The Innkeeper…not your typical Christmas poem
A moving poem by John Piper
For some of you the business of the season is on pause for a few days. Take a minute and listen to and think about this great poem about sacrifice, love, redemption and renewal. Warning, this is not a warm fuzzy poem to meet our surface holiday needs, yet it can warm the depths of our being with rough reality that reminds us of the cost of discipleship and the sacrifice and victory of Jesus.
Download the Innkeeper Book(pdf) free Here
Cosmic Treason
"God voluntarily created us. He gave us the highest privilege of being His image bearers....we are not turtles. We are not fireflies. We are not caterpillars or coyotes. We are people. We are the image bearers of the holy and majestic King of the cosmos.
We have not used the gift of life for the purpose God intended. Life on this planet has become the arena in which we daily carry out the work of cosmic treason....No traitor to any king or nation has even approached the wickedness of our treason before God....
When we sin as the image bearers of God, we are saying to whole creation, to all of nature under our dominion, to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field: “This is how God is. This is how your creator behaves. Look in his mirror; look at us, and you will see the character of the Almighty.” We say to the world, “God is covetous; God is ruthless; God is bitter; God is a murderer; a thief, a slanderer, an adulterer. God is all of these things that we are doing.”" R.C. Sproul
Praise God for being kind and gracious with us by sending Jesus. May we not trivialize Christmas but embrace the reason Jesus came into the world....to redeem and restore his image bearers.
Powerful Paragraph on Suffering
In their book Doctrine, Mark Driscoll & Gerry Breshears write about reflecting the Glory of God as we suffer.
"We image God by suffering well. When the clouds of trial, pain, loss, hardship, hurt, and tears roll in, we must never forget that our Lord Jesus Christ imaged God well even when suffering. When Jesus was hurting the most, as he hung on the cross for our sins, he reflected the mercy and justice of God perfectly.
Jesus invites us not to waste the worst moments and seasons of our life but rather consider them treasures to be invested purposefully in glorifying God by imaging the character of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
This is Jesus' point when he says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."
Thankfully, unlike so many half-true theologies that speak only of the victories of Christian life and how to image God when we are winning, Jesus shows us that if our aim is to image God, then when we win and lose and as we live and die, every moment is a sacred opportunity to be captured for his glory, our joy, and others' good."
How do we waste or sufferings? Powerful!!
Christ the Center Collection
Here are some posts I have written about Jesus being the center of our lives. I write these things to help me process what I am learning. I also hope to encourage others.
"But I have this against you..."
The Danger of Receiving Rewards Now
A Hike with my daughter and 1 Thessalonians.....Walking Worthy?
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Sherlock Holmes and the Apostle Paul...Mystery
Death by Love, Letter from the Cross
Futsal and Jesus...Ordinary Life?
His Body was Broken for Broken Families
Renovation-a lesson from Chic-fil-A(wesome)
