The Sound of Forehands Clapping

I know I have not been writing about my personal life lately. I’ve been posting links to content and such. I’ve been too busy to write, but I have been wrestling and growing.

When I started the series on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood I said

But that’s not really what interests me the most. You see, both of these views on gender within the church do not simply address the questions of “how do a husband and wife relate?” and “can women be pastors?” Both views offer answers to much, much deeper questions that are relevant to any man or woman whether or not they are married or desiring to be a pastor.

Piper has asked before, “What do you tell your little boy when he asks you, ‘Daddy, what does it mean to grow up and be a man and not a woman?’ or ‘Mommy, what does it mean to grow up and be a woman and not a man?’” Piper has said that if all you can respond with is an anatomical answer, then you are setting your children up for disaster.

Mark and I have taken a bit of a break from reviewing the book and, yes, we need to get back on track, but let me give you an update of where I am at. I am still uncomfortable with drawing lines in stone of what manhood and womanhood is without strong Biblical warrant. I still am not sure how exactly God describes manhood in Scripture or even if he does with the precision that I want, but I am more convinced then ever that it, manhood, masculinity is real.

I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but while reading the article bellow I was fighting back tears. There is a depth of character and honor that the article describes that I long for and by Gods grace I believe I will understand more and posses more. While the article is not purposefully christocentric by any means (oh and I wish it was!), I could not help but feeling the weight of His glory hidden behind it.

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Yesterday I let John Piper make the case that the God who created and upholds the universe and all the life in it speaks today.  He speaks to anyone who is willing to listen. He speaks through the Word of God.   The Bible is not just His recorded word, something He said “back then”, but it is also His living word that the Spirit amazingly, miraculously “re-speaks” to each one who has ears to hear.

That being the case and a mind blowing a case it is, why do I so often neglect such a precious gift?  I can’t claim ignorance as the cause – though my flesh would just love to.  I have known for a long time that God reveals Himself by His Spirit through this book and that this way is his primary means of doing so.

What are my reasons then? I think a big one for me is a prideful self-reliance. Jesus said that I should “not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Do I really need the words of God to live my day to day life?  I hear myself saying, “I’m getting along okay. I can handle this. I can figure this out. I can fix this.”

Sometimes I will go a bit farther then that.   “I’ve read a lot of the Bible before.   I mean I may not read it ‘as much as I should’ but I have a bunch stored up.”  Then I read

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:1–2).

Maybe the psalmist is talking about a “baby Christian” though, someone who needs to be reading it a lot…  You get where I am going with this.  I need the Bible.   I need it to live.  I can’t function without hearing from God in the Scriptures.   I can’t.  And any notion in myself that says “Sure you can” is a self-exalting, pride-induced lie.

There are other reasons that I neglect the precious gift of Gods words.  One more that I’ll touch on is this.  The word of God reveals, well, God.  How do I see Him?  Is He amazing, full of glory and wonder, does His grace seem more precious to me then anything else, does His imminence and transcendence encompass and surpass mind?  Hmm, often not.  He seems maybe distant, kind of in black and white.  If that’s how I see Him then think about it.  How excited am I going to be to see more of that God?

The problem is of course that this is a vicious down-ward spiral.  Only the Scriptures can give to me that glorious vision of who He is, but since my vision of Him is skewed I don’t go to the Scriptures and, well, my vision of Him stays the same and so it goes.  It works both ways though.  See it can be an up-ward spiral as well, but it must be fought for and it can’t be fought for in my own strength either.

So two questions: 1) What are the reasons that you have told yourself that you don’t need to be in the Scriptures regularly and 2) What is the real reason?

So I’ve been a Christian for about eight years and I have never read the Bible cover to cover. As I looked over the table of contents in my Bible today I saw a large number of books that I simply have not ever read. I am not sure what many of the Old Testament books are even about!

I’ve never used a read-the-Bible-in-a-year reading plan, but a few days ago a friend posted a link on his blog to another blog going over some of these popular reading plans.  One of the plans stood out to me:

The Discipleship Journal Reading Plan

With this plan you read through the entire Bible once.

The unique advantage of this plan is that there are “catch-up” days:

• To prevent the frustration of falling behind, which most of us tend to do when following a Bible reading plan, each month of this plan gives you only 25 readings. Since you’ll have several “free days” each month, you could set aside Sunday to either not read at all or to catch up on any readings you may have missed in the past week.
• If you finish the month’s readings by the twenty-fifth, you could use the final days of the month to study passages that challenged or intrigued you.

Bethlehem Baptist Church makes available the bookmark-method for this plan:

• Bookmarks for 1st half of the year
• Bookmarks for 2nd half of the year

So I printed out the PDF with all the readings and the check boxes and put it in my Bible. Today I sat down to do the first reading, but I had somehow lost the reading plan already! I knew I was supposed to read Genesis 1, Psalm 1, Matthew 1 and Acts 1 though so it was okay.

I could reprint the reading plan, but eventually I’m just going to lose it again anyways. Tonight I’m going to start writing a little web app that will email me what I am supposed to read every day. If I reply back to the email I’ll be telling the app that “I read the passages today” and the next day it will email me the next reading. If I don’t reply to the email then it will email the same passages for the next day.

It is a pretty straight forward plan. There are a few things where people could help if they were interested. If you know RoR you could help with part of the coding. There will need to be a web interface and then a background job. If you don’t know what I am talking about, but would be interested in helping fear not! I also need someone who can read English to help me get the daily readings from the PDF format into one I can use.

If you want to help or if you would be interested in using such a service then let me know!

I’m what some would call a dreamer. I have a vision of myself doing great things. I’m talking about being a loving and understanding leader to my wife, a compassionate and patient father, an exemplary employee and a wise and trustworthy friend. A man who is above reproach, who stewards his time and energy and money in a exemplary manner.

These are good desires that I see rooted in Scripture. Don’t get me wrong these desires are at times tainted with pride “… imagine what people would think of me then!” but I usually fight that and humility is provided. I know that God has called me to these things and that these are not man made ideas. I know that if He is the one calling me to them then these, and nothing I could come up with, must be the best path for me to joy.

Often though I feel stupid for having these dreams and these hopes. “You’re a failure. You think big but you produce small. You fail, because your heart is wicked. You aren’t fooling God.” I often feel like I am at a fork in the road: path 1) just give up, and path 2) continue pretending that you’re a good Christian.

Sometimes I take path 1 and sometimes I take path 2. Sometimes though something else happens. Gods grace meets me at that fork in the road. He says path 3 Dwayne is through me. Your heart is wicked, but my blood was shed for this and is provided by my spirit to change you. Awake and remember! Give up your strength. Here is mine.

Awhh, the easy yoke is found again!

Romans 14
5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

Paul says elsewhere that “all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.”   In the text above we see this principle teased out some.    Most Christians have heard of this principle and can intellecuatly nod their assent to it.  This passage though calls us to much more then just an acknowledgment that “while some things aren’t sin we still shouldn’t do them.”

Paul says that “each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.”  Fully convinced of what?  Fully convinced that our choices in this short, earthly life are being made from a mindset of Christ being the supreme Lord of our flesh and of our spirit and that each thing we do and think and say should be in honor to Him, not simply in exercise of our freedom.

Paul also says that “each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.”  He doesn’t say that “each is fully convinced” because by nature we are, well, lazy.  “We’re free! Thinking through these things is hard and heavy.  It doesn’t feel free!” There’s a Mars Hill song that has a line “It’s not for freedoms sake that Christ set us free.”  We have been set free from slavery to sin so that we might be made slaves to Him!

So, maybe you are one of those wonder types that has a huge quantity of mental ram and never needs to work through ideas by writing things down.  Good for you.  Now, for the rest of us, might I suggest an exercise to help follow Pauls instructions for each one of us to be resolved as to what lawful things in our lives are actually helpful in honoring Him.

It was a couple of years ago that I did this and I believe it was out of inspiration from Jonathen Edwards example.  What I did was simply to ask myself “Dwayne what are you convinced that your day to day life should look like and what are you convinced will help you to do that?”  Then I wrote down my answers in bullet form.  Here they are:

Resolution 1: To lie down early five times a week.

Resolution 2: To arise early five times a week.

Resolution 3: To not drink beer three nights in a row.

Resolution 4: To fight the battle each day.

Resolution 5: To humble myself always.

Resolution 6: To take captive each thought.

Resolution 7: To delight in Him ceaselessly.

Resolution 8: To fight for my wife’s heart

Resolution 9: To not rest until my children know my love.

Resolution 10: To eat three healthy meals a day five days a week.

Resolution 11: To replenish His temple throughout each day with water.

Resolution 12: To consider how I might stir up my friends to good works and love.

Resolution 13: To be confident in my calling.

Resolution 14: To drink scripture regularly.

Resolution 15: To listen to those who came before me.

Resolution 16: To seek counsel.

Resolution 17: To be before His face always.

Now, let’s be honest here.  I haven’t seen this list for probably a good year since it popped in my head last week.  Yet as I read them my conscience is stirred and, yes yes, I am convinced in my mind that these are the things I should be doing.  So I’ll add one  new resolution (and a recurring event on my calendar to go with it):

Resolution 18: Remember to read and pray over these Resolutions once a week.

Would you consider taking 10 to 20 minutes to briefly write down your own convictions and ask the Helper to enable you to live by them?   To get you started, would you share with us the first one or two that come to mind for you?

I had planned on beginning a study of Colosians, but I have decided not to do it right now.   For someone like me who has a habit of starting things and not finishing them this might seem like part of that pattern, but it is not.

My wife, gracious as she is, told me she thought I was doing too much.   I am a husband and my wife needs my time.   I am a father of four kids and my kids need my time. Two nights a week we are in small groups that need our time to be there and study the bible before them during the week.   I will be beginning Greek this spring which will obviously require more of my time.  I also have a job which well takes more of my time.

All that said, my wife did not think that the timing for an in-depth study was really that good.  I didn’t like that at first, but lo and behold I think she is right.  I would like to think that I could add more to my plate and maybe I could, but the fact of the matter is that I am not stewarding what I already have on my plate nearly as well as I could be.

They all relate to self-discipline and that is a very weak area for me.   It is something I have thought about, prayed about, repented for, talked with other people about for the past few years and honestly have not really grown in at all.

Here are the areas where I know I need more self-discipline:

I may write more later on about my struggle with this, but if you’ve struggled with this and found something that helped you grow in it please do pass it along to me!

P.S.

The Commentary on the Greek text of the Epistle of Paul to the Colossians by John Eadie
was a really, really good read.

I often use people. Say I have something I want to get done, but I know I’ll probably never get around to it. What do I do? I convince someone that they need to do the same thing and that we can do it together!!

In totally unrelated news I just reasoned with a friend of mine that he should start reading theology. Figured J.I. Packers Knowing God would be a good starting place for the guy. I even offered to read the book along with him – Man what a helpful guy I am . . . MUHAHAHAhahaha! :D