my burg

"It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing to a young bride and groom from his prison cell in Nazi Germany in 1943) "A good marriage is the union of two good forgivers."  (Ruth Bell Graham) "I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults.  And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage.  And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them - it was that promise."   (Thornton Wilder, "The Skin of Our Teeth") "What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in...

Francis Schaeffer at heart was an evangelist.  Apologetics for him was not merely answering questions and objections, but addressing assumptions prior to asking for commitment to Christ.  Because most people view religious belief as a category of feeling, outside of any objective sense of truth or history, he said...  "As we get ready to tell him God's answer to his need, we must make sure that he understands that we are talking to him about real truth , and not about something vaguely religious which seems to work psychologically.  We must make sure that he understands that we are talking about real guilt before God and that we are not offering him merely relief for his guilt feelings.  We must make sure that he understands that we are talking to him about history , and that the death of Jesus was not just an ideal or a symbol but a fact of space and time.  If we are talking to a man who would not understand the term 'space-time history' we can say to ...

"There is a need for what Polanyi calls the critique of doubt. When we undertake to doubt any statement, we do so on the basis of beliefs which–in the act of doubting–we do not doubt. I can only doubt the truth of a statement on the ground of other things–usually a great many things–which I believe to be true. It is impossible at the same time to doubt both the statement, and the beliefs on the basis of which the statement is doubted."  (Lesslie Newbigen, from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society ) [I've been reading about the role of assumptions and presuppositions in belief, and in apologetics.  I suppose I've been more of an evidentialist in the past but now I'm realizing how indebted I am to Francis Schaeffer's approach, and also the insights of Carl F. H. Henry (a "rational presuppositionalist"), on identifying and addressing -- and deconstructing if need be-- our unspoken assumptions.]  

"The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon"   (Psalm 92:12)   These trees are not trained and pruned by man: palms and cedars are "trees of the LORD," and it is by His care that they flourish. Even so it is with the saints of the LORD: they are His own care. These trees are evergreen and are beautiful objects at all seasons of the year. Believers are not sometimes holy and sometimes ungodly: they stand in the beauty of the LORD under all weathers. Everywhere these trees are noteworthy: no one can gaze upon a landscape in which there are either palms or cedars without his attention being fixed upon these royal growths. The followers of Jesus are the observed of all observers: like a city set on a hill, they cannot be hid. The child of God flourishes like a palm tree, which pushes all its strength upward in one erect column without a single branch. It is a pillar with a glorious capital. It has no growth to the right or...

"Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry ."  (Colossians 3:5 ESV) “The objects of most of our desires are not evil. The problem is the way they tend to grow, and the control they come to exercise over our hearts... The problem with desire is that in sinners it very quickly morphs into demand...The expansion of desire doesn't end there. Demand quickly morphs into need. I now view the thing as essential to life...How often do we live with a sense of need for things we do not need at all? How does this change the way we view ourselves, our lives, others and God? How much envy, discouragement, bitterness and doubt of God comes from being convinced that we are being denied the things we need to live life as it was meant to be?”  (Paul David Tripp) “The evil in our desires often lies not in what we want but that we want it too much.” (John Calvin) “So how do you know where an...

"Observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in His ways and keep His decrees and commands, His laws and requirements, as written in the Law of Moses, so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go. "  ( 1 Kings 2:3) "There is nothing in history to match the dire ends to which humanity can be led by following a political and social philosophy that consciously excludes God."  ( Ravi Zacharias)

Conference details here.