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One of the most difficult messages to convey to Christian women is that their most special and most important ministry that they will ever have is being a fully engaged and fully committed wife and mother.  Here is a tremndous post by Carolyn Mahaney in reflecting on the boxing up of their house of 22 years as they prepare to move.  Ladies, Moms, read this and the other posts in this same vein over at GirlTalk and be encouraged in the high calling of wife and mother.

Men, if your wife understands this well, and consistently seeks to live it out, no doubt her discouragements abound from week to week and month to month.  Men, read this, print it out and hang it on the refrigerator with the words, “Thank You” and “I Love You” and “You do an awesome and important job, and you do it with excellence!”

The Prodigal God?!?!  Yes.  Go look, and listen and be blessed.

An excellent review concerning The Shack. I have not wanted to wade into this, but my conscience would not be clear before God if I did not take the opportunity to tear down stongholds and arguments so obviously raised up against the true and clear knowledge of God as He has revealed Himself in Scripture (2 Cor 10:4,5). I would remind us all that truth is not measured by the amount of true statements or assertions detected. Truth is measured by the absence of falsehood. That is what makes heresy so easy to swallow; it contains enough true statements to divert us from the deceptiveness and subversiveness of the lies.

I don’t care about the author’s intent and neither should you. Only he and God really know the answer to that one regardless of what the stated intent of the author was. I don’t care who he wrote it for; his kids, his wife, his Sunday school class, his English lit professor. I don’t care to argue how it stacks up against Narnia or Pilgrim’s Progress as a work of fiction. All those are peripheral arguments until the main issue is dealt with; what the author actually said, wrote, asserted, affirmed, insinuated, alluded to, encouraged, and mocked compared to what the Scriptures teach. That’s what I care about. And as this article so clearly points out, what the author actually said when compared with Scripture, regardless of the emotional packaging it is wrapped in, and regardless of the true statements that make it the emotional appeal that much more gripping, ought to make a Christian son or daughter recoil in righteous anger and indignation at the blaspheming of their Father.

Thank you Tim for such a helpful, careful and God honoring handling of this controversial work.

This is a must read.

Every human has died. Animals suffer. Rivers overflow an inundate hundreds of city bocks in Cedar Rapids. Avalanches bury skiers. Tornados suck the life out of little Boy Scouts. Tsunamis kill 250,000 in a night. Philippine ferries capsize killing 800 people in a moment. AIDs, malaria, cancer, and heart disease kill millions. A monster tornado rip through cities. Droughts and famines bring people to the brink, and over the brink, of starvation. Freak accidents happen in ways you would not want to describe. Little babies are born with no eyes, six legs, horrible deformities. That is because of ONE SIN! The universe was subjected to futility and corruption in hope (Romans 8:20).

This is very important for you to answer: Why did God subject the natural order to such horrific realities when nature did nothing wrong? Souls did something wrong. Adam and Eve’s volition did something wrong. The earth didn’t do anything wrong. Why is the earth bursting with volcanoes and earthquakes? Animals didn’t do anything wrong. What’s the deal with this universal subjection to corruption, when one man and one woman sinned one time, and the whole natural order goes wrong? Disorder everywhere in the most horrible ways, a kaleidoscope of suffering in this world, century after century.

Read the full quote here.

(HT:  Shepherds Scrapbook)

I’ve heard a few playful jabs concerning my lack of posts in recent weeks.  Well there is a reason for that.  I have found that blogging can be an occasion for the flesh that in the end is not profitable (which is the diplomatic way of saying sinful).

When I’m low and discouraged, it’s easy to write something, post it to a blog and then evaluate myself based upon the “traffic” that post receives.  If the traffic numbers are high, I feel affirmed and easily convince myself that I am an effective minister.

However, effective ministry, Biblically defined, is when I am serving others by denying myself.  Paul David Tripp has said/written that most of us are ordinary, will always be ordinary and therefore we had better learn how to live in the mundane and do so to the glory of God.  Blogging is an easy way to deceive oneself that they have greater influence than they do.  It is easy to spend time convincing oneself of this fact based upon a new record of “hits in a day”, or by linking to well known men and ministries and thereby proving to all that you are “in the know” and therefore influential.  All the while putting aside the basin and the towel of difficult mundane ministry life which is essential for fruitfulness.

Blogging can also be an effective way to serve the Larger Body.  That is my desire as I consider posting again in the future.  If it can serve the Body, I’ll post.  If it’s just a rant to appease my displeasure in a situation, by God’s grace I’ll take that to the prayer closet and not the world wide web.  If it can build up and equip the Body, I’ll post it.  But if I can identify within my heart that I’m posting something namely to show I’m in the know, by God’s grace, and hopefully your prayers, I’ll put down the laptop, and pick up the basin and the towel, and go find someone whom I’m probably ignoring who needs Jesus demonstrated through me.

This post is perhaps the briefest/best post I have ever read on depression.  I commend it to you.

C.J. presents a great take on Bill Belicheck’s selfish display of unsportsmanship at the conclusion of the Super Bowl while being very careful to acknowledge the beam in his own eye. Thank God for the honest example and leadership of men like C.J.

Thanks to Michael McKinley at 9Marks for his encouraging words In Defense of Long Boring Sermons.

Do you preach the Gospel to yourself daily?  You might start the practice after reading this over at GirlTalk.

mop.jpgWell I’ve begun my part of the Puritan Reading Challenge by delving into Flavel this week. I am encouraged by what I’ve read so far and look forward to what’s ahead in this work.

With that said, I will admit I found myself becoming concerned when early in the introduction Flavel writes, ” . . . how cheering, supporting and encouraging must the consideration of these things be in a day of distress and trouble! What life and hope will it inspire our hearts and prayers with when great pressures lie upon us! It had such a cheering influence upon the Psalmist at this time when the state of his affairs was, to the eye of sense and reason, forlorn and desperate; there was now but a hair’s breadth (as we say) between him and ruin.” (p. 19)

Flavel seemed to me to be painting an overly pretty picture of Providence. A picture that is partly necessary to sustain us in times of great trial, but that doesn’t go far enough, as sometimes we simply suffer in the flesh so the that life of Christ and His glory is clearly revealed. The other part of God’s Providence that is needed is reflected in Job’s words of “though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him”, and Paul’s “to die is gain.”

In Flavel’s defense, he takes as his starting point Ps 57:2, where David exclaims that he ” . . will cry out unto God most high; unto God, that performeth all things for me.” David is holed up in a cave with Saul, the man who wants to kill him, within arm’s reach. Will God’s Providence work out for good? Absolutely! Does that assume automatic deliverance for David? No.

We know from Scripture that in David’s case Providence did work to deliver David’s life from his enemies. But in Stephen’s case, who extolled God’s sovereign Providence no less than David did here, it did not. Stephen died a martyr, glorified God in a magnificent way, and went into eternity to fully enjoy His Savior. That too was God’s Providence on display. But as I would argue, that form of Providence would have been received by Stephen as a dark Providence as he bore the pain of soul in the unbelief and anger of his enemies, and has he bore the pain of stones pounding his flesh.

With that said, I was greatly relieved to later read, “All the dark, intricate, puzzling providences at which we were sometimes so offended, and sometimes amazed, which we could neither reconcile with the promise nor with each other, nay, which we so unjustly censured and bitterly bewailed, as if they had fallen out quite against our happiness, we shall then see to be to us, as the difficult passage through the wilderness was to Israel, ‘the right way to a city of habitation’ (Ps. 107:7).

Well said.

Cool.  Check him out here.

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