Some pics from this year's Christmas.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Checking "Scroogeism"
This is really good from R.C. Sproul.
http://www.ligonier.org/blog/2008/12/marleys-message-to-scrooge.html
As I have watched Eli's mind mature and become more easily enraptured with good story, I have been convicted of too often taking the mystery and story out of Christianity. Doctrine is so important. It is the foundation for absolutely everything. Without it, we can hold to nothing. Without it, worship is impossible. Again, we are so careful to not fall into the "doctrinelessness" of much of today's church or the mindless New Age spirituality of our age, that we totally lose the experiential quality of the faith. We must learn to leave room for mystery. In our care to rightly frame all things doctrinally, we must not end in an intellectual exercise only. We cannot be paralyzed by what is a healthy concern for right understanding and we shouldn't make others around us feel this way as well. We must, like little children, stand before the throne of God - knowing what we know about Him because He has revealed Himself and because we have so painfully slowly trained our minds to think His thoughts after Him - and be overwhelmed. That is the true experience of transcendence (which Oprah and her followers are longing for and yet will never find because they have lost doctrine of the miracle of Christmas - the transcendent God becoming eminent in the flesh of Jesus Christ); that is the essence of worship.
Romans 11:33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
http://www.ligonier.org/blog/2008/12/marleys-message-to-scrooge.html
As I have watched Eli's mind mature and become more easily enraptured with good story, I have been convicted of too often taking the mystery and story out of Christianity. Doctrine is so important. It is the foundation for absolutely everything. Without it, we can hold to nothing. Without it, worship is impossible. Again, we are so careful to not fall into the "doctrinelessness" of much of today's church or the mindless New Age spirituality of our age, that we totally lose the experiential quality of the faith. We must learn to leave room for mystery. In our care to rightly frame all things doctrinally, we must not end in an intellectual exercise only. We cannot be paralyzed by what is a healthy concern for right understanding and we shouldn't make others around us feel this way as well. We must, like little children, stand before the throne of God - knowing what we know about Him because He has revealed Himself and because we have so painfully slowly trained our minds to think His thoughts after Him - and be overwhelmed. That is the true experience of transcendence (which Oprah and her followers are longing for and yet will never find because they have lost doctrine of the miracle of Christmas - the transcendent God becoming eminent in the flesh of Jesus Christ); that is the essence of worship.
Romans 11:33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
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