When all the boasting is over, what is any man but just another man? And, even though a crooked world came to admit that men should be honored only according to merit, even human honor would be of no great value. It is smoke that weights nothing.
– Augustine, City of God
Spiritual reading is mostly a lover’s activity – a dalliance with words, reading as much between the lines as in the lines themselves. It is leisurely, as ready to re-read an old book as open a new one. It is playful, anticipating the pleasures of friendship. It is prayerful, convinced that all honest words can involve us somehow or other, if we read with our hearts as well as our heads, in an eternal conversation that got its start in the Word that “became flesh.”
– Eugene H. Peterson, Living the Message, (Meditation for September 24)
I admit that I am frequently guilty of what Peterson calls “reading as a consumer activity,” i.e., reading for the sake of information that will “fuel [my] ambition or careers or competence.” I think, however, that this cannot be helped if one’s career has become an idol. In today’s competitive world, especially in the field of law, to read “consumeristically” is a necessity if you want to rise to the top. The solution seems to be: not to want to rise to the top. To be sure, one must do one’s work well, excel even! But one must also set limits. I should always remind myself that “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God,” and “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well.”
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharoah’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.”
– Hebrews 11:24-26
Choosing to serve the people of God may mean sacrificing some dream of personal greatness, some personal ambition to climb the heights of success or to excel in one’s profession. But Moses turned his back on what many of us hold dear in order to serve the people of God. Serving the people of God, even if it meant being mistreated with them, was more important to him than a life of comfort, wealth, privilege, fame and success. The choice before us, then, in the words of Betsy Childs, is this:
We can exhaust ourselves by seeking significance in what we do and how we are known, hoping that we will be remembered after we are gone. Or, we can lay our lives on God’s altar, squandering them in the world’s eyes, but entrusting our legacy to our maker.
When we take up the role of servants, we do precisely what the powerful prefer not to do: put ourselves in a position where our power is of little use. Rather than asserting the privilege the powerful have to control their environment and avoid humbling experiences, we seek Christ in the places where we will not be noticed, will not seem useful and will not receive praise. Servants are anonymous and often all but invisible, and the more powerful we become, the more we should seek out opportunities for anonymity and invisibility.
– Andy Crouch, Culture Making, p. 228
Somehow, I have to give up this thing that I love above everything else on earth because the love of God is greater… to renounce the purest of all vocations simply because it is not the one God has chosen for me – to accept something in which it seems likely that my highest personal ideals will be altogether frustrated, purely because of His love, His will. He who loves me prefers it this way, and to accept His love is to send up to Him the incense of the purest prayer, the sweetest praise, without pleasure for myself – and yet in the end it is a supreme joy!
– Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas
“Changing the world sounds grand, until you consider how poorly we do even at changing our own little lives. On a daily basis we break our promises, indulge our addictions and rehearse old fantasies and grudges that even we know we’d be better off without. We have changed less about ourselves than we would like to admit. Who are we to charge off to change the world?”
– Andy Crouch, Culture Making
Posted with LifeCast
I found this post (over at Provocations) so inspiring I just had to link to it. At the age of 40 Alphonsuz Rodriguez’ life just unraveled: “His wife died in childbirth, followed shortly by the deaths of his mother and his other children, and the family business failed.” But did he turn his back on God? No!
Rather than shaking his fist at God for such multiple misfortune, Alphonsus decided to dedicate the rest of his life in service to God.
The lesson here is: overcome evil with good. When misfortune, affliction, failure, calamity and what-have-you strike, serve God all the more!
Today a group of Reformed theology-minded Christians gathered together at West Negros University, Bacolod City to celebrate John Calvin’s 500th birthday. Atty. Jerry Basiao talked on John Calvin and the Sovereignty of God; Atty. Juan Rubrico talked on Why Calvin Matters; and I talked on Calvin and Preaching. My talk was based on the 1st seven distinctives of Calvin’s preaching as found in Steve Lawson’s book, The Expository Genius of John Calvin, as follows:
1. Biblical Authority
2. Divine Presence
3. Pulpit Priority
4. Sequential Exposition
5. Diligent Mind
6. Devoted Heart
7. Relentless Will
We had a great time! It is only right to give honor to whom honor is due. We honor John Calvin because he honored God with his life and by his preaching. Benjamin Warfield said of Calvin,”No man ever had a profounder sense of God than he.” Calvin himself said,
The thing (O God) at which I chiefly aimed, and for which I most diligently labored, was that the glory of thy goodness and justice… might shine forth conspicuous, that the virtue and blessings of thy Christ…might be fully displayed.
(Source: John Piper’s Legacy of Sovereign Joy)
From R.C. Sproul’s Right Now Counts Forever:
Calvin in debate could draw on his encyclopedic knowledge of biblical passages, as well as the ability to quote at length from ancient thinkers such as Augustine and Cicero. But above all things, Calvin sought to be true to the Word of God. He was the biblical theologian par excellence who was at the same time a singularly gifted systematic theologian.
We owe a great debt to this man. He is God’s gift to the church, not only for the sixteenth century but for all time. We therefore join the multitudes who are celebrating the 500th birthday of John Calvin in the year 2009.
Read the whole thing: The Theologian | Ligonier Ministries
