Bible Software

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As it continues to rain and I think about tomorrow’s message, I thought I’d semi-distract myself with some videos. I’ve been meaning to dig deeper into my favorite Bible software, Accordance, so I decided to watch a few podcasts today and learn some stuff I didn’t know before. I’m very glad I did. Oooh. There’s also the entire training video library.

If you’re a Mac user and Bible nerd, Accordance is for you.

It's a Rainy Holy Saturday

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That's what today looks like. And tomorrow isn't looking too differently. Trouble is, my mind keeps telling me the number of people who worshiped with us on Easter last year before saying, "If it rains, nowhere near that many will come."

As if it were all on me.

So, I'm going to spend some time praying and reading about prayer:

I won't read them all today, but clearly I need to get my mind on Jesus and I need to talk to him. I think these resources will be a big help.

Maundy Thursday

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Here's what I've been thinking about today.

Jesus feeds his disciples. His disciples are Judas, who betrayed him, and everyone else who abandoned him. I've been thinking about how Jesus must have felt in the presence of people who weren't really for him, at least for about four more days. Gethsemane was clearly a difficult experience for Jesus. Knowing what Judas was up to and what he himself was facing that night and the following day was hard.

I know the last thing I want to do when facing a difficult experience is eat. My hunger pangs are barely distinguishable from the knot of anxiety. Yet, Jesus fed his disciples. He fed them in the tradition of the Passover, reinterpreting it's meaning for them the night before he altered it completely and forever on the cross.

For some reason, my mind has been drifting to Psalm 23. I read it aloud at a funeral I officiated on Saturday and the phrase, "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies" jumped out in my mind as I read it. Why on earth does that sentence get in Psalm 23? It seems out of place. I mean, I'm not going to eat with or in front of my enemies. But this afternoon, all I could think of was Jesus, serving a meal to his disciples, one betrayer and 11 abandoners. Not friends, but enemies. The lamb that was slain at Passover was eaten by those who slew it. Those gathered around that table, in need of the true Paschal lamb, devoured what he provided.

And so we'll eat that meal tonight. We will devour the body and blood of the lamb who was slain. Enemies no more, by virtue of the death he will die on Good Friday but initiated at this table before his beloved enemies.

What is a Good Christian?

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This could probably be a much better post but I've never met a first draft I didn't love. No, wait. I've never met a first draft that I didn't submit. Maybe that'll change.

You don't care about that, though. Here's the question of the day: What is a good Christian? Is it someone who prays a lot? Someone who knows their Bible forward and backward? Is it someone who is at the church every time the doors are open? Is it someone who serves the poor? Someone who goes overseas to preach the gospel to unreached people?

I bet if you took some time to think about it and wrote some characteristics down on a piece of paper, you'd come up with some pretty standard attributes. Devotionally consistent, compassionate, servant-hearted, evangelistic, and ministry-committed. That would about sum up Sam the Super Christian who is our good ole American, Good Christian poster child.

Comedian Ricky Gervais shares the same perspective. By that I mean he thinks what makes someone a Good Christian is their ability to live up to something whether the Ten Commandments or our gold standard of Christian goodness. Mr Gervais shares his thoughts on how he considers himself to be a good Christian in this link I found by way of my friend Sam.

Here's the thing - and I know I'm on a Gospel Coalition high - Ricky starting point is just flat out wrong. So is ours when we start with the deeds of a good Christian. We're all wrong for two reasons.

First, we are not good. At all. Psalm 14 and 53 (quoted in Romans 3:10) remind us that we are not good. No one is. In reading a passage about prevenient grace recently it was asserted by the writer of the book that John Wesley almost went so far to say that in our depravity we bear the image of Satan. While Ricky is trying to be funny, he's clearly not obeying the ten commandments all the time. "You shall have no other gods before me." Ricky, you are your own god. Your point for that one is deducted. That's just the first commandment without going through and finding the holes in the rest.

Second, here's what makes me a good Christian - Jesus. Not my inability to keep the commandments, love my neighbor, or love God, but Jesus. This is imputed righteousness. It is Christ's goodness, not ours, that declares us good in our sinfulness. It is Christ's goodness, not ours, that is our basis for hope as we stand in judgment. If I do anything good in this world it is the work of the Holy Spirit for God's glory and not my own.

I'm not a good Christian the way Gervais defines it, but I have a good Christ and that is all I need.

Your To Do List Just Got Awesome

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Here’s what you need to do today. You need to go to this web page, download those four mp3s, and listen to them. Sooner rather than later. If you’ve only got time for one today, listen to the second one.

For reasons I’m not going into here - for today at least - I nearly started hyperventilating in my truck yesterday while listening to that second talk. I believe the topic of gospel wakefulness to be a pretty significant one. We’ll talk more about that later, though.

For more information just read Jared’s blog and pick up his book which comes out this fall.

The iPad and Preaching

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Jonathan Dodson wrote a great post about preaching with the iPad. My preparation and use is different so I wanted to write a bit about how I do it. I have not used my iPad to preach from yet. I mostly have a Post-it note next to the passage from which I am preaching and that’s the extent of my notes. It probably shows if you watch our video, but I’m just too awkward walking back to the lectern and looking down at notes. It’s uncomfortable for me.

So, here we go:

  • Research: I don’t use my iPad for this very much. I do have both Accordance Bible and Logos on the computer and the iPad. Occasionally I will look something up in one of these two apps (primarily Accordance) and I might read one of the books from the Logos library like I would with the Kindle or iBooks apps, but that’s about it. I mostly use Accordance on the desktop. Also, I will sometimes copy and paste my Kindle clippings into Evernote, but I rarely go back to those and look again.

  • Outlining I’m just using Jonathan’s designation here. I don’t outline very much. If I do use an outline for something, it’s usually a blog post, an article, or an idea for a book. But, for workflow purposes I start out with iThoughtsHD on the iPad or iThoughts on the iPhone. I always save these files in OPML format on DropBox. I do this because I can then open the map in Mind Manager or OmniOutliner. I might use Mind Manager to finish up a map and keep it saved in OPML so that I can then open it in my primary outlining tool which is OmniOutliner. I also use Outliner on both platforms but it’s file saving system is just dumb and really needs DropBox support. After my outlines are done, if it is a big writing project, I send the OPML file to Scrivener for the final draft.

  • Manuscript Again, I don’t take a manuscript, but if I have to write paragraphs of stuff or copy in quotes from another source that I want to share, I only ever do it in TextMate. I am a TextMate kindergartner, but this text editor is so good. I write all my blog posts (including this one) in Markdown and nothing supports systems like Markdown the way TextMate does. My life is basically a bunch of text files (.txt) right now and I love it. No more worrying much about .docx unless someone sends something to me in Word. I. Love. TextMate.

  • Preaching I haven’t done this yet, though Jonathan’s post makes me feel better about trying it out. I didn’t want to be that guy but Jonathan’s post and this one from J.R. Vassar have convinced me that I either need to quit worrying about it or just go ahead and embrace the brokenness of being that guy. I think I would differ from both of these guys in that I’m almost 100% sure I will import my notes into Keynote instead of a document. I tried showing some Bible passages and pictures in Logos a couple of weeks ago in a class I was teaching and the iPad kept going to sleep. I don’t think I want to be distracted by having to turn on my iPad every two minutes.


I can’t believe I wrote that much, but it was a good exercise for me. Anyone else have a preaching workflow they use on the iPad?

Very Proud

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My sermon this morning began with me telling about a Jehovah's Witness lady who rang the doorbell at the house and handed me a tract - nice lady and she didn't stay long which was a plus. After she left I started to read through the tract she handed me. The paragraph contained one truth and one untruth. The truth was that John the Baptist did say that Jesus came to take away the sin of the world in John 1:29. The untruth was that Jesus died to rescue "obedient mankind." There really is a logic problem in combining both statements. If humanity were obedient, we'd have no need for anyone to take away our sin. Also, we are sinners - our genus and species would be better described as homo peccator rather than homo sapiens.

I read the two sentence paragraph to those gathered in worship this morning and asked the question, "What is wrong with that statement?" Several, at the same time, called out "obedient." It didn't strike me until later this evening, but they get it! They are getting the gospel! They know that we can't rescue ourselves, that we are lost sheep (Isa. 53:6), that we are sinners (Rom. 3:23)! I am so proud of my church. I pray our the depth of our gospel understanding continues to grow.

P.S. I may have to write up our Sunday School discussion which diverted away from Ecclesiastes toward evangelism and why we are so hesitant to strike up a gospel conversation, knock on a door, or proclaim the gospel in a public place. That was awesome, too.

Shot to the Gut

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Sunday afternoon, after returning from church, I took out my iPad and checked my RSS feed. Not a great way to start out my afternoon recovery. I read a post about a pastor that broke my heart. I have read this guy's blog posts. I've purchased administrative documents from him that we tweaked and use at the church. I enjoyed learning from him. His evangelistic heart showed through everything that he did. He was close to my age and pretty much everything I thought of when I thought of success in ministry.

He is out of the ministry today because of an affair.

I was sick to my stomach when I read about it. I didn't even know the guy personally, but I took his fall personally. All I could think was, "This guy preaches like me, teaches like me, and from where I sit he looks like a better Christian than me." I was pretty angry about the whole thing, but then it turned to sadness and introspection. I've strutted around the last ten years believing I'll never do something like that - pure arrogance. We learned in Sunday school the last two weeks from Ecclesiastes 5 that we should _never_ speak rashly or promise things like that because our perspective is so very limited and, in my interpretation, we are unaware of how perilous our spiritual situations truly are. I repent of that pride and arrogance.

I woke up the next morning feeling so overwhelmingly weak. I think I'm so strong and stike out on my own, apart from God. The reality is that I'm not strong but weak and I've spent a lot of time confessing my prayerlessness and my reliance upon myself rather than Jesus. I pray that's the proper response to news of another pastor's infidelity. I pray that's the proper response because you can bet that there will be a lot of blog posts and talk about how to affair-proof your marriage. I'll tell you this - it's all a bunch of moralizing nonsense if you or me don't stick close to Jesus. I realized just how weak I am, just how much I need God's grace, and just how much of a weak lamb in need of a strong Shepherd I am.

It also brought me to realize that I need my church, my wife, and my friends - more than ever - to pray for me. Not for success. Not for thanksgiving, or anything like that - pray for my prayer time, for my time in the Bible, and most of all for my marriage. I love my wife and have been faithful to her and my intention is, barring death, to make it as long as my grandparents did, but it'll never happen without a total dependance upon Jesus.

Sunday Links 3.6.2011

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Can't wait for tonight. We are heading down to Heritage UMC in Van Buren to worship with and hear from one of my seminary and professors and mentors, Dr. Bob Tuttle. I'll report on these times of worship this week!

See you soon!