Pastor Kelly Seely

Allow me to introduce you to a good friend of mine. He is Kelly Seely and he is the pastor of Shelby Forest Baptist Church in Millington, Tennessee. He has recently started to blog and I wanted everyone to meet my good friend.

He is one of the biggest supporters of our church and I'm grateful to God for his friendship and the way that he leads as a pastor. He is a giant physically (very tall...lol) but pastors with a gentle and gracious spirit. He lives what he preaches and one of the things that I appreciate about him the most is that he is constantly knocking on the doors of his community making pastoral visits to those who probably have no pastor. I love that about him...praise God!

I know you'll be encouraged by the way God is working in His life. You can read his blog by clicking here!

What Have You Prayed For Recently? And Has God Been Answering The Way You've Been Praying?

I read this over at Life2gether and thought it was a pretty simple approach to measuring our prayer life. I really like the idea of maintaining focus on what we've been praying for and how much of our aim in prayer has been tuned to the will of God. It helps to look back and remember what we prayed for two-three months ago. Good little post here.

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Recently I was talking to my twin brother on skype and he brought up a good question to diagnose your prayer life:

What are 3 answers to prayer you’ve had this past year?

This is a great question because it makes us think about what we’ve been asking God to do and whether or not we’ve remembered what He has done. No doubt, prayer is more than just getting an “answer” from God, but sometimes we need to remember to ask him things like a little child believing that he will answer. How does a child ask? Here’s what Paul Miller says in his book, A Praying Life:

•What do they ask for? Everything and anything.
•How often do children ask? Repeatedly.
•How do children ask? Without guile. They just say what’s on their minds.

May we pray like a child this year believing that God can do more than we could ask or think!

(HT: Life2gether)

Introducing Gene Veith

Just added a new blogger to the list...Gene Veith. I was first introduced to Veith around 1997-98 in a Faith & Culture class while at Criswell College in Dallas, Texas. It has been many years since I read his book Postmodern Times, but God really used Veith and his writings to introduce me to the way culture changes, works, and counters Christianity. Therefore giving Christians an understanding in order to counter the culture with the gospel.

I wasn't aware of his blog until this morning, so I'm looking forward to reading his intriguing thoughts on Christianity and culture each day.

Enjoy.

A Concise New Year's Aim...

He must increase, but I must decrease. ~ John 3.30

10 Questions To Ask In The New Year...

I'm a big proponent of reexamining, rechecking, reflecting...just all the "re's" I guess...at the end of one year and the beginning of another.

It's a perfect time to really look back and assess our spiritual strengths and spiritual weaknesses (the good, the bad and the ugly). It's a perfect time b/c it seems that our culture/our world still moves a little slower than normal coming off the Christmas holidays and it allows us a chance to take a spiritual breath and to spiritually think.

So here's some help to that end...

Don Whitney:

The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to stop, look up, and get our bearings. To that end, here are some questions to ask prayerfully in the presence of God.

1.What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?

2.What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?

3.What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?

4.In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?

5.What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?

6.What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?

7.For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?

8.What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?

9.What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?

10.What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

Please pray through these by yourself and then make "yourself available" to sit down with your wife/husband and talk and pray through these together. It would make for great table talk during date night. As a matter of fact Stephanie and I will be doing just that this Friday, so we will be talking through these together.

Whitney writes:

The value of many of these questions is not in their profundity, but in the simple fact that they bring an issue or commitment into focus. For example, just by articulating which person you most want to encourage this year is more likely to help you remember to encourage that person than if you hadn’t considered the question.

You can read the full (31 Questions) list here.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Check This Freak Out!

This is bold and beautiful to watch! It all goes down about 3:33 into the video. Is He this holy in Eads?

The Mind Of A Missionary

Young missionaries, when warned they could die in this hostile place, said: "We died before we came here." Colossians 3:3

(HT:John Piper/Twitter)

Love It...Bringin' It From Dockers!

Talking about 'manning up'.

Someone has had enough of the Political Correctness in this country at Dockers, and it's about time!

Check out this man-ifesto from Dockers on their store website.....I'm lovin' it!

What is the most effective way for parents to influence their children?

Gary Thomas gives a great answer to a great question. As parents we should be asking similar questions like this often.

You can click Here to watch Gary's answer in under 2 minutes.

Gospel Centered Leadership

Here is a good reminder from Tullian Tchividjian of what should be the aim of my life as a Christian/pastor/shepherd/leader. I hope this is true of my life now and will always be true.

I hope it reminds you of your own repentance and faith.


In the June issue of Tabletalk my friend Scotty Smith wrote an article to young Christian leaders exhorting them to be gospel-centered in their various roles (for whatever reason I just saw it and read it today). Reflecting on mistakes he’s made and lessons he’s learned over a 30 year span of fruitful ministry, he outlines his exhortation under three headings:

1.Gospel astonishment versus theological cockiness
2.Chief repenter versus former sinner
3.Preaching Christ to yourself versus preaching yourself

Scotty’s timely cry for “an emerging generation of leaders who will live and lead as genuinely as [the apostle]Paul” is painfully helpful, not only for young Christian leaders but for all Christian’s everywhere.

You can read the whole thing here. Please do!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Over the last couple of months I've been extremely busy. I have wanted to blog, but literally haven't had the time to think through things enough to make a coherent thought. I've missed it greatly.

Due to the Thanksgiving holidays I have taken this week off and will be enjoying some time with family down in Alabama. I'm anticipating my schedule opening up a bit over the next several weeks, so Lord willing I will put some much needed time back into blogging.

Please pray for our family as we will be traveling and for us to enjoy one another's fellowship!

I would love to hear how you are spending your Thanksgiving and any sweet family traditions that you like to celebrate.

You Cannot Gather Together...

Pray for our brothers and sisters in Vietnam. This video was taken while one little church was gathering together to worship Christ. They are being raided by the authorities of the town while meeting.

What would you do NLC? How would you respond?




(HT: John Piper)

Legalism and Children

Glorify God By Working Out Your Salvation In Christ

“We glorify God by working out our own salvation. God has twisted together his glory and our good. What an encouragement is this to the service of God, to think, while I am hearing and praying, I am glorifying God; while I am furthering my own glory in heaven, I am increasing God’s glory.

Would it not be an encouragement to a subject, to hear his prince say to him, You will honour and please me very much, if you will go to yonder mine of gold, and dig as much gold for yourself as you can carry away? So, for God to say, Go to the ordinances, get as much grace as you can, dig out as much salvation as you can; and the more happiness you have, the more I shall count myself glorified.”

—Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity

(HT: OfFirstImportance)

My Father's Daughter

I encourage each of you to take a moment and read up on my wife Stephanie's new blog. She has called it My Father's Daughter.

It is her spiritual effort to encourage, minister, and lead others to lean on Christ, who are facing the realization that they have been Donor Conceived.

I love my wife and I knew that it was just a matter of time before she picked up this crisis in her own life and turned it into a way to help people see the beauty and worth of Jesus Christ through it all.

Please pray for her b/c she longs for her blog to be a means of God's grace to so many people. Something that is very encouraging is....within the first few hours of her blog going public she already had a good number of hits from all over the world.

These precious people are hurting and they need to turn to Jesus. If you happen to know anyone who is wrestling with this in their lives, please encourage them to contact Stephanie.

Praise God for His comfort to comfort others!

Next Time You Fulfill A Conditional Promise In Scripture...

Below is a pretty good article from John Piper on reading the scriptures. It addresses a God-centered thinking when reading the Bible and applying the Bible. I was encouraged as Piper reminded me that even when fulfilling the conditional promises in Scripture, it is the power of God working in me to fulfill them.

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One of the Most Important Principles in Reading the Bible

Sometimes readers of the Bible see the conditions that God lays down for his blessing and they conclude from these conditions that our action is first and decisive, then God responds to bless us.

That is not right.

There are indeed real conditions that God often commands. We must meet them for the promised blessing to come. But that does not mean that we are left to ourselves to meet the conditions or that our action is first and decisive.

Here is one example to show what I mean.

In Jeremiah 29:13 God says to the exiles in Babylon, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” So there is a condition: When you seek me with all your heart, then you will find me. So we must seek the Lord. That is the condition of finding him.

True.

But does that mean that we are left to ourselves to seek the Lord? Does it mean that our action of seeking him is first and decisive? Does it mean that God only acts after our seeking?

No.

Listen to what God says in Jeremiah 24:7 to those same exiles in Babylon: “I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.”

So the people will meet the condition of returning to God with their whole heart. God will respond by being their God in the fullest blessing. But the reason they returned with their whole heart is that God gave them a heart to know him. His action was first and decisive.

So now connect that with Jeremiah 29:13. The condition there was that they seek the Lord with their whole heart. Then God will be found by them. But now we see that the promise in Jeremiah 24:7 is that God himself will give them such a heart so that they will return to him with their whole heart.

This is one of the most basic things people need to see about the Bible. It is full of conditions we must meet for God’s blessings. But God does not leave us to meet them on our own. The first and decisive work before and in our willing is God’s prior grace. Without this insight, hundreds of conditional statements in the Bible will lead us astray.

Let this be the key to all Biblical conditions and commands: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12-13). Yes, we work. But our work is not first or decisive. God’s is. “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

(HT: Desiring God)

In & Out Grace

“God’s grace is the driving force of all change. . . . God’s grace has both an inward and an outward movement that mirror each other.

Internally, the grace of God moves me to see my sin, respond in repentance and faith, and then experience the joy of transformation.

Externally, the grace of God moves me to see opportunities for love and service, respond in repentance and faith, and experience joy as I see God work through me.”

~ Bob Thune and Will Walker, The Gospel Centered-Life

(HT: Of First Importance)

Satisfied?

“Whoever is not satisfied with Christ alone, strives after something beyond absolute perfection.”

~ John Calvin

(HT: Of First Importance)

God's Mercy On Par With My Hope?

Let Thy lovingkindness, O Lord, be upon us, According as we have hoped in Thee. ~ Psalm 33.22

I've never prayed like this before....and I've never sung a song like this before.

I've never prayed that God's mercy would be shown to me on the same level as I hope in Him. It seems at first that this would be a frightening prayer to pray. The reason for this is because I don't see myself hoping in God on the same level that I need His mercy/His lovingkindness.

So I believe this verse of scripture should pierce anyone who reads it with a meditative mind and with a heart that desires sanctification.

Albert Barnes expounds on the verse when he writes,

"The true principle, therefore, upon which God is willing to bestow His favors, and which will be the rule that He will observe, is, that if people desire much, they will obtain much; that if they have big expectations, they will not be disappointed; and that God is willing to bestow His mercies upon His people and upon the world to the utmost of their desires and hopes. Compare Psalm 81:10, "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." Psalm 37:4, "delight thyself in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thy heart."

So how intense and fervent, then, should be the prayers and the petitions of the people of God! How earnest the supplications of sinners that God would have mercy on them!"

One Of The Best Quotes That I've Read Recently

I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only that I see it, but by it I see everything else.

~ CS Lewis

(HT: Piper on Twitter)