Read Yourself into the Story

Couldn't have said it better...

Barnabas Piper:

It’s as if we have forgotten that the characters in the Bible are humans. And so are we. We become parsing, nitpicking, lesson scrounging cyborgs when we read the Bible. We read every other story as story – relatable, emotional, and rational all wrapped into one. We treat the Bible, though, as if those relatable and emotional aspects are absent or off limits.

What we need when we read the Bible is whole heap of imagination to go with our commentaries and lexicons.

What are we missing of God by reading the Bible without imagination? Wouldn’t we understand him better if felt what Joseph felt while abandoned in an Egyptian prison for a crime he didn’t commit? Wouldn’t the reality of “the Lord was with Joseph” be more meaningful if we wrestled through the bitterness or loneliness or desperation or depression that he might have suffered?

What would happen to our self-righteousness if we put ourselves in Peter’s shoes that night at the high priest’s house and looked around to see angry faces and the bloodlust in the eyes of the leaders? If we read it like any other story we would be torn between fear and uprightness. We would know the right answers to those questions, but we would know just why they were so hard to give. We might have denied Jesus too.

The Bible needs imagination to truly live. God didn’t create us as unimaginative and then give us a story to confuse us. He gave us imagination and gave us a story. He gave us a spirit to breathe life into our minds so that the right stories would live in us and us in them. We can’t read the stories of the Bible like anything other than what they are: stories.

Ministry that Depends on the Holy Spirit

I've gone through my email and am ready to get into sermon work. Reading this was a good way to get started.

Bobby Jamieson:

What does ministry that depends on the Holy Spirit look like?

It looks like preaching to dead people and praying that the Holy Spirit would give life as only he can (Eph. 2:1-3). It looks like shining the light of the gospel as brightly as you can, and praying that the Spirit would give people eyes to see it (2 Cor. 4:6). It looks like aiming for things only the Holy Spirit can give to people: new loves, new hearts, new lives, new selves.

What means does the Holy Spirit use to give new life? God’s Word.

“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). The Spirit causes us to be born again “through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet. 1:23).

Therefore, Spirit-dependent ministry is by definition Word-centered and Word-driven ministry. Ministry that believes in the Holy Spirit trusts the Spirit-inspired Word to do the work God has promised it will do.

And to return to [Francis] Wayland, he argues that such Spirit-dependent, Word-driven ministry will in fact fill churches:

If we preach in such a manner that the disciples of Christ are separate from the world, prayerful, humble, earnest, self-denying, and laboring for the conversion of men, the Spirit of God will be in the midst of them, and souls will be converted. The thing will be noised abroad. There is never an empty house where the Spirit of God is present.

Is there a Holy Spirit? There is, and he speaks through the Word. And when he speaks, the dead hear and rise to new life.

Reading Old Testament Stories

It's been many months since I've posted anything here, and I'm not sure I'm "back in the saddle," but since I just preached Genesis 43-44 last week, this is the time to post this video. Interestingly enough, I ran across this video here, just a few days before I stopped blogging back in September, and have been saving it until now.

The Paradox of Evangelism

Randy Newman:

There is a paradox about evangelism. Actually there are several but I’ll only mention one here. It starts with the realization that evangelism is impossible. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). Jesus also said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Given those realities, we need to see that evangelism requires at least two miracles. In my life, God must work supernaturally in order for me to say anything or do anything that could possibly connect to regeneration. In the life of the person hearing the gospel, God must work the miracle of raising them from the dead. (see Ephesians 2:1 “…we were dead…”).

Thus, when we step into the process of evangelism, we are entering the world of the impossible. But our God specializes in doing the impossible.

So the paradox of evangelism is that when we remember that evangelism is impossible, we are more likely to evangelize!

We accept the fact that “success” is not dependent upon us. We understand that God uses both the human and the divine in the process (remembering, of course, that the divine component is so much more important). We open our mouths, knowing that God can actually use our frail attempts to accomplish the impossible. We speak with our mouths but we ask God to speak in ways far more powerful. We reason but we ask God to reveal. We proclaim but we know we’re on a playing field with many other forces at work.

It’s a paradox but a privilege.

Without the Lord

Mary Beard reports:

Melbourn Village College — not far from Cambridge — has decided to ditch its Latin motto: “Nisi dominus frustra”. And I guess you can see why. It’s a contraction of the first line of Psalm 127, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain”… so you might translate the three Latin words of the motto something like “Without the Lord, frustration”, I guess. A touch pious you might think, and a bit Judaeo-Christian. But I can’t see that any world faith could seriously disagree and, anyway, it’s served the city of Edinburgh well enough for the last few hundred years.

They have replaced it (after a student vote, it seems) with what sounds to me more like an advertising jingle: “Inspiring Minds” (which is bound to look “so 2011” in a few years time that it too will soon be ditched). According to the Acting Principal, they wanted a motto that was more relevant to the students. In the current economic climate, Latin was “largely irrelevant” in helping the students find work.

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Use All the Circumstances of My Life Today

A prayer by John Baillie:

Teach me, O God, so to use all the circumstances of my life today

that they may bring forth in me the fruits of holiness rather than the fruits of sin.

Let me use disappointment as material for patience;
Let me use success as material for thankfulness;
Let me use suspense as material for perseverance;
Let me use danger as material for courage;
Let me use reproach as material for longsuffering;
Let me use praise as material for humility;
Let me use pleasures as material for temperance;
Let me use pains as material for endurance.

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Churches in NYC Since 9/11

Terry Mattingly, on 9/11 and churches in New York City:

Here's the statistic that insiders keep citing, drawn from a Values Research Institute (www.nycreligion.info) study: Forty percent of the evangelical Protestant churches in Manhattan were born after 2000, an increase of about 80. During one two-month stretch in 2009, at least one Manhattan church was planted every Sunday.

The impact has been big on one scale and tiny on another. According to the institute's research, the percentage of New Yorkers in center-city Manhattan who identify themselves as evangelical Protestants has, since 1990, risen from less than 1 percent to 3 percent. In other words, the evangelical population has tripled.

This relatively small slice means that -- from an evangelical-Protestant viewpoint -- missionaries still consider the city's population an "unreached people group" when compared with other regions. Thus, in 2003 the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention pinned its "Strategic Focus City" label on New York, initiating a four-year project offering additional funds, volunteers and church-planting professionals.

It's impossible to tell this story without discussing the impact of 9/11, noted journalist Tony Carnes, who leads the Values Research Institute team. Rescue workers poured into New York City from across the nation, including volunteers from heartland churches not known for their affection for New York City.

"For the first time, to a large degree, important evangelical leaders realized that New York City was not what they thought it was," said Carnes. "They learned that you didn't need to walk down the street at night looking over your shoulder, worried that you were going to get shot. ...

"They also learned that there were already many evangelical churches here and that they were not weak, struggling and embattled. Many were strong, vital and growing."

The bottom line is that, while 9/11 was crucial, this story didn't start with 9/11.

Out of Control

Timothy Stoner:

God really believes that he is the most worthy, most majestic, magnificent, glorious, stunningly beautiful being in the universe. And he is fixated on the certainty that only he deserves worship – that to him alone belong honor, glory, and praise forever and forever. With red-rimmed, stinging eyes and burning hair, all we can say is – he is right. He is astonishingly beautiful, utterly majestic and perfect in the symmetries of justice and righteousness, knowledge, and wisdom. He is as hypnotically compelling as a surging forest fire and ten times as dangerous. He is out of control – ours, not his.

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Your Words Have Direction

Paul Tripp:

The book of Proverbs is, in ways, a treatise on talk. I would summarize it this way: words give life; words bring death – you choose. What does this mean? It means you have never spoken a neutral word in your life. Your words have direction to them. If your words are moving in the life direction, they will be words of encouragement, hope, love, peace, unity, instruction, wisdom, and correction. But if your words are moving in a death direction, they will be words of anger, malice, slander, jealousy, gossip, division, contempt, racism, violence, judgment, and condemnation. Your words have direction to them. When you hear the word talk you ought to hear something that is high and holy and significant and important. May God help us never to look at talk as something that doesn’t matter.

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The Gospel at Ground Zero

Russell Moore reflects on 9/11 and the Cross. Here is the conclusion:

Let's join the rest of the world in remembering September 11. Let's not flinch from the trauma, but let's not be paralyzed by it either. And along the way, let's remember to have sympathy for those who flinch at the trauma of our gospel, who wince when the light of God's judgment exposes their dark places. Let's remember that the hands we are reaching out with are scabbed over with Roman spike holes, and the cross we are holding out is caked in blood.

Let's remember, too, that the gospel brings peace and reconciliation to every Ground Zero in the cosmos. On the day when graves are opened, even those accidental tombs beneath the rubble of terror, we will see just how good this news is, even better than our shiny churches and happy choruses can convey.

But between now and then, it can be scary as hell.

Isolation or Community

Consider this, and remember to join us for Sunday Schopl, worship and small groups tomorrow.

"We weren't built for isolation. We were created for community."

Community: Taking Your Small Group off Life Support from Crossway on Vimeo.

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