Let me pass on these thoughts from Mart De Haan of RBC.
He has made us interdependent on one another, dependent on Him, and hopeless apart from that for which we can take no credit. He has urged us to share in one another’s growth and joy by holding one another up before His throne of grace.
Dennis Ingolfsland, over at The Recliner Commentaries, has posted a web page with links to short biographies of Muhammad and Jesus. Just text, from original sources, without commentary.
Jared makes a good point on the Evangelical Manifesto released this week. “Evangelicalism won’t be reformed by a long document full of distinctions signed by a who’s who, particularly if that who’s who thinks signing this thing is one of the most meaningful things they can do.”
I wonder if this manifesto isn’t largely a reaction to the public statements of people like the Evangelical Environmental Network.
Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease?
While others fought to win the prize,
And sailed through bloody seas?
The Together for the Gospel conference was last week, and Challies has been keeping up with it. Here’s a list of audio downloads.
In 2001 at a CBMC conference (Christian Businessmen’s Connection), Dr. Howard Hendricks delivered these words in a three-part message on prayer.
Build teams committed to prayer. Now, I want to share with you because I find that very few Christians know this. Study this for yourself. Don’t go by my word. If you study prayer in both the Old and New Testament, what the Bible says about prayer mostly is addressed not to individuals, but to groups. That’s a revolutionary truth. Does that mean you don’t pray individually? Of course not. It means that you understand that God honors the collective ministry of a group of believers. The four guys who carried the man into the present of Jesus Christ, and the text says, “When He [Jesus] saw their faith, He said to the sick, ‘Rise, take up your bed, and walk.'” See, He takes very seriously the fact that you get a group of people who covenant before God to unite their hearts in prayer.
By the way, the greatest untapped reservoir in the United States and I’m sure many other countries as well is senior citizens. It’s the fastest growing segment of people in America and the fastest growing segment of that group is over 80. The tragedy is that many of these people are sliding from home, reaching for the bench, throwing in the towel, or can only look forward to retirement. May I remind you of the fact that the average American dies two years after retirement. The reason is they lose their purpose, and we are finding that the greatest group of prayer warriors we are seeing raised up all across our country is senior citizens, many of whom not only have time, but interest, money, and everything else so that they can invest in praying for others.
Another untapped reservoir is youth. There’s a church in our area that has a fantastic group of young people. I love them like crazy. They went to the elders of their church and asked, “Can we open the church on Wednesday mornings to pray?”
“Well, we’ll have to take that under consideration.”
So, after four or five meetings (typical elders), they finally decided, “No, we can’t do that. Continue reading Gathering to Pray
I’m not sure whether it makes it better or worse, to get an earworm without even hearing the song first. I got this week’s earworm from Mark Steyn’s Song of the Week: “Nature Boy.”
“Nature Boy” is a particularly aggravating earworm for me, because I find it kind of pretty. It’s the lyrics I despise. There’s a fair number of such songs on my proscribed list—“Imagine,” “One Tin Soldier,” “Green, Green Grass of Home.” I’m particularly handicapped by being a former lyricist. Because of that, I actually listen to lyrics (I think there are about six people in the country who share such a curse). This has caused me considerable suffering over my lifetime.
“Nature Boy,” according to Steyn (and I have to believe him, although it strains credulity) was written by a very odd duck named eden ahbez (no capital letters). He was, we are informed, a sort of 1940s proto-hippy, wandering around Los Angeles in a robe and sandals, with long hair and beard, living on fruits, vegetables and nuts. Somehow he managed to pass a grubby manuscript of the song to Nat King Cole’s manager, and by chance Nat actually looked at it and liked it. And so “Nature Boy” became a national hit in 1948.
There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far
Very far
Over land and sea…
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he.
It’s very clear from eden ahbez’ bio that the “strange enchanted boy” he’s describing is himself. The guy wrote a song about himself, and how wise he was.
Steyn doesn’t go into great detail about ahbez’ belief system, but it seems to have been much the same kind of Buddhist/Hindu/New Age stew that we’ve grown so sadly familiar with in our own times. So it shouldn’t be surprising that such a man would write a song in praise of himself. Humility really isn’t an important virtue to people who believe that the ultimate truth is that they are God. Or god. Or goddess. Or part of god.
It’s just rare to see it stated so baldly.
And what is the wisdom that Nature Boy has condescended to share with us?
The greatest thing
You’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return.
Bold stuff, huh? Love is the answer. Love is all you need. What the world needs now is love, sweet love.
Not a fresh insight. I can think of Someone two thousand years before who said that the chief commandment was to love God, and the second was to love our neighbor as ourselves.
It puts me in mind of the 1960s comedian Jackie Vernon. Vernon was famous for doing his routines completely deadpan, and making most of his jokes about himself (he was an inspiration to me. No, let’s be honest—he was my role model). He had a routine (if I’m crediting the right comedian) about looking for the meaning of life. He told of hearing a rumor of a wise man who lived on top of a high mountain, who could tell him the Answer. So he saved his money, traveled far (over land and sea, I have no doubt), climbed the high mountain, and finally flopped down, exhausted, at the wise man’s feet.
“Tell me the meaning of life,” he gasped.
“Life,” said the wise man, “is deep well.”
“What?” Jackie replied. “I spend all my money, come all this way, climb this mountain, wear myself out, and all you tell me is that life is a deep well?”
“You mean life isn’t a deep well?” asked the wise man.
That’s how I see Nature Boy philosophy.
Christ talked about love too. But He didn’t just tell us to love each other and everything would be all right.
He understood that none of us can love anyone enough to fix his/her heart, and that no love we can receive from each other can fix what’s so desperately wrong with our own hearts.
Instead of just gassing about love, He went into battle against evil, laid down His life, and conquered Death itself.
He even did Nature Boy one better, by having two natures.
Mart De Haan asks, “If God is good, but good isn’t God, how do we avoid making our worst mistakes with some of the best things in life?”
Chattanooga Matters (formerly the Chattanooga Resource Foundation) has a seminar from earlier this year with John Stonestreet of Bryan College on YouTube. It’s a nine part video series, and in this part, John makes a great statement. “In my view the worst thing about contemporary entertainment . . . [is that] it makes us think about things that aren’t important and keeps us from thinking about things that are. It distracts us from the real world. We are a distracted generation.”
Tonight, another insight from the bottomless, fetid pit of my wisdom.
I think of this insight as my own, but that’s probably just the result of ignorance. Likely thousands of real theologians said it before I did.
But I never read it in their books. I worked it out with my own tiny, smooth-surfaced brain.
So I think of it as my own.
Is there any saying that’s brought more comfort to sinners than this: “If you had been the only sinner in the world, Jesus would have died to save you”?
I suppose it’s a cliché, but I like it. It speaks to me.
And yet it always bothered me. Because it didn’t seem to actually rise from any biblical text. And I don’t take anything as absolute truth that isn’t either found in Scripture or plainly derived from a clear reading of Scripture.
And then I figured it out. Luke 15:3-7: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?”
And just down the page, Luke 15:8-10: “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?”
The point of these parables is not (I believe), as some will think, that everyone will be saved. The point is the concern of the Searcher for each individual who is lost.
In other words, if I had been the only sinner in the world, Jesus would have died to save me.
My apologies to everybody who came up with this first (probably in preaching on Luke 15).
But it’s a comfort to me.
Have a good weekend.