Welcome Summer!

 “Always winter but never Christmas” is how C.S. Lewis depicts sin’s grip on fallen Narnia.  I’m convinced that heaven is “always summer and always Christmas”.  Summer’s the favorite season in our house by a landslide, no runners up!   Liz and I love the house with kids home and activity buzzing all around us. 

Here’s a few things I need to remind myself about the opportunity summer brings:

1.  Embrace leisure.

God made you  for patterns of labor and leisure, work and rest.  When you  have the right balance, productive work is immensely satisfying.  But you need a time of leisure to enjoy the work.  We take vacation seriously, budget money for it, and plan it a year in advance.  Someone once told me of a church member who rebuked their pastor for taking a vacation by saying “the devil doesn’t take a vacation, how can you take one?”  The pastor responded, “I never considered the devil to be my role model.”

Before there was sin there was rest.  How much more do you  need wholesome and replenishing rest now? Jesus tells me  to take a vacation not because I deserve it, but because I’ll be an even worse mess as a pastor, father, and general image-bearer of God if I don’t.  

2. Play Hard. There’s a silly argument that pits quality time vs. quantity time.  You can’t really have one without the other. 

David Livingstone, the trailblazing missionary to Africa reflected on his entire missionary career in his journal, “I often ponder my missionary career and in the  consideration of  my   many imperfections not a single pang of regret arises in view of my conduct except I did not devote a special portion of time to play with my children.  Generally, I was so exhausted by evening there was no energy for fun left.  My children soon sprang up and left me conscious I had none to play with.” The average parent spends less than 20 minutes on Christmas Day playing with their children.  I’m convinced that much of this is due to self-absorption.  Get over your pre-occupation with self through the far superior privilege of becoming pre-occupied with having fun with others. 

I would add that children are not the only ones to play with .  I enjoy playing with my wife, in fact that's my favorite for all sorts of reasons. I won't go into here... but also friends, neighbors, older children.  What are hobbies but play dressed up in acceptable ways?  Who fishes for food except commercial fishermen?  We call it sport or hobby, but it's play...

3. Fast from Media.  You’ve heard of food fasts? Try a media fast.  The world will continue on without your following it.  For the summer I’m going to focus my news reading on the sports and comics.  Like H.L. Mencken said, that’s the only part of the newspaper that’s true anyway.  Actually, what Mencken said was that every part of the newspaper is true, except those parts that deal with something that you have firsthand knowledge about....

Remember those boom boxes of the 80’s that youth would carry on their shoulders?  They’ve been replaced with Ipods and earphones isolating people into their own little worlds.  While earphones are sometimes a provision straight from heaven, don’t let them lock you or other family members into a solitary pseudo-world.  I’ve found it useful to tune out the news radio and play Bible tapes that expose me to large swaths of scripture. Listening to the Bible read aloud  purifies my mind like nothing else.  Romans 10:17 “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”

4.   Seize Summertime Worship.  The rhythm of  rest is incomplete without worship.  Sunday comes 52 times a year, and so should you unless providentially hindered. If you’re in another town, find the church most likely to edify you and bring me back one of their programs!

 Summer affords many other opportunities for worship.  My grandfather was a very hard working farmer.  One time he told me how he would sometimes quiet his Allis-Chalmers tractor in the midst of a field and spend time with God in prayer.  Seize some of those moments and turn them into prayer and worship. 

You can make it Christmas every day of summer.  Embrace leisure, play hard, fast from media, and seize opportunities to worship.

Getting Serious About Baptism

 9 Yet you brought me safely from my mother’s womb and led me to trust you at my mother’s breast.
10 I was thrust into your arms at my birth.
 You have been my God from the moment I was born.

COMMENTS OPEN

Comments are OPEN.  All posts.  I'm part of a blog that has to shut off comments because they come in such torrents.  What's wrong with you people?.....

Anyway, feel free.  Any article, any sermon I've posted, any question you want to pose.  It's your opportunity to edify, examine, show your brilliance, grab the spotlight, etc.  Over 100 people come here every week, sometimes up to 500, so don't miss your opportunity. 

I know you're out there cause I can hear you breathing...(I see your footprints from France/ Germany/ Texas/ and other countries like Louisiana, Kentucky and Minnesota)...

So go ahead, make my day when you have something to say... say it, post it... I'll even respond... I promise

The Ten Commandments

What's Special about the Ten Commandments? 

I’m preaching on the Ten Commandments this summer.  Here's some principles and suggestions for you to review to maximize your profiting from the Word.   Why are the Ten Commandments special? 

1.  They comprehensively communicate everything God morally requires.  Think of morality as existing in categories of duty.  There are only ten categories.  Every single duty fits under one of the headings within the Ten Commandments.  The rest of the book of Exodus, and even the entire Bible's moral code is simply an application of the Ten Commandments. 

2.  They existed as duties even before God wrote them on stone and delivered them to Moses.   For example, the Sabbath rest principle was a creation mandate, which existed even before the fall of man into sin.  Israel obeyed the Sabbath rest principle before Sinai when they gathered the manna in six days, resting on the 7th.   

3.  They are spiritual.  They govern attitudes.  You don't have to "do" anything to covet your neighbor's ocean front home.  The Lord Jesus Christ explained that adultery can be committed in the heart through lusting (Mt. 5), that murder can be committed through the heart through ill-will toward others Mt. 5) , that idolatry can be committed through greed (Colossians 3:5). 

4.  They tell us about God.  Cain was guilty of violating the command against murder because man was made in God's image (Genesis 9).  What kind of God protects life? A God who is the author of life, who makes us in His image. 

5.  They tell us about reality.  What kind of God is concerned about "little white lies"?  A God who controls reality and knows that whenever we fail to tell the truth we are tearing apart the fabric of  our own lives.  Moral laws, like the law of gravity are not so much broken as they break the law-breaker.  If you throw yourself off a cliff of the Grand Canyon you won't break the law of gravity, but you will break yourself. 

6.  They show us how to love.  Ever wonder what the loving thing is to do?  Romans 13:10 tells us love is the "fulfillment of the law". 

7.  They drive us to the gospel. A wise theologian once said, "A low view of law makes man a legalist.  A high view of law makes man a seeker after grace.  Pray the high view prevails."  It's true in your own life.  A low or vague view of the law will allow room for you to develop the conceit of self-righteousness.  A high view of law will always humble you, reveal your sin and drive you to rest in God's grace found at the foot of the Cross.  This is how the Ten Commandments change us.  They melt our heart towards God so that we are driven to the Cross for forgiveness.  They root our obedience in our deliverance from slavery.  Then the Law becomes our freedom, our way of showing gratitude, and our joy and privilege. 

8.  All the great creeds focus on them.  I suggest reading the Westminster Larger Catechism, questions 99-149 for the very best commentary on the Ten Commandments.  If you do not own a copy of it, you can find it online at

 I suggest you read  Westminster Larger Catechism 99 to get you started.

One of the best ways to grow as a Christian is to use the Ten Commandments.  I encourage you to read the Westminster Larger Catechism to delve deeply into what God requires of us.  If you allow the full understanding of the Ten Commandments into your sober consciousness, it will drive you to the Cross.  You can find the Larger Catechism on this web page:

http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/larger1.html

THE OCEAN AND MY RELATIONSHIP with GOD

THE OCEAN AND GOD

In a few weeks we head for the Ocean, the OBX, Carolina's glorious Outer Banks. 

I love the OCEAN!  Our family budgets big time money (at least for our budget) to spend time at the ocean.  Our favorite spot is the Outerbanks in North Carolina, but we'll take the Jersey shore as a second best stop. 

I recommend a lecture (now a book)  by philosophy professor Peter Kreeft  about our fascination with the sea.  This article is simply an interaction with his insights.  If you have an attraction to the ocean, I think you’ll find Kreeft’s insights thought provoking.  I hail from the Midwest, the land locked state of Indiana.  Yet I find that I have a deep fascination with the Ocean.    Where did this come from and how can I understand it better? 

Good theologians know that God has revealed Himself in two books,  Nature and the  Bible.   We need to read both of them.  If we read nature without Bible we will likely miss the point.   Kreeft points out that we have brains like dogs in this.  If you point to a dog’s food they sniff your hand.  We often fail to trace nature back to nature’s Designer. 

There is  something refreshing in nature that speaks to an  inborn preference for the raw materials of nature rather than what man makes with nature.  We prefer trees to telephone poles, and rocks to buildings.  This is kind of strange given our propensity to change the raw materials into things we make with them.  I once read a definition of art as man’s ordering of nature.  There is an order within the apparent disorder of nature that is more universally appealing than any human art.  God is the ultimate Artist.  Many artists retreat to the ocean for inspiration to create paintings, poems, or stories.  The Creator’s fingerprints are all over the Ocean, and this inspires His image bearers to imitate His creative impulses. 

Philosophers and theologians have pondered the fact that the Sea returns us to the origin of  time.   The  sea’s tides are  linked to the moon’s monthly cycles, and human reproduction is tied to a women’s monthly cycle. In all languages where nouns have gender,  the sea is always feminine.    Is this coordination between the sea and the  moon and the  womb  mere coincidence?  How we organize our time into months is a response to the way the Creator has organized time in His creation.    This innate rhythm is undeniably present in the ocean’s waves and tides, music composed by God Himself. 

The best parts of experiencing the sea are free to all who can travel to it:  Our family’s favorite experiences were:   sitting in the lifeguard chair  at dusk, walking beaches near dawn, observing ghost crabs near midnight on a windy beach,  trudging  up mountainous sand dunes at sunset, catching the waves, embarking in an inflatable boat out past the waves and then surrendering to the sovereign sea to be  carried in by the waves.   The ocean reduces all of us to our proper place before God.  At the ocean we know we are all  really just  little children, made to play in the waves and create sand castles.  At the ocean, the brain surgeon and the bartender, the billionaire tycoon and the fisherman-boater are all on the same level,  equally dwarfed by infinity.  . 

God has written two books, Nature and the Bible.  We need to read them in stereo to get the intended impact.  I hope your life  is full of this kind of stereophonic interaction, letting God’s two books speak to you!   Psalm 19 teaches that “The heavens declare the glory of God”. 

 I found myself reminded of these words from a great hymn: 

“This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.”