Well done Mr. President

I have just been on John Piper's blog where he commends President Obama's speech on education.

I have to say I agree with J.P.'s assessment of the speech as excellent.

I have been involved in teaching and have had parents make me feel responsible for the failure of students who had a lax attitude to study. To therefore have the president of the U.S.A. come out and encourage the young people of his nation to fulfil their role in their education was very gratifying.

He referred to parents not letting their kids spend all day in front of the T.V. or the Xbox (the sad irony is that such parents are the ones most apt to complain of their child's failure) but also encouraged kids to "show up to...schools; pay attention to...teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed."

It is about time someone in authority gave children and parents a good shake like this. We have weak parenting nowadays where parents let their children do whatever they like and pamper to their every whim. We have parents who spend scandalous amounts of money on Christmas presents for their children that are not even wanted never mind needed and just get thrown in the corner. We have parents who would rather have their kids come with them to bingo for company rather than go to school because school is too hard for their precious little diddums. How do I know this? I have met such parents.

People today are so used to the consumer culture and the nanny state that they expect everything to be given to them on a plate. This is the same in the U.S.A., the U.K., Spain and I am sure in other nations too.

So parents, get tough with your kids. Punish them when they are disrespectful. Award them when they work hard. Teach them the value of money.

Kids buck up your ideas. Listen to your teachers, your parents and grandparents. Play hard but work hard too.

And Mr. Obama back up your words with actions. Change society so that the temptation to be lazy and think that the State will do everything for you is less appealing.

Here endeth the rant!

God used Louie Giglio to blow my mind.

Last night a friend passed me a link for Louie Giglio's talks from his "Indescribable" tour that he did with Chris Tomlin. The guy totally blew my mind. I want to thank God for giving this man a passion for God's glory. This guy powerfully reminded me that we are so infintessimally small in comparison to God that for Him to love us almost seems ridiculous. Yet there is nothing God wants more from us. As I noted yesterday from John Owen, there is nothing that grieves God more than us doubting His love for Him. I preach to myself here when I say this next comment. We need to grow up and stop judging God by our circumstances and trusting in His essential character as revealed in Scripture which is love. God in Jesus said, "In this world there WILL be trouble...." so why do we surprised with God when it comes. His promise is to be with us. Remember that He holds the world together with the word of His power and that He holds you in His hand.

Shalom.

Getting to grips with John Owen

Having had a very busy but very blessed fortnight of outreach with the team from Northern Ireland, I decided I needed to get some spiritual nourishment and have opted to dive into the depths of John Owen. Having bought R.J.K. Law's abridged and modernised version of "Communion with God" and had several failed attempts at reading it I am determined this time to stick with it. If you have never read John Owen imagine reading a 17th century version of Don Carson and you will have some idea of why this is such a challenge.

The important thing I am learning about Owen is that he is not to be read in a hurry and that he is best read with a pen, Bible and notebook to hand. If you were really really hungry you might be able to eat an 18 inch pizza yourself but you would not try to wolf it down in one bite. The same is true of Owen. The depth of his exegesis is such that you must chew over every phrase to get the most out of it.

Here are some of the choicest extracts I have read so far:

In reference to the disciples talking to Jesus in John 14 and wondering if He would accept them Owen says, "Jesus, in effect, says, 'Don't worry about that. I do not have to pray that the Father may love you, for this is His special attitude towards you. He Himself loves you. It is true indeed that I will pray the Father to send you the Spirit, the Comforter. But as for that free, eternal love, there is no need for me to pray for that, because above all things the Father loves you. Be fully assured in your hearts that the Father loves you. Have fellowship with the Father in His love. Have no fears or doubts about His love for you. The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to Him is not to believe that He loves you. '" How easy it is at times to doubt God's love for us but here we see that this grieves God's heart!

This next one is a "beezer"! "Christians are often worried as to whether God loves them or not. They are fully persuaded of Christ's love and good-will to them, but the difficulty they have is whether the Father accepts them and loves them...Such thoughts ought to be far from us. The Father's love ought to be looked on as the source from which all other loves flow." (N.B. see e.g. Titus 3v4)

Two things strike me about Owen. One is how Trinitarian his exposition is and like all the other Puritans his high Christology. In chapter 1 (The saints have communion with God) I count SEVEN times that he somehow refers to the link between our communion with God the Father and the work of Christ. This is also seen in chapter 3 (Communion with God the Father) where he says, "It is true that we do not come directly to the Father by faith. We can only come to Him by the Son...Through Christ, then, we have access to the Father, we behold the Father's glory also and enjoy fellowship with the Father in His own special love. All this we receive by faith. As we come to the Father's love through Christ, so the Father's love comes to us through Christ. The light of the sun comes to us by its beams. By its beams we see the sun, and by its beams the sun touches us. Jesus Christ is the beam of His Father's love and through Him [i.e. Christ] the Father's love reaches down and touches us. By Jesus Christ also we see and experience and are led up to the Father's love. If we, as believers, would meditate on this truth more and live in the light of it, there would be great spiritual growth in our walk with God." Wow!

So get to your nearest Christian bookshop or dust off that John Owen book from your shelf and get digging. I am sure you will find like me that his work will bless your soul and cause you to dig deeper into God's Word.

Soli Deo Gloria semper.

The scourge of the foul Indian weed

My first history teacher at Ballymena Academy, the late Mr. George Taylor, (rather unfairly nick-named Hitler...he was a gentleman when I knew him) taught us a rhyme.

"Tobacco is an Indian weed/Which from the devil did proceed/It stains your hands and stains your clothes/And makes a chimney out of your nose."

This rhyme may be somewhat antiquated in the way it expresses the evils of smoking but I think it makes the point well.

Why am I on a rant about smoking? Because the landlady of The Cutting Edge pub in Barnsley, a certain Kerry Fenton, has decided to exploit a loophole in the smoking ban law to enable her clients to "light up".

(See http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090513/tuk-pub-finds-smoking-ban-loophole-repor-a7ad41d.html for full article.)

Her customers take a survey on their smoking habits and then puff away in a separate room until their hearts are content.

Why does this bother me? Because I believe the smoking lobby will not be content until they get the ban revoked.

I believe that everything must be done to make smokers feel guilty about their habit. They should be driven to doing it in the privacy of their own homes or street corners? Sound harsh? Yes! I agree! But smoking is a vice that has direct and immediate consequences for those around them. It stinks your clothes, it makes your eyes water, it makes you cough and continued exposure to smoke can give those exposed to second-hand smoke lung cancer. I can stand next to someone enjoying a pint of beer and not get cirhosis of the liver but this is not the case with smoking.

I urge the government's legal eagle's to get on the case and close this loophole quickly. Enough good people have caught lung cancer through passive smoking, most notably the very lovable Roy Castle, and the sooner more and more smokers are forced to quit because of a sense of guilt about passive smoking the better.

Andy.

Culinary catastrophe

As a little light relief from my usual musings which tend to be more profund I have decided to share with you the experience I had with some cod steaks I cooked tonight.

My brother was kind enough to buy me a mini grill endorsed by a former American boxer famous for losing to Mohammed Ali and now being a Baptist pastor. It has been cooking up a storm and I was getting confident but tonight things went awry. I had bought some cod from a a well-known supermarket chain here which said they were desalinated which boded well. I put them on the grill and they were definitely cooked but I have never eaten anything so salty in my life. Moral of the story. Don't buy cod if it's not from a good old fashioned chippy wrapped in newspaper/greaseproof and without a good big portion of greasy chips!

Shalom.

Andy.

Comfort for the beleaguered believer

Hi folks!

It is my pleasure and I also feel my responsibility to introduce you to lesser-known Christian writers from the past for your edification and encouragement.

(If you are feeling down and need spiritual encouragement right now and feel impatient scroll on down to the quote! I tend to ramble in my blogs. It is the beauty of a blog that you have freedom so to do! And I know others, like me are interested to know the history of our Reformed forefathers whose writings are such a tonic to the soul.)

Today I want to give you a taste for Octavius Winslow, contemporary and friend of the great Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

First some biographical information. "Octavius Winslow, 1808-1878, descended from Edward Winslow, a Pilgrim leader who braved the Atlantic to come to the New World on the Mayflower in 1620. Octavius’s father, Thomas, an army captain stationed in London, died when he was seven years old. Shortly after that, Octavius’s God-fearing mother took her family of ten children to New York. All of the children became Christians, and three sons became evangelical ministers. Octavius later wrote a book about his family’s experiences from his mother’s perspective, titled Life in Jesus.

Winslow was ordained as a pastor in 1833 in New York. He later moved to England where he became one of the most valued nonconformist ministers of the nineteenth century, largely due to the earnestness of his preaching and the excellence of his prolific writings. He held pastorates in Leamington Spa, Bath, and Brighton. He was also a popular speaker for special occasions, such as the opening of C. H. Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1861. After a short illness, he died on March 5, 1878, and was buried in Abbey Cemetery, Bath.

Winslow wrote more than forty books, in which he promoted an experimental knowledge of the precious truths of God. Several of his books have been reprinted recently." (They are available through the Banner of Truth Trust.)(Taken from http://www.reformedreader.org/winslow.htm)

Now for anyone of you feeling like your spirituality is at a low ebb I urge you to get a hold of Winslow's books Help Heavenward and Personal Declension and Revival of Religion of the Soul. The latter is available for free download in pdf format from David Legge's (former pastor of the Iron Hall) website (http://www.preachtheword.com/bookstore/declension.pdf)and it is from it that I take the following quote. What comfort to know that no matter how low you feel spiritually, if you are truly saved, He is only one prayer away and will welcome you back and revive those flagging energies.

“...Remember that though your love has waxed cold, the love of your God and Father towards you has undergone no diminishing: not the shadow of a change has it known. Although he has hated your declension, has rebuked your wandering, yet His love he has not withdrawn from you. What an encouragement to return to him again! Not one moment has God turned his back upon you, though you have turned your back upon Him times without number: His face has always been towards you; and it would have shone upon you with all its melting power, but for the clouds which your own waywardness and sinfulness have caused to obscure and hide from you its blessed light. Retrace your steps and return again to God. Though you have been a poor wanderer and have left your first love, - though your affections have strayed from the Lord, and your heart has gone after other lovers, still God is gracious and ready to pardon you; He will welcome you back again for the sake of Jesus, His beloved Son in whom he is well pleased, for this is his own blessed declaration: "If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then I will visit their transgressions with a rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail.”

(Octavius Winslow. Chapter 2, pp62-63 of Personal Revival and Declension of Religion in the Soul. Banner of Truth Trust Edinburgh 2000)

I trust you will take the time to explore the richness of the writings of our predecessors like Winslow whose theology always is applied in a pastoral tone and whose writings almost always are devotional in nature. They exalt Christ and lift the soul from the many sloughs of despond into which the enemy seeks to cast us.

The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed! Maranatha!

Two very different mounts

I have always been fascinated by horses. I have never really been mad keen to ride one although I have done it a couple of times but there is something about them and the image of the horse which captures my imaginination. They are a combination of power, grace and when content they convey a sense of tranquility.

The bible speaks a lot about horses. After God defeated the Egyptians
Miriam sang, "Sing to the LORD, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea." Exodus 15v21. No ancient monarch would be without them. 1 Kings 4v26 tells us that "Solomon had four thousand stalls for chariot horses, and twelve thousand horses". 1 Kings 10v28-29 shows that Solomon paid a pretty penny for these fine equine specimens, costing 150 shekels a piece. He charged his royal merchants which the task of buying them from Kue (Some he also bought from Egypt.)and this underlines how indispensible they were to the wise king.

Horses usually symbolise military might as evidenced by Psalm 20v7: "Some trust in chariots and some in horses,but we trust in the name of the LORD our God." (Other such passages include 2 Kings 6v17 and 1 Kings 20v1. There are many others.

The Scriptures also speak about donkeys too. Many will remember the occasion where God had to use Balaam's donkey so he got the message from heaven. It was Balaam who was the stubborn one and not his mule in this instance. (See Numbers 22)They were also valued as a mode of transportation and were given as presents so therefore must have been considered valuable.

As we approach Easter the image of the donkey also is prominent in our minds when we remember Palm Sunday and the Triumphal Entry. The Son of Man was humble enough to enter Jerusalem on this often ridiculed animal. Can you imagine the reaction nowadays if Prince Charles rode through the gates of Buckingham Palace to his coronation on a donkey? He would be a laughing stock. Much more believable if we imagine him on a prize stallion. Yet Jesus, the King of Kings did it! He humbled himself to enter to the applause of men (how short lived it was!) on this all to humble of creatures.

He will be astride another animal one day soon. This time, however, it will not be on a donkey. Revelation 19v11-19 is an astounding passage which portrays the Warrior King Jesus returning on his steed ready for battle and set on taking what is His by force. No more gentle Jesus meek and mild. We see Him deal out summary justice to His enemies, destroying them with the sword coming out of His mouth and feeding their flesh to the birds.

Oh on that day there will be no doubting who He is. There will be no excuses. Those who laughed at His children and scorned His Gospel will cower and call for the rocks to fall on them. They will run but not escape. They will seek a hiding place but will be found. Oh scoffer, oh mocker, oh you who despise Christ. Turn from your sin while you can or soon you will see Him pursue you with the heavenly cavalry and will feel the full force of His wrath. His Spirit will not always strive with you.

Those of us who are His saints, take comfort from this in your trials. Ask Him to fill your mind with His splendour. Take courage from this image of the One who is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and who will one day be seen undeniably for who He is.

I close by citing the lyrics of Christian rock band Petra's take on this powerful piece of apocalyptic writing called "All the King's Horses".

All the King's Horses
Words and music by Bob Hartman
Based on Revelation 19:11-21

It's an age-old score that's got to be settled
It's an age-old debt that's got to be paid
When the King breaks through in all of His glory
To claim His throne and the world that He made
The nations wait with their armies gathered
With Jerusalem firmly under their thumbs
There will be no peace in Armageddon valley
Till the trumpet sounds and the cavalry comes
When He arrives He will conquer them all
Take back the ground given after the fall

(Chorus)
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Gonna ride down from heaven from where they've been
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Gonna put this world back together again
Gonna put this world back together

On a great white horse the King will come riding
He's the One they call Faithful and True
With His eyes of fire and blood dipped clothing
He had a name nobody else knew

And by His side ride the armies of heaven
Dressed in linen clean and white as the snow
Riding down to earth with a vengeance so holy
For a one-day battle that will trample their foe
And when the dust and the smoke disappears
The King will reign for a thousand years

When the lion lays down with the lamb
There'll be peace in the land of Abraham
They will beat their swords into plows
When every tongue declares and every knee bows