The Supremacy of Christ

By Steve DeWitt

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:15–20 ESV).

Why Was This Necessary?

If Christ was already supreme in eternity past, what did his actions for us do to magnify his supremacy?

Whenever we talk about the Trinity, many people check out and say, I can’t understand it all so I don’t want to think about it. Yet we don’t do that with other things. We don’t look at the ocean and say, because I can’t see all of it, I won’t enjoy any of it. Or if I can’t see all the sky I won’t enjoy the sunset. Can we understand all the mysteries of the Trinity or trinitarian purposes? No. But there is so much that we can see, and it is beautiful. Here is one dimension God allows us to see and understand.

What was pre-incarnation like for Christ? Glory. Infinite glory emanating from him. His character was absolutely perfect in every way. However, Christ had glories or attributes to his character that were known only to the Father and had never had an opportunity to be expressed or worshiped.

• The depth of his love had never been displayed as there had never been enemies to love

• The extent of his obedience had never been known because there was no context where he chose to suffer in his obedience.

• His power and creative imagination had not had an opportunity to be seen like a master painter without a canvas or brush

• His mercy – there were never people who deserved one thing and got another

• His compassion for the pain and suffering of others

• His wisdom and teaching

• His capacity for friendship and relationship even with those infinitely less than he

“So that in everything he might have the supremacy” (v. 18 NIV). So why was all of this necessary? Why all of creation and all of salvation and the saga of the billions of people who have ever lived and all the triumphs and tragedies of human history? Why was all this done? So that the Son would be glorified in all of his perfections and for all his glorious beauty.

So, God the Father (verse 9), acting according to the mystery of his will, purposed in Christ to display the “firstness” of Christ, his preeminence. His supremacy.

This means Christ isn’t worth more on the other side of his resurrection or even after his second coming; he had always been the infinitely valuable Son of God. But his worth and glory was now displayed in a new and beautiful way for which he can be praised.

It’s like The Antique Road Show. You’ve seen this. People bring something that’s been laying around in their attic. They dust it off and clean it up. They shine the spotlights on it, and they get the experts there and they examine the detail of the painting or embroidery and they declare, “This piece is worth $30,000!” Everybody oohs and aahs and heads for their attic to see what might be up there.

Was that antique worth more after the appraisal? No. It was already valuable in the attic. For years that thing had sat in their attic and been valuable. It wasn’t suddenly more valuable when the appraiser declares its worth than it was a few hours before in the attic. It’s just that now it is on display before the world as being a treasure.

The incarnation was God bringing the Son out of the attic. His miracles and teaching and life were the Father fixing his lights on the Son. And the cross was God dusting off the Son and showing him to the world for how beautiful he had always been. To be admired and seen in all of his glory. And now we ooh and ahh at him. And all of it was done for the praise of his glory, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

© 2020 by Steve DeWitt. You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author, (2) any modifications are clearly marked, (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, (4) you include Bethel’s website address (www.bethelweb.org) on the copied resource.

To hear the message of this excerpt in its entirety, click here

© 2020 by Steve DeWitt. You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author, (2) any modifications are clearly marked, (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, (4) you include The Journey (theJourney.fm) or Bethel Church (www.bethelweb.org) website address on the copied resource.

Steve DeWitt is senior pastor of Bethel Church in Northwest Indiana, Founder and Teaching Pastor for the media/radio ministry The Journey, and a Council member of The Gospel Coalition. He is also the author of Eyes Wide Open: Enjoying God in Everything. He and his wife, Jennifer, have two girls.

Freedom and Life in the Holy Spirit

By Steve DeWitt

Freedom and Life in the Holy Spirit

“For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” (Romans 8:6 ESV)

Here are two motivations with two very different results. The flesh leads to death. Yes, physical death, but even in life the flesh-led life is a kind of dying. Death is separation and distortion of who we were made to be. Sin takes us further and further from God’s good purposes and blessings. Sin is a long path away from God.

I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures of aging rock stars. They don’t look good. Drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll hollow out your life. The local paper posts pictures of recent arrests. Theft, domestic violence, drugs, etc. The people in those photos look terrible. Why? Sin is a journey further and further from ourselves made in the image of God.

But the Spirit-led life is the opposite. It draws us closer to God. It renews our humanity. It resurrects us to who we were made to be and directs our lives in the direction of spiritual priorities.

Paul isn’t exhorting Christians to live by the Spirit (although he does elsewhere). What he is saying in Romans 8 is that true Christians do. Why? We’ve been set free by God. We have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit. God is actively doing a work in our lives. He set us free in justification and he is in the process of setting us free from all the sinful ways of thinking and living. As Stott points out, “Thus God justifies us through his Son and sanctifies us through his Spirit.”[1]

This new life is by the Holy Spirit. Without the Spirit, we can neither understand the gospel nor live it out. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

The story is told of famous British politicians William Wilberforce and William Pitt. In the decades following the American Revolution, they were close friends. It was quite a power friendship as today both have statues in their honor in Westminster Abbey. Pitt was Prime Minister of Britain at age 24. Wilberforce was a devoted Christian. Pitt was a cultural Christian. Wilberforce had a preacher he desperately wanted Pitt to hear. Pitt finally went with him. The whole sermon Wilberforce basked in the truth. When it was done, Pitt said to Wilberforce, “You know Wilberforce, I had not the slightest idea what that man has been talking about.”

Perhaps you are William Pitt today. None of this makes any sense. It certainly doesn’t thrill you nor does it interest you. Why? Has God the Holy Spirit taken a hold of the core of your life? Is your life separation from God or movement toward God? Death or life and peace?

Without the Holy Spirit, the gospel doesn’t do anything.

A few weeks ago, on one of these really cold nights, Jennifer called me. She was by the mall on Highway 30. She said, “The van’s battery is dead. It won’t turn over at all.” OK. I said, “We have jumper cables in the van, could anyone give you a jump?” A couple was walking past, and she asked them to help. They said yes. She called me back, “It still isn’t working.” OK. I gathered the daughters and we headed up there confident. No problem. I’m the husband. I got this. I pulled our car up, hooked up the cables. Nothing. We let it charge. It’s getting dark. Still nothing. Did I mention it was cold out? I said, “I think we need to go to AutoZone and get a new battery.” So, we did.

The manager said, “Before you buy a new battery, how about I look at it?” Now that’s customer service. I’m now a big fan of AutoZone on Highway 30. He drove over and hooked up the cables. Gave it a try. Nothing. Dead. He took our battery out and we went back to the store. Their computers were down, and they said, “You have to pay cash.” Who has $130 cash on them? Not us. What do you do? I called an elder in our church who brought the money up. Bought the new battery. The manager went with us back to our van. Hooked it up. Guess what happened? It immediately turned over and started.

I was so moved by the manager’s help I offered him some of the elder’s money as a thank you. He declined. So, let’s all do business with AutoZone on 30 by the mall. Great people.

What’s the point? The unbeliever is the van with a dead battery. All our attempts to make it work couldn’t make it work. You can have Billy Graham on the TV 24/7, put verses up all around the house, and keep the car radio on Moody. The battery is totally dead. Humans can’t jump start the dead human heart.

But God can. How did God set us free? He didn’t try to resuscitate our old nature. He didn’t try to energize our flesh and make it go. That’s why William Pitt had no idea what the preacher was talking about and explains why you may have no idea what I am talking about.

What’s needed? You need a new battery. You need a new heart. You need what only God can give you. You need the Holy Spirit who gives life and brings peace. Repent of your sin and trust in Jesus. When you do, you get a new battery. The core of our lives is directionally changed from flesh and self and sin toward God and truly a whole new life. Where are you today?

You may say, I’m really not sure. Galatians is another letter by Paul which helpfully shows the difference between a life directionally led by the flesh and a life directionally led by the Spirit.

Get this, Paul is not urging unbelievers to try and show these fruits in their lives. It won’t happen! It would be like me urging my van to start with a dead battery.

This passage is both an explanation and an exhortation for sinners to turn in faith to Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit. The net effect is a Spirit-led life whose ongoing reality is life and peace.

“Deliverance from the tyranny of sin, effected through the atoning work of Christ, as an experienced ongoing reality, is the work of the indwelling, life-giving Spirit.”[2] (Gordon Fee)

Freedom. Freedom not to sin. Freedom not to live motivated by sin but by Spirit. One kills. The other gives life. One empties my humanity. The other restores and renews. Indwelling sin or indwelling Spirit? Which is the controlling principle of your life?

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

[1] John Stott, The Message of Romans, p. 219.

[2] Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul, p. 528.

To hear the message of this excerpt in its entirety, click here

© 2020 by Steve DeWitt. You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author, (2) any modifications are clearly marked, (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, (4) you include The Journey (theJourney.fm) or Bethel Church (www.bethelweb.org) website address on the copied resource.

Steve DeWitt is senior pastor of Bethel Church in Northwest Indiana, Founder and Teaching Pastor for the media/radio ministry The Journey, and a Council member of The Gospel Coalition. He is also the author of Eyes Wide Open: Enjoying God in Everything. He and his wife, Jennifer, have two girls.

When We’ve Been Wronged

By Steve DeWitt

Don’t Seek Vengeance; Do be Kind to Your Enemy

“Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:17–21 ESV).

“Heap burning coals on their head.” It is debated what this means, but in context it must mean that kindness instead of vengeance exposes the other person’s hatred even more starkly. This may lead them to shame or remorse and even reconciliation.

Two quick examples. I have counseled brokenhearted women whose boyfriend broke up with them to be nothing but kind. If instead she turns into a crazy woman and chooses to slander him to anyone who will listen, sends him hate texts, and threatens to sue him, he lays in bed and thinks, I made the greatest decision of my life. If she is kind to him, kind to his mother, and thanks him for the time they had together, he lays in bed every night and thinks, I have made the worst decision of my life. Burning coals.

I have a dear friend who had a key staff member that totally stabbed him in the back. They had a major falling out. It wasn’t pretty. Sometime later my friend took his family to a nice restaurant in the area. A little later this former staff member came in with his family and sat in another part of the same restaurant. My friend finished his meal. He paid for his meal and also quietly paid for the former staff member’s meal and left. What did that former staff member think as he realized the generous kindness from his detractor?

That is the power of loving our enemies. And isn’t this how God has treated us? Before you say, it’s wrong to not repay evil for evil, was God wrong when he loved us, his enemies? Was God weak when he gave Jesus hell instead of us? Our whole faith is built on God NOT repaying evil for evil. Instead, he met our spiritual hunger with the gospel of Jesus. He quenched our spiritual thirst with eternal water of eternal life.

How did God overcome evil? He overcame evil with the infinite good of his sovereign grace and sovereign love given freely to us by faith in Jesus.

What situation might God be calling you to apply this to this week? Who has wronged you that you could extend kindness to? Why don’t you pray about that and ask God what he would have you do?

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

© 2020 by Steve DeWitt. You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author, (2) any modifications are clearly marked, (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, (4) you include Bethel’s website address (www.bethelweb.org) on the copied resource.

To hear the message of this excerpt in its entirety, click here

© 2020 by Steve DeWitt. You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author, (2) any modifications are clearly marked, (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, (4) you include The Journey (theJourney.fm) or Bethel Church (www.bethelweb.org) website address on the copied resource.

Steve DeWitt is senior pastor of Bethel Church in Northwest Indiana, Founder and Teaching Pastor for the media/radio ministry The Journey, and a Council member of The Gospel Coalition. He is also the author of Eyes Wide Open: Enjoying God in Everything. He and his wife, Jennifer, have two girls.

Loneliness Has Been My Faithful Friend

By Steve DeWitt

While most will remember this year for a virus, many also will remember the emotional pandemic of isolation and social distancing. The effect in the human heart is an emotion we call loneliness. In one recent survey, 44 percent of respondents said they are now lonelier than they’ve ever been. With all the closures, cancellations, and stay-home orders, it’s no wonder why.

Nine years ago, I was in my early forties, and still single. As a senior pastor in a large church, my life was a swirl of people. And yet I went home to a quiet house every night. I was not only lonely in a crowd, but lonely while pastoring a crowd. At the time, I wrote an article about what years of unwanted loneliness were teaching me about God. I heard from many readers who resonated with my experience. One reader was a single woman in Kansas City. We had mutual friends who had sent her the article. A year later, we married.

This past decade has allowed me to consider loneliness more through my long-term singleness, but now also through my years of marriage and parenting. Am I still lonely? Yes, and I’m glad that I am.

Glad to Be Lonely

You’re glad you still feel lonely? Yes. What a relief to find I am made for much more than a wife and children. This may seem like inverted thinking, but then again Jesus often does that when he teaches, inverting our normal human perspective. Growing in our faith is largely the art of renewing and re-forming life, values, and experiences as God intended them.

This brings us to the pandemic of human loneliness. Clearly, loneliness is a result of sin. Adam and Eve were made for perfect harmony with God and each other. Sin brought alienation from both. When God asked Adam, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9), what Adam sensed inside was a painful chasm and response: “God, where are you?” Like him, we often don’t know just how much we have till it’s gone. Adam felt a painful surge of vertical emotional emptiness; harmony with God was gone. The Adam and Eve marital blame game quickly revealed horizontal harmony had also vanished (Genesis 3:12–13).

Sin created loneliness, but we must realize loneliness itself isn’t a sin. In fact, loneliness can be a divine grace. Rightly understood, it can be both our friend and our guide.

Valley of Loneliness

Wisdom requires us to view loneliness inversely and respond to it rightly. For the couple of decades I lived alone, my loneliness seemed not like a friend, but like an enemy. It served to remind me of my past failures in relationships — relationships I had assumed would take this painful feeling away. Therein lies the lurking danger of loneliness: if it’s not your friend, it is likely a destructive adversary in your life. We all know people whose self-isolation is their coping mechanism for either the absence of relationships or the agony of relationships (Proverbs 18:1). For them, loneliness becomes a kind of canyon to live in instead of a valley to walk through.

While loneliness is easy to see in society’s recluses, most of us live in a general relational malaise hoping someone comes to take our loneliness away. To paraphrase Henry David Thoreau, most people live lives of quiet desperation. With this pandemic, the quiet desperation in most homes is an even more lonely desperation.

How to Receive Loneliness

Loneliness is part of the inner architecture of our image-bearing. It acts like sensors in our car to tell us when something is missing — oil in the engine or air in the tires. We were made for God and for community with each other.

In this fallen creation, no human relationship will satisfy that longing fully. Our ability to be satisfied in God fully is impossible as well. Because of indwelling sin, our salvation is incomplete as we await glorified bodies and the fullness of joy in God’s presence (Psalm 16:11; 21:1). Till then, no matter our marital status, our circle of friends, our closeness with children and grandchildren, we will always be somehow lonely. My appeal as someone who has lived a long time both single and married, without children and with them, with a healthy church community and dear friends, is to see loneliness in this life as a kind of gift from God.

As hunger urges us to eat and thirst drives us to drink, loneliness presses us to a deeper and more authentic relationship with God and others. It drives us out of the gravitational pull of self-living toward relational self-giving. Rather than resenting loneliness, it will bless us if we see it as a God-placed incentive for human flourishing (Acts 20:35).

If I could talk to my old single self enduring another holiday alone at home, I would say, “You are putting too much hope in what a wife and family can provide.” I’m happily married. I love being a dad. But when we think our longings will be met if we only had this person or that relationship, we will respond to loneliness with destructive isolation and disappointment.

Let Pain Motivate You

Loneliness hurts. God embedded prickly reminders of how wonderful harmony with God and others is. The pain is a measure of the loss. Not all pain is bad. When I work out, the pain tells me I’m doing something good for me. It’s good pain. Loneliness can be good pain if I construe it rightly. What does that look like?

Loneliness creates internal energy. I can use that energy to brood in or resent my loneliness. Or I can take that energy and intentionally reach out with it. This requires discipline and self-control as my flesh urges self-destructive responses. Christians are blessed, by union with Christ and the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, to resist the flesh’s desire to weaponize loneliness (Romans 6:4; Galatians 5:16–17).

We really can make loneliness a weapon for positive change in our lives.

Turn Loneliness into Expectation

Over many years of singleness, I would secretly assume that I felt this internal pain because I was alone. I eventually realized there is often a big difference between being alone and being lonely.

Alone is the mathematical reality of one with no plus. When you are alone and lonely, it is easy to believe that a spouse, or family, or church family will drive loneliness away. My experience, however, echoes Scripture’s teaching that 1 + 1 ≠ the absence of loneliness. The common graces of marriage, family, sex, and children are very helpful in the daily struggle. Yet even the best moments of marriage and parenting and friendship always lack something; the moment of harmony passes too quickly. The warm feelings of care slip away. Human relationships ebb and flow. Even at their best, we sense that something is missing.

For this, we should rejoice. We should be glad to realize that the best of this life leaves us wanting something more, longer, and better. As wonderful as these earthly gifts are, the fact that they don’t satisfy makes God’s promises to fully satisfy us forever even more astounding. It means our joy in him and each other will be better, deeper, and yes, happier (Philippians 1:23). Every loneliness on earth is an internal confirmation that our greatest relational joys lie ahead of us. Absence should make the heart look forward.

This doesn’t blunt the pain of loneliness, but it does assure us that this pain is part of the fleeting and temporary world that is passing away (1 Peter 1:24–25). Our future is completely free of loneliness and filled with relational fullness far beyond what we can imagine. The next time loneliness shows up, thank God that your loneliness powerfully reminds you of the glory of what lies ahead for you with him.

This article by Steve DeWitt was originally published on desiringgod.org on May 17, 2020

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

© 2020 by Steve DeWitt. You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author, (2) any modifications are clearly marked, (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, (4) you include The Journey (theJourney.fm) or Bethel Church (www.bethelweb.org) website address on the copied resource.

Steve DeWitt is senior pastor of Bethel Church in Northwest Indiana, Founder and Teaching Pastor for the media/radio ministry The Journey, and a Council member of The Gospel Coalition. He is also the author of Eyes Wide Open: Enjoying God in Everything. He and his wife, Jennifer, have two girls.

The Key to Spiritual Gifts: Use Them!

By Steve DeWitt

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.” (Romans 12:3–8 ESV)

The Purpose of Spiritual Gifts is Blessing and Serving Others in the Church 

• “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” (1 Corinthians 12:7)

• “To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:12)

1 Corinthians 13 reminds us that incredible spiritual giftedness without love means nothing. Even if I have oratory equal to the ability of angels or if I cast out demons or move mountains, if I don’t have agape love as a quality in my character, I gain nothing. Love is the quintessential Christian quality. So, don’t be too impressed by spiritual gifts you see in others; that gift was given to them by the Holy Spirit. Be impressed by love, joy, and peace and strive to make this part of your life as well.

Here is an incredible truth:

Every Christian has a Spiritual Gift or Several Spiritual Gifts

You may be thinking, I must have been at the end of the line and God ran out of gifts because I don’t think I have one. Not only do you have one, you likely have several. When you think about it, it’s incredibly exciting. God is actively empowering his people to fulfill his mission and giving us the enablements we need.

So Christian, hear this, you have at least one Spirit-granted, God-empowered gifting. God’s gifts are God’s call, which means he has a purpose for every one of us. This means every member of the church is critically important and the diversity of gifts tells us that no one person is too important. Pastor Steve, then what should I do?

“Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.” (Romans 12:6, emphasis added)

The emphasis in Scripture is surprisingly not on how to discover your spiritual gift, but on the necessity of using your spiritual gift. Why would that be?

In days gone by, discovering your spiritual gift was a bigger deal in local churches. There were spiritual gift surveys and lots of emphasis on finding your spiritual gift. Yet, the Bible gives no guidelines on how to do so. It just urges us to use them.

I take from this that discovering your spiritual gift is a lot like many things in life—you figure it out as you go. Author Kevin DeYoung summarizes this with his book title, Just Do Something!As we do something, as we serve, as we try this and that, there will be some categories we are drawn to. Areas where our service seems effective. Other church members will notice and tell you, that was great! Wow, you’re really good at that! 

Do something. Get the wagon moving and let God steer it. As God blesses, take that as the yellow brick road. It likely will bless you in doing it, but don’t take your personal enjoyment of it as a key indicator. I’ve had too many church members strangely enjoy things they are not good at. Spiritual gifts bless, equip, and sustain others.

One final word here because some of you may feel motivated but still unsure of a direction to serve. This might give you some indication of your gifting. Here we are in this extraordinary time of quarantine. What about the community life of our church are you missing the most? I can’t wait to get back to _____________. What you are missing might be your gifting.

What are you doing the most these days? Think in spiritual categories. Eating Cheetos is not a spiritual gift. What has emerged in you through all this? How are you serving others? For some it’s words and speech. You are calling people. Praying with people. Writing notes of encouragement. Blogging. You are serving with words. Others, you haven’t called and prayed with anyone, but you’ve organized meals down the whole block. You’ve mowed the old lady’s lawn next door and came home with a smile on your face. In times of crisis, our giftings can shine through.

As you serve, your gifts will become evident. If you wait to do anything until you know how God has gifted you, you will wait a long, long time.

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

© 2020 by Steve DeWitt. You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author, (2) any modifications are clearly marked, (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, (4) you include the Journey (theJourney.fm) or Bethel Church (www.bethelweb.org) website address on the copied resource.

To hear the message of this excerpt in its entirety, click here

Steve DeWitt is senior pastor of Bethel Church in Northwest Indiana, Founder and Teaching Pastor for the media/radio ministry The Journey, and a Council member of The Gospel Coalition. He is also the author of Eyes Wide Open: Enjoying God in Everything. He and his wife, Jennifer, have two girls.

Steve DeWitt: Responding to COVID-19

Written by: Steve DeWitt

Dear Friends

   I am writing to you in these tumultuous times. The coronavirus is dominating the news, the stock market, the government, and our community. Over the past two weeks, this has been largely a debate about whether the virus was going to hit the US or not, and if so, how severe. While this continues to be debated, what isn’t debatable is that it is here, and now it is a question of severity of impact.
   Now, perhaps more than ever, we must press into our faith and the unchanging promises of God. Nothing, and I repeat, nothing has changed! God is still on his throne. The gospel is God’s promise of eternal salvation for all who believe in his Son. All God’s promises are as true and alive now as they have ever been.
   What is different is that the world around us is shaking. Here is our opportunity to show an unshakeable faith in our unshakeable God. In Hebrews 6:18-19 we read:
“We who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” (Hebrews 6:18b–19a ESV)
   The image of an anchor firmly secured to a rock is to steady us in the storms of life. Anchors aren’t tested in calm seas but in stormy seas. What an assurance it is that we are held fast in eternal promises made by an unchanging God to us.
So, my dear friends, steady as she goes. God’s got this. These may be the best days of ministry we have ever had. I hope so.

All My Love,

Pastor Steve

Steve DeWitt is senior pastor of Bethel Church in Northwest Indiana, Founder and Teaching Pastor for the media/radio ministry The Journey, and a Council member of The Gospel Coalition. He is also the author of Eyes Wide Open: Enjoying God in Everything. He and his wife, Jennifer, have two girls.