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.