Robert, Restless and Always Reforming

John Wesley

I remember listening to John Piper preach and he said a word that has rung in my ear ever since when it comes down to money. I also bumped into this truth again sometime later in his book Don’t Waste Your Life around page 111.  

“God has given us money to use money to show that God, not possessions is our treasure”. – John Piper 

In truth I have found that Christians who worship God, not money, prefer to live humbly and give extravagantly. This was fleshed out in the life of John Wesley the open-air preacher who is considered along with his brother Charles Wesley as the founders of the Methodist movement. Here is an excerpt of an article from © Desiring God on his life & giving. 

Take John Wesley for example. He was one of the great evangelists of the 18th Century, born in 1703. In 1731 he began to limit his expenses so that he would have more money to give to the poor. In the first year his income was 30 pounds and he found he could live on 28 and so gave away two. In the second year his income doubled but he held his expenses even, and so he had 32 pounds to give away (a comfortable year’s income). In the third year his income jumped to 90 pounds and he gave away 62 pounds. In his long life Wesley’s income advanced to as high as 1,400 pounds in a year. But he rarely let his expenses rise above 30 pounds. He said that he seldom had more than 100 pounds in his possession at a time. 

This so baffled the English Tax Commissioners that they investigated him in 1776 insisting that for a man of his income he must have silver dishes that he was not paying excise tax on. He wrote them, “I have two silver spoons at London and two at Bristol. This is all the plate I have at present, and I shall not buy any more while so many round me want bread.” 

When he died in 1791 at the age of 87, the only money mentioned in his will was the coins to be found in his pockets and dresser. Most of the 30,000 pounds he had earned in his life had been given away. He wrote, 

I cannot help leaving my books behind me whenever God calls me hence; but in every other respect, my own hands will be my executors. In other words, I will put a control on my spending myself, and I will go beyond the tithe for the sake of Christ and his kingdom. (Quotes from Mission Frontiers, Sept./Oct. 1994, nos. 9–10, pp. 23–24.  

Paul’s word on giving comes to mind in 2 Corinthians 9:6–8: “Now this I say, he who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who sows bountifully shall also reap bountifully. Let each one do just as he has purposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed.” I Pray that God would open our hearts in order to open our wallets on behalf of the gospel ministry.

In my years in ministry working with youth & college students one of the constant issues and questions by students is why and how do I prevent my spiritual life from becoming a spiritual roller coaster ride? They experience a spiritual high at a camp, a retreat, a conference or some other event and then they return to their homes where later their present reality hits them and they crash and burn in walk with God only to await until the next pick me upper.

The question would be how can a Christian maintain his cross centeredness in the midst of a busy schedule, struggles and the demands of work, school, or family?  C. J. Mahaney in “The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing” quotes John Stott giving a bright answer on keeping the passion burning in the chase after God’s heart.

John Stott, author and pastor, compares the cross to a blazing bonfire. If we want the flame in our heart to be kept alive, we have to keep coming back to the source. “the cross is the blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled,” he writes, “but we have to get near enough to it for its sparks to fall on us.” 1

The Christian needs God’s sparks from the cross to fall on him to remind us of our wretched state prior to the penal substitionary atoning work of the cross. The blazing fire of the cross magnifies our sinfulness while at the same time amplifying the riches of God’s love and grace. This constant drawing back to the cross keeps are passion kindled so that it does not fizzle out.

Mahaney shares 5 simple ways that have helped him draw near to the “sparks” of the cross each day. Stated as follows is first (1) Memorize The Gospel: read and memorize scripture that illuminates the gospel for example [Isaiah 53:3-6, Romans 3:23-26; 5:6-11; 8:32-39; 2 Corinthians 5:21]. Secondly (2) Pray The Gospel: with prayer being the center of our lives we should pray thanking and acknowledging what the work of the cross has done for us. Then (3) Sing The Gospel: with so many CD’s, worship songs and especially the old hymns out there we should sing songs that are full of the theology of the cross and that stir up our religious affections. Fourthly (4) Review How The Gospel Has Changed You: which is to reflect and remember the past from which we were saved from. Then lastly (5) Study The Gospel:  we should dive into first read the Bible then camp out in commentaries and books on various theological themes and doctrines. We should never be content with our current grasp of the gospel.

As Augustine said in his Confessions, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee, O Lord”. Oh may the sparks fly on us as we stay near the cross, so that our hearts will burn with a fire that is consumes our lives.

1 C. J. Mahaney, The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing, p.55.

The recession has hit lots of people hard, including houses of worship across the country. According to The Huffington Post, although most spiritual leaders of small towns and big cities across the country make anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000, some church pastors are making much….much more.

HuffPost Religion compiled a list of the best paid pastors and how much they make, including public appearances, book sales, and charity management. For a look at the full list of some well known and suprising names, you can head (here).

The early church fathers when describing the Trinity used the Greek term perichoresis, from Greek peri-, around, chorein, to contain (the same root as choreography). This term was used by the early church fathers to describe the triune relationship between each person of the Godhead as an eternal Holy Dance. It can best be defined as the co-indwelling, co-inhering, and mutual interpenetration within the threefold nature of the Trinity.

Alister McGrath writes that it “allows the individuality of the persons to be maintained, while insisting that each person shares in the life of the other two. An image often used to express this idea is that of a ‘community of being,’ in which each person, while maintaining its distinctive identity, penetrates the others and is penetrated by them.” ^[1]

C. S. Lewis also described the Trinity as a “dance” saying:

God is not a static thing – not even a person – but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person. I know this is almost inconceivable, but look at it thus. You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or a trade union, people talk about the ‘spirit’ of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk about its ‘spirit’ because the individual members, when they are together. Do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not have if they were apart.’ It is as if a sort of communal personality came into existence. Of course, it is not a real person: it is only rather like a person. But that is just one of the differences between God and us. What grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God. ^[2]

The Trinity is an eternal dance of the Father, Son, and Spirit where they share mutual love, honor, and joy (John 17:20, 21). In this dance the Son says it’s not me it the Father, therefore glorifying the Father. The Father lifts up the Son and glorifies the Son who again in turn glorifies the Father. The Spirit says it’s not me and brings glory to the Father. The Spirit proceeds from the Father used to accomplish the Father’s will therefore glorifying the Father. So on and on this dance goes between the Triune God.  

That God brings himself glory is demonstrated throughout the pages of the New Testament. One particular book that is important to the understanding of this is John’s Gospel. A key passage for a perichoretic understanding of God’s glory is John 17:1, where Jesus prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.” We see that the Son brings glory to the Father, the Father brings glory to the Son, and the Spirit brings glory to the Son (cf. John 16:14). Such an understanding of glory exhibits the love expressed within the Godhead by Father, Son and Spirit as they give glory to each other.

^[1] Alister McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 3rd ed. Blackwell, 2001

^[2] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Macmillan Publishing Company, NY, 1996.

Having read a number of his books and having heard numerous lectures by Bart Ehrman I jumped at the chance to read a book that provides a proper investigation into his claims and textual methodologies concerning the New Testament scriptures. Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence (Text and Canon of the New Testament) is the inaugural volume of the Text and Canon of the New Testament series. The book was complied as a scholarly evangelical response to Bart Ehrman’s, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (1996) and the notably popular Misquoting Jesus (2007).

Daniel Wallace has edited this volume starts off at bat with an introductory chapter which is a more expansive rendition of a paper he delivered previously as part of a dialogue with Ehrman over the Corruption of the New Testament. The following essays are all written by Master of Theology students and form interns of his at Dallas Theological Seminary.  

With Dr. Wallace at the helm of this book as editor, makes this book well worth adding to one’s library. He is the senior New Testament editor of the NET Bible and is considered an evangelical authority on Koine Greek grammar and New Testament textual criticism  among conservative New Testament scholars. He has published largely in these fields and is the founder of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.

The essays give backbone and support to the claim for the authenticity and integrity of the Christian canon. in turn theses essays in their academic tone also argue against both Ehrman’s methodology and his false conclusions. Essays titles:

• Lost in Transmission: How Badly did the Scribes Corrupt the New Testament text?
• The Least Orthodox Reading is to be Preferred: A New Canon for New Testament Textual Criticism?
• The Legacy of a Letter: Sabellianism or Scribal Blunder in John 1.1c?
• Patristic Theology and Recension in Matthew 24.36: An Evaluation of Ehrman’s Text-Critical Methodology
• Tracking-Thomas: A Text-Critical Look at the Gospel of Thomas
• Jesus as theos: A Textual Examination

I would recommend this scholarly work to anyone interested in textual criticism as this is written as an apologetic work. It well researched and it is written for the theological mind. A great read concerning questions to the truthfulness of scripture.

FTC Guidelines disclosure, I must state that I was given a copy of the book, “Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal” from the publisher in exchange for my review. My opinions are expressly my own, and are in no way influenced due to receiving this book in exchange for the review.

Being a teacher in youth and college student bible classes you are always on the receiving end of a large array of questions. One that is always thrown around is, “what does it mean that God’s Word is inspired?”

An adequate response always consist of 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” A little word definition to help by showing inspiried (Greek Word: θεόπνευστος, transliterated theopneustos, Phonetic Spelling: (theh-op’-nyoo-stos). Which defined is theópneustos (from 2316 /theós, “God” and 4154 /pnéō, “breathe out”) – properly, God-breathed, referring to the divine inspiration (inbreathing) of Scripture (used only in 2 Tim 3:16).

That being said with fair warning, “There is no telling what may happen when you read God’s Word!” Especially the Epistle to the Romans! This is nothing new; Augustine experienced this one day sitting in a garden.

This is not new. 1600 yrs earlier in August of 386, Saint Augustine was in spiritual turmoil. In a garden in Milan, Italy, he flung himself down beneath a fig tree and gave way to the tears which streamed from his eyes. “I tore my hair and hammered my forehead with my fists; I locked my fingers and hugged my knees.” Then he heard “the sing-song voice of a boy or a girl, I cannot say, but again and again it repeated the refrain, “Take it and read, take it and read,” Augustine took this as a “divine command to open my book of Scripture and read the first passage on which my eyes should fall.” He opened and read, “Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, spend no more though on nature and nature’s appetites.” ¹ In two sentences the knot was cut. “I had no wish to read more and no need to do so. For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled. ²

This bishop, philosopher, and theologian of the church went on to be my most accounts the most influential figure in the development of Western Christianity. I think this is what God had in mind when he inspired Peter to pen in his epistle, “But you are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;” I Peter 2:9.

¹ Quoted from Augustine’s Confessions, Book VIII, in Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley, Ca: University of California Press, 1967), 108-109).

² John Piper, A Godward Life (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers Inc, 1997), 13.

William Cowper

With a glorious subject matter and an all-star cast of authors I enjoyed the reading of the book Atonement edited by Gabriel N.E. Fluhrer. The book reveals some of this century’s best theologians (J. I. Packer, James M. Boice, R.C. Sproul, John R. Gerstner, Sinclair Ferguson, John R. DeWitt, and Alistair Begg) as they cover a vast array of themes on the atonement.     

One of the stories I found very moving was that of William Cowper written by James M. Boice is his chapter titled “The Nature of the Atonement: Propitiation”.      

William Cowper, a poet of the 18^th century, had a very troubled life. He had a miserable childhood; his mother died when he was only 6yrs old and he was sent to a boarding school where he as bullied because he was small and weak. He had a fragile mind that gave way on more than one occasion. Twice he tried to commit suicide, and at last, in the year 1756, he was committed to a private lunatic asylum under the care of a man named Dr. Cotton. As was often the case in those days, those deemed lunatics were treated very badly but Dr. Cotton was a Christian man he worked very carefully to bring this distraught man out his depression. He tried to bring Cowper the gospel, which was not any easy task. Cowper was so troubled by his sin that he would cry out in the present of Dr. Cotton, “My sin! My sin! Oh, for some fountain to open for my cleansing!” But he did not know of any such fountain.      

Here is the way Cowper told the tale, in is his own words:      

But the happy period which was to shake off my fetters, and afford me a clear opening of the free mercy of God in Christ Jesus, was now arrived. I flung myself into a chair near the window, and seeing a Bible there, ventured once more to apply to it for comfort and instruction. The first verse I saw, was the 25^th and the 3^rd of Romans: “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.” Immediately I received strength to believe it, and the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the atonement he had made, my pardon sealed in his blood, and all the fullness and completeness of his justification. In a moment I believed, and received the gospel. (William Cowper, Memoir of the early life of William Cowper, Esq. (London: Print for R. Edwards, 1816), 67. 

Cowper had problems later on in his life, but this was a turning point. Out of that experience, he wrote some of our greatest hymns. Indeed, many of them have to do with the atonement. 

There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins      

And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day,      

And there may I, as vile as he, wash all my sins away.      

E’er since by faith I saw the stream life flowing wounds supply      

Redeeming love has been my them and shall be till I die.      

And to that all God’s people, who love the atonement with Cowper, can say, “Amen”

While reading one of my books tonite by Ravi Zacharias most notably the book “Light in the Shadow of Jihad: The Struggle for Truth”, I was reminded of one of my most heartwarming moments in the story of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This is the 3^rd installment in The Chronicles of Narnia series.

The question was first posed “Where is God in the midst of tragedy?” and the context of this question was given in light of the tragedy on 9/11.  Ravi explains in his book explains this is possibly what C. S. Lewis had in mind in story The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

When Lucy has been desperately seeking the presence of Aslan when suddenly He appears before her. “Oh Aslan,” she says, “It was kind of you to come.”

“I have been here all the time,” said He, “but you have just made me visible.”

“Aslan,” said Lucy, almost a little reproachfully. “Don’t make fun of me. As if anything I could do would make you visible!”

“It did,” said Aslan. “Do you think I wouldn’t obey my own rules?”

What are His rules? They are explicitly found in his Word.  “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). Praise be to our God who is there and He is not silent!

I am glad somebody finally outside of christian circles has finally shed some light on the ridicule Denver’s star quaterback Tim Tebow has been smitten with this year for his faith in the Christian God. Todd Starnes of FoxNews, in his article for fox news is a must read titled “Why Are Anti-Christian Bigots So Eager to Prey On Tim Tebow?“.

1. Another Drinks the Kool-Aid

2. Tim Tebow Auto-Tuned: “All He Does is Win!”   (My Favorite!!)

3. Why Does Tim Tebow Succeed? 

4. Bob Costas’ Commentary on Tim Tebow