Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Vacation Time!

My family and I are on vacation this week, so I will be away for the most part from the blog world.

Pray that God will bless our time with family and friends as we spend some good time on the river down in Alabama!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Michael Jackson Dead At 50

Well I'm sure you've heard the news. Michael Jackson died today at 50. Press releases online are being made as I type this out and the possible cause is heart attack.

I never really was a big follower of Michael Jackson, although he was always before my eyes growing up watching MTV. He definitely was an individual that epitomized 'cool'. I remember friends wearing their Michael Jackson jacket, penny loafers, glasses and every now and then someone would even dare to wear a glove!

But even with his 'coolness' the man was disturbed mentally, emotionally and most significantly spiritually. Even though he epitomized 'cool', he also epitomized empty.

Could there be such a more well known figure that sought after everything, but Christ? Was there another that filled their lives with so many things that evidently never really satisfied? Has there been such a one that kept longing for more and more worldliness?

The truth is.....all of us have at one time or another!

Maybe not on the scale that Michael Jackson was able to afford, but we all, at one time sought after everything, but Christ! We all, at one time, filled our lives with things that never really satisfied! We all, at one time, longed for more and more of the world! We all, at one time or another have been guilty of the same.

Only by God's grace, I am what I am!

So, I echo another blogger's thoughts concerning his death....."May God use even this to increase our compassion and ministry to the lost, broken, and confused."

Because the truth is, before God's grace, we have all spent some time there as well!

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

John Piper

This is classic John Piper.....only it was written about 14 hours ago on Twitter! Yep....J.P. is on Twitter.

"Don't pursue joy, pursue obedience" is like saying, "Don't pursue apples, pursue fruit."

Monday, June 22, 2009

27 - 0

I have been playing baseball and softball most of my life. And I've been playing softball in a church league for about 4 years now and love it.

Well tonight I think I suffered the biggest loss I have ever experienced in all my years of playing ball.....on any level. We were slaughtered tonight 27-0! That's right....not one run in the game of softball. Pitiful, absolutely pitiful.

The tough thing is our team is really good. We have a really good coach and this is the best we've been in four years and so it was a tough loss tonight. These kind of games, playing with a team of guys you love playing ball with, really helps in learning how to win and lose for the glory of God.

I love sports and I love team sports. Other than living life with the church (the body of Christ), there's nothing like taking the diamond with a bunch of guys who love the game as much as you do and play their hearts out.....well except for winning, because I do not like losing!

I love how the Bible is sprinkled with sports analogies. The Apostle Paul realized the significance of comparing the Christian life to a race and a fight, and after an extremely tough and embarrassing loss tonight, it makes me want to play better and win more.

God has really used the game of softball to allow me to see the similarities between the two and to desire for our church to live and pursue spiritual victories in Christ together on the field of life.

One of my good friends, Tommie Stewart, told me tonight in the dugout, "there has to be a sermon illustration in this game somewhere." Well I'm sure he's right, so I'll be looking to use it one day, but probably not this Sunday....still hurts to lose (hahaha!)!

The Gospel Scuttles Human Pride

Yet another good post from....Of First Importance!

“The gospel . . . is the wisdom of God because it doesn’t praise our intellects or advertise our strengths. It causes us to fall on our knees and acknowledge our weakness, our dependence, our terrible need. It causes us to look up to God as the great Savior. ‘It is by his doing that we are in Christ Jesus’ . . .. The gospel teaches us that our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption, and our wisdom are all gifts of God. The message of the gospel scuttles human pride because it reminds us that our life did not start with our choosing God but his choosing us. Therefore, all the glory is God’s.”

~ Thomas Schreiner, “The Foolishness of the Cross

Trinitarian Worship

“There are good reasons . . . for worshiping in one act of adoration the three in their distinct persons and relations with one another. A living relationship with God requires that each of the persons be honored and adored in the context of their revealed relations with each other. The nature of our response in worship is to be shaped by the reality of the one we worship.

We worship the Father, who chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, who planned our salvation from eternity, who sent his Son into the world and gave him up for us.

We worship the Son, in filial relation to the Father, who willingly ‘for us and our salvation’ was made flesh, who submitted himself to life in a fallen world, who trod a path of lowliness, temptation, and suffering, leading to the cruel death of the cross. We worship him for his glorious resurrection, for his ascension to the right hand of the Father, for his continual intercession for us, and for his future return to judge the living and the dead and to complete our salvation. . . .

We worship the Holy Spirit, who gives life and breath to all, who grants us the gift of faith, who sustains us through the difficulties of life as Christians in a world set in hostility to God, and who testifies to the Son.”

~ Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity

(HT: Of First Importance)

Sunday, June 21, 2009

To God Be The Glory!

Today is a glorious day in the Kingdom of God.

Today is a glorious day within the scope of redemption history.

Because on this day, God has established a new church....a tower of light that will beam the light of the gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ for all to see.

Today, on this day, the true gospel of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ is now available to all people who live in the Eads community and abroad.

This is a glorious day for the glory of Christ and the good of the world.

It is our urgent prayer that the glory of Christ will always fly high over New Life Church and this community!

We ask that you pray with us to this end.

(first words from Pastor Keith for NLC's Grand Opening Celebration)

TO GOD BE THE GLORY......GREAT THINGS HE HAS DONE!

Friday, June 19, 2009

Tom Owen And New Life Church

Well today God brought us a worship leader for New Life Church. His name is Tom Owen and he brings with him a great mind for worship, filled with a heart for ministry to the body of Christ.

We are praising God for Tom and his wife Stephanie and their children. God knew what kind of leader we needed in the area of music and He sent us just the man to help us lay a foundation for worship that will serve us by starting off right from the very beginning.

Thank you Lord for Tom and his ministry to New Life Church and Eads, TN.

But it also goes without saying that we are thankful to God for Shawn & Julie Troxel as well. They have been leading our worship on Sunday mornings for over 2 months and they have blessed us tremendously by pointing our thoughts and hearts toward Christ each week.

We are praying for you both as the Lord will soon bless you with your third child!

God is so kind to the New Life Family!

'New Life' To God For Eternity

“The atoning death of Christ, and that alone, has presented sinners as righteous in God’s sight; the Lord Jesus has paid the full penalty of their sins, and clothed them with His perfect righteousness before the judgment seat of God.

But Christ has done for Christians even far more than that. He has given to them not only a new and right relation to God, but a new life in God’s presence for evermore. He has saved them from the power as well as from the guilt of sin.

The New Testament does not end with the death of Christ; it does not end with the triumphant words of Jesus on the Cross, “It is finished.” The death was followed by the resurrection, and the resurrection like the death was for our sakes.

Jesus rose from the dead into a new life of glory and power, and into that life He brings those for whom He died. The Christian, on the basis of Christ’s redeeming work, not only has died unto sin, but also lives unto God.”

~ J. Gresham Machen, Christianity & Liberalism

(HT: Of First Importance)

The Twin Pillars Of The Protestant Reformation

John Piper discusses why John Calvin's influence transcended the reformation all the way down the corridors of time to America today, while it seems that Martin Luther's influence remains tethered to that time.

"In this year of John Calvin’s 500th birthday, I don’t know of a better place to read about his impact on America than Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism given at Princeton Seminary in October 1898. Kuyper was a pastor, a journalist, the founder of the Free University of Amsterdam, and Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

John Calvin and Martin Luther were the twin pillars of the Protestant Reformation. Why do fewer people speak of Luther’s culture-shaping impact on America, but for centuries Calvin has been seen in this light? Kuyper argues,

Luther’s starting-point was the . . . principle of justifying faith; while Calvin’s . . . lay in the general cosmological principle of the sovereignty of God. . . . [Hence] Lutheranism restricted itself to an exclusively ecclesiastical and theological character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the Church upon every department of human life.

It is the personal pervasiveness of God’s sovereignty that makes all the difference. This means that “the whole of a man’s life is to be lived as in the Divine Presence.” This “fundamental thought of Calvinism” shaped all of life. “It is from this mother-thought that the all-embracing life system of Calvinism sprang.”

You may read the rest of this post by clicking here.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Matt Chandler On The De-Churched




This is so on the money!

Father help us to never be self-righteous and think that we can place You in our debt!

Raising My Children To Be Servants, Not Merely Helpers

I ran across this post about raising our children to be servants over at Life2gether. It was a good reminder about how Stephanie and I are striving to raise our children to be servants as well.

We learned something early on in our marriage about the difference between 'serving people' and 'helping people'. This really encompasses an attitude in both categories.

When we serve others, we should have an attitude of submission, inferior to superior. This is the biblical meaning when addressing the two categories.

When we help others, the attitude that could be present is one of equality and says, "I'm here working along side of you and I'm as equal as you are and because I'm helping you, I actually may know more about this project than you do"....hence the word helping. This is not to say that we shouldn't help others, but it's a difference in perspective and attitude.

This may not sound like much and it may actually sound like we're splitting hairs, but I really believe that most people 'help' others, not 'serve' others. When we biblically serve others, we actually die to self, we seek the spiritual advancement of others at whatever cost it may be to us. We intentionally place ourselves under the authority of others, because this is what it means to be a 'servant'. This is not easy to do at times and actually goes against our nature.

So, I want my children to serve, not just merely help people. I want them to demonstrate with their lives that others are more important than themselves. I want them to display their love for Christ by serving like Christ.

Jesus tells us, "whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant." He does not say, "shall be your helper."

Let's teach our children to be servants of the King!

Are You Easily Edified?

I really enjoyed a post by Justin Taylor today. He describes the simple joy of 'easily edifying' someone in Christ. A rather cool take on what 'should be' the common response in the Christian life, but unfortunately isn't always the case.

"A mature Christian is easily edified."

"Chip Stam cited those words by Harold Best in the first video I linked to earlier. Those words have been rolling around in my heart and mind for the past couple of days. Easily edified. Isn't that a wonderful goal--a sign of good mental health and genuine obedience of faith? I'm afraid that far too often an accurate assessment of myself would reveal:

* easily annoyed
* easily irritated
* easily impatient
* easily hurt
* easily angered
* easily distracted
* easily arrogant

But wouldn't it be great if those who knew us best could honestly say, "It is so easy to edify him. It doesn't take much. It doesn't need to be the best sermon ever preached or the most excellent song ever composed or the most powerful book ever written or the most theologically eloquent statement ever uttered. Just the simplest truth was enough to refresh his heart in Christ."

Not a bad way to pray--for ourselves and for others."

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The New Kid's CD From Sovereign Grace Music

To Be Like Jesus is set to be released later this month.

You can check out some samples of the songs online by clicking here.....no wait here (haha!).

The Gospel Is For Life!

I read today on Tullian Tchividjian's blog something that we both have in common....one of the most important 'discoveries' in our Christian lives has been that the gospel is not only for salvation, but sustaining us all throughout life as well. He writes,

"One of the most important discoveries of my life has been that the Gospel is not just for non-Christians; it’s for Christians too. I used to think the Gospel was simply what non-Christians must believe in to be saved, while afterward we advance to deeper theological waters. But what I’ve come to understand is that the Gospel is every bit as important for growing as a Christian as it is for becoming a Christian in the first place. The Gospel, in other words, is the fuel that makes Christians go.

In Colossians 1:6 the Apostle Paul writes that the Gospel is the instrument of all continual growth and spiritual progress after we are converted. He writes, “All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.” (Col. 1:6)."

This is has been my ongoing prayer for my life, my church, my community and even this blog (read 'My Life' in the left hand margin). That the gospel will bear a sweet fruit of ongoing repentance and growing faith and will increase all the more as Christ is pleased for us to remain here in this world.

Let this be our continual prayer for God to do a beautiful work of grace, a means of His grace, to love and live more like Jesus!

He Is Working On Our Behalf!

He is always working on our behalf, so think much more about Him rather than yourself!

“We are always looking inwards and pitying ourselves and being sorry for ourselves, and looking for something to help us. Get rid of that outlook, forget yourself for a moment; the battle is the Lord’s! Salvation is His. It is for the honor of His great and holy Name. But go further and realize that because it is God’s battle this almighty power is being exercised on our behalf even when we do not realize it. Things are being done in this great campaign of which we are not aware. We may perhaps be half-asleep at our post, and we do not realize that the great Captain is planning something with respect to us. We are unconscious of it. We would all be lost were it not for that. He, I say, is exercising this power on our behalf.”

~ Martin Lloyd-Jones, The Christian Soldier

(HT: Of First Importance)

Do Literary Devices Have Their Origin In Christ?

My wife, Stephanie, has posted a very good article on literary devices and how they all have their origin in Jesus.....very interesting. I've copied a teaser from the article below...

"It occurred to me that without Christ, there would be no literary devices with which to tell stories. Jesus IS the ultimate foreshadow, type, figure, simile, metaphor, etc. Every story told in every culture exists because of the ultimate story that has been told."

You can read the whole post by clicking here.

Special Invitation

We are gearing up for our public launch this Sunday, June 21st.

If you live or happen to be in the Memphis area this weekend, please feel free to come and worship with us.

Our service time on Sunday morning is 10.30 am.

We meet at 12100 Highway 64 (right across from Dan West Garden Center).

Please lift New Life Church up before our heavenly and ask His favor upon our people as we gather this Sunday to worship Him!

You can check out New Life Church's website by clicking here or you can click the link just to the left.

If you plan to visit, please shoot us an email or you can let us know by leaving a comment in the 'comment section'.

Thank You!

Monday, June 15, 2009

'UP'

Today I took my two oldest boys to see our very first movie together. Yep, you read correctly, our very first movie. As you can tell I'm not the big screen movie buff, but I tell you, it was a great time hanging out with my boys....just the guys. We don't get to do that much. But I had some brothers in Christ recommend the movie and so we went to see it.

The movie is called 'UP' and it's in 3-D, which is really cool and overall it was a pretty good movie. The movie really uplifts marriage in a big way.

But obviously the best part was hangin' out with my boys with a big jumbo tub of popcorn and of course we washed it all down with good old Diet Coke.

Well I'm about to take the boys to go play their baseball game....it's been a good day and hopefully we'll be able to get a good game of baseball in tonight....Lord willing it doesn't rain, again!

Saturday, June 13, 2009

New Life Church Is Now Online

Today we launched our website to Eads and to the world. As of right now we only have our front page online, but the rest will be coming very soon.

Please spread the word that New Life Church is online and soon we'll be an open book for everyone to read what we are all about!

Check us out at www.nlceads.org

Thanks!

Neighborhood Blitz...

Today we began inviting Eads to worship with the New Life Church family. We were able to meet many people today and invite them to our first ever public celebration service on June 21st.

Please pray with us that God will begin to use us as the light of the world. A city on a hill. To draw all kinds of people to Himself and for Himself.

Thank you for your many prayers!

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

For All Our Laboring And Striving....

Colossians 1.29

"And for this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me."

The purpose for our labor & striving....is to see every one complete in Christ (v.28). When we have this kind of focus for our 'laboring & striving' over the next two weeks....it should be done in 'His power', which is mightily working within in us. And His power is displayed for others to see, so that it is not ourselves in which we derive strength to 'labor & strive', but the power of God Himself gives you your strength.

So therefore, go labor today in His power. Go strive today in His power. So that one day, everyone might be made complete in Christ!

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Two Week Sprint....

We are in our two week sprint for launch day!

It has already been a wild and crazy two days, for me, to the beginning of this two weeks. Our folks at New Life Church are definitely gearing up for this effort and it has been exciting.

I will do my best to keep an update going on as we begin to 'knock out' all our projects.

Please continue to pray for us as we sprint, in faith, toward the goal of seeing the glory of Christ manifested in Eads, TN.

God is building His Church!

Friday, June 5, 2009

How Do I Stop 'Losing It' With My Kids?

This is a really good post from Jordan Thomas' blog on parenting.

"As parents we are desperately needy (usually more often than we're aware) for God to enable us to point our children toward Christ by being accurate reflections of Him.

Not even Mary and Joseph, the earthly parents of Jesus, set the example perfectly. We're all flawed, and we all need help. As we seek the Lord's face, He will provide!

In his tiny-but-excellent (19 pg!) pamphlet, William P. Smith quickly gets to the heart-problem for many parents:

When your agenda, your will, your desires, and your reputation become more important than God's, that's a sign you are trying to be your child's god. That's right. Whether you thought about it or not, you want your child to treat you like God.

Instead of pointing to the only true God, our parenting-by-force approach projects to our children that we want to be their god. A poor trade indeed! Duck now warning: Here comes another painfully-true ouch quote from Smith:

When you lose control with your children, you are communicating to them that their priority is to wrap themselves around you. They must give you what you want or pay the consequences. You are, in reality, demanding their worship. Instead of teaching them to live according to every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, you are teaching them to live according to every word that proceeds out of your mouth.

A prayer: Lord help us to point our children to the matchless glory and worth of King Jesus through our parenting!

(I highly recommend this resource, and all of the similarly-small-but-excellent life-application and counseling booklets from the ministry of CCEF.)"

A Milestone....At Least For Me (1,000 hits!)

Wow! Will you always remember where you were when you found out that I had 1,000 hits to my blog 'Disciple the Planet'?

At 9.25 this morning, I now have a comma in the number of hits to my blog.....1,000!

Thanks to all of you who are faithful readers. I hope you have been encouraged and edified as you read through all the blog posts on this site.

It's been my aim to praise God for His faithfulness to my family and to our church as well as to minister, using the means of a blog, to talk about the gospel-centered life.

I can't wait to hit 2,000!

Praise God!

Prayer Request...

New Life Church is a little more than two weeks away from going public to Eads, Tennessee. All of our families (the Andersons, Blessings, Shearers, Troxels, and Whittens) have been working diligently over the last several months in order to prepare for this launch day on June 21st!

Would you go before our heavenly Father and ask Him to give us His wisdom and strength to persevere in faith as we labor to finish all the remaining details in order for our church to be ready for June 21st?

We will be going door-to-door on June 13th inviting people to our first public service. The building that God has provided us seats about 60. Because of our seating, we will target neighborhoods in phases over the next several months. So, on June 13th, we are targeting 60 homes near our church.

We still have a lot to accomplish, but by God's grace, we have definitely come a long way in the last four months. Once June 21st comes, this will only usher us into a new chapter into our church's ministry life, but for now we need God's people praying for us to this end.

Would you pray right now for us?

Pray for God's favor over our new church and our community of Eads.
Pray for God to go before us and breathe new life into dead souls.
Pray for God to do a sovereign work of grace in our own lives.
Pray for God to fill us with His Spirit.
Pray for God to allow us to meet a lot of people on June 13th as we invite them to church.
Pray for God to specifically work in these 60 homes that we are targeting.
Pray that our labor will be a sweet fragrant aroma of worship to God that will permeate this community for the glory of Christ and the salvation of hundreds and thousands of people!

If you would commit to praying for us, please leave us a comment, so that we can thank God for your faithfulness to His Church and Kingdom.

Thank you for praying for New Life Church!

Say To My Soul, 'I Am Your Salvation'

I was reading through Psalm 35 this morning. It is a prayer for rescue and protection from enemies. It is a psalm of David and in his prayer to God, in verse 3, he tells God to speak to his soul that God is his salvation in this time of uncertainty with his enemies. He wanted his soul to be at peace, at rest and David knew that the only way that this would be possible was for God to speak His sovereign power over his life. Only God could save him from the enemies that encompassed him and he prays for God to speak this kind of peace and assurance into his life and over his life.

I wanted to share with you Barnes' Notes on Psalm 35.3

"Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation"

"Say to "me," I will save you. That is, Give me some assurance that thou wilt interpose, and that thou wilt guard me from my enemies. Man only wants this assurance to be calm in respect to any danger. When God says to us that he will be our salvation; that he will protect us; that he will deliver us from sin, from danger, from hell, the mind may and will be perfectly calm.

To a believer he gives this assurance; to all he is willing to give it. The whole plan of salvation is arranged with a view to furnish such an assurance, and to give a pledge to the soul that God "will" save. Death loses its terrors then; the redeemed man moves on calmly - for in all the future - in all worlds - he has nothing now to fear."

Thursday, June 4, 2009

I'm Not A Computer Nerd, But I Am A Husband And This Is Hilarious!!!

This is the funniest thing I've read all day! Let me know what you think...

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance — particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 and then installed undesirable programs such as NFL 5.0, NBA 3.0, and Golf Clubs 4.1.

Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I’ve tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?

Signed, Desperate

————————————-

Dear Desperate:

First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System.

Please enter the command: ‘I Thought You Loved Me.exe’, try to download Tears 6.2 and don’t forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-law 1.0 It runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources. Also, do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Food 3.0…

Good Luck, Tech Support

(HT: The Blazing Center)

To Shout or Not To Shout?

A couple of days ago I was reading Psalm 32 during my time with the Lord. While reading it I came across verse 11, which is the last verse in chapter 32. There I read a few commands. One, 'to be glad in the Lord'. Two, along with being glad we are to 'rejoice' in the Lord. And three, 'shout for joy'.

Now that jogged my memory, because a year ago I preached Psalm 100 and in that Psalm we are also commanded to 'shout joyfully to the Lord'. After doing a word study on 'shout' in Psalm 100, I learned that the Hebrew word for shout is 'ruwa' which means to 'cry out' or 'to give a war-cry of victory'.

Having never really 'shouted' in this way, and to be honest, I was feeling a little weird teaching this, but I knew I had to teach what Psalm 100 was saying. But unfortunately it still remains unpracticed in my life.

Well today I came across a post by Mark Altrogge at his blog The Blazing Center, where he describes in one of his posts, his process of obeying this one command from the Lord. I found it interesting and thought you might as well.

I wonder....do you shout for joy in this way? Is this a normal practice for you in your time alone with God? In your corporate worship with your church?

Mark writes,

"I’m not a particularly emotional person. At football games I’ve never shouted and high-fived. I never danced or moshed or sang along or held up my lighter at concerts. And I was raised in a church in which the most expressive thing we did in worship was exchange the sign of peace with our neighbor - my brother and I would give each other a sideways glance and a smirk, then give each other the peace sign.

When Jesus saved me, I became convinced from preaching and the Word that God desires expressive worship. But for me to raise my hands or shout to God or sing with gusto was like telling me to do an Irish step dance at an opera."

You can read the rest by clicking here!

A Great Reply To The Accuser

From a post by Doug Phillips....which he got from an online article by Carl Trueman

It is well-known that in his writings in table conversation Luther would often refer to visits from the Devil, how the Devil would come to him and whisper in his ear, accusing him of all manner of filthy sin: "Martin, you are a liar, greedy, lecherous, a blasphemer, a hypocrite. You cannot stand before God."

To which Luther would respond: "Well, yes, I am. And, indeed, Satan, you do not know the half of it. I have done much worse than that and if you care to give me your full list, I can no doubt add to it and help make it more complete. But you know what? My Saviour has died for all my sins - those you mention, those I could add and, indeed, those I have committed but am so wicked that I am unaware of having done so. It does not change the fact that Christ has died for all of them; his blood is sufficient; and on the Day of Judgment I shall be exonerated because he has taken all my sins on himself and clothed me in his own perfect righteousness.

Luther knew what temptation looked like; he knew his own wickedness; but he also knew the all-surpassing perfection and grace of Christ.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

God In The Wasteland

In the book Unfashionable, Tullian Tchividjian quotes David Wells and his hope for young evangelicals and the contemporary church:

"I want the evangelical church to be the church. I want it to embody a vibrant spirituality. I want the church to be an alternative to post-modern culture, not a mere echo of it. I want a church that is bold to be different and unafraid to be faithful,...a church that reflects an integral and undiminished confidence in the power of God's Word, a church that can find in the midst of our present cultural breakdown the opportunity to be God's people in a world that has abandoned God. To be the church in this way, it is also going to have to find in the coming generation, leaders who exemplify this hope for its future and who will devote themselves to seeing it realized...They will have to decline to spend themselves in the building of their own private kingdoms and refuse to be intimidated into giving the church less and other than what it needs....To succeed, they will have to be people of large vision, people of courage, people who have learned again what it means to live by the Word of God, and, most importantly, what it means to live before the Holy God of that Word."

This is a good word for us at New Life Church. We should strive to be the church that God desires His church to be and to live that out with a high view of God, regardless if it brings 'church growth'.

His Fullness For Our Emptiness

Here is a wonderful little quote from Stanley Voke on how Jesus satisfies the emptiness in different areas of our lives and by filling those areas up brings with it a revival toward God in us!

“Revival is Jesus bringing the fullness of His life into the emptiness of ours. For every lack in us there is a corresponding grace in Him. He is light for our darkness, life for our death, bread for our hunger, living water for our thirst, rest for our striving, wisdom of God for our foolishness and fellowship for our loneliness.”

~ Stanley Voke, Personal Revival

(HT: Of First Importance)

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

The Blessedness Of Being Forgiven By God

Psalm 32.1-2 & 11

1 How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
Whose sin is covered!

2 How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not
impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit!

11 [Therefore] Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones,
And shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart.

Have you been blessed? Have your transgressions been forgiven? Your sin covered? Have you been freed from the judgement of sin? Are you honest and truthful before God when confessing sin?

Then be glad in the Lord and rejoice and shout for joy, because of the wonderful work of grace in your life. God has lavished you with grace upon graces and mercy upon mercies. And this will always produce a glad heart in Christ. This will produce a joyful spirit in Christ. This is one of the many fruits of the upright in heart. For they will shout for joy, because of the abundant 'blessedness' from God the Father, through His Son Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Hallelujah....Amen!

The War Against Sin

This is a pretty good article and description on the 'war against sin' by Tim Challies. Warning: in this article he uses an extreme example of what sin could do in someone's life, when sin overpowers someone.

The Pacific Campaign of the Second World War has always fascinated me. In many ways, it seemed like a nonsensical series of battles between the United States and Japan. As the Americans sought to curtail Japanese aggression in the East, they fought their way across the Pacific Ocean, moving slowly and deliberately from island to island. Tiny, seemingly insignificant pieces of rock, jutting from the midst of a boundless ocean, hundreds of miles, thousands even, from the nearest mainland, became fierce battlegrounds. Tens of thousands of lives were lost in conquering these tiny little islands. And yet these islands were far more important than their size may have indicated, for they were able to serve as air bases from which strikes could be launched against other islands, and eventually against Japan itself. The insignificant islands were crucial stepping stones across the vast Pacific Ocean.

There are many lessons we can learn from the Pacific Campaign. Some apply to warfare, but others apply far beyond. One of the most important is this: little things lead to big things. This is as true in warfare as it is in the hearts of men and women.

The Spirit constantly challenges me to deal with little sins. As with so many other believers, I often tend to feel that I’m a pretty good guy. I have never committed any of the really “bad” sins. I’ve never killed anyone, I’ve never committed adultery and I’ve never stolen anything big enough for anyone to notice that it’s missing. I pay my taxes, stick near the speed limit, and try not to hate people. But while I have not committed those big sins, I’ve come to realize just how open I have become to the little sins. To use our military metaphor, while the mainland has not yet been conquered, I can see how I’ve gleefully allowed island after island to fall to Satan. Surely concentrated attacks on the mainland cannot be far behind. Surely big sins will follow these little ones.

You can read the rest of the article by clicking here.