Enriched Affections

I often get after my wife for having multiple favorites or "bests" of things. I tell her that having a "best _____" means that one thing is the greatest and all others are lesser. How can she have multiple best friends or favorite foods? It is frustrating as a guy that needs everything to line up and logically make sense. Can't she say I have ultimate and penultimate friends like the rest of us? However, around Thanksgiving I have to take exception to my normal "best" rule and say that I have lots of things that I'm the most thankful for. What are you thankful for? My list is very long this year. There are of course the traditional things - friends, family, a home, a great church, my salvation. All of these are incredible blessings in my life and I am grateful to God for each of them. Yesterday, as our family was talking about a few of the things that have happened in the past few weeks and months, I couldn't help but hear some music play...

Buffering... 30%... 40%... Buffering... "Daddy, why's it keep doing that?" asks my cute little 3-year-old for the seventh time. Here we are, trying to enjoy a quiet evening with some ice cream and 101 Dalmatians. My three daughters are patiently waiting for the scene to unfold on the screen, yet we are stuck watching "Buffering" instead of seeing if Roger and Anita will fall in love after they fall into the lake. Why does this keep happening? Well, the long answer is complicated. Maybe the bandwidth is overloaded on our particular router. Perhaps too many users are accessing the same file. Maybe our BluRay player is updating itself while we are watching the movie. Maybe the signal sent to the house is being split around the neighborhood and we got the short end of the Mbps. All of these reasons swirled through my head as I prepared to answer her question. And then I realized that my daughter is three and still doesn't grasp the concept of snapping ...

Have you ever prayed for death? I don't mean praying for the death of an enemy in a moment of anger. I don't mean praying for God to take you out of this world before your time. I mean praying for the death of someone you love. Is it ever appropriate to pray this way? If you've ever experienced the death of a loved one, you know the pain that accompanies such an ordeal. It isn't the pain of a physical injury or an emotional insult. It isn't the pain of guilt or hunger or fear. It is all these pains wrapped into one. It's an empty feeling that moves from your heart to your stomach, numbing your mind, leaving you searching for distraction and escape. But there is no escape. This kind of pain may dull over time, but it never fully goes away. There might be moments when it's forgotten, but there are other times when a smell or a scene from a movie bring it back as though the wound were newly inflicted. And yet, sometimes we pray for this kind of pain to be...

Baptism is an essential element of Christian worship. The Reformers defined a true church as one which preaches the Word and exercises the sacraments, namely the Lord's Supper and Baptism. Whatever you believe about baptism, I hope you take it seriously enough to follow your convictions. If you are a Christian and haven't been baptized, I would encourage you to speak with your pastor about it. As my wife and I began to put the final pieces into place about what we now believed regarding baptism, we had a few final questions. One of them was about the mode of baptism. I had always been raised with the idea that being fully immersed in water was the only acceptable way to be baptized. After all, being immersed really pictures the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. How does that fit with sprinkling babies? If I believe and infant should be baptized, was sprinkling okay? Should I meet in the middle and pour water instead of fully immersing? Thankfully, I believe scriptu...

"All Hail the Pow'r of Jesus' Name" by Oliver Holden (1793), new arrangement released by The Gettys on Live at The Gospel Coalition  (2013) Why I recommend this song for worship- This is a classic hymn, one which I hope many of you are familiar with. It echoes the phrase we will be exclaiming throughout eternity, "All Hail the Power of Jesus Name!" I love this hymn because it encompasses not only our individual praise, but the fact that people from all ages, all tribes, and all cultures will also praise the name of Jesus. The next time you sing this in church, remember that this is just a taste of what we'll be able to do and who we'll be able to worship with in heaven. Let it also remind you that just because a song might be a few hundred years old, it doesn't mean we can't still use it to worship God. I'm thankful for this, and other old hymns, which focus our hearts and minds on the realities of the coming age. Suggestions f...

The more I study scripture, the more I see the connections from the Old Testament to the New. The Bible is one Book, telling one story. Certain systems of thought will try to push the idea that only the NT is for the church and the OT is just full of good, moral stories. I couldn't disagree more. Jesus Himself said that the OT was about Him ( John 5:39 ), and if we are about knowing Christ in the church then we better know our Old Testaments. Why do I bring this up during a discussion regarding baptism which many believe is solely in the NT? Because the theme of a covenant sign (which is what baptism really is) begins in the OT. Here's what I mean. In Genesis 12 God chose Abraham to be the father of His people. By choosing to bless Abraham, God was saying that Abraham, and all those who would be his offspring through faith, would be blessed with salvation ( Galatians 3:7-9 ). Adding to this, the Bible says that Abraham is the father of all who would believe in Christ ( G...

This morning I was reminded of the vast amounts of God's grace which were poured out for my sins. Have you ever wondered about that? Is there a definitive amount of grace? We sing about grace, read about grace, and even say grace. But, have you ever wondered about what actually happened at the cross to give us that grace? Here is some math to help figure it out. We have to start with sin, since grace covers our sins. How much do you and I sin? Let's be very conservative with this estimate, knowing that the numbers are probably much higher. How about 5 times an hour, give or take. When I think about all the times I even have an angry, anxious, lustful, lazy, or unkind thought I imagine that number could be higher. Perhaps five an hour is a pretty conservative amount, but we'll use it for now. Five sins an hour multiplied by the twelve or so waking hours of the day comes to 60 sins a day. 60 sins a day multiplied out over a year gives us 21,900 sins in a year. If we expan...