"Jesus Christ did not suffer so that you would not suffer. He suffered so that when you suffer, you’ll become more like him. The gospel does not promise you better life circumstances; it promises you a better life." - Tim Keller
"It cost God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost Him crucifixion." - C.S. Lewis
"The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for
me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me." - Tim Keller
"No matter how dark the hour, do not lose heart. Redemption is at work here." - Mike Donehey
On the cross, we see the greatest act of love ever demonstrated, its effects reverberating down through history and permanently altering the lives of those who believe. The importance of the cross will never diminish. In heaven, Scripture tells us, the majestic beings around the throne of God worship by saying, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:12) When the love of God is extolled, both in heaven and on earth, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is always the focal point, for there God showed his love in the most real and powerful way imaginable—by dying for those who hate him.
But the cross did not simply display love. On the cross, Jesus performed a real, tangible, beneficial action on our behalf. Though we are by nature children of wrath, Jesus died in order to achieve something for us. He “died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3), so that we can be “justified by his blood” and “saved by him from the wrath of God” (Romans 5:9).
Perhaps no writer in Scripture says it better than the prophet Isaiah, despite the fact that he preceded Christ by centuries: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4–5). Scripture plainly and clearly teaches that Jesus died in our place, as our substitute, taking from God the punishment for our sins.
On the cross, Jesus performed the ultimate act of love, and that act genuinely accomplished something—the Son of God absorbed the wrath of God on our behalf, taking our guilt away and enabling us to receive Christ’s perfect righteousness credited to us, so that we might be presented before him as righteous.
Adapted from Casey Lute, “But God…“ (Kindle Edition)
Mercy there was great and grace was free.
Pardon there was multiplied to me.
There my burdened soul found liberty.
At Calvary.
Lord Jesus, give me a deeper repentance, a horror of sin, a dread of its approach. Help me chastely to flee it and jealously to resolve that my heart shall be Thine alone.
Give me a deeper trust, that I may lose myself to find myself in Thee, the ground of my rest, the spring of my being. Give me a deeper knowledge of Thyself as saviour, master, lord, and king. Give me deeper power in private prayer, more sweetness in Thy Word, more steadfast grip on its truth. Give me deeper holiness in speech, thought, action, and let me not seek moral virtue apart from Thee.
Plough deep in me, great Lord, heavenly husbandman, that my being may be a tilled field, the roots of grace spreading far and wide, until Thou alone art seen in me, Thy beauty golden like summer harvest, Thy fruitfulness as autumn plenty.
I have no master but Thee, no law but Thy will, no delight but Thyself, no wealth but that Thou givest, no good but that Thou blessest, no peace but that Thou bestowest. I am nothing but that Thou makest me. I have nothing but that I receive from Thee. I can be nothing but that grace adorns me. Quarry me deep, dear Lord, and then fill me to overflowing with living water.
I had one idea about what this blog would look like when I started a few years ago. God had another idea. I thought it would be a place where I could unload thoughts on any subject that were circling my brain. I thought it might bring peace to my mind so I could sleep better instead of lying awake thinking endlessly.
"In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps." - Proverbs 16:9 (NIV)
God's plan was to turn this blog into an online spiritual journal...something I had always meant to start keeping offline but had never really embraced. It became a way for me to spend time with God, to listen to the Holy Spirit, to work through things He was teaching me and to reach a deeper understanding of His truth. It has also become a wonderful resource deposit on a variety of spiritual topics.
I occasionally look at the number of page views this blog gets, which posts are receiving the most views and where readers of this blog are from. In just the last week, this blog has had multiple views from the U.S., Germany, France, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Britain, Ukraine, Hong Kong and Russia. There have been almost 6,500 page views since it began.
That is pretty mind boggling as I never set out to generate any type of audience. I figured just a few friends and family members would ever see this or even have an interest. I didn't know what God had in store. I couldn't see that He would ultimately use this for His glory.
It amazes me what God has done and is doing right here. It amazes me that God chooses to use sinners to advance His kingdom. He always has and it still is shocking. I am a mess. I am a broken sinner. I deal with temptation every day of my life and fail miserably all too often. I am only made alive again through His grace, through the cross of Jesus, through His pursuit of me. And yet, here I am, called to be part of His redeeming work in this fallen world.
It is incredibly humbling and sobering...and awesome. All the glory goes to God for what is written on these pages. Thank you Lord.
"But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." - 2 Corinthians 4:7 (NIV)
"We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God." - 2 Corinthians 5:20 (NIV)
I love Tim Keller. I love his heart for God and for people. I love his ability to teach plainly yet with insight. He makes the Gospel relatable and compelling. His book, "A Prodigal God" greatly changed and improved the way I viewed my relationship with God.
I aspire to teach like Keller, preach like Chandler and love like Chan. OK...my ultimate example is, of course, Jesus Christ, but I think these men are great examples to follow on my way to Him.
In the following videos, Keller takes on some big questions about Christianity from Oxford students. His approach in his answers is worth taking notes - for believers and non-believers alike.
Question 1: What is Christianity’s stand on other religions and do we call people of other faiths our brothers and sisters?
Question 2: I’m gay, but I want to be a Christian. I feel the need for a transcendent Savior and lover as you said last night, but I also long for human intimacy while on this earth. And the two following Christ and this seemingly innate desire for human intimacy and companionship appear mutually exclusive. What is your response?
Question 3: Why does the Bible make no mention of evolution or of lands outside its immediate context, of foreign creatures or those extinct before the book was written?
Question 4: Yesterday you said that the wages of sin are death. Can you explain what you meant by that?
Question 5: How is the God of love the same being who commands the extermination of whole ethnic groups?
Question 6: Can religion be explained as simply a product of social evolution?
Question 8: The Christians in the Crusades justified some of their actions because they saw armies of angels with them and heard God telling them what to do. They backed this up with testimonies of many eyewitness. Is this not the same as justifying the Bible by many eyewitnesses who saw Jesus after he died? If the people in the Crusades were mistaken why were the eyewitness of Jesus not?
"Unless we go to the Bible to see Jesus and His work for us, even our Bible reading can become fuel for our own self-improvement plans." - Pastor Tullian
"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." - 2 Timothy 3:16-17
"The Bible feeds our souls, warms our hearts, illuminates our minds and changes our lives."
"We do not ultimately interpret scripture; scripture interprets us." -- Oswald Bayer
"The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me." – Martin Luther
"Don't change the Word of God. Do allow the Word of God to change you!" - Mark Driscoll
"It must be said there is a difference between going through the Bible,
like a tourist, and the Bible going through you, like a spear." - Douglas Wilson
"But He answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” - Matthew 4:4
"Let us measure everything by the Bible, and resolve, by God’s help, to conform to it." ~ J.C. Ryle
As Christians, many of us struggle with head knowledge translating into heart knowledge. We state that we believe many things and we are sincere in our proclamations. However, deeper within us, in areas that we may or may not even be aware of, we have yet to embrace these truths wholeheartedly.
For example, we may say that we trust God. Yet, we create and pursue idols out of what has been created rather than the Creator Himself. We don't really trust God for complete fulfillment and joy so we do our best to arrange for those things elsewhere.
We say that we believe God loves us and all things work to the good of those who love Him. Yet, when we find our dreams unfulfilled, our plans unsatisfied and our comforts compromised, we question why a loving God would allow these disappointments into our lives. We don't truly believe God loves us. We only believe in His love when things seem to meet our definition of going in a "loving" way.
I still struggle with the first but have come a long way on the second. Still, there is another Christian belief I profess that is not mirrored in my life. I believe that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God. I believe that God's Spirit worked in and through the human writers of the Bible so that what was written on those pages is a direct communication from the Creator of the universe.
And yet...on most days...there my Bible sits...unopened and untouched. Sure, I get some daily Bible exposure through devotionals that occupy my inbox or when I prepare for care group. But that is a poor substitute for simply sitting down, opening the Bible and drinking deeply and meaningfully from the truths and promises of God. If I TRULY believed that God's words were included in that book, it would never be closed.
"Your mistake is that you don't know the Scriptures, and you don't know the power of God." - Matthew 22:29
As Patrick Morley writes in the first chapter of "Man Alive", "Jesus made a direct connection between the Bible and leading a powerful life. Lukewarm men are in error because they 'don't know the Scriptures' and therefore 'don't know the power of God.' Their capabilities don't equal their intentions. Without the right training, their soil remains bare, stony and full of weeds."
And God just brought this to mind...if we say that God isn't speaking to us or that we can't hear Him and we aren't reading our Bibles every day then we are acting incredibly foolish. His words, His counsel, His wisdom are available to us every minute, carried from the pages of the Bible to the depths of our heart by the Holy Spirit. Let's at least open up the cover and start to listen.
"Let the man who would hear God speak read Holy Scripture." - Martin Luther
Lord, ignite a passion in me for your Word that I may live a more powerful life that glorifies you more greatly, changes me more deeply and impacts the world around me more profoundly. Amen.
Don’t rest on past reading. Read your Bible more and more every year. Read it whether you feel like reading it or not. And pray without ceasing that the joy return and pleasures increase.
Three reasons this is not legalism:
You are confessing your lack of desire as sin, and pleading as a helpless child for the desire you long to have. Legalists don’t cry like that. They strut.
You are reading out of desperation for the effects of this heavenly medicine. Bible-reading is not a cure for a bad conscience; it’s chemo for your cancer. Legalists feel better because the box is checked. Saints feel better when their blindness lifts, and they see Jesus in the Word. Let’s get real. We are desperately sick with worldliness, and only the Holy Spirit, by the word of God, can cure this terminal disease.
It is not legalism because only justified people can see the preciousness and power of the Word of God. Legalists trudge with their Bibles on the path toward justification. Saints sit down in the shade of the cross and plead for the blood-bought pleasures.
So lets give heed to Mr. Ryle and never grow weary of the slow, steady, growth that comes from the daily, disciplined, increasing, love affair with reading the Bible.
"Do not think you are getting no good from the Bible, merely because you do not see that good day by day. The greatest effects are by no means those which make the most noise, and are most easily observed. The greatest effects are often silent, quiet, and hard to detect at the time they are being produced.
Think of the influence of the moon upon the earth, and of the air upon the human lungs. Remember how silently the dew falls, and how imperceptibly the grass grows. There may be far more doing than you think in your soul by your Bible-reading." (J. C. Ryle, Practical Religion, 136)
Is the Bible the Word of God? Then mind that you do not neglect it. Read it! Begin to read it this very day. What greater insult to God can a man be guilty of than to refuse to read the letter God sends him from heaven? Oh, be sure, if you will not read your Bible, you are in fearful danger of losing your soul!
Is the Bible the Word of God? Then be sure you always read it with deep reverence. Say to your soul, whenever you open the Bible, “O my soul, you are going to read a message from God!”
Is the Bible the Word of God? Then be sure you never read it without fervent prayer for the help and teaching of the Holy Spirit. Humble prayer will throw more light on your Bible than any commentary that ever was written. You will not understand it unless your heart is right. You will find it a sealed book without the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Its contents are often hidden from the wise and learned, and revealed to babes.
Is the Bible the Word of God? Then let us all resolve from this day forward to prize the Bible more. God has given us the Bible to be a light to guide us to everlasting life. Let us not neglect this precious gift. Let us read it diligently, and walk in its light.
"The Bible is not a record of good people earning God's blessing, but bad people receiving God's blessing because Jesus earned it for them." - Pastor Tullian
"If you are having trouble reading your Bible with deep and affecting meaning, imagine that you will die in about eight hours." - John Piper
The following is an excerpt from Matt Chandler's sermon, Affections Matter, preached on 1/29/12:
Now I want to show you how deep the gospel penetration went into Ephesus. We are going to go to verse 21 (Acts 19). “Now after these events Paul resolved in the Spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and go to Jerusalem, saying, ‘After I have been there, I must also see Rome.’ And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while. About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines to Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen. These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods.”
I love Demetrius. I want to have him in my house for dinner. Because one of two things just happened. Either he legitimately believes that, when he is making these silver images, he is making a god, or he thinks he just got busted by Paul. But either way, he’s undeterred from continuing on from his course of action. I don’t know what’s crazier. He either thinks that, when he is hammering silver into shape, he is building a god.
Just for the record, how powerful is a god if you made it? Like if you could manipulate it and make it, how could it possibly be god? How tiny and weak is your god, if your god is dependent upon you? This is Paul’s argument in Acts 17, “God is not made by any, He is not served by any human hands. As if He needed anything. He gives breath and life to all.” This is a very subversive attack on idolatry in Athens and Ephesus.
I was not intending to write this blog tonight but I just had to share this. It is so awesome. I have heard the teaching before that says, "Are you trying to create God in your image instead of learning what it means to be made in His?" And that is absolutely spot on and something we should continually ask ourselves. But I love the way Matt has expanded that thought.
I am thinking back to some of my witnessing experiences and the individual across the table from me would constantly try to dismiss the attributes of God that are laid out in the Bible and replace them with things they found more appropriate. Examples include:
-God is love so everyone will be saved
-God is a passive observer because I don't feel or hear Him in my life
-God is the one who gave me these desires so how can it be sin to act on them
-God allows pain, illness and depression to persist so He doesn't care about me
-God is the only one who can change me so I will just wait until He does something
-God can't be eternal because I can't comprehend eternity
-God can't possibly know everyone intimately as well as everything that is happening
-God can't exist because I can't see Him and you can't prove He does
Notice what these all have in common...they either make God much smaller or inept than He actually is, or in the case of the last point, take him out of the equation completely. The primary motivation to make God smaller is that it makes us seem bigger by comparison. The more important we perceive ourselves to be, the more relevance and self-worth we have according to this world we live in. But that couldn't be further from the truth.
The temptation is to create a god that you want. That does not bring about the reality of that god anymore than it did when a silversmith created a figurine with his hands. All you have done is fabricate the existence of a god that reflects your logic, your desires and your incredibly limited and finite understanding. How tiny and weak is your god, if your god is dependent on you.
I will worship the Creator of the Universe, the Alpha and the Omega, the eternal, omnipotent and sovereign Lord of all. I would much rather lack complete understanding and insight into the one true God than to delude myself into thinking that I have complete control and mastery of a god that only exists in my head. The only reason to do that is so you can continue to live and think the way you want without the conviction of having to answer to a higher Authority that may see things differently than you.
Is your narcissism so great that you would rather make up something useless than obey the One who created you to be truly useful?
"Make your choice. You can shut Him up for a fool, spit at Him as a demon, or fall at His feet and call him Lord and God." - C.S. Lewis
"The right created by the Court in Roe is a constitutional right of some human beings to kill other human beings." - M.S. Paulson
"When a woman has a baby in her womb, parenthood for her and the baby's father is not a choice. It's a definition." - John Piper
"Abortion is this generation's slavery. People will look back in horror & disbelief and say 'they used to kill babies in the mother's womb?!'"
As the 39th anniversary of Roe v Wade has just passed (January 22nd), I felt it was time to publish this post as I have been collecting abortion resources for the past year. Abortion is now responsible for 41% of deaths worldwide. There is seemingly no topic more divisive or emotional as abortion. Both sides are vehement in their positions with little willingness to budge or consider the other side. I have a theory on what is at the heart of this contention.
I think abortion serves as the climactic intersection for a world torn between doing things the way it wants versus the way God wants. Those with a worldview that rests on them being the center of the story have a natural abhorrence to the idea that anyone would dare tell them what to do or not to do with their body. Those with a Biblical worldview that God is Lord and Creator have a natural abhorrence to the idea that anyone would willingly murder an innocent child.
I am a pro-life Christian. I come from a family who lost a son before he was even a week old and who later adopted a daughter from South Korea. My parents grieved the loss of a child and celebrated the gift of another. I grew up learning that life is indeed precious and a gift...a gift born out of God's power and grace. What I find particularly saddening is the way pro-choice advocates have chosen to view an unborn child. They have to use a word such as "fetus" to make their argument seem less horrific yet I have never heard a pregnant woman, Christian or not, refer to her unborn child as "this fetus inside of me".
Many pro-choice advocates are outraged when a pregnant woman is killed and her baby perishes with her. They demand a stiffer punishment for the killer than if only one death had occurred. But why, if the fetus inside her is not yet a person?
Further advances in science have given us new and amazing insights to the physical appearance of an unborn child after only a few weeks. Furthermore, surgeries are now performed on a child who is still in the womb. Science continues to show us just how much of a human being resides within his or her mother. Yet, in this case, science tends to be ignored by those who are dogmatically unwavering in their position.
My hope is that God will use the following resources to open up the minds and hearts of those who believe abortion is a legitimate option. I also hope that pro-life individuals can use these resources to grow in their convictions and share this truth with others in a way that is saturated in grace and love.
Abortion has taken over 53 million lives since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. I was born in 1972. All of those lives have been destroyed within my lifetime. There are no words to describe that tragedy.
A reader passed along this story from ScienceNews:
The remains of seven children apparently killed in a ritual, and buried beneath a 500- to 600-year-old building in Peru’s Cuzco Valley have given scientists new glimpses of the sketchily understood Inca practice of sacrificing select children in elaborate ceremonies.
The children were buried at the same time, apparently after having been killed in a sacrificial rite that honored Inca deities and promoted political unity across the far-flung empire, say anthropologist Valerie Andrushko of Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven and her colleagues.
Chemical analyses of the bones indicate that at least two of the children came from distant parts of the Inca realm.
The findings lend credence to the accounts of Spanish conquistadors that described how children were selected for sacrifice from all across the empire, based on their physical perfection. We shudder at such brutal backwardness.
Today, using prenatal screening, we scour the empire for children with physical imperfections and sacrifice them to ourselves.
(First Things, “While We’re at It”, January 2011, 68)
And to show just how far in the wrong direction our society is going, how about a day where a dolphin is given the legal standing of a person while an unborn child is not? Think I am kidding? Read this...
"If 16 year old messes with turtle eggs: up to $100,000 fine and one year in
jail. If the same 16 year old aborts a baby.....she doesn't even need a permission
slip."
1/18/14 - 38 states now have fetal homicide laws, which means you can be charged with two crimes if you crash into and kill a woman on her way to an abortion clinic. But if she gets to the clinic and pays a fee, a doctor will kill her child and there will be no crime. We have lost all sanity on this issue.
