Tonight, God’s hand and God’s plan were clear.

The car we were in was rather delayed… leaving church, for a few reasons, about 15 minutes behind the others, and then it took us forever to find a parking spot.  All the while, I was repenting of impatience and trying to trust and hope that God knew what he was doing…  Of course, He was putting us in exactly the right places at exactly the right times.

Really early on, Daniel and I met a girl looking for a bus home.  We asked her if she knew the Gospel, she said “yes”, and walked us through redemptive history, quoting verses along the way.  We followed that up with the “million dollar question”: do you believe the Gospel.  “No.”

She believes in God, and Jesus, and knows the facts of the Gospel.  But she knows the cost of actual faith – that Jesus would have to take over her life – and that wasn’t a choice she was will to make just then.  Her current state is acknowledging truth in her head and wanting to acknowledge it in her heart.  But she’s not there yet.

We talked with her for about 30 minutes, trying to help her find her bus.  We found out that she’s pregnant and that if she doesn’t leave her boyfriend he’ll make her get an abortion.  So she’s pretty torn up internally and going through some crazy stuff.  We got to talk about how Christianity is about joy – a joy that is deep and true and pervasive, that doesn’t contradict sorrow and suffering but pushes on through it.

We left her with a New Testament, a Quest For Joy tract, and the Quest For Joy CD.  Pray that she would meet Jesus in a compelling way tonight.  She wants to believe.

Our next conversation was with a girl who was already a Christian, was from around here, and was churchless.  We had a good chat with her, talking through the Gospel, talking about Desiring God and what we do there, and inviting her to church with us.  We pointed her to Bethlehem’s website – pray that she gets plugged in.

The last encounter I had was really remarkable.  Bill, one of the guys we were with, and I were walking down the sidewalk and Bill suddenly stops, turns around, and says to this woman, “Can we pray for you?  I feel like I’m supposed to ask you if we can pray for you.”  Her response: “how’d you know?  My mom is about to die of cancer and my toddler is having brain surgery in two weeks.”  Wow!  We prayed for her, her mom, and her kid (who was with her in a stroller, and the happiest-looking kid I’ve ever seen.  He wouldn’t stop smiling!).  We invited her to church on Sunday – she said she’s been looking for a church and everyone she’s asked has been unhelpful.  Pray for her son, her mom, and that she’d come to church next weekend and meet Jesus!

I went into the night hopeful but afraid – it’s hard for me to start and sustain conversations with people.  I was praying that God would give me joy, and help me approach evangelism Christian Hedonistically – doing it for my joy and for God’s glory.  God answers prayer in ways we can never dream, working things out in His perfect wisdom to give us joy in Him and call people to Himself!

-Ben

(Check out the album version and lyrics here.)

-Ben

(edit: Direct link to the album: http://picasaweb.google.com/benhutton/MinneapolisApartment)

So… what should I write about?  How can I be helpful?

I get into many very relevent convos with people over IM, email, or in person that would probably be very beneficial for many people to read/hear/contribute to.  Which isn’t to say that those aren’t good ways to communicate too…

Throughout much of the semester a bunch of us watched a sermon together every Tuesday night and then talked about it, and other stuff, for a few hours.  I wish you all could have been there (and you’ll get a chance next semester!).  Perhaps something similar could be done in this space?

Leave a comment…

-Ben

1. I get to go to Bethlehem Baptist Church and hear John Piper preach every Sunday.
2. My walk to church is shorter than the walk down Ho Plaza.
3. I get to hang out in the BBC book store, which is basically what I’m always secretly hoping Borders will be every time I walk in.  Imagine (almost) every good Christian book, in one room.  (Not too many very dead guys, though there is a good number.)  I will probably come home with ~$500 of new books.
4. I get to go to real old-people Sunday School, which is something I’ve never gotten to do before in my life.
5. I get to go to BBC’s prayer meetings and evangelism times.  Last Tuesday we went street-EV’ing downtown, and we think a handful of people got saved!
6. I get to work at Desiring God.
7. I get to work at Desiring God whenever I want to, since they gave me keys .
8. DG gives us free Mountain Dew.
9. I get to work doing web programming, which is basically what I do with my free time during the summers anyway.
10. Job == Hobby => amazingness
11. I get to work with a team of godly Reformed Christian Hedonistic men and women wiser and more mature than I who treasure Jesus and the Bible and are working tirelessly for your joy and mine for the sake of the Gospel.
12. I get to work with Daniel and hang out with Joe and Liang, who are also here with me.
13. I get to meet and hang out with and learn from people who are doing things I want to be doing eventually, like going to TBI, planting churches, doing campus ministry, etc.

The project I’m working on is simultaneously very exciting and very daunting.  Objectively, it’s very clearly one of those “if this succeeds at all, it’s completely by God’s grace” things.  It can consume whatever time I’m able to throw at it, which so far has been a lot.  Like I said above, they’ve given us keys to the building, so we’ve been going home later and later each day.  Soon we’ll be keeping I-Banker hours.  Pray that the work would be done in active reliance on Jesus for wisdom and strength, and hope and joy in Jesus, not simply pretty code or solved problems.

There is one project that I can talk about – our accountability web application.  I’ll talk more about it in a later post.  Daniel’s been hard at work for the last few days writing it while I’ve been learning Ruby On Rails (he already knew it) and working on some administrative/environment stuff.  I thank God for him, the heart God’s given him, and his willingness and ability to serve the Body of Christ in building this tool.

I’ll give a more subjective analysis later.  Maybe I’ll get back into the habit of blogging often.  We’ll see…

-Ben

In the meantime, we’re stuck with text smileys.  I suggest an “o” for the eye.  Some have proposed a “-”.  I think the “o” looks better.  I also think the smiley needs a nose…

o-)

o-P

o-|

`-)     <— Winking Cyclops

-Ben

We didn’t stay for much of the conference, but for the most part what we saw was what we expected – lots of joking, laughing, and the current Christian fad of condemning legalism with more legalism. Don’t do that!

But the time spent with JW, Adam, Tracy, Nic, and Christy was awesome! We’re very much looking forward to getting to work with them this next semester. They all seem to be Piper/DWYL fans, though JW has an odd attachment to the NIV. (He says he had an ESV before any of you knew what it was.)

Two awesome quotes (well, paraphrases) from the main session we went to last night:

• The speaker, introing the passage he was going to read, said, “So now I’m going to read from a children’s Bible, also known as the New Living Translation.”
• The speaker asks us to call out some “christiany things” that we’re often told to do. One kid replies, “Join Crusade staff.”

Oh, and for those who <3 cute babies, here’s Nic and Christy’s son Jack (a few weeks old, I think):

-Ben

This morning my assistant, Bryan DeWire, found out his father, who 24 hours ago seemed in fine health, didn’t make it through emergency heart surgery. This afternoon, my wife called me in tears to update me on a very difficult day trying to raise and teach 5 young children. Very different, yet real and painful experiences of God’s providential reign in lives of Christians I love.

Also this morning I read this sentence in a pamphlet titled, “Honey Out of the Rock,” by Puritan Thomas Wilcox,

“Judge not Christ’s love by providences, but by promises.”

Experiences are very powerful. They often feel more powerful than promises. So it’s tempting to interpret prosperity and ease as God’s blessing and tribulation as God’s displeasure. And sometimes they are. But often they are not.

Actually, what we see all the way through the Bible is the Lord training his disciples to trust his promises more than providences. Think of Abraham and Sarah waiting for Isaac, or Jacob losing Rachel, or Joseph in slavery and prison, or Job’s suffering, or David running from Saul. Think of Lazarus and the heartbreak of his death and the constant tribulations of Paul. And of course Jesus set the ultimate example by looking to the joy set before him as he endured the cross (Heb 12:2).

Strange, isn’t it? In the Bible pain is often the path to unspeakable joy and prosperity is often an obstacle to it. What’s going on?

Simply, God wants us to treasure what we can’t see more than what we can.

“For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor. 4:18).

And we find out that it’s pain more than prosperity that makes us look for what our eyes can’t see, and long for a satisfaction that doesn’t exist in this world.

So Thomas Wilcox’s advice is worth heeding. For those of us who are experiencing a bitter providence, Wilcox goes on to say,

Bless God for shaking off false foundations, for any way whereby He keeps the soul awakened and looking after Christ; better sickness and temptations, than security and superficiality.

1. Reading. I mentioned this last night at Real Life, and I’ll probably write more surrounding it for the Cru website and/or listserv in a bit, but the ESV blog is promoting a “Read The Bible In January” Bible reading plan. The basic premise is that people make a New Years’ Resolution to read the Bible, then quit after a little while for all sorts of reasons. Solution? Finish reading in that “little while”. I don’t know exactly how much I’m going to attempt to read. Maybe just all of the Old Testament and the Gospels, since I’ve been spending much of my devotional time in the New Testament Letters these last few months. And I don’t quite know when to start. I don’t own a paper ESV Bible (should have brought one back from Cornell…..), so maybe after Christmas?

2. More reading. I brought home a large stack of books to read. Of course, my entire Christmas list was books, so this list may change come December 25. Right now, the current ordering of that looks to be:

1. Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart by John Ensor
2. Finishing the last few chapters of The Mortification of Sin by John Owen
3. God Is The Gospel by John Piper
4. Preaching The Cross by Dever, Duncan, Mohler, and Mahaney
5. Some of Piper’s biographies, from The Roots of Endurance, The Legacy of Sovereign Joy, and The Hidden Smile of God

3. Programming. There are a few updates to be made to the Cru site, as well as a few interesting projects to be worked on. Perhaps I’ll write about these in the coming weeks…..

4. Blogging. Lots of free time and lots of reading means I should have lots of little things to say. The best way to keep up with them (and all blogs) is to subscribe with an RSS reader (see this explanation on the Cru blog about RSS readers).

-Ben

One of them is called Sons of Thunder.  They just released a 4-song demo that you can listen to and download.  Here’s a description they’ve attached to it:

We’ve been thinking, reading, and thinking about our reading a lot lately. Here’s the gist of all that thinking and reading: The Apostle Paul said all of life is worship. A truth-telling preacher says God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. A contemporary philosopher says the opposite of faith isn’t unbelief but idolatry. And a retired music proff says that worship is not dependent on a time, place or a specific activity, but is constantly pouring out of us at all times. We heartily agree. And after a very personally trying year for the Johnson family, the lovely and talented Mrs. Johnson decided she would pour her heart out in song in response to a good, loving and gracious Father God with all of the abovementioned in mind -minus Author and Perfecter, written by Joel Brown-… This music is the result. Our new friends and wildly talented musical collaborators James McAlister, Jeff Shoop and Ryan Phillips graciously accepted our offer to join us in our endeavors and there’s little chance that these tunes would have seen the light of day in their present form without their musical expertise. These songs are intended to be sung corporately, loudly and enthusiastically where we all fellowship, Mars Hill Church. With all respect, many of our fellow congregants are somewhat self-aware, prone to snobbery and likely influenced by seasonal effective disorder brought on by dark damp Seattle winters. We could all stand some personal enjoyment. These songs are meant to get hands out of pockets, eyes off the floor, toes tapping, frowns turned-upside-down and voices singing together for the purpose of hearts being elated to His glory.

-Ben