New Year's Questions

Here is a great list of questions from Donald Whitney to ask yourself as you enter 2011. Questions like these are simple but can be really useful to help focus our often cluttered minds, reveal blind spots in our life, and hear from the Lord on what He would have us do to grow spiritually and be in His will.

The first 10 are:

1. What's one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
2. What's the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?
3. What's the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?
4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?
5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?
6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?
7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?
8. What's the most important way you will, by God's grace, try to make this year different from last year?
9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

Read the whole list here.

A Good Time to Hit REFRESH

The end of the year and beginning of a new year is oftentimes where we naturally think about what to change in the patterns, routines, and commitments in our lives as the calendar changes over. If you are in that place, or should be, I found this blog post had some useful nuggets. I liked his idea of this being a time to REFRESH. Read and apply some of these that you connect with.

I have already taken the suggestion to listen to this sermon by John Piper titled Running with the Witnesses. I downloaded this to my iPhone for one of my runs this week and was convicted, challenged, and encouraged by it. Highly recommended! I'd love to hear how it impacts those who listen to it. Takeaway line for me: "Does it Help Me Run?"

Wexford Carol...This is Beautiful

Thanks to Between Two Worlds blog for highlighting this beautiful carol performed by Allison Krauss, who sings like an angel.

The 12th century Wexford Carol:

Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved son
With Mary holy we should pray,
To God with love this Christmas Day
In Bethlehem upon that morn,
There was a blessed Messiah born

The night before that happy tide
The noble Virgin and her guide
Were long time seeking up and down
To find a lodging in the town
But mark right well what came to pass
From every door repelled, alas
As was foretold, their refuge all
Was but a humble ox’s stall

Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep
To whom God’s angel did appear
Which put the shepherds in great fear
Arise and go, the angels said
To Bethlehem, be not afraid
For there you’ll find, this happy morn
A princely babe, sweet Jesus, born

With thankful heart and joyful mind
The shepherds went the babe to find
And as God’s angel had foretold
They did our Saviour Christ behold
Within a manger he was laid
And by his side a virgin maid
Attending on the Lord of Life
Who came on earth to end all strife

There were three wise men from afar
Directed by a glorious star
And on they wandered night and day
Until they came where Jesus lay
And when they came unto that place
Where our beloved Messiah lay
They humbly cast them at his feet
With gifts of gold and incense sweet.

This is Classic...Should Anyone Ask

Who is Christmas for?

I found this article by Matt Redmond very thought-provoking, and just sent it to my parents and brother in the hope the Lord would use it to help them ponder the meaning of Christmas in a different way than before. Here is an excerpt:

Jesus came for those who look in the mirror and see ugliness. Jesus came for daughters whose fathers never told them they were beautiful. Christmas is for those who go to “wing night” alone. Christmas is for those whose lives have been wrecked by cancer, and the thought of another Christmas seems like an impossible dream. Christmas is for those who would be nothing but lonely if not for social media. Christmas is for those whose marriages have careened against the retaining wall and are threatening to flip over the edge. Christmas is for the son whose father keeps giving him hunting gear when he wants art materials. Christmas is for smokers who cannot quit even in the face of a death sentence. Christmas is for prostitutes, adulterers, and porn stars who long for love in every wrong place. Christmas is for college students who are sitting in the midst of the family and already cannot wait to get out for another drink. Christmas is for those who traffic in failed dreams. Christmas is for those who have squandered the family name and fortune—they want “home” but cannot imagine a gracious reception. Christmas is for parents watching their children’s marriage fall into disarray.

Christmas is really about the gospel of grace for sinners. Because of all that Christ has done on the cross, the manger becomes the most hopeful place in a universe darkened with hopelessness. In the irony of all ironies, Christmas is for those who will find it the hardest to enjoy. It really is for those who hate it most.

Christmas and Sharing Christ

We have been discussing in class the last several weeks that Gospel-changed people will be a witness to the world of the life-changing power of the Gospel, in large part by speaking the gospel to others or intentionally getting them in a position to hear it. This article by Ed Stetzer (who preached at Johnson Ferry last January) highlights that Christmas might be a great time to connect others to the Gospel. There is still time to invite someone to church or send them an encouraging email or article about the message of Christmas. Here is the closing of the article:

Although many of the items surrounding Christmas are not explicitly Christian most represent an open door through which the wise gospel messenger can walk. Opportunity is knocking … loudly. Seize the opportunity while people are receptive and while attention is on the birth of Christ. No matter where you serve, what the age group is around you, or whether people consider themselves to be religious or not, there are some – quite a few, really – who are ready at this time of year to hear about the Christ we celebrate.

Taking Action

Here are notes from Sunday's lesson. I thought it might be useful to keep these brief action words in front of us as we seek to be a good witness to the person and work of Christ and speak the Gospel to those whom the Lord has places in our lives. These points were drawn from the excellent book, Marks of the Messenger, by J. Mack Stiles.

1. Body Check
- Head/heart check -is the gospel prominent on our hearts and minds during the day
- Gut check - are we willing to be bold in the face of our fears of sharing the Gospel
- feet check - are we prepared to move out and speak the Gospel truth

2. Pray
- for those specific names who don't know Christ - regularly!
- to be more attuned to Holy Spirit -led opportunities to share
- pray with others directly if opportunity

3. Plan -think ahead for future occasions where you may be able to share faith

4. Think
- Study others to discern what are the issues and obstacles non -believers in our lives are dealing with that are genuine objections to faith (defeater beliefs)
Resource: The Reason for God by Tim Keller, book and DVD

5. Prepare
- Practice the "Gospel in a minute"; gospel on our hearts ready to share
- God , Man , Christ, Response
Resources:
2 Ways to Live - see link on this class blog
What is the Gospel by Greg Gilbert

6. Get started
- have lunch with others
- intentionally find ways to spend time with non-believers; go to or host neighborhood parties, pool; join rec sports leagues
- be bold in conversation
- ask questions like - "What are spiritual interests?" "What is faith background"?

7. Gather
- plan events and invite others to attend
- small group Bible Study
- neutral site or in home
- invite to church

8. Serve
- the community around us; where we live, work, and play
- redemptive life of service points to a God who redeems
- should expect this to cost something
- e.g. meals for neighbors, watching kids so couple can get away, assistance with yard work, volunteer in community -PTA, homeowners, rec league sports

9. Speak
- seize moment -ready to turn conversation to Christ ; open a door in that direction
- expose our faith to others when opportunity
- use questions
- Resources:
Tactics by Greg Koukl
Marks of the Messenger by Mack Stiles
The Gospel and Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever
Questioning Evangelism by Randy Newman


10. Pursue
-don't give up; be persistent -keep praying!
-Think, If God could save me, why not others we are praying for!

11. Invite
- a response to commit to a relationship with the living Christ
- some may be just waiting for someone to share how to do this

Bonhoeffer, Advent, and Waiting

We are doing our best to observe the Advent calendar in our home this Christmas. One of the themes of Advent is the sense of waiting on the Lord in anticipation of his coming to rescue us, both in his incarnation on Christmas, and then again at His second coming. I came across these words penned by German pastor/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer while he was imprisoned in Nazi Germany in his last years for conspiring with others against Adolf Hitler. He had only recently been engaged to his fiancee before being sent to prison. Good words to ponder on the theme of waiting, sometimes amidst trouble and suffering....

Celebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting is the art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespectful hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them. Whoever does not know the austere blessedness of waiting -- that is, of hopefully doing without -- will never experience the full blessing of fulfillment.

And again from prison in 1943, written in a letter to his fiancee:

Be brave, my dearest Maria, even if this letter is your only token of my love this Christmas-tide. We shall both experience a few dark hours -- why should we disguise that from each other? We shall ponder the incomprehensibility of our lot and be assailed by the question of why, over and above the darkness already enshrouding humanity. We are being subjected to the bitter anguish of a separation whose purpose we fail to understand. And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger.

Amen!

Incidentally, I highly recommend this recent biography of Bonhoeffer. This was one of the best books I read this past year and one of my favorite biographies I have read, period.

Reading the Bible in 2011

For each of the last several years I have made it a goal to read through the whole Bible and have benefited greatly from doing this. I recommend that everyone be in the Word on a consistent basis at some level in 2011. If this is a goal you are considering, (and I pray that many of you are) you may wish to read the following blog posts with some excellent thoughts to consider on Bible reading.

Here is Matthew Hoskinson's six-part series on Bible reading:

1. Reading the Bible in 2011
2. Dangers Within
3. Sitting Down
4. Reading
5. Plans
6. Final Thoughts