Happy Easter!
I, for one, walked out of Gordon Hugenburger's sermon at Park Street this morning a bit disappointed. I suppose it's because what I wanted was a sermon scratching through the layers of dragon scales and reaching my heart. He preached a solid sermon on the apologetic bases for why Christ actually physically died and I know the man next to me loved it. But I think (my spiritual man crush) CJ Mahaney puts it best when he says...
"It's possible for us to study the resurrection technically, to affirm the resurrection theologically, and to argue for the resurrection historically and yet fail to apply the resurrection to our hearts, particularly in relation to death."
I encourage you to watch/listen to this sermon, even if you just put it on in the background.
Before leaving you, two other CJ quotes that resonated with me:
"Death is God's determination to limit our arrogance."
"The resurrection prepares us for death by assuring us that what awaits us on the other side of death is not eternal judgment and condemnation, but instead eternal life. Because the Savior went before us into death, we have no reason to fear death. And because He died as a substitute for sinners like you and me, satisfying the wrath of God, we have been forgiven of our many sins. And because He was raised from the dead, we will be raised as well."
Amen.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Good Friday; Pet Peeve
"Seen your face in every child that smiles,
but I can't help but rejoice.
And I've heard the song called thunder,
but I knew it was your voice.
Touched the holes in your calloused hands,
stuck my fingers in your side.
oh I was six-feet-deep in doubt but
now I'm sure that you're alive."
-Dustin Kensrue, I Believe
Lately I've been worn out, tired out, and exasperated. Slightly with the church not living like the church, but mainly with myself not living like Jesus paid the ultimate cost to save me. This is a loaded statement and if you want me to unpack the facets of it (or try to), let's grab coffee sometime. Here, suffice it to say much of it has come from being kicked in the pants lately through Mark Driscoll sermons.
In one of them, he was talking about how parents must be careful to punish their children for sins, and not simply for mistakes. On Good Friday, we remember how sin renders us all wrecked, destroyed, dead...without a pulse....dead. Enter God: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved--and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:4-6, ESV, emphasis mine).
Needless to say, we rarely feel this dependence on Christ's atoning work; we rarely see how wretched we are and how urgently we need to adopt attitudes of repentance. Trigger my pet peeve: apologizing to others for mistakes, instead of sins. In lab today, a German visitor apologized profusely to me for mistaking me for someone else. I completely understood what she was getting at, but my stomach was knotting up. I often internally cringe when people apologize for simple mistakes (or for nothing at all such as stepping on the back of your shoe), though I understand their intentions. I think it's because I used to do it all the time...apologizing for trivial things. I did it so much I had a friend tell me I had to stop using the word 'sorry' and we made a bet to see how long I could go. I think, in this way (by apologizing for mistakes) we can 1) cheapen the act of repentance and forgiveness and can 2) avoid apologizing for the significant sins we have done to others. So I urge us, as a Christian community, let's bring 'sorry' back into 'sorry.' Let's not cheapen what it means to be repentant or we will fail to build real relationships with others and fail to understand how much we truly depend on Christ.
but I can't help but rejoice.
And I've heard the song called thunder,
but I knew it was your voice.
Touched the holes in your calloused hands,
stuck my fingers in your side.
oh I was six-feet-deep in doubt but
now I'm sure that you're alive."
-Dustin Kensrue, I Believe
Lately I've been worn out, tired out, and exasperated. Slightly with the church not living like the church, but mainly with myself not living like Jesus paid the ultimate cost to save me. This is a loaded statement and if you want me to unpack the facets of it (or try to), let's grab coffee sometime. Here, suffice it to say much of it has come from being kicked in the pants lately through Mark Driscoll sermons.
In one of them, he was talking about how parents must be careful to punish their children for sins, and not simply for mistakes. On Good Friday, we remember how sin renders us all wrecked, destroyed, dead...without a pulse....dead. Enter God: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved--and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:4-6, ESV, emphasis mine).
Needless to say, we rarely feel this dependence on Christ's atoning work; we rarely see how wretched we are and how urgently we need to adopt attitudes of repentance. Trigger my pet peeve: apologizing to others for mistakes, instead of sins. In lab today, a German visitor apologized profusely to me for mistaking me for someone else. I completely understood what she was getting at, but my stomach was knotting up. I often internally cringe when people apologize for simple mistakes (or for nothing at all such as stepping on the back of your shoe), though I understand their intentions. I think it's because I used to do it all the time...apologizing for trivial things. I did it so much I had a friend tell me I had to stop using the word 'sorry' and we made a bet to see how long I could go. I think, in this way (by apologizing for mistakes) we can 1) cheapen the act of repentance and forgiveness and can 2) avoid apologizing for the significant sins we have done to others. So I urge us, as a Christian community, let's bring 'sorry' back into 'sorry.' Let's not cheapen what it means to be repentant or we will fail to build real relationships with others and fail to understand how much we truly depend on Christ.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Intimacy with God
"If you want to be a Christian, of course you'll repent of your sins. But after you've repented of your sins you'll have to repent of how you have used the good things in your life to fill the place where God should be. If you want intimacy with God, if you want to get over this sense that something is missing, it will have to become God that you love with all your heart and strength."
-Tim Keller, King's Cross
-Tim Keller, King's Cross
Monday, April 4, 2011
Your heart is still young: how Jesus emptied Himself
"Allow me to give you an illustration of what subtraction by addition might look like and how it might take place. Imagine for a moment that someone, say, an older brother of yours, was shopping for a new car. He went to a BMW car dealership and asked to test-drive a beautiful, shiny, brand-new sports car. The dealer handed him the keys, and off he drove. Now, you need to know that for the past several days it had rained buckets in your area, and your brother decided to drive this shiny new car on the dirt roads out in the country. Well, as you can imagine, the roads were muddy as could be, and your brother drove this car wildly, turning and sliding every which way in the mud before he brought it back to the showroom floor. When he drove it in, absolutely covered in mud, the car dealer exclaimed, "What have you done to my car!" But to this, your brother calmly said, "Oh, you needn't worry. I've not taken anything away from the car, I've only added to it." And, of course, your brother was right. Every quality of that car was still there. It still had its beautiful coat of paint and its luster; nothing had been removed from what was there before. Rather, something had been added to it--a thick coat of mud! But notice what this mud did. It covered over that beautiful shine so that, even though it was still there, you couldn't see it. You might even say that the mud worked to hide the glory and brilliance of the car even though those qualities were still there, just hidden.
In a similar way, the fullness of the Son with every quality of his deity was poured out. Nothing from his deity was lost, but rather his full life was poured out as he took on the form of a servant. As that human nature enveloped, as it were, his divine nature, something of the glory and splendor of who he is as God was covered over--not lost or given up, mind you, but covered over. Since he chose now to live fully as a man, this required that certain aspects of his deity would have to stay hidden. To be a man, for example, he would have to accept the limitations of being at one place at one time, of learning new things as he grew from infancy to manhood, of experiencing hunger, thirst, tiredness, and weakness as all human beings do, and so on. Given this, are we required to say that Jesus gave up these qualities of his deity? No, and again I say, no! Rather, we say that Christ willingly gave up the rightful use of some of the abilities of his divine nature in order to experience fully his life now as a man. So, while he was in nature fully God, yet in order to live in nature fully as a man, he gave up the expression or exercise of some of his divine abilities. He did not give up those divine abilities themselves. In this way, Christ emptied himself by adding; there was a subtraction of the use of certain aspects of his deity by taking on the full experience of his humanity. And why? All for the purpose of humbling himself to become our servant, a full human being who would obey his Father to the point of death, even death on the cross. What a humbling he underwent. What a Savior he is!"
-Bruce Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, pg. 111-113
In a similar way, the fullness of the Son with every quality of his deity was poured out. Nothing from his deity was lost, but rather his full life was poured out as he took on the form of a servant. As that human nature enveloped, as it were, his divine nature, something of the glory and splendor of who he is as God was covered over--not lost or given up, mind you, but covered over. Since he chose now to live fully as a man, this required that certain aspects of his deity would have to stay hidden. To be a man, for example, he would have to accept the limitations of being at one place at one time, of learning new things as he grew from infancy to manhood, of experiencing hunger, thirst, tiredness, and weakness as all human beings do, and so on. Given this, are we required to say that Jesus gave up these qualities of his deity? No, and again I say, no! Rather, we say that Christ willingly gave up the rightful use of some of the abilities of his divine nature in order to experience fully his life now as a man. So, while he was in nature fully God, yet in order to live in nature fully as a man, he gave up the expression or exercise of some of his divine abilities. He did not give up those divine abilities themselves. In this way, Christ emptied himself by adding; there was a subtraction of the use of certain aspects of his deity by taking on the full experience of his humanity. And why? All for the purpose of humbling himself to become our servant, a full human being who would obey his Father to the point of death, even death on the cross. What a humbling he underwent. What a Savior he is!"
-Bruce Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, pg. 111-113
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Worshipful Brain-Dumpings
First, a quote:
"How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that fire has become flesh, that life itself became life and walked in our midst? Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the most devastating disclosure of the deepest reality of the world, or it is a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful playacting. Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of those things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between."
-N.T. Wright
Chew on this. Read it several times. It should be smacking you upside the head, hopefully in a wonderfully challenging way as it has me.
Second, my recent individual worship has led me back to wonderfully rich hymns. The thing I miss most about not ending up in Louisville is Mike Cosper and Sojourn Community Church, what a blessing. That's what makes the opening worship night of TGC so epic.
More importantly, I recommend you download these two worship albums for free:
Page CXVI's hymns sampler, including one of the most beautiful, unique versions of 'Be Thou My Vision.'
And Ascend the Hill's hymns project. Do it, it's free so I almost guarantee you won't regret it.
P.S. get this when it comes out, it will be the most amazing worship CD you've perhaps ever heard. Right now, volume I holds that spot in my book.
"How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that fire has become flesh, that life itself became life and walked in our midst? Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the most devastating disclosure of the deepest reality of the world, or it is a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful playacting. Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of those things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between."
-N.T. Wright
Chew on this. Read it several times. It should be smacking you upside the head, hopefully in a wonderfully challenging way as it has me.
Second, my recent individual worship has led me back to wonderfully rich hymns. The thing I miss most about not ending up in Louisville is Mike Cosper and Sojourn Community Church, what a blessing. That's what makes the opening worship night of TGC so epic.
More importantly, I recommend you download these two worship albums for free:
Page CXVI's hymns sampler, including one of the most beautiful, unique versions of 'Be Thou My Vision.'
And Ascend the Hill's hymns project. Do it, it's free so I almost guarantee you won't regret it.
P.S. get this when it comes out, it will be the most amazing worship CD you've perhaps ever heard. Right now, volume I holds that spot in my book.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
How is that love?
'Do we get what we want?...the answer to that is a resounding, affirming, sure and positive yes. Yes, we get what we want.
God is that loving.
If we want isolation, despair, and the right to be our own god, God graciously grants us that option. If we insist on using our God-given power and strength to make the world in our own image, God allows us that freedom; we have the kind of license to that. If we want nothing to do with light, hope, love, grace, and peace, God respects that desire on our part, and we are given a life free from any of those realities. The more we want nothing to do with all God is, the more distance and space are created. If we want nothing to do with love, we are given a reality free from love."
-Rob Bell, Love Wins, 116-117
That sounds awful. That sounds like a parent should be loving by letting their kid run in the middle of the street to fetch a lost ball, with a car barreling down the middle of it. That sounds like loving your best friend by letting them drink poison. That's awful...how is that love?
Is not the love of Christ in the Bible that we don't get what our sinful nature wants? Because of the fall and original sin, we all choose a way of destruction...we all choose hell. "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander" (Matthew 15:19, emphasis mine). "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every one--to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6a, emphasis mine).
Whenever God gives us up to our sinful desires, it's because we've chosen them over Him. And it's not a 'gracious' thing God is doing here (like Bell suggests)...it's horrendous. "For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen" (Romans 1:21-25).
No, God's gracious love is that in Christ, we have salvation! We are set free from our sin...we are set free from what our sinful nature desires and given a new heart. "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). "So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God" (Romans 8:12-14). "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26). etc.
Note: the restoration of Israel in Ezekiel 36:26 is because God wants to preserve His holy name...His holiness! Despite how Israel has sinned by their deeds (read from verse 16 on, or the whole chapter).
God is that loving.
If we want isolation, despair, and the right to be our own god, God graciously grants us that option. If we insist on using our God-given power and strength to make the world in our own image, God allows us that freedom; we have the kind of license to that. If we want nothing to do with light, hope, love, grace, and peace, God respects that desire on our part, and we are given a life free from any of those realities. The more we want nothing to do with all God is, the more distance and space are created. If we want nothing to do with love, we are given a reality free from love."
-Rob Bell, Love Wins, 116-117
That sounds awful. That sounds like a parent should be loving by letting their kid run in the middle of the street to fetch a lost ball, with a car barreling down the middle of it. That sounds like loving your best friend by letting them drink poison. That's awful...how is that love?
Is not the love of Christ in the Bible that we don't get what our sinful nature wants? Because of the fall and original sin, we all choose a way of destruction...we all choose hell. "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander" (Matthew 15:19, emphasis mine). "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every one--to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6a, emphasis mine).
Whenever God gives us up to our sinful desires, it's because we've chosen them over Him. And it's not a 'gracious' thing God is doing here (like Bell suggests)...it's horrendous. "For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen" (Romans 1:21-25).
No, God's gracious love is that in Christ, we have salvation! We are set free from our sin...we are set free from what our sinful nature desires and given a new heart. "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). "So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God" (Romans 8:12-14). "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26). etc.
Note: the restoration of Israel in Ezekiel 36:26 is because God wants to preserve His holy name...His holiness! Despite how Israel has sinned by their deeds (read from verse 16 on, or the whole chapter).
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Lesson(s) Learned
Sometimes the greatest lessons learned in life come from simple song lyrics. Hence, even the title of this post is a Ray LaMontagne song. Having been on a Lucinda Williams and National tear, here's a sampling of what's been running through my head lately:
"Ada, hold onto yourself by the sleeves, I think everything counts a little more than we think." -The National, Ada
"Everything means everything." -The National, Conversation 16
"I'll try to be more romantic. I want to believe in everything you believe." -The National, Conversation 16
"It takes an ocean not to break." -The National, Terrible Love
"We were blessed by the minister who practiced what he preached. We were blessed by the poor man who said heaven is within reach." -Lucinda Williams, Blessed
"I drove my car in the middle of the night, I just wanted to see you so bad. The road was dark, but the stars were bright, I just wanted to see you so bad." -Lucinda Williams, I Just Wanted to See You so Bad
"You wait in the car on the side of the road, lemme go and stand awhile. I wanna know you're there but I wanna be alone. If only for a minute or two, I wanna see what it feels like to be without you." -Lucinda Williams, Side of the Road
With that, I'm out. Time to go pick up babes at the laundromat.
"Ada, hold onto yourself by the sleeves, I think everything counts a little more than we think." -The National, Ada
"Everything means everything." -The National, Conversation 16
"I'll try to be more romantic. I want to believe in everything you believe." -The National, Conversation 16
"It takes an ocean not to break." -The National, Terrible Love
"We were blessed by the minister who practiced what he preached. We were blessed by the poor man who said heaven is within reach." -Lucinda Williams, Blessed
"I drove my car in the middle of the night, I just wanted to see you so bad. The road was dark, but the stars were bright, I just wanted to see you so bad." -Lucinda Williams, I Just Wanted to See You so Bad
"You wait in the car on the side of the road, lemme go and stand awhile. I wanna know you're there but I wanna be alone. If only for a minute or two, I wanna see what it feels like to be without you." -Lucinda Williams, Side of the Road
With that, I'm out. Time to go pick up babes at the laundromat.
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