Jack Deere on Availability to God

When I look at the life of Jesus, I never really see him 'finding time for God'. Rather, I see a Son whose time belongs completely to the Father. Jesus was never in a hurry. He never needed more time. This is because he looked on his time as his Father's time. Also, he was completely available for his Father's desires. He only did what he saw his Father doing (john 5:19). And he was always in the right place at the right time in order to fulfill the desires of his heavenly Father. I am continually amazed at the spontaneity and informality of the ministry of the Lord... Yes, it is comical to imagine Jesus struggling for a sermon. His life is the sermon, and he ministered out of the daily overflow of his communion with his heavenly Father. He was able to do this because he was completely available to God.

Jack Deere on Bible Deism

One of the most serious flaws of Bible deism is the confidence the Bible deist places in his abilities to interpret the Bible. He assumes that the greater his knowledge of the Bible, the more accurate his interpretations are... But the Author of the Bible is the best interpreter of the Bible... How does one persuade God to illumine the Bible? Does God give illumination to the ones who know Hebrew and Greek the most? What if the condition of one's heart is more important for understanding the Bible than the abilities of one's mind? (1 Cor 1:26-30; 1 Cor 2:7-10; John 5:37-40)

Umberto Eco on Lists

We like lists because we don?t want to die.

Tim Chester Reviews "The Vine and the Trellis"

A summary of the book:

?Vine work is about the ministry of the Word of God, by the power of the Spirit. It is the ministry that sees people converted, changed, and made mature in Christ. Trellis work is all the other things we do in our churches that hopefully support that vine work, but which actually aren?t vine work in themselves.? The authors of this book don?t dismiss ?trellis work? ? all the institutional and structural stuff of church. But they argue we need a refocus onto ?vine work? ? making disciples.

There?s a lot of good stuff in this book. I particularly love the key principles elaborated of chapters 2 and 12:

Ministry mind-shifts

1. From running programs to building people

2. From running events to training people

3. From using people to growing people

4. From filling gaps to training new workers

5. From solving problems to helping people make progress

6. From clinging to ordained ministry to developing team leadership

7. From focusing on church polity to forging ministry partnerships

8. From relying on training institutions to establishing local training

9. From focusing on immediate pressures to aiming for long-term expansion

10. From engaging in management to engaging in ministry

11. From seeking church growth to desiring gospel growth

Summary Propositions

1. Our goal is to make disciples

2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upwards

3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful teaching

4. The goal of all ministry ? not just one-to-one work ? is to nurture disciples

5. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker

6. Disciple-makers need to be trained and equipped in conviction, character and competence

7. There is only one class of disciples, regardless of different roles or responsibilities

8. The Great Commission, and its disciple-making imperative, needs to drive fresh thinking about our Sunday meetings and the place of training in congregational life

9. Training almost always starts small and grows by multiplying workers

10. We need to challenge and recruit the next generation of pastors, teachers and evangelists

Making a start

Step 1: Set the agenda on Sundays

Step 2: Work closely with your elders or parish council

Step 3: Start building a new team of co-workers

Step 4: Work out with you co-workers how disciple-making is going to grow in your context

Step 5: Run some training programs

Step 6: Keep an eye out for ?people worth watching?

Mark Driscoll on Reflection

Mark has some helpful questions in an outline of how he does a day of reflection:

Date:
Modified or Full Plan:
Note: Here I am making note if it?s one hour or one day for silence and solitude.
Place and Conditions:
Note: I am someone for whom space deeply matters. On a nice day I sit outside by a river or at the beach in a beautiful spot. I don?t like coffee shops (too noisy and crowded) or the office (too much distraction). I like to be up high with a view, crave fresh air, love the sun, and cannot relax where it?s loud, busy, ugly, stinky, disorganized, poorly designed, uncomfortable, or too hot or cold, and yes, I am picky. So, I note where I was and that helps me keep a record of nice spots for silence and solitude days. I borrow friends? vacation homes, have spots I like outside of town in the mountains, and so forth.

Part 1 ? Recent Evidences of God?s Grace

?Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.? ? 2 Thess. 2:16?17

Note: To have good words and works, we need hope and comfort by seeing and savoring evidences of God?s grace. I start with this topic to get me into a mode of worship. I can be quite a gloomy and moody person, so this gets me going in the right direction for my time with God. I often take an hour on this topic alone and make a long list, thanking God and praying as I go.

Part 2 ? Deep Questions

?The purpose in a man?s mind is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.? ? Prov. 20:5 (RSV)

Note: These are my questions and you can make your own or change mine. I don?t include Bible reading and study because they are like breathing to me, but you may want to add them. In question four I?m talking about my wife, Grace. I list each of my kids in question five because with a big family it?s too easy to treat the kids as a herd rather than knowing and pastoring each one. I put my work last, figuring that if the rest of my life is in order, work will go well. I rate every question on a scale so that I can be honest about how I?m doing and track progress over time. The prayer points are things I pray about as I?m journaling and things to put on my prayer list that week. The action items go on my calendar. Lastly, I share a lot of this with my wife, kids, friends, and others, and a lot of my blogs and ministry training are simply sharing what comes out of my journaling on days of silence and solitude.

1. How accurate is my view of God lately?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

2. How are my joy in the Holy Spirit and corresponding hope?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

3. What temptations and sins are most ensnaring?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

4. How is my connection with my wife?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

5. How is my connection with each of my children?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items
6. How is my health (e.g., weight, diet, exercise)?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

7. How is my sleep (e.g., bed time, quality of sleep, length of sleep)?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

8. How is my energy level?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

9. How is my dominion over my technology (e.g., cell phone, laptop, email, text)?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

10. How is the stewardship of my wealth (e.g., finances, possessions, property, investments)?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

11. How is my social life with friends and extended family?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

12. Who or what is filling my tank lately?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

13. Who or what is draining my tank lately?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

14. Who has sinned against me and how am I responding?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

15. Who do I need to confide in and where should I seek wisdom?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

16. Are there any warning signs that I am burning out?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

17. Am I successfully getting out of the river onto the bank enough through silence, solitude, study, and Sabbath?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

18. What do I need to stop doing, do less of, or hand off to someone else?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

19. How are my self-deception and truth suppression?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

20. How is my writing (e.g., books, blogs, papers)?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

21. How is my preaching (preparation and results, in and out of Mars Hill)?
? Scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high)
? Prayer Points
? Action Items

Neil Cole on Discipleship

We should lower the bar of how church is done and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple. That is, if we can conceive and structure a church that is simple enough that anyone can do it, and is made up of people who follow Jesus at any cost, the result will be a movement that empowers the common Christian to do the uncommon works of God. In contrast it seems that many of our current practices run contrary to this - we make church complex and discipleship too easy.

Richard Niebuhr on Liberal Christianity

Richard Niebuhr?s 1937 description of liberalism is alive and well: ?a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.?

SMH on Parenting

A new study in the United Kingdom has found that children whose parents take a "tough love" approach are better prepared to achieve in life.

The research by think tank Demos tracked the lives of 9,000 families over eight years.

The head of the research team, Sonia Sodha, says the tough love style of parenting combines warmth and discipline, and is far more important in a child's success than parents' income or social background.

"Parents are able to set rules, apply them consistently and fairly and that means that children know what the boundaries are to their behaviour," she said.

Ms Sodha says tough love parenting helps children to develop key skills such as emotion control and empathy.

"They are skills that we've termed character capabilities, and what I mean when I say that is skills like self-regulation, so being able to regulate your own emotions in difficult circumstances," she said.

"Skills like empathy, say being able to understand how other people are feeling - which is a really key skill for being able to develop good relationships with others - and skills like applications, so children being able to concentrate on the task, to be able to motivate themselves.

"This set of character capabilities are the skills that are really important in enabling children to make the most of school when they get there."


Wealthy parents

Ms Sodha said the research showed wealthier parents were likely to use the tough love parenting style.

"Parents from poor backgrounds, wealthy backgrounds, average backgrounds, they are just as likely to show warmth and affection to their children," she said.

"Where we notice the difference however was in terms of discipline, so in the ability of parents to set rules and apply them consistently. And what we found was that was a more common trait amongst parents from wealthier backgrounds."

Ms Sodha says several factors contribute to the trend.

"The first I think is the changing nature of society," she said.

"We all know we are becoming increasingly consumerist ... and if you look at the amount of direct advertising that is directed at children, that has gone up a lot in previous years.

"And what this advertising tends to do is target children to get them to pester their parents for particular goods and items, and that makes it very difficult for some parents to say no."


Family structure

Ms Sodha says a second factor is the combination of income and family structures.

"They probably all do impact on parenting style, so we know that if you are a parent who is parenting alone or if you are a poor parent, you are under a lot more stress than a wealthier parent or someone who is parenting as part of a supportive couple, so that also is important I think," she said.

Ms Sodha also says the study does not aim to tell parents exactly what they should do in every situation.

"That won't work and government doesn't know best," she said.

"What we think the implications are is that government should be ensuring that early years services ... need to be geared to helping parents develop the skills they need in order to be able to give their kids the best start in life possible."

Martin Lloyd-Jones on Knowledge

It is possible for a believer who . . . sincerely recognizes the Bible as his sole authority, and desires to submit himself wholeheartedly to its evident meaning?it is still possible for such a man to go astray by becoming purely theoretical in his attitude towards this precious knowledge. It can happen to all, but I emphasize again that it is the particular danger of those who have keen minds, and who desire to understand and to grow in knowledge. The devil knowing us as he does, always suits the particular form of temptation to our exact mentality. At this point I am not referring to people who do not read the Scriptures, or indeed little else, and who say, ?I am interested in nothing but my experience?. The devil does not trouble such people in this way, but to those who truly long to grow and develop, he comes and says, ?Of course, you are quite right; what you need, and what everyone else needs, is more and more of this knowledge?. But he presses the thought so far that in the end they get into a condition in which their whole relationship to truth is purely theoretical and academic. And this involves the terrible danger of becoming more concerned about, and more interested in, our intellectual knowledge of Christian truth than in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself; and if the devil with all his wiles can beguile us into this condition he is more than satisfied. In other words, it is the failure to realize that the ultimate end of all knowledge is to bring us to a knowledge of the Person Himself.

Nichols on Pastors

?A ministry that is all prophetic all the time will wear down a congregation. T will eventually defeat a congregation. A ministry that is all sympathetic all the time will coddle the congregation straight into the deadly pastures of unwarranted self-assurance and the false pastures of self-security. A pastor who would be a theologian knows when and how to be both convicting prophet and comforting good shepherd.?

Cole on Leadership

I have come to believe that the real role of a leader who has died to self is to equip others so that he is no longer necessary... When you exist to help others do the job, you have finally matured to the level of an equipper. The more valuable you are, the less successful you are as an equipper of others. Ironically, the more dispensable you become, the more valuable you are, because there are not that many leaders today who are willing to be dispensable. We have entered the days of recyclable disciples - transformed from garbage to glory - and disposable pastors.

Cole on Safe Ministry

SAFE:
Self preservation = mission
Avoidance of the world and risk = wisdom
Financial security = responsible faith
Education = maturity

Cole on Movements

A multiplication movement must have four characteristics:
Incarnational - pattern must be internal and work out into behaviour.
Viral - simple idea that is contagious.
Transformational - the pattern is so life changing, people can't help but pass it on.
Universal - pattern must work across all racial, economic, political, social, language and cultural barriers.

Cole on Leadership Reproduction

Disciples - Leaders - Churches - Movements. If you can't produce one, you won't produce the next.

Cole on Training in Skills

The best way is the show-how method:
Model: I do, you watch.
Assist: We do.
Watch: You do, I watch.
Leave: You do, someone new watches.

Patterson on Obedience-Oriented Training

Seven biblical commands that are useful in training leaders to obey Christ:
1. Repent, believe and receive the Holy Spirit.
2. Be baptised.
3. Love God and neighbour.
4. Celebrate the Lord's Supper.
5. Pray.
6. Give.
7. Disciple others.

Cole on Mentoring

Listen. Ask. First things first. One thing at a time. What next for this learner? Adult learning principles. Invest in what is proven. Set small challenges. Keep a record of assignments and the next appointment.

Cole on Leading Leaders

Listen. Ask.

Cole on Theological Education

We need theological training that is learning based, rather than knowledge based, curriculum driven or teacher centred. Our solution? Monthly gatherings for 8 hours of 5-8 over a year. Prior to meeting, each learner has studied four points of doctrine from two evangelical viewpoints, and be ready to teach their points with an example and an application. The facilitator just asks the questions; the learners teach.

Cole on Knowledge

Most Christians in the West are educated beyond their obedience.

CS Lewis on Church

The church exists for nothing else but to draw men
into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are
not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions,
sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of
time. God became a Man for no other purpose.
? C. S. Lewis

Ed Stetzer on Church Planting

Most importantly, we must bring Christ, not just a church, particularly a way of doing church. Sometimes, I think we get too excited about the fact that we're leading a church. That's great, as long as we remember that we're planting the Gospel that creates a church, not a church that's known for being the best church or the most trendy or the most relevant. We're planting the Gospel and so we bring Christ and not just the church. Being missional has to be tied into the mission of Jesus, which is to seek and save the lost.

Unlike the in the game Red Rover, we win when we get to stay with our new "team" and begin leading it in a new direction. Planters and pastors must first take the time to listen to the Spirit, responding appropriately His call to the particular people He assigns to us. Then, we can best respond to the call to "Come over" and win them for the kingdom of God.

Cole on Discipleship

There is a DNA to God's organic kingdom:

Divine Truth

Nurturing Relationships

Apostolic Mission

Carruthers on Teachers

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.

Dodson on Church

Church is not an event, a place or a plant. It is a family of brothers and sisters united in the Spirit and the Son. The church is a community, people in relationships under grace. So the church is supposed to be a family, but we act more like acquaintances.

Instead of sharing life and truth, joy and pain, meals and mission, we share one, maybe two events a week. Church has been reduced to a spiritual event that happens for an hour or two on weekends, and if you are spiritual, occurs another couple hours during the week in a small group meeting. We spend just enough time "at church" to be religious, but nowhere near enough time to be family.

The dominant metaphor of the church in the New Testament is the metaphor of family. Every one of Paul's letters opens by addressing the church in familial terms ? sisters, brothers, son, and our Father. The use of "brother" is, by far, the most frequent. This sibling emphasis reflects the familial nature of the church. What would happen if we started acting like family?

Clinton on Crisis and Leadership Development

A crisis is a time of increased pressure. Theses situations are often used by God to test a leader and to teach him dependence on God.eg. A leader faces a major crisis. The leader sees that his only hope is in God. He experiences God in a new way in the crisis. He sees God as the One who can and does meet him in this major experience of life. Not only does God meet the leader in the situation but He does so with a solution that is tailor-made for the leader. The overall effect is a more confident leader. It provides a landmark experience that will affect this person's ability to lead others. His followers in turn sense a new spiritual authoirty in him. Learning lessons in these experiences is the goal. Spiritual authority is a most important by-product.

Clinton's Three Challenges to Leaders

1. When Christ calls leaders to Christian ministry, He intends to develop them to their full potential. Each of us in leadership is responsible to continue developing in accordance with God's processing all our life.

2. A major function of all leadership is that of selection of rising leadership. Leaders must continually be aware of God's processing of younger leaders and work with that process.

3. Leaders must develop a ministry philosophy that simultaneously honour biblical leadership values, embraces the challenges of the times in which they live, and fits their unique gifts and personal development if they expect to be productive over a whole lifetime.

Godwin's Expectation Principle

A potential leader tends to rise to the level of genuine expectancy of a leader they respect.

Clinton on Conflict and Leadership Development

God will use conflict to point out areas of character needing modification, to point out or confirm areas of strength, or to point out areas of character missing entirely. Personal conflict can deal with inner fears, lack of self image, fear of failure, guilt, etc. The emphasis is not just on the insights learned about conflict, but also on the intended development of character orchestrated by God in those conflict situations.

Clinton on Isolation and Leader Development

One way that God forces a leader into reflective evaluation and into a 'being' stage of the upward development pattern involves isolation. It is one of the most effective means for maturing a leader. Several times in a leader's lifetime, the leader may be set aside from his or her normal ministry... The thrust of the processing is on the recognition that the isolation is God's work and that it is a call to a deeper relationship and experience of God

Clinton on the Leadership Development Pattern

The upward development pattern occurs throughout a leader's life. It is a spiral of growth in being and doing. In each being cycle there is an increased depth of experiencing and knowing God; and in each doing cycle there is increased depth of effective service for God. The final result of the upward development pattern is a fusion of being and doing. ie. Conversion - being; doing - leadership committment; being - inner-life growth; doing - development and use of ministry skills; being - ministry philosophy becomes life based; union.

Clinton on Leadership Maturity

To develop a leader to maturity, God enlarges the leader's perspectives of the spiritual dynamics of ministry. The leader must learn to sense the spiritual reality (spiritual warfare) behind physical reality, as well as to depend upon God's power in minstry. Also, the leader must learn to know God's voice in the challenge process items - faith, prayer, and influence - and the affirmation process items - divine and ministry.

Watchman Nee on Spiritual Authority

From Nee's 'ten commandments' of spiritual authority:

1. One who learns spiritual authority as the power base for ministry must recognise the essential Source of all authority: God.

7. People who are under God's authority look for and recognise spiritual authority and willingly place themselves under it.

8. Spiritual authority is never exercised for one's own benefit, but for those under it.

Clinton on Leadership Development

As a leader, you should recognise that God is continually developing you over a lifetime. His top priority is to conform you to the image of Christ for ministry with spiritual authority. Enduring fruitfulness flows out of being.

Development phases are identified by three factors: process items (people, circumstances, lessons, etc that God uses to indicate and develop leadership potential), boundary events (significant experiences that happen during a boundary time and influence its outcome), and changes in sphere of influence (the totality of people being influenced and for whom a leader will give an account to God). There is usually an interplay of all three factors during a development transition.

Wiersbe on Leadership by Principles

Methods are many, principles are few. Methods always change, principles never do.

John Hosier on Simplicity

If we reject materialism and asceticism it seems to me we are left with the biblical way of generosity, which in turn is linked with simplicity. Simplicity is not to be understood in 'nothing' but 'enough.' When we consider the needs of the poor, and indeed the needs of world mission, then there is a challenge to generosity - something that can always be increased as we simplify our lifestyle.

This is a sensitive area, for simplicity can easily become pharisaical when we begin to bring our opinion and judgement to bear on how others should simplify their lifestyle. (And particularly pharisaical if others should suggest how we might simplify our lifestyle!) The reality is that we are all extravagant in different ways. Voluntary simplicity of lifestyle is a way to increase our generosity.

Tim Chester on Fasting

When we in the western world have emotional needs many of us turn to food for refuge. We self-medicate with food. The result is ill-health and weight gain. The result is an over-consumption of the world?s resources that contributes to the hunger of other people. And every time we miss the opportunity to turn to God. We don?t live by bread alone. We need God in our lives so that life without God is an empty life. And we cannot fill that emptiness with food. Fasting helps re-oriente us away from self-medication through food towards finding refuge in God. We particularly we turn to foods high in sugar, salt and fat. These consitute our comfort foods. We find comfort in sugar, salt and fat. Sugar, salt and fat instead of the living God. We must be mad! Fasting helps restore our sanity.

TGC on Worship

Gospel-centred ministry is characterised by empowered corporate worship. The gospel changes our relationship with God from one of hostility or slavish compliance to one of intimacy and joy. The core dynamic of gospel-centered ministry is therefore worship and fervent prayer. In corporate worship God?s people receive a special life-transforming sight of the worth and beauty of God, and then give back to God suitable expressions of his worth. At the heart of corporate worship is the ministry of the Word. Preaching should be expository (explaining the text of Scripture) and Christ-centered (expounding all biblical themes as climaxing in Christ and his work of salvation). Its ultimate goal, however, is not simply to teach but to lead the hearers to worship, individual and corporate, that strengthens their inner being to do the will of God.

Tim Keller on Preaching

I pastor a church with a large staff and so I give 15+ hours a week to preparing the sermon. I would not advise younger ministers to spend so much time, however. When I was a pastor without a staff I put in 6-8 hours on a sermon. If you put in too much time in your study on your sermon you put in too little time being out with people as a shepherd and a leader. Ironically, this will make you a poorer preacher. It is only through doing people-work that you become the preacher you need to be?someone who knows sin, how the heart works, what people?s struggles are, and so on. Pastoral care and leadership (along with private prayer) are to a great degree sermon preparation. More accurately, it is preparing the preacher, not just the sermon. Through pastoral care and leadership you grow from being a Bible commentator into a flesh and blood preacher.

Lloyd-Jones on Self

How well the devil knows our human weakness! There is no method, therefore, that he more frequently uses . . . than just to play on this problem of self as it is present in every one of us. The ways in which he does so are almost endless. He works on self in order to encourage pride. He tries to make us proud of our gifts, our brains, our understanding, our knowledge . . .

Another form which this evil can take stems from the fact that various desires always tend to arise from self?the desire for importance, the desire for position . . . All this leads above everything else to a sprit of self-satisfaction . . .Furthermore this condition leads to selfishness and self-centredness. Self is always interested in itself. Everything revolves round this particular entity; and it becomes the centre of a constellation. That in turn leads to jealousy and envy . . .

To the extent that we are governed by self we are sensitive, and as such we can be easily hurt, easily depressed, and discouraged. Self is always watching for insults and slights. It is always hypersensitive. It is delicate, it is sensitized to everything; the slightest speck troubles it and alarms it. Self is totalitarian; it demands everything, and it is irritated and hurt if it does not get everything. As a consequence it becomes a most fruitful cause of quarrels and divisions and unhappiness . . .

If you have a great brain, it is no credit to you, you were born with it. If you have a wonderful singing voice, you have not produced it, it was given you. What are you boasting about? All that you have is not the result of your action and activity; it is something with which God has endowed you . . .

Paul always kept the grace of God in view; it kept him humble; it kept his spirit sweet; it kept him from the horrible sin of self and of pride and self-importance. Christians have nothing to boast of. We are what we are entirely as the result of the grace of God.

Spurgeon on God's Shaping of Character

Is it not a curious thing that whenever God means to make a man great, He always first breaks him in pieces? There was a man whom the Lord meant to make into a prince. How did He do it? Why, He met him one night and wrestled with him! You always hear about Jacob?s wrestling. Well, I dare say he did, but it was not Jacob who was the principal wres- tler??There wrestled a man with Him until the breaking of the day.? God touched the hollow of Jacob?s thigh and put it out of joint before He called him ?Israel,? that is, ?a Prince of God.? The wrestling was to take all his strength out of him and when his strength was gone, then God called him a prince. Now, David was to be king over all Israel. What was the way to Jerusalem for David? What was the way to the throne? Well, it was round by the cave of Adullam. He must go there and be an outlaw and an outcast, for that was the way by which he would be made king. Have none of you ever no- ticed, in your own lives, that whenever God is going to give you an enlargement and bring you out to a larger sphere of service, or a higher platform of spiritual life, you always get thrown down? That is His usual way of working! He makes you hungry before He feeds you! He strips you before He robes you! He makes nothing of you before He makes something of you! This was the way with David. He is to be king in Jerusalem, but He must go to the throne by the way of the cave. Now, are any of you here going to Heaven, or going to a more heavenly state of sanctification, or going to a greater sphere of usefulness? Do not wonder if you go by the way of the cave. Why is that?

It is, first, because if God would make you greatly useful, He must teach you how to pray! The man who is a great preacher and yet cannot pray, will come to a bad end. A woman who cannot pray and yet is noted for the conducting of Bible classes, has already come to a bad end. If you can be great without prayer, your greatness will be your ruin! If God means to bless you greatly, He will make you pray greatly, as He does David who says in this part of his preparation for coming to his throne, ?I cried unto the Lord with my voice: with my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication.?

Next, the man whom God would greatly honor must always believe in God when he is at his wits? end. ?When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then You knew my path.? Are you never at your wits? end? God has not sent you to do business in great waters, for, if He has, you will reel to and fro and be at your wits? end, in a great storm, before long! Oh, it is easy to trust when you can trust yourself, but when you cannot trust yourself?when you are dead beat, when your spirit sinks below zero in the chill of utter despair?then is the time to trust in God. If that is your case, you have the marks of a man who can lead God?s people and be a comforter of others.

Next, in order to greater usefulness, many a man of God must be taught to stand alone. ?I looked on my right hand, and behold, but there was no man that would know me.? If you need men to help you, you may make a very decent fol- lower. But if you need no man and can stand alone, God being your Helper, you shall be helped to be a leader. Oh, it was a grand thing when Luther stepped out from the ranks of Rome! There were many good men round him who said, ?Be quiet, Martin. You will get burnt if you do not hold your tongue! Let us keep where we are, in the Church of Rome, even if we have to swallow down great lumps of dirt. We can believe the Gospel and still remain where we are.? But Luther knew that he must defy Antichrist and declare the pure Gospel of the blessed God! And he must stand alone for the Truth of God even if there were as many devils against him as there were tiles on the housetops at Worms! That is the kind of man whom God blesses! I would to God that many a young man here might have the courage to feel, in his particular position, ?I can stand alone, if need be. I am glad to have my master and my fellow workmen with me, but if nobody will go to Heaven with me, I will say farewell to them and go to Heaven alone through the Grace of God?s dear Son.?

Once more, the man whom God will bless must be the man who delights in God alone. David says, ?I cried unto You, O Lord: I said, You are my refuge and my portion in the land of the living.? Oh, to have God as our refuge and to make God our portion! ?You will lose your job! You will lose your income. You will lose the approbation of your fellow men.? ?Ah,? says the Believer, ?but I shall not lose my Portion, for God is my Portion! He is job, and income, and every- thing to me?and I will hold by Him, come what may.? If you have learned to ?delight yourself in the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart.? Now you are come into such a state that God can use you and make much of you?but until you make much of God, He never will make much of you! God deliver us from having our portion in this life, for, if we have, we are not among His people at all!

He whom God would use must be taught sympathy with God?s poor people. Hence we get these words of David, in the sixth verse, ?I am brought very low.? Mr. Greatheart, though he must be strong to kill Giant Grim and any others of the giants that infest the Pilgrim path, must be a man who has gone that road himself if he is to be a leader of others. If the Lord means to bless you, my Brother, and to make you very useful in His Church, depend upon it, He will try you. Half, perhaps nine-tenths of the trials of God?s ministers are not sent to them on their own account. They are sent for the good of other people. Many a child of God who goes very smoothly to Heaven, does very little for others. But another of the Lord?s children who has all the ins and outs and changes of an experienced Believer?s life, has them only that he may be better fitted to help others! That he may be able to sit down and weep with them that weep, or to stand up and rejoice with them that rejoice.

So then, dear Brothers who have got into the cave, and you, my Sisters, who have deep spiritual exercises, I want to comfort you by showing you that this is God?s way of making something of you. He is digging you out! You are like an old ditch?you cannot hold any more?and God is digging you out to make more room for more Grace. That spade will cut sharply and dig up sod after sod, and throw it to one side. The very thing you would like to keep shall be cast away and you shall be hollowed out, and dug out, that the word of Elisha may be fulfilled, ?Make this valley full of ditches. For thus says the Lord, You shall not see wind, neither shall you see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water.? You are to be tried, my Friend, that God may be glorified in you!

Lastly, if God means to use you, you must get to be full of praise. Listen to what David says, ?Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Your name: the righteous shall compass me about; for You shall deal bountifully with me.? May God give to my Brothers and Sisters here, who are being tried for their good and afflicted for their promotion, Grace to begin to praise Him! It is the singers that go before?they who can praise best shall be fit to lead others in the work. Do not set me to follow a gloomy leader. Oh, no, dear Sirs, we cannot work to the tune of ?The Dead March in Saul?! Our soldiers would never have won Waterloo if that had been the music for the day of battle! No, no! Give us a rejoicer??Sing unto the Lord who has triumphed gloriously; praise His great name again and again.? Draw the sword and strike home! If you are of a cheerful spirit, glad in the Lord and joyous after all your trials and afflictions, and if you can rejoice more because you have been brought so low, then God is making something of you and He will yet use you to lead His people to greater works of Grace!

AW Tozer on Simplicity

If we would find God amid all the religious externals, we must first determine to find him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity. Now as always God discovers himself to ?babes? and hides himself in thick darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to him. We must strip down to essentials, and they will be found to be blessedly few. We must put away all effort to impress and come with the guileless candor of childhood. If we do this, without doubt God will quickly respond.

Berni Dymet on Lord's Prayer

He taught us to life God up before ourselves. To ask for God's absolute, pwerful rule to come; for His will to be done. I wonder whether this total abandonment of our own agendas, this glad submission to God no matter what it may cost us, is the key to unlocking the power of prayer.

Kevin Vanhoozer on Theology

Kevin Vanhoozer's paper on "Systematic Theology: The State of the Evangelical (Dis)union" delivered at Gordon-Conwell. It includes these 10 theses on theological interpretation:


1. The nature and function of the Bible are insufficiently grasped unless and until we see the Bible as an element in the economy of triune discourse.


2. An appreciation of the theological nature of the Bible entails a rejection of a methodological atheism that treats the texts as having a ?natural history? only.


3. The message of the Bible is ?finally? about the loving power of God for salvation (Rom. 1:16), the definitive or final gospel Word of God that comes to brightest light in the word?s final form.


4. Because God acts in space-time (of Israel, Jesus Christ, and the church), theological interpretation requires thick descriptions that plumb the height and depth of history, not only its length.


5. Theological interpreters view the historical events recounted in Scripture as ingredients in a unified story ordered by an economy of triune providence.


6. The Old Testament testifies to the same drama of redemption as the New, hence the church rightly reads both Testaments together, two parts of a single authoritative script.


7. The Spirit who speaks with magisterial authority in the Scripture speaks with ministerial authority in church tradition.


8. In an era marked by the conflict of interpretations, there is good reason provisionally to acknowledge the superiority of catholic interpretation.


9. The end of biblical interpretation is not simply communication - the sharing of information - but communion, a sharing in the light, life, and love of God.


10. The church is that community where good habits of theological interpretation are best formed and where the fruit of these habits are best exhibited.


I really liked this quote from Vanhoozer towards the end of the paper:


"Seminary faculties need the courage to be evangelically Protestant for the sake of forming theological interpreters of Scripture able to preach and minister the word. The preacher is a ?man on a wire,? whose sermons must walk the tightrope between Scripture and the contemporary situation. I believe that we should preparing our best students for this gospel ministry. The pastor-theologian, I submit, should be evangelicalism?s default public intellectual, with preaching the preferred public mode of theological interpretation of Scripture."

Jonathan Dodson on Holy Spirit

Here are some points from Jonathan on being sensitive to the Holy Spirit's work in our lives:

1. Repent for diminishing and ignoring the third Person of the Trinity. Repent for sinful self-reliance and fear-motivated neglect of the Holy Spirit. Mortify the sin that has been an obstacle to your knowing and walking with the Spirit. Receive God?s gracious forgiveness in Jesus and rejoice that the Spirit is in you!

2. Begin addressing the Holy Spirit in prayer every day. Talk to him as a Person; don?t ignore him as an energy force. Ask him for filling and direction for your entire day. Ask him to guide your decision-making, to direct your thoughts, and to fill your heart with affection for Jesus.

3. Read the Bible with a Holy Spirit lens. Look for him in the Bible and ask yourself: ?Who does this text tell me the Spirit is?? Then, refine the way you relate to him. It?s like getting to know your wife, the more you study her the better you can love her.

Rick Gamache on Kids

Justin Taylor|10:46 am CT

Questions for Kids
Last night during the conversation with John Piper, John MacArthur, and me, Piper mentioned how helped he was by the kinds of questions that Rick Gamache (senior pastor of Sovereign Grace Fellowship) regularly asks his kids. Rick gave me permission to post them here:

?How are your devotions?
?What is God teaching you?
?In your own words, what is the gospel?
?Is there a specific sin you?re aware of that you need my help defeating?
?Are you more aware of my encouragement or my criticism?
?What?s daddy most passionate about?
?Do I act the same at church as I do when I?m at home?
?Are you aware of my love for you?
?Is there any way I?ve sinned against you that I?ve not repented of?
?Do you have any observations for me?
?How am I doing as a dad?
?How have Sunday?s sermons impacted you?
?Does my relationship with mom make you excited to be married?
?(On top of these things, with my older kids, I?m always inquiring about their relationship with their friends and making sure God and his gospel are the center of those relationship. And I look for every opportunity to praise their mother and increase their appreciation and love for her.)

Marcus Honeysett on Psalm 119

The assumption of Ps 119 is that we come to the Bible not merely to be educated but to be enriched. Not just to know, but to delight, to worship, to marvel, to wonder. People who have started to taste want to carry on tasting more and more because what we have tasted of God in the Word is marvels and wonders for our amazement, enjoyment and treasure. We are meant to cry out "I WANT SOME MORE" because this is so good. Or, as the Psalmist puts it, "to be consumed with longing."

CJ Mahaney on Worship

gotta love cj - 'my priority on a Sunday is my personal and passionate participation in the worship... if we appear complacent, distracted, looking around, unaffected by what we are singing we are not pleasing God... I want to please God... I've been humbled by the gospel and I want to express my affections to the Saviour for His death on the cross for me.'

CS Lewis on Christianity

I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only that I see it, but by it I see everything else.

Philip Jakob Spener on Pietism

As a response to the dry orthodoxy of 17th Century Lutheranism, Spener penned these six points:

1. The Word of God must be more widely stuidied by the people. To this end he proposed discussions under the pastor's guidance.

2. The universal priesthood of all believers needs new emphasis. All Christians should exercise this privilege by testifying, instructing and exhorting each other.

3. Mere head knowledge is not Christianity, but such knowledge must be translated into action.

4. More love and gentleness between the Christain denominations is needed in polemics.

5. The schooling of the clergy must include training for personal piety as well as intellectual knowledge.

6. Sermons should be preparaed with less emphasis on rhetorical art and more on the edification of the hearers.

Wendland on Orthodoxism

By this we mean the fact that many pastors and parishioners often mistook a mere intellectual knowledge of carefully systematized doctrine for faith. A personal conviction of sin was lacking, as also a faith which rested on the assurance of a forgiveness and had as a natural result a consecrated life of sanctification. A religious intellectualism began to control many Lutheran classrooms and pulpits, which consumed practically all of its energy... 'The humbler duties of preaching the Gospel and ministering to the spiritual needs of the people were often shunned in favor of the more glamorous field of theological debate.... the people had grown weary of the endless and useless theological disputes in which their pastors and prfoessors engaged.... leaders of Lutehranism found time, opportunity and funds for extensive theological debate and publication, but none for missions.

Wendland on Movements

Any movement, whether religious or polictical, with an 'ism' appended to its name, is usually the result of a reaction over against a state of affairs which has become intolerable, and therefore its inception is understandable. Because it is a reactionary moevement, however, it almost inevitably goes to extremes. Thus no matter how justified its causes may be, or how sincere the zeal of its proponents, we have come to regard any 'ism' with great suspicion.

Timothy George Quotes

?No creed but the Bible? is a pretext for ?neither creed, nor the Bible.?

God give us creeds, but deliver us from creedalism!

Dependence upon God is where the faith becomes my faith.

As long as the faith remains detached, a mere system of doctrine kept at arm?s length, we are like Nicodemus, who discovers he must be born again.

The faith without my faith leads to arid scholasticism, joyless, dead orthodoxy. My faith without the faith ends up in sloppy sentimentalism.

Some people who hear about a Baptist Catechism think you might as well be talking about a pregnant Pope or a married bachelor.

Ecclesiology is the new frontier of evangelical theology in the 21st century.

Neil Bennetts on Worship

Great post! Great reminder....

The primary purpose of the church is to worship God. Not to make disciples. Not to run community projects. Not to run Alpha courses. Not to serve the poor. Not to heal the sick. Not to run conferences. Not to create leadership networks. Not to establish small groups. Not to engage with world mission. Not to evangelise the nations. It?s primary purpose is to worship.

Writing those words makes me feel uncomfortable.

You may even more so feel uncomfortable reading them.

But I recon they are true.

I feel uncomfortable with such words because they may make me look as though I am not missional, not servant hearted, not compassionate. And of course I want to be all those things. And, truth be known, I possibly even want to be recognised for being all those things. But I have to face up to it. My primary purpose as a follower of the King is to worship the King. Sing to Him. Adore Him. Lift my hands to Him.

You see, it is so easy to move very quickly on from saying

?our primary purpose is to worship God?

to

?and this also means serving the poor, healing the sick, evangelising the nations??.

In fact it almost needs to happen in the same sentence to avert accusations of poor theology. In fact almost all standard worship teaching will do that. Otherwise it wouldn?t be sound would it?

But maybe we should all pause a little longer in that place ? that place of adoration of God without any expressed intention to move on and out. That place where we stand before God and sing, and have no other purpose in that moment other than blessing His heart with the sound of our songs. Maybe we need to pause in that uncomfortable place, leaving ourselves open to accusations of extravagance, lavishness, inactivity, just a little bit longer than we are doing at the moment.

Because if the church looses sight of it?s primary function ? to worship God ? then it will start to die from the inside out. The disciples will start to disperse. The community projects will start to wind down. The Alpha course will close. The poor will increase. The sick will perish. The conference will fall into financial ruin. The leadership network will implode. The small group will cease to meet. And world mission will stop dead in it?s tracks.

Now that would be uncomfortable.

James Valentine on Jesus All About Life

When did branding become the universal panacea to any problem? From the NRL to vanilla Coke, it's not that there's a problem with the thing itself, there's a problem with the branding.

In the past few weeks no less than Australia and Christianity has announced that they need to look at their branding. I'm not sure what to make of a faith that has branding issues. Of a Creator who's putting pressure on the marketing department. You want to bring the waverers in? I don't know ? lightning bolt? Big voice from the sky? Some water into wine? I'd say branding issues dealt with.

But instead of upwardly referring the problem, this coalition of 20 Christian churches found through their market research that almost everything about themselves was on the nose; God, church, religion, holy, faith ? all of them with less brand loyalty than Hyundai. The only one who was maintaining a strong market share was Jesus ? up there with iphone, apparently.

So the churches have responded with a series of billboards. The billboards show a picture of a child at the seaside. Slogan, Thank You For the Beaches, Jesus. As powerful as a puppy with a roll of toilet paper.

If only they'd come to me. You want an impactful billboard? There's only one model. Get big red and yellow signs up along major roads, reading DO YOU WANT A LONGER AFTER LIFE? In three months replace it with PRAY LONGER. AND HARDER.

With a bit of luck you'd get plenty of attendant controversy, lots of mileage in the news columns, plenty of outraged letters and before you know it, you're getting more coverage than a condom on the Pope.

And you haven't even offered to deliver Holy Water via a nasal spray.

Branding's a cult and a religion in itself. It's an article of faith now that if there's a problem then you have to fix the brand. As irresistible as it is to mix religion and branding ? that crucifix was pretty effective logo for a millennia or so wasn't it? Only surpassed today apparently by the Golden Arches ? it's ludicrous isn't it?


James Valentine is an ABC radio broadcaster, writer, and a former member of the 1980s rock band, The Models.

Calvin on the Church

She is first of all the living body of Christ and the company of true believers. We are as ready to confess as they are that those who abandon the Church, the common mother of the faithful, the 'pillar and ground of the truth,' revolt from Christ also; but we mean a Church which, from incorruptible seed, begets children for immortality, and when begotten, nourishes them with spiritual food, (that seed and food being the Word of God,) and which by its ministry, preserves entire the truth which God deposited in its bossom

Calvin on the Church

My love for the church and my anxiety about her interests carry me away into a sort of ecstasy, so that I can think of nothing else.

Tim Keller on Missional Church

Tim writes of the characteristics of a missional church:
1. Discourse in the vernacular.
2. Entering and re-telling the culture's stories with the gospel.
3. Theological training of lay people for public life and vocation.
4. Creation of Christian communities which are counter-cultural and counter-intuitive.
5. Practicing Christian unity as much as possible on the local level.

Tim Keller on Missional Church

Most traditional evangelical churches still can only win people to Christ who are temperamentally traditional and conservative... but this is a 'shrinking market'. Eventually evangelical churches ensconed in the declining, remaining enclaves of 'Christendom' will have to learn how to beome missional. If it does not do that it will decline or die. We don't simply need evangelistic churches, but rather missional churches.

Barney Zwartz on Tom Frame's Losing My Religion

When I began in journalism more than 30 years ago, my colleagues (and I) were generally hostile to religion, which was seen entirely through the prism of Christianity. With today?s young journalists, that?s largely been replaced by a slightly shame-faced ignorance and an open-minded apathy, doubtless because it wasn?t rammed down their throats.


The under 30s largely grew up without Sunday school, while Catholic schools are far less staffed by nuns and brothers from religious orders. Christianity has a less visible presence in all sorts of ways.
So this is an enormous social change, right? Well, perhaps not. Australia has never been a particularly religious society, from European settlement till now, with a high point just after World War II, but nor has it ever been aggressively secular like, say, France. We have no constitutional separation of church and state.
What characterises religion in Australia is a certain reticence, a ?shy hope in the heart?, as sociologist of religion Gary Bouma observed two years ago in his book Australian Soul. We have made overt, ostentatious religiosity a form of bad manners rather than an offence against the state.
For Bouma, Australian religion is characterised by a serious but light touch, a quiet and even inarticulate reverence, a readiness to laugh at itself, a commitment to life here and now, and a live-and-let-live tolerance. Australians are wary of enthusiasm, of high-temperature and demanding religion, and of imported mass-culture. They dislike intolerance.
Nevertheless, institutional religion is retreating. The number of Australians identifying as Christian as the 2006 Census was 64% (down from 96% in 1901), with another 6% identifying with other religions. However, only about 10% of Australians attend worship on any given week. Somewhere between those two statistics is the real picture of Australian religious identity.
Naturally, the picture is complex. If young Anglo-Australians are less religious than their grandparents, the second and third generations of Muslims are more inclined to be devout than their parents. For many communities ? such as the post-war Greek migrants ? church has been an important part of preserving the home culture in a new country, including language and history. But non-mainstream denominations and religions, once in Australia, tend to adopt the same restrained profile.
Anglican Bishop Tom Frame ? from whose new book Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia this blog title is taken ? draws a distinction between disbelief as a positive rejection of God and unbelief as a neutral position which ranges from thoughtful doubters to the merely ignorant. He quotes Australian poet James McAuley who wrote of people ?who do not think or dream, deny or doubt, But simply don?t know what it?s all about?. Most Australians, according to Frame, are unbelievers.
Australia had a fairly irreligious beginning. Even today, as Catholic commentator Ronald Conway observed, the most common objection of ordinary Australians to religion is that it spoils their fun. Other studies show that they like Jesus but not the church, and they resent those who claim to speak for God ? or rather, what they say on God?s behalf. But it?s all rather low-key.
Frame writes: ?Apart from agitated, sometimes aggressive bloggers, most Australians seem to take a very casual and carefree attitude to religion. They are neither disinterested nor indifferent. When religion curtails their lifestyle or makes demands that exceed what is deemed reasonable, or when they require religious rites of passage or borrow religious ideas to regulate civil life, Australians can become very interested in religion. But the ever-increasing majority who describe themselves as ?not religious? without every saying what they mean by the phrase are still grateful that religion is available if ever they want it and thankful to the extent that what is on offer fulfils their social needs. Anzac Day commemorations are a good example of religion?s social utility.?
Even so, he concedes that belief is declining, and says it is for the same reasons as in Britain and Europe: the ideas that there is no evidence for God, that religion is dangerous, that religion belonged to humanity?s infancy, and that it?s just one possible explanation among many.
Australians tend to see religion as a personal pursuit to be practised in private, and do not criticise another person?s religion unless they make universal claims or try to impose their beliefs. The drift to unbelief has not been the result of deep reflection so much as that belief has gradually become implausible.
Meanwhile, what Christianity offers is no longer fashionable. Frame says it offers access to transcendent truths at a time when there are doubts about God and wariness about truth-claims. It offers forgiveness of sins at a time when personal moral failure is not a priority issue. It offers a glimpse into life?s purpose and destiny at a time when most Westerners are living longer with greater material abundance. It offers an approach to ethical living at a time when most people are more interested in maximising their pleasure and minimising their pain. It offers difficult truths about individual and institutional conduct at a time when most prefer easy political answers. In the face of this, many churches have lost their nerve and their distinctive message.
So what next? That is something we should worry about. The militant disbelievers ? the atheist equivalent of religious fundamentalists ? have a negative program to decry religious belief but not much of a positive one. As Frame says, they carefully ignore their lack of an articulated vision of what a godless world will look like.
?Although they profess few common values or shared virtues, have no comprehensive answers to the world?s problems and are offering no positive program of action to deal with greed and selfishness, betrayal and violence, they assert that a world without God is always and everywhere to be preferred. They ask that others trust their interpretations, receive their pledges and have faith in humanity. I believe that to accept such an invitation carries significant risk.?
Nor does Bouma think Australians will be much swayed. He has no doubt that Australia?s future features a significant role for religion and spirituality, because the needs they address are core to humanity: hope and meaning and connections. After two generations that seemingly deserted spirituality, it is on the rise among young people, he says. Modern forms will "neither be weak, insipid nor irrelevant; nor will they dominate the landscape . . . Hope will continue to be nurtured and quietly celebrated - a shy hope in the heart."
Over to you: Have you lost your religion (or spirituality), or found it? What sort of society will Australia be if religion is successfully marginalised? And how likely is that to happen?

Payne on Training

Ministry training is about growing gospel workers.

In other words, if we want to start training disciples to be disciple-makers, we need to build a network of personal ministry, in which people train people. And this can only begin if we choose a bunch of likely candidates and begin to train them as coworkers. This group will work alongside you, and in time, will themselves become trainers of other coworkers. Some of your coworkers will fulfill their potential and become fruitful fellow labourers and disciple-makers. Others will not. But there is no avoiding this. Building a ministry based on people rather than programs is inevitably time-consuming and messy.

Tony Payne on Discipleship

Tony has 10 points on discipleship; this is number five - that disciples are disciple makers.

Jesus gave his disciples a vision for worldwide disciple-making. No corner of creation is off limits, and no disciple is exempt from the work.

We naturally shrink from the radical nature of this challenge. It replaces our comfortable, cosy vision of the ?nice Christian life? with a call for all Christians to devote their lives to making disciples of Jesus.

Disciple-making is a really useful word to summarize this radical call, because it encompasses both reaching out to non-Christians and encouraging fellow Christians to grow like Christ. As Matthew 28 says, to ?make disciples? includes teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded. Disciple-making, then, refers to a massive range of relationships and conversations and activities?everything from preaching a sermon to teaching a Sunday school class; from chatting over the proverbial back fence with a non-Christian neighbour to writing an encouraging note to a Christian friend; from inviting a family member to hear the gospel at a church event to meeting one-to-one to study the Bible with a fellow Christian; from reading the Bible to your children to making a Christian comment over morning tea at the office.

In other words, walking in love as a disciple of Jesus inevitably means working for the evangelization, conversion, follow-up, growth to maturity and training of other people. And this happens (see Proposition 3) through prayerfully sharing God's word with them whenever and however we can.

Bryan Chappell on Worship

He breaks down this ?gospel structure? down into eight basic components:

1. Adoration (recognition of God?s greatness and grace)
2. Confession (acknowledgement of our sin and need for grace)
3. Assurance (affirmation of God?s provision of grace)
4. Thanksgiving (expression of praise and thanks for god?s grace)
5. Petition and Intercession (expression of dependence on God?s grace)
6. Instruction (acquiring the knowledge to grow in grace)
7. Communion/Fellowship (celebrating the grace of union with Christ and his people)
8. Charge and Blessing (living for and in the light of God?s grace)

In the New Testament, Chapell says we find hints of a ?gospel structure? in Rom. 11-15 and Rev. 4-21. But he astutely observes that ?the lack of explicit detail [related to a liturgy] must reflect an intention to guide us by transcendent principles rather than by specific worship forms that could become culture-bound, time-locked, and superstition-invoking.? That means there can be variation in how these components are fleshed out. The important thing is that we have a gospel-driven purpose in why we do what we do.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Preaching

The preacher must be a serious man; he must never give the impression that preaching is something light or superficial or trivial?.What is happing [in the act of preaching] is that he is speaking to them from God, he is speaking to them about God, he is speaking about their condition, the state of their souls. He is telling them that they are, by nature, under the wrath of God??the children of wrath even as others??that the character of the life they?re living is offensive to God and under the judgment of God, and warning them of the dread eternal possibility that lies ahead of them. In any case the preacher, of all men, should realize the fleeting nature of life in this world. The men of the world are so immersed in its business and affairs, its pleasures and all is vain show, that the one thing they never stop to consider is the fleeting nature of life. All this means that the preacher should create and convey the impression of the seriousness of what is happening the moment he even appears in the pulpit. You remember the famous lines of Richard Baxter: ?I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.??You remember what was said of the saintly Robert Murray McCheyne of Scotland in the last century. It is said that when he appeared in the pulpit, even before he had uttered a single word, people would begin to weep silently. Why? Because of this very element of seriousness. The very sight of the man gave the impression that he had come from the presence of God and that he was to deliver a message from God to them. That is what had such an effect upon the people even before he had opened his mouth. We forget this at our peril, and at great cost to our listeners.

P&P 85-86

Peter Drucker on Leadership

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

Peter Drucker on Leadership

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.?

Napolean Bonaparte on Leadership

A leader is a dealer in hope.

Henrik Ibsen on Leadership

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

John Piper on Sovereignty

The doctrine of God?s sovereignty is an anchor for the troubled soul, a hope for the praying heart, a stability for fragile faith, a confidence in pursuing the lost, a guarantee of Christ?s atonement, a high mystery to keep us humble, and a solid ground for all praise.

Ralph Nader on Leadership

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

Leslie Newbigin on Church and Mission

The church... is not meant to call men and women out of the world into a safe religious enclave but to call them out in order to send them back as agents of God's kingship.

Gospel Coaltion on Missional Communities

The ministry we have outlined is relatively rare. There are many seeker?driven churches that help many people find Christ. There are many churches seeking to engage the culture through political activism. There is a fast?growing charismatic movement with emphasis on glorious, passionate, corporate worship. There are many congregations with strong concern for doctrinal rigor and purity and who work very hard to keep themselves separate from the world. There are many churches with a radical commitment to the poor and marginalized.We do not, however, see enough individual churches that embody the full, integrative gospel balance we have outlined here.

SMH on Hired Friends

SMH article 22 Sep 09:

He's best friend you'll never have
Date: September 22 2009





TOKYO: The best man, Ryuichi Ichinokawa, took his place before the wedding guests, cleared his throat and for the next few minutes spoke movingly about the bride and groom. But his speech omitted one crucial fact: that he hardly knew either of them at all.

As a professional stand-in, Mr Ichinokawa is part of a growing service sector in Japan that rents out fake spouses, relatives, friends, colleagues, boyfriends and girlfriends to spare their clients' blushes at social functions.

He launched his agency, Hagemashi Tai (I Want to Cheer You Up), 3? years ago and now employs 30 people.

The number of rent-a-friend agencies in Japan has doubled to about 10 in the past eight years. The best known, Office Agent, has 1000 people on its books.

The rise of the phoney friend is a symptom of social and economic changes, combined with a deep-seated cultural aversion to giving personal and professional problems a public airing.

Demand has surged for bogus bosses among men who have lost their jobs; for colleagues among contract employees who never stay in the same job long enough to make friends, and from divorcees and lovelorn singles.

Mr Ichinokawa's stand-ins charge 15,000 yen ($190) to attend a wedding reception, but extra if they are asked to make a speech or sing karaoke.

His preparation is exhaustive, examining every possible question that, if answered incorrectly or not at all, will embarrass his client.

''I've never once been caught out,'' he said. ''If I'm pretending to be someone's husband, I make sure I know everything about my 'wife', from her mobile phone number to what 'our' kids have been getting up to lately.''

Miranda Devine on Narcissism

What's more, narcissism is on the increase, becoming a pervasive condition of society, according to two American psychologists, Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, who published a book this year, The Narcissism Epidemic.They include a long-term study of 37,000 American college students, in which the incidence of narcissistic personality traits increased on a scale rivalling obesity, accelerating in the past decade.
In 1982, 15 per cent of students scored highly for narcissistic personality traits. By 2006 the percentage had climbed to 25. Twenge claims only 12 per cent of students in the 1950s agreed with the statement ''I am an important person''; by the late 1980s that percentage had climbed to 80. The reason for the explosion in narcissism in recent years, according to the Melbourne adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg, is not just the self-esteem movement but poor parenting.
"Parents are becoming increasingly self absorbed [believing] 'the single most important thing in the world is for me to work like a dog to get the house, the car and the holiday house' and don't ? realise all their kids want is to be loved and to have one-on-one time with their parents.'' He says an "epidemic of poor parenting" is to blame for a drastic rise in psychological problems in young people. "Generation Y is being ravaged by depression, anxiety disorders and stress disorders."
For narcissistic personality disorder to take root, a person has to be born with a genetic "template" for over-sensitivity and over-reactivity. "Then something has to happen."
Carr-Gregg says parental abandonment, coupled with invalidation of the child's corresponding emotional pain, triggers the disorder. "If you grew up in an environment with time-poor parents, you are brought up in a Lord of the Flies [type of] emotional silo by other disaffected young people. It's the psychologically blind leading the blind.
"I see ? kids who are overindulged from a very early age ? and become incapable of delayed gratification. When I meet these kids in later life they tend to exaggerate their achievements and talents, tend to believe they are special and unique and interesting. They require excessive amounts of admiration and if they don't get it, they'll wipe you off the face of the planet."

John Piper on Mission

"Three billion people today are outside Jesus Christ. Two-thirds of them have no viable Christian witness in their culture. If they are to hear ? and Christ commands that they hear ? then cross-cultural missionaries will have to be sent and paid for. All the wealth needed to send this new army of good news ambassadors is already in the church. If we, like Paul, are content with the simple necessities of life, hundreds of millions of dollars in the church would be released to take the gospel to the frontiers. The revolution of joy and freedom it would cause at home would be the best local witness imaginable." (Desiring God, pp. 166-67)

Steve Timmis on Parachurch

I know saying this isn?t going to win me any friends, but someone has to tell the king he?s naked. Is it not a quiet madness for churches to largely outsource their discipleship (to parachurch agencies) and training (to theological colleges)? The best context for both discipleship and training is the people of God on mission (a.k.a. church).

Jonathan Dodson on Missional Communities

Four Principles from Jonathan:

SHARE life and truth through stories and Scripture

PRAY for one another and the city

ENGAGE people and culture of your community with the gospel

LOVE one another by eating and exercising hospitality

George Whitefield on Preaching

?As the scene was new and I had just begun to be an extempore preacher [ie, preaching without notes], it often occasioned many inward conflicts.

?Sometimes when twenty thousand people were before me, I had not, in my own apprehension, a word to say either to God or them.

?But I never was totally deserted, and frequently so assisted, that I knew by happy experience what our Lord meant by saying, ?Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water?.?

Walter Brueggemann on Lament

"Where the cry [lament] is not voiced, heaven is not moved and history is not initiated. And then the end is hopelessness... It makes one wonder about the price of our civility, that this chance in our faith has largely been lost because the lament psalms have dropped out of the functioning canon. In that loss we may unwittingly endorse false self that can take no initiative... and we may unwittingly endorse unjust systems about which no questions can be raised."

Steve Timmis on Church

If church is primarily an event when the people of God gather, and in that gathering they are equipped to take the gospel as individuals out into the world, then praise God for that intent and consequent action. If church is an identity which is ours as a people who gather around the Word and who live together under that Word so that the world might see the fruit of the gospel in adorning lives and hear the gospel spoken as the explanation, then praise God for that!

For us, church is a community being shaped by the Word through the Spirit for its shared life in the world.

Steve Timmis on Church

I guess we understand church as an activity that is defining of our identity. The people of God is the overarching category, and ?church? is one of the ways in which they are described. This might work as one of those working definitions: ?a company of God's people called together by the gospel, to live under the gospel and make the gospel known by her life and her words?.

Steve Timmis on Love

God has made us to be lovers?lovers of God and lovers of others!

Carmen Petts on Prayer

We pray to prepare, before we plan.

George Whitefield on Evangelism

When it comes to evangelism, I think like a Calvinist and preach like an Arminian.

Michael Patton on Sanctification

Sanctification has more to do with how dependent you have become on the Lord, not necessarily about being ?good.? Sanctification has more to do with how often you are broken before him, not your stoic ability to deal with pain. Sanctification has more to do with a recognition of your weaknesses than of your strengths. Sanctification has more to do with repentance than with the things that don?t require repentance.

SMH on Marriage

This article from SMH Tue 8 Sep 09 shows the latest trends in Australians' views on marriage, sex, sexuality, and God....

If you always thought Australians were a godless pack of loose-living bastards, you're right. Census figures confirm that more Australians are living together before getting married, that more children are being born out of wedlock and couples are more likely than ever to be married by a celebrant than in a religious ceremony.

Changing social attitudes over the past few decades have resulted in a greater acceptance of couplings outside marriage, including de facto and same-sex relationships.

Figures just released by the Bureau of Statistics show that registered marriages are at a 20-year high, and weddings officiated by civil celebrants are increasingly popular. In 2008, civil celebrants performed 65 per cent of marriages.

"This is part of a wider trend towards secularisation in Australia," says Lixia Qu, a researcher at the Australian Institute of Family Studies. "Not only do more people today identify themselves as being of no religion (21 per cent compared to 18 per cent in 1996) but the percentage of people who call themselves Christian has declined 78 to 72 per cent from 1969 to 2006."

These changes are easy to take for granted and yet they represent a significant re-ordering of moral priorities, according to demographer Bernard Salt.

"If you had said years ago that we would see many more people living together before marriage and double the number of kids being born out of wedlock, moralists would have seen it as proof of the decline of civilisation and the collapse of our moral fibre. But the reality is that the taboos we once thought immovable are completely flexible."

Salt believes such shifts show our maturity. "People are less preoccupied with sexuality and more concerned about discrimination, with sexism and racism and even with sustainability. Who cares if you're gay? Who cares if you live together without getting married?"

Likewise, the significance of marriage has diminished.

"People care less about the actual marriage, so they don't mind having kids outside of it."

This is partly a function of gender equality. "Marriage is part of an earlier notion that women were dependent on men. Women were saying 'if I am going to invest in you by bearing your kids, then you have to commit to me in marriage'. But with women able to earn an equal income, that contract has been weakened."

Stephen Colbert Refutes Bart Ehrman 'Misquoting Jesus'

Brilliant!
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/70912/june-20-2006/bart-ehrman

Anonymous on Thinking

Most people would rather die than think, and many do so.

David Stroud on Culture

What should we keep?
What should we redeem?
What should we reject?

Carl Lundquist on Devotion

A Christian journey that is devotional is one which values and treasures a heart-felt warming of God's presence in our lives through the work of the Holy Spirit

Jonathon Edwards on Holy Spirit

The state of the times extremely requires a fullness of the divine Spirit in ministers, and we ought to give ourselves no rest till we have obtained it. And in order to do this, I think ministers, above all persons, ought to be much in secret prayer and fasting.

John Piper on Fasting

One of the great effects of fasting is that it assists what it expresses. I mean that fasting is mainly an expression of the soul's hunger for God. It is not a contrived means to make us love God. We love him and long for him. And then fasting rises up as a way of saying earnestly with our whole body what our hearts feel: I hunger for you, O God!
AHFG p89-90

Acts 29 Church Planter - Ray Ortlund

"Acts 29 welcomed a new church planter recently, Ray Ortlund Jr. Though he may be new to the pastorate, he is not new to ministry. Prior to becoming a pastor Ray was the Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School alongside Mars Hill Church?s good friend, Dr. D.A. Carson.

Mars Hill Church members may know him better as the man who wrote the notes for the book of Isaiah in the ESV Study Bible."

A high calibre church planter!

Sam Allbury on Trinity

What happens when we forgetting the Trinity at Church? At least two things will follow.

1. Our view of church will become functional and not relational.
We will only meet to ?do? things, and will not really see the point of meeting for merely social reasons. Our gatherings will become a matter of utility and not family. In churches like this there will not be much life-sharing. The minister will see his congregation as ?clients? or 'patients'; his ministry as one of shunting people through the right programs or 'fixing the sick'. He will see himself as a professional ?Bible teacher?. His people will feel handled rather than loved. The church will be the place to grow for a while in understanding, or at least in Bible knowledge, but will not be the place to find authentic Christian community.

2. Our aim for church will be uniformity and not diversity. The Trinity shows us a God who is unity in diversity rather than unity in sameness. The Father, Son and Spirit are not interchangeable. They share an ontological unity, but function differently within the purposes of God. This lies behind Paul's teaching on the variety of gifts found in the church in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6, Our unity-in-diversity reflects God's unity-in-diversity.

A Unitarian view of God will therefore lead to a monochrome view of the church. Maturity will be understood in terms of trying to make everyone a certain kind of Christian. Christians will look the same and sound the same. They'll be encouraged into the same kind of ministry. A particular gifting will be the hallmark of the spiritually advanced. In Corinth (reading between the lines) it was evidently the gift of tongues. Today, in many reformed churches, it is the gift of teaching. Those who are really committed to the gospel will become ?Bible-teachers? (there they are again). There will be cultural and vocational flatness.

Christianity it may well be, but a form of Christianity unwittingly more akin to Islamic, not evangelical, theology.

EM Bounds on Prayer

The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men - men and women of prayer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Discipline

We claim liberty from all legal compulsion... and play this off against the proper evangelical use of discipline and asceticism; we thus excuse our self-indulgence and irregularity in prayer, in meditation, and in our bodily life. But the contrast between our behaviour and the word of Jesus is all too painfully evident. We forget that discipleship means estrangement from the world, and we forget the real joy and freedom which are the outcome of a devout rule of life.
COD p189

John Piper on Grace

The assistance we need, above all physical healing and all financial security and all employment successes and all career guidance and all relational harmony, is the divine assistance to see and to savour the glory of God in Christ.
AHFG p63

John Piper on Desires

Desires for other things - there's the enemy. And the only weapon that will triumph is a deeper hunger for God. The weakness of our hunger for God is not because he is unsavoury, but because we keep ourselves stuffed with 'other things'. Perhaps, then, the denial of our stomach's appetite for food might express, or even increase, our soul's appetite for God.
AHFG p10

Augustine on Trials

For the most part, the human mind cannot attain to self-knowledge otherwise than by making trial of its powers through temptation, by some kind of experimental and not merely verbal self-interrogation.

Francis Chan on Worship

Let?s be honest: If you combine a charismatic speaker, a talented worship band, and some hip, creative events, people will attend your church. Yet this does not mean that the Holy Spirit of God is actively working and moving in the lives of the people who are coming.

Francis Chan on Holy Spirit

From my perspective, the Holy Spirit is tragically neglected and, for all practical purposes, forgotten. While no evangelical would deny His existence, I?m willing to bet there are millions of churchgoers across America who cannot confidently say they have experienced His presence or action in their lives over the past year. And many of them do not believe they can.

Robert Murray McCheyne on Pastoring

He loved his flock more than he loved his fame.

Michael Bird on Gospel

The gospel is both a revelation from God (Gal 1:12) and is about what God himself has done in the faithfulness, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. To tell the gospel of God is to tell the story of Jesus. And yet the story of Jesus is entirely inexplicable apart from the story of God. Paul is the quintessential Jesus-freak, but he is not a mono-Jesus adherent. That is because God, Son, and Spirit all figure prominently in his opening narration of the gospel story in Rom 1:1-4. In fact, Romans is the most theocentric letter of the Pauline corpus with the word theos occurring 153 times! John Webster rightly states: ?The matter to which Christian theology is commanded to attend, and by which it is directed in all its operations, is the presence of the perfect God as it is announced in the gospel."

Carl F. Henry on Gospel

The Gospel is only good news if it gets there in time.

Andrew Wilson on Pride

People would rather be independent and miserable than humble and happy.

W.E. Henly on Pride

It matters not how straight the gates
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul

Iain Murray on Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Dr Lloyd-Jones believed that neglect of the work of the Spirit in relation to preaching was often connected with mistaken belief. Some held that the indwelling of the Spirit in all Christians leaves no need for believers to seek His Presence; others seemed to believe that the Spirit rests equally on all orthodox ministry.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones regarded this as contrary to Scripture. Why was the commands "to be filled with the Spirit" if His indwelling which takes place at regeneration is sufficient? What sense could there be in the apostolic direction to appoint men "full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom" if His fullness marks all Christians?

While there is mystery in the mode of the Spirit's Presence, it is surely clear that His work is not static but ongoing and repeated".

William Wilberforce on Joy

Joy is enjoined on us as our bounden duty and commended to us as acceptable worship.

May on Psalms

Book of Psalms is a virtual compendium of themes and topics found in the rest of the Old Testament. The marvelous works of God in creation, judgment, and salvation, Israel's story, the law of life, the Holy City and the Presence there, the once and future Davidic messiah, warning against wickedness and exhortation to righteousness, the majesty and tragedy of the human condition, the everlasting and present and coming kingdom of God all belong to the agenda of the psalms

Paul Miller on Prayer

Miller asserts that ?Jesus was the most dependent human being who ever lived.? Why? Because his entire sense of self is not self-reliant, self-centered. Rather, Jesus is because the Father and the Spirit are.

Unlike us, ?Jesus has no separate sense of self, he has no identity crisis, no angst. Consequently, he doesn?t try to ?find himself?. He knows himself only in relationship with his Father. He can?t conceive of himself outside of that relationship.

Richard Lovelace on Prayer

The proportion of horizontal communication that goes on in the church (in planning, arguing, and expounding) is overwhelmingly greater than that which is vertical (in worship, thanksgiving, confession and intercession?The old midweek prayer meetings for revival have vanished from the programs of most churches or have been transformed into Bible studies ending with minimal prayer. - Dynamics of Spiritual Life, 153

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Worship

We are so decorous, we are so controlled, we do everything with such decency and order that there is no life, no power, no warmth and it isn't New Testament Christianity! That's why the world is outside!

Paulo Coelho on Church

The ship is safest when it's in port. But that's not what ships were made for.

Bernard of Clairvaux on Love

There are those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge: that is curiosity. There are those who seek knowledge to be known by others: that is vanity. There are those who seek knowledge to serve: that is love.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Discipleship

Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without disipleship is always Christianity without Christ.

Leonard Sweet on Worship

Postmodern culture yearns for corporate worship that is EPIC: experiential, participatory, image driven, and communal.

Mark Driscoll on Worship

Everything in the service needs to preach: architecture, lighting, songs, prayers, fellowship, the smell, it all preaches.. To experience God is often the highest form of knowing and the entire worship experience must be more than a presentation about God.

Karl Barth on Fellowship

When we speak of our virtues we are competitors, when we confess our sins we become brothers.

Robert Banks on Church

The church is described as belonging not to the people by whom it is constituted.. nor to the district to which they belong.. but rather to the one who has brought it into existence (God) or the one through whom this has taken place (Christ).

Jonathan Campbell on Missional Church

God's strategy for building his kingdom is through the growing and multiplication of missional communities... The church is to share the good news of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit among all the social groupings and gather those who respond into disciple-making communities. New churches flow naturally out of disciple-making in the community context.

Michael Frost on Missional Church

If they won't come to us, we have to go to them... Instead of asking non-Christians to come-to-us (attractional)... the incarnational church seeks to infiltrate society to represent Christ in the world.

Ivan Illich on Change

Ivan Illich was once asked what is the most revolutionary way to change society. Is it violent revolution or is it gradual reform? He gave a careful answer. Neither. If you want to change society, than you must tell an alternative story.

John Gladwin on Postmodern Church

The postmodern, or emerging, church will have these four features in common:

1. Focus on the journey of faith and the experience of God.

2. Desire for less structure and more direct involvement by participants.

3. Sense of flexibility in order and a distinctly non-hierarchical culture.

4. Recognition that the experience of church is about the sustaining of discipleship.

Michael Frost on Mission

Living out the gospel within its cultural context rather than perpetuating an institutional commitment apart from its cultural context.

Robert Banks on Christian Living

Ten worrying ways in which the gap between belief and everyday life shows in our churches:

1. Few of us apply or know how to apply our belief to our work, or lack of work.

2. We only make minimal connections between our faith and our spare time activities.

3. We have little sense of a Christian approach to regular activities like domestic chores.

4. Our everyday attitudes are partly shaped by the dominant values of our society.

5. Many of our spiritual difficulties stem from the daily pressure we experience (lack of time, exhaustion, family pressures, etc).

6. Our everyday concerns receive little attention in the church.

7. Only occassionally do professional theologians address routine activities.

8. When addressed, everyday issues tend to be approached too theoretically.

9. Only a minority of Christians read religious books or attend theological courses.

10. Most churchgoers actually reject the idea of a gap between their beliefs and their ways of life.

Michael Frost on Mission

Essentially the early church was a missional movement to its core. It understood that personal conversion implied the embracing of the missio dei - the redemptive mission of God to the whole world through the work of his Messiah.

John Drane on Modernity

No persecutor or foe in two thousand years has wreaked such havoc on the church as has modernity.

Jonathan Dodson on Church Planting

Here are the Stages of Growth we followed as a Missional Core Team (see separate document Stages of Organic Growth for further explanation)

Meals & Mission: time spent cultivating community over shared meals, missional conversation, and being on mission together socially and evangelistically.

Vision & Mission: time spent in community discussions around vision and values, while continuing to practice mission.

Commitment Night: an evening in which I gave a charge, we prayed for our city, had first communion over a meal, and celebrated God’s work in our Core Team.

Bible Study & Mission: spent time teaching through Luke-Acts, identifying the themes and challenges of gospel, community, mission.

Strategy & Missional Community: time spent in more strategic conversation and planning to be a church in the city and for the city through what came to be called City Groups (aka Missional Communities).

Low Profile Public Gatherings: our first public gatherings which included preaching and primarily built up the existing Core Team

High Profile Public Gatherings: our first attractional, public gatherings in a city centre location

City Groups Multiply: existing City Groups multiply through mission and leadership development

Albert Einstein on Problem Solving

The kind of thinking that will solve the world's problems will be of a different order to the kind of thinking that created those problems in the first place.

C.S. Lewis on Worship

There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him

John Piper on Fasting

Fasting poses the question: do we miss him? How hungry are we for him to come? The almost universal absence of regular fasting for the Lord’s return is a witness to our satisfaction with the presence of the world and the absence of the Lord. This is not the way it should be. In Luke 18:7–8 Jesus says, “Shall not God bring about justice for His elect, who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them?”
. . .This is what is missing in the comfortable Christian Church of the modern world. Where in the West do Christians cry to Christ day and night that he would come and bring about justice for his elect? Where is there that kind of longing and aching for the consummation of the kingdom? It is no surprise then, that the question of fasting for the coming of the Bridegroom is scarcely asked. If the cry itself is not there, why would one even think of expressing it with fasting?

William Booth on Mission

If I believed what you Christians believe, I would not rest day or night from telling people about it.

John Murray on Redemption

“Redemption accomplished” is Jesus being our “double cure” who saves us from the wrath of God and makes us pure before God. As our substitute, Jesus died the death we should have died for breaking God’s law, and he fulfilled the law on our behalf. His righteousness is given to us as if we had fulfilled the law. That is redemption accomplished.
“Redemption applied” is the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and this ministry is “missional.” The Spirit continues and expands the ministry of Jesus. The Gospels are accounts of Jesus’ ministry through the power of the Spirit. At age 30, Jesus was baptized by John, and the Holy Spirit came down upon him and anointed him for his ministry. The book of Acts is the extension of Jesus’ ministry through earlier believers. After Jesus’ resurrection and just before his ascension, Jesus said to his disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Burroughs on Devil

The Devil is the most discontented creature in the world, he is the proudest creature that is, and the most discontented creature, and the most dejected creature. Now, therefore, so much discontent as you have, so much of the spirit of Satan you have

Richard Lovelace on Gospel

Since their understanding of justification is marginal or unreal—anchored not to Christ, but to some conversion experience in the past or to an imagined present state of goodness in their lives—they know little of the dynamic of justification. Their understanding of sin focuses upon behavioral externals which they can eliminate from their lives by a little will power and ignores the great submerged continents of pride, covetousness and hostility beneath the surface.

John Piper on Preaching

“My understanding of preaching is music without the music.” (from the WorshipGod09 message, “The Heart of Worship“)

One thing’s clear: John Piper is doing more than simply talking about God—he’s experiencing him. I guess that’s why he says preaching is meant to be “expository exultation.”

John Piper on Worship

“God is glorified in his people by the way we experience him, not merely by the way we think about him.” (When I Don’t Desire God, 30)

Strong affections for God, rooted in and shaped by the truth of Scripture - this is the bone and marrow of biblical worship. (Desiring God, 81)

“Godly people are seen yearning, longing, hungering, thirsting, and fainting for God. They are also seen enjoying, delighting in, and being satisfied in God.” (When I Don’t Desire God, 24)

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Holy Spirit

But the danger is to think of the baptism of the Holy Spirit only in terms of gifts rather than in terms of something much more important, which is this: the mark, ultimately, and proof of whether we have received the Spirit or not is surely something that happens in the realm of our spiritual experience. You cannot read the New Testament accounts of the people to whom the Spirit came, these people upon whom He fell, or who received as the Galation Christians and all these others had done, without realizing that the result was that their whole spirit was kindled. The Lord Jesus Christ became real to them in a way that He had never been before . . . the result was a great love for Christ shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Jonathan Dodson on Mission

Familiarity with the gospel breeds missional contempt. If we know the gospel as a set of spiritual facts and a code of morality, then we have very little use for the Church and her mission, the community and evangelism. But if the Gospel is deeper and more honest than we have imagined, then we must be desperate for more. More gospel talk from our friends, more gospel community from church, more gospel songs with fellow saints, and more gospel news for our neighbors. If the gospel is this great, then is must be shared. What we need is not gospel familiarity but gospel depth.

John Piper on the Holy Spirit

The baptism of the Spirit (Acts 2:16) or the receiving of the gift of the Spirit (v 17) cannot be the same as the work of God before faith which enables faith. The baptism in the Spirit is an experience of the Spirit given after faith to faith.

John Piper on the Holy Spirit

When you read the New Testament honestly, you can't help but get the impression of a big difference from a lot of contemporary Christian experience. For them the Holy Spirit was a fact of experience. For many Christians today it is a fact of doctrine.