The Rooster and the Cross

Early Christianity used various symbols to identify a building or tomb as Christian. One symbol was a cross, of course, but it might surprise you that the other most common symbol was a rooster.

Depictions of roosters have been found in the Roman catacombs where Christians gathered for worship and on Christian tombs in various cities. By the ninth century many churches mounted the image atop weathervanes on their church steeples. The oldest one that we know of is a 1200-year-old church weathervane now on display in a museum in Italy. The tradition wasn’t confined to Italy: Roosters on steeple weathervanes spread throughout churches in Europe, and as immigrants moved to the New World, they took this tradition with them. That’s why many weathervanes today still bear the image of a rooster.

What did the image symbolize? When Jesus tried to prepare his disciples for his upcoming arrest and crucifixion, Simon Peter declared he’d die in defense of Jesus. The Lord predicted his commitment wouldn’t last the night: “Will you really lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!” (John 13:38.) After Jesus was arrested a few hours later, Simon Peter repeatedly denied any allegiance to Jesus and “at that moment a rooster began to crow” (John 18:27).

I think it’s fascinating that early Christians wanted to identify their churches with an image from Peter’s biggest failure. Do you know what that means? It means that we’re not the heroes of our story. Our testimony isn’t about how wonderful we are but about how wonderful Jesus is.

I still prefer the cross rather than the rooster as the central symbol of Christianity. But we could benefit from reflecting on both symbols. The rooster reminds us that we’re not too good to need saving; the cross reminds us that we’re never beyond God’s awesome ability to save us.

Read the story of Simon Peter’s biggest failure, and then study the passage with us this weekend. We’ll begin our worship service online and on campus at 10am.

--Tom

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Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

Amazed in the Presence

Philosophy professor Jacob Needleman recalled his experience at the launch of Apollo 17 in 1975. “It was at night, and there were hundreds of cynical reporters all over the lawn, drinking beer, wisecracking.”

Then came the blast-off.

“The first thing you see is this extraordinary light, which is just at the limit of what you can bear to look at. Everything is illuminated with this light. Then comes this thing slowly rising up in total silence, because it takes a few seconds for the sound to come across. You hear a ‘WHOOOOOSH! HHHHMMMM!’ It enters right into you.

“You can practically hear jaws dropping. The sense of wonder fills everyone in the place as this thing goes up and up [and] it becomes like a star. And then there’s total silence.”

He remembered what happened next to the people around him. “People just get up quietly, helping each other. They’re kind, they open doors. They look at one another, speaking quietly and interestedly. These were suddenly moral people because the sense of wonder, the experience of wonder, had made them moral.”

Psychology researchers have recently found that moments of awe really do lead to feelings of humility and closeness to others, just as Needleman described. The research has been reported in recent articles in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American.

Reading the first 14 verses of John 18 should leave you awestruck—with all the positive changes that accompany the experience. In these verses we discover that Jesus knew what was about to happen to him and we learn he had the power to stop it. And yet he didn’t. The knowledge and power of Jesus that is revealed in these verses should amaze us. But then, even more, the sacrificial love of Jesus should astonish us.

Read these verses now, and then study the passage with us this weekend. We’ll begin our worship service online and on campus at 10am.

--Tom

(Jacob Needleman shared his recollections of the rocket launch with Bill Moyers in A World of Ideas II.)

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

A Radio Broadcast from the Future

Yogi Berra once said, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” But I discovered a group that boasts perfect accuracy with their predictions.

The group is called the Procrastinator’s Club of America, with 8,500 members and, according to their president, “another half-million potential members who have not gotten around to joining.” Members live by the motto, “It’s Never Too Late to Procrastinate,” and they wear buttons proclaiming, “Behind You All the Way.”

One of most famous practices of the Procrastinator’s Club is to make annual predictions about what events will grab headlines—but they post on the last day of the year they are supposed to be predicting. Their tongue-in-cheek “predictions” have never failed to be true!

It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. That’s why Psalm 22 is so astonishing. A thousand years before crucifixion had even been imagined as a form of execution, King David predicted the crucifixion of Jesus.

It’s eerie to read Psalm 22 if you’re already familiar with the New Testament accounts of Christ’s death. It’s like picking up the signal from a distant broadcasting tower when trying to find something on the radio while driving late at night. Do you know what I mean? In Psalm 22, it’s as if David came across a radio broadcast from the future. Coming through the crackle and hiss he heard:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

“…they pierce my hands and my feet….”

“They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.”

Remarkable.

Some Bible teachers call Psalm 22 the “Fifth Gospel.” No surprise there. This psalm provides almost as much detail about Jesus’s death and resurrection as we find in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But while the four New Testament Gospels preserved history after it happened, King David’s “Fifth Gospel” was a prophecy of what was going to happen.

This Sunday, we’ll study Psalm 22. Read it now, and then study it with us this weekend. We’ll begin our worship service online and on campus at 10am.

Tom

One more thing: I wrote a statement reacting to the news reports on the Southern Baptist Convention’s response, or lack of response, to complaints of sexual abuse in our ranks. You can find it here.

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Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

“To Walk Away Now Is to To Walk Away From Victims”

Reporters and analysts have used words like “apocalypse” and “bombshell” to describe the long-awaited findings released last Sunday. Across 288 pages, the report disclosed the failures of the Southern Baptist Convention’s response, or lack of response, to complaints of sexual abuse in our ranks. Why did the SBC commission the report, what does the report say, and what should our response be?

Why Did the SBC Commission the Report?

When the Houston Chronicle published a three-part series in 2019 on sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches, our congregation held a panel discussion to hear from one of our members who had been the victim of childhood sexual abuse in her SBC church in Connecticut. We also heard from our children’s minister about our church’s prevention policies. KXAN covered our efforts.  

Soon after the Chronicle’s exposé, concerns about sexual abuse cover-ups by the Executive Committee (EC) began to circulate within the denomination.

You have to understand something about how our convention is structured. The SBC is not a hierarchical structure such as you find in Roman Catholicism. Each Baptist church is autonomous, and we make our own decisions on staffing and budgeting and so on. Churches voluntarily band together at local, state, and national levels to engage in missions and ministry. Annually, “messengers” (delegates) come together for a two-day business meeting. In between those annual meetings, the day-to-day operation of the massive SBC is handled by an Executive Committee. The EC is made up of elected volunteers, supported by about 30 paid staff members in Nashville.

When I attended the 2021 Nashville Convention, we approved a task force to supervise an independent investigation into how sexual abuse allegations were handled by this Executive Committee. The inquiry, conducted by Guidepost Solutions, investigated the actions and decisions of EC staff and members over a period of 20-plus years.

Sexual abuse victims had brought complaints to the EC about abusive ministers who continued to serve on staff at churches that were part of the SBC. Had the EC dismissed, stonewalled, and even berated the sexual abuse victims who tried to raise these alarms? We wanted Guidepost Solutions to inform us if the stories were true.

What Does the Report Say?

The report details how a handful of EC officers served as gateways for information meant for the entire 86-member committee. When the rest of the EC was informed of complaints of sexual abusers still serving in churches affiliated with the SBC, a law firm repeatedly instructed EC staff members not to help or even respond to abuse victims.

As Brent Leatherwood of our convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission said: “This is what you get when you view individuals crying out for help as ‘potential plaintiffs,’ rather than as neighbors who deserve our care and support.”

What Should Our Response Be?

I recommend you read the report, or at least the 15-page summary at the front of the 288-page document. You can find it here. 

If you can attend the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in June, contact our church office about serving as a “messenger” from our church. The Sexual Abuse Task Force will have recommendations for us to act on, and it’s also important to vote in a president who has supported this process. The meeting is held in different cities each year, and this June it’s in Anaheim, California. You can find out more about it here.

I’ve read online comments from some church leaders who say it’s time to leave the SBC. They’ve decided this news is just the last of too many gut-punches. To them, being publicly identified with the SBC has more liabilities than assets for their church’s public witness. But keep in mind that it was the SBC that demanded this investigation be done. Advocate Rachael Denhollander, who advised the SBC task force that coordinated the investigation, tweeted that “the level of transparency is … unparalleled.” Kate Shellnut reported for Christianity Today that the effort is “the largest investigation in SBC history; it’s already changed the makeup of the EC and stands to determine the trajectory of the 177-year-old denomination.”

I don’t see that as a liability for our church’s public witness. Instead, I see that as the nation’s largest Protestant denomination setting an example for how to address failure in humility and repentance.

There may come a time to withdraw from the convention. Leadership may fail to act on any of the recommendations made by the Guidepost Solutions report. Reactive leaders may be voted in who represent the forces that resisted this investigation in the first place. We can decide at that time whether to remain. For now, I agree with Griffin Gulledge, writing for the Gospel Coalition:  

Many of you are likely ready to walk away at this point. But who are you walking away from? We now know that our leaders, our money, and our institutions hurt people. Can we say with a clear conscience, “I’m done”? At this moment when justice cries out, dare we walk away? This is the hour to speak up, to refuse to yield, to fight for the justice and mercy God requires of us. To walk away from the SBC now is to walk away from victims. To walk away now is to walk away from our responsibility.

Debbie Vasquez was 14 when her pastor at a Southern Baptist church started sexually abusing her. When she became pregnant with her abuser’s child, Ms. Vasquez was forced to go in front of her church to ask for forgiveness, but she was told she could not mention who the father of the child was because it would harm the church. He eventually left for another Southern Baptist church. Like most abuse victims who reached out to the EC over the years, Ms. Vasquez wanted the leadership in our convention to find a solution to keep abusers from hopping from one church to another where they could find other victims. In her email to the EC, she said:

“Please open up your heart and mind and talk with some of the people who are trying to get things changed. Please put aside differences and compromise –come up with a solution together... please do not ignore and pretend this problem does not exist. Please help stop other people like myself from being hurt in the way I was hurt.” 

Let’s finally respond to these cries.

Someday My Prince Will Come

Sometimes wedding announcements can be funny.

 The printed notice for the upcoming Hardy-Harr wedding predicted fun times. On the other hand, I wonder if the Looney-Ward wedding lived up to its billing. (As a pastor, I’ve presided over a couple of ceremonies that deserved that name.)

At the Kalla-Plummer wedding, hopefully they didn’t need to.

Let’s hope the announcement of the Sharpe-Payne wedding wasn’t a bad marital prophecy.

I know that sometimes a bride or groom second-guesses their decision before the ceremony. So, at the Wendt-Adaway wedding, did the groom run? And did they have to chase down the bride in the Gowen-Geter wedding?

Psalm 45 is a wedding announcement. It was originally composed to celebrate the wedding of one of Israel’s kings. But when you read it, you quickly see that no earthly king could perfectly fit the description in the verses. That is why Jews began to see it as a prophecy of the coming Messiah. They determined that the Holy Spirit was using the historical wedding of an earthly king to tell them something about the coming Messiah—and about the kind of people they needed to be for that coming Messiah.

God’s word tells us that God is on such intimate terms with his people that there’s only one earthly comparison: marriage. The kind of relationship that you find in an ideal marriage is the kind of intimacy and caring that God has toward his people. When we look into Psalm 45, we see a picture of what Jesus is for us—and what we must be for him. Verses 1-9 celebrate what kind of groom the church has in Jesus, and verses 10-17 remind us of what kind of bride the church needs to be for Jesus.

This Sunday, look at Psalm 45 with us and rejoice again in the relationship we have with the King of the universe! We’ll begin our worship service online and on campus at 10am.

--Tom

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Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

Uncork Your Memory Bottle

I read about a Jewish woman’s childhood ordeal of hiding from the Nazis in France. Just before her father moved the family into a windowless cellar, he drew her to his side. “We may have to remain inside for a long while,” he told her. “We have to find ways to remember how special this world is.”

He pretended to take an imaginary object off a shelf. “Let’s open a memory bottle,” he said. “We will put into it only the sights, smells, and moments that are most precious to us.”

The little girl’s father had her walk barefoot through the grass to remember how it felt. Together they breathed in the smell of different kinds of flowers and then closed their eyes and recalled the fragrance. They concentrated on the color of the sky and the feel of the breeze.

“Now we will store it all away,” he said, and mimed the act of corking a bottle.

They stayed in the basement a long time. Whenever the girl felt despondent, her father would say, “Pull out a memory from your bottle.” She later recalled, “Sometimes I’d take out a patch of blue sky, sometimes the scent of a rose, and always I felt better. Even after we came out of hiding, I used the memory bottle to sustain me through dark moments.”

In Psalm 77, when a man named Asaph was in tough times, he recalled how God came through for him in the past. “I will remember the deeds of the Lord,” he wrote. “I will remember your miracles of long ago.”

G. Campbell Morgan said, “What we do in the crisis always depends on whether we see the difficulties in the light of God, or God in the shadow of the difficulties.” When Asaph recalled God’s answered prayers in the past, it helped him see his current difficulties in the light of God.

This Sunday, look at Psalm 77 with us and uncork your own memory bottle! We’ll begin our worship service online and on campus at 10am.

--Tom

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Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

When You Meet the God of the Stories

Christianity is a religion of stories. Every week we come together at Hillcrest to tell stories – true stories of our spiritual ancestors. Other religions take the form of philosophical instruction or mystical allegories or ethical codes. But the Christian faith is a religion of stories. One man said that the earliest order of worship was probably something like, “Gather the folks, break the break, and tell the stories.”

When you become a believer, the Bible becomes your family scrapbook. These guys are your ancestors, spiritually speaking – Daniel in the lion’s den because he stayed faithful, Jonah in the belly of the whale because he refused to stay faithful, Joshua marching around Jericho, Zacchaeus up a tree because he wanted to see Jesus, the suffering woman who just wanted to touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak, Simon Peter denying Jesus on the morning of his arrest. These are our folks.

But then we come to a time when we become players in a story all our own. Maybe the story is like Daniel’s story, where we have to stay faithful to God and do the right thing even if it means sacrifice. Maybe the story is like Abraham’s story, where we have to step out in trust even when we can’t imagine how God is going to provide what he promised to give us. Maybe the story is like Moses’ story, where we have to take on some leadership or ministry even when we don’t feel worthy or capable. All our lives we’ve told each other these stories, and then one day we say:

“As we have heard,

so we have seen” (Psalm 48:8).

In other words, there comes a time when we experience what we’ve only read about. This Sunday we’re going to look at Psalm 48 and prepare ourselves for that time we meet the God of the Stories. We’ll begin our worship service online and on campus at 10am.

--Tom

Image Credit: Getty Images

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

Friends Who Help You Win

We’re hard-wired to glorify the solo hero. Whether it’s Zorro single-handedly rescuing his down-trodden community or John McClane terrorizing the terrorists by himself in Die Hard, we seem to be drawn to the Lone Ranger figures.

In the real world, though, it takes a team of heroes to accomplish anything of lasting value.

When you first read the story of King David in the Old Testament, you might think his story is another Lone Ranger story. David so dominates the Old Testament landscape that you might not immediately notice all the human help he received. That’s why 2 Samuel 23 is so important. As the writer of 2 Samuel drew his story of King David to a close, he celebrated David’s posse. That is, he highlighted the “Mighty Men” who made David’s success possible. When I read through the brief stories of David’s posse, I find some characteristics to honor in others -- and to develop in myself. These guys were brave when others ran away; they stood their ground no matter how exhausting the conflict; they were willing to sacrifice for the good of the community. Such characteristics helped David win his earthly battles.

Just as these men aided David in his physical battles, you need friends to help you in your spiritual battles. Life is spiritual struggle. We fight against our own rebellious internal inclinations, and we fight against a spiritual opponent who hates us precisely because God loves us. You need a posse for that kind of fight.

This Sunday, I’m going to highlight six characteristics of those who can help you win in life’s battles. It’s the third and final study in our series called “Friends for Life.” If you missed the last two sermons or want to review them, you can find them by clicking here.

So, come this Sunday and let’s learn what kind of friends we need to have and what kind of friends we need to be! We’ll begin our worship service online and on campus at 10am.

--Tom

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

Reaching Others with Others

I love the story in the Gospel of Mark where the four men bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus. Each one took a corner of the mat he lay on, and they carried him to the house where Jesus was teaching and healing people. When they saw the crowds spilling out the door, they carried their friend up to the roof and dug through the clay structure until they had an opening big enough. Then they used ropes to lower their friend right into the lap of Jesus! Verse 5 says, “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’”

Did you catch that? It was upon seeing their faith that Jesus healed their friend.

This Sunday we’ll look at Mark 2:1-12 and I’ll share four principles about the faith of these men that prompted Jesus to heal their friend. It’s the second study in our new series called “Friends for Life.” We began the series on Easter Sunday last weekend. If you missed it or want to review it, you can find it by clicking here. In last week’s lesson, I told you why you needed to build friendships that can build your faith. But friends don’t just build faith in you—they can also help you introduce the faith to nonbelievers you know and love! This Sunday, we’ll look at how to reach others with others.

This is where your Life Group can be very helpful. Hopefully, you’ve found a Life Group and you count the members of that group as friends. Your Life Group can work together with you to bring those you know into a relationship with Jesus. Your Life Group friends can pray for those you’re trying to reach, and they can model Christ for them, and they can seek to answer their questions and objections. It’s often that fruit comes only when evangelism is done within a circle of Christian friends.

So, come this Sunday and let’s learn how to reach others with others! We’ll begin our worship service online and on campus at 10am.

--Tom

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

Build Friendships That Build Hope

We need friendships. In Genesis, after each act of creation, we read, “God saw that it was good.” You see that phrase again and again until God said something was not good. He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”

We were designed to be with other people. When it comes to living the full life God intended, friendship isn’t a nice option but a necessary component. So, this Sunday I’ll begin a short series called “Friends for Life.”

Easter is a perfect day to begin a study like this. In one of the most important Bible passages about the Easter hope of resurrection, Paul says you need to make friends with those who have this hope.

When you turn to 1 Corinthians 15, you read Paul’s longest chapter on the resurrection. He talks about Christ’s Easter resurrection and our own future resurrection. And right in the middle of the chapter he says, “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character’” (1 Corinthians 15:33). In the context of the entire chapter, it was a warning against the influence of those who didn’t believe the resurrection.

So, it’s not enough to personally think right about the resurrection—we need to choose companions who think right about this, too. Paul was saying, “If those you choose as companions have a different understanding about the resurrection than you do, they’re going to have different goals and priorities and choices than you should have. And the more you’re influenced by them, the further and further away from the gospel you’re going to go.”

We must choose companions who help us maintain our hope in the resurrection.

This is an important place to start a series on improving our friendships. So, come begin this sermon series with us this Easter! We meet at 10am.

Here are some things you can do to help us prepare for the crowd we expect:

First: Arrive early. It will reduce congestion in the parking lot, the child check-in, and the hallways.

Second: Park away from the building. Leave lots of open spaces close to the building for visitors, seniors, parents with babies, and latecomers.

Third: When you enter the auditorium, move to the left and to the front before you sit down. Leave those pews in the back for visitors and latecomers.

--Tom

P.S., Don’t forget our Good Friday service! Our church will gather with five other congregations at the Anderson High School Performing Arts Center. Choose the 4pm service or the 6pm service. Click here for more information.

Image: Getty Images

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

After You Soar

In one of our favorite Bible verses, Isaiah made a great promise to those who hope in the Lord. Their strength will be renewed so that—

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not grow weary,

they will walk and not be faint.

You’ve probably read that verse many times, but have you ever wondered why Isaiah 40:31 is laid out in that order?

Soar. Run. Walk.

Doesn’t that seem, well, anti-climactic? Most of us would have reversed the order and presented it as a matter of increasing skill. We would have written:

They will learn to walk,

And then they will get a running start,

And then they will take off and soar like eagles.

But the order in which the verse is written it really is the order in which we need God’s power. 

You hear unwelcome news. Your husband comes in and says he doesn’t have a job anymore. The doctor looks over the lab results and says, “It’s cancer.” A relative calls us to break the news that a loved one has died. At first, even in the midst of tears, it’s almost as if we’re watching it happen to someone else. We even amaze ourselves at how calm we are, how decisive we are with our choices, how determined we are to overcome. What is that? We are soaring on wings like eagles. 

But fast-forward. Now it’s two months into the chemo, four months into unemployment, nine months into the grief. Very few of us are still soaring. It’s then we need strength to run, strength to walk, strength to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. God has promised us his provision for those times, too.

We need the kind of strength that enables us to endure over the long haul. In John 16:20-33, Jesus offered us a joy that can even survive grief and a peace that can even survive instability. Read that passage ahead of time and study it with the Hillcrest Family this Sunday at 10am!

--Tom

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

Finding the Finder

Three-year-old Joseph Leffler wandered off from home and disappeared in the vast forest outside Estacada, Oregon. A massive search began, but as Friday night gave way to Saturday, and Saturday passed into Sunday morning, worries intensified. How long could a three-year-old survive in the wild forest?

Then, just before noon on Sunday, little Joseph came out of the woods. He walked straight up to one of the searchers and stretched out his arms for her to pick him up.

A newspaper reported the good news under a headline in bold black letters: “Lost Boy Finds Searcher.”

I love that headline. It’s a perfect way to describe the beginning of a relationship with God. When we finally start reaching out to God, we discover that he’s been reaching out to us all along.

If you’re a nonbeliever, or you care about a nonbeliever, God is passionately pursuing people who need him. In John 16:7-11, Jesus said that as believers share the gospel, the Holy Spirit will convict nonbelievers. This should be a great encouragement. Maybe whenever you try to talk about your faith with someone, nothing seems to come of it. But this passage says that something is happening even if you can’t perceive it. As you dialogue with a nonbeliever, the Holy Spirit joins the conversation. He presses home the meaning and the worth of the truth we so imperfectly convey.

Now, does that mean everyone comes to belief? No. In a court of law, a person may receive a conviction but not have conviction. He may hear a judge declare him guilty but refuse to feel himself guilty. Sadly, its true in gospel work, too. But trust that whenever you talk to a friend or relative about your faith, there is a supernatural operator in that conversation who convicts the nonbeliever to reconsider his or her incorrect views. Knowing this should make us more diligent to share our faith and more confident in the outcome.

Go deeper into this truth with the Hillcrest Family this Sunday at 10am!

--Tom

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

When Opposition Comes

“You can be openly polyamorous, and people here will call you brave. You can put microdoses of LSD in your cereal, and people will call you a pioneer. But the one thing you cannot be is a Christian.”

That’s from an episode of Silicon Valley where Robert, the CEO of a tech company, had just presented his team to a potential client. With his characteristic tendency to make ad-lib rambles, he introduced one team member as a churchgoing Christian. Robert was later told by a colleague that he shouldn’t have done that: “It freaks people out.” But the Christian said at least now he could be open about his faith. “I’m out and I don’t ever have to go back to the closet again.”

Mike Judge is the creator of Silicon Valley. If you know anything about his other shows like Office Space and King of the Hill, you won’t be surprised at his use of absurd exaggerations.

But his absurd exaggerations often have a point.  

In a guest essay for the New York Times, Linda Kinstler wrote, “Tech is a stereotypically secular industry in which traditional belief systems are regarded as things to keep hidden away at all costs…. Many technologists regard traditional religions as sources of subjugation rather than enrichment.” She says traditional religion could contribute to the important ethical questions raised by advances in technology, but adherents face an uphill battle. Many in the industry would rather invent their own religions “than ascribe to the old ones, discarding thousands of years of humanistic reasoning and debate along the way.”

Suspicion of Christian faith isn’t limited to the tech industry, of course. Whatever field you’re in, you may find your faith is a liability for career advancement. What do you do then?

Jesus warned believers that loyalty to him would result in hostile reactions at times. When opposition comes, you’ll be helped by his words of instruction and encouragement in John 15:18-6:4. Read the passage and study it with the Hillcrest Family this Sunday at 10am! 

--Tom

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

How’s Your Friendship Quotient?

You spent 600 fewer hours with people outside your household in the last two years than you used to.  

That’s the finding of the Labor Department’s annual “American Time Use Survey.” Every year thousands of people are asked to track every minute of a single day. In 2020 and 2021, the survey revealed that the time we spent with people outside the household dropped by a full hour each day.

And what did we do with the time we used to spend with others outside the home? Mostly we just browsed online.

In their book, Veneer, Timothy Willard and Jason Locy wrote:

From our couch, we fade into the invisible, people devoid of tangible interaction, our real actions glossed over with pithier status updates, our pictures self-curated, our wall-posts filled with trite comments….We’ve fallen asleep in the land of handshakes and eye contact and walks on the beach and awakened in a world where humans look like products in an online shopping cart—downloadable, browse-able, clickable, even deleteable.... At the end of the day, we can close our relationships as we close our laptops, untouched and unmoved by the lives of others. (Emphasis added).

Does that describe you?

For decades, we’ve tested for a person’s IQ—their “Intelligence Quotient.” It’s a measurement of a person’s reasoning ability. More recently, researchers have discovered that an even more important appraisal is one’s EQ—their “Emotional Quotient.” If our Intelligence Quotient measures how well we think, our Emotional Quotient measures how resilient we are to change and stress. It’s important to measure these capacities, but I think it’s time we assessed another area: Our Friendship Quotient. We need to measure how well we relate to others.

Jesus gave us a way to do this. We’ll study his words in John 15:9-17 as we continue our series through John’s Gospel this Sunday. We’ve designated this Sunday as “Friend Day.” Forward this enewsletter to friends and invite them to come with you. You can also forward it as a reminder to friends you’ve already invited. See you at 10am! 

--Tom

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

How to Thrive on the Vine

In family-owned vineyards in the Texas Hill Country, we’ve seen vinedressers at work. Slowly, methodically, they fuss over each branch, cutting things off and cutting things back.

Cutting dead things off makes sense to us. Lifeless material can harbor disease or insects, so it has to be cut off. But if we know nothing of viticulture, we’re baffled why anyone would cut back living material. Even the plant seems to feel the loss, often “weeping” with sap until the pruning scars harden over.

But the vinedresser knows that it’s an essential step to optimize the quality and abundance of grapes. Think of it like plumbing. The twigs and branches that come off the main trunk are like a series of water pipes. By reducing the number of pipes that the water flows into, it increases water in the remaining pipes. The result is greater fruit.

Jesus intends us to be fruitful, and that requires pruning. In John 15, we see him on his way to Gethsemane, where he knew his betrayer was bringing soldiers to arrest him. Perhaps he passed by the Jerusalem Temple, and there he would have seen the ornate bas relief of grapevines that decorated the temple walls. If this is the setting for John 15, imagine him stopping and telling his men, “I want you to think of me like a vine and think of yourselves as the branches growing off the vine. Be prepared for the Divine Gardener to prune you so that you will be even more fruitful.”

We all go through affliction, hardship, and loss. To those who think we’re alone in the universe, life’s disappointments seem pointless and unbearable. But we’re not on our own. God carefully works even in hard times to bring out the very best in you. Isn’t it a comfort to know that God can bring some meaning to it? Isn’t it reassuring to know that a good and sovereign vinedresser can make you more fruitful as a result of it?

That’s what we’ll study as we continue our series through John’s Gospel this Sunday. See you at 10am! 

--Tom

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

Here to Help

Maybe you recall the story of Derek Redmond. He competed in the 1992 Olympic Summer Games in Barcelona. As the semifinal 400 began, Redmond raced ahead of all the others. But just 175 meters away from finishing, suddenly Derek felt a pop in his right hamstring and his speed slowed. He hopped on one leg, desperately trying to continue the race, but he finally fell to the track.

Then something amazing happened. Derek’s father, Jim, had been sitting up in the grandstands to watch his son run. When Derek fell, Jim ran down the steps of the stadium and pushed by two security guards to get out on the track. Jim reached his son, wrapped his arm around his waist, and said, “I’m here, son. We’ll finish together.”

The entire stadium cried and cheered as father and son completed the race.

This is a great picture of God’s relationship to us. Some people think that we’re alone in this life. They think that if God exists at all, he must be way up in the grandstands watching us from a distance. But there’s more to the picture. As we run our race, God the Father is indeed above us, but God the Son is beside us, and God the Spirit is within us. The triune God is intimately involved with our lives. Like Jim Redmond with his son, Derek, God runs with us, encouraging us and holding us up.

Drop into the Bible on almost any page and you’ll see this truth, but it shows up dramatically in the second half of John 14. In verses 15-31, Jesus told his apostles that when he left this earth he would ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit to be within us. The Holy Spirit is how we experience God in the present tense! We’ll study these verses together this Sunday at Hillcrest at 10am.

Trust God’s close presence with you as you run your race today!

--Tom

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

Untrouble Your Heart

Chapman University releases their “Survey of American Fears” each year. In their most recent polling, 48 percent of Americans said they were “afraid” or “very afraid” of the nation becoming involved in another world war. I imagine that has increased recently. About the same percentage said they worried about institutions tracking personal data. Only about 44 percent worried about identity theft, but “not having enough money for the future” keeps 49 percent of Americans up at night. Rising to the top ten for the first time since the study began: “economic/financial collapse.” Given the events of the last few years, it’s not surprising that the top five fears Americans reported included “corrupt government officials,” “a loved one contracting COVID,” and “widespread civil unrest.”

We’ve all felt anxiety over something that might happen, and we’ve known anger or grief over something that has happened. Sometimes those emotions can seem uncontrollable. What have you learned to do to regain control of your feelings? Do you count to ten, or take a walk, or listen to praise music, or exercise? Do you do “centering exercises” like focus on your breathing?

All good things. But I suggest we should reflect on the words of Jesus in John 14. He says in verse 1, “Don’t let your heart be troubled.” Note the two words that begin the sentence: “Don’t let.” That implies that we can take the reins over our emotions. We don’t always have control of our circumstances, but we can control how we react to them. We have it within our power to untrouble our hearts.

Jesus goes on to remind us of three realities. If we’ll meditate on them, we’ll be comforted. He talks about his Father’s house (verses 1-4), his Father’s company (verses 5-11), and his Father’s mission (verses 12-14). Whenever you feel as if the walls are closing in and there’s no way out, these are things to remember.

Read John 14:1-14 now, and then let’s study it together this Sunday. Join us on campus or online at 10am!

--Tom

Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

Before You Fall

John Calvin opened his most famous book with this line: “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves.”

The opposite must then be true: Foolish and destructive choices happen when we don’t really know God or ourselves.

In the second half of John 13, Jesus predicted that two of his closest followers were about to fail in colossal ways. One failed because he didn’t ever really know Jesus, and one failed because he didn’t really know himself.

Judas didn’t really know Jesus. He wanted Jesus to be a certain kind of Messiah and he willingly followed him until it was clear Jesus wasn’t going to meet his terms. It was then that he decided to get out, while collecting what he could for betraying Jesus to the authorities

People today can join in with Jesus like Judas did. They’ll consider Jesus as a means to an end. But they abandon him when he doesn’t act like they expect him to act, or when they discover Jesus taught something they don’t like, or when the prayers for health and wealth aren’t answered.

If Judas failed because he didn’t really know Jesus, Simon Peter failed because he didn’t really know himself. He swore he would never abandon Jesus, but he did just a few hours later. Three times, in fact.

The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:12, “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” It's only when we know ourselves to be weak and vulnerable to spiritual failure that we’ll take steps to avoid it. We’ll depend on God in prayer, we’ll ask our spiritual brothers and sisters for help, and we’ll avoid situations that could lead to our defeat.

We’ll study the failures of Judas and Peter this Sunday in hopes that we won’t repeat them. Read John 13:18-38 ahead of time, and then join us on campus or online at 10am!

--Tom

Tom serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

Making Me

The Apostles Creed is an ancient statement of faith recited by millions around the world and down through the centuries. The words transcend denominational differences and cultural distinctions to summarize what believers have always embraced. The late singer-songwriter, Rich Mullins, set the Apostles Creed to music in his award-winning song, “Creed.” He occasionally broke into the flow of the ancient lines to sing—

I did not make it

It is making me.

I like that line. What makes you? We all operate out of a set of assumptions about the way the world is, such as:

“If I do good things, then good things will happen to me.” 

“The only person you can count on is yourself.”

“Life is a dressing room for eternity.”

“God likes me.”

“God hates me.”

We make our decisions and respond to circumstances out of the assumptions we hold. As Mullins sang, what we believe makes us what we are. The Anchor Course will help you examine the beliefs that drive your life. It begins this Sunday.

The Anchor Course is a walk through the Apostles Creed. According to the Bible, one of the characteristics of the first believers was that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42). So, the best way to discuss Christian faith with each other is to organize it around what the apostles taught. In the Anchor Course, the points of the Creed will serve as touchstones for conversations over the basics of what Christ-followers believe.

When I teach the Course, I confess I’m not neutral in my hopes of where such an inspection will lead you. If you are exploring Christianity, I pray you will trade in your way of looking at the world for the way Jesus looked at things. If you are already committed to Christ, I hope that your time in the Course will help you operate more consistently out of the beliefs you hold.  I have yet to meet a believer who was a “finished product.” Mullins said the Creed was making him, and that implies a work still underway.

To find out more about the Anchor Course and to register for the on-campus study, click here.

--Tom

Tom serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.

“I Don’t Want There to Be a God”

Philosophy professor, Thomas Nagel, wrote: “I want atheism to be true, and I am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

It’s a remarkable statement. Some people think that the only reason anyone could believe in Christianity is because of an emotional need for it to be true. They ignore the fact that people also disbelieve Christianity because of an emotional need for it not to be true. All of us have both rational and emotional reasons for whatever view we hold.

Have you ever thought, “How can Christianity really be true if so few people believe it?” One of the reasons the Gospel of John was written was to deal with this very issue. In our study through the Gospel of John, we reach this sad line in John 12:37, “Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him.” Like the rest of the apostles, John was Jewish, and most Christians were of Jewish background. But in his day, many who were attracted to the story of Jesus and many who were new to the faith had begun to ask, “If Jesus is who he claimed to be, then why do so few believe it? Why do so few of our most influential leaders believe it?”

In John 12:34-50, he hits that issue head-on. And one thing we learn from those verses is that many people disbelieve in Christianity not because it’s not true but because they don’t want it to be true. It’s not a matter of the intellect but the will. At bottom, it’s not a rational question but a moral one. Let’s study this passage on Sunday. Join us on campus or online at 10am!

--Tom

Tom serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas.  His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.