John Newton on seeking God's wisdom

Above all, my dear friend, let us keep close to the Lord in a way of prayer: He giveth wisdom that is profitable to direct; He is the Wonderful Counsellor; there is no teacher like Him. Why do the living seek to the dead? Why do we weary our friends and ourselves, in running up and down, and turning over books for advice? If we shut our eyes upon the world and worldly things, and raise our thoughts upwards in humility and silence, should we not often hear the secret voice of the Spirit of God whispering to our hearts, and pointing out to us the way of truth and peace? Have we not often gone astray, and hurt either ourselves or our brethren, for want of attending to this divine instruction? Have we not sometimes mocked God, by pretending to ask direction from him, when we had fixed our determination beforehand? It is a great blessing to know that we are sincere; and next to this, to be convinced of our insincerity, and to pray against it.

John Newton, Letters, pp.40f

faithful: being far from shore

...often the church finds herself far from shore and threatened by strong winds and waves. Those in the boat often fail to understand that they are meant to be far from shore and that to be threatened by a storm is not unusual. If the church is faithful she will always be far from the shore. Some, moreover, will be commanded to leave even the safety of the boat to walk on water.

Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, p.141

Not speech alone: George Herbert on preaching

Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word?
He is a brittle crazie glasse;
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glass thy storie,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy Preachers; then the light and glorie
More rev'rend grows, and more doth win:
Which else shows watrish, bleak, and thin.
Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and aw: but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the eare, not conscience, ring.

How to live in exile

This is no time for panic or resentment; it is certainly no time for hate - we're still to love our neighbours as ourselves...this is a time to be faithful and gentle and firm and evangelistic and loving and principled and not driven by malice or hate or condescension or anger but simply to be Christians.

Don Carson, responding to the decision of the SCOTUS regarding same-sex marriage.

The great shadow departs

'My life' is quintessential Iris DeMent - a bittersweet song, sung with pathos and a lyrical purity. It laments the brevity of life ("only a season, a passing September that no-one will recall"), the seeming insignificance of one human life in this vast cosmos and the futility of "so many things that just never turned out right". Yet it also takes its own small stand against that wall of emptiness by celebrating the possibility that love can bring joy and comfort in pain, even if it can only "make things seem better for a while".

In Psalm 8, David movingly reflects on his own finitude against the backdrop of the endless starry sky and finds meaning and comfort in knowing that the living God cares for humankind and is mindful of them. And, yet, all is not well in that psalm: David refers to enemies - the foe, the avenger - who need to be silenced. In this vast cosmos, home to the blended kindness of God, a darkness prevails.

Psalm 8 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

The psalm hints at questions left unanswered, questions that are taken up in Hebrews 2:5ff where the writer is quite plain: we do not yet see humanity flourishing as God intended; evil is present, terrorising souls with the endless waste that is death. No, we do not yet see humanity raised to fulness - but we do see Jesus, the Son of God, made lower than the angels for a time and now crowned with glory and honour, having tasted death, having drunk its bitter cup dry, for us. He it is who calls to us in our bittersweet days, telling us that we are not simply noticed and named but that we can be lifted and loved and filled with immeasurable joy.

Hebrews 2:5-18 It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But there is a place where someone has testified: “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him? You made them a little lower than the angels; you crowned them with glory and honour and put everything under their feet.” In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone... ...Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death —that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Why pastors have to be theologians

Great stuff from Kevin Vanhoozer (HT: Mike Bird).

Learning from the wrong discipline?

If the major scriptural images and definitions for the church are family/household and body, why is so much attention given to learning from corporate leadership models rather than family/emotional systems and medicine?

No graven image

Such helpful reflections by Elisabeth Elliot on the role of experience in maturing our relationship with God:

Breaking up my categories is one of Gods methods of bringing me to maturity. I think of Wayne Oates who said the process of giving up false gods to worship the one true God is Christian maturation. This is part of what I was trying to say in No Graven Image. At that point I realized that every experience of life is a breaking down of some image and replacing it with God. But we keep making new graven images and they must be shattered. That’s what experience is. Sometimes it’s the image of ourselves, the image of the way our lives are supposed to work that has to be destroyed in order for us to worship the one true God.

 

Why your work will not be in vain

Between us and the Kingdom of God as a fully realised fact lies death. It cannot but be so. We saw before that the idea of a perfect society under conditions of mortality is impossible. The perfect society cannot lie this side of death. And moreover it cannot be the direct result of our efforts. We all rightly shrink from the phrase "building the Kingdom of God" not because the Kingdom does not call for labour, but because we know that the best work of our hands and brains is too much marred by egotism and pride and impure ambition to be itself fit for the Kingdom. All our social institutions, even the very best that have been produced under Christian influence, have still the taint of sin about them. By their own horizontal development they cannot, as it were, become the Kingdom of God. There is no straight line of development from here to the Kingdom. The outward attestation of that spiritual conviction is the fact of death. Across our path this obliterating shadow lies: not only must we, body, mind and spirit, personality as a whole, go out into the dark unknown, but also all our labours, our achievements in science, in art, in social and political progress - all is destined sometime to be swept away and forgotten. Everything in the end, even if that end be the promised death of the solar system, is destined to be buried in the dust of failure and death. Our faith as Christians is that just as God raised up Jesus from the dead, so will He raise up us from the dead. And that just as all that Jesus had done in the days of His flesh seemed on Easter Saturday to be buried in final failure and oblivion, yet was by God's power raised to new life and power again, so all the faithful labour of God's servants which time seems to bury in the dust of failure, will be raised up, will be found to be there, transfigured, in the new Kingdom. Every faithful act of service, every honest labour to make the world a better place, which seemed to have been forever lost and forgotten in the rubble of history, will be seen on that day to have contributed to the perfect fellowship of God's Kingdom. As Christ, who committed Himself to God and was faithful even when all ended in utter failure and rejection, was by God raised up so that all He had done was found not to be lost, but alive and powerful, so all who have committed their work in faithfulness to God will be by Him raised up to share in the new age, and will find that their labour was not lost, but that it has found its place in the completed Kingdom.

Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid The Rubble, p.46f

Joy can get no grip on him

(These comments by Matt Crawford in The World Beyond Your Head on the absence of silence and the gutting of attention have serious pastoral implications and are worth pondering) Our mental fragmentation can't simply be attributed to advertising, the Internet, or any other identifiable villain, for it has become something more comprehensive than that, something like a style of existence. It is captured pretty well in the following satirical news item from The Onion:

Gaithersburg, MD - While cracking open his second beer as he chatted with friends over a relaxed outdoor meal, local man Marshall Platt, 34, was reportedly seconds away from letting go and enjoying himself when he was suddenly crushed by the full weight of work emails that still needed to be dealt with...an upcoming wedding he had yet to buy airfare for because of an unresolved issue with his Southwest Rapid Rewards account, and phone calls that needed to be returned. "It's great to see you guys," said the man who had been teetering on the brink of actually having fun and was now mentally preparing for a presentation that he had to give on Friday and compiling a list of bills that needed to be paid before the 7th. "This is awesome." "Anyone want another beer?" continued Platt as he reminded himself to pick up his Zetonna prescription. "Think I'm gonna grab one." Platt, who reportedly sunk into a distracted haze after coming to the razor's edge of experiencing genuine joy, fully intended to go through the motions of talking with friends and appearing to have a good time, all while he mentally shopped for a birthday present for his mother, wracked his brain to remember if he had turned in the itemized remibursement form from his New York trip to HR on time, and made a silent note to call his bank about a mysterious recurring $19 monthly fee that he had recently discovered on his credit card statement.

I think most of us can recognise ourselves in Mr Platt. Is "modern life" really so burdensome? Yes it is. But Mr Platt seems to have a deeper difficulty as well: joy can get no grip on him. The sketch seems to be about the little tasks that claim his attention, but at the center of it is an ethical void. He is unable to actively affirm as important the pleasure of being with friends. He therefore has no basis on which to resist the colonisation of life by hassle. (p.6f)

"You cannot destroy God's good purposes for us."

Commenting on Joseph's & his brothers' experiences, Tim Keller writes:

We must never assume that we know enough to mistrust God's ways or be bitter against what he has allowed. We must never think we have really ruined our lives, or have ruined God's good purposes for us. The brothers must surely have felt, at one point, that they had permanently ruined their standing with God and their father's life and their family. But God worked through it. This is no inducement to sin. The pain and misery that resulted in their lives from this action were very great. Yet God used it redemptively. You cannot destroy his good purpose for us. He is too great, and will weave even great sins into a fabric that makes us into something useful and valuable.

(Walking with God through pain and suffering, p.264)

Not even an angel: on guarding the gospel

It's a striking warning: "if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse" (Galatians 1:8). Paul doesn't mince his words and we can be glad he didn't - the gospel is far too important to mess with. But why extend the warning to include 'an angel from heaven'? Is this just stylistic hyperbole?

Maybe Paul has in the back of his mind the unusual episode in 1 Kings 13 where a man of God from Judah is sent by the Lord to speak God's judgement on Jeroboam and was then to return home pronto, no staying to feast with the king. The message was to be spoken to the altar Jeroboam had fashioned, thus corrupting Israel's worship; it heralded the reign of a Davidic ruler who would be raised up by the Lord (Josiah) and would restore true worship and judge the corrupt.

The man of God played his part well and set off for home, just as he had been told to do. But a certain old prophet ran after him and urged him to return for the sake of hospitality - and he swayed the man of God with these words: "An angel said to me...bring him back". The man of God allowed himself to be persuaded and fell into judgement.

A message about a Davidic king who restores true worship and judges its corruption? The need to hold steadfastly to what God has spoken, even at the cost of the approval of other people? Maybe Paul wasn't being so random after all.

Allow yourself to sleep

Psalm 127:2 says that God gives sleep to those he loves. This is surely the antidote to the endless productivity hacking so many of us find we’re drawn to. It is OK to sleep, to have downtime, to end work without finishing the task. Because all true security and all true prosperity come from the LORD. And whether the best translation is ‘he gives sleep to those he loves’ or ‘while they sleep he provides for those he loves’, the key thing is this: “those he loves”. Loved by the LORD, you can rest in genuine security and slumber in his settled provision. It is in vain to rise early or to stay up late - ‘in vain’: that’s an awesome Bible word. Futile. A waste. Comes-to-nothing. A world without form and void - an empty, trackless waste, without purpose or shape, essentially fruitless. All your efforts at getting things done could amount to that. Ouch. Because unless the LORD builds the house, all labour is in vain.

When God offers you a bigger and better church

The people you serve are a huge disappointment, forever grumbling about one thing or another, looking at you with distrust and treating you with disdain. Then God says to you, ‘OK, enough is enough - I’m through with these people. But I’m going to give you a bigger and better church/ministry.’ Sounds like the vindication you’ve been looking for and a proper reward for all your hard work. It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? Time to start packing your bags and doing some searching on RightMove.

Moses handles that exact situation very differently. In Numbers 14 it seems like the Lord’s patience with the people has run-out; their refusal to listen to Caleb and Joshua’s report about the promised land has been the final straw. But the Lord is willing to continue with Moses and to make him into a nation greater and stronger than Israel have been (v.12). We might think this is probably the turning-point Moses has been secretly longing for.

Yet Moses declines. If ever there was a moment in ministry for him to indulge a sense of personal injustice and to take the vindication being offered him with both hands, this is it. To convince himself that, yes, he’s worth it and does deserve better, despite his own faults. This was that moment - and he lets it pass; he completely refuses to take it.

Instead, he appeals to 2 things: the Lord’s reputation (‘people will think you don’t have what it takes to finish what you started when you brought this lot out of Egypt’) and the Lord’s character (‘you’re a gracious and compassionate God’). His own reputation isn’t on the agenda, nor his career prospects. This is all about the Lord - his name, his character, his work, his mission in the world. And that is tied to these people, come what may.

Was Moses blind to the people’s faults, naively supposing they would improve with age? Hardly. This isn’t about denying what is plainly true; it isn’t about excusing sin, as though the people might turn the corner sometime soon. It’s about holding-on to that which is bigger than their sin and more worthy than one’s own relief.

No wonder we’re told that "Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth" (Num 12:3). And we know what will become of the meek.

A way of thinking and reading that is passing from the Church

…his story also leaves the reader with the feeling that we shall not see Oden’s like again. To recover tradition as he did, one must not simply see that modernity, or postmodernity, has failed. One must also have the tools for appropriating earlier patterns of thought…The texts that enabled Oden to rebuild his theology require time and effort to master. One cannot read Augustine in tweet-sized pieces. One cannot grasp the full significance of his thought from a Wikipedia article. Oden’s story assumes a way of thinking and a way of reading that is passing from the Church. The same basic questions about human existence remain, but I wonder if the rising generation will have even the technical skills to address them as Oden has done. Hypermodernity is superficial not just in its conclusions but also in its methods. The challenge to us is even greater than it was for Oden.

Carl R. Trueman, Review of A Change of Heart by Thomas C. Oden, in First Things, February 2015 (my emphasis)

Pastoral ministry as stochastic art

Some arts reliably attain their object - for example, the art of building. If the building falls down, one can say in retrospect that the builder didn’t know what he was doing. But there is another class of arts that Aristotle calls “stochastic”. An example is medicine. Mastery of a stochastic art is compatible with failure to achieve its end (health). As Aristotle writes, “It does not belong to medicine to produce health, but only to promote it as much as is possible…” Fixing things, whether cars or human bodies, is very different from building things from scratch. The mechanic and the doctor deal with failure every day, even if they are expert, whereas the builder does not. This is because the things they fix are not of their own making, and are therefore never known in a comprehensive or absolute way.This experience of failure tempers the conceit of mastery; the doctor and the mechanic have daily intercourse with the world as something independent, and a vivid awareness of the difference between self and nonself. Fixing things may be a cure for narcissism.

Matthew B. Crawford, in Shop Class as Soulcraft, p.81

Why I'm doing sermon prep by hand

"…for me the most important thing about handwriting has a lot to do with focus. I often feel like my thoughts act sort of like they are in a wind tunnel. It can make me easily distracted as a passing thought can occupy all of my attention. At a computer this is dangerous, as I can immediately chase down information relating to that thought, and get about three levels deep in related ideas and forget what I was doing initially. On paper if I get lost on a project I am far more likely to get lost in that project instead of floundering about elsewhere."

My Analog Life 

How worship orders life

In worship God gathers his people to himself as centre: ‘The Lord reigns’ (Ps. 93:1). Worship is a meeting at the centre so that our lives are centred in God and not lived eccentrically. We worship so that we live in response to and from this centre, the living God. Failure to worship consigns us to a life of spasms and jerks, at the mercy of every advertisement, every seduction, every siren. Without worship we live manipulated and manipulating lives. We move in either frightened panic or deluded lethergy as we are, in turn, alarmed by spectres and soothed by placebos. If there is no centre, there is no circumference. People who do not worship are swept into a vast restlessness, epidemic in the world, with no steady direction and no sustaining purpose.

Eugene H Peterson, Reversed Thunder, p.60

The biggest barriers to effective evangelism

The following paragraphs from Bruce Milne’s book, The Message of John, relate to the great prayer of Jesus in chapter 17 of John’s Gospel and to the mission on which he sends his people, then and now. The prayer itself is humbling and deeply challenging; Milne’s exposition is a powerful testament to that.

This mission has two hands. The ‘first hand’ is that of proclamation, the communicating to the world of the revelation of the Father in the Son, climaxed by his self-sacrifice for the world’s sin. This revelation (6) is commonly expressed in words (8), and must be shared in words so that the world may believe that the mission of Jesus is authentically the mission of the Father in him, and hence that he is the Saviour and Lord of sinners.

But the mission has a ‘second hand’. It is visible as well as verbal, relational as well as audible. The content of this ‘second hand’ is clearly stated in verse 23: May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you…have loved them even as you have loved me…The Father’s love for his Son in all its richness is persuasively reproduced in the mutual relationships of the Christian congregation! Nothing less than that is Jesus’ prayer.

This ‘second hand’ represents a dimension in evangelism which is commonly ignored or underestimated, and yet which is central to Jesus’ evangelistic strategy for his church (cf. 13:34-35). The local church is the obvious point of application. A group of Christians who are so knit together in the love of God that others can say of them, 'Look how they love each other,' is a church where the gospel will be the 'power of God for…salvation' (Rom 1:16). Evangelism is a community act. It is the proclamation of the church’s relationships as well as its convictions. The preacher is only the spokesperson of the community. The gospel proclaimed from the pulpit is either confirmed, and hence immeasurably enhanced, or it is contradicted, and hence immeasurably weakened, by the quality of the relationships in the pews. In this sense every Christian is a witness. Every time we gather together we either strengthen or weaken the evangelistic appeal of our church by the quality of our relationships with our fellow church members.

The biggest barriers to effective evangelism according to the prayer of Jesus are not so much outdated methods, or inadequate presentations of the gospel, as realities like gossip, insensitivity, negative criticism, jealousy, backbiting, an unforgiving spirit, a ‘root of bitterness’, failure to appreciate others, self-preoccupation, greed, selfishness and every other form of lovelessness. These are the squalid enemies of effective evangelism which render the gospel fruitless and send countless thousands into eternity without a Saviour. ‘The glorious gospel of the blessed God’, which is committed to our trust, is being openly contradicted and veiled by the sinful relationships within the community which is commissioned to communicate it. We need look no further to understand why the church’s impact on the community is frequently so minimal in spite of the greatness of our message. We are fighting with only one hand!

(Bruce Milne, The Message of John, IVP, pp.250,251)

'They just need the gospel.' Really?

You’ve told people the great good news about Jesus. How he died and rose again and in his death is the answer to their sin and estrangement from God. How his resurrection gives them solid hope in the face of death and how he gifts his Spirit to them that they might live a new life of godliness. Wonder of wonders, the message has been received, with great joy, despite opposition, and has resulted in changed lives - lives that are turned to God, lives of service to him and of intense longing for the return of Jesus, the one who saves from wrath.

What do these new Christians now need from you? And if you simply couldn’t stay with them any longer, what would you want to communicate to them from afar? If your answer is, 'They just need more of the gospel, on an ongoing basis', then you’ll likely find the apostle Paul frustrating and, ultimately, disappointing. Because his approach is quite different.

The above scenario is, of course, based on his experiences in Thessalonica. And his first letter to that church discloses very clearly the content of his teaching before he left and then, in absentia, via his correspondence delivered by Timothy. What we discover is quite surprising.

Paul is very clear about the message he preached to them, as is Luke in Acts 17 - Paul reasoned from the Scriptures in the synagogue, "explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead" and that ”this Jesus I am proclaiming…is the Messiah.” The mob that were incited to riot against Paul and his companions reported that they had been preaching that "there is another king, one called Jesus", that Jesus was Lord, not Caesar. Good, solid, reasoned gospel preaching that bore fruit. He also, so it seems, took pains not to exclude teaching about the return of Jesus (presumably the reason they ought to "know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night" 1 Thess. 5:2).

But what did Paul then teach these new believers, both in the few months he was with them and then during his enforced absence from them? What was his teaching strategy for their growth and maturing as new Christians? The answer of 1 Thessalonians is pretty ‘gospel-lite’.

In addition to the gospel (2:9), Paul and his team encouraged, comforted and urged them to live lives worthy of God (2:12). No doubt the comfort and encouragement were solidly gospel-based but it didn’t stop there: they urged these new believers to live lives worthy of God. They spelled-out the consequences of believing the gospel and the demands it makes. They instructed them "how to live in order to please God" (4:1).

The report that Timothy brought from his visit to Thessalonica reassured Paul about their "faith and love" (3:6). It’s quite clear from 1:2 that Paul doesn’t see ‘faith’ as simply a report on their doctrinal correctness - he views it (oh, hello James) as that which leads to, and is authenticated by, works. Their faith and love (for each other) are what tell Paul that these believers are "standing firm in the Lord" (3:8).

But Paul longs to be back there to supply what is lacking in their faith (3:10). Not being able to do that just now, this letter will have to suffice. So to what does he give his attention? He prays for them (3:11-13). He prays that their love for each other (and for everyone else) will increase and overflow; he prays that their hearts will be strengthened so that they will be blameless and holy before God. He prays for their lives to be increasingly changed and his prayer requests are not in the abstract but are asking for direct, visible change.

He also instructs them (4:1-12). He instructs them about living sexually pure lives in a confused and immoral context. He instructs them to intensify their love for each other and the wider Christian community. And he instructs them to live as model citizens, leading quiet lives, working to provide for their needs and not prying into others’ business. Basically, Paul says, this is more of the same teaching that I gave you when present with you (4:1,2). In addition, they ought to acknowledge and respond well to those in leadership in the church (5:12,13) and "strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else" (5:15).

Do you see where his emphasis lies as he teaches these young believers? It isn’t a case of simply reiterating the gospel. In fact, he keeps the gospel basis for his exhortations to a pretty bare minimum. And don’t forget, these are people who are only months into their Christian lives. Some want to suggest - indeed, are suggesting - that all people need is the gospel and they will then live as they ought to live as Christians. Just keep ‘giving them the gospel’, opening up its treasures and its glories. No need to emphasise the actual changes of behaviour, because that will only lead to legalism (which is fast becoming the sin of all sins).

Others would modify that, somewhat, to include ethical instruction on the basis of the gospel, and rightly so. But Paul’s example in this letter is, as we’ve seen, relatively light on a gospel foundation for his ethical instruction. His basis for urging them to grow in godliness is that, unlike the Gentiles, they know God (4:5) and he has given them his Holy Spirit (4:8). The gospel foundation is most certainly there but Paul chooses not to uncover it to any great extent, with the exception of the second coming of Jesus as grounds for holy living in 5:4-11.

What isn’t lacking, and what is conspicuous by its presence, is the strong note of warning for those who refuse to walk worthily of the Lord (4:6,8). We ought, also, to notice that it wasn’t just a matter of what Paul said but, importantly, about what he did. The emphasis in this letter on imitation is super-clear, as is the familial nature of his relationship with them. Paul and his friends had set the Thessalonian Christians an example to follow (1:6; 2:9,10) and the example they set pointed this fledgling church to the Lord Jesus Christ (1:6).

Paul is so eager to get back to them (3:10) because he wants to supply what is lacking in their faith - his presence there and his example of living a gospel-changed life is an urgent need in Paul’s mind as he thinks of these young believers and longs to continue the work of a parent among them. Not just the gospel message, but concrete, detailed ethical instruction. And not just words from a distance but a personal, familial presence that models a changed life. That’s what they needed.