Thursday, June 3, 2010

So True...

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy," C. S. Lewis wrote, "the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."

Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God. - William Carey

When we pray as He commanded, we will see what He saw, feel what He felt, and do what He did.~ Warren Weirsbe

The feature that is to distinguish Christian churches, Christian people, and Christian gatherings is the aroma of prayer. - Cymbala

All God's giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on God being with them. ~ Hudson Taylor

"If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him." -- C.T. Studd

If God be near a church, it must pray. One of the first tokens of His absence will be slothfulness in prayer. ~ Spurgeon

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

The Gospel

Don't gloss over it because you have heard it a thousand times. Soak it in...hear it as if for the first time. Take time to cherish what God has done for you. Share this with others...Christians and non-Christians alike.

As an aside, this is the second pastor I have heard in 2 days tell his congregation that some of them are going to hell. I have never heard a pastor say that in any of the church services I have been in. It needs to be said.

One More Reason to Buy Apple Stock

Steve Jobs, iPhones, and Porn
Pete from Grace City has a post about Steve Jobs, Apple, and porn. An excerpt:

Jobs has argued that he wants his portable computer devices to not sell or stock pornography.

When a critic emailed him to say that this infringed his freedoms, Jobs emailed back and told him to buy a different type of computer.

Steve Jobs is a fan of Bob Dylan. So one customer emailed him to ask how Dylan would feel about Jobs’ restrictions of customers’ freedoms.

The CEO of Apple replied to say that he values:

‘Freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’ and some traditional PC folks feel their world is slipping away. It is.’

The interlocuter replied:

“I don’t want ‘freedom from porn’. Porn is just fine! And I think my wife would agree.”

In the most revealing line, Steve Jobs dismissed the critic thus:

“You might care more about porn when you have kids.”

Pause for a moment and consider what the above emails represent.

The CEO of one of the wealthiest, most successful international companies, responds to the email of a customer. Business prospers on the mantra ‘The customer is always right.’ Business wants the customers’ money.

But in this case, over the moral issue of pornography, Jobs is happy to tell customers to buy a different product. He argues that children and innocence ought to be preserved—and that trumps the dollar.

Google (with their motto ‘Don’t be evil’) rake in billions through pornography. Ranks of employees spend their time categorising and arranging advertising for pornography. (I know, I spent some time discussing the difficulties posed to a Christian who worked in their UK HQ.) Pornography is huge business, yet here is the CEO of Apple telling the pornography businesses to take their dollars elsewhere.

Good for Jobs.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that one cannot access such things on an iPhone. If this is a temptation for you, you might want to consider something like the free app, x3watch, recommended by Andy Naselli in his post on filtering software and other apps.

Update: Just remembered a link that might be of interest (though it doesn’t have to do with the issue of porn and Apple.) Here’s an open letter that Josh Harris recently wrote to Steve Jobs, thanking him for his work and inviting him to worship the Savior.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/05/17/steve-jobs-iphones-and-porn/

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Today's Sermon

Given the title I knew this was one I needed to watch. Why are there times when I am still so enamored to sin when I know it leads nowhere good...when I know it won't bring true satisfaction...when I know it offers no peace or hope? I really want to understand my motivation for sin better. Behavioral modification is a dead end road because it doesn't change the heart. So, I want to learn why my heart goes where it does and how I can increase and deepen my heart's affections for my Lord.



Any movement toward freedom and life, any movement toward God or others, will be opposed. Marriage, friendship, beauty, rest-the thief wants it all.

So, it becomes the devil's business to keep the Christian's spirit imprisoned. He knows that the believing and justified Christian has been raised up out of the grave of his sins and trespasses. From that point on, Satan works that much harder to keep us bound and gagged, actually imprisoned in our own grave clothes. He knows that if we continue in this kind of bondage. . . we are not much better off than when we were spiritually dead. (A.W. Tozer)

Tough combination, isn't it? My flesh and Satan's continual temptations. It seems there is little rest from the battle. It explains why Jesus tells us to come to Him for rest because we cannot find it elsewhere. Piper adamantly exhorts us to make war against our sin but who really feels like making war 24/7? We are told to flee from temptation yet what good does that do if we simply flee from one temptation to another?

We have to flee to God. We have to keep our eyes and heart fixated on God. We have to press into and pursue God. It's our only hope. Yet, I struggle so much in doing just that. It concerns me at times. After all, through Jesus' death and resurrection and my heart's acceptance that He is my Lord and Savior, I am a new creation. But I don't feel very new a lot of the time. I feel like I still have to struggle with old desires and old ways and that concerns me. I take some solace in knowing that I am more sanctified now than I was 5 or 10 years ago. Sin doesn't have as powerful a grip on me as it once did yet the grip is certainly still there. So I do have faith that I am saved and that the Holy Spirit continues to work in me. But it is still way more of a daily battle than I want it to be.