Cling

4 Ways to Cling to the Lord by Sam Storms (adapted from the ESV Men's Devotional Bible.)

How To Maintain Your Devotion to God

The temptation to forget God is always present. But there is a way to maintain one's devotion to the Lord. Joshua's counsel in Joshua 23:6-11 is especially helpful and can be summarized using four As.

1. Give attention to God's Word (v. 6)

God never blesses disobedience. A mind filled with Scripture can critically evaluate secular society and can see through the empty values of the modern world and resist assimilation.
An unmistakable sign of impending abandonment of God is a diminishing respect for the authority of his Word. A disregard for biblical inspiration is always the first step toward spiritual rebellion. Joshua is talking about "keeping" and "doing" God's Word, not simply giving tacit consent to its claims. We must be "strong" to keep it and do it and not deviate from it either to the right or to the left.

2. Avoid pagan influence (v. 7)

Note the relationship between verses 6 and 7. The way one avoids being shaped after the image of pagan society is precisely by keeping and doing God's Word. There will always be a temptation to think the world has it better than we do (see Ex. 23:13). But if you have Scripture on your lips and the praise of God's name in your mouth, you won't have room or time for even so much as acknowledging anything else.

3. Attach yourself to God (v. 8)

The word "cling" in this verse is translated "hold fast" or "cleave" in Genesis 2:24, where God says a man should leave his father and mother and "cleave" to his wife (compare its use in Deut. 10:20-21; 11:22; and 13:4).

Envision the intimate embrace of a husband and wife, or a young child holding fast to his father's hand. To "cling" to God is to stay so close to him that no sin can get between you and him. To "cling" to God is to strategically plan for time alone with him for prayer and praise and the study of his Word. To "cling" to God is to trust in his promises, to seek his favor, to care only for his approval and not for that of men, to invest time in his service, and to always keep his praise on your lips (Ps. 63:7-8).

4. Cultivate a deep affection for God in every way (vv. 9-11)

"Be very careful . . . to love the LORD your God" (v. 11). The emphasis is on a relationship of intimacy: "I am yours and you are mine!" God is not just God. He is "your" and "my" God because of his desire to give himself to us in covenant loyalty. His passion for us is undying.

Although the enemies we face today are not those that Joshua and the people of Israel encountered, the strategy for confronting them remains much the same:

• Be attentive to God's Word.
• Avoid pagan influence.
• Attach yourself to God.
• Cultivate a deep affection for him.

Spiritual Gifts - 7 Principles

I've long had a problem with most so-called spiritual gifts test, believing that they mostly measure personality traits more than spiritual gifts. Therefore, I appreciated this piece - Seven Principles For the Understanding and Exercise of Spiritual Gifts by Sam Storms (via Peter Cockrell)

While much can and should be said about spiritual gifts, here are a few relevant observations or principles that I believe should guide our understanding and exercise of the charismata.

(1) Every single spiritual gift, whether it be mercy, serving, giving, speaking in tongues, or prophecy, is a “manifestation of the Spirit” given “for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7). Therefore, every gift is by definition supernatural, since every gift is the enabling presence of the Spirit operating through us. As Paul says, although there are varieties of gifts, services, and activities, it is the “same Spirit” who “empowers them all in everyone” (1 Cor. 12:4-6). So, teaching is as supernatural as tongues; service is as supernatural as word of knowledge, and so on.

(2) In light of the first point, we must acknowledge that a “gift” or “charism” of the Spirit is an impartation to enable and equip us to serve others. Nowhere in Scripture are gifts portrayed as personality traits or characteristics. A person who is gregarious and extroverted can receive the gift of mercy. A person who is quiet and introverted can receive the gift of teaching. A person who lacks self-confidence and is by nature somewhat hesitant to speak can receive the gift of evangelism. A person who has little faith and never expects to hear from God can be the recipient of a word of knowledge. This isn’t to say there is never any overlap between a person’s unique personality and the gift God bestows to them, but we must never identify any particular gift with any particular personality trait.

(3) Building on the previous point, let’s take the gift of prophecy as an example. Paul says that anyone is a candidate to prophesy (1 Cor. 14:1, 5, 24, 29-32). A prophet, therefore, is someone who consistently receives spontaneous revelatory words from God that are shared with others for their “upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (1 Cor. 14:3). But nowhere does the NT say that “prophet” is a particular set of personality traits. Given that any and all have the potential to prophesy, how could it be?

In other words, a prophet is never portrayed in Scripture as someone who always displays a certain demeanor or interacts with others in a particular way or responds to arguments with a unique emotional energy. A prophet is someone who consistently receives spontaneous revelatory words (pictures, dreams, impressions) from the Lord and speaks them to the edification and encouragement of others.

My guess is that quite often a person with certain personality and relational characteristics is identified as a “prophet” or a person with the gift of “mercy” when in point of fact the Spirit has never imparted that particular gift to them. They are who and what they are, in terms of their personality and character and relational development because they are being progressively transformed by the Spirit to be more like Jesus, but not because they happen to have a particular spiritual gift that someone perceives to be linked with that sort of behavior or relational style.

(4) Spiritual gifts are concrete manifestations of the Spirit through us. They are not who we are, therefore, but rather what we do in the power of the Spirit for the good of others. We should be careful always to differentiate between our particular gift(s), on the one hand, and who we are as God’s children in Christ Jesus, on the other.

In other words, there is an important difference between, on the one hand, our character and personality and how we are being sanctified daily to become more and more conformed to the image of Christ, and what gift the Spirit imparts to us for building up fellow believers, on the other. Simply because a person is extroverted or introverted, self-confident or timid, loves crowds or prefers solitude, is organized or disorganized, does not necessarily mean he/she will have any particular spiritual gift that always corresponds to that particular feature of their personality or relational style. Will the two sometimes overlap? Sure. But we must never insist on a one-to-one correspondence such that because “Sally” or “Steve” display certain personality traits that they are therefore to be classified as a “mercy” or as a “prophet” or as a “teacher”.

(5) The danger in drawing too close a relationship with what our spiritual gift is and who we are as individual believers is that when our gift wanes or grows dormant or isn’t received well by others we would suffer shame and experience self-doubt and have fears regarding our worth as the children of the most high God. Our identity as sons and daughters of God, our identity as believers “in Christ,” must never be tied to a particular “charism” or gift that the Spirit has chosen to impart to us and through us for the good of others.

(6) Again, building on the previous point, we must keep in mind that some spiritual gifts, because of their more overt manifestation of the supernatural presence of the Spirit, are occasional or circumstantial in nature. For instance, the spiritual gifts of prophecy, faith, word of knowledge, word of wisdom, healings, faith, working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, and perhaps interpretation of tongues, are not so much residential, in the sense that they reside permanently within us and can be used at our will, whenever we please, but are sovereignly given at a particular point in time, on a particular occasion, to address a particular circumstance. Once exercised on that occasion and for that purpose, the gift may no longer be operative (depending, of course, on God’s will for each of us).
Gifts such teaching, tongues, evangelism, mercy, service, and administration, on the other hand, are more permanent and residential: they are always with us and we who have such gifts can exercise them at any time, according to our own will.

(7) No one Christian will ever have every spiritual gift. No one Christian will ever have all the gifts of Romans 12, or the gifts of 1 Corinthians 12, or those of Ephesians 4. This is clear from Paul’s rhetorical questions in 1 Corinthians 12:27-31, each of which calls for an answer of No. Neither is it the case that one should think he/she will have at least one gift from the list in Romans 12 or at least one gift from the list in 1 Corinthians 12 or at least one gift from the list in Ephesians 4.

That does not mean we shouldn’t “desire” or “seek” or “pray” for more spiritual gifts than we currently have. Paul is clear in 1 Corinthians 14:1 that we should always desire and seek for spiritual gifts, even as the one who speaks in tongues “should pray that he may interpret” (1 Cor. 14:13).

Feasting Backward, Fasting Forward

Interesting comments on the connection between fasting and the Lord's Supper by Sam Storms by way of Rick Ianniello. I've never heard this before.

For 7+ years I've been fortunate enough to be part of a christian community that practices the Lord's Supper weekly. Sam Storm's wrote the following post which encourages me to look at the other end of that spectrum.

"There is a profoundly important connection between the spiritual discipline of fasting and our celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is a feasting that looks backward in time, whereas fasting is a feasting that looks forward in time. The breaking of bread and drinking the cup is done “in remembrance” of our Lord’s historic, and therefore past, act of sacrifice. Thus by eating and drinking we celebrate the finality and sufficiency of that atoning death and that glorious resurrection. We should never fast from the supper of the Lord, even when we are fasting from other ordinary “suppers”. On the other hand, as John Piper explains,

When we sit at Christ’s table with other believers we gratefully, fearfully, joyfully feast upon that food and drink that remind us of what has happened. And when we, in a time of fasting, turn away from the table where otherwise daily meals are served we declare our deep yearning for what has not yet happened.

“by not eating—by fasting—we look to the future with an aching in our hearts saying: ‘Yes, he came. And yes, what he did for us is glorious. But precisely because of what we have seen and what we have tasted, we feel keenly his absence as well as his presence. . . . we can eat and even celebrate with feasting because he has come. But this we also know: he is not here the way he once was. . . . And his [physical] absence is painful. The sin and misery of the world is painful. . . . We long for him to come again and take up his throne and reign in our midst and vindicate his people and his truth and his glory” (A Hunger for God, 84).

God Himself in Us

“Spiritual gifts are not God bestowing to his people something external to himself. They are not some tangible ‘stuff’ or substance separable from God. Spiritual gits are nothing less than God himself in us, energizing our souls, imparting revelation to our minds, infusing power in our wills, and working his sovereign and gracious purposes through us…[in summary] Spiritual gifts are God present in, with, and through human thoughts, human deeds, human words, human love.”

              - Sam Storms, The Beginner's Guide to Spiritual Gifts

From Enjoying God

Weather Drama

It's been a tough week for weather where I live.  On Monday we had a brief storm with high winds. Look at what fell in my driveway, just missing my car.

Then on Friday we had a line of storms come through with several tornadoes. The video below was shot just a few miles from my office.



Another twister did great damage near the campus of Mississippi College, my Alma Mater. I am thankful to God for his protection and care during these storms - and hope the weather drama is over for a while!  Prayers for those who were injured and for those whose homes and businesses were damaged.

The Three Minute Version

In the video below, Dr. Sam Storms explains What is the Gospel (i.e. the basic content of the essential message) in only three minutes:





Hat Tip: Parchment and Pen blog at Credo House Ministries

He Gives and Takes Away

One of my favorite theologians is Sam Storms. From a post at Already Not Yet I learned that Sam went through a scare this month when his 23 year old daughter miraculously survived a horrible traffic accident. She's fine. However, the incident apparently had a strong spiritual impact on Sam the following Sunday.

You may wonder, then, why Sunday would have been a difficult day for me. I was filled with such indescribable gratitude for what God had done. My heart was flooded with joy and delight as I reflected on how close she had come to death and how wonderful it was that she emerged without serious harm.

The tears of thanksgiving and profound appreciation and worship flowed freely and unashamedly. My hands were lifted high in adoration and praise ....

Suddenly, my hands began to tremble ever so slightly. The tears dried up. Without warning, giving me no chance to prepare my heart, this horrifying thought raced through my mind: “Would I be lifting my hands in love and adoration of the Lord if Joey had died last Wednesday? Or would my raised and open hand be a clenched and defiant fist? .....

I was spiritually paralyzed. A shiver of raw fear ran down my spine. No words can adequately explain the emotional terror that gripped my soul. Was I the sort of person who would only worship and honor and love God so long as he saved my daughter’s life? Was I the sort who would happily and profusely speak of the mercy of divine providence only if it shined on me favorably?

If Joey had not survived the wreck, or if she had been severely injured or paralyzed, would I have declared God to be beautiful, or would I have seen him as ugly and uncaring and indifferent? Was my faith the sort that flourished only in fair weather, or would it withstand the storm of tragedy and loss of the worst imaginable kind?

I couldn’t answer my own questions. I froze in fear. Would I have cursed God instead of extolling him had my precious little girl died?

What a question! How would I react in a similar situation? I don't know. I hope I could sing a song of trust to God even in a time of great pain and sorrow. Sam continued:

I wish I could tell you that I reassured myself by saying, “Hey, Sam, don’t worry. Of course you’d still love God. The pain would be unbearable, but your faith would withstand the test. You’re strong. After all, you’re a Calvinist. Your whole life and ministry are built on the stability and strength of divine sovereignty.”

I wish I could tell you that’s what passed through my mind. But it didn’t. Maybe I would still have praised him. I certainly hope so. Oh, God, please let it be so! But I felt vulnerable in that moment in a way I never have before. I felt weak and frail and terrified that my faith was only as good as were the circumstances of my life.

I have many times glibly and proudly quoted the words of Job: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). It’s always been easy, because the Lord has not as yet “taken away” anything of great value to me. He came close, but he gave her back. If he hadn’t, could I have honestly and sincerely said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord”? I don’t know. That’s what scares me.

Scares me too, Sam. Scares me too.

Doctrinal Statement.

Anyone reading my blog may ask, and certainly has the right to know, where I am coming from and what I believe. Someday I will get around to writing a description of my spiritual journey and how I got to where I am now.

For now, I like a personal doctrinal statement I found a few months ago by Dr. Sam Storms at Enjoying God Ministries. I'm not going to endorse 100% of what any man writes; I even reserve the right to possible not agree with what I am writing in five or ten years! I certainly wouldn't agree now with some things I believed in my younger days!

I agree with at least 90% of Dr. Storms position. Click on the link to see what Dr. Storms wrote. I'll leave a little mystery for now as to what in his statement I do not agree with. After all, got to keep my readers coming back for more, don't I?

I'm a member of a Vineyard church and graduated from Vineyard Leadership Institute. The Vineyard Statement of Faith can be found at Vineyard USA.