Contentment

God never arranges the circumstances in our lives just the way we want them. We certainly have the blessing of many things that we desire as Americans and blessed Christians, but not everything. He always leaves annoying and vexing things left sitting there--staring us in the face and not leaving like a most unwelcome party crasher.

He does this so that we will not get cocky and lazy. He does this so that we will be left dependent, vulnerable, and a bit restless.

We always need the lesson of submission and humility that annoying things provide...

What is pastoral productivity?

"I've never heard a pastor tell me he or she was too busy praying to do other things. I've only heard pastors say they were too busy doing things like counseling, organizing worship extravagances and managing church affairs to spend much time in prayer. Need we inquire further why the devil wants us busy..." David Hansen

A pastor needs to be spending his time in prayer, deep study of the Word and the culture, preaching sermons and leading in the other parts of worship. On top of that, he needs to spend a lot of his time in shepherding people through friendship and counseling/shepherding.

I have a hard time justifying why we should do much more than the above at all. And to the degree that pastors do much more than the above (give or take a little depending on gifting) the church suffers.

Ken Myers

"...Denominations and sects have flourished in America; we have something like twenty-thousand denominations in this country-some outrageous number like that-because of the fact that we've been instilled with this idea that each individual has the capacity to know truth apart from any tradition, apart from history, apart from what God has done in the church or in nature."

C.S. Lewis' case for the Christian faith - Google Books

C.S. Lewis' case for the Christian faith - Google Books

Great stuff on our being embodied humans that are made to express our love and praise through physical expression--I have in mind prayer and singing esp.

The link puts you on P. 156 of his book, but you must scroll down to the top of P. 157.

Wisdom

This is a sampling of a translation of Proverbs 1-9 that my friend has worked on for years:

"For if to understanding you cry out; To competence you raise your voice; If you seek for her as for silver, and as for hid treasure you hunt for her, Then you will understand the Fear of YHWH, And the knowledge of God you will find;"

The English translators often used the same few words to describe different Hebrew words for a wise life, for wisdom. What came out in my friend's study was the more accurate words competence and resourcefulness for the Hebrew equivalents rather than other more common and generic words.

So, wisdom is competence. It is resourceful. It is circumspect. Wisdom is discipline, my friend translates.

"You see a man who is diligent in his work-he will stand before kings!"

And to quote a line from a man who understood some of these things:

"You will always be in demand if you do your best at whatever your hand finds to do."
Don Sellers

And who is this friendly translator I mentioned? Dr. Michael Collender

Elisabeth Elliot ~ can really deliver

"Recently I committed a sin of what seemed to me unpardonable thoughtlessness. For days I wanted to kick myself around the block. What is the matter with me? I thought. How could I have acted so? 'Fret not thyself because of evildoers' came to mind. In this case the evildoer was myself, and I was fretting. My fretting, I discovered, was a subtle kind of pride. 'I'm really not that sort of person,' I was saying. I did not want to be thought of as that sort of person. I was very sorry for what I had done, not primarily because I had failed someone I loved, but because my reputation would be smudged. When my reputation becomes my chief concern, my repentance has a hollow ring. No wonder Satan is called the deceiver. He has a thousand tricks, and we fall for them. Lord, I confess my sin of thoughtlessness and my sin of pride. I pray for a more loving and purer heart, for Jesus' sake."

Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl

This is the last page from a chapter called, "Your mother was a lizard," where he attacks (Elijah style) evolution and Nietzsche. This excerpt can stand alone but the full value of the book will come when you buy it!

From the book:

"I stand, ripening in the sun, on a street corner by a coffee shop. The world spins on, undisturbed in its route. Summer has come with the loveliness of a mother. Heat, not warmth, now pours onto my face, aging me, taking me closer to death. Let it. I am here to live my story, to love my story. I will not fail to savor any gift out of a desire for self-preservation. Self-preservation is not a great virtue in this story.

I have this world, and everything in it has me, poor trade though it is. I have a barbecue. I will use it tonight. Over my shoulder a girl approaches, pushing a wheelchair. A man sits in it, twisted, drool dried on chapped lips beneath the tangles of an untrimmed moustache. Nietzsche's voice is hard to understand. 'The Christian concept of a god (Nietzsche says) as the patron of the sick, the god as a spinner of cobwebs, the god as a spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts that has ever been set up in the world: it probably touches the low-water mark in the ebbing evolution of the god-type.'

I want to ruffle his hair. I want to take the poor Lutheran boy's head in my hands and kiss his creased forehead. It is all I can do. I cannot set a bone, let alone a soul.

He moves on, preaching unbelief to an empty street.

And I move on, with the sun on my face. Clouds are growing in the west, glorious clouds piled up with rowdy care and sparked with electric life. I fill my lungs with the world, with this life, with this gift beyond containing. There is only one thing I can say. Thank you. And I must say it with my life. Through my life. To the end of my life.

And after."

Can Christians write good stories?

"Christians have long neglected the craft in favor of Sunday School moralism..."

Listen to this excellent interview of Nathan Wilson by Kevin Swanson, pastor in CO:

http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=63009110501

Hello there stranger!

This is for my anonymous responder.. Following the thread on "Relationships"

Thanks for the reply! Feel free to show yourself ;) Or not.

I agree, there are times when relational weakness masks itself by showing itself strong in "ministries" at the expense of family. This is a large problem. It is so very easy to give the best of ourselves over to everything and anything other than the family God has given us. May God help us from hypocrisy.

At the same time, I have also observed another form of imbalance. That is, families that hole themselves up at the expense of living/dieing for the Church. Richard Lusk has two fantastic sermons on the problem of patriarchalism, where the family becomes more primary than the "institutional" (if you will) Church. You can listen here: http://www.trinity-pres.net/audio/sermon05-09-18.mp3 The title is: "The Church and Her Rivals Part I: Against the Family. and Part II is: The Church and Her Rivals Part II: Focus the Family. It was Sep. 18 and 25 of 2005. They are very well done.

So, whereas the appearance of busyness in serving others can be a mask towards familial failure, it isn't always the case. I have definitely been in more traditional evangelical churches that could rebuke us in some chief relational ministries in which the Lord has blessed them. I will say though, they usually were at least Calvinistic or close thereto.

Thanks for the encouragement, and the Lord's blessing on you!

Fatty

The other day our neighbor cat that we have named Fatty plopped himself/herself? down in the middle of the street. Like Adam, I named him as he is because he looks like a cow both in weight and fur.

So there was Fatty.. Two cars piled up behind this queen and she ain't movin'. She just stared at them. Her tail lapped the cement as if to say, "I dare you to drive over me."

The cars drove around our neighborhood queen by the way.

Just thought I'd share..

Don't be petty

This is my prayer today against all my pettiness.

This is my war today against small-mindedness.

Slay narrow minded thoughts. Stop trying to bring God down to your simple outlook. Don't try and bring the beauty, difficulty, and complexity of the messiness of life down to something that only your pea brain can manage. God won't be limited, why do I try and limit Him to the plane of my finitude? Let God be God in your life and in the world. His messiness is better than my attempts to control.

Stop trying to force God's wondrous multiplicity (the Trinity) into my unitarian tidiness of my 1x1x1 comfortable space.