Being Yourself as You're Used of God in the Body

Yesterday my wife and I worshiped in Greenville, SC with the body at New Covenant Christian Fellowship. I was encouraged, challenged, and exhorted by the brothers there, mostly through individual conversation after church over lunch and coffee. Conversing with three brothers in particular was greatly encouraging and the Lord revealed to me an important truth as I sat this morning, thinking over our discussions the day before. Each one of these three brothers has a very different personality and a very different style of relating to others. On the other hand, each of them can be accurately characterized as continually having the gospel on their lips. Their speech runs sweet with love for Jesus and their lives reflect that love in the form of humble obedience to His lordship. The first brother is a sober-minded, analytical, slightly introspective type. The second brother is an evangelistic, "let me tell you what He has done for my soul," Barnabas-the-encourager type. The third brother is a visionary, go for the gusto with the gospel, "tell me what you think about this new idea" type. Enumerating their characteristics in this way was a phenomenal help to me this morning, as I realized that each one of these men is simply being himself as he submits himself to the lordship of Christ through a life of humble obedience and diligent love for Jesus and His word. This helped me realize that I cannot be like all three of these brothers. I probably cannot be like even one of them. The only thing that I can do is be who I am. At the same time, I can be like these brothers in devoting myself to my Lord and yielding my life, my personality, and my talents to His purposes. I also realized that we all have the same Holy Spirit empowering us, so rather than wishing I had more time to fellowship with them and glean from their love for Jesus and His word, I can go straight to the foot of Jesus like Mary did and straight to His word and seek to be the things I see in them.

I apologize for the scatter-brainedness of this post. I do hope that you see the same thing I saw and cease striving to be like others, whether it be men of God around you, or men of God in history, and instead, seek to be who God has made you to be as you submit yourself to His lordship in every area of your life.

Mutual Encouragement and "One-anothering"

In Romans 1:11-2, Paul says, "For I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established; that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other's faith, both yours and mine."

These two verses really struck me in my studies today and yesterday. Just think, the Apostle Paul is about to pen the greatest letter ever written, the greatest expression of Christian Theology in the New Testament, and here in the introduction he says that he looks forward to coming to the Romans so that he can be encouraged by their faith! That is truly amazing to me. Paul shows us here an incredible amount of humility. He could've been prideful and thought, "What can I possibly learn from these Romans?" or something of the sort. But that's not the way Paul learned Christianity from his Master. Instead, Paul longed for an opportunity to come to them in order that both he and they could be encouraged by the other's faith. Is this something you practice in your local church, in your small group, in your group of friends? Is this something I practice? Dr. Black, one of my professors at SEBTS really made me aware of the New Testament concept of every member ministry and the "one-anothering" that is seen throughout the pages of the NT. Its almost like reformed soteriology, once you see it, you see it everywhere. I can't read my Bible anymore without seeing the one-anothers and the ways in which the body of Christ functioned as a family in the NT. We've drifted so far from this pattern in our modern congregations, but there are a lot of folks out there who are desperately seeking to reverse the wrongs and restore to American Christianity a more biblical model. I can only hope that the Lord will see fit to use me in this reformation of sorts.

Great food and cheap books

Tonight Lisa and I went to the Hollander's for dinner. Much thanks to them for their hospitality. The food was excellent.

The post dinner trip to Mr. Otsby's was also excellent. There Blake acquired Owen's massive 7 volume commentary on Hebrews for a mere $35 as well as many other gems. I was able to snag about 15 books for under $40. Of one D. A. Carson laments, "That it is now out of print is a serious loss." I'm happy with my purchase and the envy for Blake's good fortune is slowly subsiding.



I think I will need some more shelf space soon...



Here are my summer reading books...



Finally, I thought I'd share with you this painting my friend Matt Tolbert did for me. I love it.