The Saturday Post(s)

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Dana Dill

Saturday PostHow Do You Raise Christians? “The simple fact is that your best efforts cannot guarantee salvation for your children, but your bad example could be a great hindrance to the work of the gospel in their hearts. While you might not be able to singlehandedly win them to the Lord, your influence runs deep and helps set the course for their lives.”

The Bible on Abusive vs. “Committed” Same-Sex Relationships. A very helpful read on a very popular argument. Take the challenge. “Here’s my question to all Christians who argue based on Scripture that homosexuality is a sin: How would you respond to this kind of argument?”

6 Books to Help You Preach the Gospel to Yourself. “Here are six books to help you beat the gospel into your head.”

50 Things a Mother Needs to Do in the Next 20 Minutes. Thank God for mamas. “I could think of at least fifty things that a mother of small children generally needs to do within the next twenty minutes.”

Brief Reflections on the Oral Arguments from Supreme Court. “Before yesterday’s oral arguments on gay marriage at the Supreme Court, I had contended that the Court’s decision was pretty much a foregone conclusion. I predicted that by the end of June, the Court would rule gay marriage to be a Constitutional right. Now that the case is in, I have listened to all of the arguments made by attorneys on both sides of the question. I have also listened to the Justices’ grilling of those attorneys, and I can say this.”

Ligonier is on YouTube. “Ligonier Ministries has just added some of their best teaching series to YouTube (The Holiness of God, Chosen by God, etc).”

God Owes Me Nothing. A needed reminder.

Connect the Spirit With Truth. Good counsel here. “I have seen more than one person come to reject biblical theology—even regarding the doctrine of salvation—after they became impressed with the spirituality of a particular writer or speaker who eventually led them astray.”

The Most Impressive 5-Seconds You’ll See Today. Wowzers.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Church’s Message to ISIS

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Dana Dill

Dear ISIS…

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

People Shouldn’t Be Denied the Right to Marry

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Dana Dill

fbsamesex33_616Isn’t denying homosexuals the right to marriage a form of discrimination?

Isn’t it wrong to keep homosexuals from participating in marriage?

Isn’t telling certain people they are unable to be married an infringement on our rights?

Yes. All those things are wrong. Marriage should not be legally prohibited for any adults wanting to be married. Marriage should be open to all adults who desire it. People should not be denied the right to marry.

However, this is not the issue of the current debate about same-sex marriage. The current controversy is not about barring certain people from marriage, but it is about redefining what marriage is. Amy Hall hits the nail directly on the head:

There is no class of people being told they’re not eligible for marriage. In fact, the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage isn’t about prohibiting something on the basis of bad conduct or the status of a group, it’s about the definition of marriage.

If marriage is a particular thing, then everyone has a right to take part in that institution as it stands, regardless of their personal characteristics. But to be part of the institution, they must be part of the institution. They don’t have a right to change that institution into something different simply because they don’t want to be part of it the way it is.

In bringing the point home, Amy gives an extraordinarily helpful illustration.

Imagine a public park builds a tennis court so that people can come to play tennis. Nobody should be denied the right to play tennis games there. Period. It’s a public park, open to all. One day, a group of basketball players comes to the park, wanting to play a game, but they find they can’t play basketball on a tennis court. They immediately go to City Hall to complain: “Everyone has the right to competitive exercise with a ball on that court! We’re being denied our rights based on our status as basketball players!” Can you see the problem? The fact that they don’t want to play tennis doesn’t give them the right to demand that the government build a different court at the park. Their right isn’t to “competitive exercise with a ball” (tennis shares that in common with basketball, but it can’t be reduced to that), their right is to play tennis on that court, just like everybody else.

This idea is clearly illustrated and articulated in this Q&A from Ryan T. Anderson at a recent lecture he gave titled, “What is Marriage?”

As we, both Christian or non-Christians, gay or straight, continue to have dialogues concerning this very important issue, let’s make sure we know exactly what is being argued and what isn’t. The issue is not about who can get married, but it is about what marriage is.

I encourage you to read Amy’s entire post here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Two Tips for Confrontation

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Dana Dill

Sugar-724x482I am reading a great little book on pastoral ministry by Lee Eclov called, Pastoral Graces. A few days ago I came across Lee’s two tips for helping confrontation and thought them worthy to share.

Someone once praised me for being bold in the pulpit. I felt sheepish. I don’t usually find it difficult to be direct when I’m preaching. I don’t consider it a virtue. What is hard is confronting someone personally…I have two suggestions, two spoonfuls of sugar to help the medicine go down.

First, don’t confront someone till you’ve gathered up love for them. I can take awhile, but if you don’t consciously love the person you face, your words will inflict blunt force trauma.

Secondly, smile whenever you can. Come kindly. A sympathetic smile says you aren’t there to hurt them.

Your church family and friends need you to love them enough to confront them when they’re in sin or acting foolishly. Love doesn’t ignore or pretend all is well, love confronts. While you confront, may you do so with these “two spoonfuls of sugar.” May it be received as blessing and not curse. May it help and not harm.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Saturday Post(s)

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Dana Dill

Saturday PostReligions Are Products of Culture and Geography, Not Truth. Here is Brett Kunkle’s really good answer to that objection.

How Do You Know If You’re Repentant. “Here are 12 signs we have a genuinely repentant heart…”

Don’t Be Too Quick to Look for Fruit in New Believers Lives. “When we believe in Jesus we have eternal life. We can’t lose this life. But this grace of God in believers often seems to be little more than a spark. Sometimes it takes a long time for Jesus to fan it to a full flame. And as Richard Sibbes says, that small “measure of grace” is often mixed with “much corruption” and like smoke, can be offensive. Yet Christ will not quench that faintly burning wick.”

Jesus Should Be Like Hamburgers & French Fries. “Do not think me blasphemous when I say that he must be as real and as useful to you as a hamburger and french fries.”

What Should the Church Say to Bruce Jenner? “The hope for Bruce Jenner, and for others like him, is not to alter the body with surgery or to flood their systems with hormones. The answer is to realize that all of us are born alienated from what we were created to be. We don’t need to fix what happened in our first birth; we need a new birth altogether.”

Same-Sex Marriage vs. Divorce/Cohabitation/Adultery/Etc. “I find it very hard to understand how some Christians, perhaps most, fail to see the fundamental threat same-sex marriage poses to the biblical view of marriage. Divorce wounds marriage. Cohabitation and a contraceptive mentality reflect a private indifference to the goods of marriage. But same-sex marriage does something much more fundamental: It asserts public control over marriage, detaches it from the reality of our bodies as male and female, and remakes it into a purely affective union for the sake of . . . ­affective union.”

101 Facts. You don’t need them, but you’ll like them.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Important Questions About Homosexuality That Never Get Asked

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Dana Dill

same-sex-marriage-equality-for-all-L-yvTGgJIn hopes of helping the media become more even-handed in their reporting, Dan Phillips writes a list of questions he wished they would ask Democratic Candidates concerning homosexuality and related issues.

As I read his questions, I thought that they not only need to be asked and answered by our nation’s leaders, but by us all.

  • Should people act on every sexual impulse they have? How can they tell which is which?
  • If someone has a homosexual impulse, does he have a choice as to whether or not to act on it?
  • Should adult children whose hearts move them to marry one or both of their parents be legally allowed to? Why or why not?
  • How about adult siblings whose hearts move them to marry one or more of their siblings?
  • Is being homosexual like being black or Asian? How is it different?
  • Christians believe that Jesus can free people from being enslaved to destructive sexual impulses. Are they wrong?
  • Jesus said that it was wrong to act out some sexual impulses. Was He wrong?
  • If your son or daughter married a Christian who believed that homosexuality is a sin, would you attend the wedding? Follow Up: should bakers be required by law to cater such a wedding?
  • Do you think Christians who believe in the Bible should be allowed to hold public office?

Much of the media limits viewers & listeners to only hear and think about one side of the story, but there is a completely different side that beckons serious thought.

Think on.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 8 Comments

4 Truths for Young Singles in Romantic Relationships

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Dana Dill

romanceJared Wilson recently typed 10 immensely helpful truths for young singles in romantic relationships.

Here are four that I found particularly important and valuable.

1) It’s not bad to want to have sex with your significant other. It’d be another sort of worry if you didn’t. The key is to want to glorify Christ more than you want to have sex with each other.

2) The key to glorifying Christ more than you want to have sex with each other is that it is a decision to be made over and over again.

3) Persons in a dating or courting relationship are on their best behavior. So however they are now, you can expect, over time, for them to get “worse.” As familiarity grows, people let their guards down, become more their true selves. In this way, marriage does not fix bad behavior; if anything, it often gives it freer reign. Ladies, this means that if your boyfriend is controlling, suspicious, verbally condescending or manipulative, he will become more so the longer your relationship goes on. Whatever you are making excuses for or overlooking now will get harder to ignore and more prominent the longer your relationship goes on. By God’s grace, people pursuing Christ can change, but you can’t fix him and marriage itself won’t straighten him out. If he’s rough around the edges now, it’s going to get rougher.

4) Premarital sex de-incentivizes a young man to grow up, take responsibility, and lead his home and family.

Read the other six truths here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Suffering is God’s Gift

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Dana Dill

Crown-of-Thorns-psd81005“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

Christians have long praised this verse and for good reason. Within its few words lay inestimable, life-giving treasure. In this one verse, we are taught that everything in a believer’s life is, without exception, worked out by God for their good. Everything that comes to us in this life, the really good things and the really bad things, comes to us from the hand of God and are to bless.

This includes suffering.

For the Christian, suffering ultimately comes to them from the hand of their Father and it is designed to bless, not harm. How can that be? How can suffering ever be a good thing? How can pain, sickness, poverty, etc. be anything but bad?

10 Ways God Uses Affliction for Our Good

Surely, there are ten-thousand answers to the question, but ten should suffice to get us started. From his excellent (& short!) book, All Things for Good, Thomas Watson gives ten ways that God uses affliction for the good of His people.

God Uses Suffering As Our Preacher or Tutor. Affliction teaches us about the sorrow sin brings to our world. Affliction wipes away any lofty views we may have of ourselves and teaches reveals who we really are. “A sick-bed often teaches more than a sermon.” God’s most important lessons are usually brought home through affliction.

God Uses Suffering to Make Our Hearts More Upright. “As we sometimes hold a crooked rod over the fire to straighten it; so God holds us over the fire of affliction to make us more straight and upright. Oh how good it is, when sin has bent our souls away from God, that affliction should straighten it again.”

God Uses Suffering to Make Us More Like Jesus. God brings us sorrows of our own so we may become more like the Man of Sorrows. “God’s rod is a pencil to draw Christ’s image more lively upon us…Was His head crowned with thorns and do we think to be crowned with roses?” God makes His servants like His Suffering Servant (see Isaiah 53) by bringing them through suffering.

God Uses Suffering to Help Destroy Sin in Us. Ultimately, pain, affliction, and hardship have come to us from sin. Hardship is a post-Genesis 3 word. Therefore, in enduring hardship, we are experiencing the true fruit of our sin. It is not sweet, but bitter as hell. “Sin is the mother, affliction is the daughter; the daughter helps to destroy the mother…Afflictions carry away nothing but the dross of sin.” Suffering is God’s chemotherapy to the cancer of our sin. It may hurt us and make us sick for a time, but it is given to help us get rid of the sin that truly kills.

God Uses Suffering to Loosen Our Hearts from the World. God will rip goods from our tightfisted hands”When you dig away the dirt from the root of the tree, it is to loosen the tree from the earth; so God digs away our earthly comforts to loosen our hearts from the earth.”

God Uses Suffering to Prepare Us for Comfort. Jesus said, “Your sorrow will turn to joy” (John 16:20). “Here is the water turned to wine. After the bitter pill, God gives sugar…God’s rod has honey at the end of it. The saints in affliction have had such sweet raptures of joy, that they thought themselves in the borders of heaven.”

God Uses Suffering to Honor Us. Watson says that suffering honors or exalts or magnifies us in three ways. First, our sufferings show that God thinks about us and cares for us by giving and sustaining us through suffering (see Job 7:17). Second,  our sufferings (i.e. His discipline) show we are His sons (Hebrews 12:7). Third, our sufferings make us renowned among God’s people. “Soldiers have never been so admired for their victories as the saints have been for their sufferings…Job the sufferer was more renowned than Alexander the conqueror.”

God Uses Suffering to Make Us Happy. How can this be? God grows our faith through suffering and mature faith makes happy people. The holiest people are the happiest people. “When God sets our wordly comforts on fire, then we run to Hi and make our peace with Him. When the prodigal was pinched with want, then he returned home to his father. (Luke 15:13)…Thus affliction makes us happy in bringing us nearer to God.”

God Uses Suffering to Silence Non-Believers. Often times non-believers accuse Christians of following Jesus only because they have good and comfortable lives. Sound familiar? They claim that once our health and wealth are taken away, our faith will go with it. But, the suffering of God’s people shuts their mouths. “God will have His people endure sufferings for (Jesus) that He may put a padlock on the lying lips of wicked men.”

God Uses Suffering to Prepare Us for Glory. Suffering is the road to heaven. Suffering does not earn glory, but prepares our hearts for glory. “As plowing prepares the earth for a crop, so afflictions prepare and make us ready for glory. The painter lays his gold upon the dark colors, so God first lays the dark colors of affliction, and then He lays the golden colors of glory…The worst thing that God does to His children is whip them to heaven.”

Obviously, these ten ways God uses affliction for the good of His people is by no means the last word on suffering, but, as I said above, it is a good start. Nothing lies outside the powerful hand of our Sovereign God and in the hands of our Sovereign God all is designed for our (believers’) good. Because of this, we can truly pray and sing, “Lord, thank you for the trials…”

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Happy Are Those Who Read the Bible

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Dana Dill

l_70c5cc60-5683-11e1-af72-fd9771e000021How can one maintain joy in their Christian life? Surely, there are many answers, but in any list, reading the Bible should be near the top.

J.C. Ryle, as always, says it well.

“Next to praying there is nothing so important in practical religion as Bible-reading. God has mercifully given us a book which is “able to make [us] wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15). By reading that book we may learn what to believe, what to be, and what to do; how to live with comfort, and how to die in peace. Happy is that man who possesses a Bible! Happier still is he who reads it! Happiest of all is he who not only reads it, but obeys it, and makes it the rule of his faith and practice!” (Take from Practical Religion).

Thank God for His Bible.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Saturday Post(s)

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Dana Dill

Saturday PostWhat is Biblical Love? “True, biblical love consists in the sharing of mutual joy—of seeking one another’s joy as one’s own.”

40 Things Parents Definitely Can’t Get Away With Anymore. The difference of childcare between our parents generation and ours is insane & hilarious

Jesus, the Gentle Pastor. “Jesus is so good. He knows my limits and condescends to fill them and minister to me within them.”

Is Your Smartphone a Spiritual Addiction? “If I am being honest, I have to admit that my iPhone habits have been largely unchecked, undisciplined, and unhealthy. And in a recent survey of 8,000 of our readers, many of you honestly admit the same struggle.”

You Want an Iceberg Pastor. Great thoughts on what kind of men we need in pastoral ministry.

The Church is Not Your Frat House. “Christian worship fosters community not by shutting others out, but by inviting them in as we worship a God who has made himself known in Jesus. The joy of corporate worship finds expression as we worship the King with hospitality: arm in arm, and hand in hand, for the end of all things is at hand.”

Zoos Are Not as Safe as You Think. “Oh man!”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment