Worship

I reluctantly started reading the book of Isaiah this week and was pleasantly surprised. For some reason I had this incorrect idea that the Old Testament is not as applicable/gospel centered as the New Testament is. It only took one chapter in Isaiah to show me that I was wrong. Right in the first chapter, Isaiah 1:18, there was a focus on God’s judgment and redemption of humanity.

Not only was there a picture of Jesus’ redeeming work, there was also a rebuke of hypocrisy (Isaiah 1:11) that I found directly applicable to my life. The Israelites had evidently been offering their required sacrifices to God, but had no change of heart when they did. They thought that God was after their sacrifice while he was really after their hearts.

Just like the Israelites, I often will do acts of worship (service, prayer, tithing etc.) because I think God wants me to do them. It often feels like I am just going through the motions. John Piper, in Desiring God, discusses how worship comes from the “affections of the heart.” He even goes further to say that “where feelings for God are dead, worship is dead.” In other words, worship that is just external works is not worship at all. On the contrary, authentic worship comes from “seeing Christ as not only our Savior but our treasure.” It is an overflow of the pleasure and fulfillment we find in our Savior.

If you are like me, you don’t always feel that delight in God. In those times when your worship feels so dry, I challenge you to not, as I so often do, try and “white-knuckle worship” but to instead turn to God and be real. Just like David did in the Psalms, be honest with God, maybe it won’t be the most theologically correct prayer, but it will be authentic… Any thoughts?

Enjoyment in God

Recently, I have started reading “Desiring God” by John Piper. I have found it packed with thought provoking insights and ideas. My hope is to blog some of Piper’s ideas that I find interesting.

In the first chapter of the book, titled “The Happiness of God,” Piper discusses the idea that God’s enjoyment is in himself. He states that God, delights in His own works and glory. Piper goes further to say that “God is uppermost in [God’s] affections.” This means that God also delights in the praises of his people. In fact, God commands his redeemed to praise him (2 Thessalonians 1:10, Ephesians 1:4-6 and Ephesians 1:12). But what exactly is praise?

Piper argues that praise occurs when we find something to be beautiful or excellent. Think about what you praise in your life? He then references C.S. Lewis to further his point. Lewis says that praise completes enjoyment. We naturally want to praise what we find excellent or beautiful because it completes our enjoyment of that thing.

So if praise is what completes our enjoyment of something, than God’s command to praise Him is a command to find our joy full in himself. He wants us to find pleasure in himself. This idea seems to be the basis of Piper’s book. Piper encourages his readers to become Christian Hedonists. He says that the problem with humans is not that they love pleasures, but that they settle for earthly pleasures that pale in comparison to the pleasure that God provides in himself.

Hopefully more to come as I get further into the book… any thoughts?

The Temptation of Christ

If you haven’t noticed, due to a mixture of AP exams and end of school laziness we haven’t had a blog post out in a while, hopefully we can get it back on track over the months of summer.

At the beginning of last week, I was really feeling complacent with my relationship with Christ and my studies of the Bible, so I decided to try something new. Instead of just reading a chapter or two a day I decided I would camp out in a chapter of Luke for a week and try to really think and pray about it. Well the prayer part of my plan didn’t go too well but I feel like God still taught me a lot. The passage I chose for last week was on the temptation of Christ in Luke 4:1-13, I tried to pick a passage that I knew one of the preachers I liked had a sermon on so I after thinking about it for a couple of days I could listen to their takes on the passages and bounce around some more ideas. This method of studying helped me to see things on a deeper level than just reading through a book could do.

The temptation of Jesus has been a passage that is pretty familiar to me over the years but always been kind of weird at the same time. The questions that always came to my mind were “what is the purpose of Jesus being tempted”? Over the next few posts I will try to share what I have learned about this question.

I think that part of the answer to that question comes in Hebrews 4:15. I feel that a big reason Luke includes the temptation of Christ in his gospel to help to show us the humanity of Christ. He was tempted after a 40 day fast where he was definitely not at his full physical strength. He therefore knows how it feels to us to be tempted at full force by Satan. He also knows how sly and crafty the devil is. This is very reassuring in our times of need and despair. As the text from Hebrews says, he can “sympathize with our weaknesses.” He knows how it feels to be kicked around by Satan while we are down. Christ came down to earth and experienced the same “weakness” that plagues me and you on a day to day basis. This idea a very reassuring, especially after the many times that I fall in to temptation and do a “first-degree sin” as Steve Brown calls it. I can run to Christ and he can not only forgive me, he can also relate with me in a way that only someone who has shared the same experience can. What a great Savior we have. Any thoughts?

Over the weekend I listened to a thought provoking sermon by Matt Chandler. The message was part 11 in his great series on Ecclesiastes. In the message he claimed that “so few of us ever sit back and pray and think and dwell on what was purchased on the cross.” He then goes on to assert that because, we don’t often think about what it is God has done for us, we fall back into relying on our works and actions to win favor with Christ. In a sense, we resort to trying to make our rights overcome our wrongs.

When I heard him talk about this, I didn’t think much about it. I thought that I probably do that sometimes but not too often. My opinions soon changed when he asked 3 questions that helped to show if the cross was central in my life. I encourage you to think about these three questions and be honest with yourself on what your answer is.

1) Are you currently defining your righteousness by what you do or do not do? In other words, what makes you a good man or a good women?
2) Does God love you? If yes, why?
3) Do you bring God joy?

If you are like me, a lot of times the cross and Christ’s love isn’t central in your life. This is significant because “Anytime the cross is no longer central in doctrine, in preaching, in teaching, in your life, all of a sudden we're leaving what was purchased for us [on the cross] and we're clinging to a system that didn't work for us to begin with.”

Naturally, the question becomes how do I make Christ's love expressed through the cross central in my life? While not trying to sound formulaic, there are some things that I have heard and applied that help. Later in the sermon Matt Chandler encourages his congregation to take time to meditate on the cross, and to think about what Christ did for them. Think about how, as Christians, Jesus loves us despite our sin, how his righteousness is given on our behalf. As we begin to see our sin next to His wonderful acts of love we will naturally want to change to become more like him. Chandler quotes Romans 2:4 which says “God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance” to support that idea. These are some practical ideas to help but as I said earlier they aren’t some kind of formula to get the cross central in your life.

If you are interested in Matt Chandler's messages you can check them out here.

Jonny

Steve Brown

Because I have been a follower of Christ for some time, and been going to church for even longer, I often find myself guilty of skimming over the great news of Christ’s sacrifice and redemption. For the longest time the “dance” that was supposed to be my relationship with Christ felt much more like a “march” (and often times still does). A big aid in keeping the gospel centered in my life has been the teachings/writings of Steve Brown.

A few years back, a friend gave me a book called A Scandalous Freedom by Steve Brown. Through the book, God revealed to me many things about him that I should have seen in the scripture but for some reason didn’t. Steve’s teaching that (if you are a believer) “God isn’t mad at you” helped to change my perspective on my relationship with Christ. In the book, Steve, a former pastor, seminary professor and author, talks about the Freedom offered to a believer through the cross of Christ and its impact on his/her life. Steve’s words have encouraged me when times that I feel down or condemned.

As you can probably tell, I loved the book. I soon found out that Steve Brown puts out a daily radio broadcast/podcast called “Key Life,” and quickly became a huge fan of it as well. On the short broadcast, Steve discusses various topics, “through the eyes of grace.” I really find his teachings very helpful in my walk with Christ and would recommend them especially for Christians that have grown up in the church. If you are interested check it out here or you can find the podcast on iTunes.
Jonny

Put Out The Sun

C.S. Lewis once said that “a man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.” When I first stumbled across this quote, I glanced over it and didn’t give it much thought. A little later, I stopped to really consider just what Lewis meant and it really convicted me about my life. So often I make following Jesus something that is about me by believing I somehow deserve God’s grace and a lot of blessings. Of course I would never admit that I think I am the center of Christianity but my actions and thoughts definitely suggest it. I’m sure most have heard that Jesus came to die so we can go to Heaven but, while this is definitely amazingly true, I think we leave off the more important part of His sacrifice.

What I mean is that the Bible isn’t necessarily a story about humans and our struggle but about God and His glory. The book is laced with verses clearly stating that everything, including our salvation, is to bring honor and praise to Him. For example Psalm 106: “Yet he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make known his mighty power,” Psalm 25: “For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great,” Psalm 23: “He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.” These are only three verses, I could have used many more, but I think you get the point. No matter what does or does not happen God is working all things for His greater good. What frustrates me is that I take my eyes off God’s bigger plan and focus on the unimportant. When we die what does it really matter how many championships the Gator’s won, how much money we have in our bank accounts, or who our friends were? Everything is meaningless when we lose the heart of why we are here.

To make a long story short, we as the Christian community must be very cautious lest we forget that history is not intended to bring man any praise whatsoever. God has done everything past, present, and future to reveal His holiness. For me, these thoughts begin with how I read and interpret the Bible. A lot of times I open it up to solve a problem in my life (and usually end up taking an obscure verse out of context) but maybe we should look to the Bible as a means to better understand God’s character. I think if we can consistently view our lives as a small part of God’s larger purpose, we won’t become stressed with day to day issues. We are instead free to worship the Creator who, rather than giving every insignificant human the awful death we deserve, has chosen to give His people grace and let us worship Him for eternity.

Tom

Community

During my involvement in the high school ministry at my church I have noticed that one of the hardest things to do is to foster a sense of unity and community within my friends and the youth group. This is often very discouraging for me because it seems like there is such an emphasis on unity among believers in the scriptures. The New Testament is full of imagery of how the community of believers should be like a body, working together with different functions but the same purpose. Scripture also discusses the need for openness and honesty within the church. For example, James says “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (5:16). Such honesty among believers helps to form a body that is functioning as God intends.

Unfortunately it’s not easy within today’s culture of busyness and individualism to have this. These two ideas coincide to make community a very difficult thing to obtain. Instead of facing our problems, we often fill our lives with so much noise that we can ignore them. We get so busy doing things that we don’t have time to get real with ourselves. The idea of individualism in our culture also makes community seem foreign. In Jesus’ time believers participated in life together. They were almost like a family; they ate together and looked out for each other. While it wouldn’t be reasonable to say that we should live like 1st century Jews, it isn’t impractical to apply some of their communal habits into our lives today. Another problem that often stifles community is when we take the easy road when it comes to our issues and frustrations. It is way easier to keep anything that will make you look weak or immature inside and just put on a mask of perfection than it is to be transparent with those that are close to you in your life.

In order to get real with ourselves and create a more united body of believers I feel we need to declutter our lives. We need to stop filling our days with so much peripheral stuff that we lose what should be our primary focus, the gospel of Christ. Centering back on the good news of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf will show us we don’t need these masks anymore. When Christ is the focus, we become as Steve Brown says “beggars telling other beggars where we found bread.” In other words we don’t feel the need to puff up ourselves with masks and false images. We instead can be real with each other and encourage each other to keep pursuing Christ on a daily basis. What do you think?

Jonny