Give me an undivided heart
That I might fear Your name
Teach me to walk in righteous paths
And follow in Your ways
For You are gracious and forgiving
Hear, O Lord, and answer me
Give me an undivided mind
That I might love Your Word
Help to hunger for Your voice
And know Your Spirit's sword
For You are good, Your truth unchanging
Life is found in serving You
Undivided, I want to live for You
Single-minded, all that I say, all that I do
Sanctify me, take me and make me new
That I might live for Christ, my Lord
Give me an undivided love
For all that You desire
Make me a living sacrifice
Ignite in me Your fire
For You, O Lord, are God eternal
All my ways are known to You
Undivided, I want to live for You
Single-minded, all that I say, all that I do
Sanctify me, take me and make me new
That I might live for Christ, my Lord
Undivided, counting my gains as loss
Single-minded, whatever the pain, whatever the cost
Sanctify me, help me take up my cross
And live for Him who died for me
Friday 22 September 2017
Saturday 22 July 2017
Ambassadors
The only thing an ambassador does, if he's interested in keeping his job, is to faithfully represent the message, methods, and character of the leader who has sent him. He is not free to think, speak, or act independently. Everything he does, every decision he makes, and every interaction he has must be shaped by this one question: "What is the will and plan of the one who sent me?" The ambassador does not represent his own interest, his own perspective, or his own power. He does everything as an ambassador, or he has forgotten who he is and he will not be in his position for long.
- Paul David Tripp, Parenting
- Paul David Tripp, Parenting
Sunday 11 June 2017
Awe
Creation is awesome. God designed it to be awesome. And God designed you to take in creation's awesome display. You are meant to be inspired and to celebrate the awesome things that come from the Creator's hand. But as you participate and rejoice in the awesome display of creation, you must understand that these awesome things were not intended to be ultimate. They were not made to be the stopping place and feeding station for your heart. No awesome thing in creation was meant to give you what only the Creator is able to give. Every awesome thing in creation is designed to point you to the One who alone is worthy of capturing and controlling the awe of your searching and hungry heart.
As it is true of a street sign, so it is true of every jaw-dropping, knee-weakening, silence-producing, wonder-inspiring thing in the universe. The sign is not the thing you are looking for. No, the sign points you to what you are looking for. So you can't stop at the sign, for it will never deliver what the thing it is pointing to will deliver. Created awe has a purpose; it is meant to point you to the place where the awe of your heart should rest. If awesome things in creation become your god, the God who created those things will not own your awe. Horizontal awe is meant to do one thing: stimulate vertical awe.
- Paul David Tripp, Awe
As it is true of a street sign, so it is true of every jaw-dropping, knee-weakening, silence-producing, wonder-inspiring thing in the universe. The sign is not the thing you are looking for. No, the sign points you to what you are looking for. So you can't stop at the sign, for it will never deliver what the thing it is pointing to will deliver. Created awe has a purpose; it is meant to point you to the place where the awe of your heart should rest. If awesome things in creation become your god, the God who created those things will not own your awe. Horizontal awe is meant to do one thing: stimulate vertical awe.
- Paul David Tripp, Awe
Sunday 14 May 2017
Real Faith In Our Faithful God
Please keep these two foundational perspectives in mind as you read these pages:
First, our journey in this life is about what God wants to do through our lives, not about our using God to accomplish our dreams.
Second, our impact and effectiveness as followers of Christ is in direct proportion to our faith-filled obedience as we face the challenges and opportunities God places before us.
May our great God fill your heart and mind with such a glorious vision of His power and love that you will see Him as greater than all of your fears and more than sufficient to meet all of your needs.
- Crawford W. Loritts Jr., Real Faith In Our Faithful God
First, our journey in this life is about what God wants to do through our lives, not about our using God to accomplish our dreams.
Second, our impact and effectiveness as followers of Christ is in direct proportion to our faith-filled obedience as we face the challenges and opportunities God places before us.
May our great God fill your heart and mind with such a glorious vision of His power and love that you will see Him as greater than all of your fears and more than sufficient to meet all of your needs.
- Crawford W. Loritts Jr., Real Faith In Our Faithful God
Saturday 13 May 2017
The Lucifer Effect
If prison is anything like what I went through here, I don't know how it could help anyone. (pg 162)
The System includes the Situation, but it is more enduring, more widespread, involving extensive networks of people, their expectations, norms, policies, and, perhaps, laws. Over time, Systems come to have a historical foundation and sometimes also a political and economic power structure that governs and directs the behaviour of many people within its sphere of influence.
Systems are the engines that run situations that create behavioural contexts that influence the human action of those under their control. At some point, the System may become an autonomous entity, independent of those who initially started it or even of those in apparent authority within its power structure. Each System comes to develop a culture of its own, as many Systems collectively come to contribute to the culture of a society. (pg 179-180)
The line between Good and Evil, once thought to be impermeable, proved instead to be quite permeable. (pg 195)
The primary simple lesson the Stanford Prison Experiment teaches is that situations matter. Social situations can have more profound effects on the behaviour and mental functioning of individuals, groups, and national leaders than we might believe possible. Some situations can exert such powerful influence over us that we can be led to behave in ways we would not, could not, predict was possible in advance. (pg 211-212)
The most important lesson to be derived from the Stanford Prison Experiment is that Situations are created by Systems. Systems provide the institutional support, authority, and resources that allow Situations to operate as they do. (pg 226)
You get confessions and admissions by building rapport not by bullying, by earning trust not by fostering hatred. (pg 377)
By developing a balanced time perspective in which past, present, and future can be called into action depending on the situation and task at hand, you will be in a better position to act responsibly and wisely than when your time perspective is biased toward reliance on only one or two time frames. Situational power is weakened when past and future combine to contain the excesses of the present.
For example, research indicates that righteous Gentiles who helped to hide Dutch Jews from the Nazis did not engage in the kind of rationalising their neighbours did in generating reasons for not helping. These heroes depended upon moral structures derived from their past and never lost sight of a future time when they would look back on this terrible situation and be forced to ask themselves whether they had done the right thing when they chose not to succumb to fear and social pressure. (pg 455)
- Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation.
"These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
"And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect." - Hebrews 11:1-2, 13, 39-40 (ESV)
The System includes the Situation, but it is more enduring, more widespread, involving extensive networks of people, their expectations, norms, policies, and, perhaps, laws. Over time, Systems come to have a historical foundation and sometimes also a political and economic power structure that governs and directs the behaviour of many people within its sphere of influence.
Systems are the engines that run situations that create behavioural contexts that influence the human action of those under their control. At some point, the System may become an autonomous entity, independent of those who initially started it or even of those in apparent authority within its power structure. Each System comes to develop a culture of its own, as many Systems collectively come to contribute to the culture of a society. (pg 179-180)
The line between Good and Evil, once thought to be impermeable, proved instead to be quite permeable. (pg 195)
The primary simple lesson the Stanford Prison Experiment teaches is that situations matter. Social situations can have more profound effects on the behaviour and mental functioning of individuals, groups, and national leaders than we might believe possible. Some situations can exert such powerful influence over us that we can be led to behave in ways we would not, could not, predict was possible in advance. (pg 211-212)
The most important lesson to be derived from the Stanford Prison Experiment is that Situations are created by Systems. Systems provide the institutional support, authority, and resources that allow Situations to operate as they do. (pg 226)
You get confessions and admissions by building rapport not by bullying, by earning trust not by fostering hatred. (pg 377)
By developing a balanced time perspective in which past, present, and future can be called into action depending on the situation and task at hand, you will be in a better position to act responsibly and wisely than when your time perspective is biased toward reliance on only one or two time frames. Situational power is weakened when past and future combine to contain the excesses of the present.
For example, research indicates that righteous Gentiles who helped to hide Dutch Jews from the Nazis did not engage in the kind of rationalising their neighbours did in generating reasons for not helping. These heroes depended upon moral structures derived from their past and never lost sight of a future time when they would look back on this terrible situation and be forced to ask themselves whether they had done the right thing when they chose not to succumb to fear and social pressure. (pg 455)
- Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation.
"These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
"And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect." - Hebrews 11:1-2, 13, 39-40 (ESV)
Monday 17 April 2017
The Servant King
From various things which I read over Easter:
Attitude to Serve - The Correctional Leader's Calling
I believe the purpose of a leader is to better the lives of his followers. Leaders should always ask what would deliver happiness to his followers and lead them to it. As correctional leaders, we serve our followers, the community, and a social cause...
Once we set our minds on our vision, getting there is non-negotiable. Though some might become faint-hearted before reaching the destination, we need to place the larger cause above our self-interests.
- Chua Chin Kiat, The Making of Captains of Lives
To have a fulfilling life you have to make promises
To have a fulfilling life you have to make promises. You have to surrender some freedom of choice to taste a higher freedom, the freedom that comes after you've settled on a direction, chained yourself to a cause and enlarged your capacities...
If you're going to commit to something for decades or life as it should have, as Martin Luther King once put it, three qualities. First, length. You should be able to flourish in it for a long time. Second, breadth. You should touch a lot of people. Third, height. It should pull your gaze upward and put you in contact with transcendent truth...
Most of all, the things you commit yourself to should satisfy your yearning for righteousness...
The people who look at life through a moral lens inverse the normal logic of life. Normally when we're making the big decisions we try to follow a straightforward cost-benefit logic. Does this meet my needs? Does this work for me? Am I getting more out of this than I put in?
But people who adopt the moral lens are looking for ways to forget themselves, surrender themselves, to throw themselves into something without counting the cost. They understand, if only by instinct, that their true joy is found on the distant side of unselfishness, not on this side.
People who use the moral lens don't ask, what do I want from life. They ask: What is life asking of me? What problems are out there in my specific circumstances that I am well positioned to address.
People who see through a moral lens don't ask: How big is my impact? They ask, can I do this work the way it should be done. Dorothy Sayers once wrote that if you try to serve the community with your work you will end up distorting your work. You'll be angling for applause. You'll be thinking the world owes you something. But if you just try to serve the work - if you just do your specific craft the way it should be done - you'll end up serving the community even more.
- David Brooks, University of Pennsylvania's Baccalaureate Address to the Class of 2016
A Vision for Our Hearts
Jesus Christ comes to do something much deeper than any social revolutionary has ever done or ever been able to do. He has come to actually change our whole hearts. To change our natures. The Bible shows us that God has a wonderful vision for His world. We have all rejected that vision and yet, even after that rejection, God in His amazing mercy and love continues to pursue us...
So, go ahead and give to Caesar what is Caesar's but then give to God what is God's and remember you belong to God, all of you.
- Mark Dever, God and Politics
Christ's Example of Humility
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
- Philippians 2:1-11 (ESV)
From heaven You came, helpless babe
Entered our world, Your glory veiled
Not to be served, but to serve
And give Your life, that we might live
This is our God, the Servant King
He calls us now to follow Him
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to the Servant King
Attitude to Serve - The Correctional Leader's Calling
I believe the purpose of a leader is to better the lives of his followers. Leaders should always ask what would deliver happiness to his followers and lead them to it. As correctional leaders, we serve our followers, the community, and a social cause...
Once we set our minds on our vision, getting there is non-negotiable. Though some might become faint-hearted before reaching the destination, we need to place the larger cause above our self-interests.
- Chua Chin Kiat, The Making of Captains of Lives
To have a fulfilling life you have to make promises
To have a fulfilling life you have to make promises. You have to surrender some freedom of choice to taste a higher freedom, the freedom that comes after you've settled on a direction, chained yourself to a cause and enlarged your capacities...
If you're going to commit to something for decades or life as it should have, as Martin Luther King once put it, three qualities. First, length. You should be able to flourish in it for a long time. Second, breadth. You should touch a lot of people. Third, height. It should pull your gaze upward and put you in contact with transcendent truth...
Most of all, the things you commit yourself to should satisfy your yearning for righteousness...
The people who look at life through a moral lens inverse the normal logic of life. Normally when we're making the big decisions we try to follow a straightforward cost-benefit logic. Does this meet my needs? Does this work for me? Am I getting more out of this than I put in?
But people who adopt the moral lens are looking for ways to forget themselves, surrender themselves, to throw themselves into something without counting the cost. They understand, if only by instinct, that their true joy is found on the distant side of unselfishness, not on this side.
People who use the moral lens don't ask, what do I want from life. They ask: What is life asking of me? What problems are out there in my specific circumstances that I am well positioned to address.
People who see through a moral lens don't ask: How big is my impact? They ask, can I do this work the way it should be done. Dorothy Sayers once wrote that if you try to serve the community with your work you will end up distorting your work. You'll be angling for applause. You'll be thinking the world owes you something. But if you just try to serve the work - if you just do your specific craft the way it should be done - you'll end up serving the community even more.
- David Brooks, University of Pennsylvania's Baccalaureate Address to the Class of 2016
A Vision for Our Hearts
Jesus Christ comes to do something much deeper than any social revolutionary has ever done or ever been able to do. He has come to actually change our whole hearts. To change our natures. The Bible shows us that God has a wonderful vision for His world. We have all rejected that vision and yet, even after that rejection, God in His amazing mercy and love continues to pursue us...
So, go ahead and give to Caesar what is Caesar's but then give to God what is God's and remember you belong to God, all of you.
- Mark Dever, God and Politics
Christ's Example of Humility
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
- Philippians 2:1-11 (ESV)
From heaven You came, helpless babe
Entered our world, Your glory veiled
Not to be served, but to serve
And give Your life, that we might live
This is our God, the Servant King
He calls us now to follow Him
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to the Servant King
Sunday 1 January 2017
The Gate of the Year
And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way." So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.
So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.
God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.
Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life's stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God's thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.
- Minnie Louise Haskins, God Knows
So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.
God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.
Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life's stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God's thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.
- Minnie Louise Haskins, God Knows
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)