I Will Praise the Lord

Here’s a song I wrote about praising the Lord:

I. Often times it seems the enemy’s too strong, we stand up for the King, but the battle seems too long.

But I trust in God, I know we will prevail, we fight the powers of the air with power of believing prayer.

Chorus: I will praise the Lord though the battle goes against me, I will praise the Lord, I don’t care what happens to me

In the thick of the fight, I will trust in his might, I will praise the Lord and fight the good fight.

II. Do you sometimes feel the battle can’t be won, Cheer up, take heart be strong, you’re not in the fight alone.

The blessed Son of God is sure to be with us, in his powerful name we trust, and we shall win at last.

Click HERE for the audio.

Luther’s Song

This song was inspired by the reading of Roland Bainton’s Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther

HERE I STAND

Man is justified by faith, this is what the Scriptures say,

And not by self-righteous deeds, on this rock my soul I stay,

I will trust in God alone, O what love my God hath shown,

To deliver a poor sinner such as I

Father Abraham believed, and accounted righteous he,

Being justified by faith, by God’s gracious love so free,

And no confidence have I in the flesh, it is a lie

To proclaim salvation comes through strength of man.

Chorus:

And here I stand by the grace of God

I believe that man is saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone

(repeat twice)

Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise,

I’m saved by faith alone in Christ and here I stand

Man is captive to sin’s reign and is powerless to be free

Helpless his soul to deliver unto glorious liberty

But there is one born of woman, the messiah, Second Adam,

Who hath burst the bonds of sin and set us free

Click HERE for the audio

Spiritual Hermeneutics

But a spiritual taste mightily helps the soul in its reasonings on the word of God, and in judging of the true meaning of its rules; as it removes the prejudices of a depraved appetite, naturally leads the thoughts in the right channel, casts a light on the word, and causes the true meaning most naturally to come to mind, through the harmony there is between the disposition and relish of a sanctified soul, and the true meaning of the rules of God’s word.

– Jonathan Edwards, On Religious Affections

Religion and Science

Sometimes people ask if religion and science are opposed to each other. They are – in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hand are opposed to each other. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.

– William Henry Bragg, British physicist who with his son won the Nobel Prize for physics for their work in X-ray crystallography

A legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist. Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.

– Albert Einstein

(Quotes taken from John Blanchard’s Has Science Got Rid of God?)

Human Honor

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

Tim Keller on Evolution and Science

Click here.

Spiritual Reading

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.”

The Reproach of Christ

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.

Servants

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

Renouncing a Vocation

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