“TRUTH” AND SURVIVAL OF THE CHURCH

What will insure that the church survives? Will it be our programs and propositions? Or will it be the faithfulness of Him who gives the increase when we plant and water the seed of His kingdom?

As one who is committed to truth, the following caught my eye from among several comments & links in Tim Archer’s Kitchen of Half-Baked Thoughts today.

Will Evangelicalism Last?

For one thing “Truth” is not rational abstraction — a concept, doctrine, or idea you can write down — especially not one which you conveniently have right and everyone else conveniently has wrong. Truth-as-a-rational-abstraction constitutes a denial of the incarnation (and big chunks of the New Testament). Doctrines and theologies can point to the truth but they are not themselves the Truth. The Truth has been revealed to us in and through Jesus Christ. Truth is a person. Jesus is the Truth.

WHAT SONG DO YOU SING

What song do you sing? Are you singing the songs of the United States? Or are you singing the songs of Zion?

In Babylon, Judah wept and quit singing, as we see in Psalm 137

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy! Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!” O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! (Psalm 137:1-9)

While we are shocked by the last few lines of this Psalm, we can certainly understand their question: “How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?”

Yet, that is exactly what God calls us to do. You see, as children of God, we are citizens of Heaven. “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ….” (Php 3:20). Also, speaking of His disciples, Jesus said, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (John 17:16). 

So, what song do we sing? Where is our loyalty? To America? Or to Heaven?

While we can (and should) pray for America and love it, we must not love America more than we love God. Our loyalty to the Kingdom of Heaven must exceed our loyalty to the land of our birth. New birth takes precedence over natural birth.

A Laugh for Today

Remember that Solomon said, “A merry heart does good like a medicine.” Here’s your medicine for today!

 A true story from the pages of the Manchester Evening Times:

London Cab

Last Wednesday a passenger in a taxi heading for Salford station leaned over to ask the driver a question and gently tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.

The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb and stopped just inches from a large plate window.

For a few moments everything was silent in the cab. Then, the shaking driver said “are you OK? I’m so sorry, but you scared the daylights out of me.”

The badly shaken passenger apologized to the driver and said, “I didn’t realize that a mere tap on the shoulder would startle someone so badly.”The driver replied, “No, no, I’m the one who is sorry, it’s entirely my fault. Today is my very first day driving a cab. I’ve been driving a hearse for 25 years.”