If you haven’t checked it out yet or haven’t looked in a while, make sure you go look at Good News for Toronto.

Post from: Julian Freeman

The Heir Apparent to Challies.com?

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Note that this review was given off-the-cuff in a Q&A session. Tim has done a thorough review of the book for you to read here.

But, if you’re lazy and would prefer to listen to a 4 minute audio review, rather than read one, you can download the audio review here.

Post from: Julian Freeman

Audio Review of ‘the Shack’ by Tim Challies

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Friend and fellow church-member, Tim Challies, brought the charge, ‘Pastor, Train Your People to Think Biblically!’ The audio and text are now both available online. Click here to check out the paper and the mp3.

Here’s an excerpt:

I think we ought to pause to draw out this point just a little bit. One of the areas where discernment most often goes awry is in this area of speaking truth with love. Those who emphasize discernment are typically able to voice the truth; it is love that is far too often lacking. Many ministers, and perhaps even you, can testify to the damage done to churches in the name of discernment. Just recently pastor James MacDonald wrote that he has seen more damage done to the church by Christians with the gift of discernment than by anyone else. Many ministers have erred themselves in this regard, emphasizing truth at the expense of love. It is here that we should remember the Bible’s injunctions to remain childlike. We can go back to 1 Corinthians 14:20 and see Paul’s exhortation to “Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.” When it comes to what is evil, we need to remain as little children, being innocent toward all evil things. Too many people who emphasize discernment spend inordinate amounts of time seeking out evil, dwelling upon evil, all in the name of refuting it. There is great danger in filling our hearts and lives with what is evil. So as you train your church in discernment,  do so in a way that encourages and edifies rather than in a way that tears down and destroys.

Post from: Julian Freeman

Tim Challies’ Admonition to Toronto Pastors

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But really, I haven’t posted because of the usual culprit: The Tyranny of the Urgent. Busy-ness has come to town again, and things get dropped. That stinks, but it appears at this point to be life.

In some ways I’m envious of Martha’s situation (read the story). The text says she was ‘distracted with much serving,’ while her sister ‘sat at Jesus’ feet.’ Serving is good. Sitting at Jesus’ feet is better.

I’m envious of Martha because Jesus was there, and he could tell her. She may have wasted a day in distraction, but she was able to learn what was best for her in a moment. Jesus made it clear what she should have done; what her priorities should have been.

From talking to several brothers and sisters from GFC over the past couple weeks I’ve been overwhelmed by this reality: life is full of good things. People are busy. They are ‘distracted with much serving’ as they do everything good… even things that are commanded.

But the reality is that some things are good, some things are better, and some things are best. Martha learned that, and so must we I.

So what should I be doing? What should my priorities be? When things get busy, what should get dropped? Our culture lies to us: it says that busy-ness and productiveness determine worth. If you want to be important, you must be busy. Busy=important. Our flesh lies to us: it says that we are able to get everything done. There is no need to prioritize or put limits on what we take on, since busy=important and I want to be important, therefore I should be busy and get everything done. No wonder we drink lots of coffee. We believe that nothing should ever get dropped, because we’re sufficient.

I believe the lie far too often. I need to learn to drop things–even good things–for the sake of what is best. The first step there is humility to actually say, ‘I can’t get everything done.’

How do I determine what is best? I read the Word and let God’s truth determine priorities. So first of all, I need discernment: how do I prioritize being a Christian husband, father, pastor, friend, son, grandson, brother, etc. But, I would argue, that’s definitely doable. The part that’s even harder still is actually creating–and sticking to–a schedule that reflects these priorities and doesn’t create sinful anxiety. I’ve got a long way to go.

Post from: Julian Freeman

Good / Better / Best

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The move titled Fireproof (website, Challies dot com review) will be released all throughout the States (but apparently not in Canada) in two weeks. I was able to go preview this movie with TIm back in July–and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I’ll be the first person to say that I was not expecting much. I was expecting even less when I heard that all the actors in the movie were volunteers and amateurs (i.e. they are not paid for acting in this movie). I expected less still when I heard that the movie company was started by a church. But when the movie began, I was very pleasantly surprised.

The action scenes were phenomenal–especially given the budget with which the film was made. The acting was quite good through most of the movie (although, admittedly, some of the secondary characters were noticeably amateur). The plot was somewhat predictable, but intriguing nonetheless, and there are one or two great little twists that make it just that much more of a tear-jerker by the end.

I’m no movie critic, but really, neither are you if you’re reading this, so take my word for it: this is a great date movie. Take your significant other out and enjoy this movie. It ties marriage and our need for Christ together quite well. Even the gospel presentation is remarkably well done, considering it’s context in a movie.

Check out the trailer below.

Post from: Julian Freeman

Fireproof, the Movie

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If we reject an over-emphasis on God’s love as the basis of his character, we run the the risk of focusing too much on his justice or transcendence. If we seek to reject the feminist tide of our culture and hold to biblical distinctions between male and female, we run the risk of keeping women back from the legitimate ways that they are to serve and minister in the body of Christ. The examples are endless, and for every false doctrine there is an equally-wrong opposite reaction offered in an attempt to correct it.

Tim Challies made a comment once, when reviewing a Brian McLaren book, that McLaren appears to love Jesus, but to hate God (i.e. the Father). Bruce Ware made a nearly identical statement in a theology course I took with him recently. They both made the statement because… well… it’s true. But here’s what concerns me–I wonder how far we are from being the same.

I would never suggest that anyone at GFC or in our circles hates the Father. But I do wonder how our love for him compares to our love for Christ.

For whatever reason, the tide of our Christian culture seems to be waxing strong in our love for and devotion to Christ. Perhaps because of the resurgent emphasis on biblical as opposed to systematic theology. Maybe it is the fact that we tend to focus more on the fulfilment of our salvation, rather than the promise and story leading up to it. Maybe it is our culture’s disdain of authority (and especially authority held by a male, patriarchal figure). Maybe it is just the fact of Christ’s ‘like-us-ness’ that makes it easier for us to imagine him. Regardless of the reason, it is far more common to hear a Christian these days talking about their love for Christ than it is to hear a Christian talk about their love for the Father.

Growing in our love for Christ is always a good thing. But growing in our love for Christ at the expense of our love for the Father is not a good thing. But is this a genuine problem?

Think through the songs you sing in church. Think through the Bible reading you like to do most. Think through your conversations you’ve had recently with fellow believers. How central to your conversation, your reading, or your worship is Father himself, distinct from the other members of the Trinity? Are the affections of your heart warmed the same way when you think of God the Father as when you think of Jesus?

It was the Father’s will to create. It was the Father who chose us to be in Christ before the foundations of the world. It was the Father who planned in eternity past to send Christ, the Father who promised Christ, and the Father who carried out that plan. It was the Father’s will to crush Jesus to save you. It was the Father who had to withhold his wrath for thousands of years and then bear it all on his only true Son, thus breaking an eternity of perfect union and unbroken fellowship. It was the Father who looked away from Christ in anger in order to look to you with grace.

It was the Father’s plan to send his true Son to make you an adopted Son. It is the Father who gives you his Spirit. It is the Father who holds the king’s heart in his hand, who governs all this according to the counsel of his will, and who will bring about the end of all things in the fulness of time. It is the Father’s throne on which Christ sits, and to whom Christ will return the kingdom at the end of time. 

How is your love for the Father?

Post from: Julian Freeman

Beware the Pendulum

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Make sure to pass on the word–and please, let your pastors know!

Check it out at TorontoPastors.org

Post from: Julian Freeman

And We Are Live!

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Post from: Julian Freeman

Too Cute

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The fear of a sudden loss of ice from Greenland also makes a lot of news. A year ago, radio and television were ablaze with the discovery of “Warming Island,” a piece of land thought to be part of Greenland. But when the ice receded in the last few years, it turned out that there was open water. Hence Warming Island, which some said hadn’t been uncovered for thousands of years. CNN, ABC and the BBC made field trips to the island.

But every climatologist must know that Greenland’s last decade was no warmer than several decades in the early and mid-20th century. In fact, the period from 1970-1995 was the coldest one since the late 19th century, meaning that Greenland’s ice anomalously expanded right about the time climate change scientists decided to look at it.

Warming Island has a very distinctive shape, and it lies off of Carlsbad Fjord, in eastern Greenland. My colleague Chip Knappenberger found an inconvenient book, “Arctic Riviera,” published in 1957 (near the end of the previous warm period) by aerial photographer Ernst Hofer. Hofer did reconnaissance for expeditions and was surprised by how pleasant the summers had become. There’s a map in his book: It shows Warming Island.

The mechanism for the Greenland disaster is that summer warming creates rivers, called moulins, that descend into the ice cap, lubricating a rapid collapse and raising sea levels by 20 feet in the next 90 years. In Al Gore’s book, “An Inconvenient Truth,” there’s a wonderful picture of a moulin on page 193, with the text stating “These photographs from Greenland illustrate some of the dramatic changes now happening on the ice there.”

Really? There’s a photograph in the journal “Arctic,” published in 1953 by R.H. Katz, captioned “River disappearing in 40-foot deep gorge,” on Greenland’s Adolf Hoels Glacier. It’s all there in the open literature, but apparently that’s too inconvenient to bring up. Greenland didn’t shed its ice then. There was no acceleration of the rise in sea level.

You can read the whole very interesting article here.

Post from: Julian Freeman

A Convenient Lie

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Post from: Julian Freeman

Expelled

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