Acting in the Service of Reality
March 15, 2009 – 1:24 pmPiper describing George Whitefield’s preaching, commenting on criticisms that Whitefield was merely “acting”:
This was not a repressed acting. This was a released acting. It was not acting in the service of imagination. It was acting in the service of reality. This was not rendering the imaginary as real. It was rendering the super-realness of the real as sheer awesome, breathtaking real. This was not affectation. This was a passionate re-presentation-replication-of reality. This was not the mighty microscope using all its powers to make the small look impressively big. This was the desperately inadequate telescope bending every power to give some small sense of the majesty of what too many preachers saw as tiresome and unreal.
The Glory Of The Cross
March 15, 2009 – 8:15 amWhat wisdom once devised the plan
Where all our sin and pride
Was placed upon the perfect Lamb
Who suffered, bled, and died?
The wisdom of a Sovereign God
Whose greatness will be shown
When those who crucified Your Son
Rejoice around Your throne
And, oh, the glory of the cross
That You would send Your Son for us
I gladly count my life as loss
That I might come to know
The glory of, the glory of the cross
What righteousness was there revealed
That sets the guilty free
That justifies ungodly men
And calls the filthy clean?
A righteousness that proved to all
Your justice has been met
And holy wrath is satisfied
Through one atoning death
What mercy now has been proclaimed
For those who would believe
A love incomprehensible
Our minds could not conceive?
A mercy that forgives my sin
Then makes me like Your Son
And now I’m loved forevermore
Because of what You’ve done
Real Vision by Trip Lee
February 11, 2009 – 10:34 amVerse 1 – Trip Lee:
Look I don’t know what they told you but if it don’t match up/With His holy Word then homie they need to back up/Some they pretend like they get Him they twisting facts up/That’s why we dig in the scriptures to know the Master/Homie, we have to if we want to get past the Only thing we know being what we learned from the Pastor/I really hope your listening, my listeners cause after/We want to see Him clear like a big screen plasma/Half of the cats I seen they don’t really know the Lord/They think my views are extreme, think I’m going overboard/But they ain’t read a page of the place where He’s spoken for Himself in the matters, man that’s what I be quoting for/Some say He don’t exist, nah that don’t even make sense/This Earth is masterpiece somebody had to paint this/Forget the big bang, or evolution and face this/He’s the King of Kings and author of all creation/Some say He made it then lets it run like a clock/Nah, He controls every soul and every action on the block/If it happened then He watched and it happens on His watch/No surprise in His eyes, no my God’s never shocked
Hook:
I don’t know what you heard, I don’t know what you heard/I don’t know what you heard, hope it matches with the Word/I don’t know what you think, I don’t know what you think/I don’t know what you think, homie time to get it straight
Verse 2 – Tedashii:
Wonderful, Counselor, Masterful/This is Jesus Christ, LORD, all capitals/This is why Trip and I trip after the mass appeal/Of people, who pigeonhole Jesus as a pacifist, Whoa!/A prophet with no power in His plasma/Still we preach against the views that Arius profess to have of Him (look it up!)/Meaning the deifying of Jesus was nothing more than an accident/But the Bible’s the proof that refutes and gives us facts on Him/That He was, what His Daddy was Homousia, the God-Man/sent to save us all that He loves/And set us free from sin and shut it down like it was Attica/Anyone disbelieving this truth may want to back it up or back It up/Because the Son of Man is coming that’s what’s up and at His judgment seat is where you will see/His holy wrath is just/But God is Love, that don’t mean He’s weak! Hey check His resume/Just cause He lets you breath don’t mean He won’t take His breath away
Hook
Verse 3 – Trip Lee:
These days in the church, most cats got it twisted/Don’t let them fool you on how we posed to live this/For instance, some say to come to Christ for riches/Or maybe your blessing, but my question is what is this?Cause that ain’t the gospel, that if you put your faith in Him/To come to the Savior, and then you’ll rake that paper in? Face it friends, they made Jesus they holy ATM/Paul would appalled, this gospel would be disgrace to Him/This false gospel strips Him of His flyness/He’s more like your servant and less like His Highness/So please don’t buy it, that idea is absurd/Jesus said the Christian life can be strife and it’s filled with hurt/ Look homie I would hate for, cats to get that fake stuff/And never know it’s wrong cause they wont open a page up/I pray we erase the wrong views and embrace the Holy Word that testifies to us about the Savior
Fast The American Dream
February 4, 2009 – 12:07 pmMy sister and I did well in school and we were tracking towards lucrative careers. We could have done anything. We could have been incredibly comfortable and recognized. Between my sister, my 2 brothers-in-law, my wife, and me, we have 15 undergraduate and graduate degrees. Eleven of the 15 are from Ivy League school including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania.
Now all 5 of us are either missionaries or heading to the mission field.
When some people hear of this, they think it’s tragic. Tragic.
But others see it like the pouring of ridiculously expensive and precious perfume upon the feet of Jesus.
Will those who fast the American Dream regret it in heaven?
Now fasting the American Dream does not mean neglecting excellence. I advocate for excellence in missions. Somehow over the last few decades the idea has developed that missionaries are people who can’t do anything else or people who can’t have a successful ministry in their own country.
“To those who receive great educations and have every opportunity to live wonderfully comfortable lives”, Francis Xavier says, “Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the Gospel of Christ!”
-Ben
Tweeting For The Glory Of God?
February 3, 2009 – 3:40 pmI tweet. (Apparently the cute terminology is compelling/attractive to some. But I digress.)
Twitter is a microblogging social networking application where you answer the question, “What are you doing now?” in 140 characters or less. Picture a Facebook News Feed that just had status updates… and just had the people you were actually friends with/interested in paying attention to. You can access the whole system via text message, via its website, or via any number of third party applications (including Facebook). That is, I can send a text to Twitter with what I’m doing when I’m far from my computer.
Why not use Twitter?
1. You need to know everything about everybody. (Your an info junkie – you like to know what people are up to, thinking, feeling, doing… and that’s the end. You want info for info’s sake.)
Perhaps you’re a gossip. You want to know what people are up to because you care more about what they’re doing than you care about Jesus. The more info you have, the more info you can “exchange,” and you’ll gain more info. But of course, there’s a good, justifying reason for all of this: you and your 50 closest friends definitely need to be “praying” about everyone’s deepest, darkest struggles.
Perhaps you want to compare yourself to them to help you feel better about yourself – is your life as interesting as theirs? Are you as popular as they are? Does person A spend as much time with person B as she does with you?
Or perhaps you look up to them, admire them, or even have a crush on them. People-idols are very dangerous because there’s at times a very fine line between “follow me as I follow Christ” and “I follow Paul!”
Perhaps you just want to be able to say you’re friends with them. Yes, you can follow Mark Driscoll on Twitter. No, it doesn’t make Jesus love you more.
All things to watch out for with Twitter.
2. You want everyone to know certain things about you. You’re amazing. Or at least, you’re interesting. Or at least, you want people to think so. People paying attention to us makes us feel good, and people paying attention to your carefully crafted Twitter feed will let them see how amazing you are.
Why use Twitter?
1. It shows Christians and nonchristians what you treasure. What you do with your time? What do you talk about? What do you find interesting? What do you find astonishing? Do you love what God loves and hate what God hates? Seeing Christians getting excited about Jesus and living for him is tremendously helpful to my soul.
2. Accountability and encouragement. If I’m constantly using Twitter to answer the question “What are you doing?” people can be caring for me better be asking me, “How did that go?”. This ties closely into point 1 – you can be encouraged by what other people value, you can encourage other people as they see Jesus transforming your life, and they can hopefully challenge you as they see your idols coming through.
3. Filling in the social fabric. This can work at several levels. For example, most of the Internet Strategies team at Desiring God uses Twitter. Most of us don’t live in Minneapolis and work remotely. By tweeting, we have a general idea of what each other is doing, even though we’re rarely together physically.
At a more intimate level, Ray and I are good friends who talk often. We realized that often our conversations started (or at least included) the question “what are you doing now?”. This is a question that we want to be asking each other, and that helps us understand each other, but it’s one that doesn’t need to be asked explicitly. We have enough to talk about, we don’t need to talk about every single thing that we “are doing now.” By tweeting, we’re answering that question for each other, AND allowing for further discussion in the case what we’re doing is actually interesting.
4. Collaboration, recommendation, and advice. I tweet, “Going to see [insert movie here].” The next day, you and your friends are looking for a movie to see. You know that I’ve seen that one, so you can ask me what I thought of it. I tweet, “Shopping on Amazon for a new pair of headphones.” You just got a pair for Christmas that you really like, so you message me with a recommendation.
5. Putting communication into the public space. We already do this with Facebook walls. Twitter has the notion of “replying”, where you can tweet a reply to a friend’s tweet. Other’s can then reply to your reply. Facebook has set the precedent for how this happens, and it really does mimick normal social interaction – we relate to each other in groups, not merely one-on-one. Another way to state that is that one-on-one relationships exist within a larger social context, and Twitter helps put some communication back into that context.
6. It’s a durable status message. Your Google Talk status message disappears when you change it. Twitter keeps a log of your tweets. Thus, you can tweet multiple times if you are doing multiple things (watching a Youtube Video while hanging out with people, for example). And if you link this with point 4, the “gtalk status message dialog” that occurs occasionally is now durable as well, so others can more concretely follow your conversation (which you mean to be public, anyway, by putting it in your status).
Summary
Twitter is a tool. It won’t save you. It can be used for good or evil. You can already use your computer to watch porn or to watch Piper. You can already use your email to encourage or tear down. Twitter may or may not be for you. Don’t just use it because it’s interesting. Don’t just dismiss it because it seems stupid at first glance. Be discerning. Use Twitter – or don’t use Twitter – for the glory of God.
Try to see it as a tool to help build and maintain Gospel community and Gospel witness. It is easy for Twitter to devolve into man-centeredness – pointing to yourself and your amazingness. But, with God’s help, Twitter can be used to help us love Jesus more.
Thoughts?
-Ben
Trinitarian Glory
January 25, 2009 – 4:56 pmThis just blew my mind:
God created the world to display his glory. We exist to display God’s glory. Okay.
How does the Trinitarian nature of God come into play here? God’s glory is the display of his nature, and thus creation is a display of God’s Trinitarian glory.
This is the world that BEST displays the relationships between the Father and the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit and the Son… for us to marvel at and enjoy.
The Father sending the Son to die, and the Son enduring the Cross and submitting to the Father’s will “for the joy set before him” shows us the glorious relationship between the Father and the Son in a way that couldn’t have been shown if there was no sin or death and this world was different.
Crazy.
-Ben
Parasites
January 13, 2009 – 12:40 pmFrom page 182 of When People Are Big And God Is Small by Ed Welch:
Scott Peck, in his best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled, suggests that we can shape other people into host organisms. It is not a pretty picture: people are the intestine, we are the worm.
“I do not want to live. I cannot live without my husband [wife, girlfriend, boyfriend], I love him [or her] so much.”
And when I respond, as I frequently do, “You are mistaken; you do not love your husband [wife, girlfriend, boyfriend].”
“What do you mean?” is the angry question. “I just told you I can’t live without him [or her].”
I try to explain. “What you describe is parasitism, not love.”
The Bible summarizes these various shapes this way: People are our cherished idols. We worship them, hoping they will take care of us, hoping they will give us what we feel we need. What we really need are biblical shapes and identities for other people. Then, instead of needing people to fill our desires, we can love people for the sake of God’s glory and fulfill the purpose for which we were created.
-Ben
The Glory Of It All
December 29, 2008 – 1:33 pmAt the start
He was there, He was there
In the end
He’ll be there, He’ll be there
And after all
Our hands have wrought
He forgives
Oh, the glory of it all
Is He came here
For the rescue of us all
That we may live
For the glory of it all
Oh, the glory of it all
All is lost
Find Him there, Find Him there
After night
Dawn is there, Dawn is there
And after all
Falls apart
He repairs, He repairs
Oh, the glory of it all
Is He came here
For the rescue of us all
That we may live
For the glory of it all
Oh, He is here
With redemption from the fall
That we may live
For the glory of it all
Oh, the glory of it all
After night
Comes a light
Dawn is here
Dawn is here
It’s a new day, a new day
Oh, everything will change
Things will never be the same
We will never be the same
Oh, the glory of it all
Is You came here
For the rescue of us all
That we may live
For the glory of it all
Oh, You are here
With redemption for us all
That we may live
For the glory of it all
Oh, the glory of it all
Oh, everything will change
Things will never be the same
We will never be same
