Christian

You know what you know . . .

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Bible, Open, Book, Religion, Holy. . . because you believe what you believe.

Sounds as if I got my terms mixed up, doesn’t it?  But I didn’t.  I first heard this statement many, many years ago from the evangelist Bill Rice III, son of the founder of the Bill Rice Ranch in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  (The BRR is a Christian camp that began primarily as a ministry for deaf children, brought about because the Rices’ daughter Betty was deaf.  As far as I can tell from the website, it’s still going strong today.)  It wasn’t original with him at all, but it stuck with me from that sermon.

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A Beloved Classic

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Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman by Anne Ortlund, originally published by Word Books, 1977, available in many other formats and editions.

Well!  After the Great Book Cleanout of several weeks ago, I couldn’t find my copy of this book and was very distressed to think that I might have thrown it out.  I do go back and re-read it periodically, and it means a great deal to me, so I was greatly relieved when it turned up.

I quoted Anne in the “eliminate and concentrate” post last week.  She was a tremendously talented and energetic woman who was a pastor’s wife, author, composer, and speaker.  I’m sorry that I never got to hear her speak in person, but reading this book is almost as good.  I would strongly urge you, if you’ve never done so, to get hold of a copy.  It’s quite short, only 132 pages in my edition, so you don’t have to make a major investment of time to read it.

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“All men seek happiness . . .

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Blaise pascal.jpg. . . This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
Blaise Pascal

What do you think?  We’ve all said, “I’ll regret this tomorrow,” or “I’ll be sorry I did this.”  (I’ve said it recently about my giving in to the temptation of watching just one more episode of “The Great British Bake-Off”–of which more later.)  So, if we do something that we know we’ll wish we hadn’t, does that action refute Pascal’s statement above?

If You Bring Your Best Wine to the Wedding . . .

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. . . everyone will have a good time!

Brian Patrick Leatherman, the director of the Cherry Creek Chorale, said this, or something very like this, at our rehearsal this week, in the context of the necessity for each of us to bring the best that we can to the music.  I was so struck by the comment that I asked him for the source, and he said it was a sideways reference to the wedding at Cana.  I had to think about that for a bit, but I think I get his drift. You’ll remember, I’m sure, that the wine Jesus made was much better than anything that had been served up till then.   “Thou has saved the best till now,” the governor of the feast says.  I guess I always just figured that the wine was better because it was miraculous, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t have just been more of the same stuff they’d already been serving.  No one would have ever known.  Jesus did more than He had to, and so should we.  So I gained a whole new facet of meaning for a story I’ve been hearing since childhood.

By the way, my favorite part is a little phrase tucked in near the end:  “But the servants that drew the water knew.”  The ones eating and drinking at the feast had no idea that there had been a miracle performed, but those who were actually doing the work got to be in on it.  (Read the full story in the Gospel of John 2:1-11.)

“The Lord Doesn’t Change My Feelings

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. . . uNarrow sandstone canyonntil I obey Him” (Rosaria Butterfield’s book, discussed on the previous post).  I discuss this idea of the connection between our feelings and our actions in chapter two, “How Our Emotions Work” of my book.  It’s very true that the main source of our feelings is our thoughts:  “As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 22:7 KJV).  But where do the thoughts come from?  They seem to arise spontaneously most of the time, don’t they?

Those who say that we are just products of chance and our entire mental processes are therefore  chemical reactions would then have to go on and say that our thoughts are simply random.

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A Great Shot in the Arm

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Book cover for "A Shot of Faith to the Head" A Shot of Faith {To the Head}:  Be a Confident Believer in an Age of Cranky Atheists 

by Mitch Stokes, Ph.D., published by Thomas Nelson, 2012.

Dr. Stokes has had a double career that prepared him beautifully to write about the ideas in this book.  In his earlier life he earned an M.S. in mechanical engineering and worked for an international firm where he earned five patents in gas turbine technology.  Pretty impressive.  But then he must have gotten bored or something, because he went off and earned an M.A. in religion at Yale and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Notre Dame.  He is now a college senior fellow in philosophy. So, whatever you may think about his views, you can’t say that he doesn’t have the background to write about them.

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A Book Dangerous to Preconceived Notions

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Cover of "The Triumph of Christianity"The Triumph of Christianity:  How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion by Rodney Stark,  HarperOne, 2011

Did it ever occur to you that the fall of Rome was a liberating event, not the cause of descent into barbarism, and that therefore the so-called “Dark Ages” are an invention of later historians?  That Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and subsequent support of the Church turned out to be a very mixed blessing?  That a belief in the God of the Bible encourages and supports science?  That the Crusades weren’t the horrible bloodletting that they’re usually made out to be?

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The Importance of Humility

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Cover for "Humility, True Greatness"

Humility:  True Greatness by C. J. Mahaney, Multnomah Books, 2005. Link is to the book’s Amazon page.

This little book packs a lot into a few pages.  We’d had it around the house for years and I’d never read it, which is a shame, as I could have benefited from it much sooner.  At first I struggled to get through it, as I found it a bit dry.  Come on, C.J.!  Tell us a few jokes, the way you do in your sermons!  (I’ve heard Mahaney speak several times when he was a guest preacher at a former church.)  As the book went on, though, I became more and more involved in it.  The best chapters come at the end.

Let me quote from chapter 9, “Encouraging Others”:

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