Thursday, December 13, 2012

Happy Birthday, Lyndsey!


Today is my big sister's birthday! Woohoo!

I love you Lyndsey. We've been through a lot together, and I'm SO glad we have the relationship we do. Our Lord is good, and sure does know what He's doing. I hope you've had a great day. I love you, sissy. =)
"Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life." ~Charles M. Schulz
"After a girl is grown, her little brothers, now her protectors, seem like big brothers." ~Astrid Alauda
"Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply..." ~Jane Austen

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Warning Against Adultery



Proverbs 5 (English Standard Version)

"My son, be attentive to my wisdom;
    incline your ear to my understanding,
that you may keep discretion,
    and your lips may guard knowledge.
For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,
    and her speech is smoother than oil,
but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
    sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death;
    her steps follow the path to Sheol;
she does not ponder the path of life;
    her ways wander, and she does not know it.

And now, O sons, listen to me,
    and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
Keep your way far from her,
    and do not go near the door of her house,
lest you give your honor to others
    and your years to the merciless,
lest strangers take their fill of your strength,
    and your labors go to the house of a foreigner,
and at the end of your life you groan,
    when your flesh and body are consumed,
and you say, 'How I hated discipline,
    and my heart despised reproof!
I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
    or incline my ear to my instructors.
I am at the brink of utter ruin
    in the assembled congregation.'

Drink water from your own cistern,
    flowing water from your own well.
Should your springs be scattered abroad,
    streams of water in the streets?
Let them be for yourself alone,
    and not for strangers with you.
Let your fountain be blessed,
    and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
    a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
    be intoxicated always in her love.
Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
    and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord,
    and he ponders all his paths.
The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
    and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
He dies for lack of discipline,
    and because of his great folly he is led astray."

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Pornography and the Integrity of Christian Marriage


     "Consider these two pictures. The first picture is of a man who has set himself toward a commitment to sexual purity and is living in sexual integrity with his wife. In order to fulfill his wife's rightful expectations and to maximize their mutual pleasure in the marriage bed, he is careful to live, talk, lead, and love in such a way that his wife finds her fulfillment in giving herself to him in love. The sex act then becomes a fulfillment of their entire relationship, not an isolated physical act that is merely incidental to their love for each other. Neither uses sex as a means of manipulation, neither is inordinately focused merely on self-centered personal pleasure, and both give themselves to each other in unapologetic and unhindered sexual passion. In this picture, there is no shame. Before God, this man can be confident that he is fulfilling his responsibilities both as a male and as a man. He is directing his sexuality, his sex drive, and his physical embodiment toward the one-flesh relationship that is the perfect paradigm of God's intention in creation.
     "By contrast, consider another man. This man lives alone, or at least in a context other than holy marriage. Directed inwardly rather than outwardly, his sex drive has become an engine for lust and self-gratification. Pornography is the essence of his sexual interest and arousal. Rather than taking satisfaction in a wife, he looks at dirty pictures in order to be rewarded with sexual arousal that comes without responsibility, expectation, or demand. Arrayed before him are a seemingly endless variety of naked women, sexual images of explicit carnality, and a cornucopia of perversions intended to seduce the imagination and corrupt the soul. This man need not be concerned with his physical appearance, his personal hygiene, or his moral character in the eyes of a wife. Without this structure and accountability, he is free to take his sexual pleasure without regard for his unshaved face, his slothfulness, his halitosis, his body odor, or his physical appearance. He faces no requirement of personal respect, and no eyes gaze upon him in order to evaluate the seriousness and worthiness of his sexual desire. Instead, his eyes roam across the images of unblinking faces, leering at women who make no demands upon him, who never speak back, and who can never say no. There is no exchange of respect, no exchange of love, and nothing more than the using of women as sex objects for his individual and inverted sexual pleasure.
     "These two pictures of male sexuality are deliberately intended to drive home the point that every man must decide who he will be, whom he will serve, and how he will love. In the end, a man's decision about pornography is a decision about his soul, a decision about his marriage, a decision about his wife, and a decision about his God."

R. Albert Mohler Jr., Desire and Deceit: The real cost of the new sexual tolerance, (Multnomah Books, 2008), p. 39-41.

Monday, December 10, 2012

To Live Is Christ: Trip Lee


I like music. I love God. I know not everyone enjoys rap/hip hop music, but I have found a few good men who wed good rap/hip hop music with Christ-centered lyrics. One of them you'll hear in the video below: Trip Lee (of Reach Records) gives an overview and main thesis of the book of Philippians. I have been really encouraged by this song and this video. Enjoy!




Sunday, December 9, 2012

If...Then...


"If some Christians who have been complaining of their ministers had said and acted less before men and had applied themselves with all their might to cry to God for their ministers--had, as it were, risen and stormed heaven with their humble, fervent, and incessant prayers for them--they would have been much more in the way of success."

Jonathan Edwards, (1703-1758).

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Heaven On Earth


"Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the Kingdom of heaven on earth. God does nothing but in answer to prayer."

John Wesley, (1703-1791).

Friday, December 7, 2012

Prayer Must Make Me...


"The principle cause of my leanness and unfruitfulness is due to an unaccountable backwardness to pray. I can write or read or converse or hear with a ready heart. But, prayer is more spiritual and inward than any of these, and the more spiritual any duty is, the more my carnal heart is apt to stray from it. Prayer and patience and faith are never disappointed. I have long since learned that if ever I was to be a minister, faith and prayer must make me one. When I can find my heart dissolved in prayer, everything else is comparatively easy."

Richard Newton

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Prayer Is Work



     "Praying is spiritual work, and human nature does not like taxing, spiritual work. Human nature wants to sail to heaven under a pleasant breeze, and a full, smooth sea. Prayer is humbling work. It abases intellect and pride, crucifies vainglory, and signals our spiritual bankruptcy. All these are hard for flesh and blood to bear. It is easier not to pray than to bear them. 
     "So, we come to one of the crying evils of these times, maybe of all times--little or no praying. Of these two evils, perhaps little praying is worse than no praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and delusion."

E.M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer, (Whitaker House, 1982), p. 36.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

"Early Will I Seek Thee"


"I ought to pray before seeing anyone. Often when I sleep long, or meet with others early, it is eleven or twelve o'clock before I begin secret prayer. This is a wretched system. It is unscriptural. Christ arose before day and went into a solitary place. David says: 'Early will I seek Thee'; 'Thou shalt early hear my voice.' Family prayer loses much of its power and sweetness, and I can do no good to those who come to seek from me. My conscience feels guilty, my soul unfed, my lamp not trimmed. Then, when in secret prayer, the soul is often out of tune. I feel it is far better to begin with God--to see His face first--to get my soul near Him before it is near another."

Robert Murray M'Cheyne, (1813-1843).

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Charity & Its Fruits: Lecture XVI





"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away." -1 Corinthians 13:8-10

DOCTRINAL TRUTH FROM THIS TEXT:

"HEAVEN IS A WORLD OF CHARITY OR LOVE."


Jonathan Edwards, Charity And Its Fruits, (Banner of Truth Trust, 1998), p. 325.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Charity & Its Fruits: Lecture XV





"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away." -1 Corinthians 13:8

DOCTRINAL TRUTH FROM THIS TEXT:

"[THE] GREAT FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT, IN WHICH THE HOLY GHOST SHALL, NOT ONLY FOR A SEASON, BUT EVERLASTINGLY, BE COMMUNICATED TO THE CHURCH OF CHRIST, IS CHARITY, OR DIVINE LOVE."

Jonathan Edwards, Charity And Its Fruits, (Banner of Truth Trust, 1998), p. 306.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Charity & Its Fruits: Lecture XIV





"Love...endures all things." -1 Corinthians 13:7

DOCTRINAL TRUTH FROM THIS TEXT:

"CHARITY, OR TRUE CHRISTIAN GRACE, CANNOT BE OVERTHROWN BY ANYTHING THAT OPPOSES IT."

Jonathan Edwards, Charity And Its Fruits, (Banner of Truth Trust, 1998), p. 287.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

An Essential Attribute of God



   "The words 'God is love' mean that love is an essential attribute of God. Love is something true of God but it is not God. It expresses the way God is in His unitary being, as do the words holiness, justice, faithfulness, and truth. Because God is immutable He always acts like Himself, and because He is a unity He never suspends one of His attributes in order to exercise another.
   "From God's other known attributes we may learn much about His love. We can know, for instance, that because God is self-existent, His love had no beginning; because He is eternal, His love can have no end; because He is infinite, it has no limit; because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because He is immense, His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea before which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats confused and abashed."

A.W. Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy, (HarperCollins, 1961), p. 98.