Athletes have been “Tebowing” since 1977 according to this article. Why do people think Tim Tebow invented it?

Why pray or praise or thank after a touchdown anyway? I can see praying for safety (as in being safe) but that doesn’t need a public gesture.

An athlete praising God after a loss, saying that there is a much higher purpose in life (which I did see on TV once), goes a longer way with me. Not that Tim Tebow wouldn’t do this.

Losing faith in the NFL

Also see this great post:
“Tebowing” -The new planking for God?

This is the most comprehensive page of information I’ve ever seen. It’s more than most people would want to read, but you can read what may be of interest to you or come up with some materials for others you may be ministering to.

Memorizing His Word

Here are a couple of highlights that I strongly agree with.

I know of no other single practice in the Christian life more rewarding, practically speaking, than memorizing Scripture…No other single exercise pays greater spiritual dividends! Your prayer life will be strengthened. Your witnessing will be sharper and much more effective. Your attitudes and outlook will begin to change. Your mind will become alert and observant. Your confidence and assurance will be enhanced. Your faith will be solidified.

–Dr. Chuck Swindoll, Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994, p. 61) [so good they mentioned it twice]

One note of caution – Be careful when memorizing single verses that you do not “wrench” them out of their context, lest you give the passage a meaning (and an interpretation) God never intended. Always examine the context surrounding the verse you are memorizing or even better memorize larger sections of Scripture, including chapters or even entire books.

Memorizing His Word

I’ve been frustrated with quite a few things this past week but they haven’t really gotten me down. Then today the deeper depression switch got flipped on (Bipolar) and everything felt much worse, with a sinking stomach, dark feeling and thinking things like, “I’m frustrated with everything.”

I happen to be reading the little book Christians Get Depressed Too, which is better than I thought it would be. I’ve been at this a long time and have been working on my thinking for many years, although physical type stuff is always there (yes, always) too. ”I’m frustrated with everything” shows me that I’m engaging in false extremes as the book puts it. I think I call it all or nothing thinking but that might not be the best term.

So how do I work this out Biblically? Obviously I’m not frustrated with everything in the whole world but more importantly, not nearly everything in my life. I’m not frustrated with my wife or cats or a whole bunch of other things. So I’m magnifying my frustration. I can think about 2 Cor 4:17 to put it into perspective.

2 Corinthians 4:16b-18 GW
Though outwardly we are wearing out, inwardly we are renewed day by day. 17 Our suffering is light and temporary and is producing for us an eternal glory that is greater than anything we can imagine. 18 We don’t look for things that can be seen but for things that can’t be seen. Things that can be seen are only temporary. But things that can’t be seen last forever.

(By the way, this is one of the many great things about Scripture memory.)

The frustration won’t last forever, it’s not that bad in these cases and I need to see things from a godly spiritual perspective and take refuge in Him. I need to think more about the things that will last forever and less about the temporal (Col 3:1-3). Easier said than done.

For now, the sinking, dark feeling is still there but the switch will get flipped again and the depression will be more moderate as it usually is. (For me it’s chronic.) The improvement in thinking will help the mental aspect of it hopefully and help me to persevere (James 1:2-4) for when the bigger things come along, which they will.

Comments welcome.

Some people seem very concerned that there seem (seems?) to be so few female Bibliobloggers. I don’t know why this is and it’s not a big issue for me. It is what it is. But I thought I would mention a couple that I found that are written by femalers that look to be very interesting and maybe it would make your day; or, here are two more great blogs you may consider taking a look at. I’m not mentioning them just because they’re written by women. I would like a prize of some sort. *Reformed alert*

• Housewife Theologian
• You Will Comfort Me Again

Until today I hadn’t seen this book. It looks very good. The description at Amazon makes me want to read it.
To Those Who Suffer: Understanding God’s Purpose and Pathway Through Pain by Sean Nolan

There is a sample chapter and interview with the author at Living For God (Warning: sound will play on that page).

How Does God Speak to Me Today?

What Is God Sovereign Over?

Charles Spurgeon Movie
HT: Michael Acidri via Jim West via Facebook (Kevin Bacon should be only a couple more steps away)

Super cool picture of a wasp. One possibly bad word in the description. The picture isn’t very gross from my point of view.

What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we set for ourselves in life? To know God. What is ‘eternal life’ that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God. ‘This is eternal life; that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent’ (John 17:3). What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, more delight and contentment than anything else? Knowledge of God. ‘Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: 24 But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me’ (Jer. 9:23f.).

In these few sentences we have said a great deal. Our point is one to which every Christian heart will warm, though the person whose religion is merely formal will not be moved by it. (And by this very fact his unregenerate state may be known.)

…

For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?

–J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Chapter 3–page numbers vary in different editions)

This certainly is a great deal! And yet it’s so simple. We find God in the Bible and through His works of the Holy Spirit, which always agree with the Bible. No amount of programs or fancy explanations can do the work of the Cross and the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor. 1:17-18) And nothing outside of the Bible will help us know God. Those who have no interest in the Bible really have no interest in God, which right now grieves me more than you can know.

After a lifetime of studying the Bible, it is simple realism, not mock humility, to acknowledge that we are still paddling in the shallows of revealed truth.

–Edward Donnelly, Biblical Teaching on the Doctrines of Heaven and Hell

HT: Challies.com

Quite a statement. And strangely enough, it comes from Joni Eareckson Tada (MP3 and transcript), who is still a quadriplegic, and isn’t talking about her future. What is she talking about?

How about Jesus in Matthew 13:15: “For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes–so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.’”

Joni Eareckson Tada is talking about heart and soul. About receiving God’s joy, happiness and contentment.

Jesus is talking about spiritual healing–giving us eternal life, which is knowing God and Jesus Christ (John 17:3), and being at peace with God by His forgiveness through believing in His death and resurrection, even though we’re sinners and deserve His wrath, much less being in His presence.

Certainly God heals physically all the time. When on earth Jesus healed physically nearly everywhere He went. These were called signs and wonders to point us to His authority to forgive our sins and heal us spiritually, forever.

Many have the priorities backwards. How much more important it is for Joni Eareckson Tada to be healed spiritually, as great as it would be for her to be healed physically, whether miraculously from God or miraculously through medical science. Hopefully it will happen.

Because of living with mental health difficulties, chronic fatigue and chronic pain, I can especially understand how my mind and body are “wasting away” at an accelerated rate but I’m “being renewed day by day”, as we all are. (2 Corinthians 4:16 TNIV)

I pray for physical and ‘mental’ healing, but spend so much more time praying for all of the ways I can be healed spiritually. That’s something that could be spent all day, every day on. This is something God is doing at, I know, a much more accelerated rate than if I didn’t suffer from these things. I’m not yet ready to call it a gift, as I’ve read some older and mature suffering Christians do, but I can call it an opportunity. I pray that someday I will be mature enough and that God’s joy will outweigh the suffering so much that I can call it a gift. When it’s at its worst, it’s difficult to think of it positively at all, although I thank God for what He’ll do through it (Romans 8:28-29; James 1:2-8).

Those who concentrate on and promise physical healing, possibly thwarting God’s will, especially if you give them money, should be mocked, discredited and excommunicated. They are deluded and have no business preaching and teaching because they don’t know the first things about what Jesus is about. They should be sent to an island with only the Bible, for their own good, and not let out. It’s what people desperately want, understandably, but these heretics don’t show them the value of spiritual healing. And people in their denominations or circles don’t speak out against them enough. Giving “seed money” to be healed or having to speak in tongues in order to be saved isn’t seen as a bad thing in some of these circles either.

Real life is spiritual. Let’s keep our eyes on it and want it more than anything.

Colossians 3:1-3 ESV
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  2  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  3  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

1 Timothy 6:17-19 ISV
Tell those who are rich in this age not to be arrogant and not to place their confidence in anything as uncertain as riches. Instead, let them place their confidence in God, who lavishly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good actions, to be generous, and to share. 19 By doing this they store up a treasure for themselves that is a good foundation for the future, so that they can keep their hold on the life that is real.

God opens our eyes to see the wonderful things in His teachings. The Psalmist has worked to learn and obey God’s law’s. (Memorization is a given.) It’s God that does the teaching. The Psalmist wants to keep learning. God will keep teaching. A joyful lifelong cycle.

I love this Psalm more every time I read it.

Psalm 119:18 GW
Uncover my eyes
so that I may see the miraculous things in your teachings.

Psalm 119:11-13 NET
In my heart I store up your words,
so I might not sin against you.
12 You deserve praise, O LORD!
Teach me your statutes!
13 With my lips I proclaim
all the regulations you have revealed.

Psalm 119:33 GW
Teach me, O LORD, how to live by your laws,
and I will obey them to the end.

Psalm 119:60 GW
Without any hesitation
I hurry to obey your commandments.

Psalm 119:64 GW
Your mercy, O LORD, fills the earth.
Teach me your laws.

Psalm 119:111 GW
Your written instructions are mine forever.
They are the joy of my heart.

Augustine had something to say about this but so did Spurgeon. This was found in If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil by Randy Alcorn.

Spurgeon warned against theologies that attempt to reconcile, by means of shortsighted human logic, every apparent biblical inconsistency:

Men who are morbidly anxious to possess a self-consistent creed, a creed which will put together and form a square like a Chinese puzzle, are very apt to narrow their souls. Those who will only believe what they can reconcile will necessarily disbelieve much of divine revelation. Those who receive by faith anything which they find in the Bible will receive two things, twenty things, ay, or twenty thousand things, though they cannot construct a theory which harmonizes them all.

(“Faith,” An All-Round Ministry, 1872)

The system of truth is not one straight line, but two. No man will ever get a right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once.

The first quote can be found in an interesting article on Randy Alcorn’s Ministry site. He writes about Calvinism and election but isn’t really a Calvinist so it’s a bit strange from my point of view:
Spurgeon’s Theology: Embracing Biblical Paradox

The second quote can be found here:
If God Is Good: 99 Quotes and Illustrations

I suppose I can stop posting quotes from that book now. I need to read it again someday. Interestingly, right now the Kindle edition costs more than the paper version. But the prices change often. There is an abridged version of the book too.

Some people say, “God will never reveal his plan for you if you don’t seek out to him for guidance” as Greg Jennings* did. Well if that’s true, I wish God would have told me that I would deal with mental illness, chronic fatigue and chronic back pain so I could be ready for it. But God doesn’t work that way. I can’t find any place in the Bible where God reveals his plans for your life. Certainly he has plans and God’s will comes about no matter what.

Another thing is, when God does supposedly reveals plans, it never seems to be things we would consider negative. But these are the things that God often uses to bring us much closer to him, if we are willing to submit to God’s will.

Just as if God were to answer all of our prayers in the affirmative, can you imagine the chaos if God revealed to us his plans for us? This would have unimaginable ramifications. We need to live by faith and not by sight.

From a human logical point of view, if God revealed to us that we would be successful, we might not work as hard. If he revealed that we would become very ill, we may despair and give up. As far as the small things, learn what God’s will is as well as you can as life goes on, want desperately to please Him, ask for knowledge and wisdom, and if you truly delight in the Lord (Psalm 37:4), do whatever you want.

*I love Greg Jennings and the Packers. He is obviously a brother in the Lord and could very well be more mature (more than I was at his age for sure), more faithful and more knowledgeable that me. I disagree that God will reveal to us specific extra-Biblical material, with some minor exceptions. Jennings does come from a very different denominational background that me. “Be Great” is maybe a subject for another post. I hope he can play at his highest level until he’s at least 40 and keep publicly speaking about God as he matures.

2 Corinthians 5:7 GW
Indeed, our lives are guided by faith, not by sight.

We cannot ignore the Bible and at the same time honor Jesus Christ.

–Warren Wiersbe, Let’s Go!: The Epistle to the Hebrews for Twenty-First Century Christians

From the blog post Christ Speaks to Us – Are We Gonna Listen? By Douglas K. Adu-Boahen at Wired for Truth
Thanks Douglas

People understandably want to hear from God. Some mystics will be quiet before God and expect to hear Him speak. But as many people have said, if you want to hear from God, open up your Bible and read it! Sometimes God will give you a revelation–something you haven’t noticed before. Other times you’ll read what you’ve read before and not seem to get anything new from it. But it’s still the living God of the universe, who created everything, including you (Psalm 139:13-16) that you are “hearing” by reading. If you expect God to make decisions for you, especially through Scripture, you may be disappointed. (See God’s Will – Do Whatever You Want) We need to honor Scripture and not expect it to be what it isn’t. The more we read it and know what God’s will is, the easier it will be for us to make decisions, though there will always be the especially difficult ones. If we expect to just go to it when we need it as a Magic 8-Ball, we are dishonoring it and God will not honor that.

A former pastor said, “Before my head hits the pillow, my nose is in the book.” (Not necessarily at night, but to make sure everyday) I’ve lived by that for 2-3 years now. I wish I would have consistently for the last 25.

For those unfamiliar, a testimony in most evangelical Christian lingo is how you became a Christian. Most people say, “I shared my testimony.” The word share is an  over-used catch-all for explain, say, proclaim (as in proclaiming the gospel), talk, speak, preach and many other words which involve speech. I’m writing this because my ‘testimony’ is so short that I thought I’d write about some other things.

My testimony:

I read the book of John in the Bible and within that time the Holy Spirit came to me and caused me to believe.

That’s about it. I’m so thankful that God used the Bible in his own timing and I can’t claim anything. I didn’t even buy or ask for a Bible. Someone gave it to me and suggested I read the book of John and ask God to speak to me. What a wonderful thing God did and is still doing.

At the time, the sinner’s prayer (asking Jesus into your heart, which I still don’t understand or find in the Bible, accepting Jesus as your personal savior, etc.) was, and probably is so in vogue that I prayed it later on just to make sure I ‘did it right’. I now know those were brought about in large part because of Charles Finney. Because of God working in us even though we don’t deserve it, belief in Jesus dying and rising again and being the way to God is how we become Christians, not going to church or being a good person (which none of us really are–not enough anyway) or doing good things. (John 5:24, Ephesians 2:8-9)

I’m also practicing explaining things without using Christian lingo. I like to say things in my own words anyway.

So that’s my boring but wonderful testimony. I love how God worked that out so that I can’t brag about anything and he only used Scripture. If you aren’t a Christian and would like to try it, please do. If you need any help with a Bible, how to go about it, or especially need help after you read it, let me and my blogging friends know.

What’s said here is why I love to read and is one of my favorite quotes.

It has been said that ‘the proper study of mankind is man.’ I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father.

There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, ‘Behold I am wise.’ But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumbline cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt; and with solemn exclamation, ‘I am but of yesterday, and know nothing.’ No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God…

But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe…. The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.

And, while humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory. Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore.

Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. It is to that subject that I invite you this morning…

Excerpted from “The Immutability of God,” A sermon by a 20 year old Charles H. Spurgeon at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark. J. I. Packer quotes from this message in the beginning of Knowing God.

Quote pasted, with a couple of original italics added (from my 1973 edition), from Eternal Perspective Ministries

John 17:3 HCSB
This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent–Jesus Christ.

Many of you already know about this page. There have been a few books added and if you’re confused about which are PDFs, I thought I’d help.

Resources by D.A. Carson

If you scroll down quite a ways and find Books, it’s hard to tell which are PDFs because they’re not labeled. You need to put your cursor over them and look at your status bar or wherever the URL is shown in your browser, if at all, to see if it says …pdf at the end.

If you go to Andy Naselli’s page, you’ll see seven books he lists. Those are the ones in PDF format. So just find whichever one you want. Like he mentions, you can also use a download plugin for Firefox or Chrome or whatever to download all files in a certain format, but then you’ll download all the articles too unless it let’s you download from a selection. (I don’t use one.)

There are also many excellent articles, all in PDF format and some parts of books, like the one on the Sermon on the Mount. I’m reading that one for sure.

If you have an ereader, you can then use Calibre to convert them to ePub or Kindle or whatever format. I use my ancient $39 Nokia device I got on eBay which has a convenient 4″ screen and a great eBook reader.

If you need short stuff to read in a waiting room, this has about anything you’d want because of his prolificness.

The general site also has many book excerpts, although it doesn’t say they’re excerpts. Certainly enough to know if you want to buy them or not. If you click on the book title as opposed to just the PDF button, it will tell you what the PDF contains. It’s not always chapter 1.

I’m very thankful for this resource and I hope this helps anyone who may have been confused. If there’s anything I missed or got wrong, let me know. I figured this stuff out myself.

I love this quote. Maybe this is why I’ve always liked crazy people. (Not just institutionalized, but those who are a little ‘off’.) There’s more potential. Plus they’re usually interesting.

An individual, quite completely free from tension, anxiety, and conflict may be only a well-adjusted sinner who is dangerously maladjusted to God; and it is infinitely better to be a neurotic saint than a healthy-minded sinner. . . . Healthy-mindedness may be a spiritual hazard that keeps an individual from turning to God precisely because he has no acute sense of God. . . . Tension, conflict, and anxiety, even to the point of mental illness, may be a cross voluntarily carried in God’s service.

–Vernon Grounds, “Called to Be Saints—Not Well-Adjusted Sinners”, Christianity Today (January 17, 1986), 28; as found in Is God a Moral Monster? pg. 190

How to Pray for the Soul
By John Piper

I like this article and took out a Scriptural synopsis for myself. I thought I might as well post it here.

Psalm 119:36 teaches us to pray, “Incline my heart to Your testimonies and not to gain.”

Psalm 119:18 teaches us to pray, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law.”

Ephesians 1:18 teaches us to pray “That the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.”

Psalm 86:11 teaches us to pray, “O Lord, I will walk in Your truth; unite my heart to fear Your name.”

Psalm 90:14 teaches us to pray, “O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.”

Ephesians 3:16 teaches us to pray, “That God would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.”

Colossians 1:10 teaches us to pray, “That [we] will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord… bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

All this I pray “in Jesus’ name,” because God gives these things to my soul only because Jesus died for me and removed the wrath of God so that the Father might “freely give me all things” (Romans 8:32).

IOUS

• Inclination to his Word and not to money or fame or power (Psalm 119:36)
• Open our eyes to see wonderful things when we read his Word (Psalm 119:18)
• United [heart{s}] in the fear of God rather than fragmented over a dozen concerns (Psalm 86:11)
• Satisfied in his steadfast love (Psalm 90:14)

If you haven’t see this plugin/web site feature: Try highlighting any text, like this:
Is God a Moral Monster?
or anything like, propitiation, or D.A. Carson or anything else in any post that you’re interested in. Hover over ‘Learn More’ when it comes up and you can find it at whatever site it thinks would be best (many times Wikipedia unfortunately), search results from this site, and at the top you can also find videos and images. This will make it a lot faster to look up books than going to Amazon and searching for them there. Opt out at the very bottom if you don’t like it.

This is powered by Apture and can be installed as a plugin in your browser or included in your web site by adding a bit of code just above the body tag. You have to be really smart and have your own site to do that though.

I’ve been reading Is God a Moral Monster? and enjoying it a lot. There are a lot of things to praise God for that are explained in that book.

The name of the Lord should be held in great reverence and should never be mentioned without praise and thanksgiving, which are a certain kind of worship and divine service.

–Marthin Luther, First Lectures on Galatians

Galatians 1:5 NLT
All glory to God forever and ever! Amen.

Matthew 6:9 NLT
Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.