What if we got our deepest desires?

"We would never imagine that getting our heart's deepest desires might be the worst thing that can ever happen to us." -- Tim Keller

Let us not dictate to God

“Let us not dictate to God.  Many a blessing has been lost by Christians not believing it to be a blessing, because it did not come in the particular shape which they had conceived to be proper and right.  To some the divine work is nothing, unless it assumes the form which their prejudice has selected.”

-- Jeremiah Lanphier, Alone With Jesus (London, 1872), page 88.

You did awesome things that we did not look for.  Isaiah 64:3

-- HT: Ray Ortlund, Jr.

What must I do to be saved?

The Gospel is the Good News that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross so that we could be forgiven, and rose again as Lord of all to bring us all the blessings of God's kingdom.  So what is the right (and therefore, saving) response to this Good News?  

We are to 'repent and believe' -- but to fill out the meanings of those words a little more: we are to put our trust in Jesus to be our Savior (believe) and give him our whole-souled allegiance as Lord (repentance).  That marks the beginning of a life of 'following Him' -- being devoted to live by 'everything he commands.'  Or as Paul puts it in Romans 1:5 and 16:26, it is the inception of a live lived in the "obedience of faith."

As the old Gospel song puts it, "The world behind me, the cross before me...  I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back...no turning back."

(Matt. 28:18-20; John 21:19;  1 Thess. 1:9f.; Acts 2:38; 16:31; Rom. 6:17ff.; Gal. 2:20; 6:14)

God's Last and Effective Word

"The secret of the promise is the bearing of the curse so that the blessing may prevail. The gospel is that in Jesus Christ the curse has been set aside and God’s creative purpose for the blessing of his creation is established beyond any possibility of reversal.

"God’s last and effective word is his blessing. It is a particular word spoken in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, broadcast by those who like Paul cannot but pass it on, so powerful is its effect, over flowing with blessing from those who, blessed by it, become a blessing to others."

— Richard Bauckham
"Bible and Mission"
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 35-36

Love's Demand

"Love demands the perfecting of the beloved (the growth, betterment, healing, improvement, uprightness, and goodness of the beloved). Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them; but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than even hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved. Love forgives constantly but condones least. Love is pleased with little, but demands all."
-- C. S. Lewis

6 Reasons Not to Abandon Expository Preaching

A good, brief summary from D.A. Carson

Is Scripture and Preaching Enough?

"We don't really believe Scripture is enough. It must be supplemented with techniques, programs, experiences, exercises, entertainment. The Reformation put the pulpit (for the preaching of the Word) at the center, and we're working hard to move it aside and replace it with a thousand and one distractions. 'Preach the word!' Paul cried to Timothy as he finished his own course. God grant us ears to hear, greater hearts to grasp, bolder lips to proclaim, and stiffer spines to stand on the Word alone."

-- Dan Phillips (from an interview by Guy Davies)

Where do we find God's Words today?

"There are no words of God spoken to us at all today except through the words of Scripture" - J.I. Packer

When the heart is full of the love of Jesus

On the most basic levels, I desire fullness, and fleshly lusts seduce me by attaching themselves to this basic desire. They exploit the empty spaces in me, and they promise that fulness will be mine if I give in to their demands. When my soul sits empty and is aching for something to fill it, such deceptive promises are extremely difficult to resist.

Consequently, the key to mortifying fleshly lusts is to eliminate the emptiness within me and replace it with fullness; and I accomplish this by feasting on the gospel. Indeed, it is in the gospel that I experience a God who glorifies Himself by filling me with His fullness. This is the God of the gospel, a God who is satisfied with nothing less than my experience of fullness in Him!

Indeed, as I perpetually feast on Christ and all His blessings found in the gospel, I find that my hunger for sin diminishes and the lies of lust simply lose their appeal. Hence, to the degree that I am full, I am free. Eyes do not rove, nor do fleshly lusts rule, when the heart is fat with the love of Jesus!

— Milton Vincent
A Gospel Primer for Christians
45-46

Millennials and the Church

An article about Capitol Hill Baptist Church

This, not that, is real Christianity

“You may feel and say, as many do, ‘I was converted and became a Christian.  I’ve grown.  I’ve grown in knowledge, I’ve been reading books, I’ve been listening to sermons.  But I’ve arrived now at a sort of peak, and all I do is maintain that.  For the rest of my life I will just go on like this.’

"My friend, you must get rid of that attitude; you must get rid of it once and forever.  That is religion.  It is not Christianity.  This is Christianity: the Lord appears!  Suddenly, in the midst of the drudgery and the routine and the sameness and the dullness and the drabness, unexpectedly, surprisingly, he meets with you, and he says something to you that changes the whole of your life and your outlook and lifts you to a level that you had never conceived was possible for you. . . . There is always this glorious possibility of meeting with him in a new and a dynamic way.”

-- Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Living Water: Studies in John 4 (Wheaton, 2009), page 14.
HT:  Ray Ortlund, Jr.

"Jesus is Lord"

"...for Paul, the confession that Jesus is Lord meant the acknowledgment that Jesus shares the name and the nature, the holiness, the authority, power, majesty and eternity of the one and only true God." --  C.B. Cranfield  (cp. Rom. 10:9-10)

The Power of a Good Example

I think one of the biggest stumbling-blocks that trip people up as Christians is hypocrisy and nominalism in those who profess to be Christians -- a joy-less form of religion that's devoid of its real power. But it's also true that one of the things that is most encouraging to true faith is to see it lived out for real -- the kind of real faith and love for God that Ray Ortlund describes in a tribute to his dad....

"Stories of My Dad"

The New Life, the Spirit and the Word

"...the new life in the believer is always drawn toward the gospel, the Word of Christ, the Scriptures, as the basis of its support, the food by which faith is strengthened.  The witness of the Holy Spirit binds them to Scripture to the same degree and with the same force as to the person of Christ himself."

-- Herman Bavinck, "Reformed Dogmatics" abridged in one volume, p. 525

"Jesus came preaching"

An excellent essay by Timothy George on the primacy of preaching in the ministry of Jesus.