Our best friend

“Christ is our best friend, and ere long will be our only friend. I pray God with all my heart that I may be weary of everything else but converse and communion with him.”

- John Owen, quoted by Adrian Warnock in Raised With Christ: How The Resurrection Changes Everything (Wheaton, Ill.; Crossway, 2010), 201-2.

(HT: Of First Importance)

What 'lovers' are you surrounded by?

Paul Tripp: Tell yourself today that you are surrounded by other lovers seeking to woo you away from the one central love that should shape your life.

It is sentences that change my life

John Piper: What I have learned from about twenty-years of serious reading is this: It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if the 1% of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the 99%.

(The Quote is from a sermon preached by John Piper on July 12, 1981, titled "Quantitative Hopelessness and the Immeasurable Moment: For the Encouragement of Sunday School Teachers)

(HT: C.J. Mahaney)

Remember ... you've got thumbs!

"The next time life’s got you down, just remember (you’ve got thumbs!)"

Below are lyrics to a humorous song about evolution posted on Douglas Wilson's blog (Blog and Mablog) title "Science Fiction."

Lyrics:

Out of the primeval mudpits happened one-celled life (amoebic life!)
And suddenly, for no reason at all, this life began to multiply (multiply!)
And the evening and the morning were the first 3 zillion years.

Pretty soon the ocean was filled with little beasties (it was filled!)
And then these hardy pioneers got more complicated (by accident!)
And the Society for the Prevention of God said amen (ah-ah-a-men!)

But among these children of chance were some malcontents (dissatisfied!)
Said they were tired of the water (waterlogged!)
So they crawled up on the beach and grew nostrils.

Looking back, we see the dry guys made the right choice (their choice was good!)
Because they evolved all the way up to man (and man is good!)
While those who held back only made it up to dolphin.

But does this mean that man is nothing but a mere protoplasmic accident? (no indeed!)
On the contrary, we hold that man is special (man’s unique!).
You see, man has an opposable thumb.

So the next time life’s got you down, just remember (you’ve got thumbs!)
And you don’t know why you exist or where you’re going (but you’ve got thumbs!)
Enough to make you weep for joy.

We overcome on the basis of the blood of the Lamb

“How dare you approach the mercy-seat of God on the basis of what kind of day you had, as if that were the basis for our entrance into the presence of the sovereign and holy God? No wonder we cannot beat the Devil. This is works theology. It has nothing to do with grace and the exclusive sufficiency of Christ. Nothing.

Do you not understand that we overcome the accuser on the ground of the blood of Christ? Nothing more, nothing less. That is how we win. It is the only way we win. This is the only ground of our acceptance before God. If you drift far from the cross, you are done. You are defeated.

We overcome the accuser of our brothers and sisters, we overcome our consciences, we overcome our bad tempers, we overcome our defeats, we overcome our lusts, we overcome our fears, we overcome our pettiness on the basis of the blood of the Lamb.”

—D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 103

New Page CXVI hymns album

Page CXVI's new album "Hymns - II" is available at http://www.pagecxvi.com/.

In their own words: Page CXVI is a project started with the idea of making hymns accesible and known again. They are some of the riches, most meaningful, and moving pieces of music ever written."

Visitors to the band's Web site may get the first hymns albums for free this week. The first album is very good. I've listened to the the first two tracks of the album and am not disappointed in the purchase.

Here's the song list of Hymns II:

1.How Great Thou Art
2.Praise to the Lord
3.Jesus I Am Resting, Resting
4.Rock of Ages
5.Abide With Me
6.Battle Hymn of the Republic
7.Doxology

Check it out and pass the word.

Seven sure-fire ways to blow up a church

Chuck Lawless, dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at Southern Seminary, shares seven things he would do if he wanted to “blow up” a church:

1. Begin my ministry as a teacher and refuse to be a learner.
2. Assume that the “honeymoon period” as a church leader is the time to make as many changes as possible.
3. Expect to fix everything overnight.
4. Teach a theological system more than the Bible.
5. Study always and seldom “hang out” with people.
6. Blame undiscipled members for acting like believers who have never been discipled.
7. Pray reactively rather than proactively.

Read his entire post with amplifying comments here.

Definition of justification

Here's Douglas Moo's summary of the biblical doctrine of justification:

The Bible pictures all human beings as defendants in a courtroom: a courtroom in which God is the judge and our sins constitute the evidence against us. The judge weighs the evidence and finds every single one of us guilty of sin and announces that we, therefore, must be condemned. The marvellous news of justification is that God has himself provided for us the means of escaping that condemnation: by responding to his gracious initiative in faith, we become joined with Christ, who died for us and was raised for us. We become joined to Christ, who takes on himself the penalty for our sin and covers us with the ‘righteousness’ that we need to reverse the verdict of condemnation and receive the verdict of ‘justified’, ‘right’ with God. And because we have been joined to Christ, the holy one, and have in that union received the gift of God’s powerful holy Spirit, we, who have been justified, also find our lives transformed so that we love God and neighbour.

(HT: Between Two Worlds)

Judgment + hypocrisy = cynicism

"While purporting to 'see through' others' facades, cynics lack purity of heart. A significant source of cynicism is the fracture between my heart and my behavior. It goes something like this: My heart gets out of tune with God, but life goes on. So I continue to perform and say Christian things, but they are just words. I talk about Jesus without the presence of Jesus. There is a disconnect between what I present and who I am. My words sound phony, so other's words sound phony too. In short, my empty religious performance leads me to think that everyone is phony. The very thing I am doing, I accuse others of doing. Adding judgment to hypocrisy breeds cynicism."

- Paul Miller, A Praying Life, page 91

(HT: Joshua Harris)

Heresy

“A heresy is a doctrine that ultimately destroys, destabilizes, or distorts a mystery rather than preserving it. Sometimes a doctrine that was once thought to defend a mystery actually turns out to subvert it. A heresy is a failed attempt at orthodoxy, whose fault lies not in its willingness to explore possibilities or press conceptual boundaries, but in its unwillingness to accept that it has in fact failed.”

From Alister McGrath’s latest, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (HarperOne, 2009), page 31.

(HT: Miscellanies)

Let his love win your love

“When we go to the cross, we see our God dying for us. If you let any other god down, it will beat you up. If you live for people’s approval or your career or possessions or control or anything else and you don’t make it or you mess up, then you’ll be left feeling afraid, downcast, or bitter. But when you let Christ down, he still loves you. He doesn’t beat you up; he died for you.

Let his love win your love, and let that love replace all other affections. The secret of change is to renew your love for Christ as you see him crucified in your place.”

- Tim Chester, You Can Change (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2010), 128.

(HT: Of First Importance)

Bible interpretation In a nutshell

Michael Patton has an excellent article titled "Bible interpretation In a nutshell" at Parchment and Pen, in which he provides "a practical guide to biblical interpretation following a three step process."

The three steps are as follows:

• Step one: Exegetical Statement - What did it mean then?
• Step two: Theological Statement - What does it mean for all people of all places of all times?
• Step three: Homeletical Statement - How does it apply to me?

Patton: The Bible is two-thousand years old and often seems very archaic. This makes it hard to know how it applies to us. It can be very frustrating as all Christians are encouraged to read their Bible daily but often are at a loss as to how to understand it and apply the message to their own lives. This process has served me well and I believe it is representative of the best way to interpret the ancient word of God and apply it to today. I hope that it will alleviate some of the “Bible interpretation anxiety” that is out there, allowing the Bible to become real and relevant to your life.

Read the entire article and view helpful charts here.