"Shake the world again" -Francis Schaeffer

The Bible reading plan that my wife and I are using this year has us currently in the Apostle Paul's majestic Epistle to the Romans. For supplemental reading today, I picked up Raymond Ortlund Jr.'s excellent book A Passion For God: Prayers and Meditations on the Book of Romans. Ortlund uses his own paraphrase for the whole book, writes down some very heartfelt and doctrinally sound prayers, and also includes loads of quotes that fit very well with the section he is highlighting.

Today I read his meditation on Romans 1:11-15 and it included an amazing poem written by Francis Schaeffer:

To eat, to breathe

to beget

Is this all there is

Chance configuration of atom against atom

    of god against god

I cannot believe it.

Come, Christian Triune God who lives,

Here am I

Shake the world again.

                                               Francis Schaeffer, 1960

The poem is originally from a 1960 issue of Christianity Today.

francis schaeffer ray ortlund jr. epistle to the romans

An apologetic for apologetics- Ravi Zacharias

The RZIM (Ravi Zacharias Internation Ministries) website shares the introduction to Ravi's newest book "Beyond Opinion: Living the Faith We Defend." The article/introduction is called "An Apologetic for Apologetics."

In the article, Ravi says:

"I am convinced, in the words of C. S. Lewis—who in my estimation is probably the greatest Christian apologist in recent memory—that the question of being an apologist is not so much whether you use an apologetic in answering someone’s question, but whether the apologetic you already use is a good one."

On a related note, Tim Keller's new book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (also an abridged audiobook) is coming out in the next few weeks and looks to be another helpful apologetics-in-love resource.

ravi zacharias apologetics

Dillard on eternity

"Time is eternity's pale interlinear, as the islands are the sea's. We have less time than we knew and that time buoyant, and cloven, lucent, and missile, and wild.

-Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, pg. 21

Meditations on Psalm 27- Safe

Author Paul Tripp (who penned the wonderfully helpful and encouraging book Instruments in the Redeemers Hands) has been sharing his meditations on Psalm 27 since mid August (this is the first post).

He says:

Psalm 27 really is an amazing psalm. There are moments when it soars with the thoughts of what it means to be a child of the Lord. There are places where it reaches into the harshest realities of life in a very broken world. There are times when this psalm is a scalpel, cutting through the layers and exposing the heart. It is a psalm of worship, commitment, trouble, beauty, and patience. There's a way in which Psalm 27 is a biblical worldview done as a podcast. There simply is much more there than you think there is after your first reading.

Today he shares a wonderful meditation entitled "Safe." Here is the conclusion:

I am safe
from my evil heart
and this shattered world,
not because I can escape
them both,
but because in the middle of
temptation and trial,
danger and disappointment
sickness and want,
You give me everything
I need to
fight temptation
and avoid defeat
and to point others
to the safety
that can only be found
in You.
So, I will wake up tomorrow
and face the anxiety
of not knowing,
the fear of my own weakness,
and the reality of the fall.
I will live with
faith,
courage,
perseverance,
and hope.
And when danger comes,
and it will,
I will whisper to
my weakening heart,
"Emmanuel is your shelter,
You are safe."

psalm 27 paul tripp

Mark Driscoll- Preaching to himself

Mark Driscoll is a well known pastor who in his sermon last week did something that well known pastors often don't do: he repented of pride. Not only did he repent, he addressed specific issues and did it with much grace. As my friend BJ mentioned earlier, this could become Driscoll's most influential moment. I praise God for the good work being done in and through Mark Driscoll.

The sermon was entitled "The Rebels Guide to Joy in Humility." You can listen to it (download) or watch it (download) here.

Here is an excerpt from that sermon:

I believe that humility is the great omission and failure in my eleven years of preaching. I believe that this is my greatest oversight both in my example and in my instruction.

I therefore do not claim to be humble. I do not claim to have been humble. I am convicted of my pride, and I am a man who is by God’s grace pursuing humility.

So in many ways this is a sermon that I’m preaching at myself, this is a sermon you are welcomed to listen in on as I preach to myself.

But I truly believe that were there one thing I could do over in the history of Mars Hill it would be in my attitude and in my actions and in my words to not only emphasize sound doctrine, encourage in strength and commitment and conviction but, to add in addition to that, humility as a virtue.

And so I’ll start by asking your forgiveness and sincerely acknowledging that this has been a great failure.

And I believe that it is showing up in our church in the lives of men and women who have sound doctrine but not sound attitude. They may contend for good things but their motives are bad and their methods are bad and their tone is bad and their tactics are bad and their actions are bad because their attitudes are bad even though their objective is sometimes good. I see this in particular with the men. I see this with men young and old, men who have known Jesus for a long time and should know better, and men who are new to Jesus and are learning sometimes the hard way.

I will take some responsibility for this. Luke 6:40 says that when fully trained, disciples are like their teacher, and I am primary teaching pastor of this church and I can’t simply look at the pride in some of our people and say that I am in no way responsible or complicit.

I’m a guy who is pretty busted up over this personally and it really came to my attention last December just in time for Christmas. The critics really brought me a lot of kind gifts of opposition and hatred and animosity. Merry Christmas. And some of those most vocal and nasty critics were Christians – some of them prominent Christians. So I was getting ready to fire back (my usual tactics). They hit you, you hit them twice and then blog about your victory. Which I don’t have any verses for and don’t say it was a good idea. But it had been a pattern in my life until a man named C.J. Mahaney called.

I’d always considered humility to be cowardice and a compromise. In the name of humility you give up biblical conviction and passion and the willingness to contend for the faith (Jude 3) and to fight false teaching. What he was describing was orthodoxy in belief and humility in attitude and that those two together are really what God desires. And so it got me thinking and studying and praying through pride and humility and repenting and learning and growing. So I would start by saying that I thank my dear friend C.J. Mahaney for his ongoing friendship and the kindness he has extended to me and the things I’ve been able to learn through his instruction.

Furthermore, I apologize and repent publicly to you, the church for whom I am responsible, for much pride in the history of my ministry that some of you have poorly imitated and for that I am deeply sorry.

And thirdly, to say that I’m not a humble man but as result of study I’m a man who is acknowledging his pride and pursuing humility by God’s grace.

-- Mark Driscoll, sermon on Philippians 2:1-11 (November 4, 2007), part 5 in The Rebel's Guide to Joy in Humility (3:16-8:40)

HT:Justin Taylor

mark driscoll humility cj mahaney

The last enemy to be destroyed is death

Madeline L'Engle- 1918-2007.

“Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

You can read some tributes to this marvelous woman here and here and read an older interview that Christianity Today published a number of years ago (Thanks to JT for pointing out this interview).

D. James Kennedy- 1930-2007

“Now, I know that someday I am going to come to what some people will say is the end of this life. They will probably put me in a box and roll me right down here in front of the church, and some people will gather around, and a few people will cry. But I have told them not to do that because I don’t want them to cry. I want them to begin the service with the Doxology and end with the Hallelujah chorus, because I am not going to be there, and I am not going to be dead. I will be more alive than I have ever been in my life, and I will be looking down upon you poor people who are still in the land of dying and have not yet joined me in the land of the living. And I will be alive forevermore, in greater health and vitality and joy than ever, ever, I or anyone has known before.”

Click here for a tribute page for Dr. Kennedy.

A good reminder

"Our religious activities should be so ordered in such a way as to have plenty of time for the cultivation of the fruits of solitude and silence."

A. W. Tozer

Christian contentment

jeremiah burroughs' "the rare jewel of Christian contentment"

i've been reading this marvelous little book for the past week and it has been quite encouraging. a couple of quotes:

"I have what I have from the love of God, and I have it sanctified to me by God, and I have it free of cost from God by the purchase of the blood of Jesus Christ, and I have it as a forerunner of those eternal mercies that are reserved for me; and in this my soul rejoices." (pg. 59-60)

"The truth is that the afflictions of God's people come from the same eternal love that Jesus Christ came from...all God's ways are mercy and truth, to those that fear him and love him (Psalm 25.10). The ways of God, the ways of affliction, as well as the ways of prosperity, are mercy and love to him. Grace gives man an eye, a piercing eye to pierce into the counsel of God, those eternal counsels of God for good to him, even in his afflictions; he can see the love of God in every affliction as well as in prosperity. Now this is a mystery to a carnal heart. They can see no such thing; perhaps they think God loves them when he prospers them and makes them rich, but they think he loves them not when he afflicts them. That is a mystery, but grace instructs men in that mystery, grace enables men to see love in the very frown of God's face, and so comes to receive contentment." (pg. 60)

i pray that i might learn to trust God in such a way and so to honor Him in my contentment.