Here is a link to the book trailer (or click through below) for a new book coming out in few months by Canyon, TX native (and current Nashville resident) Michael Kelley.
The Kelley's two-year-old son Joshua was diagnosed with leukemia; this is the story of what it was like to live in and battle through those days, and how the grace of God was revealed to them in diverse ways through the process.
Michael has preached in my church on numerous occasions, and is the real deal...I can highly recommend this book even though I haven't seen a copy yet because I know Michael and know his strength of character and love for the Lord.
Run, don't walk, to get this book when it is available.
Showing posts with label christian life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christian life. Show all posts
01 September 2011
24 February 2011
We Don't Understand "Wonderful"
When a popular praise-song writer introduced a re-make of the old hymn, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross a few years ago, I was struck by how badly the writer seemed to misunderstand the term 'wondrous'. It seemed, from the context of the song, that he was viewing the cross as a really cool thing (the contemporary view of 'wonderful', confused with the real meaning of 'wondrous'). The real meaning of the word has to do with the idea of the inability to understand God's condescending grace toward us as fallen sinners, not the idea that Jesus is our homeboy who bails us out in a pinch. It's a good song if you mentally twist the words to mean what they meant in a classical sense. Maybe that's the meaning the author intended, but if you ask anyone under about 50 after the worship service what it means, they'll give you the homeboy definition.
Pete Scribner posted this blog article yesterday, and it has a bit of artwork that I absolutely love. I don't love it for the content it expresses, but the irony. It smacks around one of the popular views of the Christian life these days; a view that needs to be smacked around.
Pete does a good job describing the irony. Go give it a read here.
To all those who are suffering, I would send you to First Peter. It is the best place I know in the Bible to get an understanding of what the real Christian life (not the Americanized-Finneyist/Osteen version) looks like.
Pete Scribner posted this blog article yesterday, and it has a bit of artwork that I absolutely love. I don't love it for the content it expresses, but the irony. It smacks around one of the popular views of the Christian life these days; a view that needs to be smacked around.
Pete does a good job describing the irony. Go give it a read here.
To all those who are suffering, I would send you to First Peter. It is the best place I know in the Bible to get an understanding of what the real Christian life (not the Americanized-Finneyist/Osteen version) looks like.
23 September 2010
Finding Christ in the Old New Testament
I hope the title, 'Finding Christ in the Old New Testament', is catchy, because the irony there is important for understanding a subtlety we often miss.
My Sunday School class is going through the books of First and Second Peter this year. We are still in 1 Peter 1, and have not yet reached verse 13 (that's next week). The importance of verse 13 is that it is the first time a command is issued in the book of 1 Peter. Peter spends the first 12 verses of his letter (I know he didn't write it in verses, but that's the easiest way to refer to it) proclaiming the glory of God and Christ, and our place in Christ.
I constantly remind the class that being a Christian is not about finding a way to write God into their stories, but about finding a way to write themselves into God's story. We often hear about 'finding Christ in the Old Testament' but we take for granted that we'll find Christ in the New. Not necessarily so...we can often too easily pass over the proclamation of the gospel to get to the commands (passing over the indicative to get to the imperative) since we want to put 'shoe leather' on the text. That passing-over is a mistake, and a serious one.
I need to get a patent on a new line of wrist bands called, "WHJD" ('What has Jesus done?'), but I'm guessing somebody already has. However, I have a funny feeling that they wouldn't sell nearly as many as the old WWJD bands, simply because the reality of the focus of the gospel isn't nearly as important to many people, believers or not, as is living a moral life.
And that's exactly why we struggle so much trying to live up to God's requirements for us...we take the focus off of Christ and put it on ourselves, as we are woefully bent to do.
My Sunday School class is going through the books of First and Second Peter this year. We are still in 1 Peter 1, and have not yet reached verse 13 (that's next week). The importance of verse 13 is that it is the first time a command is issued in the book of 1 Peter. Peter spends the first 12 verses of his letter (I know he didn't write it in verses, but that's the easiest way to refer to it) proclaiming the glory of God and Christ, and our place in Christ.
I constantly remind the class that being a Christian is not about finding a way to write God into their stories, but about finding a way to write themselves into God's story. We often hear about 'finding Christ in the Old Testament' but we take for granted that we'll find Christ in the New. Not necessarily so...we can often too easily pass over the proclamation of the gospel to get to the commands (passing over the indicative to get to the imperative) since we want to put 'shoe leather' on the text. That passing-over is a mistake, and a serious one.
I need to get a patent on a new line of wrist bands called, "WHJD" ('What has Jesus done?'), but I'm guessing somebody already has. However, I have a funny feeling that they wouldn't sell nearly as many as the old WWJD bands, simply because the reality of the focus of the gospel isn't nearly as important to many people, believers or not, as is living a moral life.
And that's exactly why we struggle so much trying to live up to God's requirements for us...we take the focus off of Christ and put it on ourselves, as we are woefully bent to do.
17 August 2010
Fall Campus Newsletter Post: Sunrise, Sunset
I wrote the following for the WBU-Amarillo Fall campus newsletter.
Sunrise, Sunset
Where do the days go? It seems like a few weeks ago we were planting flowers, school was getting out, and summer was just starting. I have no idea what happened to July…somehow, I missed it.
As we get ready to start the Fall term, we already see the sun setting sooner, cooler days are just around the corner, and football is cranking up. Fall has always been my favorite season. I love Spring too, but the plants are just going in the ground then; in the Fall, they are mature and all the landscape starts to look grand with the cooler nights and rain. And of course, there’s football. Ever since my freshman year of college, and the experiences there with college football, I’ve loved the start of football season. Now, it’s more about fantasy leagues than anything else, but there is still something magical in the air come the kick-off of football season.
The passing of time also reminds us of how fast life is moving. When I was a kid, I thought the summers seemed to last forever. Now, they are the blink of an eye. Most people I talk to feel the same way…summer time seems to fly by now. I finally heard an explanation of why this is so. (No, it’s not some alien intervention with the orbit of the earth.) It has to do with ratios. When we were four years old, a summer was 6% of our lifetime. When we hit 40, a summer is a mere 0.6% of our lifetime. So relatively speaking, a summer seems ten times shorter to us at 40 than it does at 4.
All this serves as a reminder to us- don’t waste your life. We can spend all our time on endless, worthless pursuits as inane as watching TV and staying busy procrastinating the things we should be doing, or we can be using the time we have (which grows shorter every year) on things that have lasting value. Some things of lasting value are temporal, like time spent with family, or taking time out to finish a college degree. These are worthwhile uses of our time, and will have value to us the rest of our lives. Other things of lasting value are eternal. Time spent with God, time spent serving others with no expectation of any payment, and time spent pointing people to Christ and to the glory of God are examples of eternally significant things we can do. Again, they have value in this life, but they also have value for eternity.
Make a point to use some of your time this season, as you enjoy the changing of the leaves and the transitions in life, to accomplish some things of temporal and (especially) eternal value. “For where people lay up their treasures, there their hearts will be also.”
Sunrise, Sunset
Where do the days go? It seems like a few weeks ago we were planting flowers, school was getting out, and summer was just starting. I have no idea what happened to July…somehow, I missed it.
As we get ready to start the Fall term, we already see the sun setting sooner, cooler days are just around the corner, and football is cranking up. Fall has always been my favorite season. I love Spring too, but the plants are just going in the ground then; in the Fall, they are mature and all the landscape starts to look grand with the cooler nights and rain. And of course, there’s football. Ever since my freshman year of college, and the experiences there with college football, I’ve loved the start of football season. Now, it’s more about fantasy leagues than anything else, but there is still something magical in the air come the kick-off of football season.
The passing of time also reminds us of how fast life is moving. When I was a kid, I thought the summers seemed to last forever. Now, they are the blink of an eye. Most people I talk to feel the same way…summer time seems to fly by now. I finally heard an explanation of why this is so. (No, it’s not some alien intervention with the orbit of the earth.) It has to do with ratios. When we were four years old, a summer was 6% of our lifetime. When we hit 40, a summer is a mere 0.6% of our lifetime. So relatively speaking, a summer seems ten times shorter to us at 40 than it does at 4.
All this serves as a reminder to us- don’t waste your life. We can spend all our time on endless, worthless pursuits as inane as watching TV and staying busy procrastinating the things we should be doing, or we can be using the time we have (which grows shorter every year) on things that have lasting value. Some things of lasting value are temporal, like time spent with family, or taking time out to finish a college degree. These are worthwhile uses of our time, and will have value to us the rest of our lives. Other things of lasting value are eternal. Time spent with God, time spent serving others with no expectation of any payment, and time spent pointing people to Christ and to the glory of God are examples of eternally significant things we can do. Again, they have value in this life, but they also have value for eternity.
Make a point to use some of your time this season, as you enjoy the changing of the leaves and the transitions in life, to accomplish some things of temporal and (especially) eternal value. “For where people lay up their treasures, there their hearts will be also.”
02 August 2010
'Christian' versus 'Christ-follower'
I've been noticing a subtle change in wording on a good number of people's blogs and profile pages...instead of calling themselves a Christian, they call themselves a Christ-follower. I have no idea where this got started, and I'd love to know. If any of you reading this have a source, please drop me a line and let me know.
jbboren@gmail.com
I haven't thought this through completely, but on the surface at least, I have a bit of a problem with the new wording. I know it sounds kinda cool, and it is certainly a contemporary way to express a religious orientation, but I'm not sure it means what many people seem to think.
Here's an example from scripture- both Simon Peter and Judas Iscariot were Christ-followers. Jesus called Judas to follow him, and he did. He called Peter, and he also followed. Yet Judas (as you know if you read the story) was never a Christian. Peter was. Judas was lost; Peter saved. One was sad he got caught, the other saddened by his lack of faith. So one can be called a Christ-follower and not be a Christian. I don't think that's the meaning most folks intend to express when they refer to themselves as a Christ-follower. (Though, as an aside, the term may have a lot of utility, since there are so many folks who attend church that are apparently not Christians.)
The Bible refers to Christians as, well, Christians. Acts 11:26 says the disciples in Antioch were the first to be called Christians. I don't think that verse is anecdotal or without importance in the scriptural narrative. I don't see any reference to Christ-followers in the New Testament. I do see Jesus telling folks to follow him, and I don't have any problem with the language used as a verb (command). I just don't see the need to use it as a noun (description). The word Christian means little Christ. This is not a reference to some kind of inherent deity in any believer, but rather to the idea of a believer in Christ being an understudy who is attempting to typify or embody Christ-likeness in their own life. The Biblical term for this process is sanctification. We can follow someone without ever trying to become like them. I follow Weird Al Yankovic, because I think his parodies are funny and I think he's a genius at what he does, not to mention he's a very talented musician. But (no offense, Al) I don't want to be like him. I don't want to be a Weird Al Mini-me. I do want to think, talk, act, love, hate, see, hear, etc., like Christ. Thus I am a Christian (a little Christ), not merely a Christ-follower.
I don't know that any of this is a really big deal, but as has been said so often, words mean things. Certainly, in the gospel itself, the importance of words is not capable of being overstated. Over time, we tend to wreck our language by the overuse of superlatives (everything is awesome even when its not). We also tend to water language down by shifting definitions, almost always away from the precise toward the general (ask someone what radical means, then look it up in the OED and you'll see what I mean). This is never helpful to a culture; moving from the concise to the abstract always results in a loss of information. Yes, we have too much information, and losing some of it wouldn't be a bad thing, but we need to keep the good and dump the bad, and that's not what happens when we lose our language.
I don't mean to disparage any who call themselves Christ-followers. I just want to make sure I send the right message by what I call myself.
As for me, I'll stick to the Biblical term, Christian.
jbboren@gmail.com
I haven't thought this through completely, but on the surface at least, I have a bit of a problem with the new wording. I know it sounds kinda cool, and it is certainly a contemporary way to express a religious orientation, but I'm not sure it means what many people seem to think.
Here's an example from scripture- both Simon Peter and Judas Iscariot were Christ-followers. Jesus called Judas to follow him, and he did. He called Peter, and he also followed. Yet Judas (as you know if you read the story) was never a Christian. Peter was. Judas was lost; Peter saved. One was sad he got caught, the other saddened by his lack of faith. So one can be called a Christ-follower and not be a Christian. I don't think that's the meaning most folks intend to express when they refer to themselves as a Christ-follower. (Though, as an aside, the term may have a lot of utility, since there are so many folks who attend church that are apparently not Christians.)
The Bible refers to Christians as, well, Christians. Acts 11:26 says the disciples in Antioch were the first to be called Christians. I don't think that verse is anecdotal or without importance in the scriptural narrative. I don't see any reference to Christ-followers in the New Testament. I do see Jesus telling folks to follow him, and I don't have any problem with the language used as a verb (command). I just don't see the need to use it as a noun (description). The word Christian means little Christ. This is not a reference to some kind of inherent deity in any believer, but rather to the idea of a believer in Christ being an understudy who is attempting to typify or embody Christ-likeness in their own life. The Biblical term for this process is sanctification. We can follow someone without ever trying to become like them. I follow Weird Al Yankovic, because I think his parodies are funny and I think he's a genius at what he does, not to mention he's a very talented musician. But (no offense, Al) I don't want to be like him. I don't want to be a Weird Al Mini-me. I do want to think, talk, act, love, hate, see, hear, etc., like Christ. Thus I am a Christian (a little Christ), not merely a Christ-follower.
I don't know that any of this is a really big deal, but as has been said so often, words mean things. Certainly, in the gospel itself, the importance of words is not capable of being overstated. Over time, we tend to wreck our language by the overuse of superlatives (everything is awesome even when its not). We also tend to water language down by shifting definitions, almost always away from the precise toward the general (ask someone what radical means, then look it up in the OED and you'll see what I mean). This is never helpful to a culture; moving from the concise to the abstract always results in a loss of information. Yes, we have too much information, and losing some of it wouldn't be a bad thing, but we need to keep the good and dump the bad, and that's not what happens when we lose our language.
I don't mean to disparage any who call themselves Christ-followers. I just want to make sure I send the right message by what I call myself.
As for me, I'll stick to the Biblical term, Christian.
11 May 2010
Tullian's Blog
As I explore various blogs on the internet, I find most of them to be of little interest, but occasionally run across one that seems to be seeking me out. You'll find links to the blogs I love in the sidebar of this page.
One of the more recent blogs I've found is the one written by Tullian Tchividjian, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida. (By the way, I admire him for the simple reason it took him a lot more effort to learn to spell his name in kindergarten that it took me.)
Recently, he's been talking about who we are in Christ, and more specifically, what we have as opposed to what we have to seek out and find. Here's what he said a few days ago-
"I used to think Christian growth happened as we go out and get what we don’t have–if we’re going to grow we have to go out and get more patience, get more strength, get more joy, etc. But after reading the Bible more carefully I’ve learned that Christian growth does not happen by working hard to get something you don’t have; Christian growth happens by working hard to live in the reality of what you do have.
You could say that Christian growth does not happen first by behaving better, but believing better–believing in bigger, deeper, brighter ways what Christ has already secured for sinners. In other words, the hard work of sanctification that Paul talks about in Philippians 2:12 is a continuous, daily going back to the reality of your justification."
That's a great look at what the Christian life is, and how we often fail to understand it, working hard to get what we don't have instead of working hard to live in what we do. Then, just today, he posted this tidbit about the gospel-
"The gospel isn’t simply a set of truths that non-Christians must believe in order to become saved. It’s a reality that Christians must daily embrace in order to experience being saved. The gospel not only saves us from the penalty of sin (justification), but it also saves us from the power of sin (sanctification) day after day. Or, as John Piper has said, “The cross is not only a past place of objective substitution; it is a present place of subjective execution.” Our daily sin requires God’s daily grace—the grace that comes to us through the finished work of Jesus Christ."
I've been saying that the gospel is for the church, not just the lost. Pastor Tullian says it a lot better than I have been (with a little help from John Piper, who's blog you'll also find listed in the sidebar). This quote will certainly turn up in my SS lesson in the next couple weeks.
One of the more recent blogs I've found is the one written by Tullian Tchividjian, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida. (By the way, I admire him for the simple reason it took him a lot more effort to learn to spell his name in kindergarten that it took me.)
Recently, he's been talking about who we are in Christ, and more specifically, what we have as opposed to what we have to seek out and find. Here's what he said a few days ago-
"I used to think Christian growth happened as we go out and get what we don’t have–if we’re going to grow we have to go out and get more patience, get more strength, get more joy, etc. But after reading the Bible more carefully I’ve learned that Christian growth does not happen by working hard to get something you don’t have; Christian growth happens by working hard to live in the reality of what you do have.
You could say that Christian growth does not happen first by behaving better, but believing better–believing in bigger, deeper, brighter ways what Christ has already secured for sinners. In other words, the hard work of sanctification that Paul talks about in Philippians 2:12 is a continuous, daily going back to the reality of your justification."
That's a great look at what the Christian life is, and how we often fail to understand it, working hard to get what we don't have instead of working hard to live in what we do. Then, just today, he posted this tidbit about the gospel-
"The gospel isn’t simply a set of truths that non-Christians must believe in order to become saved. It’s a reality that Christians must daily embrace in order to experience being saved. The gospel not only saves us from the penalty of sin (justification), but it also saves us from the power of sin (sanctification) day after day. Or, as John Piper has said, “The cross is not only a past place of objective substitution; it is a present place of subjective execution.” Our daily sin requires God’s daily grace—the grace that comes to us through the finished work of Jesus Christ."
I've been saying that the gospel is for the church, not just the lost. Pastor Tullian says it a lot better than I have been (with a little help from John Piper, who's blog you'll also find listed in the sidebar). This quote will certainly turn up in my SS lesson in the next couple weeks.
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