Padkos - April 2015

Parable of Sin – Cancer – John Piper   “All human suffering, especially the suffering of the Son of God, is meant to portray to dull souls the unimaginable moral ugliness of sin and the unimaginable offensiveness of sin to God.”

‘The Dead End Of Sexual Sin’ by Rosaria Butterfield.

 

Help Me Face Today  Amanda Knoke     “When our fear of man seems louder than our trust in him, or our fear for the future overwhelms our thoughts, or our fear and comparison strips us of our joy, the Lord proclaims to us, fear not, I am with you. . . .”

 

The Secret You Need To Know About Inconveniences - Ann Voskamp   “Inconvenience is the DNA of healthy love.” “The only way to live a remarkable life, is not to get everyone to notice you, but to leave noticeable marks of love everywhere you go.”

 

Steward the Gifts God Has Assigned to You  Jon Bloom  -“God gifts all of us in such a way that our gifts channel blessings to others by meeting various needs, and they channel the blessing of humility to us by exposing our pride and pushing us to receive God’s grace to live by God-pleasing faith (Hebrews 11:6). When this happens it produces gratitude in everyone. It’s perfect! Our gifts work to bless others and sanctify us. It’s exactly what recovering selfaholics need.”

Messy Community – Christina Fox  “But when life gets hard and there is no laughter to share, that’s when friendship is seen for what it truly is. When life gets messy, that’s where the rubber meets the road.”

When Fear Seizes You  - Stacy Reaoch  “Don’t allow the enemy of fear to seize you and take you captive. Fight him off with the promises of God’s word and his unchanging character.”

3 Ways To Remember God’s Grace  - Steven Lee  “Remembering who God is and who we are is the antidote to grumbling. If we see our world, our lives, and our circumstances through the lens of Jesus’s cross, everything will come into focus. And that clarity of sight will awaken joy in us. It is looking through this lens that we find a deep sense of what it means to be loved by a good and kind heavenly Father.”

Arguments Against Anxiety – John Piper (Look at the Book)

 

You Have Just Enough Time – Jon Bloom  “Busyness is moral laziness [because it is often a statement of our self-importance and our excuse to be inattentive to people] . . . But God has given us just enough time to do what we need to do moment by moment to respond to him. And his grace is there; it is eternally present. Every moment is a sacrament where time touches eternity and there is exactly enough time to do what God has called us to do.” Prof. Bruce Hindmarsh

Practises We Need Back in Our Lives – Paul Perkins  “Perhaps you can relate, whether with technology, children, marriage or simply getting older. Life is in a constant state of flux. While change is good, the unintended consequences of change aren’t always to our benefit. Unless we take a minute to assess what we’ve lost in the process of gaining, we might end up without what we would do best to keep. “

God Owes Me Nothing – Darryl Dash  “Why do I live like God owes me something? Could it be that I’m really serving myself when I think I’m serving God?”

Another on from the Challis blog

Indifference

Found this one over on Tim Challis' blog :

Too true

A Spot of Wisdom

When people praise you, don’t let it go to your head. When they criticize you, don’t let it go to your heart. —C.J. Rhodes

Dealing With Indwelling Sin

Excerpt from  ‘The Dead End Of Sexual Sin’ by Rosaria Butterfield.

 

“ Eventually, the concept of indwelling sin provided a window to see how God intended to replace my shame with hope. Indeed, John Owen’s understanding of indwelling sin is the missing link in our current cultural confusion about what sexual sin is — and what to do about it.

As believers, we lament with the apostle Paul, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7:19–20). But after we lament, what should we do? How should we think about sin that has become a daily part of our identity?

Owen explained with four responses.

1. Starve It

Indwelling sin is a parasite, and it eats what you do. God’s word is poison to sin when embraced by a heart made new by the Holy Spirit. You starve indwelling sin by feeding yourself deeply on his word. Sin cannot abide in his word. So, fill your hearts and minds with Scripture.

One way that I do that is singing the Psalms. Psalm-singing, for me, is a powerful devotional practice as it helps me to melt my will into God’s and memorize his word in the process. We starve our indwelling sin by reading Scripture comprehensively, in big chunks, and by whole books at a time. This allows us to see God’s providence at work in big-picture ways.

2. Call Sin What It Is

Now that it is in the house, don’t buy it a collar and a leash and give it a sweet name. Don’t “admit” sin as a harmless (but un-housebroken) pet. Instead, confess it as an evil offense and put it out! Even if you love it! You can’t domesticate sin by welcoming it into your home.

Don’t make a false peace. Don’t make excuses. Don’t get sentimental about sin. Don’t play the victim. Don’t live by excuse-righteousness. If you bring the baby tiger into your house and name it Fluffy, don’t be surprised if you wake up one day and Fluffy is eating you alive. That is how sin works, and Fluffy knows her job. Sometimes sin lurks and festers for decades, deceiving the sinner that he really has it all under control, until it unleashes itself on everything you built, cherished, and loved.

Be wise about your choice sins and don’t coddle them. And remember that sin is not ever “who you are” if you are in Christ. In Christ, you are a son or daughter of the King; you are royalty. You do battle with sin because it distorts your real identity; you do not define yourself by these sins that are original with your consciousness and daily present in your life.

3. Extinguish Indwelling Sin by Killing It

Sin is not only an enemy, says Owen. Sin is at enmity with God. Enemies can be reconciled, but there is no hope for reconciliation for anything at enmity with God. Anything at enmity with God must be put to death. Our battles with sin draw us closer in union with Christ. Repentance is a new doorway into God’s presence and joy.

Indeed, our identity comes from being crucified and resurrected with Christ:

We have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. (Romans 6:4–6)

Satan will use our indwelling sin as blackmail, declaring that we cannot be in Christ and sin in heart or body like this. In those moments, we remind him that he is right about one thing only: our sin is indeed sin. It is indeed transgression against God and nothing else.

But Satan is dead wrong about the most important matter. In repentance, we stand in the risen Christ. And the sin that we have committed (and will commit) is covered by his righteousness. But fight we must. To leave sin alone, says Owen, is to let sin grow — “not to conquer it is to be conquered by it.”

4. Daily Cultivate Your New Life in Christ

God does not leave us alone to fight the battle in shame and isolation. Instead, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the soul of each believer is “vivified.” “To vivicate” means to animate, or to give life to. Vivification complements mortification (to put to death), and by so doing, it allows us to see the wide angle of sanctification, which includes two aspects:

1) Deliverance from the desire of those choice sins, experienced when the grace of obedience gives us the “expulsive power of a new affection” (to quote Thomas Chalmers).

2) Humility over the fact that we daily need God’s constant flow of grace from heaven, and that no matter how sin tries to delude us, hiding our sin is never the answer. Indeed, the desire to be strong enough in ourselves, so that we can live independently of God, is the first sin, the essence of sin, and the mother of all sin.

I Cannot Do Much

Quoting from Tim Challis’ blog post :

 

“Sometimes you stop reading just a little bit too soon. That may be your temptation as you read this quote from Charles Spurgeon. But you’ll be missing out if you don’t read right to the end…

Heaven will be full of the ceaseless praises of Jesus. Eternity! thine unnumbered years shall speed their everlasting course, but forever and for ever, “to him be glory.” Is he not a “Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek”? “To him be glory.” Is he not king for ever?—King of kings and Lord of lords, the everlasting Father? “To him be glory for ever.” Never shall his praises cease. That which was bought with blood deserves to last while immortality endures. The glory of the cross must never be eclipsed; the lustre of the grave and of the resurrection must never be dimmed. O Jesus! thou shalt be praised for ever. Long as immortal spirits live—long as the Father’s throne endures—for ever, for ever, unto thee shall be glory. Believer, you are anticipating the time when you shall join the saints above in ascribing all glory to Jesus; but are you glorifying him now? The apostle’s words are, “To him be glory both now and for ever.” Will you not this day make it your prayer? “Lord, help me to glorify thee; I am poor, help me to glorify thee by contentment; I am sick, help me to give thee honour by patience; I have talents, help me to extol thee by spending them for thee; I have time, Lord, help me to redeem it, that I may serve thee; I have a heart to feel, Lord, let that heart feel no love but thine, and glow with no flame but affection for thee; I have a head to think, Lord, help me to think of thee and for thee; thou hast put me in this world for something, Lord, show me what that is, and help me to work out my life-purpose: I cannot do much, but as the widow put in her two mites, which were all her living, so, Lord, I cast my time and eternity too into thy treasury; I am all thine; take me, and enable me to glorify thee now, in all that I say, in all that I do, and with all that I have.”

Pray it, and allow yourself to imagine what your life would look like if you lived it…”

Padkos–March 2015

11 Best Books on Cultural Engagement – Bruce Ashford   “First, “cultural engagement” is a very broad term, encompassing many things, and a short list like I am providing only scrapes the surface. Second, I’ve tried to include a mixture of beginning, intermediate, and advanced books in order to provide recommendations for every type of reader. Third, although I don’t agree with everything that is said in any of the books I recommend, I do think each of the books I recommend provide helpful guidance in how to engage our 21^st century Western context.”

Lazy Busy – Tony Reinke “

This is sloth at its deadly best: trying to preserve personal comforts through the candy of endless amusements. Sloth is a chronic quest for worldly comfort that compounds boredom — boredom with God, boredom with people, boredom with life.

The most common species of slothfulness is “lazy busy” — a full schedule endured in a spiritual haze, begrudging interruptions, resenting needy people, driven by a craving for the next comfort. It is epidemic in our day.”

Your Job is God’s Assignment – John Piper 

 

A Plea For Gospel Sanity in Missions (Part 2) - Aubrey Sequeira  “Westerners get so googly-eyed with sensational stories from the East that they don’t even notice the non-existence of any form of the gospel message.”

A Plea For Gospel Sanity in Missions – From East to West (Part 3). -Aubrey Sequeira  “In previous posts, I addressed two major issues plaguing missions work in India: the craze for numbers and the West’s fascination with “supernatural” testimonies. Here, I wish to address another issue that is quickly gaining traction and causing problems in India, much like it has in the Muslim world: extreme forms of “contextualization.”

“We must proclaim the transcultural lordship and glory of Jesus, rather than hyper-orienting our message and praxis around specific cultural groups.”

“Scripture forms the people of God, not vice versa. I have often wondered if a connection exists between contextualization movements and the influence of post-modernism. The authority is shifted from the revealed Word to the community of readers.” “The notion that communities should read and come to their own conclusions is actually rooted in the post-modern mindset that places authority in the community rather than in the text. “

“Make a distinction between those forms of culture that are religious and those that are not. Do not shrink back from teaching the “whole counsel of God”—which means teaching people to embrace Christianity as an entire worldview. Teach them to reject cultural practices where the Scripture demands it, and be certain that all your “contextualization” is biblically warranted.”

 

Don’t Follow Your Heart  - Jon Bloom  “Therefore, don’t believe your heart; direct your heart to believe in God. Don’t follow your heart; follow Jesus.”

Living Well in a Digital World – Tim Challis  “When the Bible tells us how to live as Christians, it so often tells us that we need to put on and put off. It tells us that there are habits, patterns, and behaviors we need to stop, and new habits, patterns, and behaviors we need to begin.”

Is Your Heart Spiritually Numb? -  Christel Humfrey    “In communing with Christ, we move toward becoming our most authentic self, namely, "dead to sin and alive to God" (Rom. 6:11). So let me encourage you to make just one change that will promote your spiritual health. If you are spiritually alive in Christ, then live. Reshuffle your priorities and become who you were meant to be.”

 

3 Reasons Women Need Good Theology – Alyssa Poblete  “Therefore, the only way to prevent a distortion of womanhood is by encouraging women to behold their God—to taste and see that he is good—and to search out his Word to learn of reason after reason after reason to give him praise. We ought to tremble at the thought of encouraging women to do anything else.”

Work With Your Hands Not Your Worship

How To Read The Bible For Yourself  - John Piper “The aim of our Bible reading is not just the response of the mind, but of the heart. The whole range of human emotions are possible responses to the meaning of the Bible. God gave us the Bible not just to inform our minds, but also to transform our hearts — our affections. God’s word is honored not just by being understood rightly, but also by being felt rightly.”

Millennial Adulthood Delusion – Chris Martin  “

I’ve always been fascinated with the two primary Millennial stereotypes: 1) Millennials are self-centered and 2) Millennials aren’t growing up. I never understood where those come from. Now I get it: they’re intertwined and they’re deep within the Millennial understanding of what it means to flourish.

Three of the 34 “ways you change as you become an adult” are focused on others. Sounds more like these may be ways to become parasites of happiness, not productive, caring adults.

Millennials won’t grow up because we won’t care about anyone but ourselves.

It’s hard to grow up and be an adult when you can’t get out from in front of the mirror.”

Everyday Obedience – Our Best Witness  JD Greear

You Never Marry The Right Person – Timothy Keller

Why Sing Sad Songs When I Don’t Feel Sad? -  Matthew Westerholm  “Because of the sin and brokenness of our hearts we have reason to lament. And because of the sin and brokenness in our church and world, we have reason to lament. Most of all, because of the love of our rescuing God, we have an invitation to bring our mournful sadness as protest and appeal to our God. The God who invites our laments can rescue us. And he most certainly will.”

Answering  Post-Christian Questions -  Nancy Pearcey  “Finding Truth offers a 5-part strategy that equips us to penetrate to the core of any worldview and weigh its claims. As one of my students said, “Your book is different from any other book I’ve read on apologetics. Other books are informational; they tell us about various worldviews. Your book teaches us how to actually do apologetics.””

Apologetics, Cultural Liturgies, and our Post Modern Age – Nancy Pearcey

Emotional Blackmail – John Piper “Not feeling loved and not being loved are not the same. Jesus loved all people well. And many did not like the way he loved them.”

4 Reasons Why God Wills Work – John Piper  “The curse under which we live today is not that we must work. The curse is that in our work we struggle with weariness and frustration and calamities.”

Think of Yourself Less – video and transcript – Jason Meyer “As C.S. Lewis said, true humility is “not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less.””

We Complain Because We Forget  - Steven Lee  “The antidote to spiritual amnesia is making every effort to recall and remember God’s gracious deliverance. The fact that you — a sinner who was an enemy of God — are now a beloved child is a miracle. Don’t let that wonder ever fade.Remember.”

Fight Like A Girl – Jen Wilkins  (The Like A Girl Ad is here)  “This is a message given by a female to a female audience, so it covers some ground you might never hear preached from a pulpit. But that's exactly why women teaching women is such a needed layer of discipleship. If you're a guy, don't let that scare you from listening along. If the church is to embrace a strong vision of womanhood, both men and women will need to value it.”

The Spiritual Stages of the Believer’s Life - Nicholas T. Batzig “God’s children who pursue the true purpose of the Christian life belong in one of three categories. The apostle tells us they are little children, young men, or fathers in spiritual life (1 John 2:12–14).”

Does The Devil Have Your Ear?  William Farley – “How do we know we have been listening to the Devil’s lies? The fruits are ominous and varied. We become discouraged when life doesn’t go as we had planned. We wallow in guilt after a careless comment hurts someone we love. We compare ourselves to others and then feel worthless. We give into hopelessness or fear as we observe cultural change. Some even yield to the despair that this life is all there is. The Devil knows how to “preach it,” and we are often the victims.” “ “Maturing believers cultivate the discipline of preaching to themselves. In fact, they turn this into an art form. They read Scripture, internalize it, and then continually preach its truths back to themselves. When fears of death and dying arise, they speak to themselves about the world to come. When guilt grips their heart, they remind themselves that they have been united with Christ and that Christ’s righteousness is theirs. They don’t listen to self. They preach to self!””