Counting The Cost

Random thoughts on walking with Jesus in this turvy-topsy world

Faith = Relationship

Knowledge of God can be fully given to man only in a Person, never in a doctrine. Faith is not the holding of correct doctrine, but personal fellowship with the living God.

 

-- William Temple

 

 

 

 

From time immemorial men have quenched their thirst with water without knowing anything about its chemical constituents. In like manner we do not need to be instructed in all the mysteries of doctrine, but we do need to receive the Living Water which Jesus Christ will give us and which alone can satisfy our souls.

 

-- Sadhu Sundar Singh

posted by: Jrobbins at 14:35 | link | comments |

More about John Bunyan

From Desiring God Ministries:

 

Luther, Bunyan, Bible, and Pain

Written by John Piper

 

January 19, 1999

 

From 1660 to 1672, John Bunyan, the English Baptist preacher, and author of Pilgrim's Progress, was in the Bedford county jail. He could have been released if he had agreed not to preach. He did not know which was worse - the pain of the conditions or the torment of freely choosing it, in view of what it cost his wife and four children. His daughter, Mary, was blind. She was 10 when he was put in jail in 1660.

 

 

“The parting with my Wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling of the Flesh from my bones . . . not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great Mercies, but also because I . . . often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries and wants that my poor Family was like to meet with should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all I had besides; Oh the thoughts of the hardship I thought my Blind one might go under, would break my heart to pieces.” (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, Evangelical Press, 1978, p. 123)

 

 

But this broken Bunyan was seeing treasures in the Word of God because of this suffering that he would probably not have seen any other way. He was discovering the meaning of Psalm 119:71, "It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes."

 

 

“I never had in all my life so great an inlet into the Word of God as now [in prison]. The Scriptures that I saw nothing in before are made in this place to shine upon me. Jesus Christ also was never more real and apparent than now. Here I have seen him and felt him indeed. . . . I have seen [such things] here that I am persuaded I shall never while in this world be able to express. . . . Being very tender of me, [God] hath not suffered me to be molested, but would with one scripture and another strengthen me against all; insomuch that I have often said, were it lawful I could pray for greater trouble for the greater comfort's sake.” (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, Evangelical Press, 1978, p. 123)

 

 

In other words, one of God's gifts to us in suffering is that we are granted to see and experience depths of his Word that a life of ease would never yield.

 

 

Martin Luther had discovered the same "method" of seeing God in his Word. He said there are three rules for understanding Scripture: praying, meditating and suffering trials. The "trials," he said, are supremely valuable: they "teach you not only to know and understand but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, how comforting God's word is: it is wisdom supreme." Therefore the devil himself becomes the unwitting teacher of God's word: "the devil will afflict you [and] will make a real doctor of you, and will teach you by his temptations to seek and to love God's Word. For I myself . . . owe my papists many thanks for so beating, pressing, and frightening me through the devil's raging that they have turned me into a fairly good theologian, driving me to a goal I should never have reached" (What Luther Says, Vol. 3, Concordia Publishing House, 1959, p. 1360).

 

 

I testify from my small experience that this is true. Disappointment, loss, sickness and fear send me deeper into God and his Word than ever. Clouds of trifling are blown away and the glory of unseen things shines in the heart's eye. Let Bunyan and Luther encourage us to lean on God's Word as never before in times of affliction. I know that there are seasons when we cannot think or read, the pain is so great. But God grants spaces of some relief between these terrible times. Turn your gaze on the Word and prove the truth of Psalm 119:71, "It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes."

 

 

Trembling to learn of God with you,

Pastor John

 

 

By John Piper. © Desiring God.

Website: www.desiringGod.org.

Email: mail@desiringGod.org.

Toll Free: 1.888.346.4700.

posted by: Jrobbins at 16:04 | link | comments |

Truth from Scripture

Excerpted from John Bunyan’s

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners:

 

 

 

Once I was troubled to know whether the Lord Jesus was man as well as God, and God as well as man. Truly in those days, let men say what they would, unless I had it with evidence from heaven, all was nothing to me, and I counted myself not set in any truth of God. I was very troubled about this point and could not tell how to resolve it. At last Revelation 5:6 came into my mind,

 

 

“And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb.”

 

 

“In the middle of the throne,” thought I, “there is the Godhead; in the middle of the elders, there is manhood.” I thought this glistened. It was a good touch and gave me sweet satisfaction.

 

 

Another Scripture that also helped me much in this is, “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).

 

 

Also, besides these teachings of God in His Word, the Lord made use of two things to confirm me in this truth: the one was the errors of the fanatics, and the other was the guilt of sin. As the fanatics opposed the truth, so God all the more confirmed me in it by leading me into the Scriptures that wonderfully upheld it.

 

 

The errors the fanatics maintained were:

 

 

1. That the Holy Scriptures were not the Word of God.

[see 1 Peter 1:20-21 ]

 

 

2. That every man in the world had the Spirit of Christ, grace, faith, and so on. [see Acts 2: 38-39 ]

 

 

3. That Christ Jesus, as crucified and dying sixteen hundred years ago, did not satisfy divine justice for the sins of the people now.

[see 1 Peter 3:18 ]

 

 

4. That Christ’s flesh and blood were within the saints.

[see Luke 24:38-40 ]

 

 

5. That the bodies of the good and bad that are buried in the churchyard will not rise again.

[see I Corinthians 15: 12-15 ]

 

 

6. That the resurrection has already passed for good men.

[see I Thessalonians 4:13-18 ]

 

 

7. That that man Jesus who was crucified between two thieves on the mount of Calvary in the land of Canaan by Judea did not ascend above the starry heaven. [see Acts 1:1-11 ]

 

 

8. That He should not, even the same Jesus that died by the hands of the Jews, come again at the last day, and as man judge all nations.

[see Revelation 20:11-20 ]

 

 

Many more vile and abominable things were in those days fomented by them. Through these I was driven to a more thorough search of the Scriptures, and was, through their light and testimony, not only enlightened but greatly confirmed and comforted in the truth.

 

 

As I said, the guilt of sin did help me much. Still, as that would come upon me, the blood of Christ did take it again and again, and that so sweetly, according to the Scriptures. Oh, friends, cry to God to reveal Jesus Christ unto you; there is no one who teaches like Him.

 

 

 

 

Click HERE to read more

posted by: Jrobbins at 16:26 | link | comments |

Realistic Prayer

The childish idea that prayer is a handle by which we can take
hold of God and obtain whatever we desire, leads to easy
disillusionment with both what we had thought to be God and what
we had thought to be prayer.

      -- Robert L. Short

posted by: Jrobbins at 14:35 | link | comments |

Update on ABC Debate on God

From The Way of the Master

Newsletter:

 

 

Thank you so much for the many encouraging emails regarding the New York atheist debate. Your kind words meant a lot to Kirk and me. The following is typical:

 

"Thanks so much for your debate on ABC's Nightline. I watched several portions on the website, and our radio station is promoting your "way of the master" website now too. Praise the Lord for the words that you shared which were VERY eye-opening and revealing and had a huge world-wide audience . . . I KNOW many lives are being reached through your commitment to Christ, and this opportunity which you knocked out of the ballpark." D.P. (WA).

 

While most have understood why we did this debate, there have been a number of Christian arm-chair quarterbacks who are publicly saying that we miserably failed--calling it "the way of the disaster," and saying that we went into the debate totally unprepared. There have also been accusations from Christians and atheists saying that I didn't keep my word. For those of you that have read what our critics are saying, I would like to address these issues.

 

 

Our primary goal in doing the debate was to preach the gospel to the countless people who would be watching in their homes, because it is the gospel that is "the power of God unto salvation" (see Romans 1:16). I have noticed that often Christian apologists present wonderful arguments at debates that sweep the floor with their opponents, but they fail to preach "Christ and Him crucified." So our strategy was that we would first present clear and solid evidence of God's existence through creation (Romans 1:20 says that creation is what leaves the world without excuse), and then focus on preaching the moral Law and the gospel. Again, our primary goal was to preach the gospel and then (where possible) support our preaching with apologetics, reason, logic, with a loving demeanor. That is what we tried to do.

 

 

We studied hard, but we had no idea what they would throw at us. So we prepared ourselves to give rational answers to questions such as why the Old Testament says to cut the hand off a woman who interferes in a fight between her husband and another man, why God told Joshua to kill every Canaanite man, woman, and child, why God condoned slavery and even the beating of slaves, why a rebellious youth was to be stoned to death, etc. We were also ready to answer questions about anthropomorphic statements in the Bible, Scripture's use of hyperbole, geocentricity, who it was who imprisoned Galileo and was behind the crusades and the Spanish inquisition, and a lot more. We thought we had all the bases covered, but one or two came out of left field for which we hadn't prepared--about "entropy" and whether or not the universe is eternal. Ironically, I have faced thousands of questions from heckler's over the years, and it was the first time I had heard that question. (I have a book coming out in a couple of months called, The Atheist Delusion, which addresses each of these questions).

 

 

While we recognize that not every Christian will agree with our approach (primarily preaching the gospel), we wanted you to understand where we were coming from. OneNewsNow.com did a survey asking: Did Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort prove the existence of God to your satisfaction? The results show that over half of those taking the survey did understand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look at how the Law (going through the Commandments) caused the arguments of this atheist to become a non-issue:

 

"I was sent this test on line . . . It started asking me 'Are you a good person?' I thought, 'Sure, I'm a good person. I haven't killed anybody.' As I took the test, something started happening. The Law (as I figured out later on), was cutting through my stony heart at the time. It was quite miraculous. It was totally unexpected. I had heard the typical gospel message before but never like this. I had never heard this before. I didn't know where it was taking me. I didn't even understand what was happening to me at first. But as I was taking that test, all these problems I had with the Bible--whether it was right or wrong, all that stuff fell away. It just fell in the background and disappeared. And pretty soon I started realizing I was in big trouble!"

 

So, our tactic was to share three main points:

 

• Creation scientifically proves there is a Creator.
• Conscience tells us there is a moral Law and therefore, there must be a Law-giver. This Law is written on the heart, and tells us we are in big trouble with the Creator.
• Conversion: Becoming a new creature in Christ is an incredibly powerful argument for Christianity.

We must have reasonable answers, for reasonable people; however, these atheists were not reasonable -- they were angry and hostile. So we wanted to keep our eye on the gospel and not allow the debate to degenerate into the Jerry Springer show. It was because of this that we decided not to break away from the format given to us by ABC. Unfortunately this was seen by a number of Christians to be weakness on our part. In hindsight, if we have one regret, it is that we should have countered them a bit more than we did. Hindsight is always 20/20.

 

 

Not Keeping my Word

There seems to be some confusion about the structure of the debate. A press release headline was changed, stating this would be a "Bible-less debate." That was never the case. In fact, I provided Brian (the atheist) with a copy of my outline some time before the debate. He knew that I would begin by demonstrating God's existence without using the Bible or faith (ie. creation proves there is a Creator). He then knew that I would then open up the Ten Commandments (ie. conscience proves there is a moral law and thus a Law Giver). Finally, he also knew that I would end with the gospel. He knew I planned to move from a presentation of the general evidence of God to specific proof about Jesus Christ. So it greatly puzzled us that Brian feigned "shock" when he heard it.

 

 

Despite these accusations, I am deeply thankful to God that the full gospel was preached on ABC's Home Page (they get 19 million visitors each month), and it is still going out all over the Internet, and will do for years to come. What an incredible opportunity we were given. Only eternity will tell what took place.

 

Thank you for your prayers.

 

 

Until the nets are full,
Ray Comfort

 

 

P.S. To see the debate through our cameras (and never-before-seen behind the scenes clips) go to YouTube.com/TheWayOfTheMaster

posted by: Jrobbins at 16:24 | link | comments |