Wednesday, October 24, 2007

What a Day

This has been an amazing, strange, beautiful and tiring day.


In a way, my work load for today began yesterday since the payroll company did not return our download to me before I left. That meant I had more work to do today and on top of that, after making this abnoxious beep, my computer has randomly been shutting off. It usually does it once a week... yesterday it happened 4 times.


I did not sleep well last night and was facing the busiest day of my entire month in an exhausted state of mind. Payroll took three hours to process this morning when it usually takes one. My computer was moving exceptionally slow and my printer was squeeking like a wild mouse.


Since I have been having an unquenchable hunger for God's Word and, seemingly some time on my hands, I decided to take advantage of the slow download. My computer was occupied and I could do nothing else. I was already half way through Genesis in my normal readings so I finished it, read twenty-five chapters of Psalms and then ten chapters of Exodus.

Let me say this, it is absolutely incredible and dare I say IMPERATIVE to read God's Word in huge chunks on a regular basis. It has been a while since I have done so and it was like water to a thirsty soul. I read the accounts of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and watched as God revealed Himself to them.

This is no story. This is no play. This is real and the words on the pages I read today are faultless, seamless and life-giving. To neglect God's Word and intense study of it is not only stupid, but wrong. How can I expect to defeat sin, have a oneness with God and transform my world if I am not daily practicing my skill with the sword?

Then, after payroll was done, I checked my email and found one from Todd. He sent me a link to a sermon on YouTube. I watched the short clip.

Gut wrenching, painfully convicting and soul reviving is how I describe what I heard. Some might be angry with the preacher and others would not even understand what he said, and yet it was exactly what I needed to hear. I later listened to the whole sermon and wanted to weep uncontrolably. I would have if I had been alone in my room, but I had payroll to complete and a dentist appointment to make.

Can I ask you to listen to AT LEAST the short clip and PLEAD with you to listen to the long one? Paul Washer communicates so passionately what I long for the American Church to hear. I will be listening to it several more times and seriously continue reevaluating my life.

I will post about the sermon soon. For now I will say as I said a few posts ago... I can feel something being unleashed inside of me and I cannot wait to see what God is doing with me!

LONG Sermon- almost an hour

SHORT clip- 3 minutes

4 comments:

Augustinian Successor said...

God the Father will uphold HIS Church in America ... God the Son will gather, defend and preserve unto Himself a Church chosen from eternity ... God the Holy Spirit will draw the elect from every all corners of that piece of land known as the Yewnited Stets of Airmerica!

And our God has revealed Himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is my God, He is your God. Let God be God.

Amen?

Augustinian Successor said...

This is my first time I'm listening to Pastor Paul Washer ... I'm no Southern Baptist nor a Baptist ... but i guess he's a true Baptist according to the Word of God. i guess antinomianism and legalism are the bane of American churches ... i guess the antidote if ah may use the word is well first of all fact of the matter is that the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century restored the Gospel back to the people of God, and it's the task oooff the American churches today to continue preach the Gospel which is that Jesus died on the Cross for sinners. But, and here's the rub ... before you CAN preach the Gospel, we need to preach the LAW. Law and Gospel. The Law condemns, the Law exposes sin, the Law says that we are dead in sin and trespasses, the Law points to the fact that we are totally depraved, that we will never be able to live up to the Law because we aren't able to ... our will is in bondage to sin ... and so on and so forth ...

And this Law-Gospel preaching extends also the baptised, the regenerate, the believing, the converted ... the people of God need to continually hear Law-Gospel too ... throughout their lives ...for their admonition, for their comfort, for their edification and so on ... and so forth ...

Having said this, doctrinal purity must go hand in hand with pureness of living, else we have a kind of legalism and antinomianism in the Church. That means in the worship of God, we cannot afford to compromise for the sake of attracting people into the Church ... it means precisely that we do not engage in minor but we major in the major, so to speak ... yez, we do not obsess over head-covering, make-up and so on and so forth, but we cannot compromise on divorce and remarriage, we cannot compromise oooonnn the fact that in Scripture, we do not have any warrant for female pastors and so on ... the doctrine must be pure ...

Purity of doctrine of the Word of God will certainly affect the worship of God ... if the worship is compromised ... then Christian living will turn up be a kind of a mixture between antinominanism and legalism .

Purity of doctrine also means that the congregation must be directed from their born-again experience whatever that means to God as revealed in the Word of God and the Sacraments. They should not find assurance in themselves, but in the promises of God, in His action in the preaching, absolution, baptism and communion.

At the end of the day, repentance and faith is the call of the Gospel to all men. At the end of the day, the penitent will be saved, and the impenitent will not be saved. In the meantime, the worship must reflect the holiness of the triune God, teach His truth and so on ... in the meantime, impenitent adulterers, and so on must be barred from Holy Communion, in the meantime, predestination and election must be preached so that the congregation will know that it's not up to them to be saved, it's not up to them to will to change their lives, and so on ... in the meantime, infants of believing parents should not assume that there will be a time when their children will backslide before returning to the faith; far from it for them to presume this, rather that they should desire salvation of their children from infancy by baptism and supplications ... in the meantime, as Pastor Paul Washer has said, and the Reformed and Lutheran confessions and catechisms say ... repentance and faith is a daily affair, the killing of the old man and the renewing of the new man by throwing oneself upon the mercy of God on a daily basis ... the basis of our holiness is the sheer and undeserved mercy of God ...

I do not deserve His mercy, we all do not deserve His mercy, none of us do ... yet it was on the Cross that He died for our sins. He died for us when we were still sinners ... by nature, children of wrath ... that is the Good News that salvation is available today for all those who repent and believe ...

BenZ said...

I Love it Jaclyn! I'm not the only one who reads genesis in my spare time!!

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