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"Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me." 2 Timothy 4:10 If you make it into the Bible, this is not the way to be remembered. How can we live here in this present world, while never losing sight of the one to follow?
Recent Entries
God? Who Needs Him?May 31, 2013
Self-sufficient humanism. Paul saw it coming – “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”
Imago Dei
September 12, 2012
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Why Can't I Pray?
August 18, 2012
The bible gives us several reasons, but according to Jeremy Taylor, a deceitful heart is at the root of prayerlessness.
It's Not Rocket Science
July 23, 2012
To keep in step with the Spirit should be our daily quest. And if we are successful at that, all of life falls into place.
Theological Steak
April 10, 2012
These words by P. T. Forsythe on the magnificence of Christ's work are to theology what Ruth's Chris is to a good steak.
Describing the Indescribable
February 11, 2012
What we have in Christ will take all eternity to describe. But for one segment of one sermon, a great preacher made a mighty attempt.
Making Sense Of It All
January 30, 2012
Where are things headed? Is there rhyme and reason to the endless cycle of summer, fall, winter and spring? Is there a plan in place, or is randomness the explanation?
Avoiding The Demas Syndrome
January 21, 2009
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.
People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.
Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. Hebrews 11:13-16
There is a lot of talk these days about the world's ills, or at least the laundry list of things to fix in America. And hope springs eternal that a new president can hack away at them, waving some magic wand, till they all disappear.
David Wells in his book GOD IN THE WASTELAND dissects American culture and how it is effecting the church. As he does, we are reminded just how the great cloud of witnesses held this world and the one to come in proper tension.
The New Testament vision, then, is not about winning a victory but about entering into the victory that Christ has already won, not of gaining the world but of saving the soul.
Its message is not about making this worldly age more secure but about entering the "age to come" through Christ, not about manufacturing happiness but about finding holiness, not about purchase but about faith, not about amusement but about repentance, not about distraction but about knowing God.
That is the say, the message is not grounded in ourselves but in Christ. It's about redemption, not of progress. The purpose of the world, under the hand of God, is redemption from sin, death and the devil, from what is fading and passing to what is eternal and enduring.
"That," remarks P. T. Forsythe, is "the only teleology of the world which is as sure as sorrow, death, the soul, or its God." It assures the world, that, despite the ravages of poverty, and sorrow, the presence in every society of the "wretched of the earth," the fearful prospects of nuclear warfare - despite these and many other awful realities, there is a future.
It is not a future managed by human beings, a future constructed for their ends, but the future opened by the cross of Christ, the future of God's ends.
It is essential that the church grasp the implications of the fact that it lives in an interim time, between the first and second comings of Christ, in the murky twilight between the inauguration and the consummation of the kingdom, between the moment when the world heard unmistakable rumblings of God's justice at the cross and the moment when the storm of his judgment will arrive.
Divine judgment is, in fact, the foundation of God's moral order and the fundamental premise of the gospel. As such, it is proclaimed in both the Lord's Supper and baptism, for common to both is the thought that life outside of Christ is life under God's wrath. (172-173))
Paul's instuction in 1 Corinthians 7 is to use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. Why? For this world in its present form is passing away.
TURN YOUR EYES UPON JESUS
LOOK FULL IN HIS WONDERFUL FACE
AND THE THINGS OF EARTH WILL GROW STRANGELY DIM
IN THE LIGHT OF HIS GLORY AND GRACE
People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.
Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. Hebrews 11:13-16
There is a lot of talk these days about the world's ills, or at least the laundry list of things to fix in America. And hope springs eternal that a new president can hack away at them, waving some magic wand, till they all disappear.
David Wells in his book GOD IN THE WASTELAND dissects American culture and how it is effecting the church. As he does, we are reminded just how the great cloud of witnesses held this world and the one to come in proper tension.
The New Testament vision, then, is not about winning a victory but about entering into the victory that Christ has already won, not of gaining the world but of saving the soul.
Its message is not about making this worldly age more secure but about entering the "age to come" through Christ, not about manufacturing happiness but about finding holiness, not about purchase but about faith, not about amusement but about repentance, not about distraction but about knowing God.
That is the say, the message is not grounded in ourselves but in Christ. It's about redemption, not of progress. The purpose of the world, under the hand of God, is redemption from sin, death and the devil, from what is fading and passing to what is eternal and enduring.
"That," remarks P. T. Forsythe, is "the only teleology of the world which is as sure as sorrow, death, the soul, or its God." It assures the world, that, despite the ravages of poverty, and sorrow, the presence in every society of the "wretched of the earth," the fearful prospects of nuclear warfare - despite these and many other awful realities, there is a future.
It is not a future managed by human beings, a future constructed for their ends, but the future opened by the cross of Christ, the future of God's ends.
It is essential that the church grasp the implications of the fact that it lives in an interim time, between the first and second comings of Christ, in the murky twilight between the inauguration and the consummation of the kingdom, between the moment when the world heard unmistakable rumblings of God's justice at the cross and the moment when the storm of his judgment will arrive.
Divine judgment is, in fact, the foundation of God's moral order and the fundamental premise of the gospel. As such, it is proclaimed in both the Lord's Supper and baptism, for common to both is the thought that life outside of Christ is life under God's wrath. (172-173))
Paul's instuction in 1 Corinthians 7 is to use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. Why? For this world in its present form is passing away.
TURN YOUR EYES UPON JESUS
LOOK FULL IN HIS WONDERFUL FACE
AND THE THINGS OF EARTH WILL GROW STRANGELY DIM
IN THE LIGHT OF HIS GLORY AND GRACE
