The Gospel for Busy People

If this one line grabs your attention, then consider reading the entire post from Kevin DeYoung here.

"Because the secret of the gospel is that we actually do more when we hear less about all we need to do for God and hear more about all that God has already done for us."

Heavenly Rewards

This spring, while teaching a theology class for people from our church and another church, the topic of heavenly rewards came up. While we could be certain that there are such rewards and that we are encouraged to seek them, it was difficult for us to come to a firm conclusion as to the precise nature of these heavenly rewards. Well

, on our vacation in Florida, at a Family Dollar store, my wife and I disovered exactly what these heavenly rewards are. Here is a picture.

Apparently, Heavenly Rewards are generic Girl Scout cookies. They come in the pictured flavor, as well as thin mint. While it was exciting to find an answer to to a perplexing theological question, I have to admit, after eating most of the box of Heavenly Rewards myself, that they were a bit disappointing.

However, I still hold out hope that naming these cookies Heavenly Rewards was just a lame attempt to sell more low quality cookies - and that the true heavenly rewards are infinitely better, making the sacrifices and the suffering that Jesus calls us to more than worth while (Romans 8:18).

Why bother visiting a nursing home?

There are lots of books and blogs that talk about how to grow your church quickly. I don't think I've seen any of them recommend visiting people in nursing homes. It just doesn't sound like the way to quickly add people to our church, does it?

But that's okay, becuase there is a more important book that DOES recommend visiting people in nursing homes. It's not a book like "How Not to Grow Your Church." It's actually...the Bible. Have you ever read what it says right at the end of the first chapter of James? Verse 26 points out one extreme - worthless religion, which is when someone "thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart."

That's worthless religion. That's as worthless as it gets, as far as religious acts go. So what's the other end of the spectrum? What is the best you could do? The answer might surprise you. James 1:27 says, "Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep onself unstained by the world."

What is the purest form of religion in God's eyes? Visiting orhpans and widows. There are lots of good things that we should all be doing - Bible reading and study, prayer, encouraging other Christians, sharing the Gospel with non-Christians, giving to help the poor, etc. And we shouldn't neglect these things and only visit orphans and widows.

But, for some reason, visiting orphans and widows is an especially pure religious act - at least from God's perspective (what other perspective matters). Maybe it's because visiting orphans and widows is something that we can't get anything material out of. We don't walk away with more money. Maybe it's because visiting orphans and widows shows that we value people simply for being people made in the image of God (therefore valuing the image of God!) even if they can't do anything for us.

God doesn't have James tell us WHY visiting orphans and widows is pure and undefiled religion. But He does have him tell us THAT this is the case. So...do we have to understand WHY in order to do what God teaches us? Or do we just have to understand WHAT he teaches us?

Seeking first God's kingdom...

Between being quite busy and having some vacation time (two extremes!), I haven't posted much here lately. But here is something I read last week while on vacation. I knew I would be preaching this Sunday on Matthew 6:25-34 (Don't worry...seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness and all these things - the necessities of life - will be added to you...). So I was thinking about whether I am really doing that - seeking God's kingdom FIRST. I was challenged by the following quote from John Calvin, which I found in John Piper's book, Legacy of Sovereign Joy. It's the kind of thing that I want to be able to say about myself.

When he was thirty years old, he described an imaginary scene of himself at the end of his life, giving an account to God, and said, “The thing [O God] at which I chiefly aimed, and for which I most diligently labored, was, that the glory of thy goodness and justice . . . might shine forth conspicuous, that the virtue and blessings of thy Christ . . .might be fully displayed.”