one another

How to treat one another in Christ's church, wherever we live, whoever we are:

love [1 Peter 1:22; most of 1 John!]
at peace and living in harmony [1 Peter 3:8; Romans 12:16] 
forgive [Col 3:13
agree [1 Cor 1:10]
be humble [Eph 4:2] 
accept [Romans 15:7]
forbearing [Eph 4:2]
kind and compassionate [Eph 4:32]
greeting with a kiss [1 Peter 5:14]
don’t judge [Romans 14:13]
don’t lie [Col 3:9]
don’t grumble [1 Peter 4:9]
don’t slander [James 4:11]
show hospitality [1 Peter 4:9]
confess your sins to  [James 5:16]
be kind [Eph 4:32]
be devoted to  [Romans 12:10]
serve [Gal 5:13]
do good [James 2:16]
instruct and teach [Eph 5:21; 1 Thess 5:11; Romans 15:14]
comfort and encourage [2 Cor 2:7]
rebuke/admonish* [Col 3:16]
spur on [Heb 10:25]
pray [Eph 6:18]


*NB remember prevention is better than cure!! (Hebrews 3:12-13)

This is a very wonderful/exciting/terrifying/prayer inducing/amazed by grace thinking/action taking/repentance making/Christ delighting/Spirit depending list of commands.

A New Name

I know that I won't find this easy reading. But I also know that as a man, a pastor and a Dad I need to read it.
Perhaps you do too?

A New Name - Emma Scrivener comes out next week.

Holiness in the Ozone Layer

Our holiness is our primary environmental contribution - for was it not when sin entered that environment corrupted. 

p37 Isaiah By The Day

MTD Syndrome

God created
God wants us to be happy
God waits around until we have a problem then jumps in to help
Good people – people who are nice – go to heaven 

& I must try harder.

These are the beliefs of moralistic therapeutic deists. 

Sometimes they go by another name - evangelical 'Christian'.

Offended? Well, see Ed Welch's latest article here.  

Life in Jesus, however, is restless rest, with the accent on rest. Faith, which is the primary human response to God, means that we trust him and not ourselves. More specifically, faith means, “Jesus, help!”

Calling the wrong number?

Why Work?

Temples of the Holy Spirit!

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

one day at a time

I only dread one day at a time. 

I got this quote from p27 of this book: Running Scared: Fear, Worry and the God of Rest


God willing, I will be preaching on 'worry' this coming Sunday evening. Well, I hope to be preaching more about who God is in the face of our worries.
It will be our Harvest Service. Matthew 6 & Exodus 16 make the link between worry and food. So I hope it 'fits' in an interesting way. [I'm tempted to say, I am worried it won't! But I will resist that temptation.]

Passive Aggressive Sins

“So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating effect.” Elizabeth Franklin

Happiness

O LORD,
Teach me that if I do not live a life that satisfies you,
I shall not live a life that will satisfy myself.

The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions, p 304

A word for cave-men

... to make a man comfortable is to make him the opposite of sociable.

Sociability, like all good things, is full of discomforts, dangers, and renunciations. 

[p 137,  On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family, in Heretics, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton: 1]

Fits of Rage & Taking Offense

Galatians 5:19-21.
Galatians 5:22-25. 


Colossians 3:1-4
Colossians 3:8


-- 

We would like to have people so nice to us all the time that there would never be an occasion for us to hurt. Obviously this is unrealistic, so what I am suggesting is that the offended toughen up.  (p49)

In other words be more like Jesus. Isaiah 53:3, 7. 

Any of us in this same position would consider that we had every right to be hurt. If that's the way they are going to be, see if I'm ever going to (1) speak to them again, (2) be nice to them again, (3) forgive them or (4) die for them. Yet if this had been our Lord's reaction, He would never have gone to the cross. 

Philippians 2:5-8 


Notes & Quotes from Ch 4& 5   of How to Be Free from Bitterness: And Other Essays on Christian Relationships by Jim Wilson

Man's Anger

Genesis 4:6-7
Ephesians 4:26  'Christians are often very good on the first part of the command but a trifle weak on the second half.' (p38) 
James 1:19-20 

Perhaps then it is okay to be angry if:  

1. We do not sin 

2. We don't go to sleep with it  

3. it is anger from God and not man's anger 

4. it achieves righteousness  

5. it comes slowly  

Do you have the feeling that if these qualification are met, the amount of anger would be cut drastically?  (p38) 

Colossians 3:8 
Galatians 5:20 
Proverbs 29:22
Proverbs 14:29 


We need to see where anger comes from. Luke 6:45. 
Psalm 139:23-24
1 John 1:7-9
Philippians 4:8 
Romans 12:2 
Jude 24 


Most anger is not generated in protection of other people. And that tells us something. 


Notes & Quotes from Ch 3  of How to Be Free from Bitterness: And Other Essays on Christian Relationships by Jim Wilson

Forgiving Others

Matthew 18:35

When we say 'There is nothing to forgive' it sounds very gracious, but really it is a way we refuse to forgive. It is a dodge. Most of the time it is anyway. 

Other times we say 'OK, you are forgiven' or 'I forgive you' but we say it because we have to NOT because that is what our heart is saying. 

God knows when you have forgiven your brother from your heart. We cannot hide from the Lord when we sin in this way. (p25) 

Matthew 18:21-22. 

Anytime someone counts the number of times he has extended forgiveness, then there is no true forgiveness. (p26)

Colossians 3:13 

Matthew 6:12; 6:14. 

If I do not forgive I have good reason to doubt my salvation (p28)

1 Corinthians 13:4-5

Some of you have heard a statement like this within marriage. The husband or the wife may say, ' You always do this, and you never do that.' What does this mean? Someone is keeping score. (p30)

in a sense, forgiveness is unilateral. In one sense, Jesus Christ forgave us all before we repented. It did not become active until we received it. But God was not up in heaven holding a grudge until we got around to repenting. He is not up there bitter until we repent. He has forgiveness in His heart before we appropriate it.  

When a Christian has forgiveness from the heart, he is concerned about the person who did the sinning against him. he is not concerned about himself. (p31)

We would all like to think that we are the good guy and that the other person has the problem. It might not be that. Just assume you are the one that has the problem of lack of forgiveness.
If a Christian has forgiveness in his heart, he will be rejoicing regardless of how wrong the other person was, or how greatly the other person sinned against him. (p32) 

Notes & Quotes from Ch 2  of How to Be Free from Bitterness: And Other Essays on Christian Relationships by Jim Wilson

How to be free from bitterness

Guilt is what we feel when we sin, and bitterness is what we feel when others sin against us.

Bitterness does not depend on how great the evil is, it depends on how close the other person is to me. (p9) 

You may think that you have the right to be bitter. But the Bible does not grant anyone the right to be bitter. Ephesians 4:31-5:2. Hebrews 12:15. (p10)

Bitterness accumulates.  

Bitterness remembers details. (p12)  

Bitterness is just resentment that has been held onto. It has become rancid and rotten. It is kept in and it gets worse. 

The bitter person must first recognize that he is bitter, and secondly, that it is a gross evil. Again, the reason people do not deal with this sin is that they think it is the other person's sin. The devil says, 'Well, when he quits lying, or he quits doing this or that, or when he says he's sorry .... But suppose he does not quit? ... Are you going to be in bitterness all your life because someone else insists on being in sin? 

bitterness does not forgive

you get rid of bitterness unilaterally. It does not matter what the other person does. (p14) 

When somebody else says he is sorry, it does not get rid of our bitterness. The only thing that gets rid of bitterness is confession before God because of the Lord Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. This is the only solution. (p15)  

We must not keep it and we must not share it with others. There is only one thing to do and that is to confess it as a great and evil sin. We must be as persistent in the confession as necessary. (p16) 

I believe that this sin is a major hindrance to revival in this country. When Christians start confessing their sins, they will be able to forgive the sins of others. (p18) 

Quotes from Ch1 of How to Be Free from Bitterness: And Other Essays on Christian Relationships by Jim Wilson

Kidding ourselves

Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself of all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly', though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature.We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.  (p49)

The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis

God's Will for My Life Is ...

Caution: Mature Content of an Adult Nature

There is a popular school of thought (or, more strictly, of feeling) which violently resents the operation of Time upon the human spirit. It looks upon age as something between a crime and an insult. Its prophets have banished from their savage vocabulary all such words as 'adult', 'mature', 'experienced', 'venerable'; they know only snarling and sneering epithets, like 'middle-aged', 'elderly', 'stuffy', 'senile', and 'decrepit'. With those they flagellate that which they themselves are, or must shortly become , as though abuse were an incantation to exorcise the inexorable. (Dorothy Sayers Creed or Chaos? p14)

Show your Power O Lord!

Our Lord has instituted the sacraments for the express purpose of serving to establish and increase our faith. 

But the sacraments properly perform their role only when accompanied by the Spirit, that inward teacher, whose energy alone penetrates the heart, stirs up the affections, and procures access for the sacraments into our souls. If the Spirit be lacking, the sacraments can accomplish nothing more in our minds than the splendour of the sun shining on blind eyes or a voice sounding in deaf ears. 

 It is now clear in what way, according to this view, a godly mind is strengthed in faith by means of the sacraments. That is in the same way in which the eyes see by the brightness of the sun, or the ears hear by the sound of a voice, so the eyes would not be affected by any light unless they were endowed with a sharpness of vision capable of being illuminated of themselves; and the ears would never be struck by any noise, unless they were created and fitted for hearing.  

But if it is true, as has been explained, that in the eye it is the power of vision which enables it to see the light, and in the ear the power of hearing which enables it to perceive the voice, and that in our hearts it is the work of the Holy Spirit to commence, maintain, cherish, and establish faith, then it follows, both that the sacraments do not profit one bit without the energy of the Holy Spirit; and yet that in hearts previously taught by that Schoolmaster, there is nothing to prevent the sacraments from strengthening and increasing faith.  

There is only this difference, that the faculty of seeing and hearing is naturally implanted in the eye and ear; whereas, Christ acts in our minds above the measure of nature by special grace.(Calvin's Institutes, Book 4, CH 14.9)

stand in awe

Sometimes people say that they cannot believe that if there is a God, he would take interest in such a tiny speck of reality called humanity on Planet Earth. The universe, they say, is so vast, it makes man utterly insignificant. Why would God be bothered to create such a microscopic speck called the earth and humanity and then get involved with us?  

Beneath this question is a fundamental failure to see what the universe is about. It is about the greatness of God, not the significance of man. God made man small and the universe big to say something about himself. And he says it for us to learn and enjoy - namely, that he is infinitely great and powerful and wise and beautiful. The more the Hubble Telescope sends back to us about the unfathomable depths of space, the more we should stand in awe of God. The disproportion between us and the universe is a parable about the disproportion between use and God. And it is an understatement. But the point is not to nullify us but to glorify him. p34 Don't Waste Your Life