Happy Anniversary

Today Michelle and I have been married for 18 years. That is so hard to believe.

Before we began dating, a buddy of mine named Tom was looking for a girlfriend. He and I had started attending a Bible study and I had gotten to know Michelle some and we had actually become prayer partners. At the time, she had her eyes on some guy named Bill. Nevertheless, I told Tom that he ought to ask Michelle out. "Why?" he asked. "Because she will make someone a good wife some day" I answered.

Little did I know that I would be the lucky guy that would have the privilege of having her as my wife.

It was not long after that conversation with Tom that it occurred to me ("duh!") to ask Michelle out myself. Within two months of our first date, I asked her to marry me. Six months after that she became my bride.

We had no idea what the future would bring. If you would have told us the journey we would embark on we would have thought you were crazy. It has not been an easy road. There have been many tears but also a lot of laughs along the way.

All I know is that there is no one that I would rather have had by my side and no one better equipped to be my "help mate." God's grace is sufficient, but I believe that, if it were not for Michelle, there is no way that I could have survived the last 11 years of ministry. No way. She has been a constant source of encouragement and support. When I decided to quit (more than once!) she told me to carry on- and reminded me that God is faithful.

God brought us together because He knew that we would be the best team to accomplish the tasks that He had planned for us before the foundation of the world. And who knows what plans He has made for our future? Who knows what the years ahead will bring? If you could travel forward in time and tell me what lies ahead, I probably wouldn't believe you.

All I know is that I there is no one that I would rather have by my side than my bride.

Michelle I love you. You are beautiful. You are my support. Thank you.
Happy Anniversary.

L.L.

Penn on proselytization

I'm speechless. Watch this to the end.

ht: Matt Murphy

The Economics, Psychology and Theology of Gift Giving- The Gift Says More About the Giver

In the Washington Post (Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006) article, Did the Three Kings Bear Gift Receipts?, Kevin Hassett examines gift giving from an economist’s point of view.

He discovers that an economist would say that gift giving is a completely inefficient way of celebrating Christmas. They would claim that a person knows what they want better than you do, and they would point to studies which have confirmed that people prefer their own choice as opposed to the gifts they received anywhere from 10 to 33 percent. Thus, one could say that up to 33 percent of the money spent this Christmas season is money wasted. Using figures provided by the National Retail Foundation, that could mean an annual loss of $152 billion suffered by American consumers this year. Politicians argue tooth and nail how to save Americans $152 billion through tax breaks, etc., It seems that an economist would not be out of order to suggest the banning of gift giving as a responsible law to help American’s financial situations.

What economists, however, don’t take into account, however, is the psychology of gift giving. Hassett describes a study by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman published in 1990 explaining:

“Students at Simon Fraser University in Canada were given coffee mugs from the college bookstore and then asked whether they would sell the mugs at prices ranging from 25 cents to $9.25. A second group was asked whether they would buy a mug at the same prices. Those who received the gifts were possessive of their new treasures, and were coaxed into giving them up only at prices above $7.12. But those who did not receive the mugs as gifts found them unattractive and were willing to buy them only if they cost less than $3.12. The $4 difference is attributed to the psychological value of a gift. The recipient experienced a thrill when he or she received the mug, which became the apple of their eye. Those who were offered a chance to buy a mug experienced no such thrill.

Hassett concludes: First, you shouldn’t fret too much about the likely success of your gifts. College students are a noticeably unsentimental lot. If they become emotionally attached to mugs from the college bookstore, given to them in an experimental setting, imagine how much value a wife may attach to a gift from a beloved spouse, regardless of its exact nature.

Second…the frankincense and myrrh probably generated a textbook response in Mary and Joseph….like the mug-loving college students, Mary and Joseph must have been enormously attached to their presents. According to legend, the poor carpenter and his wife never sold the valuable gifts, despite the family’s financial needs. To this day, a case that purportedly contains the gifts of the magi is on display at a monastery in Greece. If the gifts truly were preserved for all time, it is probably because the human response to Christmas gifts has changed little since that first night.

I was listening to this article being discussed on Public Radio and found it quite intriguing, but the best part was when a caller called in to respond to the question- “what would you rather receive, a gift or money?” The caller ademately said that a gift is better because the gift says “I consider you worth spending time and effort on”- it shows that the giver cares. In fact, the caller stated, the gift says more about the giver than it does about the one who receives the gift.

What a great theological statement!

Let’s consider the gift we celebrate each Christmas- the gift of Christ. The gift of Christ, certainly does say something about those who receive Him- namely that we are sinners in need of a Savior! But it says much more about the Father who sent Him.

John Frame provides a wonderful meditation on God’s gift to us and what it teaches about Him in an article entitled The Wonder of God Over Us and With Us. Read it here.

Frame says: Christmas reveals in a wonderful way that God acts in time as well as above it. It shows us wonderfully how God relates to us, not only as a mysterious being from another realm, but as a person in our own time and place: interacting with us, hearing our prayers, guiding us step by step, chastising us with fatherly discipline, comforting us with the wonderful promises of the blessings of Christ. Truly He is Immanuel, the God who is really with us, who is nonetheless eternally the sovereign Lord of all.

Truly this bespeaks a very Merry Christmas!

Personal or Public Worship= Which is More Important?

What happens when someone argues that their own private times with God are more important than corporate gatherings of the church as a whole?

Each of us, I'm sure, have heard those who have questioned the necessity of corporate worship, thinking that it is less "spiritual" than their own private times of reading and meditation.

Well, R. Scott Clark, professor of Church History and Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary in California, has recently written saying that a strong case can be made from Scripture that public worship is more important than private.

He writes:

"We know precious little about God's clearly revealed requirements for private piety. What we have are clearly revealed requirements, in the typological revelation about attending to the divinely appointed feasts and other corporate gatherings...In the 18th and 19th centuries, however, the relation between the public and the private became reversed under the influence of pietism."

Clark argues that private practice of devotion and worship should be secondary to the public: "It is through the public reading and preaching of the Gospel that God has promised to bring his people to faith (Rom. 10). " He adds that communion and baptism are administered in public services. People are disciplined (or ought to be) for failing to attend to these public gatherings.

He continued:

"Remember, universal literacy is relatively new. Universal bible ownership is relatively new. That doesn’t mean that people couldn’t have recited passages or even whole books from memory but it means that, for much of world history, God’s people could not have had “devotions” in the way that we think of them.

Private piety and devotion is important. If we neglect private prayer and meditation on Scripture we deprive ourselves on important benefits and blessings. There is probably a correlation between private devotions and maturity but they are not the public means of grace. When it comes to piety, the private flows from the public. The latter is not the joint expression of a hundreds of private religious experiences. Whatever private religious experience we may (or may not) have our Christian life is grounded in the preaching of the Word, especially the gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and public prayers in the context of public worship services."

His full article can be found here.

For more help in this area, 9 Marks (a ministry out of Capital Hill Baptist) has wonderful resources on the importance of church membership and worship.

The Biblical Case for Homosexual Marriage...Not

Al Mohler does a critique of Newsweek's latest issue which makes a "religious case for homosexual marriage." Read his response here.

You might live in Radford if....

with apologies to Neal and Aleah.

Review of Pagan Christianity

There is no lack of junk out there being passed off as Christian scholarship. When a popular name is put behind it, it makes the stuff downright dangerous. George Barna is a name many Christians recognize and, so, assume that what he writes is trustworthy. Well, it appears that Barna has gone off the deep end and has been the subject of much criticism lately for his last work: "Pagan Christianity." Knowing that many have found this book to be "revolutionary" in their thinking of church, I figured I'd guide you to a helpful review/critique of it which points out its fundamental flaws. The review has several parts and I'm sorry that the author hasn't made it easier to go from one to the other- but they are worth your time and effort if you have heard of this book.

The first of the series of reviews is here.

Where have you been?

Well, glad you asked.

I've been setting up a new blog for the church planters in the Midwest area of our State Convention. If you are curious and want to see a few posts I've done there to the neglect of this blog, pay us a visit: Midwest CPN Blog

John Owen Communion With God- Part 10

John Owen, Communion with God Part 2, Chapter 3, Digression II

(Sunday mornings before our worship service, our church is studying our way through Owen's book. This series consists of the notes handed out for the class).

To read John Owen is to enter a rare world. Whenever I return to one of his works I find myself asking “Why do I spend time reading lesser literature?”
—Sinclair B. Ferguson


The sum of all true wisdom and knowledge may be reduced to these three heads:- 1) The knowledge of God, his nature and his properties. 2) The knowledge of ourselves in reference to the will of God concerning us. 3) Skill to walk in communion with God….In these three is summed up all true wisdom and knowledge; and not any of them is to any purpose to be obtained, or is manifested, but only in and by the Lord Christ.

1) God, by the work of creation, by the creation itself, did reveal himself in many of his properties unto his creatures capable of his knowledge;- his power, his goodness, his wisdom, his all-sufficiency, are thereby known (see Romans 1:19-21). But yet there are some properties of God which all the works of creation cannot in any measure reveal or make known;- such as his patience, long-suffering, and forbearance. For all things being made good (Gen. 1:31), there could be no place for the exercise of any of these properties, or manifestation of them. The whole fabric of heaven and earth considered in itself, as at first created, will not discover any such thing as patience and forbearance in God; which yet are eminent properties of his nature, as himself proclaims and declares (Exodus 34:6,7).

Wherefore the Lord goes further; and by the works of his providence, in preserving and ruling the world which he made, discovers and reveals these properties also. For whereas by cursing the earth, and filling all the elements oftentimes with signs of his anger and indignation, he hath, as the apostle tells us, Rom. 1:18, “revealed from heaven his wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men;” yet not proceeding immediately to destroy all things, he hath manifested his patience and forbearance to all. See Acts 14:16,17.

There are some of the most eminent and glorious properties of God that there is not the least glimpse to be attained of out of the Lord Christ, but only by and in him; and some that comparatively we have no light of but in him; and of all the rest no true light but by him:

A) Of the first sort, whereof not the least guess and imagination can enter into the heart of man but only by Christ, are love and pardoning mercy:-
a. Love; I mean love unto sinners. Without this, man is of all creatures most miserable; and there is not the least glimpse of it that can possibly be discovered but in Christ. The Holy Spirit tells us in 1 John 4:8 that “God is love.”

But how do we know this?

He tells us, verse 9- “In this was manifested the love of God, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.”

Where now is the wise, where is the scribe, where is the disputer of this world, with all their wisdom? ….That wisdom which cannot teach me that God is love, shall ever pass for folly.

b. Pardoning mercy or grace. Without this, even love would be fruitless. Pardoning mercy is God’s free, gracious acceptance of a sinner upon satisfaction made to his justice in the blood of Jesus; nor is any discovery of it, but as relating to the satisfaction of justice, consistent with the glory of God. Romans 3:25, Ephesians 1:6,7

Had not God set forth the Lord Christ, all the angels in heaven and men on earth could not have apprehended that there had been any such thing in the nature of God as this grace of pardoning mercy.

And these are the properties of God whereby he will be known, whereof there is not the least glimpse to be obtained but by and in Christ; and whoever knows him not by these, knows him not at all. They know an idol, and not the only true God. He that hath not the Son, the same hath not the Father 1 John 2:23; and not to have God as a Father, is not to have him at all; and he is known as a Father only as he is love, and full of pardoning mercy in Christ.


Our Discussion this morning centered on:

The concept that this world, with all its tragedies, is the "best of all possible worlds.”

And the question: “Is the God of Islam the God of Christianity?”

John Owen Communion With God- Part 9

(Sunday mornings before our worship service, our church is studying our way through Owen's book. This series consists of the notes handed out for the class).

To read John Owen is to enter a rare world. Whenever I return to one of his works I find myself asking “Why do I spend time reading lesser literature?”
—Sinclair B. Ferguson

John Owen, Communion with God Part 2, Chapter 3 Contd. (part 2)

The fact that Jesus is both God and man makes him able to be a source of grace to us.

1) He was fit to suffer the punishment that was due to us.

Had he not been man, he could not have suffered;- had he not been God, his suffering could not have availed either himself or us, - he had not satisfied; the suffering of a mere man could not bear any proportion to that which in any respect was infinite. Had the great and righteous God gathered together all the sins that had been committed by his elect from the foundation of the world, and searched the bosoms of all that were to come to the end of the world, and taken them all, from the sin of their nature to the least deviation from the rectitude of his most holy law, and the highest provocation of their regenerate and unregenerate condition, and laid them on a mere holy, innocent, creature; O how they would have overwhelmed him and buried him forever out of the presence of God’s love!

That is why the writer of Hebrews describes Jesus before He speaks of the purging of our sins. He is the Son and heir of all things, by whom the world, the brightness of the Father’s glory- He did it, He alone could do it.

2) Thus he is an endless, bottomless fountain of grace to all who believe. The Father committed the fullness of grace to Christ and all grace becomes to be his.

The real communication of grace is by Christ sending the Holy Spirit to regenerate us, and to create in us all the daily supplies of grace that we partake of.

This, then, is that which I intend by this fullness of grace that is in Christ, from when we have both our beginning and all our supplies; which makes him, as he is the Alpha and Omega of His church, the beginner and finisher of our faith, excellent and desirable to our souls:- Upon the payment of the great price of his blood, and full acquitment on the satisfaction he made; all grace whatever becomes, in a moral sense, his, at his disposal; and he bestows it on, or works it in the hearts o his by the Holy Spirit, according as, in His infinite wisdom, he sees it needful. How glorious is He to the soul on this consideration! That is most excellent to us which suits us in a wanting condition, - that which give bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, mercy to the perishing. All our reliefs are thus in our Beloved. Here is the life of our souls, the joy of our hearts, our relief against sin and deliverance from the wrath to come.

3) Thus, He is able to be the mediator between us and God- being one with God and one with us, and one in Himself in this oneness.

Herein shines out the infinitely glorious wisdom of God; which we may better admire than express.

What poor, low, perishing things do we spend our contemplations on! Were we to have no advantage by this astonishing dispensation, yet its excellency, glory, beauty, depths, deserve the flower of our iniquities, the vigor of our spirits, the substance of our time; but when, withal our life, our peace, our joy, our inheritance, our eternity, our all, lies herein, shall not the thoughts of it always dwell in our hearts, always refresh and delight our souls?

4) He is excellent and glorious in that He is exalted and invested with all authority.

Acts 2:36

Psalm 2:6

Heb. 2:7-9

Matthew 28:18

John 17:2

Micah 5:4

Psalm 45:5

Oh, how glorious is he in his authority over his enemies! In the world he terrifies, frightens, awes, convinces, bruises their hearts and consciences,- fills them with fear, terror, disquietment, until they yield him feigned obedience and sometimes with outward judgments bruises, breaks, turns the wheel upon them,- stains all his vesture with their blood,- fills the earth with their carcasses: and at last will gather them all together, beast, false prophet, nations, etc. and cast them into that lake that burns with fire and brimstone. Psalm 110:6; Rev. 19:20

Eph. 1:20-22

Phil. 2:9

And what a little portion of his glory is it that we have pointed to! This is the Beloved of the church, - its head, its husband; this is he with whom we have communion.

His head is his government, authority and kingdom. Hence it is said, “A crown of pure gold was on his head,” Psalm 21:3

1) It is a glorious kingdom; he is full of glory and majesty, and in his majesty he rides “prosperously,” Psalm 45:3,4. “His glory is great in the salvation of God: honor and majesty are laid upon him: he is made blessed forever and ever,” Psalm 21:5,6. It is a heavenly, a spiritual, a universal, an unshaken kingdom; all which render it glorious.

2) It is a durable kingdom. “His throne is forever and ever” Psalm 24:6. “Of the increase of his government there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever,” Isaiah 9:7 “His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom” Dan. 7:27

Cheetos Pet

Just for fun:

Dinesh D'Souza interview

Check out this interview Dinesh D'Souza and then go get his book. He is a Christian apologist answering atheist critics. Below is an excerpt:

You write that "sex is the primary reason most contemporary atheists have chosen to break with Christianity." What do you mean?

Atheists spend a lot of time thinking about the motives for belief. Why do religious people believe these ridiculous things? When you turn the tables on atheists and ask them why they don't believe, they will answer, "Because we don't have enough evidence. We don't believe because there's no proof." But if you think about it, this is an inadequate explanation, because if you truly believe that there is no proof for God, then you're not going to bother with the matter. You're just going to live your life as if God isn't there.

I don't believe in unicorns, so I just go about my life as if there are no unicorns. You'll notice that I haven't written any books called The End of the Unicorn, Unicorns Are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion, and I don't spend my time obsessing about unicorns. What I'm getting at is that you have these people out there who don't believe that God exists, but who are actively attempting to eliminate religion from society, setting up atheist video shows, and having atheist conferences. There has to be more going on here than mere unbelief.

If you really look at the motivations of contemporary atheists, you'll find that they don't even really reject Christian theology. It's not as if the atheist objects to the resurrection or the parting of the sea; rather, it is Christian morality to which atheists object, particularly Christian moral prohibitions in the area of sex. The atheist looks at all of Christianity's "thou shalt nots"—homosexuality is bad; divorce is bad; adultery is bad; premarital sex is bad—and then looks at his own life and says, "If these things are really bad, then I'm a bad guy. But I'm not a bad guy; I'm a great guy. I must thus reinterpret or (preferably) abolish all of these accusatory teachings that are putting me in a bad light."

How does one do that? One way is liberal Christianity—you simply reinterpret Christian teachings as if they don't really mean what they say. The better way, of course, is to ask where morality comes from. Well, it comes from one of two places. It either comes from ourselves—these are the rules that we make up as we go along—or it comes from some transcendent source. To get rid of God, then, is to remove the shadow of moral judgment. This doesn't mean that you completely eliminate morality, but it does mean that you reduce morality to a tool that human societies construct for their own advantages. It means that morality can change, and that old rules can be set aside. You can see why this would be a very attractive proposition for the guy who wants to live his life unmolested by the injunctions and prohibitions of Christian morality.

The Seeker Service at First Baptist