not by generations, but regeneration

My wife was reading this blog the other day and forwarded me a note.

She indicated a point the author made that struck her:

God does not have grandchildren.

John 1:12-13

¹² But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, ¹³ who were born,not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

You are not regenerated by being born to the right parents at the right time because your parents were believers and they really wanted you to believe too.

The will of man and pride and legacy cannot accomplish regeneration.

John 3:3

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

May I state the obvious in proposing a person cannot birth themself.

John 6:44

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

May I state the obvious in proposing a person cannot draw themselves up from the depths of their mire and no one can draw up another.

John 6:63

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

The flesh profits nothing.

Not a little something.

Nothing.

 

This truth is spirit and life.

 

It is life-giving to understand that you don’t have life.

It is refreshing to realize you are stale.

It is domesticating to understand you are feral.

 

Life comes in acknowledging death.

 

God does not have grandchildren.

 

It is by blood, flesh and men we are born to inherit an earthly life.

It is through faith in Jesus that we are reborn to inherit eternal life.

 

"Even the best church planter or pastor in the world can’t regenerate his child’s heart. You can’t parent a kid into conversion any more than you can pastor people into salvation. We affirm regeneration by the power of God, not by parenting. But we’re called to dazzle our kids with Jesus, delight in the Gospel, and train them faithfully, all while trusting the Spirit to act upon our kids.” ~Dave Harvey, Am I Called?

second verse same as the first: closing time edition

Today we close on our new home in Cedar Falls.
 
It is nice to have this second half of the moving puzzle box checked as "done."
 
Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you?
We've got some work to do now.
 
It is no small irony that Lauren is to this day called Scoob by her mother, my mother-in-law, and is, of couse, swooping in to assist us get the house ready to call a home for Team Van Voorst and baby Schaeffer shortly.

oh well: too deep, too far, too little and too hard‏

 

So Chambers took the past few days to pound this point into my skull
 

The woman said to Him, ’Sir, You have nothing to draw [water] with, and the well is deep’ —John 4:11

…beware of exhibiting religious deceit by saying, “Oh, I have no misgivings about Jesus, only misgivings about myself.” If we are honest, we will admit that we never have misgivings or doubts about ourselves, because we know exactly what we are capable or incapable of doing. But we do have misgivings about Jesus. Andour pride is hurt even at the thought that He can do what we can’t.

My misgivings arise from the fact that I search within to find how He will do what He says. My doubts spring from the depths of my own inferiority. If I detect these misgivings in myself, I should bring them into the light and confess them openly— “Lord, I have had misgivings about You. I have not believed in Your abilities, but only my own. And I have not believed in Your almighty power apart from my finite understanding of it.”

“Where then do You get that living water?” —John 4:11

“The well is deep”— and even a great deal deeper than the Samaritan woman knew! (John 4:11). Think of the depths of human nature and human life; think of the depth of the “wells” in you. Have you been limiting, or impoverishing, the ministry of Jesus to the point that He is unable to work in your life? Suppose that you have a deep “well” of hurt and trouble inside your heart, and Jesus comes and says to you, “Let not your heart be troubled . . .” (John 14:1). Would your response be to shrug your shoulders and say, “But, Lord, the well is too deep, and even You can’t draw up quietness and comfort out of it.” Actually, that is correct.Jesus doesn’t bring anything up from the wells of human nature— He brings them down from above. We limit the Holy One of Israel by remembering only what we have allowed Him to do for us in the past, and also by saying, “Of course, I cannot expect God to do this particular thing.” The thing that approaches the very limits of His poweris the very thing we as disciples of Jesus ought to believe He will do. We impoverish and weaken His ministry in us the moment we forget He is almighty. The impoverishment is in us, not in Him. We will come to Jesus for Him to be our comforter or our sympathizer, but we refrain from approaching Him as our Almighty God.

The reason some of us are such poor examples of Christianity is that we have failed to recognize that Christ is almighty. We have Christian attributes and experiences, but there is no abandonment or surrender to Jesus Christ. When we get into difficult circumstances, we impoverish His ministry by saying, “Of course, He can’t do anything about this.” We struggle to reach the bottom of our own well, trying to get water for ourselves. Beware of sitting back, and saying, “It can’t be done.” You will know it can be done if you will look to Jesus. The well of your incompleteness runs deep, but make the effort to look away from yourself and to look toward Him.

It is the sin of unbelief that produces the idea that we are too weak to be strong in Him.

It is the sin of pride to use your inferiority as a basis of demeaning His majesty.

It is the sin of gluttony to feast upon insecurity when He declares a fast.

It is the sin of morbid introspection that leads us to put immovable obstacles between Him and us in declaring Him too powerless to raze.

Do NOT look within.

It IS too deep.

It IS too hard.

It IS too far.

For you.

Do not refuse Him because you cannot get a bucket down far enough.

Do not reject Him because He does not come with a bucket.

Repent of your insistence on being saved a certain way.

It is deep.

But He’s deeper.

From its mouth to its mire, the well within you is seemingly bottomless.

He eclipsed the distance from heaven to earth, from God to man by a spotless life, sacrificial death and glorious resurrection.

He can handle the plunge to draw you out and up to God.

congrats KC, these are your top searches‏

I was sitting in a basement in Kansas City.

I had responded to all my email and I had some time since Paige was puting on makeup before attending a rehearsal dinner for our friend's wedding. 

I had no idea what to do.  

I typed in "a" and Google suggested "Amazon"

This prompted the following mind candy exploration:

Amazon

Bank of America
Craigslist
Dictionary
Ebay
Facebook
Google
Hotmail
Instagram
Jodi Arias
KCTV5
Lowes
Mapquest
Netflix
Old Navy
Pinterest
Quotes
Redbox
Southwest Airlines
Target
USPS
Verizon
Walmart
Xbox
YouTube
Zillow

These are your new ABC's peeps.

High-five world.

what is that to you?

John 21:18-22

18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” 19 (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him,“Follow me.”

20 Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back against him during the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?”21 When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?”22 Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come,what is that to you? You follow me!”

Peter was understandably disappointed to find out that he would be killed for his service to God in the future as Jesus points out in vs. 18.

Peter immediately, however, turns his concern to John asking, "What about John? Will he have to die too? If I have to die, I think he should have to too. It’s not fair if I have to die and he doesn’t."  (or something like that ~ VVCSV)

Jesus’ response is to say, “What’s that to you?”

Because of Jesus' response, some people interpretted that to mean that John would never die.  But John is quick to point out that this was not the point of what Jesus said to Peter.

Constantly comparing ourselves to others is always an occassion for pride or despair.  We either get cocky because we judge our neighbors as being beneath or behind us OR we get depressed because we judge our neighbors as being above and beyond our ability to reach.

God rewards and distributes according to His wisdom, mercy and purpose. If He gives some things to some people and some other things to some other people, what's that to you?

 

1 Corinthians 7:17

 

However, each one must live his life in the situation the Lord assigned when God called him. This is what I command in all the churches.

 

(I know the context of this 1 Cor 7 passage is not exactly an apples to apples situation, but I believe it does speak to the general principle of our duty to respond to what God has designed/assigned for us specifically.)

putting the gun in fundamentals‏

 

This is my slow-pitch softball team.

We are not great.

But we do have guns on our jerseys.

Now that’s playin’ hardball.

Errr…. softball…. hardly?

Yes, we are barely playing softball.

Errr… not bare, but sportin’ pistols on our t’s.

And that’s what really counts.

Unless you count the runs scored.

In which case we don’t count much.
Which means we lose often.

thoughts from church: Romans 12:1-2 by Pastor Jeff Dodge‏

Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either. “Morality and Psychoanalysis” – part 2 by  C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
 

The one who is sober can comment both to drunkenness and sobriety.

The one who is drunk is in no position to comment on either drunkenness or sobriety

Romans 12:1-2

I appeal to you therefore, brothers,by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.² Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The one who is in the Word and constantly seeking to be in Christ can comment on depravity and righteousness.

The one who is out of sync with God is in no position to comment on either depravity or righteousness.

The more we dwell on Jesus, the more we anchor and secure ourselves in Him and the reality of our desperate need for Him and desire to conform ourselves to His image through repentance, belief, faith and faithfulness.

The less we dwell on Jesus, the less secure we feel in our relationship to God as we lose sight of our depravity in becoming more and more depraved and as such desire less and lewss to do anything for, through or to Him in the process.

This is a true principle I have observed in my life as described by Pastor Jeff Dodge this past weekend in his exposition of Romans 12:1-2.