Author: Brian

Follower of Jesus, Husband, Dad, Grandpa, and Pastor

New Life. Loving God. Loving People.

On By BrianIn All About Love

On Sunday, I finished a three week sermon series going through the theme: New Life.  Loving God.  Loving People.  It is a sort of slogan for our church, with each phrase further defined on our church website and in our church brochure.  The goal was to define what our church was all about (living in response to the gospel) in everyday language that might connect with people.  You can judge how well we achieved our goal (feel free to leave your comments).  As may be obvious, it is directly related to the Three Passions theme of this blog.  Here is the entire thing as it appears on our site and brochure:

 New Life
We all need new life: 
Forgiveness for the past. 
Power to live differently today. 
Hope for the future. 
We have found this new life in Jesus.

Loving God
As we find new life in Jesus, we enter into a loving relationship with God. 
Our joy is to grow in this incredible relationship by spending time with him. 
Our delight is to live each day for him.

Loving People
Our loving relationship with God helps us grow in our love for people. 
We begin to love our families more. 
We seek to be a loving church family that cares for one another. 
We want to serve our community
and share this new life we have found with others.

Christian Complements

On By BrianIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Joseph has been rotting in an Egyptian prison for months.  One day he is unexpectantly summoned to appear before Pharaoh.  It seems Pharaoh has had some dreams that no one can interpret.  But the cupbearer remembered that Joseph had interpretted his dream two years earlier, and so the cupbearer tells Pharaoh.  So Joseph is summoned.  Pharaoh tells Joseph, “I hear you can interpret dreams.”

“So I hear that you are a good plumber.”  “I was told you are really good at golf.”  “I heard you are a great cook.”  “That was a great presentation.”  Someone comes up to you with praise for whatever ability you have.  How do you respond?

Joseph responds to Pharaoh, “It is not in me; but God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.”  On my own I can’t interpret your dream, but God can.  Interpretting dreams isn’t my ability; it comes from God.  It’s not about me; it is about him.

How do we respond to praise?  Do we point others to God?  I confess I often just say “thank you.”  They gave me a complement, and I appreciate it.  It seems somewhat awkward to constantly in effect say – “it’s not me – it’s God.”  Does that belittle their complement?  Or look at it from the other side.  If I should always deflect the praise from myself to God, maybe I shouldn’t complement others because it really isn’t about them anyways.  But shouldn’t we encourage each other and express gratitude toward those who minister in some way to us?  Of course we should!  So then maybe a simple “thank you” is a good answer after all.

But maybe there is a better.  Maybe we can both accept the complement with appreciation, and also express praise to God who gave us the ability.  Maybe the one giving the complement can phrase it as both appreciation for the person and praise to God.  Maybe instead of saying, “Thank you for…,” we should say, “I appreciate the way God used you in….”  And maybe our response should be, “Thank you.  I praise the Lord that he used me to minister to you.”  And if it seems awkward, maybe it is simply because we aren’t used to doing it. 

In the end, maybe complementing each other is an opportunity not only to encourage and express (and receive) gratitude, but an opportunity to help all of us lift our eyes to the one who is truly worthy of praise.

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some suggested posts for your pondering pleasure this weekend:

First, some good posts on prayer.  Stephen Altrogge encourages us to not lose our intensity in prayer, while Mark Altrogge encourages us to pray expectantly.  Meanwhile my friend Mike at Hunger and Thirst has a great post on how trusting God’s promises needs to impact our prayers.  And Trevin Wax fleshes out the Lord’s Prayer with related Scriptures.

Meanwhile, on other topics:

Finally, the quote of the week comes from J.I. Packer via Justin Taylor addressing our lack of focus on communion with God.  Read this quote – and let it impact your life!

Book Look: A Praying Life

On By BrianIn Book Look1 Comment

A Praying Life – Paul Miller

How does prayer and life intersect?  This book helps answer that question.  Miller takes Biblical principles and shows how they have intersected with his family life.  This dual approach anchors the book in truth while also making it practical and encouraging – a greater prayer life is not beyond our reach. 

He begins by helping us see that we are helpless – and hence must pray.  Our problem is that we think we can do life on our own – and so we don’t pray.  He then explores the need to trust God so that we will pray.  If I don’t trust God, I simply won’t bother with prayer (why would I pray if I can’t trust him?).  Both our helplessness and his trustworthiness were ideas I needed to wrestle with and grasp onto, and I suspect others would benefit from his exploration of these foundational topics as well.  He continues by considering our requests, and helping us to see how prayer and our daily life fits into God’s bigger story.  Finally, he suggests some practical ideas (like using prayer cards and a prayer journal) to help us grow in prayer.  Recommended.

Our Delight

On By BrianIn God & His Glory, Virtue of Joy

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory,
for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!
– Psalm 115:1

God loves us us.  He daily showers us with his many blessings. 
He is a refuge in our trials.  He is always faithful.
He saves us through the cross.  He makes us his children – and heirs.
He loves us with an amazing undeserved love.
And so we want him to be glorified; we want him to be honored.

Our sinful tendency is to want others to honor us, for us to receive the glory.
But as we grasp his great love for us who are unworthy of any love,
we can desire the glory to go not to us, but to him.
It becomes our delight to see him honored in our lives.

How can we honor him in our lives?

We honor him as we obey him, put his will before our own.

We honor him with our thoughts – as we think about him,
and as we thing rightly about him;
as we guard our thoughts to think what is pleasing to him.

We honor him with our lips – as we gather with his people to praise him,
and as we tell others about his glory.

We honor him with our actions – as we do our best for him
in our work, our chores, our studies, and everything else we do;
as we point to Jesus rather than ourselves.

Father, may it be our growing delight to honor you with all of our lives.  Amen.

Our Joy

On By BrianIn Habit Miscellaneous, Virtue of Joy1 Comment

One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple.
– Psalm 27:4

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
– Psalm 42:1-2

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
– Psalm 63:1

It is our joy to spend time with God. 
Not a chore.  Not a duty.  Not another item we have to check off our to-do-list. 
It is a joy.  It is what we seek earnestly.  It is what we thirst for. 
It is the one thing we want more than anything else. 

And it is more than a once-a-day activity.  It is an all-day opportunity. 
To walk in his presence.  To bring our cares to him in prayer. 
To thank him for blessings as they come our way. 
To follow his Spirit’s leading.  To abide in him always. 

It is our joy to spend time with God.

Father, help us to grow in this joy this week for your glory.  Amen.

The Story of Love

On By BrianIn All About Love1 Comment

The Story of Love

God

In the beginning was the God of love –
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
In perfect loving relationship with each other.

Creation

And this loving God made us in his image
To live in a loving relationship with him and with each other.

Fall

But we rebelled, sinned, spurned God’s love.
We worshipped ourselves instead of God.
We focused on ourselves instead of each other.
God’s judgment fell upon us.
We were separated from God.
We lived in strife with each other.

Redemption

But God’s love was reaching….
The Father sent the Son to become a man named Jesus,
Who lived a perfect life of love for the Father and others.

Blameless, he took upon himself our judgment
By dying on a cross in our place that we might be forgiven
For our rebellious failure to love God and others.

He was buried and rose again on the third day
That we might die to our rebellious ways
And be raised to a new life of love for God and others.

The Spirit applies Jesus’ saving work to us as we believe,
And helps us grow in love for God and others.

The Spirit places us in the redeemed community of love
To trade our self-worship for loving worship of God
And our self-focus for loving care for others.

Consummation

At Christ’s return, the dead in Christ will rise,
And those who are alive in Christ will be changed,
And we will dwell with God forever in paradise
Enjoying a perfect loving relationship with him and with each other.

I Am Not Worthy

On By BrianIn Miscellaneous

God promised to be with Jacob as he went to this mother’s family.  And God was with him.  God blessed him with a family and great wealth.  But he didn’t deserve any of it.  Jacob himself recognizes this.  He tells God, “I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to you servant” (Genesis 32:10). 

He says he wasn’t worthy of the smallest act of God’s love, the smallest blessing from God’s hand.  And indeed he wasn’t.  For Jacob was a perpetual liar.  He was a terrible husband and father.  And he showed a remarkable lack of trust in the Lord.  He didn’t deserve God’s blessings.  He didn’t deserve God’s love.  But God loved him not because he was lovable, but because God is love.

Jacob is much like us.  We all fail in countless ways.  We too are sinners.  We too are unworthy of God’s love, God’s faithfulness, God’s blessings.  And yet God loves us.  God blesses us.  Not because we are lovable, but because God is love. 

Our greatest need is to recognize with Jacob that we are unworthy.  We need to see that God’s blessings flow, not because of what we do, but because of who God is and what he has done.  It is too easy for us once we begin the Christian life to think that it is all about our performance, about what we do.  And so we gravitate between despair when we fail and pride when we do well. 

And yet even our best deeds are as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).  Nothing we do impresses God.  Even at our best, we are unworthy.  Whatever good we accomplish is due to God’s grace and the Spirit’s working in our lives.  We have no reason for pride. 

And when we fail, we need not despair.  Though unworthy, God will still show his love to us.  By his grace, God will freely forgive our every sin. 

The truth is that we, like Jacob, are unworthy of God’s love all of the time.  But God still pours out his love upon us like he did upon Jacob.

Father, help us to see our own unworthiness, and be amazed more and more at your unconditional love toward us through Christ Jesus.  Amen.

I Am With You

On By BrianIn God & His Glory

Jacob is leaving behind everything he knows.  He has been sent by his parents to his mom’s family whom he has never met.  On the way, God speaks to him.  God repeats the promises he made to Abraham and Isaac now to Jacob.  God will give him many offspring who will receive the land.  And more – all the families of the earth will be blessed through him and his offspring.  And then God promises, “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go” (Genesis 28:15). 

Hundreds of years later, Jacob’s descendent Jesus will die on a cross to save people from their sins.  In this Descendent, truly all the families of the earth are blessed.  And this Descendent issues the same promises to his followers that God gave to Jacob: “Behold, I am with you” (Matthew 28:20). 

God is with us.  In the hustle and bustle of the day.  At work, at school, at home, at the store, on the roads.  In the trials and struggles of life.  In the good times and celebrations of life.  When we go to sleep tonight and when we wake the next morning.  No matter what we face, where we go, or what we do, God is with us.  His presence goes with us.  The Sovereign Creator and Ruler of the world goes with us.  What a comfort and strength this should be to us today!

Passions Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

It has been a busy week with little time to write or reflect on anything to write.  But here at the end of the week are some good posts from others for you to consider:

Mark Altrogge reminds us that Christian growth takes time.  Growth isn’t instant, yet it is simple.  We can get caught up in so many details and disciplines, but in the end, Stephen Altrogge reminds us it comes down to one thing.  Certainly one discipline that can help us do that one thing (you really need to follow the link to find out what it is), is to be in the Bible.  Ray Pennoyer gives us a fresh challenge from a recent movie and a one of my heroes of the faith to be in God’s Word.  Don’t let the habits of the “hero” cast you down – most of us don’t have the time he had to devote to such things, but do let his example challenge you to hunger more for the Word.

Meanwhile, over at Crossway we get some excerpt’s of C. J. Mahaney’s new book Don’t Waste Your Sports, addressing the important issues of  humility and the temptation to play for our glory rather than God’s.  While focused on the athlete, the principles can be applied to all of life.

That is probably enough for this week.  Have a blessed Lord’s Day as you gather with God’s people to worship our great God!