9Marks Interview

Mack Stiles and several other Christian workers in tough areas talk about cross-cultural ministry.

Reforming Sunday School

That’s the topic of the latest 9Marks eJournal.  Looks to be some good stuff from a range of folks.

Ten Questions

Dayton Hartman was kind enough to ask me to share in his blog’s “Ten Questions” feature.  We talked about a range of things, including: witnessing to Muslims, African-American theology, coming to the doctrines of grace, some of my youthful mistakes, and a few other things.   The interview is here.  I hope it encourages.

Great Book at a Great Price

Get the audio of Packer’s classic Knowing God for free here!  I think this is one of those books that should be read (now listened to) at least once every 2-3 years.

My Favorite Christmas Present This Year

My five-year old picked it out for me (umm… us):

Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Time.  Interesting article. I wouldn’t agree with everything here, but there’s lots of stimulating thought:

1. Time exists.
2. The past and future are equally real.
3. Everyone experiences time differently.
4. You live in the past.
5. Your memory isn’t as good as you think.
6. Consciousness depends on manipulating time.
7. Disorder increases as time passes.
8. Complexity comes and goes.
9. Aging can be reversed.
10. A lifespan is a billion heartbeats.

52 Types of Blog Posts That Are Proven to Work.  Needing some blogging ideas?  Tired of writing the same old kinds of posts.  This might offer some help.

Some fabulous photos of Yemen architecture.  A sample:

Talk about your “bucket list.”  This makes me feel young.  Sixty-One Year-Old Vietnam Vet Makes His College Football Team.

A couple things that encouraged me today.

Greg Gilbert writes about a courageous testimony shared at his church by a young man experiencing grace amidst a battle with same-sex attraction.  We need to share more such testimonies and rejoice, as Greg does, in the Lord who is coming to finally deliver us all from sin and sinful desires.

Kevin DeYoung offers an encouragement for pastoral pressure and anxiety.  I, too, resonate with Paul’s words, “…apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.”  In a weird way, as Kevin points out, it’s encouraging to know the apostle carried this burden.  Pastors carry it for their congregations, too, and Kevin does a great job helping us.  Thanks Kev.

Reformed and Charismatic? Michael Horton offers some thoughts.  Felt timely for me after getting “grilled” by a recent guest to the island who describes himself as charismatic.  It was a good grilling, but I’ll have to think about whether to invite him back or not.  If he had the gift of prophecy, he’d already know  Anyway, Mike offers a charitable, clear, and in my opinion compelling look at the historic position on the miraculous sign gifts.  What often gets lost in these discussions is that most everyone is a “cessationist” and most everyone is a “continuationist.”  Nearly everyone in the pale of orthodoxy believes the apostolic office and gift has ceased, and that there are no current prophets speaking things on par with Scripture.  That’s a degree of cessationism.  But no one disputes the continuation of certain gifts, pastor-teacher, administration, helps, and so on.  The discussion really revolves around what to think about certain sign gifts like tongues.  Horton’s discussion covers familiar ground but reminds us of some important historical distinctions.

“… let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Heb. 10:25b).

Here are a couple of reads that I found encouraging today:

Jeremy Pierre, taking his cue from C.S. Lewis, encourages us to Love the One You’re With.  I especially found Lewis’ comment that reality is iconoclastic a helpful antidote to the fictions I carry in my own heart and head.  Perhaps it’s the case that we all live with a certain idealistic, romantic notion of “reality.”  But the real reality is far better, and more difficult, and more helpful to our souls.  Thanks Jeremy for the encouragement. How are you going to glorify God today?  Feels like a really big yet nebulous question, doesn’t it?  What if your life is “ordinary”?  Will got get any glory out of your little routine?

Mark Altrogge encourages us with a reminder of the Thousand Opportunities we will have today to honor our God with ordinary obedience.  May we be aware of God’s constant presence and activity in our lives and live each small, ordinary, run of the mill moment for Him.

In the latest edition of Themelios, Sinclair Ferguson reflects on 40 years of preaching in The Preacher’s Decalogue.  A snippet:

Forty years exactly have passed since my first sermon in the context of a Sunday service. Four decades is a long time to have amassed occasions when going to the church door after preaching is the last thing one wants to do—even if one loves the congregation (sometimes precisely because one loves the congregation and therefore the sense of failure is all the greater!). How often have I had to ask myself, “How is it possible to have done this thousands of times and still not do it properly?”

Yes, I know how to talk myself out of that mood! “It’s faithfulness, not skill, that really matters.” “How you feel has nothing to do with it!” “Remember you’re sowing seed.” “It’s ultimately the Lord who preaches the word into people’s hearts, not you.” All true. Yet we are responsible to make progress as preachers, indeed evident and visible, or at least audible progress (1 Tim 4:13, 15 is an instructive and searching word in this respect!).

All of this led me while traveling one day to reflect on this: What Ten Commandments, what rule of preaching-life, do I wish someone had written for me to provide direction, shape, ground rules, that might have helped me keep going in the right direction and gaining momentum in ministry along the way?

Be encouraged today, whether preparing to preach and teach, driving to work, or loving your wife and neighbor.  “Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).

Been a while since I’ve done one of these.  And with the summer laze setting in, it feels like the only way I can blog.  So, here goes.  A few bits and pieces from around the blogosphere.  And since it’s summer, these are all quick and light reads:

How to Fail as a Worship Leader in 10 Easy Steps

How to Get More Done by Pretending You’re on an Airplane

The Obvious and Not-So-Obvious of Staff Management

Senior Pastor as Servant’s Servant’s Servant

Music

First up: Did y’all know Mavis Staples was still singing?  Came across this piece at Mockingbird.  Check it out.

Also, Justin Taylor has a good interview with holy hip hop artist Flame.  Check it out.  In related news: We’re still reviewing Justin’s application for a ghetto card.  He’s making good progress with his interviews with Flame and Trip Lee.  But the suburban khaki factor is still quite high.  Stay tuned for further details.

Islam

A warm “thank you” to Gallifant.com for their kind review of The Gospel for Muslims.  Can I just say how encouraged I am that the Lord has taken my years of prodigal and idolatrous wandering and appears to be making them useful for the gospel and the kingdom.  Praise the Lord for His love for prodigals!

While we’re  on the subject of Islam and Muslims, this brief read puts us back on the right track: Islam, Fear, and the Gospel’s Demands.  The opening paragraphs:

I have a friend who works in a country where Islamic law governs life. The small house church he had established was in the hands of national leadership, and he was not present when the religious police broke in and arrested the entire church, sentencing all of the men to prison.

One day soon after, an angry mob assembled at the local mosque and marched toward my friend’s home. He gathered his wife and children together, locked the doors, shuttered the windows, and went upstairs. His wife shook in fear as they prayed together, asking for deliverance and praying for those who were marching down the street toward them. The shouts and insults against Christians grew as the mob drew closer to their home.

The Gospel

A worthwhile read: “Justification by Faith and Racism.”  A snippet:

I was deeply disturbed when several years ago I visited an American friend of mine in the South. He had recently been offered the senior pastorship of a white church that was located in what had recently become an African-American neighborhood. He told the elders of this church that he would only accept the position if they consented to move the church to a new white majority area. I quizzed him on this as to how he as a Christian minister could be so racially partisan. His response was that, realistically, it would be impossible to grow a predominantly white church in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. I understood the complexities of his context, but I was still dissatisfied with the theology that undergirded it and even more disappointed that a friend of mine whom I knew to be a godly man would act so pragmatically. Even 50 years after the end of legal segregation, Christians in the USA still struggle with race issues. Not simply in the work place, in schools, or in politics, but in churches that confess the name of Christ as Lord. I cannot claim immunity from racial prejudices in my own country Australia where we have our own tragic and haunted history of racial discrimination against the indigenous Australians. But the persistence of racism in churches that profess to live as citizens of heaven and as servants of Christ is a sign of our unfaithfulness and disobedience.

I want to suggest that one of the best resources for confronting racism in the Christian church is the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith.

Amen.  Read the article to find out why.  (HT: Z)

Pastoral Ministry

How do you shepherd a Christian brother being sued by a non-Christian?  Brian Croft with some brief thoughts.

From the DG Blog: Martin Lloyd-Jones Trust has made available for free nine new sermons Lloyd-Jones preached in Pensacola in 1969.  From the website:

These are truly excellent sermons. ‘Prayer’ seems a slightly unusual start to the series, but ‘The Acid Test’ is powerful, ‘A Picture of the Church’ is hard-hitting, ‘The Problem of Evangelism’ is a real gem, and from my point-of-view ‘How Shall We Escape?’ might be more appropriately titled: ‘So Great a Salvation’ – it’s a great sermon on a great salvation.

Health

This is not encouraging.  Not even a little bit: “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin” from Time Magazine.  Now I’m even less motivated to take that walk today.  (HT: Z)

I was just telling my wife that I need some time off.  Then Challies links to this:

David Murray comments on a recent article from the New York Times. “Members of the clergy now suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most Americans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen, while their life expectancy has fallen. Many would change jobs if they could.”

But I am glad to receive one more justification for not owning a cell phone!

To Be Good or Not to Be Good?

Mockingbird has a good post on why Christians should focus on their sins rather than just focus on “the good parts” of our rebirth.  A snippet:

What about the objection to focus on “the good parts” of us now that we are saints? Until Jesus returns I have a double life: I am fully justified and fully a sinner. I still live here on earth. My sin, though conquered, will continue to be condemned by the Law and thrust me on the Gospel until I go to heaven. I would prefer to focus on God’s “good parts” rather than mine.

A Larger Market?

Christian Book Distributors has launched a new website called CBDReformed (HT: Challies).  It’s designed, as the name suggests, to cater to the Reformed Christian reader.  I’d say that’s a wise move given the maniacal love of books common to  most of the Reformed types I know.

But, I’m also the type that’s “weirded-out” by anyone marketing to me in such obvious ways.  I think I still prefer Westminster.  Feels like they’re being who they are, not just a large discounter looking for a bigger slice of the book-buying pie.  I guess that angst also comes from my days of owning an independent bookstore in the era of big box retail stores.

Beta DG

Check the new Desiring God site.  it allows you to personalize, favorite, and go mobile.  Sweet stuff.  The DG folks do wonderfully creative, savvy, Christ-honoring stuff with their media.  For instance, I loved the conference announcement they put together for this year’s national conference:

Classic Ortlund on “Accepting Jesus”

A snippet:

You and I are not integrated, unified, whole persons.  Our hearts are multi-divided.  There is a board room in every heart.  Big table.  Leather chairs.   Coffee.  Bottled water.  Whiteboard.  A committee sits around the table.  There is the social self, the private self, the work self, the sexual self, the recreational self, the religious self, and others.  The committee is arguing and debating and voting.  Constantly agitated and upset.  Rarely can they come to a unanimous, wholehearted decision.  We tell ourselves we’re this way because we’re so busy with so many responsibilities.  The truth is, we’re just divided, unfocused, hesitant, unfree.

The the entire post, it’s only one more insightfully provocative paragraph.

Men Are Dumb

Or at least that’s what Abraham Piper says about this guy who writes some advice columnist for an answer to this question:

How do we ever survive without the fairer sex?  You can see why God said, “It’s not good for man to be alone.  I will make a helper suitable for him” (that is, smarter, capable of propagating the species, and capable of child proofing the house so we don’t electrocute ourselves!).

Bob Kauflin offers a helpful post on gospel-centered worship.  A taste:

But I’ve learned that we can practice gospel-centered corporate worship in a way that is more obligatory than faith-filled. What once magnified the glory of Christ becomes lifeless repetition.

Chris Tomlinson assesses the state of his union with Christ.  Here’s how he starts:

The state of my union is not that good. I don’t think you’re supposed to say that sort of thing, but it’s true, so I guess it’s worth saying.  Read the entire post to see how he finishes.

Mike McKinley with a quote on “Two things to aim at in preaching.”

Preach pointedly and rousingly — aiming at the conscience each time… and beware of displaying yourself in any of your sermons.  I try to aim at two things in studying and preaching: one is, not to say anything to show off myself; another is, not to say anything to amuse the people.

C. Michael Patton examines why some have “All the right beliefs for all the wrong reasons.”

There are four types of people:

1. The one who doesn’t know, and doesn’t know that he doesn’t know. He is a fool–shun him.

2. The one who doesn’t know, but knows that he doesn’t know. He is a student–help him learn.

3. The one who knows, but doesn’t know that he knows. He is an unenlightened person–enlighten him.

4. The one who knows and knows that he knows. He is a wise man–follow him.

I would like to add a fifth:

5. The one who knows but does not know how he knows. He is naive—deconstruct him.

Patton goes on to write:

Creating a dichotomy between the mind and the heart is a self-defense mechanism for those who are truly insecure about their faith. They don’t have enough confidence in their faith to subject it to the scrutiny that the mind demands. For these people, an introduction of the mind’s interrogation to their beliefs is like playing the lottery. There is a chance—a good chance—that it will not survive, so it is better not to take that chance. They simply “know that they know that they know.” Or, as some would put it, they know because they have a “burning in their bosom”—that’s enough for them.  Read the entire piece.

Josh Harris has a message from Jesus to Brit Hume.  Read here.

Happy birthday Bob Kauflin!  He reflects on reaching the speed limit in years.  See here.

I loved this video!  What an amazing display of God’s rich grace and glory in all life! (HT: Z)

Non-human persons?  Really?  Mohler comments.

A few things that might interest you….

Stephen Nichols made me laugh this morning.

Time asks the question: “Can Megachurches Bridge the Racial Divide?”

Michael Patton is asking: “Can Homosexuals Be Christians?”  His answer may surprise you.