Anxious?

A great reminder I stumbled upon again this morning in my blog reading.  Thanks Justin.

ANXIETY

I quit you
False lover
We’ve known each other a long time
I can’t remember how we met

Has it been 30 years?
Did you promise me, or was it I who made promises to you?
You never deliver
False, faithless friend

I put my trust in you
Your reasoning made sense to me:
Worry about this, be anxious about that
Obsess and fret on these things
And all shall be well, figured out, under control

You liar!
Your reasoning unravels
You’ve lost your luster
I’m being wooed by a new lover

He speaks a better word
I couldn’t hear it before

Too drunk I was
Choosing to sip your sneaky cocktails
Making myself a god,
Usurping the throne
Your lying logic runs that deep

I quit you
False lover
A new lover speaks

“I tell you, do not be anxious about your life”

I was blind to the voice
I didn’t realize who spoke those words to me
“I tell you”
“I” ?

Who speaks this command?
Who issues this invitation?
Who dares?
Who can say such words?

Then I saw him
And everything changed

“I tell you,” says Jesus

“I tell you,” says the second member of the Triune
“I tell you,” says the One who designed me
“I tell you,” says the God-man, come from high heaven to this anxious earth
“I tell you,” says the Savior who sweat blood for me
“I tell you,” says Immanuel, who is with me
“I tell you,” says Wise Christ, who knows all things
“I tell you,” says King Jesus, who reigns and rules over all things,

today and tomorrow and forever

These are his words
“I tell you,”
“do not be anxious about your life”

Jesus speaks against you, anxious Anxiety
I have a new love
A new lover
He has taken my trust away from you

Anxiety, I quit you
False lover

Sing to Him a new song! (Ps 33:3)

Enjoy learning this great modern hymn by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend!

Addition By Subtraction

Here was an encouraging article in the WSJ by an older Anglican believer who rather than holding on to “his” church, followed the call of God to be used to plant a new body in the same community.  Praise God for Christians and for pastors who still realize that the Body is not their corporation to run executive roughshod over, but that the mission of the Church is still about making disciples.

I appreciated this article, because in it you hear the heart of a man who is learning how the Kingdom grows and  expands and he conveys what he is learning through the process as though these truths are new to the world.  Certainly from the Episcopal/Anglican tradition, aggressive church planting is new.  Would that more elder saints in more traditional congregations learn these same lessons first hand.  Here’s an excerpt.

In 2007, my wife Barbara and I left The Falls Church, which we had happily attended from the time we became Christians a quarter-century ago. It’s a 277-year-old church in northern Virginia well-known for its popular preacher, the Rev. John Yates, its adherence to traditional biblical teachings and its withdrawal in 2005 from the national Episcopal church. Our three grown daughters and their families stayed behind at The Falls Church.

We didn’t leave in anger. We didn’t have political or theological anxieties. Rather, we left for a new church because our old church wanted us to. The Falls Church has become entrepreneurial as well as evangelical. It’s in the church-planting business. And we were encouraged by Mr. Yates to join Christ the King, the church “planted” near our home in Alexandria. We were a bit ambivalent about the move, but when Christ the King opened its doors in September 2007, we were there . . .

. . .  Mr. Yates was strongly influenced by the Rev. Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan. Mr. Keller has led in creating new churches — Redeemer has planted more than 100 churches in New York and other cities around the world. Innovative new churches, he has written, are “the research and development department” for Christianity, attract “venturesome people” as fresh leaders, and have the spillover effect of challenging existing churches to revitalize their ministry.

For all you Church planters out, Grace and Peace and God’s Increase to you today!

Can You Men Relate?

Too funny.  I’ve had this same conversation about a dozen times.  Good stuff.

Free Online Access To The ESV Study Bible

Here’s a section of an email I received from Crossway Publishers about a limited time of free access to the ESV Study Bible online.  If you haven’t purchased or used this resource, I highly encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity while it’s free.  I use it (the print version ) daily.

Crossway is pleased to make the ESV Online Study Bible available free–for anyone and everyone–for a limited time beginning today, March 2 through March 31, 2009.

As many of you have already experienced, the the ESV Online Study Bible provides numerous interactive features in addition to those found in the print edition, enabling readers to:

• Record personal notes, reflections, and links
• Click hyperlinked cross references
• Search by verse, topic, or keyword
• Digitally highlight Bible passages or key words with various colors
• Listen to audio of passages

For full access and free trial use of these features for one month, users can create a login and password at www.esvstudybible.org/online. Email information will not be shared, nor will there be any obligation to purchase.

Finding Time To Read

The list of books at the bottom of the previous post is actually a month or so old.  All but one of them has been read.  Sometimes people wonder how could someone read 4-6 books simultaneously.  Well, reading is part of my job description, so it does make it easier for me in some regards to read a lot more than it might be for others.  However, I almost never sit down and read a single book through from cover to cover.

My mind wanders, needs to process what I’ve read or simply needs other stimulation to keep from falling asleep (especially if I am reading something weighty.  meditating is tiring!). Sometimes I want to read something that will send my mind on a quick vacation by reading on some topic that I am interested in learning about, but do not wish to be an expert.  Tony Reinke would put it like this:

Books I have no intention of reading cover-to-cover are kept beside my bed. I’ll grab one of these volumes and read for about 20 minutes each night before falling asleep. This stack is constantly cycled, but here is a current picture:  (Click here for rest of the article on finding time to read)

So I too have a stack of general interest books lying around the house (bedroom, den, bathroom, family room, office) that I can read a bit here, a bit there and be mentally engaged or entertained without feeling the need to carry the author’s thought or theme throughout.  Marsden’s A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards is serving just such a purpose along with Bauerlein’s social critique of the “plugged in world” in The Dumbest Generation.  Two totally different books, and yet as I read them simultaneously, I find connections between the two that are truly stimulating to consider.

Anyway, here’s to using books as a way to engage the mind, transport the imagination, edify the soul, and feed the natural human curiosity without the mind numbing bane of channel surfing.   Here’s to all of us finding more time to read!

Resolved: Redeeming the Time Through Reading More

I’ve spent a good deal of time considering precisely that; time and how I’ve spent it.  Jonathan Edwards, the great American Preacher and Theologian once penned 70 some resolutions of which number 5 read as follows:

Resolved to not waste time.

I too want to do that in 2009.  The question becomes, in what ways can I redeem the time?

One of those ways is through reading.  Filling my heart and mind with truth, ideas, beauty.  Things that are lovely, true, of good report.  I was further compelled along these lines through a piece in the Wall Street Journal on President Bush’s habit of reading.

In this piece, Karl Rove reports that the President read 95 books in 2006.  51 in 2007 and at the point Rove wrote the aforementioned article, he had read 40 in 2008.  This mind you was in addition to reading through the Bible each year and a daily devotional!  If the Leader of the Free World can do that, I think I can find time to read more.  I counted.  I read 25 book last year and I’m a pastor!

In the coming posts, I’ll point you towards some good advice in “finding” more time to read if you too would like to see your cup be fuller at the end of 2009 than you did in 2008.

Here are the books I’m reading now.

He Is Not Silent

A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards

Peace Like A River

Talent Is Overrated

How True

(HT:  BTW)

What I (Too) Mean By Reformed

Came across this post by Kevin DeYoung and don’t know that I’ve heard or read it stated any better.  To His words, I add my hearty Amen!  Below is part of his post.  Click the link and read it in its entirety.

But that’s not all I’m saying with the word Reformed. I don’t view the Reformed faith as simply one branch on the Christian tree. I believe the Reformed understanding of the Bible is Christianity in full bloom. Hopefully, this does not make me haughty about “my flower.” But it does make me glad to have the flower (or for the flower to have me), because I find the flower to be the most beautiful, sweetest smelling bloom on the Christian tree.

When I say am I am Reformed I mean:

I marvel at God’s holiness, that he is independent, pure, good, and utterly beyond me.

I glory in God’s goodness, that he should save a wretch like me, totally undeserving, bent toward evil in all my faculties.

I rejoice in God’s sovereignty, that he chose to save me for the praise of his glory, not owing to anything I did or would do or any potential in me.

I find my hope in the second Adam who gives me life and imputed blessing, triumphing over the first Adam’s imputed death and curse.

I am grateful for God’s power by which he caused me, without my cooperation, to be born again and enabled me to believe his promises.

I take comfort in God’s all-encompassing providence, that nothing happens to me by chance, but all things–prosperity or poverty, health or sickness, giving or taking away–are sent to me by my loving heavenly Father.

I praise God for his mercy, shown to me chiefly on the cross where his Son died, not just to make a way for me to come to him, but died effectually in my place such that my sins, my guilt, and my punishment all died in the death of Christ.

I find assurance in God’s preserving grace believing with all my might that nothing–not even myself–can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord which he began in me and will see through to completion.

I rest secure in God’s covenant love, depicted in both the Old and the New Testament, showing me the incomparable blessings of knowing that the Lord is my God and I am his beloved son, that God is a God to me and my children after me.

I stand amazed in the justifying grace of God whereby I am acquitted of all my sins and clothed with new garments in the presence of my King and Judge, not because of anything I have done but only because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in which I trust.

I delight in the glory of God and in God’s delight for his own glory which brings me, on my best days, unspeakable joy, and on all my other days, still gives purpose and order to an otherwise confusing and seemingly random world.

I cherish the word of God because it is all true, because I see Christ in it, and because its rules and precepts are for my good,

I rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to illumine my mind, convict me of sin, and make me holy as God is holy.

When I say I am Reformed I mean that God is the center of the universe and I am not. I mean that I am a worse sinner than I imagine and God is a greater Savior than I ever thought possible. I mean that the Lord is my righteousness and the Lord alone is my boast. By Reformed I mean all this, and most of all that my only comfort in life and in death is that I am not my own but belong, in body and in soul, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen.

Sovereign Grace Is Having A Sale

Starting February 1 Sovereign Grace is practically giving away their best resources.  I highly recommend you take advantage of these tremendous prices.

All Sovereign Grace books are $7!   Highly recommend:

• Worldliness
• Worship Matters
• The Cross Centered Life
• When Sinners Say I Do
• Feminine Appeal
• Sex, Romance & the Glory of God
• Shopping For Time

All Sovereign Grace music is $6!  Highly recommend:

• Come Weary Saints
• Together For The Gospel Live
• Upward:  The Bob Kauflin Hymns Project
• Valley of Vision

At these prices, buy a handful and hand them out to your friends.  Stock up for Christmas!