Pure Church

An often overlooked truth is that a fruitful Lord's Day begins--not on Sunday morning--but on Saturday. Preparation for the Lord's Day is what makes the Lord's Day spiritually nourishing.

How do you prepare for the Lord's Day gathering? What disciplines and habits have you formed that serve you well?


Reformation Theology (HT: Unashamed Workman) posted this instructive sample prayer:

Our gracious God and Father. I approach Your throne today, knowing that it is only through the name of Jesus that I can stand before You. I thank and praise You for Your goodness in allowing me to do so. I recognize very well that I am unworthy of this honor, this privilege, apart from Your unmerited favor and grace. I come before You to seek Your blessing on the service on Sunday.

Grant that the Word will come to us with power and with great freedom. Be near to our Pastor and his family. Keep the family close as they serve You together. Protect them from dangers both seen and unseen. May our pastor know great wisdom as he plans his day and his week around the priorities You lay before him. May his schedule allow him much time to study Your word and to pray. May he know that he is serving You and all of us very well as he makes these a high priority. May our pastor’s family time also be protected. Grant that he would be free from all unnecessary busy-ness in ministry. Also grant our pastor sufficient rest and sleep.
Grant our pastor humility before Your Word as he finishes his preparations and grant that he may be filled with a holy dread and gravity as he stands before Your people. May he know what it is to be filled afresh with the Holy Spirit. May we truly know what it is to sit under the preaching of the Word. Speak to us, we pray. Speak to our hearts through the words we hear. May we never be the same.

Be with those who will lead us in worship. Be near to those who will sing or play instruments. Grant that in all things they may seek to serve You. May songs be selected that will bring glory and honor to Your name. May they lead us in singing songs that celebrate the beauty of the Savior and sing of Your wonders, Your glory, Your triumphs, Your holiness, Your majesty and Your great gospel. Let everything that has breath in that place praise the Lord together. May our worship be a sweet and fragrant offering to You. Accept it Lord, though we know it is poor and imperfect. Accept it through Your grace.

Be with the men and women who will be serving this week – those who are responsible for hospitality, greeting and ushering; those who will work in the sound booth, in the bookstall, in administration, and with those who will minister to our precious children and youth. Even now Lord, please fill all of these people afresh with Your Spirit. We thank you for the servant's hearts You have given to them. I ask that You will allow them to be a blessing to many this week, even to those who do not yet know You. May the service run smoothly and may Your hand be evident in all that transpires. May Your love truly flow amongst us. May each of us be sensitive to the needs of others.

Bless our church’s outreach this week, through the words we speak, the love we show and the help we give to others. Bless the proclamation of Your gospel both by word and by life. In Your goodness, bring many to repentance. Direct our conversations, and help each of us to be bold in sharing the good news of Christ with others. Use me and all of our church in outreach this week I pray.

Would you help all who attend to come to the Sunday service as true worshippers--as those who worship You in spirit and in truth. Remind us that the gathering of Your people to worship is something You have ordained for us. It is a holy and sacred time. Help us to take the Lord’s day seriously. Prepare my heart and each of our hearts even now for what You will say to us then. Grant that we may not come before you as frauds, standing in Your presence filled with unconfessed sin. Give us the strength and wisdom to reconcile ourselves to our brothers and sisters before we come before You in worship. Give us discerning hearts that we may see and confess our sin before You. Open our eyes to see and to know You in a new way. Help us to worship You, not only with our lips, but with our hearts, our souls, and all that we are. Accept the gift of worship we will bring to You. May it please You.

Be with our pastor as he prepares to preach Your Word on Sunday. Grant that his time of preparation will be fruitful and that You will stir His heart with the great news of the gospel, of the precious truth of justification by grace alone through faith in Christ alone, all to the glory of God alone. May all of us at our Church live in the power of this gospel always. Protect us from the devil’s lies and help us to never be bored by the wonderful doctrines of grace, but grant that they may be the joy and delight of our hearts. Open our eyes Lord to see just how Your glorious gospel affects each and every area of our lives. Grant that our pastor or any guest minister may preach with great power and passion on Sunday morning. May the preaching be God centered, cross centered and gospel centered.

Be with me Lord. Prepare my own heart for Sunday morning when You speak to us as Your people. I confess that already my heart is polluted with sin. As I think about worshipping You, already I wonder how other men may perceive me. Already I sin against you. Extend Your gracious forgiveness to me that I may come before You with a clean heart. Renew a right spirit within me. Keep the truth ever before me that to obey is better than sacrifice. Help me to be obedient to You in all things. Fill me with Your Spirit. Grant that I may serve You by serving others.

Grant traveling mercies as men and women, boys and girls come to our Church on Sunday. Keep us safe this week and as we gather together in Your name.

We pray for peace and unity while we gather together. We ask that there will be mercy and understanding. We ask that there will be a great outpouring of your Spirit. We ask that you will bless us for the sake of the glory of Your great name.

I ask these things humbly and in the name that is above all names, the Lord Jesus Christ. Grant that I may be expectant and observant in seeking answers to this prayer so that I may praise You for Your goodness. May we all seek Your presence and glory in it together as we worship You this week.

This year I'm trying to think about evangelism, so this video caught my eye. I wonder how often my preaching looks like this example of extreme witnessing.

Also, Paul Crouse at Engaging Your World extended the priviledge of doing an interview on The Decline. As did Christian Manifesto.

Later today, Lord willing, it'll be a joy to discuss The Decline with Janet Parshall on Janet Parshall's America.

A number of worthwhile reads in the blogosphere already this week:

Greg Gilbert poses some really, really, really helpful questions designed to help us think about our attachment to music in the public gathering of the church.

Before he votes, Eric Redmond wants to candidates to talk to him about morality.

Check out C.J. on "the pastor's task of discernment." And it's a great joy to add my brother to the blogroll.

Justin Buzzard provides insights for inserting the gospel in everyday conversation. And the GirlTalkers have some helpful questions for deeper spiritual fellowship in conversation.

My man Carter has his kids "bugging for Jesus."

The Desiring God Pastors' Conference Audio and Sermon Summaries:
Session 1: The Pastor As Son of the Heavenly Father (D.A. Carson)
Session2: The Call to Courage (Crawford Loritts)
Session 3: The Pastor As Son of an Earthly Father (D.A. Carson)
Session 4: Evangelist Bill Piper: Fundamentalist Full of Grace and Joy (John Piper)
Session 5: The Pastor As Father to His Family and Flock (D.A. Carson)
Session 6: Fathering a Pioneer Mission Ministry (Greg Livingstone)

Mark Lauterbach on "The Spirit and the Church" on Acts 2:42-47:

The heart of the passage is this – the church is the work of the exalted Christ. She thrives by virtue of her union with Him. The church is made healthy by going back to him. Sin will disrupt the church. The Savior’s blood is more than sufficient for forgiveness and renewal. The call is to faith, to seek from the Savior the grace necessary for fruitfulness to be renewed. There is no reluctance in Him.

One more quote from Packer's Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. In this one, Packer zooms in on the debate about evangelistic method and lays down one principle for all who do the work of evangelism. This is long but very much worth it.

"So, in the last analysis, there is only one method of evangelism: namely, the faithful explanation and application of the gospel message. From which it follows--and this is the key principle which we are seeking--that the test for any proposed strategy, or technique, or style, of evangelistic action must be this: will it in fact serve the word? Is it calculated to be a means of explaining the gospel truly and fully and applying it deeply and exactly? To the extent to which it is so calculated, it is lawful and right; to the extent to which it tends to overlay and obscure the realities of the message, and to blunt the edge of their application, it is ungodly and wrong.

"Let us work this out. It means that we need to bring under review all our evangelistic plans and practices--our missions, rallies, and campaigns; our sermons, talks, and testimonies; our big meetings, our little meetings, and our presentation of the gospel in personal dealing; the tracts that we give, the books that we lend, the letters that we write--and to ask about each of them questions such as the following:

"Is this way of presenting Christ calculated to impress on people that the gospel is a word from God? Is it calculated to divert their attention from man and all things merely human to God and His truth? Or is its tendency rather to distract attention from the Author and authority of the message to the person and performance of the messenger? Does it make the gospel sound like a human idea, a preacher's plaything, or like a divine revelation, before which the human messenger himself stands in awe? Does this way of presenting Christ savour of human cleverness and showmanship? Does it tend thereby to exalt man? Or does it embody rather the straightforward, unaffected simplicity of the messenger whose sole concern is to deliver his message, and who has no wish to call attention to himself, and who desires so far as he can to blot himself out and hide, as it were, behind his message, fearing nothing so much as that men should admire and applaud him when they ought to be bowing down and humbling themselves before the mighty Lord whom he represents?

"Again: is this way of presenting Christ calculated to promote, or impede, the work of the word in the men's minds? Is it going to clarify the meaning of the message, or to leave it enigmatic and obscure, locked up in pious jargon and oracular formulae? Is it going to make people think, and think hard, and think hard about God, and about themselves in relation to God? Or will it tend to stifle thought by playing exclusively on the emotions? Is it calculated to stir the mind, or put it to sleep? Is this way of presenting Christ an attempt to move men by the force of feeling, or of truth? Not, of course, that there is anything wrong with emotion; it is strange for a person to be converted without emotion; what is wrong is the sort of appeal to emotion, and playing on emotion, which harrows people's feelings as a substitute for instructing their minds.

"Again: we have to ask, is this way of presenting Christ calculated to convey to people the doctrine of the gospel, and not just part of it, but the whole of it--the truth about our Creator and His claims, and about ourselves as guilty, lost, and helpless sinners, needing to be born again, and about the Son of God who became man, and died for sins, and lives to forgive sinners and bring them to God? Or is it likely to be deficient here, and deal in half-truths, and leave people with an incomplete understanding of these things, and hurry them on to the demand for faith and repentance without having made it clear just what they need to repent of, or what they ought to believe?

"Again: we have to ask, is this way of presenting Christ calculated to convey to people the application of the gospel, and not just part of it, but the whole of it--the summons to see and know oneself as God sees and knows one, that is, as a sinful creature, and to face the breadth and depth of the need into which a wrong relationship with God has brought one, and to face too the cost and consequences of turning to receive Christ as Saviour and Lord? Or is it likely to be deficient here, and to gloss over some of this, and to give an inadequate, distorted impression of what the gospel requires? Will it, for instance, leave people unaware that they have any immediate obligation to respond to Christ at all? Or will it leave them supposing that al they have to do is to trust Christ as a sin-bearer, not realizing that they must also deny themselves and enthrone Him as their Lord (the error which we might call only-believism)? Or will it leave them imagining that the whole of what they have to do is to consecrate themselves to Christ as their Master, not realzing that they must also receive Him as their Saviour (the error which we might call good-resolutionism)? We need to remember here that spiritually it is even more dangerous for a man whose conscience is roused to make a misconceived response to the gospel, and take up with a defective religious practice, than for him to make no response at all. If you turn a publican into a Pharisee, you make his condition worse, not better.

"Again: we have to ask, is this way of presenting Christ calculated to convey gospel truth in a manner that is appropriately serious? Is it calculated to make people feel that they are indeed facing a matter of life and death? Is it calculated to make them see and feel the greatness of God, and the greatness of their sin and need, and the greatness of the grace of Christ? Is it calculated to make them aware of the awful majesty and holiness of God? Will it help them to realize that it is a fearful thing to fall into His hands? Or is this way of presenting Christ so light and casual and cosy and jolly as to make it hard for the hearers to feel that the gospel is a matter of any consequence, save as a pick-me-up for life's misfits? It is a gross insult to God, and a real disservice to men, to cheapen and trivialize the gospel by one's presentation of it. Not that we should put on an affected solemnity when speaking of spiritual things; there is nothing more essentially frivolous than a mock seriousness, and nothing more likely to make hypocrites out of our hearers. What is needed is this: that we, who would speak for Christ, should pray constantly that God will put and keep in our hearts a sense of His greatness and glory, and of the joy of fellowship with Him, and of the dreadfulness of spending time and eternity without Him; and then that God will enable us to speak honestly, straightforwardly, and just as we feel about these matters. Then we shall be really natural in presenting the gospel--and really serious too.

"It is by asking questions of this sort that we must test and, where necessary, reform our evangelistic methods. The principle is that the best method of evangelism is the one which serves the gospel most completely. It is the one which bears the clearest witness to the divine origing of the message, and the life-and-death character of the issues which it raises. It is the one which makes possible the most full and thorough explanation of the good news of Christ and His cross, and the most exacting and searching application of it. It is the one which most effectively engages the minds of those to whom witness is borne, and makes them most vividly aware that the gospel is God's word, addressed personally to them in their own situation. What that best method is in each case, you and I have to find out for ourselves. It is in the light of this principle that all debates about evangelistic methods must be decided." (pp. 86-91)

Provocative and helpful thoughts here and here.

I really appreciated my brother Lance spotting Shelby Steele's inconsistency when describing the Barack Obama campaign as "solely about race." Steele is a far more able scholar than I hope to be, but I found his interviews re: A Bound Man hopelessly... bound in a way that Obama doesn't appear to be.

The pressure on the content and length of a sermon is always downward. When is the last time a pastor had to call riot police because his congregation rose up en masse and demanded more systematic, biblical and historical theology in the sermon, more word study, tighter exegesis, and application Christological, ecclesiological, social and personal? Chances are you've never seen or heard that happen. The pressure on the content and length of a sermon is always downward.

The pastoral staff at FBC has been thinking through Ed Welch's When People Are Big and God Is Small. We finished up today with chapters 12 and 13. I was really encouraged with chapter 12, which surprised me with a very church (corporate)-centered emphasis on the Christian life. In a book that lends itself to a fair amount of individual reflection, the reader might expect a discussion of "Love Your Brothers and Sisters" to stress individual effort. But Welch warmly clothed love for brothers and sisters in the robe of local church membership and commitment.

"How, then, should evangelism be defined? The New Testament answer is very simple. According to the New Testament, evangelism is just preaching the gospel, the evangel. It is a work of communication in which Christians make themselves mouth-pieces for God's message of mercy to sinners. Anyone who faithfully delivers that message, under whatever circumstances, in a large meeting, in a small meeting, from a pulpit, or in a private conversation, is evangelizing. Since the divine message finds its climax in a plea from the Creator to a rebel world to turn and put faith in Christ, the delivering of it involves the summoning of one's hearers to conversion. If you are not, in this sense, seeking to bring about conversions, you are not evangelizing; this we have seen already. But the way to tell whether in fact you are evangelizing is not to ask whether conversions are known to have resulted from your witness. It is to ask whether you are faithfullymaking known the gospel message."
"What was this good news that Paul preached? It was the news about Jesus of Nazareth. It was the news of the incarnation, the atonement, and the kingdom--the cradle, the cross, and the crown--of the Son of God. It was the news of how God 'glorified his servant Jesus' by making Him Christ, the world's long-awaited 'Prince and... Saviour'. It was the news of how God made His Son Man; and how, as Man, God made Him Priest, and Prophet, and King; and how, as Priest, God also made Him a sacrifice for sins; and how, as Prophet, God also made Him a Lawgiver to His people; and how, as King, God has also made Him Judge of all the world, and given Him prerogatives which in the Old Testament are exclusively Jehovah's own--namely, to reign till every knee bows before Him, and to save all who call on His name. In short, the good news was just this: that God has executed His eternal intention of glorifying His Son by exalting Him as a great Saviour for great sinners.

Tokyo Jennifer tagged me with the 7 disclosures meme. So, I think I'm supposed to give 7 things you might not know about me. Here goes:

1. There was a time that I wanted to be an interior designer. You can't tell it by looking at our place these days, but I do like design. And on many nights, a good date with me and the wife is a long night watching HGTV. Which reminds me... DO BETTER WITH DATE NIGHTS!

2. Related to the above (maybe this is cheating), there was I time I also wanted to be a fashion designer. I'm no clothes horse, but I like nicely cut suits and a well-built shoe. I'm not a real fan of "What Not To Wear," however. Most of what they recommend is either too trendy or too immodest.

3. If I were not a pastor, my career of choice would be high school basketball coach. I was an assistant for 3-4 years and I loved it. There was nothing quite like the opportunity to mold those young fellas into better men and basketball players.

4. I'm actually quite shy. Really!

5. I like to read (okay, binge on) Dee Henderson romance novels about once every couple of years. I really enjoyed the O'Malley series. I thought the concept was great... seven orphans who band together to make their own family, all of whom have fabulously exciting careers, each novel focusing on one of the family member's conversion, including some major apologetic theme running alongside the action of the story. Good stuff. No Fabio nonsense.

6. Related to the above, I once accidentally took my wife's multi-vitamins for about a 2-week period. During that time, I had an uncontrollable urge to rent "chic flicks" and cried at everything. I was an absolute mess! Then, one day, straining to see through teary eyes, I looked down at the vitamin bottle I was trying to open only to realize that they were her vitamins.

7. I like country music. Now, that will get a brotha's ghetto pass revoked. But, hey, what can I say? It's good story telling. I also love the blues for the same reason.

A new friend and fellow laborer, Kurt Gebhard, sent me a copy of Jerry Bridges' The Crisis of Caring: Recovering the Meaning of True Fellowship. I've enjoyed working through this Christ-centered, pastorally helpful resource. I was struck particularly by a little section called "Union with God." Bridges outlines four possible ways a Christian can approach the Christian life."There are basically four ways to live the Christian life. The first way is to attempt to do it entirely on our own, by our own effort and willpower. This way is doomed to failure. Jesus stated very plainly, "Apart from me you do nothing" (John 15:5). If we attempt such a solo effort, some meager expressions of the life of Christ will remain in us, for, after all, we are still in union with Him. But in our daily spiritual life we will experience mostly failure, frustration, and, very likely, unsatisfactory relationships with other people. The fruit of the Spirit--love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.--will hardly be visible. Instead of growing vigorously in our lives, those gracious qualities will be stunted and withered. We may have lots of Christian activity and even apparent Christian success, but we will possess little genuine Spirit-produced fruit. Most of us have probably tried this solo approach to the Christian life and found it wanting.

I'm enjoying Mark Lauterbach's book, The Transforming Community: The Practice of the Gospel in Church Discipline. It's a rich and full treatment of this important aspect of our corporate life in Christ. Chapter 4 is called, "For What Sins?" Mark attempts to help us with spiritual diagnosis and triage, with determining how to treat various cases before us. Below are several quotes that helpfully guide us in thinking about the sins we may be called on to address as fellow members of the Body of Christ and as pastors/leaders. They're offered as coaching based on years of experience applying God's word to the lives of God's people.

Yesterday, the Lord granted the great privilege of spending some time with my brother and friend, Dr. Al Mohler. We had a great time on his radio program discussing The Decline. I pray it's encouraging for any who decide to listen. Let me know what you think.

"Humbled for past unworthiness, let elders work on steadily and prayerfully, looking for and expecting the blessing. There will be fruit of our sowing, for that is promised; and usually we shall see fruit, though that is not promised. Some men have passed away from their work to their reward thinking that they had been of little or no use in the world, when it was found that much good had been done by them. With others, again, there is a tendency to exaggerate in their own minds what they have been enabled to do. While it is very encouraging to know that the Lord has blessed our work, it requires much grace for ourselves to safely see much fruit. Everyone is not led to say, or at least to feel, as Dr. Chalmers did when told of a conversion under his preaching, "That is very humbling."

"Then we are apt to forget a great principle of God's Word: "One soweth and another reapeth" (John 4:37). In the rescue of a drowning man, one person might give the alarm, a second might bring a rope, a third might throw it to him, and a fourth might draw him to shore. It could be said truly of all these four that they were instruments in saving the man from death. So it is in the salvation of souls, as proved by the history of individuals. God works all in all, but he often uses several different instruments for the ingathering of his elect, "that no flesh should glory in his presence" (1 Cor. 1:29). How often would our poor hearts try to get credit for being the only instrument in the salvation of a sinner! Now, we can be of much use, and I believe often are of much use, where we see no necessary connection between our own work and the salvation of men. It is, in one sense, a humbling view. It excludes all boasting in ourselves. It is well for many that the good they do is hidden from them till they are able to bear it. And yet it is very encouraging too, for though we may not be able to do any great thing, we can yet do many little things. Let us rejoice to be even the smallest and humblest link in that chain of love and grace by which Jesus is drawing sinners to himself. How well for us and the souls we care for that, from first to last, "salvation is of the Lord" (Jonah 2:9)!"

From David Dickson (eds. George Kennedy McFarland and Philip Graham Ryken), The Elder and His Work, P&R, p. 126-127.

A dear fiend... I mean "friend"... called me last Saturday after my beloved Wolfpack took a beating at the hands of the then-#1 ranked UNC Tarheels.

Three things confuse a Christian;

Some time back, the good folks over at NA (check out the new look) had an interesting conversation going regarding the universal and the local church and church membership. A couple of us had been asked to write a post explaining how we would counsel someone who says they don't feel they need to join a local church because they are members of the universal church (see here and here). How can we persuade such Lone Rangers that the Lord calls them to participate in His body and that they and the body need each other? What are now posted as "articles" were originally blog posts that sparked a lot of comments and interaction. Since that time, I've been noodling on this a little bit, trying to work out the family metaphor as a way of addressing the universal--local tension.

Yesterday we posted part 1 of a quote from J.I. Packer's Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, in which Packer helps us see that in giving God thanks for their salvation many folks think of conversion like Calvinists even if that is not their conscious creed, so to speak. Today's quote provides the second reason Packer thinks many folks may be "Calvinists" and not know it.

Labels are used for convenience, but sometimes prove themselves to be quite inconvenient. As an amateur historian, I appreciate labels when they're used with some precision. They help us to make contact with the people and ideas and history that came before us. So, they can be useful. But they can also, when used sloppily or dishonestly, do more to occlude than elucidate. "Calvinist" and "Arminian" are two such labels. They're helpful when understood and used appropriately, but terribly harmful when called upon without understanding or precision.

A couple posts back, I mentioned that my personal focus this year is on evangelism and doing the work of an evangelist. Throughout the year, Lord willing, I want to consistently read something that focuses me on evangelism, the gospel, and the lost. Brother Quincy requested the reading list, so here it is as it stands. My aim isn't necessarily to read through all of these, as if the goal were to "finish." Rather, these are books that have caught my interest for one reason or another, some of which I've read before, and that I want to spend some time however slow or fast working through. If I only read a couple of them well, I'd be quite encouraged and I trust the Lord will use that.

Jonathan Leeman over at Church Matters has started a series of posts reacting to Bill Hybel's REVEAL. Should be an interesting ride. Here are the first three:

Apparently, today's posts are all about books. But if you're like me, those are the best kinds of posts.

I read with great interest and delight "Enlightened Racism: Not from the Bible," CT's review of Colin Kidd's book, The Forging of Races:Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000.


The central premise of the book is captured in these paragraphs from the review:

Colin Kidd's well-researched, wide-ranging, and insightful book, The Forging of the Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000, demolishes such assumptions when it comes to the issue of race. Kidd's persuasive and learned monograph is no gloating work of Christian apologetics. If anything, he seems slightly embarrassed by how well orthodox Christianity comes out in his narrative, trying to tone it down with mitigating statements calculated to make the accounts look more balanced than they actually are. What are in fact the obvious conclusions from his evidence repeatedly appear coyly as questions. Kidd also has a habit of using refracted or muted language.

Nevertheless, there is no effective way to offset the decisive direction in which his evidence takes us. Even the Old Testament—that vast, stagnant pond in which all manner of offensive viewpoints are supposed to lurk—offers no support to racists. Kidd admits this candidly: "the Bible is itself colour-blind with regard to racial difference." Racists have often quoted Scripture when expounding their views, but Kidd observes that they imported these racial readings into the text rather than finding them there. The New Testament teaches unequivocally that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men" (Acts 17:26 KJV). In traditional scientific terms, this is a denial of polygenism and an assertion of the monogenesis of the human race (thus all homo sapiens should consider each other as part of their extended family). Monogenesis is by no means a self-evident hypothesis. Traditional cultures uninfluenced by the biblical narrative—in China and Japan, for example—assumed polygenesis. As Kidd puts it, "Scripture has the benign capacity to render racial Otherness as a type of cousinage or remote kinship."

Moreover, far from this being the incidental implication of a few verses, orthodox Christians have consistently recognized the solidarity of the human race as a core theme of both the biblical narrative and formal Christian theology: the image of God in humanity, the Fall, and original sin are predicated on the understanding that all human beings are bound together in a single, common origin, lineage, and family. The Christian tradition has consistently discerned that this doctrinal teaching has substantial implications when it comes to the issue of race. To take a typical example, the 18th-century conservative biblical scholar Nathaniel Lardner averred: "all men ought to love one another as brethren. For they are all descended from the same parents, and cannot but have like powers, and weaknesses, and wants … . For notwithstanding some differences of outward condition, we have all the same nature, and are brethren."

I'm very much looking forward to getting a copy of this book and slowly considering its pages. We need more scholarship of the sort that takes seriously the biblical teaching on identity and applies it to our current thinking and behavior. Thansk JT for passing on the article.

Tim Challies, author of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, is on a blog tour. He's guest blogging on a number of blogs, answering questions, and discussing things with folks who leave comments. This is an excellent idea. Check him out on tour at:

"This brings us to our second point, which is that this beautiful prayer in Ephesians is for us. The "you" Paul is praying about is clearly "you" plural--"you-all." He is speaking to the body of Christ in Ephesus. The knowledge he prays for is held "together with all the saints," and the result of that knowledge is taht we "reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God" (Eph. 4:13). We mirror Christ most clearly when there is unity among God's people (Eph. 2:19-22). Such unity is achieved not when we are psychological cups, but when we are God's servants.

In the City of Compton...
Our brother holdin' down West side... in the city of Compton... Ken Jones... has put his sermons on line. You can hear them here. (HT: Carter)

2008 with the Puritans
Timmy Brister has an outstanding idea and a special offer from Reformation Heritage. We should all join him. (HT: JT)

Pastoral Priorities for 2008
Nathan Finn gives us a look at Andrew Fuller's pastoral priorities.

Evangelism
The Lord has burdened me afresh to "do the work of an evangelist." So, I'm thankful for every post that's useful on the subject, like this one: Practical Steps for Personal Evangelism.

Gethsemane and Our Sin (HT: Irish Calvinist)

Last night, my wife and I stayed up well past our bedtimes watching television. We were gripped with three programs--all at once, since I'm a guy and control the remote.

My reading project this year is personal evangelism. So, Lord willing, I'll be working through a year's worth of reading on the topic, exploring it from various angles, with the hopes of developing and implementing a personal plan for doing the work of an evangelist.