TRUST, WRESTLE, THINK, FIGHT, BELIEVE!

How do we overcome sin? will-power? discipline? "just say No". Romans, especially chapter 6, gives us a battle plan. Here are 5 strategies:

1) Trust the truth of Romans 1-5!

Romans 1-5 teaches us that we are JUSTIFIED! We stand without guilt before God, despite our regular mess-ups. Knowing that you wear a righteousness not of your own, the perfect righteousness of Jesus, means you know you are no longer in God's bad books. On the cross, Jesus exchanged his perfection for your sin. He was punished for that sin, and you were accepted for his perfection. You are now viewed as guiltless before God. With the crippling power of guilt broken, you can know that you are, and will be (on judgement day), accepted by God!


2) Wrestle with the complexity of Romans 6!

We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

Romans 6:1-10

Easy? No! Quick fix? Seems tough! Meaty? You bet! Solid? Like a Rock! The reality is that not all things in the bible are simple to understand. Many of the greatest, most powerful truths require thought, meditation, prayer and effort. This passage is one of them. It requires wrestling!

If you want to be a shrub, then glaze over Romans 6, leave it to the theologians and stop reading this article right now! If you want to be a baobab however, then wrestle with the truths of this passage.

This is what I see:

You died to sin!
When? When Jesus died on Golgotha!
Who died? Who you where in Adam. Basically, the old you that was a servant of slavemaster Sin!
Why? To be free from slavemaster Sin
Strange? Yes!
True? Yes!

You were resurrected!
When? When Christ was resurrected!
Who rose? The new you, created in Christ to do good works prepared beforehand (Eph 2:10)
Why? To to share in Christ's life which he lives to the glory of God
Strange? Yes!
True? Yes!

How did you die and rise? God viewed you as UNITED with Christ! Your "old man", to his death; your "new man", to his resurrection.

Why does Paul mention baptism? It is a physical demonstration of the reality of your death, burial and resurrection. In essence, a drama of your spiritual reality!

3) Think in sync with the truth!

In the same way, count (also: reckon or consider) yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:11

Because you are united to Christ, you need to think in a certain way if you want to fight sin. Count yourself, consider yourself, reckon yourself...dead to Sin. This is what happened. Your "old man" was crucified with Jesus so that you are free from Sin! Therefore don't think like you're not free! So many Christians refer to themselves as nothing but filthy rotten sinners. RUBBISH! If you think like that you're whacked and not in line with truth. Sure, you sin, but that's not your fundamental identity. Don't think like it is. Don't use the "I'm nothing but a sinner" excuse to carry on serving your old slave master, Sin. You no longer belong to him because that old self, which did belong to him, died! That's not you any more. Your new identity is now free to say NO to Sin and follow your new Master, God.

4) Fight the rebels!

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.

Romans 6:12-13

Slavemaster Sin won't give up his old throne (your body) without a fight! He knows that ultimately you follow your deepest desires. Therefore, he takes desires (which are neutral), twists them to be wicked, and uses them to control your body in a way that mocks God and is self destructive! DO NOT LET HIM REIGN!!!! He doesn't belong on the throne, God does. Let God, who has taken you from death to life, take your desires and direct them to what is truly most desirable: Himself. Then, those God-targeted desires will control your mortal body so that you glorify God and build yourself.

Don't fight your desire for pleasure with will-power; you'll lose! Don't fight it with self denial of pleasure; you'll give in! Rather, fight pleasure with pleasure; desire with desire. The pleasures of all that God has to offer (solid, healthy, eternally satisfying!) with the pleasures Sin has to offer (empty, destructive, fleeting).

Trust, wrestle, think...and on the basis of those, FIGHT! Say NO! pleasure vs pleasure. Don't believe the lie that sin is better. Prefer the pleasures/desires/passions of God!

5) Finally, Believe the promise!

For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

Romans 6:14

This verse is not a command...it's a promise. It's a promise that if you are UNITED to Jesus, you are under his favour and Sin shall not, no matter how hard he tries, be your master. God makes sure of that. Ultimately, that's where our confidence for winning the fight lies-the promise of God!

TRUST, WRESTLE, THINK, FIGHT, BELIEVE! Not for wimps...

I need your opinion/help!

We are currently in the process of designing a website for the new church plant from Jubilee into Port Elizabeth. The name of the church is New Nation. Below are two possible options for the front page (often called the splash page) of the website.

This is where I need your help. Could you let me know which of the two designs you feel is better. By better, I mean more attractive to new comers to the "digital front door" of the church. If you came accross these two "doors", which one would you feel more compelled to knock (actually, click) on?


Let me know and add some reasons if you have time. (Do this by posting a comment at the bottom of this post)

Thanks!
Jon

A heat and light vision for student/20's

As young people we have, God willing, many years ahead of us! This is awesome! Our joy as students and 20's is to spend ourselves for what satisfies most. We want God! We echo the words of
David in psalm 27:

One thing I ask of the Lord
This will I seek
That I may dwell in the courts of the Lord all the days of my life
To gaze upon His beauty
And seek Him In his temple!

As people that have experienced the unmatched pleasure of knowing God, we are grateful. We don't deserve to know the one true God in this way. All of us have broken pasts that have dishonoured God. Yet, God's passion for his Being to be worshipped in our souls is greater than the corruption of our sin!

We believe that God became man, the man Jesus. He broke into human history and, through a life of humility, love, compassion and truth, satisfied God's righteous requirements. Then, in the greatest event thus far in creation history, God revealed the fullness of his Glory in Jesus. The God-man Jesus, though he was innocent and knew no sin, became sin on behalf of those who hated him. He substituted himself for evil doers, past, present and future. He absorbed the fury of the Almighty God against their sin. A fury that would have consumed man eternally, Jesus bore in his body and soul. On the cross he died in the place of his people. He was punished for our peace. Yet death could not chain down his indestructible life. Jesus drank the cup of damnation dry. On the third day Jesus rose from the dead. He now reigns with God and as God over all creation.

As his people, rescued by his mission of the cross, we place our hope and aspirations in Jesus and all that is in store for him. We believe that one day he will return and all creation will acknowledge him for who he really is-God himself. He will be be glorified and we, his people, will share in that glory!

Until then, we live our lives to know him and make him known throughout our world. We do this in word and deed. We follow his example of humility, love, compassion and truth. We rely on him to deal with our sins and give us power, through his Spirit whom he sent, to overcome those sins. In the same way he loved the scriptures, we aim to love the scriptures. In the same way he was filled with God's Spirit, we aim to be filled with God's Spirit. Ultimately, in the same way he was on a mission, a mission to make God's plan of salvation known, we too are on a mission. The very same mission. To make God's salvation, namely Jesus, known to all peoples.

This is where we come full circle! As students and twenties we have, God willing, much time to do this! It's time to do what we were designed and created for...to glorify God through joyful hearts and sacrificial lives! Lets not waste them on on trivial fads. Rather, let us spend ourselves for the cause of Christ.

great quote from Piper

"The soul is measured by its flights,
Some low and others high,
The heart is known by its delights,
And pleasures never lie."

John Piper, Pleasures of God

Highlander

“The Lord gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.”

Spurgeon

What pastors should learn from Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards was a pastor/theologian. Piper argues that this is an essential combination that our church needs today and for the future! These are the main points he feels pastors should digest from Edwards' life.

1) Be radically single-minded in you commitment to know God

2) Labour earnestly to know the Scriptures (Get your vision of God primarily from the bible, not theologians, blogs, God-TV or Desiringgod.com)

3) Redeem the time and do what our hands find to do with all our might (be disciplined)

4) Study for the sake of heart felt worship and practical obedience (Cultivate a passion AND knowledge of God)

5) In all your study and in all your pastoral labour, seek to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

Download the audio which is worth listening to again and again.

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Biographies/1458_The_Pastor_as_Theologian/

Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause and to enable you to dispute with others, seek it for the benefit of your souls and in order to practice with what knowledge you have!

Why I trust the bible: part 1

In our world we are faced with many claims to truth, both religious and secular. Being a Christian in this world has forced me to think about why I believe that the bible reveals absolute truth. In this series of posts, I aim to share some of my journey to believing that the scriptures in the bible are in fact the truth. This series will have various parts that form my argument for why I trust the bible as divine and authoritative. I hope that as you see the path that I have travelled in coming to trust the bible, you too will be deepened in your confidence that it is the very word of God. Please feel free to ask questions if you have.

Part 1: the cornerstone of my confidence

Before coming to any sort of confidence in the inspiration and reliability of scripture, I met a person, Jesus. I didn't have a physical encounter. No angels, bright light or epiphany. Rather, I was told about him. People at various times and places told me different things about the man called Jesus (things that were admittedly from the bible). As the personality of Jesus became more formed in my mind, I began to think that he may not just be a mythical or legendary figure, as I had previously suspected. The things he had reportedly said were too real, too inappropriate, too loving, too harsh, too insightful, too novel, too timeless. In essence, too truth-like.

Then there was the testimony of history (both biblical and secular). His existence could not be denied. He was real and the notion of him as merely as a legend began to fade. The person of Jesus started to become real, and as I looked at what he said and did, he became increasingly credible and compelling. His teaching pierced to the heart of issues that we still face today. His humility, love and compassion drew me to him. His harshness showed me that he was not trying to curry the favour of men, but rather he stood for truth, and the glory of another. His effect on the world, considering that he was a simple carpenter that had no social status or rank, is totally unmatched (yet obvious for everyone to see if human history is studied). All these aspects of the person of Jesus led me to begin to place my confidence in him for an explanation of our world and for reality.

More than anything, however, his mission to die in the place of sinners as their substitute addressed one of the greatest needs and questions I had. How can I be justly reconciled to a God that must, by the constrains of his own just character, punish offenders (I had come to acknowledge that I was one of them). Jesus answered that question for me with an answer that didn't just teach me facts but revealed to me the holiness and love of God. That answer was the cross, and this was the ultimate aspect of Jesus that won my confidence. A God who is dies a humiliating, brutal death at the hands of men whom he prays for. This is what Jesus said he would do. On the cross he followed through.

I have come to trust him. I trust his words and claims, even his claims to divinity. Jesus to me is such an incredibly credible combination of qualities, teachings and deeds, that he must be divine. If he is merely the product of someone's imagination, then that someone must be divine. So, before I came to trust the scriptures, I came to trust a person whom I met through my personal reading of the biblical accounts, teaching of other people I trusted and my understanding of the world in which I live.

Before relying on the evidence of archaeology, history or textual analysis (helpful means to determining reliability of documents), I encountered a person portrayed in the gospel writings. This person stood out to me as real and glorious and he is the cornerstone of why I trust the bible.

Next: Why I trust the Old Testament writings with all their weird events and claims
Future topics:

• What about the New testament?
• Isn't this all a circular argument?
• What does history tell us about the assembly of the cannon (books in the bible)? how was each book chosen?
  
• Aren't there loads of errors in the bible?
• How believing in the sovereignty of God helps?
  
• What can I read to learn more about this?