How Do You Pastor Your Family?

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Some one sent me a helpful post on this immensely practical subject.

Here’s a tidbit:

Dads, it’s important for you to call the family together. Don’t force mom to keep looking at her watch, to always be waiting for you, to nag you to get started. Call the family together. Get the Bible. Know where/what you’re reading. Lead your family. Wives, this may be new or unfamiliar for many dads. Go easy on him. Encourage him. Honor his leadership. Don’t undermine. Don’t criticize. Model respect and love for your children to see. And remember, the kids are watching.

You can read the entire post here.

Operation World – PB 2010!

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Finally! It’s here. Well, almost.

Operation World, the definitive prayer guide to every nation, by Jason Mandryk, is now listed on Amazon for pre-ordering at only $16.49 plus shipping (free shipping if you order over $25 worth).

No other resource more comprehensively informs the praying Christian about the peoples of the world, their nations and the needs for intercession most pressing in every case.

I highly recommend the purchase of this tool as a constant companion for our abiding in Christ and our praying for His kingdom to come.

Order your copy today!

The Marriage Bed

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Ever on the lookout for additional helpful resources for areas of pastoral ministry, I recently came upon a new booklet by Ray Rhodes, Jr. entitled The Marriage Bed (Books That Nourish, Dawsonville, GA, 2010, 32 pages).

In some thirty years of premarital counseling this little gem is the first manual on sexual intimacy in Christian marriage that I have ever felt the freedom to give to a couple preparing for marriage. Here’s why.

Rhodes faithfully and responsibly addresses the pertinent biblical texts including Heb. 13:4 (at length), 1 Cor. 7:3-5, and selected verses from the Song of Solomon. On the latter the author particularly excels in my estimation. In his quest to exegete faithfully the text, avoiding the tendency to over spiritualize the text, he does not over sexualize the text. He does not find meaning and application where it cannot legitimately be found. I appreciate his fidelity to sound principles of interpretation in his quest to help couples through the maze of proper expression of passion, creativity, and delight in their sexual expression.

Rhodes makes the booklet immensely practical throughout with various applications to the Scriptures he expounds. Most helpful at the end is a seven day plan for cultivating intimacy in one’s marriage, a daily plan to that end that the newest married couple to the oldest will find quite helpful.

He also includes a suggested reading list at the end of the booklet with a recommendation that reveals the gospel heart driving his passion (no pun intended) for promoting healthy sexual expression within the confines of biblical marriage.

I took the risk of purchasing 50 of these booklets in a special offer from one distributor on the strength of these recommendations:

“I highly recommend this book. It is a clear, biblical and practical guide to marital intimacy.”
– Dr. Tom Ascol, Executive Director of Founder’s Ministries

“Get this booklet! In the overly sexualized society that is America today, Ray Rhodes has provided an invaluable service by helping us to think biblically about sex to the glory of God. In a format that is deceptively brief and affordable, Rhodes hands out solid treasures from God’s word that will enrich the lives of every husband and wife who read it. While carefully avoiding the excessive permissiveness or restrictiveness that mar other works, Rhodes is biblical, personal, practical, helpful and enjoyable!”
– Bruce A. Ray, author of Withhold Not Correction and Celebrating the Sabbath, and Secretary of FIRE (Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals). Bruce is Pastor of Juanita Community Church in Kirkland, WA.

“Marital intimacy is one of the Lord’s greatest gifts to his creatures. Sadly, many couples fail to experience the fullness of that gift. Pastor Ray Rhodes skillfully and sensitively brings husbands and wives to the word of the Creator to rediscover his beautiful design for the marriage bed in this wonderfully helpful book.”
– John Crotts, co-author Tying the Knot Tighter: Because Marriage Lasts a Lifetime (with Martha Peace). John is also the author of Mighty Men and Craftsmen

I debated making this resource available on our book table at the SDA on Sundays but thought better of it in the interest of exercising extreme care in not exposing young eyes to content they do not need to see.

If you would like a copy for you and your spouse, please don’t hesitate to contact the office or shoot me a confidential email and request one. The cost is only $3 and I would be happy to see that you receive a copy.

A Needed Fork in the Eye

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Once again tomorrow my Tuesday early-morning prayer group will dive into C. J. Mahaney’s convicting article on biblical productivity.

Thus far we have wrestled with the hindrances to biblical productivity (procrastination, laziness, and the tendencies of the sluggard). Now we get to consider practical helps toward the end of becoming more diligent, faithful, and fruitful in our lives and ministries.

Mahaney prescribes three things to achieve biblical productivity:

  1. define one’s present God-given roles
  2. determine specific, theologically informed goals
  3. transfer goals into one’s schedule

This means planning. Some of us would rather stick a fork in our eye than do any kind of planning, but Mahaney insists on the absolute necessity of this discipline if we are to be productive.

The problem for those of us with this fork-in-the-eye approach to planning is that during each day the most urgent requests will compete with and distract from the most important goals and priorities of our lives. Each day the number of requests we receive normally outnumber the time allotted for the day. My experience confirms that if I fail to attack my week with theologically informed planning, my week attacks me with an onslaught of the urgent. And I end up devoting more time to the urgent than the important. And at the end of the week there is a low-grade guilt and dissatisfaction in my soul, because I’ve neglected to do the truly important stuff. I want to have as few weeks like this as possible in whatever time remains for me to serve the Savior. I’m thinking you do as well.

I do indeed. Do you? Stay tuned for more, or better yet, read the article for yourself!

How to Tell the True Shepherd from the False (Part One)

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Today’s message from John 10:1-6, the setup to the Good Shepherd Discourse, is now on the web. You can listen to it here.

Here’s how I summarized the message at the end:

Because Jesus is the true and Good Shepherd, we should believe in Him as Messiah and follow Him as opposed to false and harmful impostors.

You can tell the difference between the true and false shepherd by the true shepherd’s positive intent, legitimate access, and authoritative voice to call out effectively and lead out exclusively.

Have you been called out by Jesus?

If you have, understand that He goes before you as one who leads. Whatever you are facing maritally, parentally, vocationally, economically, whatever, He knows every detail about your situation and means to do you well as your good shepherd.

If you haven’t, you may need to come out of Judaism even like the man born blind. Or maybe materialism, or humanism, or philosophy, or mysticism or a host of other false shepherds that climb up another way and take sheep captive and do them harm. Come John 10:11 He will tell us how He came to calls us out and leads us into what Psalm 23 describes as green pastures and beside quiet waters – The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He dies in their place. He bears their punishment before a holy God so they might be forgiven. Do you hear this message? Jesus the true shepherd is calling. Believe, come out, follow.

May He give us grace to hear His voice as we move into another week of following Him.

Why Sing Nothing But Old Hymns the Traditional Way?

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Good question, considering we will do just that tomorrow in our service. And it’s not just because our chief musician is out of town. Though normally we use a style of music more reflective of the age we live in for purposes of our mission, periodically we employ the genre of traditional church hymnody, and that exclusively, in a service for a variety of reasons.

First, hymns are biblical. Jesus set the example for us with his disciples in Matt. 26:30 after the institution of the Supper. Paul prescribed the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs in Eph. 5:19 as part of the means by which believers manifest the filling of the Spirit.

Second, hymns are doctrinal. We teach what we believe when we sing to each other. The ESV uses the phrase addressing one another with respect to using the three genres in Eph. 5:19. And yes, I do distinguish between the three as opposed to seeing them essentially synonymous. Many hymns, not all mind you, but many shine when it comes to the theological depth contained within the various verses. Consider, for example, just the first two stanzas alone of Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise, our first offering tomorrow:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.

When we sing such truth-saturated lyrics to one another we remind, even instruct one another, as to the magnificent character of the great God we worship. That is not to say that modern hymns written by the likes of Getty, Townend, Kauflin and others don’t do the same thing. Singing In Christ Alone should convince one of that quite quickly. But compared to much of the content coming out of the modern worship song movement over the last several decades, most great hymns of the church take us to a level of biblical understanding and God-centered praise that knows not many rivals.

Third, hymns are missional. They often rehearse redemption’s story. They preach the gospel. Consider these verses of O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing, which we will also sing tomorrow (though I regret not the last two stanzas since they do not appear in our hymnal):

He breaks the power of canceled sin;
He sets the prisoner free.
His blood can make the foulest clean;
His blood avails for me.

Look to the Lord, who did atone
For sin, O fallen race.
Look and be saved through faith alone,
Be justified by grace.

See all our sins on Jesus laid;
The Lamb has made us whole.
His soul was once an offering made
For every human soul.

Fourth, hymns are singable. I know, that’s not a word. But it works for my purposes. Hymns, especially the church’s favorites, have passed the test of time of lyrical beauty and artistry that make them especially suited to congregational singing. Their music lends itself well to the average voice and their lyrics turn phrases and lines and stanzas in such a way that the worshipper knows he or she has just the right song for such holy purposes.

Fifth, hymns are historical. They tie us to centuries past in Christian history, even as do our creeds and confessions. They remind us of the great company of saints who have gone before us. They protect us from what C. S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy, called “chronological snobbery” – the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual [might we insert artistic] climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.

At OGC we don’t disdain the past; we insist on prizing it. How else shall we guard ourselves from going off a modernist deep end either in spirit or in truth? Jesus told us that true worship consists by necessity of both (John 4:24).

So as we gather tomorrow and sing in a manner uncharacteristic for us as a rule, may we do so with all these reasons in mind and failing that, choose to prefer those among us who treasure these songs for all those reasons and more, even as they do those who more often than not get the modernized version of hymnody on any given Sunday.

Read or Get Out

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Another Oxford Club meeting for men lies just around the corner a week from Saturday. I just finished reading chapter 13, The Leader and Reading, in Oswald Sanders’ Spiritual Leadership.

In it the author cites the example of John Wesley as a model for leaders who wish to lead well.

John Wesley had a passion for reading and most of it was done on horseback. He rode sometimes ninety and often fifty miles in a day. He read deeply on a wide range of subjects. It was his habit to travel with a volume of science or history or medicine propped on the pommel of his saddle, and in that way he got through thousands of volumes. After his Greek New Testament, three great books took complete possession of Wesley’s mind and heart during his Oxford days. ‘It was about this time that he began the earnest study of “The Imitation of Christ,” “Holy Living and Dying” and “The Serious Call.” These three books became very much his spiritual guides.’ He told the younger ministers of the Wesleyan societies either to read or to get out of the ministry!

Apparently Wesley’s students had little doubt as to just where he stood on the importance of reading to the life of the pastor!

While I don’t recommend imitating Wesley’s example in a modern day version of reading while driving, there is something to be said about mastering some books thoroughly as opposed to reading widely alone.

Charles Spurgeon apparently agreed:

…master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and re-read them, masticate them, and digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times, and make notes and analyses of it. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books which he has merely skimmed, … Little learning and much pride come of hasty reading. In reading let your motto be “much, not many.”

C.H. Spurgeon, To Workers with Slender Apparatus, (Sword and Trowel, December 1873)

Brothers, I invite you to join us next Saturday, July 24, at 7 AM, at the church office, for discussion and prayer around these and other provocative thoughts concerning the leader and his time and his reading.

The One Thing We Must Never Lack

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Puritan Thomas Watson asserted that, “Pride is the greatest sacrilege; it robs God of his glory” (The Godly Man’s Picture).

If that is correct, then we ought to concern ourselves seriously about the cultivation of pride’s antithesis, humility.

Peter thought so when he exhorted the churches, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’” (1 Peter 5:5).

We certainly don’t want to end up on the wrong end of that equation.

What does this kind of humility that brings forth much needed grace look like?

Watson proposed a tenfold test of humility by which we may measure ourselves:

  1. A humble soul is emptied of all swelling thoughts of himself.
  2. A humble soul thinks better of others than of himself.
  3. A humble soul has a low esteem of his duties.
  4. A humble man is always preferring bills of indictment against himself.
  5. A humble man will justify God in an afflicted condition.
  6. A humble soul is a Christ-magnifier.
  7. A humble soul is willing to take a reproof for sin.
  8. A humble man is willing to have his name and gifts eclipsed, so that God’s glory may be increased.
  9. A humble saint likes that condition which God sees best for him.
  10. A humble Christian will stoop to the meanest person and the lowest office; he will visit the poorest member of Christ.

Occasional Puritan hyperbole notwithstanding, how do you fare when you shine the light of these qualities against your own disposition?

Watson declared, “It is better to lack anything rather than humility.” Do you see the Lord growing you in this all-important virtue of humility?

We would do well to make John the Baptist’s rally cry in John 3:30 our own. “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

May the Lord grant us grace upon grace for less of us and more of Him.

The Unshakable Grounds of Our Perseverance

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One of the most encouraging doctrines of the Scriptures to me is the perseverance of the saints (John 10:28-29; Phil. 1:6).

The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith states the fact of perseverance in the lives of true believers this way:

The saints are those whom God has accepted in Christ the Beloved, and effectually called and sanctified by His Spirit.  To them He has given the precious faith that pertains to all His elect. The persons to whom such blessings have been imparted can neither totally nor finally fall from the state of grace, but they shall certainly persevere in grace to the end and be eternally saved, for God will never repent of having called them and made gifts to them (17:1).

The reason for my encouragement with this truth lies particularly in the grounds, the unshakable grounds, upon which it rests, namely the preserving power of God in the lives of those who persevere.

Again the Confession speaks to this:

It is on no free will of their own that the saints’ perseverance depends, but on the immutability of the decree of election, which in its turn depends upon the free and unchangeable love of God the Father, the efficacious merit and intercession of Jesus Christ and the saints’ union with Him, the oath of God, the abiding character of the Spirit’s indwelling of the saints, the divine nature of which they are partakers and, lastly, the terms of the covenant of grace.  All these factors guarantee the certainty and infallibility of the saints’ perseverance (17:2).

That we persevere in grace does not depend upon our will but the will of God (Phil. 2:12-13; Rom. 9:16; John 6:37; John 6:44). We might more correctly refer to the doctrine as the preservation of the saints as opposed to the perseverance of the saints, though we must on our part employ means to this end as made plain in other texts of Scripture (Eph. 6:18; John 15:5-7; Heb. 10:24-27).

But the most encouraging thing to me is that the Confession goes on to unpack the terms of this grace of God that preserves us as pertaining to all three persons of the Trinity. The Father’s love in election (Rom. 8:30), the Son’s merit in intercession (Rom. 8:31-34), and the Spirit’s perpetuity in indwelling (1 John 3:9), not to say the oath of God (Heb. 6:16-20) ALL stand behind the promise of our, as some have called it, eternal security. Nothing less than all three persons of the Godhead ensure our perseverance as saints to the very end (Matt. 24:13).

Tomorrow evening at 5:30 PM at the church office we will have another tutorial in our Confession that focuses on this wonderful doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Why not join us for the discussion and come to appreciate all the more the unshakable grounds upon which our confidence to stand firm in the faith to the very end ultimately rests?

An Expanded Definition of Laziness

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Tomorrow morning following intercession our staff and weekly prayer group will gather around the breakfast table and discuss, among other things, our ongoing reactions to C. J. Mahaney’s provocative article on biblical productivity.

For this week I assigned sections five through seven of the article for our consideration. I found the content on the neglected wealth of Proverbs, particularly as it applied to the repeated subject of the sluggard, especially convicting.

Mahaney attributes his reading of Dr. Derek Kidner’s commentary on Proverbs to contributing to what he calls movement from a narrow and limited understanding of laziness to an expanded definition of the subject.

Here are the words from Dr. Kidner’s commentary that did the trick:

“The sluggard in Proverbs is a figure of tragi-comedy, with his sheer animal laziness (he is more than anchored to his bed: he is hinged to it, 26:14), his preposterous excuses (“there is a lion outside!” 26:13; 22:13) and his final helplessness.

(1) He will not begin things. When we ask him (6:9, 10) “How long…?” “When…?”, we are being too definite for him. He doesn’t know. All he knows is his delicious drowsiness; all he asks is a little respite: “a little…a little…a little…”. He does not commit himself to a refusal, but deceives himself by the smallness of his surrenders. So, by inches and minutes, his opportunity slips away.

(2) He will not finish things. The rare effort of beginning has been too much; the impulse dies. So his quarry goes bad on him (12:27) and his meal goes cold on him (19:24; 26:15).

(3) He will not face things. He comes to believe his own excuses (perhaps there is a lion out there, 22:13), and to rationalize his laziness; for he is “wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason” (26:16). Because he makes a habit of the soft choice (he “will not plow by reason of the cold,” 20:4) his character suffers as much as his business, so that he is implied in 15:19 to be fundamentally dishonest…

(4) Consequently he is restless (13:4; 21:25, 26) with unsatisfied desire; helpless in face of the tangle of his affairs, which are like a “hedge of thorns” (15:19); and useless—expensively (18:9) and exasperatingly (10:26)—to any who must employ him…

The wise man will learn while there is time. He knows that the sluggard is no freak, but, as often as not, an ordinary man who has made too many excuses, too many refusals and too many postponements. It has all been as imperceptible, and as pleasant, as falling asleep.”

-Derek Kidner, Proverbs (IVP, 1964), pp. 42–43.

Anyone care for another muffin?