What’s more important, human rights or climate change?

Just as President Obama’s domestic agenda disturbs many, comes word of his misguided – if not shameful – foreign policy agenda….

A Christian professor and author of note, wrote a short blog post on On Not Speaking Truth to Power —

Obama refuses to meet with the Dali Lama and figures opposed to tyranny. This is typical of the hard left. They refuse to support those who speak truth to tyrannical power; instead they curry favor from the powerful, as long as they are hostile to the West. This is unjust, perverse, and ungodly in the extreme. Wake up, America. Your president is a no friend of freedom, democracy, or “hope.”

Beyond the shiny spectacle of this “historic” president is an empty suit, political mantras (meaningless), a magic teleprompter, and a man who is putting America and its deepest ideals at risk for the sake of his neo-Marxist ideology.

What had triggered this?? He’d read an article by one of the senior statesmen of evangelicalism, Chuck Colson, on human rights (here). That article begins with some shocking revelations….

What’s more important to the administration’s foreign policy—climate change or human rights? The disturbing answer.

Many were shocked last February when Secretary of State Clinton said that pressing China about its human rights abuses “can’t interfere” with more important things — like “the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.”

Even the Washington Post was shocked; its editors said Clinton’s comments were “misguided.” But now it seems that Clinton was only stating what was to be official Obama administration policy.

We saw this same attitude last month when Barack Obama declined to meet with the Dali Lama. The snub was an apparent effort to curry favor with Chinese leaders — leaders who deny religious liberty and human rights, not only to their own citizens, but also to Tibetans.
(read the rest here)

Friends, the need to pray for our country, and for those in power, has seldom been greater than in our own time…
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Prayers & tears

Pastor Alistair Begg has sent out a wonderful devotional thought on this verse in his “Truth For Life” email. I think he writes with the same passion and illustration of Charles Spurgeon….

Behold, he is praying — Acts 9:11

Prayers are instantly noticed in heaven. The moment Saul began to pray, the Lord heard him. Here is comfort for the distressed but praying soul. When our hearts are broken and we bow in prayer, we are often only able to employ the language of sighs and tears; still our groaning has made all the harps of heaven thrill with music.

That tear has been caught by God and treasured in the receptacle of heaven. “Put my tears in your bottle” (Psalm 56:8), implies that they are caught as they flow. The petitioner, whose fears prevent his words, will be well understood by the Most High. He may only look up with misty eye; but “prayer is the falling of a tear.”
. . . . .
Read the rest HERE….

I would encourage you to subscribe too…
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How the Reformation was won…

I openned our Reformation Sunday sermon with this great quote from Iain H Murray (from a paper presented back in the 1960’s at the Westminster Puritan Conference)….

At the price of great suffering Protestantism won its way … not because of the superior numbers or learning of its adherents, but because through the Scriptures rivers of spiritual life had been opened up, so that instead of the teaching and traditions of a corrupt Church, men and women were hearing the words of the living God. 


…It is this conviction which explains why Christians endured so much at the beginning of the Reformation to translate and spread the Bible: they knew that here alone are the words of eternal life and that man can only live as he receives every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God. Scripture is the voice of God, and whether or not we are the subjects of God’s blessing or wrath may be experimentally determined by whether or not we reverence and obey what is written in Scripture. To be without Scripture is to be without God and without hope in the world.

Praise the Lord!
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Happy Reformation Day!

Do not have a happy halloween…

An email today from H.B London Jr (of Focus on the Family) included the following notes — sad but true….

Halloween has become a major unofficial American holiday. Researchers at Hallmark Cards report that 65 percent of us decorate our homes and offices for the annual event. It is second only to Christmas in retail spending at about $5 billion, and it is the third biggest party day of the year in the U.S.

The treat ends there for many thoughtful Christians, however, who understand a very troubling reality. Halloween is the high holy day for real witches and pagans, not just a night of “pretend.” Several hundred thousand American pagans, Druids, and witches celebrate Halloween as a holy day called Samhain (pronounced “sow-en”) or Shadowfest, a 2,000-year-old Celtic festival held to honor Samhain, the lord of earth. Pagans considered it to be the end of “life” (summer) and the beginning of “death” (winter).

Although today’s pagans don’t roam in black or bloody garb, snatching children, they nevertheless gather to sing ritual songs and chant ancient prayers, most of which were condemned by the early Christian church. Some still put out food offerings for the dead.

Halloween is still the primary festival celebrated by those who follow Satan, but most of our culture has absorbed the festival by embracing its supposedly innocent customs. In fact, modern witches, warlocks, pagans, and Satanists have long used the holiday as a “hook” to present their belief system as a fascinating, even benevolent religious alternative.

Certainly, for Christians to shun Halloween and other pagan practices is to swim against the cultural tide. But redirecting Halloween celebrations for our children and ourselves is one of the easier ways we can take a quiet stand.

“Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft” (Deut. 18:10).

Worldly ways

Back to the book “UNFASHIONABLE” by Tullian Tchividijian, kept near my reading chair in hopes of finishing it soon….

A worldly way of thinking is any mind-set that, unconciously or consciously, eliminates God and his revealed truth (the Bible) from how we approach life. the biblical notion of worldliness is a sleepiness of the soul in which the status, pleasures, comforts, and cares of the world appear solid, stunning, and affecting while the truths of Scripture become abstractions — unable to grip the heart or guide our everyday activities.

Let’s awaken and arouse our hearts and minds with the Word of God and prayer, to fend off this fiend of worldliness!

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A Pastor’s heart

The Pastor Emeritus of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois — Kent Hughes — has always been a help to me when I’ve heard him speak or read his many books and commentaries. He shares an insight about ministry which I have found to be true, but could not express nearly so well…

“To be a true minister to men is always to accept new happiness and new distress…The man who gives himself to other men can never be a wholly sad man; but no more can he be a man of unclouded gladness. To him shall come with every deeper consecration a before untested joy, but in the same cup shall be mixed a sorrow that it was beyond his power to feel before.”

– Philip Brookes
(quoted in R Kent Hughes, Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome)

Reliable preachers

Author and new pastor of Coral Ridge Pres. Church, Tullian Tchividjian (grandson of Billy Graham), writes about How To Identify a Reliable Preacher. He has five helpful questions:

#1. Does the preacher ground everything he says in the Bible?

#2. Does the preacher freely emphasize that because of sin, a right relationship with God can only be established by God’s grace alone?

#3. Does the preacher stress that salvation is not achieved by what we can do, rather salvation is received by faith in what Christ has already done?

#4. Does the preacher underline that Christ is the exclusive mediator between God and man?

#5. Does the preacher exalt God above all?

Ponder these… and pray for your preacher today.
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Australia against watching TV

In an article posted at the Banner of Truth website (originally in The Times ), comes news from the Australian Government that watching TV is detrimental to very young children (and, thus, to society).

Hmm. How long did it take them to figure this one out?!

The article is worth a look. Here is an excerpt….

Like every medium of communication, television has its uses. There are important educational programmes, in which visual images communicate what can be conveyed in no other way. There are TV classics, and forms of innocent entertainment ideally suited to the screen. A serious TV programme should be treated like a book, or a visit to the theatre — to be absorbed in a critical frame of mind.

But that is not how television is used. It is a constant flickering presence that competes for attention with all the necessary goings-on of everyday life. Over the years, as its impact has stalled, it has had recourse to ever more vulgar colours, ever grosser language and ever more mesmerising facial close-ups. When the telly is on, and in a third of Australian households, apparently, it is never off, conversation is impossible, and conversational skills cannot develop. Moreover, even the wisest and most affectionate remark will lose its flavour when heard against the clamorous vulgarities that issue from the screen.

So, let me ask you: what are your TV habits? What percentage of your free time is spent watching the tube? (or, for that matter, the mindless videos on YouTube)? Hours? Whole evenings?

Let us redeem the time, for the days are evil….
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John Piper & Me (#1)

Sorry for such a plain title for this post (hopefully the first of a brief series). I recently mentioned John’s 30th anniversary in the pulpit of BBC, and was asked this by a blog reader:

What was John Piper like on a personal level, how did he influence or change your perspective on ministry, and what would you say is the most important thing he taught you?

John Piper, and the people of Bethlehem Baptist Church (downtown Minneapolis) changed my life in profound ways in the late 1980’s. I had a fine internship at Wooddale Church — one of the largest churches in the BGC, in the suburbs of Mpls — serving under Dr Leith Anderson (now President of the NAE). I learned a lot (!) about “how to do ministry” there, and will always be grateful. Yet my soul longed for a greater connection between my reformed theology and my ministry.

Enter John Piper. Some old friends encouraged me to check out what was going on at BBC (downtown). We did. It was 1987, and I recall he was preaching through the sermons which would later become his book, “The Pleasure of God.” It was all that my soul craved — sound, reformed theology driving the preaching and shape of ministry. Within a few months Laurel and I started attending BBC; within a few months more, we moved into the inner city (that’s a great story in itself!).

What was it that captured us in the preaching of John Piper? First, (what is now obvious to the world) was his passion for the Lord and His Word. He is a preacher set on fire — heart, mind, soul and mouth — by what he sees in the Word, and desire to spread that glorious sight to others. Or perhaps I should say GOD was marvelously present in those services, in every part of them! [I'll have more to say on worship].

Second, when John preaches the BIBLE text is always front and center (unlike so much of what passes as evangelical preaching in America). This was a messenger who was faithful to the Word, and obligated to deliver it (like Paul in Romans 1, “…I am under obligation … I am eager to preach the gospel …”).

Third, what drew me to John’s preaching was the clarity of application. Everything had purpose and presented opportunities to grow in faith and to exercise faith in the Word. And as we settled in at the church, we saw a growing body of believers living out their professions in powerful ways (eg, being genuinely connected to the neighborhoods downtown).

I might add that John is much the same in person as in the pulpit, except (of course) for the volume and the mannerism that attend his preaching. The passion for God is ever on his lips and in his interactions (even in his volleyball playing!).

Thank you, Lord, for Pastor John Piper, and the saints at BBC who have been such a blessing to me, my wife, and so many.

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