When it’s personal, you tend to take notice. Over recent days, three soldiers from GA were killed while deployed to the Middle East. Dozens of other soldiers were injured. The unit to which these soldiers belong is just meters from my office. And the flags are now at half-staff as part of honoring these soldiers and their sacrifice. But do we notice sufficiently? What do we actually do except pause, shake our heads as if to say, “What a shame,” and “They were so young,” and “Boy, the world sure is a mess”?

I ask this not just because I’m a soldier but because I don’t know that I believe the West is, or especially that most Americans are, awake yet to the reality of how dangerous the world is, or of how the idolatry of mindless comfort brings with it deadly consequences. It seems that just so long as folks can stream their videos, take selfies, and follow Taylor Swift’s every lipstick-laden moment, they feel (not think) the world is just fine. The issue, however, is real simple: it’s called reality.

In related news, an illegal alien gives some less than polite sign language to the world after being part of a gang who assaulted New York Police Department officers. You won’t be surprised to learn that the illegal alien was released, but not before giving the world the middle finger. Good thing the progressives want to defund the police. That should help us keep progressing into the promised utopia. We’re doing fine here.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/illegal-migrant-flips-middle-fingers-charged-attacking-nypd-times-square

If you have the stomach, enjoy:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/01/31/watch-migrants-brutally-attack-nyc-cops-get-freed-from-jail-without-bail/

And Iranian-backed Houthis attacked U.S. sailors and their vessels, too, but that may’ve happened while you were on TikTok or seeing what Taylor had for breakfast.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/houthis-target-u-s-destroyer-carney-british-merchant-ship-missile-attacks-red-sea-gulf-of-aden/

Did I mention that our nation’s flags are at half-staff, again? Sorry, didn’t mean to distract you.

May I suggest a little inconvenient truth to us: You will be made to care.

That’s the way evil operates, you see. You can coast for a while. You can think it won’t affect you, but pretty soon that group of Christians who have now been indicted for praying and singing Christian hymns at an abortion mill …. well, their being persecuted will come to your doorstep eventually, you see. It’s called the silencing and the putting down of every vestige of Christian witness and sanity. You will be made to care.

We don’t want to mess with the moms murdering their babies, you see. Instead we want to punish and silence those who work to preserve life, save the babies, and minister to them and their mothers.

https://thefederalist.com/2024/01/30/dad-of-11-convicted-for-praying-at-abortion-facility-alongside-5-other-pro-lifers-targeted-by-doj/#:~:text=A%20%E2%80%9Cpeaceful%E2%80%9D%20pro%2Dlife,a%20federal%20jury%20in%20Nashville.

Just throwing it out there, folks. Ideas have consequences. Ghastly and demonic ideas tend to be followed by ghastly and demon-scented consequences. In plainspeak, it’s called the law of the harvest. We reap what we sow. And the stormclouds are gathering.

You may not see them quite yet on your social media feeds all a-glitter and sparkling with starlets and football icons, but that’s just the way the enemy of your souls wants it.

Just stay distracted; just ignore those flags at half-staff; just think it’s not your problem and that someone else will fight the bad guys on your behalf. All’s fine here, don’t you know? Social media told you so.

Oh, what’s that sound? Sounds like it’s getting closer to your zip code, to your neighborhood. Ah, nevermind. All’s well.

Sounds like a good time for some of Neil Young and Stephen Stills’ days as Buffalo Springfield:

There’s something happening here
But what it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop
Children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look, what’s going down?

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It’s time we stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look, what’s going down?

What a field day for the heat (Ooh ooh ooh)
A thousand people in the street (Ooh ooh ooh)
Singing songs and they carrying signs (Ooh ooh ooh)
Mostly say, “Hooray for our side” (Ooh ooh ooh)

It’s time we stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look, what’s going down?

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line, the men come and take you away

We better stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look, what’s going down?

You better stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look, what’s going down?

You better stop
Now, what’s that sound?
Everybody look, what’s going down?

You better stop
Children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look, what’s going down?

This morning at PT was just another iteration in years and years of morning training but I never seem to tire of watching the sky, especially on clear mornings, come alive.

Psalm 108 reads, “Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn!” (Ps 108:2 ESV).

All you need is eyes to see and ears to hear what good things God has done.

Issue: Wisdom vs. Folly: The Bible’s Binary (Depth: Part 4/5)

Recently I was having a conversation with my wife when I shared with her my love and appreciation for a teacher in my life who made a huge impact. His name was Dr. Higgins. He was an English professor in my college days who was used by God to inspire me almost like no other teacher I’d had up until then. He had read more than anyone else I’d ever met. He was one of those people who had actually read all the books that people brag about having read but few have—tomes like Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Moby Dick, all of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, Tom Jones, Bleak House, etc. Dr. Higgins seemed to have read nearly everything and for us literary types, he became a paragon of what it meant to truly be well-read and educated. Dr. Higgins became an easy model for me to emulate in my own way. 

I still think of him often, of how his lectures in the English Department building would be my favorite courses, of how he would draw a T-chart on the dry erase board, and say to us, “Learn to think clearly. On the left side of the chart are atheistic writers who share the same beliefs, the same worldview, and this is how and why their books are anti-God, anti-life books, plays, and poems (The Stranger, “Dover Beach,” Thomas Hardy’s novels, etc.)” Then on the right side of the T-chart, he’d list several theistic authors and their life-affirming works (Milton’s Paradise Lost, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, etc.).and say, “Learn to think clearly. See the pattern?” Then he would begin his lectures, and we English graduate students would feast, then be dismissed to go and learn, go and write, go and grow. 

Question: How does this relate to the Bible’s binary of wisdom vs. folly and the issue depth in the Christian life? In Proverbs, the main idea is wisdom. That’s the whole point of the book. Be wise. It’s a book of instruction delivered from a wise father to a son. It’s filled with practical wisdom for how to navigate life as a wise person rather than as a fool. 

Again and again, wisdom vs. folly is the T-chart model. Not this but that. Do this rather than that. Don’t be this way, but instead be that way, etc. Here are just a few examples:

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Pr 1:7)

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Pr 9:10)

“The fear of the LORD prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short” (Pr 10:27)

“The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor” (Pr 15:33).

Encouragement & Application: The binary is so clear in Scripture. Don’t be shallow but be a person of depth. Don’t be a mocker of God, but worship God with reverence and awe. Don’t be a fool, but rather be wise. Don’t skate upon the surface of life but examine your life in light of what ultimately matters. As John Piper wrote in a book with the same title, don’t waste your life, but rather invest it by investing in the things of eternity—truth and the souls of men. 

P.S. I miss you, Dr. Higgins. You were a wise man.

Issue: The Importance of Depth in Godly Leadership

Text: Philippians 1:9 reads, “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment . . . .”

Context: Philippians is one of the apostle Paul’s prison epistles. The label is accurate. Why? Paul was incarcerated in Rome for evangelizing his culture. History does indeed repeat patterns. Truth has always had its angelic and human enemies since Genesis 3, and even before that in the heavenlies. Light vs. darkness. Truth vs. lies. The Savior vs. the serpent.

But when Paul wrote, the theme that most characterizes this epistle of Philippians was not anger. It was not resentment. It was not hopelessness or helplessness. No, it was joy.

Paul’s prayer for his fellow believers was that their love would abound with joy. Isn’t that striking?

What’s more, he prayed that they would be knowledgeable and discerning. That is, he prayed for their spiritual depth.

The specified task was to love the brethren, and the implied tasks were that knowledge and discernment buttressed true love.

Encouragement: When I look back on the best bosses for whom I have worked, I see a common thread in all of them: They have had a joy and wisdom that underlaid and informed their leadership. That sort of demeanor is contagious. It motivates people. It attracts the right people. And it is worth our emulating.

Intro: A Call to Depth (Part 2/5)

There are some sections of Scripture that leap off the page in terms of their power. The one below from Ephesians 4 is such a passage.

Text:

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,  12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph 4:11-16, ESV).

Context: Paul was writing from his prison cell in Rome in A.D. 62 to believers in Ephesus (a port city on the western coast of modern-day Turkey) about the inheritance Christians have received in terms of wisdom. Christ, Paul tells us in Ephesians 4, gave us apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers (Eph 4:11). Why? To equip the saints (Eph 4:12). To be discerning/to grow deep (Eph 4:14). Again in v. 15, he labors the point by saying “we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

Why do we have such passages in Scripture? Because ignorance is to our shame. Because godly leadership entails wise leadership, and wisdom comes from God (James 1:5). Solomon writes so much about how wisdom is inseparable from sagacious leadership: “Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law” (Pr 29:18).

Encouragement: There is a world of difference between information, gimmicks of entertainment, and wisdom. May we be shepherd-leaders who are characterized by wisdom, and that means by knowing wisdom’s source (John 4:26).

I read a book some time ago that said every worldview, if it is to be coherent, must answer at least (4) questions:

• Who am I? (Or, what is the nature, task and purpose of human beings?)
• Where am I? (Or, what is the nature of the world and universe I live in?)
• What’s wrong? (Or, what is the basic problem or obstacle that keeps me from attaining fulfillment? In other words, how do I understand evil?
• What is the remedy? (Or, how is it possible to overcome the hindrance to my fulfillment? In other words, how do I find salvation?)

*Two books I have found super-helpful are James Sire’s Naming the Elephant: Worldview As a Concept and Walsh and Middleton’s The Transforming Vision.

Worldviews Being Played Out via Concertina Wire, Illegals, Fentanyl, & the Will to Power:

I do not watch TV, but I do read the news in order to see what is being done to my country and to the world. If you want to see worldviews in conflict, you do not have to look long. Here’s a simple graph:

National sovereignty	vs.	Borderlessness
States’ rights	vs.	Federal fiat
Law & order	vs.	Melee/lawlessness/no prosecution of crime
Protection of life & property	vs.	Abortion/infanticide/eradication of private property rights
Traditional Western biblical family values	vs.	Secularism/nihilism/postmodernism/identity politics/victim status ‘group think’

“You will be made to care” is a cliche that is nonetheless true. To use another cliche, “ideas have consequences.” Folks can say that we don’t need borders until the thugs show up on your property and the savagery ensues. When a replay of Genesis 19 happens to your family, suddenly it’s not just sunshine and rainbows anymore. Suddenly all the bromides about everybody just getting along fine, and “It’ll not affect me” thinking dissipates with a quickness. Funny how those who live lives surrounded by bodyguards, walls, fences, security cameras, bulletproof barricades, and protective armor like to lecture the little people about their intolerance.

I do not want violence; I so don’t want it. Because it tends to escalate quickly, and can, if rendered by the morally unrestrained, stagger the mind. But we are witnessing America’s military being divided against itself via federal bureaucrats. And I am fearful for my country. Texas is symptomatic of a macrocosm. And that macrocosm is a question of worldviews. Which will we live by? One leads to life; the other leads to destruction and death. May the Lord have mercy upon us.

Issue: Dangers of Depthlessness

I have several loved ones in my family that I long to be gripped by the greatness of God, but there is some resistance. One point of resistance is that Christianity has so often been presented to them as sentimentality about God loving them, drenched in Hallmark-sounding sentimentality, that they have been dumbed-down by the increasingly vapid teaching of some Christians who are charged with leading.

Yet they see me pore over volumes of church history, theology, Bibles, and biographies, etc. They see my wife fill journal after journal of prayers from her life of intercession, but then they hear that Jesus is just waiting to enter their heart, and questions about, “Why don’t they allow him to come in?” Folks, if we know anything about God at all, it certainly is not the case that he needs our permission for anything. When’s the last time you heard a pastor preach through God’s responses to Job? Here are just (3) samples of what I mean about the greatness of God:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding” (Job 38:4)

“Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?” (Job 38:8-11)  

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or can you guide the Bear with its children? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? (Job 38:31-33)

Encouragement: Like countless others in the history of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, I go through the Scriptures year after year after year. I have yet to find where God ever dumbs down the greatest story ever told. Rather, when people are confronted with the actual God who is, they collapse at his feet (Luke 8:41). Or they flee out of holy terror (Jonah). Or they are struck dead because they lied (Acts 5), or they see their own sinfulness (Isaiah 6), but they have a holy reverential fear of God (Revelation 4:10).

God is unchangeably great, magnificent, and grand. Even and especially at Calvary, when God the Son became sin and was made the curse on behalf of his people, he was raised bodily three days later in power and triumph, proving that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.

May we be confident to teach, preach, and herald the actual God of Scripture, and not substitute an anemic niceness in his stead. Why? Because the God who redeems sinners is the same God who named and sustained the Pleiades, laid the foundation of the earth, raised Lazarus, crushed the head of the serpent, and grants salvation to sinners. Herald that God, the actual God, who is Lord over all.

This little post is for me, to help me remember how the small things are not small. Let me explain.

This weekend was absolutely exhausting for me but it was a good exhaustion. Here’s how:

1. On Friday I was able to baptize a man that I (and others) have been ministering to for years now. He grew up in the Roman Catholic system, but he was given eyes to see that justification in an act of grace by sovereign God. He and I have spent a lot of hours together talking over doctrinal issues, and answering questions that growing Christians normally have. I could share many stories of how I have seen God grip this young man and reveal his (God’s) wisdom to him (the soldier). In short, however, I was deeply touched by the fact that this man, and now my brother in Christ, asked me to baptize him in the name of the triune God after he graduated from Ranger school recently. True to his nature, he was completely self-effacing and told me, “This whole journey has been about giving glory to Jesus.” Folks, I know and work with countless Rangers, and that is the very first time I have ever heard a man of his physical puissance and his bright military future, say anything like that. He was completely consumed by the grace of God and by his being a child of the King of kings. Blessing # 1.
2. On Friday night, my bride and I drove to Alabama. Friday evening, we had dinner with some precious friends. My bride used to work for our friend M. He is also the minister who officiated our wedding. And his wife, K., is an nationally board-certifed teacher, a woman who is the textbook definition of a loyal wife, shepherdess, caretaker and teacher of children, and just great friend. She loves the Lord, and it all oozes from the ways she treats people. She’s one of those people who, after you leave her presence, you feel like the world is a better place because you know she’s in it. She renews your hope in people. Blessing # 2.
3. Saturday night, we drove back home. I was able to sleep in my own bed for the first time this week. And I was so excited to be able to open the Scriptures to our Sunday school class at church today and look again into Matthew 5:14-16. I only got to one verse, because we had solid deep discussions. But we were together, assembled, gathered as a body, around the authoritative Scriptures. That’s the key. It is not about gimmicks or traditions or anything except hearing about the Lord and his revealed Word. We are all just partakers of the bread that descends from his table. Our class knows this, but they bring me (and my bride) a joy that makes sometimes long and lonely weeks away sweet beyond measure. Blessing # 3.
4. My younger child is a teenage son. I am an older man now, but I am not so old that I have forgotten what it was like to be a teenage boy. I erupted with hormones; I was worried about my pimples; I wanted to be bigger and stronger than I was; I wanted a nice car instead of no car (or a hand-me-down); I thought church was shallow and irrelevant to my life, at least most days, etc. But today after SS and church, my boy asked me to listen to some podcasts he had listened to about predistination vs. man’s ‘free’ will. I listened to them, as did my bride, and we offered our solicited feedback. My boy is grappling with these issues, folks. I am thrilled beyond measure. He is actually thinking, not just parroting talking points. He is wrestling with issues. He is not a bookworm like I am. He is not an introvert like I. He is almost totally opposite of this old man, his dad, but I cannot tell you how it warms my heart to see my boy, who has grown into an athlete, a thinker, a swimmer, a growing guitar player, and (I so pray) to be a Christian. That is what I long for more than anything else. I can pass him a library of theological tomes, but unless and until the sovereign God who formed Adam from the dust and breathed into him the breath of life breathes salvific breath into my boy, my libraries of theology are only so much reading. But just to have him pondering, wrestling Jacob-like with theological issues, makes me so proud of him that he is at least thinking about the things that most matter. Blessing # 4.
5. And one more: Our daughter is rocking her grades in courses she is taking. She’s found her niche. And I think God is on her and in her thinking. And I am quite optimistic that the prayers of her mom, the goofy blundering parenting I’ve labored to do, and the love of her brother, (and the love and prayers of her extended family) are soon to bear fruit. So, contrary to this blog’s title, this is … blessing # 5.

Question: Both taught and caught?

Principle: The Shining

Context & Text: Having been in education for years and years, a proverb that you cannot go without hearing is this: Better caught than taught. In other words, sometimes lecture is frowned upon. Be “the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage.” The list of cliches is long for how it’s best to teach myriad audiences. There are whole libraries on how to teach children versus how to teach adults, etc.

In Scripture, we see both. That is, we see lecture and inference. Here’s an example. Exodus 34 records how Moses once again went up on Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony (the Decalogue). Moses spent time in the presence of YHWH/the LORD and interceded on behalf of the people of Israel. Moses was receiving the direct words of God to teach them to the stubborn and recalcitrant people. But here’s a line that strikes me every time I read it: “Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Ex 34:29b). And in v. 35 of the same chapter, we are told “the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him [YHWH/the LORD].”

As the human leader, Moses received the lecture, so to speak, from God. Why? In order that he, before he was fit to talk or minister to others, might first be transformed, and fitted for the job to which God called him. Godly leadership is like that. So much takes place behind the scenes, away from the crowds, in the times of hard work, early mornings and late nights, in the study, in the gymnasium of the soul.

Encouragement: We remember Moses’ name today as one of the greatest names of leaders in history, a man whose bio few would dare to compete with. But Moses went it alone a lot in order that the people might see what it means to be transformed by God. Moses was not a perfect man. Far from it, he blew it on many occasions. But Moses was a man who was known by God and whose leadership carried with it the scents of having been with the LORD. Why? In order that others might not just hear of the LORD but catch it, too, via the example of Moses.

Question: What’s an Often Overlooked but Crucial Element of Godly Leadership?

Answer: Intercessory Prayer

Text & Context: It is one of my all-time favorite chapters in the Bible and is the historical basis for one of my favorite hymns. It is Exodus 33. The context is simple: Aaron, Moses’ brother, while Moses had been with God for 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain (Ex 24:18), had collected gold from the people of Israel and fashioned a golden calf. Idolatry 101. The people who had been miraculously delivered from Pharaoh’s Egyptian armies, now confessed of idols: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (ex 32:4b). Moses, of course, is furious with the people. And God is too. Why? Because God hates sin. He knows it corrupts the very nature of people. And Moses is God’s man. Moses, though a sinner himself, is God’s vessel, God’s man for the mission. God tells Moses, “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people” (Ex 33:3).

There was a tent of meeting where God would speak with Moses. A pillar of cloud would abide over the entrance to that tent when God was speaking with Moses so that the people would know of God’s presence and of God’s mediator, Moses. Moses would plead with the Lord for God to show more of his glory to Moses: “Moses said, “Please show me your glory” (Ex 33:18). What did God do? God placed Moses standing in a cleft of the rock, and God covered him so that he (Moses) would not be consumed by God’s glory, and God passed by, so to speak, to teach Moses (and the people by extension) who God is (Ex 33:20-23). It is a spectacular and stunning scene in history.  

Encouragement & Where Godly Leadership Matters: How does this apply to those who are trying to lead in godly and good ways? Here are 5 principles:

• Recognize that only God can change a person’s heart/nature (as then, so now).
• Recognize that God has his people in place as examples of salt and light amid idolatrous cultures (as then, so now).
• Recognize that idolatry always brings with it its own costs (wandering, self-destruction, consequential judgment).
• Use the opportunities God gives us to redeem the time rather than squander it.
• Remember God’s ultimate mediator was not Moses but Christ who bore the wrath so that we might live for him in our day.

For anyone curious about the hymn I referenced, it’s “He Hideth My Soul” by Fanny Crosby, the refrain of which reads:

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock,
That shadows a dry, thirsty land;
He hideth my life in the depths of His love,
And covers me there with His hand,
And covers me there with His hand.

Moses prayed on behalf of those he led and also for himself. God had his intercessor. May we look to him in repentance and faith.