Jesus and Politics

With eight months still to go until the US election, it's a good time to take a deep breath and think about where Jesus stands in all of this. Scott Sauls has written a helpful article to help Christians get some perspective. It reads, in part:

Matthew’s emphasis on a tax collector and a zealot living in community together suggests a hierarchy of loyalties, especially for Christians. Our loyalty to Jesus and his kingdom must always exceed our loyalty to an earthly agenda, whether political or otherwise.

We should feel “at home” with people who share our faith but not our politics even more than we do with people who share our politics but not our faith. If this isn’t our experience, then we may be rendering to Caesar what belongs to God.

Read the whole article here.

Belief and Obedience

So obvious, but so easy to neglect.

The message of the Cross contains two elements: (1) Promises and declarations to be believed, and (2) commandments to be obeyed. Obviously faith is necessary to the first and obedience to the second. The only thing we can do with a promise or a statement of fact is to believe it; it is physically impossible to obey it, for it is not addressed to the will, but to the understanding. It is equally impossible to believe a command; it is not addressed to our understanding, but to our will. True, we may have faith in its justice; we may have confidence that it is a good and right command, but that is not enough. Until we have either obeyed or refused to obey we have not done anything about it yet. To strain to exercise faith toward that which is addressed to our obedience is to get ourselves tangled in a maze of impossibilities."  -A. W. Tozer, Paths To Power, Chapter 3.

 

Paths To Power By A.W. Tozer / Wingspread Publishers

Balancing Ministry (or Work) and Family

We know that God won't call us to keep one command in a way that would cause us to break another. So if, over the long haul, our family suffers neglect because of our ministry, it is because we are doing things in ministry that we should not be doing because we wrongly assessed that we can handle more than we are able to handle. -Paul Tripp

Blurbing the Classics

I love this project that Justin Taylor is undertaking at the Gospel Coalition. He is curating blurbs on theological classics. These books are too old to have been blurbed about on their "original dust jackets," so they are finally getting the short commendations they deserve.

The first book is Augustine's Confessions, which I happen to have read recently. Taylor collected several blurbs and added his own take at the end. Here is Fred Sanders's.

If you took a list of the greatest books of western civilization and whittled it down to the top five, Augustine’s Confessions would still have a secure spot on that list. It might even make the cut and stay on the top three list; it’s that much of a classic. In this carefully-crafted book, Augustine does theology by listening to his life, and then listening even more carefully and passionately to the words of God. We hear him ask all the right questions and most of the wrong ones. We hear him finding the truth and saying it in his own words. Or rather, we overhear him, because from beginning to end the Confessions is one sustained prayer to the God who alone can give the soul what it needs.

Read the rest.

Twice Freed - Excellent Biblical Fiction

Twice Freed, by Patricia St. John, was a recent school assignment for my nine-year-old daughter. She was having a tough time getting into the book because of the tough vocabulary (it's recommended for 12 and up), so I decided to read it aloud with her.

I'm so glad I did. This book follows the life of Onesimus, a slave who is the topic of the book of Philemon in the Bible. My daughter and I enjoyed the story line and the struggles between and within the well-developed characters. I appreciated the accurate portrayal of society in the Roman empire including the institution of slavery, gladiators in training and in the arena, pagan festivals, guilds, shipping and dock work, and family relationships. The traits of the cities that Onesimus finds himself in--Colossae, Laodicea, Ephasus, Athens, Corinth, and Rome--are described without caricature (except maybe for Athens).

Twice Freed made me want to go back to the Bible and read Acts, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, and the parts of Revelation that deal with the people and places mentioned in the book.

I highly recommend this book for adults and children 11 and up, and as a read-aloud for kids as young as about eight.

Reason for Difficulties

"Everything difficult indicates something more than our theory of life yet embraces, checks some tendency to abandon the straight path, leaving open only the way ahead. But there is a reality of being in which all things are easy and plain--oneness, that is, with the Lord of Life; to pray for this is the first thing; and to the point of this prayer every difficulty hedges and directs us." -George MacDonald

Edited by C. S. Lewis, this book contains 365 short excerpts from George MacDonald's writings. The above quote is one I've been rereading and pondering for a couple weeks.

George MacDonald's work is in the public domain. You can learn all about him and get links to his writings on the George MacDonald Informational Web.

A Praying Life

Let go of guilt about prayer and live connected to God as he intended.

Prayer is part of life,
Not just for some holy few.
Talk to the Father.

Paul Miller, in A Praying Life, addresses all the normal obstacles to prayer--from short attention spans to honest doubt about what good prayer does--and encourages us not to give up. He reminds us of the relationship we have with God and urges us to make that relationship a natural part of our everyday lives. Miller's theology is rich and practical. He refers often to struggles that he and his wife face with their adult daughter who is autistic. I've read several books about prayer, and this is the one that has benefited me most so far. Just writing this makes me want to go back and read it again!

New Testament History

Revitalize your reading of the New Testament

Knowing the background
Brings God's holy word to life,
So read history.

Besides the epic poems, I'm reading books that help me with my life of faith. F. F. Bruce's New Testament History has been on my shelf for a long time. I'd used it for reference before, but read it cover-to-cover for the first time this January. It helped me understand, among many other things, the complicated status of Judea; who the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes were; and why Paul's preaching to God-fearing gentiles in the synagogues was so successful and controversial. My daily devotions have been enhanced by what I learned in this book.