Sometimes I am careless

Yesterday morning I began my sermon with a story about when I was about to start my sophomore year in college. I told about telling my mom I was going to quit school for awhile and get a job as a construction worker making so much money an hour… The point of the story I was trying to convey is that my mom’s zeal for me finishing college was a critical moment in my life. From her vantage point, she knew that finishing school was going to be key for me in what God was doing in my life. And because of her intensity and zeal, it was motivating to me to see a bigger picture as well.

A few things I did not mean to convey in my careless and “not well thought out” telling of that account:

1. I did not mean that there is anything wrong with working in construction.  It would not have, nor will it ever be in the future, the best fit for me. If you know me, you know that I do not have any aptitudes that are desperately needed to work in a skilled labor position. I am thankful that my mom pointed that out to me in a way that only moms can do!
2. I did not mean that working in construction (or any other industry for that matter) is not good and honorable work. In fact, I have great friends who support their families, love Jesus and are doing EXACTLY what God has designed and called them to be doing and they work in the construction industry. Work and labor are part of God’s perfect design for man and woman from the beginning of creation. Work is not a consequence of the fall… “professional ministry” is (that is a topic for another day… the language of work and “ministry” are often times identical in the Bible).
3. I did not mean that going to college is somehow a greater vision than pursuing a career without college. While I think college is valuable in preparing oneself for whatever career or work they feel called to pursue, there is nothing spiritual or magical about “college” per se.
4. I did not mean to say that I was going to make $16 an hour. That was an arbitrary number and the truth is that I do not remember what I was going to make. All I remember was that I was going to make what felt like a lot of money to me then when I was 20 years old. The reality is it was probably a couple of dollars more than minimum wage per hour, which up to that time, was the most I had ever made.

As I thought through yesterday’s sermon and what I was trying to teach from the book of Nahum, I realize I was careless and certainly may have alienated, or at least offended, some in the telling of that story. That was not my intention and I don’t think I did a good job in communicating the real point I was trying to make.

I have certainly said my fair share of careless things as I have stood up and talked in front of people; and this won’t be the last time. What is clear in my mind sometimes becomes vague and cloudy before it comes out of my mouth. It is one of the hazards for me in what I do.

Here is a great resource on the theology of work.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Lose it

This is the newest app on my iPhone. I downloaded it about three weeks ago. (I intend to download Skype app, but don’t know if I will use it or not). It counts the calories you consume for the day and tells you how many you should eat if you want to lose a little weight. I have it set to tell me how to lose 1.5 lbs a week.

First, writing everything you eat down is both depressing and revealing. Nine oreos and a glass of milk is almost half of my calories for the day. It’s not that I can’t eat 9 oreos and a glass of milk. It just means that I can have a cup of cereal for breakfast, a subway turkey sandwich with no cheese for lunch, and a piece of bread for dinner… then for desert – 9 oreos and milk. Somehow the oreos don’t taste as good given this scenario.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Amos

The last couple of weeks I’ve been teaching through the Minor Prophets. Today and last week was Amos – wow… that prophet is amazing.

Here are a couple of links:

Recap of Last week 08.16.09 (thank you Lisa Morgan @ Blessed With Grace)

Sermon 08.23.09

Salvation Army Interview 1

Salvation Army interview – part 2

East TX Rescue mission interview

Interview with Haley Bolin:  short || long

Book Recommendation: The Hole in the Gospel by Richard Stearns

Website: The Hole in the Gospel

Filed under: Uncategorized

Things I Like About Today – 08.13.09

1. Being up before everyone drinking coffee in the quiet house.

2. Listening to Terry Borens (UBC pastor) singing in the office next door.

3. Two hours @Lynda.com – fed the nerd inside of me.

4. Buffalo Wild Wings ToGo with Jay before the 1st Dallas Cowboy Pre-Season game.

5. Watching the game @Josh Knight’s house with LifeGroup guys

6. Coming home to Leslie finding that she had been watching the game and talking “football” with my wife

Filed under: Uncategorized

Things I Like About Today

1. A tour of the East Texas Rescue Mission and seeing the way I can be involved in this community
2. Hanging out with Todd Wright
3. Talking through my sermon with Mark Kuykendall – a genius!
4. Watching the Texas Rangers with Jay – he gives the best commentary
5. Reading “Seven Silly Eaters” to Katherine and she falling asleep before we get to the end
6. Hanging out with Leslie in the quiet at the end of the day.

Filed under: personal

God’s Infinite Love

I remember being taught that when you are in heaven you would have complete knowledge. That is what I “learned” anyway.  When the mystery of God met with the finiteness of my understanding I believed this was a temporary condition that would change with eternity. But, while we will experience eternality, I don’t believe we will experience infinitude. We are not and will not be infinite in the way God is infinite. We had a definite beginning.

At first, this new understanding caused my heart to sink. “You mean full understanding doesn’t come with glorification?” I perceived this as something lacking about my glorified state. What I didn’t understand is that there will be nothing lacking about my glorification. My understanding revealed a comprehensible God. The truth is that God is ultimately incomprehensible. He is more holy, more glorious, more righteous, more powerful, etc…, than I will ever be able to fully comprehend; even in my glorified state. Eph. 1 speaks of His “immeasurable greatness of his power…” Rom 8 says that “neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Neither height nor depth can separate us. There is no measurable height to His love. There is no measurable depth to His love. It is infinite. This means that it will take eternity beyond eternity to unfold the love of God towards us in Christ Jesus. It means that eternity will not be long enough to explore or experience the magnitude of God’s love. “God is love,” says John in his first letter. And there will never be an end to the knowing of God. We will never get to the end of understanding and comprehension of the eternal God of the universe.

It is not that my glorification will in any way be lacking. It is that there will be no end to the learning and discovery of the infinitely glorious God of the universe. It does not mean that I have underestimated glorification. It means that I have underestimated the magnificence and majesty of God.

That is the most comforting, overwhelming and exciting realization I have ever had.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Things I Liked About Today

1. Watching James Bond with Jay at the end of the day.

2. The homemade Big Red ice cream @ staff mtg. today

3. Staff mtg with the greatest church staff on the planet

4. Listening to Terry Borens talk about ministry “on the front lines…”

5. Reading part of volume II of Chafer’s systematic theology…

Filed under: personal , personal

A movement

The “Things I Like About Today” movement is underway… will you join?

Filed under: Uncategorized

From Spurgeon

In Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening, he makes this request…

This one morning in the year we reserved to refresh the reader’s memory upon the subject of prayer for ministers, and we do most earnestly implore every Christian household to grant the fervent request of the text first uttered by an apostle and now repeated by us. Brethren, our work is solemnly momentous, involving weal or woe to thousands; we treat with souls for God on eternal business, and our word is either a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. A very heavy responsibility rests upon us, and it will be no small mercy if at the last we be found clear of the blood of all men. As officers in Christ’s army, we are the especial mark of the enmity of men and devils; they watch for our halting, and labour to take us by the heels. Our sacred calling involves us in temptations from which you are exempt, above all it too often draws us away from our personal enjoyment of truth into a ministerial and official consideration of it. We meet with many knotty cases, and our wits are at a non plus; we observe very sad backslidings, and our hearts are wounded; we see millions perishing, and our spirits sink. We wish to profit you by our preaching; we desire to be blest to your children; we long to be useful both to saints and sinners; therefore, dear friends, intercede for us with our God. Miserable men are we if we miss the aid of your prayers, but happy are we if we live in your supplications. You do not look to us but to our Master for spiritual blessings, and yet how many times has He given those blessings through His ministers; ask then, again and again, that we may be the earthen vessels into which the Lord may put the treasure of the gospel. We, the whole company of missionaries, ministers, city missionaries, and students, do in the name of Jesus beseech you

“Brethren, pray for us.”

Spurgeon, C. H. (2006). Morning and evening : Daily readings (Complete and unabridged; New modern edition.) (July 7 AM). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

This one morning in the year we reserved to refresh the reader’s memory upon the subject of prayer for ministers, and we do most earnestly implore every Christian household to grant the fervent request of the text first uttered by an apostle and now repeated by us. Brethren, our work is solemnly momentous, involving weal or woe to thousands; we treat with souls for God on eternal business, and our word is either a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. A very heavy responsibility rests upon us, and it will be no small mercy if at the last we be found clear of the blood of all men. As officers in Christ’s army, we are the especial mark of the enmity of men and devils; they watch for our halting, and labour to take us by the heels. Our sacred calling involves us in temptations from which you are exempt, above all it too often draws us away from our personal enjoyment of truth into a ministerial and official consideration of it. We meet with many knotty cases, and our wits are at a non plus; we observe very sad backslidings, and our hearts are wounded; we see millions perishing, and our spirits sink. We wish to profit you by our preaching; we desire to be blest to your children; we long to be useful both to saints and sinners; therefore, dear friends, intercede for us with our God. Miserable men are we if we miss the aid of your prayers, but happy are we if we live in your supplications. You do not look to us but to our Master for spiritual blessings, and yet how many times has He given those blessings through His ministers; ask then, again and again, that we may be the earthen vessels into which the Lord may put the treasure of the gospel. We, the whole company of missionaries, ministers, city missionaries, and students, do in the name of Jesus beseech you

“Brethren, pray for us.”

Spurgeon, C. H. (2006). Morning and evening : Daily readings (Complete and unabridged; New modern edition.) (July 7 AM). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Common Sense

If you know me, you know my fan-boy status with regard to Glenn Beck. His new book Common Sense hit book stores this week and will likely be a NTYs best-seller. I am sure it will be good and thought provoking and a little apocalyptic (at least that is what I have come to hope and expect of Beck).  The book is named for a pamphlet that was published by Thomas Paine in 1776.

“Common Sense presented the American colonists with a powerful argument for independence from British rule at a time when the question of independence was still undecided. Paine wrote and reasoned in a style that common people understood; forgoing the philosophy and Latin references used by Enlightenment era writers, Paine structured Common Sense like a sermon and relied on Biblical references to make his case to the people.” (Wikipedia – yeah… I just quoted Wikipedia…)

Not knowing a great deal about Thomas Paine, I decided to do a little research about the time and occasion that Paine wrote the pamphlet, as well as who is this man Thomas Paine? By no means have I satisfied my curiosity, but I did come across a very interesting analysis of the time he wrote and some interesting insight to the man behind the writing. I was taken back a little…

The French Revolution of 1789 moved atheism into the public square. Attempts to enforce the law of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy-which subordinated the Roman Catholic Church in France to the civil government-led to anti-clerical violence. Earlier rulings confiscated the church’s holdings in France and banned monastic vows.

When militant atheists seized power there in 1793, launching the Reign of Terror, they attempted to de-Christianize France by replacing the church with a Cult of Reason. Secularization was exported to Italy and, in the nineteenth century when atheists and other anti-religious adherents focused on political and social revolution, they helped spur the European revolutions of 1848, the revolutionary Italian Resurgence and unification, and the rise of the international socialist movement.

The movement was not limited to Europe. English pamphleteer Thomas Paine (1737-1809) came to Colonial America just in time to take part in the revolution. His hugely influential Common Sense (1776) advocated American independence, and Rights of Man (1791)-which served as a guide to the ideas of the Enlightenment-was a major influence on the French Revolution. Age of Reason (1793-1794), an assault on revealed religion, argued that man invented religion:

The opinions I have advanced…are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty. (Thomas Paine, “The New Testament,” Life and Writings of Thomas Paine (New York: Parke, 1908), p. 238.)Paine’s deism was shared by many Founding Fathers. (Skepticism, Agnosticism, and Atheism: A Brief History of Unbelief by M.Z. Hemingway)

Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme god created the universe, and that this and other religious truth can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without the need for faith. Hope is in reason, in government… ultimately in humanity. Contra Romans 1:18-32.

Without reading Beck’s version of Common Sense, I don’t want to say that he would share the same hope… I hope not, but my lens will be adjusted to look for a common sense message that places hope in humanity, rather than a hope in the Creator.

Our greatest need is not to be saved from ourselves by ourselves through the embracing of common sense. Our greatest need is to be saved from God… by God because of His grace, through faith in the one and only Jesus.

Sola Scriptura. Solus Christus. Sola Gratia. Sola Fide. Solia de Gloria.

Filed under: Uncategorized