Sermon on the Mount: Anger
Anger retained is not a harmless, excusable emotion - it wreaks havoc and thus judgment. Jesus is commanding the discontinuing of anger and the commencement of some creative alternative. 'Anger happens.' Everything depends on what one does with this 'happening'... Jesus' command will call us almost daily to conversion, for we meet several difficult people and bad situations almost every day. Every angry incident is a fresh call to conversion.
Doing The Right Thing Just Because It's The Right Thing
On Sunday, I quoted the magisterial Reformer Martin Luther, who observed: “To fulfill the law . . . is to do its works with pleasure and love . . . [which are] put into the heart by the Holy Ghost.” All this talk about pleasure and love rubs some people the wrong way – for good reason. Anyone who has walked with God for any length of time knows that obedience doesn’t always feel like pleasure. Sometimes it just feels like… well, obedience.
Why The Sermon on the Mount is Not the Essence of Christianity
Christ's exalted ethical teaching in [the Sermon on the Mount] is not wholly unique. One can find equivalents or near-equivalents for nearly everything here in some of the rabbis, and in Socrates, Solomon, Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tzu. These profound men intuited from afar something of the high goal we are called to...
Sermon on the Mount: Two Must-Have Books
We're embarking on a 10-week study of the Sermon on the Mount this fall at Coram Deo. I'm sure this list will grow, but for now, here are two must-have books for anyone looking to mine the rich insights of this famous discourse.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones first published his Studies in the Sermon on the Mount in 1959. Like GK Chesterton, CS Lewis, and Francis Schaeffer, his insights have a timelessness to them that makes them as prescient and provocative today as they were then.
CS Lewis: Why A Community Needs a Mission
Thanks to the 400 or so people who joined us for the Coram Deo Missional Community Bootcamp last weekend - including many who traveled from places as far away as Denver and Dayton. And thanks to Dundee Presbyterian Church for the use of their beautiful and historic building.One of the points we made at the Bootcamp was that community won't necessarily lead to mission, but mission will always lead to community. A community can't just be about "community;" it needs a mission to sustain it.
Communion is for Baptized, Repentant Christians
Last Sunday, I said that the sacrament of communion is for “baptized, repentant Christians.” Every time I say this, I get a lot of questions.To be clear, there is no Bible verse that says, “Thou shalt not take communion until thou art baptized.” (If there were, I wouldn’t be writing this essay). Rather, the fact that communion is for baptized, repentant Christians is a theological deduction – a conclusion from what Scripture does say. I explained the deduction briefly on Sunday; let me do so more fully here.
Stewardship: How Should I Think About Giving?
One of my brothers in the Acts 29 Network, Matt Kruse of Seven Mile Road near Boston, recently wrote this reflection on money and stewardship. He gave me permission to post it here to help in the process of re-forming our hearts when it comes to money. One of God’s graces to me over the years He has been His prying open of my fingers that tend to lock themselves tight around my money. (It’s still a work in progress.) Below are some simple thoughts that have shaped how I think through my giving to the work of the gospel.
Choosing Childlessness?
As my husband and I read God's Word together as a couple, we learned that God desires for us to worship Him by fighting the self-serving nature of our flesh and choosing to live sacrificially. We knew that sleepless nights, restricted schedules, and child-friendly financial choices would be difficult sacrifices to make, but the Bible also made it clear to us that choices rooted in selfishness, fear, or preservation of personal comfort do not lead to the life God calls us to. We began to see the bigger picture and understood that the real question of family planning is not "Is choosing childlessness biblical?" but "Is living for myself biblical?"
What is a "Bad Mood?"
What we call “moods” are simply feeling qualities that pervade our selves and everything around us. They are, of course, extremely hard to do anything about precisely because one cannot stand outside of them... Those feelings can themselves be transformed by discipleship to Christ and the power of the gospel and the Spirit, through which the corresponding ideas and images are changed to positive ones.
The Peril of "Deciding by How We Feel"
Here lies the secret to understanding contemporary Western life and its peculiar proneness to gross immoralities and addictions. People are overwhelmed with decisions and can only make those decisions on the basis of feelings... in their confusion they quite commonly take feelings to be reasons. And they will in general lack any significant degree of self-control. This will turn their life into a mere drift through the days and years, which addictive behavior promises to allow them to endure.