Face the Cross

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I posted this about a year and a half ago, but it seems fitting contemplation for this Easter week. I first heard this beautiful hymn on the Wilds CD Creator, Redeemer, and King, and it literally stopped me in my tracks. You can hear the full version here.

Upon the cross of Jesus my eye at times can see
The very dying form of One who suffered there for me.

Face the cross, He hangs there in your place.
See the Lamb upon the killing tree.
Stand and look into the Savior’s face
As on the cross, He dies for you and me.

Face the cross and see the dying Son.
See the Lamb upon the killing tree.
See His anguish and His tears of love.
Face the cross, He dies to set us free.

Turn not away, turn not away.
His nail-pierced hands are reaching out to you, to you.

Look upon the One without a sin,.
Spotless Lamb upon the killing tree.
Feel His pain and love from deep within,
So great a price, yet paid so willingly.

Turn not away, turn not away,
Face the cross, face the cross.

Face the One who suffers in your place,
See the Lamb, upon the killing tree.
Light of the world, now clothed in darkness grim
As on the cross, He hangs in agony.

Face the cross and turn not away, turn not away.
His nail-pierced hands are reaching out to you.

Turn not away, behold His wounded side.
Turn not away, behold the crucified.
Face the cross, He hangs there in your place.
Face the cross, and see the King of Grace.
Face the cross, face the cross.

– Words by Herb Fromach, music by David Lantz

The Week In Words

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Welcome to The Week In Words, where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us, attributing it to its source, which can be a book, newspaper, blog, Facebook — anything that you read. More information is here.

I thought I’d share a few quotes related to Easter this week. Many of them have appeared on my blog in past years.

God expects from men something more…at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the credit of their religion as well as the satisfaction of their conscience that their Easter devotions would in some measure come up to their Easter dress. — Robert South

People say the cross is a sign of how much man is worth. That’s not true. The cross is a sign of how depraved we really are, that it took the death of God’s own Son. The only thing that could save a people like us was the death of God’s own Son under the wrath of His own Father paying the price, rising again from the dead. Powerful to say, this is the Gospel of Jesus. — Paul Washer

We greatly need the cheer of this precious Easter truth. We make too little of the place our Lord has gone to prepare for us. We rob ourselves greatly when we try to reduce heaven to a mere state of ecstatic feeling. We need the cheer which comes of having the eye of faith fixed on the better country and the city that hath the foundations. Such a certainty of an inheritance that is real and that cannot fade away goes far to mitigate the pangs which come of the fires and floods and disasters and frauds which so often despoil God’s people of their earthly possessions; for we know that the things seen are temporal, but the things not seen are eternal, and they are only a few heart-beats away. – E.P. Goodwin

IF you come to seek His face, not in the empty sepulchre, but in the living power of His presence, as indeed realizing that He has finished His glorious work, and is alive for evermore, then your hearts will be full of true Easter joy, and that joy will shed itself abroad in your homes. And let your joy not end with the hymns and the prayers and the communions in His house. Take with you the joy of Easter to the home, and make that home bright with more unselfish love, more hearty service; take it into your work, and do all in the name of the Lord Jesus; take it to your heart, and let that heart rise anew on Easter wings to a higher, a gladder, a fuller life; take it to the dear grave-side and say there the two words “Jesus lives!” and find in them the secret of calm expectation, the hope of eternal reunion. – John Ellerton

There are many tombs where we may be held if we succumb to the powers of sin and death. Hatred, self-pity, bitterness, resentment–these are tombs. By the power that raised Jesus Christ from that sealed and guarded tomb we may be delivered from whatever seals us off from life. Jesus came to give us life, nothing less than life, “abundant” life….Do you know someone you are praying for who is living in the darkness of such a tomb? Has it seemed that there is no more possibility of getting through to him than to someone buried? Resentment has sealed him off from any approach. Pray for the power of the resurrection to release him. Refuse, by the grace of God, to be held back by his bitterness. Then ask the Lord to help you to meet him next time in the consciousness of Christ risen. Instead of dreading the meeting because of the thought of former disastrous meetings, face it with joy. Christ is risen! Christ is risen! — Elisabeth Elliot, “Death Shall Not Hold Us,” from A Lamp For My Feet

If you’ve read anything that particularly spoke to you that you’d like to share, please either list it in the comments below or write a post on your blog and then put the link to that post (not your general blog link) in Mr. Linky below. I do ask that only family-friendly quotes be included. I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder.

And please do comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

Waiting For Spring

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Though cloudy skies, and northern blasts,
Retard the gentle spring awhile;
The sun will conqu’ror prove at last,
And nature wear a vernal smile.

The promise, which from age to age,
Has brought the changing seasons round;
Again shall calm the winter’s rage,
Perfume the air, and paint the ground.

The virtue of that first command,
I know still does, and will prevail;
That while the earth itself shall stand,
The spring and summer shall not fail.

Such changes are for us decreed;
Believers have their winters too;
But spring shall certainly succeed,
And all their former life renew.

Winter and spring have each their use,
And each, in turn, his people know;
One kills the weeds their hearts produce,
The other makes their graces grow.

Though like dead trees awhile they seem,
Yet having life within their root,
The welcome spring’s reviving beam
Draws forth their blossoms, leaves, and fruit.

But if the tree indeed be dead,
It feels no change, though spring return,
Its leafless naked, barren head,
Proclaims it only fit to burn.

Dear LORD, afford our souls a spring,
Thou know’st our winter has been long;
Shine forth, and warm our hearts to sing,
And thy rich grace shall be our song.

-John Newton, 1779, from Olney Hymns, vol. 2, hymn 31

Laudable Linkage and Cool Videos

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I didn’t have quite as much time for web surfing this week, but here are a few noteworthy things I did see:

The Unsaved Christian. Someone on Facebook linked to this. At first I balked at the title because someone is not a Christian if unsaved, so this seemed like a misnomer, but the article explains what she means and gently but clearly sounds a needed warning.

Winning Your Friends to Christ, HT to Susan.

Grace Spots.

Responding to the Scandal. If you saw the recent 20/20 report on abuse within IFB churches, this is the best response I have seen, HT to my son, Jeremy. I’ve been thinking about writing a post about this issue, but this hasn’t been a week I could have extended thoughtful time at the computer. But Dr. Bauder says just about everything I would say and more, and much better.

Homemade Note Pads are presented as a Teacher Appreciation Gift, but they’d be good for anyone.

Styrofoam Wall Art. I forget where I saw the link to this. I’ve seen similar ideas using canvas, but this would be cheaper.

Timelapse Video of San Francisco-to-Paris flight Captures Aurora Borealis. Neat article and video.

This is pretty funny. I can see how they do some of it, but they do the change-out pretty fast!

Have a great Saturday! We had storms through the night and lost power this morning, but I am so glad it is back on now!

Book Review: 10 Gospel Promises For Later Life

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I don’t usually begin book reviews this way, but I feel I must say at the outset that I cannot recommend 10 Gospel Promises For Later Life by Jane Marie Thibault.

The premise is a good one. Mrs. Thibault has been a clinical gerontologist and has worked with the elderly for nearly thirty years. After a consultation with a pastor whose housebound church members said they had trouble relating to the gospel any more for various reasons, Mrs. Thibault began discussing this with her patients and heard similar comments. So she compiled a list of ten major concerns elderly people face — among them, depending on others for help, fear of illness, pain, fragility, disability, loneliness, losing everything and ending up in a nursing home, life after death — and sought to apply gospel truth to them.

While there are some helpful parts to the book, unfortunately there are several major difficulties.

In a section speaking of Jesus’ suffering on the cross, the author says:

Jesus realized that his suffering was necessary. The only way he could convince humanity of God’s love for us was to die for his cause and his teaching. He put his money where his mouth was, dying for his message out of total and complete God-love for the entire world’s well-being until the end of time (p. 85).

Jesus’ death was much more than dying for his cause to convince us of his teaching! He died so that those who believe could be”justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus (Romans 3:24-26.) If a judge told a convicted murderer that he could go free, everyone would cry that that was unjust. In the same way, God cannot just forgive sins without satisfying His justice. When Jesus took our sin on Himself and suffered our punishment, that act satisfied God’s holiness and justice, so He could justify us and still be just Himself, and those who receive Christ as Savior receive as well “the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe” (Romans 3:22).

Another major problem I have with the book is Mrs. Thibault’s belief that living people can ask the dead for help. Speaking of “institutionally acknowledged saints,” she writes:

“If they continue to live in God’s love and to participate in God’s love of us, the saints might also help us in our daily lives, especially if we ask them to enable us to grow in our love of God and one another” p. 121-122).

“I also believe that every single Christian in the church visible (that’s us) can ask for help from anyone in the church triumphant (those who have been promoted into heaven before us”) (p. 123).

She relates that in struggling with forgiving her mother because of feeling that her mother had been apathetic to her and emotionally abandoned her before her death when the author was a teenager, the author wrote a prayer to her mother asking that the two of them work on healing their relationship.

There is nothing in the Bible that encourages interaction with the dead: in fact, there are warnings against it. Deuteronomy 18:11 says, “There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.” The only time I can remember in the Bible that anyone tried to communicate with the dead was in I Samuel 28 when King Saul was desperate because the Philistines were about to attack him and God wasn’t answering his prayers any more because of his disobedience. He tried to contact the prophet Samuel through a medium, and Samuel did not say, “Hi there, what can I do for you?” He said, “Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?” He not only did not help him, but he prophesied that Saul and his sons would be die. There is nothing I am aware of in the New Testament that would negate these warnings. Mrs. Thibault is not advocating using mediums or having seances, but still, there is nothing in the Bible instructing us to seek help from the dead or to pray to anyone other than God. Why would we want to, anyway, when He has promised to meet every need exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think?

A third major problem is the idea that “By interpreting our suffering as energy that can be useful to the human community and by offering this energy to God, we unite our sufferings with those of Christ…In effect, we turn the energy of our suffering into a gift for others to use for their well-being” (p. 86). She posits “According to the string theory of quantum physics, we are all inter-connected by subatomic ‘strings’ along which energy flows from one created thing to another. We can use our will, our intention, to direct this energy wherever we want it to go” (p. 88-89). According to my husband, who is a physicist, this is a faulty application, and the string theory is just a theory: according to Wikipedia, “The theory has yet to make testable experimental predictions, which a theory must do in order to be considered a part of science.” Mrs. Thibault says “This sounds like the scientific equivalent of Jesus’ image of the vine and the branches” (p. 89), but Jesus is speaking of the spiritual life and energy He gives to those who abide in Him (John 15), not of our directing energy wherever we want it. She writes, “Jesus has promised us that we can use our suffering energy for the welfare of all” (p.91). Not in any version of the Bible I have ever read. There are many Scriptural reasons for suffering, but nothing like this is mentioned: even the section of suffering for others’ sake does not indicate this kind of thing. The author tells of “dedicated suffering” as a group for agreed upon persons and says that those who participated in this kind of thing decreased their doctor visits and personal complaints. I don’t doubt that they felt better, but I think it was more likely due to the thought that their pain could help others and the practice of each participant expressing his or her pain. It is helpful to discuss your pain with others who also experience pain who would uniquely understand you. The author says this practice of offering the energy created by our pain to others or to God for Him to use for others “has its theological foundation” in Colossians 1:24: “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church.” But I do not believe this type of practice is what Paul is talking about (my views on what this verse is teaching align more with what is taught here.)

Even though there were parts of the book I found helpful and useful, I cannot endorse it overall for these reasons.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

The Week In Words

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Barbara Harper

This is one of those weeks when I have many I want to share, but I am afraid if I share all of them at once, some will lose their impact and get lost in the shuffle. But if I try to leave some for another week when I don’t have any….well, so far there has been only one week like that! So I think I will just get started and then decide what to do.

This is a quote from a former pastor on a friend’s Facebook:

“Obedience is not legalism. It is the beautiful response of spirit-enabled people to say yes to God.” — Mark Minnick

That’s a rich one that really needs some time to meditate on. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced being accused of legalism when you were simply trying to obey something you felt Scripture taught (and another differed on), but I have. Or, on the other hand, some people so emphasize grace that they don’t seem to see a need for obedience because they have grace for their disobedience. God provides grace in abundance when we fail, but He provides grace to obey and avoid failing, too if we ask Him (speaking here of the everday walk of a Christian — we all need God’s grace for salvation because we all have failed in the first place.)

This was seen at Challies in a review of the book Written in Tears by Luke Veldt which he wrote after reading Psalm 103 every day for a year after his teen-age daughter suddenly died. I haven’t read the book yet, but I want to.

Sometimes people of faith have a hard time remembering that suffering was an excruciatingly painful process for Job. ‘The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord,’ we quote Job brightly—forgetting that when he said it he had shaved his head and torn his clothes and that a few days later he was sitting on an ash heap, covering in painful boils and cursing the day he was born.

Don’t try to make the pain go away. The pain doesn’t go away. Hurt with me.

Rich advice for anyone wanting to help anyone suffering.

From a devotional titled The Invitation by Derick Bingham. commenting on John 7:37, 44:

You are not big enough to be the goal of your own existence. Make Him your goal.

The next few are from Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross: Experiencing the Passion and Power of Easter, compiled by Nancy Guthrie.

From Adrian Rogers on Isaiah 53:7 concerning Jesus’s silence before His accusers (p. 53):

If Jesus had risen up in His own defense during His trials, I believe He would have been so powerful and irrefutable in making His defense that no governor, high priest, or other legal authority could have stood against Him! In other words, if Jesus had taken up His own defense with the intention of refuting His accusers and proving His innocence, He would have won! But we would have lost, and we would be lost for all eternity.

I had never thought about it that way before, but I am sure that that is at least one of the reasons for His silence.

And from Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Hebrews 2:14-15 (p. 77-78):

The world was very pleased with itself, was it not, as it looked upon him there dying upon the cross? That is why they laugh. That is why they are joking. At last they had got him, they had nailed him, they had killed him. He was finished….. The devil thought he was defeating Christ, but Christ was reconciling us to God, defeating the devil and delivering us out of His clutches.

If it was not so deadly serious, the irony would be amusing that when the devil did his worst against Christ, Christ was using that very act to redeem men and deliver them from the devil.

I think I will stop there today — I have another lengthy one but I think I will save it for its own post.

And please do comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

Laudable Linkage

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are interesting things I’ve seen around the Web lately: maybe some will interest you as well.

10 reasons to break the sarcastic habit, with action plan.

So Was Jesus.

Thoughts on Modesty, not from the standpoint of causing guys to stumble, though that’s a valid concern, but as a matter of our own hearts before God.

“Dora the Doormat” and other Scary Straw Women of Complementarity, HT to Challies. Deals with some of the erroneous charges some make against proponents of complementarianism, the view that God created the sexes equal but with roles that complement one another.

Confessions of a Conflicted Complementarian, showing how gospel grace applies even in this.

One taxpayer’s response to the potential government shutdown. Heh, heh, heh.

Food:

Double Chocolate Treasures. I am definitely trying these!

Cake Balls. I usually take the easy route of just throwing cake batter in a 9 x 13 pan, but these looks so good.

Resurrection Rolls for Easter breakfast. I’ve posted my version with yeast rolls before, but this one uses crescent rolls and cinnamon. I might just try this kind this year.

Crafts/decorations:

Buttons on display. Really cute card made with buttons.

How to Turn Mini-Blinds Into Roman Shades, HT to Lizzie.

What guys think about modesty:

I can’t imagine all the work behind this:

Happy Saturday!

Book Review: Faithful

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Faithful by Kim Cash Tate is another book I won in a contest at Mocha With Linda.

Kim unfolds the lives of three friends:

Cydney is approaching her 40th birthday, single, wondering why God has not fulfilled her desires for a husband and children, stung by the fact that her thoughtless sister planned for her wedding to take place on Cyd’s birthday. But as the handsome and likable best man shows interest in Cyd, she’s flattered and even attracted, yet sure he is not the one for her.

Dana seems to have a perfect marriage — until her husband is caught having an affair.

Phyllis has been praying for her husband to come to Christ ever since she did six years previously, but he remains adamantly opposed to anything smacking of Christianity. Then at a college reunion she runs into an old friend who is widowed and seems a sensitive, thoughtful, godly Christian man, and she finds herself torn between the marriage she has and the ideal one that could be.

Each of these women learns in various ways what it means to trust in God’s faithfulness and to be faithful personally in their situations.

This was a hard book to put down — I kept wanting to let everything else go so I could keep reading and see what happened! Kim Cash Tate made it very easy to like her characters and to empathize with them and to be drawn into their struggles.

I know some women might avoid a book like this because of its subject matter, but real women in this world do face these kinds of situations, and Kim shares both the struggles and temptations they face as well as both spiritual and practical ways to deal with them in a gracious and non-preachy manner. Nevertheless I would urge caution before allowing a teen to read it: I definitely recommend a mom previewing it first.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

The Week In Words

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I have just a couple this week:

I am only about 24 pages into Women’s Ministry in the Local Church by J. Ligon Duncan and Susan Hunt, but this quote stood out to me:

If we lack interest in the church we lack what for Jesus was a consuming passion. Jesus loved the church and gave himself for it (Eph. 5:25). ~ Dr. Edmund Clowney

There seems to be a disregard or even a disdain for church these days, and this is a needed reminder of just how important it is in God’s eyes.

Then in Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross: Experiencing the Passion and Power of Easter, compiled by Nancy Guthrie, J. Ligon Duncan III shares in the chapter “Betrayed, Denied, Deserted.” speaking of the moment when Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss:

We cannot help but admire the dignity of the Lord Jesus Christ as he goes through this indignity. He does it with magnanimity and with the sense that he is nor forsaken. He is not out of control. God’s providence is ruling over all. So the character and the calmness of Jesus remind us and provide an example for us in the midst of our own trials (p. 38-39).

And later in the same chapter:

In this statement, Jesus is stressing that is not not going to the cross because God lacks the power to stop it. Nor does Jesus lack the ability to ask of God to spare him. Instead, Jesus is going to the cross because he has chosen to go to the cross. He is not a passive victim. He is the prime actor. (p. 40).

This is so important to remember, especially as people’s thoughts turn toward the cross this season and they perhaps watch films dealing with the death of Christ. There are little clues throughout the gospels that Jesus was not a “passive victim,” but was very much in control of what happened when, and he went through it all willingly.

And please do comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few that ministered to me this week:

From a friend’s Facebook:

“Order and beauty are contagious. So are disorder and ugliness. I want my house to reflect the peace and order of heaven.” ~ T. Sparrow

I quoted this post of Challies’ on Saturday, but I wanted to share this quote from it here as well:

Humility is not found in doubting what is true, but in believing that what God says is true is true indeed.

I saw this at Diane’s Facebook:

We profess to be strangers and pilgrims, seeking after a country of our own, yet we settle down in the most un-stranger-like fashion, exactly as if we were quite at home and meant to stay as long as we could.”— Amy Carmichael

That’s convicting to me because I have a pretty strong “nesting” instinct, which I don’t think is wrong in itself, but I have to remember this world, this home, is not permanent.

From an e-mail devotional of Elisabeth Elliot, taken from her book On Asking God Why:

I seek the lessons God wants to teach me, and that means that I ask why. There are those who insist that it is a very bad thing to question God. To them, “why?” is a rude question. That depends, I believe, on whether it is an honest search, in faith, for his meaning, or whether it is a challenge of unbelief and rebellion. The psalmist often questioned God and so did Job. God did not answer the questions, but he answered the man–with the mystery of himself.

From another friend’s Facebook:

“Great thoughts of your sin alone will drive you despair; but great thoughts of Christ will pilot you into the haven of peace.” -C. H. Spurgeon (March 27, Evening)

And please do comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!