Bob Struck Bob is the Associate Pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Usually an avid blogger, he does so now when the effects of cancer treatment have not clouded his mind and sapped his strength.
"If you want a strong marriage you've got to maintain it... The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence; it's greener where you water it." Rick Warren
"Let the fires go out in the boiler room of the church and the place will still look smart and clean, but it will be cold. The Prayer Room is the boiler room for its spiritual life." Leonard Ravenhill
"...the providence of God is ususally something you should roll with." Doug Wilson
"Saying Yes to happiness often means saying No to yourself." Elizabeth Elliot
"Idols are often good things turned into a god thing, which is a bad thing." Mark Driscoll
"My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things - that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior." John Newton
"I believe in Christianity like I believe the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." C.S. Lewis
"If you pray well, you will live well; if you live well, you will die well; and if you die well, all will be well." St. Augustine
"As the Lord's Prayer is the Prayer of prayers, and the Ten Commandments are the Laws of law, so the Apostles' Creed is the Creed of creeds."
Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom
"If people like you and me find much that we don't naturally like in the public & corporate side of Christianity all the better for us: it will teach us humility and charity towards simple low-brow people who may be better Christians than ourselves." C.S. Lewis
"Adam and Eve were created to be one flesh, to express in bodily form the unity that exists among the persons of the Trinity." Peter Leithart
"If anything has been lost from our culture, it is the idea that human beings are privately, personally, individually, ultimately, inexorably accountable to God for their lives." R.C. Sproul
"The kindness of the world is far more formidable than its enmity. Many, who were prepared to stem the torrent of its opposition, have yielded with compromising indulgence to its paralyzing kindness." Charles Bridges
"Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing." Screwtape to Wormwood
"Prayer isn't everything; but everything is done through prayer." -- Armin Gesswein
"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." -- C.S. Lewis
"Where there is much prayer, there will be much of the Spirit; where there is much of the Spirit, there will be ever-increasing prayer." -- Andrew Murray
"The church that multiplies committees and neglects prayer may be fussy, noisy, enterprising, but it labors in vain and spends its strength for nothing. It is possible to excel in mechanics and fail in dynamics. There is an abundance of machinery; what is lacking is power." -- Samuel Chadwick
"The church is a Body, not a business. It is an organism, not an organization! It is a family to be loved, not a machine to be engineered, and not a company to be managed." -- Rick Warren
"If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else." -- Yogi Berra
In the countdown to October 21 (tomorrow), the date set by Harold Camping for the time of the Rapture of the Church, many well known evangelical preachers – particularly those whose teaching is broadcast via radio – have preempted their regular series to rebut and clarify this issue for their congregations and listening audiences.
Why rebut and clarify? Recall that Harold Camping first predicted the end of the world as we know it and the rapture of the Church for this past May 21. When that date came and went with no fulfillment Camping went into brief seclusion and came up with a new date five months later, Friday, October 21, 2011.
Last time I asserted that the popular end times view of Antichrist seated in a rebuilt temple structure in Jerusalem was at odds with Paul’s view of the temple – a fact that casts serious doubt on its validity. So what is Paul’s doctrine of the temple?
The Greek word for temple is ναὸς (nay-oss) and it is the one Paul uses in all his communication. He uses it in six passages and all but one of those is in the singular (“temple”). We’ll look at those first then look at his one plural (“temples”) usage.
We find Paul using it in his first letter to the Corinthians. “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.” 3:16-17 ESV The temple reference here is to believers, the Church. Moreover, Paul says “God’s Spirit lives in you,” v.16.
Yes, we admit it – we have a communication problem here at Trinity. It’s part of the daily routine among our English speaking staff and volunteers to clarify what we meant when we said or wrote such and such. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. We have people here from Vietnam (the Vietnamese Grace Church); from Thailand (the Thai Church of Minnesota); and from Burma (the Trinity KaRen Baptist Fellowship).
The issue of communication became front and center when we began receiving individuals from the latter group a few years ago. As they arrived in our neighborhood and our church we couldn’t communicate. We spoke different languages. As the KaRen people attended our services and ministries they only understood a small fraction of what was going on. The same held for us English speakers when we joined with them. Neither group benefited from the ministry of the others.
The following excerpt just came from the Desiring God ministries blog. I wonder - how often does this figure into our (evangelicals') discussions on worship? At best, not enough.
I've just challenged our board members with this saying, "...we seem to be hung up on the issue of musical style and its effect upon one's feelings during the morning service. Granted, music can be a help or hindrance to our ability to focus on the glory of God.
However - and I think this is a significant point - we can have good feelings induced by music, because we like it, and totally lack what Piper brings out below."
What do you think?
"The essential, vital, indispensable, defining heart of worship is the experience of being satisfied with God. This satisfaction in God magnifies God in the heart. This explains why the apostle Paul makes so little distinction between worship as a congregational service and worship as a pattern of daily life. They have the same root – a passion for treasuring God as infinitely valuable. The impulse for singing a hymn and the impulse for visiting a prisoner is the same: a thirst for God – a desire to experience as much satisfaction in God as we can."
It surely cannot have escaped our attention that God loves words and writing. In fact, we’re told by the apostle John that words, as an expression of oneself, is at the core of who God is. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” John 1:1-2. God is One who expresses Himself in words – in this case the Word made flesh.
Furthermore, God’s revelation of Himself over the centuries has not gone undocumented. God has taken great care that His revelation, His Word is not lost but is recorded. Yet, this record is not ultimately in song, or in pictures, or riddles. Rather, it has been written down by God’s prophets and apostles (assume here an evangelical doctrine of inspiration) and preserved (assume here an evangelical doctrine of canonization) as sacred texts.
In an effort to broaden the horizons of our members our church held an art show last week. This was in conjunction with our REFRESH! service (a contemporary prayer and worship service) in which I brought forth the following brief thoughts with a view to justifying such an event.
Some may wonder and question the reasoning for holding an art show at church. "Isn’t that just a self-glorifying display of individual talent?" "What does art have to do with God anyway?"
As for the first objection I suppose an art show could be the setting for a self-glorifying display of one's talent, but no more so than someone who sings or plays an instrument during a Sunday morning worship service. It would depend on the state of one's heart.
So many people attribute the success of various modern, cutting edge churches to the raw, informal, hip, or technologically driven style of the pastor or the service. There's no doubt those things can draw a crowd - but whether they can make for a church is another question...
At any rate, I was delighted to see Mark Driscoll, pastor of Seattle's raw, informal, hip, and technologically driven Mars Hill Church tossing all that to the wind in his contribution to the Easter Sermon Jam last month.
In this short video we see Mark doing it old style - black suit, white shirt and tie; big black Bible repeatedly thumped while pacing; unabashedly, unavoidably and passionately loud in his delivery; a full choir - in robes no less! - behind him...
This IS your grandfather's preaching - your gandfather's gospel - your gandfather's Lord and Savior being magnified -- all by the grunge city's hippest pastor.
This proves that Christ's church is built "'...not by might, nor by power; but by My Spirit,' says the LORD."
Paul has warned that two things must happen before Christ comes in glory. The rebellion and the rise of antichrist. We saw that this rebellion or apostasy is to have at one time embraced the truth but then to abandon it completely. And so there will be an abandonment of the truth within the Church during the last days.
But anyone acquainted with the history of the Church knows that there have been instances of apostasy, by individuals and whole denominations, since the beginning. Even John points out that in his day the antichrist false teachers among them had gone “out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.” 1John 2:19
In response to my last post regarding apostasy my senior pastor sent me this clip of John Piper speaking about the demeanor of false teachers from Romans 16:18. His observations dovetail nicely with my closing comments on the subtlety of deception and deceivers.
For more teaching resources by John Piper go to Desiring God ministries.
Paul has warned the Thessalonians not to be deceived by end times charlatans and gives them two signs to look for that must happen before the Day of the Lord comes. He says first, “Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs…” 2Thess.2:3 NIV.
