Exhortation.

This is a recent exhortation the pastor of our sister church, Trinity, gave to his congregation.  I thought it quite good.

Sins of Youth

Trinity is a relatively young congregation. While some of you are as ancient as the hills, the lot of you are young. You are young children, you are young men, young women, young adults, young marrieds, and young parents. This means that we as a congregation must recognize that we are tempted largely by the sins of youth. You are tempted to rebel against godly authority, and You are tempted to replace those godly authorities with pathetic substitutes like professional athletes, cutting edge authors, rock stars, political pundits, celebrities of every stripe, and all manner of foolish friends in your desperate attempts to be hip and cool and intelligent. You are tempted to excess: if one beer is good, two must be better. And if you can’t quote me a verse, you can’t make me stop. You struggle with self control and discipline. How much time do you spend on Facebook? Video games? Chatting/Texting/Whatever? You are tempted to lust for worldly power, glory, beauty, and sex. And while these temptations and sins are not limited to young people, they are the typical battles. And you need to know two things: First, the God you serve desires to bless you out of your mind. He has things prepared for you that you cannot even begin to imagine. And these things include but are not limited to deep and abiding joy, glory that pours down on your head, and satisfying pleasures that do not end. But the God you serve will not give His children a stone when they ask Him for bread. He is not satisfied with cheap substitutes, and He is not pleased when His children settle for less than the best. But the best comes through the cross. The best comes through serving, through giving up yourself. True glory, true authority, true pleasure comes through putting to death the lusts of the flesh and giving yourself away for others. Serve your parents, bless your brother, help your sister, bless your roommate, minister grace to your spouse, keep on loving those little ones. Out of the trenches of homework and housekeeping and giving rides and changing diapers and studying for exams and disciplining your children and serving your employer, out of those trenches will emerge many kings and queens. Jesus rode into Jerusalem like a king, but He was not enthroned until He had shed his blood for His people.

“Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O LORD!” (Ps. 25:7)

Wal-Mart

Zane... snotty, but never naughty.

Zane's cute grin... Tikki's solace.

Zane

Guess who has been sitting up for nearly a week now?

Signe swinging

Standing in line is Christian decency.

Peter Hitchens, the evangelical Christian brother of Christopher Hitchens, world renowned atheist, wrote recently about the similarities between communism and atheism, how both attempt to take the place of God for the masses.

"Soviet power had taken on the responsibilities of God, but its commandments were very different. In fact, Soviet Communism used the same language, treasured the same hopes and appealed to the same constituency as Western atheism does today.

Soviet power was the opposite of faith in God. It was faith in the greatness of humanity and in the perfectibility of human society. The atheists cannot honestly disown it."


Peter Hitchens then makes an observation about language and standing in line, two things that might seem disparate but on further observation, reveal a societies beliefs about God.


"Several features of life in Moscow made a big impact on me, accustomed as I was to the culture and good manners of a rich and stable Protestant Christian society. One was pointed out to me by a visiting exile whose grandparents had fled in the days of Lenin.

He had been brought up in America speaking pure, middle-class Russian; literary and elegant, which sounded, as he said, 'like bells'.

He told me how shocked he was to encounter the coarse, ugly, slang-infested and bureaucratic tongue now spoken in Moscow, even by educated professional people, and seen in its newspapers and on public noticeboards.

The collapse of manners could be seen when a trolleybus swung into the roadside to pick up passengers. If you were well bundled up it was reasonably easy to withstand the ruthless pushing, elbowing and fury which erupted every time the creaking, steamed-up vehicle stopped and flapped its doors open."


I had similar experiences living in China.  No one stood in line.  I became accustomed to being elbowed by little old ladies and young schoolboys.  And the language?  Communist leader Mao Tse Tung "simplified" the language in both writing and speaking.  This was done in the name of increasing literacy among the peasants.  It also led to a cruder way of speaking.


Manners and language say much about where we put our faith and the consequences thereof.


For more about Peter Hitchens forthcoming book, click here.

Cheeseballs!

Hypocrite?

My pastor tweeted this today...

"If there is a hypocrite between you and God . . . then he's closer to God than you are."  Doug Wilson

B Zay Zay

Bus races before bed.

Pit stop

Bus races before bed.

Bus races before bed