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"God's grace cannot be faithfully preached to unbelievers until His Law is preached and man's corrupt nature is exposed. It is impossible for person to fully realize his needs for God's grace until he sees how terribly he has failed the standards of God's Law. It is impossible for him to realize his need for mercy until he realizes the magnitude of his guilt."

John MacArthur

"Jesus paid it all, all to him i owe"

"For the Glory of it All..."

I have recently taken the role of Leader in our youth group's praise band. This is a new role for me and it's one I'm really taking to heart. At first, i wasn't quite sure that i wanted to do it, but the Lord has worked so much on my heart, that it's hard to imagine myself not doing it. He began by laying the book of 1st Timothy on my heart to read this month. And within the first chapter i found these verses:

12And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry;
13Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.
14And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. 15This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

Here's Paul, one of the greats of the Christian faith, and he describes himself as the "chief of sinners." He's saying,"Here i am, a wretch and Christ sees me faithful enough to trust in his ministry." I know exactly how he feels. I feel under qualified to lead a music group, but i guess Christ sees it differently. And because of this, i want to see to it that He receives all the glory. Because that's one thing that's really been on my heart lately. Which leads us to the main point of this blog:

Everything is for the glory of God.

I know me personally, i get wrapped up in arguments and apologetics. It burns me up to see some of the things presented today in the "Name of Christ." I could launch into arguments about the emerging church movement, creation vs evolution, evangelism and countless other subjects, but end up just wasting my breath. I hate to see God's truth be clouded over with false notions and vain babblings of men. I love truth.

But when it comes to creation, you wanna know what matters? Not how many days it was done in or what order things came in, but that "The God of the universe" created all things for His glory. We look at the vast expanse of the heavens and wonder why there's only a small speck of life in it. Well, the universe wasn't created to show our relationship to it, but to show how amazing it's Creator is.

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Psalm 19:1

The whole point of the creation story isn't really to tell us what happened, but to glorify the Creator. The whole point of Adam being made from dirt wasn't to say how low he was, but to say how great God is. The whole point of the fall is not to explain why people do bad things, but to show the redemptive power of God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

The Atheist will ask, "Well, if God is so perfect, why did He let sin into the world in the first place?" To which i would reply, "How else would He be able to show His awesome, powerful, redeeming love if there was nothing to redeem? He did it so ALL will know His glory."

It was John Piper who said, "The Christian Gospel is 'The gospel of the glory of Christ' because its final aim is that we would see and savor and show the glory of Christ"(1)

Now, some might disagree and say that the gospel is more of the things we do, such as taking care of the poor or feeding the hungry, which are good things and as Christians we should take part in these, but they are not the main point. The whole point of the gospel is to glorify Christ.

I'll probably get some flak for that last one.

What worship boils down to is to give God His glory. Worship is why we were created.

And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,
Romans 9:23

So when it comes down to the time to worship, don't just stand there, but rather fall on your knees and lift up the name of Christ, one who is worthy of all glory. Tell your King you love him. Rejoice in the blood that was shed for you and be like Paul, who considered himself "chief of sinners" and give the glory to the One who deserves it.



(1) John Piper's "Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ"

"Judge not..."

“People tell me judge not lest ye be judged. I always tell them, twist not scripture lest ye be like satan.”

Paul Washer

"seriously, one minute?"

so i was talking about this to some of the senior students here at North Florida and i was wondering what everybody else thought about this subject.

I recently was in the local christian book store and amongst all the self-help books and lame christian fiction, there were actually books that dealt with spiritual things in the back. I found one among the teen section and it was titled, "The One Minute Bible."

I thought to myself, "Self, who only has one minute a day to read the Bible?"

I mean seriously, who's so busy that they only have time for one minute a day for ninety days?

Let's look at it this way. There are 24 hours in a day. That means if there is 60 minutes in each hour, then there is (hold on while i pull up my calculator app) 1440 minutes each day. 1440 minutes a day for ninety days is 129,600 minutes. So, you take the 129,600 minutes for ninety days and subtract the 90 (one per day mind you) and you get a whopping total of 129,510 minutes where you're too busy for God.

Say what?

Look folks, that's cold hard data right there and if there's one thing i know is that cold, hard mathematical data doesn't lie (except when you get into algebra).

So i said all that to say this (the watered down version):

Is the "One minute bible" OK or just really a poor idea? Maybe I'm just being a super christian and saying we should spend more than one minute in God's word. Or maybe, this "bible" (and i use that term loosely) just isn't a good idea.

Perks of the job...

One of things about working in the ministry, is that you do a lot of work behind the scenes. Especially when you work in the media ministry like i do. That's pretty much all i do is behind the scenes work.

And i love that. A lot of times, not many people know what i do. My wife would probably admit to not knowing fully what i do. It's cool though, because i can do little things for God, with pretty much just Him knowing.

The only downfall though is that i see a lot of stuff i sometimes wish i hadn't. Being the Tech Director (person who switches from camera to camera) on Sundays, i usually see who's paying attention in church and who's checking their watch every ten seconds. I see who's really there for worship and who's there just because they have to. It breaks my heart that it is normally the latter of those both.

I've seen people fall asleep.

Today, the school had a chapel in the main auditorium (the one we have church in) and i was up in the balcony, standing by the soundboard. As the music began to play, I listened to it build.

First the bass drum came in. Boom, boom, boom. And then the guitars came in. i don't think there are words in the English language to describe the wonderful noises that came from them, so just imagine. The music kept building and building until, bam, it exploded. Then the vocals came in and that's when i looked over the balcony.

After the music starting like that, i expected full on riot. What i saw was, everybody just standing there. The way it always is.

You had your few who you could see were really belting it out and giving it up to Him. But they were lost among the mass who thought it was too cool to sing.

Now i can understand sometimes you just don't "feel it", but come on, everytime?

Oh, Christians! "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot: I would you were cold or hot. So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue you out of my mouth. Because you say, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and know not that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."

No matter how crankin your music is, no matter how wonderful your soloists are, no matter how many funny stories the speaker tells, it is all for nothing.

You wanna change your church? Then preach the Gospel. Preach that man is nothing without the Grace of God. Preach to convict man's wicked heart, as Paul does in the first three chapters of Romans. Then will you see change in your church. Only then.

Why We're Not Emergent (by two guys who should be)...

So, I've started to read a new book and so far it's pretty good. It's not a full out attack on the emergent or emerging movement, but rather just reasons on why the authors are not. What attracted me to the book was the title, cause i often feel that the majority of my age group either leans toward no religion at all or the emerging church.

So far it's been pretty good and i would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

The Church...

I think there can be two legitimate definitions for "church".

The first being, "All born again Christians as a whole." This can also be called, "The Bride of Christ."

The second definition would be, "a place where aforementioned group meets for fellowship and worship."

So, we have a group of people on one hand and the place they hang out on the other.

In my last blog, I wrote that there is nothing wrong with the church. It was one of those things i understood in my head, but i guess it didn't make as much sense on paper. The church i wrote about was "the collection of all born again Christians." The point i was trying to make was that, a lot of times when the world views the "church," it sees everybody in the buildings and church services. But not everybody in those buildings and services are all Christians.

In today's church, you'll find three different types of people. The first would be the born again christian. The second would be the curious unsaved person. And the last would be the false convert, one who says he is christian, but has never truly been saved.

It is the last type of person where we find our problem and the one i was addressing in my previous blog. They are the one who professes, "Lord, Lord," but does not know the Savior truly.

I think that might help clear up any confusion, if not let me know and I'll take another stab at it.

I'd also like to get some opinions on this and perhaps start a quaint little discussion.

"Is church for the unsaved?"

I ask because, as far as me, I always been taught and told to bring people to church. I remember contests on how many people could be brought to church. I remember "friend days," where you were supposed to bring a friend to church. But i look at it now and don't really see that backed up by scripture. Church is always fellowship and worship among believers in the New Testament. To spread the Gospel, we aren't to bring the unsaved to church(2nd definition), but we should bring the church(1st definition) to the world.

What do you think?