A blog designed to encourage Grace Church of Tallahassee College/Career members to think biblically in all areas of life and to grow in the knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness (Titus 1:1). The title is based on Titus 2:12 where Paul says that the grace of God saves us and trains us to live godly lives in the present age.
What kind of a society puts its women on the front lines to risk what only men should be called on to risk? In countries ravaged by war, we consider it a tragedy when the battle comes to the backyards of women and children. Why would we thrust our own wives and daughters into that horror? My own instinct is to keep them as far from it as possible.
Perhaps some people believe that women ought to be able to volunteer for whatever job they are qualified to do. But what if the draft were reinstituted?
Let us not send people into the world with merely a vague notion that Jesus saves without teaching them particulars about the Jesus who does save. Jesus is a Savior for every kind of person, but not every kind of Jesus saves.
I too am turned off by the harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric that sounds more like Pharaoh in Exodus 1 than the “love the sojourner” commands in Deuteronomy 10. It is a commendable response to see hurting people and think, “Let’s do all we can to help.”
So how do we balance competing goods—the good of welcoming in suffering people and the good of keeping out those who want to inflict suffering on others? And how do we pursue these ends when it may be impossible to know if we are helping the right people? The answer is not as easy as fear versus compassion. Christian charity means loving the safety of the neighbor next door at least as much as loving the safe passage of the neighbor far away.
“If we think we came into existence simply by accidental process, then we may feel accountable to no one. Yet such freedom is lonely. It is purposeless. And it is false. It is the freedom that ignores evidence of design in the world, that rejects the idea that people are special to God, and that clones human beings only to grow spare parts with them and then discard them. This is what we call naturalism. Naturalism is the philosophy that says, since God did not make us, we are only as special as we want to think of ourselves as being. So we kill babies in the womb and old people in nursing homes for our own convenience” (Mark Dever, The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made, pg. 69).
The subtle seeds of pride grow an oak of self-worship in the heart. Nebuchadnezzar did not build a 40′ statue demanding worship of him on the first day of office, but in due time it made sense for him to do this. It was the incremental footpath of pride.
Psalm 127:1-2
Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.
A season of singleness is not merely the minor leagues of marriage. It has the potential to be a unique period of undivided devotion to Christ and undistracted ministry to others.
With the Spirit in you and the calendar clear, God has given you the means to make a lasting difference for his kingdom. You’re all dressed up, having every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3), with literally everywhere to go.
With God’s help and leading, you have the freedom to invest yourself, your time, your resources, your youth, and your flexibility in relationships, ministries, and causes that can bear unbelievable fruit.
Paul may have been right about our freedom from spousal concerns, but in an iPhone, iPad, iPod, whatever iWant world, single people never have trouble finding their share of diversions. In fact, if you’re like me, you crave diversion and tend to default there, whether it’s SportsCenter, Downton Abbey, working out, fancy eating, endless blogging and blog-reading, surveying social media, or conquering the latest game. We might call it resting, but too often it looks, smells, and sounds a lot like we’re wasting our singleness.That is a timely exhortation. Don't waste the main purpose of your unmarried status. Segal goes on to list 7 other suggestions that I'd encourage you to read.
“You will believe me, when I assure you, it gives me great pleasure to find you love me so tenderly. But you have need to beware lest I should stand in God’s place; for your expressions, ‘that you know not how to be from me an hour without feeling the loss etc.’ seem to imply something of this kind. My dearest E., we must ever remember that word which God hath spoken from heaven, ‘the time is short: let those who have wives be as if they had none; and those who rejoice, as if they rejoice not.’ Both for myself and you, I would always pray that God may be so much dearer to us than we are to each other that our souls in his love ‘delight themselves in fatness,’ and feel he is an all-sufficient God.”
This gospel, then, grounds human dignity since in it Christ Jesus offers himself not to spirits or angels but to the sons and daughters of Adam. We have to be reminded of that or else we will always be pulled back to seeing ourselves in terms of “the flesh”—who we think we are apart from our union by the Spirit to Christ. We start then to divide ourselves against one another as Jew and Gentile, black and white, rich and poor, First World and Third World, healthy and disabled, young or elderly, documented or undocumented, born or unborn. But the gospel cuts across the boundaries, and indeed crucifies them all. If we come to God, it will be through one Jewish mediator-king, or it will not be at all. Our call to remember human dignity is, before anything else, a call to remember who we are.
Finally, you have one life to live. And it is not a good thing to experiment with it. What will make life work? What will make my eternity happy? God did not give you life to experiment with. He gave you life and he gave you a book. God has spoken. It is not a matter of experimentation. It is a matter of application of God’s Word to everything. He knows all things. He knows what will make you happy in the moment. He knows what will make your life count for the here and now. So trust him.Good stuff.
