Pride or Passion for God?

To people who are passionless for God, passion for God appears to be pride.

So go ahead, Christian, exude your God-given passion for God, and let Him take care of the reactions.

Losing My Passion For Passionlessness

I realized today that, to some degree, I have lost that fire that God lit under me and in me five years ago. Five years ago I began to see the Bible with new eyes, I began to hear God's Word with new ears, God gave me a new heart to love Him more than anything else, I began caring about His things and His people. But as seasons change, so does life. There are valleys and there are peaks. There are storms and there is sunshine. And as surely as the sun rises every single day, so God is faithful to His own.

A conversation today reminded me that I've been living in the past, specifically in a past rebuke that has hurt me ever since. What the people said was too broad to be helpful, and it's bothered me ever since. Ultimately, it's stifled my passion for God because I've become afraid of hurting someone else's "feelings" when I talk about Him. You see, when the Bible says, "I believed, therefore I spoke," I take it seriously. Speaking is the natural outflow of believing.

It does not matter whether people want to hear it, it doesn't matter how they feel when they hear it, it doesn't matter whether they listen or care or tell you to shut up. We who trust Jesus have a commission from Him to make disciples of all peoples by preaching His forever-true, forever-standing, never-changing Word, and to do it from a heart of love for Him and love for others.

There used to be a time - my friends remember these days well - when I was visibly and audibly excited about GOD. HE was the song in my heart and the words on my lips. Not that I didn't do wrong or say stupid things - I did all the time! - but the music of my life was obviously God and God alone.

Lately I've noticed that this kind of music, this kind of fire, is largely absent from my life. Apparently I've believed the lie that cooling down is part of growing up. Well I have a newsflash - it's NOT. Cooling off on God is not part of growing up as a Christian. Don't buy the lie. Just because we grow in Christ and His wisdom does in no way mean that we settle for half-hearted passions for Him. HE is EVERYTHING !!! Everything to the Christian! Everything to the world! Everything that we need and want and hope and pray for is found perfectly in Him!

Dear Father, help me take hold of Your one Man much tighter. May You burn Your Word in me like fire, and make me a burning and shining light for Jesus. I miss His joy in my heart, I miss His name on my lips. Please come and renew me again, I pray in Christ's name. Amen.

Fairbanks

Once upon my time, I was in a rock band. Yes, that's right, a rock band. And that is exactly what we did:

We rocked. Hard.

In case you're interested in exactly how hard we rocked, here are two websites for your perusal and amusal:

The Old One (no music, lots of funny pics, old graphics)

The Newer One (not really a whole website, just new music)

Let me know how much you enjoy the FBX.

The Dangerous Book for Boys

This book looks awesome, and subtly hilarious. Check out the interview at the bottom, too. I want to get this for me, before we have our boys.

Update: Al Mohloer blogs on the book.

Now We Love Greek and Hebrew, SO . . .

After writing that post, I promptly went looking for brothers with whom to study Biblical Greek and Hebrew. God has already blessed that endeavor, so praise Him for help in application, too!

Here are some more pointers in practicing your Greek and Hebrew:

1. Ask for God's help.
"in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God," (Philippians 4:6). I need Him to come in power if I will learn anything worthwhile for His glory, and so do you. I skip this all too often and reveal my belief that I can do it on my own.

2. Get the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament.
And a Greek Old Testament, if possible. The Hebrew Old Testament is known also as the Biblical Hebraica Stuttgartensia, the Tanach, and/or the Masoretic Text. The Greek New Testament can be denoted with the name of its translator(s), i.e. Westcott-Hort, Robinson-Pierrepont, Nestle-Aland. The Greek Old Testament is called the Septuagint, or LXX. You can buy all three at the United Bible Societies site or search for them somewhere like Amazon or Half.com.

You can't read the Biblical languages unless you can see the Biblical languages, so don't think you'll get any study done unless you actually own a copy of each of these. Yes, you can still go online to a place like Zhubert.com (which you should) or find a free Bible program like E-sword (which you should) or buy an expensive Bible program like Logos or BibleWorks (which you probably shouldn't), but you can't always carry those things with you and you definitely have a hard time keeping notes in them and showing them to others. You should use all the free stuff available to you, including any library you can get into, but when the Christian hits the road his Bible(s) must go with him. (So get e-sword if you already have a laptop but no money.)

3. Use it in worship services, in personal Bible study, in group Bible study, in sermon and teaching preparation, wherever and whenever you can.
Even if you can't diagram in both languages yet, go ahead and read any and every word you can. If you are interested in a verse, look it up in the original. Pay attention to the syntax (the word order) and the vocabulary (the word choice). Practice writing the actual words down on paper. Look at them later when you return to your notes. Do the most that you can with these languages - God will reward you. "Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything," (2 Timothy 2:7)

4. Sit down and read it just to read it.
As in, not to read it for something else, but just reading it to sit and read and see if you can remember this or that particular passage. (This is easier with Greek for several reasons, but mostly because the New Testament is shorter and easier to remember.) Look up vocabulary as needed.

5. Get together with a brother or two and work through a book of the Bible.
This provides two key elements in study: fellowship and accountability. We need fellowship in study because it keeps us joyous and alert, and it builds friendships. We need accountability both personally and theologically because we must learn the obedience of being responsible students and exegetes. We need the regularity of meetings and groups because God uses them to teach us responsibility, and we need the joy of God in and with our brothers and sisters.

6. After a while, teach somebody.
Teaching is the best way to learn. So after you've learned and worked and read studied and memorized and looked up and written and read some more, go teach somebody. We have to carry on a passion for God and His Word to the next generation.

7. Thank God for such grace.
Oh to know Jesus as He really is! To see His glory in His Word! To understand His perfect character and work! To be able to speak of Him to others! Such manifold grace we do not deserve.

I Love Greek

You should too.

I love New Testament Greek because it enables me to see the Bible as it really is. No translators, commentaries, or translations needed. Just the text as originally written.

This doesn't mean that you can't read the Bible in English, or that it is of dimnished value - quite to the contrary. Our English translations of the Bible are amazingly accurate. But they will always be translations, and we need to understand that there is a depth and life to the Greek that translations simply cannot produce. I mean, come on, you can barely parse English verbs; but to learn Greek, you have to parse Greek verbs.

So, to my brothers who want to learn Greek but haven't had the guts or the desire to do it yet, I offer more reasons to love and learn and use Greek:

1. It tends to reveal God's glory more in your study.
This reason alone should be enough to learn Greek. If you even have an inkling to learn it, you may well be like me and enjoy the verb tenses and moods and all the connections they make for us, right there in the text. English can sometimes obscure these. I'm not saying that Greek is some sort of secret knowledge, only that the closer we get to the truth, the brighter God's glory shines.

2. It is the language in which God chose to write His New Testament.
Again, this reason alone should be enough to learn NT Greek. God didn't write the original text in English - sorry, KJV-only folks, it's simply not true - so we ought to bown humbly before His sovereign choice and learn in the school He's given us.

3. It reveals what translations can sometimes obscure.
So many connections, wordplays, and exegetical pointers get lost in translation. You know how, in English, you often see words repeated in a close context? Count on seeing that twice as often in Greek.

4. Pure exegesis is impossible without it.
Simply put, without the original languages, you're always leaning on someone else's translation. Your exegesis will always be dependent on theirs.

5. God will use it to build your faith in Him.
By seeing more of His glory in the text and His beautiful design in its arrangement, God will build your faith upon solid rocks of Biblical exegesis. You will be able to say, "Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone! I've seen it in the Greek text!"

Now I know that many of us simply cannot learn Greek because of time or resources or even learning limitations. And if that is the case for you, Christian, please know that God is not displeased with you and you are not missing out. If you are Christ's, then He is blessing you in a thousand different ways besides learning and using Greek.

But if you have a mission in your life of preaching and teaching, if you want to rightly divide God's Word, if you love the Scriptures, stop your delay. We could list a hundred more reasons to learn Greek, but do you really need them? You already know that you should, because God's witness in your own heart is telling you to do it.

I'll offer some more pointers in the next post. (Ps - I also love Old Testament Hebrew; but it is really hard, and I need some help on it. So I understand that, too. More on getting help in the next post.)

The Warnings of the Bible

"I have to preach the warnings of the Bible, and the elect receive them with sweet trembling which sends them running for the cross, and the hypocrites blow them off."

Pastor John Piper

25 Ways to Help Kids Love to Read

Copied from the Desiring God blog:

Here's a list of 25 ways to help your child love to read adapted from Zahler's 50.

1. Teach your child to read.
2. Let your child see you read.
3. Read aloud.
4. Encourage your kids to read aloud to you and to each other.
5. Ask your children to retell for you the stories they've read.
6. Have pre-readers “tell the story” from pictures.
7. Help your children evaluate stories.
8. Connect stories to children's lives.
9. Encourage identification with characters.
10. Make connections between books.
11. Share with your family from your own reading.
12. Recommend beloved books.
13. Own books your child will want to read.
14. Go to the library regularly.
15. Take books with you when you travel.
16. Suggest practical reasons for reading.
17. Send kids to books for answers to their questions.
18. Help your children find books that encourage them in their interests.
19. Provide a home environment conducive to reading.
20. Use TV wisely if you must use it at all.
21. Increase your child's real-life experiences.
22. Work with your child's teacher.
23. Expect great things for and from your kids.
24. Recognize differences among your children.
25. Take delight in words and let that delight show.

And, above all, let's take delight in the Word and let that delight show.

Amen, and let us press on to know the Lord in the most important, most objective, most concrete way He has given us - His very words. We have a ministry, a commission, a happy life-long job of raising up an entire generation to hope in God.

Disagreeing with JE on "Disembodied Spirits"

So I am reading Jonathan Edwards wonderful, God-centered work, Religious Affections. I like Edwards’ preliminary qualifications in Part I, Sect. I. He lays out some important distinctions and admissions – how the understanding and will work together, how the will works in approving and disapproving, the imperfection of language, and the interactings of the mind and body.

I disagree with him, for the first time I can remember, at the end of Section I, on the right side of p. 237 in the Works, when he writes, “an unembodied spirit may be capable of love and hatred, joy or sorrow, hope or fear, or other affections, as one that is united to a body.” He is trying to say that the mind is what is important in seeing and feeling for what is good or evil, but I’m unsure that he can support this particular assertion scripturally. One might point to Isaiah 6, where the seraphim fly and cry out to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts,” but that would likely go too far.

Disembodied spirits may be able to have similar affections, but they may not. If they have them at all, they are most likely very different from the affections of mortal man, who, though corrupted, was originally the one race made in God’s own image. Edwards here, I’m sad to say, skirts the line with Gnosticism.

“Bodies are not meant to be thrown away,” one God-centered teacher of mine once said, and he was right because he was reading the Bible. Speaking of life after death, Job says, “In my flesh I will see God.” This is important, and we ought not get it wrong. There is something special and unique about the God-given affections and feelings that men have and will have for God. So I will part with the great Pastor Edwards here.