The Threshing Floor

What Happens When Broken People Eat Whole Foods?

Pondering the Spiritual Dynamics of Food Choice

By Dave Park

            “Those dang hippies.” This is what I used to think to myself when I heard about those who were giving their lives to what I call a Moral Choice Health Diet. These diets are on the rise due to the ability to expose how corporations give us our food but this isn’t a new idea. In fact, it seems historically, that people and diets have gone together like peas and carrots (Forrest Gump reference). Hindus have been doing this sort of diet since the early Vedic periods reaching as far back as 5000 BCE. In the Western world, it all really started with The Orphics in the 6^th century who abstained from anything that was of an animal (ancestor of the Plant-Based Diet) but can be traced even as far back as Herodotus who tells us of the Lotophagi, a people in the 4^th century who only lived on the flesh of a Lotus plant. Ever since, there has been the spread and evolution of Moral Choice Health Diets. But the Moral Choice Health Diet, as old as its ancestors are, is essentially different and has social implications that beg investigation. “Those dang hippies…”

            The 2000’s brought with it some interesting innovations and changes, especially for Gen Y’ers. There was a resurgence of anti-corporation ideologies in the sub-culture and we saw droves of young people flocking to mom-and-pop-style establishments once again. But it was an interesting mix. Unlike the hippies of the 1960’s, the new hipster generation went anti-establishment with iPhones and GPS’s. They were waving the magic wand of big-business technology while going to a 300 square foot natural foods market in Portland in search of the best local chickpeas. At the heart of it all, it was a search for true quality. The now booming celebrity chef industry showed us that there were things in the world like truffles and saffron. Apple was setting a new world standard for how people interacted with each other, and it was fast. The financial crises that hit the job market so cradled the anti-establishment mentality that young people didn’t ‘hippie’ as extremely as in the 1960’s. They still wore button downs to work but they were from Urban Outfitters instead of Banana Republic. Young Christians and for the first time in America, Asian Christians, were becoming social activists. Justice and Mercy were again at the forefront of the battle cries and people like Dave Park were scrambling to put together conferences to cater to such a crowd. What a world!           

            These different mentalities married together in a very interesting way. The revolutionist mentality challenged giant corporations like Monsanto and Tyson. These people were now armed with video cameras and now being backed by old but defiant scientists who had been writing about food safety for decades. Not only that, the rise of those now able and wanting of food choice had Trader Joe’s in each town they could go to for their whole wheat pizza dough. Then, backed by the veteran food safety warmongers of the science world, they went to battle. Videos of hundreds of chickens trapped in cages were coupled with crazy corn cows who screamed, “GRASS!!!!” Food scientists showed graphics of animal evil thingies that clogged principal arteries. The young people shouted, “Enough.” Thus, from the corned filled poopies of Monsanto, was born the Whole Foods, Sustainability, and Plant-Based Diets.

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. But as we know, that’s not all. Mandi Ehman, a Christian writer and blogger, wrote an article last year entitled Food Choices Are Not a Moral Issue. In this, she tried to argue that food choice is not moral choice that should be judged by others. In the end, I was thoroughly confused about her title because her article seemed to argue, “Do not judge” rather than tell us that food choice is not a moral issue. She quoted from another blog by BLEAT:

A culture that redefines food choices as moral issues will demonize the people who don’t share the tastes of the priest class. A culture that elevates eating to some holistic act of ethical self- definition - localvore, low-carbon-impact food, fair trade, artisanal cheese - will find the casual carefree choices of the less- enlightened as an affront to their belief system. Leave it to the Americans to invent a Puritan strain of Epicurianism.

To this, Ehman argues that food choice is not something that she should be judged for and she called for her “Right to disagree.” She even went to 1 Corinthains 8 and ended with a note with practical applications on how to deal with the tensions of food choice. After reading Mandi Ehman’s article, I agree with her applications (Yes! Bring others to your home and be open-minded), but I disagree with her assessment of morality. Food choice IS a moral decision we make and YET we should not judge.

When the Ehmans and Lotophagis of the world make these choices, often it is based on moral issues. Those corn crazy cows invoke a visceral reaction in our bellies that touch on morality. In a pocket of United States history, diet was all about health. First, ice cream gave children polio (Freakonomics, baby!) Then we were supposed to eat more carbohydrates than anything else (oh, crazy old food pyramid…). Then a crazy man said carbohydrates was the enemy! Time to put the gloves on! And the mad man was right. I lost 100 pounds!…and then people said like it caused heart attacks or something like that. But throughout all these well-meaning food discoveries, the essential issue was health. And health could be derivative of morality in a distant sense, but the correlation between health and morality was not a straight line. The obese woman in the ‘hood was not considered ‘bad’ because she was obese. But then when she gave her two-year old son M&M’s for breakfast…the faces soured. The correlation was not direct and defined. That is, until the food choice revolution began to take place. Now Jamie Oliver was going to run down cities and proclaiming Food Messiah-ship. And all were to follow, or they were closed minded Neanderthals. On the other side of the boxing ring was Anthony Bourdain, who gobbled down six beers with pork belly fats and told you, “This is who you really are, don’t fight it.” In the same show, he would sit down with a lovely and so-cute-you-want-to-pinch-their-cheeks family to share the most meaningful meal he’s had in years. He was preaching a singular message: “Food tradition is at the heart of who a people is.” The pork belly fats of Europe have a thousand year old family tradition, and you hippies want to mess with that??? He seemed to say. Who’s right? Who has rightful claims to the food-souls of America? Was it the local Brussels sprouts in Jamie Oliver’s corner? Or was it the gravy and meatballs of Bourdain’s family dinners? There were now established two misguided caricatures in our minds: the Bacon Eating Epicurean from Monsanto and the Flower Picking Vegan from Trader Joe’s. And the kicker was: they declared war on each other. Not just a food war, but a who’s-right war. Now food choice wasn’t merely a health issue, but it was a moral dilemma and therefore a religious one.

I am not informed enough to write a hearty social commentary on the food choices of America. But I just observed the social dynamics happening around me and they made me curious. How serious is this mentality among the people? I’ve seen the guilt that some foods cause to my friends and the overwhelming sense of accomplishment that other foods cause to my other friends L  Over time, I began to get a sense of religiosity from all of it. This is not merely from my friends and family, but I’ve sensed it in myself also. I have gone from over 260lbs (but still handsome) to 160 lbs in one year. And ever since I have struggled to maintain a ‘manageable’ weight. In that, I realized that food, diet and appearance have had not only a physical affect on me, but a mental one and in turn, a spiritual one. There are really insidious sins of pride and guilt on both sides of health. I have been very prideful when I was running five to six miles a day. I have also felt pride when I wasn’t one of those superficial people who run five to six miles a day. I have felt guilt when I spent two hours a day at the gym and have felt guilt when I had to wipe the dust off of my gym membership card to Retro Fitness. “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of sin?” (Romans 7:24) My first concern really isn’t the animals and Monsanto, but it’s the church. Even Rome with all of its evils rose and fell. So will every nation, company and way of life. But the church is God’s “green-sustainability” project for it’s going to be here forever. My concern is: “What if we save our bodies but hurt our souls? What good is that?”

Now, I know that we do not embark on a dietary journey with the intention to judge others or to make a big religious thing out of it. I’ve started many and have ended many. I know that the purpose is really just to take care of the bodies which God has entrusted to us. And I know the Christian movement for food choice isn’t really anti-establishment, but it’s a matter of proper stewardship. But as the journey continues, we realize that there are some who are not on the train tracks with us but rather on the sidelines. What do we say to them? I know that those on the outside (I consider myself one) look into the Food Choice movement and raise many questions about motives, results and implications. But we really aren’t trying to discourage anyone. But at the same time, there is a feeling that much of what we treasure and enjoy (all good gifts from God), are being bashed. Images of family dinners and meaningful meals come to mind. A grateful southern family holding hands to give thanks for the buttery holiday meal comes to mind. Both sides have valid values they are trying to protect and guard. Trader Joe is trying to love stewardship of both Creation and Body. These are mandates from God Himself! And Baconator is trying to preach acceptance and graciousness maybe even while not exercising them himself. Both sides have important things to bring to the table. No one means to berate any other, but in the process it seems to happen. What do we do?

 The Westminster Shorter Catechism tells us that the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy God is the Word of God. And yes, 1 Corinthians  is probably the most direct text that gives us the context for this issue, but I also take a look at 1 Corinthians 13. No, its not just for wedding ceremonies but it is pertinent for us. In the Corinthian church, there were some who had received amazing spiritual gifts. These were good things from the very hand of God. Some were able to speak in tongues like Paul could. Some were able to prophesy and even preach for the edification of others. Others were even able to heal physical bodies. They received pure and lovely things from the hand of God. But there was something funny going on too. These gifts were not helping the church, but hurting the church! Some others were judgmental of those who had the gifts and knowledge. They saw that these were good gifts, but the results were not edifying at all. Paul, not denying the importance of these gifts and acknowledging that they are good things from God said…”There is a more excellent way.”

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

The ultimate question is whether we are loving to one another. Sorry Mandi Ehman, we are making ethical and moral choices in the church. And they are all different. In fact, we have whole groups of churches making different ethical choices just like this! But, we have something that is bigger than even our own ethical choices. We have God who calls us to bind all these difference choices together by love. Its only be the grace He gives that church members with different choices can worship together. He binds us. While ethical choices vary and abound, He is constant and calls us to love the brother or sister next to us as we love ourselves. Your body and his will fail. We have resurrected bodies waiting for us (not like Avatar though). With failing bodies he’s called us to love one another so much so that the world may see it and ask, “Why are you like that?”

“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Here’s to good eating J

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
   nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
   a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
   he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

When Christians adopted the cross as their symbol, when the fish and the dove just wouldn’t do anymore, they were ridiculed. Who would choose shame, nakedness and torture as their flag? Fools, that’s who. But they would never go back.

What does it feel like to be despised? Not just slighted or discarded, but despised? I don’t know if I’ll ever be important enough to despise. Even in my worst moments I only merit a hearty indifference, not because I am likeable but because I am not worth the effort of abhorrence. Contempt requires effort, emotion and action. Indifference casts out but hostility tears apart. Jesus was despised. The King of kings…despised.

There wasn’t an ounce of sin in his heart…“ ¹⁰ Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer..”

He was slain for our vanity. He was pierced for our laziness. He was shot for our thoughtless busy-ness. He was destroyed for our lustful hearts. He was speared for our gossiping. He was torn apart for our greed. He was killed for our careless speech. He was tortured for our wandering thoughts. He was tormented for our lies. He was anguished for our discontentment. He was gashed for our prayerlessness. He was spit on for our indifference. He was crushed for our iniquities.

For me, I have to sit here for a while on this Friday to really understand Sunday. Tonight gives perspective to Easter. Although Sundays-a-comin…I have to sit here and soak it in.

Today, by his wounds we are healed.

I’ve been studying Isaiah for Hebrew 3. Isaiah is a crazy book in Hebrew. The prose, poetry, and prayer weave together a book unlike others. Hebrew was tough. Simply put, it made me want to quit seminary all together at times. But reading Isaiah in Hebrew makes me stop at times. There is something about Hebrew. It forces you to crawl slowly through the text giving you sight; emotions brushed in expression. English flies by in an effectual exactness but Hebrew is not hurried. It refuses to fit into your schedule. The text is not a postal worker delivering information anymore. It wants to paint your room for you but it requires that you sit and watch while it happens so you can remember every layer.

Isaiah 63 is a prayer. Someone is praying for a people who’ve turned against their God. The modern day default of legal offense doesn’t cut it. Rather the intercessor gives you video. Moving images of children and a flock. He’s shouting to God, “we are NOT like a defendant on trial, we are your own children!” verse 9 says, “he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old..” Like a mother carries a child because they are too weak to walk on their own feet. “That is who you are to us!” And yet, they have wronged him. The Father has shown them a special kindness that no one but his children know about. Its called hesed and it’s too heavy to be cover on a tumblr page. But its his unique kindness, reserved only for his children. Yet the people rebel…They spit in the face of the one who carries them. A judge isn’t hurt by a criminal nor does a crime grieve a law. A child has cut deep into his father’s kindness.

This is my story. This is the story of every child of God. A legal definition of sin pales in comparision to what this is painting for us. There is grief.

But verse 16 is valiant. “For you are our Father, through Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O LORD, are our Father…” He keeps repeating this to God, “you are our Father!” Abraham is a variation of the Hebrew word “father.” but he is saying, “even though all our fathers abandon us you will never.” why? why not? why wouldn’t he abandon us?

As bad as their children are, no matter how many times the cops come home with his son in handcuffs…in front of his neighbors he pulls his son behind him and with a stern face says to them, “he’s a good boy.” The father isn’t concerned about what they think. Everyone else may shake their heads at the son, but the father always stands up for his child. Because he can’t be swayed. His mind is made up for all time. And all other allegiances may abandon but the father will always step in front of his child in confidence. “For you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us; you O LORD are our Father.”

And how true for us who are clothed by Christ then, that even on our worst days, although our neighbors say we’re a mess, our father pulls us behind him and says, “he’s my son, and he’s a good boy.”

This is hesed.

…how deep, the Father’s love for us.

There’s something about the morning that is conspicuously devotional. There’s something in the quiet. Sometimes I wake up early enough to feel the unique and unexpected. When man has submitted to his fragile design the Father hasn’t stopped from his work. He is the God who does not slumber and the morning is a kind of soft reminder for humility. 

Maybe thats the very enterprise of morning: to show the greatness of our Father while the sense of our frailty still resonates in our bones. Maybe its supposed to lift our eyes upward because we can’t say, “I’ve sustained my existence for the past few hours.” Nonsense; for there is forced surrender at the close of each day. So when we rub our eyes in the morning maybe its supposed to draw us to devotion.  

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes the early morning is a reminder to trust Him for all things for he cares. 

Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust.

Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

- Psalm 143:8 - 

Something is being thrown out the back door of many devotions and I’m finding it to be helpful to me personally. 

Hymns…precious hymns we have, that carefully and personally express to God emotions we would fail to articulate given a thousand thesauri; precious hymns that contain praises and grievances that we would obscurely identify in ourselves. Precious hymns valiantly proclaim his glory behind our heart’s pulpit. Precious hymns will sit quietly with you in sorrowful corners and whisper, “thy God will undertake.” 

Christ promised us the Comforter and his native tongue is often hymn. He is fluent for certain. In a broken world, people are not always accessible but hymns and scriptures are tucked away beneath the floorboards. 

Hymns aren’t shy. Hymns won’t be pressured to be hip and politically correct. Hymns don’t flinch at moving trends nor are they subject to age old critics and radio stations don’t dictate their merit. Hymns are primarily and passionately concerned with merging the sinner with the Father. 

They take us to precious places without need of thanks. They use the library of language without regard to being foreign or antiquated. Hymns are fearless with care. Majesty; there is a sense of it. 

If I look deep enough, honestly enough and intently enough, I find there’s a strange fear. There is a fear all too familiar but in every way, utterly unreasonable. This fear isn’t much preached about or studied in my life; neither is this fear fearless to reveal itself. Every so often I’ll find it out. The more I stare at it I sense a fondness and a perverseness all at once. It’s this: the fear of godliness.

The terror surprises me then bores me in an instant. If you can’t already tell, it’s one of the most confusing things of all. Why I don’t know but I hope it’s something that Abraham felt down deep when he was called out of Ur. I pray it’s something that the disciples felt when they dropped their nets for the last time. And I dearly hope it’s understood in some way by my peers. Why I wish this misfortune on others? I don’t know. Maybe it’s a need to feel normal. The fear of godliness; the uneasy feeling close behind the work of justification is the intimidating work of sanctification. Not too far behind. Like clockwork it trails after like the Hound of Heaven himself, as a faithful dog toddles behind his master.

I fear the constant but sudden exchange of my ashes for his beauty, the trade of my small things for his great things. I guess a part of me looks around and wonders if anyone else misses their small things. This bad man inside me loves the small things and fears the great; and you know what? We were love at first sight. The great things are great to be sure but the small things are mine, you see, they are familiar. Dirty socks for silk robes seem reasonable enough…but these dirty socks are worn in, don’t you see? Maybe silk isn’t for me.

These are the thoughts I share with Adam. They are the thoughts of a servant who cannot bear to have a master, the garden who despises the pruner, the creation who runs from the love of a Creator and more closely, a sinner who cannot stand the patient eyes of his God. I don’t know…I hope He understands; hope that he “knows my frame and remembers I am dust.” I know it’s silly. I know it’s stubborn. I know it’s ‘senseless and ignorant, a brute beast before you,’ but honest, it’s there. He scares me because he is not only a lamb but a lion, not only a suffering servant but a glorious king.

Then somewhere running through the forest of Scripture, these words step out:

 ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

So it’s a fight against that man inside me to remember who the Lord is. Seek Me. Not a false and formed god who is malicious but the true Father who doesn’t serve snakes to hungry children. Seek ME, not a Lord who unleashes suffering without thought but one who tears while he unlocks the gate. Seek ME. That part of me doesn’t get it. I love dirty socks. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. But that won’t do. Not amidst a cross. So I fight to seek him with all my heart.

Truth is, my Savior scares me sometimes. It’s a chilling thought that an all powerful God is at the wheel of my life. No side seat driving allowed. He scares me to death. “Maybe we should turn here,” I petition. “Maybe we should go this way instead?” But His patient eyes tell me that ‘His ways are not my ways.’

Does godliness scare me? Constantly. Jonathan Edwards wrote his famous work Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. I don’t fear that much. I was bled for. I was died for. I guess only a silly fool like me would fear being a sinner in the hands of a loving God. But I do. Because his ways are not my ways. But his ways are good. And I am glad he’s not only changing who I am and what I do, but also changing who I want to be and what I want to do. What a genius. He’s thought of everything.

This ‘already not yet’ is killin’ me. This ‘already not yet’ is perfecting me.

So while my shallow heart wants only to ask God to improve my situation, to change my life…I will choose to pray a small little prayer in the words of an old song instead:

Change my heart O’ God

Make it ever true

Change my heart O’ God

(…swallow hard…)

…..

May I be like you.

I’ve spent the better half of today re-reading Blue Like Jazz. I remember, I like this book. 

“There is something quite beautiful about the Grand Canyon at night. There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere.

Of course, I had always known He was, but this time I felt it, I realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty. The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined Him looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind had cheated on Him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her.”

- Donald Miller

Its a good place to be. 

“A bruised reed he will not break.”

A reed is fragile to begin with. Yet in a field there are those select reeds that have been trampled and worn. To the strong reed the wind brushes by, careless. But for the worn reed, each wind is catastophic. The bruised reed teeters between life and death with each blowing breeze. 

Like a record these few words have been playing in my head. The prophecy is taken from Isaiah, repeated in Matthew; that his Servant will come and he will be like a lamb to the slaughter. Tender and compassionate, and “a bruised reed he will not break.” 

Jesus is Yahweh. The mighty God who sits on the throne….yet he is compassionate. While he inflicts testing…he does not overwhelm. 

The enigma? The all-knowing God, who has placed each grain of sand safely on earth, bends with me. With each teeter and twist the Lord’s heart skips a beat with me. Why? Why weep at Lazarus’ grave? The stone will be rolled away.

But thats what a tender Father does. His heart clutches with every breeze. 

He is jealous for me, 
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree, 
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy. 
When all of a sudden, 
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory, 
And I realize just how beautiful You are, 
And how great Your affections are for me. 

How he loves me so.

I realize that I should just pray. A deep reverence for the Lord and his presence is a must in the Christian life but it has in some ways kept me from impromptu time with my Lord. I deal with a lot more anxiety and tension in my life than I care to think about all at once. Everyone does. Although it shouldn’t lead us to paralyzing phobia about our very existence; it’s true that we all deal with so much in one lifetime that we dare not bring it all to mind casually for the terror of snapping under the pressure. And so I just don’t think about it. And It hasn’t helped. Leaky piping eventually catches up to you. The weeks I have to prepare for a sermon, I find myself in prayer; generally out of the realization that only God can bless the sermon. What other choice do I have? Like Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” So I have to pray. For the deliverance of God’s Word I have no choice but to run to the source. And so I pray and those times have always been good. My Lord has never left me wanting. His arm was indeed long enough for me.

I saw a construction worker next to my car at a rest stop, turn off his drill and pick up his phone. He was working on a project for the New Jersey Turnpike but that obviously didn’t stop him from picking up a call from his children. “Hi honey!” I heard him say. Well, my Father is orchestrating the work of Redemptive History…but he is ready to take my call. So I should just pray. Whenever my heart feels a drip of sadness, I should just pray. When anxiety peers its ugly head, I should just pray. And even though I have to leave my house in a few minutes, I should just pray. Because my time with my Lord is precious but that doesn’t require it be long.

So I am thinking now that… I should just pray. Perhaps when I’m showering, I should just converse with Christ. When I’m driving to school maybe I’ll call on the Lord. As I flip through TV channels with no luck finding any Fresh Prince, maybe I’ll lift up a prayer. I know there ought to be a preparation of the heart for the Lord is holy..but my Jesus is personal. And these two are not contradictory. In fact, they converge to draw me in worship. So I should go to my Lord because he cares for me.

I think I didn’t realize how much I missed my Father. Just speaking to him and spilling my guts. Or even a, “Lord, I don’t have anything to say but I have some time and I’m not going to do much with it at all so I just wanted to say I am thinking of you.” I’m not sure why I deprive myself…because my Jesus is precious to me.

The Father isn’t only waiting for grave injuries but even the scraped knees of his child. His brow bled under thorns for such small prayers from me. His side was pierced for my prayers of venting. And even his last breath for my simple “thank you’s” or “I’m sorry’s.” For if it wasn’t the cross, my prayers would remain filthy rags but under the timbers of Calvary they are the prayers from a loved son. So why not just pray? I should, shouldn’t I? Yeah. I think I’ll just pray, to my Father who is ready for my call.

¹⁴Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

It hurts. And as a calloused executioner, pain wears a mask. My inclination is to reduce Christian suffering to pure and explicit agony. The imagination goes to martyrdom, doesn’t it? But subtly, the harshest sufferings is a call to obedience. To love when seemingly justified to do otherwise and the call to endure with joy a life underhanded and uncertain. So why do it? What for? Is there fruit to faithfulness that blots out weighty adversity? The French novelist Jean Sullivan offers some strikingly honest but none the more comforting words: ““When the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God, cries out that he has been abandoned on the Cross, by what right do you seek reassuring truths?”

Along with Lewis, I’m shocked that grief so closely resembles fear. But David found the balm. “I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety,” Courage indeed is not simply a virtue in itself but a resilience of virtue in the flames. In the case of the Christian, a skirmish to the arms of the Father. ‘Drawing near’ is a pleasant hymn ‘til it becomes a struggle in the squall. Not so passive anymore, is it?

As an anguished parent tearfully demands of his frightful child to bear intense agony, there’s also violent preaching to the heart. Be still, my soul! And as the heart begins its restless submission….be still, my soul. Yet the lullaby would be in vain unless completed in consolation…The Lord is on your side. On the cross there was none of this from the Father to the bleeding Son. Instead, he turned his face away. He died not that we be free from suffering, but that our suffering may resemble his. So the flames, although searing, are warm.

__________________________________________________________

“That you will, Dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

“Religion does not take a man away from his work; it sends him to his work with an added quality of devotion.” - Warfield

“A servant, with this clause,

Makes drudgery divine,

Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,

Makes that, and the action, fine.”

- George Herbert

Teach me, my God and King

In all thing Thee to see-

and what I do in anything,

To do it for Thee

If done t’ obey thy laws,

E’en servile labors shine;

Hallowed is toil, if this the cause,

the meanest work divine.

Ps. 84:10

You may make some mistakes-but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you. - Joel Osteen

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“Better have some difficulty in hearing the gospel than no difficulty at all in hearing what is very far from the gospel.” - Martin Luther

³For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. ⁴They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. ⁵But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

 ⁶For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. ⁷I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. ⁸Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. - Paul

No sin posits no Cross. No Cross posits no grace. No grace posits no power.

“I have fought the good fight…I have kept the faith.”