Category: Christian Living

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Exhortation: Series on Church Covenant, Part II

We come to our second part of our Church Covenant, which states:

We purpose to watch over one another in brotherly love, to remember one another in prayer, to help one another in sickness and distress, and to cultivate Christian compassion and courtesy.

Paul echoes these words in Galatians four when he writes:

13 For ye — to freedom ye were called, brethren, only not the freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through the love serve ye one another,

14 for all the law in one word is fulfilled — in this: `Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;’

Though we as individuals are part of the universal Church bought by the blood of Jesus, we are active members of a local congregation of that Universal Church. To be a member is to be part of something greater than ourselves; greater than our families. To be a member of a local Church is to be a member of something that will last for all eternity.

It is then simple to understand why we echo Paul’s words in Galatians. It is true that we will not perform all these things perfectly, but it is also true that we are to strive to love one another, to pray for one another, to help in times of need, and to show compassion and courtesy. The Church succeeds when these elements are stressed and applied by God’s people.

Again, I wish to stress that Church Membership gives you no excuse to sit passively. During this Lenten Season, we have even greater opportunities to express this Christian virtue of service to others. Why do members of Providence strive to live in this way? Because as Christ-followers, we are imitators of the One who served us even to the point of death. How shall they know we are Christ’s disciples? When we love one another. May we do these things for the sake of Christ and His body.

Prayer: Merciful Christ, build us up in love that we might serve one another. May the love of service increase in us during this Season, and may your Church mature in these virtues through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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In Defiance of God: Inhaling the Poisonous Gas

This morning a group of us from Micah 6:8 joined to read Scriptures and pray at the only abortion clinic in Pensacola. It was a short time of reading and prayer. As the cold weather froze our bodies we realized that we were witnessing young women entering what I would assume was a pleasantly heated building. As they entered they were most likely treated kindly. As they waited they were most likely reflecting on the freedoms they would enjoy with this thing called “a human being” out of the way. Perhaps they were struggling with their decision. Perhaps they were forced into this concentration camp. And like a concentration camp they were led to a place that they thought was a refreshing shower, but instead turned out to be poisonous gas. As a “doctor” performed his surgery, the patient was slowly being seduced by the gas of death. “The right-winger and evangelicals can’t be right about this. They just want to take away our ability to choose over our bodies,” they rationalize. “My boyfriend will leave me if I decide to keep this child.” Whatever reasons they choose, and however detailed they may be, the telos is still the same: a living, breathing, God-formed human being was being obliterated without a chance.

I was struck while listening to the reading of Psalm 10 that  “in secret places he doth slay the innocent.” How appropriate to our situation. This building is well-hidden to those who pass by. The Psalter says also that “they lie in wait to catch the poor.” Those in poverty are those who have relinquished their roles as mothers. In this case, the one in poverty of heart comes willingly to the trap set before them.

When that woman raised her fist at a pro-life activist this morning she was in defiance of God. “Those who defy verbally still have a chance,” opined the experienced activist near us. They are actually fighting with their decision was the implication. The ones who walk in quietly inhaling their first cigarette of the morning is set on their duty. Just as they puffed away on the cigarette, they were about to experience that unborn child puffed away from planet earth.

There is much work to do. I don’t do enough. I don’t pray enough. There is so much I can learn from those who have given their lives to declaring the message of life. To them I am grateful. John tells us that men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. In this clinic, it is in the darkness of the early morning that evil operates. As these ex-moms recover from their surgery, their consciences will never recover. May they never recover until God grants them repentance and their hearts find rest in the God of life.

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Brothers, We Should Stink!

Thabiti Anyabwile is at it again. According to Thabiti:

These days pastoral ministry has become more glamorous, fabulous, fashionable than ever. We hear nowadays of pastors driving expensive cars or being chauffeured, owning private jets, and living in opulent mansions. Once only the “prosperity preachers” and bona fide hucksters touted such lives; now your neighborhood “orthodox” super-pastor does the same. It’s all so pretty, perfumed with the world’s “best” of everything.

Pastoral ministry has lost its wilderness motif. She is no longer invested and involved in that labor of caring, shepherding, and defending the sheep. Pastors no longer live among the sheep for their sake, rather, they prefer the green pastures of the golf course, or spending time with the elite membership. Baxter would be shocked! How much time do we spend with your people? Do we smell like them? Do we stink because of their problems? Do our clerical clothes smell like their cigarettes? Thabiiti writes:

The apostle understands that shepherds should smell like sheep. The sheep’s wool should be lint on our clothes. Our boots should be caked with their mud and their mess. Our skin ought to bear teeth marks and the weather-beaten look of exposure to wind, sun, and rain in the fields. We belong among the people to such an extent that they can be called on to honestly testify that our lives as messengers commend the message. We should be so frequently among them that we smell like them, that we smell like their real lives, sometimes fragrant but more often sweaty, musty, offensive, begrimed from battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

What used to be a foundational feature of the pastoral ministry has now become a forgotten tradition. Perhaps we ought to smell ourselves at the end of our weeks, and ask whether our clothes have the scent of our people, whether they are messy from those long pastoral trips, whether they are stained from coffee, and whether they reflect the shepherd’s calling.

There are profound dangers in the “pastor as academician” phenomenon. All pastors are scholars, but all pastors must use their scholarship to comfort, encourage, rebuke, exhort, and love their people. Scholarship apart from the stinkiness of pastoral ministry is an unused scholarship.

So have we identified ourselves with our people? Do they know us? Do they know we care for them? What is our boast? Is it in the well-delivered homily? In our power and giftedness? If so, we need to change our clothes and put on those well-worn garments of a shepherd and truly cherish the aroma of pastoral ministry. As Thabiti concludes:

Brothers, we are shepherds down in the fields of life — and we should stink.

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On Charity

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer;
another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.
(Proverbs 11:24 ESV)

On the matter of charity, there is no doubt that the best use of charity is done locally. Who betters knows our neighbors than ourselves? Who better knows the needs of each other in the congregation than the individual in that congregation? Who better is aware of those needs than the ones called to serve others in the Church?. One way we use the tithes of the people of God is by directing it to benevolence. Individual, Church, Communal giving is much more effective than our monies being distributed from some unknown, unwise hand at the top.

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The Tangibility of Worldviews

Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth - By: Douglas Wilson, Douglas Jones George Grant writes in the foreword to Angels in the Architecture that a “worldview is as practical as garden arbors, public manners, whistling at work, dinner-time rituals, and architectural angels (14).”

For all the great resurgence of worldview thinking in our day, there is still a lack of practicality associated with it. A good worldview–one grounded in creation and providence–is messy because life can be rather messy. If one seeks to build a worldview (the task itself never ends) one needs caution not to define a worldview as some non-tangible, intellectual pursuit left to the scholars and arm-chair theologians. A worldview–to borrow Doug Wilson’s famous analogy–comes out of your fingertips.

Perhaps this is the inherent difficulty associated with getting Christians to think biblically about most issues. The difficulty stems from a low view of Creation, thus elevating the mind over body. When a Christian begins thinking he must begin where God begins, in the beginning. Creation then offers a profound view of the body with Adam’s hard work ethic, which is first found in the the pre-fall state. God does not wait to begin worldview thinking post-fall, rather He has already established the framework for good living and thinking even before one would assume it to be unnecessary.

Worldviews matter. The Christian who claims to love Jesus fails to love him truly when he despises the forming of a coherent model for thinking, and when he trivializes the common.

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Easily Offended?

Frank Viola illustrates how easily Christians are offended:

When I think about such things, the image I get is that of the Lord Jesus Christ descending from the heavens in great glory with a plethora of heavenly angels, returning to earth after thousands of years. And once He sets His foot on the ground, two Christians begin arguing over which foot landed first.

{read the rest}

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Spiritual Depression

My first and initial reading of Lloyd-Jones’s classic Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure elaborate on this trend. Lloyd-Jones asserts that a “depressed Christian is a contradiction in terms, and he is a very poor recommendation for the gospel (11).” In other words, he elaborates, “the man who is dejected and disquieted and miserable, who is unhappy and depressed always shows it in his face” (13).

It is true that this can be over-stated, but I think the principle of it is rather accurate. God created us to reflect glory with our faces. If our appearance does not reflect his glory as it ought, it is likely that it will be revealed in our countenance.

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How Can I Love the Church?

This type of wisdom from parishioners makes pastors rejoice. Tolle Lege! Please take the time and read this entire piece.

1) Read the Word: Our minds are renewed by the reading of His Word, and that renewal includes transforming those selfish concerns that often keep us from loving His people. It also arms us with discernment to know theological truth and error. When you drink up His Word, those truths overflow and bless those around you.

2) Deal with offenses or let them go: Love covers a multitude of sins and love speaks the truth. Choose one. To ignore either is to open the door wide open to conflict and bitterness. You might as well roll out the red carpet and say, “Come on in!”

3) Be thankful and make a note of it: Thankful people have their eyes fixed on the goodness of the LORD which leaves them much less time to magnify the faults of the saints or petty offenses. Write those praises down, including what you appreciate about those with whom you worship.

4) Treasure your Pastor: Treasuring leaves no time for roasting. Consider your pastor’s responsibilities, what he gives to your church each week, how he practically loves the body, the sacrifices he makes. Consider the conflict you are spared as a church body because you have a godly shepherd. Let him know how much you appreciate him, in word or on paper.

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Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist

A post by Melinda Penner in 2005 reminded me of the great responsibility pastors have to project and express a biblical view of life and the world. According to a 2005 study:

Most religious youth couldn’t coherently express their beliefs and how it is different from other faiths. Their view of God is “something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist” who solves their problems. And the most troubling finding is that religious teens don’t believe there are theological objective truths; effectively they are pluralists.

What is the cause of such naivete? The Church has certainly failed to educate their youth when their youth were only little babes (Psalm 22:9). Undoubtedly there is a parental blame in the picture. Parents need to equip early on. They need to fulfill their duties (Ephesians 6). At the same time, what is the modern Church offering their youth? Pizza parties? Pep talks about modern movie trivia?

The Church is losing her youth, though her youth may still be attending the Church. It won’t be long before they become Church corpses–offering little to nothing to the life and sanctification of the Church body–or completely abandon the pews and run to Richard Dawkins for nurture.

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Lent and the 5th Commandment

Toby Sumpter offers some insights into the 5th commandment. Here is his conclusion:

It is true that parents must teach their children to honor and obey them. But that is only practice for honoring and obeying God. The ultimate aim of parenting is not to try to get your children to obey you. The point of parenting is to get your children to love and honor and obey God. The “fat” isn’t for you. The “fat” belongs to the Lord. And they learn how to glorify God best as they see you doing it, as they hear you talking about it, as they believe that you mean it. It’s no accident that Paul exhorts all of the members of the church in Ephesus to imitate God like children (Eph. 5:1, 5:8), and then proceeds to command children to obey their parents (Eph. 6:1). When you teach your children to obey, you are merely calling on them to imitate you as you imitate Christ, as you honor your Father.