Amazing Statement

Given Tolkien’s current fame, and the obvious quality of his work, I find this statement amazing, and very telling about the power of encouragement:

“I have never had much confidence in my own work, and even now when I am assured (still much to my grateful surprise) that it has value for other people, I feel diffident, reluctant as it were to expose my world of imagination to possibly contemptuous eyes and ears.  But for the encouragement of C.S.L. I do not think that I should ever have completed or offered for publication The Lord of the Rings” (J.R.R. Tolkien to Clyde S. Kilby, 18 December 1965, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. by Humphrey Carpenter [Houghton Mifflin, 2000], 366).

I wonder what other masterpieces throughout history were never finished or published simply because the author lacked a friend to encourage him/her.
Soliloquium

Stevie Ray Vaughan - Superstition

Not Exactly The Problem

The Father’s Love for the World

“Jesus came into this world of unbelief, rebellion against God, and disobedience to God’s commandments in order to reach the world with his love. He was sent by the Father to live a life of full obedience to the Father’s word, and then to offer up his life as a sacrifice for the world, because of the Father’s great love for the world. Whoever believes in Jesus will be granted God’s forgiveness and acceptance and becomes a child of God, born by the Spirit into his family.”
- Jerram Barrs, Learning Evangelism from Jesus (Wheaton, Ill.; Crossway Books, 2009), 11.
Of First Importance

God is Good

"The goodness of God endureth continually" (Psalm 52:1).

The "goodness" of God respects the perfection of His nature: "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). There is such an absolute perfection in God's nature and being that nothing is wanting to it or defective in it, and nothing can be added to it to make it better. He is originally good, good of Himself, which nothing else is; for all creatures are good only by participation and communication from God. He is essentially good; not only good, but goodness itself: the creature's good is a superadded quality, in God it is His essence. He is infinitely good; the creature's good is but a drop, but in God there is an infinite ocean or gathering together of good. He is eternally and immutably good, for He cannot be less good than He is; as there can be no addition made to Him, so no subtraction from Him. (Thomas Manton).

The Doors - Roadhouse Blues

The Gospel Explodes Our Conditional Thinking

The gospel of justification by faith is such a shocker, such an explosion, because it is an absolutely unconditional promise. It is not an 'if-then' kind of statement, but a 'because-therefore' pronouncement: Because Jesus died and rose, your sins are forgiven and you are righteous in the sight of God! It bursts in upon our little world all shut up and barricaded behind our accustomed conditional thinking as some strange comet from goodness knows where, something we can't really seem to wrap our minds around, the logic of which appears closed to us. How can it be entirely unconditional? Isn't it terribly dangerous?

. . . [W]e really are sealed up in the prison of our conditional thinking. It is terribly difficult for us to get out, and even if someone batters down the door and shatters the bars, chances are we will stay in the prison anyway! We always seem to want to hold out for something somehow, that little bit of something, and we do it with a passion and anxiety that betrays its true source--the Old Adam that just does not want to lose control.

--Gerhard Forde, Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life (Fortress 1982), 24; italics original
Dane Ortlund

Clean Up Needed

The Practice of Prayer in the Throne Room of God

Have you ever practiced something for 24 years before realizing you’re still not very good at it? If it were golf, I would have sold the clubs in a garage sale for $15 years ago. If it were guitar, I would have long since burned my Takamine in a men’s retreat campfire. Yet I’ve been practicing prayer for more than two decades, and I’m amazed at how little I still know of this discipline.
We can think of this kind of practicing from another perspective. Can you imagine being a coach of someone for 24 years who remains woefully ineffective at your craft? Suppose you were the golf or guitar instructor—how many years could you endure with a student who could never seem to get it right?
Prayer is God’s kind of craft, because prayer only happens when God is involved. Speaking to the air is not prayer if the speaking is not directed to the God who listens for the prayers of His people. Listening to the silence is not prayer if the listening is not tuned to hear the voice of a God who speaks in the quiet places.
So while my slice is still in place, and my bar chords are still not strong, and my prayer life still lacks discipline, our God has been gracious to teach me the baby steps of prayer with the patience and care of a doting father and a devoted coach. Another lesson came this morning through Hebrews 4.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us to “draw near [with confidence] to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Here are 7 observations to encourage us to persevere in our practice of prayer.

1. Drawing near means actively coming before God. If we were to enter the throne room of a king, we would have to deliberately and physically bring our bodies before the king because we had a request to make of him. I can’t say how many times I lament my ineffective prayer life without failing to see how many times I fail to physically bring my body before God in prayer.
2. Drawing near with confidence is no small matter. For subjects of the kings of old, to approach the throne without being summoned was to invite certain death.  You may recall Queen Esther’s boldness: “I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16). Of course, Esther’s confidence came from her trust in the sovereignty of God over life and death, and our confidence comes because we rest in the advocacy of a great High Priest who is perfect and is sovereign over life and death.
3. Drawing near with confidence to the throne means drawing near a throne. Where God is seated. God. Who created and upholds all things by the power of His word. And we are approaching His throne to stand in the immediacy of His glory-filled presence, and all of His attention is on our lips to hear a request He already knows. This is stunning.
4. Drawing near with confidence to the throne of grace means this throne is unlike any other kind of throne. Many kings have been vicious tyrants; some others have been benefactors. But there is no throne upon which a mortal king has sat that can be called a throne of grace. Our God is so bent towards grace that He seats Himself upon it and surrounds Himself by it. His throne alone is a throne of grace.
5. Drawing near with confidence to the throne of grace to receive mercy may seem a paradox. A guilty man coming before a king to beg for mercy does not come with confidence; he comes with wobbly knees and a trembling voice. But the promise we have in drawing near the throne of grace with the advocacy of our perfect High Priest allows us the freedom to expect mercy when we come.
6. Drawing near with confidence to the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace means the God who seats himself upon a throne of grace offers grace to us as well. He is the source of this grace but does not hoard it. He means not only to give us grace but for us to find it as well.  When we seek at the throne of grace, we find what we are seeking.
7. Drawing near with confidence to the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need means the grace we find when we approach the throne of God, with confidence, finding mercy, is the kind of grace that is meant to help us. His grace not only forgives; it enables. It not only absolves sin; it sustains. And this kind of grace is the kind of grace that addresses all kinds of needs because it is a grace from a God who is sovereign over all things.

Praise be to God for the instruction of his word and the patience with which He teaches us! And let us continue to practice prayer, with steadfastness and perseverance, because we serve a great Coach and a mighty King who invites us to enter His throne room with confidence wrought by faith in the God-man who perfected prayer: Jesus.
By Chris Tomlinson - Gospel Coalition

Saving Grace performed by Aaron Neville from 'Gotta Serve Somebody: the Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan

Grace Does So Much

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  Romans 8:1

Between grace and gift there is this difference. Grace actually means God's favor, or the good will which in himself he bears toward us, by which he is disposed to give us Christ and to pour into us the Holy Spirit with his gifts. The gifts and the Spirit increase in us every day, but they are not yet perfect since there remain in us the evil desires and sins that war against the Spirit. Nevertheless grace does so much that we are accounted completely righteous before God. For his grace is not divided or parceled out, as are the gifts, but takes us completely into favor for the sake of Christ our intercessor and Mediator. And because of this, the gifts are begun in us.

Luther's Works 35:369-70

Here They Come

The Day Is Coming

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else...It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeaseable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or choose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work...All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciouisness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain, pg.145

Why Christians Should Covenant Together Through Local Church Membership

God’s covenant with us is prior to any covenant we make with each other. He chooses us, sets us apart, calls us to holiness, and enjoins us to love one another. But all this must happen in particulars. The commitment to live out the principles of the new covenant takes place with a specific people in a specific place. This results in a local church. Membership matters because particularization matters.
According to Jonathan Leeman (whose ideas I’ve borrowed in the paragraph above), submitting to a local church accomplishes a number of crucial things. Church membership:
1. Identifies us with Christ.
2. Distinguishes us from the world.
3. Guides us into the righteousness of Christ by presenting a standard of personal and corporate righteousness.
4. Acts as a witness to non-Christians.
5. Glorifies God and enables us to enjoy his glory.
6. Identifies us with God’s people.
7. Assists us in living the Christian life through the accountability of brothers and sisters in the faith.
8. Makes us responsible for specific believers.
9. Protects us from the world, the flesh, and the Devil.
In other words, “the covenant commitment of the local church makes the invisible new covenant visible. It’s an earthly symbol, sign, or analogy of this wonderful heavenly reality” (The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, 267).
Kevin DeYoung

The Real Spill

The Lamb Takes All Sins

"The next day (John) saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Here is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" John 1:29

Anyone who wishes to be saved must know that all his sins have been placed on the back of the Lamb! Therefore John points this Lamb to his disciples, saying: "Do you want to know where the sins of the world are placed for forgiveness? Then don't resort to the Law of Moses or betake yourselves to the devil. There, to be sure, you will find sins, but sins to terrify you and damn you. But if you really want to find a place where the sins of the world are exterminated and deleted, then cast your gaze upon the cross. The Lord places all our sins on the back of the Lamb..."

Therefore a Christian must cling simply to this verse and let no one rob him of it. For there is no other comfort either in heaven or on earth to fortify us against all attacks and temptations, especially in the agony of death.

Christ does bear the sin---not only mine and yours or that of any other indivdual, or only of one kingdom or country, but the sin of the entire world. And you, too, are a part of the world.
Luthers Works 22:163-164

Double Crossing Time --- John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton

Look At Who's Talking

Looking in the wrong end of the funnel

In her Washington Post column today, “Does God play favorites?” (5/9, A17), Kathleen Parker argues that Christian prayers are no more special than the prayers of say a Hindu or a Muslim because “new brain research supports the likelihood that one man’s prayer is as good as any other’s.” To back this up she introduces NPR reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty and her book Fingerprints of God a book that shows neurologically that “whether one is a Sikh, a Catholic nun, a Buddhist monk or a Sufi Muslim, the brain reacts to focused prayer and meditation much in the same way. The same parts light up and the same parts go dark during deep meditation.” I don’t doubt it. But she makes a fundamental mistake.
A drunk man blabbing in the street and a man filled with the Spirit of God and speaking the gospel in a foreign language apparently have some similarities to an observer. But they are doing very different things (Acts 2:5–13). Similarly, an act in the bedroom that is borne out of sinful lust between an unmarried couple as compared to the same act in the bedroom that originates from marital love and faithfulness are two radically different acts, even if they are physically indistinguishable. The physical appearance of the act often does not distinguish the sinfulness or the holiness of the act itself. This is what C.S. Lewis called “transposition,” when higher and more complex elements of the spirit world are acted out in a less complex material world they often don’t look particularly unique to the human eye. Or, as Lewis explained, when you take a book that was written in a very complex language and translate that book into a much more simplified language you must (out of necessity) give certain words multiple meanings. The same is true spiritually. The prayers that are pleasing to God—those prayers that are mediated by the blood of Jesus Christ and are reinterpreted and amplified by the voice of the Holy Spirit (Heb. 10:19–22, Rom. 8:26) are prayers that may in fact look exactly the same in a neurological scan as all other prayers and meditations that are not sanctified by the blood of Christ and not prayed through the Spirit.
To understand spiritual complexities we don’t study the simplified translation, we study the original book. In seeking to understand the spiritual world we must look down from heaven to earth rather than from earth up into the heavens. This is only possible through God’s revelation. God’s word is the only source that will help us make spiritual sense of physical acts that appear to be similar. And this is why brain activity can never determine the spiritual value of one’s prayers and meditation. It’s to attempt to understand spirituality by looking in the wrong end of the funnel.
For more on transposition see Lewis’ marvelous essay in The Weight of Glory (pages 91–115).
Miscellanies

The Problem Of Not Trusting

THERE ARE FEW PASSAGES in the Pentateuch which on first reading are more discouraging than the outcome of Numbers 20:1-13.
Yet the account carries some subtle complexities. It begins with more of the usual griping. The need of the people is real: they are thirsty (20:2). But instead of humbly seeking the Lord in joyous confidence that he would provide for his own people, they quarrel with Moses and charge him with the usual: they were better off in slavery, their current life in the desert is unbearable, and so forth.
Moses and Aaron seek the Lord’s face. The glory of God appears to them (20:6). God specifically says, “Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water” (20:8). But Moses has had it. He assembles the crowd and cries, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” (20:10) — which rhetorical question, at its face value, is more than a little pretentious. Then he strikes the rock twice, and water gushes out. But the Lord tells Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them” (20:12).
Three observations:
(1) God does not say, “Because you did not obey me enough . . . ” but “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy . . .” There was, of course, formal disobedience: God said to speak, and Moses struck the rock. But God perceives that the problem is deeper yet. The people have worn Moses down, and Moses responds in kind. His response is not only the striking of the rock, it is the answer of a man who under pressure has become bitter and pretentious (which is certainly not to say that any of us would have done any better!). What has evaporated is transparent trust in God: God is not being honored as holy.
(2) Read the Pentateuch as a whole: the final point is that Moses does not enter the land. Read the first seven books of the Old Testament: one cannot fail to see that the old covenant had not transformed the people. Canonically, that is an important lesson: the Law was never adequate to save and transform.
(3) In light of 1 Corinthians 10:4, which shows Christ to be the antitype of the rock, it is hard to resist the conclusion that the reason God had insisted the rock be struck in Exodus 17:1-7, and forbids it here, is that he perceives a wonderful opportunity to make a symbol-laden point: the ultimate Rock, from whom life-giving streams flow, is struck once, and no more.
D.A.Carson

Cream - White Room

Joy, The Uproarious Labor

The mass of humans have been forced to be happy about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. A human is more himself, is more humanlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live.

--G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Ft. Collins, CO: Ignatius, 1995), 166.
Dane Ortlund

We Are Not Safe

C.S. Lewis: “Three Kinds of Men”

C.S. Lewis’s short essay, “Three Kinds of Men,” from his collection of essays, Present Concerns (pp. 9-10):
There are three kinds of people in the world.
The first class is of those who live simply for their own sake and pleasure, regarding Man and Nature as so much raw material to be cut up into whatever shape may serve them.
In the second class are those who acknowledge some other claim upon them—the will of God, the categorical imperative, or the good of society—and honestly try to pursue their own interests no further than this claim will allow. They try to surrender to the higher claim as much as it demands, like men paying a tax, but hope, like other taxpayers, that what is left over will be enough for them to live on. Their life is divided, like a soldier’s or a schoolboy’s life, into time “on parade” and “off parade,” “in school” and “out of school.”
But the third class is of those who can say like St Paul that for them “to live is Christ.” These people have got rid of the tiresome business of adjusting the rival claims of Self and God by the simple expedient of rejecting the claims of Self altogether. The old egoistic will has been turned round, reconditioned, and made into a new thing. The will of Christ no longer limits theirs; it is theirs. All their time, in belonging to Him, belongs also to them, for they are His.
And because there are three classes, any merely twofold division of the world into good and bad is disastrous. It overlooks the fact that the members of the second class (to which most of us belong) are always and necessarily unhappy. The tax which moral conscience levies on our desires does not in fact leave us enough to live on. As long as we are in this class we must either feel guilt because we have not paid the tax or penury because we have. The Christian doctrine that there is no “salvation” by works done to the moral law is a fact of daily experience. Back or on we must go. But there is no going on simply by our own efforts. If the new Self, the new Will, does not come at His own good pleasure to be born in us, we cannot produce Him synthetically.
The price of Christ is something, in a way, much easier than moral effort—it is to want Him. It is true that the wanting itself would be beyond our power but for one fact. The world is so built that, to help us desert our own satisfactions, they desert us. War and trouble and finally old age take from us one by one all those things that the natural Self hoped for at its setting out. Begging is our only wisdom, and want in the end makes it easier for us to be beggars. Even on those terms the Mercy will receive us.
[HT: Tim Keller; Dane Ortlund] Justin Taylor

Buddy Guy & Memphis Slim - Southside Reunion - Help Me Somebody