James says that “religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans…in their affliction.” One of the marks of true Christianity is that it brings a counter culture to a world where widows and orphans are neglected and marginalized . Wherever true Christianity exists there is an active loosing of the chains of social injustice and neglect. In his book, The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Starks writes:

“To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as real hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachment. To cities filled with widows and orphans, Christianity offered a new and expanded sense of family… I am not saying the misery of the ancient world caused the advent of Christianity… people had been enduring for centuries without the aid of Christian theology or social structures. I am arguing that once Christianity did appear, its superior capacity for meeting human problems soon became evident and played a major role in its ultimate triumph… for what Christianity brought was not simply an urban movement, but a new culture” (p. 161).

Christianity is a culture where its people are not only grieved that there are so many orphans in our world but are actively engaged in caring for them in their distress. One of the reasons I love organizations like America World Adoption Association and Special Link (through which we adopted Isaiah) is that they give Christians opportunities to care for orphans in ways that they could not otherwise. Take a look at those two sites and consider how you might live out James 1:27 in the years to come.

Why this April 29th post on caring for orphans in their affliction? Because God has given my family and me an opportunity to care for some orphans in Fuling, China. We consider it a great privilege to be members of this 35 member team that on July 2nd will journey to China to join the Chinese in caring for “Fuling Kids”. You can learn more about this trip and the orphanage where we will be serving at the following two sites: http://www.awaa.org/events/missiontrip_china_2005.aspx and http://www.fulingkids.org/.

Special thanks to Justin Taylor for pointing me to the site that made me aware of this mission trip.

The following article by Tedd Tripp was inc luded in Shepherd Press’ most recent e-newsletter. I was graciously granted permission to post it. It is a great article about parenting from a Gospel-centered perspective. (You can subscribe for Shepherd Press’ e-newsletter by going to http://www.shepherdpress.com.)

Keeping Grace in Place

Keeping grace in place in our homes, that is the task. We experience many temptations to leave out the grace and the hope of the gospel when our children require correction and motivation.

How does keeping grace in place look and sound? Your message to your children is this: “People who fail can find hope in the God of grace.” Think of it this way, the gospel must be the core of your nurturing interaction with your children. The gospel is more than just the simple plan of salvation. It is all the grace and power of the gospel - forgiveness, cleansing, internal transformation, and empowerment (Ezekiel 36:25-26).
Read the rest of this entry »

“Assurance [of salvation] goes far….It enables you to feel that the great business of life is a settled business, the great debt is a paid debt, the great disease is a healed disease, and the great work is a finished work; and all other business, diseases, debts and works are then by comparison small. In this way assurance makes you patient in tribulation, calm under bereavements, unmoved in sorrow, not afraid of evil tidings, in every condition content, for it gives you a fixedness of heart….” (J.C. Ryle, “Assurance” in Holiness: It’s Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots).

“Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is Hell” (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, Chap. 6).

“The weakness of much current . . . preaching is that it betrays more a sense of what has yet to be done than of what has already been done” (P.T. Forsyth, Missions in State and Church, p. 17).

Sam Gamgee: “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?”

John 11:25-26 “Jesus said to Martha, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’”

The quotation below is from Paul David Tripp’s most recent book, Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God, 2004. I bought it…well…because I’ve entered midlife. Yes, I am between 35 and 55! But even though this is a book that specifically addresses midlife issues, it has direct relevance for all who want to learn better how to apply the gospel. So below you will find a little sample that I think you will find very applicable regardless of your age .

“You and I are always living out of some sense of identity. The way we answer the ‘who am I?’ question will have a huge influence over all that we say and do. It should not surprise us that high school athletic activities would morph into identity issues. Nor should it surprise us that the struggles of midlife are struggles of identity as well. When you begin to understand this, it becomes enormously helpful in finding your way out of that dense midlife fog. Think about how much of the drama of the biblical story is tied to identity. There is a real way in which the fall of Adam and Eve was about forgetting who they were. They were creatures of God who attempted to take on a whole new identity. Much of the drama of the Old Testament is focused on whether the Israelites would live inside of their identity as the children of God. Would they be wooed by other identities and end up worshipping the idols of the surrounding nations? In the same way, the drama of the later New Testament is about whether the church of Jesus Christ would understand and live out what it means to be ‘in Christ,’ in the middle of a world that trumpets many other identities.

“The biblical story is a story of identity given, identity lost, and identity restored. God wants you to know who you are and to live out the practical implications of the identity he has given you in Christ. That is why Scripture is constantly telling us who we are. As sinners we all tend to suffer from some form of identity amnesia. This is what Peter describes in 2 Peter 1:8-9. He says that there are people who know the Lord but are ineffective and unproductive in their knowledge of the Lord. Such a person is ‘nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed form his past sins.’ Peter is coupling this blind unfruitfulness with the issue of identity, essentially saying, ‘Your lives are not productive because you have forgotten who you are.’ I am persuaded that identity amnesia in the body of Christ is doing much more damage than we might assume.

“The problem with identity amnesia is that it gives way to something even more dangerous: identity replacement. If I have forgotten who I truly am, that identity will fail to shape my reponse to the people and situations that I encounter, and I will fill the identity void with something else” (Paul David Tripp, Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God, pp. 267-268).

Check Desiring God’s website in the next few days, you’ll see 40% off any and all audio and 25-40% off several Piper titles.

I was reading Paul David Tripp’s Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands in preparation for a NT Survey lecture. I was once again reminded of two things: (1) how quickly I turn to finding my identity outside of Christ; and (2) how great is my identity as defined by the story of redemption. Here is the quotation:

“The Bible is a narrative, a story of redemption, and its chief character is Jesus Christ. He is the main theme of the narrative, and he is revealed in every passage in the book. This story reveals how God harnessed nature and controlled history to send his Son to rescue rebellious, foolish, and self-focused men and women. He freed them from bondage to themselves, enabled them to live for his glory, and gifted them with an eternity in his presence, far from the harsh realities of the Fall.

“This overarching story reflects the fact that our problem as human beings is deeper than the individual sins we commit eaach day, creating the specific problems that complicate our lives. Our deepest problem is that we seek to find our identity outside the story of redemption…We need a message big enough to overcome our natural human instinct to live for our own glory, pursue our own happiness, and forget that our lives are much, much bigger than this little moment of life…It is because our sin problem is so pervasive and so deeply ingrained that we need more from Scripture than insight, principles, understanding, or direction. An encyclopedic, problem-solving approach to Scripture is totally inadequate for the true depth of our need. We need something that will change us from the inside out–we need Christ! Only his person and work can free us from our slavery to self and our tendency to deify the creation. Only as we see our story enfolded in the larger story of redemption will we begin to live God-honoring lives. Lasting change begins when our identity, purpose, and sense of direction are defined by God’s story (Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands, pp. 27-28).

Psalm 36 is one of my all time favorite texts. It is a spring of spritually refreshing water that I find myself going to over and over again. Click the link below for my sermon notes on Psalm 36.

The Gospel of the River of Delights - Psalm 36

Psalm 36:1-12
[1] Transgression speaks to the wicked
deep in his heart;
there is no fear of God
before his eyes. Read the rest of this entry »

Please scroll down and note the new recommended books section in the right hand column (I’m not talking about the link entitled “book recommendations” which is listed under “Categories.” The new recommended books section I’m referring to is below the entire “Categories” section.) My goal is to update the list weekly.

This is an excerpt from an article by Richard Lovelace entited, “Beyond Self-Improvement.”

“The goal of authentic spirituality is a life which escapes from the closed circle of spiritual self-indulgence, or even self-improvement, to become absorbed in the love of God and other persons. The essence of spiritual renewal is “the love of God . . . poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5). ‘My love,’ said St. Augustine, ‘is my weight.’

The substance of real spirituality is love. It is God’s love moving into our consciousness in warm affirmation that He values and cares for us with infinite concern. But His is a love which also sweeps us away from self-preoccupation into a delight in the unlimited beauty and transcendent glory of God himself, and moves us to obey Him. It is a love which awakens us to cherish the gifts and graces of others and labor to perfect these.

Paul tells us that this love is a far more reliable measure of spirituality than our gifts or works or theological comprehension, and that this love is one of the few things which lasts forever (I Corinthians 13:8, 13). And Jesus said that the highest fulfillment of the will of God in our lives is to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and to care for others as we care for ourselves (Mark 12:30-31).”

If you wish to read the full article, you can find it at http://www.goodnewsmag.org/library/articles/lovelace-nd85.htm.

If you are like me, you are longing for a lot of shalom these days. As I sit here writing this post I have a very strong desire to know and experience life as it was meant to be because things are not the way they are supposed to be anywhere in this world. So as I sit here aware of my deep desire, I remind myself of the great Gospel of Shalom.

“The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight—a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be…every one of us does possess the notion of a world in which things are as they ought to be. ‘The way things ought to be’ in its Christian understanding includes the constitution and internal relations of a very large number of entities–the Holy Trinity, the physical world in all its fullness, the human race, particular communities within this race (such as the ancient people of Israel, the New Testament church, the American Federation of Musicians), families, married couples, groups of friends, individual human beings. In a shalomic state each entity would have its own integrity or structured wholeness, and each would also possess many edifying relations to other entities.” (Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, p. 10).

This has been one of those weeks where I’ve struggled with excessive introspection, particularly as it relates to my own progress in sanctification. My brother David mentioned something to me yesterday that brought 1 Peter 1:13-21 to mind. I preached a sermon on it earlier this year. It reminded me afresh where I need to be daily fixing my eyes, namely, on the cross. I’ve heard it said (can’t remember who said it) that for every one look within we need to take ten long looks at the cross. I’ve linked the sermon manuscript below. It’s not a full manuscript, but you should be able to “fill in between the lines.”

1 Peter 1.13-21 - More Than a Mere Outline of a Human Being

P. S. The sermon has a couple LOTR illustrations in it