“Through the gospel, you have both the wind and the tide pushing you forward in your attempt to live a holy life,” (p. 112) Walter Marshall, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification

Meditating on Scripture

This first portion of Dr. Powlison’s Personal Reflection is an introduction, and includes some general comments on biblical change in the areas of anxiety, anger, and escapism. As with all of Dr. Powlison's writings, these words are infused with grace and the hope for change that comes from the gospel.

At the conclusion, Dr. Powlison encourages an unusual and yet extremely helpful reading (and singing along with!) several well-known hymns. You can click on the link to view the hymns and then follow Dr. Powlison’s suggestions. These hymns provide a wonderful picture, a model of a heart transformed by God's truth. If your experience is anything like mine, you'll never read hymns or psalms the same way again!

Personal Reflection
by Dr. David Powlison

Anxiety, anger, and escapism are common life problems, in both senses of ‘common’: everyday, every person. They are sins endemic to the human condition and to our struggle. And they are doorways through which the grace and mercies of Jesus Christ daily invade lives.

This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise.
We are not yet what we shall be but we are growing toward it.
The process is not yet finished but it is going on.
This is not the end but it is the road.
All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.
--Martin Luther

In each case, we see three things:

1. It feels like we have good reasons to react with sinful anxiety, hostility, and escapism. The pressures, heat, difficulties, threats, frustrations, wrongs, beguilements of life come at us--and reveal what rules our hearts.

2. God gives better reasons, truer reasons, deeper reasons, imperishable reasons--Himself, reclaiming our hearts--that we learn to respond with faith working through love.

3. The inworking and outworking of faith and love produces the holy anxiety of caring concern (wrapped within deep trust). Faith works through love to produce just anger (wedded to generous mercies). Faith works out into a right longing to escape trouble and to help others in their troubles (alongside hearty enjoyment of innocent pleasures).

We’ve laid out a model, a picture, a map of the terrain of battle. A map is useful for orienting you, but it does not get you there. Our goal is to relate to our God honestly, intelligently, believingly, in ways that change us in real time, real place, real problem.

1. Take one of these three common sins to face and tackle this day. Your Father is the vinedresser, putting his pruning shears into your life:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there is any hurtful way in me; and lead me in the everlasting way” (Ps. 139:23f).

2. Whichever of the common deviancies you’re choosing, first read and ponder these hymns (and, if you’re so moved, sing with heart and voice!). Notice how we’ve parsed the hymns,

--The pressures of life are described in italics, those things (‘good reasons’) that provoke us to anxiety, anger, escapism. These are the circumstances within which our battle plays out.

--The Lord’s promises and self-disclosures come in bold, these invitations (‘better reasons’) to live differently. These are ways the Redeemer enters human life. Notice how these things that God says compete with the voices and pressures that woo and provoke us towards anger/grumbling, fear/anxiety, escapism/addiction.

--Our responses of faith are underlined. This is the heart of change.

Read all the italics. Then read all the bolds. Then read all the underlinings. Then worship.

New Baby!

Kristina and Josh Fischer are celebrating the arrival of their son,

Ian Mark Fischer

Born August 9, 2007 ~4am

7lbs. 1oz.

The Bible

The teaching of the written scriptures is the Word which God spoke and speaks to his church, and is finally authoritative for faith and life. To learn the mind of God, one must consult his written Word. What scripture says, God says. The Bible is inspired in the sense of being word-for-word God-given. It is an explanation of divine revelation which is both complete (sufficient) and comprehensible (perspicuous); that is to say, it contains all that the church needs to know in this world for its guidance in the way of salvation and service, and it contains the principles for its own interpretation within itself. ---JI Packer (Fundamentalism and the Word of God, p. 47).

The Flow

There are always many things happening this time of year... I want to take a minute to help you see how some flow together...

3 biggies:
Vision Night, Friday August 24 (held at eventfuls in Jonesville)
Kingdom-Focused Prayer Gathering, Sunday August 26 (held in media center of Oak Hall)
3 days of Prayer & Fasting, August 27-29 (held wherever you are, no public meetings)

Now, the idea is this...
1.) at Vision Night God graciously calls us to partner with Him in expecting and attempting great things... which sends us to
2.) Sunday morning prayer gathering... the coming of the Kingdom is to big for us... apart from Him we can do nothing... He gives us hope in our corporate prayer
3.) We are together spiritually in denying ourselves from some good part of creation FOR THE PURPOSE of asking God to deepen our desire for Him and His kingdom...

This could be a tremendously refreshing time of renewal for us as individuals and families and as a church family. We'll need a big Jesus as we head into the Fall. Prayer is God's most often used means to get His people there.

The Bible is the Gospel of Jesus Christ

"The Bible's purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible's purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome... religion is 'if you obey, then you will be accepted'. But the Gospel is, 'if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey'. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference." --Tim Keller

"Laden with guilt and full of fears, I fly to Thee, my Lord,
And not a glimpse of hope appears but in Thy written Word;
The volumes of my Father's grace doth all my griefs assuage,
Here I behold my Savior's face on every page." --Isaac Watts

Psalm 119 continues...

What Scripture says, God says; for, in a manner comparable only to the deeper mystery of the Incarnation, the Bible is both fully human and fully divine. So all its manifold contents—histories, prophecies, poems, songs, wisdom writings, sermons, statistics, letters, and whatever else—should be received as from God, and all that Bible writers teach should be revered as God’s authoritative instruction. Christians should be grateful to God for the gift of his written Word, and conscientious in basing their faith and life entirely and exclusively upon it. Otherwise, we cannot ever honor or please him as he calls us to do. --JI Packer.... whole article

Vision Night

Next week we will gather for an annual event in our church life... Vision Night. So far we have more than 70 folks committed to making this a night dedicated to:
<> being together
<> imagining God's future for us
<> hearing the 3 initiatives that we'll give ourselves to this year ('07-'08)

What happens on Vision Night?
You'll be surprised to see the progress God made... we will look back, ever so briefly, on what we announced last year at Vision Night... and how God surpassed our hopes----- then I (rob) will lead a program where you hear from me and other leaders on the direction we're headed this year.

Where? Eventfuls is located 4 ½ miles West of I-75 on SR 26 (Newberry Road), in the Willow Walk business park just east of Steeplechase Publix. Turn onto 138th Terrace, and we are located in the first yellow building to your right.

Friday August 24 7:30pm Eventfuls in Jonesville

Youth Getaway

The Christ Community Youth Group will head to Daytona on Saturday for an overnight retreat. The focus will be developing community life in the group and envisioning the students for their usefulness in Christ's kingdom. They will return on Sunday at 3pm.
Call for more info..... 352.871.7247 Nathan Taylor; Denise Hamilton 352.528-5415

Corporate Prayer

On Sunday morning, August 26th we will have a prayer meeting that runs from 9am til 9:40.
Why on 26th? Kicking off the Fall seeking God's power
What will happen? You will be led through the Lord's Prayer and the Vision Night plans of Christ Community Church...
(It will not be you listening to someone else pray for 5 minutes uninterrupted!)

You will not be:
-- forced to pray aloud
-- disappointed that you came

Club 45

I had the privilege of meeting with the leaders of this ministry to 4th and 5th graders yesterday. They are excited about plans for this Fall.

The Club 45 dates are:
--September 16
--October 21
--December 9

There is also a plan for Club 45 to serve as a team during the Church Work Day on December 1st.

Room for good to run wild

The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.
--GK Chesterton

Psalm 119

Augustine's idea that the Psalms are essentially prayers of Jesus Christ is surely in place here. What this psalm shows us is the perfection of the perfect heart in its unwavering openness to all that God teaches in the Scriptures, and the Gospels show that our Master was mastered completely by what came to him from his Bible.

Fasting

if you picked up a calendar y'day at our weekly gathering... and looked at it... you'll notice 3 days in august dedicated to prayer & fasting...... don't zone out on that .... i would venture to say that there is some way for every person to fast in a manner that awakens new areas for you.... to get you thinking of at least one non-food fast possibility....justintaylor writes:

One of the best parts of my vacation was being without a computer. Good for the soul!

I thought back to something that Doug Groothuis (philosophy professor at Denver Seminary) requires of his students:

I routinely require my students to engage in some kind of "media fast," in which they abstain from an electronic medium for at least one week. During this time they are required to reflection several portions of Scripture--the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the fruit of the Spirit, etc.--in light of their experiences. In the six or so years I have been assigning this fast, the results have been nothing less than profound for the vast majority of the students. Having withdrawn from the world of TV, radio, computers, they find more silence, time for reflection and prayer, and more opportunities to engage family and friends thoughtfully. They become more peaceful and contemplative-and begin to notice how media-saturated most of our culture has become. So, we need some asceticism. Any area of culture that decreases godliness and enhances worldliness must come under the loving discipline of Jesus Christ--for his glory, for our good, and for the good of those we serve. Christians need to withdraw from aspects of our technological culture (which Postman calls a "Technopoly"-a culture dominated by technology) in order to gain perspective on ourselves, God, and our culture.

Psalm 114, The Hebrews Exodus, and Your Life

Tomorrow we will celebrate Holy Communion in the context of looking at Psalm 114... which celebrates the Hebrew exodus from Egypt.


The celebration of the Exodus in the annual Passover feast (Exodus 12) is intended not to simply evoke pious and thankful memories of the past, but to bring each generation under the living power of this unique eschatological event (vv. 26f; 13:8). Thus, in displacing the ritual of the remembrance of the Exodus by a new ritual centered on His death and resurrection, Jesus indicated that these events would uniquely affect the destiny of all generations of mankind. He deliberately instituted for His Church a means by which the power and reality of His death and resurrection could be brought to bear upon the life of each generation within the Church" [Wallace, "The Lord's Supper," 165]. --kim riddlebarger

Communion with each other

"We should not . . . think of our fellowship with other Christians as a spiritual luxury... We should recognize rather that such fellowship is a spiritual necessity; for God has made us in such a way that our fellowship with himself is fed by our fellowship with fellow-Christians, and requires to be so fed constantly for its own deepening and enrichment." --J.I. Packer

Bridge Collapse

John Piper pastors a church within sight of the bridge that collapsed... he writes in Putting My Daughter to Bed 2 Hours After the Bridge Collapsed
"When I sat on her bed and tucked her in and blessed her and sang over her a few minutes ago...
...Talitha is sleeping now. But one day she will die. I teach her this. I will not always be there to bless her. But Jesus is alive and is the same yesterday today and forever. He will be with her because she trusts him. And she will make it through the river."

Sunday's Worship Service

It is our pattern as a church family to celebrate Holy Communion on the 1st Sunday of each month. I wanted to write to you about the way we'll do that Sunday. There is a minor change.

The service will flow like this:
Opening Hymn, followed by a scripture reading and the Doxology... per usual

Children's Church dismissal and The sermon will come next, a meditation upon Psalm 114 which shows us a connection between the Passover & Exodus miracles of God at work in His people AND THE miracle of God at the cross.

Then we'll share communion with God and each other... followed by the return of Children's Church and a more extended time (than our usual) of celebrating the redemption we have in Christ.

I'll post a link to the worship folder later....

ManLand

Thursday August 30th... start your stretching now...

Psalm 108

With God we shall do valiantly;
it is he who will tread down our foes.

Ps108 is made up of portions of 2 earlier psalms (60 & 57)... but it is much more than a mindless cut&paste. The psalmist takes earlier prayers and suits them for his current situation.

Psalm 108 is here