The Goal

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Singing The Stubborn Song

Love this! -"Our Holy, Stubborn Song" by Gloria Furman at the Desiring God site:

There’s something stubborn about singing praise to God.

We live in a fallen world. Things are not as they ought to be. How can our mouths be filled with praise in the midst of so much darkness?

Yet we sing.

We sing because we once followed the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2), but now the King has died for us and delivered us from the present evil age (Galatians 1:4).

We sing because “we know that we are from God,” even though “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).

We sing because our King chose us out of the world (John 15:19), and his grace is “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:12).

Paul and Silas were beaten for their faith and thrown in jail. And there, in the darkness, they sang (Acts 16:25). Then a great earthquake shook the jail like a great bass drum reverberates through sound waves and shakes your heart.

The foundations of the church building may not shake when you sing, but the battle cry of love ripples through eternity and is heard by an unseen audience.

Overflowing Hearts

As someone who can hardly carry a tune in a bucket, it helps me to remember what our associate pastor often says about our congregational singing. In his Sydney accent he says, “We’re singing to God, yes, but we are also singing truth to each other.”

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16)

We are a people stubbornly fixed on the things that are unseen. The world sees affliction as evidence that our God is silent or absent. The prince of the power of the air imagines that he is gaining ground that belongs to Christ. But we hold fast to what God’s word says,

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:17–18)

C. S. Lewis once described the Church as “through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners” (Screwtape Letters).

Keith Getty and Stuart Townend called the church, “An army bold whose battle cry is ‘Love!’ / Reaching out to those in darkness” (O Church Arise).

Singing Loud

Maybe Buddy the Elf was on to something when he said, “The best way to spread Christmas cheer, is singing loud for all to hear.”

We are spreading the news that death will be swallowed up forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from the earth, for the Lᴏʀᴅ has spoken (Isaiah 25:8). The mouth of the Lᴏʀᴅ has spoken it, and we sing it loud for all to hear.

Terrible as an army with banners, we’re a singing people on our way to the city that is to come (Hebrews 13:14).

May others hear our holy, stubborn song and join along.

Holy Rebellion

From @DailyKeller

Dust to Dust, But That's Okay

This piece by Jared Wilson is so good, it's worth a complete quote: The title sounds like a downer, but the message is important. It's called You’re Going to Die (and So Might Your Dreams) 

. . . for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.– Genesis 3:19

One of the problems I have with all the “chase your dreams!” cheerleading from Christian leaders is not because I begrudge anyone wanting to achieve their dreams, but because I don’t think we readily see how easy it is to conflate our dream-chasing with God’s will in Christ.

You know, it’s possible that God’s plan for us is littleness. His plan for us may be personal failure. It’s possible that when another door closes, it’s not because he plans to open a window but because he plans to have the building fall down on you. The question we must ask ourselves is this: Will Christ be enough?

Are we pursuing our own greatness or the expansion of worship of Jesus Christ? They aren’t necessarily incompatible, but God is more interested in the latter than the former. And ultimately, if we prioritize Christ’s glory, we won’t really care in the long run how noticed, renowned, recognized, or “successful” we are personally. We’ll realize that our lives aren’t really about us anyway.

Sometimes we have to let our dreams die.

And that’s okay. We will be okay.

Look, “for those who love God, all things work together for the good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). So God’s plan might be for your littleness, and that’s okay, because his plan is not for his own littleness! His plan for your efforts, big and small, is that they will maximize the glory due his Son. That he might draw all men to himself. That he might fill the earth with the knowledge of his glory – as Habakkuk 2:14says – as much as the waters cover the seas.

One day, you are going to die. Perhaps today. What will they say about you? What legacy are you truly leaving? When the funeral is over and all the accolades about you are used up, your body will become dust.

In Al Mohler’s book The Conviction to Lead he writes of.

. . an old preacher [who] told a group of younger preachers to remember that they would die. “They are going to put you in a box,” he said, “and put the box in the ground, and throw dirt on your face, and then go back to the church and eat potato salad.”

Here’s the point: As great as you can make yourself, as many wonderful things as you can accomplish in your lifetime — even religious things — it will all be a blip on the radar of eternity. You will become dust. The worms will eat you. Statistically speaking, since most of us will never accomplish such great things that history will laud throughout the ages, memory of us will start fading with our grandchildren. Our great grandchildren will (likely) not have any clue who we are.

But!

If you are bringing glory to Christ, not a thing about you is wasted, because the mission of the Spirit of God is to maximize the glory of Christ over all the universe. So that even at the end of days, as Revelation shows us, all the glorious kings of the nations in all their renown and splendor, file in one by one into the holy city to throw their crowns at the feet of Jesus. Revelation 21 reveals that the light of the new heavens and new earth comes not from the “sun” but from the “Son,” and the kings of the nations will bring their glory into it.

There is the vision of greatness the redeemed of the Lord ought to aspire to. That he would increase and we would decrease. That our decrease would serve his increase!

And those who are willing to lose their lives — whatever that might mean — for Christ’s sake, will find them.

And from dust you will return.

The Ultimate Musician

"God is the ultimate musician. His music transforms your life. The notes of redemption rearrange your heart and restore your life. His songs of forgiveness, grace, reconciliation, truth, hope, sovereignty, and love give you back your humanity and restore your identity. "

— Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2007), 145

HT: Of First Importance

Destruction of Arrogance

From challies.com

Grace - All The Way Down

Love this piece by Jared C. Wilson:

But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
- Romans 11:6

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”– Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

What is the ratio of grace to works in the salvation equation? 1 to 0. Not one speck, not one microgram, not one atom of works there. It is all grace or no grace. Wring and wrestle all you want, but it is grace all the way down.

:

All As Loss

Here's an excerpt from a John Piper article How to Count It All As Loss (with reference to Philippians 3:8):

This is what it means to be a Christian. It is not advanced discipleship; it is basic Christianity. This is confirmed in Jesus’s words, “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). Renouncing all we have is the same as “counting everything as loss.” This is what happens in conversion. You can’t be a disciple without it. Jesus said this.....

....In everyday practical terms, what does it mean to do this? It means at least these four things:

1. Renouncing all (counting all as loss) means that, if we must choose between Christ and anything else, we will choose Christ.

That is, even though God does not bring us to the crisis of either-or at every point, nevertheless, we are ready, and have resolved in our hearts that, if the choice must be made, we will chose Christ.

2. Renouncing all (counting all as loss) means that we will deal with everything in ways that draw us nearer to Christ, so that we gain more of Christ, and enjoy more of him, by the way we relate to everything.

That is, we will embrace everything pleasant, by being thankful to Christ; and we will endure everything hurtful, by being patient through Christ.

3. Renouncing all (counting all as loss) means that we will seek to deal with the things of this world in ways that show that they are not our treasure, but rather that Christ is our treasure.

That is, we will hold things loosely, share things generously, and ascribe value to things in relation to Christ. We will seek to live the paradox of 1 Corinthians 7:30–31, “Let [Christians] buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it.”

4. Renouncing all (counting all as loss) means that if we lose any or all the things this world can offer, we will not lose our joy, or our treasure, or our life — because Christ is our joy and our treasure and our life.

That is, in smaller losses we will not grumble (Philippians 2:14), and in greater losses we will grieve, but not as those who have not hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

Much more at the link.

True Freedom

From @DailyKeller