Friday, May 29, 2009

Interview with Paul Tripp on Community

Jason Dooley passed me this recent post from Finding Grace. I thought it to be a great read and well worth all of our time reading it.
Abraham Piper interviewed Paul Tripp over at Desiring God. Paul was asked, “What is the greatest hinderance to cultivating community in the American church?” Here is some of Paul’s answer:
“The first thing that comes to mind is frenetic western-culture busyness.
I read a book on stress a few years back, and the author made a side comment that I thought was so insightful. He said that the highest value of materialistic western culture is not possessing. It’s actually acquiring.

If you’re a go-getter you never stop. And so the guy who is lavishly successful doesn’t quit, because there are greater levels of success. “My house could be bigger, I could drive better cars, I could have more power, I could have more money.”

And so we’ve bought an unbiblical definition of the good life of success. Our kids have to be skilled at three sports and play four musical instruments, and our house has to be lavish by whatever standard. And all of that stuff is eating time, eating energy, eating money. And it doesn’t promote community.

I think often that even the programs of a local church are too sectored and too busy. As if we’re trying to program godliness. And so the family is actually never together because they’re all in demographic groupings. Where do we have time where we are pursuing relationships with one another, living with one another, praying with one another, talking with one another?”

I wish that Paul would have specifically defined the word, “community.” I think the community that he and Piper are speaking about is almost a sort of bygone tradition. It’s the kind of community with face-to-face interaction, family meals around the dinner table, and quiet time spent in the presence of others. Our culture might define “community” as Facebook, blogging, e-mail, and 3-mintue cell phone conversations while driving in the car. We’ve become very adept at creating the illusion of community.
Paul continues…
“I’ve talked to a lot of families who literally think it’s a victory to have 3 or 4 meals all together with one another in a week, because they’re so busy. Well, if in that family unit they’re not experiencing community, there’s no hope of them experiencing it outside of that family unit.

You can’t fit God’s dream (if I can use that language) for his church inside of the American dream and have it work. It’s a radically different lifestyle. It just won’t squeeze into the available spaces of the time and energy that’s left over.”

One thing I’ve been learning more about in the past few months (aside from my “broken record” about living out of a posture of desperation) is that I have limitations. I am a human being, and by nature, I must conduct life within a certain set of physical limitations. I have a limited amount of energy. I have a limited amount of material resources. I have a limited amount of time. And I have a limited amount of power. That last one is hard to admit. I don’t think our secular culture would agree. “They” would say (and have said, many times): “You create your own destiny. You can do anything, if you put your mind to it.” But I’m not buying it.

It seems that the voices around us tell us over and over, “You’re here to be productive. You’re only worth something unless you’re producing.” And productive people have to be busy people, right?

Paul concludes…
“So we’ve just been confronted with how all of those things that aren’t evil in themselves become the complications of life that keep us away from the kind of community that we need in order to hold on to our identity.”

It’s ironic that I try to find my identity apart from my intended design. I was designed, by God, to live in relationship. I wasn’t called or destined to create an identity for myself, based on what I do. My identity is based on who I am: a child of God, and a member of God’s family.
So my thought is how do we participate more in our small group? Are we so busy in our lives that we forget to share our struggles, passions, love of the Savior, confessions, problems, praises, etc. with each other?

Let us pursue each other by pursuing Christ above all.

I Am His - Thomas Brooks

“I am His by purchase and I am His by conquest; I am His by donation and I am His by election; I am His by covenant and I am His by marriage; I am wholly His; I am peculiarly His; I am universally His; I am eternally His.

Once I was a slave but now I am a son; once I was dead but now I am alive; once I was darkness but now I am light in the Lord; once I was a child of wrath, an heir of hell, but now I am an heir of heaven; once I was Satan’s bond-servant but now I am God’s freeman; once I was under the spirit of bondage but now I am under the Spirit of adoption that seals up to me the remission of my sins, the justification of my person and the salvation of my soul.”

- Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth

Thursday, May 28, 2009

The Prologue - D.A. Carson

Here is an unpublished poem by D.A. Carson, which he read during his talk on the incarnation at the Next Conference.
The Prologue

Before there was a universe,

Before a star or planet,

When time had still not yet begun --

I scarcely understand it --

Th' eternal Word was with his God,

God's very Self-Expression;

Th' eternal Word was God himself --

And God had planned redemption.



The Word became our flesh and blood --

The stuff of his creation --

The Word was God, the Word was flesh,

Astounding incarnation!

But when he came to visit us,

We did not recognize him.

Although we owed him everything

We haughtily despised him.



In days gone by God showed himself

In grace and truth to Moses;

But in the Word of God made flesh

Their climax he discloses.

For grace and truth in fullness came

And showed the Father's glory

When Jesus donned our flesh and died:

This is the gospel story.



All who delighted in his name,

All those who did receive him,

All who by grace were born of God,

All who in truth believed him --

To them he gave a stunning right:

Becoming God's dear children!

Here will I stay in grateful trust;

Here will I fix my vision.


Before there was a universe,

Before a star or planet,

When time had still not yet begun --

I scarcely understand it --

Th' eternal Word was with his God,

God's very Self-Expression;

Th' eternal Word was God himself --

And God had planned redemption.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

How Do You Break Free From an Addiction to Entertainment?


John Piper answers this question, writing that "Recognizing [the problem] is a huge step in the right direction" and that " ultimately it's a gift of grace to feel the glory of God." Here are some suggestions of what you should do:

1. Seek the Lord earnestly about it. Pray like crazy that God would open your eyes to see wondrous things out of his law.

2. Immerse yourself in the Bible, even when you don't feel like it, pleading with God to open your eyes to see what's really there.

3. Get in a group where you talk about serious things.

4. Begin to share your faith. One of the reasons we are not as moved by our own faith as we are is because we almost never talk about it to any unbeliever. It starts to feel like a kind of hothouse thing, and then it starts to have a feeling of unreality about it. And then the powers of entertainment have more sway in our life.

5. . . . [T]hink about your death. Think about your death a lot. Ask what you'd like to be doing in the season of life, or hours or days, leading up to meeting Christ. I do that a lot these days. I think about the impact of death, and what I would like to be found doing, and how I would prepare to meet him and give an account to him.

Friday, May 22, 2009

How Sweet the Sound

Did someone say free music?

I did.

I am not sure if you noticed on the blog here, but there is a widget posted from Covenant Life Church in Maryland. They have put together a collection of hymns for their congregation to learn. They are taking 10 hymns and spreading them across 10 months - one per month. They all want to learn them so that they can sing them together.

I encourage you do download these songs. You may pay if you would like (any amount) or download them for free. Then share these songs with your family. Sing them at the breakfast table, at the dinner table. As you work together. Take the time to be in worship together.

I have attached the widget in this post as well.


Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Relentless Love Affair

Oh my. The relentless pursuit of Christ for His Bride. We can look at ourselves all we want. We can dress ourselves all we want. We can spend on ourselves all we want. We can work ourselves all we want. But nothing. Nothing will make us look any better than what we are.

AND YET.

And yet in the midst of all of our contradictions, Jesus, who knows everything about us, says that we are His.

Last night we talked about how God's fierce love for His Bride is often found in discipline. We often will react to God's discipline in a negative way, but it's really His discipline that is also His grace. This is what Hosea was sharing with Gomer, or Israel rather. God was issuing a call of repentance. For He has loved her with an everlasting love. One that could not be shaken or disturbed. This was a promise He made first with Adam, then Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Isaiah, Hosea and culminated in Christ.

In Hosea 2:19, God says to Israel that He will betroth her to Him. Forever. That in Him is found righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness. And these attributes are found in the robe of Christ. This very robe that He puts around us. In the midst of our sin, we washes us with His robe. So that now we can walk as Peter tell us in 1 Peter 2.
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received God's mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Praise God for who He is and what He has done for us!

In this video is a great drama of what we read in Hosea 2.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Justified Today - C.H. Spurgeon

I received the email below today. What a great statement that we all need to be reminded of daily.

"All that believe are justified."
--Acts 13:39

The believer in Christ receives a present justification. Faith does not produce this fruit by-and-by, but now. So far as justification is the result of faith, it is given to the soul in the moment when it closes with Christ, and accepts Him as its all in all. Are they who stand before the throne of God justified now?--so are we, as truly and as clearly justified as they who walk in white and sing melodious praises to celestial harps.

The thief upon the cross was justified the moment that he turned the eye of faith to Jesus; and Paul, the aged, after years of service, was not more justified than was the thief with no service at all. We are to-day accepted in the Beloved, to-day absolved from sin, to-day acquitted at the bar of God. Oh! soul-transporting thought! There are some clusters of Eshcol's vine which we shall not be able to gather till we enter heaven; but this is a bough which runneth over the wall.

This is not as the corn of the land, which we can never eat till we cross the Jordan; but this is part of the manna in the wilderness, a portion of our daily nutriment with which God supplies us in our journeying to and fro. We are now--even now pardoned; even now are our sins put away; even now we stand in the sight of God accepted, as though we had never been guilty. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." There is not a sin in the Book of God, even now, against one of His people. Who dareth to lay anything to their charge? There is neither speck, nor spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing remaining upon any one believer in the matter of justification in the sight of the Judge of all the earth.

Let present privilege awaken us to present duty, and now, while life lasts, let us spend and be spent for our sweet Lord Jesus.


Thursday, May 14, 2009

God Loves You and He Proved It.

So here’s the story.
God tells you to do something that you believe is wrong.
What would you do?

God tells Hosea to go out and marry a prostitute. Something that neither you or I would ever do – or even think of doing.

But this is in fact exactly what Hosea does.
Why?
Because God was showing Israel (His bride) something far more controversial than marrying a whore. God was showing her that He loved her.

God does something so radical here.
He takes someone, whom by His own laws should be stoned, and shows such love as to call her His bride.

How amazing and beautiful is this story. How wonderful that this story is our story.

Here is a great video from Brennan Manning on God's love.



Isaiah 61:1-3
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
because the Lord has anointed Me
to bring good news to the poor;
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

Friend, GOD LOVES YOU.
The love that He showed you was fully displayed at Calvary. On the cross and in the empty tomb. Jesus left all that He had for the sake of wretched whores like us.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

While We Were Still Sinners

This morning I came across the name Jason Dunham and spent a few minutes reading about his life and death. In 2004, Dunham was a twenty-two year-old Corporal in the United States Marine Corps, serving in Iraq. He became the first Marine since 1970 to earn the Medal of Honor—the nation’s highest award for battlefield heroism—for actions in combat.

On April 14, 2004, he was manning a checkpoint near Karabilah when an Iraqi man whose car they were searching, suddenly grabbed his throat. As Dunham wrestled the man to the ground, the Iraqi dropped a grenade with the pin removed. Aware of the imminent danger and without hesitation, Corporal Dunham covered the grenade with his helmet and body, bearing the brunt of the explosion and shielding his Marines from the blast. He saved the lives of several of his fellow soldiers. Dunham died of his wounds just a few days later without ever regaining consciousness.

The official Marine Corps citation says, “By his undaunted courage, intrepid fighting spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty, Corporal Dunham gallantly gave his life for his country, thereby reflecting great credit upon himself and upholding the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.”

Such gallantry is amazing, inspiring. It should awe us that a man would so selfishly give all he had for his friends.

And yet what Christ did was greater still. As William Farley says in Outrageous Mercy, “At the cross God threw himself on a grenade to save the enemy soldiers…” We would not wish to downplay the gallantry of Corporal Dunham who made the ultimate sacrifice. But neither can we escape the fact that Jesus Christ died for those who were not his friends, but his enemies. What love this is! Even in the greatest of human sacrifices we see just a pale reflection of the depth, the magnitude, of the sacrifice of the Son of God.

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.
Originally found: Challies.com

Thursday, May 7, 2009

The Extent of God's Mercy Goes Much Further Than Our Sin


Week one in the book of Hosea.

Some thoughts to share from last night...

The name Hosea is derived from the name Joshua, which in turn is the name Yahshua or Yeshua. Of course we know this name to be Jesus.

Is it a coincidence that Hosea and Jesus mean "to save" or "salvation?" Not at all. The story that is recorded by Hosea in his book is a story of salvation. It's Jehovah God's passionate love for His Bride, to call Her back from sin into righteousness. This we know to be true in our own life, for it is/was ultimately done through our Hosea, Jesus.

Some descriptions that depict Israel's unfaithfulness are pretty vivid. They include: a promiscuous wife, an indifferent mother, an illegitimate child, an ungrateful son, a stubborn heifer, a silly dove, and the list goes on. Hosea did not hold back in illustrating both God's righteous and holy wrath against Israel, nor His faithful love and mercy.

Our primary text that we studied was Hosea 1:1-3. Verse one was a review of all the history that was going on around Hosea's time. Verses 2-3 was when we hit the "meat" of the Word. It reads
2 When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, "Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” 3 So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
Now the temptation is to read this and say that it's a story "stuck" in that time. That it is not really relevant to us, because, well, we didn't/haven't gone out and married a whore.

But that is where the beauty is. We didn't go out and marry a whore, but Christ did. And Christ did so much more. In Revelation 19, we read that in the wedding of the Lamb (that's Jesus), the Bride (that's us) will be dressed in white. Not a spot or blemish on her. She has been washed clean. Pure. Christ is the one who dresses her. Christ is the one who dresses us. Christ takes His Bride, a former prostitute, and makes her beautiful. My friend, Christ has made you beautiful.

Praise God for his unfathomable love!

Love you.