From the site: “I am Second is a movement where signficance in life is shared.”
The website features a collection of videos featuring well-known people, like former US Presidential Candidate Muck Huckabee, Brian Welch from Korn and The Biggest Loser’s Michelle Aguilar, but also regular people from the cities and suburbs of the USA. These people have struggled with a variety of issues; abuse, affluence, addiction, trauma, racism, war and more.
In extremely well-produced video clips, (darkened room, sitting on a couch, a post-modern piece to camera) they share their struggles, their disappointments and ultimately, the hope found in Jesus as he met them in the various situations of their lives.
Well worth a visit, and also great to recommend to friends struggling with all kinds of issues.
If you’re interested in church planting, you’re quite possibly aware that the Church Planting Center at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York has launched a blog.
The RCPC Blog, currently labelled as “beta,” is home to reflections from Tim Keller, Scott Sauls and others from the Redeemer staff team as well as members of their church planting network.
In one of Keller’s first blog posts, maybe even his first, he brings John Frame’s tri-perspectivalism to bear as a tool for analysing the phenomenon that is Willow Creek Church. (Incidentally, I have Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, sitting on my desk which I’ve started reading about 5 times and never managed to quite get through it!) It’s an interesting read, although I think that viewing tri-perspectivalism as the silver bullet with which to harmonise the various threads of broad evangelicalism is probably misguided. That said, I don’t think Keller is saying it is the silver bullet, but others around the blogosphere seem to.
My invitation to World Vision’s “An evening with Brian McLaren” arrived in the post today. The nicely recycled-looking brochure didn’t do anything to alleviate my surprise at the partnership between this organisation (of which I happen to be a former employee) and McLaren, the “speaker, thinker and activist.” I think I was at least expecting some acknowledgment of his position on the fringe of Christian orthodoxy, but none was made.
It is helpful to hear from people from outside our own “stable.” We appreciate it when people are well-read and able to see past our own cultural blind-spots. And as someone preparing to plant a church and seeking to engage the community around me with the gospel of Jesus, the opportunity to hear from one of the leaders of the Emerging/Emergent Movement definitely has some appeal. As a pastor though, I believe there are good reasons for me to politely decline the invitation. It’s my privilege to spend my time with people who wrestle daily with all sorts of issues, including many which are staple fare in McLaren’s writing and speaking.
A newspaper columnist wrote:
“The average church goer takes a few hours out of the week to experience the sacred … But the rest of the time, he is immersed in a society that no longer acknowledges God as an omniscient and omnipotent force to be loved and worshipped… Today we are too sophisticated for God. We can stand on our own; we are prepared and ready to choose and define our own existence.”
As challenging as these words are, they do make a very real point. We do live in a society that has, in its own estimation, ‘outgrown God’. [We see the increasingly stark consequences of a ‘God-less’ society]. Hebrews addressed ‘exiles and strangers’ (Heb. 11v13), those who live by faith in the promises of God, walking ‘by faith and not by sight’ (2 Cor 5v7). How do you feed your faith in a barren world?
This week as a staff team we were reading a small chapter from Charles Bridges’ book, The Christian Ministry, on “The Fear of Man”. Bridges speaks of the straightforward manner in which we should speak, and how our fear often keeps our mouths closed, or, causes us to disguise our words because of our fear of being thought ill of.
Bridges writes, “The offensive truth must be smoothed, disguised and intermixed, until it is attenuated into an insipid, pointless, and inoperative statement”.
Is our tendency to back off and not speak, or speak in such a way as to mute our words, when our conscience is telling us that the godly course is to ‘speak the truth in love’.
In answer, Bridges encourages a ‘holy but humble indifference to all consequences’, entrusting their response to the Lord. Will we pray that God will make us faithful?
“The heir of heaven serves his Lord to simply out of gratitude; he has no salvation to gain, no heaven to lose;… Now, out of love to the God who chose him, and who gave so great a prize for his redemption, he desires to lay out himself entirely to his Master’s service. Oh, you who are seeking salvation by the works of the law, what a miserable life yours must be!… You have it that if you diligently persevere in obedience, you may perhaps obtain eternal life, though, alas! none of you dare to pretend that you have attained it. You toil and toil and toil, but you never get that for which you toil after, and you never will, for, ‘by the works of the law there shall no flesh living be justified’…. The child of God works not for life, but from life; he does not work to be saved, he works because he is saved.” C.H.Spurgeon
Nobody likes having their will crossed. From an early age we learn to react with anger and outrage when someone dares to impose upon us, to prevent us achieving our aims, to deprive us of what we perceive to be our right to self-determination. But this makes for a clash of wills for the Christian because the Christian lives not according to their own word, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
This is why the foundation of the Christian life is repentance and faith and this is why each and every day of discipleship with Jesus involves dying to ourselves and living to him. As Christians, we should be able to see the fruit of God “crossing our will” in the changes that he has made in us to make us more Like Christ. Can you?
The Bible should be at the centre of our life. Most of us will say that this is the case. We read it, we sing it, we study it, we hear it taught. The Bible is the foundation of our life in God – but, is it? Do we have a thirst to know God’s will that we might do it? Are we eager to know God through his Word? A 19th century Pastor, Octavius Winslow, writes,
When a professing Christian can read his Bible with no spiritual taste, or when he searches it, not with a sincere desire to know the mind of the Spirit in order to [walk] a holy and obedient walk, but with a merely curious aim, it is a sure evidence that his soul is making but a retrograde movement in real spirituality. Nothing perhaps more strongly indicates the tone of a believer’s spirituality, than the light in which the Scriptures are regarded by him.
What is it that we value the most? We live in a world that puts a value on almost everything in our life, including our life! Donald Whitney challenges us…
“Perhaps you would think of something like the Hope Diamond, the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s sculpture of David…yet offer any of these to an emaciated man who is hours from dying of thirst and hunger, the relative value of the world’s greatest treasures drops to nothing. Though inexpensive and often taken for granted, ultimately it is the basics of life – things such as food and water – that are most precious. For without them, there is no life at all. Therefore, I submit that the single most valuable item on earth is the Bible.”
What is it that we value the most?
Calvin’s fourth rule on prayer – “We pray in confident hope”. Calvin rightly comments,
“Cast down and overcome by true humility, we should be nonetheless encouraged to pray by a sure hope that our prayer will answered”
Prayer is essentially linked to faith, and true faith is founded on the sure character of the one in whom we have that faith, and not some abstract quantity or quality of ours. As we come to God in prayer, it is helpful to recall the cross of His Son. We know we come as sinners, but as forgiven sinners – sinners who are now children. Meditate on Paul’s encouragement in Romans 8.32 – “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” Let us pray!
Calvin’s third rule on prayer – “We yield all confidence in ourselves and humbly plead for pardon”.
Simply, we are to ‘depend on no assurance whatever but this alone: that, reckoning [our]selves to be of God, [we] do not despair that he will take care of [us].”
We must come, knowing that we deserve nothing but judgment and condemnation, but trusting that Jesus Christ took all we deserved on the Cross. He bought us by his blood and we are his – nothing can snatch us from his hands. We can have confidence in prayer, we can have assurance of God’s love for us, we can know that our Father hear our requests – but only on the basis of Christ’s death for us and never on the basis of our own righteousness – remember that “on Christ the solid rock we stand, all else is sinking sand”.
I love Facebook.
I love Twitter.
I love Facebook and Twitter on my iPhone no matter where I am in the world (almost)!
But I’m a little worried. To tell you the truth, I’m a lot worried. I’m worried about what’s going to happen to a whole generation of young people when Facebook catches up with them. If you’re under 20, you’re a member of the iGeneration, who along with us GenXers, could also be called the Facebook Generation.
If you use Facebook, I wonder how much thought you’ve given to what impact the information you post on your profile and on other people’s walls will have on you later in life. Remember last week when Facebook asked you “What’s on your mind?” and you wrote that funny comment (or so it seemed at the time)? Just because that comment has slipped off the bottom of your wall, doesn’t mean that it’s gone forever. In fact, it almost certainly hasn’t. Think also of your comments on other people’s walls or photos; even if you close your Facebook account and formally request Facebook to delete your page, these comments will remain, since they are information that you have “shared with third parties.”
There are some books that just keep popping up around the place. Soul-Winning Made Easy by C S Lovett, published in 1959, is one of them. Every few months I see another reference to it, someone selling it (eBay has multiple copies currently listed), or someone describing it in words like these “This book represents everything that was wrong with much of the evangelism training of years gone by”!
Tim Challies, over at Challies Dot Com, has posted some amusing illustrations, two of which are linked at right.
Here’s a section from page 78.
You have just said to your prospect . . . “Jesus is waiting to come into your heart. Will you open the door? Will you let Him come in?” He makes no reply. Great forces are at work inside him. His soul is a battlefield. The Holy Spirit and Satan want his decision. You wish you could jump into his heart and help him, but you can’t. So you do the one thing you can do . . . press him to make a decision . . . one way or the other.
Once upon a time I subscribed to the New York Times. I don’t any more. I decided I couldn’t justify the getting the Paper of Record posted to me every day! I still use the website a lot and noticed that Ross Douthat has now joined the NY Times team as a contributor. Douthat is the film critic for the National Review and joined The Gray Lady only last month.
It will be interesting to see how his view on American Life is received by the Times’ readership. Douthat’s latest opinion piece Dan Brown’s America pokes some holes in the current fascination with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons (along with the slew of copy cat pseudo-historical-religious-conspiracy-revisionist-thrillers those works have inspired).
His sharp assessment of Dan Brown’s approach to novel writing is clear:
“AUSTRALIA is marching towards recession while the growth rate is shrinking to a “remarkable” degree, a leading study has found.” [“Australia headed for ‘remarkable’ recession, index shows“, The Australian, April 15.]
What is a Christian response to such a comment? Trust in God not money? Do not be afraid, God is in control? Both of these sentiments are expressed by the Lord Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and so are true beyond doubt.
But, is there more that needs to be said? Have we ever stopped to consider the role that money and the stuff it buys for us plays in our lives? Perhaps for the Christian, the G.F.C. should serve as an check on the heart more than the wallet? Do we need to bring our hearts with our budgets before the Lord and ask whether we honestly seek his kingdom and his righteousness first? Have you ever considered that a Christian response to recession could be that you become more generous with the way we give? Something to ponder…
In one of Keller’s first blog posts, maybe even his first, he brings John Frame’s tri-perspectivalism to bear as a tool for analysing the phenomenon that is Willow Creek Church. (Incidentally, I have Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, sitting on my desk which I’ve started reading about 5 times and never managed to quite get through it!) It’s an interesting read, although I think that viewing tri-perspectivalism as the silver bullet with which to harmonise the various threads of broad evangelicalism is probably misguided. That said, I don’t think Keller is saying it is the silver bullet, but others around the blogosphere seem to.