Minister, Do Your Soul a Favor...

(I know the last sermon I posted from SBTS chapel started playing automatically. Not this time. I fixed the problem.)



...and listen to this sermon.

Anyone who is currently in ministry or is thinking about future ministry must give heed. Please.


Holla.
EP

I Highly Recommend This Sermon...

Set aside some time, get your Bible, free yourself from distraction and let this sermon get deep into your heart. Seriously. When one walks away literally scared of sin after a sermon, you know that the preacher has done his job.




BTW, this is my preaching professor.

Peace.
EP

For All You Pet Lovers...

SNL has done it again. Put things into perspective, that is.




I know.

Oh, and remember this?

Peace.
Plev

The Gospel in Discipleship and Spiritual Growth...

"To say that we need the gospel both to get started and to continue in the Christian life can be deceptive though it is absolutely true. The problem is when the gospel is viewed only as how we start the Christian life, for then the only way to continue is law. Yet the perspective consistently set out in the New Testament is that we need the gospel to grow. It has been wisely said that sanctification is justification in action. Another view on this is that those renowned men and women of faith that we all look up to usually have a greater sense of their unworthiness and of the greatness of God's grace. The greater our sense of being forgiven and justified sinners, the greater will be the likelihood that others will see in us the character of Christ. It is difficult to see why Christians, almost universally, recognize the benefits of regularly celebrating the Lord's Supper, which is a visible proclamation of the gospel, if the gospel were not the means of growth."

Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, 96.

Yup.
Peace.
Plev

2 In 1 Day...

Okay, this is my second post today, but I had to. I hate infomercials, period; and in my opinion, the only direction is up. The only way infomercials can be redeemed is to make fun of them, like this one:





Now that's a good infomercial.

Peace.

Mahaney Link Added...

FYI, I just added a link to some C.J. Mahaney sermon videos over on my "Recommended Thoughts" list. It would do your soul well to peep 'em.







Peace. Hook 'Em.
Plev

The Jam...

Sojourn Music "Absent From Flesh" Live 06.05.09 from chuck heeke on Vimeo.

Nuff said.

I know this is old news, but see the release party highlights from Sojourn's Over the Grave, Issac Watts vol. I, here.

EP

Dear Everyone:

Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, read this.

Peace.
Plev

Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churchse

Whenever I finish encountering Dr. Russell Moore, whether it's via a sermon, a lecture, or a book, I most always walk away with only one word in mind: gifted.

Adopted for Life (AFL) was one of the best books I read this summer! Here are a few reasons why:

1) I was adopted. AFL gave me a deeper appreciation for my unique story, both biologically and spiritually. The former led to the latter, but not in just a trite "God is sovereign" kind of way. Every detail of my life was re-given special significance, especially the many rebellious years that I gave my parents tremendous heartache. Most of all, I am able to look at my salvation with a deeper sense of gratitude as I reflect on the endless parallels between the unconditional love shown to me by my parents and that shown to me by God through Christ.

2) I was theologically helped to see that adoption is not mere charity, it's spiritual warfare.

3) This book will expose your heart. Dr. Moore knows the heart and is able to speak about things like adoption paper-work in a way that uncovers heart idolatry. Yes, adoption, as merciful as it is, is still subject to human depravity and can be pursued in unbelief.

4) Dr. Moore is honest about the reality of the challenges of adoption--and they are numerous!

-Should you adopt domestically or internationally?
-Should you still have children even if we want to adopt?
-Should you change the child's name once they come home?
-Is it wise to adopt in the midst of economic hardship?
-How should Christian couples respond when given the option to adopt a healthy baby or one with physical defects?
-Should you allow the child to meet his or her mother later in life?
-What happens if the biological mother decides to renege at the last moment?

All of these questions and more are counseled and handled with great pastoral insight. All you biblical counselors out there will want to add this to your library, quick!

5) He shows that churches need to strive to create a culture that affirms adoption, whether that involves adopting or supporting those who want to adopt. It's not good enough just to affirm adoption in some distant, abstract way, thinking it's good for somebody out there. Pastors must seek to directly charge their congregations to see the biblical link between spiritual adoption and earthly adoption.

I recommend this book to everyone.

I leave you with a quote or two:

On How Adoption is a Christian Apologetic to the Watching World:

"Perhaps what our churches need most of all in our defense of the faith against Darwinian despair is not more resources on how the fossil record fits with the book of Genesis and not more arguments on how molecular structures show evidence of design. Perhaps the most practical way your congregation can show Darwinism to be wrong is to showcase families for whom love is more than gene protection" (80).

On Creating a Church Culture of Adoption:

"Churches that mimic (even if by default, with silence) the culture's view that life is about possessions or sentimental pop-music romance or self-advancement simply aren't going to produce men and women committed to giving up these things for the cause of global evangelism ad missions. Faithful Christian congregations must be distinct from the blob of spirituality of contemporary Western civilization. And what is more countercultural than the embrace of children as gifts from a good Lord? We live in an era when a mom with five children receives snide comments, even from her children's pediatrician. . . . But if people in our churches learn not to grumble at the blessing of minivans filled with children--some of whom don't look anything alike--they're going to learn not to grumble at the blessing of a congregation filling with new people, some of whom don't look anything alike. If our churches learn to rejoice in newness of life in the church nursery, the'll more easily rejoice at newness of life in the church baptistry, and vice versa" (77).

On Adopting to Manipulate God:

"If you're thinking about adoption as a way of bargaining with God, as though he'll repay you for your adoption with "kid's of my own" later, then put adoption aside. Your potential children need parents--not to be a pawn in someone's attempt to manipulate the Almighty" (101).



This book is literally filled with quotable insight. Almost every page in mine has something underlined or a marginal note. I gave you only three in hopes that you will just go and read all of it.

There you are. Go get you one today.
Thoughts? Comments?
Plev

Brief Words on The Myth of a Christian Religion

A few weeks ago I finished Greg Boyd's The Myth of a Christian Religion: Losing Your Religion for the Beauty of a Revolution (MCR). I was interested in reading this book because last summer or so I read Boyd's The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church (MCN). At the time, I found MCN to be quite insightful and a helpful guide for thinking through the issues surrounding America's Christian heritage. Boyd's thesis in MCN was to argue that, though America may be influenced by vague biblical principles, our nation is no more Christian than the next; God is no more "on our side," than He is any other nation. Most of all, Boyd argues that in most ways the Kingdom of God is diametrically opposed to the kingdom(s) of this world, including America. Overall, MCN seemed to directly answer the a lot of the historical questions I had been asking about America and it's "Christian roots," while at the same time making the bold (biblical) assertions that I found many were unwilling to make. Needless to say, when I saw Boyd's sequel in the bookstore, I impulsively grabbed it and walked straight to the check out.

MCR is a continuation of the dicscussion that was had in MCN. The chief difference is that MCN is a more practical outworkings of what was argued in his first book. Arguing from a Kingdom theology (one that is, by the way, nuanced to harmonize with his egalitarianism, open theism, "non-violent activism," and his Christus Victor atonement theory, etc.), he asserts that faithful Christians will display a lifestyle that is radically counter-cultural, even towards the most cherished values of American culture. He strongly affirms that earnest Christ-followers will live in revolt against the sinful structures of our world in a way that reveals we belong to a kingdom that is "not of this world."

He's right.

The kingdom of God changes everything. Even though I would not attend Boyd's church, and even though he would argue the Kingdom is opposed to mine (according to Boyd you should "prayerfully consider" leaving a complementarian congregation [see p. 199]), I like the way he puts hands and feet on kingdom living. For instance, how should kingdom people revolt against judgmentalism, individualism, social oppression, racism, the abuse of creation, or secularism? Boyd has some great suggestions!!

If you would be willing to hear him out and do the hard work of respecting his theological differences, I would encourage you to own this book. He is an activist, so he tends to be very passionate which sometimes leads to oversimplifying passages of Scripture (like passages about how Jesus didn't resist the cross because he believed non-violence was the best way to win people's hearts). But, he uncovered a lot of greed, racism, idolatry, judgmentalism, and selfishness that was hidden in my own heart. Though I think you don't have to read Boyd's book to be aware of these things, reading this particular book would expose you to a unique voice that will at least stir up passion for the areas that Christians often (willingly) neglect.

With that, I leave you with some quotes:

On Idolatry:

"The middle-age man who leaves his wife for a younger woman is operating out of an unconscious belief that his worth is linked to feeling young and sexually attractive--at least more so than it is to remaining faithful to his marriage vows. The woman who spends all her money on cosmetic surgery is operating out of this same belief, as is the person who compulsively engages in indiscriminant sexual activity. . . . There are a million, perfectly valid, social and psychological explanations [for this]. Despite the fact that few are aware of it, however, the most fundamental explanation is tha we're all trying to feel fully alive. Everybody's got a hungry heart" (38).

On Religion:

"While there are wonderful examples of Kingdom communities who attract, embrace, and transform those who are most judged and marginalized by society and religion today, on the whole today's prostitutes and tax collectors steer as far away from Christians as they did the Pharisees in the first century" (64).

On Individualism:

"This tendency towards individualism has been greatly intensified by the hedonistic consumer culture we've created over the last century. We tend to measure our worth by what we are able to purchase. This in turn conditions us to make striving after things--pursuing "the American dream"--a higher priority than cultivating deep, committed relationships. Meaningful relationships take time, and that is something people indoctrinated into the consumer mindset never feel like they have" (70-71).

On Racism:

"[Many] white people honestly don't see racial reconciliation as that big of an issue. They seem to think it's a problem America has largely overcome. Of course they know about racist groups like the [KKK] or the Aryan Nation, and they're naturally opposed to them. And once in a while they hear about the overtly racist behavior of a police officer . . . and they object to this. The trouble is, this is all that many white people think racism amounts to. The truth is, racism in America is far more subtle and sinister than this. America was conquered by white Europeans, was structured by and for white Europeans, and it continues to privilage white Europeans. Racism has been woven into the very fabric of our culture from the start. . . . Despite the fact that we have a black president, this racism continues today, as most non-whites will testify. It's just that it's no longer obvious to most whites" (118).

On the Abuse of Creation:

"I'd like to suggest that, from a Kingdom perspective, it shouldn't matter a bit of difference why the earth is warming up. Nor should it make a bit of difference if it suddenly starts cooling down. For we as Kingdom people are called to care for the earth and the animal kingdom simply because this is part of what it means to be faithful to the reign of God" (142).

"A good percentage of deforestation could be eliminated by relatively minor lifestyle changes by people in the Western hemisphere who benefit from this deforestation the most. We simply lack the will" (149).

"But, in my opinion, the single most telling piece of evidence that shows how poorly we're manifesting our call to care for animals is the recent creation of factory farms. Over the last century we have, to a large degree, reduced farm animals to commercialized commodities whose only value is found in how efficiently we can produce and slaughter them for profit. Consequently, more than 26 billion animals each year are forced to live in miserable, overcrowded warehouses, where there is absolutely nothing natural about their existence and where they are subjected to barbaric, painful, industrial procedures. This is a far cry from what God meant when he told us to exercise "dominion"" (150).

"This means we must think critically about things like energy we consume, the water we use and the waste we throw away. It means we must be informed about the effects of our lifestyle choices--and eating choices--have on the earth and on animals" (151).


There you have it. Thoughts? Comments?
Peace.
P

Aaaaaahgh...

There is a part of me that takes intrest in journalism. I've thought about writing for magazines, journals, or even doing some investigative reporting. But, after seeing this vid, I recieved a prophetic glimpse of what I would be like, and ultimately why I would not succeed...



Thanks SNL for confirming that I am called to be a pastor instead.

Peace.

Why We Love the Church

I just finished Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion.


Go on over to the BB for a word or two about this great book.


Peace.