seventwentyfour

From Mr. Jeff Walawender: “Random trivia: The next time 7/24 will fall on a 7.24 is Tuesday, 7/24/2012.”

Let the party planning begin…

In The Mortification of Sin, Puritan pastor-theologian John Owen provides vital teaching in a neglected aspect of Christianity - killing sin. In this book, John Owen effectively dismisses various excuses for not engaging in self-scrutiny and yet avoids the current trend of self-absorption. In so doing, he provides principles to help believers live lives of holiness before God. Get it here.

In The Enemy Within: Straight Talk About the Power and Defeat of Sin, Kris Lundgaard draws on two works by the aforementioned Puritan in writing this modern-English distillation of Owen’s Indwelling Sin and The Mortification of Sin - two of his most renowned works. Lundgaard offers insight, encouragement, and hope for overcoming the enemy within. This book is available in the RBC bookstore or online.

Cornelius Plantinga Jr.’s Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin is a timely book that revives in modern terms the ancient awareness of sin that has slipped in recent decades. Plantinga uses clear language and draws upon myriad books, films and other cultural resources to drive home our need to simultanously hate sin and love the grace of Christ. Available at the RBC bookstore or here.

In Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate, Jerry Bridges’ asserts that we have become so preoccupied with the “major” sins of our society, Christians have ceased to heed the dangers of more subtle sins in our lives. We the Church must not act as though sin were only something out “in the world” and so tolerate jealousy, anger, pride and ungodliness within our own hearts. Bridges writes as one in the trenches and points his readers again and again to the profound mercy of the grace of Jesus. Available in the RBC bookstore or get it here.

Got a good resource to add to the list? Send it in.

The audio from July 8’s teaching is now available! Get it here.

listen | download

SEVENTWENTYFOUR | In his book The Mortification of Sin, Puritan author John Owen gives a timeless warning to Christians - “Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.” As Christian people, we rest assured that our sins are forgiven in Christ. Yet we know that in our daily lives, our old sin nature wages war against our new nature in Christ (Rom. 7). Yet, the word “sin” has all but disappeared from cultural vocabulary - and from much of the Church’s language as well. It’s uncomfortable. It’s ugly. But - it’s real, and we must must do violence against our own sin natures. How do we put into daily practice Paul’s admonition to “put to death the deeds of the body” (Rom. 8:13)?

[UPDATE] Join us at the Main Campus on Tuesday, July 22 for our next gathering. WE WILL NOT MEET JULY 15 DUE TO VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL.

Come out Tuesday, July 29 at 7:30pm as Jason VanDorsten finishes our teaching series, Killing Sin.

Don’t forget to check out LINK at 11am Sunday mornings at the RBC South Campus for worship and discussion of the weekend sermon.

Thanks much to those who joined us throughout the series How to Be Rich with Andy Stanley. I hope you were both blessed and challenged by the content.

Again, my personal encouragement to you is this: if God has lead you to change how or where you invest your time and money, make a plan and get accountable. Remember - guilt and greed are short-term motivators.  It’s easy to watch a series like this and leave with good intentions, but good intentions with no plan and no accountability is not going to get you very far.

Think of it this way - if your boss at work gave you a specific assignment to do, would you approach it without a plan? Just get to it …however, whenever? Probably not. How much more, then, when our Father prompts us to action, should we deliberately engage with Him in what He has asked us to do?

If you are interested in purchasing your own copy of How to Be Rich, you can do so at the North Point Resources Site. The DVD and mp3 audio is available there. For anyone interested in using this to lead a small group study, the DVD actually has a built-in small group curriculum.

Here is an interesting — and convicting — article from Boundless.org today that seems to go along with this month’s series, which we’re finishing up tonight.

I empathized with this woman’s situation. At the same time, it made me question if I too often have an irritated attitude at the slow pace of a situation, or if something isn’t accommodating my needs.

What popped into my head next were situations when I’m standing in line to pay for a single item at a store where only one register is open. Then the person in front of me poses a complicated question, demands a price check on an item that is 10 aisles away or writes a check. I may look like I’m waiting patiently, but inside I’m screaming, Get on with it, already! I’m inconvenienced because my expectation was to be in and out of the store in 20 minutes.

Too many times I let convenience control my perspective and decisions, and even steal my joy and focus. Where does this attitude come from? Do I spend more time worshiping the god of convenience than the God of the universe?…

As Andy Stanley might say, only rich people are so bothered by being inconvenienced. The more convenience we have, the more we depend on it, and the easier it is to become irritated when our routine is interrupted. I know I do.

And for my thoughts on one of the greatest casualties of failing to “be rich” well, check out this article at BreakPoint.

According to the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, epistemology can be defined as the “branch of philosophy that deals with knowing and the methods of obtaining knowledge”. A fascinating subject. As Christians, how do we come to know what we know? By what standard do we evaluate ideas?

Postmodernism is a much harder term to define. It is a reaction against Enlightment ideas and the reign of modernity, specifically rejecting the perceived unbiased nature of pure reason. I have read some of David Wells’ book ‘Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World’ and already I’ve been intrigued by Wells’ summary of the effects of postmodern ideas, such as the replacement of commonly held virtues with privately held values.

For information on the topic regarding the effect of postmodern thought in Christendom, check out John Hendryx and Nathan Pitchford’s take on its effect on American Evangelicalism. They do a good job on exposing the supposed humility of the postmodern-thinking Emergent Church, which asserts that faithfulness is more important than certainty.

Emergent churches have key insight into the problems with American evangelicalism. I believe that accusations like, ‘Many evangelical churches are arrogant, lack authentic community, don’t engage culture and raise people that often have a set of core beliefs that do not inform their day-to-day lives’ are genrally true, exposing its man-centered selfishness (I readily confess that I am guilty).

However, the article also exposes the hypocrisy present in the solution, because the proposed solution is also man-centered and selfish! Their answer is basically, ‘well, we can’t really know anything anyway, because we can’t view the world through a genuinely objectivce lenses, so let’s toss doctrine out because it produces hypocrites, and replace it with a general call to live lives that follow Christ’s example’. Hendryx and Pitchford rightly point out that this is ‘trading one form of certainty for another’ and worse, it is a substitute for the Gospel.

If we are arrogant, the solution is not to work really hard to try and follow Jesus’ example. The ultimate humbling truth in the world is the Gospel. It says we have ZERO righteousness and that we need the righteousness of Jesus Christ. If we lack authentic community, the greatest truth we have to combat this is the Gospel: Christ died and restored Christians, and thereby we can have authentic communion with God, and that should motivate us toward genuine communion with others. If we aren’t engaging culture, let the Gospel sober us in realizing that all men are under the wrath of God until they trust by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for salvation. And if theology isn’t inspiring our daily lives, let’s ask ourselves: what are we truly living for that we think is bigger than God? The Gospel should be our motivation for showing fruit in ALL areas of our life, because Christ is to be our supreme joy.

Join us Tuesdays in June at 7:30pm in the sanctuary as we start our summer video series, How To Be Rich, by Andy Stanley. The RBC pastors & staff are just finishing up this study, and have been both challenged and encouraged. We think you will be too.

Most of us spend our entire lives trying to get rich, and yet we never stop to consider how to be rich. Enticed by our culture, we focus so much on achieving an ever-increasing standard of living that we never realize when, in fact, we become rich. Because the reality is that if you have more than enough–including food in the pantry, money in a savings account, or clothes in your closet–then you are rich. In this four-part series, Andy Stanley explores a passage of Scripture written specifically to the rich, in order to help us learn how to be rich.

June Schedule:

• June 3 - Congratulations!
• June 10 - Daddy’s Money
• June 17 - Dollar-Cost Living
• June 24 - Diversify
• July 1 - Off Night

The audio from Pastor Paul Goodnight’s teaching from Haggai chapter one is now posted - Paneling Went Out in the 70’s. Enjoy!      listen | download

By now, many of you have probably heard of the book The Shack, which is making waves amongst Christianfolk. Our own Travis McSherley, editor of Breakpoint Online (a Prison Fellowship ministry), published a featured review of The Shack. Travis’ review is worth a read if you’ve read or heard about the book - you can check it out here.