27  April 2014 — 10 AM Worship

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27  April 2014 — 3 PM Worship

Carl Trueman writes:

The problem with much Christian worship in the contemporary world, Catholic and Protestant alike, is not that it is too entertaining but that it is not entertaining enough. Worship characterized by upbeat rock music, stand-up comedy, beautiful people taking center stage, and a certain amount of Hallmark Channel sentimentality neglects one classic form of entertainment, the one that tells us, to quote the Book of Common Prayer, that “in the midst of life we are in death.” It neglects tragedy.

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Jonathan Parnell writes:

Jesus was accused of being a friend of sinners. That was the word on the street in first-century Palestine.

The precise phrase — “friend of sinners” — is mentioned twice in the Gospels, in Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:34. The naysayers of the day, the religious aristocracy, criticized Jesus as a “glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”

They called him this because it was true.

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Ed Welch writes:

James 1:5-7 seems to make obtaining wisdom impossible.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”

To get wisdom, there cannot be one bit of doubt. It is either perfect faith or nothing.

To make these words even more challenging, James is only reminding us of what Scripture has been saying all along. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:5, also 26:16). Jesus restated the theme, “No one can serve two masters” (Matt. 6:24), and “if you have faith and do not doubt…” (Matt 21:21).

All this does not sound too hopeful.

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Jason Helopoulos writes:

Most of us go through real times of spiritual melancholy in the Christian life. They can be brief or entire seasons in which, as Gisbertus Voetius said, a person “fails to feel his or her heart’s delight in God and divine things.” If you have been a Christian for any period of time, you most likely have experienced this reality. In the midst of these times we often struggle to know why this feeling has crept into our hearts. It is good for us to search our hearts in times like this. We must ask the Lord to give us wisdom in identifying the cause—even as we continue to seek him. These are eight of the most common causes:

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