Now, I am no great writer like my husband…….and no great theological debater… like my husband……. so bear with me. I am not adopted as the title might indicate.  Tonight we went to church and heard a sermon about being adopted……… into the Kingdom of Heaven. This is fantastic.  Well I think so. I think this is cause for much celebration.  Our great and awesome God has adopted me into His family…… and I am the beneficary of all that is His. Wow!!  He owns the cattle on a thousand hills… so that means I own the cattle on a thousand hills.  He is the King and ruler of all the world.  So that means I am a princess of all the world.  Being adopted into His family means so very much in so many ways on so many levels.  Being adopted comes with responsibilities and being ambassadors for Christ, and being persecuted because of it, but also being empowered because of it, and the list goes on and on.  Being adopted into the family of God because of the price that God paid for us, i.e. Jesus Christ, is a very special and fantastic thing and deserves much more than a passing consideration.  Praise the Lord.

Here is a link to a post that briefly discusses The Da Vinci Code in a way I think most useful.  Paul Windsor is the principal of Carey Baptist College in Auckland, New Zealand.

(HT: Sean du Toit.  Yeah, he sounds hoity du toity…and he is.)

Expect no links in this post - I see no need to identify the person I am writing about. It is merely a sad story of one person’s “progression” away from orthodoxy.

When I first found the egalitarian discussion list, she was the least reactive and most willing to actually discuss. She is an intelligent and thoughtful woman. She had learned that invectives get you nowhere, but unfortunately had also learned to control them by not actually going too deep in discussion. This did not mean she did not go deep in her thinking.

Her history seemed to go like this… Continue Reading »

A week or so ago I wrote about the need to perhaps think about the songs we sing.  I have just read a paper, written by a New Zealand Presbyterian, which examines church worship in a much more extensive way.

Here is a quote:

“For as the Son was worshipped and adored along with the Father [emphasising His divinity in response the Arian controversy], his mediatorial role in relation to prayer and worship was obscured, and substitute figures were found, including the medieval priesthood, the communion of saints and the Virgin Mary.” 

Interesting stuff.

(HT: Andrew)

Yes, it seems that divorce as a topic has regained currency.  Mark Driscoll has preached on it recently (see his message on 1 Corinthians 7:10-24, 39-40) and the Internet Monk has started a series of posts on it.  Even worse, the Monk has used the picture on his “Part 4″ post that I have already put on the draft post about divorce I am frantically looking for time to finish!

You gotta be quick, I tell ya!

I’ve added the Napier Baptist blog to my links.  Andrew, the pastor, was at Bible College when I was.  He’s a good guy.

(For those of you who don’t know, Napier is in the Hawkes Bay in NZ.)

The recent T4G statement seems to have revived the gender debate amongst some blogs.  In fact, most of the negative reviews I have seen about the statement seem to centre on that issue alone!  Over at Parableman a conversation involving subordination/submission within the Trinity has begun which I will be watching from a safe distance.  I’m done with discussing of that topic - that is, unless I can see the possibility that it won’t degenerate into meaningless disagreement.

The above phrase is part of a song sung in our church last Sunday.  It’s a song that talks about hungering and thirsting after Jesus as our satisfaction.  (You can read the complete words to the song here.)

Now, I don’t have a big problem with these types of songs.  I agree that too many songs like this promote a “Jesus is my boyfriend” mentality - which is particularly problematic for most males - but I personally think such songs can also be used as a genuine, heartfelt response and crying out to God.  Alot of the complaints about these type of passionate songs come from a culture where passion is not considered a masculine quality, and the complainants themselves seem to think that passionate love for Jesus and knowing something of God’s power and majesty are mutually exclusive.  I don’t agree that this is so.

But my thoughts are in another direction.  As we were singing, I was acutely aware that my friend beside me, in all likelihood, had no real desire to fall on his knees and offer everything to Jesus right then.  Doesn’t mean he hadn’t offered everything to Jesus but sometimes you just don’t feel like making those passionate claims.  And I’m certain there are others who felt the same.  Shucks, even I wasn’t feeling particularly passionate at the time and to sing like I was seemed false.

So it occurred to me.  Why sing songs that assume people are all at the same place?  Commonsense tells us they are not.  There are some who could sing that with feeling, and others who are looking for answers to whom that song meant nothing at all.  Surely the songs we sing corporately should take that into account!

What about selecting songs that centre on Who Christ is and what He has done and what God is like, instead of songs that are appropriate as a devotional, individual response to Jesus?  To sing songs like the one above in a corporate setting is asking people to sing things they don’t necessarily mean.

What thoughts do we have out there?

I have noticed more and more a tendency in me to choose the pleasant way, the secure and comfortable way - the way with the most to gain and the least amount of effort - all for a life of uninterrupted contentment and satisfaction.  And should this dream of a continually pleasant life be rudely broken in upon by a “bad day”, I get angry.

No, I’m not alone in this.  All of us expect a good life.  It is our right!!! or so we believe.  But the truth is if we have no bad days, or weeks or months or even years…something’s wrong.

How can I say this? Continue Reading »

Up until recently, I had seen talk around the blogosphere about Tim Keller.  I think he was first brought to prominence through DA Carson’s book that critiqued the Emerging Church.  Tim Keller’s Church - Redeemer Presbyterian in New York - was cited as an example of reaching out to the same culture the Emerging Church wishes to without totally deconstructing church structure, preaching and faith.  (Yes, DA Carson does generalise).

Many people were saying how great Tim Keller’s preaching was and what a great church etc, etc, and I just shyed away from it all.  I don’t like jumping on bandwagons.

Just in the last week or so I began to listen to some of his messages…Wow!  I was hooked.  The first message in the “values” section of the Redeemer website (Who is this Jesus?) is the first defence of Christianity that I have ever gelled with.  It is great.  So, I am progressively listening to more.  Not all are fantastic, but they are all good.  And there are even more resources to wade through, helpfully linked to by Steve McCoy.

I found myself visiting the Redeemer site so often, it has become easier to include it in my links.

So I did.

[Update: No longer there due to revamping of blog focus]