Seen on long-time blog friend Jennifer's facebook page:

Every day is Christmas - God With Us. Every day is New Year's - Mercies New. Every day is Easter - He is Risen! Every, every, EVERY day is Thanksgiving.

Amen x infinity.

Now to live like that . . .

"God who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing—or should we say ‘seeing?’ There are no tenses in God—the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven trough the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves."

- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Today I was reminded of this quote by the great Winston Churchill (or at least attributed to him - I don't have it sourced yet):

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

This is going to be a rough year. Hang tight, people, use your God-given discernment, and pray for our country.

P.S. The sad part is that these days every year is an election year.

The quote below is a great follow-up to this earlier post. I lifted this entirely from Jared's blog.

Self-denying humility ought to show up in the way we worship together. Thankfully, we don't hear as much these days about worship wars in Christian churches as we did just a few years ago, but they are still there. For years I thought this phenomenon was the bane of the "make it up as you go along" whirl of low-church evangelical Protestantism, and mostly it is. But even with a set traditional liturgy, Roman Catholics and other groups often experience the same kinds of tensions.

Maybe you're like me, reared to have the worship music tastes of a seventy-five-year-old woman. That's because, I think, a seventy-five-year-old woman was picking out the hymns and gospel songs in the church where I grew up. I tear up when I sing "Just As I Am" or "To God Be the Glory." And I'm left cold by what some people call the "majestic old hymns." They sound like what watercress-sandwich-eating Episcopalians from Connecticut would listen to (not that there's anything wrong with that). And so many of the contemporary songs sound as if they were written by commercial jingle writers, trying desperately to find words to rhyme with "Jesus" ("Sees us?" "Never leave us?" "Diseases?"). I'm not saying aesthetics don't matter in worship. Worship is, after all, commanded to be offered with "reverence and awe" (Heb. 12:28). I am saying our varying critiques of musical forms are often just simple narcissism disguised as concern about theological and liturgical downgrade.

We need more worship wars, not fewer. What if the war looked like this in your congregation—the young singles petitioning the church to play more of the old classics for the sake of the elderly people, and the elderly people calling on the leadership to contemporize for the sake of the young new believers? This would signal a counting of others as more important than ourselves (Phil. 2:3), which comes from the Spirit of the humiliated, exalted King, Christ (Phil. 2:5-11).

When I insist that the rest of the congregation serve as backup singers in my own little nostalgic hit parade of back-home Mississippi hymns, I am worshiping in the spirit all right, but not the Holy Spirit. I am worshiping myself, in the spirit of self-exaltation. The church negates the power of the third temptation when we remind ourselves that we all have this devilish tendency and cast it aside whether in worship planning or missions or budget decisions.

-- Russell Moore, Tempted and Tried (Crossway, 2011), 149-150.

Yes.

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. (Romans 12:10 ESV)

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

- C.S. Lewis

We are so utter­ly ordi­nary, so com­mon­place, while we pro­fess to know a Power the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry does not reck­on with. But we are “harmless,” and there­fore unharmed. We are spir­i­tu­al paci­fists, non-militants, con­sci­en­tious objec­tors in this battle-to-the-death with prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers in high places. Meek­ness must be had for con­tact with men, but brass, out­spo­ken bold­ness is required to take part in the com­rade­ship of the Cross. We are “side­lin­ers” — coach­ing and crit­i­ciz­ing the real wrestlers while con­tent to sit by and leave the ene­mies of God unchal­lenged. The world can­not hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dan­ger­ous!

-Jim Elliot

[HT Challies]

You are told to love your neighbour as yourself. How do you love yourself? When I look into my own mind, I find that I do not love myself by thinking myself a dear old chap or having affectionate feelings. I do not think that I love myself because I am particularly good, but just because I am myself and quite apart from my character. I might detest something which I have done. Nevertheless, I do not cease to love myself.

In other words, that definite distinction that Christians make between hating sin and loving the sinner is one that you have been making in your own case since you were born. You dislike what you have done, but you don't cease to love yourself. You may even think that you ought to be hanged. . . .

Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained. It seems to me, therefore, that when the worst comes to the worst, if you cannot restrain a man by any method except by trying to kill him, then a Christian must do that.

That is my answer. But I may be wrong.

-- C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock

About that last sentence, I seriously doubt it.

Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. -- A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

The history of our faith is a history full of people who changed the world: Paul, Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, Zinzendorf, Edwards, Spurgeon, and more. The list could go on and on.

It's also a history of people whose fire for God burned with such an intense passion that their legacy has stayed strong through the centuries and decades, encouraging millions. I think of people like Billy Graham, our beloved C.S. Lewis, John Wesley, and Jim Elliot, to name a few.

Ours was the faith of 4th century church father Jerome, whose passion to flee youthful lusts kept him buried in his work of translating the Bible into Latin, which, unbeknownst to him, would be used by the church for the next 1,000 years.

The light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ guided Jerome's contemporary, Gregory of Nazianzus, who stubbornly held to idea of JESUS' full humanity, stating that "whatever has not been assumed has not been fully healed." In other words, if our Lord did not assume full humanity along with His full divinity, then the Gospel itself is threatened.

Christianity was the faith of the 17th century Jesuit, Pedro Claver, whose love for ill-treated slaves compelled him to meet incoming slave ships in Columbia, carry out and bury the dead bodies, and then return to the living cargo to tend their wounds and minister his understanding of the Gospel to them. When he took his vows in the Society of Jesus, he added an amendment to his name, Petrus Claver, aethiopum semper servus. Pedro Claver, forever a servant to blacks.

And like Claver, our faith was (and is) the faith of innumerable saints who considered the riches of Christ far greater than the passing pleasures of sin. Their stories may only be known by some, but their legacy has endured in the lives of their family, friends, and anyone else they have interceded for before His throne.

The one thread I have always found when learning about life-changing saints is this: they desired God. They had a passion for Him that compelled them, forced them, to spend an unmeasurable amount of time seeking His face in prayer and meditation. They had to have Him.

George Mueller was obsessed with prayer. Brother Lawrence attempted to live each second of his waking day in the presence of the Father. Mother Teresa desired "only all for Jesus."

That's the kind of passion that counts everything as loss for the sake of the Gospel.

"Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ" (Philippians 3:8 ESV).

I think there is a difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is caused by things which happen around me, and circumstances will mar it, but joy flows right on through trouble; joy flows on through the dark; joy flows in the night as well as in the day; joy flows all through persecution and opposition; if flows right along, for it is an unceasing fountain bubbling up in the heart; a secret spring which the world can't see and don't know anything about; but the Lord gives His people perpetual joy when they walk in obedience to Him.

- D.L. Moody

[H/T my friend Elizabeth]

"Paul was writing his own life story, but Jesus stole his pen."

Love that!

(From this post by our favorite Gospel-wakened Ninja)

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a ninja. I’m out. I remain committed to martial arts as always but not to being “ninja” or to being part of ninja stuff. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile,disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years,... I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

From the message in church today. This isn't an exact quote, though I was taking notes as fast as I could. The message was from Acts 4-5

We are programming ourselves to death, so much so that we miss the point of the Gospel. The early church was out of step with the world system. Because of this, the early church had influence, inviting notice and persecution.

We're not turning the world upside down. We're letting the world turn us inside out.

On a related note, read this post by our favorite Author-Pastor-Blogger, and check out the very interesting conversation in the comments thread as well.

Read this tonight. What a challenging reminder.

"It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to." - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

[H/T The quote rotation on my other site]

"We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

Working on my sermon for Sunday on Luke 12:49-13:9. Found this jewel by Darrell Bock in the NIV Application Commentary:

Much of 12:49-59 raises the issue of judgment and accountability before God. Yet all too often we try to package Jesus for our culture today as if sin were a minor topic on his agenda. This is not only the work of skeptical scholars like those noted above, it is also found in the way we preach Jesus in evangelism. For all the value of seeker-sensitive approaches, if as a result of trying to market Jesus churches soften the message at this point, then they distort the gospel and do not preach the Jesus who offers renewal of life.

To remove accountability to God for sin is to remove one of the realities that make grace so powerful. In the effort to make the gospel palatable, we risk emasculating it of its most precious truth, that God has paid the debt for our failure and has washed it white as snow. Ironically in trying to exalt God's love by ignoring sin, we remove the most powerful evidence of its presence.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

[H/T The Inklings]

"My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” - John 18:36

In a reference to this passage, our pastor made the following statements:

"Jesus did not come to bring political reformation. He was not interested in making things better in the political realm. He came to save people from eternal death."

"We're more interested in watching Hardball and Hannity than spreading His message. We're more ready to declare 'I'm a Republican' or 'I'm a Democrat' rather than proclaiming Christ."

[here he mentioned that he was quoting someone else] "If Jesus were to come today a lot of Christians would want to make him President of the United States. That would be a step down for the Son of God."

I found this very refreshing. As you can probably tell if you've been reading this blog for very long, I generally vote Republican. Our pastor is not an edgy 20-something guy. He's forty and he hunts, and we're in a very red part of a very red state.

Here's another one, from the end of the message: "Church was never meant to be a building where we all come and hide."

Good and challenging stuff.

John Piper, in this thirty year old sermon, positively nails a subject that's troubled me for a long time.

Some background: I have, on occasion, taught a spiritual gifts "seminar". At first I thought it was pretty cool stuff, but I became more and more troubled by the a) intense focus on self-searching required in the class, to "identify my spiritual gift" and b) the reliance on self-graded surveys to determine one's gift or gifts. I don't mean to suggest there's no value there. I have taken those surveys and they've tended to agree with what I think my spiritual gifts are.

But I didn't discover my spiritual gifts by taking a survey. I discovered them by doing ministry; often by basically stumbling into a ministry that I wasn't expecting. Like when I was twenty and some youth minister, in a fit of God-breathed insanity, asked me to teach a week's worth of Bible study on a passage I'd never even read before, to a bunch of sixteen year old kids that I didn't know, at a summer camp, with about four hours notice.

Not very wise, perhaps, but that one event was life-changing.

We're about to jump into a few weeks on spiritual gifts in our Friday night Young Singles home group, and I'm going to base these few weeks largely off this one sermon. An excerpt below:

I think it would be fair to say also from this text [1 Thess 3:2] that you shouldn't bend your mind too much trying to label your spiritual gift before you use it. That is, don't worry about whether you can point to prophecy or teaching or wisdom or knowledge or healing or miracles or mercy or administration, etc., and say, "That's mine." The way to think is this: The reason we have spiritual gifts is so that we can strengthen other people's faith; here is someone whose faith is in jeopardy; how can I help him? Then do or say what seems most helpful and if the person is helped then you may have discovered one of your gifts.

. . .

I really believe that the problem of not knowing our spiritual gifts is not a basic problem. More basic is the problem of not desiring very much to strengthen other people's faith. Human nature is more prone to tear down than it is to build up. The path of least resistance leads to grumbling and criticism and gossip, and many there be that follow it. But the gate is narrow and the way is strewn with obstacles which leads to edification and the strengthening of faith. So the basic problem is becoming the kind of person who wakes up in the morning, thanks God for our great salvation and then says, "Lord, O how I want to strengthen people's faith today. Grant that at the end of this day somebody will be more confident of Your promises and more joyful in Your grace because I crossed his path." The reason I say becoming this kind of person is more basic than finding out your spiritual gift, is that when you become this kind of person the Holy Spirit will not let your longings go to waste. He will help you find ways to strengthen the faith of others and that will be the discovery of your gifts. So let's apply ourselves to becoming the kind of people more and more who long to strengthen each other's faith.

Emphasis mine.

"What do you see in Christ’s right hand? Seven stars; yet how insignificant they appear when you get a sight of his face! They are stars, and there are seven of them; but who can see seven stars, or, for the matter of that, seventy thousand stars, when the sun shineth in his strength? How sweet it is, when the Lord himself is so present in a congregation that the preacher, whoever he may be, is altogether forgotten! I pray you, dear friends, when you go to a place of worship, always try to see the Lord’s face rather than the stars in his hand; look at the sun, and you will forget the stars.”

- Charles Spurgeon, quoted in Guzik's commentary on Revelation 1

This is such a great reminder to me, as both a teacher and as a learner.

And to all of us, in our often rock-star church culture.

Now, back to prepping for Revelation 1 . . .

We are not victims of God's will, we are willing participants and grateful recipients.

- Neal McHenry

The words of a young man who just lost his wife, the mother of four young children, to brain cancer.

That's reality, and wisdom born of suffering.

Speechless . . .