Weekend Links

 Some links that caught my attention:

 Encyclopedia Britannica Goes Out of Print After 244 Years

Also, Rest in Peace Britannica

5 Things a Pastor Should Never Say

Advance Review of "Blue Like Jazz: The Movie" 

Who Are the Greatest Preachers?

The Journey Requires Multiple Decisions

There is a difference between "accepting" Jesus and "following" Jesus.

The concept of following evokes rich imagery—journey, process, adventure, and dependence. Accepting sounds like Jesus is put on our scales, and we decide his fate, like he is campaigning for our vote as he runs for Messiah. To accept Jesus does not call one to live as a disciple; it merely calls one to make a decision. Following calls for a series of decisions being made by the minute, keeping Jesus the focal point, refusing to look to the right or the left, increasing in likeness to his character and in closeness to his person.

- Bill Clem, Disciple: Getting Your Identity from Jesus

Hat Tip: Christians in Context 

This is a good book that I am part way through reading (along with so many other books!) Plus, as the "Journeyman" I am, of course, always interested in quotes describing following Jesus as a journey, because it is!
     

Follow Me on Twitter

For those of you who use Twitter I'm now on board with the Twitverse. You can follow me at bg_simmons.
    

Let's Go Swimming!

"The gospel isn't the diving board of Christianity. The gospel is the pool itself."

             - J.D. Greear

Hat Tip: Darryl Dash

Success = Serving

To follow up this mornings earlier post about "orthodoxy of community," consider this:

"Christians do not find happiness by ruling over their neighbors, or by seeking supremacy over the week, or by being rich, or by attacking the inferior. On the contrary, Christians see success in taking upon themselves the burdens of their neighbor, using their positions of superiority to benefit the deficient, an in distributing whatever they receive from God to the needy.  This is what it means to be an imitator of God."

      - From The Letter of Mathetes to Diognetus, 2nd century AD

Quoted in Trevin Wax, Holy Supremacy, page 70

Orthodoxy of Community

"One cannot explain the explosive dynamite, the dunamis, of the early church apart from the fact that they practiced two things simultaneously: orthodoxy of doctrine and orthodoxy of community in the midst of the visible church, a community which the world can see. By the grace of God, therefore, the church must be known simultaneously for its purity of doctrine and the reality of its community."

- Francis Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World

Hat Tip: Vitamin Z

(Love me some Schaeffer - now more than ever!)

Three Words

Salvation in three words:  God....Saves....Sinners!

“God – the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit; three Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father’s will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of the Father and Son by renewing. Saves – does everything, first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory: plans, achieves and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies. Sinners — men as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, unable to life a finger to do God’s will or better their spiritual lot.”

— J. I. Packer, Teaching the Faith, Forming the Faithful
(Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2009), 103

Hat Tip: Of First Importance

He Wants You to Join the Song

From a beautiful piece by Paul at Thinking Out Loud:

When I looked to my right, there was Brett.

He looked angry. The worship leader had chosen a classic hymn, “A Shelter in the Time of Storm.” Brett doesn’t care for the hymns. Even though he’s the standby guitarist for three of the four worship teams, when a hymn comes along he doesn’t sing. Even the revamped versions of “When I Survey” and “Amazing Grace” don’t work for him. He just stands there with his lips pursed together.

When I looked to my left, there was Daniel.

He looked distressed. We’d moved on to a different song now, introducing the new modern worship Chris Tomlin song, “White Flag.”  Daniel is a retired school teacher. He gave up his NASB for a more modern translation, but he’s not giving in an inch when it comes to all the new songs we’ve been learning lately. So he stands stone-faced, silent, with his lips pursed together.

When I looked up, there was God.

The Valley is the Place...

This may have to be my new life motto:

"Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all, 
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision."

From The Valley of the Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers

Quoted by Trevin Wax, Holy Subversion, page 127

On Nothing Less...

Excerpt from Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, Preface

So then, have we nothing to do to obtain righteousness? No, nothing at all! For this righteousness comes by doing nothing, hearing nothing, knowing nothing, but rather in knowing and believing this only–that Christ has gone to the right hand of the Father, not to become our judge, but to become for us our wisdom, our righteousness, our holiness, our salvation!

Now God sees no sin in us. For in this heavenly righteousness, sin has no place. So now we may certainly think, “Although I still sin, I don’t despair, because Christ lives–who is both my righteousness and my eternal life.” In that righteousness I have no sin, no fear, no guilty conscience, no fear of death. I am indeed a sinner in this life of mine and in my own righteousness, but I have another life, another righteousness above this life, which is in Christ, the Son of God, who knows no sin or death, but is eternal righteousness and eternal life. For if the truth of being justified by Christ alone (not by our works) is lost, then all Christian truths are lost…On this truth and only on this truth the Church is built and has its being.

Hat Tip: Tullian Tchvidjian (Love the picture!)
BTW, the Kindle version of Luther's Galatians is free at Amazon