Category: Life

When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become your sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.

—Abraham Kuyper

Via: Eric Schumacher

True religion is a union of the soul with God, a real participation of the Divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul, or, in the apostle’s phrase, ‘it is Christ formed within us.’

—Henry Scougal
The Life of God in the Soul of Man

Via: Of First Importance

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death – we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time – death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Cost of Discipleship

Via: Desiring God Blog

What makes a successful Christian? Who’s number one on God’s “most impressive Christian” list? Is it:

• The mega-church pastor who preaches six times on Sundays, writes chart-topping books, and has his own podcast with really cool rock music (probably U2) at the beginning? Maybe.
• The children’s ministry volunteer who dispenses fifty-three pounds of goldfish crackers to sweaty three-year olds every Sunday? Maybe.
• The homeschooling mom who deals with large volumes of laundry and baby poop on a daily basis? Maybe.

In Matthew 25:14-28 Jesus spells out a blueprint for success that’s very different from our standard definitions of success. You know the story. A master is preparing for a journey and starts dishing out the Benjamin’s to his servants.

The first servant gets five talents, the second gets two talents, and the third gets one talent.  Servants one and two immediately hit the streets, putting their talents to work in the cause of the master. Servant number three digs a hole and buries his talent. The master returns.

Servant number one stands before his master and presents him with ten talents, a return of 100%. Servant number two? One-hundred percent ROI. Servant number three presents the master with a big fat nothing. He simply returns the talent he was given.

The response of the master is incredible. To the first two servants he says:

Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.

No reference to the numbers. No talk of the bottom line. The master highlights the faithfulness of the servants. You have been faithful over a little. That’s it.

A successful Christian is someone who faithfully uses their talents and circumstances to further the cause of God. Numbers don’t equal success. God is impressed with faithfulness. The faithful pastor of 20 is just as pleasing as the faithful pastor of 2,000. The faithful small group leader is just as pleasing as the faithful mega-conference worship leader. God doesn’t ask for big results, he just asks for faithfulness.

So the question of the day/year/century/eternity is: are you faithful?

Via: The Blazing Center

Amen. This is a powerful and thought-provoking post written by Trevin Wax on the Kingdom People blog…

My children will not grow up in a country where race is considered a barrier to the presidency.

That fact by itself made me glad as I watched Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th president of the United States yesterday. It gave me a great sense of satisfaction to think about how far our country has come from the days of separate water fountains and lynch mobs.

But the thrill of seeing an era of sinful racism put behind us has faded quickly, for me at least. I hate to be the one to pop the balloon of our collective national pride in this historic moment, but I sense that we as Americans are facing the rise of a new national sin – one that is more subtle and even deadlier than the sins of our past – one that is common to all other empires that have risen and fallen throughout the ages:

A smug sense of self-righteous superiority that usurps the rightful throne of God.

Watching the news over the past few days has been almost sickening. No, it’s not the average citizens fawning over Obama as if he were the Messiah. Or the over-hyped statements from reporters trying in some way to capture the “historic nature” of the events and speeches taking place. Annoying as the now blatantly subjective news coverage has been, that is not what has bothered me the most.

Instead, the truly troubling aspect of the new era we have just inaugurated is the underlying assumption among so many in our country that now, finally, we have truly arrived. A new age has dawned!

We are now above racism in our land. We have put behind us the terrible sins of our past and we are moving forward into a new world of hope and peace. We have recaptured the moral high ground in our world. We are unstoppable, unbeatable, unassailable!

We deceive ourselves. Our rhetoric reveals an imperalistic mindset grounded in smug self-righteousness and a false sense of superiority.

World, look at us now! We are the biggest. We are the best. And we are nice now. We are above racism. We are above the sins of our forefathers. We are above the notion of sin itself.

We are so enlightened that the writers of our newsweeklies can thumb their noses at six thousand years of human history (and almost every other civilization in the world today) and decide that same-sex marriage should be legalized.

We are so enlightened that we can eliminate whatever might stand in the way of our sexual exploits or prosperity-seeking, even if that means the sacrifice of another 50 million unborn children.

We are so enlightened that we can restore Science back in its proper place (meaning that it’s okay to create human life in order to destroy it, as long as we, the powerful, can benefit somehow).

We are the enlightened ones who bring justice and freedom and peace to the world.

You could hear it in Bush’s audacious speech after 9/11, in which he claimed that “we will eliminate evil from the world.”

You could hear it in John McCain’s claim at one of the 2008 debates that the “United States of America is the greatest force for good in the world.”

You can hear it even now in the speeches of Barack Obama: We are the world-changers.

Behind the clamor of the adoring media and the sight of swooning fans in Washington, D.C. – we can see that what truly unites us as a nation is a sense of superiority over the rest of the world, a belief in America as our savior, a naïve assumption that our cause is always right.

The Tower of Babel is going up right before our eyes.

But how many leaders have to come and go before we realize the truth that only Jesus Christ is Lord?

How many examples of government injustice have to take place before we realize that Christ’s Church is still the greatest force for good in the world?

How many towers have to fall before we realize the truth that his kingdom is the one that will never fail?

We live in a day when hope has dawned, yes. But not because we have elected a new president. Let the Church never forget:

Peace has broken out because of the cross – God’s resolution to our war against him. Hope has dawned because the tomb of a certain first-century Jew has been emptied of its contents. Justice will reign because of the Church who anticipates his return and dominion.

Nations rise and fall, but the Word of the Lord stands firm forever.

Via: Trevin Wax