day no. 15,257 continued... conversations and kingdoms

This morning in my dreams before waking up I distinctly heard, "1 Kings 10:1-5." That was it. No commentary or elaboration. Just those words. I was asleep but alert. I repeated the words. I made note of them. I was still dreaming, yet able to make arrangements to look up the passage once I was awake. But my alarm went off at 7am, I went through my morning hygiene routine (use restroom, wash hands, floss, brush, mouthwash, brush beard) and then headed out to the dining table for my morning devotions. 

t was a rainy morning and overcast and dark enough that without a light, it felt much earlier. I looked up 1 Kings 10:1-5 on my phone, but my fat fingers must have pushed on 1 Samuel instead of 1 Kings. So I read an account of David sending condolences to a foreign king and that king's advisers responding with suspicion resulting in the shameful treatment of David's messengers. I moved on to my regularly scheduled devotions committed to dwelling more on the matter after I'd devoted my time to my readings and my morning walk and prayers.

Once home and settled in and caught up with my morning's work, I hunkered down to mull over the meaning of the text and to puzzle the possibilities of it being brought so clearly to my attention this morning. However, when looking up what I had copied and pasted to myself from my phone, I realized I was reading 1 Samuel 10:1-5 and not 1 Kings. I now looked that up and am prepared to ponder it and my mistake in reading 1 Samuel this morning.

1 Kings 10:1-5
And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart. And Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not. And when the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon’s wisdom, and the house that he had built, and the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he went up unto the house of the Lord; there was no more spirit in her.

OBSERVATIONS:

Solomon had free publicity that spread his fame far and wide without a marketing campaign. This reputation reached the Queen of Sheba, but she assumed it was too good to be true, but good enough to be worth the trip to check it out in person. She didn't send someone else to verify it, she wanted to see it with her own eyes. Her mission was to expose or prove Solomon by hard questions. She brought her A game and an impressive entourage in order to ensure everyone in Solomon's court knew that she was not nobody. Upon being granted an audience with him, she gave vent to every question she had, holding nothing back. And Solomon was proven. He satisfied her inquisition. She laid herself bare and hid nothing and Solomon was filled with wisdom and no answer escaped him or remained hidden. After hearing him and seeing his kingdom, the Queen of Sheba had the wind knocked out of her sails, she had no fight or bark left. She had nothing left but to accept the reality of what she had heard. It had not been overstated. It was not embellished. If anything, it was understated. It paled in comparison to the reality. Solomon defended the faith by his life and doctrine, his kingdom and his conversation confirmed it.

APPLICATION:

TBD. At this point, it's unclear. I will continue to mull this over as I engage with what's in front of me, pondering possible application points. I should also ask Paige if she has any insights or thoughts in response.

ADDENDUM:

Incidentally, in my morning reading, I also read this in a Year with Bonhoeffer devo I'm reading...

"The ancients had a persistent sense of man's helplessness while sleeping, of the kinship of sleep with death, of the devil's cunning in making a man fall when he is defenseless. So they prayed for the protection of the holy angels and their golden weapons, for the heavenly hosts, at the time when Satan would gain power over them. Most remarkable and profound is the ancient church's prayer that when our eyes are closed in sleep God may nevertheless keep our hearts awake. It is the prayer that God may dwell with us and in us even though we are unconscious of His presence, that He may keep our hearts pure and holy in spite of all the cares and temptations of the night, to make our hearts ever alert to hear His call and, like the boy Samuel, answer Him even in the night: 'Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth' (I Sam. 3 : 9). Even in sleep we are in the hands of God or in the power of evil. Even in sleep God can perform His wonders upon us or evil bring us to destruction. So we pray at evening: 

'When our eyes with sleep are girt,
Be our hearts to Thee alert;
Shield us, Lord, with Thy right arm,
Save us from sin's dreadful harm.' - Martin Luther

But over the night and over the day stands the word of the Psalter: 'The day is thine, the night also is thine' (Ps. 74:16)." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

day no. 15,257: a shared hostility

"Paul and James were in full fellowship, both their concerns were legitimate, and they extended the right hand to one another. They did this, and what they both wrote is in the Scriptures because sinful men constantly want to veer off in one direction or the other. Paul opposed dead works, and James opposed dead faith. What they shared was their hostility to death." - Douglas Wilson, European Brain Snakes

There is an attempt in some circles to promote the idea that Paul and James were opposed to each other. But their hostilities were not aimed at each other at all. In fact, they agreed emphatically that light had come and that it was the life of men. Therefore, they set their sights on darkness and death. They were fighting the same battle against the same enemy on different fronts.

Their agreement was on the adjective. The nouns may have been different, but the adjectives were common ground. The adjectives declared the uniform, the nouns informed the regiment. Paul and James both were at war with death. Paul took a rod to dead works and James set his fists to fighting dead faith. Paul was also opposed to dead faith and James was against dead works, but they fought at the posts which their passions assigned them and used weapons appropriate to their respective terrains.

day no. 15,256: an open and shut case

"Chesterton once said (Chesterton always once said) that 'the purpose of an open mind was the same as the purpose of an open mouth—it is meant to close on something.' A man who is not closed in certain respects is a man who was never open in the right kind of way." - Douglas Wilson, European Brain Snakes

Open-mindedness has been solicited as a good thing and narrow-mindedness, consequently, as a bad thing. But as Chesterton and Wilson point out, a perpetually open mind never wraps itself around anything by closing. It cannot wrap it's mind around anything because it refuses to close itself around anything. In a similar sense, a mouth that is always open is a mouth that is always starving or in its best efforts at least very rude.

All that to say, openness is not, in itself, to be admired or pursued. The follow up question of "open to what?" and "closed to what?" must be asked. After all, an insistence on being open-minded is also an insistence on being closed to the idea of closing, which is awful narrow-minded when you think about it.

day no. 15,255: warmth without walls evaporates in a moment

"Beauty without truth is as limp as truth without beauty is ugly.” - Douglas Wilson, European Brain Snakes

Warmth without walls evaporates in a moment while walls without warmth are abandoned over time. 

Flattery is flacid.

The cold, hard facts are, as it turns out, cold and hard. 

day no. 15,254: deathbed side manner

I read the following in Douglas Wilson's Angels in the Architecture...

When a brother seems to be in his death struggle, it is godly and advisable to exercise him through a prelate or other priest with written questions and exhortations. He may be asked in the first place: 

"Brother, are you glad that you will die in the faith?"
Let him answer: "Yes."

"Do you confess that you did not live as well as you should have?"
"I confess."

"Are you sorry for this?"
"Yes." 

Are you willing to better yourself if you should have further time to live?"
"Yes."

"Do you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has died for you?"
"Yes."

"Do you believe that you cannot be saved except through His death?"
"Yes."

"Do you heartily thank Him for this?" 
"Yes."

"Therefore always give thanks to Him while your soul is in you, and on this death alone place your whole confidence. Commit yourself wholly to this death, with this death cover yourself wholly, and wrap yourself in it completely. And If the Lord should want to judge you, say: 'Lord, I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between me and Thee and Thy judgment; I will not contend with Thee in any other way.'

If He says that you have merited damnation, say: 'I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between myself and my evil deserts, and the merits of His most worthy passion I bring in place of the merit which I should have had, and, alas, do not have.''

He shall say further: "The death of our Lord Jesus Christ I set between me and Thy wrath." 

Then he shall say three times: "Into Thy hands, Lord, I commend my spirit."

And the gathering of those standing about him shall respond: "Into Thy hands, Lord, we commend his spirit."

And he shall die safely and shall not see death eternally. - St. Anselm

If I should find myself in such a privileged place as to be dying with the time provided to profess and reiterate my faith before God and man, I pray someone walks me through this liturgy. To have the opportunity to state, emphatically and clearly where my hope lies before God and those gathered by my deathbed side. To affirm my faith and hope in Him alone and to confirm in the minds and hearts of my beloved that this is what it looks like to die well, to finish strong, to fight the good fight to the very last and to hit the finish line with your chest. May God grant me such an honor to testify so boldly to the benefit of my soul and the souls of those gathered around me.

day no. 15,253: too glad to be true

"The reconciliation of righteousness and mercy is the main theme which drove forward the medieval heart of the Protestant Reformation. Of the early Puritans, C.S. Lewis remarked, 'Whatever they were, they were not sour, gloomy, or severe; Nor did their enemies bring any such charge against them.... For [Thomas] More, a Protestant was one 'Dronke of the new must, of lewd lightnes of minde and vayne gladnessese of harte'.... Protestantism was not too grim but too glad to be true.' Too glad to be true - what a wonderful summary of the fruit of the Protestant doctrine of justification! Now things have changed. In our day, evangelicals almost yearn to be described as 'sour, gloomy, and severe,' as we grovel in our self-centered pietism and political campaigns for external morality. What a different world we would live in if Christians were characterized, not as those calling for Federal prohibitions on this and that, but for the right to celebrate? What if we were known by our enemies, not for our shallow sentimentalism and indifference to beauty, but as that community most exuberantly living life to the fullest, full of eating, drinking, and merriment (Eccl. 8:15)? Perhaps then we could be slandered like our Lord for being gluttons, winebibbers, and friends of sinners (Matt. I I:19). The exuberance characteristic of the early Protestants wasn't the thin fanaticism of a Finney revival, but the life-changing shock of unexpected liberation, the joy of justification in Christ." - Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture  

How good is the Good News?

I think we have a better handle on how important it is than on how good it is. We know it's important. We believe it's meaningful. We engrave it on things. We memorialize it.

But do we celebrate it?
Is it so good that it can't but erupt into praise?

Christians are called to enjoy the goodness and beauty of the Good News as well as to stand for the truth and importance of it. In fact, by reveling in its goodness, we actually accentuate its importance. It is so important that it shows up in the way we eat our meals, pray before bed, carry ourselves when walking, give when no one's looking. Our generosity is fueled by cheer when we dwell on the goodness of the Good News. It does not compete with its importance. It only heightens how important it is and declares it vibrantly.

day no. 15,252: hard things now or harder things later?

"You can do the hard thing now, or a much harder thing later." - Douglas Wilson, The Neglected Qualification

Putting things off does not make them any easier. In fact, it only makes them harder. Whatever factors led to their difficulty will only be that much longer in force and that much stronger in force.

Difficulty is not diluted by delay.

If you are waiting to do hard things until they are easier, you will never do hard things. They won't be easier and you will be that much more used to NOT doing them by the time you get to the place where you thought you'd finally get around to them.

day no. 15,251: sing and swing; bellow in battle

"The Church today is a stranger to victories because we refuse to sing anthems to the king of all victories. We do not want a God of battles, we want sympathy for our surrenders. We need to be taught to sing as Alfred the Great taught his men before going into battle - 'Jesus, defend us.'" - Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth

Christians have largely forgotten how to sing along with marches. We don't know any tunes in the key of "V." All our songs are either in minor keys about the present or tra-la-la's about a distant, nebulous future where hope is permitted to put up 2x4s. But God left us a legacy of victory hymns to sing while we're out there swinging away.

Psalm 149:6

Let the high praises of God be in their throats
and two-edged swords in their hands

We sing while we swing; we bellow while in battle.

day no. 15,250: the right kind of bright

"Jesus said that we were to evaluate teachers by the kind of fruit they produced. And what better place to check than their garden at home? A man who is wrong about children will find it difficult to be right about anything else. So what we need (as I’ve said in other places) are more children with the right kind of bright in their eyes, like Jonathan after he ate the honey. But in his case, it was in spite of his father’s foolish prohibition. May God spare us from the indignity of having children who do well despite us. We want children who have that kind of bright in their eyes because they have fathers who gave them the honey in the first place." - Douglas Wilson, The Neglected Qualification

Our goal should be to provide honey for our children's hearts. Their bright should be in light of our efforts, not in spite of them.

day no. 15,249: war of ages

“And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses” (Neh. 4:14).

But as good as this is, we need to move past it. Once we realize that we are in a long war, a war in which the first blood shed was that of Abel, and the last blood shed will be that of the final martyr, an honored someone who will no doubt not be born for many centuries yet, we will finally recognize the importance of the time we are called to invest in our children.

Because it is a long war, it crosses generations. In a very short space of time, your children will join you in the line, and a short time after that, their children will join them. This means that we begin by fighting for our children, but we must end by fighting by means of them. We must do two things simultaneously—we must fight today’s battles, and we must recruit and train tomorrow’s warriors.

So a short-sighted man who throws himself into ministry, neglecting his family in order to do so, is not just demonstrating for us that he doesn’t understand his wife and kids. He is demonstrating for us the fact that he doesn’t understand the nature of true ministry." — Douglas Wilson, The Neglected Qualification

In order to fight the good fight, you must train future fighters. If you abandon your post in order to bolster another's, you will lose the war and it will be your fault. Your sons and your daughters, your wives and your houses are your post. Future success is a matter of present focus. If you sharpen arrows now, they will do damage later. The time to whittle is not in the middle of the battle, but right now.

day no. 15,248: antifragile prayer

On my walk to work this morning (12/18/19) I made the following connection between prayer and antifragility.

Fragility prays for no problems. It cannot accept a world with problems and prays for God to remake the world in their image and preference.

Resilience prays for problems to be easier than they have to be. It accepts the fact of problems, but focuses on their severity rather than their reality, which it readily accepts.

Antifragility prays for more of the right kind of problems. It asks God to make things harder than they have to be as a result of increased blessing. 

Resilience resists certain blessings since they attend certain work and fragility prefers less blessing if it means less stress. Antifragility welcomes work in order to host more blessing.

Fragility is hostile to blessing.
Resilience is willing to host blessing.
Antifragility is hospitable to blessing. 

Antifragility opens its doors and sends out invites welcoming blessing and its problems over. Fragility prays blessing doesn't find its address. Resilience hopes blessing doesn't stay for dessert. Antifragility prepares a room for blessing to live and prays it will take up residence in its life.

day no. 15,247: curb appeal

"The English word 'earth' comes from the same Old English word that gives us 'yard,' a tamed piece of ground. In this sense, think of middle earth as a cultivated portion of land, surrounded by wilderness. The wilderness is modernity, full of monsters, and the yard is a small and pleasant shire. While our children are little, we want to imitate our medieval forefathers and tell our children the truths in fairy tales that will keep them out of the woods. When they are grown, they will be able to fight the monsters and expand the fences of middle earth." - Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture

Our medieval forefathers had a better grasp on truth, love, and beauty than our modern day step-dads. Medievalism saw God everywhere while modernity only sees God if it comes to the end of that which it thinks it sees. God’s presence is, if permitted at all, relegated to the fringes of knowledge and used as a stop gap between the ever decreasing space between the ceiling of what is knowable and the high water mark of what we think we know.

Modernity thinks our sees our ancestors were infatuated with monsters because they were monstrous. Modernity dispatches beauty in order to eliminate ugliness, mocks truth in order to reduce lies and scoffs at goodness in order to end badness.

Modernity attempts to level the playing field by calling the lowlands “the high ground." It says fences are the enemies of liberty and lets in every fowl ghoul the fences had kept out.

Modernity “tames” the world by calling the wilderness a "yard.” It lets the weeds flourish and then hangs a "mission accomplished" banner over them. It assumes the goal was always merely to call it a "yard" and congratulates itself for its cleverness in doing what our forefathers failed to do. It would rather redefine "yard" than do the hard work of cultivating the soil.

Modernity is at war with truth, beauty and goodness and makes their very essence a cuss word. It calls abstraction "truth," androgyny "beauty," and disintegration "goodness."

The cultural mandate of Christianity is to conquer the world, tame the land, subdue the giants, slay the dragons, and to cultivate the truth, beauty and goodness.

day no. 15.246: substitute teaching

"The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone." - John Stott

Substitution is what plunged mankind into sin. Adam put himself in the place of God and attempted to assume jurisdictions which he was not authorized to enter. Sin is man putting himself in the place of God and assuming the sovereignty and freedom afforded only to holiness. God solved the sin of this particular scenario through substitution. He sent His Son to take on flesh which would take on the sin of the elect. He who knew no sin became sin in order to save those caught in the sin of substituting themselves for God. He, who was God, set aside His claim to deity in order to claim our sin as His. He substituted Himself in our place for our sin after living in our place for our righteousness. 

Substitution led the world into darkness.
Substitution retrieved her back into the light.

day no. 15,245: an immoral standard of morality

"The majority of people have their morality well within their own grasp, they have no sense of need of the gospel. It is God Who creates the need of which no human being is conscious until He manifests Himself." - Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest


In other words, most people are moral by their own standards. They are not perfect and they know that, but their standard of morality does not require perfection. They do not hold themselves to a "be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" standard of morality. They grade on a curve. 

We need God to convict us of the state and standard of our morality. In other words, we do not need to merely repent of being immoral by God's standards, but for having an immoral standard of morality to begin with. This very standard is what keeps us from seeing the extent of our immorality and our need of mercy and grace in order to obtain a declaration of righteousness over our lives. 

day no. 15,244: stretch goals

"Stretch Yourself: Note that the prophet stretched himself upon the child. When you consider the size of a man versus a child, one would think it should say, “he made himself shorter or thinner.” He was a full-grown man, and the other a mere lad. Common sense would seem to dictate that he would have shrunk himself, right? But no, he stretched himself. And mark this, no stretching is harder than for a man to stretch himself to become childlike. He’s no fool who can talk to children. A foolish person is much mistaken if he thinks that his mere silliness can interest boys and girls. This task needs our best sense of associating ideas in a new and unexpected manner. It involves our most diligent studies, our most serious thoughts, and our ripest ability to teach our little ones. You will not make the child alive spiritually until you have stretched yourself. While it seems a strange thing, yet it is so. The wisest man will need to exercise all his abilities if he hopes to become a successful teacher of the young" - Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Soul Winner: How to Lead Sinners to the Saviour

To communicate complicated truths to simple minds is not a matter of mere engagement or entertainment. It is not the job of the adult to be silly enough to gain an audience with a child. Certainly the adult must not take themselves too seriously in order to speak to a child, but the goal isn't merely to entertain children, but to educate them. 

This requires stretching. You need to stretch before engage children and you to stretch while you're engaging them.  Admittedly, it is much easier to entertain children. Sure, it costs you the time and energy you could have spent pursuing more adult endeavors, but it isn't hard to imagine how to captivate a child with something childish. Anyone can be childish. It's so easy, even children can do it. They don't need your help in that department. They are already better at that than you. They need your leadership to become mature. That is something they cannot do unless someone shows them. But that harder to teach, so many merely opt for shenanigans instead of substance. 

If you are not willing to stretch yourself, you will not see children raised to life. Silliness cannot save, but stretching oneself to reach down to the the lost who live their lives below the 4 foot line does. Stooping requires stretching. It is harder to become small than it is to rise to your full height. 

Do the difficult work for stretching yourself small and you will see your little ones become great hearts.

day no. 15,243: Christmas in July

Christmas is the essence and initiation of postmillennial, optimistic, Christian world conquest

"Let earth receive her King"

The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein (Psalm 24:1)

Jesus is the King of the earth. The question is not IF He is the King, but HOW He will be received as King. The command of the hymn is for the earth to gladly receive her King rather than to resist or reject Him. Either way, He is King. But those who resist will be broken by the stiffness. Hard things break when hard pressed.

"Joyful all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies"

The will of God will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Heaven wins. Jesus triumphs. His Kingdom will reign forever. Christmas is the inauguration of His Kingdom. It has been increasing at hand more and more so every day since that initial in-breaking.

"And makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love"

The nations will justify God. They will testify to His glory. They will demonstrate His righteousness and the wonders of His love by being discipled and immersed into His Son in the power of His Spirit to the glory of the Father in Heaven.

Christmas is a commission to mission. It is a call to conquer the earth in the Name of the Christ. It is a call for the entire earth to organize herself under the headship of Christ and be present, by nation, when roll is called.

Christmas is the conquest that never stops conquering.

day no. 15,242 continued... for our cities, for our homes

2 Samuel 10:12
Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God: and the Lord do that which seemeth him good.

Nehemiah 4:14
Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.

If Christian men do not fight for their homes, they cannot win the city and if they do not fight for the city, they cannot expect to keep their homes.

But either way, we are called to play the men on behalf of our people, our cities, our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our wives, our lives, our homes, and our heritage. And having given our best on behalf of our beloved, we are to entrust what follows to the Beloved.

While we do not know what results may seem good to Him, we do know what means He has deemed good: we should be of good courage, be men and be glad to assume the sacrificial responsibility appropriate to our station; we should employ our strength for those entrusted to us, place ourselves between the danger and our beloved, and at the end of the day or in the very end if it should come to that, close our eyes in faith, trusting our day's obedience to His designs.

day no. 15,242: how many? ...or who men-y?

“Success in battle is not a function of how many show up, but who they are.” -- MCWP 6-10

Would you rather have 1,000,000 Persians or 300 Spartans?

In the long run, even 300 Spartans cannot hold off 1,000,000 Persians indefinitely, but they can hold them off long enough to make a difference and 300 Spartans can produce an impact entirely disproportionate to their number because of who they were.

Were the 300 successful? Some may say, "No." They all died and the Persians ended up getting through. But is that the measurement by which the Spartans were attempting to succeed? No. They knew they were going to die. They did not fight assuming that they would survive, they fought assuming their fighting is what would make it possible for their people behind them to survive. And by their own standard, they achieved high marks. They were successful in battle. They completed the main effort in herculean effort.

day no. 15,241: present and accounted for

"We didn’t wish to drive them away by preaching the truth. But since they went of their own accord, we certainly don’t want them back as members." - Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Soul Winner: How to Lead Sinners to the Saviour

We don't preach the Word in order to scatter, but in attempting to gather God's elect. The inevitable result, however, is that those offended by God's Word will scatter. "The same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay" and the only way to keep some from hardening would be to reduce the heat enough to keep them soft. But at that temperature, the ice wouldn't melt either and everyone's hearts would either remain soft by hiding from the Word or hard by keeping away from it.

"Hard preaching produces soft hearts and soft preaching produces hard hearts." 

- Jim Wilson

If you bend over backwards to get disobedient people back into your flock, you will find that you do not have a flock, but an infestation.You should welcome them back to hear the truth if they are so inclined, but you should not chase them down with lies in order to win them back to the truth; unless your aim is to increase the number of those killed by your tower's inevitable collapse.

We want people to feel welcome to stay and hear the Word, but that presupposes the Word will be present... even if it means their absence. The Word will be present even if it means they won't be accounted for. by refusing to show up and be counted The One to whom we must all given an account must be as present now in Word and power as He will be one day in person.

day no. 15,240: fuel burns better and hotter than fodder

"We must let the tares grow until the harvest. But the best thing to do, when you can’t uproot the tares, is to water the wheat. Nothing keeps back tares like good strong wheat." - Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Soul Winner: How to Lead Sinners to the Saviour"

Nothing combats bad culture like good culture. When you are in a gun fight, you need bullets to fire back at your assailant. If you find yourself in a culture war, you are going to need some culture to fire back at your adversary. If you only look to disassemble and critique the faults in their artillery, you will find yourself buried under a pile of rumble. But if you are dedicated to manufacturing ammunition, producing culture and casting vision, you have an arsenal that can do some damage. You will no longer spend your time talking about surviving the culture and will spend your energy on demolishing the other one.

In other words, fuel burns better and hotter than fodder.

You can look for things that should burn well or you can acquire more accelerant.

Good strong wheat changes the landscape more effectively than agonizing over the presence of weeds. Watering wheat is a better strategy for killing weeds than starving everyone by obsessing over the weeds.

Matthew 13:24-30
He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

"Jesus called it a wheat field, not a tare field." - Bran Sauve'

Though Jesus assured us there would be tares in the field, He also reassured us that the field is defined by the presence of wheat, not the absence of tares.

day no. 15,239: trigger warning

"We, in Hell, would welcome the disappearance of democracy in the strict sense of that word, the political arrangement so called. Like all forms of government, it often works to our advantage, but on the whole less often than other forms. And what we must realize is that 'democracy' in the diabolical sense (I’m as good as you, Being Like Folks, Togetherness) is the fittest instrument we could possibly have for extirpating political democracies from the face of the earth.

For 'democracy' or the 'democratic spirit' (diabolical sense) leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first sign of criticism. And that is what Hell wishes every democratic people to be. For when such a nation meets in conflict a nation where children have been made to work at school, where talent is placed in high posts, and where the ignorant mass are allowed no say at all in public affairs, only one result is possible.

The democracies were surprised lately when they found that Russia had got ahead of them in science. What a delicious specimen of human blindness! If the whole tendency of their society is opposed to every sort of excellence, why did they expect their scientists to excel?" - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Peoples who embrace the world the way that God made it will always excel over those who attempt to remake the world in their own image. Countries that pass laws against gravity can expect to be overtaken in time by those who use the force of gravity like a hammer to smash them into pieces. While it is possible to abuse the way God made the world by wielding it for ungodly gain, it is impossible for those who refuse the way God made the world to shield themselves with theirs from ungodly advance.

day no. 15,238 continued... boundless because it is bound

"Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: 'My yoke is easy and my burden is light.'" 
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament of Freedom

Grace is boundless because it is bound. Slavery to Jesus is infinite freedom. Freedom sought elsewhere is infinite slavery. It is difficult and heavy because it involves saying, "No" to one's self in submission to another. It is easy and light because the One to whom it binds itself is the only free agent in all of creation. 

If you are bound to Jesus, you are free. But you are not free from being bound. If you are free in Christ, you are not free to be out of Christ. To be free in Jesus is to be bound to Him. To be free from Jesus is to be bound for destruction. Grace requires you to draw from just one account, but when you do, you discover it is an inexhaustible treasury of pleasure forevermore.

Psalm 16:11
Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

The path of life can only be safely traversed by being bound to Jesus, but if you're bound to Him, you're also bound for a place where delight dwells and fullness finds its source. If you are holding His right hand, you are experiencing joy and pleasure without measure now and forever, world without end, amen.

I am free because I'm bound
I am bound for heavens gate
Where my feet will stand on holy ground

I am bound for glory
- Vertical Worship, Bound For Glory

day no. 15,238: democracies do not want great men

"In that promising land (England) the spirit of 'I’m as good as you' has already begun something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system. How far its operations there have gone at the present moment, I should not like to say with certainty. Nor does it matter. Once you have grasped the tendency, you can easily predict its future developments; especially as we ourselves will play our part in the developing. The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' These differences between pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have – I believe the English already use the phrase – 'parity of esteem.' An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT.

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I’m as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers – or should I say, nurses? – will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.

Of course, this would not follow unless all education became state education. But it will. That is part of the same movement. Penal taxes, designed for that purpose, are liquidating the Middle Class, the class who were prepared to save and spend and make sacrifices in order to have their children privately educated. The removal of this class, besides linking up with the abolition of education, is, fortunately, an inevitable effect of the spirit that says 'I’m as good as you.' This was, after all, the social group which gave to the humans the overwhelming majority of their scientists, physicians, philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, composers, architects, jurists, and administrators. If ever there were a bunch of stalks that needed their tops knocked off, it was surely they. As an English politician remarked not long ago, 'A democracy does not want great men.'” - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape Proposes a Toast

C.S. Lewis published these words on December 19, 1959.  He foresaw the state of state education. "I'm as good as you" reduces the goal of education from setting minds free (liberal arts) to enslaving whole persons (indentured servitude).

While God would use education to help His people appreciate their freedom (Galatians 5:1), Satan would twist it to help people despise the freedom they're rejecting. Education energized by "I'm as good as you" produces disciples oriented in egalitarian nothingness. Egalitarianism seeks to remake the world in its own image -- without form and void, shapeless and substance-free. Rather than affirming the value of different shapes, they force everyone into one shape. The trick of diversity training is its insistence on sameness. God loves diversity and made two sexes, Satan hates diversity and seeks to eliminate their distinctions by insisting "one is as good as the other."

But this is obviously untrue. Men are better than women... at being men and women are better than men... at being women. It's always as if they were born with an advantage of sorts. Call it gender privilege. And that, as we all know and have been relentlessly told in our time, this unacceptable and intolerable. We are told that if were more tolerant, we would not be so insistent. But therein lies the snooker. In order to be considered tolerant by their standard, we must stop tolerating such insistent distinction and get with the uniformity program. Because if we don't, we're narrow-minded.

Poppycock!!!

day no. 15,237 continued... family religion is necessary for the nation

"Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation." - Joel 1:3

"In this simple way, by God's grace, a living testimony for truth is always to be kept alive in the land--the beloved of the Lord are to hand down their witness for the gospel, and the covenant to their heirs, and these again to their next descendants. This is our first duty, we are to begin at the family hearth: he is a bad preacher who does not commence his ministry at home. The heathen are to be sought by all means, and the highways and hedges are to be searched, but home has a prior claim, and woe unto those who reverse the order of the Lord's arrangements. To teach our children is a personal duty; we cannot delegate it to Sunday school teachers, or other friendly aids; these can assist us, but cannot deliver us from the sacred obligation; proxies and sponsors are wicked devices in this case: mothers and fathers must, like Abraham, command their households in the fear of God, and talk with their offspring concerning the wondrous works of the Most High. Parental teaching is a natural duty--who so fit to look to the child's well-being as those who are the authors of his actual being? To neglect the instruction of our offspring is worse than brutish. Family religion is necessary for the nation, for the family itself, and for the church of God. By a thousand plots Popery is covertly advancing in our land, and one of the most effectual means for resisting its inroads is left almost neglected, namely, the instruction of children in the faith. Would that parents would awaken to a sense of the importance of this matter. It is a pleasant duty to talk of Jesus to our sons and daughters, and the more so because it has often proved to be an accepted work, for God has saved the children through the parents' prayers and admonitions. May every house into which this volume shall come honour the Lord and receive his smile." - Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

day no. 15,237: on par excellence

"You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them 'tyrants' then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, 'democracy.' But now 'democracy' can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks". - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Egalitarianism hates excellence. There is enmity between them as there is between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. They are diametrically opposed to one another. They each have wills which they desire to impose upon the other.

Egalitarianism resents the implication of the differences. Inequality always sniffs of injustice in their eyes as though all nuggets of gold must weigh the same or that pellets of gold and plastic of equal weight should be equally valued.

Excellence, however, is not plagued by envy. It does not resent smallness. It does not hesitate to be great. It aims high and does not apologize. It doesn't need the smallness to recognize how much bigger it is. It's aim is not downward. Yet, it refuses to aim low. That is why small things stay so small. They are always looking down on things. Excellence grows upward towards the sun from where it receives its energy. It isn't hamstrung by looking down to ensure everything else is looking up to it.

Lewis foresaw the participation award, self-esteem culture coming down the pike, The spirit of "I'm as good as you" can only slide and tumble one direction. A dead fish can only swim downstream and as long as you know where the current is going, you can predict where the fish will end up. God is great and His Spirit in a man compels him to greatness. He desires to achieve in keeping with His calling in order to honor His Creator. He does not do so in order to be considered great by others, but because he considers his God worthy of the effort. He doesn't need to be noticed by anyone as long as he is noticed by His God. He can be great in secret knowing the greatness of His God allows Him to see him in secret. But whatever he does, he does not seek to be insignificant. He does not try to go unnoticed across the board. In fact, he desires all the more to be noticed by his primary audience. He doesn't dance as though no one is watching, but as though only One were watching - One who loves dancing.

day no. 15,236 continued... everything for nothing

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing."
 -- Diettrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Grace is like an all-inclusive resort with an all-you-can-eat buffet and an open bar.  One way to shirk the generosity of your admittance is to be stingy, to refuse to enjoy the great lengths that your host has gone to in favor of your preferred shrewdness. The other way to abuse to this generosity is by taking 12 fried chicken legs, eating the skin and tossing the rest; piling slices of watermelon on your plate, taking a bite out of each and tossing the rest; taking 8 shots of whiskey because it's on the house and throwing up most of them in a drunken stupor later.

The first way treats grace as insufficient and makes grace more costly than it already is by attempting to add your payment to that which it already cost your host. The latter way treats grace as unimportant and makes grace so cheap that no thought is given to the costs of the host. The first refuses to accept anything for free and the latter refuses to consider how much it costs someone else to offer you freely.

Grace is free because someone else paid the bill.

John 19:30
When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished"

day no. 15,236: confidence in the conspicuous

"Suspicion often creates what it expects. (Since, whatever I do, the neighbors are going to think me a witch, or a Communist agent, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and become one in reality.)” - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

At some point, a person begins to think, "If I'm going to be hung as a thief, I might as well steal something."

If you are the one being suspected, do your very best to resist this temptation to be as bad as they already imagine you are. It is better to be hung between two thieves as an honest man accused of treason than to be hung as a traitor, guilty as charged.

If you are the one suspecting others, do your very best to resist the urge to subtly season each of your glances or words with suspicion. If they are who or what you suspect them to be, they won't be able to conceal it forever. If they aren't, why would you want them to become what you suspect? Don't be so set on being right in your assessment that you would be disappointed to discover that they are, after all when everything is said and done, an honest chap and nothing of the sort you suspected. This comes from pride and it must die.

Place your confidence in the conspicuous.

1 Timothy 5:24-25
The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later. So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden.

day no. 15,235 continued... like leaning on a sharpened stick

Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding. 
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.

The other day while walking and praying, God revealed to me just how often in life I have leaned upon my own understanding. I have long been in the habit of taking great comfort and finding great confidence in assuming that I understood things or could understand them if given enough time. My confidence was in my ability to see what was going on or to figure it out if I thought about it long enough.

But in recent days, I've discovered that I don't. It is humbling, but it is hopeful. Because it is a sin, it can be repented of and forgiven and because it is a promise, it is a comfort to know that there is understanding in Him in whom I am asked to trust. Straight paths and clear headedness come from Him. May God grant it as I seek through trusting Him. May He be my starting block instead of my own understanding. May I look to Him before I look within.

day no. 15,235: I'm as good as you

"The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say, 'I’m as good as you.' The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the center of his life a good, solid, resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says 'I’m as good as you' believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: 'Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he’s one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different.'" - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

"I'm as good as you" is envy with mascara. It is cosmetically concealed smallness. It boasts of integrity, but is fueled by disingenuinity. It is meretricious. "I'm as good as you" recognizes its own inferiority by asserting its equality. Equality in this sense of the word is the essence of the egalitarian leveling agent that seeks to devour any and every difference by reducing all peoples to the lowest common denominator imaginable in order to eliminate that nagging feeling of inferiority. It is like leaven working its way through the lump only with the end in mind of leaving no lump. The problem is not the superiority of the neighbor, but the way one's own inferiority makes the man feel. Being inferior is not inherently problematic. It's only problematic if one refuses to accept it or the feelings associated with it. If, instead, those feelings are fanned into the flame and weaponized with words like, "justice" and "equality," well then, that is now a problem and not one which will long we tolerated. In this spirit, one will soon be subject to the picket line chants of "What do we want? Equality! When do we want it? Now! How do we want it? By any means necessary!"

day no. 15,234 continued... timely

I really, REALLY, needed THIS today.

"As The Federalist notes, the turning point was June 4. At that time, it was made manifest to all careful observers, not to mention more than a few casual observers, that the lock downs and restrictions were political. They were simply a form of partisan crowd control. This realization extends to the masking mandates, which are being driven by the same political agenda. This whole thing was high hypocrisy. It was hypocrisy on stilts. Consequently, our conclusion ought to be no more lock downs, no more restrictions, no more masks. The people dictating these things to us are not sincere. They are not telling us the truth." -- Douglas Wilson, 7 Reasons for Unmasking the Masks

Read the full article by clicking HERE.

day no. 15,234 continued... masters are not made overnight

The other day my son, Finneas, explained that he was trying to build a tower out of books in the basement, but it kept falling over. Then he said he remembered the blooper reels at the end of Danny MacAskill videos we watch and how we've discussed before that these show how hard he tries and how often he fails before getting the picture perfect take that we see in the polished, edited video beforehand.

I often tell my children, "If you want to be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad at it first."

Then that same week, I came across this quote in a book I was reading,

“The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.” -- James Clear, Atomic Habits

Sometimes we fear failure, sometimes we fear the same ol' same ol'. We don't want to look bad, but we don't want to be bored with being ok either. We fail to be great because we can't handle the monotony that accompanies becoming great and often one of the key differences between the great and the only ok is that the great have the endurance to do what's required over and over without giving up or getting bored.

As Oswald Chambers initially taught me, "The good is always the enemy of the best." Being good enough is the most obvious reason to forego getting any better.

Then before preaching this last Sunday, I was speaking to Keaton about house projects and he mentioned a concept he embraced years back that has helped him tackle and complete many a DIY: "Plan to pay the dumb tax." This is easy to remember because it's not hard to associate paying taxes with dumbness as in, "I'm not paying your dumb tax." But that was not the point Keaton was making. He was pointing to a principle: the first time you do anything, you will have to pay the dumb tax. Whatever you do first, you will do poorly, at least compared to how good you will get at it if you have the chutzpah to do it again. Cuts will have to made twice before you learn how to do them just the once. Things will have to be unscrewed or unbolted and done over or in a different order before you're able to do them efficiently and just the once. The dumb tax is what you pay in order to learn enough to do it better the next time. All skills are learned and acquired by paying the dumb tax. All smart people have paid their dumb tax. The real dummies are the ones who never pay it.

Then today, I read this,

"If difficult goals could be achieved quickly, more people would be achievers." -- John Wooden, Wooden on Leadership

Seems like God is banging the same drum a lot for me lately. Perhaps this is a lesson I need to deeply learn: a mere taste of the medicine required to treat the malady of fear and pride, 

"In order to be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad at it."

And once good at it, to not grow bored with being good enough so that you fall below grade, but staying hungry and motivated and able to endure monotony in order to be a master at something.

Masters are not made overnight.

day no. 15,234: young heads on old shoulders

"We can’t put young heads on old shoulders, even if we were to attempt to do it." - Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Soul Winner: How to Lead Sinners to the Saviour

Young men need wisdom and older men need energy. Young men have energy, but don't know what to do with it. Older men know what to do, but are too tired or impatient to do it or teach others to do it.

Proverbs 20:29
The glory of young men is their strength,
but the splendor of old men is their gray hair.

As much as we might wish younger men were smarter and that older men were more motivated, they won't be unless they catch of vision of benefiting each other. It will cost the young man a great deal in humility in order to be under the authority of an old fuddy duddy and it will cost the older man a great deal of patience in order to teach a young man what to do and when to do it.

1 John 2:12-14
I am writing to you, little children,
    because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake.
I am writing to you, fathers,
    because you know him who is from the beginning.
I am writing to you, young men,
    because you have overcome the evil one.
I write to you, children,
    because you know the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
    because you know him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
    because you are strong,
    and the word of God abides in you,
    and you have overcome the evil one.

God has given certain gifts to certain stages. Young men and older men have different strengths. These can either complement each other or they can battle each other. If they fight against each other, neither will win. If they fight, side by side, on the same team with each other against the evil one, everyone except the evil one wins!