… Before I die I wanna burn out bright
I’ve put all the RSS feeds from all the people in Crusade whose blogs I know of into a shared tag on Google Reader. You can subscribe to it here, or view a webpage with them all here.
Includes: Ben, Liang, Rajiv, Ray, Ken (Arnold), Charlene, Crystal, Jeanne, John (Sullivan), Tom (Jackson)
If you’re not on my list, and feel you should be, post your blog’s url in the comments and I’ll add it. I feel like I might be missing some of you…
-Ben
O Lord, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!
Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths,
and my lifetime is as nothing before you.
Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah
- Psalm 39:4-5
Come now, you who say, ”Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” - yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ”If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
- James 4:13-17
Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!
Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!
- Psalm 150
YouTube - Trip Lee Interview-What is the Wasted Life?.
“Anything separated from Jesus Christ is a waste of our lives… Anything we do, separated from the motivation behind it - giving the Lord glory - is a waste of our lives. Pursuing things that are not of the Lord, pursuing things that don’t show him to be glorious, and pursing things that don’t help us to know him - it’s a waste of our lives.”
I’ve started going through Paul Tripp’s Whiter Than Snow. It’s a book of 52 short meditations on Psalm 51. Here’s a snippet from the first one that I find immensely helpful.
Here’s the point. Before you can ever make a clean and unamended confession of your sin, you have to first begin by confessing your righteousness. It’s not just your sin that separates you from God, your righteousness does as well. Because, when you are convinced you are righteous, you don’t seek the forgiving, rescuing, and restoring mercy that can only be found in Jesus Christ.
What’s actually true is that when I come to the Lord after I’ve blown it, I’ve only one argument to make. It’s not the argument of the difficulty of the environment that I am in. It’s not the argument of the difficult people that I’m near. It’s not the argument of good intentions that were thwarted in some way. No, I only have one argument. It’s right there in the first verse of Psalm 51, as David confesses his sin with Bathsheba. I come to the Lord with only one appeal; his mercy. I’ve no other defense. I’ve no other standing. I’ve no other hope. I can’t escape the reality of my biggest problem; me! So I appeal to the one thing in my life that’s sure and will never fail. I appeal to the one thing that guaranteed not only my acceptance with God, but the hope of new beginnings and fresh starts. I appeal on the basis of the greatest gift I ever have or ever will be given. I leave the courtroom of my own defense, I come out of hiding and I admit who I am. But I’m not afraid, because I’ve been personally and eternally blessed. Because of what Jesus has done, God looks on me with mercy. It’s my only appeal, it’s the source of my hope, it’s my life. Mercy, mercy me!
-Ben
Joshua Project is a ministry that collects data on the world’s unreached people groups. You should check out their website. They’ve published their data in many formats, including a downloadable Google Earth .kmz file. I’ve taken that and built a webpage using the Google Earth Plugin.
1. Use this file to install the Google Earth Plugin to run Google Earth objects in your browser (works with any Windows browser).
2. Go here to view the Joshua Project map. You can click and drag to move around, and use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.
For more info on Joshua Project, you can check out this video.
-Ben
Worth a slow, prayerful read (from here):
As far as any eye could see
There was no green. But every tree
Was cinder black, and all the ground
Was grey with ash. The only sound
Was arid wind, like spirits’ ghosts,
Gasping for some living hosts
In which to dwell, as in the days
Of evil men, before the blaze
Of unimaginable fire
Had made the earth a flaming pyre
For God’s omnipotent display
Of holy rage. The dreadful Day
Of God had come. The moon had turned
To blood. The sun no longer burned
Above, but, blazing with desire,
Had flowed into a lake of fire.
The seas and oceans were no more,
And in their place a desert floor
Fell deep to meet the brazen skies,
And silence conquered distant cries.The Lord stood still above the air.
His mighty arms were moist and bare.
They hung, as weary, by his side
Until the human blood had dried
Upon the sword in his right hand.
He stared across the blackened land
That he had made, and where he died.
His lips were tight, and deep inside,
The mystery of sovereign will
Gave leave, and it began to spill
In tears upon his bloody sword
For one last time.And then the Lord
Wiped every tear away and turned
To see his bride. Her heart had yearned
Four thousand years for this: His face
Shone like the sun, and every trace
Of wrath was gone. And in her bliss
She heard the Master say, “Watch this:
Come forth all goodness from the ground,
Come forth and let the earth redound
With joy.” And as he spoke, the throne
Of God came down to earth and shone
Like golden crystal full of light,
And banished once for all the night.
And from the throne a stream began
To flow and laugh, and as it ran,
It made a river and a lake,
And everywhere it flowed a wake
Of grass broke on the banks and spread
Like resurrection from the dead.And in the twinkling of an eye
The saints descended from the sky.And as I knelt beside the brook
To drink eternal life, I took
A glance across the golden grass,
And saw my dog, old Blackie, fast
As she could come. She leaped the stream—
Almost—and what a happy gleam
Was in her eye.I knelt to drink,
And knew that I was on the brink
Of endless joy. And everywhere
I turned I saw a wonder there.
A big man running on the lawn:
That’s old John Younge with both legs on.
The blind can see a bird on wing,
The dumb can lift his voice and sing.
The diabetic eats at will,
The coronary runs uphill.
The lame can walk, the deaf can hear,
The cancer-ridden bone is clear.
Arthritic joints are lithe and free,
And every pain has ceased to be.And every sorrow deep within,
And every trace of lingering sin
Is gone. And all that’s left is joy,
And endless ages to employ
The mind and heart to understand
And love the sovereign Lord who planned
That it should take eternity
To lavish all his grace on me.O God of wonder, God of might,
Grant us some elevated sight,
Of endless days. And let us see
The joy of what is yet to be.
And may your future make us free,
And guard us by the hope that we,
Within the light of candle four,
Are glorified forevermore.
My hair grew to the longest it’s been for about a decade, I think. Thanks to Joe and my new Wahl clippers (”Premium DuraChrome finish is always in style!”), I am now sheared.
Before:
During:
After:
Slideshow:
You can now search all of desiringGod.org from Firefox. Follow along…
1. Go to desiringGod.org.
2. See how the arrow next to the Google Search Box is blue? That means you can add a search function…
3. Click it and you’ll see the option.
4. Click “Add ‘DesiringGod.org Search’”.
5. Don’t try it out just yet… right now it’s set to open in the same tab. To configure it to open in a different tab, go to about:config, click through the confirmation, and enter “browser.search.openintab” into the Filter.
6. Double-click on the line so that the “Value” (the right-most column) says “true”.
7. Try out your new search box. Important keyboard shortcut: ctrl-k. This will focus the search box by putting the cursor there. You’re now only a ctrl-k away from searching DG!
Bonus Step: If you install Google Desktop Search, you can use the keyboard shortcut ctrl-ctrl (tap ctrl twice) to bring up a Google search box from within anywhere on your computer.
Let me know if you have any questions or problems.
-Ben
Often, my flesh thinks it needs 2 things to be happy:
Simple enough, right? I feel like I’m not too unique here.
Here’s Jesus’ approach: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” - Mark 10:45
I can’t “give my life as a ransom for many” and atone for sin. But I can stop looking at myself and start looking at Jesus because of His atonement for sin. And I can serve others, for His glory, as Jesus enabled me and showed me how to do.
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. - 1 Peter 4:10-11
How to really be happy? Live pointing at, relying on, and hoping in Jesus.
-Ben
At the core of the Gospel that so many of us affirm is justification by faith: we are justified externally not based on our own merits but based on Christ’s merit - he was punished for our sin and he lived the righteous life we could never live.
It’s easy for me to try to forget this and try to justify myself. How does it look? Often it goes like this: I sin, and I feel bad about my sin, so to make myself feel better, I remind myself of myself - of the good things I’ve done, the things I’ve done that should make me feel good about myself. I caught myself doing this just now… trying to deflect feelings of shame and guilt by reminding myself how super I am and about all the things I do right. I try to make myself acceptable - in my own eyes, in others’, and in God’s - by appealing to my own works.
So sinful. So unbiblical.
My righteousness gets me nowhere. Isaiah 64:6 says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
Christ’s righteousness is what gets me to heaven. And it deals with guilt and shame and inadequacy and fear in ways that appealing to my own righteousness was never meant to.
“And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” - 1 Cor 1:30
To deal with sin, we remind ourselves of Jesus, not ourselves.
-Ben
