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Father Hunger?

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Our Men’s Ministry Collision Course met this past Sunday, March 18, 2012.  We discussed this video from Desiring God entitled, What is Father Hunger?

Here’s a transcript of the interview:

Scott Anderson: So Doug, tell me about this phrase I’ve heard you write about on your blog and talk about before, Father Hunger.  What do you mean by that and what are you trying to get at using that phrase?
Doug Wilson: What I mean is that when, when fathers abdicate, when fathers are not fathers, when fathers don’t exhibit the kind of backbone their wives and their children need them to exhibit, there’s a natural and built-in creational need that his wife and his children need him to exhibit but he’s not exhibiting.  They need him to give them something that he’s not giving to them.  And when he—famished nature will be avenged—when you withhold from your children the praise that children ought to receive from their father, when you withhold from them a love that they ought to get from their father, when you withhold from them provision they ought to get from their father, they have a deep awareness that something’s missing. 
Now, oftentimes, because of how they’ve grown up they don’t know what it is exactly.  They can’t pinpoint what the problem is but they are highly susceptible to political demagogues, they are susceptible to counterfeit forms of masculinity, screaming at rock stars, people who exhibit some sort of machismo, some sort of strength, people gravitate to that not knowing why they do.  They’ll fall for the promises of a paternalistic state: “I’ll take care of you; I’ll provide everything you need.”  And that’s all driven by father hunger.  Feminism is driven by father hunger.  Many people think feminism is the desire to have men go away.  I think fundamentally feminism is the deep angst over men not showing up.   
After showing this video to the men, we discussed the examples of Abraham (Genesis 22:5), Job (Job 1:5) and Paul’s commands to the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 16:13-14).  We asked men two questions:
1) What do the examples of Abraham and Job teach us?
2) In what area(s) do you need to “act like a man”?
We closed in prayer with men praying at tables with one another over these things. 

Weekend Review – Faith Understands

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My AM sermon from 3/18/12 entitled Faith Understands from Hebrews 11:3 is now online.  The sermon sought to unpack some aspects of faith, but specifically helped us see that what we believe about the creation of the world is a matter of faith.  Whether we accept the Bible’s teaching on it or deny it, we are exhibiting faith in something.  For the believer, it is by faith that they understand the origin of the world, taking God at His Word.

Hope you have a great week.  I’ll have a post tomorrow summarizing our men’s ministry Collision Course.

Time…

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I get the privilege to give a eulogy on my grandfather’s life tomorrow.  I love constructing eulogies around Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.  What does that say?  Well, it begins by saying there’s a season for everything, a time for every matter under heaven.  I have to chuckle when it comes to my Gpa and time, because being on time wasn’t just a priority, it was a lifestyle.  Being on time meant that you left 5 minutes early.  There have been all kinds of stories from the family about this.

My grandpa’s schedule as a pastor is a great testimony for His love for God, people and helps us understand how he took God’s Word seriously when it said there was a TIME for everything under heaven.  On a typical day…
8-10:00AM – In the office studying for Sunday’s sermon
10:00-10:30AM – Home for coffee with Grandma
10:30AM – Noon – Visiting hospitals, nursing homes and shut ins
Noon – 1PM – Lunch
1 – 4:30PM – More visitation off the list he had compiled of people who needed attention.
(All of these visits were then transferred into a pastoral journal that kept track of all these “appointments”.)

I still marvel at God’s kindness to provide me with such a heritage and long to not only be faithful to that, but ultimately to my Father in heaven.  How might you employ your time in faithfulness to God’s plan for you?

Faith Is…

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Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, for by it the people of old received their commendation (Hebrews 11:1-2).  This was my text for my sermon yesterday, 3/11/12.  The sermon was entitled Faith Is.  Many misrepresent Christianity by claiming that it is just a leap into the dark unknown, but the Bible itself doesn’t allow for such a construct.  The Bible sees faith as stepping with full confidence and assurance, dare I say proof, into all that God’s promises, which is unseen to the natural eye.  This is the time-tested path for those who relate to God.  For more info, give my sermon a listen.  Hope you have a good week.

Take Heart

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Our praise team is singing this song today.  Here’s the lyric:

[Verse 1:]
There is a light
It burns brighter than the sun
He steals the night
And casts no shadow
There is hope
Should oceans rise and mountains fall
He never fails

[Chorus:]
So take heart
Let His love lead us through the night
Hold on to hope
And take courage again

[Verse 2:]
In death by love
The fallen world was overcome
He wears the scars of our freedom
In His Name
All our fears are swept away
He never fails

[Bridge:]
All our troubles And all our tears
God our hope He has overcome

All our failure And all our fear
God our love He has overcome

All our heartache And all our pain
God our healer He has overcome

All our burdens And all our shame
God our freedom He has overcome

My Grandpa’s Passed On…

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Just got a call that my Grandpa has finished his fight here on earth…

About the same time he was passing, I was reading Winslow’s Morning Thoughts for March 11, which said this:

Dry, then, your tears, and cease to mourn, you saints of God. They are “not lost, but gone before.” Their spirits live with Jesus. And when He comes, He will bring them with Him, and you shall see and know them with a cloudless sight and a perfect knowledge. The very eyes which once smiled upon you so kindly- the very tongue which spoke to you so comfortingly- the very hands which administered to you so skillfully- the very feet which traveled by your side so faithfully- the very bosom which pillowed you so tenderly- you shall meet again. “The coming of the Lord draws near,” and those who “sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.” Let us “comfort one another with these words.” 

Please pray these sweet words of comfort over my family today.  We’ve lost an oak…

Faith…

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My AM sermon today will be on Hebrews 11:1-2, describing what faith is.  Here’s a longer definition from Phil Hughes on what v.1 is driving at and I’ve added space for emphasis…

[Faith is a] conviction
     that is not a static emotion of complacency
     but something lively and active,
not just a state of immovable dogmatism
    but of vital certainty
which impels the believer to stretch out his hand, as it were
     and lay hold of those realities on which his hope is fixed
     and which, though unseen, are already his in Christ.

Hoping to hold out this kind of faith today…

Weekend Preview – Faith Defined

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This coming Lord’s Day, we finally get to Hebrews 11, specifically vv.1-2.  In this opening statement, we have faith defined with terms like assurance and confidence.  Often, people think that Christianity is some blind leap into the dark.  But, the Bible paints faith in entirely different concepts.  Faith is, actually, centered and fully reliant on the reality that is ours in Christ.

Looking forward to this Lord’s Day as we revel in these and other truths.

Your Brain, Memory & God’s Word…

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There was a great post a couple of days ago entitled Hidden In the Heart.  The writer, in my estimation, was seeking to sound a wake up call for us to not be numbed to the effects that technology has on us, but to redeem them for the glory of God and the good of the Gospel.  Here’s a sampling of this:

If we are to be holy we need to hide the word in our hearts, and that means a deliberate commitment to memorisation and meditation. It means a refusal to allow our brains to be trained by the world, a resistance to the laziness that the interweb can breed in our all-too-susceptible minds; it means a commitment to holiness that is willing to re-train and develop the faculties of our hearts contrary to the trend and tendency of the age in which we live, and to make sure that we pack into the armoury that array of weaponry necessary for the constant fight against ungodliness, temptations within and without. We must love that truth, know that truth in its sense and substance, in its particular words and phrases, understand it as a treasure and as a weapon, and learn how to use it in the combat with sin.

I invite you, then, to fight the effect of technology in your heart and soul and fight to renew your mind.  With you in this fight…

The Resurrection of Jesus

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Here’s my Edifier article from the March/April 2012 Church Newsletter of Crestview:

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4)


I know it may be difficult to wrap your mind around this, but Easter is just around the corner. And, if you’re like me, I often find myself needing help to be able to praise God for what He’s accomplished in raising Christ from the dead. It was with great joy, then, that I read these words from Octavius Winslow:


“The resurrection of Christ is a vital doctrine of Christianity. It sustains an essential relation to the spiritual life of the believer. Viewing it in connection with the union of Christ and His people, the two facts become identical— standing in the relation of cause and effect. Our Lord, in His great atoning work, acted in a public or representative character. He represented in His person the whole elect of God, who virtually were in Him, each step that he took in working out their redemption. In His resurrection from the grave this was preeminently so. The Head could not be resuscitated apart from the body. Christ could not rise without the Church. Thus, then, the new or the resurrection life of Christ, and the inner or spiritual life of the believer, are one and indivisible. Now, when the resurrection of the Head is spiritually realized, when it is fully received into the heart by faith, it becomes a quickening, energizing, sanctifying truth to each member of His body. It transmits a power to the inmost soul, felt in all the actings and manifestations of the spiritual life. Blessed are they who feel, and who feel daily, that they are indeed “risen with Christ,” and who find every new perception of this great truth to act like a mighty lever to their souls—lifting them above this “present evil world”—a world passing away.

“Perhaps no circumstance connected with the resurrection of Christ conveys to the mind a clearer idea of its bearings upon the happiness of the Church than the part which the Divine Father is represented as having taken in the illustrious event. His having committed Himself to the fact at once stamps it with all its saving interest. “Whom God has raised.” “Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father.” “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead.” By this act of raising up His Son from the grave, the Father manifested His delight in, and His full acceptance of, the sacrifice of Christ, as a finished and satisfactory expiation for the sins of His people. So long as Jesus remained in the grave, there was wanting the evidence of the acceptance of His death; the great seal of heaven, the signature of God, was needed to authenticate the fact. But when the Father released the Surety from the dominion of death, he annihilated, by that act, all legal claim against His Church, declaring the ransom accepted, and the debt cancelled. “He was taken from prison,”—as the prisoner of justice—the prisoner of death—and the prisoner of the grave; the Father, in the exercise of His glorious power, opens the prison door, and delivers the illustrious Captive—and by the door through which He emerges again to life, enters the full justification of His whole Church; for it is written—“He was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.”

“A more important truth— where all are of infinite moment to the happiness of man—is not found in the Word of God. As it forms the keystone to the mighty arch of Christianity, so it constitutes the groundwork of spiritual life, upon the basis of which the Holy Spirit of God quickens the souls of all, who are “the called according to His purpose.” It was a knowledge of this truth which awoke the ardent desire of the apostle’s soul, “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection.” (Evening Thoughts, Feb 8)


I hope you find the truths found in this brief excerpt helpful. The resurrection is not some insignificant, meaningless event. No. In the resurrection, believers are united with Christ and now truly live, not for ourselves but for Him who died and rose again for us. Blessed to celebrate this with you once again…