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Wings to a Bird
One word Christians don’t seem to use as much as they once did is the word “godliness.” It’s a biblical word, one used frequently in the pastoral epistles. When Paul wrote to Titus he identified himself as a servant and an apostle, and the reason for those roles was “the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness.”
The Greek word for godliness is eusebia and it means “a life devoted to revering God.
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Brains and Bread
If you were God and wanted a way for people to remember the most important event in human history, what program would you use? More than a watershed event, this is the Son of Your love, Your eternal glory, who enfleshed obedience and sacrifice to purchase a people for life. How will you move the redeemed to remember and rejoice?
We might be tempted to focus on the mental aspect. After all, memory is the brain’s territory.
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Serious Bible Studiers
The disciples on the road to Emmaus listened as Jesus interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself, and their hearts burned. Earlier in His ministry Jesus had talked with some other Jews who were serious Bible studiers. They searched the Scriptures. They didn’t do it to disprove God’s Word, they did it with confidence that they would find eternal life in there.
Yet Jesus claimed that while they knew some of the finer points they had missed the entire point.
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Life in the Body
The Christian life is a life in the body. Paul told the Roman church to present their bodies as living sacrifices as part of their spiritual worship (Romans 12). He warned the Corinthians about sexual sins against the body, because “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you. You are not your own, for you have been bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
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Freedom from Confusion Is a Gift
Those who believe in the sovereignty of God ought to be the most kind instead of belligerent, and the most patient instead of panicked, in discussions with those who disagree. This is true logically; it is inconsistent to act as if you make the difference while saying that God makes the difference. So it is an issue of being consistent. It is also an issue of obeying God’s command.
the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.
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Get You Out of Bed Truths
After a paragraph of imperatives and illustrations about the generational work Timothy was called to (1 Timothy 3:1-7), Paul added another imperative, a turn of the head to the Savior.
Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel (1 Timothy 2:8)
Think on Jesus, keep Him in your mind. And in particular, remember that He died, was buried, and on the third day rose again in accordance with the Scriptures.
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Spiritual Shapeshifters
Whatever your preferred system of eschatology, there is no doubt according to Paul’s definition that we are living in the “last days.” He told Timothy that the last days would include “times of difficulty” (1 Timothy 3:1), and he described the people who would make it difficult. Such persons “will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (verses 2-4).
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Divine Smack Talk
Even though He offers them no redemption, God is, perhaps surprisingly to us, interested in teaching the angels.
For much of the Old Testament, prophets searched and inquired their own prophecies about the grace that would come through the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. All of this good news, which Peter said had been preached to his elect readers, were “things into which angels long to look” (1 Peter 1:10-12).
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Pots Throwing Pieces
I bit the bait and clicked an inflammatory link a while back that permanently burned my brain. A straightforward tweet asked: What is the most offensive verse in the Bible? and promised an answer behind a click. The answer surprised me, stirred me, and settled for me so much of our cultural, and even Christian and Christian cultural, woes.
The most offensive verse in the Bible is Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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Boy, Was I Bored
I read the following short story at our school’s year-end assembly last Friday. It was inspired by three things:
The start of summer break This quote from Robert Capon: “boredom is not neutral—it is the fertilizing principle of unloveliness.” My favorite kids’ book: Boy, Was I Mad
Now here’s my version.
It was late one Wednesday morning, and boy, was I bored.
Summer break had started out fun.
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No More Intended Evil
The sovereignty of God and the suffering of men is not an academic exercise. Theodicy—a good God’s control over man’s evil (and nature’s destructive force that hurts men)—confronts us every day. If we say He can stop it, why doesn’t He? If we say He can not stop it, where can we go for help?
I’ve always found it helpful to remember that the most evil thing that has ever happened in the world was planned by God before He created the world.
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Calvinist Excuses
If God is sovereign, should we confess our sin?
In other words, if God planned that we were going to sin, then isn’t our sin His responsibility? If He willed our sin to bring about His glory, and, in some cases, to bring about good for us, then what is really wrong with it? It is not a new question.
But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say?
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The gospel in three words: God saves sinners.
Read more in this fantastic essay by J.I. Packer - johnowen.org/media/pac…
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The Patriarch’s Prophetic Blessing
Jacob blessed his sons on his deathbed with a vision of the future he could only see by faith. He prophesied that a ruler would come from Judah’s line (Genesis 49:9-10), and he probably would have been impressed if he’d seen David and Solomon in their day. We know, though, that another and greater King came from Judah.
The apostle John saw a vision around a throne in heaven, and an elder said there was no reason to weep because the “Lion of the tribe of Judah…has conquered” (Revelation 5:5).
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The Damp Bounty Paper Towel
One way we know that we’re growing up is by how much we can absorb. I don’t mean absorbing information, though the more mature we are the more we will increase (and be able to increase) in the knowledge of God. The absorbing I’m referring to is the ability and capacity to take up and reduce the intensity of someone else’s difficulty, to help them keep calm and obey on, to swallow up some of the freaking out rather than freak out in return.
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Locating Trust
In Psalm 20 David has us sing,
Some trust in chariots and some in horsesbut we trust in the name of the LORD our GOD. (verse 7) The verse before (6) and the verse after (8) connect this song to battle. Verse 1 talks about “the day of trouble” and verse 9 includes a shout out for the king. Men are always tempted under fire to trust their strengths, their strategies and supplies, to trust what they can see.
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On Not Wandering Like a Verbal Amoeba
God made limits for increased glory. The size of the canvas frames the image and shows off how much the artist can fit in a small space (for example, have you seen the pencil-tip sculptor? It is more impressive how much he can do with so little to work with). A poetic convention restricts the impression or feeling to a form rather than letting it meander like a verbal amoeba. And the glory of man includes not running 60 mph, not flying without mechanical aid, and not working without sleeping.
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Getting qualified and motivated to declutter a messy marriage.
Key principe/practice: repentance
ht: @luggit
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The Great Gravity of Glad Sacrifices
I gave the address at our school’s Fundraising Feast last Friday night. Here are the notes for my talk.
Oxford defines gravity as “the force that attracts a body towards the centre of the earth, or towards any other physical body having mass.” Isaac Newton calculated the movements of planets based on their masses and the distance between their centers. Albert Einstein argued his theory of general relativity that the curvature of spacetime accounts for the direction and momentum of free-falling objects.
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By God’s grace there is great gravity around glad sacrifice.
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Old and New Humility
“[T]he old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.” –G. K. Chesterton
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Stamped with New Value
Bread and wine are good. They have their own, built-in sustaining properties. They are also available to enjoy at your own home around your own table, or without a table if you prefer.
What is special about the bread and wine on this table? Well, in terms of the gluten, it’s the same. The tannins have no magical properties. But while there is nothing mystical about the physical elements, there is a supernatural process at work.
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A Bucket Worth of Behavior
Repentance is both a change of thinking and a change in action. It is both abstract and concrete. Because of the internal part, which is both necessary and first, it may be tempting to treat repentance as an invisible thing. True repentance takes place in the heart, but is that all we can know?
Repentance is internal but it is not invisible, at least not indefinitely. Repentance on the inside—again, where it must begin—will work itself out.
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Easter Had to Be Effective
It appears that Americans will have spent more money for Easter this year than they did for Valentine’s Day (ht: Al Mohler). When it comes to the commercialization of holidays, Easter may not be quite as marketed for money-making as Christmas, but it is multiplying like bunnies.
What most people are buying most is candy. I remember getting candy on Easter when I was a kid, and we often give candy to our kids, too.
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Beholding Him Better
Based on how the calendar works this year, Easter Sunday and Tax Day in the United States fell within two days of each other. Jesus often used economic vocabulary and asked some critical questions about our accounting categories. What is the price tag on your soul?
In Matthew 16 Jesus told His disciples that He was going to Jerusalem and would suffer many things and be killed and on the third day be raised.