The gospel way versus natural religion
June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
The end of the parable of the prodigal son and the joyful Father examines the older son, the one who remained at home and served his father, thinking his service merited his father’s love. In other words, he was a legalist.
These few lines from the Puritan Thomas Boston capture the natural tendency of sinful human nature toward legalism:
“In the way of the gospel, the sinner must stand before the Lord in an imputed righteousness, but corrupt nature is for an inherent righteousness; and, therefore, so far as natural men follow after righteousness, they follow after ‘the law of righteousness’ (Romans 9:31-32), and not after ‘the LORD our righteousness.’ Nature is always for building up itself, and to have some ground for boasting, but the great design of the gospel is to exalt grace, to depress nature, and exclude boasting (Romans 3:27). The sum of our natural religion is, to do good from and for ourselves (John 5:44); the sum of the gospel religion is, to deny ourselves, and to good from and for Christ (Philippians 1:21).
–Thomas Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State (emphasis added)
Stop what you’re doing and worship!
June 30, 2009 | Comments Off
Here’s the situation: It’s Wednesday evening. You and your family have finished dinner, and the children scatter (after, of course, dutifully clearing the table and doing the dishes) to their four corners of the house to return to whatever playthings had captivated their attention before dinner. You also take up your normal after-dinner routine, checking your email, reading the news, making sure the weather will hold for your cookout this weekend. Then you look at the time and it’s 6:45, which means one thing: “Kids, stop what you’re doing and let’s go to worship!”
Of course, right? It’s time to go to worship. You have to stop everything else so you can go to the place where you worship. So you can do the things you do when you worship. Take a pause from life and worship. And then an hour and a half later, after worship is done, you can resume life as usual.
Is this what our gatherings are for? To take a pause from life, to stop whatever else we’re doing, and worship? And then afterward, carry on with life—perhaps with a better perspective, a stronger resolve, clearer spiritual sight, or maybe even having seen God in His word and in Christ, and having repented of sin. But nevertheless, afterward, you resume something you had temporarily stopped in order to worship.
Here’s the problem: You never stop worshiping. Whatever you or your children were doing before you came to the church building, you were worshiping. And whatever you go back to doing when you leave, you are worshiping. Everything you do is worship.
You don’t get to turn worship on, then turn it off. You don’t get to turn life off in order to worship. Life is worship. Worship is life. How so?
Everything you do is service to someone or something, indicating the worth of that person or thing in your life. Which is exactly what worship is: Worship is service of some kind offered to someone or something, indicating the worth of that person or thing. And therefore everything you do is worship. It may not always be readily obvious what or whom you are worshiping; but you are always worshiping.
Worship is woven into our very make-up as God’s creatures. He created us to serve Him and to bear His image. We therefore cannot be anything other than servants and image-bearers. Which means we therefore cannot be anything other than worshipers. Which means we cannot do anything other than worship.
This is a foundational truth that we must grasp if we are to order our lives—and the church—rightly. Worship is not an event; it is not a compartment of life; it is not music, or prayer, or preaching, or the ordinances; worship is life.
Coming up next: The real worship war
Treasuring Him
June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
A video for your edification.
Not How We Live But Why We Live
June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
NOT HOW WE LIVE BUT WHY WE LIVE
Let no breath enter my breast lest I gasp for the Giver.
Let no drink cool my thirst, lest I pant for the Giver.
Let my tongue taste no morsel, lest I savor the Giver.
Let no shelter shield my body, lest I find refuge in the Giver.
Let no scenery thrill my soul, lest I am in awe of the Giver.
Let no affections satisfy my heart, lest I long for the Giver.
Let no possessions fill my hands, lest I own the Giver.
Let no longing dwell in me, lest I pine for the Giver.
Let no life live within me, lest it is lived for the Giver.
Let not death overtake me, till I am held by the Giver.
Let not one second slip away, till I am secure in the Giver.
Oh to have the most intense longing for the highest Good.
- Jack Colwell, The Two Faces of Repentance, Part 2
Listen to Pastor Jack Colwell’s “Glory of the Joyful Father” series online at the FCC Media Center.
The Gospel for all
June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Here is an article on reformed blogger Tim Challies’ site, written by a pastor in Toronto who regularly, purposefully, lovingly evangelizes within Toronto’s gay village. Many lessons for us as scatterers of Gospel seed, and not just with regard to evangelizing the gay community. Some questions that came to mind as I read:
- Do I spend time purposefully making friends and expanding the sphere within which I can share the gospel?
- Do I regard others as people made in the image of God, with whom I can build real relationships; or do I view them simply as potential converts, or worse yet, conquests?
- Does the sin I see in others’ lives look more repulsive to me than the sin in my own life?
- Do I really believe that the Gospel is the power of God to salvation for all who believe?
Read and pray for this man and his ministry, and examine yourself in light of Jesus’ command to preach the Gospel to all.
Content with mediocrity
June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
A very helpful and convicting bit from D. A. Carson:
Some Christians want enough of Christ to be identified with him but not enough to be seriously inconvenienced; they genuinely cling to basic Christian orthodoxy but do not want to engage in serious Bible study; they value moral probity, especially of the public sort, but do not engage in war against inner corruptions; they fret over the quality of the preachers sermon but do not worry much over the quality of their own prayer life. Such Christians are content with mediocrity.
- D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers
via Vitamin Z
A new blogger afoot…
June 9, 2009 | Comments Off
Hello out there in cyberspace. It’s your friendly neighborhood music minister (or, as some would have it, “chief musician”), having now been approved to begin blogging here on the FCC website (or maybe just not prevented from blogging!). I hope to post weekly, brief articles covering a range of topics, most of which will be at least tangentially related to either our corporate worship, music in general, culture in general, or our church life as a whole. Occasionally I will pass on a link I find helpful, or an interesting or provocative quote, or just something I have enjoyed and believe you will too.
I thought I would begin with just a little bit about myself, for those of you whom I’ve not yet come to know. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind the last month or so, and so I’ve only just begun to settle into my role here at FCC. I just finished my master of music degree at the UMKC conservatory, where I majored in piano performance. That degree is what brought Kimberly and me to Kansas City; we planned on staying until I graduated and then getting out of here (hopefully to somewhere with much warmer winters)! Obviously, the Lord had other plans for us, plans in which we now rejoice.
Before moving to Kansas City, I lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I completed a bachelor of music degree, also in piano performance, from the University of Cincinnati conservatory. For just under two years while I was there, I served as music minister at Ryker’s Ridge Baptist Church in the beautiful river town of Madison, Indiana, and it was there, under the leadership of two very solid and gifted pastors, that I came to more fully understand and embrace a Biblical picture of God’s sovereignty over salvation, as well as a more Biblical picture of doing church.
Also while I was in school at Cincinnati, through the clever (and underhanded!) work of some friends, I met the woman of God who would become my wife. Kimberly lived in South Carolina at the time, where she was completing a degree in early childhood education at Presbyterian College (no, she wasn’t a Presbyterian—in fact, her father is a Baptist pastor in the town, which is what led her to that school). Our correspondence grew into a full-blown courtship, I proposed April 6, 2007, and we were married December 29 of that year, following which she joined me in Kansas City.
Before Cincinnati, I had lived all but the first two years of my life in Eastman, Georgia, a town of around 6,000 people. My parents were solid believers, both having come from believing households themselves. They were diligent to see that my brother and I were raised in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, for which I am eternally grateful. My own depravity, however, turned this discipline and instruction into a life of self-centered, man-pleasing legalism (the kind that allows one to be a baptized, faithful church member, a leader in the youth group, in fact). My freshman year of high school was when, by the work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, I first truly repented and believed the Gospel.
As I mentioned, Kimberly also grew up in a believing household, the daughter of a pastor. Her story is very similar to mine, in having come to realize, and repent of, her unbelieving legalism in her teenage years. She had known for years that she wanted to teach elementary-school-age children, and after doing so in the public school for a year, she was blessed with the opportunity to teach from a Biblical, Christ-centered perspective at FCA.
Just as we all can say, it is by the grace of God that Kimberly and I are who we are, and where we are. And as I said before, we rejoice in where the Lord has led us, and we look forward to serving in this body for as long as He would have us do so.
Thanks for reading,
Andrew