Showing posts with label Lord Jesus Christ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lord Jesus Christ. Show all posts
Thursday, December 24, 2009
An eve of light: holy night
Merry Christmas to each of you, as you carry your burdens and pray your prayers, and trust, even as you walk through the darkness... light dawns for you! Alleluia!
Be blessed this night, this holy day!
Alleluia!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The relation of Christ to human self
First order: True to Christ = true to self
Christ is ours not because He represents our best but because He redeems our worst, not because He set a seal to our manhood but because He saves it, not because He elicits it but because He gives it. You must not tell men that the way to understand God is to understand the human heart, nor that the way to be true to men is to be true to their own selves. We are not true to men till we are in Christian relation to them; and that comes from being true to Christ and to the Word of His grace.
Selah.
P.T. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, 83.
Christ is ours not because He represents our best but because He redeems our worst, not because He set a seal to our manhood but because He saves it, not because He elicits it but because He gives it. You must not tell men that the way to understand God is to understand the human heart, nor that the way to be true to men is to be true to their own selves. We are not true to men till we are in Christian relation to them; and that comes from being true to Christ and to the Word of His grace.
Selah.
P.T. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, 83.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Angels, help us to adore Him
Praise, my soul, the King of heaven
Words: Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847)
Tune: Dulce Carmen
Praise, my soul, the King of heaven;
to his feet thy tribute bring;
ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven
who like me his praise should sing?
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise the everlasting King!
Praise him for his grace and favor
to our fathers in distress;
praise him still the same as ever,
slow to chide, and swift to bless:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Glorious in his faithfulness!
Father-like he tends and spares us;
well our feeble frame he knows;
in his hands he gently bears us,
rescues us from all our foes:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Widely as his mercy flows!
Frail as summer's flower we flourish,
blows the wind and it is gone;
but while mortals rise and perish
God endures unchanging on.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise the high eternal One!
Angels, help us to adore him,
ye behold him face to face;
sun and moon, bow down before him
dwellers all in time and space:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise with us the God of grace!
Selah.
Words: Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847)
Tune: Dulce Carmen
Praise, my soul, the King of heaven;
to his feet thy tribute bring;
ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven
who like me his praise should sing?
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise the everlasting King!
Praise him for his grace and favor
to our fathers in distress;
praise him still the same as ever,
slow to chide, and swift to bless:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Glorious in his faithfulness!
Father-like he tends and spares us;
well our feeble frame he knows;
in his hands he gently bears us,
rescues us from all our foes:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Widely as his mercy flows!
Frail as summer's flower we flourish,
blows the wind and it is gone;
but while mortals rise and perish
God endures unchanging on.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise the high eternal One!
Angels, help us to adore him,
ye behold him face to face;
sun and moon, bow down before him
dwellers all in time and space:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise with us the God of grace!
Selah.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Acuerdate oh Señor -- Holy Week
I'll share this video with you all, created for use in our special Tenebrae service. Part of my ordination vows say to serve the people with "intelligence, imagination, creativity and love." Well, this service [including video slideshow] took every ounce of that! Lots of effort and imagination, finding, creating, choosing pictures and then choosing the right song: my first attempt at creating multi-media for worship. But I absolutely couldn't have done this without integral help from Patrick. He was the technical brain behind this video. He worked so hard to make the Tenebrae service a success: thanks, Patrick! Way above the call of duty -- heavenly.
So, friends, enjoy this prayer song and video.
Make sure to click the full screen version, second button from the right.
God bless you this Easter season!
Loy
p.s. Translation of Acuerdate oh Señor
Acuerdate oh Señor
Acuerdate oh Señor
De las naciones de la tierra acuerdate
Que tu favor y tu amor
Sean derramados sobre el mundo oh Señor
En tu bondad acuerdate
En tu bondad acuerdate
Remember, oh Sir!
Remember, oh Sir!
For the nations of the earth remember
That your favor and your love
Are spilled out on the world, oh Sir!
In your kindness remember…
In your kindness remember…
Selah.
Monday, April 06, 2009
The One who brings prisoners out of darkness
Servant of Yhwh, the Chosen One
Isaiah 42:1-7
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it:
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
Selah.
Isaiah 42:1-7
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it:
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
Selah.
Grace is free but not easy
God in Christ: teleology and theodicy
There was an occasion when Christ was asked a question of theological curiosity—if the goal of salvation would include few or many. And His answer, nationally viewed, was disappointing—as if for Him such an inquiry was academic, or only inquisitive. He convened it at once into a religious occasion. He turned it into the central and primary theology, where we are not merely curious but concerned. He said that such inquiries could only be solved practically only if a greater question were first settled for our own soul; that eschatology was a matter of soteriology, and soteriology a matter of personal salvation; that we had no key to the eternal future of others except what we had for our own; that our interest in the saving of the world might be perverted to submerge our own salvation; that, in the desire to know, or even in our haste to effect, the destiny of the race, we might miss in our soul the certainty which was the root of all other.
‘Are the saved few?’ ‘Few enough to make you afraid you may not be there. See to your entry. The religious inquisitives may be eternal failures. So may the religious bustlers. You must taste salvation to discuss it. You must experience the world’s salvation to deal with the saving of the world’ (Luke xiii. 23). As if He should say: ‘Acquaint yourself with what God has done. Immerse yourself in it. The consummation will not come by man’s gradual organization under a law of love, but by the consummating Act and Gift of God in His Kingdom and its righteousness—by that and each man’s part in it.’
But that Act it was far from easy to take home. Grace is free but not easy. It was not in the growth of man’s delectable breadth and charity that Christ found the way to heaven; He cast His inquirers upon a narrow way ending in a strait gate. It was not to a wider knowledge or a larger vision that He looked for the central and final theodicy. The only final theodicy He knew was God’s saving Act, in which He Himself grew more and more straitened till it was accomplished. To know and taste that was everything. The world’s history did not make for Him the world’s final judgment; it worked up to such a judgment, where He is Himself on the bench. Love’s straightening for a tangled world was a cure for its sin – it was propitiation, the mercy of the Cross. ‘Herein is love—that He gave His Son as propitiation.’
Love that meets need finds that to be the chief need. Its first and last gift to man is the Cross. This Cross became not only a rescue from a strait but the principle and measure of the whole world. The Lord of the Cross is the final trustee of universal judgment. The whole purpose of history, if we are to believe Christ, was something more than the disentangling of a moral muddle, the evolution of a moral order, or even the growth of a moral personality; it was the redemption of that personality. Its final ethic is that involved in faith with its justifying, regenerating power. It was to bring every man to deal with Him as Savior, to plant every man at last before the judgment-seat of His Cross and Grace, to work in every man the supreme conviction of belonging to Him, and finding in Him his own new soul—new, yet his own. So that no man comes to himself till he come to Him, and the world does not’ arrive’ till it settle to rest in Him.
That is the Christian teleology of history, whether we accept it or do not. Christ, judge and justifier, is the one theodicy. The whole race says, ‘for me to live is Christ.’ Everything exists for Him—love, culture, war, tragedy, glory. He is the one moral touchstone of God and man for ever, the crucial point of the eternal and immutable morality of the Holy.
Selah.
P.T. Forsyth, The Justification of God, 54-44.
There was an occasion when Christ was asked a question of theological curiosity—if the goal of salvation would include few or many. And His answer, nationally viewed, was disappointing—as if for Him such an inquiry was academic, or only inquisitive. He convened it at once into a religious occasion. He turned it into the central and primary theology, where we are not merely curious but concerned. He said that such inquiries could only be solved practically only if a greater question were first settled for our own soul; that eschatology was a matter of soteriology, and soteriology a matter of personal salvation; that we had no key to the eternal future of others except what we had for our own; that our interest in the saving of the world might be perverted to submerge our own salvation; that, in the desire to know, or even in our haste to effect, the destiny of the race, we might miss in our soul the certainty which was the root of all other.
‘Are the saved few?’ ‘Few enough to make you afraid you may not be there. See to your entry. The religious inquisitives may be eternal failures. So may the religious bustlers. You must taste salvation to discuss it. You must experience the world’s salvation to deal with the saving of the world’ (Luke xiii. 23). As if He should say: ‘Acquaint yourself with what God has done. Immerse yourself in it. The consummation will not come by man’s gradual organization under a law of love, but by the consummating Act and Gift of God in His Kingdom and its righteousness—by that and each man’s part in it.’
But that Act it was far from easy to take home. Grace is free but not easy. It was not in the growth of man’s delectable breadth and charity that Christ found the way to heaven; He cast His inquirers upon a narrow way ending in a strait gate. It was not to a wider knowledge or a larger vision that He looked for the central and final theodicy. The only final theodicy He knew was God’s saving Act, in which He Himself grew more and more straitened till it was accomplished. To know and taste that was everything. The world’s history did not make for Him the world’s final judgment; it worked up to such a judgment, where He is Himself on the bench. Love’s straightening for a tangled world was a cure for its sin – it was propitiation, the mercy of the Cross. ‘Herein is love—that He gave His Son as propitiation.’
Love that meets need finds that to be the chief need. Its first and last gift to man is the Cross. This Cross became not only a rescue from a strait but the principle and measure of the whole world. The Lord of the Cross is the final trustee of universal judgment. The whole purpose of history, if we are to believe Christ, was something more than the disentangling of a moral muddle, the evolution of a moral order, or even the growth of a moral personality; it was the redemption of that personality. Its final ethic is that involved in faith with its justifying, regenerating power. It was to bring every man to deal with Him as Savior, to plant every man at last before the judgment-seat of His Cross and Grace, to work in every man the supreme conviction of belonging to Him, and finding in Him his own new soul—new, yet his own. So that no man comes to himself till he come to Him, and the world does not’ arrive’ till it settle to rest in Him.
That is the Christian teleology of history, whether we accept it or do not. Christ, judge and justifier, is the one theodicy. The whole race says, ‘for me to live is Christ.’ Everything exists for Him—love, culture, war, tragedy, glory. He is the one moral touchstone of God and man for ever, the crucial point of the eternal and immutable morality of the Holy.
Selah.
P.T. Forsyth, The Justification of God, 54-44.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
O Champion of all Loves
Glory to you, O Champion of all Loves
Glory to you, O Champion of all Loves,
who for our sake endured the cross,
encountered the enemy and tasted death.
Glory be to you, O King of all kings,
who for our salvation
wrestled with principalities and powers,
subdued the forces of hell
and won the greatest of all victories.
To you be all praise, all glory and all love;
now and for ever. Amen.
Alleluia!
Selah.
Glory to you, O Champion of all Loves,
who for our sake endured the cross,
encountered the enemy and tasted death.
Glory be to you, O King of all kings,
who for our salvation
wrestled with principalities and powers,
subdued the forces of hell
and won the greatest of all victories.
To you be all praise, all glory and all love;
now and for ever. Amen.
Alleluia!
Selah.