God's Presence and Our Presence in His Script

"The main point to always bear in mind is that God is present where he promises to be present. We don't pull him down out of heaven or bring him up from the grave; rather, he comes to us through his Word, especially as it is preached. God is omnipresent, but the question for us is not where he is present in his majesty and glory, but where he is present in his mercy and grace toward us as sinners. Surely God is present in a beautiful sunset, in a violin concerto, in the grandeur of the Grand Canyon, and in the kindness even of my non-Christian neighbors. However, the question is where God is present in peace, with the assurance that he accepts me, forgives me, and adopts me as an heir of his estate. This comes only through the gospel--a strange and surprising report that we do not know as a matter of course or learn about through common culture. It is a story that can only be told, Good News that can only be announced...
The Bible is a grand story, from Genesis to Revelation, with Christ as the lead character. The more we hear the story, the more we find ourselves being written into it as characters. We discover ourselves not in the fading scripts of this age or in glossy magazine images but in the story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. We are there with Adam and Eve, capitulating to the lie. We are there with Abraham and Sarah, hearing and believing the gospel and being justified. We are walking along with the disciples, not getting it, then getting it, then not getting it again, and then really discovering what his journey was all about. And we are there with the company of heaven, worshiping the Lamb. It is the purpose of preaching and sacrament to put us there, to kill our dead-end character and to write us into God's script."
-Michael Horton, The Gospel Commission

Bold I Approach

In my Bible study, we're working through a study on prayer called Bold I approach. Admittedly, I thought it was Bold-Roman Numeral I-Approach. It's Bold, I Approach. They seriously need a comma. But I'm reading through the third book in what is one of the best trilogies ever written, Michael Horton's Christless Christianity, The Gospel-Driven Life, and The Gospel Commission. If there's one word I could choose to sum up why I am appreciative for Michael Horton, it's for his boldness. Both in arguing against what the Gospel is not and in arguing for what it is. While Christless Christianity (which is so, so worth reading) provides a much-needed critique of Christianity in America, The Gospel-Driven Life offers the alternative, the solution, to many of those issues. As I read The Gospel Commission, I am challenged in a gut-wrenching way as I see what we are called to do in this time between Christ's first coming and His return. So many passages have weighed on my heart thus far, but I thought I'd share this one, as he sums things up so clearly:

"The mere fact that we live in a religiously pluralistic society today creates new pressures to soften the message, to remove its offense, and to present it as helpful for everybody rather than saving for those who believe.
In recent years, different views regarding the destiny of the unevangelized have been grouped under three classifications: pluralism, which holds that all paths lead to God; inclusivism, which teaches that although Christ is the only Savior, explicit faith in Christ is not ordinarily necessary for salvation; and exclusivism, which maintains that ordinarily there is no salvation apart from hearing and believing in Jesus Christ.
I am not a fan of these terms. Although I believe that the third view is consistently and clearly taught in Scripture, calling it "exclusive" stacks the deck against it. God loves the world and sent his Son so that whoever believes in him has eternal life (John 3:16). God includes in Christ a vast number from every nation who would have excluded themselves if it were not for God's sovereign, gracious intervention. It hardly seems appropriate to denigrate this announcement with the epithet "exclusive.""
-Michael Horton, The Gospel Commission

Fighting the Appetites

"Sometimes we actually empower Satan by the way we speak of Christian conversion. We highlight the testimony of the ex-alcoholic who says, "Since I met Jesus I've never wanted another drink." Now that happens sometimes, and we should give thanks for God's power here. But this liberation is no more miraculous, indeed in some ways less so, than the testimony of the repentant drunk who says, "Every time I hear a clink of ice in a glass I tremble with desire, but God is faithful in keeping me sober."
The girl with same-sex desires might conclude she is doomed to be a lesbian because she isn't drawn to boys and still fights her attraction to girls. Family members who have to cut up their credit cards to keep from spending every paycheck on what they see advertised may conclude they're just not "spiritual" enough to follow Christ because they still war against their wants. Nonsense. You are not what you want. You are who you are. And that's defined by the Word of God. It might be that God frees your appetite from whatever it's drawn toward, but usually he instead enables you to fight it. This might go on for forty days, for forty years, for an entire lifetime. That's all right. There must be room then in our churches for a genuine bearing of one another's burdens when it comes to the appetites. Pretending the appetites are instantly nullified by conversion is a rejection of what God has told us--that we are still in the war zone."
-Russell Moore, Tempted and Tried

There's plenty of time to make you mine

"We expect Jesus to have endured temptation as we endure temptation--and he did. But much of what we include in "temptation" isn't temptation at all. It's beyond our good, created desires being appealed to. It's instead those embryonic stages of sinful desire. Jesus' desert testing was indeed forty days of torture, but his torture was not because he, like we, longed to do the forbidden. It is because embedded with those good, natural human desires, he longed for what was good in each of the things he was (temporarily) denied." -Russell Moore, Tempted and Tried

Seriously, though, buy this book or let me buy it for you. It's been a personally convicting and challenging page-turner thus far. The chapter "Starved to Death: Why We'd Rather Be Fed Than Fathered" hit me on so many levels. Buy it or let me buy it for you, seriously: Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ

I am very far

And I want to tell her, "your love isn't lost"
Say, "my heart is still crossed"
Scream, "you're so wonderful!"
-Okkervil River, Unless it's Kicks

The Hold Steady wisely penned the line, "certain songs, they get scratched into our souls." This statement is certainly true, but true in so many forms. On the one hand, the lyrics to a particular song can help you through troubling times or allow you to weep with joy as they express feelings you could never find words for. On a different note, the beat to a particular song may have you dancing for days. On the other end of the spectrum, certain songs and albums can be so ingrained in you that they take you to a particular place. You identify those albums with a certain place in time.

For me, the albums The Stage Names and The Stand Ins by Okkervil River do just that. They take me back to 1916 Eastern, junior year of college. They bring back joyous memories of living with some of the coolest guys on the planet. And those memories started to come up full-boar last night as I saw Okkervil River live. While Boston's thrown at me one of the worst concerts I've been to (The Decemberists), it's also thrown at me some of the best (Julieta Venegas, Lucinda Williams, and now OR). Despite breaking down in New York, the band hauled to get to Boston and played for as long as they could (~2 hours) before the show had to end so no one missed the last train. They did an absolutely phenomenal job of playing a variety of songs from across their discography, including a handful of tunes from Black Sheep Boy, one from Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See, several from The Stage Names and The Stand Ins, and, of course, quite a bit from their new album, I am Very Far. Highlights included a gorgeous Will Scheff solo acoustic rendition of "A Stone", ending the set with an extended version of "Lost Coastlines", melting my heart with "A Girl in Port" with Lauren on the slide (see picture), and ending the encore with "Unless it's Kicks."

And everything from their new album. Seriously, if you don't have I am Very Far, you must get it. With a big budget, Scheff goes big. The instrumentation is explosive and the production is maximalist, in contrast to OR's previous albums. But live, the songs are incredible, rich with layers of musical genius.

Visual Aids for (Modern) Men and Women

"Too many churches overlook God's preferred visual aids--the sacraments--and jump right to video, drama, and props to get people's attention. We are making a big mistake when we think these "signs and seals" will be anywhere as effective as the ones instituted by Christ Himself. Pastors who don't explain the sacraments and very rarely administer them are robbing their people of tremendous encouragement in their Christian walk. We can hear the gospel every Sunday, and eat it too.

Of course, this eating and drinking must be undertaken in faith. The elements themselves do not save us. But when we eat and drink them in faith, we can be assured that we receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life. More than that, we get a picture of our union with Christ. As we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we literally have communion with Him, not by dragging Christ down from heaven but by experiencing His presence through His Spirit. Shame on parishioners for coming to the Lord's Supper with nothing but drudgery and low expectations. And shame on pastors for not instructing their people in the gospel joy available to us in Communion."

-Kevin DeYoung