It is important to know not only in general that the Bible is true but also that in the Bible God’s words are identical to his actions. When he says, “Let there be light,” there is light (Genesis 1:3). When God renames someone, it automatically remakes him (Genesis 17:5). The Bible does not say that God speaks and then proceeds to act, that he names and then proceeds to shape—but that God’s speaking and acting are the same thing. His word is his action, his divine power.
Anytime a church can throw other various events to create awareness in their community that they exist, that’s always a good thing. People begin to build an awareness of, “Okay, this church is in our city. They’re around. I’ve had interactions with them, and those interactions were positive.” When people get to those points in their lives where they’re like, “I need somewhere to run,” then they’re like, “Hey there’s that church over there.” So when [JGivens is] telling his story, he’s like, “I’m ready to run to God.” Part of running to God usually involves running to the local church. It’s not just, “I’m going to run out into the middle of nowhere and scream.” More than likely you’re going to run to a local church that has made itself known to you.CT, Pastoring Rappers
He is telling us that we will never be content unless, as we make our heartfelt request, we also acknowledge that our lives are in his hands, and that he is wiser than we are.
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Suffering almost almost always shows you that some things you thought you couldn't live without, you can live without if you lean on God.
So in our reading life, we ought not to oppose reading to life, or life to reading. In Christian circles, mark the person who continually shouts out, “Christianity is more than a doctrine, it’s a life!” More often than not, that’s the person who’s lost the plot. Reading is for life. And reading books, done right, is itself practice in reading all things. Practice with the nouns on the page prepares us for the nouns all around: all the persons, places, and things. We read persons: What do they mean by what they say and do? How do you interpret them correctly? How do you keep yourself from over-interpreting them or under-interpreting them? It’s difficult and dangerous, so we practice on dead people. Plato’s not insulted if you read him wrong; he’s in the Phaedrus (oddly, a book he wrote about how writing books was bad) waiting for you come back and get him right. Your roommate, on the other hand, is immediately offended to be read wrong, and says so.
The accusation of Satan was that Job did not actually love or serve God - he was loving and serving himself through compliance with God's will. And we have said that this is always partly true of even the best of God's followers. But it is because we do not fully love God just for his own sake that we are subject to such great ups and downs depending on how things go in our lives. We do not find our hearts fully satisfied with God unless other things are also going well, and therefore we are without sufficient roots, blown and beaten by the winds of changing circumstances. But to grow into a true "free lover" of God, who has the depth of joy unknown to the mercenary, conditional religious observer - we must ordinarily go through a stripping. We must feel that to obey God will bring us no benefits at all. It is at that point that seeking, praying to, and obeying God begin to change us.
But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken forever do they pass into song.
The formal Christian is a man who knows enough about Christianity to spoil the world for him; but he does not know enough about it for it to be of any positive value.
Make your productivity systems streamlined, but don’t spend time over-optimizing. Act. You are free to do this because knowing what’s best does not depend on having your system all up to date; rather it depends on just stopping, reflecting, and asking, “What is the best thing to do now?”
Generosity without agenda is scandalous. It defies everything our culture stands for. But, too often, the church enforces greed instead of fighting it.It's time for the church to be known as the crazy people who are always giving things away. Let's show people that faith in Jesus is more about giving than receiving.
But the law can do only what the law can do. The law can only tell us what God requires and thereby explode our sin and misery, and when we find our righteousness in the gospel, the law can tell us what a life of gratitude looks like. The law has that important function to fulfill. But the law never becomes the gospel. The law is always an imperative, a command. The gospel is always an indicative, an announcement of a state of affairs, telling us what God has done. We should not look to the law — either God’s or a task list we have made up for ourselves — for our identity. I use the example of a sailboat. The law can tell us where we are and if we are in trouble. But only the gospel is the wind in our sails.
“The heart of most religions is good advice, good techniques, good programs, good ideas, and good support systems. . . . But the heart of Christianity is Good News. It comes not as a task for us to fulfill, a mission for us to accomplish, a game plan for us to follow with the help of life coaches, but as a report that someone else has already fulfilled, accomplished, followed, and achieved everything for us. Good advice may help us in daily direction; the Good News concerning Jesus Christ saves us from sin’s guilt and tyranny over our lives and the fear of death. It’s Good News because it does not depend on us. It is about God and his faithfulness to his own purposes and promises.”
What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around.
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.
To pray successfully is the first lesson the preacher must learn if he is to preach fruitfully; yet prayer is the hardest thing he will ever be called upon to do and, being human, it is the one act he will be tempted to do less frequently than any other. He must set his heart to conquer by prayer, and that will mean that he must first conquer his own flesh, for it is the flesh that hinders prayer always.
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No man should stand before an audience who has not first stood before God. Many hours of communion should precede one hour in the pulpit. The prayer chamber should be more familiar than the public platform. Prayer should be continuous, preaching but intermittent.
...but as the relationship progresses, you begin to love the person for himself alone, and then when some of the assets go away, you don't mind. We call that growth in love and character. Now, what if you grew in your love for God like that? What if you could grow in your love for Him, so that he became increasingly satisfying in himself to you? That would mean that circumstances wouldn't rattle you as much, since you had God and His love enriching and nourishing you reagrdless of the circumstances of life.
How can we get there - how can you move from loving God in a mercenary way toward loving God himself? I'm afraid the primary way is to have hardship come into your life. Suffering helps yu assess yourself and see the mercenary nature of your love for God.
When you cannot see your way, be satisfied that he is your leader. When your spirit is overwhelmed within you, he knows your path: he will not leave you to sink. He has appointed seasons of refreshment, and you shall find that he does not forget you. Above all, keep close to the throne of grace. If we seem to get no good by attempting to draw near him, we may be sure we will get none by keeping away from him.
...humility get s much grace because grace runs downhill!
We must never assume that we know enough to mistrust God's ways or be bitter against what He has allowed. We must also never think we have really ruined our lives, or have ruined God's good purposes for us. [Joseph's brothers] surely must 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.
"...if Christ be so merciful as not to break me, I will not break myself by despair."
Let me urge upon you the importance of cultivating faith if you are to be able to walk in love and spiritual power. Without faith it is impossible to please God, but those who believe are given more grace than they can handle. Believing is to expect God to be with you and change you and change others. Therefore expect great things from God; attempt great things for God. When the work is dull or routine and people are slipping away, go forth with new boldness and preach Christ until you are filled with faith yourselves and God works faith in others.
"Ah, well, there is no great mystery in that. But you will know all about it soon enough. How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of nature! Are you well up in your Jean Paul?"
"Fairly so. I worked back to him through Carlyle."
"That was like following the brook to the parent lake. He makes one curious but profound remark. It is that the chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness. It argues, you see, a power of comparison and of appreciation which is in itself a proof of nobility. There is much food for thought in Richter. You have not a pistol, have you?"
Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all. — Peter Drucker
Effective prayer in pastoral work arises from the habit of private prayer for prayer's own sake - or better, for the sake of fellowship with God.
Since our relationship to God is the key to everything, it is the principle area of attack upon our Christian life. Honesty and realism are required of us here. The New Testament urges us to be "clear-minded and self-controlled" so that we can pray (1Peter4:7). If we are confused or hazy in our thinking about prayer, and how to ensure its correct place in our life, we are bound to fail in achieving its proper priority. If we do not inject a fair amount of disicpline into our life, we will be unable to control the contrary elements that continually militate against prayer.
Their greatest joy was to honour God, not to use God to get what they wanted in life. And as a result they were fearless. Nothing could overthrow them.
Such simplicity of devotion [trust in the Father's will, childlike devotion to Jesus, humility which puts others first] enables us to see our work with clear vision and to plan and act with sanity. It also enables us to bear with the routine of daily work, with the knowledge that many of our tasks are left half done and even those that are completed are highly imperfect. For prayer teaches us that we are sons of God with a Father who loves us not because we are perfect but because we are in union with Christ.
He needs to break down our tendency to cry out in prayer, "Your will be done," and then to get up and still try to impose our will on circumstances.
"The minister must experience what he would teach or he will find himself in the impossible position of trying to drive sheep. For this reason he should seek to cultivate his own heart before he attempts to preach to the hearts of others."
~ A.W. Tozer, Tozer On Leadership
Put simply, why would God give me guidance when my mind is closed to some aspect of His will?
Freedman argues that there is a fundamental problem in secularism that will always block efforts to form the same kind of "thick" communities that religious belief provides. Community amongst persons is forged only when there is something more important than one's own interests to which all share a higher allegiance. And, Freedman says, "humanism suffers...from the valorisation of the individual." When I am the final authority for determining right and wrong, and when nothing is more important than my right to live as I see fit, tight supportive community is eroded, perhaps even impossible.
We all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales—because they find them romantic . . . This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.
What I would stress, then, is that a man of vision gets his vision only in and through prayer. Only prayer with a goal of glorifying God at any cost can give God's vision to a man or woman.
Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell—the hell of your own meanness.
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| Matthew Crawford (see previous post) | |||
We increasingly encounter the world through these representations that are addressed to us, often with manipulative intent: video games, pornography, gambling apps on your phone,” he says. “These experiences are so exquisitely attuned to our appetites that they can swamp your ordinary way of being in the world. Just as food engineers have figured out how to make food hyper-palatable by manipulating fat, salt and sugar, similarly the media has become expert at making irresistible mental stimuli.” Distraction is a kind of obesity of the mind, in other words, with results that could be just as hazardous for our health.
Paul sees this fuller knowledge of God as a more critical thing to receive than a change of circumstances. Without this powerful sense of God's reality, good circumstances can lead to overconfidence and spiritual indifference. Who needs God, our hearts would conclude, when matters seem to be so in hand? then again, without this enlightened heart, bad circumstances can lead to discouragement and despair, because the love of God would be an abstraction rather than the infinitely consoling presence it should be. Therefore knowing God better is what we must have above all if we are to face life in any circumstances.
“There’s a tactility that somehow links the real world to the world of the mind, and it makes for better, more grounded thought. Sometimes I wonder if e-reading leads to e-thinking: fast, fleeting, reactive, but ultimately it doesn’t take root in a mind and transform it. When you publish a real book, those ideas are meant to transcend and endure, no matter what tech is in vogue. That’s the kind of thinking I want to do, and I do it best on paper.
“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
| Q: You mentioned the historical record, and in your books you write about a 30-year pattern with bridge collapses. Describe that. People have studied bridge building over almost a century and a half or more, and it’s been well-documented. They have noticed that there is a major bridge failure about every 30 years. The question is, why 30 years? One of the explanations is that this is about the duration of a professional generation. An engineer’s career is about 30 years long, roughly. What happens is that these young engineers are coming in and the older engineers are, at the same time, moving out. The older engineers have all this wisdom and experience. But many organizations don’t have a formal procedure for taking that knowledge that’s in the older generation and imparting it to the newer generation. Or even if they do, the younger generation is sort of cocky and thinks they know more. After all, they’ve just gone through school and they’ve learned the latest stuff. So even if there is an attempt to pass on the wisdom to the younger generation, the younger generation either rejects it or doesn’t take it very seriously. Then the younger generation, depending on where it comes in the cycle, if it doesn’t experience failures directly due to its own miscalculations, it gets cocky. It gets comfortable, overconfident and complacent, and all of those qualities welcome mistakes and they lead to failure (Interview with Henry Petroski, reprinted at Q-ideas) |
By our making the Sabbath dreary, many young minds may be prejudiced against religion: we would do the reverse. Sermons should not be so long and full as to weary young folk, or mischief will come of them, but with interesting preaching to secure attention, and loving teachers to press home the truth upon the youthful heart...
It was a small group of eleven men whom Jesus commissioned to carry on his work, and bring the gospel to the whole world. They were not distinguished; they were not well-educated; they had no influential backers. In their own nation they were nobodies and, in any case, their own nation was a mere secondclass province on the eastern extremity of the Roman map. If they had stopped to weigh up the possibilities of succeeding in their mission, even granted their conviction that Jesus was alive and that his Spirit went with them to equip them for their task, their hearts must surely have sunk, so heavily were the odds weighted against them. How could they possibly succeed? And yet they did.
