Resurrecting the Cross: Have We Lost Our Way?

By Ernest Randolph

EMBRACING THE WAY OF THE CROSS CHANGES EVERYTHING! 

Do you ever wonder why everyone, even a Christian, continues to struggle with failing to do the good they want to do? Do you worry about what God thinks of you when you sin? Do you struggle with defining what is morally right and wrong? What if God intended to change the paradigm of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Feb 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685560218

Ernest Randolph

Ernest Randolph has been in ministry since 1986, working with youth and adults, pointing them to Jesus. After graduating with his master's in Youth Ministry from Denver Seminary in 1994, he worked as a youth pastor, as well as a lay pastor in churches around the Denver area. For the last five years, he has followed a call to lead a Bible study in the local bar, teaching the Word of God to a whole new demographic. This opportunity has forced him to dig deep into the biblical message of salvation and discover how God has provided the perfect means to save everyone: rich, poor, strong, weak, young, old, sinner, or saint. The way of the cross kept screaming out to him as the only way possible to provide for the reconciling all people from all walks of life to God. He wrote this book to remind you of that same message of the cross, which is the life-changing power of God to everyone who believes.

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RESURRECTING

THE CROSS

HAVE WE LOST OUR WAY?

THE WAY OF TRUTH

THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS & RESTORATION

THE WAY OF OVERCOMING EVIL

THE WAY OF FREEDOM & PURPOSE

THE WAY OF LOVE

By Ernest Randolph

Resurrecting the Cross

Trilogy Christian Publishers A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

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Copyright © 2023 by Ernest Randolph

Scripture quotations marked CSB are taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible, and CSB®, are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers. Scripture quotations marked HCSB are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org. Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NET) are from the NET Bible® copyright ©1996, 2019 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. http://netbible.com All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.TM. Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

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Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

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ISBN: 978-1-68556-020-1

E-ISBN: 978-1-68556-021-8

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Preface

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

First Corinthians 1:18 (NKJV)

Jesus brought a paradigm shift to the whole world by modeling an entirely new way of life through His loving, sacrificial death on the cross. He possessed more power and wisdom than anyone who ever lived, yet He did not use it to rule the world. Instead, He suffered to create a relationship with humanity. Understanding this reason-defying act from a new perspective enhances our sense of how Jesus changes our lives and defines our purpose as His followers in a confusing world. The work of Christ on the cross frees us to live by the Spirit and opens a whole new life for us. The apostle Paul wrote that this freedom is not the old life of living by the law of sin and death—it is a new life lived by the law of the Spirit (Romans 8:2, NASB). The apostle John explained how to live by the law of the Spirit when he wrote: If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us (First John 4:12, NASB). Our new ability to emulate the love Jesus showed on the cross—through the power of the Spirit—is the essence of this new life paradigm.

Transformation begins with following Jesus as Lord, but the richness of understanding the cross promotes even greater change in us. This book begins by explaining the gospel in a way that sets the foundation for our new life in Christ, and then it demonstrates how the Christian life is lived out at the foot of the cross. I will teach you how Jesus turned the world love-side-up by forever changing the lives of those who embrace the way of the cross.

In order for people to experience the transforming power of the cross, I have found that they need to understand salvation and sanctification from a slightly different perspective than what is usually taught. A few key concepts I teach may challenge both the conservative and the not-so-conservative Christian. I know new ideas may be difficult to consider, but the perspectives I present have come from extensive Bible study and years of walking with Jesus. I am not asking you to disregard your beliefs; I merely hope this book can help you along in your journey. I want to be a small nudge to move you closer to Jesus as you live by the Spirit in you and by His love. My main goal is that you, as a Christian, learn to live by the way of the cross.

Understanding how to live the Christian life in the way of the cross was not easy for me. It took me forty-five years to listen to what the Spirit was trying to teach me all my life. He implored me to embrace the love and sacrifice Jesus demonstrated on the cross—where He took away my sins, freed me from the law, and transformed me by teaching me to love. He showed me that this life is not about becoming righteous by following rules. Rather, it is a process of the Spirit perfecting His children in heavenly love. God has unending truths to teach all of us no matter how long it takes, and He is faithful in teaching us through His Spirit. I have received a glimpse of His truth regarding salvation and sanctification and am privileged to be able to share it with you. I hope this book will help you grow closer to knowing Jesus from the perspective of the cross.

Introduction

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28 (NIV)

From the moment we are born, it seems we begin creating our kingdom. Our first servants are our parents, who respond to our beck and call. We may add a brother, a sister, an extended family, a babysitter, and others to our court. All who enter must be approved by us. We scream and cry at the ones we don’t like and smile at the ones we do.

Our power begins to fade quickly. Tables turn, and we are corrected or ignored when we are mean or demanding. We are disciplined when we hurt someone else, and we don’t get everything we want. Some people even decide they don’t like us. The building of our kingdom gets exponentially more complicated with each passing day.

We enter school and learn kingdom building is highly competitive with a horde of other kids on the same journey. In America, we are told if we do everything right, we can become anything we want, maybe even the president. We live with a compulsion to decide what we must learn and who we must become in order to achieve our desired kingdom.

As we grow older, we are faced with the difficult question of higher education. Greater learning is expensive and difficult. One must be convinced it will be a beneficial building stone.

The prospect of obtaining a spouse, a life partner to join us on this journey, weighs heavily on our hearts. The desire for companionship and the wish for someone permanent to give and receive love can be overwhelming. Our desire for a spouse may come with a longing to have children and build a family much like the family of our youth—improved, of course.

At different stages of this building project, most of us will stumble across the prospect of the existence of a higher power, and we must decide if that higher power has a place in our kingdom. You might assume this book is about including Jesus in your kingdom as that higher power. If that is what you think, you are close. It is not only about including Him but about allowing Him to transform your entire kingdom.

Please allow me to share some of my personal journey with God, which led me to write this book, and transform my life.

By my eighteenth year, I fully embraced the need for Jesus in my life, but it was not an easy road. My interaction with Christianity started very young, and my personal Christian struggle emerged in my heart around the age of twelve.

I grew up in a small town in the West as a backsliding, conservative Christian. Our chaotic and dysfunctional family included three brothers and five sisters. The turmoil of my childhood and the hypocrisy of my father’s faith led me to question what I wanted God’s role to be in my kingdom. My father wore out Bibles, reading them every night, and had us in church on Sunday, but he brutally fought with my mother every Sunday afternoon.

To solve some of the incongruencies of their Christianity, I found myself seeking explanations for life beyond the oversimplified and superficial Christian explanations. The standard answers I had encountered did not adequately explain my situation, and I found myself becoming quite rebellious toward my family and God. Throughout my waywardness, Jesus continued to pursue me, and at sixteen I began to see His importance in my life.

I drew closer to Jesus but struggled with knowing Him, and experiencing the freedom and love that was promised. I knew plenty of commendable Christian people for whom the Christian religion of rules and confession seemed to work to inspire them to live somewhat honorable lives—especially on the outside—but it did not work for me. On the inside, my hate, anger, and judgment ran deep and continued to plague me. I found no religious cure. I had not been shown by my family how to behave properly. My behavior was acceptable but usually not exceptional, and I made some serious mistakes that hurt others. There was no Bible verse or repenting of sins that could fix me. There was no list I could follow, commitment I could make, or self-punishment I could inflict to change my behavior. Christianity had been a part of my life since day one, and it had not cured me of my problems. How could something so true not transform my life in the way I thought it should? Had I lost my way?

The route that led me to understand the way of the cross as a solution to my problems started in high school. As a senior, I had a revival in my Christian life and made a plan to conquer my sin. I went through the New Testament and composed a list of all the bad behaviors to avoid and all the good actions I needed to perform. Wow! Now, that was a great list. There are few propositions we encounter in life that can make you feel more overwhelmed than a list of dos and don’ts, but I was up for the challenge. I thought I was doing well. I sought God with all my heart, avoided all the usual sins, respected my parents, loved my siblings, and even kept my actions respectable with my girlfriend. Because my behavior had been the opposite just a year prior, I felt I was a satisfactory Christian. I surmised I had found an answer to including God in my kingdom.

The summer after my senior year of high school, I had the privilege to be a camp counselor for six weeks. This was an amazing experience of friendship, worship, and godly teaching. At the end of the season, the director provided a personal evaluation of each counselor. Now came the first great blow to my legalism and self-empowered righteousness. The director said I was not committed to God enough. As a young, idealistic Christian who had turned from a life of sin, I was crushed. At that moment, I broke the command not to hate. The harsh criticism from a Christian leader discouraged me. I was shaken in my resolve to be a good Christian. I was still committed to God, but my commitment to righteous behavior began to waver with this blow.

My freshman year of college at a Christian university catapulted me along on my journey of learning truths about Christianity and life. I was thoroughly engaged and enlightened as a young believer. My two favorite classes were Developing a Christian Worldview, which helped me relate Christianity to the broader world, and Introduction to Psychology, which helped me relate the truth of the Bible to my personal behavior. I seemed to be growing in the right direction. But then there was the not-so-positive side. I began to question moral boundaries and began to see relationships with women as the answer to fill the deficit of love left by my broken family.

My sophomore year took a darker turn. I crossed moral lines in my dating relationship, which challenged my new Christian worldview. I was now a walking, living hypocrite. Not only was this against the rules of the college, but it was also a tremendous mental and moral conflict for someone headed into ministry. Through the Christian knowledge I had gained, I could describe the Christian influence on western culture, I could explain the trinity and predestination, and I knew the five points of Calvinism, but these truths did not help me control my daily behavior. Something was drastically wrong, and learning more about Christianity and its rules did not solve my problems.

Without any alternative solutions to guide me, I held on to my legalistic regimen and committed to behaving better for the sake of my love for God and my future work in ministry. This attempt to pull myself up by my bootstraps was indeed a form of legalism, as I attempted to earn God’s favor by behaving well in my own strength. Even though I knew God loved me when I failed, I still thought it was my job to behave better, crashing hard when I felt like I had let Him down. I did not fully understand that the process of changing my heart was as important as changing my behavior.

I struggled throughout my twenties wondering the same thoughts most people do: What is my purpose? Will I ever find a mate? Am I a decent person, even though I have sinned in the past and still seem to fail quite often? Why is my life not easier? In the stew of my conscious and subconscious mind, these questions mingled with my feelings of loneliness, hurt, pride, disappointment, happiness, depression, and fleshly desires. My psychological health was a mess. I was attempting to get it right, yet I was a long way from finding out what right was. Not understanding how much I needed the guidance of God’s Spirit, I did whatever I thought would make my life better as I constructed my kingdom.

I finished up my undergraduate program in youth ministry and worked at a church as an intern at twenty-two. The elders offered me a part-time junior high youth pastor position for $700 a month. This was not much to live on, even in 1990, so I waited tables on the side to pay the bills. Feeling a bit out of place and unappreciated, I went to my pastor for counseling and direction. He shared his opinion that I needed to go to seminary—the last place I wanted to go. I knew, subconsciously, learning more about Christianity would not cure the confusion in my heart.

Instead of staying and following the pastor’s direction, I left to look for another ministry. I found work in a structurally rigid environment as a counselor at a Christian wilderness therapy camp for troubled teens. It was a lonely, disciplined year of my life spent in the woods with delinquent kids. Although the structure was something I needed, isolation from peers at such a young age was more than I could handle, and I quickly moved on.

I found myself back in Denver and began working as an electrician to make ends meet. My electrical skills advanced, but my heart was not done with ministry. Finally, listening to my old pastor’s advice, I enrolled in seminary. After starting with two night-courses the first term, I needed to increase to all-day Monday classes for the upcoming semester. The prospect of only working four days a week did not sit well with my electrical boss, and he demanded I choose one or the other. I chose to drop seminary. My real boss, God, did not agree with my decision.

As I drove to work on the day seminary registration was to take place, a song blared on the Christian radio station with lyrics to the effect of How can you turn your back on me after what I’ve done for you? I was a little disconcerted by how applicable the song felt to my decision not to stay in seminary. When I arrived at the job site, no supervisor was present to instruct me on what to do, which had never happened before. I went to a payphone and called in. The voice on the other line simply instructed me to wait for the supervisor to show up. Sitting at a random job site for almost two hours, with nothing to do, felt like God was icing me. Agonized by my decision, as the time ticked away on my watch, I realized if I left right then, it still was not too late to register. Finally, I followed God’s obvious prompting, quit my job on the spot, and left to enroll in seminary. I felt God step into my life that day. I was high on the Spirit, and seminary was right where God wanted me.

It is intriguing how God subtly works in our lives, and we struggle to see it until we take the time to observe what He has done and is doing. I found, as I struggled to seek God’s will and purpose in my life, my circumstances continued to improve. One great improvement was meeting an amazing woman shortly after graduating from seminary, and we were married two years later.

Together we stepped into ministry when I took a part-time junior high youth pastor position in Aurora, Colorado. God began to bless me with a family, a ministry, and a budding business, all at the same time. At thirty-four, I stepped away from that ministry, not knowing it would be my last time working officially in a church. The three years spent at the church were a life-changing experience, and we parted with fond feelings about what we had accomplished.

Ministry was not over for us by any means. We began volunteering at a church near our house on the west side of Denver, helping another youth pastor acquaintance. I loved working with youth, whether paid or not.

A painful experience at this ministry led me to question everything I knew about the church and what it meant to follow Jesus. Volunteering as a youth leader was enjoyable and fruitful for the first year, and the youth pastor and I became relatively close friends. In the second year, the church pressured him to increase numbers and morale. My wife and I began investing more time and energy in helping, which proved to be a futile effort. Unfortunately, the church leadership had already made its decision about the health of the youth group. Consequently, the church chose to hire an outside consultant to evaluate its youth program and enact change. They looked past all our progress and saw only the weaknesses. Much of the blame for the failing youth group was laid on me because I helped with so many aspects of the group.

The consultant, who was also a close friend of mine, called me one night. He tried to confirm his suspicion that I wanted to take over the youth group. Since it was not my intention and he got nowhere in the conversation, he came right out and said, Ernie, you’re a washed-up youth pastor trying to take over John’s job. This statement from my friend tore out all my desire to be a part of this ministry or any ministry in the future. It hurt to the core because I was giving everything to this group and to God, and I was pinned as the problem, told I was a failure, and accused of trying to stab my friend in the back. I tried to ignore the hurtful, wrong accusations and even continued to help until the church ended my friend’s job, but the hurt did not go away. It ripped at my heart, and each little incident brought it back. I was completely confused as to what God wanted from me and as to why He would do this to me through His pastor and my friend. I felt I had failed God and was finished with the ministry, thinking, What other sign could God give me? I felt as if God had hit me in the head with a big stick, not to correct me but to knock me out.

Shortly after the experience, I began to avoid reading the Bible. I knew I could not obey or get right even one of the sayings or commandments in the Bible perfectly. I had studied God’s Word my whole life, and I certainly had enough Scripture in my head to remind me of my inadequacy. I also knew the Bible well enough to keep up my youth group teaching. I continued to devote myself to work and to my wife and kids, feeling depressed whenever I let anyone down. Since I believed I had failed God as a youth worker, I wanted to get this part of my life right. Even with all my effort, I was only moderately successful. I was relatively happy—except when someone expected what I could not deliver or when people were dissatisfied with my work. I tried not to let either happen.

God was not through with me. In my time of struggle, I stumbled on a radio show by Aaron Budjen with Living God Ministries.¹ Jesus changed my life through Aaron’s teaching about the complete forgiveness given at the cross and expanded my understanding of the gospel. My eyes were slowly opened through listening to countless hours of his broadcasts. I finally understood God’s great forgiveness and how He gives us His Spirit and frees us from the law. What a life-changing realization! I understood it was God’s plan for me to back off Scripture to allow God to correct my misconceptions about salvation and His grace. I needed this time for a paradigm shift in my understanding of how Christ’s work on the cross should play the central role in how I was to build my kingdom.

This is not an expression of disappointment about my ministry path because I can look back and see that God took me on a journey to change my understanding of salvation. The small mountain church, where I attended and worked with the youth during this time, was a perfect environment for me to process this transition. I did not abandon God, nor did He abandon me. Our relationship grew closer and deeper through all my struggles.

My entire journey with God throughout my life, including my experiences in ministry, has been amazing and transforming. As I look back, it is clear God reached out to me at a young age and walked me through the turmoil of my childhood. I had some wonderful friends, caring siblings, and an abundance of great Christian influences in my life. God even gave me experiences that were supernatural at times. Bad times were mostly due to struggle with the sin of others and my own sin, all very unfortunate. There was also a darker side. I was often guilty of self-sabotage because I felt my efforts were rarely enough, which either led to failure or underperforming. At times, the harder I tried, the harder I failed. Gratefully, God was able to take my eclectic life of good and evil, including my many failures and scattered successes, and use them all to help me see life from a unique perspective regarding religion, faith, and His grace. Truth did not come easy to me because almost all I knew concerning how to live a life of love and the true gospel had to be learned from scratch. Mine is a journey of discovering, with much difficulty, the way to truth and life found in Jesus through His work on the cross.

Even though I