Sorry about the lack of content on the blog, for all three of you faithful followers! We are in the midst of updating a brand new website that has taken up our time. However, I ran across a video that I think is imperative to watch…Hope you do!
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I just want to revisit something that we said on Sunday that is absolutely crucial to the life of the church, which is the following statement:
“It is imperative that we begin to understand that church is not a building we come to once a week, but a people we belong to every moment of everyday.”
So how do you belong to our community? You belong by sharing your life with others; sharing what God is doing through the Gospel to change you; sharing with others, humbly and gracefully, where they are falling short; and both receiving correction and encouragement from and to others in the fellowship. In other words, we live our lives together under the Kingship of Jesus so that we will persevere and mature in our faith.
Hello all, back from Denver and ready to get back to Redemption! Tomorrow we are going to spend the morning looking at the importance of Community Groups and their importance to the mission of our church. In light of that I want to post a quote from J.I. Packer (if you don’t know who that is, just know that he is the Christian Yoda). He wrote,
“We should not think of our fellowship with other Christians as a spiritual luxury, an optional addition to the exercises of private devotions. Fellowship is one of the great words of the New Testament: it denotes something that is vital to a Christian’s spiritual health, and central to the church’s true life…The church will flourish and Christians will be strong only when there is fellowship.”
These thoughts are from a section in our notes in our marriage class…
Contrary to much popular opinion marriage does not have to turn out to be a bad thing. In fact, marriage is a good gift from God that leads to great joy in our lives. However, there are many who doubt this premise. On the one hand there are many who refuse to get married because they perceive to live with one person the rest of your life sounds restricting and impossible. They reason that they could never live with the same person for the entire lives. They want to be’ free.’ On the other hand there are those who are already married and find no joy in that relationship. In fact, their spouse is a ‘burden’ to them. These people are always complaining to others about the shortcomings of their spouse. Anybody know that guy? Both groups, those not desiring to be married and those already married and regret it, seem to follow Kurt Cobain’s philosophical, lyrical masterpiece (please read much sarcasm into that), “married, buried.”[1] This is far from the biblical ideal of marriage. God desires that our marriages be satisfying and joyous. He desires that they be growing and nurtured into a joy filled relationship that demonstrates the Gospel. There is absolutely nothing wrong in delighting in your spouse![2] However, sadly it seems that there are very few that find this. Why?
There definitely is no lack of energy among married Christians to find this satisfaction in their marriages. There are thousands of Christian couples trying to save and will do anything to save their marriages and, consequently, they run to the Christian bookstore for help. These people are facing serious issues such as: their husband doesn’t treat them as their greatest possession; their wife doesn’t respect their authority; their husband is always out with his friends and spends no time building the family; or maybe their spouse is cheating on them. They are all looking for that one book that will rescue their marriage. So off they run to the local Christian bookstore, which has no shortage of ‘Christian Marriage’ books. The sad state of affairs of the books in the ‘marriage’ section in these local Christian bookstores, however, is revealed through their ‘stepping stone’ theology. Yes, I just made that up. Dozens of these books use the Bible to get you a better marriage, rather than using our marriage to glorify and get God! These books are little more than self-help books that use the Bible to instruct someone on how to use God to get what they really want–a happier marriage. For these people God is the not the ultimate person to be gained, but their spouse. God is not the ultimate object of their affections, but getting what they really want—respect, love, or time. Keeping in theme with ‘old music’ philosophy the Monkees got it right when they sang, “I am not your stepping stone.” God is not our stepping stone to get what we want. God is the only ultimate thing to be gained that will give us true joy in our marriage. Some of these books, for example, argue that your marriage is not thriving because the husbands don’t love their wives and the wives don’t respect the husbands. So if the spouses did these two things then your marriage would be great.[3] Others advocate that one should do something nice for your spouse for 40 days to improve their marriage. Again, the Bible and God are used to improve your marriage, but the end thing gained is not God but their spouse. Plus what happens on the 41st day and you don’t do anything? We end up feeding our spouse’s idols so much that books have been written specifically on how to identify my spouse’s idol languages, so we can feed them!
Sadly and more ironically these books deliver what the people were looking for. People have claimed that these self-help books saved their marriages. But in what sense were the marriages saved?[4] As we will argue later, the reason marriages are not what they should be is because each spouse has idols that are not being met, but when each spouse feeds the idols of their spouse they find happiness, their marriage has been ‘saved.’ So these self help books just teach us how to feed our spouses idols, which in turn makes them happy, which ‘saves’ their marriages. Really? Saved our marriage? A problem with this rescue method is that our spouses will not at all times feed our idols, then what? Off to another Christian, self-help, stepping stone marriage book? We end up in an endless cycle of futility looking for someway for our spouse to make us happy, rather than submitting and finding our rescue in God’s love for us through Jesus.
[1] The song is called “All Apologies” and is a very interesting song on the marriage relationship as a whole.
[2] The problem we want to avoid is that we don’t take a good thing, our marriage or spouse and make it an ultimate thing. Far too many of us commit marriage/spouse idolatry, which is putting our ultimate trust and hope in something other than God Himself.
[3] Even though love and respect comes from Ephesians 5 and the commands are to be obeyed, the principle fails because the success of the marriage is based on the ability of the other spouse to carry out their responsibility. And when they fail to live out their responsibility, then the marriage problems are solely their fault.
[4] This leads directly into what is a ‘successful’ marriage? We must understand that success is not just staying together, not peacefully coexisting, and not even just loving each other. A successful marriage is one that does all of these because God is the ultimate object of their worship, such that they exemplify the Gospel to the lost world.
Just a couple of new things to highlight…
(1) Redemption Denver has initially launched their website and has a ‘splash’ page up. We added their link under churches.
(2) We added a new section entitled, ‘What We’re Reading…If You Care’ and it is the books that the pastors are currently reading if you are looking for some books to read.
(3) We are in the process of changing and upgrading our entire website, which the Lord knew the right timing because we signed up right during a huge sale! This change is several months down the road so just a heads up.
I pray that we will listen to this short piece on making war on our sin and quit ‘murmuring’ about continued deficiencies.
“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.”
Now I know that my particular method of biblical parenting is not the only way, and I also know that I don’t have parenting all figured out! However, there is a pet peeve of mine and it is when parents count to three when directing their children to obey them. Really, you are counting to three? That is your method of how you are teaching your children to obey your God-given authority? I just want to know what it is that you think you are accomplishing? I ran across this post on parenting that spoke to this very issue. It speaks my very same concerns regarding this parenting technique. It states,
“The counting-to-three routine undermines your authority and places your child in the driving seat. You are training them that, essentially, obedience is a negotiation and they can determine the timing of their obedience. Train them to think, “I must obey straight away.”
Think of it this way: Does God count to three for waiting for us to obey? Further, we are called to teach our children to learn to obey us so that they will learn and understand how to ultimately obey God. When we train our children through counting we are presenting a false model of how God expects us to obey. We ultimately give our children a wrong view of God. So parents, fathers specifically (Eph 6.4) may we biblically train our children to obey us so that they begin to learn and understand how to obey God.
I ran across this on another blog and cannot get it out of my head. I would encourage you to read and continually reflect on this tremendous quote from Jonathan Edwards…our homeboy!
Spiritual pride is the main door by which the devil comes into the hearts of those who are zealous for the advancement of Christianity.
It is the chief inlet of smoke from the bottomless pit, to darken the mind and mislead the judgment.
It is the main source of all the mischief the devil introduces, to clog and hinder a work of God.
Spiritual pride tends to speak of other persons’ sins with bitterness or with laughter and levity and an air of contempt. But pure Christian humility rather tends either to be silent about these problems or to speak of them with grief and pity.
Spiritual pride is very apt to suspect others, but a humble Christian is most guarded about himself.
He is as suspicious of nothing in the world as he is of his own heart.
The proud person is apt to find fault with other believers, that they are low in grace, and to be much in observing how cold and dead they are and to be quick to note their deficiencies.
But the humble Christian has so much to do at home and sees so much evil in his own heart and is so concerned about it that he is not apt to be very busy with other hearts.
He is apt to esteem others better than himself.
—Jonathan Edwards, “Thoughts on the Revival,” Works (Edinburgh, 1979), I:398-400.
Here is a great song from Sovereign Grace Ministries Music from the album Sons and Daughters. Someone put some animation to it and I think it is really helpful in seeing the Father’s love for us.
Here are the lyrics:
You held out Your arms, I walked away
Insolent I spurned Your face
Squandering the gifts You gave to me
Holding close forbidden things
Destitute a rebel still, a fool in all my pride
The world I once enjoyed is death to me
No joy, no hope, no life
Where now are the friends, that I had bought
Gone with every penny lost
What hope could there be for such as I
Sold out to a world of lies
Oh, to see Your face again, it seems so distant now
Could it be that You would take me back
A servant in Your house
You held out Your arms, I see them still
You never left, You never will
Running to embrace me, now I know
Your cords of love will always hold
Mercy’s robe, a ring of grace
Such favor undeserved
You sing over me and celebrate
The rebel now Your child
© 2009 Sovereign Grace Worship (ASCAP).
