Abraham Piper's Excellent Blog
This morning I accidentally stumbled on Abraham Piper's blog,
CISongs.
It is a wonderfully refreshing site designed that contains nothing but
lyrics to songs/poems that he has written. I'll definitely be returning
often. Here's a sampling, entitled "
Clinging to the Cross," that refreshed my soul greatly this morning:
I cling fast to the cross that drowned
my sin in blood—in Christ’s blood.
(And I) shout aloud with a grateful sound,
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
If you are slipping, here’s your solid ground—
If you’re in bondage, here you’ll be unbound—
If you are lost, here you may be found—
Clinging to the cross where your sins are drowned
In blood, in blood—in Christ’s blood!
(And we) shout aloud with a grateful sound,
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
'The Ultimate and Final Question" by Lloyd-Jones
There can be no doubt whatsoever that all the troubles in the Church
today, and most of the troubles in the world, are due to a departure
from the authority of the Bible. And, alas, it was the Church herself
that led in the so-called Higher Criticism that came from Germany just
over a hundred years ago. Human philosophy took the place of
revelation, man's opinions were exalted and Church leaders talked about
'the advance of knowledge and science', and 'the assured results' of
such knowledge. The Bible then became a book just like any other book,
out-of-date in certain respects, wrong in other respects, and so on. It
was no longer a book on which you could rely implicitly.
(read more...)
The Cross He Bore by Frederick Leahy
In 13 Short Chapters, Became One Of My All-Time Favorite Books
With only 83 pages and 13 chapters this book is pregnant with
thought-provoking and soul-humbling truth that caused me often to just
cry out as a beggar to God in awe, in love, in gratefulness, and in
humble pleading for faith and grace.
Basically
what Leahy does in this book is walk the reader through Christ's last
hours on earth, His Passion. Dealing in 13 chapters with different
aspects and scenes from those hours, the divinity of Christ and His
humanness are both kept sharply in focus. The sin of mankind both for
which Christ was dying and the sins of those who directly took part in
His murder are not deminished, but neither is the fact that "It was the
will of the Lord to crush him" that it was the Lord who "has put him to
grief" (Isaiah 53:10).
I recommend that you read this book in a
quiet place with little destraction with your Bible by your side. Read
it one chapter at a time and then sit and re-read, and pray. Let the
Spirit take you back to the foot of the cross where you gaze up at your
only hope, the King of the universe hanging in misery, damnation, and
ultimately victory. Look at the cross he bore and realize that with
such a high price to secure our salvation, anything that we hope to add
or to repay will only be an insult to His gift, diminishing its value
and His glory. Let the Spirit take you to the foot of the cross where
you realize who we are, we are all beggars.
Garmin Forerunner 301
This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. The
Garmin Forerunner 301
combines a GPS with a heartrate monitor. You can use it for running,
walking, bike riding, working or whatever. This seems like a pedometer
on steroids. It keeps track of your distance traveled, speed, heart
rate, and calories burned. So basically, after going running, I can
have a record downloaded via a USB port to my computer showing me how
well I did. What really seems cool would be to track improvement over
time and to challenge myself to go further faster with fewer rests. A
major positive is that it claims to be water resistant which is a must
for me because of the massive amounts of sweat that regular pour out of
my body when I exercise.
But based on the customer
reviews, it seems like I should maybe wait
til the next implementation when they can work out the bugs of an
inconsistent heartrate monitor and apparently an inaccurate GPS (That's
wierd seeing as how it's from
Garmin).
So if anybody is looking for a birthday present ;-) this might be it.
Just kididng. If anybody wants to spend that kind of money on a
birthday present, this would be much more appreciated. I might be looking into getting of these in a future version.
Comments on Commenting on the Purpose Driven Life (PDL)
This post is sparked by another post by Phil Johnson at awesome up-and-coming blog, Pyromaniac...this one regarding
The Purpose Driven Life.
Phil has done an amazing job throughout his ministry with which I am
familiar defending the gospel. It is obvious that he loves Christ and
that comes out in his passion for doctrinal fidelity. Many readers,
however, may fall into a category of loving "theology" without loving
the God of which it speaks. And on the other side, many may read who do
not even know the God of whom we are writing. In both cases, it is the
duty of the Christian to bear testimony in word and in spirit to Christ
our Savior.
This particular entry was entitled, "
Marginal Observations about PDL®".
I agree with the substance of every marginal note that Phil made and
referenced in his original post; however, I think that we must be
careful about how we present our distrust of the book. The fact is that
many people respond to this book, and they have the seeds of the gospel
sown (I know the gospel is not even really presented here, but
nevertheless, after reading this book people may be interested in "God"
or "spirituality") and they may then stumble upon this blog looking for
someone to walk with them toward God. It's our job to then point
them to the cross and humbly walk with them (not tell them how to get
there but walk with them) to the foot of the cross. I know that all of
our concerns swirl around the the very issue of the cross (PDL simply
doesn't present a great need for it because sin is minimized, the
subject of the message is self and not God, repentance is non-existant,
no substantive mention of justification or imputation, etc), but if one
who was not "schooled in the ways of reformed blogging" stumbled onto
this site after reading the book, I think that they would write us off
as
separatist lunatics or a jealous fringe and not as something
attractive, definately not those who they would look to to offer them
further guidance (again, please note, I am not speaking of the original
blog post but to the rather harsh tone of the comments following). Then
they'll end up going to a seeker-sensitive church that will give them
nothing but a good feeling on their way to Hell. So I just want to
encourage all of you and encourage myself as well in the midst of our
blogging to consider the weaker brother.
(read more...) Keywords: Purpose,Driven,Life,blogging
Libronix Personal Book Builder Books FTP Site
The greatest Bible software in the world,
Logos Bible Software, released a nifty little thing called the
Libronix Personal Book Builder
(PBB) last year. Basically with the book builder, owners of the
software can port their own work or public domain works into the
Libronix Digital Library System. When I had heard about the release of
the book builder when it was still in pre-publication, I thought that
surely it would result in an immediate rash of free Libronix books
spreading like wildfire throughout cyberspace...no such luck. I was
sure that with the wealth of public domain texts already organized
formatted in html format at the
Christian Classics Ethereal Library a few industrious souls would revolutionize the Libronix world. Nope. Pretty much, until now, the
Logos newsgroups were the only centralized place to find the various PBB that are out there.
A few sites had collected their own works (
Concordia Theological Seminary,
John McComb's site, and others), but nothing centralized. Thomas Black has set up an
ftp site
(a little hard to access sometimes) that has a compilation of all the
personal books he knows of so far. This is the closest thing that I
know of that we have to a centralized repository of PBB books. Thanks,
Tom.
On Phil Johnson's "Quick-and-Dirty Calvinism"
I just got finished reading Phil Johnson's new post, "
Quick-and-Dirty
Calvinism" on his new blog, PyroManiac...Right on! In just a few short
paragraph's Phil distilled the recent polarizing trends on the web
(possibly reflecting views in the real world, but who knows?) in a very
convincing fashion. I was saved early in 2000; coming from a background
where when I heard the term "Calvinist" I thought of
separatist, harsh,
unthinking, religious prudes. Then, within weeks after my conversion
from fruitless and sin-indulgent religiosity to Christianity, I was
exposed to the
doctrines of grace at my first church
East Valley Bible Church Gilbert.
At first, I am very ashamed to say, I took my new-found knowledge and
"shared" it with everyone...in all actuality my old pastor, Walter
Crutchfield, probably characterized me best as Barney Fife with
"Calvinism" as the one bullet in my gun:
"I shouldn't have been trusted with it for fear of accidentally shooting myself or an innocent bystander.
"
Somehow I was deceived by the unthinkable, that the fact that I had
nothing to do with my salvation, that I was so dead in my trespasses as
to be unable to even respond to a glorious message of salvation, and
that even now in my sanctification I was powerless apart from the
willing of God...that in the knowledge of all of that I became proud.
At the discovery of the most humbling message around, I became
boastful, proud, and arrogant, even harsh. I became to a degree the
very characterization that I had applied to Calvinists. Thankfully,
being exposed to the godly lives of my two mentors in the faith--Walter
Crutchfield (who began to really temper me by giving me his very marked-up copy of
Spurgeon v. Hypercalvinism) and Daryl Ridgely--the teaching of so many Godly men who
thankfully did not characterize those traits, men like
John Piper,
C.J. Mahaney,
Al Mohler,
John MacArthur,
Tom Shrader
and others, and now to the shepherding of
my amazing elders my life was
transformed. My Calvinism
became humbling; no longer was it a
systematic theology to be merely refined and debated. My understanding
of the doctrines of grace as expressed in the Bible (not in tradition)
help me understand my conversion--not it defines my conversion. It
makes me sure that God loves me, loves me personally, not just mankind
generally. It makes me gracious. It drives my sanctification. It fuels
my understanding of the cross. It thrusts me to my knees. It leaves no room to "play church" or to "play Christianity."
(read more...) Keywords: calvinism
500+ Essential-to-Know Aquarium Species
A review of two books,
Marine Fishes by Scott Michael and
Marine Invertebrates by Ronald Shimek:
(read more...) Keywords: Aquarium
