Apprentice2Jesus

Ramblings of a Confessing Pentecostal

Archive for the month “August, 2009”

30 Aug 2009

Loving the Church

This review gives me another chance to simply say: “I love the Church!” I truly love the Body of Christ and love the Church. This book is one I need to put on my list and get!

This quote is a good one:

We need to be reminded that:

there is no language in Scripture about Christians building the kingdom. The New Testament, in talking about the kingdom, uses verbs like enter, seek, announce, see, receive, look, come into, and inherit. … We are given the kingdom and brought into the kingdom. We testify about it, pray for it to come, and by faith it belongs to us. But in the New Testament, we are never the ones who bring the kingdom. (49)

The review is a great synopsis and offers a challenge to the view that everything is wrong with “organized religion.” It’s a good shot at McLaren’s new book, Everything Must Change.

Posted in Church, Church Life, Potpourri, Theology | Leave a Comment
30 Aug 2009
3 Comments

The Resolutions — #5

5. Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

This is from Jonathan Edwards’ list of resolutions. Do not lose one moment of time. I don’t think Edwards did. He was constantly in study, writing, prayer and ministry. He learned how to discipline his time and make sure he used the days effectively. He died prematurely and is still considered America’s finest theologian (and this before America was the United States).

May my life be found squeezing life from every day. May I be found learning more about the Kingdom of God and walking in that power. May I be found loving my family. May I be found moving from one degree of glory to another. Greater glory. May the Spirit lead me on.

Posted in Bible Study, Holiness and Christian Culture, Jonathan Edwards, Journal, Revival and tagged
26 Aug 2009

The Resolutions

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards

I have been looking at the resolutions of Jonathan Edwards. That list had 70. He reviewed them every week. The first 21 he wrote in one sitting. I couldn’t come up with five of them in one sitting.

There is a resolution needed in my life. The glory of God matters. That glory has to be sustained. There is a call to move from one degree of glory to another. This is not something that is done half-baked. No half-effort. Moses was all in when he called out, “Lord, show me your glory!”

Jonathan Edwards? All in.

To that end, I am taking the first seven of Edwards’ list and forging my own resolutions. My life is to be to the glory of God.

Posted in Potpourri | Leave a Comment
26 Aug 2009

Dare I Do This?

After 300 posts on blogger, making a domain name for myself over there, etc., I am attempting what seems to be called the “inevitable.” So, I will play with this for awhile.

If anyone knows how to get my domain name “apprentice2jesus” to point to this new blog, I’d be grateful.

Posted in Potpourri | Leave a Comment
25 Aug 2009
2 Comments

Holy God, Part 3

Sidenote, before I even start: This is my 300th post on this blog. Long journey.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

There are a couple of thoughts stirring in me as I continue on this journey hungering for the glory of God. In Romans 1 and 2 there is the huge temptation to focus on one sin and one sin only. But it’s the overall picture that disturbs me. I am disturbed personally, because I know in my own self I have had the temptation to follow my own way and act like I am SO wise, and exchange the glory of God for some false image (Rom. 1:22f).

The huge temptation in my life, and I would suspect in the lives of many others, is the temptation to just simply have my own way. Ignore HIS glory and go my own way, looking for my own solutions, wallowing in my own sin or in my designs. His glory is so much greater. His presence makes all the difference.

Another thought stirring in my mind is from a message I am listening to from Mark Batterson. He said, “Our biggest problem is a small view of God.” We just don’t think of God as we should.

If we think of him as “big,” it’s more like the menu at McDonald’s. There’s the large and then the SUPERSIZE version. God is the Supersize version. How foolish.

He is the One who shakes the heavens. His voice moves the the mountains. The seas roar. In Psalm 97 it says the hills melt like wax at the presence of the Lord.

My life needs to fall before him, completely undone, saying, “SHOW ME YOUR GLORY!” I don’t want this old stuff anymore! I don’t want to go up from here unless the Lord is going with me.

His presence is the difference maker. His presence MUST be in my life. No more exchanges! I need his glory.

Posted in Spiritual hunger
24 Aug 2009
1 Comment

Holy God, Part 2

We have three teenage boys. One in college, two in high school. We have told them all through life, “If you don’t learn how to say ‘No’ to things, it means you will still say ‘No’ by your actions.” By that we mean you quite simply can’t say “Yes” to everything and get it done. You will still choose. So, you may have told some friend, or some teacher, or some parent, that you WOULD do something, but decided another thing you said “yes” to was more important, so you went and did that instead.

We carry that habit into our Christian lives. When we don’t have the discipline of “NO” in our lives, we will more often than not, by default, tell God “NO.”

In my own life there may be some things the Lord wants to talk to me about. Not necessarily things of sin, but matters where if I would adjust my priorities of time I would find a richer time with him. Maybe I sense that in my spirit and I agree. Yet, if I do not make the adjustments, I am essentially saying to a holy God, “This other thing is more important.”

Israel’s struggle before the exile was being a nation who truly served ONE GOD. They were called to serve one God, they just never got around to it. Even the most righteous kings who would call Israel back to Temple worship left idols up in the hill country. They couldn’t make the all out effort to say YES to God.

The exile cured that. Israel became radically monotheistic and they haven’t had that problem since returning from captivity.

What will cure it for us? What will get us to finally get the idols out of the hill country and truly serve our God?

Posted in Holiness and Christian Culture
23 Aug 2009
1 Comment

Holy God

Preaching on Leviticus today I came to a realization. We, as Christians, are so worried about offending people who don’t believe, we will do things to keep from “offending” them, but in doing so, we end up offending God. We care more about our own reputations than we do the holiness of God.

Posted in Holiness and Christian Culture
17 Aug 2009
2 Comments

Staying on the Theme of Fire…

This past week and into this week I have been studying Exodus 33 and the glory of the Lord. I am now working my way through some references on the glory of the Lord and find myself in Leviticus 9 and 10. In the verses ending Chapter 9 and beginning Chapter 10 there are some thoughts I wanted to put out there and see if there would be any help in response.

Here are my initial thoughts (done quickly because I’ve got to get to work!):

1. The presence of God came down and fire came from that presence.

2. At the end of Chapter 9 the fire consumed the offering because it was prepared properly and the result was people worshiped.

3. At the beginning of Chapter 10 the fire consumed Nadab and Abihu because they offered up “strange fire.”

The fire of God will consume. The fire here could be seen as “good” (when the sacrifice was accepted), but also as “judgment” (when Nadab and Abihu offered up the wrong thing). In either case, there is a dealing with the fire of God.

Any thoughts?

Posted in Bible Study
14 Aug 2009
2 Comments

Playing with Fire

Mark Galli has a powerful column at ChristianityToday. It is a challenge to think about the God we serve. It’s a caution about being too trite in our walk with God.

He quotes Annie Dillard:

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.

We have a dangerous gospel. We have a dangerous God. One day we may wake up to that fact. We may realize the true power right at our fingertips. Hopefully it won’t be about the time where we thought we were mixing a little PlayDough and it ends up being an explosive concoction.

I am planted in Exodus 33 right now where Moses is refusing to move Israel without God going with them. His declaration is this: “What would make us different from any other nation?”

Israel would shirk that attitude in a hurry. They would cry for a king generations later because “everyone else has one!”

It seems to me the church is in the same boat. I see a church in America that isn’t looking to be different. We aren’t crying out saying, “Lord, if your presence isn’t here, why even bother!” We seem to whining about how we want to look just like everyone else. We want to blend in better.

We can have the debate about “relevance.” It’s a good one to have. But I think when we work so hard for relevance we reach a point where we’ve lost the cry of Moses and we take up the whining of Israel. We just want to be like everyone else. We want everyone else to like us. We don’t want hard times. We don’t want to be “persecuted” for our beliefs.

We have a dangerous God. If we ask for his glory, he just may give it to us. What then?

Posted in Spiritual hunger
11 Aug 2009

Don’t Stop Knocking


Dr. George Wood delivered a great message last week at General Council in Orlando, FL. I watched the video online and was so thankful for his message. He told the story of his parents being a small Indiana town. They had successfully planted churches in other towns, and would go on to plant churches in China. But in that small Indiana town they worked 2.5 years, his dad’s health gave out, and they left. The A/G later sold that building to a woman evangelist.

It turns out the woman evangelist saw the church explode in growth. She still pastors the church at the age of 91!

Dr. Wood has preached in that church several times and he asked the Lord why his parents hadn’t made it there. Why did the woman evangelist succeed and his parents fail?

He heard the Lord speak to his heart that his parents had knocked on a hard wall continuously for 2.5 years. When this woman came to town she knocked once and the wall fell. Why? Because his parents had kept knocking and they had weakened the wall.

Our call isn’t about worrying over the certain gauges of success. Our call is to be faithful. My call is to keep my eyes on Jesus. What will matter 100 years from now? It’s the legacy of faith. Will I pass on a legacy of faith to the next generation?

I need to keep knocking. I need to keep pressing on that wall. There is breakthrough. Darkness WILL give way to light in my community. Don’t stop knocking!

Posted in Revival | Leave a Comment

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