Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Elijah Prays for Rain- Terry Virgo

I recently found out about this sermon on prayer from Terry Virgo, a pastor in the UK. Katie and I listened to it yesterday while driving through Nebraska and were immensely blessed, challenged and convicted by it. There are certain sermons or books that help reorient you to the way things actually are instead of the upside down ways that we normally think because of our sinful misperception. This is one of those sermons! After listening to it yesterday, my prayerlessness made absolutely no sense and regular, fervent, long prayer made the most sense in the world. I pray that Jesus will use it in the same way in your lives.


Elijah Prays For Rain from Adrian Warnock on Vimeo.

ht: @JohnPiper

Friday, August 14, 2009

Christian Arrogance

An awesome video about the dangers and antidotes to Christian arrogance from Tim Gaydos, the Pastor at Mars Hill Church's downtown Seattle campus:

ht: @theResurgence

Moving Back to California!

In 3 days, my wife and I will pack up our Nissan Sentra and hit the road back to California! Our two years in Wheaton have been hard, wonderful, stretching, enlightening, spiritual beneficial and spiritually growing all at the same time. Katie and I have always told our families that we're so glad that the Lord brought us out here for school and for the amazing friendships that He has formed for us in our time out here. We're sad that this time is over but are also super excited about what Jesus is going to do both in an through us in this next stage of life and ministry.

The plan is to arrive back in LA on August 26th where I will continue to be a freelance editor for Crossway Publishers and take on a part-time Pastoral role at Copperhill Community Church. I can't wait to serve under and alongside the leadership of this great church as they seek to further God's mission to glorify His name through His son in the Santa Clarita Valley and the Greater LA Area!



Wednesday, August 12, 2009

L.A. Times: Must science declare a holy war on religion?

A very interesting article from yesterday's L.A. Times. I disagree with many of the author's presuppositions regarding the creation/evolution debate. However, the title of the article is what caught my interest. The antagonism that the New Atheism has shown towards religion in general is described as a "holy war". This just goes to show that even the supposedly neutral and objective Atheism is, in reality, just another belief structure which people are passionate to propagate for the 'good of their neighbor' or protect when their cherished beliefs are attacked from outside. Atheism is just as much a religion as anything that its adherents would like to demolish with their arguments.

Must science declare a holy war on religion? - Los Angeles Times

ht: @TGCN

Doctrine of Revelation

Here's my most recent addition to my own doctrinal statement, a discussion of God's revelation:


God’s perfection and infinity in all His attributes means that He is a Being totally Other from His creation. Therefore, knowledge of God by the creature is utterly impossible unless God first takes the initiative to reveal Himself to His creation. God’s primary revelation of Himself comes in the Person of His Son, Jesus, who is the Word of God incarnated into Human flesh. As the perfect Image and Reflection of the glories of the Father, it is the Son who accurately makes God known to human beings. Corresponding to the Son, who is the living Word of God, is the Bible which is the written Word of God. The 66 books which make up the Old and New Testaments were inspired by the Holy Spirit through the individual human authors so that we might come to know and understand the person of the Father through the Son to whom the Scriptures bear witness. Because God is Truth itself, the Scriptures are completely authoritative for life and faith and are without error in everything that is communicated within them.

When man fell into sin and were cursed as a result, the effects of the fall spread to every area of his being. Thus, certainty in knowledge and interpretation is an impossible goal apart from the intervention of God by His Spirit. Thus, the goal of the Church is to interpret the Scriptures faithfully in their historical/theological context in total dependence upon the Spirit in every step of the process.



Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Doctrine of God

This week is my last week in the PMT (Pastoral Ministry Training) Apprenticeship program at my church. One of our final projects is to write a personal doctrinal statement so we can learn to clearly articulate the range of our theology. I'm excited about this project because I'm writing what I hope will amount to a blend of Systematic and Biblical Theology. I'll begin with the doctrine of God and Revelation and then move through Redemptive History from Creation to Fall to Redemption to New Creation. Under each of these headings will fall most of the things that are discussed in the traditional categories of Systematic Theology (Theology Proper, Anthropology, Hamartiology, Soteriology, Ecclesiology and Eschatology). However, rather than abstracted truth, these doctrines will be discussed as they play out in the drama of God's work to rescue the Creation and vindicate His glory in the New Creation. I plan to post my work this week as I progress. So, for your reading pleasure, here's what I have so far in regards to the doctrine of God.

The One God has eternally existed in the three equally-Divine Persons that constitute the One God in Trinity; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The foundation of the life of the God-head is the mutual enjoyment and glorification that each Person of the Trinity has in the other two Persons such that God’s primary passion is for the furtherance of the enjoyment of His own glory. God is completely and totally self-sufficient since He has life in Himself a

nd is absolutely perfect in both love and holiness. All God’s perfections are infinite and so He can be described as infinite in power, knowledge and presence.

The Father is the beginning of the Trinity from whom is eternally generated the Son. It is to the Father that the Son and Holy Spirit are functionally subordinate and as such He is the Head of the Life of the Trinity.

The Son is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and, as such, is fully Divine. The Son is the perfect image and representation of the Father and, as a result, the Father and Son delight in the mutual beauty of their perfections with the full energy afforded by omnipotence. His economic role is to take the glorious perfections of God and make them visible or knowable to the creation. Thus, it is only through the Son that we have access to knowledge of the Father.

The Holy Spirit is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and Son and is fully Divine as are the other two Persons. He proceeds from both the Father and the Son and is Himself the fully energy of the delight with which the Father and Son enjoy the perfection of the Other. It is the economic role of the Holy Spirit to lead creatures to see and savor the beauty of the Son and, as a result, come to know the Father.

While each Person of the Trinity is distinct in His Personhood, there is no distinction as to Divinity and each fully shares the attributes of the Others.