Borrowed Light: Today in Blogworld 01/01

Mike Leake

Happy New Year! Not only is this New Year’s Day but it is also my Birthday. Not my physical birthday but my spiritual birthday. 8 years ago today the Lord effectually drew me to himself. Actually, if I were to be speaking theologically my actual “new birth-day” probably came some time before January 1st. Nonetheless, January 1st is the day that my eyes were opened to see the beauty of Christ.

There are not many blog posts yet to speak of, so this will be short.

One quote that gripped me this morning was by Ray Ortlund. In his Happy New Year post he encourages us with these words: “Yes, we live in an age of deep darkness. But so did the apostles. They did not moan, ‘What’s the world coming to?’They shouted, ‘Look what’s come to the world!'” This serves as a reminder that God is still on His throne. No matter how dark the world gets we must remember–greater is He.

Another great thing to remember this year is this quote by C.J. Mahaney: “If there’s anything in life that we should be passionate about, it’s the gospel. And I don’t mean passionate about sharing it with others. I mean passionate about thinking about it, dwelling on it, rejoicing in it, allowing it to color the way we look at the world. Only one thing can be of first importance to each of us. And only the gospel ought to be.” (HT: Of First Importance)

Timmy Brister posts a completed year in review with all of the statistics for his blog, and links to all of his posts. As I am fairly new to his blog, I find some of the titles quite intriguing and will probably check a few out.

Nathan Busenitz compiles Edwards’ resolutions into a Top Ten list. He also reminds us that our resolutions should look more like the God-centered resolves of men like Edwards than the shallow man-centered promises of the world.

Borrowed Light: Today in Blogworld 12/31

Mike Leake

Looks like bloggers are back to work this morning; as soon as I looked at my Google Reader I noticed 28 new posts. It being New Year’s Eve, I thought it wise to point you to a couple articles on the New Year. Matt Harmon points us to Jonathan Edwards Resolutions; which are always good to read this time of year. It is especially important that we remember Edwards’ beginning statement: “Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat him, by his grace, to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ’s sake.” I reminded our youth on Sunday that even if we make our New Year’s resolution something to the effect of “determining to know nothing in 2008 but Jesus Christ and Him crucified”, we will fail by January 2nd or 3rd. Therefore we must live under and preach the gospel to ourselves daily.

Many people use this time of year to reflect upon the past year, and sometimes their entire lives. John Piper considers it a yearly dress rehearsal for meeting Jesus. Therefore, this time of year can serve to awaken us to a realization of another year passed and another moment closer to meeting the Lord. Pyromaniacs use the last words of Benazir Bhutto to remind us of the frailty of life. How ironic that her last words were “Long live Bhutto”. As this year draws to an end we must remember that the only way to accurately proclaim “Long live…” is to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Last night Tim Challies summarized the Reality Check Conference. He concluded his blogging on sessions 6 and 7.

Timmy Brister concluded his 2007 Year in Review with post 10-6 and 5-1. One of these posts that particularly caught my interest was On Hitting Homiletical Homeruns. The conversation was also carried over at Said at Southern, here. The discussion is over plagiarism in the pulpit. The discussion began when James Merritt suggested going to his website and preaching his sermon instead of spending so much time putting together their own. This is not an uncommon thing. I frequently get fliers in the mail encouraging me to stop preparing sermons and do what really matters (and apparently what I should really want to do)–spend time with our youth. I wonder if this might be an unbiblical practice on top of another (shout out to Garrett). I wonder if we had a plurality of elders maybe a teaching pastor could spend time on sermon prep and the other elders could do some of those other things. Maybe the pastor was not meant to be the lone ranger and having to rip sermons off the internet because he spent 30 hours this week at the hospital and in counseling.

The 9 Marks newsletter has been posted online. This newsletter focuses on Corporate Prayer and will be worthy of checking out.

John Piper points us to Clyde Kilby’s 10 Resolutions for Mental Health.

Lastly, the Irish Calvinist draws our attention to a video posted on James White’s site. It compares Joel Osteen, The Secret, and Stuart Smalley. It would be humorous if Osteen did not boast 20,000+ deceived members. The reason I am so strongly opposed to Osteen is because he is a false prophet that deceives many. He preaches a half (maybe quarter) truth that is divorced from the bloody Cross of the Gospel. The problem is not that God doesn’t want to bless us. The problem is that the blessing is not in material things it is in God Himself, and it comes through the Cross. Not only the Cross of Christ but also ours (Matthew 10:38). Here is the video:

2007 Year in Review at FBC New London

Mike Leake

The title may be a little deceptive. This will not be a review of all of the ministries here at FBC New London, but only the student ministries.

The first part of January saw us finish a sermon series on Hosea. We finished off January by looking at Fad Jesus. We were introduced to Superhero “Jesus”, Cool “Jesus”, Homeboy “Jesus”, and South Park “Jesus”. All of these, as we noted, fall well short of the biblical Jesus. We also had a lock-in at the beginning of the new year.

February was given to relationships. Nikki and I told our story. We also gave some advice on “dating” and laid out for the youth biblical courtship. During the month of February we also had Soup-er Bowl Sunday.

In March we began a 17 week series on Philippians: Advancing the Gospel. This series lasted until June 27th. (It is my hope to put this entire series, as well as a series on 1 John, available online). During this time we celebrated graduated with our seniors. We held “revival” at our church in March. We went on a mission trip to Columbia to help plant Heritage Baptist Church.
Also, as soon as the school semester was over we began our Ministers In Training program. This lasted throughout the summer. We also went to Six Flags in June (or maybe August, I forget)

July was an extremely busy month. We had 4th of July missions, church camp, and VBS. During VBS week we looked at 5 Dangers. Also in July we had Youth Wednesday. That week we were honored to have Ryan Lake preach the message and our youth praise band led the worship.

The first weekend in August we held our second-annual Evangelism Seminar. This year we looked at Evangelism in a Postmodern World. August was actually dedicated to teaching on evangelism. Our sermons for August were geared toward preparing the students to enter their mission field at school.

In September we began a sermon series on the Minor Prophets. The series lasted until last week, when we summarized all of the messages by telling of the Promised King. Each week was an overview sermon on each of the 12 Minor Prophets. As far as activities during this time we were relatively inactive, except the occasional FCA.

These are a few of the highlights of the year for us. Each of these activities and sermons carry memories for me. Some of the messages were used by God to bring salvation to some of our students. We were encouraged by having a few baptisms of our youth this year. Also the number of students involved in Ministers in Training was highly encouraging. Many students also grew deeper in their enjoyment and love for Christ.

2007 was a good year and God blessed us in numerous ways. If I forgot something (like the making of a few of our short films) then please share some of your memories of 2007. My prayer for this year is that we might deepen in our love for Christ. I also am praying that our passion for serving the King might ever-increase.

Borrowed Light: Today in Blogworld 12/29

Mike Leake

At 2 Worlds Collide, Don Whitney gives us 31 Things to Ask Yourself this New Year. This first question sets the God-centered pace of these questions: “What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?”

Tim Challies is attending the Reality Check Conference (sponsored by Anchored in Truth Ministries) and blogging after the sessions. So far he has posted on Session 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Sounds like some really great Christ-centered preaching and teaching at this conference. This would be a good conference to take our young people to next year.

Timmy Brister continues his year in review–today is 15-11.

And lastly, as I post this, the Patriots are set to play the Giants in hopes of going 16-0. Tom Ascol reminds us to be praying for Tom Brady tonight as we watch this game.

Tomorrow (or possibly late tonight) I will be posting a 2007 at FBC New London Year in Review.