You Know What Today Is?

Happy Reformation Day!

“Nothing in my hands I bring,
simply to thy cross I cling;
naked, come to thee for dress;
helpless, look to thee for grace;
foul, I to the Fountain fly;
wash me, Savior, or I die” ~Augustus Toplady

Growing Young

Here'a great thought from Brennan Manning that I saw over at Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology the other day:

A Philistine will stand before a Claude Monet painting and pick his nose; a person filled with wonder will stand there fighting back the tears. By and large, our world has lost its sense of wonder. We have grown up.

--Brennan Manning 

  I'm pretty middle-aged now and I have sensed parts of my heart getting a little - I don't want to use the word "hardened" -  let's say, road-weary.  Calloused seems harsh.  Maybe crotchety would work.  At any rate, I don't like it.  I never want to lose the wonder I once had as a child where every day was an adventure, every stream was a river, every hill was a mountain, every stick was a sword, and God was a super, shining, invincible hero bristling with cosmic power.  I want the wonder of my childhood to mingle with the knowledge that years of experience and study have bought me, and I want it to keep me from becoming brittle and ... boring ... in my faith.

Let's finish this off with one of my favorite songs from Rich Mullins, Growing Young:

Heroes And Motorcycles

Tim Witten will like this...(aside from the shattered motorcycle)

Posting these two vids today because...well, because they comprise such a heroically cool story.  And I like motorcycles.

Preaching Through Adversity

The one thing that's done me the most good in the past several weeks is this message by John Piper titled "Preaching Through Adversity" based on the life of Charles Spurgeon.  His concluding words were a quote from Spurgeon that gave me the kind of chuckle that comes when common sense suddenly comes into focus and you realize you can breathe a sigh of relief: Confidence has returned.

"You never met an old salt, down by the sea, who was in trouble because the tide had been ebbing out for hours. No! He waits confidently for the turn of the tide, and it comes in due time. Yonder rock has been uncovered during the last half-hour, and if the sea continues to ebb out for weeks, there will be no water in the English Channel, and the French will walk over from Cherbourg. Nobody talks in that childish way, for such an ebb will never come. Nor will we speak as though the gospel would be routed, and eternal truth driven out of the land. We serve an almighty Master ... If our Lord does but stamp His foot, He can win for Himself all the nations of the earth against heathenism, and Mohammedanism, and Agnosticism, and Modern-though, and every other foul error. Who is he that can harm us if we follow Jesus? How can His cause be defeated? At His will, converts will flock to His truth as numerous as the sands of the sea ... Wherefore be of good courage, and go on your way singing [and preaching!]:                                                                                         

The winds of hell have blown

The world its hate hath shown,

Yet it is not o'erthrown.

Hallelujah for the Cross!

It shall never suffer loss!

The Lord of hosts is with us,

the God of Jacob is our refuge."

 

Beautiful Eulogy

Beautiful Eulogy is a fresh, talented and truth-full band out of Portland and the video below shows their passion and creativity in the eponymous final track of their album.

Cowper's Grave

William Cowper suffered miserably under the smothering weight of dark depression, yet through his life and writings became a display of God's glory and faithfulness.

Elizabeth Barret Browning wrote a poem a century after Cowper's death describing his great influence on hymn writing and scholarship, and she also alluded to the afflictions of the mind that were a regular part of Cowper's life.  Some of the lines describe places of the heart that are as familiar to me as my own backyard, and it is the sweet and stirring final four stanzas that display the power of Christ and His sure and certain victory over the darkest of nights.

I hope you have the time to read "Cowper's Grave", and to read it out loud (poetry is better appreciated when spoken).

It is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying.
It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying.
Yet let the grief and humbleness, as low as silence, languish.
Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish4

O poets, from a maniac’s tongue was poured the deathless singing!
O Christians, at your cross of hope, a hopeless hand was clinging!
O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,
Groaned inly8while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling!

And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story,
How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory,
And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed11,
He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted,

He shall be strong to sanctify the poet’s high vocation,
And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration.
ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good forsaken,
Named softly as the household name of one whom God hath taken16

With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think upon him,—
With meekness that is gratefulness to God whose heaven hath won him,
Who suffered once the madness-cloud to His own love to blind him,
But gently led the blind along where breath and bird could find him,

And wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic senses
As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious influences.
The pulse of dew upon the grass, kept his within its number,
And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber.

Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home-caresses,
Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan26 tendernesses.
The very world, by God’s constraint, from falsehood’s ways removing,
Its women and its men became, beside him, true and loving.

And though, in blindness, he remained unconscious of that guiding,
And things provided came without the sweet sense of providing,
He testified this solemn truth, while phrenzy desolated,
—Nor man nor nature satisfy, whom only God created.

Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother while she blesses
And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses,—
That turns his fevered eyes around—“My mother! where’s my mother?”—
As if such tender words and deeds could come from any other!—

The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending o’er him,
Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love she bore him!—
Thus, woke the poet from the dream his life’s long fever gave him,
Beneath those deep pathetic Eyes, which closed in death to save him.

Thus? oh, not thus! no type of earth can image that awaking,
Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs, round him breaking,
Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted,
But felt those eyes alone, and knew,—“My Saviour! not deserted!”

Deserted! Who hath dreamt that when the cross in darkness rested,
Upon the Victim’s hidden face, no love was manifested?
What frantic hands outstretched have e’er the atoning drops averted?
What tears have washed them from the soul, that one should be deserted?

Deserted! God could separate from His own essence rather;
And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father.
Yea, once, Immanuel’s orphaned cry his universe hath shaken—
It went up single, echoless, “My God, I am forsaken!”

It went up from the Holy’s lips amid his lost creation,
That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation!
That earth’s worst phrenzies, marring hope, should mar not hope’s fruition,
And I, on Cowper’s grave, should see his rapture in a vision.

Confessions. True Ones.

This was originally posted over at the most excellent Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology website and it was strangely encouraging even as it painfully laid my soul bare.  It was as if the words these Puritan men wrote were my own:

In the 1640s our forefathers drew up the Westminster Standards, those marvelous statements of Christian doctrine that have stood the test of time and continue to guide the church today. Rich, careful, reverent, true.

A few years later, in 1651, a group of pastors in Scotland who had accepted these documents doctrinally realized that they had another need, not in their creeds but in their hearts. They determined that they needed not only to confess publicly these doctrines but also to confess publicly their sins as leaders of the church.

Here is part of what they confessed, reproduced in Horatius Bonar's Words to Winners of Souls.

*Exceeding great selfishness in all that we do; acting from ourselves, for ourselves and to ourselves.

*Not caring how faithful and negligent others were, if it might testify to our faithfulness and diligence, but being rather content, if not rejoicing, at their faults.

*Seldom in secret prayer with God, except to fit for public performance; and that much neglected, or gone about very superficially.

*Glad to find excuses for the neglect of our duties. Neglecting the reading of Scripture in secret, for edifying ourselves as Christians. . . . Not given to reflect upon our own ways, nor allowing conviction to have a thorough work upon us; deceiving ourselves by resting upon absence from and abhorrence of evils from the light of a natural conscience, and looking upon the same as an evidence of a real change of state and nature.

*Not esteeming the cross of Christ and sufferings for his name honorable, but rather shifting sufferings from self-love.

*Not laying to heart the sad and heavy sufferings of the people of God abroad, and the not-thriving of the kingdom of Jesus Christ and the power of godliness among them.

*Refined hypocrisy; desiring to appear what, indeed, we are not. Artificial confessing of sin, without repentance. . . . Confession in secret much slighted, even of those things whereof we are convicted.

*Readier to search out and censure faults in others than to see or deal with them in ourselves. Accounting of our estate and way according to the estimate that others have of us. . . .

*Not praying for men of a contrary judgment, but using reservedness and distance from them; being more ready to speak of them than to them, or to God for them.

*Not preaching Christ in the simplicity of the gospel, nor ourselves the people's servants, for Christ's sake. Preaching of Christ, not that the people may know him, but that they may think we know much of him. . . .

*Too much eyeing our own credit and applause; and being pleased with it when we get it, and unsatisfied when it is lacking. Cowardice in delivering God's message; letting people die in reigning sins without warning.

 --Horatius Bonar, Words to Winners of Souls (American Tract Society, 1950), 24-28; language slightly updated.

Somebody Needs To Hear From You

Within the space of 30 minutes this morning, I had two friends contact me to tell me that they were thinking of me and praying for me.  One is a friend in ministry that lives here in Kansas, but whom I rarely see.  He called just to encourage me and tell me that he prays for me regularly.  The other is a college buddy living in Phoenix who has been and continues to be an encouragement to me at just the right times. His text this morning was simple and heartfelt and gave me just the boost I needed. 

I gotta admit, it makes me a little suspicious about what's coming down the pike when people tell me they've been praying for me, but it also gives me great confidence because I know that God has enlisted good men to lift me up when I need it most, whether I'm aware that I need it or not!

Who needs a message from you today?

Last Choice

Jesus is all over the Bible. His presence is especially vivid in the life of David.

Consider David the shepherd boy from Bethlehem and how even the very-in-tune-with-God Samuel wouldn't have chosen him as the one to anoint as king over Israel.  Samuel wanted Eliab.  After all, he was the oldest and the tallest of Jesse's boys; he looked like king material.  But of course God had chosen David instead.  David was late to the meeting (apparently wasn't even summoned at first) because he was out with the sheep.  He was everyone's last choice.  But God's sovereign choice.

Consider Jesus Christ, our great and true shepherd, born in Bethlehem.  No one though much of him at all; his appearance and appearing were far from kingly.   He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  No one would have chosen him to be king, much less Son of God.  He was the last choice. In fact, multiplied millions still reject Him as Savior. But He will be King nonetheless.  

Honing Exposition

In my ongoing quest to be better preacher - and by better I don't necessarily mean more likeable or more adept at public speaking or more interesting, although these things have their value - I've been taking a closer look at what constitutes good, expository preaching.

Although perhaps not possible in every setting or sermon, I think an ideal message from a pastor to his people will include exposition (exposing the meaning of the passage), evangelism (revealing and proclaiming the Gospel in the passage), application (what decision and/or action is called for) and an apologetic (why this is Truth with a capital "T").

In regard to evangelism, I like what J.I. Packer says in Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God:

"So, in the last analysis, there is only one method of evangelism: namely, the faithful explanation and application of the gospel message.  From which it follows - and this it he key principle which we are seeking - that the test for any proposed strategy, technique or style of evangelistic action must be this:  will it in fact serve the word? Is it calculated to be a means of explaining the gospel truly and fully and applying it deeply and exactly?  To the extent to which it is so calculated, it is lawful and right; to the extent to which it tends to overlay and obscure the realities of the message, and to blunt the edge of their application, it is ungodly and wrong."

Spurgeon Rap...No, Seriously!

How cool is this? Shai Linne gives a lyrical biography of Charles Spurgeon: