Constitution Day

Apparently today was Constitution Day. Not quite sure how that one slipped by me. Anyway, I guess it kind of goes without saying that Schoolhouse Rock is in order...

The Reason for God DVD

If you've read The Reason for God (and if you haven't, you should), then you might enjoy this DVD. Here is a preview:



You can pre-order it here.

(HT: Vitmain Z)

Friday Fun...Mr. Bean Goes to Church

I meant to use this video for a Friday's Funnies entry long ago, but then forgot to do so. When Tim Challies posted a version of it earlier this week, my memory was kindled.

Watch below as Mr. Bean goes to church. You may have to turn up the sound on your computer because the audio level is rather low.

Marriage: Fifteen Years In

Well, today is my fifteenth wedding anniversary. I am thankful to God for having so greatly blessed me, and today I find myself quite predictably thinking a lot about marriage.

Fifteen years in, has marriage been what I expected? In one sense, yes. I had a pretty good idea what it would be like because Erin and I already knew each other so well. We had dated since high school, so we had already overcome some of the hurdles that newlyweds less familiar with each other often face.

That being said, the fact that we knew each other so well coupled with the fact that (like most people right out of college) I thought I knew far more about everything than I actually did, presented peculiar difficulties. We were typical of most couples getting married, thinking our life together would be perfect. And even though we knew it wasn’t that way for many (most/any) folks, we were confident that we would be the exception.

So have these fifteen years been perfect? Honestly, no. Like any couple outside of the storybooks, in addition to the many fantastic ups, we’ve also had our downs. Most of these have resulted from a single factor: I’m a part of this marriage.

But from my perspective, and I am fairly confident Erin would tell you the same, our marriage has been wonderful. At times it has been difficult, but marriage has been the vehicle of God’s great blessing to me. Through it I have grown both emotionally and spiritually. I have been blessed with two amazing children who have the most loving and devoted mother I could ever want for them. Year by year I’ve grown closer to my best friend in the entire world.

And I have learned a lot about love.

Usually when we talk about love we are referring to a romantic feeling in the heart, a feeling that causes our knees to go weak and the butterflies to flutter in the pit of our stomach. Or perhaps what we mean is simply that when I am with that person they make me so happy. Maybe it’s just the sense someone gives us that, as Jerry Maguire put it, “You...complete...me.”

These are decidedly not what I am talking about when I say that I’ve learned a lot about love. Oh yes. They are all present too. And that’s another area in which I am enormously blessed by God. But when I say I’ve learned a lot about love, what I mean is that I’ve learned about true love, the kind of love that Christ has for his bride (the Church). And in seeing this love, I’ve also learned how very far short I fall of his example.

Bryan Chapell writes in Each for the Other, "God loves us as a consequence of the relationship he has established with us, not because of any beauty we possess or any service we could offer. Nothing better communicates this grace than unconditional love. A husband who cherishes his wife to honor the divine covenant that binds them, rather than any good she does for him, honors both his God and his wife."

This is the kind of love that I have tried to have for my wife (though I regularly fail). Love that is neither dependent on what she can do for me, nor on how I feel about her at any given moment. Rather it is love that is dependent on the commitment I made to her fifteen years ago today. A commitment to honor her and to cherish her. And yes, a commitment to love her.

Quite frankly, it’s something my wife has probably done a better job of than I have. Of course, it’s not really a fair comparison; there’s a lot more beauty in her to love than there is in me. If she’s going to love me, it can’t be for anything I possess! But in loving me in spite of all the messiness I bring to the party, she has shown me how to love her.

You see, I find her more attractive in every way than I did on the day we married. She is more beautiful in character, in spirit and in appearance. She still simultaneously makes my heart melt and race. But when I say I love her, I’m not talking about how I feel. I’m talking about a commitment to her well-being. A commitment to be a blessing to her. A commitment that I am honored to have the opportunity to keep.

I do this because Christ made a commitment to his bride, a commitment to be about her well-being. A commitment to be a blessing to her. A commitment that he was honored to keep. And in so keeping that commitment, he makes his bride lovely.

Make no mistake. I find my lovely bride to be completely worthy of my love (and far more for that matter). But that is not why I love her. I love her because Christ loved his bride even though she was completely unworthy.

A couple months ago Andrew Peterson released an album entitled Counting Stars. When he did, I posted this entry which included the video below to the song Dancing in the Minefields. Given the nature of the date today and the beauty of the truths contained in the song, I figured it was worth posting again.

Listen. Enjoy. And I pray that you might personally know the joy spoken of in this song, the joy that I’ve been so blessed to know for these fifteen years.

Advice for Young Pastors

I am constantly impressed at the sage advice and wise insights that come from the heart and mind of Kevin DeYoung. Though relatively young, Kevin is wise far beyond his years, and his sermons, books and blog posts regularly feed my soul.

Yesterday and today, Kevin posted a great two-part series with his advice for theological students and young pastors. Among his suggestions are the following:

4. Establish your priorities at the church early and clearly. I suggest: preach, pray, and people.

13. Learn to think in 5 year, 1 year, 6 months, and 1 month increments. When you start out at a church you’ll feel three months behind everyone else; you need to be six months ahead.

20. God opposes the proud but gives grace to humble. Pray this into your soul before and after every sermon.

24. Don’t preach your issues from seminary. I can almost guarantee no one in your church doubts the Pauline authorship of Ephesians. It says “Paul” in their Bibles so they’re good to go.

28. Be comfortable in your own shoes. Preach through your own personality. Learn from, but don’t try to clone, your heroes.

33. Make time to make friends. In the long run neither you nor your church will regret the hours invested in personal relationships with other pastors, old friends from seminary, and kindred spirits in the congregation.

39. Love your wife. Spend time with your kids. Be very afraid if you no longer look forward to going home at the end of the day.

40. Be generous in giving credit to others and stingy in passing around the blame.

44. What your people need most from you is your own personal holiness. People want a pastor who has been with God.

45. Keep your passions in proportion. Not everything matters as much as everything else. Keep the gospel front and center.

If you are a pastor or seminary student, do yourself a favor and check out the complete lists. Read numbers 1-20 here and numbers 21-45 here.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

"Christianity is not the movement from vice to virtue, it is the movement from virtue to grace."

Gerhard Forde

Don't Forget the Blood

I suppose it has always been the case, but it seems especially prevalent in our day. Many people love the message of Jesus (or at least what they think this message might be), they just don’t love the message of the cross. To put it another way, they simply can’t abide by the idea that a holy God requires payment for my sins and yours, and that Jesus provided this payment when he shed his blood as an atoning sacrifice. We long to love Jesus for who we want him to be, as opposed to loving him for who he was and is.

I’ve been reading through Your Jesus is Too Safe by Jared Wilson, and I came across a passage yesterday that does a great job of capturing this idea:

The cross of Christ is foolishness to those who are perishing, which is a stinging indictment of so many self-appointed “Christian” spokespeople who have conveniently forgotten all about the cross. The cross is a foreign concept to the religious hucksters on television, and those in the pulpits and in publishing, who would ask you to take Jesus without taking his cross.

My friends, Jesus is not a pop song, snuggly sweater, affectionate boyfriend, a poster on your wall, self-help book, motivational speech, warm cup of coffee, ultimate fighting champion, knight in shining armor, or Robin to your Batman. He is blood.

And without blood, you die.

Friday Fun...I Love His Singin'

I think this might be the kind of situation that calls for Paul's admonition in Ephesians 4:15 that we speak the truth in love...

Praying Through Scripture

Have you ever wondered what exactly some people mean when they suggest that we should "pray through Scripture" and "meditate" upon it? If so, Dave Cover, Teaching Pastor at The Crossing Church in Columbia, Missouri (and one of my mentors from my collegiate days) gives us a helpful example.

In it, he highlights the benefits of committing Scripture to memory and encourages us all to memorize such passages as Psalm 23.

When you’re lying awake at night unable to sleep for whatever reason (restlessness, anxiety, worry, regret, etc.), you can meditate on and pray through Psalm 23 from memory. When you’re driving on your way to work and you’ve got that anxious feeling inside you—either because of trouble at home or at work or in life—you can meditate on and pray through Psalm 23 from memory. Cling to the presence of God and the promises of all that He is for you in Christ the same way King David did 3,000 years ago, and the same way believers have done ever since.

You can read Dave's whole post here.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

“For what is more consonant with faith than to recognize that we are naked of all virtue, in order to be clothed by God? That we are empty of all good, to be filled by him? That we are slaves of sin, to be freed by him? Blind, to be illumined by him? Lame to be made straight by him? Weak to be sustained by him? To take away from us all occasion for glorying, that he alone may stand forth glorious and we glory in him?”

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

The Gospel of Wealth

David Brooks wrote a thought-provoking op-ed piece in The New York Times yesterday entitled The Gospel of Wealth. In it, he examines the capitalistic and consumeristic influences on the church in America "When Europeans first settled this continent, they saw the natural abundance and came to two conclusions: that God’s plan for humanity could be realized here, and that they could get really rich while helping Him do it."

Brooks focuses specifically on David Platt, a pastor who suggests, “When we gather in our church building to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshipping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we may be worshipping ourselves.” Read the whole column here.

(HT: Kevin DeYoung)

Pastor Your Family First

For all my friends in the ministry, here are some great words of advice from one of my favorite preachers/teachers/mentors, Bryan Chapell, President of Covenant Theological Seminary.

"Sermon Planning and Loving Your Family" from Journey-Creative on Vimeo.

Friday Fun...Laughing Babies

If laughing babies doesn't put a smile on your face, well, I give up.

Calvinists are Evil

"Calvinists are evil." That was the title and opening sentence of a blog entry I came across today. Well, seeing as I'm a Calvinist (I've got the bobblehead to prove it), you might expect that this post upset me a bit. As it turns out though, I couldn't agree with the author more. His thoughts included the following:

All of us, Christians or otherwise, are intrinsically evil and the moment we start thinking well of ourselves is the moment we have begun to take our eyes off the Gospel to compare ourselves with ourselves. This standard of “by comparison” is mere relativism and it’s what the world does when it tries to sort out evil without attaching blame to itself.

and

Thinking well of ourselves is not only unwise; it’s spiritually deadly. It leads to the same self-righteousness that entrapped the hearts of the Pharisees. It isn’t faith. It doesn’t lead us to God’s eternal kindness through forgiveness.

As Brad so provocatively points out, we must realize that our goodness always and forever rests in and emanates from Christ. This is right in line with today's edition of Wednesday's Words of Wisdom. You can read Brad's whole post here.

A Father's Love

As the school year is just about to get under way here in Michigan, I am amazed at how fast my kids are growing up. It's an odd thing, because I remember how old I felt when I was their age, and at the same time I still see them as the little babies we brought home from the hospital.

Growing up is hard for kids, but it might be even harder on parents. Frank Cusumano of KSDK-TV, the NBC affiliate in my old hometown of St. Louis, recently did a fantastic feature on taking his oldest child off to college. As someone who was trained in sports broadcasting, I always admired the excellence with which Frank exercised his craft. Among the many great stories I saw him do though, this one stands out head and shoulders above the rest.

If you have children, please let me commend this piece to you. It's well worth the five minutes it will take to check it out.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be. It is always on His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest.

B.B. Warfield, Works, 7:113