From John Piper

How to Fast

Pick a day of the week or a day of the month and plan to fast in 2009. Plan which meal or meals to skip. Skip them entirely, or do it with only juice or only water. There are not rules. There is only spiritual hunger being spoken and stoked with physical hunger.

Take some of the time you would have spent eating and read some scripture and take time to tell God why you are doing this and what you long for.

Why Fast?

Here are six biblical aims for fasting.

1. For Jesus to come back – Matthew 9:14-15
2. For help in a new venture in ministry – Matthew 4:1-2 & Acts 13:3
3. To avert some danger or threat – Ezra 8:21 & 2 Samuel 12:16
4. To express sorrow and loss – 2 Samuel 1:12 & 1 Chronicles 10:12
5. To express repentance and grief for sin – Joel 2:12-13
6. Not for the praise of men – Matthew 6:16-18

God’s been calling me to make 2009 the Year of Prayer and Fasting. Not really sure why, but they are definitely areas where I feel I am not as committed to God as I should be.

Here are John Piper’s reasons to pray and meditate over biblical truth.

1. Biblical truth saves.

Take heed to yourself and to your doctrine; hold to that, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. (1 Timothy 4:16)

2. Biblical truth frees from Satan.

You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32)

3. Biblical truth imparts grace and peace.

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. (2 Peter 1:2)

4. Biblical truth sanctifies.

Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth. (John 17:17)

5. Biblical truth serves love.

It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment. (Philippians 1:9)

6. Biblical truth protects from error.

Attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God…so that we may no longer be…carried to and fro by every wind of doctrine. (Ephesians 4:13-14)

7. Biblical truth is the hope of heaven.

Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

8. Biblical truth will be resisted by some.

The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings. (2 Timothy 4:3)

9. Biblical truth, rightly handled, is approved by God.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

10. Biblical truth: Continue to grow in it!

Grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 3:18)

Good article by Skye Jethani about mission during times of recession. Especially important to Julie and I as we seek a new church and desire to invest ourselves fully.

What if we could tap into the 80+ hours people spend every week on the job, with their families, and engaging in life’s ordinary responsibilities? Of course, this would require a fundamental shift in the way we think about mission and institution. Here are a few implications:

1. It would mean helping people see the missional dignity of ordinary work; communicating that their jobs matter to Christ and his kingdom, not just what happens within the walls of the church.
2. It would mean elevating the role of family and household relationships as vehicles for spiritual growth and missional engagement. Yes, raising children and caring for aging parents honors God and advances his kingdom just as, if not more, than institutional church programs.
3. It would mean not extracting people from their lives and communities to engage in church programming or committees unless absolutely necessary, but equipping them to live in communion with Christ within the context he has placed them.
4. It would shift the focus of Sunday worship away from mission and outreach to a time of celebration and encouragement for Christians who are engaged in mission the other six days of the week.
5. It would mean deploying church leaders outside the institution to engage members in their native contexts; mentoring and coaching on their turf rather than ours.
6. It would mean a radical adjustment in what the church celebrates-not institutional expansion or programmatic growth, but stories of ordinary people incarnating Christ at home, at work, at school…everywhere life happens.

A church built upon people’s core time rather than leisure time will not only maximize its missional impact, but it will also be far less susceptible to the unstable foundations of our debt-based economy. It would mean fewer churches fearing economic recession because they’ve build their missional strategy on the foundation of ordinary life rather than institutional programs, buildings, and staffs.

Timmy Brister’s review of Thabilti Anyabwile’s What is a Healthy Church Member? Julie read it and really enjoyed it

* Five Steps to Becoming Gospel-Saturated *

1. Know the Gospel

“The gospel or good news of Jesus Christ is that God the Father, who is holy and righteous in all his ways, is angry with sinners and will punish sin. Man, who disobeys the rule of God, is alienated from the love of God and is in danger of an eternal and agonizing condemnation at the hands of God. But God, who is also rich in mercy, because of his great love, sent his eternal Son born by the Virgin Mary, to die as a ransom and a substitute for the sins of rebellious people. And now, through the perfect obedience of the Son of God and his willing death on the cross as a payment for our sins, all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, following him as Savior and Lord, will be saved from the wrath of God to come, be declared just in his sight, have eternal life, and receive the Spirit of God a a foretaste of the glories of heaven with God himself” (40-41).

2. Desire to Hear the Gospel and Preach the Gospel to Yourself

“We must cultivate and protect a ravenous desire for this message. Regularly bearing and plumbing the depths of the gospel increases our knowledge of the message, our affections for the Savior, and our skill in sharing the message” (41).

3. Order Your Life Around the Gospel

“As church members, our aim is to understand the gospel so deeply, so intimately, that it animates every area of our lives. We want the gospel central to our communication with others, central to how we encourage and correct, central to individual career and relationship decisions, central to the decisions the church makes corporately, and central to all our habits of life. We want the gospel, the God of the gospel, to take priority in every area of life” (42-43).

4. Share the Gospel with Others

“If we would contribute to the health of our local congregations, we must be committed not only to harvesting the gospel for ourselves but to shipping it to others as well. We must do the work of an evangelist. With urgency and love we must tell the non-Christians among us to repent of their sins and to believe on Jesus Christ… . A gospel-saturated life is a life that splashes out onto others with the good news. A healthy church is built, in part, on healthy gospel-motivated members” (44).

5. Guard the Gospel

“The healthy church and church member fight for and protect the apostolic gospel delivered and preserved in the pages of Scripture” (45). This chapter on being gospel-saturated, I would argue, is the most important mark of a healthy church member. The importance and sufficiency of the gospel for believers could not be emphasized enough. Anyabwile has done a great job in laying out five incremental steps in the path of becoming gospel-saturated, and we would all serve our churches well to consider ourselves in light of these important truths!

Powerful challenge from Greg Gilbert

Not many of us will ever have the opportunity to sit face to face with a terrorist and have to decide what loving that person might look like. But we do have to decide whether we’ll take pleasure in the thought of that person being in hell—or whether we’ll pray and genuinely hope for that person’s salvation and forgiveness. Putting it all together, I think the best and most Christian response is probably this: to be glad when a terrorist is brought to justice and punished, even executed, by the state, but at the same time to pray that someone, somehow, in those final moments is telling him the Gospel of Jesus, and to hope that one day you’ll stand next to him praising Christ as two forgiven sinners who, if it weren’t for him, would both be in hell.

Colin Adams post on the care of the church in 1 Timothy 5

1 . Pastoral care is the responsibility of everyone (v 1-2)

“Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.”

2. Pastoral care should have a particular focus on those in real need (v 3-15)

“Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need…”

3. Pastoral care should be administered within families wherever possible, so as to lessen the burden on the church (v 16)

“If any woman who is a believer has widows in her family, she should help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who really are in need.”

4. Pastoral care should extend to leaders too (v 17-18 )

“The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honour…”

5. Pastoral care should include pastoral discipline, even of leaders if necessary (v 19-20)

“Those [elders] who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning.”

6. Pastoral care should be administered with an awareness of the potential of falling into sin (v 22, 24-25)

“…and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.”

7. Pastoral care should often involve practical, as well as spiritual advice (v 23)

“Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illness.”

Reading J.I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God completely changed my outlook on evangelism and helped to make Reformed Theology clearer to me. I highly recommend it. Here are some great blog posts on Evangelism

Ligon Duncan’s The Gospel and the Local Congregation speaks of a culture of evangelism

1. that your whole congregation would be able to articulate the Gospel, personally, in a compelling and understandable way;
2. that your whole congregation would understand the importance and necessity of their lives, their prayers and their participation in Gospel witness;
3. that your whole congregation would deeply care about conversions (and I would lay stress here, that we are talking about real conversions, not numbers; disciples, not decisions; changed lives, not merely prayed prayers);
4. that your whole congregation would earnestly and regularly pray for conversions, talks about their own conversions and the conversions of others, and put a priority on people coming to know God; and
5. that your whole congregation would be excited about the Gospel itself, and not simply about a method of sharing the Gospel, or a training program.

He then defines Evangelism

To bear witness to Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that

1. people may come to put their trust in God, through Christ;
2. to acknowledge Him as their Savior; and
3. to serve Him as their King,
4. in the fellowship of His Church.

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The Gospel must be shared with words. It is a message. We can’t tell it with our deeds (though our lives must reveal it effects). There is no such thing as wordless evangelism.

His follow-up post features a helpful comment from P.J. Tibayan

“I like the definition of evangelism and think that it is accurate. I think the “so that” helps us remember what we’re aiming at. I do want to say, however, that putting the “so that” in the definition might make someone think they are failing at evangelism when the aim is not realized. So though I’d use that definition, I’d be quick to emphasize that our responsibility, and therefore the standard of failure or faithfulness, is explaining the news clearly so that they understand the news. We aim at true conversion, but we understand that we are not responsible to convert, but to faithfully witness with love and honesty.”

Mark Driscoll posted at The Resurgence about Evangelism

Evangelism is the speaking and showing of the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to people who do not yet know Him. Evangelism is the natural overflow of a life lived in joy as a worshiper of God.

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As Christians, our love for Jesus and people should cause us to delight in speaking and showing the transforming power of Jesus’ grace at every opportunity.

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Regarding evangelism, it is Jesus Himself who set an example for us as The Evangelist.

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Second, perhaps the most thorough treatment of the doctrines of predestination and election are to be found in Romans 9–11. But in the middle of that breathtaking theological treatise that shows how salvation is fully the work of God, we also read Romans 10:14–15: “But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news [the gospel]!’”

God has not only determined who will be saved, but has also determined how He will save them—and this often includes using our evangelistic efforts, though God can also save people apart from us as He chooses. God often chooses to allow us to be involved in the process so that we might share in the joy of seeing people’s earthly and eternal lives forever transformed through Jesus.

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Practically, this means that by understanding that God is already at work on the elect, we are able up to do evangelism with the greatest amount of freedom and joy. We can share the gospel of Jesus in full confidence that God will use it to save some people because they are elect. On the other hand, if some people should not respond to the gospel in faith, we should not take that personally but rather pray that God would open their blind eyes to see His love and also humbly trust God’s will and timing in all things.

Lastly, the fact that Jesus remains to this day an active evangelist is of great encouragement to me personally. It means that children who are aborted in the womb, those mentally incapable of understanding the gospel, and those people who have lived in times and places that missionaries did not visit are not necessarily beyond the hope of salvation. Indeed, Jesus could visit and save anyone anywhere because He remains The Evangelist.