With another Lord’s Day on the horizon, I offer this quote by J. C. Ryle passed on to me by one of our deacons as a way for all of us to prepare for our encounter with God through the preaching of His word.

Let us beware of despising preaching. In every age of the Church, it has been God’s principal instrument for the awakening of sinners and the edifying of saints. The days when there has been little or no preaching have been days when there has been little or no good done in the Church. Let us hear sermons in a prayerful and reverent frame of mind, and remember that they are the principal engines which Christ Himself employed when He was upon earth. Not least, let us pray daily for a continual supply of faithful preachers of God’s Word. According to the state of the pulpit will always be the state of a congregation and of a Church (Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke volume 1, [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1986], 128, 129).

That last line sobers me as a preacher as it should every church goer who listens to preachers.

Let us pray daily for a continual supply of faithful preachers of God’s Word.

My post comes from Tampa this evening. Camp Logos brought me here. That’s what Libronix calls it. Two days of intensive seminar training on the lastest version of their Bible study software, Logos 4. You know, the package I purchased in Minneapolis a few weeks ago spurred on by the promise of doing exegesis 10,000 times faster!

So this is camping of a different kind. Frankly, I’m nestled in at a cost effective hotel near the training site, getting ready to retire soon in hopes of awaking fresh tomorrow morning for another go around of mastering this incredible computer resource.

Why do this? What’s the point? Always a good question. Answer? Our mutual joy. Everything comes down to that when it comes to a pastor’s job description, if I read 2 Cor. 1:24 right.

Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith (emphasis added).

I’ve actually got the software up and running as I write this piece. The literal Greek reads: sunergoi we are of your faith. We get our word synergy from the Greek word. It’s a noun, not a verb. Spiritual leaders are workers together with their people (this is synergy at the highest level) for their mutual joy in Jesus. Another way of saying it is that we work together for that which brings us the greatest pleasure. Who would argue with the notion that joy comes as a direct result of the experience of pleasure?

Where might we find greater pleasure than at the right hand of God (Psalm 16:11)? What reveals the God who gives such extreme pleasure more than the Scriptures (Psalm 19:7-11)?

I read today in my devotions a segment of J. C. Ryle’s book, Holiness, with this thought about pleasure:

Millions live for pleasure. Hedonism is the great spirit that knows no boundaries, whether economical, social, political or cultural—pleasure is an idol enslaving the great majority of the world. The schoolboy looks for pleasure in his summer vacation, the young man in independence and business; the small business owner looks for it in retirement, and the poor man in the small comforts of home. Pleasure and fresh excitement in politics, travel, amusement, in company, in books, in several vices too dark to mention, pleasure is the shadow which all alike are hunting; each, perhaps, pretending to despise his neighbor for seeking it, each in his own way seeking it for himself, each wondering why he does not find it, each firmly persuaded that somewhere or other it is to be found.

Oh my, it is indeed to be found and nowhere more intensely than at God’s right hand in His word. I’m camping out in Tampa these two days in hopes of gaining greater proficiency in my study of the Bible for our mutually exceeding joy and intense pleasure.

The first concerns Good Friday, April 2. Orlando Grace will participate with Faith Baptist Church, 500 N. Bumby, in Orlando, in a joint Good Friday worship observance from noon to 1:00 PM. Pastor Jack of Faith will preach. I will lead worship and communion. If you are off from work and/or have the lunch hour free that day, please consider joining us for a time of remembering our Lord’s crucifixion and the priceless atonement His death secured for His own. Check the events section of this website for a map on how to get to Faith Baptist Church.

The second concerns new adult 9:30 equipping hour classes for the second quarter of 2010, set to begin on April 4. There will be four offerings from which to choose:

1. Biblical Peacemaking Training: Matthew Antolick will lead this study in principles of biblical conflict resolution with a view to forming a reconciling team at OGC that will help people with dealing with conflict when it arises.
2. The Thessalonian Epistles: Delroy Thompson will lead this book study through Paul’s two epistles to the Thessalonians.
3. The Shorter Catechism (Part 2): Pastor Clay will pick up where he left off at the end of 2009 with another look at the Baptist Catechism.
4. Discover OGC Newcomer Orientation Series: I will teach another installment of our introduction to the values, mission, and vision at Orlando Grace, the gateway to covenant membership for those interested in learning more about the church.

Please watch for more details on these classes on the website, in the enews, and in the announcements on Sunday mornings throughout the rest of the month of March. Be praying where the Lord would want you to focus attention on your spiritual growth by participating in one of these classes. For more information, feel free to contact the instructor of the course in which you are interested.

McCarthy’s book, The Road (which was made into a film in fall of 2009), is a disturbing look into a bleak future, one where seemingly no hope survives. The reader is introduced to a father and his 10ish year old son who are struggling daily to find food and warmth amidst a desolate land, all while trying to steer clear of the many dangers of this stark new world.

McCarthy is a master of the novel. If bleak could be beautiful, his terse descriptions of a gray world come close. His style also proves that poetic lines need not be over indulgent or flowery. There is no sentimentality presented, just the cold reality of the nothingness our characters find themselves in.

But in the midst of these dire circumstances and disconcerting images, we are presented with a man sacrificing himself for his son over and over. He wasn’t perfect, he surely made mistakes, but when he made a mistake he apologized gently, because he loved his son very much—much more than anything else in the world including himself.

In reading this story, my desire for a father (or the Father) intensified. In many ways my father was the opposite of the man in The Road, often sacrificing me for himself. I definitely do not want to give my children the same flawed fatherhood I received. And it is in my longing for something more than my earthly father, acknowledging the hurt and pain that he wrought, that I find the sorrow that leads me to my God. It would be easy to give up and ignore the longing, but it is a real work of grace and courage to follow that hurt to something more.

McCarthy’s disturbing images of a hopeless future point us to the grim reality that in our current world, though seemingly comfortable on the outside (especially for us Westerners), there is a lurking darkness and violence just beneath the surface. We need fathers to help us traverse this darkness. And this points to the Father who gives us the grace to do so.

The man in our story is a welcome contrast to most fathers portrayed in television, especially comedies. The typical TV Dad is a Homer Simpson: dull and withdrawn. Though funny in a comedy, it is tragic in real life. The sad reason these father characters work so well is that they are true to life.

We all have an image of God presented in our fathers and some of us have a more accurate description than others. But none have a perfect portrait, we are all flawed. McCarthy forces us to reconcile and struggle with these similarities and differences.

Though my father has failed me in many ways, and I know I am deeply flawed myself, there is still hope. Through the power of Jesus’ work on the cross, my wounds are not my own. Through the power of Christ’s resurrection, there is hope for new life, there is a possibility for me to know the love of a Father, and to give that love as a father one day. This is the unnamed hope that propels a story like The Road. It is one that touches the essence of every human being.

Near the end of the story, there’s a woman who tells the boy that “the breath of God was his [father’s] breath.” And so it is, for better or worse. And with the grace that God gives, it won’t be perfect, but it can be for the better.

This was originally posted on gregwillson.com.

Here is the study guide for this week’s 9:30 equipping hour class in prayer in case you missed it.

Chapter Nine – A Sovereign and Personal God

1. What challenges does Carson bring early on in this chapter to the popular notion prayer changes things?

2. What two truths does Carson work from at the outset on p. 148 on the way to unpacking biblical reflections that can help us pray better? What problem does he say we have concerning these? Where does he offer biblical support for both?

3. Which passages of Scripture does Dr. Carson argue bring both these truths together at the same time? Which proves most illuminating to you and why?

4. Why does the author argue that the Acts 4:23-30 passage proves to be the most revealing of the seven passages under discussion?

5. If we agree with Dr. Carson that the Bible affirms both truths as he attempts to demonstrate, where does he say we are to go from there on p. 156ff?

6. How does he qualify the notion of freedom in dealing with the issue of mystery in reconciling these two truths?

7. How does he qualify God’s relation to good and evil in furthering his argument?

8. How does Carson relate the nature of God to the discussion? What wonderful truth does he articulate? How do you react to the statement, Christians are prepared to accept certain mysteries?

9. What crucial lesson does Carson draw out before he concludes the chapter? How do the examples he cites help you in your understanding? How does he relate all this to prayer? How does he deal with the problem passages related to God relenting?

10. How will this chapter make a difference in your prayer life?

I blew through these applications fairly quickly. I offer them here on the blog for further consideration.  These things will be true of us in this area, if we truly belong to the One who sets free indeed.

1. We will not habitually commit sin. – Rom. 6:2 – How can we who died to sin still live in it? We will experience over the course of time, sometimes painfully slow, the progressive, gradual, transforming power of grace from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18).
2. We will deliberately rely on grace and the power of the Gospel for transformation not our own moral effort. 2 Cor. 3:18 begins And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord (emphasis added). It’s not about trying harder; it’s about becoming transfixed, gloriously mesmerized by the beauty and grace of Jesus who sets free by the power of the gospel appropriated by faith.
3. We will consistently confess and repent of our sins when we do fall in this life and pursue accountability so as not to deceive ourselves. If you battle an addiction, you may battle for years. Don’t give up. As long as you have accountability, practice James 5:16, see others signs of God’s grace at work in your lives, you may legitimately have assurance of salvation. Claim promises like John 8:32 & 36 and host of other grace-empowering, sin-liberating promises of God’s word until you prevail. Get out of compromising situations and patterns that set you up. Don’t tell me you’re serious about your faith and overcoming lust if you continue to put yourself  in the wrong place at the wrong time with your boyfriend/girl friend. Tell somebody what’s going on and pick someone with guts who will get in your face when you get out of line.
4. We will seek to live a holy life as an overall pattern by obeying God’s words and doing good works. Eph. 2:10 says we are created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared before hand in which we should walk. Good works are conspicuous and even those that aren’t can’t remain hidden according to 1 Tim. 5:25. Does anybody anywhere see anything of this nature going on in your life?
5. We will practice love for all, but especially for our brothers and sisters in the faith. 1 John 3:14 – We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. Tremble, shake in your boots, if you profess to follow Christ but anger, bitterness, malice, wrath, and resentment consume you. Genuine believers give off the aroma of kindness/grace/love. They practice forgiveness. They are peacemakers.
6. We will seek to set our affections more upon the things above as opposed to worldly things below. Col. 3:1-2 – Seek the things above, set your minds on things above not things below. If your delights and affections get more traction downtown in the bar and club scene on Saturday nights as a rule than they do in a God-centered, Christ-honoring, joy-giving church scene on Sunday morning, and I’ll grant you not all churches fit that description, you should ask yourself some very hard questions. Your faith may be fatally flawed.

If these things are true of us and growing, we may draw hope and strength from the assurance that our faith is genuine. All glory to Him who saves and keeps His own to the very end.

One of my professors has instilled in his students the dangers of modernism, consumerism, and comfort. We are in a real way owned by our possessions instead of the other way around. My car requires maintenance and upkeep, my computer needs a printer and external hard drive, my camera needs a case, a charger, extra memory cards…and on and on ad nauseum. This does not mean that it is always wrong to own things, but one must check his motives for accumulating or hoarding. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred at the end of WWII, said in his book The Cost of Discipleship “Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected.” I think that I often aim to collect, more often than I desire to use my goods wisely.

It makes me sad to see how tied to this world I am. I like comfort and to be surrounded by stuff I’ve worked hard to buy, but I hate how owned I feel sometimes. When I think about my future, I don’t want things like moving to a different state or engaging in overseas missions to be out of the question because of fears like, “What would I do with my books while I was gone?” or “How much stuff would fit in my suitcase?” At the end of life, we can take nothing with us. Since believers in Jesus are called “Citizens of Heaven” we can begin the process of “unattaching” ourselves from this world in preparation for the one to come. After all, the Gospel of Matthew reminds us, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt 6:21) Notice that it does not say, “For where your heart is, there your treasure will be.” We may think that our hearts are in heaven, but our fetters of earthly goods may prove otherwise. But we can concentrate on getting the treasure where it should be and our hearts will naturally follow suit. So here’s to spring cleaning, charitable giving and garage sale-ing with renewed vigor because I know I am breaking the fetters of this world in preparation for one to come! (Plus, I won’t have to dust as much anymore!)

A seasoned trainer of killer whales got dragged under water by her ponytale by a male Orca known for a history of living up to its name.

The debate in the news remains alarmingly this-worldly in terms of animal rights, conservation, ad nauseum.

As always, the Scripture speaks profoundly on an altogether different level.

In response to Job’s complaints in the face of unspeakable suffering far exceeding that of the family of Dawn Brancheau who dared tether Tilikum to her less-than-containable leash, the God of the universe said this:

“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook
or press down his tongue with a cord?
2 Can you put a rope in his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?
3 Will he make many pleas to you?
Will he speak to you soft words?
4 Will he make a covenant with you
to take him for your servant forever?
5 Will you play with him as with a bird,
or will you put him on a leash for your girls?
6 Will traders bargain over him?
Will they divide him up among the merchants?
7 Can you fill his skin with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?
8 Lay your hands on him;
remember the battle—you will not do it again!
9  Behold, the hope of a man is false;
he is laid low even at the sight of him.
10 No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up.
Who then is he who can stand before me?
11 Who has first given to me, that I should repay him?
Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.

Leviathan is the English translator’s best guess for a difficult-to-translate Hebrew word often rendered as a large sea animal. Orcas fit the bill. They are among the hugest of the dolphin species weighing up to six tons and measuring up to the length of a school bus. Males are particularly large and aggressive. Tilikum serves the SeaWorld community for his stud services and large-splash-making capabilities  – a crowd favorite indeed.

Until this week when he took a 40 year old handler so very easily to her watery grave.

If you seek to see the world through heavenly-minded eyes, the lesson seems plain. Who dares to trifle with a killer whale? No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up. Ms. Brancheau, I am certain, dared not in the slightest to stir up the mighty beast floating in the pool before her. Even so, her proximity to creation’s majesty cost her nothing less than her very life. Word to the wise.

Word to the wiser still. Who then is he/she who can stand before God? Let the question sink in. Who then is he/she who can stand before God? None. I say it again, none. If dear Dawn (and my heart goes out to her grieving family and friends) could not stand poolside by Leviathan and escape with her life, who among us can pretend to put God, who owns the whole of heaven, including Orcas, great white sharks, lumbering hippos, and the rest of His wondrous and fearsome creation, in the dock and claim some legitimate argument with His sovereign administrations in their life for which we might better respond, He gives and takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).

May we not miss the boat along with the masses debating the pros and cons of killer whales consigned to captivity as if the only things we should consider lie along an animal rights plane and no other. Far more can and should result from this tragedy than that. Let nature and its grandeur speak to us internally rebuking our sinful pride. Let it speak to us vertically recalibrating our hearing and seeing such that we hear and see Him and thus, along with Job, despise ourselves and repent in dust and ashes (Job 42:5-6).

Over the past 8 months I have been traveling with the middle and high school girls through the book of Ruth. We dove in to the text of Ruth Wednesday after Wednesday, but for the next to the last meeting we spent the night in Matthew chapter one – a chapter consisting solely of a (dreaded!) genealogy. A lengthy and daunting list of names opens the very first pages of the New Testament and precedes even the telling of the birth of Christ Himself! Though we often don’t understand the importance of genealogies, those two facts alone should show us the importance of slowing down and looking intently at the list of names.  In my time with the Ruthettes, I focused on just one aspect of the genealogy in Matthew chapter 1.  There are five women mentioned specifically in this register of ancestors: Rahab, Tamar, Ruth, the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba), and Mary. For those readers unfamiliar with the women listed above, let’s just say that their lives were full of conflict, gossip, and misunderstanding.

These women were stained in the eyes of the world.

They were prostitutes, widows, foreigners, adulterers, and pregnant out of wedlock. They lied, deceived, and at times hid the uglier parts of their choices. At first blush, it would appear to many that something in their choices, or backgrounds, or persons should have excluded them from being used by God. And certainly many would agree that such women would not have been given the immense honor of being in the lineage of Christ.  Perhaps they wouldn’t be the women you’d be proud to be related to. You might even avoid them at the family reunion because of the shocking stories you heard about their breaches of tradition. Jesus could have been tempted to distance Himself from his extended family members by leaving their names out of the record, thus causing His origins to appear more “respectable.” Yet here they are proudly listed in the genealogy of Christ.

Praise God that He does not exclude people from his service who are stained in the eyes of the world. These women became the conduits of the purpose of Yahweh. They gave birth to, nursed, and raised godly men, kings, and even Jesus Himself. Even though our life situations may be vastly different from Rahab, Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary, we sometimes believe the lie that we have a stain which prevents us from being used by God. I think this is one beautiful lesson we can learn from this genealogy – God redeems our pasts and uses us, stains and all.

“God’s hand is all over history. God works out His purpose, generation after generation. Limited as we are to one lifetime, each of us sees so little of what happens. A genealogy is a striking way of bringing before us the continuity of God’s purpose through the ages. The process of history is not haphazard. There is a purpose in it all. And the purpose is the purpose of God.”
—Derek Kidner, quoted by David Guzik, Commentary on Ruth, www.studylight.org

One important way we seek to do that is by building bridges into the community through works of service and acts of mercy.

After all, Jesus commanded us to do this very kind of thing in Matthew 5:16. He means for us to let our light shine in such a way that a watching world sees our good works and thus glorifies the Father in heaven.

The community outreach team recently sought to lead us into one dimension of this by acquiring for us the Adopt-a-Road rights to the stretch of Maitland Avenue that includes our office, property, and the SDA church where we meet. The boundary runs from Orienta on the north end to Oranole on the south.

Last Saturday a bunch of us gathered at the office for training (yes, you need training to pick up garbage along the road – we did other things too) for our first quarterly clean up effort along our roadway. Three hours later she looked as good as she has ever looked since I’ve lived in this neck of the woods. As three of us worked our way north from the office, we had numerous occasions to greet folks walking on the sidewalk. A police officer even stopped, lights flashing, and asked us to identify ourselves as we leaned over to clean out the entrance to another storm drain!

May I encourage us not to underestimate the significance of even this small step of road maintenance as a local church? It’s a means to a very important end. We are excercising our outreach muscles. We are reaching out beyond our cloistered reformed sanctuary and venturing out into a lost world that needs Christ.

May we do so more and more in 2010 individually and corporately! Hear the words of Robert E. Coleman in his chapter of Telling the Truth called The Lifestyle of the Great Commission.

To reach them [skeptics], we must take the servant’s mantle. When they know they are loved, we have their attention. In a generation like ours that has lost a sense of objective truth, living by their feelings rather than by faith, this may be the only way to make sense to them initially. Look around and see how you can meet a need. Take a fresh-baked loaf of bread to your neighbor. Better still, have the family over for dinner. Help the man next door on a work project like fixing a roof or building a room in the home. Tutor a child on a school project. Visit people in sickness. Be there to help in times of bereavement or when someone is in trouble. There are a thousand things we can do. It’s our business to identify felt needs of people around us and try to help. Unassuming as it may be, this is how our witness becomes credible. Communication usually begins at the feeling level. Don’t you like to be around persons who can feel where you hurt? One who is known as a servant will never lack opportunities in evangelism. Soul-winners are first known as shepherds (pp. 256-57).

While writing this post I noticed through the window my neighbor across the street hauling out his yard waste for tomorrow’s collection. I broke away and went to ask about his significant other. She hasn”t been around much. Turns out she has cancer – just diagnosed three weeks ago. Looks like this shepherd/cancer survivor has some work to do.

Won’t you do the same as the Lord leads?

Let us be bridge builders for God’s glory and our joy!