For What it’s Worth…

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:

Hi there – I thought that again the more silent partner should speak…

I would like to recommend two books that have helped me in recent times.  

The first is Atheism Remix by Albert Mohler Jnr.  Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the US of A and is a theologian who likes to mix it with issues raised by the intersection and clash of Bible and culture.  In this little book [only a bit more than 100 pages, and small ones at that] Mohler goes head to head with the New Atheists – guys like Richard Dawkins [The God Delusion] and Christopher Hitchens.  He looks at the emergence of the New Atheists and why they are different [and more of a threat] to the older variety.  He looks at their arguments and two notable critiques of their ideas.  This is a very helpful little book as it lays out the debate in a simple, understandable manner.  Recommended for those rub shoulders with those who have read [or seen - "The Root of All Evil" showed as a documentary] Dawkin’s especially.

If you’re learning our memory verses with us, you might like to use the computer desktop images we’re producing to help keep the Bible passages in front of you
Our first passage is Philippians 4:8.  Download the desktop image for your computer below.

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I thought that as Clayton’s name was all over this blog and it claimed to be from “two guys”, I, the silent partner, had better speak up.

I have been working on “lust” this week – to be precise, before I get buried under your pastoral concern, I have been working on what Jesus says about it [Matthew 5.27-30] and why it is NOT GOOD.  Funny enough, the Basement group last night looked at the same passage last night.

What struck me this week was that sin can kill ‘Christians’.

Many of us love the great doctrines of grace, atonement,  predestination – and we rest our assurance on the work of Christ for us alone.  I stand ONLY on what Jesus did and NEVER on what I do.  But Jesus tells us that unless we are radical [in the sense of getting to the root] in dealing with our sin our eternal fate may be a bit hotter than we anticipate.  Does Jesus expect perfection – well [the good Anglican answer] yes and no.  Yes – “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”.  No – this is a goal we will not reach this side of judgement.  BUT IT MUST BE OUR GOAL

Tomorrow night at 5 PM Church I’ll be baptising Jemima, one of our youngest 5 PMers!
What exactly is it that we’ll be doing?

At the very end of Matthew’s gospel, we read the Jesus’ words “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:17 – 20) There are approximately 100 uses of the group of “baptism” words in the New Testament. What do we make of this somewhat strange little process?

Baptism is part of being a disciple of Jesus.
Don Carson says of Jesus’ words in Matthew 28, “the New Testament can scarcely conceive of a disciple who is not baptised or who does not receive instruction.” Wearing a fire-proof suit and a helmet won’t make me a racing driver, but if I’m a racing driver, I’ll wear a fire-proof suit and a helmet. That is to say, while someone isn’t made a disciple of Jesus simply by teaching them what Jesus has said and baptising them, someone who is a disciple of Jesus will be taught about Jesus and baptised.