Tried With Fire

I know many young evangelicals barely have any stomach for controversy, let alone strong words about a serious topic. But if there is no way to be simultaneously bold and humble; if there is no way to be a gentle, caring person while still speaking in clear tones about hurtful error; if there is no way to correct those who oppose sound doctrine without being a moral monster; if there’s no way to love truth and grace at the same time, then there’s no way to be a biblical Christian . Judgmentalism is a sin and Calvinists can be jerks. But not every judgment is sinful and not every truth is cruel just because Reformed people teach it. (From this post by Kevin DeYoung on the Rob Bell pre-book controversy , emphasis mine.)

I didn't grow up reformed.  Until three years ago, I had no idea what the word even meant, but when reformed theology found me, it opened a whole new world.  There are no words to describe the relief and freedom that comes when you realize your salvation in its totality depends on God and not you.  The Gospel isn't the recitation of the sinners prayer but a life changing truth that takes us from new birth until the very end.  Doctrine suddenly became a wonderful thing to learn.  I had never seen before how my view of God shapes my view of man and vice-versa  My concept of sin directly affects my understanding of grace. Same with wrath and love. These words have meaning, and rightly defining them makes all the difference in the world. A biblically robust, cohesive framework of truth is a beautiful thing. But sometimes I react against what I used to believe.  I'm a little too quick on the trigger when certain phrases or topics strike a raw theolog...

There is a little hollow in the sweet gum tree outside our sunroom window which makes a nice watering hole for the neighborhood critters.  I had taken a pic of the squirrels a few months ago, but I noticed the blue jay today. He/she posed very nicely for the camera.

O Love, beyond conception great, That formed the vast stupendous plan Where all divine perfections meet, To reconcile rebellious man. There wisdom shines in fullest blaze And justice all her rights maintain; Astonished angles stoop to gaze, While mercy o'er the guilty reigns. Yes, mercy reigns, and justice, too; In Christ, they both harmoniously meet; He paid to justice all its due, And now he fills the mercy seat, Such are the wonders of our God, And the amazing depths of grace, To save from wrath's vindictive rod, The chosen sons of Adam's race. William Tucker (1731-1814) 

I'm thankful for: Signs of spring even if they come from Trader Joe's. Hearing the birds sing for joy this morning. God's provision through my job.  I am now transcribing for all 5 doctors in the practice (one doc dictates as much as 4 or 5) plus 2 nurses.  I am working more hours and learning to not overwork myself.  My prayer is to not put my confidence in the provision but in the One who provides. For these quotes by John Flavel: In all the comfortable providences of you lives, eye God as the author or donor of them. Remember He is "the Father of Mercies" that begets every mercy to you, "The God of all comfort" (2 Cor. 1:3) without whose order no mercy or comfort can come to your hands.    Have you not seen the all-sufficient God in the provisions He has made for you and yours, throughout all the way that you have gone?  Who was it that supplied to you whatever was needful in all your straits?  Was it not the Lord? The Mystery of Prov...

The winners of The Mystery of Providence by John Flavel are Petra of Penned Pebbles and WhiteStone !  Congratulations, ladies!  Please drop me an email (pilgrim dot mommy at gmail dot com) with your contact info. Many thanks to everyone who entered.  I have more books to give away this year, so stay tuned.

What do you call a semi-Pelagian pirate? An Arrrr-minian. (ducks head and runs...)

Christ is the Keeper of his saints, He guards them by his power; Subdues their numerous complaints, In every gloomy hour. What though they fear each dread alarm, Tried, and severely tossed; Held by the Saviour's might arm, None, none can e're be lost. He'll lead them on fair Zion's road, Though weary, weak, and faint; For O! they ne'er shall lose their God. Or God e'er lose a saint. How sure his great salvation shines; How full the vast reward; How firm the promise e'er remains; How faithful is the Lord! Richard Burnham (1749-1810)

Thanks to Angus Duncan and his staff at the Sacred Sandwich .

I'm thankful for ordinary pastors.  I'm thankful for godly men who have embraced God's call on their lives to shepherd the flock of God.  They may never be conference speakers, write books, or have blogs with thousands of followers, but they endeavor to be faithful to the gospel in the churches under their care.  Even if they serve in total obscurity as far as the world is concerned, God is mindful of their labor of love. I'm thinking of 2 men in particular.  One is my former pastor who has rested from his labor and is with Jesus.  The other is my current pastor. May the Lord bless and strengthen our pastors and their families and show us how we can encourage their souls.

Work is crazy this week.  They say, "when it rains, it pours", and I've had a veritable downpour of dictation this week from one of my doc's.  I've missed visiting your blogs.  Lord willing, I'll type my way out of the hole today, and things can return to normal.

My afternoon did not go as planned. As I was headed to the car, my heel slipped off the walkway in front of the house. I lost my balance and down I went.  I broke my fall with my right hand, but fell sideways banging my glasses and shoulder.   I went back inside to check the damage and wash the cuts on my hand and eyebrow.  Since I know enough medical information to be dangerous and having transcribed enough head injuries, I contacted the plastic surgery practice and asked if a nurse could take a look at my scratches. The drive was uneventful until I exited the highway.  The traffic was at a standstill.  All 3 lanes as well as the on-ramp to the highway were blocked due to a multi-vehicle accident just half a block down the road.  Eventually, the police allowed traffic to proceed after 45 minutes of waiting with varying degrees of patience from my fellow motorists.  Once at the practice, one of the surgeons made sure I didn't crack any bo...

Last night, Pastor Charles Taylor finished the race.  He fell asleep on earth and awoke in the presence of the Lord. I'll never forget the first sermon I heard him preach on the last Sunday in 2007. He spoke on Isaiah's vision of the Lord from Isaiah 6. I didn't know how starved I was for God's word until then.  After that one sermon, we knew we found our church home. It was a privilege to have Pastor Taylor baptize my daughter.  She wanted to be baptized previously, but we weren't in fellowship with a local church.  We considered other options including having a brother from out of town baptize her in the James River, but I'm glad we waited.  There were problems with the baptistry, so Charlie worked on it himself so she could be baptized.  We weren't members at the time, but his view was that the church should do all it could to further a believer in his/her walk with the Lord, member and nonmember alike. Pastor Taylor faithfully shared the word Sun...

My thankful list: Enough snow to cover the grass but not hinder driving. Grace to get to bed earlier and rise earlier.  It's amazing how much better you feel with adequate sleep! Grace to stick to the Murray McCheyne reading plan so far.  Although this may not suit everyone, I have been blessed.  The theology conference this past week-end.  Dr. Smith was a wonderful and challenging speaker. I appreciated his talks on doctrine becoming our life blood particularly after reading  Think  by John Piper. I was amazed by Dr. Smith's knowledge of scripture and church history, quoting passages with citations and names and dates from memory. Answered prayer.  My sister's mother-in-law responded to the medication where she could be discharged back to the nursing home.  She's in the final stages of Alzheimer's, but God displayed His mercy to her and to my sister and brother-in-law.  Thank you so much for your prayers! Verses like these: There is t...

I'll be giving away 2 copies of The Mystery of Providence by John Flavel (1628-1691) this month. First published in 1678,  Flavel writes in the introduction: It is a great support and solace of the saints in all distresses that befall them here, that there is a wise Spirit sitting in all the wheels of motion, and governing the most eccentric creatures and their most pernicious designs to blessed and happy issues. And, indeed, it were not worth while to live in a world devoid of God and Providence. And from the publisher's intro to this edition: Even those who profess to accept without question the truth of divine sovereignty are not infrequently guilty of practical unbelief. Glibly to assert that 'all things work together for good to them that love God' is relatively easy, but to believe this when our circumstances are distasteful and likely to deteriorate is evidence of a spiritual apprehension of the sovereignty of God.  Yet we cannot truly recognize and improv...

One of the most striking evidences of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift.  In other words, it takes thought, resolve, energy, and effort to bring about reform. In the grace of God, sometimes human beings display such virtues.  But where such virtues are absent, the drift is invariably toward compromise, comfort, indiscipline, sliding disobedience, and decay that advances, sometimes at a crawl and sometimes at a gallop, across generations. People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people to not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godles...

May the grace of Christ, our Saviour, And the Father's boundless love, With the Holy Spirit's favour, Rest upon us from above. Thus may we abide in union With each other and the Lord; And possess in sweet communion, Joys which earth cannot afford. John Newton (1779)

In the 2nd session, Dr. Smith continued with things that impair our communication, preaching, and teaching in the body of Christ.   In all of these sessions, he gave numerous scripture references. 3. Demise of doctrine: In the mind of God, there is no separation between doctrine and praise.  True worship should flows out of the knowledge of who we worship, but today that's not the case.  As he said, "We sing more heresies today than in the first 500 years of church history." 4. Grace has been diluted: We are justified by grace, sanctified by grace, and will be glorified by grace. Don't fall into "sola boot strapsa" where we begin to think that once we are saved, the rest is up to us.  We firmly believe in sola fide but faith is not alone.  Paul is not in conflict with James.  We work from salvation not to be saved but because we are saved. We are able to work out our salvation because God has worked it into us.  Not grace plus or Jesus plus a...

It was a joy and pleasure to hear Dr. Smith last night.  His burden for this week-end is to encourage us to not separate doctrine and doxology.  It's not an either or but a both together.  (Sounds very much like Piper's burden in writing Think .)  He said, "Doctrine is the cradle for Doxology."  Doctrine is not an end in itself; it's not purely information.  But doctrine is for transformation, for the praise and adoration of God.  Therefore there needs to be a reunion between the two. He then shared how we need to be good exegetes, taking out the meaning of the text, not putting our own ideas in.  This involves hearing what God says to us through His word, relating what we have heard, and then relying on the Holy Spirit to bless it.  Dr. Smith says this process is being a good exegetical escort.  It's not in our power to save; it's not in our power to transform.  But we lead the hearer by the Word of God into the presence of Chri...

My thankful list: We had a great discussion on holiness in the women's group Tuesday evening. We're in the 8th chapter of Transforming Grace by Jerry Bridges. Our friends John and Nicolette invited us over for dinner last night.  We had good food, played Apples-to-Apples, and were able to hear more about their call to Spain as missionaries. This afternoon, we saw Voyage of the Dawn Treader with our friend Becky. Afterwards, she came over for dinner and fellowship. Tomorrow is the start of the theology conference.  I'm looking forward to hearing Dr. Smith share on making doctrine doxological. We've been blessed to be with different saints every day this week. Isn't fellowship in Christ such a wonderful thing?

and because I'm in a rather silly mood... Most people know the old tongue twister: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? But do you know the answer to that timeless question? A woodchuck would chuck all the wood a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. Now that I've wasted several cycles of your brain, you can go and impress friends and family with this newly acquired piece of useless information.

I don't know what the ground hog saw, but this is what I saw in the garden yesterday. Update: Phil did not see his shadow.

Here's an update on my sisters' mother-in-law: She made it through the night on Sunday much to the doctors' surprise. However, they only give her a few more days given the seriousness of the infection and her prior physical condition.  She does not appear to be suffering. I do need to make one correction, though.  My brother-in-law's family is not Buddhist but more Confucianist/Chinese ancestor worship.  For some this is only cultural, but for others it is a very real belief. Thus for his mother to say she believes in Jesus is a clear break with cultural and family tradition. My brother-in-law and sister are comforted that his mom has put her faith in Christ.  When it's time, she will go home.  They are praying this will be an opportunity to share the hope they have in Christ. Thank you so much for praying.  They appreciate your prayers very much.

We had the privilege of taking a meal to a family last evening.  Pastor Taylor has been suffering from renal cancer and is now under hospice care.  When we arrived, his dear wife invited us in and hugged us.  Lying in a hospital bed in the living room, Charlie greeted us and thanked us for coming.  He apologized that his hearing was not as good nor his voice as strong.  He cheerfully asked us how we were and chatted about various subjects. Joy shone in his face as he praised God for His goodness.  It was hard to keep back the tears when Charlie said, "I have no complaints.  God has blessed me in every possible way, every possible way!" May we glorify the Lord like this dear brother when it's our turn to tread the verge of Jordan.