Sure, but that is not the gospel. God had a plan for Pharaoh, but it wasn’t good news. Don’t invite people to come to our Lord Jesus Christ because God has a wonderful plan for them.
The good news is not you can, but he has.
The good news of the gospel is not your potentiality, but Christ’s accomplishment.
Oh Father,
Teach us that when we pray to You,
we pray
to You.
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be your name.
Oh how this singular thought would rectify much sin in our prayers
Story and proposition are not two antithetical approaches to reading the Scriptures; they are the way to read the Scriptures. Without story the proposition “God is faithful” is just a bone with no flesh. You can see it sure enough, but it does not come alive with meaning and depth as when you see God faithfulness displayed with the patriarchs. Without propositions story becomes a puddle of flesh. We become the story’s interpreter, able to form it as we wish. It becomes a story by us, about us. Be true theologians, be men of flesh and bone.
Jesus became flesh and bone to put God’s glory on display. Because of Him we know what it means that God is gracious, God is forgiving, God is just, God is righteous, and so much more. Take away the story and the proposition “justification by faith” has no basis. Take away the proposition “justification by faith” and we misinterpret the story.
Be true theologians, be men of flesh and bone. Be men of proposition and story.
Positive/negative and optimism/pesimissim are not Biblical catagories, faith/unbelief and hope/despair are.
Oh how much impotence results from confusing the two!
I read two great posts today. One made me joyfully shout amen, the other sweetly broken.
A Wordless Gospel Is Like a Digitless Phone Number
Saying “Preach the gospel; if necessary use words” is like saying “Tell me your phone number; if necessary use digits.” – J.D. Greear
HT: Justin Taylor
I’m afraid I have more faith and interest in the internet than in God. How about you?
I tried for hours this morning to access the internet, though it wasn’t responding.
I don’t do that with God. Do you? – Abraham Piper
Many hesitate to tell people that they are pregnant after having experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth. They may want to wait until some point in the future when things are more certain. Maybe they don’t want to get people’s hopes up, only to have them decimated again. This is understandable, but I would commend you to go another way. It may be a harder way, indeed an impossible way, but I believe it is the Christian way.
Why we celebrate conception and not just birth:
In case you are worrying Bethany is still pregnant at this time. Please continue to pray God’s mercy on us for a safe, healthy, and joyous pregnancy and birth.
I love thunderstorms, but I am too comfortable around them. If I am awake I enjoy them, if asleep I snore through them. Even the tornado siren fails to stir me. Yesterday afternoon as I sat in my office I loved to listening to the pouring rain and occasional thunder outside my window. I had to step out of the office a few times just to appreciate it. A record setting 4.42 inches of rain would fall. On the way home my joy began to fade as I noticed the high water levels in my neighborhood. I remembered the water level in a heavy rain can get close to our backdoor. It has never flooded in the past, but I thought this might the time. All the sudden the rain took on a regal robe of majesty. It was to be respected.
I approach God too casually. I forget His Holiness, His majesty, His glory, His righteousness, His jealousy, His wrath, His uncompromising commitment to His name. I forget that He is a consuming fire. I forget that there is only one reason why I am not under wrath. There is only one reason why I am no longer condemned. There is only one reason why His Spirit indwells me. There is only one reason why I can read His Word, assured of its promises, as illuminated by the Spirit. There is only one reason why I can pray to Him and approach His throne. There is only one reason why His magnificence is beautifully glorious and not horrendously terrifying. That reason is Jesus and the “wonderful, tragic, mysterious” tree.
Knowing God is perhaps like skydiving (I’ve never been). It is a thrill, an exhilarating, breath-taking stunning joy – only with a parachute. Take away the parachute and it is utter terror, there is no joy only sheer dread.
Or as I love to illustrate it, imagine there is a colossal roller coaster that dwarfs all others. It has more twists, loops, and drops than all its competition combined. You are intrigued and become consumed with riding it. But then you discover it is a terror for it has no harnesses. All who dare approach it die, there are no survivors. It breaks your thrill seeking heart to discover that this magnificent coaster would not be your joy, but your undoing. God is the eternal, infinite joy our hearts were made for. As Augustine said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” Yet you cannot enjoy this God for all His power is against you. But there is a safety harness. He is Jesus. We only enjoy all that God is in Jesus. No one would ever ride a respectable roller coaster without a harness. Approaching God with reverence and fear means constantly clinging, loving, appreciating, and worshipping the harness. The storm is only truly enjoyed from the vantage point of safety.
Related Posts:
I’m not a fan of the phrase “quiet time” though I use it from time to time. It is not because I think there something inherently incorrect in the term, I just think it wimpy. Designating listening to Yahweh via His Word and responding to Him in prayer as “quiet time” is akin to taking a glimpse at the Grand Canyon and commenting with a casual shrug “it’s big”. My favorite way to think of that slice of morning I spend in God’s Word is “Communion with God”. Communing with the Holy Creator sounds deeply more appealing than having a “quiet time”.
So when is the best time to have one… umm… “having one” – that’s “quiet time” language. When is the best time to commune with God? Always of course, but as far as setting aside a dedicated time, what time is best? I recommend that you find the time when you are both most alert and most able to dedicate a good space of time to the task. You may be most alert in biology class, but you are not able to dedicate that time. You may be able to dedicate a lot of time after supper, but then you are not alert. For most teens morning is not your alert time. I often have students who feel some measure of guilt because they spend their evenings with God instead of their mornings. I would say you are imposing a law on yourself that you should not be bound to.
Still I offer two cautions to non-morning persons. One, are you a non-morning person because of bad evening habits? Two, If you do commune with God at some time other than the morning, do go to bed in meditation and prayer and rise with Him as the first thought on your mind. Spend five minutes reminding yourself of what you studied the day before.
It is no small advantage to the holy life to “begin the day with God.” The saints are wont to leave their hearts with Him over night, that they may find them with Him in the morning. Before earthly things break in upon us, and we receive impressions from abroad, it is good to season the heart with thoughts of God, and to consecrate the early and virgin operations of the mind before they are prostituted to baser objects. When they world gets the start of religion in the morning, it can hardly overtake it all the day. – Thomas Case from Living for God’s Glory by Joel R. Beeke
Last night in D-teams, we were discussing the ways we often relate to and treat our Holy God. One of the young men shared that he often treated God like a vending machine. He explained that when God is your vending machine, you simply go to Him when you need something, offer a token, and push a button. He further explained that often when the desired results are not dispensed from his Vending-Machine God, he would kick and shake the machine in anger, much like you do when your Snickers is stuck.
I thought this was a brutally honest and real confession, and one to which we all relate. I know that I have treated God like this: “Father, yesterday in my hour of greatest need, I desired your help greatly and sought you with confession and tears. Today, I wish you would just leave me alone. I don’t need or want the whole guilt-trip thing. I’ll call again on you later if something comes up.”
Our first steps in seeking a better, closer relationship with God must begin with our own acknowledgement that we treat God like a vending machine, or a genie-in-a-bottle, or our very own BFF with text capability. In fact, when we treat God in this manner, he ceases to be our God, and becomes a mere god to us – an idol of our own creation.
God wants to be the Lord of our lives. He deserves it. He demands it. He has made us. He has purchased us. We owe Him nothing less.
