Yesterday, the winners for the Great Book Blast were picked at a book signing in Rockford, IL at Parable Christian Bookstore.
Monthly Archive for May, 2009
Page 3 of 3
Southern preacher Fred Craddock tells about an unusual meeting with a greyhound:
On my last trip to Southampton, I was visiting a family. We sat around after dinner and talked. The children played with the family dog, a large, long, narrow sort of dog.
‘That’s a full-blooded greyhound,’ the lord of the house proudly told me.
‘We got him after his racing days were finished. He’s great with children.’
The children rolled on his back, their heads between his paws. He licked them affectionately. Eventually it was time for the kids to go to bed. The parents gathered them up, leaving me alone with the dog. I asked the dog,
‘What’s it like to be a greyhound and race professionally? I’ve never been to a greyhound race myself.’
‘It’s not a bad life,’ said the greyhound. ‘They treat you like a king. Feed you well. I had it made down there in Florida, racing.’
‘Well, why did you leave? Did you just age out? You don’t look that old to me,’ I said.
‘No, I’m not old enough for retirement. I quit.’
I persisted, ‘Well, what made you quit?’
He replied, ‘Well, if you had ever been to a greyhound race, you might understand. In every greyhound race, all of the dogs line up, we are released, and then we follow a little white rabbit thing around the track.
‘It’s not really a rabbit, it’s just some sort of stuffed thing that is white and is pulled around the track. We all chase it. One day, after a race, I got a close look at that rabbit. To my shock, I found out the rabbit wasn’t real! That meant the race wasn’t real. So I quit. I was almost ashamed to have spent so much of my life chasing a fake rabbit. . . all that running and running. It’s kind of embarrassing to be honest with you. . . ‘"
Have you heard? The rabbit isn’t real.
I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind (Ecclesiastes 1:14).
Pray for our country. Owen Strachan links to an article that reports 4 of 10 new babies in the U.S. are born to unwed mothers. Click here.
Have you thought much about Heaven lately? Have you tried to picture the New Jerusalem?
Reading the sermons of Jonathan Edwards has helped me picture Heaven more vividly.
For many their only exposure to Edwards has been his famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” If you haven’t read that sermon, do so soon. But, I think one of Edwards greatest sermons was one in which he talked about Heaven. In that message, Edwards preached about how believers would relate to Christ in Heaven. Edwards said that Christ will treat believers as dear friends and that our access to Jesus will be more free than the Disciples had to Jesus during His earthly ministry.
Do you realize that if you put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is not ashamed to say that you are His brother or sister? And, that if you have done that, you can be very sure that soon you will be with Him forever.
Edwards told his congregation, [Jesus] will treat you as his dear friend; and you shall [always] be where he is, and shall behold his glory, and dwell with him, in most free and intimate communion and enjoyment . . .
My family has a spot in the Heavenly City all picked out. We’re going to meet at the 5th tree on the right side of the river facing the throne. We would love to have you stop by and visit us.
I saw this little girl in Mango, Togo, West Africa last week. She lives in abject poverty. If she doesn’t have AIDS, she knows people who
do. The odds that she will grow up with both her parents in good health are low. She probably sleeps on the floor of a mud hut.
While I’ve never necessarily been good at spotting angels, she looked like one to me.
Whether or not she is an angel, where I am concerned, she is a stranger. And, Hebrews 13:2 reads:
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.(Heb 13:2).”
So, it could be that when I prayed silently for her in sweltering heat, somewhere just inside the 10/40 window in Africa, that I was actually praying for an angel? You never know.
But, it’s more likely that she isn’t an angel. She is simply the prettiest little girl living in poverty in West Africa. She couldn’t fathom that people half a world away are looking at her picture, thanking God for her smile, and praying that she would be reached with the Gospel so that one day on the other side, we could celebrate answered prayer and the wonders of missions.
This for sure. If she is not an angel, she is “one of the least of these.” And, if we can help her, then we will do something directly for the Lord Himself (Matthew 25:40).
* * * *
The reason that I was in the vicinity of this little girl was that I (and more importantly a surgeon I was with) were visiting a man who had broken his hip after falling in a well. He was laying in his mud hut in great pain and little or no medical help available. You can read more here.
Here is an excerpt from Unpacking Forgiveness. If (1) You are in the initial 
stages of an argument or, (2) If you think Matthew 18:15-17 are the only verses in the Bible, then read this.
A Sad, Ridiculous Story
It started out simply, as complicated things often do. On a night long ago, Denis O’Brien walked into a restaurant called the Mousetrap. [He] was looking for friends, and when he found them, he turned to walk out.
A cashier stopped him. Apparently O’Brien had misplaced a red tab that the restaurant issued to its customers to keep track of their food and drinks. The Mousetrap required a $5 fee for lost tabs, O’Brien was told.
It could have ended there, but it didn’t. O’Brien could have paid the fee, but he wouldn’t. The restaurant could have let him go, but it wouldn’t. Instead, the dispute escalated over a decade into a series of suits and two counter suits in two states and two countries.
The restaurant has gone out of business, but the $5 red tab has grown to more than $165,000.
On that night, Feb 29, 1980, O’Brien, who was then a University of Virginia graduate student in pharmacology, screamed that paying anything would violate his rights because he had eaten nothing and drunk nothing. At the Mousetrap’s request, he was taken by police to the Charlottesville jail. There, a magistrate refused to issue an arrest warrant. O’Brien was released.
O’Brien could have let the matter end there, his indignation justified by the magistrate, but he demanded a printed apology from the restaurant and threatened to sue….. O’Brien’s lawsuits eventually were dismissed for various reasons, writing another possible ending to the incident. But the Mousetrap sued O’Brien after he had moved….[O'Brien failed to show up for the trial and]…without O’Brien in the courtroom, the jury awarded $60,000 in damages to the restaurant.
[The prosecutor] said O’Brien is to blame for his problems. “All he had to do all these years was come and tell the judge the story. He knew the suit was coming. Had he come to the judge, the judge would have reopened it. He didn’t tell anybody he was in town. He just decided he was going to be clever, I guess.”
O’Brien did not pay the judgment and [the prosecutor] pursued him in Massachusetts courts. O’Brien said that the matter still was not decided when he left the country for New Zealand in 1984.
For nearly seven years, O’Brien found peace from the Mousetrap suit.
But the search for O’Brien had not ended…. On a cool New Zealand evening last October, an officer of the court appeared on O’Brien’s doorstep. He carried papers saying O’Brien, who is now a 42-year-old lecturer in pharmacology at the Central Institute of Technology in Trentham, still owed the $60,000 judgment plus interest.
[As of the time of the writing of this article], the matter is under consideration in a New Zealand courtroom.[1]
Can you believe it? A hot-headed college student set out to make a point about a five-dollar bar tab. And, because he insisted on proving that he was right, he ended up fleeing to the other side of the world with a $165,000 debt hanging over his head. Ironically, O’Brien later discovered that he had the tab in his pocket the entire time. Just reading it, I wish that I could have been there to say, “Here, I’ll pay the $5!”
Of course, O’Brien wouldn’t have accepted because he was so committed to proving that he was right.
But, even as we shake our heads, most of us need to admit that there has been a time when we insisted on pursuing a matter because “it was the principle of the thing.” Looking back on it, we would have to admit that it was foolish to pursue it. It was never that important in the first place.
Stop for a moment. Can you think of a time in your marriage or friendships that you blew something up when you should have let it go?
This brings us to an important truth; we do not need to formally resolve every conflict that takes place. Some offenses need to be dropped. While there are times that we go to another party and say, “You have offended me,” and we will talk about those occasions in the next chapter. There are other times when we just need to get over the matter. Proverbs 17:14 warns,
The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out.
~ Proverbs 17:14
In The Message, Eugene Peterson paraphrases,
The start of a quarrel is like the leak of a dam, so stop it before it bursts.[2]
Starting a quarrel is like playing with explosives at the base of Hoover Dam. If you are not careful, you will end up blowing up the dam, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to put the thing together again. Starting a quarrel is like flinging a glass of water across a room. Once you have done it, you can never reverse the process.
Other verses make a similar point.
- Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense (Proverbs 19:11).
- The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult (Proverbs 12:16).
- It is an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife, but every fool will be quarreling (Proverbs 20:3).
- Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8).
[1] DeNeen L. Brown, “U-Va. Student’s $5 Bar Tab Now a $165,000 Hangover,” Washington Post, April 29 1991.
[2] Eugene Peterson, The Message: Proverbs (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1995), 58.
Quoting Proverbs chapter 3, in Hebrews 12 the author of Hebrews reminds his listeners that all people who are truly Christians can expect discipline.
My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father the son he delights in.
So, all Christians can expect that God will providentially discipline them through the circumstances of life.
Now, to many of us, the idea that we may go through difficult times may seem initially discouraging. But, one thing we need to see about God’s discipline of those who truly know him, is that it is for the purposes of the future not the past. The author of Hebrews wrote:
10b but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
The author of Hebrews talks about a harvest in the future. It isn’t that God is getting us back for what we have done. But, it isn’t for the purpose of making you pay the penalty. If you believe in Christ, then he paid the penalty for your sins. God’s discipline of his children is for our own good in the future.
Once when one of our sons was about three years old, he crossed our street without permission and snuck off to see one of the neighbors. Of course, we had to discipline him. But, our purpose in disciplining our three year old, was not to say, “Look buddy, we’re going to get you back for what you did. We didn’t need to get back at our son. Our purpose in disciplining him was to teach him so that in the future he would make better choices about the street.
So it is for us. All believers will face some discipline from God. Those who deliberately stray will face more. But, the purpose of God’s discipline is not to force us to pay the penalty for our sins. Jesus already paid the penalty for the sins of his people. God disciplines his children for the purposes of the future, not to get them back for the past.
Enter the Summer Book Blast
Deadline for entering is Thursday, May 14, 2009.
Your chance to win one of 10 books including a calf-skin ESV Study Bible that retails for $239.99.
Or, 1 of:
2 signed copies of Unpacking Forgiveness
2 copies of, What He Must Be if He Wants to Marry My Daughter, Voddie Baucham,
2 copies of Don’t Waste You Life, John Piper,
2 copies of What is a Healthy Church? Mark Dever, and 2 copies of Worldliness, by C.J. Mahaney.
I will be at Parable Christian bookstore (on State Street in Rockford, IL) from 1-4 PM on Saturday, May 16.
You can enter the drawing either by stopping by the book signing in person, or by subscribing to Chris’s blog through either RSS feeds or e-mail.
Send me an e-mail with “book blast” in the subject line and I will know you entered.
