“Be content to be nothing, for that is what you are. When your own emptiness is painfully forced upon your consciousness, chide yourself that you ever dreamed of being full, except in the Lord.” Spurgeon
quotes
Elementary My Dear
During free time at yg retreat.
Eleven-year-old boy: (Walks in from outside.) Stupid hose!
Me: (Shocked.) [Insert boy’s name in caps lock]!!!!
Everyone: (Giving me a weird look or shaking head.)
Fellow retreat leader: I think he was referring to the garden hose.
Right before Bible study.
Ten year old girl: (Points to tiny boy.) Pastor Elle, he’s not supposed to be here.
Me: You guys, be nice.
Ten year old: Make him leaaave!
Nine year old boy: He’s only four!
Four year old boy: (Eyes wide open like saucers, shrinks back.)
Me: What?? He’s only FOUR? (Jaw drops.) He shouldn’t be here!!
Nine and ten year old: THAT’S WHAT WE WERE TRYING TO TELL YOU!!!
Playing charades.
Six-year-old girl: (Clawing the air.) Rawrr.
Eight-year-old girl: Bear!
Six-year-old: No, it’s like a cat.
Eight-year-old: Cat!
Six-year-old: No it begins with an L… O… I…
Eight-year-old: Lion! My turn. (Struts like a super model and tosses her hair.)
Six-year-old: Sheep!
Taping for Christmas video.
Me: Jesus is the best present.
Eight-year-old girl: Jesus is the best present.
Me: Better than iPods.
Eight-year-old: (Slow grin.) Better than everything.
Me: Say it one more time, Jesus is the best present, better than iPods.
Eight-year-old: Jesus is the best present, better than (pause) everything.
Me: No. Jesus is better than iPods!
Eight-year-old: Uh-uh!
Me: Say it!
Eight-year-old: (Clenched teeth.) Nnnever!
Me: Oh my gosh! You don’t think Jesus is better?
Eight-year-old: He IS.
Me: Okay, so say Jesus is better than iPods.
Eight-year-old: Nooooooo!
When I am especially nice to them (e.g. driving them to Ralphs to pick up snacks) they will start addressing me as “my girl,” “my love,” and “my honey.” Even the too-cool-for-school oldest boy will like open my car door for me with a grin and say “Here you go my love!” Cracks me up.
Christmasy Thinkings
“Yet this is where the glory of preaching and hearing the word of God comes into play. Preaching is proclamation, and proclaim we must, however inadequate we might think our words and our delivery are. Preaching is not a carefully worked-out philosophical defence of what God must be like if the advent of Christ is to be true. Nor is it an attempt to make Christianity look sophisticated or moral as the world understand these things. Least of all is it stand-up comedy designed to entertain those who might otherwise seek their fun elsewhere. Its agenda, especially at Christmas, is not to be determined by unbelief or what the hipsters in the Village will tolerate or what the brain’s trust at MIT think is plausible. Preaching at Christmas is akin to Lk. 2:8-12. It is the announcement of what God has done, that he has come in Christ, and that thereby his grace has abounded and overflowed to those who deserve it not.. Our task as preachers is to do simply that: proclaim the advent of the Christ. Can there be a greater privilege, a more awesome responsibility, or a greater delight?”
-Carl Trueman
Apostolic Christocentric preaching is big enough to encompass not only redemption accomplished but also redemption applied. Christ-centered preaching announces redemption accomplished: what Jesus did for us once-for-all in history, fulfilling all the Father’s promises as covenant Lord, and all our obligations as covenant servant—and, more than that, enduring the covenant curse that our treason so richly deserve! But it also announces the benefits of redemption applied, the death-to-life difference that Christ’s once-for-all accomplishment effects in those who are united to this new covenant mediator by faith, And those redemptive benefits applied to us by the Spirit of Christ are wide enough to embrace both his rectifying of our sordid record and the renovation of our corrupted hearts: regeneration, forgiveness, vindication, reconciliation, adoption, sanctification, and glorification.
-Dennis E. Johnson
I was reminded of being at a conference with a well-known preacher who is based in the US. He began his sermon by recounting an interview he had done on the radio. He was asked the question, ‘What would you like your legacy to be?’, to which he replied ‘I want to finish the race, and not disgrace my wife and not disgrace the church which I serve.’
I remember thinking as I heard this preacher, ‘What a cop out and lack of godly ambition! Doesn’t he want to leave a legacy? Build a dynasty? I want to change the world!’
The problem is as I’ve come to see it is that there is a very fine line between godly zeal and selfish ambition. A number of years later after having heard that speaker, 2011 has seen 2 of my good friends fall into sins which have disqualified them from the ministry; they’ve shipwrecked their life’s work. I have begun to understand something of what that preacher said.
-Paul Levy
What does all of this mean? Even as you do the work of the ministry, it is important to remember that accurate self-assessment is the product of grace. Only in the mirror of God’s Word and with the sight-giving help of the Holy Spirit are we able to see ourselves accurately. In those painful moments of accurate self-sight, we may not feel as if we are being loved, but that is exactly what is happening. God, who loves us enough to sacrifice his Son for our redemption, works so that we would see ourselves clearly, so that we would not buy into the delusion of our own righteousness. He gives us a humble sense of personal need so we’ll seek the resources of grace that can only be found in him.
In this way, your painful moments of sight, conviction, grief, and confession are both the saddest and most joyous of moments. It is sad that we yet need to confess what we must confess. At the same time, accurately seeing and fully acknowledging our sin is a cause for celebration. Only Jesus can open blind eyes. Whenever a sinner accurately assesses his sin, the angels in heaven rejoice, and so should we, even when that sinner is us.
-Paul Tripp
What Thielicke was doing was what all preachers do all the time: teaching theology in the face of death. The difference is that most of us have comfortable enough lives and circumstances that we are able to pretend to ourselves that we are really doing something else, that death is not really real at all. That is surely why so many churches become distracted by so many trendy ministries of trivia rather than the simple proclamation of truth.
This Christmas, the challenge of preaching is to bring people into the presence of Christ, not with the unattainable ambition that fear of death, the final enemy, will be taken away; but certainly with the desire to prepare people for death. And if Thielicke, and Simeon, are right, this is not magic or clever or particularly sophisticated: it involves teaching people the simple, straightforward, unfathomable truth of God Incarnate
-Carl Trueman
God’s beauty looks different than we might expect. While angels sung of his arrival, God again reached out to the dirty and despised. He invited shepherds to be the only visitors permitted to the labor and delivery unit. In time, men of stature and renown would come to worship, but even their fullness of joy demonstrated a poverty of spirit. For how else could these wise men bringing great riches bow the knee to a child who had not yet been potty-trained? They did not come in power and prestige, but in pursuit of the veiled beauty of the Christ child.
The beauty and glory of Jesus’ birth is seen in contrast Caesar Augustus. In the headlines he was counting heads to prove his power. Meanwhile, the God who knows the number of hairs on every head (without counting), was sending his Son into the world. The contrast could not be more stark: Men counted matches in the dark, unable to benefit from their potential light, while the God of infinite light hid himself in the dark flesh of Jewish boy, one who came into the darkness to show his light to world.
-David Schrock
“My heart is only five years old.”
Immediately after she finished typing it, she realized it was true. It was as if the sun had finally risen, like arms extended its illuminating rays reaching out through the clouds after decades of dark haze. Every action, every intonation, every silent musing over the years… By this new light, all pointed glaringly at the truth. How could she possibly have missed it? It neatly explained everything: inordinate delight in the mundane, overactive imagination, love for play and abhorrence of work and soulless rigidity, questioning of authority, strong need for praise and approval, underlying desire to be taken care of, inability to pay attention for more than two sentences. She’d been struck countless times throughout her life by the absence of evidence of development and growth in her thought process, that it never seemed to age. Because it hadn’t, you idiot. The girl at twenty-seven was a slightly better packaged model of the girl at five, yet the core remained the same.
Not an idiot after all. An idiot has a mental age of a three year old or less, an imbecile that of a four to six year old, and a moron that of a seven to twelve year old. That placed her squarely with the imbeciles. On the other hand, imbeciles supposedly have IQs ranging from 20-49; last time she checked hers was 136. Tricky, this classification of MR thing.
An airy sigh escaped as she rolled out of bed. Life does not stop to bemoan the fate of a forever retarded yet unretarded girl. On it inexorably marches, and so would she.
Some Good Stuff
“This is what we mean when we talk about Christocentric understanding of redemptive history. From fall till he arrives in history. How does what Christ has accomplished as the second and last Adam and new true Israel, how does that become yours and mine? How does God take what Christ has accomplished and make that the possession of the church and the world? The answer to that question is found, in terms of fundamental structure, union with Christ. What Christ has accomplished in his death remains useless and no value to us as long as we remain outside of him, devoid of a spirit-wrought faith. What Christ is, he is for you. What he has accomplished, he has accomplished for you. And you are brought by the secret, supernatural working, into a union with this Christ, that finds conscious recognition in faith. By this faith, Christ confers upon you, by his spirit, all that he has accomplished for you. He raises you up in heavenly places so that you sit with him. Everlasting glorious things are yours in Christ. You have also been justified, sanctified, adopted in Christ. Every benefit you have in this age and the age to come is yours by virtue of union with Christ. Union of Christ is so important because Christ himself is so important. What he accomplishes, he accomplishes for you.
“Redemption secures promises that were promised before fall. When he appears what does he do? Rev 19, he does exactly what the generation under Joshua failed to do. Rides forth, sword coming from his mouth, conquering and to conquer. Then confers holy kingdom upon his people. What was typologically failed to be done with Adam and Israel reach eschatological zenith in Christ. What I want you to see, is don’t lose sight of your Savior. Everything you have you have in him. Union with Christ is the organizing framework for every benefit we receive from Christ.”
Lane Tipton
WYSINWYG 