The Plodding Preacher

Yesterday the committee for the Academy Awards (the Oscars) rescinded the nomination for best song for the song "Alone, Yet Not Alone."  The song was a Christian song from a Christian movie sung by Christian singer/author/speaker Joni Eareckson Tada.  Joni is a quadriplegic who serves God faithfully despite her disability.  The reason given for the song's disqualification was that the song's producer sent out emails asking Academy voters to consider the song.  Really?  Every year Hollywood production companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to host gala events for voters in order to get there movie noticed.  They have been known to give gift bags (bribes) to Academy members in order to gain their attention.  This song was disqualified because one man sent emails asking members to consider the song?  Sigh.  What can we say?  Darkness loves darkness and darkness hates light!

The old saying is that "you can't judge a book by its cover."  However, I was just listening to Wretched Radio and they argued that in the Christian world you can judge a Christian book by its cover.  They concluded there was one basic question that can be asked to discern whether a book is a bad one.  Does it have the author's picture on the cover?  All the books by Christianity's false prophets and health and wealth prosperity preachers have the preacher's picture on the front.  That should tell us that the book is really about them; not Jesus.  They are the celebrities and their faces will sell the book.  Books that honour Jesus, don't need a celebrity endorsement. Check it out the next time you visit a Christian book store.

Stanford University and the University of California-Berkley just released a study which shows that gossip is good.  They concluded that gossip allows society to ostracize those who behave poorly, which in turn causes that person to fix his behaviour in order to be allowed back into the group.  Wow - where do you even begin? Top Ten Questions that show this is a stupid conclusion: 1.  Since when did conformity to the group become the ultimate virtue? 2.  Who says the group-think is correct? 3.  It is good to ostracize? 4.  Can you say "manipulation?" 5.  Have any of these researchers ever been the target of malicious gossip? 6.  Isn't the behaviour of ostracizing just another name for bullying? 7.  Aren't we all supposed to "just say no" to bullying? 8.  Do these people not remember high school peer pressure? 9.  "Sticks and stones , may break my bones, but names will never hurt me? 10. What does God say? All o...

I have always thought of myself as a fairly laid-back, easy-going kind of person.  In my own eyes, I always seem to be the rational and reasonable one.  Wise and thoughtful, I would never be the person who had to have his own way. Wow, is self-deception ever strong. The past few weeks have been tough.  Things in which I have invested my life have come to nought.  People in whom I trusted, have done things of which I never thought they would be capable.  Friends who received mentoring and training at my hands have turned their back on that teaching and have tossed me aside as a has-been with no bearing on the future. And all the while. . .deep inside. . .an ugly little monster has ranted and raved. . . My dirty little secret has made itself so evident that even I can see it with my own eyes.  I want to be in control.  I want to tell everybody what they are doing wrong.  I want to smooth the waters and make everything bette...

"If God is the Creator of the entire universe, then it must follow that He is the Lord of the whole universe. No part of the world is outside of His lordship. That means that no part of my life must be outside of His lordship." R. C. Sproul

I have stayed away from politics in my blogs so far because of the divisive nature of such issues.  However, this political issue bleeds into the theological, so I feel I may cross the line.  Our Canadian Prime Minister has been in Israel this week.  While there he has unequivocally stated his and our countries support for the nation of Israel, its right to exist and its right to defend itself from attack.  As a Canadian and a Christian, I applaud my Prime Minister. Now there are some Christians who would disagree with me.  It has become trendy and progressive in some circles to favour the Palestinians.  After all they tell me, Jesus always supported the poor and down-trodden.  The then argue that in this case the Palestinians are the poor and therefore, Christ would take up there cause.  I could suggest that there are several suspect assumptions in this argument, but I would rather make a positive Biblical case why I support Israel. 1.  ...

Here is a good reminder from the Prince of Preachers about our fascination with new things. "I know the proud flesh wants to serve Christ, by striking out new paths. Proud man has a desire to preach new doctrine, to set up a new Church; to be an original thinker, to judge, and consider, and do anything but obey. This is no new service to Christ. He that would serve Christ must follow him; he must be content to tread only in the old footsteps, and go only where Christ has led the way. ?It is not for you and me to be originals; we must be humble copies of Christ. There must be nothing about our religion of our own inventing; it is for us to lay thought, judgment, and opinion at the feet of Christ, and do what he bids us, simply because he gives the command." C.H. Spurgeon

I came across this great paragraph by Spurgeon that speaks to the conversion of children through the hard work of those who teach in the children's ministries of the church.  I hope that it is an encouragement to all the Sunday School, Awana, Word of Life and Christian School teachers in our congregation.  God does work miracles through your hard work and faithful teaching. “Children need to learn the doctrine of the Cross that they may find immediate salvation. I thank God that in our Sunday school we believe in the salvation of children as children! How very many has it been my joy to see of boys and girls who have come forward to confess their faith in Christ! And I again wish to say that the best converts, the clearest converts, the most intelligent converts we have ever had have been the young ones! And, instead of there being any deficiency in their knowledge of the Word of God and the Doctrines of Grace, we have usually found them to have a very delightful acquaintanc...

Many of us are tempted to find the key in doing, but the answer is actually found in being. It is vital that we are routinely humbled by the reminder that Christian life is grounded, not in what we can do, but what has been done for us and what we need done to us. Alistair Begg

I had a little guy in my office today.  He was struggling with believing that there really was a Jesus and a heaven and whether he really could trust the Bible.  We talked for a while about why we should trust something.  For me it really comes down to one answer.  If the Bible is trustworthy in the things I can check, then I trust it to be trustworthy for the things I can't check. This picture is of one of the caves of Qumran where the dead sea scrolls were found.  Before their discovery, so-called scholars believed that the Old Testament had been gradually revised and edited to come up with the text that we have today.  However, the scrolls found in these caves which had been hidden away for 1900 years, show that the text we have is virtually identical to the text Jesus had all those years ago. 

At the time of the Reformation, church had devolved to a place where ministry was the work of the professional clergy class.  Clergy preached, ruled, sang, visited, etc.  The ordinary person was expected to show up, watch, give and obey the clergy class.  One of the most striking developments of the protestant reformation was the rediscovery of the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer.  Every believer was a priest before God, not just the professional class.  Every believer had the indwelling Holy Spirit and was called to the work of the ministry, not just the paid professional.  Every believer could be led by the Spirit into truth, not just the clergy. This rediscovery had a radical effect upon the post-reformation denominations.  Over the next number of centuries, churches gradually became ever more congregational in their governance.  Whole denominations arose because of the belief that every person was a priest before God.  I...

1 Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. I know the context of this passage is love and its relation to the gifts of the Spirit. However, it seems to me that the principle could be applied to a multitude of issues in our society. The thoughts, reasoning and expectations of children are radically different that those of adults. Children live in a protected world that shields them from the harsh realities of life. Becoming an adult involves a coming to term with those realities. Maturity faces those challenges head-on and learns how to deal with them. Growing up means leaving behind the fantasies of childhood in order to confront the realities of life. I am distressed by the way our society encourages us to remain in the fantasy world of childhood. One example of this is happiness. Only children expect to be happy all the time. They expect a world where they shou...

This Sunday morning the sermon was taken from John 3:22-36.  In that passage, two of the disciples of John come to him with the report that Jesus was now baptizing more people than John.  John's response is one of the most humble in all of Scripture.  It was in reading that response that a thought occurred to me.  With all the leadership and ministry books out there, why do we not have people picking up on the ministry style of John the Baptist?  Maybe I am a little cynical, but I guy who gets his head chopped off might be a bit of a tough sell in our success-driven marketplace.  Can you imagine the title?  "Five Easy Steps to Losing Your Head." I can't imagine that book making it on the Christian bestsellers list. Yet John the Baptist is a great example to those of us in ministry.  His clarity about his own place and role in the ministry are worthy of emulation.  Here are some of the observations I made as I looked at his response to ...

"Fear not because your prayer is stammering, your words feeble and you language poor.  Jesus Can understand you." J. C. Ryle

  John 20:1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.    Luke 24:6 He is not here, but has risen.

Our society has elevated tolerance to the level of the last remaining virtue.  In doing so they have also redefined tolerance to mean that everyone must agree that everything is ok.  Unfortunately this trend has made its way into the church where it has manifested itself as a pathological refusal to allow anyone to criticize anyone (except, of course, it is perfectly acceptable to malign and name-call against anyone who is not tolerant).  However, there is far too much at stake to remain silent.  There are too many wolves in sheep's clothing.  We must be willing to call out those in our midst who are preaching a false gospel that is in fact leading people to destruction.  So how do we recognize those worthy of being called out? Rick Henderson of churchismessy.com  has written an excellent article entitled "It is OK to Throw Stones If You are Throwing at Wolves."  In that article he has given some pointers on how we can spot the wolves in our pul...

I heard an expression a while back that really has taken my fancy. I was listening to Wretched Radio which was featuring a Christian comedian. This comedian was giving his testimony and he spoke of "getting downwind of himself." He used this expression to describe the experience of learning how truly horrible he was. Just as a person who lives downwind of the local garbage dump smells the stink, when he realized what a wretch he was, he got his nose full of the stink of his own sin. Some of us who have been on the road for a while have forgotten our stink. We have forgotten that we were and still are those who do incredibly offensive things before our God. We stink to high heaven! Unfortunately, it has been too long since we have been downwind of ourselves. We have lost a sense of how abominable our sin is to God. Why is this so important? Well when we get a good whiff of our stench it reminds us how gracious Christ was in dying for us. There was nothing in my stinking, r...

"We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all. Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don't want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of 'good time' is seldom in sync with ours." ― Oswald Chambers

This two week period of the year that runs from just before Christmas till just after New Years are a television wasteland.  All of the specialty channels have been running marathons of their favourite programs.  For twelve or even twenty-four hours one can become comatose watching episode after episode of some of the most mind-numbing television available.  I suppose in a way it makes sense for the channels because complete seasons of most programs are available on DVD and people seem to enjoy gorging themselves on this type of television candy. Well last night, before I shut off the TV in disgust, I came across a couple of programs being run back-to-back on the Discovery Channel.  The station that prides itself on educating the masses was showing two documentaries which each ran for two hours.  The first of the two supposedly revolved around a shark attack that had sunk a fishing boat.  From this start, the show interviewed "eyewitnesses," scientists an...

This week I would like to start a new feature that will appear from time to time on this site.  In it, I would like to introduce my church family to individuals within Christianity who are worth getting to know.  They may not all be identical to us in every nuance of doctrine, but they are godly individuals who have blessed me with their ministry and who are making a difference for the cause of Jesus Christ.  I want to start with a gentleman by the name of Justin Peters.  I will allow Justin to introduce himself and tell of his background on his website justinpeters.org.  I want to tell you, instead, why this man has made such an impact upon me.  Justin has cerebral palsy.  On the scale of that malady, his level would be described as moderate.  What this means practically is that left to his own abilities, it takes him two hours to get ready in the morning.  It is a debilitating condition.  Honestly, it makes anything I endure complete...