Recommendations

Over the last few years I have been greatly encouraged, inspired and convicted by a few great websites. First and foremost, I recommend signing up to receive John Piper's sermons by email (with links to watch or listen to him) on a weekly basis from desiringgod.org. I also receive emails from Sam Storms at enjoyinggodministries.org which have been very enlightening and thought provoking. Storms basically blogs a commentary on Scripture and emails his posts out to those who sign up. As you might have guessed, he and Piper are good friends. I also receive almost daily an entry from christianquote.com. These are usually short but profound quotes from many of the great Christian thinkers of our time and the past. They tend to be quite reformed in their content. Lastly, I just began regularly reading blogs at markdroberts.com after reading a good bit in Roberts' "blook", which is book based on a blog. The book is about the reliability of the gospels and can be found in blog form on his website. It has been a great read. I highly recommend all four of these resources. If you have any recommendations for me, I would love to have them. Peace and love in Christ...

Thoughts from a Notebook

I have many notebooks filled with all kinds of stuff in them that at one time I thought was important enough to write down and read later. I wish that I were organized enough to use one notebook until full and then move on to another, but I am not. Chalk it up to my ADD or whatever, but I just can't work that way. Sometimes I am thankful for that, though. Today I arrived at work and pulled out my little blue notebook in which I had written little notes to myself about how to do my job better. As I was flipping through, I noticed a page full of my handwriting which I don't really remember writing or what prompted me to write it in the first place. God works that way. So this is what I wrote to myself however long ago (years?) it may have been:

True worship is fully emotional. You can not meet and experience God without being deeply moved, but emotions are not the ultimate goal! They are a right response to truth. Emotions can change, but truth never does. Many preachers are artificially emotional and they shamefully exploit people's emotions for personal gain. They are not preaching and worshiping in spirit and truth.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem at the beginning of the week, the people were very emotional. Many of them were expecting Him to usher in His great kingdom to finally rise up and defeat the mighty Roman Empire. Nobody expected Him to end the week on a Roman cross, being crucified on a trash dump as a result of the same people's cries for His crucifixion.

For better or worse, emotions are extremely powerful, which is exactly how God designed us. But emotions must be in response to truth. Jesus did not come to save Israel from the big, bad Romans, but to save them (and us) from themselves (and ourselves) and the wrath of a holy and righteous God.

Despite our best efforts, we don't define what kind of king Jesus will be. He does. At the beginning of the week, the crowd was saying and doing the right things, but their hearts were not right before God and they could not see the truth. We can be exactly the same. Religious behavior and emotional enthusiasm are wonderful, but the cross must always be right there at the center. I know that I must check my heart and mind all the time to see Jesus for who He really is and not who I want him to be. I must beg God to guard my heart and mind and convict me so that as I see Him more fully, I will know a fuller joy and satisfaction (and many other wonderful emotions) that are pure and right before a holy God.

The Case for the Real Jesus

I just finished reading Lee Strobel's The Case for the Real Jesus. If you aren't familiar with Lee (and even if you are), Lee was an award-winning investigative journalist and then legal editor for the Chicago Tribune back late 70's and 80's. With a journalism degree and a Masters of Studies in Law, he is highly qualified to be particularly inquisitive and skeptical while trained to be unusually objective. I have read his four popular books (a few of them several times) and I highly recommend them.
I am aware that there are critics of Lee's entire starting point and outlook on evangelism because they feel that the Holy Spirit does the work of saving people and changing their affections. While this is very true, there is certainly a way to Christ through the critical mind examining the evidence for Christianity and finding that it stands up to the fiercest scrutiny and is a firm foundation to build a faith and worldview on. Lee came to a saving faith in Christ this way in an attempt to disprove Christianity to his newly-converted wife, and I was heavily influenced by an examination of the evidence for myself before I committed my life to Christ.
Criticizing Christianity is certainly in vogue these days (while other faiths are fiercely protected from attack) largely on historical grounds. It is not easy to believe all of the things that the Bible teaches actually happened. I mean, how are we really expected to believe that a man went around and did half of the things that Jesus supposedly did? If the writers of the gospels embellished a few things or made them up all together, how can we trust them? Am I really supposed to willingly give up my life (even in martyrdom) for something that I can't really trust is true? How can I be so sure?
Some people say that you just know in your heart that it's true and that is the essence of faith. If you need evidence, it isn't true faith. Baloney. The Bible itself appeals to evidence for the existence of God (Romans 1:18-23) and we should not be afraid of scientists, historians, archaeologists or anyone that studies the Book of Nature when we are examining the Bible. I, personally, have greatly benefited from studying the evidence for Christianity before and after I became a Christian. There have been plenty of times when I seriously doubted my faith for a moment and was so thankful that I could go back through the evidence and the arguments in my mind, reread books and articles and rest again in the fact that our faith is well grounded in truth.
In response to the heavy criticisms of Christianity, there are many good books out there by brilliant defenders of the faith. Lee interviews some of them and points the reader to more books that are also very helpful. I have learned a great deal and found my faith growing deeper and deeper by reading these great men and women.
The four titles by Strobel that I would highly recommend (in this particular order although they were not written in this order) are: The Case for a Creator, The Case for Faith, The Case for Christ, and The Case for the Real Jesus. From there I would read some of the bibliographies found in those books and I suspect that you, like I, will be surprised at how firm a foundation we stand on in our Christian faith.

So Do Not Fear...

I was just sitting here wondering, “What is my life coming to?” I am presently married (to an amazing woman!), a seminary student, a school bus driver, a mattress salesman and a father-to-be. Who could have imagined? This certainly is not how I would have predicted things to turn out. I am married to a beautiful, lovely woman named Julie. She is the love of my life. We are in our second year of marriage and I am so thankful for her. Julie is due in August and the prospect of being a father is daunting to say the least. I feel completely inadequate to “train up a child in the way he should go.” I rarely know which way I should go, so I am at a loss for how I should teach somebody else. Fatherhood is an enormous responsibility. While I am certainly not really qualified to raise a child and a strong sense of fear crosses my heart when I think about myself as a future father, I know that “His mercies are new every morning” and that His “grace is sufficient.” That is exactly why Jesus tells us not to worry about the future, but to trust God and his promises. Isaiah 41:10 is the most precious promise for me and what I continually preach to myself throughout the day:“So do not fear for I am with you. Do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.”Promises like this are designed to overcome our fear of what may occur in the unknown future and drive that fear away. They are designed to give us a “peace that passes understanding” and a deep sense of joy in the God that is sovereign over all things, even the tiny cells that are dividing and forming the baby that will be my son or daughter. Please pray for Julie and me that we would learn to truly trust God in this time of uncertainty and excitement of the birth of our baby in August.