TASKMASTER | Super Inc.

"'The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s.' It turns out the problem wasn't limited to an age group. In 2007, The New York Times reported that three in ten American women confess to taking sleeping pills before bed most nights. The numbers are so high and unprecedented that some are calling it an epidemic....

 

This came across my screen about the same time that the news broke about the meteoric rise of Americans claiming no religious affiliation, shooting up from 7 percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2010. When those under the age of thirty were polled, that percentage more than doubled again, to nearly 35 percent. While the numbers themselves were a bit of a shock, I wish I had been more surprised by the findings. From my vantage point as a pastor, I can tell you, it is truly heartbreaking out there.

 

The Good News of God's inexhaustible grace for an exhausted world has never been more urgent...

 

Anything else is an unquestioning embrace of performancism in all sectors of life. Performancism is the mindset that equates our identity and value directly to our performance and accomplishments. Performancism casts achievement not as something we do or don't do but as something we are or aren't... what people think of us are more than descriptive; they are synonymous with our worth...

 

It is high time for the church to honor its Founder by embracing sola gratia [by grace alone] anew, to reignite the beacon of hope for the hopeless and point all of us bedraggled performancists back to the freedom and the rest of the Cross..."

 

The Taskmaster (above) was thrown off by the need to perform his own works, create his own merit, build up his own version of himself. Because of his irreconcilable past, there would be no way for him to be a "good guy again." But, that's not where the story ends.

 

 

In some way, even this character had been used for good all along. Although he could never pay the world back for the damages he had done, he had merit and use to those who knew his value.

In another way, God gives us merit and use even in our weakness when we come to Him.

"The Gospel of Jesus Christ announces that because Jesus was strong for you, you're free to be weak. Because Jesus won for you, you're free to lose. Because Jesus was Someone, you're free to be no one. Because Jesus was extraordinary, you're free to be ordinary. Because Jesus succeeded for you, you're free to fail..."

Read more in "One Way Love" by Tullian Tchividjian.

Check out his streamed event next month.

Find out more about the Taskmaster's origin.