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Posts tagged Xtianity

3 Notes

newsouth:

Tim Barnwell

…as i went down to the river and prayed.

newsouth:

Tim Barnwell

…as i went down to the river and prayed.

17 Notes

Missio Dei Church Blog: Happy Reformation Day!

missiodeiasheville:

On this day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed is famous ‘95 Theses’ to the door of the Castle Church of Wittenburg, Germany, sparking what would come to be known as the protestant reformation. Here is a quick guide to understanding Luther’s reformation.

Matthew Barrett at the Gospel Coalition…

5 Notes

What Verb Do We Expect?

What verb should connect “God” and “us”? He is the subject. We’re the object.

What action should we expect?

read on…

15 Notes

Christian Hedonism

God blatantly entices us to seek happiness, joy, pleasure (whatever you want to call it) in him with verses like this: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4), and “in his presence is fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). We’re supposed to want pleasure.

More here

Notes

Labour to know thine own frame and temper; what spirit thou art of; what associates in thy heart Satan hath; where corruption is strong, where grace is weak; what stronghold lust hath in thy natural constitution, and the like…

Be acquainted, then, with thine own heart: though it be deep, search it; though it be dark, inquire into it; though it give all its distempers other names than what are their due, believe it not.

John Owen

1 Notes

Notes

don’t waste your life

by God’s grace i don’t live according to my failures. i have lots. i was separated from my creator because i believed and acted like i was my own god - i hated him. in my utterly broken and miserable life God came to me. because the eternal immortal infinite God of the universe came to me in the person of Jesus Christ to deal with my rebellion, sin and broken soul i have been reconciled to my creator. he lived a perfect life that i could never (ever) live and then made an exchange with me through his death. he died a death of righteous condemnation on a cross at the hands of a roman executioner. this was my death that i deserved. because God is more loving than i could ever have imagined, in return for nothing i could offer, Jesus gave me his perfect right standing before a holy and righteous God.

now i am free from the bondage of sin and death - my life is Jesus’. my failures are no longer counted against me - Jesus’ perfection is what God sees when he looks at me. where i was once an orphaned child of wrath, God has now adopted me into his family of perfect and holy children, made pure by the blood of his sacrifice.

Christ’s kingdom is already here (but not yet in its fullness); simultaneously a journey and a destination. Jesus is coming back again; this time not as a servant, but a warrior. he will judge every person that has ever lived and is now living by one thing:

Do you believe that Jesus is God and that he is the only way to be reconciled to God?

2 Notes

How could God ask that of me?

Excellent article from Nancy Guthrie

If we read the Bible assuming that we are expected to follow in the footsteps of those who are featured in its pages, we will find ourselves always trying harder to sacrifice and obey but never measuring up. We’ll assume that God asks us to do things that will make us miserable just to put us through a test of our allegiance—diminishing, rather than magnifying God in our hearts. But when we read the Bible recognizing that it is not about what we must do for him, but about what he has done for us through Christ, rather than being offended by what we fear he may ask of us, we find rest in what he has done for us.

Read full article here.

2 Notes

Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.
J. I. Packer 

1 Notes

New Birth and Worship // or "What it Really Means to be a Christian"

joeholland:

A theology of spiritual new birth is one of the most important and misunderstood concepts in Christianity.  I’m grateful for Driscoll’s clarity.

Notes

… those spiritually glorious interviews, holy courtings, most superlative but most sincere commending and cordial entertainings of each other, those mutual praisings and valuings of fellowship, those missings, lamentings, and bemoanings of the want thereof, those holy impatiencies to be without it, swelling to positive and peremptory determinations not to be satisfied nor comforted in any thing else, those diligent, painful and restless seekings after it till it be found and enjoyed, on the one hand; and those sweet and easy yieldings to importunity and gracious grantings of it, on the other; with those high delightings, solacings, complacencies and acquiescings in and heartsome embracings of one another’s fellowship … O what will he make of his church when sinless and in heaven, when he makes so much of her when sinful and on earth! And how incomprehensibly glorious must he be in himself, that he puts such passing glory on her! These transports of admiration at one another, … and finally these vehement joint-longings to have the marriage consummated and the fellowship immediate, full, and never any more to be interrupted.

In The Epistle Dedicatory to James Durham’s Clavis Cantici of 1668, his wife Margaret describes personal communion with Christ. 

we don’t have too much passion - we have too little.

12 Notes

q+a

Question: What do you say to the person who says that church is not relevant and is boring?

R.C. Sproul: If we go to the Scriptures and see the record of individuals who encounter God in this world (e.g., Jacob at Bethel, Abraham in Genesis 15, Moses and the burning bush, Habakkuk, Job, Jeremiah, Isaiah), you’ll see a wide range of human emotions and reactions. Sometimes it’s a giddy joy. Sometimes it’s just an awe inspiring silence. Sometimes it’s the quivering lip and the trembling belly. Sometimes it’s the rottenness that enters the bones. Other times it’s weeping. There is no singular, monolithic, prescribed, human emotional response to an encounter with God’s presence in holy Scripture. If you canvass all of those events, the one emotion you will never ever, ever find in Scripture is that people are bored in the presence of God. So instead of trying to entertain and keep people’s attentions, why don’t we simply present God to the people and develop our worship in every way to awaken the people to the presence and character of Almighty God? If you bring people into the presence of God and give them His word, how can it not be relevant?