Susan Creek

Susan Creek by Douglas Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A good read for youngsters. Mixes history of George Whitefield and other preachers, English and French politics and espionage, when it's right to fight (even kill) and when it is wrong.

Second in a series, but stands alone fine, too.


View all my reviews

Sap, to bear fruit

Jesus tells His disciples in the upper room, as he passes the cup around the table, that He will not drink of this fruit of the vine again until he drinks it anew with them in His father’s kingdom. The sacrifice of Jesus was itself fruit taken from the vine of Christ, well-pleasing to the Father. We as branches are to bear similar fruit. This is why we commune with Christ’s flesh and blood, by the Spirit. His blood is real drink. By this communion His life-giving Spirit gives us sap that brings forth fruit on our branches, in our lives. This isn’t a physical transformation of our bodies, or this bread or wine. But it is certainly a real and spiritual transformation and renewing and feeding that is happening to those with faith. Faith leads to receiving Christ’s Word, His bread and wine, where we take in Christ’s fruit. So it’s no surprise that we then bear the fruit of His Spirit in our lives.

11/6/11

An urgent plea

Notice the book of Proverbs is an urgent plea from father to son to listen to wisdom. There is great value in such entreaties to our children. Ask God for a heart pursuing wisdom, and then show your children that heart, wehn you have it. Sons, daughters, you are called to treasure your parents’ commands, to incline your ear, apply your heart, cry out, lift up your voice, to seek and search for understanding. This is not like deciding to go buy a candy bar at the corner gas station. No. Instead, is your life marked and permeated with this quest? Now, none of us seeks out wisdom with the earnestness we should have. But God is kind to reward even a little faith with moving great mountains. Ask, and it will be given to you.

11/6/11

Weekly Wedding rehearsal

Heavenly Father, You have called us to Yourself through Your Son. You have given Him to us for a savior, a king, and a good husband. Your Spirit is preparing us as a bride for her wedding day. At this wedding rehearsal that we call Lord’s Day worship, we pray for understanding and insight to see what is going on. The same Spirit you sent to turn on the lights in us, and perform a heart transplant to make us live again, that same Spirit unites us to You, gives us a desire for you, brings us into Your presence in the heavens where Christ sits. We stand before you now, and You are holy, holy, holy. The angels sing this without ceasing and without tiring of Your infinite majesty. You are the almighty king. Help us see your sovereign majesty, truth and grace today. Help us to anticipate the wedding to come with joy and earnest preparation.

Worship Invocation

10/30/11

Reform your calendar

We need to be re-formed in God’s presence, not removed FROM His presence. So it is with our holidays. While the reformation rightly removed many saints’ days, several of our holidays need to be reformed, not removed. Halloween is one of these.

The church began to celebrate All saints day in the 300s, celebrating the victorious saints at rest with Christ. Over time, superstition and error came in. All Saints, or all Hallow’s Eve turned into Halloween. Like Mardi Gras revelry before Lent’s piety, Halloween became the devil’s last stand before the celebration of the holy ones in glory.

So let’s get the big picture here. The Christian calendar year begins around December 1, after death of autumn has come to the world's grass and trees. With Advent and Christmas we celebrate the coming of the light of the world at our coldest and darkest hour. We then celebrate His ministry, death and resurrection in the spring, the time of new life. We celebrate Pentecost at the beginning of summer, when God cultivates our new life in the Spirit. Summer is the time of growth. Fall is when the harvest comes in, and we have All Saints Day to remember those who have entered their rest. We give thanks for the harvest of crops and souls. Meanwhile Satan makes one last grab at the end of history. This is Halloween. All of history is dramatized in the church year, and it is all pointing to the vindication of Christ’s saints, as they appear with Christ, when He comes again. We can give thanks for loved ones and great ones who have gone before us to glory.


10/30/11

Believe and Live

We live by the promise. This is why I’ve taken to saying right before we eat and drink, something like, “Believe and live.” Not that the physical bread and wine we consume gives us spiritual life. But by faith we claim the promise, we do what our Lord Jesus told us to do, and He does really bless us in it. Life is communicated from the Jerusalem above, our mother. We are in the womb, needing nourishment. Consider your baptism the setting up of that connection, this table the food itself. Without faith, there’s a blockage and we aren’t fed. But with faith, our claiming the promise week by week at this table and hearing the Word gives us strength and growth.

10/23/11

Caught, and Going Down

Proverbs 1:24-31

Wisdom warns us, if we refuse to heed her, destruction will come; calamity, terror, a whirlwind, distress and anguish. Slaughter and destruction. When these come, wisdom will not deliver the fool from them. She laughs, like the Lord laughs in Psalm 2 at those who fight against Him. When we despise the Lord and turn from His wisdom, we reap what we sow. We have to eat the rotten fruit from the rotten seeds we planted. If we turn again to wisdom and listen to her, we will live in safety with God in His house, in wisdom’s house.

It’s important to note, when wisdom says that the caught will call and she won’t answer in vs 28, she speaks of the call of the caught and afraid, not the repentant. Wisdom rejects the still-rebellious, the caught in consequences. Turn back to wisdom now, for God’s sake, and for your own.


10/23/11

Sin and Communion

Question: should I keep communion from my child if he has unrepentant sin from that morning?

The short answer is: no.

Why? Two quick reasons:

1. Lack of repentance should usually be given time to harden into stubbornness (hopefully it turns into repentance, instead!) before withholding communion.

2. It is the elders' role to keep communion from a church member, not the parents.

The longer answer:

It is your job as a parent to lead your child to repentance and reconciliation with the Lord before (or even during) the worship service, before the bread and wine are given him. If you are unable to do this for some reason, talk with an elder that Sunday morning and ask them what to do. The elders may let your child commune or may ask them not to. This is a difficult decision, so respect and follow what they tell you.

Theologically, on the one hand keeping your children (or yourself) from the Table because you don't feel him (or you) repentant enough takes the keys of the kingdom from the elders and shuts yourself out of the Kingdom of God as a form of self-flagellation. On the other hand, letting unrepentant sinners partake of the Lord's Supper defiles the person, and they eat and drink judgment on themselves.

In the abstract, I come down on the first hand above. One thing communion "does" is fight against low-grade defiance. When you are in a funk for a few days, God often hands you circumstances to draw you out of it, and one of those is communion. If you think you need to withhold yourself from the Table in that funk, you are pursuing a perfectionism that is not attainable. Why not let the Supper lift you out of the sin, as it is partly meant to do? Do you hold back if you find one waft of sinful desire within? Is there a time limit on that - no sin in the last 30 minutes, since you woke up, last 4 days? God is patient with us while we cling to sin for a while. Consider how He dealt with Israel. We MUST drop it, and the either/or choice between the sin and the Lord’s Table is made clear every time your church celebrates communion. But we also cannot expect complete repentance and perfection in ourselves or our children at the moment of receiving the bread and wine.

Pastorally, it helps alleviate tension and pressure to "do it right," to remember that the Supper is a MEANS of Christ's grace, not the source. Doing it wrong does not endanger your soul. The decision should hinge on the message you and the elders are sending to your child by having them partake or not. Will it help her more to be warned that she is outside of God's grace the way she is behaving, or to be comforted that even sin cannot separate her from God's love? Practically, as I administer communion every week and observe the congregation partaking, my thoughts are on God's goodness to us in Christ generally, not checking to see if anyone is not partaking, and wondering why.

Whatever is decided about your son or daughter, it's probably a good idea to meet with your pastor or elders later to lay out the situation, and seek their input in how to disciple your child in the future.

Loving the Church

Loving the Church: God's People Flourishing in God's Family by John Crotts

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I picked this up at Shepherd Press' booth at a home school convention. I highly recommend it.

From a practical and down-to-earth angle, Crotts persuades the normal Christian of the need to participate in the Body of Christ. The strength of the book is how it speaks to those tempted to drop out of church, or those who already have. He calls them back graciously and firmly, with good teaching about the church along the way. He shows HOW the church is good for Christians and an important part of our walk with the Lord. One example is that we encounter Christians at church who think differently than us, and we need that challenge. We need to see how other families live so we have a greater pool to draw from in making decisions.

Being involved in the church takes time and effort, and it is outside our comfort zone. We Americans crave our time and our comfort. More participation often means more bruises from dealing with other sinful Christians. This is an uphill battle! Crotts addresses this with realism and grace.

The cheesy coffee shop scenes and a more Baptist view of the sacraments and children were a minor hindrance to this Reformed, infant-baptist, Calvinist. But he is careful not to offend on this point. Instead, he stakes his claim in a closing punch (strong exhortation!) to return to the church.



View all my reviews

On Christian Brotherhood

"You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him." - C.S. Lewis

Wanted: Gracious Clarity

There is a tension and paradox between needing a clear structure, and extending lots of grace. I think it's a key to wise living in many areas. If you're all structure you'll be too rigid and wind up with tears and battles. If you're all grace and just defer to what others want, you lose the structure and boundaries you should provide.

Give It Up

This is a table of reconciliation. It not only shows us what restored fellowship looks like, it also shows us how to get there. Restored fellowship looks like a famished body that finally gets fed. Our bones waste away in grief when we are separated from God and from each other in unconfessed sin. We need the nutrition of Christ to give us strength to live for Him.

And how do we get to reconciliation? By doing what Jesus did. He didn’t think it a big thing to remain equal in glory with God. He gave it up, humbled himself with many sacrifices, culminating in the cross. This is the source of our strength to reconcile with each other, and to bring the gospel of reconciliation to the world. Don’t think your reputation a big thing. Lay aside your preference. Sacrifice for the good of the body of Christ. But before you do, receive grace and remember you are a forgiven and loved child of God.

10/16/11

Who Do You Listen To?

Proverbs 1:22-23
“How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?
For scorners delight in their scorning,
And fools hate knowledge.
23 Turn at my rebuke;
Surely I will pour out my spirit on you;
I will make my words known to you.

It can be hard to listen to wisdom. We are simple, and the word means gullible, naïve. We listen too quickly to the world’s call to sin. "What’s that? Wreck my marriage and family and career for a night or two of pleasure? Okay, sure." Or we think that scorning the wicked, scoffing at sin is all it takes to be wise. It is one thing to critique worldliness, but it’s a whole 'nother animal to live faithfully before God. Fools hate knowledge. They turn away from maturity because it might mean – gasp - reading a Book. We need to listen to lady wisdom’s rebuke, heed it, and turn. Learn to be suspicious of the siren song of the serpent; but be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, who makes His words known to you.

10/16/11

He Has Done It

Father God in heaven, Creator of all worlds, maker of grass blades and stars, blue skies and daddy long legs, trees and dirt hills, we praise You for filing the earth with Your goodness. For establishing the world by Your powerful Word, for framing the waters, the land and the sky by Your Son. We fear You and stand in awe of You, for You spoke and it was done. When we ruined Your good image in us, You spoke again, promising redemption and conquest of evil, and You have done it, and You will do it. So we have gathered on the day You raised Your son from death, to praise and thank You for undoing death, destroying the devil, and restoring fellowship with You. We gather in the joy of this good news, praying for Your Spirit to anoint us with reverence and joy to worship You rightly now.
We come to you through Jesus Christ, by the power of Your Holy Spirit who lives and reigns with You, one God without beginning or end. Amen.

Opening prayer
10/9/11

Sit and Eat, says Love

Going through airport on the way home I saw a young man wearing a t-shirt that said, “Take me home and feed me.” This is what God has done for us. He has taken us home and fed us. Everything has been done for us: the Son was sent, the price is paid, the Spirit is sent, there is water to wash up, the dinner table is set. So come and sit.

George Herbert:
“Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.”

10/9/11