day no. 15,752 continued... a decade of once for all delivered

Ten years ago on this very day, December 8, 2011, I published my very first blog. That was 3,654 days ago. This is what I said then...

On purpose

"Contend for the faith once for all delivered unto the saints."

The Good News is a message. It is something which is relayed. You cannot be it, make it, add to it, or take away from it. You can either report it verbatim or create for yourself something more tailored to your liking. However, if you do the latter you are not reporting the Good News, but rather just plain ol' news. News announcing to all your opinions and the vain imaginations of your heart. We speak of a God who sent His one and only Son to be crucified for our sin, to be buried, and to be raised on the third day. This is an event that actually happened. What it means that the event happened is colored in by the writers of the New Testament. Just because you own crayons, doesn't mean you get to keep coloring. And to borrow a line from Pastor Mark Driscoll, "Just because you own a Bible does not mean you get to keep writing."

A baton is passed from one to another. The next runner does not have to find their own baton. They do not have to polish the one passed to them. They have to pass that same baton to the next runner. They have to stay on the right track, in the right lane (the one assigned to them). They don't earn the baton. It is passed to them. They receive the baton. The same baton that was passed to the runner before them. The same baton that started the race will finish the race.

You are not the baton.

The worst news in the world is the weight of thinking I have to be the Gospel. The worst scenario for the next runner is that I am the baton.

This blog is intended to be a resource for those interested in preserving that which has been consistently proclaimed by those who know, love, trust, and believe in YHWH. It may include some commentary from time to time, but the main thrust of it is to capture and report back to the reader that which I am gathering from the Bible and those that love Jesus who talk about, write about, and blog about the Bible.

I am not seeking to do your spiritual growth for you, but simply to gather all that I find interesting and helpful and condense it here in a context and proportion more easily digested. In other words, I will hit up the buffet and then tell you what was worth the space on the plate. That said, test all things, keep the good and chuck the bad. I will try on my end if you try on your end. Don't take my word for it.

Read for yourselves.

Enjoy. Please comment on what is helpful. Ask questions. If I don't know the answer, I will seek to find it. If the answer has not been unveiled yet by God, I will point you back to trusting in Him and His character (right, Elihu? - any Job love out there?)

day no. 15,752: stop the fop

"The roughnesses which have rendered some obnoxious, and the fopperies which have made others contemptible, we must put away. We cannot afford to run great risks through little things. Our care must be to act on the rule, 'giving no offense in anything, that the ministry be not blamed.' By this is not intended that we are to hold ourselves bound by every whim or fashion of the society in which we move. As a general rule I hate the fashions of society, and detest conventionalities, and if I conceived it best to put my foot through through a law of etiquette, I should feel gratified in having it to do. No, we are men, not slaves; and are not to relinquish our manly freedom, to be the lackeys of those who affect gentility or boast refinement." -- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students

Sometimes it proves better to be a man than to be mannerly. It all depends on whose manners they are and how you break them.  If they are from God and for His glory, don't break them at all. If they are from man and mar God's glory, don't break them too lightly.

day no. 15,751: the honesty of our prayers

Luke 10:2
Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.

C.H. Spurgeon in explaining the mission and vision of The Pastors' College said, "As we are commanded to pray for laborers in the Lord's harvest, so are we bound to prove the honesty of our prayers by our actions."

2 Timothy 2:2
The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.

May our practices not flag behind our prayers and our prayers not fail to lead with zeal.

day no. 15,750: a well-ordered house is the end of the world

Proverbs 24:27
Prepare thy work without,
and make it fit for thyself in the field;
and afterwards build thine house.

"So fight the good fight. Go home, build a house, and if you do it in the right way, you will give the world a glimpse of things to come.  There is nothing more terrifying to the principalities than this. Because in the end, the principalities will bow and confess the Lordship of Christ, and if your house is ordered well, it is a reminder of that glorious day" -- C.R. Wiley, The Household and the War for the Cosmos

We begin by fighting for our children, we transition to fighting along side them, and in the end, when we are gone, we continue to fight through them.

A well-ordered house is a harbinger of the end of the world.

"Conjugal marriage is the end of the world. It connects this world to the next, it unites Heaven and earth, and it is a sign that reads, 'This is the way the world will end, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with wedding bells.'" -- C.R. Wiley, The Household and the War for the Cosmos

So, build your house. 
Join the good fight.

Joshua 24:15
As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

day no. 15,749: atticus jacob rhyne van voorst... teenager

Atticus,

You are officially a teenager, and that, my friend, does NOT scare the snot out of me. Let me tell you why. You're not just any teenager. Sure, if we're talking your average, run-of-the-mill, teen on the street, I'm with MCR, God have mercy. But when I look at you, I don't worry. You're the right kind of dangerous. You are not the kind of teen good people need to be afraid of, but the kind of teen evildoers need to steer clear of. You are a good kid and a good man, a good Christian, a good son, a good friend, a good brother, a good graphic novelist, a good builder, a good breaker, and a good many other things. I love you and am proud of you. I like being your dad and like having you as my son. I love having you as a brother in Christ and look forward to watching God bless you with all that He has given me: a good wife, good kids and a good life.

You are a great graphic novelist. You capture action really well. You always have. From an early age, you could communicate movement through your drawings. You understand how things move and what it should look like. You can make an inanimate picture on the page move in the mind. You apply that same skill to engineering all kinds of lego inventions. You can see how it should look and reverse engineer it back into its parts. You bring things together. You build it in your mind and are able to then build it with materials. You have the clear, creative spark of one made in the image of His Creator.

In keeping with this, you enjoy watching Lego and plastic army men stop motion videos on YouTube. These take an existing area of interest, war, and combine it with the engineering spirit I was just mentioning. You like to watch the stop motion videos and think about how they were made. You enjoy the final product and thinking through the process of what it took to produce it.

You love justice and you hate injustice. You hate seeing someone get away with a crime and love watching those attempting to get away with something get caught in their attempts. You love watching Instant Karma Police videos on YouTube as well as watching Car Crashes Time.

You like eating. And when you're not eating, you're thinking about eating. And when you're not thinking about eating, you're sleeping. You are growing taller and stronger everyday. All that food is fueling your brains and your body as they both grow in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and everyone who knows you. You love spicy food. You put hot sauce on just about everything and you recently discovered that the hottest wings B-dubs offers is no match for you. I can't wait to find your heat ceiling, if you have one. It is fun watching you delight in it. You genuinely enjoy eating spicy food and it is a joy to watch someone you love enjoying themselves so much.

You are a great big brother. Your younger siblings all adore you. Juniper loves spending time with you and you are a great role model for her. You are going to be a great dad. You are already a great brother.

You are a HUGE help around the house. As you grow, your responsibilities have grown. You now know how to mow the lawn on your own. You can be trusted to go out and get it done without any help and it always looks great. It's fun watching you enjoy that. You like being outside and mowing and sweating and showering when done. You feel accomplished and you should. You're doing awesome and it is an enormous help to us. You love helping out at the Amish and load up the milk at Ora and Marie's without complaint. You enjoy having loads placed on your shoulders and responsibilities put onto your plate… along with more food!

You read your Bible every night before bed and copy down the Proverb-of-the-day picture I do in your notebook. You often incorporate your nightly reading into your prayer before bed and it is a joy to watch you learning from and growing in the same Word that I love. As we both read and believe and apply it, we will only grow closer as we grow in Him together.

You like sitting in the front seat of the van and make sure to take advantage of every opportunity you have to do so. You sit quietly and watch out the window. You are a quiet kid. You like to look and think. But you are learning how to share your thoughts and how to let people in to that inner life that you spend so much time cultivating.

I love who you are and who you are becoming. I am so proud of you.

Happy 13th Birthday, Atticus. I love you so much. I always have... and I always will. No matter what. Forever and ever. Amen!

day no. 15,748: reading and re-reading old books

"None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.” ― C.S. Lewis, On the Incarnation

Chronological snobbery can be avoided, but it requires spending time with those from previous epochs. One of the most profitable habits I have developed is that of reading and re-reading old books. Not to the exclusion of contemporary writings, but in addition to. Do not be too quick to remove the ancient landmarks of good books by focusing merely on a diet of modern thought. As John F. Kennedy once fairly summarized Chesterton in saying, "Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up." In other words, don't merely move on from old books unless you can explain why they were written and read in the first place.

There are few habits I more highly commend to you than that of reading and re-reading good, old books.

"Most of all, perhaps we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many place is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune form the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age." -- C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, Learning in War-Time

For Chesterton's actual words, see below:

"In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says,''I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: 'If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.'" --  G.K. Chesterton, The Thing; The Drift from Domesticity

day no. 15,747: restore to us strong rods

Ezekiel 19:10-12
Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters:

she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.

And she had strong rods for the sceptres of them that bare rule,

and her stature was exalted among the thick branches,

and she appeared in her height with the multitude of her branches.

But she was plucked up in fury,

she was cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up her fruit:

her strong rods were broken and withered;

the fire consumed them.

"What is meant by her strong rods, viz. her wise, able, and well qualified magistrates or rulers. That the rulers or magistrates are intended is manifest by verse 11, 'And she had strong rods for the scepters of them that bear rule.' And by rods that were strong, must be meant such rulers as were well qualified for magistracy, such as had great abilities and other qualifications fitting them for the business of rule. They were wont to choose a rod or staff of the strongest and hardest sort of wood that could be found, for the mace or scepter of a prince; such a one only being counted fit for that use; and this generally was overlaid with gold.

It is very remarkable that such a strong rod should grow out of a weak vine. But so it had been in Israel, through God’s extraordinary blessing, in times past. Though the nation is spoken of here, and frequently elsewhere, as weak and helpless in itself, and entirely dependent as a vine, the weakest of all trees, that cannot support itself by its own strength, and never stands but as it leans on or hangs by something else that is stronger than itself; yet God has caused many of her sons to be strong rods fit for scepters; he has raised up in Israel many able and excellent princes and magistrates, who had done worthily in their day.

When God by death removes from a people those in place of public authority and rule that have been as strong rods, ’tis an awful judgment of God on that people, and worthy of great lamentation." -- Jonathan Edwards, God's Awful Judgment in the Breaking and Withering of the Strong Rods of a Community

Oh that God would make for us strong rods from our weak vines and raise up for us reliable scepters by which to rule and reign favor in His Name for His sake and our good.

1 Timothy 2:1-6
I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

"Such rulers are eminently the ministers of God to his people for good. They are great gifts of the Most High to a people, blessed tokens of his favor, and vehicles of his goodness to them; and therein are images of his own Son, the grand medium of all God’s goodness to fallen mankind. Therefore, all of them are called, sons of the Most High. All civil rulers, if they are as they ought to be, such strong rods as have been described, will be like the Son of the Most High, vehicles of good to mankind." -- Jonathan Edwards, God's Awful Judgment in the Breaking and Withering of the Strong Rods of a Community