“In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.”
– Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience In The Same Direction
“We begin with one fundamental fact about worship: at this very moment, and for as long as this world endures, everybody inhabiting it is bowing down and serving something or someone – an artifact, a person, an institution, an idea, a spirit, or God through Christ. Everyone is being shaped thereby and is growing up toward some measure of fullness, whether of righteousness or of evil. No one is exempt and no one can wish to be. We are, every one of us, unceasing worshipers and will remain so forever, for eternity is an infinite extrapolation of one of two conditions: a surrender to the sinfulness of sin unto infinite loss or the commitment of personal righteousness unto infinite gain. This is the central fact of our existence, and it drives every other fact.”
| Harold Best - Unceasing Worship |
“As to what spiritual rebirth is, however, we can say that persons reborn in the Spirit are characterized by their single-mindedness. They have only one desire: to do God’s will in all things, or – to put it in Jesus’ words to Nicodemus – to “do the truth” and thus “to come out into the light so that what they are doing may plainly appear as done in God” (John 3:21). They are so caught up in God’s love that everything else can only receive its meaning and purpose in the context of that love. They ask only one question: “What is pleasing to the Spirit of God?” And as soon as they have heard the sound of the Spirit, they follow its promptings even when it upsets their friends, disturbs their environment, and confuses their admirers.”
| — | Henri Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing |
If you plead God’s value as a source of your hope instead of pleading your value as a reason for God’s blessing, then His unwavering commitment to His own glory engages all His heart for your protection and joy.
from John Piper’s A Sweet and Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God
Yesterday, Pastor James mentioned that we will be using the ESV (English Standard Bible) translation a lot more at Hosanna, and suggested buying a copy. You can get one for less than the price of taking your family to the movies (and then some).
If you’re looking to buy an ESV, here are some suggestions:
1. ESV Deluxe Compact Bible
2. ESV Thinline Bible (TruTone)
3. ESV Single Column Reference Bible
4. ESV Study Bible
5. ESV Thinline Bible, Premium Calfskin Leather
It’s good to read the Scriptures in different translations to get new perspectives. The ESV is a very faithful translation, and takes a word by word approach to translating the original languages. I have enjoyed using it, both for devotional reading and for study. If you decide to buy one, enjoy the riches we have in the many good Bible translations available to us!
“Once we had no delight in God, and Christ was just a vague historical figure. What we enjoyed was food and friendships and productivity and investments and vacations and hobbies and games and reading and shopping and sex and sports and art and TV and travel…but not God. He was an idea – even a good one – and a topic for discussion; but He was not a treasure of delight.
Then something miraculous happened. It was like the opening of the eyes of the blind during the golden dawn. First the stunned silence before the unspeakable beauty of holiness. Then the shock of terror that we had actually loved the darkness. Then the settling stillness of joy that is the soul’s end. The quest is over. We would give anything if we might be granted to live in the presence of this glory forever and ever.
And then, faith – the confidence that Christ has made a way for me, a sinner, to live in His glorious fellowship forever, the confidence that if I come to God through Christ, He will give me the desire of my heart to share His holiness and behold His glory.
But before the confidence comes the craving. before the decision comes the delight. Before trust comes the discovery of Treasure.”
John Piper – Desiring God
“Sometimes I feel like when I make decisions that are remotely biblical, people who call themselves Christians are the first to criticize and say I’m crazy, that I’m taking the Bible too literally, or that I’m not thinking about my family’s well-being. . . When people gladly sacrifice their time or comfort or home, it is obvious that they trust in the promises of God. Why is it that the story of someone who has actually done what Jesus commands resonates deeply with us, but we then assume we could never do anything so radical or intense? Or why do we call it radical when, to Jesus, it is simply the way it is? The way it should be?“
- Francis Chan, Crazy Love
