being a doer

Tim Challies has a good post on why he hates coffee which leads to his thots on living what you like and being a “reservoir” verses being a “pipe.”  It’s worth 5 and half minutes of your time to read it.

quote from Lane Craig’s essay:

“Imagine that you’re hiking through the woods and come across a translucent ball lying on the forest floor. You’d naturally wonder how it came to be there. If one of your hiking partners said to you, “Don’t worry about it! There isn’t any explanation of its existence!”, you’d either think he was crazy or figure that he just wanted you to keep moving. No one would take seriously the suggestion that the ball existed there with literally no explanation.

Now suppose you increase the size of the ball in this story to the size of a car. That wouldn’t do anything to satisfy or remove the demand for an explanation.

Suppose it were the size of a house. Same problem.

Suppose it were the size of a continent or a planet. Same problem.

Suppose it were the size of the entire universe. Same problem.

Merely increasing the size of the ball does nothing to affect the need of an explanation.”

(from Lane Craig’s essay:  ‘Five Arguements for God’

shallow or deep?

PBS Frontline program discusses how the ditigal age weakens our abilities to think deeply

Digital Nation video

How does your own multitasking affect your interest in stopping to think more deeply about things in your life?  Thinking deeply is an essential soul activity for the Christian especially as it relates to the time and effort we put into God’s Word.

“…and in His Law he will meditate day and night” Psalm 1:3

“Open my eyes that I may see wondrous thing in Your Law”  Psalm 119:18

 

inconsolable

“I am going to talk about what has meant the most to me in C. S. Lewis—how he has helped me the most.”

a lecture/sermon entitled “Lessons from an Inconsolable Soul”

by John Piper

audio

video

excerpt:

“…I find both my heart and my mind awakened and made more alive and perceptive and responsive and earnest and hopeful and amazed and passionate for the glory of God every time I turn to C. S. Lewis. It’s this combination of experiencing the stab of God-shaped joy and defending objective, absolute Truth, because of the absolute Reality of God, that sets Lewis apart as unparalleled in the modern world. To my knowledge, there is simply no one else who puts these two things together the way Lewis does.”

pomo thinking

from an address by Ravi Zacharias

“I remember lecturing at Ohio State University, one of the largest universities in this country. I was minutes away from beginning my lecture, and my host was driving me past a new building called the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts. He said, ‘This is America’s first postmodern building.’ I was startled for a moment and I said, ‘What is a postmodern building?’ He said, ‘Well, the architect said that he designed this building with no design in mind. When the architect was asked, ‘Why?’ he said, ‘If life itself is capricious, why should our buildings have any design and any meaning?’ So he has pillars that have no purpose. He has stairways that go nowhere. He has a senseless building built and somebody has paid for it.’  I said, ‘So his argument was that if life has no purpose and design, why should the building have any design?’ He said, ‘That is correct.’  I said, ‘Did he do the same with the foundation?’ All of a sudden there was silence. You see, you and I can fool with the infrastructure as much as we would like, but we dare not fool with the foundation because it will call our bluff in a hurry.”

John Piper reciting Philippians

John Piper reciting Philippians

How to Wreck Your Church

How To Wreck Your Church In 3 Weeks

a blogpost by Ray Ortlund:

How to wreck your church in three weeks:

 

Week One:  Walk into church today and think about how long you’ve been a member, how much you’ve sacrificed, how under-appreciated you are.  Take note of every way you’re dissatisfied with your church now.  Take note of every person who displeases you.

 

Meet for coffee this week with another member and “share your heart.”  Discuss how your church is changing, how you are being left out.  Ask your friend who else in the church has “concerns.”  Agree together that you must “pray about it.”

 

Week Two:  Send an email to a few other “concerned” members.  Inform them that a groundswell of grievance is surfacing in your church.  Problems have gone unaddressed for too long.  Ask them to keep the matter to themselves “for the sake of the body.”

 

As complaints come in, form them into a petition to demand an accounting from the leaders of the church.  Circulate the petition quietly.  Gathering support will be easy.  Even happy members can be used if you appeal to their sense of fairness – that your side deserves a hearing.  Be sure to proceed in a way that conforms to your church constitution, so that your petition is procedurally correct.

 

Week Three:  When the growing moral fervor, ill-defined but powerful, reaches critical mass, confront the elders with your demands.  Inform them of all the woundedness in the church, which leaves you with no choice but to put your petition forward.  Inform them that, for the sake of reconciliation, the concerns of the body must be satisfied.

 

Whatever happens from this point on, you have won.  You have changed the subject in your church from gospel advance to your own grievances.  To some degree, you will get your way.  Your church will need three or four years for recovery.  But at any future time, you can do it all again.  It only takes three weeks.

 

Just one question. 

Even if you are being wronged, “Why not rather suffer wrong?”

(1 Corinthians 6:7)

pondering God’s Words

Good tips on how to meditate on God’s Word

Is it easier in our time to meditate on God’s Word than it may have been a thousand years ago?

breakthrough discovery

a piece of ancient Hebrew pottery confirms that the OT is older than critics have said

“The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least some of the Biblical scriptures are now proven to have been composed hundreds of years before the dates presented today in research and that the Kingdom of Israel already existed at that time.”

can you hear the sound of the cadence of freedom?