Blog is back!!! (with a vengeance)

Ok well hopefully I can start this thing back up (at least for a little bit) whil i have some free time in the summer. As if anyone really reads it anyways.

Anyways, the summer has been pretty sweet so far. Camp was amazing. The Edgewood guys are really awesome. I am truly blessed to be friends with them. I feel the Lord has blessed me with desiring and valuing his gospel more and more each summer and seeing how it needs to be at the center of my life. I have been able to read a lot more this summer than in summers past and have felt a lot of growth from that time.

Well i'll keep the Return short and sweet, but be prepared for more.

A Cornerstone, Not a Hurdle

As I was running on the treadmill at the Healtplex yesterday, I saw the news ticker at the bottom of one of the news stations talking about Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury's, which is the head of the Anglican Church, critiques on the birth of Jesus. In a story in the London Times he states that the Three Wise Men were probably not kings and there were probably more than three. All of this is fine and does not violate Scripture. In fact it is what is afforded in Scripture according to Matthew's Gospel.

Where Williams begins to stumble is when he says that New Christians need not believe in the "hurdle" of the Virgin Birth before they could be signed up to be Christians. While I may agree to some point with the statement, the fact is that Williams sounds a lot like Rob Bell in de-emphasizing the importance of the Virgin Birth. Both make it seem that the Virgin Birth is not essential to the Christian faith, when indeed it a cornerstone belief in orthodox Christianity.

As Mark Driscoll puts it, "Would we really lose anything if there wasn't a Virgin Birth? Yea, we'd lose Jesus."

Without Jesus being born from a Virgin the prophecy of God's word in Isaiah 7:14:

"Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel."

wouldn't be fulfilled and therefore, Christ wouldn't really be the Christ and we would still be in our sins.

This is not a minor issue, but rather a foundation truth of the Christian faith. I pray that as the time to celebrate Christ's birth comes closer this would be savored by Christians more and more. I pray that in all of it the glory of God would be revealed.

Things I am Thankful For

Here are some things that I am thankful for on this Thanksgiving:

- My wonderful family
- Chipotle
- The men of the Jungle: Ryan, Mike, Mark, Jeff, Dan, James, and Josh
- John Piper, Tim Keller, and Mark Driscoll and their sermons
- Edgewood High School
- My co-leaders Matt, Shannon, Andrea, and Cara
- Fairfield Young Life and the leaders there
- The MMV
- The Oaks Community Church
- SDS Thursday night special
- The Office
- Kevin Jamison for always challenging me to grow deeper in Christ
- Bryan Lopina for being the example to me of what a Christian looks like
- John Bagen for his passion for Young Life and the area
- Joey Haker, Eric Kirby, and Brian Knapp and our Bible study
- The girls of the Treehouse and LDV
- Wednesday Night Bible Study and the men in it
- Marshall Segal for being an encouragement and friend that I can grow deeper with
- Friends
- The Bible
- Jesus Christ and His death, resurrection, and saving act on the Cross

Wisdom from Owen

I came across this John Owen quote in the introduction of his book The Mortification of Sin:

"Set faith at work on Christ for the killing of thy sin. His blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls. Live in this, and thou wilt die a conqueror; yea, thou wilt, through the good providence of God, live to see thy lust dead at thy feet."

Amen.

Pride

I came across this story under Yahoo!'s odd news section that is unfortunately a sign of just how deep a man's pride can really be.

To sum up the article a man was kicked by an ostrich in front of some females who laughed at him and as a result the man ended up shooting the ostrich because it had wounded his pride and made him look bad in front of the ladies.

While, I certainly can rush to judgement on this person because this is certainly and outrageous story, I should actually think back and reflect on how I use my pride to justify myself before others. Do I always have to be right in every argument? Do I always have to put things down that I don't like or agree with? These and many other questions are question that we (and especially myself) need to ask on a daily basis.

All of Life

I have been thinking a lot lately on the concept of all of life being one of repentance. This has really been on my mind since I presented a discussion on Martin Luther's 95 Theses in my Reformation class. The first of these these said that all of life should be repentance instead of just ceremonial penances that the Church of the day practiced.

This has me thinking of a lot of things that I need to personally repent of and just take to the Cross. I realize that my pride will often prevent me from doing this and in doing so I allow my love of being right and love of sin to take precedent over the gospel in my life.

The great news is that Christ has died for these sins and is drawing us to repentance in Him, though we need to be killing sin before it kills us to quote Owen. In doing this I press on in perseverance to the day of Christ Jesus which hopefully will come quickly.

Jacob's View of the Holiness of God

I was reading in Genesis the other when something that Jacob said caught my attention. It was after he had wrestled with God at the end of Chapter 32 when he said:

"I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved." Genesis 32:30

In this verse Jacob realizes that He was allowed to see God and out of God's mercy He is still alive afterward. I believed that the reason that Jacob is so astonished at this is because by seeing God's face he realizes his vast shortcomings before God. He realizes how small he is in comparison, as well as, how holy God is and how sinful he is. The fact that even by seeing God one was supposed to die is quite a remarkable statement about the perfection of God.

I pray that I realize more and more everyday how holy God really is and how utterly sinful I really am. I pray this so that the cross of Christ will become bigger and more powerful in my own life. I also pray this prayer for everyone. I pray it because when viewing this the gospel is of utter importance to each and every person. As Spurgeon said, "When your sin is small, Your savior will be small also."