The Siberian Grinder

From Jared Wilson

Are You Gospel Shaped or Just Religious?
3 Ways to tell

1. Your reaction when things fall apart.

Do you catch yourself saying, “God, why is this happening? I’ve done x, y, and z?” Do suffering, difficulty, and obstacles provoke “why?” questions predicated on your goodness or effort? You’ve been working so hard, reading your Bible, going to church, serving others . . . why would God let this happen to you now? If that’s your line of thinking, it reveals you believe God owes you. And that’s religion.

2. Your reaction to others.

Do you compare yourself, bad or good, against others? Do you belittle, mock, condescend, even if just internally? Do you resent others’ successes? Do you celebrate others’ failures? Do you really wish people would get their act together, or do you really wish people knew Jesus? Are you frequently annoyed, put out, irritated, embarrassed, or inconvenienced by others?

3. Your appraisal of Jesus.

Is he your greatest treasure? That’s the number one indicator of gospel-conformity. You may know right off the bat if this is true or not. For some, it’s true only sentimentally or religiously. You may think it’s true ultimately, but your time, talents, words, emotions, and bank account testify differently.

These are all heart issues. Anybody can get the behavior right. The Pharisees certainly did, and most of them went to hell. But this isn’t even about looking Pharisaical or legalistic or churchy. There’s a lot of Christian hipsters out there in coffee shop churches who have no idea they’re just religious.

Here’s Piper’s very biblical take on the subject.

The following is the eulogy for my sister-in-law, Jennifer Johnson, who went to be with the Lord on February 21, 2010. A memorial service for Jennifer will be held tomorrow at the First Baptist Church of Geneva (a memorial was also hosted at the First Baptist Church in Murray, KY on February 23, 2010, with Pastor Sam Rainer officiating).

Jennifer Elizabeth Johnson was born on July 8, 1983 to Lisa Kirby in Richland, WA. She grew up in Washington and in Central Florida. On April 17, 2006, Jennifer was married to Christopher Johnson. On May 21, 2009, she was diagnosed with ovarian and uterine cancers, and on February 21, 2010, Jennifer Johnson transitioned to heaven.

Jennifer should be remembered by what she loved. First, she loved the Lord Jesus Christ. She recently wrote three pages of testimony, sharing the trials and hardships that she endured as a result of her illness. The conclusion says it all. Jennifer wrote, “I wouldn’t have it any other way. Praise the Lord!” Jennifer’s testimony was clear; she loved the Lord and viewed her life as a gift from him.

And she loved her husband. Through all the difficulties and trials they shared together, she never varied from her devotion and commitment to him, not even for a moment. In fair weather as in the storm, Jennifer demonstrated her love and devotion in a thousand ways.

Family was precious to Jennifer – and they all knew it! She loved her family, and she was beloved by her family.

And all Jennifer’s friends knew of her love – for she loved them well. It is not to say that she was a perfect friend or that she perfectly loved. None of us can claim that. But one thing is clear – Jennifer loved her friends and they loved her.

And she loved life! Jennifer enjoyed music and crafts and the arts. She approached life with boldness and enthusiasm and charisma. Every day was a gift, and Jennifer cherished all of them.

In some ways the end of one’s life testifies of the whole. Jennifer spent the last months of her life trying to educate women about the symptoms and dangers of ovarian cancer. While fighting her own battle with cancer, and she fought hard, she also fought for other women, believing that if women like her would learn about the dangers of ovarian cancer and of the benefits of early detection, many might be able to beat their cancer.

She wasn’t afraid; she wasn’t bitter and she never asked, “Why me?” What she did say was this:

“I wouldn’t have it any other way. Praise the Lord!”

Here’s where my dad and I are right now; and where we’re going.

I find the following to be highly accurate. In fact, I would rank Wikipedia right up there with Al Gore, as far as truth is concerned. Wikipedia is a product of the bigger cultural and philosophical phenomenon; i.e., that objective fact has given way to general consensus. Relativism lives on (if you [or the majority] believe that it does, anyway).

Great challenge to “pay heed to the text” by R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

A few days ago, I received an acceptance letter for a doctoral program at a decent school. The acceptance was provisional upon successfully completing the four remaining classes in my MDiv program and graduating at the conclusion of this semester. I am merely fishing for options, though, and have not decided to do a doctorate right away. If I take the plunge, three more years of study and a dissertation await me. At some point, I would like to study and do research at that level – the only question is whether I should begin in the Fall or wait a year or three.

Decisions, decisions.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made is the sermon I preached yesterday to honor Sanctity of Life Sunday. Preceding the sermon, we watched 99 Balloons.

The following is my in-depth review of the new Apple iPad…

it’s cool.

The end.

(yes, you guessed it. This is a hit-count experiment. Isn’t that frustrating?)

On this day, 65 years ago, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz Death Camp, where more than a million people (Jews, Gypsies and Slavs) were murdered by the Nazis. May we never forget the unbelievable atrocity that the Jewish Holocaust was, or the evil ideology that drove it. If we can remember, maybe we won’t repeat it.

Oh for the fallen we weep,
Never will we forget.
Oh for the fallen we weep,
always will we regret.

Oh for the fallen we sing,
our joy in their memory.
Oh for the fallen we sing,
if only their names we see.

How to wreck your church in three weeks:

Week One:  Walk into church today and think about how long you’ve been a member, how much you’ve sacrificed, how under-appreciated you are.  Take note of every way you’re dissatisfied with your church now.  Take note of every person who displeases you.

Meet for coffee this week with another member and “share your heart.”  Discuss how your church is changing, how you are being left out.  Ask your friend who else in the church has “concerns.”  Agree together that you must “pray about it.”

Week Two:  Send an email to a few other “concerned” members.  Inform them that a groundswell of grievance is surfacing in your church.  Problems have gone unaddressed for too long.  Ask them to keep the matter to themselves “for the sake of the body.”

As complaints come in, form them into a petition to demand an accounting from the leaders of the church.  Circulate the petition quietly.  Gathering support will be easy.  Even happy members can be used if you appeal to their sense of fairness – that your side deserves a hearing.  Be sure to proceed in a way that conforms to your church constitution, so that your petition is procedurally correct.

Week Three:  When the growing moral fervor, ill-defined but powerful, reaches critical mass, confront the elders with your demands.  Inform them of all the woundedness in the church, which leaves you with no choice but to put your petition forward.  Inform them that, for the sake of reconciliation, the concerns of the body must be satisfied.

Whatever happens from this point on, you have won.  You have changed the subject in your church from gospel advance to your own grievances.  To some degree, you will get your way.  Your church will need three or four years for recovery.  But at any future time, you can do it all again.  It only takes three weeks.
Just one question.  Even if you are being wronged, “Why not rather suffer wrong?” (1 Corinthians 6:7).

HT: Take Your Vitamin Z

What an incredible life! Eliot Mooney, God is using you and your 99 days on earth to proclaim his Glory.  And you were blessed with great parents!

99 Balloons from Igniter Media on Vimeo.

I was thankful to find this old essay by Dorothy Sayers, entitled, “Why Work“. It is an excellent reminder of the inherent platonic ideas we have when in comes to work, and the need to adopt a more biblical approach. Here is the same excerpt posted at Justin Taylor’s blog.

The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.

. . . Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade—not outside of it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not meant they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meant for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.

The official Church wastes time and energy, and moreover, commits sacrilege, in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work—by which she means ecclesiastical work. The only Christian work is good work well done. Let the Church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is Church embroidery or sewage-farming.

1. We must preach because of the power of the Word of God to change human lives and to transform the experience of the church.
2. We must preach because preaching is God’s ordained means for making himself known to us.
3. We must preach because preaching not only communicates truth about God, it also mediates the very person and power of God.
4. We must preach because preaching (aside from reading) is the most effective means for transmitting the truths of Holy Scripture.
5. We must preach because preaching is the fuel for worship. Preaching fans the flames of passion for Jesus.
6. We must preach because preaching is not simply the fuel for worship, preaching is worship.
7. We must preach because preaching is the catalyst for church growth, renewal, and revival.
8. We must preach because preaching is the means by which the glory of God is revealed and imparted to those who listen with faith.

HT: Desiring God

From Clyde Kilby:

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.

2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: “There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.”

3. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities.

I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

4. I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.

5. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.

6. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.

7. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the “child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder.”

8. I shall follow Darwin’s advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music.

9. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, “fulfill the moment as the moment.” I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.

10. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.

HT: John Piper