The Aquila Report Archives - Page 15 of 942

Parents, Know and Defend Your Rights

By Kristen Waggoner — 4 months ago

The Wailes and Roller families recently joined with another family to enlist the legal help of Alliance Defending Freedom. They filed a lawsuit against JeffCo for refusing to give parents truthful, pertinent information about their children’s overnight accommodations, thus hampering the rights of parents to make informed decisions about their children’s upbringing, education, and privacy. At the core of the school district’s policy that allows this egregious behavior is the idea that the government can raise kids better than parents.

When Joe and Serena Wailes allowed their 11-year-old daughter to attend a trip to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., sponsored by their public school district, they were told she would room with three other fifth grade girls. It wasn’t until their daughter was in her room getting ready for bed on the first night of the trip that she discovered she would share a bed with a boy who self-identified as a girl.
Bret and Susanne Roller live in the same school district in Colorado, Jefferson County Public Schools, locally known as “JeffCo.” When they sent their 11-year-old son on a sixth grade camping trip known as Outdoor Lab, they were told their son would be in a cabin with six to 30 other boys, including a male high school counselor. It wasn’t until their son was in the mountains—away from home and without any means of communication—that he realized the school district had lied. His 18-year-old counselor was not male but was instead a “non-binary” female.
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A Renewed Mind, a Transformed Life

By Chris Larson — 4 months ago

Through the light of Scripture, we begin to understand God’s holy character and realize our sinfulness—learning all that was lost in Eden, and discovering why we long to return from exile to the Father’s fellowship. That leads us to turn in repentance and look with joy to the redemption found only in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Did you know that Romans 12:2 is regularly one of the most shared Bible verses across the entire internet?
If you have been familiar with Dr. R.C. Sproul’s ministry for some time, it wouldn’t surprise you to learn that Romans 12:2 is a frequently discussed verse at Ligonier as we think through new ways to serve Christians who are pursuing renewed minds. When he named Ligonier’s daily radio broadcast in 1994, Dr. Sproul turned to Romans 12:2 to describe the broadcast’s purpose: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” From this verse, our farthest-reaching ministry initiative, Renewing Your Mind, was launched. Dr. Sproul explains:
God gives us the revelation of sacred Scripture in order for us to have our minds changed so we begin to think like Jesus. Sanctification and spiritual growth [are] all about this. If you just have it in your mind and you don’t have it in your heart, you don’t have it. But you can’t have it in your heart without first having it in your mind. We want to have a mind informed by the Word of God.
In another exhortation from his classic book, The Holiness of God, Dr. Sproul wrote:
The key method Paul underscores as the means to the transformed life is by the “renewal of the mind.” This means nothing more and nothing less than education. Serious education. In-depth education. Disciplined education in the things of God. It calls for a mastery of the Word of God. We need to be people whose lives have changed because our minds have changed.
There can be a temptation for some Christians to take a verse like Romans 12:2 and turn it into a “Just Do It” Nike-style battle cry of transformational sanctification divorced from the previous eleven chapters penned by the Apostle Paul. Yet the imperative of Romans 12:2 flows from the “mercies of God” outlined in Romans 3:21–12:1. This undeserved favor for redeemed sinners, given through the grace of God in Christ, provokes an outpouring of gratitude and a life of joyful duty.
Romans 12:2 is a vital hinge on the door of biblical truth.
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Training in Godliness

By Simon van Bruchem — 4 months ago

All of us need to train for godliness. It doesn’t matter if you are a new Christian or if you have been a believer for fifty years. All of us need to work on building godly habits of Bible reading and prayer. We need to confess our specific sins and actively work on loving God and others in different ways. We need to meet with other believers.

In the past few months, I have become more regular with working on my physical fitness. I have managed to fit a few different exercise sessions in each week as part of my everyday routines. At the start, it didn’t seem like much had changed. Starting something new meant that my muscles that were used to not doing much suddenly had to work, and they were a little sore. Yet, after a while, I could up my intensity and weight levels. I noticed that I had more energy and less sore muscles from everyday living. It’s still a work in progress, but I am slowly becoming fitter and stronger, and the benefits are noticeable.
All of this reminded me of this passage from 1 Timothy:
7 Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; 8 for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. 9 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.
(1 Tim. 4:7-9 ESV)
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10 Puritans Who Changed the World: John Flavel, the Preacher of Providence

By Joel Beeke — 4 months ago

Flavel was flexible, resilient, and persevering amid suffering. When he could not preach, he wrote. For example, during the persecution of Nonconformists in the 1670s and early 1680s, Flavel published at least nine books, including A Token for Mourners, The Touchstone of Sincerity, The Method of Grace, and Treatise on the Soul of Man. Flavel’s Mystery of Providence is perhaps the best book ever written on the doctrine of divine providence. It comes from the pen of a man who experientially knew suffering in the crucible of affliction.

John Flavel was born in the town of Bromsgrove, England. He was the son of Richard Flavel, a pastor who died (along with John’s mother) during the Great Plague of 1665 while imprisoned at Newgate for nonconformity. After receiving an education in the Scriptures from his father, John began his studies at the University of Oxford, where he was a remarkably diligent student. After receiving ordination from the presbytery of Salisbury in 1650, Flavel settled in Diptford, where he honed his gifts. In 1656, he accepted a call to minister in the seaport town of Dartmouth. This position earned a smaller income than he had received in Diptford, but his work was more profitable. Many were converted through his ministry.
Government officials ejected Flavel from the pulpit in 1662 for nonconformity but he continued to meet secretly with his parishioners for worship. Once he even disguised himself as a woman on horseback to reach a secret meeting place where he preached and administered baptism. Another time, when pursued by authorities, he plunged his horse into the sea and escaped arrest by swimming through a rocky area to safety.
After the Five Mile Act went into effect in 1665—prohibiting pastors from teaching within five miles of their pastorates—Flavel moved to Slapton. There, he continued to minister to many in his congregation. He secretly preached in the woods, sometimes until midnight. Once, soldiers rushed in and dispersed the congregation. They apprehended and fined several fugitives, but the rest brought Flavel to another wooded area where he continued his sermon. Flavel preached from other unique pulpits, including Salstone Rock, an island submerged at high tide.
After King Charles II gave Nonconformists greater religious freedom in 1672 by issuing the Declaration of Indulgence, Flavel returned to Dartmouth. When officials canceld the indulgence the following year, Flavel once more secretly preached in homes, secluded neighborhoods, or remote forests. In the summer of 1682, he sought safety in London, where he assisted in a friend’s congregation. Flavel returned to Dartmouth in 1684, where he continued his ministry under house arrest. He preached there every Lord’s Day and on many weekday evenings to the gathered crowds. He was faithful even in the face of opposition from the government and hostile townspeople (who burned his effigy in a mob). Yet he wrote concerning his beloved Dartmouth, “Oh, that there were not a prayerless family in this town!”
In 1687, King James II issued another indulgence for Nonconformists that allowed Flavel to preach publicly again. His congregation built a large chapel to herald his return to the pulpit.
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Eloquence and the Heart, Part 2

By Mark Abdelmessieh — 4 months ago

Who deserves the presence and the empowerment of the third person of the Godhead? We surely can do nothing to merit His blessing. “God doesn’t use people because they are gifted. He uses people (even preachers) because he is gracious… If we do believe (this), then we will pray – we will pray before we speak, and we will pray for others before they speak.”[17] Indeed, we can only ask humbly and earnestly and ask (and even teach) our audience to pray for this unction upon us as we bring God’s Word to them.

How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matt. 12:34)

In the first part, we saw how eloquence can have a place in Biblical preaching only when it takes the role of servant not master. The master is the Bible. Any form of eloquence that will hinder the message is must be done with. Any form of eloquence that will hone the Biblical message can be used for the glory of God and the benefit of God’s people. Now we turn to the important truth that the seat of eloquence is the heart.
Too often when the word “eloquence” is mentioned we think first of the gift, the skill, the art, the tongue, the will and the mental abilities. However, the truth that Jesus binds speech primarily to the heart should inform all our thinking about God glorifying eloquence.
William Perkins penned, “Gracious speech expresses the grace of the heart.”[1] It is not a surprise then that when people heard Jesus, they said “no one ever spoke like this man!” (Jh. 7:46; cf. Lk. 4:22). Jesus was the most eloquent man who ever lived because He owned the purest heart ever existed.
If the main telos of preaching is not merely to deliver information, but to seek the transformation of the hearers, then the preacher’s heart must be first transformed by the content he preaches.[2] In other words, if the goal of preaching is “to bring people face to face with the living God”[3] then the preacher’s heart must experience this encounter first. It is this transformed heart that is filled with the reality of God’s character and God’s messages that best sees and exhibits Him (Matt. 5:8).
The prophet Jeremiah knew something of this truth when he said, “there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it (that is God’s Word) in, and I cannot” (Jer. 20:9). Paul echoes the same truth in saying, “I believed, and so I spoke.” (2 Cor. 4:13). It is only when the heart is filled with living faith and burning zeal for the truth that the mouth will speak with true eloquent. This principle is behind the fact that “beggars are often eloquent”, A. Alexander expressed. For, “The most important point in true eloquence is to be absorbed in the subject so as to think of nothing else. He who understands and feels his subject and lets nature give the expression, possesses the eloquence of which I speak.”[4] In another place he adds, “To have the heart of the preacher duly impressed with the importance of what he delivers, is better than all rules, and will in great measure cover defects, or rather remove them. Nature teaches the proper tunes to those who have strong feelings much more effectually than any rules of rhetoric.”[5] No doubt the two disciples on the road to Emmaus had burning tongues because they had burning hearts (Lk. 24:31-35)!
How then can your heart be kindled with the truth you seek to preach? It must be admitted that this is primarily the gracious work of God’s Spirit. However, when the Spirit works, the preacher will seek “not only to cultivate piety generally,” but to prepare his heart “for every discourse” he is seeking to deliver. Unfortunately, many preachers fail in the due preparation of their own hearts before preaching.[6] One way to prepare one’s heart is by preaching every sermon to one’s own heart first. Without savoring and digesting the truth first, one cannot deliver it with power for others to taste it.[7] The heart (and the preaching) cannot be dull if the glory of God is manifest to it. “A pastor who is not manifestly glad in God does not glorify God… A bored and unenthusiastic tour guide in the Alps contradicts and dishonors the majesty of the mountains.”[8] If the heart is kindled with the majesty of God, the tongue will follow.
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When Internet Culture Becomes the Culture

By Austin Gravely — 4 months ago

Internet culture is, for most people, the most attractive thing to do at any time of the day or night. When the majority of Americans are addicted to smartphones and social media, they are not turning them off. Even if you personally participate little in internet culture, your neighbors are likely being reshaped on internet culture’s terms without even realizing it. Sooner or later, you will encounter the formative effects of internet culture in your life. Are you prepared to share the Gospel, defend the Christian faith, and make mature disciples of Christ against a backdrop of the fraternity, fandom, and fantasy that internet culture provides?

Try to define the word “religion”.
If you have a hard time coming up with a good definition, you’re not alone. “Religion” is notoriously difficult to define; philosophers, theologians, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians all answer the question in a different way. But imagine if I said, “Well, since there is no universally agreed-upon definition of ‘religion’, religion doesn’t exist.” You’d think I’d gone mad even if you weren’t an academic. Religion is everywhere! It may be hard to define, but you know it exists without having to think twice about it.
Now, try to define “internet culture”. Again, if you have a hard time coming up with a definition, that’s okay. Like “religion,” “internet culture” is challenging to define, and like “religion”, it’s definitely real.
The secular world recognizes that internet culture exists, and a new generation of writers and content creators have found immense success by trying to answer the question, “What do we do about it?” In contextualizing events and artifacts of “internet culture” for the masses, writers like Charlie Warzel, Casey Newton, Taylor Lorenz, and Ryan Broderick have created enormous audiences for themselves by taking the weird, niche, and/or dangerous aspects of internet life seriously. Dozens of highly successful YouTubers have followed suit, such as Tiffany Ferguson, Jenny Nicholson, Kurtis Conner, Wendigoon, and Supereyepatchwolf—just to name a few.
Christian thinkers and writers recognize the power of the internet and have been at the forefront of writing about the dangers of smartphone addiction, excessive social media use, and internet pornography. But where secular internet culture writers often approach their topics from a live-from-the-scene-of-the-crime perspective, Christian writers are frequently on the outside looking in. Both perspectives are important, but if we want to seek and save the lost where they are found, we cannot approach internet culture solely from the safety of the sidelines. Someone needs to call an ambulance, like a lifeguard team rescuing a drowning swimmer. Someone needs to be prepared to do CPR, but none of that matters if someone isn’t willing to dive into the water to bring the victim to the surface first.
The Three “Fs” of Internet Culture
One way scholars study “religion” is to look for common categories that religions share despite their differences. Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism are all mutually exclusive religions with beliefs that are incompatible with each other. Still, each has a category for “holy texts,” “sacred spaces,” and even a “goal” to work towards. These categories can stand independently and overlap with other religious categories.
We can take a similar approach to “internet culture”, and the nearly limitless internet sub-cultures. Though far from exhaustive, we can better understand “internet culture(s)” by examining three categories: fraternity, fandom, and fantasy.
Fraternity
American history is replete with fraternal orders—more casually known as “social clubs” or sometimes “secret societies”—that served as important community centers of power alongside churches and schools. Organizations like the Knights of Columbus, Lions Club International, and even the Ku Klux Klan sought to give like-minded Americans a place to belong and work together for a common goal, whether for charity through community service or reinforcing white supremacy. While most of these organizations were originally men-only (hence “fraternity”), parallel orders for women or women-only social clubs, such as sororities on college campuses, also existed. Each of these groups has its rites of initiation, vocabulary, customs, and expectations for how a good member participates in the group.
Discord servers, subreddits, and group messaging apps function as the “fraternal orders” of internet culture. Whether based on fandom, discussed below, or shared occupation, these groups exist to bring like-minded people together in a communal space for a communal purpose. Like any real-world fraternal order, each of these spaces has its initiation rites, vocabulary, customs, and expectations of its members. Of all the various subreddits, Discord servers, and group chats I participate in, no two are alike.
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The Importance of a God-Centred Doctrine of Sin

By Chris Northcott — 4 months ago

It is crucial to work towards a view of God and his world that is shaped by the revelation that God has given to us. Failing to do this will result in us being formed instead by the foundational assumptions of our culture, in which humanity is exalted and God is marginalised.

One of the trickier challenges for Christians in any culture is disentangling our imagination from the framework given to us by the culture we live in. While Christians believe in God, call Jesus Lord, rest in the achievements of the cross, acknowledge the dignity of humankind, and so on, they may not be doing so in a way fully formed by the norming norm of the Bible. Our beliefs can easily be coloured more by the values of their culture. This has been a challenge since New Testament times—consider, for example, the view the Corinthians had of the human body—formed more by Greek culture than by Genesis. This highlights the necessity of being both acutely aware of how our own culture impacts on our faith and practice, as well as deeply familiar with Scripture.
A Human-Centred Doctrine of Sin
Consider the doctrine of sin. In a secular culture such as in New Zealand or Australia, humanity can loom much larger in the conceptual universe than God. Among other things, this can distort the doctrine of sin. One example of a doctrine of sin shaped in this way is Roger Wolsey’s essay “A Progressive Christian View of Sin & Sinners”. Wolsey describes sin as a failure to do what is right, and highlights the human proclivity to hurt others and to do so against their own better judgement. In his words, humans are “busted and broken”, “cracked pots”, “imperfect vessels”, “beautiful messes”, who make “mistakes”. Sin is “like an addiction” that leads to “self-sabotaging cliffs” from which Christian faith should guide us away. When we sin, “we are causing suffering to ourselves and others.”
Because of this framework, repentance for Wolsey is a process of transformation and reorientation, leading to such a dramatic difference in our persons that we can thus be said to be “born again.”
What is most noteworthy in Wolsey’s article is what is absent. He largely describes sin as an offence against others humans, or in terms of the harm it does to ourselves. True, he does describe sin as “missing the mark”, as transgressing God’s will; he later notes that when we sin we are “out of communion with God”.
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The Perspective of a Godly, Wise Man

By Bill Elliff — 4 months ago

Such a man realizes that God oversees everything in his life, and even the worst and hardest events can produce a redemptive purpose. He works all things together for good. Any bitterness or anger at God or man can be laid aside as we see what God is doing.

How we see things is most always through the lens of our particular perspective, our bias. And, it’s not always right. This is why it is so critical to be a man who has humbled himself and listened to God. A man who sees all of life through God’s eyes finds the right perspective. And this changes everything.
Joseph was such a man. It is why his story stands out in human history. Joseph was used by God to deliver the Israelite nation in a time of famine. Indeed, he was used to save the whole world from worldwide famine. God used his brothers’ bitterness and hatred to get Joseph to Egypt and place him in a position where this could happen. Joseph could have been bitter at his brothers for their cruelty, but instead, he saw and embraced the sovereignty of God in all these affairs.
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Habitual Communities

By T.M. Suffield — 4 months ago

Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, October 13, 2024
I want to argue that there is a sort of Christian community that can be found whenever you gather with Christians and that habitual elements of this also teach us that all of life is meant to be about following Christ. Most British Christians find this concept off-putting. If I were to suggest that the group of mates who’ve gathered to watch a film could maybe pray together before they do, many would scoff. Perhaps you might accuse that of sounding dreadfully American. I’m sorry American readers, but we’ve become culturally allergic to earnestness, and often find those who take their faith seriously a bit kitsch.

If part of recovering from our discipleship doldrums is to embed habits—and I think it is—then we will need to do something beyond thinking individually and thinking about the worship of the church. The church’s worship should be our starting point, and then the church should have a wider habitual life—as they all do, this is what a pattern of prayer meetings is for example—that serves the formation of Christian character.
The trickiest element, that I’m going to try and tease out in this post without having clear answers, is the potential for habitual life in the space between individuals and churches. We could go ‘beyond’ churches and think about cities and nations, and I think that could have some value but is entirely theoretical in the UK’s current moment. Instead, I’d like to look ‘between.’
By this I mean that there are a number of small institutions between the individual and the church. The household is the most obvious, whether that dictates a nuclear family, a much looser collection of housemates, or the explicitly Christian concept, but there are other possible forms of community. I suspect most people jump to those that are organised by churches: small groups and sports clubs and knitting circles and such like. These aren’t out of scope, but I want to include something broader, as the group of mates from your church (or many churches!) that hang out together to do a thing regularly should be included too. I’m talking about any loose form of ‘institution’ or ‘community’ that has a habitual life. That habitual life is then open to being thought about theologically and as a locus for formation.
I can sense that my writing is vaguer than I’d like because I’m searching for terms for a concept that I suspect is easier to draw. I want to argue that there is a sort of Christian community that can be found whenever you gather with Christians and that habitual elements of this also teach us that all of life is meant to be about following Christ.
Most British Christians find this concept off-putting. If I were to suggest that the group of mates who’ve gathered to watch a film could maybe pray together before they do, many would scoff. Perhaps you might accuse that of sounding dreadfully American. I’m sorry American readers, but we’ve become culturally allergic to earnestness, and often find those who take their faith seriously a bit kitsch.
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Alleviating Fear

By Bill Elliff — 4 months ago

If you have fear in any area, there is one remedy. In prayer and the reading of the Word, listen to God. Let Him remind you of His promises (there are 7,000 in the Bible) and give you direction for your life. And then believe Him.

Everybody has fear. Fear is that anxiety that comes when we anticipate evil or danger, that something could go wrong. It often implies the potential of loss and manifests itself in multiple ways. Pippert said that whatever you fear you serve.
How do You Overcome Fear?
God has continually helped those who turn to Him deal with fear. Look how he helped an aged Israel when there was a total famine in the world, as his son Joseph invited him to leave the promised land and go down to Egypt.
God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, “Jacob, Jacob.” And he said, “Here I am.” (Genesis 46:2-4)
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