Seize the Word

[Reposted from my site.]

Author’s note: Having written independently of knowing what the summer X-Roads theme is, I am delighted that they have matched up nearly perfectly. I hope, then, that this is a blessing to all of you, and I hope to see those of you who have not yet graduated in the fall — my best again to those who have.

For those of you who have little time, the essence of the post is this:

As long as we view prayer simply as the means to maintaining our own Christian lives, we will not fully understand what it is really supposed to be. But when we learn to regard it as the highest part of the work entrusted to us — the root and strength of all other work — we will see that there is nothing we need to study and practice more than the art of praying.

—Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer

Read from the beginning…

Just a random thought that came across to me from my Bible reading and scanning through potential BBS studies for the fall.

Hebrews 13:5–6:

Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU, so that we confidently say, “THE LORD IS MY HELPER, I WILL NOT BE AFRAID. WHAT WILL MAN DO TO ME?“

As I was reminded by a brother today, God could take everything away from us if He wanted to. All that we have is from Him, and He can reclaim it any time He wants. God is good to us. I think the material aspect of this verse just caught me a bit more, seeing as I’m now working and dealing with my own finances. And I know, I don’t have it bad, but it’s just new and a source of stress in working it all out.

But even more… God is with us forever. Just that thought is so awesome. Definitely something we all can aspire to in dealing with new things. God is with us, so we should not be afraid. As simple as it sounds and as true as it is, it’s hard for me to take to heart. But I want to, and I’m working on it.

Praise Him for the Word.

The following words are from the book Preach the Word on expository preaching (HT: Thabiti Anyabwile), so we’re not exactly the target audience, but I think we can still gain something from them in our personal Bible reading and group Bible study:

Learning to listen by opening our eyes is one of the key skills for the biblical preacher to develop. We need to see what is really there and what is not. Like a person with hearing difficulties, we need to strain to catch every detail of vocabulary and nuance of tone in our Lord’s conversation with us in the unique and specific parts of Scripture. But the problem with a written text, which increases the more familiar we think we are with it, is our tendency to skim-read it in order find what we already know is there. We then deal with general ideas rather than give attention to detail, and the resulting sermons exist in a world of theological abstraction. So much preaching is bland and predictable because there has been no move toward studying the text beyond its general themes and familiar ideas to the uniqueness of this particular Word of the Lord. The preacher has been content with a superficial, surface reading in which he has viewed the text through the prescription lenses of his own evangelical framework. This means that he has been in control of the text, assessing it, dissecting it, allowing it to illustrate the principles of his framework that he is determined to preach, but not permitting the text to be in the driver’s seat, controlling the sermon.

What needs to be happening in the preparation process is for the text to be challenging our framework, and this is achieved by questioning. Obviously, our first question will always be, “What precisely is this text saying?” But then there are other key questions with which we can sharpen our listening skills. For example, “Why does the biblical author say it in these words?” This may alert us to specialist vocabulary that often opens up major themes in the rest of the book of which our preaching is a part. Or it may challenge our pastoral rules of thumb, or even our doctrinal formulations. Additionally, we can ask, “Why is the author saying it to these people (his original hearers)?” This raises the whole issue of contexts, both historical and theological, both of the book in the Bible and the passage in the book. Finally, “Why does the author say it here, at this particular point in his work?” This is an inquiry about the literary context, which helps us to build a picture of the development of the book’s major teaching themes, which will also greatly help with application of the passage to the context of today.

Reposted from my site. Blurb below

Inspired by an exellent reminder by stephchensays, I revisit an old album I used to listen to often

What if God decided humanity has rejected him so completely that He just… disappeared? What would become of mankind if God chose to “die,” to “go to sleep forever”? That’s the idea explored with gut-wrenching detail on the mind-bendingly cinematic and horrifically apocalyptic concept album from Zao,”The Funeral of God.”

-PureVolume.com’s description of Zao’s Funeral of God

Now, we typically think of God being dead as the world coming to an end, the sky on fire. Judgment. But what if God died and…everything continued? What if, all His blessings remained, His miracles; Eternal life even. Would you trade a Jesus for a heaven without Him?

In other words, what I’m really asking is this:How much do you love God for…

1. The things He’s done for you Versus…
2. For who He is?

Keep Reading…

Now that school is over, I finally have time to catch up on some reading. I kicked off the summer with a book that I got as a gift for my baptism: God’s Answers to Life’s Difficult Questions, by Rick Warren. After reading through some of it, I think my favorite character in the Bible (other than Jesus) would have to be Peter. Time and time again, we are shown Peter’s flaws, his inadequacies, and his insufficiencies, and yet, God uses him in his ministry. The reference I just finished reading, regarding dealing with failure, is in Luke 5:1-11.

The passage describes Peter, the master of fishermen, with the best equipment and the most experience, not catching a single fish after an entire night’s work. He was undoubtedly disappointed. But Jesus came to him the next day and requested to use his boat as a platform to speak. When he was done, Jesus instructed Peter to take his boat out again. He obeyed, and they caught more fish than the boat could handle.

This next part, I have to credit the author for coming up with, though I’m sure most people could have come up with some sort of variation of it. There are three principles that could be drawn from this story:

1. Appropriate God’s presence in your life. Letting Jesus into your boat is the first step towards catching fish. “Too often we try to separate the secular and the spiritual; we have our Christian life nicely partitioned off from our career. But this prevents God from blessing your business or job. And the truth is, God will bless anything you give him. If you give him all your life, he will bless all of it. But if you give him just a part of it, he will bless just that one part.” But take note of the order in that passage, that Peter first allowed his boat to be used for Christ’s purposes, and only after that did Jesus take care of Peter’s needs.
2. Cooperate with God’s plan. Despite being the best fisherman around, he didn’t hesitate when Jesus told him to take his boat out. Despite being tired from working all night, Peter obeyed and cooperated. He took his boat out of the shallow into the deep. “When God works in your life, it always involves risks, because God wants you to live by faith. Many Christians barely get their feet wet because they’re afraid of getting in over their heads [...] God’s plan for your life is a good plan, one that will work for your benefit.”
3. Anticipate God’s promises. When Peter took his boat out that second time, he did it because Jesus said so, knowing that God would act if he followed Jesus’s instructions; his net would not come up empty. “Peter expected God to keep his promise. Peter wasn’t depending on his own fishing ability, so he wasn’t afraid of failure. He believed in the promises of God.”

Two more points can be made from this passage. First, when Peter obeyed God, God blessed him with more than he could handle. He caught so much fish that his nets began to break and he had to distribute some fish to other boats. When we follow God, he blesses us so much so we could continue to bless others whose nets may be empty. Second, this was when God first told Peter that he would be catching men, rather than fish, from this point on. Upon hearing that, Peter dropped his entire boatload of fish to follow Jesus.

The disciples knew that as long as they followed him, their needs would be more than satisfied. Christ would take care of them no matter what happened. They wanted a relationship with him that was more than a one-time miracle. Then Christ invited them to become part of the greatest task in the world: “I’m going to make you fishers of men. You are going to share my Good News with other people.”

The chapter closes with a thought challenge: What is your “boat” that God might want to use as a platform for his work?

Reposted from my site:

Some of you have gotten this as an e-mail forwarded by me but I still feel that this makes for a good reminder as we wrap up our semester theme of Passionate living. I came across this as an article of the site Of First Importance because I subscribe to his feed.

Loving Jesus like his Father does

Posted: 15 May 2008 12:00 AM CDT

“I have paraphrased John 17:26 in order to pray it like this: ‘Father, grant me power from the Holy Spirit to love the Son of God like you love him.’

I pray this in the morning when I get up; I pray it during the day when my mind slips into neutral; and I pray it when I fall asleep at night. My heart has been captured by this prayer.

When I pray it, I am confessing to God that if he does not grant me a work of the Holy Spirit in my life, I will never acquire passion for the Son of God. I am confessing to him that my godliness, my discipline, my knowledge of the Word, though all good, are insufficient to produce passion for the Son of God.

I can change my mind, but only the Holy Spirit can change my heart. Divine love can only be divinely imparted.”

—Jack Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), 201

Here is some food for thought regarding mentoring. I recommend all who are involved in the sibling program especially to read it.

Jesus said, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” —Matthew 25:34–40

In Him,
Tim

I was reading James 2, the part forbidding favoritism. The majority of the section specifically rebukes those who favor the rich and neglect the poor. This isn’t a huge issue for me, so I just glossed over it. However, at the conclusion of this section, it read,

If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.

I’ve read this section before, but I noticed for the first time that the favoritism spoken of here is not limited to the discrimination between rich and poor. When I choose to talk to someone over another more socially awkward person, that can be a form of favoritism as well. We should be loving all of those around us equally.

The idolatry of “will worship”.

Soli Deo Gloria

—Tim

[By Emerald Poon Katz, reposted from her Xanga]

We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It is an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up His permanent post as high priest for us, in the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 6:18–20, emphases mine)

In an unpredictable world, we may feel like our compass is broken, whatever we used to direct our paths: perhaps that is grades, perhaps career, perhaps personal relationships. When those fail us, we are left with nothing to do but to look towards the One who never fails us, who wants nothing more but to hold us in His arms of love and point us in the right direction.

Often times the difficulties in our lives make us want to turn away from God as the voice of doubt, the voice of the evil one, tells us, “God doesn’t care about you: look at how horrible you are. And if God did care about you, why would these bad things be happening in your life?” It is in these moments when our faith is tested that we must hold on even tighter, a white-knuckle grip to His promises of delivering us through whatever circumstances we may be in. This faith, belief with the heart as opposed to the eyes, is what will see Him carry us through. For another thing, when the voice of the evil one makes us question if God really loves us, we have to remember that His love is unconditional and He is unchanging. For those who have come to Christ, our sin is not bigger than God’s salvation: He has paid for them in full — past, present, and future.

We may change, but God remains the same, and when we turn back to Him, for those who have turned away, we will find that He has been waiting for us the whole time with arms wide open. “Welcome home, my child.” Furthermore, no matter what paths we have to walk in the life, we have to remember that God is in charge and that nothing is a mystery to Him. “I have been there; I am here with you right now,” God would say. “I will be with you always, till the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Jesus ran this race before us, this life. As such, we have an example of how to model our life. God is near, God is here, and because of who He is we can face whatever life has to offer. In moments of despair and uncertainty we must claim victory: that is, we must hold on to the promise that God will not leave us behind. Nothing is impossible with God. We can never forget that. God’s power will overcome our hurt. He is close to the broken-hearted, and He is mighty to save.

No matter where the path leads, God has already been there.
—RBJ

Ah, yes, a lovely video from Godtube (sorry, can’t embed). Yup, a lovely sight. This song reminds us that we can trade our sorrows, pains, and concerns for the joy that comes only in Christ. God will shoulder them for us, but we have to turn to Him in prayer and let them go. The victorious man or woman is one who is down on their knees. That, my friends, is the proper battle stance.