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That's About Right

Using a Sony W580i to the Glory of God

Seminary is often a tight squeeze for the wallet. It is an especially tight squeeze for those of us who are married and have children. When Charlee and I came to seminary, we thought we would be paying $370 a month for a one bedroom apartment with the utility bill of a one bedroom apartment. When God blessed us with Amelie, we found out we would be paying $520 a month for a two bedroom apartment with the utility bill of a two bedroom apartment.

My wife and I have literally sat down with other couples and asked, "We are not trying to pry, but you have more kids than we do, you work part time, and you're both taking classes. How do you do it?" We looked at each other and laughed the first time someone asked us how in the world we made ends meet with a child while attending seminary. The truth is that I have no idea. I have thrown up my hands in frustration so many times and have often wondered allowed, "When they say you need only Jesus to be in ministry, do they mean you need only Jesus, or do they mean you need Jesus and a bank roll?" Times have definitely been tight for us. We've missed out on a lot to be here in New Orleans. We have watched family and friends take vacation after vacation. Everyone I know has an iPhone, and I'm stuck with this thing (nevermind that I've been an Apple fan boy since highschool).

I'm not complaining here. In fact it's quite the opposite. All the vacations and shiny Apple products in the world are trash compared to the greatness of being here in New Orleans with my wife and daughter on this grand adventure knowing God deeply as he moves us one step closer to the kingdom every day. I don't need shiny stuff. I need Jesus. I seek first the Kingdom of God (often stumbling along the way), and he has been there with us all along the way providing for us at just the right moment. I'm not going to come along and say that if you follow God he'll bless you with stuff. He might not. In fact, it will probably cost you some stuff to follow him. But I contend that I am more content to worship God living in a cardboard box than to be without him in a mansion made of iPhones. Every blessing we have had in seminary has come straight from his hand at just the right moment. Go to seminary for more than five seconds and you will discover that very little of your training and honing for ministry comes while sitting in a desk.

If you are called to be trained for ministry, hang in there. And when you wonder how in the world you will make it when others have stores of cash and you come from nothing, remember that God is the provider of us all. If he has called you, then he will call upon people to bless you. He has called upon ministry minded people to create seminary scholarships for people in just your situation. You seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and let him worry about paying the light bill or the tuition invoice.

Nth word = N letters

Read the sentence below carefully…

“I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunication's incomprehensibleness”.

This is a sentence where the Nth word is N letters long.

e.g. 3rd word is 3 letters long, 8th word is 8 letters long and so on.

The Purpose of Money: A Christ-Exalting Open Hand

Last night in our Bible study, we were confronted with a question:

Which is more impressive:
A) To get rich and thank God
or
B) to be so satisfied in God that you give away riches and call it gain?

We bantered back and forth for a while about responsible stewardship and giving when your kids have to go hungry because of it or when your light bill doesn't get paid. The real answer for us lies in what the Bible says, so I want to put forth the story rich ruler and Jesus to help us understand the purpose of money.

¹⁸ And a ruler asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" ¹⁹And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. ²⁰You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.'" ²¹And he said, "All these I have kept from my youth." ²²When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." ²³ But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. ²⁴Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, "How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! ²⁵For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." ²⁶Those who heard it said, "Then who can be saved?" ²⁷But he said, "What is impossible with men is possible with God."

The ruler wants to know what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus gives him a list. What is interesting about this list is what it does not contain -more on that in a moment. But let me take this opportunity to say that I believe that this guy kept those commandments. He was surely a standup guy! You or I would love to be around him. He's moral, he pursues holiness, and he's responsible with his cash (he is rich after all). He would probably make a great deacon in many churches. To drive this home -the guy was not lying about his commandment keeping. That's not the problem here.

Back to what the list leaves out. Jesus then makes a second request of him, "Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." Is Jesus giving him yet another rule to follow? No! Jesus is pointing out to the ruler that he has made money into an idol. The rulers affections are so bound up in his money that he is morally unable to part with it to follow after another love, namely God. His riches on Earth are so appealing to him -so enjoyable and satisfying- that they have robbed him of a right affection for God. He took his money and put it in the place of God -the place of adoration, affection, and worship. Luke writes that "when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich." The idol of money is not easily usurped. The ruler knew that his relationship with his money was keeping him from being in right relationship with God, but still he would not forsake his worship of money for affection, love, and worship of God.

So what is the solution then? Let me first address a few ways in which we deal wrongly with money. The first way is money-phobia. Jesus says, "Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor...and come, follow me." Well then, that means that every single person should sell everything and go live in the woods (the only place you'll find food without money). Don't get me wrong. This approach is not always wrong. It was right for the rich ruler, and it is right for many today. But Christ did not intend for all to do this in order to follow him (although everyone must give up the idol of money to follow). Jesus dealt with money. The disciples dealt with money. Paul make tents to make money to support his ministry. The solution is not to be rid of all money, period.

The second solution is to twist the text to allow us to stay rich. Face it. We here in America, although we all desire to claim middle class status, are filthy rich compared to the rest of the world. If we want to stay rich and keep a clean conscience with have to come up with a way to deal with the text that lets us stay that way. Jesus says, "How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." What do we do with that? "Well you see, there was a gate in Jerusalem that was called the Eye of the Needle. And camels would have to get on their bellies and shimmy through to get in. It was a tight fit." Bologna. That explanation never appeared in any commentary until the 15th century, and it is completely historically unfounded. There is no historical evidence that any such gate ever existed, but it makes us feel better to think that Jesus was just saying that it's a tight squeeze for the rich to get into heaven. The plain meaning of the text is that just as impossible as it is for the biggest animal that we have seen (the camel for people in Jerusalem) to go through the smallest opening that we can think of (the eye of a needle for people in Jerusalem) so it is for the rich entering heaven. It's impossible and not just tough.

What do we do then with our money to keep from being rich? We give it away! We count it as useless for anything other than giving glory to Jesus and showing that he is valuable. God gives us money to show that money is worthless in comparison to him. The answer to finding our treasure in money is to find our treasure in Jesus! Let's look at this in scripture. In Matthew 6 Jesus says,

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on...But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."

Jesus flat out says that our first pursuit is to be God's kingdom. Every dime we have then has the end of advancing the good news of forgiveness from God and the return of King Jesus to Earth. The accumulation of wealth ceases to be the end in itself when the pursuit of the kingdom of God takes its place. Money then becomes merely another opportunity to make Jesus look really really valuable. As stewards of the money that belongs to God, we give it away, we buy food with it, we move to a city and buy a house with it, we buy clothes with it, but all with ONE goal -the advancement of the kingdom of God, the honor and fame of his great name among all the nations. How would your life change if this is what your bills looked like?



If every time you looked at your money you had that question before you? If every time you handed it to a cashier that question was placed before her -to look at your money, look at your purchase, look at you, and consider your God. Let me encourage you to have that question before your eyes every time you spend a dollar, and open up your mouth by the Spirit and pose it to the cashier. Does what you do with your money make Jesus look valuable? When you give it away, do you call it gain?

For the uninitiated...

Pluses and Minuses

From Morris Chapman's address to the 2009 Southern Baptist Convention yesterday:

The Southern Baptist Convention is experiencing a resurgence in the belief that divine sovereignty alone is at work in salvation without a faith response on the part of man.

Some are given to explain away the “whosoever will” of John 3:16. How can a Christian come to such a place when Ephesians says, “For by grace are you saved through faith” (Eph. 2:8)? I do not rise to become argumentative, or to change minds already convinced of one perspective or the other. But I do rise to state the obvious. Man is often tempted to design a theological theory in light of a biblical antinomy in order to clarify what God is trying to say.

I do not know a single Southern Baptist who believes that divine sovereignty alone is at work in salvation without a faith response. I do not know a single Calvinist that believes this either! I could be wrong. There may be a Calvinist or Southern Baptist preacher out there that believes in Hyper-Calvinism, but I assure you that he preaches to a congregation of 20 people out in the middle of the woods. You can find plastered all over the Bible that NO ONE is saved apart from a faith response to the gospel. But you know what you can't find in the Bible? The phrase "whosoever will" in the verse John 3:16.

Here's a shot at Acts 29 from Chapman in the same speech:

Some of the church-growth methodologies that masquerade under the guise of Bible exposition are increasingly known for the crude themes and the vulgar language of their strongest advocates. The sacred desk is no place for the carnal, the sensual, and the sensational. Ministers of the Gospel must exercise great caution when rushing in where angels dare not tread, and churches and pastors of the Southern Baptist Convention must avoid even the appearance of evil in this regard.

I love how he calls missional living and church planting a "church growth strategy". Living with a Christ-exalting sense of purpose and planting Christ-centered Bible believing Spirit led churches is not a church growth strategy. It's the church growth strategy -you know, the one found in the New Testament and the one that has produced authentic Christianity throughout church history. The guys at Baptist 21 actually apologized because of Morris' address. I am tempted to be much more sarcastic and move into some of the ridiculous motions, but in the spirit of charity, I'll move on to the positives.

The Great Commission Resurgence passed! Praise God that Southern Baptists are drawing together on this point. Johnny Hunt, Al Mohler, Danny Akin, and Chuck Kelly all gave wonderful addresses. I was encouraged greatly by their words and spirit. NOBTS is extraordinarily blessed by God to have Chuck Kelly, a man who wears joy in God on his sleeve, as its president. If there is anything positive about NOBTS, it is that we are under Dr. Kelly's leadership.

There's another positive that I want to talk about, but iMonk said it better than I ever could, so I will leave it for him to say:

The younger leaders of the SBC are taking on power in a denomination that has been, for the most part, attempting to lock the doors and hope they would go away. Well, they didn’t. They came to the convention and voted in a mechanism to take an urgent look at what we are doing for the one thing that holds us together: a commitment to carry out the Great Commission. What you saw today was a serious changing of the power grid in the SBC. The vast numbers of obedient old-guard messengers are never again going to show up and make the SBC into a wholly owned subsidiary of the culture war or the Jerry Vines version of the SBC. This is now a denomination that has given itself clear and simple instructions: Get to the task of world missions, not the task of building a denominational culture.

John Calvin's 500th Birthday

Get the John Calvin birthday clock at Calvin 500

Whatever your theological leanings, this is a momentous occasion. Listen to what the founder of Arminianism had to say about him:

After the Holy Scriptures, I exhort the students to read the Commentaries of Calvin. . . . I tell them that he is incomparable in the interpretation of Scripture; and that his Commentaries ought to be held in greater estimation than all that is delivered to us in the writings of the ancient Christian Fathers: so that, in a certain eminent spirit of prophecy, I give the pre-eminence to him beyond most others, indeed beyond them all. I add, that, with regard to what belongs to common places, his Institutes must be read after the Catechism, as a more ample interpretation. But to all this I subjoin the remark, that they must be perused with cautious choice, like all other human compositions.

— Jacob Arminius

About that book I wrote with Donald Miller...

Click the book to read a blurb about it.

Being a Dad: The First Six Months

Yesterday marked my sixth month of being a dad. Have I really been at this thing for that long? It seems like an apt time to be hitting the half-year milestone. Amelie is now a babling, laughing, teething (two of them) baby who sits up on her own (though not without frequent head injury as she sees something that takes her aback and then...takes her aback). She has gone from a little wide eyed football in the crook of my arm to a very vocal ("da-da-da-da-da") little creature with frog-like bouncing abilities. Being someone who sees her every single day, it is difficult to notice how much she has grown unless I look at pictures. For example:

vs

See where I am coming from there? For the last six months there has been something (often times several things) new -whether a new personality trait or activity.

As God has developed Amelie as a human, he has developed me as a father. I have learned a great deal about sacrifice, trust, unconditional love, shortsightedness, love, relationship, time management, frustration, and patience. I know that I have much much more to learn. I have grown so much and, I have not even begun to grow -just like my daughter. For those out there who have not had children, you really do not know what it is like until you have one. I know that sounds frustrating, because I was frustrated by it in the past, but it is true nevertheless. God opens you up to see how helpless and unable to understand the universe you truly are the instant you hold that crying baby. And he opens you up further to see the love that he has for us as your heart breaks because of her cry. And you understand a little better his joy over us as the sound of your infant's laughter strikes your ear for the first time.

I often look at her and become fearful due to the sheer amount of information that Amelie must learn under the stewardship of Charlee and me. I think about ABCs and multiplication tables, American history and Christian worldview, Audrey Hepburn and Bob Dylan. How will I teach her everything I want her to know? How will I find the time and energy for it to pass on the knowledge that is dear to my heart? And most importantly will I model a life of repentance that drives her to worship at the feet of King Jesus? I have to stop and realize that in many ways I am as helpless a father to Amelie as I am as a son before God. He is ultimately in control of time and of the hearts of men. These things I prayerfully leave in his hands as he works in me and through me to disciple Amelie in this thing we call life. It's been a wild ride thus far, and if the Lord wills, I will have many more half years to raise, love, and instruct my daughter.

Oh, and here's one more for laughs...

Cal.vini.st Anniversary Giveaway!

Cal.vini.st is celebrating its one year anniversary by giving away 3 copies of Bibleworks 8! All you have to do is subscribe, fill out a form, and answer a question. It's well worth it, and you get to read their awesome content. Click here for the contest link.

Amelie Month Five

New Wordle for the CDB

Click the image to see the wordle.

John Piper on Twittering During Worship

Read the full article here:

The fact that an electric cord is easily cut, does not mean that the power flowing through it is small. It produces bright and wonderful effects. So it is with preaching. Great power flows through fragile wires of spiritual focus.

I agree. Twitter during church sounded like a neat idea, but the more I thought about it the more hesitant of it I was. The sole exception, I think, is possibly note taking, though I find it hard to imagine how good notes can be taken 140 characters at a time. I would have to see this before I could believe it.

Contextualization Hurts!

I don't think Timothy was concerned about being cool when he agreed to travel with Paul in Acts 16:3,

Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.

Whew.

This post is a few weeks late, but I've been busy. As you may know, summer is upon us. This means that my semester has wrapped up. I took into classes to ethics, philosophy of religion, and counseling. I was stretched and well-taught in all three either by how I agreed with the professor or how I differed from them. It is amazing what you can learn from godly men with whom you disagree. We truly all do see now as through a glass darkly, and one day we will see fully.

I take a break from school in the summer. Although this means there is no pressure as far as assignments are concerned, I still feel like I am moving a mile a minute. I am fine with that though, because it means I get to do things that I have problems doing during the semester. I have written for myself a list of things to accomplish this summer. I am hopeful that I will add to this list and get everything on it done.

To Do:

• Get all my things from my Great Grandmother's house in central
• Write a Unifyer post for each week of our summer study and prepare to teach it:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

Week 9

Week 10

• Meet with a certain friend about some issues
• Write planned blog posts:

End of the semester

Being a dad

• Read books:

Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton

The Future of Justification by John Piper

Justification by NT Wright

Wild at Heart by Eldridge (for a friend)


• Order Wright's Justification and a book for my wife from Amazon
• Update the estimator on my grandfather's site
• Sit down with my grandfather and overhaul his site
• Sit down with my dad to plan his site
• Build dad's site
• Look at dad's cameras
• Look at dad's register
  
• Read Ed Stetzer's paper in the Fall 2008 issue of the BCTM Journal
• Read Page Brooks' paper in the Fall 2008 issue of the BCTM Journal
• Transfer Charlee's family VHS videos to DVD for my mother-in-law
• Get new glasses
• Replace my Mac's keyboard
• Get an Amelie video up
  
• Do something with my 12 inch Powerbook

Order Power Supply

Order DC-in Board

Go Get DC-in Board from Baton Rouge b/c Paypal is stupid.


Install DC-in Board

• See if one of the spare laptop screens I have fits Charlee's Toshiba
• Co-author book with Donald Miller
• Read paedocommunion stuff from Rob
• Write 3 weeks small group of curriculum for the fall sermon series

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

• Build CFTA website
  

Chasing Cars

Mom and dad took me out to an all you can eat seafood place near Simmesport, La for my birthday. We were all talking outside the restaurant after we ate. I sat Amelie on top of Charlee's car, and this is what happened. Sorry for the video quality. It's from my mom's cell. Amelie quit once Charlee got out the camera.

I totally agree.

The question is: How do you define happiness?

Fabulous Fun Finds Hotslings Giveaway!

Fabulous Fun Finds is giving away Hotslings. Click here to check them out!

Killing is Killing

I posted this before in a different format. Desiring God's media team is quite talented.