Hearing God’s Voice
First, watch the two videos and then keep reading…
Those videos really resonate with me. I know what it is like to be deaf and then hear. I know what it like to have so many “voices” drown out the voice of the Father.
Voices that say things like…
“You will never be good enough for God’s love.”
“You have blown it too many times to be used by God.”
“God loves you but He doesn’t really like you right now.”
For some of us, those voices are the soundtracks of our lives…constantly playing over and over keeping us in a constant state of bondage.
The question is, “Whose voice will you listen to?”
Will you listen to the voice of the Father Who loves to speak truth?
Or will you listen to the other voices?
Let me give you a challenge… Below are ten spaces and in those spaces I want you to write 10 scriptural truths that God says about you.
Then, spend the next few days contemplating your list and rooting out the lies that you have believed that contradict the truth of God…I will go first
1 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 2 Cor. 5:17
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Until next time…
Darin
The Church of Your Dreams
It has been my experience that everyone who comes to a church has an agenda. Given enough time, it will eventually emerge. I know that sounds like a bad thing but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes, agendas can be good. Jesus Himself, while on Earth, was consumed with a singular agenda…”to do the will of Him who sent Me.”
For the past few weeks, we have been talking a whole lot about the church we believe God wants us to be. In fact, 2012 is going to be the year we attempt to really flesh this out. This means we are going to have to change some things. This means that some old agendas have to die and some newer ones have to take center stage. This calls for both humility and courage. Faith and determination.
In the middle of all of this, may we not forget what the church really is. The church isn’t programs or meetings or buildings. The church is people… it is us…you and me. This reality is what makes church so exciting and messy at the same time. Each one of us, in our own unique way, contribute to the beautiful mosaic that God is creating called “Horizon.”
I want to end with a short blog post from Ray Ortlund that I read today. It was so refreshing to me that I wanted to share it with you. You may be wondering what the church of my dreams looks like…this is a snapshot. This is really what I hope for us!
Until next time…
Gospel + Safety + Time
by Ray Ortlund
It’s what everyone needs. Everyone. Gospel + safety + time. A lot of gospel + a lot of safety + a lot of time.
Gospel: good news for bad people through the finished work of Christ on the cross and the present power of the Holy Spirit. Multiple exposures. Constant immersion. Wave upon wave of grace and truth, according to the Bible.
Safety: a non-accusing environment. No finger-pointing. No embarrassing anyone. No manipulation. No oppression. No condescension. But respect and sympathy and understanding, where sinners can confess and unburden their souls.
Time: no pressure. Not even self-imposed pressure. No deadlines on growth. No rush. No hurry. But a lot of space for complicated people to rethink their lives at a deep level. If we relax, trusting in God’s patience, we actually get going.
This is what our churches must be: gentle environments of gospel + safety + time. It’s the only way anyone can ever change.
Who doesn’t need that?
Grace from Beginning To End
Always challenged and encouraged by Tullian. He always makes me think!
Enjoy!
Darin
Might As Well Face It, You’re Addicted To Law
I’ll never forget hearing Dr. Doug Kelly (one of my theology professors in seminary) saying in class, “If you want to make people mad, preach law. If you want to make them really, really mad preach grace.” I didn’t know what he meant then. But I do now.
The law offends us because it tells us what to do–and we hate anyone telling us what to do, most of the time. But, ironically, grace offends us even more because it tells us that there’s nothing we can do, that everything has already been done. And if there’s something we hate more than being told what to do, it’s being told that we can’t do anything, that we can’t earn anything–that we’re helpless, weak, and needy.
The law, at least, assures us that we determine our own destiny.
The law does promise life to me,
If my obedience perfect be. (Ralph Erskine)
This we understand. And we like it. We like it because we maintain control–the outcome of our life remains in our hands. Give me three steps to a happy marriage and I can guarantee myself a happy marriage if I follow the three steps. If we can do certain things, meet certain standards (whether God’s, my own, my parents, my spouse’s, society’s, whatever) and become a certain way, we’ll make it. Law seems safe because “it breeds a sense of manageability.” It keeps life formulaic and predictable. It keeps earning-power in our camp.
The logic of law makes sense.
The logic of grace, on the other hand, doesn’t.
Grace is thickly counter-intuitive. It feels risky and unfair. It turns everything that makes sense to us upside-down. Like Job’s friends, we naturally conclude that good people get good stuff and bad people get bad stuff. The idea that bad people get good stuff seems irrational and wrongheaded on every level. It offends our deepest sense of justice and rightness.
Grace is not rational…The gospel of grace throws our glory train off its tracks. Instead of calculating, mastering, and determining, we find ourselves completely helpless, left with no option but to fall into the everlasting arms of the God who could consume us in his wrath but instead embraces us in his Son. (Mike Horton)
So, it doesn’t surprise me at all when I hear people react to grace with suspicion and doubt. It doesn’t surprise me that when people talk about grace, I hear lots of “buts and brakes”, conditions and qualifications. That’s just the flesh fighting for its life, after all. As Walter Marshall says in his book The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, “By nature, you are completely addicted to a legal method of salvation. Even after you become a Christian by believing the Gospel, your heart is still addicted to salvation by works…You find it hard to believe that you should get any blessing before you work for it.”
Because we are natural born do-it-yourselfers–God-wannabes–(and have been since Genesis 3), the vitriol reaction to unconditional grace is understandable. Grace generates panic because it wrestles both control and glory out of our hands. This means that the part of you that gets angry and upset and mean and defensive and slanderous and critical and skeptical and feisty when you hear about grace is the very part of you that needs to be reckoned dead. That’s where mortification begins–it begins with that part of us that hates grace.
But while I’m not surprised when I hear venomous rejoinders to grace (the flesh is always resistant to “It is finished”), I am saddened when the very pack of people that God has unconditionally saved and continues to sustain by his free grace are the very ones who push back most violently against it. Some professing Christians sound like ungrateful children who can’t stop biting the very hand that feeds them. It amazes me that you will hear great concern from inside the church about “too much grace” but rarely will you ever hear great concern from inside the church about “too many rules.” Why? Because we are by nature glory-hoarding, self-centered control freaks. That’s why.
It’s high time for the church to honor God by embracing sola gratia anew–the “high-octane grace that takes our conscience by the scruff of the neck and breathes new life into us with a pardon so scandalous that we cannot help but be changed…For many of us the time has come to abandon once and for all our play-it-safe, toe-dabbling Christianity and dive in” (Dane Ortlund). It is time, as Robert Farrar Capon put it, to get drunk on grace. Two hundred-proof, defiant grace.
It’s scandalous and scary, unnatural and undomesticated…but it’s the only thing that can set us free and light the church on fire.
God, Horizon and You!
Yesterday, we started a new series in our morning worship service called “God, Horizon and You!” To me this is more than a message series…it is the foundation of what I believe God wants to do in and through our church. I believe it is who God wants us to be! I think if you will be passionate about being faithful to church these next couple of weeks, there will be no confusion on your part about how to move deeper in your life with God.
Yesterday, I talked at length about what we believe the mission and purpose of God is behind everything. I believe the biblical answer to this question is the GLORY OF GOD! God’s desire is that His people continually proclaim the goodness of His glorious name in and through everything. Everything God does is in pursuit of that one goal. My challenge to all of us…including myself…was to think about what our lives really reflect. Do I reflect the glory of GOD or the glory of ME?
I want to encourage you to be in church this Sunday because two important things are going to happen that will help us moving forward. First, we are going to talk about the mission of the church. If God is about His glory then it only makes sense to say that His people, the church, should be committed to the same thing. How do we as a local church carry this out? Second, our theme for 2012 is “Living Life Around the Cross!” This is not just a catchy slogan…this phrase is going to direct who we are for 2012 and beyond. As part of this effort, we are going to take a spiritual vitality / life / devotion assessment on Sunday. We will give this assessment out on Sunday morning. This assessment will serve as the foundation for you to understand where your spiritual life is strong and where are the areas that you are out of balance. You really don’t want to miss it!
Lastly, let me also say that I passionately believe that while we should be about God’s mission, we will never be successful without God’s help. So much of what God is asking of us is impossible outside of His divine aid. Because I believe this so passionately, this Wednesday night will be a time of extended prayer. We will humble ourselves before God and do the most important thing that our church will do this year…ask God for His help! There will be no teaching and no Kid’s Connection…just prayer. We will continue to have these special prayer services on the first Wednesday night of every month for 2012. If there is anything that our church does that you should be at…it is these services. We really have no right to expect God’s blessing if we don’t care enough to ask. I can’t think of a better way to pursue God’s glory than this…we will start at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday…see you there!
Darin
See You On Christmas Morning
Someone once said…”the more things change, the more they stay the same.” I think that is so true, especially at Christmas time. For hundreds of years, the question in the minds of Christians is how do we maintain a balance between Christmas as a cultural holiday and Christmas as a celebration of the birth of our Savior.
Four hundred years ago, Christians in America refused to celebrate Christmas because they believed that it wasn’t commanded in Scripture and they began to see what we are trying to resist today…the excessive materialism at Christmas time. Because of this, they actually cancelled church services on Christmas day.
Today Christians have taken a different stance. The struggle these days is not if the church should celebrate Christmas…almost all do. The struggle seems to be whether or not the stores that we buy our gifts in say “Merry Christmas” vs “Happy Holidays”. Almost daily I receive emails asking me to refuse to shop in certain stores because they say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. I have to wonder if this fight is nothing more than slapping the name of Jesus on our excessive materialism so that we feel justified in spending so much money on things that will be forgotten in three months.
I am not saying don’t enjoy Christmas the cultural holiday. Buy gifts, go to parties, eat good food and enjoy your family…I know I will. Just remember that those things are not ultimate. They are not worthy of our worship.
As a Christian, we know that Christmas is more than a cultural holiday. Christmas stands as a reminder to us of the grace of God revealed as a baby in a manger. Christmas stands as the fulfillment of the promise God made in Genesis 3…that One would come and ultimately crush the head of the Serpent. According to John 1, Christmas is about shining the Light in dark places.
The next time the worker at Best Buy (or where ever) says “Happy Holidays” don’t go into automatic defense mode and correct them. Instead, quietly thank God, that in His goodness, He revealed His grace to you and that He would do that same for this worker. Pray the this worker…your friends…your neighbors…your co-workers would see beyond the cultural holiday to the Baby lying in a manger.
Honestly, if you have any hope of this happening, it has to start with you. So on Christmas morning, where will you be and what will you be doing? For goodness sakes, don’t forget to go to church!
See you on Christmas morning at 10:30!
Darin
