Just a reminder for my peeps: We’ve got a five15 BIG MEETING Saturday. This is for all high school and middle school students and their parents.

If you’d like to begin preparing your heart for Driver’s Ed, Part 4–Yield: Proverbs on Friends, you can read Proverbs 27:17. Please pray that we would experience the full range of the Holy Spirit’s work in our meeting: illumination of God’s Word, conviction of sin, serving one another through spiritual gifts, and so on.

Please consider coming early to pray with Zach and the others.  6pm, Room B01. Other than the preaching of God’s Word, there will be nothing more important happening on Saturday night than this.

As usual, pizza & ping-pong at 5:15pm, the meeting starts at 6:30pm. See you there!

Categories: Announcements, five15 blog
1 Comment »

If C. S. Lewis were alive today, this would be his 108th birthday. Born in 1898, Lewis brought his stunning intellect and creative capacities to bear in Christian apology and fiction. If you want to read a little more about him, I wrote a very brief bio here about a year ago. Here is one of my favorite scenes from The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe (C. J. used this in his message on Sunday):

“Oh, it’s too bad,” sobbed Lucy; “they might have left the body alone.”

“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?”

“Yes!” said a great voice behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked around. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seeen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.

“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.

“Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?” said Lucy.

“Not now,” said Aslan.

“You’re not–not a–?” asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost. Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.

“Do I look it?” he said.

“Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh, Aslan!” cread Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.

“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.

“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

(pp. 161-163)

Categories: five15 blog
2 Comments »

Driving through a shopping center in Burke today, I saw a sign that got my attention:

Recognize the font? That’s Chipotle, people! Good food is on the way. It’s a good thing, too, because Burke is food-challenged. This particular shopping center possesses a Taco Bell, a Subway, and a Starbucks, all of which score points. But working against these fine eating establishments is Friendly’s. Whatever points get scored by having a Starbucks are immediately negated by having a Friendly’s.

But happy thoughts, friends: Chippies is on the way. You-know-who will be there on opening day!

Categories: Announcements, five15 blog
5 Comments »

Normally in Monday Matters posts, I try to summarize the message from the day before. CJ’s message yesterday from Isaiah 53:1-6, 10-12 contained too much good stuff for me to even try. I’m going to provide a very short outline, and the quotes from the message below, but I recommend that you download this message and listen to it again and again.

OUTLINE

1. The Appearance (vv.1-3)
2. The Reality (vv.4-6)
3. The Signficance (vv. 10-12)

“[These verses] are the Bible in miniature and the gospel in brief.” Charles Spurgeon

“Here, then, is one of the peaks of the Old Testament’s revelation of God. From its summit, we can look across the intervening centuries and see the distant coming of Christ. From our vantage point, we obtain a clear view of his work on the far-off summit of Calvary and gain a definitive perspective on its meaning. This song takes us to the heart of the human problem and the heart of the divine mind.” Derek Tidball

“It looks as if it had been written beneath the cross itself, upon Golgotha.” Franz Delitzsch

“Jesus Christ our Lord, moved by a love that was determined to do everything necessary to save us, endured and exhausted the destructive divine judgment for which we were otherwise inescapably destined, and so won us forgiveness, adoption and glory. To affirm penal substitution is to say that believers are in debt to Christ specifically for this, and that this is the mainspring of all their joy, peace and praise both now and for eternity.” J.I. Packer

“When we think of Christ dying on the cross we are shown the lengths to which God’s love goes in order to win us back to himself. We would almost think that God loved us more than he loves his Son! We cannot measure such love by any other standard. He is saying to us: I love you this much. The cross is the heart of the gospel. It makes the gospel good news: Christ died for us. He has stood in our place before God’s judgment seat. He has borne our sins. God has done something on the cross which we could never do for ourselves. But God does something to us as well as for us through the cross. He persuades us that he loves us.” Sinclair Ferguson

Categories: Monday Matters, five15 blog
No Comments »

And still another reason to give thanks… In fact, this is the reason to give thanks. All the good things we enjoy, for which we thank God, flow from this truth, described in Romans 8:32:

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

The substitutionary death of Jesus Christ is the basis for all the good we receive, and the grounds for our thanks. By all means, be thankful today for the church, family, friends, good food, freedom, and more. But don’t forget to thank God for the ultimate expression of his kindness and mercy to us:

For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God… 1 Peter 3:18

Categories: five15 blog
No Comments »

I can think of another reason that we should devote more than one day a year to giving thanks to God for all we’ve received. I get this from one of Jack’s Bible memory verses: 1 Thessalonians 5:16:

“…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

It’s easy to laugh when Jack tries to pronounce “Thessalonians” and “circumstances”. What’s not as easy is applying these verses in real life. As we begin our Thanksgiving meal, it’s a tradition in my family to go around the table and recount the blessings of the last year for which we are grateful to God. And that’s good; we should do that. But it’s easy to be grateful while you chewing some sweet potatoes and passing the gravy.

What about gratitude on other days? I want to encourage you to look for ways cultivate gratitude even after the turkey is long gone. I think a great way to do this is to keep a list of the requests you submit to God in prayer. I write mine down each day in my Moleskine. Periodically look back review what you’ve been praying for, taking note of the prayers God has answered. Let’s be like Matthew Henry: it was said that he was “an alert and thankful observer of answered prayer.”

Why should we do this?  The verse above couldn’t be more clear: it “is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”  People spend a lot of time trying to figure out: what is God’s will for my life.  Here it is, folks: give thanks.
What prayers of yours has God answered lately?

Categories: five15 blog
No Comments »

How can it be that we devote only one day a year to giving thanks?  We have so much to be thankful for, Thanksgiving should be a year-long holiday.  But we are served every year by this holiday: more than the official start of the Christmas shopping season (although it appears that Halloween is beginning to assume this role), Thanksgiving is a wonderful reminder that we must thank God for all that we’ve been given.

What have we been given?  A better question would be: what have we not been given?  1 Corinthians 4:7 says:

“For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”

We deserve eternal punishment for our sins, and instead we receive grace and mercy, compassion and kindness.  Our sins are cleansed, removed, forgiven.  And on top of that, God allows us to enjoy things like smoothies.  He grace is so abundant, we get to multiple smoothie shops from which to choose!  Amazing!

The point is, everything good that we have, and everything bad that we’ve been spared, has come from outside of us.  In other words, we must give thanks for everything we’ve been given, because all of it comes from God as a gift.  Let’s make this Thanksgiving week, Thanksgiving month, Thanksgiving year.

More to come…

Categories: five15 blog
No Comments »

I did something crazy today. I was on my way to Smoothie King with a friend; I could already taste the Cherry Picker. Driving down 236, I saw the newly opened Robeks in Fair City Mall. Someone had recently recommended that I try it, so we gave it a go.

Unfortunately, there was no Cherry Picker equivalent on the menu, so I was left comparing apples to, um… cherries. I had the Raspberry Romance, which was good. (Go ahead, make fun of me if you want). Delicious, obviously very fresh ingredients. I didn’t think it was cold enough: by the time I got to the bottom, it was more juice than smoothie. Maybe that means the quality is good.

I haven’t converted to Robeks yet: that’s too big a decision to make on only one drink. And it’s hard to leave a smoothie shop whose motto is: “Chewing Is Overrated.”

I need some help with this evaluation: has anyone else been to Robeks? How do you think it stacks up? Better or worse than The King?

Categories: five15 blog
3 Comments »

You decide…

Categories: five15 blog
5 Comments »

I heard once that celery is the perfect diet food: apparently it takes more calories to digest celery than you actually get from the celery. Now, whether that’s precisely true or not, I do not know, but I can tell you this: that’s a great metaphor for sin.

Imagine if your entire diet were of celery. The more you eat, the hungrier you get. Starving, you sit down to a huge feast of celery. You gorge yourself, only to rise from the table more ravenous than when you sat down. Sin is like that. The more you eat, the less satisfied you are.

One of the saddest truths about sin is that it is a quest for happiness that can never deliver. We sin because we think what we’re sinning to get will please us. But sin never satisfies. It pleases, but only very briefly, and then leaves us hungrier than before for real happiness. Someone sent me this quote recently which I think explains it well:

“Again and again it appears that Christians are not sufficiently in touch with themselves. They do not know themselves well enough to realize that, because of the way in which their nature has been changed, their hearts are now set against all known sin. So they hang on to unspiritual and morally murky behavior patterns, and kid themselves that this adds to the joy of their lives. Encouraged by Satan, the grand master of delusion, they feel (feelings as such, of course, are mindless and blind) that to give up these things would be impossibly painful and impoverishing, so though they know they should, they do not. Instead, they settle for being substandard Christians, imagining they will be happier that way. Then they wonder why their whole life seems to them to have become flat and empty.” J.I. Packer, A Passion For Holiness, p. 85

Feel flat and empty? If you’re a Christian, there’s a better way. There is joy unimaginable available for the taking in Jesus Christ. Here’s the secret that will deliver us from substandard Christianity: remember the gospel. Verses like John 15:9-11 are incredibly helpful in this way:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

Want your joy to be full? Abide in Christ, and remember the love that sent him to the cross for sinners like us. Meditate long and hard on the three verses above. Make a list of any “unspiritual and morally murky behavior patterns” and repent from them. Give them up to find the joy that is in our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus.

Categories: five15 blog
No Comments »