live thus

To live thus -- to cram today with eternity and not wait the next day -- the Christian has learnt and continues to learn (for the Christian is always learning) from the Pattern. How did He manage to live without anxiety for the next day -- He who from the first instant of His public life, when He stepped forward as a teacher, knew how His life would end, that the next day was His crucifixion; knew this while the people exultantly hailed Him as King (ah, bitter knowledge to have at precisely that moment!); knew, when they were crying, Hosanna!, at His entry into Jerusalem, that they would cry, "Crucify Him!", and that it was to this end that He made His entry. He who bore every day the prodigious weight of this superhuman knowledge -- how did He manage to live without anxiety for the next day?

Søren Kierkegaard

how we think of God

In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised. I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us. It is written that we shall, “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be a real ingredient in the Divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son – it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.

csl

enabled

If we would talk less and pray more about them, things would be better than they are in the world: at least, we should be better enabled to bear them.

John Owen

Mind Games

Your thoughts can make yoU believe or make yoU doubt. They can be true or false. They can lead yoU toward a healthy lifestyle or steal away your ability to live a fulfilled life. Perhaps most powerfully, thoughts have the ability to free yoU, or they can enslave yoU inside the worst cage of all…yourself.
…
I believe God has placed inside each of us a desire for intimate passion, soulful purpose, and mind-boggling potential. Yet too often we let our minds (or the way we think) get in the way of all that. We let our poor thinking dictate how we aRe going to live. We invest poorly in our minds, so we get a poor return on our investment. In short, we play mind games with ourselves.
…
I’ve played mind games for most of my adult life. One day a couple of years ago, I woke up and decided I was going to stop cold turkey. No more playing the games that had so often left me feeling depressed, anxious, obsessed, alone, fearful, codependent, and paranoid. I’m no shrink or theologian, and I will not pretend to be, but I’ve learned over the past several years what God can do with the human mind. And I’m living proof that he can use just about any type of mind for his purpose and glory. The book you’re now holding, Mind Games, is one part my story and one part lessons I’ve learned about my mind and how I cannot survive without thinking free – and neither can yoU.
…
I coined the term ‘freethinking’ to describe a mind that is free of game playing, free of bondage, free of self-absorption. A mind in pursuit of being surrendered to the passions and dreams of Jesus is truly free. I’ve often had to learn this the hard way on my journey of faith. But I’ve come to realize that the more I surrender, the more I am able to be free from bondage of worry, anxiety, and depression. It’s not like I don’t ever feel those things; I do, but they no longer define who I am. They don’t lock me up in a cage. They don’t control me. My pursuit of being dependent on Jesus sets me free from that cage.
…
Reality brings challenges into our lives that can send us into mental tailspins. I’ve been there. You’ve probably been there, too. But no matter whether it’s depression or anxiety or codependence or anger or lack of confidence or fear that cripples our ability to think free, God can heal it. That’s what freethinking is all about – finding freedom and healing. And we all need it no matter what our stories entail…

Matthew Paul Turner (The opening to Mind Games)

only

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

Saint Augustine

spring

Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone but in every leaf in springtime.

Martin Luther

Romans

Dr. N.T. Wright wrote, "Many have given (Romans 9-11) up as a bad job, leaving Romans as a book of "gospel" for eight chapters, four of "application" at the end, and three of "puzzle" in the middle" adding, "it is as full of problems as a hedgehog is full of prickles." We believe its all "gospel" so we need to study it - prickles and all!

Western

We sometimes come to God, not because we love Him best, but because we love our possessions best; we ask Christ to "save Western civilization", without asking ourselves whether it is entirely a civilization that Christ could want to save. We pray, too often, not to do God's will, but to enlist God's assistance in maintaining our "continually increasing consumption". And yet, though Christ promised that God would feed us, he never promised that God would stuff us to bursting.

Joy Davidman

Swete

There are times when we cannot pray in words, or pray as we ought; but our inarticulate longings for a better life are the Spirit's intercessions on our behalf, audible to God who searches all hearts, and intelligible and acceptable to Him since they are the voice of His Spirit, and it is according to His will that the Spirit should intercede for the members of His Son.

Henry Barclay Swete

I will sing of my Redeemer

I will sing of my Redeemer,
And His wondrous love to me;
On the cruel cross He suffered,
From the curse to set me free.

Sing, oh sing, of my Redeemer,
With His blood, He purchased me.
On the cross, He sealed my pardon,
Paid the debt, and made me free.

I will tell the wondrous story,
How my lost estate to save,
In His boundless love and mercy,
He the ransom freely gave.

Sing, oh sing, of my Redeemer,
With His blood, He purchased me.
On the cross, He sealed my pardon,
Paid the debt, and made me free.

I will praise my dear Redeemer,
His triumphant power I’ll tell,
How the victory He giveth
Over sin, and death, and hell.

Sing, oh sing, of my Redeemer,
With His blood, He purchased me.
On the cross, He sealed my pardon,
Paid the debt, and made me free.

I will sing of my Redeemer,
And His heav’nly love to me;
He from death to life hath brought me,
Son of God with Him to be.


Words: Phil­ip P. Bliss
Music: James Mc­Gran­a­han

too happy

What then are we afraid of? Can we have too much of God? Is it a misfortune to be freed from the heavy yoke of the world, and to bear the light burden of Jesus Christ? Do we fear to be too happy, too much delivered from ourselves, from the caprices of our pride, the violence of our passions, and the tyranny of this deceitful world?

François Fénelon

grandest rhetoric

Christianity is pre-eminently the religion of the heart. It does not always ask words, but it always wants work. The motives and not the means are the things on which it passes judgment. And the man who shows by his life that he is not ashamed of the Gospel will assuredly one day find that the Gospel is not ashamed of him. There is much more which might be said, but I refrain. Ere I close, you will let me add my emphasis to the fact that it is in our life and conduct that we must show our devotion to Christ. The silent Gospel reaches further than the grandest rhetoric.

Woodrow Wilson

beyond

If He hath promised to make us happy, though He hath not particularly declared to us wherein this happiness shall consist, yet we may trust Him that made us, to find out ways to make us happy, and may believe that He who made us, without our knowledge or desire, is able to make us happy beyond them both.

John Tillotson

inexorable

It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.

cslewis

summer-day

I shall think it mercy to my soul, if my faith shall out-watch all this winter-night, and not nod or slumber, till my Lord's summer-day dawn upon me.

Samuel Rutherford

soften

It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has been not only the highest pattern of virtue but the strongest incentive to its practice; and has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.

W. E. H. Lecky

sacrifice

The principle of sacrifice is that we choose to do or to suffer what apart from our love we should not choose to do or to suffer.

William Temple

common

Every man has in his own experience some knowledge of the perplexing uncertainty of this whirligig of time. Yet with his best thought, and largest opportunity, and the application of his highest ability, he cannot penetrate far. But the Christ of God unfolds both its meaning, and its order. He shows that the goal is freedom, and the guidance love. In this way Christ appears direct to the spirit of man, not by its special acquirements, or special ability, but through its common needs and common tasks.

John Oman

nothing

I'd rather do 'nothing' with you forever, than the greatest thing on earth with someone else.

~popstar

Forget

This is what the LORD says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

Prayer and action

Prayer and action, therefore, can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. Prayer without action grows in powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation. If prayer leads us into a deeper unity with the compassionate Christ, it will always give rise to concrete acts of service. And if concrete acts of service do indeed lead us to a deeper solidarity with the poor, the hungry, the sick, the dying, and the oppressed, they will always give rise to prayer. In prayer we meet Christ, and in him all human suffering. In service we meet people, and in them the suffering Christ.

Henri J. M. Nouwen

Amor, ergo sum

Welcome to postmodernity, where even the 'I' at the centre, Descartes's last bastion, turns out to be an unreliable kaleidoscopic mirror. But with Paul there is a way through, not to a reconstruction of an arrogant modernist Self, but to a new way of being human, a way that is rooted, through baptism, in the Messiah, or more particularly in the love of the one God revealed in him. If anyone is in Christ - new creation! Not 'Cogito, ergo sum' but 'Amor, ergo sum': I am loved, therefore I am.

N.T. Wright

little bit different

Jim: ya know i just realized, this is Pam's and my first night away together. I used to play it over in my head and, it was just a little bit different. Maybe a nice hotel, or a romantic dinner. Wine. Um, but wine that wasn't made out of beats. Didn't think Dwight would be involved at all. And uh - i always imagined less manure. I mean some manure, just less.

- The Office.

expecting to be repaired

And when the cynic reminds us that people fall off crags, get lost after sunset, and are drowned by waves and eaten by lions; when the cynic cautions that faces get old and lined and forms get pudgy and sick--then we Christians do not declare that it was all a mistake. We do not avail ourselves of Plato's safety hatch and say that the real world is not a thing of space, time, and matter but another world into which we can escape. We say that the present world is the real one, and that it's in bad shape but expecting to be repaired.

~N.T. Wright: Simply Christian

hankering

Our business is to love what God would have us do. He wills our vocation as it is: let us love that, and not trifle away our time in hankering after other people's vocation.

François de Sales

twanging

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul. If heed is not paid to this, it is not true music but a diabolical bawling and twanging.

J. S. Bach

I will not

I will not complete yoU
I will not be the most attractive guy
I will not always make yoU smile
I will not always be a comfort
I will not always understand
I will not have lots of money
I will not bring yoU eternal joy
I will not bring yoU complete security
I will not set your heartf fully at peace
I will not always make yoU happy
I will not always put yoU first
I will not change exactly into who yoU want
I will not be all that i'm supposed to be
I will not be your source of life
I will not keep yoU from being lonely
I will not make yoU more beautiful
I will not encourage yoU enough
I will not thank yoU enough
I will not love yoU enough
I will not hold yoU enough
I will not be enough for yoU
I will not walk with yoU enough
I will not laugh with yoU enough
I will not cry with yoU enough
I will not be real with yoU enough
I will not seek God with yoU enough
I will not serve with yoU enough
I will not always be your closet friend
I will not always be your strongest ally
I will not always be your biggest fan
I will not be the life of the party
I will not be the master of all trades
I will not be a knight in shining armor
I will not be wholly free from my own sin
I will not be wholly free from your sin
I will not be fully redeemed
I will not be a master of Christianity
I will not be enough of a Jesus lover
I will not be enough of a crazy people lover
I will not be super romantic
I will not take your breathe away
I will not make everything alright
I will not get yoU the house that yoU may want
I will not get yoU the exact family that yoU may want
I will not make all your dreams come true
I will not be your dream come true
I will not ......
I will not be your John, Dave, Joe, or Steve

Though of all these things yoU are deserving, I am a very lacking and selfish creature.


I will only be: simply - me. . .
. . . God created (oh what a sense of humor). God loved(oh what mercy).

BUT

... my one job amongst all my lackings, is to push yoU closer to the Almighty, Loving God that created yoU as well.


(C) C.S.Popstar. Pending Publishing House. The Bat Cave, March 2009.

When Trials Come

When trials come no longer fear
For in the pain our God draws near
To fire a faith worth more than gold
And there His faithfulness is told
And there His faithfulness is told

Within the night I know Your peace
The breath of God brings strength to me
And new each morning mercy flows
As treasures of the darkness grow
As treasures of the darkness grow

I turn to Wisdom not my own
For every battle You have known
My confidence will rest in You
Your love endures Your ways are good
Your love endures Your ways are good

When I am weary with the cost
I see the triumph of the cross
So in it's shadow I shall run
Till He completes the work begun
Till He completes the work begun

One day all things will be made new
I'll see the hope You called me to
And in your kingdom paved with gold
I'll praise your faithfulness of old
I'll praise your faithfulness of old

Keith & Kristyn Getty
2005 Thankyou Music
YoUTubE