A Brilliant Quote on Preaching

 I'm preaching at my church this week. I love this quote. I don't think my manuscript is even good enough to qualify as "pitiful":

“How utterly dependant we are on the Holy Spirit in the work of preaching! All genuine preaching is rooted in a feeling of desperation. You wake up on Sunday morning and you can smell the smoke of hell on one side and feel the crisp breezes of heaven on the other. You go to your study and look down at your pitiful manuscript, and you kneel down and cry, "O God, this is so weak! Who do I think I am? What audacity to think that in three hours my words will be the odor of death to death and the fragrance of life to life (2 Cor 2:16). My God, who is sufficient for these things?"

John Piper in  The Supremacy of God in Preaching

When Science Blasphemes Less Than Religion

I've come across a terrific video. But before I post it, I thought of this as-terrific quote. How are we doing Christians?

"I do see the design of the universe as essentially a religious question. That is, one should have some kind of respect and awe for the whole business. It's very magnificent and shouldn't be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religion, although he strikes me as a basically very religious man. He must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had ever imagined, and they were just not talking about the real thing. My guess is that he simply felt that religions he had run across did not have a proper respect for the Author of the universe."

Charles Misner, General relativity theory scientist (as quoted in Let the Nation Be Glad and in this sermon on the Supremacy of God)


Here's the video that brings us from planet Earth, across the entire known Universe and beyond.

Books, Where and When I Read Them

As I was going through the routines common to all men, I had a laugh. I really have books everywhere. It's almost obsessive compulsive. I'm not sure what is the limit, but you can tell me.


Francis Schaeffer's Christian Manifesto in the bathroom. Alcorn's Purity Principle in my school bag. The Deliberate Church, The Power of Mentoring, Mornings and Evenings (Dever/Alexander, Martin Sanders and Charles Spurgeon) at my bedside.
A New Testament in my coat pocket, a cheap Bible (1€50) always at hand and various books by John Piper can be found everywhere (did I mention how much I loved God is the Gospel?). From my bedroom, to the top of the stairs, the door and everywhere in between (almost), you can find books. Then there are the newspapers and magazines.


Most evenings, as I crawl into bed, I'm too tired to even read the growing pile of books. On top of all that, there are many books that BLF asks me to evaluate (and I gladly do). I recently read Vintage Jesus AND Vintage Church by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears. Both were good.

Rethinking Short-Term Missions

This post is straight from the Desiring God blog. I don't have the time to comment (I'm busy preparing for this weekend's youth retreat) except to say that this rethinking of short-term missions is vital. I've been with OM for three years and have myself received many short-term teams to France.

I'm not sure where the rethinking will lead, but with Bill Walsh and John Piper, we should do OK.

May 25, 2009  |  By: Bill Walsh 

Category: International Outreach

This week we are going to do a 5-part series on missions trips.
The last few decades have witnessed explosive growth in short-term missions as a strategy of the Western church for spreading the Gospel and serving the poor. Your church is probably sending teams out this summer.
As we approach this season, we want to direct your attention to articles that will challenge your assumptions about what it means to do short-term missions well. Many of us have made significant mistakes in the past, and some damage has likely been done. Thank God for his patience with us.
Please don’t receive these challenging articles as admonitions to drop short-term missions as a strategy. Rather, use them to think carefully and prayerfully about how your team should approach this task in a way that will honor the Lord and serve the cause of expanding the Kingdom.
Over the next four days, we will feature articles from some leaders who regularly address this topic.
We’ll start with a few key questions answered by John Piper.

• Are short-term mission trips worth doing? 
• Who should consider going on short-term missions trips?
• What is the vision for short-term missions at your church?

How Do You Break Free from an Addiction to Entertainement?

JT posted this from my good buddy JP: 


1. Seek the Lord earnestly. Pray like crazy that God would open your eyes to see wondrous things out of his law.


2. Immerse yourself in the Bible, even when you don't feel like it, pleading with God to open your eyes to see what's really there.


3. Get in a group where you talk about serious things.


4. Begin to share your faith. One of the reasons we are not as moved by our own faith as we are is because we almost never talk about it to any unbeliever. It starts to feel like a kind of hothouse thing, and then it starts to have a feeling of unreality about it. And then the powers of entertainment have more sway in our life.


5. . . . [T]hink about your death. Think about your death a lot. Ask what you'd like to be doing in the season of life, or hours or days, leading up to meeting Christ. I do that a lot these days. I think about the impact of death, and what I would like to be found doing, and how I would prepare to meet him and give an account to him.


Read the whole thing from John Piper

God is the Gospel, Praise God We Don't Have to Settle For Less!

Sunday, 9am. 


We're about to go to church. Today is a special service. We'll be split into small groups for discussion, but will start by having everyone give their testimony in 59 seconds.


That would be:
-How my life was before I met Jesus.
-How I met Jesus.
-What has changed since I met Jésus.

I've been studying what the gospel for the past few weeks. I had a hunch what it was, but I wanted to saturate myself with it. I'm not saturated yet, but this morning I'll be giving a short summary of Accepting the Gospel.
The book I've found most helpful (and simple really), are the first three chapters of God is the Gospel , by John Piper. Its brilliant!

Bernard Madoff: How Are the Mighty Fallen! (by John Piper)

A few months ago he was worth over $800 million. Now, at age 70, he sits in this prison cell, 7.5 by 8 feet, with a sink, a toilet, and a bunk... (Read more)

Source: Desiring God

I Think My Wife's a Calvinist Video

You've probably seen this. But I watched this video for the first time and had a good laugh.

A Word to the President

John Piper speaking to the president during his sermon:



From the Desiring God blog.

Pray More Than You Criticize

I felt rebuked by reading the notes of Marc Driscoll at the Desiring God Conference. I'm going through a more difficult time and I would like to shoot down several people that probably deserve it. So these words were good for me.
I perhaps didn't read them as I was intended to. I read them as if I were the shepherd and I examined myself to know if that was indeed a description of myself.

"Pray that they would have a thick skin. Pray that they would have a humorous outlook. That they would laugh at themselves, that they would have a tender heart toward Jesus and the sheep. That they wouldn’t be hammered, that they would keep a tender heart, that they would have a humble disposition, that when criticisms are true, they would repent. That they would look at a criticism for a kernel of truth to be sanctified by."

You can read the whole thing for yourself here

Is John Piper Wrong?

Alright, the title was just to get your attention. In the future, when I disagree with Piper, I'll just cite my case without being so dramatic. My most recent problem with John Piper came about while reading Desiring God (a most excellent book). In it he claims that:

"The climax of God's happiness is the delight He takes in the echoes of His excellence in the praises of His people." Page 50

That sounds most beautiful, but it sounds too grand. I tend to react against it because I find it makes too much of man, especially a man that has had no real choice in his decision. Of course, to our eyes we do, but ultimately, God is sovereign over all our decisions. Therefore, while I can understand that he "delights in the echoes of His excellence in the praises of His people," I cannot agree with the way Piper formulates it.

You cannot compare 'echoes' with the real 'excellence'. You cannot compare a 'climax' with a more normal 'delight'. So I disagree for two reasons:

1. Climax indicates the highest peak of God's happiness. This must be found within the Trinity and not in mortal man.

2. It makes too much of a predestined man's praise.

Now, I'm pretty sure that either Piper didn't intend to sound that way or I totally misunderstood him. Nonetheless, I thought it worthwhile to make a quick note of it.