The Pulley

I just read this poem on DesiringGod's website. It's by George Herbert. I love it. I hope it will bless you.

The Pulley
When God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can:
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottome lay.

For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlesnesse:
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.

A little snow

The national weather service says that the Ogden area is supposed to get about 1-3 inches total this afternoon. In the last hour we got about 3 inches. It's really starting to come down. I was just driving in it and you couldn't start from a complete stop without sliding. I saw some cars making left hand turns slide and drive over the curb, and a bunch of people that were trying to go way to fast. Driving in weather like this isn't too bad. It's driving in weather like this with other people who don't drive too well that makes it bad :) Even four wheel drive trucks were sliding. Anyway, I'm also supposed to go to my parent's church for their Christmas Eve service (mine isn't having one this year) and then up to their house where I'll spend the night and tomorrow. Lord willing, we'll all survive the drives. I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas and take the opportunity to really reflect on the birth of our Lord. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14, ESV) The Word became flesh. We can't even fathom the depth of this truth. It is too wonderful for us, too lofty for us to attain. Jesus Christ, the image of the Father, emptied himself and took on the likeness of sinful flesh in order to take on our sin and give us his righteousness and has now ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the throne of God. There is no greater act accomplished for the love of his people and the demonstration and sake of his glory than what Jesus Christ did for us and for God and for himself. The Word became flesh. The image of God, the transcendant Word through whom the universe exists and through whom we live and move and have our being, came into time and tabernacled with us. We have seen his glory. He has revealed himself in order to show us the Father in order to transform us into the images of his glory. We beheld the fullness of grace and truth. All grace was demonstrated in him and there is no truth apart from him. He is all in all, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the great "I AM." Praise be to God and to him alone.

Winter

Winter is officially upon us here in Utah. It's been freezing the past couple of weeks with nighttime temperatures getting as low as 11 degrees. However, we haven't really had a good snow fall. We've had a couple of inches here and there, but they usually melt away within a few days. However, we're getting some good storms going through the area right now and the snow's really falling. We're getting thunder and snow at the same time. I've never really experienced it like this. Usually when that happens it's rain mixed with snow. But this is pretty good snow. It is wetter then we usually get here, but it's full-bodied snow. The skiers are going to be really happy. This also means that we will almost undoubtedly have a white Christmas. I know I will because I'm going up to my parents house and they live over the mountains where there is a great deal more snow. All-in-all, it's getting a lot colder and a lot whiter here. If I didn't have to drive in it, I would love it. At least we have a good snowplow system here. I just got a call from my worship leader and, due to the snow, we're cancelling worship practice. Anyway, if you like snow and mountains, Utah is the place to be right now :) The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmaments declare his handiwork.

A little mormonism

This is a good post on some information concerning Mormonism. It responds to a Fox News 21 question interview with someone from the Mormon church and the answers given there. If you want to see the interview itself, you can find it on Justin Taylor's blog. While I was reading this, I thought about Catholocism and the comfort that comes from having a set doctrine from the church that is set down and historically proven and Catholics hold to it. You can easily point to the areas of disagreement and continue from there. The Mormon church is really slippery. Part of this, I think, is because they don't base all of their belief on head knowledge. They don't go around spouting off doctrine. They promote and "evangelize" by talking about their experience, or the "burning in the bosom," or by talking up how great the family life is in Mormonism. If you've ever seen commercials for the Mormon church, the family is the center of everything they believe in. They don't go into anything about their beliefs. In fact, the only reason you know it comes from a religious group is that it's from the LDS church. What this means for witnessing is that when we try to address the doctrine of the church and hold it next to the Bible, they turn quickly to their personal testimony and how awesome their culture is to defend their beliefs and will cease to engage with you. This isn't always the case, but it can often be. My fear and concern is that the Mormon church is starting to look more and more mainstream and Christian. Mitt Romney can give a speech about how he believes Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world and all of a sudden, his beliefs are looking more and more Christian to the outside world. Perhaps this isn't entirely due to the Mormon church covering up their "strange" doctrines and obvious inconsistencies, although I believe much of it is. I think some of the problem is that the Christian church is no longer looking as Christian as it should. We don't stand for doctrine. We begin to spout our own personal testimonies and family life and traditions. We shouldn't neglect to talk about how Biblical Christianity does impact our lives, but those must be evidences for the truth, not the foundation for it. We have reverted to experience instead of truth and doctrine in our witnessing and apologetics. We must return to our historical roots and fight for the doctrines and truths that separate us from the rest of the world. If Christians would stand up for the sovereignty of God and his all-suffeciency, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, salvation through grace alone, the inerrance of the Bible alone, the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, etc. then perhaps the world wouldn't confuse Christianity with Mormonism and Catholocism and Mormonism and Catholocism would stop wanting to be associated with us. We need to take a stand on the firm foundation of Scripture alone and seek to show God as glorious and not our mega churches and our institutions (marriage, family, life). If we boast in our mega churches it should be because of the change produced by God through that instrument in the lives of people and the community. If we boast in our institutions like marriage and family and our pro-life causes, then it should be because they flow from a God-centered theology. We have to stop leaving God out of the center (and often the entirety) of our witness. We must boast in him and nothing else. The souls of the people of this nation depend on it.

Psalm 36

In my daily devotions I read Psalm 36 a while ago and I thought I would share some thoughts:

After a long list of the traits and character of the wicked, David caps it with this: "He does not despise evil." It is the character of the righteous to despise evil. We should be very fearful when we cease to despise evil. This is a trait I see lacking in me so often. Often I can hold up and praise that which is good, but I don't want to despise what is evil. I think that's often because I don't want to give up those parts of my life. I enjoy some of those evil things and if I despise them, then I will have to give them up, so I don't shed the light of the word on those areas of my life because I want to expose my own evilness. The heart is indeed desperately wicked, who can know it? This is a sobering reminder.

And after a long list of God's attributes and why the godly flee to him, David caps it with this: "In your light, we see light." When we line ourselves up with God and can be siad to truly be in him we see him. We don't see anything else. When we are enveloped in this marvelous light, all we see is the glory of the light. Our eyes get fixed on Jesus. We were blinded by the god of this world, but then God opens our eyes to see the "light of the glory of the gospel fo Jesus who is the image of God." In order to experience this we must be in the light. In order for this to happen we cannot be prideful (vs. 11). Once pride takes it's foothold in our ives we will cease to be in the light (not in an absolute, salvific sense) and we will not see the light. Pride is a destructive sin and it has destroyed many of the unrighteous. We must not be found with it. Destroy your pride and flee to God in abject humility and he will show you light.

I love the contrast presented here. The first four verses are dedicated to showing the wickedness of the wicked. In the next five verses, David contrasts the wicked - but not with the righteous. He contrasts the wicked with God. In doing so, David exalts comparing ourleves and others to the true standard - God - instead of the false one we so quickly embrace - each other. He also demonstrates that the only true righteous One is God and we all would be like the wicked where it not for God's grace. This contrast is indeed impressive and should be taken not of. Use it to cast down your pride and your view of yourself and exalt your view of God and his loveliness and how deficient sin and wickedness is in the light of the fountain of light.

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Even though I wrote that about a week ago, I think I needed to go back over the truth in those verses. It is so easy to compare myself with others and think that I'm okay and that, compared to the rest of the world, I'm doing pretty good. But they're not my standard. God is. And the only way I can stand blameless before the throne is if I'm dressed in his righteousness alone.

I saw "I Am Legend" Saturday and this Psalm reminds me of some of the themes in the movie (really good, by the way). Without giving anything away, there were a lot of contrasts in the movie between light and dark. Dark was when the evil was present, but they hated the light. Light was the only way to defeat the darkness. Then Will Smith quotes Bob Marley when he says in response to racism "Light up the darkness." We don't light up the darkness by focusing on ourselves. We light up the darkness by giving the darkness the true Light. He is the source of all light and he is the only way that light can pierce the darkness and overcome it. We have no light in ourselves. It only comes through God. We must give the world God. Nothing else will do! Show them the light of the world by being lights ourselves. Let your light so shine before men that they will see your good works and glorify God. We can be a light so long as Jesus shines through us. We have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the glory will go to God. We are frail. We need to let the power of God shine through our weaknesses so that the world will see that it is God that changes it and not us. "Light up the darkness" with the only light that really matters - Jesus Christ. God give me the grace and the strength to see this through - every day. I have no strength to do this. I cannot move unless you move me. I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me so that the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loves me and gave himself up for me. The world needs this gospel. And were the ones who have to spread it. I can't fail in this task anymore due to my lack of desire to despise evil. I must live in the light.



P.S. I Am Legend is a really good movie. If you go see it, look for the analogies to Christ and the light/dark metaphors. It's really cool.

Due to popular demand...

...here is the link to pics of the house I looked at: http://utahrealestate.com/reports/photo/index.wfr?types=&find_listno=748489&ptype=p_res

Unfortunately I couldn't post them directly here, and I didn't have my camera with me when i went to see it. But hopefully this will sate your curiosity :)

House Search

Recently I've been looking around at houses in the downtown Ogden area with my friend who's also a real estate agent. After seeing a bunch of houses that I wouldn't want to buy at all, I finally found a house that very well might be a great house. It has three bedrooms and one bath, a little more than 1500 square feet, a fireplace, plenty of living space, a killer kitchen, and a sane floorplan. It is also in the price range I've been looking for. If the Lord wills, this could be a killer place to buy. You might ask why a guy my age would be looking to buy a house instead of renting until marriage or beyond. I've come to learn that my knowledge of the will of God is much more limited than what I once thought it was. God gave me a general direction to press toward when I was 17 and as I continue to grow toward that goal, God continues to whittle down the generalities and bring me to the exact place He wants me to be in and the work He wants me to do. With that in mind, God appears to be leading me to make my home in Ogden for the foreseeable future and seek to be a light to that city. Ogden has a lot of crime and there doesn't seem to be much of an effort on the part of Christians to make an impact in the heart of the city. Most of the churches that are "successful" seem to be found in the suburbs. As far as I can tell, there really aren't many God-entranced, Bible-preaching, Gospel-centered churches in the city and God seems to be leading me to that area. So with that in mind, I've been looking at houses in the area in order to live among the people that I would be ministering to and evangelizing. Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up is that I would really appreciate your prayers for wisdom and discernment in this search. I desperately need to be focused on God's will in this situation and not just on my own desires which seem to so often conflict with God's. May my ways be His ways, and His thoughts my thoughts. Sola Deo Gloria

Youth Group and some randomness

How great is our God!!! For the second time in about as many months I got the cold that's going around again. A couple of days ago, my throat hurt so bad I didn't even want to drink water. Even now, the sore throat has gone away, but it's left a bad cough behind and my voice isn't strong at all and it sounds a lot different then normal. I save you the details about the crud in my throat as well. Anyway, I started the post this way because every time I've needed to sing or teach or go to an interview or anything like that, God has given me enough strength and decongestion to speak and sing clearly. We have youth group on Wednesday nights and this night I had to lead the whole thing because all of the other youth leaders were at a funeral. So this meant I had to do all the small group teaching (we're going through the "Truth Project" dvds - really good) and I normally lead worship. God gave me the strength to do all of it. And then, in the small group we were talking about evolutionists and Rom. 1:18-20 and all that good stuff and I started bringing the gospel to bear on it and emphasizing that we shouldn't go around calling them stupid and thinking ourselves superior to them, because we all used to be like that. And I was getting some of their thoughts on this and my only senior started busting out the gospel and how amazed she was at it and the incredible love that Jesus displayed toward those that were crucifying Him and just marvelling at our Savior. She's one of the deeper ones in the youth group and I know that she pursues God and loves God and is saved, but I've never really heard her just talk about the gospel that way and really be that affected by it. And I couldn't help but wonder if God is using the gospel series that we're going through to really bring home the amazing grace God has bestowed on us and how awesome heaven will be because God will be there and how that really makes death gain. I don't know if that's the case, but I hope God's used it in a small way in her life to bring her closer to God in that way.

Plus, I can't thing of a song more upbeat than "Sugarpie, honeybunch" or whatever the name of that song is. I was just at the grocery store on my way back home and they were playing that song and you just felt like singing along with it and dancing. Praise God! He's given me a really great night and it's nothing of me! I didn't do anything to make tonight cool. It was all God. How great is our God!!!

A little Newton

“Though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say that I am not what I once was, a slave to sin and Satan. And I can heartily join with the apostle and acknowledge that by the grace of God I am what I am.”
- John Newton

This came from the blog, firstimportance.org. It's an awesome site. I highly encourage visiting it. And what truth is embodied in this statement. What a glorious reality that we are no longer slaves to sin and Satan. And praise God that we will yet be glorified! We will not stay in this state forever.