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The Church, The Future Generations and Revival

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Here’s an important question answered from Ray Ortlund’s When God Comes to Church:

“Do we want to guarantee that our children will run in the opposite direction of our most cherished biblical convictions?  All we have to do is sterilize our churches.  Make them rigid, unresponsive, grim.  Require of our ministers that they play the role of scolding, scowling Reverend Eat-Your-Peas. Treat the gospel as a theological system only, rather than also as a personal remedy.  Use the Bible as ammunition for “culture wars” rather than as food for life.  Withdraw from the historical situation in which God has placed us.  Build up the walls, reinforce the barriers and make certain that no experience gets in here.  Ignore the fact that “doctrine only” is not itself a biblical doctrine.

“But do we want our children to embrace our biblical convictions with joy?  Let our churches become environments fertile with revival potentialities.  Let’s shape our churches with deliberate intention that their content and tone may encourage our children, and all others, in true experience of God.  Let our convictions open up to their eyes a glorious vision of God and to their hearts the succulent pleasures of God.  We cannot trigger a divine visitation on our churches, but it is our responsibility prayerfully to offer our Lord a church steeped in the gospel and tenderly responsive to his presence.  His Spirit’s blessing should not have to work against the logic and ethos we create.

(pp. 16-17)

Weekend Recap – 4/19/15 – Abide

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My 4/19/15AM sermon, The True Vine from John 15:1-11, is now online.  There were so many things to say about this powerful word from Jesus on being the True Vine and without Him we can do nothing.  My heart was rocked to the core by Him and I tried to help our people see these things.  My outline got at connections between us and the True Vine and how we live in the here and now.  I hope you find encouragement in it.

Weekend Recap – 3/29/15

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My 3/29/15AM sermon, The Good Shepherd from John 10:11-18, is now online.  This sermon proved to be a great text for Palm Sunday as seeing that the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep is such a profound truth in the section of Scripture.  Holy Week builds to Jesus’ death and resurrection and these themes easily emerged from Jesus’ own description of what He came to do.  I hope this sermon encourages you, as well.

Carson on how Good Friday relates to Easter

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In the Pillar NT Commentary on John, here’s a great connection Don Carson makes (commenting on John 10:17):

Jesus lays down his life in order to take it up again. Jesus’ sacrificial death was not an end in itself, and his resurrection an afterthought. His death was with the resurrection in view. He died in order to rise, and by his rising to proceed toward his ultimate glorification (12:23; 17:5) and the pouring out of the Spirit (7:37–39) so that others, too, might live.

CBC H2Go – Christ: The Joy of Missions

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I’m posting today over at our church’s missions blog:

Habbakuk 3:17-19 “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.”
Strategic Recklessness is really about JOY.  “We forsake our security and comforts in this life to fulfill the Great Commission and to seek our everlasting joy in Christ.”  Christ does give us a superior joy.  Somehow the prophet knew this reality to be true.  Even though everything seemed to be taken away, He still had God and that was the place of joy.  Missions might mean you are inconvenienced, persecuted or even put to death, but having that everlasting joy in Christ means that it will never end.  It’s yours today in Him.  Christ is the joy of missions.  Let Him inspire you to give up all for sake of His cause.

Weekend Recap – 3/22/15

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My 3/22/15AM sermon, Jesus Is The Door from John 10:7-10 is now online (Small Group Questions here).  I had been out of the pulpit a couple of weeks with my India trip, so it was good to return to this series that our church is doing through this Easter season.

This particular sermon highlighted how Jesus is exclusive from other religious leaders, how He’s the Savior and how He gives abundant life.  So, I’m hoping this sermon was helpful and engaging and promoting a deeper reliance on Him.

Weekend Recap – 3/1/15

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My 3/1/15AM sermon, Introduction to the I Am’s from John 20:30-31 is now online.  This sermon introduced a sermon series our church is pursuing through the Easter season on the 7 I Am’s of Jesus in John’s Gospel.  Here’s a helpful chart overviewing where we’re headed:

My hope through this sermon was to help people connect to John’s purpose: that we may see Christ and believing in Him, we may have life in His name.  Hope you have a great Sunday.

Book Review – Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled by D. Martyn Lloyd Jones

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The good Doctor, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, is maybe one of the greatest preachers in the 20th Century.  This collection of sermons was given at the church he served in London, Westminster Chapel, in 1951 with the recent memory of World War 2 fresh in his listeners minds and the raw reality of the Cold War beginning to sprout.  What follows in this book are 8 sermons from John 14:1-12.  
You can imagine the scene, much like today’s world.  It seems like our world is filled with so much uncertainty and doubt.  We don’t know what the right matters are to stand firm on (in some cases) and we wonder what to make of the future.  In comes Lloyd-Jones employing God’s Word as a surgeon for the soul.  Part 1, We Must Believe, gets at three chapters: Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled, Believe in God, Believe Also In Me.  Part 2, The Soul and Its Future, includes In My Father’s House, I Go To Prepare a Place for You, and I Will Come Again, and Receive You.  In Part 3, No Other Way, he rounds out this series with I Am The Way, The Truth and The Life and Greater Works Than These Shall He Do.
Today, you may wonder what to do with your life.  What are the areas that are eternal?  And, in deeper ways, how does your heart find a place to live in light of all that’s happening in the world.  I would encourage you to grab this group of sermons to find the comforting words of Jesus used in ways that will sure encourage you.  I highly recommend this book.