April 2011
1 post
abhorrence applied. abhorrence...
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,...
March 2011
2 posts
WatchMercy Vision 2011
MERCY VISION 2011 →
December 2010
1 post
A bulwark never failing.
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...
August 2010
2 posts
dew and devotion
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...
flute and dirge
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...
July 2010
2 posts
"Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."
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...
Psalm 8
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...
June 2010
2 posts
Livin' on His Edge
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...
Impulsive Banter
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...
April 2010
4 posts
searing balm
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...
doorkeepers...
“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
...
hearing aids.
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
_____________________________________________________________________
“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 ...
March 2010
2 posts
"Aslan," said Lucy, "you're bigger."
Times of trial seem to be the centerpieces in my walk in Christ.
The frightening look back does tempt to flirt with vacant nostalgia but there is substance there. There is a strange but inescapable feeling of attachment to the Lord. While the flesh cries out to tear away from him, the Lord refuses. So in indulgence, there is guilt. So in gladness, there is a heavenward look. Along the archives...
Ebenezer
Appeals for calm after Nigerian sectarian slaughter
by Aminu Abubakar Aminu Abubakar Mon Mar 8, 5:45 pm ET
JOS, Nigeria (AFP) – UN chief Ban Ki-moon and Washington led calls for restraint on Monday after the slaughter of more than 500 Christians in Nigeria, as survivors told how the killers chopped down their victims.
Funerals took place for...
February 2010
1 post
Confessions of a Young Preacher
My posts have been intentionally cerebral and poetic. Tumblr has been my outlet for creative expression and yet I admit that there is a secret anxiety that is gleaning through it all.
I wish I could tell you that seminary has changed my life. I wish I could tell you that the halls of Westminster have changed the very genetic makeup of my soul. I wish, very honestly, that books of theology and...
January 2010
2 posts
So little time...
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. –Ecclesiastes 3:11
Time is an odd thing for a Christian. For a Christian he knows that God is eternal and we are his image. For the Christian he feels a certain disparity in his existence and is not sure why. It is almost as if we are in...
Book Recommendation
Hello,
I spoke on Paul’s call to apologetics on Sunday but I meant to recommend a book after the sermon. I guess I got caught up in the message and I didnt get to do it.
If you would like to know more about the mandate to apologetics you can pick up/order online this book from the Westminster Bookstore www.wtsbook.org
The Battle Belongs to the Lord By K Scott Oliphint
He is my...
December 2009
2 posts
Whither are we moving now?
“I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriffs at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here. I think he’s pretty proud of that. I know I was. Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe…can’t help but wonder how theyd’ve operated these...
beautiful hinges.
“‘I should have thought that a pack of British boys… would have been able to put up a better show than that…Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.” -Lord of the Flies 1983-
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature with its...