Serving God with His people at Faith OPC has been a great joy and blessing. When I grow up, I want to umpire Little League Baseball. I will revel on that day when I can say to a 10-year-old boy after four pitched balls, "Take a walk in the sunshine."
My wife of 30+ years, Peggy, consistently demonstrates the love of Christ and remains my very best friend. Our six children, our four lovely, sweetie-pie daughters-in-law, and our four grandchildren serve as resident theologians.
“Researchers George Gallup and Jim Castelli put the problem squarely: ‘Americans revere the Bible--but, by and large, they don't read it. And because they don't read it, they have become a nation of biblical illiterates.’
How bad is it? Researchers tell us that it's worse than most could imagine.
Fewer than half of all adults can name the four gospels. Many Christians cannot identify more than two or three of the disciples. According to data from the Barna Research Group, 60 percent of Americans can't name even five of the Ten Commandments. ‘No wonder people break the Ten Commandments all the time. They don't know what they are,’ said George Barna, president of the firm. The bottom line? ‘Increasingly, America is biblically illiterate.’
Multiple surveys reveal the problem in stark terms. According to 82 percent of Americans, ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ is a Bible verse. Those identified as born-again Christians did better--by one percent. A majority of adults think the Bible teaches that the most important purpose in life is taking care of one's family.
Some of the statistics are enough to perplex even those aware of the problem. A Barna poll indicated that at least 12 percent of adults believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. Another survey of graduating high school seniors revealed that over 50 percent thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. A considerable number of respondents to one poll indicated that the Sermon on the Mount was preached by Billy Graham. We are in big trouble.”
“The ascension of Christ implies his prior humiliation, suffering, and death (Paul can’t talk about Christ ascending without also speaking of his first descending into the depths). But that is over. Now you celebrate the triumph of your Lord.
The bodily ascension affirms that Jesus Christ accomplished a salvation for you that involves the real, tangible world in which you live. Your salvation may be a matter of the heart, but it touches far more than just the heart and mind.
The bodily ascension is particularly important for those of us who hold to the Reformed faith. That comes to the surface in how we view the Lord’s Supper. In contrast to the church of Rome, which teaches that the bread is transformed into the physical body of Christ, and even in contrast to the Lutheran view, which teaches an omnipresent physical body of Christ present in the Lord’s Supper, we affirm that the physical body of Christ has ascended into heaven where he sits at the Father’s right hand. That doesn’t mean that Christ is absent from you. But, rather than depending on his physical presence, he is with you through faith, by his Word and Spirit.”
I have been double-rotten to the core about not posting on the Roger Olson book, Arminian Theology—Myths and Realities (IVP, 2006). This morning I read a bit more—I back-tracked some—and then re-skimmed the Table of Contents and what not.
He says on p. 12 that Arminian as a term is not commonly used in the 21st century. I guess he’s suggesting that that’s true for the man on the street. It’s just not so in the circles where I run. My years at Evangelical Bible Book Store, and here in the OPC, I can pretty much say that there’s not a week that goes by and someone, some where is using the term. Again, in the circles where I run.
I first became acquainted with Arminian positions on salvation via four books: JI Packer’s pamphlet AnIntroductory Essay to John Owen’sThe Death of Death in the Death of Christ, the 1972 publication from Banner of Truth, The Grace of God in the Gospel, by John Cheeseman, Philip Gardner, Michael Sadgrove, Tom Wright (notice, this is the Tom Wright we’ve come to know as the prolific NT Wright), and two books by AW Pink Profiting From the Word and The Sovereignty of God.
Back in 1978 is when a few men got me started reading on the doctrines of grace.
Olson expresses concerns for those who get their Bible teaching, exegesis and theology about Arminianism from Calvinists. He’s writing about me.
For a way to expand your abilities to pray knowledgeably, these guides are the ticket!
In an on-again and off-again way, our family used the Operation World prayer guide around the table at home. Our first four children heard me read from this prayer resource. Also, maybe the kids will remember the map of the world on the wall next to the kitchen table. We have aimed at praying widely over the years.
We first learned of the book at an Urbana Conference years back. Then Evangelical Bible Books started carrying it, and I would talk it up in the store in Escondido.
Folks, this is good stuff. Go to the Operation World site and start making use of the current updates and newsy items---current events and evangelistic and church-related matters---for your prayer watch.
We do puppet ministry here in Grants Pass, and it's fun to learn of practical ways to image His hands and little bodies with the stage, scenery, story, conflict and resolution.
“More than a few Christian thinkers have conceived of God in artistic terms, and regarded the creation as an ongoing drama, with a vast cast of characters, innumerable subplots, and all sorts of conflicts: truth versus falsehood, God versus the Devil, good versus evil. The whole production is heading toward a resolution known only to the Author, but foreshadowed in the Apocalypse, where He is the Author and Finisher, the Alpha and the Omega.
What makes this drama different is that the Author has seen fit to become human, to be born among His characters, then to work, suffer and ultimately die at their hand.
G. K. Chesterton attempted to dramatize this in his play The Surprise, in which the author first performs the action through puppets, who faithfully executes his every command. Subsequently, a shift is made to living, self-willed men and women who manage to make a mess of things. From offstage the author cries: What do you think you are doing to my play? Stop it! I am coming down.”
From The Seductive Image: A Christian Critique of the World of Film by K.L. Billingsley from Crossway Books, 1989
Back 17 years ago, I preached in Lenoir, NC, and really enjoyed the fellowship of the saints. I think around 25-30 folks gathered around the throne of the Lord on that Sunday AM. I am reminded of that time because of Gerrit Dawson’s book Jesus Ascended—The Meaning of Christ’s Continuing Incarnation. Dawson used to pastor in Lenoir; he’s in Baton Rouge now.
With last Sunday’s observance of Ascension Sunday, I have been nosing around in Dawson.
At one point he writes:
“…many of our people [American church folks] feel a sense of separation between their church life and their business, school or private life. Church is soothing after a rough week. People say it helps put things back into perspective. They get reoriented at church, and then go back into the world where a different set of values reign. By the end of the week, they have lost their spiritual footing and feel soul-weary…
…My premise [in this book] is that the church—our local church and churches of the west—needs to recover the meta-narrative of the gospel as a counter-story, indeed a better story to the one the world tells. As we noted in the introduction, the second article of the Apostles’ Creed is a narrative of a dozen dramatic movements. One of those episodes, the ascension, has been sorely neglected in the church’s telling of the story. The silence about this episode cuts us off from the present work of Christ in heaven and from the conclusion of the story—his coming again to judge the living and the dead.”
Do we have this sense of separation—a loss of perspective, as Dawson says, which leads to purposelessness in our day-to-day work and service, because we assume that our Lord’s separation from this world means the same for Him? Is it because we fail to teach and act on Christ’s on-going work regarding the earth, that we lose our way in it too?
The heavenly Man, our Sovereign God and Lord, is very earth-oriented. “He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet…who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us….I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you….A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher…”
Isn’t it this greatness of the gospel’s story that compels us onward? The gospel reverses things—at one time we had no hope, without God in the world; but now Hope lives! Jesus reigns, rules and recovers!
If we trim back the gospel, we’re back to the matter of preaching and teaching a little, narrow story with little, narrow application. What’s the little, narrow thing? We teach that Jesus won our salvation—that He brought us back to God by His mercies, but that’s it. In a little Gospel, we’ve been brought back to God, but not back to the world with God in it.
But with the Ascended Life, the earth is the Lord’s!
Dawson goes on to quote a father in the faith, H. B. Swete, who wrote back around 1900, saying that men who know the Ascended Life know how to live in this world.
The Bible relays the story-line of redemptive history showing that God ordinarily achieves His purposes through weakness; His tools are the weak—particularly, children and youths (see His method with weak men at 1 Cor. 1:18-ff.). They topple the mighty (Psalm 127:4).
From the Old Testament, there’s young Joseph and the nation that is dependent on him; then the ruddy David and his slingshot before Goliath, and you also have the very young Josiah and his reforms—to name but a few. God showcases this work of weakness, and the trajectory arcs over into the New Testament with the work of weakness in the provision of the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of His people. He is the hope—the child of promise—the One upon whom all the saved are dependent (Luke 2:25–32).
The banner theme from the Bible, “God’s strength is made perfect in weakness,” routinely strikes the chord of hope, promise, strength and fruitfulness because the older generation waits on the weakness of the younger one. In this way, the older must serve the younger.
Parents, pastors and youth workers should keep stepping out in hope and confidence for they are the ones rightly aligned with God’s message and method when they’re busy in the discipleship of the younger generations.
God has put His signature on the kids of the kingdom; they are the ones through whom the Lord meets the world head on. Through children, by those underneath, wisdom, the fear of God, is vindicated.
Can stories in the sermon about the pastor’s personal experience be a bad fit?
Notice from acts 17: 22-23, Paul speaks of his walk through the city and what he observed about the Athenians. That’s his sermon starter. Also, in Acts 10, we’re told of Peter’s personal experiences with the Lord—“us who ate and drank with Him…and He commanded us to preach to the people.” In the preaching of John the Baptist, he spoke of his own servanthood: “…but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose…” (Luke 3:16).
True enough—the men of the New Testament weave into their sermons their own life-moments and life-situations, right along with the message of repentance and faith toward Jesus Christ, who was crucified, buried and resurrected.
But it’s good to step back to ask about our use of ourselves in the sermon. Can use of our own life situations for teaching and illustrations get excessive? Are there times when it is like a square peg in a round hole?
It is excessive when it is done in every sermon. You don’t see the apostles in Acts weaving personal testimonies or illustrations in every message. It happens; but not in every message—see Acts 2, Peter’s sermon at Pentecost; Paul’s sermon in Acts 13. Preacher, pace yourself, and make sure you monitor your words about self.
It is a poor fit when forthright words of hard-to-hear applications are necessary. The apostles, no doubt, were bold and direct. When preachers speak about themselves, they avoid the direct, gripping application starter—“you.” Maybe preachers have lost sight of the plain-spoken, riveting use of words for truthful confrontation. Direct, unqualified words give rise to certain emotions. Sometimes those emotions can be best, most faithfully, reached by being blunt. God stirs. He stirs with no-nonsense confrontation. Have you charged your congregation as a father would charge his children (1 Thess. 2:11)?
Story-telling about self can be a thoughtless move away from the story-line and circumstances of the passage. It can be a neglect of helping our people to stand in the shoes of the persons in the biblical text, and those of the first-readers. I grant that it is more natural to remind people of the scene and drama of Joshua at the Jordan or the circumstance of the infirmed man who is helpless at the pool of Bethesda. To be sure, narratives can give word-pictures to use unlike places in the New Testament letters. But ask—how can I seize the circumstances of the events of the passage to drive home the vivid color of the text, leaving myself out of the explanation? Telling the biblical story well or particular parts of it, and telling it to bring people into its drama fosters Bible learning and reflection that promotes the Lord’s work in history.
To routinely speak in a way as to make you the memorable point of the sermon, robs our Triune God of His glory and grace. If we hammer away enough and consistently punctuate the message with our histories, mannerisms, gestures, foibles, responses and reflections—humorous or no—people will get that message. We need to be thoughtful about appropriate self-admission and self-reflection. It can come across as gaining favor, and not being faithful. Maybe you’ve read Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. At one point, he talks about self-addiction. He writes: I was addicted to myself. All I thought about was myself. The only thing I really cared about was myself. I had very little concept of love, altruism, or sacrifice. I discovered that my mind is like a radio that picks up only one station, the one that plays me: K-DON, all Don, all the time.
I have used my own life many, many times in sermons over the years. It takes discernment about the place and propriety of such things.
James Bannerman, the old Scottish pastor, on body life
“According to the arrangement of God, the Christian is more of a Christian in society than alone, and more in the enjoyment of privileges of a spiritual kind when he shares them with others, than when he possesses them apart...The Christian Church was established in the world, to realize the superior advantages of a social over an individual Christianity; and to set up and maintain the communion of the saints.”
J. Bannerman, from the early 1800s, in his 2 vol. set, The Church of Christ, Vol. 1: pages 91-92.
God has made me ready to read something like this, and embrace it. He’s worked on me in this respect for the past 10 years or more. Don’t take me wrong. I have always been a man devoted to the church, but not one dependent on her. I’ve not been one to see that I can only rightly, with great, great enjoyment possess Christ and His benefits in the context of the utter necessity of being dependent on others.
Bannerman says, “superior advantages;”there are higher, deeper things as the church breathes and lives together, as the called-out, gathered people.
O God, give me more repentance from my individualistic superiority. G. Mark Sumpter
Registration is now open for the 2010 National Bible Bee competition.
If you’re in the South Central Oregon, Southern Oregon, Northern California areas, and would like more information, see our link right here.
Email us, Mark and Peggy Sumpter here: mpsumpter@gmail.com. To register for the Grants Pass Bible Bee, go here.
What is the Bible Bee?
The National Bible Bee Competition is a series of events designed to help parents encourage diligence in Bible study, Scripture memorization, and prayer in their families. There are two focal points: 1) Bible memorization and Bible knowledge competition held at Local Bible Bees organized by volunteer Hosts and Local Event Teams in various locations throughout the United States. 2) The National Bible Bee competition for the 300 top-scoring contestants from the Local Bible Bees. Family discipleship is reinforced during the time leading up to these events through planned voluntary social interactions around the Word, memory verse games, and Christian fellowship.
Where are the Bible Bee Contests held?
Local Bible Bees will be held in churches, schools, universities, and community centers across the United States on Saturday, August 28th, 2010.
The National Bible Bee Contest will take place at the Renaissance Hotel and Conference Center in Schaumburg, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, on November 11-13, 2010.
Who can participate in the Bible Bee? On May 1, 2010, families may begin to register their children and youth who will be 7 to 18 years of age as of November 13, 2010. Contestants will compete in one of three age divisions: Primary (ages 7-10), Junior (11-14) or Senior (15-18).
How is the Bible Bee set up?
Contestants at the Local Contests will participate in a Preliminary Oral Round in which they have 10 minutes to recite up to 30 Bible verses or passages from their age division’s level(s) in front of two judges. They will also complete a 200-question Written Test Round, which tests their comprehension of the memory verses as well as their understanding of a specified book of the Bible.
The scores from the Preliminary Oral Round and Written Test Round determine which contestants move on to the Final Challenge Round, an onstage, sudden-elimination oral round. The winners of the Final Challenge Round in each age division win their Local Bible Bee.
The scores from the Local Preliminary Oral and Written Test Rounds are also tabulated to determine the top 100 contestants nationally in each age division, who are then invited to compete in the National Bible Bee Contest.
The contestants’ ranking in the Local Final Challenge Round does not affect this selection.The National Bible Bee Contestants are challenged with another Preliminary Oral Round and Written Test Round, structured just like the Local Contests; the top-scoring youth from these two rounds move on to the Semi-Final Challenge Round, another onstage, sudden-elimination oral event.
The final five contestants from each age division who remain standing in the Semi-Final Challenge Round will advance to the Final Challenge Round; this exciting, sudden-elimination oral round in front of thousands of Bible Bee family members will determine the 2010 National Bible Bee winners.
What are the rewards for being in the Bible Bee?
The greatest reward is your family drawing closer to the Lord and closer to one another as you study God’s word together, memorize Scripture and pray together. Local Event Teams may choose to arrange awards and/or prize money for their Local Bible Bee winners. The top National Bible Bee winners are awarded from $5,000 up to $100,000 according to their Final Challenge Round rank and age division.
I read this three or four days ago from the commentary on the Larger Catechism from Johannes Vos on Q. 60.
Here’s the question in view:
Q. 60. Can they who have never heard the gospel, and so know not Jesus Christ, nor believe in him, be saved by their living according to the light of nature?
A. They who, having never heard the gospel, know not Jesus Christ, and believe not in him, cannot be saved, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, or the laws of that religion which they profess; neither is there salvation in any other, but in Christ alone, who is the Savior only of his body the church.
Vos expands on this subject matter, and he applies it to ministry to persons with disabilities:
What further hope may we have for the salvation of some of the heathen?
ANSWER: “See the Confession of Faith, 10.3 (second sentence), which refers to other persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word. This refers to persons born mentally deficient. It is certainly possible that some or even all of such people will be among the saved although they are incapable of coming to understand and believe the gospel. ”
These words from Vos remind me of the time at New Life OPC in Escondido, CA we had a strong ministry to the disabled. They were gifts from Jesus Christ to our congregation back then. The ministry of the Word was strong to them, and they were in regular worship with us. Maybe it should be said that we joined them in worship! The congregation offered cups of cold water to them. It was a great ministry.
I know that in the Reformed world we have to keep working hard on learning how to minister to disabled persons—to present the gospel to them well and to administer the sacraments to them as faithfully as we can.
I think a proper and fitting manner and attitude of ministry to disable persons is to err on the side of graciousness and support to such ones. Extending ourselves to baptize them into the covenant; and to reach them with the Word and the administration of the Lord’s Supper seems fitting.
Jesus told the story of the banquet, see Luke 14:
12He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
Would it be in line with Scripture to welcome to the Lord and His feast disabled persons, who, like these others in the story from Jesus, cannot repay?
Maybe there are churches and para-church ministries that have insight on this area of gospel work. I know that the Christian Reformed Church has had a strong ministry to mentally disabled persons for two or three decades now.
“Because evangelicals articulate salvation in such individualistic terms and because modern science and individual reason carry such authority for evangelicals, we do not need the body of Christ for daily victorious Christian existence. In some ways, frankly, we can do without it. We don't need the church to live salvation because we have personal salvation augmented by reason, science, and immediate (charismatic) experience. The church is left with nothing else to do but distribute information, goods, and services to individual Christians. And so, for evangelicals, the church in essence is left to be a sideshow of what God is doing for, in and through individuals. Because of our modernism, we no longer have a need for the church to be the social manifestation of his lordship where he reigns over the powers of sin, evil, death, the prolepsis, the very inbreaking of the kingdom of God.”
Where do we first go for learning proper critique of movies?
“For the first time in human history, the stories are told not by parents, not by the school, not by the church, not by the community or tribe and in some cases not even by the native country but by a relatively small and shrinking group of global conglomerates with something to sell.” Media analyst George Gerbner
I don’t buy it, figuratively nor physically.
Gerbner over-reaches in this comment. It’s too, too technologically, consumer-digitally-driven.
Stories are always generated and passed on by the culture-shaping influence of the home, the church, the schools, the artists, writers, teachers, counselors, and others.
I think it would be more accurate to say: nowadays, we have the means to disseminate the stories quickly and widely. In this way, those who are pushing things onto the consumer public have the quick-draw ability. That’s important and measureable and attention-getting for popular culture, but that’s all. Faddish things are faddish, and they make money.
Still the best stories are told by the best story-tellers, not marketers.
In the book, Eyes Wide Open: Looking God in Popular Culture, William Romanowski of Calvin College comes so very close to locating a grid for a proper, faithful critique of art, theater, movies, literature and such using the service of the gathered people of God for public worship.
But he misses the mark.
He sweeps the effort of movie critique under the rug of the totality of living for the Lord. In essence, if you want to learn to discern, remember all of life is under God’s Lordship. He owns it all and rules it all. Since He is owner, redeemer, sustainer and ruler, then, all needs to be seen through the lens of what He says about it. True and helpful.
Romanowski quotes Romans 12:1-2, but only as a world-view grid.
He fails to tap into the passage as a worship-grid. He writes: “As living sacrifices, all the activities of life—including engagement with the popular arts—make up our spiritual worship of God (Rom. 12:1).”Look at movies with the eyes of faith. Take up the call to discern as a form of worship; it’s your stewardship to do so. In short, do all your movie evaluating—do everything, unto the glory of God. That’s fine.
But what about the culture-shaping role of public worship on Sunday? I take the Romans 12:1-2 passage as the one-two punch. 1) First offer your bodies. 2) Be transformed with mind-renewal. Worship transforms. Worship shapes. Worship makes disciples. Worship will shape us week after week for renewal—a renewal either after God, for God or after man, for man and his worldliness.
The hope and basis for growth in good story-telling is in good liturgy. The hope and basis for growth in sound, faithful critique of movies is in good, sound, faithful liturgy.
I am hoping to get more and more into volumes that promise movie-watching helps and guides for being armed for critiques. The two pictured here might be ones to lean on. Do you know of others?
Go...Baptizing...Teaching Jesus commissioned His church, “And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. Matthew 28:18-20.
In what way are the activities of administering water baptism and biblical and theological teaching unto obedience connected in the Great Commission?
DA Carson, New Testament man out of Trinity Divinity School, takes baptism and teaching as what shapes, what characterizes responsible disciple making. He says … “baptism and teaching are not the means of making disciples, but they characterize it. Envisaged is that proclamation of the gospel that will result in repentance and faith, for matheteuo (“I disciple”) entails both preaching and response. The response of discipleship is baptism and instruction…[to show more about this idea of what characterizes disciple-making, Carson finishes]… it would certainly misconstrue the text to absolutize the division between discipleship and baptism-instruction…”
I think Carson is reminding us of the church’s task, I think that’s his point. Other passages in the New Testament will tell us more about the means and ingredients of discipleship growth, etc. In Matthew 28:19, Jesus commissions His church setting forth the task at hand.
But note that baptism and teaching hang together. They work together making up the church’s task, which is shaping, forming, building and crafting disciples.
Christian parents bring their young children to be baptized and then instruct them in the ways of Christ. Evangelists and pastors baptize and instruct the many, who were once outside of the church and apart from the sound of the message of mercy, and these servants as well carry out the command to make disciples.
Many have rightly seen baptism as the first-step in discipleship; it’s the initiatory step. Then what follows is instruction. John Calvin and others along the way have taught that disciples are to understand their baptism, to know it, to know its significance, and to live it out. Baptism is the rudder of the Christian faith and life—it signifies and seals the promises of God’s work for us in Jesus Christ. We’re in-grafted into the Lord, and thereby, dead to sin and alive to Him, and that directs us unto the whole, full way of life, and calling and eternal destiny.
Faithful disciple-making instruction aims to open up the full curriculum of baptism. Discipleship is the life-long task and experience of learning of the significance of our baptism. Life in Christ, life together, life for the world, life against the world—it’s a life-long walk.
Baptism and leaning unto obedience work together, they hang together in the disciple-making process. They sound like the happy dialog between the cello and viola sections of an orchestra.
This is a good word that fits nicely with a small group Bible discussion group we take part in here in GrantsPass. We’re going through the book Unfashionable on Sunday nights.
“I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world.”
John 17:15
It is a sweet and blessed event which will occur to all believers in God’s own time--the going home to be with Jesus. In a few more years the Lord’s soldiers, who are now fighting “the good fight of faith” will have done with conflict, and have entered into the joy of their Lord. But although Christ prays that His people may eventually be with Him where He is, He does not ask that they may be taken at once away from this world to heaven. He wishes them to stay here. Yet how frequently does the wearied pilgrim put up the prayer, “O that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest;”Christ does not pray like that, He leaves us in His Father’s hands, until, like shocks of corn fully ripe, we shall each be gathered into our Master’s garner. Jesus does not plead for our instant removal by death, for to abide in the flesh is needful for others if not profitable for ourselves. He asks that we may be kept from evil, but He never asks for us to be admitted to the inheritance in glory till we are of full age. Christians often want to die when they have any trouble. Ask them why, and they tell you, “Because we would be with the Lord.” We fear it is not so much because they are longing to be with the Lord, as because they desire to get rid of their troubles; else they would feel the same wish to die at other times when not under the pressure of trial. They want to go home, not so much for the Savior’s company, as to be at rest.
Now it is quite right to desire to depart if we can do it in the same spirit that Paul did, because to be with Christ is far better, but the wish to escape from trouble is a selfish one. Rather let your care and wish be to glorify God by your life here as long as He pleases, even though it be in the midst of toil, and conflict, and suffering, and leave Him to say when “it is enough.”
Faith is the knowledge of what God has done for us in Christ, the confidence that this is a true, historical fact, and the assurance that, by this saving work of Christ in history, we are accepted before God apart from anything that we have done. This is why God gives us the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper to confirm our faith in his gospel and to seal us in its promises.
The blessing of gathering to ready ourselves for the Lord's Day
One of the most impressive things about traveling to Israel last year centers on their Jewish sabbath-keeping. Noteworthy is the attention given to food. Set your watch by the celebratory merry-making and communion of the meal on late Friday afternoons.
Jeremy and I noticed the tables in the main receiving hall at the Kibbutz where we stayed were moved, and the computer was put away. The stainless steel warmers came out brimming over with prepared yummies galore. I will always treasure the Sabbath preparation and celebration; it all started at about 3:00 P.M.-ish.
The Hebrew class we were taking made a point of having wine at our Friday, Shabbat class. Our teachers were all evangelical folks from States-side evangelical colleges and seminaries. Loads and loads of fun and learning.
On our side of things in Grants Pass, we've been having Sabbath House from 6:30 to 9:30 P.M. on Saturday evenings. We've been going at this since last September, 2009. People drop in, and can come and go as they please. We share a meal, sing hymns and psalms, read a story and play games. It's been great!
June 1st is around the corner, do you want to kick-start your Bible reading---again?! I do. 
