Fargo had a snow day today. Yeah, the whole city. On March 10. I went to work this morning, but they declared hazardous conditions, so I came home.
Then I drank some hot chocolate.
So did Rebekah.
Rebekah worked from bed.
We Skyped Katie. (Actually this was a different day, but it seems like a good snow day activity.)
And we made this video.
How foolish are those men who wish to pry into the future; the telescope is ready, and they are looking through; but they are so anxious to see, that they breathe on the glass with their hot breath and they dim it, so that they can discern nothing but clouds and darkness.-Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The idiom "below the belt" is not enhanced by saying "way below the belt."
Getting hit way below the belt is much less underhanded than getting hit only slightly below the belt.
Last night I had a dream. It was Sunday morning and I was at an unfamiliar church. As the worship set was ending I was informed that I would be preaching the sermon. I was scared, but confident that the Lord would guide me through a text.
But then I was given a topic: repentance.
I got to the pulpit and fumbled through Scripture, trying to find something on repentance. For the longest time I just stood there, looking at my Bible. Then I decided to go to Nehemiah. I guess it kind of works, but preaching a sermon on repentance using Nehemiah as your supporting text seems like a stretch, or at least is not my first choice in consciousness.
I think I just had a nightmare about topical preaching.
Recently I have been thinking about the overarching authority of Scripture and it's command over any experiential citation. Often people proclaim their experiences to be authoritative, but alas, they crumble under the weight of Scripture. The following, although not entirely exhaustive, are my thoughts concerning the preceding.
Seeking an experience, rather than Scripture, for understanding or revelation is warned against directly by Jesus.
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed.
How can I pardon you?
Your children have forsaken me
and have sworn by those who are no gods.
When I fed them to the full,
they committed adultery
and trooped to the houses of whores.
They were well-fed, lusty stallions,
each neighing for his neighbor's wife.
Shall I not punish them for these things?
declares the Lord;
and shall I not avenge myself
on a nation such as this?
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Resolved, never to suffer the least motions of anger towards irrational beings.
"As with all emotion, which exist before words and independently of words, anger is hard to define with words. But we should try because evidently there are different experiences called anger, some of which are sinful and some of which are not. For example, in Mark 3:5 Jesus himself is angered by religious leaders who do not want him to heal a man on the Sabbath. "He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart." And Jesus repeatedly referred to God's anger either directly as the wrath of God in judgment (John 3:36; Luke 21:23) of indirectly in parables (Matt. 18:34; Luke 14:21).
"A standard English dictionary defines anger as "a strong feeling of displeasure and usually antagonism." The reason the phrase "as strong feeling of displeasure" can't stand by itself is that we don't think of really bad tasting food as awakening anger, even though there may be strong displeasure. That displeasure needs another component before it is experienced as anger. If someone keeps feeding us terrible food, and we sense that they are doing it intentionally then we may get angry. Anger seems to be more of less strong displeasure about something that is happening willfully and, we feel, should not be happening.
"Of course, we do sometimes get angry when that is not the case. If we trip over a root, we may turn around and kick the root in anger. If we bump our head on the kitchen cabinet, we may smack the cabinet door in anger. But in our best moments we look at those reactions as foolish. We intuitively sense that we are imputing willfulness to the root and the cabinet, as of they did something to us on purpose.
"This is why the young Jonathon Edwards resolved not to get angry in inanimate objects. His Resolution #15 said, "Resolved, never to suffer the least motions of anger towards irrational beings." Therefore, the difference between anger and other emotions of displeasure is that anger involves strong displeasure with something that is happening intentionally that we think should not be happening."-John Piper, What Jesus Demands from the World
Rebekah and I are spending the weekend in the Twin Cities with my parents and sister. Last night we attended church downtown, freeing up our Sunday to relax and celebrate my mom's birthday which is on Monday.
So, this morning as I was making my way to take a shower I passed my dad flipping through the channels. He looked at me and said rather sarcastically, "We could watch Mac Hammond." I quickly responded, "I'll pass" and continued toward the bathroom. Then I heard a familiar voice. It was Francis Chan. I did not think Cornerstone Church had a Sunday morning program, so I stopped to take a gander. Indeed it was Francis Chan, but he was on the Hour of Power. This seemed paradoxical, so I sat down to watch the program (or what was left of it). I caught the last 10 minutes and it was very good.
Pastor Francis spoke about having an eternal perspective, leaving everything to follow Jesus, and being satisfied in Christ alone which seemed extremely ironic against the gaudy backdrop of exotic plants and an organ the size of Rhode Island in a glass structure that looks more like Paul Bunyan's greenhouse than a church. Maybe that's why I found it to be so interesting. You can watch Pastor Francis on the Hour of Power here or read his message here.
Then, after the message, a song, and a benediction, there was an anticlimactic promotion for a "blessing pillow."
