The Influence of Excitement

There are some wonderful instances of ordinary Christians, not least the young, who are concerned to preach the whole gospel unabashedly and do good first to the household of God and then, as much as is possible, outside as well. That has got biblical mandate behind it. . . .

My warning would be to those who are coming along and talking a lot about, “I want to be faithful to the gospel, but I also want to do social justice and good works.” My warning would be: it is not just what you do, it is what you are excited about.

If I have learned anything in 35 or 40 years of teaching, it is that students don’t learn everything I teach them. What they learn is what I am excited about, the kinds of things I emphasize again and again and again and again. That had better be the gospel. 

If the gospel—even when you are orthodox—becomes something which you primarily assume, but what you are excited about is what you are doing in some sort of social reconstruction, you will be teaching the people that you influence that the gospel really isn’t all that important. You won’t be saying that—you won’t even mean that—but that’s what you will be teaching. And then you are only half a generation away from losing the gospel.

Make sure that in your own practice and excitement, what you talk about, what you think about, what you pray over, what you exude confidence over, joy over, what you are enthusiastic about is Jesus, the gospel, the cross. And out of that framework, by all means, let the transformed life flow. (Boldfaced text is my emphasis).

– Don Carson, lecture, “Is the Culture Shaping Us or are We Shaping the Culture?” delivered at the CBMW Different By Design Conference (Feb. 2, 2009, Minneapolis, MN)..

This Is Priceless!

Failure and Success: Not Measuring Up
AW Tozer

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. --1 Corinthians 15:58

It is good to come to the understanding that while God wants us to be holy and Spirit-filled, He does not expect us to look like Abraham or to play the harp like David or to have the same spiritual insight given to Paul.

All of those former heroes of the faith are dead. You are alive in your generation. A Bible proverb says that it is better to be a living dog than a dead lion. You may wish to be Abraham or Isaac or Jacob, but remember that they have been asleep for long centuries, and you are still around! You can witness for your Lord today. You can still pray. You can still give of your substance to help those in need. You can still encourage the depressed.

I hope you have not missed something good from God's hand because you felt you did not measure up to Gideon or Isaiah. In this your generation, give God all of your attention! Give Him all of your love! Give Him all of your devotion and faithful service! You do not know what holy, happy secret God may want to whisper to your responsive heart.

"Father, I commit myself to faithfulness today. I don't have the great gifts of these 'former heroes of the faith.' But You've given me life today; You've given me the gifts You want me to have and use; You've called me by Your grace to serve You. I give it all to You today. Amen." 

Jesus, Author of our Faith, 72.

"But to deviate from the truth . . .

. . .  for the sake of some prospect of hope of our own can never be wise, however slight that deviation may be. It is not our judgment of the situation which can show us what is wise, but only the truth of the Word of God. Here alone lies the promise of God's faithfulness and help. It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity."

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoted by Eugene Peterson in
A Long Obedience In the Same Direction, page 36.

Would Jesus Use Facebook? Probably.

With a predictably mixed response to yesterday's blog post I am encouraged with the following from the writings of A. W. Tozer. It reminds me that there are indeed things that matter and then there are things that don't matter at all. What I said yesterday, and maintain today, is that for ME, social networking represents one of the choices to be made in "our painfully intricate civilization". And for ME it is one of those things that "unless [I] get out from under them, they will crush [me] body and soul." After all is said and done, the question, "Would Tozer use Facebook?" or for that matter, "Would Jesus?" might well be answered, "ummmmm . . . probably."

Here's the quotation from Failure and Success: The Things That Matter.

...that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. --Philippians 1:10-11

In life there will be found certain great fundamentals, like pillars bearing up the weight of some mighty building....

The wise man will simplify his life by going to the center of it. He will look well to the foundations and, having done that, he will not worry about the rest.

Life as we know it in our painfully intricate civilization can be deadly unless we learn to distinguish the things that matter from those that do not. It is never the major things that destroy us, but invariably the multitude of trifling things which are mistakenly thought to be of major importance. These are so many that, unless we get out from under them, they will crush us body and soul....

Every believer as well as every minister of Christ must decide whether he will put his emphasis upon the majors or the minors. He must decide whether he will stay by the sober truths which constitute the beating heart of the Scriptures or turn his attention to those marginal doctrines which always bring division and which, at their best, could not help us much on our way to the Celestial City. The Next Chapter After the Last, 11,14.

"Oh God, we are so inundated with distracting things and clamorous voices. Deliver me today from the trifling things and help me to spend every minute of the day on 'the things that matter.' Amen.

[Anti]Social Networking

I begin here to list reasons I no longer use Facebook. I think these would apply to Twitter, MySpace and other social networking instruments although I have never used them. In any case, this is my own list (not a judgement on anyone else) although it could possibly help to guide - and even guard - others.

1. James 4:14  - For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.  Computers can take over one's entire life and all too easily. I know enough about myself to be wary. I don't need an easy reason to spend more time at the computer. Somehow I think that, Life consisteth not in the abundance of [Facebook Friends] one possesseth (loose paraphrase of Luke 12:15).

2.1Cointhains 10:23 and 6:12 -  All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.  All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Facebook is for me - and others - but certainly for me, habit-forming if not addictive. And, "that which I cherish is either an idol or an offering." Two issues here: lack of discipline and idolatry.

3. John 3:30 -  He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less. For me, Facebook is too easily the gasoline that ignites the spark of self - "me, myself, and I". As Josh Harris put it:  " I found that [Facebook] encouraged me to think about me even more than I already do–which is admittedly already quite a bit. Without any help from the internet I’m [already] inclined to give way too much time to evaluating myself, thinking about myself and wondering what other people think of me. If that egocentrism is a little flame, than Facebook for me is a gasoline IV feeding the fire. I need to grow in self-forgetfulness. I need to worry more about what God is thinking of me. I need to be preoccupied with what he’s written in his word, not what somebody just wrote on my “wall.”

4. If our brains really do have plasticity and are molded in their processes by the tools that we use, then I certainly don't need something else that has me thinking in "sound bytes" and short little bursts of data. Most media and the internet have retooled our minds - rebooted our mental hard drives - so that we neither concentrate nor contemplate as we have and ought. (Nicholas Carr. The Shallows.  Neither do we do it nor can we even if we try. Try sitting down and reading a book for two hours or even an hour or even 15 minutes without squirming and itching to check email or in this case, Facebook. I am conscious that having put this on my blog, you will be one of the few that have read this far - skimed it maybe, but not read it - simply because it's too long and most cannot concentrate that long.

5. Ephesians 5:3, 4 - . . . let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; . . . nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. Unless every "Friend" is oriented to Ephesians 5 and Philippians 4:8 very few set as a benchmark for their posts, "think on these things". Meaning then that it can be and often is a magnet for the filthy and the foul; at the least, inanity, shallowness, superficiality, baloney becomes characteristic. Whether writes it himself or invites or  engages in such himself, it is still difficult to police, ignore, or hide others.

6. I resist redefinition of English words and phrases - "friend" for example. Someone has written: "As the saying goes, you are lucky if you have two friends who you can completely trust. Most people on Facebook have over a hundred "friends". By using the term to apply to every most casual acquaintance, we devalue its meaning and encourage fleeting superficial relationships. Friends are about quality, not quantity. Facebook friends accumulation is like checking who caught more fish." Someone has identified a significant number of people with this concern. It is called a fear of an Orwellesque Deterioration of Language. But on top of this, English teachers are tearing their hair out at what texting has done to a young person's ability to spell. And that pales next to other linguistic atrocities. Every time I turn around another noun has been turned into a verb - sourced, if you will. Tell me that this does not impact our language, and I've just referenced two examples (or is it three)?

7. True communication is multi-level and one of those levels is the non-verbal level. They say that 80% of communication happens through body language and facial expressions. I miss out on all that with you if you are just a Friend on Facebook..

8. I have seen the incredulity and felt the scorn of those who learn of my general aversion to the Net and to Facebook especially. And people actually get mad at me - or think I am some nutty Luddite - because I try not to check my email out of the office. This kind of thing confirms my suspicions, hardens my resistance, and prove at least to me how questionable the whole thing is.

9. If nothing else, I would have questions about Facebook because of the circumstances under which it was created, the reasons it was created, and the kind of person who created it. Can any good thing come out of that moral and misogynistic mishmash? At what point was it suddenly redeemed? Did I miss something?

10. Bottom line: the charge from Proverbs 4- Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. 


Is Google Making Us Stupid? An article in The Atlantic by Nicholas Carr

Nothing sinister here . . . is there?

'Tis the season when manger scenes will be stolen or vandalized, retail employees will be strictly instructed how to greet the holiday shoppers, and bumper stickers enjoin the faithful to “Keep Christ in Christmas.” Stephen Colbert’s 2008 Christmas special might even be trotted out to again remind  that Xmas is a term only used by militant atheists as part of their culture war against Christianity.

With respect to the latter concern I will just say that there is nothing inherently wrong with "Xmas" . . . unless, in the mind of the user it is indeed  intended to keep Christ out of Christmas or make the term more acceptable to atheists or to the Jewish people.

In fact the use of the letter "X" to abbreviate the name of Christ has been used for hundreds of years – first example in 1551 – in religious writing, where the “X” represents a Greek “chi”, the first letter of “Christ.” In this use it is parallel to other forms like “Xtian”, “Christian.” But people unaware of the Greek origin of this "X" often mistakenly interpret Xmas as an informal shortening and many frown upon the term because it seems to them a commercial convenience that omits Christ from Christmas.

Will I use the term? Probably not much. And that grates on me as it always does when other silliness or evil co opt perfectly good words in the service of some new insanity.

"Woe is me for I am undone." - Isaiah 6:5

Unlike Isaiah, in our own "undoneness" most of us have a perverse and inexhaustible ability to reinvent ourselves.

When up against harsh, bitter, undeniable disaster that properly understood has so much potential for our good, we rather rationalize, deny, explain, defend, and excuse, and we do this to our eternal confusion.

Our "lostness" (ESV) shines with blinding incandescence and screams to be recognized for what it is. But somehow we miss it and to our everlasting misadventure and dishonor.

Ten Missional Prayers for the Church Today

These ten prayer themes appeared some weeks ago in a September 16, 2010 blog by Dr. James Emery White. Click here for Dr. White's blog 

Some of these so audaciously highlight the church's shameful self-centeredness, irrationality and self-delusion, shallow thinking, and general misbehavior that they almost take one's breath away! Every one of them shakes me a little but I have highlighted those that most do that:

1. That pastors would see other churches in their immediate vicinity as a co-laborer, not as the competition.

2. That members of churches would see themselves as ministers and missionaries, dying to themselves for the sake of the cause, as opposed to consumers who care most about whether they are fed, ministered to, or served themselves.

3. That parachurch organizations would be parachurch organizations - meaning serving alongside the church while giving the local church the pre-eminence it deserves - and allowing the partnership to reach its full redemptive potential in light of the biblical mandate.

4. That church planters would commit to being a) sent by a church; b) called by a community; and c) eager to go where no one has gone. Instead of a) sending themselves; b) going to where they simply desire to live; and c) remaining blind to the reality that they'll be the 11th McDonalds in a row of ten existing ones.

5. That all seminaries would remember that they exist to serve the church, and that they would serve the church to such a degree that their students would be more on fire to serve and build the local church after they have graduated than before they entered.

6. That those committed to discipleship, and rightly so, would quit pitting it against evangelism as if any emphasis on "reaching out" somehow takes away from "building up", creating a false dichotomy that doesn't exist biblically.

7. That older generations would quit worrying about whether they are being catered to sufficiently, and would become more interested in whether they are passing the baton on to the next generation that is so desperate and hungry for mentoring.

8. That the false dichotomy between a concern for personal or sexual morality, and social justice, would evaporate. Instead, that we would see that being salt and light applies to both concerns: being as concerned for a culture of divorce as much as we are for the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

9. That the pendulum between whether to share the gospel or engage in social ministry would also disappear. That we would see them not as an either-or, but a both-and; we are to give a cup of water and the bread of life, feeding both stomach and soul.

10. That we would understand that lost people are not the enemy, but instead the objects of the Father's heart - and thus, they should be the objects of ours. That we would join the Father as He sets out to find His lost sheep, search for His lost coin, and look desperately down the road for His prodigal son.

Corruption

(My brother, Dave, and a coworker are currently in Indonesia. The following two blog posts are edited emails. They are lengthy but need to be read and understood by Christians who want to think and act as would Jesus Christ. Highlighting is mine).


If you live in the west, you might think you have to deal with corruption. But you ain't seen nothin’ till you travel to other parts of the world. Here are some real instances to give you an idea of the immensity of the spiritual darkness that has engulfed just one nation – the nation of Indonesia:

 ·     Imagine that you have a serious crime problem. You call the police, unless you live in Indonesia. Even if a murder has occurred, the police will favor the person who offers the biggest bribe.

·       Imagine that you are pulled over in traffic by a cop. You must have been speeding or committed some other infraction . . . unless you live where darkness reigns. It would almost always be because the police officer is low on finances and needs to "fine" you so he can pay a bill or have some extra cash.

·       Imagine that you have to go to court and stand before a judge. You expect justice to be done. But not where it is always winter and never Christmas, because when Satan makes the rules, the person with the biggest bribe always wins.

·       Imagine that you are a college student. You enroll in a course, do assignments, take exams, and get a grade. But not in a land where every vestige of good is in the process of being squelched. Here you cannot pass a course without bribing the professor repeatedly for each exam and for a final grade (even though the professor habitually either doesn't show up for class, or shows up unprepared, or dismisses class after a brief discussion about something unrelated to the content of the course).

·       Imagine that you have completed all of your college course work. You naturally expect to graduate. Not in a land where the malevolent tyrant has been eradicating hope. After completing your college course work, you still cannot graduate unless you pay a bribe to the dean.

.·       Imagine that you are a college graduate, are sincerely motivated, and want to teach school in a needy area to help the students. You will surely find a job and the government will bend over backwards to help you . . . unless you live where despicable wickedness is the rule. Here you cannot get a teaching position without bribing the local principal. One well-meaning teacher wanted to work in a school in a poor, remote area. But first she had to pay the principal $25,000 (US dollars) just to get the job. She borrowed the money from family and friends and, on her low salary, will spend the rest of her life paying it back.

·       Imagine that you rent a house, sign a lease, and even make improvements with the owner's guarantee in writing that when the lease is up you have the first right to rent the house for another period of time. Sounds secure . . . unless you live where the father of lies has written the rules. Here no document is backed by the courts (remember the judges take bribes).

·       Imagine that you are stopped at a traffic light and a motorcycle crashes into the side of your car. The cyclist is clearly guilty and must pay his own hospital bills and your car repair bills . . . unless you find yourself at the mercy of the master deceiver. Here the person with the most expensive vehicle is assumed to have the most money and must pay all of the hospital and repair bills, regardless of guilt. If you refuse to pay, a mob will assemble and will attack you.

·       Imagine that you are a pastor and your church obtains a legal building permit and construction on your church building begins. The government would never come back to you 2 years later and revoke your permit and forbid you to worship in your facility . . . unless your church is in Indonesia where, if enough neighbors complain, the government will withdraw your building permit and mobs can come and disrupt your service and beat up the pastor.

·       Imagine that there are "Christians" in Florida who are burning Korans and you, a western missionary, are appalled at such an act and think it is utterly stupid. People around you would never automatically associate you with such insanity . . . unless you live in almost any Muslim context. There every westerner is believed to be a "Christian" who walks in lockstep with the most idiotic actions that other westerners may take against Islam. For safety, you must hide in your house and wait for days for everyone to calm down before you can reappear.

·       Imagine traffic laws . . . Oh, forget that one. The only traffic law in many parts of the world is that the first vehicle to land on a piece of pavement has the right to that spot.

This is the world that Roscoe and I have been in for only 3 days and it absolutely drives us crazy. Imagine what a God of beauty, truth, and order thinks of such a place! Imagine missionaries who have intentionally moved here to devote their lives to bringing the light of the glorious Gospel of Jesus to people crippled by darkness. Some bring wives, many bring children, and they will often spend 10, 20 or even their whole ministry lives here.

The next time you need justice and it is properly meted out . . . the next time you are promised something and the promise is made good . . . the next time a government official functions with integrity . . . the next time you are rewarded fairly for your labors . . . remember a nation of 240,000,000 people who never get to have such an experience.

And remember thousands of followers of Jesus who, for centuries, have devoted their entire lives to living in such a corrupt and difficult environment because they are passionate that representatives from every nation, tribe, tongue, and people will worship the Lamb throughout eternity.

Burning Muslim Holy Books - A Missionary Update from Indonesia

(The following is a slightly edited copy of an email received from my brother who  is currently in Indonesia doing some training of pastors).

This update goes primarily to Americans who have mainly known a world and culture that is western and formed by a Judeo-Christian worldview. Though not perfect, to us our world is orderly, just, clean, and pure. That is not the world of Indonesia. I will try to give a taste of but nothing short of visiting this country will really tell the story.

Roscoe and I find ourselves in the largest Muslim nation in the world during Ramadan, the holiest month of the Muslim calendar. We are learning a lot about Islam by being here, but how can I share those things sensitively, graciously, and yet truthfully?

Let me then say a word about the presence of Islam as a majority religion. In the west, there is a lot of confusion about Islam and the church seems to struggle with a healthy attitude towards Muslims. Much of the concern seems to come from confusion as to where our loyalties lie: are we loyal Americans or are we devoted soldiers of the cross of Christ sent on a mission to bless all the families of the earth?

It's amazing how those two thought systems get mixed in together, producing a sad theology that is effete and is incapable robust Christian discipleship.

Let me be clear: I am proud to be an American and I love my country. This is not Jane Fonda in Viet Nam denouncing the USA.

An illustration of our problem is seen in the fact that many evangelical Americans are ideologically (and even theologically) "pro-Israel" and "anti-Arab" or "anti-Palestinian". In all of that it seems to me that we have given short shrift to the theme of the Bible – that is that God intends to bless ALL of the families of the earth. We seem to have forgotten that our priority as evangelical Americans is not to advance the American flag to the four corners of the earth but to penetrate every ethnic group with the liberating truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Therfore, as Americans we may rejoice when Israel wins a war, or when America invades Iraq or Afghanistan. We may even be able to justify our feelings patriotically, theologically, or geo-politically. But what we may fail to take into consideration is that these military initiatives have huge ramifications among those national Christians and missionaries – especially if they are American - who are making great sacrifices for the spread of the Gospel.

American military initiatives are generally perceived by the Muslim world as Christians on a Crusade (with a lot of the historical baggage that carries). The result is that the work of foreign mssnries is set back. The local missionary here  told me yesterday that every time America makes a military move against an Islamic nation, Indonesian mobs roam the streets looking for foreigners to beat up. He has to stay home behind locked doors for a week or more until emotions subside.

Again, I am not taking a position here on American military initiatives; I am merely encouraging us to remember that for the Christian with a heart and mind for Christ’s global purposes there is a lot more to this than patriotic jingoism. We must thoughtfully  consider the implications of such initiatives for the more important issue of carrying out Jesus' mission.

An isolated situation like a so-called church in Florida having a day to burn the Quran may seem to many of us as some blip on the screen that is annoying but not something to be given serious thought. But the rioting this week here in the capital, Jakarta, where Molotov cocktails are being thrown at the US embassy to protest the Quran burning, should convince us that the Muslim world is watching this situation and is assuming that this incident reflects the deep animus of ALL Americans toward Muslims as people.

These days in Indonesia has told me that there is a more significant issue confronting our world than planes being flown into towers, road bombs killing innocent bystanders, human bombs walking into restaurants and killing people, and Al-Qaeda spawning terrorism around the globe. All of those are very important being also terribly wrong, but there is something that trumps all of that.

What could be more important? It is the deconstructing of the evil system of religion and worldview that has spiritually paralyzed a huge percentage of our world's population. That is the real concern, and there is a loathsome spiritual being named Satan who gloats over his conquest of so many creatures created in God's image. He is our enemy, infinitely more so than even Osama bin Laden.

Satan has shrewdly engineered a religious system that is so evil, so despicable, that it can completely corrupt every part of a culture where it prevails and can totally immobilize the capacity of the people to think clearly or to respond to truly Good News. This is truly worthy of our concern, sadness, indignation, and yes, anger.

But make sure that your anger is not misplaced or misdirected. Transform it into prayer and action that can be translated into a direct assault of the Kingdom of God against this vile kingdom of darkness that holds people in its disgusting grip.

God, Make Us Desperate!

A few days ago I [Jon Bloom] listened to a sermon by a man who is preparing to lead a missionary team that will plant itself into one of the least reached nations in the world.

The most optimistic estimates of the number of indigenous Christians in this nation is less than the number of people who attend [my church] on a Sunday morning. A lot less.

Listening to him was like listening to the writer of Hebrews. This man knows what he’s getting into. He’s planted a church in this nation already. The cost to follow Jesus in this nation is high. A good week is when no one in the church has been beaten.

These brothers and sisters are experiencing a “hard struggle with sufferings” (Hebrews 10:32). There are beatings, property plunderings, heresies, divisions, and there is immorality. Most church troubles we read about in the Epistles, they have it.

Listening to this missionary left most of us American Christians wondering if we’d be able to hack it. And that’s unnerving.

The New Testament teaches us that whether or not our treasure is really in heaven is most clearly seen when it costs us our earthly treasures in order to obtain it. But American Christians live in the most prosperous nation in world history and the one in which it costs the least to be a Christian.

This environment can be deadly to faith. It allows false faith to masquerade as real very easily. And its power to dissipate zeal and energy and mission-focus and willingness to risk is extraordinary because it doesn’t come to us with a whip and a threat. It comes to us with a pillow and a promise of comfort for us and our children. The former makes us desperate for God. The latter robs our sense of desperation.

And it’s the lack of a sense of desperation for God that is so deadly. If we don’t feel desperate for God, we don’t tend to cry out to him. Love for this present world sets in subtly, like a spiritual leprosy, damaging spiritual nerve endings so that we don’t feel the erosion and decay happening until it’s too late.

So we must fast and pray for and support the suffering church in the diseases that can set in from harsh adversity. But we must also fast and pray for God to deliver us from the diseases that set in from prosperity. We need him. We can discipline ourselves in various ways. But we cannot manufacture our own desperation. Only God can make us desperate for him.

So God, whatever it takes, increase our awareness of our dependence on you in everything! Keep us desperate for you so that the deceitfulness of sin does not harden our hearts (Hebrews 3:13). In Jesus’ name, amen.

Original Jon Bloom article at Desiring God blog.

What the Book teaches matters

John Piper often speaks and writes specifically about the absolute centrality of the Word of God. This week the following was posted at www.desiringgod.org.

This fourth post in the Essential Piper Series again spotlights Piper's teaching on this theme. It comes from his sermon, "Building Our Lives on the Bible."

We are a people of the Book. We know God through the Book. We meet Christ in the Book. We see the cross in the Book. Our faith and love are kindled by the glorious truths of the Book. We have tasted the divine majesty of the Word and are persuaded that the Book is God's inspired and infallible written revelation. Therefore, what the Book teaches matters…

There is no salvation from sin and guilt and condemnation and hell apart from faith in Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12; Romans 10:13-17; 1 John 5:12). And there is no other authority besides the Scriptures to show you who Christ is and to give you his Word. So don't leave the Bible, children. Don't leave the Bible, young people. Don't neglect the Bible, dads and moms. Don't ignore the Bible, single people. Under God, the "sacred writings," the Scriptures, are the greatest treasure in the world. They alone make us wise unto salvation through Christ. O don't neglect this Book!

The post stands on its own. However, it is well worth your while to click on "Building Our Lives on the Bible" for the full text of the message.

Bonhoeffer Redux

It is the 65th anniversary year of the Nazi execution of Detrich Bonhoeffer. He died by hanging on April 9, 1945 at the Flossenburg Concentration Camp  for his part in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was 39.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (April 2010, Thomas Nelson), by Eric Metaxas, was selected by World Magazine as Runner-Up Book of the Year. You can read my earlier blog entry: Bonhoeffer: A Conscience Captive to the Word of God.

This is without a doubt in the list of the top five books that I have ever bought or read.

See the World Magazine review at

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/16863. 

 I hope you will buy it also. 

Bonhoeffer - A Conscience Captive to the Word of God

Now I know better, my early training notwithstanding. How I regret having never questioned the then prevailing notion that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the theological bad guys - not only was he supposedly suspect as to orthodoxy but actually an enemy of the Gospel. Thankfully, it is not too late to profit from the life and writings of this man of God.

Truly, if ever a man spoke with a "conscience captive to the Word of God" (M. Luther) - it was Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. This is the title of the very revealing and moving new book by Eric Metaxas (also the author of the seminal Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery).

Metaxas' work is sorely needed, not just for me but for so many others who have been misinformed. Bonhoeffer dared to criticize the politicized cultural "Christianity" of Hitler's Germany (primarily the unbiblical "religious" legalism, fomalism, and Nazi compromise). Metaxas emphasizes - and proves - that Bonhoeffer was not, as some have said, a liberal Christian opposing genuine Christianity. Unfortunately, some English-speaking interpreters of his German letters have unjustly distorted his prison-letters and taken certain phrases -- such as "religionless christianity" -- out of context. To see his genuine love for the whole, unabridged Word of God, please see Bonhoeffer's little booklet, Life Together. 

Kevin Williamson wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "Bonhoeffer’s is a story that the most imaginative novelist could not have invented." I can tell you that it actually does read like a novel while also opening up that darkest of times; after all these years his descriptions still stretch credulity: How could these things have ever happened? How could such people exist in a civilized world and how could so many have been deceived? And how is it possible that so many died the grisley and horrific deaths that they died?

But more to the point, how could such a man as Bonhoeffer come to be? And how could he - or anyone - stand as he did against the tidal wave of National Socialism? He was often alone, and very often at odds with the Nazi controlled German Christians Church, misunderstood and doubted even by his own Confessing Church?

This is a book that is "unputdownable", but one that you eventually do have to stop reading, if only because it is well-over 500 pages long! But 500-plus gripping and inspiring pages they are. And besides that, with mind and emotions in overload, the only thing that one can do sometimes is set it aside. For me that was often to turn to the Word of God, to meditate, and to pray.

Bonhoeffer's best known work is The Cost of Discipleship. In the beginning of the 1963 Macmillan paperback edition there is a "Memoir" written by G. Leibholz." In it he describes Bonhoeffer's faith and martyrdom. Here is an edited version which includes some quotations directly from Discipleship:

Memoir

"In his hearing before the Gestapo during his imprisonment, defenseless and powerless as he then was, only fortified by the word of God in his heart, he stood erect and unbroken before his tormentors. He refused to recant, and defied the Gestapo machine by openly admitting that, as a Christian, he was an implacable enemy of National Socialism and its totalitarian demands toward the citizen—defied it, although he was continually threatened with torture and with the arrest of his parents, his sisters and his fiancée… In 1944, when friends made an attempt to liberate him and to take him to safety abroad, he decided to remain in prison in order not to endanger others.

"The last service which Dietrich Bonhoeffer held on the day before his death... 'moved all deeply....' Every Nazi inflicted death was calculated to be gruesome; Bonhoeffer's was no different when stripped naked he put his head in a noose of piano wire. "Bonhoeffer, who was never tried, went steadfastly on his last way to be hanged, and died with admirable calmness and dignity. God heard his prayer and granted him the 'costly grace'—that is, the privilege of taking the cross for others and of affirming his faith by martyrdom."

"How can a man wax arrogant if in this life he shares the suffering of God?" 

"Both modern liberal theology and secular totalitarianism hold pretty much in common that the message of the Bible has to be adapted more or less, to the requirements of a secular world. No wonder, therefore, that the process of debasing Christianity as by liberal theology led, in the long run, to a complete perversion and falsification of the essence of Christianity...." 

A Christian must be prepared, if necessary, to offer his life for this. Thus all kinds of secular totalitarianism which force man to cast aside his religious and moral obligations to God and subordinate the laws of justice and morality to the State are incompatible with his conception of life.…"

"The life of the spirit is not that which shuns death and keeps clear of destruction: rather it endures death and in death it is sustained. It only achieves its truth in the midst of utter destruction."

"In a modern dictatorship, however, with its subterranean ubiquity and all-embracing instruments of oppression, a revolt means certain death to all who support it. ... The future in modern society depends much more on the quiet heroism of the very few who are inspired by God. These few will greatly enjoy the divine inspiration and will be prepared to stand for the dignity of man and true freedom and to keep the law of God, even if it means martyrdom or death--

"… because they 'look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen; for the things which are seen /are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal." [2 Cor. 4:17-18, 33-34]

"Jesus invites all those that labor and are heavy laden, and nothing could be so contrary to our best intentions, and so fatal to our proclamation  as to drive men away from him by forcing upon them man-made dogmas. If we did so, we should make the love of Jesus Christ a laughing-stock to Christians and pagans alike."

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Please read the book. I would loan you mine but I got it at the library.

Joel Osteen and the Glory Story

Joel Osteen and those who are like-minded continue to deliver a counterfeit gospel that baffles untaught believers, confuses everyone else, while reaping monstrous personal profits. We cannot but be concerned for his soul and for the eternal consequences for all those who advance such deliberate deceptions. These teachings are manifestly far fetched; they do not yield to even basic logic and even superficial comparisons with God's Word serve to expose the error.

Please follow the link to Dr. Michael Horton's article: Joel Osteen and the Glory Story: A Case Study.

Again, the answer to all this - Receive the Word!

"How few there are who die so hard."

The Difficult Death of Adoniram Judson

Yesterday (April 12, 2010) marked the 160th anniversary of the death of Adoniram Judson, America's first foreign missionary. For 38 years—through imprisonment, torture, illness, deep depression, isolation from family and friends, and the loss of two wives and numerous children—he suffered to bring the gospel to the unreached peoples of Burma.

At age 61 he fell ill for the last time. John Piper recounts those final days:

The only hope was to send the desperately ill Judson on a voyage. On April 3, 1850 they carried Adoniram onto the Aristide Mariebound for the Isle of France with one friend, Thomas Ranney, to care for him. In his misery he would be roused from time to time by terrible pain ending in vomiting. One of his last sentences was: "How few there are who . . . who die so hard!"
At 15 minutes after 4 on Friday afternoon April 12, 1850 Adoniram Judson died at sea, away from all his family and Burmese Church. That evening the ship hove to.
"The crew assembled quietly. The larboard port was opened. There were no prayers. . . . The captain gave the order. The coffin slid through the port into the night" (To the Golden Shore, p. 505).

He died in obscurity, but to this day the fruit of Judson's life and death proves the promise Jesus gave in John 12:24: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." As Piper observes,

Today it is estimated that the Myanmar (Burma's new name) Baptist Convention to be 3,700 congregations with 617,781 members and 1,900,000 affiliates—the fruit of [Judson's] dead seed.

What significance does this have for us today? Piper asks the hard question, especially of pastors:

Are you sure that God wants you to be a pastor in this comparatively church-saturated land? Or might he be calling you to fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, to fall like a grain of wheat into some distant ground and die, to hate your life in this world and so to keep it forever and bear much fruit?
[...]
The question, brothers, is not whether we will die, but whether we will die in a way that bears much fruit.

* * *

Read or listen to the rest of John Piper's biography of Judson.

"I Never Made A Sacrifice"

Today is David Livingstone’s birthday. He was born March 19, 1813. He gave his life to serve Christ in the exploration of Africa for the sake of the gospel.
On December 4, 1857, he spoke the sentence that has made the greatest impact on me. It is one of the clearest applications I have seen of Jesus’ words in Mark 10:29-30. Jesus said,

Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.

Here is what Livingstone said to the Cambridge students about his “leaving” the benefits of England:

For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. . . . Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.

(Cited in Samuel Zwemer, "The Glory of the Impossible" in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, Ralph Winter and Stephen Hawthorne, eds. [Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1981], p. 259. Emphasis added.

God's Employment Office Is Open

Did you know that there there can be zero-percent unemployment for the Christian? There are more than enough exciting work opportunities available in the Kingdom Job Bank.

There’s something positive about this current financial cataclysm. Here’s what I mean: Remember what happened on the day Stephen was stoned? “A severe persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered, and those who were scattered went on their way proclaiming the message of good news” (Acts 8:1,4). And then later, “Those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the message” (Acts 11:19).

In spite of Jesus’ parting “Go ye” words still ringing in their ears, most Jerusalem Christians had remained content in their home town comfort zone. What got their attention? What got them moving? What made them obedient?

Trouble. In fact, a cataclysm of persecution. They were scattered; not willingly, but in fact, the persecution “made havoc” of the church. It cost believers everything.

Cataclysm? Yes, but it was good for the church and good for the Gospel because believers began doing what Jesus had told them to do — “They that were scattered went everywhere preaching the Word.”

Our present cataclysm is not the same as this but it has the same potential. Could it possibly even reset the direction of our lives so that 2500+ languages might have a Bible? Or a flood of Christian workers materialize? Or millions of unreached people hear of Christ for the first time? And could it mean that even short term mission agencies will have a surplus of workers?

It all can happen once we are freed from hindrances and delivered from our excuses. It doesn’t require a cataclysm to do this but such an upheaval sure helps create a situation where it is more likely to be done.

None of us really want the losses caused by this financial downturn, but here it is. Now what? Well, remember . . .

The Kingdom Job Bank is open and they are hiring.