Best Mom!

my mom is better
than yours. gentle, sweet and kind,
and prettier too.

Need of Jesus

Lord Jesus,
I am blind, be thou my light,
   ignorant, be thou my wisdom,
   self-willed, be thou my mind.
Open my ear to grasp quickly thy Spirit's voice,
   and delightfully run after his beckoning hand;
Melt my conscience that no hardness remain,
   make it alive to evil's slightest touch;
When Satan approaches may I flee to thy wounds,
   and there cease to tremble at all alarms.
Be my good shepherd to lead me into the green pastures of thy Word,
   and cause me to lie down beside the rivers of its comforts.
Fill me with peace, that no disquieting worldly gales
   may ruffle the calm surface of my soul.
Thy cross was upraised to be my refuge,
Thy blood streamed forth to wash me clean,
Thy death occurred to give me a surety,
Thy name is my property to save me,
By thee all heaven is poured into my heart,
   but it is too narrow to comprehend thy love.
I was a stranger, an outcast, a slave, a rebel,
   but thy cross has brought me near,
                 has softened my heart,
                 has made me thy Father's child,
                 has admitted me to thy family,
                 has made me joint-heir with thyself.
O that I may love thee as thou lovest me,
   that I may walk worthy of thee, my Lord,
   that I may reflect the image of heaven's first-born.
May I always see thy beauty with the clear eye of faith,
    and feel the power of thy Spirit in my heart,
    for unless he move mightily in me
    no inward fire will be kindled.


Need of Jesus,
from Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions, 
pg 102.

Being an Introverted Pastor/Teacher

Sometimes when I read a blog or an article, it strikes a real chord in my heart.  The other day my wife pointed me to this post on the Desiring God blog that did just that.  I think it struck a chord in her heart on my behalf as well.  I believe that was because it put to words what I experience in my own life.

The blog was about a discussion with John Piper reflecting his 33 years in ministry.  The sentences that caught my attention were:

“It’s amazing how many introverts go into ministry,” Pastor John said of himself and others. But it’s true. For many pastors, hanging out with people is physically draining. “A lot of people would say that’s a bad thing; you should repent of that and turn around and either do something else, or start loving to hang out with people.” 

Or, he said, introverted pastors can use their strengths to intentionally love people. Extroverted pastors and introverted pastors, if they’re born again, both love people, but there remains a tension for the introverted pastor who defines love exclusively in terms of activities in the presence of people.

He went on to discuss how he learned to be who God had created him to be in ministry. It was encouraging to hear.  Mostly because I love the people of my church, genuinely love them, but I have always found personal interactions to be challenging.  Not because I don't want to interact, but I just don't feel good at it. Plus, I love just being at home with a book.

Piper goes on to say,

Plead with God to make your in-disposition to be with people a blessing to people. In other words, I would say after 33 years, my default after preaching is to go home and pray and read, not to hang out for three hours over a meal. That’s my disposition. I do hang out for an hour and pray with people, and I’m glad I do, and it is rewarding to do it.... If you're wired that way, instead of constantly praying God would make you another kind of person, pray that he would make you really useful for people. I think he’s done that for me.... 

I believe what people have benefited from me most is what I have seen in the Bible. I don’t think I have blessed Bethlehem much by being a good organizer or a good model of personal evangelism. I can list a lot of ways they have not benefited from me. But, if I don’t despair, if I say there’s been some good done, I know where it came from — it came from me taking notes over my Bible and wrestling to see how Hebrews 10:10 and 10:14 come together, that was this morning; seeing something I’ve never seen before in the text, and walking into a staff meeting and telling them; walking into a hospital room and telling her; walking into the pulpit and telling them what I saw. And then going home to see some more. 

Take what you see, and then if you’re a writer, you write it. If you’re a preacher, you preach it. If you’re a hanger-outer, tell the hanger-outters-with what you saw this morning.

You can read the entire article by clicking here, that will also take you to a link where you can watch/listen to the entire discussion that happened at Redeemer Bible Church.

Thinking about having this rap battle with my sister later...

I think that +Ashley Harmless and myself could have this rap battle... specially since we share a mama... !

Some good Noise Trade music right now...

If you have never been to NoiseTrade.com, now would be a good time to visit them.

Noise Trade has free music.

Yeah sure, there is the option of leaving the artist a tip, but sometimes I don't really know the artist that well.  There have been a couple of times that I have left a tip for an artist that I knew and I believed in supporting their work (or ministry in some cases).  But sometimes I just download something that sounds interesting, but I have never heard of it before.

If you haven't been there before, you should swing by and pick up Andrew Peterson's The Lost Boy Sampler.  So far I have loved all of Andrew Peterson's work, and this one doesn't seem to be a disappointment.

I also downloaded two albums from The Vespers.  I have never heard of this group, but so far I have really enjoyed what I've heard so far.  In fact, I am listening to them right now. Here is a video of them live in New York.

Taking God Seriously - Book Review

Taking God Seriously by J. I. Packer was not at all what I expected it to be.

I have read a couple of other Packer books.  I have thoroughly enjoyed everything that I have read from him in the past, so when this new book became available through Christian Audio, I was happy to listen to it in order to write a review.

Having read these other books by Packer, I was expecting this book to deal with big thoughts of how we need to take God seriously.  I was ready to soak in some over-arching themes on the importance of really listening to God and doing what He says.

My first surprise came when he started talking extensively about issues in the Anglican church.  Not only did I not know that Packer was Anglican, I had also never seen him refer to any current denominational issues.  This book contains numerous references to current issues that are plaguing the Anglican church and many other churches in the world today.  Much of this book felt like an address to others in the Anglican church to ... well ... take God seriously.

The next surprise that this book delivered was related to the content.  Sure, he addressed some issues that I expected, like repentance, but he also addressed some issues that I didn't expect, like church, baptism and communion.  Even though I didn't necessarily agree with everything he said, I also didn't find myself disagreeing with anything he said either. I found the information landing on very common ground and very Biblical, at the same time. But what made this surprise content really enlightening was that while I was listening to it, I found myself realizing that I hadn't been taking Baptism or Communion as seriously as I should, and that the question of taking God seriously couldn't really be dealt with until these issues were addressed.

If you've never encountered a book by J.I. Packer, this is a great place to start. He has a straight-forward, no-nonsense style of writing that I find refreshing.  He doesn't beat around the bush, he goes straight to the point, and he brought this direct style of writing, which I've normally encountered in his theological works, into this current, culturally relevant book.

Blessed by not being Blessed

The church where I am the pastor has seen some growth lately.  On Easter Sunday we had 4 baptisms, there have been others wanting to join the church, and several others who have been attending on a regular basis for a couple of months now.

I am struggling for the words to try to explain how exciting this has been for us.  You need to understand that we were averaging about 25 people, 3 months ago.  Lately it has been closer to 50 on several Sundays.  Then, this Easter we had 75 people in our building, when the previous Easter we had 15.  On a personal note, before the four baptisms that I performed on Easter Sunday, I had only performed three other baptisms total... in my whole life!  It has been very exciting.

To top everything else off, the people that are coming are the exact sort of people that I had been hoping for.  Nearly everyone that is new is someone who has either never been to church, or has not been to church in countless years.  There are even several who attended Edgewood when I was a child, who have come back now.  More than one person was convinced that the walls would come crashing down if they ever set foot in a church, and yet, here they are.

When I first came to Edgewood to be the Pastor, I had hopes of a revived church.  I prayed for it, I longed for it, and I diligently sought God for it. But instead of growing, we actually got a little smaller.  There were some families that just stopped coming.  Then there were some regulars who weren't as regular.  Things were getting quite slim, and there were several Sundays that the crickets were chirping and the tumbleweeds were blowing through.  We were hoping and praying for God to bring the unchurched through our doors, we were inviting people left and right, and our desire was simply in the Gospel of Jesus Christ being spread in our town.

To be totally honest, my confidence plummeted.  I started thinking that all of my sermons were horribly presented.  I started questioning my interactions with other people... was I nice enough?  ...did I say enough?  Everyone that left, I took it personally.  Every criticism was really a criticism of me.

But then something really neat and totally unexpected happened.  I became nothing.

It happened when one particular couple left the church. I couldn't believe it. I had tried everything I knew.  And with these people, I had really attempted to reach out to them and encourage them in any way that I could.  All of the stops had been pulled out and I still came up lacking.  I was really nothing in the process, but that is a good thing.

I mean, isn't this Christ's church anyway.  Isn't He the one who builds it?  Isn't it the Spirit who empowers it? I wasn't attempting to find my "nothingness" in the church, it just happened.  Then the more "nothing" I became, and the more okay I was with being nothing, the more the gospel started to seep into my life, becoming a part of my very psyche.

I really started to believe that it was all of grace.  It was all about what Jesus does and not about what I can do.  Consider how the gospel can play into our service:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 

(1 Corinthians 1:26-29, ESV)

What a blessing it has been in God's timing.  I know for a fact, that if God would have brought people to our church when I first came here, I would have been tempted to glory in myself instead of in Him.  God has blessed me, by not blessing me, when I thought He should.