Accountability- A 14 letter word

In CJ Mahaney's book on Humility he talks about accountability and how getting friends close to you to search out and mortify your sin. A very practical guide for pastors, (and with a little tweaking, for anyone) on evaluating how we are doing in some key areas on a regular basis is this guide found at Desiring God.

Though accountability can be done poorly and for the wrong reasons, and feel quite plastic to boot, it is, nonetheless, biblical and necessary for our growth.

One thing to note: there is a big difference between what often happens in accountability groups and what genuine accountability is. This is worth discussing at more length which I will perhaps do later. For now, it is enough to say that what often happens is a catharsis with no real remedy. Men or women share their junk and mistakenly believe that the healing comes in the sharing--the venting of the stuff. But that is merely like lifting the hood on the car, pointing at the broken fan belt, having others acknowledge the brokenness of the belt, saying together that it shouldn't be that way and then closing the hood and doing nothing more after that. While sharing our junk is hard work, the real hard work comes in extracting the sin, not in merely identifying it.

Snap out of it

This short post by Jon Bloom over at DG was what God used to snap me out of a little pity party I was throwing yesterday. It reiterated what my pastor preached this last weekend too.

For Fun: little "g" gospel: Grizzlies

The Montana Grizzlies are going to the Division 1 AA National Championship. I went to grad school there. Loved it then. Still love it. For a few more days you can watch the replay of two amazing teams playing awesome football in zero degrees, snow, and a winter storm warning...and it went down to the wire. Great game. Go Griz.

God's Pleasure in Us

John Piper wrote in an article about how God delights in his people. For those who read or watch Joel Osteen (and like or believe him) this may not seem like a big deal (though it really should). But Piper is fairly famous for trampling over such man-centered views of God in favor of God-centered views. In this article, he writes:

God looks upon his children through the lens of Christ’s imputed righteousness. That means two things: One is that God counts us perfect in Christ. The other is that he can still see us becoming in practice what we are positionally in Christ. The lens of imputation secures our invincible right standing with God. It also warrants God’s delight in our imperfect delight in him. That is, even though we are counted perfectly righteous in Christ, God can still see our actual sinning and the fruit of the Spirit in our life. That is why he can be delighted in us to greater or lesser degrees. We know this because he both reckons us as perfectly righteous (Romans 4:4-6) and disciplines us for sin in our life (1 Corinthians 11:32). Therefore, God’s delight in our delight in him varies in proportion to the affections of our heart, but is possible only because God imputes to us Christ’s perfect righteousness.

This one still stumps me. It feels like the objective,"distant" God is pleased with me positionally. But the personal God who really knows what I am like is not so pleased. Yes he loves me, but does he like me?

Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the fact that there are not two Gods--a distant objective one, and a personal one--but rather, there is one God who is both pleased and displeased.

As an accountant, I reconcile numbers. I have less success reconciling this. Perhaps this is like the trintity, or the hypostatic union, or the origin of evil--we just don't get to know. Or is it?

Must give more thought here.

Dever on Post-Civil War Church History

This presentation by Mark Dever of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D.C. on the history of the church in America since the Civil War is really excellent. He talks about the rise of liberalism in the church (and how it should not be confused with the liberalism of politics), and the dance that ensued up through the present to bring about neo-orthodoxy, evalgelicalism, para-churches, and the pitfalls along the way. If you've ever wondered why there are different denominations, this will help you immensely...and it won't bother you any more--unless you a part of the wrong one!

Genesis 3: The Cover-Up

Tim Keller walks through the fall and the variety of ways we "make coverings" for ourselves to hide our sin. He talks about how we cover ourselves (by impression management and more) because we want to be loved but feel like if we are truly known we can't/won't be loved. In the gospel however, we see a way where we can be BOTH known AND loved. In typical (but even exceptional for him) form, he speaks to the heart and mind.

Tim & Kathy Keller on Marriage

Tim and Kathy are both brilliant people. If I am honest, most of the time I have trouble listening to women teach. Not so here. Actually really enjoyed this marriage talk they gave at their church. As a teaser, they tell the story of Kathy smashing their wedding china to get Tim's attention. Why? Listen to find out.

Tim Keller on Friendship

Once again, Tim Keller opens the lid on friendship from a biblical perspective. A couple of highlights...gospel friendships are marked by:

1) Constancy. That is, friends are available to each other and support each other in every kind of life circumstance. This is not the same as being inseparable. In fact, Keller points out the proverb that says you can wear out your welcome with a friend.

2) Carefulness. Here, you know a person well enough that you know what they are feeling and don't say or do things that unnecessarily hurt them. You would seldom accidentally hurt them because you know them well and a careful (full of care) for them.

3) Candor. Sometimes you will hurt them. But you do this for their good. And they know it.

4) Counsel. This is blurry to me now, but I am sure it was good! (I actually think it was tied fairly closely with candor.

Furthermore, friendships are both discovered and forged. Friendships start with the discovery. When talking to someone you find that you share similar convictions or affinities. You think or say to the other "you too?" Do this enough times and you may have someone with the potential to be a good friend. But while friendships start here with discovery, they also must be forged. That is, they take some deliberate effort but this effort is not contrived; rather, there is a seemingly instinctual desire to seek the growth of the other. I am not doing justice to what Keller explains. You should simply listen.

Whoever? Really?

In this short video by John Piper, he talks mostly about Santa Clause (bad news) vs. Jesus Christ (good news). And as is often the case, while it is a good contrast, what hit me was not the overarching point, but one very sweet quote from John 6:37 ff:

"All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

This highlighted phrase hit me especially because of late I have had trouble believing that God is really for me in any excited sort of way. Sure, I am "in the club" so to speak (a poor metaphor) but I feel like He is disinterested in me. Something about the way those words landed tonight chipped away at my disbelief. "Are you not more valuable than many sparrows?"

Testmony of and Oportunity for The Gospel

At Desiring God's Blog, John Piper talks about a visit to the worst and best prison in the country.

Humility

C.J. Mahaney's book, Humility: True Greatness is a must read. I have read it three times and was thinking just a couple of weeks ago that I need to read it again. To summarize the overarching lesson that I learned from this book (and there are dozens of "underarching" lessons) it was this: the sin that is most likely to hold you back from true greatness is that sin that everyone sees but you. Mahaney likens it to a glob of cream cheese on your face about which you are ignorant. I liken it to a third arm that I am unaware of that flips people the bird when I'm not looking. In either image, the idea is that you can't see it but it is damaging your life and witness and consequently, the glory and honor of the Savior. Humility will help you hold up the mirror to see it, and push you into the kind of community wherein it can be exposed and extracted (though experience has shown this to be an utterly painful extraction).

Blog Pre-Launch

It's presumptuous to name this a pre-launch--as if something publicly significant were taking off. I don't imagine the readership of this blog extending beyond the borders of some close friends, and even they may find the time-consuming nature of the posts too tedious to fastidiously follow. On a personal level however, I hope this will be significant. I have wanted to chronicle some of the media I've read that has--in extraordinary ways--pointed me back to the gospel and back to Jesus. Most often for me, it is an MP3 sermon that I listen to on the way to or from work. I burn through a lot of MP3 audio on my commute. And occasionally, something I listen to will hit me in an extraordinary way that I want to remember. Likewise, a phrase, or a sentence, or a paragraph from a book or article will also hit me in a way that I want to remember. At other times, it may be a moving video that joggs my sleepy affections and I'll want to somehow remember that notion--however abstract it may be.

But my flesh fails me and my memory right along with it. I don't remember things well.

Part of this is due, I am convinced, to the fact that I rely too much on my computer for organizing my life (I missed a lunch appointment with a really good friend today because I was not at work--where my calendar and re-MINDers are). And I suppose that if I want to gain that part of my mind back I should go the way of the neo-Luddites rather than more deeply intertwine my mind with e-things.

But (sorry Neil) because a small handful of friends have also found some of these media snippets helpful toward good and eternal ends, and because I am not optimistic about any ensuing conversion to the Luddite camp to exercise my memory's synapses, I proceed with my logging. I say "logging" because purists will tell you that a 'blog is really a "web-log"--that is, a log of where you have been on the web. While I get most of my MP3 sermons or seminars from the web, my books are usually simply purchased in that most antiquated form with pages, ink, and the like. I intend to include them both. The purist will also tell you (see point #2) that "if you have more original posts than links, you probably need to learn some humility." Which serves as the perfect segue to my first official post...