Keep it on Christ, Chris... keep it on Christ.

God has certainly taught me much in the past year... it has been a difficult year, to be sure... but I've understood lately just how much this difficulty was necessary for God to grow me just a bit more.

As many who might read this may already know, my relationship with my ex-girlfriend was ended a little over a year ago. This has been incredibly difficult for me to deal with, because I was moving towards making the relationship a bit more... ehh... permanent, if you will. Yah. Almost bought the ring, yo. Almost bought it.

Having that kind of relationship taken from me rocked me to the core, I have to admit (mostly because she was yet another one of the idols of my idol-factory heart). I was shaken and beaten, and didn't know what to do with myself. I was so sure that marriage was where that relationship was supposed to go. But God has taught me a good thing lately, a thing which - among other things - I'm not sure I would have been able to learn without being shaken so thoroughly (coffee, anyone?).

I have been thinking about my pastor's view on evangelism, which is that the fruit of his ministry isn't really his concern, it's God's. He's always said that, as he preaches the Gospel, if God decides to fill the church with 1000 people, he will praise God. If God decides to fill the church with 10 people, he will praise God. Whatever fruit God decides to bear from his ministry should have no effect on his calling to preach the Gospel and nothing but the Gospel. He keeps it on Christ.

In meditating on this, I have realized that I was focusing so intently on the fruit that I thought would be reaped from being in a Christ-glorifying relationship with a godly woman (namely, marriage), that I completely lost sight of the fact that I had been in a Christ-glorifying relationship with a godly woman. I was part of something which brought glory to the name of the Son of God, and seemed to have forgotten how much of a blessing this was, and how both of us can now glorify Christ more fully and deeply in our separate lives, having been a part of that relationship for a time, than if it had never happened.

Praise God for His faithfulness and goodness, and for His glory! Lamentations 3:37-38, Job 1:21, 2:10.

So, my prayer is that God would continue to remind me of this as He grows me. No matter what the fruit may be that He decides to bring about in my life, that is His business to deal with, not mine. My business is to bring glory to the name of Jesus, by the power of God's Spirit, and to lead others to the foot of the Cross in any and all ways that God will choose to use me to do so. As I do that, I pray that I would remember that anything that comes about in my life as a result is simply God's will unfolding, and that His will is good.

Keep it on Christ, Chris... let God take care of the rest.

Blogging...

...I'd like to do it again.

Yeah.

I think I'll do that.

Not overthrown by scholarship

The conviction was growing in me that life is too short and the church is too precious for a minister of the Word to spend his life trying to recreate a conjectured Jesus. There was work to be done—very hard work—to see what is really there in the God-given portrayal of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels. [... T]he portrayal of Jesus in the four Gospels has not been overthrown by scholarship. The appearance of overthrow arises from the unwarranted creation of criteria of authenticity that by definition will rule out aspects of the New Testament portrayal. Thankfully, God has raised up several generations of careful, rigorous, and faithful scholars who are not cowed by the radical critics and who patiently go about their work establishing the historical credibility of the four Gospels. I thank God for them. I don’t mean that they provide proof of the Gospels. I mean they show that the attacks on the historical validity of the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels are not compelling.

-John Piper, "What Jesus Demands from the World" (pp. 32, 33)

The peculiar notion that he alone is Lord.

So, I'm not sure what my exact thoughts are on Mark Driscoll's (alleged) pulpit "etiquette", but what I do know is that the sassy truth he speaks is, at times, very refreshing... not to mention that it just makes me laugh out loud!

I just started reading John Piper's "What Jesus Demands from the World" today, and here is what Driscoll had to say about the book (taken from the back cover):

"This is a peculiar book. It assumes that the four Gospels are true and unified. It assumes that Jesus not only does things for us but also makes demands of us. And it assumes that Jesus has authority over everyone regardless of their religion, gender, race, income, sexuality, nationality, or culture. You will likely not agree with every point. But you will hear from a Jesus who is more than a soft-spoken, effeminate, marginalized, Galilean hippie-peasant in a dress and has the peculiar notion that he alone is Lord."

Piper on the Prosperity "Gospel"

The prosperity gospel is alive and well in America... but it is "a gospel contrary to the one [we] received" (Galatians 1:9) and a message which "will turn [people] away from listening to the truth" and cause them to "wander off into myths" (2 Timothy 4:4).

It is good to our souls to hear truth spoken out against it:

Bad day

What happens when I don't want to trust in God? What do I do when I don't want to accept the possibility that things won't go my way? Where do I go when laying things at His feet means I might experience more pain?

Trusting in God has always seemed so easy to me, because all of the possible outcomes were at least "acceptable" in my mind.

It's easy to trust God when you don't have to fear what He might do with your life.

But what about when I don't want what He might give to me?

That's hard... and it is a test of faith that requires prayer. Help me in prayer, whoever might be reading this.

In Christ Alone, the Remix

I love hymns. They are God centered, glory driven, grace distilling, time tested, biblically rooted gold mines of truth that we sing back to God in response to what He teaches us through the ministry of the preached word. But sometimes, the truth to be found in hymns is a bit tough to find because of the difficult wording... so I like to take some liberties of translation in my head sometimes to get at what the author of the hymn was actually saying. I did this here before with one of my favorite hymns, Before the Throne of God Above, and I'd like to do the same with one of my other favorite hymns, In Christ Alone.

------------

My one and only hope for salvation is only ever found in Christ,
He is the source of all good and strength in me, and the reason why I worship;
He is my Cornerstone, He is the support of all that I am, He is my solid Ground,
And it is He who stands firm through even the fiercest drought and storm, both physical and spiritual.
How high His love is shown to be, how deep His peace is proven,
When my fears are calmed, and when I no longer have to struggle!
He is my Comforter, He is my Everything,
So it is here, in the love of Christ, that I stand.

Only ever in Christ! He became a human:
The complete fullness of God in the form of a helpless baby!
He gave Himself to us as a gift of love and righteousness,
And was despised by the very ones that He came to save.
And on that cross, as Jesus died,
The just wrath of God toward our sin was answered for, and satisfied,
Because every single sin of God's people was put on Jesus.
I have become alive, and continue to live, in the death of Christ.

His body laid there in the tomb:
The Light of the world, put to death by the darkness of sin.
Then, bursting forth in the fullness of His glory,
He rose again from the grave!
And now, since He stands victorious over sin and death,
The curse of sin and its ability to kill me no longer have any control over me,
Because I belong to Christ, and He belongs to me;
My life and soul have been purchased forever by the precious blood of Christ.

I no longer am bound by guilt in this life, and I no longer fear death:
This is the power of Christ in me.
From the beginning of my life, to my final breath,
Jesus is Lord over my life and my destiny.
And none of Satan's power, nor any plan made by man,
Can ever take me away from His hand.
Until He returns again, or decides to take me home to heaven,
I will stand here in the power of Christ!