Same Sex Marriage Collection; Civil Rights; FaceBook the Marriage Destroyer; African American Pastors

Weekend Links

A busy week with fewer links as a result. Have a great memorial day weekend. Don’t let anything spoil it.Drive safely. Pray hard. Live in joy.

Engaging with Culture

Would Jesus Approve of Same Sex Marriage? (Jerry Newcombe)
African American Pastors Urge President Obama to Reconsider Same Sex Marriage
Black Pastors in an Adulterous Relationship with President Obama (Paul Stanley)

Is Gay the New Black? (Challenging the assumption often put forward that there is a correspondence between the civil rights movement and the gay affirmation movement.)
Does FaceBook Wreck Marriages? (A growing story line seems to suggest that Facebook is making marriages even more vulnerable as fantasy is given tracks to run on.)
The Church’s Ministry to Homosexuals (A note to be missed post if you are one who struggles with these issues personally, know someone who struggles with them or if you just find yourself questioning what is the right approach.)

Building Better Christians and Churches

Eight Ways to Create a Passionate Work Culture
The Demise of Guys (CNN article on how video games and pornography are destroying young men and ruining a generation.)

 

“A Handy Little Chart of Truth”

Friday is for Heart Songs

I don’t know where I got it. I don’t know who compiled it. I only know it is exactly what it says it is, “a handy little chart.” 

HANDY LITTLE CHART
God has a positive answer:

YOU SAY	GOD SAYS	BIBLE VERSES
You say: “It’s impossible”	God says: All things are possible	(Luke 18:27)
You say: “I’m too tired”	God says: I will give you rest	(Matt 11:28-30)
You say: “Nobody really loves me”	God says: I love you	(John 3:16 & John 3:34)
You say: “I can’t go on”	God says: My grace is sufficient	(II Cor. 12:9 & Psalm 91:15)
You say: “I can’t figure things out”	God says: I will direct your steps	(Prov. 3:5- 6)
You say: “I can’t do it”	God says: You can do all things	(Phil. 4:13)
You say: “I’m not able”	God says: I am able	(II Cor. 9:8)
You say: “It’s not worth it”	God says: It will be worth it	(Roman 8:28 )
You say: “I can’t forgive myself”	God says: I forgive you	(I John 1:9 & Romans 8:1)
You say: “I can’t manage”	God says: I will supply all your needs	(Phil. 4:19)
You say: “I’m afraid”	God says: I have not given you a spirit of fear	(II Tim.1:7)
You say: “I’m always worried and frustrated”	God says: Cast all your cares on ME	(I Peter 5:7)
You say: “I’m not smart enough”	God says: I give you wisdom	(I Cor. 1:30)
You say: “I feel all alone”	God says: I will never leave you or forsake you	(Hebrews 13:5)

 

Prayer During National Turmoil

Friday is for Heart Songs

I was cleaning out some files and found this prayer for a community prayer service I took part of at the town center in Bolingbrook, IL four days after 9-11. It was a public service, but I have made a decision that whenever I participate in these types of services, I will only do so in the name of Jesus. Let’s not ever forget that the people of God need to act like the people of God no matter what is going on around us. 

Prayer in Time of National Crisis
September 15, 2001
Tuesday plus four days

Father, we come to You today because we are desperately in need of your comfort and direction.  We come to You because we have no where else to turn. We wish we had come sooner Father, but we are coming now.

            Addressing You, King David of Israel once prayed these words and we use them this day to wrap our prayers up in this day of mourning.

“Praise be to you, O LORD,
God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.
11 Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom;
you are exalted as head over all.
12 Wealth and honor come from you;
you are the ruler of all things.
In your hands are strength and power
to exalt and give strength to all.
13 Now, our God, we give you thanks,
and praise your glorious name. ^[1]

Because of Your greatness and because You are with us in our tears, we thank You for this day to gather and pray. We need You. We desperately need You. Many of us have spent too long counting years instead of making our years count for You.

We ask Father, that You would change that.  That You would work powerfully in our hearts, that You would move powerfully in our nation to make it a nation that truly is One Nation Under God, Indivisable, With Liberty and Justice for All.

We have spoken these words, many of us since childhood, and yet we have failed to invest energy and passion in pursuit of the truths to which they point us.

Father, we repent of that. We ask that in our time of mourning as a nation, that you would enable us live lives that reflect the noblest words of our heritage and of Your holy word. Would you fill our churches with men and women who desire to know You, not so our churches will be big, but that You will receive great praise. Not so our egos would be soothed but that the nations of the earth would know that we love and honor You.

Strengthen the men and woman risking their lives attempting to save those that still may be alive in wreckage of such evil.  Protect their spirits from despair as their eyes witness carnage that no human eye should see.  Give, we beseech you Father, give us leaders who will lead us not only militarily and politically and economically, but who will model a dependence and trust in You as they serve the nation. Give us leaders who will lead us spiritually.

Comfort the afflicted we pray.  Especially those who have lost loved ones.  Draw all of those who survived the attacks in New York and Washington to Yourself and cause them to live with a new found purpose for Your glory and the good of their fellow man. Do the same things in our hearts.

We pray Father, that out of this great wickedness and evil, You who are mighty and powerful, would bring about powerful change in our nation.  We do not love You as we ought. We do not serve You as we ought.  We do not desire You as we ought. But Father, would you use this time to draw us and help us to live passionately for and like Christ.

We ask all these things not on our own merit O God, but by the merit of precious blood shed by our Savior on our behalf and in the holy and precious name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

[1]The New International Version, (Grand Rapids,MI: Zondervan Publishing House) 1984.

 

Show Me the Place Where the Suffering Began

Friday is for Heart Songs

I have been a Leonard Cohen fan since the late 1960′s through all the interesting changes to his voice, each of them  more interesting than the one before. Cohen, as far as I know is not a Christian, but his lyrics have always revealed a depth and a searching for honesty if not truth itself that I have found encouraging and authentic. Recently I ran across these lyrics which seemed to fit a couple of my posts from this last year, notably, Piercing an Ear as an Act of Worship, and Which is the Better Word for a Christian: Servant or Slave?  

May the Word that became flesh, show you His place for your today.

Show Me the Place, Leonard Cohen

Show me the place where you want your slave to go
Show me the place, I’ve forgotten, I don’t know
Show me the place for my head is bending low
Show me the place where you want your slave to go

Show me the place, help me roll away the stone
Show me the place, I can’t move this thing alone
Show me the place where the word became a man
Show me the place where the suffering began

The troubles came, I saved what I could save
A thread of light, a particle, a wave
But there were chains so I hastened to behave
There were chains so I loved you like a slave

Show me the place where you want your slave to go

Show me the place, I’ve forgotten, I don’t know
Show me the place for my head is bending low
Show me the place where you want your slave to go

The troubles came, I saved what I could save
A thread of light, a particle, a wave
But there were chains so I hastened to behave
There were chains so I loved you like a slave

Show me the place
Show me the place
Show me the place

Show me the place, help me roll away the stone
Show me the place, I can’t move this thing alone
Show me the place where the word became a man
Show me the place where the suffering began

 

The Pastor’s Comfort for the Task of Preaching

Friday is for Heart Songs

One of the most comforting verses in the whole of Scripture for a pastor is Psalm 19:7.

7 The law of the Lord is perfect,
      restoring the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure,
      making wise the simple.

It tells him that the Word of God is the perfect tool to use when people need hope, encouragement, support, direction and perspective. In our church plants and campuses, we believe that the Bible is a sufficient guide for all the ills of the soul that plague our lives. And we have seen marriages healed, addictions eradicated, anger and bitterness conquered by relying on God and the power of his Word. Paul put it this way, the word of God is what makes a man or woman “adequate” (translate “competent”) for the tasks of counseling and pastoral care (2 Timothy 3:16-4:2).

If your soul is overwhelmed with the stresses of life and burdened by the weight of the past, turn to the Word of the living God. The Word works. It works because it is true. It works because God stands behind it, God breathed it, and God watches over it to perform it. His Word will last forever. So in the battles of life, learn to place your faith in the God who speaks and your life will be a glory to God and your joy will be made full.

 

Unbelievers Have a Right to Judge Christians

Meditations and Exhortations on Discipleship

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another:
just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
(John 13:34-35 ESV)

            In these two brief sentences, Jesus gives the unbelieving world the authority and right to judge whether we are his followers by the observable love that they can see that we have for each other. The world has the right to judge us as non-Christians, non-followers of Christ, un-disciples, if they can not see a radically different type of love at work in our midst.

            How are you doing? Are you working at your love for your wife, your husband, your children, your brothers and sisters in the church who you sit next too each week? If your non-Christian neighbor saw your interaction with other believers, would something in their soul cry out, “Wow, see how they love one another!”

            Let’s work on it together.

 

Learning About Time from Bonhoeffer

Friday is for Heart Songs

“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. … it is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.”

Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 99.

How much more time would we have for others, believers and unbelievers alike, if we followed this simple counsel from professor and martyr for Christ, Herr Bonhoeffer?

If you are planting a church
If you are pastoring a church,
If you are a pastor on a church staff,
If you are an elder of a church, …

… how are you building margin in your schedule so you have intentional time with a few brothers, to build into their lives and help them to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ?

… how are you making time for interruptions by believers and unbelievers alike, to help others (“spare our hands”) so that they feel the love of Christ in our care for them?

… is your schedule more important than the people in your schedule?

 

Resolved: To Know and Own My Sinfulness

Friday is for Heart Songs

“Resolved, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if there were none as grotesque as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.” (Jonathan Edwards)

Jonathan Edwards wrote a series of “resolutions for life” between the years of 1722-23, seventy in all. The first 21 were written in one sitting in 1722. The resolution above is number 8 in that list. The spirit of Edwards 8th resolution is almost completely out of sync with our culture but it is nevertheless wise and biblical. Jesus makes just that point in a parable in Luke 7:41-43.

41 “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” 43 Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he [Jesus] said to him, “You have judged rightly.” (ESV)

We love more and better when we know the depth of what we are forgiven. We love less when we forget the greatness of what has been given in the gospel of Christ.

“Lord Jesus, would you help me to see my sin
with a clarity that drives my heart
to a renewed and deeper joy in you. Don’t let my heart grow cold or
forgetful of the greatness of what you have done for me
in dying and rising for me.  Amen. 

 

“Let Your Love Be a Public and General Love”

Friday is for Heart Songs

I love finding gems of insight and inspiration and here’s one from Kairos Journal. So here is a bit of church history and a powerful story of love an sacrifice on behalf of the gospel. May God make all of us a greater lovers of seekers after his kingdom and his righteousness. It also gives a window into why I love the Puritans and find great benefit in reading their writings and the stories of their lives.

________________________________________________

A public and general love”—Thomas Vincent (1634 –1678)

Thomas Vincent, who was removed from his pulpit during the great ejection of Puritans in 1662, is famous both for his book on Christian love and his courage during the great plague of London in 1665. As “pestilence walked in darkness, and destruction wasted at noon-day,” Vincent decided to remain in London to comfort and care for God’s people. It was the practical outworking of his teaching about the selfless public character of true devotion to Jesus.

Show your love to Christ in your public-spiritedness and zeal for Christ’s honor and interest. Let your affections be public, not private, narrow, contracted, and centering in self. Let your love be a public and general love. Love not only relations, but love all Christ’s disciples, though of different persuasions and interests, because of the image of Christ. And love not only your friends that love you, but also your enemies that hate you, because of the command of Christ. Let your desires be public desires. Desire the welfare of the universal church, and of all God’s people throughout the world; and, accordingly, pray for their peace and prosperity. And endeavor, as you have opportunity, to promote the public good more than your own private advantage. ¹

^Footnotes:

1 Thomas Vincent, The True Christian’s Love for the Unseen Christ (1677; modernized reprint, Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria,1993), 105-106.

 

A Truly Converted Life

Friday Musings

A truly converted life is a life that is infused with the missio Dei. Being on mission for God is always word and works, proclamation and compassionate action, herald and healer. If we care only for social justice and never give voice to the Jesus Story—the gospel narrative of redemption and the call to repent and believe or if we only care for the gospel narrative of redemption and never give effort to issues of justice and care for the poor, we fail to integrate our lives in a biblically wholistic fashion.