restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations

Dealing with Loneliness During COVID-19

 David Alan Black 

In a recent edition of USA TODAY, writer Alan Gomez explores howlong-term loneliness affects us physically and mentally. It’s a valuable analysis. In short, Gomez writes that “humans were not meant to be alone.” We are hard-wired to be social creatures. (The writers of the New Testament might say we are created for koinōnia — deep and genuine relationships.) The forced isolation of Covid-19, “if it is prolonged, puts wear and tear on our bodies. The reason it’s unpleasant is it’s a biological signal, much like hunger and thirst, to motivate us to reconnect with others.”

If you are the friend or loved one of someone who lives alone — and 25 percent of Americans do — I have a few suggestions. Continue to pray with and for your friend. Reach out to them in simple ways. Call or text frequently to check in. Sometimes a mere smile on FaceTime can be a balm for another person. Make sure to listen to your friend sympathetically as he or she pours out to you the pain and struggle of living in isolation. Be a good listener. Give your friend permission to say whatever is on their mind. Ask God to give them the courage to trust him. Additionally, you may need to direct them to a pastor or trained counselor. Remind yourself that it’s not your job to “rescue” them. That’s God’s responsibility. You may find it beneficial to share with them your own struggles with loneliness. Being transparent with your hurting friend will help create a loving and honest atmosphere. Ask God to show you how to help your friend along the way. Be like the four men in Luke 5. They did not ignore their paralyzed friend’s need. They did not abandon him to a life of loneliness. They were fully committed to seeing that he got relief. They were willing to sacrifice their time and energy. They were persevering and undaunted in their caregiving.

During this time of isolation on the farm, my friends and family have been wonderful. This pandemic has given all of us an unexpected opportunity to reconnect with each other. My friends and family spend hours with me every week on the phone just listening. They demonstrate their love and concern on a daily basis. They encourage me to stay in the word and trust God.  They pray for me on a regular basis. I know they are only a phone call or text message away if I need them.

When I feel lonely, I find that reading or listening to Scripture is a source of comfort to me.

• “He is a father to the fatherless; he gives justice to the widows, for he is holy. He gives families to the lonely” (Psalm 68:5-6).
• “Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted” (Psalm 25:16).
• “Be strong and courageous … for the Lord your God goes with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you” (Deut. 31:6).
• “Surely I am with you each and every day, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).
• “Do not be afraid, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand” (Isa. 41:10).
• “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Pet. 5:7).
• “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). 

Finally, let’s not forget that Jesus experienced loneliness. “All the disciples forsook him and fled” (Matt 26:56). “He was despised and rejected by men” (Isa 53:3). His ultimate loneliness was when he died for you and for me. Jesus was lonely for us. If you have come to the end of your rope (and we all do eventually), turn your life over to him. Let him bear your burdens. He is the closest friend and companion we will ever have. The more we meditate on his presence, the less we will tend to be overwhelmed by the loneliness of life.

May 30, 2020

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

Back to daveblackonline

   restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations

The Gifts and Eph. 4:11-12

 David Alan Black 

Today I read Ephesians for my AM Bible study. I was curious to see how The Living Bible (TLB) rendered 4:11-12, where Paul writes about apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers. Here TLB has:

Some of us have been given special ability as apostles; to others he has given the gift of being able to preach well; some have special ability in winning people to Christ, helping them to trust him as their Savior; still others have a gift for caring for God’s people as a shepherd does his sheep, leading and teaching them in the ways of God.

It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of this passage. A few thoughts:

Strictly speaking, there are no eye witness apostles today. That doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t any “apostolic ministries” at work today. I’m thinking especially of pioneer missionary work, church planting, and itinerant ministries.

What about prophets? TLB seems to suggest that the NT gift of prophecy has to do mainly with what today we call “preaching” (that is, the Sunday sermon). But again, in the technical sense, there are probably no prophets today if by “prophet” we mean the recipient of special revelation from God. But as with apostles, there may also be a less technical way of understanding the term. Paul may have also had in mind what Stott calls “a special gift of biblical exposition” (p. 162). High on my list of such gifted men would be James Boice, Haddon Robinson, Chuck Swindoll, and John Stott himself. Not surprisingly, two of these men have written standard textbooks on biblical preaching. (If I were to ever teach homiletics I would require my students to read Robinson’s Biblical Preaching and Stott’s Between Two Worlds. In my opinion, no better books on the preparation and delivery of expository messages have even been produced.)

As for evangelists, I think TLB has nailed it with its rendering “some have special ability in winning people to Christ, helping them to trust him as their Savior.” Stott thinks the term includes a special gift of “evangelistic preaching” or of “making the gospel particularly plain and relevant to unbelievers” (p. 163). “There is a great need for gifted evangelists today,” he writes, “who will pioneer new ways of exercising and developing their gift, so as to penetrate the vast unreached segments of society for Christ” (Stott, p. 163).

Finally, I love TLB’s rendering of the couplet “pastors and teachers”:

… still others have a gift for caring for God’s people as a shepherd does his sheep, leading and teaching them in the ways of God.

For one thing, TLB makes it clear that Paul is not calling these people “pastors.” He’s using a metaphor. For another thing, TLB rightly stresses the need for shepherds to lead and teach their flocks. Who would deny that sound biblical teaching is a major need in our churches? So let pastor-teachers teach well! As Paul writes in Rom. 12:7 (NLT):

If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well.

And what is the purpose of these gifts of Christ to his church? “Why is it,” writes TLB, “that he gives us these special abilities to do certain things better?”

It is that God’s people will be equipped to do better work for him, building up the church, the body of Christ, to a position of strength and maturity.

I would render the first clause here as, “To equip God’s people for works of service.” This is the well-known principle of every-member ministry that I have written about in my books The Jesus Paradigm and Seven Marks of a New Testament Church. A pastor will encourage “God’s people to discover, develop and exercise their gifts” (Stott, p. 167).

His teaching and training [continues Stott] are directed to this end, to enable the people God to be a servant people, ministering actively but humbly according to their gifts in a world of alienation and pain. Thus, instead of monopolizing all ministry himself, he actually multiplies ministries.

The Protestant Reformation, adds Stott, recovered the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Isn’t it time that the modern church recovered the ministry of all believers?

To recapitulate, let me offer here an expanded paraphrase of Eph. 4:11-13 to attempt to bring out the meaning of this passage. In so doing, I will take TLB’s translation and tweak it in certain places:

To some of us the risen Christ gave special ability on the one hand as eye-witness apostles (in the technical sense) and on the other hand as missionaries and church planters (in a non-technical sense); to others he gave the gift of direct revelation (in the technical sense) and of being able to accurately expound and apply the Word of God (in a non-technical sense); to still others he gave the special ability to win people to Christ, helping them to trust him as their Savior; and finally, to others he gave the gift of caring for God’s people as a shepherd does his sheep, leading and teaching them in the ways of God. The purpose of all these gifts is to prepare God’s people for works of humble service and thus to build up the church, Christ’s body, until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we become mature people, reaching to the very height of Christ’s full stature. 

As I conclude, I venture to suggest that Paul’s words here in Eph. 4 are indispensable to all members of God’s new society, the church. Shepherd-teachers must actively cultivate body life. Christians are not passive spectators of what God is doing in his church. The way the body of Christ grows to maturity is when all of its members use their God-given gifts for the building up of the church. It is good to see this simple truth being affirmed and practiced more and more in our day.

May 13, 2020

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

Back to daveblackonline

   restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations

God’s Message For Us In Covid-19

 David Alan Black 

What in the world is the message of Covid-19? Good question. Sometimes I can’t figure out the simplest things in life. It took me two years and eight months to figure out that I was to propose to Becky. Had to have all my ducks in a row first, of course. Becky knew right away. I once ordered a “pepperoni pizza” in Germany only to be served a pizza covered with red peppers. During my doctoral exams in Basel I uttered those unforgivable words, “Ich weiss nicht” (I don’t know). Can you relate? Of course you can. Who hasn’t scratched their head when faced with tough questions?

One of life’s giant-sized questions is facing us today. What is God doing during Covid-19? While we may speculate, we don’t really need to guess. Has any other time been so conducive to solitude? To self-examination? To taking stock of our lives? To going deeper than we have ever gone before? Today Chuck Swindoll embarked on a 2-part series at Stonebriar Community Church with the title, “The Priority of Solitude.” I’ll link to it below. You need no ephod to know where Chuck’s going. Covid-19, he says, is “the most abnormal, unusual time in which we have ever lived.” If we’re not careful, we’ll miss its significance. Chuck drives home his point with a quote from Malcolm Muggeridge: “Any happening, great or small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us. And the art of life is to get the message.”

To help us get that message, Chuck gets up close and personal with us. He tells the story of the months he spent overseas courtesy of Uncle Sam. He was unprepared for the deployment. He didn’t want to leave his wife alone at home. He couldn’t imagine there being anything worthwhile about the place where the military was sending him. He was happy where he was. The message God had for him during this time? Merely the most life-changing message of his life. In Chuck’s words, the Lord was saying to him “I want to remove from you every crutch, everything you normally lean on, so that I can have your full attention, because my plan is to change your whole course of life.” The result? Chuck came away with a new sense of calling:

What I looked at at the time as a disruption or an interference in what I would call a rather happy life, I came to realize was an essential message I would not have gotten had it not been for those 16-17 months totally removed from all things familiar.

It’s so easy, says Chuck, to be riveted to Covid-19, to the statistics, to the news, to the impact of the virus. But with strong emotion he adds, “That’s NOT the message! That’s NOT what God wants us to hear!” The Covid-19 virus stops us in our tracks. It pulls us out of the fast lane. It pushes us into isolation and we’re left to ourselves. Traffic has stopped. Business has stopped. The movement of life, the rhythm of life, has stopped. “We have been pulled over for an extended pit stop in this race track called life.”

“Let’s not miss this message,” says Chuck. This is time to “discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7). Godliness isn’t automatic. It doesn’t come miraculously. Discipline is involved. “It won’t come easily, and it won’t come naturally. But it can come at a time when we’re all set aside from the normal activities of life, if we are aware of it and see it as a priority.” Quoting from Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipleship, Chuck brings it all home:

The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.

It’s time, concludes Chuck, to “go deeper in ourselves, to take stock of how we’ve been living our days, our years, and we pause and go through the disciplines involved in probing deeper and deeper in our relationship with our Lord.”

Today I thought of Chuck Swindoll not so much as a famous pastor but as our national chaplain. I ask myself, “So Dave, have you learned this lesson — the lesson of Covid-19?” This lesson begins with disconnections. It continues with self-awareness. And it ends with finding God — and yourself. “You’ll never know that Jesus is all you need,” writes Max Lucado in his book Facing Your Giants, “until Jesus is all you have.”

No, we never saw the storm coming. Its arrival jolted our complacency. It destroyed so much of what we love. The devil’s stirred up nothing but trouble, fear, and death. We’re all living in the Covid-wilderness. We want to go to church. We want to attend that game. We want to eat out again. We want to return to the classroom. We want to visit grandma and grandpa or see our grandkids. We want normalcy.

That day is coming. Maybe even sooner than later. But in the meantime, we don’t have to travel to a faraway country for 16-17 months to face a life-changing encounter with God. A pandemic does the trick just fine. Yes, it will require some work on our part. But never have we had more time for solitude and self-reflection than today. Maybe God will do for us what He did for Chuck those many decades ago. Isn’t it time for us to take that long inward look we’ve been avoiding all these years? Assemble a meeting of three parties: Yourself, God, and your Bible. Let Him speak to you as never before.

As Muggeridge reminds us, Covid-19 is a parable whereby God is speaking to us. And the art of life is getting the message. Chuck Swindoll gets that message. May God help us to do the same.

May 10, 2020

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

Back to daveblackonline

   restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations

Pastor, Are You Teachable?

 David Alan Black 

Today I’d like to talk to you about a character trait that’s been on my heart for several days now. It’s a trait that all Christians need, but especially those of you who are serving in pastoral (teaching) ministry.

I suppose we’re all familiar with Paul’s lists of qualifications for church leaders. They’re found in Titus and Timothy. The trait I want to talk about today is found in 1 Tim. 3:2. It’s the 7th qualification that Paul sets forth for “overseers.” The Greek word is didaktikon. “An overseer,” writes Paul, “must be didaktikon.” Your Bible translation probably says something like “must be able to teach.” And that’s one way the Greek can be rendered. But did you know that the same Greek word can be rendered in a completely different way? My Greek dictionary tells me that didaktikon can be translated either as (1) “able to teach” or as (2) … are you ready?

“Teachable.”

That’s right. Teachable. You say, “Well, Dave, what does it mean here?” And my answer would be, “I don’t know!” You see, one of the things I have to constantly remind my Greek students is that Greek is not a magic potion you can ingest and then afterwards everything becomes crystal clear. It isn’t the Abracadabra or Open Sesame of biblical interpretation. It’s a not a magic wand you can wave over your passage and then — POOF! — expect the meaning to jump out at you miraculously. This is precisely one of the most important things we can ever know about Greek: It doesn’t necessarily tell us what the Bible means. But it can (and does) limit our options. It tells us what is possible, and then many others factors — especially the context — have to kick in at that point.

So do I have an opinion about what didaktikon means in 1 Tim. 3:2? Sure do. Here I think it means “teachable.” Look, first, at the context. No other qualification mentioned in Paul’s list has to do with an aptitude, or a skill set, or an ability. Instead, they all have to do with a man’s character. His lifestyle. I think “teachable” fits this context quite nicely. Secondly, think for a moment, if you will, about those pastor-teachers in your life you’ve come to love and respect the most. I’ll do the same. Know what I think they all have in common? They’re passionate learners! They love studying the Scriptures! They don’t burn out or rust out. Instead, every week they can’t wait for Sunday to come. “Look at what I’ve been learning this week! I can’t wait to share it with you!” In a word, they are teachable. In two words, they are lifelong learners. That’s called teachability. It’s one reason so many pastors are returning to our seminary for their Doctor of Ministry degree. They are lifelong learners. That’s why some pastors even enroll in our Ph.D. program. Recently my former assistant received his Ph.D. in New Testament from our school. Know what he does, week in and week out? He pastors a local church.

Billy Graham once spoke at a pastors’ conference in London toward the end of his ministry. Someone asked him, “Dr. Graham, if you had to do your ministry all over again, what would you do differently?” He thought for a moment and then said, “Well, I would have prayed more, that’s for sure.” BAM! That struck me right between the eyes! If ever there was a prayer wimp, that’s me! Then Graham added, “And I would have studied more and preached less.” I find that it’s difficult for me to learn anything when I’m doing all the talking. There’s a time for listening, and a time for talking. A time to be “quick to listen and slow to speak.” A time for study — deep, reverent, Spirit-led study. R. C. Sproul once said that the key to being an effective pastor-teacher is being simple without being simplistic. He said a great teacher-preacher is like an iceberg. You only see 10 percent, but underneath you sense the other 90 percent.

What’s your teachability quotient, pastor friend? Are you preaching from the canteen of Saturday night or from a reservoir of Bible knowledge? If you’re not sure, just ask your people. They know. You can’t disguise mediocrity.

Are you teachable? The leader who has nothing to learn has nothing to teach. So … are you teachable? If not, you can be. Start today.

May 4, 2020

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

Back to daveblackonline

   restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations

Pastor, Are You Teachable?

 David Alan Black 

Today I’d like to talk to you about a character trait that’s been on my heart for several days now. It’s a trait that all Christians need, but especially those of you who are serving in pastoral (teaching) ministry.

I suppose we’re all familiar with Paul’s lists of qualifications for church leaders. They’re found in Titus and 1 Timothy. The trait I want to talk about today is found in 1 Tim. 3:2. It’s the 7th qualification that Paul sets forth for “overseers.” The Greek word is didaktikon. “An overseer,” writes Paul, “must be didaktikon.” Your Bible translation probably says something like “must be able to teach.” And that’s one way the Greek can be rendered. But did you know that the same Greek word can be rendered in a completely different way? My Greek dictionary tells me that didaktikon can be translated either as (1) “able to teach” or as (2) … are you ready?

“Teachable.”

That’s right. Teachable. You say, “Well, Dave, what does it mean here?” And my answer would be, “I don’t know!” You see, one of the things I have to constantly remind my Greek students is that Greek is not a magic potion you can ingest and then afterwards everything becomes crystal clear. It isn’t the Abracadabra or Open Sesame of biblical interpretation. It’s a not a magic wand you can wave over your passage and then — POOF! — expect the meaning to jump out at you miraculously. This is precisely one of the most important things we can ever know about Greek: It doesn’t necessarily tell us what the Bible means. But it can (and does) limit our options. It tells us what is possible, and then many others factors — especially the context — have to kick in at that point.

So do I have an opinion about what didaktikon means in 1 Tim. 3:2? Sure do. Here I think it means “teachable.” Look, first, at the context. No other qualification mentioned in Paul’s list has to do with an aptitude, or a skill set, or an ability. Instead, they all have to do with a man’s character. His lifestyle. I think “teachable” fits this context quite nicely, don’t you? Secondly, think for a moment, if you will, about those pastor-teachers in your life you’ve come to love and respect the most. I’ll do the same. Know what I think they all have in common? They’re passionate learners! They love studying the Scriptures! They don’t burn out or rust out. Instead, every week they can’t wait for Sunday to come. “Look at what I’ve been learning this week! I can’t wait to share it with you!” In a word, they are teachable. In two words, they are lifelong learners. That’s called teachability. It’s one reason so many pastors are returning to our seminary for their Doctor of Ministry degree. They are lifelong learners. That’s why some pastors even enroll in our Ph.D. program. Recently my former assistant received his Ph.D. in New Testament from our school. Know what he does, week in and week out? He pastors a local church.

Billy Graham once spoke at a pastors’ conference in London toward the end of his ministry. Someone asked him, “Dr. Graham, if you had to do your ministry all over again, what would you do differently?” He thought for a moment and then said, “Well, I would have prayed more, that’s for sure.” BAM! That struck me right between the eyes! If ever there was a prayer wimp, that’s me! Then Graham added, “And I would have studied more and preached less.” I find that it’s difficult for me to learn anything when I’m doing all the talking. There’s a time for listening, and a time for talking. A time to be “quick to listen and slow to speak.” A time for study — deep, reverent, Spirit-led study. R. C. Sproul once said that the key to being an effective pastor-teacher is being simple without being simplistic. He said a great teacher-preacher is like an iceberg. You only see 10 percent, but underneath you sense the other 90 percent.

What’s your teachability quotient, pastor friend? Are you preaching from the canteen of Saturday night or from a reservoir of Bible knowledge? If you’re not sure, just ask your people. They know. You can’t disguise mediocrity.

Are you teachable? The leader who has nothing to learn has nothing to teach. So … are you teachable? If not, you can be. Start today.

May 4, 2020

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

Back to daveblackonline