I’ve been reading “Relationships: A Mess Worth Making” by Paul Tripp and Tim Lane and I heartily recommend it to all. I will soon finish and post my review. But for now, follow with me as the authors cut to the heart of our talk in relationships.
Here is a quote from the chapter on Talk:
Christ said, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45, authors’ emphasis). Our problem with words is not primarily a matter of vocabulary, skill, or timing. Have you ever said, “Oops, I didn’t mean to say that!” Often it would be more accurate to say, “I’m sorry I said what I meant!” If the thought, attitude, desire, emotion, or purpose hadn’t been in your heart, it wouldn’t have come out of your mouth… The real problem with your communication is what you want to say and why you want to say it, which ultimately has nothing to do with your language skills. Christ reveals that the what and the why are shaped by the heart. Therefore, if we hope to transform the way we talk with one another, the heart must change first.
Convicting.
How often do you pray for your church leaders? Paul writing to the church in Colosse:
“9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” Col. 1:9-10
Pray for your church leaders, pray that God would protect them from error, from sin, from things that would distract them. I commit to pray for my church leaders daily, how about you?
I received a prayer letter from some friends serving in a foreign land this morning. What a challenge he put forth in just a short amount of paragraphs. Here is what it reads:
Tuesday, 10:35pm. After a brimming full weekend of ministry (attending friend’s 50th birthday party, preaching at a small church), Monday had been a day of preparation for guests (6 arrived on Tuesday—two runs to the airport). A neighbor had confided to us their marriage is on the brink. Now when we wanted to be finding our pillows, we were sitting in our neighbor’s kitchen, peeling back the debris from a war zone—a cruel and vicious war.
What hope do you offer two people who have systematically destroyed all hope, trust, and respect for each other?
Jesus Christ. He is the hope for the hopeless and a refuge for the broken.
I wish I could write and say that both offenders fell to their knees and prayed for forgiveness from each other from God. As best as we could we enunciated the Gospel and told them of their need and the remedy found only in Christ.
How hard it is to see people remain unyielding and their hearts blinded. But part of ministry, real ministry, is seeing people reject the truth and endeavoring to love them and continue to pray and continue to share God’s truth with them. Real ministry takes a toll. It takes endurance. It takes walking by faith and not by sight. It often comes when we are at the end of ourselves. When it is not convenient, or wanted, or ideal. Please pray for us that we would have grace and strength to engage and face the opportunities of real ministry.
“So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12
How minutes a day do you waste? Whether it is watching television, listening to the radio, reading nonsense, starring at the wall… whatever your pleasure. Today I am keep track of wasted minutes. Sorry, I’m not sharing. I am embarrassed already.
I heard on Sunday of a 16th-century reformer Philip Melanchthon, who kept a record of every wasted moment and then took his list to God in confession at the end of each day. What an example of a man who wanted to redeem the time, because the days are evil. Everyday we have a new opportunity to reject sin and obey God.
Last night we had a unusually warm evening, so we ventured out for a walk and playtime at the nearby playground. My daughter loves to explore playgrounds, and I sheepishly admit having irrational fears that she’ll be to adventurous and cause injury to herself. I think in the back of my mind that she’ll be more daring then I am myself, but tonight my fears have been relieved. She is as scared as I was when I was a kid, in fact she is quite timid.
I’m sure these giant rubber mounds sticking up from the ground looked so big to my daughter before she mounted one to walk across, but after climbing the first, then second, which is a few inches taller and then to the third, now four inches shorter than the second, she began to get very scared and begged for our help. She asks for our hand, but we believe in her and cheer her on to complete the next step on her own.
After a few moments of hesitancy and disbelief in herself, she cries out again for help. I hold out my hand for her, but reply “All you need is my one little finger, you can do it”. She looks at me, grabs my one little finger and confidently walks to the next mound. We exclaim in loud, boisterous (and somewhat high-pitched parenting voices) “Good job Madelyn! We knew you could do it!”
In that moment I realized that sometimes all we need in our lives and ministry is to know that we can hold on to someone for strength, courage, and hope. But sadly all too often I forget that God is there and I ignore his hand. Some days I am completely confident… in myself. Which can get me into lots of trouble.
In the beginning of Joshua you read,
6 Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. 7 Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. 8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” vv.6-9
Three times Joshua is charged to be strong and courageous in the task he was about to do. I can only imagine what he might have been thinking; except for the part where they would go to war and have to kill their enemies. Never done that before. But, I firmly believe that God has created each of us with the ability to make wise decisions but it is never divorced from Him and His Word. Twice in the above verses Joshua is commanded to do all according to the Word and to not let it depart from his mouth. And he ends in verse nine with an incredible promise, the LORD your God is with you wherever you go. We can be strong and courageous in life and ministry, but know that God is there to hold out his hand.
I just finished Andrew Peterson’s next installment of the Wingfeather Saga Series, “North! Or Be Eaten“. I must say at the outset that I am not a big fiction reader, in fact I can count on one hand how many fiction titles I have read in the past 10 years.
I couldn’t dig into this book until I had to re-read his first book “On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness“, of which I am glad I did to refresh my mind of the characters and the setting. Where the first book was mostly set up and back story, this book is all action. North! Or Be Eaten keeps up a proper pace for an adventure-fantasy. This book is filled with hidden dangers, jealously, anger, remorse, and deadly secrets (for clarification, they are not the same as hidden dangers). Despite all the troubles that the characters faced, North! Or Be Eaten definitely ends on a hopeful note. I still have lots of questions and I am very curious about what the future holds for the Igiby’s. I have a strong feeling that there will be another book or two in this series.
I am also quite sure kids will be riveted by the story and on the edge of their seats. I also encourage parents to read this along with their kids or to them so that you can bring out some of the questions the story poses.
There is also a very cool website devoted to the Wingfeather Saga which brings more clarification to the story and characters and also a note to the parents section. I really enjoyed this book and look forward to future installments.
Author bio.:
Andrew Peterson is the author of On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, Book One in the Wingfeather Saga, and The Ballad of Matthew’s Begats. He’s also the critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter and recording artist of ten albums, including Resurrection Letters II. He and his wife, Jamie, live with their two sons and one daughter in a little house they call The Warren near Nashville, Tennessee. Visit his websites: www.andrew-peterson.com and www.rabbitroom.com
It’s football season and most men will spend an obscene amount of time in front of the television. Not me, I spend an obscene amount of time watching baseball.
It was a momentous night last night in our home, we finished The Jesus Storybook Bible for the first time before Madelyn went to bed. We started reading this every night about three months ago and have been pretty faithful with it. It takes only a few minutes to read and captures a story from scripture with great consistency in pointing the reader (or listener) that the rescuer is coming (OT) or He is here in the NT with Jesus. The pictures are great too, enough excitement to capture the attention of a three year old most nights.
Here is a good review by Tim Keller,
“I would urge not just families with young children to get this book, but every Christian–from pew warmers, to ministry leaders, seminarians and even theologians! Sally Lloyd-Jones has captured the heart of what it means to find Christ in all the scriptures, and has made clear even to little children that all God’s revelation has been about Jesus from the beginning–a truth not all that commonly recognized even among the very learned.”
I would highly recommend you purchase this book, especially if you have little ones in your house. If you are curious before purchasing, you can check out the new website for the Jesus Storybook Bible when you can listen to samples of the new audio narration and view PDF stories. The new deluxe version will be coming out in October.
Also, visit Timmy Brister’s blog for another review of this book – he finished it in their family last night too!
I was directed to Tevin Wax’s blog to read his review of “The Shack” from Justin Taylor’s blog. I have been following Trevin on twitter (@trevinwax) for some time and have been impressed with his viewpoints and comments.
His review seems to be very balanced and clear on his likes and dislikes of the book. As I was when reading this book, there are some things that are positive like his portrayal of evil and how God can comfort us in our suffering. But the list really ends there and then is filled with a lot of negatives. My biggest beef is the shining reviews on the book itself and by other “christiasns” that say it changed their view of the Trinity. I think it really confuses what scripture says about the trinity and probably does a lot of harm.
Wax’s review of using non-fictional characters in a fiction story is right on:
Let’s say you meet an author who wants to use your grandparents as the main characters in a novel. The author tells you that the narrative will be fictional, but that your grandparents will have the starring roles. Sounds great! you think.
But when the manuscript arrives in your hands, you discover that the story does not accurately represent the personalities of your grandparents. The relationship between them is all wrong too. Grandma berates Grandpa. Early on, they run off and elope (which is totally out of character). At one point, they contemplate divorce.
When you complain, the author responds, “Remember? I told you it would be fictional.”
“Yes,” you say, somewhat exasperated, “I knew the story would be fictional, but I thought you would get my grandparents right. The grandparents in your story aren’t anything like my grandparents.”
“Who cares?” the author responds. “It’s a work of fiction.”
“Well, I care,” you say, “because people will put down this book thinking that my grandparents were like the way you portrayed them.”
My biggest problem with The Shack is its portrayal of God. I understand that the book is a work of fiction, not a theological treatise, and therefore should be treated as fiction. But the main characters are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are actual Persons. To portray God in a manner inconsistent with his revelation to us in Scripture (and primarily in Jesus) is to misrepresent living Persons.
I guess this was my view, but couldn’t express it as well as Tevin does. I am also baffeled on why this book is still being “sold out” on bookshelves everywhere and the most downloaded Christian audiobook on iTunes. Tevin covers that too:
- Missing fathers. So many people have grown up with absent daddies or abusive father figures. For many, the mother is the rock of the home. To portray God the Father as a matriarch is bound to resonate with a good number of people.
- The anti-authoritarian tendency of our culture. At one point in the book, God speaks of there being no roles of hierarchy in the Trinity. God even submits to humans. This resonates with a culture that already eschews traditional understandings of role and authority. (I can picture my Romanian friends rolling their eyes at The Shack and saying, “That’s so American!”)
- The immanence of God. Evangelicals too often bring God down to the level of understanding, faithful friend. Ultimately, this view of God is shrunken and reductionist. Just like it is misrepresenting God to make him so other that he is virtually unknowable, it is misrepresenting him to make him so close and human that his God-ness is absent.
You can read the whole review here.
HT: JT
I am not a “soul winner” – I am a Ambassador for Christ.
“While we must always remember that it is our responsibility to proclaim salvation, we must never forget that it is God who saves. It is God who brings men and women under the sound of the gospel, and it is God who brings them to faith in Christ. Our evangelistic work is the instrument that He uses for this purpose, but the power that saves is not in the instrument: it is in the hand of the One who uses the instrument.” P.27 from “Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God” by J.I. Packer
