Category: Devotional

Devotional thoughts for my benefit and yours from here, there, and everywhere

God & The Virginia Tech Massacre

~ fundyreformed ~ 13 Comments

Like most of you, I was saddened with the news of the Virginia Tech Massacre. 32 people tragically killed — an unthinkable and senseless act indeed.

I watched the afternoon service held at the University yesterday afternoon. There was not much hope offered. No one really made sense of the devastation. The Virginia Governor brought in some Scriptural allusions. He even brought up Christ’s suffering on the cross. President Bush mentioned faith, and cited a verse or two. The Jewish lady rabbi quoted Ecclesiastes 3. The Muslim cleric had a fairly long and thoughtful speech, that I thought was quite good.

Sadly, there wasn’t a distinctly Christian message of hope to be heard. There wasn’t a Christian message to answer a question that must be plaguing the minds of countless VT students this week: “Where was God then? Where is God now?”

So how do we as Christians respond to such a tragedy? Well, it goes without saying that we can pray. And with such a gripping story with such a terrifying reality, we should pray for an especially strong end-result. We should pray that God would use this event to turn many to Christ, to cause many to begin to seek God and ponder the questions of death and eternity, right and wrong, love and hate.

We should also be ready with answers. God was there at Virginia Tech on Monday. He is there this morning. God works all things according to his own will. But His ways are much higher than ours. We don’t know what good will come from this, but Scripture teaches God allows evil to bring about good. In fact, he is always working things together for good to those who love Him and are his chosen people (Rom. 8:28). At the end of this post, I’ll provide some links to online resources on the topic of God and suffering.

Third, we should reach out and love those affected by this tragedy. Christians are to comfort those who mourn. We have the message of the gospel with its unlimited and boundless hope. So we should be all the more eager to lift up those hurt with tragedies and pain around us.

Most of us are not immediately near the tragedy in Virginia, but we know countless lesser tragedies and rub shoulders with other hurting people in our own communities. And if we don’t know hurting people now, we will soon enough. As we make an effort to love the hurting, we will find opportunities to answer the tough questions, and share the blessed and hope-filled gospel of Jesus Christ.

So I close by encouraging us to reach out and comfort the hurting around us, to be ready with Christian answers to the tough questions, and to earnestly pray for those affected by the Virginia Tech massacre. Specifically pray for the ministry of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Blacksburg, as well as other Christian churches in the area. Let me leave you with the words of the African Benediction (see above link for more on this), as well as the links I promised.

Minister: All our problems . . .
People: We send them to the cross of Christ!
Minister: All our difficulties . . .
People: We send them to the cross of Christ!
Minister: All the devil’s work . . .
People: We send them to the cross of Christ!
Minister: All our hopes . . .
People: We set on the risen Christ!
Minister: Christ, the Son of Righteousness, shine upon you and scatter the darkness from before your path: and the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you, forever and ever. Amen.

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Believing Men, Beware the Blog

~ fundyreformed ~ 3 Comments

The following article was written by my friend Ryan Corbett. I think he makes some great points and that his challenge deserves to be taken seriously. Join me in determining to use blogging as a means to a noble end (the spread of God’s glory and the edification of self and others), rather than being used by blogging for a selfish aim (the spread of the glory of self and the avoidance of fulfilling God’s call for us as men).

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I have in mind an online medium which poses, I believe, a dangerous threat to the faith and usefulness of Christian husbands, fathers and ministers in our age. No, it is not pornography, adult chat rooms or online gambling, though these widely recognized vices have, in their own ways, shipwrecked the faith of a good many in the past decade. What I have in mind is far more innocent, subtle, and even wholesome: The Christian blogosphere. I by no means mean to suggest that blogs with Christian content are unuseful. Quite to the contrary, they offer an incredible forum for the exchange of ideas and information and have connected people and movements to one another like never before. Many a man has, I’m sure, come to a fuller understanding of the character of God, been stimulated toward a more radical lifestyle and even experienced conversion through the agency of Christian blogging. I can personally testify to the role of the World Wide Web in connecting me with mind-changing and soul-edifying doctrinal material which I was once in the dark about. But we must not casually think that because of their theological content, blogs of this nature have no capacity to become weapons in the hands of the evil one to steal, kill and destroy. Recent observation has led me to ponder the reality of this threat, specifically to Christian men in the prime of their strength with a tendency toward the life of the mind (I describe myself here). The threat can be summarized as follows:

  1. Christian blogs can quietly take the place of the disciplines of Word and devotion. If a Christian man is checking golf stats or monitoring his stocks, there is no sense of spiritual fulfillment. But if he is making his rounds on Christian blogs, reading stimulating articles, posting biblical comments and downloading podcasts of sermons, there is the tendency to feel that the spiritual duty of communion with God has been satisfied. In a couple of hours before dinner he has, perhaps, read a Christian review of a current movie, skimmed through a debate over eternal security and watched a clip of an interview discussing church growth trends. Is he not valuably spending his time? And if a few days go by in which his Bible was not cracked, did he not get devotional stimulation anyway? I suggest that hours spent surfing Christian blog sites are no replacement for earnestly going after God with an open Bible and notebook. Rather, a dependence on the blog can train us to get our spiritual insights second-handedly, and to think about communion with God mainly in terms of hot-button issues, arguments and polemics. These have an important role in the Christian life, but they can never take the place of routine devotion through the disciplines of Word and prayer.

  2. Christian blogs give men the opportunity to flaunt themselves, something we’re all geared to enjoy doing. Where else can an average guy get himself published for his Christian buddies to read? He may manage his own blog, or he may borrow space from another by posting comments. In any case, his potential to be read and recognized has suddenly increased manifestly by the advent of the blog. He finds himself checking to see how many hits his blog received in a week, and re-reading his own posts with a sense of pride. Let’s face it, men, we love to see our names out there. We love to read the comments people post in response to that clinching point we made. Whenever that insightful reformedguy79 (you know him only by his webname) picks up on a comment you typed, you give yourself a pat on the back. How many unconsciously allow their egos to be stroked by faceless interactions online, and continue to be drawn back in pursuit of more opportunities to win a moment of fame?

  3. Blogs have the tendency to reduce people to one dimension — a dimension in which men feel particularly comfortable — the intellectual and argumentative. The blog is impersonal. It talks back, but not immediately, and there are no tears, no emotions or confrontations. It is just nice, clean, manly exchange. It is a lot easier than initiating spiritual dialog with a wife, who is inclined to bring in messy emotions, spot your hypocrisies, and require a personal vulnerability that we would rather avoid. Can the fellowship of the blog really fulfill Christian one-anothering, transparency, and serious accountability? If we think it does, we are in danger. Hell is hungry for men who have let these necessary disciplines slip away.

  4. Blogging, not engaged in responsibly, has the potential of consuming a lot of time which is stolen away from family, bible study, communion with the saints, ministry to poor, orphans and widows and radical mission to the lost. Log the hours you spend online weekly and ask whether that time could have been redeemed for activities more befitting one called to be the head of his home, a solider in Christ’s army and a worker of righteousness in an unjust world. Healthy, soul-refreshing activities like bike-rides and walks in the park on autumn days can also suffer neglect. TV makes men lazy, and too much time in the virtual world of blogging has similar potential to make men lazy.

The fact that something is dangerous does not make it wrong. Fire is both valuable for life and deadly. It would be foolish to completely disregard this means of access to quality biblical teaching, contemporary ministry ideas, and yes, some devotional stimulation. But with Christ’s return at the door, the deceitfulness of sin and the brevity of life, we cannot afford to be unwary. Consider the following ideas as a means of guarding yourself for God and family.

First, for every minute spent surfing the Christian blog world, spend at least as much time with God, on your face, seeking Him and pouring over His Word. This will have the effect of either radically limiting your time online or radically increasing your time in the Word until it truly is sweeter to you than the drippings of a honeycomb, more valuable than fine gold, and more attracting than the blog. Second, as a finite being with a finite amount of time, choose a handful of blogs which are truly, consistently spiritually stimulating, which are grounded in Word, devotional in nature, and which leave your heart more inclined to Jesus. Seek out these, and avoid the temptations to eternally blog-shop about on other sites and links. The sheer size of the web can be overwhelming and time-squandering if one doesn’t restrain himself to a few familiar and most helpful pages. Third, you may find it wise to take periodic blog fasts, especially if you discern a distraction from real-life interaction with Christian believers, ability to lead your family in a vital walk with God, and a personal hunger and thirst for the Word. Such fasts may give insight into ones level of attachment and dependency on the blog for spiritual health and satisfaction. The blog is certainly a valuable tool, but let us not forget that the spiritual giants of the past with the depth of spiritual insight and communion with God for which we admire them, had not the availability of this medium, and carried out their prolific writing ministries with a pen and paper. Could it be that their lack of access to this wide range of information and ideas actually enabled them to be more singleminded and useful than we?

Christian brothers, take care and make every effort so that the Christian blog is for you a means of perseverance and not a detraction from it.

Ryan Corbett

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
(Ephesians 5:15-17 ESV)

God's Fatherhood & Resurrection Day

~ fundyreformed

  

I recently received my free copy of the April/May issue of By Faith (the magazine of the PCA). I am thoroughly pleased with the magazine, but that’s beside our point here. In an article entitled “Our First Priority should be to Extend Our Life-Consuming Mission: God’s Kingdom to the Ends of the Earth” by Dr. Richard Pratt, I read the following story:

  

I had the privilege of being in Indonesia two days after the great tsunami struck Indonesia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka in December 2004. While I was there, I spoke with a number of Muslims about the terrible tragedy that had come upon that great island nation. I always asked them two basic questions. First, I asked, “Do you believe God had anything to do with this tsunami?” Their answer was predictable. “Yes, of course. Allah is in control of everything. Everything happens in-sha’a Allah [as Allah wills].” But then I followed with a second question: “Do you find any comfort from God when you pray?” Every person I asked replied in much the same way. They laughed and said, “I pray now even more than I used to, but I don’t find any comfort. All I pray is, ‘Please, don’t send a tsunami to destroy me, too.'” Although there are exceptions, mainline Islam teaches that God is so transcendent, so distant, that He does not care tenderly about us. In fact, most Muslims think it blasphemy to speak of God as “our Father.” How sad.

Jesus’ opening to the Lord’s Prayer reminds us of the good news that we bring to so many in the world today. God becomes the loving Father of all who come to Him by faith in Christ.

God’s Fatherhood

The above story causes me to stop and think of the wonder that Almighty God is my Father. What a joy to know that the Holy Spirit works in me to cause me to cry, “Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:15). We should literally be amazed that Jesus instructed us to pray, “Our Father…”. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God.” (1 Jn. 3:1) May God receive more praise and honor as we learn to love and trust Him more, even as He truly is our loving Father.

The author of the article, however, pointed out something else significant about God being our Father. He says,

Although there are evangelicals who think of God as too transcendent, most of us today have been so influenced by the narcissistic, self-absorbed ethos of modern Western culture that we have the opposite problem. When we hear “Our Father,” we tend to think of God as if He were a sweet grandfather….

In other words, some of us have a hard time conceiving of God as our loving Father, instead we might think of Him as a taskmaster, or even just a remote deity. Others have a hard time thinking of God as more than a Father. We readily see him as our friend and helper, but can’t really picture Him as our Lord and Master. I would add that the culture of contemporary evangelicalism predisposes us toward this second error, while the culture of contemporary fundamentalism (especially hyper fundamentalism) predisposes us toward the first error.

Both of these errors are detrimental to our spiritual life. Understanding and appreciating God’s Fatherhood can free us to serve joyfully and love Him more fully. Remembering God’s Sovereignty should make us wonder and praise Him all the more that He still is our loving Father. Truly the Christian doctrine of the Fatherhood of God is wonderful and sweet. I cannot do it justice in these few sentences here.

The Resurrection and God’s Fatherhood

Most evangelicals don’t really think of God the Father much at all on Easter. The focus is Jesus and His triumph over death (and rightly so). Yet Resurrection Day has much to teach us of God our Father.

I do pity the Muslims who cannot conceive of God as a loving Father of His children. But the Muslim reaction to the Resurrection can serve to teach us Christians a thing or two. Their reaction is one of complete shock and utter horror.

“God would let His Son (or His Prophet) be humiliated and tortured, yea even killed? How unthinkable!”

The words of Jesus on the cross “Father, forgive them…” are even more unthinkable. In the Muslim mind, honor is preeminent (this is sorely lacking in Western society). And God must preserve His honor!

It would do us well to think long and hard over their reaction. Yes indeed, God was and is outraged that people would so harm His Beloved Son. The wrath of God will be poured out without measure on the ungodly, and rightly so.

Yet God is not only higher than humans, he is better than them. Sure, a natural and sinful earthly Father will seek retribution and revenge on any who would dare harm his precious child. It would be natural for us to expect God to react similarly. The glory of Easter, however, is that God is love.

In love, God poured out the horrible and destestable sins of all the elect upon His Son Jesus. And God asked and willed for His Son to endure all of God’s wrath deserved for those sins. God had a hand in the torture of His own Son.

Why? To what end? God did this to redeem a people unto Himself “” to become our loving Father! In the travesty surrounding the death of Jesus, God made room for us to be His children! What wonder. Truly God’s wisdom appears to be foolishness to natural man (1 Cor. 1). Why did God need to go to such lengths to accomplish the redemption of His people? How could God endure the wickedness of sinners as they crucified His Son? What about God’s honor?

God receives more honor, as One who patiently endures evil until the day when He will finally settle the score, than One who quickly loses patience with sinful man. And God receives more honor in his loving and gracious offer of the gospel to all men (even those who hate Him), than One who simply watches out for His friends. God received great honor in the loving obedience unto death, that Jesus accomplished, as He paid the blood price for God’s children, and His bride.

So the next time you are thankful that God is your loving and caring Father, remember all that God suffered for you, in the death of His Beloved Son, to make this relationship possible. Ultimately, God receives all the praise for becoming our Father. That the Creator should stoop to become a Father, is truly marvelous. And it does not speak at all of our innate worth. Rather it shows how wonderful and marvelous, yea gracious, our great God truly is. Praise Him, today, for His loving gift of the Resurrection and the relationship it secured.

Don’t Waste Your Life

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

One of John Piper’s best books has got to be Don’t Waste Your Life. In fact, it is the book I recommend for people unfamiliar with Piper’s misistry and message.

The book is great and the message is greater. We need to make our lives count for Jesus. Recently, I stumbled upon dontwasteyourlife.com, a new online venture of DesiringGod.org. The site is fantastic, and it is devoted to spreading the message of the book. I encourage you fellow bloggers to promote this site. They have a podcast with short videos, like the one below. And they have a blog. They also sell copies of the book, and the new group study kit (with special DVD).

With that being said, I encourage you to watch the short clip below, and to be encouraged anew to make your life count for Christ. But remember, lean on God’s grace. We can’t live this kind of a life without God’s amazing grace.

Thoughts on the Battle of Jericho

~ fundyreformed ~ 10 Comments

I recently read the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho in the new kid’s Bible storybook I’ve been promoting. In that story I read these words:

Then God made his people a promise. “I will always be with you….    If you do what I say, your lives in the new land will be happy and everything will go well.”

So Joshua gathered his army together…. They were ready to fight. But the plan wasn’t about fighting; it was about trusting and doing what God said. (emphasis added, quote from The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones)

Canaan as a Type

These words spurred me to think about the battle of Jericho as it relates to the battle of our own personal sanctification. Christians for centuries have interpreted the story of Israel’s redemption and exodus form Egypt, their wandering in the desert, and their conquering the promised land in some kind of a spiritual sense. Scripture certainly presents Jesus as the archetypal Passover Lamb. The misadventures of Israel in the wilderness teach us spiritual lessons (1 Cor. 10). And the promised land is a type of Abraham’s “better” and “heavenly” country which he sought (Heb. 11). Numerous hymns have also  equated crossing the Jordan with entering our eternal rest.

Certainly a redemptive historical hermeneutic finds great significance in the story of the Israelites conquering the promised land. As my friend Nathan Pitchford has so clearly shown, the land of promise is intimately connected to fellowship with God. The land was to be the place where God would be Israel’s God and they would be His people. Fellowship was the goal of the land promise, even as later with David, God chose Jerusalem to be the city where His name would be. The OT covenants and promises became increasingly particularized and focused on the heir of David to be ultimately fulfilled with Christ.

All that is to say the possession of Canaan by the people of God was important because this land was to provide a restoration, in part, of Eden. It was to be a place where God communed with man in intimate fellowship. Such a place clearly typifies the abundant Christian life of a believer. A believer experiences fellowship with God which is truly a foretaste of heaven. Just as the land of Canaan ultimately points forward to the New Jerusalem and the New Earth (see Rev. 21), so the believer’s experience of life in Christ is the foretaste of the true essence of eternal life.

The Battle to Win Canaan

Now that we have established the typical significance of the land of Canaan, we are prepared to see how the battle of Jericho wonderfully instructs us. (And I grant I have not truly established it, rather I  explained it. This post is not a full-fledged  defense of the redemptive historical hermeneutic.) Before the Israelites could possess their inheritance, they had to conquer their foes. The battle of Jericho was the first fight to win the promised land, and it sets up what proves to be a pattern. The Israelites trust in God’s power to win each battle for them.

I hope you can see how this applies to us. In order for us to reach our inheritance — the ultimate promised land of heaven, we must trust in God to win our battles.    In Jesus (the Captain of the Lord’s hosts) must be our trust. So with ultimate salvation, we must trust in God to undertake for us and win the battle.  

But this applies to our sanctification as well. For us to enjoy the abundant life in Christ, we must fight the flesh and engage our besetting sins. We must mortify sin (see John Owen’s excellent work On the Mortification of Sin, which is an exposition of Rom. 8:13). And how do we win the battles of sanctification? By trusting in God to win our battles for us, of course. We follow in Joshua’s footsteps.

The Point of this Post

What most blessed me in thinking through all of this was an observation. Joshua and the army of Israel did not sit around on their hands and wait for the walls to fall down. They obeyed. Scripture repeatedly tells us that good works are the inevitable, even the required fruit of believers.   (See my post Once Saved, Always Saved?!?!) If we are not obeying, we have good reason to be doubting our salvation.  

Today, there are many who so stress the necessity of good works that they have redefined justification. They claim  justification is based on our good works, yet they claim such works are only done through the Spirit, and so this position still qualifies as justification by faith.  

Against the backdrop of this whole debate, the example of Jericho becomes all the more clear. If the Israelites had not obeyed by marching around the city, God would not have given them th evictory. Obedience is necessary. But obedience does not earn or obtain anything. It is only God’s grace which would topple the walls of Jericho. And certainly marching around the city did not do anything to earn the victory. God throwing the walls down earned the victory.

Conclusion

In conclusion, as we face the struggles of personal sanctification, let us take heart. God is fighting our battles for us. We do need to be faithful and march around the walls of the sins in our life. But ultimately God is the one who tears down those walls and gives us spiritual victory after spiritual victory. Just like it took many years for the Israelites to conquer all of Canaan, our own struggle for sanctification is a slow process. And like the Israelites, we will never expel all of our sins. We can, however, win a victory and live a life of victory (see Josh. 21:43-45). And when we do, it is not our obedience which has won anything. It is all by God’s grace and His fighting for us. The battle is indeed the Lord’s.

So let us seek to trust our Great Captain, and follow His lead in fighting our sin. To God be the  glory, great things He has done, and will do!

(For similar posts, see My 219 Epiphany, parts 1 and 2; Once Saved, Always Saved?!?!; and Bitterness and Desire.)