Another Gospel

When people speak of saving America, are they thinking in terms of all men falling short of the glory of God? What do we need to be saved from? Doug Wilson writes insightfully on the subject. Here is a short excerpt of the article below.

"The assumption is that the underlying America is just fine the way it is unless some progressive has been messing with it. We need to "save America," the thinking goes, and so the language of salvation is used all the time. But in our heart of hearts, we are saving an innocent kidnapping victim, and not a skid row bum who became a drunk because of his own stupid choices."

https://www.google.com/reader/view/?tab=my#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.dougwils.com%2Findex.php%3Fformat%3Dfeed%26type%3Drss

Good writers use word pictures

The Puritans did it all the time. When explaining the need for both prayer and the use of means in our afflictions, Thomas Brooks says: "As the pilot that guides the ship hath his hand upon the rudder, and his eye on the star that directs him at the same time; so when your hand is upon the means, let your eye be upon your God, and deliverance will come. We may neglect God as well by neglecting of means as by trusting in means; it is best to use them, and in the use of them, to live above them."

Permission to Roar

Thomas Brooks' booklet The mute Christian Under the Smarting Rod teaches us how to suffer and yet not sin. I recently recommended this book to a friend and she is finding her heart powerfully plowed up. Here is one choice line out of many: "A gracious , a prudent silence doth not exclude sighing, groaning, or roaring under afflictions. A man may sigh, and groan, and roar under the hand of God, and yet be silent. It is not signing, but muttering; it is not groaning, but grumbling; it is not roaring but murmuring, that is opposite to a holy silence."

I am so thankful that God is stirring his people to read the Puritans. They move us toward a robust and sturdy Christianity and a deeper, sweeter walk with God.

Gems from The Mischief of Sin

"Affliction is like a rent in the coat; sin is like a rent in the flesh."

"Affliction has a promise made to it...but there is no promise made to sin."

Thomas Watson

Nightmare Atheism

Nathan Wilson has written a wonder filled book called Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl. Incredibly, it has helped me to see the world with new eyes. I have to pinch myself to believe it.

In the book he makes a very good case for there being no objective moral code once God is whited out of one's worldview. The result is nightmarish:

"People are raped in this world, and rape is evil. Because evil exists, there must be no God. Because there is no God--no authoritative standard over creation--the badness of rape downgrades to a mere matter of societal taste. Ethnic cuisine, ethnic ethics. In God's absence rape is no longer fundamentally evil. In our country, you'll get confined to a cell (if caught and convicted), but that just means we enforce our taste, not that our taste has any real authority over anyone else. In other societies, girls have been passed around and traded like baseball cards. Is that right? Is that wrong? Neither. You like exploitation; I like apple pie."

Ultimately the preference of the most powerful will win the day. No rule of law. And we were promised freedom by the new atheism. May God stem the tide before the darkness falls on us.

Thank God for France

Did you know that at one point in the Reformation nearly 50% of the French were Reformed? And three of the four statues of the Reformation Wall were French: John Calvin, William Farel, and Theodore Beza. Most of John Calvin's seminary students were French. It was a Frenchman, Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, who greatly influenced Luther on his view of justification.

Now a ministry called Huguenot heritage is holding a conference on the history of the Reformation in France in hopes of sparking a new Reformation. Gather your family around and watch this moving lesson of church history. You will marvel.

http://www.dougwils.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7684:that-side-of-the-prime-meridian&catid=72:shameless-appeals

"Courtship in the Air"

Doug Wilson have done some serious thinking about courtship, and has come to some wise, thoughtful conclusions. Here are 21 questions for a prospective suitor and 21 for a prospective wife. These are tools to help us enter marriage thoughtfully, prayerfully and carefully. http://www.feminagirls.com/2010/05/29/courtship-in-the-air/