on giving...

If our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot because our charitable expenditure excludes them.

C.S. Lewis

Facing a Task Unfinished

Words by Frank Houghton

Facing a task unfinished,
That drives us to our knees,
A need that, undiminished,
Rebukes our slothful ease:
We, who rejoice to know Thee,
Renew before Thy throne
The solemn pledge we owe Thee
To go and make Thee known.

We bear the torch that flaming
Fell from the hands of those
Who gave their lives proclaiming
That Jesus died and rose.
Ours is the same commission,
The same glad message ours;
Fired by the same ambition,
To Thee we yield our powers.

Where other lords beside Thee
Hold their unhindered sway,
Where forces that defied Thee
Defy Thee still today;
With none to heed their crying
For life, and love, and light,
Unnumbered souls are dying,
And pass into the night.

O Father who sustained them,
O Spirit who inspired,
Saviour, whose love constrained them
To toil with zeal untired,
From cowardice defend us,
From lethargy awake!
Forth on Thine errands send us
To labour for Thy sake.

© Overseas Missionary Fellowship


Frank Houghton was the General Secretary of the China Inland Mission (now OMF) during WWII, and Bishop of East Szechwan. He wrote it as part of a campaign he was leading to recruit 200 new workers to China in 2 years.

O Great God

Words and music by Bob Kauflin

O great God of highest heaven
Occupy my lowly heart
Own it all and reign supreme
Conquer every rebel power
Let no vice or sin remain
That resists Your holy war
You have loved and purchased me
Make me Yours forevermore

I was blinded by my sin
Had no ears to hear Your voice
Did not know Your love within
Had no taste for heaven’s joys
Then Your Spirit gave me life
Opened up Your Word to me
Through the gospel of Your Son
Gave me endless hope and peace

Help me now to live a life
That’s dependent on Your grace
Keep my heart and guard my soul
From the evils that I face
You are worthy to be praised
With my every thought and deed
O great God of highest heaven
Glorify Your Name through me

Why We Need Fairy Tales and Fantasy

Fairy tales move us in a way that realistic fiction cannot. Fairy tales speak to several deep human longings that we are almost ashamed to admit and that we can never discard. We long to long to survey the depths of time and space. We long to get outside of time altogether and escape death. We long to hold communion with other living things like angels. We long to find a love that perfectly heals and from which we can never part. We long to triumph over evil finally and totally. When you are in the middle of a great fairy tale, the fairy tale lets you live, even briefly, with the dream that love without parting, escape from death, triumph over evil are real and realisable. That's why the stories stir us so deeply and why we will go on reading and writing them no matter what the critics say.

But the gospel's message is that through Jesus Christ, every single one of these things that the fairy tales talk about is true and will come to pass. We will hang out with angels. We will have loves from which we'll never we parted. We will see absolute triumph over evil. There is a beauty who will kiss you in all your beastliness and transform you. There is a prince who will save us forever...

Someday there will be a new heaven and a new earth, that everything sad will become untrue and all of our deepest human longings will come to pass. In the knowledge of that, we can go forth into the world to serve as those who love our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, out of thankfulness.

Lifted from a Tim Keller sermon.

See also:
Between Two Worlds Blog

He is risen!

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain:
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me,
For I am His and He is mine —
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

~ From ‘In Christ Alone’ by Getty and Townend

Good Friday

He left His Father’s throne above
So free, so infinite His grace—
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!

From "And Can It Be" by Charles Wesley, 1738.

pathways...

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost, 'The Road not Taken', from The Poetry of Robert Frost.

bitterness

Sin of any kind grieves the Holy Spirit, but that form of it which finds expression in bitterness towards another child of God causes Him special pain.

D. E. Hoste

one life to live...

It's easy to call yourself a Christian, go to church, and yet not be committed to your King's cause. You can fritter away your life, or you can wrap yourself up in affluence and material comfort. You have one life to live. Do you see that there is for you a lifework with a future; obeying the command of your Master to go and work for him, to seek to extend his kingdom, to build his church, to make disciples of all nations? This is a job with a future, because your King is coming back, and when he does return, and asks you to give an account, you want to hear him say to you: 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'

Michael Griffiths, Tinker, Taylor, Missionary?

a broken heart can be a good thing?

Break my heart for what breaks Yours
Everything I am for Your kingdom's cause
As I walk from earth into eternity

from 'Hosanna', by Hillsong United
Words by Brooke Fraser

bono did our bible reading today...

40
Words and Music by U2

I waited patiently for the Lord.
He inclined and heard my cry.
He brought me up out of the pit
Out of the miry clay.

I will sing, sing a new song.
I will sing, sing a new song.
How long to sing this song?
How long to sing this song?
How long, how long, how long
How long to sing this song?

You set my feet upon a rock
And made my footsteps firm.
Many will see, many will see and hear.

I will sing, sing a new song.
I will sing, sing a new song
I will sing, sing a new song.
I will sing, sing a new song
How long to sing this song?
How long to sing this song?
How long to sing this song?
How long to sing this song?


Links:
Psalm 40
U2

cosmic disappointment

... no matter what we put our hopes in, in the morning, it is always Leah, never Rachel.... this cosmic disappointment and disillusionment is there in all of life, but we especially feel it in the things upon which we most set our hopes.

Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods

Keller suggests there are 4 responses to this realisation:

1. Continued idolatry and spiritual addiction - You can blame the things that are disappointing you and try to move on to better ones.

2. Self-loathing and shame - You can blame yourself and beat yourself.

3. Cynicism and emptiness - You can blame the world.

4. Reorientate your life towards God and find hope in Him.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world [something supernatural and eternal]

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Links:
The story of Jacob and Leah from the Bible (Genesis 29:16-35)
'Counterfeit Gods' by Tim Keller

all you need is love?

Most people, if they have really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we have grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

three ways to live

The gospel tells us that our root sin is not just failing in our obedience to God but relying on our obedience to save us. Therefore, the gospel is the “third way,” neither religion nor irreligion. The religious person may say, “I am dong the right things that God commands” and the irreligious person may say, “I decide what is right and wrong for myself.” But both ways reject Jesus as Savior (though they may revere him as Example or Helper). Both ways are strategies of self-salvation – both actually keep control of their own lives. So the gospel keeps us from legalism and moralism on one hand, and from hedonism and relativism on the other.

Tim Keller, The Prodigal God

wrestling

Unless he [the leader] is constantly and faithfully wrestling in the heavenlies with the powers of darkness, there is a real danger in becoming involved in westling with his colleagues.

D.E. Hoste

we're bruised reeds

After conversion we need bruising, so that reeds may know themselves to be reeds, and not oaks; even we need bruising by reason of the remainder of pride in our nature, and to let us see that we live by mercy; and that weaker Christians may not be too much discouraged, when they see stronger ones shaken and bruised. Thus Peter was bruised when he wept bitterly. This reed, till he met with this bruise, had more wind in him than pith. "Though all forsake thee, I will not," (Matthew 36:35). The people of God cannot be without these examples. The heroical deeds of those great worthies do not comfort the Church so much as their falls and bruises do.

Richard Sibbes, "The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax" (1631)

humility

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited, indeed.
C.S. Lewis

servanthood...

We are not called to help people. We are called to follow Jesus, in whose service we learn who we are and how we are to help and be helped.
Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon

An invitation to mission work...

If you want hard work, and little appreciation of it; value God's approbation more than you fear man's disapprobation; are prepared, if need be, to seal your testimony with blood, and perhaps oftentimes to take joyfully the spoiling of your goods... you may count on a harvest of souls here, and a crown of glory that fadeth not away, and the Master's 'well done'.
J. Hudson Taylor

get some sleep

Go to bed seasonably, and rise early. Redeem your precious time: pick up the fragments of it, that not one moment of it may be lost. Be much in secret prayer. Converse less with man, and more with God.
George Whitefield