EKU Spring Break Retreat in Destin, FL: Day Two

9 03 2010

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Yesterday (Monday) was such a neat experience.  We had our morning worship at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church, followed by lunch (where Cindy and I ate too many fried foods – oysters, clams, pickles), but then we went to the beach and saw the EKU Campus Crusade for Christ kids at work.

They had a mission called “Steps of Faith” where they were to establish relationships through tug o’war, volleyball, football, etc., and then initiate conversations about the things of Christ.  You should have seen them going up and down the beach, recruiting people for volleyball and tug o’ war—there must have been well over 60 participating. 

The result: many seeds were planted for the gospel.  Some even joined us for our Tacky Putt-Putt Tournament that evening. 

What about this morning?  I will be preaching from Jonah 2 (“The Danger of Running on Auto-Pilot”), then more relationship-building and seed planting this afternoon (weather permitting).

Please pray for our students.


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“Meet the Puritans” Book Giveaway

8 03 2010

Check out this great book giveaway:  Meet the Puritans by Joel Beeke, et al.  This looks like a great book to have in your collection. 


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EKU Spring Break in Destin, FL: Day One

8 03 2010

Morning Walk

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This morning, I had a chance to walk along the shoreline at Destin, carrying my ESV Pocket Bible and my book by Sinclair Ferguson called Grow in Grace.  As I looked out at the Gulf of Mexico, a number of Scripture passages came to mind.  Among them was Job 38:1-11 (pictured left):

1Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
2"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? 3 Dress for action like a man;
   I will question you, and you make it known to me.

4"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
   Tell me, if you have understanding.
5Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
   Or who stretched the line upon it?
6On what were its bases sunk,
   or who laid its cornerstone,
7when the morning stars sang together
   and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

8"Or who shut in the sea with doors
   when it burst out from the womb,
9when I made clouds its garment
   and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10and prescribed limits for it
   and set bars and doors,
11and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
   and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

  The ocean and the gulf had always fascinated me while I lived in Florida, and still do now that I live in Kentucky.  It was a chilly morning, but was grateful at how the Lord warmed my heart with His Word.

Morning Worship

This morning we worshiped at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church (PCA) where Dewey Roberts pastors.  We had a wonderful time of worship, where every portion of the service was laced with Scripture.  No choir, no special music, just Scripture, catechism, prayer, offering, singing, and preaching.  We went with Adam and Jennifer Dixon and their children.

 

Lunch

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I highly recommend the restaurant Pompano Joe’s.  It’s right up the road from where we are staying (more on that tomorrow).  The Dixons treated us to a wonderful meal.  As a fan of the Reuben sandwich, I was intrigued by an item on the menu, “Grouper Reuben” (or the Rouper Greuben, as my wife and I call it).  Really, outside of Richard’s Bake and Shark in Maracas Beach in Trinidad, this is the best sandwich I’ve ever had.  Cindy had the Blackened Mahi Mahi sandwich which she enjoyed immensely as well.

We also had a chance to see some of the guys and gals playing volleyball on the beach, trying to develop not only some significant relationships for Jesus, but also a serious tan. 

Launch

Our Spring Break Retreat Launch took place last night.  Great seeing so many college students in one place (90+).  Pray for us as we really hit the ground running on Monday morning.

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We Need to Regain a Fear of the Lord

7 03 2010

As I was reading “Grow in Grace” by Sinclair Ferguson, I came across this hymn by F.W. Faber. Here is the text in full. May we indeed regain a fear of the Lord.

 

My fear of Thee, O Lord, exults
Like life within my veins,
A fear which rightly claims to be
One of love’s sacred pains.

Thy goodness to Thy saints of old
An awful thing appeared;
For were Thy majesty less good
Much less would it be feared.

There is no joy the soul can meet
Upon life’s various road
Like the sweet fear that sits and shrinks
Under the eye of God.

A special joy is in all love
For objects we revere;
Thus joy in God will always be
Proportioned to our fear.

Oh Thou art greatly to be feared,
Thou art so prompt to bless!
The dread to miss such love as Thine
Makes fear but love’s excess.

The fulness of Thy mercy seems
To fill both land and sea;
If we can break through bounds so vast,
How exiled shall we be!

For grace is fearful, which each hour
Our path in life has crossed;
If it were rarer, it might be
Less easy to be lost.

But fear is love, and love is fear,
And in and out they move;
But fear is an intenser joy
Than mere unfrightened love.

When most I fear Thee, Lord! then most
Familiar I appear;
And I am in my soul most free,
When I am most in fear.

I should not love Thee as I do,
If love might make more free;
Its very sweetness would be lost
In greater liberty.

I feel Thee most a father, when
I fancy Thee most near:
And Thou comest not so nigh in love
As Thou comest, Lord! in fear.

They love Thee little, if at all,
Who do not fear Thee much;
If love is Thine attraction, Lord!
Fear is Thy very touch.

Love could not love Thee half so much
If it found Thee not so near;
It is Thy nearness, which makes love
The perfectness of fear.

We fear because Thou art so good,
And because we can sin;
And when we make most show of love,
We are trembling most within.

And, Father! when to us in heaven
Thou shalt Thy Face unveil,
Then more than ever will our souls
Before Thy goodness quail.

Our blessedness will be to bear
The sight of Thee so near,
And thus eternal love will be
But the ecstasy of fear.

(F.W. Faber)


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We made it to Destin!

6 03 2010

Thanks to all of you who prayed for our trip to Destin!  After spending a night in Knoxville, we made it at around 6:00 p.m. EST.  We were blessed to have dinner with Adam and Jennifer Dixon (Adam is the head of the EKU Campus Crusade for Christ) and also with Weston and Heather Tripp.  They each have wonderful families, and I look forward to ministering to the 90+ college students who came down from EKU.

Tomorrow, we will head to church at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church (PCA) here in Destin.  They will be hosting the EKU Cru students for this week, so I look forward to being with these dear brothers and sisters in Christ for their morning worship.  While I am a staunch credo-baptist (baptism of adult believers only) and not paedobaptist (holding to the baptizing of infants), I do link arms with them in most every other important tenet of the faith.  I find them to be devoted believers in the authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures and am grateful to call them who have received Christ as their only Lord and Savior my brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Tomorrow will be the launch of the week’s events, so please pray that God would be honored and we would get off to a glorious start.  I will be preaching from the book of Jonah, so pray God would give me the words to say and a clear mind and speech to say them.

More tomorrow!


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Blogging About Destin Next Week

4 03 2010

Dear friends:

I have the privilege of preaching in Destin, Florida next week to about 100 college students from Eastern Kentucky University who will be going on a Spring Break Retreat.

God directed me to the book of Jonah, and I look forward to preaching and teaching from this glorious book about “Will You Say ‘No’ When God Says ‘Go’?”

I shall blog each day and give updates on what God will do in the midst of these young men and women.  Please pray for him to move mightily.

Blessings!


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A Different Man in the Pulpit (A.W. Tozer)

2 03 2010

You are witnesses, and God also, how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe…. 
–1 Thessalonians 2:10

I am afraid of the pastor that is another man when he enters the pulpit from what he was before. Reverend, you should never think a thought or do a deed or be caught in any situation that you couldn’t carry into the pulpit with you without embarrassment.

You should never have to be a different man or get a new voice and a new sense of solemnity when you enter the pulpit. You should be able to enter the pulpit with the same spirit and the same sense of reverence that you had just before when you were talking to someone about the common affairs of life. (A.W. Tozer)  Worship: The Missing Jewel of the Evangelical Church, 29.

"Lord, help me to be a man of impeccable integrity. Give me the grace to be the same man, whether in the pulpit, in a board meeting, caught in rush hour traffic, or at dinner with my wife.
Amen."

(From Literature Ministries International)


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List of Books I Read in February 2010

1 03 2010

My goal is to read 4-5 books on various topics and length to help keep myself sharp.  Here are the four books I had the pleasure of reading this past month.  If you have partaken of these works in the past, I would enjoy knowing your thoughts as well.

 

Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis.  A very well-written, insightful and revealing look at the most popular cartoonist of all time, Charles M. Schulz.  I bought this book for $7 (retail $35)… it’s worth twice the retail’s amount.  You’ll never read Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, or any of the others the same.  I found this book enlightening and, to be honest, progressively sadder as it went along.  Read my review.

Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley:  Even though he sets up a strawman of (bad) expository preaching, this is a crucial book for pastors in helping them understand, engage, and apply the one point for a sermon.  I would have my ministry candidates at my church read through this book!

If the South Had Won the Civil War by MacKinlay Kantor.  This is an interesting alternative history from a Pulitzer-Prize winning author who speculated on the South winning the Civil War.  It hinged on two events:  General Ulysses S. Grant dying at Vicksburg, and the Confederate army winning at Gettysburg (both on July 4, 1863).  The thought of Lincoln’s capture, Maryland and Kentucky joining the Confederacy, Texas eventually becoming its own nation—it makes for a very interesting and well-written read for every Civil War buff.

Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers by T. David Gordon.  Gordon was diagnosed with cancer, and thus he felt compelled to write on his perspective of today’s preaching.  He has some very good insights based upon his observations (which, for the most part, I agree with) in the need for preachers to be ones who know how to read and write well.  Although communicating via writing and speaking are two different animals, he makes a valid point that understanding how to communicate in these ways helps for unity and clarity in the spoken word. 


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A Word for Ministers from Richard Sibbes

27 02 2010

Christ chose those to preach mercy who had felt most mercy, as Peter and Paul, that they might be examples of what they taught.  Paul became all things to all mean (1 Cor 9:22), stooping unto them for their good.  Christ came down from heaven and emptied himself of majesty in tender love to souls.  Shall we not come down from our high conceits to do any poor soul good?  Shall man be proud after God has been humble?  We see the ministers of Satan turn themselves into all shapes to ‘make one proselyte’ (Matt 23:15).  We see ambitious men study accommodation of themselves to the humours of those by whom they hope to be raised, and shall not we study application of ourselves to Christ, by whom we hope to be advanced, nay, are already sitting with him in heavenly places?  After we are gained to Christ ourselves, we should labour to gain others to Christ.  Holy ambition and covetousness will move us to put upon ourselves the disposition of Christ.  But we must put off ourselves first (Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 27).


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Links to Help Your Grip (2.24.10)

23 02 2010

Francis Chan puts forth some horrifying videos about persecution and murder of the Christians in India.  Those images will never leave my mind.  Ever.

Timmy Brister lists 21 questions he’s been asking himself as a pastor.  Here are four:

    • If our church would cease to exist in our city, would it be noticed and missed?
    • If all the pastors were tragically killed in a car accident, would the church’s ministry cease or fall apart?
    • If the only possible means of connecting with unbelievers were through the missionary living of our church members, how much would we grow? (I ask this because the early church did not have signs, websites, ads, marketing, etc.)
    • What are the subcultures within the church?  Do they attract or detract from the centrality of the gospel and mission of the church?

Read how one American Idol auditioner put Simon Cowell in his place—through Christ-like forgiveness.

Do the Five Love Languages really exalt the lordship of Christ?  David Powlison explains:

Like all secular interpretations of human psychology (even when lightly Christianized), it makes some good observations and offers some half-decent advice (of the sort that self-effort can sometimes follow). But it doesn’t really understand human psychology. That basic misunderstanding has systematic distorting and misleading effects. Fallenness not only brings ignorance about how best to love others; it brings a perverse unwillingness and inability to love. It ingrains the perception that our lusts are in fact needs, empty places inside where others have disappointed us. The empty emotional tank construct is congenial to our fallen instincts, not transformative. It leaves what we instinctively want as an unquestionable good that must somehow be fulfilled. It not only leaves fundamental self-interest unchallenged, it plays to self-interest. . . .

Sadly, Benny Hinn’s wife has asked for a divorce after 30 years of marriage.

Our church has started praying for our Resurrection Sunday services.  You can follow the 40 days prayer guide at our Casting in the Creek blog.

Feel free to listen to and read my sermon from this past Sunday on “Pure Churches are Investing Churches.”  I pray my legacy at Boone’s Creek Baptist Church is marked by this vision of ministry.

Lastly, I have set up (finally) my Amazon store, Gripped by the Gospel.  Come, take a look, and partake of the books! 


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