Cautionary Celebration

About the election, Doug Wilson says " the main thing we need to remember in all this -- and we need to remind ourselves of this every day -- is that the Republicans, who now have a strong hand in the House, are still, well, Republicans. We, in order to advance a biblical agenda, now have to work with the Republicans, who still have those black little hearts."
Our trust must be in the Lord.   Men will disappoint us.    
For the entire blog post go to

http://www.dougwils.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8148:the-2010-chainsaw-massacre&catid=129:obama-nation-building

Elections and John Flavel, the Puritan

If the temptation to fear comes around before elections, as it does with me, chew on this quote from Flavel:
"To trust God in part, and the creature in part, is to set one foot upon a rock, and the other upon a quicksand."

Let us work and pray, and then sweetly resign ourselves to the perfect will of God.

"We can be good without God" says the Atheist.

To prove that we can be good without God, Dawkins started a charity. He gave responsibility for it to a fine young atheist.   But perhaps the bud was more promising than the blossom:
http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.com/2010/10/corruption-in-atheist-camp.html

"He finally realized that he was going to die."

This week my husband read to us from Gary North's Backward,Christian Soldiers?


Here are some excerpts from a section called "Optimistic Future Corpses."  I should maybe clarify that I do not consider postmillennialism to be the only acceptable view of end times. And I do not consider that only postmillennialists see things in the following way.... But I do consider the view a great encouragement to this kind of patience, wisdom and perseverence.  Yes, we must ALWAYS be ready to die at any moment, but at the same time we do not want to be like the five foolish virgins who were unprepared for a long wait.  We must not fail to invest our minas with hope and thoughtfulness.   May God give us grace.

  "David Chilton...once remarked that the day he accepted postmillennialism, he finally realized that he was going to die.  He said that this awareness was unique. Nobody had even told him this before.  He and his premillennial peers had always believed that they were going to be raptured.  He said that this new perspective on his own personal future changed the way he thought about his life's work.   Indeed, it had to.  One's time perspective is crucial to one's view of work and work's legacy.  The problem today with postmillennialism, perhaps more than anything else, is that it is a philosophy of personal, physical death.  That sort of philosophy really has a limited Christian market in our era.  Marxists have a secularized version of this faith, which is why they are such potent ideological opponents.   Most Christians have no such outlook.   They prefer not to think about death.   They prefer to think about the rapture.

"Death is the backdrop of all endeavors by postmillennialist.  The death of the sin-cursed body is the starting point. Then the question has to be asked: How should we then live?  What kinds of institutions should we build? What kind of education should we impart to our children?  How much capital should we invest in long-term projects?  What kinds of books should we read or write?  How, in short should we fight?  What can anyone leave behind that his own death will not swallow up?

"Because postmillennialists know that they cannot assume continually that they have five good years left, and that they should assume that their organizations are not going to be left behind in a world without the presence of other Christian workers, they have to think about the future.  Because they know they will die, they can be optimistic about the future.  They know that other Christians will persevere.  They know that Christian institutions will survive to serve as salt for the world civilization. Because they will die, they think to themselves, they can build for the earthly future of others who will also die.  Because their view of their own efforts is necessarily short run--one lifetime, at most-- their view of the long-term effects of their efforts in implicitly long run."

A Mother's Tears kept in a bottle....

Rev. Leonard Katundu, called to minister to the Malawian Presbyterian Church in Africa, tells this moving account of his grandmother, Orpah.    Orpah was converted by Christian missionaries, and began to offer up fervent prayers and tears to God for the conversion of her children and grandchildren.   All of her sons became preachers of the gospel.  Her daughter, Nyembezi, also believed and taught her children the ways of the Lord. Leonard is one of Nyembezi's sons.  He has received training at the excellent Puritan Reformed Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is looking forward to shepherding the sheep there in Malawi.

The tears of his grandmother are still remembered by God.  May God bring continued blessing because of them.

What shall I write in her birthday card?

When opportunities to send cards come up, I love to grab our book Gathered Gold by John Blanchard.  This is a marvelous collection of quotes including numerous gems from the Puritans.  Blanchard says he got a "trawling eye" after his conversion and began to gather quotes as he read.  Today our oldest daughter turned 20, and I wrote this anonymous quote in her card: "If you wish to be disappointed, look to others; if you wish to be disheartened, look to yourself; if you wish to be encouraged, look to Jesus."

Another good quote is about evolution by G.K.Chesterton: "The evolutionist seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing."

When the hand that rocks the cradle also prays....

One morning we read Isaiah 65 in family worship -- about God waiting to be gracious to those who cry out to him.  He waits, ready to bless with living water, bread, rejoicing, singing and gladness for the hungry, thirsty and weary.

I had been reading a small book of sermons by Brownlow North called The Rich Man and Lazarus
to the children.  Preached in Northern Ireland in 1859, these sermons were instrumental in starting a spiritual awakening:  "church-goers who had sat thoughtlessly for years listening to sermons, suddenly awoke to the realities of an eternal world; ministers began to preach with a new authority; factory workers carried Bibles to their benches..."  If you are curious about these sermons that God was pleased to use for revival, let me share a quote.  Asserting that the sin of the rich man was his being content without God, Mr. North goes on to address the congregation:  "I pray God that...every unconverted man ...on earth, may feel his want and need, as the Rich man feels his in hell; I pray to God that the sorrows of death my even now compass him, that the pains of hell may immediately get hold upon him."

What fodder for prayer as you rock the cradle, teach to sew, read aloud, and hear times tables.

"Lord, for my children and theirs and theirs, may they see you as waiting to be gracious to those who cry out to you.  If not, may the terrors of hell be upon them so they hear and come and cry, dreading the hunger, thirst, shame, wailing and sword that will be theirs otherwise.  Amen"