Year: 2014

Categories
Christian Living

You Were Made To Burn

“You Were Made To Burn”
  by brian rushing

Today, I basically just want to share with you an extended quote from J. C. Ryle. This quote describes what it means to have zeal (or great passion) for God.
candle that is lit and slowly disintegrating fulfilling its purpose - it was meant to burn

Zeal in religion is a burning desire to please God, to do His will, and to advance His glory in the world in every possible way. It is a desire which no man feels by nature—which the Spirit puts in the heart of every believer when he is converted—but which some believers feel so much more strongly than others that they alone deserve to be called ‘zealous’ men ….

A zealous man in religion is pre-eminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he is earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough-going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit.

He only sees one thing, he cares for one thing, he lives for one thing, he is swallowed up in one thing; and that one thing is to please God.

Whether he lives, or whether he dies—
whether he has health, or whether he has sickness—
whether he is rich, or whether he is poor—
whether he pleases man, or whether he gives offence—
whether he is thought wise, or whether he is thought foolish—
whether he gets blame, or whether he gets praise—
whether he gets honour, or whether he gets shame—
for all this the zealous man cares nothing at all.
He burns for one thing; and that one thing is to please God, and to advance God’s glory.

If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it—he is content. He feels that, like a lamp, he is made to burn; and if consumed in burning, he has but done the work for which God appointed him.

Such a one will always find a sphere for his zeal.
If he cannot preach, work, and give money, he will cry, and sigh, and pray…. If he cannot fight in the valley with Joshua, he will do the work of Moses, Aaron, and Hur, on the hill (Exodus 17:9-13). If he is cut off from working himself, he will give the Lord no rest till help is raised up from another quarter, and the work is done. This is what I mean when I speak of ’zeal’ in religion. (Practical Religion, 1959 ed., p. 130)

Jesus said that you are the light of the world. You are that lamp (or candle) that was made to burn. Are you willing to be consumed in the burning, allowing your wick to burn up and your wax to pour out, spending yourself and being spent, knowing that you are simply being consumed by the work that God has appointed for you?

God, help me to be willing to be consumed in the very burning of serving You.

        (Quotes in today’s post are from Practical Religion by J. C. Ryle)


Categories
Christian Living

Life Is Full of Trouble

“Life Is Full of Trouble”
  by brian rushing

If life was able to be ordered at the drive-thru window, we’d say something like: “God, I want combo #1… the Trouble-Free Life with the side of popularity and success. Leave off the pain, problems, and frustrations. Oh, and be sure to add lots of extra cash. And go ahead and Supersize it!”

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.
Life is not Burger King. You can’t “Have it your way.”

But when we don’t get our way, and instead find ourselves on a path full of pain, heartache, and trouble, we often get disappointed with God. We wonder, “Why, God? Why is this happening to me? Why aren’t you keeping me happy?” When we have taken the false view that God’s job in our lives is to keep us happy, we’ll find that disappointment overtakes us quickly.
signs that read "disappointment" to signify life is often full of trouble
“But this idea of God’s intention is a complete mistake: God’s wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable. Not even to Christians has he promised a trouble-free life; rather the reverse. He has other ends in view for life in this world than simply to make it easy for everyone.”

Well that’s not what I want to hear!
If that’s the case, then what is His plan for my life?
If His plan for my life is not MY happiness, then what should I be looking for?

Maybe J. I. Packer has it right when he tells us that God is working for His Happiness.

It is staggering that God should love sinners; yet it is true. God loves creatures who have become unlovely and (one would have thought) unlovable. There was nothing whatever in the objects of his love to call it forth; nothing in us could attract or prompt it. Love among persons is awakened by something in the beloved, but the love of God is free, spontaneous, unevoked, uncaused. God loves people because he has chosen to love them and no reason for his love can be given except his own sovereign good pleasure.

God was happy without humans before they were made; he would have continued happy had he simply destroyed them after they had sinned; but as it is he has set his love upon particular sinners, and this means that, by his own free voluntary choice, he will not know perfect and unmixed happiness again till he has brought every one of them to heaven.

God is always working, but it is not toward my temporary happiness on earth based on a trouble-free life. Rather, God is working toward my eternal happiness based on me being with Him forever. And I have to learn that it is not my circumstances that bring me true joy and pleasure in this life, but rather it is my relationship and daily walking with Him. So trouble-free living living isn’t the goal that He has for me on this earth… walking with Him in contentment is.

How well am I walking in contentment with Him?

        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)


Categories
God

Your God Is Too Small

“Your God is Too Small”
  by brian rushing

After Hurricane Katrina, when I was rebuilding my library through the gifts of people donating books to me, one of the books that was sent to me was titled: “Your God is Too Small.” When I saw the book, I immediately thought: What a great title!
a tiny snail symbolizing how we sometimes feel about God - too small, too slow, too powerless to help us
Too often that seems to be the truth for us…
Our God is too small… That is, the God we have in mind is too small.
It was the reason that Moses questioned God’s ability to provide meat to all the Israelites when they were wandering toward the Promised Land. “God, ummm… I know you said you’d provide us with meat, but maybe while you are sitting up there in heaven you forgot to look down here and count us… there are a lot of us to feed. I’m not sure you are able to fulfill your promise.”

To which God replied: Is My arm too short? Do you think that my power is limited? Wait and see whether I can fulfill my promises.

And He did fulfill His promise.
He sent them so much meat, they got sick of eating it.

I am so very much like Moses and the Israelites. Too often, My God is too small. I don’t believe that He has the power to fulfill His promises. That is why I worry. When I worry, what I am actually saying is: “God, I’m not so sure that you are going to be able to come through for me this time.” But the truth is that God is never small. Just my faith and belief in Him are. Instead, God is too big for me to even comprehend.

The word majesty, when applied to God, is always a declaration of his greatness and an invitation to worship. The same is true when the Bible speaks of God as being on high and in heaven; the thought here is not that God is far distant from us in space, but that he is far above us in greatness, and therefore is to be adored.
”Great is the LORD, and most worthy of praise” (Ps 48:1).
“The LORD is the great God, the great King. . . . Come, let us bow down in worship” (Ps 95:3, 6).
The Christian’s instincts of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God. But this is knowledge which Christians today largely lack: and that is one reason why our faith is so feeble and our worship so flabby. We are modern people, and modern people, though they cherish great thoughts of themselves, have as a rule small thoughts of God. When the person in the church, let alone the person in the street, uses the word God, the thought is rarely of divine majesty.

A well—known book is called Your God Is Too Small; it is a timely title. We are poles apart from our evangelical forefathers at this point, even when we confess our faith in their words. When you start reading Luther, or Edwards, or Whitefield, though your doctrine may be theirs, you soon find yourself wondering whether you have any acquaintance at all with the mighty God whom they knew so intimately.

I sometimes feel that way when I read books by godly men.
I sometimes feel that way when I sit in Sunday School class and hear other people speak about their relationship with God.
I sometimes feel that way when I hear other people pray to their Heavenly Daddy.

Do you ever feel that way?

My prayer today is that of the father who came to Jesus with a demon-possessed son and said:
“…if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!”
To which Jesus said: “‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.”
And immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”

God, I do believe You are big enough to meet my every need and fulfill my every desire; help my unbelief!”

What are you facing today? Do you trust that God is big enough to handle it? Do you need to pray that He will help you get past your unbelief?


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)


Categories
Serving Others

A Good Way To Spend and Be Spent this Christmas

“A Good Way To Spend and Be Spent this Christmas”
  by brian rushing

In my previous post, I shared a quote from J. I. Packer: “…the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor — spending and being spent — to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends — in whatever way there seems need.”

I want to share with you a way that you can “spend and be spent” this Christmas… It is something that our family has begun doing each year to change our Christmas tradition.
christmas gifts

In the past, Paige and I went to the stores throughout November and December with our list of people we had to buy gifts for. It was a long list (kind of like yours!). We scrambled to find something for everyone. But we kept realizing that it was hard to buy gifts for our family that they really needed. The reason? They already had everything they needed and more. In fact, all of our family members already have more stuff than fits in all their closets, shelves, and attics! Our houses are overflowing with “stuff.” Does this seem familiar to your experience?

So we discussed the issue and decided to experiment with a different way of gift-giving at Christmas – one that helps us to better embrace the spirit of giving at Christmas. Here’s how we do it – Each adult in the family brings $50 to pool with one another (you could set a different limit, but we landed on $50). We then take the pooled amount of money and have the children in the family look through a “Missions Catalog,” such as the Samaritan’s Purse “Help Others at Christmas” gift catalog. The children then choose how we will spend our money to help others. The children have a great time in picking out items to help other children and families around the world – baby chickens, a hive of honeybees, a fishing boat, medicine, livestock… whatever they want to choose. So instead of the kids searching through a toy catalog for gifts for themselves, they end up searching through a catalog of gifts to give to other people in real need! This leads to some great “teachable moments” as we discuss with them how missionaries use the gifts to share Christ with the families who receive the presents. After selecting the gifts we will provide, we pause to say a prayer asking God to use these gifts to bless the families that receive them and to draw those family members to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.dairy_animals

I know of others in our church family that have begun doing something similar, even giving gifts to one another in the form of donations to important ministries. I know of children who had received their Christmas money and wanted to add some of their “just received funds” into the adult “pool” of money to increase what could be purchased.

It is great to finish our celebration with our families and feel a real sense that we had helped each other better understand the real meaning of Christmas – celebrating what Christ did for us and how important it is that we share Him with others. I love the idea of “giving gifts” to one another that go to help spread God’s Word all over the world to families who need to hear of the great love of Jesus! During this Christmas season, I hope that you will continue to think of ways to help your family be “on mission” for God – spending and being spent – even if that leads to “non-traditional” ideas!

If you would like to do something similar with your family, let me give you two possible sites you can visit to find great ideas:
Samaritan’s Purse
(Search for their Holiday Gift Catalog. You can view the catalog items online or even download the catalog as a .pdf file)

International Mission Board’s Strategic Projects
(You can click on “All Projects” to see all 116 items that the different missionaries are striving to do – such as the Hope Haven Wheelchair project that I recommend!).

Categories
Christian Living

Helping Others is Inconvenient So Just Ignore Them

“Helping Others is Inconvenient So Just Ignore Them”
  by brian rushing

Once again, a year has blown by us in a hurry, and we find ourselves about to celebrate two of our favorite holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Thanksgiving might could be explained as the holiday of stuffing your face until you are about to pop (and then waiting awhile and stuffing it some more); and…
Christmas as the holiday of faking good behavior so Santa will give you gifts. (Or when you have gotten a bit too old for Santa, switching it to the holiday of using Santa to threaten others into fake good behavior!)

So (tongue-in-cheek) we might could call these two holidays our celebration of the sins of gluttony and deceit!

Just kidding… We know that this is not what these holidays are all about, but too often, we seem to head down a path that doesn’t embrace a truly thankful, giving spirit that these two holidays should point us toward. Too often we find ourselves with bad attitudes (and maybe even behavior) during this time of the year. We find ourselves with hurried attitudes similar to two of the people in Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan: the priest and the Levite.
slightly blurred watch face symbolizing an inconvenient attitude of hurry
These two men should have provided kindness and mercy to the man in need, but they both failed to do so – perhaps because it was too inconvenient to do so in the busyness of their day.

J. I. Packer says: “It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians — I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians — go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians — alas, they are many — whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.
…The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor — spending and being spent — to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends — in whatever way there seems need.”

These words from Packer hit me pretty hard, as I consider my own behavior during this holiday season. I don’t like doing things that are inconvenient to me. And Helping Others is Usually Inconvenient! But that doesn’t give me (or any Christian) the right to Just Ignore Them.

And what I discover is that I am so busy with my plans, that anything “extra” that comes along during a day is pretty inconvenient – just like the beaten man was for the priest and Levite. Will I be willing to “spend and be spent” to enrich the lives of those who aren’t my friends and family this December? What will I do this holiday season to move away from the attitude of the “Christian snob” and live more like Jesus who gave His time, care, and concern to do good to others – even when it was inconvenient for Him? God, change my heart, change my attitude, change my behavior. Help me to “slow down” and stop feeling inconvenienced by others, and instead to realize that I have an opportunity to speak to others about You in each unexpected encounter.

        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)