I absolutely love this article.
How History’s Take On Two Back-to-Back Presidents Exposes Our Shifting Views of Sin
We really do reap the consequences of our “acceptable sins” as much as those which aren’t so acceptable.
Why Marriage is Better than Cohabitation
Amen.
I am so glad that someone has said this.
Here is how to properly wrap cords…I need this:
I have a confession to make. It likely won’t be a popular one, and I truly might just be being a curmudgeon. Part of me wants to dismiss the whole thing and say, “well, I don’t think God really cares so long as you are worshipping Him”, but in the Old Testament that attitude towards worship never went too well. So, I’m going to say it and then duck.
I look forward to every Monday morning listening to my new Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify. On occasion I’ll discover new bands or new songs that I really love. And Spotify has picked up on my love for Jesus but I don’t think they’ve quite gotten my doctrinal stances. They play lots of songs from churches that I don’t have much affinity with. And so many of these songs are directed to the Holy Spirit. And that’s where I start to duck, as I share my unpopular opinion that I’m not a big fan of songs directed to the Holy Spirit.
Don’t get me wrong. The Spirit is fully God. And as such deserves every ounce of worship that is directed to the Father, Son, and Spirit. So I’m not bothered because these “Spirit songs” are some how idolatry and worshiping One who doesn’t deserve it. But the pattern that I see in the New Testament is that prayer and worship are often to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.
Many of these songs are asking the Spirit to do something. Fall on us. Breathe on us. Fill us. Shape us. Come to our worship service. Rain down. Flood us. Overcome us. And I think even one I heard recently asked the Spirit to break out.
I’ve really tried to get to the bottom of my distaste on this thing. If I am just being a curmudgeon, why? What is my biblical stance here? I know I’m always a bit bothered by songs which seem to be giving God permission to do stuff—as if He really needs it. But even still, there are several places in Scripture where we see examples of believers calling upon God to do stuff—like deliver us, transform us, etc. So, I really don’t think that’s my problem.
But I do think it is connected to my problem. We just simply do not find believers in the New Testament asking the Spirit to do stuff. Consider Luke 11:13. Here Jesus explicitly says, “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” I mean, if we are supposed to ask the Spirit to come and join us, or to fill us, or any of the above I’d think Jesus would have just said, “Pray to the Spirit and he’ll come”. Even Acts 1 speaks of the Spirit coming as the Father’s gift to us. And lest you think this was just pre-Pentecost this same pattern is all throughout Acts. The Spirit’s reception is directly tied to the proclamation of Jesus. You don’t see any examples of Paul laying hands on someone and saying, “Holy Spirit, come and enter this person”.
Again, the pattern is to pray to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. And it seems like our worship is to be similar. Ephesians 5:18-21 and Colossians 3:16-17 seem to follow the same pattern.
I think why I’m most bothered by this is that it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about the role of the Spirit. I’m always skeptical when I hear of a Spirit-driven worship service which is very light on Jesus and heavy on the Spirit. I say that because the Spirit is all about Jesus. I suppose I’m fine with these Spirit songs so long as we really know what we are singing—are we wanting the Spirit to fall upon us so that we can have great feelings and emotional experiences or because we deeply want to be rocked to our core? Do we want the Spirit to come and convict us deeply about the way we’ve been talking to our wife, and we want Him to shine the light of the Holy Christ upon our lives so we can find not only forgiveness in the Savior but also transformation through the very same Lord. Are our prayers and songs and please for the Spirit more about Christ and His glory or us?
I like the way Art Azurdia says it, speaking of seeking after emotional experiences he says one of the problems with this is “that the ministry of the Holy Spirit has become Christian-centered rather than Christ-centered. At this very point a great deal of contemporary evangelicalism steadily reveals its failure to recognize the predominant ministry of the Holy Spirit.” (Azurdia, 50)
Azurdia goes on to quote JI Packer who says this:
The Spirit’s message to us is never, ‘Look at Me; listen to Me; come to Me; get to know Me;’ but always, ‘Look at Him, and see His glory; listen to Him, and hear His word; go to Him, and have His life; get to know Him, and taste His gift of joy and peace.’ The Spirit, we might say, is the matchmaker, the celestial marriage broker, whose role it is to bring us and Christ together and ensure that we stay together. (Azurdia, 50-51)
So I’m just a bit unsettled by all these Spirit songs. And I suppose I’m bothered because it feels a bit to me like how my daughter acted in the store the other day. She was playing in the doll section at Wal-Mart and told one of the dolls that she was going to take her home, and that she’d be her new friend and all that jazz. But she was misunderstanding the way this thing works—you don’t ask the doll if you can take her home. You ask daddy who has to fork over the cash to pay for it.
It’s an imperfect illustration but the person of the Spirit and His indwelling presence is the gift of the Father who was purchased for us through the Son. As I read the New Testament I don’t see us receiving this gift by become Spirit-directed but we receive the Spirit when we plead with the Father to give us the Spirit so that we’ll be all about Jesus. We plead with the Father to give us this good gift.
I suppose I simply wish our songs reflected this Christ-centeredness a bit more…
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Photo source: here
How to Diagnose and Treat Pastoral Authoritarianism
I wish this weren’t a problem, but it is.
3 Reasons My Idols are Better Than Jesus
I don’t necessarily agree with the idol factory metaphor, but this is why they are so appealing.
20 Quick Tips to Improve Your Productivity
Tim knows what he is talking about here. I’ve tried some of these…usually fall back into bad habits, though.
Bring Back the Church Prayer Meeting
We still have a prayer time on Wednesday evenings but it has morphed into Bible study time as well. I’m trying hard to find the balance here and teach our people to be desperate in prayer. This is one area where I often fear one of my weaknesses will be reflected in our local church. Lord, help us.
This is part two to Tom Nettles speaking on Spurgeon’s approach to the Bible:
A couple years ago I wrote an article giving Six Tips for Helping the Busiest of Pastors to Start Writing. I wrote that as an associate pastor whose time was spent a bit differently than it is now as a senior pastor. I’m one of those really busy pastors right now who has a passion for writing well but I’m struggling to find the time to do so. I thought I’d dust off that article and see how well I can apply it to my current situation.
Here are my six tips in their original form…I’ll provide comments afterwards:
Six Tips for Helping the Busiest of Pastors to Start Writing
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Looking back on these six tips I wouldn’t change a thing. Especially if I was communicating to a pastor who was just beginning to add writing to his ministry. I still believe pastors should be writers—maybe not published writers, but intentional writers nonetheless. And I believe these six tips would help a busy pastor to prioritize. But now that my schedule is different than it was a couple years ago, I think I’d add one more thing.
7. Block off two periods of time per day for writing but expect to only get one of them. This is the part that I am struggling with the most. I have so many pressing needs and so many thoughts running through my head that devoting time to writing is difficult. I have several ideas for articles but I don’t have the time to write them. I think my first tip is good—but it needs a bit more. It takes time to edit a sermon into a series of blog posts. If I’m not intentional about my time it is going to be taken up. So, what I’ve started doing is setting a bit of time for writing in the morning and some for writing in the afternoon. But rarely do I get both of these times. Yet, if I have two of them I can be a bit more flexible with my schedule. Rarely, will I have two emergencies hit in the same day.
To be honest, I’m still struggling through this adjustment of how my day is spent. One thing that I haven’t addressed, because frankly I haven’t figured it out, is how to have myself emotionally ready to write. What I mean is that just because I have time scheduled to write at 2:00 it doesn’t mean that at 2:00 I’m going to have a mind ready to write. So what I’m having to learn to do is to know my body. I have to know when my mind is sharpest and most conducive to writing and when I’m probably just going to stare at a computer screen. But even still, if my 1:00-2:00 is spent on something that is emotionally taxing I’m not going to be able to write as well during that time. I suppose I need to allow myself a bit more freedom to juggle.
If you are a busy pastor who also writes…how do you do it? What tips would you give?
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Photo source: here