My Master Deserves More

An excerpt from Spurgeon’s Lectures To My Students:

How few of us could compare ourselves with Mr. Joseph Alleine, whose character I have mentioned before? “At the time of his health,” writes his wife, “he did rise constantly at or before four of the clock, and would be much troubled if he heard smiths or other craftsmen at their trades before he was at communion with God; saying to me often, ‘How this noise shames me. Does not my Master deserve more than theirs?’”

What a convicting thing to hear. Maybe people went to bed earlier then, but 4 am was still 4 am. How often does sleep cut into how much time I spend with the Lord? Too often. My Master deserves more.

I know how much you guys love Bibles…

So be sure to drop by Ligonier and find out how you can get one for a donation of any amount. Seriously. In honor of Reformation week they’re giving out genuine leather Reformation Study Bibles while supplies last, so hurry!

Reading This Week

We started going through Philippians on Sunday and Pat and I are going to be taking turns teaching. So if you think of it, please pray for me in my inexperience.  That being said, to say that I’m enjoying studying would be a severe understatement. Thankfully Pat is letting me use his resources or my experience would be a much different one. You better believe that from now on I’ll be asking for commentaries for Christmas, Birthdays, and all other instances where I might receive gifts.

The fantastic part is I get to start on something that was on my heart recently. Well, after seeing the date on the linked post, I guess it wasn’t so recent after all. No matter, it still feels fresh, which is good. It never ceases to amaze me that no matter how familiar a passage is or how many times we may have studied it, there is always more to learn from it. Praise God for the sufficiency of His word!

Learning In War-time.

The following is an excerpt from a message that C.S. Lewis gave in 1939 called Learning In War-time.  I’m reading it out of The Weight of Glory which is rapidly becoming my favorite work- or rather collection of works- of his.

It’s interesting to me how of the three enemies of a scholar during war-time he lists, I find two applicable regardless of war.

The first enemy is excitement- the tendency to think and feel about the war when we had intended to think about our work.  The best defence is a recognition that in this, as in everything else, the war has not really raised up a new enemy but only aggravated an old one.  There are always plenty of rivals to our work.  We are always falling in love or quarrelling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs.  If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other end before we can really get down to our work.  The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable.  Favourable conditions never come.  There are, of course, moments when the pressure of the excitement is so great that only superhuman self-control could resist it.  They come both in war and peace. We must do the best we can.

The second enemy is frustration- the feeling that we shall not have time to finish.  If I say to you that no one has time to finish, that the longest human life leaves a man, in any branch of learning, a beginner, I shall seem to you to be saying something quite academic and theoretical.   You would be surprised if you knew how soon one begins to feel the shortness of the thether, of how many things, even in the middle life, we have to say “No time for that,” “Too late now,” and “Not for me.”  But Nature herself forbids you to share that experience.  A more Christian attitude, which can be attained at any age, is that of leaving futurity in God’s hands.  We may as well, for God will certainly retain it whether we leave it to Him or not.  Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future.  Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment “as to the Lord.”  It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for.  The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

Man Choir

Some of my fondest memories of Azusa Pacific University took place with these guys. The APU Men’s Chorale.

Probably one of my favorites was my first performance with these guys at St. Francis Episcopal church in Upland. We did two performances, first for their “contemporary” service and then for their main service. I put contemporary in quotes because if the man leading the service is wearing robes and you sing hymns exclusively, we clearly have different definitions of contemporary. Moving on…

It just happened to be bring your pet to church day. Awesome. People had brought their dogs, cats, hamsters, rabbits, ferrets, you get the idea…all to be blessed by the minister. Again: awesome. So in this contemporary service, our choir outnumbered the congregation two to one and once we started singing we wanted nothing more than to be able to just blend in. We started singing a hymn that was altogether unfamiliar to us. I remember us making it a verse or two before we started shielding each other so we could get our giggles in although after reading the first verse I don’t see how we made it that long. It culminated in a handful of us actually hunched over laughing. Thankfully there were enough of us in man choir that we could stick them in the middle out of the sight of the congregation. Maybe you had to be there, but here are the lyrics nonetheless. And some videos of one of Man Choir’s more recent performances. Give em a listen. They’re awesome.

A Sing of all Creation

Dolphins leaping, swallows gliding,
Glory in God.
Wolves a-howling, eagles soaring,
Glory in God.

Buffaloes and cattle roaming,
Horses stamping, bears a-prowling,
Sheep a-grazing, squirrels hoarding,
Glory in God.

Elephants and tigers roaring,
Glory in God.
Alligators and coyotes,
Glory in God.

Skunks an roaches, ants and spiders,
Rattle snakes and mountain lions,
Have their place in all creation,
Glory in God.

Hamsters snuffing, geckoes sunning,
Glory in God.
Cats a-snoozing, dogs a-panting,
Glory in God.

Goldfish staring, rabbits hopping,
Doves of peace on Francis lighting,
Shyest creatures in our stillness,
Glory in God.

Dragons sitting on their trasures,
Glory in God.
Flames that burn but warm our houses,
Glory in God.

George released the dragon's wisdom,
Pierced the darkness with his lancing,
Fierceness met with courage blending,
Glory in God. Glory in God. Glory in God.

Whatcha readin?

It’s been awhile since I’ve asked. What books are you in right now?

The Rabbit Room.

Sweet.

Pietism.

Moving on. You guessed it, the second “ism” is pietism. Guinness defines it as,

a “heart religion,” an understanding and way of believing that places piety, or total life devotion, at the center of the Christian faith. Long a feature of Christian orthodoxy, pietism became a recognizable religious movement at the end of the seventeenth century. As such it stands as a movement of revival in protest against other emphases, such as sacramentalism and doctrinalism, and other tendencies, such as ritualism, legalism and- most importantly- intellectualism.

I quote Ferris Bueller, who quoted John Lennon, “I don’t believe in “isms”, I just believe in me.”

Ok, not really. Personally, I just believe the Bible. There were just way too many “isms” in there not to quote it. You know you were thinking it anyway…moving on…

Isn’t total life devotion what Christ asks for? Absolutely. Check out Matthew 8:18-22, Mark 10:17-25, Luke 14:25-33, etc… So why mention this as something that is a contributor to anti-intellectualism in the realm of American Evangelicals?

Similarly to how Guinness addressed Polarization, he asserts that Pietism itself is a good thing, however, over time it became deformed.

Reinforced by the polarization discussed earlier, the core themes of the Puritan mind shifted or disappeared- from the objective to the subjective, from the covenantal and communal to the individual, from election to voluntarism, from Calvinism to Arminianism, from the liturgical to the informal, and from a stress on theology to a stress on experience.

I agree with what Casey said about how piety coexisting with deficient belief is going to be false piety, while strong intellectual belief without putting faith into action is not true faith. So if A=B, and B=C…

To put together what I feel Guinness is getting at and what Casey already stated, do you think the shift to the individual, voluntarism, Arminianism, the informal, and a stress on experience has led to deficient belief and in effect false piety? Let’s face it, the shift that Guinness has stated is extremely accurate. I do feel that the subjectivity involved in the post-modern shift has led to the academic side of the evangelical’s brain taking a hit while in the pew or while reading their Bible. Anybody have a different opinion?

Polarization.

Right before I moved to Chico I started reading a book by Os Guinness called Fit Bodies, Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don’t Think and What to Do About It and so far I like it a lot. In the first section of the book, he goes over eight “isms” that he feels have contributed to the problem that led him to write this book. The first “ism”, the only one that isn’t actually an “ism” at all, is polarization. Guinness writes,

Ironically, evangelicals are often much more aware of other forms of polarization- “conservative” versus “progressive” in the culture wars, for instance, or “conservative” versus “liberal” or “modernist” in theological matters. But we are less conscious of this automatic polarizing tendency in our own hearts and minds and of its severe consequences. In 1853 an observer noted the widespread impression “that an intellectual clergyman is deficient in piety, and that an eminently pious minister is deficient in intellect.”

I read this and immediately I can think of people who I feel seem to balance the characteristics of intellectualism and piety, but I think that Guinness has a point that today the trend seems to be that people and, in my opinion, churches seem to choose to emphasize one side over the other. Do you think this is an accurate assessment of where the church is at today? If you had to put your church somewhere on the spectrum where would you put it?

Just wondering…

What are you reading right now?