My wife and I have gotten Netflix recently. They have a lot of good movies, and this week I watched Apollo 13. The basic plot of the movie centers around these three men who are on a mission to walk on the moon. When they get into outer space, something goes wrong on their ship, and the mission drastically changes to one of rescue. There are dozens of obstacles that must be overcome, and you find yourself rooting for the truly heroic engineering of the astronauts and the hundreds of people working around the clock to bring them home.
The movie just ended, and I am writing this as the credits are rolling. They do indeed make it back! The epic soundtrack is still ringing in my ears. At the end of the movie, for over three minutes during their re-entry, there is radio silence. The climax is the moment that you hear Tom Hanks voice as Jim Lovell break the radio silence letting Houston and the world know that they have made it. Families rejoice! The spell-bound world takes a deep sigh of relief. Mission control cheers. Joy! Peace! Comfort! The director of mission control sinks back into his chair as emotions overcome him, and he rests in a job well done, NASA's finest hour, the failure that was a success. No moon rocks, but in bringing the men home, they achieved the seemingly impossible.
It is a great story. You find yourself rooting for the characters. Even better that it's a true story. (God wrote it, right?!) What can we learn from this story?
From this true story I take several lessons regarding evangelism...
1. This movie is a story about salvation. These men's lives are at risk. But so are the lives of many around us. While the astronauts are threatened by death in the vacuum of deep space, those around us are threatened with being swept away into eternal damnation. What is worse? Harm to the body, physical death? Or harm to the soul, spiritual death? Do we root for and become as invested in the salvation of souls from hell as we do about astronauts from death?
2. This movie is a story about sacrifice. The NASA community are committed to bringing their men home. They feel duty bound to do so. Those men in space are their brothers, and they will do whatever it takes. They band together to see it happen. Just like a marine will not leave a wounded man behind to be taken by the enemy, so NASA refuses to leave their men in space if there is anything possible they can do about it. Do we feel such an intense loyalty to the people around us in the various and expanding spheres of neighbors we have that we will do anything to see them saved? Look at what our Savior sacrificed in love for us! True friendship and love is to lay down our lives for the sake of others, as our Savior did for us. We carry around the death of Christ in us, and as we suffer for his sake to bring the gospel to others, we fill up what was lacking in Christ's afflictions, namely a flesh-and-blood picture of the sacrificial love of Christ to the community we happen to be in.
3. This movie is a story about the commitment of community. As stated above, the camaraderie of the NASA family was amazing and inspiring. I want our churches to be like that. We should work together and band together because we are in a life-and-death struggle for the very real lives of those around us. Going to church should have an urgency and a weightiness and a brokenness over the lost. We are on a mission. During those days of Apollo 13, the seven days they were in space, the salvation of those men reprioritized literally everything for those who were connected to them in some way. Church should be a time when we willingly submit to a radical reprioritization of our lives so that we are living worthy of the gospel for the sake of the lost and ultimately the sake of God's glory.
4. This movie is a story about expertise. Hearing the men in the mission control and in the space ship prepare for launch was like hearing a symphony. Checking down the systems, they each call out that they are okay to go. In the end it took everyone working on all the systems to get their specific job done. Each person in the NASA team had a specific passion and gifting that they had given their lives to do. They couldn't do everyone else's job, but they could do their own, and that was necessary. A very necessary chain. The Body of Christ functions this way. We are called to be who we are and not anyone else. If you're a pinky toe, be a pinky toe.
Additionally, I believe every single believer, because of the urgency of the gospel, is called to be a threefold student. 1. We are called to be students of the Word and students of the Gospel. And preaching the Gospel to others should simply be the natural overflow of daily preaching it to ourselves as the primary means and motivation of our sanctification. 2. We are to be students of this age. We are to be discerning about the world we live in, and we should know it and its pitfalls very well, so that we may warn and help the perishing. 3. We are to be students of people. We should invest far more time into knowing deeply those around us than we do in knowing fictional characters, pets, and other things. Be an expert in people; they will certainly outlast the things that will not make it to the next world.
Ultimately all of this is in God's hands. After all that NASA did, the fate of the crew was still in the hands of God. We can do nothing to save people. Jesus died and rose to bear the sins of the world. Jesus saves! Jesus gets the glory as the Savior of sinners. To him alone be all the glory. But he gives us the responsibility to go. We are to go as witnesses of a Risen Savior. His Spirit alone can awaken dead hearts, but he has ordained that the preaching of the Gospel be the means by which he awakens those dead hearts, and he has entrusted the preaching of the Gospel to his Spirit indwelt Body. What a privilege! We preach repentance and forgiveness. Paul, who spoke of the sovereignty of God over everything, including salvation, yet believed more than anyone that there was power in the preaching of the gospel, and he groaned and ached, even wishing he could take the place of his Jewish brothers, so that they might see Jesus and believe.
Oh God, let us lose sleep, groan inwardly, weep deeply. Help us become students of the Word and of our fellow man, and hear our prayers for the salvation of the lost. Brothers and sisters, let us come together as the people of God and take seriously our call as a missionary Body in this world. Let us not waste our lives... Soli deo Gloria!
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Walking Through the Institutes - Introduction
It has been awhile since I have blogged. And the more recent entries are more full of links and videos than they are of my actual writing. I have been blessed by being able to write about my faith and the glory of our great God over the past year, and I have been encouraged especially by some of the stories of those who have read and been helped early on. I do want to continue writing.
I am recently married! My wife is wonderful, and we are learning how to build our lives together. I also started teaching this semester. Both of these take a lot of time, and that is a very good thing. How lame if I only blogged all the time and never actually lived! Nevertheless, writing is one of my passions, and sharing my faith is as well. My writing pace at first was frenetic; then it slowed to a stop. Now I would like to find a good place in the middle somewhere.
In looking for a writing project, one of the first places I look is toward what I am currently reading. I have recently picked up John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin was a reformer, and if you have not heard of him, he is a very polarizing figure in the history of Christianity. Most Christians love him, hate him, or have never heard of him. Usually that hinges on whether or not you believe you decisively chose God, or God decisively chose you for salvation. This is not a debate I will resolve in this blog post. Calvin's Institutes were basically his systematic theology. Given his influence in Geneva and Europe at large, this book heavily influenced later Reformed theology and is prerequisite reading for his later commentaries on specific books. It went through several revisions until he was happy with it and felt it was in a complete form, and today the book I hold is 1001 pages thick... I certainly have some reading to chew on.
Today's world is thick with the air of tolerance. Not the kind of tolerance that fights for your freedom to believe what you want and live according to the dictates of your conscience, whether right or wrong, but the kind of tolerance that refuses to say that anyone is right or wrong. The very concept of truth is thrown to the ground and steamrolled like an antiquated novelty from a bygone time. Our culture is permeated with an antagonistic distrust of truth or its personal response - conviction.
Today's church breathes in this air, too, and too often, in cowardice, we abdicate the concept of truth and the firm conviction that we have truth in God's revelation to us. With no firm ground underneath our feet, Christianity becomes a religion about our experience, the way we feel when we sing songs or read the Bible or help other people. A real God who is there and breaks into our existence, who rightly is worshipped as the center of all the universe is replaced by us and our subjective feelings as the center of things. When Christianity wimps out on its proclamation of truth, and when we forsake our fundamental identity as witnesses of our risen Savior and Lord, we become just another voice in our postmodern world, indistinguishable from all the other voices. May it not be so!
We should not be allergic to true conviction. The pattern of this world would tend to do this to us if we do not resist it. Our conviction allergies, caught as we have gone out into the world to proclaim, tend to follow us back into the Church as we seek to minister to each other and proclaim God's Word to each other. How often do you receive or give Biblical rebuke or correction? If Church is mainly about my own personal entertainment experience - which is the case if don't really believe in truth - then rebuke and correction will be completely foreign. How seriously do you take and how seriously does your church take the need to learn the full counsel of God in our discipleship?
I am a Calvinist. I am a Christian first, but I am also a Calvinist. Just like I am a Christian first and also a Baptist. To say I am a Christian means decisively saying some things that will be offensive to people who are not. To say I am a Christian does not mean that I understand everything about God or the Bible or life. To say I am a Christian does not mean that I agree with every Christian about everything, and it does not mean that I agree with everything Christians have done in the past. But nevertheless, I do not shirk the label Christian because of any of these things. Likewise, I don't want to shirk being called a Calvinist simply because of the negative connotations some have with that label.
I have felt the modern aversion to the concept of truth and the idea of having convictions and saying things that will offend. I think that many will point to Calvinism and Arminianism, and they will rightly say that neither fully expresses the truth about God and his world, and that is true. Our knowledge of God, even with Scripture, is limited. (Limited though it is, I believe our knowledge of God through Scripture is sufficient, and he has given us what he means for us to know.) Certainly, our attempts to systematize and see the unity and connections among Scripture will be limited, but that certainly does not mean that they are useless. On the contrary! Finding the connections among Scripture bring it to life so that our quiet times in the Word are not just random bits of information without context. Our God is one, and he speaks with one voice through Scripture, and what a journey and delight it is to pursue that voice in all its variety and richness and truth! May it come alive for you!
I certainly think some conceptions of God are closer than others. I think atheists are way off. I think Hindus and Buddhists are a bit closer because they at least allow the supernatural. Judaism and Islam see a single God. Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are very close to Christianity, but they differ at massively important spots as well. But eventually we move into denominations. I would say that Catholics are Christians, but I would have some significant disagreements with them. There are some first-order differences, which might place you outside the bounds of orthodoxy, and there are second-order differences, like what is the correct method of baptism, and for the latter it would be uncharitable and false to say they are not Christians over a minor disagreement. (Not everyone would agree to which differences go into which category.) When we abdicate truth and conviction, who cares about denominations anymore? But if you care about truth, and if you investigate Scripture, inevitably you are going to disagree with other Christians at certain points.
Admitting to the label of a Calvinist is a gentle rebellion against today's modern and post-modern aversion to labels and claims to truth. I still believe in mystery and I do not understand everything, but on reading Scripture, I tend to agree with Calvin about the main points, though not about everything. I do not believe that Calvinism is an extra-Biblical add-on that distorts Scripture. Rather, I believe that it is the most accurate statement of what I believe to be the true interpretation of Scripture. If I did not believe that to be the case, I am sure that someone else would have expressed a better overall interpretation of Scripture, and for shorthand, I would have taken the guy's name and said, "I follow Jesus above all, but I generally tend to agree with this guy." I believe God chose me because I believe Scripture points me in that direction, and experientially and personally, I simply see God's grace toward me in my own case, and in my salvation I give him all the glory. He drew me! That is all.
Whew! That was a bit longer than intended... But all that to say, Calvin is an important figure in Protestant history. This book represents his thought well, and it is a primary source. I want to read through it and blog my thoughts as I go. I hope you are not turned off by the specificity of my journey. But hey, many in the world are turned off by the specificity of God in choosing a particular people and being born as a Jewish baby at a particular time to a particular young family in a particular place. We do not serve a vague force, but a personal Trinitarian God who descended to mankind and took on human flesh for our salvation in a rescue mission the beginning of which was called Christmas! Hallelujah!
I am recently married! My wife is wonderful, and we are learning how to build our lives together. I also started teaching this semester. Both of these take a lot of time, and that is a very good thing. How lame if I only blogged all the time and never actually lived! Nevertheless, writing is one of my passions, and sharing my faith is as well. My writing pace at first was frenetic; then it slowed to a stop. Now I would like to find a good place in the middle somewhere.
In looking for a writing project, one of the first places I look is toward what I am currently reading. I have recently picked up John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin was a reformer, and if you have not heard of him, he is a very polarizing figure in the history of Christianity. Most Christians love him, hate him, or have never heard of him. Usually that hinges on whether or not you believe you decisively chose God, or God decisively chose you for salvation. This is not a debate I will resolve in this blog post. Calvin's Institutes were basically his systematic theology. Given his influence in Geneva and Europe at large, this book heavily influenced later Reformed theology and is prerequisite reading for his later commentaries on specific books. It went through several revisions until he was happy with it and felt it was in a complete form, and today the book I hold is 1001 pages thick... I certainly have some reading to chew on.
Today's world is thick with the air of tolerance. Not the kind of tolerance that fights for your freedom to believe what you want and live according to the dictates of your conscience, whether right or wrong, but the kind of tolerance that refuses to say that anyone is right or wrong. The very concept of truth is thrown to the ground and steamrolled like an antiquated novelty from a bygone time. Our culture is permeated with an antagonistic distrust of truth or its personal response - conviction.
Today's church breathes in this air, too, and too often, in cowardice, we abdicate the concept of truth and the firm conviction that we have truth in God's revelation to us. With no firm ground underneath our feet, Christianity becomes a religion about our experience, the way we feel when we sing songs or read the Bible or help other people. A real God who is there and breaks into our existence, who rightly is worshipped as the center of all the universe is replaced by us and our subjective feelings as the center of things. When Christianity wimps out on its proclamation of truth, and when we forsake our fundamental identity as witnesses of our risen Savior and Lord, we become just another voice in our postmodern world, indistinguishable from all the other voices. May it not be so!
We should not be allergic to true conviction. The pattern of this world would tend to do this to us if we do not resist it. Our conviction allergies, caught as we have gone out into the world to proclaim, tend to follow us back into the Church as we seek to minister to each other and proclaim God's Word to each other. How often do you receive or give Biblical rebuke or correction? If Church is mainly about my own personal entertainment experience - which is the case if don't really believe in truth - then rebuke and correction will be completely foreign. How seriously do you take and how seriously does your church take the need to learn the full counsel of God in our discipleship?
I am a Calvinist. I am a Christian first, but I am also a Calvinist. Just like I am a Christian first and also a Baptist. To say I am a Christian means decisively saying some things that will be offensive to people who are not. To say I am a Christian does not mean that I understand everything about God or the Bible or life. To say I am a Christian does not mean that I agree with every Christian about everything, and it does not mean that I agree with everything Christians have done in the past. But nevertheless, I do not shirk the label Christian because of any of these things. Likewise, I don't want to shirk being called a Calvinist simply because of the negative connotations some have with that label.
I have felt the modern aversion to the concept of truth and the idea of having convictions and saying things that will offend. I think that many will point to Calvinism and Arminianism, and they will rightly say that neither fully expresses the truth about God and his world, and that is true. Our knowledge of God, even with Scripture, is limited. (Limited though it is, I believe our knowledge of God through Scripture is sufficient, and he has given us what he means for us to know.) Certainly, our attempts to systematize and see the unity and connections among Scripture will be limited, but that certainly does not mean that they are useless. On the contrary! Finding the connections among Scripture bring it to life so that our quiet times in the Word are not just random bits of information without context. Our God is one, and he speaks with one voice through Scripture, and what a journey and delight it is to pursue that voice in all its variety and richness and truth! May it come alive for you!
I certainly think some conceptions of God are closer than others. I think atheists are way off. I think Hindus and Buddhists are a bit closer because they at least allow the supernatural. Judaism and Islam see a single God. Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are very close to Christianity, but they differ at massively important spots as well. But eventually we move into denominations. I would say that Catholics are Christians, but I would have some significant disagreements with them. There are some first-order differences, which might place you outside the bounds of orthodoxy, and there are second-order differences, like what is the correct method of baptism, and for the latter it would be uncharitable and false to say they are not Christians over a minor disagreement. (Not everyone would agree to which differences go into which category.) When we abdicate truth and conviction, who cares about denominations anymore? But if you care about truth, and if you investigate Scripture, inevitably you are going to disagree with other Christians at certain points.
Admitting to the label of a Calvinist is a gentle rebellion against today's modern and post-modern aversion to labels and claims to truth. I still believe in mystery and I do not understand everything, but on reading Scripture, I tend to agree with Calvin about the main points, though not about everything. I do not believe that Calvinism is an extra-Biblical add-on that distorts Scripture. Rather, I believe that it is the most accurate statement of what I believe to be the true interpretation of Scripture. If I did not believe that to be the case, I am sure that someone else would have expressed a better overall interpretation of Scripture, and for shorthand, I would have taken the guy's name and said, "I follow Jesus above all, but I generally tend to agree with this guy." I believe God chose me because I believe Scripture points me in that direction, and experientially and personally, I simply see God's grace toward me in my own case, and in my salvation I give him all the glory. He drew me! That is all.
Whew! That was a bit longer than intended... But all that to say, Calvin is an important figure in Protestant history. This book represents his thought well, and it is a primary source. I want to read through it and blog my thoughts as I go. I hope you are not turned off by the specificity of my journey. But hey, many in the world are turned off by the specificity of God in choosing a particular people and being born as a Jewish baby at a particular time to a particular young family in a particular place. We do not serve a vague force, but a personal Trinitarian God who descended to mankind and took on human flesh for our salvation in a rescue mission the beginning of which was called Christmas! Hallelujah!
Monday, October 10, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Analysis of a Movie: True Grit
I have not had a lot of time to write on my blog lately. I have been working hard at Coahulla Creek. There just has not been much free time to pursue reading and listening to sermons and blogging and those sorts of things. It is a different sort of season of life right now, one that involves a little less sleep than I would like, but God is sovereign over all my seasons and all your seasons. I will give him thanks and glory even as I learn what it means to glorify him in this context.
Today I have had a bit of free time, and I stumbled across some resources on Mars Hill's website. How might a Christian think about movies? About stories? About how these relate to God? Questions abound. One of the convictions of the church at Mars Hill is that films and entertainment in general make theological statements. They make claims about reality. As Christians we necessarily live in a culture and it is not an empty question to consider how we are to relate to that culture. To exhaust that question would take a lot of blog entries... but this church believes it is edifying to collectively talk about the meanings of popular movies. It is like training in worldview and the way to think.
I watched True Grit and enjoyed it, and they talk about it. Perhaps you will enjoy or be edified...
Today I have had a bit of free time, and I stumbled across some resources on Mars Hill's website. How might a Christian think about movies? About stories? About how these relate to God? Questions abound. One of the convictions of the church at Mars Hill is that films and entertainment in general make theological statements. They make claims about reality. As Christians we necessarily live in a culture and it is not an empty question to consider how we are to relate to that culture. To exhaust that question would take a lot of blog entries... but this church believes it is edifying to collectively talk about the meanings of popular movies. It is like training in worldview and the way to think.
I watched True Grit and enjoyed it, and they talk about it. Perhaps you will enjoy or be edified...
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Jealous
My eyes shed streams of tears,
because people do not keep your law.
(Psalm 119:136)
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
(Matthew 6:9)
I read that first verse, the one from Psalms, and it revealed to me a lack in my own heart and reminded me of a sermon by John Piper on the second verse, the one from Matthew.
When you and I think of the lost, those who are without Christ and destined for hell apart from a divine salvation, we usually have a reaction sort of like this... we know that their potential fate is terrible. They will be in torment forever, and their suffering will be horrible. To me, however, that is often more of a head knowledge than a heart knowledge. Whatever it has been - perhaps just the anguish of sustaining that sort of emotion - I have become numb to the horror and reality of hell for those who will go there. I know I need to feel more than I do.
When it comes to evangelism, this knowledge of the reality of hell is one potential motivation. I even think it is an essential motivation, one that should not be minimized or ignored or denied (as some have done lately). Indeed, love would move us to seek the alleviation of the suffering of our fellow men and women. However, I believe there is an even greater motivation that should be the fuel of our evangelism.
That greater motivation is to see, savor, cherish, pursue, advance, and behold the glory of God! When we share the Gospel with another, we do hope to save them from eternal punishment because we value their souls - indeed God has chosen to value our souls. However, a twin hope is to see this effect in their salvation: another heart awakened to worship our holy God. We rejoice because a soul is saved and because God is worshipped. We are jealous for God's name, and we yearn to see him praised from more hearts because he is infinitely worthy! Worthy is the lamb who was slaughtered! Oh, to be covered by the blood of a Savior who would plan such a plan and save such a one as me!
What is worth more? A human soul or the praise of God's holy name? I would say God and his glory are worth more, but in his wisdom and love, he has chosen a plan that does not set his glory and the salvation of sinners at odds. Thanks be to him for that!
We rejoice to see sinner's eternal suffering stopped; more so, we rejoice to see God worshipped in truth from another heart because he is worthy! We do both.
When people do not keep God's laws, do I shed streams of tears? I ought to. When I read the verse, it hit me in this way: people not keeping the law is the cause of the psalmist's sorrow. Law breaking is the grounds of the sorrow. While he may also shed tears because those people will suffer judgment, here it seems that he is simply sorrowful over the transgression itself. Indeed, the law is to be treasured because it is given by God, who is to be our supreme treasure. The law (and for us the Bible) is precious because it has been spoken by our God, and its promises have been purchased by his blood. We should long to see it honored, beginning in our own hearts but also among all. Just read the rest of Psalm 119 to see a testament of God's goodness to us by giving us his law; the psalmist loves the God's words and he eats, sleeps, breathes, reads, memorizes, soaks in, and keeps them as best he can. What a tragedy when those words are trampled upon even in the least.
We should be jealous for God. He is jealous for us. He wants our hearts, and he wants our ties to idols to be broken. We should want the same thing; we should long for the smashing of our idols, even to the point of the amputation of our limbs and eyes. But not only for us. We should yearn for Christ to be lifted up in every heart, his praises to be sung from every tongue, every eye turned to heaven, every ear tuned to the precious Spirit-breathed promises of his Word. This whole world is his, though it still currently stands in rebellion, and we should be jealous that God's kingdom be proclaimed and known through the whole place. I think that is the cry of the first petition of the Lord's prayer (and also the second).
"Hallowed be your name." That means, "God, make your name holy to me. Help me to honor it. Your glory is worth all, though I have fallen so short. Make your holiness known to me so that I treasure you more deeply, down to the deepest parts of me. And make your name holy throughout this whole world. Make your name a treasure among those hearts where it is now trampled. Holy, holy, holy are you Lord! Your name is greatly to be praised!" I think that is what it means.
Well, this has been my first rambling on my blog in awhile. As always, I pray it is of benefit to you my reader, whoever you are, and I pray that God's name would be hallowed in your heart. I guess I will be writing this blog less now that I have a real life job, but I am glad I still have it. Soli Deo gloria!
because people do not keep your law.
(Psalm 119:136)
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
(Matthew 6:9)
I read that first verse, the one from Psalms, and it revealed to me a lack in my own heart and reminded me of a sermon by John Piper on the second verse, the one from Matthew.
When you and I think of the lost, those who are without Christ and destined for hell apart from a divine salvation, we usually have a reaction sort of like this... we know that their potential fate is terrible. They will be in torment forever, and their suffering will be horrible. To me, however, that is often more of a head knowledge than a heart knowledge. Whatever it has been - perhaps just the anguish of sustaining that sort of emotion - I have become numb to the horror and reality of hell for those who will go there. I know I need to feel more than I do.
When it comes to evangelism, this knowledge of the reality of hell is one potential motivation. I even think it is an essential motivation, one that should not be minimized or ignored or denied (as some have done lately). Indeed, love would move us to seek the alleviation of the suffering of our fellow men and women. However, I believe there is an even greater motivation that should be the fuel of our evangelism.
That greater motivation is to see, savor, cherish, pursue, advance, and behold the glory of God! When we share the Gospel with another, we do hope to save them from eternal punishment because we value their souls - indeed God has chosen to value our souls. However, a twin hope is to see this effect in their salvation: another heart awakened to worship our holy God. We rejoice because a soul is saved and because God is worshipped. We are jealous for God's name, and we yearn to see him praised from more hearts because he is infinitely worthy! Worthy is the lamb who was slaughtered! Oh, to be covered by the blood of a Savior who would plan such a plan and save such a one as me!
What is worth more? A human soul or the praise of God's holy name? I would say God and his glory are worth more, but in his wisdom and love, he has chosen a plan that does not set his glory and the salvation of sinners at odds. Thanks be to him for that!
We rejoice to see sinner's eternal suffering stopped; more so, we rejoice to see God worshipped in truth from another heart because he is worthy! We do both.
When people do not keep God's laws, do I shed streams of tears? I ought to. When I read the verse, it hit me in this way: people not keeping the law is the cause of the psalmist's sorrow. Law breaking is the grounds of the sorrow. While he may also shed tears because those people will suffer judgment, here it seems that he is simply sorrowful over the transgression itself. Indeed, the law is to be treasured because it is given by God, who is to be our supreme treasure. The law (and for us the Bible) is precious because it has been spoken by our God, and its promises have been purchased by his blood. We should long to see it honored, beginning in our own hearts but also among all. Just read the rest of Psalm 119 to see a testament of God's goodness to us by giving us his law; the psalmist loves the God's words and he eats, sleeps, breathes, reads, memorizes, soaks in, and keeps them as best he can. What a tragedy when those words are trampled upon even in the least.
We should be jealous for God. He is jealous for us. He wants our hearts, and he wants our ties to idols to be broken. We should want the same thing; we should long for the smashing of our idols, even to the point of the amputation of our limbs and eyes. But not only for us. We should yearn for Christ to be lifted up in every heart, his praises to be sung from every tongue, every eye turned to heaven, every ear tuned to the precious Spirit-breathed promises of his Word. This whole world is his, though it still currently stands in rebellion, and we should be jealous that God's kingdom be proclaimed and known through the whole place. I think that is the cry of the first petition of the Lord's prayer (and also the second).
"Hallowed be your name." That means, "God, make your name holy to me. Help me to honor it. Your glory is worth all, though I have fallen so short. Make your holiness known to me so that I treasure you more deeply, down to the deepest parts of me. And make your name holy throughout this whole world. Make your name a treasure among those hearts where it is now trampled. Holy, holy, holy are you Lord! Your name is greatly to be praised!" I think that is what it means.
Well, this has been my first rambling on my blog in awhile. As always, I pray it is of benefit to you my reader, whoever you are, and I pray that God's name would be hallowed in your heart. I guess I will be writing this blog less now that I have a real life job, but I am glad I still have it. Soli Deo gloria!
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Make God Known at Work
Tomorrow morning I officially begin the first day of my new job. I will be a math teacher at Coahulla Creek, teaching freshmen and seniors. I am excited and a little nervous, and your prayers are much appreciated. I ran across a blog entry on Desiring God's website, where Piper wrote very briefly on ways to make Christ known at your secular job. These are things I want to keep in mind, and wherever you are at, I am sure they may help you as well...
I have in mind at least five things—five ways to make God known through your secular job and all of them are important. When one of them is missing, the witness to the truth of Christ suffers.
I have in mind at least five things—five ways to make God known through your secular job and all of them are important. When one of them is missing, the witness to the truth of Christ suffers.
1. The excellence of the products or services you render in your job shows the excellence and greatness of God.
2. The standards of integrity you follow at your job show the integrity and holiness of God.
3. The love you show to people in your job shows the love of God.
4. The stewardship of the money you make from your job shows the value of God compared to other things.
5. The verbal testimony you give to the reality of Christ shows the doorway to all these things in your life and their possibility in the lives of others.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Psalm 150
Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!
Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!
Our God is infinitely worthy of all our praise. He gives us our breath and heartbeat, so that we can give them back to him by living and praising. This is by no means a complicated entry. Just a simple reminder to stop and praise God that you are alive and blessed, even if things seem difficult. There is deep joy to found in the Fount! Go to him and drink!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!
Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!
Our God is infinitely worthy of all our praise. He gives us our breath and heartbeat, so that we can give them back to him by living and praising. This is by no means a complicated entry. Just a simple reminder to stop and praise God that you are alive and blessed, even if things seem difficult. There is deep joy to found in the Fount! Go to him and drink!
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