The Kind of Men God Used/Uses

Horatius Bonar, writing the preface to John Gillies’ Accounts of Revival, proposes that men useful to the Holy Spirit for revival have been marked in these nine ways:

1. They were in earnest about the great work on which they had entered: “They lived and labored and preached like men on whose lips the immortality of thousands hung.”

2. They were bent on success: “As warriors, they set their hearts on victory and fought with the believing anticipation of triumph, under the guidance of such a Captain as their head.”

3. They were men of faith: “They knew that in due season they should reap, if they fainted not.”

4. They were men of labor: “Their lives are the annals of incessant, unwearied toil of body and soul; time, strength, substance, health, all they were and possessed they freely offered to the Lord, keeping back nothing, grudging nothing.”

5. They were men of patience: “Day after day they pursued what, to the eye of the world, appeared a thankless and fruitless round of toil.”

6. They were men of boldness and determination: “Timidity shuts many a door of usefulness and loses many a precious opportunity; it wins no friends, while it strengthens every enemy. Nothing is lost by boldness, nor gained by fear.”

7. They were men of prayer: “They were much alone with God, replenishing their own souls out of the living fountain, that out of them might flow to their people rivers of living water.”

8. They were men whose doctrines were of the most decided kind: “Their preaching seems to have been of the most masculine and fearless kind, falling on the audience with tremendous power. It was not vehement, it was not fierce, it was not noisy; it was far too solemn to be such; it was massive, weighty, cutting, piercing, sharper than a two-edged sword.”

9. They were men of solemn deportment and deep spirituality of soul: “No frivolity, no flippancy . . . . The world could not point to them as being but slightly dissimilar from itself.”

HT: Ortlund

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Not the Same Tone As the Moderns Might Say It

Worldly things are good in themselves and given to sweeten our passage to Heaven.

Worldly Saints, p. 59 by Puritan Richard Sibbes

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Read and Do

20 Qualities of Good Listeners

HT: Challies

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Let’s Take Care of Those Things Shall We?

Every uncorrected error and unrepented sin is, in its own right, a fountain of fresh error and fresh sin flowing on to the end of time.

– C.S. Lewis

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What Need We More

Hudson Taylor wrote to a friend, expressing his confidence,

“We have $.87 and all the promises of God.”

HT: Future uber-blogger JMF

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“I Do Solemnly Swear”

The Lincoln Bible

Here is a really neat interactive essay from the Wall Street Journal documenting in pictures the inaugarations of the Presidents, focusing on the Bibles they used for the swearing in.

I Do Solemnly Swear

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Resolved: To Grow

Jonathan Edwards says how (Misc. Discourses):

1. Be assiduous in reading the Holy Scriptures. This is the fountain whence all knowledge in divinity must be derived. Therefore let not this treasure lie by you neglected. Every man of common understanding who can read, may, if he please, become well acquainted with the Scriptures. And what an excellent attainment would this be!

2. Content not yourselves with only a cursory reading, without regarding the sense. This is an ill way of reading, to which, however, many accustom themselves all their days. When you read, observe what you read. Observe how things come in. Take notice of the drift of the discourse, and compare one scripture with another. For the Scripture, by the harmony of its different parts, casts great light upon itself.—We are expressly directed by Christ, to search the Scriptures, which evidently intends something more than a mere cursory reading. And use means to find out the meaning of the Scripture. When you have it explained in the preaching of the word, take notice of it; and if at any time a scripture that you did not understand be cleared up to your satisfaction, mark it, lay it up, and if possible remember it.

3. Procure, and diligently use, other books which may help you to grow in this knowledge. There are many excellent books extant, which might greatly forward you in this knowledge, and afford you a very profitable and pleasant entertainment in your leisure hours. There is doubtless a great defect in many, that through a lothness to be at a little expense, they furnish themselves with no more helps of this nature. They have a few books indeed, which now and then on sabbath-days they read; but they have had them so long, and read them so often, that they are weary of them, and it is now become a dull story, a mere task to read them.

4. Improve conversation with others to this end. How much might persons promote each other’s knowledge in divine things, if they would improve conversation as they might; if men that are ignorant were not ashamed to show their ignorance, and were willing to learn of others; if those that have knowledge would communicate it, without pride and ostentation; and if all were more disposed to enter on such conversation as would be for their mutual edification and instruction.

5. Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause, and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your souls, and in order to practice.—If applause be your end, you will not be so likely to be led to me knowledge of the truth, but may justly, as often is the case of those who are proud of their knowledge, be led into error to your own perdition. This being; your end, if you should obtain much rational knowledge, 163it would not be likely to be of any benefit to you, but would puff you up with pride: 1 Cor. viii. 1. “Knowledge puffeth up.”

6. Seek to God, that he would direct you, and bless you, in this pursuit after knowledge. This is the apostle’s direction, Jam. i. 5. “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God, who giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not.” God is the fountain of all divine knowledge: Prov. ii. 6. “The Lord giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.” Labour to be sensible of your own blindness and ignorance, and your need of the help of God, lest you be led into error, instead of true knowledge: 1 Cor. iii. 18. “If any man would be wise, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.”

7. Practise according to what knowledge you have. This will be the way to know more. The psalmist warmly recommends this way of seeking knowledge in divine truth, from his own experience: Psal. cxix. 100. “I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.” Christ also recommends the same: John vii. 17. “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”

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The Best Sorts of Advice Are Sometimes Free

Last month, several families from Charity were able to go to hear Tedd Tripp’s two day seminar on biblical parenting. It was a good condensed version of his two wonderful books Shepherding a Child’s Heart and Instructing a Child’s Heart which are the books I would most urge parents to read to complement your understanding of Scripture. The sessions of the conference are Scripture-soaked and can add freshness and needed help to every home.

Just before we saw him in Franklin, he was at Mark Driscoll’s church in Seattle. Mars Hill has released full online video of all the sessions, and I strongly commend them to you to view online, or, if your internet connection won’t handle the stream, to download it. It is free.

The sessions are rich with just the sorts of things that will make our homes to be bent more toward Christ. I hope you and your spouse will watch them together as a parenting unit.

They were all beneficial, but I loved Session 2 the most and Tripp commented that it was the most important part of the five.

Shepherding a Child’s Heart Conference

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Don’t Begrudge the Load

Spurgeon:

Losses, crosses, heaviness, sickness, poverty, and a thousand other ills, are of the Lord’s sending, and come to us with wise design.

and perhaps one of the dearest Spurgeon quotes I know, one I’ve carried in my head 15+ years.

He who would glorify his God must set his account upon meeting with many trials. No man can be illustrious before the Lord unless his conflicts be many. If then, yours be a much tried path, rejoice in it, because you will the better show forth the all sufficient grace of God. As for his failing you, never dream of it—hate the thought. The God who has been sufficient until now, should be trusted to the end.

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Don’t Coast

One of my favorite college teachers would repeatedly remind us of the next upcoming test or project and then nudge us to prepare hard because afterward, we could just coooasst through the rest of the semester. He would say this before every test or project.

I know that my soul is too content to live off the spiritual capital that has been learned or forced in during my 3 1/5 decades on this orb.

This is a good article with Five Suggestions for Staying Fully Alive.

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What Do You Fear?

I came across this Howard Hendricks quotation after I had been mulling again over the quote, “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Hendricks said,

I live with the dread of tame, domesticated Christianity. I fear for my students that they will chase after what they want — and therefore miss what God wants.

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On Reading

I‘ve traveled the world twice over,
Met the famous; saints and sinners,
Poets and artists, kings and queens,
Old stars and hopeful beginners,
I’ve been where no-one’s been before,
Learned secrets from writers and cooks
All with one library ticket
To the wonderful world of books.
~ Anonymous ~

Whether you love it or hate it, do it lots or little, there’s advice here for you from Challies about reading: 10 Tips to Read More and Read Better.

I don’t read as much as I should, don’t vary my reading often enough and don’t read enough old books. I’m thankful for the advice.

And to take it a step further, what about study? Martin Luther said,

“I shall say nothing here about the pure pleasure a man gets from having studied, even though he never holds an office of any kind, how at home by himself he can read all kinds of things, talk and associate with educated people.”

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Teaching Children to Be Thankful

Nancy Wilson gets to the core:

One of the central duties of parents is to teach their children to be grateful to God for all their many blessings. I remember my father teaching me that I could not even lift my little finger if it were not for God’s power and goodness. That little lesson had an impact, obviously, because I still remember him demonstrating this finger-lifting.

So when you are teaching the little ones to say thank you and please, it is a lesson about their Christian duties that reaches beyond simple cultural expressions of good manners. It it teaching them to have thankful impulses. It is teaching them to speak the language God wants to hear from all His people all the time.

Our fallen, sinful impulses direct us to take notice of what is missing, what is lacking, how things fall short of our desires. This is why kids whine and moan and are given to complaining. But God has given parents to children to bring them up to better things. So we have to accompany our commands to our children (say please when you ask for things) with biblical teaching (God wants us to be thankful for everything all the time).

Children need to be taught to count their blessings: fingers, toes, parents, siblings, food, sunshine, rain, Christmas, and all the rest. And, as always, it comes back to the parents modeling such gratitude themselves. It is rather counterproductive to snap at your children with, “Say thankyou!” as though you want to add, “you little beast!”

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Thank You, Veterans

Last week I was surprised to come across Nashville National Cemetery (picture). Today I’ll take my family.

Here’s another extended slideshow version of the same song.

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My Mad Mission

I’m thankful for a friend [thanks, Farmer] who sent me this article right before we moved to TN to help start JECA. We think of it often.

Mad Missions:Avoiding the soft despotism that emphasizes personal security | Marvin Olasky

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An Opportunity to Be Terribly Fruitful

Nancy Wilson quotes G.K. Chesteron’s insightful comments on the role of women:

“Woman must be a cook, but not a competitive cook; a school-mistress, but not a competitive school-mistress; a house decorator, but not a competitive house-decorator; a dressmaker, but not a competitive dressmaker. She should have not one trade but twenty hobbies; she, unlike the man, may develop all her second bests. This is what has been really aimed at from the first in what is called the seclusion, or even the oppression, of women. Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad. The world outside the home was one mass of narrowness, a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse of monomaniacs. It was only by partly limiting and protecting the woman that she was enabled to play at five or six professions and so come almost as near to God as the child when he plays at a hundred trades. But the woman’s professions, unlike the child’s, were all truly and almost terribly fruitful.”

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This Week is Reformation Week

Our pastor, Sam Gage, wrote this overview passage and then read it in two parts during this week’s morning service:

Sadly, modern Christians are absolutely clueless about a significant period of time called the Reformation. If you ask most Evangelical Christians today whether they were Catholic or Protestant, they would know just how to answer the question and say without much thought, Protestant. Although they would know that they weren’t Catholic, they would not be able to give a good answer as to what it means to be Protestant. “So, what is it that you are protesting?’ you might ask them. The brave might respond, “the Catholic church.” It would become painfully obvious that these protesting “soldiers” were unaware of why they were in battle and unsure of whom the enemy really was. The term Reformation is the historical name given to a period of time beginning in the sixteenth century where a cry went forth in Western Europe. All agree that the starting gun of the Reformation was Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenburg, Germany on October 31, 1715. The second large body of commotion started in Switzerland by John Calvin in Geneva. The later large movement in Reformation centered not on an individual, but rather a group called the Anabaptists. Lastly, a fourth major movement in the Reformation was the counter attack mounted by the Catholic Church in response to the success of the Reformers. These events encompass a period of roughly two and a half centuries during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The reformers unanimously circled their wagons around 5 truths:

• Sola Scriptura
• Solus Christus
• Sola Gratia
• Soli Deo Gloria
• Sola Fide

Perhaps no other Sola caused as much turmoil during the Reformation as Sola Fide. It was the very doctrine that prompted Martin Luther in his 95 theses to challenge the Catholic position of indulgences. He had heard a sermon preached by a Catholic clergy which appalled him by its crude theology and materialism. Upon returning home, he drafted the theses and posted them October 31, 1517 on the church door at Wittenberg. Subsequently, the Catholic Church condemned Luther’s writing and wrote an order to have his worked burned. In response, some followers of Luther burned the order. Luther became a prolific writer and composed a number of works that refuted not only indulgences but established the reformational position of Sola Fide.

The Catholic position in opposition to Luther’s Sola Fide was that the grace of God was poured into us and made us able to do good works that make us fit for salvation. It was taught that only by our will cooperating with grace and producing good works was the sinner able to merit salvation. Justification to the Catholic mind was then a process, not an event by declaration.

In evaluating the Scriptures teaching on Sola Fide, we see that the righteousness that the justified sinner stands in is not the works which by performing he has merited grace. Rather we see that the only efficacious righteousness that will save us is being clothed with the righteousness of another—the righteousness of Christ imputed to us.

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What I’ve Missed Is Now Here

Every time I’ve been to New Haven, CT (four times, I think) to do a little drive around Yale, it’s been too late in the day or too Saturdayish to go to Yale Library’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library to sit in a quiet spot and devour a book or page handled and handwritten by Jonathan Edwards.

Now they’ve brought some of those images to us online. We miss the smell of the building like this, but there are some pretty amazing things here. Here is what they have so far.

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How to Win at Life

Richard Steele:

“Read and think; read and pray; then live by His grace.”

HT: George Grant

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Learn How to Swim So You’ll Know How When You Need To

John Piper on why the book of Job exists:

“Virtually everyone will experience a bitter calamity sooner or later. And you can mark this ahead of time: it will almost certainly seem absurd and meaningless and undeserved when it comes.

You may be shaving and singing a hymn when you feel the lump on your neck. You may be buying supper for your family at the grocery store when all of a sudden you realize your two-year-old is gone.

It will seem very absurd, and you will cry out, “Why?” a hundred times before the cloud passes over. Most of our grief and pain does not come as a clear punishment for sins. Most of it comes out of nowhere and baffles our sense of justice.

That’s why the book of Job is so relevant. Job’s suffering seems to come out of nowhere and have no connection to his character. His story is recorded for us so that we will have some help in living through these calamities—and not just help to keep a stiff upper lip but to bow reverently and trustingly before the sovereign goodness of God.”

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Never Fear the Storm

From The Valley of Vision:

“Nothing exceeds Thy power,

Nothing is too great for Thee to do,

Nothing to good for Thee to give.

Infinite is Thy might, boundless Thy love,

limitless Thy grace, glorious Thy saving name…

I ask great things of a great God.”

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The Aim of Education is Not Always the Presidency

This is the poem/hymn that Karsten will begin memorizing in school this week.

God Make My Life A Little Light (1873) by Matilda B.B. Edwards

God make my life a little light
Within the world to glow;
A little flame that burneth bright,
Wherever I may go.

God make my life a little flower
That giveth joy to all,
Content to bloom in native bower,
Although the place be small.

God make my life a little song
That comforteth the sad
That helpeth others to be strong,
And makes the singer glad.

God make my life a little staff
Whereon the weak may rest,
That so what health and strength I have
May serve my neighbors best.

God make my life a little hymn
Of tenderness and praise,
Of faith, that never waxeth dim,
In all His wondrous ways.

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No Time Outs

A quote of mine from a sermon on Parenting Proverbs:

“Every bit of parenting is a spiritual endeavor. Every bit! We cannot go to the ice cream store without it being a spiritual expedition. A trip to the ice cream store is immensely multi-faceted. It involves themes of temperance, thankfulness, control, charity for others, and host of other things. Parenting is and must be a deliberate spiritual endeavor.”

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Supplant Your Pride. Hear Job Fresh.

Listen to John Piper read his biographical/narrative poem Job. It will teach you much. It will stir your soul deeply.

It’s available for listening or download or reading free (as are almost everything he does) by following the link above.

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Relief From Anxiety, Worry and Frustrations

John Newton quoted in Jerry Bridges’ Respectable Sins (p. 66):

“[One of the marks of Christian maturity which a believer should seek is] an acquiescence in the Lord’s will founded in a persuasion of his wisdom, holiness, sovereignty, and goodness…So far as we attain to this, we are secure from disappointment. Our own limited views, and short-sighted purposes and desires, may be, and will be, often over-ruled; but then our main and leading desire, that the will of the Lord may be done, must be accomplished. How highly does it become us, both as creatures and as sinners, to submit to the appointment of our Maker! and how necessary is it to our peace! This great attainment is too often unthought of, and overlooked; we are prone to fix our attention upon the second causes and immediate instruments of events; forgetting that whatever befalls us is according to his purpose, and therefore must be right and seasonable in itself, and shall in the issue be productive of good. From hence arise impatience, resentment, and secret repinings [i.e., complainings,], which are not only sinful, but tormenting; whereas, if all things are in his hand, if the very hairs of our head are numbered; if every event, great and small, is under the direction of his providence and purpose; and if he has a wise, holy, and gracious end in view, to which everything that happens is subordinate and subservient; – then we have nothing to do, but with patience and humility to follow as he leads, and cheerfully to expect a happy issue…How happy are they who can resign all to him, see his hand in every dispensation, and believe that he chooses better for them than they possibly could for themselves!“

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Why We Sing in Worship

Jonathan Edwards:

“We sing in worship to engage and express our affections. There is no other reason to sing. If we aren’t dealing with our affections in worship, we might as well just read the lines of the songs dryly together in paragraph form without any music. We worship with music to because God has created music with a certain nature where it tends to move our affections deeply.”

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Home Should Be A Place for Sweet Aromas

An excerpt from the chapter “The Art of Home School Opera: The Blessing of Family Eccentricities,” from The Little Boy Down the Road: Short Stories and Essays on the Beauty of Family Life, by Douglas W. Phillips, to be released from Vision Forum, October, 2008:

Every day there are thousands of sounds competing for the attention of fathers.

There is the sound of the television set. This is the intoxicating call of the ancient siren, lulling men to slumber, urging them to check their brains at the door of their homes and float into a sea of passivity until they crash upon the rocks of life. There is the sound of the city and the business world. These sounds sometimes give men the false assurance that corporate success is the true test of manhood.

Then there are the diverse sounds of the world in general — a never-ending barrage of sound coming from the hum of machines, the chatter of people, and the background music that follows modern man from elevators to his car to the local coffee shop. These sounds remind us that we are not alone. But they also train us to be incapable of sitting in silence and communing with our God. Like a drug that takes away the pain of life at the expense of the clarity of the mind, these sounds often fill our heads with unnecessary distraction, such that it is a struggle to focus on the most important things.

We live in a world of sound pollution — too much sound, all the time. We spend so much time listening to indiscriminate sounds that we often fail to hear the music of life. We need to reduce the pollution and start listening to the most important music — the sounds that make a Christian household a Christian household.

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Try Unpacking This

Jonathan Edwards, Miscellanies 247:

“For God to glorify himself is to discover himself in his works, or to communicate himself in his works, which is all one; for we are to remember that the world exists only mentally, so that the very being of the world implies its being perceived or discovered. Or otherwise for God to glorify himself, is in his acts ad extra to act worthy of himself, or to act excellently. Therefore God doesn’t seek his own glory because it makes him the happier to be honored and highly thought of, but because he loves to see himself, his own excellencies and glories, appearing in his works, loves to see himself communicated. And it was his inclination to communicate himself that was a prime motive of his creating the world. His own glory was the ulitmate [end], himself was his end; that is, himself communicated.”

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From the Mother of 19 Children

Susanna Wesley’s childrearing advice (she was also the 25th child in a family of 25 children):

In order to form the minds of children, the first thing to be done is to conquer their will and bring them to an obedient temper. To inform the understanding is a work of time and must with children proceed by slow degrees as they are able to bear it: but the subjecting the will is a thing which must be done at once; and the sooner the better. For by neglecting timely correction, they will contract a stubbornness and obstinacy which is hardly ever after conquered; and never, without using such severity as would be as painful to me as to the child. In the esteem of the world they pass for kind and indulgent, whom I call cruel, parents, who permit their children to get habits which they know must be afterward broken. Nay, some are so stupidly fond as in sport to teach their children to do things which, in a while after, they have severely beaten them for doing.

Whenever a child is corrected, it must be conquered; and this will be no hard matter to do if it be not grown headstrong by too much indulgence. And when the will of a child is totally subdued and it is brought to revere and stand in awe of the parents, then a great many childish follies and inadvertences style may be passed by. Some should be overlooked and taken no notice of, and others mildly reproved; but no willful transgression ought ever to be forgiven children without chastisement, less or more, as the nature and circumstances of the offense require.

I insist upon conquering the will of children betimes, because this is the only strong and rational foundation of a religious education; without which both precept and example will be ineffectual. But when this is thoroughly done, then a child is capable of being governed by the reason and piety of its parents, till its own understanding comes to maturity and the principles of religion have taken root in the mind.

I cannot yet dismiss this subject. As self-will is the root of all sin and misery, so whatever cherishes this in children insures their after-wretchedness and irreligion; whatever checks and mortifies it promotes their future happiness and piety. This is still more evident if we further consider that religion is nothing else than the doing the will of God and not our own: that the one grand impediment to our temporal and eternal happiness being this self-will, no indulgencies of it can be trivial, no denial unprofitable. Heaven or hell depends on this alone. So that the parent who studies to subdue it in his child works together with God in the renewing and saving a soul. The parent who indulges it does the devil’s work, makes religion impracticable, salvation unattainable; and does all that in him lies to damn his child, soul and body forever.

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No Ordinary John

My esteem of President Washington as a Christian man–not a Deist–is skyrocketing as I am plowing through Stephen McDowell’s biography. There really can be no objection when presented with the great and many evidences.

Lincoln loved the man he followed. He said…

“Washington is the mightiest name of earth–long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. Let none attempt it.”

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