We Have Moved to Ekklesia521

We have moved to www.ekklesia521.org/blog.  Ekklesia521 is the high school ministry of Grace Fellowship Church and from here on out, all the posts will be posted at the Ekklesia521 website.

Ridiculous Amount of Resources Available from Desiring God Ministries

As I was contemplating buying a book that was listed on Justin Holcomb’s new post on the Resurgence website titled, Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Had to Die, I remembered that John Piper put free (that’s right free) complete pdf files of all of his books on his website, desiringgod.org.  And lo and behold, when I checked, there it was – the entire book for free online.

No kidding – the resource library on the website is massive.  It includes (but not limited to) the following:

• Every single sermon since the 1980s available either via audio or video.  They’re also all transcribed so each sermon is available to print as well.
• An “Ask Pastor John” section where he answers questions that people from all over the world have asked him.
• Free Complete Books as pdf files.  Quite possibly the most ridiculous thing (in a good way).  I mean, who makes all their books available online?  Someone who’s committed to seeing the glory of God magnified more than themselves, that’s who.  I would highly recommend the book Desiring God and Don’t Waste Your Life (not to say the other books aren’t just as good).
• Articles.  Topics range from God, sin, salvation, spiritual growth, life issues and more.
• Conference messages.  These have especially been helpful to me in developing my understanding and subsequent love and affections for Christ.  Might I suggest the National Conferences (e.g. 2006′s The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World and 2005′s Suffering and the Sovereignty of God).

And there’s more!  They’re available for anybody.  Seekers, agnostics, atheists, seasoned Christians, new believers, sufferers, pastors, teachers, men, women, youth, children.  Praise God for John Piper and the burden He gave to him to magnify God’s glorious grace in such an amazing way.

Again, here’s the website.

What is the Gospel?

All of my entries up to this point have either, directly or indirectly, been related to this thing called “The Gospel.”  What then, exactly is the Gospel?  R.C. Sproul, the founder and president of Ligonier Ministries, offers a brief, yet powerful description of the Gospel here in his website.  Below is just a few sentences from it:

“There is no greater message to be heard than that which we call the Gospel. But as important as that is, it is often given to massive distortions or over simplifications. People think they’re preaching the Gospel to you when they tell you, ‘you can have a purpose to your life’, or that ‘you can have meaning to your life’, or that ‘you can have a personal relationship with Jesus.’ All of those things are true, and they’re all important, but they don’t get to the heart of the Gospel.”

Click here to read the rest of it.

Excerpt from Tim Keller’s New Book, Counterfeit Gods

I found this today on The Gospel Coalition website and thought I’d pass along the info.  It’s a pdf of the Introduction from Tim Keller’s upcoming new book Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters, due out October 20.

Just finished reading it and I am super excited.  Can’t wait to read the entire thing.

I Dare You To Pray This

Just came across this on the TGC blog.  Thought I’d pass it along.  Man, you can always trust Francis Chan to speak truth from God’s word in order to re-focus your perspective.  I needed this.

Two things I ask of you;
deny them not to me before I die:
Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you
and say, “Who is the Lord?”
or lest I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God.

- Proverbs 30:7-9

Driscoll on ABC Nightline

Mark Driscoll was on ABC Nightline this week in which he had a chance to describe modern-day idolatry.  You can see the video here.

It was a good interview in that it pretty much laid out the problem of idolatry.  I only wish they gave him a chance to talk about the solution to the problem, namely Jesus Christ.

Romans 1:25 clearly defines idolatry as “exchang[ing] the truth about God for a lie and worship[ping] and serv[ing] the creature rather than the Creator.“  Or in other words, taking a good thing that God has given as gifts (e.g. food, relationships, the ability to exercise, reputation, etc.) and elevating these things to the position of a god thing, where we look to these things to find our ultimate identity, comfort, and salvation from whatever hell that we find ourselves  in.  Whenever we make good things into god things, they invariably become bad things.

However, in Christ, we find full acceptance.  As sinful as we may be and as often as we may whore ourselves to these false gods (read Judges 2, 3), thereby fully deserving God’s wrath on us (Ephesians 2:3), Christ still took upon Himself our sin and, in return, gave us His perfection (2 Corinthians 5:21).  This is where we are to find our true salvation, our true identity, and our true comfort.

Our only hope is that as we dwell on that good news everyday, our affections for these false gods will be displaced with a stronger affection, namely an affection for Christ and what He has done.

Filthy Roman Sponge

Here’s a clip from Mark Driscoll’s first sermon in a new series that he started titled “Luke’s Gospel: Investigating the Man Who Is God.”

Free From Sinning?

One of the things that I’ve been wrestling with ever since the Gospel took root in my heart (recently, I might add) was what to do in regards to matters of holiness.  Because after listening to several pastors lately and after talking to other believers, it seemed like to me, that as soon as God grabbed hold of their hearts, their struggles with sin in their life stopped immediately.

The growing frustration I began to feel was that, though I know God did, in fact, grab a strong hold of my heart, I still struggled (and continue to struggle) with sin in my life.  In fact, as I was doing my devotions in Judges last night, I couldn’t help but genuinely despair for a good while at the thought that my heart is identical to that of the Israelites, who in the book of Judges, constantly forgot God’s goodness and constantly turned away from God.  In fact, verses 16-17 was particularly devastating for me.  It says this:

16 Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. 17 Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I am a whore to other gods.  And the fact that I can’t seem to stop bowing down to them pretty much left me in a very dark place last night.  And the thing is, cognitively, I knew what I needed to do at that point.  What I preach and teach is that the only “solution” to that is to dwell on the cross and what Christ accomplished for me so that my affections for Him expel my affections for these other gods in my life.  But to be honest, last night, I was just in a really dark place.

But in God’s grace, as I was driving, I again listened to another one of Matt Chandler’s sermons.  This one is from the Resurgence National Conference in 2008.  I would highly recommend this to anybody else who is wrestling with this same issue.  He speaks of something called progressive sanctification, which basically means that though we are justified (or made in right standing with God), holiness is a process.  Hence, Hebrews 10:14, where the author of Hebrews writes the following:

14 by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

Here’s a link to the sermon.  Also, for those who want to study more on the topic of progressive sanctification, there’s a lot of good stuff here that I’m beginning to devour up, starting with the distinction given at the top of the page by A. Orendorff on the difference definitive and progressive sanctification.

God is bigger.  God is better.  God is more satisfying.

Come Thou Fount

Came across Justin Taylor’s blog, Between Two Worlds, and saw that he recently posted a video that Mars Hill Church made on Robert Robinson, the author of the hymn Come Thou Fount.  I still remember singing this song at the Gospel Coalition conference this past April and just being completely wrecked by it.  Here are the lyrics to the song:

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

You can find the video here.  May it stir your affections for Christ as it does mine.

My Idol Factory

As I was began preparing today for this Sunday’s upcoming sermon on idolatry (Galatians 4:8-10), God, in His inexplicable mercies, had it in His mind to not simply allow me to study this topic as if I had no idols in my life to repent of.  In fact (and this is the depth to which my depravity goes), when He began to show/convict me, through the Holy Spirit, some of the idols which I bow down to in my life, I was unwilling to repent of them.

Needless to say, preparing for this sermon has beaten me up.  And something tells me that God’s not done yet.  But praise God that He has, yet again, begun this seemingly never-ending process of beating me down and taking me to the cross.

Anyway, for your edification, here’s a link to several resources that has to do with the issue of idolatry.  I would recommend the articles by Tim Keller, C.J. Mahaney, David Powlison as they do much work with what idolatry looks like in the 21st century.

Also, for anybody in ministry, I would most definitely recommend this sermon by Mark Driscoll from the Advance 09 conference that was held in Durham, North Carolina in June.  You can also find the rest of the messages from the conference here.

Allow me to leave you with a quote from John Owen that I heard quoted by Matt Chandler not too long ago.  I hope it serves you well, as it did me.

Herein would I live; — herein would I die; — hereon would I dwell in my thoughts and affections, to the withering and consumption of all the painted beauties of this world, unto the crucifying all things here below, until they become unto me a dead and deformed thing, no way meet for affectionate embraces.