A prayer by William Tyndale, one of the early Reformers. A prayer that I need in these days of rumblings and threats that make up our world.

Dear God, give me a steady heart and a true courage in all my striving against the devil, so that I may not only endure and finally triumph, but also have peace in the midst of struggle.

May I praise you and thank you and not complain or become impatient against your divine will.

Let peace win the victory in my heart, so that, in my impatience, I will not initiate anything against you or my neighbor.

May I remain quiet and peaceable toward you and toward other people, both inwardly and outwardly, until the final and eternal peace shall come. Amen.

I read this today and found it worth sharing:

“Men are undoubtedly more in danger from prosperity than from adversity. For when matters go smoothly, they flatter themselves and are intoxicated by their success.”⎯ John Calvin Commentary on Isaiah 32:11

Reflections by Todd Mangum, of Biblical Theological Seminary

If there was ever a group of people in history that needed to heed this point it is Americans today: American Christians especially.

It is a point that God warned His people about early on. It is as if God knows that people will turn to Him when they are under duress.  It is “when your cities are great and splendid,” “your houses are full of all good things,” when the “cisterns are hewn” and fresh water abounds, when “the vineyards and olive trees” are plump with their produce, “and you shall eat and be satisfied” – that is when “you must beware, lest you forget the LORD who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Deut. 6:10-12; cf. Deut 8:11-14).

Isaiah the prophet drives home this very point in the 8^th century B.C., warning the people (my paraphrase) “YOU ARE FORGETTING! YOUR PROSPERITY IS MAKING YOU STUPID!”  This prophecy is what prompts Calvin’s observation in the 16^th century (more than 2,000 years later).  And 500 years after that, here we are, forgetful and stupid once again.

Jesus states plainly, “You cannot serve both God and materialism” (Matt. 6:24). It really does seem like many American Christians believe that if you work it right, you can. How forgetful, how stupid we are.

What would Calvin say about a country so prosperous, about a people so arrogant and proud, so comfortable and complacent? What would Isaiah say? What would Moses say?  What would Jesus say?  (I’m guessing the message would be similar and would be along the lines of: “Beware!  You are forgetting, and your prosperity is making you stupid!”)

I prefer prosperity to adversity myself. But I cannot escape the truth of Calvin’s warning, rooted in the warnings of the prophets of old.  How about you?

About a year ago I wrote on these words that still resonate with me.

Augustine wrote: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” He went on to write, “You called, you cried, you shattered my deafness. You sparkled, you blazed, and drove away my blindness. You shed your fragrance, and I drew in my breath, and I pant for you. I tasted and now I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and now I burn with longing for your peace.”

As human beings we are all made in the image of God. We are made to commune with Him, to delight in Him, to glorify Him with every ounce of our being.

This journey of faith we are on is not about a list of dos and donts. This is a journey in which I seek pleasure in God alone. Often, my problem is that I am far too easily satisfied in this quest for pleasure. I am guilty of seeking pleasure in cheap imitations and in things that are temporary and pass away. All the while I hear Christ reminding me that there are eternal pleasures found in Him. It was for the JOY that was set before him that Moses chose the reproach of Christ and deemed it worth far more than all the treasures Egypt could offer.

May we be renewed and refreshed to seek pleasure in God alone. Let us taste, and in tasting hunger and thirst for that which only God can give. If we hunger and thirst for righteousness we shall be filled!

It has been a while since I have written. Forgive me for that lapse, but life has gotten in the way of late. This morning in Men’s Bible Study we looked at Ephesians 2:10 where Paul states that we are God’s workmanship.

Not to get overly technical, but in the Greek the word for workmanship is Poiema, a word that carries the idea of creation or workmanship. I like to translate this that we are the masterpieces created by God. Our lives are the Poems written by God.

We are the lumps of clay in the hands of the Master Potter – being created by Him just as He pleases.

Paul will go on and declare that in this marvelous thing we call the church God has broken down the walls of hostility and united all of us in this one wonderful family. Now, can you imagine if you were painting a masterpiece and the only color on your palette was white? What would the picture might look like? Of if the only color you had was one shade of brown?

But in the masterpiece God has painted there is every color of the rainbow, every color imaginable. What a gloriously wonderful picture God has painted. We are his masterpiece.

But, we are to be more than a masterpiece that sits over the fireplace mantle. We are created by God, fashioned by Him, for good works. We are fashioned by Him that the world might see the glory and character of God shining in and through us.

May the world read the poems of our lives and come to know our loving God who fashioned each one of us for His glory!

To my ear there are few passages more wonderful than John 1:1-14. Yesterday I read it in The Message, a paraphrase by Eugene Peterson. He has a wonderful treatment of verse 14:

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

The wonder of this verse is couched in John’s simple beginning:

Calvin maintains in the Institutes that God is the fountain of every good.

“It will not suffice simply to hold that there is One whom all ought to honor and adore, unless we are also persuaded that he is the fountain of every good, and that we must seek nothing elsewhere than in him.”

You see, our faith not only tells us that God exists, but also who He is and what He is like. He not only IS good, but all that He does is good. God is good all the time – and all the time God is good.

Now, I will grant there are those times we question this tenet. His hand of providence does not always seem kind and good to us as He takes us down paths we would not have chosen. In times like this we learn what it is to walk by faith and not by sight – which is the essence of the Christian life.

If we believe that God is the fountain of all good then it follows that must seek nothing elsewhere than in him. We are to seek pleasure in God and in all that God has made. We are to delight in Him as He delights in us.

This Thanksgiving as you gather around the table remember the words we sing – “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” and acknowledge God’s blessings to us in all of life.

Today I read a post that a friend, Daniel McDonald shared. It was a recap of a lecture by Russel Moore, a Southern Baptist pastor, on the state of the religious right and the influence of the church in modern culture.

The article had some important thoughts that I want to try and recapture for you.Rod Dreher wrote the original post and I want to credit him for much of the commentary.

Dreher wrote that the heart of Moore’s message was if the Religious Right is to be saved, it will have to put aside the emotionally cheap theatrics and the politics, and walk through the wardrobe towards a more theologically serious, C.S. Lewis-style Christianity. I loved this passage:

Even if one concedes that demagogic populism is morally acceptable (and I don’t), others can quite simply do demagogic populism more effectively in a postChristianizing America. What we have to offer is more akin to the abbot in the dystopian novel A Canticle for Leibowitz who in seeking to persuade a woman not to euthanize her child, ultimately realizes that the most important thing he could say is “I, a priest of God, adjure thee.” When, as he puts it, God’s priest was overruled by Caesar’s traffic cop, the narrator tells us, “Never to him had Christ’s kingship seemed more distant.” In an age suspicious of all authority outside of the self, the appeal to a word that carries transcendent authority can be just distinctive enough to be heard, even when not immediately embraced. This is the difference Kierkegaard makes between a genius and an apostle, one sent with a word that is not his own.

Moore is contending that the best way to influence the culture for Christ is to stop trying to “influence the culture for Christ”, but rather to be deeply and thoughtfully Christian, and to allow your countercultural life to be your testimony.

Moore states that we need public arguments. We need philosophical persuasion. We need political organizing. But behind that, we must have consciences formed by a prophetic word of “Thus saith the Lord.”

I could not agree more (no pun intended). I have maintained that one of the great problems with the modern church is that we do not theologize enough. We need a theology that impacts our practice. We need orthodoxy but also orthopraxy.

Dreher points out that Martin Luther King, Jr. did not simply speak to the passions of his followers but to the consciences of his detractors and to the consciences of those on the sidelines, overhearing it all. Behind that was a coherent set of ideas, grounded in the Bible and the Declaration of Independence.

So, on November 9, rather than slitting your wrists, moving away, or beginning to attack the newly elected President, let us focus on living in a society in which our culture was not the dominant culture and rather than responding in anger, surprise, or fear – let’s listen to the call of the Good News to live out the Kingdom of God in the place and the time that God has put us. God has great things He will do in us and through us!

It seems to me that most of the angst that I hear about the church and the culture we live in is the result of the growing realization that Christianity is no longer (or at least will soon be no longer) the dominant culture of our society.

As I reflected on that I realized that as I read the NT that was the very truth of those early Christians. They were not the dominant culture of their day – they lived counter-cultural lives.

I was reading today in Matthew 5 and 6 – the Sermon on the Mount. There is a series of repeated reflections that begin with the words – “You have heard it said”. That was a reflection of the dominant culture of their day. You have heard it said. But then Jesus went on to say – “But I say unto you.”

You have heard it said “You shall not murder” but i say unto you – don’t be angry with a brother or sister.

You have heard it said “you shall not commit adultery”, but I say unto you don’t look with lust on another.

And so it goes – a call to the early disciples to live Kingdom lives – lives dominated by the Kingdom of God and not by the kingdom of man. Has that call changed?

The prophet Jeremiah spoke to a people in exile. He told them some rather startling things. In Jeremiah 29 we find these words:

4 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:

5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.

6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.

7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

I am in the midst of prepping for my Sunday Sermon in which I will deal with Psalm 139 and blend it with the Jeremiah reading. But, there is a prayer at the end of the Psalm that grabs my attention (and you can relax if you are in my congregation – I wont get that far on Sunday). It is the prayer –

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.

24 See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Today in Men’s Bible Study (a great group of guys who meet weekly Tuesday mornings at 7 at Steak and Eggs. All are welcome.) we were talking about what it means to glorify God and how that works itself out in our daily walks.

We read Psalm 63 and wrestled with the longing David had and the satisfaction he had in God alone. I am reminded that I am far too easily satisfied with things that may be good, in and of themselves, but which take the place in my heart that should be reserved for God alone. There are so many things that I enjoy doing that if I pursue those then there is too little time for God and family. The good becomes the enemy of that which is best and becomes wrong for me.

We need the resolve of David when he said – one thing have I asked of the Lord and that will I seek after – to dwell in the courts of my God my whole life long.

God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him!