Revival from the Rubbish

In Nehemiah, we read of Sanballat, no friend to the returning exiles of Jerusalem, when observing their efforts to rebuild the walls of the city, asked:
“What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?” (Nehemiah 4:2 ESV)

For the answer, we go to Pastor and Missionary FW Boreham: “‘Will they bring a revival out of rubbish-heap?’ asks Sanballat. Of course. A rubbish-heap is God’s raw material. A revival is His finished product…the Church of Jesus Christ knows how to TRANSFORM this mass of refuse into a field of roses. Paul understood the magic secret. He looked upon the unbridled lust, the grinding tyranny, and the hideous idolatry of the city of the Caesars, and was unabashed. And he gave his reason. The GOSPEL, he said, is the power of God unto TRANSFORMATION. He saw that the foulest filth of Rome might become the fairest fragrance of the New Jerusalem.”

Let this truth take root. Though we were once rubbish-heaps, today we are counted as a ‘pearl of great price’. Where once God looked at us in pity, today He sees only the finished work of His Son.

Boreham on Absent-mindedness

“Jesus took great care to make His virtues habitual. “As His custom was, He went up to the synagogue.” He knew that, unless the minor graces become mechanical, the major graces must become impossible. I have often thought that, in His earlier days — the days of His boyhood, the days of His youth, the days of His labor at the bench — Jesus must have schooled Himself to do absentmindedly a thousand little thoughtful and unselfish kindnesses or He could never have brought Himself, in the crisis of His life and the vigor of His manhood, to die for us men on the bitter and shameful Cross.” – FW Boreham, The Home of the Echoes

The Myth of National Stories

Unless you live in a cave, you are no doubt aware that a couple of bombs were recently detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  Before that, some guy killed his own mother, stole her guns and went on a shooting rampage at an elementary school of all places.  Tragedies.  Heartbreaking tragedies that make you thankful that your kid didn’t attend Sandy Hook Elementary or that you weren’t on pace for a 4 hour marathon in Boston on Tax Day.  Other tragedies such as the Joplin tornado or Gulf Oil spill come to mind as recent tragic events that got our nation’s attention.  Or at least got the media’s attention.  But did any of the aforementioned tragedies keep you awake at night?

Quick: What is the unemployment rate in Seattle?  My guess is you don’t know.  Nor do you care.  There seems to be a causal relationship between caring and knowing.  How many people will die of AIDS in Miami-Dade county this year?  You probably don’t know that number either.  Nor do I, for the record.

Have you ever stopped and considered that the US is just too big and too abstract for us to be emotionally invested in?  Is the unemployment rate of Seattle more meaningful than Vancouver, Canada?  It is for the ‘Buy American’ crowd.  It isn’t for me.  Does an oil spill off of the coast of Mississippi actually cause you more anxiety than a similar spill off the coast of Africa?  How can we possibly ‘care’ about all of these so-called National Stories?

Where am I going with this?  I have come to understand that there are only 2 kinds of stories in life:  Tribal stories and human stories.  There is no such thing as a national story and anyone peddling national stories is probably looking for money or power or both.  You don’t care about the Boston bombing.  Unless your brother was running in the race.  What percentage of Americans can actually name 1 single kid that was tragically killed at Sandy Hook?  I know I can’t.  My point is this: all of those stories, tragic by every definition, are tragic because they are human stories, but do not elicit care or concern from me because they did not involve my tribe.  And they are not MORE tragic because they happened to Americans!!!!  Had a bomb gone off at the finish line of the London Marathon my reaction would have been 100% the same!  I would have probably been happier only because it wouldn’t have dominated the TV programming for the next few days.

Politicians need to create national stories to validate their own quest for your power.  The media needs to do the same, except they seek ratings.  But if you are honest, there really is no such thing as a national story.  If you love Boston or Marathons than my guess the story was meaningful to you.  But that is because it affected your ‘tribe’, your people if you will.  If you don’t care about Boston or Marathons than you no doubt went about your day like normal.

Don’t get me wrong, those events are still tragic.  But only because we share a common connection in our humanity.  Sharing national citizenship will not make me more emotionally vested in a story.  And in reality, nor will it you.

Stop buying the lies that national stories are important.  If Maine was sold to Canada tomorrow, how would it affect your life?  If you woke up today and found out that the US purchased Haiti, would their recent earthquake become more important to you?  Of course not.  Just over 2 years ago, a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami rocked Japan.  What a tragedy.  A horrific event to say the least.  But my guess is it garnered the same reaction from you as any of the other tragedies that we have read about in recent memory.  Unless of course your son was on a missions trip to Japan when it happened.  Now it’s tribal. And now it is meaningful.

What are the ramifications for eliminating the National Story narrative from you thinking?  I leave you to wrestle with that question.

A review of Jeremiah Burroughs’ “Contentment, Prosperity, and God’s Glory”

I was told once that the sharpest knife cuts the cleanest and heals the fastest. That statement holds true for the new edition of an old Puritan classic, “Contentment, Prosperity, and God’s Glory” by Jeremiah Burroughs. The publisher, Reformation Heritage Books has taken this classic and did an amazing job of updating it without compromising the content. Most Christian readers, if they are aware of Burroughs, know him from his more popular work, “The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment”, of which this work is an epilogue of sorts.

Taken from his studies on Philippians 4:11-12, Burroughs is laboring to convey to the Christian that though being poor is difficult, when it comes to the Glory of God and the praise and worship He is due, being `full’ or `prosperous’ is far more difficult. Here is a sentence that captures his message: “When a man knows how to enjoy God in his abundance, to be led to Him by his possessions, to acknowledge Him in all things, and to be thankful to Him in all things, he has truly learned how to abound”. And that is truly what Burroughs is aiming at: teaching the Christian that has been blessed by God with riches and fullness in this life, to be very careful, to learn how to be full, and to use the blessing of riches for the spreading of the Gospel.

I had a season in my life where I made more than the median income and much more than I am making now. All of the money is gone. Every penny. So as I read the book, I felt the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit working through the author to shine His light upon my foolishness. It wasn’t that I was out wasting the money in ways that would shame the church or bring reproach to our Savior, but certainly in my days of prosperity my daily time with Him was less frequent, my prayers were shallow and superficial, and my overall spiritual health was in need of improvement. In reading this book, I now know why. I had not learned how to be full. I needed to learn, as Paul declared in Philippians, `to know how to abound.’

If your desire is for wealth or at least material comfort in this world, please read this book. If you are already blessed by God in such a way that your `abound’, please read this book. If you are of lesser means and you envy the rich, please read this book. And if you are in fact perfectly content with whatever state God has you, please read this book so as to keep your guard up.

Do not be intimidated by the fact that this was written many centuries ago, it is fresh and relevant as if it were written today. I enthusiastically recommend this book, regardless of where you are in your spiritual journey.

A Review of John Crotts’ Bitesize Biograph-John Newton

John Newton lived a remarkable life, a life filled with Gospel themes of rebellion, redemption, revival and restoration.  Most, if they know of Newton, know of him through his association with the famous hymn that bears his signature, Amazing Grace.  But limiting Newton’s life to that single work is like limiting New York City to the Empire State Building.  Great in its own right, but still so much more to see.

 

The book, Bitesize Biographies-John Newton, by Pastor John Crotts is a convenient, devotional biography of the great English hymn writer and pastor that sets out to give the reader a more accurate understanding of who Newton was, where he failed, and how our Lord harvested tremendous ministerial fruit from this man.  The book begins by recounting the turmoil of his upbringing and subsequent debauchery as a sailor on the high seas.  He was insubordinate, mean-spirited, and altogether a burden on the captains he sailed with, leading him to be in a constant state of flux regarding his employment.  The book also deals with his captivity in Africa, his never-ending love for a young lady, Polly, and finally his conversion to Christ.  The middle of the book shares the joys of ministry that Newton experienced along side some giants of the faith in Carey, Fuller, and of course, Wilberforce.  I have long found his very special relationship with William Cowper to be inspiring and moving, one that was bathed in a spirit of grace and patience.  Today’s church has much to learn from Newton in how he so gently handled the issue of mental illness, suicide, and depression.  The final section of the book, by far the best section, contains expositions by Crotts of ‘Amazing Grace’ and some of the letters that Newton penned in his life.

 

The book is not without issue however.  While I found the subject matter intriguing, I struggled to get past the prose.  Crotts writes this book more like a very lengthy blog entry than like a well-researched biography.  He does not use traditional paragraph formatting, but chose to separate his paragraphs with spaces, much like this review.  And his use of exclamation points borders on being amatuer!  The narrative section of the book is filled with them!  I found them to be distracting and frustrating!  Finally, he seems fixated on trying to determine the precise point of Newton’s conversion, only to state that it is impossible to truly know when Newton did finally respond to the Gospel.  Then why ask so many times?  The reader is left to believe that Newton really only turned to Christ after his outward struggles with sin had subsided.  That’s not the Gospel, nor is it what I believe that Crotts was intending, but his repeated attempts to answer the question regarding Newton’s regeneration leaves the reader wondering if regeneration and a fierce struggle with sin can’t in some cases exist simultaneously.  My fear is that those mature in their walk with Christ will find his prose distracting and those immature in their walk will find his obsession with the moment of Newton’s regeneration confusing.  And for those two reasons, I would struggle to recommend this work.  By all means, the body of Christ will be blessed to study the fascinating life of John Newton, but perhaps a look at other works would bear more fruit.

A Review of Scott Petty’s ‘Suffering & Evil’

The question of the Christian God’s existence and the role of suffering in the world of the Christian God is inevitable.  Not only is it inevitable, but it is also a good question.  A meaningful question.

Works that address the question simply restated, “How can a good God exists with so much evil and suffering in the world” abound, but too many of them default to the ‘Free-will’ argument or more recently “Open Theism” or “Open Futureism”.

Therefore it pleased me greatly to read ‘Suffering & Evil’ by Scott Petty, an installment from the ‘Little Black Books’ designed to help young adults tackle large-life issues.  Mr. Petty at no point falls back on the ‘Free-will’ argument, choosing instead to use the Scriptures, particularly Job, to help the reader understand how a Sovereign God can in fact exist in a world full of suffering and evil.  He essentially narrows his argument down to the fact that suffering and evil, though present universally among humanity, is painful for two reasons:  1) We haven’t seen God with our eyes, which may help us in knowing that He is taking more than a passing interest in us and 2) Our humanity limits our perspective: we can’t see the whole puzzle.  And though painful, we can trust that God will be sovereign in our suffering, as He was with Job’s and that in the end, when we know more and see more, we will in fact see that the suffering was for our betterment.

Often times, when this question of ‘Theodicy’ comes up, I am inclined to challenge people to read Alexander Pope’s ‘Essay on Man’, as over the years I have gleaned much truth from it.  However, it is a challenging read.  To a lesser degree, William Cowper’s ‘God Moves in a Mysterious Way’ is another great poem dealing this question.  But if prose is needed, and a short work at that, I can easily recommend Petty’s work.

I applaud Mr. Petty’s efforts, to answer a ‘deep-end of the pool’ question, all the while keeping the answer very palatable.  Though specifically intended for a young adult audience, I believe that anyone struggling with this important question can find comfort in the truth of these pages.

A Thought, A Picture, Some Perspective

“Blessed are they that mourn!” It is the glory of the gospel of Jesus that it stoops to the lowliest, bringing the boon of happiness to the hearts that need it most. – FW Boreham

A Review of J.I. Packer’s ‘Puritan Portraits’

If your historical understanding of Christianity is anything like mine, than the Puritans were nothing more than some grumpy, English-speaking Calvinists with nothing better to do than invent creative ways to shame the likes of Hester Prynne and others for not living up to their pietistic standards.  And though I have little doubt that some Puritans could actually be described as such, I am sure that description would be more worthy of “Puritanism”, rather than many of the Puritans themselves.  Thanks to J.I. Packer’s new book, “Puritan Portraits”, I certainly possess a more accurate picture of what it meant to be a Puritan, what they contributed to their local churches, and ultimately what their contributions have meant to the entire globe.

Packer focuses this work on the a few of the more well-known Puritans and helps his reader understand that these great thinkers were not in a historical vacuum, but were a significant part of the England’s overall development of late 16th Century through the mid-17th Century.  These men shared the stage with Shakespeare and Milton, Cromwell and Locke, Newton and a host of other men that quite honestly made history wholesale.  But holding down many of the pulpits in England during the same time these great men were changing history were John Owen, John Bunyan, Matthew Henry, Stephen Charnock, John Flavel, Henry Scougal, Thomas Boston (in Scotland), William Perkins, and Richard Baxter.  There were obviously many many others, but Packer has chosen to use his prose for these portraits.

From Packer we learn the historical context that created the need for these Puritan thinkers (a term many of them rejected) and what motivated them to not only leverage their great voices, but their even mightier pens.  It is in fact on the works of these men that Packer devotes his energy, as most of these portraits have previously appeared as the introductions to stand alone works by the aforementioned authors.  But, I appreciate the fact that Packer did not focus on the the more well known works that many of us would easily recognize, such as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Matthew Henry’s Bible Commentary, Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, or John Owen’s Death of Death.  Instead, the reader is made aware of other contributions these authors made, smaller in scale, but not necessarily in worth to the kingdom.  I happened to be reading Boston’s ‘Crook in the Lot’ before I became aware of this work and feel now that as I finish ‘Crook’, I will have even more appreciation by better understanding where Boston was coming from.

If the word ‘Puritan’ for you has become synonymous with Christian Pharisaism, then I encourage you to pick up this book and get a fresh understanding of what the Puritan’s were about, how ‘pastoral’ they in fact were, and how serious each of them approached their relationship with a living Savior.

Finally, I was expecting much of the history motif of this book, but I was not expecting to be spiritually enriched by this book.  And I must say, spiritually enriched is how I would describe myself after concluding ‘Puritan Portraits’.  Of course, Packer warns this should happen in the beginning, but I was shocked to the degree of sensitivity this book brought to the surface.

The work can be purchased here.

A Daily Thought

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. – Edmund Burke

Guess who said this?

The following quote is from a US Senator in the 20th century discussing why minimum-wage laws were a good idea for his state-namely they would price-out the ‘colored worker’.  I am not sure that speeches like this could be given in today’s Senate chamber, but it least it can be said that they used to be more honest.

Of course, having on the market a rather large source of cheap labor depresses wages outside of that group, too – the wages of the white worker who has to compete.  And when an employer can substitute a colored worker at a lower wage – and there are, as you pointed out, these hundreds of thousands looking for decent work – it affects the whole wage structure of an area, doesn’t it?

Care to take a guess who would make such a bold statement?

According to this Senator’s line of thinking, without minimum-wage laws, black people would come in and steal jobs that should be for white folk.  Is it a stretch to say that minimum-wage laws were designed explicitly to keep blacks unemployed?

The answer…Senator and soon-to-be President, John F. Kennedy.  Tell me why blacks love the Democratic Party?

The great, Don Boudreaux has more here.