Ten Ways to Help Kids Love Missions

A good post at the Desiring God site.

D.A. Carson on Evangelicalism

Justin Taylor links to lectures by D.A. Carson (one of the most important theologians ministering today) concerning the current state of evangelicalism.

"Jesus Christ did not rise alone"

“Jesus Christ did not rise alone. He rose as the head of a whole body of people elected to have faith in him, to benefit from him, and to extend his mission in the world.”

- Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Engaging God’s World (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2002), 81.
posted at Of First Importance

Why God is completely for us forever

"Our only hope for living the radical demands of the Christian life is that God is totally for us now and forever. Therefore, God has not ordained that living the Christian life should be the basis of our hope that God is for us. That basis is the death and righteousness of Christ, counted as ours through faith alone.

"On the cross Christ endured for us all the punishment require of us because of our sin. And in order that God, as our Father, might be completely for us an not against us forever, Christ has performed for us, in his perfect obedience to God, all that God required of us as the ground of his being totally for us forever.

"This punishment and this obedience are completed and past. They can never change. Our union with Christ and the enjoyment of these benefits is secure forever. Through faith alone, God establishes our union with Christ. This union will never fail, because in Christ God is for us as an omnipotent Father who sustains our faith, and works all things together for our everlasting good.

'The one and only instrument through which God preserves our union with Christ is faith in Christ -- the purely receiving act of the soul."

-- John Piper "The Future of Justification" p. 184 (Crossway 2007)

Living What We Believe

Is your Christian faith what really defines you and the way you look at life? To ask it another way, are your professed Christian beliefs (the doctrines you've been taught and that you would say you've embraced) -- are these the beliefs/ideas that really shape and control you (your outlook, your values, your priorities)?

If you're like me, you have a variety of reasons for affirming 'belief' in the doctrines and teachings of Christianity -- reasons related to fitting in with family and friends, fitting in at church, etc. But I have found that it's possible to kind of slide into a nomimal, polite, half-pretending way of believing, with the result that what I say I believe as a Christian isn't really what's defining and directing me. Instead, another set of basic beliefs are what is really calling the shots in my life.

Here's one example: I know that the Gospel says that we're accepted and welcomed by God because of grace alone received through faith alone, and that my works (my performance) adds nothing to my being right with God. And I know that Christianity teaches that God set in motion the plan of salvation (includng making me right with him) because he loved me, not in order that he could love me.

So the Gospel and Christianity teach this great and gracious and generous and free and sovereign saving love of God, through Christ, that comes to me as sheer gift -- and it's all of grace from first to last, forever. That's what the Gospel says. That's what Biblical Christianity teaches. So that's what I believe...sort of...sometimes...well, kind of...but not very often.

Why do I say that? Because much of the time what I really believe, and how I really look at things, is substantially different than what I just described. For deep down I have another set of beliefs (that I picked up from the world, the flesh and the devil) -- and according to those beliefs how I'm performing and how well I'm doing very definitely determine what God thinks of me, and how he regards me, and whether I have reason to expect his blessing.

According to this 'faith' (belief system), salvation might have been "all of grace" to start with, but from there on out, it was largely about me 'maintaining' God's good favor, staying on his good side, by how well I obeyed, and how little I disobeyed, and how much I served, and....and....

See what I mean? During those times I have, for all intents and purposes, stopped believing the Gospel, the good news of grace, and my whole identity and outlook end up being shaped by the lies that the devil has found a way to make me believe...deep down.

So no wonder it's called a fight of faith -- a struggle to keep believing -- really and truly, from the heart believing, a believing that begins with what's at the heart and core of Biblical Christianity: the Gospel of grace itself.

Ultimately, we all end up living what we really, truly believe. So may God help us (by his Word, his Spirit, prayer, and the fellowship of his people) to really and truly believe the Truth.

Recommended book on Worship

I'm looking forward to reading a new book on worship (especially in relation to music in the church) by Bob Kauflin. It's entitled "Worship Matters" (published by Crossway). You can read more about the book, including two very good sample chapters here.

Kauflin has his own blog at worshipmatters.com

Really "Getting" the Gospel

“Christians come to see that both their sins and their best deeds have all really been ways of avoiding Jesus as savior. They come to see that Christianity is not fundamentally an invitation to get more religious. A Christian comes to say: 'Though I have often failed to obey the moral law, the deeper problem was why I was trying to obey it! Even my efforts to obey it has been just a way of seeking to be my own savior. In that mindset, even if I obey or ask for forgiveness, I am really resisting the gospel and setting myself up as Savior.'

"To 'get the gospel' is to turn from self-justification and rely on Jesus’ record for a relationship with God. The irreligious don’t repent at all, and the religious only repent of sins. But Christians also repent of their righteousness. That is the distinction between the three groups–Christian, moralists (religious), and pragmatists (irreligious).”

- Tim Keller, “The Centrality of the Gospel”

“That Christian who has free grace, who has free justification, who has the mediatorial righteousness of Christ, who has the satisfaction of Christ, who has the covenant of grace most constantly in his sight, and most frequently warm upon his heart—that Christian, of all Christians in the world, is most free from a world of fears, and doubts, and scruples which do sadden, sink, perplex, and press down a world of other Christians, who daily eye more what Christ is doing in them, and what they are doing for Christ, than they do eye either his active or passive obedience.

"Christ has done great things for his people, and he has suffered great things for his people, and he has purchased great things for his people, and he has prepared great things for his people; yet many of his own dear people are so taken up with their own hearts, and with their own duties and graces, that Christ is little eyed by them or minded by them!

"This is the great reason why so many Christians, who will certainly go to heaven—do walk in darkness, and lie down in sorrow.”

- Thomas Brooks, A Cabinet of Choice Jewels
posted at Of First Importance

Holy for His Sake

"I will not trifle with the sin that slew by best Friend; I must be holy for his sake."

-- Charles Spurgeon

The Cross Persuades Us that God Loves Us

"When we think of Christ dying on the cross we are shown the lengths to which God’s love goes in order to win us back to himself. We would almost think that God loved us more than he loves his Son! We cannot measure such love by any other standard.

"He is saying to us: I love you this much. The cross is the heart of the gospel. It makes the gospel good news: Christ died for us. He has stood in our place before God’s judgment seat. He has borne our sins. God has done something on the cross we could never do for ourselves.

"But God does something to us as well as for us through the cross. He persuades us that he loves us...."

..."But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (NASB).The cross should never be expounded simply as a demonstration of the love of God in a sense of being overwhelmed with his love, like it doesn’t matter if anything else was accomplished on the cross as long as we are overwhelmed by his love and swept along into fellowship with him, and that is the atonement. No. But while wrath is satisfied and Christ dies for our sins, it would be erroneous for us to reduce this to the kind of mathematical formulation of “this is how God has merely dealt with our sins.”

"No, this is also how God actually proves to us he really loves us!So it is both the effecting of the atonement and the persuading of his love...."

-- Sinclair Ferguson (from an interview of Ferguson by C.J. Mahaney)

Theologians as Sewage Specialists?

...That's what J.I. Packer suggests:

"Think of theologians as the church's sewage specialists. Their role is to detect and eliminate intellectual pollution, and to ensure, so far as man can, that God's life-giving truth flows pure and unpoisoned into Christian hearts.

"Their calling obliges them to act as the church's water engineers, seeking by their preaching, teaching, and biblical exposition to make the flow of truth strong and steady; but it is particularly as disposers of spiritual sewage that I want to portray them.

"They are to test the water and filter out anything they find that confuses minds, corrupts judgments, and distorts the way that Christians view their own lives. If they see Christians astray, they must haul them back on track; if the see them dithering, they must give them certainty; if they find them confused, they must straighten them out."

-- "Hot Tub Religion" p.13 (Tyndale)

"Instructing a Child's Heart" by Tedd & Margy Tripp

Tim Challies gives a helpful summary and review of a new book, "Instructing a Child's Heart."

"The Gospel in 6 Minutes" by John Piper

Here's a good, brief summary of what it means to believe and live by the Gospel.

The Great Omission (Why We Need to Recover Gospel-Centered Christianity)

I have been concerned and disturbed for some time about trends going on in supposedly evangelical churches and ministries, and recently the reason for my concern crystallized in my mind: way too much of what happens in evangelicalism today, in its worship and witness, its popular trends, in so many of the songs and well-attended seminars, etc., is marked by a glaring omission – the Gospel is being left out. Or at the very least, we ('evangelicals') are no longer Gospel-centered in the way we should be (and in the way we used to be).

When we gather for worship we sing and speak about God maybe most often as the one who strengthens us for coping with life’s trials and troubles. And many evangelical authors and seminar leaders and even pastors may teach about how to live more successfully and strategically. We may even be calling people to live for things bigger themselves. (That’s big with those inclined toward the emergent movement…..)

And many of those things are all good in their place, but they cease to be good if they crowd the Gospel from the center, and even end up being a substitute for the Gospel – for believing it, proclaiming it, celebrating it and living by it.

We are EVANGELicals. That means, literally, we are GOSPEL-centered people. We are not mere theists; we are Christians, and even more specifically we are Gospel-centered (because we’re Bible-believing) Christians!

Remember, the reality and meaning of the Cross is at the heart of the Biblical/authentic Gospel. That’s why Paul could call his message “the word of the cross” and why he would tell the sophisticated and worldly-wise Corinthians, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Cor.1:18; 2:1ff.) So again, it’s the message and the meaning of the cross and the resurrection – in other words the Gospel that is at the heart of real, true, authentic Christianity.

And so we must be Gospel-centered Christians (preaching the Gospel to ourselves everyday)…

– The Gospel defines who we are as believers – our faith in Christ takes the shape of believing what the Gospel declares about Him, centering in his being the Son of God who saves through his cross and resurrection.

-- The Gospel, then, is also what defines us as church. We are those baptized by the Spirit into one body when we believe the Gospel of Christ.

-- The Gospel defines how we are to live (e.g., Rom.6:1ff.; Gal.2:20ff.)

-- the Gospel fuels true worship (Rev.5:9-10, 12-13)

-- the Gospel directs how we minister (2 Cor. 5:11, 14-21) We are ambassadors: think of what the function of an ambassador is, and how he can get it wrong by distorting the king’s message. Such distortion happens when we leave out part of what we're to be proclaiming.

“The message about Christ (the Gospel)" is to richly inhabit our worship and our witness, our meetings and our ministries -- in sermons, but also in our songs (Col.3:16f.). The gospel is not merely a message about God helping us to cope with our problems and disappointments and broken dreams, etc. (Liberals believe that much.)

No, the Gospel is about God saving us from our sin – the penalty, power and presence of sin – and saving us specifically through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and saving us by grace alone through faith alone because we were too wicked and weak to save ourselves. The gospel is about the triumph of the gracious reign of God.

THAT’S THE GOSPEL!! And it is just plain wrong (and sad, and silly) when we settle for a lesser substitute message about God being just this nice, benign Being out to help everybody make their dreams come true.

May we recover our commitment to being as Gospel-centered as the apostle Paul, who wrote: "But far be it from me to boast/glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." (Gal.6:14)

Communicating the Gospel in a Post-modern Culture

I highly recommend this lecture by Pastor Tim Keller on communicating the Gospel in a post-modern culture. It includes crucial insights that relate to evangelism in more traditional contexts too.