Love?

Donald Miller, from Blue Like Jazz

"The thing about Reed College you may not know is that it is a beautiful place. I mean the people are beautiful, and I love them. My house-mate, Grant, and I were on campus the other day helping kids move into their dorms, and we met this kid Nathan, who needed us to move a couch up to his room. Grant and I were sort of surprised when Nathan started talking to us because, no kidding, he sounded just like Elmer Fudd. He was short and stocky, and nobody but Elmer Fudd himself sounds more like Elmer Fudd than Nathan. Grant almost started laughing, but we tried very hard to listen to the person inside the voice, and so on the way to the storage shed Nathan opened up and told us that as a summer job he worked at Los Alamos, researching nuclear weapons. Nathan does not know his left from his right, which I thought was a peculiar characteristic, given he is one of the smartest people in the world or something. We would come to an intersection and he would point and say, in a perfect Elmer Fudd dialect (I can't do accents at all), "Go dat way, Don. Dat ith de way to the thorage thed."

I was speaking at a pastors conference in San Francisco, and I was telling them about my friends from Reed and what it looks like to talk about Jesus in that place. Somebody asked me what it was like to deal with all the immorality at Reed, and that question really struck me because I have never thought of Reed as an immoral place, and I suppose I never thought of it as an immoral place because somebody like Nathan can go there and talk like Elmer Fudd, and nobody will ever make fun of him. And if Nathan were to go to my church, which I love and would give my life for, he would unfortunately be made fun of by somebody somewhere, behind his back and all, but it would happen, and that is such a tragic crime. Nobody would bother to find out that he is a genius. Nobody would know that he is completely comfortable talking the way he talks and not knowing his left from his right because he has spent four years in a place where what you are on the surface does not define you, in does not label you. And that is what I love about Reed College because even though there are so many students having sex and tripping on drugs and whatever, there is also this foundational understanding that other people exist and they are important, and to me Reed is like heaven in that sense. I wish everybody could spend four years in a place like that, being taught the truth, that they matter regardless of their faults, regardless of their insecurities."

Faith Without Works?

Spurgeon - "True faith in God will also make us abundant in good works. The eleventh of Hebrews is a chapter dedicated to the glorification of faith; but if I assert that it records the good works of the saints, can anybody contradict me? Is it not as much a record of works as of faith? Ay, verily, because where there is much faith, there shall surely ere long be abundant good works. I have no notion of that faith which does not produce good works, especially in the preacher. I question whether, as channels for damnation, Satan has upon earth more apt instruments for breeding infidelity, and for causing men to regard the gospel with contempt, than those who profess to believe it, and then act as though the belief were a matter of no consequence whatsoever...among the people there has been no real care for souls. The sermon was preached, but the people were not prayed for in secret, they were not hunted for as men search for precious things. They were not wept over; they were not in very deed cared about."

"What a God is He thus to hear the prayers of those who come to Him when they have pressing wants, but neglect Him when they have received a mercy; who approach Him when they are forced to come, but who almost forget to address Him when mercies are plentiful and sorrows are few. Let His gracious kindness in hearing such prayers touch our hearts, so that we may henceforth be found 'Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.'" - Spurgeon

"Blessed are the poor in spirit." - Matthew 5:3

God giving me this message this morning is an amazing act of love and grace.

Chambers - "Beware of placing Our Lord as a Teacher first. If Jesus Christ is a Teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalize me by erecting a standard I cannot attain. What is the use of presenting me with an ideal I cannot possibly come near? I am happier without knowing it. What is the good of telling me to be what I never can be - to be pure in heart, to do more than my duty, to be perfectly devoted to God? I must know Jesus Christ as Saviour before His teaching has any meaning for me other than that of an ideal which leads to despair. But when I am born again of the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come to teach only: He came to make me what He teaches I should be. The Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man the disposition that ruled His own life, and all the standards God gives are based on that disposition.

The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces despair in the natural man - the very thing Jesus means it to do. As long as we have a self-righteous, conceited notion that we can carry out Our Lord's teaching, God will allow us to go on until we break our ignorance over some obstacle, then we are willing to come to Him as paupers and receive from Him. "Blessed are the paupers in spirit," that is the first principle in the Kingdom of God. The bedrock in Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty, not possession; not decisions for Jesus Christ but a sense of absolute futility - "I cannot begin to do it." Then Jesus says - "Blessed are you." That is the entrance, and it does take us a long while to believe we are poor! The knowledge of our own poverty brings us on to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works."

God or the Laws of Physics?

Taken from God and Stephen Hawking by John C. Lennox MA PhD DPhil DSc and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. The book is a refutation of Stephen Hawking's claim which can simply be stated as, "we know how the universe works and what caused it, there is no need for the idea of God in modern thinking, therefore God does not exist."

I have long admired Mr Hawking, as both a scientist and great man, but I cannot fail to see the overall flaw in Hawking's argument. Whether or not the physics stands up to scrutiny is, at the present time, beyond my jurisdiction, but I can, with certainty, proclaim that even if mankind was able to explain away the intricacies of the universe, it would not give the slightest credence to the notion that there is no God.

Lennox - "A supernatural being or god is an agent who does something. In the case of the God of the Bible, he is a personal agent. Dismissing such an agent, Hawking ascribes creative power to physical law; but physical law is not an agent. Hawking is making a classic category mistake by confusing two entirely different kinds of entity: physical law and personal agency. The choice he sets before us is between false alternatives. He has confused two levels of explanation: agency and law. God is an explanation of the universe, but not the same type of explanation as that which is given by physics.

Suppose, to make matters clearer, we replace the universe by a jet engine and then are asked to explain it. Shall we account for it by mentioning thee personal agency of its inventor, Sir Frank Whittle? Or shall we follow Hawking: dismiss personal agency, and explain the jet engine by saying that it arose naturally from physical law?

It is clearly nonsensical to ask people to choose between Frank Whittle and science as an explanation for the jet engine. For it is not a question of either/or. It is self-evident that we need both levels of explanation in order to give a complete description. It is also obvious that the scientific explanation neither conflicts nor competes with the agent explanation: they complement one another. It is the same with explanations of the universe: God does not conflict or compete with the laws of physics as an explanation. God is actually the ground of all explanation, in the sense that he is the cause in the first place of there being a world for the laws of physics to describe."

Psalm 118

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!

Let Israel say, "His steadfast love endures forever."

Let the house of Aaron say, "His steadfast love endures forever."

Let those who fear the LORD say, "His steadfast love endures forever."

Out of my distress I called on the LORD; the LORD answered me and set me free.

The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?

The LORD is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.

It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man.

It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes.

All nations surrounded me; in the name of the LORD I cut them off!

They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side; in the name of the LORD I cut them off.

They surrounded me like bees; they went out like a fire among thorns; in the name of the LORD I cut them off!

I was pushed hard, so that I was falling, but the LORD helped me.

The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.

Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous: "The right hand of the LORD does valiantly,

the right hand of the LORD exalts, the right hand of the LORD does valiantly!"

I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the LORD.

The LORD has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death.

Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD.

This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it.

I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

This is the LORD's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Save us, we pray, O LORD!

O LORD, we pray, give us success!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD! We bless you from the house of the LORD.

The LORD is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us. Bind the festal sacrifice with cords, up to the horns of the altar!

You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God; I will extol you.

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; but his steadfast love endures forever.

1 Corinthians 9:16

"One point, which I believe is essential to a minister's faith, is that we believe in our own commission to preach the gospel... He who doubts as to whether he is sent of God, goes hesitatingly; but he who is certain of his call from above demands and commands an audience; he does not apologize for his existence, or for his utterances; but he quits himself like a man, and boldly speaks God's truth in the name of the LORD. He has a message to deliver which he must deliver, for woe is unto him unless he preaches the gospel." - Spurgeon.