I’ve known of many girls who struggle with beauty and self-image. It is an issue that seems to pervade much of the young women in modern western society, even within the church. The need for the approval of man –or rather, men — saturates their heart and mind beyond the approval that God provides. Being seen by God as beautiful, precious, and valuable sometimes just isn’t enough. (I would also partly attribute the rise of the “princess” mentality to this problem of self-image)

However, there are also those who have struggled through and are winning the battle — they are embracing their identity in Christ, being convinced that they are the image of God, and that no external beauty can change that. One such women is Bethany Dillon, one of my favorite Christian singers as you probably know already. She wrote a song a few years ago, titled “Beautiful“, that speaks to the heart of these issues of beauty and self-image.

I was so unique, now I feel skin deep
I count on the make-up to cover it all
Crying myself to sleep cause I cannot keep their attention
I thought I could be strong but it’s killing me

Does someone hear my cry? I’m dying for new life

[Chorus]
I want to be beautiful, make you stand in awe
Look inside my heart, and be amazed
I want to hear you say who I am is quite enough
Just want to be worthy of love,
And beautiful

Sometimes I wish I was someone other than me
Fighting to make the mirror happy
Trying to find whatever is missing
Won’t you help me back to glory

[Chorus]

You make me beautiful
You make me stand in awe
You step inside my heart, and I am amazed
I love to hear You say
Who I am is quite enough
You make me worthy of love and beautiful

Our substitute, then, who took our place and died our death on the cross, was neither Christ alone (since that would make him a third party thrust in between God and us), nor God alone (since that would undermine the historical incarnation), but God in Christ, who was truly and fully both God and man and who on that account was uniquely qualified to represent both God and man and to mediate between them.  If we speak only of Christ suffering and dying, we overlook the initiative of the Father.  If we speak only of God suffering and dying, we overlook the mediation of the Son.  The New Testament authors never attribute the atonement either to Christ in such a way as to disassociate him from the Father, or to God in such a way as to dispense with Christ, but rather to God and Christ, or to God acting in and through Christ with his whole-hearted concurrence.

John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1986, 2006), p. 156.

How can a local church community reach out to its immediate surrounding community with the gospel of Jesus Christ, if its members do not live there and have no intentions of moving there?

As I gather on this Lord’s Day with brothers and sisters of my local church, I am encouraged and challenged by the large numbers of church members who have moved into the immediate community of the church so that they would be able to live as the hands and feet of Jesus, so that they could proclaim the gospel through building relationships with their neighbors.  I am convicted of living where I live, on campus of Southern Seminary, without any intention of moving off campus.

So often I’ve seen churches who just plan programs and activities and just “wait” for people to see them there, waiting even longer for somebody — anybody — to ask them “why” they are doing these programs and having these activities.  Without any plan to get the gospel to the neighborhood, and without any plan to proclaim the good news to the people who come for those “outreach” activities, such churches are left stagnant and un-growing, and even worse, less than a handful of people are added to their numbers yearly if any.  The worship and sermons during Sunday Services lack Christ-centerdness and further lacks a clear presentation of the gospel in every sermon.

Church members don’t live in the church’s surrounding community, and even worse, they live very far away.  As if such wasn’t bad enough, new young couples move out of the neighborhood instead of moving in, for their own pastor is not even an example of “reaching out by being there”.  Maybe he preaches one thing (”Dearly beloved, let us move into the community!”) and lives out another (he lives far away from the church in another city).  Such hypocrisy is not only a failure to be an example to the church body, but is completely unhelpful in encouraging church members to heed his preaching.

Further, parishioners argue that proclaiming the substitutionary atonement in every sermon and worship set is not necessary, because they assume that unbelievers already know that that is why the church exists, because they assume that believers no longer need the gospel after becoming a Christian.  Little do they know that nonchristians and unbelievers are visiting their churches every Sunday, yearning to hear of the hope of a God who has crushed His son Jesus for their sins, looking for a gracious God whom they could put their faith in — One who is worthy to be praised.

If only those parishioners would know that the very thing that they think is unnecessary and hindering to the church’s ministry is the very thing that their neighbors desperately need: the good news of Christ and him crucified, a friend who would come next door and sit with them every week to hear about Jesus’ redeeming blood.

This is a simple question that requires a biblical answer: Can a woman be in authority over a man in the local church? For in this question, the purity of the local church is revealed in how it is answered.  Whether or not a church truly permits women to be in authority over men is seen through the actual function and structure of the church itself.

In recent years, the church in the west has answered this question in ways that contradicts the whole council of God in his Word.  From a standpoint of supposed biblical equality, women have been given authority over men in the local church.  The positions, roles, and functions of women in the church has found its birth not in the local church per se, but at home and in the level of the family.  We ought to be attentive to such trajectory of our own local church, and the direction of our denomination at large.  We must keep a close watch at where the evangelical church is going in this day and age.  As we do so, what we find may surprise us, if not frighten us to the very core of our faith.

Numerous so-called evangelical churches today have women in the Elder Board. In these churches, the Elder Board does not function like a “council of elders” as commanded by the Bible — with men exercising spiritual leadership and being gifted to teach — but rather as an administrative board that follows worldly, unchristian business models of organization and structure.  Some Baptist churches also have women pastors on their paid staff, and even more significantly, some congregations have ordained women as “Reverends“, as well as inviting women to be guest preachers for their Sunday Services.

Other Protestant churches who desire to be more biblical may not have women in such authoritative positions or formal teaching roles, but they do allow women to be in other teaching (and thus, authoritative) roles.  Women are Sunday school teachers, teaching hermeneutics or books of the Bible over younger Christians — which inevitably include men.  And further, even many young girls in their teens and early twenties are leading Bible study over other Christian guys.  Or maybe the girls are very skilled and trained musically, leading worship music for fellowship gatherings and Sunday services.

These are but a handful of examples where I’ve heard of many congregations falling away from a biblical understanding of leadership and authority in the home and the local church.  Many of these areas of ministry described are at their foundation shepherding responsibilities that have a pastoral emphasis.  But despite the fact that many women in these examples are not “pastors” or “elders” in local churches, these roles and functions are all being done by women, and in essence the women are exercising authority over and teaching doctrine to many men in the local church in varying degrees.  Women in many Christian homes and churches are not only taking care of servant tasks in the household of the family and of the church, but they are exercising authority and spiritual leadership over men

Whether this be an organized authority or simply something that “just happened,” this has in many places become the accepted norm, and thus is now something that regenerate church members of both genders accept and do not even argue about.  Maybe you’ve heard similar words like these:  “There’s wrong with this — it’s just the way things are done in my home and my church!  I think the Bible promotes equality between me and my husband.  I should be allowed to teach Bible lessons at church as he does!” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve never thought too much about the relationship between a rightly structured marriage and effective evangelism.  Thus, I was quite intrigued when I read the the Editor’s Note of the July/August 2008 eJournal by 9Marks:

Can a man with a good but wrongly structured marriage have a faithful evangelistic ministry? This question was posed to me recently. The answer seemed obvious—”Look, it may not be ideal, but if a person is out there sharing the gospel…”

I then presented the question to a pastor whom I respect tremendously. I was amazed when he said that he was unsure whether such a man could. His rationale: “A rightly ordered and healthy marriage is that close to the heart of the gospel, and an unhealthy marriage teaches a wrong gospel.”

Wow. I hadn’t thought about that. But it makes biblical sense, doesn’t it? Analogous perhaps to the gospel witness we might attach to caring for the poor (a popular topic, and easier to talk about)?

Consider one of the first consequences of the fall—the marriage of Adam and Eve is cursed with a distorted relationship (Gen. 3:16b). Consider also one of the best pictures of Christ’s redemption—marriage (Eph. 5:22-33). Consider Paul’s requirement that a pastor have a rightly ordered home before he thinks of leading the church (1 Tim. 3:4). A rightly ordered and healthy marriage displays or pictures the gospel. It’s a symbol or a type, like caring for the poor (2 Cor. 8:9).

As society moves further and further away from the biblical practice of marriage (think of the recent decision by the California Supreme Court to allow for homosexuals to marry), it will become that much more critical for rightly ordered and healthy Christian marriages to comprise the backdrop of gospel proclamation, again, like so many are saying about caring for the poor. Neither of these matters are the gospel, but both present a kind of picture of the gospel; both are powerfully redolent with the gospel’s love and forgiveness.

How crucial then for pastors to attend to their own marriages, as well as the marriages in their churches. This issue of the 9Marks eJournal on marriage hopes it can help our brother pastors do just that, if only in a small way.

–Jonathan Leeman

I often get made fun of by Americans down here in Kentucky because I am Canadian and thus speak various Canadian slangs and idioms without knowing it.  Them Americans can be quite uninformed about us Canucks who just live north of the border!

Anyways, here’s some help in learning to speak Canadian, for those ignorant Americans (and closet Canadians) among us!

Terms and Phrases

• Eh - “Eh?” is a word you add to the end of a sentence, to ask for a response of agreement or disagreement, similar in meaning to “don’t you think?” ex. “Looks like a storm comin’ in, eh?” It is also sometimes used with “I know”, and in that case it doesn’t really mean anything. -”Wow, the Oilers really kicked butt tonight!” -”I know, eh?” Basically ‘do you not think so too?’
• Bathroom - Bathroom and washroom are used interchangeably in Canada to refer to a place where you would find toilets. Say “Bathroom” in some parts of the US, and you’ll get a place with a bathtub in it. Biffy can also be used.
• Deadly - A reaction to something done “over the top”; overdone; excessive. Can also be used as a response to something done very well. Circa 1974ish.
• Touque - A knit cap. Usually worn in winter.
• Hoser- calling someone is a “hoser” is really just calling them a loser. In the old days, the team that lost the hockey game would have to hose down the rink, and hence the reference “hoser”.
• Loonie - the Canadian one-dollar coin.
• Toonie - the Canadian two-dollar coin.
• Brown Bread - Whole wheat bread.
• Homo Milk - Whole Milk
• Dooryard- The front garden.
• Wicked - Something or someone amazing. i.e. “Cheryl is wicked at her job”
• How’s She Bootin’er? - It’s the equivalent of “How’s it going?”
• Beauty - A reaction to something done extremely well.
• Double-Double - Said when ordering a coffee; indicating two creams and two sugars.
• Growl - to yell.
• Brutal- to be very bad at something.
• Chesterfield - A couch.

Read the rest of this entry »

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. (1 Timothy 6:11)

Father in Heaven,

On this day that you have made, I bend my head and bow my heart in worship to you, for you good and your love endures forever. In your holiness, your perfect spotless righteousness, you are worthy to be praised, because you alone made all things. In you, I am held together, and apart from you, I would be subject to your holy wrath and judgment. Thank you again for the gift of your one and only begotten, Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior: for giving him freely to me as a gift to be received by faith, trusting in his atoning work on the cross in my place for my sins. His blood has washed away my sins, and for that, I am thankful everyday of my life.

Oh Lord and my God, I desire to be a man of God, just like your servant Timonthy. I desire to be faithful and strong in light of persecution and difficulty, a slave of one Master and a worshiper of one Lord. May I never selfishly desire renown of my own name or seek after earthly fame, but in all things and in every part of my life — personal and public, church and family — may I be known for what I flee from, who I follow after, what I fight for, and who I am faithful to. I know that perfection in obedience is impossible in this life where sin is still present in my body, and yet I am convinced that through the Scriptures divine submission may be produced within my heart. Though sin may still abound in my flesh, your grace shall abound in my life through Spirit-empowered repentance all the more.

O Great God of highest Heaven, let my outward behavior be continually righteous and honorable in your sight, that people around me would wonder what God I serve who has transformed my heart.  Conform my heart and soul to the shape of Jesus’ cross, so that I would be more and more like Christ and less and less like those of this world.  In reverence and in fear, may I come boldly into your presence, where angels even fear to tread, to ask that your kingdom would come and your will be done in my life and the life of my beloved.

In the name of Christ I pray,

Amen.