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.
God's Total Book for Telling it All, for Telling it Well
This is vintage Alan Bloom on the unraveling of the centrality of the Bible for all in American life:
“In the United States, practically speaking, the Bible was the only common culture, one that united simple and sophisticated, rich and poor, young and old, and--as the very model for a vision of the order of the whole of things, as well as the key to the rest of Western art, the greatest works of which were in one way or another responsive to the Bible--provided access to the seriousness of books. With its gradual and inevitable disappearance, the very idea of such a total book and the possibility and necessity of world-explanation is disappearing.”
“...Satan puts all his efforts into getting the Christian busy, busy, buy, but not producing.
Men, where is you man? Women, where is your woman? Where is the one whom you led to Christ and who is now going on with Him?
...The curse today is that we are too busy. I am not talking about being busy earning money to buy food. I am talking about being busy doing Christian things. We have spiritual activity with little productivity.” This is lights out theology from the Navigators founder, Dawson Trotman.
About four weeks ago at Classical Conversations, I overheard a mild debate over the proper grammatical use of shall.
Someone pinpointed it: Wow, if we abide by traditional grammar on the use of shall, then maybe Queen has misled a whole generation!
Here are the words to their 1977 legend:
Aah Buddy you're a boy make a big noise Playin' in the street gonna be a big man some day You got mud on yo' faceYou big disgrace Kickin' your can all over the placeSingin'
We will we will rock you We will we will rock you
Question: Does Queen get it wrong with the chorus, We will, we will rock you?
“For formal English, there is a rule which states that in the Simple Future, the auxiliary shall should be used in the first person, and the auxiliary will should be used in the second person and third person. Like the auxiliary will, the auxiliary shall is a modal auxiliary. Thus, in formal English, the Simple Future of the verb to work may be conjugated as follows:
I shall work
you will work
he will work
she will work
it will work
we shall work
they will work”
The future tense in the first person, we, takes shall, and that indicates simple futurity. Queen, therefore, should have used shall. However, grammarians also say will is permitted when stating a promise, intent, or obligation.
Were they singing about something more than simple futurity? If they were promising to rock, intending to rock, then Queen was in the right.
About 45 minutes ago, someone on KLDR radio Grants Pass torqued the volume on the Queen tune, and it reminded me of the will/shall discussion.
The writer and humorist, James Thurber, wrote: “Men who use shall west of the Appalachians are the kind who twirl canes and eat ladyfingers.”
12 saying: “ I will declare Your name to My brethren;In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.”
13 And again:“I will put My trust in Him.”
And again:“Here am I and the children whom God has given Me.”
14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. 16 For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham.
Does the writer offer a focused pattern of his instruction in this text? It seems so. He moves from our Lord's presence with His people in worship, vs. 12; then to a general affirmation of Christ's trust, vs. 13a, and then back to worship, His being close in identifying with His people, vs. 13b.
There's the centrality of worship, first; take note, Jesus is singing with His people, and then the outflow of faith and faith's life with others--He's not ashamed of worship and life with His children.
The passage shows the pace-setting grid of worship; Jesus Himself took on this pattern. He gave focus on His Father, and then focus on His brethren.
It is worship that provides influential life-training and discipleship.
The words, “Fear not” appear one hundred times in the Bible. This doesn't mean there are no real and present dangers in our lives—things that are sensible to fear. What it does mean is that God does not want us to be immobilized by fear. Instead, He wants us to trust His presence, His love, His protection, and His sovereignty over our fearful circumstances. He wants us to focus on His promises rather than on the circumstances that terrify us. He knows just what we can bear. He also knows how much each difficult situation will stretch us and deepen our faith in Him.
Peter Lee OPC Pastor in Maryland Preaching On Facebook
Today the Washington, D.C. area is digging out of the ginormous blizzard of 2010. Some areas are reporting anywhere from 25 to 40 inches of snow!OPC pastor, Peter Lee, in the Riverhill area of Howard County, just outside of Columbia, MD has a 7 1/2 minute feed of video of preaching God's Word. He's ministering to his parishioners of Living Hope OPC who are experiencing a forced sabbath--they're staying home due to the white stuff.
Listening is an active labor, a learned skill, not a passive silence as though two were taking turns at the same game. False listening is waiting for the other to finish; good listening is waiting on the other while he or she speaks, as good servants, with intense attention, wait on their employers. It is a busy service.
From the book, As For Me and My House by Walter Wangerin, Jr. p. 166
Back in 1969 and 70, I can remember riding my skateboard from Spenard, the airport area of Anchorage, to downtown. I guess I was probably 12 or 13. Usually it would be an early Saturday morning, obviously in the summer time.
I went downtown to browse the books at the Book Cache on 4th Avenue. I remember walking the aisles in the philosophy section and picking up Rollo May. I really didn’t follow his presentation much, but I liked his pithy quotes. For some reason I was drawn to sentimental, gooey philosophy and psychology. It’s a bit stunning to think what influences 12 and 13 year olds. Here are some of his quotes from the internet.
Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness. Rollo May
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing. Rollo May
Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair. Rollo May
Depression is the inability to construct a future. Rollo May
Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves. Rollo May
Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is. Rollo May
Wikipedia informs us that May graduated from Union Theological Seminary of New York in 1938 with a Bachelor of Divinity. So, his later psychology stems from mixtures of religion and philosophy. Union has reeked with humanism since the days of the German critical influence on its Bible department (1870s-1890s). What does this mean? Essentially, the Bible is a product of the human mind.
Theologian Paul Tillich, one of Rollo May’s teachers at Union, for example, taught that the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is impossible, but the story of Christ rising from the dead restores dignity to Him. After all, remember all the good things Jesus did. It makes a useful, helpful conclusion to His story. Good feelings and human concerns get a measure of satisfaction if in your mind His rising from the dead is true. People of this sort think it to be true, and so, if it’s true in your mind, put your thoughts down into a story. That’s what the apostles did, Tillich taught.
The apostles had lived with Jesus for the three years. When He was arrested, crucified and buried in the tomb they knew Him as He was. So, in order to have the dignity of Christ restored in their own thinking, and in order to have a message for the world around them, the apostles produced gospels and letters (the NT).
Writing the stories about Jesus was good, and it was a help with the concerns, anxieties and needs of the apostles. It is theology based on feeling, not statements of historical truth.
If you go back over the quotes by May, you’ll see this liberal theology unpinning. May wants to weave personal quests, adventure and purpose into humanitarian effort, being wishful and hopeful. It’s about getting more and more into yourself in order to find a story that satisfies your anxieties. It’s meaning found within.
So, back there at that time in Anchorage, a 12 or 13 year old was poking a nose into some of Rollo May’s writings trying to find answers to anxieties and concerns.
Man too readily looks inward for help. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. Proverbs 16:25.
Wise parents search continually for help and encouragement, for counsel and guidance, and maybe we've been overlooking a glorious gift from God that is right under our nose each Lord's Day. Fathers and mothers are sitting on the proverbial gold mine with lessons for nurture and training from public worship.
Just as the force of gravity provides energy—pulling objects toward the ground, whether we've planned it that way or not—so worship provides energy for parental nurture. By faith, this energy can be harnessed for godliness, for world-and-life-view training for our children and youth.
Worship as Dialog
Perhaps you've heard of the dialogical principle of worship. Parents, you might explain it to your children as the friendship principle of worship. God speaks to his people, and then we respond. Like two friends, God and his people take turns speaking and listening through the parts or elements of public worship. He welcomes us and tells us who he is and what he has done…(for complete article)
Obedience showing faith and faith showing obedience: like a child serving his father
God summoned Adam to walk in faith, to live out of the communion he enjoyed with his God and Father. Notice Calvin’s own point about proving out, showing forth, the gift of faith that he already had. Calvin’s words are helpful with respect to holding together the notions of Adam’s sonship-walk and a test of his faith, the probation at the tree in the Garden.
Calvin writes: “We must, therefore, look deeper than sensual intemperance. The prohibition to touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a trial of obedience, that Adam, by observing it, might prove his willing submission to the command of God. For the very term shows the end of the precept to have been to keep him contented with his lot, and not allow him arrogantly to aspire beyond it. The promise, which gave him hope of eternal life as long as he should eat of the tree of life, and, on the other hand, the fearful denunciation of death the moment he should taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, were meant to prove and exercise his faith.”
16th Century French Reformer, John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.1.4
Tomorrow night, the Lord willing, several of us from Grants Pass are going to a Kamloops-Portland WHL, Junior A game. Yow-za.
I’m looking forward to meeting a forward for Kamloops, C.J. Stretch. He’s a relative of family in our Grants Pass area. This picture and the one below is C.J.
Right now, I’m listening to singer John Ondrasik (On drah sick); he’s likely most famous for his hit Superman (It’s Not Easy). His band turns heads with the name Five For Fighting. Ondrasik, a southern California boy, loves ice hockey. He’s an LA Kings fan. The Five For Fighting handle comes from the infraction of having to sit down for 5 minutes in the sin bin (a.k.a penalty box) after the fisticuffs.
Ondrasik on hockey:
NHLF: You spoke on the NHL Live radio show about how you think hockey is the greatest live sporting event in the world. What do you most enjoy about going to NHL games?
JO: The speed, grace, and violence make hockey the most intriguing “in the arena” sport to watch. There's nothing more exciting than a NHL playoff game in OT where one play can decide a series.
