Today in Blogworld 04.23.13

Mike Leake

Letter to a Parent Grieving the Loss of a Child

I wish letter like this were foreign and unhelpful. Sadly, they aren’t. So this letter from Piper would be very helpful to those grieving the loss of a child.

Top 10 Ways to Ruin Your Child’s Imagination

If you want to ruin your child’s imagination so that you can exert mind control over him/her, this is the way to do it. Or if you’re a good parent and want to know what not to do.

Responding to Sexual Brokenness in Our Families and Churches

I appreciated this piece by Lore Ferguson. “If you have a background with sexual brokenness, whether you were abused or the abuser, the seductress or the succumbed, you have the opportunity to walk free from that.”

This, then, is how you could pray

This is a letter from a dad to his son on praying in public. This is really helpful. I’ve worked with teens for over a decade now and this is a common concern for them.

I don’t know why I found this so funny, but I did:

God’s Wrath and the Boston Bombers

Mike Leake 1 Comment

In Revelation 15-16 we see people and angels in heaven praising God for the execution of His wrath. That’s hard to swallow. I know that we are to praise God for all of his attributes and all of his actions—but it’s hard to fathom praising God for His wrath.

Watching the news last Friday evening helped me to get a faint picture of how we might praise God for His wrath. The picture to the right is from the Friday evening when Dzhokkar Tsarnaev was finally captured. The crowds gathered to cheer on the police as they escorted the scene.

This gives us a picture of what is going on Revelation 15-16. Justice is being served. Things are being made right. And it’s good for us to clap in those moments. As Wayne Grudem writes:

As with the other attributes of God, this is an attribute for which we should thank and praise God. It may not immediately appear to us how this can be done, since wrath seems to be such a negative concept. Viewed alone, it would arouse only fear and dread. Yet it is helpful for us to ask what God would be like if he were a God that did not hate sin. He would then be a God who either delighted in sin or at least was not troubled by it. Such a God would not be worthy of our worship, for sin is hateful and it is worthy of being hated. Sin ought not to be. It is in fact a virtue to hate evil and sin and we rightly imitate this attribute of God when we feel hatred against great evil, injustice, and sin. (Grudem, Systematic Theology, 206)

God has given us those who “bear the sword” and execute His judgment upon sin and injustice. This is but a preview of the full justice that God will eventually execute. As we cheer on those that brought justice to the Boston bombers—we are in fact cheering on the wrath of God.

Yet, grace gives us pause

I should be in that cop car. I should be the one of whom all the righteous clap as I’m escorted into hell. But I’m not. Grace stepped in. I will never face the wrath of God because it has been swallowed up in Jesus.

This reminds me that I don’t see things quite rightly yet. I do not see human sin in all of its ugliness. I do not yet see the grace of God in all of its fullness. But someday I will. Someday I will, through grace, clap as God’s justice is brought about.

Until that day I have a mixture of emotions and response. I marvel at the fact that I’m not in that cop car, that I have breath in my lungs, and grace poured out upon me. I go as a minister of reconciliation, telling the world that the wrath of God can be averted, that Christ has drank it to the dregs. I weep because people still grieve, justice isn’t fully accomplished, sin still has a say, and the next murderous outrage is still on the horizon. And yet I rejoice in hope, knowing that someday the Lord will set all things right.

Though I still don’t fully know how to worship and praise God for His wrath, I do know that I long for things to be made right. And with that I can only cry out, Maranatha!

Today in Blogworld 04.22.13

Mike Leake

Dead Leaders Make Dead People

A remember that a ministers own spiritual well-being has a bearing on the people he leads.

The Boston Bombers Were Outside Their House

Here is an account of a couple believers who lived right next to the shootout with police and the Boston bombers.

The Pastor’s Justification: Interview with Jared Wilson

I’m excited to get Jared Wilson’s newest book, The Pastor’s Justification. Here Brandon Smith interviews him about this project.

Real Men In a Really Loud World

What is the identity of a real man? Our world is noisy in answering that question. Dan Sardinas urges us to answer that question through the gospel.

And you thought your city had a pothole problem:

It All Comes Back to Jesus

Mike Leake

I was reminded this morning of the VBS theme from a few years ago. All I remember was something about a boomerang express, a kangaroo, and the fact that it all comes back to Jesus.

I also remembered this quote from Christopher J.H. Wright:

“Ultimately all that will be there in the new, redeemed creation will be there  because of the cross.  And conversely, all that will not be there (suffering, tears, sin, Satan, sickness, oppression, corruption, decay and death) will not be there because they will have been defeated and destroyed by the cross.  That is the length, breadth, height and depth of God’s idea of redemption.  It is exceedingly good news.  It is the font of all our mission.

So it is my passionate conviction that holistic mission must have a holistic theology of the cross.  That includes the conviction that the cross must be as a central to our social engagement as it is to our evangelism.  There is no other power, no other resource, no other name through which we can offer the whole Gospel to the whole person and to the whole world than Jesus Christ crucified and risen.”  (Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God, pages 315-316)

It really is all about the pre-eminent Christ.