(excerpt from an interview with Michael Horton)“As for orthodoxy, it is cold and dead and grim without the warmth and life and beauty with which love invests it. The Ephesians even hated the evil deeds and words of the Nicolaitans, so unimpeachable was their theological correctness. But to hate error and evil is not the same as to love Jesus Christ.” —
John Stott, What Christ Thinks of the Church
HT: Ray Ortlund
(excerpt from an interview with Michael Horton)
Mike, what is one lesson you’ve being learning in recent years that you think might be helpful to share with others?
I guess it’s the lesson of needing more patience. Impatience is one of my besetting sins, as my wife—one of my chief sanctifiers—reminds me regularly. It’s a terrible besetting sin because essentially it’s rooted in a failure to connect theory with practice. I believe that God is sovereign, but I don’t really think He is. If it’s going to happen, I think that I have be the one to do it and that it’s got to be done my way. And as I grow just a little bit older I’m beginning to realize more and more that this world is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. I am also growing in my understanding that the church is Christ’s and that He has not entrusted its welfare to me or to us. He is making sure that His church progresses, and He’ll do it even through our feeble efforts. So my relaxing a little bit more and trusting in the providence of God—not just believing it intellectually but relaxing in it, basking in it, really, taking refuge in it, has been helpful in trying to become more patient and dependent on God.
HT: Justin Taylor
“Are you tempted? Look unto Jesus. Are you afflicted? Look unto Jesus. Do all speak evil of you? Look unto Jesus. Do you feel cold, dull, backsliding? Look unto Jesus. Whether you are weak or strong, in the valley or on the mountain, in sickness or in health, in sorrow or in joy, in going out or in coming in, in youth or in age, in richness or in poverty, in life or in death—let this be your motto and your guide, “LOOKING UNTO JESUS!”
~ J.C. Ryle
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HT: JC Ryle Quotes
“It’s not your church, it’s his church, and the church is going to grow as he builds it, and if you start to take credit for it, or start to think you’re converting them to your thing, you will easily step into the place of Jesus for people, both in your own life, you’ll say ‘Gosh, I gotta do more and it’s dependent on me and if I don’t pull it off, who’s gonna?’ And your people will start to think that it’s their job to build your church. Their job is NOT to build your church, it’s JESUS’ job to build the church, he said he’d do it. Their job is to BE the church, to submit to Christ as the head, to honor him in all things, to live unto him!” — Jeff Vanderstelt
“All forms of idolatry involve us deeply in folly. All idolatry is not only treacherous but also futile. Human desire, deep and restless and seemingly unfulfillable, keeps stuffing itself with finite goods, but these cannot satisfy. If we try to fill our hearts with anything besides the God of the universe, we find that we are overfed but undernourished, and we find that day by day, week by week, year after year, we are thinning down to a mere outline of a human being.”
–Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin
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HT: Tolle Lege
“The prophets dreamed of a new age in which human crookedness would be straightened out, rough places made plain. The foolish would be made wise, and the wise, humble. They dreamed of a time when the deserts would flower, the mountains would run with wine, weeping would cease, and people could go to sleep without weapons on their laps. People would work in peace and work to fruitful effect. Lambs could lie down with lions. All nature would be fruitful, benign, and filled with wonder upon wonder. All humans would be knit together in brotherhood and sisterhood; and all nature and all humans would look to God, walk with God, lean toward God, and delight in God. Shouts of joy and recognition would well up from valleys and seas, from women in streets and from men on ships. The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom.”
–Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin
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HT: Tolle Lege
“The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.
Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom.
Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life.
Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.
Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
–C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper Collins, 1952/2001), 226-227.
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HT: Tolle Lege
Sage words from Jeff Vanderstelt…
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A while back I shared at a seminar how we welcome people to our Gatherings on a weekly basis in order to remind them that they ARE THE CHURCH…Here’s what we generally say…
“Welcome to Soma’s Gathering. We believe because of what Jesus has accomplished through his life, death and resurrection that we have become His Church saved BY His work FOR His work. We no longer GO to church because we ARE the church. In fact, we believe that We, the Church, go to the world as God’s sent people to bring the good news of Jesus in word and deed so others might believe and become Jesus’ Church.
If you don’t yet believe in what Jesus has accomplished on your behalf to make you right with God, then you are GOING to church today. You’re welcome to attend this gathering as one who is GOING to church as long as you need to…our hope is that you will one day come to believe and become part of Jesus’ Church.
If you have already believe this Gospel of Jesus, then we’re calling you to stop GOING to church and join us in being equipped and sent to Be the Church today.”
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