Free to Serve

Every Family Does Family Worship

Wednesday night, I sat in on an Equipping Matters class that Doug Young is teaching at MVBC on the topic of Family Worship. This session was called, "Implementing Family Worship." It was practical, insightful, and challenging.

I walked away reminded that in order to have intentional, deliberate, and productive times of family worship, I need to prepare. It's amazing how much thought we give to so many details in our lives--where we are going to go on vacation, how we are going to budget our time at work, what the next project at our house is going to be--and how comparatively little attention we give preparing to lead our families (or even ourselves) in the basic disciplines of Bible study and prayer.

Family worship is more than a few minutes gathered in the living room for a Bible study. It's way of saying that Jesus Christ is the most important person in our lives, and we are going to be spending time in his Word, understanding it and applying it.

And here is the thing: every family does family worship. Every dad is leading their family to worship something. It may be sports, it may be work, it may be technology--but the kids in the home know what is most important to mommy and daddy--even if they can't articulate it.

So the question really isn't, "Are you doing family worship," the question is, "What are you leading your family to worship today?"

What is an accountability partner?

One of the first, strange Christian terms I remembering hearing is "accountability partner"? What, exactly, is this? Frankly, the term can seem a little creepy.

But if you know your heart, you know there is absolutely nothing creepy about having a fellow Christian in your life to help you battle sin. Paul Tripp in his book, Instruments In the Redeemer's Hands has a great chapter on accountability and a great section that explains what it provides:

1) Accountability provides structure. Because life can be so busy, it is helpful to have a person or a group of people with whom you regularly discuss life's most important matters.

2) Accountability provides guidance. Practical, personal input is needed if we are to grow in Christ-like living. 

3) Accountability provides assistance. Sometimes we need more than "input." We need help. We need someone to literally  take us by the hand and walk us through a situation. Accountability can make that happen.

4) Accountability provides encouragement. It's not all about being rebuked. Sometimes it's about being reminded of ways the gospel is actively at work in your life.

5) Accountability provides warning. When someone is rebelling against necessary change, accountability is like a stop sign. To ignore that stop sign is to enter the danger zone.

Whether you like the term or not, do you have an accountability partner? If not, why not? Is it for lack of time, lack of interest, lack of conviction of sin? Look for someone that God may have already have put into your life who can encourage you to follow Jesus more closely.

Great Friday

Today is Good Friday. It's a special opportunity to reflect upon the death of Christ and especially the meaning of his death for the believer. It is hard to reflect upon Jesus' death without meditating on the idea of debt. 

Consider the refrain from the song, "Amazing Love.” It goes like this: "Amazing love, oh, what sacrifice;The Son of God given for me. My debt He pays and my death He dies, that I might live. To understand what happened to the Son of God the day he died, we have to understand the idea that we are indebted to God.

Sports, Sin, and Sanctification

Is it possible that, in some small way, our passion for sports is also a means of our sanctification? This must be the case. Enjoy March Madness. Root. Spend time with family and friends. Talk during the games, build relationships. Use the whole "event" as an opportunity to share life together--much the way friends build bonds while shooting a round of golf. 

Just don't let sports be your first love. Make sure your kids know you love Jesus more than your team. Make sure they know you love the body of Christ, the church, more than you love those players. And think twice before becoming a Portland Trailblazers fan. Seriously.

Christianity Explained

Christianity Explained is a great introduction to the Christian faith. I began taking a small group through it last Sunday (sans DVD), and I'm continuing it tomorrow as we think about what Christ accomplished on the cross. The cross is essential to become a believer, but it is also essential for continuing in the faith. I love this prayer of thankfulness for Christ's work on the cross:

The cross still stands and meets my needs

    in the deepest straits of the soul.

I thank thee that my rememberance of it

    is like David's sight of Goliath's sword

        which preached forth thy deliverance.

The memory of my great sins, my many temptations, my falls,

    bring afresh into my mind the rememembrance 

        of thy great help, of thy support from heaven,

        of the great grace that saved such a wretch as I am.

    There is no treasure so wonderful

        as that continuous experience of thy grace toward me

            which alone can subdue the risings of sin within:

Give me more of it.

The Peace of Christ is Reasonable

In 1750, the Puritan pastor, Jonathan Edwards, preached a sermon entitled, The Peace Which Christ Gives His True Followers. Edwards took John 14:27 as his text, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you."

He describes the peace Christ gives to those who follow him. It is an eternal peace, a sweet peace, a holy peace, and, perhaps surprisingly, a reasonable peace.

Christ's peace is a reasonable peace and rest of soul; it is what has its foundation in light and knowledge, in the proper exercises of reason, and a right view of things; whereas the peace of the world is founded in blindness and delusion. The peace that the people of Christ have, arises from their having their eyes open, and seeing things as they are. The more they consider, and the more they know of the truth and reality of things--the more they know what is true concerning themselves, the state and condition they are in; the more they know of God, and what manner of being he is; the more certain they are of another world and future judgment, and of the truth of God's threatenings and promies; the more their concsciences are awakened and enlightened, and the brighter and the more searching the light--the more is their peace established.

Christians are exposed to the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In that light we see things more clearly. Our eyes are open. We see reality as it actually is. We know ourselves better. We see our weaknesses and our strengths more clearly. We can be honest about how we have failed in ways that an unbeliever struggles.

It is not that the unbeliver can never understand himself, but he can't fully understand himself without the light of the gospel in his life. He sees only a bit of his true self the way you can see only some of a dark room when the door to the bright hallway is just cracked open. Most importantly, the believer is able to know God, his character and his ways. This is a knowledge out of the reach of someone without God's peace.

Notice what Edwards preached happens when the unbeliever begins to ask hard questions about life, when he "allows himself to think": 

The worldly-man's peace cannot be maintained but by avoiding consideration and reflection. If he allows himself to think, and properly to exercise his reason, it destroys his quietness and comfort.

Part of the evangelistic task for believers is getting others to think:

• What is life all about?
• What are we here for?
• What will happen when you die?
• Why do you make the decisions you do?

When a person starts truly and deeply thinking about life and death and time and space and reality and eternity, he or she cannot help but become troubled. He may not be honest about these troubles with others, but he feels the trouble deep within.

We were made by God to be at peace. It is our own sin and rebellion that has blinded us. We need God to open our eyes and, when he does--by breaking into our hearts with the gospel--we can truly, fully, and wonderfully know a peace which transcends understanding.

Pastors don't listen very well . . .

So argued the late William Still, pastor of Gilcomston South Church of Scotland. He wrote in The Work of the Pastor:

The hardest thing ministers, who are great talkers, find to do is to listen. Don't be making up your next speech while the other is talking. Listen! You may hear something you have never heard before. Don't assume that this problem is like many others you have dealt with. It may seem to be, but as no two people are exactly alike, so no two persons' problems are alike. You will find that many of your fixed ideas, which you may think are thoroughly Christian and apply to all cases, will be upset if you listen carefully enough to begin to see what the solution to a particular problem may be.

And so Still goes on to say that the best course of action is to ask questions, lots of questions, and to withhold offering counsel until you have listened as fully and as carefully as you can.

This seems like a wise word to all of us. After all, the church is full of men and women and children talking and listening to one another all the time. There are some of us who do a great job of listening. In fact, truth be told, it would be good for those of us who fall into this camp to do a little more talking! But then there are others who just won't stop talking. Another person's sentence is just an opportunity for us to figure out what to say next. 

Into which camp do you fall? Proverbs 15:23 is a good reminder for both camps, "To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!"

 

Why Didn't Jesus Pray to End World Hunger?

There is something striking in Jesus' teaching on prayer. On on hand he urges us to pray for anything. John 14:13-14, "Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it." And notice John 15:7, "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." These words lead us to big, bold, prayers, don't they? We should pray boldly for ourselves and for the world in which we live. It is, after all, a world rife with injustice. 

On the other hand, he urges to pray for something as simple as daily bread. Matthew 6:11 is not grand, it hardly seems bold. It is straightforward, modest, perhaps a little dull: "Give us this day our daily bread." 

This day.

Not "every day," not "forever," but simply "this day." Jesus is saying that our attention should be focused on the moment. Our prayers should be focused on getting us through this present trial, not the next one. Perhaps this is why the chapter ends, "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

I don't for a moment believe I should stop praying big, future-oriented, kingdom-minded prayers. Whether it is "Lord, come quickly!" or "End the evil of abortion" or "Prepare the hearts of godly men who might one day marry my daughters and the heart of a godly woman to one day marry my son." There are many wonderful, big prayers that take tomorrow into account.

And yet, the prayer of Matthew 6:11 is not that kind of prayer. "Give us this day our daily bread." God gave Israel just enough manna to last them one day. God's grace is like that. There is an everlasting supply, but it comes to us each and every day as we approach the throne of grace boldly with specific prayers:

• "God, help me today to serve you well." 
• "Give me the strength, today to resist temptation."
• "Allow me to trust, today, that you will provide all that I need."

It is easy to look forward to tomorrow and worry what is going to come next. But it is far better to leave tomorrow alone and plead with God to help us, provide for us, and strengthen us, today.

May the Gospel of Jesus Christ drive us happily to our knees in prayer. May we lay the world, which is already His, at the Lord's feet. And may we place our day, which he has already ordained, in the Lord's hand as we humbly ask Him to give us all we need, and nothing more, to get through today.

"Courageous Confidence in God"

The church that I am privileged to serve has a number of elderly saints. It is tempting in a church like this to think that death is something that comes upon the old. Though that is certainly true, we must all be prepared to die, and die well at that.

None of us is ready for death naturally. Death is unnatural and our flesh rejects it. God's Word and Spirit must do a supernatural work in our hearts to prepare us for death, whether it take place when we are 90 or 19.

Nancy Guthrie has edited a nice volume of essays on the topic of death. O Love That Will Not Let Me Go: Facing Death with Courageous Confidence in God. Published last year, the book includes contributions from the past, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, B.B. Warfield, Abraham Kuyper, Jonathan Edwards and the present, J.I. Packer, Michael Horton, Randy Alcorn, Timothy Keller.

Here's a taste from Keller, "Rubbing Hope into the Reality of Death":

Our future is not that we will live in an ethereal, immaterial world. You're not going to float around in the kingdom of God. You're going to eat; you're going to love. You're going to sing because you'll have vocal chords! In realms and degrees of joy, satisfaction, and power that you cannot now imagine, you're going to eat and drink with the Son of Man. On that day we're going to see each other and say, "I always knew you could be like this. I saw glimpses of it, flashes of it, and now, look at you!" You're going to get the life you always wanted. This is only the real defeat of death.

So the Christian hope, in distinction from the religions and cultures that offer you an impersonal future, gives you a world of love. In distinction from religions that give you an ethereal, immaterial future, the Christian hope gives you the life you've always wanted. Lastly, while other religions and cultures talk about an afterlife, none gives you the assurance of it. 

A New Year Prayer

From Valley of Vision . . .

Thou art my divine treasury in whom all fullness dwells,

    my life, hope, joy, peace, glory, end;

May I be daily more and more conformed to the,

    with the meekness and calmness of the Lamb in my soul,

    and a feeling sense of the felicity of heaven,

    where I long to join angels free from imperfections,

    where in me the image of my adored Saviour

        will be completely restored,

    so that I may be fit for his enjoyments and employments.