day no. 15,044: Christianity is a revealed and a redemptive religion

B.B. Warfield said that, "Christianity is a revealed religion and a redemptive religion."

Revealed because it is from God for Christ.
Redemptive because it is by God in Christ.

Our religion comes from God for the sake of revealing His Christ. Our religion is by God for the sake of redeeming us in Christ. It is from Him, for Him, by Him, in Him, to Him and through Him, just like everything else.

Romans 11:36
From Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.

day no. 15,043: control = perception vs. reality

Control can be discussed in terms of perception and reality. There are things you think you can control and things you think you can't. Then there is the reality of the matter. There are things you really can control and things you really can't. The chart below pits our perception against our reality when it comes to our control of the world around us and inside us.

If you perceive you can control something and you really can, you must keep on keeping on. The temptation here is to grow weary of doing the good you are already doing and slip into a state of thinking you can't control it anymore or perceiving that you are wearing out and cannot possibly keep this thing up. In this quadrant, the temptation is to get tired and the admonition is to keep going!

Galatians 6:9
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

2 Thessalonians 3:13
As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good.

If you perceive you can control something, but you really can't, you must learn to trust God and stop trying to ensure that your will be done on earth since it won't be done in Heaven.  The temptation here is to overestimate your ability to impose your will upon the world around you, the world that God made, the world that God is currently sustaining and superintending with His powerful right hand. Repent and believe in God and trust His control of that which you cannot. He will not help you by giving you the steering wheel, He is already helping you by steering one handed while smacking some sense into you with the other.

Psalm 46:10 
Be still, and know that I am God.

Psalm 115:3
Our God is in the heavens;
He does all that he pleases.

If you perceive you cannot control something, but you really can, you must suck it up and take some initiative. You are not helpless. God has given you the ability to govern yourself in this matter, but up until now you have taken no responsibility for it. Our responsibilities are our responses to the abilities He has given us to manage. You can say, "No," to yourself by the power of His Spirit. You can say, "Yes," to God by the power of His Spirit.

Galatians 5:25
If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Ephesians 4:1
Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

If you perceive you cannot control something and you really can't, you need to keep on keepin' not. Do not fall victim to the temptation of thinking you can control it or trying to make it potentially controllable if the need should ever arise. Stay watchful and be vigilant. Don't get lazy and get off guard. It takes work and faith to stay humble.

1 Peter 5:6-8
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

James 4:6-7
God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

day no. 15,042: open-ended nothingness

"Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” - G.K. Chesterton

There is an openness that masquerades as fullness, but is in actuality only emptiness.

day no. 15,041: what's for dinner?

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - G.K. Chesterton

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." - Flannery O'Connor

False things are still false even if they are the rave of everyone's Pinterest boards.
True things are still true whether or not they show up on modern menus.

day no. 15,040: a poorly drawn line is better than no line at all

"Drawing the line in the wrong place is preferable to refusing to draw it at all."
- Doug Wilson

"Morality, like art, consists in drawing a line somewhere." - G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News

While it is wrong to fence an area too narrowly or too broadly, it is even worse to not make fences at all. The fact of fences is itself a central principle which cannot be ignored. Fences are inescapable. It is not a matter of if you will have fences, but where you will erect them.

To refuse to fence anything in or out in an effort to avoid an error is to already be in the embrace of making the error of liberality. The indecision is itself a decision in one particular direction.

To not fight is to lose the fight. To refuse to oppose the enemy is to accept your enemy's imposition. God placed enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. To refuse to fight is to lose the fight. The serpent's soldiers will never lay down their arms until they are snuffed out finally and forever by the Serpent Crusher.

day no. 15,039: homiletical help, week 4: not just any words will do --> CONTEXT

Good morning preachers and teachers of God's Word,

This week I'd like to draw your attention to the words we use to communicate the God's Word to others. 

The first consideration is CONTEXT: when to say what words

EPHESIANS 4:29
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Our words should match our occasions. God's grace is most penetrating when it matches the moment. In other words, God's grace does not often attend slapdashery. 

A solider may have access to many weapons, but the type of engagement will determine which weapon they use. A knife is no good at 3oo yards, but a sniper rifle might do the trick. Conversely, a sniper rifle in close quarters is only useful as a blunt object, but it's functional precision will be nullified by the intimacy of the engagement.  All that to say, some words are better than others depending on the situation.

The charge this week is to avoid generalisms and seek precision. It is easier to use whatever comes to mind in the moment than it is to choose beforehand which words you will use at which moments.

The goal is to give grace to those who hear. Our best efforts should be made to place no additional stumbling block between our speaking and their hearing. The better we fit our words to the occasion, the better they will build, the more likely they will give grace to those willing to hear us.

May God accompany you this week as you prepare your upcoming messages, giving you words from His Word, giving you insight into the context and wisdom to understand the occasion so that our words may do the miraculous in giving grace.

day no. 15,038: whatever works for you

Had this thought while walking to work in the rain this morning (10/11/19).

The chief end of man is not to find a way that works for you,
but to conform your ways to the grace of God.

Merry Christmas!

day no. 15,037: remembership

"Christ does not call us to join a church, but to submit to a church." - Jonathan Leeman

"The church is not simply another voluntary society, like the Boy Scouts or the Sierra Club. It's an embassy of Christ's kingdom. And kings do not offer suggestions, sell products, or provide resources that people can take or leave." - Michael Horton

It is easy to forget that Christ calls His people to gather together as His body in a local church. Not because Scripture is silent on the matter, but because society is so loud in the contrary. 

"You don't have to go to church to be a Christian."
"The church is not a building, it's a group of people."
"I love Jesus, I just don't like the church."

But we are not called only to personal growth, we are called to interpersonal growth and the place we do both is in the context of the local church, belonging to it, submitting to it, serving it and growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior together (2 P 3:18)

day no. 15,036: the dangerous duty of delight

"I begin to suspect that the world is divided not only into the happy and the unhappy, but into those who like happiness and those who, odd as it seems, really don't." - C.S. Lewis

"God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy." - Jeremy Taylor

Lewis and Taylor are not saying that Christians should always be smiling and wearing permanent foyer face. They are not asking Christians to pretend like heartache is fun or suffering is piece of cake. 

What they are saying is people who take themselves incredibly seriously wouldn't enjoy Heaven even if they were allowed to go there because someone would invariably ask them to dance or sing or run or some other undignified behavior which the person finds beneath them. 

When you take yourself seriously, you never get the joke. And heaven will be full of people who have embraced the punchline and found freedom in laughing at themselves and rejoicing in their God.

All that to say, "Get over yourself. You're a joke and everyone knows it. But they feel uncomfortable laughing around you until you're ready to join them."

Isaiah 66:10-11
“Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,
    all you who love her;
rejoice with her in joy,
    all you who mourn over her;
that you may nurse and be satisfied
    from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
    from her glorious abundance.”

day no. 15,035: without the Spirit or the Word

"Without the Spirit we get dry. Without the word we get weird" - Ray Ortlund, Jr.

We need new life constantly flowing into us because we cannot produce it on our own.
We need old wisdom to guide us because we constantly produce new ways to go rogue.

day no. 15,034: homiletical help, week 3: no words, no life

Good morning preachers and teachers,

Today, I want you to consider the potency of our work. We work in words and by God's grace those words are used by Him to raise the dead to life.

People are not born again without words.

1 PETER 1:23-25
You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; 24 for

“All flesh is like grass
    and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
    and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

When we preach, we are attempting to connect our hearers to the Word of God through our words. The Word of God is the source of life, but He has given us the great privilege and responsibility of using our words to speak His.

I leave you with Calvin's comments on why God uses mere men to preach instead of just booming His voice from heaven or sending His angels to preach, since they would presumably do a much better job than we do...

"God might have acted, in this respect, by Himself, without any aid or instrument, or might even have done it by angels; but when a feeble man, sprung from the dust, speaks in the name of God, we give the best proof of our piety and obedience, by listening with docility to his servant, though not in any respect our superior." - Calvin, The Institutes

day no. 15,033: principled problem solving

"A problem can only be solved by a principle." - G.K. Chesterton

Principles help navigate problems they way a code helps you navigate a cipher or a compass a landscape. In order to solve a problem, you must be able to identify the principles involved.

Hebrews 5:14
But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

This can sometimes be work, but it is productive work. It helps you get handles on the problem, the moving pieces and the best possible solution provided the principles in play.

day no. 15,032: pride and seek

There is a peculiar pride that lurks behind our suffering. To expose it, one only needs to cite an example of personal suffering. It is often lures the lurker out from behind its dark corners. It comes out in the form of a repartee detailing a similar, but more intense, version of your suffering: i.e. if you were sick, they were sicker; if you have pain, they have more; if you're experiencing loss, try experiencing what they've lost; and so on...

Or perhaps you've noticed this compulsion in your own person. You read or hear about another's struggle and immediately from the corners of your mind many examples of greater hardship that you have had to endure pounce on the opportunity.

Pain and suffering may appear to be peculiar places in which to discover pride hiding, but they are preferred hiding places for exactly that reason. You don't hide in places people think to look if your game is to remain hidden.

No one wants to be outdone when it comes to having endured difficulty. Said the other way, everyone wants everyone else to know precisely how painful, devastating, and difficult the trials they've experienced have been.

This is, of course, due in part to the fact that only the individual knows their peculiar sufferings. We are all most acquainted with and intimately aware of the details surrounding our suffering, our pain, our despair, etc... We can not know others as we have known our own, but it is peculiar that almost without exception we assume that our barometer is accurate and that the temperature of our pain reads hotter than the heat of others. Just because we know our pains best does not mean that knowledge must necessarily lead us to believe our pain to be the worst. In other words, it does not follow that just because you are most acquainted with your thermostat, that yours is set to a higher temperature than those you don't know. The fact that you live in your house doesn't make it more or less comfortable to live in. It just means you are most familiar with the temperature of where you happen to live. Knowing the unique pain of our loss should, in some cases one would think, lead us to imagine our losses are not as severe as some of those we hear about from others. In other words, knowing that our thermostat has a setting for 90 degrees and yet we have ours set at 72 should help us imagine that some people's homes are actually warmer than ours.

But pain is often our pride. We survived it and we don't want anyone to take that from us. But, logically speaking, they can't, of course. We know that. They can't diminish our survival by regaling us with theirs. But because we are competitive with respect to this, we feel like anything that rivals our pain must be attempting to steal the dignity of our pain away. As though it were a game of keep away being played between two friends over coffee, mildly attempting to filch each other's respective thunder in the form of deeper wounds, more intense despairs, etc...

There is, of course, another option. 

2 Corinthians 1:3-7 
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

We can repent of our pride, receive comfort from our God and give comfort to our neighbors knowing how badly hurt we have been and how badly we now hurt for them knowing that they are hurting. We don't have to clamor and play keep away. We can be comforted and feel no pressure to try and squeeze comfort from another by getting them to confess that our pain sounds worse, our loss more severe or our hardships more difficult than theirs.

We are comforted not so that we can compete in the marketplace of pain pride, but so that we can comfort others still caught up in the mayhem or currently enduring the pains of whatever it is God may be using to help them comfort others someday.

day no. 15,031 continued... results and resolutions

Juniper,

One year ago today, we received the results of the blood tests which were performed in response to an unusual ultrasound appointment. Between the time of the ultrasound and the results of the blood test, I prayed and fasted on your behalf begging God to heal you if in fact something was wrong or vindicate you if the original ultrasound was not seeing what it thought it saw. The results of the blood test confirmed you were happy and healthy and did not have any chromosomal abnormalities as they first suspected.

What a joyous day that was to praise God for His grace to you and to us as your parents and your siblings as your family. It is hard to conjure the kind of suspense in retrospect knowing the results, but I do remember the intense pleading and depth of supplication that was constantly on my heart prior to their publication. I remember how desperate I felt in waiting and how empowered I felt in pleading on your behalf and yet saying, "But not what I will, but Your will be done." I prayed that God's will would in fact be in unison with the one I felt so intensely and yet was willing to submit my feelings and longings to His designs. His goodness was never in question even while we awaited His decision. 

You are a testimony of God's grace and this has marked you from early on. May your heart be full of gratitude as you look above and around you knowing how deeply you have been loved and provided for by your Father in heaven and your father down the hall.

I love you little lady. Always have. Always will. No matter what. Forever and ever. Amen!

Love,

Daddy

day no. 15,031: he who works much, lives much

"What comfort will it be to you at death, that you lengthened your life by shortening your work? He who works much, lives much. Our life is to be esteemed according to the ends and works of it, not according to the mere duration. As Seneca says of a drone, 'there he lies, not there he lives; and long he abode, not long he lived.'" - Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

Q: If you could run hard and hit the finish line with your chest at 50 or saunter slowly and be drug across the finish line at 90, which would you choose?

Q: Would you buy 40 years of life at the expense of living?

Living for the Lord may very well take years off of your life in some cases, but you will have lived a life worth living with whatever years you are given.

Living for life may very well add years to your life in some cases, but what you gain in quantity, you lose in quality.

day no. 15,030: narwhal

I feel two intense and often competing calls upon my life from God.

(1) The call to preach

I love preaching. I love laboring with God's Word to understand, craft, edit, execute, etc...  I feel it deep inside my bones. I resonate with the sentiments I see in Scripture of those who feel a fire in their chest and a compulsion to study, conform to and speak from the Bible.

(2) The call to lay ministry

I love serving the church for free, or as one has said, "being good for nothing." I love being able to provide the example of what it looks like to love the Lord and not get paid vocationally to do so. Too many have only the two categories of someone who does not take the Bible all that seriously and attends church at best and the one who takes God at His Word and thus enters into vocational ministry because of their commitment to it. Being a lay leader emphasizes the intense call upon all to be disciples that make disciples wherever you may go, including your work, your community, and your home.

But these two desires produce conflict.

To be able to preach more would require laying aside my laity and joining the rank and file of those in vocational ministry. To pursue laity is to set aside opportunities to preach.

I feel like I'm sometimes stuck in a "not double awesome" situation. 

Lay ministry? awesome!
Preaching? awesome!
Lay ministry and preaching? NOT double awesome.

I feel like a narwhal.

A unicorn is awesome. Obviously majestic and respected and no one wonders why little girls want them to be the theme of their birthday parties. They're awesome! Obviously.

Whales are awesome. Obviously majestic and respected and no one wonders why everyone wants to save them or sight one from the safety of a boat. They're awesome. Obviously.

A narwhal is essentially a whalicorn. It is not double awesome! It is pretty intriguing, but it hasn't caught on. I don't know why not. I mean, it's a whale with a unicorn horn. How has this not become a bigger deal. They aren't exactly secret at this point either. People know about narwhals. And yet, they haven't gained the traction that either unicorns or whales have. 

I think when people discover I am intensely drawn to lay ministry and preaching they respond they way they respond to narwhals... interesting? I'm intrigued. But the intrigue soon wears off. One or the other is a clear trajectory, but both is a confused mess... like a narwhal.

So pray for me as I navigate the tension of feeling pulled intensely by God to both and attempting to discover what it looks like to pursue preaching from a lay leader's seat.

day no. 15,029: coulds and shoulds; oughts and options

TWO RULES:
Accrue coulds
Pursue shoulds

ACCRUE COULDS
As you grow in wisdom, stature and favor with both God and man, you will also grow in opportunity and influence. You will have more outlets offered to you. In other words, the number of things you could do grows. Growing influence means growing things you could do. But having options doesn't mean you must take advantage of each and every one of them.

PURSUE SHOULDS
As your options increase, the need to do what only you can do increases. The more influence you have, the more you should opt to do things that only you can do rather than things anybody could do. Some things can be done by anyone while some things can only be done by you and can only be done at particular times.

For example, no one can be my wife's husband except me. No one can be my children's father except me. If I don't husband my wife or father my children, they do not have another husband or father they can look to. Additionally, I must father my children now while they are young. I could write a book or record a podcast now, but if the time I take to do it comes from time I could have been fathering my kids, I cannot father them later. I can always write a book or record a podcast later, but the time to father is now. If I miss it, I can't do it later.

So grow in influence and the number of things you could do. The man of God lacks no opportunity and the godlier, the more opportunities he is qualified for. But as that bank of opportunity grows, the discernment to invest intentionally where only you can grows with it.

Know your shoulds and pursue them wholeheartedly. Only you can love God with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength. They are yours to steward. Lead them to the Lord. After that, know what is an ought and what is an option. Oughts are responsibilities you must fulfill. Options are opportunities you could fill in for if it complements your overall mission without subtracting from your primary mission.

One must know their lead goals in order to accomplish their lag goals without becoming overly interested in secondary assignments.

day no. 15,028: team formation and function

This morning (October 2, 2019) my friend, Joel Wise, introduced me to some team development dynamics that I found really helpful.

STAGE ONE: Forming

In this stage, you identify the WHY? behind your team and use it to pick your WHO? The WHY? drives the HOW? which gives you insight into WHO? will be needed as a part of this team to accomplish its WHY? This is the stage where WHY must drive and unite in order to sustain it through the next stage.

STAGE TWO: Storming

After the initial formation of the squad, there is a stormy season of adjusting to the environment. Team members settle into their roles, discover the hiccups associated with WHERE they have been placed and HOW it affects their ability to contribute to the WHY. Some team mates will be jealous of other team member's roles and/or responsibilities. Some will want to be the leader rather than wherever they've been placed. This is seasonal weather which does not indicate the team has any major issues per se, but rather that it is a team in process. The storms do help identify areas that can be improved upon and team members should feel the freedom to rock the boat a bit at this point given that the voyage has only just begun and the goal is to get out to deeper waters. This is a season where HOW gets worked out.

STAGE THREE: Norming

In this stage the problems have been identified, the storms are settling and the team members are learning what normal life looks like on this team. The team begins to experience a good idea of regular work. Each person sees how WHAT they do contributes to WHY they are doing it and the HOWs have largely been addressed by the storms.

STAGE FOUR: Performing

In this final stage, the team has reached its maximum level of achievement. Norms have been established that address the storms identified that threaten to keep the team from achieving its dream. In stage four, performing, the team is living the dream. They are seeing the fruit of the vision and the work behind the WHY providing fruit to be harvested. This is a season of reaping and refining. As the team sees production, it becomes ever increasingly important to circle back to remind everyone of the WHY because at this stage mission creep can easily distract everyone. The goal can shift away from its original WHY and to WHATs which conflict with the established WHY.

Everything has problems. A team in formation has the kind of problems a team forming has. A team performing has the kind of problems a performing team has.

In preparing for problems, it is good to think of problems in three categories:

CATEGORY 1: Possible

Here you list out all of the things that could go wrong. This is the widest and wildest bucket. Toss everything in there you can imagine going wrong.

CATEGORY 2: Plausible

At this stage, you take all of the possible problems from bucket one and remove any which are not plausible. Sure it is possible, but the likelihood of some problems is pretty low. 

CATEGORY 3: Probable

In this final stage, you take all of the plausible problems and identify those which are most probable. Given the goal you are trying to achieve and the methods you are using to accomplish them, what are the most probable problems your team will experience. 

Make extensive, detailed plans on HOW you will deal with those WHEN they come up. If your response is that a problem is more of an IF than a WHEN kind of problem, then it goes back into the plausible bucket. The probable bucket is only for WHEN kind of problems. Because there will be problems. Plan for them. But don't exhaust yourself attempting to put out every possible fire you can imagine. Focus your energies on those most probable.

day no. 15,027: the five offices of Biblical masculinity

In Doug Wilson's Future Men he provides five offices of manhood/masculinity:

1. Lords
2. Husbandmen
3. Saviors
4. Sages
5. Glory-bearers

I have since re-christened the first two as:

1. Conquerors
2. Cultivators

Today, I contrived a new formulation

1. Subduers
2. Settlers
3. Saviors
4. Sages
5. Sons

Or, alternatively

1. Conquerors
2. Cultivators
3. Christs
4. Catechumens
5. Children

Or observed as actions which must be executed

1. Procure
2. Provide
3. Protect
4. Prophesy
5. Procreate

Or in terms of verbs

1. Dominate
2. Cultivate
3. Mediate
4. Meditate
5. Emulate

day no. 15,026: homiletical help, week 2: word-centric work

Good morning preachers and teachers of Anthem Church/Salt Columbia,

Hopefully last week's reminder that words require work and preaching and teaching require labor have encouraged you to make time to sweat over your upcoming sermons and to adopt new practices and exercises to help you grow stronger as you dig deeper for the love of God's Word and the good of those who He draws to hear from us. Also, hopefully it has encouraged you when sermon writing has felt hard and difficult. It is supposed to be hard. It is supposed to be work/labor.

TODAY: word-centric work

The work we do can ONLY be done with words: preaching, teaching, discipleship, counseling, etc... is word-centric work. You can drive a truck without saying a word, you can paint a canvas without speaking, you can walk beans, lay brick, cook or clean without talking, but you cannot preach, teach, admonish, instruct, disciple, counsel, encourage, etc... without words.

In other words... words matter.

ROMANS 10:8-17
“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

In order for us to do the work that only we can do, we must use words. As you prepare for your next sermon, think about the actual words you are using. Not just the point you are trying to make, but the words you are using to make that point: the number of words, the color/temperature of the words, the flavor/spice of the words, the volume, the melody, the sharpness, the speed, etc.... Do the words themselves complement the message from your text?

I love you guys. Hopefully you are finding this helpful. As you seek to employ and adopt some of these for your next sermons, may it become part of your regular sermon preparation to the glory of God and the good of those whose ears He brings to hear our preaching/teaching engagements.

day no. 15,025: weekly dress rehearsal

"The Sabbath is a weekly dress rehearsal for heaven." - Ray Ortlund, Jr.

Van Voorsts take the Lord's Day seriously. On it, we follow very strictly our two rules: 
(1) Obey and (2) Have Fun!

We look forward to Sundays every week. We eat breakfast together in paper bowls so that there aren't any dishes to do. I make my special coffee with frothed milk and creamer. We go to church together and worship our God with our people. We pick up food on the way home and eat together and again, there is no clean up required. We read and relax and play and then head to nap around 2. We all get up by 5 and have cereal for breakfast in, you guessed it, paper bowls to again eliminate dishes. We head downstairs for family movie night, pile onto the sectional, get under the covers and enjoy our evening together. One team, one dream: to love God and to love each other together forever.

We are practicing for eternity. We want to be ready to enjoy where we're going. Although, to be fair, heaven is not home, the new earth is. So our weekly practice is rooted in things like eating and sleeping and hugging and laughing because that is a clearer picture of eternity than floating on the clouds without a care in the world. If anything, the new earth and eternity will be concerned only with cares of that world, the perfect place for us to be perfected by the Pioneer and Perfector of our faith, Jesus.

We want to walk into eternity prepared to have our minds blown away, but also prepared as possible to immediately enjoy as much of it as possible. And that is why we take practice so seriously. That is why we are so devoted to delight.

Matthew 25:21, 23
His master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master."

day no. 15,024: the sticking point

"I would rather believe a limited atonement that is efficacious for all men for whom it was intended, than a universal atonement that is not efficacious for anybody, except the will of men be added to it." - Charles Spurgeon

If someone has a sticking point when it comes to the so-called, "5 Points of Calvinism," it's almost always, without exception just one particular point on which they are "stuck,"
...limited atonement.

Unless you have a universalist approach to Scripture that assumes everyone is going to heaven when they die, you limit atonement. The question is not IF you limit it, but HOW.

You either must limit is efficacy or its ubiquity. You must say its power is limited or that its promiscuity is. Which does it lack? surety or scope? Because it must lack at least one.

What Spurgeon is quoted as saying above assumes that the atonement is limited in quantity, not quality. It saves to the utmost everyone that it saves. It works for those whom it goes to work. But by this definition of the atonement, it's scope is limited or reduced from everyone in the entire world, to those elected out of the world. All kinds of people will be elected: poor, rich, black, white, men, women, old, young, sick, healthy, etc... But not each and every one from each and every kind is elected.

Many find this distasteful and opt for a more broad scope saying, "the atonement made it possible for each and every individual regardless of race, nation, tongue, gender, etc... to be saved." In this arrangement, the scope is broadened to include everyone ubiquitously, however, the efficacy is now limited. In this understanding, everyone CAN make it to heaven, but no one assuredly will. In this case, at least in theory, everyone could reject salvation and the atonement and heaven could be vacant. Granted, the benefit would be that everyone could do it, but the fact remains that no one will assuredly do it and those who have been previously done it should fret that perhaps they didn't do it enough or must do it again later.

Limiting atonement's scope is the only measure of providing any security to anyone's salvation. While it does mean that some will most assuredly not be saved, it means that some most assuredly will. 

John Owen put it this way...

The Father imposed His wrath due unto, and the Son underwent punishment for, either:
1. All the sins of all men.
2. All the sins of some men.
3. Some of the sins of some men.

In which case it may be said: 
a. That if the last be true, all men have some sins to answer for, and so none are saved.
b. That if the second be true, then Christ, in their stead suffered for all the sins of all the elect in the whole world, and this is the truth.
c. But if the first be the case, why are not all men free from the punishment due unto their sins?

You answer, Because of unbelief. I ask, Is this unbelief a sin, or is it not? If it be, then Christ suffered the punishment due unto it, or He did not. If He did, why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which He died? If He did not, He did not die for all their sins!

In other words, we are left with 4 options, Christ died for:

All of the sins of all men
All of the sins of some men
Some of the sins of all men
Some of the sins of some men

If Jesus died for all of the sins of all men, everyone is going to be saved.

If Jesus died for some of the sins of all men, all men still have sins for which they must  themselves atone.

If Jesus died for some of the sins of some men, all men still have some sins of which they must atone for themselves and some still have all their sins left to atone for.

But if Jesus died for all of the sins of some men, then some men will actually be saved, not because of works, lest any of them should boast, but by grace through faith, which is itself a gift flowing from the finished work of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

day no. 15,023: Jesus Christ, God's only begotten, conceived by the Holy Spirit

This is a core belief of Christianity. It is embedded in the most ancient of our creeds.

The Apostles Creed

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord.  He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin, Mary.  He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.  He descended into Hades.  On the third day He rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.  I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Christianity asserts what Luke says plainly. God, the Holy Spirit, impregnated Mary

Luke 1:26-38

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. 36 And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

Gabriel tells Mary she is going to have a child. She, a virgin, asks the obvious question, "How?" He responds that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and impregnate her. The seed will be divine, not human. The egg will be human, hers. Thus fulfiling God's promise from the Garden before He sent Adam and Eve out...

Genesis 3:15

I will put enmity between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
    and you shall bruise his heel.”

Also, notice that Gabriel said, "therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God." Why will the child be holy, perfect, blameless, without sin, the very one and only begotten Son of God? Because "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." In other words, the reason the Son will be God is the Dad is God. The second member of the Trinity will descend and take upon Himself flesh.

John 1:1, 14 
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus being the seed of the woman implanted by the Holy Spirit so that He would be the son of Man (born of a human egg) and the Son of God (born of divine seed) is a statement about male headship.

How so, you ask? Great question!

Adam plunged humanity into the Fall, not Eve. Eve was deceived first by the serpent and then Adam listened to his wife. But Eve did not have authority to send humanity headlong into hereditary sin passed down incessantly generation to generation. Why? Because inheritance does not go through the helper, it goes through the head. Adam was the head of the household. He could have repented on behalf of his wife before God even after her eating of the fruit presumably and kept himself pure and substitute himself as an acceptable, perfect sacrifice on her behalf. This is precisely what Jesus would end up doing.

The reason it is important that He was born of a human woman was so that he would be human. The reason it is important His dad was divine means He did not inherit the sin of Adam... because inheritance goes through the man, not the woman. Families receive their identity through their dads, including their sin nature and since every person ever born since Adam and Eve have been conceived by a human father, the sin of Adam and death along with it have reigned.

1 Corinthians 11:8-9, 11-12
For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9 Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man... Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman;  for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.

Romans 5:12-14
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

So all that to say, if you don't understand male headship, you don't understand God's story of creation, Fall or redemption. God made man first and made him the head. Man, as the head of humanity, lead all humanity into sin, death and destruction. Through the second Adam, the son of man and Son of God, Jesus redeemed humanity by substituting Himself in humanity's place, as her Head, with the authority to take upon Himself all that was hers, claim responsibility for her, die in her place and rise again to set her free forever.

And that, my friend... is Good News!

day no. 15,022: an antifragile take on death and mistakes

The essence of fragility is fearing the unknown and preparing for it by hoping it doesn't happen or pretending that a world without problems is possible. That's fragility's move: hope disaster never happen. 

The essence of resilience is being resigned to the known and preparing to absorb it when it comes. That's resilience: accept the fact of problems by preparing to endure them.

The essence of antifragility is being excited by the prospect of problems and running towards problems, not merely accepting their reality. That's antifragility's move: invite the right kind of problems and grow stronger because of them.

In order to demonstrate how this plays out, let's take two major problems: death and mistakes. Both have obvious difficulties associated with them and both are inevitabilities: it is not a matter of IF you will need to deal with them, but WHEN. 

DEATH

The fragile outlook of death is that it is the END.

Matthew 6:27
Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

If you imagine that death is the end, you will spend a lot of time, talent, energy and time on trying not to die. You will orient many of your decisions around the orienting principle of, "Whatever it takes, don't die."

The resilient outlook of death is that is must be ENDURED.

John 11:24
Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

If you imagine that there is life after death, you won't be as anxious about trying to stay alive, which is an advantage over seeing death as the end, but it still leaves you disappointed about the prospect of death. Sure it isn't the end of everything, but it's the end of this thing.

The antifragile outlook of death is that it is an ENTRANCE.

Philippians 1:21
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

If you believe there is life after life and it is the life you desire more even than this life, you will see death not only as something assured, not merely as something to endure, but something to be embraced and even enjoyed. It is an entrance to where you really want to be. If you desire to be where Christ is, death is the only way to get there.

MISTAKES

The fragile outlook on mistakes is that they are to be AVOIDED.

The resilient outlook on mistakes is that they are to be ACCEPTED.

The antifragile outlook on mistakes is that they are to be INVITED.

A fragile outlooks imagines it can avoid mistakes and spends a good deal of time, talent, energy and money simply trying to avoid them. A resilient outlook accepts the reality of mistakes and attempts to learn from them. An antifragile outlook sees mistakes as the only way to learn and invites the right kind of mistakes as progress, not regression.

Many Christians would do well to accept the reality of problems and prepare better for them instead of praying for a world without problems. They need to be where they are and accept what is rather than resenting the world as they pray for another. Some Christians have accepted the reality of problems and are committed to enduring them when they come along. Few Christians embrace problems and would rather shovel for ox dung knowing it is the natural problem having more pulling power produces. 

We cannot hole up and simply hope problems never knock. We do better to have a plan for when problems knock. But we do best to send out invites to the right kind of problems, praying to hear them knocking, knowing that a greatest harvest comes with them.