This dude took pride in his cause
Everyday put on his costume which defined who he was
He said he didn’t care, he liked being unique
Accused the rest of the world of being a bunch of sheep

Lived his life going against the grain
Spent all of his time with those who felt the same
Hit his mid-twenties and still nothing’s changed
Except his boys who chose to grow with age

Now he’s looking for friends with the same behavior
He hangs out on campus with a bunch of teenagers
He’s punk rock, he’s hip-hop, he’s everything the system’s not
And he likes it that way

He likes being on the defense
He likes having something to fight against
He likes calling himself a revolutionist…

— John Reuben, Cooperate

“I have been picking on Christians because I am one, and see no reason to pretend we are better that we are.” — Philip Yancy #

That just says it all right there.

Nathan: Well, why aren’t these people happy? Do they think heaven is a sad place to be?

Papa: I think they’re sad because they’re thinking about their sins.

Nathan: But they’ve been forgiven, and now they’re in heaven! They’re supposed to be thinking about Jesus!

Papa: Oh, they’re thinking of Him, too. They’re sad because they’re thinking about Him dying on the cross.

Nathan: But He’s not dying anymore. The whole reason we’re doing this is that He came alive, right?

Papa: Right.

Nathan: Well, I don’t think they could be sad about Jesus. I think they’re sad ’cause they had to eat those icky crackers and drink that dumb old Kool-Aid.

My favorite part was the following exchange (because it seems to sum up so many things for me):

Nathan: Is this as confusing to them as it is to me?

Papa: It might be if they thought about it much.

It seems to me that the “local church” and “universal church” distinctions adds very little to our biblical understanding of God or of the church. Instead, it seems to divide the church into little groups that feel that they are maintaining unity in the body of Christ as long as they are united withing their “local church”. Meanwhile, it also allows believers to ignore the “one-anothers” of Scripture if the “one-another” does not “belong” to their “local church”.

This is one of the big reasons behind a project I have in the works. I don’t know when it’ll be announced, because I just finished a client’s redesign and I have some family obligations to attend to. But one of these days, I’ll let you know what’s under the hood…

I do sort of like the irony in people criticizing me for being critical of people being critical. Sort of a rabbit-hole type thing. Is the one with the last word most divisive? Wheeeeee!

Source: “On Division,” The Gospel-Driven Church

Edit: Ooh, there’s more:

There is the Gospel, and there is the not-Gospel. To criticize and name those who preach and profit from the not-Gospel is not being divisive; the division began with the deception. The unity is broken not at the point of criticism, but at the point of departure from the Gospel.

I woke up this morning at about 4am. I had about five seconds from the moment that I was awake and knew a muscle was pulled, and the start of the pain. This was the worst one I’ve ever had! It was like I’d been stabbed in the calf, and someone was twisting the knife over and over again. And it seemed like multiple muscles in my calf were getting pulled–like how one power supply goes down and puts a strain on the whole system, eventually shutting everything down. Steven Subotnick, D.P.M. says:

“This out-of-the-blue leg cramp is as intense as a kick from a palomino. You’ll be lying in bed or even asleep when you get this terrible knot-usually in the calf but sometimes in the thigh or the arch of your foot.”

Apparently if I get out of bed right away and stand on that leg, it’ll make the pain go away quicker? (That and drinking more water, of course–I hate drinking water!) I wish I’d checked Wikipedia before today.

“Pastoral authority” is invoked in support of all kinds of actions, events, and propositions. In more mundane uses, “pastoral authority” becomes a catchphrase signaling the need to acquire permission from the pastor to take action or make a public statement. Along these lines, you might hear someone say, “I disagree with Pastor Tom about this issue, but I don’t want to undermine his pastoral authority.” More extreme applications, of course, include the forceful silencing of dissent and the legitimization of unfortunate personality worship. In this vein, something like this is more likely: “Don’t you know our pastor has authority over you?”

To be clear, in my criticism I do not take away from the responsibility of our local church pastors to shepherd our congregations. The apostles left us careful instructions regarding the need for us to recognize, honor, imitate, and submit to our leaders (1 Thess 5:12-13; 1 Tim 5:17; Heb 13:7, 17), as well as details regarding the characteristics that qualify and disqualify leaders from service (1 Tim 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9).

Yet, if you survey the teaching of the NT epistles on the matter of elders, overseers, leaders, or shepherds, you will find no mention of “authority” or “exercising authority over” anyone. In fact, 1 Peter 5:3 contains explicit instruction for shepherds to oversee the people “not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.”

Source: SBCOutpost.com (HT: Alan Knox)

It is a severe violation of the adult conscience to treat the saints as children under the over-lordship of elders. The ultimate effect of treating the saints as children is that they will either remain children in their understanding as they submit to bondage, or they will rebel. Elders exercise appropriate authority as fathers within their own households, but their role in the assembly is not as fathers and lords over children and servants, but as elder brothers in the faith and humble servants to the whole.

Source: Steve Atkerson, New Testament Church Leadership

Then the Elder continued, “What if a truly strong leader is one who is un-threatened enough to actually, honestly listen to the input of those around them, precisely because (a) they are secure in their identity in Christ, and (b) they know they need the voices of others to adequately hear what God is saying to the whole group? What if the ‘weak’ leader is really the one who insists on his or her own personal vision, and is too threatened to consider the voices of anyone else?”

“Maybe it takes more cajones to NOT insist on the leader’s ‘vision’, or ’strategy’, and to trust that the Spirit speaks through the Body, hmm?”, he asked, gesturing with open hands.

Source: Robby Mac, Through The Looking-Glass

What I mock is exactly the same thing that we find mocked in the pages of the New Testament—ecclesiastical stuffed-shirt pretentiousness, and an inability to maintain a sense of godly proportion. You know, camels and gnats, gold and altars, and justice and mercy and tithing from the spice rack.

(Source: Douglas Wilson, Reformed Catholicity)

This is not another song about the mountains, except about how hard they are to move. Have you ever stood before them like a mustard seed who’s waiting for some proof? I say faith is a burden: it’s a weight to bear; it’s brave and bittersweet, and hope is hard to hold to. Lord, I believe, only help my unbelief till there’s no more faith; no more hope. I’ll see your face and Lord, I’ll know—I’ll sing your praise and let them go—’cause only love remains.

— Andrew Peterson, No More Faith (Clear To Venus, 2001).

As wonderful as this life can be sometimes, nothing could possibly compare to the day that’s coming. More than anything, my heart cries out:

But, Lord, ‘tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait, the sky, not the grave, is our goal. Oh trump of the angel! Oh voice of the Lord! Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul! And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend…

And sometimes, I want that Day so badly that I can’t sing the last line: “Even so, it is well with my soul.” Because sometimes it’s not well with my soul “even so” (that is, even if the Lord doesn’t “haste the day”). I want sin to be gone; I want to stand face-to-face with my lord and my God in that city he’s been preparing. I’m weary of the pain and disappointment and disease and death that sin has subjected this world to. I want to see everything finally brought into utter subjection to Jesus, the Christ.

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.

— Isaiah 11:6-9 (ESV)

Yesterday we celebrated God’s triumph over Satan, Death and Hell. His victory was total, but it is not yet utter. And so we praise and work and wait and hope, until “…the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death” — 1 Corinthians 15:24-26 (ESV). But until then…

Give us faith to be strong, give us strength to be faithful; this life is not long, but it’s hard. Give us grace to go on, make us willing and able; Lord, give us faith to be strong.

— Andrew Peterson, Faith To Be Strong (Carried Along, 2000).

Wow, I like this! At least, I think I like it. It’s always hard to judge a parody when you’re unfamiliar with the original. I’ve been looking all over the Internet for the Cowboy Bebop intro theme this thing is a parody of, but I can’t find it.

“Class? Anyone? Anyone?”

UPDATE: Silly me! The guy included a link to the Cowboy Bebop intro on this piece’s profile page!

I’m subscribed to an e-mail list run by Revival School, and I just received a great one from them! This is quoted from Chapter 5 of A.W. Tozer’s Paths to Power. It was published in 1911… but it seems just as applicable almost a century later!

To any casual observer of the religious scene today, two things will at once be evident: one, that there is very little sense of sin among the unsaved, and two, that the average professed Christian lives a life so worldly and careless that it is difficult to distinguish him from the unconverted man. The power that brings conviction to the sinner and enables the Christian to overcome in daily living is being hindered somewhere. It would be oversimplification to name any one thing as the alone cause, for many things stand in the way of the full realization of our New Testament privileges. There is one class of hindrances, however, which tends out so conspicuously that we are safe in attributing to it a very large part of our trouble. I mean wrong doctrines or overemphasis on right ones. I want to paint out some of these doctrines, and I do it with the earnest hope that it may not excite controversy, but bring us rather to a reverent examination of our position.

Fundamental Christianity in our times is deeply influenced by that ancient enemy of righteousness, antinomianism. The creed of the antinomian is easily stated:

• “We are saved by faith alone;
• Works have no place in salvation;
• Conduct is works, and is therefore of no importance.
• What we do cannot matter as long as we believe rightly.
• The divorce between creed and conduct is absolute and final.
• The question of sin is settled by the Cross; conduct is outside the circle of faith and cannot come between the believer and God.”

Such, in brief, is the teaching of the antinomian, And so fully has it permeated the Fundamental element in modern Christianity that it is accepted by the religious masses as the very truth of God.

Antinomianism is the doctrine of grace carried by uncorrected logic to the point of absurdity. It takes the teaching of justification by faith and twists it into deformity. It plagued the Apostle Paul in the early Church and called out some of his most picturesque denunciations. When the question is asked, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” he answers no with that terrific argument in the sixth chapter of Romans.

The advocates of antinomianism in our times deserve our respect for at least one thing: their motive is good. Their error springs from their very eagerness to magnify grace and exalt the freedom of the gospel. They start right, but allow themselves to be carried beyond what is written by a slavish adherence to undisciplined logic. It is always dangerous to isolate a truth and then press it to its limit without regard to other truths. It is not the teaching of the Scriptures that grace makes us free to do evil. Rather, it sets us free to do good. Between these two conceptions of grace there is a great gulf fixed. It may be stated as an axiom of the Christian system that whatever makes sin permissible is a foe of God and an enemy of the souls of men.

Right after the first World War there broke out an epidemic of popular (NEW or NEO) evangelism with the emphasis upon what was called the “positive” gospel. The catch-words were “believe,” “program,” “vision.” The outlook was wholly objective. Men fulminated against duty, commandments and what they called scornfully “a decalogue of don’ts.” They talked about a “big,” “lovely” Jesus who had come to help us poor but well-meaning sinners to get the victory. Christ was presented as a powerful but not too particular Answerer of prayer.

The message was so presented as to encourage a loaves-and fishes attitude toward Christ. That part of the New Testament which acts as an incentive toward holy living was carefully edited out. It was said to be “negative” and was not tolerated. Thousands sought help who had no desire to leave all and follow the Lord. The will of God was interpreted as “Come and get it.” Christ thus became a useful convenience, but His indisputable claim to Lordship Over the believer was tacitly canceled out.

Much of the stream of gospel thought has been fouled, and its waters are still muddy. One thing that remains as a dangerous hangover is the comfortable habit of blaming everything on the devil. No one was supposed to feel any personal guilt; the devil had done it, so why blame the sinner for the devil’s misdeeds? He became the universal scapegoat, to take the blame for every bit of human devilry from Adam to the present day. One gathered that we genial and lovable sinners are not really bad; we are merely led astray by the blandishments of that mischievous old Puck of the heavenly places. Our sins are not the expression of our rebellious wills; they are only bruises where the devil has been kicking us around. Of course sinners can feel no guilt, seeing they are merely the victims of another’s wickedness.

Under that kind of teaching there can be no self-condemnation, but there can be, and is, plenty of self-pity over the raw deal we innocent sinners got at the hand of the devil. Now, no Bible student will underestimate the sinister work of Satan, but to make him responsible for our sins is to practice deadly deception upon ourselves. And the hardest deception to cure is that which is self-imposed.

Another doctrine which hinders God’s work, and one which is heard almost everywhere, is that sinners are not lost because they have sinned, but because they have not accepted Jesus. “Men are not lost because they murder; they are not sent to hell because they lie and steal and blaspheme; they are sent to hell because they reject a Saviour.” This short-sighted preachment is thundered at us constantly, and is seldom challenged by the hearers. A parallel argument would be hooted down as silly, but apparently no one notices it: “That man with a cancer is dying, but it is not the cancer that is killing him; it is his failure to accept a cure.” Is it not plain that the only reason the man would need a cure is that he is already marked for death by the cancer? The only reason I need a Saviour, in His capacity as Saviour, is that I am already marked for hell by the sins I have committed. Refusing to believe in Christ is a symptom of deeper evil in the life, of sins unconfessed and wicked ways unforsaken. The guilt lies in acts of sin; the proof of that guilt is seen in the rejection of the Saviour.

If anyone should feel like brushing this aside as mere verbal sparring, let him first pause: the doctrine that the only damning sin is the rejection of Jesus is definitely a contributing cause of our present weakness and lack of moral grip. It is nothing but a neat theological sophism which has become identified with orthodoxy in the mind of the modern Christian and is for that reason very difficult to correct. It is, for all its harmless seeming, a most injurious belief, for it destroys our sense of responsibility for our moral conduct. It robs all sin of its frightfulness and makes evil to consist in a mere technicality. And where sin is not cured power cannot flow.

Another doctrinal hindrance is the teaching that men are so weak by nature that they are unable to keep the law of God. Our moral helplessness is hammered into us in sermon and song until we wilt under it and give up in despair. And on top of this we are told that we must accept Jesus in order that we may be saved from the wrath of the broken law! No matter what the intellect may say, the human heart can never accept the idea that we are to be held responsible for breaking a law that we cannot keep. Would a father lay upon the back of his three year-old son a sack of grain weighing five-hundred pounds and then beat the child because he could not carry it? Either men can or they cannot please God. If they cannot, they are not morally responsible, and have nothing to fear. If they can, and will not, then they are guilty, and as guilty sinners they will be sent to hell at last. The latter is undoubtedly the fact. If the Bible is allowed to speak for itself it will teach loudly the doctrine of man’s personal responsibility for sins committed. Men sin because they want to sin. God’s quarrel with men is that they will not do even that part of the will of God which they understand and could do if they would.

From Paul’s testimony in the seventh chapter of Romans some teachers have drawn the doctrine of moral inability. But however Paul’s inner struggle may be interpreted, it is contrary to the whole known truth to believe that he had been a consistent law-breaker and violator of the Ten Commandments. He specifically testified that he had lived in all good conscience before God, which to a Jew could only mean that he had observed the legal requirements of the law. Paul’s cry in Romans is not after power to fulfill the simple morality of the Ten Commandments, but after inward holiness which the law could not impart.

It is time we get straightened out in our thinking about the law. The weakness of the law was three-fold: (1) It could not cancel past sins – that is, it could not justify; (2) it could not make dead men live – that is, it could not regenerate; (3)it could not make bad hearts good – that is, it could not sanctify. To teach that the insufficiency of the law lay in man’s moral inability to meet its simple demands on human behaviour is to err most radically. If the law could not be kept, God is in the position of laying upon mankind an impossible moral burden and then punishing them for failure to do the impossible. I will believe anything I find in the Bible, but I do not feel under obligation to believe a teaching which is obviously a mistaken inference and one, furthermore, which both contradicts the Scriptures and outrages human reason.

The Bible everywhere takes for granted Israel’s ability to obey the law. Condemnation fell because Israel, having that ability, refused to obey. They sinned not out of amiable weakness, but out of deliberate rebellion against the will of God. That is the inner nature of sin always, willful refusal to obey God. But still men go on trying to get conviction upon sinners by telling them they sinned because they could not help it.

The vogue of excusing sin, of seeking theological justification for it instead of treating it as an affront to God, is having its terrible effect among us. Deep searching of heart and a resolute turning from evil will go far to bring back power to the Church of Christ. Tender, tear-stained preaching on this subject must be heard again before revival can come.

The contradictions observed in the teachings which we have examined here are another cause of weakness. Christians do not, as a rule, enjoy great power until they begin to think straight. Whether or not the Methodists were right on every point they held is an open question; but their leaders had thought things out so clearly that they were not leading the people around in circles. As far as they could see there were no contradictions in their philosophy of faith, and this was a source of real strength to them. The same was true in the Finney revivals. God used Finney to get people thinking straight about religion. He may not have been correct in all his conclusions, but he did remove the doctrinal stalemates and start the people moving toward God. He placed before his hearers a moral either/or, so they could always know just where they stood. The inner confusion caused by hidden contradictions was absent from his preaching. We could use another Finney today.

If you would like to subscribe to the list, send an e-mail with just “subscribe” in the subject line to prophetic@revivalschool.com.

Mike “Plew” Plewiak from Volunteers4Christ and Cornerstone Church of Knoxville just posted this quote he found on Reformation Theology from a sermon that was preached c.180 AD:

[H]e was lifted up upon a tree and an inscription was attached indicating who was being killed. Who was it? It is a grievous thing to tell, but a most fearful thing to refrain from telling. But listen, as you tremble before him on whose account the earth trembled!
He who hung the earth in place is hanged.
He who fixed the heavens in place is fixed in place.
He who made all things fast is made fast on a tree.
The Sovereign is insulted.
God is murdered.
The King of Israel is destroyed by an Israelite hand.
This is the One who made the heavens and the earth,
and formed mankind in the beginning,
The One proclaimed by the Law and the Prophets,
The One enfleshed in a virgin,
The One hanged on a tree,
The One buried in the earth,
The One raised from the dead and who went up into the heights of heaven,
The One sitting at the right hand of the Father,
The One having all authority to judge and save,
Through Whom the Father made the things which exist from the beginning of time.
This One is “the Alpha and the Omega,”
This One is “the beginning and the end”
The beginning indescribable and the end incomprehensible.
This One is the Christ.
This One is the King.
This One is Jesus.
This One is the Leader.
This One is the Lord.
This One is the One who rose from the dead.
This One is the One sitting on the right hand of the Father.
He bears the Father and is borne by the Father.
“To him be the glory and the power forever. Amen.”

Forget what Dan Brown told you: Constantine didn’t create the Christian’s idea of Jesus. It’s true, we’ve believed it the whole time, and it’s never gonna change!

“Am I missing it, or is there an unusual silence in the blogosphere about the Muslim outrage over the cartoons of Mohammed. To me this cries out for the observation that when artists put the crucifix in a flask of urine, Christians were grieved and angered, but not one threatened to kill anyone. Our longing is to convert the blasphemers with the Good News of Christ’s death and resurrection, not kill them. Our faith is based on One who was reviled not just in cartoons but in reality and received it patiently for the salvation of the cartoonists. These riots are filled with intimations about the glorious difference between Christ and Mohammed, and between the way of Christ and the way of Islam. And the cowing of the press around the world and the US government is ominous for the fear we are under of Islam–not just extremist Islam. I do not respect the teachings of Islam which when followed devoutly lead to destruction. So I have been pondering which will take me out first, Islam, Uncle Sam, or cancer. No matter, all authority belongs to Jesus. I just want to bear faithful witness to his glorious gospel of peace to the end.” — John Piper

(Source: Justin Taylor, with thanks to Michelle Malkin for posting the cartoons.)

Thank God for men like John Piper, who aren’t afraid to speak the truth! It is indeed a stark contrast between the reaction of Christians and Muslims in their respective situations.

No, I take that back. I haven’t made a single sale yet.

I’ve opened a CafePress shop and I’ll be starting to stock it with odd things I put together in my spare time. Feel free to look at it as a way of starting the Seitlers’ "our car won’t last forever" fund.

Right now them pickin’s is pretty slim: there’s a shirt likely to appeal only to my immediate family, and then there’s a snarky shirt with a quote from Lincoln about the role of the Judiciary Branch of the United States Federal Government. Maybe I’ll get a "Second MousePad" in there or sumpthin’.

Anyway, toward the end of it (yes, I’m spoiling the ending!) Piper says this:

“My greatest longing in response to this enmity is that Christians walk in the way of the cross. Yes, militant Islam is big and threatening. It may even be the true Quranic Islam. There are alarmists whose whole tone seems to awaken political and even militant responses from Christians. My concern is that as the church we distance ourselves from this kind of response and focus on the truth that we will never spread the Christian faith by the sword. Some Muslims may kill to spread their faith. Some Christians have. But it is not the way of Christ. It is not the way of the cross.”

Amen! I’ve also got a new candidate for my e-mail signature: “We will die to make [Christ] known. But we will not kill to make him known.”

“All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.”

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”

“America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

It’s a shame Presidential figures today don’t talk like that.

As John Piper has said,

“God sent Jesus Christ into the world to save sinners. He did not suffer massive shame and pain because Americans are pretty good people. The magnitude of Christ’s suffering is owing to how deeply we deserve Katrina—all of us.

Our guilt in the face of Katrina is not that we can’t see the intelligence in God’s design, but that we can’t see arrogance in our own heart. God will always be guilty of high crimes for those who think they’ve never committed any.

But God commits no crimes when he brings famine, flood, and pestilence on the earth. "Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?" (Amos 3:6). The answer of the prophet is no. God’s own testimony is the same: "I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things" (Isaiah 45:7). And if we ask, is there intelligent design in it all, the Bible answers: "You meant evil…but God meant it [designed it] for good (Genesis 50:20).

This will always be ludicrous to those who put the life of man above the glory of God. Until our hearts are broken, not just for the life-destroying misery of human pain, but for the God-insulting rebellion of human sin, we will not see intelligent design in the way God mingles mercy and judgment in this world. But for those who bow before God’s sovereign grace and say, "From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever," they are able to affirm, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" (Romans 11:36, 33). And wisdom is another name for intelligent design.

Recently a group of vanguard theologians that the original Hebrew and Greek Bible is thoroughly satirical, and that English translators have bowdlerized it. What a great sin… but restitution has been made! Now you can buy the most literal version of the Holy Bible yet translated!

Introducing The Serrated Edge Study Bible! Now you can “count it all [bleep!] in view of the greatness of knowing Christ.”

Teach your children what it means to be a prophet with The Serrated Edge Study Bible:

Elijah mocked them and said, “cry aloud, for he is a God! Either he is talking, or he is taking a [bleep!].”

(We’re not saying that other translators are wrong—a man’s got to know his limitations.)

Put new life in family devotions with The Serrated Edge Study Bible:

“In calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the whore in the land of Egypt, and she [bleep!] after their [bleep!][bleep!] whose [bleep!] was like the [bleep!] of donkeys, and whose [bleep!] was like the [bleep!] of horses.”

“Father! What do those words mean?”

“Well, honey, let me tell you…”

The Serrated Edge Study Bible’s notes make clear all the satire that the most literal translation can’t. Decode Jesus’ cryptic put-downs…and Saint Paul’s scatological humor…and find every first-century cuss word on the “Saint Peter Profanity Chart.”

Just don’t let your mother see.

It’s track #8, if you’re interested.

Yeah, it’s most likely a joke… but it would be so cool to have a copy.

So if you ask me tonight, “All right, tell us then, what is the unwasted life? What does it look like? What is the essence of the unwasted life�” I just mentioned it: A life that puts the infinite value of Christ on display for the world to see. The passion of the unwasted life is to joyfully display the supreme excellence of Christ by the way we live. Life is given to us so that we can use it to make much of Christ. Possessions are given to us so that by the way we use them, we can show that they are not our treasure, but Christ is our treasure. Money is given to us so that we will use it in a way that shows money is not treasure, but Christ is our treasure.

The great passion of the unwasted life is to magnify Christ. Here is the text that, perhaps more than any other, governs what life is really about: Philippians 1:20-21. Paul says, “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.“

Paul’s all-consuming passion was that in his life and in his death Jesus Christ be honored, that is, that Jesus Christ be made to look like the infinite treasure that he is. The reason you have life is to make Jesus Christ look great. There is one central criterion that should govern all the decisions you make in life and in death: Will this help make Jesus Christ look like the treasure he is?

Left his seamless robe behind
Woke up in a stable crying
Lived and died and rose again
Saviour for a guilty land

It’s a story like a children’s tune
And it’s grown familiar as the moon
So now I ride my camel high
And I’m aiming for the needle’s eye

I chased the wind, but I chased in vain
I chased the earth, but it would not sustain

There’s only one who never fails
To beckon the morning light
There’s only one who sets loose the gale
And ties the trees down tight
When all around my soul gives way
He is all my hope and stay
There’s only one, only one Holy One

Lord, You are my Prince of Peace
But this war brings me to my knees
See there’s a table You’ve prepared
And all my enemies are there
But where my Shepherd leads
Where else can I go?
Who else fills my cup till it overflows?

There’s only one who never fails
To beckon the morning light
There’s only one who sets loose the gales
And ties the trees down tight
To the Solid Rock I fly
Though He bids come and die
There’s only one, only one Holy One

That’s my darling wife right there. I tell ya, it’s stuff like this that I find so endearing. How could I not love a woman who’s an endless source of quotable quotes?

It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s “enormous bliss” of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to “enormous”) comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? not, certainly, for a biscuit tin filled with moss, nor even (though that came into it) for my own past. ??????????? — and before i knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense, everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant by comparison.

The only sin that you can make any progress in defeating in your behavior is a forgiven sin. If you turn that around and say, ‘oh, I want to be forgiven; I need to conquer this sin,’ you will be defeated at every turn.