I hope you all have a merry Christmas tomorrow. Here are a few good Christmas posts:
God Became a Man – Justin Taylor
Some good classic quotes on the incarnation from Spurgeon, Augustine, and more.
Why a Virgin Birth? – Douglas Wilson
Good answer to the question…
5 Ways to Play With Your Kids This Christmas – Trevin Wax
Dads, this one is for us. You may not like every idea, but the post gets us thinking in the right direction.
Here are some good posts on afflictions and prayer:
Eight Helps for Coping with Affliction – Arthur Hildersham (via Joel Beeke)Acquaint yourself thoroughly with the Scriptures, for they prepare people for affliction, and teach us patience and comfort in affliction, like no other book can.
Leading Our Emotions: Depression – Chris Brauns
Only Christ satisfies the needs of our soul (though we often idolize other things such as children and believe they will satisfy). Does the use of your time indicate that you believe only Christ will satisfy the thirst of your soul?
Spiritual Depression: A Strategy for Defeating It – Chris Brauns
A central strategy in the battle depression must be to turn from a private focus on self, to a corporate worship of Christ.
You Asked: Can I Pray to Jesus? – Graham Cole (via Gospel Coalition)
So can you pray to Jesus? Of course you can. But let me suggest if this is the predominant way we pray we may lose something of enormous importance. We may lose sight of the glorious gospel with the Father as the architect of our salvation, the Son as the achiever, and the Spirit as the applier.
To Hell with the Devil and His Destructive Lies – John Piper (via Justin Taylor)
I hate the devil, and the way he is killing some of you by persuading you it is legalistic to be as regular in your prayers as you are in your eating and sleeping and Internet use. Do you not see what a sucker he his making out of you? He is laughing up his sleeve at how easy it is to deceive Christians about the importance of prayer.
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day celebrating our great Savior!
Yesterday we said that one application of delighting in the Word was to memorize it. I have been reading the Redwall series to my kids. They love it, and so naturally they have memorized some of the lines. They love Narnia, and can quote lines from the books and the movies. If we delight in the Word, shouldn’t we be able to quote lines from it?
But the Bible is a big book! What verses should we memorize? One good approach is to memorize verses that you have been reading and meditating on. Which verses seem to jump out at you as a special challenge or comfort from God? Memorize those verses.
But there are also some basic passages that touch on the basic teachings of the Bible, and basic issues that everyone of us face as we fight the good fight of faith. The folks at Children Desiring God have chosen 260 passages as basic passages which they call Fighter Verses. They have created a five year program that has you learning one passage a week. Many churches use this program to encourage each other to memorize Scripture together. I encouraged the folks at my church last week to try it in the coming year. I just started working through it myself. Perhaps you might want to try it too.
I encourage you to visit their site. It is packed with helpful Scripture memory resources. They have a bookmark with all of the 2013 verses on it, plus a strategy for learning and remembering them. If you want to create memory verse cards, they have a link to easily do that. They also have a blog post each week reflecting on the verse you will be learning. Plus there are apps for your tablet or smartphone to help you learn the verses. They have audio resources and more. Explore their site, and ask God if he might have you use this resource in the coming year. And if not, how else might he be calling you to memorize his Word in 2013?
In the last post we looked at three reasons from Psalm 119 regarding why we should delight in the Word. Today, I want to consider three ways we should apply our delight in the Word:
If we delight in the Word, we will mediate on it, memorize it, and live it. As the New Year approaches, this is a good time to reconfirm your commitment to God’s Word. And if God’s Word has not been a commitment in your life, now is a great time to commit yourself to the Word for 2013.
Psalm 119 is a psalm of delight in the Word. Again and again the Psalmist declares his delight in God’s Word (v14, 16, 24, 70, 77, 92, 111, 143, 162, 174). He also gives us at least three reasons why we should find joy in God’s Word. God’s Word is:
As we ponder these three reasons, and use the Word as our guide and help and word from God, may God cause our delight in His Word to grow!
Christmas is a time of joy, yet many struggle to find it. In the midst of the trials and sufferings of life, where can we find joy? The writers of the Psalms tell us places where they found joy – places where we too can find joy even in the midst of the struggles of life. We can find joy in:
It is not hard to see what all of these joy-bringers have in common. All come from God. Every good thing that brings us joy comes from God. Each joyful blessing comes from the river of his delights (Psalm 36:8). God is the source of joy. We find our joy ultimately in him:
You have put more joy in my heart
than they have when their grain and wine abound.
– Psalm 4:7
You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
– Psalm 16:11
For you make him most blessed forever;
you make him glad with the joy of your presence.
– Psalm 21:6
Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy,
and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.
– Psalm 43:4
In the presence of God, we find exceeding joy beyond any other joy. The joy found in God’s blessings is good; the joy found in God himself is better. This Christmas, no matter what struggles you are facing, you can find joy in the presence of the Lord. Won’t you draw near to him?
Christian joy is the proper response to the presence of something desirable: God.
– Philip Kenneson
The joy of the Lord will arm us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies, and put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hooks.
– Matthew Henry
Joy is diminished…by walking at a distance from God.
If you get away from the fire you will grow cold.
– Charles Spurgeon
Christ being present with you, this is your main joy. Enjoy the feast for yourselves,
or you will not be strong to hand out the living bread to others.
– Charles Spurgeon
Search the Scriptures diligently, and your joy shall spread and deepen.
– Charles Spurgeon
All the writings of Scripture, doctrinal, experimental, or practical, all have for their object, that which John declares in these words – “that your (our) joy may be full.”
– Charles Spurgeon
Because advertising cultivates the insatiable desire for the new, the improved,
the bigger and better, we find ourselves all but incapable of experiencing joy
and contentment in our everyday lives.
– Philip Kenneson
Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,
All his boasted pomp and show;
Solid joys and lasting treasure
None but Zion’s children know.
– John Newton
There is enough in God to furnish us with matter of joy
in the worst circumstances on earth.
– Matthew Henry
With His great infinite heart He loves me. It is a conquering thought;
it utterly overcomes us and crushes us with its weight of joy;
it bows us to the ground and casts us into a swoon of ecstasy.
– Charles Spurgeon
What can make those uneasy whose souls dwell at ease in God?
– Matthew Henry
That lasting peace between nations requires so much effort and attention is,
without doubt, an unmistakable sign of our fallenness as a race.
Peace, it seems, is not our natural state.
Rather, enmity is fundamental to the human condition.
– James S. Spiegel
If God has established peace by reconciling us both to God and to one another in Christ, then we must do all we can to embody visibly that unity and harmony
that are the hallmarks of our new life of peace.
– Philip Kenneson
Addiction to mammon makes us forget others.
Preoccupied with keeping what we have or getting what we do not have, the needs of others fade from our thoughts.
It is not so much that we wish them harm as that we have no wishes for them at all.
– Arthur Simon in How Much Is Enough?
Brian J. Mikul 