day no. 15,128: breadcrumbs from blogs

On a run home from work the other day I found myself praying for these posts. While I use this blog as a searchable database for myself and a repository of quotes and thoughts I want to be able to easily catalog and call upon by search bar in the future, I also hope that my children and others may find value in them as well to the advancement of God's glory and my neighbor's good as it has been an exercise of personal growth in developing a regular habit of processing thoughts and putting words to them for me. 

The phrase I stumbled upon in my prayer was, "please Lord, don't let the delight die with me." Sometimes I am so ravished in delight by the thoughts and meditations God grants me to marinate in and I want others to have that delight. I want my children to find themselves periodically enraptured by the thought of God's grace in the Gospel of Christ. I have found such delight and joy in mulling over God's wisdom and don't want all of that satisfaction to end selfishly with me. So I strive to put into words what God is teaching me, showing me, revealing to me, etc... I do it to document His goodness and to leave bread crumbs back to the Source for others. My goal in doing so is that others would find these crumbs adequate guides to get them to the Person of Jesus and the unending, ever-satisfying joy only He can provide.

These words I write on this blog are my attempt to put down the delight I experience in my thought life and lay rails for others to run on back to where I found it.

thoughts from "Free to be Fallen" by Tullian Tchividjian‏

Check out the full post HERE.

 

The freedom to be OK with not being OK.

 

Some would say, “We go to church to give to God, to show Him that we’re serious.”

 

I understand the sermon note pointed at our consumerism.

 

It’s a good one.

 

Many of us do come to church only to get and never give the church or God anything.

 

And…

 

We will continue to do so unless we RESPOND to the fact that in Christ, God has given us everything.

 

The best fuel for maturity is NOT a rally cry for us to do good works in order to become who we always wanted to be.

 

The best fuel for maturity is a proclamation of forgiveness found in faith in what has already been done by God.

stranger danger‏

Tullian is often Johnny-on-the-spot.  THIS proves it yet again. Read below:

 

I was putting my daughter Genna (11) to bed the other night and I asked her, “Honey, what do you think is God’s overall disposition toward you?” Her immediate response was, “Disappointed.” After probing why she might answer that way–wondering, perhaps, if the Holy Spirit had convicted her regarding something she may have said or done–I realized that she wasn’t feeling convicted about any particular sin, she simply sees God as someone whose feelings toward her are basically unhappy ones. She knows that God is perfect and that she is imperfect–she understands that God is holy and that she is sinful–and so it only makes sense to her that God is perpetually displeased with her.

 

Seizing an opportunity to preach the gospel to my daughter–AGAIN–I scrambled in my mind for an illustration that might help an 11 year-old grasp the liberating power of Christ’s imputed righteousness. Now, don’t be nit-picky. I know illustrations all break down at some point. But this was my best off-the-cuff attempt to help an 11 year-old sleep well knowing that God’s love for her is immutable (it’s actually kind of sad that I even have to say that).

I said, “Genna, imagine some stranger (let’s call him Steven) comes walking down our street right about the time Mommy is making dinner. He walks up our driveway, through our front door (without knocking), into our kitchen, looks at mommy and asks, ‘What’s for dinner?’ Now, you and I both know that Mommy is hospitable. But a complete stranger walking in our house would freak her out. She’d probably say something like, ‘Who are you? And if you don’t turn around and leave right now I’m going to call the police.’”

 

I continued, “Now imagine that same stranger comes walking down our street around dinner timewith Gabe (Genna’s 17 year-old brother). The two of them together walk up our driveway, through the front door, and into our kitchen. Gabe looks at Mommy with his arm around his friend and says, ‘Mom, this is my friend Steven. Can he stay for dinner?’ Her response would be totally different, wouldn’t it? She would say something like, ‘Nice to meet you Steven. Of course you can have dinner with us.’ Then she’d get another place-setting and treat Steven like a son at our table. Why? Because he was with Gabe.”

 

I then went on to explain the difference between the way God feels toward those who come to him without Jesus and those who come to him with Jesus. Reminding her that, because of what Jesus did for her on the cross, God sees her as a friend and a daughter, not an enemy and a stranger, she smiled. I explained that God is a good Father and will discipline those he loves, but because she’s with Jesus, God’s affection for her is unchanging and his approval of her is forever.

 

Having talked to many, many Christians over the years, I know for a fact that a lot of them (like Genna) think that God is perpetually disappointed with them. Maybe it’s time the church spends more energy reminding Christians that God’s love for them is not dependent on what they do or don’t do, but rather on what Christ has done for them. For, as Luther said so well, “God does not love sinners because they are attractive; sinners are attractive to God because he loves them.”

 

I promise you, more Christians need to be reminded of this than you think–including you and me, if we’re being honest!‏

thoughts from "the burned over place" a blog by Tullian Tchividjian‏

Read HERE.

 

This is an awesome image of how the Law and the Gospel interact.

 

“Fire would not burn the place where fire had already burned.”

 

It is well worth the 5 minutes it will take to read it.

 

It reminds me of the following passage:

 

Psalm 51:17

 

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

happy new year! unless you liked 2012 in which case i'm so sorry for your loss

Congrats Christians and Christanettes!
We did it!!! 
Another year!!!!!
Exclamation points!!!!!!!

2013 stands to be a banner year for the minivan voorsts.

Stay tuned or get left in the exhaust of our Windstar (affectionately called "the vidi van").

rubbernecker

I ain't no holla-back grrl. 
For so many reasons.

But i thought I'd change up the look a little for 2013.
Ya know, to keep your eyes coming back.

It's my gift to you.
(if by "you" i mean "me." which i do)

Merry Christmas!

Thoughts from "The Gospel is Good News, Not Good Advice" by Tulllian Tchividjian

Read the full post HERE.

This blog post by Pastor Tullian is from Michael Horton's "The Gospel-Driven Life."

I love good advice.  I love smart people who are able to tell me how to be smart.  I hate being dumb.  I hate failure.

The Good News tells me that God's foolishness is wiser than my wisdom.  The Good News announces a triumphant Christ that has conquered my failure.

I hate my sin.  I hate that I'm not perfect.  God hates that about me as well.  The Good News in Christ is that God accepts me not just as I am, but just as I am in Christ.

Thoughts from the "1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith"

I was reading a blog and saw an advertisement on the right column for Reformed Baptist Seminary. I don't know why it never before occurred to me that Reformed and Baptist being combined into one was pretty much the most awesome thing ever.  If only because I am so drawn to both the systematic theology of Calvinism and the not-baptizing-babyism of Baptists.

Spurgeon is one of my favorites and he had ties to both the Baptist and Reformed traditions. 

Most Christians will read books written by Christians.  Fewer Christians will read the forementioned books and actually also read the Bible.  Even less will read books, the Bible, and doctrinal statements.  I am that odd breed that considers the last extremely interesting.  If I am turned on to a new church or pastor, I will often go to their website and read their doctrinal statement. 

I found this confession/doctrinal statement from the 1600's super encouraging.  You can read it HERE.

It's all there: election, sanctification, justification, marriage between one man and one woman, good works, etc...

It is not for the faint of heart.  If  you are one who struggles through the latter parts of Exodus and 1st and 2nd Chronicles, this may be difficult for you. To boot, it is in an older style of English as well, so it does take a certain degree of concentration in order to really grasp the fulness of what they are communicating as their doctrine of God and church and Christian life and liberty thereafter.

If you do not want to take the time to read this, read your home church's doctrinal statement off their webpage.  If you don't care what some dead English Reformed Baptists thought, I understand.  But you should care what your pastor and elders believe and what they hope to infuse into you and your family and your neighbors in attendance at your local gathering of sainted ain'teds. 

Doctrine may not be everyone's cup-o-tea and I get that, I really do.  It is, however, my cup-o-tea and I could see where you'd be grossed out having to drink tea from my cup.  While it may not get your heart racing or mind bubbling with activity, it should have some place in your life.  Some place of some priority that is. You may not like "doctrine," but as A.W. Tozer once said,

"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us."

Thoughts from "Hoping for a New Reformation" by Tullian Tchividjian

Read the full blog post HERE.

I love the way Tullian is so relentlessly devoted to preaching the purity of the Gospel in granting hope and freedom to those burdened by religion, sin, and self.  The Law of God and the Gospel of God are what must be preached to reach the lost with the full counsel of God.

Tullian has devoted his life to anchoring the Christian hope in Christ alone.  He says it this way,

"It just seemed so new to so many because it had been lost for so long amidst a moralistic, narcissistic, “do more, try harder”, caricature of the Christian faith that has been prevalent for so long. What I kept hearing from people all over the world was that so many pulpits consistently preach the Christian and not the Christ and as a result many have been burdened by the false idea that the focus of the Christian faith is the life of the Christian. I knew something had to be done."

Tullian started up Liberate - a resource for proclaiming the firm foundation of hope in Christ alone by grace alone in faith alone.

He sums up this organization's mission this way,

"My hope and prayer is that this website will be a place where you can hear and believe the good news that the God who rightly condemns sinners according to his law, liberates sinners with the forgiving love of his gospel. We pray that it becomes a catalytic platform for serious thinking about 'a more radical gospel.'”

Thoughts from "How 'Love God and Love Others' is a Backward Gospel" by Justin Holcomb

Please read the full blog HERE.

Q: What is the Gospel?
A: Love God and love others.

Result: Either self-righteousness in pridefully assuming you're doing that or total desparation in knowing that you fall flat short of that.

-----

Q: What is the Gospel?
A: Jesus loved God and others perfectly and by faith in Him we are seen as having done the same.

Result: Humility and faith in the righteousness granted by God from God unto God to His glory

-----

This is a great reminder of the necessity of semantics (that certain words mean certain somethings) and avoiding the confusion of categories (that one thing is categorically different than the other thing)..

"Love God, love people" is a great summary of the Law of God, not the grace of God.  

The Law of God is perfect and awesome. 

But the Law did not die for you.

Thoughts from "In My Father's House" by John Dink

A blog for: the broken, the wounded, the mourning, the weak, the desperate, the humiliated.

"Law to the proud.  Grace to the humble." ~ Hell's Best Kept Secret by Ray Comfort

Reading one of John Dink's older posts (as I have only recently become aware of his writings and wanted to hear more while I waited for the next new post) I found this reminder that grace is for the humbled.

Check out the full blog HERE.

If you despair in your heart from all your misdeeds or the incompleteness of your good deeds, thank Jesus for this brokeness.  A contrite spirit and a broken will before God are His blessings to you. 

May the Gospel be preached as the Best News to those for whom doom is forecast in their hearts by the grace of the Holy Spirit. 

Preacher, please remember to preach the devastating nature of the Law in humility and petition that the Spirit may produce in the souls of its hearers a total undoing.  Preach the terrifying nature of the Gospel in proclaiming that this new found dilemma has in its wake the reconciliatory solution of Christ on a cross, complete, and accomplished.

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fear relieved.
~ "Amazing Grace"

Thoughts from "Are You Righteous?" - by Tullian Tchividjian

I was recently perusing blogs on the Gospel Coalition website.  Among their contributors is Tullian Tchividjian (better known as Billy Graham's grandson and pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church where he took over for Dr. D. James Kennedy after he passed away recently).

This blog is about justification, imputed righteousness, and the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  If that is not up your alley, then you either do not know what those terms mean or you are not a Christian. 
The topic de jure for "Are You Righteous?" is the penetrating piercing of Jesus' "sermon on the mount." We are not as good as we think we are and the Law is patient in preaching this to us if we have been given ears to hear.

Behavior is all society and religion care about.  You do not have to do the right thing for the right reason as long as you don't do the wrong thing for any reason.

An excerpt from the blog says it this way,

"The law enforcement institutions of society are concerned with right behavior. They do not care why people obey the law, so long as they obey it. The person who breaks no laws is righteous in their sight regardless of the motivation that produces law abiding behavior."

Tullian expands on this idea when he says,

"The truth is that God isn’t concerned with any kind of obedience; he’s concerned with a certain kind of obedience. What motivates our obedience determines whether or not it is a sacrifice of praise. Doing the right thing with the wrong heart reveals deep unrighteousness, not devout righteousness. T.S. Eliot said it best, “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.” (emphases added)

I adore Tullian because he is so on point when it comes to the Gospel of God in Jesus.  As such, I am basically quoting his entire post, but here is another fantastic synopsis of the dilemma we all face.

"External righteousness is something we can all achieve on our own with a little self-discipline and a lot of self-righteousness. But Jesus wants us to see that regardless of how well we think we’re doing or how righteous we think we’re becoming, when “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” becomes the standard and not “how much I’ve improved over the years”, we realize that we’re a lot worse than we fancy ourselves to be-that unrighteousness is inescapable, that 'even the best things we do have something in them to be pardoned.'"

Lastly, Tullian notes that Jesus died to kill this nagging feeling that we owe Him something in return for what He did for us and the constant struggle with our religious hearts to conjure up morale to do something for Him.  Not that we should not work out what God has worked in, but that we should recognize the balance of eternity does not rest on our ability to complete what Christ could not finish on His own or our ability to now pay off the debt of gratitude owed to Jesus for the debt He assumed on the Cross.  Jesus is not in the industry of purchasing other's debts to make a profit. 

He is not a grace lender. He is a grace Giver.

Tullian summarizes this by quoting someone else (another thing I love about finding faithful pastors is that they lead you to other faithful pastors from whom they glean their inspirations)

"In the cross, “God has stormed the last bastion of the self, the last presumption that you really were going to do something for him…He has died in your place! He has done it. He made it. It is all over, finished, between you and God! He died in your place that death which you must die; he has done it in such a way as to save you. He has borne the whole thing! The fact that there is nothing left for you to do is the death of self and the birth of the new creature” (Forde).

I know I have given you a lot of it, but all of it is soooo good.  Check it out.  I may have hit on some highlights, but the overall message is strung together beautifully as he weaves Biblical passages with quotes of famous dead people and real life experiences.

Thoughts from "The Double-Reach of Self-Righteousness" by Tullian Tchividjian

Read the full blog HERE.

Tullian points out,

"the thing that gets in the way of our love for God and a deep appreciation of his grace is not so much our unrighteous badness but our self-righteous goodness."

He goes on to say,

"...it’s always the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person. It’s the prostitute who understands grace; it’s the Pharisee who doesn’t. It’s the unrighteous younger brother who gets it before the self-righteous older brother.

There is, however, another side to self-righteousness that younger-brother types need to be careful of. There’s an equally dangerous form of self-righteousness that plagues the unconventional, the liberal, and the non-religious types. We “authentic”, anti-legalists can become just as guilty of legalism in the opposite direction. What do I mean?

It’s simple: we become self-righteous against those who are self-righteous. Many younger evangelicals today are reacting to their parents’ conservative, buttoned-down, rule-keeping flavor of “older brother religion” with a type of liberal, untucked, rule-breaking flavor of “younger brother irreligion” which screams, “That’s right, I know I don’t have it all together and you think you do; I know I’m not good and you think you are. That makes me better than you.”

See the irony?

In other words, they’re proud that they’re not self-righteous! Hmmm…"

He concludes,

"So the question is not whether you are self-righteous, but rather, in which direction does your self-righteousness lean? ...Thankfully, while our self-righteousness reaches far, God’s grace reaches farther. And the good news is, that it reaches in both directions!"

I, again, have reprinted a good portion of this blog post for you, but eagerly encourage you to hit the link above and read it in its entirity to capture the full weight of the appeal being made  Hopefully this taste has whetted your appetite for the full meal.. Tullian has a profound gift for preaching the Gospel's power to release us, free us, forgive us, and empower us to honor God with our lives..

The love of God in the Gospel inspires reciprocal love which ends in devotion and displays of grand romantical gesture.  Attempting to love Him only by the Law often provokes jealousy, pride, and boastful works on which confidence is claimed apart from Christ -- whether in pridefully declaring that "no one's perfect" as a backhanded confidence in one's sinfulness or by pridefully declaring that "no one else is perfect" as a ignorant confidence in one's sinlessness.

Thoughts from "The great God over small things" by Paige VV

I read my wife's blog today and thanked God with bubblings of joy in the deepest places of my soul. She is so awesome and puts into words so well what we all are often prone to think.

Please check out her blog HERE.

What we do matters, no matter how small because God is great and personal; a "King in the dirt" as my wife so beautifully states it.

Bonus Post

I was reading Pastor Jeff's blog this morning and was really encouraged and empowered in my Rock and Salvation, my Fortress, my Protector, my LORD, my Warrior, my Comforter, my All in all.  The bruised reed He will not break and the smoldering wick He will not snuff out.  He is there for me because He loves me.  What a powerful message in particular to parents who when raising littles very rarely are blessed with heart-produced gratitude.  It is not in vain.  In serving and cherishing we show the love of God as He has shown tirelessly to us.

"They imagine that they eat and walk on their own strength."

 Check it out HERE.

It is extremely powerful, poignant, and pithy.  It will take you only a short time to read it, but the truth of it will leave you chewing long after.  It is a very articulate and simple breakdown of the passage and the communication of God’s unfailing, often unappreciated love for us.