Life

Well, I had a pretty good Christmas. I was very blessed to have the Barra's in Ingham adopt me for Christmas, I had a great day with them and their family! It was relaxing being away from the base, in a normal house, sleeping in a normal bed, having normal family meals... wonderful! I always feel really refreshed after going up there. I also started a new book on Christmas day... "Don't Waste Your Life" by John Piper. It's quite a good book... I don't really know much about John Piper, really... I listen to his sermons via Desiring God's podcast, but that's about it.

Well... I haven't in a while... oh well. I've been quite busy. A deadline for a website I was helping out with a little bit suddenly jumped ahead... leaving me and Justin about a week to finish it off. So... there were a couple of nights where I worked until four or five o'clock in the morning... pretty much straight through the night. We got the site launched by the new deadline, although we're still tweaking it.

Scripture clearly teaches that our "choosing" God is preempted by His salvation. While we may "choose" to follow Him, that choice is not possible as a result of our free will, but as a result of God freeing our will to be able to choose Him. God always is the first cause in our salvation, at the very least. Thinking on this, though, people very often have objections, such as "we need free will so that we may choose God" or "we need free will such that we may choose to love" or something along that line of thought. These are questions that are difficult when we consider the nature of our will, but I'm not addressing those now (however, if you want me to, I can another time). What I'm wondering is this: why do we fight so hard for the case of free will? Why does it matter to us?

Well, my vacation for February/March in Canada has been confirmed, so I will be coming home for a month! I'm quite excited by this... by the time I fly out, it will have been more than two years since I left home (which was at about 3 AM on New Years Day 2008), and over a year since I saw (most) of my family down here in Australia. It's too bad I wasn't able to get home for Christmas... that would be fun... oh well. I have posted a few songs that were recorded when I played for "Live Off The Deck" at our Family Night Barbecue a couple weeks ago...

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Well, I haven't written about what I'm up to in the last little while, so might as well. Over the last couple of weeks, I have continued my journey through the book of Romans, as well as Phillipians.

In my previous article, I sought to establish that Jesus’ Second Coming is, indeed, very relevant to our generation now. I did not, however, provide much application... what does it actually mean for us, here and now, for it to be relevant? In other words... what are we to do, knowing that we are in the beginning of the transition period that will end when Jesus establishes His throne on earth? This is a huge question! One could write a book on this subject and not encapsulate everything. With that in mind, we will be looking at the passage we are already familiar with, which is Matthew 24-25, as Jesus lays out some important principles therein as to what we should expect and how we ought to live our lives in response.

"Studying Jesus' Second Coming has no real impact on us, now, and is therefore irrelevant."

I hear this all too often, or something similar. I'm sure you have too, or maybe that is your belief and you have said it yourself? I believe that this is not only an un-Biblical, but a very dangerous position to hold as a Christian in this day and age. Some will have objections to this, of course... probably the strongest being from the camp of Preterism, who in a nutshell believe that most or all of prophecy regarding Jesus was fulfilled in or before 70 A.D.  I will not address this, here... I will simply say that this doctrine misses the mark in a terrible way, and is not worthy of rebuttal here... I have some other thoughts on it in this blog post. If you do want me to address the topic of preterism more in full, I may in the future. The others that often object to the relevancy of Jesus' Second Advent, in my experience, often seem to base it around the idea that it doesn't actually help us living our lives now.

I'm not sure what I want to write on to begin, but I do know what I feel in my heart. Over the last little while, when people ask me how I am, I'm not sure how to answer. Really, I'm good, I have little to complain about. Just below the surface, however, is this boiling ocean of discontentment. It is not that I don't have many possessions, it is not that I have little money: I have all of these I need to survive, and, indeed, more than I need to survive of both. I can fill my stomach, and pay my bills... what else do I even need? No, friends, my discontentment runs much deeper than that, still.

"I have been writing this volume while residing in Germany for a teaching trip. I am humbled by penning these 95 theses in the same country as Martin Luther did many years ago. I submit these to the evangelical church of our day and pray that God would allow anything of truth in these pages to bend and change men's hearts back to God." - Greg Gordon - http://www.sermonindex.net **

“It is useless for large companies of believers to spend long hours begging God to send revival. Unless we intend to reform we may as well not pray. Unless praying men have the insight and faith to amend their whole way of life to conform to the New Testament pattern there can be no true revival.” - A.W. Tozer

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