by Elizabeth | Sep 1, 2010 | Learning Story
If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you know I return frequently to Matthew 11:29-30, because I struggle most with this concept of resting in Christ and taking his yoke, not my own or others. I found this at a favorite blog: Gospel Paradox by Pastor Andy Lewis…here’s an excerpt:
God says in Matthew 11:29-30 “Take my yoke upon you for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.”
These gospel words have given me peace. It reminds me that I must work but Christ calls me to work the correct way. The preceding verse calls me to come to him with all of the things that are weighing on me…what I think the day should look like, what I feel should be accomplished, how I hope people will respond, what needs to be done on my to do list…when it says “come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”
But then the following verses of 29 – 30 remind me that when I give him my burden he gives me his yoke. Here is the difference, his yoke fits me perfectly. And Jesus is not a slave driver – he is “gentle and humble in heart” and through following him we “find rest for our souls” Oh the mellowing effects of putting the gospel deep in our lives!!!
Father, whatever comes my way today remind me that it comes from the hand of a sovereign, loving God who is gentle and humble. Let me rest and relax, even as I work, in the truth of your yoke rather than the burdens I or others put on my back. May I be satisfied today with pleasing you above all others. Amen and Amen.
by Elizabeth | Aug 31, 2010 | Learning Story
Thinking about Flannery O’Connor, the funny, unorthodox, and excellent Christian novelist who wrote of the “inescapable Jesus.” If you’ve never read Wise Blood, with its central character Hazel Motes, I recommend you find that one hour you would have lost before you ever knew you had it and read this short novel. Here is a brief introduction from an essay by Stephen Sparrow. The link to the rest of the essay is below.
Listen you people. I’m going to preach there was no Fall because there was nothing to fall from and no Redemption because there was no Fall and no Judgement because there wasn’t the first two. Nothing matters but that Jesus was a liar…
Where you came from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.
Now, if the reader teases out the meaning of those words, he ends up with a frightening scenario. All explanations have vanished: all justification for living, gone: everything has collapsed in a heap. The virtue of Hope lies dead. Of course O’Connor would be the first to say that Faith is not about comfort zones. In 1959 she wrote to her friend Louise Abbot saying; “What people don’t realise is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.” But the irony here is that for those who profess no faith, there are likewise no comfort zones. The bottom line is that Atheism is also a Faith
Read more: http://mediaspecialist.org/ssinescapable.html#ixzz0yBOQO4p3
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial
by Elizabeth | Aug 30, 2010 | Learning Story
Saturday I picked up a book that’s been hiding on my shelf for a while. It’s about enjoying God. It’s called Desiring God. John Piper writes about “Christian Hedonism,” saying that Christians were made to seek pleasure, to desire God, to enjoy God, and in enjoying Him, to worship Him, to live for Him and in living this way, to take pleasure from life. Here’s a little snippet. I’ve broken Piper’s paragraph into sentences, so we can concentrate on each point.
7 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him.” I Cor. 1:27-29
“Christian Hedonism combats pride because it puts man in the category of an empty vessel beneath the fountain of God. It guards us from the presumption of trying to be God’s benefactors.
Philanthropists can boast.
Welfare recipients cannot.
The primary experience of Christian Hedonism is need.
When a little, helpless child is being swept off his feet by the undercurrent on the beach and his father catches him just in time, the child does not boast; he hugs.”
Where do you feel strong today? What do you need?
by Elizabeth | Aug 28, 2010 | Learning Story
Revisiting John Piper’s Desiring God.
“The great hindrance to worship is not that we are a pleasure-seeking people, but that we are willing to settle for such pitiful pleasures.
The prophet Jeremiah put it like this:
My people have exchanged their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord; for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:11-13)
The heavens are appalled and shocked when people give up so soon on their quest for pleasure and settle for broken cisterns.”
Dear Lord,
Help us to come before you, not just tomorrow, but every day, seeking the joys of being with you, of knowing you, of knowing how much you love us, how completely you have forgiven us, how fully you have graced us. Let us rest in the realities of who you are and enjoy you and all of your good gifts to us without wanting to replace you with them.
With the joy you grow in us, we pray,
Amen.
by Elizabeth | Aug 27, 2010 | Learning Story
My husband and I are assigned the task of teaching high school seniors a lesson on the Dangers of Alcohol on Sunday. WOW. A sobering subject (no pun intended). Because as much as we enjoy a good glass of wine, we would willingly trade it for the lives of people lost to us through alcohol-addiction or or alcohol-related-death.
That being said, we can NOT smugly sit aside and point fingers at those who struggle with alcohol addiction. I have a powerful addiction too, and the Bible tells me you do too: ADDICTION TO SELF. Add into that substances, activities, relationships that I think I will die if I cannot do or have. I am an addict. That’s why I love grace. Hear from Samson and the Pirate Monks again on the dire need for community along with the gospel to combat addiction, not to mention the stunning reality that addiction sends us flying to God for grace (though sometimes later rather than sooner.)
“God, in his grace, has used addiction to shatter my moralistic understanding of the Christian faith and force me to accept the gospel. I am not a faithful man. That’s why I need a Savior. I cannot live victoriously on my own. That’s why I need a Helper and brothers. I cannot keep my promises to God—the very act of making them is delusional—but God will keep his promises to me.
As a Christian, I am perpetually reduced to the role of a supplicant. No more can I offer God a bargain, his favor in exchange for my faithfulness, or go toe-to-toe with him, demanding payment for years of service. But when I approach him humbly, as a restored prodigal son, he responds with overwhelming generosity to my requests for aid. No fancy prayers are required. In fact, God finds fancy prayers repugnant. He loves it, however, when I acknowledge my need and my belief in his benevolence with a simple one-word prayer: “Help! ” Samson and the Pirate Monks, Nate Larkin
by Elizabeth | Aug 26, 2010 | Learning Story
I love this book. How can you not love a book that acknowledges on the first page, “I haven’t always had friends.” Other than the fact that it’s written for men (which leaves me with the unfortunate, cowardly, potential escape route of saying, “Well, this ISN’T ABOUT WOMEN!”:), it’s an awesome book on why we need gospel community. Read this quote and — don’t raise your hand — but nod just a little if it nailed you the way it did me.
“Most of us are slow to recognize that we have lost the war against our besetting sin. We deceive ourselves about the progress of that war, taking false comfort in inconsequential successes, distracting ourselves with elaborate battle plans and issuing orders to internal forces we cannot control. Our losses continue to mount, affecting everyone around us, but we ignore them. We imagine that we are “fighting the good fight” against sin, but the battle is already lost. All that remains is the formality of surrender—and the opportunity, the wondrous alternative, of surrendering to God instead. Until we grasp the magnitude of our defeat, the prospect of surrendering to God is distasteful to us. We recoil at the thought of giving up, fearing a loss of our imagined liberty, and we frantically carry on our feeble resistance. But on that great and awful day when the inner defensive ring finally collapses, we fall toward God exhausted, and there to our inexpressible relief we find welcome instead of rebuke, dignity instead of shame, and life instead of death.”
