day no. 16,610: be strong and get to work

Haggai 2:4

Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest; and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the Lord, and work: for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts.

Be strong and get to work.

God is with you.

Do not reason, "God is with me, why be or do anything?" That is godless backchat. All labor in the Lord is not in vain, but laziness is. If God is for us, who can stop us? Scripture reasons that the Lord's presence produces enthusiasm, not skepticism. If the Lord is at hand, we ought to be at work. Whenever any reasons the opposite: God is near, let's doze, it ends poorly. Christ's parables highlight the godless recline of those who assume that conclusion.

Because of the grace of God we get to work. We are permitted to work. God gives us purpose and points us in a particular direction. We are privileged to work. God gives us something to do. God provides scope and meaning. We are prompted to work. Far from floating, we paddle. We do not coast along, we crank the accelerator. God's grace gives us more grit, not less. His mighty works on our behalf inspire our best efforts for His glory.

Be strong and get to work.

God is with you.

day no. 16,609: consider your ways

Haggai 1:5-7

Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways.

Consider your ways. God is not mocked. You cannot sow sin and reap satisfaction. You cannot indulge in discord and enjoy harmony. If you flatter chaos, you will not attract order. So, if all of your attempts to fill the void only produce a bigger hole, consider your ways. Perhaps satisfaction cannot be pursued as end in itself. Maybe pleasures are means to an end, not an end to obtain by any means. If you are spending liberally, but scarcely reaping, consider your ways.

day no., 16,608: no rest until the rest find rest in Him

"I hope, as soon as practicable, to attack." — Stonewall Jackson

The gates of Hell will not prevail against the advance of the Kingdom of Christ. Christendom is not in quarantine hoping to ride out the deluge of disease outside it's pearly gates. The call to defend the faith once delivered is not a command to cloister. The enmity inserted into existence by God does not merely run the one direction. Yes, the world will hate us like it hated Christ, but do we hate the world the way Christ did? Which is to say, do we love the world the way the Father did? He so loved the world that He sent His Son as a weapon of mass destruction. He loved the world too much to watch it rot. He took the offensive and inserted Himself into our sorry situation. He flexed His initiative for the sake of His world, even while it was His enemy (Rom. 5:10). He loved His enemies by defeating them (Matt. 5:44). He blessed its rebels by making them obey.

Our hope is not in retreat, it is in reform. We only want to be left alone (1 Th 4:11) so that our leaven might work its way into everything else. We do not desire a Christian ghetto, but Christendom. All that to say, we don't desire peace and quiet without Christ. And we will not rest until the rest of the world rests in Him.

day no. 16,607: chesteronian calvinism a la wilson via lewis

"On many questions and specially in view of the marriage bed, the Puritans were the indulgent party, if we may without disrespect so use the name of a great Roman Catholic, a great writer, and a great man, they were much more Chestertonian than their adversaries." — C. S. Lewis

The term, "Chestertonian Calvinism," was coined by Doug Wilson, but I had not previously considered that it's inspiration came from Lewis. That only adds another layer of joy to the cake. So, in using the term, you not only get the soteriological precision of Calvin and the benevolent gratitude and wonder of Chesterton, but also the imaginative medieval power of Lewis. The term itself then is a fine dish consisting of Calvin, Chesterton, and Lewis, but was served to me at a restaurant run by Wilson. All that to say, Chestertonian Calvinism about sums it all up.

day no. 16,606: you cannot tolerate abominations without being taught by them

Deuteronomy 20:17-18

But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee: That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the Lord your God.

We pick up on where we plop down. We observe and more often than not absorb the habits and customs of our surroundings. In fact, without intention, this will happen. No one can resist the current they are caught up in without, uh... resisting it. 

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." — G.K. Chesterton

You cannot tolerate abominations without being taught by them. The presupposition of God's command to utterly destroy pagan culture is that it will serve as a schoolmaster if it isn't. It will instruct even if it is not institutional. 

How much more so then should Christians hear this warning? If being around abominations is dangerous, how much more so to be deliberately taught by them? If their presence is accidentally instructive, how much more their intentional instruction? If there is a danger in living near Sodom, how much more is there a danger in sending your sons to Sodom State University?

Hebrews 2:1

Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.

If we ignore what we've heard, we will slip into what the world is saying. If we stop paying attention to God's eternal Word, we will spend our attention on the advice of the world. Heed will be given. It is inescapable. If you do not heed to God on purpose, you will heed to the world by accident. How much more so if you teach your kids to heed it and send your kids to be taught by it? If there is a danger in failing to provide a Christian education, how much more is there a danger in intentionally receiving one from the Antichrist?

day no. 16,605: the king is subject to the Law

Deuteronomy 17:18-20

And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them: That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.

Kings must be reminded that they are under the Law of the Lord. The laws of the land apply to the man with the crown on his head as much as they do to the man minding his plow. In fact, one could argue, as a representative of all his people, the law is more pressed upon the king than the cobbler, since he will come in contact with it more often and with more at stake in each meeting.

"Lex Rex." — Samuel Rutherford

The Law is King and the king is subject to it. 

Psalms 82:6-7

I have said, "Ye are gods; And all of you are children of the most High." But ye shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.

The King of kings commands His kings to keep His law for the expressed purpose of reminding them that they are NOT ABOVE their brothers. They sit in a seat that is higher than their neighbors, but as men, they are not a different class of person. They are truly superiors with respect to their office, but they brothers with respect to their standing before God. The Law does not apply differently to them as men. They are ALL equal under God. That has a nice ring to it. I feel like I've heard something like that somewhere before... but I digress.

A King who keeps Christ's commands ensures peace for his people and his people's people. May God grant us again men who understand their place under God in humility and over us as representatives in responsibility.

day no. 16,604: a holy hubbub

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once described the presence of children in church as, "The sweet sights and sounds of a holy hubbub.”

Chaos is not an excess of life, but an abundance of death. An engine running makes noise, but an engine dying makes a different noise. Chaos is the cacophony of failing parts, not the sound of thriving ones. Children are not chaotic. That is the word we use, but it is not the condition of our kids. They are abounding in life and vitality. They are the opposite of chaos. They are an engine firing on all cylinders, not one giving up the ghost of its last one. The hum of an engine is not the screech of a breaking one.

Our kids in church should be like running engines. They cannot be altogether silent, because they are not dead; but neither should they be screeching, because they aren't dying. When they do get riled up, it is more like an engine revving than one expiring. But a parent's job is to keep them in the right gear so as to keep the engine from revving too high and for keeping the noises to a bare minimum. Hubbubs should not be destroyed, but discipled. Anyone sitting nearby exasperated that the engines are humming doesn't understand how life works. To their credit, life is not noisy, but to counter, it does make noises. Noise in se may be the cacophony of hell, but Heaven... is not silent. And neither are we. Screwtape's entire Spotify playlist may be discord, but ours is harmony. Harmony is not less sounds, but more, joyfully complementing each other.

So, let the kids live and appreciate the hum of their horsepower, Do your best to corral it and harness it for the holy hubbub that is life in abundance; and come along side those sitting beside you at church trying to harness and hitch their team up to the hubbub that is holiness incarnate.