Re:Sound, a new project started by Mars Hill Church in Seattle, just released a preview sampler of eight worship song from four of their forthcoming albums. It’s stinking awesome! Check it out here!!!
Pray For Me
After a year away from the Pacific Northwest, I am considering taking a job in Seattle.
Some questions you might have:
What does this mean for school? – This job actually could enable me to continue with school part-time, and not take on any more debt. I have loved this last year studying at Redeemer Seminary under men like Sinclair Ferguson, Elliott Greene, Mike Rasmussen, and others. However, I haven’t been able to cover all my expenses. I’ve been working at a local coffee shop to cover my rent, but all my other expenses (and half of my tuition) have been covered through student loans. At this current rate, I could be buried under student loans if I was to remain a full-time student here in Dallas. If I do get this job, I plan on continuing seminary, and hopefully will be able to finish my degree debt free! (Which is awesome for a future church planter!) I will be considering some distant education options, in the event that I do move to Seattle.
How did this come about? – Well I’ve made several connections over the last year with some amazing guys from Seattle. I sent in my resume back in early May and was backed through a great recommendation from one of those connections. I didn’t hear back from the organization for two weeks, and then suddenly last week I received and e-mail for the guy that I would be working for in Seattle. We exchanged a couple of e-mail, and then decided I would fly up to visit and interview in person for the job.
When are you going? – I will be flying up to Seattle on June 13th, and I will be staying through June 15th. Then I’ll be flying down to Portland to spend a couple of days with some friends there.
How can we pray? – Pray that I would walk by faith, not by what makes sense. Pray that God would create a holy unsettling in me, if I am not supposed to move. Pray for wisdom for those who are hiring for the position. Pray that I would live my life on God’s terms, not on my own. Pray that whatever I end up doing that God’s kingdom would be advanced through it.
What happens if you don’t get the job? – I will continue walking obediently in the lanes that God has currently provided for me through Redeemer and my current job.
If you have any questions, feel free to call me or ask me next time you see me!
For the King,
Paul
Two Futures
A great new movement that has been started by “American Christians for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. We believe that we face two futures and one choice: a world without nuclear weapons or a world ruined by them. We support the multilateral, global, irreversible, and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons, as a biblically-grounded mandate and as a contemporary security imperative.”
MIA
Sorry I haven’t posted anything in the last week or so. I’ve been owned by midterms for one of my classes. This week I was in Orlando, FL for a church planters conference. I’m hoping to post something new this week, but I’m busy catching up. Some of the men I heard speak this week were just dynamite! If you want to check them out here’s some links to their personal blogs, and multimedia sites:
Examen Me
Today hasn’t been that productive of a day. So I decided that I MUST accomplish something worth while before I leave the coffee shop where I was supposed to be “studying”. So I’ve decided to publish another blog about a wonderful site called Examen.Me. If you’ve ever had a hard time developing your own time for personal devotions, or avoided keeping a journal at all cost because you really never knew how to start the whole process. Examine.me is here to provide us with some direction. It’s a website that has taken some of the most devotional and ancient practices of the Christian Fathers, and put them in a 21st century format.
The team behind the website describes Examen.Me describe the site like this: “We are working hard to build a web site (web app) that will let you interact with God by guiding you through Scripture and prayers while providing a journal to record your experiences…what we are working on could radically change how many interact with God on a daily basis, at least that is the goal.”
Go check out the web tour, and register for your free account here
Here’s a screen shot of what the interface looks like:
Journal Response 8
Spiritual Blindness
The roots of our struggles are often masked by a deep spiritual blindness and deafness that is the result of the Fall. Intrinsic to Christ’s redemptive plan is spiritual healing from these afflictions. God promises in Isaiah 35:5 that he will send the Messiah who will come and “then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.” And later in Isaiah 42:16, God promises, “And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them.” God initiates this process on two fronts. The first front is the illumination of our corrupt hearts through the scriptures with the help of the Holy Spirit. The second front is through our relationships with other believers. God uses our Christian brothers and sisters to help reveal the areas of our lives that we cannot see. Paul Tripp describes these areas of afflictions, as a series of “masks” that distort our understanding of our trials, needs, values, spiritual condition, and even God. God uses our fellow believers as instruments to help us see where we cannot see, to shine the light of God’s word into those areas of darkness so that we might turn back to Christ.
But we often avoid those areas of darkness and try to cover it up by dressing up our actions. We turn to self-medication, therapy, and ten-step programs, or we try to unknowingly ignore our blindness by turning our attention to humanitarian deeds, and personal morality. But what we need is not more devotion to religious exercises, or endless amounts of self-reflection, or greater acts of service. But we need is Christ. We need to get to know him. We need more of him and less of ourselves. You may be wondering how is it that you get to know Christ. Miller offers two suggestions for us. “Keep two things in view: first, you cannot know Him unless you are sure He loves you and died personally for…your sins.” “Secondly, Christ calls us to abandon trust in our own strength and righteousness. We do not have the strength to improve ourselves morally or the righteousness with which to justify ourselves.” Christ loves to reveal himself, and as we saturate ourselves with the knowing Christ and prayer, combined with the presences of other believers in our lives, he will transform us. God will lead us into repentance and greater dependence. He has promised this to us! “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.”
Good Friday
Isaiah 53:3-10
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
