February 1st, 2009 WHAT IS THE GOSPEL? The gospel is "good news", and it is no less than these 4 basic essentials: 1.God. There is a holy God who created all things and us, to whom we owe our existence, and to whose standards we are accountable. Genesis 2:7, Acts 17:24-26, 31 2. Mankind's sin. All men and women have sinfully rebelled against God and are alienated from God and deserving of nothing but eternal death and punishment. Romans 3:23, 6:23. Sin=missing the mark, falling short, de-godding God, any failure to conform to the moral low of God in act, attitude, or action. 3. Jesus Christ. Eternal God the Son- Jesus humbly took on human nature and came to us in person, lived a perfect life, healed many, preached the gospel, and willfully died on a cross in our place, paying the penalty for our sins, he was buried, and he was raised victoriously over death and sin. I Cor. 15:3-5, Isaiah 53:5-6, Romans 5:8. It is about trusting in the person and the work of Jesus Christ. 4. Repentance and Faith: The gospel commands a response of repentance and faith. According to scripture the promise of savlation comes along with these responses. John 3:16, Eph 2:8, Faith=believing the word of God and acting on it no matter how I feel believing that god will bring a good result. Acts 2:38, 2 Cor. 7:10. Repentance = a change of mind, attitude, and action regarding my sin. Our reponse should be both repentance and faith. Saving faith is changing faith. "Salvation is by faith alone but saving faith is never alone" - John Calvin The gospel should be shared humbly, yet boldly to all. February 3rd, 2009 Well one of my friends made a comment to me today about updating my "blog", so here I am behind my computer thinking of things to say. A lot has happened in the past few days, but I am not worried. God is in control. My roomate got a new laptop and was mesing around with the webcam, it was funny stuff! I am hoping to make a trip to Washington, DC this spring break, March 1-6 or so. We would go see all the monuments and museums (all free, what a bonus) and stay at a nice campsite that is fairly cheap and easily accesible via bus which you can get week passes to. Pretty neat stuff. We would go to the zoo and see the white house as well as the holocaust museum. I think it would be a good experience, seeing as how the last time I was there I was only 12 years old or so. The book, "The Cross and Christian Ministry": Leadership Lessons from I Corinthians by D.A. Carson, not only has an amazingly long title, but it an astounding book. It has shaped many of my personal views on my ministry and definitely opened my eyes to what the scripture has to say about many things that I had not seen or considered before. Very enlightening. I strongly suggest it to anyone who has any interest in being in ministry of any kind. I still haven't recorded my new songs yet, but in my audio production/electronic music class, we are getting a lot of studio time, so maybe I can record them differently (better?) than previous songs. We will see! February 17th, 2009 New journal layout started today. Went and made a trip to Wilmington to visit my bro down at school too. I am also sick. Coughing up flem is no fun!!!! February 18th, 2009 Does Ephesians 4:29 apply to blogging? By William D. Mounce koinoniablog.net This post is a little off topic, but I have gone through a series of events that have encouraged me to bring up this topic. Ephesians 4:29 says, "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear" (ESV). Our speech is not to tear down but to build people up. Our words should be appropriate to the situation and should be an extension of grace. Two verses later Paul adds, "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice." I am pretty sure that the type of corrupting talk he has in mind is the result of human anger, anger that should have been dealt with and sin that should have been forgiven, which is the topic of the next verse. "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." This issue is sufficiently significant that it resurfaces a few verses later. "Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving" (5:4). One of the patterns that I have noticed is that we often are justified in our anger, and that anger vents itself in ungodly language that clearly violates the clear teaching of Scripture. But because our anger is so strong, and our justification so deep, we feel that not only are we justified to speak in corrupting and graceless ways, but that we have some sort of divine mandate to do so. It would be wrong, we reason, to speak any other way. I have often commented to myself (and those around me) that gossip, slander, and critical speech are the native tongue in the church. I was talking to a friend the other day who said that when they first started to attend their church, they decided to go to Sunday School. The two ladies in front of them (and it could just as well been men) were gossiping up a storm. In fact, one in particular was ripping on other women, so much so that my friends were uncomfortable and started to leave. Just then an elder came into the room, sat down next to the woman spewing poison, put his arm around her and started talking to her. She was his wife. This kind of story can be replicated over thousands of churches, thousands of church leaders, and most everyone else. Our anger makes us strong, but it does not satisfy. We gossip and slander and tear down; but it never satisfies, so we continue to violate the clear teaching of Scripture. And we wonder why people are not attracted to the grace of Jesus Christ. This attitude of entitlement—"I have a right to express myself in angry and violent terms"—shows itself in many venues. When I was pastoring, I had the rule that if someone wanted to encourage me, email was great. If they wanted to criticize me, it had to be done face-to-face. I have a file of happy notes that I read and reread, from students and others. They are a source of great encouragement and edification. But if someone has something against me, the only biblical option is to talk to me face-to-face. Scripture makes no other allowance. Email gives us great strength. Because we are not looking right at the person, we lose a sense of accountability and are often more willing to use stronger language, words that do not convey grace, make conclusions that are based more on imagination than fact. We make more ourselves, and we make less of the person to whom we are writing. This sinful fact is exaggerated in the academy. We are taught, and we teach others, that in an academic situation it is right to be critical. At one level this is true. The academy is the place to exchange ideas, critique arguments, and evaluate judgments. I love this type of debate. But at what point does helpful, grace-giving evaluation and critique move over the line and violate the words of Paul. And when this conflict does arise, who is right? The academy or Paul? As a teacher and pastor, I have thought a lot about this issue, but a few days ago it surfaced again. Someone responded to a blog I had written that talked about a person who shot a bullet through a certain translation and mailed it to the president of the publishing company. I cannot repeat the response because of its vulgarity, but basically the person said a bullet was too good for this translation. The title used sexually vulgar language, and the content of the blog used the F-bomb to describe their opinion of the translation. What is amazing to me, but not unexpected, was that this person felt fully justified in the use of vulgar and profane language. His anger had established patterns of thinking that kept him from seeing his clear violation of God’s law. How does that happen? It reminds me of the student who spent 30 minutes cussing me out, and when I suggested that his use of the S word was inappropriate for a Christian and a pastor, he justified his language by saying it wasn’t swearing, just vulgar. Somehow, in his mind, that justified his language. It seems to me that all of us need to be aware of this trap. I remember being confronted by a good friend. I was speaking with another pastor about a person in the church I was frustrated with, and I wasn’t very kind. My friend loved me enough to take me into the other room and in no uncertain terms let me know my attitude was inappropriate. I had justified my speech because I was a pastor speaking to another pastor, and somehow I had built patterns into my thinking that allowed this type of ungracious speech. I was wrong. Perhaps this is a lesson we all need to learn. There are ways to disagree—even strongly disagree—with people and their ideas that do not violate Jesus’ or Paul’s instructions on speech. We all have established patterns of thought that justify sin, even to the point that we can’t (or don’t want to) see an obvious lack of grace. And this is nowhere more obvious than in emails and blogs. So what if we accept the following guidelines: 1. Take every thought captive to Christ. In other words, think before we speak and write, weighing everything we say and write against the teachings of our Lord. 2. Feel free to disagree when it is appropriate to the situation, but always do so as an expression of grace. 3. When wanting to encourage, write it. 4. When wanting to criticize, if possible, do so face to face. If it is not possible, write only what you would say face-to-face. 5. No matter how angry or justified you feel, there is never a place for cruel or vulgar speech. Maybe then we wouldn’t have to moderate blog comments. February 19th, 2009 Two good links/websites to check out: www.markinc.org - Dr. Chuck Betters website www.awakemysoul.com - The Sacred Harp