Javalujah with Jim

06/04/2026

This is a good, honest and transparent view of where the SBC actually is….

The Slow-Motion Collapse of America’s Largest Protestant Denomination

05/29/2026

What a great confession from Tullian….

Evangelical culture has become so insulated that it now exposes how massively detached from reality it really is.

From Al Mohler arguing that a female church staff member discussing a sermon on a podcast is “functioning as a pastor” and therefore “unbiblical,” to a Ligonier conference panel spending extended time discussing whether a Calvinist should marry a non-Calvinist (I’m not kidding!), the sheer energy poured into this kind of microscopic insider minutiae reveals just how badly much of church culture has lost the plot.

And this isn’t just harmless theological nerdiness anymore. It’s blindness. It’s pompous self-indulgence. It’s tribal obsession masquerading as faithfulness. They sit on their stages or behind their microphones discussing issues they insist are of vital importance, while remaining untouched by the everyday reality and actual lives of real people in real trenches. It’s the luxury of people so cocooned inside a religious subculture that they’ve forgotten how devastated and desperate most actual human beings are. And they don’t care. To them, that’s just background noise beneath their doctrinal and moral performances.

And I say that as someone who used to live inside, and participate in, that world. I lived behind the curtain.

Until my scandal got me thrown out.

Honestly, getting pushed outside the bubble exposed how profoundly out of touch the bubble really was. While church people obsessed over niche doctrinal turf wars, celebrity pastor drama, and endless theological boundary-policing, people outside the bubble were drowning in addiction, shame, anxiety, loneliness, depression, fractured families, fear, and despair.

Eleven years after my crash—the fallout, the humiliation, the bloodbath I caused, the long road of amend making and recovery—I can honestly say this: getting canceled by the Christian subculture was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

My darkest exile became my brightest grace.

In the wreckage, I found freedom. I found people who bleed out loud. People who tell the truth about themselves even when it’s ugly. Outside the sanitized bubble of Christian culture, I found addicts, failures, misfits, and doubters. And they were real—raw, honest, self-aware, unimpressed by religious performance and allergic to pious platitudes.

It’s obvious what some of these guys need to do: spend meaningful time with people outside their religious, sub-cultural echo chambers. Sit with struggling people. Listen to stories that aren’t sanitized or polished. Put their hands in the real dirt. Go to recovery meetings and just listen for a while—not to fix, but to learn. Recovery circles have a way of reintroducing you to reality, and to what actually matters most.

Those are my people now.

And I’m never going back.

I may have lost my place in the system…but I found my heart and soul.

05/26/2026

A great word from Tullian…

One of the more common criticisms I get about my sermons, posts, and books is this:

“Why do you always talk about grace? When will you ever get around to instructing people on how to live holy and godly lives?”

And my answer is pretty simple. Never.

Think about it: Do we really need more instruction about the fact that stealing, selfishness, jealousy, lust, resentment, pride, addiction, dishonesty, and bitterness are wrong?

Or is it that, more often than not, the issue isn’t awareness but the inability to break free from what we already know is unraveling us?

The problem isn’t information.

The problem is that even knowing better, we still can’t seem to shake these things consistently.

That’s why I don’t spend my time telling people to “try harder,” “do better,” or “clean themselves up.”

Because practical instruction, by itself, isn’t very helpful when you’re dealing with the deeper forces of addiction, compulsion, shame, fear, trauma, loneliness, relapse, and the endless ache that drives so much of our behavior.

What people need is not new and better instructions.

We need a better word.
A deeper word.

We need to hear “it is finished” before we hear “get your act together.”

We need to be reminded that we are loved and covered even at our worst. That none of our dirt can deter grace.

Because that’s the thing that actually begins to soften hard hearts over time.

Not pressure.
Not threats.
Not impassioned exhortations toward moral betterment.

Grace creates a kind of transformation that behavioral instruction never can.

I’m not against growth. I’m not against change. I’m not against transformation.

I just happen to believe those things actually happen in the soil of unconditional love rather than the pressure cooker of moral performance.

People stop hiding when they know they’re safe, and they’re more likely to come out of the shadows and be honest when they believe forgiveness and grace are on the horizon rather than judgment.

A hiding heart has no chance of survival in the face of persistent love.

05/26/2026

A good conversation…

Rick Warren tells Russell Moore how Scripture changed his view on women becoming elders and teaching men in the church; reveals plans to the appeal the SBC's recent ruling removing Saddleback Church.

05/08/2026

This is a thoughtful dialogue on belief, integrity, and the future…I certainly don’t agree on all points, but find some compelling insights into power and what people are willing to give up to possess it.

Our most transactional president is having trouble processing.

04/29/2026

Here are some helpful steps toward praying for your pastor.

Satan doesn’t have to chase your entire congregation, just the leaders. Your prayers help win the battle.

02/10/2026

Dr. Dennis Kinlaw, former President of Asbury College/University once said:

“Jesus never said or asked three things:

1) What’s in it for me?

2) How will I look?

3) I deserve better than this.”

Be like Jesus, my friends.

09/26/2025

Somewhere along the way, many of us absorbed the idea that the church exists to make the world a “more Christian” place. We’ve been taught to see the church as a kind of moral improvement society, a political lobby, or a culture-shaping machine whose primary task is to influence the world toward Christian values.

But biblically speaking, that’s never been the church’s mission. The church is not God’s tool for national renovation or cultural domination. It’s not the chaplain to Caesar, the PR department for a political party, or the engine of moral reform. The church is the community of the broken, gathered around the news of God’s grace for sinners in Jesus.

Martin Luther insisted that the church exists not to enforce cultural morality but to deliver Jesus’ saving grace through Word and Sacrament. The church, he argued, is a spiritual institution first—not a political or cultural force. For those who claim things were better in Luther’s day and that he would take a different approach today, history says otherwise: moral decay and hostility to God’s law are the norm, not the exception. Our times are no more hostile than any other; to think otherwise is ignorance of history.

Some will say, “But what about when culture celebrates what the Bible condemns? Isn’t it the church’s job to speak out?” The truth is confrontational—but not in the way we often think. The truth that confronts us is that, regardless of your moral or political views, we are all great sinners in desperate need of a great Savior.

Even Jesus, when standing before Pilate, made it clear: “My kingdom is not of this world.” If it were, his followers would have fought to establish earthly power. But his kingdom is altogether different—rooted in weakness, not strength; in grace, not law; in a cross, not a sword. And when Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” he wasn’t calling for a cultural or moral takeover. He was pointing to the way God’s kingdom comes—through the proclamation of the gospel, as sinners are rescued, forgiven, and set free.

And this is where we often get confused: culture warring and cultural engagement are not the same thing. Culture warring is about winning power; cultural engagement is about bearing witness. One seeks to control; the other seeks to confess.

Jesus didn’t send his disciples into the world to Christianize empires or legislate virtue. He sent them to announce forgiveness, to proclaim good news, to baptize sinners, to feed the hungry, to comfort the grieving, to bear one another’s burdens. The church is not a factory producing “better people”; it’s a recovery place announcing that, because of Jesus—the “suffering servant”—the sick are healed, the guilty are pardoned, and the dead are raised.

When we confuse the church with a culture-war movement or a moral majority, we trade the scandal of grace for the seduction of power. And in doing so, we lose the very thing the world most desperately needs: a community that doesn’t point to its own goodness, but to Jesus’ finished work for sinners like us.

The church doesn’t exist to make America more Christian. The church exists to make Jesus known. That’s a far more beautiful—and far more liberating—calling.

08/05/2025

For Matt Redman, one of the most respected worship leaders and songwriters of the modern era, there’s a crucial distinction we need to make in worship.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with telling a story,” he says. “But there is a beautiful dynamic that happens in worship where you tell the story — and then you respond to it.”

That response is what Redman calls the “chapel” moment in a song. It’s the pivot from simple narrative to prayer, from observation to awe.

This is the difference between horizontal and vertical worship, he explains. One describes God to each other. The other speaks directly to Him. And while both have a place, Redman says something vital is lost when churches drift too far into horizontal territory — especially during corporate worship.

“I don’t want my songs to just be a classroom — I want them to be a chapel too.”

We dive into the difference between horizontal and vertical worship at the link in bio🔗

07/20/2025

This is a good word!

Let me be as clear as I can be: “Examining your fruit” as a way to be assured of your standing with God is a dead end. It leads to one of two places—delusion or despair. Delusion if you think your fruit is enough. Despair if you know it’s not. Because the standard isn’t progress—it’s perfection. And flawlessness is the only thing God accepts.

That’s why Martin Luther would recoil at this statement from John MacArthur:

“The conscience is where you experience real assurance… it’s what’s going on in your heart that is the source of your assurance.”
(The Certainty of Christian Assurance, Sept 15, 2002)

Luther would call that dangerously subjective, deeply introspective, and fundamentally law-bound. It’s not Christ-centered. It’s not gospel-grounded. It doesn’t comfort the afflicted—it afflicts the afflicted even more.

In Luther’s own words:
“Look to Christ, not your conscience.”

Why? Because for Luther, the conscience was not a place of peace—it was a courtroom. And the law was the prosecuting attorney. The conscience doesn’t comfort—it condemns. It’s not the voice of grace—it’s the echo of judgment.

Luther’s own conscience drove him to the brink of despair under the crushing weight of God’s demands—until the external word of the gospel broke in and rescued him. Not “Christ in you” as some kind of spiritual thermometer—but Christ for you, outside of you, regardless of how you feel.

He once said: “When the devil throws our sins in our face and declares that we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus:
‘I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is, there I shall be also.’”

Your heart lies. Your conscience accuses. But the gospel assures.

MacArthur’s view, however well-intentioned, is a subtle form of legalism disguised as spiritual maturity. It binds the conscience, and robs the weary of true freedom. It doesn’t liberate sinners—it burdens them. It drives the believer inward on a perpetual performance treadmill, constantly asking, “Am I feeling enough? Am I sincere enough? Am I clean enough? Am I less sinful? Am I more holy?” I. I. I.

It smuggles your works back into the equation—not through your hands but through your heart. It makes you—your internal condition, your feelings, your level of personal holiness—the measure of your peace. It turns the gospel into a mirror, not a window.

For decades, I’ve been saying that looking inward for assurance will always betray you. Why?

Because: Your heart is unstable. Your conscience is inconsistent. Your performance is insufficient. You are not perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. Period.

God’s love for you doesn’t ride on your resolve to do better or try harder. It’s not about your faithfulness to Him, but His faithfulness to you.

Assurance comes from the finished work of Christ outside of you, not the shifting condition of your conscience inside you. To suggest otherwise, as MacArthur does, is to functionally deny sola fide—justification by faith alone—even if he affirms it doctrinally. Because if your assurance rests on the cleanliness of your conscience, it no longer rests solely on Christ. It rests on your ability to feel spiritual enough.

Bottom line: Assurance doesn’t come from within. It comes from without. The gospel declares you righteous even when your heart condemns you.

“God does not slack his promises because of our sins…or hasten them because of our righteousness and merits. He pays no attention to either.” Martin Luther

“If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.” – 1 John 3:20