my love hasn’t grown cold - bethany dillon
You shake your head
What is so hard to believe?
When you are in your bed
I sing over you the sweetest things
Because oh, my love does not tire
I’m awake when the moon is full
And I know the times when you feel lost
And you just aren’t sure
Lo and behold
My love hasn’t grown cold
For you
You cold steal away in the middle of the night
And hide in the light of day
While you cloak yourself in the darkest lies
But oh my love, it swims in the deepest oceans of fear
And as soon as you lower your head
I am here
Lo and behold
My love hasn’t grown cold
For you
If only you could see
How heaven stills when you speak
I know all your days
And I have wrapped you in mystery
And oh, my love for you
Is as wide as the galaxies
Just hold out your hand and close your eyes
And come be with me
Lo and behold
My love hasn’t grown cold
For you
When I stand before the throne
Dressed in beauty not my own
When I see Thee as Thou art,
Love Thee with unsinning heart;
Then, Lord, shall I fully know—
Not till then—how much I owe.
Charles Spurgeon
I Asked the Lord to Grow in Grace and He Almost Drove Me to Despair - John Newton
I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek, more earnestly, His face.
’Twas He who taught me thus to pray,
And He, I trust, has answered prayer!
But it has been in such a way,
As almost drove me to despair.
I hoped that in some favored hour,
At once He’d answer my request;
And by His love’s constraining pow’r,
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.
Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry pow’rs of hell
Assault my soul in every part.
Yea more, with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.
Lord, why is this, I trembling cried,
Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?
“’Tis in this way, the Lord replied,
I answer prayer for grace and faith.
These inward trials I employ,
From self, and pride, to set thee free;
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may’st find thy all in Me.
response to "living the good lie" - mimi swartz for the new york times
The New York Times and other publications brush over the motivations a person might have to pursue heterosexuality when they have homosexual inclinations. Individuals who identify themselves in the person and work of Jesus Christ are usually not taken seriously. This isn’t because their choice does not make sense, but because those who say they advocate for a liberal view of sexuality do not understand The Gospel. Jesus Christ Himself had no romantic life, children, money, and was murdered at 33 in order to save humanity from their self-destruction. It is absolutely logical and brilliantly clear why a person would “deny themselves,” as Christ taught, in order to avoid the consequences of living in misdirected relationships. How is it a stretch for a Christian to choose an infinite, unconditionally loving God over the possibility of romance in this life? The Gospel says to look at sexual intimacy and then through it, in order to understand what it points to: the inseparable, incomparably intimate union a Christian has with Jesus. But instead of seeing sex as a hint to something greater, it is seen as salvation. Humanity looks at it without looking past it. The One who created it is the ultimate Lover, which is evidenced by Him putting on the flesh of man in order to redeem the entire universe. There is a spiritual desire deep in the soul of all humanity that is far more powerful than the desires that inform physical attraction and it is this: you cannot produce your own meaning. Every soul needs rapture and can be seen as two empty arms reaching out for meaning and love, yet it is only God who can meet such a deep yearning for intimacy and identification. And here we fight to the death about the sign that points to what is much greater and accessible for people of all sexual persuasions. Love between man and man, woman and woman, or man and woman will never satisfy the deepest longings of the soul, so The New York Times could at least admit that making a life choice based on a worldview that explains the answer to that yearning is not absurd, but arguably very sensical.
Jon Fitz - On Mission
Pip Craighead - On Culture
gospel, not support groups, allow for balanced view of homosexuality
opinion piece I wrote for my university’s paper
how the gospel influences prayer
(this is slightly incoherent and pretty disorganized, but there are some important points scattered in between it all)
Holy Spirit Swag: death & naturalism
“As I see it, death is evil because it deprives us of what some of us feel is our ‘birthright’ as spiritual beings: continued intellectual, moral, and spiritual progress. We cannot quite believe that we are nothing more than complex physical systems no more worthy of continuance than trees and…
http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2011/03/23/bell-the-book-and-a-candle/Love moves the heavens and the stars. Love created the universe and love will win in the end. Rob Bell did not say this—Dante did—and Dante believed in Hell. Dante also thought all of us, including himself, in danger of going there for all eternity.
Dante believed in Hell, because of reason, reading the Bible, and because of love. If love is to win, then Hell must exist. Sadly, Rob Bell has chosen the culturally sterile, ethically bankrupt, and unloving position of denying love’s demand: hell exists and love built it.
It would be easier to disagree with Bell, if he were not so likable and also right about so many other things. Bell is admirable in being open to possibilities. Socratic questioning is a good thing and nobody should deny Bell the right to speculate.
Sadly, speculation can substitute for rigor and Rob Bell is not a very careful thinker.
Old books like the Bible require rigorous exegetical skills or they end up saying what we wish they said. Bell’s god ends up looking suspiciously like Rob Bell, never a good sign in a theologian.
Bell’s god will not take “no” for an answer. Like some cosmic lounge lizard, He follows you for eternity until you give Him a sympathy date. Bell’s god has more in common with Zeus, whose “love” always got what it wanted, than the Triune God of Scriptures. The good news about the God of the Bible is that He is nothing like Homer’s Zeus: God will let you love somebody else.
Love will win, but true love does not always get what it wants. If the beloved gets what he demands, love will accept the choice, even if that means rejection of the beloved. Our God knows our “no” means “no.”
Christianity has always been clear: if you don’t like God’s paradise, then you get to live someplace else. If you don’t like God’s rules, then God loves you enough to let you live by the rules you have chosen.
Bell struggles, it seems, with the notion that human choice counts for eternity.
This either ignores or discounts the possibility that human existence in the next life is outside of time. If humankind exists with God in Heaven or in Hell outside of time, then there is no “enduring” punishment. If time does not exist in Paradise, then there is literally no time to repent and change course. Like the angels, a person after death is fixed. The dead are literally out of time.
If the new heaven and new earth are inside of time, Bell ignores our experience of sin or any bad choices. We are most free at the moment we choose to love something we should not, but as we continue in that path we often become more addicted to our choice. Hatred grows and consumes until no will is left.
Turning away from bigotry and hatred requires intellect, but hatred and bigotry consume the intellect. God Himself cannot unmake time and if a man destroys his will and his intellect, then repentance is no longer possible. There is nothing left of the man who will not give up his petty loves or has turned his hatreds into himself.
Sin can be so rooted in a man that it becomes the man.
Bell assumes that “death” is merely a stage of human existence and does not mark an ontological change. The very substance of a person changes at death, if for no reason than he exists for a moment bodiless. This marked difference ends a phase of our existence, but Bell does not respect that division.
He demands that the afterlife look a great deal like this life, though without the nasty bits, but the life of the world to come is almost nothing like this life. This life, marred as it is by our failure to love, is only a dim shadow of the world to come. If we are not changed in this life, the very pleasures of Heaven will be greater pain than the fires of Hell.
Bell claims he is saying nothing new and this is true. He has taken the road of so many who will not love the “other” enough to hear “no.” He demands that everyone think, in the end, as he thinks. He demands his god wins, but his god is a tyrant and not the Lover of Sacred Scripture. If Bell is right, love hasn’t won… a nagging, harassing, hectoring god has.
Christians have seen this weak love too many times. What are the results?
Men who live with a healthy fear of Hell make more careful ethical choices. Love cares about the beloved. The lover cares about every word, every choice, and weighs every decision. Bell’s god wears us down, no choice we make matters in the end, and Bell’s nanny god is not worthy of love. The lover fears offending his Beloved, but nobody need to fear offending Bell’s god.
The Christian God loves us and so respects our choices. He knows who we have become and does not unmake us if we will not be unmade. If we will be damned, then damned we will be. God is just in His love and having made us with free will He does not cheat His own standards.
Men with a love of God and a fear of missing Him produced Western culture and great art. Dante, John Chrysostom, C.S. Lewis, and Jonathan Edwards disagree with Bell. Unitarians, that nineteenth-century artifact, agree with him. There is no doubt which belief is more culturally robust. The high choice between Heaven and Hell produces the cathedrals like Notre Dame; the less serious views of Bell produce ephemeral stuff suitable for a You-Tube culture.
We have seen all this before now. The Victorians who denied hell read as syrupy, culturally bound, and unaware the Holocaust was around the corner. Theologians so up-to-date they sound as dated as yesterday’s You-Tubes may like Bell, but Christians will stick with Dante’s Bible.
We could grow morbid about the truth of Hell, but need not. Love sends us to where we wish to go, respects our choices, and judges us justly and with mercy. Nobody will go to Hell that did not choose damnation and nobody will stay who wills to let things go. Bell just does not love
Our love is like a guttering candle in a high wind. It burns too weak for the gales of death which will rip apart our souls and bodies. Most of our loves are selfish and come mixed with hatred and in the face of true Love will be snuffed out. Real love, unmitigated love requires tapping into a flame that burns like the sun and cannot be extinguished when the cold winds and waves of death overwhelm us.
Bell’s comforting words will not keep our petty love from going out in that coming tsunami. It will reshape us utterly and only real love can endure it. If we are not prepared the Good Book says, the storm will extinguish our feeble candle forever. Love always wins.
By: Dr. John Mark Reynolds
