2009 changed everything for me. I went through a terribly painful church transition and the death of my father. C.S. Lewis said that pain is God’s megaphone to wake us up. During that season of ache, God woke me up to the size and scope of his amazing grace and I’ve never been the same. I learned that his grace is sufficient in brand new, bright, and liberating ways. I learned in my desperation just how big God’s deliverance truly is. I learned, at a functional level, that everything I need in Christ I already possess.
As I traveled and shared the message that Jesus + Nothing = Everything and that the gospel is the good news that because Jesus was strong for you, you’re free to be weak; because Jesus was extraordinary, you’re free to be ordinary; because Jesus succeeded for you, you’re free to fail; because Jesus won for you, you’re free to lose–I always got two questions:
Is this true?And if it is, why have I been in church my whole life and never heard this before?
I knew that I wasn’t saying anything new. It just seemed so new to so many because it had been lost for so long amidst a moralistic, narcissistic, “do more, try harder”, caricature of the Christian faith that has been prevalent for so long. What I kept hearing from people all over the world was that so many pulpits consistently preach the Christian and not the Christ and as a result many have been burdened by the false idea that the focus of the Christian faith is the life of the Christian. I knew something had to be done.
So…LIBERATE was born.
The mission of LIBERATE is to announce (and then announce again and again) the liberating word of the gospel to a wounded and worn out world, hoping that the burdened and burnt out, the Christian and the non-Christian, will hear and rest in the freedom that Jesus came, died, and lives to give. Through the demand of his law, God confronts and condemns people in their bondage and sin; through the declaration of his gospel, God comforts and forgives people with the liberating love of Jesus Christ. We want sufferers to hear these “two words” (law and gospel) so they can believe the promise that frees us from our past of guilt and shame; frees us from the present bondage of bitterness, insecurity, self-reliance, and fear; and frees us for the joy of worshiping God and serving our neighbor.
We plan to distribute this message through an annual conference (our first one was last February–you can read about it here), books, music, sermons, curriculum, and a very well-resourced website.
LIBERATE online is a collection of resources (sermons, blog posts, conference talks, testimonies, conversations, and more) that attempt to say one thing in fresh and diverse ways: Jesus came to set the captives free (Luke 4:18). My hope and prayer is that this website will be a place where you can hear and believe the good news that the God who rightly condemns sinners according to his law, liberates sinners with the forgiving love of his gospel. We pray that it becomes a catalytic platform for serious thinking about “a more radical gospel.”
Welcome to LIBERATE!
Help us spread the raging fire of freedom…
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