Wisdom from an Unlikely Source...

 

Amen.

This is the music artist Prince at the Yahoo Internet Life Awards in 1999.

Don't Panic

    

Here's another "solid" that Peter Leithart sent out on his email newsletter of the Theopolis Institute.

___________________________________

Friends of Theopolis,

A tempest rises while the disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee, and they panic. Waves nearly engulf the boat. They think they're going to die.

Jesus, meanwhile, is asleep. How can He be so calm at a time like this? How dare He?

In the battle between the tempest and the disciples' faith, the tempest wins because, as Jesus later explains, they are "men of little faith."

The disciples' natural first response is to awaken Jesus. They want Him to help, but, as Anthony Bloom observes, they also "want him to be as anxious as they are." They can't imagine Jesus will help unless He too panics.

Jesus refuses to be caught up in their terror. He rebukes the disciples, calms the storm, and calls them into His peace, to become what Edwin Friedman calls a "nonanxious presence."

In our shrill and angry world, Jesus issues the same call to us. The church will do much good, will be light and life, will ride the high places of the earth, if we have enough faith to obey this simple command: Don't panic.

Peter Leithart

September 14, 2021

Godly Fear

"The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else."

                  -Oswald Chambers

Molding Us and Shaping Us

Be assured that Jesus the King is always "at work".  The Great Shepard is always caring for His "sheep".

Hear a good word from Oswald Chambers.

"When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship; when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us."

Uncomfortable?  You should be because He is not that tame lion at the circus, and He does as He knows best and not according to our whims and desires. And that, of course, does not play well with modern man and his monomaniacal drive to control EVERYTHING. 

Finding a Scapegoat

"One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license."

         
                -- P.J. O'Rourke
                   Rolling Stone (30 November 1989)

Chesterton: Not Changing with the World

"A man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into a fixed star, and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope. Millions of mild black-coated men call themselves sane and sensible merely because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world."

           -- G.K. Chesterton an excerpt from his book Heretics

Words are Knives

“For definitions are very dreadful things: they do the two things that most men -- especially comfortable men -- cannot endure. They fight; and they fight fair.”

-- excerpt from essay “Utopia of Usurers” by G.K. Chesterton

Compromising with Compromise

“Too often (in politics, ecclesastical politics, academic politics, whatever), Christians trim their convictions so that they might stick around to make a difference. But by the time they are (eventually) in a position to make a difference, they cannot. This is because they compromised fundamentally in order to get where they are. Rather than make a difference, they were actually made different.”

-- Doug Wilson: Blog & Mablog blogpost “A Cinder Block in the Goldfish Bowl” 12/11/2004

Going Cheap

"Cheap is expensive in the future."

Having a Child's Heart but a Grown-up Head

"Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary, He told us to be not only "as harmless as doves," but also "as wise as serpents." He wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim." 

        - C.S. Lewis, excerpt from Mere Christianity

Our Resurrected Bodies

"There will be reclining at the feast in the kingdom of God.  There will be sitting on Christ's thrones.  There will be standing at last on His right hand and His left, and eating of the tree of life.  Now, what are all these things but most certain proofs of a bodily appointment and destination?"

    -- Tertullian (160-230 AD), Christian elder and writer in Carthage, North Africa

Your Clothes Showcase Your Heart

"The purity of the heart will show itself in the modesty of the dress."

          -- Matthew Henry (1662-1714) from his commentary on Proverbs 7.10 

People of the Way are People of the Word

"Why is it that some Christians, although they hear many sermons, make but slow advances in the divine life? Because they neglect their closets, and do not thoughtfully meditate on God's Word. They love the wheat, but they do not grind it; they would have the corn, but they will not go forth into the fields to gather it; the fruit hangs upon the tree, but they will not pluck it; the water flows at their feet, but they will not stoop to drink it. From such folly deliver us, O Lord, and be this our resolve this morning, "I will meditate in thy precepts."

     -- from Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening devotional book, October 12th

We are to be a family of the Word-book.  That means more than merely listening to a Sunday morning lecture (which I would exhort you to avoid, or slowly wean out of your life as soon as you are able) it also means we are speaking words and reading words as well.

The Word comes in through the eye-gate and ear-gate, and then goes back out into the World to either other believers or into the dark corners to those who haven't come out into the Light.   

Rich Toward God (No.2)

Charles Spurgeon is commonly heralded as one of the greatest teaching elders in the past few hundred years.  His many years of sheparding were marked not only by his godly teaching, but also by his many labors on behalf of the poor and needy as well.

Some examples are in 1861 he help erect an almshouse for the elderly.  In 1864 he aided in establishing a school for needy children in London.  In 1886 he founded the Stockwell Orphanages. And in 1867 he help build a hospital.

When asked why he had supported and helped so much in these activities on behalf of the poor, Spurgeon said: 

"God's intent in endowing any person with more substance than he needs is that he may have the pleasurable office, or rather the delightful privilege, of relieving want and woe. Alas, how many there are who consider that store which God has put into their hands on purpose for the poor and needy, to be only so much provision for their excessive luxury, a luxury which pampers them but yields them neither benefit nor pleasure.  Others dream that wealth is given them that they may keep it under lock and key, cankering and corroding, breeding covetousness and care.  Who dares roll a stone over the well's mouth when thirst is raging all around?  Who dares keep the bread from the women and children who are ready to gnaw their own arms for hunger?  Above all, who dares allow the sufferer to writhe in agony uncared for, and the sick to pine into their graves unnursed? This is no small sin: it is a crime to be answered for, to the Judge, when He shall come to judge the quick and the dead."

                            - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"God's intent in endowing any person with more substance than he needs is that he may have the pleasurable office, or rather the delightful privilege, of relieving want and woe..."

"God's intent in endowing any person with more substance than he needs is that he may have the pleasurable office, or rather the delightful privilege, of relieving want and woe..."

"God's intent in endowing any person with more substance than he needs is that he may have the pleasurable office, or rather the delightful privilege, of relieving want and woe..."

PRECISELY.

Rich toward God

“Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’  And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’  But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’  So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

-- Jesus Messiah

    Good News according to Luke (12.15-21)

"God Can..."

"Nonsense doesn't cease to be nonsense merely because you preface it with, 'God can'."
       
-- C.S. Lewis
(quoted by Pastor Douglas Wilson in a recent sermon I listened to)

Meditation: Self-denial

"The self is given to us that we may sacrifice it: it is ours, that we, like Christ, may have somewhat to offer    not that we should torment it, but that we should deny it; not that we should cross it, but that we should abandon it utterly: then it can no more be vexed.  What can this mean? We are not to thwart, but to abandon?  It means this: we must refuse, abandon, deny self altogether as a ruling, or determining, or originating element in us.  It is to be no longer the regent of our action.  We are no more to think, "What should I like to do?" but "What would the Living One have me do?"

- George MacDonald - George MacDonald: An Anthology of 365 Readings edited by C.S. Lewis

Meditation: Seeing Ourselves Honestly

"Clemens has his head full in imaginary piety. He is often proposing to himself what he would do if he had a great estate. He would outdo all charitable men that are gone before him; he would retire from the world; he would have no equipage; he would allow himself only necessaries, that widows and orphans, the sick and distressed, might find relief out of his estate. He tells you that all other ways of spending an estate is folly and madness. Now, Clemens has at present a modest estate, which he spends upon himself in the same vanities and indulgences as other people do. He might live upon one-third of his fortune and make the rest the support of the poor; but he does nothing of all this that is in his power, but pleases himself with what he would do if his power was greater. 

      Come to thy senses, Clemens. Do not talk what thou wouldst do if thou wast an angel, but consider what thou canst do as thou are a man. Make the best use of thy present state, do now as thou thinkest thou would do with a great estate, be sparing, deny thyself, abstain from all vanities, that the poor may be better maintained, and then thou art as charitable as thou canst be in any estate. Remember the poor widow's mite.

- William Law, from A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection (1726)

The Gospel as Faerie Tale

Frederich Buechner is increasingly becoming one of my most favorite authors/teachers, and this excerpt below may give you some insight as to why.  Check out his excellent book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale 

"The gospel does have many of the earmarks of a fairy tale. In fairy tales you have the poor boy who becomes rich, the leaden cabinet which turns out to have the treasure in it, the ugly duckling who turns out to be a swan, the frog who becomes a prince. Then we come to the gospel, where it's the Pharisees, the good ones, who turn out to be the villians. It's the whores and tax collectors who turn out to be the good ones. Just as in fairy tales, there is the impossible happy ending when Cinderella does marry the prince, and the ugly duckling is transformed into a swan, so Jesus is not, in the end, defeated. He rises again. In all these ways there is a kind of fairy tale quality to the gospel, with the extraordinary difference, of course, that this is the fairy tale that claims to be true. The difference is that this time it's not just a story being told -- it's an event. It did happen! Here's a fairy tale come true."

- Frederich Buechner, from an interview in The Door magazine

Meditation: Do You Rest in Comfort and Security?

The great missionary God used in China, Hudson Taylor, once returned to London, England on a furlough in an effort to recruit people to aid in the Gospel outreach to China.  To do so he was visiting various congregations and at one point, on one given Lordsday, he broke and couldn't take the whole Christian "thing" that had grown up all around him.  Here's what he wrote concerning this one particular worship gathering...

"At the moment it seemed to worsen the situation. As the full congregation rose to sing the last hymn, I looked around...pew upon pew of prosperous merchants, shopkeepers, visitors; demure wives in bonnet and crinolines, scrubbed children trained to hide their impatience; the atmosphere of smug piety sickened me. I seized my hat and left, unable to bear the sight of a congregation of a thousand or more Christian people rejoicing in their own security, while millions are perishing for lack of knowledge. I wandered out on the sands alone, in great spiritual agony."

How 'bout you?  Playing it safe, passive and comfy, or are you living out the strenuous, cruciform life for Messiah's glory and love of neighbor?