Sunday, July 5, 2009
The Church Without The Spirit Is Dead
John Stott in The Spirit, The Church & The World, pg.60
Saturday, July 4, 2009
EPA Scientist Told to Shut Up About Global Warming
And what was the EPA afraid would get out?
After reviewing the scientific literature that the EPA is relying on, Carlin said, he concluded that it was at least three years out of date and did not reflect the latest research. “My personal view is that there is not currently any reason to regulate (carbon dioxide),” he said. “There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They’re not going up, and if anything they’re going down.”
Carlin’s report listed a number of recent developments he said the EPA did not consider, including that global temperatures have declined for 11 years; that new research predicts Atlantic hurricanes will be unaffected; that there’s “little evidence” that Greenland is shedding ice at expected levels; and that solar radiation has the largest single effect on the earth’s temperature.
Yeah, I guess that would have been inconvenient, especially as the President was pushing through his Cap-and-Trade energy fiasco to reduce greenhouse gas emmissions this week.
Luther and Packer on Repentance
"Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged" (Keep in Step with the Spirit [Revell: 1984], 104)
Labels: repentance
Friday, July 3, 2009
Inconceivable!
Caught In The Same Swamp
Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, page 115.
Church Membership
C. S. Lewis, "Membership," in The Weight of Glory, page 174.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
It Is Of Grace
It is of grace that any are saved, and in the distribution of that grace, He does what He will with His own: a right which most are ready enough to claim in their own concerns, though they are so unwilling to allow it to the Lord of all. Many perplexing and acrimonious disputes have been started upon this subject; but the redeemed of the Lord are called, not to dispute, but to admire and rejoice; to love, adore, and obey. To know that He loved us, and gave Himself for us, is the constraining argument and motive to love Him, and surrender ourselves to Him; to consider ourselves as no longer our own, but to devote ourselves with every faculty, power, and talent to His service and glory. He deserves our all, for He parted with all for us. He made Himself poor, He endured shame, torture, death, and the curse for us, that we through Him might inherit everlasting life. Ah ! the hardness of my heart, that I am no more affected, astonished, overpowered with this thought.
John Newton
C.S. Lewis's Willingness to Be Enchanted and Openness to Delight
. . . Lewis's mind was above all characterized by a willingness to be enchanted and . . . it was this openness to enchantment that held together the various strands of his life--his delight in laughter, his willingness to accept a world made by a good and loving God, and (in some ways above all) his willingness to submit to the charms of a wonderful story. . . . What is "secretly present in what he said about anything" is an openness to delight, to the sense that there's more to the world than meets the jaundiced eye, to the possibility that anything could happen to someone who is ready to meet that anything. For someone with eyes to see and the courage to explore, even an old wardrobe full of musty coats could be the doorway into another world.
HT:Justin Taylor
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Are You Full Of Patonizing Nonsense When It Comes To Jesus
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity pg. 52
'You're Gonna Need Somebody When You Die' CHARLEY PATTON, 1929 Delta Blues Guitar Legend
The Eyes Of The Reborn
Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom, pages 54-55.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tony Bennett: "The Way You Look Tonight"
"But That's Just Your Interpretation"
This objection aims to dismiss your truth-claims as overrated. It's a strategy for leveling out all assertions as no more than mere personal opinions: "You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to."
Here are some things to keep in mind.
One, stay focused on what C. S. Lewis called "mere Christianity" -- the core truths of the gospel that are super-clear in the Bible. Avoid pet doctrines and denominational nuances. Your unbelieving friend might be throwing this objection out there because you really are advocating just a personal hunch.
Two, validate the objection, then neutralize it. "Sure, there's interpretation in what I'm saying. But no one can know anything without interpreting it, without running it through the sieve of personal understanding. It's like the sunlight shining through a stained-glass window. The colors show up, but the light is still real and the sun is really out there. So okay, you're getting the gospel through me, and I'm not very good at this. Big deal. The point is, it isn't JUST my interpretation. There is truth in what I'm saying."
Three, make the truth personal, and offer it personally to your friend. "I always have to watch myself, to minimize the distortion-factor in my thinking about Christ. So, thank you for reminding me of that. But here's what I can't get away from. As I read the Bible, the reality of Christ comes storming through to me so clearly I just can't dismiss that power as an 'interpretation.' I have to deal with him, because he's dealing with me. If you'd rather keep it safe, at the level of 'interpretation,' I don't blame you. He is totally rocking my world. But here's where I come down. I'd rather have him messing with me than lose him by treating him as an abstraction. His love is the only good thing in my life I'll keep forever. Want to talk about that? Want to talk about what he can mean to you too?"
Monday, June 29, 2009
Simul justus et peccator
[sim’-uhl yoos’-tuhs et peck’-aw-tore]
(Latin simul, “simultaneous” + Latin justus, “righteous” + Latin et, “and” + Latin peccator, “sinner”)
At the same time righteous and a sinner. The phrase was coined by 16th century German Reformer, Martin Luther. In his Lectures on Romans, Luther put it this way, “The saints in being righteous are at the same time sinners; they are righteous because they believe in Christ whose righteousness covers them and is imputed to them, but they are sinners because they do not fulfill the Law and are not without sinful desires. They are like sick people in the care of a physician: they are really sick, but healthy only in hope and in so far as they begin to get better, or, rather: are being healed.”
God Wants to Work Through You
Unbelief says:Some other time, but not now;Faith says:
some other place, but not here;
some other people, but not us.Anything He did anywhere else He will do here;With our
anything He did any other time He is willing to do now;
anything He ever did for other people He is willing to do for us!feet on the ground,we walk out in this fullness of the Spirit, if we will yield and obey.
and our head cool,
but with our heart ablaze with the love of God,
God wants to work through you!
The Counselor has come, and He doesn't care about the limits oflocality,The Body of Christ is bigger than all of these.
geography,
time
or nationality.
The question is:
Will you open your heart?
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Have you seen Jesus lately? - - by Charles Spurgeon
The disciples ought to have recognized Jesus, they had heard His voice so often, and gazed upon that marred face so frequently, that it is amazing that they did not know Him. Yet is it not so with you also? Have you seen Jesus lately? You have been to His table--and you have not met Him there. You are in a dark trouble, and though He plainly says, "It is I--do not be afraid," yet you do not recognize Him. Alas! our eyes are blinded! We know His voice; we have looked into His face; we have leaned our head upon His bosom--and yet, though Christ is very near us, we are saying, "O that I knew where I might find Him!"
We should know Jesus, for we have the Scriptures to reflect His image. Yet how frequently we open that precious book--and have no glimpse of our Well-beloved! Dear child of God, are you in that state? Jesus walks through the glades of Scripture, and desires to commune with His people. Yet you are in the garden of Scripture--but cannot see Him, though He is always there!
Make it your prayer, "Lord, open my eyes--that I may see my Savior present with me!" It is a blessed thing to desire to see Him. But oh! it is better far to gaze upon Him! To those who seek Him--He is kind; but to those who find Him--He is precious beyond expression!
Is This Not A Happy Business
Martin Luther, quoted in Alister E. McGrath, Christian Spirituality: An Introduction, pages 158-159.
Arminianism
(ahr-mih‘-nee-uhn-iz’-um)
A summary of teachings that are attributed to 17th century Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius. Arminian theology took issue with the teachings of John Calvin on 5 points, articulated in the Five articles of Remonstrance of 1610. The doctrines can be summarized as universal (prevenient) grace, conditional election, unlimited atonement, resistible grace, and uncertainty of perseverance. This eventually led to the Synod of Dort of 1618-1619, which resulted in the State church upholding what later became the 5 Points of Calvinism, while condemning Arminianism. Arminian theology later received official toleration by the State and has since continued in various forms within Protestantism.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Hope In A Decadent Age
"Behold, I am making all things new." Revelation 21:5
See Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present, page xvi.
A Tortured Existence - Thoughts About Michael Jackson
So the king is dead. What a sad end to a sad life; a pathetic end to a pathetic life (by which I mean to use pathetic in its true sense as “arousing pity and sympathy). I don’t know that I have ever seen, in one man, such a combination of self-love and self-loathing, shocking narcissism combined with equally shocking self-hatred. Truly Michael Jackson was unparalleled.
Andrew Sullivan offered a few interesting thoughts.
There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child. By abuse, I do not mean sexual abuse; I mean he was used brutally and callously for money, and clearly imprisoned by a tyrannical father. He had no real childhood and spent much of his later life struggling to get one. He was spiritually and psychologically raped at a very early age - and never recovered. Watching him change his race, his age, and almost his gender, you saw a tortured soul seeking what the rest of us take for granted: a normal life.
But he had no compass to find one; no real friends to support and advise him; and money and fame imprisoned him in the delusions of narcissism and self-indulgence. Of course, he bears responsibility for his bizarre life. But the damage done to him by his own family and then by all those motivated more by money and power than by faith and love was irreparable in the end. He died a while ago. He remained for so long a walking human shell.
I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy, tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time; and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.
I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours’ and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.
I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life. And I pray that such genius will not be so abused again.
From beginning to end, Jackson led a tortured life and he led much of it in full view of the public. As much as he was secretive, being whisked about behind masks and tinted windows, the sheer volume of cameras and the unending interest in his life meant that his every step was recorded. We saw him change his skin color, change his face, and almost change his gender. Through it all, we gasped at his obvious self-loathing, expressed in his desire to change everything he is and was and manifested in his increasingly bizarre behavior. He was a tortured soul and I doubt we can even imagine what was going on inside that increasingly twisted heart, that increasingly conflicted mind.
Michael Jackson was in so many ways a product of this sick celebrity culture (that he helped create) that will never rest satisfied until it has both created and then destroyed the newest celebrity. We want our celebrities to start strong and finish weak, to begin with a bang and then fizzle, pop and sputter, all for our enjoyment and entertainment (Susan Boyle stands as the most recent example of this). Jackson gave us so much to talk about, so much to enjoy. More than any other celebrity he embodied the “vanities” of Ecclesiastes. He was at one time known for what he did so well and then was known for being a freak; he was at one time fantastically wealthy and then utterly broke; he was once loved and then despised. He had it all and yet, it seemed, he had nothing. All of it was meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
Andrew Sullivan ended his reflection on Jackson by saying, “I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life.” I hope the same. Truly, I do. I never cared much for Michael Jackson. I listened to his music occasionally in life but, after losing my childhood collection of 45’s, I didn’t ever buy one of his songs or albums. But it was impossible to miss him completely as even decades after the peak of his fame, his face was often in the news and even a simple skim of the headlines would show that his strangeness was increasing year-by-year. Through all of this I haven’t ever hoped for much on his behalf. But I hope now that he has finally found peace. Sadly, though, his life showed no evidence that he had found the One who is peace, the one who offers true peace. And if that is the case, the true horror of it all is that Jackson will spend all of eternity in the same twisted mind that tortured him for most of the fifty years he was given here. Those fifty years seemed to drive him to the brink of utter insanity; the thought of an eternity in that state is too horrific to imagine. We may like to think that death inevitably brings peace to a tortured existence. But Scripture gives us no reason to find hope except in the One who offers hope by saying “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” May you find that rest today so you can enjoy that rest eternally.
Why Changing The Outside Is Not Enough - Some Thoughts About Michael Jackson
As you shrink from the Frankenstein shock of Jackson's visage, reflect: mankind was created in God's image (Genesis 1:26-28), and still bears that image (Genesis 9:6). But in seeking to take God's place and make themselves gods (Genesis 3), our foreparents did to their whole beings what Michael Jackson did to his face: they horridly disfigured themselves and all of us, leaving a repulsive mockery of what we were meant to be.
The only solution for us is not a succession of endeavors to remake ourselves. Each attempt leaves a worse spectacle than the previous, and moves us further from what we truly need.
The only solution for us is the solution to which Michael Jackson never submitted himself, as far as is known: to be born anew, under the good hand of our Creator. We do not need new faces. We need new natures. We need the miracle of regeneration, not the tragedy of manmade makeovers.
And this can only come through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Anonymous people from at least six continents pass through these pages every day. My prayer for you, whoever you are, is that you will take your hurts and brokenness and crimes against God to the only place when you can find forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation: to the Lord Jesus Christ.
By Dan Phillips, ToRead The Rest
Thursday, June 25, 2009
How To Avoid Being Shallow
C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, chapter 8.
I believe the Lord takes every one of his children to this place of bare trust in his Word. Without it, we would remain shallow. Through it, we emerge more deeply surrendered to God as God, more deeply settled and quietly certain and surprisingly satisfied.
I also believe that many of us are in that place of intense pressure right now.
God will keep us.
Thanksgiving
"Everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving." 1 Timothy 4:4
No Country for Burly Men
by Christina Hoff Sommers
A "man-cession." That's what some economists are starting to call it. Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a "downturn" for women but a "catastrophe" for men.
Men are bearing the brunt of the current economic crisis because they predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost more than 3 million jobs since December 2007. Women, by contrast, are a majority in recession-resistant fields such as education and health care, which gained 588,000 jobs during the same period. Rescuing hundreds of thousands of unemployed crane operators, welders, production line managers, and machine setters was never going to be easy. But the concerted opposition of several powerful women's groups has made it all but impossible. Consider what just happened with the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Last November, President-elect Obama addressed the devastation in the construction and manufacturing industries by proposing an ambitious New Deal-like program to rebuild the nation's infrastructure. He called for a two-year "shovel ready" stimulus program to modernize roads, bridges, schools, electrical grids, public transportation, and dams and made reinvigorating the hardest-hit sectors of the economy the goal of the legislation that would become the recovery act.
Women's groups were appalled. Grids? Dams? Opinion pieces immediately appeared in major newspapers with titles like "Where are the New Jobs for Women?" and "The Macho Stimulus Plan."Read The Rest
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Does Your Church Still Exist?
John R. W. Stott, What Christ Thinks of the Church, page 33.
American shoppers misled by greenwash, Congress told
More than 98% of supposedly natural and environmentally friendly products on US supermarket shelves are making potentially false or misleading claims, Congress has been told. And 22% of products making green claims bear an environmental badge that has no inherent meaning, said Scot Case, of the environmental consulting firm TerraChoice.
The study of nearly 4,000 consumer products found "greenwashing" in nearly every product category – from a lack of verifiable information to outright lies.
Even the experts are confused. Case, whose firm runs its own Ecologo certification programme, admitted he had bought a refrigerator only to find it failed to meet its claims of energy efficiency.
I believe that we have another case of "A sucker is born every minute"
C.S. Lewis on Seeing Everything Your Enemies Do As Bad
"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out.
Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?
If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred."
This certainly applies in politics, doesn't it? When George W. Bush was President, he was demonized daily by those who thought virtually everything he did was utterly scandalous and terrible. And now many conservatives--including, ahem, many Christians--are returning the favor with President Obama.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Kurt Warner On The Best Part Of Being A Proffessional Football Player
A Life Well Lived - Bob Bosworth

I was blessed to have known Bob, and while he was not in the States very much his life had quite an impact on me. In your lifetime you can count on one hand the number of great men that have crossed your path, Bob was one of those men.
You Do Matter
Deborah Schaeffer Middelmann, regarding her father Francis Schaeffer, quoted in Colin Duriez, Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life, page 203.
Kenosis
[kuh-noe’-sis]
(Greek, “emptying”)
Describes the “emptying” of Christ at the incarnation. The Greek word kenoo (”to empty”) is found in Phil 2:6-11 where Christ humility is described through the incarnation. Debate exists concerning the meaning of the Kenosis. Did Christ lose divine attributes and thus “empty” himself, or did he give up rights for the independent use of his divine attributes, without actually giving them up? Most theologians would opt for the latter, believing that if Christ “lost” divine attributes he would no longer be divine; indeed, he would never have been divine in the first place considering the essential divine attribute of immutability (the inability to change in essence).
Monday, June 22, 2009
Atheist Bus Campaign
The Most Oppressive Tyranny
Sunday, June 21, 2009
This Infinite Fountain Of Love
Jonathan Edwards, "Heaven is a world of love," Charity and its Fruits, pages 327-328.
Open House

Saturday was a busy day, we had my daughter Jessica's Graduation open house at my sister Sally's house, in South Lyon. After a night of monster rain we had a beautiful muggy day with plenty of sunshine and a nice breeze.That's my mom who just turned 85, then Jessica and on the right is my sister Sally.
Friday, June 19, 2009
No Degrees of Deadness
A silly scenario? Yes, of course! But lets think about this as it relates to man's condition outside of Christ. He is not vibrant and healthy; nor merely under the weather a little, and not just extremely sick about to breathe his last breath. God says that man is actually dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1). The Greek word for dead here is necros, meaning dead like a corpse. There are no signs of spiritual life. It is a hopeless case.
Continue reading "No Degrees of Deadness" »
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Filling Voids
We might try to fill the voids we so deeply feel by doing bad things or by doing good things. When we salve the ache in our hearts, which only God himself can satisfy, by doing good things, we then feel proud and think God owes us and we get angry when he doesn't fork over. When we salve the ache within by doing bad things, we feel shamed and think God despises us and slink away from him in bitterness and cynicism. But we are the ones complicating our souls.
Filling the void with anything but God is a sin. Sin can involve doing a good thing, or sin can involve doing a bad thing. But only God can comfort us. Only God can fill our souls with the magnitude of the One we long for. And he does, freely, on terms of grace. "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God." 1 Peter 3:18
To be empty and disappointed and brokenhearted does not disqualify you from God. It means God is near, if you'll have him.
Ray Ortlund
The Best Fears of Our Lives
Russell D. Moore on the Good Father’s Quiet Desperation
Somebody please help me. I’m really, really depressed, and I don’t know what to do. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even know I was depressed until a new study came out, and I’m at high, high risk. An article by Vanderbilt and Florida State sociology professors, based on data from the National Survey of Families and Households, has concluded that parents are more susceptible to depression than non-parents.
According to the Sacramento Bee’s report, “Parents experience significantly higher levels of depression than grown-ups who don’t have children.”
I still thought I was okay, since I’m a reasonably happy man. That is, until I saw the definition of the problem. According to the Bee: “The researchers suggest that worry is a lifelong cost of having children.” And don’t think it gets better when they leave the house: “Parents of grown children (whether they live at home or have moved out) and parents without custody of minor children exhibit more signs of depression than other parents.”
To read the rest go Here
The Almost Impossible Thing
"The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ."
"[The natural life] knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that."
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Milt Jackson - People Make The world Go around
P.J. O’Rourke on the New “Obamamobile”
Living in a Society of Possible gods and goddesses
C. S. Lewis in Weight Of Glory
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues THP 1959
Little Moments Of Decision
Lord, make my life a miracle!"
Raymond C. Ortlund, Lord, Make My Life A Miracle, page 151.
A Long Terrible Story
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity















