Absolute Heresy

This is a disturbing news article from Europe:

THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.
The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.
“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.
The bishops acknowledge their debt to biblical scholars. They say the Bible must be approached in the knowledge that it is “God’s word expressed in human language” and that proper acknowledgement should be given both to the word of
God and its human dimensions.
The Bible is true in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: “We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters.”

This could be very damaging to many believers in establishing wrong patterns at the basis of their faith. The Bible is the Word of God and inerrant, very true in every sense. It is the foundation and the rock, and the only thing that can be trusted as being the truest thing. We have a world that wants to be stuck in a very postmodern mind-set. The only thing that is true is what you think about it, that's very incorrect. This article and this kind of thinking erodes the power of the Scripture. If we can be skeptical about we can believe or not about the Word, we lose our foundation and our footing about what we believe, we begin to believe what we want to believe, in order to serve our means.

They say the Church must offer the gospel in ways “appropriate to changing times, intelligible and attractive to our contemporaries”.

Here's the reason why they stated the above. We need to all be very careful of trying to not stand ABOVE the Word, but UNDER its teaching. If we can pick and choose, what parts about the Bible we believe, we are OVER the Word. It doesn't have meaning to us, we try to put meaning on the Bible. "I don't think that parts true, we don't have to follow what it says."

I believe we can interpret their saying above as, "If WE don't change how the Bible is presented, it won't be attractive to modern day people." This is the beginning of the slide in connecting the WE to the ATTRACTION, as if we are determining how important "God" is. God is Almighty, the power of the gospel is true, let's not water down biblical doctrine to serve our means.

Let us become better listerners to what the Word has to say to us. Let us take that as truth into our hearts, being the Word of God, which we know is truth. Let us communicate these absolute truths to others in a gracious, loving way.

Here's a link to the website. Click Here.

More Time Management

Here's some other quotes that I found useful in understanding time management:

Procrastination may represent a failure to identify and to act in congruence with your own basic values. - Dr. William Knaus

Unwillingness to say No: Recognize the pain of saying YES is becoming greater than the pain of saying NO.

A Counter !?!

Did you see the counter on the left side? What's that for? Who would be keeping track of that?

Time Management

I was reading a time management booklet at work on how to better manage time for business. They were some great quotes in there, a lot of them had biblical principles behind them. I hope they are as encouraging to you too.

"The enemy of the 'best' is often the 'good'. - Stephen Covey

How true. Sometimes we get caught in doing good things, that we don't take the time to really ponder what God wants us to do. His plans work out in better ways than we can ever think or plan. His plans are what's best, so we can't fill our schedule with what we think is best, even if they're great, good things.

"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least." - Goetne

We must always keep our core values first, our goals, our principles in place before we let other things push those aside.

On Christ's Care

"The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord." - John 20:20b

"We should come to know Christ in this way: He is kindly disposed and comforting to all the poor who are needy and anxious; on the other hand, He is a severe judge of all who despise Him. To know Him this way is to know Him rightly.
Therefore, we should expect from Christ all love, kindness, comfort, salvation, and encouragement, and call on Him in perils of fire, perils of water, in death, and in all assaults on your faith. For He is also the only Cornerstone, to whom we should hold in all our troubles."

The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther - 6: 55

Seven Issues with the church's current evanglestic state.

1. Sunday School has lost its' priority. The importance of the small groups and the small groups specifically reaching specific people. (86% of people that go to Sunday school will be invovled in the church 5 years later as compared to 17% of those not in Sunday school being involved in the church.
2. The uninvited 81%. Of the unchurched, 81% haven't been invited to church ONE time.
3. Failure to grasp the '4-legged stool'. Of keeping people in church, we aren't encouraging these aspects enough: expectations, ministry invovlement, small groups, relationships.
4. The interested unchurched person. Of those that hadn't been invited to church, 84% would say yes they would come to church if invited, as long as you would come with them through the doors.
5. Failure of members to develop meaningful relationships with the lost.
6. Lack of intentionality in evangelism.
7. Theological beliefs that diminish evangelistic passion. Christ is the ONLY way for salvation and to be excluded from condemnation. Also, we need to cling to the gospel, not this life.

- notes from Thom Rainer, Providence Baptist Church 8/14/2005

The Effect of Universalism on Missions

The notion that people are saved without hearing the gospel has wreaked havoc in the missions effort of denominations and churches that minimize the biblical teaching of human lostness without Christ.

Apart from the special, saving grace of God, people are dead in sin, darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God and hardened in heart (Ephesians 2:1, 4:18). And the means God has ordained to administer that special saving grace is the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

J.Piper - Desiring God, pg 192-193

The Engaged Couple

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We are all smiles the day after our engagement. Here we are getting ready to go to Capitol Hill Baptist Church at Paul Curtis' house.

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The Couple

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A Picture of me and my fiance, Meg.

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All I Need

Give me unwavering faith
that supplications are never in vain,
that if I seem not to obtain my petitions
I shall have larger, richer answers,
surpassing all that I ask or think.
Unsought, thou has given me
the greatest gift, the person of thy Son,
and in Him thou wilt give me all I need.

Valley of Vision - The Prayer of Love (pg. 271)

Delayed Writings

Sorry for the delay in returning to the post, but a lot has been happening over the past couple months. I transistioned to my new position with Sherwin-Williams, and am constantly learning new things every day. It's a transistion working full-time and juggling what was on my plate in less time, but I really praise God for this position and the financial stability it brings and for the future. Also below, I now have a fiance too, it's been a sweet time preparing for that moment of proposal and now for the moment of engagement, heading and planning towards our marriage. Hopefully I will be able to post more and post pictures of some of the events of the past couple months.

Josh

Happy News!

I would just like to announce to you all that this weekend, Meg Madden and I got engaged. We were in Washington DC visiting a friend and away for a little mini-vacation. It was the perfect opportunity for a suprise. We had a peaceful picnic right near the Jefferson Memorial, and then I proposed, asking her to be my wife. Such a sweet weekend, and I had a hard time keeping it under wraps and containing my excitement.

the Building of the Church

'I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' - Matthew 16:18

'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.' - Matthew 28:18-19

These two verses point out a lot about the sovereignty of God and the importance / His care for the church.

God's Workings at Work

Praise God! Last week it was confirmed that I got the new promotion in Sherwin-Williams. It is a great working of Him. Thanks for all your prayers and encouragement during this time. It is definitely a blessing.

Josh

The Happiness of God

'God's saving designs are penultimate, not ultimate. Redemption, salvation, and restoration are not God's ultimate goal. These He performs for the sake of something greater: namely, the enjoyment He has in glorifying Himself...

If God were not infinitely devoted to the preservation, display, and enjoyment of His own glory, we could have no hope of finding happiness in Him. But if He does in fact employ all His sovereign power and infinite wisdom to maximize the enjoyment of His own glory, then we have a foudnation on which to stand and rejoice.'

- J.Piper - Desiring God (pg. 33)

Then Let All My Pleasures Tell

But I do bid that all will come
And drink with me the waters from
The Fountain of delights whom we
Call Christ, and that we taste and see
The fullness of his Father's joy
Which none can make and none destroy;
And that we take from his right hand
Eternal pleasures he has planned
For those who love him more than all
His gifts, and gladly leave the small
And fleeting pleasures of this earth
To savor God and all he's worth.

...

His goodness shines with brightest rays
When we delight in all his ways.
His glory overflows its rim
When we are satisfied in him.
His radiance will fill the earth
When people revel in his worth.
The beauty of God's holy fire
Burns brightest in the heart's desire.

- J.Piper - Desiring God

Praising God

'I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.'

- C.S. Lewis - Reflections on the Psalms

'Praising God, the highest calling of humanity and our eternal vocation, did not involve the renunciation but rather the consummation of the joy I so desired. My old effort to achieve worship with no self-interest in it proved to be a contradiction in terms. Worship is basically adoration, and we adore only what delights us.'

- J.Piper - Desiring God

A New Job ?

I humbly ask for your prayers. This coming Thursday I will have an interview for a full-time job. I hope to get this, and put forth my best capabilities. Pray that I will use this opportunity to exalt Christ, that I would be humbled by that, and truly live it out in my work-life. Thank you.

Contentment

Do you think you are content in life? Pastor Horner laid out a lot about our / my state of contentment. Convicting words that cut to the heart.

"We always want more than we have, not less. I need just a little bit more ..."

And then even to the point of:

"We don't know the meaning of enough."

A lot of this sermon was pointing our need for contentment, and the wrong attitudes of contentment we have and the wrong things we have contentment towards. But he then went on to explain a solution for this problem.

"We won't be content with anything unless we are satisfied with Jesus Christ."

Praise God we have a remedy that will truly be all-satisfying and fulfilling to exactly what we need.

This passage for the sermon was Philippians 4:10-20

D.Horner - 'To Learn Contentment' 5/1/05

Remember the Word - Authorial Intent of 2 Peter

Peter writes 2 Peter to tell his audience - "REMEMBER THE WORDS." Which words? "The words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles." (2 Peter 3:2) WHY do we need to remember the words? I believe the end of 2 Peter sums this up - "the untaught and unstable distort ... Scripture to their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 3:16-18) Also, "you do well to pay attention [to the prophetic word] as to a lamp shining in a dark place." (2 Peter 1:19)

Here are some points of the book that support the above:

• Through the true knowledge of Him, we can see that His divine power has granted us everything pertaining to life and godliness. (1:3) Where can we find the true knowledge?
• "He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of divine nature." (1:4) Where can we find the promises? In His Word.
• In the section 1:12-15, Peter explains that he wants to constantly remind them of the truth, so that they will be diligent to call it to mind.
• In the section 1:16-21, Peter reveals the authority of the writers of the Word, the eyewitnesses of His majesty and the prophetic word. Verse 21 says, "for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God."
• Peter sounds the alarm against the false prophet and teachers in chapter 2. They "will secretly introduce destructive heresies" (2:1) and "because of them the way of truth will be maligned;" (2:2) and that "they will exploit with false words;" (2:3). Peter explains the severity of these actions in 2:3, "their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep."
• Peter uses 4 Old Testament proofs and examples in regard to the false teachers in chapter 2. Three are specifically examples of 'the LORD knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.' (2:9) 1] "God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast into hell." (2:4) 2] God "did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah". (2:5) 3] "He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly thereafter;" (2:6) and "He rescued righteous Lot". (2:7) The other is an example of the false teachers following the way of Balaam. (2:15-16)
• In chapter 3, verses 1-2 tell us that Peter is stirring them by way of reminder to remember the words.
• Mocker will come saying "Where is the promise of His coming? ... all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation." (3:4) Peter refutes this by using the Word - "it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water." These 'teachers' didn't know their Word well enough to perceive these things or they choose not remember the Word.
• "According to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth." (3:13)
• Peter introduces the value and high regard to Paul's work in 3:15-16 - "just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters," "which the untaught and unstable distort [some things Paul has written] as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.
• Again, 3:17-18 tells them to be on guard so they will not be deceived in a manner that leads to destruction but to grow in grace and knowledge.

Check out all of 2 Peter and study it on your own to gain insight from this awesome, powerful book. Figure out the author's intent from the word, which means more than my words. I encourage you to diligently study the word. Let me know what you think and your opinions (shaped through the word).