You Will Comfort Me Again

Good News for Anxious Christians--Why Trying to Be Christian Makes Us Anxious

2012-02-22T00:46:00.000-06:00

I recently decided to blog through the chapters of the book Good News For Anxious Christians (10 Practical Things You Don't Have to Do) by Phillip Cary. I find the title wittier the more I think about it because it mimics the titles of Christian self-help books. We all want those "practical" tips on everything from house-cleaning to living the Christian life. But this book is not about self-help. As the author confided in the first sentence of the preface, "this book is a stealth attempt to preach the gospel, disguised as an attack on the new evangelical theology." It's a good idea to keep that in mind as one reads along, although the author does a very good job of keeping the gospel in focus.

Last time, I recapped the Preface. This time I'll try to summarize the introduction, Why Trying to Be Christian Makes Us Anxious. Cary begins with a little history on the new evangelical theology he is critiquing in his book; the theology that has promoted certain practical ideas and techniques such as "giving God control", "letting God work", "finding God's will", and so on. "The good news is that this is a new theology--it's not in the Bible and you don't have to believe it. You might think, 'but wait a minute, isn't this how you have a relationship with God? Don't those phrases tell us something important about how to be a Christian'? And my answer is: not in the Bible, they don't."

This new theology took over American evangelicalism fairly recently, "about the time when color TV came on the scene." It fits in very well with the consumerist theology we now see everywhere--marketable products that promise to transform your life. This kind of marketing and the use of techniques in living the Christian life has had a terribly detrimental effect--Christians have been trained to feel guilty for thinking! "Since bad theology can't really defend itself against critical thinking, it has to try to get you not to think." Cary encourages his readers to "think critically about what I say--take seriously the task of discerning what is true from what is false here. Having done that, you're one step closer to discerning what is true from what is false in the theology you've been taught. And that will do you a lot of good."

Cary isn't just trying to dismantle a bad theology; he's trying to get across to us that the gospel is such good news, and is so liberating from all the newer, bad theology, that it's almost hard to believe it could be true. "For some readers, what I'm talking about in this book will seem too good to be true. To those readers, I say: the gospel of Christ is often like that--hard to believe because it is such good news. But go ahead and believe it!" The gospel of Christ is good news, he says, because it does us a lot of good. "It frees us from anxiety, makes us cheerful and glad. And that is something we need, because life is hard and the Christian life is harder."

The Christian life is a life of love, which is very hard work, and of heartache, because we love people who hurt. And besides all that, we have our own hurt. "Trying to be Christian" is anxiety-producing. But what the gospel of Christ does is give us Christ, and that is enough. We can "...let everything else be what it is--hard work, worthwhile work, works of love, and the heartaches that come with all of that. And we can let our feelings be what they are, whatever that may be. What matters is Jesus Christ, and the gospel tells us that all is well on that score: that we are our Beloved's and he is ours."

Next time I'll take a look at Chapter 1, in which Cary discusses Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart. We'll see why Cary says that's such good news.

Good News For Anxious Christians

2012-02-08T20:49:00.000-06:00

I'm re-reading a book, Good News For Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don't Have To Do, by Phillip Cary, and it's a great little book. I thought it might be a good idea to try blogging through it. If these posts catch your interest and you decide you might want to get the book and read it, you can order it here, at amazon. So here we go with the first part of the book, the Preface.

Cary, the author, is concerned about "the new evangelical theology". He believes that this theology consists of supposedly "practical" ideas that promise to transform our lives, but which actually get in the way of our believing the gospel.The gospel is the good news that God has already decided to do something about our lives--whether we let him or not, whether we do anything about it or not, whether we believe it or not. In contrast, the new evangelical theology offers ideas that "promise practical transformation", as Cary says, "but in real life they mainly have the effect of making people anxious--not to mention encouraging self-deception, undermining their sense of moral responsibility, and weakening their faith in Christ".

These are serious claims. We should be startled by this because each of us is, to some extent, a product of the teaching of this new evangelical theology. That's because it is taught in the majority of churches and sold in the majority of Christian bookstores. Cary believes that this theology, which is actually relatively new to the church, is harmful. Therefore, he says, he intends to be "unsparing in my criticism of these ideas... I want to do my best to free Christians from the burden of believing these ideas and trying to put them into practice".

The Introduction is next, in which Cary explains how "trying" to be Christian is making Christians anxious. The ten chapters that follow--the "ten practical things you don't have to do"-- will, in their turns, explain:

Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart
Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit
Why You Don't Have to Let God "Take Control"
Why You Don't Have to "Find God's Will For Your Life"
Why You Don't Have to Be Sure You Have the Right Motivations
Why You Don't Have to Worry About Splitting Head from Heart
Why You Don't Have to Keep Getting Transformed All the Time
Why You Don't Always Have to Experience Joy
Why "Applying It to Your Life" Is Boring
Why Basing Faith on Experience Leads to a Post-Christian Future

I really like this book. I think it's an important one, especially for women. I appreciate the good news and the freedom of the gospel truths of it. Next time I'll try to summarize the Introduction, which has some important stuff in it, and then get on to the *heart* of the matter in Chapter One.

If My People...

2012-02-02T00:46:00.000-06:00

I have had several people express to me, concerning prayer, that praying is more for our benefit than anything. The thinking seems to be that since God sovereignly governs all things, and since he has decreed that all his purposes will come to pass, that our prayers serve mostly to encourage us when he answers them, or to remind us that he is God and we are dependent on him, and so forth.

But that's not how the Bible speaks of our prayers. Paul, for instance, asked for prayer a good bit. And he asked for prayer so that good things would actually come to pass. He told the Colossians, "Pray for us, that God may open a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ... that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak" (Col. 4:3-4). He also told the Corinthian church, "You must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many" (2 Cor. 1:11).

It sounds to me like Paul really coveted their prayers, because opportunities and blessings and Paul's ability to speak well depended on them. I know God has already determined that his purposes and plans will prevail. I guess you could accurately say that they'll prevail with or without us. But they won't prevail apart from prayer. Prayer is a means God has chosen and ordained to accomplish his purposes. What happens when a Christian doesn't pray, or prays little? At the least, it seems that Christian will miss out on being a wonderful and important part of great things happening in the world.

Revelation 8:2-5 tells of an angel at the altar in heaven who takes a golden censer, filled with "the prayers of all the saints", and throws it upon the earth. This seems to bring about the final judgments of God on the earth and the end of all wickedness, and the ringing in of his everlasting kingdom. What did the Lord teach us to pray on a regular basis? "May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." Surely that prayer, prayed by all the saints with fervency and longing through the centuries, will fill the golden censer and bring heaven to earth.

Brothers Means Brothers

2011-10-19T10:49:00.000-05:00

In 1 Corinthians 16:13, Paul exhorts the readers of his epistle to "be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong".

In the whole epistle of 1 Corinthians, Paul addresses the recipients as "brothers" 28 times (as in 1:10, "I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree..."). By a glance at my concordance, I see that Paul addresses his readers in this way, in all his epistles, around 98 times.

The Greek word translated "brothers" is adelphos, which does in fact mean "brother". The ESV footnotes, though, remark in every instance that it could also mean "brothers and sisters". They even do so in 1 Corinthians 16:15 (right after Paul has told these brothers and sisters to "act like men")!

Though I don't know all the reasoning behind my favorite Bible translation's notes on this, I don't think earlier generations of Christians were too worried that the apostles unabashedly looked to the men of the church to provide leadership for their churches and families. Paul and the other apostles simply understood that this is God's design. Yet men have always been tempted to avoid this responsibility and accountability, and women have always sought to take it upon themselves.

More and more as a Christian woman, and as an older Christian woman particularly, I ponder the Bible's teachings on men and women in the church. Women have a vital role, to be sure, in the church, just as we do in the home and in the world. But I often wonder--what would happen in the church if we prayed more and talked (and taught) less? What if we women determined to excel in the task of teaching the Bible assigns us--that of training (or receiving training) in godliness for marriage and parenthood and the home (Titus 2:3-5)? Would not the men of the church be strengthened and encouraged by this? Might it not have the effect, especially through our prayers, of seeing men begin to take more seriously the roles God means for them to have?

Paul tells the brothers he addresses to be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, and be strong. I've seen so many Christian women, myself included, very tempted to step up to this plate because of the seeming absence of men who will do so. But it is no accident, and not simply a cultural thing, that the apostles address their instructions mainly to the men of the church. Though Eve fell first (1 Timothy 2:13-14), it was for the man God came looking in the garden (Genesis 3:9). Surely God will be most glorified, and homes and churches will be most helped, if we recognize that "brothers" means brothers.

On Waxing Eloquent Without Knowledge

2011-10-03T21:55:00.000-05:00

Comments on Acts 17 from author Michael John Beasley:

"Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man" (Acts 17:29).

The primary verb in this statement is opheilomen [we ought]. This is a word that speaks of one's debt to another, and in the case of man's relationship to God, it refers to our divine obligation towards the Lord who is the Creator and Despot of everything. What Paul states here is... that men are not at all free to entertain thoughts about God that He Himself has not revealed. Implicitly, Paul is indicating to us that it is Scripture, and Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) that must be embraced in order to have an explicit revelation of the One who is, Himself, the exegesis of the Father, Jesus Christ.

When men wax eloquent regarding their own philosophies and subjective feelings about God's nature, they are violating their divine obligation towards the One who created them. Ultimately, man's lack of freedom to think of God as he wishes mirrors the principal commandments found within the Decalogue [Exodus 20:3-5].

(From Altar To An Unknown Love: Rob Bell, C.S. Lewis, and the Legacy of the Art and Thought of Man by Michael John Beasley)

Why, In Particular, Me?

2011-10-03T09:44:00.001-05:00

(An excerpt from the Banner of Truth website. The whole essay is found here.)

There are Christians here who are asking ‘Why?’ They have been walking through a dark valley. They have fallen into a fearful pit. They are being overwhelmed with trials and tribulations and they are not coping very well with them, but they are coping much better than I would if I were experiencing the pain of their providences. I am thinking of child abduction, a car accident, cancer, a genetic illness, a birth deformity, the violence of wicked men, war and religious persecution, the death of our loved ones.

Months of anguish, years of crippling weakness, long times of crushing loneliness and despondency. We have read of the difficulties that some eminent servants of God have passed through. Consider the two major traumas that Horatio Spafford passed through. The first was the great Chicago fire of October 1871 which ruined him financially, and shortly after, when crossing the Atlantic, all four of his daughters died when the ship they were sailing on collided with another ship. His wife Anna survived and sent him a telegram with two words on it, 'Saved alone.' Several weeks later he sailed across the Atlantic and on that voyage wrote his famous hymn,

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
and sorrows like sea-billows roll,
Whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Most of us have heard of that grief, and other similar difficulties that eminent servants of God have passed through. We have listened to older Christians mentioning the trials they have known, the struggles and falls, and we have wondered whether the Christian life could possibly be all that arduous.

There is another side to this, of course. There are great days and years, there are highs; there are mountain tops; there is joy unspeakable and full of glory. There is the possibility of being content always and in all things. There is melody in our hearts. We can say, 'Every day will I bless Thee and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever.' There is the promise God makes that his grace is sufficient for us, that his strength is most perfectly experienced when we have no strength ourselves and simply fall onto his outstretched arms.

I may not tell you from the day you become a Christian, 'From now on everything’s coming up roses.' I may not hide from you sober realities. Many a day the road is rough, and I know the paradox that it is rough by God’s own ordering: "For he commands, and forth in haste the stormy tempest flies"; that is how the psalmist saw it. We have known some stormy tempests in our congregations, and in our families and in our own personal lives. There are days when the church cries out (as the Old Testament church cried), 'Can there be knowledge in God of things below?' Does God know what he is doing? Is he aware of the pain of all this? Does he know of the shame that is being brought on the name of Christ? Where is there light in this darkness?'

There are humble believers today who are close to God and they are perplexed. They are holy men and women and their hearts are broken; their hopes are shattered, their worst fears realised; they are bruised and broken. They don’t know why God has done it this way, and we don’t know. It is a secret matter known only to God; it is past finding out, and we have to live our lives within the framework of that limitation. Often the Lord has to say to us what he said to Peter, 'You do not realise now what I am doing, but later you will understand' (John 13:7). John Flavel famously said, 'God’s providences, like the Hebrew letters, are to be read backwards.' Certainly from the perspective of glory we shall understand our griefs. All things will become clear when we pass into the region of light.

Heaven is a world of knowledge. It is not a place of eternal perplexity. Now we see through a glass darkly but there we shall know to our eternal satisfaction why God has been dealing with us as he has. The voice of trust says, 'Later I will understand.'

Blind unbelief is sure to err
and scan God’s work in vain.
God is his own interpreter
and he will make it plain.
(William Cowper)

This world is not in the grip of chance and fate or under the control of the devil. God has the whole wide world in his hands. When the tower of Siloam fell on 18 people and killed them some people were thinking that they were worse than the men in the tower who’d been spared. Some thought that that is why they had been killed, because they were particularly wicked. It was their karma. But Jesus said to them, 'I tell you no! But unless you repent you too will all perish' (Luke13:4). We do not know why some are struck down and others spared, but we do know this - that unless we show repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ we are all going to perish. Why particular Christians experience particular suffering we do not know. It is a secret thing belonging to the Lord.

I was listening to the testimony of Joni Eareckson Tada speaking of her initial suicidal despair when she realised as an 18 year old that she was paralyzed from the neck down for life. She longed for a friend to help her commit suicide, and then one day a fellow teenager came and sat with her. His name was Steve and later he went to the same theological seminary that I went to. She asked him why God had done this to her if God were all powerful and all loving. Imagine as a 19 year old being asked by a paralyzed, beautiful, despairing girl that question. But God helped Steve to answer her.

He spoke to her of the cross of Calvary where the Son of God was nailed. He also couldn’t move. God allowed wicked men to do that to his Son, and out of it God brought deliverance and eternal life to billions. Steve planted those seeds in Joni’s anguished mind and said no more. God gave him that wisdom. We know, many years later, that out of Joni’s life multitudes have received hope and blessing. Her example and teaching have been life-transforming. But why her in particular? . . . why you in particular? . . . is a secret thing.

Guess What? We Get To Enjoy Things

2011-09-01T11:29:00.001-05:00

Ecclesiastes is a comforting book for the Christian, or should be. It can seem different from other books of the Bible (and of course it is) but its message is the same as the whole message of the whole Bible. Like Proverbs, it offers unique insights for gaining true skill in godly living and thinking. For it is a God-breathed collection of Solomon's observations concerning those things in life that are futile, vain and a "striving after wind"; on those things in life that are meaningful and eternal; and on the blessings God has given us in this difficult and fallen world (honest work, the ability to trust and know God, peaceful sleep and freedom from worry). The conclusion of all these observations is to "remember your Creator in the days of your youth... fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). We need this book. It is as necessary for our training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16-17) as any other book of the Bible.

I love it in part because being inclined to want to worry about tomorrow and miss the blessings of today, it corrects and reproves me in a unique way for doing that. One of my favorite passages:

Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart (5:18-20).

Tempted toward mild peitism as I was for much of my Christian life, these verses come to me as "good news from a far country" (Proverbs 25:25). They are refreshment to my soul, because I have also tended to struggle against accepting my "lot". Even though I profess to believe strongly in the doctrine of a good and wise Creator's providential guidance of my life, my worry and dissatisfaction have often given the lie to the claim of my lips. In addition, those pietistic tendencies I mentioned have often kept me from the simple enjoyments God so kindly provides. I have overlooked them because I've been preoccupied with the state of my soul and the state of the Church. This is why I say that those verses in Ecclesiastes come as such good news to me.

It is, in fact, the good news of the gospel. There are many problems, vexations, sorrows and difficulties in life. There are problems in society and problems in the Church. We should do all the good we can while we have opportunity. Yet these problems always have been, always will be, until the King returns to at last subdue this planet's mad uprising against his good Rule and to take up his throne on a New Earth. Until then, the good news from the far country, the gospel of Christ, gives me rest. It means that because he has given me the gift of knowing God, fearing God, being made right with God and believing God, I can find enjoyment in all the toil with which I shall toil (and I must toil!) under the sun the few days of life he has given me. I won't much remember the evils of life because God keeps me occupied with joy in my heart--if I take this good news seriously.

Yes, Ecclesiastes is a rich book. It describes the reality that is, both the weary futility of a life lived pursuing vain things and the great potential of life when one closely follows the true words of the Preacher. Its truths, when embraced, give rest in the present and hope for eternity to come. Live a faithful life now in the humble fear of the Lord; don't miss and disdain the comforts and joys of the lot in life he has provided you; and wait patiently for the great things to come, for "better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit" (Ecclesiastes 7:8).

Three Leaps For Joy

2011-08-29T12:43:00.003-05:00

"An evil man is snared in his own transgressions, but a righteous man sings and rejoices" (Proverbs 29:6).

I am musing on this verse from my morning's reading in Proverbs. First of all (I muse), it should be noted that the righteousness of this righteous man is not his own but is a gift. This man's righteousness was received; in the Old Testament and today, this imputed righteousness is the free gift of God, bestowed because of his lavish mercy, on un-righteous former transgressors! The righteous man of Proverbs 29:6 has been declared right with God through faith in Christ's atoning work. He is a humble man, grateful and astonished at the grace given to him in Christ.

So this happy man, though beset by many afflictions and trials, goes singing and rejoicing on his way. The evil man, in the meantime, is the one who loves and clings to his sin. He believes that to give it up and put his trust in this Jesus would be the ultimate folly. Ironically and tragically, the very sin he clings to constantly proves to be a snare and a trap to him. He becomes entangled and ensnared. There is no song in his mouth and no rejoicing in his heart. Declaring in his heart that for him "there is no God," he sadly becomes the ultimate fool (Psalm 14:1).

Reading of the other man, the righteous man, I was reminded of Christian in Pilgrim's Progress. Though afflicted by temptations and trials on his journey to the Celestial City, Christian and his companions could often be heard singing and rejoicing as they went. Here John Bunyan describes the way Christian came to be relieved of his heavy burden of sin, declared clean and right before God, and the glad song he sang about it:

    Now I saw in my dream, that the highway up which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a Wall, and that Wall is called Salvation. Up this way therefore did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back.

    He ran thus until he came at a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a Cross, and a little below in the bottom, a Sepulcher. So I saw in my Dream, that just as Christian came up to the Cross his burden loosed from off his Shoulders, and fell from off his back; and began to tumble; and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the Sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.

    Then was Christian glad and lightsom, and said with a merry heart, He hath given me rest, by his sorrow; and life, by his death. Then he stood still a while, to look and wonder; for it was very surprizing to him, that the sight of the Cross should thus ease him of his burden. He looked therefore, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks.

    Now as he stood looking and weeping, behold three shining ones came to him, and saluted him with Peace be to thee: so the first said to him, Thy sins be forgiven. The second stript him of his Rags, and clothed him with change of Raiment. The third also set a mark in his forehead, and gave him a Roll with a Seal upon it, which he bid him look on as he ran, and that he should give it at the Celestial Gate: so they went on their way. Then Christian gave three leaps for joy, and went on singing.

Thus far did I come loaden with my sin,

Nor could ought ease the grief I was in,

Till I came hither: What a place is this!

Must here be the beginnning of my bliss?

Must here the burden fall from off my back?

Must here the strings that bound it to me, crack?

Blest Cross! Blest Sepulcher! blest rather be

The Man that there was put to shame for me.

Three leaps for joy!

(Text from Oxford World's Classics 2003 The Pilgrim's Progress)

Reading In Matthew

2011-08-25T06:48:00.003-05:00

I love the gospel according to Matthew. It's my favorite of the gospels (because it's the one I'm reading right now!). In it, as in all of the gospels, the mighty deeds of the Lord Jesus Christ are recorded. In Matthew, a very long discourse of the wise words of the Lord Jesus are also recorded. It begins in Chapter 5, verse 2, "And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying...".

He opened his mouth! The fountain of life was opened up to those disciples up on the mountain. His words came out, instructing them, surprising them. "You have heard it said... but I say...", and such things as that. He had come to set them straight about what makes men right with God. The traditions they'd been taught had obscured God's true plan. Those disciples' world was beginning to get turned upside down, as happens when Christ's words and deeds are comprehended by faith in the human heart.

The sweetest thing I got from my reading in Matthew this morning was really two things: the comfort, hope and reward of heaven for these temporary sorrows and suffering we endure (Matthew 5:3-11); and the great way our Lord gets across the fact that the righteousness that pleases God is not based on anything done "before other people" (Matthew 5:20-6:16). All human pride is laid low here, for who can manifest such genuine humility and sincerity as Jesus commands? Only someone to whom another's righteousness has been given as a gift--the free gift of God through his Son.

"You therefore must be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect," Jesus said (Matthew 5:48). Thanks be to our heavenly Father, then, that he sent this perfectly righteous One to do what we are not able to do. He perfectly fullfilled all the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 5:17) on behalf of all those who will believe in him and thus receive the free gift of his very own righteousness, procured for helpless sinners through his death on the cross.

What a wonderful Savior.

Sermon On The Mount wordle (click for a bigger image)

A Change

2011-08-21T15:36:00.003-05:00

I changed the name of my blog. It comes from Psalm 71:20-21:

You who have made me see many troubles and calamities
will revive me again;
from the depths of the earth
you will bring me up again.
You will increase my greatness
       and comfort me again.

Psalm 71 speaks to me of God's sovereignty and goodness in both making us see many troubles and in reviving us again. It speaks to me of our great hope in the coming of Christ and in the resurrection from the dead, comforted then forevermore! It speaks to me of God's great faithfulness to his pilgrim people as we sojourn on through a difficult landscape, and of the hope I have that even though I'm growing older, God isn't through with me yet! Until the last breath I can speak with is done, I hope I am still praying, trusting, and proclaiming this way:

O God, from my youth you have taught me,
   and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
So even to old age and gray hairs,
   O God, do not forsake me,
   until I proclaim your might to another generation,
   your power to all those to come. Psalm 71:17-18

Spurgeon's Fifth

2011-07-27T21:44:00.003-05:00

"A Call to Prayer and Testimony" was preached by C.H. Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London on February 8th, 1891. His text that morning was Isaiah 62:6-7: "On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the LORD in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth". Here from that sermon is Spurgeon's fifth reason not to rest:

Above all, let us never rest out of despair. The feeling does come over you sometimes—"What is the use of our labor? So little comes of it. What is the use of protesting for the truth? The churches will not hear you. You only earn ill-will, and are ridiculed as an old fogy. What is the use of being earnest about winning souls? Men are indifferent. The present engrosses thought—social questions are pressing. Everybody pines for sensationalism or amusement. What profit is there in keeping to the old way?"

That spirit creeps over the child of God like the cold of the Arctic regions, numbing him and tending to send him into the sleep of despair. The evidence of this evil power is found in the tendency to restrain prayer before God. From this may our God rescue us! Come, my brothers, I do not know who among you is going to sleep; but I would like to shake the man who is so benumbed, and wake him up; and I hope that, in your turn, when you see me benumbed, you will shake me also, and wake me up to diligence in prayer. Let us awake this morning, and begin again.

We must not, will not, yield to slumber. There is small cause for fear, and no cause for despair. Our cause defeated? Not a bit of it! All will come right yet. God waits; but he waits that he may be gracious unto us. His time to favor Zion will come, and the good old cause will win the victory. The work of the Lord is in a greater hand than ours. He will not fail nor be discouraged. "Men ought always to pray, and not to faint"; and when they feel that they are fainting, they should resolve to pray with double earnestness, and faintness will yield to joy.

(You can read the whole wonderful thing here.)

Another One Bites The Dust

2011-07-26T10:45:00.014-05:00

Too many of the songs we sing in church turn out, on closer inspection, to be man-centered. By this I mean that instead of God and his mighty deeds being really central in the idea of the song, those things have been subtly shifted to instead revolve around our experience. The words of the song may include references to and about God, but somehow end up being about us! This is usually because the writer has misinterpreted or misapplied Scripture.

Not to pick on an old favorite, but a case in point came to mind as I was reading in 2 Timothy this morning. As I read in chapter one, I was reminded of a gospel song we sing occasionally at my church, and which I've been tolerably fond of. The verses express a sentiment believers can identify with, for sure:

I know not why God’s wondrous grace
To me He hath made known,
Nor why, unworthy, Christ in love
Redeemed me for His own.

The verses go on in a similar vein of thought. The refrain (the chorus) is what came to mind this morning:

But I know whom I have believed,
And am persuaded that he is able
To keep that which I’ve committed
Unto him against that day.

This is word for word from 2 Timothy 1:12 (King James Version), which should mean it's a good refrain with a biblical meaning, right? But there's a problem: Paul's words, in the Bible, do not refer to himself as being "kept", but to the gospel!

The song's message is this: "I don't know why God showed such grace and mercy to me, but I do know this: God will keep me safe through this life and bring me to heaven". But Paul's message to Timothy in the passage referred to is, "Don't be ashamed of suffering for the sake of the gospel, Timothy; I'm not, because I know this gospel of Christ I've been entrusted with will prevail; it will be guarded by the God I know. He will guard it through you as well!" (Read the surrounding verses in 2 Timothy 1:8-14 to see this context.)

One reason for the songwriter's mistake may have been due to the wording of verse 12 in the King James, which leaves out the idea of the gospel being a "deposit entrusted" (Gk. parathēkē) to Paul as an apostle. But that would simply mean that the songwriter lifted words out of their context in Scripture and went with his own meaning, instead of paying attention to the surrounding context. The context makes Paul's meaning clear, even in the King James. Besides that, the meaning of this passage had been long understood correctly by careful Bible teachers. Commentaries certainly existed in the late 1800's, when this song was written!

Regardless of the reason for this 19th century error, we certainly have an advantage today provided by more reliable translations, like the ESV, that get it right:

...our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you (2 Timothy 1:10b-14).

I appreciate the sentiments of the song, "I Know Whom I Have Believed". It is a song with an idea that is certainly Scriptural (God will bring his children safely through this life and on to heaven), yet the Scripture used to back up that message means something else--something very important about God, about his eternal gospel, and about his mighty deeds. It's an example of how we take the (always!) God-centerededness of Scripture and make the focus ourselves, even in seemingly good ways! It's never a good thing to do.

One more song to gently and lovingly store away in the "Not The Most Helpful" file of the church. A better choice for its message might be "All The Way My Savior Leads Me" by Fanny Crosby. Feel free to mention another one!

Christian Braggarts

2011-07-06T09:26:00.001-05:00

Peace and mercy to Christian braggarts:

"But far be if from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:14-16).

Peace and mercy only to those whose boast is in what God has done through his Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross.

Spilled Milk/ Freely Justified

2011-07-03T07:38:00.003-05:00

Our small world was not secure, disturbed by unhappiness at home, and finally divorce. My older sister and I had our maternal grandmother, our Granny, who for a few years was saddled with the daily care of us (and didn't really seem to mind). One day, waiting at her house for our mother to pick us up after her workday, a fiendish plot developed in my mind. As the time grew near for her to arrive, I asked Granny for a cup of milk. She poured one for me. I held it til my mother arrived. Then with impeccable timing, the moment she walked into the house and into the kitchen where I stood waiting, I turned the cup upside down and deliberately dumped that cold, white milk all over my Granny's clean kitchen floor.

I remembered that maneuver recently as I am trying to think, more deeply, maybe, than before, what it means that I've been justified before God by one act of righteousness, that act of the one Man, Jesus Christ: namely, his death on the Cross for sinners. Grace reigned through that righteous accomplishment, a grace that leads to eternal life. When he acted for me in this way, I didn't know him... I didn't even care about him. Yet he died for me and through that sacrifice, has reconciled me to God. No goodness of mine could have accomplished this right standing with God, for all my goodness was no better than filthy rags in his sight. He has attached no strings to this gift of complete and utter reconciliation with himself. I don't have to perform, I cannot perform... he did all the performing, all the accomplishing. I've been justified, made right with God, by his sheer grace, alone. And that same grace has removed every shred of condemnation for every misdeed, now and forever.

Maybe a child's act of dumping milk on the floor before a poor mom's tired, astonished face illustrates the need for such grace. Maybe I was being bad to see if someone else's good could overcome the wickedness I was hatching in my heart. (Maybe I was just being bad!) In any case, moms and Grannies are only human, and imperfect. But perfect God came in the flesh, that one Man, and did what no one else could do.

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life" (Romans 5:6-10).

I need to understand this grace much better, for there is still the immature girl in me, lacking a grasp on the hugeness, the implications of God's one-sided, unilateral act through his Son of rescuing and justifying me, a real sinner; reconciling me, truly and forever, to his good and holy Self. I still want to dabble in guilt over spilled milk. But reading slowly and thoughtfully through Romans 4-8 (with help and encouragement from the good Doctor) is making me think better of it.

It Is Not Glorious

2011-06-25T11:42:00.000-05:00

"It is not good to eat much honey, not is it glorious to seek one's own glory. A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls" (Proverbs 25:27-28).

Self-control is a good thing in the Bible. Paul instructs Titus to urge the older men, the older women, the younger women, the younger men, and finally everyone, to live "self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age" (Titus 2:1-14). Self-control is self-denial (denying one's "self" ). It's so often painfully counter-intuitive to us.

Honey (or pizza or homemade ice cream on a hot summer day) is good and when we sit down to eat it, we want to eat our fill and more. Yet to do so is used in Proverbs as a metaphor for seeking one's own glory. It is an indulgence to our flesh. In the end, the result of indulging our fleshly desires will be the same as a city overcome and overrun by an enemy, the sad remnant of its former glory being its crumbled, broken-down walls. That city is no good anymore. It no longer offers a safe place to live and work; its former industry, its warm homes and friendly neighbors are now a thing of the past. The city is no good to anyone anymore.

To biblically exercise self-control is to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus. It means saying "no" to many indulgences that the world takes for granted as being ok. It can mean saying "no" to indulgences in food, but the emphasis of Scripture is on saying "no" to "ungodliness and worldy passions" (Titus 2:11-12). It means denying our hearts the "right" to cling to bitterness or anger or lust. The reason for this self-control, this self-denial? We are people who are waiting for something better, a prize that we may forfeit if we indulge in these things. The prize is "our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works" (Titus 2:13-14).

It is not glorious to seek one's own glory (to indulge our worldly desires). However, it is glorious to live as those anticipating the soon appearing of another's glory, that of our great God and Savior, Jesus. When he comes, all the self-denial we are called to will seem a small thing. It will be seen simply as the reasonable way to have lived in light of the greatness of the reward. In this way God's people, the church, will remain the light of the world, a city set on a hill, zealous for good works until he appears.

That Your Trust May Be In The Lord

2011-06-22T10:32:00.000-05:00

"Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge, for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you, if all of them are ready on your lips.

"That your trust may be in the Lord I have made them known to you today, even you" (Proverbs 22:17-19).

At first glance it may not seem apparent how making the words of the wise, their instructions and warnings, known to our children leads to their trusting the Lord. But here's what occurs to me: the trust in him comes because the root of wisdom and knowledge is the fear of him (Proverbs 1:7). Fearing him leads to trusting him.

So it's maybe like this: the moral commands of God in the Bible are ones we dare not fail to keep, but they are also ones we quickly learn we are not able to keep. This immediately brings about a crisis, a dilemma. The fear of the righteous Judge wells up. The consequences promised for our immorality, our lack of holiness, are fearful. We are undone.

But then good news appears. The Lawgiver and Judge has also become our merciful Advocate. In fact, our only rescue will come from the One who is holy and will judge our sins accordingly. He appears; we cling to his saving promise in hope and faith. There is no one else to rescue us from the consequences of our moral failure. We are saved by the Judge himself.

This is how Proverbs teaches fathers to appeal to their sons. The parents' own fear of the Lord leads to an urgent appeal to their children to incline their ears, hear (really hear) the words of the wise, to apply their hearts to knowledge. In doing so their children will learn, as the parents have learned, both the fear of the Lord and to trust the saving work of Christ on their behalf.

Prayer and Listening to God Part 6: The Myth Of The Still, Small Voice

2011-06-12T16:33:00.004-05:00

(This is Part 6 in a series of posts on Prayer and Listening to God. Click here for Part 1).

I've been writing on the topic of prayer and listening for God's voice because it's an important doctrine to get right. Many people today believe that we should expect to hear God speak to us apart from his voice in Scripture. They teach that we should be "tuned in" to God's inner leading in order to learn his will for a decision we must make, for instance. I don't believe the Bible teaches this at all, and that in fact, it teaches something far different. This is the sixth in a series of articles explaining why. So far, here's what I've talked about:

Part One: A lot is at stake in what we believe about prayer and listening to God (the way we view Scripture, for starters). Every Christian needs to understand his own position on this.

Part Two: Only the Bible can define what biblical prayer is and what it isn't. The Bible teaches that prayer is speaking to and making requests of God. The Bible does not teach or model deliberately listening for God's voice in prayer (or at any other time).

Part Three: There is a knowable history of how we've come to believe that listening for God's voice in prayer is taught in the Bible. It is a belief that has been infiltrating conservative, orthodox Christianity over the past 50 or 60 years. It's largely based on misuses of Scripture.

Part Four: Though we are not to listen for God's voice in prayer, we do enjoy fellowship and communion with God in the ways the Bible teaches. However, God's word is our source for knowing his will. Understanding this is a very freeing truth, light years more satisfying than the mystical approach promoted today.

Part Five: There are right and wrong ways to "rightly handle" God's word, that is, to interpret and teach it (2 Timothy 2:15). We need help and training in this, especially in our day. Learning to interpret the Bible correctly will help us avoid error and get the right meaning and purpose of biblical texts. Getting God's meaning and purpose causes us to grow in understanding and in holiness.

This sums up where we've got to so far, and if you haven't read those articles, please take the time to do so before reading this one. As promised, I'll now offer an example of why Christians believe they are supposed to learn to hear God directly speak to them, whether in prayer or at other times. This example has to do with the concept of the "still, small voice."

In 1 Kings 19:9-18, God revealed himself to Elijah in various ways, including what the King James Bible calls a "still, small voice". The ESV translates the same phrase as "low whisper"; the original Hebrew means something like "a thin silence." Here is the pertinent phrase in its context in 1 Kings 19 (quoted here from the ESV):

“... he [Elijah] came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said to him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ He said, ‘I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.’ And he said, ‘Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.’ And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” (vss. 9-13).

The "low whisper" was indeed a sound Elijah heard, just as he'd heard the wind, the sound of rocks splitting and breaking, and the roaring of the fire; but in no way did the low whisper represent God speaking to Elijah. God did speak to him, but it was first before, and then after, the low whisper. In both those places, God "said" words to Elijah, and those words are recorded in the text (see verses 9 and 18); they were rational, intelligible words that Elijah immediately and clearly understood, and responded to in like manner.

So if the low whisper (the still small voice) was not God speaking to Elijah, what was it? I believe the best answer is that it was one of several ways in which God revealed himself to Elijah there on the mountain. The great wind, the earthquake, and the fire were all phenomena that testified to God's awesome, even fearful Person and power. He is the God who governs all things, who shakes the earth and who is a consuming fire. Elijah cowered in terror before these demonstrations! Yet he is the God who is gentle with those who are his. When Elijah heard, at last, the low whisper, he wrapped his face in his cloak, signifying his meekness before this awesome God, and took courage to step out onto the mountain. The still, small voice illustrated God’s gentleness and mercy in condescending to the weakness of his servant by revealing himself in a way that Elijah could bear. John Calvin said:

“… God, in so speaking [in metaphors], lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children… Such modes of expression, therefore, do not so much express what kind of a being God is, as accommodate the knowledge of him to our feebleness. In doing so, he must, of course, stoop far below his proper height.”

Job says it like this:

“The pillars of heaven tremble and are astounded at his rebuke. By his power he stilled the sea; by his understanding he shattered Rahab. Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him? But the thunder of his power who can understand?” (Job 26:11-14).

In Jesus, it may be said that this revelation of God is fulfilled:

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

The idea of listening for a "still, small voice" to receive direct communication from God should be finally and firmly put to rest. This wrong interpretation has hampered the church's knowledge and firmness for decades. Remember that Elijah, as an OT prophet, was uniquely called to directly receive God's word, and then preach and write it. No one is called to that function anymore, since the canon of Scripture has been given and is closed. The passage in 1 Kings 19 is certainly meant to instruct us, as is all Scripture, but it's not meant to teach us to listen for an inner message from God. Rather, it's meant to teach us important truths about God's character and his ways.

Next time I'll talk a bit about a couple of other popular myths along this line: feeling "led" and feeling a "peace" (or the lack thereof). Eventually, I'll try to tackle this whole concept of listening for God's voice from a positive angle. Yes, God does guide us. Yes, you and I need to talk about that!

(What's missing in this picture? Why, verse 13, of course: "... And behold, there came a voice to him and said...").

The Scathing Good News of the Gospel

2011-06-12T07:38:00.000-05:00

In Luke chapter 3, John the Baptist has begun to preach. He said things like this to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him:

"...You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father', for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire...

"I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I... will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

And this is how Luke characterizes such fiery preaching:

"So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people" (verse 18).

Only God makes such scathing indictments good news to sin-weary people. May all God's preachers faithfully preach thus.

A Proverb a Day

2011-04-22T08:52:00.005-05:00

Proverbs 22:17-21

"Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise... that your trust may be in the Lord, I have made them known to you..."

It's easy to think of the book of Proverbs as merely a loose collection of pithy sayings designed to give us practical wisdom for living. I think a lot of people don't quite know what to do with the book. Many Christians have a vague sense of guilt about both Psalms and Proverbs; they believe and accept that both are God's inerrant, and inspired word, but find "getting" the books difficult and therefore boring.

This is unfortunate, because in reality both books are so useful and helpful (of course! 2 Timothy 3:16-17). Understanding the purpose of the books--the authors' mindsets and intentions in what they wrote, and therefore God's intent on inspiring them--helps in drawing one into God's purposes in the wisdom literature of the Bible.

Proverbs tell us that its bottom-line purpose is to instruct its students in the fear of the Lord. The warnings of Proverbs, whether about strange women, too much wine, the temptations of wealth, or hanging out with the wrong crowd, are the admonitions of a loving father warning us away from the edges of the cliffs and toward the healthy fear of the Lord, keeping us on safe paths that lead to life as we traverse the pilgrim way. The warnings are intensely practical because this is where we live. Young men do fall prey to sexual temptation and snares; alcohol does entrap people; immoral and profane people do corrupt the simpleton who keeps company with them for leisurely pursuits.

The Proverbs are like the Law, in that they reveal two ways to live. Fear the Lord, believe the words of this book, and live. Ignore these words, indulge yourself in these ways warned against, and die--perhaps an early, physical death--and risk the loss of your soul.

I've had the habit for several years now of reading the corresponding chapter of Proverbs to the day of the month (thus a quote from chapter 22 today). I can't know, in this life, how life-altering it has been to do so. Nowhere except in Proverbs will one find a warning like, "The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down" (Proverbs 14:1). Those words have brought me up short many a time in my own folly. It's not pretty sometimes; I wish I were a much more gracious doer of God's word and sailed through life with always pure motivations; but honestly, sometimes I just need a brutal warning to bring me skulking back from the edge of disaster. I ain't so great. But the words of the wise, they are.

Read the Proverbs. The one chapter a day habit is a good one and over time, will start to do its work in your thoughts and affections. God designed it to work like that.

Must Christians Always Experience Joy? Part Two

2011-04-21T12:52:00.008-05:00

One way to help in thinking about the Bible's commands to rejoice are the differences between the seasons of rejoicing and weeping we experience as individuals, and the Church's rejoicing.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:16, Philippians 3:1 and Philippians 4:4, Paul exhorts the church to rejoice. The command is plural; it is the duty of the whole body of Christ to always rejoice in the Lord. The basis for this corporate rejoicing of course, just as for individuals in the church, is the grace and hope brought to us through the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Church, as the body of Christ, is meant to keep these truths always central and prominent to guide her pilgrim journey on the earth.

But as individual members of Christ's body and of one another ( Romans 12:5, 1 Corinthians 12:27), the Bible recognizes we will not always be rejoicing (Romans 12:15). Sometimes as individual members we'll bear a heavy load (Galatians 6:2). Sometimes as individual members we'll suffer and feel no cheer (James 5:13).

Notice that the response to those who weep and have no cheer is not a pep talk, necessarily, but to be with them in their distress. Those who suffer remain joined to the Church's continued rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God (Romans 5:2), yet the Bible tells those who are able to to turn and weep right along with those who weep, even as with the whole body they continue on, rejoicing in hope.

It's an antimony, to be sure, how a real acknowledgment of the suffering and cheerlessness of individuals goes right along with rejoicing in hope. We don't always see the Church acting in her assigned role of rejoicing in hope even as she's turning to weep with those who weep. Our wrong understanding of what biblical rejoicing is based on keeps us from being able to do this well, perhaps. The point of my post from yesterday (that I maybe didn't make so well) is that the Scriptures make room for individual members of Christ's body to have seasons of difficulty in which they may not experience feelings of joy; and that the biblical response of the always-rejoicing-in-hope Church is to weep right along with them.

If the body of Christ, filled with the Spirit and with the words of Christ (Ephesians 5:18 and Colossians 3:16), continues faithfully in rejoicing in hope and in weeping with those who weep, then sufferers will be helped and encouraged to rejoice in hope as well.

Must Christians Always Experience Joy?

2011-04-20T00:20:00.005-05:00

I came across a great book, "Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don't Have To Do" (love the title) by Phillip Cary. I ordered the book after reading this review, in hopes it would prove useful in counseling and in helping women to think soberly about such things as "how to know God's will." I'm sure it will prove useful in those ways, but thankfully, it's already proven very helpful to me, particularly the chapter entitled "Why You Don't Always Have to Experience Joy."

I needed to read these words, and be reminded of this truth, and see a few things in a new way. The kind of joy we like to tell each other we "ought" to feel has been a sort of rare commodity for me these days. More of "the silly grin" has definitely been wiped off my face. :)← (Yet look, there it is again, trying to make its appearance.) ☺ (Oh stop it!) You see what I mean. We often think that the joy the Bible calls us to is a perpetual bubbly (or wisecracking or giddy) façade. Yet this can be a disheartening way to think. The real truth of the matter is much better, and much more satisfying.

Here are a few quotes from this chapter of the book so you can get a taste of it yourself. These words are good news to the suffering, the depressed and the afflicted, because their context is the gospel of Jesus. The good news, our hope, resides in what Christ has done on our behalf, not in what we can manage to drum up on our own. By all means read the review I linked to above, and order a copy here. You won't go wrong with this book.

"The idea that Christians are supposed to have a deep inner joy all the time is a terribly cruel notion. The idea itself is what's cruel: it turns people who wish to comfort the afflicted into tormentors. They want to help their suffering friends get the joy back, but in the process they insist their friends accept the underlying idea that it's not normal for the Christian life to include deep suffering of heart. So in addition to their suffering, their friends are wounded by the suggestion that their affliction is due to some failure in their Christian life--as if there's something wrong with Christians who have a cross to bear" (p. 139).

"The Bible makes time for this dark night, because it teaches that hope is a kind of waiting (see, for example, Psalm 25:3, 5, 21; Psalm 27:14; Psalm 37:7; Psalm 40:1; Psalm 130:6). Often it's a very active kind of waiting, full of labors like rebuilding a city in a land full of enemies (see Nehemiah 4:1-23). But it may also be a passive kind of waiting that includes suffering, a longing that arises in the midst of great affliction, where the only activity available to you is prayer, complaining to God. In the Bible, complaining to the only one who can rescue you is an act of hope. This is why complaint is one of the most important forms or genres of prayer, as in the many Psalms that cry out, "How long, O Lord?"... To pray these psalms of complaint is to realize that waiting in hope does not mean being content with suffering, as if there were something good about being in pain. But neither does it mean there's something wrong with people who suffer" (p. 141).

"Although we cannot understand all the glory that is to come, we do know [our story] is the kind of story where the happy ending makes the whole story good. We can see that already in the day we call Good Friday. We call it good because of what is revealed in the light of Easter Sunday, when the glorious resurrection from the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ changed everything in human history forever, including the meaning of the events on Good Friday. Not only the past, but also the future is different, as every cross we bear is different because of the cross of Christ. Our own death is different because of his resurrection from the dead. The whole universe is different because this man, who is God in the flesh, sits now at the right hand of God the Father at the center of the angels' unbroken hymns of praise. Everything in the world is already different, hiding a glory that is to be revealed when the kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven" (p.155).

Relevant Words From 1925

2011-04-16T22:13:00.002-05:00

"The absence of doctrinal teaching and preaching is certainly one of the causes for the present lamentable ingnorance in the church. But a still more influential cause is found in the failure of the most important of all Christian education institutions. The most important Christian education institution is not the pulpit or the school, important as these institutions are; but it is the Christian family. And that institution has to a very large extent ceased to do its work. Where did those of us who have reached middle life really get our knowledge of the Bible? I suppose my experience is the same as that of a good many of us. I did not get my knowledge of the Bible from Sunday School or from any other school, but I got it on Sunday afternoons with my mother at home. And I will venture to say that although my mental ability was certainly of no extraordinary kind I had a better knowledge of the Bible at fourteen years of age than is possessed by many students in the theological seminaries of the present day.

"Theological students come for the most part from Christian homes; indeed in very considerable proportion they are children of the manse (i.e., their fathers are pastors). Yet when they have finished college and enter the theological seminary many of them are quite ignorant of the simple contents of the English Bible." ~ J. Gresham Machen, quoted in Biblical Eldership by Alexander Strauch, p.80

Scope and Sequence

2011-04-12T09:59:00.006-05:00

The Bible is a Book that tells a Story; it's the true narrative account of something God has done, is doing, and will someday bring to a grand fulfillment. Like any great story, reading it in bits and pieces, but never reading and understanding it from beginning to end, will not be satisfying. One won't get it fully. The story will be missing continuity; there will be gaps in one's understanding.

In the Bible the epic, true tale of God's plan of the ages is told in many different ways, using many different genres that include straight historical accounts, poetry, apocalyptic writing with scenes full of imagery and figures of speech, and riddles and parables. There are many stories within the story, like in Genesis 1-3 where we're given the whole reason for all that's to follow. All the different authors, different genres of writing, and stories within the story progress with seamless God-centeredness toward the final, amazing conclusion (with a tantalizing preview of the good that will be the next Story!).

"Scope and sequence" is an educational term that refers to the breadth and depth of a specific curriculum. The scope is how much will be taught of a subject over the course of a semester or year; the sequence is the order in which the lessons will be studied. The Bible, no differently than any "course," has a scope and sequence that takes precedence over any other study we will ever undertake. The scope is breathtaking, of eternal urgency, and of supernatural power and claim. The sequence, like any other true account, starts at the beginning and ends at the finish.

If you are a Christian, making a commitment to read God's story from cover to cover only makes sense. There are plenty of good reading plans available to help you; some good ones can be found here or if you want to simply keep a record of your reading, print out a handy record-keeping sheet here. Keep reading until you know you begin to understand. Keep reading until you begin to know the fear of the Lord. Keep reading until you begin to be ready for every secret thing to be brought into the light. And then keep reading.

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).

Raised From the Dead

2011-04-09T07:59:00.005-05:00

A microcosmic analogy (one of many in the Bible) of God's electing call:

"And He went up on the mountain, and called to Him those whom He desired, and they came to Him" (Mark 3:13).

No one can resist that call. God is mighty to save.

The Bible's Rx For Unity in the Church: Truth and Love™

2011-04-07T07:24:00.017-05:00

Active Ingredients and Purpose
Sound Doctrine, Love....................Immaturity/Sin Reducer

Other Ingredients
Faith in Sufficiency of Scripture, The Human Voice

Uses
Permanently Relieves Immaturity in the Church Due to Being Carried About By:

Every Wind of Doctrine
Human Cunning
Craftiness in Deceitful Schemes
Falsehood

Promotes Healthy Upward Growth of Each Member Together into the Head of the Church

Dosage
Pour Truth and Love™ liberally into large-sized container with spout, such as the human heart. Carefully tip spout in direction(s) needed, including, periodically, toward self. Refill container as needed, daily at minimum and hourly if necessary, in order to keep mixture right. Be sure active ingredients remain pure. Do not use if out-of-date.

More information including refills, warnings, motivations and encouragements for use may be accessed at Speaking the Truth in Love, Ephesians 4:14-16. (Please see there, in addition, all comments preceding and following.)

A Vision of Jesus

2011-04-05T08:56:00.007-05:00

Remembering Stephen's dying glimpse of the glory of God and of Jesus standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:54-60) encouraged me this morning. In a very real way, as we live out lives of martyrdom for the sake of his renown, we've been given the same view:

"For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6).

"But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone" (Hebrews 2:9).

But wait a minute, you might say--living out a "life of martyrdom"? Really? Yes. It's the calling of every disciple of his: "And he said to all, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me'" (Luke 9:23).

"Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day," said Paul, who had once stood by approvingly, guarding the coats of the men who were stoning Stephen (Acts 7:54-60).

As we pilgrim through this barren land, denying ourselves, taking up our cross daily, we need a sure view of the glory of God and of the risen, glorious Christ. With the eyes of our understanding we must comprehend, as surely as Stephen saw with his physical eyes, Jesus rising to stand, preparing to welcome with the crown of life (James 1:12) every cross-bearer for his sake into his heavenly kingdom.

Grieving the Holy Spirit: Watch Out!

2011-04-01T09:03:00.005-05:00

"And He said to the man with the withered hand, 'Come here.' And He said to them, 'Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?' But they were silent. And He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand.' He stretched it out, and his hand was restored" (Mark 3:3-5).

"And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:30-32).

I think the idea of "grieving the Holy Spirit" may be a bit misunderstood in the American church. Don't we tend to have an image of Him sitting by sorrowfully, perhaps with dejected, downcast demeanor, wishing we would pay attention to Him and "let Him" do what He wants to do in our lives? Maybe our ideas area little better than that, but still, do we have the understanding that by grieving Him, the Bible means that we...gulp...make Him angry?

In the passage from Mark, Jesus' anger stemmed from His being "grieved at their hardness of heart." The passage from Ephesians shows that we grieve the Holy Spirit by our bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander and malice toward one another in the Church. In both cases we see two things: it is the arrogant and unloving treatment of one another that brings on this "grief," and this grief is His righteous anger toward our hard and ignorant hearts!

I see that I should not take Ephesians 4:30 as a verse taking up for, or trying to protect, some sort of defenseless, easily wounded or shy Holy Spirit. Instead I should see it for what it is, a warning! "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God," for His anger is kindled by our hard, unloving hearts! Because He loves us, God's discipline will be sure to follow.

The Difference Between "If You Will" and "If You Can"

2011-03-29T09:25:00.012-05:00

There is a big difference in the Bible between those two things. One is pleasing to God; the other is not. In the last 50 or so years, it's become popular to say that including in our requests to God "If it is your will" somehow conveys a lack of faith. But nothing could be further from the truth. Two stories in the Bible--one about a leper, and the other about a boy's father--serve to illustrate this.

In Mark 1:40-45, a leper came to Jesus, imploring him and kneeling before him to say, "If you will, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Mark says, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I will; be clean." And at once the man was clean of leprosy.

In Mark 9:22-24, the disciples had not been able to help a boy tormented by spirits. Jesus saw the crowd gathered and took things in hand. The boy's father told Jesus that for a long time, since the boy's childhood, this spirit had been trying to destroy him. "But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us," finished the poor father. "'If you can!'," returned our Lord. "All things are possible for one who believes." Immediately, Mark says, the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief!"

The leper believed that Jesus could. This was pleasing to the Lord, and earned the leper no rebuke. But the father of the boy did not know if Jesus could. This is what earned him Jesus' rebuke in the form of repeating his faithless words back to him.

There are some things we ask God for that we know are his will to do. We know it's His will for His name to be hallowed, for His kingdom to come, for His church to forgive. We know it's His will for us to be sanctified in His word of truth and for believers to have love for one another. Those things are prayed "in accordance with His will," that is, in accord with what He has definitely declared, in his word, that He is going to cause to happen. We can pray in faith that those things will happen.

For other requests, such as for healing, for a specific new job, for a husband or wife, we cannot know His will. We make our requests for those specific things we want, because that's what he wants us to do; the faith that pleases him is our knowing that He can do whatever is his will to do. And it pleases Him when we express it in just that way, trusting him for how he will, in His compassion, answer.

Once Sorrowful, Now Always Rejoicing...Paul

2011-03-15T05:02:00.011-05:00

Sunday at lunch after church the conversation turned to the apostle Paul. We were discussing how that before his conversion, he had been a very determined fellow and very efficient and effective in his wrong-headed zeal, but after his conversion he found himself weakened, laid low by God, yet used very mightily by him to accomplish his mission. God had told Paul, "My strength is perfected in your weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). In this way it was evident that it was God who was doing great things, not Paul. Paul liked it that way, too. He now gloried only in the Cross, boasted only in Jesus Christ, and this was the best thing that had ever happened to him, by far. In fact, in comparison, all the "success" he had known before was now, to him, only like so much rubbish (Philippians 3:8)!

Our conversation turned to the sorrow that Paul carried always with him over his terrible treatment of believers before his conversion. He had dragged many out of their houses into prison; he had brought grief and heartache to many a family and many a church; he had been an accomplice to, if not outright doer of, murder. When Stephen, the godly and spirit-filled deacon in the early church in Jerusalem, was stoned to death for his testimony of Christ, Paul (Saul in those days) had stood by holding the coats of the men who stoned him... in other words, giving hearty approval.

We then thought of a wonderful thing. Just before Stephen died, he saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of the Father, waiting to receive this, his first martyr, into the heavenly realm. Stephen was so enraptured with this view of the risen Christ and the glories of heaven, I think it quite drew his attention away from the evil actions of the men who were about to take his life! Paul was standing right there, heard Stephen cry out in amazement at the vision, coldly watched as the angry mob carried out its grim purpose. And that, he thought at the time, was that.

But years later, this forgiven, weakened apostle had an amazing experience of his own. He was taken to heaven while still alive. There he heard things "that cannot be told, which man may not utter". The experience was so great, so glorious, that an affliction was given to him to buffet him about (even more than he already was!) to help him resist any sinful pride in this great privilege. Paul, who had stood by watching as Stephen died with eyes fastened on heaven, had now been transported there himself, to enjoy a brief foretaste of what Stephen had seen, and what Paul himself would soon be enjoying forever.

What did Paul see? What did he hear? We don't know because God said "No" on any reporting back about it. Paul is the only mortal man we know of who had this experience--a visit to heaven and return to this life, before death. (I'm sorry--no, glad--to say that we are to discount others' claims to this, like the "90 Days in Heaven" guy. Those stories just do not bear the weight of truth.) And how kind of God to grant his sorrowful-yet-rejoicing, always-bearing-in-the-body-the-death-of-the-Lord-Jesus apostle this wonderful experience. Paul, it may be safe to say, suffered more for righteousness' sake than any other except for the Lord himself. He was uniquely called to a life of hardship, sorrow, pain and loss. And so the Lord Jesus tenderly brings him to the dwelling place of God, just for a brief moment. He lets Paul take it all in, hear and see what no one has heard and seen and returned to tell about, soaking into his wearied soul, I'm sure, the glory to come, the unbelievable joy awaiting, marveling at the astonishing purposes and councils of the just and holy God, predetermined before the foundations of the world, all being perfectly executed by the willing and obedient angels.

And did he see his brother Stephen there? We don't know. As we were talking around the table, the wideness of this mercy and goodness of God to Paul sort of made us sober. Our eyes got big. What could we say? This was God's doing, this bringing his faithful apostle up for a taste of the good things to come, and to see first-hand the very things that his faithful deacon and martyr Stephen had seen on that day long before, that day when Paul had stood by, holding the coats.

Painting: The Conversion of Saul by Caravaggio

My Ideas Vs. God's

2011-02-25T10:11:00.004-06:00

I've got my own ideas on serving the Lord. I figure if I serve on church committees, visit shut-ins, worship with the church on Sundays, feed the homeless, and do a fairly good job of taking care of my family, that I've probably done pretty well in serving him. If I teach some kind of class at church, even better! My ministry, my "using my gifts," is really important to me. What has God really called me to do? I wonder. Am I serving where and how he would have me to? Maybe I should consider taking on a new responsibility... it just seems like maybe I should be doing more...

Yikes! What if I found out that my ideas about serving the Lord weren't his ideas at all! (And if I really pay close attention to his word, I might find that out.) I've been teaching a class of women, but have I been striving to "love my husband and children" (Titus 2:3-5) as he would have me to? (Gotta study his word to find out what that really looks like!) Or, maybe I've been busy helping and serving in practical ways at church, running here and there to meet needs and devoting hours to various programs and functions, but have neglected sitting daily at the Master's feet with an open Bible to learn from him! (This was the "activity" that actually earned Jesus' praise and commendation in Luke 10:38-42.)

Just some things to chew on. We are busy women, but we are first and foremost disciples of the Lord Jesus. "Disciple" means "student." We're students of Christ; and yet how much time do we devote, like Mary, to sitting at his feet, Bibles opened to hear him speak, learning of him so that we can really know what our priorities in ministry should be? We can certainly go and do, hither and yonder; but never, never should we go and do in ways that undermine or harm our first priorities, our true ministries. This requires care, thoughtfulness, study and submission to God's word as his revealed will for us.

I've got my own ideas on serving the Lord... but I need to give those up, take Jesus' yoke upon me, and learn of him. His ideas are best.

"Jesus Christ Has Come In The Flesh"

2011-02-10T11:22:00.003-06:00

What does John mean in 1 John 4:2-3-- "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God"? Does John mean that if someone can simply quote those words, then we can know that they are of God; that by virtue of their being able to quote them, we can then know that the words they continue to speak are from God, and that we can trust what they say? Actually, that's not what John means. He means something much more wonderful than that!

In John's Gospel, in John 20:30-31, after recounting three of Jesus' appearances to various disciples in various places after his resurrection from the dead, John says this: "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." We become convinced that Jesus died and was raised back to life by this written testimony of his disciples, the apostles, that Jesus appeared to them after he rose. The confession of Jesus as "the Christ, the Son of God", is the Spirit-revealed knowledge that he died and came back to life, that he appeared to the apostles, alive, and that he still lives. It's the confession that all he claimed to be and all he claimed he would and will yet do, is true.

Such a confession, born of the faith of believing that the testimony of the apostles is true, is our life from the dead. John goes on to say of the apostolic testimony: "We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error" (1 John 4:6).

So, the "every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh" is the same person as "whoever knows God listens to us". A true teacher (for 1 John 4:2-3 is about true and false prophets and teachers) is one who confesses what the apostles confess, who listens to the apostle's teaching, agreeing with and submitting to it as the very word of God. That teacher's confession will agree with the whole testimony of the apostle's written, recorded testimony of the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, and with all that it means. That's what the confession of 1 John 4:2-3 is--more than rote words, it is simply shorthand for a radical, life-altering, supernaturally revealed and given faith!

The Wise Reprover and the Listening Ear of Titus 2

2011-01-25T10:14:00.008-06:00

Titus 2:3-5--"Older women... are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled."

Proverbs 25:12--“Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear.”

1 Peter 3:1-4--"Likewise, wives... Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious."

What woman doesn’t appreciate a great hairstyle, nice clothes, and fine gold jewelry? Yet, such adornments pale in comparison to the beauty God is after. What God finds "precious" and "beautiful" in the feminine heart is something Peter calls a "gentle and quiet spirit." What such a spirit looks like is described in practical ways in the verse above from Titus 2. It includes having a heart that's being "trained"-- in loving one's husband and children, in self-control, in purity, in being a worker at home, in being kind, in being submissive to one's own husband. Note the idea of training as a key ingredient in attaining to this beautiful condition. Note the implication that we aren't born, nor do we go into marriage and child-rearing, knowing how!

Proverbs 25:12 lists two elements necessary for the kind of training that results in beautiful godliness: (1) a wise reprover and (2) a listening ear. It takes both to get the lovely result, comparable in beauty to gold rings and ornaments. Titus 2:3-5 supplies a New Testament identity to these two elements: the older women of the church (wise reprovers), willing and able to teach, and the younger women (listening ears), willing to be taught, and to change, so that "the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:7).

Becoming trained in this kind of beauty pleases God so much because it glorifies him. At stake is the reality of the gospel lived out before a skeptical world. Without this kind of grace and transformation in the lives of women, therefore in the lives of families, and therefore in the life of the church, the truths of God are in danger of being blasphemed (that's the meaning of the word translated "reviled" in Titus 2:5). The world sees the difference between our words of profession and how we actually live our lives.

So I ask you today, as I'm asking myself: as Christian wives and mothers, how are we doing in living this out? Do we really want this; are we willing to pay the price to become women who teach and encourage one another to become women with these habits, with these qualities, so precious and beautiful in the sight of God our Savior? Are we willing to submit to God's plain words and work out, in a practical sense, how all this plays out in our homes and in the church? Are we seeking to become both "wise reprovers" and "listening ears," or are we resistant to believing that these words of God could really apply in this way to us?

This is not an easy thing. God's words here, like all doctrine, are open to all sorts of misunderstanding and/or mischievous misrepresentation, especially in our day. But it's imperative, especially in our day, that we grasp its importance. It's not being dramatic to say that the lives of our children and the future of the church depends on it.

When we stand before God to give an account of our lives, he won't ask us how we did with our careers, our portfolios, our workout routines or our wardrobes. Instead, we'll be called to account for how we believed his word and tried to obey it. None of us will perform perfectly--thank God for his gift of righteousness, imputed to the believer through the atoning death of his Son!-but the desires of our hearts will be laid bare, and our failure to love what He loves will surely be cause for regret. I am praying anew, as an older woman, for the grace to be both a wise reprover and to have a listening ear, for the opportunity both to teach and to be taught, for that is the true Christian life. Will you pray about this, too?

Prayer and Listening to God Part 5: How "Rightly Handling" Makes All The Difference

2011-01-08T10:53:00.016-06:00

(This is Part 5 of a series of posts on Prayer and Listening to God. Click here for Part 1).

In the last article of this series, I took the opportunity to talk a little about the rich fellowship and communion we can enjoy with God in prayer. Prayer is not "one-sided;" we are not simply talking into the air! God is with us in our prayers. In today's article, as promised, I'll offer a hopefully helpful and interesting overview of Bible interpretation, and how it matters when it comes to the issue of listening for God's voice. In the next article, I hope to present some common examples of misinterpreted Scripture along that line. I was fascinated to see how this misunderstanding has come about in the church, and hope you will be, too.

Hermeneutics, of course, is the fancy word with a simple enough meaning: it’s simply the name of the process used to interpret Scripture. Using the right hermeneutic is part of what Paul is talking about to Timothy when he tells him, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15). There is a right way and a wrong way to “handle” Scripture, and much of this has to do with right and wrong ways of interpreting it. If we rightly interpret the Bible we are well on our way, with the Holy Spirit’s illuminating help, to rightly understanding it, teaching it, and obeying it.

Simply put, the grammatical-historical method of interpretation is the hermeneutic that broadly serves to rightly interpret Scripture. Its aim, taking into account the genre of the passage, is to discover the meaning of the passage: what the author intended and what the original hearers were to understand. The grammatical historical process involves keeping in mind guiding principles like these:

Context is King

This cardinal rule of interpretation means that every verse in the Bible must be understood in light of the author’s intent in the chapter it’s found in; every chapter must be understood in the context of the author’s intent in the book of the Bible it’s found in; and every book of the Bible is to be understood in the context of the overall message of whole Bible itself.

Scripture Interprets Scripture

All of Scripture, having the same Author, is in harmony with itself and never contradicts itself. Therefore, less clear passages are always interpreted in light of more clear passages. For instance, a New Testament passage that seems to say that all people will ultimately be saved must be interpreted in light of the many passages that tell us clearly this is not the case. The explanation is that “all” often means, especially with Paul, that both Jew and Gentile are included, or sometimes it refers to people from all different sorts of groups. Sometimes it just means, literally, all! :) The context usually provides the clue.

Here’s another rule that especially comes to bear on the issue of listening for God’s voice in prayer: Descriptive passages should be interpreted in the light of prescriptive ones.

Descriptive texts are the narratives of the Bible--stories that describe events of certain times in redemptive history. Prescriptive texts are didactic--teachings that prescribe how we are to live as Christians in light of those events. The fact that these stories are told in the Bible, that these events are described, does not necessarily teach that we are to expect those kinds of events for ourselves. For instance, the story of Peter walking on water does not teach that we should expect to walk on water. This will become very important as we look at the issue of listening for God’s voice in prayer. It is to the prescriptive, the teaching portions of the Bible, that we primarily look in order to learn what God requires of us in terms of faith. In the New Testament those are found, by and large, in the Epistles.

Next post in this series: the enduring legend of the still, small voice!

(Please click here for Part 6.)

A

The Epistles Give the Standard

2011-01-07T22:43:00.005-06:00

"If I might summarize all these dangers, it is the danger of isolating a text or an idea and building up a system around it, instead of comparing Scripture with Scripture. It is the seeking of a short cut in the spiritual world... We must reject anything which is not based soundly upon the teaching of the Epistles. We must be very careful that we do not take an incident out of the Gospels, and weave a theory around it... we must realize that our standard... is to be found in the Epistles." ~ D.M. Lloyd-Jones, Knowing the Times, page 11

Picture: Apostle Paul in Prison by Rembrandt

Beware Lest You Defend God!

2011-01-06T11:55:00.012-06:00

You would think I'd have titled this, "Beware Lest You OFFEND God." But we need to be just as wary of defending him, lest we end up, in doing so, after all offending him. That's what Job's friends did. Here's the story.

In the book of Job, Job's "comforters," his friends who came to visit after all the disasters described in Chapter 1 had come upon him, didn't like the way Job was talking about God. They felt as if Job was accusing God of sending suffering his way without due cause, so they leapt to God's defense.

"God," they said, "always rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked in just the ways we describe. Therefore your suffering, Job, has come upon you due to wickedness in your life."

But Job refuses this view, instead pointing out what we might call the difficult providences of God. He speaks directly to God about it like this:

"What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him, visit him every morning and test him every moment? How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit? If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? Why have you made me your mark?" (7:17-20)

Now, these words of Job's must have sounded blasphemous to Job's friends, and they likely would to us, too. So they set about vigorously "defending" God (as we might). But the truth was, Job was on to something that his friends had missed. Job knew that God does not stand in need of misguided defense, as Job's friends tried to provide. Job was seeing and commenting on the whole thing in a more truthful way (although with limited understanding) than his three comforters. His view of God as the sovereign "instigator" of his suffering was spot on:

"But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind" (12: 17).

Even the dumb beasts, even the bushes, could have told Job's friends that God, the sovereign ruler of all things, had brought "all this" about! Duh!

What did God want to teach Job, and all Job's friends, about himself? He wanted to teach them that he is Ruler, and that he is good. That he is sovereign, and that he is merciful. That his ways are higher than ours and past finding out, yet that he is willing to draw near to us. Job wishes for an "arbiter," or umpire (Job 9:32-33) to "lay his hand on us both" (that is, on both him and God, should Job be allowed to bring his unhappy case before God for trial). The New Testament tells us that God did indeed send just such a Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5, Hebrews 9:15, 12:24) to do what we weak and unrighteous people could never do: make us righteous by his own blood, and forever successfully plead our case before God the Judge! So we see that the God who sometimes sends affliction is the same God who sends mercy. And he does it all for his own purposes, for his own glory, and for those who are his, their good.

Puny man cannot accuse or defend God. Here is how Job rightly puts it to his friends who are so eager to "get God off the hook" :

"With God are wisdom and might; he has counsel and understanding. If he tears down, none can rebuild; if he shuts a man in, none can open. If he withholds the waters, they dry up; if he sends them out, they overwhelm the land... he makes nations great, and he destroys them; he enlarges nations, and leads them away...

"Will you speak falsely for God and speak deceitfully for him? Will you show partiality toward him? Will you plead the case for God? Will it be well with you when he searches you out?... He will surely rebuke you, if in secret you show partiality!" (Job 13:1-12).

And here is how God finally speaks to the issue, putting it this way to Job's friends:

"My anger burns against you [Eliphaz] and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has... my servant Job will pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has" (42:7-8).

Beware of "defending" God! :)

Come, Lord Jesus!

2010-12-31T22:18:00.007-06:00

December 25th is done. There is still a tree up (just no presents under it), still lights on the houses, still a Christmas cd in my car player; and I feel, just like every year, a sadness, a bittersweet nostalgia. Why's that? I listen again to a Christmas cd, not the silly one (by Mariah Carey) but the good one, with a choir. Now that all the needless rush and stress is over, I want it back! But today, I realized, not "it"; but him. Not the little baby in the manger but the King, riding on a white horse. I want the King to return.

We've celebrated his first advent, but there's another, second advent we wait for, long for now. Christmas is great. Our attention gets focused on the greatest miracle and gift ever: that God came and dwelt among us in human flesh. That he was right here among us for a little while. And at Christmas it's kind of like we get to act that out a little, even setting out figurines in our houses. We imagine seeing it, that we're there and it's all happening, right under our noses. But then, the day is over, and it all gets packed up and put away, and we are still waiting. I know it's just trees and lights and candles and figurines. But still... don't you feel increased loneliness for him? Doesn't Christmas just make you long to see him with your eyes? Don't you long for him to come again, this time for good?

And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven" (Acts 1:9-11).

He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! ~ Revelation 22:20

How Do You Meet Needs?

2010-12-29T11:16:00.002-06:00

I've been thinking, what are the things God in his Word tells us to do to meet needs, whether in our families, in the church, or in the world? And how good a job are we--am I--doing of paying attention to that?

Here's what the NT has to say about meeting needs in our families:

Wives submit to, love and respect your husbands; be a worker in your home
Children honor and obey your parents, take care of them physically in old age
Husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church, live with them in an understanding way
Fathers, bring up your children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord and don't provoke them to anger

(Won't just these four things keep some of us busy for the rest of our lives?)

Here's a sampling of what the Bible says about meeting needs in the church:

Bear one another's burdens
Share one another's joys and sorrows
Share generously what you have with those in need
Show hospitality
Encourage each other in the Lord
Teach and exhort each other through singing together
Think about ways to stir one another up to love and good works
Forgive each other
Speak the truth in love to each other
Make disciples

(Those all apply in the home as well, by the way.)

And here's a sampling of what the Bible says about meeting needs in the world:

Always be ready to give a humble answer to those who want to know the reason for your hope
Do not be ashamed of Christ and his words before unbelievers
Share the gospel
Be willing to suffer for righteousness' sake so that unbelievers may see your good works and (perhaps in this life) give glory to God
Obey and honor the government authorities
Do not love the world or the things of the world

Our ideas of meeting needs often fall short or are even opposed to what God, in his authoritative word, says we should be doing. I'm convicted!

"And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near" (Hebrews 10:24).

How My View of Scripture Was Altered

2010-12-28T07:42:00.005-06:00

From a journal entry a while back:

The reality of the all-encompassing sufficiency and authority of the Bible exploded into my view six or so years ago. Before then, I was casting my eyes about for answers in every direction, looking for the help so sorely needed, looking here, there, everywhere, it seemed, but in its pages. I'd been a Christian 30 years.

But at last the Lord gathered me up to himself, heart wildly pounding, eyes searching for him, and he gently turned and held my face steady to the page. And at long last, the words came into focus and I saw him there. Since then has been a continual feast and fellowship with the Lord, by his Spirit, in the pages of his Book.

May your word, Lord, become foremost, central and prominent in the life of your church, and in our estimation.

I will bow down toward Your holy temple and give thanks to Your name for Your lovingkindness and Your truth; for You have magnified Your word according to all Your name. ~ Psalm 138:2 (NASB)

His Yoke is Easy, His Burden is Light (Even When We Are Distressed)!

2010-12-15T09:58:00.007-06:00

Not long ago, it came up in a conversation with a loved one that all this difficulty in relationships and difficult church situations can't be right. All the arrogance we see around us, born of a false view of God and his ways, plus the struggle with our own sinful hearts, causes forlornness. All this just can't be right, was the conversation, because of this: Jesus said, "Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest; take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).

But here's why these words of Jesus don't make it wrong that we are, both of us, distressed and struggling so often. The first reason why is this one: Jesus was talking about the salvation from sin he offers.

He had, in Matthew 11:1-24, just pronounced a ringing indictment on the unbelief and hardheartedness of the Jews in failing to recognize both the forerunner (John the Baptist) and their Messiah. The cities in which he had done most of his miracles were included, because they did not repent (v. 20); if the miracles these cities had witnessed had been seen in Sodom, said the Lord, Sodom would have repented and would still be here today. How favored these cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum had been, yet by their lack of repentance, their damnation was sealed.

The the Lord in vs. 25 begins to speak of God's goodness in revealing himself, not to these lofty cities, but to "infants." "Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does any one know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him."

Having made this great statement of praise dor the Father's freedom and pleasure in sovereignly revealing himself to those whom he would, Jesus then extends his invitation-- not to be refused--to those infants, those little ones, those weary ones (us!): "Come unto me."

The weariness and the heavy burden is the guilt of sin; the rest he offers is the forgiveness and the removal of it. His easy yoke is his commands, which are our delight (Psalm 40:8) and not burdensome; his "burden" for us is joy, the joy of our salvation!

This is not a one-time benefit, but is meant to sustain us throughout all our journey in this pilgrim passage. Who can ever "get over" the wonder of a Savior who has canceled the debt of sin?

The other reason why these words of Jesus don't make it wrong that we are distressed and that we struggle so often is this: it was the way of our Master himself, of his apostles, and of all the faithful and suffering church since then. I'll just close with these words from Scripture:

"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence" (Hebrews 5:7).

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies" (2 Corinthians 4:7-10).

"It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?" (Hebrews 12:7).

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal" ( 2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

Every High Priest Must Offer Something

2010-12-13T09:16:00.004-06:00

Hebrews 8:3: "For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest to have something to offer."

Hebrews 10:10: "And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."

Rehearsals for Judgment

2010-12-09T09:20:00.003-06:00

I'm reading through Hosea, using a commentary to help with some of the historical references and allusions. When I read in Chapter 10 verse 8 that the people of Israel would go to judgment calling to the mountains and hills, "Cover us! Fall on us!" I knew the commentary would have something good to say! Because, of course, this cry has been, and is to be repeated elsewhere in history.

But the last word on human arrogance and independence is reserved for the end of the [Hosea] verse: "They shall say to the mountains, Cover us..." - a cry which the New Testament will take up twice; first to predict the still greater horrors awaiting the Jerusalem of AD 70 as the logical outcome of its Good Friday choice, and secondly to portray the terrors of the Last Judgment, with men of every rank and nation "calling to the mountains and rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb'" (Luke 23:30, Revelation 6:16).

So we are not left to contemplate the downfall of Israel on its own, safely isolated in the eighth century BC. It meets us as a foretaste of still weightier events, as indeed are all the local, limited tragedies of history. Our Lord laid down for us the right and wrong reactions to such happenings when he was asked to comment on a massacre: "And he answered them, 'Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.'"

We can hardly complain that the last act of our human drama has been under-rehearsed!

(From The Message of Hosea by Derek Kidner)

Don't Run From God in the Mornings

2010-12-08T09:22:00.002-06:00

He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day. ~ John Bunyan

The One Song

2010-12-07T10:23:00.010-06:00

I am hard at work on my next installment in the series on "Prayer and Listening to God." For today please enjoy an article written by Jared Wilson on the "one song" of the gospel. How could we ever tire of its words of mercy, grace and redemption?

The Beautiful Monotony of the Gospel

One fear we must put aside in our quest for greater gospel-centrality is that it will not preach week to week. The enemy and our own flesh will test our commitment with the "plausible argument" (Col. 2:4) that the gospel will just sound so one-note. We are tempted to think the repetition will have the unintended effect of boring people or making the gospel appear routine and commonplace.

But the gospel is resilient. It is miraculously versatile. It proves itself every day for those awake to it. Because it is the antidote for all sin of all people, power effectual for every type of person no matter their background or circumstance, it is God's might to save every millisecond and therefore every Sunday.

The gospel is indeed one song. But it is a song with many notes. The news is the same, but some of the words may change and the angles shift. (Use a thesaurus if you have to.) If we are awake to the gospel and seek the wakefulness of others, Christian and non-Christian, the playing of the greatest song at every instance is a lot like the exuberance of childlike wonder in monotonous fun. In Orthodoxy, the great G.K. Chesterton writes:
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

When we "get" the gospel for what it really is -- the power to save, the most thrilling news there could be, the declaration that God's Son died for us and then came back to life! to be the risen Lord and supreme King of the universe, not just the entry fee for heaven but the currency for all of life -- we revel in the new creation it unleashes in its wake at every turn. We never get tired of hearing it. It's the new song that never gets old. "Play it again, play it again!" we will cry.

Gospel wakened people have been given the strength enough to exult in the beautiful monotony of the gospel.
The further good news is that those who are dulled in their senses will not be further dulled by the gospel. In fact, only the gospel can deliver them from their dulled state. No amount of fog and lasers will do it.

That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel . . . -- Romans 1:15

Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel -- Ephesians 6:19

(Pastor Wilson notes: "This is a slightly edited version of a passage appearing in my book Gospel Wakefulness coming from Crossway in Fall 2011.")

HT challies.com

Consider How Amazing Christ's Conquests!

2010-12-03T09:00:00.009-06:00

Over the past few years I've been reading in a book called "The Christian in Complete Armour" by a Puritan pastor in England named William Gurnall. It was published in the 1660's in separate volumes, containing 600 pages in all. The book I have is all the volumes bound together. Not only is it a big book in terms of number of pages, but it's a weighty book in terms of ideas. Spurgeon said of it, "... every line is full of wisdom... John Newton said that if he could read only one book beside the Bible, he would choose 'The Christian in Complete Armour'."

So that's the kind of timeless and helpful book it is. Today I read a couple of paragraphs that talked about the huge wonder of Christ's saving work when certain facts are considered. Here are Gurnall's thoughts from the section of the book, "The Christless Soul is Without Armour" (paraphrased by me):

Considering how the Christless soul is (a) completely alienated from God and so not sheltered under God's defenses (b) in a state of darkest spiritual ignorance (c) impotent to withstand the onslaughts of Satan or even his own desires and (d) in an actual state of partnership with sin and Satan, then Satan's great conquests in the world are not to be wondered at. We look around and see his vast empire and then the tiny plot of ground occupied by Christ's subjects; we see what heaps of precious souls lie prostrate under Satan's foot of pride and what a small regiment of saints march under Christ's banner; and the strangeness of it all can make us ask, "is hell stronger than heaven?"

Think about this--Satan finds the world unarmed, he finds no one in opposition to him in the whole world. Every single individual is born fully inclined to yield to him at his first summons. Even if a man's conscience tries to hold out against Satan's schemes for a while, the man's will and his affections (his true desires) will rise up and declare mutiny against his conscience. Like an uprising of soldiers in a garrison, the will and the affections will never rest until they've forced the conscience to yield. If conscience tries to hold out, the will and affections will go against conscience's command and throw open the city gate, as it were, to the enemy, and traitorously deliver the conscience over to their side. This describes Satan's easy victory over the souls of men.

On the other hand, when Christ comes to demand the soul, he meets with a scornful and easy reply: "We will not have this man to reign over us." There is no struggle between conscience, will and affection; with one consent they vote against him, rising up in blasphemy. "You will not come to me," says Christ. Oh, how true are sinners to their master, the devil. They will not deliver the castle they hold for Satan til fired over their heads! Just as Pharaoh opposed Moses on the one hand and enslaved Israel opposed him on the other, so Christ is opposed both by Satan's hand and also by the very ones Satan so oppresses.

The conquests of Alexander the Great were lessened by the fact that he overcame a people buried in barbarianism, a people who had no arms and no discipline to fight wars. The conquests of Caesar were heightened by the fact that he overcame a people more warlike and furnished. Likewise, Satan's conquests are of poor, ignorant, and graceless souls, who have neither weapons, nor hands, nor hearts with which to oppose. But when Satan assaults a redeemed saint of God, then he finds himself before a city gate with bars; he is forced to sit outside it, and finally to rise with shame, having been unable to take even the weakest hold, or to pluck the weakest saint out of Christ's hands. Rather, Christ turns the tables on him, and brings souls out of Satan's dominion with a high hand, in spite of all the force and fury of hell which, just like Pharaoh and his host, pursue them!

Prayer and Listening to God Part 4: Before We Go On; Prayer is a Rich Fellowship With God

2010-12-02T11:49:00.017-06:00

((This is Part 4 of a series of posts on Prayer and Listening to God. Click here for Part 1).

In the previous article in this series, I said that I would offer a few quick guidelines for interpreting Scripture, and then look at some Scripture passages that have been used as "proof" that we should expect God to speak directly to us. I need, though, to stop here for a minute and say a few things that I think are important.

In making the case that we are not to deliberately listen for God's voice, whether in prayer or at any other time (for this is the case I'm trying to make), I am not, not, not saying that we do not enjoy rich fellowship and communion with God in prayer and in other times, too.

This rich fellowship and communion with God can be understood in light of such passages as John 14:26, John 15:26, and John 16:12-15. The fellowship we enjoy with God is through the activity of the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of adoption (Romans 8:15, "by whom we cry 'Abba, Father'") and who is the Spirit of truth (John 16:13-14, "he will take what is mine and declare it to you"). One main thing the Holy Spirit came to do was to apply the truths of Scripture to our thinking and desires. You can work that out for yourself from John 14 and 15 and 16. That would be a worthy year-or-two-long project.

The more Scripture-soaked and promise-infused we become, and the more we come to love and reverence his word, the more we are coming to love and know God. This is how the Holy Spirit works in our lives in an experiential way-- always through the word of Christ (the Scripture). This is what John 16:13-14 is saying.

Prayer and fellowship with God is the stuff that fits us for heaven and makes us ready to stand before him on that day when all shall give an account to him. But we must never confuse the rich, warm and abiding fellowship with God that we enjoy through the Spirit's application of the truths of God with an expectation that we should hear God speaking to us in direct ways, apart from his word. To go there is to use a language and experience that the Bible doesn't use about prayer.

So, to sum up, there is a richness, a reward, a life-changing knowledge of God to be had in and through prayer. All this is the very reason (!) I'm writing against the practice of listening for his voice, as taught by so many today. Seeing prayer in that false way, seeing the Holy Spirit's work in that false way, will rob you of what is really available to you. Available, that is, if you cling to his promises in trust, look to him for his mercy, fear him for his excellent greatness, and tremble at his word, the Scriptures.

So please, keep in mind as you read these articles on prayer and listening to God that prayer is a rich life with God, seen in secret and someday openly rewarded by our heavenly Father, promising fellowship with him through his Spirit by his word. Next article I intend to get back to dismantling as best I can the wrong stuff in the hopes of making more way for the good stuff. We'll look at those guidelines for interpreting Scripture and at examples of misinterpreted texts (starring one of the biggies, the much-misunderstood "still, small voice").

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share your thoughts, questions and ideas in the comments.

[1] E.M. Bounds said, “The word of God is the food by which prayer is nourished and made strong.” The sense of fellowship and growing relationship with God we feel as we grow steadfast in prayer is the work of the Spirit, the Spirit who came to teach and apply to our hearts and lives the word of Christ, the Scripture (John 14:26, John 15:26, John 16:12-15).

Please click here for Part 5.

Prayer and Listening to God Part 3: How We Got Here and Why It Matters

2010-11-26T20:43:00.018-06:00

(This is Part 3 in a series of posts on Prayer and Listening to God. Click here for Part 1.)

In the previous post in this series, I said I would talk next about how we in the Church came to believe we should listen for God's voice in prayer; and I said that I would talk about why it matters. So to begin, here's a quick (and incomplete) history on how we got here.

Over fifty years ago, something was happening in the academies that most in the pews knew little or nothing about. In many seminaries, including Southern Baptist ones, liberal theology imported from the German schools had taken hold; this theology sought to do away with belief in the inerrancy of Scripture, and sought also to do away with the historical-grammatical method of reading and interpreting Scripture. After all, if the historical-grammatical method could be done away with, then anything in the Bible could be reinterpreted, denied or explained away. And this is just what happened.1

Young men trained in these American seminaries became pastors with a new understanding of what the Bible is and how we are to view it, an understanding that was opposed to orthodox Christianity. The "new understanding" did not necessarily show up in ways that people noticed. There was still preaching from the pulpit that at least gave lip service to the gospel, there were still professions of faith, baptisms, Sunday Schools and training unions. In a way, things seemed much the same. However, much had changed. Slowly, the churches began to forget about some of the important things that had once been widely understood, including basic knowledge on understanding and interpreting Scripture.

In the 1950's and 60's, a charismatic "revival" with roots in an earlier Pentecostalism began to affect mainline denominational churches, as well. (Some of the history of this charismatic/Pentecostal movement is documented here, if you'd like to know more of the story.) The cultural upheaval of the 60's, along with the changes mentioned above, left much of the Church open to aberrant doctrine. The way was paved for acceptance of the idea of listening for God's voice in prayer, supported by its proponents with misinterpreted biblical texts and isolated verses taken out of context. The idea that we are to seek to hear God's voice inwardly as we pray, informing us of his will for our jobs, education, etc. has now become accepted as the norm.

(You may be thinking at this point that if all this is true, how did people 'discern' God's will for their lives before this all took place? You may enjoy many of the changes brought about by the charismatic movement; you may have lived through those days yourselves, and have fond memories from that time. I understand those questions and that sentiment, and I'm going to get to that. But first let me state, though you may not yet be on board with my premise, why all this matters.)

At stake in this issue of whether or not we are to listen for God's voice in prayer is the supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture in our faith and practice. It takes thought and study to see why this is true, to see that the Bible makes certain claims for itself. For instance, the Bible claims to be the only source of revelation of God's will, and that its pages contain all we need to know of his will for his people (Psalm 19:7-11, 2 Peter 1:16-21). The Bible claims, as well, that many things are for God alone to know (Deuteronomy 29:29). For making life choices in regard to these unrevealed things (what jobs we will take, who we will marry), the Bible claims to provide abundant wisdom from its own pages. The Bible holds the place of honor in our lives for teaching us the wisdom we need to make life's decisions (Proverbs 1).

All this hopefully raises good questions: "What about Paul--what about the Old Testament prophets? They heard God's voice and were directly guided by him. So were others in the Bible. Are you saying that in those narratives, the Bible isn't teaching us to expect such guidance ourselves?" Those are exactly the sorts of things we'll look at in my next post. In it, I'll offer a few quick guidelines for interpreting Scripture, and then look at some Scripture passages that have been used as "proof" that we should expect God to speak directly to us.

I'm convinced by Scripture (and by experience) that all this is very good news for God's people. There is a way of understanding God's will that is far better than anything contrary we may have believed. Proverbs 25:25 says, "Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country." The good news of how we may know what God wills for us and how we are to think about guidance and decision-making brings relief, and freedom from the anxieties of wondering whether we've missed God's will, or if we've "heard" him right. Therein lies the hope of freedom in Christ, and the hope of a wisdom that "adorns the doctrine of God our Savior" (Titus 2:1-10). Oh, yes, and one that by the way has huge practical benefits to your spouse, your children and your church as well.
(Click here for Part 4).

Prayer and Listening to God Part 2: A Biblical Definition of Prayer (What the Bible Teaches [and doesn't] About Prayer)

2010-11-22T08:15:00.019-06:00

(This is Part 2 in a series of posts on Prayer and Listening to God. Click here to begin at Part 1).

In my first post in this series, I explained my purpose for writing on this topic: the Church's need to know whether listening for God is part of biblical prayer. Are we taught in Scripture to listen for God's voice speaking directly, apart from Scripture, to us? By "God speaking", I mean his giving us messages directly into our thoughts--nudgings and inner promptings about decisions we need to make, for instance. Our thinking on these things needs to right, so that we can know if this is something the Bible does teach us to expect, or not. If the Bible does not teach this, how in the world did we come to believe it? What's the harm in trying to practice hearing God's voice outside of Scripture? And also, if we are not to do so, how can we discern God's will in the decisions and choices of life?

We need to go to the Bible for insights and answers to all these things. But in order to give the Bible the "final say" on these matters we must see Scripture as our "only rule of faith and practice". We have to come to the Bible willing to agree and submit to its teaching as the very word of God, the source of all our doctrine. The Bible's teaching trumps everything, even our own experience. That's what Scripture claims for itself (2 Timothy 3:16), and to fail to submit to it is to fail to submit to God. So with that said, we soldier on to a biblical definition and look at prayer.

A Biblical Definition of Prayer

It'll be helpful to first take a look at a couple of definitions from two respected Bible study tools, Easton's and Baker's Bible Dictionaries. Here’s how Easton’s defines prayer:

Prayer is converse with God; the intercourse of the soul with God, not in contemplation or meditation, but in direct address to him… It is a "beseeching the Lord" ( Exodus 32:11 ), "pouring out the soul before the Lord" (1 Samuel 1:15), "praying and crying to heaven" (2 Chronicles 32:20), "seeking unto God and making supplication" (Job 8:5), "drawing near to God" (Psalm 73:28), and "bowing the knees” [Paul’s euphemism for petitionary prayer] (Ephesians 3:14).

So prayer is here defined not as listening, meditation or contemplation, but as our talking to God.

Baker's makes this point:

Though prayer also includes adoration (Psalm 144-150; Luke 1:46-55), confession (Psalm 51; Luke 18:13), and thanksgiving (Psalm 75 ; 1 Thessalonians 1:2), Christian prayer has always been essentially petitionary… The immediate source of this confidence came from the teachings and examples of Jesus himself, such as the model prayer he offered (Matthew 6:9-13 ; Luke 11:2-4) and his assurance that one had only to ask the Father in order to receive what was needed (Matthew 7:7 ; Luke 11:9) (italics mine).

On this petitionary character of prayer in the Bible, Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne say helpfully, "...people today may refer to any number of different activities as 'prayer' but when God speaks about prayer in the Bible, he is really only talking about one thing. In the Bible, prayer simply means 'asking God for things'... prayer in the Bible is unashamedly and universally verbal."1

Is Listening to God Part of Prayer?

Missing from these descriptions of prayer is the idea of our listening for God to speak. And that, of course, fits exactly with the whole testimony of the whole Bible. Nowhere in all the accounts of people praying in the Bible, nowhere in all its teachings on prayer, nowhere is a listening mode in prayer ever modeled, taught or implied. That probably needs to be read again, digested for a moment and considered. The idea of waiting on or listening for God to speak, to impress something in the way of guidance for decisions on our minds during prayer, is unknown in Scripture.

I hear the protests, I really do. You may be wondering about all the Scripture verses that are quoted as proof we should be quiet and still and try to hear God speak into our hearts. There are many helpful things to know concerning those various passages in the Bible, and we'll get to those as we go along.

For now, consider just these two things about Christ's prayers and what he taught on prayer. When his disciples came to Jesus for instruction on how to pray, Christ did not describe listening as part of prayer; rather he taught his disciples to make requests that were in accord with the Father's revealed will (Matthew 6:7-13). In his Gethsemane prayers, Jesus spent no time listening for his Father's voice and asked for no answer from him, but rather made requests: "In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence" (Hebrews 5:7). Christ petitioned; the Father heard (and acted). This is the model and pattern of all prayer in the Bible.

I realize this idea may be a surprising, even an offensive claim. We're steeped in decades, now, of being taught that it's normal to expect God to direct us by inner promptings, whispers and nudgings; that listening is as important a part of prayer as our speaking. I'm not saying we have no warm communion, no fellowship with God in prayer, of course not! But what we have come to mean by "fellowship" with our heavenly Father needs a more biblical light shined on it, which I'll also attempt in a later post. For now, I'd ask you to prayerfully and with an open Bible consider the things I'll be talking about. With your Bibles open you'll see texts that hopefully will raise honest questions, and addressing some of those will be the topic of my next post: why did we come to believe we should listen this way for God's voice? There are very understandable, and fascinating, reasons this view has taken hold in the Church! We'll also talk about why it matters.

Click here for Part 3

1 Phillip D. Jensen and Tony Payne, Prayer and the Voice of God: Listening to God's Living Word Will Transform the Way You Pray (Kingsford: Matthias Media, 2006) pg. 15

Chasing the Wind and the Words of the Preacher

2010-11-20T10:09:00.013-06:00

I needed Ecclesiastes this week. Life is real and life can be painful, and God was good to let me hear Alistair Begg on the radio teaching a little from that book the other day. So I decided to turn to its pages once again and am so glad I did.

The message of Ecclesiastes is a confirmation that no, you're not crazy, and yes, the creation is in trouble and all our lives reflect that. It is because of the fall of Adam in the garden, because of the disastrous effects of sin. We're all now subject to the vanity of all worldly pursuits. They are all "fleeting, ephemeral, and elusive," as the ESV Study Bible introduction to the book puts it; the word translated "vanity" (over 38 times) in Ecclesiastes is literally "vapor." It is the same word and idea Paul uses in Romans 8 as he explains that in the Fall, the "creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it" (Romans 8:20).

We all know this, deep down. We may forget it for periods at a time, we may push it to the backs of our minds, but it only takes the right difficult circumstance to remind us vividly that the world is broken, and so to a great extent are our lives. It is a fact too painful to be acknowledged apart from hope. Some of the philosophers acknowledged it and came up with observations and solutions that lead nowhere but to a stoic bearing up under it all until death comes in relief. Some of the philosophers ended in despair. But that's not where Ecclesiastes goes. Thank God!

The message of Ecclesiastes is the greatest of news for the weary, the hopeless, the one who has "eyes wide open" and does not want to sugar-coat this life. The good news is this: God has told us all that he expects of his people (Micah 6:8). It is not too hard for us! (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, Romans 10:6-8, Matthew 11:28-30). That is because of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh who "came near" to make a way for us to heaven and to the resurrection (John 14:6). (Yes, I know Ecclesiastes doesn't know all this yet, but this is the way the Bible interprets itself.) More good news, straight from the pages of Ecclesiastes:

"He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I [the Preacher] perceived that there is nothing better for them [the children of men, that's us] than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil--this is God's gift to man" (Ecclesiastes 3:11-13). Isn't that such kindness from God?

God is sovereign over all our affairs, whether we have abundance (materially) or little: "In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him" (Ecclesiastes 7:14). Quit trying to play God, and relax! Trust him who holds all these things in his sovereign hands.

Don't labor and toil for vain things, but do toil: "Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot [there's God's sovereignty again!]. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil--this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart" (Ecclesiastes 5:18-20).

The message of Ecclesiastes is that there is so much about God's ways and his decretive (secret) purposes we don't know, that therefore we should live the short life we have on this earth humbly, in recognition of that, but in gratitude for the blessings of work, and family and God's provision for us (Ecclesiastes 9:7-9), whether little or a lot (it's always enough!). We should not be puffed up and "think more highly of ourselves than we ought to" (Romans 12:3). All mankind is in the same boat--the end of us all is the grave (Ecclesiastes 9:1-2). All this wisdom and truth of Ecclesiastes is to be understood in the New Testament revelation of Christ and what God did through him to win our salvation. For those who have received the truth of the gospel there is Heaven to look forward to.

Ecclesiastes ends with this: "The end of the matter: all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). This is the key to living. Life is complicated and fraught with difficulty, even evil, but God has given us a compass that points true North as we journey through: "Fear God and keep his commandments." He gave us the best motivation to do so, as well: "For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil." In between those two things lies our life, to be lived in simple, glad obedience, trust and gratitude.

I'm so thankful for Ecclesiastes. It's words are like "goads" (Ecclesiastes 12:11), the sharp, pointed sticks that keep the flock to the right path, and they are like "nails firmly fixed" (12:11), providing "moral and intellectual stability" (from the ESV Study Bible explanatory notes). It has been that for me over the past few days. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity apart from Christ. All flesh is as grass; the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord, it lasts forever (1 Peter 1:22-25).

Going About It Our Own Way

2010-11-18T10:13:00.005-06:00

What a tragedy in the Church and in the families in the Church! Our Lord gave us the model to pray and what could be more clear? It is "our" Father and give "us" this day "our" daily bread; forgive "us" our trespasses and deliver "us" from the evil one. It's a prayer, and a model for prayer, meant to be prayed together with other believers.

I'm sad that we don't pray together like that; sad that we don't feel the need to.

(Maybe one day we will!)

Prayer and Listening to God

2010-11-16T23:02:00.010-06:00

“I believe that prayer should be as much about listening to God as it is about talking to him.”

Listen to popular Christian radio, take a walk down the aisles of most Christian bookstores, or do a Google search on the topic and this is the sentiment and belief you're sure to hear. That's because it's what the Bible teaches, right? It's certainly what a large segment of the Church has come to accept. But believe it or not, there was a time (and amazingly, not that long ago) that this claim would have been rejected and would have brought quick correction. Why not these days? Has the church learned something new-- or have we forgotten something we used to know?

It's the latter that is true. I'm not alone in saying so; the record of Church history and the Bible, and fortunately, a growing number of people speaking on this issue today, agree. We're up against a battle, though. A lot of attractive people hold conferences and write books that promote just the sentiment quoted above. It's a difficult thing to talk to people about, especially when one does not write books or speak at national conferences.

But the Bible tells us, if we are willing to hear what it says, just what God wants his people to know about prayer and listening to God. What we believe about prayer is really, really important. What we believe about it will determine how and why we pray. We must gain the knowledge we need to discern whether popular authors like Priscilla Shirer and Henry Blackaby are right in what they claim. We must determine if it's possible that the wool has been pulled over our eyes concerning this whole idea of hearing God's voice in prayer.

It's not a simple issue in our day and time. Much has been mistaught (as I'll provide examples to show in later posts). It takes a lot of words to accurately convey what the Scriptures teach on this. As with all doctrine, the doctrine of prayer and of how God guides his people won't be grasped simplistically or overnight. But over the course of some upcoming blog posts, I'd like to offer some things for people to consider, chew on, go prayerfully to key Scriptures about.

Next post, "A Definition of Prayer," something we may think we've had down pat, but could find surprising in some ways.

(This is Part 1 of a series of posts on Prayer and Listening to God. Click here for Part 2).

Words Called Out

2010-10-31T21:19:00.000-05:00

God's plans, the ones he's revealed in Scripture, are not fodder for Bible Trivia or the Bible category on Jeopardy. His plans are more like words called out over a strong wind, words you've shruggingly neglected until your house starts to break up and blow away; then you realize that the syllables you've heard have been the plan to survive this wind, which has turned out to be a deadly tornado, after all. His plan suddenly is understood to be the most important message in the world to pay attention to.

"Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will" (Hebrews 2:1-4).

This plan, it turns out, is everything.

Illustration copyright © 2009 by Michael Wimmer. The Pilgrim’s Progress: From This World to That Which Is to Come (Crossway 2009), p. 129.

A Scary Story--Stalked By A Corpse

2010-10-30T18:14:00.001-05:00

What if you found out that a corpse is stalking you? I mean a real corpse... a bone-a-fide (pun intended), verified dead person; and not just any old dead person, but one who was, when alive, a vile, immoral, impure, evil and covetousness person. A corpse who has no love for you or anyone else and in fact would just as soon see you dead, too. A stinking, rotting, decayed mass of sinful pride, jealousy, false love, disobedience and gossipy envy. I have news for you: there may be such a being stalking you right now. The Bible tells all about it, and even identifies it. It's your old self.

If you have been born from above, made alive in Christ by God's gracious gift of salvation, then you've definitely experienced the dilemma of being stalked by the "corpse" of your old self. "We know that our old self was crucified with him..." (Romans 6:6a). The old self of the believer, nailed to the Cross of Christ, is indeed dead as dead as can be. The old self was killed "in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin" (Romans 6:6b). That means that we have been legally freed from the old self's control. The problem is that this sinful old self refuses to admit he's dead! He's like the battlefield enemy who heard that the war is over and that his side lost, but is bitterly determined to fight on to the very end, taking down any enemy he can. And you're the enemy. Though defeated, the old self still stalks you, trying to entice you back into the old life of sin and misery.

And if you don't understand that the new you--the you who was raised to new life in Christ--has been freed by the Cross from obligation to him (Romans 8:12-13), then the old self has won a temporary victory! That stinking, rotting body of death will draw you in at every opportunity, luring you into all manner of earthly deeds--jealousy, covetousness, gossip, strife, and a host of others. That oozing corpse will try to attach itself around your affections and tempt you to neglect God and his word, to avoid prayer, and to isolate yourself from the body of Christ. Your old self--that grinning, hideous corpse of death--can be very persuasive.

What to do? Why, as John Owen said, you must "be killing sin or it will kill you." Though the old self is legally dead we find must keep killing it, as it were (Ephesians 4:22, Romans 13:14). Though that law of sin was decisively dealt with on the Cross, God has ordained that these vicious, intensive skirmishes will continue until the day we die or the Lord returns. But learning to glory in the truths of Romans 6:6 and Romans 8:12-13 encourages us to reckon ourselves "dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:11). Knowing these truths gives us the strength to overcome this "law of sin... this body of death" (Romans 7:23, 24)-- to deal with by faith with this un-alive corpse that rises up to wreck our Christian walk. The gospel, the good news of what Christ accomplished on the Cross, is the truth that enables us to fight the good fight of faith. God is for us in this fight.

Being stalked by a rotten, defeated corpse isn't really the scary thing. The really scary thing would be not to know or care what the Scriptures say about these things! The most scary thing of all would be to refuse to do this: "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming" (Colossians 3:5-6).

Don't be scared of a corpse this Halloween. Learn to fear the Lord!

The Lord Will Give You Understanding

2010-10-12T10:11:00.010-05:00

In 2 Timothy 2:1-6 Paul, nearing the end of his life, gives Timothy three illustrations that will help him in faithfully living out his charge. The three brief illustrations involve a soldier, an athlete, and a hard-working farmer. Paul tells Timothy, "Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything."

"Think Over What I Say"

We must think over many things the Scriptures say. In our time and culture, we want to "get it" immediately, or at least fairly quickly. We have short attention spans, and have lost our taste and tolerance for riddles. But in the opening verses of Proverbs, which introduce the book's goals and purpose, the writer exhorts, "Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles" (Proverbs 1:5-6). Proverbs is a great collection of sayings and riddles designed to give greater wisdom to the wise.

In his letter to Timothy, Paul imparted wisdom to his young son in the faith in a form that Timothy, "trained in the words of the faith" and having been brought up from childhood "acquainted with the sacred writings" (i.e. the Old Testament, including Proverbs) would be very familiar with--a riddle. In keeping with Proverbs 1:5, Paul's riddle (or proverb, or saying) is for the purpose of Timothy's obtainingguidance. God wanted Timothy to use his mind and his sanctified reasoning, and so be helped.

"The Lord Will Give You Understanding"

This is a thrilling and hopeful promise. Like Timothy, we're called to prayerfully think and ponder on the words of Scripture, knowing God is able to give us understanding of what the writer meant (that is to say, what the Holy Spirit meant, and means for us to understand). The ESV Study notes on this text say that "Paul exhorts Timothy to make the effort to think and meditate on what Paul has written; as he does so, God will give him understanding in everything about which Paul has instructed him. The believer's efforts and God's empowering work together" (italics mine).

The whole Bible is certainly not written as a riddle. A riddle (or a proverb or a saying), as mentioned above, is a literary device, and where such things are used in Scripture is obvious. But there are plenty of passages in the Bible that require this kind of "thinking over."

In a blog article (recommended) entitled "When the Bible Gets Too Hard" the author quotes John Piper and Philip Jensen:

If you only read things [in the Bible] after which you said “duh!” you'd stop reading in a hurry, because you already know and feel the way you should. But if you start bumping into things that are weird or strange, then you'd better live there. You'd better camp there until your brain and your heart get shaped by the strange things.1

I love puzzling over difficult parts of the Bible. I love it, for the difficulty is in my head, not on the page, and puzzling over these difficulties gives me an opportunity to change the way I think.2

May we learn more and more to think over what the Bible says, asking and trusting that the Lord will, in his time, give us understanding.

1 From the audio version of John Piper's sermon Thinking and feeling with God: A broken and contrite heart God will not despise.

2 Phillip Jensen's ‘Problems With the Text’ from So Long And Thanks For All the Fellowship.

Organic God

2010-09-20T23:56:00.018-05:00

I did not realize that the roots of postmodernism are firmly in the Romanticism of 19th century Germany (and elsewhere).

Postmodernism is a reaction against Enlightenment rationalism... and the sense of alienation that came from urbanization. This sense of alienation included a desire to connect with nature. Germany after World War I was characterized by a desire to reconnect with nature that included a desire for pagan religious ideas that were linked to nature. Gene Veith explains: “Because of their Romanticism, fascists sought to overcome the alienation between the human being and nature. Again, the villain was modern civilization, with its scientific technology and polluting factories.” This same sensibility characterizes postmodern thinking today which, as I have claimed in another work, is a resurrected version of Romanticism. People want to be connected to nature and to react against the Enlightenment; to do so involves making decisions on a basis other than logic and rationality. Most people would be shocked to realize that their postmodern inclinations are those of fascist ideology which led to [the rise of] Hitler. ~ from 'Ideas Have Consequences: A Partial Paraphrase and Review of Modern Fascism by Gene Edward Veith' (by Bob DeWaay, found here).

If that idea sounds far-fetched, you need to read Bob DeWaay's paper. He's a smart man. And from where I sit, this explains a lot. We tend to think that postmodernism is a truly new way of looking at the world, but we should have known!

"What has been is what will be,

and what has been done is what will be done,

and there is nothing new under the sun."

Ecclesiastes 1:9

There is no new truth and there is no new error. The Bible tells us everything we need to know to be equipped with knowledge in both categories, if we'll just read it and understand it.

Further on in the paper I just referenced was a sentence with a word:

"Again Veith explains: 'Fascists seek an organic, neo-mythological unity of nature, the community, and the self. The concepts of a God who is above nature and a moral law that is
above society are rejected'" (Veith: 17).

The word that jumped out at me is "organic," which is a term growing in popularity in the emerging/postmodern/church-growth movement.

As in, for instance, "The Organic God." This "video driven Bible study" promises to get us in touch with ~~Mother Nature~~ God as we've never known him before. A video trailer on the website plays haunting, Chris Isaak-esque "I Don't Want To Fall In Love Again" music as a female commentator speaks:

"Imagine if we could simplify our faith---strip it of all the pollution and additives--and know God for who he is... natural, pure, essential, organic.

"Imagine if we could experience his big-hearted love... his surprising talkativeness... it would change us--forever.

"The organic god. It's like falling in love all over again."

I'll venture a guess that the "pollution and additives" the author would like to strip our faith of turn out to be doctrine and theology. With those out of the way we can be really free to imagine this talkative God. At about two-thirds of the way through the video--I'm not kidding about this--a rock (?) shaped suspiciously like a woman's breast and dripping water from just where you'd think (pure, essential and organic water, I'm sure) appears. God as Nurturing Mother, don't you know. It's earthy, it's sensual, it's organic god. I'm telling you, somebody's buying this stuff at $159.99 a pop. (I suppose I must provide a link to the video so here it is. I hate to send anybody around this stuff.)

All this confirms that Pastor Bob DeWaay and others are discerning this correctly. If you wonder why it matters I'll say that if you're a Christian in the USA, then you are or soon will be influenced by teachers embracing this postmodern bent. It's coming... soon, to a church near you.

Tuesday Texting--Paul's Limited "All"s

2010-09-07T15:08:00.004-05:00

Paul (and other writers of Scripture) use the word “all” in ways that might be initially confusing to our Americanized ears and eyes. For some reason in our reading of the Bible we take this word, when we see it in reference to people, to mean “every person ever born.” But what it actually means, many (or most) times, is “all people in a certain category” or “all kinds of people.” Sometimes “all” means both Jew and Gentile (i.e. the promises are not just for the Jews anymore). Sometimes, like in the text we’re looking at today, it means all the people Christ died for.

But wait, you might say, that’s everybody; that’s every person ever born. Well, not in this passage or others like it; in the context of who Christ died for, “all” is a limited category. A look at this today’s text makes it clear.

[14] “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; [15] and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15).

You see right away that the “one” of verse 14 is Christ. Then who are the “all” that Christ died for? Before you answer, “everybody ever born duh,” see the whole line… “one died for all, therefore all have died.” The "all" who died are the same "all" Christ died for, and they are also "those who live" (verse 15). They are a special category of people!

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11).

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).

So that’s how Paul’s “all”s are often limited. When it says that Christ "died for all," it isn't saying that Christ died for everybody ever born. Rather, he died for all who have died and now live again in this way… in the Colossians 3:3 and the Romans 6:11 and the Galatians 2:20 way. And they not only died, but now they live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for their sake and was raised.

The Only Question

2010-09-01T13:08:00.006-05:00

"Our missionary activity, our church activity, everything we do ought to flow from the theologian and the exegete, the man who opens up his Bible and only has one question: 'What is Thy will, O God?' We are not to send out questionnaires to carnal people to discover what kind of church they would attend. A church ought to be seeker-friendly but a church ought to recognize there's only one seeker--His name is God--and if you want to accommodate someone, accommodate Him and His glory. We are not called to build empires, we are not called to be accepted, we are called to glorify God."

Paul Washer, "Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church"

Tuesday Text(ing)

2010-08-31T11:53:00.005-05:00

As you might see, I’m gradually changing the name of this hopefully weekly feature into something really clever. Next Tuesday, if I can maintain my good intentions to post again, I’ll drop the parentheses. And hope everybody gets it.

Anyway, this Tuesday Text(ing) is from 1 Corinthians 7. In this chapter Paul says all these things:

“…because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband” (verse 2).

“…to the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am” (verse 8).

“Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity)” (verses 20, 21).

“So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God“ (verse 24).

It sounds as if Paul is all over the place in his thinking, saying one thing then contradicting it with another. Which is it, Paul… “do not be concerned about it” if you were a slave when called, or “if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity”? Is it true that “each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband” or is it “good for them to remain single” as Paul was?

I’m sure it’s obvious that reading the whole of Chapter 7 with these verses in their proper context, and reading Chapter 7 itself in context with the whole epistle, makes Paul’s thought clear. His aim is to “promote good order” and secure the Corinthian church’s “undivided devotion to the Lord.” This will be of greatest benefit to them, for whatever most glorifies God also happens to be what’s best for us. This chapter shows the liberty and flexibility for the believer within God’s bounds of holiness. We should do what is holy and right towards God and each other in each circumstance of life.

One can easily see how taking certain of these verses in isolation could lead to a misunderstanding of Paul’s teaching and purpose. This is true throughout the Bible, not just in Paul’s letters. The writers of the Bible breathed the air of a different time and culture than we know, especially in the West, and their flow of thought was sometimes different than we are used to. But that doesn’t mean we can’t understand and get their (inspired!) point. With prayerful dependence on the Holy Spirit for spiritual understanding and with a thoughtful attention to context and argument (flow of thought) for the literary understanding, all of Scripture is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness“ (2 Timothy 3:16).

What All I Have

2010-08-28T11:50:00.005-05:00

Truth #1: I have a widescreen tv and a Blu-ray disc player, a stove and an oven and a dishwasher, a car that runs fairly dependably, a house to live in and groceries in my pantry; some pets, a family, fairly good health and a somewhat capable mind; a guitar, a piano, a Bose stereo, a computer, a sense of humor, a family physician, health insurance, life insurance, home-owners' insurance, books and bookcases, lamps and lightbulbs and eyeglasses; clothes and shoes, a few friends, memories, regrets, and worries and difficulties. I have goals and ambitions, successes, defeats, sadness and joy. I have it all.

Truth #2: All I have is Christ.

Why We Need the Puritans

2010-08-27T09:54:00.006-05:00

Why should those seeking to develop a truly biblical counseling approach give special consideration to the Puritans? Because they were the first Protestant school of Biblical Counseling.

J. I. Packer, who is most conversant with the writings of these men, puts it well:

". . . the Puritans . . . were strongest just where evangelical Christians today are weakest . . . Here were men of outstanding intellectual power, in whom the mental habits fostered by sober scholarship were linked with a flaming zeal for God and a minute acquaintance with the human heart."

Today’s biblical scholars don’t understand the human heart, Packer says, while our counselors don’t know the Scripture. But the Puritans were an entire generation of men who combined these two strengths. He goes on:

"The hollowness of our vaunted biblicism becomes apparent as again and again we put asunder things God has joined . . . we preach the gospel without the law, and faith without repentance . .. in dealing with the Christian experience we dwell constantly on joy, peace, happiness, satisfaction, and rest of soul with no balancing reference of the divine discontent of Romans 7, the fight of the faith of Psalm 73, or any of the burdens of responsibility and providential chastenings that fall to the lot of the child of God. . . they consult their pastor, and he perhaps has no better remedy than to refer them to a psychiatrist! Truly, we need help, and the Puritan tradition can give it."

(excerpt from an article by Tim Keller; read the rest here)

Tuesday Text

2010-08-24T11:14:00.010-05:00

I used to read this and be slightly troubled: “I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you” (1 John 2:26, 27). What, John? How terribly uninformed of you. Surely you’re familiar with this: “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-14). Hmph. No need of anyone to teach us, indeed.

My former, mild hmph-ing illustrates the need to grasp basic principles for interpreting Scripture, one of the primary ones being, of course, that Scripture interprets itself. Put another way, passages like that one in 1 John, passages that may seem confusing, are interpreted in light of very clear passages that speak to the same issue. Specifically, such New Testament thoughts as John's above often need the knowledge of pertinent Old Testament thought in order to be understood correctly. There is a very simple reason for that: New Testament writers are writing in light of Old Testament truth that they are intimately familiar with. They now understood what the Old Testament had been talking about all along, and so their writing often refers back to that older revelation. John's statement goes back to the prophet Jeremiah.

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

Thus, John and Jeremiah are both talking about the same thing--the power of the new covenant, of the new birth--by which the true knowledge of God is birthed in the heart of forgiven sinners. John’s language for this gracious act of God is "the anointing that you received from him abides in you." Jeremiah’s language is "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts." Jeremiah’s vision of a future surety, the true knowledge of God, has become a reality for John and for those Jew and Gentile believers to whom he is writing. This kind of knowledge of God could never be taught; it is a gift of revelation from above. It will come to its full culmination in the new kingdom, when we behold him face to face ("And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God'" [Revelation 21:3; compare with Jeremiah 31:33] ).

(P.S.--I won’t even mention the terrible misuse and abuse the biblical meaning of “anointing” has received at the hands of the pseudo-“charismatics” and such. Sigh. That word, too, is rooted in Old Testament realities that inform New Testament usage, and a responsible study of it would go a long way toward correcting the silly statements about this and that speaker you hear tossed around.)

Part 2 of The Azalea Chronicles

2010-08-13T22:02:00.009-05:00

Part 2 of The Azalea Chronicles, in which I attempt to come through with the second part of what was purported to be a two-part post. There. And on to the topics at hand. How did my pruning attempts go; did I make any improvement in the looks of the front of our house; and most importantly of all, why is any of this worth blogging about? I shall attempt to answer.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I did pare down those azaleas, big time. To my daughters' horror, I lopped and cut and pruned them until they were mere shadows of their former selves. I sliced, diced and shredded (didn't mean to do that). I was a bit horrified myself as our lush, jungle-like azaleas were suddenly transformed into docile, mealy-mouthed bush sorts of things, but not even that--mostly just shy bare limbs of wood, with sprigs of green sticking out here and there just to show they were still alive. Here's a picture of the results.

Okay fine, this isn't me and these are not my azaleas. But the shocking denuding done to these is just the same shocking denuding that I did to mine. I just can't ever find my camera cord.

Now I understand that large, older shrubs like mine can be pretty much cut down to the nub, maybe six inches or so from the ground, and will come back just fine. I can't expect any blooms next spring--I lopped all those right off--but it should put out new growth, which I should definitely pay attention to in a timely manner so that the whole big overgrown thing doesn't happen again. So I may cut 'er down a little more, just to show 'er who's boss. And her children, too. (The several random trunks which surely were never planted on purpose). (Obviously I need to learn a bit more about botany or gardening.) The other tall shrub things are still just there, a little less tall, and maybe they need to be whacked down to 6 inches high as well, but I still need to consult a professional about all this. So all in all, it definitely looks different. Better? Don't know about that.

But here's the reason I'm even writing about all this on my blog. It's not because I'm looking to start posting gardening tips or lots of oh-so-humorous accounts of my day--no, the reason I wanted to write about it was because of the thought process that got started that day as I was whacking away at the azaleas. Any time I do any bit of gardening, which is usually just pulling a few weeds, the analogies start popping into my head and they are just so... analogous. Just so true and so helpful. So as I'm cutting severely away at this azalea, removing so much of it that it seemed I may end up killing the thing instead of improving it, I thought of John 15:1-8: "I am the true Vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch in me that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit."

So this is azalea, not grapes, and it's a matter of appearance, not fruit-bearing, so the analogy had to leave off what I was doing at some point. But still, I was imitating the work of a husbandman--taking away the branches that weren't pleasing to me, and didn't suit my desires. Mere aesthetic appearance, of course, is not nearly as important as a dead, fruitless branch. The silly problem of an azalea branch growing to the left when you need it to grow to the right is nothing compared to the seriousness of a branch apparently attached to the trunk, yet that just doesn't bear fruit. Something's really wrong with that branch, not just annoying. Something looks alive when really it's not. Something is proving by its lack of fruit that it's not really connected to the life of the vine.

And so here must come the Husbandman with his sharp blade. For this branch, the one described in John 15:1-8, it's not to prune, or to train back, or to improve an appearance. It's to remove. Perhaps he lifts up the branch once more, just to be sure. Perhaps he examines it one last time, searching in vain for the fruit that should be there. He is a long-suffering Husbandman and he is kind; he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. But alas, there is no fruit, just like last time, just like every time before, and the time has come for the inevitable. He wields the knife; the fruitless branch is severed from whatever attachment it bore to the vine; it falls to the ground with a thud, and there it lies withering until at last it is gathered up with the other fruitless branches, thrown into a pile, and burned. This is the end of all such branches who profess a life in the Vine, who boast of their capabilities but who bear only lots and lots of foliage and no real evidence of their union to their Lord. It is a tragic thing. "Abide [remain] in me," commands our Lord, the True Vine of Israel, to the disciples (minus Judas) who huddle near him at the end: "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you" (John 15:16).

The Lord Jesus is not inviting the disciples to come hang out with him overnight. He's promising them that those who are in him in a regenerated way will bear fruit ("If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.") It's one of those many puzzling places in the Bible where we are commanded to do what we cannot do (think Jesus to Nicodemus, "You must be born again"). None of the disciples can manage by self-effort this kind of abiding; none of them can make themselves become attached to Jesus in a life-giving way, none of them can simply will fruit to pop out, none of them have any hope of asking whatever they wish for and having it happen. But Jesus can do it. He can give life; he can cause abiding, and growth and fruit; he can so transform their minds by his abiding word in them that their wish is his command.

Enough already; a long post, longer than people (according to statistics) are willing to read on a blog post, so if you've read this far, congratulations, you're not a statistic. I still didn't talk about a lot of other analogies I thought about as I pruned the azaleas, about how severe his pruning of the fruit-bearing boughs must sometimes be, about how it seems like some pruning could be the death of one yet. You draw those analogies. I'll just leave it at this--I think God wants his people to know a little something about gardening. And I think he wants us to see that he is the Husbandman who will do what is right; he is the Master Gardener of us all.

The Bible is Everything

2010-07-19T09:53:00.009-05:00

"If we will not listen to the Bible we will listen to nothing, and if we will not be changed by [the Bible] we will be changed by nothing." (Quoting Alistair Begg, heard on the radio this morning commenting on Luke 16:19-21.)

"And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'"

Part 1 of The Azalea Chronicles

2010-07-10T23:19:00.011-05:00

We have an azalea plant that is trying to take over one side of our house. I wish I had a picture of how it looked, to show you that this is true, but I failed to take one earlier (and it is now too late, as you shall learn). However, here is a picture I found on Google that somewhat depicts the former state of our azalea here at the house.

That is a very pretty house, I think. And that large azalea looks much like ours did when it was in bloom this spring, including the whole covering up the windows thing, except theirs looks like it has at least been touched by pruning shears before.

In fact, all our foundational shrubs and hedges had gotten quite out of hand. They were all very large and quite intimidating to me. I'm not a gardener, though I love gardens and timidly like to wish I were one (a gardener, not a garden). The larger and shaggier our shrubs and hedges became the more I left them alone, looking the other way when I walked past, often even whistling to keep my nerve up. It became ridiculous and something had to be done. Well look here, you can see for yourself. See these beautiful young ladies, who just happen to be some of my nieces and soon-to-be-niece (I think; when are you guys ever going to set a date?) but anyway, look just past them, over their heads, and you'll see who I'm talking about.

The Towering shrubs and hedges. They're much taller than foundational shrubs and hedges ever should be.

So finally, about four days ago, I just snapped. Into action, and I said, this is it. I'm taking down those towering monstrosities and especially that insane azalea (it looked, by then, like some snaggle-toothed monster because I had sheared the section that was covering my bay window but left the other half looming and veering crazily skyward).

I had bought an electric hedge trimmer about two months ago but did not have the nerve to get it out of the box. David my husband, Protector and friend was home and with me on this project, so he did the honors, and also made a trip to Lowes for a shovel, some loppers, some potting soil and a new rake (because our plan wasn't just to destroy and remove but to beautify and add, as well).

(This is just a shot of me as I wish I looked in my garden. I've just been wanting to use this picture for something. But back to the real project.)

I did not know what I was getting into. Had I known, I would surely have hesitated; I might even have called the whole thing off. I did, in the middle of the project, make a desperate phone call to the lady at Ace Hardware who is a horticulturist and has helped me with plants before. I got her voice mail and tried to sound nonchalant, asking her "just to call me when she got a minute" and I'd like to "hire her to come by sometime and help me identify some shrubs and give me some advice on how to prune them" and stuff like that. I really wanted to scream "Come to my house right now!!! Where are you? You have about two minutes to call me back or so help me..." But I didn't. And she never did call me back, anyway.

So, you're probably ready for me to get on with some descriptions that would explain all this... melodrama, and I'm anxious to, believe me, but this post has been long enough, so I'll call it Part 1, and the next post I will call Part 2, In Which I Begin to Hack Away at the Azalea. Then you'll see more what I'm talking about (just like I did). So stay tuned.

Various Thoughts, Ruminations and Hopefully Non-Platitudes

2010-07-08T11:36:00.006-05:00

Just some completely random thoughts today:

I so like and appreciate Tim Challies. I don't know another internet writer/presence/person with more to offer and a sweeter, humbler soul than him. And besides that, it's fascinating to see how his career has come along in the seven or so years I've been reading (and listening to) him.

Relationships are hard, at home and in the church. We have to love each other. (It's different in the workplace; certain things are required of us there, but not like with family.) We can't run away. We're called to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:10-16) to each other when everything in us wants to ignore, pout, quietly leave, rail against. We're called to press in tighter when the going gets rough. It's contrary to our flesh, our society and our desires. It is the way of the Cross.

John Calvin is cool and helpful. I have a booklet entitled "Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life" which is simply Chapter Six of Book III of his "Institutes." That little book talks about things like those mentioned above: the true Christian walk and calling of a disciple (as opposed to the grandiose and silly things we sometimes like to make it). We're called to self-denial, he explains; but beyond that, we're called to take up our Cross and follow the Lord Jesus. Cross-bearing, Calvin says, is more difficult than self-denial.

I appreciate my family. I feel so inadequate in my efforts for them. I either over-do or under-do; my weakness and stumbling in this become more apparent to me everyday. "For we all stumble in many ways." It makes me (after I remember to think about it) more consciously dependent on, and earnestly desirous of God's mercy for them, for us all. In the end, all our best efforts will be seen to have been far short of the perfection required in order to accomplish the great tasks we've been given (loving our husbands and children, being a Proverbs 31 lady, etc.) But what will be seen is the perfect accomplishment of our Lord and Savior in his sinless and perfect obedience, including his death on the Cross. In his resurrection, we are made to share in his very own perfection, righteousness and glory. What a thought; what a hope! It spurs me on to renewed effort and willingness to die to myself daily and finish well the race set before me.

Well, those are some of my thoughts for the day. Be blessed in your day.

All I Have is Christ

2010-07-06T14:50:00.013-05:00

Growing older stinks sometimes. I often am aware that I've brought a lot of the difficulty of this time of life on myself. It is all too true. But yet...

There's grace. My Lord loves me; he thought of me before the foundation of the world was even laid and determined to have me for his own child. He purchased me out of the world with blood-soaked mercy. I am forever his.

I am a mess-up in many ways, but Jesus Christ redeems mess-ups just like me, swoops them up out of the pit of despair they've dug for themselves and makes them part of his story, to the praise of his glorious grace, as it says in Ephesians 1:3-10. He is sure-handed and able to do everything I cannot. All I can do is fall on him for mercy and grace for help in time of need.

Growing older is another way God is using to make me see that it's in Christ alone my hope is found. Some young people out there are sure able to put that into words very well! Here's one example. When I'm young and when I'm old... all I have is Christ.

Sovereign Grace's Devon Kauflin

Worth Fasting For

2010-06-26T00:46:00.001-05:00

What does a fast by King David in the Old Testament have to do with our fasting today?

In 2 Samuel 12 David was fasting--"And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground"--in hope that God would spare his stricken child, son of his adulterous union with Bathsheba. The elders of his house had tried to raise him up and get him to eat, but he refused. He remained prostrate before the Lord until the seventh day, when at last the child died. Then David did a surprising thing. Instead of displaying even greater grief and harming himself (as his servants feared), the son of Jesse "arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes. And he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. He then went to his own house. And when he asked, they set food before him, and he ate" (2 Samuel 12:20).

His perplexed servants asked, “What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive; but when the child died, you arose and ate food.” It seemed backwards to them. David answered them, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me" (Samuel 12:21-23)”

And what struck me immediately was the remembrance of Jesus' words to some men who came to ask him about fasting, men who wondered why his disciples didn't fast like the disciples of the Pharisees and John the Baptist. Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day" (Mark 2:19-20).

We fast because unlike David's son, Jesus will come back again. And our prayers, with fasting, will play a role.

Like David, we fast for a son, but unlike David, we fast for the return of the "first born among many brothers" (Romans 8:29), the "first born from the dead" (Colossians 1:18), Jesus the preeminent Son! David's time for fasting was over at the death of his child; but in our case, upon the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the time for fasting had just begun.

Even so come, Lord. Stir your people to fast and pray and long for your return. Unlike David's child, you will return, your coming hastened by the prayers and fasting of your people (2 Peter 3:11-13, Revelation 8:3-5). When you come, you will raise up your people to new life again, in resurrected bodies, on a renewed and resurrected earth. David will, at last, hold that lost child close again. We will see King Jesus, who will rule and reign forever in justice and truth. It is worth fasting for.

Paul's Doctrine-Rich Greetings

2010-06-24T11:45:00.007-05:00

From a breakdown of Titus 1:1-3 I did a while back: "Paul, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in the hope of eternal life, which God... manifested through the preaching." This sums up the purpose of Titus! (You can click on the picture to enlarge it.)

God's Use of Means

2010-05-18T12:09:00.013-05:00

It's been asked more than once: "If God has ordained everything that comes to pass, and nothing can thwart his will, then why do we still need to pray? What real difference do our prayers make?" This is a great question. If we believe that God simply reacts, waiting for our prayers to guide him in his responses, this won't present a puzzle. If we believe that God is dependent on us--on our weak and faltering efforts--to accomplish his will, then we probably won't even have considered this question. But if, through our reading of the Scriptures and our own suffering we've gained a higher view of God and of his word, then this at some point becomes of great interest. Why does a sovereign, all-powerful God ordain that his people should pray for what he's already determined will come to pass?

The reason is that God, for his own glory and purposes, chooses to use means to accomplish his will. ("Means" are not ill-tempered, cranky people!) Means, rather, are the ordained ways by which God fulfills his preordained purposes.

For example, we know that Christ has purposed to return some day. He will return no matter what. All that he has ordained to come to pass between now and then (missions, the preaching of the gospel, the perseverance of the church, the "fullness of the Gentiles" being brought in, etc.) will also come to pass, no matter what. Yet he has told us to pray for his return ("pray like this... 'Let your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.'") He told us to pray for all that comes in between. We are to beseech the Father to send laborers into the harvest (missionaries, church planters, teachers and preachers) and to pray for the church, for her success in proclaiming and living out the gospel in the world, and to pray and work for our own sanctification, even though "it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13).

In his wonderful little book The Bruised Reed, Richard Sibbes offers this helpful illustration, showing that the use of means is a principle taken for granted even in civic matters: "For who, if he knew before that it would be a fruitful year, would therefore hang up his plough and neglect tillage?" In other words, if a framer could somehow see ahead and know that harvest time will bring a rich crop, he would still get his plow out in the spring to till up the ground and plant the seed. His plow and his effort and the seed are the ordained means to the certain, coming bounty.

So God, in the unsearchable riches of his wisdom and ways, has ordained that all his sovereign purposes will surely come to pass, and that they will not come to pass apart from the prayers and labors of the saints. Again in the words of Richard Sibbes, "The means that God has set apart for the effecting of any thing are included in the purpose that he has to bring that thing to pass." We can be sure that in whatever he has decreed, he will also provide the means--whether prayer, or the preaching of the gospel, or any other ordained means--to accomplish those purposes.

photos here and here

Always the Scriptures

2010-05-03T23:39:00.010-05:00

How we need to do away with false divisions in our thinking between the work of the Spirit and the use of the Scriptures. The Lord Jesus elevated the Scriptures! Here's one example; here's how he partnered the most shivery, spine-tingling, exciting spiritual experience of all history (his resurrection!) with the use of his written testimony, the Scriptures.

After he was raised from the dead, the Lord met up with two sad and disturbed disciples of his on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-49). He asked them, "What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?" (as if he didn't know). As they sadly explained, he had a firm plan and purpose; he was about to open their minds and hearts to the very thing they had lacked in their understanding all the events they had seen so far. He was about to open up the Scriptures to them.

"Oh foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!" he began. Then, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them "in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." Later, after he had broken bread with them and had revealed to them who he was, they exclaimed to one another, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?" Tumbling over themselves with excitement they hurried to Jerusalem and Peter and the other disciples to report all these things, and when Jesus appeared to them there, their fearful disbelief melted into (ahem) joyous disbelief as they touched his real body and watched him eat real food. And these observable proofs were not what convinced. The Lord Jesus told them as their eyes were taking all this in:

"These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then, the text says, "he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, 'Thus it is written...'" (Luke 24:44-46a). This was the the thing they had lacked.

It is always the Scriptures.

What our eyes have seen will never be enough. In the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), Abraham tells the rich man, suffering torment in hell, that sending Lazarus from Paradise to warn his brothers would not convince them. "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them... if they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead" (Luke 17:29, 31). Jesus told doubtful Thomas after he had touched his resurrected body, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29).

Always the Scriptures.

"Faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17). The Lord Jesus had disclosed that the Holy Spirit would glorify him because he would "take what is mine and declare it to you" (John 16:14). He had told them that this Holy Spirit would "not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak" (John 16:13). He told them that the Holy Spirit will be the Helper sent by the Father in Jesus' name who will "bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." And this is just what happened after the Lord ascended; the Holy Spirit came and powerfully opened up the truth and the interpretation of Jesus' words to his disciples, so that they wrote them down into living, life-giving words. Now the Spirit does the work done by the Lord Jesus himself on the Emmaus road and with the gathered disciples: he opens up the minds and hearts of those who read and hear to understand.

Always the Scriptures!

"You have exalted above all things your name and your word" (Psalm 138:2).

Take the Sword...

2010-03-27T10:40:00.008-05:00

"In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God..." (Ephesians 6:16, 17)

Think of "the sword of the Spirit," the word of God, as the sword the Spirit both wields and gives us to wield. The Holy Spirit wields the word of Christ; it is how he works, and what he came to do. In John 15, Jesus said of the Spirit, "He will take what is Mine and declare it to you." The Spirit takes Christ's word, the Scripture, and puts it into our hands as we study it, meditate on it, and abide in it; he makes it our weapon of righteousness. We are to take it up and when we do, in the power of the Spirit, he takes our hand and guides the strokes, slashing here, exposing there, as the sword does its living work.

"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart"(Hebrews 4:12).

Psalm 19

2010-03-23T16:20:00.002-05:00

The Bible doesn't give its treasures away to glib readers. For instance, it often records surprising things that people said and did, but without comment; we are puzzled, and must become more thoughtful if we hope to solve the riddle. The Bible says things that seem to contradict other things; we are challenged, and must stop to study if we want to have understanding. The Bible says some things in such a way that if we're looking for an easy, shallow way to believe about God, we can seem to have found it. If we insist, the Bible will remain a small book to us.

But the Bible is, in actuality, a deep treasure mine, while at the same time it is a vast library. The glib reader, though he intends to dig deep, will miss the treasure because he misses the contexts, the wide references, the wonderful continuity. Or, the glib reader will browse here and there from the wide library but never dig deeper, never get the big picture, because he's busy with only bits and pieces. And so he too will miss the treasure.

But the one who's given up glibness... the one who's begun to tremble at this word... roams far and wide, up and down, throughout the vast library. Night and day you'll find him there, poring joyfully over the volumes. He has a pickaxe; he often stops to dig deeper for the treasure that the volumes say lies beneath the surface. He sometimes weeps at the aching beauty of what he finds. Pickaxe in one hand, open reference in the other, he'll spend his life mining for this treasure, for the truth that is more to be desired than gold. (Yes, than much fine gold.)

A Straight Line with a Crooked Stick

2010-02-25T10:40:00.005-06:00

In talking about the difficult doctrine of God's ordaining and ruling over evil without being sinful himself (as in the preordained murder of his Son) John Piper offers this illustration from the life of Joni Eareckson Tada:

Perhaps some may think that this heady theology... is too high to be practically helpful. Joni Eareckson Tada and her coauthor Steve Estes have found it otherwise.

Joni has been almost completely paralyzed from the neck down from a diving accident when she was 17 years old. During a bleak period of doubt and anger, a friend introduced her to Steve Estes. They began to study the Bible together. 'She came to the classically Reformed belief that her injury was an expression of God's love. To put it simply, Scripture taught Tada that her soul was infinitely more important than her body.'

She explains, 'I was heading down a path of self-destruction [before my accident]... I was checking out a birth-control clinic to get some pills, because I knew I'd be sleeping with my boyfriend in college. Somewhere in that mess of emotions and regrets and falterings and failings, while making a sham of my Christian faith, somewhere in that desperation I said, "God, rescue me." And he did. I believe my accident was a direct answer.

Some people might want to say indirect, but I lean toward the old adage that God draws straight lines with crooked sticks.'

As Piper says, "The life of the godly is not a straight line to glory, but they do get there--God sees to it."

Taken from A Sweet and Bitter Providence by John Piper

Keeping Us Right

2010-02-04T23:46:00.006-06:00

Calvin chose two metaphors to describe our need for God’s Word: Scripture functions as a pair of eyeglasses to correct our blurred vision, and as a strong thread to guide us through life’s confusing labyrinth.

“Just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision can scarcely construe two words [from a beautiful volume] . . . so Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, clearly shows us the true God,” Calvin writes. “If we turn aside from the Word we shall never reach the goal. [Returning to God] is for us like an inexplicable labyrinth unless we are conducted by the thread of the Word” (I.vi.1-3).

HT

Becoming A Pure Vessel

2010-02-01T11:32:00.007-06:00

Have you ever prayed and asked the Lord to purify your heart--to purify your motives and your secret thoughts and desires? You should! We all should do this, because this is why he chose us... to "purify for himself a people for his own possession"(Titus 2:14). He does this purifying by exposing the secret thoughts and intentions of our hearts by the use of His word--through the Bible! Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

Let the word of God do its discerning work, rooting out the impurities and exposing them to yourself; for this to happen you must read it, seeking diligently to learn what is right and true before God, asking him by his Spirit to make you willing to take action on what he shows you (James 1:22, 23). Only in this way can you become one who is zealous for good works, a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.

Angling Our Lives Toward God

2010-01-08T10:02:00.007-06:00

Alec Motyer comments on James 5:13:

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.
"Our whole life, we might say, should be so angled towards God that whatever strikes upon us, whether sorrow or joy, should be deflected upwards at once into his presence. In particular, this is an exercise in glad acceptance of the will of God. This is the common denominator of prayer and praise. In praise, we say to him, 'Your will is good, perfect and acceptable; this is what you have done for me and I rejoice.' And as for prayer in times of trouble, it attempts--however poorly we may succeed--to copy the Gethsemane prayer of Jesus in saying, 'Not my will but yours.' R.V.G. Tasker notes helpfully that when Jesus was in agony, 'wrestling with the forces of evil at the moment of their strongest attack, he "prayed more earnestly" (Luke 22:44). Prayer may not remove the affliction but it most certainly can transform it.'

"This, then, is the individual at prayer. He is reflecting all his life upward, acknowledging the sufficiency and sovereignty of God, practicing the grace of acceptance and rejecting the disgrace of stubbornness. In this the voice of prayer and the voice of praise are at one, for alike they say that the will of God is good."

(I've been reading Motyer's wonderful commentary on James in the past weeks. Read a bit about his love for the Bible here.)

Photo

How Did Jesus See the Old Testament?

2009-12-23T11:10:00.005-06:00

Are we as Christians missing out on much of the meaning of the New Testament because we don't understand the Old? Alec Motyer speaks on Jesus' and his disciples' view of the OT Scriptures:

"It would not have surprised his disciples that our Lord affirmed the enduring validity of the Old Testament (Matthew 5:18). They would have taken it for granted that God's word is imperishable. It is we who must candidly face the Lord's estimate of the Bible as he knew it and, out of reverence for him, adjust our misunderstandings until we see the beautiful wholeness of the word of God, the Old and New Testaments as divine revelation" (The Story of the Old Testament, p. 10).

Feelings Follow Behavior

2009-12-18T14:49:00.005-06:00

Wow. Here's a truth that needs to be promoted with all seriousness in our churches. Psychology has introduced us to a failed model of therapeutic "truth" that has even permeated the church. But David M. Tyler in his book God's Funeral argues that ungodliness (idolatry) leads to unrighteousness (wrong behavior) and thus is the cause of much of our mental sufferings:

"'Feelings follow behavior' is a principle found first in Genesis 3 and throughout the whole Bible.

"The Bible teaches that there is a relationship between behavior and feelings. Ungodliness leads to unrighteousness which leads to guilt, depression, anxiety, fear, shame, etc. After they had eaten of the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve fled from the presence of God because they were "afraid" (Genesis 3:10). When God rejected Cain's offering he became angry and depressed. God asked Cain, 'Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?' God said to Cain, 'If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?' (Genesis 4:6-7). If Cain would change his behavior his feelings would change. God's rhetorical question to Cain sets forth the important principle that behavior determines feelings."

I'm convinced that this principle holds true for kiddies as well as their mommas and daddies.

The Cost of Discipleship

2009-12-12T19:24:00.004-06:00

"And they said to him, 'The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.' And Jesus said to them, 'Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days'" (Luke 5:33-35).

"When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed" (Acts 14:21-23).

"Jesus takes it for granted that his disciples will observe the pious custom of fasting. Strict exercise of self-control is an essential feature of the Christian's life. Such customs have only one purpose--to make the disciples more ready and cheerful to accomplish those things which God would have done" (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, quoted by John Piper in A Hunger for God).

Fasting is a lost discipline of Christ's church. May we recover it for his glory.

Some Thoughts on Cross-Shaped Worship

2009-11-11T12:51:00.009-06:00

I was thinking this morning that our worship of God is Cross-shaped. The daily working out of our salvation is not only vertical, toward him, but horizontal, toward one another, as the gospels and epistles so consistently show. The Bible doesn't separate vertical from horizontal; worship isn't worship without both, just as a Cross is not a Cross without both. "So if you are offering your gift at the altar (vertical) and there remember that your brother has something against you (horizontal), leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (Matthew 5:23,24).

What other god is so uncompromisingly solicitous of the love of his followers for each other? But our God is always mindful of his children, his heritage, and we're called to imitate him in that mindfulness. We're never to forget each other in our worship of him, even in our corporate singing, because even there he tells us that we're speaking to one another, teaching and admonishing one another, in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16).

I'm seeing more and more that this is the Cross-shaped life he's calling us to in his church.

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A New Evangelical Consituency

2009-11-02T12:21:00.007-06:00

"In the last two or three decades evangelicals have discovered culture. That actually sounds more flattering than I intend. I would welcome a serious discussion about culture. We should be exploring what it is and how it works, rather than just looking at polls to see what is hot. A serious engagement with culture, though, is not what most evangelicals are about.

"What they want to know about culture is simple and easy to unearth. They want to know what the trends and fashions are that are ruffling the surface of contemporary life. They have no interest at all in what lies beneath the trends, none on how our modernized culture in the West shapes personal horizons, produces appetites, and provides us ways of processing the meaning of life. All of that seems like pretty complex and useless stuff. Pragmatists to the last drop of blood, these evangelicals are now in the cultural waters, not to understand what is there, but to get some movement. They are there with their surfboards trying to get a little forward motion as each tiny ripple makes its way toward the shore. This quest for success, which passes under the language of 'relevance,' is what is partitioning the evangelical world into its three segments."

David Wells, The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers and Emergents in the Postmodern World, p.3

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Spurgeon: The Gospel Invitation Is To All (Even Dynamite-Men)

2009-10-22T09:53:00.008-05:00

The gospel is that you believe in Christ Jesus; that you get right out of yourself, and depend alone in him. Do you say, 'I feel so guilty'? You are certainly guilty, whether you feel it or not; you are far more guilty than you have any idea of. Come to Christ because you are guilty, not because you have been prepared to come by looking at your guilt. Trust nothing of your own, not even your sense of need.

Sinners, let me address you with words of life; Jesus wants nothing from you, nothing whatsoever, nothing done, nothing felt; he gives both work and feeling. Ragged, penniless, just as you are, lost forsaken, desolate, with no good feelings and no good hopes, still Jesus comes to you, and in these words of pity he addresses you, 'Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.'

'Him that cometh to me:...' the man may have been guilty of an atrocious sin, too black for mention; but if he comes to Christ he shall not be cast out. He may have made himself as black as night- as black as hell... I cannot tell what kinds of persons may have come into this Hall tonight; but if burglars, murderers and dynamite-men were here, I would still bid them come to Christ, for he will not cast them out. No limit is set to the extent of sin: any "him" in all the world- any blaspheming, devilish "him" that comes to Christ shall be welcomed. I use strong words that I may open the gate of mercy. Any "him" that comes to Christ--though he come from slum or taproom, betting-ring or gambling-hell, prison or brothel--Jesus will in no wise cast out.

from Spurgeon V. Hyper-Calvinism by Iain H. Murray

He Himself Will Wipe Every Tear

2009-10-09T09:55:00.007-05:00

Isaiah 25:8a--"He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away every tear from all faces."

"The exalted title of Sovereign Lord calls attention to the fact that in all the dignity of his divine Sovereignty, it is the Lord himself who will attend to our tears, moving from person to person until each eye has been dried." (Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah)

Whatever My God Ordains is Right

2009-10-02T00:04:00.001-05:00

Whatever my God ordains is right: His holy will abides;
I will be still whatever He does, and follow where He guides.

He is my God; though dark my road,
He holds me that I shall not fall;
Wherefore to Him I leave it all.

Whatever my God ordains is right: He never will deceive me.
He leads me by the proper path; I know He will not leave me.

I take, content, what He has sent;
His hand can turn my griefs away,
And patiently I wait His day.

Whatever my God ordains is right: His loving thought attends me;
No poison can be in the cup that my Physician sends me.

My God is true; each morning new
I’ll trust His grace unending,
My life to Him commending.

Whatever my God ordains is right: He is my Friend and Father;
He suffers naught to do me harm, though many storms may gather.

Now I may know both joy and woe,
Some day I shall see clearly
That He has loved me dearly.

Whatever my God ordains is right: though now this cup, in drinking,
May bitter seem to my faint heart, I take it, all unshrinking.

My God is true; each morning new
Sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart,
And pain and sorrow shall depart.

Whatever my God ordains is right: here shall my stand be taken;
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine, yet I am not forsaken.

My Father’s care is round me there;
He holds me that I shall not fall:
And so to Him I leave it all.

No Rebuke for Our Believing Fears

2009-09-30T11:42:00.009-05:00

Just a quick observation to add to yesterday's post. In yet another gospel account of disciples in a boat, crossing the sea, and becoming fearful, we'll see again that Jesus reproved his disciples not for their honest fears, but rather for their disbelief in his word.

This time (in Matthew 14:22-32) his disciples are on their way back across the sea at the end of a long day of ministry with Jesus. He has healed the sick and fed over five thousand people with only five loaves of bread and two fish. He has remained to pray; as the disciples are making their way back to the other side in the boat, night falls and they are now struggling against a contrary wind, beaten by the waves. Suddenly they see what they take to be an apparition... it is their Lord, coming to them, walking on the water! They cry out in fear, "It is a ghost!" But what does our Lord say? Does he reprove them for this fear--"O you of little faith?"

No, not for this; rather, he calls out to them with his cheerful encouragement, "Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid!" There is no reproof. They are struggling; they need their Master. Peter, that importunate one, answers him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." The Lord says, "Come." We know what happened next; Peter obeyed well at first, but seeing the wind, he forgot Jesus' command to come, and began to sink. The Lord graciously answered his cry for help, took his hand, and then came the searching question: "O you of oligopistos, of little faith, why did you doubt?"

What I'm aiming at here is that, again, Jesus didn't rebuke the disciples for their weakness of fear. Peter only earned that reproof when he failed to believe that the Lord would do what he said; in his simple command to Peter, "Come!" were all the promises of heaven to enable Peter to come. Because he told Peter to come walk on the water, Peter certainly could, if he would only believe his Lord. As Augustine said, "O God, command what You will, and give what You command." Our faith is in the promises of this great God to enable us to do his will.

His will for us, the new covenant people born into a church in Acts 2, is revealed in the pages of the Bible. Our job now is to become familiar with this Bible so that we understand how to read it, how to rightly interpret it in all its different parts, how to love it so that it truly becomes a weapon in our hands, the sword of the Spirit, laying open what needs to be exposed, bringing grace and truth to bear on all that is false.

And our Lord will never rebuke us for our honest doubts and fears, so long as we are saying with the Psalmist, "When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?" (Psalm 56:3-4).

Mustard Seed Faith

2009-09-28T21:19:00.016-05:00

The nature of Christian faith, first given at salvation and put to work afterwards, can be a source of confusion for believers. A careful biblical study of what faith is and how it works in our lives can help to clear up misunderstandings we may have; let’s examine one Scripture passage together and hopefully find encouragement in our approach to God’s word.

In Matthew 17:20, Jesus told the disciples that if they only had the smallest amount of faith, like a mustard seed, they would be able to accomplish great things (to move a mountain was simply a Jewish metaphor for doing the seemingly impossible.) This promise can cause Christians today to wonder what’s wrong with them. They feel that their faith must not yet be what they take our Lord to be saying…the minimum amount, so to speak. As if he’s saying, ‘Look, can’t you even drum up this much faith…faith the size of a mustard seed? If you can just drum up that much, you can do some great things!” Feeling that we don’t have the faith to move a mountain (or overcome our worst habits), we accept that we are sadly lacking. We make a choice either to glaze over and “disconnect” from this teaching and go on, or stumble in our walk and suffer a rift in our close fellowship with the Lord.

But neither is necessary. A right understanding of these words of Jesus should bring both light and encouragement to those who struggle with the issue of faith.

It’s important to know that our Lord isn’t asking the disciples to drum up “at least” a mustard seed-sized faith. Rather, he’s giving them some good news…that it only takes that! Even if it is only that small, he’s telling them, the size of one of the tiniest seeds known, their faith will be enough to accomplish great things, and for this reason; it’s not their faith itself that everything depends on, but the One their faith is in. Their tiny faith must be in the greatness of the God who can uproot mountains and move them to another place.

Before Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples often failed to grasp and believe who Jesus was, so they often failed to understand and obey his words. He reproved them more than once for this…“O you of little faith.” The Greek for the phrase “little faith” is oligopistos; it doesn’t mean “no faith,” but rather “ineffective”, “defective”, or “deficient” faith, reflecting their muddled understanding of who Jesus was. They were reproved for their hard hearts in not understanding his teaching, and for their failure to believe and obey him.

This story from the gospels may help shed some light. Luke, in 8:22-25, gives the account this way:

“One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side of the lake.’ So they set out, and as they sailed he fell asleep. And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger. And they went and woke him, saying, ‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?’”

Notice that Jesus revealed his will for the disciples when he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” When the violent storm blew up, the disciples became afraid; Luke assures us that they were indeed in danger. When the frightened disciples went to him, saying that they were about to die, he woke up and rebuked the storm, and it ceased. Then he asked them, “Where is your faith?” Why did the Lord reprove them?

Not, I think, because they were afraid and woke him up; it was rather their disbelief that he could and would get them to the other side in spite of his expressed purpose to do just that. “We are perishing!” they cried. (Matthew adds that they asked, “Do you not care?”) Their unbelief in his words was rooted in their hard-hearted failure to understand who he was, as seen in the last verse of Luke’s account.

And we have this same problem today! Lacking a true grasp of the character and accomplishment of Christ, we fail to believe and act on his words (Matthew 7:24). We don’t understand that the faith he calls us to exercise is simply to believe him; it is a settled trust in who he is, in what he has accomplished, and in his word. The purpose of the gospel accounts, John tells us, is that we too may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing we may have life in his name.

Jesus does not ask us to drum up faith. Faith is a gift (Ephesians 2:8) as well as something we must exercise, and its object is God, the mover of mountains! What he has said he will do, he will do. We place our tiny trust in his great power and ability, described in the Bible for us so that we can believe. This is the nature of faith, and this is its purpose…to believe the promises of a great God, and believing them to act upon them, and so give glory to him both in this life and in eternity.

The Futility of Regret

2009-09-12T08:47:00.008-05:00

I came across this essay by A.W. Tozer on Paul Martin's blog, and posted it here for my own benefit and enjoyment. Hope it's of help to you too.

The human heart is heretical by nature. Popular religious beliefs should be checked carefully against the word of God, for they are almost certain to be wrong.

Legalism, for instance, is natural to the human heart. Grace in its true New Testament meaning is foreign to human reason, not because it is contrary to reason but because it lies beyond it. The doctrine of grace had to be revealed; it could not have been discovered.

The essence of legalism is self-atonement. The seeker tries to make himself acceptable to God by some act of restitution, or by self-punishment or the feeling of regret. The desire to be pleasing to God by self-effort is not, for it assumes that sin once done may be undone, an assumption wholly false.

Long after we have learned from the scriptures that we cannot by fasting, or the wearing of a hair shirt or the making of many prayers atone for the sins of the soul, we still tend by a kind of pernicious natural heresy to feel that we can please God, and purify our souls, by the penance of perpetual regret.

This latter is the Protestant's unacknowledged penance. Though he claims to believe in the doctrine of justification by faith, he still secretly feels that what he calls "godly sorrow" will make him dear to God. Though he may know better, he is caught in the web of a wrong religious feeling and betrayed.

There is indeed a godly sorrow that worketh repentance, and it must be acknowledged that among us Christians this feeling is often not present in sufficient strength to work real repentance; but the persistence of this sorrow till it becomes chronic regret is neither right nor good. Regret is a kind of frustrated repentance that has not been quite comsummated. Once the soul has turned from all sin and committed itself wholly to God there is no longer any legitimate place for regret. When moral innocence has been restored by the forgiving love of God the guilt may be remembered, but the sting is gone from the memory. The forgiven man knows that he has sinned, but he no longer feels it.

The effort to be forgiven by works is one that can never be completed because no one knows or can know how much is enough to cancel out the offence; so the seeker must go on year after year paying on his moral debt, here a little, there a little, knowing that he sometimes adds to his bill much more than he pays. The task of keeping books on such transaction can never end, and the seeker can only hope that when the last entry is made he may be ahead and the account fully paid. This is quite the popular belief, this forgiveness by self-effort but it is natural heresy and can at last only betray those who depend upon it.

It may be argued that the absence of regret indicates a low and inadequate view of sin, but the exact opposite is true. Sin is frightful, so destructive to the soul that no human thought or act can in any degree diminish its lethal effects. Only God can deal with it successfully; only the blood of Christ can cleanse it from the pores or the spirit. The heart that has been delivered from this dread enemy feels not regret but wondrous relief and unceasing gratitude.

The returned prodigal honors his father more by rejoicing than by repining. Had the young man in the story had less faith in his father he might have mourned in a corner instead of joining in the festivities. His confidence in the loving-kindness of his father gave him the courage to forget his checkered past.

Regret frets the soul as tension frets the nerves and anxiety the mind. I believe that the chronic unhappiness of most Christians may be attributed to a gnawing uneasiness lest God had not fully forgiven them, or the fear that He expects as the price of His forgiveness some sort of emotional penance which they have not yet furnished. As our confidence in the goodness of God mounts our anxieties will diminish and our moral happiness rise in inverse proportion.

Regret may be more a form of self-love. A man may have such a high regard for himself that any failure to live up to his own image of himself disappoints him deeply. He feels that he has betrayed his better self by his act of wrongdoing, and even if God is willing to forgive him he will not forgive himself. Sin brings to such a man a painful loss of face that is not soon forgotten. He becomes permanently angry with himself by going to God frequently with petulant self-accusations. This state of mind crystallizes finally into a feeling of chronic regret which appears to be proof of deep penitence, but is actually proof of deep self-love.

Regret for a sinful past will remain until we truly believe that for us in Christ that sinful past no longer exists. The man in Christ has only Christ's past, and that is perfect and acceptable to God. In Christ He died, in Christ he rose, and in Christ he is seated within the circle of God's favored ones. He is no longer angry with himself because he is no longer self-regarding, but Christ-regarding; hence there is no place for regret.

Lloyd-Jones on Preaching

2009-08-30T15:34:00.007-05:00

"Now this is the very opposite of inviting people to a quest or to a search. That idea has always been popular; this notion that a Christian is someone who is seeking and searching; someone who sets out on a journey into this vast unexplored expanse of truth. What is a Christian? "Well," people say, "Christians are men and women who do not just spend their time eating and drinking and indulging their passions. They are intelligent people and they set out in the search for truth and oh, it is thrilling; it is wonderful! The uncharted ocean, the promised land, the unknown; and off you set, with this thrill and excitement on the quest for truth." This has always been very popular. People like the idea; it appeals to their spirit of adventure and there have been those who have not hesitated to say this. Their criticism of our evangelical gospel has always been that it is too certain and too dogmatic.

The poets like saying this sort of thing, do they not? They of all people, have generally fooled themselves better than others-- "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive!" says one of them.

But life is not a game; it is not a play; it is not just play-acting. Oh, life is serious and solemn; it is real and it is earnest. And that is the sort of life of the world that we find ourselves in today. So I thank God that as I look at this, I am not invited to some great experiment or to some great search or question or journey of exploration. In the midst of my failure in life, with my heart breaking and my soul bleeding, and as I am almost giving up in despair, I suddenly hear a bugle call or a trumpet sounding, and I say, What is that? And, thank God, I hear an authoritative proclamation; I hear a man saying, "Listen, I am a herald, I have a message from the Imperial Palace; I announce to you." "Preaching!"...

But let me translate that into simpler, more ordinary language. My task [as a preacher] is to tell you that the answer to all your questions is in this one book, the Bible. If I am a herald (and, thank God, unworthy though I am, that is what I am) I am not here to tell you my theories and my ideas about life, for they are no better than yours. No, I have been given a message from the Imperial Palace and here it is. And I am here to tell you with authority, with the authority of God, that all your questions have already been answered and all your problems have already been solved. You have but to listen to this preaching, this proclamation, and you will find peace and rest for your soul.

And if you should be asked to pass from time to eternity today, you will know where you are going; you will not be alone; you will be able to say with the Apostle Paul, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day" (2 Timothy 1:12). Thank God for preaching--proclamation, authoritative pronouncement!"

excerpts, The Kingdom of God by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, pgs. 12-14

Reading the Bible with Opened Eyes

2009-08-15T00:10:00.003-05:00

BibleStudyMagazine.com recently interviewed John Piper:

BSM: There’s an old saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”
How do you keep your familiarity with the Bible from causing
you to grow indifferent to it?

PIPER: I pray Psalm 119:18 each time I go to the Bible: “Open my
eyes that I may behold wonders in your law.” I think the point of
that prayer is that there are wonders everywhere in “the law,” in
the Bible, the instruction of God. And the psalmist is aware that he
doesn’t often feel or see wonderful things as wonderful. So he asks
to see. I do as well. I’m asking specifically that I would have spiritual
eyes to see what is wonderful as wonderful. And don’t think that it
doesn’t matter that you read glorious things without seeing them as
glorious. It matters, and therefore we should plead with God to open
our eyes.

you can read the rest of the interview here

(HT: desiringgodblog)

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale

2009-08-10T10:09:00.005-05:00

No way!!!

HT: Laurie

On Cultural Engagement

2009-08-07T17:31:00.010-05:00

Some thoughts from the blog article of Ray Van Neste, Director of the R.C. Ryan Center for Biblical Studies at Union University in Jackson, TN, titled "Ken Myers on Cultural Engagement:"

"In the recent issue of Touchstone Magazine Ken Myers' article “Waiting for Epimenides” draws from the letter to Titus lessons for cultural engagement. This is a good article both in its handling of Titus and in its observations of the current church scene. Here are some quotes:

“A passion for Christian maturity is easily obscured when church leaders become preoccupied with the church’s cultural relevance.” (9)

“Far from looking more like their neighbors in the interest of winsomeness, they are enjoined to live lives that put their neighbors to shame.” (11; commenting on Titus 2:1-10)

“St. Paul’s letter to Titus is a bracing rebuke to much of the vague talk about cultural engagement one hears in so many Christian settings. … It recognizes that cultural moods and styles can be enemies of faithfulness.” (11)

Noting that there are often secular voices pointing out the deadening effects of cultural trends, Myers goes on to say:

"But, all too often, these prophetic voices are ignored, as American churches have emulated the most popular trends of our time to attract people who want a spiritual supplement to the cultural status quo instead of a radical critique of the conventional wisdom. Christian leaders have assumed that ‘engaging the culture’ means finding out what the majority wants and figuring out how to exploit those desires in the name of Jesus." (11)

You can visit Ray Van Neste's blog from here.

To Get Us Thinking...

2009-08-06T12:06:00.009-05:00

From Desiring God blog today: a helpful article on "Questions to Ask When Preparing for Marriage."

Photo Mircea Tudorache

The Question of Inerrancy

2009-08-05T12:07:00.007-05:00

I was surprised and bemused a little over a year ago to run into a young Baptist youth leader at children's camp who believed the Bible contained error in what it taught. This surfaced in a conversation we had during breakfast one morning that began with my asking him what sort of books he liked to read. This young man was actually the main speaker for this camp. He became quite agitated over the topic, telling me that he used to believe the way I did about the inerrancy of Scripture, but no longer did.

Not long ago I was listening to a talk by Don Carson in which he communicated that though the battle for the inerrancy of Scripture has been fought valiantly in past decades, it has not been won. Here Don Carson speaks about 4 minutes on the topic (the video cuts off, wish it could have run a little longer!) but it's enough to get a taste for where the issues lie.

I bow down toward your holy temple
and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness,
for you have exalted above all things
your name and your word (Psalm 138:2)

Augustine and Pelagius For Us Ladies

2009-08-02T05:44:00.008-05:00

"O God, command what You will, and give what You command," prayed Augustine, the 5th century bishop of Hippo, Africa, and so answered the growing heresy of the day taught by, among others, a British monk named Pelagius. Pelagius answered Augustine's thought with his own: God would never command something that is not in the ability of man to do.

This was not the first serious doctrinal conflict that had arisen in the church, but it is one of the first that provided theological labels still in use. Although Pelagius' views were condemned as unbiblical at the Council of Carthage in 418, they remained popular with many and have persisted in one form or another to this very day. Most of us in the church are unaware of these historical events and unfamiliar with the terms Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism, yet the views of Pelagius and others like him still deeply affect our understanding.

This conflict of understanding is one reason we have trouble growing and changing into the image of Christ, which is God's will for us. The New Testament words of Jesus and the apostles concerning how we are to live, and what sort of people we are to be, can seem so hopelessly beyond us that our eyes (and hearts) glaze over. We just can't apply such high standards to our own lives! Or, we determine to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get with the program of obeying God's commands. We make resolutions and "decisions" for Christ that harden eventually into a rigid lifestyle of rules. We really want to be holy, but feel it must come by our own efforts.

Either way we fall short of God's requirements. He does demand that His people be holy, set apart and conformed to the image of His Son, but He is not glorified by our own attempts at righteous living resulting in rigidity and self-righteousness. They are doomed to fail.

This is the dilemma that has led multitudes from Isaiah, to Paul, to Augustine and Luther to fall on their faces before the righteous demands of God and cry out, "God, you are holy and I am not! Command what you will--I have no say-so or argument anymore with Your holy and just law. Only, give what I need to obey Your commands!"

This is the prayer from the heart that God is waiting to hear. We have to come to the end of ourselves, and see very plainly that we will never fulfill God's righteousness by our own efforts.

This stuff really matters (thus a world-wide council convened in 418 A.D. in order to get it settled, or so they'd hoped.) And to bring it all down to our world, it matters greatly to us women; the stakes are so high that Paul says if we let the ball drop, and don't become doers of the word and not just hearers, we will actually aid the enemies of God and bring reproach to His gospel (Titus 2:5). What will we do about commands like this, which we cannot obey in our own strength and we dare not simply glaze over?

"Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening" (1 Peter 3:1-6).

We'll fly to Jesus for help.

Lord, command what You will, and give what You command.

(learn more about Augustine and Pelagius here)

Photo by janusz l

Piper on Mental Health

2009-07-15T09:38:00.009-05:00

"While I was a student at Wheaton College, a very wise and deep and happy teacher of literature, Clyde Kilby, showed us and taught us this path to health. Once he said, 'I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.'

"He had learned the deep significance of this outward-oriented self-forgetfulness from C.S. Lewis and drew our attention to it often. Mental health is, in great measure, the gift of self-forgetfulness. The reason is that introspection destroys what matters most to us--the authentic experience of great things outside ourselves."

from "The Clouds Ye So Much Dread Are Big With Mercy--Insanity and Spiritual Songs in the Life of William Cowper", The Hidden Smile of God by John Piper, pg. 112

Photo by Nelson~Blue

Tolkien on Choosing Books for Children

2009-07-13T15:37:00.007-05:00

Ray Van Neste (whose blog, The Children's Hour, I highly recommend to parents of young readers) quotes J.R.R. Tolkien: “A good vocabulary is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one’s age-group. It comes from reading books above one.”

In other words, don't be afraid to read the more difficult books with and to your children. Help them develop a taste for and skill with vocabulary.

J.R.R. Tolkien

John Wesley's Directions for Congregational Singing

2009-07-09T09:28:00.006-05:00

John Wesley published these instructions to the congregation on singing well in 1761 (they're still found at the front of some Methodist hymnals). They're as timely and helpful today as they were then. I love the language.

1. Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a single degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up and you will find a blessing.

2. Sing lustily, and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.

3. Sing modestly. Do not bawl, as to be heard above, or distinct from, the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.

4. Sing in time. Whatever time is sung, be sure to keep with it. Do not run before, not stay behind it; but attend closely to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can. And take care you sing not too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from among us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.

5. Above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve of here, and reward when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.

The Tension in Good Teaching

2009-07-07T05:28:00.004-05:00

I'm reading an excellent little book, "Teaching to Change Lives" by Dr. Howard Hendricks. This stuff is good; if you teach in any capacity, as a parent (and all parents teach), Sunday School teacher, public school teacher; or if you have any desire to learn more about teaching, get a copy of this book. It's easy to read, engaging and filled with rich, quotable nuggets of wisdom. Chapter Two of the book, "The Law of Education," deals with the tension a teacher must create in order to stir up learning. In explaining why tension is a necessary component of good teaching, Dr. Hendricks begins with psychologist Abraham Maslow's four levels of learning:

1) Unconscious incompetence--the learner's beginning point, the basic level where everyone starts... where you're ignorant and you don't know it.

2) Conscious incompetence--now you know you don't know. How do you find out? Usually somebody tells you but occasionally you discover it for yourself.

3) Conscious competence--you've learned something, as when you first get the hang of driving a car, and you're consciously aware of it as you do it.

4) Unconscious competence--you're so competent you don't even think about it anymore.

Hendricks goes on to explain that the art of teaching--and the difficulty of learning--is getting people to place themselves at the beginning of that cycle, to plunge to the bottom, so they can begin the learning process. There is no growth, no development, no true learning, apart from the tension that must come as people are made aware that they don't know. Tension is absolutely indispensable to the process.

I see this as so very true in the Church in our day, in the area of Christian discipleship. I lived many years not knowing that I didn't know... smug and satisfied with my knowledge of doctrine, of the Bible, when really it was so pitifully lacking. Only the bittersweet providences of God awakened me to my true condition. I'm so thankful to Him for creating the tension that I needed in my life to show me that I needed to become a true learner, a humble disciple.

A good teacher will imitate the Master Teacher by helping someone get to the place of seeing that they need to learn. It's an exciting and humbling prospect, that we are given the privilege of participating in changing hearts and minds, in changing lives. May we desire to do that to the very best of our ability, to the glory of God. This little jewel of a book by Howard Hendricks looks like it will be a great help in that direction.

Giving Us Words to Express Experience

2009-07-02T12:44:00.004-05:00

God's word, among all the other benefits it gives us, gives us this one: a language to talk in, a framework to give voice to our experience as Christians. Work in biblical counseling has helped me understand this even more.

Truly the Bible is sufficient. It provides every description of the way of God we need to know, interacting and intersecting with our own desperate human condition. I was trying to articulate what my former neglect in pursuing holiness has to do with my resoluteness now to declare His truth to all generations. 1 Timothy 1:16-17 gave me the language to say it in this morning: "But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost (of sinners) Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life. To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen."

When God Says "I'm Going To Do It"...We Pray For Him To Do It

2009-06-25T23:44:00.006-05:00

God told Elijah that He was going to send rain and so...Elijah prayed for rain.

"This is the wonder of prayer...that instead of God's saying "I'm going to do it" making prayer redundant, actually, God's saying "I'm going to do it" is meant to inspire us to pray, and direct our praying that so that our praying is in line with what God has said.

"Prayer is built on what God has promised He will do. Prayer starts in God, prayer starts with God initiating, telling us what He's after. It's not us thinking, "What shall I pray for?" No, it's much more responding to His initiatives--what He wants to do--and we come and ask Him in the light of that."

From a talk by Terry Virgo; all commas, quotes, dashes and such made up by me as I listened. You can listen to the whole thing here.

Don't Waste Your Life Tour Coming to Birmingham

2009-06-11T14:11:00.007-05:00

The Don't Waste Your Life Tour is coming to Birmingham June 27th, at the downtown Jefferson Complex! Featuring Lecrae, Trip Lee, and others. Please do not miss this if you are in the area--please bring friends who need to hear and experience this.

Your Money, Your Singleness, Marriage, Talents, Your Time,
They belong to you to show the world that Christ is divine.
That's why its Christ in my rhyme, That's why its Christ all the time,
See my whole world is built around Him, He's the life in my line.
- from the song Don't Waste Your Life

Tickets are $10 at the door, groups of 20+ can call ahead. Doors open at 6 pm and concert starts at 7 pm. Call 205-215-6793 for more info. Visit the Reach Records website for tour dates.