Life As A Vapor

Thank You, Lord, for the lives of flawed

and faith-filled saints!

Thank You for grace, amazing grace,

that saves and uses sinners!

Lord, don’t let us dream too small about our lives.

Don’t let us limit Your power

to what we see in the mirror.

Help us to trust You. 

Help us as William Carey said,

to expect great things from God

and attempt great things for God.

We are not great. But You are great.

Your power is made perfect in our weakness.

We surrender all claims on our lives.

Come. Make us useful for the glory of Christ.

In His great name, we pray, Amen.

-- John Piper

Are you frustrated with your church?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

This applies in a special way to the complaints often heard from pastors and zealous members about their congregations. A pastor should never complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.

. . . let [the pastor or zealous member] nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the congregation before God. Let him rather accuse himself for his unbelief. Let him pray God for an understanding of his own failure and his particular sin, and pray that he may not wrong his brethren. Let him, in the consciousness of his own guilt, make intercession for his brethren. Let him do what he is committed to do, and thank God.

From Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein, (New York: HarperOne, 1954), 29, paragraphing mine.

Christianity: The Greatest of All Levelers

I don't know its origin but when a friend quoted this I asked him to write it down for me. And now I come back to it a lot; more often in recent days when I note the borrowed glory of those parading themselves, especially in politics, but also in sports (an Olympian proclaims himself to be "The Greatest . . ."), business and industry, and the like. Wherever there is authority, ability, supremacy or influence that pronounces high words of promise and prophecy, this truth remains: 

Christianity is, in one sense, the greatest of all levelers.

It looks to the elements, and not to the circumstantials of humanity; and regarding as altogether superficial and temporary the distinctions of this fleeting pilgrimage, it fastens on those points of assimilation which liken the king upon the throne to the very humblest of his subject population. 

They are alike in the nakedness of their birth. They are alike in the sureness of their decay. They are alike in the agonies of their dissolution. And after the one is tombed in sepulchral magnificence, and the other is laid in his sod-wrapt grave, are they most fearfully alike in the corruption to which they moulder. 

But it is with the immortal nature of each that Christianity has to do; and, in both the one and the other, does it behold a nature alike forfeited by guilt, and alike capable of being restored by the grace of an offered salvation. And never do the pomp and the circumstance of externals appear more humiliating, than when, looking onwards to the day of resurrection, we behold the sovereign standing without his crown, and trembling, with the subject by his side, at the bar of heaven’s majesty. 

There the master and the servant will be brought to their reckoning together; and when the one is tried upon the guilt and the malignant influence of his [life] . . . —O! how tremendously will the little brief authority in which he now plays his fantastic tricks, turn to his own condemnation; for, than thus abuse his authority, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.

Take some time with these words. Understand them. Be sobered. But also be encouraged.