my burg

"And now, O Christ, let there be light So we can see the way aright Between two dismal forms of death, And with that light, O give us breath To live again, and bring us back From pleasures in a foreign shack, Or from the pride of weary arm, While working on the Father’s farm. From demon sloth and pleasures raw, Or demon toil and pride of law. The pathway home from either place Is opened by the word of grace. O Christ, pursue us till we see That all of God’s bequests are free. The ticket that we have to show Is this: that we are glad to go.” (John Piper, in The Prodigal's Sister)  The painting above is "Sacrificial Grace" by Makoto Fujimura.

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."  (Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV) "If the ills of humanity were caused by culture, they could certainly be cured in no other way than by culture.   But the ills are native to the human heart, which always remain the same, and culture only brings these out.   With all its wealth and power, it only shows that the human heart, in which God has put eternity, is so huge that all the world is too small to satisfy it.   Human beings are in search of another and better redemption than culture can give them.   They are looking for lasting happiness, an enduring eternal good.   They are thirsting for a redemption that saves them physically as well as spiritually, for time but also for eternity."     (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, III:326-327)

In the parable of the talents, the master says to his servant, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”  The master, who represents God, praises his servant for being faithful. He doesn’t praise his servant for being awesome. He doesn’t praise his servant for being extreme, innovative, productive, or edgy. He doesn’t praise his servant for taking the road less traveled, finding self-fulfillment, or adding his verse to the story (see Dead Poets Society). He praises his servant for faithfully working with what he was given.  The thing God cares about and honors is faithfulness, not famousness. Face it: faithfulness is pretty boring. Faithfulness looks like creating spreadsheets and changing diapers and caring for aging parents and setting up chairs on Sunday morning. Nobody gets a standing ovation for faithfulness. Nobody makes documentaries about faithful servants. Nobody n...

“What is the local church? It’s the institution which Jesus created and authorized to pronounce the gospel of the kingdom, to affirm gospel professors, to oversee their discipleship, and to expose impostors. All this means, we don’t ‘join’ churches like we join clubs. We submit to them.”  (Jonathan Leeman, "What Is The Local Church?" ) “No man who is full of himself can ever truly preach the Christ who emptied himself.”  (J. Sidlow Baxter) “Jesus redefined all authority as servant-authority. Any exercise of power can only be done in service to the Other, not to please oneself. Jesus is the one who did not come to be served, as the world’s authority figures expect to be, but to serve, to the point of giving his life... [He] clearly states his position on the meaning of authority and headship: In the world, rulers and high officials exercise their authority by ‘lording it’ over others. Not so with you. Those tasked with leadership must be the slaves of all, following their mast...

More highlights from David Wells' God in the Whirlwind ... "In all Western cultures, I have suggested, the love of God is welcomed and the holiness of God is given inhospitable treatment. Western nations will tolerate almost anything except a hard truth like this. We therefore do need to do a little ground-clearing work—because this idea has been so widely misunderstood and is so easily caricatured... "If we are to understand the biblical teaching, we must distinguish between wrath in God and what we so often see in human anger. Human anger is often accompanied by malice, vindictiveness, retaliation, revenge, and hatefulness. God’s wrath, of course, has no such defilements. It is a pure expression of his holiness. It is not an outburst of irrational temper. Temper, malice, revenge were seen in some of the ancient gods and goddesses. They could be capricious, bad-tempered, and destructive. God, though, is not. He is none of these things and never could be...

"God is elevated over all of life. God is God. We are but a part of his creation and dependent on him. He is its center. We are its periphery. He is infinite. In our humanity, we are but fading and finite. Between Creator and creation is a boundary. There is no place for pantheism in a biblical worldview. All spiritualities that begin within the self, building on the self as their religious source, are false. The self cannot reach out, in, or up and find God in a redemptive way. All of these cultural spiritualities have assumed that the boundary set between Creator and creature, between the holy God and sinners, can be crossed from our side and crossed naturally and easily. It cannot. Only God, the infinite Creator and the one who is utterly holy, can cross these boundaries."  (David Wells, God in the Whirlwind )

"I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn't go to the churches. . . But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit."  (C. S. Lewis) Quoted by Ed Stetzer here .