I know, repentance isn’t your favorite word. It’s not mine either. No doubt it conjures up something like an angry turn-or-burn “preacher” (either pounding the pulpit or screaming in the streets) letting people have it or an ultra-fundamentalist family member unhappy with your choices of what’s right or wrong. Despite the bad taste that might be lingering in your mouth for words like “repent” and “repentance”, let’s together seek to move past those barriers and rediscover what God actually says about repentance. It might never be for your favorite word or your favorite part of being a Christian, but as we look into God’s Word I think we’ll see that repentance is meant to be a life-giving, sin-replacing, gospel-rooted posture of the Christian life. Easy? No. Good? Yes.
Category: Discipleship
Disciple Your Kids by Remembering with Them
“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children.” (Deuteronomy 4:9)
“And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery.” (Exodus 13:14)
“There is power in telling our story to our children. At the earliest age, our children can begin to hear parts of our story and to be eyewitnesses to how God is continuing to shape it. I love to tell my children aspects of my own faith story in the context of the age they are at that time.” Michelle Anthony in Spiritual Parenting
Continue reading Disciple Your Kids by Remembering with Them
Roles in Sanctification
Yesterday’s post reminded us the decisive break with sin allowing us to fight our sin already happened at conversion. I stated that rather than this making sin excusable or causing us to be spiritually lazy, it should actually motivate us to live in the freedom from sin and the fellowship with God that we get in Christ through definitive sanctification. I thought it might be helpful to consider how 20th century theologian John Murray summarized our role versus God’s role.
Sanctification is A Thing of the Past
Don’t get confused by the title. I’m not another millennial ditching personal growth or holiness in the name of authenticity or liberties. In this post, I won’t be arguing to stop pursuing sanctification (maturity or growth), but I will argue for understanding how the most important part of it has already happened.
Fresh Air in the Atmosphere of Trinitarian Grace
“To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion…according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.” (I Peter 1:2)
Throughout his first letter, Peter reminds his readers their suffering, rejection, and experience as exiles is normal. The kingdom of light is no more welcome to a kingdom of darkness than the bedroom light being flipped on while I’m sleeping is welcomed. And yet, as exiles they are God’s people, and are called to reflect Him. Though kicked to the curb by the world we are called into a new family and given a sense of belonging by our Triune God. Even as we struggle in a world that’s against us we are empowered by a God who is for us. Only this God-given grace, not the weight of duty or demands, can motivate maturity and obedience when we’re constantly swimming upstream. Continue reading Fresh Air in the Atmosphere of Trinitarian Grace
Why We Need God’s Promises
“The knowledge of the glory of God must be promising if it is to carry power. We must know it and believe that we are included—that the promises are ours, that the call is to us” (John Piper)
Life shakes us up. It smacks us with wind and waves. It might be a trial, suffering, a personal temptation, dealing with guilt and shame, struggling with something like anxiety or fear, or the discouraging howls of an extended spiritual wilderness. When these storms blow hard, what keeps us upright? What sustains and steadies us?
What Makes Going Deep in the Bible Hard for You?
“If the Word does not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.” John Owen
As believers, all of us desire to be in the Bible more often than we are and with greater depth and intimacy than we do. But we don’t all struggle with the same challenges with our Bible reading.
For one person, their biggest obstacle might be not knowing how to read, interpret, or understand the Bible. They’ve never been equipped to do so, which results in regular frustrations of putting the Bible back down without having a clue what they read. For others, it might be distractions from a phone blowing up with emails and text messages. Each of us have unique circumstances, varying levels of maturity, and our stages of life might differ. This is important because if we want to go deeper in God’s Word, we have to diagnose what’s personally keeping us back. We need to ask, “What are my biggest obstacles to more consistent and more meaningful times reading God’s Word?”
Continue reading What Makes Going Deep in the Bible Hard for You?
Making Observations (Studying the Bible)
A common approach to studying the Bible is the Inductive Method. The goal is to draw out and rightly interpret a passage, not read into it or force our own meaning into it. While people use various words or acronyms to explain steps in the Inductive Method, the most simple is Observation-Interpretation-Application. In this post, I’ll provide suggested questions for learning how to make observations in a passage of the Bible. The observation stage asks, “What do I see?”
Imperfect Disciple by Jared Wilson
In a sermon this morning, I shared one of my favorite quotes from Jared Wilson’s Imperfect Disciple. Jared is one of my favorite authors today, and in my opinion, this is his best book yet. Below is a short summary from my Amazon review, followed by a few of my favorite quotes to entice you to sneak this into your Christmas list.
Renew Your Mind in Community
In my last post, I shared some thoughts on how to renew our minds so we fight error with truth. While any of it could be done in some form of Christian community (small group, bible study, discipleship relationships, etc.), it might have felt more individualistic. The ninth point in that post highlighted just how important a community, or a group of Christians living life together, is for thinking biblically together.
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