Full John Piper "Bloodlines" Documentary

To go along with his newest book, Bloodlines, Crossway went with Pastor John Piper back to Greenville, SC where he grew up to look at his journey as it relates to race.

Powerful.

Courageous Movie

The next movie from the creators of Facing the Giants and Fireproof comes out today. Courageous takes a look at issues relating to fatherhood. I really enjoyed Randy Alcorn's novelization of the story, and I would encourage everyone to check out the movie. Great message that many men today need to hear.

Here's what John Piper said about the movie:

I watched Courageous with my wife and was thoroughly engaged. I like action, and I like reflection, and I like affection—explosive moments, wrack-your-brain moments, and break-your-heart moments. Rarely do movies combine them all. For me this one captured me. Does the movie preach? Well, it sure has a point. But about the time you think you might get preached at, a bullet may cut through your car door. I would willingly take anyone to see this film, assuming they can handle suspense. And I think the conversations afterward would not be superficial.

And here's the trailer:

Reasons to Have a Large Family

From Raising Olives:

In no particular order:

1. When God said, “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord…Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them (Psalm 127)”, we believe He meant it.

2. World domination.

3. We know what causes it.

4. Over the last several thousand years, children have outperformed both the stock market AND gold in ROI.

5. We believe that God’s plan is better than ours.

6. People think that we are patient “super parents.” (insert maniacal laughter)

7. We want to leave a lasting legacy.

8. Our kids are cute!

9. We don’t want to have all of our “investments” in the stock market.

10. In a world that views children as an inconvenience or punishment (Obama said he wouldn’t want his daughters “punished with a baby”) we think someone should stand up and say, we welcome children and believe that they are precious and valuable.

11. We love late night snuggles, running two year olds, laughing at the table, crayon drawings, and silly songs.

12. Division of labor.

13. We still get to play on the playground.

A Seriously Entertaining Marriage Proposal

And some pretty good dancing too...

I Am Second - Lecrae

Music Video of the Week: Mute Math

Mute Math - "Blood Pressure"

Get More: MUTEMATH, Music, More Music Videos

Doug Wilson and Mark Driscoll: Men and Masculinity

This interview is about 25 minutes, but I found it very helpful on some topics regarding men, masculinity, how to minister to young men, etc. Some good insights into how Driscoll and Mars Hill Church structure things as well.

Propaganda: Our Story

HT: Zach Neilsen

"Baptized Four Times" - An Objective Faith

I found this video very interesting. Greg Gilbert, J.D. Greear, and Trevin Wax discuss the fact that Greear was baptized 4 times growing up. Now probably you, like me, weren't baptized 4 times if you are a believer. But my guess is you, like me, have had numerous times where you questioned a past profession of faith and wondered whether or not it was valid. I remember numerous times where I "gave my life to Christ" again, just to make sure, just in case the first one didn't count. I felt like my faith was weak and couldn't be real.

I was placing my assurance in a subjective experience and the strength I perceived in my faith rather than recognizing an objective faith in the power of the person and accomplished work of Christ. This does not mean we should never examine ourselves to see whether or not we are in the faith, but that examination doesn't look to a past experience to justify salvation. Christ accomplished the salvation of his beloved 2,000 years ago. Our faith is an objective experience where Christ raises us spiritually from the dead and seals us with the Holy Spirit.

Kevin DeYoung and John Piper: The Hole in Our Holiness of God

Kevin DeYoung: Parenting and Secondhand Stress

Kevin DeYoung:

If I had to name a besetting sin right now it would be impatience, especially with my kids. I don’t think this is a constant problem, but it is recurring. I love my kids dearly and play with them and do special things with them and try to teach them the Bible and discipline them when they disobey. But I can also be impatient. And that’s a sin. I needlessly exasperate them at times. And that’s a sin too.

So I took note of these paragraphs from Bryan Caplan who has written a sometimes-right-on, sometimes-head-scratching, non-Christian, pro-big family book on parenting:

Most parents worry about the dangers of secondhand smoke. But few consider the dangers of secondhand stress. If you make yourself miserable to do a special favor for your child, he might enjoy it. But if he senses your negative feelings, he might come to share them.

Secondhand stress is one of kids’ leading grievances. In the Ask the Children survey, researched Ellen Galinsky interviewed over 1,000 kids in grades three to twelve and asked parents to guess how kids would respond. One key question: “If you were granted one wish to change the way your mother’s/father’s work affects your life, what would that wish be?” Kids answers were striking. They rarely wished for extra face time with their parents. They were much more likely to wish their parents would be less tired and stressed. The parents were simply out of touch. Virtually no one guessed that kids would use their one wish to give their parents a better attitude.

Galinsky also asked kids to grade their parents’ performance on a dozen dimensions. Overall, parents did pretty well. Moms had an overall GPA of 3.14, versus 2.98 for dads. A majority of moms and dads got As for “appreciating me for who I am,” “making me feel important and loved,” and “being able to attend important events in my life.” Anger management was parents’ Achilles’ heel. More than 40 percent of kids gave their moms and dads a C, D, or F for “controlling his/her temper when I do something that makes him/her angry”—the very worst marks on their report card. (Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun, 32-33)

I’m never quite sure how much stock to put in studies like this, but Galinsky’s study certainly rings true. As parents we love our kids to the moon. We love to plan special events and give them special treats. We never want to miss a soccer game or recital. Way to go us! But we are easily frustrated and prone to anger. The basic point of Caplan’s book is that parents make parenting too hard by trying to do too much, getting too worked up about little things, and thinking they have almost sovereign control over their children’s future. I certainly don’t agree with all his suggestions and findings, but Caplan is right about this: it would be better for us and for our kids if we made fewer outings, g0t involved in fewer activities, took more breaks away from the kids, did whatever we could to get more help around the house, and make parental sanity a higher priority.

Beware the secondhand stress. If mommy (or daddy) ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Or as God put it, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Eph. 4:26-27).

Russell Moore on Pat Robertson

Russell Moore, with a great response to the comments of Pat Robertson:

This week on his television show Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said a man would be morally justified to divorce his wife with Alzheimer’s disease in order to marry another woman. The dementia-riddled wife is, Robertson said, “not there” anymore. This is more than an embarrassment. This is more than cruelty. This is a repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Few Christians take Robertson all that seriously anymore. Most roll their eyes, and shake their heads when he makes another outlandish comment (for instance, defending China’s brutal one-child abortion policy to identifying God’s judgment on specific actions in the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, or the Haiti earthquake). This is serious, though, because it points to an issue that is much bigger than Robertson.

Marriage, the Scripture tells us, is an icon of something deeper, more ancient, more mysterious. The marriage union is a sign, the Apostle Paul announces, of the mystery of Christ and his church (Eph. 5). The husband, then, is to love his wife “as Christ loved the church” (Eph. 5:25). This love is defined not as the hormonal surge of romance but as a self-sacrificial crucifixion of self. The husband pictures Christ when he loves his wife by giving himself up for her.

At the arrest of Christ, his Bride, the church, forgot who she was, and denied who he was. He didn’t divorce her. He didn’t leave...

...Sadly, many of our neighbors assume that when they hear the parade of cartoon characters we allow to speak for us, that they are hearing the gospel. They assume that when they see the giggling evangelist on the television screen, that they see Jesus. They assume that when they see the stadium political rallies to “take back America for Christ,” that they see Jesus.

But Jesus isn’t there.Jesus tells us he is present in the weak, the vulnerable, the useless. He is there in the least of these (Matt. 25:31-46). Somewhere out there right now, a man is wiping the drool from an 85 year-old woman who flinches because she think he’s a stranger. No television cameras are around. No politicians are seeking a meeting with them.

But the gospel is there. Jesus is there.

Read the whole article.

Book Trailer for Piper's New Book - Bloodlines

This looks absolutely fantastic.

The Sermon on the Mount

Matt Carter (The Austin Stone Community Church) reads the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew's Gospel before the Sea of Galilee. Powerful.


Sermon on the Mount from The Austin Stone on Vimeo.


HT: JT

A Prayer for the 10th Anniversary of 9/11

Mike Cosper from Sojourn Community Church:

Lord as we gather,

celebrating your glory and goodness,
we acknowledge the shadow of today’s anniversary.

Together, we remember September 11, 2001.
We mourn for the lives lost in New York City,
Washington D. C., and on Flight 93.

We lament death’s reign,
the visible and invisible forces of evil,
the principalities and powers of this dark world,
and the evil that lurks in the hearts of all men . . . including our own.

With the Psalmist, we cry:

“How long, Oh Lord?
How long will your enemies scoff?
How long will you withhold your justice
from a world that is desparate to see it?”

We lament a world at war, and we ask you for peace

In Afghanistan
in Iraq
in Libya
in Israel and Palestine
in Egypt and Syria, and all of the nations of the earth that long for freedom from oppression.

We ask for protection over our loved ones and families who serve overseas,
we pray for the fatherless and the widow,
for the poor and oppressed.

We lift up our global leaders
that by your grace they might lead with wisdom and justice
and work for peace.

And we acknowledge that all such hopes and longings point us to one who will soon return and bring an everlasting peace and justice.

Together we proclaim:

Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;
on that very day his plans perish.

Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD his God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.

The LORD sets the prisoners free;
the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
the LORD loves the righteous.
The LORD watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

The LORD will reign forever,
your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the LORD!

(Psalm 146:2-10)

Amen. Come Lord Jesus!

HT: Trevin Wax 

Panel Discussion at Southern Seminary on 9/11

At the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary chapel yesterday, Al Mohler, Russell Moore, Zane Pratt, and Heath Lambert talked about 9/11 10 years later.


911 Panel Discussion from Southern Seminary on Vimeo.

Jeff Tweedy of Wilco Performs "I Got A Feeling" from the Black-Eyed-Peas

I thought this was pretty funny and shows just how ridiculous the lyrics to a lot of pop songs really are.



HT: Paste

Doug Wilson on Christopher Hitchens: "Simply Incoherent"

Doug Wilson:

Maybe it is just me, but Christopher Hitchens is at his very best when he is making sense. This is something he does, with his usual vim, in a recent article for Slate entitled “Simply Evil.” In it, he makes short work of the kind of anti-Americanism that tried to turn 9/11 into something complex enough for an obfuscating intellectual to puzzle over. He nails those who tried to blame the attacks on “the Bush administration or the Jews.” And for those who held up a simplistic tit-for-tat blowback explanation, Hitchens dutifully pulls their shirts over their heads and rolls down their socks.

And at the same time, Hitchens defends himself ably against charges that he must have turned into a rah-rah Americano by pointing out that he was a named plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the National Security Agency concerning warrantless wiretaps. He also arranged to have himself waterboarded in order to argue persuasively to his readers that such practices did indeed constitute torture. He wrote critically and honestly on the subjects of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and he has formally registered his contempt for the security theater fraud perpetrated, at an airport near you, by uniformed members of the TSA.

All this is Hitchens doing what Hitchens does best, and he does it for most of his article. And then, fulfilling the promise of the title (“Simply Evil”), he veers into incoherence at the very end when he only had about two column inches to go. It was like watching a bicycling Tour de Something rider, 50 yards ahead of the nearest competitor, anticipate the finish line by raising both hands above his head, at which point he triumphantly bites it.

“The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fully deserve to be called ‘evil.’”

...Evil? Imagine there’s no heaven, Lennon urged us. It’s easy if you try. No hell below us—nothing to kill or die for. If you say things like this, certain other things follow. Hitchens has been in the front ranks of the new militant atheists, and he has made a great show of being the kind of contrarian who is willing to say absolutely anything, provided it only be true. We have to grow up, Hitchens has said. We have to reject outmoded concepts. We have to get rid of the idea that there is a God in heaven, telling us the difference between right and wrong. But if these things be true, then there are other things that follow. For some reason, Hitchens is willing to affirm the premises but will not own any of the obvious conclusions. You cannot throw away your suitcase at the beginning of your journey, and then, as you are nearing the end of the trip, pull out all the things that you packed in it. There may be shrewd ways of avoiding baggage handling fees, but that’s not one of them.

Read the rest of the article.

We Were Created for Community

This is fascinating. And convicting as well.


Community from Crossway on Vimeo.


HT

Spurgeon: A Stupid Way to Read Scriptures

Justin Taylor quoted Charles Spurgeon with a very convicting word for people like me who have a tendency to rush through their daily Bible reading.         

You are retired for your private devotions; you have opened the Bible, and you begin to read.  

Now, do not be satisfied with merely reading through a chapter. Some people thoughtlessly read through two or three chapters—stupid people for doing such a thing!  

It is always better to read a little and digest it, than it is to read much and then think you have done a good thing by merely reading the letter of the word.  

For you might as well read the alphabet backwards and forwards, as read a chapter of Scripture, unless you meditate upon it, and seek to comprehend its meaning. 

Merely to read words is nothing: the letter kills.

The business of the believer with his Bible open is to pray, “Lord, give me the meaning and spirit of your word, while it lies open before me; apply your word with power to my soul, threatening or promise, doctrine or precept, whatever it may be; lead me into the soul and marrow of your word.”

Also, it is not the form of prayer, but the spirit of prayer that shall truly benefit your souls.
That prayer has not benefited you, which is not the prayer of the soul.

You have need to say, “Lord, give me the spirit of prayer; now help me to feel my need deeply, to perceive your promises clearly, and to exercise faith upon them.”

In your private devotions, strive after vital godliness, real soul-work, the life-giving operation of the Spirit of God in your hearts.

Music Video of the Week: Bon Iver

Bon Iver - "Calgary"

The Story Behind @fakejohnpiper

Jared Wilson, the man behind @fakejohnpiper on twitter, tells the story of why he started the account, his approach to trying to honor Piper through it, and shares some of his favorite tweets. I've really enjoyed watching the stream over the last couple years. It's clear Jared has a real affection for Piper and for those of us who share that affection, there's a real depth to the humor behind the account. Thanks Jared.

Here are the favorite tweets he shared:

- all of the "Desiring God theme park" tweets that followed this one: Thanks to a generous grant, we are pressing forward with plans for a Desiring God theme park . . .

- I got the skills to pay the bills. Except when people use the "pay what you can afford" option.

- If you summerolaters are getting a kiddie pool, you better be baptizing people in it.

- I have prayed for the gift of tongues, but received the gift of gestures. http://twitpic.com/3nwoyo

- Preaching at Mars Hill Seattle this weekend. Still shaken from Driscoll's welcome noogies

- I will be on the road 200 weekdays in 2010, preaching the gospel. You'll be on your couch all year, picking your nose.

- Perry Noble uses lots of exclamation points. Know who else does? Girls.

- I was RT'd 260+ times this morning. Good job. Idolaters

- (On Thanksgiving): Turkey is most glorified in you when you are most stuffed with it.

- 36 idolatry days left till Christmas. Which you'll probably also be idolatrous on.

- Factoid No. 1: "Don't Waste Your Life" originally titled "Don't Mess Around Doing Things That Aren't Important, God-wise."

- Preaching at @MarsHill this year. Will need to break out some edgier language like "shenanigans" and "uvula"

- Working on some Facebook apps with the Desiring God nerd team. "John has thrown an imprecatory psalm at you . . ."

- Phone peddler just asked if I had a retirement plan. I said yes. It's called "death."

- Preaching to college students keeps me young. Also keeping me young: Tuesday night hip hop classes at the downtown Y

- The 401K was invented for quitters

- Greg Boyd invited me to a surprise party for a mutual friend. Told him I'd only attend if he called it a "God is Never Surprised" Party

- Instructing church hostess to change all ads for the Bethlehem Fellowship Potluck to read Fellowship Potpredestination

- Black Friday: I am meditating on the cross of Christ. You are out shopping for a Wee or whatever it's called

- Starting an Everyday Sex Challenge series at Bethlehem this morning. Oh, wait that's not me. 'Cause I'm not an idiot

- Rear-ended someone while erranding. Tried to explain that calamities are the work of God for our good, but she just wanted my insurance info

- I have 48 books coming out this year

Russell Moore: The Gospel at Ground Zero

Russell Moore has the cover story in the upcoming issue of Christianity Today. It deals with the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 and understanding it in terms of the gospel.

You can read the article online here.