"9 Things That Christian Worship Should Be"

A great summary from Zac Hicks.

"...make every effort..."

 "Resolved, to endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness, in the other world, as I possibly can, with all the power, might, vigor, and vehemence -- yea, violence -- I am capable of, or can bring myself to exert, in any way that can be thought of." (Jonathan Edwards) Compare 2 Peter 1:5-11.

"Why your church matters"

from Ray Ortlund, Jr.:

“. . . the church of the living God, the pillar and buttress of the truth.”  1 Timothy 3:15

". . . the church of the living God.  A church is where the idols of our culture can be cogently discredited and the living God rallied around, rejoiced in, worshiped, studied, loved and obeyed.  If the church is dead or dormant, God’s own appointed testimony to his living reality powers down.  The felt reality of God in the world today is at stake in our churches.

". . . the pillar and buttress of the truth.  A “pillar” holds something up high for all to see.  In this world, the one truth that will outlast the universe needs to be put on clear display rather than submerged under all the stuff that’s demanding our attention week in and week out.  A church can make the gospel obvious and accessible through preaching, teaching, memorizing, catechizing, blogging, etc.

"A 'buttress' firms something up, makes it strong.  For many, the gospel does not feel strong.  Other things hold them together.  But a church buttresses the gospel by showing that it really works.  Not only does the gospel create the church, but a church also buttresses the gospel.  The gospel starts feeling solid and believable and urgently needed as our greatest resource in all of life.

"By divine appointment, the church makes the real Jesus seem real, it makes the truth visible to busy people, and it embodies living proof that the gospel enriches real people living real lives today.

"The church matters.  Your church matters.  In these powerful ways."

"Never the Same"

From the Desiring God website:

In 1962 Don and Carol Richardson came into contact with a remote tribe in West New Guinea known as the Sawi people. They were cannabilistic headhunters without a written language, nor any clue about Jesus.

The Richardsons, along with their three children, preached the gospel to the Sawi people and witnessed a remarkable movement of God. The story is told in the best-selling book Peace Child and has inspired many to take the gospel to the furthest ends of the earth.

Just recently — fifty years after they first met the Sawi — the Richardsons returned to the village they once called home. This short 15-minute film from Pioneers documents that experience. It is one of the most amazing things you will ever see.

The Christian Church as Counter-culture

"The world’s illegal rebellion [against God] is illegitimate. It certainly feels real, of course—IS real—but it doesn’t change the reality that God is still Ruler of everything. Though people may think they have rebelled, they have not—and cannot—ultimately escape the fact that King Jesus still is sovereign. And though we feel outnumbered and highly unpopular at times by clinging to our Christian ideals, though we make ourselves subject to all kinds of criticism and misunderstanding by resisting the widely held opinions of our friends and neighbors, we can’t help but recognize a tension that keeps us from following where the leader of this rebellion wants to take us. As much as we may feel obligated by our family histories, or as willing as we may be to at least consider the validity of these differing viewpoints, there’s no common ground for us to stand on. Our aims are incompatible. As Christians, we don’t join an illegitimate rebellion. Instead, we live for King Jesus in contrast to those around us. We live in loyalty to the very One the world rebels against. We’re in rebellion against the rebellion."

-- Ed Stetzer, "Subversive Kingdom: Living as Agents of Gospel Transformation"   (pp. 5-6). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

A prayer for grace to live a life of love

from Scotty Smith:


"And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And live a life of love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God". Eph. 4:30-5:2

     Merciful Father, mighty Holy Spirit, most compassionate Lord Jesus, I praise you today for the love with which you love us, in which you have rooted us, and by which you are transforming us. It took the whole Trinity to redeem me, and it will take the whole Trinity for me to live this life of love to which you have called us. There’s no other way I will even begin to be an “imitator of God.” So hear my cry.
     Father, I don’t want to live today just with a theoretical or theological awareness of being your dearly loved child. Let it be deeply experiential and existential—very real, very encouraging, and very humbling. Your lavish love for us is the greatest convicting power this side of the new heaven and new earth. Stun my heart afresh—show me yet again, and even more of the height, depth, width and breadth of your love for us in Jesus.
     All day long, let me hear you serenading me in the gospel, that I might be filled with joy and peace, and that I might grieve the ways I grieve the Holy Spirit—with my thoughts, with my words, and with my actions. Without the incontrovertible convicting work of the Spirit, I might seek to justify the ways I love poorly—blaming others for my bad attitude and grace-less manners.
     Lord Jesus, you are so kind, compassionate, and forgiving of me. May the fragrant aroma of the sacrifice you made for me on the cross to permeate all my relationships. You’re not calling us to change or fix anyone. You’re calling us to live as a broken perfume bottle, through whom the aroma of grace will bring your gentling and transforming presence. Show me how to boast in you and in my weakness, that I might freely and gladly live as a servant of others.
     God the Holy Spirit, you who raised Jesus from the dead, give me the power I will need today to rid myself of all bitterness, anger, rage, brawling, slander, and malice and all the other ways I love poorly. Indeed, Triune God, the life of love you live for me, please live through me. So very Amen I pray, in Jesus’ peerless and loving name.

-- from Pastor Scotty Smith

One Solitary, Matchless, Divine Transaction

"Vicarious sacrifice is not only not the law of being, it is not a law at all. It is one solitary, matchless, Divine transaction—never to be repeated, never to be equaled, never to be approached. It was the splendid and unexpected device of Divine wisdom, which in its disclosure flooded the minds of angels with the knowledge of God."


— John Murray
Redemption Accomplished and Applied

As when I'm at my best....

"Resolved, to live so at all times, as I think is best in my devout frames, and when I have clearest notions of things of the gospel, and another world."

-- Jonathan Edwards

Relationship Idols?

“No human being was ever meant to be the source of personal joy and contentment for someone else. Your spouse, your friends, and your children cannot be the sources of your identity. When you seek to define who you are through those relationships, you are asking another sinner to be your personal messiah, to give you the inward rest of soul that only God can give.

"Only when I have sought my identity in the proper place (in my relationship with God) am I able to put you in the proper place as well. When I relate to you knowing that I am God’s child and the recipient of his grace, I am able to serve and love you.

"However, if I am seeking to get identity from you, I will watch you too closely. I will become acutely aware of your weaknesses and failures. I will become overly critical, frustrated, and angry. I will be angry not because you are a sinner, but because you have failed to deliver the one thing I seek from you: identity.

"When I remember that Christ has given me everything I need to be the person he has designed me to be, I am free to serve and love you. When I know who I am, I am free to be humble, gentle, patient, forbearing, and loving as we navigate the inevitable messiness of relationships.”

-- Timothy Lane and Paul Tripp,

The Present Power of the Gospel

"If you are not reminding yourself again and again of the now-ism of the gospel, that is, the right-here, right-now benefits of the grace of Christ, you will be looking elsewhere to get what can be found only in Jesus. If you are not feeding your soul on the realities of the presence, promises, and provisions of Christ, you will ask the people, situations, and things around you to be the messiah that they can never be. If you are not attaching your identity to the unshakable love of your Savior, you will ask the things in your life to be your Savior, and it will never happen. If you are not requiring yourself to get your deepest sense of well-being vertically, you will shop for it horizontally, and you will always come up empty. If you are not resting in the one true gospel, preaching it to yourself over and over again, you will look to another gospel to meet the needs of your unsettled heart."

-- Paul David Tripp, "Dangerous Calling"

Certainty and Openness

from Ray Ortlund, Jr.:

Some Christians seem “all certainty.”  Maybe it makes them feel heroic.  But they see too few gray areas.  Everything is a federal case.  They have a fundamentalist mindset.

Other Christians seem “all openness.”  Maybe it makes them feel humble.  But they see too few black-and-white areas.  They have a liberal mindset — though they may demonstrate a surprising certainty against certainty.

The Bible is our authority as we sort out what deserves certainty and what deserves openness.  1 Corinthians 15:1-4 defines the gospel of Christ crucified for our sins, Christ buried and Christ risen again on the third day, according to the Scriptures, as “of first importance.”  Here is the center of our certainty.

From that “of first importance” theological address, we move out toward the whole range of theological and practical questions asking for our attention.  The more clearly our logic connects with that center, the more certain and the less open we should be.  The further our thinking extrapolates from that center, the less certain and the more open we should be.  When a question cannot be addressed by a clear appeal to the Bible, our conclusions should be all the more modest.

The gospel requires us to have high expectations of one another on biblically central doctrines and strategies, and it cautions us to be more relaxed with one another the further we have to move out from the center.

Building our theology is not like pushing the first domino over, which pushes the next over, and so forth, down the line — each domino of equal weight and each fall equally inevitable.  Rather, building our theology is more like exploring a river.  We start out at the mouth of the river.  It is wide.  There is no decision to make.  All is unmistakably clear.  But then one starts paddling up-river.  As each tributary forks into the river, one must decide which way to go.  Indeed, it may eventually become difficult to distinguish between the river itself and a tributary.  But many decisions must be made along the way, not every one equally obvious.

This is why we need a map of the whole, noting the main features of the topography, such as 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 provides.  There are other scriptures that help us globalize our biblical thinking.  For example, Exodus 34:6-7 is quoted multiple times throughout the rest of the Old Testament.  Clearly, it is an atomically weighted passage that other biblical authors treated as a sort of theological North Star for guidance.  There are other passages meant to help us develop a wise sense of overall theological proportion.

A church or movement may desire, for its own reasons, to define secondary and tertiary doctrines and strategies as important expectations within their own ministry.  That’s okay.  But then it’s helpful to say, “We know this isn’t a dividing line for Christian oneness.  It’s just a decision we’ve made for ourselves, because we think it will help us in our situation.  We realize that other Christians will see it differently, and that’s no problem for us.”

May we become more certain where we’ve been too open and more open where we’ve been too certain, according to Scripture.  And where it seems helpful to provide further definition on our own authority, may we do so with candor and humility but without apology.

Election day....

A prayer for America on Election Day.

"Eating Disorders and the Power of Christ"

...from Kristin Gilles....

If You Call Jesus "Lord"...

"You can’t call Jesus Lord [= Master] without declaring yourself his slave. Does that make sense? If you hear a little girl in the mall call me 'Dad,' then she has identified herself as my daughter. When you call Jesus 'Lord,' you aren’t [just] saying, 'He’s the teacher— and I’m the student.' You are saying, 'He’s the master and I am the slave.'"

 -- Kyle Idleman, "Not a Fan: Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus" (p. 151). Zondervan.

Fan or Follower?

It may seem that there are many followers of Jesus, but if they were honestly to define the relationship they have with him I am not sure it would be accurate to describe them as followers. It seems to me that there is a more suitable word to describe them. They are not followers of Jesus. They are fans of Jesus. Here is the most basic definition of fan in the dictionary: “An enthusiastic admirer”…

But Jesus was never interested in having fans. When he defines what kind of relationship he wants, “Enthusiastic Admirer” isn’t an option. My concern is that many of our churches in America have gone from being sanctuaries to becoming stadiums. And every week all the fans come to the stadium where they cheer for Jesus but have no interest in truly following him. The biggest threat to the church today is fans who call themselves Christians but aren’t actually interested in following Christ. They want to be close enough to Jesus to get all the benefits, but not so close that it requires anything from them….

-- Kyle Idleman “Not a Fan: Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus”  (Zondervan)