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.”

Executed for Distributing the Bible

Foxnews.com has a story about a North Korean woman who was publicly executed last month for distributing the Bible. We ought to pray that God would protect those who face similar threats, be grateful for the courage that she and others show in the face of persecution, and have the courage to use our freedom to spread the same Good News to those around us.

Our Need of Prayer

I was just reading a chapter about prayer in a book for pastors. I was preparing to discuss that chapter tomorrow morning with a small group of other pastors. I'm used to talking about prayer and hearing about the importance of praying - even if I'm not as good a pray-er as I ought to be. There were sections on private prayer for ourselves, praying for those in our churches, praying as part of pastoral visitation or counseling, and public prayer. But it was the final section of the chapter (just two paragraphs) that really caught my attention. The section was titled "Our Own Need of the Prayers of Others."

Quite often, the apostle Paul asked others to pray for him. Here is a sampling:

Romans 15:30-32 - "Now I urge you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me, that I may be rescued from those who are disobedient in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may prove acceptable to the saints; so that I may come to you in joy by the will of God and find refreshing rest in your company."

Ephesians 6:19 - "Pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak."

Colossians 4:3 - "...praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned."

If Paul needed people to pray for him, then we need the prayers of other at least as much. We are pretty good at asking others to pray for others who are in need. And we aren't to bad at asking them to pray for us when we are in a crisis - financial, health, marital, etc. But most of the time, are we seeking to have others pray for us? Do others know how we would like them to pray for us? Sure, when we ask others to pray for us, we can no longer hide the fact that we are not self-sufficient. We reveal our need in general, which is humbling enough, and we may be further humbled by particular needs that we reveal. But wouldn't we rather have people praying for the needs that we actually have, rather than keeping those needs to ourselves?

The closing line in this chapter on prayer is this: "No Christian knows how much he owes to God for the prayers of others, and not least shepherds (meaning pastors) and teachers." So...how do you want people to pray for you? And who are you going to ask to pray for you?

Why does God make us pray?

One question that might have come to mind this Sunday as we talked about how disciples pray and what they pray for, taken from the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:7-15), is this: If God knows what we need even before we ask Him (Matthew 6:8), then what is the point of praying? Why does God wait for us to ask Him instead of just giving us what He knows we need?

That's a good question. And here is my attempt at a brief answer. The most important thing for us is not to simply have the things that we need, but to know and trust and love God. What could happen if God constantly gave us the things that we need without us ever having to pray for them? The Bible suggests some answers.

Deuteronomy 6:10-12 - “Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied, then watch yourself, that you do not forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

Proverbs 30:8-9 - “Give me neither poverty nor riches; Feed me with the food that is my portion, that I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the Lord?” Or that I not be in want and steal, And profane the name of my God.”

What do these scriptures seem to suggest? When things are going well for us, we are prone to forget God, which is about the worst thing that we could ever do. When things go well, we can begin to think that we are the reason that things are going well, or that there is just some law in the universe that makes things go well. But what does prayer do? It keeps us from forgetting God by reminding us that whatever good things we receive are given to us by God.

When God knows what we need before we ask him, but he often waits to give what we need until we ask him, he helps to keep us from forgetting him. At first, making us pray may seem stingy. But when we realize why God makes us pray, we realize that making us pray is one of the kindest things that God could do because it keeps us form one of the biggest mistakes we could ever make - forgetting God.