Amazon now has the second album from Deas Vail on sale for $1.99. If you like Mae or Edison Glass, you’ll like Deas Vail. And if you don’t know who any of those bands are then just download it anyway and try something new. You can’t really go wrong for $1.99.
I’m not going to lie, Daughtry is a guilty pleasure for me. With a few exceptions, I’m not usually too fond of pop charting songs and albums. However, I like Daughtry for reasons that I can’t really articulate. So…Amazon has them (or should it just be him) listed as the download deal of the day. For $3.99, it’s worth a spin. So click below and start jammin’.
How can you be sure that you are saved? Maybe you have asked or been asked that question. Many people will point back to a stroll down the church aisle or a prayer that they once prayed. However, Scripture does not counsel us to place our trust and hope in such experiences. Thabiti Anyabwile has written an excellent post showing us how Scripture addresses this question. He concludes with this:
If we lack assurance, one remedy is being with and loving God’s people. It’s another argument for the centrality of the local church and the necessity of our meaningful involvement in her. As Mark Dever sometimes puts it, “The local church is like an assurance of salvation co-op.” I think he stole that from the Bible.
Do you lack the assurance of salvation? Here’s one remedy: Join a church. Love the people. Receive assurance.
You can read the whole post here.
Kindle has come to the Blackberry. This is a brilliant app though I have yet to test it. But the idea excites me already. However, I will say that reading books on a Blackberry is not the most enticing option. The screen on most Blackberry phones, aside from the Storm, is pretty small. But this app might be a handy feature for people who travel or need something to read on the fly. You can download the app for free over at Amazon.
Here’s a modern day, animated parable that should cause us to think about the functions of the church and the role of the Holy Spirit.
The Big Red Tractor from Jacob Lewis on Vimeo.
On Sunday, our Sunday School class looked at Malachi 3:6-18 and God’s unchanging love. It is only fitting that we discussed love on Valentine’s Day. Naturally we could have gone to 1 Corinthians 13 to talk about the many attributes of love. However, this passage gives us something a little different to think about in light of the current holiday. Malachi takes us away from thinking about our own acts of love and brings us to the heart of God’s unchanging love as expressed toward Israel. Israel had turned her back on God time and again. Yet despite Israel’s history of disobedience God had remained the same. His love for them did not change. His promise to them did not change. In fact, God’s unchanging nature is the only reason why they were not destroyed. There is a dual consistency between God and Israel. While Israel was consistently disobedient, God was consistently loving and merciful. God’s consistent love and promise overcame their shortcomings. He simply says to them, “Return to me and I will return to you.” So we see that God’s love is unchanging despite our actions.
God follows this statement of his unchanging love by bringing two charges against Israel. It is a strange way to follow such a merciful act. Why tell Israel that they will be shown mercy and then follow that up by charging them with their sin? In order for the Israelites to return to God, they must be aware of their sin so that they might turn away from it. Repentance is needed in order to reestablish that close relationship that Israel experienced in previous generations. Israel has not honored God for the provisions that have been received (i.e. Israel has not tithed) nor has trusted in the words of God to take care of them. Their faith has dwindled because of the prosperity of non-believing people. But again, despite Israel’s lack of faith and negligence in worship, God never abandons them. He disciplines his children by sending them into exile but then delivers them as an act of love. This exile occurs in order to open the eyes of his people to the sins they have committed against Yahweh. Even God’s discipline is an act of love.
So this week, think about the love of Christ that has been lavishly poured out on you. When you start to lament your situation or find yourself extremely discouraged, remember what Christ has done on the cross so that you might have new, eternal life. It came at a great cost. But that just goes to show you how great the Father’s love is for us.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer (one of my favorite authors).
What peace it brings to the Christian’s heart to realize that our Heavenly Father never differs from Himself. In coming to Him at any time we need not wonder whether we shall find Him in a receptive mood. He is always receptive to misery and need, as well as to love and faith. He does not keep office hours nor set aside periods when He will see no one. Neither does He change His mind about anything. Today, this moment, He feels toward His creatures, toward babies, toward the sick, the fallen, the sinful, exactly as He did when He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die for mankind.
For the next 48 hours, you can purchase a copy of Tim Witmer’s new book, The Shepherd Leader: Achieving Effective Shepherding in Your Church, for $5.00 at Westminster Bookstore. Tim Witmer is currently Professor of Practical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary where he is Coordinator of the Practical Theology Department, Director of Mentored Ministry and Master of Divinity Programs. He is also the Minister of Preaching at Crossroads Community Church (PCA) in Upper Darby, PA.
Below is a video from Tim concerning the aspect of shepherding in pastoral ministry.
This is very touching. Faith like this can certainly move mountains.
99 Balloons from Igniter Media on Vimeo.
I can definitely relate to these words by Iain Campbell:
Maybe there is something utterly and fundamentally wrong with me (sin, perhaps?) but I’m not prepared at any stage before I start preaching to say that I’ve done my prep; and nor am I prepared at any stage after I finish to say that I did all I could have. The more I preach, the less adequate I am for it, and the more the conviction grows that there is much, much more I should have put in to that sermon.
Maybe Campbell’s conviction and humility in the pulpit is something that should be experienced by more preachers today. Preacher’s should feel the weight of responsibility that comes with proclaiming God’s Word to God’s people. We are never adequate for the task. But that’s the beauty of it. The Spirit takes our humble thoughts and words and applies them to the hearts and minds of each person in the pew…and God gets all the glory.
You can read the rest of the post here.
The statistics that I listed in my earlier post are telling. Put together 20,000 people who commit their time, money and efforts to making Christ known across the globe and see what can be accomplished. Even on a small scale, imagine what could be done with an entire church of individuals who banded together for such causes on a regular basis. Needs would be met, hearts would be softened, and seeds of the gospel could be planted and hopefully harvested.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no illusions of a Utopian Christian world being created by acts of kindness. The world is not made of gumdrops and unicorns. Sometimes our efforts to serve and share are rejected and even mocked. Persecution and rejection come with the territory. That should be no surprise to us since Christ himself was mocked and spat on throughout his ministry and even as he went to his death. But I do not think our biggest problem is a fear of rejection born out of many experiences. We don’t have the experiences to even begin to justify that problem. I think that the struggle to go deeper in our commitment to Christ comes from our misunderstanding of reality. Being born again, we have been given a new set eyes, a new heart, and a new mind so that we might see the world as Jesus sees it. Of course, this new vision of reality comes progressively. We will never see or understand things perfectly. We will never embody Christ perfectly. We grow into our faith over the course of our entire lives. Yet it seems that many times we are content with going through the motions of our Christian faith instead of really pushing our faith as far as it will go and asking the tough questions. What takes greatest precedence in our life? How is our time and money spent? What have we been reading and studying lately? What prayers have we offered up? What physical needs have we met? How have we made the gospel known? These are the type of questions we should be asking constantly. And we should push each other to go deeper in our commitment to Christ. We have been born again. We are his children devoted to his ways for his glory. And we should sacrifice everything we have in order to glorify God and fully devote ourselves to him in every way possible since he is deserving of such adoration and loyalty.
As I examine my own life, I realize how often my words are betrayed by my life. I want to believe that I don’t waste time or spend my money in frivolous ways. I want to believe that I’m serving in meaningful ways that are helping people in need on a regular basis. I want to believe that I am spending hours each day mining the treasures of God’s Word. In reality, I fail miserably at all of these things. I praise God that my salvation is not dependent on them. However, I realize that there is limitless room and a great need for growth in my life. I want to be more faithful than I am right now. We need others in our lives who can be used by God to push us in that direction. That is what we should find in the church. It is also what we should be as the church…a community of Jesus worshipers who challenge one another to go deeper in their devotion and affection for our Savior. So let’s challenge one another to press on closer toward Christ on a daily basis. Let’s be the church and let God take care of the rest.
