DC Bible Study

Ephesians 3:20

Tue, 22 May 2012 06:45:29 -0700

"Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us..."

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Ephesians 3:17-19

Sat, 19 May 2012 12:46:59 -0700

"...so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith-that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

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Needs of the Times

Thu, 17 May 2012 07:19:09 -0700

Do you want to understand what the times require of you in reference to your own soul? Listen, and I will tell you. You live in times of peculiar spiritual danger. Never perhaps were there more traps and pitfalls in the way to heaven; never certainly were those traps so skillfully baited, and those pitfalls so ingeniously made. Mind what you are about. Look well to your goings. Ponder the paths of your feet. Take heed lest you come to eternal grief, and ruin your own soul. Beware of practical infidelity under the specious name of free thought. Beware of a helpless state of indecision about doctrinal truth under the plausible idea of not being party–spirited, and under the baneful influence of so–called liberality and charity. Beware of frittering away life in wishing and meaning and hoping for the day of decision, until the door is shut, and you are given over to a dead conscience, and die without hope. Awake to a sense of your danger. Arise and give diligence to make your calling and election sure, whatever else you leave uncertain. The kingdom of God is very near. Christ the almighty Savior, Christ the sinner’s Friend, Christ and eternal life, are ready for you if you will only come to Christ. Arise and cast away excuses; this very day Christ calls you. Wait not for company if you cannot have it; wait for nobody. The times, I repeat, are desperately dangerous. If only few are in the narrow way of life, resolve that by God’s help you at any rate will be among the few.

~ J.C. Ryle

Tract: Needs of the Times

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Tweet by Matt Perman

Thu, 17 May 2012 06:45:55 -0700

Matt Perman (@mattperman)

5/16/12 4:47 PM

Poor workmanship is not just poor workmanship. It is a failure to love your neighbor as yourself.

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Josh Hamilton, Relapse, and the Means of Grace

Wed, 16 May 2012 20:05:08 -0700

Josh Hamilton, Relapse, and the Means of Grace

Published on Desiring God Blog | shared via feedly mobile

In case you missed it, Texas Ranger Josh Hamilton hit four home runs in one game last week.

In case you don't know baseball, that's a big deal. Only 15 other players in Major League history have accomplished the feat.

But what's impressive about Hamilton is that it's not just one good game. It's now several outstanding seasons, and an unusual career. An unashamed evangelical, Hamilton is one of the more amazing sports stories of our time as he has recovered from drug addition and alcoholism, with God's help, to become one of the game's elite players. Not only is he a four-time All-Star, and the 2010 Most Valuable Player, but he currently leads the American League in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in.

ESPN's Pardon the Interruption interviewed Hamilton the day after his four-home-run performance, and in the course of the interview, he was asked about his recent "relapse" (he admitted in February to consuming 2 or 3 drinks at a bar in Dallas). Hamilton responded with depth and authenticity about his faith and that he's been learning to evaluate the weeks and months that lead up to temptations to relapse. In particular, he says he's learned to ask, "Did I stop praying? Did I stop getting into the Word? Did I stop fellowshipping and allowing people who care for me into my circle?"

What he's talking about are the so-called "means of grace." In fact, John Frame (who explains the means of grace as "certain channels by which God gives spiritual power to his church") categorizes the various Christian means of grace under the three precise headings Hamilton mentions: Word, prayer, and fellowship.

So how do we Christians, recovering sinners as we are, avoid relapse, grow in our faith, and continue to avail ourselves of the grace of God for everyday life? Here's Frame:

Without God’s grace, we are lost. And we need God’s grace not only at the beginning of the Christian life but throughout. So, naturally we ask, where can we go to find God’s continuing grace to us? Where do we go to get the resources for sanctification, for continuing spiritual growth? The short answer is that there are three places: the Word, fellowship, and prayer.
Except for the second, we can find those resources either privately or publicly. The second, fellowship, is by definition public. But we can receive the Word either by individual Bible study or through the public preaching and teaching of the church. And we can pray, of course, either privately or publicly. In our private use of the means of grace, we come to God as members of the church, the body of Christ. Apart from Christ, our Bible study and prayer will not help us. Indeed, we need other members of the church to help us understand the Bible and to teach us how to pray. So, in an important sense, even the private means of grace are within the church. . . .
It is not typical in Reformed theology to regard fellowship as a means of grace. But I think it clearly is. Remember all the passages . . . on one-anothering? Those make it plain that our spiritual health depends on one another — both what other believers do for us and what we do for them. The larger concept that includes all those one-anotherings is the concept of fellowship.*

This is the stuff of healthy Christianity — for superstars and unknowns alike. The ground is level at the cross, not just at conversion, but for everyday spiritual wherewithal. We're all invited to avail ourselves daily of God's means of grace in the Word, prayer, and fellowship.

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Faith & Repentance

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:14:00 -0700

"Preaching the need for faith without repentance is only preaching half of the gospel."

-Wayne Grudem

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How To Cultivate Mighty Faith

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:00:35 -0700

by MARK ALTROGGE

I once had a garden. Well, you could loosely call it that.

I’d had this romantic notion about how good it would be to get out in the fresh air and get my hands dirty, get back to the earth, and all that kind of stuff. I could picture how good it would feel to pluck bulging tomatoes and harvest basketball-sized green peppers and enter a 200 pound pumpkin in the state fair.

I was partially inspired by my next-door neighbor, Steve. Steve loved his garden. He was in it every evening puttsing around, weeding, watering, pruning, plucking. Steve simply loved being in the garden and working hard at it.

Though I had a romantic notion of a garden in my mind, there was just one problem. I didn’t want to work.

After I plowed the initial space, put down plastic and planted the original plants, I had no desire to be out there. I got no joy from plucking the suckers to make the plants stronger. I didn’t want to weed. It was even tiresome for me to water the garden in the evenings. It wasn’t like the garden was huge, I just wasn’t into it. I didn’t want to work at it.

Steve’s garden and my garden were separated by about 20 feet. Yet at the end of the summer there was a huge difference in our gardens. Steve’s was neat and laden with rich ripe vegetables. My garden was weed-infested and anemic looking.

I did have a pumpkin vine that was about 240 feet long and took up about half of my backyard, at the end of which was one lone pumpkin the size of a softball.

What was the difference between our gardens? They both got the same amount of sunshine and rain. But Steve worked away at it every day. Little by little, one day at a time. Steve applied himself faithfully to his garden, whereas I didn’t. After my initial efforts I expected the garden to produce all by itself with no effort on my part.

So what was the difference? Diligence.

It’s the same with our faith. If we want to have strong faith healthy face, we must be diligent.

“Would you like to possess more faith? Do you find believing so pleasant, that you would like to believe more? Then take heed that you are diligent in the use of every means of grace—diligent in your private communion with God—diligent in your daily watchfulness over time, temper, and tongue—diligent in your private Bible reading—diligent in your own private prayers. It is vain to expect spiritual prosperity, when we are careless about these things. Let those who will, call it excessively precise and legal to be particular about these things. I only reply, that there never was an eminent saint who neglected them.” – J.C. Ryle via Erik Kowalter
“Do not neglect the means which the Spirit has appointed for help. Pray, meditate, hear, read, do your best, and expect his blessing. Though your ploughing and sowing will not give a harvest without the sun, and rain, and the blessing of God, yet the sun and rain will not bring a crop unless you plough and plant.” – Richard Baxter

Over the years, I’ve observed that the believers who do the best in trials, who seem to have mighty faith, are those who have been diligent to cultivate faith. They’ve sown, watered and weeded. Plodded and plowed. Day by day. Little by little, consistently reading Bibles and books, praying, meeting together with the saints.

Excuse me, I have to go to the store now to buy some vegetables.

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Workloads, Busyness, and Time-Hoarding

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:18:22 -0700

by Tony Reinke | May 14, 2012

From Lydia Brownback's new book, A Woman’s Wisdom: How the Book of Proverbs Speaks to Everything (Crossway, 2012), pages 170–171:

The way we use our time is always going to be shaped by how we view our time. Do we see it as a gift or as a right?
Those who view time as a gift can echo the psalmist who said, “Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). They realize that their time is actually a God-given asset that they are to invest for God’s glory. They are cognizant of the fact that an hour gone by can never be relived.
Conversely, those who view time as a right tend to hoard their hours for selfish pleasure and often resent having to invest energy serving others — including God.
I wept with remorse some time ago when I realized what a guilty time-hoarder I can be. I’d been living through an exceptionally busy speaking season, and on top of this a book deadline loomed. Additionally, I had growing responsibilities at my place of full-time employment. I felt utterly overwhelmed. But rather than casting myself upon Christ and resting in the strength he so willingly supplies, I began to grumble. Grumbling led me to where it always leads — straight into a brick wall.
I was paralyzed by the volume of projects on my plate and found myself unable to make headway with any of it. I came home one day and cast myself onto my bed and cried out to God, “I just can’t do this anymore, Lord!”
Over the next day or so he answered my cry with the conviction that my trouble had more to do with my attitude than with my workload. It wasn’t his enabling that I’d really wanted. It was free time. In my desire to fill up more hours with relaxation and personal comforts, I had ceased to see that the work on my plate was a gift, as all kingdom work is. In writing and speaking, I’m not doing God any favors; he is blessing me with the privilege of getting to do it.

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Mother’s Day Good News

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:09:06 -0700

"Here’s some Mother’s Day good news. We can get up every morning and remind ourselves that our joy is eternal. We remind ourselves that our joy is not found in our performance. We remind ourselves that our happiness is not grounded in our children’s love for us. We remind ourselves that all of our joy comes from knowing that our Heavenly Father loves us as he loves his Son. That unchanging love is what brings us joy.”

-Jessica Thompson (co-author of Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus. She is a member of an Acts 29 church and has been homeschooling for the past two years. She is married and has three children.)

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Do Not Neglect The Throne of Grace

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:51 -0700

Let us pray more heartily in private, and throw our whole souls more into our prayers. There are live prayers and there are dead prayers; prayers that cost us nothing, and prayers which often cost us strong crying and tears. What are yours? When great professors backslide in public, and the church is surprised and shocked, the truth is that they had long ago backslidden on their knees. They had neglected the throne of grace.

~ J.C. Ryle

Tract: Needs of the Times

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Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me (lyrics)

Mon, 07 May 2012 07:11:04 -0700

1.        Rock of Ages, cleft for me,         let me hide myself in thee;         let the water and the blood,         from thy wounded side which flowed,         be of sin the double cure;         save from wrath and make me pure. 2.        Not the labors of my hands         can fulfill thy law's commands;         could my zeal no respite know,         could my tears forever flow,         all for sin could not atone;         thou must save, and thou alone. 3.        Nothing in my hand I bring,         simply to the cross I cling;         naked, come to thee for dress;         helpless, look to thee for grace;         foul, I to the fountain fly;         wash me, Savior, or I die. 4.        While I draw this fleeting breath,         when mine eyes shall close in death,         when I soar to worlds unknown,         see thee on thy judgment throne,         Rock of Ages, cleft for me,         let me hide myself in thee.

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Two Options

Sun, 06 May 2012 14:57:34 -0700

"Friends, the bible only gives you two options: You either face God's just judgement & wrath or you acknowledge that you are hopeless and need Jesus who received the judgement & wrath in your place."

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Do You Take Your Irritability Seriously?

Sat, 05 May 2012 14:22:26 -0700

By Phil Ryken (adapted from Loving the Way Jesus Loves)

Most of us tend to think of irritability as a natural response to life’s little frustrations. We also tend not to worry too much about our irritability, although some Christians may perhaps be wise enough to make it a matter for prayer. When was the last time you asked the Lord to help you respond graciously to that special person who always annoys you?

We should take our irritability much more seriously, because it is the very opposite of love. We know this because 1 Corinthians 13:5 says that love “is not irritable.” Irritability is the antithesis of charity. It is not merely a way of complaining, therefore, but actually a way of hating.

Ryken uses Mark 6:30-44 to show how Jesus dealt with a situation that irritated the disciples. Understanding the anatomy of irritability can help us battle it.

The Anatomy of Irritability

Who gets irritated: Everyone does, including people who are busy serving the Lord. When Paul told the Corinthians that love is “not irritable,” he was writing to believers in Christ who were active in their local church. If an apostle can get irritated while he is spending time with Jesus, then we can get irritated too. Whenever we start to get exasperated, we should see this problem for what it really is: a failure to love. We know this because the Love Chapter (1 Cor 13) tells us that love is not irritable.
When do we get irritated: The disciples were tempted to this sin at the end of a full day after a long trip, when they were tired and hungry. This happens to all of us. Physical weakness puts us in the way of spiritual danger. So if we find ourselves getting more irritated than usual, we may need to take the small but very practical step of getting something to eat and drink, or taking a little rest. This is also something for parents to keep in mind when their children are getting angry: taking proper care of them will help them fight against sin. Notice as well that the disciples were tempted to irritation right after they had been successful in serving the Lord. The strongest temptations can come right after we have been busy doing kingdom work, and the Devil is desperate to regain lost ground. We need to anticipate when we are likely to be physically or spiritually weak and thus in special need of prayer and the help of the Holy Spirit. When we are weak, we can be strong only by the power of God.
How does irritability treat other people: Basically, it doesn’t want anything to do with them. When the disciples were irritated about how long they had to wait for dinner, they wanted Jesus to send everyone away. This was not the only time the disciples tried to keep people away from Jesus: they did the same thing when mothers were bringing their babies for Jesus to bless (see Luke 18:15–17). When we are irritable, we want to get away from other people—our family members, our neighbors, our classmates, our coworkers—even if it means keeping other people away from Jesus, too. Our exasperation is not just a failure to love other people but also a failure to love God. This is how irritability treats other people: by putting what we want ahead of what they need and, if possible, by trying to avoid their needs altogether. The real problem is us, not them. We need to be honest about this, because often we blame the people around us for the way we respond.

What irritable people need—what we need—is more of the love of Jesus. Thankfully, we see such love in Mark’s story of the feeding of the five thousand. What we see is not only an example to follow but also a Savior to receive into our lives, a Savior who has the power to change anger into love. Everything Jesus did in this story is exactly the opposite of what his disciples did. This is because Jesus is everything that we are not. He is the living demonstration of nonirritability, which is simply another way of saying that Jesus is love.

Learn more about Loving the Way Jesus Loves by Phil Ryken.

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Heaven & Hell

Sat, 05 May 2012 14:15:01 -0700

"Heaven is not a place for those who are afraid of hell; it’s a place for those who love God. You can scare people into coming to your church, you can scare people into trying to be good, you can scare people into giving money, you can even scare them into walking down an aisle and praying a certain prayer, but you cannot scare people into loving God. You just can’t do it.” - Matt Chandler

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Explicit Gospel

Sat, 05 May 2012 14:13:31 -0700

“This avoidance of the difficult things of Scripture — of sinfulness and hell and God’s notable severity — is idolatrous and cowardly. If a man or a woman who teaches the Scriptures is afraid to explain to you the severity of God, they have betrayed you, and they love their ego more than they love you.” -Matt Chandler

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Something I'm grateful for

Sat, 05 May 2012 06:48:59 -0700

That I get to be part of a church community where it's okay to not be okay.

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Self-Forgetfulness

Fri, 04 May 2012 16:54:41 -0700

“Gospel humility means we can stop connecting every experience, every conversation with ourselves and can thus be free from self condemnation. A truly gospel humble person is not a self hating person or a self loving person, but a self forgetful person.” -Tim Keller

I don’t know about you, but man am I guilty of this.

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Is There a Better Description of the Christian Life Than This?

Thu, 03 May 2012 14:54:17 -0700

by: Justin Taylor

I am not what I ought to be.
Ah! how imperfect and deficient.

Not what I might be,
considering my privileges and opportunities.

Not what I wish to be.
God, who knows my heart, knows I wish to be like him.

I am not what I hope to be;
ere long to drop this clay tabernacle, to be like him and see him as He is.

Not what I once was,
a child of sin, and slave of the devil.

Thought not all these,

not what I ought to be,
not what I might be,
not what I wish or hope to be, and
not what once was,

I think I can truly say with the apostle,

“By the grace of God I am what I am.”

—John Newton (1725-1807), cited in Letters of John Newton, p. 400.

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Education and Imitation: Bible interpretation for Dummies like You and Me

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:26:25 -0700

I’m really excited about my friend Curt’s new book...check it out:

Promo video link https://vimeo.com/39857421
Amazon sale link http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0071PSJWS?ie=UTF8&tag=bloggintheolo-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393177&creativeASIN=B0071PSJWS&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC&ref_=tmm_kin_title_0&qid=1335534316&sr=8-1

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Weakness

Tue, 01 May 2012 07:53:57 -0700

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). Scripture assumes we each have weaknesses, and Christ is aware of and extends mercy toward every single one. He can relate to our struggles and calls us to do the same for our spouses.
-Dave Harvey
Grabbed with TextGrabber

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