Passion Points
Our church had VBS this past week, which means I have been really busy the last two weeks – and so the lack of blogging. But I’m back, and here are some good posts to consider as you prepare to meet together with your local church tomorrow:
Pastors Need Your Care Part 1 – Jason Helopoulos
Pastors Need Your Care Part 2 – Jason Helopoulos
As a pastor, I can affirm that these are some great suggestions.
How Much Time Do Pastors Spend Preparing Sermons? – Thom Rainer
Most church members give little thought to the amount of time it takes a pastor to prepare each sermon. In reality, sermon preparation is a large portion of a pastor’s workweek. Unfortunately, this work is invisible to typical church members. They don’t realize the enormous amount of time it takes just to prepare one sermon.
Why I Pray Publicly for Other Churches – Greg Gilbert
Each week, I choose one or two churches and pray for their services that day. I pray for the church to be attentive to the Word of God. I pray for the pastor to speak boldly and accurately from the Bible. I pray for people to be convicted of their sin, for Christians to be encouraged in the faith, and for non-Christians to be converted. I also thank the Lord that we live in a city where we are not the only church in which the gospel is proclaimed.
8 Ways Satan Keeps You From Worship – Thomas Brooks (via Tim Challies)
Satan wants to keep you from worshipping the One he hates. He wants to keep you from doing the right thing, whether that is spending time alone with the Lord in Scripture and prayer, attending and participating in public worship services, or any other thing that will draw you closer to the Lord. Here, courtesy of Thomas Brooks, are eight ways Satan will keep you from worship.
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!
Prayer Quote of the Week
A man is powerful on his knees.
– Corrie ten Boom
Passion Points
For Father’s Day, here are some good posts for fathers. The first two are must-reads!
12 Questions for Fathers – Greg (Yearn for God)
Being a father is a great privilege and an even greater challenge. I have two boys that I love deeply. While I cannot guarantee that they will love Jesus and walk in the fear of the Lord, how I relate to them is a huge factor in determining the kind of men they become. Here are a twelve questions I try to keep in my mind as a father.
Advice for Parenting Young Kids – Steve McCoy
I wanted to share some advice for things I feel we have learned and that not enough folks are talking about. At its core, this list is a quick mind-dump of the practical advice I want to give parents with young kids after years of doing it. By no means do we do all of this perfectly. I assume you know that already.
Do Men Mother? – Kevin DeYoung
The raising of children is intended to be a couples-project, with a father and a mother excelling in different ways.
Raising Gospel Centered Children – Luma Simms (Gospel Centered Discipleship)
When Jesus instructs us to go out and make disciples of all nations, that includes our children—our closest disciples.
Raising Kids in a Pornified Culture – Zach Nielsen (Gospel Coalition)
How can parents raise children in a pornified culture? Here are eight suggestions for this ever-increasing problem.
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day celebrating our Heavenly Father with fellow believers, and yes – some good time with family too.
Our New Position in Christ
The gospel aids our pursuit of holiness by telling us the truth about who we are. Certain sins become more difficult when we understand our new position in Christ. If we heirs to the whole world, why should we envy? If we are God’s treasured possession, why be jealous? If God is our Father, why be afraid? If we are dead to sin, why live in it? If we’ve been raised with Christ, why continue in our old sinful ways? If we are seated in the heavenly places, why act like the devil of hell? If we are loved with an everlasting love, why are we trying to prove our worth to the world? If Christ is all in all, why am I so preoccupied with myself?
– Kevin DeYoung in The Hole in Our Holiness
Maturity in Christ
Three times in Acts 15:30-6:5, we find the word “strengthened”. Judas and Silas “encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words” (15:32). Paul and Silas were “strengthening the churches” (15:41). The churches were “strengthened in the faith” (16:5).
We too need to be strengthened. We need to be strengthened by the teaching of the Word. We need to be strengthened by the encouragement of others. We need to be strengthened in our faith. We need to mature in Christ.
And we ought to pursue this maturity. We gather together to be strengthened as we spend time praising God, praying, and hear the Word. We commit to regularly spend time alone with God in His Word, and prayer, and praise. We come together as families to read the Word and pray and sing. We pursue growth. We pursue maturity. And as we mature, we can help to strengthen others, helping them to mature.
Don’t float through your Christian life. Get the oars in the water. Get serious about pursuing maturity in Christ.
Purity in Conduct
In Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council requested the Gentile believers to avoid four things. We addressed three of them yesterday. The fourth item they were to avoid was sexual immorality. Why focus on this? Probably because it was a big issue of the day. Sexual immorality was part of the culture, indeed part of the pagan worship. And the Gentile believers needed to understand that sexual immorality was not how Christians acted. They may have lived that way before, but as Christians they couldn’t anymore. They had a new life in Christ. They needed to pursue purity in conduct.
Much has changed in 2000 years, but sexual immorality is one of the big sins in our culture today as it was back then. Sexual immorality is in the air we breathe, but it must not be found in Christians. We can’t hook up for a one night stand. We can’t live together. We can’t have an affair. We can’t engage in homosexual activity. We must flee all sexual immorality. We must pursue purity in conduct.
Torment the Devil
Prayer is a great torment to the devil.
– Augustine
Unity in Fellowship
In Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council requested the Gentile believers to avoid food offered to idols, food that had been strangled, and food with blood still in it. Why focus on food issues? Because eating together was and still is an important part of fellowship, and these three things would offend the Jewish believers. If Jewish and Gentile believers are going to have fellowship together, eat together, and find unity together, then the Gentiles need to strive to avoid offending their Jewish brothers and sisters in Christ.
We too must strive not to offend each other. We all have different personal convictions regarding behavior based on our age, how we were raised, where we have lived, and more. We ought to strive not to offend each other in what we do. We may need to agree on some things we will all avoid so as not to offend each other.
We have all seen one child figure out that something bugs another child, and so this first child goes out of their way to do that something just to irritate the second child. Scripture teaches us to do the opposite. If we know something offends someone, we should graciously strive not to do it. Pursue unity in fellowship.
But notice also that the Gentiles were only given three things to avoid so as not to offend their Jewish brothers. But the Jewish believers held many more personal convictions from the Mosaic Law, and the Gentiles were not expected to keep the Law to please them. There was still a lot of room for Gentiles to do things that the Jews would find offensive, but the Jewish believers had to avoid being offended.
We too must graciously strive not to be offended. We can’t expect others to follow our personal behavior convictions, or judge them when they don’t. We must avoid being offended by what our brothers and sisters in Christ do.
If you go out in the rain in a t-shirt, you will soon be soaked. You need a rain slicker, so the rain “slicks” off of you. When you go to church, don’t wear a “t-shirt” in which every offense soaks in until you are drenched with anger. Wear a “rain slicker”, so the offenses just slick off of you.
In sum, we all need to focus on ourselves. Graciously strive not to offend. Graciously strive not to be offended. Pursue unity in fellowship.
Clarity in Salvation
In Acts 15, some people were saying that circumcision was necessary for salvation. So Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem to pursue clarity on this matter. The apostles and elders met to consider the matter. From the evidence of Scripture and the Holy Spirit’s working, they came to the conclusion that salvation was by grace alone through faith alone.
While we may not think circumcision is necessary for salvation today, we must continue to pursue clarity in salvation. Salvation remains by grace alone through faith alone. We must be crystal clear on this. We are not saved by good works or living a good life. We are not saved by going to church or praying or giving money. We are saved by grace through faith. Confusion on this matter can be eternally fatal. So we must come back again and again to this central truth: Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone.
Brian J. Mikul 