Peter Witkowski Memos

Memo: A Critical Few Days – April 2021

Yesterday, April entered a critical phase in her breast cancer battle. As many of you know, she began her new treatment plan this past Tuesday, April 27. But before the first pills had time to dissolve, April began to develop a discomfort on her right side. Over the last 72 hours, that pain has gone from the level of a muscle ache to a life-altering level of anguish. After spending a few hours talking with April’s medical teams, we know that the cancer tumors in her liver are producing this intense pain as well the nausea and the general sense of unwellness that has slowed her a halt. Thankfully, April’s liver has not yet reached the point of failure. That line is still a some week’s walk away. The plan today calls for April to keep taking her new potent regimen of the new clinical LY drug and the Everolimus. If the medicine works, the cancer should begin to shrink over the next few days and her liver function should increase, resulting in a far better quality of life. As we wait for that day, April will have to continue to manage her pain and nausea with prescription painkillers and nausea pills. On Tuesday, her blood tests will provide some indication of the effectiveness of the new drug. We pray that that day will bring good news.

If this plan fails, April can still fall back upon a chemotherapy treatment plan which promises to quickly shrink the tumors in her liver and elsewhere. But the move towards Chemotherapy while expedient would also exhaust most of her treatment options, shifting April’s breast cancer trajectory into a less favorable position. With a heart full of fortitude, April is pressing forward on the dark path of pain and anguish, hoping today’s suffering will produce health tomorrow.

Please pray for God to reduce the tumors in her liver. Pray for God to sustain her body as she suffers. Pray for God to comfort her soul as her body remains at war with itself. Pray for our kids to know the comfort of Christ during this time. Pray for April and me to have wisdom as we parent our children through this time. And pray that these critical days will conclude with good news.

Thank you for all of your love, support, and your messages. However, we may be slow in responding to them due to April’s health at this time. As always, we will continue to post updates here.

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Peter Witkowski Parenting

Churches need Families and Families Need Churches

Christians should champion and defend the family because it serves as foundation for all civic institutions. At this juncture, Christians find great commonality with the advocates of natural law who assert that the family is the foundational building block of society. A quick scan of the Scriptures reveals that the family existed before any other human institution. Adam and Eve walked about the Garden of Eden, petting animals thousands of years before Paul started sailing around the Mediterranean planting churches. Similarly, the philosopher John Locke believed couples mated and formed families long before tribes, cities, and nations began to dot the English countryside. Both worldviews proclaim that the family is the most basic, simple, or natural societal unit. To quote the great Puritan Pastor, Richard Baxter, “The Life of religion, and the welfare and glory of both the Church and the State, depend much on family government and duty.” The family sets the trajectory for both all of society. When family units break down, the church descends into chaos and society falls into anarchy.

Following this thinking many in the church have assumed that the church was birthed out of the family. But while this line of thinking aligns with the naturalistic understanding of the universe, it proves incongruent with narratives of creation, fall, and redemption found in the Scriptures. Christians need to reexamine the purpose of the family in light of the church.

The Fall Reshaped the Family

When God created Adam and Eve, he did not stick them on a desert island. He placed them in the garden of Eden in community with God, indicating that God sustained the family through tabernacling with them. The creation mandate to be fruitful and multiple was a mandate to bring all the earth under the glorious and full rule of God. Adam and Eve were not expanding human society apart from God. They were expanding the tabernacle to encompass the whole earth. In short, they were to turn the globe into a grand church, a grand garden.

Sadly, the first couple never fulfilled their mission. They listened to the snake and plunged the world into death. The effects of Adam and Eve’s sin radical altered every aspect of the natural order from economics to gardening. As expected, the family unit fell under the corruption. In Genesis 3:16, God tells Eve, ““I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.” Redemption could not be found through genetics, marriage, and procreation. A new family was needed.

The Spiritual Family

Jesus came as the new Adam to be the first born of many brothers and sisters. He created a spiritual family that called men and women to be “born again” by the spirit through faith (Jn. 3:7). In Mark 3:35, Jesus defines the spiritual family according to belief proclaiming that, “whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” This exchange proves more than permissible This new family picks up the creation mandate of the first Adam. The new Adam has commissioned his new family, the church, “to go and make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:16).” In the church, the new spiritual family once again resides in community with God for the purpose of glorifying him through kingdom expansion. The keys to God’s kingdom have been given to the church. 

The Family Church Relationship

The nuclear family still remains the important foundational block of human society. From the family arise culture, society, and government. Civil society cannot exist without mom, dad, Jimmy, and Sally.

The institution also works in tandem with the church to support spiritual flourishing. A faithful marriage provides both the husband and the wife countless opportunities to experience God’s sanctifying power as they learn to love one another. Children remain a blessing from the Lord providing couples with social connections and economic security.

The fruits of marriage also facilitate evangelism. To perpetuate the gospel, Christians need to reach children. Procreation, adoption, and foster care all beautifully facilitate the great commission through family framework. The goals of the Christian family align with the mission of the church, and the mission of the church should align with the goals of the family.

Lastly, the family serves as a good gauge of the a culture’s health. When families descended into relational chaos, both society and the church should take note for the gospel is not going forward and chaos stands ready to invade our culture (Micah 7:6).

The Limits of the Nuclear Family

But for all of its benefits, the biological family cannot rightfully claim to be the foundation of the church. Though the family and the church support each other, Jesus is the bedrock of the church. A wife can come to faith apart from her husband and a husband apart from his wife. The arrival of children also does not instinctively produce faith in either the parents or the children as seen in the legacies of Cain and Nimrod. Salvation comes through the preached Word administered by the local church in coordination with the sacraments. As Baxter noted, the church through the ministry of the pastor upholds “the world, to save it from the curse of God and to perfect the creation, to attain the ends of Christ death 112).” The church supports and redeems souls.

Thus, Paul can encourage singles “to remain single, as I am (1 Cor. 7:7).” Both the married couple and the single adult can glorify God through worship and love of neighbor. Moreover, in the new heavens and the new earth, family structures will pass away. But our identity in Christ will remain. The church sustains the family which in turn helps to sustain both the church and the culture.

Conclusion

The new covenant established by Christ’s death and resurrection has fundamentally altered the definition of God’s people. The family of God is no longer defined by biology. It is defined by the Spirit. The church is the bride of Christ. We should not neglect the local church for our families. Rather, we should locate our families in the church, hoping to guide them all into Jesus’s family. The garden came first and then Adam and Eve.

To fix society, we must advocate for health churches, which in-turn will produce healthy families that produce healthy churches and healthy societies. In other words, those who are Christians must recognize and teach that the Christians understanding of family differs from the natural law view of family.

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

You Don’t Have Heed Those Impulses

We don’t have to do it. When our flesh demands that we vent all our frustrations like a foghorn, we don’t have to give in. When we feel the impulse to fulfill our sexual urges, we don’t have to give in. And, when we feel like hope resides at the bottom of that ice cream tub, we don’t have to eat through it. The Christian does not have to surrender to the flesh when it makes demands upon his or her soul.

Such a resistance comes not from asceticism, wearing simple clothes, or minimalistic living. As one of the first monks, St. Antony, discovered, temptation and Satan can hound the soul who resides in a desert cave just as easily as they can torment the man living on the fourth floor of an apartment building in Paris. We cannot resist temptation in our own strength. Rather, we gain the ability to resist temptation when we repent of our sins and trust in the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus for salvation.

Why Jesus Was Tempted Part 1

In Matthew 4:1-11, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the desert so that Satan can tempt the Messiah to sin. This temptation has two purposes. First, it reveals that Jesus fully understands what it is to be human. Like you and me, he got tired and hungry. He faced real temptation. He gets us. Hebrews 4:15 declares, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has in every respect been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Because Jesus is one of us, he can empathize with us and save us. Thus, when we mess up and surrender to temptation, we do not have to fear that God will strip us of our salvation. Jesus who is the guarantee of our salvation has already fulfilled all righteousness. The moment we come back to our senses, we can ask for forgiveness, knowing He will grant it. Jesus gets that we are weak. That is why he came. But that is not all.

Why Jesus Was Tempted Part 2

Jesus’s temptation also reveals that Jesus has defeated the devil. Satan called Jesus to turn the stones into bread. Though his stomach had growled more than a million times during his 40 day fast, Jesus does not surrender to the lust of the flesh as Adam and the nation of Israel had done before him. Jesus resists the Devil. He declares, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matt 4:4).” In other words, spiritual life does not come through listening to one’s-self, through giving expression to what we feel, or through living out the Nike motto which calls us to “Just do it.” Life comes through the Word of God. Psalm 19:7-9 reminds us:

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.

Because Jesus delights in the Word and not in his physical needs, his children can do the same. This is not some ideal beyond our reach reserved for those in a perfect world. Jesus felt urges that did not align with the commands of God. Despite the intensity of the temptations, Jesus still successfully resisted sin in a fallen world. His children can do the same. In Ephesians 3:17, Paul says, Christ dwells “in your hearts through faith.” The God who resisted Satan resides in us. Through faith, we can resist the Devil. We no longer must fall to temptation.

Temptation vs. Sin

Temptation itself is not evil. To encounter the thought, “I desire sex” does not make one sexually immoral. But to act on idea by cultivating private fantasies or by swinging over to your girlfriend’s house to give to that desire is sin. Like us, Jesus was tempted, but he did not turn the stones to bread. He obeyed God. Though our temptations may be intense, we too can obey God.

What If I Always Fall?

The failure to find victory over temptation reveals that we do not know Christ. Admittedly, Christians always remain vulnerable to sin for they are not Christ and do stumble at times. Noah got drunk, Abraham lied, and Peter showed favoritism, refusing to eat with Gentiles. Perfection will allude us. But if we lean into Christ through faith, making use of the Word, prayer, and the church, we will stand far more than we fall. Through Christ, we will resist the Devil and watch him flee from us.

However, if we only fall, regroup, and then fall again when hit by the impulses of the body, we reveal that we do not know God. Thankfully, God remains forever compassionate and forgiving. If we will but repent and believe, Jesus will forgive us, breaking the chains of sin and death.

Conclusion

Friend, I don’t know what temptations have surrounded you today. But this I do know; you do not have to surrender to Satan’s demands. We are children of the new Adam and the new Israel. By the power of Christ we can resists the lusts of the flesh. Expect Victory