A River in the Night
Posted on July 18th, 2008
Wow, time slips by quickly. Has it really been over a month since I wrote anything for this site? Proves my blogging inconsistency. I’ll go for a week or two in a row posting regularly, then stop for an endless time while other things in life take priority.
Like having a child. Still waiting for that, though. Due date’s in three days, so any day now they can come!
Anyway, I am still here, still in ministry, still pondering how to do this thing and live life in a God-honoring way. And still reading books. Just not the ones I have in the sidebar at the moment…that’s the next update!
Hopefully, I’ll post more later. In the meantime, back to whatever it was I was doing before.
Tags: books, Life, parenting
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Psalm 18:1-24
Posted on June 11th, 2008
An awesome, humbling portrait of one man’s experience of God’s salvation. There’s a picture of the sufficiency and security of God for salvation at the beginning, then David expresses his immense need for help. He was at the point of death, with nothing in view to save him from his certain destruction. He then describes God’s passion for desiring to help David, to save him from his troubles. The anger and emotion attributed to God as He leaves heaven to descend to earth and care for the one He loves is inspiring for anyone who has been in the depths and wonders if there is any who loves me, any who cares whether I exist: God cares.
Verses 16-19 describe the actual salvation that David experienced. It is entirely God’s doing. David’s enemy had no hope of stopping God’s plan to save David. And there was nothing that David did of his own that saved him. God plucked him from his misery. God saved. Sounds like Paul’s salvation by grace through faith. As the hymn writer says, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.”
The last set of verses, 20-24, are a struggle for me, though. There David says that God dealth with him according to David’s righteousness, and that he had upheld God’s statutes – there was no fault on him. Where does this righteousness come from? Is it a righteousness credited to David somewhere along the way, as Genesis 15 says that righteousness was credited to Abraham? Is it akin to the righteousness we have by means of the blood of Jesus?
Since finishing Jerry Bridges’ The Pursuit of Holiness, I have been struggling with this – and the Bible passages I’m reading seem to keep bringing it up. What is my role? David could say he was blameless before God. I cannot do the same. Yet, I believe that Christ’s work is sufficient for my sin, that there is nothing that I can do other than bring what Isaiah called “filthy rags.” I feel a calling to live a holier life, and I struggle with the areas I know fall short that I cannot seem to change.
Pray for me. And I’ll be praying for you.
Tags: grace, holiness, Psalms, righteousness, salvation, sin
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Psalm 17
Posted on June 10th, 2008
I have mentioned Powered by 4 before, here.
I’m not up to a daily reading yet, but I have been reading most days of the week, especially when I go int othe office at church. The whole goal of Powerd by 4 is to get people to read the Bible 4 times a week. Of course, the ideal is daily, but it gives us who struggle with maintaining a consistency in Bible reading a starting point. If you find yourself struggling in the discipling of Bible reading, I encourage you to check out their plan. They send out a daily e-mail. It’s great for me, because there is not a day that goes by that I don’t check my e-mail. Why I can be so faithful with checking e-mail and reading blogs but not sitting down for even 10 minutes to read and reflect on Scripture without a gimmick I cannot explain.
Anyway, after reading through Genesis 12-50, the daily readings have moved on to Psalms. We read the first ten Psalms before diving into Genesis, and we picked up with Psalm 11 after finishing the story of Joseph. Today’s reading is Psalm 17.
What a psalm! David is praying to God, and tells God that he knows that God can examine him and find nothing to fault David for. There is absolutely no way that I could say such a thing, and that is painful to admit. Old struggles rear their heads, things that I have fought in the past and am tired of fighting, so I just give in. And I justify them as “normal,” because I see so much of it around me, so many people who condone the things that I know are wrong. I look out and find comfort that I am not alone in my struggle. I find comfort by those who would find value in what in my heart of hearts I know is wrong. And I rely on the blood of Jesus to recover old sins that I succumb to again.
Not quite an example of Christian virtue.
David goes on in the psalm to ask God to save him from his enemies, and David speaks of his enemies as those who have looked to the world for their wealth and riches. They spend all of their energy in the here and now, looking to the next generation to “carry their legacy.” Do we not do the same thing?
David calls us to a higher standard: “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” (Psalm 17:15)
I love the hymn “Face to Face,” where we sing about that day when we shall meet Jesus face to face after this world is through and we are part of the new creation. It will be a glorious day. I should be living for that, not for the good of the next generation. Not dwelling on the pleasures of the here and now that are fleeting. Eternity looms. God awaits.
And I’m too busy succumbing to old passions.
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“The Pursuit of Holiness” by Jerry Bridges
Posted on May 25th, 2008
I’m pretty sure that this book is destined to be one of those that I read and reread over the course of my life. It serves as a good reminder of the depth of sin, the bleakness of it, the need to eradicate it from our lives. Surely such a thing would be obvious to those of us who identify ourselves as Christ followers, who have sworn our lives to serve the One whom we believe died for our sins. And yet it is so easy to forget. I’m not sure why. I just know that, having finished reading this book for the second time (I read it in college for a class), I am newly inspired to pursue a Christ-like life that can be described as pursuing holiness. I want it. And right now, I am even willing to get up at 5AM every day to demonstrate that.
Unfortunately, 11 hours from now will be a real test of that passion, and that’s just sad. That my life is challenged by that, and not defined by that. I am a Christian. A “little Christ.” I am part of His body. A hand or a foot or a little toe or a hair that protects from cold or something – I’m a part of His body. And I don’t live it. I have as my job the training of other members of His body. And I don’t live it.
It takes me a week to read a 158 page book about it, too. Arg.
I definitely need to reread this one once every few years, if not more often.
Tags: books, holiness, Life, sin
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Core Values
Posted on May 16th, 2008
I just finished reading Being Leaders by Aubrey Malphurs. I may reflect more on the book as I process it, but I want to get one particular set down tonight. I have been using another of Malphurs’ books, Advanced Strategic Planning, to help walk our church through the establishing of core values, a mission statement, and a vision statement. In Being Leaders, Malphurs throws out the idea of personal core values. He mentions it in Advanced Strategic Planning, but I never actually thought about setting out my own core values.
One of the appendices in Being Leaders is a personal core values audit. It’s actually the same audit he gives for churches to use in both books. So I took it, and here’s what I discovered about myself, in the order of priority that I established for them:
- Worship and Prayer
- Bible Knowledge
- Evangelism/Lost People/Missions
- Community/Relevance
- Mobilized Laity
The order is significant, as I perceive this is a process that someone would walk through. First, people should worship God and engage Him in prayer. This would be naturally followed by a desire to know Him more, which would happen through Bible study. While I don’t think Bible knowledge is necessarily a prerequisite for evangelism, I believe we become better evangelists the more we know about God, which is why I have it third. As we pursue evangelism, we will likely realize that we need to understand the people we are trying to reach: the people of our community (either where we were born or where we have chosen to live for work, family, or ministry). We will need to understand the community and make our message relevant, that is in the vernacular of the community so that the message can be heard and understood. And I firmly believe that this is a task of everyone in the church, not just the lead pastor, the staff, or the church leaders (be they deacons, elders, Sunday school teachers, or some other unnamed group).
Tags: church, core values, Ministry, philosophy of ministry
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