Just a reminder: there is a picnic this Sunday at Mason Neck State Park.  Directions are below.

Remember: this event is BYOL (Bring Your Own Lunch).  Bring your soccer ball, frisbee, and baseball & glove, too

Got questions?  Since I’m still in Tennessee, call Tony Rossell.

Directions:

• Turn RIGHT onto 123. Go about 7 miles.
• Turn LEFT onto Silverbrook Road. Go 4 mile.
• Turn LEFT onto Lorton Road. Go about 1.3 miles.
• Turn RIGHT onto US-1/Richmond Hwy.
• Turn LEFT onto Gunston Road
• Turn RIGHT onto High Point Road
• Go through the entrance, look for the picnic area on the left.

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I’m off with the fam to scenic, historic Dandridge, Tenneesse, for a little R&R.  Blogging may be sporadic over the next couple weeks; I don’t know what internet access will be like in Tennessee’s second-oldest town.  But, you never know.  Stay tuned.

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Let us make sure that conversions professed are coversions possessed.

Mark Dever wrote yesterday on the Together For The Gospel blog a post entitled, “Should Evangelists Question Professions of Faith?” His post is intended for evangelists and preachers, but since every parent is an evangelist and preacher in their own home, there may be something here that we can learn from this. An excerpt:

“But if evangelists [parents] want to see lost sinners [their children] saved, and if evangelists [parents] know that we sinners can deceive ourselves, then it’s not surprising that we [parents] want to try to make sure (with all appropriate qualifications about our limitedness) that conversions professed are conversions possessed.”

See what he’s getting at here? Sin is deceptive, and it is possible that sin may deceive us (or our kids) by persuading us (and them) that they are converted when they are not through shows of outward behavior without genuine heart change. How can we know for sure? Dever quotes the great George Whitfield’s perspective on the parable of the soils:

“There are so many stony ground hearers, who receive the Word with joy, that I have determined to suspend my judgment till I know the tree by its fruits. I cannot believe they are converts until I see fruit brought back; it will never do a sincere soul any harm.”

Some parents may hear this and think it callous, uncaring. Are we just supposed to ignore professions of faith in our kids? Withhold encouragement? Deny them comfort and assurance of salvation? No, that isn’t what Whitefield or Dever are saying. Dever provides some steps to take:

“What should we do? Encourage the new believer in all things good. Remind them of the gospel. After some appropriate time (which would vary much from case to case) they should be baptized and join a church. They should regularly hear the preaching of the Word, commune, fellowship, pray and obey the Word. They should be building relationships in order to do that. And they should be told to hope in Christ alone for their salvation. Our desire is to find every professor getting safely home to heaven.”

Read the whole article here.

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Do you remember the message Mark gave us one Sunday morning in which he described himself as “waking up each morning as an unbeliever”?  He went on to tell us how he has to start at the beginning every morning, reminding himself that he has been bought with a price and now lives for Christ. It is so easy to forget. I know I do. I bet you do, too.

I think it can be helpful to have truths about the gospel written down somewhere. I have a special journal (Moleskine, of course) where I write down helpful quotes or outlines of truths that will help me preach the gospel to myself. I recently read chapter 11 of Paul Tripp’s book, War of Words. He lists 6 gospel promises that will protect us from despair and unbelief and remind us of the truths about the difference the gospel can make for us:

1. The first gospel promise we need to embrace is the promise of forgiveness. God’s promise of forgiveness is full an complete… What freedom is found here! It makes no sense or a believer to live imprisoned by fear, in the darkness of guilt and shame. Jesus has paid the debt!
2. The second gospel promise is deliverance. Christ came not only to forgive our sins, but to deliver us from them. On the cross he broke the power of sin’s mastery over me. In the gospel I find not only forgiveness and deliverance, but also strength. The same power that raised Christ from the dead is now living within us.
3. Another precious promise of the gospel is restoration. God is a Restorer. In his sovereign love, God has been bringing us to this point of insight and conviction at just the right moment.
4. In the gospel we also find the promise of reconciliation. The heart of the gospel is the coming of the Prince of Peace. In him we find reconciliation not only with God, but with one another.
5. Further, the gospel brings the promise of wisdom. You may be thinking: I know I need to change…, but I don’t know where to start or what to do. What you need is wisdom, and not only does God give wisdom, but he gives it generously and without finding fault (James 1:5).
6. Finally, the gospel promises us mercy. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that Jesus was tempted like we are in every points so he understands and sympathizes with our weaknesses. We can come to him and find mercy and grace to help us in our time of need (Heb 4:14-16).

Which one of these promises helps you today? Preach it to yourself! Think about it, meditate on it, and pray through it. Pick another one tomorrow.

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“Preach the gospel to yourself” is one of those phrases we have to be very careful with. It’s a phrase we hear often and it could be easy to think we know what it means and assume we’re doing it fully and rightly. What does it mean? Jerry Bridges again, from Discipline of Grace:

It means that you dwell upon the promise that God has removes your transgressions from you as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), that He remembers your sin no more (Isaiah 43:25)… But it means you realize that all these wonderful promises of forgiveness are based upon the atoning death of Jesus Christ.

It is the death of Christ through which He satisfied the justice of God and averted from us the wrath of God that is the basis of all God’s promises of forgiveness. We must be careful that, in preaching the gospel to ourselves, we do not preach a gospel without a cross. We must be careful that we do not rely on the so-called unconditional love of God without realizing that His love can only flow to us as a result of Christ’s atoning death.

Remember: the gospel is about Jesus. Who He is and what He has done. So if we’re going to preach the gospel to ourselves, we have to make an effort to remember what He did on the cross, AND the continuing effect His death has for us today. The continuing effect is that we can draw near to God through Jesus and his death, with confidence. Remember the “double transfer”? Jesus has taken our sin and given us his perfect righteousness.

“Justification is like two sides of a coin. On the one side we are declared “not guilty” before God, and on the other we are positively declared to be righteous through Christ. That is, we are counted in God’s sight as having perfectly obeyed the law of God.” (p. 53)

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Hope y’all had fun with five15 at Kings Dominion. I’m still enjoying the memory of the Hypersonic and the Drop Zone.

If you have any good pictures email them over, and I’ll post them for everyone.

What was your favorite ride?

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Saturday I ended the “Refresh, Part 2: Justified By Grace” message by encouraging you to preach the gospel to yourself.  I will be posting all this week on how to preach the gospel to yourself.   Why is this necessary?  Jerry Bridges explains in The Gospel For Real Life:

“Unfortunately, many believers do not live as if justification is a permanent, abiding state.  They have divorced their hope of eternal life in heaven from their relationship with God today.” (p. 110)

He goes on to explain how this worked for the apostle Paul:

“For Paul, justification was not only a point-in-time event that occurred in the past, but it was a present reality in which he rejoiced every day.  Paul did what we should do.  He renounced any confidence in his own performance or, for that matter, any dismay over his lack of performance.  Instead, by faith he looked to Jesus Christ and His righteousness for his sense of being in right standing with God today and tomorrow, and throughout eternity.”  (p. 111)

In other words–and I’ll be saying this over and over all week–is that preaching the gospel to ourselves means working hard to remember that Christians are justified by grace: that this point-in-time, once-for-all event, which happened when we became Christians, has enduring effects into the present and the future.  And one of the effects is that God the Father looks at us as having the full righteousness of Christ.  This is great news.  More on that the rest of this week…

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Italy beats France 5-3 on penalty kicks in overtime. Who’s happy?

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Last night I gave the second message of our summer series called Refresh: Justified By Grace. Thought you might like to have the qoutes.

“Sin is the missing of the target, a wandering from the path, a straying from the fold. Sin is a hard heart and a stiff neck. Sin is blindness and deafness. It is both the overstepping of a line and the failure to reach it—both transgression and shortcoming. Sin is a beast crouching at the door. In sin, people attack or evade or neglect their divine calling. These and other images suggest deviance: even when it is familiar, sin is never normal. Sin is disruption of created harmony and then resistance to divine restoration of that harmony. Above all, sin disrupts and resists the vital human relation to God, and it does all this disrupting and resisting in a number of intertwined ways.” - Cornelius Plantinga

“Unless we realize that God’s wrath rests upon the sins we have committed and still do commit, we shall never feel the need to be justified.” - Anthony Hoekema

“The Bible would say to us that, in light of eternity, the most important question we all face is: How can a sinful man or woman come into a right relationship with an infinitely holy and just God?” - Jerry Bridges

“Justification is like two sides of a coin. On the one side we are declared “not guilty” before God, and on the other we are positively declared to be righteous through Christ. That is, we are counted in God’s sight as having perfectly obeyed the law of God.” - Jerry Bridges

“There are two “courts” we must deal with: the court of God in Heaven and the court of conscience in our souls. When we trust in Christ for salvation, God’s court is forever satisfied. Never again will a charge of guilt be brought against us in Heaven. Our consciences, however, are continually pronouncing us guilty. That is the function of conscience. Therefore, we must by faith bring the verdict of conscience into line with the verdict of Heaven. We do this by reminding it that our guilt has already been borne by Christ.” Jerry Bridges

Want to know more about how to preach the gospel to yourself? Stay tuned…

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I ran across this chapter 102 of John Piper’s A Godward Life, Part 1. The chapter is entitled “Teenage Resolutions In Honor Of Mom And Dad: What I Pray Our Teens Will Say.” In case you don’t have the book, I want to share most of the article with you here. As you read this, some might think to themselves: “This just isn’t realistic. Way over the top. Does he really expect this of teens.” The answer is that God’s grace can do this to teenagers. It’s not unrealistic or unreasonable.

Teens, sit down with your parents and go over this together. What commitments is God calling you to make to them and to God? It doesn’t have to be exactly this list; you may want to come up with your own. But you should remember that honoring your father and your mother (Ephesians 6:2-3) looks something like this.

Here we go:

This is my vision of what is possible in the power of Christ’s Spirit under the influence of God’s Word.

1. Resolved: I will obey your instructions and do what I know you expect of me, even when it is not mentioned. I will not force you into repeated reminders, which I sometimes call nagging.
2. Resolved: I will not grumble or complain when I do my chores but remember what a great thing it is to have a family, a home, clothes, food, running water, electric lights, and central heating in a world where millions of teenagers have none of these.
3. Resolved: When I think your demands are unfair, I will move to do them first, and after showing an obedient attitude, I will ask if we can talk. Then I will explain my side and try to understand yours.
4. Resolved: I will not stonewall you and give you the silent treatment, which I dislike when my friends to do me. If I am depressed and want to be left alone, I will say, “I’m sorry, I don’t feel like talking now. Can we talk later? I’m not mad. I just need to be alone.”
5. Resolved: When I do something wrong and let you down, I will apologize sincerely with words that you can hear. Something like, “Mom, I’m sorry I didn’t pick up the pile of clothes.”
6. Resolved: I will call you be affectionate family titles like “Mommy,” “Daddy,” “Mom,” or “Dad.” I won’t let other kids pressure me into calling you nothing or calling you something disrespectful as though true affection were embarrassing or childish.
7. Resolved: I will say thank you again and again for the ordinary things you do for me. I will not take them for granted as though you were my slave.
8. Resolved: I will talk about my feelings. Both the positive ones (like happiness, pity, excitement, and sympathy) and the negative ones (like anger, fear, grief, loneliness, and discouragement). I will remember that unshared feelings lead to estrangement, coldness, and even more lonliness and discouragement.
9. Resolved: I will laugh with the family and not at the family. I will especially laugh when my little brother or sister tells a simple joke with expectant excitement.
10. Resolved: I will give two compliments for every criticism. And every criticism will aim to help someone improve, not just belittle or cut down.
11. Resolved: I will enter into family devotions and treat Bible reading and prayer with respect and do my part to help others in the family enjoy them. When I don’t feel spiritually strong, I will pray about this as a personal need rather than pouring it on others as a glass of cold water. I will remember that confessed weakness knit hearts together.
12. Resolved: I will not return evil for evil to try to justify my meannessbecause somebody treated me meanly first.
13. Resolved: I will read my Bible and pray every day, even if it is only a verse and a brief call for help. I know that teens cannot live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.
14. Resolved: I will come home at the time we agreed on. If something happens to stop me, I will call and explain and ask your guidance.
15. Resolved: I will greet our guests with courtesy and respect and try to make them glad they came.
16. Resolved: I will always tell the truth so that you can trust me and give me more and more freedom as I get older.
17. Resolved: I will pray for you as long as I live, that we will be united in faith and love, not only in this world, but for all of eternity in the kingdom of God.

Any resolutions you would like to add to this list?

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