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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 The Bible then became a book just like any other book, out-of-date in certain respects, wrong in other respects, and so on.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

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