Come as you are - a gospel call

Listening to Geoff Moore's song and just celebrating that He called me, me a prodigal and one who would rather sell my Father's inheritence to eat with the pigs.  May I celebrate my Father's call to me!  Is he calling you?  Are you listening?

[The Parable of the Prodigal Son]



[11 ] And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. [12 ] And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them. [13 ] Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. [14 ] And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. [15 ] So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. [16 ] And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.


[17 ] “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! [18 ] I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. [19 ] I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ [20 ] And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. [21 ] And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ [22 ] But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. [23 ] And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. [24 ] For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.

The Gospel calls to you and says come, come with your broken heart, shame of sin, the dark blackness of the existence that you sometimes call joy and come to him.  Don't let the sin drown out His call to you, please listen to him.  Cling to Him in faith admitting your sin, he said this to the tax collectors and the Pharisees looking on, he is not a respecter of persons, don't look at your education, your filthiness, your weaknesses, your looks, your money, your connections that contiue to plague you.  Look to the Cross and be saved, look, look, look...


Come as you are
Open hands, broken heart
As you are
Come with your joy
And your pain
With your doubt and your shame
As you are




Prodigal daughters and sons, everyone
All will be forgiven
No matter what you’ve done
And when the Father sees you he will run
No matter how far
Come as you are




Come, please don’t wait
There’s still time
It’s not too late
To come as you are

Christian lyrics - COME AS YOU ARE LYRICS - GEOFF MOORE

Evangelism and the Manti Pageant; FAIL

Manti, UT is a place of gathering for the Mormon faith to gather and play out the foundations of their faith as portrayed through the Book of Mormon.  This Pageant draws 7,000-10,000 per night, in this little town of about 4,000, during about 6 days in the summer.  It is also a place where, Christians, who love Mormons, come to confront the false gospel of those same Mormons.  According to many of the testimonies, that I've heard, there has been respectable dialogue between the attendees and the evangelists there to share the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

But this is now being threatened.

The Town Council of Manti is considering a proposal which would shut down the main street going to the pageant location thus inhibiting our brothers and sisters from doing the work of the gospel where it has been unobstructed before.  They would turn the street into a park but with special "rules".  Basically this would inhibit those coming to Manti from a public venue that they can, as I said, lovingly confront the false gospel that the Mormons hold to.  It seems as if there is not a lot of debate on this but we need to get the message out.  There is a proposal from John Kauer of thinkabouteternity.org that would allow the City and LDS to buy the property but maintain the civil liberties that any public park would have. 

The Gospel is not at all affected or offended, they will still go and there will still be the evangel in Manti but this is an assault. There would be signs of prohibition against proselytizing, can you imagine?  I know that I've seen, "pick up after your dog", "no alcohol", "no parking after dark", "don't litter".  But, "don't talk about the true gospel"? :)

Please pray:

• 
  
  for the town council of Manti.
• 
  
  for the ministries that are seeking to minister there.
• 
  
  that the gospel would continue to go out w/o hinderance from those opposed to it.

Your boasting friend,

Tim

*here is the real sign that is out there, of course it is not as good as my sign above, being truthful...:)

Could there be anything worse?

This an excerpt from Justin Taylor's blog:

"We need to realize that those who are in hell desire nothing more than the absence of God. They didn’t want to be in God’s presence during their earthly lives, and they certainly don’t want Him near when they’re in hell. The worst thing about hell is the presence of God there."

—R. C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross (Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust, 2007), pp. 157-158; my emphasis.


What a gift we have in this faith that but for the grace of God we would be with those who deny God and live in rebellion to him.  May God continue to grant us eyes to see.

A few months ago I posted here regarding hell and the actualities of it.
 
Your boasting friend,
 
Tim

Learning the Gospel via Jerry Jones

Not quite him teaching it intentionally but this is what I get everytime there is a Cowboy's game and I'm coming home on I30. Instead of starting the "I hate Jerry Jones" Facebook page I instead think of the gospel applied to my own heart.

Jerry Jones may never know how much he is contributing to my sanctification through the activity of the Holy Sprirt that He gets each time that I have to wait in traffic. So may the gospel come to Mr. Jones in a tangible way and may my life be more of an example as I sit in the mess of I-30. :)

Your boasting friend,

Tim

Forgotten God

If I were to recommend some reading on the Person and work of the Holy Spirit I would not hesitate to recommend Francis Chan's book Forgotten God.  Basically he works from the premise of the Bible, imagine that, and then works out of that.  He dosen't tend to get lost in minutae in his writing which is refreshing as it is challenging.  I cannot believe that people could bore you with the Holy Spirit but that is what we tend to do in forgetting his work in our lives and trying to disect Him instead of worship Him.  Check out the book and don't be bored in church or outside of it anymore.

Some great quotes:

"We are not all we were made to be when everything in our lives and churches can be explained apart from the work and presence of the Spirit of God." (p. 18)

"It is true that God may have called you to be exactly where you are.  But it's absolutely vital to grasp that He didn't call you there so you could settle in and live out your life in comfort and superficial peace.  His purposes are not random or arbitrary.  If you are still alive on this planet, it's because He has something for you to do." (p. 92)

"The Spirit who raised Christ from the dead is not someone we can just call on when we want a little extra power in our lives.  Jesus Christ did not die in order to follow us.  He died and rose again so that we could forget everything else and follow Him to the cross, to true Life." (p. 122)

"I believe He is calling me - and all of us - to depend on Him for living in a way that cannot be mimicked or forged.  He wants us to walk in step with His Spirit rather than depend solely on the raw talent and knowledge He's given us.
But instead of living this way, we've created a whole brand of churches that do not depend on the Spirit, a whole culture of Christians who are not disciples, a new group of "followers" who do not follow." (p. 143)

"No matter where you live and what your days look like, you have the choice each day to depend on yourself, to live safely, and to try to control your life.  Or you can live as you were created to live - as a temple of the Holy Spirit of God, as a person dependent on Him desperate for God the Spirit to show up and make a difference.  When you begin living a life characterized by walking with the Spirit, that is when people will begin to look not to you but to our Father in heaven and give Him the praise." (p. 156) [emphasis mine]

Your boasting friend,

Tim

Little reminders in the midst of busyness...

This is from Carl Trueman at the Reformation 21 blog:

"Above all, the iPhone phenomenon speaks of the need to be continually occupied with texts, tweets and whatever. The obsession with texting and these other phenomena is indicative of the general noise we need to generate to keep ourselves occupied. One of those things which calls to mind Pascal: the measure of true human being is the ability to sit alone in silence in a room. Were we to do that, in our fallen state we would have no choice but to face our own mortality, the ultimate hopeless futility of our existence without God.

Have a nice day."
 
It sounds like my daily struggle with consuming myself with other stuff instead of thinking on Him.
 
May we find times of reflection sobering yet with a smile. :)
 
Your boasting friend,
 
Tim

Hell, yes. You will live for eternity.

A couple of years back Robert Jeffress of 1st Dallas wrote a book, Hell, Yes! it was regarding the nominal views of hell that have been purported in the press and even in a lot of theological studies these days.  But without Hell what is Heaven other than a place where the good people go who would help some old lady across the street or go buy the bum in the alley some food?  I mean hell is going to be a party and so I'll get over to heaven one of these days in eternity somewhere when the party dies down right?  But hey what do they always say, "its going to be a !$#% of a party!".  Well not the way the Bible lays it out, it is going to be anything but and I would like to say that if you are a Christian reading this that a deeper view of hell will actually inform and reform your personal evangelism.

At night my family and I like to go through a Family Catechism, going through the questions that are posed and then answered.  It is the revised work of a guy named Charles Spurgeon a 19th century preacher in England. 

Question 39 is posed like this:

"What will happen to the wicked at the day of judgment?"

Answer:

"At the day of judgment, the bodies of the wicked will be raised out of their graves, sentenced together with their souls and sent to bear unspeakable torments with the devl and his angels forever in hell."

You can read that over again slowly one more time, not to celebrate it or think of someone who is going and relish it but to feel the tortorous monstrosity that will be hell.  Now, if he stopped there that wouldn't be good but of course there is always "back up" to what is answered.  So listen to God's Word...

"And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." Daniel 12:2

"28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment." John 5:28-29

"9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might," 2 Thess. 1:9

"41 “Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Matthew 25:41

Aptly we end with Jesus' own warning against those who would not prepare themselves for eternity.  As the book of Hebrews says, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" Hebrews 10:31.

So what of you, what will be your eternal home?  Please don't read John 5:29a and say, "Whew, I'm good, I mean I know what evil is and I'm not it."  But how are you defining "evil" there?  This is where hell gets more personal, because as you look down the corridors of history you see only One that did no evil, Jesus Christ.  What John is saying there in the preview of the end, when all known things will come to an end and everyone will give an account, is that there is only one way to be "good" or "good enough" to measure God's exacting standard, and it isn't by what you do.  What do I mean?  I mean that your own righteousness wouldn't measure up to God and it never could, only God could bring it to us and the way that he has done that is through his Son, Jesus Christ.

Please, if you care for your soul, read through those verses again and consider eternity without God, without hope.

Your boasting friend,

Tim