Changes, and some Bunyan

First, on a personal note… due to getting busier at work as well as the start of school, I will only be posting somewhere around once a week going into this fall and winter. However I do still greatly appreciate your patronage and I will check the blog daily to reply to comments and for general housekeeping.

Second, I am reading John Bunyan’s classic The Pilgrim’s Progress, which is the second most popular book in history after the Bible. I am still early on in the story, but I am already in awe of the clarity that can emerge through this story enveloped in allegory. As an example, check out the dialog between Christian, the main character who is on a journey seeking God, and the Interpreter, who is discussing Christian’s journey to this point and the fruits of the characteristics of Passion and Patience:

Then said Christian, “now I see that Patience has the best Wisdom, and that upon many accounts. 1. Because he stays for the best things. 2. And also because he will have the glory of His [God's] when the other hath nothing but Raggs.”

Interpreter: “Nay, you mad add another; to wit, The glory of the next world will never wear out; but these are suddenly gone. Therefore Passion had not so much reason to laugh at Patience, because he had his good things first, as Patience will have to laugh at Passion, because he had his best things last; for first must give place to last, because last must have his time to come, but last gives place to nothing; for there is not another to succeed:

“He therefore that hath his Portion first, must needs have a time to spend it; but he that has his Portion last, must have it lastingly. Therefore it is said of Dives [Luke 16], In thy life thou receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and though are tormented.”

May we never be blinded of eternity because of the allure of the present, or trade the eternal riches of heaven for wispy gain in this life!

The Christian Flavor of Humility

We often speak of the need for humility as Christians, and we are exhorted by Paul throughout the New Testament to put on humility as children of God - see Ephesians 4.2, Philippians 2.3, and Colossians 3.12. But when we give up ourselves in humility - contrary to what the world teaches - we do not give up our power or our inheritance in Christ.

Therefore our humility should not be accompanied by fear or timidity or passivity (all of whom like to claim humility as a disguise), but should rather be a demonstration of power and security. We have Christ as our example, who we read about in Phillippians 2:

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

As we empty our lives of the pursuit of our own glory, God’s glory will shine through and He will be magnified. Our path in humility is a confident path based on our righteousness in Christ and our adoption as God’s children, as Paul describes in Romans 8:

14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba! Father! 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

17 and if children, then heirs - heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ - provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

We are therefore victorious - not victims - in this life, as we live both now in the power of our Savior and in eager expectation of our eternal life together with Him. This is the Christian flavor of humility, that our humility is based not on our own lack of power but on the demonstration of God’s power, and for God’s glory!

Thanks for reading!

Mickey

Luther on Study

Check out these words from Martin Luther. He applies his comments to preachers, but I see no reason to stop there. We have all been given God’s Word, and it is our duty to live it and be able to talk about it as it comes up in daily life. Read and reflect (thanks to HePrayed.com for text in full), and I welcome any comments… thanks for reading!

Some pastors and preachers are lazy and no good. They rely on these and other good books to get a sermon out of them. They do not pray; they do not study; they do not read; they do not search the Scripture. It is just as if there were no need to read the Bible for this purpose…

Therefore the call is: Watch, study, attende lectioni (attend to reading). In truth, you cannot read too much in Scripture; and what you read carefully you cannot understand too well, and what you understand well you cannot teach too well, and what you teach well you cannot live too well. Experto crede Ruperto (Believe a man who has found this out). It is the devil, it is the world, it is our flesh that are raging and ravaging against us.

Therefore, dear sirs and brethren, pastors and preachers, pray, read, study, be diligent. Truly, this evil, shameful time is not the season for being lazy, for sleeping and snoring. Use the gift that has been entrusted to you, and reveal the mystery of Christ.

-Martin Luther

Self Image and Our Quiet Time

1 Peter 5:5 Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Romans 12:16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

I was thinking about humility this week and how it goes back to having an accurate self-image. We can fall of both sides of the self-image wagon:

• We of course can value ourselves too highly and lack the humility that we are called to as children of God.
• We can also be influenced by criticism and negative comments and forget that we are God’s child, made in His image.

Both of these tendencies either warp the meaning of humility or throw it out all together, both of which are distortions of our true value.

I was struck this week by the importance of our quiet time with God in keeping a healthy self-image. Our quiet times establish, before the world starts crowding in each day, three aspects of our existence:

Who God is - King and Lord over all

Who we are - a sinner

Who we are in God - a sinner saved by grace!

Conceit ignores who we are and a low self-image forgets who we are in God, but none of it matters at all if we forget who God is and what He has done.

A time alone with God each morning helps to set us straight before the day begins, and the challenge throughout the day is to not let others or ourselves to distort our understanding of ourselves throughout the day. This is how we can remain humble and yet fully confident, because we know that God always walks with us and that His Spirit lives in us!

What are your experiences fighting to remain humble and keep a right self-image?

What would you add to my comments based on your experiences?

Thanks for reading!

Mickey

Prayer & Meditation Resources from Dr. Whitney

I recently experienced some awesome, awesome talks by Dr. Don Whitney (SBTS) about prayer and meditation and practical ideas for fueling our quiet times alone with God. I encourage you to check out some of the following resources and consider adopting a few new habits that will help you dig into God’s Word and allow the Spirit to change you as you live and commune with Him!

I listened to the following three sessions during a recent road trip of a conference that Dr. Whitney does all over the US about prayer and meditation. These talks get very practical, and I wish that I would have learned this information the first day that I was a Christian and had reviewed it every year since then.

Session 1 - Meditating on Scripture
Session 2 - Praying Through Scripture
Session 3 - Praying Through Scripture

Here are some of the resources that he uses in his classes and conferences (I encourage you to read and print these out even if you are not able to listen to the messages):

Methods of Meditation
Phillippians 4:8 Questions
The Joseph Hall Questions

More information on this subject from Dr. Whitney’s classes that he teaches can be found here, and more audio from Dr. Whitney can be found here and here.

Here is the homepage for Dr. Whitney’s website.

I pray that these resources might help to jumpstart your prayer and meditation as it has mine. These methods help to open up two-way communication between us and God, as it is not through fulfilling “quiet-time requirements” but through a life lived with God that we fully glorify Him and are deeply satisfied in Him!

Please feel free to leave comments about what you find through these resources or even some of your own experiences in these areas.

In Christ!

Mickey

HaMoreh Ministries

I would like to introduce you to an exciting (relatively) new ministry that is linking Houston and other points western with Kenya and an expanding network of churches and seminaries in Africa. This ministry is named HaMoreh (”teacher” in Hebrew) and is headed up by Jaime Johns, who is a linguist, preacher, & professor extraordinaire. Jaime has an extremely large heart, and it is shines through every time you hear him talk of his “children” in Africa and the many loving relationships that he has developed over there.

There is a link to HaMoreh’s ministry at the top of this page, and you can read Jaime’s blog here. Jaime teaches and preaches in Kenya for most of each summer and Christmas break and teaches in the meantime at Houston Baptist University and elsewhere. Many awesome pictures from the ministry are contained on the website, and more audio & video resources are placed on the HaMoreh’s website everyday. I encourage you to watch the following video which gives an overview of the ministry and explains where the ministry is headed:

I encourage you to pray about, and, if the Spirit so leads you, to begin supporting this ministry.

The two audio sermons of Jaime’s that are listed on the site allow Jaime’s heart to shine through, and you will also experience Jaime’s testimony and hear of the journey that Jaime took to come to Christ.

It is exciting to get involved with and support a ministry that is doing so much on the ground in Kenya not only to help hurting people but share the Gospel - living water - with them so that their soul will never thirst again, regardless of their physical circumstances!

Success

The following is an account of the passing of Tom Carson by his son, D.A. Carson in his book Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor:

When he died, there were no crowds outside the hospital, no editorial comments in the papers, no announcements on television, no mention in Parliament, no attention paid by the nation. In his hospital room there was no one by his bedside. There was only the quiet hiss of oxygen, vainly venting because he had stopped breathing and would never need it again.

But on the other side all the trumpets sounded. Dad won entrance to the only throne room that matters, not because he was a good man or a great man - he was, after all, a most ordinary pastor - but because he was a forgiven man. And he heard the voice of him whom he longed to hear saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Lord.”

Let us always remember that success in the kingdom of God is not measured by numbers, money, prestige, or any other earthly thing, but by faithfulness to Christ.

May the greatest words that we ever hope to hear be “Well done, good and faithful servant… enter into the joy of your Lord!”

When the Bible Offends

Romans 9:10 And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, 11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad - in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls - 12 she was told, The older will serve the younger. 13 As it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.

What do we do when the Bible offends? Sometimes we read passages that do not ring true with what we would expect the Bible to say, but they are there nonetheless. We can go from Bible translation to [reputable] Bible translation and even to the original languages, and wham, there we are still assaulted by what we cannot explain.

Many are very offended by Romans 9:11-13 and seek to explain it away or simply ignore it. Regardless of how you handle these verses - I recommend, since they are in the Bible, that we accept them - I propose that what may offend us initially ought not be what shocks us.

It is easy to pull out election and I hated and become immediately offended and to rush to rescue God from being unjust, unloving, etc. What ought to grab our attention is not the linking of election and I hated but the connection between election and I loved.

Because God is a just God and we declare ourselves to be His enemies, God can do no other but hate what is evil - who we are in our sinful ways, apart from Him. What initially shock us is what really makes the most sense. What is amazing is that, in spite of our continued rebellion, God would call some of us to Himself!

Argue all that you want about how it happens and what happens when, but at the end of the day we must, first of all, accept every word of the Bible as true even when it may not initially make sense to us, and second of all, recognize that God’s grace is amazing - that He would love any of us!

Isaiah 24:1 O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.

As the Body Turns

Well, I finally found someone who writes at my level! Check out the preface to Mark Dever’s What is a Healthy Church?:

Noes and Hand were sitting in the church pew talking. The morning service, led by Ear and Mouth, had just ended, and Hand was telling Nose that he and his family had decided to look for a different church.

“Really?” Nose responded to Hand’s news. “Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hand said, looking down. He was usually slower to speak than other members of the church body. “I guess the church doesn’t have what Mrs. Hand and I are looking for.”

“Well, what are you looking for in a church?” Nose asked. The tone in which he spoke these words was sympathetic. But even as he was speaking them he knew he would dismiss Hand’s andwer. If the Hands couldn’t see that Nose and the rest of the leadership were pointing the church body in the right direction, the body could do without them.

Hand had to think before answering. He and Mrs. Hand liked Pastor Mouth and his family. And Minister of Music Ear meant well. “Well, I guess we’re looking for a place where people are more like us,” Hand finally stammered. “We tried spending time with the Legs, but we didn’t connect with them. Next we joined the small group for all the Toes. But they kept talking about socks and shoes and odors. And that didn’t interest us.”

Nose looked at him this time with genuine dismay: “Aren’t you glad that they’re concerned with odors?!”

“Sure, sure. But it’s not for us. Then, we attended the Sunday school for all you facial features. Do you remember? We came for several Sundays a couple of months ago?”

“It was great to have you.”

“Thank you. But everyone just wanted to talk, and listen, and smell, and taste. It felt like, well, it felt like you never wanted to get to work and get your hands dirty. Anyway, Mrs. Hand and I were thinking about checking out that new church over on East Side. We hear they do a lot of clapping and hand-raising, which is closer to what we need right now.”

“Hmmm,” Nose replied. “I see what you mean. We’d hate to see you go. But, I guess you have to do what’s good for you.”

At that moment, Mrs. Hand, who had been caught up in another conversation, turned back to join her husband and Nose. Hand briefly explained what he and Nose had been talking about, after which Nose repeated his sadness at the prospect of losing the Hands. But he again said that he understood since it sounded like their needs weren’t being met.

Mrs. Hand nodded in agreement. She wanted to be polite, but, truth be told, she wasn’t sad to be leaving. Her husband had made just enough critical remarks about the church over the years that her heart had begun to reflect his. No, he had never burst into an open tirade against the body. In fact, he usually apologized for “being so negative,” as he put it. But the little complaints that he let slip out here and there had had an effect. The small groups were a little cliquish. The music was a little out of date. The programs did seem a little silly. The teaching wasn’t entirely to their liking. In the end, it was hard for the two of them to put their fingers on it, but they finally decided that the church wasn’t for them.

In addition to all that, Mrs. Hand knew that their daughter Pinkie was not comfortable with the youth group. Everyone was so different from her, she felt out of joint.

Mrs. Hand then said something about how much she appreciated Nose and the leadership. But the conversation had already run on too long for Nose. Besides, her perfume made him want to sneeze. He thanked Mrs. Hand for her encouragement, repeated that he was sorry to hear of their departure, then turned and walked away. Who needed the Hands? Apparently, they didn’t need him.

[end of preface]

This allegory sheds some light on much of the cause of dissension and division in churches today, but it is unfortunate that it is not often this easy to diagnose in the real world. Stories like this can help us to examine our own role within our church as well as our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ who make up the rest of the body. Plus, by using parody to imitate situations that we have all seen, this story is just plain funny!

1 Corinthians 12:18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.

Putting Out

This last spring I listened to the book Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell and was amazed at his account of his harrowing adventure in Afghanistan along with the training that he endured to become a Navy SEAL. All Luttrell ever wanted to do in life was be a SEAL, and therefore throughout high school and college he trained and prepared for the grueling process of becoming an elite special forces soldier. All soldiers, even after they have gone through boot camp and a time of active duty service, must go through a 6 month training program called BUD/s in order to become a Navy SEAL, often regarded as some of the most intensive military training in the world.

Luttrell went into BUD/s in shape and ready to go, and he flew through many of the early tests along with many other exceptional athletes. Before long, however, almost every soldier was near their breaking point and one-by-one they began to quit the training and give up their dream of becoming a SEAL. But Luttrell, along with a few of his classmates, made it through to the end of their training and became SEALs. In the remainder of the book Luttrell describes the fateful mission of SEAL Team 10 for which the book is named.

The point of bring up this book goes back to a comment that Luttrell received from one of his commanders after he had completed his BUD/s training. His commander told him (this is a paraphrase) that he knew that Luttrell would make it from the beginning, because he was “putting out.” Now, there were many individuals in better shape and more physically gifted than Luttrell, but he made it farther than most of these because he was using what he had to the best of his ability.

Even though his gifting mattered - certain benchmarks had to be obtained - Luttrell’s effort is what set him above the rest and allowed him to complete the training and become a SEAL.

When we hear about some people’s gifting (e.g. Charles Spurgeon, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, etc.) and see the great things that they accomplished and it is easy to assume that their great abilities are the reasons for their achievements. The truth to their stories is that each of these individuals worked harder than probably any of us are willing to attempt, and therefore they made sure that they used their gifting to the best of their ability.

These examples are directly applicable to our own spiritual walks, because the principle is the same: gifting helps, but effort is what really matters.

It may be hard for us to study the Bible on a regular basis, maintain a consistent time of prayer and meditation, engage in consistent scripture memory, and keep our noses in God-glorifying and edifying books - especially when others can make it look so easy. We must remember that, even though we cannot control our gifting, we must focus on what we can control: our effort.

Truth be told, what is hard for us - reading, praying, memory - is hard for almost every Christian in the world, even the most renowned. The key is how much growth matters to us, and the difference is a life lived with and depending on Christ rather than just knowing about Him.