True Love

Son, you just asked me: How can someone show love over and over again when they're constantly rejected?

Caleb, the answer is: You can't love her because you can't give her what you don't have.

I couldn't truly love your mother until I understood what love really was. It's not because I get some reward out of it. I've now made a decision to love your mother whether she deserves it or not.

Son, God loves you even though you don't deserve it. Even though you've rejected Him. Spat in His face. God sent Jesus to die on the cross and take the punishment for your sin because He loves you.

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." - Romans 5:8 (NIV)

Verse of the Day

"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." - Micah 6:8 (NIV)

The Purpose of Scripture

- Reblogged from Caleb

Watching the above video got me thinking about what Scripture is meant to do and what Scripture is not meant to do.

What is the purpose of Scripture? Ultimately, the purpose of Scripture is to point us to Christ.

"And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself... They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"" - Luke 24:27, 32 (NIV)

"Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." - John 20:30-31 (NIV)

"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." - 2 Timothy 3:14-17 (NIV)

Worship Matters

And I worry when the words of some of the modern worship songs seem to me just a random selection of Christian slogans as it were rather than actually a narrative of the world as claimed by Jesus and as rescued by Jesus in His death and resurrection and the world is still a suffering place, but which is looking forward to the new creation. Some worship songs are struggling to say that, but if the narrative is broken then it's not actually helping the people who are singing it in the way that it should.

And then the other thing I really, really worry about is the music. Quite a lot of the contemporary worship songs don't actually have tunes in the proper sense. They have two or three notes which they go to and fro on and then maybe they have a chorus which lifts it a bit, but it's still often not a tune. When you go back to some of the older things way back into the medieval period and through the 16th, 18th century etc. you have an actual tune. And the point about a tune is that it's telling a story. It's going somewhere.

And I am very anxious about worship songs which have deconstructed the tune - the idea of a tune - and that's the radical nature of post-modernity to deconstruct the narrative. That's where our culture is. But we ought to be discerning how to do fresh actual tunes, not sort of past issues, copying what was done in the 16th or 17th or 19th or whatever century, but actual refreshed new creation tunes rather than simply a scattering of random notes. You can feel the difference in the congregation when they're given a real tune to sing.

- N. T. Wright, Scripture & History

God's Sovereignty

Witnessing God's sovereignty in the lives of others is part of God's sovereignty in our lives.

In other words, it is in God's sovereignty that we witness His sovereignty in the lives of others.

But If Not

"Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."" - Daniel 3:16-18 (NIV)

Do we have a "But if not" in our spiritual vocabulary? Is our faith fireproof? If wars should arise and son, daughter, husband, sweetheart be taken from our side, have we a "But if not" to carry us through that fiery furnace? If business should fail or financial reverses be experienced? If ill health grips us? When old age enfeebles us? When bereavement strikes? When desire for a life partner is not granted? When cherished plans are thwarted? If Christian work does not meet with the success we envisaged? When we are not designated to the mission station we expected or live with the fellow worker we would choose? Let us emulate the dauntless faith of the noble three who maintained their confidence in God in the face of seemingly unrewarded faith. "But if not, we will still go on trusting God," said the three men. They did not fall into self-pity or unbelief.

We may not always understand God's dealings with us at the time, and He nowhere undertakes to explain Himself. "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter" is His promise. In the meantime we learn many a lesson in the furnace of testing...

Job lost all - home, herd, family, health, even his wife's sympathy - yet in the midst of the holocaust his faith triumphed gloriously. "He shall bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold him." But if not, "though he slay me, yet will I trust him."

Imagine the poignancy of Isaac's question to Abraham, "Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham had his answer ready. "God will provide a lamb," but if not, I will still trust, accounting that God is "able to raise him up even from the dead" (Hebrews 11:19). Such a thing as a resurrection had never been dreamed of, but Abraham's faith rose to the occasion and he received him back from the dead in a figure.

John the Baptist was languishing in prison. He was disappointed that he had received no message from Jesus, that He had taken no steps to liberate or even visit him. He sent his disciples with the question, "Master, am I mistaken? Art Thou He that should come, or look we for another? But if not, my faith is not stumbled. I will keep on looking for another."

The Lord Jesus was agonising in prayer in Gethsemane, in such distress that bloody sweat forced its way through His pores. "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. But if not, thy will be done."

- J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Maturity

Perfect Freedom

Jesus teaches His followers an essential of discipleship: "If you continue in My Word." It means a life of commitment to His teaching, acting on what we already know. In that context we keep on learning the truth about God, ourselves and others, about His purpose for our life and the problems we face. In the process our Lord also frees us from the tyranny of the urgent in our daily lives.

St. Augustine expressed a paradox of the Christian life: "Slavery to God is perfect freedom." In other words, commitment to the will of God - the purpose for which we are designed - offers freedom to become the person we are meant to be - freedom to travel along the road of God's choice...

We need to recognise that the term "time management" is a misnomer. A person cannot do anything to time itself - delay or hasten, save or lose it - much less "manage" it. The challenge is to manage ourselves under the lordship of Jesus Christ, from Whom we get our goals and values. The basic question is what we do within the time frame granted to us - how we plan, decide, organise, evaluate, revise our tasks.

The bottom line is managing ourselves to make the best use of our abilities and opportunities. This is what we really mean when we use the popular misnomer "time management".

- Charles E. Hummel, Freedom from Tyranny of the Urgent

On Galatians 2:11-21

The question at issue was not, "How can individual sinners find salvation?" but rather, "Are Christian Jews bound, by the Jewish kosher laws, to eat separately from Christian Gentiles, or are they bound by the gospel to eat at the same table with them?"

- N. T. Wright, The Letter to the Galatians: Exegesis and Theology

Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive. How we find salvation are saved shapes how we respond to the gospel, how we respond to the reality that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile - 'for [we] are all one in Christ Jesus' (Galatians 3:28, NIV).