I am proud to be your baby brother. Now mom and dad will be expecting me to accomplish something great too…
Archive for October, 2006
One of the thoughts that has been running through my head over and over again these past few months is the depth of good I have in God apart from all else. It is of course, as most biblical assurances are, easy to say but difficult to believe.
If all my greatest career-related dreams came true and I had all the money I ever wanted, at last becoming the great man of success that my dad always wanted me to be, and then was suddenly robbed of all I had and spent the rest of my life on the streets, would I still consider myself wealthy because of my imperishable inheritance in the Lord?
I love my family deeply. I have thousands of memories with them that make me smile and laugh and feel warm inside. How about if I had to choose between having God or having my mom, dad and my dear brother Jon? would I choose God? Would I choose him begrudgingly? Or would I consider myself richly blessed even without my family, as long as I had Him?
What about if I married the love of my life and after exchanging vows, with the strong and joyful realization that I was going to spend the rest of my life together with her, watched as she suddenly collapsed and died, would I consider myself to be more than fulfilled because even without her, God is mine and I am His?
I ask myself these questions, and I keep trying to evaluate whether the Lord is really more than enough for me. Do I really see Him as overabundant? Do I really perceive my cup to be overflowing? These are tough questions to ask for me, and even tougher to affirm. I realize again and again, as I so often do during times of trial, that counting everything as loss is hard. Whatever it is I consider precious, God is able to take away. But if He does it, it is so that I might understand what it means for the Lord to be “the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.” And when I understand it rightly, I think it will be worth the loss because I will have finally gained Him truly.
“O Lord, if this were lost instead,
And all I had was you, I would
Be rich, and have the greatest Good.”-excerpt from “The Misery of Job and the Mercy of God” by John Piper
concerning my last video blog, I decided to create visual scale of ugly faces in order to clarify the distinctions between intensity of ugliness.
There are in my own book at least 8 levels of ugly, usually by level 3, all girls have already dropped from the scale,(they do not have the capacity to exceed level 3) So here you are, go ahead and click on the thumb nail for a better view.
level 0:
level 1
level 2:
level 3:
level 4:
level 5
level 6:
level 7:
level 8 : not yet developed.
I know I haven’t written anything meaningful lately, well… all in good time.
An excellent blog entry relevant to high schoolers today.
Published October 11, 2006 Uncategorized 1 Commentpulled from Pyromaniacs
My Short, Eye-Opening Stint as a Youth Pastor
How I Got Drawn into the Lordship Debate—part 5
by Phil JohnsonAfter college, I spent a few years on the staff of Moody Press as a manuscript editor. I loved the work, and it conditioned me to read things critically and carefully. (I probably learned three times more about theology in my first two years as an editor than I did in five years of college as a theology major.)
But my heart was in church ministry, and in 1979, a few months after Darlene and I were married, we moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where I spent three years as assistant pastor at Central Bible Church. My main responsibility was leading the youth group.
It was during those years in youth ministry that I was forced to face the lordship issue squarely.
I’ll never forget my first meeting with the youth group. It was a modest-sized group—about twenty kids. We had a brief time of introduction where each member of the youth group gave a short self-introduction. I had asked them if they were believers to describe how they came to faith. Every one of them claimed to be a Christian. And in almost every case, they grounded their hope of salvation in some supposed moment of faith in early childhood when their parents led them in praying to “invite Jesus into my heart.” In most cases, they said this occurred when they were about three or four years old—too young even to remember the moment. But every one of them hung their hope of heaven on to some point in the past when they supposedly “accepted Jesus as savior,” and that one-time moment of faith was the sole basis for their confidence that they were saved.
Ominously, however, when they talked about their hobbies, interests, and aspirations for the future, not one of them articulated any passion or ambition that was remotely related to anything spiritual.
As time went by and I got to know these kids personally, I began to have serious questions about whether some of them were genuine Christians. In fact, (with a few notable exceptions) the kids who seemed to dominate the group lived lives that were no different from their non-Christian friends—and some of them were significantly worse. If they had any real interest in the youth group, it was for the social activities alone. They had no desire for spiritual things, no apparent love for Christ, no ambition for personal holiness, no real esteem for the things of God—absolutely nothing that would distinguish them from the pagan kids in the neighborhood.
In fact, some of the pagan kids lived lives that on the surface seemed morally superior to some of these church kids who insisted they were Christians.
I began to teach a series of Bible studies from the 1st epistle of John. Of course, that epistle includes a lot of truth that will shatter a pseudo-Christian’s false confidence. In time, we studied verses like 1 John 2:4, which says, “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” And 1 John 2:15, which says, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” And 1 John 3:10, which says, “In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.”
Numerous statements like those throughout 1 John strike directly at the heart of the no-lordship perspective on saving faith. So as that youth group studied those passages, young people began coming to me to admit that they had never really loved Christ before. Some of them asked for help understanding the gospel. A few of them confessed that they had only recently come to possess genuine saving faith.
Of course I rejoiced whenever a young person told me that, and I expected the students’ parents to rejoice as well.
Wrong. The response I began getting from parents was surprising. I remember a frantic call I received one night from a woman in our church. She said, “Phil, I’m not sure what you have been teaching in the youth group, but our son came home and told me he has just become a Christian for the first time.”
Nothing in her tone conveyed that she was upset by this, so I said, “Well, praise the Lord.” I had been praying for that student in particular.
But she suddenly got very agitated with me and said, “No, you don’t understand. He has been a Christian since he was 2 years old. I held him on my lap and personally led him in a prayer to receive Christ. He’s always been sure of his salvation until you started teaching in 1 John.”
It turned out that she was very upset with me. She informed me that a few of the parents in our church had conferred on the matter, and they were concerned that I was teaching their kids “lordship salvation.”
That was only the second time in my life that I heard that expression. It turns out that these parents had been exposed to Ray Stanford’s Handbook of Personal Evangelism, and they wondered if I was teaching their kids heresy.
Before long, that woman’s son’s life changed so dramatically for the better that she soon saw the reality of conversion in his life, and she realized that something genuine had finally happened to give her son a true love for Christ. God had changed his heart, and he was truly and soundly converted. He went on to study at a Christian university and is still walking with the Lord today.
But that episode brought the lordship controversy back to the forefront of my thinking. What, precisely, does the gospel call sinners to? Discipleship? Conversion? Surrender? A notional faith, or a life-changing trust? Is love for Christ something different from and extraneous to faith? And if called upon to distill the essence of the gospel in one succinct plea to sinners, what would that include? Did I really, truly understand the gospel?
The irony that I was in full-time ministry and still not settled on those questions hit me upside the head like a railroad tie. I realized I had erred seriously by not thinking those questions through carefully and settling the issues in my heart long ago. So I became determined to research the matter biblically and settle it once and for all in my own conscience before I evangelized any more students.
I acquired Ray Stanford’s evangelism handbook and studied what he had to say on the matter. And at about the same time, I began to listen to John MacArthur’s radio broadcast.
That was barely a year after the launch of the Grace to You radio ministry. At the time, Tampa Bay was one of only three metropolitan areas in the country where you could hear the broadcast.
But I began to listen, and I noticed that John MacArthur frequently touched on subjects related to the lordship issue. His ministry is and always has been expository rather than topical, so he never preached a sermon on the lordship issue per se, but his handling of the gospel and all his teaching about salvation began to clarify for me the very issues I was grappling with.
I strongly suspected from the gist of his teaching that he too had encountered personal criticism from advocates of the no-lordship position. I wished that he would write a book on the subject. I even daydreamed about the using my editorial skills to help him boil down some of his preached material into book form. I made up my mind that if I ever met John MacArthur, I would suggest to him that he should write such a book. “
Now Phil Johnson edits books written by John MacArthur, the most well-known being a book on the Lordship debate, The Gospel According to Jesus
if you can’t see it, it means it hasn’t been approved yet.
“[Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through. And there was a man called by the name of Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was, and was unable because of the crowd, for he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way. When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” And he hurried and came down and received Him gladly. When they saw it, they all began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”” (Luke 19:1-10, NAS95S)
The tax collector, Zaccheus, was shunned by society, hated and despised by his fellow Jews and scoffed at by the Romans for selling out his own people. When he climbed that low hanging tree, it was not primarily because he was short or because he didn’t want deal with the inconvenience of pushing through the crowd. I think it was because nobody in the crowd would stand aside to let him in to see Jesus. The crowd was pressed in before him, and he was of course pushed out. You know the scene. It is not so different from when you were in gradeschool and your classmates, gathered in a circle, would not break the circle to let you stand with them. Likewise, Zaccheus was excluded.
But you know what? Jesus saw him immediately. And what He said there in that place was something that today rarely leaves the lips of believers. Our Lord, with words of confidence and joy invited Zaccheus to come and be a part of His life.
The Holiest of men, the creator of all wisdom, accepted this sinner on the spot. And more than that he showed interest in him and an expressive love for him. Notice how he makes no mention of Zaccheus’ secret extortions. Instead, he does something amazing, he gives him a chance to rise on his own. Jesus gave Zaccheus the opportunity to come, and from out of his own initiative, set right his wrongs. Jesus did not tell Zaccheus what he thought he should do. But He assessed the situation and instead let Zaccheus think for himself.
I think as Christians we are very sensitive to other people’s sins and quick to point them out or offer suggestions as to how we think it best to remedy them. I do not think this is wrong, and in fact I know it can be very fitting at times. But when people are broken and their countenance has fallen, when they are crushed by their own failures these sorts of words only bring discouragement and increase the weight of shame on their shoulders. Our good Lord showed a kindness in this encounter that we should strive to imitate. It is a kindness that stands beside the broken, helps to bear the weight of their shame and speaks confidence into their lives. It is a soft-spoken, gentle, and deeply loving word. An act of understanding and a silent expression of unconditional and unchanging love. Jesus was the Master of discerning the state of man. This sort of kindness only comes with close obsevation to the mental, emotional and spiritual condition of a person. In Christ’s words as well as in His acts there is a sort of careful subtlety that we often forego in order to speak our minds and indulge our desire to preach.
The deepest acts of kindness are often found in those moments when shame and wretchedness are cast aside, and the broken are given the chance to rise again, albeit on weak knees and unsteady legs. The Lord Jesus has done it for us, let us do it to one another. Pay attention to the faces and voices of our brothers and sisters, they speak volumes to the condition of their souls.
Why there is no tension between the Abrahamic religions.
Published October 5, 2006 Uncategorized Leave a CommentThat’s what I wish I could write about in my research paper. Unfortunately I don’t think it will fly. I’m taking a class on the Abrahamic connection between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity and I need to come up with a research paper topic by tommorow.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize that it is impossible for the three Abrahamic religions to stand in tension without the compromise of their doctrinal integrity. In class, all that seems to be discussed in the lecture in regard to their differences is historical facts, or obscure geneologies. And in the light of such minute differences, they build their hopes that all three religions can join hands and unite to make the world a better place.
They have missed the largest and most definitive issue, the way to salvation. Or perhaps to put it in a more general way, dealing with the relationship between man and God. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity will never fit together because all of them are fundamentally different in this regard. No matter how much we may agree on the person of Abraham, if we do not agree on the person of God, and if we do not agree about who we are in relation to Him, there is no real meaningful agreement at all.
No tension exists between these 3 religions because God never meant there to be one. If the Lord divinely established one way to salvation, which he has if Christ’s words are true, or even if Muhammad’s words are true, then there can be no tension. Call me a fundamentalist, but I think it’s just plain A is not equal to A + B + C.
