Gentlemen in and around Hutch: Just a reminder, we will have 7 in ’11 tomorrow, Saturday AM, February 12, at 8AM. Tom Dixon will be teaching on the second of the seven deadly sins (anger) and we will have time for eating, accountability, learning and prayer. Join us…
Forgiving Those Who Don’t Change
Darrin Patrick answers some questions from people in his church. In this installment: How do I forgive someone who refuses to change?
Snarky?
As believers, the words we use are to be characterized by letting: “no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). In some interaction with others recently, I’ve noticed my own words are rather snarky. I confessed this to some fellow leaders and they wondered what it meant.
Wiktionary defines snarky as “Snide and sarcastic; usually out of irritation; often humorously.” It’s easy to speak words like this when wronged or when we seem to be more righteous than someone else. We can act as if we are better than our brothers or sisters. This can’t be. Let’s be loving and forgiving towards them, especially when they sin.
As we think this weekend about forgiveness and having a forgiving spirit towards others, let’s wage war on our tongues, seeking to make sure that no corrupting (snarky) talk comes out of our mouths.
Weekend Preview – Forgiveness
This coming Lord’s Day (2/13/11) we will be honing in on Matthew 6:12 (…and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.) This will be my opening illustration from Rick Reilly on Aaron Rodgers’ unforgettable forgiveness. Summarized as:
To err is human. To forgive is divine.
To forgive in the Super Bowl, even better.
There are so many lessons for us to learn from what Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:12. Join us this Sunday as we explore these truths.
Wed PM Activities at Crestview
…will be cancelled on 2/9/11
How’s your eyes?
I got my eyes checked this afternoon. One year ago I gave up all the squinting to get some glasses. I realized pretty quickly that my sight hadn’t been clear for a while.
How’s your spiritual sight? We do such a great job noticing other people’s failures and oversight, but give ourselves a very charitable assessment. Hold up God’s Word to your life by asking other people to assess your blind spots. In doing so your spiritual sight will be clarified.
Weekend Recap – Daily Bread
Today’s sermon, Model Prayer (3) on Matthew 6:11 is now online. This sermon sought to flesh out what a dependent, trusting heart looks like towards a God who can “give us this day our daily bread.” Hopefully the sermon was helpful in making your heart more dependent on the God who gave you life.
No service this evening. Hope you have a blessed week full of trusting the Lord for the basics.
Daily Bread (from Proverbs 30:7-9)…
This video from Francis Chan gets at the truth we will be looking at this coming Lord’s Day. What does it mean to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”? Here’s the question from Chan:I hope this challenges you and you come ready to hear what God’s Word has to teach us. To review, why not read through Matthew 6:9-13 (these are also the church’s memory verses for January).
Test
I’m testing a new Android app. Thanks for bearing with the technical difficulties.
DG Pastor’s Conference Wrap Up
Now that I’m back from the 2011 Desiring God Conference for Pastors, here are some reflections on each of the messages.
Session 1 – Cultivating Private Prayer as a Pastor – Joel Beeke
This was a great kick off session, full of quotes and much practicality. I really felt conviction of my lack of prayerlessness through this sermon. His two paths of application were Take Hold of Self and Take Hold of God. Matt Perman tweeted that this was the best sermon on prayer he’s ever heard. I am in relative agreement, although this wasn’t an exposition as much as a topical unfolding of the subject of prayer.
Session 2 – Helping Your People Discover the Praying Life – Paul Miller
If you’ve read Miller’s book, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World, then this session will be a helpful, one talk summary of all that this book teaches. It was really encouraging as well.
Session 3 – Prayer as a Way of Walking in Love: A Personal Journey – Francis Chan
This talk was a testimony of sorts as to how Chan has experienced answered prayer in his walk with the Lord. Great question in this talk was “Do you still believe God answers prayer?” Very motivational to the practice of prayer.
Session 4 – He Kissed the Rose and Felt the Thorn: Living and Dying in the Morning of Life Robert Murray McCheyne – John Piper
I love these biographical messages by Piper each year. This year’s didn’t disappoint. He weaved what made this young man burn with passion for God by showing his conversion and preparation for a young life. It ended up looking at the place of prayer in McCheyne’s life. Again, very encouraging.
Session 5 – Leading Family Worship – Joel Beeke
This talk had 4 goals: to lay out a paradigm for family worship, to discuss the practice of it, to lead us to preach on this and to consider more effective ways of training others in this. This talk was replete with practical ways one could go about practicing family worship.
Session 6 – Unreached Peoples and the Power of Prayer – Jerry Rankin
Another highlight of the DG conference is the missions talk or how does the subject of the conference relate to the fulfilling of the Great Commission. Rankin gave a call for us to go about obeying the Great Commission and realize that as we pray for the nations God might be changing our hearts to go ourselves.
Session 7 – Q & A – Speakers Panel
The conference typically wraps up with a session dealing with some questions the conference inspired. Helpful way to review and hear about the subject matter again.
Overall Reflection: I loved attending this conference. DG always does a great job of leading us in singing, giving us opportunities to pray and helping us think through subject matters. I personally would have liked to see more Biblical expositions, but found the messages helpful. I think, also, that sometimes commendations were confused with commands. It’s easy for pastors (especially) to treat applications as matters of obeying or disobeying what God has actually said. There was some blurring of that. However, these are minor assessments. Overall, I know that I need to be about the work of prayer in ministry and this conference helped give me avenues to flesh this out more in my life.
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