If you have two minutes, this video interview of R C Sproul by Mark Driscoll, put up by the Resurgence, is well worth your time.
Sproul answers the question “Does God really want everyone to be saved?” and comes back with a killer answer that God’s disposition is towards loving kindness, but that does not interfere with his concern for righteousness and justice. Therefore, his judgement is carried out with tears because he does not delight in the destruction of the wicked.
Filed under: General, Mission in the Mountains | Tags: assurance, Charlie's, God's Sovereignty, hope, humility, love, mission, preaching
At Charlie’s this term, we’ve been looking at Ephesians 1:3-14 – one passage over the course of one term. It has been so good to go so deeply into God’s Word, preaching about every spiritual blessing that we have in the gospel. This week, I’ve been preparing to speak on God’s sovereignty in salvation. This idea really sits behind the whole passage. I don’t chose God, he chooses me. It’s not that I loved God but that he loves me when I have no love for him.
I feel so incompetent to preach on the topic of God’s sovereignty because it is raises a lot of other issues and affects all of life. I think that this truth is foundational for everyday faith, and I feel like I will only get a handle on it after a full life lived under God’s sovereignty. But still, I feel so privileged to speak into the lives of these teenagers and I pray that God will stir them up to a greater trust in Christ through my humble words.
My talk outline is as follows:
God’s Sovereignty in All of Life: From the Cosmic to the Ordinary, completely dependent on God
God’s Sovereignty in Salvation: God’s Intiative, God’s Grace, God’s Glory
Living Under God’s Sovereignty
After much prayerful reflection upon this topic I’ve included the following thoughts for living under God’s Sovereignty:
Humility
This is the starting point for life in Christ. The truth is that we are nothing, we are sinners saved by grace. If we live like we’re the king of our own life then we might have some worldly success but we won’t have anything worth writing home about, because the life of Christ will not have invaded our lives. We need to get ourselves out of the way, putting to death sin, the evil inclinations of our hearts and letting Christ come to life in us. This will mean a radically transformed life, because we’ll be concerned with the things of the kingdom of Jesus – service, surrender, sacrifice, love – rather than chasing after worldly riches and success. We will not boast: it is Christ who gets all the glory, not us. Get us out of the way so that Jesus can be seen as worthy of all praise and honour and glory and power.
Worship
Because God has made us fully alive from being dead in our sins, our whole lives will be oriented toward in him awestruck worship. He deserves everything that we are and he demands our whole life – indeed he bids us to come and die with Christ – to come and offer ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. As Ephesians 1 says: to the praise of his glory!
Assurance
Because our salvation is based on what God has done for us, there is no fear that we can stuff it up. He has done it all, there is nothing remaining.
Hope
For Christians, hard times will come. Opposition for the sake of Christ, sickness, betrayal, loneliness, temptations and trials of many kinds. But God is working his purpose out. We can rest assured that it is all happening within the sovereign plan of God, knowing that he is working for our good and his glory through all things. When the storms of life come, we know that the boat will not sink and that the storm will come to an end. This life is a life of suffering for but a little while, but then we enter glory. And so we live in hope, because this life is going to be hard and we long for the return of our king when he will wipe every tear away and restore all things.
Love
Love begets love: because God has loved us, we love others. This is what his Spirit compels us to do. To be the servant of many, to walk the cross walk, to live the cross life, communicating the love of God in the gospel to our broken world.
Mission
Just as God has given us all these amazing things in salvation, we know that he is still accomplishing this in the world today. He is proclaiming the glory of his name to Springwood, to the Mountains, to Sydney, to Australia, to the world. And he is at work through his people. Through us! God is the one who is at work, but he invites us to play along. Just like a Father who is at work in the garden digging a hole, who gives his son a toy shovel to help out, God is the one at work! We are his agents of mission in this world. We know what God is doing, we now need to humble ourselves for his kingdom work.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. I’d appreciate any comments or thoughts that you may have as they will definitely contribute to the talk.
Jon Foreman is one of my favourite songwriters. I’ve not only enjoyed his music but his deep lyrics for the last few years. Although I am a huge Switchfoot fan, my favourite tracks are from Jon Foreman’s solo projects.
I came across an article by Foreman today written for The Huffington Post. It was a beautiful piece, much like his songwriting, called Goodness Precedes Greatness. As he describes his struggle to write songs in these present days of despair, he identifies our need for a hero, and not the superficial heroes with which our society provides us, but we need something deeper. He suggests that what we’re after is rooted in “sacrifice and surrender”.
It’s a wonderfully crafted article. Truly beautiful writing.
I don’t want to critique the article, but it’s interesting, as with his songwriting, Foreman does not point to Jesus as the hero who emulates this life of sacrifice and surrender. But still, the beauty of the gospel weaves its way through his life and writing. And the gospel is the ultimate display of beauty – beauty through pain, hope through suffering, glory through surrender, life through death.
We need to recapture the beauty while holding onto Christ.
My latest article for fervr is now online. It is the first in a series of articles that I am writing communicating the basics about the reality of persecution today. Check it out here.
Filed under: General | Tags: fundraising, Jon Acuff, kindergarten, Vietnam
Jon Acuff’s fundraiser for the kindergarten in Vietnam has now reached its $30,000 goal, in one day! Absolutely incredible. Praise God that so many people gave so generously to this project. I’m sure the result is beyond anyone’s wildest dreams seeing as they hoped to raise the money over two months and it’s all come in within a day!
Filed under: General | Tags: Colombia, Jon Acuff, Stuff Christians Like, Abraham Piper, 22 Words, Christmas Care, fundraising
Jon Acuff over at Stuff Christians Like is raising money to build a kindergarten in Vietnam in the same approximate area where I have recently been. Check out the project here and also read his interview with Abraham Piper who blogs at 22 Words here. When I last checked (0921 AEDT 10 November 2009), Jon had raised $21,647.00 for the kindergarten through his blog. He is aiming to raise $30,000.00.
I think it’s a really interesting idea to raise money for a cause through your blog. Things like this really jump out at me as I consider new innovative ways to raise awareness, advocacy and fundraise for the persecuted church with youth in Australia.
As a shameless plug, if you are interested in supporting Voice of the Martyrs Christmas Care Colombia project, click here, and read the blurb below.
Have you ever been disappointed by a Christmas present that you’ve been given? Maybe you received undies and socks from your grandmother when really you wanted an iPod, or maybe your brother didn’t give you anything at all!
Many Christian children in Colombia don’t have the choice to be disappointed, because they have never received a Christmas present in their life! But this year, you can give Colombian children a gift of hope for Christmas – Voice of the Martyrs is coordinating the delivery of Christmas Care packs to children of the persecuted church in Colombia. Each pack will include supplies for school and home, food, toys and a book about the life of Jesus.
We will be distributing packs in areas controlled by the rebel guerrilla army. Christians face harsh opposition from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC guerrillas) for their bold Gospel work: pastors have been assassinated, missionaries have been kidnapped, churches have been closed, and entire Christian communities have been displaced.
For only $20 you can give a Christmas Care pack to a Colombian child – some of them have lost their parents to the violence of the FARC guerrillas. Christmas Care enables you to do something real to support the persecuted church.
Here are some challenging ideas for how you can raise the money:
- give from your pocket money
- get a summer/part time job
- get a few friends from your youth group or school to put in a few dollars each
- pass on some of the money you receive from Christmas presents
- For Youth Leaders: run a Christmas Care Colombia fundraiser at your youth groupMy local youth group runs a fundraiser at the end of every year raising money for a different cause. This year we are supporting Voice of the Martyrs Christmas Care Colombia project. We don’t have a big youth group, but we can make a big difference in the lives of children of the persecuted church in Colombia.
Christmas care packs include: a backpack, 1xschool pack (includes notebooks, pencils, sharpeners, erasers, and a box of colouring pencils), 1xtoiletries kit (includes toothbrush, toothpaste, soap), 1xHe Lived Among Us, 1xT-shirt with a Christian message/design, a snack, oatmeal, toy (age and sex appropriate).
As an aside, to understand the blog title you need to read Jon Acuff’s blog post about the fundraiser.
Rainy day.
While most people enjoy snuggling up inside out of the rain, listening to the beautiful sound on the corrugated iron roof, I was getting wet. And I loved it. It reminded me of childhood in fact, where you’d be outside doing something, let’s say playing soccer, and it would start raining but you would just keep playing. And by the the end you would end up soaking wet, muddy all over but with a smile from ear to ear. It is days like this that live in your memory for many years to come.
That was my day today. And I loved it. Pulling up weeds in our front garden.
I can’t think of a better way to spend a day off than to work hard in the garden all day, to come inside and have a shower, then to sit down with a cuppa and the weekend paper.
After too many weekends in a row being busy from time-off on Friday to time-in on Monday morning, this weekend was a welcome relief for Katherine and me.
Be still and know that I am God.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been reading through C J Mahaney’s series on Biblical Productivity. I read one part of the series today that really stirred my heart and made me think of what one of my good friends often says. Josh often expresses his lament regarding the false dichotomy between the sacred and the secular – that we are prone to compartmentalize our lives so that we end up talking about serving God as only one part of life, rather than it being about all of life.
Mahaney addresses this forcefully in his chapter on Roles in the Biblical Productivity series. He quotes Leland Ryken’s book Redeeming the Time.
The original Protestnats were right in going beyond this (being a Christian at work) and claiming that the work itself is a spiritual issue and a means of glorifying God. We can be Christian not only in our work but through our work if we view our work as an obedient response to God’s calling.
Mahaney comments that “this perspective will transform your attitude as you proceed to work, wait in traffic, and arrive to work for yet another day”.
Mahaney also discerns that “too many Christians are so distracted by thoughts of the future that they cannot discern with clarity how God has called them to serve in their present vocations. Though they show up for work each day, they don’ts work with passion and joy each day”. I know that I have been guilty of this, and through this article I have been greatly encouraged to see how God has sovereignly brought me to where I am right now. I can serve God best where I am in the present, and I can do that with passion adn joy because I know that it is God’s will. Mahaney stresses that “in the future God may call you [elsewhere]. But that is for another time”.
I am here. God has brought me here. God has given me all that I need. And so I will serve him day-by-day, where I am now, for his glory and honour until he calls me elsewhere.
One final quote for Josh (because I know that he will love this one):
…your vocation is to be found in the place you occupy in the present. A person stuck in a dead-end job may have higher ambitions, but for the moment, that job, however humble, is his vocation. Flipping hamburgers, cleaning hotel rooms, emptying bedpans all have dignity as vocations, spheres of expressing love of neighbour through selfless service, in which God is masked.
So are you living in the present, serving God with passion and joy where he has called you to today? Or are you living in the future, overlooking the opportunities that God has given you now to serve and honour him, wherever that may be?
I’ve been talking a bit lately to the Music Coordinator for our church about how we should ‘do music’ and where the music ministry is heading. We’ve done a number of innovative things already – Clifftop Praise, Jesus aLiVE – but obviously there is always need for thoughtful and prayerful consideration of how we can do ministry better. With this intention we went along to the young adults meeting (called The Inn) at Imagine Nations church in Penrith. I could easily write a whole post about this meeting and some reflections on it, but instead I just wanted to preface an interesting article I found on the Sovereign Grace blog by Jeff Purswell.
He preached at the WorshipGod09 conference obviously about worship. His main point was that while singing at church is really important, it is not the most important thing that happens. The preaching of God’s Word is the most important act of worship during the church meeting and it is only this that can stir the heart to genuine heartfelt affection for Christ expressed through singing.
It’s worth reading. Check it out here.
If you have the time, this is a great clip defining and responding to the prosperity gospel. One of the things that I love about Piper is that he makes it his aim to prepare his church for suffering, and in this clip he clearly articulates that to come to Christ is to come and die, that “normal Christianity is pain – sorrowful yet always rejoicing is the pattern. To follow Christ is to suffer, and it’s brief – it’s only 80 years…and then there is an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
This theology of suffering and discipleship is so relevant to my work with the persecuted church and it’s what I try to communicate to youth as I go around and speak.
Check it out!
