the implication of the second sentence: “When I stopped communicating about my problems.” Stopped communicating. This implies that there had been a time when he had someone in his life that he could communicate with about this. That is amazing. Who does a pastor go to and talk about the fact that he longs to be with a man?

Sin is a tricky thing. Sometimes, we are relieved of sin all at once. Sometimes, presto, we are saved and it is gone. Sometimes, however, we struggle. Sometimes we struggle our whole life. Sometimes God leaves the thorn in the flesh with us. Sometimes God takes away the load. Sometimes, He gives us a stronger back. Sometimes we have to fight and resist and keep fighting and keep resisting.

As long as Ted had someone—a priest—that he could talk to about his sin, talking pushed back the darkness. But, “When I stopped communicating about my problems, the darkness increased and finally dominated me.” Having a priest in his life—someone he could talk to about what was not perfect—created a bubble inside which he could walk and breathe. When he stopped talking, the bubble collapsed.

What is a small group?

A small group is not a miniature worship service with a miniature pulpit and a miniature preacher. A small group is a church of a different sort. It is an interactive group. It is a participatory group. It is a one another group. It is a place where we can get honest. It is a place where the masks can come off. It is a place where we can come clean. It is a place where we can get real. It is a place where we can confess our sins. It is a place where we can find healing.

Not that all this confession will happen in group per se. Much of it will happen outside of group. The group time is only one part of group. The whole idea of group is to develop relationship where people get together outside of group. In these relationships the masks come off. Honesty develops. We get real. We get well.

Where are you at questions pave the way. They begin the process in class that continues in relationships in the rest of life.

The key to making it work

But, “I ask and they don’t get honest” you might be thinking. Here is the key: you get honest. You take off your mask. Quit pretending you have it all together. It is amazing how when one person gets honest, the whole atmosphere of the group changes.

We must do this carefully. It is possible to share too much with too many too quickly and do more harm than good. There is a place and time to keep a secret. There is such a thing as too much information.

I was in a church service once where a gal came forward during the invitation. She was crying. “I just need to confess my sin to the body of Christ. I need to get something off my chest.” The pastor handed her the microphone. Not a good call, in this case. “I just need to confess my sin to the body of Christ. I need to get something off my chest. I have been guilty of sexual immorality with John Smith.” John [not his real name] was sitting about three rows back. I had the feeling he was not in the mood to have his sins confessed.

There is a line in a old hymn that goes, “Plunge in today and be made complete.” Sometimes we do well to do that—plunge in. Sometimes, we do well to take a different approach—wade in slowly. Did you see the movie What About Bob? Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps.

Most classes I have been in, however, err on the other side. They are too superficial. Too much pretending. Too fake. The key is for one person—normally the leader—to get real, take off his or her mask and get honest.

Let the magic begin.

Josh Hunt, How to Use Questions to Stimulate Life-Changing Discussions, Good Questions Have Small Groups Talking (Las Cruces, NM: Josh Hunt, 2010), 73–80.

WE are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel. This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man or sink the man in the plan or organization. God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.” The dispensation that heralded and prepared the way for Christ was bound up in that man John. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.” The world’s salvation comes out of that cradled Son. When Paul appeals to the personal character of the men who rooted the gospel in the world, he solves the mystery of their success. The glory and efficiency of the gospel is staked on the men who proclaim it. When God declares that “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him,” he declares the necessity of men and his dependence on them as a channel through which to exert his power upon the world. This vital, urgent truth is one that this age of machinery is apt to forget. The forgetting of it is as baneful on the work of God as would be the striking of the sun from his sphere. Darkness, confusion, and death would ensue.

What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men—men of prayer.

Edward Bounds, Complete Works of E. M. Bounds on Prayer: Eight Volumes (WORDsearch, 2013).

Truth is often a careful mid-point between two extremes. The great fallacy for most of us is not to believe a lie, but to believe one truth too much, to the exclusion of an opposite truth.

Jesus spoke of the narrow way. I believe the reason He spoke of the narrow way is because it is so easy to go too far this way or that. The narrow way is in the middle of the broad way. The narrow way is walking the center stripe down the middle of the road. There are often a thousand ways to go wrong. Only careful wisdom will keep us on the right way, the narrow way, the center strip.

Before I get too far into this discussion, let me illustrate how this works. I have often done it this way in seminars. I divide the crowd into two groups—men and women works. I ask the men to look at this verse and be prepared to answer the accompanying question:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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.” Matthew 11:28–30 [NIV]

According to this verse, is Christian living easy or hard?

Then, I have the men close their eyes, while the women look at this verse and the same question:

“We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said. Acts 14:22b [NIV]

According to this verse, is Christian living easy or hard?

Then, in one voice I have them answer together. On three, is Christian living easy or hard? One … two … three … The room fills with a conflicting sound. Half the room says “easy” while the other half says, “hard.”

Actually, it is not split quite evenly. Usually, about three fourths of the room says, “hard” while only one fourth says, “easy.” This is because people are letting their own experience shape their thinking. They are not answering according to the verse I gave them, they are answering according to their experience. Many have found Christian living to be hard, very hard.

This demonstrates something rather profound about the modern church. Christian living is hard for us. Even though Jesus said His yoke is easy, most Christians find it hard. And, even with the verse right in front of them, they will say that Christian living is hard. We have not found the narrow way.

Christian living is either easy or impossible, because it isn’t you living it. It is Christ living his life through you.

• “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20 [NIV]
• for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Philip. 2:13 [NIV]
• To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me. Colossians 1:29 (NIV)

Allow me to make this very real for you. Think of a day when you lived the Christian life reasonably well. Think of a day when you walked in the Spirit, when you abided in Christ, when you were living a fruit of the spirit life. If you can’t think of a day, think of an hour, or a moment. Can you think of a time? (I hope you are thinking of right now.) On that day or hour or moment when you lived the Christ life, was it easy or hard?

Christian living is easy when you are living it. When the Spirit is flowing through you. When the Wind of the Spirit fills your sails, it is easy. Peter spoke of the men who wrote the Bible as being carried along. (2 Peter 1:21) It is not hard to be carried. Someone else is doing the work. We can’t be carried as perfectly as the men who wrote the Bible, but we can be carried along by the Spirit.

I believe the reason many of our churches are failing is because they have not taken on Jesus’ easy yoke. They have taken on the yoke of law. They have taken on the yoke of duty. They have taken on the yoke of religion. For if we put on Jesus’ yoke we will find it as Jesus described: easy. Christian living is either easy or impossible. It is easy because it isn’t you living it; it is Christ living his life through you.

If you have found Christian living to be a struggle, if you have found it to be a pain, if it is for you a duty or an obligation or ought-to and should-have and you-better, you have taken on the wrong yoke. That is the yoke of religion. That is the yoke of law. Take off that yoke. Put on Jesus’ yoke. It fits. It is easy. It is a yoke of grace and acceptance and love and mercy and forgiveness and being carried along by the Holy Spirit.

That will preach, and it is all true. But. It is not the only thing that is true. This is also true: we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God. He never promised us a rose garden, or, if He did, we must remember that roses have thorns. Jesus suffered and we will suffer. He was called the man of sorrow and if we follow His way we will have sorrows. He will discipline us as children he loves. The world is a painful place. The storms come—to the just and the unjust, the storms come. It is sometimes a hard place.

Jump ball questions get us in touch with both sides. They help us find the narrow way.

The narrow way, in this case is understanding that, in a way, Christianity is both easy and hard. Christ lives his life through us and it is a matter of getting out of the way and letting Him live His life. But, it is not completely passive. Consider these verses that speak of working hard to live the Christian life:

• We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; 1 Cor. 4:12 [NIV]
• For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 2 Peter 1:5 [NIV]
• Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, Col. 3:23 [NIV]

These two verses, that straddle a chapter break bring together the balance: To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me. I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. Col. 1:29–2:1 [NIV]

Who is struggling and with whose energy? Is Christian living active or passive? Is it letting go and letting God, or is it working hard?

Yes.

Christian living is both active and passive. It is working hard and letting go and letting God have His way. The narrow way understand both. The jump-ball question gets us in touch with the tension.

Sovereignty versus free will

The classic example of this tension is the issue of predestination versus free will. I grew up in a Baptist home and a Baptist church and came to believe the middle of the road Baptist perspective on this matter. Baptists are not in universal agreement on this matter, but there is a big middle that is in approximate agreement. I thought everyone who was a real Christian saw it this way, and only fringe groups saw it any other way.

As it turns out, Baptist, as best I can tell, are kind of an anomaly. The world has been divided down predestination/free-will lines, and Baptist don’t fit neatly into either category.

Down through the centuries, the church could be divided along the two lines that go like this:

Calvinist love these verses:

• You did not choose me, but I chose you. John 15:16a [NIV]
• It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. Romans 9:16 [NIV]
• As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, Ephes. 2:1 [NIV] (Implication: dead men can choose Christ. They have to be regenerated from the outside.
• These verses are all about before salvation. There are corresponding verses that Calvinist love for after salvation.
• Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philip. 1:6 [NIV]
• I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. John 10:28–29 [NIV]

Arminians don’t like to talk about those verses. They like to talk about these verses:

• And then, whoever calls out to the Lord for help will be saved.’ Acts 2:21 [TEV]
• Whoever will CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE Lord WILL BE SAVED. Romans 10:13 [NASB]
• The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9 [NIV]
• And, consistent with the free-will approach, Arminians believe that if you get saved and you don’t like it, you can leave. It is a kind of money-back guarantee. They are very comfortable with the verses that say, “If we disown him, he will also disown us.” 2 Tim. 2:12b [NIV] or, as other translations have it, “If we deny Him, He also will deny us.” 2 Tim. 2:12b [NASB]

So, we can divide these beliefs into a matrix:

	Arminian	Calvinistic
Before salvation	Whosoever will may come.	You did not choose me; I choose you.
After salvation	If we deny Him, He will deny us.	He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.

I have no desire to enter this debate. Brothers have been debating this issue since the time of Paul and will be debating till Christ’s return. My point is this: if you push any one of those beliefs into the corner, you get stupidity.

Let’s take the lower right-hand box as an example. I heard an interview one time where a man was asked about his theology at this point. “Do you believe in once saved, always saved”?

“Oh yes, I believe it so strongly that I believe that once you place your faith in Christ you could backslide and wander from God or even outright reject God and say to Him, ‘I don’t want your salvation. I don’t want to be a Christian. I no longer believe.’ and God will hold you by the nap of your neck and say, ‘Sorry. You wanted in. You can’t get out.’ ”

I asked my dad, who believes in the security of our salvation, about this. “Is that right, Dad?” We can shake our fist in the face of God and say, “I don’t want your salvation. And God will hold us and say, ‘Too bad, you wanted in; you can’t get out’?” My dad wisely responded, “I wouldn’t try that if I were you, Son.”

My Dad understood the narrow way. He understood that we have security in our salvation and we can rest in our relationship with God. But, there is a reason the Bible includes the warnings that those who endure to the end will be saved.

If you push any one of those four quadrants to the corner, you get stupidity.

You may not believe, as the Calvinist do that your salvation was predetermined before the start of time, but I hope you understand there was more going on than you just being able to see a good deal and being smart enough to get in on it. God was acting on you from the outside. He was doing for you what you could not do for yourself.

You may believe that God has determined who will be saved, but don’t believe as strongly as those who opposed William Carey, the father of the modern missions movement, and said, “Sit down, young man, if God wants to save the heathen in India, he will do it without your help or mine.” That is Calvinism pushed to the corners and Calvinism pushed too far.

You may think you can lose your salvation, but I hope you see that possibility as a rather extreme case. Isaiah 49:15 asks, “Can a mother forget her baby?” The answer is, “Not usually.” There is an extremely strong bond between a parent and a child. But, you have known situations as I have where a parent did forget their child. Still, the point is, it is rare. I hope you have the confidence in God and understand that you would have to be extremely and openly rebellious toward God in a rather sustained way for Him to put you out.

When you push any one of the doctrines to its corner, you end up with heresy. What you end up with is stupidity.

Faith and works

Another place where the tension is been hotly debated is over the issue of faith and works. If you are, as I am, on the protestant/evangelical side of things, you are probably uncomfortable with this statement:

Faith by itself,
if it is not accompanied by action,
is dead.

We read a statement like that and it sounds vaguely familiar so we don’t want to reject it outright, but we sure want to say, “Yeah, but …” We don’t embrace it in the same way we embrace the verse that says, “not by works, so that no one can boast.” We have not memorized James 2:17 as we have memorized Ephesians 2:9. We are out of balance. We have lost the narrow way. When we read Ephesians 2:9 we pound the pulpit and raise our voices. When we read James 2:17, we mumble.

We need to get comfortable with the fact that there is no salvation without works. That kind of faith—the works-free kind does not save. Works don’t save, but there is no salvation without them. Do you feel the tension? That is the narrow way. “You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.” James 2:22 [NIV]

Jesus taught that “by their fruits you will know them.” (Matthew 7:16) Some have preached a gospel that suggests you can live like the devil and end up with the angels as long as you do this transaction called being saved. The Bible does not teach that. But, it is not about behaving our way into heaven, either. It is about walking the narrow way.

Jump ball questions get us in touch with the narrow way. They get us in touch with the tension. Most people don’t believe a lie so much that they believe the truth in an out of balance way. They have missed the narrow way. The jump ball questions helps to get the group back into the center.

Sunday School is famous for giving oversimplified answers to complex questions. A “Sunday School” answer does not mean a profound, thoughtful answer. It means an overly simplistic answer to a complex question. Answers like:

• We are saved by grace through faith apart from works and that is that.
• Once saved and always saved.
• Let go and let God.
• It is not about you.

The truth is, there is more to it than that. The truth is more complex than that. The truth is:

• We are saved by grace through faith apart from works, but it is always the kind of faith that is accompanied by works.
• Once saved always saved, but those who endure to the end are the ones that are truly saved and if we disown Him, He will disown us.
• Let go and let God. “To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.” Colossians 1:29 (NIV)
• It is not about you, but God does offer you an abundant life. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 [NIV]

All through the Bible we find this tension. Jump-ball questions get us in touch with the tension.

We need to teach people to think, to argue, to defend their position, to balance opposing ideas. I heard a Christian counselor say recently he has never seen a single example where a couple disagreed over a parenting strategy and the best answer was on one side or the other. The best answer was always the narrow way somewhere in between. One parent wants to be more strict. The other wants to be more lenient. The narrow way is in between.

Chuck Swindoll’s Pastoral accountability questions

1. Have you been with a woman anywhere this past week that might be seen as compromising?

2. Have any of your financial dealings lacked integrity?

3. Have you exposed yourself to any sexually explicit material?

4. Have you spent adequate time in Bible study and prayer?

5. Have you given priority time to your family?

6. Have you fulfilled the mandates of your calling?

7. Have you just lied to me?

Wesley’s Band Meeting Questions

1. What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?

2. What temptations have you been met with?

3. How were you delivered?

4. What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?

5. Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?

James Dobson tells the true story of women who have embraced the biblical teaching of submission and embraced the biblical teaching on servanthood and putting the needs of others first and when their husbands suggested that they should invite another women to join them in their bedroom the women did it. They did it in the name of obedience to the command of God to be submissive. They did it in the name of obedience to the biblical principle of servanthood. When you push servanthood that far, you sled right past the truth into the lap of stupidity.

Some, on the other hand want to erase the biblical injunction for wives to submit to their husband. They speak of mutual submission so loudly so as to erase all distinction between men and women. This is missing the narrow way on the other side. There is a difference.

We are giving our classes answers when what we need to be giving them is questions. Hard questions. Difficult questions that have no Sunday School answers.

When you got it right

You know you got it right when people are still engaged at the end of the hour. You know you got it right when people are arguing and raising their voices and you have to tell them the hour is late. You know you got it right when they call you three days later and say, “I have been thinking about what we talked about and, have you ever thought about this …?”

You know you got it right when you have to remind people that we must disagree agreeably and that we are called upon to live lives where our gentleness is evident to all.

Most Bible Studies are too polite. They are too placid. They are too predictable. They are too sleepy. I love to walk into a class full of Baptists parroting the party line about once-saved-always-saved with this kind of yup-yup tone and just read one verse, “If we disown Him, He will disown us.”

Silence.

Then someone will speak up and say, “I don’t believe that.”

“It is in the Book.”

“Where?” Now we are about to have a conversation. Now, things are going to get interesting. Now a fight just might break out.

Every truth has a balancing truth, including this one

You can take this truth too far. You can believe this too much. You can take it so far that you believe everything and hold to nothing. Taken too far, your theology is all about yeah-but and you never say with Luther, “Here I stand. God help me. I can do no other.”

Some things don’t have any balancing truth. They just are. Jesus is Lord. God is God. The Bible is truth. These are just truth. We need balance, but not too much balance. Every truth has a balancing truth, including this one. The jump-ball question gets us in touch with that. The lead us to the narrow way.

John Wesley’s Small Group Questions

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better that I am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?

2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?

3. Do I confidentially pass onto another what was told me in confidence?

4. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?

5. Am I self-conscious, self pitying, or self-justifying?

6. Did the Bible live in me today?

7. Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?

8. Am I enjoying prayer?

9. When did I last speak to someone about my faith?

10. Do I pray about the money I spend?

11. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?

12. Do I disobey God in anything?

13. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?

14. Am I defeated in any part of my life?

15. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy or distrustful?

16. How do I spend my spare time?

17. Am I proud?

18. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisee who despised the publican?

19. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold resentment toward or disregard? If so, what am I going to do about it?

20. Do I grumble and complain constantly?

21. Is Christ real to me?

Note: John Wesley is the father of the Methodist Church.

Josh Hunt, How to Use Questions to Stimulate Life-Changing Discussions, Good Questions Have Small Groups Talking (Las Cruces, NM: Josh Hunt, 2010), 59–72.

There is a difference between truth and truth that matters. How-did-they-feel questions are one of the best way to make the truth truth that matters.

I saw a great example of the difference between truth and truth that matters recently. My wife’s cousin recently quit smoking. She is a middle-aged adult who has been smoking since she was a teenager and suddenly, she quit.

Why do you think this happened? The truth suddenly became truth that matters. Do you think she finally discovered the warning label on the side of the cigarette box? Do you think she read an article about how smoking can kill you? No. Her brother died of smoking-related problems. She watched her brother die and the cause was smoking and she knew it and the truth became truth that matters.

The people you teach would probably agree that the stories of Samson and Deborah and David and Paul and all the rest are true. But, quite honestly, they don’t matter much to them. It is not truth that matters. Your job is to make the truth truth that matters. One of the best ways to do that is through How-did-they-feel questions.

How-did-they-feel questions makes the truth come alive. It connects us emotionally with the characters in the story. It bridges the two or three thousand year gap between us and the story and makes us feel the truth, not just know the truth. The emotional connection is the human connection. How-did-they-feel questions makes the truth real. It makes the truth truth that matters.

Modernize the story

In order to make the question work, sometimes it is useful to modernize the story. This is not to change the essential message of the story, but to tell it as it might happen today. If it is a parable of Jesus, we tell it as he might tell it today.

If I am teaching on the story of the prodigal son, I might paraphrase it along these lines:

Imagine a son, say he is nineteen years old and he knows that his dad will leave him something in his will, but he doesn’t want to wait that long. So, he asks for his check now. (It never occurs to him that the dad might need the money because that is the way teenagers think.) Unbelievably, the dad writes him a check. Let’s imagine the dad has some money and he writes the son a check for half a million dollars. Wow! He never had a Christmas like this before.

He takes the money and runs. He buys a fast sports car and heads out to Las Vegas, Nevada. He starts spending. He spends the money on wine, women, song, gambling, seafood buffets and Celine Dion tickets. After a while he runs out of money. About the same time that he runs out of money, there is an economic down turn. Unemployment skyrockets to double digits. He can’t find a job anywhere.

Finally, he gets a job washing dishes at one of the casinos. He can barely make ends meet. He doesn’t have any skill to get a better paying job and expenses are high in Las Vegas. One day, he is so hungry that he finds himself instinctively grabbing some of the uneaten food that he is about to drop down the garbage disposal—scraps that someone left on their plate.

Then it hits him. “My dad treats his employees better than this. I could swallow my pride and go home and my dad would take me in and he would give me a job and I could do better than this. At least I would have decent food and a decent place to stay.”

He does it. He starts heading home. I have never been to Israel, but people who have tell me it looks a lot like New Mexico, where I live. There is not a lot of rain where I live and, consequently, not many trees to block the view. You can see a long, long way—fifty miles or more on a clear day. People who have been to Israel tell me that Israel is a lot that way. There is a place in the story where it says, “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him.” Now, it doesn’t say this, but it stands to reason that if the father could see the son when the son was a long way off, the son could also see the father when he was a long way off. In fact, because the father did not know when the son was coming, but the son did know where his house was, it stands to reason that the son could see the father’s house long before the father could see the boy.

I live in the valley of the Rio Grande River. When you enter the city from the West, there is a particular place where you cross a ridge and the whole valley opens up before you. The Organ Mountains are in the distance and you can see the whole city all at once. At night, it looks like a string of Christmas lights laying in a pile. Imagine the son coming on a scene like that. He can see the area of town that is his neighborhood, though he cannot yet make out the house. How is he feeling in that moment? What is going through his head? What is he thinking about?

I have asked this question to many groups and the answers are as different as they are accurate. The son was feeling all kinds of things:

• Fear
• Dread
• Worry
• Shame
• Guilt
• Embarrassment
• Hope
• Anticipation
• Homesick
• Joy

It is a classic picture of mixed emotions. I think he was feeling a lot of negative emotions. I think he was worried and ashamed. But, I don’t think worry and shame would have driven him there. I think he was also feeling some positive emotions—hope and anticipation. Life had gotten pretty bad for him and he was hopeful that it was about to get better.

Now, let’s think about this story from the other side. Let’s think about it from the Dad’s perspective. Do you remember what the text says the dad did when the dad saw the boy?

He ran.

He ran. We know from studying history that middle-aged men did not do a lot of running back in the day. They were dignified. They were sophisticated. They were in charge. They delegated. They pointed. They didn’t run.

I’d encourage you to do some reading in this history and in the commentaries, but then, just think about real life. If you are a middle aged man (or woman) think about this: when was the last time you ran? Not just hustled a bit—ran. When is the last time you got into an all-out run? When is the last time you ran as fast as you can run?

For most of us, it has been a while. Most of us, when we get into the middle aged years of life don’t do a lot of running. Little kids do a lot of running, but we don’t run much once we reach middle age. There are exceptions, of course, but generally, middle aged men don’t run. They didn’t run then and they don’t run now. The text says the dad ran.

I have probably watched one too many Hollywood movies, but I picture this scene in slow motion. The dad running toward the boy. A look of confusion on the boy’s face. Why is he running? Is he mad? Is he going to yell at me and tell me to get off his property? No. He is smiling. The dad is smiling the biggest, most welcoming smile he has ever seen. The son starts to run too. The camera pans back and forth from father to son as they get closer together.

Then they embrace. Oh, do they embrace. The father hugs the son and the spin around and spin around and spin around. Then, I see the father stopping, putting one hand on each of the sons shoulders, taking a good look at him and saying, “Somebody hire a band. Someone call a caterer. Shut down the store. We are going to have the biggest party this town has ever seen.”

How do you think the son was feeling then?

However you describe that feeling—loved, accepted, excited, forgiven, whole—that is how God wants you to live your life. He wants you to walk each day in the Father’s embrace. He wants to baptize you in the Father’s acceptance. He wants to surround you with his love.

Has the truth that God loves you become a little more truth that matters to you?

How did they feel questions do that for us. They make the truth come alive. They make it human. They make it personal. They make it today. They make it real. They make it matter.

How to make How-did-they-feel questions work

How-did-they-feel questions work best (as in the case above) when there is more than one right answer. The son was both excitedly anticipating being home and at the same time dreadful, fearful and guilt-ridden.

I was working recently on a lesson on the trial of Jesus. Matthew 26:3: “Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, “Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?” Matthew 26:62–63 records, “But Jesus remained silent. The high priest said to him, ‘I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ ” (NIV) Here is the question. How is the high priest feeling about this time? Some right answers include angry, frustrated, smug, shocked, exasperated, worried. I wonder if the chief priests knew their evidence was thin and they were secretly worried that they might not pull this thing off? Here is follow up question: How would the chief priests felt at the end of the day if the trial had gone the other way? Imagine that Jesus had been vindicated by Rome and the charges were dropped and he got off with little more than a hand slap. How would the high priests have felt then?

Here is another example from a recent lesson. The story is that of David and his rebellious son Absalom who is trying to take over his father’s kingdom by force. Consider this text:

Then David said to all his officials who were with him in Jerusalem, “Come! We must flee, or none of us will escape from Absalom. We must leave immediately, or he will move quickly to overtake us and bring ruin upon us and put the city to the sword.” 2 Samuel 15:14 (NIV)

How is David feeling in this moment? Or, how are David’s feelings different from that of his men at this moment? They are both feeling fear, and perhaps anger. But David is feeling some other things. This is his son. He is mad at him, but he still loves him. He is feeling love in the middle of it all. Perhaps he is feeling guilt for not raising him better, or self-doubt. No doubt he is feeling a profound sadness. It is this mixture of emotions that makes the How-did-they-feel question work.

Consider this poignant passage a bit later:

David mustered the men who were with him and appointed over them commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds. 18:2 David sent the troops out—a third under the command of Joab, a third under Joab’s brother Abishai son of Zeruiah, and a third under Ittai the Gittite. The king told the troops, “I myself will surely march out with you.” 18:3 But the men said, “You must not go out; if we are forced to flee, they won’t care about us. Even if half of us die, they won’t care; but you are worth ten thousand of us. It would be better now for you to give us support from the city.” 18:4 The king answered, “I will do whatever seems best to you.” So the king stood beside the gate while all the men marched out in units of hundreds and of thousands. 18:5 The king commanded Joab, Abishai and Ittai, “Be gentle with the young man Absalom for my sake.” And all the troops heard the king giving orders concerning Absalom to each of the commanders. 2 Samuel 18:1–5 (NIV)

Note verse 4. How is David feeling as he stood beside the gate? How is he feeling when he said, “Be gentle with the young man Absalom for my sake”?

Sometimes, the What-are-they-feeling questions have great importance. Consider the case of Judas in Matthew 27:

When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.” “What is that to us?” they replied. “That’s your responsibility.” So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. Matthew 27:3–5 (NIV)

Here is my question: What is Judas feeling here? Is this true repentance? Was he saved? Will we see Judas in heaven? He clearly takes full responsibility for his actions. He does not blame or make excuses. Does it take more than this kind of confession to receive forgiveness?

How-did-they-feel questions are one of the best ways to make the truth truth that matters. They make the story come alive. They build a bridge back through time to that two and three thousand year old story and make the truth human. We feel connected. It is the emotional connection that makes the text real.

Josh Hunt, How to Use Questions to Stimulate Life-Changing Discussions, Good Questions Have Small Groups Talking (Las Cruces, NM: Josh Hunt, 2010), 51–58.