Bubble Creek Canyon

God is far more

“The gospel shows us that God is far more holy and absolute than the moralists’ god, because he could not be satisfied by our moral efforts, even the best! On the other hand, the gospel shows us that God is far more loving and gracious than the relativists’ god. They say that God (if he exists) just loves everyone no matter what they do. The true God of the gospel had to suffer and die to save us, while the god of the relativist pays no price to love us.”

- Timothy Keller

James May rides in a U2 spy plane

I totally envy this guy. He gets to see what few of us do.

I'm an ambassador for Christ, cleverly disguised as _________

... you fill in the blank.

Our pastor today said something that really got me thinking. He asked us what the primary goal of the church in this age was. "Well", I thought, "To glorify God and enjoy Him forever". Yes, I suppose that's the chief end of man, sort of the ultimate goal in the grand picture, but the primary (to be more specific: immediate goal) here on earth now is to make disciples, which consequently glorifies God - all the other valuable things the church does on earth support that. Worship, study, etc... are to prepare us for and motivate us to... missions.

If the church's main goal here on earth was to study God's word (and I don't diminish the importance of this for a second), wouldn't it have been better for Him to take us to heaven immediately, so we could study in a more perfect and accommodating context? Yes. What about worship? Well, praising God is wonderful, but some Sundays my flesh really takes all the joy out of worship. I really get a sense of just how much better worshipping God in song will be on the new heaven and new earth.

So, why leave us on earth after He regenerates us and makes us His followers? To love, and share the good news with my neighbor (Christian and non-Christian alike) and work to see His kingdom spread, all under His power and direction. He IS returning someday, but we don't always act like we're on mission. You know, it might be easier to have that attitude if I WERE in a foreign land. To always have the feeling of being "sent" at every turn. Here's the challenge: whatever situation He's sovereignly set us, we are to be "on mission".

Does this mean obnoxiously cramming the gospel down someone's throat? No, but it does mean hanging out with people (like Jesus did), speaking the truth in love when the opportunity arrives (like Jesus did) and joyfully welcoming people into our company and kingdom (like Jesus did). ...and yes, you can have fun doing it. Find something you like to do, invite some non-believers to join you, and voila let the Holy Spirit bring opportunities to engage them! Genuine friendship is the goal. Even if they never become a follower of Christ, that's not your responsibility. I'm NOT talking about looking at people as "converts", "notches on your belt", etc... that's NOT loving people, that's legalism.

Think about your own life and vocation. Are you a stay-at-home-mom? A designer? A store manager? You might want to start thinking of yourself as an ambassador for Christ cleverly disguised as one of these vocations. Just something to think about...

Legalism part 2

I love this quote:

“It is not easy to get the law killed; something of a legal disposition remains even in the believer while he is in this world: many a stroke does self and self-righteousness get, but still it revives again. If he were wholly dead to the law, he would be wholly dead to sin; but so far as the law lives, so far sin lives. They that think they know the gospel well enough bewray (reveal-J.F.) their ignorance; no man can be too evangelical, it will take all his life-time to get a legal temper destroyed.”

Ralph Erskine, The Works of Ralph Erskine, vol. 2, p. 27.
(Paramount Blog)

"No man can be too evangelical" - Wow. Amen to that.

Legalism

"...Legalism is primarily a God-ward thing. It’s a way of making and keeping yourself acceptable to God. From this flows the legalism that is directed towards one another It’s a way of scoring sanctity points in our fellowships, and exerting what one postmodernist called a “truth regime” - it’s about pride, power and control. It simultaneously glorifies man and “unsecures” man. Thus its true opposites are grace and faith." - Dominic Smart, Minister of Gilcomston South Church in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Full article: http://www.beginningwithmoses.org/bigger/ds_legalism.htm

Counting the Cost of Sexual Immorality

Have you ever considered the effects of your sexual immorality - especially if you're serving in any sort of ministry capacity in a church?

Author and teacher Randy Alcorn sat down and came up with a list of effects. When he was going through a time of temptation, or knew he would have to face it, he would take out the list:

Personalized List of Anticipated Consequences of Immorality

* Grieving my Lord; displeasing the One whose opinion most matters.

* Dragging into the mud Christ's sacred reputation.

* Loss of reward and commendation from God.

* Having to one day look Jesus in the face at the judgment seat and give an account of why I did it. Forcing God to discipline me in various ways.

* Following in the footsteps of men I know of whose immorality forfeited their ministry and caused me to shudder. List of these names:

* Suffering of innocent people around me who would get hit by my shrapnel (a la Achan).

* Untold hurt to Nanci, my best friend and loyal wife.

* Loss of Nanci's respect and trust.

* Hurt to and loss of credibility with my beloved daughters, Karina and Angela. ("Why listen to a man who betrayed Mom and us?")

* If my blindness should continue or my family be unable to forgive, I could lose my wife and my children forever.

* Shame to my family. (The cruel comments of others who would invariably find out.)

* Shame to my church family.

* Shame and hurt to my fellow pastors and elders. List of names:

* Shame and hurt to my friends, and especially those I've led to Christ and discipled. List of names:

* Guilt awfully hard to shake—even though God would forgive me, would I forgive myself?

* Plaguing memories and flashbacks that could taint future intimacy with my wife.

* Disqualifying myself after having preached to others.

* Surrender of the things I am called to and love to do—teach and preach and write and minister to others. Forfeiting forever certain opportunities to serve God. Years of training and experience in ministry wasted for a long period of time, maybe permanently.

* Being haunted by my sin as I look in the eyes of others, and having it all dredged up again wherever I go and whatever I do.

* Undermining the hard work and prayers of others by saying to our community "this is a hypocrite—who can take seriously anything he and his church have said and done?"

* Laughter, rejoicing and blasphemous smugness by those who disrespect God and the church (2 Samuel 12:14).

* Bringing great pleasure to Satan, the Enemy of God.

* Heaping judgment and endless problems on the person I would have committed adultery with.

* Possible diseases (pain, constant reminder to me and my wife, possible infection of Nanci, or in the case of AIDS, even causing her death, as well as mine.)

* Possible pregnancy, with its personal and financial implications.

* Loss of self-respect, discrediting my own name, and invoking shame and lifelong embarrassment upon myself.

Alcorn's Blog entry

The Sense of Touch in Worship

The Sense of Touch in Worship
from Ligonier Ministries Blog

by R.C. Sproul

Years ago, I spoke at a service at a large church in California. After I finished preaching, the associate pastor invited everyone who would like to have prayer to come forward to the long kneeling bench across the front of the sanctuary, and seventy-five or eighty people responded. The minister then gave a closing prayer, but as he prayed he walked along the bench and touched each person on the head very gently. I thought, "This is remarkable. This is a recovery, in a sense, of the ancient tradition of having a physical touch that is a part of the worship service."

Jesus understood the importance of touching those to whom He ministered. Very often, when He healed people, He touched them. We see a beautiful example of this in Matthew 8, where a man with leprosy approached Jesus to ask for healing. Leprosy was extremely contagious and was incurable, so those who contracted it became social outcasts, forced to live apart from the rest of the community. But Jesus not only healed the leper, He touched the man. Jesus ministered to his physical need and also to his need for human contact.

People today need that touch. That's why an important moment in church on Sunday morning is when the pastor interacts with the worshipers as they depart. I tell my students in the seminary that there's an art to greeting people at the door after the church service. It's vitally important for the pastor to extend his hand and at least offer to shake hands with every person who comes by. Some will walk right by, but the vast majority of people want to stop and shake the pastor's hand. If that person is an elderly man or woman, and especially if it is an elderly widow, the pastor should never, ever shake with one hand. He must take that lady's hand in both of his hands. Why? It is because she needs that special touch, because she experiences loneliness. In giving her that tender, loving touch, the pastor is being Christ to the people, giving the Master's touch in His name to people who are afraid, or who are lonely, or who are hurting. People want to be touched, not in an evil sense, but in a tender and merciful sense, in a human sense.

Every Christian would love to kneel in Christ's presence, feel the touch of His hand, and hear Him say, "Your sins are forgiven" or "Be healed and go in peace." He doesn't do that now, but in His wisdom God has made provision for people to be ministered to through touch as we worship together.

*****

From A Taste for Heaven: Worship in the Light of Eternity by R.C. Sproul.

Prayer Mirrors the Gospel

"Prayer mirrors the gospel. In the gospel, the Father takes us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of salvation. In prayer, the Father receives us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of help. We look at the inadequacy of our praying and give up, thinking something is wrong with us. God looks as the adequacy of his Son and delights in our sloppy, meandering prayers.”

—Paul Miller, A Praying Life

No, Mr. President

The Bible's purpose - 2 views

Tim Keller contrasts 2 approaches to scripture's purpose:

“The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible’s purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome… religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.”

- Timothy Keller

Mike Horton interview: the gospel-driven church

Mike Horton was on Issues, Etc., discussing "The Gospel-Driven Church":

Here's the link

thought-provoking questions

I have taken a paragraph from Mike Horton's new book, Christless Christianity and split it up into bullet points for thoughtful reflection:

• Does Christ come merely to improve our existence in Adam or to end it, sweeping us into his new creation?

• Is Christianity all about spiritual and moral makeovers or about death and resurrection — radical judgment and radical grace?

• Is the Word of God a resource for what we have already decided we want and need, or is it God’s living and active criticism of our religion, morality, and pious experience?

In other words, is the Bible God’s story, centering on Christ’s redeeming work, that rewrites our stories, or is it something we use to make our stories a little more exciting and interesting?

Worst pun of all time?

I'm thinking so...

from racism to reconciliation

The power of the gospel is clear in this powerful reunion.

Jesus anime demoniac concept

"You have heard it said... but I say to you..."

Ever wonder why Jesus says this? It sounds at first as if He's contradicting the law of Moses. Intimating that the law got it wrong, but "here's what you should REALLY do." Indeed, that's probably what the Pharisees and the strict followers of Moses thought - it was even shocking for His own disciples to hear no doubt.

Here's some helpful commentary on this topic from Lee Irons in his article A New Locus of Authority:

"Perhaps an analogy may help. The constitution of the United States and the constitution of England may have many points in common. I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the constitution of England (even if based on common law) contained similar provisions concerning civil liberties such as the right to freedom of religion or freedom of speech. But are citizens of the United States bound by these provisions in the constitution of the England? No. We fought a Revolutionary War, broke from England, and we are now bound by the constitution of the United States. The fact that there are points of similarity and continuity doesn’t change that fundamental legal fact. We can trace lines of organic, historic continuity from the Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights. But, legally, we Americans are not under the Magna Carta or the constitution of England.

So with the new covenant. We Christians are members of a new polity called the new covenant. We are not bound by the constitution of Israel (the Mosaic Law). We are not Jews. Are there points of similarity and continuity between the old covenant and the new? Of course. Every moral teaching contained in the old covenant is carried forward into the new. Christians are still obligated to flee idolatry, sexual immorality, murder, and so on. If anything, our view of what is entailed by God’s moral law is expanded and heightened in the new covenant. The prohibition against murder entails a prohibition against hating our neighbor in our heart. The prohibition against adultery includes the prohibition against lust. Neighbor-love is expanded to enemy-love. And so on. But in reality, even these heart attitudes were always a part of the moral law. They are just more clearly seen in Christ and made more explicit through his teaching."

Read the whole article

who are we attracting?

This is thought-provoking:

“Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.”

- Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God

The Price that Love Pays

“God’s love is his holiness reaching out to sinners; grace is but the price that his love pays to his holiness; the cross is but its victory over sin and death; and faith is but the way in which we bring our worship to him who is holy.”

- David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant

How much do you have to hate somebody NOT to proselytize?

Penn Jillette, a comedian and illusionist who happens to be an atheist, describing a recent encounter he had with a Christian: