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Yearning for Heaven: Shifting Our Paradigm

By Tim Thorburn — 5 months ago

I share Cole’s desire that we live with eager expectation, longing for our resurrection into the age to come in the new heaven and the new earth (Rev 21:1). But Cole’s pervasive language of ‘heaven’ often confused me. Although he acknowledges our ultimate future is resurrected bodies in a new creation (13–14), he usually refers to that future state as ‘heaven’. He seems unaware of people like NT Wright emphasising that the Christian eschatological hope is not ‘going to heaven when you die’, but resurrection to real physical life when Christ returns.

Why is my generation of Christians often spiritually tepid and languid? Why can we be indistinguishable from the secular people around us? Cameron Cole has the answer—we are too earthly minded, with little or no yearning for heaven. We need to shift our paradigm. In his words, ‘most Christians live with very little awareness of their eternal trajectory’, and as a consequence our service to Christ feels ‘routine and obligatory’, ‘blah or meh’ (2).
He is not the first to make such a diagnosis. I remember as a young adult hearing Don Carson remark that western Christianity lacks clear and substantial hope—we live in and for the present age. And I live in a location on this spinning globe where it feels like heaven on earth is within touching distance, often to our loss.
Cole admits that he was deeply infected by this same disease until the accidental death of his 3-year-old son. This tragic event prompted a deep and ongoing reflection on the reality and significance of heaven, not just for his son, but for his own life and faith. This gives Heavenward a strong personal tone as Cole shares his own pain and growing hope.
Christ-Centred Heaven
I resonate with Cole’s diagnosis of the malaise that infects our Christianity. I too perceive that myself and my western co-heirs with Christ often have minimal day-to-day hope in life eternal, but are heavily earth-focussed. It needs to change. As an added point, we would do well to imitate our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world whose longing for Christ’s return is palpable.
His vision of heaven is Christ-centred. Heaven is wonderful because of the presence of Jesus, reigning in glory. Cole does mention other aspects of the future, but these are rightly overshadowed by the prospect of knowing Christ, even as we are already known.
He grounds his encouragement to be heavenly minded in rich biblical theology, drawn mainly from the Apostle Paul. The central section of the book (chapters 3–7) track Paul’s teaching on the present experience of heavenly realities brought about by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Bravo! These hopes are not an exaggeration or speculative fantasy.
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The Depth of Our Depravity

By Bill Ellif — 5 months ago

We were created to live in dependency upon God. This was not added because of man’s fall. It was how we were designed so that we would forever live in union with our Creator. Our sin explains why we are separated from God, and our separation from God explains our continuing, increasing sin. Without Him in our lives, we are “dead in our trespasses and sin” and have no capacity for godliness.

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)
How sinful are we? The answer is: totally. Apart from God and His intervention in our lives, we are completely and totally spiritually depraved.
Noah’s Day
… proved it in bold relief. Mankind had been separated from God’s presence because of their sin for ten generations, and the result was decades of ever-increasing evil. Finally, we come to Noah’s day, and we have recorded the assessment of mankind written above: “Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
Lest we think this is just an Old Testament phenomenon, listen to Paul’s description of every man in Romans, Chapter 3.
10 “There is none righteous, not even one;
11 There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.”
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A Biblical Case for the Christian Principles of Voting

By Ray E. Heiple Jr. — 5 months ago

Written by Ray E. Heiple Jr. |
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Wherever there is a choice between candidates, where one of those candidates, if elected, will clearly do more to uphold the moral law of God to protect the good and punish evil, you have a moral obligation before God to vote for that candidate. That is how you exercise your God-given authoritative position as voter, to protect the good and punish the evil. It does not matter which candidate you like more, which one looks or sounds more like you, which one will make your life easier in some way, which one acts nicer or friendlier, which one the newscasters like more, or anything else.

…that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence (1 Tim. 2:2b).
Christians are required to keep the moral law. Jesus said repeatedly “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15, 23; 15:10). The moral law declares the difference between good and evil. Good and evil are objective realities that are the same for all people, places, and times. Good and evil do not change because God does not change, and man does not change. The moral law is equally obligatory on all human beings because all human beings are equally and unchangeably created in the image of God. The summary of the moral law is the Ten Commandments. The summary of the Ten Commandments is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Every moral law: every good and every evil; can ultimately be placed under these two commands: love God and love your neighbor. Every evil ultimately breaks one of these two laws, every good ultimately keeps them.
The idea of law inherently includes authority. Authority is coercive power. Government is the imposition of some amount of authority given to some humans to exercise over others. Human governments are instituted—according to the will of God—to keep the moral law. They have authority from God for this and no other purpose. Scripture states that every authority figure is God’s minister for good (Rom. 13:4). God gives humans authority over other humans to protect the good and to punish the evildoer (Rom. 13:3; WCF 23:1). This is true of all human governments. The authority of parents, teachers, elders, contractors, employers, HR departments, army officers, civil magistrates, judges, baseball umpires, presidents, and babysitters is given solely for this and no other purpose: to protect the good and to punish the evil, or to say it another way, to uphold the moral law. To whatever degree authorities do not uphold the moral law they are abusing or being derelict in their duties.
Therefore, everyone in authority is accountable to God to do what they can, according to their power and position, to uphold the moral law of God. There are no other grounds for one person to have authority over another. Because all human beings are equally human, equally made in the image of God, no one person is born having inherent authority over another person, for there are no grounds for it when we consider human nature simply and exclusively. Now when we take into account additional factors beyond human nature, like relationships such as between children and parents, then we have a basis on which to subject one—children, to the rule of another—parents, which is good and right considering the origin and dependence of children on parents for everything. However, because that authority is relational and not according to some natural inequality, once children are adults, parents naturally lose their position of authority over them. However, while they are in authority over them, parents are accountable to God to exercise their authority to protect and promote the good and to punish the evil actions of their children. The relationship of parents to children makes this responsibility inescapable.
Similarly, every legal American citizen, not currently incarcerated or in some way incapacitated, is by way of relationship to this country in a position of authority for which he or she is accountable to God: to promote and protect the good and to punish the evil behavior of everyone under this nation’s government. The United States’ Constitution is the highest human authority in this nation. And according to that constitution, those in positions of authority are put there by the authoritative election of the citizenry. Therefore Romans 13 applies directly to you as you exercise your authority by voting. Wherever there is a choice between candidates, where one of those candidates, if elected, will clearly do more to uphold the moral law of God to protect the good and punish evil, you have a moral obligation before God to vote for that candidate. That is how you exercise your God-given authoritative position as voter, to protect the good and punish the evil. It does not matter which candidate you like more, which one looks or sounds more like you, which one will make your life easier in some way, which one acts nicer or friendlier, which one the newscasters like more, or anything else. The only thing that matters, accordingly to your moral obligation before God to do whatever you can with your God-given authority to protect good and punish evil, is which candidate will actually do that when elected? Which candidate will do more to punish evil and protect the good as these categories are defined by the word of God?
To NOT vote according to this one question is to be derelict or abusive in the authority you have as a voter. Now no one exercises authority perfectly: no parent, police officer, professor, or president. But when you are in any of these or other positions of authority, you are obligated, in every instance, to do what is most good and least evil. Consequently, when you are in the authoritative position of voter, you are obligated by the authority of your position, to put people into government (authoritative) offices who will exercise their authority most in accordance with this same law of God, which binds and is the reason for all authority. So, if in the providence of God there are only two persons who can realistically be elected president, and one of them would clearly do more to protect the good and punish evil, you must vote for that person. It does not matter that both of those persons are seriously flawed, have done bad things, or have other checks against them. If in the providence of God, one of them will be running this country, and if by that same providence you have been given the great authority, privilege, and sober responsibility of choosing which one, you must not be derelict in your duty, you must not rebel against God because you don’t like the two choices He has sovereignly put before you. You must vote for the one who you have sound reasons to believe will better do his duty to protect the good and punish the evil doer. If you can see a difference between them according to this ultimate standard, then to not vote, or to vote for neither of the only two who can win, is to abuse and misuse the authority of voter, that God has graciously given to you. If one of them will clearly do better, or to say it another way, if one of them will clearly do LESS EVIL, then to not vote for that one is to not faithfully exercise your authority of voter, and the reason for which you have been given it, in accordance with the will and word of God.
Now, is there a discernable difference between the only two candidates who at this date can realistically be elected president, according to the raison d’être of all authorities: punishing the evil and protecting the good? It seems to me on clear moral issues like abortion, sexual immorality, and the monstrous evils of the transgender movement, which has been pushing their views into elementary schools, that the choice is as clear and obvious as night and day. Right now, all over this country, public school children in fifth grade and even earlier are being shown videos and other materials encouraging them to consider sinful and harmful views of sexual orientation, gender identity, masturbation, and other related evils. Increasingly, parents across America are not being told that their children have, through the manipulation and indoctrination of transgenderism, “identified” as something other than the boy or girl that they genetically and unchangeably are. Claims of schools providing powerful hormones and puberty blockers to pre-pubescent children without parental consent are on the rise. As are alleged instances where children have been taken from their parents for not going along with their child’s new “gender identity,” and all of the Dr. Frankenstein procedures “experts” and authorities are saying are necessary to keep one’s child from suicide: including permanent sterilization, maiming, and disfiguring. Can there be a more significant issue than this? Would anyone seriously set disputed and questionable issues—like policies of welfare, immigration, and climate change with all of their complexities, possibilities, and wide-ranging consequences and details, on which experts continually disagree and so-called solutions are regularly proven wrong—alongside of promoting, practicing, and legally protecting the maiming and sterilizing of otherwise healthy children? On these life and death issues, on these issues directly addressed by the Bible, there is a clear as day choice. One candidate and one party celebrate transgenderism and is seeking to mandate “gender-affirming care” in schools, hospitals, and everywhere else. The other candidate and party are trying to protect parental rights and consent for their children, and employees’ rights to dissent from and opt out of transgender-promoting activities without losing their jobs. You have been entrusted with authority from God to vote for one of these candidates. You will answer for how you wielded that authority according to God’s one and only standard for all authority: protecting the good-doer and punishing the evil-doer. Now what will you do?
Ray E. Heiple Jr. is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Senior Pastor of Providence PCA in Robinson Twp., PA

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On Humility

By Bill Muehlenberg — 5 months ago

As William Law (1698-1761), the English author of A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life once put it: “Humility is nothing else but a right judgment of ourselves.” That’s it. True humility is knowing who we really are, in the light of knowing God as he really is. Not only that, but when we contemplate Christ and his work, that too can only lead us to humbling ourselves and getting on our knees before him.

I make no claim to being a paragon of Christian virtues, including the virtue of humility. So as usual, I am writing a piece like this as much for myself as for anyone else. And I will say it at the outset: please pray for me in this regard. I have a long way to go in reflecting real biblical humility – and in eschewing carnal pride.
But I can perhaps say a few words about this matter. Sadly, most of us have known Christians, including too many Christian leaders, who may lack in basic humility, love and grace. They can be rather full of themselves, they can be proud, they can look down on others, they can be condescending, and so on.
And this might especially be true of those who are more intellectually inclined, be they teachers or writers or theologians or academics or scholars. Great learning need not make one proud, but often it can lead in that direction. So care must be taken here. And again, since I tend to be rather cerebral, I too certainly need to be on guard here.
Like you, I have experienced some of these folks who seem to have little time for me, as they busy themselves in their academic pursuits. They can ignore you or slight you and make you feel like you are a nobody. But on the other hand, I have also known some very bright and very-well known Christian leaders and scholars who have been quite the opposite.
They will take time out of their busy schedules to acknowledge me or reply to me or even thank me for something. This has happened to me at times when I write a book review of some well-known and distinguished author for example. Sometimes they will respond to me on the social media or on my own website and thank me for my review and say a few kind words.
So being full of ‘smarts’ does not of necessity mean you will become proud, aloof, arrogant and out of touch with the mere masses. But too often this can be the case. So let me speak to this a bit more, including looking at what steps we might take to ensure this is not the case in our own lives.
On Humbling Ourselves
Scripture of course often speaks about humility, and its opposite, pride. I want to draw upon just one passage here, James 4:10. It says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” One major question I at least want answered is this: How do I humble myself?
Again, while not claiming to be an expert in this area, I can offer a few worthwhile answers. It was John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion who famously spoke of the need for a proper basis of all true knowledge: the knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves.
And in that order. As we begin to know God as he really is, that cannot but help impact us and help us to see ourselves more truly and more accurately. As we get more and more genuine knowledge and understanding of God and self, the only real result should be for us to be humbled.
How can we not become humble as we contemplate who God really is in all his majesty and greatness and holiness and purity and perfection?
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Natural Disaster and Pastoral Comfort

By Jim Elliff — 5 months ago

God intends either discipline or testing by what is suffered, and both produce the good of improved sanctification.[29] We are not allowed to take “natural calamity” out of that package of necessary suffering for the believer. God in His providential care designs the calamity as a blessing in sometimes macabre dress. We are to “consider it all joy . . . when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”[30] Suffering is a foundational aspect of sanctification.

We must acknowledge that the most troubling problem emerging from any large scale natural disaster is not that people die. That is a real human and emotional issue, but not the most significant one. Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, tornados or floods do not change the statistics on the number of the human race experiencing death by even one digit. A typhoon in Bangladesh swept away between 300,000 and 500,000 lives in 1970,[1] and the worldwide influenza pandemic of 1918 exterminated between 50,000,000 and 100,000,000,[2] but neither of these catastrophic events changes the grim prognosis that every member of the human race will die. We are dying at a hundred percent rate already.
It is also not the overarching dilemma that natural events destroy what we have made—our homes, buildings, roads, etc. No one should be surprised when a house or building is brought to nothing in a mudslide in view of the fact that God declares that decay will eventually destroy all things anyway.[3] We are promised the cataclysmic destruction of the entire earth as we know it in the future.[4] Some have lost these things earlier than they had hoped they would, but that they would be destroyed should never be in debate with evangelicals. So there is nothing new here either.
Furthermore, it should not be a conundrum to us that many people face an alteration of their existence due to catastrophe. A new order will come to everyone eventually; heaven and a new earth will be experienced by some[5], and hell for others. Death alters everything, as will Christ’s return.
We should also remember that there is no meaningful dissimilarity in the horribleness of death in a natural disaster as opposed to normal times. If it were possible to ask a man in the sanitary environment of a hospital what it is like to breathe his last breath when he is drowning in his own fluid, he would tell you it is every bit as horrific as being drowned in a flood. Because God mercifully allows the body to experience shock in times of fright, many will thankfully have some anesthesia when they die, whether natural or narcotic. But death is still a ravaging enemy wherever and however it is encountered. Some may linger in the hospital room for days before they die, while others under the rubble caused by an earthquake painfully expire from dehydration. A woman may die instantly when a hurricane pushes her house down, while her sister may end her two year struggle with an insidious malignancy with screams. Which is easier?
Everyone will die; everyone will lose whatever they have; everyone will face a completely altered existence; everyone will experience the horror of last moments on earth. We have already bought into all of these as theological verities. So what is so arrestingly unique about a natural disaster? Why do we become poetic and communicative about it? Why do we not hear news commentators saying, “Today an earthquake in India did the normal: It took a few thousand lives, destroyed property, took people to another existence and did it in the typically horrible way. The stock market was up today with heavy volume . . .”
We are alarmed because a natural disaster brings dramatic focus to these universal inevitabilities. It paints them in vivid color right before our faces so that we cannot escape them. We see how impotent we are. Our invincibility evaporates; our vulnerability parades in front of us and mocks us. We watch as people just like us, going about their business, lose everything and die in a moment. It grabs us precisely because it is us we are hearing about. Natural disaster is not about something new happening, or even about something unusual happening, but about something that has always happened and is inescapable for each of us—and more precisely, for me.
All death and destruction comes from the most cataclysmic event of history, the fall of man, and from the resulting just judgment of God.e[6] Our natural world groans under the resultant bondage.e[7] Believers, of all people, should learn to reconcile themselves to this fact. One pastor was reminded by God after the loss by flood of all his awards and letters from important people not to be concerned. Reportedly God said to him, “Don’t worry . . . I was going to burn them anyway.” Whether he heard these words directly or not, the sentiment was true.[8]
The certainty that death, decay, and destruction are going to happen anyway to all of us and to all of our things, however, does not eradicate the internal pain that believers may experience. Even Christ, who said, “Let not your heart be troubled,” was “distressed and troubled,” and “deeply grieved, to the point of death” by the weight of sin placed on Him. With perfect knowledge and absolute trust, He still worked out His peace with the cross on Gethsemane. Granted, His was an infinitely bigger burden than ours, but there is surely a lesson here.
Some of the greatest of saints have also been depressed about losses or disruptions (David, Elijah, Spurgeon, and Martin Lloyd Jones, etc.). Ongoing emotional troubles remind us that disaster of any sort is often an immense trial, spinning off secondary disasters, like hurricanes spin off tornadoes, even among believers. If this is so, we more-average saints must have much aid in understanding and coping with natural disaster when it affects us or those we love dearly. What can help?
When disaster occurs, the mental/emotional state of the believer is directly bound to his spiritual perception. Ultimately, and often immediately, believers can overcome a debilitating freefall into anxiety over what has transpired. It becomes the pastoral job to not only empathize, but to lead believers to have a biblical perspective about disaster and loss as soon as possible—preferably prior to the event occurring. It is concerning this perspective that I wish to direct our attention.
Nature Obeys God
The disciples said of Jesus, “. . . even the winds and the sea obey Him?”[9] This verse is often employed apologetically with skeptics for the purpose of proving that Jesus is actually God. The believing world has almost always asserted, in pacific times, that God controls nature. The farmer prays to God for rain for his dry fields, just as the Christian school teacher requests from God clear skies for the class picnic, because we assume that God has everything to do with it. But does this general, almost presupposed evangelical belief extend far enough when times are more difficult?
As an illustration of how God’s oversight of nature may be addressed, the Second London Baptist Confession clarifies the extent of God’s control in its first and second under “Divine Providence.” It is worth a careful reading:

God who, in infinite power and wisdom, has created all things, upholds, directs, controls and governs them, both animate and inanimate, great and small, by a providence supremely wise and holy, and in accordance with His infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable decisions of His will. He fulfils the purposes for which He created them, so that His wisdom, power and justice, together with His infinite goodness and mercy, might be praised and glorified. (Job 38:11; Ps. 135:6; Isa. 46:10,11; Matt. 10:29-31; Eph. 1:11; Heb. 1:3)
Nothing happens by chance or outside the sphere of God’s providence. As God is the First Cause of all events, they happen immutably and infallibly according to His foreknowledge and decree, to which they stand related. Yet by His providence God so controls them, that second causes, operating either as fixed laws, or freely or in dependence upon other causes, play their part in bringing them about. (Gen. 8:22; Prov. 16:33; Acts 2:23)[10]

This historic confession has not overstated the biblical principle. The Psalmist speaks convincingly concerning the control of God over natural events:
Whatever the Lord pleases He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deep places. He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth. He makes lightening for the rain; He brings the wind out of His treasuries.[11]
It was God who ordained each of the natural plagues on Egypt, for instance, including turning water to blood, filling the land with frogs, sending hail, and devastating locusts. Even Pharoah recognized this.[12]
Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down to the earth. And the Lord rained hail on the land of Egypt.[13]
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Godly Parenting as a Witness to the World

By Brian Cosby — 5 months ago

The Apostle Paul writes, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). Both the negative (discipline) and the positive (instruction) are in view here. Disciplining and teaching children involve more than just passing on biblical knowledge or enforcing rules. It means shaping their character and helping them to delight in the Word of God.

The Bible offers numerous instructions on how parents should raise their children, guiding them not only to live moral and upright lives but also to understand and embrace their identity within the home, church, and state. But godly parenting is also a witness to the watching world and is a distinguishing characteristic between those who belong to God and those who do not.
The Covenantal Context
One of the key distinctives of godly parenting is that its foundation is the bound relationship God has with His people, known in Scripture as covenant. The covenantal context emphasizes that raising children is not just about instilling good behavior, but about nurturing them in the fear and knowledge of the Lord so they can grow into their role as participants in God’s ongoing story of redemption. In the Bible, a covenant is more than just a contract; it’s a bound relationship between God and His people with both promises and obligations.
When parents realize that they are raising covenant children—children who are part of God’s covenant community—they understand that their parenting has a purpose beyond mere survival or success in this world. They are raising children who are meant to live in relationship with God, embracing the promises He has made to His people, and fulfilling their calling as children of the covenant.
Godly Parenting
“Godly” parenting assumes that the parents are believing, thinking, and living in such a way that reflects God’s will for them as revealed in His Word. They are marked by the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23) and are fulfilling their role as parents according to the precepts and commands of Scripture. Deuteronomy 6:4–7 states:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
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The Uncarnation of Christ?

By J.A. Medders — 5 months ago

Written by J.A. Medders |
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
We need the truth about Jesus, but not without Jesus himself. Who would ever settle for accuracies of a friend and yet never experience friendship? Systematic theology, which we love, doesn’t love us in return. But Jesus loves us. The doctrine of the virgin birth cannot comfort us when the news of cancer hits home—but the one born of the virgin will. Do you see the difference? Francis Schaeffer put it this way, “Doctrine is important, but it is not an end in itself. There is to be an experiential reality, moment by moment.” A real Jesus really matters.

One of the devil’s greatest ploys is to distance us from the realness of Jesus. While heresy is a handy tool for the evil one, an orthodoxy wielded and tilted at the wrong angle can also do his work.
Doctrine is vital to the Christian life. I must state that upfront for the sake of everything else I’m about to say, lest I’m misread. We can never diminish or dilute the importance of sound doctrine. My concern is when our theology never rises above the ink set on the page. I want to warn us about doing theology in a way that depersonalizes our Lord. Any approach to doctrine that dehumanizes Jesus of Nazareth is deadly to our spirituality.
If our understanding of eternal sonship, substitutionary atonement, Christus Victor, resurrection, and the lot are only seen as sentences and standards to maintain, we are lost at night in the snowy mountains. It’s dangerous. We need to stay near the light, the path, and the 98.6 degrees of warmth of Christ’s risen body. Never lose the realness of Jesus.
My spirituality changed forever when it hit me in a fresh way that Jesus is more than doctrinal data to affirm. He is a real person. Human. Not a theory or mythology. Jesus is a Jewish man. He is incarnate—Son of God, now in human flesh. He has the features—hair, facial construction, build, accent, etc.—of an Israelite born in the first century and grew up in Nazareth. Today, he sits on the throne, reigning over the universe, loving, leading, interceding, and caring for his people. He is drawing people to himself, too. I know this seems elementary—it’s not. It’s everyday Christianity.
Our flesh and the devil are happy to uncarnate Christ—to reduce him to doctrinal points we affirm and then ignore him. But spiritual theology rejoices over Christ—his person and work—as our divine and personal Savior, Lord, and Friend.
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Digital Discipleship for Your Children (5) Addiction to Distraction

By David de Bruyn — 5 months ago

True reality is not found in the mere visual. “For we walk by faith, not by sight”. Christian imagination enables us to experience hoped-for things as substantial, and things not seen as if they are evidentially present (Hebrews 11:1). Biblical imagination actually prioritises words over images. It focuses on the meaning of words, particularly God’s Words.

To prepare our children for a life that will likely involve vast amounts of time on the internet, we have to warn them about what is addictive and destructive. No one begins a practice and hopes to end up enslaved by it. The nature of addiction is a voluntary surrender to more and more mastery by a pleasure some habit. Therefore, we have to point out the danger before they walk into it.
On the internet, that addiction is the pleasure of novelty. The web offers a non-stop array of links to click, messages to check, apps to open, likes and comments to view. The architecture of the web is built upon our love of the new and the alluring. Films such as The Social Dilemma have well-documented how much of this was designed by those familiar with brain chemistry and psychology. The addiction to social media and to the web in general is no accident. It is a design feature that enriches some as it enslaves others.
In the meantime, not only does an addiction to continual checking of our phones or apps grow, but something is lost. That loss is the brain’s ability to focus without distraction. The habit of needing the dopamine hit for checking email or WhatsApp or some other notification literally trains our brains to want that “relief” after just minutes of concentration. We think we are just “multi-tasking”, but we are actually addicted to distraction.
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The Ordinary Means of Ordinary Outreach: Reaching Our World without Losing Our Way, Part 2: Sacrament

By Nick Robison — 5 months ago

Our secular world tells us to look inside ourselves so that we might find the good within, but at the Lord’s Table, we are asked to examine ourselves so that we might find our weakness and sin so that we might be taught to rely more and more upon Christ’s sacrifice, which becomes more endearing to us once we have determined through introspection that we are lost apart from his broken body and redeeming blood. As Gentiles were invited to humble themselves during the Day of Atonement, so we invite our guests to examine themselves and pray that they might find their need for Christ and become jealous for what we have found signed and sealed in those little tokens of Christ’s body and blood.

The mission and purpose of church outreach are best summarized by Christ in the commission that he gave his church: to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all of his commandments. These marching orders tell us that by reaching out to the world, we are to draw them into the covenant communion of the Church. Discipleship does not end at the water cooler at work or wherever the gospel is first believed. It follows the road that brings us into communion with the people of God.
Unfortunately, many churches and denominations have adopted a policy of outreach that involves conforming the church to the image of the world in some way, thus making the church more palatable. For instance, if the church is seeking to draw in more young people the worship becomes more youthful and energetic. On the other hand, if the church is targeting another niche group, such as “cowboys,” the service will take on a more western theme.
Now it might be good to offer a little conviction on this matter. This is something that churches can do without even realizing it. In 2016, I know of many members of Presbyterian churches who voted for Donald Trump that were made to feel as if they had done something immoral and hurtful by things said from the pulpit. I know of others whose experience was the reverse. They had not voted for President Trump and were anxious about what was to come from his presidency, only to find in their churches, rather than Christ centered worship that left political concerns in the parking lot, a political victory parade in the guise of Christian fellowship. We must ask the question and be serious in answering it, “Do our church services, how we decorate, or how we preach focus on attracting only certain kinds of people with specific political affiliations to our congregations?”
I bring this up to make a point. If our worship of Christ is made contemporary to our present time or culture, our worship becomes enslaved to current events and proclivities. By allowing the secular to invade the sacred, we have tragically, and perhaps inadvertently, made the sacred less appealing to those who have grown weary of the vanity of the secular. This is precisely what we see taking place in our world. More and more people are beginning to wake up to the fact that they have been sold a lie by those who seem influential in the world. Atheism has not offered them the hedonistic utopia that they were promised. Guilt and shame did not disappear with their belief in God, and now, rather than having a compassionate and merciful God to go to with their sin, they have nothing but a blind, pitiless, and indifferent universe of stuff. These people have judged the secular and have found it to be wanting.
How unfortunate it is that all some churches have to offer these people is more secular art, music, motivational speeches, and politics all rebranded with a Jesus FishTM slapped on it. We, as Presbyterians, must have something to offer the world that is not of this world. Something like the Kingdom of God! (John 18:36)
There is nothing more peculiar to the Church of Christ than the sacraments that He has given to us, through which he gives us the grace that sets us apart from the secular world. These sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are things that are not given to the world but only to those in the household of faith. Baptism is given to those who have believed in Christ and their children, whereas the Lord’s Supper is given to those who are able to feed upon Christ as he is offered in the elements of bread and wine by faith alone.
The exclusivity of the sacraments, however, does not make them unserviceable in our outreach to the world. Christianity is not a gnostic religion, whereby we hide secret knowledge from outsiders. There is no “inner sanctum” of knowledge or revelation that the church has been commanded to keep out of the sight of the unenlightened.
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A La Carte (October 15)

By Tim Challies — 5 months ago

Today’s Kindle deals include at least one must-read (Jerry Bridges’ Respectable Sins) and several other good picks such as The Well-Watered Woman. Olasky’s Pivot Points and Lament for a Father are interesting reads as well.
(Yesterday on the blog: Great Gifts but Little Faithfulness)

“Are you feeling unfulfilled? Taken advantage of? Do you feel like a victim? Are you convinced your marriage is doomed? Are you realizing that your children are holding you back? That motherhood is unsatisfying? That as a woman you are trapped, unappreciated, and probably suffering from unrecognized trauma or undiagnosed mental disorders? Do you believe your husband has narcissistic tendencies, that he is insensitive, that he doesn’t do enough, that he doesn’t care enough, that he isn’t the person you were meant to marry?” If so, Melissa wants to chat.

Kevin Burrell tells about a neat relationship between two very different birds and then draws some spiritual applications.

Kevin DeYoung offers some counsel to the church at election time. “I believe pastors must be careful how they lead their churches in our politically polarized culture. I know there are good brothers and sisters who may disagree with these principles and their practical implications. But at the very least, pastors must disciple their leaders and their congregations in thinking through these matters wisely and theologically.”

This is a neat article from Christianity Today (which may require a free account to read). It tells about Barry “Butch” Wilmore who continues to be an elder from space.

What is Calvinism? Writing for Ligonier, Herman Selderhuis explains in some detail.

Rebekah tells about an “eye-opening experience as a result of a Facebook marketing error.”

I thank you that you call your children, Lord, to faith in Christ your Son, our Savior, and to a home where we will feast forever, with you.

One scandalous hypocrite makes the world suspect that all professors are so.
—Thomas Watson