Catholicity, Orthodoxy, and Lordship
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Resources:
The Rise of Fundamentalist Catholics
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I have been reading through the psalms in preparation for our upcoming Psalm-Roar and thought I’d put Psalm 3 into a chanted form using the ESV translation.
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The Psalms hold a special place in the life of the church, not only as songs of adoration but songs that shape our practices. The psalmist kneels; therefore, we kneel. The Psalmist lifts up his heart, therefore we lift up our hearts to the Lord. But another set of psalms describe the ascending aspect of worship. We walk together symbolically to God’s presence. One way the people of Israel walked up to the temple was by singing God’s praises. So, they didn’t simply walk in silence when they were called by God to worship, but they walked together and singing. In the liturgy, we call this the processional. We see it at a wedding when the bride comes with her father triumphantly as the people stand in awe. In a sense, the people are processing together with the bride and father. This theme of triumph was also present in Paul’s writing. Listen to this description of the Apostle Paul in II Corinthians:
“But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere…”
We process with Christ Jesus who already processed for us in victory! We come into God’s presence not as innovators, but as followers of the One who already processed for us; therefore, we follow in his train.
Dear friend,
Your desire for more keeps leaving you more and more empty. You fill the storehouses, but your heart is never content. Your hunger for more things is a manifestation of your humanity. We are made to desire and hunger something. In fact, you become like what you hunger and desire. Don’t get me wrong: there is nothing inherently wrong with consuming. We consume to survive, to enhance our lives and for other reasons but consuming for its own sake is disastrous. Another Amazon purchase, another method, another toy, another, another. It never ends, and your hunger never ceases.
When the Apostle Paul says to store up your treasures in heaven, he was giving us a principle for how to consume properly. Heaven’s storage does not have an expiration date; nothing loses its freshness. So, please consume. But consume knowingly. It’s possible that what your heart desires is attention, affirmation, and more, but those actions will only shape your hunger for the wrong things. Only Christ can fulfill our deepest longings. As Augustine writes: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” You may need to re-examine your budget, habits, and desires. You need to seek that heavenly city more than the possessions of earth.
Yours truly,
Pastor Brito
Please leave your comments and suggestions on the comment section.
Resources:
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Dear friend,
I am a better pastor than John Piper, John MacArthur, Tim Keller and any other pastor of renown. No, I am not as rhetorically gifted, nor am I widely published, nor will I ever draw the crowds, but for you, specifically, the members of my congregation, I am the best pastor you will have. I will go further and say that your local pastor, whoever he may be, is also a better pastor than all the men I mentioned above. They are uniquely called men to shepherd you, to hear your stories, to know your individual names, to baptize your children, marry your daughters, bury your fathers; yes, these men are better pastors than the prestigious men above.
You can go ahead and gain from their insights, listen to their sermons and lectures, read their books, but at the end of the day, only one man (or a couple of them) will be at the hospital when your son has a concussion or breaks his leg, or when your aging mother has a heart attack, or when the unexpected comes.
Friends, don’t lose sight of your local reality and community. Encourage your pastor to continue the hard work of ministering, bearing burdens, exhorting, comforting, and more. Don’t believe the lie that you can do church alone with these celebrities or that you don’t need a local body or that theology is a job best done in isolation or that your local pastor is only a fill-in or an add-on to the real pastors. You belong to a local body. And that weak and sometimes unsophisticated and sometimes clumsy, and sometimes corny, but always faithful man is a better pastor for you than all those super names combined.
Sincerely,
A local pastor
