“Good works do not make a man good, but a good man does good works.”
                — Martin Luther

 “I Will Prepare for Worship” from Thom S. Rainer’s blog.

This weekend I will attend my church’s worship service.
I will prepare for that corporate worship event;
I will not take the moments lightly.
I will see it as a precious time to gather with brothers and sisters in Christ. 

I will prepare for worship.
I will ask God to prepare my own heart.
I will ask Him to help me hear God’s Word clearly.
I will ask Him to speak to me that I might be changed. 

I will prepare for worship.
I pray that I will not be distracted by my own preferences:
By the style of music; the length of the sermon; the place where I sit;
Or anything that would cause me to focus on me instead of God. 

I will prepare for worship.
I will pray for my pastor that the sermon will be anointed.
I will pray for strength for my pastor,
And for encouragement in a world that often offers little. 

I will prepare for worship.
I will pray for other leaders in the church,
Leaders often unnoticed and unappreciated,
And specifically for those who sacrificially care for our children in the services. 

I will prepare for worship.
I will pray that I will hear God’s voice in the music, in the prayers,
And in every moment we gather as a body of believers,
United in heart, focus, and purpose. 

I will prepare for worship.
I will pray with my family before we leave to go the church service.
I will also pray alone for the services before we leave,
Even if it’s only for a few minutes. 

I will prepare for worship,
As I see fellow believers enter to worship together,
I will pray for them and their families,
And I will pray for their own hearts of worship. 

I will prepare for worship.
I understand I am blessed to be able to gather,
Because I know that many Christians around the world
Are being persecuted and banned from such times. 

I will prepare for worship.
I pray I will understand that it is a foretaste of heaven,
And that I will never take such times for granted,
I pray I will truly rejoice in the house of the Lord. 

I will prepare for worship.
Thank you, God, for your grace.
Thank you, God, for you goodness.
And for allowing me these precious moments to gather to worship You. 

“I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.”
—Psalm 122:1

“More than any other sport, football is about the coach, the general with the god complex who wants to map every sequence, prepare for every contingency” (Rich Cohen, Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, 17).

“Your team is a nation and on game day your nation is at war. That’s what my father understood when he tried to dissuade me from following the Cubs. He believed that a Cubs fan will come to accept defeat as the inevitable end of all earthly endeavors. A Cubs fan is fatalistic: he rends his garments and cries, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! The ultimate implication of my father’s words was left unstated: a Cubs fan has a greater likelihood of leading an unfulfilled life. Pick your team carefully, because your team is your destiny” (Rich Cohen, Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, 11-12).

“The biblical faith holds steadfastly and unmistakably to the Creator-creature distinction. “Know ye that the Lord He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Ps. 100:3). If there is such a thing as truth and falsehood, there could be no wider disparity between Biblical theology and [Ralph Waldo] Emerson. Those who hold that “all is one” are not Christians. They have the wrong worldview and the wrong god. They have deceived themselves with a worldview incapable of maintaining the preconditions for all human thinking, coherent logic, and social interaction. From a Christian point of view, this is gross idolatry in its blatant denial of the true and living God and its incorporation of man into the godhead” (Kevin Swanson, Apostate, 101).

The Bible is largely a narrative of the first 4000 years of redemptive-history. Christians should care about history, study history, and spend time learning both Biblical and extra-biblical history. Christians should be familiar with key figures and events of history. Why? As Kevin Swanson says, “God has a way of teaching His truth by historical object lessons”  (Apostate, 67).

In 2008, R.C. Sproul, Jr. made a great observation:

The internet has been about as useful in encouraging thoughtful theological discourse, or even appropriate ecclesiastical judgments, as it has been in encouraging sexual fidelity.

To echo the sentiment from prior post, somewhere in The Baptized Body Peter Leithart says, “Christians are to have a self-image not based on our own perceptions or feelings but based on the Word and promise of God.”

“From the beginning, man has always relied upon God’s verbal revelation for his ethical behavior. Immediately upon creating Adam, God spoke to him concerning His ethical requirements (Genesis 2:16-19)” (Kevin Swanson, Apostate, 41).

Even Adam in his original righteousness relied upon the Word of God. Arguing by contrasting the greater to the lesser: in light of the sinful effects of the fall and the imputation of Adam’s sin (cf. Romans 5:12-19), how much more are the sons of Adam behooved to rely upon the Word of God?

Pride. Human autonomy. Self reliance. Idolatry. These four are one in the same. Thus, self-reliance is self-destruction. We are creatures, so we need to have creaturely-reliance, i.e., man was created to be Word-reliant. Christ the God-man said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).