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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Conversion

Last night at bible study we looked at the nature of conversion... I was lost in the texts as I prepared for 1 Cor 15. We dwelt on the word "received" because Paul says that the Corinthian church received the gospel and on which they were taking their stand... What does that word receive mean? You received the gospel? We looked at several forms of receiving the gospel that I found in scripture:
1) Birth: This concept is seen in a few places but probably the clearest is Ephesians 2. "You were dead in your sins and transgressions... but because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ... it is by grace you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:1,4-5) So before you knew Christ, you were dead, but God graciously said this word to you, "LIVE!" (Ezekiel 16:6)
2) Kingdom Change: Romans 6 helps us with this illustration. Before receiving Christ we were a part of a nation. It is a nation of darkness. It is the kingdom of sin and we all were slaves to this sin. Sin was our master and we gladly took orders from it. God in his grace brought you into His kingdom, the kingdom of light. So, we have changed teams in a sense.
3) Adoption: Before we received Christ we were spiritually poor. We were put out. We were orphans. Sin was our father but he abandoned his own. We were in a sad state and left to ourselves we would perish. God in His mercy adopted you and I (Ephesians 1:5). He saw our poverty and was moved to act on our behalf. He reached out His hand and brought you into his home with the promise of  sharing in His inheritances.
4) Bride: The Bible also teaches us that when we receive Christ we are betrothed to Jesus. We are wed to the King of Kings. We become His object of love and commitment and we gladly receive our beloved with deep heartfelt appreciation. Before we were wed to him we were harlots so it is extremely gracious that Jesus would take us in and provide for us and love us. These word pictures are drawn from Ephesians 5 and Ezekiel 16.

Let us end by thinking about these analogies and what they mean for us personally. Each of them leads us to throw ourselves on Jesus in humble adoration. So take a few minutes today to praise Him for your receiving of the gospel.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Rightly Handling the Word of God

I am reading Don Carson's Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor. It is a book on Don's dad Tom Carson and his ministry. Last night as I was reading I was crushed by a couple journal entries that Tom made about a young pastor. To set the stage let me give a little background information. Tom was a pastor in French Canada and he was in charge of a bilingual congregation. Basically double the workload as he preached essentially to two separate congregations one of which was not his dominate language. At 52 after much prayer and seeking God's guidance he stepped away from his ministry and was situated in a different town working for the city and volunteering at another bilingual church. He essentially became the associate pastor. After the senior pastor resigned a younger pastor was brought in. This leads to the journal entries.

Tom repeatedly noticed that the young man wasn't handling the word of God accurately. He made mention of it in his journal and it was quite unsettling. Even though Tom was not a confrontational man, (according to the author/ son Don) Tom had a conversation with this young pastor about reevaluating whether he was called to the pastorate.

I read that and it hit me with a mega ton of force. How often have I mishandled the word of God? How many times have I missed the point of the text and led people astray? What a sobering thought. It is so easy to manipulate words to say what you want of them or to even try to be clever and draw some new insight out of the text. What a heavy responsibility pastors have. I pray for all the pastors that they would be struck with the awesomeness of handling God's words. We are messengers trying to deliver the Almighty's message with accuracy and clarity. Help us to study with diligence. To divide the word with trembling and trepidation. To kneel before you and sit in your counsel begging for Your words so we just get up and ramble. Then Lord by your grace and loving kindness let us stand before your people that you love and declare, "this is what the Lord says." 

Saturday, April 25, 2009

The Gospel Coalition Audio and Video









My time spent with Pastor David Clark at The Gospel Coalition was incredible. It was a call to faithfully preach the word and to do it with intensity and careful diligence. The whole week was perfect. Now, I am left to sort through everything that I heard while there (about 10 hours of preaching!?) You can download and enjoy the audio and video here by clicking on the title of the talk.

Discipleship from Oswald

Just wanted to point out maybe my favorite little article from Oswald Chamber's My Utmost for His Highest. It is from April 24th and you can read it here.

Self Help or God's Glory

As I was reading through Don Carson's book on his father's ministry titled Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor I had to stop after I read a manuscript of Tom Carson's radio broadcast. It was a little lofty and used some old terminology. It also seemed to exult the glory of God and there wasn't a three point application. I had to stop and think for a minute (this is a new thing I learned at the conference and I am trying to employ it more). The manuscript along with a lot of Puritan things that I have been reading lately led me to write this in my notebook and I think it is worthy of sharing:

Gospel Change: Two church services might be equally declared, "good" but for very different reasons. The first because it was practical, easy to follow, and offered a couple points that can easily be put into practice (Almost self help in nature). The second service might be declared "good" because the majesty of God was displayed through His word. The first of our examples might see immediate behavioral change but I would contend it might only be temporary. The latter might overwhelm the hearer and seem as if there little to no application. However, the latter is clearly the better and will produce an actual and lasting change. Beware of practical "self help" sermons. Be desperate for "God help."

Monday, April 20, 2009

Book Review- Letters Along the Way













Letters Along the Way by D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge. This book was excellent and comes highly recommended. The premise of the book is that a young christian begins corresponding with Dr. Paul Woodson, an experienced and older christian. Imagine sitting in on a mentorship between a young bible student, husband, soon to be pastor and the older pastor and college professor. Don Carson comes through his character (Woodson) and I can almost hear his voice as he instructs Timothy in so many different areas including, school selection, direction, politics, relationships, hermeneutics (study of interpreting the bible), salvation, church trends, evangelism, pastoral duties and challenges, and many other topics. Like Mark Driscoll says about Letters Along the Way, "This is the closest things to a personal mentorship with Don Carson you are going to get."

I highly recommend this book to every Christian. It will help clarify and strengthen your faith.

The Gospel Coalition






Over the next few days I will be at the Gospel Coalition's conference in Rosemont, IL. I am excited about sitting under the teaching of some amazing pastor's and scholars. Also, I am connecting with other like minded youth ministers. That alone should be worth the time. 

Pray for Fuel that things would go smoothly without me being there (It will! It is humbling but it will be great). Pray that I would learn some great truths and that the I would be extremely encouraged by my time there. Pray also for renewed passion and vision that will come back and ignite our youth. 

More Thoughts on "Yeah But..."

The real issue here is how we look at the scriptures. If the Bible is the word of God, which it absolutely is, then we need to know how to interact with it. Unfortunately, it isn't as simple as merely reading it. There is a correct way to handle the word and at the same time there is an incorrect way to handle the word. We have a slight disadvantage in that we have been exposed to experiences and we possess biases that we bring to the table when we read. These experiences and biases we impose on the text. We make it say what we want it to. This is called isogesis. What that means is we have an idea in our head maybe we heard someone say or maybe we experienced something that makes us feel it must be accurate, so we open the Word and make it say what we already think... this is wrong.

Let me show you a verse that should help curb this error: "There is a way that seems right to man, but in the end it leads to death" (Proverbs 14:12; 16:25).

So it is important for us to recognize that what may seem right and good and noble and biblical might in fact be wrong. We can manipulate the Bible to say pretty much anything we want. Its a big book and there are many portions that if taken out of context could lead to error and eventually to death.

That is why we want to pursue good reading of the bible... called exegesis. Trying to get from the text the actual meaning and truth. We need to come to the bible and work to understand what it actually says, then when we understand what it says then and only then can we apply. So, lets make it our effort to systematically encounter the word with a desire to understand its meaning and then apply what we learn to our lives. 

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Acts 11- Yeah but...

When we come to the Bible we generally bring our luggage. We have years of teachings that muddle with the way that we read the text. We neatly categorize teachings into our mental framework and organize texts in such a way that the Bible can at times seem neutered.

We have our favorite proof texts that we base our faith on... They are the ones that we would wear on t-shirts. (if your that kind of "christian") We have the verses that go on our coffee mugs or over our desks on the wall. Those are our favorite. In fact, we even promote favorite verses by asking each other, "what is your 'life-verse' or your 'favorite verse?'" Then there are the texts that get put on our mental shelf called 'I don't understand.' We read something and because it doesn't click right away we don't bother asking any questions of God but would rather quickly store it away so we don't have to think of what it means and the implications of obeying. Lastly, we have verses that we dismiss. They are abrasive and rub us wrong so, because we have been taught to do this, we argue them away. We claim that the message is not for us. We discard God's word on the basis of "culture" or "new covenant" or something like that. We would never tear a page out of the bible but we might mentally take a scalpel and remove parts that we can't seem to easily obey.

When Peter explained his actions in Acts 11 he closes his explanation with this sobering question, "who was I to think that I could oppose God? (vs. 17)" He knew that God was revealing to him a new way to interact with people, a new way to look at Gentiles, and a new way to display love. Who is little old Peter to stand up to God and oppose God's revealed truth.

We as students of the bible need to learn to do this. We need to come to the bible with much prayer. Asking God to strip us of unhelpful biases. Asking Him to rid us of preconceived notions that hinder us from learning something new. We need to be ready to change and we need to be ready to go to a deeper level of understanding and commitment. I love the quote, "we are not trying to master the bible, but rather we are trying to be mastered by it." Our learning should be proportionate to our obeying. We should strive to commit to what we already know. And be open to God's new direction and leading. Who are we to oppose what God wants to teach us today? 

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Thoughts on Spurgeon Pt 2

Joyful first servings: 
It seems to me that Spurgeon was anointed from the get go. After his wonderful and complete conversion experience he began to teach Sunday School and then later began to preach on a circuit to local farm towns within walking distance of the church he was attending. Keep in mind that when Spurgeon started preaching he was still a boy 16 years old or thereabouts. He was affected by the gospel so clearly it was easy to teach others about it. He spoke from the heart... and this in turn affected others. 

How has the gospel affected you? I am wrestling with this as we talk about joy at youth group. How do you achieve joy in what Jesus did through his death burial and resurrection? How can you truly appreciate that event like you should? 

Most of the time at best I am a little excited about it... but honestly there are a lot of days where I know a lot about the gospel and it doesn't get my blood pumping like it should. How can I fight that?

I guess what I learned is that it is a struggle to keep Jesus on his throne. So many other things try to rush the throne of our hearts and take over. We need to learn what particular things help us to keep the Gospel alive in our hearts. It should never grow old. So, figure out what helps you appreciate Jesus most. For me right now it is a J.I. Packer series of lectures on the Puritans (Spurgeon's heroes). But at other times it has been listening to Hillsong United or dialoguing with other passionate Christ followers.

The bottom line of Spurgeon's success early on in his ministry was that the Gospel had completely dominated him... he was a changed man. And, out of the overflow of gladness others were changed as well. 

Does the gospel affect you like that?

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Consumed Recap

During our time together we focused on Jesus teaching on worship found in John 4. Here is how it unfolded:
1)Worship is now no longer bound to the temple (church)
a) We are living stones that have been called to declare the praises of Him who rescued us out of the darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Peter 1)
2)Now worship happens in everything we do.
a) Whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we do it all for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31)
b) Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice... this is your spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1)
3)Worshiping in truth Honors God
a)tethered to the Word
b)Worshiping what we Know 
Above: Students using their creative skills to worship.
Above: Students in 'The Vortex'
Above: Making Blacklight Worship Posters
Above: Service is a form of Worship
Above: Getting things unstuck
Above: Saturday Morning wakeup session
Above: Teaching time
Above: Goofing off at the bonfire on Friday night
Above/Below: Worship Main session

Above: Small group 

Helpul Article on Conversion

I recently wrote an article on Spurgeon and his conversion... It is probably a great idea to point out that not all conversion happens the same way. People are drawn to the cross in all sorts of different ways. God is creative in his calling of men and women.

But, I would say that conviction of sin is a great place to start and praying for conversion would be a great thing for seekers to begin.

An article was just posted on conversion here. Here is a quote from that article by Jonathon Dodson.

Gospel change in some cultures is more gradual than instantaneous. The American Evangelical tradition of “deep consciousness of personal sin followed by a sense of joyous liberation” is not common to all cultures. Missionaries labored for years before they saw a single conversion, and even then, the conversions were sometimes very different than what they expected. Cultures that are more communal experience conversion differently that cultures that are highly individualistic. In many African and Asian cultures, conversions come in pairs or families instead of by single individuals. Not all gospel change happens identically, especially across cultures.
...Like the former missionaries, we must reconfigure our understanding and expectation of how people undergo gospel change and how disciples are made. We must be more open to “process conversions” while also guiding that process toward full commitment to Jesus as Lord. Our goal should not be to replicate our personal conversion experience, but to preach the gospel effectively so that we can make disciples in the emerging post-Christian context. We must heed the failures of the past and call people, not to our experience of conversion, but to the experience of the Spirit’s converting, whatever that process may entail.

Also, John Piper recently wrote a book called Finally Alive that you can get here. I listened to the sermons that the book is based on and it was extremely helpful in my understanding of conversion.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Thoughts on Spurgeon, pt 1

It was crazy to me that C.H. Spurgeon grew up looking at the pictures of Christian from Pilgrim's Progress. He spent his youngest years perusing books of great depth like Pilgrim's Progress and Foxe's Book of Martyrs. He began at an early age to engage in discussions of doctrine with older gentlemen(both his father and grandfather were pastors and young Charles would sit in as they talked with other pastors and leaders). This led to an interesting point in his life when the weight and burden of sin was crushing his soul...

I'm not sure how long this took place but I am sure that it had a profound effect on his outlook on sin and ministry. First, that sin was utterly deplorable but also that sovereign grace should be (and was) preached in every sermon. 

It was incredible to me that he spent time begging God for conversion. He had an awareness of sin but needed to be born from above. I think it is a great idea to teach people to pray for conversion. That they need to have God accomplish a work in them that they cannot achieve by signing a card for baptism or by wandering to the front. This desperation for conversion had a profound effect on him. He took sin absolutely seriously and he resolved to preach with crystal clear clarity that all need to trust in the crucified Jesus for salvation.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Consumed: Retreat

We are gearing up for our retreat... the facilities are decorated, the band is practiced up, and there are worship stations for people to express their creativity in worship either through painting/ drawing, or writing out prayers and placing them in the cracks of our prayer wall (wailing wall).

It has been incredible to put to practice what we will be teaching about this weekend. Worshiping even in the preparation. I have an anticipation of what God is going to accomplish this weekend and I cannot wait to see His might hand at work!

Please pray for all the students that will attend. We are hoping God would use this as a stake in the ground that will help students to develop habits of worship that will last a lifetime.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Lack of Sleep and Falling in love at a Coffee Shop

I just feel like rambling... last night I was up until 4am. It certainly wasn't planned. I needed to get a paper written for my class through Moody Bible Institute. Busyness kept pushing the paper back until about 10pm last night when I was finally able to sit un-distracted and hammer it out. I got done about 2am and then when I got to my apartment my neighbor's baby was crying keeping me from any hope of sleep (walls are paper thin). After some time of tossing and turning I got up to talk to Ashley for a little while because she was at the hospital working her routine night shift, a total downer when the love of your life is on the opposite side of the world (not literally but on the other side of the world of consciousness; awake when I am sleeping and sleeping when I am awake). At about 4am I was finally able to get my eyes to stay shut and I dozed off for what seemed a minute before my alarm started going off.

Needless to say, I am exhausted and dragging... so in this sleep deprived hallucinating state I am making some observations that might not be made in a sober state of mind. First off, God demands sleep. Not in His book of the Law (at least not that I am aware of). But, He did create us to need sleep by nature. I am a mess when I don't get a solid 8. And, the nights that I get 8 hours of sleep are peppered sporadically throughout the year. I need more sleep.

Maybe it is my state of mind but I also realized over the past couple days that I feel like one of those nerdy kids that reads inordinate amounts of fiction. You know the kid that can't keep his glasses anywhere near the top of the nose but constantly has to push them back up either with the index finger or by crinkling his nose. The kid is brilliant but can barely have a conversation with a human. That is what happened to me yesterday... Twice. I sit at my desk all day and read and write and plan and when technology intrudes with a phone call I realize that I can barely escape from my stupor to have an intelligible conversation. It is awkward to put it gently. So, I am hoping that I can stay a part of this world and not levitate to some parallel universe where people aren't human but communicate with books and stanzas and some dungeons and dragons language.

So, instead of having one of my coworkers find me sleeping on my keyboard I peaced out this afternoon. I went to the coffee shop and just tried to soak up the real world for a minute. As I was driving I was blessed by the beauty of creation and the piercing rays of sunshine that finally made their way to Beloit in March (apparently the rays are generally busy elsewhere this time of year and if they feel like it they might grace us with their presence, but don't count on it because they are busy). It was incredible. I sat at Pleasant Street Coffee and let the jam being played over their CD player penetrate my ear canals and make me want to dance while I peered out the window. It was good for the soul. I fell in love with Jesus all over again as I experienced Him at a coffee shop. It was like being jolted to life by a defibrillator. I was able to gasp for air and appreciate His creation.

The conclusion of the matter: Life is meant to be lived, it is meant to be enjoyed and cherished, hobbies are healthy, homework is heavy, people are important, coffee is good for the soul, and life isn't meant to be lived in an office.