in the midst of this

My Friend Kyle Scheele is Publishing a Book

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:35:32 -0400

My Friend Kyle Scheele is Publishing a Book:

Get yourself a copy… heck, get yourself 100 copies.

"By commanding us to take, he signifies that he is ours; by commanding us to eat and drink, he..."

Thu, 03 May 2012 09:36:37 -0400

“By commanding us to take, he signifies that he is ours; by commanding us to eat and drink, he signifies that he is become one substance with us. In saying that his body is given for us, and his blood shed for us, he shows that both are not so much his as ours, because he assumed and laid down both, not for his own advantage, but for our salvation. And it ought to be carefully observed that the principal and almost entire energy of the sacrament lies in these words, “which is given for you,” “which is shed for you”—for otherwise it would avail us but little, that the body and blood of the Lord are distributed to us now, if they had not been once delivered for our redemption and salvation. Therefore they are represented to us by bread and wine, to teach us that they are not only ours, but are destined for the support of our spiritual life.”

- John Calvin

by what standard?

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:11:34 -0400

by what standard?

"Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent,..."

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 21:14:02 -0500

“Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.”

- John Owen

The Village Blog - The Passover Lamb

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:47:43 -0500

The Village Blog - The Passover Lamb:

A blog post by my good friend Clint Patronella… a wonderful reflection for this time of the year.

"It is better to avoid sin, than to flee from death. If you are not ready today, how will you be..."

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 10:56:30 -0500

“It is better to avoid sin, than to flee from death. If you are not ready today, how will you be ready tomorrow? The morrow is uncertain. How do you know that you will live until then?”

- Thomas a Kempis

Tonight's Communion Reflection // Revelation 19.1-8

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:53:00 -0500

The consummation of the church’s full and final salvation is seen in the wedding supper of the Lamb. The church is the bride, made ready for union with Jesus, the Lamb of God. Christ and the church are united in the context of a great end of time feast. The similarity in terms between this final wedding supper of the Lamb and the Lord’s Supper is hardly coincidental—the Lamb is the Lord.

One of the more brilliant points of significance in the crossover between these two meals is that John is writing it to the persecuted churches of Asia Minor, and he is communicating to them that in their celebration of the Lord’s Supper they are experiencing a foretaste of the celebration that will mark their full and final redemption.

So, when the suffering and evil you are confronted with in this world seems overwhelming and discouraging… run to the table. Because, it is at the table that we are not only reminded of Christ’s triumphant, but we also taste of it.

In taking communion we join with the church victorious, “with the angel and archangels, and all the company of heaven,” in worshipping our risen Lord.

* As a church, James River Assembly, partakes of the Lord’s Supper every Wednesday evening at our prayer service.

**This post is in part an adaptation of pages 16-17 in Robert Letham’s book The Lord’s Supper: Eternal Word in Broken Bread

"There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to..."

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:48:18 -0500

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”

- C.S. Lewis, Preface to The Screwtape Letters

"I know of nothing else to do than to pray humbly to God to give us such real Doctors of Theology as..."

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:26:00 -0500

““I know of nothing else to do than to pray humbly to God to give us such real Doctors of Theology as we have in mind. Pope, Emperor, and universities may make Doctors of Arts, of Medicine, of Laws, of the Sentences; but be assured that no man can make a Doctor of Holy Scripture except the Holy Spirit in heaven. As Christ says in John 6: ‘They must all be taught by God himself.’ Now the Holy Spirit does not ask for red caps or brown, or any other pomp. Nor does he ask whether a person is young or old, lay or cleric, monk or secular, virgin or married. In fact, in ancient times he actually spoke through a donkey against the prophet who was riding it. Would to God that we were worthy to have such Doctors given to us….””

- –Martin Luther, Address to the German Nobility (1520 AD).

Side Note: Karl Barth uses this quote to support the idea that an authentic theologian of the Church ought to be a regenerated Christian, not merely a “mystical” (or “spiritual” in today’s terms) theologian (Church Dogmatics I.1, 18-19).

Thanks to William Molenaar for providing the quote and the link to Barth on his blog.

"The Word of God in Acts that may be regarded as normative for Christians is related primarily to..."

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:30:38 -0500

““The Word of God in Acts that may be regarded as normative for Christians is related primarily to what any given narrative was intended to teach… Historical precedent, to have normative value, must be related to intent. That is, if it can be shown that the purpose of a given narrative is to establish precedent, then such precedent should be regarded as normative.””

- Gordon Fee, How to Read the Bible for all its Worth (1982), 99.

I really thought our team did a great job on the intro video for...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:35:57 -0500

I really thought our team did a great job on the intro video for our One Small Step series.

Regardless of how you feel about Mitt Romney personally or...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:11:00 -0500

Regardless of how you feel about Mitt Romney personally or politically, yesterday his campaign basically gave a tutorial on how not to create momentum for your candidate (or at an event in general).

Lesson: if you only expect a crowd of 1,250, probably best not to book a 65,000 seat stadium.

jonwasson: Yosemite time lapse. Amazing. watch in HD.

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:36:42 -0500

jonwasson:

Yosemite time lapse. Amazing.

watch in HD.

"O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power and..."

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:40:15 -0500

“O Lord and Master of my life!
Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power and idle talk.
But give me rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to my servant.
Yea, O Lord and King!
Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; for thou art blessed unto ages of ages.
Amen.”

- A common fourth-century prayer of Lent from St. Ephrem the Syrian

"We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to..."

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:48:06 -0500

“We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken.”

- Timothy Keller

"Hope alone is to be called ‘realistic’, because it alone takes seriously the..."

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:31:19 -0500

“Hope alone is to be called ‘realistic’, because it alone takes seriously the possibilities with which all reality is fraught.”

- Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope

"In the Christian understanding, Jesus does not tell us how to live so we can merit salvation...."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:41:55 -0500

“In the Christian understanding, Jesus does not tell us how to live so we can merit salvation. Rather, he comes to forgive and save us through his life and death in our place. God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior.”

- Tim Keller, The Reason for God

"You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have..."

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:24:35 -0500

““You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed””

- John Bunyan

#simplebutprofound

joy upon joy, grace upon grace

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:35:32 -0500

joy upon joy, grace upon grace

"Christ became flesh, a servant, without form or comeliness, the most despised of human beings; he..."

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:27:43 -0500

“Christ became flesh, a servant, without form or comeliness, the most despised of human beings; he descended to the nethermost parts of the earth and became obedient even to death on the cross. So also the word [the Bible], the revelation of God, entered the world of creatureliness, the life and history of humanity, in all the human forms of dream and vision, of investigation and reflection, right down into that which is humanly weak and despised and ignoble… . All this took place in order that the excellency of the power … of Scripture may be God’s and not ours.”

- Herman Bavinck (1854–1921)