Foz do Iguaçu

A few years ago Lindsey and I participated in a mission trip to Brasil. The day we left Cascavel we flew out of Foz do Iguaçu [Iguacu Falls]. The Iguacu river borders the state Paraná, Brazil and Argentina. This water fall was huge…I guess it’s approximately 7 times the size of Niagra Falls. I guess the water power generates a large percentage of electricity for the region.

Anyhow…at the Desiring God website they have pictures of natural wonders with bible verses… Well, low and behold the last time I went there was the Foz do Iguaçu. Check it out!



Cool!

"Why don't people pray beyond the sick list?"

One last quote from David Powlison.

"Why don't people pray beyond the sick list? We pray for circumstances to improve so that we might feel better and life might get better. These are often honest and good requests - unless they're the only requests we make. Detached from the purposes of sanctification and a yearning for the coming of the King, prayers for circumstances become self-centered."

[David Powlison Speaking the Truth in Love pp. 124]

"Psychologies...Thin Gruel"

I'm reading Speaking the Truth in Love by David Powlison [scroll down a bit the link to see his bio] right now. In the chapter Why I Chose Seminary for Counseling Training he recalls something interesting.

"...my experience in the mental health system fed a growing disillusionment and skepticism [in regards to his opinion of psychotherapy]. I was working as a Mental Health Worker (MHW) on a locked ward at McLean Hospital outside Boston. One day a young woman named Mary slashed herself with a broken bottle. As we dressed her wounds and sought to calm her, she wailed inconsolably, 'Who will love me? Who will love me? Who could love me? Who could love me?' Drugs eventually quited her down. But her anguish and guilt made the psychologies I believed seem like thin gruel. Her distraught cry was realistic and heart-rending. Nothing I knew could really answer her, not her psychiatrist, medication, parents, job, boyfriend, or peers in the small group I led. We could manage Mary - sort of - but neither our theories nor techniques could really touch what ailed her. I now see that her cry of desolation could only find answer in the mercy and hope of Jesus, one thing that our theories, therapies, and institution made a point never to offer her. [My emphasis]"

[David Powlison in Speaking the Truth in Love pp. 155]

It's almost impossible to do his argument against psychotherapy justice in a blog post, but he has some very strong points!

"To Show You My Power"

I was reading Exodus this morning in my devotions and this passage stuck out to me. Notice why God has “raised you [them] up,” in order to “show you [them] His power, so that my [God’s] name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”

Exodus 9:13-16
“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. For this time I will send all my plagues on you yourself, and on your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. [ESV]”

This reminds me of John 9 when the disciples asked Jesus whose sin caused the man in question to be born blind, and Jesus responded, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him [John 9:3 ESV].”

When was the last time you recognized a trouble in your life to be a display of God’s might. Remember Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:7?

“So to keep me from being too elated by the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. [ESV]”

Further in 2 Corinthians 12:9 he said, “But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' [ESV]”

Therefore, let us say along with Paul, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. [2 Corinthians 12:9-10 ESV]”

Heavenly Father, show us your power today!

"Redeeming the Time"

Here's a post I did at Matt Proctor's blog under his posts Rest is the Youth Pastor's Missing Ingredient and Idleness is the Youth Pastor's Playhouse:

You know a few passages popped in my head when I was reading your posts on this.

Proverbs 19:15 "Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger. [ESV]"

and

Proverbs 20:13 "Love not sleep, lest you come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread. [ESV]"

I think that rest and sloth are completely different states of mind...yet the same outward appearance. Deliberateness in the use of time is almost always good [Eph 5:16] whether for rest, work or play. You don't have to be sharing Christ every second to be productive...but doing everything in faith to the glory of Christ should be done every second [Ro 14:23; 1 Cor 10:31]. To not would be to sin.

My problem is that I'll say I'm going to rest...and I'll watch tv...and then I have a headache...or I just don't feel revived. So after all of that mindless numbness of vegging in front of the 'boob tube' didn't result in rest. That's not good redemption of the time...for my physiology:)

In Christ
Noah

I assume that rest isn't only a problem for youth pastors...what do you guys think about this?

C. S. Lewis and "Membership"

C. S. Lewis on "Membership":

"The very word membership is of Christian origin, but it has been taken over by the world and emptied of all meaning. In any book on logic you may see the expression "members of a class." It must be most emphatically stated that the items of particulars included in a homogeneous class are almost the reverse of what St. Paul meant by members. By members he meant what we should call organs, things essentially different from, and complementary to, one another, things differing not only in structure and function but also in dignity. Thus, in a club, the committee as a whole and the servants as a whole may both properly be regarded as "members"; what we should call the members of the club are merely units. A row of identically dressed and identically trained soldiers set side by side, or a number of citizens listed as voters in a constituency are not members of anything in the Pauline sense. I am afraid that when we describe a man as "a member of the Church" we usually mean nothing Pauline; we mean only that he is a unit - that he is one more specimen of some kind of things as X and Y and Z. How true membership in a body differs from inclusion in a collective may be seen in the structure of a family. The grandfather, the parents, the grown-up, the child, the dog, and the cat are true members (in the organic sense), precisely because they are not members or units of a homogeneous class. They are not interchangeable. Each person is almost a species in himself. The mother is not simply a different person from the daughter; she is a different kind of person. The grown-up brother is not simply one unit in the class children; he is a separate estate of the realm. The father and grandfather are almost as different as the cat and the dog. If you subtract any one member, you have not simply reduced the family in number; you have inflicted an injury on its structure. Its unity is a unity of unlikes, almost of incomensurables."

[C. S. Lewis Membership Pp. 110-111 (From The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, MacMillan)]

"What does war do to death?"

C. S. Lewis is helpful with this:

"What does war do to death? It certainly does not make it more frequent; 100 percent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased. It puts several deaths earlier, but I hardly supposed that that is what we fear. Certainly when the moment comes, it will make little difference how many years we have behind us. Does it increase our chances of a painful death? I doubt it. As far as I can find out, what we call natural death is usually preceded by suffering, and a battlefield is one of the very few places where one has a reasonable prospect of dying with no pain at all. Does it decrease our chances of dying at peace with God? I cannot believe it. If active service does not persuade a man to prepare for death, what conceivable concatenation of circumstances would? Yet war does do something to death. It forces us to remember it. The only reason why the cancer at sixty or the paralysis at seventy-five do not bother us is that we forget them. War makes death real to us, and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of our mortality. I am inclined to think that they were right. (My emphasis)"

[C. S. Lewis Learning in Wartime Pp. 31 (From The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, MacMillan)]

War is hideous...but do you think that maybe this is one of the reasons that man in our country want to back off of the war?? Just something to think about.

Workin' Out!

Well, Linds and I have a new plan in working out!

Get to work earlier and burn some calories right after working hours. Ask me how it's going sometime to keep me accountable. This is my workout summary:)

10 minutes running [Hill setting at 6 MPH]
5 minutes walking [Hill setting at 3.6 MPH]
3 sets of 12 reps each for the following

Curls 17.5 lbs
Lat raises 20 lbs [after these I noticed how weak my left arm is compared to my right!]
Incline press 1st set 30lbs, 2nd and 3rd sets 35lbs
Back extension 90lbs
Ab Cruch 1st set 70lbs, 2nd and 3rd sets 90lbs
Lat pull down 70lbs
Shoulder press 1st set 30lbs, 2nd and 3rd sets 20lbs

I know I'm a lightweight, but hey, you've got to start somewhere. Hopefully when I post stats again after a while there will be a significant improvement:)

Favorite Blurbs From DG

Below are some of my favorite quotes from the Desiring God conference 'Above All Earthly Powers'. I took these from my notes...so some of these might be paraphrases...but I'm pretty sure most are exact quotes:)

David Wells

"Jesus isn't great, He's incomprable."
"Christ is re-railing the universe."
"In Christ's work on the cross the very back of evil is broken."
"We live in the period of the already and the not yet."
"It is God's pleasure that He be acknowledged for who He is now!"

Tim Keller

"[Regarding the Emergent Church] This movement won't last without institutions."
"[Summary of Emergent thinking] Authentic relationships trump truth."
"The west is an ex-mission mission field."
"The demon is deeper."
"As the city goes, so goes the culture."
"We should be hobobs."
"Theology, all of it, must be an exposition of the gospel."
"If I'm saved by grace there's no limit to what He [God] can ask of me."
"Who's exclusive beliefs cause me to be humble and to love their opponents?"
"Are you insulting your Creator by your low expectation of evangelism in your cities?"

Vaudie Bauchman

"Narrative is not normative."
"You are the crowning glory of the creation of God."
"You are what the creator of the universe says you are."
"We possess the answer and we are possessed by the answer."
"How dare you steal His [God's] air."

Mark Driscoll

"Jesus is HOT in pop culture."
"I yell, God's in charge, Nighty Night. [Sleep like a Calvinist]"
"In the name of tolerance and kindness we send people to hell."
"I'm sick of talking about the kingdom and not the king."
"Relevantism not relativism."
"Seeker sensible not seeker sensitive."

D. A. Carson

"We go to heaven not to be saved, but to see God's glory."
"Worship, worship, worship."

[Carson's view of missions were very similar to some of the concepts that I learned at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. Perhaps I'll write a little later about it:)]

John Piper

"His [Jesus'] joy becomes ours in His propositions."
"He [God] acts from fullness, not need."
"Seeing God's glory in our minds enables us to love Him in our hearts."
"Joy was designed by God as the deepest way to reflect God's glory.
"There is no such thing as hypocritical joy."

Some Good Packer Quotes!

Quote I
"Think! says Paul in effect. God is for you, you see what that means; now reckon up who is against you, and ask yourself how the two sides compare. (Note, the translation "who can be against us" is wrong, and misses Paul's point: what he asks for is a realistic review of the opposition, human and demonic, not a romantic pretense that it does not exist. Opposition is a fact: the Christian who is not conscious of being opposed had better watch himself, for he is in danger. Such unrealism is no requirement of Christian discipleship, but is rather a mark of failure in it.)" [Pp. 263 Knowing God]

Quote II
"Again: you are called to be a meek person, not always standing up for your rights, nor concerned to get your own back, nor troubled in your heart by ill treatment and personal slights (though, if you are normally sensitive, these things are bound to hurt you at the top level of consciousness); but you are simply to commit your cause to God and leave it to him to vindicate you if and when he sees fit. Your attitude to other people, good and bad, nice and nasty, both Christians and unbelievers, is to be that of the good Samaritan toward the Jew in the gutter - that is to say, your eyes must be open to see others' needs, both spiritual and material; your heart must be ready to care for needy souls when you find them; your mind must be alert to plan out the best way to help them; and your will must be set against the trick that we are all so good at - "passing the buck," going by on the other side and contracting out of situations of need where superficial help is called for.

None of this, of course, is strange to any of us. We know what kind of life Christ calls us to; we often preach and talk to each other about it. But do we live it? Well, look at the churches. Observe the shortage of ministers and missionaries, especially men; the luxury goods in Christian homes; the fund-raising problems of Christian societies; the readiness of Christians in all walks of life to grumble about their salaries; the lack of concern for the old and lonely and for anyone outside the circle of 'sound believers.'

We are unlike the Christians of New Testament times. Our approach to life is conventional and static; theirs was not. The thought of 'safety first' was not a drag on their enterprise as it is on ours. By being exuberant, unconventional and uninhibited in living by the gospel they turned their world upside down, but you could not accuse us twentieth-century Christians of doing anything like that. Why are we so different? Why, compared with them, do we appear as no more than halfway Christians? Whence comes the nervous, dithery, take-no-risks mood that mars so much of our discipleship? Why are we not free enough from fear and anxiety to allow ourselves to go full stretch in following Christ?

One reason, it seems, is that in our heart of hearts we are afraid of the consequences of going the whole way into the Christian life. We shrink from accepting burdons of responsibility for others because we fear we should not have strength to bear them. We shrink from accepting a way of life in which we forfeit material security because we are afraid of being left stranded. We shrink from being meek because we are afraid that if we do not stand up for ourselves we shall be trodden down and victimized, and end up among life's casualties and failures. We shrink from breaking with social conventions in order to serve Christ because we fear that if we did, the established structure of our life would collapse all around us, leaving us without a footing anywhere." [Pp. 269-270 Knowing God]

DG Conference

The Desiring God conference "Above All Earthly Powers" was great.

Here is a picture of me with a brother that has helped me in a ton of ways, Justin Taylor. From considering the TBI up at Bethlehem Baptist Church, to the Internship at CHBC, to seminary at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Be sure to check out his blog Between Two Worlds.

Miesen...he mentioned something about an incident with macaroni and cheese...what's that all about?

Washington DC Pictures

Here are some pics of me with some of the pastors from Capitol Hill Baptist Church.

Matt Schmucker the Director of 9 Marks ministry. Matt's the one that hooked me up w/ all the free books. He was a very gracious brother.

Michael Lawrence associate pastor at CHBC. It was fun to play name that jazz musician in his office;) Check out the series of sermons he did on Biblical Theology...they're awesome! [Creation, Fall, Love, Sacrifice, Promise.] He might be working w/ Crossway to publish these in the future.

Mike Gilbart-Smith and his wife Hanna were excellent hosts. They're from England...so it was fun to have lamb and tea! They hosted three of us and they have two children. They even hosted a member of CHBC one night. That's 8 people staying in one house. They were great! Check out Mike's sermon on Philemon here from a few weeks ago.

Mark Dever, who is the senior pastor of CHBC. He's written a bunch of books, and speaks at tons of conferences. His latest sermon series on the book of Ruth was great. Check it out [Ruth 1, Ruth 2, Ruth 3, Ruth 4.] It was great on Sunday evening...we were up until 2am talking about theology and church situations and he fell asleep in his chair:) All of these guys worked extremely hard all weekend. It was amazing.


Here are some of the cliche pics...but I had to get a few in front of the Capitol and the Washington Monument:)

Slim on the Posts

Well, lately I haven't posted much, so I'm sorry about that for the folks that check out my blog:)

A lot has happened in the last month:) I have been out of commission for the last couple of weeks trying to reflect on everything that God has been teaching me. In case you didn't know I was in Washington DC about 3 weeks ago for a church health conference with 60 other folks at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. It was incredible!

And Lindsey and I just returned from the Desiring God conference in Minneapolis [we went with my sister, and the Youngs].

I'll post quite a bit more later!~

Josh, C. J. Mahaney was sitting in the row right behind us listening to Piper's talk on Sunday morning. I wanted to get my pic with him to surprise you, but he snuck out while we were praying, lol:)

In Christ
Noah

The Truth War

Slated to come out this Spring [2007] is MacArthur's new book "The Truth War". I guess it will discuss the Emergent Church among other things in the current Evangelical landscape.

[HT: PyroManiacs Blog]

Self Love

Self love is shallow! Do you avoid looking into your life because you have "self love"? I know I do at times. Lets break the cycle and know ourselves fully that we might walk more honestly with our God, family, and friends. For Jesus Christ's namesake. Amen.

"It were an easy thing to be a Christian,if religion stood only in a few outward works and duties,

But to take the soul to task, and to deal roundly with our own hearts, and to let conscience have its full work, and to bring the soul into spiritual subjection unto God,

This is not so easy a matter, because the soul out of self-love is loath to enter into itself, lest it should have other thoughts of itself than it would have."

[Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) was a Puritan pastor. Quotation is from The Soul's Conflict, and Victory Over Itself by Faith, XV:vii:6, in The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, Vol. 1, (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1862), p. 200.]

[UPDATE: I intended to but forgot to mention that I found this quote in David Powlison's book Speaking the Truth in Love.]

It’s Always Cool to Get Free Books!

I haven’t been given so many free books in my life…check it out! I got these for free last weekend!~

Speaking the Truth in Love [David Powlison]

Reformed Pastor [Richard Baxter]

Polity [edited by Mark Dever]

MacArthur NASB Study Bible [John MacArthur]

Humility [CJ Mahaney]

Getting the Gospel Right [RC Sproul]

Give Praise to God [edited by Ligon Duncan III, Derek Thomas, & Philip Ryken]

Counted Righteous in Christ [John Piper]

9 Marks of a Healthy Church [Mark Dever]

I've finished Sex, Romance and the Glory of God and it was great. I'm in the middle of Speaking the Truth in Love and it's very good too.

It's been a While

Wow...

Friends, it's been a while. I'm back in Des Moines again. God is good...and life is seriously in a whirlwind right now...but it's good!

Thank you for praying for me while I was in Washington DC. I'll give a little more of an update later, but I just wanted everyone that reads this to know that God is good and it went very well...I feel like a different person with some of the perspective that God has given.

Anyhow...I hope you're all doing well.

In Christ
Noah

"Till the God of Love Sees Fit"

"Plagues and deaths around me fly;

Till He bids, I cannot die;

Not a single shaft can hit,

Till the God of love sees fit."

(John Ryland from A.W. Pink's The Soveregnty of God pp. 145)

"If It Be His Sweet Will"

"Ill that He blesses is our good,

And unblest good is ill,

And all is right that seems most wrong,

If it be His sweet will."

(from A.W. Pink's The Sovereignty of God pp. 148)

“Paganized Small Town America?”

What is going on in small towns???

Lanesboro, MN: A few months ago Lindsey and I stayed at a B&B in Lanesboro, MN. It’s known to be a small “artsy” town. On the surface you might think that it is pretty innocent. Well, it’s not innocent at all. It used to be [from what I gather] a small German and Amish settlement and mainly agrarian. Well, if the shops on main street are any indication of what it is now, I would say it is a secular/pagan/wiccan/with some Christianish influence thrown in for good measure.

Well, you’d think, “that’s just Lanesboro, MN,” well no, it’s not!

Eureka Springs, AR: We were just in Eureka Springs, AR and we saw the same kind of “artsy” small town. Only this is in the “Bible Belt”. Well we saw some of the most pagan shops you could imagine. From native American spiritual gifts complete with mixtures of teas for healing…to homosexual themed ornaments…to witches that are clearly a “niche” market. The strange thing is that there appears to be a Wiccan influence taking root in these small towns by what the stores are selling. One of the clearest marks of this is the mainstreaming of things like stuffed animals [witches], decorations [nudity all over the place] and cards. These cards have witches and fairies as themes. Weird! These aren’t like tinker bell from a Disney movie…these fairies and witches clearly convey a deeper “spiritual” message. I bought a pair of shoes at a more “mainstream” store and the woman who sold them to me had a pentagram tattooed on her hand. Also, the incense was so strong in the stores that my brother in law's allergies were going nuts. With all the smells it was almost like I was back in India with all the incense.

What’s going on?

These themes probably don’t fairly generalize the entire towns of Eureka Springs and Lanesboro, but I’m trying to figure out what is going on here.

Why did I get this impression? It’s almost like as the population has left some people have revitalized the town and made it a “tourist trap” and somehow hippies and some of these occult things have moved in.

About an hour away is the Rogers/Bentonville area. The main question that pops into my mind is, “Are they sending missionaries from these 5,000 plus congregations to reach these small towns?” They need to hear the gospel in contrast to Tibetan Buddhism, Native American Pantheism, Wicca, etc.

Have you guys observed this in other small towns you’ve been to? If yes, which ones? I’m just curious.