Quote from this wonderful cheat sheet:
“We old folks have to find our cushions and pillows in our tankards. Strong beer is the milk of the old.” – Martin Luther
and
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.” – Abraham Lincoln
On the eradication of sin and iniquity in our lives:
I know God doth sometimes come in upon the soul instantly, in a moment as it were, wounding and healing it; as I am persuaded it was in the case of David when he cut off the lap of Saul’s garment; but ordinarily, in such a case, God calls for waiting and labouring, attending as the eye of a servant upon his Master (Psalm 123:2; Psalm 130:6). Says the prophet Isaiah, ‘I will wait upon the Lord, who hideth his face from Jacob.’ God will have his children lie a while at his door when they have run from his house, and not instantly rush in upon him; unless he take them by the hand and pluck them in , when they are so ashamed that they dare not come to him.
— John Owen, The Mortification of Sin
Isaiah 8:17 I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.
Note: This might be a multi-part serious that simply hat-tips articles that I feel that defines American Christianity. -Ed.
Freakonomics Blog at NYT receives this email from G.D. in the heart of Texas.
We are agnostics living deep in the heart of Texas and our family fakes Christianity for social reasons. It’s not so much for the sake of my husband or myself but for our young children. We found by experience that if we were truthful about not being regular church attenders, the play dates suddenly ended. Thus started the faking of the religious funk.
Welcome to the buckle of the Bible Belt.
When men are wounded by sin, disquieted and perplexed, and, knowing that there is no remedy for them but only in the mercies of God through the blood of Christ, do therefore look to him and to the promises of the covenant in him; and thereupon quiet their hearts that it shall be well with them, and that God will be exalted that he may be gracious to them; while yet their souls are not wrought to the greatest detestation of the sin or sins on account whereof they are disquieted; this is to heal themselves, and not to be healed of God. This is but ‘a great and strong wind’ that the Lord is nigh unto, but the Lord is not in the wind. When men do truly look upon Christ whom they have pierced, without which there is no healing or peace, they will mourn (Zechariah 12:10); they will mourn for him even upon this account, and detest the sin that pierced him. When we go to Christ for healing, faith eyes him peculiarly as one pierced.
- John Owen, The Mortification of Sin
Acts 2:36 “… God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Two Christians Critically Wounded at Wedding in Pakistan
“One of the green-turban-wearing Muslims peremptorily told us to recite the Islamic holy Kalima [profession of faith] or face direct bullets and the lethal consequences,” said Khushi Masih.
Both Christians said that they joyfully refused, and instead they began reciting Psalm 91.
“Our decision infuriated them,” Imran Masih said, “and instead of shooting into the air, they shot us, leaving us only after being convinced that we were dead. Praise the name of Lord Jesus Christ, who raised us from the dead!”
Acts 14:19-23 But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.
courtesy of Ree Drummond, A Pioneer Woman Cooks
prep time: 30 Minutes
cook time: 30 Minutes
difficulty: Easy
servings: 6
In a large soup pot or dutch oven, melt 4 tablespoons butter. Add the onion and cook for a few minutes, or until it starts to turn brown. Add the carrots and celery and cook an additional couple of minutes. Add cauliflower and parsley and stir to combine. Cover and cook over very low heat for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, pour in chicken stock or broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and allow to simmer.
In a medium saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons butter. Mix the flour with the milk and whisk to combine. Add flour-milk mixture slowly to the butter, whisking constantly. Remove from heat and stir in 1 cup half-and-half. Add mixture to the simmering soup. Allow to simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Check seasoning and add more salt or pepper if necessary.
Just before serving, place the sour cream in a serving bowl or soup tureen. Add two to three ladles of hot soup into the tureen and stir to combine with the sour cream. Pour in remaining soup and stir.
Serve immediately.
In a wonderful crossfire conversation over on Twitter, I picked up that Will Adair was trying to get a global reading group to go through Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion in one year and discuss along the way.
If you are interested, come join us over at Bound with Christ. Read the three posts, get registered and get your copy of Institutes and come along for the ride.
To order a steak ‘well-done’, culinarily speaking, is the equivalent to ask for your red meat to be burnt. Chemically, this makes sense but in the restaurant kitchen, the results are even worse:
1. Since you’ve just ordered your steak to be burnt, there is no way you care whether or not you get a good cut of beef. Sure you are going to get that ribeye you’ve just ordered but chances are, those less-than-desirable cuts were saved for people who really don’t care about their steak… people, who would ordered a burnt piece of meat, for example.
2. By ordering ‘well-done’, you have just increased the time of cooking your order by four-fold over properly ordering the cut medium-rare or even rare in some cases. In order to make sure that the rest of the plates don’t get cold, the kitchen will simply throw your steak into the microwave to finish in time. So what was the difference between that steak and a TV dinner? Exactly.
I understand that you don’t want to be sick over a undercooked piece of protein but don’t confuse beef with chicken. Chicken is riped with all kinds of awesome bacteria and there is no dish in the world that calls for undercooked chicken unless as part of the dining experience means that you are glued to your toilet for the next 24 hours. Beef, not so much. There are many dishes that call for raw beef such as carpaccio which are thinly sliced or pounded raw pieces of beef, usually topped with a salad or Parmesan or both. My favorite is Yuk Hoe, a Korean dish with seasoned raw beef topped with raw egg.
Are there risks in eating raw beef? Sure but there are risks in no matter what you eat. Even something as healthy as spinach is not above being tainted.
To those reading, nodding in total agreement, let me challenge you to never let loved ones order well-done. The next time you’re with someone who orders a burnt piece of meat, stop them and insist that they order it medium rare. If they don’t like it, you will pay for their steak and get them what they like. Chances are, they have always had steak well-done and never really tasted steak to begin with.
Note: To those who think Jesus is girlie and sweet and fairy-like, skipping through the hills, sprinkling happy dust for all the good girls and boys, to those I contend, not bloody likely:
“Let us muse upon the fact that Jesus was conducted outside the gates of the city. It was the common place of death. That little rising ground, which perhaps was called Golgotha, the place of a skull, from its somewhat resembling the crown of a man’s skull, was the common place of execution. It was one of Death’s castles; here he stored his gloomiest trophies; he was the grim lord of that stronghold.
Our great hero, the destroyer of Death, bearded the lion in his den, slew the monster in his own castle, and dragged the dragon captive from his own den. Methinks Death thought it a splendid triumph when he saw the Master impaled and bleeding in the dominions of destruction; little did he know that the grave was to be rifled, and himself destroyed, by that crucified Son of man.”
—Charles Spurgeon, “The Procession of Sorrow” (sermon on John 19:16; preached on March 1, 1863)
Reading Ed Stetzer’s Biggest Changes in Christianity in the Last Decade, I have sat and dwell over this one statement for most of the day:
“A widespread abandonment of Christian doctrinal commitment — even doctrinal knowledge. Forget the rising number of people with no religious identity; the news to me is the vast number of self-identified Christians who have no real knowledge of, or deep commitment to, a specific Christian faith. You could say they were watering down Christianity’s teachings, but I question if they even know those core teachings.”
Cathy Lynn Grossman, religion reporter, USA TODAY
Then I get this towards the end of the day:
When Christ absorbs the wrath of God that we deserved, God never aims at our destruction but only at our holy, eternal happiness.
- John Piper
My question to those would would profess to be a Christian:
Is Piper’s quote as real to you as the fact that we must breathe air to live?
-or-
Is there doubt or pushback inside your mind? Is your immediate response, “Well…”, “I don’t know…”, “Perhaps…”, “But…” or “I guess so…”?
Let me contend that is what doctrinal knowledge does. Doctrine is not a four letter word that some churches would have you believe but doctrine is simply “something that is taught; teachings collectively“. For us to teach doctrines is simply teaching what the Bible teaches. To preach the gospel of God and to absolutely know all that God has done to save you and me and others, we know that are “no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Ephesians 4:14)
When watching a certain scene in a lecture, show, book or movie and not just feel why it is wrong but know why it is wrong. We, ourselves, can give words of counsel based on what the Bible teaches and not what just feels good in the moment or what the world would tell us what is the ‘right thing’. This is not just what is good and what it is sin but even the little steps before we get to that point. This is the little decisions and thoughts that we have all throughout the day.
There is not a better example of this then in the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis 2-3.
In Genesis 2:16-17, God gave just the one commandment, “Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Do it and you will die.” God gave this commandment to Adam right before Eve was even in the picture. Since Adam had the law and being the head and leader of the marriage, it fell on him to teach his new wife the single lone commandment of God.
Adam is no different than most humans in where I believe Luther suggested, “that religion is the default nature of all humans.” Meaning that, much like Pharisees, we love to take what is good and holy, God’s commandments, and lay a bunch of more rules upon those, making the weight impossible to bear for some. Adam does this with his own wife and we know this and Satan knew this as we go into Genesis 3.
Satan: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
Eve: “Not actually. He said, ““We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
Satan: Really? You don’t say.
Because of that little slip up, Satan was able to preach a false gospel and Adam and Eve thought that was a pretty good idea and accepted it. The result: they were separated from God and the intimate relationship they had with God was broken and shattered.
This is not where we go headlong into all things knowledge in thinking that knowledge will save us because we know that “knowledge puffs up” and if we are not careful, we will exalt ourselves above others who don’t know, don’t care to know or even can’t know. This knowledge is not of anything that we have done but the just the fact we can know, understand and love God is all because of the wisdom of the Spirit of God at the will of the Father through what Christ did on the cross. We take what we have learn and let it continuously cut against our heart. We approach the throne of grace in humility and love and ask our sweet, dear King, “What would teach me today. O Lord, do what you need to do to make my heart more like yours.” In that, we know that love builds us up and those around us (1 Corinthians 8:1-3).
Calvin would challenge us to think of doctrine as an affair “not of the tongue, but of life. It is not apprehended by the understanding and memory alone, as other disciplines are, but it is received only when it possesses the whole soul, and finds a seat and resting place in the inmost affection of the heart… It must enter our heart and pass into our daily living, and so transform us into itself that it may not be unfruitful for us.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion cf. Total Church by Chester and Timmis, pg 162.)
Let us go back and think about the Piper quote for one moment. Have you ever heard or felt, “God is upset with me because my finances are in a wreak, I am not married yet or I am dying with cancer. It must because of sin in my life.” However, because we know that because in order for God to call us His people, His wrath would have to be poured out upon us and kill us in order to atone for our sin. However, in His love, Christ takes on our sins and takes on Father’s wrath, that was meant for us, instead. That wrath was 100% completely upon Christ. Not 99% where then God held back 1% to save when you screw up. For Him to call you ‘My Beloved’, your sins will have to be dealt with. Shockingly enough, God deals with your sins perfectly. We sum that up in the doctrine of propitiation within the doctrine of atonement.
Now we know that to be fact, how much more beautiful is this quote now:
When Christ absorbs the wrath of God that we deserved, God never aims at our destruction but only at our holy, eternal happiness.
- John Piper
Psalm 30:5-7a
For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
As for me, I said in my prosperity,
“I shall never be moved.”
By your favor, O Lord,
you made my mountain stand strong;