Spiritual Growth

Relational pride and humility

I’m finally reading through Gary and Betsy Ricucci’s marriage book, Love That Lasts. I’ve been meaning to read through it for a few years now. It’s full of biblical encouragement, personal examples, and practical insights.

Here’s a section I read to my wife just this morning. This excerpt alone, as they say, is “worth the price of the book”.

Pride loves to talk, reveling in every self-exalting form of self-expression

Pride is quite content with what it already knows.

Pride assumes I already understand everything I need to.

Pride assumes I don’t need help.

Pride sinfully judges others by assuming they will respond negatively or unhelpfully if I am open.

Pride uses conversation as broadcast time.

Pride doesn’t need a spouse, just an audience.

Pride denies what the gospel reveals about our seriously sinful condition (Proverbs 10:19; Gal 5:17)

Whenever Betsy poses a question or concern about my tone of voice, manner of speech, or choice of words, and my first response is to “explain” or “defend” rather than ask a lot of questions about what she heard, invariably I am confirming her concern and am guilty of pride.In contrast humility yearns to learn, because it recognizes its deficiencies (Prov 12:15).

Humility asks questions and loves dialogue.

Humility has never found someone it couldn’t learn something from.

Humility assumes there is always more to learn about anything.

Humility assumes I need others.

Humility would rather be open and vulnerable than closed and independent.

Humility uses conversation with a spouse to explore new worlds.

Humility puts energy and effort into listening.

Humility treats a spouse as a fellow traveler on the road of biblical wisdom.

Humility that leads to intimacy takes an interest in one’s spouse as a gift from God.

Humility believes what the gospel says about our desperate need for God and his grace – after we’re saved as well as before. -Gary and Betsy Ricucci, Love That Lasts, p.70-71

Filed Under: Books, Manhood/Womanhood, Spiritual Growth

Smitten with Jesus

Pastor Scotty Smith now has a blog on The Gospel Coalition website. It’s unique contribution is that the posts are prayers. They are loaded with gospel-insights and biblical truth. I haven’t read one yet that doesn’t stir the soul.

Filed Under: Spiritual Growth

What NOT to say to those who are suffering

In this brief post, Ed Welch talks about how to come alongside people who are going through trials. He makes very helpful comments about the difference between questions that are “orthodox” and questions that are “orthodox and pastoral/edifying“. Taking Welch’s wisdom to heart could go a long way in bringing support and encouragement to our friends who are going through hard times.

Filed Under: Church Life, Spiritual Growth, Theology

Vintage Powlison on "Why me?"

Another gem from Justin Taylor’s blog. How often I find myself lacking words for how grateful I am to God for David Powlison. He is a man who has suffered and has dedicated his life to helping others in suffering.

Filed Under: Spiritual Growth, Theology

What this passage "means to me"

From Thabiti Anyabwile’s post entitled, ‘What It Means to Me’:

That little sentence has been the death of many well-meaning attempts to understand the Bible. “What it means to me” ruins our understanding because it decapitates the intent of the original author. What matters first and primarily is “what did it mean to John or Paul or Luke or whoever wrote Hebrews.” What did the author intend to communicate. That’s first base in biblical interpretation and its the guard rail that keeps us from driving off into the wilderness of subjectivity and a million swamps of private interpretation.

And, ultimately, we’re concerned to know what the Author–God Himself–intends to communicate with us. If we’re hasty to rewrite the Bible with our own thoughts, we’ll ultimately write God right out of it. A premature “what it means to me” takes the pen out of God’s hand and dips it in the ink of our puny intellectual, emotional, social, psychological and usually idolatrous wells.

Read the whole post.

Filed Under: Church Life, Spiritual Growth, Theology

Worship Music or Music Worship?

That’s the name of a message I heard years ago from friend and mentor, Bob Kauflin. As a worship leader in my local church I get comments rather regularly like “that song really makes me worship” or “now that was worship” (at the end of a particularly energetic time of corporate singing) or “if you want to really wake people up, you should do this song”. Bob has challenged my thinking in these areas over the years and has helped me think more biblically about the Sunday meeting – how the ancient practice of singing praise to God connects to the larger picture of God’s purposes in the corporate gathering.

In this post, you enter a conversation that is already in progress. Bob is responding to Pastor Greg Gilbert’s thoughts on the pitfalls of over-emphasizing music in our thinking about gathered worship. Follow the links that Bob includes. The entire conversation will prove stirring and, I believe, beneficial.

Filed Under: Church Life, Spiritual Growth

Take heed what you read

“Be careful what books you read, for as water tastes of the soil it runs through, so does the soul taste of the authors that a man reads.” -John Trapp

Filed Under: Books, Spiritual Growth

Introducing Mark Dever

Last week I had the chance, over at the blog for Next, to introduce another main session speaker for the Next Conference (May, 2010): a personal favorite, Mark Dever.

Dever has what he calls a “canon of theologians”. He has a particular theologian assigned to each month of the year, such that, in a given year, in addition to his other reading, he will devote extra time to becoming more familiar with that theologian and his writings. Those 12 or so men have been so consistently edifying to his soul that he makes a point year after year to delve more deeply into their writings.

All that said, if I had a canon of living theologians/pastors, there is no question in my mind that I would take a month of every year to spend extra time benefiting from Mark’s eminently helpful books, sermons, articles, and interviews.

Filed Under: Books, Church Life, Messages, Spiritual Growth

My Favorite Books of 2009

This is a snippet of an email sent to members of the worship team at Lakeview Christian Center – a great bunch of friends and servants, and a fine group of musicians to boot. I try to encourage the team to be “readers of good books”. We want to be a worship team full of people who desire to learn more and more truth about the God we worship, so that we might lead others in God-centered, doctrinally-anchored songs that rise from grateful hearts. We certainly don’t want to worship in a way that we’re simply stringing together tired cliches that say lots about how we feel and precious little about the One we’ve gathered to worship.

So, this little list is from a recent exchange with the team. Since I’ve sent this, they’ve been chiming in one by one to let the other team members know what books have affected them the most this past year. Seeing the solid things they’ve been reading and hearing how it has affected them is a great encouragement to the whole team.

Hopefully, as we’ve talked about before, we are cultivating the art of good reading – first and foremost, God’s Word, but also – and we learn this value from God’s Word – faithful teachers and Christian leaders (whose fruitful labor lives on in books) …

Though not in any particular order, these would be the five best books I read in 2009.

Just Do Something (DeYoung, Kevin)

Pivoters [our ministry to 18-30s] always ask questions about life, marriage, calling, majors, decisions, so I read anything on this topic that I can get my hands on. DeYoung’s book is far and a way the best treatment I’ve come across on the topic of how to discern God’s will. It’s also a perfect book for someone who says “I don’t like to read” since 1) the book is pretty short 2) DeYoung’s writing is solid, engaging, and at several points humorous and 3) every Christian immediately recognizes how relevant this subject is for his/her life.

The Reason For God (Keller, Timothy)

Keller’s defense of Christian faith is beautifully written and cogently argued. He does an excellent job arguing for the biblical worldview and Christian faith as well as deconstructing some of the pillars of 21^st century skepticism. I love Keller’s writing.

Instructing Your Child’s Heart (Tripp, Paul D.)

The re-enacted conversations of how to discipline and correct children with the gospel are alone worth the price of the book.

Keeping Holiday (Meade, Starr)

Meade’s book is a kind of modern day Pilgrim’s Progress. The characters and story development effectively communicate truths like – our inability to fulfill God’s requirements, Christ’s provisions for us, the Christian standing always with “the wind in his face” (opposition to the world, flesh, devil), false promises of sin, the ways that God “speaks” and draws us to Himself, the power of grace, the traps of religion, and more. Short book. I read it to the boys. They begged for more every night. So did I.

The Institutes of the Christian Religion (Calvin, John)

I have tons of quotes from Calvin’s Institutes, but have never gone through the whole thing. It is widely regarded as one of the grandest works of Christian literature in all of church history. All of Calvin’s theology is bathed in Christ-centered devotion. He is no rationalist or dusty theologian. It was a riveting read that brought me to tears on many occasions. His letter to the King of France in 1536 (at the front) is Christian statesmanship par excellence. I trust Calvin’s magnum opus will be on my all time top 10 list when I’m 90, if I’m alive. Ref21 blog has a reading plan that will take you through it in a year. You’ll have to put on your thinking cap, but the journey is well worth the effort.

Filed Under: Books, Calvin's Institutes, Church Life, Spiritual Growth, Theology

Favorite authors: David Powlison

I’m letting myself slip little by little here because in the case of some of the writers I mention in this series, I’ve engaged their material more in sermons or articles rather than in their books. That would be the case here.

Powlison is a seasoned man – seasoned by years of ministry and some challenging personal trials. The main thing I hear him ‘say’ to me as I read and listen to his stuff, is “Matt, care for people. Listen to people. Ministry is not one size fits all. Seek to apply the gospel to the individual sitting next to you. Comfort and speak the truth in love, with patience.”

Two great places to hear him say that, in more and better words are in the following sermons:

I’ll get to Mark Dever in this series soon and talk more about this then, but the 9Marks Interviews have been an invaluable resource for me. I’ve listened to many of them, many times each. One of my all time favorites (I’d say top 3) is Dever’s interview with Powlison. The way Powlison shares his testimony is a beautiful tribute to the power of God’s grace. It’s also great stuff if you have particular interest in counseling.

Filed Under: Books, Church Life, Messages, Spiritual Growth

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