Why do I love John Piper and Augustine so much?

Here's Why....

Augustine wrote so beautifully to God to admire His godly ironies,

"You my God, are supreme and most just. You are the most hidden from us and yet the most present amongst us, the most beautiful and yet the most strong, ever enduring and yet we cannot comprehend You. You are unchangeable and yet you change all things. You are never new, never old and yet all things have new life from you. You are the unseen power that brings decline upon the proud. You are ever active, yet always at rest. You gather all things to Yourself though you suffer no need. You support, You fill and you protect all things. You create, nourish them, and bring them to perfection. You seek to make them Your own, though You lack for nothing. You love your creatures, but with a gentle love. You treasure them, but without apprehension. You grieve for wrong, but suffer no pain. You can be angry and yet serene. Your works are varied, but your purpose is One and the same. You welcome all who come to you, though you've never lost them. You are never in need yet are glad to gain, never covetous yet You exact a return for your gifts. We give abundantly to You so that we may deserve a reward; Yet which of us has anything that does not come from You? You repay us what we deserve but You lose nothing thereby. You are my God, my Life, my Holy delight, but is this enough to say of you? can any man say enough when he speaks of You? Yet woe betide those who are silent about You! for even those who are most gifted with speech cannot find words to describe You."

I could almost bold the entire paragraph. How amazing the attributes of God are captured and certainly God placed this talent in Augustine to write of Him like that! Preciously beautiful.

And John Piper when he preaches like this .....

ok, I'll be upfront about it, I LOVE JESUS CHRIST :)

Yeah, I know I'm not the mushy mushy kind really and I'm really quite unaffectionate at times(at times) but I want the whole world to know that I love Jesus Christ. That's right, I love Him.

I'm not saying this because I'm in some emotional high, in fact, its been a lonely week but oh for crying out loud, I was made to declare the Lord who loved me without scruple. Who gave Himself as the atonement for my sins and who bore it with such love and willingness that still, despite my years of being in Him, I'm still an infant grappling with the massiveness of His sacrifice.

I love Him because He loved me with such a love that still today, I know not its depth, its width, its height or its fullness.

I love Him for I know not when, nor how, nor from whence, but I know He loves me with an everlasting love - a love that existed before time began and will continue to exist even when time has faded away.

I love Him because He stared at me from upon the tree and while charging me with His death, absolved me with His blood and embraced me with nail pierced hands.

And though I know my love for Him is imperfect, I know He will perfect my love for Him.

And so I pray that from His love, I might be able to love my brothers and sisters. I have many intellectual quandries that I deal with in my spare time, but let them wander if they must for Lord, root me in Your love.

Lord I have loved thee with an imperfect Love,
Yet by thy perfect love,
Root me in your everlasting love.

Before Jesus returns

before Jesus returns,

There will be tears in the eyes of Orphans,
Hunger will take the lives of millions more,
Many more widows will stare into the window of loneliness
Men will hurt each other with emotional hurts that go real deep

Machines of war will roll destruction and fear into many innocent lives
Abusive fathers will hurl chairs at clueless children
Gossip will run amok, friends will anger each other
Hope will wane for the weakest and the poorest as the ruthless exploit mercilessly

Still Families will be torn asunder by selfishness and cold calculation
Still I will see many more down trodden men and women lining the underpasses, with packets of tissue in their hands
Still the endless rush for more money, more goods, more accolades, more stuff continues unabated
Still I will have to fight with so much in me.

Still I'll wonder what Jesus looks like and how I'll respond when I see Him
Still my love will yearn for Him.

Before Jesus returns.

Found this youtube video. Didn't understand much of what she was singing but I i liked the title and I thought the voice and passion was great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUcs-EkQJ7k&feature=related

Praying for the church

Having returned from the prayer retreat over the past week, I am convinced of the need to pray more for the church. Certainly, I give thanks to the Lord for friends who actually love praying for the church. Whether there be differences in style or preference of structure in prayer, its really quite non-essential as compared to a similar passion for Christ to be loved and glorified in His bride.

As I've began to observe, we do not usually learn prayer from a person, we usually learn prayer with a person. It cannot be lectured much, it has to be partnered with. Which means that prayer is a subject that simply cannot be understood, it has to be lived. And when people commit to praying together, they naturally will grow closer as friends. Which is why, I do not encourage cross gender prayer partners(unless of course...) but that aside :P It is my prayer that people will fall in love with prayer because it means loving to meet God. We love to talk and write those we love and the more we love them, the more we love to hear them and talk in return. Like prayer, its all about a love for God and the knowledge of the price He paid so that we can have this privilege of prayer.

Prayer came at the price of His Son. Its grace that we can enter into His presence. This two sentences mean the world to me and I'm sure many others.

In particular, I hope we can pray for the church. Why? well do pay attention to the words.

The church is important because Christ died for the church. Hold on, one might say, should it not be because the church is important that Christ has to die for her? And I'll restate my point again, that the order the sentence is constructed is important for our understanding on why we should pray for the body of believers. As the sentence in bold implies, God's willingness to send His Son for her gave her value. She had no intrinsic value apart from the fact that Christ loved her. Her worth is imputed by God and not that she was able to demand a sacrifice from God or that she by herself was too precious to require the inevitable sacrifice of the Son.

Her value was imputed from the beginning by the Father through a sacrifice 200 years ago. Her value was linked competely to Christ's willingness to obey the Father, despite the fact that He did not need her at all. But He loved her and wanted her to be with Him. The cross gave the church great value, because God showed that He wanted to tie His glory with His reward from His Son's sufferings.

In short, because He loved us and demonstrated His love for us through the Son, our value was found - our worth can only be found in His love.

If the sentence was flipped, it makes us seem too important that Christ has to die for us. Its humanistic and allows one to suggest that Christ needs the church to be glorified. it makes God's love appear needy which cannot be further from the case. But God does not need us, yet He loves us while we were defiant. He has no needs that we can meet (certainly He is self sufficient in and of Himself) yet He chose to die for sinners. That makes sinners and christians worthy of pur prayers.

And so because the church is valued so greatly by the cross, should we not endeavour to pray for her like Christ did? :)

Reading and some books to recommend

The books on my table are piling up and despite my efforts to read them, this trajectory appears to be unstoppable. This is despite the fact that my pace of reading has picked up considerably and I've similarly become more attentive to absorbing as much as I can from my readings. I call it the Malthusian book dilemma - The number of books will grow in a geometric progression but the pace of reading can only grow in an arithmetic progression. :P With it my mum gets miffed at the mess the in my room, and i get miffed because my mum is miffed and I don't think i can finish my books to make my mum less miffed.

Of course, the situation is not as bad as it seems and really, my book collection has not become a librarian's dream come true... yet. But over the past few years, especially during my time in university, I've made a few observations about reading that I wish to share here.

1) its not how many books we read that matters, its how much we absorb from the reading.

2) choose our books wisely, whatever that is reflected on the pages often affects our thoughts and is played out in our lives. The books become a huge part of us. There is no clear segregation between narrative and living as some of us would wish to believe. that's why reading the bible is so fruitful and reading lousy books is so damaging.

3) Thus we must never read good books, we must read only the best! Just think about it this way, an average man reads 10 books cover to cover a year (I'm proposing a wildly optimistic statistic here since most chaps in the 21st century just simply do not read that many books), and he begins to read this much from say 20 years old. So for approximately 60 years, he would have read 600 books only. How many of them are comics, trashy novels .. etc. How many of them are the best and most meaningful literature that actually make a difference in our lives?

4) Contemporary books are not necessarily the best books available. we must search for books that stand the test of time and not those with nice flashy covers. A good way to find the best books is to ask for advice from friends we trust or to look at the bibliography of authors we know are worth reading ( see who inspires them and most certainly, they'll inspire us) . I'm pretty careful with modern books. For example, i will never buy a book that has a title like "How China will rule the world in 20 years" or " Church growth strategies for the 21st century". The china book will be part comedy in less than 10 years and the church growth book is probably a passing fad.

5) Know thy author. The book is a reflection of its author. Find out about the author before we commit to his book. This really helps in understanding if the book is good, and if it is, knowing the author makes the reading so much more meaningful.

6) Lastly, read them with prayer. No book should be read without putting them within the context of the wider plan of God. Every book I read, whether history, politics, economics and of course theological become deeply revealing when placed under prayer and the knowledge of a God who is sovereign and mankind who is deeply in need of a Saviour.

These are some of my thoughts on reading. Other than that, I would like to recommend some great books on the cross. Do read them if you have time. There is great joy and fruit in this endeavour :)

1) Living a Cross Centered Life by C J Mahaney
Its easy to read and really, its beautiful. For me the past week was dominated by the stuff this book discussed. It opened the bible for me again and thus I recommend this highly.

2) The cross of Christ by John Stott
its Stott's magnum opus because its discussion on the cross is deep and wide ranging. lots of referencing to be done.

3) The discipline of grace by Jerry bridges
I agree that the first 3 chapters of the book are worth re-reading for the rest of our lives

4) In my place, condemned He stood by J I Packer and Mark Dever
J I Packer's essay on atonement is fantastic and precise. Its Christ magnifying and I learnt a great deal indeed. The 1st and 2nd essay in particular are excellent.

Hope this blesses anyone who happens to pop by.

The gospel

"I fear that the cross, without ever being disowned, is constantly in danger of being dismissed from the central place it must enjoy by relatively peripheral insights that take on far too much weight. Whenever the periphery is in danger of displacing the center, we are not far removed from idolatry" Don Carson

"We never move on from the cross, only into a more profound understanding of the cross."
David Prior

"Our consistent pursuit has always been to keep the gospel central in everything we do. We never assume that there's already sufficient understanding, appreciation, and experience of "Jesus Christ and Him crucified." C J Mahaney

"The gospel cannot be preached and heard enough, for it cannot be grasped well enough.... Moreover, our greatest task is to keep you faithful to this article and to bequeath this treasure to you when we die." Martin Luther

"Now I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preached to you .... for I delivered to you as of FIRST IMPORTANCE what I have also received: that CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS"
Apostle Paul to the Corinthian church

I grew up learning much of the periphery around the cross. In fact, I thought the gospel was a very basic doctrine that had to be learnt and after which moved on from. But the past few years in particular had been particularly intense simply because God allowed me to see my error and had mercifully corrected me. I am now convinced that the gospel is indeed, of first importance- to be preached again and again until the day i die. Everything else should be expounded according to its relationship with the center. I am fully convicted of the fact that the deepest and most precious thing we learn about Christianity is the first thing we learnt about it upon conversion - that CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS.

I believe that we would discover almost everything about eschatology(Revelations and all that) but we would spend our whole lives marvelling at the grace of God upon the cross. The cross will still demand eternal amazement and our hearts will learn an infinity about its beauty at every moment and yet realise that there is still so much more.

I was brought up with the periphery for much of my teenage life. As you might then suspect, I became really angry with the fact that no one taught me about the gospel. For so long I was taught to admire light emitted from light bulbs. No one put me through the bible to gape in wonder at the sun. It was by grace that I was led to the gospel, not just as an item of salvation but as the center of all theology. Till today, this alone, this illumination has made all the difference and I am exceedingly glad in Christ.