Who Was St. Patrick?

HT: Christian History Made Easy

Renew Within Me A Spirit of Holiness

A prayer of St, Ambrose of Milan (HT Trevin Wax)

Lord Jesus,
My soul and body are defiled by so many sinful deeds.

My tongue and my heart have run wild without restraint,
causing misery to others and shame to myself.

My soul bleeds with the wounds of wrongdoing,
and my body is a playground of selfish indulgence.

If I was to come before you as a judge,
you could only condemn me to eternal torment,
for that is what I deserve.

Yet I come before you,
not as a judge, but as a savior.

I depend not on your justice,
but on your mercy.

As you look upon the wretched creature that I am,
I ask that your eyes be filled with compassion and forgiveness.

And as I sit at your table,
I beg you to renew within me a spirit of holiness.

St. Augustine Still Matters

8 Things We Can Learn From St. Augustine by Gerald Bray, author of Augustine on the Christian Life: Transformed by the Power of God. (via Crossway)

Does Augustine Still Matter?

What does Augustine mean to us now? What is there about his life and work that still speaks to the Christian life today, and to what extent are his thoughts original to him? Was he merely repeating what had gone before, or did he strike out on new pathways that have remained serviceable for the modern church?

1. The Importance of Real Relationship with God

The first thing we notice about him is the emphasis he placed on the relationship of the individual to God. He lived in a world that was rapidly becoming Christian, at least in a formal and public sense. It would have been very easy for him to have gone with the flow, as many of his contemporaries did. But Augustine confessed that he became a Christian only when the Holy Spirit of God moved in his heart, and not before.

He had to be brought face to face with his sinfulness and complete inability to save himself. He was forced to recognize that he had no hope other than to put his trust in Jesus Christ, who had died to pay the price of his sin. He had to learn that to be a Christian was to be in fellowship with the Son of God, to be united with him in a deeply individual union that rested on personal conviction, not on outward support or tradition. From beginning to end, his faith was a walk with God that could only be expressed as a dialogue between two spirits. Take that away and there would be nothing to speak of at all—no faith to confess and no life to live.

2. The Necessity of the Church

Next on the list comes his adherence to the church. Augustine knew that although every Christian must have a personal faith that is not dependent on outward rites and traditions, he also belongs to the universal church. Christians cannot leave the church and live on their own, as if nobody else is good enough for them. There may be good reasons for establishing new congregations, but believers ought to be in fellowship with others and not cut themselves off as if nobody else is quite as good or as pure as they are.

There is no such thing as a pure or perfect congregation, as those who have tried to establish such things have discovered to their cost. In every place, the wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest; the sheep and the goats will only be separated at the last judgment. It was Augustine who first stated this clearly as the reason for not breaking away from the church, and his logic is as valid today as it was when he wrote.

3. The Helplessness of Humanity

Augustine has also taught us that the human race is united in sin and rebellion against God and cannot save itself. Those who have met with Christ have learned that they must trust him completely and not rely on their own efforts, qualities, or inheritance for their salvation.

The works which they do as Christians are those that have been commanded by God, but they only make sense within the context of the relationship that he has already established with his people. If that relationship is right, then everything a Christian does will be forgiven by God, however bad or unfruitful it may be. But if that relationship is wrong, then even “good” works will be of no use, because the context and rationale for them is lacking.

4. The Supreme Authority of the Bible

Augustine also taught the church that the Word of God is to be found in the Bible and nowhere else. He suffered from the problem that he was unfamiliar with the original languages of Scripture and he had inadequate textual resources at his disposal. As a result, his exegesis is often faulty and cannot be trusted.

However, because he had a concept of the Bible as a single, overarching message from God, these faults of detail were less serious than they might otherwise have been. He never appealed to an isolated verse in a way that would make it contradict the general witness of Scripture as a whole. For example, he did not use the assertion that “God is love” in a way that would preclude eternal punishment in hell, of which Jesus himself warned his followers. However “God is love” was to be understood, it had to be consistent with the existence of eternal damnation. On more than one occasion, this sense of “the whole counsel of God” preserved Augustine from errors into which he might otherwise have fallen.

Augustine’s sense of the bigger picture is of great importance to the church, because there is a constant temptation to take Bible verses out of context and use them in ways that contradict the overall message of the God’s Word. There is also a temptation to introduce human traditions that are not in the Scriptures and make them tests of orthodoxy.

Augustine’s method of interpretation was designed to prevent aberrations like these, and the miracle is that—despite the limitations of the resources available to him—he succeeded as well as he did.

We should not always follow him, of course, and must correct him when we can show that he was wrong. However, that is true of any interpreter of Scripture—nobody gets it right all the time! What we must not do is reject Augustine because of his limitations and deny that he has anything to teach us. His conclusions may not always have been right, but his methods and principles remain surprisingly valid, even after so many centuries.

...Than To Rule Over All the Earth

“The delights of this world and all its kingdoms will not profit me. I would prefer to die in Jesus Christ than to rule over all the earth. I seek him who died for us; I desire him who rose for us. I am in the throes of being born again. Bear with me, my brothers and sisters. Let me see the pure light; when I am there, I shall be truly a human being at last. Let me imitate the sufferings of my God.” 

-- St. Ignatius of Antioch, Martyr (circa 107 AD)

A Prayer For Bible Readers

Bede’s Prayer When Studying Scripture 

May Your Spirit, O Christ,
lead me in the right way,
keeping me safe from all forces of evil and destruction.
And, free from all malice,
may I search diligently in Your Holy Word
to discover with the eyes of my mind Your commandments.
Finally, give me the strength of will
to put those commandments into practice
through all the days of my life.

- Bede, 673-735

Praying the Parts

Well,. I think this prayer covers it all!

O God, defend me everywhere
With your impregnable power and protection.
Deliver all my mortal limbs,
Guarding each with your protective shield,
So the foul demons shall not hurl their darts
Into my side, as is their wont. 

Deliver my skull, hair- covered head, and eyes,
Mouth, tongue, teeth, and nostrils,
Neck, breast, side, and limbs,
Joints, fat, and two hands.  

Be a helmet of safety to my head,
To my crown covered with hair,
To my forehead, eyes, and triform brain,
To snout, lip, face, and temple.  

To my chin, beard, eyebrows, ears,
Chaps, cheeks, septum, nostrils,
Pupils, irises, eyelids, and the like,
To gums, breath, jaws, gullet.  

Protect my spine and ribs and their joints,
Back, ridge, and sinews with their bones;
Protect my skin and blood with kidneys,
The area of the buttocks, nates with thighs.
Protect my hams, calves, femurs,
Houghs and knees with knee- joints;
Protect my ankles and shins and heels,
Shanks, feet with their soles. 

Protect my toes growing together,
With the tips of the toes and twice five nails;
Protect my breast, collarbone and small
    breast,
Nipples, stomach, and navel. 

 Protect the whole of me with my five senses,
Together with the ten created orifices,
So that from soles of feet to crown of head I
   shall not sicken in any organ inside or out. 

The Breastplate of Laidcenn

From The Path of Celtic Prayer: An Ancient Way of Everyday Joy by Calvin Miller

Refuge

Eternal God, the Refuge of All Your Children 

Eternal God,the refuge of all Your children,in our weakness You are our strength,in our darkness our light,in our sorrow our comfort and peace.May we always live in Your presence,and serve You in our daily lives,through Jesus Christ our Lord.

- St. Boniface (675-754 A.D.)

HT Trevin Wax

Roots Matter

The quote below is from an article entitled Why Church history Matters and How You Should Implement It at The3Movement.Org. The whole piece is good, but I especially like and endorse this section:

Knowing our spiritual ancestry puts our sorrows, anxieties and wounds into perspective. Ours is a historical foundation built on the blood of martyrs — Christians willing to live so radically for Jesus they considered it joy to die for Him.  Yet I frequently experience Christians leaving contemporary churches in droves because they don’t have a category for pain.  They believe they are alone, and that sorrow is unique to them.  This is the fruit of a individualistic, self-preoccupied society which has pervaded the Western Church as well as the culture.  When people walk away from faith, it’s sometimes because they are ill-equipped to understand the paradoxical tension between the goodness of God and the reality of pain.  And this is why Church history matters.

Roots matter, History Matters. Legacy Matters. Heritage Matters.  Please read the entire article at the link.

The Bridge Over Death

Glory to You, Lord Jesus Christ!
You built Your cross as a bridge over death,
so that departed souls might pass
from the realm of death to the realm of life.

Glory to You!
You put on the body of a mortal man
and made it the source of life
for all mortal human beings.
You are alive!

Your murderers handled Your life like farmers:
they sowed it like grain deep in the earth,
waiting for it to spring up and raise with itself a multitude of men.

We offer You the great, universal sacrifice of our love,
and pour out before You our richest hymns and prayers.
For You offered Your cross to God
as a sacrifice in order to make us all rich.

- Ephrem the Syrian, 306-373

quoted in On the Way to the Cross

HT Trevin Wax

History in 1,000 Words

Below is a post from Crossway Called The History of Christian Theology in 1,000 Words written by Gerald Bray, author of God Has Spoken: A History of Christian Theology (October 2014).

Theology is essentially the way in which the Christian church has received the Word of God revealed to us in the Bible and in Jesus Christ. The early church inherited the Hebrew Scriptures (our Old Testament) and accepted them as a true picture of who God is and what he is like. He is absolutely unique and sovereign over everything that exists, which he created out of nothing and for a purpose.

Furthermore, he gave human beings the right to rule in his name and established them in fellowship with himself. Nonetheless, our first parents were tempted away by Satan and sinned against God. The rest of the biblical story recounts how God’s plan to deal with this rebellion, first by choosing a special people for himself (Israel) and then by giving them prophets to teach them how to respond to him.

The first Christians inherited all of this from their Israelite forbears. However, in the person and work of Jesus Christ they came to a new and deeper experience of God. In the Old Testament, God appeared as One, dwelling among his people yet remaining largely unapproachable. He was the fire in the burning bush that could not be touched. He was present in the Holy of Holies, which was off limits to all but the high priest, who himself could only enter the inner sanctuary but once a year.
In Christ, all this changed.

Jesus broke down the barriers separating God from his people, revealing more about who he is and how he works. Believers are now seated in the heavenly places, with access to God’s presence through the indwelling Spirit of the Son, who comes from the Father. The Christian experience of God is therefore Trinitarian.

The person of the Father was the focus of Jesus’s ministry. He taught his disciples to think of God as Father, because otherwise they could not have understood Jesus as the Son. The Aramaic word ‘Abba’ (Father) was so characteristic of Jesus that it is preserved in the Gospels as a reminder of him.

Next came the work of the Father, who was understood as both the Creator and the Redeemer. There were people who thought that this was impossible, because, if a perfect God had created the world, the world would also be perfect and would not need redemption. They therefore concluded that the Creator was an inferior deity, whose work was perfected by the Father of Jesus Christ. If that idea had been accepted, the Old Testament would have been rejected as the revelation of a lesser being. Jesus would not have fulfilled its promises, but overturned its false teaching. This idea was contrary to his purposes, and so the early church had to reject it by insisting that evil is not intrinsic to creation, and that the God who made us is the same God who saves us.

What Happened to the Real St. Patrick?

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 Video from Christian History Made Easy

The Wind In My Sails

The chief service I owe you, O God,
is that every thought and word of mine should speak of You.
The power of speech which You have bestowed on me
can give me no greater pleasure
than to serve You by preaching Your gospel.

But in saying this,
I am merely expressing what I want to do.
If I am actually to use this gift,
I must ask You for Your help -
ask You to fill the sails I have hoisted for You
with the wind of Your Holy Spirit,
inspiring my mind and my voice.
I know that I am often heavy with stupor,
so that I am too lazy to speak of You.
And I do not spend sufficient time studying Your Scriptures,
to ensure that my words conform to Your Word.
Give me the energy and the courage to share the spirit of the apostles,
that like them I may truly be an ambassador of Your grace.

- Hilary of Poitiers, 310-367

HT:  Trevin Wax

The Sacrifice of Prayer

"Prayer is the spiritual offering that has done away with the sacrifices of old.

We are true worshipers and true priests. We pray in spirit, and so offer in spirit the sacrifice of prayer. Prayer is an offering that belongs to God and is acceptable to him; it is the offering he has asked for, the offering he planned as his own.

We must dedicate this offering with our whole heart, we must fatten it on faith, tend it by truth, keep it unblemished through innocence and clean through chastity, and crown it with love. We must escort it to the altar of God in a procession of good works to the sound of psalms and hymns.Then it will gain for us all that we ask of God..."

                -Tertullian (2nd-3rd Century AD)

Awakening Faith, page 87

Pray for All

"...If you pray only for yourself, you will be praying, as we said, for yourself alone. But if you pray for all, all will pray for you, for you are included in all. In this way there is great reward; through the prayers of each individual, the whole body intercedes to God for each member. In prayer there is no pride, but an increase of humility and a richer spiritual harvest."

           - St. Ambrose of Milan (4th Century AD)

Awakening Faith, page 46

Righteous Boast

"Boasting in God is perfect and complete when we take no pride in our own righteousness but acknowledge that we are utterly lacking in true righteousness and have been made righteous only by faith in Christ."

                 - Basil the Great (4th century AD)

Awakening Faith, page 26

Enlarged Capacity

"It might perplex us that God asks us to pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him, if we do not realize that our Lord does not want to know what we want - for he cannot fail to know it - but wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers so that we can receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it. "

                  -St Augustine of Hippo (4th century AD)

Awakening Faith, page 9

More Sighs Than Words

"Excessive talking should be kept out of prayer, but that does not mean that one should not spend much time in prayer, as long as a fervent attitude continues to accompany the prayer. To talk at length in prayer is to perform a necessary action with an excess of words. To spend much time in prayer is to knock with a persistent and holy passion at the door of the one upon whom we call. But in our day-to-day life, the task is often accomplished more through sighs than words, more through weeping than speech. He 'places our tears in his sight, and our sighs are not hidden from him' (Psalm 38:9), for he has established all things through his Word and does not need human words."

                   -St Augustine of Hippo (4th Century AD)

Awakening Faith, page 50

Writings of Influence

If asked to make a list of the most influential books and writings in all Christian history, could you do it? Here's one knowledgeable guy's attempt to make such a a list. The point in this endeavor is not that one agrees with all the teachings of all the books, but that these are the works that have had the greatest and most widespread influence, with their influence standing the test of time.

What do you think? Any recommended changes, additions, deletions?

(BTW - If you do not recognize a sizable portion of the names, perhaps you should get out more)

And the winner for most influential book is...

Kindle a Fire Within

Lord, I pray that You may be a lamp for me in the darkness.

Touch my soul and kindle a fire within it,
that it may burn brightly and give light to my life.

Thus my body may truly become Your temple,
lit by Your perpetual flame burning on the altar of my heart.
And may the light within me shine on my brothers and sisters
that it may drive away the darkness of ignorance and sin from them also.

Thus let us be lights to the world,
manifesting the bright beauty of Your gospel to all around us.

- Columbanus (6th Century AD)

HT Kingdom People

  

This is Jesus

Born as a son,
led forth as a lamb,
sacrificed as a sheep,
buried as a man,
he rose from the dead as a God,
for he was by nature God and man.

He is all things:
he judges, and so he is Law;
he teaches, and so he is Wisdom;
he saves, and so he is Grace;
he suffers, and so he is sacrifice;
he is buried, and so he is man;
he rises again, and so he is God.

This is Jesus Christ,
to whom belongs glory for all ages.

- Melito, bishop of Sardis (d. 180) 

HT Trevin Wax