More than I ask or imagine. . .

How Can I Change the World? It begins in the Sanctuary of the Lord.

I have always been a big fan of the idea that you live how your worship.  I firmly believe that worship services train us as God's people to live for him.  Below is an article by Mark Horne on How to Change the World?  Hope you enjoy it.

10 things a church can do to change the world

by Mark Horne

The principle to keep in mind is that we have to change ourselves first.

1. Participate in the Lord’s Supper Every Sunday in Worship
The Kingdom is again and again a feast. The Church is the beachhead of the Kingdom. Does Jesus ever tell a parable comparing the Kingdom to a lecture hall? Does he ever compare the Kingdom to a music concert? Then lets not stop up the Kingdom at the source. Lets get it right. Lets eat and drink.

2. Drink Wine in Church
Duh. How else would you worship a glutton and a drunkard? The Gospel is New Wine that bursts wineskins–not grape juice that sits there inert. You want to know if God can forgive a sinner like you. Get it in a cup and drink it down and you will know. That changes everything.

3. Sing the Psalms
By sing, I mean chant. Don’t remake the Psalms to fit a rhyme scheme. Sing the words that are there according to an accurate translation. What would happen if we did this? For one thing a ton of bad theology would be exorcised.

Arise, O Yahweh
O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
But you do see,
for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
Yahweh is king forever and ever; the nations perish from his land.

4. Pray the Psalms
Arguably this is redundant with the point above. But I want to stress that God wants us to pray things like:

judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God!

There are people and whole churches who claim to be Bible-believing who think this is sinful to pray. You can’t change the world for God if you think He is really a Pharisee unless he has the help of your styleguide by which to edit his prayers.

5. Tell people in church that God has forgiven them.

Don’t preach that God forgives some people somewhere some time. Tell the professing Christians in front of you, and their children, when they confess their sins together, that God has wiped each one of their slates clean. The good news that is going to change the world is not that God forgives someone somewhere at some time.

(Yes, God forgives them at other times, including when they pray apart. But these things are not opposed. Rather, one helps the the other. Those who are trained to believe that God hears and forgives them will be encouraged to trust God for the same at other times and places.)

6. Believe the whole Bible and teach it like God really meant it.

Because saying, “You’re getting too much of your theology from the parables” mostly means, “Jesus was a stupid peasant who told misleading stories that we have to carefully strip down to a single point that we found in Paul’s Epistles”–or rather, “that we found in Westminster Confession” (or, “… the Councils of Trent” or whatever). I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that God isn’t blessing churches who don’t like the Bible.

7. Preach Jesus as King but Avoid Petty Politics

Jesus is Lord and he wants a visible unified entrance to the Kingdom (Church) as a witness to that fact. We have to obey what Jesus says, but we also have to recognize how divisions and arguments actually can undermine the theocratic Faith. So find some highly obvious points in the public square to harp on (i.e. abortion), but try not to get bogged down in minutia (don’t preach Christian libertarianism, socialism, or whatever from the pulpit).

8. Let the Great Commission be your commission

If you think you know what this means, go read it, and ask yourself what this says about being “born again,” “faith,” or “evangelism” compared to what it says about obedience, theocracy, baptism, and ongoing teaching/training of everyone.

9. Worship like the Bible matters

Does it not strike anyone as odd that, if you want to attend a worship service that took you systematically through Scripture, you would be better off in an Episcopal, formal Lutheran, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox service rather than a Baptists, conservaitve Presbyterian, or “Bible Church” assembly? Is God supposed to speak to us in the Church or not? If not, how are we supposed to see anything change, let alone the world?

10. Live Corporately like Matthew 18 is in the Bible

I mention the whole chapter on purpose, by the way, because it is obviously focused on humility and forgiveness, and in that context gives directions for accountability and purifying the Church. I think that is important because, while not one church in a hundred includes Matthew 18.15-19 in their real canon, some that do can be so zealous (I’m using a euphemism) about it as to reinforce the temptation to neglect it. But it is in the Bible and it is an operating instruction from the Lord Jesus. So obey Him.

The Fellowship of Presbyterians: Why a New Reformed Body? #MN2011 @fellowshippres

Here is a just posted video from the Conference from Minnesota that I attended last month.

 

 

John Crosby - "Why a New Reformed Body?" from Fellowship of Presbyterians on Vimeo.

Ron Paul Exclusively on the Kindle.

As many of you know, I am a fan of Ron Paul's writings.  And more of you know my love of the Kindle.  Well, now these two things come together now.  Amazon just announced that 4 of Ron Paul's books will be offered exclusively in the Kindle store.  Below is the press release from Amazon. 

One of the first books I read on my Kindle was End the Fed, and I read Revolution last summer in print. These other books are in some book stores but they are expense in print.  I find Ron Paul refreshing in our current political climate.  He is not partisan, but he teaches people through his interviews and writings about our Consitition and how Washington is supposed to work.   I look forward to reading some more of his work espeically on Abortion and Foreign Policy in the 4 added books.

Bestselling Author and Congressman Ron Paul's Books Now Available Exclusively in the Kindle Store

RosettaBooks makes electronic versions of four books by Ron Paul available exclusively in the Kindle Store for download in under 60 seconds SEATTLE, Jun 07, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) --Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that RosettaBooks has released four books by bestselling author and Congressman Ron Paul exclusively in the Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore). The books--"A Foreign Policy of Freedom," "Pillars of Prosperity," "The Case for Gold" and "Abortion and Liberty"--are available as e-books for the first time, and they will be exclusive to the Kindle Store for one year. Customers can download these books from the Kindle Store for $9.99, and can read them on their Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, PC, Mac, iPad and soon, Android phones. "We're happy to be able to offer our customers these four books by Ron Paul exclusively in the Kindle Store," said Melissa Kirmayer, Director, Kindle Content. "All four books are available for $9.99 and are ready for customers to download and start reading in under 60 seconds." Ron Paul, an 11-term congressman from Texas, has been described as a leading advocate of freedom in the U.S. capital. He has devoted his political career to the defense of individual liberty, sound money and a non-interventionist foreign policy. Judge Andrew Napolitano calls him "the Thomas Jefferson of our day." After serving as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s, Dr. Paul moved to Texas to begin a civilian medical practice, delivering more than 4,000 babies in his career as an obstetrician. He served in Congress from 1976 to 1984 and again from 1996 to the present. He and Carol Paul, his wife of 51 years, have five children, 18 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Ron Paul, the New York Post once wrote, is a politician who "cannot be bought by special interests." A congressional colleague once said: "There are few people in public life who, through thick and thin, rain or shine, stick to their principles. Ron Paul is one of those few." "Ron Paul is one of the most widely admired authors in politics," said Arthur Klebanoff, CEO of RosettaBooks. "RosettaBooks is proud to publish the first e-book editions of four of his most important books, available exclusively in the Kindle Store."

Who is Marx and the Marxist?

Just for the record, we need to understand the real thing before we go off and start using the term "Marxist".    Below is an article by Whittaker Chambers, a former Marxist on what one is from Time Magazine.  Hopefully this will be helpful to all the false accusations of Communism. 

"When Clio, the Muse of History, gets her diary up to date, whom will she write down as the Man of the 20th Century? Barring the unlikely appearance, before 2000, of an extraordinarily effective saint or major prophet, the Man of the Century will be a German intellectual, devoted to children, caviar and Aeschylus.

He does not look the part. His scholarly forehead, his small, sparkling eyes, his massive and majestic beard set him apart from other 20th Century heroes. The black-rimmed eyeglass, which he carries on a thin ribbon around his neck, is a gentle anachronism. Above all, his dates seem wrong. For it was at the height of the Victorian era, when the atom appeared almost as indestructible as Britain's dominion of the waves, that Karl Heinrich Marx died."

Click Link above to find out more......

Chuck Baldwin on Romans 13: Christians and the Civil Government

 

Before I head off for 2 weeks of vacation, I wanted to post on Chuck Baldwin.  I thought about voting for him for President but he was not on the Ballot up here in Pennsylvania.  Baldwin was an outspoken critic of George W. Bush from the conservative side.  In the article below, he defends blind obedience to the Civil Magistrate that many Christians do with a view to Romans 13.  Granted, I, as a WCF guy, would probably do the whole Lex Rex thing and say if the government is not following God's law then there is cause for civil disobedience.   Let me know what you think about his stances.

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It seems that every time someone such as myself attempts to encourage our Christian brothers and sisters to resist an unconstitutional or otherwise reprehensible government policy, we hear the retort, "What about Romans Chapter 13? We Christians must submit to government. Any government. Read your Bible, and leave me alone." Or words to that effect.

No doubt, some who use this argument are sincere. They are only repeating what they have heard their pastor and other religious leaders say. On the other hand, let's be honest enough to admit that some who use this argument are just plain lazy, apathetic, and indifferent. And Romans 13 is their escape from responsibility. I suspect this is the much larger group, by the way.

Do we really believe the Declaration of Independence?

Image via Wikipedia

Well, July 4th is this weekend and I wonder if we really believe the Declation of Independence.

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Could this even be done in today's world? 

A great quote from GK Chesterton about Patriotism and Country: Can (the patriot) hate it enough to change it and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?

Is Right versus Left really accurate?

Image by arellis49 via Flickr

Here is a video (10 min) that I believe is helpful in discussing political spectrum.  Nazis were not conservative, they were a movement of governmental power.  They were literally the National Socialist German Workers Party.  Any organization with that name today would tell us that it is a movement of the so-called Left side.  Here is a video to clear up this issues that define the real political spectrum.  The reality is that there are two choices, a Republic or an Oligarchy.  I must recommend the educational and historical work Liberal Fascism by Jonas Goldberg that traces the reality of these issues. He traces the history of the progressive movement in the 20th century. Excellent Excellent work.