July 9th, 2008 Jeff
" ‘Tis not that I did choose Thee,
For Lord, that could not be;
This heart would still refuse Three,
Hadst Thou not chosen me …
My heart owns none before Thee,
For Thy rich grace I thirst;
This knowing, if I love Thee,
Thou must have loved me first."
– Josiah Conder, 1836
Found in the front matter of the Jesus Storybook Bible we bought Dutch. Wow, that’s the type of Christ-exalting humility and truth I hope our young son to grasp. We hope to swim with him in the deep end of God’s perfections and grace (even from this young age).
"We love becaus e he first loved us ." [ 1 John 4:19 ]
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June 21st, 2008 Jeff
Sometimes we say our words must be a balance of love and truth . Think about that phrase.
A balance? As if truth and love are to be weighed in comparison? Shall we have 50% love and 50% truth, or if we are really bold, then 80% truth but keep the loving flowing a little at 20%. The concept comes from Ephesians 4:15 : "speaking the truth in love." Our truth must be filtered in love, and our love must be filtered in truth. There is a happy tension in there for sure. People deserve 100% of both, for love and truth are not enemies but rather best of friends. God is Truth; He is Love; He is neither one in part, but both in His fullness. Jesus’s incarnation reveals this much for in Him dwells all the fullness of grace (love) and truth (John 1:14 ).
"Balance" is a metaphor, and I contend, it is an incomplete one. We use it to talk about balancing work and play, our finances, our relationships, our emotional and chemical state, and just about everything else it seems here in the West. Do you have a balanced diet? The picture of "balance" is, at the very least, incomplete, in my humble opinion. For is God (and are we?) solely interested in finding out how to balance our careers and our families? Isn’t there more to this vapor of a life than simply finding our inner balance?
Enter a better, more descriptive word: Rhythm .
Rhythm (from Greek rhythmos , "any measured flow or movement, symmetry") is the variation of the length and accentuation of a series of sounds or other events.
The Christian life is a journey towards realizing God’s rhythm. (I would say ‘finding’ it, but must confess I don’t think we are capable of looking for or finding it ourselves.) All things in the end will be brought into full harmony through Christ ( Eph. 1:10 ), while in the interim we endure this broken, unrhythmic world. Through Christ’s redemption from our fallen state, the Spirit’s renewing us and empowering His community of believers, and the Father’s joy in making us full sons of God, we get to join in the dance (perichoresis ) with the Triune God.
It seems that the New Testament vision of Christ is less about bringing balance to our lives, and more about restoring the underlying rhythm of the entire universe, us included as the most important aspect of creation ( Romans 8:18-27 ). Perhaps the reason why so much of our "preaching" these days (How To …) does not transform is because it is aimed at this make-believe balance rather than transforming the whole person to live in the whole rhythm of our Creator.
I don’t know much about music and cannot carry a tune, but when I hear good music, it makes the soul groove. The harmony and melody and beats come together in a true concert of sounds, which makes one think ‘ah, that’s how it is supposed to be!’
- How about you? What makes (musical) rhythm attractive to you?
- And how do we go about achieving God’s harmony for our lives?
Kari and I are committed to finding out what it means to live in the Gospel rhythms, or to use the NT wording, walk in step with the Spirit, in His rhythm. We find our balance living in His rhythm.
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May 27th, 2008 Jeff
“God did not create us to get the cosmic, infinite joy of mutual love and glorification, but to share it. We were to join in the dance. If we center our lives on him, serving him not out of self-interest, but for the sake of who he is, for the sake of his beauty and glory, we will enter the dance and share in the joy and love he lives in. We were designed, then, not just for belief in God in some general way, nor for a vague kind of inspiration or spirituality. We were made to center our lives upon him, to make the purpose and passion of our lives knowing, serving, delighting, and resembling him. This growth in happiness will go on eternally, increasing unimaginably (1 Corinthians 2:7-10 ).”
- Timothy Keller, The Reason For God (New York, NY: Dutton, 2008), 219.
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April 17th, 2008 Jeff
Today at Cornerstone School of Ministry we are studying perhaps the most important paragraph in all the Bible. It’s truths are so compellingly beautiful I can hardly contain myself; teaching God’s Word ignites my soul. Romans 3:21-26 is the paragraph in view, and verse 20 sets the stage.
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March 5th, 2008 Jeff
Kari is preaching/teaching a sermon in a communications lab class on Monday, and has 20 minutes to develop the themes of Philippians 2:1-4. I was eager and to have her practice on me today, receiving her words of wisdom and exhortation as the food my soul needed.
She’s posted the rough draft of her manuscript over on her blog. Her four points are the Premise, Picture, Path and Pursuit of unity as believers in the church. One of my favorite parts is centered around verse 3 on the Path:
Verse 3 provides us with a Path to unity.
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” (Phil. 2:3)
The path to unity has a steep downgrade. The road goes down, and down and down and down. At times it’s windy, at times narrow, but always always down. The amazing thing is that this downward path takes you to the mountaintop. The summit of the Christian life is experienced on the mountaintop of humility.
Amen. I needed that, especiallly these days as I learn more and more the blessings of being poor in spirit, desperate for Christ and needing God’s Word to guide our every steps.
Andrew Murray says humility is the sense of entire nothingness which comes when we see how truly God is all, and in which we make way for God to be all. Humility is losing oneself in God. It is a total lack of concern for self, which sets us free.
In making the fourth point (Pursuit) we are reminded how this frees us from pride.
Tozer says, The burden of self-love is a heavy load indeed.
CS Lewis said, “The pleasure of pride is like the pleasure of scratching. If there is an itch one does want to scratch; but it is much nicer to have neither the itch nor the scratch. As long as we have the itch of self-regard we shall want the pleasure of self-approval; but the happiest moments are those when we forget our precious selves and have neither but have everything else (God, our fellow humans, animals, the garden and sky) instead.”
Humility, then is forgetting our precious selves. When we do this, we are freed to gain true fellowship and unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
She goes on to remind us that “humility truly is the most freeing quality of life,” and the entire passage is centered around making the case as to why that is.
Kari’s final words drive the full thrust of the the passage home:
So you may be wondering, how can I cultivate this? Understand the Premise—we are accepted and loved by God. Gaze at the Picture—Love, Unity, Like-mindedness. Follow the Path down to humility. And lay down your burden of self for the Pursuit of one another. Do you want the secret to this? It’s found in the Little Way. Therese of Lisieux devised a prayer-filled approach to life that is deceptively simple. Seek out the menial job, welcome unjust criticisms, befriend those who annoy us, and help those who are ungrateful. Lay down your burden of self and Live the Little Way.
That’s a sermon I’d like not only to preach, but to live.
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September 24th, 2007 Jeff
“Grace fills us with very different feelings from the possession of anything else. If you have tasted the grace of the Gospel, the irresistible longing of your hearts will be, ‘Oh, that all the world might taste its regenerating waters.’”
– Robert Murray McCheyne, letter dated 16 September 1840
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September 21st, 2007 Jeff
Justin Buzzard (normally found here) has written a piece, “Three Pastoral Concerns in 800 Words” on the New Attitude Blog, dedicated to raising up a God-centered, Gospel-living, Bible-saturated generation of men and women who display Jesus Christ is in all their lives.
Good stuff, especially the reminder that the Gospel is not just the entrance to the Christian life, it is also the imperative of all the Christian life, to be related to Christ and live in Him, at all times, in the Gospel. (Or, to use a metaphor I came up with, the Gospel is not merely the diving board into the pool, it is the pool. We need to swim in all its fullness, plunging into the deep end daily.)
Here are a few highlights of Justin’s article:
Issue #1: Gospel-Driven Living
As a pastor I’ve noticed that many of the Christians I come into contact with inadequately appreciate and apply the gospel. Each week I encounter many believers who don’t appear to grasp how radical, how good, the good news is. Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension are reduced to the long forgotten starting line of the Christian life, rather than appreciated as the message, the oxygen, that enables each new stride, all progress forward, in the Christian life.
About one year ago I asked some Christians to grab a pen and paper and answer the question, “What is the gospel?” One answer read: “The gospel is what Jesus did for sinners on the cross. It’s how you become a Christian.” This answer is true, but it’s not true enough. There’s more to it. I could speak to the incomplete content of this answer, but here I’ll speak to the incomplete application of this answer: “It’s how you become a Christian.” If you view the gospel merely as what makes you a Christian, rather than also what matures you as a Christian, you minimize the Savior and maximize yourself.
That’s dangerous.
The nitty-gritty consequences of this, of holding to a mere starting-line gospel, a mere starting-line Savior, are severe. The negative affects I’ve observed are: legalism, joylessness, pursuit of self-glory rather than God’s glory, fear, prayerlessness, pride, and loss of concern for the lost.
I’m seeking to lead people to the comprehensive, robust gospel presented in the Scriptures which teaches that each step forward in the Christian life is made only through reliance upon our Savior. Our sin is that bad and our Savior is that great. I’m seeking to do this both by preaching this gospel to myself as often as possible and by talking about and applying this gospel in any and every preaching, teaching, counseling, and evangelism opportunity I’m presented with.
…
Issue #2: Discipling Godly Men
(read it)
…
Issue #3: Local Church Commitment
The local church stands at the center of God’s design to redeem the world. Jesus died for the church (Matthew 16:16-18). You can’t obey Hebrews 13:17 unless you’re part of a local church: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” And yet many among this generation of Christians view commitment to a local church as a peripheral concern.
For me this is a central issue, especially as I regularly encounter Christian twentysomethings who find their way into our twenties ministry, operating under the unbiblical conviction that this ministry can be a substitute for involvement in a local church. I’ve sought to respond to this concern by talking loudly week in and week out about the importance of the local church.
Six “core commitments” underlie what my ministry to San Francisco Peninsula twentysomethings is all about. The sixth of these commitments, the local church commitment, is a value that I stress as I encounter non-Christians, Christians from other churches, and Christians who claim no home church who visit our ministry for single and married twentysomethings. This commitment reads as follows:
The local church stands at the center of God’s design to redeem the world. Every Christian is called to be involved in a church (not a twenties ministry), a body of people of all ages who travel through life together and meet regularly to worship God, hear the gospel preached, practice the sacraments of baptism and communion, and submit to the leadership of elders. We love our church—being a part of it and serving it.
I’m responding to this third issue by championing this commitment, by seeking to infect young adult Christians with a love for the local church, the church that Jesus died to create.
Okay, that was almost all of it. Just trying to keep it under the 800 words, even though he wasn’t able to. Thanks for the encouragement, Justin.
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July 16th, 2007 Jeff
Gospel-saturated thoughts
Kari and I have been talking quite a bit lately on the need for us Christians to live with a Gospel-saturated mindset. That is, the Gospel (the Good News of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ) is not just a message for entering the Christian life. It is the principle we must continue to live by in all of life. Jesus is not just our ticket to God. When we believe the Gospel, we get God. He is the Gospel!
This need to always keep the Gospel front and center in our minds is key to the Apostle Paul’s instructions concerning the life in Jesus:
Colossians 2:6-7
6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
How did we receive our Savior Jesus as Lord? By faith. We were the recipients of God’s grace, and thus must live by this grace as the transforming reality of a life lived under, by, through and for God.
As Tim Keller reminds us, religion says, “I obey — therefore I am accepted.” But the Gospel has an entirely different bent, saying, “I am accepted — therefore I obey.” God is at work and He is the reason we desire to live for Him, and we live and move from the seat of grace, not of having to work for and maintain this relationship we now enjoy with God.
It is the one thing we must know really well. And swim continually in the deep end of it. God at all times in every situation in our lives deals with us on the basis of grace. Who else can that be said of?
Martin Luther comments on being Gospel-saturated:
This truth of the Gospel is the principle article of all Christian doctrine…Most necessary is it that we know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into their heads continually.
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