it's a good thing I like to dance
Mystery quote time. Who said this?
“Preaching is not the totality of the church. And if all you have is preaching, you don’t have the church. A church is a body of people who minister to each other. One of the purposes of preaching is to equip us for that and inspire us to love each other better.”
Guesses?
In his book “Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit” (book/DVD) Francis Chan says there are two big things that tend to inhibit our relationship with God and our reliance on the Holy Spirit:
1. Comfort (maybe our lives are too safe)
In his experience, as in mine, we feel closest to God when nearness to him is a necessity rather than an option. The Holy Spirit is described in the Bible as the “Helper” and the “Comforter”. But what reason could we have to rely on a helper or a comforter if our lives are carefree and comfortable? Sometimes cares and discomfort are what’s needed to push us into a space we should be but refuse or delay going to.
This disruption of our quest for permanent but artificial comfort is the work of the Holy Spirit. He is calling us to a life of reliance and, often, insecurity – and it is an exciting life! Many people resist this because they’ve adopted safety and security as an idol. This needs to change.
A.W. Tozer:
“To expose our hearts to truth and consistently refuse or neglect to obey the impulses it arouses is to stymie the motions of life within us and, if persisted in, to grieve the HS into silence”
2. Volume (maybe our lives are too loud)
Multitasking anyone? When was the last time you experienced one uninterrupted hour? In our distraction culture we are training ourselves to accept as normal the opposite of what God requires for relationship – long, sustained, uninterrupted periods of time.
When we are accustomed to constant brain activity via email, text messages, Facebook, Twitter etc. we find it difficult to spend quiet, uninterrupted time with God and others with whom we are supposed to be in a relationship.
Our lack of intimacy with God is often due to our refusal to unplug. Jesus didn’t have electronic media distractions to deal with but he regularly had mobs of people following him, and yet he was disciplined about taking time to be alone with God. As with everything else, we need to follow his example in this.
The Bible tells us to make good use of our time. We are to work hard, and to be about our Father’s business. It is not evil to be busy, but it is evil to be too busy.
I’ll never forget the day I read this paragraph from Eugene Peterson’s book “The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction” for the first time:
The adjective busy set as a modifier to pastor should sound to our ears like adulterous to characterize a wife or embezzling to describe a banker. It is an outrageous scandal, a blasphemous affront.
I am busy because I am vain. I want to appear important. Significant. What better way than to be busy? The incredible hours, the crowded schedule, and the heavy demands on my time are proof to myself — and to all who will notice — that I am important.
BUT, he goes on
How can I lead people into the quiet place beside the still waters if I am in perpetual motion? How can I persuade a person to live by faith and not by works if I have to juggle my schedule constantly to make everything fit into place?
I as a Pastor am not immune to this curse of busy-ness.
How can the “still small voice” of the Spirit compete with all of the distractions in our lives? He doesn’t try to. He just keeps speaking, waiting for you to turn down the volume of everything else and listen. When everything else is turned down and you can hear him he’ll tell you “This is the volume at which you were meant to live.” Keep turning down the volume on your life until you hear him. The problem is likely NOT that he’s not speaking, but that the volume of the rest of your life is so loud that you can’t hear.
The Holy Spirit filled those first disciples and equipped them in every way to be fruitful participants in the mission of God. If we will open our hearts and lay down our lives they way they did, he will do the same for us.
N.T. Wright:
“The point of the HS is to enable those who follow Jesus to take into all the world the news that he is Lord, that he has won a victory over the forces of evil, that a new world has opened up, and that we are to help make it happen.”
| Books and Authors Recommended in This Post |
|---|
| Eugene Peterson – “The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction” (buy book) |
| Francis Chan – “Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit” (buy book/DVD) |
| N.T. Wright |
| A.W. Tozer |
| Shop Amazon |
According to the Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church (chapter 15):
If the resurrection is a fairy tale…
- Then not even Christ was raised
- Then my preaching is hopeless
- Then your faith is foolishness
- Then we are all still in our sins
- The those who believe in Christ who have died are gone forever
- And finally, if the resurrection is a myth and we believe it anyway, then we Christians are of all people most to be pitied.
But since the resurrection is not a fairly tale…
- Then Christ was raised
- And my preaching is NOT hopeless
- Then your faith is NOT foolishness
- And we are NOT still in our sins
- And we will meet again with those who have died believing in Christ because death will ultimately be destroyed
- And finally, since the resurrection is NOT a myth then we are NOT of all people most to be pity. We are of all people the most privileged and because of that we should be the most caring, compassionate, loving, Christ-focused, resurrection celebrating people on the earth!
Believe in Jesus. Believe in his life, his death and his resurrection and in so doing receive eternal life.
Amen.
Jonathan Smith is the Dean of Distance Education at Knox Theological Seminary.
This session was the highlight of the conference for me. Why? Well, because finally someone was getting into Marshall McLuhan and I could tell he had a good understanding of McLuhan’s thinking (link).
He also understood the digital native/digital immigrant paradigm. The next generation of students will be full digital natives and will have an even greater expectation of connectivity as part of their education. They will expect access to classes from phones and other devices. Discussions, lectures, and study notes will all be online.
Smith also spent time on McLuhan’s tetrad of media effects (link) and then applied this process of evaluation to the technologies he was endorsing. This involves asking the following questions of any new medium or technology we are considering:
1. What does the medium enhance?
2. What does the medium make obsolete?
3. What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
4. What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?
This was an excellent session that laid out the fundamentals of media and technology study and then applied them to many of the ideas that were presented at BibleTech.
Neil Rees of the British & Foreign Bible Society delivered and interesting session about deafness, sign language and Bible translation.
Anyone who has a level of hearing loss is considered deaf and this represents about 2% of any population. This 2% is further categorized into those who are “post-lingually deaf” (those who become deaf after having learned to speak) and “pre-lingually deaf” (those who were already deaf before they learned to speak).
Because our writing system is largely based on speaking and since our alphabet is primarily phonetic, people who are pre-lingually deaf have difficulty learning to read as well. Books, subtitles and lip-reading are really only good for the post-lingually deaf.
There are two types of languages in the world: spoken languages and sign languages (SLs). Sign languages too have their own lexicon, grammar and dialects. Just as there is no universal spoken language, there is no universal sign language. So, for example, there are differences between American and British sign language and in Ireland it is divided into male and female forms.
Ethnologue.com estimates that there are about 400-500 different forms of sign language in the world yet there is only one complete sign language Bible.
Modern technologies are expanding the possibilities for more sign language Bible translations. These include video streaming, avatar systems, cartoons, and animation systems.
Mr. Rees implored the room of developers and other technologists to consider the deaf when developing new Bible translation and study tools.
I’m in Seattle at a conference called BibleTech. The next several posts will be summaries of some of the sessions I attended
Matthew Clarke is an Australian with a passion for both technology and scripture. His session gave us an overview of references to technology in scripture.
He began by defining technology as tools and techniques and extensions of human abilities. Working with that definition we can find many references in scripture to weapons and wheels and parchment, and of course the many forms of technology that would have been necessary to build the tower of Babel.
We are probably more dependent on technology than at any other point in history, and this can cause us to rely more on technology than on God. Clarke reminded us that God’s purposes can be achieved without the use of technology. God can simply speak things into being. Technology can lead us to assume that we have no need for God and then it becomes idolatry.
Clarke reminded us that “Being a technologist is a holy calling… Modern technologists need to recognize that the abilities we use to serve God were given by God in the first place.”
This was a helpful to have early in the schedule of a Bible and technology conference and gave us a good theological base for the later sessions.
Apparently he’s not one. Have a listen:
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Favorite quote from the above audio: “Heaven is important but it’s not the end of the world.”
(audio excerpted from Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Podcast)
New post over at my writing blog:
Freedom is Found in Submission, Authority is Found in Sacrifice
Every time the word “authority” is mentioned some people shudder at the implications. Some know authority as an abusive father, overly controlling church members or a teacher that used to pick on them. Authority is often seen as a tool to be used for the betterment of one’s own life. In contrast to this, godly authority is something you are given as a responsibility to make the life of another better… (keep reading)
So this guy named Paul gets arrested in a holy place. He gets arrested, ironically enough, because people who should be his allies are trying to kill him.
Why? Well, they had seen him with a second-class civilian earlier in the day, walking through the city. Now that same guy was in the holy place – not with Paul but… Unlawfully! – and they saw an opportunity to make an accusation.
Some dramatically inclined fellow puts on his acting hat and proclaims: “Help! You Israelites, help! This is the man who is going all over the world telling lies against us and our religion and this place. He’s even brought Greeks in here and defiled this holy place.” 
(Acts 21:28 MSG) A mob beating ensues…
A more likely scenario is that they dragged the Greek against his will into the temple just to frame Paul. As one commentator put it: “The possibility that Trophimus [the Greek] might have wandered of his own free will into the forbidden area is about as likely as that somebody should wander into the private rooms in the Kremlin for the purpose of sightseeing.”
Besides, they could have asked Paul directly if he’d brought him in but, shucks, he might say no, and then what? Paul was guilty of associating, no doubt, just like Jesus often was, but no proof existed that he had actually transgressed the law. But why let that spoil the fun?
“Never mind the facts – we say Paul brought him here! Let’s get him, boys!”
Part of their message to Paul was, “Be careful whom you are seen with in any place. It could come back to haunt you…” and you can imagine that being followed with an “if-you-know-what-I-mean” wink. In other words, they were seeking to control his actions with fear of repercussions – in this case, direct physical violence.
Like this was news to Paul. He already knew, since the Holy Spirit had notified him, that in every city he went to there would imprisonment, beatings, and persecution. (see Acts 20:23-18-23)
And So…
When people don’t like what you’re doing, they’ll use anything as a stone to throw. Good intentions? – We don’t care. Actual facts? – Maybe later.
When people don’t like what you’re doing, they watch you with an eye for any small mistake that can be leveraged into a full-scale assault.
When people don’t like what you’re doing, they’re willing to believe anything negative about you because they’ve already decided what they think about you.
When people like this don’t like what you’re doing, be blessed, because Jesus says you ARE blessed. Matthew 5:11-16 (ESV):
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (or, as Peterson puts it: “My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.”)
Be blessed.
Jesus himself is our peace. He is the “Prince of Peace” but there is a paradox we need to deal with here found in Matthew 10:34-39 where Jesus says: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace…”
Of this paradox Russell Moore says:
There are two very different kinds of peace pictured in Scripture, and in order to get to the one you’ve got to disturb the other. Jesus speaks of himself as one who brings peace (Jn. 14:27), just as the old prophecies and the announcing angels promised of him. But then he turns around and says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have come not to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34).
In the gospel, that peace comes only through war. This isn’t violence, the way we think of it, flesh and blood against flesh and blood. It is the Spirit of Jesus marching as to war against the principalities and powers in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12).
So the peace that he brings is:
It would be nice to have all three but we cannot always have it. When it comes to taking up our crosses and following Christ there will be many with whom we will not have peace, and Jesus tells us here that this will cut deeply, even into family bonds.
Charles Spurgeon said of this peace:
“Peace will be the ultimate issue of the Lord’s coming; but, at first, the Lord sends a sword among men. He wars against war, and contends against contention. In the act of producing the peace of heaven he arouses the rage of hell. Truth provokes opposition, purity excites enmity, and righteousness arouses all the forces of wrong”
Nonetheless it says here that Jesus, as the Prince of Peace, IS our peace (v14), makes peace (v15), and that he came to preach/proclaim this peace (v17). So first he achieved it and then he proclaimed it. Since it still his achievement, we should continue to proclaim it!
As John Stott says:
“Jesus Christ is still preaching peace in the world today, through the lips of his followers. For it is a truly wonderful fact that whenever we proclaim peace, it is Christ who proclaims it through us.”
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