The Wonderful Grace of Repentance

Tonight, Grace Life Church of the Shoals and Anchored in Truth ministries will be hosting the 2009 True Church Conference and the theme is one of weight and substance. The Wonderful Grace of Repentance is the subject to be addressed and I hope it will prove to be as powerful and sanctifying as the conference topics have been over the past two years. If the goals of this conference are to be achieved, then repentance must begin with us as shepherds and be transferred to the congregations we serve.

I think the church in America has much to repent of, but I also know that I too have much to confess and turn away from. The closer I walk with Christ the more my sin and shortfalls become apparent to me, and this is a wonderful grace. Please join with me in praying that God would pour out His Holy Spirit upon us and that Christ-exalting repentance would follow in pastors and churches.

If you are interested in the conference but will not be able to attend this year, I hope to post a summary of the sessions that I attend here in the days to come. There will be no one live-blogging this conference as in years past but the media is being made available. If interested you can pre-order the conference video here and audio here.

Where Has My Time Gone?

You’ve heard the statement that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions; well by God’s sheer grace I am no longer on that road, but I get the point. Since the new year has rolled around I had intended to be more consistent in updating this blog. At the same time I intend to be more disciplined in study and prayer. I can say that my study and prayer time has been reviving, while my blogging has been non-existent.

But rather than try to get all of my thoughts in order and post an article I have decided to relay to everyone who reads what exactly has been taking up the bulk of my time the last few weeks. Here’s a list of what I have been up to lately in no particular order.

I renewed my commitment to read some of the books that I’ve had sitting on my shelves for a while. Here is a list of what I am currently reading:

• D. Martyn Lloyd Jones The Fight of Faith, volume two of  Ian Murray’s biography. I read volume one this time last year and loved it, but volume two has proven to be even more profitable. It is interesting to me how the battles fought in England in ML-J’s day compare to the evangelical crises of America in our own.

• The Holy Spirit, by John Owen. Few authors stir the soul like the Puritans and Owen was their chief in many respects. One small paragraph from Owen will fuel my meditation and praise more than an entire chapter from most contemporary authors. Think on this opening paragraph from the book, “When God planned the great work of saving sinners, he provided two gifts. He gave his Son and he gave his Spirit. In fact, each person of the Trinity was involved in the great work of salvation. The love, grace and wisdom of the father planned it; the love, grace and humility of the Son purchased it; and the love, grace and power of the Holy Spirit enabled sinners to believe and receive it (Owen pg. 1).”
  

• Total Church, by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis has been a great read and one I have slowly worked through. It is refreshing and challenging, but altogether God honoring in it’s scope and purpose. I highly recommend it and would love to sit and discuss it’s content with anyone. Also, the guys over at The Resurgence have made available the media from the 2008 Total Church conference.

• Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin. This is something that I have used a a reference over the year, but have never taken the time to read through completely. Tim Brister over at Provocations and Pantings posted last month that this year marks the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth and he also provided a link to a reading schedule. I took him up on his advice and have thoroughly enjoyed my reading, it’s much simpler than it may sound because Calvin was inclined to a more practical Biblical theology. He said, Doctrine is an affair “not of the tongue, but of life…it must enter our heart and pass into our daily living, and so transform us into itself that it may not be unfruitful for us (Calvin 3.6.4).”

• Through the bible this year. Over the years I have used many different reading plans to read through the Bible in one year and this year i am using one that Tim Pointed out, here is a reading schedule if you want to try and catch up.

In addition to reading I am currently preparing these series for preaching:

• History of Christianity, supplementing the DVD series put out by Dr. Timothy George. I will be teaching this series, starting Feb 18th, to our youth. The videos are pretty straight forward and in my case will require much in the way of supplemental material, but this is a great tool to introduce any generation to their Christian heritage.

• Just finished, a four week series on Luke 15: the Prodigal son parable. I recently read Timothy Keller’s book The Prodigal God and enjoyed it very much. His presentation of the parable of the prodigal son is thought provoking and convicting. I spent some time myself after reading the book, studying and meditating on the parable and the fruit of that study became a series for our youth.

• A series on personal relational evangelism for teaching on Sunday nights. This study has been interrupted by youth events and family sickness, which i would rather not discuss, but in the end it has been fruitful for me and will, with the Holy Spirit’s power, prove profitable for the congregation as well.

I am also getting excited about Spring gardening. For those of you who don’t know I have been planting a garden for the last three year and I greatly enjoy this. Here’s what I am doing to get ready

• Planning what to plant. At this time each year I pull out my seed catalogs and my gardening books and think about what I want to raise. I haven’t finished my planning, mainly because i have to whittle my wish list down to a manageable workload. I only have so much space to work with and so much time to work. This is the worst part.

• Preparing the soil, tilling and fertilizing. This is the back breaking joy of late winter for me. The smells, the feel and the anticipation makes me feel like a kid sometimes.

• Getting together with friends who also love to get their hands dirty. This year a neighbor of mine is planning to start a garden and this has afforded me several conversations about the work. On top of that, Roger Nelson, my gardening mentor, and I can’t help but talk about putting seeds in the soil. The communal aspect of gardening is a plus that makes all the work worthwhile.

So this is what I have been up to. What about you?

Shockingly Humerous

If you are not aware of the organized evangelism of the new order Atheists, you should be. Over the past twenty years a new breed of Atheism has risen from the lofty towers of obscure intellectualism, but much of what they are using as propaganda falls short of intelligence.

Any denial of the existence of God falls into the realm of faith, for there is simply no means of proving or disproving the existence of the supernatural. The new atheists know this, and so they have redirected their attacks slightly away from God and clearly toward the Church. For a good introduction to this new breed and their efforts pick up and read Dr. Al Mohler’s new book Atheism Remix.

But, if you want to know some of their tactics in spreading their message you need look no further than the side of a city bus. Aparently their method of evangelism is to post anti-God propoganda on the side of city buses so that as we sip our lattes we can be made to weigh ideological issues. Yet, the slogans they are using may do little to further their cause.

So what is their message?  “There’s probably no God.  Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Perhaps, you agree that the idea is shocking, but hopefully you chuckle with me as you realize that their great effort falls flat with the use of the word probably.

If you concur you might want to check out Dr. Mohler’s blog and see his recent post of this issue…for a good quick laugh.

A Must Hear Sermon

One of my favorite classes in college was an Early American Lit course I took in my third year. One of the reasons it was so much fun was due to the fact that my professor was a bit odd and  she enjoyed every minute of the class, which was somewhat contagious, at least for me. My wife was in the class with me and she always ribbed me because I seemed to be the teachers pet in a way; and she was right.

But the reason this was so can easily be tied to the course content and the season of my life. I had just prior to this semester been born again of the Holy Spirit. I was a new creature and all of my life was changing. My desires were changing, and I wanted to know all I could about God and His people. Out of class I was reading the Bible for the first time and it was exhilarating, but in the classroom I was reading of the early pilgrims and their trials in the New World.

For me, it was the best of both worlds:  Getting credit for a 300 level class while feasting on the wisdom and trials of men and women of faith. It was in this class that I first met Jonathon Edwards, and was required to read his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. It fell heavily upon me and broke me apart as high tide upon a child’s sandcastle.  It is a powerful sermon and it has never left me.

Just last year I purchased a set of Christian Classics narrated and read by Max McLean, Which included Edwards sermon along with the Conversion of Augustine, Luther’s response at the Diet of Worms, Bunyan’s Pilrgrim’s Progress, and Whitefield’s The Method of Grace. Pilgrim’s progress stays in my car at all times, but these others are well worth the cost.

But the reason I am writing this is to let all of you know that you can download a free copy of Edward’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God for free here. Most of us have heard of this sermon, but there are few who have actually read, much less heard it narrated so well. It is billed as the most powerful sermon ever preached on American soil…take that to heart if you listen.

Adorable Things Kids Say

Luke – “Daddy did you know that honeybirds can fly backwards?” translation = hummingbird

Me – “They can?”

Luke – “Yes sir, and they can fly upside down too.”

Me – “What does a honeybird look like?”

Luke – “Kind of like a knockingbird.” translation = mockingbird