Man Cold

I am feeling a bit under the weather today. Sore throat, runny nose, headache,… must be a man cold!

Tunes for Tuesday

The Awe Factor

Our God is an Awesome God!

The Day Before

Whether you like him or not, imonk, has written an article worth sharing with everyone you know!  Read it here or over at his blog.

UPDATE: We are still praying for Gary and his family. He’s still fighting. Your prayers are welcome.

The news story is strange and tragic. Three college softball players go for a night time drive in the country. On an unfamiliar road, they take a wrong turn and drive into a pond….and drown. There was a day before. A day with no thought of drowning. A day with family and friends. Perhaps with no thought of eternity, God or heaven. There was a day when every assumption was that tomorrow would be like today.

 My friend Gary has been the night dean at our school for more than 20 years. His wife has been in poor health, but he has been a workhorse of health. He’s walked miles every day, eaten a vegetarian diet and always kept the rest of us lifted up with his smile and constant focus on the joy he took in his salvation. Two weeks ago, the doctor turned to him and said leukemia. Today he stands on the crumbling edge of this earthly shadow, looking at the next world, fighting for his life with all that medicine and prayer can offer. Our prayers for him as a school community have been continuous, because we never thought there would be such a day.

There was a day before he heard “leukemia.” A day of work, chores, bills, hopes of seeing a grandchild, prayers for students, love for Suzi. Not a thought that the journey of life contained such a surprising turn for him. And on that day, Gary was full of faith, full of a servant’s heart, ready for many more days or ready for this to be last one before whatever was around the corner. We all live the days before. We are living them now.

There was a day before 9-11. There was a day before your child told you she was pregnant. There was a day before your wife said she’d had enough. There was a day before your employer said “lay offs.”

We are living our days before. We are living them now.

 Some of us are doing, for the last time, what we think we will be doing twenty years from now.

Some of us are on the verge of a much shorter life, or a very different life, or a life turned upside down.

Some of us are preaching our last sermon, making love for the last time, saying “I love you” to our children for the last time in our own home.

Some of us are spending our last day without the knowledge of eternal judgment and the reality of God. We are promising tomorrow will be different and tomorrow is not going to give us the chance, because God has a different tomorrow entirely on our schedule. We just don’t know it today. Who am I on this day before I am compelled to be someone else? What am I living for? How am I living out the deepest expression of who I am and what I believe?

My life is an accumulation of days lived out of what I believe is true every day. Gary lived every day with the story of Jesus nearby and the joy of the Lord a ready word to share. When the day came that “leukemia” was the word he had to hear, he was already living a day resting in the victory of Jesus. That word, above all earthly powers, cannot be taken away. It speaks louder and more certainly the more the surprising words of providence and tragedy shout their unexpected turns into our ears.

Live each day as the day that all of the Gospel is true. Live this day and be glad in it. Live this day as the day of laying down sin and taking up the glad and good forgiveness of Jesus. Live this day determined to be useful and joyful in Jesus. Live this day in a way that, should all things change tomorrow, you will know that the Lord is your God and this is the day to be satisfied in him

Change of Heart

We all know, some choose to ignore.

If its morally right, why should it be a “last resort”?

Tunes For Tuesday

What Every Young Preacher Needs To Hear

By all accounts I still fit into this category of young and dumb preachers.Now I know RDM doesn’t specifically call young preachers dumb but what an encouragement to know that you sermon stinks and it’s ok because eventually you’ll get better. I know that sounds pretty harsh, but looking back at some of my earliest material that I preached, I really don’t think that I’ll be preaching it that way again. I have found that most experienced preachers look back on their early sermons and cringe as well. That’s what ’s encouraging to me. Let us thank God that He uses our messages regardless of our inability and uses us in spite of who we are!

A Word to Young Preachers

— Friday, October 30th, 2009 —

Your first few sermons are always terrible, no matter who you are.

If you think your first few sermons are great, you’re probably self-deceived. If the folks in your home church think your first few sermons are great, it’s probably because they love you and they’re proud of you. If it’s a good, supportive church there’s as much objectivity there as a grandparent evaluating the “I Love You Grandma” artwork handed to them by the five year-old in their family.

So your first set of sermons, unless you’re very atypical, are probably really, really bad.

So what?

The great thing about Christian ministry is that Jesus doesn’t start all over again with his church every generation. He gives older men in ministry who shape, disciple, and direct younger men in ministry. This includes (although it’s not limited to) critiquing your sermons.

Your sermons will be critiqued. You want them to be critiqued, and harshly.

Now you don’t want them critiqued harshly by your congregations (and a critical attitude toward your pastor’s preaching, church members, is not a fruit of the Spirit). But you want them critiqued, and you want them critiqued now.

Your sermons will be highly critiqued early on in your ministry, when you’re still being shaped, or you’ll just be left alone.

The great preachers you hear or that you read about in your church history books are not almost never those who were preaching great sermons from the very beginning of their ministries.

Great preachers are the ones who preach really bad sermons. The difference is that they preach really bad sermons when they’re young, and are sharpened for life by critique.

Mediocre preachers are those who start off with sermons that are, eh, pretty good, but they’re never critiqued and thus never grow.

So if you’re early on in ministry and you preach a bad sermon, so what? You’re in a train of previously bad preachers that extends from Moses to Aaron to Simon Peter to about every good gospel preacher you’ve ever heard with your own ears.

Your bad sermon says nothing about your future. If you’ve got folks in your life saying, “Hey, that was a really bad sermon,” that does indicate something about your future, so praise God for it. It’s probaby a sign that God has something for you to say, for the rest of your life.

The New Moral Majority

(CNN) — If you were to judge the success rate of monogamy by the sex lives of public figures, perhaps couples should change their marriage vows to say, “Till a tempting new partner do us part.”

Talk-show host David Letterman recently joined former presidential candidate John Edwards, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer on a long list of politicians and entertainers (think Jude Law) who have admitted having sex outside their marriage or committed relationship.

But do they just illustrate the realities of modern life?

Read all of this article.

Here’s what Denny Burk has to say on this article.

This article is really sad for a lot of reasons, but I do think it accurately describes the decline of sexual mores in American society. What’s interesting, however, is that the author does not present any of this as a retrogression. Rather, he rather cooly describes what’s happening in the culture as if serial monogamy and polyamory are viable alternatives in the modern world. In other words, it’s presented as if one may leave behind monogamy just like one might throw out an old sweater for a new one. There’s no moral problem whatsoever with this kind of behavior. That is a commentary within itself.

Are we really taken by surprise, in the defining of our morals anymore? We become more and more Hedonistic and given to our own desires, and like Denny says, this article is indeed a commentary in and of itself. Are we surprised that the new trend among high school girls is for them to be “bicurious”  when what they’re shown on TV is that kissing another girl is what will really make the boys happy. (Watch last week’s episode of Heroes and read this article.) Are we surprised when a celebrity is caught with someone other than his wife and its played off as OK, because “what’s really important, is for them to be happy.” Think Jon and Kate plus 8.

Disgusting.

How do we change this trend? One way is by living the way God has called us to live. Call sin, sin. Abstain from all appearances of evil, and train your kids in the way of our Savior. Teach them to be obedient to His word. Think of the trend that could begin.

Is one person really going to make a difference? It will to that person, and it has to start somewhere.

How willingly do people go to Hell?

Does Anyone Standing by the Lake of Fire Jump In?

---

By John Piper October 28, 2009

 

---

 

C.S. Lewis is one of the top 5 dead people who have shaped the way I see and respond to the world. But he is not a reliable guide on a number of important theological matters. Hell is one of them. His stress is relentlessly that people are not “sent” to hell but become their own hell. His emphasis is that we should think of “a bad man’s perdition not as a sentence imposed on him but as the mere fact of being what he is.” (For all the relevant quotes, see Martindale and Root, The Quotable Lewis, 288-295.)

This inclines him to say, “All that are in hell choose it.” And this leads some who follow Lewis in this emphasis to say things like, “All God does in the end with people is give them what they most want.”

Read the entire article.

I really love reading C.S. Lewis and was familiar with his quotes on hell, but had not really given them much thought. This is a thought provoking response from John Piper that I’m inclined to agree with.

Tunes for Tuesday