"Thinking like a slave"

Team Pyro has a great post about why we need to be involved at church, explaining how those who make excuses for not being a part of a church share the same flaw that "every one of them views the Christian life as a process of negotiation."

Another key point:

You see? It's all one. Jesus is Lord, or we are. If we are, He isn't; if He is, we aren't.

You and I need to think like a slave; and not only a slave, but a crucified slave, who has died to his old master, and come to life for another.

Then you and I take our truckload of excuses and rationales and dodges and rationalizations, we say "Yep, I'm going to need help," we take them and ourselves to the Cross, we count ourselves dead to them, we plead for the enabling grace of God...

...and we obey.

View the post here.

Mike McKinley Is On Fire...Figuratively Speaking Of Course......And Some Apologies...

Dear Reginald,

My apologies for sending this to you so soon after my previous correspondence, but I thought that this next post from Mike McKinley on the 9Marks blog was interesting. It concerns the 4th of July in Church.

A quote for you:

I think in our culture the evangelical church (especially the Southern Baptists with our God and Country celebrations) is often synonymous with right-wing patriotism. So I think it doesn't serve the gospel well to make a big show of patriotism in our worship gatherings. My fear is that it will hurt the Christians ("I must be a good Christian, I am a patriot and have a yellow ribbon sticker on my car") and the non-Christians ("Being a Christian means being a good American").

I know that after not corresponding with you for such a long time, and then suddenly bombarding you with these messages, that you must feel quite confused. For that I apologize. I will attempt to be more consistent with my correspondence from this point forward, as long as nothing else distracts me.

Yours Sincerely With The Most Heartfelt of Thanks,
Jason

On Blog Slugs...er...Headlines

Dear Reginald,

I'm going to be perfectly honest, I'm not exactly sure what is going on here, but the title of this blog post from 9Marks caught my eye. I should probably read into it more.

Sincerely Yours,
Jason Michael McGovern

"You can't have a country where everybody lives in a nursing home."

Mohler explains.

To Be Fair...

...There have been quite a few posts here on Tim Keller lately. So, I offer up for your consideration another article (from Team Pyro), which offers up some thoughts on Keller, apologetics, and Hell.

A quote:

In fact, I think the problem with apologetics today is that too much apologetics is too apologetic. Too often, we actually come across as if we're saying, "Yeah, sorry... but I do believe this. Sorry. I know it's lame. It's true for me. You don't have to believe, if you don't want to. That's cool. But there you have it. Uh... Sorry!"

Well, I'm not sorry, and I don't think it's lame. In fact, I think unbelief is lame. Or I wouldn't bother with this whole take-up-your-cross and deny-yourself business of walking after Jesus. And there you have it.

Evangelism Testimony #2

From someone else we know....

(HT: The Shambles)

Train Delays & the Sovereignty of God

New Attitude began publishing gospel-sharing testimonies. The first one just happens to be from someone we know quite well.

Hollywood, the Gospel, and Pyromaniacs

Team Pyro has an interesting article on a recent episode of E.R.

Key quote:

As I've often observed and remarked: the most gifted screenwriters can concoct believable monsters, deviants, heroes, regular-joes, atheists, agnostics, all sorts of characters. But the believable depiction of a full-orbed Christian character is simply beyond them. Evidently they have never known (much less understood nor liked) even one credible, practicing, Biblically-faithful Christian. It's the one color missing from their palate — as starved for ideas as they are.

Calculators & Discernment

Is it just me, or does Tim Challies seem to think discernment is important? My first clue was his book review website, and my second--that he wrote a book about it. Today, Mr. Challies offered some insights on what he hopes people will get from his book. He compared cheating on the discipline of discernment to cheating on long division with a calculator. He says, “Just knowing that discernment is an expectation for all of us is valuable knowledge and something many Christians really do not understand.”

Here are some of his thoughts:

And second to that, I want people to realize that discernment is something we are responsible for as individuals. We cannot simply leave discernment to the experts. Rather, we each need to learn to discern and we each need to grow in the skill of discernment. Like using a calculator for division, we can rely on others to give us the bottom line. But like doing long division, it is far better to do the work ourselves and to ensure we understand how to discern. The theological equivalent of using a calculator may be just Googling what John Piper or John MacArthur says about a certain topic and taking that word as law. It may be asking a parent or pastor and accepting what they say without further thought. We are all prone to want to get to the final tally without going through the intervening steps.

But like the kid who cheats by using a calculator, we cheat ourselves if we do not do the difficult work of discernment. As we discern what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong, we train ourselves to think as Christians and we train ourselves to really understand what discernment is. We make sure that we understand the difficult business of discernment—not only the end result but the process of getting there.