12.15.2011

12 Reasons for Christmas


  1. “For this I was born and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37).
  2. “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8; cf. Hebrews 2:14–15).
  3. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).
  4. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
  5. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
  6. “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:5).
  7. “For God so loved the world that whoever believes on him shall not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:16).
  8. “God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9).
  9. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
  10. “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against . . . that the thoughts of many may be revealed” (Luke 2:34ff).
  11. “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).
  12. “Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarches, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:7–8; cf. John 12:27ff).
Adapted from the article, “12 Reasons for Christmas” (1991).
© 2011 Desiring God

4.18.2011

Never borrow from the future. If you worry about what may happen tomorrow and it doesn't happen, you have worried in vain. Even if it does happen, you have to worry twice.


1. Pray
2. Go to bed on time.
3. Get up on time so you can start the day unrushed.
4. Say No to projects that won't fit into your time schedule, or that will compromise your mental health. 
5. Delegate tasks to capable others.
6. Simplify and unclutter your life.
7. Less is more. (Although one is often not enough, two are often too many.)
8. Allow extra time to do things and to get to places. 
9. Pace yourself. Spread out big changes and difficult projects over time; don't lump the hard things all together.
10. Take one day at a time.
11. Separate worries from concerns. If a situation is a concern, find out what God would have you do and let go of the anxiety. If you can't do anything about a situation, forget it.
12 Live within your budget; don't use credit cards for ordinary purchases. 
13.. Have backups; an extra car key in your wallet, an extra house key buried in the garden, extra stamps, etc.
14. K.M.S (Keep Mouth Shut). This single piece of advice can prevent an enormous amount of trouble.
15. Do something for the Kid in You everyday. 
16. Carry a spiritually enlightening book with you to read while waiting in line.
17. Get enough rest.
18. Eat right.
19. Get organized so everything has its place. 
20.. Listen to a tape while driving that can help improve your quality of life..
21. Write down thoughts and inspirations.
22. Every day, find time to be alone.
23. Having problems? Talk to God on the spot. Try to nip small problems in the bud. Don't wait until it's time to go to bed to try and pray.
24. Make friends with Godly people. 
25. Keep a folder of favorite scriptures on hand.
26. Remember that the shortest bridge between despair and hope is often a good 'Thank you Jesus .'
27. Laugh.
28. Laugh some more!
29. Take your work seriously, but not yourself at all.
30. Develop a forgiving attitude (most people are doing the best they can). 
31.. Be kind to unkind people (they probably need it the most).
32. Sit on your ego.
33. Talk less; listen more.
34. Slow down.
35. Remind yourself that you are not the general manager of the universe.
36. Every night before bed, think of one thing you're grateful for that you've never been grateful for before.  
   
GOD HAS A WAY OF TURNING THINGS AROUND FOR YOU. 


'If God is for us, who can be against us?' (Romans  8:31)

4.16.2011

The Sermon on the Mount

Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5
Theme for the Day by Rev. Reagan Cocke: The Sermon on the Mount
All that Jesus taught is good and possible for his disciples. He did not teach law but how we are to live in his kingdom. He calls his disciples to live and grow in grace. In the Sermon the Mount, Jesus gathers his disciples around himself and then lays out an ethical standard by which to live. He warns them that “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The Sermon on the Mount is probably the least understood of all Jesus’ teachings. In it Jesus describes what he wants his followers to obey, delivering a Christian value system with ethical standards: attitudes to money, ambition, lifestyle, and religious devotion. All of these are at variance with the world in which we live. Are his ideals unattainable—attractive but totally unrealistic? John Stott answers: “The standards of the Sermon are neither readily attainable by everyone nor totally unattainable by anyone. Jesus spoke this Sermon to those who were already his disciples and thereby also citizens of God’s kingdom and the children of God’s family. It describes the kind of people reborn Christians are or should be.”
The eight blessings (beatitudes) Jesus sets forth at the beginning of his sermon, are given by God to disciples in whom he is working such a character. These blessings are not a reward for the religious; these blessings are gifts of grace for repentant sinners. These are marks that give evidence to God’s grace working in us, displaying what we are in Christ and being made Christ-like. We are perfect in Christ, yet we are still a work in progress. We display the firstfruits but await the true harvest. As Paul says, We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
Of the eight blessings found in Matthew 5:3-10, the first 4 describe a Christians’ relationship to God and the second 4 describe our relations to our fellow man:
·         Blessed are the poor in spirit. Jesus is saying that we are to acknowledge our spiritual poverty, our spiritual bankruptcy before God, and out total need of him.
·         Blessed are those who mourn. Jesus is speaking of those who not only recognize their spiritual poverty but actually grieve over it. Confession is one thing; contrition is another.
·         Blessed are the meek. Jesus is speaking of those who have a humble and gentle attitude toward others which is determined by a true estimate of oneself. In our age that promotes self-esteem, it’s hard to find the meek.
·         Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Jesus is speaking of those whose deepest desire is for the whole human community to be pleasing to God. Martin Luther says: Jesus’ command is not to crawl into a corner or into the desert, but to run out . . . and offer your hands and your feet and your whole body, and to wager everything you have and can do. A hunger and thirst for righteousness that can never be curbed or stopped or sated. If you cannot make the world completely pious, then do what you can.”
The first four beatitudes reveal a logical, spiritual progression: those who are poor in spirit mourn over the cause of it, admit their spiritual poverty in meekness, and long for God’s righteousness in their lives and in all human life. These four attitudes lead to four more beatitudes:
·         Blessed are the merciful. Jesus is speaking of those who, having repented of their own sins and received God’s mercy, likewise show mercy and compassion for people in need. What people; what need? Think of the parable of the Good Samaritan and the man who showed mercy. God’s mercy extends to all, and so must ours.
·         Blessed are the pure in heart. Jesus is speaking of those with a single heart, a heart of flesh given by God, who serve one master only. The pure in heart have their whole lives, public and private, transparent before others. They are people without guile.
·         Blessed are the peacemakers. Jesus is speaking of those who actively pursue peace at a cost. The peace of God is not peace at any price but at the price of his Son. True peace and true forgiveness are costly treasures of divine work. God forgives us when we repent. Peacemaking comes through repentance. Jesus told us to forgive when others repent: “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.”
·         Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Jesus is speaking of the reality of being a Christian. He suffered for righteousness’ sake. Those who hunger for righteousness like Jesus, will suffer for the righteousness they crave. Suffering is a badge of true discipleship, for a disciple is not above his master. Following Jesus means we will suffer. If you aren’t suffering, you are following at a safe distance. This is one time that tailgating isn’t sinful.
The beatitudes paint an accurate and comprehensive portrait of discipleship, one that John Stott describes this way: We see the disciple alone on his knees, acknowledging his spiritual poverty before God and mourning over it. This makes him meek and gentle in all his relationships, since this honesty of who he is as a sinner compels him to allow others to think of him what before God he confesses himself to be. Yet he is far from acquiescing in his sinfulness, for he hungers and thirst after righteousness, longing to grow in grace and goodness and holiness. We see him with others, engaged in society, not insulated from the world’s pain and messiness because he longs to serve God. He shows mercy to those battered by adversity and sin. He is transparent in all his dealings, actively seeking to be a peacemaker. Yet, like Jesus, he is not thanked for his efforts but opposed, slandered, insulted, and persecuted on account of the righteousness for which he stands and the Savior with whom he identifies.
The world dreams of progress, of power, of winning the future, but the disciples of Jesus focus on the end, the last judgment and the coming of the kingdom. To these heights the world cannot rise. So the disciples of Jesus are strangers in the world, unwelcomed guests and disturbers of the peace that is not peace. The culture of the world and the counter-culture of Christ are at loggerheads. No wonder the world rejects and despises those who are blessed by God. No wonder Jesus was killed on a cross. Not only do these beatitudes paint a portrait of discipleship, they also paint a portrait of the cross, of Jesus dying for the sins of the world. That is why disciples live cross-centered lives grounded in a cross-centered message.
The Sermon on the Mount is built on the assumption that Christians are different. Jesus calls us to be different. The tragedy of the Church throughout history is our constant tendency to conform to the prevailing culture instead of developing a Christian counter-culture. Consider in your own life where you can live counter-culturally.

4.13.2011

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Rethinking Progress

The gospel has me reconsidering the typical way we think about Christian growth.

It has me rethinking spiritual measurements and maturity; what it means to change, develop, grow; what the pursuit of holiness and the practice of godliness really entails.

What’s been happening in me recently is similar to what happened in me when I first became a Calvinist back in the Winter of 1995.

Everything changed.

I began to read the Bible with new eyes. The sovereignty of God and the sweetness of his unconditional grace were EVERYWHERE! I remember thinking, “How did I miss this before? It’s all over the place.”

Well, the same thing has been happening to me with regard to how I think about Christian growth.

If we’re serious about reading the Bible in a Christ-centered way; if we’re going to be consistent when it comes to avoiding a moralistic interpretation of the Bible; if we’re going to be unswerving in our devotion to understand the many parts of the Bible in light of its unfolding, overarching drama of redemption, then we have to rethink how we naturally and typically understand what it means to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).

In his 2008 movie The Happening, writer, producer, and director M. Night Shyamalan unfolds a freaky plot about a mysterious, invisible toxin that causes anyone exposed to it to commit suicide. One of the first signs that the unaware victim has breathed in this self-destructing toxin is that they begin walking backwards—signaling that every natural instinct to go on living and to fight for survival has been reversed. The victim’s default survival mechanism is turned upside down.

This, in a sense, is what needs to happen to us when it comes to the way we think about progress in the Christian life. When breathed in, the radical, unconditional, free grace of God reverses every natural instinct regarding what it means to spiritually “survive and thrive.” Only the “toxin” of God’s grace can reverse the way we typically think about Christian growth.

For a whole host of reasons, when it comes to measuring spiritual growth and progress our natural instincts revolve almost exclusively around behavioral improvement.

It’s understandable.

For example, when we read passages like Colossians 3:5-17, where Paul exhorts the Colossian church to “put on the new self” he uses many behavioral examples: put to death “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” He goes on and exhorts them to put away “anger, wrath, malice, slander” and so on. In v.12 he switches gears and lists a whole lot of things for us to put on: “kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” just to name a few.

But what’s at the root of this good and bad fruit? What produces both the bad and good behavior Paul addresses here?

Every temptation to sin is a temptation, in the moment, to disbelieve the gospel–the temptation to secure for myself in that moment something I think I need in order to be happy, something I don’t yet have: meaning, freedom, validation, and so on. Bad behavior happens when we fail to believe that everything I need, in Christ I already have; it happens when we fail to believe in the rich provisional resources that are already ours in the gospel. Conversely, good behavior happens when we daily rest in and receive Christ’s “It is finished” into new and deeper parts of our being every day— into our rebellious regions of unbelief (what writer calls “our unevangelized territories”) smashing any sense of need to secure for ourselves anything beyond what Christ has already secured for us.

Colossians 3:5-17, in other words, provides an illustration of what takes place on the outside when something deeper happens (or doesn’t happen) on the inside.

So, going back to Philippians 2:12, when Paul tells us to “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” he’s making it clear that we’ve got work to do—but what exactly is the work? Get better? Try harder? Clean up your act? Pray more? Get more involved in church? Read the Bible longer? What precisely is Paul exhorting us to do? Clearly, it’s not a matter of whether or not effort is needed. The real issue is Where are we focusing our efforts? Are we working hard to perform? Or are we working hard to rest in Christ’s performance for us?

He goes on to explain: “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:13). God works his work in you—which is the work already accomplished by Christ. Our hard work, therefore, means coming to a greater understanding of his work. As I mentioned a few posts ago, in his Lectures on RomansMartin Luther wrote, “To progress is always to begin again.” Real spiritual progress, in other words, requires a daily going backwards.

I used to think that when the Apostle Paul tells us to work out our salvation, it meant go out and get what you don’t have—get more patience, get more strength, get more joy, get more love, and so on. But after reading the Bible more carefully, I now understand that Christian growth does not happen by working hard to get something you don’t have. Rather, Christian growth happens by working hard to daily swim in the reality of what you do have. Believing again and again the gospel of God’s free justifying grace everyday is the hard work we’re called to.

This means that real change happens only as we continuously rediscover the gospel. The progress of the Christian life is “not our movement toward the goal; it’s the movement of the goal on us.” Sanctification involves God’s attack on our unbelief—our self-centered refusal to believe that God’s approval of us in Christ is full and final. It happens as we daily receive and rest in our unconditional justification. As G. C. Berkouwer said, “The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.”

2 Peter 3:18 succinctly describes growth by saying, “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Growth always happens “in grace.” In other words, the truest measure of our growth is not our behavior (otherwise the Pharisees would have been the godliest people on the planet); it’s our grasp of grace–a grasp which involves coming to deeper and deeper terms with the unconditionality of God’s grace. It’s also growth in “the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” This doesn’t simply mean learning facts about Jesus. It means growing in our love for what Christ has already earned and secured for us, then living in a more vital awareness of that grace. Our main problem in the Christian life is not that we don’t try hard enough to be good, but that we haven’t believed the gospel and received its finished reality into all parts of our life.

Gerhard Forde insightfully (and transparently) calls into question the ways in which we typically think about sanctification and spiritual progress when he write:

Am I making progress? If I am really honest, it seems to me that the question is odd, even a little ridiculous. As I get older and death draws nearer, I don’t seem to be getting better. I get a little more impatient, a little more anxious about having perhaps missed what this life has to offer, a little slower, harder to move, a little more sedentary and set in my ways. Am I making progress? Well, maybe it seems as though I sin less, but that may only be because I’m getting tired! It’s just too hard to keep indulging the lusts of youth. Is that sanctification? I wouldn’t think so! One should not, I expect, mistake encroaching senility for sanctification! But can it be, perhaps, that it is precisely the unconditional gift of grace that helps me to see and admit all that? I hope so. The grace of God should lead us to see the truth about ourselves, and to gain a certain lucidity, a certain humor, a certain down-to-earthness.

Forde rightly shows that when we stop narcissistically focusing on our need to get better, that is what it means to get better! When we stop obsessing over our need to improve, that is what it means to improve! Remember, the Apostle Paul referred to himself as the chief of sinners at the end of his life. It was his ability to freely admit that which demonstrated his spiritual maturity–he had nothing to prove or protect because it wasn’t about him!

I’m realizing that the sin I need removed daily is precisely my narcissistic understanding of spiritual progress. I think too much about how I’m doing, if I’m growing, whether I’m doing it right or not. I spend too much time pondering my failure, brooding over my spiritual successes, and wondering why, when it’s all said and done, I don’t seem to be getting that much better. In short, I spend way too much time thinking about me and what I need to do and far too little time thinking about Jesus and what he’s already done. And what I’ve discovered, ironically, is that the more I focus on my need to get better the worse I actually get. I become neurotic and self-absorbed. Preoccupation with my performance over Christ’s performance for me makes me increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective. After all, Peter only began to sink when he took his eyes off Jesus and focused on “how he was doing.”

So, by all means work! But the hard work is not what you think it is–your personal improvement and moral progress. The hard work is washing your hands of you and resting in Christ finished work for you–which will inevitably produce personal improvement and moral progress.

The real question, then, is: What are you going to do now that you don’t have to do anything? What will your life look like lived under the banner which reads “It is finished?”

What you’ll discover is that once the gospel frees you from having to do anything for Jesus, you’ll want to doeverything for Jesus so that “whether you eat or drink or whatever you do” you’ll do it all to the glory of God.

That’s real progress!


Spiritual "Progress"

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3.09.2011

Prayer for Lent

 

God our Father, help us to fast from all that distracts us from your love. Help us to recognize you as the origin and goal of all the desires you place in our hearts. We ask this through Christ our Lord.