Christ’s Resurrection and Ours

The resurrection of Christ, along with His crucifixion, is a cornerstone of the Christian faith. We affirm our faith in the resurrection of Christ when we say in the Apostle's Creed, "On the third day He rose again from the dead". But be careful not to leave the resurrection there. Christ's resurrection is not only the ground and hope of our resurrection on the last day, but of the very life we have with Christ right here and now.

The Bible tells us that the beginning of our life in Christ is a product of the empowerment of Christ's resurrection. It's as if the impact of Christ's "re-birth" from the dead empowers the rebirth of His people. We have various words and images to describe this power: conversion, regeneration, new birth, "born again". The apostle Peter describes it like this:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" 1 Peter 1:3

Peter links the resurrection of Christ with our "new birth". The very power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that resurrected your dead heart to a living faith and hope! Truly this is an amazing mystery, one that goes beyond my capacity for explanation. So I will leave it to a poet to frame this mysterious connection (Mary Karr, "Descending Theology: The Resurrection" Poetry, January 2006):

"From the far star points of his pinned extremities,
cold inched in—black ice and squid ink—
till the hung flesh was empty.
Lonely in that void even for pain,
he missed his splintered feet,
the human stare buried in his face.
He ached for two hands made of meat
he could reach to the end of.
In the corpse's core, the stone fist
of his heart began to bang
on the stiff chest's door, and breath spilled
back into that battered shape. Now

it's your limbs he comes to fill, as warm water
shatters at birth, rivering every way."

The well wisher of your soul's happiness,

Pastor Tom

Spiritual Conversations

At our elder’s meeting on Wednesday evening we discussed 1 Thessalonians 5:12-14

“We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.” (1 Thessalonians 5:12-14)

We talked about the importance of laboring “among” God’s people, being with people and building shoulder to shoulder relationships. We shared some ways to have spiritual conversations with people. Some good ideas for conversation starters were;

• “How can I be praying for you?”
• “Let me tell you what the Lord is doing in my life…, how about you?”
• “What is feeding your soul these days?”
• “How goes it with your soul?”
• “What are you reading these days?”
• “How is the battle going?”
• “What are you learning about God.., what are you learning about yourself?”

Questions like these can help us know the hearts of our people so we can “labor among” them better. These are good questions to ask each other as well!

My Daily Resolve

My Daily Resolve

“Preaching the gospel to myself each day nourishes within me a holy brazenness to believe what God says, enjoy what He offers, and do what He commands. Admittedly, I don’t deserve to be a child of God and I don’t deserve to be free of sin’s guilt and power. I don’t deserve the staggering privilege of intimacy with God, nor any other blessing that Christ has purchased for me with His blood. I don’t deserve to be useful to God. But by the grace of God I am what I am and I have what I have, and I hereby resolve not to let any portion of God’s grace prove vain in me! And to the degree that I fail to live up to this resolve, I will boldly take for myself the forgiveness that God says is mine and continue walking in His grace. This is my manifesto, my daily resolve; and may God be glorified by this confidence that I place in Him.”

- Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer for Christians (Focus Publishing, 2008), 52.

Book Review: Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner. San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1991, 106 p.

Overview—Give a brief overview of the book, including its theme, perspective and approach.

"Telling Secrets" would be placed in the genre of "spiritual memoir". In it Buechner takes the reader though some of the significant, though traumatic events of his life. He talks about his beautiful, yet fragile mother, his father's suicide when he was a boy, growing up in Bermuda, his daughters traumatic anorexia, and his surprising stay at Wheaton College. As a spiritual memoir, Buechner writes for himself, yet with an eye to encouraging the reader to go deeper into the investigation of how the events of our lives shape us. In "telling our secrets" we become more whole people.

Critique—Offer a brief critique of the book, including elements of strength and weakness.

After the recent spate of young authors bent on spiritual musings, I found it refreshing to read a spiritual memoir written by someone past his twenties! Buechner writes well, and I have enjoyed everything I have read by him ("Godric", to name a noteworthy volume). He is frank and honest about his experiences, even the unflattering ones. Yet he never strays into the emotional exhibitionism some writers seem to exploit. The book is very subtle – Buechner never seeks to preach, yet almost subliminally urges his readers to great self-discovery and self-disclosure.

Application—Offer some specific application to your own ministry— demonstrating the value and relevance of the material in this book.

The most probing sections of "Telling Secrets" were those in which Buechner challenges ministers to become witnesses of the presence of God in their own lives. Sadly many ministers become "professionals who have mastered all the techniques of institutional religion and who speak on religious matters with what often seems a maximum of authority and a minimum of personal involvement". As a result our sermons are "as bland as they are bloodless". I was challenged to a more moment by moment awareness of the work of God in my own life and an authentic disclosure of that to others.

Best Quote—Be sure to include the page number where the quote can be found.

p. 38 "In these pages I tell secrets about my parents, my children, myself because that is one way of keeping track and because I believe that it is not only more honest but also vastly more interesting that to pretend that I have no such secrets to tell. I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are your secrets. Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it means to be human."

What does a Cross-Centered Church look like?

We speak a lot about the power of the Gospel to set us free. We speak often of being "free in Christ". We believe whole-heartedly that the message of the cross is a liberating message. But from what does the gospel set us free? The simple answer is, the cross sets us free from our selves. And that looks a lot like humility!

To a church that seems to be so enamored with its prestige and presence, the apostle Paul writes:

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. (1 Corinthians 1:27-29)

The Corinthian believers were puffed up with pride, boasting of their own spirituality. Paul reminds them that at the foot of the cross, none of us have anything to boast about. The marvelous secret of the gospel is that we are set free from a relentless gaze upon ourselves to boast in Christ! C.S. Lewis puts it this way:

"The pleasure of pride is like the pleasure of scratching. If there is an itch one does want to scratch; but it is much nicer to have neither the itch nor the scratch. As long as we have the itch of self-regard we shall want the pleasure of self-approval; but the happiest moments are those when we forget our precious selves and have neither but have everything else (God, our fellow humans, animals, the garden and the sky) instead."

And nothing helps us to "forget our precious selves" better than gazing at the cross. Tim Keller, echoing Lewis, says this:

"The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less."

Thinking of ourselves less? What a concept! How do we do that? Get close to the cross and be liberated from the bondage of self-consciousness to the liberation of self-forgetfulness!

The well wisher of your soul's happiness,

Pastor Tom

"Behold, I make all things new"

“There are children of God who need this text, ‘Behold, I make all things new,’ whose sigh is that they so soon grow dull and weary in the ways of God, and therefore they need daily renewing. After a few months a vigorous young Christian will begin to cool down; and those who have been long in the ways of God find that final perseverance must be a miracle if ever it is to be accomplished, for naturally they tire and faint.

Well, now, dear friends, why do you and I ever get stale and flat? Why, it is because we get away from him who says, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ The straight way to a perpetual newness and freshness of holy youth is to go to Christ again, just as we did at the first. A better thing still is never to leave him, but to stand for ever at the cross-foot delighting yourself in his all-sufficient sacrifice.

They that are full of the joy of the Lord never find life grow weary. Getting near to Christ, you will partake in his joy, and that joy shall be your strength, your freshness, the newness of your life. God grant us to drink of the eternal founts, that we may for ever overflow.”

—Charles Spurgeon, “Sermon for New Year’s Day”

Thoughts worth pondering from the Desiring God blog...

Reading Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ classic Spiritual Depression would be a strong way to start the new year.

The title can be a tad deceiving. It’s not merely a book for those with a pronounced sense of spiritual depression. It’s a book for all Christians—for the daily spiritual depressions we all face this side of heaven.

Lloyd-Jones ends his second chapter with these challenging and refreshing words:

Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression? The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and forever to your past. Realize that it has been covered and blotted out in Christ. Never look back at your sins again. Say: ‘It is finished, it is covered by the Blood of Christ’. That is your first step. Take that and finish with yourself and all this talk about goodness, and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that true happiness and joy are possible for you. What you need is not to make resolutions to live a better life, to start fasting and sweating and praying. No! You just begin to say:

I rest my faith on Him alone
Who died for my transgressions to atone. (35)